Why We Defend Israel: Because Faith Shouldn’t Be Built on Revisionism

A critical mind might ask whether Islam is about worship or dominance, because what it rewrites, reclaims, and forbids tells a deeper story than faith alone.

If you look at the story of Islam with a critical mind, a few uncomfortable questions begin to rise to the surface. Not from hate, but from pattern recognition. From looking at history not only as it’s told, but as it unfolded. Why is it that Islam consistently positions itself not just as a successor to Judaism and Christianity, but as their replacement? Why does it deny their foundational truths, claim their prophets, alter their stories, and then accuse others of falsehood?

Let’s start with the land. The holiest site in Judaism is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where two Jewish Temples once stood. After Islam emerged in the 7th century, it quickly took control of the land and built the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque directly on that site. Not near it. Not beside it. On it. If someone were to approach this with a critical mind, they might see this not as reverence, but as domination. An architectural statement of “we are the final truth, and we are here to overwrite yours.” It would be like Christianity building a church over the Kaaba and claiming it was now Christian. Muslims would never accept that. So why should Jews accept this?

This pattern isn’t limited to Jerusalem. In India, hundreds of Hindu temples were destroyed or converted into mosques during Islamic conquests, most famously, many Hindus believe the Babri Masjid was built in the 16th century atop the sacred Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya. The site became a flashpoint for national tension, eventually leading to the mosque’s demolition in 1992 and a decades-long legal battle that ended with Hindus reclaiming the land. In Turkey, the Hagia Sophia, a cathedral of Eastern Christianity for nearly a thousand years, was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Though it was turned into a museum in the 20th century, it was re-Islamised as a mosque again in 2020. Even in the UK today, some churches, no longer in use, are being purchased and transformed into mosques. It’s not just demographic change, it reflects a religious ideology that doesn’t simply coexist but replaces. Like on the Temple Mount, where Islam didn’t build next to Jewish history but on top of it, the message is clear: what came before must be erased.

Islam doesn’t just take land. It takes narratives. It says Abraham was a Muslim. That Moses was a Muslim. That Jesus, born into a Jewish family, preaching in synagogues, was a Muslim too. In the Islamic telling, these figures were never Jewish or Christian, but proto-Muslims. It’s not reinterpretation. It’s historical appropriation. Even the crucifixion, one of the most historically attested events in ancient history, is denied. Jesus didn’t die, they say. Someone else took his place. This isn’t theology. It’s an erasure of the central event of Christian faith. All of this raises the question: is Islam a religion that seeks truth, or a system that insists on rewriting it?

It’s not hard to notice a superiority complex at play. There is a recurring theme in Islamic teaching that Islam is the final and complete revelation. That Muhammad is the seal of the prophets. That previous scriptures were corrupted. That previous peoples strayed. This isn’t an invitation to dialogue. It’s a theological declaration of supremacy. It creates a mindset where Islam is right by definition, and everyone else is wrong by default.

When Muslims say Jesus was Muslim, it is not simply an alternative interpretation. It’s a total rebranding of history. It’s part of a broader pattern where Islam takes the most sacred figures and symbols from other religions and reframes them within its own worldview. The Kaaba, once a pagan shrine, is rebranded as Abrahamic. Jerusalem, sacred to Jews and Christians for over a millennium before Islam existed, becomes the third holiest city in Islam. Sacred spaces, sacred stories, and sacred figures are all absorbed. But it is always a one-way exchange. Nothing is borrowed. Everything is claimed.

For hundreds of years, Islam has viewed Judaism not as a parallel faith but as a deviation. Jews have been tolerated at times, but often humiliated, taxed, and treated as second-class under Islamic rule. The idea of Jewish sovereignty, especially in land once ruled by Islam, is treated as a provocation, an insult. But why? Why is it that Islam can conquer land and claim it forever, but Jews returning to their homeland is seen as theft? Why is it acceptable for Islam to overwrite Jewish tradition but not the other way around? If you approach this with a critical mind, you might see not just theology, but power. Not just faith, but empire.

This dynamic doesn’t just play out in ancient history. It’s alive and well in the modern West too. Why is it that when evangelists preach peacefully on street corners, almost every time they’re shut down, it’s by groups of Muslims? I’ve seen it myself. I once debated a Muslim speaker called Hamza from Speaker’s Corner. I told him plainly: we should all be able to co-exist, let people decide freely. But he wasn’t having it. He looked me in the eye and said it was his goal to crush Christianity. That wasn’t hidden. That wasn’t metaphor. That was the mission. This isn’t just about truth. It’s about total dominance. It’s not about co-existence. It’s about replacement. The fact Muslim converts are referred to as “reverts”, speaks a lot about the supremacy I’m talking about. STNG fans will know it appears Borg like. 

If the Islamic God were truly sovereign and all-powerful, why was conquest necessary at all? Why did Islam feel compelled to take the land by force, Jerusalem, North Africa, Persia, Spain, parts of India? If the truth of a religion is self-evident, why did it require an empire to spread it? Why were swords and armies necessary to carry the word of Allah, if the word itself was supposed to be the ultimate proof?

Some might argue that conquest exists in the Bible too. That the Israelites took the land of Canaan and called it theirs because God gave it to them. That’s a fair question. But even in that story, there is a fundamental difference. The conquest of Canaan is not presented as an expansionist campaign of empire. It is a specific, one-time divine command to a stateless people to reclaim a promised land after centuries of slavery and exile. It is not a mandate for eternal conquest, nor is it used to justify spreading Judaism by force across the world.

Judaism never became an imperial religion. There was no Jewish empire bent on expanding into foreign lands, forcing conversions, or rewriting the beliefs of others. Jews didn’t march into Europe, Asia, and Africa to convert the masses or build synagogues over sacred sites. They weren’t trying to dominate global narratives. In fact, most of Jewish history is not about conquest, but about survival, often under the rule of others, often in exile, often persecuted.

Modern Israel is not the result of biblical conquest. It is the result of international consensus, legal process, and existential necessity. In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the land between Jews and Arabs. Israel accepted. The Arab world rejected it and chose war. The Jews didn’t invade or colonise. They agreed to a peaceful solution, one that recognised both peoples. It was not conquest. It was restoration. And when that offer was refused, they defended themselves, as any nation would. 

So when critics equate Islamic conquest with biblical history, or with the founding of Israel, they are blurring very different stories. One is an empire that spread by the sword and still demands submission. The other is a people who returned home through diplomacy and law, after centuries of displacement, and were immediately attacked for simply existing.

Throughout history, empires that have sought total control haven’t just conquered land. They’ve rewritten the past. The Nazis did it in Alsace, burning books and banning French identity to erase what came before. The Soviets did it with propaganda, censorship, and the violent silencing of dissent, claiming the past was a lie and only the Party held truth. Islam, too, followed this pattern. It didn’t just conquer people. It replaced their prophets, rewrote their scriptures, renamed their landmarks, and claimed divine authority to do so.

Unlike Jesus, who spread his message through words, humility, and sacrifice, often resulting in his followers being martyred for speaking truth to power, Islam’s rise was through warfare and fear. Where Christianity expanded in defiance of persecution, Islam expanded by causing it. Muhammad was not martyred. He was a military commander, a ruler, and a conqueror. His successors launched campaigns that reshaped continents. The sword was not incidental to Islam’s spread. It was central.

And while many Muslims today appear peaceful and moderate, it must be said plainly. They are only moderate because they have been influenced by Western values, secularism, pluralism, and freedom of thought. Islam in its pure, unfiltered form looks far more like ISIS, the Taliban, or the regime in Iran. That is Islam without Western influence. That is Islam as it was written. Those who follow a softer version of it often do so because they’ve adopted the fruits of the West while denying its roots.

Modern liberals defend Islam in the name of tolerance, yet ignore its long legacy of conquest, oppression, and historical erasure. They speak of justice while defending an ideology that declares itself final, infallible, and immune to criticism. They rage against the British Empire, but would never apply the same outrage to the Islamic conquests of the Middle East, North Africa, or the Indian subcontinent.

Would these same people defend British colonial subjects the way they defend Palestinian ones? Would they back Christians in Nigeria, Hindus in Pakistan, Yazidis in Iraq, or Jews in Israel with the same passion? Of course not. Because this isn’t about anti-imperialism. It’s about choosing which power they want to win. They are not against colonialism. They just prefer a different coloniser. Which makes even less sense when you look at what happens after these revolutions. In Iran, Marxists helped bring down the Shah, only to be hunted, tortured, and killed by the Islamic regime they helped empower. In Egypt, secularists and liberals joined hands with Islamists against Mubarak, only to be silenced or exiled when the Muslim Brotherhood took over. The left has a strange habit of aligning with movements that would destroy them first and I still don’t understand why they think this way. It is mind-boggling. It’s as if they are more afraid of the West’s reflection in the mirror than of actual tyranny.

Maybe part of the reason so many people avoid criticising Islam is that it’s simply easier to target Christians and Jews because we’re tolerant. Because we’re not going to threaten them. Maybe they’re not activists. Maybe they’re cowards. Because if they truly believed in justice, in anti-colonialism, in freedom of speech and conscience, they would apply the same critique to Islam that they do to the West. But they don’t. Perhaps deep down, they are afraid. Not of God. Not of truth. But of the consequences. Because when Islam is criticised, it’s not uncommon for it to be met with outrage, with violence, with death threats. That silence, that caution, that fear, says something.

But as Christians, those of us who follow Jesus, we are not afraid to ask the hard questions. We are not afraid to look at patterns, to study history, to examine what is unfolding in front of us and name it. We do not rewrite the past. Christianity builds on Judaism. It doesn’t erase it. It adds to it, through Jesus, not in opposition to it. That’s not what’s happening with Islam. What we are seeing is more like Orwell’s 1984. The twisting of history. The suppression of memory. The replacement of language with slogans. When I hear the word Islamophobia, I think of Newspeak. A word designed not to protect people, but to stop discussion. To halt questions. To make you afraid to think.

But I do not hate Muslims. They are free to believe. They are free to worship. I am not trying to deny anyone their right to faith. What I am saying is simple: stop denying others the right to question. As a Christian, I hear criticism of my faith all the time. That’s fine. That’s part of freedom. I don’t even have to allow it. People are entitled to challenge Christianity, to mock it, to reject it. That’s how truth is tested. So why should Islam be exempt?

If it truly is truth, then it can survive questions. But if it cannot survive being questioned, then maybe it was never truth to begin with.