Few questions regarding Islam are as salient to current events and public discourse as the relationship between Islam and violence, and few questions are as polarizing. Outsiders looking into the house of Islam have reached conflicting conclusions, with American Presidents defending “the religion of peace” while others connect acts of terrorism and violence directly to “the traditional, orthodox, and classical version of Islam…”
Many non-Muslims picture the qur’anic heaven as an eternal orgy in which the faithful freely engage in all kinds of sexual perversion with full immunity. This libertine version has a long history in the West,[i] and American Christians won’t easily be disabused of it. Not with writers like Sam Shamoun recasting the qur’anic heaven in the most despicable terms possible, as “Allah’s brothel.”[ii] British conservatives won’t likely let go of it either, not with Boris Johnson—then MP, now British prime minister—retelling the same tired orgy story in his 2004 novel Seventy-Two Virgins – A Comedy of Errors.
While the Qur’an does emphasize heaven’s sensual pleasures…
Several times recently I have been asked by concerned Christians questions along the lines of “will Muslims take over in the UK/the West?” or “how should we respond to the violence of Jihadists/ Islamic State etc?”. My precise answer depends upon the circumstances but is usually along the lines of “keep calm and think biblically”!
What do I mean? There is a danger that we allow our thinking to be manipulated by the secular media or the agenda of people who want to scare us into supporting their particular cause. So here are five suggestions for a calm and biblical approach to Islam and current world events:
Despite winning only a handful of converts, Samuel Zwemer was the greatest missionary the United States has ever sent to the Muslim world. Of him, the historian Kenneth Latourette said, “No one is more deserving of the title, ‘Apostle to Islam.’” He was a gifted evangelist, a prolific author, a compelling speaker, and a dedicated professor—never deviating from this message: Muslims need Jesus, and Christians need to reach them.