Yes, there are also enrichening encounters between Muslims and Christians

William Lane Craig in Denmark

The Christian philosopher William Lane Craig went on a speaking trip to Denmark in March, from the 18th to the 25th, and had an interesting encounter:

We then flew to Copenhagen, where our host was Jesper Christiansen, a Christian businessman who organized my debate with the Danish philosopher Klemens Kappel in 2012. This time I spoke at an evangelistic meeting on "The Existence of God." This meeting was held in a local church in a somewhat run-down neighborhood. What I later learned is that this is a Muslim section of town with many immigrants, and so a sizeable part of the large audience that night was Muslim, as we could readily see from the head coverings worn by the women. I was shocked that they would attend a Christian meeting in a church. But the Lord is doing a good work in this community. One man we met, now an ardent Christian, told me that 2 and 1/2 years ago he was a member of ISIS! During the question-and-answer [period,] we once again had intelligent questions posed by both secularists and Muslims in the audience.

Turns out, there is here still some common ground where Muslims and Christians can meet and discuss even theology. Some Muslims may even know the name "William Lane Craig" because he has almost singlehandedly resuscitated the Kalam Argument, an argument developed in the Muslim world, formulated to prove that the world has a beginning at a finite time in the past.

Let me offer an example. A church service might seem to have gone on forever, but it has to have had a beginning at a finite time in the past, or we would never have gotten to this point in the sermon.

Thomas Friedman Redux: More on Moderate Muslims' Reactions to the Islamic State

Thomas Friedman Redux

NYT

A week or two ago, I reported some of Thomas Friedman's findings on Muslims' disgust with the Islamic State and even disgust not only with Islamism but even with Islam itself, some Muslims opting for atheism, and Friedman reports on more such reactions this week:

[There is an] online backlash against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, by young Muslims declaring their opposition to rule by Islamic law, or Shariah, and even proudly avowing their atheism . . . . Ismail Mohamed, an Egyptian on a mission to create freedom of conscience there, started a program called "Black Ducks" to offer a space where agnostic and atheist Arabs can speak freely about their right to choose what they believe and resist coercion and misogyny from religious authorities. He is part of a growing Arab Atheists Network. (Friedman, "How ISIS Drives Muslims From Islam," New York Times, DEC. 6, 2014)

Not all choose atheism:

Another voice getting attention is Brother Rachid, a Moroccan who created his own YouTube network to deliver his message of tolerance and to expose examples of intolerance within his former Muslim faith community[, for] he's converted to Christianity . . . . In . . . [a] recent segment on YouTube, which has been viewed 500,000 times, Brother Rachid addressed President Obama: "Dear Mr. President, I must tell you that you are wrong about ISIL. You said ISIL speaks for no religion. I am a former Muslim. My dad is an imam. I have spent more than 20 years studying Islam . . . . I can tell you with confidence that ISIL speaks for Islam . . . . ISIL's 10,000 members are all Muslims . . . . They come from different countries and have one common denominator: Islam. They are following Islam's Prophet Muhammad in every detail . . . . They have called for a caliphate, which is a central doctrine in Sunni Islam . . . . I ask you, Mr. President, to stop being politically correct - to call things by their names. ISIL, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabab in Somalia, the Taliban, and their sister brand names, are all made in Islam. Unless the Muslim world deals with Islam and separates religion from state, we will never end this cycle . . . . If Islam is not the problem, then why is it there are millions of Christians in the Middle East and yet none of them has ever blown up himself to become a martyr, even though they live under the same economic and political circumstances and even worse? . . . . Mr. President, if you really want to fight terrorism, then fight it at the roots. How many Saudi sheikhs are preaching hatred? How many Islamic channels are indoctrinating people and teaching them violence from the Quran and the hadith? . . . . How many Islamic schools are producing generations of teachers and students who believe in jihad and martyrdom and fighting the infidels?"

ISIS, by claiming to speak for all Muslims - and by promoting a puritanical form of Islam that takes present-day, Saudi-funded, madrassa indoctrination to its logical political conclusion - has blown the lid off some long simmering frustrations in the Arab Muslim world.

I hope this new-found skepticism leads to an opening among Arabs and the Muslim world. Last time I posted on this, I noted that some Muslims were reading the hadith and sunnah for the first time and discovering that the Islamic State has textual support for its actions.

The question therefore poses itself: Where is the line between Islam and Islamism to be drawn?

Christmas: Once a Year Too Often?

Hani Nakshabandi
Liberal Saudi Author and Journalist
Memri

Like every holiday, I suppose, Christmas comes but once a year, but that's once too many times for some, apparently, though not for the 'liberal' Saudi Mr. Nakshabandi, whose more positive opinion is implied in his words on Christians and (I guess) on some Islamists:

I listened to the Christmas sermon in a few churches, and they called for love and forgiveness. I also listened to a few Friday sermons [in the mosques] and most dealt with the ban on celebrating Christmas and threatened [anyone doing so] with hell. One side calls for love and the other side threatens damnation! ("Saudi Author: Nothing Wrong With Muslims Joining Christmas Celebrations," Memri, Special Dispatch No. 5577, December 26, 2013)

Well, there's got to be at least a balance between hatred and love! But maybe even that balance is insufficient for some haters who want the utter destruction of love, as Mr. Nakshabandi goes on to point out:

Tune the radio to any news channel. Most of the news items concern a killing here and a bombing there . . . and the vast majority, most unfortunately, are connected to Muslims. To [dissociate] ourselves [from these acts], we term [those perpetrating these actions] extremist terrorists. However an extremist is also someone who rules that celebrating the holidays [of non-Muslims] is forbidden because he objects to a world engulfed in love and prefers hating and ostracizing the other and even hopes that the other will die, if possible.

Mr. Nakshabandi hopes for peace on earth, "that love should prevail throughout the world." He believes that we would be happier if we all tried harder for that . . . but we find ourselves as fathers, mothers, siblings confronted by those who haven't left hatred behind. Mr. Nakshabandi nevertheless has hope:

Do we need love or killing? I hope the day will come when Muslim religious scholars have the courage to admit that participating in the celebrations and festivities of another -- any other -- is a good deed that is not motivated by love for this religion or other but by the desire that love should prevail throughout the world.

If only the Islamists agreed . . .

Robert Spencer Implying a Treasonous Obama?

President Obama

9/11 Memorial Service in NYC

(Image from US Embassy, Seoul, Korea)

I learn a lot about radical Islam from reading Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch, but I'm careful to remain my own man and keep my own counsel. I therefore read the posts on his site with a critical eye, especially when I come across a blog entry such as this recent one (September 12, 2011) by Mr. Spencer:

Obama reads Biblical passage at 9/11 ceremonies implying that 9/11 was an act of God

Obama reads Psalm 46, including verse 8: "Come, behold the works of the LORD, how he has wrought desolations in the earth."

The only people who think that 9/11 was an act of the Supreme Being wreaking desolations on the earth are . . . Islamic jihadists.

So why did Barack Obama pick this psalm out of 150 psalms, and out of innumerable appropriate Biblical passages, to read at the 9/11 ceremonies? 9/11, after all, was a day when there were indeed wrought desolations on the earth. Did Obama really mean to say that God did it, that it was an act of divine judgment, rather than a monstrous and unmitigated evil?

Or is this just another one of those funny coincidences, of which there are so very, very many when it comes to Barack Obama and his remarkable, unqualified and obvious affinity for Islam? 

In taking verse 8 of Psalm 46 as a reference to the destruction of September 11, 2001, Mr. Spencer has allowed his distaste for President Obama to cloud his better judgment. Here is what the President actually said in quoting the entirety of the scriptural passage:

Remarks by the President at the September 11th 10th Anniversary Commemoration

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear,
even though the earth be removed,
and though the mountains be carried
into the midst of the sea.
Though its waters roar and be troubled,
though the mountains shake
with its swelling,
there's a river
whose streams shall make glad
the City of God,
the holy place of the Tabernacle
of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her.
She shall not be moved.
God shall help her
just at the break of dawn.
The nations raged,
the kingdoms were moved.
He uttered his voice.
The earth melted.
The Lord of Hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come behold the works of the Lord
who has made desolations in the Earth.
He makes wars cease
to the ends of the Earth.
He breaks the bough
and cuts the spear in two.
He burns the chariot in fire.
Be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations.
I will be exalted in the Earths.
The Lord of Hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge. 

If we read the above passage carefully, we see that the only lines that might refer to the destruction of 9/11 are the following ones, and these clearly present God as a place of safety in troubled times when the earth is unstable and even the heights are brought down to the level of the seas:

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear,
even though the earth be removed,
and though the mountains be carried
into the midst of the sea. 

This upheaval described above can be read as destruction by enemies, and therefore as a parallel to the 9/11 attacks, but the terrible destruction is countered in the verses that follow below by gladdening streams of water, a metaphor for God's blessing upon his people in a time of trouble, which can be applied to mean blessings upon America by drawing upon long-held traditions about America as a shining city on a hill, a new Jerusalem:

[T]here's a river
whose streams shall make glad
the City of God,
the holy place of the Tabernacle
of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her.
She shall not be moved.
God shall help her
just at the break of dawn.

In the verse that Mr. Spencer objects to, which follows in the verses below, President Obama is much more likely referring to God's assistance on America's side in defeating Al-Qaeda, for the term "nations" is used scripturally to refer to enemies, such as Al-Qaeda, which is indeed a multinational terrorist group:

The nations raged,
the kingdoms were moved.
He uttered his voice.
The earth melted.
The Lord of Hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come behold the works of the Lord
who has made desolations in the Earth. 

In the context of this psalm, the Lord's desolation would far more likely be wrought upon America's enemies than upon America herself, for the God of Jacob could hardly be a refuge for Americans if He is attacking the United States. President Obama could more plausibly be accused of jingoism than treason in quoting this psalm, but I'll give him a pass on both. He's simply drawing upon scripture to offer comfort by reaching to metaphors of divine blessing upon those who have suffered from the 9/11 attacks. Here's the video of the entire ceremony (27:24), which includes Obama's recitation of scripture (starting at about 9 minutes).

The problem raised for Mr. Spencer is that his unlikely scriptural reading here in this psalm calls into question his general ability to provide sound hermeneutics of scripture, whether the Bible or the Qur'an. I don't think him incapable of a proper interpretation, for he's an intelligent and well-educated man, but I do think that his 'distastes' can cloud his judgment, so I advise a degree of caution in accepting his views.

In short, learn from him, but think for yourself, which is good advice in general.

Speaking of the Copts . . .

Egypt

(Image from Wikipedia)

In their recent article for the New York Times, "Promise of Arab Uprisings Is Threatened by Divisions" (May 21, 2011), Anthony Shadid and David D. Kirkpatrick have reported on Egypt's religious tensions in a somewhat oblique manner:

In Cairo, the sense of national identity that surged at the moment of revolution -- when hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths celebrated in Tahrir Square with chants of "Hold your head high, you are an Egyptian" -- has given way to a week of religious violence pitting the Coptic Christian minority against their Muslim neighbors, reflecting long-smoldering tensions that an authoritarian state may have muted, or let fester.

One has to read rather carefully to recognize the unlikelihood that a Christian minority of merely 10 percent -- unlike those peaceful "people of all [other] faiths" -- could accurately be described as adopting violence that's "pitting the Coptic Christian minority against their Muslim neighbors." Let's rewrite the passage to reflect reality:

In Cairo, the sense of national identity that surged at the moment of revolution -- when hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths celebrated in Tahrir Square with chants of "Hold your head high, you are an Egyptian" -- has given way to a week of religious violence pitting the Muslim majority against the Coptic Christian minority, reflecting long-smoldering tensions that an authoritarian state may have muted, or let fester.

That would more accurately portray what is really happening in Egypt between the Copts and their Islamist opponents. But denial is a river in Egypt, and here is what instead gets reported:

At a rally this month in Tahrir Square to call for unity, Coptic Christians were conspicuously absent, thousands of them gathering nearby for a rally of their own. And even among some Muslims at the unity rally, suspicions were pronounced.

"As Muslims, our sheiks are always telling us to be good to Christians, but we don't think that is happening on the other side," said Ibrahim Sakr, 56, a chemistry professor, who asserted that Copts, who make up about 10 percent of the population, still consider themselves "the original" Egyptians because their presence predates Islam.

I am skeptical that many sheiks are "always" pressing the Muslim faithful "to be good to Christians," but be that as it may, the Copts are the original Egyptians, and their liturgical language derives from the ancient Egyptian language.

As for the unidentified "rally of their own," I suspect that the Copts were rallying to protest the recent attacks upon several of their churches, one of which was set ablaze. Little wonder that the "Coptic Christians were conspicuously absent" from the "rally this month in Tahrir Square."

And what of those "hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths" who had previously "celebrated"? Did they all show up for the unity rally? Of course not. There is no "all faiths" in Egypt. Aside from infinitesimally tiny slivers of other religions like the Bahá'í, who are scarcely worth counting, there are only the 90 percent Muslim majority and the 10 percent Christian minority -- and Egypt's Islamists would like to see that 10 percent whittled down to a mere sliver, too.

Will Copts go the way of Iraq's Christians and flee their native country in reaction to Islamist violence? I suppose that we'll find out.

Saudi Irony of the Day?

Maureen Dowd

Fred R. Conrad, Photographer

(Image from New York Times)

Ms. Maureen Dowd recently traveled to Saudi Arabia to get a clearer picture of Islam and discovered something unexpected in our globalized world:

It was nearly impossible for me to experience Islam in the cradle of Islam.

Rather ironic, as she implicitly goes on to note in her New York Times column, "Pilgrim Non Grata in Mecca" (March 9, 2010), because:

You don't have to be a Catholic to go to the Vatican. You don't have to be Jewish to go to the Western Wall (although if you’re a woman, you're squeezed into a slice of it at the side). You don't have to be Buddhist to hear the Dalai Lama speak -- and have your picture snapped with him afterward.

But in Saudi Arabia, Ms. Dowd was not allowed in a mosque . . . unofficially. Apparently, Saudi Muslims, or at least some of them, believe that there's some unwritten rule forbidding nonbelievers from entering places sacred to Islam, for in Jidda, she asked to attend a mosque but "was told that non-Muslims could not visit mosques," which isn't true, technically, as Prince Saud al-Faisal also insisted, though he did admit:

Well, you know, it depends who you ask . . . . Somebody . . . who doesn't want to run into trouble may tell you no.

But why would any Muslim in Saudi Arabia imagine running into trouble for letting a non-Muslim enter a mosque? Perhaps because for so long Saudi Arabia''s Wahabist form of Islam has called for a "wall of resentment" between Muslims and non-Muslims and has informed Muslims that:

[E]veryone who does not embrace Islam is an unbeliever . . . and . . . they are enemies to Allah, his Prophet and believers. (Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology, Freedom House, 2005, page 24)

That might be a reason . . .

Neda Agha-Soltan: A Christian?

Neda Agha-Soltan

Click Photo to Enlarge

(Image from Gabrielle Cusumano)

Readers probably recognize this photo of Neda Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman who was struck by a bullet in the heart on June 20, 2009 during the recent demonstrations in Iran. If you missed the earlier reports, see the Wikipedia entry on the "Death of Neda Agha-Soltan" for information and links.

Truth is hard to come by in a case such as this, for the Iranian government has clamped down on reports and has claimed that foreigners killed her. I certainly don't accept this official Iranian claim. Initially, I assumed that Ms. Soltan had simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and had gotten struck by a stray bullet, for she was apparently not directly involved in a protest at the moment, nor was she especially close to where clashes were occurring. Many reports that I've seen, however, insist that she was deliberately targeted by the Basij, a paramilitary volunteer militia formed to protect the Islamist Iranian state and monitor the Islamic practices of Iranian citizens. But I couldn't understand why someone as innocuous as Ms. Soltan would be targeted.

Now, the buzz on the internet has been growing that Ms. Soltan was a Christian, based on the evidence of what appears to be a Christian cross on the necklace that she is wearing in the photograph above. Click on the photo to enlarge the image, and decide for yourself, but it does appear to be a cross to my eyes -- as well as to the eyes of my wife.

From the fact that Ms. Soltan had studied at Islamic Azad University, majoring in philosophy and religion, I had assumed that she was Muslim, but supposing that she were a convert from Islam to Christianity, then a motive for her execution would become more plausible, for Muslim-background Christian have previously been targeted by Iran's Islamist government (e.g., Hossein Soodmand in 1989, Mehdi Dibaj in 1994, and Ghorban Tourani in 2005), and the popular disorder during the demonstrations may have provided the Basij a perfect opportunity to strike.

So . . . was Ms. Soltan a Christian . . . and was she targeted? I suspect that we'll be hearing more about this soon enough, though definitive answers might be difficult to obtain.

Expat Living: "Is Obama a Muslim?"

Barack Hussein Obama

In Garb of Shinto Devotee?

(Image from Protected Source)

My most-recent Expat Living article has appeared in the Korea Herald at a most significant time, mere hours before voting begins for this year's US presidential election between John Sidney McCain III and Barack Hussein Obama II. Appropriately, therefore, I deal with this election's central issue:

Is Obama a Muslim?

The U.S. presidential elections are upon us, and the crucial, pressing question facing every American voter is this: Is Barack Hussein Obama a Muslim? To answer this thorny question, we must attempt to establish the facts.

From Obama's own remarks, we learn that in a visit to Japan, a customs official at Narita Airport stamping his visa noted the name "Obama" and said, "I'm from Obama," clearly implying that they both hailed from the same hometown. As is well known, Obama is a city located in Wakasa Province of Fukui Prefecture in Japan.

Barack Hussein Obama was himself not actually born in the city of Obama but in Honolulu, Hawaii. We know from statistics that Japanese make up the largest ethnic group residing in Hawaii -- a whopping 16.7 percent, even higher than the 16 percent native Polynesians! I therefore suggest that Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., belonged to the immigrant Japanese population in Hawaii. This inference is strongly supported by the equally strong possibility that the paternal surname "Obama" indicates the city of ultimate origin.

This is not an unusual phenomenon among surnames around the world. Take the surname "Scott." This is a Gaelic surname of Old Irish origin indicating that the paternal family originated in Scotland. Or consider the surname of the famous Irving Berlin, who wrote the lyrics and music to "White Christmas," one of the world's most-recorded songs -- though it cheated a bit to reach that stratospheric level, for it was sung by the ever popular Bing Crosby in two wildly popular Hollywood musicals, the 1942 film Holiday Inn and the 1954 film White Christmas.

Anyway, the surname "Berlin" implies that one's paternal family stems from the German city Berlin. Irving Berlin could thus have declared, along with President John F. Kennedy in 1963, "Ich bin ein Berliner." Not that he would have wanted to do so, for the indefinite article "ein" can suggest that the word "Berliner" refers to a jelly doughnut. Most Americans do not realize this fact, but continue to flush with pride at what they consider Kennedy's staunch support for freedom. Of course, if Kennedy had been identifying himself with the people of Hamburg or Frankfurt, Americans might instead flush with embarrassment to recall a president who referred to himself as a "Hamburger" or a "Frankfurter."

I suppose that I should mention that Irving Berlin's birth name was Israel Beilan, but on the sheet music to his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy," his name was misprinted as "I. Berlin" -- which looks remarkably like a claim to be not merely a Berliner but the city itself! Interestingly, the surname "Beilan" was a misspelling his father's surname Baline, which implies that Irving Berlin's family actually originated from the island of Bali in the country Indonesia rather than Berlin in Germany. My point, however, remains valid, namely, that the surname "Berliner" indicates that one's paternal ancestors stemmed from Berlin.

By precisely the same logic, Barack Hussein Obama's paternal ancestors must have stemmed from the city Obama, located in Japan, as previously noted. Japan's Muslim population stands at about 60 to 70 thousand, mostly foreigners, with only some 6 to 7 thousand of these being native Japanese. Since the surname "Obama" clearly indicates that Obama's paternal family originally stems from the Japanese city of Obama, which is about five hours by train from Tokyo and has only slightly more than 30,000 inhabitants, then Barack Hussein Obama is statistically very unlikely to be Muslim.

I therefore tentatively conclude that Barack Hussein Obama is not Muslim . . . though he might be Shinto.

Jeffery is a professor at Ewha Womans University and can be reached through his blog Gypsy Scholar at gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily representative of The Korea Herald. -- Ed.

Such is my conclusion, and I stand by it even though it might affect the imminent presidential election by reducing Obama's support among WWII veterans of the Pacific theater's wartime operations, for such old soldiers might still hold grudges against the Japanese.

I apologize, however, for not having sufficient time to deal with this election's other pressing question, namely, could Americans trust a man named after a foreign city not even located in the Northern -- let alone Western -- Hemisphere?! I refer, of course, to John Sidney McCain III.