ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which also goes by the acronym ISIL or just the name Islamic State, is threatening to commit terrorist acts on U.S. soil as they behead captured Western aid workers and journalists, some of whom are U.S. citizens. UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday that that will only strengthen the resolve of the UK, U.S., and other coalition forces in opposing these radical Islamists in Syria and Iraq. ISIS has already taken control of much of northern Iraq and northern and eastern Syria in an effort to establish a “caliphate” there. It is reminiscent of the geo-political landscape in the Middle East during the early centuries of Islam.
Ever since 9/11, the U.S. government has increased its efforts to search for and root out Islamic radicals here in our country who are sympathetic to ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and other Islamic terrorist organizations. For instance, the U.S. White House has scheduled a meeting of specialists for later this year to discuss the problem. And the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, is undertaking a spasmodic tour of various U.S. cities seeking to partnership with local leaders for the purpose of stopping such homegrown Islamic radicalism. Johnson says, “We can’t allow youth to fall prey to ISIL’s ideology. We need to provide them an alternative to re-channel their hopes and re-channel their passions.”
Indeed, but you have to fight ideology with ideology. Yesterday, Secretary Johnson met with local leaders in Dublin, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus and home to a significant Muslim community. Hossam Musa, iman of Dublin’s Noor Islamic Cultural Center, suggested that Mr. Johnson’s government agency employ Islamic scholars to thwart ISIS’s rhetoric and supposedly their use of the Qur’an. Musa says, “How do we beat ISIL?… You beat them at their own game.” He means countering their ideological arguments, some of which are religious.
Mr. Saqr, the youth director at Dublin’s Noor Islamic Cultural Center also made an interesting suggestion. He proposed that Homeland Security offer a monetary prize to volunteers to write the best message that counters the ISIS message. But the U.S. has never done anything like these suggestions by Mr. Musa and Mr. Saqr because of our doctrine of the separation of church and state. Thus, the U.S. government does not respond to religious rhetoric by its opponents such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL. I think that is a mistake. Remember “G.I. Jane” during WWII? I think we need an “Uncle Sam” who responds to this violent rhetoric with some words of wisdom if not trying to counter this nonsense about wooing young Muslim men into such violence by promising them 72 virgins and whatever in heaven immediately when they forfeit their lives. That is strong impetus for these naive young men to commit suicide, or else “fight for God” as the Qur’an often says. But if they knew that they were not going directly to heaven, they might think twice about forfeiting their lives so easily.
But as I hinted in a recent post, the Qur’an is part of the problem. It tells Muslims concerning “infidels” to “strike off their heads” (8:12). I don’t read about moderate, peace-loving Muslims who oppose such radicalism in their religion, addressing these troubling verses in their sacred text. Like Judaism and Christianity with the Bible, Islam is supposed to be based on the Qur’an. These Islamic radicals claim they are the ones who are faithful to the Qur’an, not those Muslims who oppose them. How about leaders of the recent Twitter hashtag, “Not in My Name,” responding by addressing these Qur’an texts. (For a substantial list of such texts in the Qur’an which instruct Muslims to exercise violence, see my September 24, 2014, post entitled “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”) Maybe some have, and I don’t know about it. If so, such a response by moderate Muslims is not getting into the mainstream media. I would think our U.S. media would welcome it.
See my April 4, 2014, post entitled “Are We Doing Enough About Islamic Suicide Bombers?” Therein, and in another post, I argue that religious Jews and Christians are partly responsible for the common Muslim view of the afterlife: the soul is immortal and that upon death the souls of the faithful go immediately to heaven to be with God, experience conscious bliss, and enjoy rewards there for eternity. That’s what most Christians believe, and I believed it for about twenty-five years because, like most Christians, that’s what my church taught me. But then I undertook a deep study of this subject in the Bible and concluded that that is not what the Bible teaches. Rather, the Old Testament teaches often and clearly that at death all human souls go Sheol, which is “the place of the dead.” Sheol appears 67 times in the Hebrew Bible. The Greeks believed in the same concept, calling this place of the dead “Hades.”
Jesus certainly did not believe in the immortality of the soul, an idea that originated with Greek philosophers centuries before Jesus lived. When Pharisees challenged Jesus to do a sign proving he was a prophet of God, he said, “And evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster so for three days and three nights and the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12.40 NRSV). As here, Jesus often called himself “the Son of Man.” His mention of three days and nights refer to his interim time period between his imminent death on Good Friday and resurrection on the third day later, on Easter Sunday. And his expression, “in the heart of the earth,” can mean nothing other than that his soul would be in the center of the earth, which is where the Old Testament implies that Sheol is located.
The most prominent Old Testament text about resurrection of the human body is Daniel 12.2. In the NRSV, an angel says to Daniel concerning the end of the age, “But at that time your people [faithful Israel] shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” The angel concludes his message to Daniel, who by now was quite aged, by saying, “But you, go your way and rest; you shall rise for your reward at the end of the days” (v. 13). The angel meant that when Daniel died his soul would be at “rest,” that is, asleep as he said in v. 2. Then he would “awake” at the end of days. Such language militates against the Greek notion of the immortality of the soul. For further reading, see the classic book on this subject by Jewish, New Testament scholar Alan F. Segal entitled Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (Doubleday, 2004, 800 pp.). He thoroughly shows from history that all Christian leaders and theologians of the early centuries opposed the Greek notion of the immortality of the soul and claimed that it was the antithesis of resurrection of the human body. Indeed, when the Apostle Paul preached at Athens, Greece, he spoke of the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 17.31). Luke then reports, “When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this'” (v. 32).
Thus, Jews and Christians did like many religious people do; they were influenced by other religions and philosophies. They abandoned the biblical, Hebrew teaching of the afterlife, that the soul goes down to Sheol to sleep and await resurrection, and embraced the Greek teaching that the soul is immortal and that upon death righteous souls go to heaven to enjoy conscious bliss.
So, I think the U.S. government should at least oppose these Islamic terrorist organizations by publicly stating that ancient Judaism and Christianity did not espouse the concept of the immortality of the soul and that it is debatable whether or not the Bible affirms this teaching.
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