A Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't [Hardcover]

Robert Spencer is a keen observer of Islam, and has been quite prolific, turning out a number of excellent books warning us about the danger which militant Islam poses. As he and others are want to point out, while there may be many moderate and peaceful Muslims, the real question is, what about Islam itself? Is it indeed a religion of peace, or is it in fact a religion fully compatible with, and the theological ground for, Islamist violence?

And how does Islam compare with Christianity on a number of key points, such as the nature of democracy, the treatment of women, and freedom of conscience? In all these areas, Spencer demonstrates that there is a very wide gulf indeed between the two world religions.

Consider just one important difference: the broader issues of politics, democracy and freedom. Leftist, secular critics argue that both radical Islam and conservative Christianity seek to impose a theocracy on the free West. They are half right. The Islamists are absolutely dedicated to this aim. The imposition of sharia law over the entire globe is clearly at the forefront of the Islamist agenda.

Indeed, leading Muslims are quite unguarded about their intentions here. Spencer sites many of these leaders, and their clear aims to wage holy war against all unbelievers, until a universal Islamic caliphate is established on planet earth.

In contrast, where are the Christians calling for an end to democracy and the establishment of a theocracy? In response, the critics usually point to the Christian Reconstructionists. But what about them? They are for the most part few in number, and hardly mainstream in the Christian community.

They are mainly confined to the United States, and there are plenty of leading Christian groups which have distanced themselves from the Reconstructionists. And there certainly is no global movement to replace secular law with Biblical law. By contrast, Islamist jihad is an international movement, with activist elements working to achieve their aims around the globe.

As Spencer notes, even if some Christians are arguing for a Christian America, they state that this is to be a voluntary outcome, achieved by Christian evangelisation and Christian persuasion. This is hardly at odds with the Constitution, as Spencer reminds us.

And for all the scare-mongering about the Christian Reconstruction movement, many associated with this group are really on about such harmless agendas as getting Christians to vote, and raise their voices in the public arena. This is clearly not an anti-democratic crusade.

And it was really Christianity that gave the modern world the notion of the separation of church and state. This goes straight back to the words of Jesus, when he said that we should render unto Caesar his due, and render to God his due. There has been a long Christian tradition of the concept of the two swords: the state and the church. Each is ordained by God, and each has its own sphere of authority and influence.

The fact that these two spheres may have become confused at times, or seen as one on occasion, does not minimise the basic Biblical position that the two are to remain separate, yet overlapping, authorities. This of course is quite the opposite of Islam. There is no separation of church and state in Islam. There is no secular sphere in Islam. All of life must come under sharia law and the will of Allah. That is why true democracy is hardy achievable in Muslim nations.

Spencer argues that even those Muslim states where democracy is more or less in place, such as Turkey or Indonesia, are a far cry from Western democratic nations. While Muslims enjoy the full range of rights and benefits in Western nations, Christians are at best second class citizens in so-called Islamic democracies. Persecution of Christians in Turkey and Indonesia is an ongoing problem, and their condition of dhimmitude, or servanthood, is well documented in such nations.

Spencer examines quite a few other major areas, and finds very clear differences between Islam and Christianity. In an age that seeks to minimise differences in the name of tolerance and getting along, this can only result in the denigration of Western democratic freedoms, and the blunting of a necessary criticism of Islamist jihadism.

There is a real war going on, and there is a real clash of civilisations occurring. Says Spencer, this clash between the Judeo-Christian worldview and that of Islam is about "two fundamentally opposed visions for society: one based on sharia - a true theocracy - and the other based on freedom".

And Spencer reminds us that Islam means submission, and that all people are to be the slaves of Allah. Jesus made a radically different claim: "I no longer call you slaves ... But I have called you friends." (John 15:15)

Freedom and responsibility characterise the Judeo-Christian view of personhood. Servitude and tyranny are the inevitable results of the Islamic worldview. The two could not be further apart, and it is time that these distinctions are heralded, instead of being covered up by the Christophobes and the appeasers of Islam. As such this book deserves a wide reading.

To the doctrinaire or rigid ideologist, facts are often inconvenient. But Robert Spencer, though superbly logical, is no ideologist. If there is any rigidity in him, it's only in his unbending faithfulness to facts despite frequent death threats made against him by Islamic jihadists. Spencer takes a reportorial, not ideological, approach to his subject. He often bends over backward to be fair in his statements.

The book is powerful, and provided one can suspend one's prejudices and stick with it, it grows increasingly powerful the further into it one reads. The book reveals anew the roots of our civilization, its central historical threads. It will be extremely valuable for those who want to see religious freedoms defended in a world where such freedoms are under global assault by a growing totalitarian religious movement with hundreds of millions of adherents.

Jihadists want to murder Spencer because he tries to tell the truth about Islam, warts and all. But at this point any violent action against him will only propel his books to stratospheric bestseller status. With his last two books, and now this new one, he has transformed the cultural landscape. Many leaders and elite opinion-makers in the U.S. have been increasingly influenced by reading him. That's especially true of his recent works, which have already been bestsellers: 1) The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, and 2) The Truth about Muhammad. Now The Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is And Islam Isn't also deserves bestseller status.

The book is a quick and fascinating read. I finished it within a couple of days of receiving it. Its length seemed just right to me: 210 pages, not including the notes and index at the end.

I found this book to be one of the most valuable ever for understanding the roots and development of Western civilization.

I read "Religion of Peace?" pretty much at one sitting. Dr. Spencer's depth of scholarship is spell binding, yet easy to read. He covers areas from anti-Semitism to Nazism, contrasts of tolerance or intolerance between religions, calls for war for religious beliefs, Jihad, the Crusades and the Papacy, to reason versus dogma, to equal human rights for both men and women.

Modern multi-culturalism's efforts to take all religions on equitable footings are unsupported by historical events, or a religious fervor to conquer the world for Allah; which is a world dominating jihadic dream of sharia law for all the lands of the Earth. The weakness of arguments for such jihadic conquests are exposed, showing how no such equivalence exists in Christianity, or any other world religions. To a reasonable person this spells the centuries old conflict for world domination on religious grounds, not Judeo-Christian but Islamic, which is only once more raising its ugly scepter after a lull of relative religious peace. But reason has no place in such a conflict, because it comes from non-reasonable religious assumptions, that Allah gave the world the Law, the Sharia, and our humanly agreed upon laws, our freedoms by Social Contract, is null and void in the Muslim mind. A personal faith can be equated with Christianity, given large latitudes of tolerance, but an Islamic politicized mandate to conquer the world for a religious belief system, by force if an invitation to Islam is rejected, has no parallel in any other religious beliefs. Our tolerance of other religions is unrequited in the Muslim belief system, and this in its politicized jihadi format makes it a violently dangerous cult-like system for the world. Sharia is not equal to the rule of law. Slavery is not equal to freedom. And Islam is not equal to any other religions if it is mandated to subdue rather than be subdued. Religion of Peace? Christ's perhaps, but Mohammed's? Let the reader decide. I did.

Can there be dialogue between Islam and the Western ideals of liberty based on our Christian values? Dr. Spencer's excellent treatment of this dialogue dilemma is handled with balanced reason and facts. Is our civilization worth defending? Yes. Because we conquered slavery, and support human equality, equality of genders, and we believe in human rights, while the world of Sharia still harbors inequality and slavery.

Ivan Alexander
www.humancafe.com

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 75 reviews  3.5 out of 5 stars