Author: Dale Wong
Publication: ChronWatch
Date: August 31, 2003
URL: http://www.chronwatch.com/featured/contentDisplay.asp?aid=4088&mode=print
Americans are a good people, and
it is not in their nature to believe that a religious group like Islam
can be an enemy to our country and our way of life. But Paul Weyrich notes
that Islam has opposed Christianity and Judaism for centuries. This
article appeared on the website of the Free Congress Foundation.
It's not just because Prem Awaes
has come to this country as a legal immigrant that Americans should welcome
him. No. He has a message that does not make for easy listening, but it
is one that Americans, particularly those who are anxious to cast Islam
as a peaceful and tolerant religion, need to hear.
Awaes has come to America thanks
to the sponsorship of the Virginia Council of Churches and the Presbyterian
Church of Fredericksburg. He had been trained as a missionary by the Salvation
Army and had operated a Christian school in Pakistan.
Because Pakistan is a Muslim republic,
Awaes' work as a Christian missionary made him run afoul of the government's
laws. Believers in the Christian religion are often persecuted; the police
seldom do much to ensure the protection of religious minorities. Indeed,
as Awaes pointed out in an interview with the Fredericksburg Free-Lance
Star, they will often be the attackers.
Recalling the violence inflicted
on his village in an attack six years ago, Awaes said: ''They threw hand
grenades at houses. Muslims robbed the houses and took everyone's things.''
After living constantly on the run
in Pakistan, Awaes fled to Asia, living there for a while before being
granted refugee status by the United Nations and finding sponsorship in
the United States. He expects to be reunited with his family soon.
More Americans are coming to realize
that while many Muslims lead peaceful and tolerant lives, those who truly
believe that the Qur'an represents the divine words spoken by Allah will
not be tolerant or peaceful toward the ''People of the Book'': the Qur'an's
designation for Jews and Christians.
As Sura 9:29 of the Qur'an declares:
''Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that
forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge
the religion of Truth, [even if they are] of the people of the Book, until
they pay the Jizya [a special higher tax rate] with willing submission,
and feel themselves subdued.''
Many contemporary theologians depict
the Crusades as Christianity's war against Islam, but they have it dead
wrong. For Islam was on the march centuries before the Crusades, having
conquered the Christian lands of Egypt, Syria, North Africa, and Spain
by the time Pope Urban II had declared the first Crusade.
To this day, the enmity continues.
Just last year, a Muslim cleric in Indonesia called upon his fellow believers
to fight ''belligerent infidels'' who are Christians.
Christians who believe that all
people are equal in dignity before God need to realize that this idea is
not taught in traditional Islam. Muslims who do believe in this equality
of dignity have been influenced by the West, but within the Muslim community
they are typically shouted down by the more fervent and louder voices of
Islamic militants.
My colleague Robert Spencer writes
in ''Islam vs. Christianity: The Age-Old Conflict Continues'' that Americans
need to wake up to the fact that not all religions or their followers share
the Western values of tolerance.
Indeed, more Americans are waking
up to this. A poll released last month by the Pew Forum on Religion and
Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
showed 44 percent of the American public now understand that Islam is more
likely than other religions ''to encourage violence among its believers.''
Only a quarter of Americans realized this in March 2002.
Sept. 11 should have alerted every
American to that fact. Unfortunately, the innate American sense of trust
and decency, our best values, leave us ill-equipped to confront an enemy
like Islam - just as it was difficult in 1940 for many Americans to grasp
that a civilized country like Germany could discard true Christian beliefs.
Now, as the second anniversary approaches
of that terrible day, conservatives need to make sure every American realizes
the true nature of the threat we face from Islam's fervent believers. We
should not have to depend on al-Qaeda to provide a reminder.
Paul M. Weyrich is chairman and
CEO of the Free Congress Foundation, whose website is: http:// www.freecongress.org/