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I
must be brief, and I want to talk about the most serious
religious crisis of our time. It is the rift that certain
fundamentalists--Christians, Jews and Muslims--are trying to
open between Christianity and Islam, the two largest religions
on the planet. Sadly, some people are seeking to foster hatred
and religious war on both sides. The sort of misinformation
that is being disseminated among Christians and Jews is quite
alarming and distressing. Some of it is outright falsehood.
For example, one thing you may hear today is that Muslims do
not worship God, they worship something else called Allah.
But Allah is simply the Arabic word for "God." It is closely
related to the word for God, Alaha, in Aramaic, the language
that Jesus and his disciples spoke, a language still spoken in
a few areas in the Middle East. If you are an Arab Christian,
or Arabic speaking Jew or Muslim, you pray to Allah. To
question that is like arguing that French speakers don't
worship God, they worship something else called "dieu".
Muslims worship the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and
anyone who opens an English translation of the Qur'an will see
that.
Jerry Vines, former head of the Southern Baptist Convention,
has described the beloved Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, as a
"demon-obsessed pedophile." Franklin Graham, son of Billy
Graham, who also gave the invocation at President Bush's
inauguration, describes Islam as "a very evil and false
religion." Jon Hanna, an evangelical minister from Ohio who
edits Connection Magazine in that state, also describes
Islam as "false." He cited the 1st epistle of St John (2: 21):
"The one who denies that Jesus is the Christ, he is the liar.
He is the Antichrist." Mr Hanna then concluded: "The Muslim
religion is an antichrist religion."
Yet this is a barefaced lie. The Qur'an, or Recitation
of the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad, the holy book of
Islam, always refers to Jesus as "the Messiah." Christos
or Christ is only a Greek translation of the Aramaic and
Hebrew word, "messiah." The Qur'an also refers to Jesus as the
word of God and spirit from Him, born of the sinless virgin
Mary, "purified above all women," and it gives more space to
Mary than the New Testament does. I know a number of Muslims
who ask "our Lady Mary" for her intercession every day. There
are several shrines in the Middle East where Christians and
Muslims honor Mary side by side and ask her to pray for them.
I have never heard, and never expect to hear, any Muslim
insult the name of Jesus. It would be a rejection of what
Islam has taught them, that he was the promised messiah, that
he ascended to heaven, and that he will come again before the
world ends.
Still another word you often hear is that Islam fosters
hatred, violence, and religious warfare. I want to spend a bit
of time on this, because it is so widespread a
misunderstanding. Jews are told to take an eye for an eye, a
tooth for a tooth. Christians are told that when smitten, they
should turn the other cheek-although I have met very few of
them who actually do that. Muslims on the other hand are told
in their revelation to resist oppression, even at great
personal cost, because otherwise one is only assisting the
oppressor to oppress, and God hates oppressors. This is basic
to Islamic ethics, and we need to understand it.
A
related matter much misunderstood is the doctrine of jihad
in Islam. It means "virtuous striving," and that is a matter
the Qur'an lays great stress on. "Did you suppose that you
would enter Paradise without God knowing who among you have
striven and are patient?" (Qur'an 3: 147).
Living a good Muslim life, praying ritually five times a day,
keeping the hard fast of Ramadan, going on the arduous
Pilgrimage to Mecca, giving generously to the poor, rearing
one's offspring in the fear of God, is all of it a jihad.
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