Resistance is futile – but so is striving. Just love

The Pew Institute predicted recently that by 2070, Islam could be the world’s largest religion. The Institute also predicts that Christianity will lose majority religious status in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.

Do I want Islam to dominate the world? No. It’s not because I think that Christians are better than Muslims. I have many beautiful Muslim friends, including Afghan Hazaras and Iranians who fled to Australia to escape persecution. They are wonderful people, loyal citizens, and the type of people everyone would like to have a next door neighbors.

Am I afraid of Islamic terrorism? Yes. But it is not religion that is terrorist, but fanatics claiming religion. There are dangerous fanatics among all religious groups. Right now many co-called Muslims are grabbing the headlines by outdoing each other in gruesome acts, and it is true that some words in the Quran and Hadith can be used as justification.

I want Christianity to persist and grow because of the great gift of love that Jesus Christ gave the world. As I write for this blog, I often find myself discussing the frailties of human consciousness (Christian, Muslim – it does not matter) that lead to hatred and violence. I have written about our blindness to anything that does not fit our personal frame of the world and how this leads to blame and defamation. This even causes us to create ‘evidence’ to support our world-view where none exists.  We seek out people who affirm our own world-view and that breeds group violence. The blindness that results from this is buttressed by our belief that we are motivated by the best of intentions, and that our cause is ‘righteous’.

In the face of these human limitations that lead to destruction, I despair. There is no escape from my own human condition, and I have found that the more I strive to perfect myself, the worse I actually become.

But I am not left in that despair because Jesus Christ redeemed us from this. Christ does not call Christians to despair, nor to strive for perfection through human strength alone.  While the Old Testament is a book of striving for perfection under the Law and violent striving against enemies, Christ tells us to love. And sometimes Christians are indeed able to love, not because they have perfected themselves, but in those moments when they can permit themselves to surrender to the love of God, allowing themselves to be ‘gathered under His wings’. We don’t deserve it, nor do we win it.  We are given this grace.

Christians are called to love. We are called to share that love. The gift of love is what makes Christianity different. It releases us from the chains of striving, of despair, and dissolves the frames we create.

Let’s remember to offer this love to all of our fellow strugglers in life.

Thanks to Gwydlon Williams https://www.flickr.com/photos/45909111@N00/

It is Biblically orthodox to spread love, not fear

Michael Youssef, founder and pastor of the Church of The Apostles, recently said: “I fear Islamic jihadists less than I fear the Christian church departing from Biblical orthodoxy. The reason I say this is because historically, Islamic expansions have taken place every time the church of Jesus Christ departed from living under the authority of the Scriptures.” I agree, but I doubt that Dr. Youssef and I have the same understanding of ‘Biblical orthodoxy’.

Christians are indeed departing from the ‘authority of the Scriptures’. Instead of radiating the love of our Lord and Savior, Christian groups are engaged in publicizing the evils of Islam.  For example, billionbibles.org claims that Muslims are engaged in a five-step program to institute Sharia law. Not ‘some Muslims’ or even ‘many Muslims’ – this site, as do so many of the same ilk, speaks of  ‘Muslims’ as if all are the same, with the same intentions. , and by doing so they demonize all Muslim people. While the Brotherhood is indeed active in many countries, including the United States, but it certainly does not represent ‘Muslims’.  Just one example: the governments of Bahrain Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates consider it to be a terrorist organization, just as the US does.

This focus on ‘what is to fear from Islam’ is endangering Christianity. The great and wonderful thing about Christianity is that it is a religion for which ‘orthodoxy’ is love, the love of one’s neighbor whoever he or she may be. By demonizing, we turn away from the ‘orthodoxy’ of love.

Some claim ‘Of course, we love Muslims – it’s just their religion/ISIS/Sharia/Al Qaida/whatever that we are exposing as evil’. If we ‘love Muslims’, then we will take care not to demonize them. And where does Jesus tell us to put our energy into creating websites and programs that focus on the wrongs that we think others are doing?

Where there are forces that can create hatred in our hearts, the Church must be on the side of love. Instead of fanning the fires of fear with ‘evidence’ that Muslims are evil, the Church is called on to use its energy to argue for love.

Truth is the foundation of love. Some Muslims, like the Muslim Brotherhood, intend to take over America, and the state must fight against this, just as it fights against any force with this intention. Some Muslims have joined ISIS, and we must fight with all our strength against this entity. But we must filter our words through love when speaking about any publically demonized groups, including Islam and Muslims. Most of all, we must focus on spreading love, not increasing fear.

With thanks to https://www.flickr.com/photos/elycefeliz/

What do Muslims have to do to prove that they are not a terrorists?

What do Muslims have to do to prove that they are not terrorists? Commentators and media outlets seem to ignore words and actions against extremists if they come from Muslim organizations and nations.

One complaint among non-Muslims is that Muslim religious authorities do not condemn terrorist attacks, but indeed they do. Charles Kurzman’s University of North Carolina webpage is just one source of the hundreds (possibly thousands) of statements and fatwas against terrorism are listed. Kurzman collected 67 statements against terrorism by Muslim groups from September 2001 to October 2010, and cites ten other collections of similar statements.

A fatwa (religious ruling) from the Fiqh Council of North America (an Islamic juristic body) is representative of many:  ‘Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives.  There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism.’

Muslims are not only speaking out against extremism, but taking action. Last September, the United States and 10 Arab states signed up for a military campaign against IS. The communique stated that ‘nations would contribute as appropriate’, and that phrase caused many to believe that the Arab states would not in renege on military action when the crunch came. The agreement, however, was not a collection of empty words. Within a few days, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates joined the U.S. airstrikes against IS targets in Syria.

Skeptics may argue that, by taking military action, these nations are just protecting their own Islamic culture and peoples. Recent actions by Egypt, however, challenge this assumption. In the last few days, Egypt has bombed IS targets in Libya because IS beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians. Not Muslim citizens – Christian citizens. In addition, Egypt declared seven days of national mourning for these Christian citizens. When President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi commented on the strikes he said that ‘Egypt and the whole world are in a fierce battle with extremist groups carrying extremist ideology and sharing the same goals’.

There are other actions that are very rarely noted, for example small groups of Syrians are hunting down IS fighters in eastern Syria in a guerrilla campaign, and  Iraqi Kurdistan and Syrian Kurdistan are militarily engaged against IS.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world are against terrorism. The brother of Ahmed Marabet, the Muslim policeman who was killed protecting the staff of Charli Hebdo, called the IS attackers ‘false Muslims’.

He also said: ‘I am addressing myself to all racists – the Islamophobes and the anti-Semites: You must not mix up extremism with Muslims. The madmen have no color nor religion. Stop … having wars or burning mosques or burning synagogues because you are attacking people’.

Thanks to Monaxle https://www.flickr.com/photos/monaxle/

I didn’t know Charlie, but Muhammad sent me an Easter card

I met Muhammad, and Ali, Reza, Baqir, Hassan, and Hussain, along with many more Muslim men in 2002, when I volunteered to teach them English. They were refugees, newly-arrived in Australia from Afghanistan. It wasn’t until many years later that I met Fatima, Sara, Farida, and other Muslim women. In 2002, none of us realized that the terms of their visas would keep them separated from their wives and children for at least three years, and some of them were to wait six long years to reunite.

Nor did we realize that they were to provide proof that Muslim terrorists are as Pope Francis said last Monday, ‘enslaved by “deviant forms of religion” that use(d) God as a mere ideological pretext to perpetuate mass killings’.

Most of the volunteers (there were about 50 of us), had, like me, been recruited through Christian churches, and not one of us had had any experience of Muslims or of Islam. I had barely seen a Muslim person before and knew nothing about Afghanistan and how these men’s ethnic group was ‘fair game’ there for the Taliban.

As a result of our lack of knowledge, and because the men could only speak a few words of English, we volunteers had to do a lot of guessing. The men were exceedingly polite and always treated us with respect, and so we felt that we could not rely on cues from their behavior. We had lengthy discussions about how to behave. Was it OK to shake hands? They did so easily, but we knew that there were rules about contact between the genders. We provided tea and cakes after the lessons. What were the rules of Halal concerning cakes? They were eating the cakes, but perhaps they were unknowingly violating the rules of their religion because they were too polite to refuse? We wanted to give them small gifts at Christmas time – but would they be offended in some way but too polite to refuse? The questions kept arising, and we kept making our best guesses.

They were guessing, too. Easter in Australia is a four-day national holiday. Good Friday is a very solemn occasion, and everything is closed except churches. On Easter Saturday, however, it has become a national pastime to invite friends and family to barbeques (or ‘grills’ as the Yanks say). We volunteers decided to hold a ‘barbie’ on Easter Saturday and invite the men. We had the invitation translated and expected the men to happily accept. We had been on outings together previously, and they had always been eager because the events gave them some relief from the uncertainty of their visas and the dreadful separation from their families. But this time they seemed cold. When we reminded them, they did not tell us that they were not coming, because, was we discovered, in Hazara culture it is impolite to refuse an invitation, but we sensed that they may not turn up.

We asked an interpreter to help us, and discovered that the men knew that Good Friday was a sad day, followed by rejoicing on Easter Sunday. So, they reasoned, Easter Saturday must also be a solemn occasion, and we were only inviting them out of a compassion so great that we were ready to violate our religious traditions! Once they understood that the occasion would be as happy for us as it would be for them, they gratefully accepted. This memorable occasion showed us that that Muslim men, as well as us, were concerned to be respectful and that we sometimes stumbled over ourselves in order not to offend.

As we relaxed, we discovered that we could talk about our faith with the men more easily than with mainstream Australians and that they cared about our religious life. To this day, for example, the only Easter cards I have received have been from Muslims, and Christmas brings many Muslim good wishes.

We truly met each other and came to love each other.

(If you would like to know more about my experiences with these Muslim men (and are not daunted by academic writing!) you may be interested in my dissertation)

Thanks to https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrehan00/

How to create a demon

Answer this: Do you believe that impulse spending wastes your money? Now answer this: How often have you bought something on impulse in the last week? Last month?? Just one example (a rather lame one, I admit) that opinions do not equal behavior.

A much more serious issue for the social health of our communities is the mismatch between opinions that people say they have about others, and their behavior towards them. Towards Muslims, for example.

In Australia in the aftermath of 9/11, a number of politicians and public commentators announced that anything Muslim was ‘un-Australian’. Scholars wrote papers and books about the prejudice against Muslims expressed by politicians and the media. Now, in 2014, hate speech is again crawling out from under its rock, lured by the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) atrocities.

As usual, many media stories portray all Muslims as potential ISIS fiends. These created ‘demons’ sell papers, and win politicians votes, and so we hear a lot about them. Some of the stories are so way out that they are even funny, like the Australian Senator who said she would not allow anyone wearing a burqa into her office as a matter of security. When she posted this manifesto on social media she tried to support her point with an image of a woman in a burqa handling a gun. Unbeknownst to her, the woman in the picture was in fact an Afghan policewoman on duty in Kandahar. The media and politicians thrive on these created ogres.

When surveys ask the public if they hold the same opinions,  the majority agree.  Opinions, however, are not predictors of behavior. During the post 9/11 rise in public anti-Muslim sentiment, many Australians rallied to help and support their Muslim neighbors. I was fascinated by this dissonance between opinion and behavior, and studied this phenomenon for my PhD thesis. I found that, almost without exception, when Australians met Muslims face to face, they greeted them with warmth and hospitality, and welcomed them as neighbors.

Although I now live in the US, I know that Australians are currently living out the same paradox. While many politicians demonize them, Welcome to Australia and many other citizen groups are opening their hearts and homes to the ‘security risks’.   One man recently conducted an experiment in Australian streets where he accosted actors dressed as Muslims and told them to ‘go back to where they came from’ and called them terrorists. Every single person who passed by stopped and interfered. (I would love to hear from Americans about initiatives like this here.)

As long as calling on ‘demons’ enables media and politicians to win followers and make money, the decent instincts of ordinary citizens are ignored in public discourse.

Murder with a pure heart – fighting ISL

Today is the 11^th of September, the thirteenth anniversary of  the terrorist attacks of  9/11. Flight 93 crashed into a field quite near here, in Shanksville, Pa. That was the flight on which the passengers took over the plane from the hijackers. There is a memorial being developed there which I will soon visit.

Last night, 9/10, President Obama declared that the US would pursue IS (the Islamic State, also known as ISL), until it is destroyed, including strikes in Syria.

This morning, the meditation in my Bonhoeffer daily devotional was about conflicts between nations. Bonhoeffer pointed out that the causes of wars are the same as those that poison personal relationships: “lust for power, pride, inordinate desire for glory and honor, arrogance, feelings of inferiority, and strife over ‘living space’ and over one’s ‘daily bread’” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom).

Bonhoeffer reminds us that as Christians we are called to become aware of and root out the casus belli in ourselves so we can be witnesses for peace in the world.

The remarkable thing about Bonhoeffer is that, despite being a man whose every action was founded on deep examination of his conscience in the light of the Gospel, he participated in a plot to kill Hitler. He understood the roots of war, that we are each responsible for eliminating those roots from ourselves and our societies, and yet he attempted a murder.

As Christians we are called to peace, and yet there are circumstances that demand war. I pray that we follow Bonhoeffer’s example, so that when we do support aggression, it is from a deeply-examined conscience and with sorrowful reluctance.