and every man’s hand against him. He shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.

(Genesis 16:12)

In the film version of Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, there is a memorable line that is much to my purpose in this post.

Weary with toil, sick with grief, heart stretched to the breaking point between the call of fear and duty, Frodo is standing alone beside a river, rehearsing the words of a recent conversation with Gandalf.

“I wish the ring had never come to me; I wish none of this had ever happened,” said Frodo.

To which Gandalf replied, “So do all who live to see times like these. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

And so it is today.

Though we could wish it otherwise, once again the spirit of Ishmael is abroad in the world. Wild, angry, hostile to every man, it requires, alas, that every man of good will should respond and raise his hand against it.

I wrote the following essay to help Christians do that very thing. For again, the battle is upon us, and like it or not, we must equip ourselves to fight: for the souls of Muslim people, for the souls of those whom they seek to enslave, for the preservation of our way of life, and for the glory of the one true and living God.

Hopefully, we will not have to fight with bombs and bullets. But most assuredly, we will have to fight with truth, spoken in love.

Here, then, is a brief summary of the Islamic worldview. I offer it to assist you in understanding the gist of Islam, and also to suggest some ways in which we all might be able to help our Muslim neighbors experience the glorious liberty of the sons of God . . . and peace in the presence of those who would dearly love to dwell with them as brethren.

To read the essay, please click here.