Abu Daoud

Abu Daoud's thoughts on the Arab Spring

2012-02-04T10:34:00.001-08:00

From Part II of my interview with Don Warrington. Read it all at his blog and leave some comments already! Here is one of the questions:

6) Where do you see MENA going, especially in view of events such as the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the Arab Spring?

This is the million-dollar question, isn’t it? First, the people who protested didn’t take political control, so as much as they wanted freedom and democracy, they just won’t get it, I’m sorry to say. The Egyptian elections were demonstrably corrupt, though the international press has not said so—I have no idea why. The Islamists will take power and they will not let it go. And why is this surprising? That is precisely what Muhammad did—engaged in diplomacy and compromise and so on, but once he had power he was ruthless. In the end, an Islamic society cannot be a free society. Islam and freedom are mutually exclusive.

The question I have is this: will it be like Iran? After the revolution in `79 Islam had a chance to prove itself in the political arena, and Islam, unlike Christianity, makes substantial guarantees in this area. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have concluded that Islam failed—it did not deliver politically so it must be false in terms of its religious and spiritual claims too. They have turned to Christianity some of them, and some to secular humanism or atheism. Will this happen in these newly Islamist states? Perhaps. I pray it will. Islam’s love of political power may well be its Achilles’ heel. Meanwhile, that means the native Christians need to stay as long as they can, and foreign missionaries like me need to stay no matter what. I will do it. Maybe the kids and wife need to go back to the US, I will do everything I can to stay here even if all hell breaks loose.

Don Warrington interviews Abu Daoud, Part 1

2012-01-11T00:17:00.000-08:00

Don Warrington over at Positive Infinity keeps a fine blog which has been on my blogroll for years over at Islam & Christianity. Don interviewed me about being in the mission field in the Middle East, and the first part of the interview has been posted. Check it out HERE.

Here is one section of the interview:

2) What type of training did you obtain for this? Was it helpful? For others who might be considering this, what kind of training is best?

My own training was largely on my own. I will say that having a background in philosophy from a secular university is great. I mean, philosophy is all about listening very carefully to what people say and write, to the point where you understand them better than they understand themselves even. We debated and thought about the big questions—the relation of the soul to the body, the existence of God, the nature of good and evil, and so on. With that sort of background you are really able to interact with Muslims on a whole different level than what folks learn at the local bible college or what have you. Also, Muslims are aware that in the distant past they produced a couple of outstanding philosophers. I mean, these were the people with whom Thomas Aquinas was interacting! So when you say you are a scholar of philosophy and religions, which is what I am, and what I tell people when they ask me, ‘What do you do?’ they really respect it.

For more Click Here.

Response to Warrick Farah's questions on conversion and the word 'Christian'

2011-11-14T07:32:00.001-08:00

WarrickFarah at Circumpolar, a blog on the topic of mission to Muslims, asks some interesting questions about converts from Islam to Christianity. In a nutshell,he is wondering if avoiding words like ‘Christian’ and ‘conversion’ in Islamiccountries (like Somalia, if you can even call that a country anymore), wouldnot lessen persecution. He poses three questions. Here they are, with myanswers.

People can be persecuted for Christ, or they can be persecuted for Western Christianity by calling themselves “Christians.” Of course the difference between the two is really difficult to discern, and I don’t pretend to know in Musa’s case here. But some persecution is unnecessary and more a result of association with the immoral West than with the glorious Jesus. I do wonder about Sayed Musa and this Somali MBB- what if they chose not to call themselves “Christians”?

Abu Daoud’s answer: I think it is a bit unfair to askMuslims who decide to follow Christ to notcall themselves Christians. They know the language of Christian andChristianity, and they find it in their history and in their book, the Qur’an.The concept of following Christ from within Islam is a Western, modernistconstruct—it represents an attempt to renegotiate boundaries traditionallyconsidered as immutable and objective. Not to be confrontational, but it isakin to same-sex marriage in this respect. All of this to say, these are not 21stCentury Americans who can deconstruct and reconstruct terms in order to firtheir picture of how reality should be, and we should not expect them to act insuch a way. (Anyone interested in further exploring this critique of modernityshould read Peter Berger’s important book TheHeretical Imperative.)

The language of “conversion” is politically loaded, and whenever persecution hits international headlines there are always other factors involved, as the article clearly shows. The NT language is really rich and diverse in describing the concept of conversion. Is there a better English word?

Abu Daoud’s answer: This is an interesting question,and I think there is more room for discussion here than with the word‘Christian’, which, I think, need not and can not be tossed out (with thepossible exception of Jews). The key word used in the NT to talk about peopledeciding to be disciples of Christ is repentance. But that is a technical wordthat will not make sense to people who do not know the NT well (including mostChristians I think). How would we say that? He repented and decided to followChrist? It lacks the concise nature of the word ‘convert’ that people in allfields understand to mean a significant turning away from something and toanother thing, in this case away from Islam and to Christianity. So is there abetter English word? For internet material meant for a wide audience ofnon-specialists? I don’t think so. Is there a better word in Somalian? I have no idea.

Public advocacy for the persecuted usually puts governments in very awkward situations with the end result usually ending in deportation. How should we stand for religious freedom without shaming Muslim governments into overreacting?

AbuDaoud’s answer: I think this is the most complex question, and all I can say isthat it needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis. Ultimately the West needsto wake up and realize that Human Rights and Islam are, I am sad to say,irreconcilable. I mean, the Prophet very clearly said, ‘whosoever changes hisreligion, slay him.’ That does not leave a lot of room for creativity, does it?This problem has been around for a while, and it led Kenneth Cragg to theconclusion that Christian mission to the Muslim world must contain a strongelement of advocacy for religious freedom.

Please chime in, either here or over at Circumpolar. I enjoy this sort of conversation, just keep it civil ;-)

--Abu Daoud

Albion Land interviews Abu Daoud

2011-11-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I had the privilege to be interviewed by Albion Land, founder of the blog The Continuum. I think I mentioned it a long time ago but I recently re-read it and I think you might find it quite interesting.

Here it is:

Albion Land interviews Abu Daoud

Abu Daoud, now on Scribd

2011-10-29T19:20:00.001-07:00

Hi All,

I have opened a Scribd account, so for those of you who use that fine service, please feel free to follow me there, and I would also like to follow your activity.

It is also a convenient place to see all my published articles, which I am in the process of uploading:

www.scribd.com/abu_daoud

--Abu Daoud

St Francis Magazine, Vol 7:4 (October 2011)

2011-10-05T12:25:00.001-07:00

Hi All,

Well, the new issue of SFM is out a few days late, but better late than never. I have not read the whole thing yet, but so far there are two articles that are noteworthy I think.

The first is Jeff Morton's harsh review of the missiology and theology of Carl Medearis. I have not personally read Medearis' book Muslims, Christians, and Jesus, but I have heard several people speak highly of it. So it is interesting to find such a critical review of his work. Here it is:

THE LYRICS OF CARL MEDEARIS: A POST-MODERN CROONS A SONG OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM by Jeff Morton

Second, I actually put together a complete bibliography of SFM's first five years. Do check it out. I guarantee you will find some interesting articles that you will want to read. Also, you will most certainly enjoy my intelligent and penetrating insights into the journal's strengths and weaknesses ;-)

St Francis Magazine: A Complete Bibliography of the First Five Years by Abu Daoud

Or by all means, just download the entire issue if you prefer.

--Abu Daoud

Egyptian Fairy Tale - Investors.com

2011-04-27T20:22:00.000-07:00

Egyptian Fairy Tale - Investors.com

Part XXIII: The myth of Islamic religious tolerance through the ages

2011-04-25T07:42:00.001-07:00

Part XXIII: The myth of Islamic religious tolerance through the ages
by Abu Daoud

A reader of the blog asked this good question:

Abu Daoud,

I've heard various Western historians say that Islam has historically been more tolerant than Christianity. They point out the treatment of non-Christians, particularly the Jews, in Europe and compare that with the treatment of Christians in the Middle East. It is true that even after the Arab conquests, there was a substantial Christian population in the Middle East for many centuries. The Muslim overlords needed the jizya, so Christians were tolerated. I believe it was only after the Crusades and Mongol conquests, when Christians sided with the Mongols, life for Christians got tougher. Now, of course, with the rise in Muslim fundamentalism things have got a lot tougher.

What do you say? Has Islam been historically tolerant, more tolerant than Christianity? Or has Christians always had it tough since the days Muhammad blazed on the scene?

Here is my answer: Islam does, in general, tolerate religious groups like Jews and Christians, but in such a way that Christians and Jews (called dhimmis) have curtailed religious, political, and economic freedom. They are doomed to a long slow decline. For instance, they cannot in general build new churches, convents, or synagogues, and can only repair existing ones with government permission. Their women can be married off to Muslims (or enslaved) in which case all the children will be Muslims, but they themselves cannot take Muslim wives (who would then produce Christian children, as per the father's religion). Dhimmis must pay something called the jizya or the poll tax, which fluctuated throughout Islamic history, it could be a crushing burden or something rather light. Once a Christian converted to Islam they were no longer obliged to pay that tax. Certain positions in government and military were, at times, limited to Muslims only, which provided another incentive for dhimmis to convert to Islam.

Outbreaks of anti-Christian violence likewise occur to this day. But the Christians cannot really do anything about it, can they? If they defend themselves then they are guilty of fighting against Muslims, and all will be punished. The Islamic government will sweep it under the rug and rarely are those responsible punished. The violence occurs. It is ignored by the government. Christians have no choice but to accept the injustice. If they call for justice they will be punished. It is a long, slow strategy of elimination. It has worked well over the centuries, leading to massive emigration of Christians and Jews from Muslim lands.

In other words, Islamic countries have the inhumane system of dhimmitude which is the Islamic equivalence of 'tolerance'. There never has been, and never will be, in an Islamic country genuine religious freedom. The key test in this area is simple: can a Muslim convert to Christianity (or some other religion) without being persecuted or resisted by the government? There are a very few Islamic countries where a person can indeed legally convert (Turkey is the only one I can think of, and maybe Lebanon?). It is legal in Turkey because Ataturk felt Islam was outdated and antiquated, in Lebanon, if indeed it still legal, because of the historical predominance of Maronites.) As the Prohet said, "man baddala diinahu, fa'aqtaluuhu"--Whosoever changes religion, slay him.

Regarding Muslims in Christian countries, they enjoy genuine religious freedom, something Christians in Muslim lands never have and never will experience because religious freedom and Islam are, in esse, incompatible. Historically, we don't have examples of large numbers of Muslims in Christian countries until recently. The expulsion of the Moors from Spain was more political than religious. Many of the Moors (Muslims) were explicitly treasonous and sought to overthrow the current political order, Europeans are glad to let such people remain in Europe nowadays, but in previous days Europeans had a bit more common sense and realized that you can't have a substantial population in your country that wants to overthrow the government. Europeans then realized what they seem incapable of understanding now: that Islam is not a 'religion', it is rather an imperial political movement sanctioned by theological myth.

Regarding the Jews in the lands of Christendom, there is a mixed bag. Certainly there were times when the Jews of Islamdom were better off than the Jews of Christendom. That was not always the case, and Christendom never totally purged itself of Jews, which is indeed what dar al islam today has done. So when we are talking about getting Jews our of your lands, at least as it stands today, Muslims have been more successful than Christians, even taking into account the Holocaust, which is viewed favorably by many Muslims today.

Hope that answers your question. When people toss out these slogans it is worthwhile to do some good historical research, something most Muslims will not do, as it inevitably leads to the conclusion that the Qur'an is wrong and Muslims are by no means 'the best of all people'. It is also sad that some contemporary authors (non-Muslims) perpetuate these myths (Armstrong? Menocal?), but it is very PC to do so, and leads to grants, published articles, and cushy positions at Oxford. And in Western academia today, these things are much more important than trivial things like truth.

New issue of St Francis Magazine

2011-04-05T21:45:00.001-07:00

Well, issue two of volume seven of St Francis Magazine has now come out. I'm not surprised it took a while longer than usual, given the tumult in the Middle East where several of the editors are. But that having been said, I'm really excited about several of the articles. Here they are, and let me share why I think they are worth your scrutiny. (Though let me admit that I have not yet read all of these, though I have read some of them.)

John Damascene in context: An Examination of “The Heresy of the Ishmaelites” with special consideration given to the Religious, Political, and Social Contexts during the Seventh and Eighth Century Arab Conquests, by D. Bryan Rhodes

I'm a big fan of church history, as long-time readers will know. I am looking forward to detailed analysis of the first documented commentary of a Christian on Islam.

What is the Qur’an? A Moroccan intellectual’s critique of the Qur’an’s ethical teachings, by Bassam M. Madany

Madany is a great source for translating and interpreting Arabic-language documents. Also, he's been doing ministry for longer than I've been alive.

‘Your swords do not concern me at all’: The liberation theology of Islamic Christianity, by Duane Alexander Miller

I love the idea of combining liberation theology and ex-Muslim Christians doing theology!

Enjoy the reading! And let me know what you think about the various articles.

--Abu Daoud

On the recent unrest in countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen

2011-01-28T19:22:00.001-08:00

by Abu Daoud

Well, what can I say?

I have been surprised by the outbreak in massive riots in Egypt, and lessed such events in Yemen and Jordan. What really seemed like the moment when 'the levee's gonna break' was when folks in Egypt started calling for the resignation of Mubaarak.

You see, you can have riots, even violent, destructive ones, in the Middle East, for certain causes, like Islamic stuff (of course), and anti-American and anti-Israel stuff (of course), and even maybe for rather pragmatic things like the price of bread or sugar of tomatos. You can even call for new elections or a new parliament or a new group of ministers (the new boss...same as the old boss), a la Jordan. But you can't call for the top guy to be replaced, or to leave, or to step down, or anything. In fact, you should not even mention him, unless you are saying, hey this guy needs to save us from these corrupt jerks. Then it's ok.

Well, that's not what is happening in Egypt. The police are out of play, widely despised by people in general. Now the military has been called in, and what of that? Even if one or two main commanders tell their troops, you know, we're here to defend Egypt from Israel and Libya and fill-in-the-blank, so we're just not going to get invovled in this, either way....well, that will end up being decisive. If a couple of influential commanders do that, then a new regime in Egypt is not impossible.

But if the military by and large obey their orders (which seem illegitimate to me, but then again I'm American), then sooner or later, perhaps after much bloodshed, the iron will of the Mubaarak Dynasty will be enforced upon all.

Part XXII: Iranian Christianity

2010-11-14T07:10:00.000-08:00

Part XXII: Iranian Christianity

by Abu Daoud
November 2010

That Muslims are converting to Christianity in numbers unprecedented throughout history comes as a (welcome) surprise to most Christians in the West. Every now and then I find someone who has heard about one of these movements, like the tens of thousands of Berbers in Algeria who in the last two decades have converted, or the hundreds each year who are baptized into the Catholic Church in countries like France and Italy. Or perhaps they have heard of the experimental laboratory that is Bangladesh, where there are groups of people who call themselves Christ-followers but don’t use the term Christian or Muslim to refer to themselves.

But one of the most numerically significant movements of Muslims to Christianity is among Iranians. I am not talking about people with Iranian citizenship who come from ethnic groups which are traditionally Christian (Armenians and Assyrians), but about the large ethnic group whose ancestors were Zoroastrians and slowly but surely, century by century converted to Islam. Today there are very few Zoroastrians left in Iran.

While I have spent most of the last five years in the Arab world, I have of course occasionally spent time in the US and the UK for multiple reasons—conferences, education, vacation, weddings, and so on. And during that time I have had the pleasure of meeting with many Iranian Christians. Some of them are brand new believers, just-baptized, some of them converted decades ago and are seasoned leaders in their churches. Some left Iran under favorable circumstances, while many left Iran as political, economic, or religious refugees. Some of them converted while still in Iran, some of them after their departure. I want to outline here a couple of things I have noticed about Iranian Christianity in the Diaspora.

First, this is a new church. If you have an Egyptian or Palestinian who comes to Christ, they are able to look back to their ancestry and say, ‘I had Christian ancestors, I’m returning to something ancient.’ And that can be important from a psychological and emotional point of view. Knowing that can bring them strength and encouragement. But Iranians never were Christians. So the churches they are forming and the sort of Christianity they are constructing is genuinely something brand new, and not simply a newer version of something ancient.

Second, Iranian Christianity preserves Iranian culture and identity. Iranians who become Christians tend to be critical of Islam to some extent. Many of them identify it with Arab culture and thus as something imported from afar, and ultimately something that degraded Persian culture. Most of their children have Persian names, and not Arabic ones. On the other hand, they continue to celebrate the Iranian New Year (Nowruz) with its rich traditions, because it is pre-Islamic.

Third, it is non-denominational. While these Christians by and large are evangelical and perhaps charismatic, there is no one denomination or Christian tradition that dominates the movement. On the plus side this means that Christians from many different churches and denominations are able to bring their ideas and spiritualities to the table. The down side is that personal differences among leaders can sometimes lead to divisions that probably did not need to happen. Over the years I have been in touch with Iranian Christians who are Anglican, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, as well as some who don’t belong to any one denomination. In spite of all this diversity, the good news is that the churches and leaders tend to stay in touch and consult together by means of meetings, conferences, the web, and so on.

Fourth, Iranian Christianity is facing huge challenges. The most obvious one is persecution within Iran, but there are others too. How does one train leaders when it is impossible to open a seminary (in Iran)? How can churches and leaders remain accountable to each other when they belong to so many different denominations? Will the prosperity gospel lead to a bitter split among their churches? And what to do with the second generation, who are born in the West and perhaps feel more at home in a normal English- or German-speaking church?

Nonetheless, the story of Iranian Christianity is exciting and inspiring. We can now very realistically speak of hundreds of thousands of Iranian Christians around the world, and a substantial population in Iran itself. But as the church grows, opposition increases too. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Remember the Iranian Church in your prayers. It is the new-comer to global Christianity, but one with a lot of energy, but a lot of difficulties to face as well.

Open Letter to the Pope on Muslim Evangelism

2010-09-30T11:13:00.001-07:00

Available here in PDF format. Published in the October 2010 issue of St Francis Magazine.

Here is an excerpt:

The third reform I recommend is this: each bishop must discern
how new disciples coming from Islam should be baptized.
Here there is no panacea. Each diocese is different and the question
of baptism must be handled in a wise but apostolic manner. In
the Middle East (where I have lived for several years) the general
practice among Catholics is to refer Muslims who inquire about
baptism to evangelicals, or simply tell them (as above) that they
must find their salvation in Islam through greater self effort. Of
course Muslims requesting baptism are adults, and thus are (ideally)
baptized by the local bishop. Catholic bishops in the Muslim
world have shown a very strong tendency towards favoring the
security of their material goods (schools, clinics, churches) over
the sporadic and risky requests posed to them by the Muslim
seeking to know Christ, or for that matter the ex-Muslim who
does know Christ and is seeking the sacrament of initiation into
the church which the bishop oversees. The complications are,
well, complicated. But we are called to be shrewd and wise by our
Master. If the bishop needs to be able to deny that he has baptized
a new Christian, then let him specify an old, retired priest or
monk to do this. Or a very old and devout lay person perhaps. Or
a visiting cleric whose expulsion from the country will not be
harmful. Or something. But let there be a policy of some sort. In
the West, the policy most worthy of emulation is your own: unapologetic,
public, and bold.

Thanks to Don for linking to this at his blog.

A strange episode with corruption and the Gospel

2010-04-10T02:15:00.000-07:00

The other day I was visiting a small city which doesn't get many foreigners at all. I went into the barber's to get a shave (you can do that here, it's cheap too). We got into a conversation about history and I said that I have studied religion a good deal. The barber was impressed as I listed off the Islamic caliphates and where they were based. The place had a lot of people in it, just young guys hanging out with nothing to do.

Anyway, after a while he laid out carefully and intelligently the argument for Islam: the Gospel and Torah are corrupted, they were once integral but are not now. So God sent a final revelation, the Qur'an, through the last Prophet, to be a sure foundation and revelation to humanity. What is your response to this, he wanted to know.

I pointed out a few basic things: if God could not preserve the first three books, then why would he be able to preserve the fourth? (This is a question that has no answer, he said.) I also mentioned that the the Qur'an does not say the these books are corrupted. I said that 'tahriif' is simply an Islamic tradition, like the face veil, and you can take it or leave it as you like. I finally pointed out that in the Qur'an God tells Muhammad, "If you are in doubt about anything, ask the people who have read the book before you." Now how can God tell Muhammad to ask these people for advice if their Scriptures are corrupted? All pretty standard stuff.

Then something surprising happened. The other barber who had been listening jumped in, Yes, this is true, the Qur'an does not say the injiil is corrupted at all.

This surprised me a lot. I have never heard a Muslim who was not a follower of Jesus or an academic writing in some journal defend the integrity of the Gospel/injiil. Strange.

Anyway, I lent my NT to the first barber and told him next I'm back in his city I would go to pick it up, and see if he had found any corruption in it. Not sure when I'll be back down there, but God willing he will read it and we'll have a good conversation next I see him.

Abu Daoud

Part XXI: Islam, Conversion, and Identity

2010-03-02T06:01:00.001-08:00

Part XXI: Islam, Conversion, and Identity
by Abu Daoud
3/2010

In part X of this series I talked about reasons why Muslims are attracted to the Christian faith. This topic of conversion is very interesting, and I want to discuss it a little more.

The nature of the Gospel, and of Christian mission in general, is not to replace any given culture with ‘a Christian culture’. For a while this was indeed the strategy, to become Christian meant getting a Western name and wearing European clothing and so on. Those days are long gone though. Today we understand that every culture will have elements that need to be confronted by the Gospel, but that does not mean that the Gospel itself becomes the new culture. It is like the salt, which makes the food good, but which you don’t eat on its own. Cultures are evangelized, not just individual persons.

And here is where Islam comes into the equation: shall we understand Islam as a cluster of cultures which need to be evangelized, but not replaced? Or shall we understand Islam as rival religion, which must be replaced by the Christian religion? There are multiple heated arguments on this topic going on all over the place today among missionaries and converts as well. Let me unpack the results of each theory:

If we say that, yes, Islam is indeed a culture, then, just like we have Jewish followers of Jesus (who don’t call themselves Christians), we can also have Muslim followers of Jesus. They worship God through Jesus Christ, read the Bible and believe in it, and will tend to have a positive view of the Qur’an and Muhammad. They do not call their gatherings ‘churches’ usually, and they tend to use the Islamic vocabulary and names (like ‘issa for Jesus), rather than Christian terms (yasuu’ for Jesus). This group will focus on using concepts that overlap with the Qur’an like ‘Kingdom of God’ and ‘straight path.’

But what if, when we look at Islam, we see a rival religion? Then there is no way to reconcile Muhammad and Jesus, the Bible and the Qur’an, nor should we try to do so. This approach would generally focus on the new identity a person has in Christ, with an emphasis on being part of the Church—a different community than the Islamic umma. It would be normal for a person to take a new (non-Islamic) name, though not required. Their view of Muhammad and the Qur’an will tend to focus on short-comings and deficiencies.

Clearly, I am painting with broad strokes here. But that should not obscure the very real issue at hand here—it is not just a matter of semantics. If Islam is more of a culture to be evangelized, but we preach as if Islam were a rival religion, we may fail to communicate the Gospel in an understandable manner relating to that culture’s context. On the other hand, if we emphasize how the Gospel and Islam as a culture go together, and thus create a community of Muslim followers of Jesus, we risk compromising central beliefs (the Trinity, the incarnation) and practices (baptism) that have always defined Christian orthodoxy. These are, broadly speaking, the two paths before the churches today as they seek to relate the message of new life in Messiah to the Muslims of the world.

Catholic Lay Missions and Muslim Evangelism

2010-01-03T23:06:00.001-08:00

Catholic Lay Missions and Muslim Evangelism
by Abu Daoud (4 Jan. 2010)

I have often complained about the lack of a culture of lay missions in the Catholic Church. And then you find something like FMC. In one way, this is very encouraging. But the main problem that I see with this is that the missionaries are sent out with the permission of the local bishop. Now how many Catholic bishops in the Middle East are going to tell some lay missionaries they can come over and evangelize Muslims? The answer is close to zero. The Catholic Church has physical resources scattered throughout the region, from hospitals to schools to monasteries to historical sites. In all honesty, and I'm not saying this to be a jerk, the upkeep and well-being of those physical resources will almost always trump Muslim evangelism. And the bishops, in a way, are right. When you get into the business of Muslim evangelism you really are putting everything on the line. Calling Muslims to embrace Christianity stirs up Islamic anger like few other things. Might there be a bishop here or there who is willing to do this? Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it.

But that doesn't mean groups like FMC and Kerygma Teams (both Catholic) can't have a successful ministry to Muslims. I am thinking that bishops in places like southern Spain and some of the French ports would be happy to have lay missionaries explicitly (if quietly) working to evangelize Muslims. Ah but then you run into the funding problem. Catholic parishes do not have a tradition of supporting lay missions like Protestant churches do. Depending on where you are in the Middle East I would say a family can get by on between $70,000 to $100,000 a year in donations. That might seem like a lot, but from the top of that take of 10-15% which goes to administration of the missionary agency, then account for travel, communications, health insurance, and so on, and you're left with a man making about $40,000 gross in self-employment income. Work out the taxes and SEI and you end up with a man who has a net income of $15k to $30k.

But Europe is a different story. I would say Europe is about twice as expensive as the Middle East. So unless your independently wealthy (and I don't really know any missionaries who are) you have to raise funds from local churches. Figure in the fact that Catholics rarely tithe to their churches, and when they do it is at about 50% the rate of Protestants.

In sum, while I applaud this groups like FMC, I don't see how they can make a substantial contribution to the Church's mission to Islam.

Abu Daoud on Zakaria Botros

2009-10-06T01:42:00.000-07:00

I have recently published in St Francis Magazine a short article/book review on Abouna Zakaria Botros. Here is an excerpt:
I believe that Botros is an example of contextualized ministry par excellence. This might sound like a strange thing to say today when contextualization and a non-polemical approach are seen as inseparable. Au contraire. Contextual witness does not mean be- ing nice, and it certainly does not mean refraining from criticism of the Prophet of Islam or its book. What contextualization means is that you are asking the questions to which people want to know answers. A basic example of this is the now commonplace insight that Arabs are more moved by honor-shame questions than innocence-guilt ones. That is context. And Abouna does this very well: Muslims want to know about Muhammad, the shari’a, the ahadiith, and so on. They want to know how Islam can (or cannot) be al haal, the solution, as other great Egyptians have argued (Al Banna? Qutb?). And Botros is uniquely prepared to address these questions: for one, his Arabic is excellent, which might not mean a lot to people who have not studied the language, but understand that classical Arabic and common Egyptian Arabic are about as close to each other as Latin and modern Italian. (OK, maybe that’s a little bit of a stretch, but not much.) His skills in Arabic permit him to delve into the copious volumes of traditions about the life of the Prophet and Islamic shari’a. Egypt asks Zakaria: in what way can Islam be the solution? Zakaria responds: this is the life of the Prophet and the law of Islam; you make your own decision.

Read it all at SFM: Abu Daoud, 'Observations on Abuna Zakaria Botros (and a Book Review)' in St Francis Magazine, Vol 5:5, Oct 2009, pp 93-8.

A list of all my SFM publications can be found on the right-hand side of the screen at Islamdom, FYI.

Seyyid Qutb on Jihad and Takfiir

2009-09-08T03:45:00.000-07:00

Well, I am now in chapter 4 entitled "Jihad in the Cause of God." It is easy to see why this guy is said to be a great inspiration for Al Qaeda and other groups which use violence. One of the things that surprised me is just how unapologetic he is about jihad NOT being about defense:

...these defeatist-type people try to mix the two aspects and want to confine jihaad to what is today called 'defensive war'. The Islamic Jihaad has no relation to modern warfare, either in its causes or in the way it conducted.

He chalks it up to a bunch of pseudo-Muslim scholars and orientalistis--this terrible plot to redefine Islamic jihad to deprive it of such an important element and tool.

He also begins to touch on takfiir, which is an important aspect of the spirituality of al qaeda type gorups today. The doctrine is that anyone who is no following true Islam, even if they say they are a Muslim, are not. Such a person practicing an incomplete or incorrect Islam is a hypocrite and an apostate, and apostates should be killed. Thus the taking of the lives of all those fake Muslims (ie, the government of KSA, American and British soldiers who are Muslims, Iraqi police officers, etc.) is not a violation at all of the command to not kill Muslims. They are all unbelievers, they are mukaffariin, excommunicated ones, by their own incomplete allegiance to God and his law.

Anyway, Qutb is quite clear on the question of violence, and it boils down to this: it is lawful and obligatory to use violence to overturn all form of government that are not truly Islamic (by his standards), which means probably every government in the world today.

Good reading: Sayyid Qutb and Milestones

2009-09-08T03:44:00.000-07:00

Milestones by Qutb is one of the key texts in understanding the recent rise of puritanical (and sometimes violent) movements within Islam.

I read the first chapter today and a few things caught my attention:

His view of the first generation of Islam is totally unrealistic. After the death of Muhammad tons of Muslims left (or tried to leave) Islam, and it was only after being 'convinced' (beaten in battle) that they came back to the fold.

I found his extensive concern with the scientific and military power of the West interesting. He says basically that the Muslim world won't catch up, so it has to offer something of a totally different category. For him that is the life-giving values of Islam. (And genuine freedom, but that's for another post.)

He also reminds me a little of Jospeh Smith with his ridiculous "the church disappeared from 100 AD through 1840 or so" thing. Qutb actually does not say that Islam has been polluted. He says that it has disappeared. It's not that the Ummah needs to be reformed. It's just gone. Pretty strong medicine.

So what is the project? To purify a community which will drink only from the clear streams of the Qur'an (and nothing else) and form a vanguard (how European of him!) that will demonstrate in some Muslim country the glory of Islam. And when people see this community with its blessings and live-giving properties, they will adopt the same kind of life style.

"...the beauty of this new system cannot be appreciated unless it takes a concrete form. [...] In order to bring this about, we need to initiate the movement of Islamic revival in some Islamic country." (p 11)

Humility and the arms of the Church

2009-08-20T04:32:00.001-07:00

I will say that one should not embrace my line of work if one likes to have all his ducks in a row and the ability to plan more than, say, six months in advance. People always ask us, how long will you stay in the Middle East. The question itself is absurd. How long would we LIKE to stay here? Now that's something I can reasonably talk about.

Anyway, what brings this to mind is that I have a short visit to Scotland to plan for in a month or so, and the normal place where I stay is not available. So what do you do? Funds for ten nights at a hotel are there, but in good conscience I just can't spend so much on something like that. So a hostel? I could do that, I have stayed at hostels numerous times. But they are hardly the kind of place you want to stay at if you are (like me) trying to work on research, reading, editing, and writing.

So what do you do? E-mail local Christians whom you know, perhaps not that well, and just ask for help. It is humiliating a little, but as Mother Theresa said, the only way to learn humility is by being humiliated. From a Western point of view it is, I think, more humiliating than asking for money--why is that? So you humiliate yourself and ask for help. Just sent out the e-mail to a few people and we'll see what the responses are.

I like this day, it's the Feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

--Abu Daoud

Part XX: The Islamization of Europe

2009-07-25T09:15:00.001-07:00

Part XX: The Islamization of Europe
by Abu Daoud

I have suggested on numerous occasions that Western Europe is being Islamized at a rapid and consistent pace. However, a recent article in Newsweek contends that this is not the case. In this section XX of my series on Islam and Christianity I want to analyze the Newsweek article by William Underhill and reveal its lack of coherency. (The article can be found here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/206230/output/print)

It is well known by now that Muslims have many more children than ethnic Europeans, and that Islamic immigration has been robust for decades and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. These factors indicate the Islamization of Europe, or the creation of ‘Eurabia.’ Underhill says these fears are overblown. What are his reasons?

One thing that the author mentions without actually spelling out the implications is that the Europeans are getting older: you have fewer Europeans and they are older, while the new Muslims are young, very young. Youth matters. Folks in their 50's and 60's will not take up arms to defend their European heritage. Now youth in the 20's and 30's might, but guess what? They were mostly aborted and were never born because of European hedonism. On the other hand, as we see with the 'immigrant youth' (not Muslim youth, mind you!) every revolution starts with youth--that was true in France and the USA and it will be true Europe.

It is easy to risk everything when you don't have much to begin with, and the possible prize is great power and wealth. The older Europeans will not resist it, other than with the occasional ineffective 'immigration reform' passed by their governments. But guess what--these reforms will not be effective. Immigration has been ‘tightened’ in the past, but the number of immigrants did not decline after these restrictions. As long as there is a policy of ‘family reunification’ like we see in the UK and the US, there will be a wide open door because most people in the lands of Islamdom already have family somewhere in the West. Because of this there are already entire areas in France in the UK where the civil authorities do not venture. This is what we call a failing state: a state that does not have a monopoly on violence.

Like they say in London, "Islam, our religion today, your religion tomorrow."

And Newsweek is most certainly wrong about this on multiple levels. One thing is that Newsweek keeps talking about a Muslim majority in Europe. I am not talking about that at all. I am talking about Muslim majorities in major cities such that those large cities are Islamized. Think Marseilles, for example, or Malmo, Sweden. And also, let's not talk about a majority--let's talk about a majority of the population under 35--the ones who might actually be able to take up arms if it came to that (and it will, in certain places, almost without a doubt). You don't need a majority of the population to take political control of a region. The history of Islam shows us this very clearly.

But surely Underhill has some other arguments, let me examine a few of them:

"Moreover, the myth of Eurabia implies the existence of a united Islam, a bloc capable of collective and potentially dangerous action." True, but I'm talking about the establishment of de facto Islamic city-states, and there are indeed individual cities/regions where powerful Islamic groups (including ethnic-criminal ones) could realistically monopolize power. Newsweek shows its historical ineptitude in its monoculturalism--thinking that it's all about nation states. A very narrow-minded Western reading of the situation. In other words, I am not saying there will be one monolithic state of Eurabia—no one is saying that. Underhill is constructing a straw man and then knocking it down. I am talking about a variety of de facto Islamic city-states around Europe.

"Moreover, the myth of Eurabia implies the existence of a united Islam, a bloc capable of collective and potentially dangerous action." On the contrary, I recognize that Islamdom is every bit as fragmented as is Christianity. But we could say the same thing about the Islamic states today: Morocco, Egypt, Saudi, Pakistan, and Malaysia are all very different in their Islam. But guess what? Conversion from Islam to Christianity is illegal in every single one of those states.

Also, every one of those states has a Muslim population that is willing to use acts of violence to further their politico-religious aims (in Islam there is no distinction, of course). So yes, a Muslim city-state in France with Algerian leadership will look different than the Turkish Islamic city-state in Germany or the Pakistani one in England. They will not be alike, but they will all be Islamic which tells us a few clear things: no religious freedom, an inferior status for women, persecution of homosexuality, an increase in nepotism and decline in rule of law, and the use of state-sponsored violence to proscribe dissent. These are trends that one can find in every single Muslim state in the world.

And that is the future of Europe. That is Eurabia. Who cares about the hamlet of 700 old Scots in the Highlands. Not to sound heartless, but they just don't matter. Also, Underhill fails to take into account emigration from Europe. Does he not know that many ethnic Europeans are not so keen on living in a neighborhood where they are discriminated against and churches are regularly vandalized? Is it a surprise if these folks move out of the Islamic area or as is increasingly the case simply leave the country?

Underhill has written an incomplete and illogical piece of tripe. He has selected information when it was convenient for him and ignored other information. Furthermore, he does not seem to realize that his ‘myth of Eurabia’ is not a theory that anyone to my knowledge is actually advancing. It is rather like fishing in the stocked pond where everyone is promised to catch at least fish. It is not genuine scholarship or journalism.

Also, see my links here:

European Islamdom I
European Islamdom II
European Islamdom III

History and the Beginning of Protestant Missions

2009-05-23T01:42:00.001-07:00

The Protestants were famously willing to sit around on their duffs for centuries while the Jesuits and Franciscans (among others) were busy making converts to the ends of the earth. "That you God that I am elect and not like those filthy Catholics!" Well, that is perhaps a little strong, but perhaps not. That all started to change in the late 18th C. with on William Carey:

Around 1780, an indigent Baptist cobbler named William Carey began reading about James Cook's Polynesian journeys. His interest grew to a furious sort of "backwards homesickness", inspiring him to obtain Baptist orders, and eventually write his famous 1792 pamphlet, "An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of Heathen." Far from a dry book of theology, Carey's work used the best available geographic and ethnographic data to map and count the number of people who had never heard the Gospel. It formed a movement that has grown with increasing speed from his day to ours. (From Wikipedia, where else?)

And now, in a curious reversal, the Catholics and the old churches of the European reformations are pretty much sitting on their hands now while those creative if sometimes-reckless cousins of Protestantism--evangelicalism and Pentecostalism--have placed themselves at the forefront of the church's missio ad gentes.

Yep, that's how church history is. Crazy stuff.

--Abu Daoud

Watch out what you ask for...

2009-04-17T06:49:00.001-07:00

Watch what you ask for...
by Abu Daoud

You might actually get it. You know this saying, it's pretty well-circulated really.

I think of this today--let me tell you why. I entered the place of business of a friend of mine. Today is Friday, like Sunday for Christians, a day of observance and worship, but here in my city some of the businesses are open. He was reading (or chanting actually) the Qur'an when I entered his place of business. I sat down and waited for him to finish, which he promptly did.

And then he reached for the little Bible I had given him some months ago, and said, "The Messiah said, 'I have not come to bring peace, but to bring a sword!' What does this mean?" I had given him the Bible hoping he would read, and perhaps some of your prayed for him because I had asked you to, and he was reading it!

But this is hardly an easy saying of Jesus; it speaks of the division of families. My brain was working at full speed, not only scanning my ability to interpret this Scripture, but also how to explain this all in Arabic. The explanation I gave him is not the important thing (that Jesus as a prophet knew that the truth brings division, even persecution, because sometimes people hate the truth, and he had brought a message of truth from God), but that he was reading, and indeed, truly grappling with the meaning of the words of Messiah.

Then his friend entered and said hello. He asked, "Have you asked him about the sword thing?" I explained myself again.

I had given them a Bible and they indeed had read it. Not so much like they read the Qur'an, which is more of a spiritual recitation that does not focus on the meaning of the words, but really trying to understand this message of Jesus.

Pray for these two friends, and pray for me, that we might have wisdom and be led by God into all truth.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

--Abu Daoud

A Lengthy Discussion with Two Muslims Friends

2009-03-22T08:02:00.001-07:00

A Lengthy Discussion with Two Muslims Friends

I went to see some friends and Abd started out by saying, How difficult was the life of Job! He had scars and sores and he lost everything! We talked about Job a while, and then I asked (knowing that the Qur'an says very little about Job) where he heard this. He said, I read it in the Bible you gave me. I didn't know he had been reading it. We discussed redemption a little: the idea of God making good from an evil situation.

I have two Muslim friends with whom I got into a rather lengthy conversation with yesterday. Abd asked me point blank, do you say that Jesus is God? It is practice among evangelical missionaries today to not answer such a question in the affirmative. But I am becoming increasingly disappointed with that approach. I answered in the affirmative. He quoted the verse of the Qur'an about God not begetting nor being begotten. I agreed with the verse, saying that in the biological sense it was absolutely true, and that is what the Qur'an was talking about. So Christians and Muslims both agree with that statement if understood in context. I explained that as a Christian I do not limit the power of God--God is all powerful. Therefore if God wills to become human he may. In other words, as a Christian I really believe that Allahu Akbar (God is greatest), unlike Muslims who circumscribe and limit God's ability to reveal himself.

What ensued then was a discussion on the Trinity. The Trinity is another one of those topics that missionaries today tend to stay away from, most of them, to be honest, don't have the theological training to really understand the doctrine, much less explain it to others, much less defend it. I said that we believe in the Trinity because the Gospel says that God is love. For God to be love from all eternity means that the essence of God is relational: the essence of God is nothing other than the relationality of love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I recited the Orthodox phrase several times: Allah Waahid, mutasawwi fil jawhar, wa ghayr munfasil: One God, co-equal in essence, inseparable. God is eternally loving, and indeed God is love, something that we can believe because we believe in the Trinity. It is not a quality of God, but the very being of God.

Whereupon I was asked about the Holy Spirit, and I replied that our souls are sick and broken, and God desiring us to be holy and righteous, but knowing that we are not able to accomplish this by our own power, has offered to give us his Spirit to dwell within us and empower us to be righteous.

This was a fairly lengthy conversation. We talked about lots of other things. But it was a pretty all-encompassing sort of discussion. Both of these guys are really thinking about the claims of the Gospel and Jesus.

Abu Daoud on exporting the American model of church and liturgy

2009-01-01T00:21:00.000-08:00

An e-mail I just wrote to a friend, I thought it was interesting enough to share with you all. Happy New Year to everyone! --AD

Hi Brother,

You raise a great question: in many ways the American church is not replicable outside the States, no? I would agree with you in several aspects. American culture is very much focused around entertainment, and that really comes across at church. I mean, how many people have you met who do or don't go to a certain church bc of the music or the preaching? It is a difficult balance, I mean, you should be edified by the sermons, but there is such a thing as substituting an entertaining sermon for a boring one that is edifying. The same can be said for the way our churches handle their physical assets. I am, however, not one of these guys who says that we need to go back to home churches (though here that is needed sometimes, but more as a security matter than some ideological debate, like it is in the US).

All of this is related to my conviction that liturgy, in some sense of the word, is an important part of Christian worship. It serves to focus attention away from the entertainment factor (ie, the preacher or worship leader) and towards the work of the people--which is what the actual Greek word liturgy means, the work of the people, or a public work. So yes, the standing and sitting and kneeling can certainly become meaningless ritual, but I have found that is not the case nearly as often as non-liturgical Christians allege. I have ample experience with both forms of Christianity (liturgical and non-liturgical) in a number of different cultural settings and languages.

Also, it is entirely possible to combine the best aspects of evangelical ethos and liturgical worship, I have seen this at some Anglican and Lutheran churches, for example. The desire to shed every last bit of structure (liturgy) is very American, isn't it? I think that's another aspect of how American Christianity does not work so well in other cultures. The non-structured every-guy-doing-his-own-thing kind of worship we sometimes see in the US is more or less incomprehensible to many folks here in the Arab world, both Christian and Muslim.

Anyway, that is much more than you expected, I'm sure! Peace be with you during these twelve days of Christmas, and happy new year!

Bridging the Divide: how to talk to evangelicals

2008-12-13T14:43:00.000-08:00

Bridging the Divide: how to talk to evangelicals
by Abu Daoud

A reader of Islam and Christianity recently asked the question of how he, an Orthodox Christian, could talk to his Baptist neighbor to convince him that he was in fact a genuine Christian. The Baptist was off to Russia, if I recall correctly, to evangelize the unsaved Orthodox. How can our Orthodox (or Catholic perhaps) friend convince his neighbor that he is in fact a fellow brother in God's family and not just an unsaved soul who needs to be born again? Here are a couple of pointers:

1) Read the Bible and let him know about it: evangelicals have a special devotion to the Bible, just like many Palestinians have a special devotion to Saint George or Mexicans have for the Virgin of Guadalupe. The Bible plays a very central role, as it should, in their lives in areas like Bible memorization and daily devotionals. Once he understands that you read the Bible and believe in it he will take your faith more seriously.

2) Use words he knows: when talking about the hierarchy, unless it is very important to specify, please feel free to use the word "pastor" instead of the various and sometimes convoluted titles that have developed through the ages. Pastor is a helpful word because it is what he calls the leader of his church. Other examples: sermon, not homily. Worship and Communion, not Holy Liturgy and Eucharist.

3) Acknowledge your faults: people generally have a fairly good reason for thinking that Catholics and Orthodox are nominal and that they are not fully converted. Acknowledge that and admit that your church really does need to do a better job teaching youth about the Christian faith and the Bible and the virtuous life. There are so many people who are technically Christians (they have been baptized) but who are unevangelized. Your evangelical friend understands that nominal Christians are unsaved, and one can make a strong case that in a sense of the word they are correct.

4) Pray with him: ask him to pray for you, ask him how you can pray for him. Evangelical Christianity rightly understands that prayer is a mark of God's grace in the life of the believer. That you would pray for him and ask him to pray for you shows that God's grace is active in your life.

Well, those are a few pointers. Sooner or later, if you are good friends and communicate often, then you will be able to get into deeper questions about differences in practices. theology, and so on.

But given the specific instance mentioned above, what would I have done? (And I'm not Orthodox btw.) I would have told him that he has an important job to do, to disciple the Russians and teach them the Bible and call them to a living and strong faith in their Lord. I would say that the Russian Orthodox Church has a great history of missions but after Communism it became weakened and many of our Orthodox brothers there have no knowledge of the Bible or the transforming power of the Holy Spirit to free them from addiction, alcoholism, and sickness. Then I would say a prayer with him and ask God's blessing in his mission to Russia.

[originally posted HERE.]

Sacramentality in Islam and mission to Muslims

2008-12-01T02:48:00.000-08:00

[This is part of the text of an article I wrote for St. Francis Magazine which can be found HERE. Part I can be found HERE.--AD]

[...]Take a look at the pillars of Islam. While Muslims do not use the language of sacrament, they certainly have the concept, though in an incomplete manner. (For ultimately the fullness of the sacramentality of Creation cannot be grasped without the incarnation). Because the sacramental principle is distorted but present in Islam, one ends up with the rather crude and instrumentalist language regarding forgiveness of sins: that if one does this or that then certain sins will be forgiven. Forgiveness in Islam is not the reconciliation of mercy and justice as it is in Christianity: it tends more towards a sort of randomness and, some might say, capriciousness on the part of Allah. The two are related of course. Because there is no reconciliation of justice and mercy in a body—a human body which is “sacrificed for us” and “takes away the sins of the world”—there can be nothing higher than capriciousness which oscillates between mercy and justice without really dealing with either of them in a concrete way.

Nevertheless Islam is filled with rituals and there can be no doubt that through these concrete rituals—and much attention is given to form—mercy and forgives can be earned, though one is seldom assured that they have been imparted. To bring a person from Islam into Christianity is to bring them from one set of signs and symbols into another. This is true even if we are using the phraseology of the Kingdom of God and Islamic vocabulary. Islam already has a ritual washing which is performed by devout Muslims quite frequently. Baptism is an alternate ritual washing, performed once.

The community of the Kingdom of God has a ritual meal which is celebrated on a regular basis by those who have made the required confession of faith (in baptism). It is not a sacrifice of a living animal, as is the Islamic ritual sacrifice-meal (Eid al Adha); also, it is performed more often (in Acts daily, and until the 16th C. weekly). The Islamic sacrificial meal is a memorial of a grand sacrifice provided by Allah whereby Abraham’s son was spared: it and the meal celebrate and recall filial obedience. The ritual sacrifice-meal among the subjects of the Kingdom is similar, but not identical. For one, it is always a participation, a going-back-to and a reliving of one sacrifice that was made at a specific point in time (under Pontius Pilate) in a specific way (he was crucified, dead, and buried) on a given hill near Zion. There too is a theme of filial obedience. In the Quran the son of Abraham knows ahead of time that his father will kill him, unlike in the Genesis narrative. Yet he goes with him to meet this fate. In a more dramatic and lengthier narrative we have a similar story in the Gospels. But the ultimate end of the sacrifice is not only obedience for the sake of obedience, but obedience for the sake of reconciling all Creation to God. Another way to put it is this: to preserve the justice and mercy of God through the sacrament of Jesus’ body. [...]

Abu Daoud. 'Mission and Sacrament, Part II' in Saint Francis Magazine 4:3, Dec. 2008

Part XIX: Islam is a Civilization

2008-10-22T02:22:00.001-07:00

Part XIX: Islam is a Civilization, not a religion
by Abu Daoud

The word religion is spectacularly Western. It comes from the Latin meaning “to re-connect” or to form a link that has been severed. It is popular in the USA, and perhaps in the UK, to say that Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship. Neither is entirely correct though: Christianity is indeed a religion, but it is relational as well. Christianity does indeed seek to re-connect (or reconcile, to use a more biblical word) two warring parties: God and man. And it does this through the cross of the God-man, Jesus Christ, God incarnate.

But what of Islam? Is it a religion? Does it seek to reconnect two estranged parties?

The word normally used in Arabic to translate the English-Latin word religion is “diin.” But if we look at that word we find a very different understanding of the relation between humanity and God/Allah than we would via the other word, religion.

The Arabic word diin is a gerund, and it is based on the verb daan, which means, in its root form, (he) judged. In fact we find this confirmed in no less a prayer than the opening chapter of the Quran (al fatiha—the opening), wherein we read that “your is the day of diin” or “yours is the day of judgment.” So in Arabic Islam (which, make no mistake, is the true Islam) diin is nothing less than judgment.

This moves us towards the true understand that the English word ‘religion’ quite simply has no translation in Arabic. If wish to translate the word ‘reconciliation’ we may use the fairly accurate word tasalluh, which does indeed mean to reconcile two inimical parties. But for the word ‘religion’ we would have to resort to fairly exotic contrivances like ‘ta3alluq’ or something along those lines.

I mention this all simply because I have noticed the very pernicious effect of mistranslations. Words have a great deal of power. I bring up the topic because one hears often among Western politicians the idea of “secularism” among Arab or Persian Muslim peoples, wherein one separates religion from civil rule. When we understand that the truly Islamic-Arabic understanding does not, and can not, separate religious rule from civil rule, we have moved a step towards being able to intelligently grapple in a realistic way with the sundry challenges faced by people in the diverse countries of Southwest Asia and North Africa. Religion involves judgment (diin). Civil rule involves judgment (diin) as well. There is no separation, and within an Islamic civilization separation of the two is neither desirable nor possible.

Bibliography for Islam and Christianity

2008-10-02T14:42:00.001-07:00

Broadly speaking, of course, here is a bibliography I have been working on (and am working on) for some time. It is not narrowly tailored, so it has some works on completely Christian issues (sacramental and trinitarian theology) which, in my view, are important for understanding how Christianity relates to Islam and can answer Islam. And vice versa, so there are works on the Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) which do not at any length discuss Christian themes or ideas, but are nonetheless essential in grasping the otherness of Christianity when approached from the Islamic framework.

Bibliography for Islam and Christianity
by Abu Daoud

Abd al-Masiih. ‘ALLAH? The God of Islam and the God of Christianity?’ in St Francis Magazine Vol 2:4, March 2007.

Arab World Ministeries (AWM) ‘Contextualization of Ministry among Muslims: A Statement on the Appropriate Limits’ in St Francis Magazine Vol 3:1, June 2007.

Armstrong, Karen. 2002. Islam: A Short History. Modern Library Chronicles.

Arthur, J. Bryson. 2001. The Real Church: The GodMan Legacy. Nairobi: Uzima Press.

Bailey, Betty Jane; J. Martin Bailey. 2003. Who are the Christians in the Middle East? Grand Rapids; Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans.

Bettenson, Henry, ed. 1967. Documents of the Christian Church, Second Edition. London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Caner, Emir Fethi and H. Edward Pruitt. 2006. The Costly Call, Book 2. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel.

Chauvet, Louis-Marie. 1995. Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence. Translated by Patrick Madigan, Madelaine Beaumont. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press.

Chesterton, G. K. 1920. The New Jerusalem. Pub UNK.

Coote, Robert T. ‘Finger on the Pulse: Fifty Years of Missionary Research’ in IBMR, Vol. 24:3.

Cragg, Kenneth. 1991. The Arab Christian: A History in the Middle East. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press.

_____. 2000. The Call of the Minaret, Third Edition. Oxford: One World Press.

Crombie, Kelvin. 2006. A Jewish Bishop in Jerusalem: The life story of Michael Solomon Alexander. Jerusalem: Nicolayson’s Ltd.

Dalrymple, William. 1998. From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East. London: Flamingo.

Donaldson, Stuart A. 1909. Church Life and Thought in North Africa A.D. 200. Cambridge: University Press.

Dutch, Bernard. ‘Should Muslims become “Christians”?’ in IJFM, Vol. 17:1, Spring 2000.

Evans, Edward. ‘Discipling and Training for Muslim background Believers, Part 1: A Growing Need’ in St Francis Magazine Vol 3:2 , Sep 2007.

Farah, Rafiq A. 2002. In Troubled Waters: A History of the Anglican Church in Jerusalem 1841-1998. Leicester, UK: Christians Aware.

Farah, Warrick. 2005. Mapping People Groups in Yemen for Informed Church Planting: A Research Project. Unpublished Manuscript.

Foster, John. 1956. Beginning From Jerusalem: Christian Expansion through Seventeen Centuries. London: United Society for Christian Literature.

Francisco, Adam S. ‘Luther, Lutheranism, and the Challenge of Islam’ in Concordia Theological Quarterly, Vol. 71:3/4, July/Oct 2007.

Fromkin, David. 1989. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Garrison, David. ND. Church Planting Movements. Richmond, Virginia: International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

_____. 1990. The Nonresidential Missionary: A new strategy and the people it serves. Birmingham, Alabama: MARC & New Hope.

Goldsmith, Martin. ‘Immanuel—Imanu-Allah: The Name of the Creator Deity and the Name of God’ in St Francis Magazine Vol 3:3, Dec 2007.

Gray, John. 2003. Al Qaeda and what it means to be modern. Chatham, UK: Faber and Faber.

Gunton, Colin E. 1997. The Promise of Trinitarian Theology. London, New York: T&T Clark.

Gustafson, K. and Common Ground Consultants, Inc. 2007. An Insider View. Unk: Common Ground Consultants, Inc.

Hallaq, Wael B. 1997. A History of Islamic Legal Theories: An introduction to Sunni usul al-fiqh. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Harper, Susan Billington. ‘Ironies of Indigenization’ in IBMR Vol. 19:1,

Hart, David Bentley. 2004. The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Grand Rapids, Michigan; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans.

Hogg, W. Richey. ‘Vatican II’s Ad Gentes: A Twenty-Year Retrospective’ in IBMR Vol. 9:4, Oct 1985.

Horner, Norman A. ‘Christianity in North Africa Today’ in Occassional Bulletin of Missionary Research Vol 4:2, Apr 1980.

Huband, Mark. 1999. Warriors of the Prophet: The Struggle for Islam. Oxford: Westview Press.

Huntington, Samuel P. 1998. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon & Schuster.

Jameson, Richard and Nick Scalevish. ‘First-Century Jews and Twentieth-Century Muslims’ in IJFM, Vol. 17:1, Spring 2000.

Jenkins, Philip. 2002. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jenner, Henry. ‘Mozarabic Rite’ in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume X. 1911. Censor Lafort, Remy. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

John Paul II. 1990. Redemptoris Missio: On the Permanent Validity of the Church’s Missionary Mandate. Hunter Publishing.

Karsh, Efraim. 2006. Islamic Imperialism: A History. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.

Kerr, David A. ‘Christian Mission and Islamic Studies: Beyond Antithesis’ in IBMR, Vol. 26:1, Jan 2002.

Khalil, Mohammad Hassan and Mucahit Bilici. ‘Conversion out of Islam: A Study of Conversion Narratives of Former Muslims’ in The Muslim World, Vol. 97, Jan. 2007.

Klauser, Theodor. 1979. A Short History of the Western Liturgy: An account and some reflections, 2nd Edition. Trans. by John Halliburton. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

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Part XVII: Intro to the Shari'a (Sharia, Shari'ah, Shariah)

2008-09-25T01:47:00.000-07:00

Part XVII: Intro to the Shari’a
by Abu Daoud

During a recent five-month sojourn in the West I had the opportunity to do a good amount of teaching on Islam, and there was one question that people kept asking: what exactly is the shari’a? Where does it come from? These are the questions I want to tackle in this paper:

Generally one hears the word shari’a translated as “law” but that’s not quite right. It would be more like the Jewish understanding of Torah in fact. It does contain positive laws (thou must) and negative law (thou shalt not), but it also has a whole series of other classifications, including things that are recommended but not mandatory (certain prayers, for example) and things that are frowned upon but not forbidden (smoking, entering churches). There are also categories for things that are neutral, and a category for things upon which there is no judgment.

The shari’a then is like law with a whole body of advice thrown in for good measure. Moreover it is not mutable. While there are several schools of shari’a its origin is divine and thus the shari’a is immutable like God. For example, its provisions about slavery, stoning adulterers, slaying the one who offends the Prophet, the inferiority of Christians and Jews under Muslims, or the permanent injunction to wage jihad—none of these things can be repealed or changed.

Furthermore the shari’a touches on every single aspect of life. It is not then a “law” in the Western understanding of law, which is established to protect social order and freedom (or what have you). Some of the aspects of it make sense to the human mind, but ultimately its nature is not like ours and our obligation is not to understand it but simply to obey it. It is not meant for Muslims alone, but for all of humanity, and indeed it is the vision of Islam and the purpose of jihad to make the world submit to the shari’a of God. So there really is a cosmic dimension to this concept. Much of the shari’a simply stands beyond understanding.

The source of the shari’a is revelation. In Islam revelation takes two forms: the Qur’an and the sunna. The Qur’an does contain rules about things like divorce, inheritance, the value of certain witnesses, the division of the spoils of jihad, gambling, alcohol, and so on. But much is left unanswered, which is where the second source becomes so important: it is found in the collection of sayings and deeds of the Prophet and his companions. These deeds and sayings are individually called “hadith” and the plural in Arabic is “ahadith.” After Muhammad had died and Islam was growing quickly several Muslim scholars went about collecting these ahadith, and it become important to form a chain of witnesses from the present to Muhammad, so they will often start, “Ahmad heard from Yusef, who heard from Yaqub, who heard from Omar, that the Prophet used to eat dates on the morning” or something like that. Some of most important collections of ahadith are those done by Al Bukhari, Abu Dawood, and Muslim, but there are many others.

Since the Prophet was the perfect man or ideal man, it followed that even his words and way of being (sunna) were in themselves a form of revelation regarding Allah’s will for humanity. So this is the second form of revelation that forms the bedrock of the shari’a.

Through centuries of Islamic jurisprudence, Quranic interpretation (ijtihad), and the use of analogy, the shari’a finally reached a form around the 13th Century (some say earlier) where it basically was considered to be complete in that it had all the resources needed to make judgments on any topic. Thus further revision via new interpretations of Revelation (Qur’an and the sunna) were no longer permitted or needed.

In conclusion the shari’a is Allah’s will for all of humanity revealed in the Qur’an and the way of life (sunna) of Muhammad. It is complete and immutable and has been so for many centuries. The society that abides by the shari’a will be prosperous, just, and powerful. It is the will of Allah that the whole of humanity be made to submit to the shari’a.

Part XVI: Islam and Mormonism

2008-09-11T23:32:00.000-07:00

Islam and Mormonism
by C. Fletcher, ed. Abu Daoud

In studying world religions, I have noticed several similarities between Mormonism and Islam. Sure, there are significant differences as well (Monotheistic Islam vs. Polytheistic Mormonism for example), and I would not suggest that they are theologically compatible, but the foundings of both religions are surprisingly similar and worth noting.

Here are 12 of the parallels that have been noted (this list is by no means exhaustive):

1. Both claimed that the original meaning of the teachings of Jesus and those who preceded him had either been forgotten or corrupted.
2. Both prophets are reported to have come from humble beginnings with no formal education and were barely literate.
3. Holy Books: Both prophets wrote a new holy book that was apparently inspired by God, and both claimed that their holy book was the most correct and perfect book on earth. Also, they both claimed that their holy books were based upon a record stored in heaven. Both religions claim that their Holy Books have been preserved and are accurate to what was originally recorded by their prophets.
4. Both prophets claimed to have had visions and to have been visited by angels. For Muhammad it was the angel Gabriel, and for Smith it was the angel Moroni. Both visions revealed many new teachings that contradict the Bible.
5. Both believed that no true religion existed on Earth and they were there to restore God’s truth. Islam claims that Adam and Abraham were truly Muslim and that it is restoring 'the true faith of Abraham'. Mormons claim to have restored 'the true faith/church' that was on the earth during and after the time of Jesus, before the supposed "Great Apostasy".
6. Both prophets were practicing polygamists and advocated polygamy (and condemn polyandry) by supposed revelation from God. Additionally, both men married very young girls.
7. Both profited greatly (financially) from their followers by commanding their money.
8. Both men received “convenient” revelations just in time to satisfy their own desires. For example, Muhammad got a revelation that he himself was allowed to marry 8 wives instead of the usual 4 in Islam, and Joseph Smith got a similar revelation (revealed in Doctrine and Covenants section 132) that he was not only permitted to marry multiple wives, but that it was required for salvation and was an everlasting covenant. This revelation came just as he was going to be “caught” with other women he was having affairs with. Additionally, D&C 132 specifically mentions his wife Emma by name and warns her to death should she be unfaithful to Joseph. (Most scholars [even Mormon scholars like Todd Compton] estimate that Joseph Smith had 33 wives before he was killed. Surely he would have had many more had he lived longer.
9. Both left no clear successor for their faith - leading both religions to splinter after the death of their prophets. In each religion there are splinter groups with each group claiming to be the true successor or true continuation of the faith.
10. Both Islam and Mormonism have those who follow the "original doctrine" of the founding leaders and like these founding leaders, are violent polygamists, and have revelations justifying their evil actions.
11. Both prophets and religions deny the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the eternality of Jesus, as well as Jesus being God in the flesh
12. Both men were murderers. For Muhammad, there is no question about this. Most Mormons teach and believe that Joseph Smith was martyred, but this is not true. It is historically verifiable that he shot and killed two men during the shootout that ultimately took his life. The Mormon view is that he was “led like a lamb to slaughter” and was killed as a martyr. Not so. It was a gunfight, that he and his brother lost, but not before taking some lives of their own.

Here are some scriptures to reflect on in light of the points above. While these scriptures may come across as abrasive... remember, it's not my view or anyone else's, this is the Bible.

Galatians 1:6-9 "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; 7 which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you, and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed."

2 Cor 11: 12-15 "And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. 13For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve."

Witness to Muslims and 1 John

2008-08-28T06:49:00.001-07:00

Witness to Muslims and 1 John
by Abu Daoud

I went out today with, let us say, an openness to talk with folks about the religious topics. But instead of taking a copy of the Gospel in Islamic Arabic which I have used on several occasions (I didn't have one handy), I picked up a small pocket Bible. It is the Jesuit translation, which I particularly like because it uses real (classical) Arabic but not the rarefied, esoteric stuff found in the main translation--the Van Dyke.

Also, it is not designed to be an Islamic translation, but I suspect it is modeled to offer something aesthetically pleasing and useful for liturgy. (What else would you expect from Jesuits? And now that I think of it what could be more Quranic?)

I also though about the people I was visiting, how we had discussed several parables of the Kingdom before and I was thinking, maybe we should mix it up a little and try something else. I recalled the advice from an Anglican priest from when I was new in the Middle East. He had recommended 1 John, so I thought, ok, let's do it.

So we did, three of us sat down and read 1 John 1 and here are some of my impressions:

Plus:
-the language of light is something Muslims know
-darkness as an image of sin/evil makes sense to Muslims
-the phrase "word of God" is also in the Quran, of course
-the author starts out by insisting that he is talking about what he has seen and touched, lending the text authenticity
-the repetition and flow is very nice, reminiscent of the earlier surahs in the Quran which are quite poetic, of course 1 Jn is pretty concise and clear, which makes it different than the Quran.

Minus:
-it is not one the THE GOSPELS, that is, not from Jesus, which means it's not by Islamic standards "injiil." But I explained John was one of the followers of Jesus, like the rightly guided caliphs. He said, ok so this is like hadiith. Well, sort of, I said.
-there is a clear statement about "Son of God" in there, so if you haven't talked about that already, or if you don't want to tackle that issue, then stick to the parables of the Kingdom. But sooner or later you gotta take yer medicine.

Anyway, some reflections. Please keep me in your prayers, lots of stuff is happening, some of it not so good, some of it good but difficult.

Part XV: Islam and the Sword of the Religion

2008-08-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

One of the most heated discussions I have had with a Muslim was about the topic of the sword. "The problem is that you believe in the sword of the religion, but we (Christians) know that there is no sword of the religion! Jesus said that he who lives by the sword will die by the sword."

The sword of the religion is a prominent theme in Islamic thinking. In fact one might name his son saif-iddiin--Arabic for Sword of the Religion. Indeed the name of the son of Libya's ruler: Saif al-Islam Kadafi: Sword of Islam Kadafi. It is there on the flag of Saudi Arabia beneath the Islamic confession that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet. There are also some hadiiths, or sayings from the life of Muhammad, on the sword:

"Paradise is in the shade of swords," embodies well the philosophy that paradise is a reward to be won by the use of the sword. (Sahih Al Bukhari, Jihad, 22:73)

Or this one, also from Al Bukhari, "Allah marvels at those who enter paradise in chains." While not explicitly using the word sword, one finds here the conviction that those who are enslaved by Islamic conquests and so receive Islam are have somehow been graced by Allah.

Being very fond of his swords Muhammad named them: Dhu al Faqar, Al Battar (which originally belonged to King David, according to one tradition), Al Ma'thur, Al Rasub, and so on (he owned and named nine swords).

Muhammad as a political leader was at times very diplomatic and humble. But at times we see a robust and some might say ruthless exercise of violence for the sake of maintaining and furthering his own domain and authority. While the non-Muslim may see this sanctification of violence and slaughter as an abuse of religion, we must remember that for the orthodox Muslim the domain and will of Muhammad are synonymous with the domain and will of God. Marking out a boundary between the will and action of Muhammad and the will and action of God is something that Islamic scholarship has been neither desirous nor able to do. For this reason several ex-Muslims call their former religion "the worship of Muhammad."

But whatever the reason may be, there is no recognition of a difference between Muhammad's will and Allah's will in Islam. Because of this the vigorous use of violence--the sword of the religion--in Islam emerges as an element of worship, gaining a sort of sacramental aura. In Christianity a sacrament is "an outward sign of an inward grace." And in Islam the presence and use of the sword of the religion, especially when it leads to the successful imposition of the will of its wielder, must be construed a sure sign of the presence and favor of Allah.

To allow Muslims to enter and reproduce in a country, as we especially see in Europe, while expecting them to lay down the sword of the religion, is to fundamentally misunderstand Islam. The sword of the religion is an essential part of Islam because it was essential to the success of Muhammad, himself the ideal man, the perfect man. There is no presupposition that violence is bad in Islam. VIolence when used for the cause of Allah is in fact a great good as it leads to the triumph of Islam and the shari'a. To expect a sudden wave of un-Islamic pacifism to envelope Muslims in non-Muslim countries is the worse sort of hypocrisy.

The strategic use of violence is and always will be near the heart of Islam, and conservative Islamic scholars today recognize few limitations in the use of said violence against non-Muslims. In fact Muslims who do not hold to their devout, strict (and accurate I would say) construal of Islamic practice make themselves kuffaar--unbelievers--thus surrendering their right to live. In other words, many people we would call Muslim are valid targets for the sword of the religion. This is how, for example, Al Qaeda can declare a Jihad on the leader of Pakistan, General Musharraf. Moreover his supporters, by supporting a leader who is not validly Muslim, forfeit their right to live as well. The name of this practice of Islamic excommunication is called takfiir, and is becoming more and more common.

All of this means that silly mantra that "Muslims condemn the murder of innocent civilians," is almost a meaningless statement. It must be followed by questions like, "Who precisely are innocent?" and "Who precisely are civilians?" There are scholars who would say that NO American tax payer is innocent, for he supports the military in its oppression of Muslims by the simple act of paying taxes. Other scholars have explained that since all Israeli Jews will eventually be part of the Israeli military, Israeli Jewish children can not be classified as civilians, rather they are legitimate military targets for the sword of the religion.

Words are slippery things. One man's jihad is another man's terrorism. One man's holy warrior (mujaahid) is another man's criminal. One man's moderate Muslim is another man's apostate who must be killed. As a gesture of trust and dialogue it is important to always ask for clarification of meanings when discussing these things.

Why? Among most Christians to say "the sword of Christianity" would be met with distaste and conjure recollections of a few isolated historical events. But for Muslims the sword of the religion is the sovereignty of Allah working out the slow but sure submission of the world.

Part XIV: Islam and Tahriif

2008-08-04T23:15:00.000-07:00

The Arabic word referring to this corruption is "tahriif", and the teaching is that the Christian (and thus Jewish) Scriptures are profoundly flawed and are thus not reliable indications of God's will, commandments, prophets, or of the history of his people. (Note: I am particularly occupied with questions regarding Jesus' teaching--the injiil--in this article.)

Tahriif is a very wide-spread belief among Muslims today, though it is not universal. It places Muslims in a very powerful position regarding the Bible because for anything they agree with already they can say, "This is from Allah, do you see that we believe in the Prophets? Why do you not accept Allah's final prophet (Muhammad) as well?" But if they are confronted with anything that challenges Islam or the Qur'an, they can say, "Clearly the text has been corrupted, for Jesus would never have said such a thing and this goes against the Qur'an."

So how can a Christian react to this? There are several paths that come to mind, all of which have been used with some degree of success in the past, I will outline three of them for you and indicate which one I generally prefer:

a) Historical Weakness of Tahriif: The traditional doctrine of tahriif tells the following story: Prophets like Jesus and Moses received genuine verbatim revelations from God like Muhammad. But perfidious Jews and Christians later corrupted these texts to suit their purposes. Now this story is found nowhere in the Qur'an, which most Muslims don't know, but it is based on certain hadiith and most Muslims simply don't know the Qur'an very well. This story is problematic from an historical point of view and prompts raises more questions than it answers:

• The New Testament took form on three different continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe), how were Christians able to collect all the valid versions of the injiil (the book Jesus received from God) given that it was recorded and spread over such a broad area?
• Languages: Sections of the NT had been translated from Greek into Latin, Syriac , Hebrew, and probably Amharic and Coptic by the end of the 2nd Century. Did the tahriif of the injiil take place before or after the translations? If before, then it must have been in the 1st Century, but there were still people alive then who had known and listened to Jesus personally, which means that there would be some record of people objecting to this corruption of the injiil. If the tahriif occurred after the translations, then we would have to believe that EVERY COPY of the true injiil which was present in three continents in (at least) half a dozen languages was destroyed.

b) Motive of Corrupters: The Gospels as we have them today give a rather unflattering picture of the Apostles. They are often foolish, proud, and faithless. It is thus unlikely that they would have "corrupted" the injiil without revising the many events which make them look foolish and weak.

It is also unlikely that one would corrupt a text without removing all the promises of persecution and familial strife, and the advocacy of poverty--hardly the kinds of things you put in a religious message if you want it to be popular. Rather, one thinks that a religious message crafted to gain popularity would include the promise of riches, women, and power--promises we do find explicitly in the Qur'an.

Moreover all the Apostles minus John were martyred for their faith. If they had corrupted the injiil and knew it to be a false message, it is inconceivable that they would all die rather than denounce it's validity. Who then corrupted the injiil? People will not die for a message they know to be corrupted. By the end of the Apostolic era the texts of the four Gospels were too wide spread and and existed in too many languages for a unified and viable tahriif to be possible.

But historical reasoning and evidence will generally get you nowhere at all with most Muslims because in Islamic culture the entire discipline of history has largely been subsumed as a sort of devotional exercise to prove the Qur'an is correct. Trying to argue from historical evidence that the Qur'an is not true is like me trying to convince you from the hymnal that the Bible is false.

c) Corruption in your Heart: This is by far my preferred apologetic. I like this approach because in many ways it mirrors Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and the interiority of the Kingdom of God. Fasting is not about letting other people know you are fasting, it is about God knowing you are fasting, for example. Similarly, I start by explaining that tahriif is very real and it is a significant problem. We say that God knows the heart of all men, and that he is all powerful--no Muslim will disagree. Then I explain that when the Jew knows the Torah and its commands, and he disobeys it, he has corrupted the Torah in his heart. Likewise the Christian who knows the commands of the injiil and disobeys it has corrupted the injiil. And finally, the Muslim who knows the commands of the Qur'an and disobeys it, is it not true that he has corrupted the Qur'an? The answer, in my experience, is always yes. Muslims are very aware that most Muslims aren't very strict in their obedience.

In conclusion I usually ask, "Is Allah powerful or weak?" Powerful! "Is Allah wise or foolish?" Wise, the answer comes. "Yes my friend, and Allah is more powerful than the Jews and the Christians, and no one is capable of corrupting God's words to his prophets! If anyone says that his words corrupted IN THE TEXT of the Torah and Gospel, he is a man who believes that God is neither wise nor powerful. But you see that corruption is in our hearts."

This is not simply a play on words. It does accommodate the Muslim who already believes in tahriif. All you have done is to reformulate the doctrine of tahriif in a way that is very much based on Jesus' teaching. But this apologetic also gets to a very foundational weakness in the Islamic view of God. God is always connected with power in Islam--Allahu Akbar! God is the greatest. Yet the Islamic narrative proposes that Jesus was not crucified, for God would not let than happen to a prophet of his. Yet we are also told that the word God gave to this prophet was not preserved? To preserve the true injiil would have been easy for God. Why did he not do it? Why did he allow 600 years of humanity to operate under the assumption that this corrupted injiil was in fact valid and accurate? And given that even from the beginning Christianity was riven with heresies and fanatics, how is that not even one copy of the real injiil was preserved by a dissenter.

All good questions. But they are not to be used to as a weapon to assault a Muslim. Whether the tone is light and conversational, or adversarial--which is sometimes necessary--we must always speak the truth in love. It is a sign of God's love to us that his true Word is in fact his Son who came to live with us, hunger with us, eat with us, cry with us, and suffer for us. His Word is not some book that one can close and place a shelf, but one who is alive and whom death could not hold down. Because of his life we have hope for eternal life: "And this is everlasting life, to know you the one true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

Part XIII: The Gospel According to Muhammad

2008-07-19T04:53:00.000-07:00

In this thirteenth section of my presentation on Islam I want to address the question of what Muslims believe about the Gospel, for they do indeed believe in the Gospel--but the meaning attached to that word for Muslims is radically different than what it means for Christians.

First though I think it would be useful to outline what exactly Christians believe about the Gospel. We actually use the word in several different ways. Often we simply use it to refer to the four books in the New Testament that record the events and teachings of Jesus' life: they include things like miracles, healings, sermons, short sayings, genealogy, events surrounding his birth, crucifixion, resurrection and his commissioning of the Apostles to carry forth his preaching.

We also use it very generally to refer to the central proclamation of how all those events relate to us, namely that we can be reconciled to God through Jesus, and that we can receive forgiveness of sins in his name. Of course, the initial proclamation of Jesus was simply borrowed from his cousin John the Baptist: Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand! But the focus on the Kingdom of God for various reasons is not used by our churches today. Rather, different Christian churches emphasize different ways of articulating the Gospel (atoning sacrifice, adoption as sons, sharers in his divinity, and so on), but the message always revolves around or centrally features the forgiveness of sins in and through Jesus.

But as to Muslims: the word Gospel in Arabic is injiil, which is actually derived (via Syriac) from the original Greek word found in the New Testament: euangelion. Muslims reject what we call the injiil because it does not match their criteria for a prophetic message. In Islamic though there is no cooperation between the prophet and God as we find in Judaism and Christianity. In the latter two religions the prophet is inspired by God's Spirit but nevertheless puts the message into his own words, using his own expressions, talents, backgrounds, phrases, and so on. This is also true for the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) of the New Testament.

In Islam God causes a message to descend from heaven, via an angel, to his prophet, who then utters verbatim the dictation he has received from the angelic mediator. (The exception to this is Moses/Musa whom the Quran says spoke to God face to face, as to a friend.) Thus the Quran teaches that God caused the injiil to descend to Jesus/Issa. This is clearly not the picture that we find recorded by the four Gospel-writers of the New Testament. They are simply giving their recollections of Jesus' ministry, and who can say if they are even trustworthy? Thus the true Gospel was revealed by Jesus who was a good Muslim prophet, as were interestingly his disciples, according to the Quran. Jesus was not crucified, but he was taken back into heaven by God with his revelation--the injiil. Thus the true Gospel/injiil is in heaven with God, preserved by him there. It is certainly nowhere present on earth, and the best that one may hope is that parts or portions of it continue to exist in the four Gospels. They are, though, generally judged by Muslims today to be untrustworthy and not worth reading.

Such is the general explanation given by Muslims today, but the questions that this explanation provokes are numerous: why would God send Jesus, begotten of a virgin, working great miracles, who ascends into heaven, and not protect his message from corruption? This is, I think, a difficult question for Muslims to answer. A few have agreed that the four Gospels of the NT are valid, but by and large that is a minority position. One seems to end up with a weak God who is unable to safeguard his revelation to his prophets from corruption (tahriif) by nefarious Christians. Or with a God who allows centuries of pre-Muslim Christians to believe in a counterfeit injiil for no good reason. For Muslims do teach that pre-Islamic Christians could be true believers for they were living within the light that had been revealed to them--but according to this account that light was in fact darkness.

Some also propose that the true injiil was preserved, but that it was later (after Jesus' ascension) corrupted, but where is the manuscript or historical evidence of this? Extensive parts of the New Testament had spread through three continents in more than four or five different languages by the third century. When and where and how did this corruption of the Gospel happen? Who did it? There is no historical evidence for this position at all.

Such is the account of the Gospel according to Muhammad: it is hidden and unknown, its prophet great and worthy, but his message unknown to us today.

Salaam min al Rab ma3kum. Peace from the Lord be with you.

Abu Daoud

Part XII: Islam and Sloth

2008-07-19T04:52:00.002-07:00

Modern Muslima is a a magazine for Modern Muslim women (Muslima is the Arabic word for a female Muslim). I enjoyed reading this article because it shows how Muslims, in particular here, how Muslim women, are taught to respond to Christian missionaries.

The article starts off with some interesting information about the acculturation chart. It is explained fairly well and the folks at Modern Muslima seem particularly alarmed about C5 missionaries, and perhaps C4 missionaries as well.

Last night I hung out with three friends of mine and we played Risk (I won, alhamdulillah, with a last minute sweep through Asia) and we discussed these questions. Not one of us thought that C5 was appropriate or healthy, or, as this article mentions, honest. So there we are in agreement.

I will take issue with one of the topics raised: Muslims are told that when engaged with questions about the Quran or Islam to send the person to a local imam. I am sorry but that just seems like intellectual and spiritual laziness to me. If Muslims really believe that the Quran is word-for-word from God, then they should be able to answer basic questions about the book and the religion. I believe that this approach is in fact one of the most negative aspects of Islam: Muslims are neither encouraged to scrutinize their religion nor to ask difficult questions.

Second note: in different sections of the article, it is stated that most Muslim states prohibit evangelism, and then that missionaries often refer to the "sorry" state of Muslim women throughout Islamdom. Is there any attempt to link the two concepts by Modern Muslima? Nope. In fact the two things are inextricably related: evangelism is prohibited because Islam teaches that religious freedom is blasphemous; Islam teaches that women must be treated as a form of property for men. Denying religious freedom (evangelism and conversion) and denying women freedom (education, civil liberties, work) flow from the same intolerant civilization.

One wonders if the Muslim women at Modern Muslima have ever considered what would happen to their publication if secular government built on a Judeo-Christian heritage were to cede to an Islamic government. A better solution than sending your kids to an Islamic school or not allowing them to go to sleep-overs might be to actually start asking some hard questions about Islam, rather than just assuming that the religious men (and all imams are men) will figure it out. Sloth is a capital sin. The one who overcomes slothfulness will ask hard questions; the one who asks hard questions is one who searches; one who searches will find.

Here is the link: Secret War

Part XI: Muslims' Main Objections to Christianity

2008-07-19T04:52:00.001-07:00

In Part X of this series on Islam I wrote on four of the main things that attract Muslims to Christianity (The Bible, Dreams and Wonders, Charity and Kindness, and Christian Community or the Church), but now I want to outline the four main theological stumbling blocks for Muslims who are interested in the Christian faith. Note that I am talking about the ones who are interested, most Muslims actually have no desire whatsoever to learn about other religions, nor do they have any desire to ask hard questions about their book or the life of Muhammad. Islam does claim to be the supremely logical religion, but the ability to engage in critical thought in the Middle East is close to null.

In any case, here are the four theological topics which are most confusing and difficult for Muslims who are searching for truth. The four topics are born from Islamic caricatures or misunderstandings of genuine Christian teaching. I will make no effort in this article to show how Christians respond to these objections, though I am open to doing that if you are interested.

1) The Incarnation: How can God become a man? This has been scandalous since the very beginning of the faith, but it is absolutely essential to maintain this doctrine since without it God becomes further and further removed from our understanding. Also, our anthropology or understanding of what it means to be human, whether as individuals or as parts of a community, becomes degraded.

2) The Trinity: The period of Islam's growth and early spreading was marked by an extraordinary and effective policy of military subjugation which did not allow space for attempting to understand the Christian dogma of the Trinity, which was by then articulated in the language of Greek philosophy. Thus the rejection of the nuanced doctrine of God's triunity was firmly cemented as a form of tri-theism by the time Islamic scholars gained the skills whereby they could effectively dialogue with Christian theologians. Of course, by that time is was an article of faith for the Muslim scholars that trinity was somehow identical to tri-theism, so in spite of their academic abilities, it was simply not open to question: the Christians had to believe in three gods, even if the Christians said they didn't.

3) Corruption of the Bible: Muslims are taught that Christians and Jews corrupted the books which came down from heaven to such prophets as Jesus and Moses and David. This is, actually, not clearly supported by the Quran, but it is a common teaching today.

4) The Crucifixion: The prevalent interpretation of the Quran today indicates that Jesus was not crucified. Also, in Islam God's grace and favor must be identified with political and military supremacy, thus the idea that one of God's prophets could be reduced to such a humiliating death is fairly repulsive to Muslims. There are interpretations of the Quran which support that Jesus was crucified, but Islam refuses to or is unable to differentiate between the meaning of the Quranic text and the act of interpretation.

Part X: Why Muslims are Attracted to Christianity

2008-07-02T07:06:00.000-07:00

Part X: Why Muslims are Attracted to Christianity
by Abu Daoud

I don't know if this can be verified, but I heard that more Muslims have converted to the Way of Jesus Christ in the last ten years than in all the other years since the advent of Islam in the 7th Century. I'm not sure it's an accurate figure, but I will say that something is certainly happening among Muslims and that there is an openness in their society that was not there before. I also want to point out that large numbers of nominal Christians, especially in Europe, are converting to Islam--a main reason being so they can marry Muslim women. Who has more converts? I have no idea. I will say that Muslims converting to Christianity often pay a heavy price in terms of persecution, and that Westerners converting to Islam are afforded generous protection by their governments.

But here is the question: why are Muslims attracted to the way of Jesus Christ? Here are some of the main reasons:

1) The Bible. We forget how compelling and convincing Jesus' teachings and parables are. He was certainly, among other things, a highly talented teacher, and his parables and sayings have the ability to lodge themselves into a person's mind, even after only one hearing. His insights into human nature, society, kindness, forgiveness, and God's power--not too mention the many miracles he worked--are convincing to a good number of Muslims. Of course Islam teaches that the Christian and Jewish Scriptures are muharraf--corrupted. But after a fair reading of the Gospels, sometimes the integrity and wisdom found therein can break through this Islamic doctrine. Incidentally, Muslim background believers from my experience tend to center their thought on the Gospels much more than Paul's epistles--very different than the evangelical tradition which has, in practice at least, tended to give primacy to the Pauline epistles.

2) Dreams, Miracles: What can I say? They are happening, and folks here don't have the initial inclination that Westerners do to "disprove" or "figure out how it was done." A miracle is from God--it's that simple. Often times in dreams people see Jesus, though at times it is one of the saints. This may not result in conversion, but it opens a path of inquiry that sometimes leads to conversion.

3) Charity: "They will know that we are Christians by our love." One refugee from a neighboring country received some help from some Christians, and he said, "We come here and we receive nothing form the Muslims--the Christians are the only ones who take care of us. I know nothing of your religion, but I will become a Christian." We think of the things like the Inquisition and the Crusades, but we forget the quiet, persistent witness of kind, caring Christians from all traditions, including Catholics and Orthodox. Which brings to mind something that Saint Francis, another apostle to the Muslims, said, "Let us not seek to be loved, so much as to love others." If you need to be reminded of the quiet work of the Church around you, just look at how many schools and hospitals are run by Christians or where founded by the various churches.

4) Christian Community: Islam teaches that a man should not speak to a woman unless they are married or of the same family. It is a witness to the beauty of the Christian community, and thus its faith, when Muslims see genuine respect and friendship between men and women who are neither related or married to each other. The assumption among Muslims is that this sort of thing must lead to fornication or adultery; on the other hand, young men and women sincerely yearn for fellowship with members of the opposite sex. When they see this among Christians it reveals that we are a peculiar people, that there is something different about us: fellowship, conversation, and friendship but without all the adultery and fornication they are told must result.

There are other reasons as well, but my experience is that these are the main ones. The challenge is getting people to think. Islam teaches that it alone is the reasonable and logical religion. Since people in the Middle East have extremely weak critical skills due to various reasons, this assertion is simply accepted. These are four things which I know have been important in challenging that assumption, which have led people to ask new questions and venture down new paths.

Part IX: Islam and Victimhood

2008-07-02T07:05:00.000-07:00

Part IX: Victimhood and Muslim Identity
by Abu Daoud

“No one admits that his own yoghurt is sour.” --Syrian proverb

I want to suggest in this post that victimhood has become an integral and essential element in Muslim identity today. There are a number of reasons for this, some of them are valid, but many of them are not. I want to explain why and how this has come to be the case today.

If I may quote Sam Huntington, “The problem is not Islamists, it is Islam: a civilization convinced of its superiority and obsessed with its inferiority.” Islam is unlike Christianity in that it makes certain guarantees, namely that if a society is faithful in following Islam (and the sharia’) then certain consequences must follow: material wealth, political power, an ever-widening scope of authority over non-Muslims, scientific and economic advancement, justice and good governance, and so forth. It is very clear though to people throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that other than sub-Saharan Africa their region is near the bottom of the list in all these areas. With globalization, migration, increasing ease of travel, and of course the internet, it has become clear to Muslims everywhere that this is not at all the case today.

(It must be stressed that Christianity does not make any such promises. While there are verses from the proverbs that speak of God rewarding hard, honest work, and many of us have seen this in our lives, even stronger is Jesus’ insistence that the Kingdom of God is characterized by opposition which may well be violent, and indeed resulting in martyrdom.)

And the tension is not just between MENA and the West. Rapid development and the growth of a middle class have moved forward in nations like India and China, not to mention the astounding development of places like South Korea and Japan in the 20th Century.

So there is a very tense situation because the empirical evidence and experience of the people run directly against the claims of Islam. There are two common ways of trying to reconcile the evidence and the religious doctrine. The first is simply to say that none of the Muslim countries are actually practicing Islam correctly. I hear this a lot: this country is too strict, that country is too liberal; this country is not democratic enough; that country has a corrupt monarchy; and so on. My answer: There are more than 20 Arab Muslim countries, and you mean to tell me that not one of them can get Islam right? If that is the case then Islam is more of a dream than a realistic system that can actually work. It’s like someone telling you that you can get a million bucks for walking from the ME to North America. You can easily spend all your life trying to do it, but ultimately it is simply impossible, no matter how wonderful the promised reward is.

The second response though is my primary concern here: victimhood. The reason that Muslims nations are not the prominent world powers, that their governments are extremely corrupt, that nepotism and tribalism and rampant, that five million Israelis publish more scientific papers in a year than 400 million Arabs, that no Muslim nation in MENA actually has freedom of the press, assembly, or speech, and that the governments are not accountable to the people—the reason is simple: we are being oppressed.

The culprit changes from place to place and time to time: the French, the British, the Israelis, the Americans, but tomorrow it will be someone else. Sometimes the culprit is other Muslims, but even then (as is the case of fighting between Shiia’ and Sunni in Iraq) the real culprit is outside of Islam.

The rise of the sense of victimhood is integral to the recovery of jihad which we have witnessed in these last years. Historically Jihad need not be related to self-defense at all, but the appeal to self-defense strengthens those who advocate it. And here is the critical tie: If all Muslims are victims of Western anti-Islamism then any act of Jihad against the West becomes an act of self-defense. This was OBL’s explicit rational for the 9-11 attacks: they were a defensive measure. And since all Americans contribute to the American oppression of Islam by virtue of paying taxes, all Americans (children and women included) are in fact military targets and their execution is an act of worship to God. Such is his logic, which, while novel, has great appeal throughout Dar al Islam.

Victimhood is a central element of contemporary Islamic identity. When the West does not help Muslims it is oppressing them. When the West intervenes in the region it is imperialism and occupation. When the west opts for the long, messy, and sometimes ineffective path of diplomacy, they are indecisive. When the West makes dramatic moves they are brash and militant. Victimhood confers on one’s self the ability to abuse power in the name of protection and self-preservation.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only remedy because, as I outlined above, political and social efforts to help will always be interpreted by some as further persecution. Moreover, they lack the ability to bring about the profound moral and spiritual conversion that we call being born again. Only within the Gospel do we find a point of reference for victimhood and power because we understand that in the ultimate sense of the word no one is a victim because no one is absolutely innocent except for Jesus Christ. As the Gospel transforms our minds and our communities, the imperative is to be generous and forgiving rather than to assert the rightness of one’s cause. This is the transformation we should hope for in MENA.

Part VIII: Islam, the Pope, and History: Even the Past must Submit

2008-07-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

Part VIII: Islam, the Pope, and History: Even the Past Must Submit
By Abu Daoud

We were in a taxi and I was listening to the news in Arabic, which is still quite difficult for me since it’s all classical Arabic, and I picked up something about the pope, Pakistan, a Byzantine emperor, and the fact that many Muslims were very angry.

The first question that comes to mind is whether in fact Pope Benedict's statement was actually true. Namely, that Islam was spread by military force and (at least up to the time of Emperor Manuel II Paleologus) had made no positive contribution to human society or civilization. Historically, I think it is quite difficult to disagree with this point.

However, there are a number of popular stories (myths I would call them) about the riches of Islamic culture and its contributions to history. I will not say that Islamic civilization (whether of the Arab or Turkish variety) has made no contribution whatsoever to civilization, but I will say that the contribution is extremely minor.

Take for example the myth about Muslims preserving the teachings of Aristotle. Well, it was in a Muslim country, but it was Syriac monks who actually did the copying and the preservation. Or consider the magnificence of the Shrine of the Dome of the Rock, in Jerusalem, which is often pointed to as an instance of the brilliance of Islamic architecture. In fact, when the Muslims entered Jerusalem they were still mostly nomads who would have had little experience in building permanent structures. The design and construction of the Dome of the Rock was indeed carried out under Islamic governance, but by Greek Christians. (When the Crusaders took control of Jerusalem they renamed it the Church of the Holy Land, by the way.)

If one takes a close look at the list of Muslim luminaries in the areas of history and medicine and science, one quickly notices that few of them were born Muslims and educated by Muslims. In general, Muslim rulers would take over a region or area, and a condition for scholars to remain in their positions (often as part of the royal court) was their conversion to Islam. So it is not surprising that most of them had converted from Christianity, Judaism, or (in Persia) Zoroastrianism. (Persian Islam is, of course, different than Arab of Turkish Islam.)

Another popular myth is the regarding the Islamic presence in the Iberian peninsula (Spain) up through the conclusion of the reconquista in 1492. Even by European standards the two Islamic empires that controlled regions in the peninsula were particularly war-ridden and brutal. (And the European standards of the time were not very high!)

If these contributions are so great then how can one account for, say, the decline of Constantinople from being the world center of history, theology, science, and medicine, under Christian rule, to being what it is today: Istanbul. Or how can one account for the fact that, excluding petroleum and natural gas, the entire Middle East and North Africa (minus Israel) contribute to the world's gross product the same percentage as Norway? If Islam is indeed the true religion wherein peace and freedom are united to God's sovereign rule, then why are Muslim countries close to the bottom of the list in terms of freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech? If the first caliphs (successors of Muhammad) where living in Islam's golden age, then how is it that three of the four were assassinated?

So where does this all leave us? Anger seems to be a fundamental aspect of Islamic culture today, and this should worry us. Nevertheless, I hope that the pope will not apologize, he has done nothing wrong, even if it has made many people angry. If anything, he should clearly articulate the challenge: let historians come together for an honest assessment of the growth of Islam and its alleged contributions to humanity.

But there is little room for positive developments, I'm afraid. Within the Arab Muslim world the capacity for critical thought and analysis is close to zero. Thus, since Islam teaches that it is the religion of peace, all things must submit to the teaching--even history. And here is a profound insight: historical facts must conform to the teaching of religion; that is, we do not go to study history to learn more about our religion and how it developed. Rather, we study the Qu'ran which then directs us in determining what history must say. The role of the historian is to figure out how to justify such a reading. Thus, history is a form of apologetics within Islam.

I think that every culture has this tendency: to idealize an earlier period of time as being the golden age. Christians have this, whether it is found in the Apostolic period, the High Middle Ages, the Reformation, or what have you. Countries have it as well. But Islam has a totalizing and universal aspect to it, as does Christianity, but Christian revelation is primarily found in a person, Jesus Christ, the Word of God--not in a book, not even in the Bible. If it were found in a book then God's Word would be frozen in time and inextricably and completely linked to a particular instance of cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and political history. But Islam is such a religion, thus it is also a religion that Arabicizes in a very special way. One former Muslim said that Islam destroys cultures, while Christianity fulfills them. And before you think of all the stumbling and ineptitude of colonial missionaries, consider that this man was from Africa, a colonial land par excellence.

I suspect that behind that pope’s comments are questions of historiography, anthropology and the philosophy of history. But they are not simple questions or topics, and the capacity to engage in these discussions is simply not present within the Muslim world. Allahu Akbar! God is Great, and everything must submit to him--including historians and history. This is why we have not seen any reaction to the pope's statement based on historical evidence—the historical evidence is simply not important. One would think that it would be more effective to produce historical evidence that his characterization is not accurate, rather than having parliaments demand apologies and burning effigies of him.

Within Islam, the use of violence and threats of violence to compel a person to admit that Islam is not violent is not contradictory. Both are truths given by God and thus the apparent contradiction is subsumed into the unity (tawhiid) that is God. The violence has changed, but the West is for the most part submitting to Islam. We see this when the press is extra-careful to cast Islam in a positive light using all sorts of misleading euphemisms. One also thinks of recent demonstrations in London where people were allowed to carry signs protesting political leaders in the most violent language, while non-Muslim demonstrators carrying anti-Islamic and anti-Muhammad signs were detained are made to go away. Apparently, the freedom of speech of Muslims is more important than the freedom of speech of non-Muslims in London. This current situation is closely related to the historical discussion, because Islam has viewed the use of violence to secure superiority of rights for Muslims as an expression of God's goodness and sovereignty, and this practice has a long and respected history.

So was Benedict XVI right in drawing out this old document? I am not sure, I would have preferred a more subtle plan including all the Catholic bishops, priests and laypersons here in the ME for the evangelism of Muslims and the planting of home churches for formerly-Muslim believers. The eventual goal would be establishing an underground hierarchy that does not possess any property so that it cannot be manipulated by the state's power over buildings and schools. Well, that is one idea.

But perhaps his provocative reference was made with the desire for a more robust and honest dialogue. If that was his desire I hope he will find a blessing in realizing just how difficult (or impossible some might say) that dialogue is. Every culture and civilization has its own traditions and ways of communicating. Within Islamic civilization the finding of common ground (with other civilizations) has generally occurred when the threat of violence is an incentive, not one of mutual respect but overwhelming superiority of power accompanied by the willingness to use it ruthlessly. This is clearly a problem for Christians for whom violence is never or seldom a positive good. On the other hand, if we think of Tertullian’s famous quote, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, I would simply point out that for any number of reasons, Dar al-Islam is an exception, the blood the of the martyrs here is simply forgotten.

Ultimately, the only possible remedy for this ailing civilization is the Gospel. In the Kingdom of God we do not find complete healing here and now, but we do find substantial healing for our minds and hearts and bodies on the side of the Resurrection. A growing community of believers who have come out of Islam will lead to a Christian community that is bold and creative and knows how to communicate the Gospel to Muslims, unlike the vast majority of Christians here right now.

Suggested Reading:

The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude
By Bat Ye’or

The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of New World Order
By Samuel Huntington

The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror
By Bernard Lewis

Islamic Imperialism
By Efraim Karsh

All three of these authors are excellent in their fields; also worth a read is Daniel Pipes.

Part VII: Reformed Islam

2008-07-02T02:23:00.000-07:00

Part VII: Reformed Islam
by Abu Daoud

I have noticed a good deal of talk regarding the hope that exists in the West of a Reformation for Islam. There are two points I wish to make in response.

The first is regarding what exactly constitutes a "reformation." Historically the term refers to a decentralized group of reformation movements throughout western Europe in the 16th Century. But there is a significant gap between what the Reformers intended and actually accomplished. The complete picture is complex, but Calvin and Luther (among others) would be horrified to see the seemingly endless multiplication of Protestant-tradition churches we see today--that is, the continual splitting of denominations and ecclesial bodies.

The Reformers did, however, claim that they were returning Christianity to its original, if obscured, Apostolic and Biblical roots. There was a concrete and pervading desire to reject what the Reformers understood as traditions that departed from the original Biblical mandates. The relation of the believer to God was also made more direct, jettisoning the role of the priest or the bishop as the representative of Christ. The Reformers also introduced what were either entirely new or recovered principles of interpreting Scripture. Inherent in this entire and largely uncoordinated group of reform movements was a decentralization of power from the bishop of Rome (the Pope) to local pastors, congregations, laity, royalty, and governments.

So the second question is what would "Reformed Islam" look like? Well, it would discard centuries of traditions that people adopted to live with the presence of diversity and plurality--even taking into account how minor those accommodations were. It would also release the individual Muslim from accountability to his community, making him directly accountable to God and his mandate for perpetual and global jihad. It would finally lead to a proliferation of schools of interpretation, many of them accusing the other of faithlessness in right interpretation of the Qur'an.
I would therefore argue that we have in our midst a highly-Reformed Islam in the form of what is alternately called Wahabi or Salafi Islam. There is an interesting history behind each of the words and they are not identical. Suffice to say that followers of Salafiism understand themselves as interpreting and living out the Qur'an and Hadith (sayings of Muhammad) in accordance with the original and plain meaning understood by Muhammad and his companions (the salafi, which is Arabic for "predecessors.")

It was indeed this school of Reformed Islam that highly influenced the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Not for centuries have we seen a government that so faithfully and perfectly obeyed the pattern of the early Muslims (salafi). In other words, the Afghanistan under the Taliban was Reformed Islam. It was Islam stripped of accretions not mandated by the Qur'an or his companions (who play a role like the Apostles in many ways), who understood themselves as interpreting the Qu'ran plainly and simply, without the influence or intermediary of distracting scholars and philosophers and theologians.

Part of Reformed Islam is the return to active, vigorous and perpetual jihad, as was the custom of Muhammad and his companions. Muhammad himself was part of over 70 battles/raids during his own lifetime, very few of which were defensive. The expansion of jihad we see today is not radical or fundamentalist Islam. It is Islam in its most historically accurate and pure form.

Part VI: The Qur'an in Conversation

2008-07-02T02:21:00.000-07:00

Part VI: The Qur'an in Conversation
by Abu Daoud

Excerpts from a Conversation I Just Had

Me: I am arguing that the Qu'ran does not actually say that Jesus was not crucified. The passage you reference is, "they did not crucify him, but it only appeared so." But if you look at the whole sura, you will see that it is discussing God's relationship to the descendants of the sons of Israel, whom we call Jews today. And historically, if you read the Injiil (Gospels), you will see that the Jews did not have the authority to crucify Jesus by their own power. They had to get the permission of the Roman authorities, and actually it was Roman soldiers that crucified him. So yes, to an observer it may have seemed like the Jews were actually totally responsible for his death, but that was not the case.

So when I say that Jesus was crucified, I am not saying anything against the Qu'ran itself, which you believe is from God. Rather I am disagreeing with one tasfiir (interpretation). The interpretations are not from God, but from man, so they may be incorrect.

Leith (my Jordanian friend): But we are guaranteed correctness in these interpretations because the Prophet related the correct interpretations to his followers and they have been collected by men likeAl-Muslim, Al-Bukhtori, [and so on].

Me: Ah, you refer to the ahadith [this is the plural of hadith, or the sayings of the Prophet, which after the Qu'ran extremely important for Muslims]. But who compiled the ahadith? They were men like you and me doing historical investigation. My point is that you cannot know for sure if they are correct because these men were not directed by God himself. The point is that I am disagreeing with the interpretation of the Qu'ran, not the text itself.

***

Leith: We are all sinners, but the prophets receive a special gift, they become immune to error and sin. They can no longer sin.

Me: But what about before they receive the message from God?

Leith: Yes, they can sin.

Me: But Jesus never sinned at all, that is in the Qu'ran. This is why we [Christians] pray in the name of Jesus. When we pray in our own name, why should God listen to our prayers? But when we come to God in the-name of Jesus, this is the only person in all of history who never offended God. So then God will listen to us and forgive us.

Leith: Actually we pray to God in the name of Muhammad and all the prophets.

Me: Ah yes, Muhammad. Who in the Qu'ran has problems with one of his wives because he is spending too much time with his Egyptian concubine. And then one of his wives gets jealous of her and tells him, "Don't come to me saying you have another message from [the Archangel] Gabriel!" I think she was too clever for him!

Leith: Yes! [Smiling] I think you are right. You know the Qu'ran well! Do you know how many wives he had?

Me: At any given time up to eight, but in all his life I think 13.

Leith: Eleven.

Part V: Islam: Religion Plus (cont.)

2008-07-02T02:20:00.001-07:00

Part V: Islam: Religion Plus (cont.)
by Abu Daoud

In Part IV of this series I established that Islam is more than just a religion, according to Western standards, which allow for a separation of religion and state. Islam contains within its teaching regarding the relations and duties of man before God a very specific political order. What is it?

It is the caliphate. The Arabic word xalifa (caliph) means “successor [of the Prophet].” When God appointed Mohammad to be the Prophet who would bring the incorrupt and incorruptible revelation from God, he also chose him to be a ruler over the Umma. The caliphate existed in one form or another through the 20th century (1924), lastly within the Ottoman Empire (whose successor is Turkey). Devout Muslims therefore long for and must work for the restoration of the caliphate. This was precisely the desire of Abu Mussab al Zaraqawi (a Jordanian mujahid), recently deceased. He was a devout and good Muslim. This may seem like a troubling statement, but in reality his devotion to his religion extended far beyond my own devotion to my religion, and probably yours as well. He was working to restore the caliphate, to unite all Muslim people into one Umma that would unite all the nation states of Islam. In his willingness to use violence as a means of ushering in God's gracious and righteous reign he was following Muhammad's pattern of life (sunna).

In fact, the existence of nation states is reprehensible to devout Muslims. They run against a central tenet of Islam: that there are only two religious-political entities in the world: Dar al Islam (House of Islam) and Dar al Harb (House of War). The vision of conservative Muslims (it is an error to call them fundametalists) is to bring all Muslim peoples into one entity. The combined power would be capable of completing the effort (jihad) of making the peoples of the world submitters (muslims) to God’s rule.

In other words, God’s grace is manifest not in bread and wine and water and oil (as in our religion), but in political rule. Political-religious rule is how God reveals his grace and goodness to the world. It is how he works to restore justice and peace and order to the world. Until that rule of God is completely restored, the Ummah must continue to exert effort (jihad) to work for that restoration and submission and surrender.

This is the good and glorious vision of Islam for the world. I do not agree with it, of course, which is why my family is devoted to evangelizing Muslims. My family and I want then to understand that true submission (islam) to God means submission to his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the image (iconos, in Greek) of the glory of God, as Paul said. If one rejects the Son, how can one say he accepts the Father? "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father."

Part IV: Islam: Religion Plus

2008-07-02T02:18:00.000-07:00

Part IV: Islam: Religion Plus
by Abu Daoud

There are two central aspects of Islam that folks in the West tend to misunderstand. Because of these two flaws in our understanding we continue to make decisions and take actions that are ineffective or counterproductive in the Dar al Islam.

The second thing is the relation of power to grace. But the first thing, which is related to the second, is that Islam, properly speaking, is not simply a religion, but an entire civilization. Islam is a holistic and organic system of life that includes very specific regulations and laws regarding everything from inheritance to divorce, investing to commerce, and—here is sticking point—regulations regarding government.

Muhammad was the civil and religious ruler of the Umma (the Islamic nation) at the time of his death. Since a prophet gains immunity against sin once he has been called by God, he can do no wrong. This certainly gets around the messiness of dividing and distributing power, which the founders of the USA attempted to do. But there is a problem: original sin. For all have sinned! There is not one righteous, no not one!

Christianity has flirted with the union of all civil and religious power under one person, specifically in the idea of the Holy Roman Emperor, who was considered by some to be rex et sacerdos—King and Priest. But overall we have tended to separate the two spheres in some way or another.

For traditionally-minded Muslims, the idea of separating the two kinds of authority is unnatural and an affront to the human person, who is at once a political and religious being. Before you dismiss this insight, let me point out that the so-called alternative (secularism) is running into great problems nowadays. The reason for this is that it is very difficult to figure out where to draw the line between the religious person and the political person—as Islam rightly argues. Does the line exclude a prayer before Congress meets? Does the line exclude students from bringing Bibles into public schools? Does the line exclude atheists from holding public office? What about Satan worshippers? My point is simply that Islam has a good point here: the human being is at once political and religious, reflecting the unity (tawheed, wahda) within God. So any attempt to divide the two spheres must be, to some extent, artificial, mutable, and provisional.

But what is a religion? This might seem like a simple question, but in fact it is very difficult to answer. Christians in the USA these days like to say that Christianity is a relationship (with Christ), not a religion. I appreciate the sentiment behind that statement, but it is in reality totally false. A religion, speaking generally, is any system of beliefs and practices that teach people(s) how to relate to Ultimate Reality (what we call God). So the very idea that Christianity is relational is a very religious idea: we should relate to God personally, not impersonally; or personally, and not communally. Some people say they are spiritual and not religious—I used to say that. Now I say I am very religious. Let people draw their own conclusions.

Islam teaches that part of the relationship between the political ruler and the religious ruler is all encompassed within the submission, yielding, sublimination, or surrender (various translations of the Arabic word islam) that must characterize the community and person before God and his Prophet. So to those who say that Christianity is a personal relationship, not a religion, the traditional Muslim replies that Islam is a political relationship, not just a religion.

Part III: Islam and the Other Religions

2008-07-02T02:17:00.000-07:00

Part III: Islam and the Other Religions
by Abu Daoud

So here is the question: Is it important for Muslims to learn about other religions?

As I discussed the question with a number of Muslims it became clear that their answer is clearly YES. Then why do Muslims know so little about other religions? Because they believe firmly that everything they need to know about those other religions is contained in the Qu’ran. Who do you believe: the verbatim Word of God that existed with him from all eternity, or texts that have been corrupted and misinterpreted by Christians and Jews?

There is one word that you must learn in Arabic to understand how Muslims look at other religions: muharraf. It means something like corrupted and untrustworthy. This is the word used to describe the texts (called Books) of the other prophets such as the Torah which was revealed to the prophet Moses (Musa); the Zaboor, revealed to the Prophet David (Dahood); and the Gospel, revealed to the Prophet Jesus (Issa).

Indeed, there is a central difference between the Judeo-Christian concept of prophecy and that of Islam. In Islam the prophet does not bring a message inspired by God, but a verbatim message from God that must be recorded in a book. In the Judeo-Christian tradition there are many prophets who did not write a book (Elijah for one) or even have their prophecy recorded by someone else.

This obviously presents a great difficulty for Christians, as we do not have the Book that God supposedly revealed to Jesus, rather we have four recollections of his teachings and life by different men. Again, the Qu’ran is clear that Christians and Jews, though once possessing valid books from God’s prophets, no longer do. Rather, “They have tampered with words out of their context and forgotten much of what they were enjoined” (5:13).

The circular logic of Islam comes into play again here because the Qur'an proves itself:

“Say: ‘Have you any evidence you can put before us? You believe in nothing but conjecture and follow nothing but falsehoods’” (6:148). The Qur'an demands irrefutable evidence for anyone who would challenge what it teaches, but provides no justification for the truth of its own claims other than its own existence.

Enlightened Muslims know all there is to know about the other religions by reading the Qur'an.

Part II: Islam, Cartoons and Riots

2008-07-02T02:14:00.001-07:00

Part II: Islam, Cartoons and Riots
by Abu Daoud

I was chatting with a friend of mine who lives in Saudi Arabia yesterday. She has always lived there, her dad has three wives, she has never been outside of the Middle East. She is a smart lady, and witty too. I asked her about the cartoon debacle and she said what many folks here are saying: they don't have the right to offend Islam that way.

I just got back from spending some time with a very moderate Muslim friend who is not an Arab. His sisters don't wear head coverings, he doesn't go to mosque often. He compared the cartoons to people who praise the holocaust. I said that it was illegal to incite violence against a group, which is what you have in his holocaust example. Here violence was not being incited against Muslims. He responded, but it led to violence on the part of Muslims--so what's the difference?

These two twenty-somethings represent the future of the Middle East. They are well-educated, multi-lingual, intelligent people, and they are both dear friends of mine. Neither of them had even seen the cartoons though.

So what is the reason for this gulf between our approach and theirs? Let me suggest two possible factors:

The language of rights. It is foreign to Islam, specifically in the generalized form of "human rights" or "inalienable rights." While rejecting positivism, the rights of a person are derived from the fact that they are living under a valid Islamic authority. Politics is sacramental, so a Muslim ruler is an outward sign of an inward grace, namely the subjugation and subjection of the peoples of the world to God's rule. (Note that violence can become sacred under this model.) So speaking of a right to anything that is insulting to Islam is inherently self-contradictory.

The Final Revelation. Islam is very confident that it is the final and true revelation from God. Therefore to allow space for any belief that might contraddict this is unjustified. Christianity and Judaism are allowed to exist, but under a system of governance that assures their eventual extinction. This system has been spectacularly successful in Northern Africa and Asia Minor and the Arabian Peninsula.

These are just two points. There are others, but I think it will help us to at least size up how different the two frames of mind or worldviews are from eachother.

So how should Christians react to those who offend them? I think there is no one answer to that, but it is clear that the genesis of that action must begin with loving our enemies and blessing those who curse us.

I think Christians are so used to having our faith ridiculed that it is hard for us to imagine the novelty of what many Muslims are experiencing. But give it a try. Feel the fury, the anger, the desire to kill and to destroy. But then hear the voice of your conscience brought alive by the Spirit reminding you that you are as guilty as your enemy, that if he deserves death then so do you, and that if you are to live up to the name of Christian that you must love him. And love mercy. Pray for that zealous desire to forgive.

I think that is where Christians are obliged to start, though depending on conditions it will lead us to different places and actions. But not to hoping for nuclear destruction in this or that country or the lawless torching of embassies. Not there, I am sure.

Part I: The Qur'an: Introduction

2008-07-02T02:13:00.000-07:00

Part I: The Qur'an: Introduction
by Abu Daoud

It is often said that the Qur'an is like the Bible: one is the holy book for Muslims, and the other is for the Christians. This is not a very accurate way of looking at the situation though because the two books are very different. The Bible is really a collection of many kinds of writings (prophecy, poetry, genealogy, history, personal letters, and so on) written by a large number of people across over a thousand years. The Bible was written in three languages across three continents (Europe, Asia, Africa).

The Qur'an is wholly different. According to Islam, it was not written by anyone, it was revealed, word for word, from God, by the angel Gabriel (Jabriil in Arabic) to Muhammad throughout his life. The Qur'an consists of 114 chapters, called surahs in Arabic. These surahs are organized like Paul's letters to the churches: from longest to shortest. The second is "The Cow" which is 31 pages long (in the translation I use), and the last one is "The Men" which follows:

SAY: 'I seek refuge in the Lord of men, the King of men, the God of men, from the mischief of the slinking prompter who whispers in the hearts of men; from jinn and men.'

That is the entire surah.

The word "qur'an" is possibly derived from the Arabic word qara' which means "he read." The word itself means something like recitation.

The content of the book is much more uniform than that of the Bible, as could be expected from a book produced by one person over a much shorter period of time. There are dietary laws, there are rules about how the believers should interact with Jews and Christians and idolators. There are regulations about the use of the spoils of war (there is a surah called "The Spoils"). Every aspect of life is touched upon, much like the Torah for Orthodox Jews.

There is a great deal of equivocation about the Jews and the Christians in the Qur'an. There are some positive remarks, like, "Believers, Jews, Sabeans, and Christians--whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right shall have nothing to fear or to regret." But then two paragraphs later we find this: "Unbelievers are those that say: 'God is one of three.' There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished." (5:69 ff.) There are many examples of this throughout the entire book, so it is not surprising that among Muslims there are so many points of view. (Also you will notice that the author obviously does not grasp the theology of the Trinity. This is not the kind of thing a Muslim can say though since each and every word is from God.)

The same can be said in terms of the use of violence, though the verses limiting violence seem to be fewer in number than those extolling it as long as it is carried out correctly. One that is frequently quoted in the Western press is this: "whoever killed a human being [...] shall be regarded as having killed all mankind" (5:32ff). These seem like the words of a religion of peace indeed. But the entire verse needs to be examined to understand how it has functioned throughout history:

"That is why We laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being, except as a punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all humankind; and that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as having saved all mankind."

So if there is "other villainy" then capital punishment is called for. Such crimes include insulting the Prophet and renouncing Islam. And lest we be impressed by this graciousness, we find this admonition a few verses later, "As for the man or woman who is guilty of theft, cut off their hands to punish them for their crimes. That is the punishment enjoined by God. God is mighty and wise." Fortunately most Islamic countries do not do actually do what "God enjoins." But you can clearly see that there is no question of this being a rule for a specific people at one time in history. It is more like a command for every believer in the world throughout all of time.

Let me know what questions you have. I have quoted mostly from "The Table" in this e-mail, if you would like to read the entire surah.

Peace be with you all.