THE WHITE-ANTING OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE

By Dr Patrick Sookhdeo International Director of Barnabas Fund

The story is told of an Australian who came home one day to find his house had collapsed and little remained but a pile of dust and rubble. Unknown to him, white ants had been eating away at the foundations and supporting timbers of his house for years. While everything had continued to look normal from the outside, internally the house was being gradually consumed. Then one day it had finally crashed to the ground, destroyed by the tiny insects.

In many Western countries an insidious and destructive force is eating away at our Judaeo-Christian heritage. There may be little visible change but ideological Islam is eroding the foundations and supports of Western society, its culture and its religion, by a gradual process of Islamisation.

In 1981 the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) was established and registered in the USA. Working in the worlds of publishing and academia, the IIIT has three objectives, which are set out below in the Institute’s own words:

1. To provide a comprehensive Islamic outlook through elucidating the principles of Islam and relating them to relevant issues in contemporary thought.

2. To regain the intellectual, cultural and civilizational identity of the Ummah [worldwide Muslim community] through the Islamization of the humanities and social sciences.

3. To rectify the methodology of contemporary Islamic thought in order to enable it to resume its contribution to the progress of human civilisation and give it meaning and direction in line with the values and objectives of Islam.

To summarise, the IIIT aims to transform the world by what they call elsewhere “the Islamisation of knowledge”. Every academic subject and every aspect of every culture is to be “Islamised” so that all the civilisations of the world are guided by and imbued with Islamic values and Islamic objectives. This is in effect to re-define truth. Facts are no longer objectively true or false, but their truthfulness depends on whether they fit with Islamic values or not.

Twenty-six years after the institute was founded, the world is well on its way to being transformed. Islam now tops the public agenda across the globe in a way it did not in 1981. Islam seems to be laying claim to every achievement of the non-Muslim world. In the UK we are told that Islam inspired the glorious architecture of our medieval churches and cathedrals. We are told that William Shakespeare probably followed a kind of Islamic mysticism. The message between the lines is repeated: “Islam is the source of all that is good in your civilisation. So why not become a Muslim?” Effectively the Islamisation of knowledge is a form of da‘wa (Muslim mission).

Secular media are beginning to assist the process of disseminating Islamised knowledge. Even the respected National Geographic magazine has published a map of the Middle East on which is marked a journey made by Abraham with Ishmael and Isaac to Mecca, where, said the magazine, he built the kaba and established the haj pilgrimage. There is no hint in the magazine that this is an Islamic version of events, completely at variance with the Biblical story; it is set out as established fact.

In 1 Corinthians 2:14 Paul tells us that spiritual things must be spiritually discerned. Sadly it is not just the Western secular world that has been taken in by the deception, but increasingly Christians are also being fooled. A prominent British evangelical leader now advocates that local churches should invite an imam to their Sunday morning worship and give him an opportunity to present his beliefs about Islam and let the Christians ask him questions. “I simply cannot think of a more impacting, prophetic and dynamic way of exposing believers to a major faith ideology of which most of us are entirely ignorant,” comments the evangelical leader. This could lead to such an erosion of the Christian faith that the house collapses.

For more information on the work of Barnabas Fund go to http://www.barnabasfund.org/

Source: Barnabas Fund