Soft Jihad and a Cut-Price Christ

On Islamic Cultural Conquest, Part II

We have become accustomed to opposing things which we ought to have defended and welcoming things which we ought to have opposed.

The success of “soft Jihad” and the gradual normalisation of Islamic cultural conquest in formerly Christian nations is enabled by the Christians who refuse to stand up to it. We have become accustomed in our time to opposing things which we ought to have defended and welcoming things which we ought to have opposed.

When the things we welcomed eventually turn on us and undermine our way of life, we should not be surprised. This is what we allowed to happen. We did it because we wanted people to know we were “nice”. We might be known instead as fools who didn’t know what we were letting ourselves in for.

Soft Jihad does not involve bloodshed—unlike the 70 Christian martyrs brutally beheaded by Islamists in the Democratic Republic of Congo recently—but it is “holy war” all the same. These “soft” incursions of Islam into western culture, we are told, are comprised mainly of “peaceful” Muslims who would never dream of anything so barbaric.

Perhaps so. But such attitudes of peacefulness are ignorant of the truth of the religion they claim to uphold. That religion is inevitably and inescapably committed to cultural conquest at root and branch level, whether they know it or not and whether they like it or not.

Sura 8:39 and Islamic Conquest

The much-cited Sura 8:39, for example, clearly gestures towards the conquest of unbelievers with the end-goal of religious and cultural domination:

"Make war on them until idolatry shall cease and [Allah's] religion reigns supreme."

“Ah,” says the peaceful western Muslim, “but there are also verses in the Quran calling for peace to be shown towards unbelievers.” Perhaps, but only as long as such unbelievers do not oppose Islam. And in any case, such verses are rendered obsolete by the latter verses which contradict them, as Sura 2:106 states:

"If We [Allah] abrogate any verse or cause it to be forgotten, We will replace it by a better verse or one similar. Do you not know that [Allah] has power over all things?"

Many of the more “Jihadic” verses come later on in the Quran, thus overriding—or, “conquering”—those earlier, peaceful-sounding verses which the multicultured apologists love to cite.

Muslims will tend to complain that verses like Sura 8:39 are misunderstood, that we can only really understand it in the original Arabic, etc. But looking at multiple versions of the translation still gives the same essential meaning for an inevitable trajectory of domination:

“And fight them until there is no fitnah [“mischief” / opposition] and [until] the religion, all of it, is for Allah”.

Remember that what is assumed by “religion” here is not just “a personal belief” (the way liberal westerners tend to see religion) but the conflation of belief and culture. It is not the harmless, neutered understanding of religion beloved by secularism; it is a totalising force which re-founds the culture at a fundamental level. So when it says “until all of it is for Allah” it means not just the religion of Muslims but the religion of all people.

As noted, there are indeed many liberalised western Muslims out there who do not understand the logical implications of their own religion. They seem to believe that their religious way of life can continue on its current trajectory of growth in the West without eventually overriding the current “host culture” which supports it—the one that happens to have been constructed on Christian foundations.

In reality, it is impossible to speak of Islamic religion without speaking about culture. This is actually true of most religions, not least Christianity. In Islam, however, this is especially pointed because there is a particular kind of culture—founded on Sharia Law—that must be instituted in order for Islam to be truly “practiced”. All it takes is for enough Muslims to realise that much of what we call “Islamism” is not a niche aberration of true Islamic principles but a more consistent interpretation of them. Even if we discount the more manic of the extremists in our midst, just think about the “raw material” these millions of currently-peaceful-Muslims provide for groups intent on “awakening” them to the more radical—that is, more consistent—expressions of Islam in culture.

Whether Sura 8:39 speaks of fighting unbelievers “until their obedience be wholly unto Allah” or fighting them until “the entire system is for [Allah]”, or fighting them until “there exists…faith in Allah altogether and everywhere”, the meaning is clear: total religious conquest; and thus, total cultural conquest.

Why Christians Must Speak Up

As noted previously, such a reality should be concerning to any person who cares about the future of their national culture. But it’s because of the way historic Christianity is bound up with our national culture in Britain that means contemporary Christians ought to be taking a lead in doing something about it. Why do we so often leave it to the Tommy Robinsons and Douglas Murrays of this world to speak out and do something? Where are the Christian leaders?

While many Britons feel a deep passion for their national heritage and a sense that it is inseparably “Christian” in some way, it is the Christians themselves who ought to have the clearest insight into what those Christian foundations truly mean and be ready to stand up and defend them. But as noted previously on “soft Jihad”, many Christians have been cowed into passivity by their own multicultural naïveté.

All is not lost, of course. Last year I spoke with the prominent Christian apologist of Speaker’s Corner, Bob the Builder, on why (and how) Islam must be directly confronted. I spoke too with Tim Dieppe from Christian Concern about the creeping influence of Islamism and the fear of “Islamophobia” which further inhibits many British people from confronting it. I also wrote about the incident of Hatun Tash (also of Speaker’s Corner) who endured significant persecution as a result. There certainly are some voices out there willing to say things in relevant places.

The problem is they remain the vast minority and largely absent from mainstream platforms. Indeed some “evangelicals” who ought to be at the forefront of clear Christian proclamation on these things have even begun to employ their evangelical winsomeness on behalf of Islamic religious cultural practices.

Evangelicals For Islam?

A video was recently posted showing a card-carrying “conservative” evangelical church in the US extolling the virtues of Ramadan.

In this video, the chirpy evangelical leader did not say Islam was “true” as such but was lauding and even recommending Christians to “enter into” the practice of Ramadan, speaking of how good it is that this special time helps Muslims to “reinvigorate their relationship with God”. He said that, rather than opposing Ramadan, Christians can and should “join in” with the prayers and fasting of these Muslims, recognising their positive value, in the hope that such prayers might lead these Muslims to an encounter with Christ.

Most of the modern winsome evangelical churches right now would still probably gasp at this. They will think how unthinkable it is that an evangelical church could say such things. But given enough time, don't be surprised if they start to say similar things one day too. All it takes is time. Because this is precisely where the welcome-happy shallowness of much modern winsome evangelicalism leads: literally proclaiming the "good news" of Islam with the same fervour with which they ought to be proclaiming Christ. Spend a couple of decades short-cutting the Bible and exclusively emphasising the “niceness” and “hospitality” of Christ and you won't be able to stop things like this from happening.

I've seen it happen to many people, churches, and institutions over the years with regard to so many other anti-Christian ideologies. They once were sound but now are lost… having gradually drifted downstream with the world. Many did so, ironically, whilst claiming to be more concerned with “Christ” than “the culture”, not realising that the subtle ideologies which they refused to stand against would one day come to chip away at their belief in Christ too, often without them even realising.

Christ mercifully forgave Peter his moment of cowardice when he said: “I do not know him”. But there is a worse cowardice even than that. Remember He says to the Laodiceans: “because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” (Rev. 3:16). He wants nothing to do with the kind of limp faith that cheerily tells people they stand for Christ yet refuses to actually stand up when it counts. We must not sell out to the world by offering them a superficial, cut-price Christ. He is king of kings and Lord of Lords with “all things” under his feet (Eph. 1:22). This is why He is not apathetic to what happens in culture. It’s part of His domain.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Aaron! They’re just doing evangelism aren’t they? After all, they didn’t say Christ was not ‘the way, the truth, or the life’ or anything, did they? They want these Muslims to find Christ.” You can see how our evangelical logic can get us here, can’t you? It seems a bit like Paul using Greek poetry to reach the Athenians in Acts 17:16-31, referring to their “unknown God” and thereby proclaiming the true and living God. There are, after all, many examples of Muslims becoming Christians in and through the direct subversion of Islamic practices (e.g. through revelations of Jesus of whom they knew something about due to their engagement with the false “Jesus” presented to them in Islam).

The problem arises when these practices are not opposed appropriately (which Paul does do in Acts 17:30-31, remember, by calling his hearers to repent and turn wholesale to Christ). Within the present context of the cultural growth and dominance of Islam in the West, it is foolish to think that our “approval” of its idolatrous practices and prayers can be seen as irrelevant to the ongoing dominance of Islam and the ongoing dilution of Christianity in our time. It would be like joining in with the worship of the golden calf—set up expressly in rejection of the LORD—in the hopes that the idolaters may in time merely “redirect” their worship from the calf to the LORD.

God does not merely “intercept” our false worship and claim it as His own. There must be a disruption, a convicted recognition and repentance from that false worship (and its attendant practices) before we turn to Him. Praise God that some Muslims meet Christ through dreams. But we must not assume they will magically find Christ in and through Islam. We have a duty to proclaim Christ to them: “And how are they to hear unless someone preaches to them?” (Rom. 10:14).

Standing For Christ

How confusing would it be for any new converts to be told they may continue to partake in these Islamic fasts and feasts even after they have sworn allegiance to Christ? What a mockery of all those who have been persecuted for converting from Islam, especially those who paid for it with their life!

Should a converted drug addict go and take drugs with unconverted drug addicts in the hope that they might receive a powerful revelation of Christ in and through their pursuit of an “ecstatic” experience? Of course not.

Those of us who claim to be “evangelical” about Christ must not be caught selling a cut-price Christ, however well he appears to “sell”. We must be evangelical about proclaiming the whole Christ, the true Christ, the one who is more valuable than all the wealth in the universe and yet says to us:

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live…”

—Isaiah 55:1-3

To accept the glorious gift of the Gospel first means humbly recognising your soul’s genuine hunger and thirst for living food and drink, and being satisfied by it. But it also means standing up for the Christ who gave it to you so freely.

Standing for Christ means not only standing for all that that He stands for but also all He stands against. If we would build our house on the rock rather than the sand, then we must reject the religious ideologies (including secular multiculturalism) which seek to undermine that Rock, even when they claim to do so in Jesus' own name.

Christians should love their enemies. They can sometimes do so by opposing them. But above all they can tell them that the true Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one comes to God except through Him. This is the Good News that has been entrusted to us by He who so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son for it, that whoever turns from their sin and believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal and abundant life.

If you want to defeat Islam in Britain, start living like you really believe that.

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See part 3 here: