Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Michael Carl, a veteran pastor and journalist who has written on terrorism, Islam and the persecuted church for WorldNetDaily.
FP: Michael Carl, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
MC: Glad to have the opportunity to speak with you.
FP: I would like to talk to you today about the “interfaith dialogue” that Christians are engaged in with Muslims. It doesn’t appear that Muslims have exactly the same objectives as Christians. What is happening here exactly?
Carl: The problem is that Christians enter these dialogue sessions with the idea that they’re what the Muslim activists proposing them say are going to be. Christians are of course commanded by Christ to ‘“make disciples of all nations.”’ So it’s commendable in a way that the Christians involved see the dialogues as an opportunity to evangelize to Muslims. But that’s not the objective the Muslims have in mind. The CAIR sponsored groups that initiate the contacts have a desire to disinformation. They willingly present ‘Islam Lite’ to the unaware Christians in the audience. They speak of faithfulness to Allah, pilgrimages, doing charitable works and Christians just soak it up not knowing that there is a double edge on those Islamic terms and concepts.
FP: What is the “double edge” on the Islamic terms and concepts that you raise?
Carl: I think the ‘double edge’ is the variance between the Islam Lite for the public and the real nature of what’s really being advanced. A good example of this is Muslim writer Yahiya Emerick. Emerick has written, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Islam. This is his work that presents Islam Lite, the ‘Islam is a religion of peace,’ and all Muslims are not jihadists version. This is the book that presents Islam as, ‘just like Christianity because they go to their mosque, have an Islamic version of ‘Sunday School’ for the kids, etc. Then there’s Yahiya Emerick’s textbook that he wrote for seventh grade students in Islamic schools. In this book, the chap who is an American convert to Islam, tells Muslim students that the Bible is a book of fables and myths, that jihad really means conquering infidels and that all Muslims have a duty to support jihad.
FP: CAIR is behind many of these interfaith movements. Your thoughts?
Carl: CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land funding trial a few years ago. The reason is because CAIR was established in the 1990s as a Hamas front group. Their goal is simply to advance jihad in the United States politically first, and then by other means if necessary. I’ve written on this subject in a series of articles, the latest being a caution on interfaith dialogue, “Christian Question: Interfaith dialogue or Useful Idiots.” In February, I did a series of three stories on CAIR-related activities: “Churches Fed Islam Lite,” a “Muslim Suspended from Delivering Lectures to the Army,” and then the story on Hartford Seminary developing a program to train Imams for mosque leadership. The details presented in this series of articles shows that Christians must be wise and discerning in how they deal with Muslims and how they listen to the news when we hear of CAIR’s lobbying efforts allegedly on behalf of advancing the interests of Muslims in America. Nine times out of ten there’s a jihad-related objective behind the emphasis.
FP: Why is there such naiveté among Christians in this context?
Carl: I think it’s quite simply that as American/Western Christians, we’ve combined our Americanism with Christianity. We want to trust people and believe that a person’s word is his/her bond. We still have an optimism that, ‘Somehow, all of this is going to work out’ and that we Americans haven’t done enough digging into real Islam to find out what’s really behind the burqas and kafiyes.
So, as a result, we naively believe the lines about Islam being a religion of peace. We don’t know that every Muslim supports jihad through the even division of their zakat, the mosque offering/tax. We don’t digest the reality that about half of all American Muslims publicly support Osama bin Laden and the jihadists. Since the percentage is so high, there’s at least a 50-50 shot that the really nice Muslim family on your block really wishes to subjugate you under Sharia Law.
FP: So what should Christians be keeping in mind and pursuing when dealing with Muslims in “interfaith dialogue”?
Carl: They always need to be aware of any invitation for dialogue. I would honestly suggest that the Christian initiate the contact with a Muslim. Talk to the neighbour, the store clerk or whoever and begin sharing the Gospel. If a member of a local mosque is initiating the contact, based on the evidence, the invitation is being given with the backing of the local chapter of the Islamic Society of North America, CAIR, or the Muslim Student Association, all of which were started by the Muslim Brotherhood and are Hamas front groups.
FP: Crystallize for us the key differences between a Christian sharing the Gospel with someone and a Muslim “sharing” the Islamic message with a non-Muslim. If a person arguing with you said, “This is the same thing.” What would you answer?
Carl: First, the God of the Bible is not the same as Allah. Allah was the 7th Century moon god on the Arabian peninsula. Muhammad just gave him a promotion. This is the reason that the crescent moon is the symbol for Islam. In the Qur’an, Allah commands Muslims to support jihad, to slay the infidels unless they convert and to put to death any Muslim who turns from Islam. In my reading through the Qur’an, I’ve found numerous references to fighting, warfare, ambushes, and conquest. The Qur’an and the Hadiths teach that the only guaranteed way to eternal life in heaven is to die in jihad. Islam offers no guarantee of salvation either. Another key difference between the god of the Qur’an is revealed in the fact that the Qur’an has no ‘context.’ The suras are arranged from longest to the shortest and in no chronological order. Thus, the reader doesn’t get the sense of reasoning for why Allah commands something.
On the other hand, Jesus commands us to witness for Him by our character, our words, and our deeds. Jesus commands us to witness and verbally share the Gospel by telling people of what Jesus has already done for us. We don’t have to work our way into heaven and we certainly don’t get a quick pass to heaven if we die in a military campaign. Our salvation has been provided by Christ’s sacrifice for us on the cross. He’s completed the work, our part is trusting in Him and inviting others to do the same. And that promise is given unconditionally to us. We “confess with our mouths Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that because God has raised Him from the dead we will be saved.”
FP: Michael Carl, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.