Jesus, the founder of the Christian faith, was being questioned by the Jewish authorities regarding a tribute tax to Caesar. Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Mark 12:13-17 (The same passage appears, slightly modified, in Matthew 22:15-22 and Luke 20:20-26).For the most part Christians have based their attitudes toward government on this passage. The accepted theology here is that Jesus' statement establishes two separate realms, Caesar's and God's, and that people should render to each what they ask for in their respective realms. This passage has come to be understood as recognizing the existence of two distinct authorities, one spiritual and the other political. The establishment of a separate Church and State was established here in America. With it came the freedom to practice a religion without government intervention.
But much of Islam has no such distinction. Muhammad was a religious and political leader, the Prophet and the head of state. Under his successors, the caliphs, Islam grew into a huge empire and world religion. Islamic sharia, or Holy Law, deals with power, authority, and political philosophy. Specific applications differ among Islamic nations. In an extreme example of this spiritual political blend, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini once said, "Islam is politics or it is nothing.”
With this mindset, many Muslims believed that the Western world and the United States became infidel invaders; imperialist bullies who desecrate Islamic states by force. European colonialism, Western imperialism, and U. S. policies are at the heart of all the Jihads of recent history. Many Muslims deplore the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. America and Israel often are seen as collaborators trying to destroy Islam.
Especially disturbing to the Muslim radicals is the Western world’s relationship with rulers of Saudi Arabia -- Islam's Holy Land -- whom they see as warped by greed, graft, and moral corruption. One Saudi diplomat noted after 9/11, "What shocks me most is why they hit America and not us."
But they did hit America, and radical Islamic views of politics played an important role. In the aftermath of 9/11 much has been said about Islam and its growing influence on the western world. Most Americans can’t wrap their head around a religious state and given what most of us see in the Muslim world, Islam is anything but a “Religion of Peace.” Sharia Law is as foreign to us as was Jesus’ statement to the people he spoke to regarding Caesar’s Coin.
These Islamic laws in practice are brutal to the western observer; they are barbaric, and what makes it even more disturbing is it is mainly levied against women and children. Let’s face it, we in the U.S. are loathe to see Sharia Law instituted here no matter how many times the so called “moderate Imams” tell us how peaceful their religion is and how tolerant the west must be.
The simple fact is that the radicals rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the radicals who march shouting, “Death to America”. It is the radicals who wage any one of 50 wars worldwide. It is the radicals who systematically slaughter Christians, Jews or anyone else who aren’t them. It is the radicals who bomb, behead, murder, and honor-kill. It is the radicals who take over mosque after mosque. It is the radicals who zealously spread the doctrine of stoning, physical abuse, and mutilation. It is the radicals who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers. The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority including Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Western World, the 'silent majority,' say nothing.
Communist Russia was comprised of people who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill 70 million people.
The average Japanese prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by swords, shovels, and bayonets.
I have a brother. He isn’t born of my family, yet I love him and consider him as such. He is a man who spent his youth under the thumb of the communist party in the days of the USSR. He watched as members of his family disappeared for having a viewpoint that differed from the party. He, with others, could say nothing without fear of it being repeated to the authorities; the authorities who were always looking for the next example of what would happen to those who were in non-compliance with the law. The basic premise was that if you aren’t one of us, you must be one of them. My “brother” is a Jew from the Ukraine… a man of God, a scholar of the Book, a man of peace. He is also a Rabbi. He has seen what happens to the silent majority.
Lastly, I was asked recently to participate in an interview offering my opinion on the proposed Quran burnings in Gainesville. I declined the offer; they weren’t looking for an educated viewpoint. They wanted to pick a fight. But I will ask this question. Does burning the Quran change what is written in it? How about the Bible? Yet, everyone from the Pope to Barrack Hussein Obama are bending over backwards to appease radical Islam because some “pastor” gets it in his head to BBQ the Quran. Once again the Muslim World is out burning U.S. flags and threatening death to all Christians; Imams telling the people in the name of their “religion of peace” that they are obligated to kill all Americans on sight.
Let’s be honest here. There is never going to be a way the Western world can appease radical Islam. There will always be something else that they find offensive.
If you want to silence the rising voice of radical Islam, know what’s in your Book first. Be able to defend the Christian Faith first. Once you do that, burning any other religions book will be irrelevant.
Be that Voice,
Bishop Ian
