Thoughts on ISIS, Islam, and Polite Genocide by Doug Wilson
Why the Left and Islam Join Together Against Israel
The Left and Islam make strange bedfellows. The former is allegedly the political philosophy of freedom, liberation, social justice, women’s (womyns) rights, LGBT rights, animal rights, and warm puppies (well, Leftists actually are more likely cat people). Islam, on the other hand, promotes Sharia law, limits the role of women in society and the family, would hang gays, lesbians and the transgendered, is against free speech (must not insult the prophet), and is responsible for most death-by-terror in the world. Islam allows for rape, pedophilia, and recruits children as suicide bombers. As I write this, ISIS is demanding Iraqi women undergo genital mutilation.
But they can and do join forces against Israel.
One might think this is coincidental: Islam hates Israel because it has historically done so, and the Left is against Israel because Israel is perceived to be unjust towards its neighbours; these two entities (Islam and the Left) have otherwise nothing in common. The Left’s silence on the above Islamic social values is telling.
But I think there’s a much greater reason for the Left’s hatred of Israel: the natural rebellion against the acts of God in history.
The story of Islam is that Abraham’s son Ishmael, not Isaac, is rightfully heir to the land promise. God promised the land to Abraham (Genesis 12:7). The Bible is clear, however, that the land belongs to the heirs of Isaac, as he was the son of the promise (Genesis 21:12; Romans 9:7). Ishmael was born to a slave woman, Hagar (Genesis 16-21). This sets Islam against Judaism and Christianity, as the claim to the land and blessings of Abraham are seen to be usurped by Isaac, not divinely conferred upon him. Islam will forever be at war with the Jews, and the Jews know it. If Israel were to be eliminated as a state, no Jew would be allowed to exist anywhere else in peace. Islam will seek to eliminate all descendants of Isaac.
This too, of course, means that the story of Jesus must be rewritten by Islam. The Islamic Jesus is unrecognisable to Christians. The Islamic story of Jesus has nothing to do with the historical Jesus as described in the most accurate accounts of His life: the canonical Gospels.
Israel has a Biblical, historical, moral, legal, political, and theological claim to the land. [Important note: I do not believe that the theological claim to the land is absolute; I am not a dispensationalist, nor do I believe that Israel’s return to the land has eschatological significance].
The Left does not seem to get this, as the Left has little use for, or useful understanding of, Christian theology. Failing to understand this, however, means that he Left’s confusion about the events that are taking place in Israel must continue, with some sort of relativist understanding of “human rights,” or “social justice.” Justice is served when terrorists are rebuffed and punished. But if launching rockets from hospitals, schools, and homes are ok, and measured retaliation is not, then the Left is too morally and legally confused to comprehend. Starting with a hatred of Israel, no attack against Israel is unjustified to Leftist thinking.
The Left, by definition, tolerates religious faith only in its most private expressions. The existence of Israel, and from that the Christian Church, is an affront to an ideology that denies both God’s existence and His actions in history. Creation points to a Creator (Romans 1:18-28, Psalm 8, 19), and atheism’s feeble attempt to deny that is becoming apparent (“New” Atheism, Dawkins, Hitchons, et al). Creation points to a Creator, a nation’s existence points to a Lord of History. The nation of Israel also points to Christ. In fact, Israel will not be the end recipient of the wrath of Islam and Left, it is Christ and His church. The rebellion started before our first parents kept the garden, and the end of the battle is on the horizon. Sin and death were defeated on the cross.
Both Islam and the Left represent human rebellion against a God Who acts in history. It is the Christ who is hated who is also the Christ who can heal all divisions (Ephesians 2:11-22).