Is Bin Laden Winning?

Repeatedly Osama bin Laden seems to resurrect from the dead and win another battle for Islam. When bin Laden and his terrorist ilk attacked the United States of America on 9-11, his attack upon American soil resounded throughout the media, our culture, and our world.  Bin Laden’s stated goal in his attack was to bring Islam to the infidels.

In the early days after the 9-11 attack, the red, white, and blue sleeping giant stirred, put its sons and daughters into harm’s way, and pushed back.  Ever paranoid of labeling an entire religion as evil, we balanced our military assault on our attackers with incorporating Islamic teaching in our schools, bringing Islamic religious centers to our communities.  At our best, we Americans seem to be under the impression that if we will only understand Islam, we will no longer be a target of the bitter vitriol of its more radical elements.  Our egalitarian drive toward fairness insists upon distinguishing between violent Islam and peaceful Islam.  At our worst, we Americans seem to embrace a masochistic self-loathing concerning those who have professed and proclaimed their agenda of destruction!

The Sunday after 9-11, churches were packed.  Christians fled to their God for comfort, refuge, and answers.  But in the years that have followed, America has followed a deliberate path of capitulation to Islam.  Public schools have embraced Islamic instruction, while rejecting Christian teaching. Cities and towns have created ordinances and taken action designed to increase tolerance toward Islam. Sharia law has been entertained and even referenced in legal decisions from the bench.

Is bin Laden winning?

Duke University’s plan to host Islamic call to prayers from its campus chapel bell tower was quickly abandoned in January, 2015 when major donors threatened to pull their support.  However, the lunacy of leadership to pursue such a path in a United Methodist Church university seems to follow the pattern of self-destruction pursued by the post-modern promoters of the dogma of tolerance. Tolerance is cheered as the path to world peace, but it has dragged Duke University, much of the church, and our nation to the brink of the nihilistic leap off the cliff of self-destruction into the morass of meaninglessness.

But what if Islam really is the enemy? What if our attempts at inclusiveness, understanding, and opportunity toward Islam are fundamentally flawed?  What if the god of Islam really is a spiritual force for darkness, ruin, and destruction–not peace?  What if Islam’s goal really is the total destruction of the freedoms and liberties which have been the hallmark of the American experience? What if Islam and its god really are the enemy–the great Satan?

Is bin Laden wining?