Recently a Muslim Imam in Kuwait made a startling admission.  Takmeel-e-Pakistan’s candid sermon was posted on the internet.  It is worth hearing and considering:

We use trains and planes, but they are not our trains and planes.  The [Westerners] manufacture them and export them to us. True, we can buy the most magnificent things in the world for our homes and for ourselves.  Our people can buy the most luxurious cars…We own them, but we don’t manufacture them…Others do this for us….

The income of the entire Arab world, including the oil producing countries, does not reach that of a single European country such as Spain.  Spain—let alone Germany, France, Britain, or Italy--just Spain, which is at the bottom of the list of industrialized countries…The income of the entire Arab world does not reach it. 

How come?  Because we don’t work.  And if we do work, we don’t do it professionally….We are a nation that doesn’t work…When we do work, we don’t do it professionally…The Prophet said that Allah ordered us to excel in everything.  He imposed excellence and professionalism…If you kill, do it properly, and if you slaughter, do it properly.  Even when killing you must do it well….

Unfortunately we do not excel in either military or civil industries.  We import everything from needles to missiles…We still haven’t manufactured an engine in our Arab countries.  We assemble parts, but have no manufacturing industry….How come the Zionist gang has managed to be superior to us despite being so few?  It has become superior through knowledge, through technology, and through strength.  It has become superior to us through work.  We had the desert before our eyes, but we didn’t do anything with it.  When they took over they turned it into a green oasis.  How can a nation that does not work progress?  How can it grow?

The Imam is right.  Islam does not manufacture things.  It does not create.  It does not build.  Often we hear about the so-called Islamic golden age and the glories of Islamic civilization from a thousand years ago.  The reality is that when Muslims conquered the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe, they took over a thriving Christian civilization and ran it for a time, taking credit for the advances in medicine, science, and technology that were already in place.  The Imam is being honest.  Islam does not work.

Why doesn’t it work?  Here the Imam has it wrong.  He says the Israelis and the West achieved knowledge and technology and strength and worked hard.  And certainly that part is true.  But in spite of the command of Allah, the Muslims failed to do those things.  They had just as much opportunity.  And today they have the advantage of fabulous wealth.  Yet the bulk of their population languishes in unproductive poverty.   The cause of Islam’s persistent underachievement is the god they follow.

The god that the Qur’an reveals is arbitrary and capricious.  He is demanding.  And the fealty he requires is essentially destructive.  Muslims are commanded to conquer the world in the name of Allah.  Those who refuse to submit are to be killed or suppressed until they submit.  Allah demands unquestioned obedience.  And that obedience is expressed in rigid and legalistic outward acts: prayers five times a day bowing down toward Mecca; a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to the central shrine; Jihad against infidels; the suppression of all other faiths by the shedding of blood.  In reaction to imagined sexual impurity, Islam imposes the most awful restrictions upon women.  Islam at its heart destroys initiative  It is oppressive, not liberating.  It is crushing, not freeing.  Because that is the nature of Islam’s god.

Consequently, the human spirit is suppressed and denied.  Human depravity is empowered.  Right and wrong are comingled.  Moral ambiguity reigns.  Blessing and tragedy alike come by the capricious will of Allah.  And because no one can really know beforehand what Allah’s will is in daily affairs, life itself is arbitrary.  And if life and reality are arbitrary, the human soul languishes.  What is the point of achieving anything if in the end Allah may yank it all away?  Result: no achievement, no building, no work--for work ultimately produces no promise of a better life. 

Of course, many Muslims do not succumb to this dark pessimism.    Human beings are, after all, resilient beings and many yearn for something higher and grasp it in spite of the impediments.  But those who take Islam seriously, who strive to conform their lives to Islam’s sacred writings, soon are swept into bloody despair.  Hence the repeated eruption of terrorism, the ultimate rage against futility.

Why has the West risen above despair?  It is because of Christianity.  Christianity proclaims a God who is altogether holy and good, who rules justly over the world according to his revealed law, and who loves and offers mercy to humans in their downtrodden condition.  In a word, where Christianity dominates a culture, there is hope.   It began in the Garden where God presented man with a purpose and gave him a fulfilling task of building and creating.  “And God blessed [the man and the woman]; and God said to them, ‘be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28) 

And when man failed and fell into sin, “God sent forth his Son…in order that he might redeem” fallen sinners and set them again on an upward course. (Galatians 4:4-5).   To the redeemed he gives the command through the apostle, “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands…so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need.” (I Thessalonians 4:11-12)  That is good news.  And it is offered to all who will hear.

Dr. Rick Perrin is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and Chairman of the Board of World Reformed Fellowship..  He writes a weekly blog called ReTHINK which may be accessed at www.rethinkingnews.wordpress.com. He may be contacted directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. . 

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