Islam is Hedonism

I have voiced my difficulties working with Muslims and the faith of Islam. On several occasions, working with interpreters during my deployment, they have told me what the Imams are saying from the local mosques during Friday prayer. One such case recently presented me with an interesting observation. In this particular message, the Imam was teaching almost the exact opposite of what I and my family as Christians and what many others believe.

The Imam said in the midst of talking about the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, “Ramadan is a month to get close to allah. The way that you get close to allah is to do what makes you feel good about yourself.”

When I heard this, I had an epiphany. As Christians we presuppose that as humans, we are “fallen.” Many people would read the word “fallen” and not understand what it means to a Christian. To explain, I need to go through some other theological points. Another presupposition that Christians hold is that God created humankind in His image and initially without sin only to have humanity turn their back on God in sin. Everyone knows the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When they ate the fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they then “fell” from God’s favor disobeying a direct commandment and He could no longer fellowship with man as he once did. Now this has significance because with that falling, humanity became basically evil. Human actions, apart from God, are motivated by a soul that is evil and without good. It is like a dark room. Darkness itself is only the absence of light just like human kind is, without God, evil. Even Jesus told his disciples they were a light to the world (Matt 5:14). The perfect verse is John 3:19, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.” Ultimately man is free from good without God. So if you follow the teaching of this Imam to its extent, you get humans doing whatever they want that makes them feel good. Well if man is evil and loves darkness, then what he does to make him feel good is going to be evil. Logically that is not a good thing. So my epiphany is this: Islam is just the same old Hedonism (indulging in whatever the person desires as a way of life) that has been around since the beginning of man. Islam is just another face of it.