“MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD” VS. ISLAM AND THE CALIPHATE ARE ONE
It should not be a surprise that very different kinds of governments emerge in Islamic societies and in societies that have been shaped by the Bible. Government is a fruit, a product, and a reflection of the values of society. And we have seen, Islamic values and Biblical values are mirror opposites. Consequently, the governments they produce are also mirror opposites.
The Bible emphasizes the sovereign authority of God over human beings, rather than the sovereignty of the state or the authority of man over man. The God of the Bible never abdicated His authority to the state, to a king, or to any man.
In the Bible Jesus said: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
Societies based on Biblical values do not give absolute power to fallen human beings. They have built-in mechanisms to protect against human wickedness, tyrannies, dictatorships, and totalitarian rule. There are no guarantees, of course, because it is ultimately up to human beings to protect their Biblical values and even fight for them if necessary. Majority Christian nations are made up of people who could fall into sin and self-destruction if they abandon Biblical values or take them for granted. But a constitutional republic like the United States, with its checks and balances, and its rule of law not men, is structured to limit the chances of tyranny by limiting human power.
Islam, on the other hand, is inherently totalitarian. It can never accept any limitations on government power to enforce Allah’s commandments. Islam requires total submission of the individual to the Islamic government—the caliphate—for the sake of jihadist expansion. Here too, there are no guarantees. Not all Muslim nations adhere equally to sharia, so there is more freedom in some than in others. But the difference is not because sharia and the Koran are more tolerant in one nation and less in another. The Koran is the same book everywhere, and all the schools of sharia demand that Muslims be governed by Islam’s tyrannical laws.
Islamic values will never lead a nation to liberty, democracy, or political stability. Those things cannot happen without major violations of sharia and the rejection of Islamic values. That was exactly what happened in the case of Turkey, when Kemal Ataturk veered away from Islamic values in the early twentieth century and linked his country to European culture. But Turkey’s deviation from sharia was hard to maintain if the country was to continue considering itself a Muslim nation. Sharia clearly states that any Muslim leader who brings novel ideas that are not based on sharia would be considered an apostate and should be forcefully removed from office. Many Muslims today consider Ataturk an apostate who destroyed Islam in Turkey. After living with Ataturk’s deviations from sharia for many decades, Turkey is slowly moving back to its Islamic roots, which means back to tyranny and political instability.
Islamic leaders are proud of using coercion, terror, and tyranny in order to keep Islamic governments faithful to sharia. We have seen how top Sunni authority Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi said that without the death penalty for apostasy, Islam would cease to exist. Abu A ‘la Mawdudi, the most influential Islamic theologian of the twentieth century, proudly stated that Islam is a totalitarian system and a form of fascism, just like Nazism and Communism, that would destroy all personal freedom.1
This is how Mawdudi described the ideal Islamic state (caliphate): “It seeks to mold every aspect of life and activity. . . . In such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal or private. . . . such a state should be run only by those who believe in the ideology on which it is based and in the Divine Law which it is assigned to administer. The administrators of the Islamic State must be those whose whole life is devoted to the observance and enforcement of this Law.”
That is true, as we have seen to our horror, about “the Islamic State,” the caliphate set up by ISIS. But it is also true about any and every genuine Islamic state. Even Muslims who do not support ISIS and are repulsed by the atrocities in the Islamic State know that any true Islamic state would have to be ruled by Muslims who would enforce sharia.
And, as Mawdudi said, the caliphate would also be committed to jihad: “Jihad is both offensive and defensive at the same time. It is offensive because the Muslim Party attacks the rule of any opposing ideology, and it is defensive because the Muslim Party is constrained to capture state power in order to protect the principles of Islam in space-time forces.”2
Biblical Self-Government vs. Islamic Tyranny
Since all men are sinners, the Bible teaches self-control rather than the authority of man over man. Jesus did not wish to take control of the government: “And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s” (Luke 20:25). But the Bible has inspired and influenced the state, fostering the self-control that makes self-government possible. That is why without Judeo-Christian values a constitutional republic or democracy cannot work. The Bible stresses the importance of governing self and family first as the foundation for good governance (Matthew 18:15–18, Galatians 5:16–26, I Corinthians 6:1–11, I Timothy 3:1–5, Titus 2:1–8).
Islam does not trust citizens to choose freely to uphold Islamic values. Thus capturing state power in order to force submission to Islam and its principles is the main goal of Islam. The above statements of Mawdudi and Qaradawi should put the West on notice that the goal of Islam is always to capture government power and control it absolutely, in order to put an end to people’s freedom to resist the religion of Allah.
Wherever Islam goes, the goal is to control government in the country it invades. Islam did not expand through peaceful missionary work. While Christian missionary families volunteered to live modest lives in some of the most dangerous parts of the world to preach the Gospel, Islam expanded through conquering nations—by “futuhat,” the Arabic word that literally meaning splitting nations open.
As Mawdudi explained, “The objective of Islamic Jihad is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system, and establish in its place an Islamic system of state rule. . . . Islam wishes to do away with all states and governments which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam.”3
In short, Islam needs jihad in order to enforce its moral vision on the world. The purpose of Islamic fighting is “To put an end to the sovereignty and supremacy of the unbelievers [non-Muslims] so that the latter are unable to rule over men. The authority to rule should be vested in those who follow the true faith [Islam]; unbelievers . . . should live in a state of subordination.”4
Without government control Islam is impotent and powerless. Even the most fervent Muslims lack confidence in the validity of its teachings, the justice of its sharia, and the loyalty of its followers. That is why it has to be enforced through tyrannical government control.
Without Islamic control of the government, citizens would not be forced to submit to sharia, jihadist wars against non-Muslim countries would not be waged, and the legal oppression of non-Muslims and the collection of “jizya” penalty taxes could not go on. But above all, without control of government the Islamic blasphemy and apostasy laws would not be enforced, and Islam would end.
While Christianity expands from the bottom of society up, Islam is forced on the society from the top down. After conquest by the sword, the new Islamic government forces Islam on the people until after decades and centuries of life under terror, nations like Egypt have no memory of their Biblical past.
Islamic Government: Immune to Criticism
Western and Biblical values rely on reason; thus Jews and Christians do not fear criticism of their religion. But the fact is, no religion or ideology should be immune from criticism. The freedom to speak out against a religion is especially important if the government and the laws people are forced to obey are determined by that religion.
Islamic sharia dictates that government should fall under the total control of Islam and its laws. And since Islamic law bans the criticism of Muhammad, Allah, and Islam itself, that immunity to criticism is extended and transferred to the Islamic state (the caliphate).
Under Islam, there is no escape from tyranny. Sharia makes the preservation and spread of Islam the number one duty of the caliphate: “the Islamic community needs a ruler to uphold the religion, defend the sunna. . .” (Reliance of the Traveller o25.2).
Islamic law is dictator-friendly as long as the head of the Islamic states rules by sharia. According to the sharia manual Reliance of the Traveler, the caliphate must be ruled by a Muslim male. It is invalid to appoint a non-Muslim to authority, even to rule over non-Muslims (o25.3). In fact, if the Muslim ruler (caliph) ceases to be Muslim or imposes “bid’a,” Arabic for a novel idea that conflicts with sharia, on the people, then he loses his authority. At that point, he should not be obeyed. In fact, it becomes the obligation of the Muslim public to rise against him and remove him from office (o25.3). The forceful seizure of power from such a caliph at any point in his term of office is thus a valid and legitimate form of change of government under sharia (o25.4). But as long as the caliph is a believing Muslim, it is obligatory upon citizens to obey the commands and interdictions of the caliph, even if he is unjust (o25.5). So essentially the caliph is free to be a dictator, and the people can do nothing about it. The only way he can lose his right to rule is by deviating from Islam.
In other words, Muhammad made sure that if at any point the Islamic government veers away from sharia, Muslim citizens have the right to forcibly take out the leader and replace him with another who would enforce it. Sharia clearly states that a Muslim head of state can come to power through seizure of power, meaning through force. Allah made sure that his Muslim helpers on earth would forcibly take out any leader who would not enforce sharia. The almighty Islamic government must never be ruled except by sharia enforcers.
Under sharia, the caliphate has absolute, total control and power over citizens. In the eyes of a Muslim, Allah and state enforcement of sharia are one. That is the reason why wherever Muslims go they feel lost without a sharia-controlled government. Muslim immigrants sooner or later start demanding to live under an Islamic government that enforces sharia. Without such a government, Muslims feel that they have betrayed Allah.
Islamic Revolutions: All About Government Control
Islam is not a belief system concerned with influencing hearts and minds. Instead the ultimate goal is to unify the world under a universal Islamic state, the caliphate. To Islam, that political goal is much more important than anything Christians or Jews would recognize as a truly religious or spiritual goal.
The Islamic world has always been torn by civil unrest, revolutions, and counter-revolutions for control of government. These Islamic civil wars have typically been between two camps who want a stricter and a less strict version of sharia law. Recently it is usually a military dictatorship on one hand and an Islamic terror group that wishes to impose full sharia on the other hand. These are the only two groups that can be serious contenders for power in a majority-Muslim country, where democratic values cannot exist.
Islamic wars with the outside world are also about bringing government under the fold of Islam and sharia. Any neighboring country that is not Islamic or does not follow sharia is a target of Islamic jihad. It is the duty of the Muslim head of state to attack it and never befriend it. Muslim leaders who befriend un-Islamic states are considered apostates who deserve to be killed. That’s precisely why Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assassinated—because he was working for peace with a non-Islamic entity.
God Does Not Relinquish His Power to Government vs. the Caliphate Assumes the Power of Allah
The God of the Bible never abdicated his throne to man: “Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting” (I Timothy 6:15–16).
The God of the Bible warned his followers against judging people. Christians are supposed to judge only the sin, and never to hate the sinner. The God of the Bible says that “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19). That phrase has a much deeper meaning than you might think. It covers much more than just the obvious. It has taught Christians a wonderful lesson—to mind their own business.
Allah, on the other hand, told Muslims that “vengeance has been prescribed for them” (2:178) and entrusted his followers with enforcing sharia on one another. So minding your own business is not an Islamic value. Muslims consider other people’s business as their own to judge and punish if it deviates from sharia. So in a sense Allah has abdicated his power to Muslim leaders and the Muslim public, to do vengeance, retaliation, and enforcement of Allah’s law against sinners, whether Muslims or non-Muslims.
When the ISIS fighters behead, torture, rape, set fire, and drown people in cages, they truly believe that this is a commandment and power given to them by Allah. Muhammad himself acted the very same way, so who will convince them that they do not have this authority from God?
That transfer of power from Allah to the Islamic government totally changes the equation of the Islamic political system, government, and social structure, making them completely different from the West. Sharia itself and its enforcement on man by man have given human beings divine power over their fellow humans beings. Muslims feel authorized by Allah to make life-and-death decisions over those who sin, and not necessarily just over criminals. Sharia punishes not only the crimes of man against man, such as murder and theft, but also crimes against Allah—in other words, sins. That might explain why ISIS and Islamic governments such as those of Saudi Arabia and Iran execute, behead, torture, and stone sinners against Allah. When Western governments ask terrorists, Why are you doing this? the answer is typically I got that authority from Allah in the Koran.
Any Islamic state thus has the authority from Allah to be the representative of his godliness on Earth. And sharia crowns the government with Allah’s power. The relationship between Allah and the Islamic state is thus intertwined in reality and also in the minds of Muslims. That is one reason why Islamic revolutions and political assassinations never solve the problems of the Muslim world or end by establishing good government.
The Government Serves the People vs. the People Serve the Government
The Bible emphasizes servanthood, not political power. “And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:44–45).
From the beginning, Muhammad produced a religion to fit his huge appetite for power and control and his endless lust for wealth and pleasure. The Bible was an inconvenience, to say the least. Muhammad’s fears of rejection, of losing control, and of being stripped of powers he had seized by the sword became the driving force behind Islam itself. To preserve Muhammad’s power and perks, there had to be divine orders from Allah himself to convince Muhammad’s followers that sacrificing their lives on earth was worth it. Everyone—men, women, and children—had to voluntarily give themselves as slaves to the Islamic state, which is the representative of Allah on earth. The reward for all serving the state (and Allah) was never a promise to be finally set free, but a promise of endless sex in Heaven. Millions of Muslims took the deal.
That was the carrot. But there was also a stick. Islam designed a whole social structure and system of government where citizens are to serve Allah and the Muslim state in exchange for—being allowed to live. Fear of execution for the smallest deviation from Islam is the driving force behind Muslim obedience to Islamic governments.
Serving the Islamic state is synonymous with serving Allah. Opposition to or criticism of an Islamic leader who rules by sharia, even if he is unjust, is a crime punishable by death. Rebellion is allowed only against leaders who deviate from sharia. Total dedication and servitude to the sharia state and its jihad goals is the highest form of worship in Islam.
To preserve such a pyramid scheme from ever being exposed by smart Muslims, the Islamic state has to stay in control over the Muslim mind, keeping it isolated from and paranoid against societies that allow freedom and have respect for the individual. For fourteen hundred years Islam has preserved its power over its citizen slaves through relentless and constant hate propaganda, fear-mongering, slander of Jews and Christians, and outright lies and distortions.
Expressions such as human rights, women’s rights, child abuse, voting, constitutional republic, democracy, and “government of the people, by the people, for the people” were never heard by the citizens of Islamic states until Western technological advances brought them to the Muslim world. The old war between Islam and the West was re-ignited—but this time as an ideological war. Islam right now is in a fight for survival, but the West unfortunately does not know that.
Instead of thwarting Islam’s constant need to expand in order to survive, the West rolled out the red carpet to Islamic expansion and gave Islam new respectability and hope. By welcoming Islam to America and Europe, the West gave the religion of Allah a new license to survive and thrive. The West saved Islam from imminent self-destruction, intentionally or unintentionally giving it a life line to stay in business longer. But its survival could mean the end of Western Biblical civilization.
In Harmony with Human Nature vs. Working against Human Nature
Western policies in the Middle East are based on the hypothesis that Muslims are just like everybody else and want the same things in life: freedom, democracy, a job to take care of their family, and so forth. In other words, they want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness like everyone in America. But are these the values of Islam? The answer is no.
This is why whenever the West tries to help the Muslim world the project fails. When the West works with and supports Islamic leaders, the Muslim public blames the West for supporting dictators. On the other hand, when they take out Muslim dictators—Saddam Hussein, for example—Muslims accuse the West of overstepping its boundaries, meddling in Islamic internal affairs, and occupying Muslim lands. When it comes to dealing with Islamic nations, the West will always be blamed, because Muslim citizens are trained to blame their oppression on outside forces and never on Islam and sharia.
As individual human beings, Muslims in their heart do yearn for the natural needs that we were all born with. They have the same desires that nature has given to us all. But what both the West and the Muslim world refuse to understand is that the natural needs of human beings will never be met under the Koran and sharia law. Human rights and democracy are incompatible with Islamic values. Any effort to import them to the Muslim world will be harshly dealt with by the Islamic sword.
Allah never promised Muslims life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but he surely promised them lots of sex in Paradise if they do jihad. What Muhammad wanted the most from his followers was for them to challenge the sovereignty of non-Muslim nations with jihad and sacrifice their life, liberty, happiness, and family. Ridding the world of the kafirs was more important than giving Muslims what they are missing—that is, love, peace, forgiveness, and being saved right here on earth.
Instead, Islam bans Muslims from putting their natural needs, desires, and even human rights above jihad until an Islamic state controls the whole world. So Muslims will never be able to achieve happiness, or even basic human rights, until Allah’s utopia, the caliphate, is achieved on Earth. Muslims are left chasing a mirage, doing jihad to keep the killing of non-Muslims and the expansion of Islam going. And all they get is an IOU from Allah, an admittance ticket to the supposed Islamic Paradise.
Regardless of how Muslims may feel about their human rights, Allah’s plan does not include life under a democracy. The priority of any genuinely Islamic state is jihad and not the protection of human rights.
Endowed by Our Creator vs. Endowed by Our Islamic State
The human rights recognized today in the West have their origins in the Bible. The U.S. Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Human rights are called inalienable because they were given to humanity by the God of the Bible. They were not created by any government, and they cannot be taken away by any earthly ruler. The role of government in a society based on the Bible is to protect these human rights, given to all citizens by God.
But all religions are given equal rights under the U.S. Constitution. And the migration of Islam—which claims to be a religion, but is really a totalitarian political ideology—to the West has caused some confusion on this point. The rights in the Declaration of Independence do not seem “self-evident” to many Muslims, who are in pursuit of something very different from happiness. Their goals are jihad, the expansion of Islam, control of the government, and enforcing sharia. And if their goals are achieved, the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution will be crushed. Under Islam, the only rights citizens have are the rights allowed them by sharia and the government.
One day American Muslims could demand a different constitution and bill of rights. They could claim that their rights do not come from the God of the Bible, but from Allah—which means that all Americans would have to live under a caliphate or Islamic state.
If Islam succeeds in America, such a constitutional disaster will be a matter of when, not if. That has happened in all nations that took in many Muslims. India for example, had to split itself into two states, Pakistan and India, in order to avoid permanent civil war. And even with that, Muslims in Pakistan continue to threaten India with terror.
Allah does not endow his creatures with human rights or extend his grace to all human beings like the God of the Bible. All men are not created equal under Islamic law: as we have seen, Allah calls non-Muslims his enemies and tells Muslims that non-Muslims do not deserve to live on this Earth.
The West must challenge political Islam and sharia law as soon as possible. Islam does not define itself as just a religion; we should take Muslims’ word for it. The influential Islamic scholar Mawlana Abu’l-A`la Mawdudi said of the ideal Islamic state, “Its sphere of activity is co-extensive with human life. . . . In such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private.”5 He called the caliphate “the very antithesis of secular Western democracy. . . . Considered from this aspect the Islamic state bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states.”6
What the West Needs to Know
While Islamic law will accept nothing less than the total control of the government and the legal system of a country, defenders of Islam continue to deceive the West by claiming that sharia is in harmony with the U.S. Constitution.
Muslim jihadists are fully aware that the U.S. Constitution protects the free exercise of religion, and they also know that sharia does not allow the free exercise of any religion other than Islam and Islam alone. Since Islam calls itself a religion it is thus legally protected to be freely preached and practiced in the U.S. on an equal footing with the Bible. That ensures that we will see future civil unrest in America.
When the U.S. Constitution was written, Islam was not practiced in America, but now it is. Millions of Muslim immigrants are pouring into the West, welcomed with open arms by Western political leaders. This is while Christians and Jews are being liquidated in the Middle East. Sooner or later the nature of Islam will win even over the so called “moderate” Muslims in the West, and demands for an Islamic government and laws will be heard loud and clear.
The only way for America to protect its system from Islam is not just to outlaw sharia, but more importantly to define the word “religion” in the Constitution. According to American values, no ideology should be awarded the privilege of being called a religion if it executes apostates, bans human rights and freedom, and demands control of the government. These should be the minimum conditions for any belief system to be recognized as a religion under the U.S. Constitution.
Though today the percentage of Muslims when compared to the U.S. population is still minuscule, the Islamic fight to penetrate and control the American government is already underway. During the Obama administration a large number of practicing Muslims and even Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers, succeeded in getting appointed to key positions in the administration, in the judiciary, and in other parts of the government.7
And today it is not just Muslims who argue that no one has the right to criticize or slander Islam or Muhammad. The United Nations is trying to ban criticism of religion—in effect extending sharia blasphemy law to the entire non-Muslim world.
The UN attempt to ban criticism of religion was supported by Obama in a speech in which he said, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” President Obama had no comment when an Egyptian court sentenced four teenage Christian boys to prison for a video mocking ISIS.8