Can a Muslim be God’s Voice to an Evangelical Christian?

I once lived with a Muslim family for two years. It was extremely challenging, but not in the ways I expected it would be.

I lived with the Muslim family in their house near the center square of the capital city of Albania. There were nine of us in a relatively small space. Added to the cramped conditions was the fact that running water flowed only a few hours a day, electricity was intermittent, and food variety was limited. But I found none of this too difficult, even though Albania (Muslim, Balkan, post-Communist, poor, Mediterranean) could not have been more jarring to my affluent, American, “white,” Baptist upbringing.

What I found most challenging was this: They loved me. They loved me not only in a pat-you-on-the-back landlord sort of way. My Muslim family loved me like a son, which included caring for me as their spiritual responsibility.

This took particular force in the person of my hunched and humming Albanian grandmother. She was the first face I saw each morning, and at night she would lovingly touch my shoulder and say “sweet sleep.” She also pastored me. She encouraged me when I was low, blessed me as I went about my work (which, by the way, was Christian missionary work) and she told me about God’s love for me. She challenged my Christian training and my American pragmatism. She was a dawdling, superstitious Muslim. How could I allow her to be God’s voice in my life?

Tough questions

What am I to do? Seriously.

How do I understand all the folks who cross my path and don’t fit my theological categories? As a devout Christian, what am I supposed to do with the non-Christians I have known who are kinder than most Christians, purer than most Christians, and seemingly more connected to God than most Christians? Even more troubling, what am I to do with religious outsiders who are spiritually wise and speak that wisdom into my life? Am I allowed to accept their wisdom or am I required to sit in perpetual suspicion?

FULL ARTICLE FROM LEADERSHIP

‘Let’s Start Over’: Muslims Hope Pope Francis will Salvage Relations

By Kari Huus, Staff Writer, NBC News

Catholics and Muslims have come a long way since the Crusades, but during the tenure of Pope Benedict XVI, relations between the world’s two largest religions hit the skids.

So it was with relief and renewed optimism that prominent Muslims and interfaith advocates cheered the newly anointed Pope Francis.

“We are hoping for better relations with the Vatican after the election of the new pope,” Mahmud Azab, adviser for inter-faith affairs at Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning in Cairo, told AFP. “We congratulate the Church of St. Peter and all Catholics around the world.”

From the start, Benedict put less energy in reaching out to other religions than his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who blazed the trail for Catholic relations with Muslims and other religions through his tireless travels and scores of meetings and prayer with imams around the world.

Under John Paul, the Vatican launched the World Day of Prayer for Peace in 1986, which was at first a hard sell for prominent Muslims, said Father Thomas Michel, who has a PhD in Islamic studies and headed John Paul’s office for Islam for 13 years.

FULL ARTICLE FROM NBC NEWS

Mennonites Reach Out to Build Positive Christian-Muslim Relations

SALUNGA, Pa. — Eastern Mennonite Missions’ new Christian/Muslim Relations Team wants to equip Christians around the world for life-giving interaction with Muslims.

Eastern Mennonite Missions’ Christian/Muslim Relations Team, from left: Jonathan Bornman, David W. Shenk and Andres Prins. — Photo by Kim Winey/EMM

The team’s tagline is “Peacemakers Confessing Christ.”

“Globalization and immigration have resulted in the 2.4 billion Christians and the 1.6 billion Muslims of the world interacting and relating to one another in new settings,” said team member Jonathan Bornman, who served among the Muslim people of Senegal in West Africa for 10 years. “We want to equip Christians to open doors of friendship and good relations with their Muslim neighbors.”

Other team members are David W. Shenk, EMM global consultant known worldwide for encouraging Muslim-Christian dialogue; and Andres Prins, who has 30 years of experience in North Africa and the Middle East.

Shenk notes that many Christians in North America worry about having Muslim neighbors. Recently he discovered similar concerns in Neuwied, Germany, where he led a seminar on being good neighbors to Muslims and sharing the good news of Jesus with them.

The Christian sponsors of the seminar went to every mosque in the community with an invitation to the final evening session on the peace of Christ. A number of Muslims came and then lingered after the session for conversation.

FULL ARTICLE FROM MENNONITE WORLD REVIEW 

Humbled by the Muslim response to Christians at Christmas time

Each Christmas, my family receives more greetings and gifts from Muslim friends than from fellow Christians.

We treasure handmade cards by Muslim children who do not celebrate Christmas. We cannot dismiss these efforts as tokenistic as they are annual and original. They are not five-second, to-from cards but well-worded peace messages in English and Arabic.

I only wish we took the time to reciprocate this goodwill gesture at the two Islamic Eids, their religious festivals, annually.

Throughout my childhood, we would be visited by Lebanese Muslim friends laden with generous gifts. This did not mean they had suddenly elevated the prophet Issa, as Jesus is known, to the son of God.

Their faith was not compromised and we felt humbled and honoured.

As I write this article, there is a knock on the door. Ahmad, my late father’s carer when he had Alzheimer’s, arrives looking like a bearded, smiling Santa bearing gifts.

When people say to him ”You do this but you are a Muslim?” he replies ”I do this because I am a Muslim”.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE AGE

‘Muslim Bias’ Investigation Instead Finds Christian Bias In Texas District’s Curriculum

A chain email sent to Dallas-area school board members and district officials thatprompted an investigation into alleged Islamic bias in the system’s curriculum turned up perhaps unintended results.

The email, titled “IRVING ISD INDOCTRINATING ISLAM,” warned: “Christians are going to have to stand up against the pro Islamic teaching in our public schools with CSCOPE curriculum.”

CSCOPE is a nonprofit offshoot of the Texas Education Service Centers, established in 1965 across the state’s school districts, and helps develop curricula and implement school reform. The agency is reported to have received about $25 million in funding last year.

According to The Dallas Morning News, the resulting 72-page report – compiled by a former social studies teacher described by CSCOPE’s director as a “very socially and fiscally conservative” woman who “watches Glenn Beck on a regular basis” — found quite the opposite of any Islamic bias: If anything, Irving schools have a Christian bias.

The teacher was told to “look for anything she would consider the least bit controversial,” by reading every textbook used for kindergarten through high school and record any bias in the CSCOPE curriculum, according to the Morning News.

Among the findings:

• Christianity got twice as much attention in the curriculum as any other religion. Islam was a distant second.
• The Red Crescent and Boston Tea Party reference mentioned in the email were nowhere in CSCOPE’s curriculum, although they may have been in the past.
• If there was any Islamic bias in CSCOPE it was “bias against radical Islam.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE HUFFINGTON POST 

Christians and Muslims Seek Common Ground in Cincinnati

For the past five years, a small, dedicated group of Muslims and Christians has been meeting in Greater Cincinnati, debunking myths and dissolving stereotypes, one personal relationship at a time.

The local Muslim-Christian Dialogue confronts tough topics head-on, says organizer Bill Lonneman of College Hill. “Even open-minded people are coming in with fears and concerns about terrorism. We don’t shrink away from addressing those issues.”

Dozens of such groups have been meeting for years across the nation and around the world, but co-organizer Karen Dabdoub thinks many Greater Cincinnatians would be surprised to learn that such an organization has been quietly at work here.

Without the group, “I think there would be a lot more distance between people of different faiths in our community,” said Dabdoub, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Cincinnati.

One issue the group confronts: Mainstream Muslims respect Christians and Jews as fellow “people of the book” who also believe in a holy text and one God, Lonneman said. Yet Muslim extremists, who make up a small portion of the Muslim population, draw the lion’s share of attention for their violent acts, he said.

FULL ARTICLE FROM CINCINNATI.COM 

Giant of Christian-Muslim Dialogue, the Rt. Rev. Kenneth Cragg, Dies at age 99

The Rt Rev Kenneth Cragg, who has died aged 99 , was a distinguished scholar who, more than anyone else in the 20th century, helped Christians to a deeper understanding of, and a wider sympathy for, the religious faiths of Muslims and Jews.

This he achieved long before the importance of such understanding for world peace was widely recognised. Besides a long teaching ministry in universities, he was the author of some 40 books, two of which, The Call of the Minaret (1956) and Sandals in the Mosque (1959), became classics. In these Cragg concentrated on Muslim prayer and spirituality, showing the rich treasury of devotion available to the devout Muslim and its affinity with the Christian tradition.

His later books, written after the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism on to the world stage, were particularly concerned with the question of whether or not violence is an integral element of the Muslim faith. He believed it to be unhelpful to deny the existence of such an element, which had developed during the period when Mohammed was living in Medina and creating through political and military strength the conditions favourable to the spreading of his message.

But Cragg pointed out that during the preceding period, when the Prophet was virtually a prisoner in Mecca, he received his original revelations, which emphasised the central importance of promoting harmony and peace. Cragg urged today’s Muslims to recover this emphasis and abandon all forms of militarism, though he recognised that for many in the Arab world religion and politics are inseparable.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH 

Muslim Leaders Support Pakistani Girl Rimsha Masih who was Accused of Blasphemy

WASHINGTON (BP) — Muslim clerics and scholars — including representatives of radical groups — have voiced support for a Pakistani Christian girl accused of blasphemy. An official medical review, meanwhile, has revealed she has mental difficulties.

According to media reports, the All Pakistan Ulema Council, an organization of Muslim clerics and scholars, denounced the climate of fear and vigilantism surrounding Rimsha Masih, who was accused of blasphemy for burning religious texts and then arrested when an irate mob demanded action. The facts of the case — including what the young girl burned while cleaning — are in doubt, and some media reports say she has Down syndrome.

“The law of the jungle is taking over now and anybody can be accused of anything,” Allama Tahir Ashrafi, chair of the council, told the BBC.

He called on the government to impartially investigate the accusations and punish the accusers if they falsely pointed the finger, according to Toronto’s Globe and Mail.

“We see Rimsha as a test case for Pakistan’s Muslims, Pakistan’s minorities and for the government,” Ashrafi told a news conference in Islamabad, according to the McClatchy news service. “We don’t want to see injustice done with anyone. We will work to end this climate of fear. The accusers should be proceeded against with full force, so that no one would dare make spurious allegations.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM OPPOSING VIEWS

Iman Sheikh: Pakistan’s anti-Christian witch hunt

Rifta Masih is an 11-year-old Christian girl who lives near Islamabad, Pakistan. She reportedly suffers from Down’s Syndrome. Like many of the other Christians in her area — who comprise about 10% of the local population — the members of her family work menial jobs, and live in tiny properties rented from Muslim landlords.

On Thursday evening, Rifta was seen leaving the one-room dwelling she lives in with her sister and parents, carrying an earthenware dish filled with ash. Or, it may have been some refuse in a small shopping bag. Although Hammad Malik, a 23-year-old witness, is unclear on exactly what the girl was transporting, he is quite certain that the burnt remains had Arabic writing on them.

Rifta, he alleges, was burning pages from a Koran inside her house, and then trying to find a place to dispose of the remains. Although he did not see her do this, that did not stop him from assembling an angry group of men and reporting the incident to the local police, with the demand that the girl be apprehended in accordance with the country’s Blasphemy Law. The authorities at first did not act, but then moved swiftly to get the girl into custody when a mob of over 500 people gathered at the Masih home’s doorstep. Fearing for her safety, the authorities put her into a cell for a two-week detention.

Welcome to Pakistan: A nightmare society beyond pity or parody, where handicapped 11-year-old girls must be locked up to ensure their own safety.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE NATIONAL POST 

Muslims Condemn Blasphemy Charges Against Christian Girl in Pakistan

Muslims together condemn the arrest and imprisonment of a Christian girl, Rimsha Masih, in Pakistan on blasphemy charges.

The New York Times reported on Aug. 20:

The police jailed the girl, Rimsha Masih, and her mother on Friday after hundreds of Muslim protesters surrounded the police station here where they were being held, demanding that Ms. Masih face charges under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. A local cleric had said Ms. Masih had burned pages of the Noorani Qaida, a religious textbook used to teach the Koran to children.

(Noorani Qaida has nothing to do with Al-Qaida, it is simply means principles.)

 

We urge Muslims in Pakistan and around the world to focus on this particular topic and seek to abolish the blasphemy laws.

There is a way out to find lasting solutions to rid of the abusive practices by a few in the clergy group. These men, literate or illiterate, at least claim to follow Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) life examples; however, they don’t, and it is our immediate responsibility to pass on Prophet Muhammad’s practices to some of these men who pass judgments without any reference to the life of the Prophet. Screaming at them or pushing them to the corner is neither Jesus’ way nor Muhammad’s way.

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is considered a blessing to the humanity and rightfully known as Rahmutul Aalameen, the mercy to mankind. It behooves Muslims to protect the integrity of that title and never commit an unmerciful act invoking his name.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE HUFFINGTON POST