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terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 spawned a spate of
conservative Christian reflections on the essential characteristics of
Islam. Figures from Christian Broadcasting Network’s Pat Robertson to
Colorado Springs pastor Ted Haggard pointed to the inherently violent
nature of Islam. Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell said on 60
Minutes that "Muhammad was a terrorist", a glib comment that set
off riots among Asian Muslims and earned him a fatwa from an Iranian
cleric calling for Falwell’s assassination. As recently as 2006, even
Pope Benedict XVI generated a major controversy by making disparaging
comments about Islam’s violent history. One might think that these
Christians’ views simply represent angry reactions to the horrific
violence of 9/11 and ongoing jihadist terror. But a closer look
reveals that American Christians have deep-rooted views of Islam as a
violent, demonic religion.
Pastor Aaron Burr Sr (the president of the College of
New Jersey at Princeton and the father of the politician Aaron Burr
who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel) expressed widespread
Anglo-American Protestant sentiment in a 1756 sermon in which he
discussed "the false prophet and grand impostor Mahomet". According to
Burr, the early medieval period represented a dark night for the
Christian church for two primary reasons: the rise of the Catholic
papacy and the spread of Islam. Muhammad brought Arabia under his
control by violence, as he taught his followers that Islam should be
"propagated by the sword and that it is meritorious to die for it".
Misery, woe and ignorance followed in Muhammad’s wake and compounded
the sufferings of god’s true church in the world.
Burr, like most prominent Anglo-American theologians
of that time, believed that the advent of Islam had been predicted in
the Bible, particularly in the Book of Revelations. Most conservative
American Christians now think that the prophecies of Revelation point
to future events but early Americans saw many of the prophecies as
already fulfilled in history. Burr shared the common opinion that
Revelation 9:2-3, which speaks of locusts coming out of a smoky abyss,
was fulfilled with the coming of Muhammad. Like most colonial
observers, Burr saw Muhammad as the worst kind of religious
"impostor", who pretended to have received revelations from god in
order to gain power.
Since the colonial era, conservative American
Christians have maintained a conflicted attitude towards Muslims. They
have portrayed Islam as having malevolent origins but they have also
kept faith that Muslims would eventually convert to Christianity.
Despite the overwhelming difficulties of Muslim evangelisation,
anecdotal accounts of Muslims becoming Christians were steady-sellers
in colonial and antebellum America. Probably the most famous Muslim
conversion narrative in the 19th century was the account of Abdallah
and Sabat, told in a sermon by British pastor Claudius Buchanan. This
compelling, tragic tale of the Arabian friends’ journey to faith in
Christ was printed in various forms throughout Britain and America
from the early 19th to the early 20th century.
Conservative Christians have hardly lost their taste
for Muslim conversion stories, as demonstrated by books like Bilquis
Sheikh’s I Dared to Call Him Father (1978). In this
autobiography, Sheikh, a Pakistani noblewoman, recounted her
conversion to Christianity following a series of dreams and visions
about Jesus. The book defined the ideal Muslim conversion for a
generation of Christians. It has been translated into many different
languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Finnish and Amharic (a Semitic
language spoken in Ethiopia), and it remains in print today.
Despite their hopes for Muslim conversions, American
Christians have also anticipated that Islam would meet its demise in
the end times when Jesus would return to earth and establish his
kingdom. In early America, many Protestants believed that Islam and
Roman Catholicism would be destroyed simultaneously. Some even saw the
two as the eastern and western Antichrists. The expectation of Roman
Catholicism and Islam’s downfall and the imminent return of Christ led
to bold date setting in the early 19th century, capped by the
forecasts of William Miller and his followers who expected the end to
come in 1843.
Jesus’s failure to appear at the appointed hour helped
to transform standard Anglo-American interpretations of Bible prophecy
and by the early 20th century "dispensational" theology had become
dominant in conservative circles. Dispensationalists began to
anticipate the re-establishment of the state of Israel where the final
battle between good and evil would transpire. The founding of Israel
in 1948 and the subsequent struggle between Israel, the Palestinians
and the Arab states has become the frame for many conservative
Christians’ interpretation of prophetic scenarios.
There remains a common expectation among American
Christians of Islam’s coming downfall. Many now interpret the
mysterious description of the attack by "Gog and Magog" against Israel
in Ezekiel 38 and 39 as forecasting a time when Arab Muslims would
unite with Russians to destroy Israel. Their attack would be
miraculously foiled in a hail of fire and brimstone and this event
would set the stage for the rise of an atheistic Antichrist who would
launch a genocidal campaign against the Jews. This would lead to the
final battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ to earth.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 inaugurated a
sharply heightened interest in Islam among American Christians and in
time we may also see that it generated lasting departures in prophetic
interpretation, as some conservatives have begun to put Islam squarely
at the centre of end times theology. Some have even begun to argue
that the messianic Mahdi expected in some Muslims’ beliefs actually
represents the Antichrist.
Despite some post-9/11 novelties, the history of
conservative American Christian thought regarding Islam is largely a
story of continuity, not change. Although they have often seen Islam
as an inherently violent, malevolent religion, traditional Christians
have also maintained persistent hopes of mass Muslim conversions to
Christianity. Those who did not convert would ultimately fall before a
returning Christ in the last days. Although the details may have
changed over time, their convictions about the end of days have helped
assure many American Christians that their god, the father of Jesus,
would triumph in the end.