Can a devout Muslim be a good American?

By Bryan Fischer

Can a devout Muslim be a good American? I submit that the answer to this extremely important question is "No."

This is simply because the values of Islam are fundamentally incompatible with the values of an America which has been formed and shaped by Judeo-Christian values.

First, America celebrates the free exercise of religion. Islam does not. The first fundamental liberty our Founders protected in the Bill of Rights is the freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience. In Islam, you are only allowed, under penalty of death, to worship Allah according to the dictates of Mohammed's conscience.

It is still a capital crime in virtually all Muslim countries to convert from Islam to Christianity. In many Muslim countries, such as our main Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, it is a capital crime to worship Christ with other believers, even in clandestine settings.

Second, America reveres the God of the Bible, while Islam does not. Despite their differences, our Founders were united by a powerful and shared belief in the Creator revealed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. At the time of the founding, 99.8% of the population of the colonies identified with the Christian religion (the other 0.2% followed Judaism). Still today the vast majority of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Islam does not share with us this unifying faith, and worships a different god altogether.

America was founded on a reverence for the Judeo-Christian God, the source of all our inalienable rights. The Creator-God the Founders worshiped has an only-begotten Son. But devout Muslims worship a different god altogether, for, as banners all across the Muslim world declare, "Allah has no son."

The apostle Paul frequently refers to God in his letters as "the father of our Lord Jesus Christ" to distinguish him from the pagan gods. Those who lamely try to claim Christians and Muslims worship the same God are theologically illiterate.

Simply put, the Founders worshiped the God of the Bible, and Muslims do not.

Third, America, shaped by Christian thought, believes in the use of persuasion while Islam does not. This is true whether we are seeking to convince someone to share a religious or political point of view. But Islam teaches that its cause is to be advanced primarily at the point of the sword.

Both Christianity and Islam have global aims. But the driving energy in Christianity is to win the world through love and persuasion while Islam seeks to subdue the world through force. The only choices given to Christians under Islam are to convert, submit, or die.

Simply put, Christian America believes in persuasion, while Islam believes in raw power.

Fourth, Christian America cherishes liberty as a fundamental value while Islam does not. One of the mottos of the Founders in our battle with Britain was, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Cor. 3:17)." The mark of a Christian nation is a hunger for liberty and freedom inspired by the Spirit of liberty.

Where the spirit of Islam is, there is only darkness, repression and tyranny. In Islam, there is no political or religious liberty of any kind.

This is why, by the way, it is fundamentally misguided for Americans to think we can build nations in the Muslim world that love democracy and a republican form of government, for the simple reason that the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of liberty and freedom, can't be found in Islamic countries.

The spirit that is active in Islam is a heavy, malevolent and oppressive spirit which despises freedom and thinks of it as weakness.

Only a people whose values have been shaped by the Spirit of liberty will hunger for freedom, whether of the religious or political kind. Christianity values liberty while Islam values subjugation, control and domination.

Fifth, Christian America believes in the dignity and worth of women while Islam does not. While Christianity does teach that men and women have different but complementary roles in the home and in the church, Christianity believes that women are the full equal of men in worth, dignity and value.

Christianity teaches husbands to love their wives, as Christ loved his bride, the church. Just as Christ laid down his life for his bride, so Christian husbands are taught to lay down their very lives to protect and serve their brides.

But Islam teaches husbands that they may literally beat their wives into submission if they get out of line. Prominent Islamic imams deliver entire sermons devoted to the subject of how these beatings are to be administered. Simply put, Christian America believes husbands should treat their wives with respect and honor, while Islam does not.

(Wives are taught in Christianity to willingly submit to the leadership of their husbands in the home. You will look in vain, however, for any instruction to husbands to compel their wives to submit. Submission, in Christianity, is a matter between a wife and God rather than between a wife and her husband. What motivates a wife to submit to her husband, according to Scripture, is her reverence for Christ, not her fear of a beating.)

This is why Christian America is aghast at the entire concept of Islamic "honor killings," in which wives and daughters may be brutally murdered to restore "honor" to the family. In Islamic thought, it can be a capital offense for a young woman to date a non-Muslim, to refuse to wear a hijab, and even (in one case here in America) to take a fast-food job at Wendy's.

Even more incomprehensible to Christian America, in Islamic thought victims of rape bring shame to their families simply by being the target of a brutal sexual crime. They often are subject to a second crime of violence, homicide this time, to restore the family's reputation.

Even more reprehensibly, the murder is carried out by male members of their own families, males who, in Christian thought, have a sacred responsibility to nurture and protect. And this is not as rare as you might think. The U.N. estimates that 5,000 honor killings take place around the world every year under the influence of Islam.

Values such as liberty, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, a shared faith in the Creator, persuasion, and female worth and dignity are absolutely essential, non-negotiable parts of what it means to be an American. These values reflect the essence of the American spirit and the American experiment. Without these values, America is not America, and is not the country bequeathed us by the Founding Fathers.

The religion of Mohammed shares none of these values, and as long as a Muslim clings to the values of his religion, he cannot embrace the values of America. In fact, the only way a Muslim can become a good American is by forsaking Islam altogether.

All this raises grave and urgent questions about the capacity of Muslims to assimilate into American culture. Europe is now realizing with alarm that Muslims have no intention of becoming Europeans but insist on having their own enclaves and traditions and even their own shariah court systems. The fracturing of European culture is already too far advanced to be stopped. Europe is likely to be majority Muslim by mid-century, at which point European civilization will be but a distant memory preserved only in dusty and forbidden books.

Here in America, cities such as Dearborn, Michigan have virtually become Islamic cities where far more TVs are tuned to Al Jazeera than CNN or Fox News. In Hamtramck, Michigan, the Islamic call to prayer is sounded all over the city five times a day while nary a church bell is to be heard.

It's not too late for America to recognize the threat posed by unbridled Islamic immigration and to do something about it. And do something we must, lest we be reduced to recalling for our grandchildren what America was like when America was America.

© Bryan Fischer