Terrorism takes more lives

It is with sadness that we learned of the recent terrorist attack in Nice, France and the beheading of two people in a church. As believers, we find it horrible to think that a peaceful visit to a quiet church could lead to the loss of one’s life at the hands of a deranged man.

Alarmingly, rather than condemn this act of murder, many in radical Muslim countries cheer this behaviour on. The former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, took to Twitter to declare that, “Since you have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French. The boycott cannot compensate the wrongs committed by the French all these years.” Thankfully, Twitter took down the other inflammatory and abhorrent tweet he wrote which read, “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.”

Former elite cricketer and now Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, tweeted a similar sentiment, “The Prophet [Mohammed] lives in our hearts. When he is ridiculed, when he is insulted, it hurts….We human beings understand one thing: The pain of the heart is far, far, far more hurtful than physical pain. And that’s why the Muslims react to this.” Khan even likened this pain that Muslims feel over cartoons of Mohammed to the pain Jews felt during the Holocaust. I strongly disagree with Khan. What was suffered by the Jews has no historical comparison.

Khan has gone so far as to demand that social media companies ban criticism of Islam. He says, “Given the rampant abuse and vilification of Muslims on social media platforms, I would ask you to place a similar ban on Islamophobia and hate against Islam for Facebook that you have put in place for the Holocaust.” Not surprisingly, the world makes no reference to the constant criticism and derogatory comments made about our blessed Saviour, Jesus Christ. Yet, compare the two graves – Mohammed’s is still occupied by the dust of his bones. The grave of Christ is empty.

In standing in solidarity with France, Britain has called on its NATO allies to stay united in defending the values of tolerance and free speech as well as to challenge Turkey. It seems that the logical starting point is to remove Turkey from NATO. After all, their shift from a secular constitution to a political system driven by radical Islam no longer aligns with the values of sister NATO nations who are Western. It would be far better to include Israel in the NATO alliance rather than tolerate Turkey’s belligerence, particularly given their history of genocide against 1.5 million Armenians (largely Christian) a century ago.

The reason that Islam is incompatible with Christian values is that in the minds of radicals, rather than cherishing life as the precious gift that it is, death (particularly as a martyr) becomes a means to attaining one’s most gratifying pleasures in some decadent spiritual afterlife (I refer to the Muslim promise of a harem of virgins for the martyr in “paradise”).

There is an infinite moral gap between Jesus Christ and Mohammed and perhaps that is why many Muslims are turning away from Islam and accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour. As we have demonstrated in this article, many Muslims refuse to forgive those who offend them. But where Mohammed refused to forgive those who offended him, Jesus forgives anybody who comes to Him.