Islam is fundamentally a religion centered on law and divine commands, where Allah is unknowable and Muslims are servants who must obey God's rules without personal relationship, while Christianity is centered on love, with God being love and offering a personal relationship through Jesus Christ; this fundamental difference shapes their political approaches, with Islam seeking to enforce Sharia law at all levels of society while Christianity seeks to create conditions where people can freely love God and neighbor.
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Church And State Australian Summit IX | Session 1 - Islam
Added:Well, welcome everybody.
If we can um shut down the stalls now and encourage everybody to grab a seat.
We're about to start. I think we're already live. Are we? We are. Hello to everybody uh on YouTube who's watching.
So, we're actually live streaming for free the first session today and tomorrow only. Um and everybody who's bought a ticket to the summit is getting a copy of all the videos for free. And then we're actually giving uh the videos from every session to people who are ongoing supporters of church and state.
So we think this is a $200 conference and teaching all day long. It certainly costs a fair bit to put on. Um and so we're just encouraging people to become partners with the ministry to get access to seven twohour sessions. Uh and that's from as little as $5 a month. So, if you know anybody who's missed out, let them know they can just become a supporter of church and state to to do that. Uh well, uh if you have the opportunity to move closer to the front and center, please do. Um we uh want to just create lots of energy. I know nobody likes moving once you've got your seats, but the front row is not reserved. Um and only the naughty kids sit up the back.
Uh but as you do that, let's um stand and sing the Australian national anthem.
[music] >> [music] >> Australian [music] [singing] let us rejoice for we are [singing] one and free with golden soil [music] wealth to our home is [singing] good by the sea.
>> [music] >> A land abound natures gives all beauty rich and [music] in [singing] his pace. Let every saint of birth Australia be here [music] [singing] and let us sing.
If you can stay standing, we're just going to read a scripture and open in prayer.
Can anybody guess what scripture I want to read?
>> 1 Kings chapter 3 verse 9.
The most political prayer and guide for democracy that you will ever see.
Solomon prays and says to God, "So give your servant a discerning mind so he can make judicial decisions for your people and distinguish right from wrong.
Otherwise, no one is able to make judicial decisions for this great nation of yours." And everybody who prays for political wisdom said, "Heavenly Father, we lean entirely on your wisdom, your mercy, and your grace for the opportunity as well as the obligation before us to as voters administrate justice and rule this great nation of yours along with 26 million neighbors with whom we share this responsibility and privilege. Give us wisdom, God. Give us understanding. Give us discernment so we can clearly and boldly and courageously and carefully discern the difference between right and wrong. We ask for your wisdom throughout this conference. Let us not go ahead of you. Let us not fall behind you. We pray that we would hear what the spirit of God would teach us in this moment. We pray the church in Australia would hear what you would teach her today so that we [music] can arise and be the prophetic voice that you have called us to be as one people united under the lordship of Jesus Christ and the flag of this great nation that you have called us to and and given us life in in Jesus name we commit everything to you. May the speakers speak with wisdom and articulation and the uncction of the Holy Spirit. We pray that the listener would hear, not choosing offense, but choosing to listen and be guided by the word of God, the authority of scripture, and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. And all the free people who agreed said, "Amen." Amen. Well, if you would like to sit, if you're more comfortable, feel free to. We're going to have some worship now. So, if you would like to stand, feel free to. Uh we are going to crown Jesus as king because he is king of kings and the wise people choose to confess it today instead of waiting for that beautiful day when he comes and rules in triumph. Amen.
Big thank you to Amos for [music] leading worship today. There's a story to tell about our worship team. Um but God's done some miraculous provision of that. [music] But um Amos, thank you for leading us in worship this morning.
Let's have congregational worship where the congregation is the center where the voice and the most instrument most attentive thing that God wants to hear is your voice um worshiping him exalting his lordship. Amen. Amen. Thank you brother.
>> How [music and singing] great is our God sing with thee. How great is [singing] our God?
[music] [music] You are a [singing] great God. How great is our [singing] God. Sing with me. Sing with me. [music] How great is our [singing] God? And all will see all will see how [music and singing] great how great how great is [singing] our God.
Sing the splendor [singing and music] of the splender of the king [singing] [music] clothed in majesty.
You are clothed in majesty.
So let the earth rejoice. Let [music] all the earth rejoice.
Let all the He [singing] wraps himself in light. He wraps himself in light and darkness tries to hide.
Darkness [singing and music] tries to hide.
Trembles at his voice and trembles at his voice. Trembles [singing] at his voice. So we say, "How great is our God."
Sing with me. [singing] Sing with me how great you are. A great God, our God. And all will see, [singing] all will see how how great [singing] is our God. [screaming] Mighty, AWESOME, highly lifted up. How great is our [singing] God. Our God. Sing with me. Sing with thee. How great is [singing and music] our God. There is no one like him. Oh, we see how he is [singing and music] our God.
You're the name above all names. You are worthy to be praised. You are worthy.
[music] The [singing] song my heart will sing. So my [singing] heart will sing.
How great [singing] [music] is our God.
You're the name [music] above all names.
You're the [singing] name above all names. You are worthy of our praise.
[singing] Worthy of our song. My heart will sing. Heart will sing.
How great is our God.
So we declare you are great. How [singing] great is [music] our God.
Sing with me. You are mighty Lord. How great you are great in [music] this country.
So we'll [singing] see. Oh we'll see how great how great.
Yes.
Hello. Oh, does anybody else experience like a lot of like hot >> soul, [screaming] myior [singing and music] God to thee, [music] how great [singing] thou art.
[music] How great thou are [singing] [music] sings my [singing] soul, my savior God to thee.
How [singing] great [music] thou are.
[singing] How great thou [singing] are.
[music] Oh Lord my God. [music] When [singing] I in [music] awome wonder [singing] [music] consider [singing] all the worst [singing] thy hands [music] have made.
I see the [singing and music] stars.
I hear the [music and singing] glory thunder.
Thy power [singing] throughout [music] the [singing] universe is [music] made.
>> [singing] >> Sing then sing my soul my savior [singing] God to thee.
How [singing] great thou are.
You are [singing] great Lord. How great thou are. [music and singing] It sings my soul.
It sings my soul.
My [singing] savior God to thee.
How great thou art.
[singing] How great thou [music and singing] are.
All the [singing] earth will shout your praise. Our hearts will cry. These bones will sing.
Great [music] are you, Lord.
All [singing and music] the earth will shout your praise. Our hearts will cry and [singing] these bones will sing.
Great [music] are you, Lord.
All the earth and [singing] all the earth [music] will shout your praise. Our hearts will cry and these bones [singing and music] will sing. Singing great for you. Are you Lord, [singing] it's your blood. It's your [music] breath in our [singing] lungs.
Soon we pour [music] out our praise. We pour out our praise. your praise in [music] our lives. [singing] We pour out our praise to you. [music] It's your praise, your brethren, our lives.
So we pour out our praise, pour [singing] out our praise to you, to [music] you, to you, your breath in our love.
So we pour it out, Lord.
to all the [music] Lord.
Great [singing] are you Lord. [music] [singing] Oh great are you Lord.
Great are you. Mighty [music] [singing] awesome King of Kings. Great are [singing] you Lord. [music] Great are you, Lord. [singing] All the earth said, all [music and singing] the earth will shout your praise. Our hearts [singing and music] will cry. These bones will sing. Praise are you Lord all the earth and all the earth.
Shout in our hearts will cry. [music] These [singing] bones will sing. Great are you Lord.
>> [bell] >> It's your breath in our [music] lungs.
So we pour [singing] out our praise.
[music] Pour it out. We pour it out. We pour it out.
[music] We see great are you Lord.
Our [singing] hearts cry out. You are great. You are mighty.
Yes, you are great [music] are you Lord.
pass [music and singing] the [singing] water [music] so long a path to me. [music] You are [music and singing] desire [music] to worship [music] as the dear [singing] land.
Dear [music] for the water soul [singing] my soul longs I [music] [music] >> [music] >> You [singing] alone are my strength and my shield.
To you alone [singing] may my [music] spirit.
[bell] You alone [singing] [music] are my desire [music] and alone to worship.
[music] You alone, you [singing] alone are my strength and my [singing] [music] shield.
to you alone [singing] may my spirit.
[music] You [music] alone [singing] are my heart desire and to [music] worship.
and [music] peace like a river. [music] [singing] [music] When [singing] sorrows like [music] sing [singing] whatever [music and singing] my love [music] thou [singing] hast me to It [singing] is well.
It is well with my [singing] soul.
It is well.
It is [music] with my [singing] soul.
with my soul. [music] It [singing] is well.
It is well [singing and music] with my soul.
It is [music] well [singing] [music] my soul Jesus.
Lord, we just thank you for your presence. We thank you for your Holy Spirit. We thank you for the unity of the saints in Jesus Christ that from near and far, from all kinds of denominations and distances, we come together today to crown you king and to learn about your kingdom.
We worship you. We exalt you. You are enthroned [music] in majesty above and we fix our gaze on you. Let us see more of Jesus. Let us lift Jesus name higher and higher. [music] And Lord, we pray that as we do so with truth and boldness in our preaching that you would draw all men unto you. We thank you for this worship and your anointing of the Holy Spirit. And we just uh pray that Australia would be saved. God bless Australia. Amen. Amen.
You may be seated.
Thank you, Amos. So Amos uh and I have been conspiring together for a while.
He's he's got a great worship band and they love church and stage and just come and donate their time so joyfully. And then yesterday they had a death in the family because they were all from uh very close families or all or one big family in the band. And so Amos called me and said everybody but me is out. Um and and so it's really special that Amos is here um this whole weekend and uh and we pray that the Holy Spirit would be a comforter and peace to uh your whole family and friends uh as as they grieve this weekend. So we we will excuse him tonight and he's going to try and rejoin us tomorrow. Um, and I'll tell you more about um the alternate plans that the Holy Spirit had as a backup. Um, which which is very exciting. But, uh, that's a story for tonight. Um, so make sure, by the way, if you're watching this or if you're here and you didn't know, uh, we released 150 free tickets for tonight's gospel service. Uh so we'll be having worship and the testimony of Jamie Zoo uh who is a social media influencer with over 10 million fans uh and followers and he's got a radical conversion story uh which is which is really giving glory to God. Um so invite all your friends and let them know jump on the church and state website and see if there's any tickets left. Um and uh hopefully we can we can give away 150 tickets so that everybody can hear that gospel message in person tonight following which I will interview him and then we will take lots of questions from the audience which we are going to do. This year we're doing something new and that is Q&A after every single session. So, we've actually decided to rob every speaker of five minutes um and put it all together at the end of the session uh so that you can ask them questions and so we can even panel and talk amongst ourselves to tease out an issue uh a little bit more.
Um so we'll see if you don't like it, let me know after the conference and we'll go back to long sessions next year. Um but it's only five minutes. Um it's already a struggle to keep it brief. Uh, but I was sent a video by somebody. When you send me things, I I tend to watch them.
Um, especially if there's a little explanation on why I should, if it's just a link, I I might not see any headline worth clicking on. But uh somebody sent me a link for our first speaker at this conference speaking at a recent Unite the Kingdom rally um hosted by Tommy Robinson in the United Kingdom.
Um or we hope it again becomes the United Kingdom. Um, can we say amen to the prayer in our anthem that Australia would advance one and free? That there would be unity as well as liberty in our great nation. And we pray the same for for our mother country um the United Kingdom, England, Great Britain. Um, and anyway, I I uh managed to reach out to a few friends. Um, and I I got his phone number. He generously agreed to talk to this random bloke from down under who he'd never heard of. Um, understandably.
And uh, and we had a great conversation for a long time. And um, I I found somebody who's exciting to talk to um, and I did a reaction video. You might have seen. I tell you what, it is going off on my Instagram channel. Um, like 50,000 likes or something and like nobody follows me on Instagram and nobody engages with my stuff. It it's I'd be happy if I get 50 likes. Um, but this one, it's all his work, all his preaching in the public square, Parliament Square, literally outside uh in London and uh just preaching the gospel and laying it straight. And this man is on fire and full of the Holy Spirit. and he is going to open our session today which is all about Islam.
England and all of Europe in fact has lessons to teach Australia on this philosophy.
Uh so look let me take up no more of his time. Uh would you please give a really rousing round of applause to welcome Bishop Kai Dua.
[applause] [cheering] Well, a very good morning to you there in Brisbane. I pray that you're all well.
Hallelujah.
And uh yes, I can see you all. Well, you know, when I start the United Kingdom rallies, let me greet you in THE SAME FASHION. BRISBANE, LET ME HEAR YOU.
[screaming] HALLELUJAH. It is a joy and an honor to be with you via video. Uh please forgive my ability to be there. Uh as Dave will probably explain, it's a long way to come, just for two days. Uh I fully intend to join you there in Australia as often as we can. Australia is a nation that has a very special place in my heart. Many people wouldn't know, but my greatuncle was Lord Baleu, who built the Melbourne University Library and served as Churchill's minister of war for your great country. So, uh, I'm looking forward to being there. Uh, I've learned the 11th biatitude of the disciples.
Some of you might know it. It's blessed are the short- winded for they shall be invited back. So aside from greeting everybody and saying thank you for the opportunity to open this year's church and state summit there, let me get straight to it. Uh as I know that this voice and this face is not appeasing to all. Um but it is one that a mother loves. Thanks be to God. So my brothers and sisters, there are moments in history when a nation becomes a mirror, not a mirror in which others admire themselves, a mirror in which others see their future.
The United Kingdom has become such a mirror. And I stand before you today not as a politician seeking votes, nor as a commentator seeking headlines, but as a Christian bishop who loves his country and who loves yours enough to speak plainly. There is a proverb which says, "The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty." The purpose of a warning is not condemnation.
The purpose of a warning is mercy.
When a lighthouse warns the ship of the rocks, it is not being negative.
It is being loving.
And today, my brothers and sisters, I bring you a very dark warning from Great Britain.
Not because Britain is uniquely wicked.
Not even because Britain is uniquely foolish, but because my beloved Great Britain has traveled further down a certain road than many other nations in the Western world. When one nation has already walked into the swamp, wisdom requires others to pay attention to the mud on its boots.
For centuries, Britain was not merely a country that possessed Christianity.
Britain was a country shaped by Christianity.
Our laws bore the fingerprints of scripture. Our institutions assumed the existence of moral truth. Our rulers were accountable to something higher than themselves.
Our liberties grew from the conviction that every man and every woman bears the image of God.
Think of it. the abolition of slavery, the development of parliamentary government, the common law, the the dignity of the individual, the very concept of universal human rights.
These principles did not emerge from nowhere. They emerged from a civilization that was built upon Christian foundations imperfectly.
It was built often inconsistently it was built and I must admit sometimes hypocritically it was built yet undeniably it was built. The roots were Christian.
The trunk was Christian. The fruit was Christian.
And my [clears throat] brothers, my sisters, from those same roots grew Australia.
your legal traditions, your your parliamentary traditions, your understanding of liberty, your conception of justice, your your institutions, your public life.
All of these things emerged from the same civilizational inheritance because Australia and Great Britain are not merely allies. We are branches from the same tree.
And I say this as a warning. If disease appears in one branch, wisdom requires the others to pay attention. See, the great illusion of our age is that civilization can survive the destruction of the beliefs that created it. We have been told that cultures are interchangeable, that traditions are interchangeable, that religions are interchangeable, that that national identities are interchangeable, that all beliefs produce the same social outcomes, that every world view ultimately leads us to the same destination.
But history has always said otherwise.
And reality today says otherwise, too.
and increasingly to the rest of the world. Great Britain now says otherwise because nations are not merely sustained by economics. They are sustained by shared moral assumptions, a shared story, uh a shared inheritance, a a shared understanding of right and wrong, a shared conception of who we are. And when those things disappear, a nation does not become more united. it becomes more fragmented and fragmented societies eventually become fearful societies. Now let me be clear on something. This issue is not directly immigration itself.
Australia and Great Britain have both benefited enorm enormously from migration. People have come from every corner of the world to our great countries and enriched both nations.
Many of them have embraced our values.
Many have strengthened our churches.
Many have become patriots to our great lands. Many have become what we would now call family. See, the Christian gospel itself compels us to recognize the dignity of every human being. For every person is made in the image of God. Every person possesses inherent worth. Every person deserves justice.
Every person deserves charity. Every person deserves the opportunity to flourish. But my brothers, my sisters, you and I know all too well. That is not in question.
The question is something else.
The question is whether a nation can sustain itself when immigration ceases to be ordered and becomes indiscriminate.
When integration becomes optional. When assimilation becomes offensive. When the host culture is taught to apologize for its own existence. And when national confidence collapses. when the majority culture that we have is instructed that its own inheritance is something shameful. And Britain has become a case study in precisely that experiment with radical Islam. And the results are evidently visible. Not through ideology, not through theory, purely through observation.
One of the greatest casualties of the rise of Islam in the United Kingdom has been confidence in Christianity itself.
See, for decades, Britain's political class embraced a strange doctrine. Not Christian tolerance, but absolute intolerance.
They embrace the belief that every claim must be treated as equally true. That every value is equally valid, that that every world view is equally beneficial, that every criticism should be equally forbidden except in the case of Christianity. And this this might sound compassionate. I know it might sound truly enlightened. It might even sound sophisticated.
But believe me, my brothers and sisters, it merely functions like an opiate. It dulls the senses. It numbs discernment.
It weakens our judgment. And eventually, it leaves a civilization incapable of recognizing the threats to itself.
The church, tragically, the church has often drunk deeply from the same cup. Many church leaders in the United Kingdom stopped speaking about truth and began speakingly exclusively about their feelings. They stopped teaching conviction and began teaching accommodation of false gods and false ideologies. They confused kindness with surrender. They confused hospitality with self erasia. They confused love with the abandonment of discernment.
When a church when a church loses confidence in its own gospel, it should not be surprised when society loses confidence in the church as well. See, you've probably seen that across Britain, Christian speech increasingly exists under immense political pressure.
Now, I'm not speaking merely of legal questions. I'm speaking of cultural realities.
Repeatedly, street preachers find themselves reported, challenged, or removed from public spaces. Evangelists are frequently warned to avoid saying anything that could be se perceived as offensive and often arrested. Biblical teaching on Christ as the unique way to salvation is increasingly treated as a form of social aggression. Traditional Christian moral teaching is frequently portrayed as intolerant of other religions.
And in some contexts, concern exists that criticism of certain religious ideas, particularly where Islam is concerned, that generates accusations, controversies, and quite often legal or professional consequences.
The result result is predictable.
See all across the United Kingdom now people are already self censoring.
Pastors have become cowardly and cautious. Evangelists become hesitant to speak the gospel. Churches as we've seen have become all but silent. Now that's not because the gospel has changed. It is because our courage and our conviction has diminished.
When courage diminishes, Christianity retreats from the public life not by force but by imi intimidation from state and from false religions. And meanwhile, Christian festivals that once form part of the national rhythm increasingly become sources of anxiety.
Christmas becomes the winter celebrations. Nativity scenes are now seen as controversial. Public institutions sometimes seek neutral language rather than explicitly Christian language.
The very faith that built the cultural architecture of the nation is treated as one option among many rather than it being treated as the foundation upon which the entire structure of this nation was built. Now this isn't about me directing hostility towards people of other faiths. It is about the fact that we are a civilization that is forgetting itself.
We are a tree that is forgetting its roots. We are a nation that is forgetting its story. A people forgetting why they became free in the first place.
And perhaps for Australia and for the United Kingdom, most concerning of all is the loss of moral confidence.
See, a nation that cannot define itself, cannot defend itself.
A nation that cannot articulate its values, cannot transmit them. A nation that refuses to distinguish between beliefs eventually loses belief altogether. The question is not whether people arriving in a nation will influence that nation. Of course they will. The question is whether that nation possesses enough confidence and strength to influence them far more in return.
Now for generations Britain answered that question with confidence. But today it answers it with cowardice and uncertainty.
and uncertainty is a dangerous foundation for a civilization.
Now, Australia stands at that crossroads. You are not Britain. You're you are not Europe. Your story is unique and it is your own. Yet, as a nation, you face many of the same pressures, the same cultural currents, the same ideological assumptions, the same temptation to surrender your convictions in pursuit of approval. And therefore, you're facing the same choice. Will Australia remain confident in its inheritance, or will it apologize for it and succumb to a false religion? Will Australia continue to recognize the Christian foundations beneath its freedoms? Or will it pretend those foundations do not matter and surrender to a false god? Will Australia preserve a culture capable of integrating newcomers into a shared national story?
Or will it fragment into competing ideologies with no common destination?
See, my brothers, my sisters, these are not merely political questions. They are spiritual questions because every civilization ultimately rests upon what it worships.
My brothers, my sisters, Christianity is not merely a private devotional system.
It is not merely a a collection of religious preferences. It is a truth about reality itself. Christ is not Lord of a church building. Christ is Lord of heaven and earth. Christ is Lord of our history. Christ is Lord of our nations.
Christ is Lord of our parliaments.
Christ is Lord of our courts, Christ is lord over kings and prime ministers.
And wherever his lordship is denied, something else inevitably takes his place. For nature itself abors a vacuum [clears throat] and so does culture.
If Christ is removed from the center, false gods always arrive.
Sometimes the god is ideology. Sometimes the god is identity. Sometimes the god is pleasure. Sometimes the god is state.
But believe me the throne of a nation never remains empty. And the crisis of the west is not just fundamentally demographic.
It is very much spiritual.
See, immigration particularly of this Islamic culture that didn't create Britain's crisis. Britain's crisis began when Britain lost confidence in Britain. When Britain lost confidence in the Christ of Christianity. When Britain ceased believing its own story. When Britain ceased teaching its own inheritance.
when Britain abandoned the faith that has sustained it for centuries.
A civilization that knows who it can integrate others knows who it is that can integrate others successfully. A civilization that has forgotten who it is that struggles to integrate anyone.
So the deeper issue is always spiritual confidence and spiritual confidence can be restored through spiritual renewal.
So this morning, as much as it sounds like doom and gloom, I do not come merely with a warning. I come to you as a brother in Christ with great hope.
Because the answer is not fear. The answer is not bitterness. The answer is not resentment.
The answer, my brothers and sisters, is revival.
The answer is repentance. The answer is courage. The answer is truth spoken in love. The answer is churches all across our lands filled with the Holy Spirit.
The answer is Christians who know what they believe and why they believe it.
The answer is fathers who teach the faith to their children. The answer is strong, courageous pastors who preach the whole council of God. The answer is believers like you and I who refuse to surrender their convictions for social approval. And the answer is a church that remember she serves a risen king.
My brothers, my sisters, I boldly declare Australia does not need less Christianity. Australia needs more. Not cultural Christianity without conviction. Not nominal Christianity without disciplehip. Not Christianity as a historical c curiosity, but Christianity as a living reality.
Christianity that baptizes the believers. Christianity the that that evangelizes the lost. Christianity that transforms lives. Christianity that shapes culture. Christianity that produces [clears throat] courage. Christianity that creates more saints. Christianity that builds nations.
See, the early Christians didn't inherit a Christian empire. They inherited a pagan one. Yet within a few centuries, they had transformed the whole world.
Not through political power, not through coercion, not through violence, through truth, through holiness, through sacrifice, through unwavering conviction. [clears throat] See my brothers, my sisters, the future can still belong to the gospel, but only if the church remembers that she is the church. Only if she stops whispering what God has commanded her to boldly proclaim. Only if she stops apologizing for what God has declared to be good.
only if the church rediscovers the magnificent confidence of the saints.
And so let me finish my session with this.
Australia is not merely a geographical territory. Australia is a stewardship, a trust, a gift handed down through generations, purchased through sacrifice, built through faith, protected by courage. And now, my brothers and sisters, it is entrusted to you. Do not squander that inheritance. Do not surrender it through indifference. Do not abandon it through forgetfulness of the gospel. Do not exchange it for the false comfort of cultural amnesia. My brothers, my sisters, today and every day, remember who you are. Remember where your liberties came from. Remember that faith shaped your institutions.
Remember that the gospel shaped your civilization. Remember the Christ who stands above every nation for Britain's story does not need to become Australia's future. That is why warnings exist. That is why history matters. That is why God grants nations opportunities to learn before disaster arrives.
The prudent see danger and they take refuge. The wise learn from the experience of others. The faithful remain awake. So my brothers, my sisters, be awake, be sober, be courageous.
Yes, love your neighbors. Defend the weak. Speak the truth unashamedly.
Proclaim the gospel with boldness. Honor your inheritance. And above everything else, exalt the risen Jesus Christ.
Because nations rise and nations fall.
Empires come and empires go. Governments are born in one parliamentary session and perish in another. But the kingdom of God endures forever. And if your beloved Australia would remain truly free, truly united, and truly blessed, then she must not merely remember Christ as a figure of her past.
She must enthrone him again as the Lord of her future. May God grant it. May God hasten it. And may future generations say that when the warning came from Great Britain, Australia listened. And having listened, she turned Aresh to Jesus Christ, who is the only King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. My brothers, my sisters, may God bless you and may God bless Australia.
>> Is everybody awake?
>> Very good. Thank you so much, Bishop Kai. That was uh magnificent and rousing as I as I knew it would be and so biblical and faithful and orthodox and historical. Um the the warning is is well heeded. Sir, we will continue to learn about Islam now, but uh Bishop Kai is going to stay on the line with us even though it's 2 am where he is. Uh and you'll be able to ask him questions uh after our next two speakers. So, thank you, good sir.
Well, our next speaker this morning is a new friend of mine. Um, he was recently on a podcast uh with Reverend Mark Drury um with uh John Anderson. If hopefully you've heard of both of those people. Um but if you haven't subscribed to John Anderson's Conversations podcast, I strongly recommend you do. It's uh excellent and he's had quite a few guests on there recently um exploring the issue of Islamic philosophy and mass immigration.
We want to understand and soberly uh survey the reality of of Islamic philosophy and any compatibility it has with the Christianity and the Christian philosophy that founded Australia. Uh our next guest speaker is an expert in Islamic philosophy as well as Christian philosophy and is a minister of the gospel. Uh and he can tell you more about his academic engagements and and occupation but he is a highly regarded academic in Australia. Um would you please welcome to church and state pastor, doctor, professor, all of the above Richard Schumac.
Good morning. Um Richard will be fine particularly here. Um I won't spend much time uh giving you my CV or anything like that but my just very briefly I come at um the discussion of Islam from a missionary background originally I I spent a long time working in Horn of Africa communities particularly Somalian Ethiopian Eratrian uh before shifting more into missions training so that's my background and yes uh my research expertise is into Islamic that's that's not my um PowerPoint um but my yeah my research special specialty is in Islamic worldview or Islamic philosophy and so really what I want want to do today it'll be a very much a change of gear and probably a bit of a change of volume I'm not as dramatic but um hopefully there'll be some resonance I want to give you a bit of a sense of um Islamic political theology and a little bit of Christian and political theology ology like how do Muslims think about how to engage with the society they're living in? That's the gist of it. And then how do we as Christians, what's the Bible got to say about how how we um engage back the other way.
Hopefully there won't be it won't be too complicated. This is just an introduction and there'll be some stories along the way that hopefully will um put a bit of flesh on it and there'll be a quick Q&A time at the end.
So maybe to start, I remember I I cannot remember exactly what we're talking about, but I um was in Melbourne in one of the Islamic centers. I'm not sure if you're aware, but um Muslim communities tend to have mosques, which are sort of like churches, but they also have Islamic centers, which are like um their their propagation or their evangelistic centers. That's where they'll be producing literature and running events.
And I had been invited along by a Muslim friend to one of those centers. And it got to the point where um I was debating with the key shake in that Islamic center.
And he was telling me about Islam. I was sharing the gospel with him. And it got to this point in conversation when he just said to me, he sort of stopped the conversation and said, "Look, why are you why do you keep banging on about love? Why are you talking about love all the time?
And that was extremely telling. Um, and really what if you can walk away with nothing from this session, understand this. Fundamentally, the difference between Islam and Christianity all the way down at every level is that Christianity is centered on love and Islam is centered on law.
And that shapes everything. but particularly shapes their political theology. So very briefly an intro to their political theology is that um at its heart Islamic political theology is just enforced law.
Our job is to enforce law and particularly in the case of Islam to enforce Sharia law because it's God's laws and it's for everyone.
That's the mindset behind it. Um and that's because Islam is a legal religion. I'm going to quote a few Islamic uh writers. Don't worry about whether you get everything or even you don't have to write it down or understand it particularly, but just get the get a sense of it. Get the gist. So, Al Gazali, this is a guy was 8 n 100 years ago, one of their key thinkers and this is really important.
He said that the end result of the knowledge of the believers is their inability to know God and that their knowledge is in truth that they do not know him and that it's absolutely impossible for them to know him. This is really important. Muslims don't have a personal relationship with Allah.
Not only that, they have no expectation.
Even in heaven, they don't expect that they'll meet God. God is utterly unknowable. All you know in Islam is God's rules, God's will. He doesn't reveal himself to you. There's certainly no incarnation.
Allah just tells you the rules and you have to keep the rules.
Let me uh quote a guy named Shabir Akar.
He was actually a scholar at Oxford.
He's a Muslim theologian who was working at Oxford University.
He said this. Men in Islam, men are servants of a just master. They cannot in orthodox Islam typically attain any greater degree of intimacy with their creator. Just servants, just slaves.
That's literally what Islam is. Slaves to the Lord.
Um this conviction is also reflected in the extent to which God is thought to be accessible to human knowledge. The Quran unlike the gospel never comments on the essence of Allah. Allah is wise or Allah is loving. Maybe pieces of revealed information. But in contrast to Christianity, Muslims are not entitled to claim that Allah is love or Allah is wisdom.
Only descriptions are attributed to the divine being. And these merely, and this is important, the things the Quran says about God is only merely as they bear on the revelation of God's will for man.
The rest remains mysterious. So even the Quran doesn't tell you very much about God at all, tells you a few things, all it's trying to tell you is you need to do this. All you need to know is God is the Lord and you have to follow his laws. That's the gist of it. Um the technical word they use for this is that Islam, it's not really even a a religion. It's a nocracy. It's a situation where laws are in charge.
Laws rule.
It's not a theocracy. It's not that Allah is ruling. It's that the rules rule.
Sait. Hussein Nasa said technically speaking the Islamic ideal is that of a democracy that is the rule of divine law. So all that's happening is laws and then the goal of Islam and particularly the goal of Islamism um which is roughly evangelistic Islam or Islam that wants to promote itself. The goal is to impose those laws at every level of society.
So this guy named Abdul Allah Maldudi, he's very influential in um conservative Islamism in the world. He says the chief characteristic of Islam is that it makes no distinction between the spiritual and the secular in life. Its aim is to shape both individual lives as well as society as a whole in ways that will ensure that the kingdom of Allah may really be established on earth and that peace, contentment, and well-being may fill the world. So that's the goal. The goal of Islam is to enforce laws at every level, personally, socially, politically.
Um, it's important to understand too that in the imagination of Muslims, this is not an act of hate. It's an act of love or it's an act of trying to benefit society. Question of course is whether the laws are good or true or real and beautiful. Um, but that's what they're imagining. And they're imagining if we can enforce these laws, things will be good. And our job is to enforce those laws.
So worship in Islam is simply submitting to God's laws.
Doing family or doing community Islam is just applying the laws at every little level. There are laws for everything in Islam. There's laws for going to the toilet. There's laws for preparing your dinner. There's laws for walking in out of doors. are things you are supposed to do at every level.
And importantly for today, and this is really where we're headed today, um governance in Islam is enforcing those laws on your society because that's what you do with laws, right? Um the power they have is that you enforce them. And in Islam, they would say that every apparatus of government is at the disposal of Islam. So you can use the law courts to enforce it. You can use the police to enforce it. You can use the military to enforce it. You can use government legislation to enforce it.
But that's what they're trying to do. It is an enforced religion.
Um, by the way, it's it's fascinating. Most Muslims don't love that, by the way. And it's a really interesting question um how much the heart is involved in that. I remember it was fascinating singing um well done for singing the national anthem. I haven't done that for a long time since primary school I think in a public event. Um but back then we sang God Save the Queen which is really interesting. Um that's how old I am now.
But I wonder if the queen cared whether I sung that with enthusiasm.
Maybe she would have liked it. Um but that didn't really matter, right? The job to be a subject is just to follow the rules. It's nice if your heart's in it. Doesn't really matter. Um, and that's that's Islam.
As long as you're following the rules, you're being a good subject. That's the job. Nice if your heart's in it. Doesn't matter if it's not. We're just going to make you do it anyway for your own sake, whether you like it or not. And that's the feel of Islam. Islam is very serious because it's all about keeping laws.
It's not fundamentally about joy or peace or love. It's about obedience.
Um, now just a couple more comments about that. What this means is of course that Islam is essentially necessarily inherently political.
It will always try and impose itself politically if it's um taking itself seriously. The debate within Islam even across the different schools in Islam is not whether Islam is a political religion. The debate is simply well how do we do that and what's can we what which political systems are Islamically legitimate which which political systems can we be compatible with can Islam coordinate with democracy in any meaningful sense they're the questions Muslims are asking they're not asking whether Islam should be the political rulers of Australia it's just well how do we get there also the question will be in any particular given situation, when's the right time to use the army? When's the right time to use the law courts? When's the right time to use the police?
By the way, most Muslims would reject terrorism as a legitimate form of imposition of Islam. But that doesn't mean they reject force. They will still believe it should be enforced using every tool that we have to enforce them.
So that's that's a very brief introduction to um Islamic political theology. Um very quickly too before I start talking about some practical things seems to me that a Christian political theology and this is more your this is your world not so much mine but my very brief affection is that Christian political theology rather than being enforced law it's applied love.
Christianity at its heart is a religion of love. God is love. Christianity is relational.
The heart of worship in Christianity is love God and love your neighbor.
Worship of God is intimacy in God's presence, praising, enjoying um literally having him indwell you and restore you and renew you and enliven you. It's intimate. It's personal. It's essentially loving. That's worship.
Christian community or Christian society is love of neighbor.
And here's the interesting thing too.
Christian law, this is the way I understand law. I'm not sure how you think about it, but biblical laws um they're codified love. It's sort of a description of this is what it's going to look like for you to love each other.
Well, there are some boundaries. You see the ten commandments, right? They're fascinating. There's only only a handful of things. just don't do these things.
That'll be bad for you. Don't lie. Don't murder. Um here's some fences. Stay away from this. But everything else is open to you. You can come up with as many creative possibilities for how you're going to love each other and encourage each other and serve each other and build a beautiful world. Um there is amazing extraordinary freedom in Christianity of the fact that there's only ten commands.
There's a few things don't do.
Everything else is up to you. you are free to love. Um, and the beautiful thing about love too is you can't enforce love. Love is it has to come from you.
It's an entirely different way of thinking about the world. It's certainly an entirely different way of thinking about society.
Um just a little reflection on what that means for politics too. Our engagement with politics which is about law by the way is I think what our call is is to be engaged in politics as an act of trying to create a society where people are able to love. Even that has to be an act of love and not an act of enforcement.
[music] We want to vote for laws that will allow people to love God and love their neighbors. [music] We want to lobby for laws that are good and just.
And we want to and maybe this is you.
I'm guessing in this room there are people like this. Get into parliament, work to create laws that are good and just and allow people to love. And some of that will be fences. There'll be some laws that will need to say no.
Discipline is is a part of love and the bishop said that before too. Love is not just about softness. There's a discipline to it. But fundamentally it has to be driven by love. It has to be shaped has to create a society that is allowed to love. But yeah, there'll be discipline. We're saying well actually in order to love we're going to stop this and we're going to stop this and we're not going to allow that. There will be some fences.
Do not murder matters when you have situations like Bondi. There will be some fences but always aimed at love.
All right. Now, just a few uh reflections on how those two things fit together. Islamic political theology, Christian political theology.
Um I want to say this really clearly.
Islam and particularly Islamism in the sense of Islam that promotes itself.
Islam is an adversary. It's an adversary of the gospel and it's an adversary of um Australia or the West um whatever you want to call that ideology. Islam is an adversary.
It's certainly a spiritual advers adversary and and tragically it's a spiritual adversary for Muslims as well.
It is a bondage. It's a spiritual bondage that people are under. They're under a bondage to law. Read Galatians.
The New Testament is full of people who are under a bondished law and needing to be rescued by a gospel of grace. And that's what Islam is for Muslims.
They don't enjoy it because that's not really the point. The often don't enjoy it because it's about obedience. Let me tell you a story. We worked with Somali community. One of the laws in Islam is that you're supposed to fast. You do Ramadan, the fast of Ramadan. You fast for a month, four weeks technically. And um if you're pregnant or if you're breastfeeding, you don't need to fast. In fact, you're not supposed to fast. Um but you need to make it up later.
And now we we hung around with Somali and there were girls there who were married at 17, 18 who would start having babies. They'd have six, seven, eight babies. They would be either pregnant or breastfeeding until they were in their 30s. Um, and I remember talking to one of these girls and she had 12 years worth of fasting to make up or 12 years of Ramadan. And so do the math like 14 months of um non-stop fasting would have caught it up.
I just said to her, "Really? You really think that God would want to do that to you?
Is that really good?"
And she said, "Yep, I hate it.
But that's what I have to do. I have to do that to please Allah.
There are so many layers of that bondage. But it's a bondage to law. It's not a freedom and a grace and a joy. And Muslims are under that bondage. That's a tragedy.
Islam is also a missional adversary.
They are enemies of the gospel in the sense of they are preaching law. They are promoting law. They're trying to enforce law.
It really is a as Dave put it, it's a it's an ideological challenge.
It's adversarial to the gospel. It is anti-grace. It is anti- a god who would love you so much that he would come in person.
First chapter of the Quran is the thing that Muslims pray regularly. It's the it's the um bit like the Lord's prayer but they pray it every time of their regular prayers and it's a prayer against Christianity and Judaism actually. It's lead me in the straight path which is Islam. Pick me from this way which is Christianity and pick me from this way which is Judaism.
every day they are praying against Christianity and praying for Islam. It's a spiritual and gospel adversary. It's a missional adversary and it's a societal adversary as well.
People who want to take their Islam seriously. And by the way, only about a quarter of Muslims in Australia want to do that. But for the ones who do, they have very little interest in their lives aligning with the rest of Australian society.
They see the rest of Australian society as an as an adversarial thing, a thing to be transformed.
Um a thing where laws to be applied and not love. Let me give you another example.
We um in our ministry, we used to run a camp every year. We had many Muslims who had come. It was a great opportunity to share the gospel. But there was one time where we were driving a mini I was driving a mini bus. We had some Somali Muslims who were conservative. We had some Lebanese sort of Muslims, very half-hearted. Got in the bus and the Lebanese um Muslims back in the day had a cassette and they put this music cassette in so that we could have music in the bus.
Um and they're all women by the way. And then the Somali said, "No, God's laws forbid us from listening to music."
Um and that turned into a fight. I was that I'll be quick. that literally turned into a fist fight in the bus where the Somali were trying to stop music being played because it was against the law.
Um I think the thing I felt most sad at that point was I thought really you're Africans, you're Africans, you'd love music and in private they all listen to music. It was only in public we have to enforce the law but you are built for music. You teach us music. Um how are these laws good for you?
Um again the b it was a bondage that they were under that they were just trying to impose socially wasn't legally but socially. Um and Islam is a legal adversary as well. It's a political adversary. Um Islamism particularly the um call it the jihadi or the the violent sort of islamism really is a political enemy of Australia where people I used to play soccer with who are in jail now for plotting terrorist attacks. Somali young Somali men really is a political adversary.
How do we deal with that? How do we deal with a political, social, spiritual adversary? Um well Jesus says love your enemies. So again the heart of our engagement with the world is love has to be at the center. And that's beautiful and brilliant.
Um and again those those three layers really matter. we engage with our world missionally and socially and politically. Missionally to love our enemies and to love our neighbors is to preach a gospel of grace. That's the only way that they'll get out of their bondage to law is if they discover that God is a God of love and grace.
Socially, we need to love our neighbors and witness what that looks like. Don't be scared of your Muslim neighbors.
invite them into Christian community so that they can see what a grace community looks like and not a law community.
I need to see that. I could tell you a heap of stories about how that might work. Um, and the last one is to love our Muslim neighbors, particularly our Muslim adversaries politically.
It will be to establish firm laws in Australia that prevent Sharia being applied.
We need fences around that. We need to say no to Sharia law because the laws are not true and they're not beautiful and they're not good and they don't promote love.
So again, Christian political theology is an enacted love and part of that is creating society where it will remain free and have the opportunity to be loving and we need to resist Sharia law.
One very quick last comment. Um maybe a way of imagining how you hold all these things together. Um my my previous pastor a while back um one of his daughters tragically um as a teenager was swept up in a drug community became addicted was still living at home. Um but it was chaotic and she was stealing from then and destroying the fabric of that family.
They loved it a bit. She gave up her faith as well. They loved her to bits and they prayed for her and they cared for her, but they also disciplined her.
She ended up having to be asked to leave the house. Um, didn't mean they were abandoning her, but they were holding together all under the banner of love, but they were holding together care and proclamation of grace and enacting of grace with firm discipline for her own sake and for the sake of the family. And in a society where we have Islam, Islamism and a quarter of Muslims who want to oppose Islam, we need to hold those two two things together. We need to love them enough to share a gospel of grace, but also love them enough and love our communities enough to put firm boundaries where they need to be.
There's a brief intro and we can talk more in the Q&A. I'll hand over [applause] Thank you, Dr. Dr. Richard Schemac. Did everybody enjoy that? Found that enlightening and and eye opening.
I uh once interviewed an abortionist um many years ago and and she'd gone infamous globally for something that conservatives, reputable outlets had misunderstood and/or misrepresented. I'm like, guys, we don't need to make stuff up. We don't need to exaggerate it.
Abortion is already incredibly wicked and evil and ugly and barbaric. Uh and and it's look it's the same about Islamic ideology. We can be sober about it and have a honest survey of it um that doesn't exaggerate or or uh be hyperbolic about about the risk. What we do need to do is stop softfooting it and be honest about it and make sure that our government understands that we want the foundations of Australia preserved, not exchanged or or transferred to Sharia law uh which is the intent of of those uh that philosophy. Um, our next speaker is incredibly courageous and and bold. Uh, and can I share a little bit of your family bio history with that?
He himself is a Christian minister as well as a Jew and his brother converted to Islam.
So he has a lot of particular insights into the ones that are very personal and compassionate and honest and scripture informed. Uh which is the kind of sobriety that I'm looking for uh when I want education on on Islam. Uh but his topic for us to finish up before we go to Q&A this morning is a a phenomenon that is poisoning Australia uh I think worse than any pandemic we've recently had. uh that is the mind virus of anti-semitism and that is something that is being exacerbated to no small by the mass importation of Islamism into this nation changing for the worst the character and fabric of of our society.
Uh so to talk to us about Islamic anti-semitism would you please welcome to the stage Reverend Mark Leech.
>> [applause] >> Thank you. Thank you so very much, Dave, uh again for inviting me back. Thank you, Richard, for that fantastic uh overview and introduction uh to Islam.
It sets up what I'm going to do uh pretty easily. Now, I'm just going to juggle with our guys up the back, the slides. I have some slides um that I'd like to share with you.
I come at this um as somebody who on the 9th of October 2023 stood in front of a crowd of pro Palestinian Islamists uh protesting outside town hall about to march on the opera house of Australia to call for the eradication of Jewish life in the Middle East. The infamous rally at the opera house that called to gas the Jews, kill the Jews, f the Jews. Uh and uh before they got there, I stood up as a Christian pastor looking all religious, put on a clerical shirt and went down to stand against uh the ideology of hate and waved the flag of Israel in the face of a thousand angry people and was chased through the streets of Sydney for my troubles. Hid behind a police van while they dispersed a bunch of people threatening to slit my throat. And I did that not just as a act of solidarity with the state of Israel who'd experienced the greatest massacre of Jewish life in a day since the Holocaust. I did that not just as an act of solidarity with the Jewish community who are being warned to stay out of the city that day. I did it as an act of uh as as a as an act of solidarity for the soul of Australia to say we cannot be a country that allows our city to be taken over by Islamic hatred of the Jews and hatred of the West and hatred of our Christian foundations. And we had to stand. And if and if there is a silver lining but with the horrendous barbaric evil of October the 7th and Kamas and a silver lining with the persecution of the Jews, it is this. The role of the Jewish people for the last 3,000 years is to be the suffering servants of the world. And in their suffering at the kinetic edge of Islamism, they have enabled us to have this national conversation to point to the south of Israel, to point to Bondi and say, say, "Friends, these are our enemies, not just of the Jews, but of the West." As Richard so eloquently and calmly pointed out to us, the silver lining of October the 7th and of Bondi is we can we we cannot unsee those events. We cannot pretend that all ideas are equal, that all religions are equal, that all cultures are equal. So I come at this as Dave said, my mother was a German Jew who fled the Holocaust. My father was a a white South African Roman Catholic and my brother converted to Islam and I'm an Anglican pastor who now leads a national grassroots advocacy movement and I come at it with this singular focus a I want Australia to be a country where every Jewish person is treated just the same as any other Australian and their kids don't have to go to their kids don't have to go to school behind armed guards and you don't have to be worried when you wear a mug and Davidid and you look ethnically Jewish that you're going to be attacked because if we can secure the safety and security of Jewish life in Australia then Christian life will be safe and secure as will every minority and I'm deeply concerned about Islamic anti-semitism and it's a terribly unpopular topic uh I I was meeting with a very senior New South by can you click a timer because I have no idea when I'm going to finish cuz uh or you could just tell me what time I meant to finish on the clock there because that's what it's showing me.
Okay, I'll just keep going.
>> 11ish >> 11ish. I'll take the ish as important part.
[laughter] Um what was I saying? Uh, oh, it's very I was meeting with a senior I was meeting with a senior New South Wales government uh minister and talking about the Royal Commission and some legislative ideas we had to protect Jewish life and he he refused to acknowledge that Islam was under any of the attacks that have happened in Australia that it he said it's mental illness the stabbing of Bishop Mari Mari Emanuel And even the attack at Bondi, the defense will be mental illness. It's not Islam. So it's so we we have a lot of work to do to educate people. Um what I want to do is I I don't need to do a technical overview of what anti-semitism is. Uh you know, hating Jews, treating Jewish people as different by virtue of their their race, uh treating Jews, um discriminating against Jews. But if we can just go to slide six. Um what's important uh is that the formatting works. No, what's important on slide six, the flexible scapegoat. Next one down if you would after that. Yep. Yep.
Yep. Okay. So when you think about anti-semitism and when we think about it and understand it in the light of Islam as well, you need to understand and this is this will generally move me to tears that if you're Jewish, you have 3,000 years of being hated, right? Um and and that hatred takes many forms. So in the early 20th century, Jews were blamed for both capitalism and communism simultaneously.
Jews were blamed when they were too powerful, for being too powerful, but also for being too weak. The all powerful Jews who control the banking system and the global economy, but also the weak, despised, wandering Jew. The Jews were hated when they assimilated.
So when a Jew looks like me and uh gets themselves ordained, and it's really because we're trying to control the church. When a Jew doesn't When a Jew assimilates and marries a non-Jewish person, it's because they're trying to control and pollute the race. When a Jew gets involved in politics and doesn't play the as a Jew card, it's because they're trying to hide and destroy uh the society. But when Jewish people stay separate, well, then look at them. They're bad citizens.
They don't belong. Look at these strange Jews in their black clothes and their strange outfits and their strange religions. And now Jews were hated when they were stateless, the wandering Jews.
But now they're hated.
We're hated because we have a state.
and the state of Israel, the hatred of the state of Israel, anti-Zionism, which is a term I prefer rather than pro Palestinian, but the the pro Palestinian anti-ionist movement, has been incredibly cleverly used by the Muslim Brotherhood, by the Islamists as the vector by which they can continue to convince Western Christians and Western societies that they are part by that they that the Western Christianity as it is aligned with Israel is a colonial settler evil oppressive entity that is actually bringing destruction on the whole world and only by identifying with the Muslims in the Middle East and in particular the Palestinian Muslims. Only when the west does that will the west be freed from this its terrible legacy of being colonial oppressors and the Palestinianism and the resultant anti-sionism and hatred of Jewish people because of the existence of the state of Israel is a key move to divide and conquer the west.
And one of the things that concerns me very greatly is the naivity of so many followers of the Jew Jesus. The naivity of the Christians that they are turning they don't see they are being played.
They are the useful idiots out of out of their empathy and compassion. When you see endless photos and video of the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, which is real and horrific and awful, but it's war. It's not genocide. And when they side with that, you end up with the suicidal empathy that Gad Sad the uh Lebanese philosoph Lebanese psychologist talks about. This this this takes one part of the Christian gospel, our our love and empathy for people, puts it solely and and directs it in a suicidal way to Islam and says Islam is the religion and the path of uh freedom for all those who are being oppressed by you terrible evil capitalists and western Christians and terrible evil Jews. And the church is starting to believe that lie.
I I I I'll tell I got an email today, just this morning. I send out a weekly email. Um and I'd love it if you subscribe to that. Um but not if you respond to the email in this way. Let me find the email.
Um, okay.
Uh, sorry. I the email I got an email this morning and from a Christian person and I I use that word loosely.
Um, God obviously doesn't want me to share it with you.
Oh, no. Here it is. This is it.
Okay, I'm a child of a Holocaust survivor. I love Jesus. I'm a pastor. I have a Muslim brother. I try to speak carefully, compassionately, with love. And he says, "Dear Mark Leech, you nasty, racist, Islamophobic, woke bigot."
This is a Christian guy. The racist aparite state of Israel is murdering and throwing Palestinian Christians as we speak. Not that bigots like you can care. Palestine will be free from the river to the sea, glory to the interifada and the ABC and Palestinian Christians and Muslims.
Welcome to my welcome to my life. Uh so please subscribe and then send me nice emails that go Mark, we're praying for you. That would be lovely. uh Islamic anti-semitism is fueling the attacks on the Jewish diaspora and it's using its alliance with the woke left. Uh and this is a 40 well this is actually a 76-year agenda of the Islamists to destroy the state of Israel and to destroy the west.
Uh I want to make this point and if we go down a slide uh anti-semitism is real in Christianity. You can go on to our YouTube channel and watch a lecture I do on this. Uh but anti-semitism, Jew hatred in Christianity is a bug, not a feature.
You cannot follow the Jew Jesus born a Jew, raised a Jew, ministered as a Jew, uh died as a Jew, raised from the dead as a Jew, ascended and seated at the right hand of the father as a Jew. So Jewishness is im actually adopted the humanity of Jesus according to the very triune life of God. You can't read the New Test the the Christian scriptures and hate Jews unless there's a very very big bug in your system. And there is a big bug. It's been there for 2,000 years. It's terrible. It's resurging and we need to do something about it. But it's a bug. Next slide. However, anti-semitism is a feature, not a bug of Islam.
Okay. very important to understand that distinction because uh we have to stand against anti-semitism Christianity but we do it in a different way to the way we have to stand against Islamic anti-semitism. When I talk to Christian anti-semmites I just tell them to repent and go back to the source go back to the foundational go back to the founder of Christianity and then come and tell me that you can hate Jews.
The problem is when I talk to Islamic anti-semmites, I can't tell them to go back to the founder because if they do, they will not find a consistent message of love for Jews in Islam. The question on our next slide is this, of course, uh how did Muhammad treat the Jews? Um and as Richard said, Islam is just a whole system of laws, legislates everything.
And where do you get the laws? You get the laws from the Quran and then from a collection of the stories about the life of Muhammad, the hadiths and then a collection of the sayings of Muhammad, the S. And so Islamic law, juristprudence that that legislates every bit of your life comes to you via those three collections of documents.
And uh the ultimate example of how we should live as Muhammad. So just a very quick question, how did Muhammad treat the Jews? Well, in 627 uh he led the massacre of the Jews of Medina where scholars say somewhere between 600 and 900 Jews were massacred and Muhammad led uh that and was involved the scholars say in slitting their throats. Why is throat slitting a favored means of uh jihad?
There's easier ways to kill someone.
Why? Why do jihadists slit throats?
because that's what the prophet did, right? When you look at the violence of October the 7th, the sheer barbarity of it. It's it's not random. The ritualized uh desecration of the bodies, the slitting of the throats, the the manner of the slaughter is uh comes straight out of the Quran and the Hadith, the story of how Muhammad and his followers conducted war, including against the Jews. So, this is the problem in Islam.
you you can't address anti-semitism by saying go to the founder because if you go to the founder you you you you might have a very serious problem and and this is the problem in uh our western liberal world when I talk to politicians and when we grapple with what we're facing in Australia as Richard said you know maybe only 20 or 25% of Muslims are uh strict Muslims and so the distinction I now make is you know it's like Christians there's a lot of slack Christians right Yeah, I I I'm a Christian. I go regularly to church uh you know twice a year, Christmas and Easter. In fact, now mostly it's only once a year, maybe at Christmas. And and actually really I'm a Christian because I tick the census box and I'm not something else. And and there's a lot of lot of Aussies like that, right? There's a lot of And then there's some super keen being Christians like you all here.
You know, you're you're in church at least once a week or maybe that's what you report. It's probably more like once a fortnight, but you're still you come and you take your faith really seriously. you live your life.
A really strict Muslim who's really consistent is going to be an Islamist and they're going to hate Jews because that's what the foundational texts say. Um, here are some uh commands enduring perpetual Islamic juristprudence and commands about how Muslims are to treat Jews. If we go to the next slide. Thank you.
Ah gosh, why is that not working? Okay, I'll tell you. I'll fill in the blanks for you. Oh, is it? Oh, thanks Dave. I should have checked.
Okay. Uh, Sah Alb Bukari, one of the two most authoritative collections. Hadith says this, commands the Jews, the Muslims to kill Jews in war with nature aiding their extermination presented as a perpetual duty. This is the infamous hadith that says at the end of time the rocks and the trees will cry out saying uh oh Muslim there is a Jew hiding behind me come and kill them perpetual command. Uh Quran 9:29 orders fighting Jews and Christians until they pay the Jiza in humiliation enforcing enforcing secondass demi status as an eternal mandate. Quran 551 forbids alliance with Jews labeling them inherent enemies and equating friendship with apostasy. Um, you cannot. Yep. Quran 582 declares Jews the most intense enemies of believers, justifying perpetual hostility. Quran 560 dehumanizes Jews as cursed apes and pigs, supporting inter internal inferiority and anti-Semitic tropes.
Ian Hersy Ali very well-known ex-Muslim who's now a follower of Jesus b grew up in Somalia said it was really only when she moved to the Netherlands that she realized that Jews um actually were human and didn't have tails.
She never met a Jew but was taught they really if you really understand what Jews are like they're really they're really apes.
Okay, this is uh you know one strand now. Thank God hashem mosts and certainly most Muslim people in Australia do not obey these and take this as as a way that that should shape their living now. I mean my brother didn't didn't past tense he's he's he's dead so don't ask me what he thinks about these things now but he certainly didn't he wasn't strict in this sense but it's there our next slide gives you this little fact you can quote from their center for uh the political study of Islam the foundational texts of Islam uh are 9.3% of the content contains Jew hatred this compares with 7% of Hitler's mine comf uh by the way the minecom It's just German for inif.
And some people say, "Oh, but no one really thinks this anymore." Here's a quote from on the next slide from um uh Abdul al- Rahman al- Sudis, a preacher in the Al Haram mosque in Mecca. Read history and you will understand that the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today who are evil worshiing infidels, distorters of other words, calf worshippers, prophet murderers, prophecy deniers, the scum of the human race whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs. These are the Jews. An ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, lentiousness, evil, and corruption.
That's me.
Okay. This is mainstream Sunni theology.
This is what all the kids in UNRA schools in Gaza and the West Bank disputed territories are taught. This is this is in the curriculum in uh Pakistan. Um and this will be being taught unofficially in Islamic schools in Australia depending on who's teaching them. But this is mainstream. This is not unusual.
So we have a problem. Um, and uh, what are we going to do about it? You might be saying at this point, "Thank God I'm a Christian, not a Jew because I'm not that hated."
But of course you are, as they say in the Middle East, first they come for the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.
Um, so jihad is real. It is an adversary. We have a massive challenge.
Uh, we have a challenge here in Australia.
uh a million Muslims, 25% are Islamist, jihadists. Um that's a lot of people.
And it only takes a father and a son with rifles to go and massacre Jews. So, and it's very frustrating for me because um after we set up uh Never Again is now and the allies uh I've spent two and a half years telling everyone who'd listened, including um the assistant commissioner of police in New South Wales two years ago. I said, "Of course, in a meeting I said, "Of course you know it's a when, not if that there's a mass terror event targeting Jews."
Um and he said, "No, we don't. No, no, we don't talk like that."
It's like, well, no, we do. Like, this is because we were organizing events of like 10,000 people in the city center and and we had massive police protection for our events. They were phenomenal.
But then over the last two and a half years, they were lulled into, you know, catastrophic failure to understand this.
So, what do we do? Next slide. As Richard pointed out, oh, here we go. Um, no, slide 15. We love our neighbors. We love our enemies. We overcome evil with good. Um, so if you just keep going down a couple of slides down the back there.
Keep going. Next one. Yeah, there we go.
That's the Christian view. That's what we're trying to do. What that looks like. How love gets embodied in your political system is uh a challenge. So I'll tell you what I'm trying to do.
What does this look like? We started off being called Never Again is Now we've rebranded. We're called Allies for a Strong Australia because what we have to do is mobilize the middle of Australia to to understand what the issues are. If we're to protect Jewish life in Australia, then this is not a fight that the Jews can win. There are there are 150,000 people, but it's a fight that we as the church have to lead because it's in our interests to ensure that there is no Sharia law ever in Australia. Okay.
So now, how is that going to happen?
How's that going to happen? Well, I tell you how it's not going to happen. It's by a bunch of Christians sitting in their churches, not getting involved in politics, and then winging like stuck pigs when the politicians that get elected don't agree with them on things.
So, we have to mobilize Middle Australia. And when I shle around the country, and we we do events all around the country, Middle Australia is very concerned about this. So, we're building a movement called the Allies for a Strong Australia. We're working with the Allies in Canada. We have the same thing going there. Uh, I was in New Zealand last week. We're looking to set up allies in a strong New Zealand. I'm going to the UK next week to look to set up allies for a strong UK because what we want is a network of allies where we take people there. There are four groups of people in this in Australia, right?
There are our enemies, our opponents, people who could be our enemies, people who could be our friends, and people who are our friends. And our movement looks to work with the people who could be our friends, help them become our friends, then turn them into allies and mobilize them as activists to hold our politicians to account. And we're building a massive broad movement around the country led by Christians and Jews because we get this. We get it. We get the theology. We get the political vision. We have the moral imagination to be to lead this with love. And our vision is if we go to the next slide down that we will have uh chapters of allies in every federal electorate holding our political leaders to account. So we can't we can't complain if the leaders in our parliaments enact laws that we don't like if we haven't influenced them and we know how to influence them which is to train activists in every electorate to understand the nature of Islam, understand anti-semitism, understand Western civilization, embrace a biblical moral imaginary of love and then bring pressure to bear on our political leaders in our political parties so that people who get pre-seelelected, people who get elected and then are in there what they what they enact This policy protects Jewish life in this country, protects Western civilization, and enables this country to be the place where one day if my great grandson wants to wear a kipah and sits in public, he'll be safe and free. And if my great granddaughter wants to wear a skimpy bikini to the beach, she'll be safe and free as well. That's what we're in and for. And I will end there and encourage you to sign up and uh join the allies um and uh and work with with wonderful friends like uh Dave and Richard and our partners with ACL and and this we need we need a broad citizen movement around the country. So um uh God bless you. God bless this wonderful country and uh thank you.
[applause] Okay, we're going to skip the panel discussion because lunch has some importance. Um, we are going to go straight to questions from you. If I think we've only going to have time for two or three. So, if you would like to ask a question, can you please form a line on the side there? If they're super quick answer, super quick questions, not sermons, lectures, or speeches. Um, and we give super quick answers. We might be able to get through more than two or three, but we'll just form a line down the side past the stalls there. Uh, Trevor, are you grabbing those stools?
>> Actually, don't worry about it. We can just stand. It's only 15 minutes.
>> Oh, is it that long?
>> It's all Mark's fault. Um, Richard, here's a microphone for you, >> sir.
>> All right. If you could give us your name and uh your guys, come. What are you doing?
>> I Well, I thought we have to be Oh, no.
We can be in front of Okay, >> here we go. Nice and nice and Okay.
It's a Christian love going on there.
Very cool. Your name and question, sir?
>> Yeah. My name is Jim Bellis and I'd like to ask if uh Islam believes it's a superior religion and it breeds a superior civilization, why do so many uh go to the Christian West?
>> Is that for anybody? Richard, you can go.
>> I'm happy to say a couple of things about that. Um it's not just Islam. The Quran tells Muslims that they are the best of all people and that Islamic societies are the best of all societies and in their imagination they are. Um but you are correct. There are no uh there are a couple of things that have gone in in the last 100 or so years. Um the collapse of the Muslim Empire particularly with the Ottomans were the remnant of that in um but that collapsed. But also you look around the Middle East or Muslim countries and they're um nearly all in crisis ranging from complete train wrecks to um crisis and certainly they're not represented well in any metrics about societies that are strong and creative and making influence in the world. That's absolutely reality and the standard narrative in the Muslim world to try and excuse that or explain that is because they've been oppressed by colonial powers. That's how they explain it. It's not a very good explanation. If they were the best, you'd think they'd be able to somehow do something about that.
But what what the current mentality is, we'll play the victim card. It's like that because we're victims. That's that's how they imagine it.
>> Doesn't make sense.
>> And they then justified by saying they're coming to bring the blessings of Islam to the West as well. There's a post hawk justification of their economic and lifestyle immigration theologically to expand the caliphate.
>> True. And and actually there's also two uh the Islamic theology divides the world into two bits. There's Darl Islam and Darl um darl har d Islam is there's the Muslim world and then there's the hard means war the world of war and so yeah it is sort of evangelistic in a sense but yeah we you go to the west but it's an act of conquering rather than as a as an act of blessing is probably the way it's framed but yeah that's the way the world is Dr. Terry Harding.
Terry Harding. [laughter] Uh, gentlemen, um, given the prime minister's, uh, appointment in 2004 of our special envoy for combating Islamophobia, Aftab Malik, who was a lecture in Sharia law in the law faculty at Sydney University. And that um, last year he finally delivered his report. I'm calling it the Malik report.
It addresses um 12 key Commonwealth institutions with 54 recommendations.
That's my prep. Uh are you aware of any national interest in responding to or opposing Malik's report?
I know the report and I've read the report and um I'm not aware of a a major sort of coordinated public response but but there are um individual people like in my world in the world of sort of Islamic studies and and particular ministries are connected with reaching out to Muslims who al who have responded and it's been sort of privately coordinated if that's the right word. So there is some response. Um it's also worth knowing that he is very frustrated that the government isn't isn't really sort of acting on his recommendations in the way we'd like which I think is wise because the >> the report is it's not good.
>> It's not wise. I would say I would say sorry the that our whole strategy is to respond to that and the general push of Islamization in Australia and it has to be responded to at a grassroots level and I would say politically uh our prime minister is nothing if not a pragmatist.
So he has very carefully not touched that report with a barge pole um because he knows it's uh incendury and will provoke a massive response. Um, but we are working flat out. I'm giving I mean really our whole movement is responding to that. But you have to win the hearts and minds of everyday Aussies. You've got to educate them and then you've got to bring pressure on the politicians and have a new generation of political leadership who understand this and have the courage uh to stand and to think in these theological and philosophical categories.
>> I have written a 34page analysis and am happy to share that with you if you would like it. That'll be great.
>> You guys can catch up in 10 minutes.
>> Uh reminder, we have Bishop Kai on the on the uh Zoom on the line. I'm just like Anyway, if anybody's got a question, please for Bishop Kai.
>> Hi. Um my name is Heather Vara. Thank you for each three of your speeches.
They've been really interesting and I'd love to hear all your thoughts on this.
Perhaps Bishop Kai in a response to what you've seen happen in the UK. But we have established obviously the Islam is a problem in our societies.
But when I see how we respond to it, there's two different camps. So you've got the Muslims who need to be as you've said, they are living under bondage.
They are deceived and in a false religion. So we need to respond to this group of individuals.
Then there is the other group who are which I find in the feminist movement are very strongly pro-Islam. They're not Muslims but you know the woke agenda of defending Islam making sure this is you know the religion of peace. How do you respond to the different camps? Because I've heard people who talk on Islam say when you bring up jihad to Muslims they get very defensive. So we need to be evangelizing to them but however educating people differently that what Islam is that how do we respond to those two different camps.
>> Bishop Kai if you could uh if you've got thoughts on that you go first and then is a specialist in Islamic uh well Muslim mission work evangelism very much. Um in the United Kingdom the Islamist problem is uh far greater than the other side of the argument. We have a rise now of uh what should we say Islamos sympathetic uh politicians and leftists and liberals.
The the danger of that argument is if we don't deal with it correctly and we don't deal with it sufficiently you you're looking for us in the United Kingdom. We're looking at a repeat of Iran in 1979. The socialists got into the political bed with the Islamist. And of course, when the Islamists came to power after the revolution, the socialists were the first ones that they executed. Now, I'm not sure they'd go that far at the moment, but the the Islamist problem in the United Kingdom is fundamentally overwhelmed by the fact that we have a huge number of radicalized Islamists that believe that this entire country should be subjected to Sharia law. Um, more so than we have the the number of, you know, what we we now turn moderate Muslims.
And we have a government that is completely Islamosympathetic.
They're pushing an Islam a very Islamic agenda. But you might have seen the news um recently, but um when it comes to the the the Islamic agenda in the United Kingdom, um you know, our institutions treat everybody differently. The government are trying to enshrine through the back door blasphemy laws to protect Islam. So I I think for for me my perspective on it is very very different to where you guys are in Australia because you're several years behind where we are today in the United Kingdom. All I would say is this in terms of both evangelize. Don't soften the gospel because of who it is you're preaching to. Preach it plain and preach it truthfully. Let the gospel do the work that it needs to do. but under no circumstances whatsoever show any quarter and that's quite a medieval term but I'm quite a medieval kind of guy show no quarter at all to the ideologies of of false gods and false religions or you will end up where Britain is today >> there is a tension to be balanced balanced between national policy and personal evangelism isn't there >> yeah of course um But particularly with that question, how how do you speak to a Muslim who um imagines that that their theology is not like that? I mean, I'm friends with or was were friends with a guy named Deil Kareshi. I don't know if anyone's read his book um seeking Allah finding Jesus. One of the things is Muslims have no Mark showed before that the three key sort of texts of Islam are the Quran and Hadith and Sah. No, no Muslims have read H hadith or or Sierra in any detail. And most of them don't understand the Quran because they don't speak Arabic. They have no idea what their own faith teaches about any of those things. And so um the fascinating thing with Nibir was his sort of pathway to Christianity actually was to go and actually look at Muhammad. And so the way that Mark did it was brilliant that that discussion about what um Islam really is like and what the texts are like. You go to the texts and you'll see the way that Muhammad treated Muslims and Christians and unbelievers. Full stop. you see the heart of what Islam is like and when many Muslims see that they are repelled by that. You're seeing that in Iran at the moment, hundreds of thousands of Muslims turning away from Islam as it's sort of exposed for what it really is. So yeah, ironically, show them Muhammad and then through that show them what Islam is really like and then you can then contrast um just how extraordinary Jesus is in so many ways.
That that's really brief. We can talk more about it, but >> awesome. Thank you. Beautiful Esther.
>> Hi. Um, mine is a more local question.
Uh, perhaps Mark, you might be able to address it given that you're looking for advocacy uh, locally. I just noticed as I was describing yesterday a sign a signage that's just gone up recently in our local area. I'm just wondering is there a process by which we can um thoughtfully be able to speak to government like the local officials that will navigate their pro bias.
>> What was the sign?
>> The signage I is um it's it's more about just promoting something of an Islamic >> Okay.
>> uh nature.
>> Yep. Uh look, we we we've lived for a long time in essentially a Christian world where it didn't really matter as as Christians, as everyday Aussies, whether it was labor or libs in power, they shared the same world view where you know that has gone. So we have to mobilize a whole new generation of people with a in a matter of urgency. So the answer is this. Um, politicians at all levels of government listen when enough of their constituents front up at their office, phone them, speak up. That's hard. And and we don't know how to do it. Like, who knows how how do you go and talk to a politician?
How do you go and talk to your local council? Well, join the allies and we'll train you and we will and then you'll be part of a whole broad movement. So the we're not just Christians. We're Jews.
We're libertarians. We're gay. We're straight. where a whole bunch of people who care about these values. So then you go and speak to them. And so one of the things you can do is um know who your local councils are, know who your members are, and when you're at Woolly's doing your shopping and you you see your local MP there, go up to the checkout and say, "I'm just really worried about, you know, creeping Sharia and Islam and it seems to me that this is a real concern." And and then then email and then join a political party on mass. We have enough people to stack every branch of the Liberal Party in the country. Um, >> join.
>> Join, >> not stack.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Join. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's what I meant. Join.
>> So, so we have to as an act of love, and I loved what Richard said and and it's an act of love enacted politically to influence our politicians to put a boundary around Sharia. If you love your Jewish neighbors, as Romans 5:15-27 says, you should do, the gospel is good news to the Jew first and then the Gentile. If you love Jewish Australians, you need to oppose the Islamization of Australia with every fiber of your being.
[applause] >> It's also if you love your Muslim Australians, >> well, correct. We have protect every Australian from Sharia. Sharia is bad for Muslims.
>> Yeah.
>> Sharia is a curse.
>> Christianity is the blessing which sets people free. Which is why they come to Australia as refugees and not go from Australia as refugees. The whole reason is because we don't have Sharia polluting and poisoning and destroying the liberty, peace, righteousness, justice, and peace of everybody in this nation, including the Muslims and unsaved and everybody who we love equally. It it's we need a fence around Sharia because Sharia is sedicious to the Christian Foundation of Australia.
Next question.
>> Hello, Jared Armstrong. Question for Bishop Kai.
Bishop, I'm curious about those starves in the corner of your room. What do they actually mean? For one, but before I finish, can you explain to us again why you became infamous in the public sphere with your letter that was published and who that was to? But but more importantly, I'm curious to know if you've had any feedback from your political echelon in the UK, whether positive or negative.
>> Well, thank you for the question. The starves that you can see are microsers.
Uh the one to my left uh bears the flames of the Holy Spirit, a symbol that as a shepherd I should be at at all at all times guided and led by the blessed Holy Spirit and consumed by the fire that consumed the those that gathered in the upper room. This one to my right is infamously known as the freedom crosia.
It bears all four flags of all four saints of the United Kingdom along with the uh the the symbolism scriptural symbolism of the Holy Spirit. It has a unique aspect to it because on the very front of the crook at the top is the only part of the wood that's not varnished. It's sealed with anointing oil that came from Jerusalem as a symbol that as a shepherd I should of course be guided and led again by the Holy Spirit under the anointing that flows from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Uh so those are the those are the staffs of a shepherd that you see. And um people ask me a lot, you know, why do I carry these and why am I constantly amongst the people? Because I grew up on a farm. I grew up in farming.
And of course, the shepherds smelt like the sheep, which is why I like to uh I don't pontificate from ivory towers as you've seen. To answer the second part of your question, I wrote a an open letter to his majesty the king to remind him in no uncertain terms you swore a solemn oath before God and before a congregation of witnesses and before your loyal subjects throughout the Commonwealth as defender of the faith and emphasized the faith, not defender of faiths. that you are constitutionally the head of the Church of England and defender of the Christian faith and in rather political but straightforward language intimated to his majesty that you are doing a pretty lousy job of defending the faith to which you swore an oath. So that that's what uh the infamy of my letter has um uh is about and I think the last time we checked we had something like 66 million views of that letter around the world and and I've had support from all over the globe for the fact that we've written it. To answer your question, uh, I had an indirect response from Kensington Palace, the home of and home and office of the Prince and Princess of Wales, because 5 days after the letter was received by Buckingham Palace and published in the public domain, the uh, formerly avowed atheist, Prince of Wales, affirmed his private belief in Christian faith and his commitment to the Church of England and its ongoing role as the state church. I have had no response whatsoever from the Palace of St. James or his majesty other than um somebody I know that works with the palace that in for me Bishop Kai um they really don't know what to say at all.
However, the establishment, the Church of England and Church of Wales and other institutions have have been absolutely brutal in the way that they're trying to deal with me and attempting to uh bring a silence to the voice that uh turned it into a written dialogue and penned that letter. And unfortunately, they've mistaken me for someone that cares about their opinions because I will not be silent.
>> [applause] >> Thank you, Jared. Well, we have time for one more question. So, we're going to go, but I want to go really fast because I want to let Pastor Jonno have a question as well. He is our host today.
Uh, so we will thank him when it's his question time. But, uh, second last question and we will try and be super quick.
>> Thank you. Uh, I am Danny Wtherspoon.
It's an ancient Scottish name, Wther Spoon, which comes from the parable of the lost sheep.
My question is about Jizia. Can you please elaborate for us the understanding that the common Muslim living in Australia would have on how Jiza relates to them? Uh the leader of the Liberal Party, Angus Taylor, recently announced that uh his policy would be to uh remove from anybody who's not an Australian citizen things like um social security and the doll and all that sort of stuff.
I'm I'm wondering does the average Muslim understand or is the are they taught that that sort of stuff in Australia is an a right uh for them to receive as a Jiza interesting question uh Dr. Richard, would you like to tackle that?
>> Right. So, just for those >> in less than 60 seconds.
>> Okay. Sure. Cool. Mentioned the jizzy.
The jizzy is a tax. So, um historically the idea was under a Muslim government, you would either have to convert to Islam um or be killed or this is formally in the um in the Sharia or be killed or agree to be a secondass citizen of another faith in which case you would pay a tax literally. It's a blood tax. It's sort of and as you paid it, the a sword would be laid across your your neck to say, "Well, instead of being killed, I'm going to pay you this money." And that's the Jiza. Um, now the average Muslim wouldn't have a very strong understanding of Jiza at all.
They wouldn't be able to tell you either of the sort of practice of it or theology of it. And it hasn't been applied consistently or um systematically throughout Muslim history. But that's what it is. They wouldn't really understand it. Um, most Muslims their theological education is just going to reading the mosque, sorry, reading the Quran at a mosque in Arabic on a Friday until they're 12 and then that's it. So, they don't really understand their own theology, which is part of the part of the problem about all this actually. But, um, yeah, very little, almost none, only some of the leaders would understand that.
>> Very good. Thank you, Pastor Jonno. Can we thank Pastor Jonno and this great church for hosting us? [applause] >> [cheering] >> There are many churches that are preaching boldly the truth of the word of God to the nation and are not afraid of when that rocks the boat of the political status quo. So thank you sir >> and on behalf of our team as well thank you to David and and the whole panel bishop and Reverend Mark and uh and doctor thank you so much um for coming to speak today. [applause] My my question is perhaps a bit of an observation and I'd love to to hear what um whether you've observed this because in Islam essentially and this is church and state um we know as a as a Christian we look at first kings chapter 18 and 19 uh Elijah taking on the then government of that time to bring about revival um and it's very interesting Elijah establish lished a national altar to deal with the altars of Bal at the same time.
And originally I come from Malaysia and you hear the call to prayer very early in the morning, 5:00 a.m. And as we know, I really believe the church is called to be that house of prayer for all nations.
And we are dealing with uh religion that prays five times a day. Their altars are very clear. It's in our face.
And uh my brother lives out at uh 8 mile plains and he's literally in front of the mosque and we see the call to prayer. There's a seat temple there as well.
I really believe that to take this on and I appreciate your wisdom, your all your expertise, but in terms of prayer, what are we doing to challenge their altar?
What are your observations?
Right? Because I I organized the open heaven prayer for Brisbane. We had 5,000 people at Nissen Arena. Some of you may have been there to pray for the city.
But I really believe we need concerted focused prayer because it is altar versus altar. Can can I so I'll just jump in very quickly. Uh Pastor John, thank you for your amazing support of our movement and this country. Uh I was in New Zealand last week and they have a movement. I met with a politician uh islander background. he has established in they have 72 electorates for the central government in New Zealand and they have established a network of intercessors in all 72 electorates and so we're talking so I said okay well what we've got to do is we've got to activate those intercessors politically but then I thought what we need in Australia that will complement our allies movement because we've been focused on the political thought here's a role for Christians we we really should have a network of intercessors for exactly these reasons in every federal electorate across denominations who working in handinand glove with our political movement because you are exactly right at a core level this is a spiritual battle. It really really is.
And our problem is we are so thoroughly secular even in the church. We're functionally deists. We don't we don't see the spiritual realm. And uh and so I I was very convicted and your little word is just so I'm now announcing this as a new strategy. [laughter] We need we need intercessors in every electorate with a vision of what this country could and should be like and understanding the spiritual elements of the foreign gods that we battle against.
And I'll leave it at that.
>> I'd just say yeah. Amen. It's the most powerful tool we have. Um we do underutilize it. There are have been networks at least I lived and worked in Melbourne. There was a strong prayer network that was cross national in Melbourne. can't talk about what it looks like in Brisbane, but yes, totally agree. Best we've got.
>> And bishop in the UK, >> I have a slightly different take on it um to my brothers and I appreciate everything they do. I think the church has been far too silent and far too hidden for far too long. So I now take every opportunity to uh step into the public sphere and unashamedly lead prayer. Last September we led over a million people on the streets of London.
Just three weeks ago, four weeks ago, we've led well over 150,000 again in public prayer. I have a little kind of uh Old Testament in me that demands of me that I take prayer into the public's face.
public sphere. Greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. So I challenge every believer, not just the clergy. Um, and in the UK, I can't speak for Australia, but in the in the UK, the clergy uh of the established church and a lot of the the the the uh evangelical, Pentecostal, charismatic clergy are a huge disappointment because they'd rather be woke and accepted and and preach all manner of nonsense than preach the truth of the gospel. So, it takes bold, strong believers that are filled with the same spirit that filled those in the upper room. And I challenge every one of you sitting there. Don't wait for prayer networks and they have their place. Get out on the streets and pray. Get out and reclaim your nation from false gods and false ideologies because if you don't, nobody else will.
[applause] Thank you. So, if uh I can figure out how I would really love to get Bishop Kai here physically to do a tour of this nation, [applause] next year's Church and State Summit.
Bishop Kai, I >> I know how to make it happen. We [laughter] I just need to get on a plane and come.
But yes, next year's church and state, if not sooner.
>> Yeah. Amen. [applause] and and then I'll find some excuse to come and tour Wales with you.
>> So that's very good. Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to go to lunch now. We're about to say goodbye to our live stream. Uh for those watching the live stream, we will uh be broadcasting the same time tomorrow. The only and last opportunity you get to watch it for free. You can also get tickets to come tonight for free to the uh gospel service there. But uh would you please join me in thanking our speakers the this morning? [applause] >> Thank you very much.
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