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 (15)

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 (3)

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 (40)

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, Güzide 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 (5)

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 (10)

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)