Anna Lee Link

I recently wrote an article explaining why Islam is not merely a religion, and I am absolutely astounded by the ignorance of so many of you in my comments. The number of people replying, “Oh, sort of like Christianity,” is embarrassing. Apparently, I need to put on my teacher pants and explain this as if I were standing in front of a third-grade classroom, because some of you are either being deliberately dishonest or genuinely do not understand the histories or doctrines you are attempting to compare. Jesus did not establish a government. He did not command an army. He did not impose a special tax on unbelievers. He did not create a civil and criminal code governing inheritance, courtroom testimony, marriage, divorce, punishment, taxation, and warfare. He did not conquer territory or rule a state. Muhammad did. That is not an insult. It is history. Christianity is centered on following Christ. The New Testament does not provide Christians with a comprehensive legal system to be imposed upon an entire country. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Islam is a religion, but it is not merely a religion. It is also a political, legal, and social system. Muhammad was not only a religious teacher. He was a political ruler, military commander, and lawgiver. Sharia governs far more than prayer and personal morality. It addresses marriage, divorce, inheritance, testimony, criminal punishment, taxation, warfare, and political authority. The Quran assigns different inheritance shares to sons and daughters in specified circumstances. It places husbands in authority over wives. Islamic texts prescribe corporal punishments. Traditional Islamic sources report that Muhammad consummated his marriage to Aisha when she was nine. Traditional Islamic jurisprudence also prescribed death for apostasy under certain conditions. Those are not inventions created by people who “hate Muslims.” They come from Islam’s own texts and legal tradition. And before several of you predictably shout, “What about the Inquisition?” let us put that history back into its actual setting. Muslim armies invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and rapidly conquered most of the territory. Christian kingdoms then spent centuries reclaiming it. The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478, near the end of that long struggle and within a society profoundly shaped by conquest, reconquest, forced conversion, and religious conflict. Was it simply a direct response to the original Muslim invasion? No. History is more complicated than that. Its immediate purpose was to investigate suspected heresy, initially among baptized Jewish converts and later among Muslim converts as well. It also became an instrument of royal power and religious control. That does not excuse it. It places it in history. I am not proud of the Inquisition. No Christian should be. But notice the difference: Christians can look back at it, condemn it, and recognize it as a grave abuse of religious and political authority. We do not have Christian governments in 2026 convening inquisitorial tribunals, torturing converts, or executing people for leaving Christianity. Meanwhile, governments and movements invoking Islamic law still imprison people for blasphemy, punish apostasy, publicly flog men and women, restrict the lives of women, and impose religious law through the power of the state. These are not stories preserved behind museum glass. They are happening now. So if you want to compare apples to apples, compare the present to the present. Do not drag a Christian tribunal created in 1478 into the conversation while pretending not to notice governments enforcing corporal punishment in the name of Sharia in 2026. Do not reach back five centuries to condemn Christianity while asking everyone to ignore what is being done today under Islamic law.