Prayer at the Paris Great Mosque, France By Julian/stock.adobe.com.
Israel has confirmed that a body extracted by their forces in a southern Gaza tunnel is that of Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar. The brother of Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, he was killed in a May 13 airstrike as he hid under the European Hospital in Khan Younis.
“We found a military base under a hospital,” said the company commander who discovered the body. His statement forms a descriptive metaphor for my article this morning.
According to a new report profiled by journalist Simone Rodan-Benzaquen in the Free Press, the Muslim Brotherhood is building an extensive infrastructure in Europe. This radical movement seeks to impose Islamic law through schools, charities, and religious networks, creating “ideological bases under hospitals,” as it were. It claims to reject violence, but it has extremist offshoots such as Hamas and often blurs the line between nonviolence and radicalization.
Founded in 1928, the Brotherhood views Islam as a total system. And, as Rodan-Benzaquen warns, “It is coming for all of the West.”
“Reaching far beyond the mosque”
Rodan-Benzaquen’s article tells us how:
The Brotherhood has methodically expanded its presence across [Europe]—embedding itself in local communities through a network of mosques, charities, educational institutions, and civic associations, all designed to promote its vision of political Islam under the cover of religious outreach.
In France alone, the Brotherhood’s network comprises 280 mosques. Every Friday, some ninety-one thousand people worship in these spaces. The movement also controls or influences twenty-one private schools and 815 Quranic schools. According to Rodan-Benzaquen, over sixty-six thousand minors in these schools are “taught to see themselves as part of a global Muslim community in moral and cultural opposition to Western secularism.”
For example, they have distributed texts that praise Sharia law as superior to man-made law (such as democracy), denounce interfaith marriage, and vilify Jews. The Brotherhood has also established stores, youth centers, job training programs, matchmaking services, Islamic microfinance initiatives, and charities that collectively form parallel structures of authority for Muslims to utilize. Their larger purpose is to elevate religious law over that of the country and impose social pressure on Muslims to comply.
Their new frontier is digital, with waves of online influencers trained in Brotherhood institutions and fluent in grievance politics who are focusing on younger audiences. Rodan-Benzaquen warns that they are “reaching far beyond the mosque, preaching on screens in palms and in sitting rooms all across the globe.”
Qatar and Turkey have been funding and supporting the movement and its affiliated networks. Its larger purpose is global cultural and political domination for Islam.
Fertile soil for immorality
One reason the Brotherhood’s ideological strategy is so effective is that it encounters so little cultural resistance. Not only has public discourse been accommodating under the banner of multiculturalism, but the West has long abandoned any cohesive worldview to oppose it.
When secularized society has no way to separate truth from falsehood, labeling both as subjective fictions, how are we to counter the truth claims of the Muslim Brotherhood or any other worldview? Our ideological “soil” is fertile ground for any agenda organized and incentivized enough to take advantage of the opportunity.
The “sexual revolution” that has normalized pornography and premarital and extramarital sex while redefining and trivializing marriage has been possible only in a world where biblical morality was first marginalized. Continued public support for abortion and the growing embrace of euthanasia across the country are possible only because the sanctity of all life is ignored or rejected.
In each case, what seems attractive at first to a post-Christian culture is destructive to our souls and our collective future. “Military bases under hospitals” is an apt metaphor for our day.
Imparting “the very life of God”
The good news is that we’ve been here before. The first-century Roman Empire was at least as hedonistic as American society today. Unwanted children were abandoned; unwanted elderly people were euthanized; every kind of sexual immorality was normalized and practiced. Like the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating Europe and the West, foreign powers and movements threatened the Empire from within.
Then came Pentecost, and the God who created the universe began living inside humans by his indwelling Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16).
He not only forgave fallen people for their sins, he set them “free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2) and made them his “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). They became a new and different kind of people (1 Peter 2:5), demonstrating a character so different from the fallen culture (Galatians 5:22–23) that others could tell “they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). And over time they built the mightiest spiritual movement in history and transformed the Western world.
Billy Graham wrote:
When we give our lives to Jesus and trust him as our Savior and Lord, the Spirit renews our souls and brings the life of God into us. We have joy and peace, and we have a new direction to our lives because the Spirit of God has imparted to us the very life of God (my emphasis).
When “we have all that is needed”
Now it falls to us, as with our first-century sisters and brothers, to live out “the very life of God” in every way we can. First, by submitting every day to the Spirit and giving our lives to his leading and purpose (Ephesians 5:18). Second, by leading everyone we influence to join us in the abundant life found only in Christ (John 10:10). And third, by declaring and defending biblical truth and morality in a culture desperate for light in its darkness (1 Peter 3:15–16).
I remember touring Carlsbad Caverns years ago. After our group descended into the heart of the cave system, our guide had us sit on a rock ledge and then extinguish our flashlights. The darkness was so absolute as to be tangible. I could not see the hand in front of my face. Then he turned on his flashlight, and my eyes were drawn instinctively to its light.
So it is with the light of the Spirit—the darker the room, the more powerful, tangible, and attractive he becomes. A. W. Tozer reminded us:
“When we have the Holy Spirit, we have all that is needed to be all that God desires us to be.”
If Jesus is your Savior, you have all of the Spirit.
Does he have all of you?
Quote for the day:
“The Holy Spirit transforms and renews us, creates harmony and unity, and gives us courage and joy for mission.” —Pope Francis
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