What do Muslims think of us? revised 1.23.06

Yesterday a friend asked me if I would help him in a presentation he is making, by answering the question: What do Muslims think of us?

I agree that it is important for each of us to listen well enough to know the answer to this question, but I am not sure that I am the person people should be listening to.

Ideally, we should be listening to Muslim friends and that what we think of each other is part of a real friendship. But, given the realities of the barriers between Muslims and Christians, barriers that limit both the instances and depth of personal relationships between Christians and Muslims, this question, and its counter question, what do we think of Muslims?, we cannot come up with accurate answers very easily.

Before I get into some possible answers to the question, it is also worth noting that the question itself is highly reductionistic. Think about the following:

• How can one dare think of an answer that would work for all 1.3 billion Muslims in the world today? Do all Muslims think alike? Do some Muslims like Christians and hate Westerners?
• When we ask what they think of "us", who is "us"?
• Are we asking what they think of Christians or what they think of Westerners?
• Is there a difference between a Westerner and a Christian (I think there is!!!)?
• Is there a difference "in the Muslim mind" (I beg forgiveness for even using that expression) between Christians and Muslims?
• How can one dare think that it is possible to discover the answer that the 1.1 billion Muslims would give when they don't have a friendship with a Christian? Who is going to ask them?

Assuming the question is what do Muslims think of Christians? might help us focus on the real issue: If the 1.1 billion Muslims who do not have a friendship with a Christian have an opinion about Christians, what is it based on?

It is a common thing for Christian missionaries to say that Muslims consider the terms "Christian" and "Westerner" to refer to the same people and values. So that they think that the sex and violence in Hollywood movies is a reflection of Christianity, or to conclude too quickly that Westerners who visit their countries are Christians and that their behavior reflects Christian values, or even to say that the West's "war on terrorism" is a continuation of the Crusades and a reflection of Christianity's hatred or fear of Islam.

If Muslims do not know Christians (or, more importantly than those who are Christian in name, they may never have met people who seek to be followers of Jesus) it could be easy enough to think that Western Culture is Christian Culture, just as we think Middle Eastern Culture is Muslim Culture when in fact there are many Arab Christians and, in fact, most Muslims are not Arabs.

I could go on. The point I want to make, though, is that Muslims are probably as ignorant of Christians as real human beings as Christians are of Muslims. Our impressions of each other are formed through different means and are part of the great wall of separation and hostility that has characterized Muslim/Christian/Western relations for 12 centuries.

It might be important for us to understand where Muslims can draw from to form an opinion about Christians or about Westerners.

• Islam has a place, in its holy book (in the Koran) and in its theology, a place for Jesus, the founder of Christianity. Muslims are forced to answer for themselves the questions, who is Jesus? Is the Bible accurate?
• The opposite is not true. Mohammed is not in the Bible and most theologians, unless they specialize in comparative religion or in the encounter of Christianity with other religions, do not have to worry about the meaning of Mohammed's life and religious claims or even about the Koran.
• Mohammed was married to a woman from a Christian background and Mohammed lived among pagans, Christians and Jews. Though most Christians today would consider the forms of Christianity he encountered heretical, Muslims have an understanding that their version of monotheism is better than Christian or Judaism. In fact, for them, it is based on God's corrective and final revelation of His Word, the Koran.

Getting to an answer to the question...

Words in Islam that refer to Christians:

• people of the book recognizes the revelation about Jesus that was entrusted to Christians. The Injil (New Testament) is a true revelation, though Christians are accused of changing it to promote deceptions they made up after Jesus died (such as that he is God). Nonetheless, this description is positive.
• infidels describes Christians as NOT believing the truth about God as revealed by Mohammed and expressed in the Koran.
• dhimmis is the name for Christians who, in Islamic society, are allowed to continue to follow their Christian faith.

Christians are both tolerated and protected by Islamic law. This creates an interesting situation. Muslims can legitimately claim that they are more tolerant toward Christians than Christians are toward Muslims. At the same time Christians can rightly argue that Islamic freedom of religion does not include freedom for Muslims to become Christians.

Why the double standard? Perhaps it is related to the belief held by many Muslims that as each country, region or people group submits to Islamic law, the world gets closer to a world that will finally be in harmony with God's design. The forward march of Islam can be seen by some Muslims as an irreversible sign of the grace of God. Under such a vision, it is easy to understand how there might be freedom to become a Muslim, but none to stop being one!

So, having made this long discourse, can we find a one sentence answer for the question: what do Muslims think of us?

Here are some one sentence answers:

The western system has come to an end primarily because it is deprived of those life-giving values which enabled it to be the leader of mankind.

--Sayyid Qutb in Milestones, p8, 11

Why do you not acknowledge our prophet?

--man on the street, Morocco

Why won't you allow us into western society?

--immigrants from the Middle East

You Christians are better Muslims than we are!

--a frequent comment by local Muslims to Christian humanitarian workers in their communities

many Muslims view the West
as the source of colonialism, racism, and immorality while Islam
is viewed as the fount of equality, justice, and godly civilization

--Bernard Adeney-Risakotta in SojoMail Nov 13 2002

I began to think to myself, how could such a man be condemned to hell [for not being a Muslim]

--Mehdi Abedi in Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition

So...

I think finding an answer to the question can be a fruitful endeavor, but I hope we can do it with careful attention to our own motives and methods:

• I know this was not my friend's intention when he asked the question, but it is important that when we ask what Muslims think of us that we do so honestly. If our answer will be an excuse to either love them, or hate them, we will have forgotten God's proactive stance toward humans and we will be reaction.
• If we are asking the questions so as to merely study about them (to enter into the debate about the legitimacy of orientalism), we should be careful that we not do this as an alternative to actually meeting, knowing and engaging individual Muslims about the things that are important to us and to them.
• Our biggest challenge is to break down the walls of separation that keep us from knowing Muslims and them from knowing us. These walls keep us from knowing our Muslim neighbors and from accepting them into our lives. These walls keep us from being a bridge over which the Holy Spirit can make the living Jesus we follow known to Muslims.

The peace of our world today is directly affected by geographic and social barriers that keep Muslims and Christians from knowing each other at the personal level. Most Muslims go through life without meaningful contact with the few Christians who live among them and Christians are unaffected by the few Muslims in their part of the world. Muslims who know no Christians and Christians who know no Muslims make our world more dangerous.

By avoiding each other, we do nothing to reduce the violence inherent in both the West's war on terrorism and in Jihad, fighting in the way of Islam for the world to submit to God.

But, breaking down the barriers is not a panacea. Getting people together can cause clashes as much as it can cause reconciliation. It is, however an essential first step if we are going to be experience the fulfilling of God's goal to reconcile all humanity in Jesus, make His good gifts available to all peoples and put an end to injustice. That happens when Jesus followers and Holy Spirit carriers live in close contact with people who haven't been introduced to Jesus yet or touched by God's Holy Spirit.

Perhaps the most important question I can ask myself: what do I think of Muslims? Is what I think of Muslims in line with what God thinks of Muslims? Am I willing to go out of my way to be a friend to Muslims here and around the world?

Summary:

What to Muslims think of us? Ask a Muslim.

What do we think of Muslims? We need to ask ourselves the hard questions.

As for what God thinks of Muslims. Maybe we need to ask Him!

My birthday

Today is my birthday. If it dries up enough, Lois and I will go out to Point Reyes for a nice walk. Tomorrow Angela and Shaun will join us for dinner.

later...

Point Reyes was great. We started at the south trailhead of the Coast Trail, turned toward the beach at the Palomarin trail and went down the beach. We picked up a bottle that looked like it had spent a lot of time at sea!

Unfortunately, it didn't have a message in it. But that would have been a little hard to do because the screw on cap was still sealed!

It had barnacles on it and it looks like it is a little crooked, that is, the base is not straight, so when you sit it on a table, it leans a little to one side.

Best of all, it doesn't have any brand markings or names on it, and it looks a little crude in its manufacture. We got the idea that it is not from the USA.

So we brought it home in hopes of figuring out its story some day (right!). Since the theme is "getting old", it works for a hopeful retirement project (still a long way off!).

Afterwards Lois took me to Caffè Trieste in Sausalito for a bite to eat complese with a live Jazz band and Marimba. Along with the Marimba the guy waiting the tables just gave me the feeling that I should go up to him and say, "Usted ¿De qué parte de Guatemala es?" But, by his looks, you might wonder if he spoke Spanish. ¡Qué el lector entienda!

This is the way I like to celebrate my birthday.

One man one goat

Sorry about posting twice in one day. But I couldn't pass this one up. Click on the link and go to picture number 4.

We are fighting for "One man, one vote." But "One man, one goat" may have at least as much to do with the future of humanity according to Isaiah 60:1-7 as does democracy!

How I got started thinking about Islam

On a trip to Dakar, Senegal, I came across an artist who paints on the back of glass. I found this picture interesting and asked the artist about it. He said it was Abraham and Ishmael.

That was the first I was ever exposed to this interpretation of the life of Abraham. I have used this picture to lead me to try and understand what God thinks of Muslims and of Christians. This seems to me to be even more important than what Christians and Muslims think of God, though that is of fundamental importance, too.

A quick look at the Atlas the other day reminded me that we westerners do not see the world in terms of religion. Our way of evaluating a country or a region is to ask how many goods and services they produce. Or to ask what language they speak. But at least the Atlas's I looked at had no map of religions. But what people think about God is proving to be important, at least in today's world. People are killing each other over that.

In the Abraham/Ishmael/Isaac story, one that is important to approximately 1/2 of all humans on earth today, we can see how what God thinks of humans is important. Read Genesis 22.

Or read this article about the Feast of Sacrifice by Gilchrist. I think the article is marvelous.

May God continue to take initiative in each of our lives and may we be open to what He wants to do. Without that, we are lost and so are our children.

More on the hope for humanity's future

I don't want to get the focus off the question that I raised at Eid: "What is important for the future of humanity?"

I got a lot of comments on that posting. Make sure you read the comments. That's where I say a little about what I believe is important for the future of humanity. My hope depends on Christians and Muslims living next to each other and developing a relationship in which God has a role. There are many ways this can happen, but it seems to me that we are doomed to jihads followed by crusades followed by terrorism followed by "just wars", ad infinitum unless we can figure out how to break down the "dividing wall of partition". For that you may want to take a look at Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

It is not easy to imagine how this is going to happen!

We I did get one very interesting reply to my posting was an article from the Internet regarding whether the son that Abraham offered was Ishmael as is popularly believed among many Muslims or if it was Isaac as the Bible declares. It is from a Christian polemical site, so it would be interesting to know if thinking Muslims actually agree with what is written there.

This of course gets into a polemic that can degenerate into an arguement about "who is right". While one may be right and the other may be wrong (or did Abraham offer both sons and have this experience twice?), such polemic hasn't been able to settle this question during the last 1300 years. If our disagreements continue define our relationship, the future of humanity is at risk.

I don't think that is what God was thinking about when he rescued Abraham's son, whoever it was. What was He thinking?

Dick Hillis

Lois and I spent almost all day Saturday remembering a man of God whose life touched ours profoundly: Dick Hillis, the founder of OC International. When we went to Brazil in 1977, we were sent out under OC International.

Dick Hillis died on December 14 and his memorial service was January 14. It was an all day affair with BOTH of his families (he and his first wife, Margaret, had 6 kids and many many grandchildren) including the OC family. It was wonderful to reconnect with many precious friends and fellow travelers, since we were part of the OC family for 16 years! Read the link!

Here are some things I heard that challenge me:

• When OC started out, Dick surrounded himself with people in their 20's and built the mission with their help. One said: "Even though we were in our 20's, he expected us to do our jobs well. He gave us jobs that were over our heads. He praised us when we did well and he confronted us when we didn't. He expected hard work and he expected God to guide us. He always took the hardest job.
• Dick told us, I will give you 10 days to decide whether God is telling you to join us in Taiwan. Get counsel from people who know you well. Bathe everything in prayer. Find examples, especially Bible examples, of people faced with a similar decision and learn everything you can from that example.
• He wanted to build the church by building a foundation under national leaders. Raise up others so that they will be successful.
• Spend yourself on a cause that will outlive your own life.
• If you are going to make it as a missionary, learn to laugh at your mistakes!
• Dick was there when I was in trouble or hurting.
• He served, not to be great, but to make others great.
• "Where are all the men? 80% of missionaries are women. You men are all chickens!" (He said this to High Schoolers at Mt Hermon before WWII.

What stood out to me most was that he was a fork in the road person. His challenge changed the course of the life of many people. And this was because he had a great love for Jesus that was noticeable to all, and that he depended on God to enable him and to take ordinary lives and use them in extraordinary ways.

I was reminded of his favorite verse (2 Cor 4:5) "we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake."

I hope I can follow His example!

Eid and hope for the future of Humanity.

Ever since I was introduced to the Muslim world through my Latin American friends, I have had a special fascination with Eid, the Muslim holiday that was celebrated yesterday.

Eid, by its place in the Islamic calendar and by the things that are done on Eid, can remind Muslims each year that their ancestor Ishmael was spared death because God provided a substitute (yes! that is their variation on the story of the rescue of Isaac in Gen 22).

My fascination (and my hope) grows when I read in Isaiah 60:7 that God promises that the rams of the children of Ishmael will be "acceptable on my Altar".

Does that refer to the rams in these pictures of the Eid holiday? Take a moment to look at them.

Islam can be a challenge to our Christian faith. For many Muslims "devotion" to God is critical for the future of humanity and they see Abraham’s willingness to offer his son as a supreme devotion to God.

Our Christian faith says that Jesus is critical for the future of humanity.

What do you think is critical for the future of humanity?