A REBELLION AGAINST THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
“He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his Commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”
—1 John 2:4
In theory, Muslims accept the Bible as true revelation—except that they believe both Old and New Testaments to have been “corrupted” by the Jews and the Christians. In fact, Muhammad rejected the Golden Rule—“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12)—which is the essence of the Bible’s moral teaching, and the Ten Commandments, which are summed up by that rule. Jihad is by its very nature a violation of the Bible’s commandments. Islam replaced both the Golden Rule and the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” with “Kill your neighbor if he’s a non-Muslim.”
Jihad by its very nature promotes offensive war and terror against neighboring non-Muslim countries. That has produced bloody wars on the borders between Islam and its neighbors. Such a bloody relationship between Islam and the entire outside world requires a constant string of justifications, false claims, propaganda, and outright lies—all to convince the West that Muslim violence is justified and to convince Muslims that they are the victims of the West. Arab media and history books are all about justifying jihad.
Love Your Neighbor versus Kill Your Neighbor
The Bible calls humanity to a higher standard. The Ten Commandments are divine commandments establishing the principles under which society and human beings can flourish and prosper. Jesus summed them—and all God’s commands to us—up in the New Testament: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37–40).
The endurance of the Ten Commandments is a testament to their wisdom. They are universal values that transcend cultural and historical differences. These Mosaic laws carry values and ideas that were revolutionary for their time. Even today many cultures and people all over the world are still struggling to live by them.
The Arabian culture of the seventh century did not struggle to abide by the Ten Commandments, but it was aware of them. Muhammad knew about the morality of the Bible, but he gave his new religion a morality that is exactly the opposite. While all of the Ten Commandments flow from the requirement that Christians and Jews must love God and their neighbors, all of Islamic law flows from the requirement that Muslims must kill their neighbors until and unless their neighbors submit to Islam. Islam does incorporate a few of the Ten Commandments into its morality, but puts them in service to Muhammad’s new morality, which contradicts others of the Ten Commandments and conflicts with the Bible’s moral message on the deepest level.
Some advocates of Islamic Law in America today defend sharia by arguing that it is based on the Ten Commandments. Muqtedar Khan, for example, associate professor at the University of Delaware warns Americans against panicking about sharia because, as the title of his article puts it, “Sharia Is Based on Ten Commandments.”1
Khan’s equation of sharia with the Ten Commandments is incorrect, to say the least. In fact it is an assault on the truth and on the Word of God. If sharia is in harmony with the Ten Commandments and Biblical values, then why does the Koran declare the Bible corrupted and call on Muslims to kill Jews and Christians wherever they find them? Why does Islam declare that the Koran and sharia replace the Bible, if they are the same? It is time for Muslims to answer these questions truthfully and end the charade.
Muslims should be confronted and exposed for spreading lies about their own and other people’s religions. Such lies are detrimental not only to the West but to Muslims themselves. It is high time they woke up from their fourteen-hundred-year slumber and self-deception.
Islam’s Clash with the Ten Commandments
Sharia books never measure their laws by values of the Ten Commandments, but rather by the Koran and Muhammad’s actions, lifestyle, and sayings. The Ten Commandments are mentioned in the Koran, but only as a historical reference to the Abrahamic roots Muhammad wanted to link his new religion to. Instead of adjusting to conform to the values of the Bible, Muhammad reversed them and claimed that Jews and Christians intentionally falsified their Bible. Islamic education has never taught the Ten Commandments in schools; in fact it totally shuns anything that has to do with the Bible.
Sharia is in fact a breach of the Ten Commandments. The fact that majority Muslim countries are in a constant state of in-fighting, revolutions, and bloody repression, while Western nations are peaceful, is explained by the differences between the religious laws that have shaped the two cultures. Sharia creates constant strife. The Arab Spring failed precisely because sharia is the antithesis of the Biblical Ten Commandments. In every Islamic society there are at least two irreconcilable camps: those who want to strictly follow sharia and force it on everyone else, and those who want to relax it.
After every successful Islamic revolution when the old leader is pushed out or assassinated and a new leader is installed, there is typically a honeymoon period of brief jubilant celebrations. But the excitement and joy are quickly followed by disappointment, as Muslim society slips back to where it started—back into the bondage and tyranny of Sharia.
In his article, Professor Khan accuses Americans of being unreasonable, ignorant, or unjustifiably afraid. This is the accusation of “Islamophobia” that is always thrown at Western critics of Islam. But someone with the professor’s level of education should know better. Why is the Middle East, still today, on fire, suffering from horrific civil wars? It is precisely because of sharia. The in-fighting between Muslims today is for the same reason as always—between two camps, those who want to soften sharia to make life more bearable, and those who want sharia to be enforced rigorously. There are no groups in any Muslim country today calling for no sharia; if they once existed they are dead.
What Professor Khan failed to notice is that the Islamic world is on fire over sharia and not over the Ten Commandments.
From the very beginning, Arabia’s cutthroat culture clashed with values of the Ten Commandments. Islam came to preserve and not reform Arabian warring values, and that is why the Bible became the enemy of Islam.
Professor Khan’s article accusing the West of freaking out about sharia is exactly the opposite of the reality of Islam in history. Muhammed did start by embracing the Biblical idea of one God, but when it came to actually living by Biblical standards and the values of the Ten Commandments, it was Muhammad who freaked out. They clashed with the cutthroat Arab culture Muhammad was committed to. At the very beginning of Islam, that cutthroat culture won out over the Biblical commandments. And even today the whole charade called sharia stands as a legal and religious impediment to abiding by the Ten Commandments, across the Middle East and beyond.
The First Commandment: Loyalty
“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2–3). This commandment is of supreme importance to our personal relationship with God, which should be based on loving and honoring Him. Jews and Christians are encouraged to become members of God’s family and to relate to Him as children relate to their Father in a loving family. “And [I] will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (II Corinthians 6:18).
In Islam, the very idea of God as Father is offensive. According to the Koran, “The Jews and Christians say: We are sons of Allah and His loved ones. Say: Why then doth He chastise you for your sins? Nay, ye are but mortals of His creating. He forgiveth whom He will, and chastiseth whom He will. . . .” According to the Koran if he truly loves you, Christians and Jews, and calls you his children, then how come he still punishes you for sin? This passage betrays Muhammad’s bizarre views not only of God, but of fatherhood. Essentially he is asking, Why aren’t Jews and Christians spoiled brats, if they are truly the children of God?
So who is the God of Islam, and what kind of relationship does he tell us to have with him?
The truth is, Allah is not the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To begin with, the historical roots of “Allah” have nothing to do with the Bible. It was a name for the chief pagan god of the Kaaba in Mecca before Muhammad. The name of Muhammad’s father, who was a pagan himself and died before Muhammad was born, was Abdullah, meaning slave of Allah. And still today Abdullah is one of the most popular names in Islam.
Muhammed linked himself to all the prophets and other Biblical figures not only to gain legitimacy by the connection, but also to bring them down as inferior to him and Islam. In the process, Muhammad shredded the meaning of the Bible. For instance, in the Koran Jesus was just a prophet and not the Son of God. Islam’s holy book does not stop there, but refers to Christians as idol worshipers and Jews as the worst of Allah’s creation. Islam’s view of God as He is represented in the Bible is that of falsifier, a liar, and a corrupter.
Islam’s reversal of Biblical values is astounding. In the Bible, loyalty to God springs from love for God, who “loved us first” (I John 4:19). But Islam has no concept of God as loving and compassionate. As we have already seen, Islamic loyalty to Allah is based on fear and submission; the Muslim’s relationship to God is that of a slave to his master. That is why the meaning of the word Islam is submission.
Islam does command loyalty to the one God. Those who do not believe in Allah are guilty of “shirk,” which means believing in more than one God. Christians are counted as having committed “shirk” because Islam teaches that belief in the Trinity is equal to belief in three gods. Islam does not stop with labeling Christians idolators, but expects and entrusts Muslims to execute the “mushrikin”—the plural for those who commit shirk—if they refuse to convert to Islam (or failing that, Christians must submit to second class dhimmi status and pay the jizya tax, but that option is not available to Hindus and other non-Muslims who don’t qualify as “people of the book”). Hence, a Muslim’s loyalty to Allah requires that he kill non-Muslims. Thus Islam is enforcing one of the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” by requiring the violation of another commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13).
Islam has no understanding of the Biblical concept of loyalty to God out of love. Islamic loyalty to Allah is out of fear of a distant master who is eager to punish humans. With such a relationship to God setting the tone, Muslims’ interpersonal relationships with other human beings are based not on love, but on fear, as we have already seen from numerous examples from the shame-based culture I grew up in.
Loyalty to the God of the Bible is completely compatible with love of friends and neighbors, and also with patriotism and good citizenship in the West. The same cannot be said for loyalty to Allah. In a July 16, 2015, article, Dr. Richard Swier asked, “Can Muslims Be Loyal to Anything Other than Allah?” He gave the example of Muslim Army major Nidal Malik Hasan, who decided to blast away at his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009, while yelling “Allahu Akbar.” Upon joining the Army, Major Hasan had taken an oath of allegiance to defend the U.S. Constitution, to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion.” But despite that oath, Hasan killed twelve of his fellow American soldiers with Allah’s blessing. What the West does not understand is that Major Hasan’s loyalty to Allah prevented him from being loyal to America and its citizens.
The same thing became clear at the trial of the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen from Pakistan:
Judge: “Didn’t you swear allegiance to this country when you became an American citizen?”
Shahzad: “I did swear, but I did not mean it.”
Judge: “You took a false oath?”
Shahzad: “Yes.”2
It is important to mention here that taking a false oath under a non-Muslim legal system is entirely legal under Sharia. Committed Muslims know that swearing falsely and lying are proofs of their loyalty to Allah. Islamic loyalty to Allah once again proves to be a twisted form of loyalty that violates another of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” (Exodus 20:16).
The Second Commandment: Worship
The Second Commandment says, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them” (Exodus 20:4–5). It forbids us to betray our love of Him by bowing down to meaningless idols. This commandment protects our special relationship with our Creator, who made us in His likeness and continues to mold us into His spiritual image.
Islam does enforce the Second Commandment, like the First—but at the cost of breaking the others, and also with one strange exception that I explain below.
Muhammed started his movement by rejecting idolatry after he was exposed to Jewish and Christian preaching. At first the Prophet did not use violence to convert others to Islam, but that got him nowhere. Eventually Muhammad saw that the only way he was going to be victorious was—as he himself said—through terror. The day Muhammad made the decision to be a warrior and use holy terror to expand his religion was the day he collided with the Ten Commandments and Biblical values.
Muhammad’s use of terror devalues human life, which separates him from values of the Commandments. When he ordered the killing and beheading of those who disagreed with him, Muhammad was committing a crime against God.
And strangely, Islam contradicts itself on idolatry: when Muhammad conquered the Kaaba from the “idol worshippers” and claimed it as an Islamic holy site, Muslims retained it as a holy place and even kept one of the idols that was worshipped there prior to Islam: the Black Stone. As John Calvin, the influential French theologian and reformer during the Protestant Reformation, said, “So today the [Muslim] Turks, although they proclaim at the top of their lungs that the Creator of heaven and earth is God, still, while repudiating Christ, substitute an idol in place of the true God.”
The Third Commandment: Reverence and Respect
“Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain” (Exodus 20:7). The Third Commandment is about how we communicate our feelings about God to others and how we address and view Him in our thoughts.
We have already seen how so many of the names that Islam gives to Allah describe truly evil behavior: “Deceiver,” “Prideful,” “the Humiliator,” and so forth. Muhammad absolutely took the name of the Lord in vain. In fact, he replaced the true God with an impostor called Allah. Because Muhammad altered the attributes and nature of the God of the Bible to fit Islam, Allah is no longer the same God of the Bible but a fake replacement. That is the ultimate violation of the Third Commandment, which forbids taking the Lord’s name in vain.
Muhammad plagiarized the Bible, distorted and denied its true message in the Koran, and claimed the true Bible had been corrupted. He then claimed all the glory of the God of the Bible for Allah and all the holiness of the Bible for the Koran. Even on his deathbed, Muhammad was still commanding his followers to chase and kill all the Jews, who knew about his plagiarism and falsification of their scriptures, all the way to Jerusalem, their Holy Land. Muslims followed his orders, conquered Jerusalem and built a mosque right on top of the ruins of Solomon’s Temple.
The Fourth Commandment: Sanctification through Our Relationship to God
The Fourth Commandment requires us to “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”:
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
The Hebrews observed a day of rest for all human beings, whom they believed to be made in the image of God. The Sabbath was to be kept holy to renew body and soul.
The Sabbath was yet another revolutionary idea for its time. In other ancient cultures, rest was a luxury reserved to the lucky and wealthy few. The world was divided between a few masters and many slaves, who worked with no rest.
The notion of a Sabbath day of rest to keep holy is not found in the Koran. Islam does make Friday the day when Muslims gather to pray in the mosque. Some Islamic theocracies, such as Saudi Arabia, harshly punish those who neglect to attend Friday prayers, and in less radical countries Muslims who disobey suffer from social shaming and threats. But the Koran states that the Sabbath day of complete rest is only required for Jews (16:124).
Muslims do fight in jihadist wars on Fridays and also during the holy month of Ramadan. In fact, Islamic terror attacks against Coptic Christians in Egypt increase on Fridays. Many Muslims are off of work on Friday, and mosque Friday sermons often call them to do jihadist attacks on non-Muslims. That explains why more attacks happen on Fridays when Muslims leave mosques angry and ready for holy attacks on the enemies of Allah. Jihadist terror is considered a religious duty and a holy act under Islam. Friday is a holy day, so holy acts of jihadist terror fit in beautifully.3
The Fifth Commandment: Respect for Parental Authority
The Fifth Commandment is “Honour thy father and thy mother” (Exodus 20:12). Islam does command children to be “good and dutiful” to parents in many Koran verses. On the other hand, there are Koran verses that encourage Muslim children to disassociate themselves from their non-Muslim parents: “Choose not your fathers nor your brethren for friends if they take pleasure in disbelief rather than faith [in Islam]” (9:23). That in itself is not so different from a few New Testament passages that say that Jesus will bring division (Luke 12:51–53), and warn Christians they may have to choose between family and God: “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life” (Matthew 19:29).
But there is nothing in the New Testament like the sharia law that completely undercuts the relationship between children and parents by allowing parents to kill their children with impunity: “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) will not be subject to prosecution for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring” (Reliance of the Traveller o1.1-2 p. 584). That law strikes at the heart of love and trust between parents and children.
Thus “honor killing” of family members is a protected right of parents and grandparents under Islamic law. How can a child honor his parents under such conditions, when parents are encouraged by the laws of their religion to care more about their honor than their kids?
The Sixth Commandment: Respect for Human Life
“Thou shalt not kill,” says the Sixth Commandment (Exodus 20:13). According to the Bible, taking another person’s life is a sin; it is not our right to decide whether they live or die. And Biblical values on the respect for human life go beyond avoiding murder. God requires that we not maliciously harm another human being in word or deed: “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (I John 3:15). The God of the Bible teaches us that life is precious; He wants us to build life and not destroy it.
Western culture takes for granted that all religions share the same basic principles, including considering killing to be a major sin. But the contrast between the Bible and the Koran is most glaring here. It is on the subject of killing that Muhammad’s reversal of Biblical values becomes crystal clear. Not only does Islam reject the Sixth Commandment, it actually enshrines killing as the most important form of worship and devotion to Allah. “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah” is an Islamic slogan that you can see repeated by members of Hamas on Palestinian television.4
Commandments to kill and terrorize are in abundant supply in the Koran, hadiths, and sharia, as we have already seen. Those who murder under the title of holy jihad are honored as “shahid” for the sake of Allah—like my thirty-five-year-old father, sent by the Egyptian government on a mission to “slay and [be] slain,” as the Koran says (9:111), when I was eight. He killed Jews, and he got killed in the process. Meanwhile, suicide is not permitted under Islamic law—with one exception; if it is done in a “martyrdom” operation. In other words, as long as the person committing suicide kills others for jihad.
Islam has totally inverted the Sixth Commandment. While Christians and Jews are bound by their covenant with God not to kill, Muslims are under a covenant to do war, “Fighting is prescribed for Muslims” (Koran 2.216). As we have seen, Allah even reprimands Muslims who stay home to avoid fighting: “Not equal are believers who sit home and receive no hurt and those who Fight in Allah’s Cause with their wealth and lives. Allah has granted a grade higher to those who Fight with their possessions and bodies to those who sit home. Those who Fight He has distinguished with a special reward” (Koran 4:95).
Muslims often have no choice but jihad because those who flee from fighting are promised Hell—and sometimes killed by other Muslims. The Koran says, “If you march not forth, He will punish you with a painful torment and will replace you with another people, and you cannot harm Him at all, and Allah is able to do all things” (9:39). “Refusing to perform jihad and fleeing from combat with unbelievers” is not just a sin, though, but also a crime against Islam (Reliance of the Traveller w52.1, 369–70). As Muslim authorities teach, even today, and even in countries where Muslims are a minority: “Those who reject jihad are considered infidels.”5
Relentless commandments to fight and kill are all over the Koran: “fight with the ringleaders of the unbelief. . . . Will you not fight against those people who have broken their oaths, conspired to expel the Messenger and were the first to attack you? Do you fear them? Nay, it is Allah Who is more deserving of your fear. . . . Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and humiliate them. He will grant you victory over them and heal the hearts of a believing people.” (9:12–15). “Fight those people of the Book (Jews and Christians) who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day . . . until they pay Jizya (protection tax) with their own hands and feel themselves subdued” (9:29).
Let me list the different commandments to kill the different classes of people who are named as targets by Muslim scriptures, with citations to the Koran verses and hadith passages that command the killing:
1. Kill idolators wherever you find them (9:5, 22:19–22)
2. Kill Jews everywhere and anywhere, even if they hide from Muslims (Bukhari 4:52:177)
3. Kill Christians if they violate the dhimmi treaty or don’t pay jizya tax (Koran 9:29)
4. Kill apostates, that is Muslims who leave Islam (Koran 4:89 and o8:4, and Bukhari, 4.52.260)
5. Kill (and torture) non-Muslims who resist Islamic jihad: “The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom” (Koran 5:33)
6. Kill non-Muslims who preach the gospel to Muslims, or otherwise lead them away from Islam (p. 609, o11.10)
7. Kill homosexuals (Abu Dawud, 4447), burn and throw them off of buildings alive (Mishkat, vol. 1, p. 765)
8. Kill those who commit blasphemy against Muhammad or Allah—even if they repent—including all of the following:
• Reviling Allah or his Messenger
• Being sarcastic about “Allah’s name, His command, His interdiction, His promise, or His threat”
• Denying any verse of the Koran or “anything which by scholarly consensus belongs to it, or to add a verse that does not belong to it”
• Holding that “any of Allah’s messengers or prophets are liars, or to deny their being sent”
• Reviling the religion of Islam
• Being sarcastic about any ruling of the Sacred Law (sharia)
• Denying that Allah intended “the Prophet’s message . . . to be the religion followed by the entire world” (Reliance of the Traveler pp. 59798, o8.7)
As we know to our sorrow, Allah’s command to Muslims to murder is not a relic of the bloody past. We have already seen that one Islamic preacher has recently promoted stabbing while wielding a knife and yelling “Stab!” Another Islamic cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri, said to his followers, “Killing a Kafir who is fighting you is OK. Killing a Kafir for any reason, you can say, it is OK—even if there is no reason for it. You can poison, ambush and kill non-believers. You must have a stand with your heart, with your tongue, with your money, with your hand, with your sword, with our Kalashnikov. Don’t ask shall I do this, just do it.”
“Glory kneels before you” were words spoken at the funeral of two Arab terrorists who recently boarded a bus in Jerusalem with a gun and a knife and murdered Haviv Haim (age seventy-eight), Alon Govberg (fifty-one), and Richard Lakin (seventy-six).6 This is how Islam rewards those who kill the enemies of Allah and places them on a pedestal. There are many verses in the Koran that are specifically designed to relieve Muslims of any kind of guilt for killing Allah’s enemies. The Koran comforts killers by saying it is not your hands that are doing the killing but Allah’s: “It is not ye who Slew them; it is God” (8:17).
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, told American authorities after being captured: “See, I told you, I cut Daniel’s throat with these blessed hands.” The God of Islam considered the hands of KSM blessed for cutting the throat of Daniel Pearl.7
The Seventh Commandment: Purity in Relationships
The Bible, as we have already seen, condemns adultery for both men and women, while in Islam it is almost always only women who are declared guilty, caught, and punished for sexual sins. The Seventh Commandment simply says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14). It forbids the violation of the marriage covenant by willful participation in sexual activity with someone other than one’s spouse. Adultery leads to the corruption of the institution of marriage, which is established by God as between one man and one woman (Genesis 2:24 and Matthew 19:5).
The Bible promotes loyalty between spouses, something that is impossible in Muslim marriage because of the polygamy and sexual slavery permitted in the Koran and sharia. Allah told Muhammad: “O Prophet! surely We have made lawful to you your wives whom you have given their dowries, and those whom your right hand possesses out of those whom Allah has given to you as prisoners of war . . .” (Koran 33.50). The phrase “those whom your right hand possesses” means slaves.
Muslims look at loyalty in marriage and adultery in a totally different way from Christians and Jews. Adultery is a crime punishable by death or stoning in Islam. Muhammad himself ordered the stoning of adulterers: “Two people guilty of ‘illegal’ intercourse are brought to Muhammad, who orders them both stoned to death.” Apparently their act was out of love, since the verse records the man as trying to “shield the woman from the stones” (Bukhari 6:60:79). Adultery is easy to detect in women, who must be loyal to one husband, but it is a totally different story for men. Loyalty to one wife is not required in Islam. In addition to allowing polygamy, there are many legal loopholes in sharia, as we have already seen, that allow men to have sex with women who are not their (permanent) wives.
Most victims of honor killings in the Muslim world are women. There are at least five thousand reported honor killings of Muslim women annually for the crime of having sex outside of marriage.8 The unreported cases could be even higher. Here again, Islam seems to obey one of the Ten Commandments—but only by breaking another one: “Thou shalt not kill.”
The Eighth Commandment: Honesty
The Bible says “Thou shalt not steal” (Exodus 20:15). In Islam, stealing is also a sin. But not always. In fact, Muslims have a right to seize the kafirs’ property.
In the West, where society’s rules were formed by the Bible, the Eighth Commandment safeguards everyone’s right to acquire and keep property they own legitimately. Without a strong respect for other people’s property, society would be chaotic.
In Islam, stealing is a sin punishable by the amputation of limbs. Muhammad said, “The hand should be cut off for stealing something that is worth a quarter of a Dinar or more” (Bukhari 81:780). Muslims still practice amputation for stealing today.
But let us not be fooled by Islam’s harsh punishment for stealing into thinking that Islam is serious about stealing under any conditions. Just as with murder and lying, Islam only forbids stealing under certain conditions—namely, when a Muslims steals from other Muslims.
Killing and stealing are interconnected in Islam. Because after killing non-Muslims in jihad Muslims are encouraged and awarded with their property, their homes, businesses, women, and children. As we have already seen, these are called legitimate spoils of war or booty. Thus forcefully taking the property of unbelievers is not considered stealing under Islam but a legitimate right: “And He caused you to inherit their land and their houses and their wealth, and land ye have not trodden. Allah is ever Able to do all things” (Koran 33:27).
In the Koran, Allah himself gave Muhammad the right to take the property of the Jews after he beheaded between six and nine hundred Jewish men in two days: “What Allah has bestowed on His Messenger (and taken away) from them [the Jews]—for this ye made no expedition with either cavalry or camelry: but Allah gives power to His messengers over any He pleases: and Allah has power over all things” (59:6).
Even today, a leading imam who is also a professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, has said, “Muslims have the right to take the property of filthy Christians and Jews.” That is Yasir Qadhi, who was described by the New York Times Magazine as “one of the most influential conservative clerics in American Islam.”9 Qadhi justifies stealing from Jews and Christians as “a means to establish monotheism on the land.” He quotes Muhammad saying “I have been commanded to fight the people until they” convert and explains that “if they don’t, their life and property are halal [free for the taking] to the Muslims.”10
So the excuse for allowing Muslims to steal from non-Muslims is for the purpose of spreading monotheism! It seems that Islam never got the news that Judaism and Christianity were always monotheistic religions, way before Islam came into existence. But even if they were not, is converting people a legitimate justification for stealing in a major world religion? Apparently it is.
The Prophet Muhammad bragged, “I have been given five things which were not given to any one else before me. 1. Allah made me victorious by His terrorizing my enemies. 2. The earth has been made for me. 3. Booty has been made lawful for me yet it was not lawful for anyone else before me. 4. I have been given the right of intercession. 5. Every Prophet used to be sent to his nation only but I have been sent to all mankind” (Bukhari vol 1: 331).
ISIS in Iraq and Syria is openly stealing not only from non-Muslim minorities, but also from believers in other sects of Islam, such as the Shiites. They are also stealing antiquities from museums, and what they can’t carry away they destroy. Reuters reported on December 28, 2015, that the Islamic State has set up departments to handle “war spoils,” including slaves, and the exploitation of natural resources such as oil.11
The following is an excerpt from a televised sermon by prominent Egyptian sheikh Abu Ishak al Huweini, waxing lyrical about the benefits of stealing from non-Muslims:
. . . Jihad for the sake of Allah is a pleasure, a true pleasure. Mohammed’s followers used to compete to do it. The reason we are poor now is because we have abandoned jihad. If only we can conduct a jihadist invasion at least once a year or if possible twice or three times, then many people on Earth would become Muslims. And if anyone prevents our dawa [proselytizing] or stands in our way, then we must kill them or take as hostage and confiscate their wealth, women and children. Such battles will fill the pockets of the Mujahid who can return home with 3 or 4 slaves, women and, children. This can be a profitable business if you multiply each head [slaves] by 300 or 400 dirham. This can be like financial shelter to a jihadist, in time of financial need, can always sell one of these heads [slaves]. No one can make that much money in one deal (from hard work. . . .12
The Ninth Commandment: Truthfulness
In the Bible, lying is a sin: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” (Exodus 20:16). In Islam, lying and slander are a religious obligation—if they’re for the benefit of Islam.
The Ninth Commandment tells us that our lives, thoughts and behavior should be anchored to truth. If we truly love people then we must not lie to or otherwise deceive them.
There is no hesitation or double talk about the importance of truth in the Bible. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” says Jesus (John 8:32). He describes Himself as “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The Psalmist asks, “Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart” (15:1–2).
As with stealing, Islam has many loopholes and contradictions regarding lying and speaking the truth. We already saw in chapter three many of the Islamic sources permit lying or even require it as an obligation.
A religion that is not clear about what is sin and what is not with regard to such a basic moral issue as lying versus telling the truth does a great deal of harm to any society where it holds sway. In Islamic countries, one Muslim may gain respect and rewards for lying to non-Muslims to protect Islam, while another may be harshly punished for telling the truth—for example, the many journalists who have been jailed and even executed because they told stories the government wanted to suppress. These are the fruits of Islam, which has produced a society that is uncomfortable with the truth, and more comfortable lying.
How can Muslims trust a God who is proud to call himself the greatest deceiver? How can they emulate a prophet who lies, kills, and steals? If Allah allows them to lie to expand the power of Islam, then how do they know Allah and Muhammad weren’t doing the very same thing in the Koran itself—in other words, how can they even trust that Allah and Muhammad are who they claim to be?
The day Islam gambled with its own credibility and reputation by obliging its followers to lie for the purpose of expansion, was the day it condemned itself to perpetually trying to cover up previous lies and justifying and defending itself to a world that has no trust and only fear of Islam. Islam is in a constant stressful and draining race to cover up and camouflage its lies and hide and disguise its true goals and intentions.
Various Islamist groups—not just Al Qaeda and ISIS—instruct their members on how to conceal themselves to avoid being detected in their efforts to spread Islam and sharia to the West: avoid mosques, shave your beard, and even wear a Christian cross in order to blend in.13 Several Arab students who attacked my views when I spoke on college campuses were wearing crosses to give the impression that they were Middle East Christians who support Islam. But their anger at my criticism of Islamic law left no doubt in my mind that they were Muslims and not Christian Arabs.
This kind of Islamic deception is going on all over our university campuses in America. Islam has been trying to build itself up in the U.S. by using deception.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Islam has been proving—by trying to build stable and successful societies and governments with no success—that a foundation of lies is a shaky foundation for a society. Instead of repenting, reforming, and asking for forgiveness for its history of lies, Islamic society has been fighting the truth for fourteen hundred year and counting.
Americans know that their country is the land of the free and the home of the brave, but how many fully understand why? As long as the U.S. sticks with Biblical values, including the truth, it will always be free.
It is a miracle of the Holy Spirit that I was saved from the jaws of a religion that punishes truth-tellers. I consider myself a living example of what the Bible means when it says that “the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32)
The Tenth Commandment: Contentment
The Tenth Commandment says, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s” (Exodus 20:17). The focus of the Tenth Commandment is on our hearts and minds. It tells us not to covet, meaning desire or crave the possession of something that belongs to somebody else. Not all desires are immoral, but coveting is an improper longing for what is not rightfully ours. It can lead us to greater sin, and that is why God warned us against it. Instead of coveting, the Bible advises us to do the opposite—to rejoice when other people are blessed.
By asking us not to covet, the Bible encourages us to look deep within ourselves to uncover our thinking and motivation. That self-examination turns us to repentance and God’s grace in a wonderful process for cleansing ourselves from the kind of thinking that can lead us to sin and guilt.
The Tenth Commandment is utterly alien to Islamic values and the example of Muhammad. Muhammad was a very intelligent man, but not analytical or a deep thinker. He never commanded Muslims to do a self-examination of their minds and hearts to stop them from thinking along lines that could lead them into evil acts of sin. In fact Muhammad lured his followers by promising to fulfill their covetous desires.
Muhammad took pride in doing precisely what the Tenth Commandment forbids. The Prophet’s life is a series of examples of coveting without restraint. He called those he coveted his enemies and the enemies of Allah to justify his improper desires. Muhammad literally charged into stripping his enemies of their possessions, homes, property, trading caravan goods, women, and children. And he called this killing, raping, and ransacking a divine service and worship of God.
Muhammad did not just covet the possessions of his non-Muslim enemies. When he desired the wife of his adopted son Ali, he came up with a new revelation making it legitimate and holy for Ali to divorce his wife and for Muhammad to marry her.
Muhammad was extremely envious of the Jews of Medina, especially when they refused to convert to his new faith. After Muhammad beheaded all the male members of the Jewish tribe, he had his first pick of the young wives. He forced one of them to have sex with him the very night he beheaded her husband. This horrifying behavior is all documented in Islamic books on the life story of Muhammad, which never refer to it with shame, but instead with pride. That is the tragedy of Islamic values—Muslims are prevented by their religion from telling good from evil.
The whole concept of jihad is a brazen violation of the Tenth Commandment, because it means conquest over non-Muslims and taking what they have. Jihad has taken Muslims into some very dark places, allowing them to commit horrible crimes to achieve the objects they covet: forced sexual slavery, beheading, flogging, torture, terror, lying, and so forth.
Even after he had conquered all of Arabia, Muhammad still coveted more. His desire for conquest of other people and their possessions had no limits. After his death, his followers continued to conquer and plunder the wealth of other civilizations, such as Egypt and Persia.
Muhammad’s Appropriation of the Bible
But Muhammad didn’t just take what he coveted from other civilizations. He also stole from other religions—namely Christianity and Judaism, the religions based on the Bible.
Muhammad coveted the honor and glory of God Himself. He coveted the moral authority of Jesus, the Son of God. So Muhammad called the Bible corrupted and replaced Jesus with himself as God’s legitimate representative on Earth. The Koran claims that Jesus will come back as a Muslim, deny the Bible, and proclaim Islam the correct religion for humanity. And Muhammad used the authority he had stolen to set up a morality that is in opposition to the Ten Commandments, and that authorized him to act on his own lusts and greed. But to oppose the Ten Commandments is to oppose God, His blessings, the truth, and reality itself. That is where the uncontrollable darkness of coveting, envy, lust, and sin led one man—and is now leading 1.6 billion Muslims, nearly a quarter of the world’s population.