Too ashamed to admit that it even exists...

For those who are circumcised do not even keep the Law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh. (Galatians 6:13)

(Tim, w/thanks to David W.) Like Joseph Smithism, Mohammedanism is not all it's cracked up to be. The best way to understand it may be to think of an heretical polar opposite to dispensationalism. With Islam, it's not the Old, but the New Testament that's thrown out. And yet it's not the Old Testament left intact, but the Old Testament eviscerated of the Fatherhood of God, with only a terribly perverted law and justice remaining.

There's no mercy; there are no antitypes pointing to the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world. There's no Suffering Servant, no promise of a Redeemer.

Islam is the Judaizers run amuck...

with no ministry of the Holy Spirit to apply God's grace to our hearts leading us to repentance and faith, and no power of the Holy Spirit to make us holy.

So, we're left with the morality of men who fight their enemies by blowing their women and children to smithereens with suicide bombs; who replace the women in bondage at home with young effeminate boys who dance dressed as women and then, later in the evening, are taken to a hotel room where they're gang-raped. The practice is called "bachabaze" and this is what the BBC reports concerning its prevalence in Afganistan:

According to Abdulkhabir Uchqun, an MP from northern Afghanistan, the tradition is not just alive, but steadily growing. "Unfortunately it is on the increase in almost every region of Afghanistan. I asked local authorities to act to stop this practice but they don't do anything," he says. "Our officials are too ashamed to admit that it even exists."

Hear me on this: it is the privilege of the officers of Christ's church to see and discipline such sin in the knowledge that, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. In other words, the moral of this news item is not that perversion is at the heart of Islam, but that perversion is at the heart of man--every man everywhere across all ages--and only the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ is able to bring it into the light, forgive, and remove it. In the power of the Holy Spirit.

Thank you, Heavenly Father, for bringing us to the Cross and washing us in our Savior's precious blood.