ISIS continues its murderous march across Syria and Iraq, committing genocide on the Yazidis and the few Christians who are left. This week they warned America, “We will drown all of you in blood.” There is no ambiguity in that threat. They punctuated their declaration by sawing the head off infidel American journalist James Foley and posting the video for everyone in the U.S. to see. What is a Christian nation like the U.S. to do? The problem with the U.S. intervening anywhere in the Muslim world is that there are no good guys to back. There is no side that is worth helping, no side which even remotely shares our values of religious liberty and civil rights. None. Already in Iraq it’s impossible to tell we were even there, and Afghanistan will be the same. Muslim nations cannot be helped, they can only be stopped.
So here’s what we as a Christian nation can do.
1. Give asylum to persecuted Christians in Muslim lands. As a Christian nation, we should use American resources where we can to extricate persecuted Christians from Muslim countries and grant them asylum in the United States. Churches in America can be asked to step up and sponsor Christians who need refuge on our shores so that there will be no cost to taxpayers. Instead, we have delegated the selection of refugees to the United Nations and they are sending us mostly followers of Islam rather than followers of Christ. It’s time we start making those decisions ourselves.
2. Make Israel’s border our red line. We should only intervene militarily if ISIS attacks an embassy, which is sovereign U.S. soil and thus demands some kind of proportional response, or attacks Israel. And if ISIS attacks Israel, our one true ally in the Middle East, we should hit ISIS with everything we’ve got. That’s where we should draw red lines: around our embassies and on Israel’s border. Until then, we have no realistic choice but to let Syria, Iraq, and ISIS sort things out however they choose. In the meantime, we should not be weakening our military, as our current president is doing, but building it up so that we are fully prepared when that day comes. The only U.S. dollars we should spend in Muslim countries should be in support of mission organizations that are taking the light of the gospel to these darkened corners of the world. Likewise, we should support stateside missions whose goal is to evangelize Muslims who have legally migrated to our shores. Each misguided Muslim is made in the image of God and deserves an opportunity to hear the truth.
3. Immediately suspend further Islamic immigration. We must take ISIS at its word and start dealing rigorously with Islam on our own shores. (A banner was seen in Ferguson, MO this week emblazoned with the phrase “ISIS is here.”) Over 100 Americans are currently waging jihad in Syria and Iraq. They must under no circumstances be allowed back into the United States. Radical Islam is like Ebola. It must be quarantined to protect the cultural and spiritual health of our society. Some countries are refusing to allow any immigration from the African countries where Ebola has broken out, on the simple but entirely reasonable premise that they can’t know for sure who is and is not a carrier.
And so we must bottle up Islam in Islamic lands and contain it there. It’s imperative for the U.S. to suspend Islamic immigration entirely. Most Muslims do not want to kill us. The problem is that we have no sure way to identify the Muslims we have to worry about from the ones we don’t. We must therefore be careful with them all. And we should do as New York City did for a decade and surveill every existing mosque in America to thwart terrorist plans before they can be hatched.
As Thomas Jefferson said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. For the sake of our freedom and security, our vigilance at this time in history must be directed toward militant Islam.
