Jesus, Jihad, and Peace: What Bible Prophecy Says About World Events Today
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Jesus, Jihad, and Peace: What Bible Prophecy Says About World Events Today
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781617953682 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Worthy |
| Publication date: | 02/17/2015 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Jesus, Jihad and Peace
What Bible Prophecy Says About World Events Today
By Michael Youssef
Worthy Publishing Group
Copyright © 2015 Michael YoussefAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61795-368-2
CHAPTER 1
The Goal of World Domination
Mohamed Bouazizi was a twenty-six-year-old street vendor in Sidi Bouzid, a rural village in central Tunisia. His father died when he was three, and his stepfather was unable to work. So from the time he was ten, Mohamed had worked hard to provide for his family. In his twenties, he found it difficult to find work and was rejected by the army, so he bought a vendor's cart and sold produce, earning a little more than a hundred dollars a month. He budgeted his money carefully so that he could help support his mother, stepfather, and siblings. He even put one sister through college. He also set a little money aside each month in hopes of one day replacing his cart with a van.
His customers loved him. "Mohamed was a very well-known and popular man," said a friend, Hajlaoui Jaafer. "He would give free fruit and vegetables to very poor families." Yet Mohamed was constantly bullied by the police, who demanded bribes and confiscated his produce when he couldn't pay. "Since he was a child, they were mistreating him," said Jaafer.
On the morning of December 17, 2010, as Mohamed Bouazizi was on the street, selling his wares, the police stopped him to shake him down for another bribe. Not only did Mohamed have no money for a bribe, but he had borrowed two hundred dollars to buy produce for his cart. When Mohamed said he couldn't pay the bribe, a woman named Faida Hamdy, a municipal official, came out to confront him. Witnesses say she confiscated Mohamed's weighing scales (valued at one hundred dollars), and when he protested, she slapped him, spat at him, insulted his dead father, and overturned his produce cart. In Mohamed's culture, being shamed by a woman is the ultimate humiliation.
With his produce ruined, how could he pay back the loan? The police told Mohamed he would be fined, but he had no money to pay the fine. He went to the governor's office to ask for his scales back, but the governor refused to see him. Believing his life was ruined, Mohamed stood in the intersection in front of the governor's office, doused himself with gasoline, and shouted, "How do you expect me to make a living?"
Then he flicked a match and set himself ablaze.
Severely burned over 90 percent of his body, he lived for eighteen days in the hospital and then died on January 4, 2011. More than five thousand people attended Mohamed Bouazizi's funeral, enraged that the corrupt government had destroyed the twenty-six-year-old street vendor's hope.
Anti-government anger spread through the country like wildfire. People expressed their rage through mass demonstrations and revolts from one end of Tunisia to the other, sending Tunisian president Zine Ben Ali fleeing into exile in Saudi Arabia.
The spark of revolution spread quickly across the region. In Egypt, thousands of protesters poured into historic Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo. Protests also popped up in Alexandria, Suez, and other Egyptian cities. The demonstrations were nonviolent at the beginning, but as the government of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak clamped down, clashes broke out, killing hundreds and injuring thousands. Demonstrators demanded an end to the corrupt, repressive Mubarak regime. On February 11, 2011, after eighteen days of protests and violence, Hosni Mubarak resigned, ending three decades of the Egyptian police state.
More civil uprisings took place in Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, Algeria, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Morocco, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara. Palestinian protesters launched demonstrations along the borders of Israel. Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, and Morocco implemented reforms to prevent the protests from getting out of control. A full-fledged civil war broke out in Libya, which sent Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi scurrying for cover. On October 20, 2011, NATO planes struck a convoy of vehicles. Gaddafi, who was in one of the vehicles, escaped and hid in a drainpipe. Libyan rebels dragged him out of the drain, beat him, and dealt him a brutal tyrant's death. The Syrian government, by contrast, doubled its repressive measures and eventually resorted to chemical weapons.
In country after country across the Arab world, people chanted, "El Shaab yurid iskat el Nizam!" (The people want the fall of the regime!) Thus began a wave of uprisings that came to be known as the "Arab Spring."
The False Hope of the Arab Spring
In the early stages of the Egyptian uprisings, there was cooperation between Egyptian Christians and Muslims. For example, after a New Year's Day 2011 car bomb destroyed the Saints Church in east Alexandria, killing twenty-five worshippers, Muslims attended Mass alongside the Coptic Christians as a show of support. One Muslim Egyptian told the Los Angeles Times, "I'm here to tell all my Coptic brothers that Muslims and Christians are an inseparable pillar of Egypt's texture.... We will share any pains or threats they go through."
Initially, that spirit of cooperation flowed both ways. In February 2011, as anti-Mubarak demonstrations were in full swing in Cairo, thousands of Muslims gathered in Tahrir Square to protest and pray. Hundreds of Coptic Christians encircled their Muslim compatriots, joining hands to form a protective cordon around the Muslims against police and military forces. But just a month later, as the BBC reported, Tahrir Square became the site of violent clashes between Christians and Muslims, killing thirteen people.
Across Egypt, cooperation between Christians and Muslims disintegrated and clashes erupted. In late February 2011, a Coptic priest was stabbed to death by masked men shouting, "Allah is great!" On March 12, the Shahedin Church in Helwan Province was torched by a Muslim mob, setting off a street battle that killed thirteen Christians. In May, a dozen Egyptians were killed in attacks on Coptic churches. On September 20, a Muslim mob partially destroyed the al-Marenab Church in the southern Aswan Province.
Though many young Muslims demonstrated support and solidarity with Christians in Egypt, the Muslim extremists and hard-liners infiltrated the Arab Spring movement and turned it into an opportunity to terrorize and kill Christians.
For example, Ayman Anwar Mitri is a Coptic Christian, a middle-aged man living in the Egyptian town of Qena. Mitri rented an apartment he owned to two Muslim sisters. In early 2011, soon after the beginning of the Arab Spring uprisings, Mitri learned that the two sisters had been charged with prostitution. Not wanting his property used for immoral purposes, he evicted the women.
Days later, Mitri was awakened at four in the morning by a phone call telling him the apartment was on fire. He arrived as firemen were extinguishing the blaze. As Mitri inspected the damage, a Muslim appeared at the door, tricked him into going to another apartment—and there a dozen Muslim men ambushed him and began beating him. The fire had been a setup to lure Mitri into a trap. The Muslim men shouted, "We will teach you a lesson, Christian!" The group brought in one of the sisters and ordered her to admit an adulterous relationship with Mitri. She refused, so they beat her until she accused Mitri.
The Muslims hacked off Mitri's right ear, gashed the back of his neck, and slit his other ear and his arms. They were about to toss Mitri out of the window of the fifth-floor apartment when a policeman among them said killing Mitri would get them into trouble. The men demanded that Mitri convert to Islam, but he refused. Finally, the men called the police, who came and took Mitri and the prostitute away. No one was ever arrested for the attack on Ayman Mitri.
The Arab Spring in Egypt began as a pro-democracy movement under the slogan, "The people want the fall of the regime!" Yet the young pro-democracy reformers who had set the Arab Spring into motion were leaderless and disorganized. So Islamic hard-liners quickly seized these demonstrations for their own purposes. Before it was over, gangs of Muslim men swarmed through Cairo with clubs and torches, chanting, "The people want to bring down the Christians!" I personally spoke with Christian leaders in Cairo, and they told of roving gangs of thugs who smashed and looted shops and banks.
An Egyptian-Canadian friend told me she had gotten through to her family and learned that her father was sick and bleeding in the hospital, but most of the medical staff had fled so there was no one left to provide medical care. The janitor and other low-level hospital workers defended the patients from thugs and looters. It was anarchy, and the police could not protect the citizens.
While Western news agencies painted a rosy picture of the Arab Spring as a peaceful outbreak of pro-democracy feelings, the Arab Spring movement was co-opted by Islamic fundamentalists, including the Salafi sect (followers of the Salafiyyah Islamic movement), which views mob violence as a legitimate form of Sharia justice. Sharia literally means "the straight path," and Muslims believe that Sharia law governs all aspects of life.
The hope of the Arab Spring proved to be a mirage.
The Pattern of Islamic Revolution
During the early stages of the uprisings, I accepted invitations to appear on CNN, Fox News, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and other news outlets to talk about these events. While most Western media celebrated this seeming wave of freedom sweeping the Arab world, I was one of the few voices sounding a warning. I predicted these changes would result in violence and persecution for Christians—and as Muslim mobs torched Egyptian churches and Egyptian military vehicles rolled into crowds of peaceful Christian demonstrators, my predictions came to pass.
Appearing on Governor Mike Huckabee's show on Fox News Channel, I said, "I'm not here to defend former president Hosni Mubarak. During his thirty-year tenure, state corruption grew and political dissidents were often imprisoned without trial. At the same time, Mubarak made a number of positive reforms. For example, he privatized the banks and grew the economy, which in turn helped create a large Egyptian middle class."
In 2011, I saw student protesters waving signs that read, "Down with the tyrant Mubarak!" I thought, Those kids don't know what a real tyrant is. I grew up in Egypt under the harsh rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser. When I was around my friends in high school, I avoided talking about politics because I never knew which of my friends might be a government informant. It seemed like every other person was a potential informant, and every once in a while, someone you knew would be denounced and arrested. It was like living in George Orwell's 1984. Life under Mubarak was no utopia, but it was hardly the repressive Egyptian society I grew up in.
The young, university-educated demonstrators of the Arab Spring were sincere in their desire for freedom and democracy. But they didn't realize that Islamic extremists were working in the shadows, exploiting their youthful fervor and quietly infiltrating and manipulating the revolution, just as Ayatollah Khomeini had manipulated the Iranian Revolution more than three decades earlier.
During the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Islamists stirred up revolutionary passions and sent students into the streets of Tehran to demonstrate against Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. When the Shah abdicated and left the country, Ayatollah Khomeini took over the revolution. All the freedom-loving protesters who dreamed of a democratic Iran were silenced. The last thing Islamists want for the people is freedom.
That's the pattern most Arab world revolutions follow. Hidden Islamists stir the pot and keep idealistic students inflamed and angry. Once the revolution is in full swing, the Islamists seize power, round up the activists, and chop off their heads—either figuratively or literally. After the revolution, the Islamists refer to the original demonstrators as hemir al-thawra (donkeys of the revolution)—stooges to be used and then discarded.
Hamas, the Sunni Palestinian terror organization and political party, followed the same pattern in coming to power in the Gaza Strip. An offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas gained power by exploiting the revolutionary passions of the demonstrators during the First Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israel in 1987.
And the same pattern has been playing out in Egypt. As I told Governor Huckabee, "If the Egyptian political system falls, it will be a free-for-all. The extremists and militants will move in for the kill. Make no mistake, they will use the secular-educated Muslims to get the power, but once they get to power, they are going to get the dissidents out of the way.... Their number-one goal is to break the accord with Israel, create an alliance with Hamas in Gaza, and then reignite the conflict and enmity with Israel again.... The Arab world is in ferment all around the nation of Israel and is working all around the borders of Israel. Once Israel falls, their vision, their third wave of jihad, is Europe and then the United States."
Islamic extremists are totally committed to their goal of establishing a global Muslim state, the Caliphate (more on that in chapter 8).
The Muslim Brotherhood
One of the largest and most influential of all the Islamic extremist groups is the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, now operates throughout the world, including the United States. The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood is "Islam is the solution." The credo of the Brotherhood is "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
Where did the Muslim Brotherhood come from and what are its goals for the Arab world? What are its goals for the West?
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by a schoolteacher named Hasan al-Banna. He was angry and frustrated over Western political influence and the declining influence of Islam in Egypt. He had two goals in mind when he founded the Brotherhood. His short-term goal was the expulsion of the British from Egypt. His long-term goal was to establish the Caliphate, a global Muslim state with the Koran as its only constitution. A brief review of history will show how Hasan al-Banna became such an influential figure in the Islamic world.
In the 1860s, Egypt was building the Suez Canal in partnership with France, while racking up a mountain of debt to European banks. Ultimately, the only way Egypt could discharge the debt was by selling its share of the Suez Canal to Great Britain. (Here is a lesson for nations that pile up debts that can never be repaid.) This arrangement gave Britain controlling seats in the Egyptian cabinet, and Egypt became a de facto protectorate of the British Empire. In 1922, the government of the United Kingdom issued a declaration of Egyptian independence—but Egypt was not entirely free. The British government reserved four areas for itself: communications in Egypt, the defense of Egypt, the protection of foreigners and minorities in Egypt, and the administration of the Sudan. Though technically independent, Egypt remained under colonial domination.
That was the situation when Hasan al-Banna arrived on the scene in the 1920s. Strongly influenced by the radical Wahhabi Islamist movement in Saudi Arabia, al-Banna was determined to liberate Egypt from British rule and erase all non-Islamic influence. Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the ancient city of Ismailia, on the west bank of the Suez Canal. In March 1928, the Brotherhood consisted of just seven men: al-Banna and six men who worked for the Suez Canal Company.
He taught them that the only way to defeat the corrupting influence of the Christian West was to return to Sharia law, based on the Koran. A key requirement of Sharia law is an Islamic caliphate as the form of government. From this small beginning, the Muslim Brotherhood grew to an estimated two million members by the late 1940s.
In 1939, Hasan al-Banna and the Brotherhood's inner circle formed a military wing called the Secret Apparatus. During World War II, the Brotherhood worked with Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in British Mandate Palestine, engaging in agitation against the British, acts of terrorism, and recruiting Muslim soldiers to fight in the Nazi military during World War II. After the war, theBrotherhood's Secret Apparatus carried out assassinations and acts of terror against Christians, Jews, and others in Egypt and against the fledgling nation of Israel. The goal of the Brotherhood was to achieve the formation of an Islamic state under Sharia law.
In November 1948, Egyptian prime minister Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi ordered a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood—so the Brotherhood assassinated Nokrashi in December 1948. In response, Egyptian government agents ambushed and killed Hasan al-Banna in Cairo in February 1949.
The founder was dead, but the Muslim Brotherhood lived on. In 1952, the Brotherhood supported a military coup that overthrew the Egyptian monarchy. The Brotherhood believed it had finally won a place of power in the Egyptian government—but the military junta that seized control had no intention of sharing power or lifting martial law in Egypt.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Jesus, Jihad and Peace by Michael Youssef. Copyright © 2015 Michael Youssef. Excerpted by permission of Worthy Publishing Group.
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Table of Contents
Author's Preface xi
Introduction: A Wake-Up Call 1
1 The Goal of World Domination 5
2 Ignored Warnings 27
3 The Prophet and the Koran 45
4 Are Allah and Jehovah the Same God? 67
5 What Does Islam Teach About the End Times? 85
6 Two Different Prescriptions for Life 105
7 What Is Jihad? 119
8 The Global Caliphate 137
9 All Roads Lead to Israel 149
10 The Spreading Wildfire 165
11 A Spiritual Battle 187
12 God's Peace Treaty 203
Notes 225