Back to the Future

Islamic Imperialism and Its Failures

Islam is a uniformitarian religion.  It recognises no distinctions of race, colour, ethnicity, or geography--theoretically.  In his final visit to Mecca, Muhammad uttered his "closing" address:

O people, your Lord is one and your ancestor is [also] one.  You are descended from Adam and Adam was [born] of the earth.  The noblest of you  all in the sight of Allah is the most devout.  Allah is all knowing and all wise. [Koran, Sura 49, 13]

Theoretically this made all human beings equal; it also made the community of Islam--the umma--borderless and universal.  The promise of Islam to remake the world via the universal umma could be expressed as follows:

At a stroke the past was wiped clean.  One's ethnic origin and traditional ties and relationships counted for nothing, only one's faith and piety.  The umma was not merely a novel form of socio-political communal organisation.  It was a divinely ordained brotherhood, bound together by something far stronger than blood and far wider than the Arabian Peninsula: the great equalizer between Arabs and non-Arabs, free men and freed men. [Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007),  p.19.]

This was a radical notion.  It was Muhammad's version of the Lord's Great Commission.  But, it had a critical difference: in the mind of Muhammad there was no distinction between temporal and religious authority or rule.  They were one and the same.

And Now, Some Good News . . .

If You Have Been Killed, Thank God

God moves in mysterious ways, we are told, His wonders to perform. 

Recently, we posted a piece on the hunger of Jewish people in Israel to study and research whether Yeshua of Nazareth was actually the long awaiting Jewish Mashiach.  Such things are taking place beneath the radar screen of the madding crowd and the buzzing hives of Unbelief.  As one church historian once observed, some of the greatest movements of the Spirit of God drawing people to the Master of the Universe are only seen and recognised after the event. 

Now, hot on the heels of that report, friends sent another report, this one published in Christian Today. 

'We are living in the midst of the greatest turning of Muslims to Christ in history'

Lucinda Borkett-Jones

Christian Today

Despite the daily news of the persecution of Christians around the world by Islamist groups, there is another, lesser-known story of growing numbers of Muslims around the world who are turning to Christ as Lord.
Missionary David Garrison's book, A Wind in the House of Islam, charts this phenomenon, which he says demonstrates that "we are living in the midst of the greatest turning of Muslims to Christ in history".

The book is the result of two and a half years of research and involved travelling more than 250,000 miles to conduct interviews with more than 1,000 people around the Muslim world. In the study, a 'movement' of believers is defined as a group of more than 1,000 baptised believers or 100 new churches within a Muslim community. In total he found 69 movements that had started in the first 12 years of the 21st century, in comparison with virtually no voluntary movements of converts to Christianity in the first 12 centuries of Islam.

In the Darkest Hours

Bright, Shining Light

Several weeks ago, a horrific story of murder emerged from Kabul.

In life, Farkhunda would have been an unlikely role model for empowering Afghanistan's women.  Every day, she wore the head-to-toe black garment favored by conservative Muslim women. She studied at an Islamic religious school. She believed, her father said, that women should be educated in order to raise their children in a good way, manage their house and make their husbands happy.

In death, however, Farkhunda has become a champion for women's rights and the rule of law. The 27-year-old's brutal murder by a mob last week has galvanized this nation in a way no other recent atrocity has. It has unleashed a society's deep-rooted frustrations with the unchecked violence in everyday life, highlighting the continuing struggle between Afghanistan's ancient customs and modern laws. . . .

She was accused of burning a Quran, a crime punishable by death in Afghanistan, according to Islamic law - a crime authorities later said she did not commit.  Although details are unclear, some witnesses suggested that the attack was sparked by a dispute Farkhunda had with the mosque's imam. Whatever the case, the mob was bent on killing her in the most horrific manner. They dragged her body with a car, then burned it and threw it into the Kabul River.

It took two hours to murder her, the brutality unfolding as hundreds of people and armed policemen watched, doing nothing to save Farkhunda from her assailants. The neighborhood police headquarters was about a five-minute walk from the mosque. Many witnesses shot photos and videos with their smartphones.  [Stuff]

We are told that many Muslims are departing their religion in disgust at such violence.