The Million Muslim March?
by Jamie Glazov (He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian,
U.S. and Canadian foreign policy)
On last weeks O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly had a profound discussion about the Fort Hood massacre with Bernie Goldberg..... Goldberg is always superb.... and this time he narrowed in wisely on the pathologies that the Fort Hood massacre has exposed: the political correctness nurtured by the Left in our society and the disinclination of so-called "moderate" Muslims to stand up in mass numbers and denounce the likes of Nidal Malik Hasan.
In making his point, Goldberg shrewdly asked when we are going to see a Million Muslim March take place in Washington – in which a million Muslims gather to denounce terror and declare that what Nidal Malik Hasan did was un-Islamic.
Goldberg's point is crucial, but we need to add to it. The key that is often missed in our nation's discussion on Islamic terrorism is that this is not necessarily about Muslims themselves. As the scholar Robert Spencer has stressed over and over again, the problem is not Muslims, the problem is Islam – in the sense that the problem is what Islam teaches.
So the crucial issue in all of this is not what this Muslim may think or that Muslim may think. It's not about these empty arguments about whether the majority or minority of Muslims are peaceful or not. The issue is what Islamic theology mandates. And so the crux of the issue is this:
....if Islam is really a Religion of Peace and if the majority of Muslims really do support peace and reject violence, then when are they going to rise up in majority numbers and denounce the teachings within Islam that inspire and sanction the terrorism that Islamic terrorists engage in? When will they renounce the verses and teachings that Islamic terrorists point to and quote in justifying and explaining their violence?
So here is an idea. Thank you Bernie Goldberg, there does need to be a Million Muslim March. And if Islam is a Religion of Peace, then in this Million Muslim March the million Muslims who gather can demonstrate it by categorically doing the following:
***[1] Repudiate Sura 9:29 of the Qur'an, which commands Muslims to fight Jews and Christians ("the People of the Book") until they "pay the jizya [a non-Muslim poll tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." The teaching is that, if they refuse to pay the jizya, Jews and Christians should be killed. Are Muslims ready to join the Million Muslim March and reject this as un-Islamic? Are they ready to completely negate Islamic law when it comes to the teaching of the necessity to subjugate Jews and Christians?
***[2] Collectively agree that a woman has a right to engage in a love life she chooses without having to fear for her life. In other words, to accept that women have the right to self-determination, including in the sexual realm, and that their lives must not be at stake in this matter. This reality is in many respects, and on many realms, at the heart of our terror war, as jihad is very much inspired by the impulse to keep women enslaved under a system of gender apartheid. As Wafa Sultan, Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel, Phyllis Chesler and others can tell you, jihadists are infuriated by women's freedom in the West and see this as a grave threat to their misogynistic systems of totalitarian Puritanism. If Muslims at the Million Muslim March cannot agree on this principle of women having the right to be free, then they are in the end legitimizing violence against women and declaring Islamic ideology to be incompatible with the democratic system in which they live. And this reality, of course, explains why honor killings are perpetrated by Muslims throughout the world and why they are on a skyrocketing increase in America and in the West.
***[3] Reject the Islamic doctrine on apostasy, which holds that a Muslim has to be killed if he changes his religion.
***[4] Reject the Islamic doctrine that Muslims are obligated to turn the whole world into committed Muslims, by force and jihad if necessary. In other words, the Muslims who arrive at the Million Muslim March can prove their religion is one of peace by repudiating all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence that teach that it is part of the responsibility of the umma to subjugate the non-Muslim world through jihad.
***[5] State that Christians and other non-Muslim religions can freely proselytize in a Muslim land or community and remain unharmed.
***[6] Reject the Qur'an's description of Jews being apes and pigs. (Suras 2: 62-65, 5:59-60, 7:166)
These are the first six ideas for the Million Muslim March. There are, of course, many more. Perhaps various scholars of Islam, like Robert Spencer, will be invited to contribute more ideas by the organizers of the Million Muslim March. But I have a feeling all of this will not happen, just as I have a feeling that the six suggestions I have made, and the facts that are contained within them, will not be ingredients for discussion in our media, especially among those who are vehemently denying that the Fort Hood massacre has anything to do with Islam, jihad or Islamic terror.
Very much on point, with one small problem... ain't gonna happen. That would be the moral equivalent of suggesting that a million Christians march on Washington to denounce Jesus' teachings about any number of things. I doubt that any believer in any religion is going go actively denounce their beliefs. Could happen, but not likely.
So where does that leave us? At war, that's where. But we now face an enemy like no other in modern times. We face a war of religious ideology. An I'm concerned that the western cultures are totally unprepared for such a thing. Hell, we won't even officially acknowledge that this is a war of religious ideology.
When I first saw the title I thought it had to do with sheets. Ahem.
Quote from: Diane Amberg on November 15, 2009, 04:43:02 PM
When I first saw the title I thought it had to do with sheets. Ahem.
ROTFLMAO!!! :laugh:
Good eyes, Diane!
Maybe we can make bandages n sell em at the march!
Oh, for cryin' out loud, would ya'll stop talkin sheet and stay on topic ;)
wow, i missed that typo too, good eye
Sorry, I just thought it was funny. I know I'm weird that way. I'm not picking on anybody,honest. ;D
Are they gonna get Louis Farrakhan to lead this one too? He led the million man march for the black men so it's obvious that as the leader of the Nation of Islam he should lead this march too....
I think it's a bunch of nonsense! If a million white men march isn't that considered racist?
louis farakhan is a different kind of muslim
enlighten me on the many different kinds please....
well, ok.
Louis farakhan is the head of an organization called the Nation of Islam (NOI). This group goes back to the civil rights movement and was founded by W.D. Muhammad here in the United States. Like most cults, they believe their founder was some kind of messiah. The group's first leader was Elijah Mohammed, who preached that African Americans should be completely separated from the white race. Some of his famous followerd were Malcom X and Mohammad Ali, both of whom later converted to mainstream Islam. I may be mistaken, but sometime during the late 70s, the original nation of islam was dissolved and most of their leadership converted to mainsteam islam. Then Farrakhan stepped in and put the organization back together.
At any rate, mainstream islam is 1400 years old and believes that jesus was the messiah, mohammad was the last prophet. They still await the return of jesus while the NOI believes that W.D. Muhammad was the return of the messiah. The NOI exlcudes people on the basis of race, which is not allowed in mainstream Islam. There are many other minute differences, but you get the point.
Ok, now you can all tell me i'm a muslim because i know so much about islam. To that i say, I Like To Read!!! sheesh. Autobiography of Malcom X was a good book. Everyone remembers him from his days with the nation of Islam, but what most people don't know is that in the end, he regretted that lifestyle and he regretted the hatefulness and racism of his speeches.
Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, the Black Church in America, and the threat of Islam.
By John Marion and Ben Adams
November 2008
In this article, we will explain how Louis Farrakhan's "Black Islam" ties in with the infamous Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Rev. Wright made headline news because of his fiery rhetoric from the pulpit.
The connections between Islam, "Black Islam," and Jeremiah Wright's brand of Christianity are critically important to the fate of the black Church and to the future history of America. With the ascendancy of President-elect Obama, this topic becomes more relevant by the week.
Many African-American pastors are deeply concerned about the influence of Islam on their congregations. But we must start with one of the key roots of the problem.
Black Liberation Theology
Jeremiah Wright adheres to a doctrine called "liberation theology" – in this case "black liberation theology." The church's website (even after many publicity-motivated revisions) makes this very clear.
Before we get to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, here is a quote from Thabiti Anyabwile defining black liberation theology.
Anyabwile, once a Muslim, later became assistant pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. He's now the senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Grand Cayman Islands. He's a well-respected authority on the black church in America.
In a March 20, 2008 interview in Christianity Today magazine, Anyabwile says,
Black liberation theology concerns itself with the political aspirations of African Americans from a fairly radical bent.... It's an effort to do theology from the vantage point of the marginalized and the oppressed. Its main benefit is that it does raise questions that aren't often addressed by most theologians. Its main failure is that it either supplants or equates the biblical gospel with a concern for temporal politics, particularly politics viewed from a politically liberal and self-consciously black perspective.
This exaltation of politics over biblical truth is the reason why Rev. Wright's sermons contain the politically-charged messages which received so much attention in the news during the 2008 Presidential campaign.
But what does all this have to do with Islam?
From Liberation to Slavery
Wright preaches black liberation theology, which is a radical, liberal, Afro-centric ideology. It addresses some legitimate concerns of the black community, and it makes heavy use of Scripture (albeit for its own political ends), but solid biblical theology usually takes a backseat to its harangues against injustice and calls for social change.
If that tune sounds familiar, it should. This same message has been promoted by the black social justice movement since the 1950s. Once again, that movement did some very real good. But it also produced people such as the radical Black Panthers, Elijah Mohammed, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. These last three individuals were all instrumental in the founding of the so-called "Nation of Islam."
The Nation of Islam is a radical fringe group - actually an Islamic cult which preaches doctrines that both Christians and mainstream Muslims would consider heretical (for different reasons). Although they're on the fringe, however, their influence is far bigger than the size of their organization.
You may have already seen Chuck Colson's reports about Islam's stranglehold on much of the U.S. prison system, where black Muslims are actively recruiting among the prisoners. John Marion had a few dealings with Nation of Islam members during his street-evangelism days - their confrontationalism and in-your-face Scripture-twisting is stunning.
Farrakhan is an expert at enlisting the help of black Christians to promote his own causes. Worse still, the Nation often functions like a "gateway drug": it moves African-Americans from liberal Christianity, past the NOI, into Islam itself.
Why does this happen? Here's why: although black liberation theology draws heavily from the Bible, its primary source isn't the Bible – it's the social justice movement.
In other words, black liberation theology was born from the same intellectual womb that spawned the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers. They all have a common heritage.
That's why it's no surprise that when Farrakhan traveled to Libya to meet with the Islamic-socialist military dictator Muammar Gadhafi... Jeremiah Wright went with him.
As a matter of fact, The Trumpet Newsmagazine reported late last year that "The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is the recipient of this year's Lifetime Achievement 'Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Trumpeter' Award."
Black liberation theology is chiefly about an ideology of victimhood which brings together liberals, socialists, Marxists, Muslims, and others. They camp out under the umbrella of struggling against "oppression." (The "oppressors" vary from group to group, but it's usually some kind of affluent white Christian Westerners.)
Now, Wright probably disagrees with Farrakhan about theology – but the two can still work together because they have similar core beliefs. Wright sees in Farrakhan a man who shares his same goals for social change in America. And Barack Obama - though he has minimized his ties to both men - shares the same set of goals.
Ultimately, liberation theology is not about theological content or the truth of the Gospel; it's about emotional words like "hope" and "change." But while "hope" is a very biblical concept, and while "change" is often needed, a robust belief system must be built on something much more solid than these ideals.
Again, it's true that a lot of oppression has taken place throughout history, and no group is innocent. But even though it makes good points about these injustices, when it comes to sound biblical teaching, liberation theology doesn't deliver. It's weak.
And here, at last, is where Islam comes in: Islam eats weak theologies for breakfast.
Islam was born on the Arabian Peninsula, which was the fringe of the Church at that time – the place where all the heretics exiled themselves. Islam killed or assimilated the heretics, engulfed semi-Christian Africa, then pushed into Europe. It was only stopped by the unified strength of that Christian continent.
But now the Church in Europe has grown impotent. Christendom on the European continent is barely making a squeak as Islam advances where Christianity once flourished.
It's the same with liberation theology.
The Wright-Farrakhan social doctrine, to which Obama subscribes, is easy prey to the better-developed and historically proven sociology of Islam. This is why the black congregations of America are being ravaged by Farrakhan and his crowd.
Do you see the evil irony here? Liberation theology and the social justice movement, which are so fixated on release from oppression and bondage, often lead their followers into the very clutches of Islam. But Islam is not a religion of freedom: it is an ideology of submission, domination, and slavery.
Only true, orthodox Christian theology, understood and lived out in the culture, can stand against Islam.
The Response
There are political implications to this issue, but our main concern is the health of the Church in America and its ability to stand for the truth in the public forum.
The job of Truth For Muslims is to respond to Islam in America, and part of that is going to mean confronting "Black Islam" as it makes inroads into the African-American community.
The issue of black Islam needs more attention than we can give it in this one article. Truth For Muslims is offering resources and information about the issue. Go here to see our resources for understanding and responding to Black Islam.
November 2008
yay for conspiracy theories and people interconnecting unrelated ideas