Many people on the news talk about how Islam needs to be reformed like Christianity, and we need to work with moderate Muslims to encourage them to do that.
I watched a YouTube clip of some Arab guy named Hashim Almadani. I’ve never heard of him, not sure of his background or beliefs, but the two clips I saw, I liked. He spoke about Linda Sarsour, who’s a really dangerous and phony representative of Islam the left seems to like right now, and about moderate Muslims and their efforts to reform Islam. Regarding the latter, he basically said, “Good luck with that!” But he stimulated this blog, because I’ve gotta respond to this whole idea, so commonly spoken about on TV.
Reporters so frequently say things like, “Well, have you seen the violence and holy war scriptures in the Christian holy book? Didn’t Christians and Jews have to reform their religion? Shouldn’t we give the Muslims a chance to reform theirs?” or things of that sort.
Something has to be said about this, by people who know history and Christian theology! But much has already been said and written. I wonder if anybody wants to learn the truth? Thousands of pages are out there, if you’ve a mind that’s open and willing to learn.
I can’t spend the proper amount of time to explain it here, but let me say just a few things about it. There are only a few especially violent sections in the OT that are shocking to our modern worldview – the story of the Flood, the Exodus and entry into the Promised Land, and then some of the passages on the death penalty.
God Himself brought the Flood, wiping out the whole human race except for Noah, his wife, his sons, and their wives, a total of 8 people. Modern people think this is outrageous, murderous, hateful. They can’t believe in a God who would do anything like that, so they say the Bible must be the product of an ancient people, and must be ridiculous. Then there’s the Exodus. Of course, God killed all the firstborn of Egypt, that’s the first horror, and then He wiped out the whole Egyptian army in the Red Sea. After that, He ordered the Israelites to kill every man, woman, and child in Canaan, so the Israelites could take over their land. We’re told this is holy war, it’s completely outrageous and unacceptable, it’s imperialistic, racist, and downright wicked. Then of course, there are various incidents where people are executed under Moses, David, and others, and it seems pretty harsh to our modern sentiments. And the Jews, they had to sacrifice all those innocent animals all the time. It’s so barbaric, primitive, unnecessary, right?
Many people, even Christians, have difficulty accepting these things and fitting them into their concept of religion, especially adapting them into their concept of gentle Jesus, meek and mild. There are so many things that have been said to help with this. I recommend a book by Paul Copan, “Is God a Moral Monster?” It’ll help you see these things from a different perspective. The bottom line is, there are reasonable explanations for all of this, explanations that may not please modern people, but nevertheless make a lot of sense.
For the purposes of this short discussion however, I can’t go into all of that. What I want to address is how many think that the New Testament God is different from the Old Testament God, or, they think the NT is sort of an updated and more acceptable religion than the OT, a reformed religion, more suitable to modern times. I recently read about Reformed Judaism and was surprised to learn it was an attempt to update Judaism to modern culture and worldviews. Its founders clearly said they were going to use human reason to reform their religion and bring it into the modern world. Modern Jews don’t offer bloody sacrifices anymore to appease God. They believe that prayer, repentance, and living a moral life are good enough for that.
Most Christians seem to also believe we need to update our religion to modern ways of thinking. A book I read, called The Transformation of American Religion, was a sociological study of how religion has changed in America, and it showed some pretty clear statistics that proved every single religion that has come to America has softened, been made more palatable, more agreeable to modern American sentimentalities. And of course, in line with this is the whole debate about homosexuality. Many say we Christians used to believe in slavery, but we finally learned to reject it, we used to think women’s place was in the home, and they shouldn’t vote or exercise authority over men, but we’ve become much less sexist now. And so, it’s only reasonable to think that we should also update our ideas on same-sex attraction and so forth. Thus, the Episcopalian denomination ordained a homosexual bishop who left his wife and kids to enter into a same-sex relationship. The debate goes on.
And so, religions change, they adapt. And Islam will too, we just need to give it time. I have two main points I want to make about this. I hope you’ll hear me out.
Point # 1: The essential difference in thinking here has to do with one thing: The reality of divine revelation. Is there really a God out there, and does He/she/it speak or reveal anything to the human race? I submit that most people who call for the reformation of Islam and who say Judaism and Christianity have reformed or updated to fit in modern society don’t really believe in revelation. Instead, they are practical atheists. They may accept that a majority of people believe in something beyond what they can see, believe in some religion, and they may realize they have to sort of put up with that. But they don’t believe that the religions four fifths of humanity believe in are actually based on reality. They don’t believe any God has revealed anything absolute.
I’m afraid even many Christians are not totally sure of this. They think religion is good because it promotes morality, moral restraint on evil human tendencies, and it gives comfort regarding death, the afterlife, times of suffering, etc. But they don’t really think the Bible is a revelation from God. They think maybe its main ideas are good, but primitive people wrote those ideas down, so they may have been influenced by their times, so they wrote things in a way that no longer works for modern people. We need to reform and adapt those things to bring them into current times. We need to be open to change our thinking.
But here’s what I want to ask such people to consider. What if God really does exist and can really communicate with mankind? Do you think He’s changing and adapting to modern developments? (Some Christians do believe this. It’s called process theology or open theism.) I mean, do you believe God used to be kind of angry and wrathful, used to lose his temper from time to time, but He’s been mellowing out over the millennia? Do you think He didn’t know how we were going to turn out, so He changed over the years, allowing slavery to be abolished, elevating women, looking with more favor on homosexuals? Do you think He used to demand animal sacrifices because He knew primitive people liked that sort of thing, but then, around 2,000 years ago, He sort of gave up on the idea? Do you think He sent Jesus because He knew modern people wouldn’t accept the older version, and it was time for an update? God had to reinvent Himself to remain relevant to modern times?
You see, I submit to you that God doesn’t change. He’s always been omniscient and omnipotent. He’s always known what was right and wrong. He’s always been against sin. He’s always revealed His wrath from heaven against it. He didn’t update when He sent Jesus and the NT. He foretold it with absolute accuracy centuries before it happened. He planned everything He did with total foreknowledge and in detail. Slavery wasn’t abolished because God changed His mind. It was mankind that had to gradually see the light as they were transformed by God’s Word. When Jesus came, He elevated women like on one else ever has, but it took mankind over a thousand years to gradually accept. Jesus reaffirmed marriage as an institution from God for one man and one woman. He reaffirmed the need for sacrifice for sins by becoming The Sacrifice to end all sacrifices. He didn’t update Judaism – He fulfilled it and brought about the new covenant just as He had promised through Jewish prophets. Christianity started in a hostile, pagan world, and in three centuries, it transformed that world into a Christian world in Western Europe. In that Christian world, things like science and democracy and capitalism and education and hospitals were all created. The enlightenment and humanization of mankind was fostered like nowhere else and like nothing else in all of history. God didn’t change over time. God changed man over time, by mixing into the whole mix of dough, the yeast of His truth.
Over centuries, however, humans being the sinful beings they are, gradually allowed the truth of God to morph into a religious system that differed from what God originally had revealed, the Roman Catholic system. Humans always tend to forget things God has revealed and to change them or fail to live up to them. This happened under the Old Testament over and over. Humans are weak, confused, defective, sinful. Humans change. Not all Catholics were completely estranged from God or completely wrong and sinful. Not all Orthodox believers. God was at work in all the branches of Christianity, and continues to be. There were and are many who love God and follow His word. But the overall system drifted and needed to be reformed.
The Reformation was a huge upheaval. It was an awakening to the fact that the Christian movement had changed and slipped and gotten some things wrong. It was a reform movement, with the aim of reforming by getting back to the original teachings of the Bible. It wasn’t an update of Christianity, but rather, a return to more of what Christianity was originally about.
Which brings me to the second main point I want to make, and this is regarding Islam. People want to encourage a reformation of Islam, an update to modern ways and times. But point # 2 is this: Those who call for such a reformation really have no idea what they are really calling for.
First of all, do they know anything about what it is to be a religious person? Probably not! They’re secular for the most part, so religion is pretty much a world they cannot relate to. Nothing is absolute in their worldview! Everything is fluid and changing! The Constitution is a “fluid document” that needs to be adapted to the modern world. Religion is nice, but it has to conform to modern worldviews! Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds to those of us who truly believe our religions?! Even many or most American Christians nowadays, according to studies, don’t really live their lives according to the teachings of the Bible. They’re not as committed to living by God’s revelation as they might think. When it comes to sexual practices and beliefs, what they do with their finances, their witness, their personal lifestyles, far too many who call themselves Christians don’t live by what they say is God’s Word, but instead, live according to their own preferences. But to those of us who really try to do that, the idea of updating our beliefs to conform with modern society is not only wrong, it’s dangerous! Don’t you understand that’s how it seems to devoted Muslims? They believe modern ways are not just misguided, they’re evil!
But secondly, and this is my last point, do people who call for a reformation of Islam understand what Islam really is? Have you read the Quran? The Hadith? Have you studied about the life of Muhammad (many scholars today are not even sure the man existed; there’s a growing body of evidence for that.) The Reformation of Christianity was an attempt to return to the Bible alone as a standard of living, and to the original ways and teachings of Jesus. What would a reformation of Islam entail, if not a return to the origins of Islam and its prophet? Hello? Does ISIS ring any bells for you? When our forces brought enough peace to Iraq to allow them free elections, what did they vote for? An Islamic state! When the people of Iran had a chance to break free from a Western puppet, the shah, what did they bring in to replace him? The ayatollah Khomeini! What are Islamists calling for everywhere? Sharia! A return to the origins of Islam.
My point is this. So-called moderate Muslims, what are they? They’re compromisers! They’re people who use human reason and human advancements in thinking (which all came about through Christianity by the way, just sayin’), to try and think through how to change Islam. I submit to you they are people who have common sense, and who love their heritage and their people, and have been brought up Muslims, so they naturally love their religion and background, they identify with it as a people, so they want to retain what they think is good from all that, while getting rid of or changing what’s no longer acceptable, and what’s causing so much turmoil, violence, and death in the world. They recognize the fact that Islam itself is the cause of these problems, so they want to reform it. But my friends, reforming Islam is just morphing it into something it never was! You can’t reform Islam without just creating another religion! The vast majority of Muslims will never accept this, just as the majority of Christians remained outside the Reformation. Have you noticed? To this day, there are still more Catholics and Orthodox than Protestants, and our reformation was far less drastic than what Islam would need!
That’s all the time I have, and I’ve exceeded my word count, I’m sure. I just had to point this out. If you disagree or have anything to add or comment about, I’d love to hear it!