The Church and the Community – A Reflection from My Hometown

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Andrew Fuller

I was recently in my hometown of Luton, England. When I moved away in the 1980s the population was around 170,000 and there were by my count 70 churches in the town. Today the population is close to 210,000 and according to a pastor who has served in Luton for more than thirty years, there are over 120 congregations.

The ethnic mix of Luton has continued to expand. I grew up in close proximity to an area where many immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia had settled. Today those communities have been augmented by migrants of African, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Latin and Eastern European origins. Accordingly the church has taken on an ethnic diversity. Local congregations catering to Nigerian, Brazilian and Chinese can easily be identified and the Caribbean Church of God in Christ has its national headquarters in the town, located in a converted cinema, where I remember seeing the Sound of Music as a child.

During my visit I experienced three distinctly different congregations. My observations prompted thoughts about what the local church as a community is really supposed to be.

The first church experience was the congregation in which I grew up. A suburban Methodist church, which at one time was the largest congregation of its denomination in town, has sadly become a shadow of its earlier life. The congregation is mostly elderly and because of financial and building maintenance considerations is considering merging with the local Baptists. A changing demographic in a neighborhood now inhabited by many of Muslim and Hindu traditions, and an inertia of worshipping tradition have combined to inhibit growth. The service included the participation of the local Baptists for the week of prayer for Christian Unity and was what I grew up calling a hymn sandwich. Individual hymns, accompanied by piano because the organ had broken that morning, wrapped themselves around prayers, readings and a sermon.

The second experience was of a Ghanaian Pentecostal congregation who use the sanctuary of the Methodist church for an afternoon worship service. Lively, upbeat music and a strident preaching style engaged a congregation that was larger than the morning’s Methodist gathering. Although the singing was in English, it was noticeable that some of the members spoke to each other in an African language. A large bus with the church’s name was parked outside and the vehicles in the parking lot suggested a certain affluence among the worshippers.

The last experience was a gathering of thirty-somethings, exclusively Caucasian and clearly experimenting with what Church could look like in an endeavor to engage a post-Christian younger generation. City Life was founded eight years ago by a group of Cambridge graduates who moved to Luton with the express intent of starting a ministry to the young adult community. While manifesting the main ingredients of the church experience the form would have been fairly unrecognizable to the member of the traditional Methodist Church, and probably to the Ghanaian worshippers as well. The meeting took place in a Jazz club, with attendees gathered at tables to share a brunch together. A group activity and some announcements opened the proceedings, after which a member of the team gave an exposition on a passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. An opportunity for written prayers to then be collected and read out was followed by worship songs to a solitary guitar accompaniment. The breaking of bread together at each table concluded the meeting. Worship, the Word, Witness and Fellowship were all in evidence.

Throughout this latter experience I felt there was a conscious endeavor to make the experience understandable to any visitors who might have no prior experience of church. An unbeliever could find understandable reason for the activities.

This community has also put their expression of faith into action in the wider community as they participate in practical ministry to people of the street, and engage the political scene.

Each of these experiences was extremely different and yet they are all expressions of the same community of faith. For me it was not the worshipping tradition that differentiated so much as the demographic. Denominational and theological affiliations were far less noticeable than age and ethnicity. It has been said in America that the Sunday hour is the most segregated of the week as black and white, and now, with recent migration, Hispanic, gather separately to worship. In Luton’s case it was a defined experience of age groups and of ethnic communities.

Yet we are all called to one body in Christ. In the words of the revised Nicene creed of the year 381: We believe in one, holy, catholic (universal), and apostolic Church. So, how do we express worshipping community in a way that perpetuates and makes itself meaningful to a changing society? How does a congregation become consistently renewed in being salt and light to the dying world around itself? Is the Methodist congregation, now seventy-eight years old, destined to die with those in their eighties who were members of the first Sunday School classes? How does the vibrant life of the African congregation make room for the uninitiate of another culture? And how will a meeting of former college students and now thirty-somethings adapt to accommodate the children already being born into their midst?

May God continue to bless and grow his people in a multitude of creative ways across the town of Luton.

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I Am Christian & Not Charlie

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Andrew Fuller

NunThose who have seen my Facebook page will know that I have been using the Arabic letter Nun as my profile picture. I, and others have done this to express solidarity with the suffering of Christians in Northern Iraq and Syria who have been driven from their homes and towns by Islamic State. IS members had painted this letter on the homes of Christians, representative of the word Nasara used for followers of Jesus, as a shaming symbol. In some communities houses so marked have been destroyed or requisitioned.

I recently acquired an I-am-N shirt from Voice of the Martyrs[1]. It has the Nun in red on the front and I-am-N on the back. I plan to wear it on occasions when I want to be clear that I express solidarity with the Middle Eastern Christian community who are presently on the frontline of suffering for Christ.

In these expressions I want to declare unequivocally that I am Christian. I would hope that my story, personality and character would testify to that truth alone, however there comes a time to take a more creative stand. So, many across France came together on the weekend to express their solidarity with the deceased staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. As many as three million are believed to have demonstrated against terrorism and violence that had come so suddenly to the streets of Paris the previous week. As with 9/11, London’s 7/7, and the Madrid train bombings of 2004, we, in the west do not expect terrorist violence to enter our own societies. We reserve our expectation for Africa, the Middle East, Russia …

But at the same time as world headlines were covering the violence in Paris, little account was being given to events in Northern Nigeria where Boko Haram overran the town of Baga, razing the homes of 10,000 to the ground, and where a ten-year-old girl self-detonated killing 19 in a marketplace in Maiduguri, the provincial capital. It is so much harder to express solidarity with the suffering of those whose stories are not spread across the world’s media.

All of God’s creation is precious. Every son of Adam and daughter of Eve are created in His image for a purpose. The ravage of sin diverts many from that purpose and it is only redemption through the work of Jesus Christ that sets us back on course. I doubt whether the staff of Charlie Hebdo were Christians. I doubt that their work is glorifying to God. The kind of cynical satire the magazine is known for is offensive to many; the cartoons are often ugly. However, in a world of free expression we value their right to produce the material they disseminate regardless of what we think of the content.

Charlie is innocuous in himself, named thus for Charlie Brown, the Peanuts comic character, who the magazine published in the days when Charles Schultz was still drawing. But I am not Charlie. I am foremost a Christian. I do not stand in defense of an insignificant Paris comic, I stand in solidarity with the Christian community around the world.

I am also not Muhammad and I don’t understand why he or his god cannot stand up for him. I am reminded of the taunting words of the prophet Elijah as he confronted the prophets of Baal as Baal failed to act in response to their prayers: Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.[2] The Christian community of the last few decades has survived and grown through many assaults from the artistic blasphemer. The Last Temptation of Christ, The Life of Brian, Piss Christ and the Da Vinci Code, to name just a few, will have caused offense to many Christians. But through all those artistic assaults I recall no incidence of public violence conducted against the offending community. The Christian community believes the words of God: It is mine to avenge; I will repay[3].

In the wake of the Paris events and under the title: Islam’s Problem with Blasphemy, Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol writes in the New York Times:

Muslim statesmen, clerics and intellectuals have added their voices to condemnations of terror by leaders around the world. But they must undertake another essential task: Address and reinterpret Islam’s traditional take on “blasphemy,” or insult to the sacred. [4]

Many Muslim newspapers condemn the cartoons that caused the original offense and the one published on the front of the latest Charlie Hebdo edition; other commentators urge France to enact laws against the insulting of religions and religious figures. While Idris Al-Driss writes in the Saudi Al-Watan newspaper: I look forward to a French law that protects people’s sanctities and beliefs from attack and ridicule [5], Akyol continues:

– Mockery of Muhammad, actual or perceived, has been at the heart of nearly all of (the) controversies over blasphemy.

– This might seem unremarkable at first, but there is something curious about it, for the Prophet Muhammad is not the only sacred figure in Islam. The Quran praises other prophets — such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus — and even tells Muslims to “make no distinction” between these messengers of God. Yet for some reason, Islamist extremists seem to obsess only about the Prophet Muhammad.

– Even more curiously, mockery of God — what one would expect to see as the most outrageous blasphemy — seems to have escaped their attention as well. Satirical magazines such as Charlie Hebdo have run cartoons ridiculing God (in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim contexts), but they were targeted with violence only when they ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad.[6]

Charlie is just a cartoon character. Let Muhammad stand up for himself. As for me, I’ll stand in peaceful prayer and action for the Christians suffering at the hands of misguided Muslims.

[1] https://secure.persecution.com/p-5892-i-am-n-long-sleeve-t-shirt-s.aspx – accessed January 14, 2015

[2] 1 Kings 18:27

[3] Romans 12:19

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/opinion/islams-problem-with-blasphemy.html?_r=0 – accessed January 14, 2015

[5] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30812155 – accessed January 14, 2015

[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/opinion/islams-problem-with-blasphemy.html?_r=0

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In Him Was Life

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Andrew Fuller

Nicolai Gogol’s 19th century work Dead Souls is regarded as one of the great Russian novels. Set within vivid images of the rural life of the land-owning class, it is a commentary on the condition of serfdom before that class of Russian slaves was emancipated in 1861. The serfs are the enslaved servant class, bound to the land; to the cycle of housework and harvest. They are owned by their masters from birth until beyond death. Only the next of infrequent censuses will remove them from the register of property. Serfs are taxed and so, even the dead ones are a financial liability to the landowning class until the next government census extinguishes the record of them.

Into this context comes Pavel Ivanovitch Chichikov, a disgraced former civil servant. He travels from estate to estate offering to buy the deceased serfs. I would like to know whether you might turn over to me those not alive in reality but alive with respect to legal form,[1] he asks a potential customer on one occasion. As he travels, he acquires a large number of these dead souls. They exist on paper alone but as collateral they have great worth for his plan to take out a huge bank loan and then disappear.

The story is not a political commentary, but it makes a dig at the social structure of 19th century Russian society. As such it is illustrative of the paradoxical nature of life. In this case the dead have marketable value in excess of the living. Chichikov has no use for living servants. He has no land in need of their services. They would be costly to maintain. But their intrinsic value lies in the fact that they exist according to legal form.

The New Testament tells Jesus’ followers that God made them alive with Christ even when they were dead in transgressions[2]. However, having been made alive in Christ, we are to become dead to the world.[3] Just as we are destined to die only once,[4] so, having died, our life is now hid with Christ in God.[5] According to the legal form, we are dead. We should be of no further value to the world’s systems. But in Christ, we have been made alive and our lives are to be lived for His Kingdom purposes. Christ has paid the debt for our wrongdoing. We have been set free from our sinful nature. And we are dead. But, as with Gogol’s Dead Souls, each one of us has huge collateral value. Because we are dead we have come to life in the Christ whose love compels us to love our neighbor, and to do good to those who hate us. Because we are dead we have nothing left to lose when we serve the purposes of our Lord. Because we are dead we can truly find the life that awaits us in Christ.

In the great words that John uses to begin his story of Jesus, we are told that the Word that was with God in the beginning is the source of all that has been made. Furthermore, In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.[6] This Christmas let us remember that in His coming, His living, and His death, is our life, and that which makes us, in our death, of resurrection value to Him.

[1] Nicolai Gogol – Dead Souls – tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky – Alfred. A Knopf, 1996 – p. 37

[2] Ephesians 2:5

[3] Galatians 6:14

[4] Hebrews 9:27

[5] Colossians 3:3

[6] John 1:4

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Islam and its Relation to the West – Part 3 – Three Signs of Hope

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Andrew Fuller

Earlier this month I was invited to speak at a formal dinner of a secular association on the subject of Islam and its relation to the West. I have expanded my presentation and am posting it in three parts. This is part 3 – to read parts 1 & 2 go to:

 https://thefullerreport.com/2014/10/25/islam-and-its-relation-to-the-west-part-1-three-areas-of-tension/  &

Islam and its Relation to the West – Part 2 – Three Areas of Concern

In the first part of this article I addressed three areas of tension between Islam and the West. I then wrote of three areas of Western concern. I’d like now to turn to some signs of hope that I see for change in the Muslim world that may help to mitigate some of the tensions over the next generation.

My first sign comes from the comments of those, both secular and Christian, who have long observed the Muslim world.

Theodore Dalrymple is a pseudonym of an atheist British doctor who worked in Muslim communities in several Sub-Saharan nations before practicing psychiatry in London. His observances of Muslim culture include many of the plight of women forced into arranged marriages. Commenting in 2004 he wrote: The Iranian refugees who have flooded into the West are fleeing Islam, not seeking to extend its dominion, as I know from speaking to many in my city … fanatics and bombers do not represent a resurgence of unreformed Islam buts its death rattle. [1]

The Pew Research centre has researched the attitudes of Muslims toward that brand of radical behavior defined as Islamism. They surveyed over 14,000 respondents in fourteen Islamic nations and found that the more the average Muslim has become familiar with Islamism, the more he has rejected it. In the Middle East, concern is growing. Lebanese, Tunisians, Egyptians, Jordanians and Turks are all more worried about the extremist threat than they were a year ago. [2]

My last quote comes from the late Dr. Tom Little. Tom was an optometrist and a Christian who lived for over thirty years in Afghanistan. He trained Abdullah Abdullah, Chief Executive Officer of the Afghan government, former Afghan foreign minister and an eye doctor. Tragically Tom and his team members were murdered by persons unknown upon their return from what was to have been Tom’s last mobile eye clinic in the mountains of Nuristan province in August 2010. In a conversation with Tom just five weeks before his death I asked him what changes he saw coming to the Muslim world. He said: The Muslim world will be a very different place in twenty years’ time. Education, literacy and access to the internet in remoter areas will have broken the hold of the village mullah on the mind of the community.

A second sign of hope concerns the increasing scrutiny which the Qur’an is coming under. Islam has never undergone the kind of reformation that the Christian faith experienced in the Middle Ages, nor have its texts undergone the kind of critical scrutiny to which the Bible was subjected beginning in the late nineteenth century. Partly this is due to the perceived unchallengeable nature of the Qur’an. Muslims believe the Qur’an to be the Word of God that has been eternally kept in heaven in Arabic, transmitted to earth, and protected for all time against falsification. Muslims are so certain of this that criticism within Islam is rare. An argument by a non-Muslim about the inconsistency of a quote from the Qur’an is not defended with logic, but with the statement that the argument is trumped by the miraculous inerrancy of the Qur’an. Where a Christian puts his faith in his Lord Jesus Christ as the revealed Word of God, the Muslim puts his faith in the Qur’an regardless of its logical inconsistencies.

Debate often focuses on the origins of the Qur’an and the reliability of the current text as a record of what Muhammad actually believed was communicated to him. Modern scholarship, mostly non-Muslim, has examined the oldest examples of the Qur’an and highlighted the discrepancies between the versions. In 1972 workers renovating the great mosque in Sana’a, Yemen, found an ancient Qur’an. The parchment upon which it had been written has been carbon dated to around 670 AD. Two versions of the Qur’anic text can be found on the material. The lower text had been erased and written over, however the presence of metals in the ink meant that the lower text had resurfaced over time. The upper text conforms to the standard version of the Qur’an however the lower text, obviously written before the upper, contains many variants, clearly suggesting that the Qur’an that we have today is not the same as some of the Qur’ans that were written down by earlier scribes. Gerd Puin, a German expert in Arabic calligraphy and Qur’anic manuscripts who examined the texts stated in 1999: These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic text is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed. In the same publication he also stated concerning the reluctance of Islamic scholars to acknowledge the research being done with the Sana’a texts: They don’t want it made public that there is work being done at all, since the Muslim position is that everything that needs to be said about the Koran’s history was said a thousand years ago. [3]

Lastly I offer as a sign of hope for change in the Muslim world the thousands of reports of people who have had dreams and visions of Jesus Christ. These are not the only reason for the news of people in many places in the Muslim world confessing a new-found faith in Jesus, however they are a significant factor. More Than Dreams [4] is a series of carefully researched dramatized stories of Muslims who had a life-changing experience following the appearance of Jesus to them in a dream.

The revival of Christian faith in the Kabyle region of Algeria has been well documented.[5] Starting in the early 1980s many people had dreams and visions in which Jesus Christ appeared to them. As they began to learn that others had had similar dreams momentum began to build and today there are congregations numbering several hundreds of worshippers in that region of an otherwise strongly Muslim nation.

I have collected many stories of these dreams and have interviewed some of those who had the dreams. I even met a Lebanese Muslim who put his trust in Jesus Christ after he dreamed that Jesus played a game of basketball with him. I also met a Christian who did not himself have a dream but while minding his own business in a café in Tunisia was approached by another man who said: I saw you in my dream and I came to you and you told me the words of life. Now that I have found you, please tell me the words of life!

I’ll conclude this short series of articles with a comment that sets the stark contrast between the rules of a fundamentalist construct of Islam and one of the principles that, even if not adhered to by many, lies at the foundation of the Christendom which has influenced the development of Western society.

In 2012 Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, wrote his fellow jihadists that at least half of his budget in Yemen was funded by ransoms paid for western hostages. He described these, along with other sources of income as spoils of war. [6] Islamic opinion upon what may be done with the spoils of war focuses on a passage in the Qur’an recorded at Sura 8:69 So enjoy what you have gotten of booty in war, lawful and good. Theft in Islam is forbidden but enjoying the spoils of war is permissible because taking booty: is a means of responding in kind, because the Muslims … have had their wealth taken from the … So this is a means of … giving back that which has been taken from them. It is in the nature of restitution of their rights. For Allah says: “And indeed whosoever takes revenge after he has suffered wrong, for such there is no way (of blame) against them. The way (of blame) is only against those who oppress men and rebel in the earth without justification” Qur’an 42:41-42 [7]. Just as the July 7th bombers in England justified their actions on the basis of a Western war against Islam, so, extremist views of Islam justify the taking of spoils of war as taking back that which has already been taken from the Muslim by the oppressor. Islamic State propagates the message that: War booty is more lawful than other income for a number of reasons. It is seized from one who does not deserve it, because he uses it to aid himself in disobeying Allah and associating others with Him. So if it is taken from one who uses it contrary to the obedience of Allah, … then such wealth becomes the most beloved of wealth to Allah and the purest form of income in His sight. [8]

What a stark contrast this point of view presents in the face of the words of Jesus, which, whether the reader adheres to them or not, have influenced the lives and actions of many down the centuries: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. [9]

 

[1] http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_2_when_islam.html – Accessed October 24, 2014

[2] Pew Centre – Concerns about Islamic Extremism on the Rise in the Middle East, July, 2014

[3] Toby Lester – What is the Qur’an – The Atlantic Monthly, January 1999

[4] http://www.morethandreams.org

[5] See for example George Otis Jr. – The Last of the Giants – Chosen Books, 1991 – p.157

[6] Rukmini Callimachi – Paying Ransoms, Europe Bankrolls Qaeda Terror – NY Times, July 29, 2014

[7] Shaykh Muhammad Saalih al-Munajjid – Islam Question and Answers – http://islamqa.info/en/7461

[8] Dabiq – the official magazine of Islamic State Issue Number 4 – Dhul Hijjah 1435 (September/October 2014) – p.11

[9] Luke 6:27-28 NIV

Posted in Culture and Politics, Islam, Nations | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Islam and its Relation to the West – Part 2 – Three Areas of Concern

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Andrew Fuller

Earlier this month I was invited to speak at a formal dinner of a secular association on the subject of Islam and its relation to the West. I have expanded my presentation and am posting it in three parts. This is part 2 – to read part 1 go to:

Islam and its Relation to the West – Part 1 – Three Areas of Tension

In the first part of this article I addressed three areas of tension between Islam and the West. I’d like to now consider three areas of Western concern as it relates to the Islamic world.

Firstly, migration is changing the shape of some societies. Since the 1950s migration particularly of South Asians to the UK, Turks to Germany and North Africans to France, has changed the demographics of those nations. There are now many second and third generation members of non-Caucasian communities living in those nations, sometimes integrated and sometimes alienated. Their presence has established the mosque in many towns and cities at a time when many traditional churches have closed their doors. Indeed in some places church buildings have been converted into mosques.

In the United States, itself a nation of immigrants, those arriving before the mid-point of the last century were largely from Europe and Latin America, carrying with them, whether religious practitioner or not, at least some understanding of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Since that time the majority of immigration has been from Asia, Africa and the Middle East and from among peoples whose heritage is Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim. As in Europe, some of these immigrants have not integrated well into their new surroundings. Reasons for tension within fractured society have flowed from failure to learn the host language, adapt to local culture and customs and embrace a different worldview. In the case of Islam these factors have been exacerbated by Islam’s religio-political nature which, within extreme interpretations, rejects non-theocratic governmental systems.

Many of those who migrated did so for economic reasons. Some relocated because their lands of origin did not offer the religious and political freedoms that the West offered. It is therefore frustrating to many in the West to see minorities exploiting Western freedoms for their own purposes and sometimes turning those against their new homelands. This became apparent in my own hometown of Luton, England, where the four back-pack bombers of July 7th, 2005, were filmed on CCTV entering the railway station, on their final journey to London. Three of them were born in the UK. Leaving aside their published justification for their actions it remains evident that freedom of speech in the UK contributed to the proclamation of a message of religious hatred that serves to radicalize some members of the community of Muslim-descent. Luton was also home to the so-called Stockholm bomber, Taimour al-Abdaly, who died on December 11, 2010 during an unsuccessful attempt to kill shoppers in a crowded shopping area of Stockholm, Sweden.

When I was in high-school in 1970s’ Luton, 95% of the 11th and 12th grade (Sixth Form College) were Caucasian. Today less than one third of students are Caucasian and nearly half have South Asian origins.

In August last year I wrote an article entitled Hometown Fanatics [1] referencing a BBC documentary that had been produced by a young woman who grew up in Luton and came home to interview Muslim fundamentalists and members of the English Defence League which despite a racist reputation contains within its mission statement the words: Promoting The Traditions And Culture Of England While At The Same Time Being Open To Embrace The Best That Other Cultures Can Offer. [2] It was clear in the documentary that members of the Muslim community (as indeed any other community) have a freedom to protest offensively that would be denied them in many places where their grandparents grew up.[3]

Muslims in the West are often portrayed as the most sensitive of immigrant communities. This may well be connected to the host’s perspective of the Muslim world, however, it has resulted in some extremes of political correctness in endeavors to avoid offense. Racial tension has been high in Australia recently partly because of political battles over the plight of sea-borne refugees from Asia, and partly because of Australian military engagement in Syria and Iraq. An Australian store recently had to withdraw from sale a T-shirt which under the Australian flag bore the slogan: If you don’t love it … Leave! amid protests that it was racist. Many might ask why patriotic pride in one’s nation and traditions should not be a subject to promote. Interestingly media attention resulted in a rise in online sales even though the shirt was no longer available at the store.

The spokesmen for radical Islam in the West are a second cause for concern. Abdullah Azzam was a Palestinian who founded a network of Islamic militant support out of Peshawar, Pakistan in the early 1980s. He was a founding member of Al Qaeda, became known as the Father of Islamic Jihad and was assassinated by persons unknown in 1989. Speaking in 1988 as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan collapsed he said: “After Afghanistan, nothing in the world is impossible to us any more. There are no superpowers or mini-powers. What matters is the will-power that springs from our religious belief … There is no turning back from the stone, to the pistol, to the Uzi, to the RPG and then you can expect Allah’s ultimate victory”. [4]

Those words were not spoken in Pakistan or in the Middle East, they were spoken to a gathering of Muslim immigrants in Oklahoma.

Azzam was Palestinian-born however some of the most high-profile proponents of militant jihad in the West today are Western-born. Robert Musa Cerantonio is Australian, born to an Irish mother and Italian father. He was raised Catholic but converted to Islam at age 17. Facebook shut down his page in April 2014 because he was using social media to encourage acts of terrorism. Speaking in Sydney in 2012 he asked: Who are the real terrorists? His remarks left no doubt that he believes Islam demands that the enemies of Allah are never comfortable with us. We are to inspire terror (the fear of God) in them, he says.[5]

Nicolas Blancho is a Swiss Caucasian who heads the Islamic Association of Central Switzerland. Although not directly associated with the advocacy of violence he ascribes to the Wahabist form of Islamic fundamentalism often associated with Islamic terrorism. He has stated that stoning is a valuable component of his religion [6] and his views are so distasteful that the Swiss based Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan has said: The majority of Muslims in Switzerland do not recognize themselves in his words. [7]

A third cause for concern is the lack of debate about the behavior of Muhammad in the public arena. Much more is known about Muhammad from an historical point of view than is known about Jesus Christ. Ibn Ishaq compiled a biography of Muhammad little more than a century after Muhammad’s death, relying upon the oral traditions about the founder of Islam. The original work did not survive and today we rely upon the record of Ibn Ishaq’s work made by Ibn Hisham in the ninth century. However, this record has been a major source for subsequent Muslim historians. In a recent article entitled: Why is there such historical animosity expressed by Arab to Jew? [8]I referenced the beheading of the Jews of Medina by Muhammad. Although some Muslim historians including Ibn Hisham’s contemporary Malik Ibn Anas, have tried to discredit the account believing that Ibn Hisham relied too much on contemporary reports from sons of Jewish converts, many others, including the twentieth century Egyptian writer Muhammad Haykal have referenced it. Muslims have such a reverent view of Muhammad that on a recent occasion a Muslim acquaintance would not agree that a writer he had referred me to had repeated this account as part of the historical narrative, when the text was in front of him. Following the example of Muhammad, Islam spread outward from the Arabian Peninsula with frequent resource to the sword. By contrast there is no evidence that Jesus Christ was ever anything other than the Prince of Peace in his dealings with men. On the one occasion that the gospel records a sword being taken to his defence, he rebukes the perpetrator and heals the wounded.

Douglas Murray is a British academic and an atheist. Writing in the Spectator following participation in a discussion on the subject of the Islamic State televised by the BBC Sunday Live program in September, he said: While it remains inconceivable that we would have a discussion about Christianity without reference to the teachings and the life of Christ we are still trying to have a very public discussion about Islam while refraining from mentioning any of the more ‘challenging’ aspects of the teachings or actions of Muhammad. [9]

Serious questions have to be raised about the foundation of Islam but on the wider issue of Islam in relation to the West the debate is much more about differing worldviews than the mere fact that a radical minority have chosen to use select passages from the source documents to justify vengeance against the western world that they perceive to be the source of greatest offense against them.

This is part 2 of three parts – to read part 3 go to:

https://thefullerreport.com/2014/10/27/islam-and-its-relation-to-the-west-part-3-three-signs-of-hope/

[1] https://thefullerreport.com/2013/08/

[2] http://www.englishdefenceleague.org/mission-statement – accessed October 24, 2014

[3] The documentary can be viewed here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgKMI1wV0ps

[4] Steven Emerson – Jihad in America – SAE Productions, PBS Video, © 1994

[5] Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0PSoySAat0

[6] http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/schweiz/standard/Nicolas-Blancho-Spuren-fuehren-zu-alQaida/story/19838860 – accessed October 24, 2014

[7] http://www.20min.ch/schweiz/news/story/14151951 – accessed October 24, 2014

[8] https://thefullerreport.com/2014/07/18

[9] The reluctance to talk about the link between beheadings and Islam – Douglas Murray – The Spectator, August 26, 2014

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Islam and its Relation to the West – Part 1 – Three Areas of Tension

Posted on October 25, 2014 by Andrew Fuller

Earlier this month I was invited to speak at a formal dinner of a secular association on the subject of Islam and its relation to the West. I have expanded my presentation and am posting it in three parts.

In the 1980s Herman Wouk’s novel War and Remembrance was dramatized for the small screen.  Through thirty hours of television the viewer follows the epic themes of the Second World War and the personal stories of several fictitious characters. Aaron Jastrow is a Polish-born Jewish American academic living in peaceful retirement among his books in north Italy. He cannot believe that what is happening around him is a personal threat. As Europe is overrun by the Nazis he passes up various opportunities to travel to the United States. Eventually he is remanded into custody, accommodated by the Germans in a Paris hotel, then interned at Theresienstadt, and finally returned to his Auschwitz birthplace and the gas chamber now located there. The viewer watches a terrible slide toward the inevitable.

Although presently just a microcosm of 1940s Europe, the rise of IS in Syria and Iraq suggests a resurgence of the worst of the 20th century nationalism manifest in Hitler’s Germany and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. A view of the plight of Yezidi, Christian and Shi’a minorities along the fringes of the Kurdish region could easily equate their suffering to that same inevitable slide toward the Jewish holocaust.

In the 20th century it was National Socialism and Communism that mutated into terrible persecutions of those who did not belong because they were not like those who had the power. Today it is an aberrant form of Islamic society which declares its intolerance of those not like itself and says: “If we all believe exactly the same thing then we can build a successful nation for ourselves”. It seems appropriate therefore to present a short examination of the relation between Islam and the Western world by looking at areas of tension, concern and hope.

First of all, however, I’d like to endeavor to separate the radical Islam expressed by the Islamic State from the life and practice of many Muslims who want to serve their god in peace wherever they live within a pluralistic society. Muslim friends of mine fear that the term Islamist as applied to strands of militant Islam does a disservice to the religion of Islam and the wider Muslim community – it is a term that is insulting to the vast majority of Muslims who know that although the practitioners of a faith may be terrorists and extremists it is cruelly unfair to make any religion out to be the problem when it is human behavior that is.

Having made that comment I should like to share three areas of tension between the West and the Arab world which exacerbate Western misunderstandings of the Muslim community. An increasingly wealthy Western society has promoted the interests of the individual above the condition of the community. The term individualism entered the English language in the first half of the 19th century as a means to express distaste for the idea that individuals are more important than the society of which they are a part. However influences such as the 19th century pioneering of the American West, built around rugged individuals, and the 20th century media promotion of stars in the entertainment and sporting industries have served to ingrain the idea that the individual stands alone in his society. Even in the development of modern evangelicalism the personal salvation experience through the individual sinner’s prayer has been emphasized over the collective experience illustrated occasionally in the Bible[1].

By contrast much of the East, whether Asian or Middle Eastern is more deeply rooted in an idea of the community or the tribe having precedence over the individual. Absent the influences of globalization and totalitarian philosophies many Asian and Arab family structures are much more intact than those in the West. Family and tribal loyalties remain dominant.

In the West culture is based upon ideas of right and wrong. A man is guilty or innocent and he is responsible to society accordingly. A man’s wrongdoing is his personal responsibility. Believing in the inherent goodness of the individual the justice system always wants to find mitigating circumstances. Hence in a recent judgment against the former Mayor of Charlotte, NC, the judge could say: You’re a good man, a very good man, but you have made serious mistakes, as he handed down a forty-four month sentence to Patrick Cannon for accepting bribes while in public office.[2]

On the other hand an eastern society is much more likely to be based on the concepts of honor and shame. A man’s wrongdoing has direct impact upon how he and those of his tribe are viewed. In the Arab world: Honor is what makes life worthwhile; shame a living death, not to be endured, requiring that it be avenged.[3] This helps to explain, even though it does not justify, the concept of honor killings. In the story told of The Princess several Saudi teenage girls escape the restriction of their veiled lifestyle to go out with some older men. The father of one of them discovers what has happened and in an endeavor to remove the shame of such a misdemeanor from the family he invites friends to a party at his home where he has his daughter publically drowned in the swimming pool.[4] In a wider Eastern context it helps to explain why a South Korean man responsible for safety measures at a concert where sixteen people died as the result of the collapse of a ventilation grate, committed suicide, rather than face the shame of his responsibility. He left a note to his wife saying he was sorry for the dead victims. [5]

These different approaches to the fundamental make up of society produce tensions between the West and the East of which the Islamic world is a significant part. Firstly, they result in different understanding in the field of Human Rights. It has been pointed out that militant groups in the Middle East have long known that their brand of Islam is incompatible with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. [6] Under Islam, God has the rights and man has the duties. Muslim groups met in 1981 in Paris to draw up an Islamic Declaration of Human Rights that makes clear that the freedoms and rights referred to were only to the extent permissible under the Shari’a law. Individual rights, as understood in the Western context, are forfeit to the communal rights of an Arab tribalism. Someone from the Arab world might therefore argue, for example, that what the West regards as an individual freedom of expression should be subservient to the community right to economic development.

The second area of tension concerns what is meant by democracy. When President Bush and Prime Minister Blair talked in 2004 of bringing democracy to the Middle East I am sure that there were many both West and East who wondered how that could be possible. The Western Anglo-Saxon democracy which they represented was developed over a thousand years of the shaping and reshaping of political landscapes. Documents such as Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights, the US Constitution of 1788 and the Great Reform Act of 1832, were stepping stones to the creation of a system on both sides of the Atlantic that has given democratic processes to the English-speaking peoples. However, they are understood within their contexts. Taking them and injecting them, as if with an hypodermic, into the Middle East would do a disservice to the societal constructs that have shaped those societies.

In a 1992 interview the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia commented: The Democratic system that is predominant in the world is not a suitable system for the peoples of our region .. The system of free elections is not suitable to our country.[7] The Shari’a Law derived from Islam is incompatible with Western Democracy because it is based upon the idea of a theocracy laying down God’s unchangeable law.

The experience of the Arab Spring since 2004 has underlined the fact that bringing any kind of truly representative system of popular government to the nations of the Arab world is fraught with difficulties. The Egyptian popular overthrow of the Mubarak regime led to the election of an Islamic party who immediately made themselves unpopular with sectors of society by doing things that were outside their mandate. The experiment in democracy ended with a return to rule by a leading member of the military.

Perhaps the former French president, Jacques Chirac best summed up a response to the idea of bringing democracy to the Middle East in the words: There is no ready-made formula for democracy transposable from one country to another. Democracy is not a method, it is a culture. For democracy to take root solidly and durably in the Arab world, it must be an Arab democracy before all else.[8]

The third area of tension I should like to highlight is that of religious freedom. In the West we value our individual freedoms and although the way in which they are recognized varies from nation to nation issues such as freedom of speech, assembly and religion go largely unquestioned. Last year I attended a seminar at Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.[9] Two speakers gave very different perspectives on religious freedom. Firstly, Thomas Farr, Director of the Religious Freedom project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs stated that religious freedom is: the right to believe or not and the right to act on the basis of belief, to enter and exit religious communities and to act on the basis of religious belief in civil and political society within broad limits that are equally applied to all. Then Farid Esack, head of the Department of Religion at Johannesburg University and Professor of Islam stated, in a convoluted style: In the parts of the Muslim world which I am most familiar with, … We don’t affirm the value and centrality of religious freedom. …Notions of freedom do not come automatically to our religious language. And so at the end of the day, … for the vast majority of people in the Muslim world, and Muslim authority figures, whether they are government or scholarly figures who interact with the non-Muslim world. … it is still very much the age old principle that Islam is meant to dominate and Islam is not to be dominated. He allowed the audience to assume that the only interpretation of the principle of freedom of religion within Islamic nations would be for the free practice of one’s Islam.

There are many other areas of tension between the West and the region that can loosely be termed the Muslim world, however these are the three that most often come up in my experience of dialog with Muslims in that region.

This is part 1 of three parts – to read part 2 go to:

Islam and its Relation to the West – Part 2 – Three Areas of Concern

& to read part 3 go to:

Islam and its Relation to the West – Part 3 – Three Signs of Hope

[1] See for example: John 4:53 – The healing of the official’s son; Acts 16:33 – The conversion of the jailer; Acts 10:2,44 & 11:14 – Cornelius and his family;

[2] Former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon sentenced to 44 months for taking bribes -http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/10/14/5242408/former-charlotte-mayor-patrick.html#.VEe0l_nF_CY – accessed October 22, 2014

[3] David Pryce-Jones – The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs – Harper Collins, 2002 – p.35

[4] Jean Sasson – Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil – William Morrow, 1992

[5] South Korea concert planner found dead in Seongnam – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29673124 – accessed October 22, 2014

[6] Ibn Warraq – Why I am not a Muslim – Prometheus Books, 1995 – p. 176

[7] Robert L. Maddex – Constitutions of the World – Routledge, 2014 – p.243

[8] Bush opens new rift over Middle East plan – The Guardian June 9, 2004 – http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/10/g8.iraq – accessed October 15, 2014

[9] The Boundaries of Religious Pluralism & Freedom: The Devil is in the Detail – Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University – April 13, 2013 –  video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ah1XDFy-qI&list=PLjnGdo9K7edGSkraqeJNFHv_r_cY_wJB0&index=1 – accessed October 15, 2014

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Affordable Healthcare Part 2

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Andrew Fuller

Last October I shared my Health Insurance story with some comments on the Affordable HealthCare Act of 2010. I’m continuing the story here.

I am self-employed & for the last ten years I have purchased my own medical insurance through one particular insurance company. The policy has been changed at my initiative on a couple of occasions ensuring it cannot be grandfathered into the new system. My current plan serves our family of five (spouse and three school-age kids) well. We carry a $1,500 deductible per person with a family maximum of $5,000 out-of-pocket. We each receive a free wellness check up every year with related laboratory work charged at only 20% of cost outside the deductible. This policy currently costs us $417 a month and was continued from last year’s renewal through November of this year until the point when the provider is no longer permitted to offer the plan as it does not comply with the Affordable Care Act.

As expected, I have recently received a letter from the provider regarding a replacement plan for December 2014 onward. Maintaining the $1,500 deductible the new plan is offered to me at a monthly cost of $1,314.18, or, in other words, a 315% increase in premium. I am told that my new plan will include coverage for ten Essential Health Benefits however I will have to wait until open enrollment for 2015 plans begins on November 15th (fifteen days before the expiry of my existing plan) to find out what these are.

I note from the provider’s website that I can reduce this cost to only $942 per month if I accept a $12,000 family out-of-pocket maximum.

Based on my projected income I may be eligible for a tax credit subsidy, (provided through the tax code to assist lower income families to obtain healthcare insurance) however I live in Virginia and the recent Halbig case (see article at http://kff.org/health-reform/perspective/the-potential-side-effects-of-halbig/) has questioned the eligibility of residents of states that use the federal exchange, rather than establish their own healthcare exchange. Early in 2014 the Republican controlled legislature vetoed Democrat Governor McAuliffe’s endeavor to set up a state exchange by expanding Medicaid, a move that it has been suggested would cost Virginia millions of dollars in the long-term.

As someone who has always looked after myself and my family, I am also deeply concerned that such a subsidy would make me into a government dependent!

While I appreciate the concern of the present government to assist more people to get health insurance they have failed to produce a series of measures that addresses all the issues. The ACA appears only to make healthcare more available. It does not address the underlying issues in the escalating cost of healthcare. Where are the controls on liability and where are the controls on actual cost?

As I stated in my post last year (https://thefullerreport.com/2013/10/23/affordable-healthcare/) The White House currently carries the following statement on its website at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/economy/middle-class/making-health-care-more-affordable

“The Affordable Care Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in March 2010, gives middle class families better health security by putting in place comprehensive health insurance reforms that will hold insurance companies accountable, lower health care costs, guarantee more choice, and enhance the quality of care for all Americans”.

Based on my present experience I want to ask what is Affordable about the consequence to me of the Affordable Care Act?

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ISRAEL and ISIS – The Only Similarity is the First Two Letters

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Andrew Fuller

It seems to me that the mainstream media have moved very quickly from the atrocities being committed by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to the bombardment of Gaza by the Israel Defence Force. Headlines are filled with one sad story after another from the schools, hospitals and neighborhoods of Gaza while few references to the treatment of Christians in Mosul or Kurdish Muslims in Syria, make their way to the front page.

The varied crises of the Middle East are complex. While Lebanon has maintained relative recent calm compared to the years of its long civil war, Syria has become a battlefield. Out of that war has emerged the group that was too extreme for Al Qaeda. The Islamic State is now waging war on several fronts: against the Iraqi Shi’ites and Christians; against the Syrian government; and against the Syrian Kurds[1], who like their brethren in the north of Iraq are defending themselves in an endeavor to control their own destiny. The presidency of the Syrian Kurdish region recently declared, referencing the consequence of the flight of the Iraq forces and the surrender into IS hands of vast amounts of military hardware: The attacks from Isis have reached an acute level following their recent acquisition of heavy artillery. [2]

IS are committed to bringing the Kurdish region of Syria into their Caliphate, as they also make Mosul in northern Iraq its capital. In the process they are using whatever means they can to intimidate, inspire fear, and ultimately destroy resistance to their vision of the will of Allah.

Israel by contrast is continuing its battle for survival. I recently referenced the Qu’ranic basis for the hatred some Muslims have for the Jews. [3] Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant published in 1988 includes the words: The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. The preamble to the covenant states: Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realized.

No matter how much we may want to protest that this is not how civilized peoples behave, the evidence tells us that in many places around the world, the grievances of many, founded or otherwise, against the West, and therefore against the so-called Christian world, are many. Be it colonial legacy, or modern multi-nationals; control of capital and labor, or even the missionary expression of the Christian church, the West must take a share of the blame. It is, after all, only seven decades since a civilized and Christian Germany was exterminating the Jewish race.

Israel and the IS begin with the same letters in our Latin script, but there the similarity ends. Israel is a democracy. Arab and Muslim alike have a share in the democratic process in Israel. The worshipping rights and privileges of resident Christian and Muslim are protected. Israel is the only Jewish nation in the world and it is their historic homeland, just as Arabia is the homeland of the Arab people. Political Islam by contrast is a theocracy based on one man’s vision of 7th century Arabia. Like Muhammas, ISIS tolerates none who do not think like it, beheading Shi’a, driving Christians from their homes and destroying churches and Shi’a mosques alike.

The Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul states that Islamic Fundamentalism has the basic cruelty of allowing only one people The Arabs, the original peoples of the prophet, a past, and sacred places, pilgrimages and earth reverence. Islamic Fundamentalism is the most uncompromising kind of imperialism.[4] Meanwhile Christian apologist Robert Morey claims that Islam is actually the deification of seventh-century Arabian culture. In a very profound sense, Islam is more cultural than it is religious.[5] He goes on to say that: Whenever Islam becomes the dominant religion in a country, it alters the culture of that nation and transforms it into the culture of seventh century Arabia.[6] That would sound extreme, if not offensive to my Muslim acquaintances but juxtaposed with the frequent sight of veiled or burqa’d women in Western communities, and the media image of bearded fighters in various conflicts around the globe, it is not hard for the man in a western street to see a correlation.

In 1998 I attended a seminar on the Palestinian issue in Richmond. One of the speakers was a local college professor and leader in the local Palestinian and Muslim communities. I asked him why he thought that the Palestinian people had a legitimate case for an independent state while the Arabs and Turks consistently refused the idea that the Kurdish people had a right to an independent state. He stated that the two situations were totally different without giving any explanation.

I do not doubt that the Israeli Defence Forces are guilty of some atrocities. I do not deny that the Palestinian people have endured long suffering. However, until Hamas and its allies surrender the idea that a nation has no right to exist I cannot accept their legitimacy. In their eyes, their sad circumstances and those of many Palestinian refugees may be a consequence of 1948, but the rest of the Arab world must bear a share of the blame. Keeping hundreds of thousands of Palestinians contained in densely populated surroundings without ever assisting with their resettlement seems to serve the purpose of the Arab world’s wider agenda.[7]

In the meantime we in the Christian community are still commanded to love neighbor and enemy alike.

 

[1] The Kurds are an ethnic minority people spread through Northern Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey. Their origins are believed to be with Medes, and they hold much more lightly to their Islam, than the Arabs.

[2] While Iraq burns, Isis takes advantage in Syria – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28347456 – accessed July 29, 2014

[3] https://thefullerreport.com/2014/07/18/why-is-there-such-historical-animosity-expressed-by-arab-to-jew/

[4] V.S.Naipaul – Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples p.64 – Vintage Press, 1999

[5] Robert Morey – Islamic Invasion p.20 – Harvest House, 1992

[6] Ibid p.22

[7] Palestinian citizenship is a complex issue in Arab nations, for example in Jordan: Although most Palestinians have Jordanian citizenship and many have integrated, Jordan still considers them refugees with a right of return to Palestine. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) reported in 2006 that over 1.8 million Palestinians were registered as refugees and displaced persons in Jordan. Around 150,000 Palestinians, mostly from Gaza but also those who remained in the West Bank after 1967 and only later came to Jordan, are denied citizenship. – World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples –http://www.minorityrights.org/4945/jordan/palestinians.html  – accessed July 29, 2014

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Why is there such historical animosity expressed by Arab to Jew?

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Andrew Fuller

Following ten days of missiles raining down on both Gaza and the southern coastal regions of Israel, the Israeli military has launched another ground offensive into Gaza with the intent to: establish a reality in which Israeli residents can live in safety and security without continuous indiscriminate terror, while striking a significant blow to Hamas’ terror infrastructure [1]. The eyes of Muslims, Christians, Jews and many others around the world are turned toward that little strip of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean that has staged so much of human history. While many in the West look on with ignorance, and many from the Muslim world are once again agitated, there are others who have unanswered questions.

After I graduated college I spent six months living in the land of Israel. I lived in the old city of Jaffa, a mixed community of Arabs and Jews just to the south of modern Tel Aviv. Jaffa is a hilly promontory and port on the Mediterranean, and, as Joppa, is Biblically associated with the stories of Jonah and the Apostle Peter’s dream. In the evenings I would go for a run along the coast (that little strip of land) between the two communities. I ran through a wasteland of rubble and garbage dumps.

At the time I did not realize that the land bore the scars of persistent Arab-Jewish conflict. As Jewish immigration took place tension grew between the new arrivals and the older communities. Damage had been done to the area during the Jaffa riots of 1921, again in 1936 when British troops serving in the Palestine mandate blew up homes from east to west leaving an open strip of land as a barrier between the Arabs and the Jews, and yet again during the 1948 conflict in the aftermath of the declaration of the independent state of Israel. Thirty years later I have a much deeper knowledge of the history and the suffering of the Arab-Jewish conflict. How far that knowledge translates to understanding I am however, far from sure.

I’m puzzled by unanswered questions. The media never tells the full story; the issues underlying the conflict are complex and diverse emotional responses are expressed strongly by all sides. Whether an Israeli citizen trying to defend their homeland, an Arab national contesting the right of the Jew to be in Palestine, or an American evangelical lobbying for Biblical claims to the land, there remain untold stories and unexpressed feelings.

The Palestinian people have undoubtedly suffered greatly over much longer than the sixty-six years since Israel became a modern nation. However, how much of their suffering is directly the responsibility of the Israeli government and how much has been consequent upon their use as pawns in a greater game?

The Battle of Khaybar in 629, fought by the Prophet Muhammad against the Jewish tribes of the Banu Nadir, is recalled in victory chants at Hezbollah rallies: “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return,” and the name Khaybar sometimes graces Hezbollah rockets aimed at Israel [2]. This clear modern statement takes Arab and Muslim animosity toward the Jewish people all the way back to the foundation of Islam. I recently had a conversation with a Muslim in which he refused to accept the idea that Muhammad promoted violence toward the Jews. However the historic record is clear.

Two years before the Battle of Khaybar another battle took place outside Yathrib (Medina). A large army of Arab tribes from Mecca came to destroy the Muslims. Muhammad had his men build a trench across the route the invaders would have to take. The Banu Qurayza, one of the Jewish tribes of Yathrib had agreed to live peacefully with Muhammad and his followers. However Muhammad discovered that they were secretly offering the Meccan tribes the right to cross their undefended property toward Medina, an event which seems not to have actually taken place. Muhammad laid siege to the Banu Qurayza who eventually agreed to surrender provided their supposed allies, the Aus, be allowed to decide their fate. The chief of the Aus, Sa’d ibn Muadh, had become a convinced Muslim. He was also dying from wounds sustained in the battle. He condemned the men to join him in death.

According to Robert Payne in his History of Islam: The terrible judgment was carried out to the last detail, with Muhammad himself superintending the general massacre, even helping to dig the trenches in the market place. The next morning the Jews, with their hands tied behind their backs, were taken out in batches of five or six at a time and forced to sit on the edge of the trench; then they were beheaded and their bodies were tumbled into the trench. [3]

The so-called Battle of the Trench resulted in the enactment of Muhammad’s revenge against  the Banu Qurayza. Ibn Ishaq (born 704 AD, died between 761 & 770) was an early Arab Muslim historian who collected the oral traditions of Muhammad to compile a biography of him. He writes: Then the Apostle went out to the market of Medina … and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches … There were 600 or 700 in all.[4]

Ibn Kathir (1301 – 1373) was a Muslim theologian and commentator. His tafsir or exegesis of the Qu’ran is regarded as highly authoritative. He commented on Qu’ran 33:36 – And those of the People of the Book who aided them – Allah did take them down from their strongholds and cast terror into their hearts. (So that) some ye slew, and some ye made prisoners, with the words: Then the Messenger of Allah commanded that ditches should be dug, so they were dug in the earth, and they were brought tied by their shoulders, and were beheaded. There were between seven hundred and eight hundred of them. The children who had not yet reached adolescence and the women were taken prisoner, and their wealth was seized.[5] Kathir believed that the Qu’ranic verses 33:9 and 33:10 also related to the Banu Qurayza [6].

The argument is made that the Banu Qurayza had broken their covenant with Muhammad by allowing the pagan army from Mecca passage through their land which had not been subject to Muhammad’s Medinan defences. However Muhammad and his army were resting and not engaged in a battle with the Banu Qurayza at the time. Apparently the Angel Jibril (Gabriel) made one of his frequent appearances to Muhammad and told him that even though Muhammad had laid down his weapons, he, Jibril, had not. He told him to get up and go to the Banu Quraiza, for Allah has commanded me to shake them. [7] It would seem that only at this point did Muhammad set out to deal with the Banu Qurayza, perhaps in a quest to secure spoils of war for his men.

Many Muslims today try to avoid talking about this event in their violent history. However Muslim leaders and scholars alike of the modern era do not deny the events. Haykal, an Egyptian writing in the middle of the twentieth century records: Muhammad proceeded to Medina where he commanded a large grave to be dug for the Jewish fighters brought in to be killed and buried [8]. More recently the Turkish Islamic preacher and writer, Fetullah Gulen, while avoiding stating what actually happened has written: The Messenger (Muhammad) besieged them for 25 days. At last they asked for surrender terms, agreeing that they should submit to Sa’d ibn Muadh’s judgment, who decreed the sentence according to the Torah [9].

If these battles were just one series of events in Islamic history they might be disregarded. However, not only the historical record, but also the theological tradition of the Muslims evidence an antipathy toward the Jews. The Hadith are a report of the teachings, sayings and deeds of the prophet Muhammad. They were recorded from the oral traditions many years after the death of the prophet. The Hadith of Bukhari, compiled in the ninth century is considered to be the most reliable collection of Hadith and regarded by many Muslims as second only to the Qu’ran itself in terms of reliability.

At the age of 16 Bukhari made the pilgrimage to Mecca from his home in Bukhara, in present-day Uzbekistan. From there he traveled to many centers of Islamic learning to talk to the holy men of Islam. He may well have talked with over 1,000 scholars and recorded over 600,000 traditions. At the age of 32 he began to draw up a definitive collection of the authentic Hadith. Using what has become known as the Science of Hadith, the collector tested each for authenticity based upon the chain of transmission, compatibility with the Qu’ran and the textual context. Discernment needed to be made between those Hadith which were genuine and those which had been created for political or theological purposes extra to the true Islam. By the time Bukhari had completed his work he had identified 7,275 tested traditions which he compiled into chapters to form a complete system of Islamic law not reliant upon speculation. On this basis we can anticipate the reliability of the following Hadith about the Jews which are contained in Bukhari.

Abu Hurairah was a companion of the prophet who accompanied him on his journeys for more than three years. He stated: Allah’s Messenger said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.” [10]

Abdullah Ibn Umar was a son of the Umar who became the second Caliph after Muhammad’s death. While still in his teens he participated in the Battle of the Trench. He was a prominent authority on hadith and the law. He is reported as saying: Allah’s Messenger said, “You (i.e. Muslims) will fight with the Jews until some of them will hide behind stones. The stones will (betray them) saying, ‘O `Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him.'” [11]

This is not the place to write of the succession of injustices done to the Jewish people throughout the ages by the Muslim community. To be fair, comparative reference would have to be made to Christian and other persecutions of the Jews. However, no serious-minded Christian scholar today would claim a theological mandate to kill Jews such as is contained within the body of Islamic theology.

Among many modern Islamic scholars Yusuf al-Qaradawi is clear in his views about the Jews. An Egyptian theologian and Chair of the Qatar-based International Union of Islamic Scholars, he is a controversial figure. In a sermon broadcast on Al Jazeera in 2009 he stated: O Allah, take your enemies, the enemies of Islam. O Allah, take the Jews, the treacherous aggressors. O Allah, take this profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people. O Allah, they have spread much tyranny and corruption in the land. Pour your wrath upon them, O our God. … O Allah, do not spare a single one of them. O Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.[12]

I may not have all the answers to my questions but I do know that the Prince of Peace spoke differently to us with the words: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.…[13]

 

 

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28359582 (accessed July 17, 2014)

[2]  Colin Shindler – The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews – New York Times Sunday Review – 10/27/12

[3]  Robert Payne – The History of Islam, p.47 – Dorset Press, 1990, originally published 1959

[4]  Alfred Guillaume – The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, p. 461-464 – Oxford University Press, 2002

[5]  Ibn Kathir, Saed Abdul-Rahman – Tafsir Ibn Kathir Juz’21, p.213 –  MSA Publication Limited

[6]  Ibid p. 213

[7]  Ibid p. 213 & Al-Bukhari 4:52:68

[8]  Muhammad Husayn Haykal – The Life of Muhammad (trans. Ismail Raji Al-Faruqi) p. 337 – Selangor, Malaysia: Islamic Book Trust, 2002, originally published 1933

[9]  Fetullah Gulen – The Messenger of God (trans. Ali Unal), p.243 – The Light Inc. Somerset, NJ, 2005

[10]  Al-Bukhari 4:52:196

[11] Al-Bukhari 4:52:195

[12] Middle East Media Research Institute TV – Clip #1979 January 12, 2009

[13] Luke 6:27,28 NIV

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So What’s Going On In Iraq Now?

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Andrew Fuller

The nation of Iraq has been fixed firmly in the western conscience for over twenty years. Ever since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and proclaimed it the 19th province of Iraq, it has been a place that has both intrigued and entangled the western powers. But Iraq is really an artificial nation. It never experienced the centuries of development from which the national conscience of many ancient nations benefitted. No nationalist unifying events have served the nation; not for Iraq the 1776 declaration of American independence, nor the nation-birthing declaration of the German Empire in 1871, which serve as the historical building blocks of nations. Iraq is the product of post-Ottoman maneuvers on the part of European powers.

Under the Ottoman Empire the region now known as Iraq comprised three distinct Wilayats, or administrative areas. These were the Kurdish Wilayat, governing the predominantly Kurdish region around the cities of Kirkuk, Mosul and Irbil; the Baghdad Wilayat centered on the modern capital; and, in the south at the Arabian Gulf coast, the Basra Wilayat. The Kurdish people are predominantly Sunni Muslim, however many other faiths have influenced the region including ancient forms of Christianity and Zoroastrianism. The peoples of Baghdad and Basra are predominantly Arab, however where Baghdadis are mostly Sunni, those from the south are, like the Iranians, predominantly Shi’ite.

These three regions have distinctly different outlooks on life and with them, different ideas about nationhood. The regions were melded together to form the Kingdom of Iraq or what British historian Christopher Catherwood has termed Churchill’s Folly[1]. The British had induced the Arab peoples to revolt against their Ottoman overlords by promising the Hashemite clan that they would rule over Syria. However, that territory had already been promised to the French, so it was left to Winston Churchill at the British Colonial Office to offer Ottoman Iraq to the Hashemite Prince Feisal. Defying a global wave of nationalistic sentiment and the desire of subjugated peoples to rule themselves, Churchill put together the broken pieces of the Ottoman Empire and unwittingly created a Middle Eastern powder keg[2]. Nonetheless, the British wanted to establish a Mid-Eastern counter-balance to the perceived threat of Iran as a power in the region.

When Saddam Hussein came to power at the head of a Ba’athist regime (the same political body that rules Syria) he kept the nation united by a rule of fear. Iraqis became Iraqi by default and ethnic and religious differences were subjugated, often by force. Hussein was, at least nominally, a Sunni Muslim. Sunni Iraq and Shi’a Iran engaged in an eight year conflict during the 1980s ostensibly because the Iraq leadership were fearful that the Iranian revolution would encourage unrest among the Shi’a majority in Iraq.

Unfortunately the government that has emerged in the wake of the ouster of Saddam Hussein has become, instead of a government of national unity, one in which the Shi’ite Nouri Maliki has gathered great support from the Shi’a communities at the expense of the Sunni and Kurd. Some have regarded him as using his position to profit the Shi’a at the expense of the Sunni, while the semi-autonomous Kurds are marginalized.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda, has already been very active in Syria. From an Islamic point of view it is Sunni, however it is devoted to violence as the means to establish a new Caliphate with the ultimate goal of unifying all Muslims, eradicating heresy and establishing a universal theocracy. Beginning in Syria, where it has ruled the city of Raqqah for over a year, ISIS goal in the recent ‘invasion’ of Iraq, is to extend this new Caliphate. They will do this with an unrelenting violence against everyone whom they do not believe to be a true Muslim. A recent video posted online shows one of their leaders interrogating three Syrian truck drivers on the road into Iraq[3]. He asks them how often they kneel when they pray, how the prayer times differ during the day, and then accuses them of being polytheists, when they claim ignorance of what the Alawite Ba’athists (the ruling party) are doing to the true Muslims in Syria. Meanwhile, a Shi’a militia leader in Iraq states: ISIS regards Shia as their eternal enemy, and they will kill whoever falls in their hands who is Shia, whether they are soldiers, grocers or even singers[4].

ISIS having overrun Mosul in the north, and Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, claim their goal is to take the battle to Baghdad and then beyond to the Shi’a holy city of Karbala. This city is home to the tomb of the son of the founding leader of Shi’a Islam. Ali, the first cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, is believed by Shi’a to have been chosen by God to lead Islam. He was enshrined in Najaf, Iraq, after his assassination, and his son Hussein fought for the succession, only to be killed in the battle of Karbala. In its early days, Islam had a very bloody testimony. That testimony continues to infect it today.

The current battle for Iraq has the prospect of destroying the nation; it raises the specter of the USA actually working alongside the Iranian regime in defence of Shi’a Islam; and it may be the spark that ignites full Kurdish independence, something that will antagonize both the Iranian and Turkish governments. However events transpire and with respect to the vast majority of peace-loving Muslims, the conflict further reinforces the bloody nature of Islam’s roots and continued expression of its passion. Oh Lord, may your Kingdom come and may your will be done, here on earth as it is in heaven!

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[1] Churchill’s Folly: How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq – Christopher Catherwood – Carroll & Graf 2004

[2] Amazon review – http://www.amazon.com/Churchills-Folly-Winston-Churchill-Created/dp/078671557X

[3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1099961/ (accessed June 16, 2014)

[4] Abu Bakr al-Zubaidi quoted in New York Times article Massacre Claim Shakes Iraq  by Rod Nordland and Alissa Rubin, June 15, 2014

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