Yesterday evening, CNN reported that Florida’s Dove World Outreach Center had arranged for an armed militia group to protect the Qur’an-burning event they scheduled for September 11.

This morning, it appears, the militia is having second thoughts.

“Right Wing Extreme has pulled support for the International Burning of the Koran day and will not attend the event,” the group announced in a 1:50 a.m. press release on its website. “After much thought and prayer the organization’s leadership determined this event does not glorify GOD in way that leads the lost to Jesus Christ.”

The group, which bills itself in the release as an “armed Christian conservative group,” says they got started in April 2009 after a department of Homeland Security report called “Right Wing Extremism,” which highlighted the radical far right’s revitalization since President Barack Obama took office.

The group considers Islam a “cult” and blasts the President for his support of the Park51 Islamic center which a Muslim group plans to build near Ground Zero in New York. But they do not think burning Islam’s holy scripture will solve any problems.

“Dove World Outreach are our brothers and sisters in Christ,” the release says. “However we ask that they not hold this event for the reason that it may diminish the work of the Holy Spirit to witness to Muslims.”

The release also quoted James 1:19: “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.”

Posters on the group's forum were divided on the issue.

“I support the desecration of the Koran,” wrote “RushLimbaughFan,” “because not Only is Islam a Heathen Religion, it is also the only one that Preaches Hate and Kill thy Neighbor in the Name of spreading Islam across the Globe.”

“This could be the stupidest idea ever in the history of stupid ideas,” wrote “Kevin.” “What do you think the net results of this action will be? You will give the left ammunition right before the November elections.”

“You are all horrible human beings and Christians,” retorted “empire.” “Jesus taught in the bible to turn the other cheek and respect other people. Is this what you call that?!”

"What happened, Shannon? Who got to you?" wrote Fran Ingram, who said she was a "proud member" of the Dove World Outreach Center, to Right Wing Extreme founder Shannon Carson. "I cannot believe you wrote your latest press release. I call it totally cowardly."

"I will be removing my membership from your forum," she added.

Dove World Outreach Center’s Pastor Terry Jones told CNN that Right Wing Extreme must have “bowed to fear or to pressure from other organizations, other groups.”

After receiving threats by phone and email and meeting with the FBI, Jones had hoped the group would be able to protect them during the Qur'an burning event.

"This is just a typical giving in to pressure and fear,” he said.

Posted by Trevor Persaud at August 25, 2010 | Comments (16)

It's been a bad week for Christian aid groups in two of the world’s most challenging nations.

In Afghanistan, ten workers for the International Assistance Mission (IAM) were found shot in the northeastern region of Badakhshan. Beyond veteran ophthalmologist and team leader Tom Little, whose wife recently wrote for CT on the Christian call to suffering in mission, the now-identified dead include Glenn D. Lapp, who worked with the Mennonite Central Committee, and 32-year-old Cheryl Beckett, a pastor’s daughter from Tennessee and a graduate of Indiana Wesleyan University. Out of the 1,500 aid groups registered in Afghanistan, 17 aid workers have been murdered and 19 abducted this year.

Questions are flying about the circumstances of the murders. The Taliban have claimed responsibility, saying they killed the team because they were Christian missionaries. IAM denied the allegations, insisting that its workers do not proselytize and carried no Bibles. Local police suspect bandits. Only one member of the ambushed party survived—the driver says the attackers spared him because he insisted he was a Muslim and quoted passages from the Qur’an. However, there were two other Muslims with the party, and the driver remains in Afghan custody for unclear reasons. (Another Afghan member of the team traveled home separately and was unharmed.)

Meanwhile, the head of IAM says he expressed concern to the team leader over the size of the group and the number of foreigners in the party. He also pledged that IAM, active in Afghanistan since 1966, would continue its work despite the losses.

In Somalia, an Islamic militant group has ordered three Christian groups—World Vision, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, and Diakonia—to leave the country, claiming they are “missionaries under the guise of humanitarian work.” Al-Shabaab recently claimed responsibility for attacks in the capital city of Uganda which injured at least five American missionaries.

World Vision noted that their Somali offices are staffed by nationals who are mostly Muslim.

Posted by Trevor Persaud at August 9, 2010 | Comments (2)

Yesterday afternoon, I heard that Kregel, the publisher of Unveiling Islam, had issued a statement supporting one of its top authors Ergun Caner, until recently dean of the seminary at Liberty University.

Of course, Caner, who authored Unveiling Islam with his brother, has become an enormously controversial figure due to many questions about his biography and expertise in Islam.

These questions from bloggers and the news media, including CT, caused the university to initiate its own internal investigation and on Friday, June 25, issue notice that Caner's contract as dean would not be renewed for the coming academic year. Caner remains as a professor at the seminary.

This turn of events caps a staggering setback during the past year for Caner. One year ago, he was signing books and giving media interviews at the SBC convention.

Kregel, which released the full statement early this morning to CT, said in part:

On June 25th Liberty University released a statement regarding its investigation of statements by Dr. Ergun Caner. Part of the Liberty report concluded:

“However, the committee found no evidence to suggest that Dr. Caner was not a Muslim who converted to Christianity as a teenager. . . .”

While Liberty University’s investigation did conclude that Dr. Caner made “factual statements that are self-contradictory” in sermons and speeches, Dr. Caner’s story, as presented in his 2002 national bestseller Unveiling Islam (co-authored with his brother Emir), has been verified by numerous persons who knew the Caner brothers as teens and throughout their adult lives. Kregel Publications has found no credible evidence that contradicts the biography as presented in Dr. Caner’s books.

[and]

Kregel Publications has concluded that the Kregel titles by Dr. Caner are trustworthy, factually accurate, and helpful to both Christians and seekers wanting to know more about Islamic beliefs and how those beliefs compare and contrast with biblical Christianity. We accept as sincere Dr. Caner’s statement, posted on his Web site in February, that said he “never intentionally misled anyone. . . . For those times where I misspoke, said it wrong, scrambled words, or was just outright confusing, I apologize and will strive to do better.”

Meanwhile, scholar, author, professor Dr. Norman Geisler has posted two lengthy documents on his website, addressing critics of Caner point by point.

Click here for the full text.

Despite these endorsements, from the critics' point of view, there remain many unanswered questions about Caner's expertise in Islam as well as puzzlement about Caner's unwillingness to respond to media requests for interviews or produce some physical evidence (an old passport, visa, or a birth certificate, for example) that would corroborate his story.

I spoke at length by phone yesterday with Dr. Geisler, more off the record than on. He makes no secret of his personal support for Caner. He had no problem admitting that the "full truth" had yet to be told and that Caner had been "hung out to dry."

There are unconfirmed reports that Liberty University has placed a gag order on Caner. So far, the school has said very little other than its June 25 statement.

Posted by Tim Morgan at July 7, 2010 | Comments (18)

According to news wires and sources, a judge in California has ruled immediately that Mosab Hassan Yousef, the author of Son of Hamas, can be granted political asylum in the US after he clears several of the normal steps, such as a background check. The US government has dropped its opposition without explanation.

Here's what the news wires are reporting:

The son of a Hamas founder who became a Christian and an Israeli spy will be granted U.S. asylum after he passes a routine background check, an immigration judge ruled Wednesday.
Mosab Hassan Yousef got the good news during a 15-minute deportation hearing after a U.S. Department of Homeland Security attorney said the government was dropping its objections.
The agency denied Yousef's asylum request in February 2009, arguing that he had been involved in terrorism and was a threat to the United States. Attorney Kerri Calcador gave no explanation for the government's change of heart. The immigration judge, Rico Bartolomei, ruled that Yousef will be allowed to remain in the United States after he is fingerprinted and passes a routine background check. Yousef, who has been living in San Diego, was cheered by supporters as he left the hearing and said he would like to become a U.S. citizen.
Supporters called him a hero, not a terrorist. "For 10 years, he fought terrorism in secret, hiding what he was doing and who he was," his attorney, Steven Seick, wrote in a court filing. "He deserves a safe place away from violence and fear." Yousef, 32, had argued that he would be killed if he was deported because he spied on the militant group for Israel's Shin Bet security's intelligence agency and abandoned Islam.

According to Mosab's spokesperson, he will hold a press conference by phone later today. CT will update this story after that.

According to a press statement released late Tuesday night:

Yousef’s case has initiated a sense of disbelief, and even outrage, that the man who is considered a hero in Israel for preventing a number of suicide bombings is being considered for deportation. Yesterday, Yousef received a letter signed by 22 members of Congress, that was written to DHS Secretary Napolitano in support of Yousef. In addition, Yousef has recently received a thank you letter from the Knesset for his contributions to Israel. Yousef worked with the Israeli intelligence agency called Shin Bet. His Shin Bet handler Gonen Ben-Itzhak will be at the hearing to testify in Yousef’s behalf.

Mosab and his Shin Bet handler had this to say in The Washington Post:

We believe that friendships like ours are key to eliminating hate and promoting the liberty that both our peoples so desperately desire.

For the full op-ed piece, click.

Posted by Tim Morgan at June 30, 2010 | Comments (6)

In a statement issued by Liberty University Friday, a panel of four trustees announced they had found that Ergun Caner, dean of the seminary at the Lynchburg, Virginia, school, had made "self-contradictory" statements about "dates, names and places of residence" in his public talks following the events of September 11, 2001. However, the trustees found no evidence to question Caner's basic claim that he was "a Muslim who converted to Christianity as a teenager."

Caner has been the target of both Christian and Muslim apologists and bloggers who claim that he falsified his biography in order to inflate his credibility as an expert on Islam. Christianity Today earlier reported on the controversy here and here.

Apparently, Liberty University's trustees consider Caner's misleading statements to be serious enough to undermine his ability to serve as seminary dean. They are removing him from that role while allowing him to remain on the faculty. This nettles critics.

A news article in the Lynchburg News and Advance, quotes apologist and vocal Caner critic James White: "Simply removing him as dean and allowing him to continue teaching the same subjects he was teaching before really isn’t going to lead to a conclusion of the controversy." The university's statement “raises all sorts of questions about what did [Caner] apologize for," White said. "The students ... deserve an open response."

Here is the full text of the university's statement as printed in The News and Advance:

After a thorough and exhaustive review of Dr. Ergun Caner’s public statements, a committee consisting of four members of Liberty University’s Board of Trustees has concluded that Dr. Caner has made factual statements that are self-contradictory.
However, the committee found no evidence to suggest that Dr. Caner was not a Muslim who converted to Christianity as a teenager, but, instead, found discrepancies related to matters such as dates, names and places of residence.
Dr. Caner has cooperated with the board committee and has apologized for the discrepancies and misstatements that led to this review.
Dr. Caner’s current contractual term as Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary expires on June, 30, 2010.
Dr. Caner will no longer serve as Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.
The university has offered, and Dr. Caner has accepted, an employment contract for the 2010-2011 academic year. Dr. Caner will remain on the faculty of Liberty Baptist.

News about yesterday's events were also carried by the Associated Press.

Posted by David Neff at June 26, 2010 | Comments (29)

In late May, Mosab Hassan Yousef, author of best seller "Son of Hamas" about his life as an informant inside Israel and his life-changing decision to follow Christ, posted on his personal blog that US Homeland Security wants to kick him out of the US for his past ties to Hamas.

He writes:

I have worn many hats in 32 years—Muslim, Christian, son of Hamas, Prisoner 823, spy, traitor, USAID administrator, businessman, best-selling author. Now I am Homeland Security File# A 088 271 051. And, according to these “highly trained” civil servants, I am a threat to America’s national security and must be deported. On June 30, at 8 a.m., I have a hearing before Immigration Judge Rico J. Bartolomei at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration Court in San Diego. But I am not worried about this. I am outraged! My only concern is about a security system that is so primitive and naive that it endangers the lives of countless Americans. Honestly, Judge Bartolomei’s verdict really does not matter. If he rules to deport me, I will appeal. And Homeland Security has assured me that, if he rules in my favor, they will appeal. And this insane merry-go-round can go on like that for decades.

I interviewed Mosab some weeks ago and and edited version of this interview is in the June issue of CT and posted online today. As an American, I suppose what is most shocking about Mosab's situation right now is that he's the one that made first contact with Homeland Security!

He notes in his blog:

It began when I arrived in America January 2, 2007. I walked into the airport like anyone else on a tourist visa. Seven months later, I went to the Homeland Security office, knocked on their door and told them, “Hey, guys, I am the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, my father is involved in a terrorist organization, and I would like political asylum in your country.” They were shocked. They didn’t expect it. I told them, hey, you didn’t discover me. You didn’t catch me. I came to you and told you who I am to wake you up. I wanted them to see that they have huge gaps in their security and their understanding of terrorism and make changes before it’s too late. I filed an application for political asylum. Not surprisingly, on February 23, 2009, they told me that I was “barred from a grant of asylum because there were reasonable grounds for believing [I] was a danger to the security of the United States and because [I] engaged in terrorist activity.”

What is additionally suprising is that so far very few within the community of Christian leaders have come forward in recent days to vouch for Mosab or pledge their support in his fight against deportation.

In the meantime, CT is following another tragic deportation case involving a former Muslim who gave his life to Christ.

A Kenyan who graduated from a Michigan college and wrote a book about his conversion to Christianity has lost his bid to remain in the U.S. A federal appeals court today refused to overturn a decision to send Hussein Wario back to Kenya. Wario fears he will be persecuted because of his conversion from Islam. But the appeals court says Kenya mostly is a Christian country and Wario can live there while avoiding his hometown, the Tana River District. The 35-year-old Wario entered the United States to attend Hope College in Holland in western Michigan. He graduated in 2000 and wrote a book last year, titled "Cracks in the Crescent," about his conversion to Christianity.

If you are not scratching your head yet, President Obama's aunt was just recently granted political asylum after a judge reversed his ruling to deport her. You can read about this mysterious ruling here. Amazing.

Posted by Tim Morgan at June 8, 2010 | Comments (12)

"Neighbors," shot on location in Jos, Nigeria, examines what happens when segments of a community oppose one another in a standoff that appears to have no solution. This is a story not only of Jos, but of places throughout the world where historical differences of tribe, race, and religion lead to violent conflicts.

 

 

Related Elsewhere:
Previous Christianity Today coverage of the January Jos riots includes:

• More Human Smoke Rises in Jos | This week's deadly riots struck home for the academic dean of ECWA Theological Seminary. By Sunday B. Agang (January 21, 2010)
• The Truth About the Religious Violence in Jos, Nigeria | It's not easy to state who started it or how many died. But the horror for those affected is clear. By Craig S. Keener (January 21, 2010)
• 'In Jos We Are Coming Face to Face in Confrontation with Satan' | The Anglican Archbishop of Jos speaks out on last week's deadly attacks and the media coverage that followed. By Benjamin A. Kwashi (January 26, 2010)

Previous Christianity Today coverage of the 2008 Jos riots includes:

• Fault Line of Faith | Six pastors killed, 40 churches razed in Jos's most recent violence (Jan. 15, 2009)
• Diagnosing Jos | Political problems don't always have political solutions. (December 23, 2008)
• Violence Smothers Jos in Smoke | Peace eludes us. (December 3, 2008)

Coverage of earlier violence includes:

• Mutual Mayhem | A plea for peace and truth in the madness of Nigeria. (Nov. 3, 2004)
• Religious Riots in Nigeria Leave Hundreds Dead | Leaders condemn the use of religion as a tool for violence. (Oct. 2, 2001)
• Nigeria On the Brink of Religious War | Northern states adopt Islamic law, increasing Christian-Muslim tensions. (Dec. 16, 1999)

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at March 2, 2010 | Comments (2)

Now that controversy over the fate of Rifqa Bary -- the teenage Christian convert who ran away from her Ohio home fearing her Muslim parents would kill her -- has reached Elian Gonzalez proportions, many evangelicals may be tuning out the never-ending headlines.

But don't miss this one.

Craig McCarthy was the Orlando attorney representing Rifqa Bary's mother until Sept. 3. He is also a committed evangelical. And, contrary to those who have mobilized around Rifqa's cause, McCarthy believes her Sri Lankan parents are in the right.

McCarthy is "happy that the child knows Jesus." But he is concerned that "many Christian conservatives have allowed themselves to adopt a narrative and thus reach conclusions ... prematurely" -- to the extent that their evangelistic zeal has led them to spread false information.

The core of his message: "Please recognize that the Lord is not so powerless as to need people to hide information, to embellish facts, or to give false witness in order to advance Christ's kingdom."

Read it all here.

Posted by Jeremy Weber at September 18, 2009 | Comments (19)

In misguided attempt to combat swine flu, Egypt's government has announced plans to destroy the mostly Muslim nation's 400,000 pigs--which are owned by members of the country's Christian minority. The action comes despite comments from the United Nations that the slaughter is "a real mistake." The disease cannot be caught from eating pork. Egypt's Christians, understandably, are bewildered.

The move to slaughter the pigs, kept mainly by the country's Christian minority, sparked an angry response from farmers, who said reported government pledges of compensation of $105 per animal were inadequate.

Clashes were reported in Khanka, 25km north of Cairo, with pig farmers setting up road blocks and smashing the windscreens of veterinary services' vehicles as they sought to take people's pigs away.

"Our pigs are healthy. They are our capital and they have no diseases," Adel Ishak, a rubbish collector from Manshiet Nasser, northeast of Cairo, told the AFP news agency.

"How will they replace the capital if these pigs are killed?"

Posted by Stan Guthrie at April 30, 2009 | Comments (6)

* Tuesday, April 21.

Wow. Across three days and meeting in total for 25 hours with seven meals, about 65 Muslim and Evangelical leaders met in Pasadena, Calif., to discuss a wide range of topics.

Don Wagner, a leader in this initiative and a professor at North Park University, at the end exclaimed, "The Holy Spirit has been present with us!." True confessions, he's right. Yes, Islam teaches about the Holy Spirit, not as a person, but as God's active force. (Yeah, we disagree on that one too.)

In summary, here are my three take-aways from this event:

-- The person of Jesus and our relationship with him must be central to discussions between Muslims and evangelicals.

-- Evangelical advocacy for religious freedom worldwide is best positioned when it is clearly linked to the benefit of religious freedom for all faiths, not just for Christians.

-- Religious labeling of all kinds is hazardous to our spiritual health.

* Friday, April 17, 10 pm, update

About 60 Muslim and Evangelical leaders and seminary students met for 12 hours of meetings, meals, and discussion on the Fuller Seminary campus today. (The session resumes tomorrow morning. See below for additional details.)

My head is spinning from the quality of the presentations and the passionate exchanges. So far, this has been a richly rewarding event.

Here are some of my initial impressions after interacting with these scholars, authors, editors, professors, students, and ministry leaders:

1. Muslims and Evangelicals who are committed to the work of dialogue spend a lot of time explaining to each other why extremists do what they do in the name of their own faith.

2. Islam, Christianity, and Judaism have been, are now, and will be in a deep encounter for generations to come. While there was little discussion of Jews and Judaism, the reality of this encounter was for me inescapable. Dialogue that does not lead to tri-a-logue will not survive the test of time.

3. Muslims and Evangelicals once and for all must settle, resolve, mutually understand, and respect their divergent doctrines of God. The end value of such a heroic effort of understanding must not be underestimated.

4. One scholar admitted to what he called "dialogue fatigue." Actually, I see that as real progress. When Muslims and Evangelicals press beyond the far point of verbal exhaustion, isn't that when we can breakthrough to some other new place? Listening to God requires our silence.

5. Evangelicals and Muslims do each other a disservice when they mutually shy away from airing their grievances openly due to quick pursuit of easy faith-based harmony.

6. There is true urgency to this pursuit of relationship and understanding between Muslims and Evangelicals. The consequences of growing tension between Islam and Christianity are growing greater. As I said to one participant, "Lives and souls hang in the balance."

* Friday, 9 am

I'm on campus at Fuller Seminary in sunny & warm Pasadena, CA, for today and tomorrow as about 65 Muslim and Evangelical leaders from North America and the Middle East are discussing a wide range of mutual concerns. The World Islamic Call Society is sponsoring this session, the third one of its kind.

The title is, "A Common Word Between Us and You."

Among the evangelicals here are: Donald Wagner, Leith Anderson, Gary Burge, Len Rogers, Colin Chapman, Dudley Woodbury, and Martin Accad.

Muslim leaders include: Mahmoud Ayoub, Assad Busool, Asma Afsaruddin, Muhammad Sammak, Jamal Badawi, Sayid Sayeed, Abed Ismail.

See below for five of the questions under discussion. I welcome your input since I will be a presenter on Saturday afternoon.

What additional questions would you want explored?

Email me, here. Or, add your question in the comments section below.

Some of the topics to be explored, in question format:

1. What is role and meaning of worship in the New Testament and the Qur'an?

2. What lessons are there for us in looking at the treatment of Christian minorities under Muslim rule and Muslim minorities under Christian rule?

3. What are the consequences, goals, and obstacles of dialog between Muslims and Evangelicals?

4. How should we approach the problem of terrorism and the plight of American Muslims and also the plight of Middle Eastern Christians?

5. How does the call for equality and justice influence the treatment of Muslims and Christians in the North American media, and also in the Muslim media?

(Photo: 'Blue Mosque,' Istanbul, Turkey.)

Posted by Tim Morgan at April 17, 2009 | Comments (13)

When Random House dropped the The Jewel of Medina, a romance novel about Muhammad and his child bride, they said it was because it "could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment." Were they talking about literary critics?

A Wall Street Journal op-ed quotes the professor who, according to the article, sparked fears of violent retribution, saying the novel was "a very ugly, stupid piece of work. . . . You can't play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography."

NPR posted an excerpt of the prologue of the book, now to be published by Beaufort Books: "Scandal blew in on the errant wind when I rode into Medina clutching Safwan's waist. My neighbors rushed into the street like storm waters flooding a wadi." Ugh.

Further down in the passage, Muhammad is reverently and sympathetically portrayed. But kind intentions and literary mediocrity didn't render the book passable in Serbia, where a publisher pulled the book and apologized to an Islamic society that was getting ready to protest. It remains to be seen how "small, radical segments" will react this year when the book is published in the U.S., U.K., Spain, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Macedonia, Brazil and Germany.

Beaufort Books also published HarperCollins/Regan Books castoff If I Did It by O.J. Simpson.

Posted by Susan Wunderink at September 8, 2008 | Comments (3)

On the final morning of the Muslim-Christian conversation held last week at Yale, Christian participants eagerly anticipated what Christian speakers would have to say. Several Christian speakers had grounded their messages in explicitly Christian teachings, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. But there was a general sense that Muslim speakers had more pointedly articulated their beliefs during the nearly three days of meetings. (See earlier reports here and here.)

Early in the conference, reports circulated that when Regent College theologian John Stackhouse had used the parable of the Good Samaritan to present a clearly Christian viewpoint during the closed-door pre-conference workshop, some Muslim leaders had complained that Stackhouse was trying to evangelize them. Perhaps other Christian speakers were instinctively treading more softly.

During coffee breaks, several Christian participants told me they felt the Muslim speakers had been more carefully chosen to represent Islamic views. A Wednesday morning session which featured two famous preachers intensified this feeling.

The Muslim preacher was Yemenite Al-Habib Ali Al-Jifri, known popularly as Habib Ali. He ranks as one of the ten most popular preachers in the Muslim world (not just the Arab world). He exuded youth and charisma as he winningly invited Christians and Muslims to make religion once again a solution to the world's problems rather than a part of its problems. Al-Jifri called us to form an alliance of virtuous persons.

Winsome though he was, Al-Jifri did not hesitate to stress the absolute transcendence of God and the absolute unity of God, in contrast to the way paradoxical way that Christians affirm these things. (For Christians God is both transcendent and immanent; God is both one and three.)

The Christian preacher was the 81-year-old Dr. Robert Schuller. He is without doubt one of Christianity's most widely heard preachers, and he has possessed popularity and influence for a very long time. Schuller matched Al-Jifri in winsomeness and charisma. There seems to be no limit to Schuller's generosity of spirit. But his presentation fell short of making any distinctions between Islam and Christianity. Instead, he spoke of the need for Christians to "reframe the gospel." He stressed his "profound respect for people who are sincere in their faith" and talked about how at age 81 he knows he doesn't know all the answers and, indeed, wants to know "which of his answers are wrong."

Epistemic humility can be a virtue in some contexts, but when devout moderate Muslims are trying to get to know their Christian counterparts, explicitly Christian affirmations are called for. Instead, Dr. Schuller repeated his long-standing message about the importance of self-esteem.

By Thursday morning, Christian conferees were placing their trust in two symbolic evangelical figures to represent them well: Geoff Tunnicliffe, International Director and CEO of the World Evangelical Alliance, and Leith Anderson, pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

In his brief panel presentation,Tunnicliffe talked about the importance of rebuilding the metaphorical bridges that recent social and political storms have destroyed. In that context, he asked Muslims to stop stereotyping Christians--especially evangelicals.

During this conference we have heard how Muslims feel they have been stereotyped and stigmatized in the media. As evangelical Christians we feel the same stereotyping.

I ... [serve] a global family of over 420 million evangelical Christians. We are a diverse community of Christians, yet we are often portrayed through the media as being tied to one political agenda, one view of eschatology, and intolerant of all others. That is simply not the case. While we have a shared commitment to some core biblical truths, we also have a diversity of views on many issues. The ... vast majority of evangelical Christians live in the Global South and ... that will become even more pronounced in the years to come.

Just as we promise to seek to move beyond the stereotyping of Muslims found in the media, can I ask you, my Muslim friends, to get to know us beyond what is reported in the newspapers and television programs?

If we are ... to build this new bridge, this must be a part of the architecture.

Tunnicliffe also touched on issues of religious freedom, human rights, and "mutual respect for the sharing of our faith."

Leith Anderson gave a plenary address, and thus had a bit more time than Tunifcliffe to develop his evangelical Christian response to the conference. Nevertheless, with so much that he and others felt had been unsaid or underemphasized, Anderson had to pack his message tightly.

Anderson talked about evangelicals as good news people who share classic Christian beliefs, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. In addition, we are characterized by a deep commitment to the authority of the Bible. We stress that we are all sinners in need of reconciliation with God and with each other. Most of all, he said, evangelical Christians are identified as those who experience a personal relationship with God through repentance and turning to God in faith. We are followers of Jesus by personal choice. We are not about politics or money or power. Evangelism, he said, is one of our "pillars" (as important to us as the five pillars of Islam are to Muslim believers). Love of God, he said, begins with God and not us, he said, and God's love is unconditional and unilateral.

* * *

Several speakers stressed the commonalities of commitment and parallels in belief that could allow Muslims and Christians to engage in common action.

Curiously, one topic that went almost unmentioned was the family. Dr. Mohamed Bechari, president of the Federal Society for Muslims in France, mentioned it in passing when he listed areas of common ground: The family is the core of society and the happiness of mankind, he said. He expressed surprise at some Christian clergy who accept "homosexual marriage," but he stopped short of calling for any kind of coordinated Christian and Muslim efforts on family issues.

The general silence on the family and the complete silence on potential common activity to strengthen the family puzzles me. While our traditional family systems and our understandings of gender relations differ (even as they differ within our respective communities), we do believe together that faithful, stable, two-sex marriage is essential to the well-being of society. Are there not ways to work together on family issues?

* * *

What was achieved in New Haven from July 28 to 31?

Christian and Muslim leaders have a better sense of each other as persons. We know whom to call when differences arise. We understand the pain and struggle of Christians in Muslim-dominant societies and of Muslims in Christian-dominant cultures--and if we don't understand, we no longer have any excuse for insensitivity.

Theological gaps which many of us knew only from books were underscored in new ways. The difference between Muslim and Christian understandings of love was significant. Christian love imitates divine love and is unconditional: We love not only our families and our neighbors but our enemies. Muslim love is more discriminating, taking the form of compassion on worthy persons in need (widows and orphans were used as an example). But they are not called to love unworthy persons (someone cited "the arrogant").

In practice, Christians often love only the worthy and fail to love their enemies. But the call to imitate God's love for us "while we were yet sinners" constantly tugs us toward loving more broadly.

I am grateful for the opportunity to meet, eat with, and listen to moderate Muslim leaders from near and far. I look forward to calling some them in order to work for the common good. And the next time I see a negative stereotype of Muslims, I plan to test its validity against some of the individuals I now know.

Posted by David Neff at August 3, 2008 | Comments (7)

Tuesday was the first full day of the "Loving God and Neighbor" conference that is bringing together Christian, Muslim, and (a few) Jewish leaders on the campus of Yale University.

The day's meetings were kicked off by two articulate and compelling Muslim speakers.

First was the remarkably articulate and charming Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan (who attended Princeton for his undergraduate work and holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge). Prince Ghazi characterized the "Common Word" document issued in 2007 by 138 Muslim scholars and clerics as "our extended global religious handshake." This was not a concession to Christians, he said. The statement was "about equal peace and not capitulation."

The first item on his list of tension-producing factors between Muslims and Western Christians was "the question of Jerusalem and Palestine" and during a break in the meetings he re-emphasized the issue of the control of and access to Jerusalem as a factor that would have to be resolved before any lasting d?tente could be achieved.

Did Ghazi go over the top when he claimed that hostility to Muslims in Western countries was at a high enough level to warrant worries about internment camps - or even concentration camps - in the near future?

It was encouraging that he treated the Holocaust as a historical fact and cited the standard six-million figure (things that often get denied by Muslims in the Middle East). But it was shocking that he claimed that Western societies were, with respect to Muslims, now comparable to the pre-genocidal prejudices among Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis in 1994.

Following Prince Ghazi was Shaykh Mustafa Ceric, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia. "Ours is not the problem of difference," said Shaykh Ceric about relations between the three great Abrahamic faiths. "Ours is the problem of similarity."

"Those who are similar are more severe to each other than those that are different," he pointed out. "We must learn how to live with our similarities."

Dr. Ceric preached the value of forgiveness. Having witnessed the terror and brutality of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, he has had much to forgive. He told the Yale gathering of Muslims and Christians that "the human being has the right to ?an eye for an eye.'" But the right to revenge is balanced by Islamic teaching: "If you forgive, you will be forgiven in the world to come, and [here my notes are a bit shaky] it will be your propitiation."

But Ceric startled several evangelical listeners when he suggested that not everyone was worthy of love all the time. While he talked about love for widows and orphans, for example, he named "the arrogant" as an example of those who should not be loved. This contrasts sharply with Christian notions of love, in which we are called to love unconditionally "because he first loved us." And the difference between the two notions of love became a point of discussion.

Yale theologian Miroslav Volf made a point of explaining the Christian view of love in his panel presentation just before lunch. Contrasting with another Muslim cleric's assertion that we cannot speak of love as being of the essence of God, but only of love as God's actions, Volf read the locus classicus from 1 John 4:7-21, with its famous sentence, "God is love." Because God loves (among the persons of the Trinity) before the world comes into existence, said Volf, God's love is not reactive, but is of his essence.

The Muslim and Christian presentations on Tuesday were characterized by good will, but neither group backed away from the fundamentals of their faith. Critics of the 2007 "Loving God and Neighbor Together" document feared that it was not as explicitly Christian as it ought to have been. But if the conference is any indication, their concerns were unfounded. Explicitly Christian assertions of the divinity of Jesus, the Triune nature of the Godhead, and the unconditional nature of Christian love were the order of the day.

Posted by David Neff at July 30, 2008 | Comments (10)

Filed: 7:05 AM, July 30, 2008

Senator John Kerry kicked off the "Loving God and Neighbor in Word and Deed" conference (also known as the "Common Word" conference) Monday night with a largely unsurprising, but welcome speech. He was, after all, preaching to the choir: Christian and Muslim leaders from around the world who want to find a way to live together peacefully.

Kerry began by telling his roughly 150 listeners that the meeting they were attending at Yale University "can help change the world," while warning that pessimism about future relationships between the Muslim world and the West hands demagogues who play to pessimism about the inevitable violent clash of cultures and religions. "You have placed yourselves among those who are on the right side of the debate," he told them. "We must love one another or die."

Kerry, who is a direct descendant of Puritan governor John Winthrop, famous for his "city on a hill" sermon, recounted for the benefit of the global audience the way in which early American history was shaped by a series of bitter religious splits. But the fruit of that early experience of division was a commitment to welcoming all faiths, he said.

Kerry balanced his assertion that "we all worship the One God, the same God" with a plea that religious differences not be played down among the Abrahamic faiths. We don't need to succumb to "mush" in order to find tolerance. Nor do we need to remove the influence of faith from our public life, he said. "If we aren't shaped by our faith, we don't have faith."

Our goal should be a politics that seeks the global common good, Kerry said, not just the politics that cares for the people of one nation. He cited Vatican II documents to support this planetary notion of common good politics.

The audience gave Kerry a courteous welcome, but none of his comments drew applause until he called for the US to put Middle East peace back on the mainstream foreign policy agenda, and to do it in a way that would deal with "everyone's grievances."

Most quotable line of the evening: "Faith may be worth dying for, but it cannot be worth killing for."

Kerry has gone back to Washington, but the choir has stayed behind to hear each other sing. The panel discussions today will be less inspirational and motivational and will deal with substantive issues. The dozen or so Muslim and Christian panelists Tuesday include evangelical leaders such as Miroslav Volf (Yale), Peter Kuzmic (Croatia), Tukunboh Adeyemo (Kenya), Martin Accad (Lebanon).

Posted by David Neff at July 30, 2008 | Comments (9)

For decades Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, has been looked to as a beacon of relative tolerance among Muslim majority states. (Indonesia's population of 237.5 million people is 80 percent Muslim.) Consider the following from the 2000 edition of the Operation World prayer guide:

Monotheism and communal peace are the basis for the stated government ideology of Pancasila. All citizens must choose one of five religions: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity (Protestant or Catholic).

But in recent years, radical Islamists have been attempting to impose a stricter version of the religion of Muhammad on their fellow Muslims--and on the rest of the nation. On June 9 the government ruled that the minority Ahmadiyah sect, a more liberal branch of Islam, may not spread its beliefs. As a result, Islamists last week sealed off more than 10 Ahmadiyah mosques. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal Asia says the government-sanctioned discrimination is unlikely to end there:

If radical thugs are allowed to target Ahmadiyah houses of worship today with impunity, what prevents them from targeting other kinds of Muslims tomorrow? Or Christians? Or Sikhs? The government's refusal to protect the Ahmadiyah threatens the underpinnings of Indonesia's tolerant society. It's a familiar theme in history, and one that has not boded well for liberal democracies.

And indeed there are numerous signs of strain on the country's communal harmony. According to a recent report by Reuters:

There is a growing risk of conflict between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia's Papua, partly fuelled by migration and a growth in fundamentalism, International Crisis Group said in a report on [June 16].

Twice last year in Papua, two provinces on the western half of New Guinea island, communal tensions almost erupted into violence linked to tensions over the building of a new mosque and an iron tower in the form of a Christmas tree, it said.

"The potential for communal conflict is high in Papua because both sides consider themselves aggrieved," said Sidney Jones, a senior adviser for the International Crisis Group.

Indigenous Christians feel threatened by ongoing Muslim migration from other parts of Indonesia, while Muslims are concerned about facing discrimination or even expulsion, it said.

The prospect of conflict has also been fanned by religious tensions in other parts of Indonesia such as the Maluku islands, which have suffered from fighting between Christians and Muslims.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at June 25, 2008 | Comments (7)

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is said to be the only unforgivable sin. I've never understood exactly what that looks like, or met anyone who could explain it to me, but I'm fairly certain that if you were the unfortunate, you wouldn't pay the price until death.

Sadly, the same can't be said for those who blaspheme Islam in the Muslim world. Just ask Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, the 23-year-old Afghan journalist, sentenced to death for his words, of which the exact nature I can't find online. He's appealing, and Reporters Without Borders said he caught a break yesterday when his case was moved to Kabul.

"His request for transfer to Kabul has finally succeeded, allowing Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh to be separated from other detainees in the vast Pul-i-Charki jail, in the east of the capital. His transfer to Kabul has given rise to hopes that his appeal will not be influenced by religious fundamentalists, as was the case when he was sentenced to death for "blasphemy" by a court in Mazar-i-Sharif, on 22 January 2008."

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at April 1, 2008 | Comments (2)

The recent exchange of conciliatory letters by Muslim and Christian leaders continues to generate discussion.

On the surface, the aim of the letters - both calls for Muslims and Christians to work together for world peace - seems fairly benign. The title of the Muslim letter, signed by 138 scholars and clerics broadly representative of the Islamic world, is "A Common Word Between Us and You." The Christian letter, crafted by professors at the Yale Divinity School's Center for Faith and Culture, is called "Loving God and Neighbor Together."

However, critics like Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, have said that the Christian document cedes too much theological ground to Muslims. This debate was taken up in earnest by John Piper and Rick Love on Piper's Desiring God blog. Piper, the preaching pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, and Love, the former international director of Frontiers, have gone back and forth (and back and forth again) on the topic, centering their debate primarily on what theological common ground Christians and Muslims can be said to share.

More interesting than the peacemaking letters themselves - and of more long-term importance, quite possibly - is how Christians answer this question, which Crossway associate publisher Justin Taylor addressed today in a blog post worth reading. Taylor quotes the following from Love, with whom he disagrees almost entirely:

Muslims already worship God as the One Living God - Creator and Judge of the Universe. . . . I believe that Muslims worship the true God. . . . I believe that anyone who affirms monotheism - whether Muslim, Jew, Sikh or Tribal - are worshiping the true God. How can it be otherwise, since there is only one God?

So do Muslims worship the same God as Christians, albeit imperfectly? CT senior editor Timothy George also tackled this questions in a 2002 article entitled "Is the God of Muhammad the Father of Jesus?" "Apart from the Incarnation and the Trinity," George writes in the concluding paragraphs, "it is possible to know that God is, but not who God is."

That's the key difference, Taylor writes, because worshiping the true God entails worshiping him as he truly is. The strength of Taylor's post is his look at several key biblical passages, both Old and New Testament. As he points out, Jesus even said that Jewish religious leaders, monotheists to the core, were not of God and did not have God as their Father. Why? Because they refused to accept that he had come from God as God's very Son - a rejection that continues to shape both Judaism and Islam.

Still, disentangling the monotheistic religions is a confusing task, one made more cloudy by on-the-ground realities like Arab Christians' use of Allah to speak of God. The three major monotheistic religions overlap, with Christianity claiming to supersede Judaism and Islam claiming to supersede both. What's most needed for Christians, George concludes, is a winsome and missional approach that turns our significant theological differences into attractions to Christ.

"We are wise to remember that sometimes the best way to address these issues is to move from theological abstraction to story," George writes. "Isn't that what the Christian is about? God was in Christ, reaching out to us in love, accommodating himself to our condition, to save us. This is what we are about as ambassadors of Christ and his gospel: to go into the world, into the prisons, into the barrios and the ghettos and wherever it is that human beings exist in alienation and separation from God, and to tell them that the relational God is reaching out to us."

Posted by Madison Trammel at February 28, 2008 | Comments (19)

Religious freedom in the Middle East moves three steps forward, two steps back in a judicial ruling in Egypt on Saturday.

Compass Direct News Service reports:

Egypt's top administrative court has ruled in favor of 12 converts to Islam seeking to return to Christianity but has left the group vulnerable to discrimination by mandating their former religion be noted on official documents. In his ruling Saturday (February 9), Judge El-Sayeed Noufal ordered Egypt's Interior Ministry to issue the converts "Christian documents" noting their "ex-Muslim" status. Human rights activists heralded the decision as a breakthrough for religious freedom in Egypt, where conversion away from Islam, though not illegal, has been forbidden in practice. But human rights advocates remained wary, saying that listing the converts' former religion on their documents would make them vulnerable to discrimination. "It's obviously a stigmatization to have ["ex-Muslim"] on your ID card," a representative for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights told Compass.

Look here for the full story.

Posted by Tim Morgan at February 11, 2008 | Comments (4)

Religion coverage in The Atlantic is typically well done. The magazine's coverage of the neutering of religion from The Golden Compass was interesting for the way it treated both Hollywood and the anti-religious themes of the book on which the movie was based. Though the magazine retains the secular, above the fray, attitude toward faith of its New England founding, it also put Philip Jenkin's article on the New Christendom on the cover in October, 2002, when his book describing the phenomenal growth of non-Western Christianity debuted.

So, the magazine's March cover story (not yet online) on the literal battle between Christianity and Islam in Nigeria is equally well done, despite some mistakes.

Eliza Griswold - daughter of the former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church - writes from the town of Yelwa, where an attack that killed Christians in church in 2004 brought on a more gruesome response against Muslims killing hundreds. Yelwa is in Nigeria's Middle Belt, which, Griswold writes,

marks the fault line between Christianity and Islam not only in Nigeria, but across the entire continent. A satellite image from Google Earth shows the Middle Belt as a gray-green strip between the equator and the 10th parallel, dividing the fawn-colored dry land from the vibrant sub-Saharan jungle canopy. It also separates most of the continents 67 million Muslims to the north from 417 million Christians to the south.

Because of the 20th century explosion of Christianity in Africa, by the year 2050, Griswold writes, the demographic and geographic center of Christianity will be in northern Nigeria, where the country's Muslims live. This fact makes any tensions in the country religious ones. With 140 million people, oil revenues that never seem to help the people (half of whom live on less than a dollar a day) thanks to government corruption, and a changing regional climate that has wiped out many traditional livelihoods, the country has plenty of tensions.

"Every crisis is automatically interpreted as a religious crisis," an Anglican archbishop says. "But we all know that, scratch the surface and it's got nothing to do with religion. It's power."

Power, in this democracy (despite massive corruption) is a numbers game. Christians and Muslims compete for numbers - converts. And to do that, they not only use intimidation (Griswold quotes Archbishop Peter Akinola saying that Muslims do not have a monopoly on violence), Christians and Muslims appeal to want what Nigerians need most - prosperity.

Pentecostalism has brought along American prosperity theology. (Griswold doesn't seem able to separate Pentecostalism from prosperity theology.) And, in the competition for souls, Nigeria's Muslims have come up with an Islamic approach to making people wealthy.

Griswold suggests that, while violence between Christians and Muslims is still a threat, this sort of competition - non-violent pursuit of winning hearts and minds - is growing.

Hopefully she's right. The stories of murder, rape, and intimidation (all justified by either side's scripture) are horrifying. Yet, Griswold doesn't offer much to hang that hope on other than the story of an imam and a pastor who gave up leading militias to work together for peace. It's inspiring, but she gives little evidence of their effectiveness. And Griswold, despite her father's Christian leadership, doesn't seem to fully understand the Christianity she's reporting on, much less Islam. For example, she says Pentecostals "share an experience of the Holy Spirit, or the numinous, that offers the gift of salvation and success in everyday life." (italics are mine. At least she didn't spell it like Rob Bell.) And Muslims have yet to show that they can treat minorities as equals, instead of "protected" classes or worse.

Still, the article, and it's companions by Alan Wolfe (on how religiosity really is decreasing with modernization) and Walter Russell Mead (on American evangelical political moderation) are worth reading.

Posted by Rob Moll at February 10, 2008 | Comments (2)

The Wheaton College student newspaper, The Record, reports today that the influential evangelical college's president, provost, and chaplain have removed their names from a letter to Muslim leaders that has attracted criticism in some quarters.

"Loving God and Neighbor Together" was published in the November 18, 2007, New York Times as a response to an October statement from 138 Muslim scholars and clerics calling for interfaith cooperation. Wheaton College president Duane Litfin and provost Stanton Jones were among the signatories, along with pastors Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson, Youth With a Mission chairman Lynn Green, Frontiers mission founder Greg Livingstone, theologians Miroslav Volf and John Stott, and Christianity Today Media Group editor-in-chief David Neff.

"I signed the statement because I am committed to the business of peace-making and neighbor-love," Litfin wrote in The Record. "I did not savor the document's unnuanced apology section, but swallowed that in order to be a part of reaching out a hand to these Muslim leaders who had courageously taken the initiative. Though the statement was not written in the way I would have written it, it seemed to me that I could sign it without compromising any of my Christian convictions."

But in the last month, the statement has been sharply criticized by several other evangelical leaders, including Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler, pastor John Piper, and Focus on the Family's CitizenLink newsletter.

(A Christianity Today news report on the statement and its critics appears in the March issue of the magazine; we'll post it online shortly.)

Such critiques, Litfin said, prompted him to rethink his signature. "[O]n this occasion my eagerness to support the statement's strengths caused me to move too quickly," he wrote. Rereading the statement, he says, he found it was

not carefully enough crafted to avoid encouraging that basic premise of civil religion, i.e., that we are all worshiping the same God, climbing the same mountain, just taking different paths. It appears to me that the statement could have been written so to avoid this problem while still reaching out a gracious hand to these Muslim leaders. ? To speak unqualifiedly of "our common love for God," as if the Quran's Allah and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ are one and the same, and as if what it means to "love God" in these two faiths means the same thing, is to say more than I am willing to grant. I do not criticize others who do not share these qualms. But as for me, I needed to back away.

Litfin emphasized that he was not pressured or even encouraged to take his name off the statement. "No one had suggested it or even knew I was taking this step,' he said. "It was simply a matter of conscience, combined with the fact that I had put the College on the line in a way I was no longer comfortable in defending."

And in fact Litfin implicitly answered some critics who had argued that interfaith dialogue undercut evangelism:

As to the related question this incident raises of evangelism and inter-faith dialogue, surely the best answer is a balanced one. If we truly believe the Gospel and love our neighbor, evangelism will lie near the core of our relationships without occupying the whole of it. Our friendships with non-Christians transcend evangelism in the sense that those friendships continue even when Christ is not received. In other words, our friendship is not contingent upon that reception. But nor can any genuine friendship with non-Christians exclude an evangelistic concern. Our relationship may be in pre-evangelistic phase, or evangelistic phase, or a post-evangelistic phase, but a desire to see our friend find Christ must never disappear from the frame. If our love is genuine, we will always retain sight of our friend's deepest need and stand ready to serve it if the opportunity arises.

Jones and Wheaton College chaplain Stephen Kellough said they agreed with Litfin's conclusions, and similarly withdrew their names to further distance the college from the statement. Roy Oksnevad, director of Muslim Ministries at Wheaton College's Billy Graham Center, kept his signature on the document, and told the Record, "I still agree [with the statement]. I don't have reservations."

Also of note in the Record this week: presidential candidate Mitt Romney had wanted to hold a rally on the campus two days before Super Tuesday, but was turned away. "Only in extraordinary circumstances do we open the college community to Sunday activities," Jones told the student paper. "Particularly a political event at noon on Sunday is very incongruent with our religious identity."

More articles on the Muslim statement, "A Common Word Between Us and You" and the Christian statement include:

• An early call from Fuller Seminary's J. Dudley Woodberry for a Christian response to "A Common Word."
• NAE president Leith Anderson on why he signed "Loving God and Neighbor Together"
• Mike Edens of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary on why he signed.
• Rick Love, International Director for Frontiers, responding to John Piper's concerns.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 8, 2008 | Comments (16)

Perhaps as part of trying to find common ground, Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh’s Jesus is as blonde as anyone’s, but the ideas behind his film pretty much undercut the Jesus of the Bible, who insisted on his deity, authority, death, and resurrection.

Jesus, the Spirit of God won an award at the 2007 Religion Today Film Festival in Italy.

Posted by Susan Wunderink at January 15, 2008 | Comments (4)

Capitalism runs on capital. So, what do you do when your religion forbids loaning money, but your economy is flush with cash due to rising oil prices?

Islamic scholars are debating just how to get around the ban on usury, or lending with interest. And a recent ruling by an Islamic scholar has thrown a wrench in what had become accepted practice. The International Herald Tribune reports,

Islamic banking assets outside Iran totaled $400 billion to $450 billion in 2006 and are projected to rise to $1 trillion by 2010, according to a recent report by McKinsey & Co. Total assets, including those in Iran, totaled $750 billion in 2006, a small fraction of global financial assets, but one that is growing quickly.

Experts say growth has been driven by booming Persian Gulf oil revenue, Muslims' growing preference for an expanding range of Shariah-compliant products and increasing acceptance of Islamic banking practices by financial regulators around the world.

Unfortunately for the industry, "one of the world's leading Shariah finance scholars recently rattled the market by saying 85 percent of Islamic bonds, or sukuk, are not Shariah-compliant. Sheik Mohammed Taqi Usmani argued that, in essence, they were structured too much like conventional bonds."

These bonds are structured in a way that gives the lender a share in future profits, but they also include a promise to pay back the original loan. The promise to repay makes the arrangement similar to a traditional bond, Usmani said.

Christians should pay attention to this debate. While the church has long since become comfortable with loaning money with interest, it can be helpful to see another religious group wrestle with modern capitalism. After all, why was it that for centuries Christians forbade usury and then heavily regulated it?

Hmm, maybe the mess created by the sub-prime mortgage lenders has something to do with it.

Posted by Rob Moll at January 14, 2008 | Comments (5)

I've had more than one conversation recently in which a sincere and devout Christian has argued that Islam is inherently violent and that Christianity is not. Each has pointed to Koranic verses that advocate violence, and to current events that demonstrate Muslim violence.

This line of argument I find unconvincing: Christian history (Crusades; conquest of the New World, etc.), current events (Rwanda genocide; IRA; Christian-Muslim clashes in Nigeria and Indonesia), and a reading of the Old Testament ("Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones [Babylonian babies] and dashes them against the rock!" Psalm 137:9) can hardly be dismissed with a wave of a hand.

And anyone who is aware of Muslim perceptions of Christians knows how unfortunate this entire argument is. Read, for example, "Muslim Violence, Christian Non-Violence: People in Glass Houses Should Not Throw Words" by Sheila Musaji, editor of the website The American Muslim. Ms. Musaji is hardly a radical. She is, in fact, extremely moderate--if moderation can be so described. Admittedly, her argument is not tight, and there is some confusion of categories, but it is her perceptions of Christians that is crucial to note, and to note that this perception is grounded in a great deal of fact.

Instead of us worrying about Islamic violence, perhaps we should take the log out of our own eye and ask, "Is Christianity inherently violent?" I don't think it is, but I'd have a hard time proving that to a lot of people, especially Muslims.

Posted by Mark Galli at January 2, 2008 | Comments (45)

The stakes and the rhetoric over last spring's murders of three missionaries in Turkey continue to get higher. While some are suggesting the victims have PKK connections, others are demanding the defendants be tried for genocide.

Five young plaintiffs are being tried for the killings of Tilman Ekkehart Geske, Necati Aydin, and Ugur Yuksel in Malatya, Turkey. Seven others are not in custody but have been charged with aiding in the murders.

The trial itself opened November 23 with quite a crowd in attendance and has already stalled. The Turkish Press reports that:

The prosecutor demanded life imprisonment for five suspects on charges of setting up an armed terrorist organization and killing people. The suspects and their lawyers said they are not ready to defend themselves. Then, the judge adjourned the court till January 14, 2008.

One of the major concerns about the defense is that, in an appeal to anti-missionary sentiments, it will portray Geske, Aydin, and Yuksel as apostates who had it coming to them. Orhan Kemal Cengiz, one of the attorneys for the complainants and a Turkish Daily News columnist, wrote:

There are 31 files in this case and just 15 of them comprise information about the murder and the perpetrators. What about the other 16 files?

The prosecutor retrieved all documents from the computers of the victims and put them in the case file as "evidence." If a prosecutor sees missionary activities as criminal then it is not difficult to understand how some people can become crazy and kill these missionaries!

Furthermore, these files, which are public now, may lead to new murders because they include many details on other Protestants who reside in different parts of Turkey. The addresses, emails, telephones of many other Turkish Protestants are in the files, which have already been in the hands of the murderers. The prosecutor failed to make a thorough investigation and he has also put many other lives in danger.

I would like to give you some specific information, but if I went into all details of the weirdness of the files, this article would turn into a small booklet.

It probably won't be difficult to convince the court that the victims were at least partly to blame, Cengiz says, "From the communications sent to the file we understand that Necati Aydin, one of the victims, had been under constant surveillance and in his police record he has recorded as a former criminal for the ?crime' of ?missionary activity.'"

There has been much hand-wringing in the Turkish press over these murders and what they mean about tolerance and teen violence in their society. But the country - or at least its press - continues to choke on the distinctiveness of people of faith.

Forum 18 published an op-ed that probes the source of the anti-Christian violence. In it, G?zide Ceyhan concludes it's a result of "disinformation about Christianity in statements by public figures and through the media, the rise of Turkish nationalism, and the implicit and explicit approval both of the marginalization of Christians from Turkish society and also of actions - including murders - against them."

Keep a lookout for our January cover story, "Jesus in Turkey."

Posted by Susan Wunderink at November 30, 2007 | Comments (6)

A year ago, Muslim clerics wrote to the Pope, disagreeing with his characterization of Islam in a speech given at the University of Regensburg. Today, on that anniversary and coinciding with Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, a larger group of Muslim scholars have written another letter to the Pope and "leaders of Christian churches everywhere."

It's a 29-page document this time, densely packed with quotes from the Quran and the Bible, but the simple thrust of it is a call for Muslims and Christians, on the theological basis of our common belief in love for one God and love for our neighbor, to work together for world peace. As the letter states in its opening paragraph:

Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.

Christian response, so far, has been largely positive. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the more than 70-milion-member Anglican Communion, said the letter's call for respect, fairness, justice, and kindness is "indicative of the kind of relationship for which we [Christians] yearn in all parts of the world."

"The call should now be taken up by Christians and Muslims at all levels and in all countries," he continued, "and I shall endeavor in this country and internationally to do my part in working for the righteousness which this letter proclaims as our common goal."

The Evangelical Alliance, an umbrella group for U.K. evangelicals, released a statement saying that "any approach that is seeking to draw different religions into dialogue for the purpose of peace must be encouraged." Still, the statement warned, "genuine and important differences between the two faiths remain."

But more interesting than Christian response, perhaps, will be Muslim response. Of the 138 scholars, some are known to be liberal, according to Dudley Woodberry, professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, but at least one has ties to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. It will be interesting to see what kind of commentary emerges from outlets like Al Jazeera (which hasn't covered the letter online yet at all).

CT will likely post further analysis of the letter in the days to come. In the meantime, you can read the full text of the document on the BBC's site.

Posted by Madison Trammel at October 11, 2007 | Comments (11)

Iran's nuclear ambitions are just one aspect of the mullahs' iron-fisted approach to maintaining their power. According to an article in the Monday Wall Street Journal (entitled "Domestic Terror in Iran"), the powers that be that run the Islamic Republic are cracking down against "anti-Islam hooligans," as well as "trade union leaders, student activists, journalists and even mullahs opposed to the regime." After describing the recent public execution of seven men, the author, Amir Tahiri, states:

"The Mashad hangings, broadcast live on local television, are among a series of public executions ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month as part of a campaign to terrorize an increasingly restive population. Over the past six weeks, at least 118 people have been executed, including four who were stoned to death. According to Saeed Mortazavi, the chief Islamic prosecutor, at least 150 more people, including five women, are scheduled to be hanged or stoned to death in the coming weeks.

"The latest wave of executions is the biggest Iran has suffered in the same time span since 1984, when thousands of opposition prisoners were shot on orders from Ayatollah Khomeini."
...
"The campaign of terror also includes targeted 'disappearances' designed to neutralize trade union leaders, student activists, journalists and even mullahs opposed to the regime. According to the latest tally, more than 30 people have 'disappeared' since the start of the new Iranian year on March 21. To intimidate the population, the authorities also have carried out mass arrests on spurious grounds.

"According to Gen. Ismail Muqaddam, commander of the Islamic Police, a total of 430,000 men and women have been arrested on charges related to drug use since April. A further 4,209 men and women, mostly aged between 15 and 30, have been arrested for 'hooliganism' in Tehran alone. The largest number of arrests, totaling almost a million men and women according to Mr. Muqaddam, were related to the enforcement of the new Islamic Dress Code, passed by the Islamic Majlis (parliament) in May 2006."

According to Iranian Christians International, there are more than 6,700 Muslim converts to Christ among the 65 million people living in Iran (and perhaps 15,000 Iranian Christians of Muslim background worldwide). One wonders whether they are also being caught up in the terror campaign. An estimated seven Christians have been martyred there since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Certainly the entire country can use our prayers.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at August 6, 2007 | Comments (2)

New fighting inside Gaza is creating a lawless situation that reminds me of Somalia and other fearful and bloody places around the globe.

Tragically, Gaza does not even arise to the level of being a "failed state." There's just failure, no state.

Open Doors is one of the few Christian ministries still committed to working inside Gaza, supporting the local Christians there, especially at Gaza Baptist church in Gaza City. Open Doors released this information on Thursday, June 14:

Threats by Islamic militants
Islamic militants are creating a situation that verges on anarchy. They are targeting everything that is against their view of Islam. The group "the Sword of Islam" has sent death threat letters to female broadcasters on Palestine television. "We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed, to protect the spirit and morals of this nation," the group said in a statement emailed to news agencies on June 1. Recently the shop of the Bible Society was bombed by the same group. Every Christian organization is a possible target for this group. It has become clear that they are searching actively for churches and believers in Gaza and harassing them. The same kinds of groups are also active in the West Bank.

Fear Is in Control
Several sources have confirmed the firm grip of fear created by Muslims militants over the society. They say that especially believers from a Muslim background are afraid to be discovered and killed by militant forces. Not many have the courage to have contact with other Christians. Fear is trying to creep in everywhere.

Prayer Requests
Pray for the suffering Christians in Gaza, that the Lord protects them and gives them wisdom and encouragement. Pray that they will not be controlled by fear, but by a love for God and their neighbors. Pray that the political tension will cease and that Gaza will get a government that enables the whole church to prosper. Pray especially for the children.

Early this morning, I received a forwarded email from a Christian leader currently inside Gaza, he writes:

Gaza streets are again under the control of gunmen as the violence spirals out of control. Security forces loyal to different factions took up positions at major intersections in the early hours of the morning and Gaza awoke to the sounds of war. The route to --- this morning took me past numerous gunmen and a detour into an area I would have rather not gone. Arriving later than normal I was happy and surprised to see that most of the staff had already arrived.

These leaders call on Christians worldwide to uphold them in prayer.

NEWS UPDATE:
Thursday, June 14, 2007, 17:44 CDT. Comments from inside Gaza Thursday midnight....

CT reaches influential Christian leader inside Gaza.

Christianity Today senior writer Deann Alford spoke this afternoon (about Thursday midnight local time) with an expatriate evangelical missions leader who has been doing ministry and living in the Gaza Strip, where the Islamic party Hamas has taken control. We are not releasing his name or exact location.

Are you in a safe place for now?
I'm safe and doing OK, waiting to see what happens with the new government. My building is in a really bad location right now. I'm staying with some people from the church. In this area it's been very quiet for the last few days. Everybody [in Gaza's Baptist church] seems to be out of harm's way. I'm not concerned for my safety.

What's the situation for Gaza and Gazan evangelicals?
I've seen in the last few hours that although people are cautious, they're going out without so much fear. Christians, I think, are in the same situation. There's the added uncertainty of being Christian and not knowing if that will change anything in the equation. Families I've spoken with today are not overly worried about how a Hamas government will treat them. Hamas has always treated them and taken care of them very well. I haven't seen any fear or concern of a takeover. But there's uncertainty. Nobody knows exactly what the next few days and weeks will hold.

How are church members communicating with each other?
That's become more difficult. Often it's through landline. Cell phone signals are very, very weak. Power is out in some areas.

What has the church been able to do ministry-wise?
Nothing. Every one I know from the church has stayed home.

What's the status of the church's building, which is across the street from the police station?
The security situation in some ways is safer. One party is now in complete control of the Gaza Strip. I imagine the security part could mean positive things for the church building.

How do Christians there anticipate this will play out?
We're wondering what the physical reality will be. Nobody really knows what will happen in the next few weeks. I don't imagine Israel will be too keen to allow a lot of foreigners in now. There is fear Gaza will become one big concentration camp, partly because it already is. It's very unlikely there will be any contact between Hamas government and Israel. The fear is that the humanitarian situation will go completely out of control. The common man on the street will suffer the most.

What are your plans?
I'll probably leave for the West Bank whenever there's a way out for internationals. There's only a handful of internationals in the Gaza Strip at the moment. I was planning to leave by the middle of July. I tried to leave yesterday and talked to UN security. They recommended I stay in my apartment. Today there's no way out. The border is closed.

Posted by Tim Morgan at June 14, 2007 | Comments (11)

Soon, Islam in America will no longer be an immigrant faith. It will be the faith of people who grew up attending American public schools, colleges, movie theaters, and shopping malls. "But as the first generation of American-born Muslims begins graduating from college in significant numbers, with a swelling tide behind them, some congregations are beginning to seek native imams who can talk about religious and social issues that seem relevant to young people, like dating and drugs." It's tough to find "culturally savvy" imams when those who are religiously educated come from the Middle East and those whose parents immigrated did not come to see their children lead a mosque.

An article in today's New York Times describes the religion's slow transition from imported to homegrown. If American-born Muslims do not find a way to adapt the faith to a new context, Muslims worry, they will either drop the religion or seek its radical fringe.

"Islam in America is trying to create a new cultural matrix that can survive in the broader context of America," said Prof. Sherman Jackson, who teaches Arabic and Islamic law at the University of Michigan. "It has to change for the religion to survive."

Posted by Rob Moll at June 1, 2007 | Comments (4)

Sticks and carrots:

At the White House this morning, President Bush ran out of patience with the genocidal regime ruling Sudan. He announced a collection of sanctions against the nation-state of Sudan and individuals associated with the sickening killing and rape still going on in the Darfur region at the western border with Chad.

See this video clip:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2007/05/29/VI2007052900512.html

Here's a link to the Washington Post online article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/29/AR2007052900462.html

The Save Darfur Coalition includes many evangelical groups that should be encouraged by this move. China especially is likely to resist the imposition of sanctions.

We Christians must understand how the situation in Darfur ripples throughout the region and globally. Until there is real peace in Sudan, this region of Africa will remain violent and unstable.

The carrot and the stick are now on the table, Omar Bashir.

Prayer for the persecuted church in Sudan in the south should just be the beginning of our commitment. I agree with President Bush that we cannot "avert our eyes" from this suffering.

Posted by Tim Morgan at May 29, 2007 | Comments (4)

According to an opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal, by Tawfik Hamid (tantalizingly described as "a onetime member of Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamist terrorist group, is a medical doctor and Muslim reformer living in the West"), the assimilation of Muslims into American society is (to borrow a phrase from Jimmy Carter) an "incomplete success." Here's a portion:

"According to a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey, "younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified." About one out of every four American Muslims under 30 think suicide bombing in defense of Islam is justified in at least some circumstances. Twenty-eight percent believe that Muslims did not carry out the 9/11 attacks and 32% declined to answer that question.

"While the survey has been represented in the media as proof of moderation among American Muslims, the actual results should yield the opposite conclusion. If, as the Pew study estimates, there are 2.35 million Muslims in America, that means there are a substantial number of people in the U.S. who think suicide bombing is sometimes justified. Similarly, if 5% of American Muslims support al Qaeda, that's more than 100,000 people."

Still, it's good to know of the existence of passionate Muslim reformers such as this author, though sad that he feels the need to shield his location for safety reasons.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at May 25, 2007 | Comments (5)

A Pew study finds that American Muslims are largely assimilating into the country.

Some findings, as reported by the Washington Post:

* 78 percent say that suicide bombings of civilians is never justified in order to defend Islam, which is not all that high.

* 65 percent of American Muslims are foreign born.

* "They believe that Muslims coming to the United States should adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct."

* Socioeconomically, they are on par with average Americans.

* U.S. Muslims oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

* Pew estimates there are 2.35 million Muslims in the United States.

As someone who often shops alongside Muslims (there seems to be no Muslims in my neighborhood but plenty at the mall and the grocery store, at least those who wear headscarves), this is both encouraging and confirming of my own experience. I wonder if Muslims see their assimilation as a good thing, or a capitulation to American customs.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 23, 2007 | Comments (10)