Bible Answer Man Says Islam Is Not Religion of Peace, Warns of Ramadan: Muslims Fast, They Also Blast
"Bible Answer Man" Hank Hanegraaff has condemned what he called the West's "blind spot" in declaring Islam a religion of peace, stating that the holy month of Ramadan is a time when Islamists increase their attacks on Christians.
Hanegraaff framed his Facebook video on Friday within the context of the Islamic State terror group's slaughter of 29 Coptic Christians, including children, in Egypt on the first day of Ramadan.
"Global Islamic jihadism gets a power boost during Ramadan," Hanegraaff, who heads the Christian Research Institute, said in the video.
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He said that a euphemism that comes to mind is that during Ramadan, "Muslims fast, they also blast."
"If you are a Christian you ought to be familiar today more than ever that our brothers and sisters, men women and children, are being massacred in the Middle East," he said, noting that besides the latest attack on Copts, churches across the Middle East have been emptied out, and Christians crucified and slaughtered for their faith.
Western leaders, such as former U.S. President Barack Obama, have tried to argue that Islam has a "true peaceful nature," despite the actions carried out by IS and other radical groups, insisting that they promote a "twisted interpretation of religion that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims."
Hanegraaff argued, however, that it is not just radical Islam, but "plain old run-of-the-mill-Islam" that has been inspiring jihadist conquests and attacks throughout the world ever since the religion was founded 14 centuries ago.
He read from his upcoming book, MUSLIM: What You Need to Know about the World's Fastest Growing Religion, where he argued that Islamic societies throughout the world have been based on Sharia law.
"Sharia acknowledges that the greater jihad is spiritual warfare against the lower self, and yet the vast majority of Sharia law is devoted to prescribing what it means to wage war against non-Muslims," Hanegraaff positioned.
He said that Sharia places people in only "two houses," namely "the house of Islam," or the "house of war."
"The narrative that Islam is a religion of peace is a blatant falsehood, and 1400 years of history say so," he added, claiming that attempts to build democracies in the Middle East are "absurd," given that the "global Islamist cult" seeks to "eradicate Christianity."
"Now there are millions of peace loving Muslims in the world," he noted, but maintained that "Islam is a social, economic, legal matrix designed around Sharia."
As The Guardian noted, Muslim leaders have condemned violence done in the name of Islam, and have also spoken out against the slaughter of the Coptic Christians on Friday.
"These traitors violated Islam's principles by spilling blood and terrorizing others, and broke their vows [of protection] by targeting Christian brothers, who are our partners in the homeland," Dar al-Ifta, the state-linked Islamic authority in Egypt, wrote.
"Neither Muslim nor Christian approves of the Minya incident, which targets stability in Egypt," added Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb.
Other evangelical leaders in the U.S., however, have warned of Islam. The Rev. Franklin Graham said that Islam as a whole is a "threat to our very life."
"Islam targets the weak," Graham declared, following the bombing at an arena in Manchester, England, which killed 22 people earlier in May.
"Islam is a threat to our very way of life. There will be more stabbings, more shootings, more bombings, and more killing. Our U.S. politicians need to wake up and see the dangers," he added, and warned jihadists that hell, and not a paradise of 70 virgins, await them in the afterlife.
