NYT: 3 Clergymen tell how differences of faith led to friendship

Laurie Goodstein writes for the NYT.

NASHVILLE — It sounds like the start of a joke: a rabbi, a minister and a Muslim sheik walk into a restaurant.

The three say they became close not by avoiding or glossing over their conflicts, but by running straight at them.
But there they were, Rabbi Ted Falcon, the Rev. Don Mackenzie and Sheik Jamal Rahman, walking into an Indian restaurant, and afterward a Presbyterian church. The sanctuary was full of 250 people who came to hear them talk about how they had wrestled with their religious differences and emerged as friends.

They call themselves the “interfaith amigos.” And while they do sometimes seem more like a stand-up comedy team than a trio of clergymen, they know they have a serious burden in making a case for interfaith understanding in a country reeling after a Muslim Army officer at Fort Hood, Tex., was charged with opening fire on his fellow soldiers, killing 13.

“It arouses once again fear, distrust and doubt,” Sheik Rahman said, “and I know that when that happens, even the best of people cannot think clearly.”

The three say they became close not by avoiding or glossing over their conflicts, but by running straight at them. They put everything on the table: the verses they found offensive in one another’s holy books, anti-Semitism, violence in the name of religion, claims by each faith to have the exclusive hold on truth, and, of course, Israel.

“One of the problems in the past with interfaith dialogue is we’ve been too unwilling to upset each other,” Rabbi Falcon told the crowd at the Second Presbyterian Church here. “We try to honor the truth. This is the truth for you, and this is the truth for me. It may not be reconcilable, but it is important to refuse to make the other the enemy.”

Asked what is the hardest issue they have faced, the minister and the sheik simultaneously said, “Israel.”

“Yeah,” the rabbi said, “ ’cause these guys still don’t understand.”

Across the country, interfaith initiatives are multiplying. Jews and Christians have held dialogues for years, but after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many local interfaith groups decided it was urgent to include Muslims. Many Muslims were eager, too, concerned that their faith not be defined by terrorism. There are now interfaith Thanksgivings, interfaith college clubs, interfaith women’s groups and interfaith teams building affordable housing. On Nov. 14 and 15, 100 synagogues and mosques in North America and Europe paired up for dialogues and joint social service projects.

What distinguishes the “amigos,” who live in Seattle but make presentations around the country, is a unique approach to what they call “the spirituality of interfaith relations.” At the church in Nashville, the three clergymen, dressed in dark blazers, stood up one by one and declared what they most valued as the core teachings of their tradition The minister said “unconditional love.” The sheik said “compassion.” And the rabbi said “oneness.”

The room then grew quiet as each stood and recited what he regarded as the “untruths” in his own faith. The minister said that one “untruth” for him was that “Christianity is the only way to God.” The rabbi said for him it was the notion of Jews as “the chosen people.” And the sheik said for him it was the “sword verses” in the Koran, like “kill the unbeliever.”

“It is a verse taken out of context,” Sheik Rahman said, pointing out that the previous verse says that God has no love for aggressors. “But we have to acknowledge that ‘kill the unbelievers’ is an awkward verse,’ ” the sheik said as the crowd laughed. “Some verses are literal, some are metaphorical, but the Koran doesn’t say which is which.”

Clearly, all three clergymen are in the liberal wing of their respective faiths. Mr. Mackenzie, 65, is a minister in the United Church of Christ, and recently retired from leading a large congregation, the University Congregational U.C.C., in Seattle. As a young man, he taught in Lebanon.

Rabbi Falcon, 67, is a Reform rabbi with a doctorate in clinical psychology who founded synagogues in Los Angeles and Seattle that meld meditation with Jewish tradition.

Sheik Rahman, 59, is a Sufi, a path of Islam focused more on spiritual wisdom than strict ritual. He is the son of a diplomat from Bangladesh, which helps explain his courtly ease. He co-founded an unusual mixed-faith congregation in Seattle, the Interfaith Community Church.

The minister and the rabbi met in a Christian-Jewish dialogue group, and the rabbi and the sheik met later when they were both on the board of a fledgling university that never got off the ground. After Sept. 11, Rabbi Falcon reached out to Sheik Rahman. They conducted several interfaith workshops, and for the first anniversary of the attacks, Rabbi Falcon invited Mr. Mackenzie to get involved, and the events were held at Mr. Mackenzie’s church. When they were over, the three said to one another, why stop now?

They began to meet weekly for spiritual direction, combining mutual support with theological reflection. Their families became acquainted over meals. They started an AM radio show, and they traveled together to Israel and the occupied territories. Recently, they wrote a book, “Getting to the Heart of Interfaith,” (Skylight Paths, 2009).

At one point, the rabbi read a line the sheik had written about the security wall in Israel and announced, “If that line is in the book, I’m not in the book.” After vigorous discussion, Sheik Rahman rewrote the line in a way that both men felt was respectful of their principles.

In the question-and-answer period at the church here, one woman challenged, “It would behoove you to start speaking in mosques.” (They already have some mosque events planned.) Others asked for practical steps to build bridges.

Afterward, Mark Wingate, a computer programmer and a Methodist, said: “Talking about the untruths of each tradition is very courageous. It gets it out of the platitude category and into dialogue.”

Mr. Wingate’s wife, Sally, added: “They had to work really hard to get to that point. Most of us are not willing to work that hard.”

My time in Hizb ut-Tahrir

Rashad Ali, an ex Islamist extremist gives a short interview with the Times on his experience in Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist organization.

Rashad now works with the Quilliam Foundation, an anti-extremist think tank.

God's Country: a report on religious violence in northern Nigeria

The Atlantic has a fascinating report by Eliza Griswold, daughter of the previous Episcopal Presiding Bishop, Frank. It's about religious violence between Christians and Muslims in northern Nigeria. The story, in fact, starts off with violence.

It was an ordinary soccer pitch: sparse tufts of grass and reddish soil surrounded by cinder-block homes. The two candidates stood on opposite sides of the field as the people of Yelwa, a town of 30,000 in central Nigeria, lined up behind them one May morning in 2002 to vote. Whoever had more supporters would lead the town’s council. And whoever led the council would control the certificates of indigeneship: the papers certifying that Yelwa was their home, and that they had a right there to land, jobs, and scholarships. Between the iron goalposts milled ethnic Jarawa, principally Muslim merchants and herders; next to them were the Tarok and Goemai, predominantly farmers and Christians. For several years, their hereditary tribal chief, a Christian, had refused certificates of indigeneship to Muslims no matter how long they’d lived in Yelwa. Without the certificates, the Muslims were second-class citizens.

As the two groups waited in the heat to be counted, the meeting’s tone soured. “You could feel the tension in the air,” Abdullahi Abdullahi, a 55-year-old Muslim lawyer and community leader, said later. A tall, thin man with a space between his two front teeth and shoulders hunched around his ears in perpetual apology, he was helping to direct the crowd that day. No one knows what happened first. Someone shouted arna—infidel”—at the Christians. Someone spat the word jihadi at the Muslims. Someone picked up a stone. “That was the day ethnicity disappeared entirely, and the conflict became just about religion,” Abdullahi said. Chaos broke out, as young people on each side began to throw rocks. The candidates ran for their lives, and mobs set fire to the surrounding houses.

After that episode, the Christians issued an edict that no Christian girl could be seen with a Muslim boy. “We had a problem of intermarriage,” Pastor Sunday Wuyep, a church leader in Yelwa, told me on the first of two visits I made in 2006 and 2007. “Just because our ladies are stupid and attracted to money,” he sighed. Economics lay at the heart of the enmity between the two groups: as merchants and herders, the Muslim Jarawa were much wealthier than the Christian Tarok and Goemai. But Pastor Sunday, like many others of his faith, felt that Muslims were trying to wipe out Christians by converting them through marriage. “It’s scriptural, this fight,” he said. So he and the other elders decided to punish the women. “If a woman gets caught with a Muslim man,” Sunday said, “she must be forcibly brought back.” The decree turned out to be a call to vigilante violence as patrols of young men, both Christian and Muslim, took to the streets. What eventually transpired, in the name of religion, was a kind of Clockwork Orange.

What happens when two faiths claim to have exclusive truth? What happens when those truths are opposed, and the two faiths have adherents in the same country, in this case a populous state of 140 million, evenly divided between Muslims and Christians? What if social conditions in that country, like poverty and a weak government and police force, are conducive violence?

Is there hope for peace between Christianity and Islam?

Must there always be war between our faiths?

For reasons that Eliza covers in her article, the two are generally geographically separate. Islam started in the north, Christianity in the south. However, the faiths meet in the Middle Belt, an arid and hilly area that had good natural defenses. The British united North and South Nigeria, and forbade Christian missionaries from proselytizing. They also started colonial policies favoring Muslims, possibly out of some distrust that Christian missionaries would disrupt their empire.

Yelwa was a recent site of religious violence.

ne Tuesday at 7 a.m. in Yelwa, about 70 people were praying their morning devotions at the Church of Christ in Nigeria (founded by none other than the fiery Kumm himself). It was in February 2004, about a year after the elders had issued their edict that no Christian woman was to be seen with a Muslim man. As the worshippers finished their prayers, they heard gunshots and a call from the loudspeakers of the mosque next door: “Allahu Akhbar, let us go for jihad.” “We were terrified,” recalled Pastor Sunday, who had been standing outside the gate as the churchyard swarmed with strangers. He stayed near the church gate, but many other people fled toward the road behind the church. There, men dressed in military fatigues reassured them that they were safe and herded them back to the church. Then the men opened fire.

Pastor Sunday fled; that’s why he survived. The attackers—who were not, in fact, Nigerian soldiers—set the church on fire and killed everyone who tried to escape. They chased the head of the church, Pastor Sampson Bukar, to his house next door and ran him through with cutlasses. They set fire to the nursery school and the pastor’s house. During my first visit to Yelwa in the summer of 2006, his burned Peugeot was still outside. The church had been rebuilt and painted salmon pink. Boys were playing soccer, each wearing only one shoe so that everyone could kick the ball. “Seven in my family were killed,” said Sunday as we sat in the churchyard. “We call them martyrs.” He pointed to a mound of earth not far from where we were sitting. On top was a small wooden cross: it marked the mass grave for the 78 people killed that day.

“This is about religious intolerance,” he went on. “Our God is different than the Muslim God … If he were the same God, we wouldn’t fight.” For Pastor Sunday, the clash was millenarian and grounded in the literal words of Christian scripture. “The Bible says in Matthew 24, the time will come when they will pursue us in our churches,” he said. Matthew 24 foretells the Tribulation: the war that will precede Armageddon and the final coming of Jesus.

A few hundred yards down the road from the church, there’s a cornfield. In it, a row of mounds: more  mass graves. White signs tally the dead below in green paint: 110, 50, 65, 100, 55, 25, 60, 20, 40, 105. Two months after the church was razed, Christian men and boys surrounded Yelwa. Many were bare-chested; others wore shirts on which they’d reportedly pinned white name tags identifying them as members of the Christian Association of Nigeria, an umbrella organization founded in the 1970s to give Christians a collective and unified voice as strong as that of Muslims. Each tag had a number instead of a name: a code, it seemed, for identification. They attacked the town. According to Human Rights Watch, 660 Muslims were massacred over the course of the next two days, including the patients in the Al-Amin clinic. Twelve mosques and 300 houses went up in flames. Young girls were marched to a nearby Christian town and forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. Many were raped, and 50 were killed.

Another Pastor was interviewed.

Pastor James Movel Wuye was born in Kaduna into an ethnic minority called Gbagyi. Historically, his people were aboriginal warriors who fought off Hausa Muslim slave raiders before the arrival of the British, who actually made things worse. “They were merciless, the Muslims who were ruling over us,” he said. His people still call the Hausa Muslims ajei, which means “those who trouble us.” Pastor James’s father was a soldier, and when James and the other barracks boys played war, their imagined enemies were their Hausa oppressors. As a teenager, James rebelled: he drank and smoked, and he wooed a long list of girlfriends. He also joined the Christian Association of Nigeria and, at 27, became general secretary of the Youth Wing. In 1987, the Middle Belt exploded. When fighting between Christians and Muslims reached Kaduna, Pastor James became the head of a Christian militia. “We took an oath of secrecy,” he said. “We carried pictures of those [of us] who’d been killed. We were martyrs: we felt that we were dying in defense of the Church.” The war, like the faith itself, became a struggle for liberation.

James incited violence by relying on the literal, inspired word of scripture. “I used to say, ‘We’ve been beaten on both cheeks, there’s no other cheek to turn,’” he said. “I used Luke 22:36: as Jesus said to the disciples the night before his crucifixion, ‘And if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.’” When the pastor was 32, a fight broke out between Christians and Muslims over control of a market. “That day, we were outnumbered,” he said. “Twenty of my friends were killed. I passed out, so I don’t know exactly what happened.” When he woke up, his right arm was gone, sliced off with a machete.

I've castigated Peter Akinola on numerous occasions. However, Westerners must understand his context. There is violence on a daily basis. It occurs between religions, but a bishop Eliza interviewed points towards a deeper cause, of poverty, past colonialism, of a government unable to police the country to stop the violence. Before you castigate Peter, understand his context.

Peter does show up in this story, actually.

At the time of the massacre, Archbishop Peter Akinola was the president of the Christian Association of  Nigeria, whose membership was implicated in the killings. He has since lost his bid for another term but, as primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, he is still the leader of 18 million Anglicans. He is a colleague of my father, who was the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in America from 1997 to 2006. But the American Episcopals’ election of an openly homosexual bishop in 2003, which Archbishop Akinola denounced as “satanic,” created distance between them. When I arrived in 2006 in the capital of Abuja to see the archbishop, his office door was locked. Its complicated buzzing-in system was malfunctioning, and he was trapped inside. Finally, after several minutes, the angry buzzes stopped and I could hear a man behind the door rise and come across the floor. The archbishop, in a pale-blue pantsuit and a darker-blue crushed-velvet hat, opened the door.

“My views on Islam are well known: I have nothing more to say,” he said, as we sat down. Archbishop Akinola has repeatedly spoken critically about Islam and liberal Western Protestants, and he was understandably wary of my motives for asking his thoughts. For Akinola, the relationship between liberal Protestants and Islam is straightforward: if Western Christians abandon conservative morals, then the global Church will be weakened in its struggle against Islam. “When you have this attack on Christians in Yelwa, and there are no arrests, Christians become dhimmi, the vocabulary within Islam that allows Christians and Jews to be seen as second-class citizens. You are subject to the Muslims. You have no rights.”

When asked if those wearing name tags that read “Christian Association of Nigeria” had been sent to the Muslim part of Yelwa, the archbishop grinned. “No comment,” he said. “No Christian would pray for violence, but it would be utterly naive to sweep this issue of Islam under the carpet.” He went on, “I’m not out to combat anybody. I’m only doing what the Holy Spirit tells me to do. I’m living my faith, practicing and preaching that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to God, and they respect me for it. They know where we stand. I’ve said before: let no Muslim think they have the monopoly on violence.”

Archbishop Akinola, 63, is a Yoruba, a member of an ethnic group from southwestern Nigeria, where Christians and Muslims coexist peacefully. But the archbishop’s understanding of Islam was forged by his experience in the north, where he watched the persecution of a Christian minority. He was more interested during our interview, though, in talking about the West than about Nigeria.

“People are thinking that Islam is an issue in Africa and Asia, but you in the West are sitting on explosives.” What people in the West don’t understand, he said, “is that what Islam failed to accomplish by the sword in the eighth century, it’s trying to do by immigration so that Muslims become citizens and demand their rights. A Muslim man has four wives; the wives have four or five children each. This is how they turned Christians into a minority in North Africa.”

He went on, “The West has thrown God out, and Islam is filling that vacuum for you, and now your Christian heritage is being destroyed … You people are so afraid of being accused of being Islam-phobic. Consequently everyone recedes and says nothing … Over the years, Christians have been so naive—avoiding politics, economics, and the military because they’re dirty business. The missionaries taught that. Dress in tatters. Wear your bedroom slippers. Be poor. But Christians are beginning to wake up to the fact that money isn’t evil, the love of money is, and it isn’t wrong to have some of it. Neither is politics.”

There are some things for which there is no excuse whatsoever. Certain crimes, like genocide and organized rape, are considered to be crimes against humanity. They so outrage the conscience that all of humankind is hurt. If this is true, then our Creator is surely hurt also. Crimes this heinous are also crimes against God.

Most Christians would say that all people have the right to act in self-defense, provided the response is proportional to the threat, and the response is in itself just. We can surely understand, after this, that Christians are subject to heinous crimes. They feel that murder and rape of Muslims is a just response.

It is not.

When Danladi and Ibrahim reached their captors’ village, they were forced to drink alcohol and to eat pork and dog meat. Although she was obviously pregnant, Danladi’s abductor repeatedly raped her during the next four days. After a month, the police fetched Danladi and Ibrahim from the Christian village and took them to the camp where most of the town’s Muslim residents had fled. There, the two young women were reunited with their husbands. They never discussed what happened in the bush.

“The Christians don’t want us here because they don’t like our religion,” Danladi said. “Do you really think they took you because of your religion?” I asked. The women looked at each other. “In Islamic history, there are times when believers and nonbelievers have fought,” Danladi said. “We think what happened here is part of the clash that will come. After the clash, people will see poverty and suffering and that’s what’s happening now. According to our ulamas [teachers], there is no way that the whole world will not be Muslim.”

Later, I looked up Matthew 24, the verses that Pastor Sunday had cited. In many versions of the Bible, Jesus’ words are inked in red to show that these are the exact and inerrant words of the Lord. Down the rice-paper page, one red verse (Matthew 24:19) caught my eye: “But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days!” I thought of Hamamatu Danladi. After her rape, she told me, she didn’t give birth for four more months, which meant she carried that child for more than a year. Maybe I didn’t understand her. When I returned to visit her a year later, I asked again if I’d misunderstood. No, she said, she’d carried the baby for more than a year. Maybe, she thought, he simply refused to come into this world during the conflagration.

Peter must surely account for his actions.

We have only the words recorded by Eliza Griswold to go on. But Peter's words and actions in this area and others speak of a man who, frankly, commits murder and then invokes the name of God to deny it. If he is not a murderer in bishop's clothing, he must speak now.

Additionally, American conservatives who have affiliated with the Church of Nigeria must ask hard questions about their archbishop. They need to consider what sort of message they send if they swear allegiance to a murderer.

Rowan Williams refused to invite Nolbert Kunonga to the Lambeth Conference due to his murderous actions. Peter Akinola would deserve the same treatment, unless he accounts satisfactorily for himself.

Crimes against humanity are also crimes against God, our Creator.

Christians and Muslims who commit crimes against humanity, and then justify them using the name of humanity's Creator, are committing a grave sin.

For some things, there can be no excuse.

Rowan Williams to impose Sharia law in Britain

OK, that's NOT what Rowan said at all: he wants to allow Muslims to be able to choose Sharia law for certain civil matters, as is done in some other countries. But it makes for a better headline.

The BBCa report. Thinking Anglicans has reactions here and here. I wonder what Big Pete (as in, Peter Akinola, the notorious homophobe) will think?


Williams under fire in Sharia row

Dr Williams interview
The Archbishop of Canterbury has attracted widespread criticism after appearing to back the adoption of some aspects of Sharia law in the UK.

Dr Rowan Williams said the UK had to "face up to the fact" some citizens did not relate to the UK legal system.

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham said such moves would create "social chaos."

But Bishop of Hulme, the Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, criticised the "disgraceful" way in which the archbishop had been "ridiculed" and "lampooned" by some.

"We have probably one of the greatest and the brightest archbishops of Canterbury we have had for many a long day," he said.

Taken aback

The robust defence follows criticism of Dr Williams in some circles.

The BBC understands from sources who work on Christian-Muslim interfaith issues that the Dr Williams has faced a barrage of criticism from within the Church and has been genuinely taken aback by how his words were received.

Islamic Sharia law is a legal and social code designed to help Muslims live their daily lives, but it has proved controversial in the West for the extreme nature of some of its punishments.

[The] implication that British courts should treat people differently based on their faith is divisive and dangerous
Trevor Phillips
Equality and Human Rights Commission

Dr Rowan Williams told BBC Radio 4 on Thursday that he believed the adoption of some Sharia law in the UK seemed "unavoidable".

He said adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law could help social cohesion. For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

But Gordon Brown's spokesman said the prime minister "believes that British laws should be based on British values".

He added that Mr Brown had a good relationship with the archbishop, who was perfectly entitled to express his views.

Shaista Gohir, a government advisor on Muslim women and director of Muslim Voice UK, said she did not believe there was a need for Sharia courts because "the majority of Muslims do not want it".

SHARIA LAW
Sharia law is Islam's legal system
It is derived from the Koran and the life of the prophet Mohammed
Sharia rulings help Muslims understand how they should lead their lives
A formal legal ruling is called a fatwa
In the West, Sharia courts deal mainly with family and business issues
English law recognises religious courts as a means of arbitration

She told BBC News: "Many Muslim commentators and the media are wrongly assuming that all Muslims want Sharia law in the UK.

"Various polls have so far indicated that around 40% want Sharia law. Although this is a significant percentage, why ignore the views of the other 60%?"

Following the archbishop's comments, Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said: "To ask us to fundamentally change the rule of law and to adopt Sharia law, I think, is fundamentally wrong."

Shadow community cohesion minister Baroness Warsi told BBC News 24: "Dr Williams seems to be suggesting that there should be two systems of law, running alongside each other, almost parallel, and for people to be offered the choice of opting into one or the other. That is unacceptable."

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said he had "an enormous amount of respect" for Dr Williams, but could not agree with him on this issue.

He said: "Equality before the law is part of the glue that binds our society together. We cannot have a situation where there is one law for one person and different laws for another."


Trevor Phillips, who chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the "implication that British courts should treat people differently based on their faith is divisive and dangerous".

In an interview with BBC correspondent Christopher Landau, Dr Williams said Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".

He stressed "nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that's sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well".

'Respect and tolerance'

But Dr Williams said an approach to law which simply said "there's one law for everybody and that's all there is" was dangerous.

Under English law, people may devise their own way to settle a dispute in front of an agreed third party as long as both sides agree to the process.

There is, and should only be, one law which covers all people and to suggest it can be otherwise is to seriously damage our rights

Patricia London, UK

Muslim Sharia courts and Orthodox Jewish courts which already exist in the UK come into this category.

Dilwar Hussain of the Islamic Foundation, an influential think-tank on Muslims in Europe, said non-Muslims needed to be reassured that nobody wanted to invent a new legal system.

He said: "Most Muslims are perfectly happy with the legal system as it exists in the UK. They support it. It protects them, it includes provisions for Halal food and for banking services. In other words, some of the most important things that concern people are already there in the system.

"We are not seeking the introduction of a new system - absolutely not. But there are some areas, issues around families for example, where many Muslims would like to be able to find solutions according to what they believe. That is not incompatible with our law."

Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "We're looking at a very small aspect of Sharia for Muslim families when they choose to be governed with regards to their marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody of children and so forth.

"Let's debate this issue. It is very complex. It is not as straight forward as saying that we will have a system here."

A word of hope between us and them

Posted on God's Politics, a blog by several members of Sojourners.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
A Word of Hope Between 'Us and Them' (by Brian McLaren)

Last week I wrote about the possibility of waking up to war with Iran. My fear that we are sleeping now, and should be in the streets and taking action, turns all of my anxiety into a feeling of profound nausea.

But at the very moment of nausea, I see a glimmer of hope. A group of 138 Muslim leaders from around the world and across the various denominations of Islam have come together to reach out to Christians through a statement entitled "A Common Word Between Us and You." In this document, they affirm that they share the same commitment to the great commandment of Jesus that we hold dear: the call to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This command, they make clear, means that they see Christians as their neighbors, and to be faithful to their faith and values, they want to reach out to us in our faith – in love, as neighbors.

They acknowledge the obvious truth: Christianity - with over 30% of the world's population - and Islam - with over 20% - together comprise over 50% of the world's people. In light of those numbers, unless Christians and Muslims learn to get along as neighbors, nobody in the world will be secure. Our world's great religions must either allow themselves to be manipulated by political and corporate interests as agents of fear and distrust that predictably lead to war, or they must be converted into agents of peace, justice, and love.

This is not simply another mushy, gushy, least-common-denominator, "I'd like to teach the world to sing" style of feel-good "can't we all just get along." The Muslim leaders acknowledge, "… Islam and Christianity are obviously different religions—and … there is no minimizing some of their formal differences." But then they go on to say, " ... it is clear that the two greatest commandments are an area of common ground and a link between the Qur'an, the Torah, and the New Testament."

Thankfully, a group of Christians that includes evangelical theologian Miroslav Volf has responded with a beautiful reply. This emerging dialogue represents to me a tremendous opening, a needed alternative to terror and counter-terror, a gesture and counter-gesture of peace - the makers of which, Jesus said, will be blessed indeed (Matthew 5:9). Thank God for these signs of good hope amid spreading fear. Let us throw our prayers and energies behind them.

Financial Times: Britons more suspicious of Muslims than other countries, even the US

[this article was posted on MSN Money.]

Britons are more suspicious of Muslims than Americans and other Europeans are, according to a poll for the Financial Times.

Only 59 per cent of Britons thought it possible to be both a Muslim and a citizen of their country, a smaller proportion than in France, Germany, Spain, Italy or the US – the other countries polled by Harris Interactive.

British citizens were also the most likely to predict a "major terrorist attack" in their country in the next 12 months; to consider Muslims "a threat to national security", and to believe Muslims had too much political power in their country.

However, on more personal measures of integration – having Muslim friends and accepting the marriage of their child to a Muslim – Britons showed more enthusiasm than some other countries.

The findings suggest that terrorist plots against the UK, including the London bombings of July 7 2005, have hardened British attitudes towards Muslims. Osama Saeed of the Muslim Association of Britain blamed the findings on what he called "a vicious campaign" by the press against the Muslim community,.

Most British respondents – 52 per cent – expected a "major terrorist attack" in their country within a year. Even in Spain where the Basque extremist group Eta has recently abandoned a ceasefire, only 32 per cent predicted a big attack. The numbers fell to 30 per cent in the US and 15 to 18 per cent in France, Italy and Germany.

France emerged as the country most at ease with its Muslim population. The French were most likely to say they had Muslim friends, to accept if their child wanted to marry a Muslim, and to say Muslims in their country had received unjustified criticism and prejudice.

Patrick Weil, political scientist at the University of Paris 1- Sorbonne, said: "In France we are very good at cultural integration. We are very bad in fighting discrimination, especially in high-level jobs. In the UK it is the opposite."

In the US, which has proportionally fewer Muslim inhabitants than France, Britain or Germany, 21 per cent saw the presence of Muslims as a threat, while 20 per cent said Muslims had too much power.

Harris conducted an online poll between August 1 and 13 of 6,398 adults, broadly split among the six countries surveyed.

Iranian minister backs temporary marriage to relieve lust of youth

Robert Tait in Tehran
Monday June 4, 2007
The Guardian


Iran's interior minister has challenged a social taboo by urging the revival of the ancient Shia practice of temporary marriage to give young people easier legitimate access to sex.
Moustafa Pourmohammadi, the minister, said the tradition, known as sigheh, should be promoted to offset a trend towards later marriage, which he said was depriving Iran's youth of sexual fulfilment.

The custom of sigheh, which allows couples to establish unions lasting from a few minutes to 99 years, is permitted under Shia Islam but has been likened in Iran to prostitution.

But Mr Pourmohammadi, a conservative cleric, described it as "God's rule" and said it was an acceptable alternative to pre-marital sex, which is forbidden under Islamic law.
"The increase in the marriage age in this country has caused many problems," he told a conference in the city of Qom. "Is it possible that Islam is indifferent to a 15-year-old youth into whom God has put lust? We have to find a solution to meet the sexual desire of the youth who have no possibility of marriage. Islam is a comprehensive and complete religion and has a solution for every behaviour and need, and temporary marriage is one of its solutions for the needs of the youth."

He called on religious schools to study the possible side effects of an increase in the practice.

Roughly half of Iran's 70 million people are under the age of 30. Increasing numbers are delaying marriage under monetary pressures, including rising inflation and house prices.

Mr Pourmohammadi's plea echoed a similar call in 1990 by Iran's president at the time, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who said temporary marriage was preferable to being "promiscuous like the westerners".

However, the idea has been attacked by women's groups.

Rafat Bayat, a fundamentalist female MP, said the custom had to be strictly supervised and limited. "Do you accept, yourself, to tell to your daughter's suitor that your daughter has already made temporary marriage several times?" she asked Mr Pourmohammadi.

As it clashes with a cultural tradition favouring women being virgins until marriage, sigheh has been unpopular among Iranians. It allows Muslim men to have temporary marriages with non-Muslim women, but Muslim women can only have such relationships with co-religionists. Sigheh children are classed as legitimate.

The custom is thought to have originated among pre-Islamic Arab tribes. The Prophet Mohammed recommended it to his companions and soldiers, though it was later banned under Sunni Islam.


[Editor: I believe there is a similar custom known as handfasting, practiced by ancient Pagan peoples. A couple would get handfasted for a year and a day.]

US Sunnis and Shiites sign intra-faith code of conduct

I'm not sure if this story is active on the Caspers Star Tribune website, so I'm posting the text below. The original link is here. It is my hope that Muslims in the West will continue such intra-faith measures, that they will learn to make accomodations to Western culture in a manner consistent with their faith, and that Western culture will accomodate to Muslim culture.


Muslim leaders are trying to strengthen Sunni-Shiite ties in the United States, hoping to head off conflicts between the faith's two major sects and get American Muslims to focus on common problems.

With sectarian divisions fueling violence in Iraq, Sunnis and Shiites in the U.S. are increasingly wary of a spillover effect. In one public example, leaders from both traditions have launched "Intra-faith Code of Honor" campaigns in three cities with major Muslim populations.

So far, 20 Sunni and Shiite leaders in Southern California have signed the first such code. The document denounces "takfir" _ the labeling of another Muslim as a nonbeliever _ forbids hateful speech about revered figures and urges debates at the scholarly level, not the street level.

Similar agreements are expected to be completed this month in Detroit and Washington, D.C.

"As technology has made information from across the globe and information from historical conflicts more available, people have been pondering their self-identity," said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, which is helping organize the effort. "That has brought a requirement to appreciate the nuances, but it's also brought challenges."

Those include questions over how prayer is conducted, said Dr. Maher Hathout, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Southern California, which eschews Sunni or Shiite labels. The honor code urges congregations to follow worship traditions of whichever groups is in the majority locally, an issue that has arisen over the Shiite custom of combining some of Islam's five daily prayers, Hathout said.

Another concern is keeping virulently sectarian literature from the Middle East out of American mosques.

"As much as we can make clear the Muslim-American identity is not a natural extension of the Middle East, the better off we'll be," he said.

Other steps under discussion include gathering national Sunni and Shiite leaders, workshops at mosques and political analysis of Middle East trends "so people are not caught off guard," Al-Marayati said.

Although no reliable data exists, it is presumed America's estimated 2 million to 6 million Muslims are 85 percent to 90 percent Sunni and 10 percent to 15 percent Shiite, reflecting the global breakdown. Conflicts have been few, scholars say, in part because this country's Muslim population is relatively small. Plus, immigrant U.S. Muslims tend to be prosperous and are melding into society instead of clustering in poorer neighborhoods, which has caused conflict in Europe.

Theological divisions between Sunnis and Shiites are less pronounced than, say, those separating Roman Catholics and Protestants, Muslim scholars emphasize. The main dividing line: a disagreement over succession that began after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

In the Detroit area _ home to the nation's largest concentration of Muslims _ Shiites blamed Sunnis for vandalism at Shiite-affiliated mosques and businesses after the execution of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who repressed the Shiite majority in Iraq.

Shiite Imam Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Mich., the largest mosque in North America, said sectarian tensions are not a serious problem, and most Sunnis and Shiites get along.

At the same time, intra-faith efforts can address the graver problem of anti-Muslim sentiment, he said. Bias incidents against Muslims including harassment, violence and discrimination rose nearly one-third last year to a 12-year high, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"Shiites and Sunnis need to work together so we can face our joint challenges," Qazwini said.

Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky, said challenges posed by the terrorist attacks, the first Gulf War and the ongoing war in Iraq have united Sunni and Shiites in the United States more than divided them.

"There's never really been a very strong ecumenical movement in Islamic history that has really tried to forge understanding," he said. "Maybe this is the beginning of it."

Islam is about tolerance - 'not rigid views' - Straits Times, Singapore
by Zakir Hussain

The rigid way some Muslims around the world interpret Islam worries American Msulim scholar Sherman Jackson. Such an approach gives no room for differences of opinion and belief.

This is a threat to the tolerance that is inherent in Islam, said Professor Jackson, a leading scholar of Islam at the University of Michigan.

Such intolerance also goes against classical Islamic traditions, he added.

But this blinkered view is a temporary hiccup, as Muslims around the world increasingly seek to reconcile Islamic traditions with the realities of the modern world.

They are not without any references.

Prof Jackson seeks the practices of early Muslim theologians as a model.

These scholars had borrowed from Greek and Persian authors. Also, Muslim legal systems had in the past allowed Jews and Christians to practice their own religious laws.

"Classical Islamic tradition offers a model of tolerance and can contribute to pluralism and religious co-existence in the modern world," he told reporters ahead of a public lecture on diversity and tolerance in Islam at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts last night.

Prof Jackson, a Muslim, is on a 4-day visit here. [here = in Singapore: me]

The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Muis) and the Muslim Converts Association of Singapore had invited him as a speaker for their series on contemporary Muslim community with new trends and critical views in Islamic thinking.

National University of Singapore sociologist Syed Faris Alatas agreed with Prof Jackson's call that Muslims should revisit their history for models of tolerance and progress.

Intellectual and academic freedoms in many Muslim countries today are a far cry from those in the past, he said, thereby hindering their development because good ideas are controlled.

Prof Jackson also noted that historically, Muslim communities were able to differentiate between the moral and political spheres.

When the state morally disagreed with a group of people, it did not bar them from expressing their views, he said. "Now, if people think something is morally wrong, they believe they have a right to deny others that practice."

Such intolerance, he said, draws on a modern desire to homogenize society in contrast to the history of pluralism in Islam.

Worse, such views have fanned fears about Islam among non-Muslims, he added.

These fears have grown since the Sept 11 terror attacks in the United States in 2001.

However, Prof Jackson is confident such fears will pass, just as resentment against African-Americans getting equal rights in the 1960s was overcome.

"I am confident that ultimately, fair-mindedness will prevail," he said.


Editorial comments: Having read a couple of other books by liberal Muslims, many of them educated in the West, I believe that Professor Jackson is right to argue that Islam has the memes for pluralism and tolerance.

Non-Muslims should take heed of my other post today (Israel, tear down this wall: ++Rowan). We should get Israel to withdraw to the Green Line and remove all settlements. We should withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as reasonably possible. We should stop supporting dictators in Muslim countries. If we cease to threaten the freedom of Muslims, the tolerance memes in Islam will reassert themselves.

I am in no way asserting that Islam is some sort of ideal religion. At present, for example, it is illegal in many Muslim countries to convert away from Islam on pain of death. Christian converts and missionaries are persecuted. I am not trying to absolve the persecuters of their culpability, either. Indeed, their actions easily qualify them for the "fire and judgment" that this blog promises to those who violate human rights. However, I am saying that if we want to stop them, and if we want to stop planes from being flown into buildings, we have our own parts to play.

By demanding that Keith Ellison not swear his oath on the Koran, some Americans confuse jingoism with Christianity

Keith Ellison (D-MN) is America's first Muslim congressperson. Being a Muslim, he wishes to swear his oath of office with his hand upon the Koran. America stands for freedom of religion, among many other freedoms, so his wish appears perfectly reasonable to me ... if being Muslim were a problem for Minnesotans, they would not have elected him.

Dennis Prager, writing for the American Family Association, insists that:

"He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization."

"America, not Keith Ellison, decides what book a congressman takes his oath on."

"Devotees of multiculturalism and political correctness who do not see how damaging to the fabric of American civilization it is to allow Ellison to choose his own book need only imagine a racist elected to Congress. Would they allow him to choose Hitler's "Mein Kampf," the Nazis' bible, for his oath?"

"But these naive people do not appreciate that America will not change the attitude of a single American-hating Muslim by allowing Ellison to substitute the Koran for the Bible. In fact, the opposite is more likely: Ellison's doing so will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones, as Islamists, rightly or wrongly, see the first sign of the realization of their greatest goal -- the Islamicization of America."


Some posters on Titus One-Nine, a conservative Anglican blog, espouse similiar sentiments.

RAMcClain: "Let him resign if he refuses to swear on the Bible. I don’t believe we should give in to him, or anyone else who chooses otherwise."

Dee in Iowa: "The voting on AOL’s question as regards this is 2 to 1 in favor of him having to use the Bible. FYI I voted with the minority…."

MK: "1. because it represents Muslim expansionism into the accepted ways of the United States, which are Christian in foundation."
"He was raised a Roman Catholic and attended a Jesuit high school, then apostasized to Islam when he was 19. What did he learn at school?"

Christopher Hathaway: "Maybe it’s time we challenged the idea of a secular State indifferent to the religion which gave it life. The Koran knows no such thing as true religious freedom. I say keep that damned book as far from our government as possible."
"I think I have made clear my loathing of Islam as a vile and dangerous religion. It is not friendly to Western civilization."
"This country is a country based upon the freedom given to us by God, the God of the Bible, not the god of the Koran."


There's no easy way to say this, but the church in Nazi Germany (both Catholic and Protestant) confused jingoism with Christianity, and for the most part failed to condemn Hitler. For us to conflate Christianity and jingoism in America is to tread down the same path.

Prager's comments on "multiculturalism" are quite disturbing. Many White Americans seem to be afraid that their country is being overrun by people of color - Arizona, for example, declared English as the official language of the state. Prager is Jewish, and that makes it a lot more interesting. He forgets that Jews were once subject to discrimination and persecution in the US. If some political figure were to make a similar statement when anti-Semitism was still acceptable, it would invite, or at least legitimate, attacks on Jews.

Prager also comments that Jewish legislators in America have always sworn on the Bible. Indeed, Sens Coleman and Wellstone of Minnesota, both Jewish, swore on Bibles. But, they felt comfortable doing so. This isn't a Christian-only state. The oath is to the Constitution, not to the Bible. If Ellison can only honestly swear his oath on the Koran, then he absolutely should do so.

And, to bring us to face our racism, I should ask: if we elected a Jewish senator who insisted on swearing on the Torah, would the response be quite this vitriolic?


Titus One-Nine page:
http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?p=16490#comments

Prager's piece at American Family Association:
http://www.afa.net/aa112806_2.asp


Addendum: Titus 1:9 is maintained by Canon Kendall Harmon of, I believe, South Carolina. The articles he posts are usually very good and give a good view of the conservative side of the Episcopal Church. A lot of liberals and moderates frequent his blog as well, but some of the more virulent conservatives post things that are not so good.