After the White House gathering on “violent extremism” this past week, our president said again, “The notion that the West is at war with Islam is a lie!”
It feels evident to many Americans that a rigid and radical strain of Islam has declared war on us! This war is apparent in the beheadings, bombings, burnings, crucifixions, kidnapping of girls, raping of women, and threats toward Rome and the West. This week it was reported that the Islamic State (IS) is now harvesting and trafficking in human organs; now the beheadings have a financial component.
Islamic terror is evident in their call to join the jihad and the Islamic caliphate they seek to enforce. It is obvious in the prophet they revere and the religious books they treasure. It is most clear in the words of their earthly leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his vision of the coming Islamic apocalypse.
To intentionally ignore discernable facts in this matter is being intellectually and irresponsible. It leaves us naively exposed and ill prepared. It makes us blindly deny there is “an elephant in the room” when there is. It makes some invent unconvincing excuses. It makes us “second guess” ourselves—just like many German people (and the world) did during the rise of Nazism. It makes us overlook the obvious.
Just like Nazi ideology could not coexist with a civilized world, radical Islamic ideology cannot coexist in our modern world. For it yearns to kill the Jew, the infidel, the westerner, and even Muslims different from themselves. This group has a bent for blood and they are very thirsty.
Recently our president tried to make a point by injecting the history of the Crusades, yet have we heard our leaders condemn the modern day practices of forced female circumcision, honor killings of family members, and sex-slavery of their captured victims among radical Islamists? How can they get away with these barbarities under the watchful eye of the highbrow press?
What would have happened if twenty-one Palestinians had been beheaded by Jewish soldiers? An eruption akin to a thousand Mount Vesuvius’ would have spewed hot and hateful magma around the world by the press, parliaments, premiers, and presidents. The moral outrage would have led to a combined choir of countries crying for the United Nations (UN) to surround this tiny country with a million soldiers and the immediate court martial of its leaders.
Yet, twenty-one Coptic Christians are beheaded in Libya, and most of the world acts like they are not surprised. But where is the moral outrage? Where are the cries for help? Where are the marchers? Where are the political journalists hiding; those who still believe the pen is mightier than the sword?
Who will tell the story of the grandmother in Oklahoma being beheaded at work and our government categorizes it as workplace violence?
Who will remember the finish-line bombing in Boston and help us remember that these innocent looking Tsarnaev brothers were evangelized by the deranged ideology of terrorists?
Who will comfort the families of 13 American soldiers shot dead by Maj. Nidal Hasan–later declaring that he is solider of Allah—yet our government calls his deeds at Fort Hood workplace violence?
Who will guard our schools from this diabolical dogma if our leaders will not properly name this radical ideology and the linkage it has in history? And, why is anti-Semitism intensifying as terrorism rises?
Who will help America remember the day of September 11, 2001, when over 3,000 Americans were killed by 19 Islamic al-Qaeda Muslim extremists as they hijacked four airliners? Who will remember the deaths of over 400 fire and police officers? Who will remember the fatal fall of bodies from those tall towers?
We are to remember these events and the souls we have lost—not out of hatred, but out of respect for our martyrs and to maintain a Paul Revere kind of vigilance.
As Radical Islamic leaders issue their cruel call to come and join their jihad—we of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ should rise up with a bolder challenge. We must call our people to spiritual warfare! We must call millions around the world to our knees in prayer—personally and corporately.
We must sound the trumpet to “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” (Eph. 6:10). We are to “put on the full armor of God…and…stand our ground” (Eph. 6:13). With overlapping shields of faith may we take up all the weapons of God “against the spiritual forces of evil” (Eph. 6:12).
We sense in our hearts that “boots on the ground” will eventually be needed to combat the evils and growing cancer of radical Islam, but “knees at the altar” should precede the bullets and bombs.
© Ron F. Hale, February 22, 2015