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Islam -- A Peaceful Religion? 63

“Islam must rule the world and until Islam does rule the world
we will continue to sacrifice our lives,” Al-Badr spokesman Mustaq Aksari

-- CNN September 19, 2001.

Islam -- A Peaceful Religion?

According to the Quran, Allah has given the whole world to the Mos-
lems -- to be its masters and inheritors. In order to fulfill this destiny,
militant Islam is quite prepared to go to war and be destroyed in the pro-
cess. A demonic force is at work of which the governments in the West
have no real comprehension.

I n a thought-provoking editorial on the proliferating Islamic culture in western Europe, The
Times, London, asks: “Where should one’s respect for the traditional culture of an immigrant
community stop?” In both France and Germany, says The Times, large fundamentalist Islamic
groups suppressed by their home governments, are EXPLOITING the relatively free and plural na-
ture of West European society (and also the United States), as well as the alienation and disorienta-
tion felt by many of the immigrants, to try to impose on the immigrant communities a
TOTALITARIAN AND INTOLERANT world view, with the result that the most well-meaning at-
tempts by the French and Germans to assimilate, emancipate or simply educate the Moslem immi-
grants sometimes encounter a discouragingly hostile response.

In Britain, too, most of the problems that Islamic culture brings are being experienced. The
arranging of shifts and holidays so that pious Moslem workers can say their prayers at the correct
time, and go on the haj. And, continues The Times, there are vast gray areas: enforcing sexual seg-
regation in state schools, putting up with nightly revels next door during Ramadan, withholding
French, German and English literacy classes from women whose husbands object and so on. While
all the major West European countries owe a part of their postwar prosperity to immigrant labor,
thanks to a higher birthrate which is related to that indigestible cultural identity, an increasing num-
ber will also become reliant on the social security systems.

But in a letter to The Times, the Editor of Impact International argues, “Where should
one’s respect for the immigrant [Moslem] community begin?” He draws attention to the declaration
on the elimination of all forms of intolerance and of discrimination based on religion or belief
adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on November 25, 1981 (resolution 36/55). He points out
that Article 1 proclaims, “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” and that “This
right shall include freedom to have a religion or whatever belief of his choice, and freedom, either
individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief
in worship, observance, practice and teachings.”

The Berean Voice July-August 2002