Sunday, May 19, 2013

Michael Youssef: The Bipartisan Folly of Our Islam Delusion

Western nations are still convinced that if we simply remove dictators in Muslim countries, and install democracies in place of the dictatorships, freedom will flourish. What we fail to realize is that there is a very important reason that democracy flourished in the West.

FoxNews—In our deeply partisan politics of today there is one area where it is hard to find the truth spoken by either Republicans or Democrats. It is the idea that Muslim people yearn for democracy. This is a glaring shortsightedness that both sides hold in common.

To be clear, many of my Muslim friends long for Western-style democracy and freedom. But they are always thwarted (and always will be) by the majority view that prevails in their countries. That is why even those friends of mine would admit that democracy is incompatible with Islamic ideology.

Knowledgeable people will agree that our modern form of democracy is a delicate rose that bloomed in the soil of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation turned the people of the Dark Ages back to the Bible, with its deeply rooted respect for the individual.

The Bible unequivocally declares that God values “the individual.” God not only created a man and a woman to be compatible in every way, but God gave man the management responsibility for His creation—thus God placed “the individual” at the helm of importance.

The Christian faith testifies to the fact that although humans fell out of favor with God by disobeying His command not to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden and therefore bringing sin and death into the world, God saw fit to redeem them at a colossal cost to Himself—by dying for the sins of the world on a Cross. Such is the value he places on us.

That is the soil that gave Western democracy its ideals.

Now enter some misguided Republicans and Democrats who think that the ideology of Islam can be rehabilitated and made compatible with Western Christian values.

Neither political side understands that, contrary to the biblical view of man, the root of Islamic ideology declares that man is of no consequence. Allah is. The human individual is of no value; he is only to serve the whim of Allah, his prophet, and the successors (caliphates) of the prophets of Islam.

Democracy and freedom rise from the bottom up, whereas Islam is a top-down ideology—Allah, whose words they claim to have received, is all that matters. (Continue Reading.)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Here are a few questions for Dr. Michael Youssef:

What of ancient Israel's theory of initial acquisition? What of ancient Israel's theory of property in general? And since we're on the subject of "the individual," what of ancient Israel's various wars or God's command that the Israelites wipe out the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:1-6)? I'm sorry, but any discussion on the relationship between the bible and "democracy" must say something about expropriation and divinely commanded genocide in a credible way.