Islam a Threat to Christianity and West?

Post 21--:

Before reading this post, please reread the introductory paragraphs to Post 19. That introduction holds for this one as well. Though in most of these posts, my main reading target consists of Muslims and others interested in Islam, in this series I am addressing Canadian Christians and their concerns about Islam. But you, my Muslim friends, feel free to read and consider. Reading this series of posts originally published in Christian Courier (CC) may help you understand your Christian neighbour a bit better.

In a 2002 “Identity Statement,” my denomination, the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) identified secularism, not Islam, as “the primary enemy.” This is supported by a statement of the Reformed Ecumenical Council of 1991 as well as by Reformational or Kuyperian philosopher, Bennie van der Walt. The reason for this view is that, if you will permit me a Dutchism, Islam comes in wooden shoes, while secularism sneaks up on you in socks. Wooden shoes clatter; you can hear them clearly. Anyone coming up from behind you cannot possibly hide himself. But you can’t hear someone sneaking up behind you in socks. Islam is the wooden shoes that makes its presence known everywhere. Secularism is a sock; it sneaks up on you. It is so interwoven in Western culture that we have largely become immune to its effects in our minds and hearts.

Islam is a threat in some way, but not the most dangerous one. Various forms of Islam are indeed threatening the West for a number of reasons. I have in mind here mainly Fundamentalist, militant and terrorist versions.

Secularism has created a spiritual vacuum in this culture and has blinded Westerners to the essence of religion. If it were not for secularism, Islam would not have made the inroads it has in the West. And to the extent that secularism has made its inroads, to that extent we are handicapped in our response to Islam. Secularism has led its adherents to assume that Muslims coming to the West would become ”reasonable” like the rest of us! That is, become secular like us. Forgive my bluntness, but I consider this a “stupid” approach by which a certain ignorant “philosopher-king” shaped our multicultural philosophy on which subsequent emigration policies were based. Designing a national policy on basis of ignorance is dangerous and thus a threat, a threat even to the very secularism that welcomed those Muslims. Too bad dead philosopher kings are beyond the reach of earthly judges!--except of course of self-appointed ones, like myself.

Terrorism of any stripe among us, whether intellectual or violent, is an undeniable threat to all of us. The creeping influence of Wahabism and the presence of other forms of intolerant militant fundamentalism, sometimes in the form of violent hidden cell groups, are dangerous. They inculcate intolerance and hate in their schools in the West, especially Europe and the USA. They plan violent attacks on innocent crowds. Antonides has done well to warn us in his CC articles.

More moderate forms of Islam reject violence and have said so repeatedly. Their approach includes a philosophy of mission that will use all the tools of Western democracy to infiltrate our entire culture, especially Canada’s human rights instruments. They are supported in this effort with oil money from Muslim governments and by the efforts of the Organisation of Islamic Conference via the UN. They target especially Western concepts of freedom of speech under the guise of protecting their religion. There is an undeniable threat component to our Canadian secularism as well as to legitimate Christian activity in their legally legitimate approach.

I have been a missionary for 30 years in a country with over 60 million Muslims. Those Muslims consider Christian missions a dangerous threat, especially because they associate it with colonialism and its aftermath—and they are partially right. Most missionaries do not understand the legitimacy of this charge and do not consider themselves a threat to anyone. If it is legitimate for Christians to send missionaries to Muslim countries, then it is also legitimate for Muslims to do their mission work among us, even if we also tend to identify theirs with a kind of Muslim imperialism. So, is their legitimate mission a threat?

I would rather think of the da'wah mission of moderate mainstream Islam as a challenge, a serious challenge. Our challenge is not to prevent them from carrying out their mission. Rather, it is for us to cleanse ourselves from our secularism and once again read the Bible afresh, with an open spirit not restricted by the dictates of our Western worldview. That way we may begin to acknowledge our own imperialistic history and what our countries have done and continue to do among Muslims. This cleansing above should lead us to demand that our governments and corporations reshape our relationships with the Muslim world on basis of justice and equality for all people and to quit supporting oppressive regimes for the sake of oil.

Yes, some Muslims present us with threats; others, with challenges. Imperialistic and missionary urges have always driven Islam. However, the West has been equally imperialistic and missionary with respect to the Muslim world. We should recognize that their current hostility towards us is at least partially a response to our imperialism. We have evoked it. We are seen as a threat to them as well!

I do believe that Islam is a threat to the West as it is. It is generally acknowledged that the West is drifting away from its religious, historical and cultural foundation and is left with a spiritual and cultural vacuum that Islam is rushing in to fill. Its leaders are adept at using the democratic institutions of the West for their own ends.

The West is built on a bubble that could burst anytime. Insufficient births coupled with abortion, collapse of the family structure, loss of sexual restraint and modesty, rape of the environment, outrageous materialism, a culture of entitlement and human rights devoid of any degree of responsibility, extremely high pay for less work, political correctness—all these and more will lead to collapse if allowed to continue. Muslim leaders are watching it happen from the sidelines and in the meantime preparing their community for what seems to some as the inevitable. It has happened before. Why can it not happen again?

Islam is definitely a threat to Western Christianity in so far as the latter is defined in terms of the current church institutions without a vibrant faith and personal commitment that come from being born again. People are dropping church membership by the droves. The original ancient Christian world has been overtaken by Muslims long ago with few traces left of the Christian church that once thrived there. With hardly any exception, wherever the Christian faith has had no roots in the hearts of the common people, Islam has been able to supplant it. It is poised to do it again, this time in the heartland of the former Christendom, not with the sword, according to Ghadafi, but with the womb.

It is impossible to predict the future or God’s plans. He has created unexpected revival of His people before and He can do it again. No reason to reject that possibility. In fact, we should pray for such a revival. Expect it even. But such a revival, to be effective, needs to move beyond the so-called spiritual to wholistic reformation across the entire culture, including but reaching beyond the family by reducing abortion and divorce, restoring our sexual mores and modesty, accepting more realistic incomes and “lower” our standard of living, healthy politics. Islam challenges Christians to do that. Islam is a challenge to Christians, more than a threat.

POST 1--INTRODUCTION
For an introduction regarding my good self, please turn to the “About” page on my website www.SocialTheology. Amongst other things, you will learn there that, though I am a Caucasian, I spent 30 years in Nigeria’s Middle Belt in various capacities. You will also learn there that I hold a doctorate from the Free University of Amsterdam, where I specialized in mission studies and wrote a hefty dissertation on missions and colonialism under the title Missionary Messengers Of Liberation In A Colonial Context (1979). For info about other publications of mine, please turn to two other pages on that same website: the “Boeriana” page for a more or less complete list of my publications and to the “Islamica” page for my publications on Christian-Muslim affairs. The more you peruse the various pages on that website, the more you will find out about me. That may be helpful in understanding where I come from in my posts, that is to say, my worldview.

In addition to this blog, I have also started one with the name “WorldlyChristianity.blogspot.com.” That one will further develop issues of Christian worldview, a favourite topic of many people these days. It is the same worldview that will underlie this blog. So, these two blogs will be supporting each other.

This blog will concentrate on Christian-Muslim relations and other issues related to these two religions. I do not claim final or complete expertise on that subject, but I definitely claim to know a thing or two about it. After all, 30 years of mature living in a Nigeria with a cleft population of over 60 million adherents of both religions has provided a rich mine of experiences. So have my doctoral studies equipped me with considerable qualifications. On top of all that, from the Islamic page on the website you may have learned that I have written 8 volumes on the subject of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria. That took me about 10 years of concentrated research and writing. So, come along, read me and challenge me as we go. I love challenges, for they often sharpen our mind and improve our understanding. I especially invite my Muslim friends to join the “party.”



The entries will sometimes be slightly edited materials from my series Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations, a series of 8 volumes, plus the COMPANION CD that counts as Volume 9. For more information about its layout, see my website SocialTheology.com. That series is a Nigerian case study of Christian-Muslim relations—often about how not to do “it.” Nigeria is a unique case in that you find some 65 million plus Christians facing 65 million plus Muslims. There is no constellation like this anywhere else in the world. No country has two such huge and equal blocks of both religions within its borders. Another part of the dynamic is that though both are on the increase in Nigeria, Christians appear to be increasing faster and are poised to outnumber Muslims. At the moment, both insist they constitute the majority along with the rights they claim with that status. However, neither the 2007 census nor earlier ones included religious statistics, so that it is anyone’s guess as to which religion can boast the larger following. But, as always, perception and propaganda outstrip the facts in power and significance.
Though I concentrate on Nigeria, it is Nigeria as a case study with global implications from several points of view:
• What dynamics develop when you have two large blocks of these religions living together?
• What happens when you have these two aggressive missionary religions competing for a place in the sun?
• What happens when a once almost supreme Muslim community is confronted with an emerging Christian community that has woken up to a growing sense of political awareness and power?
• What happens when you have a confrontation between a Muslim community that vehemently rejects secularism in favour of sharia and a Christian community that insists on a form of secularism?
• What happens when both communities are fearful, mistrusting of and angry with each other so that they can no longer hear each other out?
The flow of events in Nigeria is a powerful example of how things are NOT to be done from either side. I expect that Nigerians who read these monographs will feel deeply ashamed of the violence they unleash on each other in the name of their respective religions.
But these studies are not written primarily to embarrass Nigerians. Their purpose is to arrive at some parameters within which we can develop more positive relations with each other, relations of respect and tolerance, that will allow both religions to flourish within the one nation.
These relations have been bedeviled by untold blood shed and destruction ever since 1980. The series describes and explains the riots themselves and the issues of confrontation. Most of the study concentrates on the opinions of Nigerian Muslims and Christians themselves by providing extensive quotations and appendices, especially from the media. Each volume deals with a separate aspect of the relationship.
These studies do away with taboos, now politely dubbed “political correctness” and as well as with religious wishful thinking. We are encouraged to get real. The fatal influence and role of secularism in these relationships in Nigeria come across very pointedly. The weak inheritance of a dualistic gospel transmitted by Christian missions also is explained and constitutes a major reason for confusion in Nigeria.