Written by Stan Guthrie

Confucius once said, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” When it comes to radical Islam, it’s clear that too many people have chosen foolishness over wisdom. The question is, in these dangerous times, are there enough of us willing to embrace wisdom?

Our answer will go a long way toward determining whether the West, founded upon Judeo-Christian principles, will prevail over radical Islam. For, as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said recently, “You cannot remedy a problem if you will not name it and define it.”

The Obama administration’s verbal contortions over the nature of our self-avowed enemies would be comical if they weren’t so seriously misguided. After a recent atrocity by the Islamic State (also called ISIS or ISIL), the president opined, “ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.” Following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean offered this: “I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it’s a cult.” These statements bring to mind the odd Bush administration mantra after 9/11: “Islam is a religion of peace.”

Then there’s the absurd statement by one of the current president’s spokesmen. He asserted that the Taliban—which murdered nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and which saw one of its affiliates slaughter 132 schoolchildren and nine staff in Pakistan—isn’t a terrorist group. No, it’s merely an “armed insurgency.” Cut from the same cloth is the refusal by Al Jazeera’s English service to use words such as “terrorist,” “jihad,” and “Islamist” when describing Al-Qaeda and ISIS. As one executive at the network said, “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.”

Contrast this kind of politically correct denial with the growing realization in Europe that things must be called by their proper names. The massive march in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo massacres is one sign. Another is the willingness of growing numbers to speak up.

“Europe has tacitly accepted that from now on the freedom of satire is valid for everything but Islam,” writes Angelo Panebianco in Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. “Now [Islamists] are aiming for a more ambitious objective to strike at the religious heart of the West, forcing us to accept that not even the pope is free to reflect aloud on the specificity of Christianity or that which differs from Islam.”

Czech President Miloš Zeman warns that the world faces a challenge similar to the Nazis. “We have to ask ourselves if a repeat of the Holocaust could happen,” Zemen said in a recent speech in Prague marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. “This time it would not comprise 6 million Jews, but rather members of countless faiths as well as atheists—and even Muslims. Which is why I would like to welcome the fact that moderate Arab countries recently joined in the battle against Islamic State.”

Another president, Egypt’s Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, says it is time for a fresh start for Islam, which he avows is a tolerant religion. “The terrible terrorist attacks which we have seen and this terrible image of Muslims is what led us to think that we must stop and think and change the religious discourse,” he said, “and remove from it things that have led to violence and extremism. We need a new discourse that will be adapted to a new world and will remove some of the misconceptions.”

Removing those things won’t be easy. In an editorial, National Review acknowledges that most Muslims worldwide seek to live peacefully with their non-Muslim neighbors. But that does not end the discussion about whether Islam is a tolerant faith or ISIS killers are “true” Muslims.

The editorial notes “a large minority of Muslims—maybe hundreds of millions worldwide—who cleave to interpretations of their faith that enjoin murder, rape, torture, and cruelty as pious, even mandatory, acts. They take their diabolic faith seriously, and the result is what we saw in Paris. . . .

“Thus, there are in practical terms two Islams—a religion, if not of peace, then of peaceful accommodation, and a religion of death.”

That is so for several reasons that cannot be dismissed lightly. First, there appear to be two basic approaches to interpreting the Qur’an and how to make sense of verses that call for violence, side by side with those that call for peace and tolerance.

The older, classical school of interpretation, the one followed by the Islamists, endorses what is called the “law of abrogation.” This law, actually a hermeneutical principle, says that earlier verses in the career of Muhammad must be interpreted in light of later ones. If there is an apparent contradiction, they say the later ones must hold sway. Defending this approach, they point to verses such as 2:106: “When we cancel a message, or throw it into oblivion, we replace it with one better or one similar. Do you not know that God has power over all things?”

The problem for those who insist that “Islam is a religion of peace” is that the later verses reflect the more warlike stance of Muhammad and the Muslim community, when the movement was strong and aggressive. So the oft-cited verse, “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256), has been abrogated in the minds of Islamists. They point to later verses, such as 9:5: “Kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush.” They say the later, more violent verses are controlling.

Of course, so-called “moderate Muslims,” such as El-Sissi, disagree. They point out that the law of abrogation implies that the Qur’an has errors, which they do not believe. It is an ongoing theological debate among Muslims worldwide.

There is a second reason we cannot dismiss the fact that there are at least two Islams around the globe. Simply put, there is no interpretative authority that all Muslims recognize. There is no “pope” or modern-day prophet to resolve all the theological disputes within Islam. Not only are there two main branches of Islam—Sunni and Shi’a—there are multiple religious leaders, each with varying levels of influence. While all Muslims revere the Qur’an and Muhammad and seek to follow the Five Pillars, they do not agree on all the particulars of the religion. Whatever you or I might think of the “true” DNA of Islam, if this global faith of 1.6 billion people is ever going to settle on a peaceful vision, it won’t be non-Muslims who talk them into it.

That’s why pronouncements from the White House or various media quarters about what constitutes “true Islam” are ludicrous. These self-appointed experts about Islam might as well declaim on whether all Christians must come under the authority of the pope.

Islam, in practical terms, is however Muslims themselves practice it—peacefully and violently. Let us pray for and encourage the former, knowing also that God is drawing many Muslims to Christ these days. But let’s also recognize that simply wishing for something doesn’t make it so.

We can start by calling things by their proper names.

This article was originally posted at the BreakPoint.org website.

 Islam in America
A Christian Response 
featuring Dr. Erwin Lutzer

May 7, 2015
CLICK HERE for Details

In a story about Bret Baier’s withdrawal from a Catholic conference, where he was going to speak about his Catholic faith, the website known as Mediaite noted that Republican Governor Bobby Jindal (LA) was going to go through with his appearance at the event. But the website warned him about the consequences of offending the homosexual lobby. “Given the controversy that follows U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) more than a decade after he allegedly spoke before a group connected to white supremacists, Jindal, who has presidential ambitions of his own, must be giving his appearance some serious thought right about now,” it said.

Hence, the philosophy of white supremacism associated with the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis is compared to Catholicism. That’s the message this so-called “respectable” source of news and information is sending. Jindal rejected that. The governor’s spokesman said, “Governor Jindal looks forward to addressing the summit and speaking about what faith means to him.”

The summit is sponsored by Legatus, a group that upholds the teachings of the Catholic Church on human sexuality and other matters.

If Baier was speaking at or attending a fundraiser for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA), that would have been perfectly okay. After all, many Fox media stars, including Megyn Kelly, have done so in the past. In addition, Fox pours money directly into this important lobby in the homosexual movement, and it’s not even a controversy.

What’s fascinating in this case is that the attacks which forced Baier and actor Gary Sinise out of the Legatus conference do not involve opening fire on anybody’s editorial offices and murdering the offenders. These things are mostly done differently in America. I say “mostly” because of the terrorist attack on the Washington, D.C. offices of the Family Research Council (FRC) in 2012. That was inspired by a “hate map” posted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) pinpointing the location of the FRC. A security guard was injured as he stopped a homosexual militant from trying to carry out a massacre in the FRC offices.

In most cases, however, the weapons of character assassination, distortion, and anti-Christian bigotry will suffice. The purpose is to intimidate and ostracize those who dare to associate with groups affirming traditional standards of morality. One of the new tactics, as used by Mediaite, is to associate Catholics with racial extremists. This is a smear that is beneath contempt, but the gay lobby and its fellow travelers will stop at nothing.

The message that the site was sending to Jindal is that he risks his political future by associating with a notorious hate group called the Catholic Church. It was a threat disguised as news.

The leftists have no quarrel with the views of the pope on economic matters. And they certainly won’t quibble with his encyclical on climate change when he issues that in March. But challenging the morality of the lifestyle of so many in Hollywood and the media is something else. Questioning the homosexual lifestyle simply cannot be tolerated.

Jindal, who is a Catholic, didn’t succumb to the pressure. He had the intestinal fortitude to remain true to his beliefs. He understood that the attacks on Legatus were an attack upon his own faith. He couldn’t back down and maintain his own principles. Jindal’s decision to stand up to the modern totalitarians in the gay rights movement has to be seen as courageous.

Backing out is especially troubling in the case of Bret Baier, since his speaking appearance at the Legatus summit was for the purpose of talking about his own Catholic faith expressed in his book, Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love. He wasn’t there to talk about gay rights. Neither was Sinise, for that matter.

Baier, or his corporate bosses, have to take the blame for giving in to the pressure. We would have thought that the Fox News Channel would have stood firmly for freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. It sets a terrible precedent that a “conservative” news channel, which became successful by speaking for many without a traditional voice in the liberal media, should bow at the altar of political correctness. Why they buckled to the pressure is a story in itself.

As we have pointed out, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is allowed to pontificate on the air, including on behalf of the gay rights cause. But a Bret Baier speech about his book at a Catholic event is supposed to be offensive. This is the state of our media today.

The tactics used by the homosexual lobby have been perfected by such groups as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations against their enemies. What’s new is that the official Catholic Church teachings on human sexuality are now labeled as so offensive that people can’t even be associated with a group that promotes them. This is the kind of religious discrimination we have seen in countries like France against the Jews.

Some in the media called the summit “anti-gay,” which is a complete lie. As Legatus Executive Director John Hunt said in a statement, “Legatus embraces all that the Catholic Church teaches—nothing more, nothing less. Of course, at the core of all that the Church teaches is Christ’s unconditional love for every man and woman. While the Church has and always will teach about the morality of certain behaviors, these teachings are always to be understood in the context of the value of and respect for every human person.”

Turning Christian love into “hate” is an indication of how a situation can be twisted into something it’s not. This is how political correctness, a form of cultural Marxism, works in practice. The homosexual lobby has perfected this tactic of intimidation.

Hunt said the group’s members are only asking for the freedom to exercise their religious beliefs, “which includes the ability to gather together and discuss their faith.”

That such a meeting has become controversial, to the point where major figures in the media and Hollywood can be forced to back out, is a terrible reflection on the condition of the First Amendment right to free speech in America today. The news organizations that are involved in this silencing of freedom of expression have shown they have no understanding of what “I am Charlie” is all about.

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media website.