Retired Pastor James McConnell is waiting to see if his next
sermon will be given from a prison pulpit. His crime? The 79-year-old pastor,
speaking at the church he founded in Belfast, Ireland, preached a sermon on 1
Timothy 2:5: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the
man Christ Jesus.” Pastor McConnell says he wrote that sermon to protest “… the
terrible injustice done to a young Muslim woman named Miriam Ibrahim who was
converted to Christianity and for marrying a Christian man. Miriam Ibrahim was
pregnant and was to receive eighty lashes and possibly martyrdom.” McConnell
stated in part of his sermon, “Islam’s notions about God, about humanity, about
salvation are vastly different from the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Islam
is heathen. Islam is satanic. Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell.” As has
become in other parts of the world, it could very well befall us in America.
Speaking ill of Islam may be deemed hate speech and punishable by fine and
imprisonment and in some cases forfeiture of one’s life. Is not Islam’s ideas
about God, humanity and salvation dissimilar from that of Christianity?
But increasingly,
speaking out against Islam from a biblical position is coming into conflict
with hate-speech legislation in many Western nations, to include America. The
U.N. Human Rights Council has even adopted a resolution that "defamation
of religion ... leads to violations of human rights" and stated that
"... freedom of expression ... should be exercised with responsibility and
may therefore be subject to limitations" expressly deploring "the use
of the print, audio-visual and electronic media, including the Internet ... to
incite ... xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination toward Islam.
..." How about prejudice and
intolerance toward Christianity?
No comments:
Post a Comment