How Should A Christian Respond To Islamic Jihad?

Iwill never forget how I felt on September 11, 2001. I was eighteen, a freshman in college, and a Muslim. I first heard the news of what had happened when I saw dozens of people gathered around a TV in my university’s student union. They were watching looped footage in which the World Trade Center was hit by a plane before the towers crumbled, killing thousands. Word soon spread that what we’d seen was not an accident but a terrorist attack perpetrated by Muslims as an act of jihad.

I knew instinctively that people could react angrily, even violently, toward Muslims like me given what had happened. As far as they knew, I believed the same thing as the terrorists. But the Islam I knew was not the same. My parents had taught me that Islam is a religion of peace, and that we are supposed to love our country. Islam as I knew it, in fact, was very different from the faith practiced by the terrorists. So I soon wondered, What does Islam really teach?

Rather than just continuing to believe what I had been told by my elders and imams, I started investigating Islam. What I learned was that the peaceful Islam on which I was raised did not reflect the Islam Muhammad taught. Instead, from the moment Muhammad had a fighting force, he launched more than eight battles a year, taking thousands of women and children as slaves, beheading hundreds of teenage boys and men, and conquering Arabia in the name of Islam. As I would later explain in my book, Answering Jihad, violent jihad is woven into the very fabric of the faith Muhammad taught.

Most Muslims, however, do not follow Muhammad in fighting; in fact, very few even know the truth about jihad. I certainly didn’t. I had been taught in the mosques that Muhammad only fought defensively and unwillingly. Only later did I discover Muhammad’s love for jihad.

It is critical to understand that Muslims do not all believe the same thing. Muslims are people, individuals who all understand their religion in different ways—just as Christians hold different views.

Today I am a Christian, and I follow the commands of Jesus. His teachings are not normal. They are otherworldly, almost unbelievable. Jesus tells us to pray for those who persecute us, to put away our swords, and to love our enemies. He asks us to take radical steps like these because all people are created in the image of God—and that includes Muslims.

Importantly, while Jesus commands us to love Muslim people, we should not love Islam, the religion they practice. Rather, we must speak the truth about Islam. That, in fact, is how Christians should respond to Islamic jihad: we must proclaim the truth and love Muslims, which means taking a stand against Islam by taking a stand for the gospel.

Today Muslims are coming to Christ at unprecedented rates, and my story is proof of the trend. There have been more conversions from Islam to Christianity in the past fourteen years than in the previous fourteen centuries. This increase in the ranks of heaven means a decrease in the ranks of Islam. Sharing the gospel is the best answer to Islamic jihad.