What Christians Can Learn from Radical Islam

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As I write this, the United States is reeling from a horrific mass murder in San Bernardino, California in which 14 people were killed and 21 injured.  The perpetrators of this evil were a man and his wife who had become radicalized Muslims, the wife apparently having pledged allegiance on Facebook to the head of ISIS.  It seems that the couple were not personally connected to any other group and although they were inspired by ISIS, they committed this atrocity on their own.

This mass murder, tragically, is nothing new to America. Most other mass killings have been committed by those with deep emotional and mental problems, such as the Sandy Hook killing in which 20 young children were killed. But the Muslim couple in California were deeply religious, professing a devout belief in God as they viewed him. So how did this happen?

Many make the ignorant judgment that the cause is the Muslim religion itself. I label this an ignorant judgment from personal experience.  I live among thousands of Muslims in my neighborhood, a good majority of whom are Pakistani and Bangladesh immigrants. There are also a large number of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in my neighborhood, along with many Christians and many other religions, including atheists. We all live peacefully together.

I never feel threatened in any way by the Muslims in my neighborhood. I know that like everyone else, they just want to live in peace and raise their families. In fact, the only time I have witnessed any kind of religious attack in my neighborhood was last year when some jerk was writing "Allah is evil" throughout the neighborhood and in the subway.

Anti-Muslim graffiti in my Brooklyn neighborhood

So what caused the young couple in California to turn against the people with whom they lived and worked? What caused them to kill and destroy? Were they just evil, hateful people? As I stated above, they were very religious, praying several times a day. They had a six month old baby whom they seem to have loved and treated very well. They made sure the baby was safe with her grandmother before they went on their killing spree. After the shooting, their relatives gave a news conference in which they expressed their shock and inability to explain the actions of this young couple. The head of the mosque they attended also expressed his shock and disbelief as well.

How does someone go from devout religious to murderer believing that he is serving God (John 16:2)?

In an interview on the plane recently returning to Rome from Africa, Pope Francis denounced religious fundamentalism, not just among Muslims but among Catholics and all other religions as well.  From Catholic News Agency:

We are all children of God. We have the same father. In this sense, we have to make politics of unity, reconciliation. A word that I don’t like, but I have to use it is “tolerance.” But, not only tolerance, co-existence, friendship. That’s how it is. Fundamentalism is a sickness that exists in all religions. We Catholics have some, not just some, so many, who believe they have the absolute truth and they move forward with calumnies, with defamation and they hurt (people), they hurt. And, I say this because it’s my Church, also us, all of us. It must be combatted. Religious fundamentalism isn’t religious. Why? Because God is lacking. It’s idolatrous, as money is idolatrous. Making politics in the sense of convincing these people who have this tendency is a politics that we religious leaders must make, but fundamentalism that ends up always in tragedy or in crime, in a bad thing comes about in all religions a little bit.

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What is the difference between fundamentalism and true devotion to God? As Pope Francis says in the statement above, "religious fundamentalism isn't religious. Why? Because God is lacking. It's idolatrous, as money is idolatrous." Fundamentalists are not just convinced that their beliefs are correct.  They are also completely convinced of their own personal righteousness. To the fundamentalist, the world is sharply divided between "us" and "them." Anyone who is not "us" is viewed as the enemy. All of those in the "them" camp are evil and must be rejected.  Fundamentalists believe that those who disagree with them have nothing of value or worth to offer. 

As Pope Francis has stated, fundamentalism is idolatry. Fundamentalists do not worship God. They worship and idolize their beliefs, practices and traditions.  It never enters their mind that they might be wrong in their understanding and application of the beliefs they profess.  They are basically convinced of their own infallibility, and do not see how they often hold contradictory beliefs.

For example, I find it really amazing that many Christians - and Catholics among them - will stand up against abortion and euthanasia, saying we must support the weakest among us. which of course is absolutely correct. At the same time, they will rail against allowing immigrants into the country, especially now rejecting Syrian immigrants, war refugees who are being murdered and driven out of their homeland by our common enemy, ISIS. These Christians feel that out of the many hundreds of thousands of people, there might be a small handful who are radical terrorists, even though no such terrorists have ever been found among the refugees, despite the totally unsubstantiated claims of ISIS to the contrary. Many try to say there was a Syrian refugee among the terrorists who attacked Paris, pointing to a Syrian passport. However, as a Washington Post article reported:

THE PASSPORT IS FAKE: Authorities in multiple countries are pretty certain that the passport, found near the body of an unidentified attacker who died during his suicide assault of France's national soccer stadium, is fake. It carried the name of "Ahmad Almohammad," a 25-year-old Syrian. French officials have indicated that Almohammad was a loyalist soldier in the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and died a few months ago.

The article went on to explain:

IDENTIFIED ASSAILANTS ARE E.U. NATIONALS: Although the Paris terror attacks appear to have been partially planned or coordinated by Islamic State operatives in the Middle East, all the identified assailants are so far citizens of European Union countries. This suggests that their radicalization was likely homegrown on the continent, and not imported via an exodus of beleaguered Syrian refugees.

Christians fundamentalists will never allow these facts to get in their way.  Muslims are the enemy and we can't trust any of them, not even a small boy whose body washed up on a beach after he drowned with his mother and brother trying to escape from ISIS:

These Christian fundamentalists who claim to love God will turn away people in desperate need if they feel their own physical safety may be at risk, whether these beliefs are validated or not.  By doing so, they give credence - right or wrong - to those who oppose them, claiming they care about babies who are yet to be born but will do nothing to help them once they are born.

Jesus Christ told us to pray for our enemies, to never stop loving them.  Certainly we can reject the erroneous thinking and beliefs of other people, but we can never, never reject them as human beings. Like the Good Samaritan, we must be there for anyone who needs our help.  As Jesus Christ said, whatsoever you do for the least of these my brethren, you do for me.

The reason Islamic extremists kill in the name of God has little to do with their Muslim beliefs.  As I said, I live among thousands of Muslims, and none of them have ever tried to kill me or harm me in any way.  It is fundamentalism - a belief in our own infallibility - that is driving the extremists we saw in California and Paris. It is true that most fundamentalists in other religions do not physically kill others as we see in Muslim extremists, but killing does not always involve physical murder.  As I John 3:15 tells us, "Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him."  And to turn away from those in need is to turn away from God Himself.

As Christians, we must never be self complacent.  We must be constantly questioning ourselves, examining our motives, asking God to reveal the true intentions of our hearts.  As I have written previously, as Catholics we can never question Christ or His Church, but we must constantly put our own hearts to the test.  Do we walk in faith, or do we demand that everything and everyone meet our human, limited, fallible standards and understanding?

Christ said He will judge us not based on how much we know, or how many rosaries we say or how much time we spend in Church, etc.  He will judge us on how much we love one another. As we are told, love covers a multitude of sins (I Peter 4:8).  Love is all that really matters.  As Pope Francis said, anything else ends in tragedy or crime.