Christians Commanded to Love their Muslim Neighbors Insist Speakers

HONOLULU (ABP) — An American missions professor who served more than two decades in Indonesia and an Arab Baptist educator from Lebanon emphasized the need to reach out in love to Muslims during a July 29 session at the Baptist World Congress meeting in Honolulu.

Robert Sellers, missions professor at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology in Abilene, Texas; and Nabil Costa, executive director of the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development, led a focus-group discussion of Christian-Muslim relations, during the once-every-five-years convocation of the globe’s Baptists.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE ASSOCIATED BAPTIST PRESS

Evangelical Body: Cancel ‘Burn a Qur’an’ Day

The nation’s largest evangelical body is urging the Florida church behind “International Burn A Quran Day” to cancel its plans.

Plans to burn Islam’s holy book on the ninth anniversary of Sept. 11 shows “disrespect” for Muslims and would only “exacerbate tensions” in Christian-Muslim relations worldwide, stated the National Association of Evangelicalson Thursday.

“It sounds like the proposed Quran burning is rooted in revenge,” said NAE President Leith Anderson, in a statement. “Yet the Bible says that Christians should ‘make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else’ (I Thessalonians 5:15).”

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE CHRISTIAN POST

How I Rediscovered Christianity Through Islam

By Philip Clayton

I always thought that the way to believe more deeply was to surround myself with other Christians. After all, isn’t that the traditional tool for religious socialization? Send the child to Sunday School, surround her with Christian friends and teachers, make it a Christian high school and college if possible … and then her faith will hold for life. Teaching a child to be Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu, it was said, works much the same way.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

Tennessee Politician’s Remarks on Islam Raise Uproar

By Michael Cass, The Tennessean

NASHVILLE — Comments by Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey suggesting that Islam might be a cult and that Muslims might not qualify for constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms drew criticism from Islamic groups Tuesday and an eruption of national media attention.

Ramsey, a Republican candidate for governor, said at a mid-July campaign event in Chattanooga that he is “all about freedom of religion,” which is guaranteed by the First Amendment.

FULL ARTICLE FROM USA TODAY

Church Plans to Burn Qur’an: Is This Evangelism?

A Gainesville, Fla, pastor claims the Bible’s lesson of brotherly love and truth commands it to burn the Quran on an Islamic holy day.

Evidently, the Dove World Outreach Center, which calls itself “a New Testament, Charismatic, Non-Denominational Church that believes in the whole Bible,” was not content with the outrage prompted by a roadside sign posted this month, “Islam is of the Devil.”

Now, according to Religion News Service, the church is planning “International Burn A Quran Day,” on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks this year — smack during Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic feast days at the conclusion of the Ramadan fast.

FULL ARTICLE FROM USA TODAY

Palin Opposes a Mosque and the Founding Fathers

Suppose there were a heavily Muslim neighborhood in New York, with mosques, religious schools and shops with meat prepared according to Islamic dietary rules. Suppose an evangelical church wanted to build a chapel there. And suppose local Muslims tried to block it as a flagrant insult to them.

Would Sarah Palin urge the church to retract this “unnecessary provocation” in the “interest of healing”? Would her followers? Or would they scorn this disparagement of Christianity and champion the religious freedom on which America was built?

You know the answer. But Palin is not a slave to intellectual consistency. Change the church to a mosque, and put it a couple of blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, and she suddenly loses all patience with the rights of religious believers.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Secularism is an Islamic Doctrine

Ismat Sarah Mangla and Anees Ahmad

Some two million Muslims, according to the Pew Research Center, have the privilege of living in the United States today. Many are citizens who vote, participate in all parts of civic life and hold steady jobs. But there are still some Americans who distrust Muslim-Americans, as evidenced by the current opposition to mosque projects in both Manhattan and Tennessee. Americans may wonder: Do Muslims living in Western society have any sense of loyalty to their non-Muslim governments? If a country enacts Shariah law, does that mean that women and non-Muslims will lose all their rights? Are non-Muslim countries with large Muslim populations in danger?

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

Burka Ban: Why Must I Cast Off the Veil?

The French vote to ban Muslim women from covering their faces in public is just as oppressive as the Islamic law forcing them to do it in the first place, says Nesrine Malik.

The first time I had to wear a niqab was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. My parents, originally from Sudan but living in London, had just moved to Saudi Arabia. Before we joined them, four black abayas (full-length cloaks) and niqabs (full face-veil) were dispatched to me and my three sisters.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE TELEGRAPH (UK)

775 coffins: Bosnia marks 1995 Srebrenica massacre

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Hoisting hundreds of coffins aloft, a line of weeping relatives stretched for at least a mile (1.6 kilometers) Sunday as they honored Srebrenica massacre victims on the 15th anniversary of the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

A whole hillside in the eastern Bosnian town was dug out with graves, waiting for 775 coffins covered in green cloths to be laid to rest at the biggest Srebrenica funeral so far.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Malaysian Islamic Courts Appoint First Women Judges

KUALA LUMPUR: The appointment of the first two women judges to Malaysia’s Islamic courts was hailed Thursday as a move to address the gender imbalance in the country’s religious judiciary.

Premier Najib Razak announced the appointments, made by the king in May, as an example of the government’s commitment to transforming the Sharia judiciary.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE TIMES OF INDIA