Why I Defend Muslims
We cannot, and should not, demand that everyone share our beliefs. But we can, and should, demand that everyone share our freedom.
Feb 8th, 2012 | By Skye Jethani | Category: Culture, Faith, Features, Mission, TheologySome Christians get excited when they discover that I’m half Indian or that I studied Islam in college. They’ll sometimes ask me to talk about how Christianity compares to other faiths. But I’ve learned that what they mean to say is: “Great, you’ve read books I’d never own so you can tell us how awful those other religions are, and you’re brown so you won’t be called a bigot!”
That’s pretty much what happened a few weeks after 9/11 when I spoke to a college group at a large church. When the pastor learned about my background he said he’d like to throw me a few “softball” questions about Islam at the end of my teaching time. His softball turned out to be a curve ball. He asked me, “Islam is essentially a religion of violence, right?”
“No,” I responded. “Islam advocates peace, and most Muslims are very kind, peaceful people.”
The pastor looked annoyed from the back of the room. He tried again. “But doesn’t the Koran advocate killing Christians and Jews?”
“You might be able to find verses like that in the Koran,” I said. “But you could pull verses out of context from the Old Testament to justify killing people too. And there have been very violent eras of Christian history when people did just that. It’s not unique to Islam.”
At this point the pastor was shaking his head at me from the back of the room. Afterward he expressed his frustration. “There were kids here who aren’t sure what they believe,” he said to me, “they’re wondering about Christianity. And you’re defending Islam?”
“Look,” I said, “I’m ready and eager to talk about the uniqueness of Jesus, the wonder of the Gospel, and I’ll even talk about what distinguishes Christianity from other faiths, but I’m not going to do it by smearing our neighbors and their religion with half-truths and caricatures.” The pastor was not happy with me. I had been invited to teach a second week. The invitation was rescinded.
Conversations like that, as well as my work with interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims, have led some to believe that I’m an advocate for Islam…or at least not sold out for team Christianity (a.k.a. theologically liberal). Nothing could be farther from reality. Here’s the truth. First, I believe Jesus calls us to love our neighbors, including our Muslim neighbors, and we cannot love them if we are gripped by fear. The distortions and hysteria regarding Islam since 9/11 is unfair to our Muslim neighbors and preventing Christians from loving them as we are called. I simply want to help the church move past fear to a posture of faith where love becomes possible.
Second, I believe the message of Christ can stand on its own merit without having to misrepresent other religions or showcase the worst elements of other faith communities or their pasts. Heaven knows Christianity has some skeletons in its history closet, and if we want to have a showdown between the worst expressions of Islam and the worst of Christianity, count me out. I’m not interested in defending Christendom/European imperialism. I’m interested in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (Yes, Pat Buchanan, there is a difference between the two.)
And third, I believe James Madison did a great favor to the Christian faith when he penned the First Amendment. Madison understood that in order for true religion to thrive, for peoples’ affections to be stirred for their Creator, they needed freedom. Freedom from state coercion. Freedom of conscience. Freedom of practice. Freedom of speech. Freedom to accept religion or reject it. When religion, particularly faith in Christ, is mandated by the state it inoculates the population from the power of the Gospel. It lulls them into thinking they are truly of Christ when in fact they are not. Madison’s writings on the topic reveal that the First Amendment was his attempt at protecting the purity of religion from the coercive power of the state, not simply the other way around.
I want to live in a society where Muslims enjoy every freedom to believe, think, practice, and promote their faith, because only in such a society will Christians be free to do the same. But sadly not every state promises the freedoms we have been blessed with in our country. I encourage everyone to read the cover story in the new issue of Newsweek by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (a former Muslim now atheist), titled “The War on Christians.”
She reveals how the West has become increasingly sensitive to Islamophobia and the crimes committed against Muslim minorities in Europe and North America. But the media seems reluctant to publicize the horrors being suffered by Christian minorities in North Africa, the Mideast, South Asia, and Indonesia. Violence against these Christian communities is on the rise with some radical groups advocating genocide. In addition, Christians are not protected by state laws and in some cases denied even the right to worship privately in their homes. Ali writes:
So let us please get our priorities straight. Yes, Western governments should protect Muslim minorities from intolerance. And of course we should ensure that they can worship, live, and work freely and without fear. It is the protection of the freedom of conscience and speech that distinguishes free societies from unfree ones. But we also need to keep perspective about the scale and severity of intolerance. Cartoons, films, and writings are one thing; knives, guns, and grenades are something else entirely.
I will continue to speak out in defense of my Muslim neighbors, and I will not stop calling the church to love them rather than fear them. But we must not forget our sisters and brothers in Christ who live in places that do not yet have the freedoms we, or Muslims in the West, enjoy. I am not interested in a cultural holy war between Christendom and Islam. The issue at hand is not world domination of one faith or a winner-take-all crusade/jihad. Rather it is human dignity and religious liberty. Followers of Christ, perhaps more than any others, should advocate that all people be free to believe, worship, think, and preach without fear of persecution. Because where this freedom exists not only are religious communities more likely to coexist in peace, but I believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is more likely to thrive.
As Christians we cannot, and should not, demand that everyone share our beliefs. But we can, and should, demand that everyone share our freedom. For where this freedom exists, we can be sure that Christ will be lifted up and draw people to himself.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Brilliant and well said.
I do the same!! Amazing how ignorant and foolish some people are… Keep going, mate!
This was an incredible blog post—it literally took my breath away. You articulated your viewpoint on the topic extremely well, and I completely agree with you. I’m looking forward to sharing your post with my youth ministry group and seeing what they think. Could make for quite the discussion!
Well said
An excellent piece. Of course, this perspective, and your overall work, dovetails with that of our Evangelical Chapter of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy (http://www.fidweb.org). I hope we can discuss it some time.
It’s rare that I want to wave an American flag at the same time as contemplating the beauty of being a follower of Christ’s good news. Usually I dislike the two together, feeling I must sell out the latter to embrace a jingoistic caricature of the former.
Again with the odd parenthetical comments. You write so eloquently and I agree with you 100 percent. You preach and teach about loving your neighbor and then take a personal and cheap shot at Pat Buchanan. Skye, you are better than that.
Thank-you for facing the hard issues without the religio-political hummingandhawing. I’m glad you are bold enough to state your stance. Even if it means not getting invited back.
I definitely agree with your stance that Christians should love Muslims. I also agree that the church should be continually reminded that she is to love her Muslim neighbors. However, I do not understand what you mean when you say that “we … should demand that everyone share our freedom”. Are you specifically referring to the freedoms of Muslims in America? If so, that clarifies the issue somewhat and explains why you referenced James Madison. If not, I do not see how you can “demand that everyone share our freedom” in other countries. Their constitutions do not allow for this freedom and we do not have any authority over them to ask that they follow our rules about freedom. Could you please explain what you meant?
Thanks for this great statement! I am thankful to Julie and Andrew for pointing it out to me on facebook.
Well thought out and stated. Having made many aquaintences in Cleveland with members of the Islamic faith, I Know them as mostly kind people that enjoy their freedoms.
Skye, you write that verses that advocate violence from the Qur’an are “taken out of context”. I assume you say this and believe it to be true because you are unaware of, or unwilling to accept, the doctrine of abrogation (al-Nasikh wal-Mansoukh) that instructs us to deal with contrary verses by replacing the earlier version with the latter one. I can assure you, the violent ones come last, specifically Surah 9:5, known as the Verse of the Sword, which abrogates all the loving, peaceful, coexisting verses used to paint Islam as an equivalent religion of peace. It’s an illusion. It is you who have made an important error here, and this has consequences when you try to frame the promotion of Islam to be magically compatible with the kind of religious freedom from the state you also advocate. The problem – and it’s not a small one – is that these two notions, Islam and religious freedom, are contrary ideals; you can achieve one (politically and legally) but you cannot accommodate both. You must choose.
Thanks, Brother Skye, for believing and living this.
What’s the point of having intelligence if we’re not gonna use it?
Why emphasize education only to spend life wallowing in ignorance?
I like where you’re going with this.
My immediate family is about 50-50 Muslim-Christian and our relationships have only gotten stronger after the conversions. Regardless of our science of life, we all live and die, we eat and go hungry, we drink and are thirsty. We love and are beloved. We should be more concerned with being an example and helping when asked, than with proselytizing and interfering.
On another note, I have lived or spent extensive time in several Muslim-majority countries, and it’s not as bad as it seems. Attacks against minorities have to be stopped, but, to be honest, history proves that they are always going to happen, everywhere. That’s what religion’s there to fix, right? The number one fact to keep in mind about that is that they are exceptions. The vast majority of minorities in the vast majority countries are safe the vast majority of the time. Check the numbers. Beyond that, historically, these same minorities have existed and thrived as such for centuries if not more than a millenium, and the Muslim lands have been a traditional safe haven for minorities fleeing persecution. Just keep that in mind…
Ah yes, it’s all good… except where it isn’t.
Don’t worry that a third of British born, British raised, affluent, educated muslims think it’s just peachy to kill in the name of defending Islam. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry that UN Resolution 16/18 advances the legal concept that defaming Islam (ie, criticizing it in any way) is a crime, nor worry that people like Hamza Kashgari who make a criminal tweet that fails to treat Mohammed with the utmost respect and veneration has been repatriated through Interpol from Malaysia back to Saudi Arabia to face the death penalty for apostasy. It’s really no big deal, you see. The tenets of Islam are almost perfectly aligned with western secular values… right up until democracy can be subverted to impose the submission of all to its barbarism and authoritarian rule. Until then, you see, it’s really no problem at all, and anyone who doesn’t agree can be called a bigot and an Islamaphobe with the approval of vast swaths of otherwise nice liberal people who think this appeasement is tolerance in action.
Make no mistake: freedom of religion, freedom to criticize it through free speech, is not compatible with Islam.
[...] A little something from Skye Jethani on Christians and Muslims. I think there’s a lot to discuss following Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s article in a recent issue of Newsweek, but until we get to that, enjoy some thoughts from Skye Jethani: “… my work with interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims, have led some to bel… [...]
[...] Skye Jethani has some good things to say about freedom of religion and the way Islam is sometimes mischaracterized. Pass along the unorthodoxy:MoreLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. [...]
[...] the link: Why I Defend Muslims Be prepared to be stretched. Share this:EmailPrintFacebookLinkedInTwitterLike this:LikeBe the [...]
The freedom to practice Sharia is a freedom that will lead to the subjugation of non-Muslims.
“Not many of you should be teachers, brethren.”
should we have the workplace sanction Muslim break-times, so that the workplace must come to a halt five times a day so they can pray?
Muslims believe Allah has given them the freedom to kill apostates. You would sanction this?
What you are countenancing is religious pluralism that would inevitably lead to only Muslims having the freedom to practice their religion.
Skye,
I totally agree, for Jesus does say in Matt. 19:19, “…YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.”
Then in Matt. 5:44 Jesus says, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray those who persecute you,” But in John 14:6 Jesus said to His disicples, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father
but through Me.” So we as Christians have a great responsibility to our neighbors, to our enemies and to all
people, that is to gosple of Jesus Christ.
Well, Ron obviously missed the point, but Skye, I do thank you for this also.
This week I was listening to Janet Parshall on our local Moody station interview a man who has convert from Islam and who has a ministry taking the gospel to Muslims. He talked about this violent aspect of Islamic history and the Quran, too–that the God of Islam is not someone who loves us and with whom we can have a personal relationship, that he gets angry and punishes those who sin. A Muslim man called the show and explained that this was not true of a proper Muslim understanding–that the Quran describes a God who is unable to be influenced (to be angry, for example) by any human action (in which I recognized the classic Christian doctrine of God’s “impassibility”) and who is full of compassion and mercy. (We should recognize that Mohammed borrowed many of his ideas about God and his prescribed practices of prayer from the Jews and Christians he encountered–the five hours of prayer taken from Christian monastic practice, for example).
In listening to this Muslim caller, I also thought of those OT passages where God commands the Israelites to slaughter Canaanite men, women and children, and I recognized that when outsiders look at our sacred texts, it’s not always easy to predict what kind of “God” they will postulate from those texts–except that, unless they are looking solely at one of the Gospels, it would be unlikely they would postulate one that looked anything like the one true Christians believe in! Indeed there are extremist “Christian” groups, and, as you pointed out, those more mainstream historic periods of western European history with violence perpetrated by Christians of some stripe (the Crusades, Oliver Cromwell, etc.)–and often against other Christians.
There are some stripes of Christians also, that when they talk about the nature of God in His wrath against the sin (and sinners), and emphasize the penal aspect of Penal Substitution atonement theory, and talk about how Christians should relate to such a God, in the image of God they conjure up, they sound a lot like the negative stereotypes we have of Muslims! Ironically, I know some Christians like this and in this case, they are the ones who also have the worst fears about Islam and want to emphasize Islam’s potential (which I agree is there) for violence and removing human rights and freedoms through sharia law.
All this is to say, I appreciate the balance you attempt to bring to this subject, Skye. Keep up the good work.
I appreciate and agree with many of the things you have said here. I followed your suggestion and read “The War on Christians” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. While I respect the fact that you recommend it, it seems to me that your own comment following her description of the ongoing slaughter of Christians in areas dominated by Islamic groups ( “But we must not forget our sisters and brothers in Christ who live in places that do not yet have the freedoms we, or Muslims in the West, enjoy.”) is a rather weak, inadequate statement.
I cannot expect the world that I live in to be any more tolerant of me (if I genuinely follow Jesus) than it was of my Master. I don’t believe, though that I should fail to be on guard against a system of belief whose most emphatic followers systematically seek out and kill Christians.
Our own founding ideals were based on a theistic/Judeo-Christian worldview. I find myself in agreement with tildeb (#12, above) “It is you who have made an important error here, and this has consequences when you try to frame the promotion of Islam to be magically compatible with the kind of religious freedom from the state you also advocate. The problem – and it’s not a small one – is that these two notions, Islam and religious freedom, are contrary ideals; you can achieve one (politically and legally) but you cannot accommodate both. You must choose.”
To love someone involves continually seeking their ultimate good. I likewise believe that followers of Jesus are called to love our neighbors (and our enemies). That does not mean closing our eyes to the truths that are there to be seen, including the often spoken agenda of groups such as the Islamic Brotherhood. Framing this as an issue of tolerance of an ultimately intolerant system of belief that such groups represent (and whose numbers and influence in Islam are rapidly growing) seems naive and irresponsible at best. A quick look at recent European history says much about this. Islam is, in many areas, moving militantly into countries and cultures where there is a spiritual vacuum. I suggest that we have just such a vacuum rapidly engulfing our own culture.
When influence can be brought to bear on our ‘free and tolerant’ system to prohibit the name of Jesus being used in prayers – at some VA cemeteries, for instance, or in military religious settings), the undermining of the foundations of said freedom has already become deeply eroded, by design. If we deny the truths that our founders built our freedoms and rights upon, we cannot expect to keep those freedoms and rights. The forces of evil and darkness are real and predatory. We are warned to be on our guard against them. The ideas and beliefs ‘guiding’ and motivating the people who are right now killing fellow followers of Jesus seem to me to be just such forces.
I am grateful for a worldview that tells me that God, our Creator and the Author of the reality we all inhabit, rules supremely over all He has made. The often painful and ugly narrative of human history is the story He has written. I wait eagerly for His Son and our King to rule in person in the coming age.
[...] you haven’t read Skye Jethani’s excellent post – “Why I Defend Muslims” – by now, you certainly should. It’s made the rounds of the blogosphere, but [...]