This is the final segment of a four-part interview with Rev. Elijah Abraham. (To see the first three segments, click here, here, and here.) Rev. Abraham was born and raised as a Muslim in Iraq, but converted to Christianity when he found that Islam did not answer his most pressing religious questions. He was interviewed for The New American by James Heiser.
The New American: Please define the difference between a “terrorist” and a “jihadist.”
Rev. Elijah Abraham: A terrorist will put a gun to your head in the middle of the night, threaten your life, and steal your possessions. He’s not willing to die for what he wants to accomplish. That’s why we have Saddam Hussein, bin Laden, Chavez, Stalin, and others. They did not kill themselves. They gained their power at the cost of the people they were willing to kill, or massacre by the millions, if they had to. That’s a terrorist.
A jihadist is willing to die for his ideology in order to advance that ideology. That’s a jihadist. That’s why, in America, we don’t know who we are fighting. We don’t know who the enemy is. First, we have not identified that Islam is really an enemy. We have given it the status of a religion. Second, as soldiers of that religion or ideology, if we call them jihadists, our own government, thanks to Obama, has redefined the terms so that we don’t use the term “Islamic terrorist” in our vocabulary anymore. So, Mr. President, what do you want to call them? Attention Deficit Disorder with a gun?
TNA: You are involved with the organization Veterans Against Jihadism. What is its work?
Rev. Abraham: I was approached by a friend of mine, a former Marine Colonel — a wonderful, godly man — and we started talking about it at the end of last year. In February, he invited me to a meeting in the Bronx, New York, to make a presentation about the threat of Islam to the United States. That was the birth of Veterans Against jihadism. Actually, they wanted to call it “Veterans Against Terrorism.” I said, “No, it’s jihadism we are dealing with here.” That’s why I believe George W. Bush did an incredible disservice to the United States when he said that Islam is peaceful and that 19 people hijacked Islam. That drove me nuts when I first heard that.
We launched the Veterans Against jihadism website in April 2010. The purpose is to educate veterans, and the American public in general, about the threat and give documentation about this concern. The emphasis is on being factual, not emotional. The goal is to mobilize veterans — 29 million strong in the United States — to vote this November, to get rid of big government, to get America back and to fight for America, because when the veterans took an oath to protect the Constitution from domestic and foreign enemies, that did not end when they were retired. A veteran is a veteran. Veterans Against Jihadism’s goal is basically to protect the Constitution of the United States, and to protect America from foreign and domestic enemies, and they see jihad and jihadism as a clear and present danger.
TNA: You also connected with Living Oasis Ministries. What is its purpose?
Rev. Abraham: God called me four years ago to start this organization. Our mission is to awaken the American church to the Islamic agenda and meet Islam with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you only talk about Jihad, that will paralyze people with fear, and they will not do anything…. So I go to churches and say, “Here’s the problem, which is Islam, its spirit, its agenda,” and so forth. How do we combat it? With the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because I really believe it’s a battle for the hearts, just as I’ve seen in my life, and in my friends who are former Jihadists: the spirit of God came upon them, and the Word of God changed their lives. If it happened for them, it can happen for any Muslim. But the problem is, the challenge for our ministry is, the American church apathy. What I call “American Christianity,” and I do speak out against “American Christianity,” is something I call upon them to repent of, and to return to biblical Christianity. “American Christianity” allowed American [secular, worldly] culture to influence the Church instead of the Church influencing the culture. The American churches stopped being the light of the world and the salt of the earth. And that is because of the influence of the American culture.
We are at the crossroads again because of the Islamic spiritual attack on America, on the Church, and on our families in the Church. And the churches are silent — deathly silent — and that really bothers me because as preachers we are prophets of God to proclaim the Word of God and speak out against injustice and speak out against forces that are coming to attack our families and our religious liberty and our freedoms.
To be the light of the world is to shed light on evil and to expose the evil, so those who are trapped in that darkness will see the light and come to Christ. To be the salt [of the earth] is to create thirst in the people who really hunger for righteousness and for God. Our congregations have stopped being the salt and the light. They have become very materialistic, [with] close to a secular humanist mentality. They have put a wall of individualism around them. Political correctness seeped into our evangelism, as well: “I don’t want to offend him….” I say, “No, offend him. He’s dying and going to hell. What are you talking about?” There has come an entertainment attitude into our American churches. But you do have some remnant. Praise God for the remnant; I’ve been in some of these churches and they are doing wonderful things. But that is such a small minority. The majority of American churches are filled with a “Churchianity” … huge mega churches. And even small churches want to imitate the mega churches, so they start adopting all the "seeker sensitive" worship approaches, and so forth.
So our ministry is, first of all, a watchman-on-the-wall ministry to expose false doctrine, and expose methodologies that are now being used by missionaries and mission agencies…. These are mission agencies that have “contextualized” and go through the process of Islamization of the Gospel. They say, “Yes, we worship the same God with the same Jesus of the cross, same Jesus of the Bible. And it’s okay for missionaries to identify themselves as Muslims. There’s the “Jesus mosque” movement out there in the Muslim world. And here in the United States and around the world there are seminars called, “Jesus in the Koran.” All of that is heresy, and I’m speaking out against it, as well.
TNA: What, then, are we to say about Christians who are engaged in these syncretistic worship services where you’ve got Christians and Jews and Muslims all together and praying? The Yankee Stadium “Prayer for America” Memorial in September 2001, is one that comes to mind as an example. What do we say about the faith of those who are engaged in such actions?
Rev. Abraham: The question is: Are they engaged in meetings like this as U.S. citizens to protect the Constitution? I have no problem with that. But when they come under the umbrella that we worship the same God? No we don’t. That we all have the same faith? No. Jesus was very exclusive. He said “I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.” It’s exclusive. I can’t sugarcoat that.
TNA: Some try to defend it as “serial prayer”: “I pray to my god, then this fellow prays to his….”
Rev. Abraham: I don’t give one precious moment of my time to people like that. I come from a completely different worldview. The only thing I have as far as Jesus is concerned, as far as God is concerned, is the Scripture. I see the Scripture in black and white. I don’t see it in gray. I don’t have the luxury to see it in gray and sugarcoat what the Scriptures say. When Jesus says, “I am the way,” it’s exclusive. There’s no sitting on the fence. I will visit with a Muslim, I will love a Muslim, I will share the Gospel with a Muslim, but I’m going to tell him, “We worship a different God.” And I don’t have to tell him. As I am sharing this with him, he’s going to acknowledge to me, “That’s not the same God.”
TNA: What do you believe would be the three most important books for a Christian to read about Islam, its history, and “peaceful jihad”?
Rev. Abraham: There’s a book called The Mosque Exposed by Solomon and Almaqdisi. It’s very good because it explains what the purpose of the mosque is, and every American needs to read that. Also the book Modern Day Trojan Horse — it’s very powerful. There’s a good website to go to for history and apologetics: www.answering-islam.org. There’s also jihadwatch.org and, of course, VAJonline.org.
Related articles:
Idealized Islam: Interview With Rev. Elijah Abraham, Part I
Idealized Islam: Interview With Rev. Elijah Abraham, Part II
Idealized Islam: Interview With Rev. Elijah Abraham, Part III
