Senait Habta, a 28-year-old university student, was held for two years in a metal shipping container, which was sweltering hot during the day and bitterly cold at night. Senait became seriously ill and was reportedly offered medical care and freedom if she would deny Christ. She refused, and eventually died on 23 April 2010. She had been arrested with 15 other students simply for attending a Bible study group. Eritrea is one of the world’s worst persecutors of Christians. The government sees them as a threat to national unity because they give their ultimate allegiance to God and not to the state.

~ Patrick Sookhdeo, Heroes of Our Faith: Inspiration and strength for daily living, p. 51, Isaac Publishing 2012. (My assessment, after reading a story a day for the last couple of months: I reckon it’s the best summary of what’s been going on in terms of persecution of Christians through the centuries since Foxe’s Book of Martyrs)…

~~

There are Christians and ‘Christians’, Muslims and ‘Muslims’… I’ve just been driving and listening to Waleed Ali on ABC Radio National (Australia). Waleed is the best-known Muslim media person in our country. His lawyerly objectivity is impressive. And I enjoyed reading his book… (However, see http://rcroucher.wordpress.com/  and http://jmm.org.au/articles/16222.htm ).

Now consider: ‘Hamid Ali, [then] spiritual leader of Al-Madina Masjid, a mosque in Beeston, W. Yorkshire, UK, publicly condemned the London bombings of July 7, 2005. But in a secretly taped conversation with a Bangladeshi-origin undercover reporter from The Sunday Times he said the 7/7 bombings were a “good” act and praised the bombers…’ (Sunday Times Feb. 12, 2006).

And this: Dr. Taj Hargey, Chairman of the Muslim Education Centre, Oxford, explained on British television: ‘We have one vocabulary in private and we have another vocabulary for the public domain and that’s why you don’t hear it because you’re the public domain’ (speaking on “A Question of Leadership”, Panorama BBC 1, August 21, 2005).

Both were cited in Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, The Challenge of Islam (2009, p. 37). Sookdheo, born a Muslim but who converted to Christianity, writes: ‘Protective deceit and dissimulation are an intrinsic part of Islam, permitted in certain specific situations, one of which is war, i.e. the defense of Islam. Some Muslims also hold that it is permissible to break agreements with non-Muslims, believing such contracts to be valid only as long as they serve the cause of Islam’ (ibid.)

I listened to Sookhdeo for a couple of hours last year in Melbourne, and I cannot question either his scholarship or integrity in all this. I disagree with some aspects of his very conservative theological stance, but the questions here have to do with the veracity of his research and his judgments about Islam. And some of those judgments are quite alarming.

Christians who are theologically conservative (like the Sookhdeos, Australian scholar Dr. Mark Durie, et al…) tend to focus on the ‘bad news’: when Muslims migrate to the West they don’t integrate very well; in Muslim-majority countries Christians and others are severely persecuted, or at best (best?) reduced to dhimmi status; Muslims have a sometimes-open, sometimes-hidden agenda to take over the nations where they’re in a minority and impose more and more Shari’a law. etc. etc. The more mainline/softer/liberal Christian approach emphasizes patience, love, acceptance: certainly friendship. Humiliating/criticizing is not the Christian way… ‘Now that’s all well and good’ the conservatives respond, ‘but do you remember the Chamberlain “appeasement” saga? The call then was to face the reality of who Hitler/ what Nazism really was… Hiding your head in the sand, ostrich-like, won’t make facts go away.’ The liberals reply, ‘But we’re talking about the most important dynamic between human beings – love and respect. Didn’t Jesus and Paul say love was #1 for God-followers?’ To which the conservatives (quickly, sometimes too quickly) respond with a ‘Yes, but, yes, but…’ 

Now, I have some sympathy with both approaches… How to balance/reconcile them is the challenge… Surely we must emphasize both love and truth, without sacrificing one for the other. ‘Speaking the truth with love’ is our aim… In our interactions with Islam, it is not loving to ignore the plight of persecuted minorities in Muslim-majority states, or to ignore the often-terrible treatment of women in those places… And if we speak with loving criticism, and the response is ‘humiliation’, then some responsibility for that response has to lie with the perpetrator of the abuse… 

~~

Here are the most salient points Sookhdeo makes in his The Challenge of Islam:

‘Peace and harmony in British society are fast disappearing, for which the main cause seems to be the egregious behaviour of a radical minority within one particular faith, Islam’ (p.2). ‘The UK’s 2000 or so mosques are basically “a cover for a political movement” ie., British Islam has become “a political movement masquerading as a religion”’ (quoting Iranian liberal Muslim writer, Amir Taheri) (3).

‘In Islam there is no separation between sacred and secular, or between spiritual and material. Islam encompasses the social, legal, cultural, political and even military aspects of life’ (8).

‘Islam will pose a much greater challenge to Christianity in the 21^st century than Gnosticism did to the early church’ (quoting Prof. Johan Bouman) (13).

‘Muhammad is considered infallible, free from sin… Many Muslims, especially in the Indian subcontinent, hold that he was created from an eternal heavenly substance… and must be protected from any criticism or slight’ (19). The original Qur’an is believed to be inscribed in Arabic on a tablet in heaven (20). Muslims believe Jesus will return as a Muslim and convert everyone to Islam (22). ‘In the eyes of most Muslims there is no potential for any change to the shari’a regulations formulated in the 8^th and 9^th centuries AD’ – with its ‘discriminatory [stance] against women and non-Muslims’ (25,26).

‘The submission of non-Muslims is done primarily through fear. The West is now at a crossroads in its relationship with Islam. Threats and intimidation have resulted in pusillanimous governments, compliant media and an insipid Church… Christians are increasingly unwilling or unable to critique Islam. Either they embrace dialogue and interfaith relations and acquiesce, in the name of tolerance, to Muslim demands or they retreat into a ghetto-like mentality born of fear… But in our day more Muslims are coming to Christ – more than ever before in history’… [a significant number due to] Muslim men marrying Western women’ (114-115).

Conclusions?

‘Although superficially similar. Islam and Christianity are very far from being sibling religions… Christianity emphasizes the premise that God is love… In Islam duty and works are the way to heaven although Muslims can never be sure of their eternal destiny. If love is the meaning of reality for Christians, then power is the meaning of reality for Muslims’ (116).

~~

Patrick Sookhdeo’s Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam (2007) is a more substantial tome (650+ pages). Some bits I marked:

(From Prof. Richard Holmes’ Foreword. He’s professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield University): ‘Whatever advantages may have been gleaned from Guantanamo will, in the long term… be submerged by the fact that the place’s very existence helps spawn a mass of radicalised young men eager to avenge injustices inflicted on their brothers… [And] to thousands of Muslims, many of whom had neither affection for Saddam nor real quarrel with the West, [the Iraq invasion] was a symbol of unspeakable humiliation. We are tactics-driven, but “strategy lite”’ (p.5). ‘Al Qa’eda’s war aim is “complete victory over infidel powers and the establishment of the Islamic caliphate”. Al Qa’eda’s training manuals justify the torture or murder of hostages, using a version of Islamic teaching to justify itself’ (6).

Sookhdeo’s thesis: ‘The challenge for the West is not to declare war on Islam, the personal faith of the mainly peaceful majority of Muslim people, but rather to declare war on the Islamic theology, philosophy and ideology that motivate and sanction fanaticism, extremism, violence, and terrorism’ (8). ‘The mantra “Islam is peace” is heard so often in the West today, and yet this is true only in the sense of peace borne out of religious war resulting in the submission of the enemy’ (9). ‘Many are at pains to distinguish “Islamist terrorism” from what they believe to be the unacceptable term “Islamic terrorism”. This is a meaningless distinction: Islamism is simply the essence of classical Islam, and violence and terror are found within both of them’ (10).

‘In the West, Muslim liberals have the freedom to express their views, but face the ire of community leaderships heavily influenced by the power-centres in their countries of origin and by the resource-rich Wahhabi Saudis who fund much of their activity’ (15). ‘The ultimate goal of Islam: a worldwide Islamic government based on shari’a’ (17).

‘It is remarkable that a world community of over 1.2 billion, comprising some 52 independent Muslim-majority states (having significant large minorities in over 40 other states), controlling more than half the world’s oil resources and constituting the largest voting bloc in the United Nations, continues to see itself as a victim of forces beyond its control… These feelings of victimhood have been redirected into feelings of rage against the West as the main cause of Muslim weakness and humiliation’ (18-19).

‘Sheikh Muhammed Taher of the Leeds Grand Mosque, UK , makes clear… his belief that jihad includes actual fighting, urging Muslim youngsters, both male and female, to be brought up as jihad warriors’ (21).

‘A variety of interpretations have been suggested with respect to contemporary Islamic violence. Huntington wrote of Islam’s “bloody borders” and interpreted war in its contemporary expression in terms of a clash of civilizations. By contrast, Francis Fukuyama, following his idealistic predictions of a post-Cold War period characterised by liberal democracies, argues that current Islamic violence represents the death throes of a religion unable to compete and coexist with liberal democracy’ (423).

Jordan’s King Abdullah II : ‘There is no such thing as extremist Islam and no such thing as moderate Islam, for Islam is one’ (430).

‘In the end the objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood are not dissimilar from those of the extremists; it is only their methods which differ’ (434).

‘[The escalating] Sunni-Shi’a conflict… in the Middle East… is producing a reaction in peacable Muslims who are revolted by the daily carnage and are increasingly disillusioned with their religion which produces such hatred, cruelty and violence… Non-Arab Islam might develop a more peacable doctrine. Indonesian Islam did so…’ (439).

Patrick Soodhdeo’s plea: We ought to give more support to liberal Muslim networks, which are working towards the reformation of Islam, away from its inherent war-like stance.  (443).

~~ 

Rosemary Sookhdeo’s Secrets Behind the Burqa (2004, 2008) contains stories and insights from conversations with Muslim women, mostly in the East End of London.

Her thesis: Muslims believe that the Qur’an… teaches the equality of men and women, but many rights given to women by Islam have in practice been ignored. ‘Islamic laws are saturated by a notion of the eminence of men over women, and they include numerous rules to regulate women’s lives’ (p. 59).

Examples:

‘Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?’ (Hadith 1:301); ‘the witness of two women is valid only when accompanied by a man’ (45). The majority of dwellers-in-hell are women (Hadith 8:456) (39). ‘In the Qur’an there is not one verse to show that women will be treated equally in paradise’ (40). ‘Unless a woman is obedient and grateful to her husband at the time of death she will go to hell’ (41).  Muhammad… believed that if a man and woman were alone the third person present was the devil’ (97).

‘Women are not as intelligent as men’ (41). ‘Wife beating is considered to be sanctioned in the Qur’an’ (45). ‘According to the Shari’a a man has only to repeat “I divorce you” three times in front of witnesses and the wife is thrown out of the house’ (50). About 70% of forced marriages in the UK end in divorce; 75% of divorces are initiated by women; in Muslim countries governed by Islamic law a woman who divorces her husband must give up her children (70, 81).

‘From the time of birth girls are considered a liability… their birth can go unannounced and condolences may be offered’ (112).

Rosemary Sookdheo believes there are about twenty honor killings of women a year in the UK (this was ten years ago) – perpetrated by cousins, fathers, brothers, uncles, sons or other male relatives. ‘Up to 17,000 women in the UK are being subjected to “honor” related violence every year, according to the Police Chiefs’ (87). Children as young as eleven are being sent abroad to be married.

Women must be virgins when they marry, but ‘it is no loss to a man’s honor to sleep with a prostitute for she is considered to be nothing’ (76). An increasing number of women are paying up to 4000 pounds for hymen replacement operations.

Rosemary Sookdheo devotes several pages to the conflict of cultures, especially for younger Muslims in the UK. According to a paper presented to the British Psychological Society in 1997 by psychologist Dev Sharma Muslim girls have a higher degree of anxiety and are up to three times more likely to harm themselves than their white counterparts (111).

Her devastating conclusions: ‘Muslim integration into British society has effectively come to a halt’ (124). ‘There is no discussion in the Muslim world on the position and rights of women. Not one constitution in the Muslim world upholds sexual equality. But there have been gains in Tunisia and Morocco  where women are being given more rights’ (125). (But note: this was written before the ‘Arab spring’.)

~~

In Yahoo’s Answers: ‘ “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” is often used in political and social contexts for any obvious truth denied by the majority despite the evidence of their eyes, especially when proclaimed by the government.’  (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006050209041). The Sookhdeos would agree. Although their Christian theology is of a conservative colour, the question still remains: are they on to something that many of us would prefer to ‘wish away’? Go figure!

Rowland Croucher  jmm.org.au

January 2013