With ISIS occupying significant international media and political attention, many are wondering how we should to respond.

First, how are Muslims responding?

Muslims who actually support ISIS and its actions seem to be a small minority. This minority holds that ISIS is nearer to the true practice of Islam than other forms of Islam. They believe that ISIS is forging a legitimate caliphate—an Islamic state—demonstrated by its territorial expansion through military victories and its leader’s apparent claim to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad—a requisite of being a leader of a caliphate.

Due to the genuine desire to live in a “pure” Islamic society, a small minority of Muslims from around the world have been attracted to ISIS‘s cause. Qur’anic texts that seem to favor brutality are violently applied to those who oppose the “rightful” rule of the caliphate.¹

Many Muslims genuinely desire to live in a “pure” Islamic society.

But the majority of Muslims contend that ISIS and its actions are simply wrong and have nothing to do with true Islam. This view is shared by many Muslim leadership associations, universities, scholars, and religious leaders—including the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that represent 59 countries and Al-Azhar University, the leading Islamic university in the world.

Since interpretation of the Qur’an in Islam requires wide scholarly consensus, the majority of Muslim leaders claim that ISIS has wrongly ignored the consensus view and misinterpreted the Qur’an.²

The majority view rejects the violence that ISIS says is justified by the Qur’anic texts. Instead, many Muslims view ISIS as a contemporary movement that has grown in an environment of sectarianism and civil strife, created within the context of weakened dictatorships in Iraq and Syria.

Many Muslims view ISIS as a movement … created within the context of weakened dictatorships in Iraq and Syria.

What about the Christian responses?

Like Muslims, Christians also have various responses toward ISIS. Some might respond with fear. Some call for military action in a ‘just war.’ Other Christians may respond with compassion and humility by living out Jesus’ words to turn the other cheek, love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you (Luke 6:27-29).

Some Christians consider ISIS to be an inevitable outworking of Islamic texts and roots, which seem to give credibility to a very small extremist element within Islam. Still others follow the lead of the Muslim majority—which believes that ISIS misrepresents Islam—in order to build bridges and identify with the sorrow that many Muslims also feel towards ISIS.

Here are 10 ways we can respond practically to ISIS—and all Muslims—with love, respect, and kingdom purpose:

• Avoid putting all Muslims in the same box. Islam is not monolithic; rather, it has varying interpretations of and approaches to its own texts.
• Offer compassionate assistance to the many who are suffering and displaced due to the actions of ISIS—such as Syrian refugees, the majority of whom are Muslims.
• Pray for the transforming power of Christ in the lives of those who inflict evil and terror—just as Saul was transformed as he carried out terror against the early followers of Christ.
• Extend grace, mercy, love, and goodwill to Muslims in your community who are concerned about being unjustly discriminated against.
• Affirm the call and example of Christ by loving our enemies as well as those who consider us their enemies.
• Pray for and seek to help persecuted Christian—brothers and sisters in the Lord (Hebrews 13:3)—and affirm that martyrdom for Christ is a powerful testimony (Revelation 12:11) and is often the seed of the church.
• Proclaim Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness to the secular world as Islam renews the discussion of faith within the public sphere in the West.
• Promote love and respect when secularists or Muslims use their freedom of speech to foment disdain, violence, or hatred through offensive words or depictions.
• Exercise eyes of faith to see that current events could bring questioning within Islam that draw many to Jesus.
• Pray that, as a result of the increased awareness of the Muslim world, followers of Jesus would be moved to pray for, support, and be part of efforts to go, serve, and communicate Christ to Muslims.

May we take hold of this time as an opportunity for the Gospel—thanks to the heightened attention on Islam, the great socioeconomic needs in the Muslim world, and the ideological questioning happening within Islam.

Endnotes

1  Graeme Wood, ‘What ISIS really wants,’ Atlantic Monthly, February 2015.
2  Mehdi Hasan, ‘How Islamic is the Islamic State?’ New Statesman, 10 March 2015.

Original article: FrontiersUSA.org/blog/article//10-responses-to-isis