Eboo Patel is the author of  Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice and the Promise of America and founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core.  He recently penned an opinion piece for CNN entitled “How Evangelicals Can Learn to Love Muslims.”  Caught my eye.  Patel marvels at the evangelical political embrace of conservative Roman Catholics, a group that just 60 years ago would have faced the same kind of suspicion and scrutiny that Mormon presidential candidates deal with.  In the piece, Patel describes Islam as “the new Catholicism.”  To make his point, Patel quotes no less an “evangelical” authority than Norman Vincent Peale:

“Our freedom, our religious freedom, is at stake if we elect a member of the Roman Catholic order as president of the United States,” Norman Vincent Peale told a conference of evangelical leaders in September 1960.

Materials handed out at the Peale conference claimed ‘Universal Roman Catholicism’ was both a religion and a political force whose doctrines were ultimately incompatible with the American ideals of freedom, equality and democracy.

Then Patel makes his analogy:

Replace “Roman Catholic” with “Muslim” and “Church hierarchy” with “caliphate” in those pronouncements and today we are witnessing a similar energy directed against a different faith community using largely the same categories.

In today’s parlance, Kennedy was part of a stealth jihad meant to replace the U.S. Constitution with sharia law and practicing taqqiyya to mask this dawa offensive.

As they believed about Catholicism then, many evangelicals now view the very nature of Islam as incompatible with American values. Evangelicals rate Muslims lower on a “‘favoribility” scale than any other religious group, according to “American Grace,” a book by scholars Robert Putnam and David Campbell.

Fear Not, Talk Much

Of course, Patel is correct to note American Evangelical skepticism about Islam.  There exists a great deal of fear about Muslims in general and Muslims in government in particular.  And to be sure, much of the fear rests squarely on the shoulders of muscular ignorance.  Our fear fuels a reactionism that not only destroys relationships and hurts people but also robs us of genuine opportunities to make Jesus known.  I wrote The Gospel for Muslims with this concern in mind.

And, it seems to me that the optimism fueling Mr. Patel’s article ought really to be considered and embraced instead of the fear that exists.  Patel highlights the effort of some evangelical pastors to broker inter-faith dialogues with Muslims.  I believe in such dialogues.  When we talk to one another we discover that people are people and sometimes there much in common.  Dialogue makes a lot of sense and tends to make a lot of friends when done well.  I’m grateful for the many Muslim friends the Lord has given me both in the U.S. and in the Middle East.  Christians, of all people, should excel at loving their neighbors.  Sounds like something Jesus once said.

Is Islam Liberal or Pluralistic?

But, there was, in my opinion, a serious flaw in Mr. Patel’s article.  Mr. Patel tends to think of Islam in philosophically liberal terms.  He conceives of an Islam that grows comfortably in pluralistic soil.  It’s a hopeful point of view, but I don’t know that history and contemporary politics bear it out.  Islam is a stubbornly pre-Enlightenment religion.  It boasts of its essentially unchanging nature–which is both a strength (for traditionalists and conservatives) and a weakness (for progressives and true liberals).  Islam continues to be a missionary religion (like Christianity) with the goal of bring Dar Al-Islam–the house of Islam–to every area of life everywhere Muslims live.  That, of course, brings us to Sharia, the codification of Islamic law, which one Muslim writer describes as ”the epitome of the true Islamic spirit, the most decisive expression of Islamic thought, the essential kernel of Islam.”[1]  Another Muslim writer says simply: “The Sharia is Islam’s constitution.”[2]  The main sources of sharia were the Qur’an, the sunna and hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), Islamic case law with its aversion to “innovation,” and some elements of culture and tradition.  On the face of it, we’d have to conclude that to the extent Muslims look to bring a society under sharia then to that extent it remains incompatible with the non-establishment and separation clauses.

If the issue is simply whether or not we’ll love our Muslim neighbor, then Patel rightly encourages us to actually talk with them and get to know them.  But if the issue is whether or not Muslims are accepted in American circles of political power, then question becomes: Is sharia compatible with American-styled Democracy?  Patel’s piece blurs these two very different discussions.  We may very well develop friendships and loving encounters with our Muslim neighbors–and we should.  But whether Islam as a political theory exists cozily with genuine Liberalism remains another matter.  American Christians need to think in not only loving terms about their Muslim neighbor but also in careful ways about Islam as a religion and political philosophy.

In my opinion (which won’t get you your favorite latte at Starbucks), Islam and sharia pose significant threats to American-styled political discourse and practice.  I say that not because I’m a zealot for preserving “western” values and civilization, or because I think any individual person from a Muslim background needs to be suspected or opposed.  I write this because I think most westerners continue to be uninformed and unsuspecting regarding the internal dynamics of Islam.  Pluralists and political liberals tend to respond not with knowledge of the faith and its import for political philosophies, but with obfuscating platitudes about “accepting everyone.”    The issue is not should we accept our Muslim neighbors and friends, but whether we should unknowingly slide toward a very different political and cultural vision of society and freedom.  Patel confuses these two things.  We need a more careful meeting of the minds.

In Piper’s Thinking. Loving. Doing., which was a transcript of this address in 2010, I suggested that Islam remains incompatible with pluralism for four reasons:

1. Sharia, at best, is theocratic, and theonomistic at the very least.  If the sharia is the “constitution of Islam” then sharia offers a very different legal footing than American constitutional law.  American constitutional law grounds itself in natural law and individual liberty when the Declaration of Independence declares, “We hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  But Islam declares that Allah rules all things and all societies must be brought under the rule of Islam.
2. Because sharia leaves no room for modernization or flexibility in interpretation it leaves no room for healthy pluralism.  With the Islamic bias against “innovation” and “interpretation,” the Sharia remains largely locked into the body of rulings and ideas set within the first 300 years of the Muslim era (9^th century).
3. Because Sharia incorporates cultural consensus into law, the certain cultural practices enter into the legal framework of countries unaware.  In our context, when we refer to “cultural practices,” we do not necessarily associate such things with a particular religious practice.  So a person may participate in a cultural milieu without our necessarily making any religious assumptions about that practice at all.  But in Islam, culture is religion and religion is culture.  So to admit elements of sharia into the legal framework of any country like the United States under the guise of “cultural practice” or “multiculturalism” is to give ground to sharia and to establish a constitutional footing quite at odds with the assumptions the country was founded upon.  We cannot admit cultural practices into western law without opening the gate to all of Sharia.  Think, for example, about Muslim women in France wearing veils for driver’s license.  Most people think of the veil largely as a cultural preference or practice issue.  But the adorning of veils is as much about sharia and its legal requirements as it is about culture.  Protecting the wearing of veils begins the process of extending other sharia-inspired practices in Western societies.
4. Advocacy for sharia sometimes reaches a point where it can no longer tolerate difference or accept minority status.  If Muslim communities come to define sharia as the only acceptable framework for living freely and worshipping freely as Muslims, then we can understand why substantial Muslim minorities in places like the Phillipines and Indonesia look to secede from the wider country to form separate Muslim states.  And if living under sharia becomes the only acceptable way to live, we understand why militarism and force become acceptable strategies for some people.  Such Muslims view aggressive advocacy and militarism as self-defense or acceptable jihad because their view of sharia does not include western-styled pluralism.

Desiring God linked to these dueling videos from a young Muslim and a young Christian poet.  Apparently, the Muslim’s video launched first, and the Christian responded with the support of Alpha & Omega Ministries.  One thing should be abundantly clear from the videos: Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God.  That should have been obvious, but sometimes people need it stated.  It’s creatively stated here:

Psalm 119:

¹²⁹ Your statutes are wonderful;
therefore I obey them.
¹³⁰ The unfolding of your words gives light;
it gives understanding to the simple.
¹³¹ I open my mouth and pant,
longing for your commands.
¹³² Turn to me and have mercy on me,
as you always do to those who love your name.
¹³³ Direct my footsteps according to your word;
let no sin rule over me.
¹³⁴ Redeem me from the oppression of men,
that I may obey your precepts.
¹³⁵ Make your face shine upon your servant
and teach me your decrees.
¹³⁶ Streams of tears flow from my eyes, 
   for your law is not obeyed.

When I watch this video and think of reading such translations as though being circulated with “Father,” “Son of God,” and other vital revelations of the character of God, I feel something akin to what the psalmist feels in v. 136.  I could weep over this tampering with God’s word and the harm such distortions do to the people of God and the glory of Christ Jesus our Lord.  This 5 minute video with Muslim background believers contending with “insider” movements tells the story poignantly.

The word of God should alter people; people should never alter the word of God–especially those people who claim to love the God of the word.

For those who might be interested, here is a link to a petition to Wycliffe, Frontiers, and SIL along with some fact sheets.  If you’re not the petition signing type, I hope you’re the petition making type.  I hope you’ll petition the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit for the preservation of His word so that those who need the word of life will have it and those who sacrificed their lives for it will be honored.

No.  Honestly, I can’t think of a more damaging action than the translation attempts some groups are making in predominantly Muslim countries.  Dropping the familial language “Son of God” or “God the Father”:

1. Undermines the perceived integrity and reliability of the Scriptures;

2. Robs the Church of centuries of theological reflection and meaning, including Trinitarian orthodoxy, Christology, and more;

3. Betrays the radical sacrifices that believers are making in these lands for these truths; and,

4. Tends toward a denial of the uniqueness of the gospel witness itself.

World Magazine’s current article, “The Battle for Accurate Bible Translation in Asia,” hits all the issues on the head.  I heartily commend it.  Here’s the opening paragraphs:

Fikret Bocek says that Turkish quince, a fruit like a pear, takes a long time to grow and ripen, but it’s delicious. Patience is key for good quince, he says, and also for the salvation of his fellow Turks, most of whom are Muslim like he once was.

Patience was key when the Turkish police arrested and imprisoned him for 10 days in 1988, when he was beaten, verbally abused, and tortured with electrical shocks. The police ordered Bocek, then a teenager and a new convert to Christianity, to recite the shahada, “There is no God but Allah.” Despite a crippling fear, he found he could not physically open his mouth to say it, which he attributes to divine intervention.

Patience, a fierce patience, was key in 2007 when a group of Muslims brutally murdered a close friend of his and two other Christians while they were meeting for a Bible study in Malatya, Turkey. The Muslims, who had pretended that they were interested in Christianity, disemboweled and then dismembered the three men in a two-hour torture session the killers filmed. They finally slit the Christians’ throats from ear to ear.

Bocek points to the naked pragmatism and concern for visible results driving these moves:

Bocek, 40, now a pastor and church planter in the coastal town of Izmir, Turkey, tells Western mission agencies to be more patient for faith to ripen in Muslims in his country, and not to alter key biblical phrases in translations for the sake of outreach. The phrase “Son of God” is offensive to Muslims because it seems to imply that God was a physical father to Jesus through a sexual union with Mary, so some translators have sought to find alternate terms to describe that relationship. “They get involved in these translations because they see that there is no fruit,” Bocek said. “We have results. But you have to be patient and take it really, really slow.” He and his fellow pastors address the offensive connotations of “Son of God” by explaining what it really means. “For centuries,” he said, “that’s the way it went.”

The entire article is well worth reading.  It includes responses from proponents of the translation approach.  But on balance, I think the piece nails the issues and reveals the great danger of tampering with the Lord’s revelation of himself in Scripture.

HT: WHI

In God’s kindness, I’ve had the privilege of participating in four public Muslim-Christian Dialogues in the United Arab Emirates over the last six years. These have been wonderfully warm exchanges in a part of the world generally “closed” to such conversations.

2011 Dubai Muslim-Christian Dialogue – Trailer 2 from gdskc on Vimeo.

The corporate sponsors for the events have launched a new website committed to Christian-Muslim dialogue and understanding. The site features videos from the last three discussions and other resources they may interest you. I hope you’ll take a look and I hope it’ll be an encouragement to you. You can support this effort by purchasing a video or making a donation. Consider purchasing a couple of the DVDs to give to friends, your church or mosque, or to a local library.

Today, I’m heading to Dubai for two weeks of ministry among saints and friends there.  The main event while there will be the fourth Muslim-Christian Dialogue I’ve had opportunity to participate in.  These dialogues have become highlights in my life and ministry and a real example of how Muslims and Christians may carry on honest, intentional discussions without rancor and strife.

This year’s topic is “How Can We Find Forgiveness from a Holy God?”  Can there be a more important topic of discussion between people who profess to worship God?  Who can stand if God counts his sins against him?

I’ll have the privilege of discussing this question with Bassam Zawadi, a Muslim apologist who makes his home in Saudi Arabia.  Bassam was a moderator in one of the first dialogues and a very able discussant in the exchange two years ago.  I genuinely like Bassam, his passion, his honesty, and his kind demeanor.  This should be a rich discussion–and more than a discussion, a question that determines eternity for all people.

This opportunity also reminds me that in a region experience a lot of unrest there are places like Dubai where free conversations can be had in some measure and where genuine exchange can take place without violence.  At our last dialogue, we had participation from government officials in Dubai who were very enthusiastic about the discussion.  May the leadership of the government and university officials become a model for many other governments.

I’m always warmed by the hospitality I experience from the people of the U.A.E. and especially the hosts and sponsors of the event.  Speaking of which, businesses like Gulf Digital Solution, the event’s sponsor, are not only an economic blessing but also a real blessing to the quality of student and community life.  It should be a wonderful time of exchange and serious discussion of the most foundational question imaginable: “How can we find forgiveness from a holy God?”

Is peace in the Middle East possible?  Of course.  But like peace everywhere else, it depends on accepting the message of peace with God through the Prince of Peace.  Knowing that, we should commit ourselves to 1 Timothy 2:1-2–”I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for everyone–for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.”

If the Lord gives you leave, please pray for our time in Dubai.  And you’re in the area, stop by and bring a friend.

That’s a question people frequently ask, and it’s a topic worthy of some pondering.  We want to see all the sons and daughters of Adam made in God’s image know the love and fellowship of God for which they were made.

While at the Ocean City Bible Conference, I had opportunity to sit down with Alex Crain at Jesus.org to discuss this and other questions related to Islam.  Over the next couple days, I’ll post some of those videos and others made with Phil Johnson and Paul Tripp.

I hope this short video offers some quick help.  And if you’ll forgive the shameless plug, you can find more thoughts on witnessing to Muslims in The Gospel for Muslims.

How Can Christians Best Witness to Muslims?

I appreciated this post from Scott Moore (HT: Z).  It captures well the opportunity/dilemma that exists right next door to us.

I will never forget the serious look on Dr. Richard Pratt’s face one Monday night as he was expressing his number one fear for the next generation. It was not alcoholism, or disease. It was not liberalism, or the church’s view on women being ordained (or not) in ministry. He looked across the classroom and called all of us to take heed to the Islamic growth in America. One statistic I remember is that the census reported that by year 2025, one major metropolitan city, in America, will be predominately Muslim. I tucked that statistic away, and have not thought of it since…until yesterday.

The doorbell rang. As the dog barked, and as the kids proceeded to run around like chickens with their head cut off, I left Katie to the new baby and answered the door. I was not prepared for my visitors.

Read the rest.  This is the kind of experience I pray we’d be prepared for as God’s people.  I pray the Lord makes The Gospel for Muslims of some help in these opportunities.  Oh, Lord, make us zealous for your name and eager to share your live!

Yesterday I began reading Stephen Prothero‘s new book, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World–And Why Their Differences Matter.  It’s a follow-up to Prothero’s best-selling Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know–And Doesn’t.

In God Is Not One, Prothero works to help us with our basic ignorance of eight of the world’s major religions.  He does this in a very clean and engaging journalistic style.  There’s history here, but also human drama and contemporary analysis.  He also aims to avoid stereotypes and flat, one-dimensional depictions–no easy task given the scope of the book.

But one of the things I appreciate already is Prothero’s rejection of the current mantra among so many in the world: “All religions basically worship the same God.”  Prothero uses his introduction to basically demolish that idea as far as I’m concerned.  The book is worth the introduction for its able deconstruction of that myth.  As an example, here’s a great analogy from a subsection in the introduction (“Sports and Salvation”) where Prothero illustrates that not all religions have the same goal of salvation, a common misconception most of us have:

Which of the following–baseball, basketball, tennis, or golf–is best at scoring runs?  The answer of course is baseball, because runs is a term foreign to basketball, tennis, and golf alike.  Different sports have different goals: basketball players shoot baskets; tennis players win points; golfers sink puts.  So if you ask which sport is best at scoring runs, you have privileged baseball from the start.  To criticize a basketball team for failing to score runs is not to besmirch them.  It is simply to misunderstand the game of basketball.  So here is another problem with the pretend pluralism of the perennial philosophy sort: just as hitting home runs is the monopoly of one sport, salvation is the monopoly of one religion.  If you see sin as the human predicament and salvation as the solution, then it makes sense to come to Christ.  But that will not settle as much as you might think, because the real question is not which religion is best at carrying us into the end zone of salvation but which of the many religious goals on offer we should be seeking.  Should we be trudging toward the end zone of salvation, or tyring to reach the finish line of social harmony?  Should our goal be reincarnation?  Or escape from the vicious cycle of life, death, and rebirth? (p. 22)

The sports analogy is helpful because it reminds us that not every religious system has the same end in mind.  They work to accomplish different things in the world and in the lives of the adherents.

But Prothero’s suggestion that choosing a religion simply depends on what goal we have in mind would seem to miss his own point.  If we take the truth claims of each religion seriously, we must recognize that some goals are penultimate at best (social harmony, for example), while others are ultimate and therefore overwhelmingly significant (rebirth or eternal life, for example).  And we might realize that there is a religion that claims to do each in its proper place, that is, provide salvation through rebirth manifest in social harmony at least among its adherents.  When we think in those terms, we’re really only left with one option: Jesus.  God doesn’t come a la carte.

Prothero writes without that kind of interest.  He attempts to write as a religion scholar possessing something of the “objective detachment” of his guild.  He doesn’t pretend to have had no experience with religion, and with a Christian upbringing in particular.  But in his assumption of academic standards for his fields, he manages to raise very big questions in very interesting ways without very helpful answers or guidance.  That’s left to pastors and blog writers, I suppose .

At any rate, I’m three chapters in (Introduction, Islam, and Christianity) and already I think this is a book well worth buying and reading.  As I said earlier, I think the introduction alone is worth the purchase price of the book.  So far, he’s given a good overview of Islam, though each religion is a topic so vast an introduction to the religion could command an entire book itself.  Props to Prothero for attempting such an ambitious undertaking.

Below are the chapters and religions covered.  The sub-titles give you Prothero’s short-hand for the religion’s main goal.

Introduction
Islam: The Way of Submission
Christianity: The Way of Salvation
Confucianism: The Way of Propriety
Hinduism: The Way of Devotion
Buddhism: The Way of Awakening
Yoruba Religion: the Way of Connection
Judaism: The Way of Exile and Return
Daoism: The Way of Flourishing
A Brief Coda on Atheism: The Way of Religion

Lord willing, I hope to interact with God Is Not One as I read. Would really welcome your thoughts.

Related Posts:

Rejoice with Me

Are God and Allah the Same?

Muslim-Christian Dialogue

One Man’s Journey from Judaism to Islam to Christianity

Christianity Confronts Islam

Today, I have the privilege of talking with my brother Albert Mohler on his radio program about The Gospel for Muslims.  Check us out online or listen in at 5pm EST on a station in your area.