Many in the West assume that the Islamic threat is only in the form of terrorism, and if only ISIS is destroyed, then the real peaceful Islam will emerge ready to coexist in harmony with Western and Biblical values. That is false. The West is building its entire policy regarding Islam on a false premise. And that is why I have written my fourth book, Wholly Different: Why I Chose Biblical Values Over Islamic Values: to lay out the full scope of the threat of Islam to Western civilization.
After I moved to the US 38 years ago, I discovered that Islamic values are totally opposite to Biblical/Western values. The first Muslim sermon I heard when I visited a mosque in the US in 1979 was on how we, Muslims, must never assimilate in America. I felt that this dangerous advice was paving the way to divide America into the “house of Islam” and the non-Muslim “house of war.” I stopped going to the mosque and lived without a faith for 17 years in America.
But after I started hearing Biblical values in churches and synagogues, I discovered why Islam is afraid of assimilation. If Muslims assimilate in the West, Islam will cease to exist, and that is because its values are opposite in everything about life, human rights, family, and government.
The Original Culture Clash
The original culture clash, or clash of civilization, between Muslims and Bible believers did not start between Europe and the Islamic Middle East. It first erupted inside the Middle East, in the 7th century, when Muhammad led a ferocious bloody rebellion in the Arabian Peninsula against “the people of the book” — Jews and Christians, their values and what they stood for. In a nutshell, Islam came 600 years after Christ, not to confirm the Bible, but to discredit it. Islam was a bloody rebellion against the Bible and its values. All of the Ten Commandments were in fact violated by Muhammad for the sake of making Islam rule supreme.
The Jews and Christians of the Middle East lost the first culture clash, and were forced to submit to Islam and live in humiliation under sharia as dhimmis. Christianity and many Jews were pushed further back Northwest towards Europe. Gradually Europe were left alone holding the banner of the Bible after the Christian Byzantine Empire was decimated by Islam. That was when a second culture clash started between Islam and the Bible, Europe and the Middle East.
These are facts of history that Teddy Roosevelt warned us of when he said that if we do not fight we will lose to Islam, the same way the People of the Book in the Middle East lost to Islam in the seventh century: “Christianity is not the creed of Asia and Africa at this moment solely because the seventh century Christians of Asia and Africa had trained themselves not to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to fight. Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, and on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equal with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated….”
Western Biblical theologians believe that the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, brought an ethics revolution to the world. Islam came to rebel against such a revolution with a counter-revolution that was uniquely Muhammadan.
Everything that Jews and Christian held dear to their heart, Islam sets out to destroy. Below are some of the differences between Biblical and Islamic values mentioned in the book:
- We are all sinners vs. They are all sinners.
- Life is sacred vs. Death is worship.
- Jesus died for us vs. We must die for Allah.
- Jesus came to save us vs. We must save Muhammad’s reputation.
- Judge the sin, not the sinner vs. Judge the sinner not the sin.
- God the redeemer vs. Allah the Humiliator.
- Confession of Sin vs. Concealment of Sin.
- At war with the Devil vs. At war with flesh and blood, the enemies of Allah.
- Truth will set you Free vs. Lying and slander are an obligation.
- Changing oneself vs Changing others.
- Self-Control vs. Controlling others.
- Vengeance is the Lord’s vs. Vengeance is prescribed to Muslims.
- Love your enemies vs. Hate Allah’s Enemies (non-Muslims).
- Work Ethics vs. Wealth through conquest.
- Kingdom of God is not of this world vs. Allah and the Islamic State are one.
Nonie Darwish is the author of “Wholly Different; Why I chose Biblical Values Over Islamic Values”
