Q: You are familiar with what happened here in Orlando, Florida at Pulse, the gay bar. What happened is the Islam community took a page add in the Orlando Sentinel apologizing and said they had nothing to do with that shooting. Part of the add went, “We affirm that the mass murder that took the lives of so many innocent people was a vicious aggressor whose actions do not represent Islamic values. The Qur’an says, ‘Do not be brutal or commit aggression, for surely God does not love aggressors’ (Surah 2:190)” Are they missing the part where the Qur’an says that all people must be converted to Islam and the teachings of Muhammad, and that all those who do not believe in him will be either eliminated or killed? Isn’t that too part of what Islam teaches?

Hank Hanegraaff: Well, absolutely. I think what’s important to realize is that you really have two Qur’ans as opposed to one. You have a “Meccan” Qur’an and you have a “Medinian” Qur’an. When Muhammad was in Mecca, he was a struggling itinerate preacher. He had a very long road to hoe. As a result of being a struggling preacher, he said things—part of the Qur’an—that were peaceful at the time because he was in a great minority. He had very few followers. When you get to Medina, Muhammad was a bloodthirsty warlord. Therefore, the tenor of what he communicated was far different from when he was a struggling preacher in Mecca.

So, you have two Qur’ans. You can pick and choose between the two, but if you want to know what Islam is all about, conceding that there are peaceful Muslims, you can never concede that Islam is a religion of peace. It has always advanced by the sword.

If you look at the history of Christianity it has advanced by the Word not the sword. You don’t find suicide bombers in the Christian faith. If you do, they are an aberration.

Inevitably, when you hear of a suicide bombing, you can immediately deduce that it must be Islamic. The fact remains that all of history has been a history of violent jihad within Islam. Look, for example, at Muhammad’s life and then the four Caliphs that followed him, a twenty-nine-year reign collectively. These were very violent years whereby Islam advanced by the sword. Look at the Umayyad Caliphate, again a bloody one, if there ever was one. The Abbasid Caliphate, often times considered the greatest of all of the Muslim caliphates, advanced by the sword. Look at the Ottoman or Turkish Empire throughout the world, and you find violence, destruction, and death. In some cases, there was complete genocide. Now you have the Islamic State following in the footsteps of previous Caliphates, calling themselves a Caliphate, wanting to unite all of Islam under their ghastly reign, and they are inspiring a whole host of people based not on some weird radical theology, but on the essence of what was taught to them and modeled for them by their leader Muhammad, modeled for them in the Qur’an, the Al-Hadith, the Surah, the Sunna, Sharia law, and interpreted even by those today who are the experts.

You find nothing in the history of Islam but a legacy that either says that you submit, and if you happen to live in a Muslim country then you become a dhimmi, which is a proposition whereby you are inferior and you have to pay a protection racket to stay alive, or you say the Shahada, which is the means of saying, “I have just converted to Islam,” or you face the sword. Those are the three options you have. What Muhammad taught and what Islam has always taught is that there are only two houses—the house of Islam and the house of war. If you’re not part of the house of Islam, you’re part of the house of war.

Now do I concede that there are many Muslims that do not understand their own legacy, their own history? Of course. But, this is very akin to what you ultimately put your trust in. The founder of Christianity or the founder of Islam, as two primary sources. You have the two fastest growing religions in the world, although Islam now is the fastest growing religion in the world. If you look at the legacy of Christ, He told to put up your sword, if you advanced by the sword, you will die by the sword (Matt. 26:52). Muhammad did exactly the opposite, beheading Jews—very much like the Islamic State does today. Calling People of the Book the vilest of all creatures (Surah 98:6).

There are Muslims that know what they’re doing, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) is a great example. They are simply playing off the ignorance of people within the American community who think that Islam is a religion of peace. It isn’t even a religion in the Western sanitized sense of the word. It is a socio-political economic system that rides on the rails of Sharia, and in the process subjugates people. Look at how women are subjugated under Islam and wonder how Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton can speak of Islam in breathless terms with soaring rhetoric. You have Obama denouncing Scripture, but revering the Qur’an, and you find in that there is either duplicity or ignorance. I don’t know which but one or the other. This kind of duplicity is being communicated over and over again, particularly in the wake of the kinds of tragedies experienced in Orlando.

For further study, please see the following:

Will the Real Islam Please Stand Up? (David Wood)

Jihad, Jizya, and Just War (David Wood)

Muhammad and Messiah: Comparing the Central Figures of Islam and Christianity (David Wood)

The Rise of the American Jihadist (David Wood)

Ambiguous Islam (John Ferrer)

Submit or Die: The Geostrategic Jihad of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda (Part One) (Charles Strohmer)

Submit or Die: The Geostrategic Jihad of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda (Part Two) (Charles Strohmer)

Did Muhammad Believe in Women’s Rights? (Mary Jo Sharp)

Blog adapted from the July 8, 2016 Bible Answer Man broadcast.