Revisiting Islam...

Its been a few months since we have discussed the Islamic faith, but I wanted to spend at least a couple of blogs on it especially in light of the Holy Father's visit to Turkey at the end of November and the increased clash between Sunni's and Sh'ites in Iraq.

The Pope visited Turkey on November 28th through December 1st. This was a visit that had been planned long before his speech in September that enraged many Muslims. His primary purpose was to meet with Bartholomew I, the leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians. After the speech, however, he expanded his agenda to include meetings with Muslim leaders in hopes of improving Muslim-Christian dialogue.

I discussed concerns in a couple of previous blogs (Sept. 17 & 18) about whether Islam is a violent faith. We had discussed the question of the violence of Islam in a blog entry from March 21st as well as a series of blog entries in February (Feb. 19, 21 & 22). At the time, I think our concenus was that in general Islam is not a violent faith. After reading an interesting and very informative book, however, I have to question that determination.

At the retreat I was on at the beginning of January, I read a book titled, "Unveiling Islam" written by Ergun and Emir Caner. These two are brothers and are converts from Islam to Christianity. They stated that the purpose of writing their book is: "not an academic exercise, but an easily understood panorama of Islam, explaining motives, beliefs and history. It is meant to guide and encourage every person who wants to be more effective witness [of Christianity] to Muslims" (p. 26). In the course of reading their book, one realizes that there is a deeply rooted directive of intolerance and mission of destruction against Christians. Now, as I read this book I kept asking myself, "Are these two brothers who hold a grudge against their former faith and simply want to bash it?" As I progressed through the book, though, their presentation and evidence supporting their claim of intolerance of Christianity was well grounded. As I explore a few of their prudent points in the next couple of blog entries, I will let you decide for yourself.

Before I close this entry, I want to point out that even if the core of the Islamic faith promotes violence and intolerance toward the Christian faith, it does not mean that all Muslims or even the vast majority of Muslims are married to this belief or even pursue it actively. I have met a number of Muslims in my life and not one has shown intolerance of me or tried to kill me. Yet, like all faiths, there are those who follow the tenets of their faith to the letter. In these coming entries, it will be our task to determine if their tenets instruct all Muslim to wipe out Christianity, whether most Muslims adhere to such tenets if they do exist and whether there is a chance of dialogue between Muslims and Christians as Pope Benedict is hoping. As always, I welcome your comments and input. Until next time...God bless.

posted by: crossman at 17:09 | link | comments |
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