Islam means submission (to the will of Allah) and Muslim is one who submits. To understand Islam, one must comes to terms with Muhammad (ca. 570-632). Little is known of the prophet's early life. He was born in Mecca and at an early age was orphaned. He participated in both the cultic activities of his tribe and the caravan trade as well. During one of his prolonged periods of mediation and reflection, the angel Gabriel appeared to him. These revelations were later collected into 114 chapters of the Koran (Quran), the holy book of Islam. The essence of these revelations was that there was one God, Allah, and that he, Muhammad, is the (last and final) prophet of Allah.

This teaching meant that the polytheism of the bedouin tribes was an affront to God and would result in judgment. This was most unpopular, so he was forced to flee Mecca in 622. He took up residence in Medina and Islam began to grow there. He organized a military power in Medina and by 630 had conquered Mecca. By his death in 632, the entire Arabian peninsula was converted to Islam. At his death, a crisis emerged that would forever change Islam. Over the issue of succession, the early faith split. The Sunni branch regards the first four caliphs (religious leaders) as the rightful successors to Muhammad. The Shiite branch regarded Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammad, as the legitimate successor. That division has never been healed. The Shiites are in a definite minority, centering primarily in Iran, and segments of other south Asian nations like Iraq, Lebanon, etc. The Sunnis are by far the majority of Muslims worldwide. What do Muslims believe? At its center, Islam has a works-righteousness view of salvation. What the human must do is merit the favor of Allah. The five pillars of Islam summarize the obligation of the Muslim to Allah:

1. The witness: The Muslim must say the following as a statement of faith: "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet." This means, of course, a commitment to the rigid monotheism of Islam that denies any possibility of God as trinity. To the Muslim, to say God has a son is blasphemous. (John 3:16 is of no help in sharing your faith with a Muslim.) To say Muhammad is a prophet of Allah is to say that he is the last and final prophet of God. Abraham, Moses, Jesus were all prophets but Muhammad is the final prophet. The implication is that the former were prophets, and that Judaism and Christianity distorted the message of Allah. Muhammad is the final corrective and the Koran is the sum of that final revelation.

2. The ritual prayers: The faithful Muslim is to pray five times daily in the direction of Mecca. The prayers are largely memorized ones in Arabic. There is little personal intimacy in the faithful's relationship to Allah.

3. The paying of alms: This is a yearly amount of 2.5% of all liquid assets and income- generating properties that is paid to a religious official or representative of the Islamic state. It can be used to feed the poor, encourage conversion to Islam, ransom captives, relieve debtors, etc. It is an obligation of every Muslim.

4. The fast of Ramadan: This is a month long fast during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. During this fast, the believer must abstain from all food, drink, and sex during the daylight hours. It is the key to heaven, for it involves a sacrifice of one's desires and is performed for God's sake alone.

5. The pilgrimage to Mecca: This takes place during the first ten days of the 12th month of the Islamic calendar and is obligatory for every believer who is physically and financially able to go. The Islamic faith is a complex faith of sacrifice and zeal. The challenge is how this faith can mix with western emphases on the individual and to an extent on materialism. This is one of the reasons that another teaching of the Koran called the jihad is so controversial.

Today, the jihad is primarily aimed at the West. Jihad is controversial because many believe the Koran actually teaches a personal, internal jihad that the faithful practice in attacking personal vices and sin. But today, it is rarely used that way. It is considered a means of holy war, spreading the Islamic faith and defeating the enemies of Islam, namely the West. Added to this is the thought that to die in a jihad is to find immediate entrance into heaven with Allah. Most Sunni Muslims regard this teaching as used by Osama bin Laden as a prostitution of the Koran; others disagree. The challenge is that jihad is what radicalizes and increases the fanaticism of the minority of Islamic radicals who follow bin Laden.

See The Oxford History of Islam, chapters 1 and 2.

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POSTMODERNISM, THE UNIVERSITIES AND TERRORISM

Remarkably, many American universities are having difficulty processing the war on terrorism. Yet, when one understands the radical relativism, the radical pluralism and the radical morality of the postmodern worldview, with its passion for personal autonomy, then it is not difficult to understand why many universities are places where there is not only sympathy for the terrorists, but actually blaming the terrorist strikes on the United States. Here are some examples of this contorted and twisted view of terrorism at some universities:

The American Association of University Professors released a statement that promised to "continue to fight violence with renewed dedication to the exercise of freedom of thought and the expression of that freedom in teaching." I have absolutely no idea what that means. Bradford Wilson of the National Association of Scholars recently characterized this statement as "fatuous nonsense," "Marxist claptrap," and an "anti-Americanism in its basic thrust."

According to John Leo, the dominant theme on many university campuses is that America had it coming and fighting back would be vengeful, unworthy, and a risk to the lives of innocents. A speaker at the University of North Carolina teach-in called for an apology to "the tortured and the impoverished and all the millions of other victims of American imperialism." Georgetown University is holding a debate entitled "Resolved: America's Policies and Past Actions Invited the Recent Attacks." At Yale a panel of 6 professors focused on "underlying causes" of the attack and America's many faults, including our "offensive cultural messages."

This is rather extraordinary and rather unbelievable. But then again it is not! Most universities today are hotbeds of postmodern relativism, promoting the idea that there really are no absolutes and no basis for making moral or ethical judgments. One thing is certain: The commandeering of passenger jets and using them as missiles to destroy the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is a monstrous evil. It is absolutely evil and the ones who caused that evil are criminals. There are no underlying causes to their acts. Their worldview of radical Islam caused them to see America as the enemy of their worldview.

The people they killed on the plane and in those buildings were innocent, and no faith, including Islam, can justify murder like that. God has given the responsibility to government to promote justice and thwart evil. Doing so against these murderous terrorists is just and right. It will not do to blame the victims for this crime. It will not do to blame the United States for this crime. If some American universities and some university professors cannot condemn something like these terrorist strikes as the monstrous evil that they are, then God help the next generation of leaders whom they are training. I trust that some professors, somewhere in the United States are calling this for what it is a horrific evil purely and simply!

See John Leo, US News and World Report (8 October 2001).

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SHOULD THERE BE A PALESTINIAN STATE?

President Bush advocated last week, very generally, the creation of a Palestinian state. Osama bin Laden, in the video released after the US began bombing Afghanistan, stated that Americans will know no peace until there is peace in Palestine. His goal is to drive all infidels out of the Middle East, including Jews and Americans. How should we think about the creation of a Palestinian state? Several key facts:

Fact one: Israel began as a nation in 1312 B.C., two thousand years before the rise of Islam. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of the Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of Israel. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital; it has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity.

Fact two: In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. That number was about 630,000, the same number of Jews who fled Arb countries at the same time. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since WWII, Arab refugees who fled Israel are the only ones that have never been absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands.

The PLO charter still calls for the liquidation of Israel and, to bin Laden, Jews are infidels who must be driven from the land of Israel and a Palestinian state thereby created.

The point of all this is that you cannot separate what bin Laden and the terrorists are doing from the conflict over Israel. The claim of Palestinians to the nation-state of Israel is a spurious one. The claim of the Jew to this land is much more solid both in terms of history and in terms of the Bible.

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