Chapter 8: Radical Islam

God is saying to you today:
“Everything is going to work out. I will give you strength when you can’t go on. Don’t let the enemy convince you to go back to the things that I have already brought you out of. Don’t give up.”

In The Book of Signs, Dr. David Jeremiah offers answers to questions including:

• What does the Bible tell us about the future?
• How much can we understand about biblical prophecy and its application in our lives?
• What signs and signals will precede the end of everything as we know it?
• Which of those signs and signals have already come to pass, which are we experiencing now, and which are still to come?

An epic and authoritative guide to biblical prophecy, The Book of Signs is a must-have resource for Christians seeking to navigate the uncertainties of the present and embrace God’s promises for the future with a renewed sense of hope and purpose.

Chapter eight radical Islam, Georgia. Sada was a general under Saddam Hussein. He was a military hero.
Iraq’s top air force pilot and the man Saddam called on to hear the truth about military matters.
In his book, Saddam’s Secrets. Sada speaks about the spreading impact of Islam around the world.
He wrote, I’m often asked about militant Islam and the threat of global terrorism.
More than once, I’ve been asked about the meaning of the Arabic words, Fatah and Jihad.
What I normally tell them is that to followers of the militant brand of Islam, these doctrines express the belief that Allah has commanded them to conquer the nations of the world, both by cultural invasion and by the sword.
In some cases, this means moving thousands of Muslim families into a foreign land by building mosques and changing the culture from the inside out and by refusing to assimilate or adopt the beliefs or values of that nation to conquer the land for Islam.
This is an invidious doctrine but it’s being carried out in some places today by followers of this type of Islam.
Sata went on to warn Americans not to think that the Islamic revolution is a Middle Eastern or European problem.
Their ultimate goal is conquest of the West and America. They won’t be stopped by appeasement.
They are not interested in political solutions. They don’t want welfare.
Their animosity is not caused by hunger or poverty or anything of the sort.
They understand only one thing, total and complete conquest of the West and the destruction of anyone who does not bow to them and their dangerous and out of date ideology of hate and revenge.
Americans do not seem to take the threat of Islam seriously.
In fact, the Pew Research Center tells us that us citizens are essentially oblivious to the potential danger of radical Muslims.
A recent poll indicated that only 16% of the public report knowing a lot about the religious beliefs and practices of Muslims while more than eight in 10 say they know a little or nothing at all.
According to Sada Americans are particularly vulnerable to the spread of militant Islam because our enemies take advantage of traits that we consider socially positive.
One of the nicest things about the American people is that you are generous and friendly people.
And because of this, you are sometimes naive and overly trusting, you want to be friendly.
So you open up to people and then you’re surprised when they stab you in the back.
Many brave young soldiers have died in Iraq for this reason.
But I think this is also a big part of the problem with the State Department and others in government who fail to understand the true nature of this enemy.
The rise of radical Islam and the prevalence of terrorism has impacted the West in ways that cannot be overstated.
Especially since 9 11, we experience it every time we wait in an airport security line, every time we hear reports of another attack and every time we turn on the news and hear commentators describe how Islamic culture is growing in our own land.
Yet radical Islam is more than a threat to our way of life.
It is also a sign of the last days.
The rise of Islamic terror is setting the stage for the events in Ezekiel 38 39.
These chapters prophesy an invasion of Israel in the end times by a vast coalition of nations, all of whom are Islamic today, except for Russia.
Israel has said that a new axis of terror, Iran, Syria and the Hamas run.
Palestinian government is sowing the seeds of the first World War of the 21st century.
The rise of Islam and especially radical Islamic terrorism strikingly foreshadows Ezekiel’s great prophecy is Islam militant or peaceful.
Not long ago. Fox News aired a special called radical Islam terror in its own words, which featured shocking clips from Islamic television, showing Clerics and political leaders advocating attacks on the United States and Israel.
The documentary included programs shown on Islamic TV, in which Children sing of their desire to participate in violent jihad or to become suicide bombers.
And it aired footage from a radical Islamic rally in California where the audience was told one day you will see the flag of Islam over the White House in the face of such reports.
One of the most unsettling puzzles about Islam is the contention by some Muslim leaders that they are a peace loving people.
Yet even as they make the claim, Islamic terrorists continue to brutally murder any person or group with whom they find fault, former radical Shiite Muslim Riza AAA asked if Islam is a peaceful religion, then why did Muhammad engage in 47 battles?
Why in every campaign, the Muslim armies have fought throughout history?
Have they slaughtered men, women and Children who do not bow their knees to the lordship of Islam.
The reign of terror of men such as Saddam Khomeni Gaddafi, Idi Amin and many other Muslim dictators are modern examples.
If Islam is peaceful, why are there so many verses in the Koran about killing the infidels and those who resist Islam?
If Islam is peaceful? Why isn’t there even one Muslim country that will allow freedom of religion and speech?
Not one if Islam is peaceful, who is imparting this awful violence to hundreds of Islamic groups throughout the world who kill innocent people in the name of Allah to get a handle on these contradictory sides of Islam.
It will help us to delve briefly into the history of how the religion came to be and what beliefs it holds today.
The history of Islam, the name Islam literally means submission.
A Muslim is one who submits to God. There are about 1.8 billion Muslims in our world today.
Approximately 3.45 million live in the United States, which is about 1.1% of the US adult population.
While we usually associate Islam with the Middle East.
The largest Muslim populations are actually in the Asia Pacific region.
According to Islamic tradition, the founder of Islam Mohammed was born in Mecca in present day Saudi Arabia.
In 85 70 Mecca was a thriving center of religious pilgrimage filled with temples and statues dedicated to the many gods.
The Arabian people worshiped at that time, Mohammed’s father died before the prophet was born and his mother died when he was six years old.
He was raised by his paternal grandfather, grew up to become a camel driver and then a merchant.
And at the age of 26 married a wealthy caravan owner named Kadija Khadija was 40 years old and had been divorced four times.
In spite of her age, she and Mohammed had six Children together.
Mohammed worked in professions that brought him into contact with Christians and Jews who caused him to question the religion of his people.
He was 40 years old and meditating in a cave outside of Mecca when he received his first revelation from that moment on according to his testimony, God occasionally revealed to Him messages that he declared to the people, these messages which Mohammed received throughout his life form.
The verses of the Koran which Muslims regard as the divine word of God.
In the seventh century Arabian world, the people worshiped more than 360 gods, one for each day of the lunar year.
One of these was the moon God, the male counterpart to the female Sun God.
The moon God was called by various names, one of which was Allah and it was the favorite God of Mohammed’s family.
As Muhammad began to promote his new religion.
He elevated the moon God Allah and declared him to be the one true God.
His devotion to Allah was fierce in establishing and spreading his religion of Islam.
Mohammed slaughtered thousands of people who resisted conversion opposition in Mecca, forced Mohammed and his followers to flee to Medina in 86 20 where he became the head of the first Muslim community.
In 86 31 he returned to Mecca where he died the following year.
At his death, the Islamic community became bitterly divided over who would be Mohammed’s successor. Even today.
That division survives in the two Islamic sects now known as Shiite and Sunni conflict between these sects is one of the major stress points in Iraq and throughout the Islamic world.
At the death of Mohammed, the group we know as the Sunni followed the leadership of Muhammad’s personally chosen successor, Abu Bakar.
The Sunni now comprise about 90% of the Islamic world.
They believe that Mohammed’s spiritual gifts died with him and that their only authority today is the Koran. The Shiites.
On the other hand, followed Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali believing Ali had inherited Mohammed’s spiritual gifts.
Winfried Corwin explains, the Shiites believe that their leaders, the imams have authority on par with the Koran.
It is the Shiites that believe that the 12th imam went into concealment hundreds of years ago and continues to live there until he returns as the Mahdi.
The Muslim Messiah Abu Bakar and his successors launched holy wars that spread Islam from Northern Spain to India and threatened Christian Europe.
Christians resisted the threat and a series of wars followed that drove the Islamic invaders back into the Middle Eastern countries where they still dominate their zeal to have their religion control.
The world has not diminished however, and it remains a threat to all who do not maintain vigilance.
The habits of Islam.
Sunni Muslims mandate five acts of worship which are frequently referred to as the five pillars of Islam.
Shiite Muslim worship comprises eight ritual practices.
But these encompass the same five pillars of Islam as practiced by the Sunni.
The five pillars are as follows to recite the Shahada. The Shahada is the Islamic creed.
There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.
Its recitation is the duty of every Muslim to pray.
Salat Muslims pray while bowing toward Mecca five times each day in the early morning, in the early and late afternoon at sunset and an hour after sunset, they give arms Muslims are required to give 2.5% of their income to those in need.
They may give more as a means of gaining further divine reward.
But 2.5 per cent is an obligatory minimum too fast.
So Muslims refrain from food during the daylight hours throughout the lunar month of Ramadan.
This month is to be given over to meditation and reflection and it ends with a celebration to make the pilgrimage haj those physically and financially able must visit Mecca at least once during their lifetime.
The journey usually takes at least a week and includes many stops at other holy sites along the way.
The hatred of Islam, no doubt, the most frightening word associated with Islam is Jihad sometimes called the sixth pillar of Islam.
Jihad means struggle. The greater Jihad is the inner struggle of each Muslim to submit to Allah.
The lesser Jihad is the outward struggle to defend the Islamic community.
This is the Jihad that strikes fear in the hearts of any who reject radical Islam.
These Muslims take Jihad to mean violent defense of Islam and expansion of the Islamic religion even by means of deadly aggression.
The hatred that the Muslims have for the Jews is well documented.
But the settlement of Israel into her homeland in 1948 took this hatred to a level of murderous fury militants.
And radicals refer to Israel as little Satan and the United States as big Satan and they are determined to wipe both countries off the map.
While the majority of the world’s Muslims attempt to live in peace with their neighbors.
The number of radicals who preach violence and terror is mushrooming around the world today as I speak these words, there is not a single predominantly Muslim nation on earth where Christians are not persecuted.
As general, Saa warned, we cannot afford to relax our vigilance in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism.
The hopes of Islam radical Islam has a vision of its future that does not bode well for those who stand in the way to gain a better understanding of this vision, we will look briefly at some of the goals the Islamic world hopes to achieve Islam hopes to rule the world.
It is one thing to hear about Muslim determination to take over the world.
It is quite another to watch it happening before our eyes as it is in Europe.
The most startling social migration of our age is the Islamization of Europe.
Tony Blankley of the Washington Times sounded an alarm about this Islamic infiltration.
The threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 19 forties to point out the obvious the resurgence of a militant Islam drove America to fight two wars in Muslim countries in two years.
Disrupted America’s alliance with Europe. Caused the largest reorganization of American government in half a century.
With the creation of the Department of Homeland Security changed election results in Europe and threatened the stability of most of the governments in the Middle East.
We can easily see and resist the effects of Jihad in militant terrorism.
But we have trouble seeing and resisting the settler strategy that the Muslims call FAK Fatah is infiltration, moving into a country in numbers large enough to insert the influence of Islam in places where a military invasion will not succeed.
The slow systematic and unrelenting methods of Fatah are conquering entire nations. Two illustrations are instructive.
The first concerning France, what we’re seeing in many places is a demographic revolution.
Some experts have projected that by the year 2040 80% of the population of France will be Muslim.
At that point, the Muslim majority will control commerce, industry, education and religion in that country.
They will also of course control the government as well and occupy all the key positions in the French parliament and a Muslim will be President Islam is also happening in England where Muslims are advancing their goal of dominance by taking advantage of the British policy of pluralistic tolerance.
An example occurred in September 2006 when the British Home Secretary John Reid gave a speech to Muslim parents in East London, encouraging them to protect their Children from becoming suicide bombers.
A fundamentalist Muslim leader shouted the speaker down. He ranted. How dare you come to a Muslim area?
I am absolutely furious. John Reid should not come to a Muslim area.
Muslims are not only immigrating massively to Western countries but also claiming entitlement to keep their settlements off limits to native citizens.
In early 2008, England’s Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams gave the world a stunning example of general Sata’s claim of Western naivete concerning Islamic intentions.
Williams told a BBC correspondent that the growing Islamic population in Britain made it expedient to be accommodative.
He said the UK has to face up to the fact that it seems unavoidable that Islam’s legal system Sharia law will be incorporated into British law.
His term for this blending of laws was constructive accommodation, Sharia law derived from the Koran and teachings of Mohammad is the legal system by which Muslims are to live in the West.
The law is fairly benign and deals mainly with family and business.
But in Muslim countries, it can include such things as honor killings, in cases of suspected immorality.
You may hear other terms used to describe the Islamic goal of world domination.
For example, biological Jihad or demographic Jihad describes the nonviolent strategy of Muslims moving into Europe and the West and having more babies than their hosts within several generations.
They hope to repopulate traditionally Christian cultures with their own people and they are certainly on track to reach that goal.
According to a Vatican report, the Roman Catholic church understands this for the first time in history.
We are no longer at the top. The Muslims have overtaken us.
Islam hopes to return its messiah. In 2005.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was called before the United Nations Security Council to explain his determination to develop nuclear weapons.
He ended his speech with this prayer quote, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository.
The promised one that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.
The promised one in Ahmadinejad’s prayer was a reference to the 12th imam, a figure in Shiite teaching that parallels the figure of Almaty in Sunni teaching.
In essence, both of these titles refer to the Islamic Messiah who is yet to come.
Shia Islam believes that the 12th imam can appear only during a time of worldwide chaos even though the hope for an Islamic messiah is surely futile.
The chaos that radical Islamic leaders are creating to bring about that hope is all too real many of the biblical prophecies concerning the end times will be brought about by the beliefs and actions of radical Islam.
And we are beginning to feel the pressure of those impending events in the rapid spread of Islamic radicalism in our own time responding to the Islamic threat.
How are we responding to the rise of Islamic radicalism? Not too well.
I fear on the whole, those who shape our culture and policies are inadvertently accommodating the radical agenda of Islamic conquest.
We must stop being deceived about this threat.
We must stand our ground and affirm truths that many people seem all too willing to give up in the name of tolerance and accommodation.
Here are two truths on which I see much confusion today.
It is critical that we affirm these truths to maintain a clear understanding of the vast chasm between Christianity and Islam.
Allah is not another name for the God of the Bible in mid August 2007, Dutch Catholic Bishop Musk Cans said that he wants everyone to call God Allah.
He explained during an interview on Dutch TV. Allah is a very beautiful word for God.
Shouldn’t we all say that from now on, we will name God Allah, a Roman Catholic news analyst disagreed with the bishop stating words and names mean things referring to God as Allah means something.
Indeed they do as Stan good enough reminds his Jerusalem newswire readers in the name of Allah people hijack planes and use them to wreck unspeakable devastation, blow themselves up in crowded public venues to annihilate innocent people.
And in the name of Allah, millions of people pray for the destruction of Israel and the United States, good enough observed that when God introduced himself to Moses, he gave his name as Jehovah.
He went on to say he also has many other names, describing aspects of his nature and character.
Allah is not one of them. Bishop sins surely knows the biblical names for God.
So what was he thinking when he urged Christians to call God Allah, a statement on his diocese website explained if Muslims and Christians address God with the same name, this contributes to harmonious living between both religions.
When Islamic leaders saw this, their mosques must have run with the slaps of high fives.
Their policy of Atah was working beautifully and they must have been overjoyed when the spokesman for the Council on American Islamic relations embraced Musk’s proposal saying it reinforces the fact that Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the same God.
We hear this appalling claim often these days, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Allah and God are emphatically not the same.
The God of the Bible is knowable according to the Koran, Allah is so exalted that he cannot be known.
The God of the Bible is a personal being with intellect, emotion and will.
Muslim theology tells us Allah is not to be understood as a person.
The God of the Bible is one God in three persons.
The Koran denies the Trinity and views it as a heresy.
The God of the Bible is a God of love. Allah does not have emotional feelings toward humanity.
The God of the Bible is a God of grace. According to the Koran, there is no savior.
Clearly, the God of the Bible and Allah are not at all the same and should never be acquainted with each other.
The Koran is not a divine book on par with the Bible.
Many people also say that we should consider the Koran to be on the same level as the Bible.
A comparison of the two books shows the absurdity of such acclaim.
The Bible is a masterpiece of cohesion, depth and consistency.
God inspired more than 40 men over a period of 1400 years to write the God breathed words that carry his unified message from Genesis to revelation.
Second Timothy 3 16, the Koran, on the other hand, is a self contradicting book supposedly given by the angel Gabriel to Mohammad.
Since Muhammad could neither read nor write the sayings were translated and collected from the memories of those who had heard him objective readers who have read both the Bible and the Koran are immediately able to tell the difference between the quality and comprehensibility of the two books.
Historian Edward Gibbons is an example of such a reader.
Gibbon could hardly be accused of being a Christian yet he described the Koran as an incoherent rhapsody of fable and precept and declamation which sometimes crawls in the dust and sometimes is lost in the clouds.
Muslims are within the reach of God’s grace.
We may find it hard to pray for avowed enemies who threaten our destruction.
But Jesus commands us to love your enemies.
Bless those who curse you do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.
I believe that includes radical Islamic terrorists. We have good evidence that such prayers are effective.
Our weekly television program turning point is available in many Arab countries.
We routinely get correspondence from individuals who have come to Christ through the Ministry of God’s Word via satellite TV.
Recently, we received a letter from an Arab country in which the writer told us he had accepted Christ, a postscript pleaded with us not to send any materials to his address.
A sobering reminder of the courage it takes for a Muslim in an Islamic country to confess Christ as Savior God is at work in the Islamic world.
Many Muslims are being confronted with the gospel in their dreams.
One Saudi Arabian had a terrifying nightmare in which he was being taken into hell.
This vivid and horrifying dream destroyed the man’s peace night after night.
One evening, Jesus appeared in his dream and said, son, I am the way the truth and the life.
And if you would give your life to me, I would save you from the hell that you have seen.
This young man knew something of Jesus from the distorted teachings of the Koran.
But he didn’t know the Jesus of the New Testament.
So he began searching for a Christian who could help him.
Christianity is banned in Saudi Arabia and a Christian caught witnessing to a Muslim could be beheaded.
So the young man’s search took time, but the Lord eventually led him to an Egyptian Christian who gave him a Bible.
He began reading and when he got to the New Testament, he was moved to give his life to Jesus Christ.
Soon afterward, an opponent of the young man discovered his conversion. The authorities arrested and imprisoned him in jail.
He was tortured and sentenced to death by beheading.
But on the morning of his scheduled execution, no one showed up to escort him from the cell.
Two days later, the authorities threw open his cell door and screamed at him.
You demon get out of this place.
The man learned later that his execution had not occurred because on the very day he was to be beheaded.
The son of his accuser had mysteriously died.
The New Christian is now quietly working to bring other Muslims to faith in Christ.
Abraham Lincoln once said the best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
And the best way to counter the threat of Islam is to make Christians out of Muslims.
This won’t turn away prophecies of events sure to come, but it does give you a role in the drama to be played our prayers.
Our testimonies and our love for our Islamic neighbors may not turn the inevitable tide for the world, but they can turn the tide for individuals and allow them to escape the wrath to come.
And that is definitely worth doing.