Updated Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2008

Christian apologist highlights teachings of Islam

By Douglas Baker

BSC Communications

As real time video captured the crash of the second plane directly into the south tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, a new enemy was introduced to the United States in ways which defied traditional logic.

Hiding deep in a cave thousands of miles away was a man now infamous in the world - Osama bin Laden - who held up three fingers to his followers, one for each airplane which slammed into targets in New York and Washington, D.C.

As bin Laden wept openly, he prayed and recited the words, "Allah akbar," which translated means, "god is great." Islam and terrorism was quickly fused in the minds of many Americans as this strange new enemy was now touting this mass murder as a religious accomplishment in the name of a god.

Immediately, military scientists and national security strategists began to categorize and formulate a careful background understanding of exactly who attacked the United States. To their frustration, they were unable to easily classify the enemy in terms of symmetrical warfare. Normally, enemies represented organized nations with power to make war for a defined objective.

Throughout history, war was a struggle between great national powers such as the conflict between Japan and America in World War II. No nation, however, claimed responsibility for the atrocity in New York and Washington - a radical segment of a religion did. And this religion - Islam - quickly presented problems for the world.

No longer could history be understood only in terms of the formal study of history and economics or in politically progressive terms advanced through technological achievement.

Increasingly, theological ideas were coming to dominate in matters of state, and to factor out religion as a determining factor for the actions of America's enemies was seen as unwise by even the most hardened secularist. George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow of Washington, D.C.'s Ethics and Public Policy Center warned in his book, Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action, that "the great human questions, including the great questions of public life, are ultimately theological."

Americans openly struggled to comprehend a theological enemy who, in the words of historian Victor Davis Hanson, was capable of inciting "illiterate teenagers to kill an American army officer with a quarter-million-dollar education from West Point, riding in a $100,000 Humvee."

Mike Licona, a Christian apologist with the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, agrees that the "influence of Muslims is growing in America, and the knowledge of Christians about the religion itself is very limited." Licona recently spoke at the annual evangelism conference sponsored by the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina in Greensboro.

"There are areas in the nation which are so densely populated with Muslims (such as Dearborn, Mich.) that the calls to prayer can be heard throughout the city five times per day," Licona said. "How the church of Jesus Christ responds to the growing Muslim population will be critical in future days, and the church of Christ must work to understand Islam far better than she is currently doing."

According to a report by the United States Department of State in 2006, there are more than 8 million Muslims in the United States, and that number continues to grow rapidly. Licona indicated that many Muslims were quite familiar with the teachings of Christianity. Speaking before a group of pastors and church leaders, Licona said that, "Islamic apologists often castigate Christian apologists as unfair to their prophet Muhammad. Muslims often say that they respect and honor Jesus, but the Jesus of the Qur'an is not the Jesus of the Bible." While Muslims agree that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, performed miracles, never sinned, is the Messiah and the Great Prophet, and will come again, they deny that he is divine, that he died on the cross and was raised from the dead.

"These are the core doctrines of the Christian faith," Licona said, "and to deny these doctrines reveals that Islam does not fully understand the Christian Scriptures." French scholar Alain Besan�on agrees with Licona. In his May 2004 commentary essay, he states that "The Abraham of Genesis is not the Ibrahim of the Qur'an; Moses is not Moussa. As for Jesus, he appears as Issa, out of place and out of time, without reference to the landscape of Israel. His mother, Mary, or Mariam, identified as the sister of Aaron, gives birth to him under a palm tree. Then Issa performs several miracles, which seem to have been drawn from the apocryphal gospels, and announces the future coming of Muhammad."

"Muhammad is easily disproved as a false prophet," Licona said, "and Christians must be passionate yet respectful in their defense of the Christian faith. More and more, the church must understand Islam so as to reach out with a robust and passionate articulation of the Christian faith." Challenging those present at the conference to understand that the five pillars and six beliefs of Islam was a religion of works built on a foundation of writings which are unreliable and capable of being refuted by Christians, Licona concluded his remarks to the group by calling for an aggressive and intentional outreach to the Muslim community.