Hank Hanegraaff - MUSLIM: What You Need to Know About the World’s Fastest Growing Religion

Hank Hanegraaff serves as president of the Christian Research Institute (CRI) and hosts the internationally syndicated Bible Answer Man broadcast and the Hank Unplugged podcast. He is author of more than twenty books and widely regarded as one of the worlds leading Christian thinkers. Hank and his wife, Kathy, live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and are parents to twelve children.

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I would first like to acknowledge my dear friend Jack Countryman, without whom this volume would not have become a Harper Collins publication. To be back with the team in the Thomas Nelson division is sheer delight. They have been willing to take on a project that, for many, would be simply too hot to handle.

Furthermore, I am deeply grateful for my colleagues at the Christian Research Institutemany have been with me for well over two decades. I am particularly grateful for Stephen Ross, my personal assistant, who is instrumental in helping me think through complex matters and, even more, is my treasured friend for almost twenty-eight years. I could not imagine a day in the office without him. Moreover, my beloved wife, Kathy, and blessed tribe of twelve continue to be a sanctuary amid the storms and challenges of life.

Finally, as evidenced by the notes section, I am indebted to many authors and their works. Without them, my own thinking would be greatly impoverished. I am particularly grateful to Abdu Murray for his input and insightsthey have strengthened this manuscript immensely. And to Robert Spencer for contributing the foreword and for his example of telling it like it is, no matter the cost. He is as brilliant as he is brave. Other noteworthy authors and commentators include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, James M. Arlandson, Mindy Belz, Baron Bodissey, David Cook, William Lane Craig, Nonie Darwish, Mary Eberstadt, Daro Fernndez-Morera, Thomas L. Friedman, Sebastian Gorka, William Harris, Daniel Hoffman, Raymond Ibrahim, Thomas F. Madden, William McCants, Nabeel Qureshi, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Abdul Saleeb, Sam Shamoun, Charles Strohmer, Serge Trifkovic, Bill Warner, David Wood, Graeme Wood, and researchers at Answering-Islam.org, TheReligionofPeace.com, and ClarionProject.org.

Beyond any adequate thanksgiving is the Triadic One who has ordered my life around that which is divine.

You cannot win a war if you cannot talk honestly about the enemy.
SEBASTIAN GORKA

D espite its incoherence, the Muslim cultone billion six hundred million strong and growingis poised to fill the vacuum left by a Western culture slouching inexorably toward Gomorrah. Demographics alone are alarming. While polygamous Muslims boast a robust birth rate, native Westerners are moving rapidly toward self-extinction. Filling the void are multiplied millions of Muslims who have little or no intention of assimilating into Western culture.

Equally grave is the specter of global Islamic jihadism now exacting mass genocide on Christians in the East and ever-multiplying terrorist attacks throughout the West. What more can I say? We have witnessed the cobelligerency of fantastically wealthy Saudis spending billions of dollars exporting virulent Wahhabism to the West. Worse still, Western governments, academic institutions, and media outlets are bent on exporting a false narrative respecting the religious animus animating global Islamic jihadism.

While this serves to recapitulate the problem, what begs our attention are potential solutions. Some suppose that the solution lies in the aggressive use of Western military power. While this is wholly necessary, it is hardly sufficient. As Sebastian Gorka has wisely noted, You cannot win a war if you cannot talk honestly about the enemy.

Even during the Reagan revolution, illiberal liberalism continued to hold sway in the educational, entertainment, and environmental industries that create, manipulate, and disseminate ideological constructs that are driving Western civilization in a very dangerous direction.

The only real solution to a disintegrating West and resurgent Islam is what the prophetic pen of Os Guinness wisely designated renaissancethe power of the gospel however dark the times. The challenge, said Guinness, is to shake ourselves free from the natural despondency of those who look only at circumstances and at the statistics of decline and gloom. We do well to realize that the West has been won twice before, and now it appears that the West has almost been lost a second time. So now, partly in response to the courageous faith of those who achieved it twice before, but more in response to the Great Commission itself, it is time to set our minds and hearts to win back the West to our Lord again.

We live in an ABC moment (Anything but Christianity). A moment in which Christianity is routinely ridiculed and Islam referred to with reverential tones. Yet ABC can also serve to remind us that the solution for regaining Western civilization and defeating global Islamic jihadism is ultimately grounded in answers, biblical literacy, and countering cults.

This is the task of the Christian churcha task that she and she alone can fill. Thus, it is crucial the church be awakened from a diabetic coma brought on by a steady diet of fast-food Christianity. Said Guinness, The world to come will be shaped by whether the worldwide Christian church recovers its integrity and effectiveness and demonstrates a faith that can escape cultural captivity and prevail under the conditions of advanced modernityor does not.

Answers play a crucial role in that authentic Christians have been commissioned to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.twenty-first-century Christians must be equipped to effectively answer ideologies such as illiberal liberalism and illicit Islam. The heart will not receive what the mind resolutely rejects.

Biblical literacy, like being equipped to provide answers, is a core Christian value. It is one thing to say that God has spokenthat the Bible is divine rather than merely human in origin. It is quite another to understand what God has said. A great many Muslims discount the Bible as the infallible rule for faith and practice because they mistake its meaning. When Muhammad encountered the biblical word begotten, he retorted, it is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son (Q 19:35). Of course, the Bible does not use the term begotten in the sense of sexual reproduction. Rather, in the sense of special relationship. Had Muhammad understood the art and science of biblical interpretation he would not have made such an elemental mistake. Reading the Bible in the sense in which it is intended is a science in that rules apply; it is an art in that the more you apply the rules, the better you get at it.

Countering cults is likewise the task of the church. Wrongly apprehended, this discipline would rightly be regarded a never-ending tedium. Satan packages and repackages his lies in a wide variety of ways. Rather than attempt to absorb every deviation of every cult, we are far better served to become so familiar with the main and the plain things of Scripture that when a counterfeit looms on the horizon, we spot it instantaneously.

Cults are notorious for linguistic subversionfor pouring their own unique meanings into key words and phrases. When Muslims use the word Jesus, the meaning they pour into the word reduces Jesus to the merely human way-shower for Muhammad. Muslim intellectuals are also expert at taking texts out of context and using them as pretexts for theological perversions. Thus, when Jesus said, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever (John 14:16), Muslims contend that this advocate is Muhammadthis despite that fact that both the immediate and broader context precludes this outrageous theological perversion. Islam manifests sociological deviance as well. Devotees characteristically display displaced loyalty to Muhammad and Islam and are galvanized together through physical and psychological intimidation tactics. When Muslims convert to Christianity, they do so