EDL Supporter Says of Muslims: “kill-em-all”

On the 4 Freedoms Worldwide website ‘Old War Dog’ has a series of anti-Islamic photos.

One of them is entitled: kill-em-all

‘Old War Dog’ states,

‘I see the EDL as a small part of the overall counter-jihad movement… That’s why I support EDL.’

From Wikipedia,

‘The English Defence League (EDL) is an English far-right single-issue organisation formed in 2009. Its stated aim is to oppose the spread of Islamism, Sharia law and Islamic extremism in England, although the EDL’s political direction is being debated within the group.’

‘It presents itself as being multi-ethnic and multi-faith, and states that it opposes only “jihadists”, not all Muslims. Nevertheless, EDL members were reported to have chanted “We hate Muslims” at pro-Palestinian demonstrators in London on 13 September 2009.’

Clearly some of EDL’s supporters are violent extremists who wish to kill Muslims.

UPDATE:

Old War Dog just sent me an email, he says

‘I never thought of it like that. I’ve deleted that picture since you point it out though. I seen the heads of the radicals and terrorists which were spiked as a cry for justice, not as an incitement to violence? Don’t know if you’d noticed the heads on the spikes were all known terrorists and extremeists.’

I’ve checked the website and the offending photo has gone. Good. But the picture is clearly an incitement to kill Muslims. Also, the central figure in white is shown from the back and is unidentifiable, so even accepting his logic, the central Muslim figure is not a ‘known terrorist and extremist’. I note also the Christian cross in the sky at the top of the pic, which infers the killing is a form of Christian jihad.

BUT!

Here are some more photos from Old War Dog, a man who claims to reject terrorism and extremism (!). I let you, the reader, decide if he is a complete hypocrite or not:

This photo is entitled Humpty Dumpty:

Advanced guide to understanding Christianity

COMING SOON:

An Advanced guide to understanding Christianity

MDI have announced a new course for Muslims wishing to undertake a scholarly and rigorously academic approach to understanding Christianity, for dialogue, debate and discourse.

It is intended to be a 6 week course. Each class lasts for 1 hour 30 minutes at a central London venue. Starting at GCSE level and rising to A level in the last 2 weeks.

Subjects covered include:

a general introduction to the Bible, the biblical canon, textual history, why there are different Bibles

the historical Jesus, who he was, and what his first followers believed about him

James, Peter and John and the Jerusalem Church

the theology of Paul

can we trust the New Testament?

historical theology (Christology, creeds and councils)

how can biblical scholarship help Muslim Dawah today?

I will be teaching this class on behalf of MDI. The programme will begin in the new year. Venue, dates and further information to follow…

MDI Event 10th December 2009

I will be chairing and moderating this event, inshallah.

Contentions by Abdal-Hakim Murad

All Islam offers is God.

We need an Erasmus, not a Luther.

Atheism: the belief that water originates in the well.

Laziness is its own chastisement.

A god is any site of independent volition.

America is Rome. Europe is Athens. Islam is Jerusalem.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is not to be changed by it.

To switch on a television is to acknowledge one’s own lack of refinement.

You are your intentions.

The Crucifixion and the Conquest of Mecca: which is higher: to forgive from a position of powerlessness, or of power?

The Vicarious Atonement proves that torture can be a good thing.

Islamic democracy: sovereignty belongs to God.

He is dead who does not feel the Qur’an move in his hands.

Rumi

Wisdom from Rumi (Selected by Kabir Helminski)

Let’s ask God to help us to self-control:
for one who lacks it, lacks His Grace.

The undisciplined person doesn’t wrong himself alone—
but sets fire to the whole world.
Discipline enabled Heaven to be filled with light;
discipline enabled the angels to be immaculate and holy.

The peacock’s plumage is his enemy.
The world is the mountain,
and each action, the shout that echoes back.

This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace
to extract the silver from the dross

Anger and lust make a man squint;
When self-interest appears, virtue hides:

Fortunate is he who does not carry envy as a companion.

If ten lamps are present in one place,
each differs in form from another;
yet you can’t distinguish whose radiance is whose
when you focus on the light.

The idol of your self is the mother of all idols.
To regard the self as easy to subdue is a mistake.

If you wish mercy, show mercy to the weak.

The stoppered jar, though in rough water,
floated because of its empty heart.
When the wind of poverty is in anyone,
she floats in peace on the waters of this world.
As long as desires are fresh, faith is not;
for it is these desires that lock that gate.

The tongue of mutual understanding is quite special:
to be one of heart is better than to have a common tongue.

If you dig a pit for others to fall into,
you will fall into it yourself.

Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader,
are your own nature reflected in them.

With will, fire becomes sweet water.

The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks
is a minor hero
compared to the lion who overcomes himself.

O son, only those whose spiritual eye has been opened
know how compulsive we are.

Whoever gives reverence receives reverence.
The intellectual quest,
though fine as pearl or coral,
is not the spiritual search.

The intelligent desire self-control;
children want candy.

Since in order to speak, one must first listen,
learn to speak by listening.

When, with just a taste, envy and deceit arise,
and ignorance and forgetfulness are born,
know you have tasted the unlawful.

Know that a word suddenly shot from the tongue
is like an arrow shot from the bow.
O tongue, you are an endless treasure.
O tongue, you are also an endless disease.

I am burning.
If any one lacks tinder,
let him set his rubbish ablaze with my fire.
Although your desire tastes sweet,
doesn’t the Beloved desire you
to be desireless?

The world’s flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel:
eat less of it, for it is full of fire.

Forgetfulness of God, beloved,
is the support of this world;
spiritual intelligence its ruin.
For Intelligence belongs to that other world,
and when it prevails, this material world is overthrown.

Were there no men of vision,
all who are blind would be dead.

All these griefs within our hearts
arise from the smoke and dust
of our existence and vain desires.

Whoever lives sweetly dies painfully:
whoever serves his body doesn’t nourish his soul.

Your thinking is like a camel driver,
and you are the camel:
it drives you in every direction under its bitter control.

If you are wholly perplexed and in straits,
have patience, for patience is the key to joy.

Fast from thoughts, fast:
thoughts are like the lion and the wild ass;
men’s hearts are the thickets they haunt.

If you are irritated by every rub,
how will your mirror be polished?
Anyone in whom the troublemaking self has died,
sun and cloud obey.
If you wish to shine like day,
burn up the night of self-existence.
Dissolve in the Being who is everything.

There is no worse sickness for the soul,
O you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.
The heart and eyes must bleed a lot
before self-complacency falls away.
Can the water of a polluted stream
clear out the dung?
Can human knowledge sweep away
the ignorance of the sensual self?
How does a sword fashion its own hilt?
Go, entrust the cure of this wound to a surgeon,

Many are the unbelievers who long for submission,
but their stumbling block
is reputation and pride and continual desires.
I’m the devoted slave
of anyone who doesn’t claim
to have attained dining with God
at every way station.

Everyone is a child
except the one who’s intoxicated with God.
God has said, Knowledge that isn’t from Him is a burden.
like a woman’s makeup, it doesn’t last.

Be cleansed of the (false) self’s features, and see your pure Self:
Know the mirror of the heart is infinite.
Either the understanding falls silent, or it leads you astray,
because the heart is God,
or indeed the heart is He.

Everything, except love of the Most Beautiful,
is really agony. It’s agony
to move towards death and not drink the water of life.
Fiery lust is not diminished by indulging it,
but inevitably by leaving it ungratified.

Anger is a king over kings,
but anger once bridled may serve.

Servetus to Take off the Veil

19th November, UPDATE:

Servetus the evangelical is none other than:

‘Kermit Millard Zarley, Jr. (born September 29, 1941) an American professional golfer who played on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour. He is also an author of several books.’

So says Wikepedia about him. What a joke.

A while ago I did a post about an anonymous evangelical Christian author who went by the pseudonym “Servetus the Evangelist” who had published a new biblical study on the Trinity entitled: The Restitution of Jesus Christ. The original plan was that the author, a well known evangelical, would reveal his identity on the 500th anniversary of Michael Servetus’s birth, but in the meantime, as a kind of playful contest, would release weekly clues as to his identity and invite readers to make guesses.

However recently “Servetus” has announced a change of mind. He promises to reveal his identity this Thursday November 19th. The following announcement has appeared on his Website:

ANNOUNCEMENT!!! October 18, 2009
I have decided to end this contest and reveal my identity as the author of The Restitution of Jesus Christ on November 19, 2009, almost two years earlier than planned. I will tell on this webpage who I am. And I will tell about the interesting development that has caused me to change these plans. It is something totally unexpected and that I could not have foreseen. Yet I am very excited about it.

I hope all the fuss about his identity proves to be worth it!

Apostates and Islam

Recently, a certain Christian politician launched a discreditable attack on my previous post on apostasy. I have sought authoritative guidance on this matter from scholars in the Islamic world whose work is available in English. I reproduce below an excerpt from a work entitled The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi who is the head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), and the president of the International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS).

His authoritative judgement needs no endorsement from me, but I am happy to acknowledge it as the teaching of Islam.

Capital Punishment

Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala says, “…Do not take the life which Allah has made sacred except in (the course of) justice….”(6:151)

Allah has mentioned three crimes for which the death penalty is justified:

1) Unjust murder. Murder which has been proved demands retaliation by taking the life of the murderer—a life for a life, a like return for an evil committed, as the initiator of the killing is the initiator of the wrongdoing. As the Qur’an states, “In the law of qisas (retaliation) there is life for you, O people of understanding….”(2:179)

2) Publicly committing zina with a person who is not one’s spouse if at least four upright people have actually witnessed intercourse taking place and testified before the court that they saw it. The death penalty applies to either of the two who is married. Confession, repeated four times before the court by the adulterer or adulteress, is equivalent to the testimony of four witnesses.

3) Apostasy from Islam after willingly accepting it and subsequently declaring an open revolt against it in such a manner which threatens the solidarity of the Muslim community is a crime punishable by death. No one is compelled to accept Islam, but at the same time no one is permitted to play tricks with it, as some Jews did during the Prophet’s time:

A party of the People of the Book say, ‘Believe in what has been revealed to the Believers’ at the beginning of the day and reject it at the end of it, in order that they may turn back (from Islam). (3:72)

The Prophet (peace be on him) limited capital punishment to these three crimes only, saying,

The shedding of the blood of a Muslim is not lawful except for one of three reasons: a life for a life, a married person who commits zina, and one who turns aside from his religion and abandons the community. (Reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim)

In any of these instances, the death penalty can be implemented only by the proper authority after due process of law prescribed by the Shari’ah; individuals cannot take the law into their own hands, becoming judges and executioners, since this would result in absolute chaos and disorder. However, the judge may turn the murderer over to the victim’s next-of-kin to be executed in his presence so that their hearts may be eased and the desire for revenge extinguished. This is in obedience to the saying of Allah Ta’ala, “…And whoever is killed wrongfully, We have given authority to the heir; but let him not go to excess in killing (by way of retaliation), for indeed he will be helped” (17:33).

© Paul Williams 2009

Examining C.S. Lewis’ Trilemma

Here’s a new article by Muslim writer Bassam Zawadi who created the excellent Call to Monotheism website.

It presents a refutation of CS Lewis’ often quoted argument that Jesus claimed to be God.

Enjoy!

C.S. Lewis is a man who needs no introduction. He was indeed one of the most influential Christian figures of the 20th century. His works fascinatingly appeal to a wide audience of readers who come from different religious backgrounds (including myself). However, despite enjoying reading his works one cannot resist but to strongly disagree with some of its content. I am speaking specifically about C.S. Lewis’s famous “Jesus was either a lunatic, liar or Lord” argument.

This popular argument is heavily cited by Christian laity today against people of other faiths – particularly Muslims who hold Jesus to be so dear to them – mainly due to its revival by popular Christian apologists like Josh McDowell (see Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999), page 157).

It’s disappointing to see that Christians do not offer other alternatives besides the above three. This could simply be due to 1) their inability to think and comprehend or 2) stubbornness that they are right and close mindedness to entertain other views or 3) just sheer ignorance of the reality of scholarship out there.

However, it is refreshing to see that respected Christian scholars – including the conservative ones – could see the fallaciousness of this supposed trilemma as I will show below.

Lewis’s famous argument is stated as follows:

I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse.. I have to accept the view that He was and is God. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: MacMillan, 1943), pages 55-56)

Conservative New Testament scholar Craig L. Blomberg takes issue with this view and states in the introduction of his famous book The Historical Reliability of the Gospels:

The problem with this argument is that it assumes what is regularly denied, namely, that the gospels give entirely accurate accounts of the actions and claims of Jesus … This option represents the most common current explanation of the more spectacular deeds and extravagant claims of Jesus in the gospels. (Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, (Intervarsity Press, 1987), page xx)

Liberal New Testament scholar and former Bishop J.A.T. Robinson protests against Lewis’ argument:

We are often asked to accept Christ as divine because he claimed to be so–and the familiar argument is pressed: ‘A man who goes around claiming to be God must either be God–or else he is a madman or a charlatan’ … And, of course, it is not easy to read the Gospel story and to dismiss Jesus as either mad or bad. Therefore, the conclusion runs, he must be God. I am not happy about this argument. None of the disciples in the Gospels acknowledged Jesus because he claimed to be God, and the Apostles never went out saying, “This man claimed to be God, therefore you must believe in him.” (John A.T. Robinson, Honest to God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), pages 71-72)

Liberal theologian, Professor John Hick states:

In this, one of the earliest christologies, the human Jesus was raised to a unique and highly exalted role (though not to deity) shortly after his death.

All this rules out the once popular form of apologetic which argues that someone claiming to be God must be either mad, or bad, or God (e.g. Lewis 1955, 51-2). With the recognition that Jesus did not think of himself in this way christological discussion has moved from the once supposedly firm rock of Jesus’ own claim to the much less certain ground of the church’s subsequent attempts to formulate the meaning of his life. (John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age, 2nd ed. (Louisville: WJK, 2005), pages 28-29)

Conservative New Testament scholar Craig Evans said:

When it comes to evaluating Jesus, popular Christian apologists often appeal to the triad of options proposed by C.S. Lewis half a century ago: Jesus was either a liar, lunatic or Lord. The appeal makes for good alliteration, maybe even good rhetoric, but it is faulty logic. Without further qualification, those who adhere to this line of argument commit the fallacy of excluded middle. That is, they overlook other viable alternatives. At least two other alternatives are possible; both relate to how Scripture is understood and both come into play in the books that Fabricating Jesus criticizes.

A fourth alternative is that Jesus is neither liar, lunatic nor Lord (in the traditional, orthodox sense); he is something else. He may be Israel’s messiah, the Lord’s servant and perhaps the greatest prophet who ever lived. He could even be called God’s son, but not in the trinitarian sense, in which Jesus is seen as fully God and fully human. As far as we know, this more or less agrees with Ebionite Christianity, a form of Jewish Christianity that emerged in the second century and eventually disappeared sometime in the fifth century. The Ebionites possessed one or more edited versions of the Gospel of Mathew, which tended to enhance the status of the law and minimize the divine nature of Jesus. They believe that in the sense King David could be called God’s son (as in Ps 2:7) Jesus also could be called son of God. But Ebionites did not hold to what theologians call “high Christology” – that is, the view that Jesus is divine. The Ebionite understanding of Jesus is pretty close to the view of two of the scholars considered later in this chapter.

A fifth alternative is that we really don’t know who Jesus was, what he really said and did, what he thought of himself, or what his companions thought of him, because the New Testament Gospels and other sources we have are not reliable. The New Testament Gospels may well present Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and as God’s Son, but for all we know, that is nothing more than the theology of Christians who lived in the second half of the first century, Christians who had never met Jesus and had never heard him teach. (Craig Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels, (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2006), pages 20-21)

So as we could see, there are at least two other possible alternatives: 1) Jesus’ words are not to be understood as him claiming to be God, therefore making the position of Muslim apologists and Unitarian Christians who argue that Jesus did not claim to be divine to be a possibility and 2) Even if the New Testament does clearly show that Jesus claimed to be God, it’s possible that these words are falsely attributed to Jesus.

In conclusion, Christians who keep posing this argument need to start being a little bit more open minded and realize that there are other alternatives that they must engage with. To keep shoving this logically fallacious trilemma down the throats of people will do nothing but push them further away from them and create barriers to having a serious intellectual dialogue surrounding the topic of the historical Jesus.

Feel free to contact me at b_zawadi@hotmail.com

In Praise of Christian Honesty

It’s a fact that not all Christians are right-wing fundamentalists (yes really!). The excellent Christian Forum ‘The Ship of Fools’ has a new feature called ‘The ten worst verses of the Bible’. Actually there are many other horrible and vile verses which for some reason don’t get a mention, but I’ll add my favourite nasty verse at the end. Just remember folks: this is God’s Word you’re reading!

The ten worst verses of the Bible

Lord, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Ship of Fools can finally and authoritatively reveal the worst verse in the Bible, according to our readers.

The verse is ascribed to – who’d have thought it – St Paul, and if you’ll turn with me in your Bibles you’ll find it in 1 Timothy:

“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12)

It’s a verse that’s particularly difficult to discuss. When we revealed the results of the Chapter and Worse poll at the recent Greenbelt festival, Hannah Kowszun, the only woman in our panel of three had, of course, to contribute in sign language.

St Paul did well to make the top place with his rules for church life in first-century Ephesus, beating genocide, infanticide, executions, dismemberment, human sacrifice (and donkeys) to get there. All the verses that placed from fifth to second place resorted to violence to do so.

In second place, the Lord via the prophet Samuel instructs King Saul in ethnic cleansing:

“This is what the Lord Almighty says… ‘Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” (1 Samuel 15:3)

It seems like a rather disappointing elucidation of what the Lord did and didn’t mean by, “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

At number 3 is the only entry from the Hebrew Torah:

“Do not allow a sorceress to live.” (Exodus 22:18)

This is not the only biblical death penalty, but it appears sorceresses elicit greater sympathy than blasphemers, rebellious sons, unfaithful fiancées and brides who fail to prove their virginity.

Number 4 is particularly jarring because it comes at the end of a favourite psalm, which moves from pining for home to anger against the Babylonians who have taken them into exile. It’s the line that Boney M didn’t quite manage to fit in to their disco calypso hit, Rivers of Babylon:

“Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (Psalm 137:9)

Hebrew hymnwriters were rather franker about their feelings than their modern counterparts, weren’t they?

Number 5 brings us to the most unpopular book in the Top Ten, Judges, a history of Israel before its first king:

“So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go.” (Judges 19:25)

The man in question is so outraged by the treatment of his woman, he cuts her into 12 pieces and sends them around the 12 tribes of Israel in protest. The biblical writer makes no comment.

From all that violence, we return to Paul for some homophobia. The 6th worse verse in the Bible is:

“In the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.” (Romans 1:27)

It’s the one you could imagine Rowan Williams trying to sneak out of the Bible when no one’s looking.

Then at 7 it’s back to Judges for a bit of human sacrifice:

“And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, ‘If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt-offering.’” (Judges 11:30-1)

As Hannah Kowszun said at Greenbelt, perhaps he was hoping it would be the missus. But it was his daughter, so he was morally obliged to burn her for God.

In at number 8, a golden oldie, for prog rock fans, it’s Genesis. God is speaking to Abraham:

“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” (Genesis 22:2)

More human sacrifice. Admittedly, this time it turns out that God doesn’t actually mean it, but does that really let him off the hook?

We’re back to St Paul for a third time with number 9:

“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22)

And scraping in at the last moment to the number 10 slot, it’s the man who gets a much better press for saying most of the same things, St Peter:

“Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.” (1 Peter 2:18)

All in all, the results are a mixture of the historically horrific and milder restrictions that are still being applied in our own times. It may be a surprise that biblical sexism caps biblical genocide, but maybe it’s because it’s more of a live issue. No one is using the Book of Samuel to justify genocide today, but the words of Paul are still used to silence women.

It’s an unedifying list, but we think the Bible can survive bringing these shadowy verses into the spotlight. It’s not the all-or-nothing book that fundamentalists (atheist and Christian) say that we must either accept wholesale or burn. We need a view of the Bible that is nuanced enough to treasure its comforts and challenges, its classic stories and groundbreaking ethical wisdom, while facing the plain fact that some of it is unacceptable.

Here’s my nomination for number 11:

Hosea 13:16

The people of Samaria must bear their guilt,
because they have rebelled against their God.
They will fall by the sword;
their little ones will be dashed to the ground,
their pregnant women ripped open.”

Christian Terrorism

The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605

As I write these words multiple explosions are occurring in London. But don’t be alarmed. The English people are celebrating, with fireworks, their deliverance from one of the most memorable events in English history: the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the House of Commons and the King in 1605.

Christian terrorism did not begin in 1605 of course. Acts of terror had been perpetuated by the Christians against other Christians since the days of the early Fathers (not to mention terrorism against Jews and Muslims). But the English have celebrated their deliverance from this particular act of Christian terror annually for the past 400 years to the chant of ‘Remember, remember the Fifth of November’.

The conspirators were all devout Catholics, determined to overthrow King James I of England and VI of Scotland

I have read, and recommend, Antonia Fraser’s fascinating book The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605, (published by Weidenfield & Nicolson, London, 2002). She is a Roman Catholic herself, and it is instructive to read the dedicatory page:

FOR

Edward who would have defended them

Lucy who would have hidden them

Paloma who would have succoured them in exile

So Christian terrorism still has its defenders today, though no one seems to bat an eyelid from the safe distance of 400 years.

For an excellent discussion of what constitutes terrorism and how to define the term see Definition of terrorism

© Paul Williams 2009

The headquarters of Christianity may well have been Baghdad not Rome…

‘The First Christianity’

This Thursday, 21:00 on BBC Four

BBC Synopsis:

‘When he was a small boy, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s parents used to drive him round historic churches. Little did they know that they had created a monster, with the history of the Christian Church becoming his life’s work.’

‘In the first of a six-part series sweeping across four continents, Professor MacCulloch goes in search of Christianity’s forgotten origins. He overturns the familiar story that it all began when the apostle Paul took Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. Instead, he shows that the true origins of Christianity lie further east, and that at one point it was poised to triumph in Asia, maybe even in China.’

‘The headquarters of Christianity may well have been Baghdad not Rome, and if that had happened then western Christianity would have been very different.’

more info here: BBC

and here: BBC Press Office

Our New Event: ‘The Islamification of Britain: Reality or Myth?’

The Muslim public debate forum, the Muslim Debate Initiative has announced that the Muslim community have publically invited members of the Far-right to an open public dialogue/debate on the 10th December 2009, at a prestigious central London venue to discuss their contentions on Islam, the Muslim community in England/Europe, and the impact of immigration, in the hope that prejudice and misconceptions can be tackled through engagement.
 
The title of the event will be: ‘The Islamification of Britain: Reality or Myth?’ and will be held in central London, at Conway Hall, Holborn. Additionally, the panel will also be joined by members of the Christian People’s Alliance Party and the Liberal Democrats, who both current serve as London councillors, and will be attending to add their perspectives to the discussion.

The invited panel, consisting of representatives from Liberal, Christian Democrat, Muslim and the Far-Right backgrounds, will engage in discussion and debate over the controversial topic ‘Islamification’ which has become the flag bearing issue for the campaigns by the BNP, EDL and SOIE (Stop the Islamification of Europe) groups.
 
The Speakers who have confirmed their attendance, will be:
 
Alan Craig - London Councillor for Newham and Leader of the Christian People’s Alliance Party. Alan has campaigned vigorously against the building of the Olympics ‘mega mosque’.

Fiyaz Mughal - London Councillor for Haringey and member of the Liberal Democrats party. Fiyaz is adviser to party leader, Nick Clegg, on Interfaith and Preventing Radicalisation and Extremism.

Abdullah al Andalusi - Public speaker on Muslim political affairs, experience Muslim community worker and co-founder of Muslim Debate Initiative; an inter-community discussion forum.

Stephan Gash - Head of the Stop Islamification of Europe (SIOE) group, and organiser of the September Harrow Mosque demonstration. He has called for a repeat demonstration in December.

Quotes:
 
“I am happy to be given a platform to express my views, despite the fact that others would not give me such a platform”

Stephen Gash (SIOE) – The Harrow Mosque ‘anti-mosque’ demonstration Organiser.

“This event will be the first of it’s kind, in terms of members of the Muslim community directly inviting right-wing anti-sharia campaigners to the discussion table. Such intercommunity engagement and public discussion is virtually unprecedented in modern times. Furthermore, the event itself, whatever the result, will demonstrate that Muslims are not against censorship, but rather we welcome open discussion and debate, as long as we get to voice a defence of our beliefs and way of life in an fair, equal and open platform, even if we have to create that platform ourselves.

Lastly, we feel that only by direct engagement can we defeat the prejudice and hatred that is rising in Europe against Islam. The event planned for 10 December 2009, is done in the hope that Muslims, general non-Muslims and those of the far-right, can attend and listen and come to an understanding of the real human reality of Britain today, not the false scare mongering and social dissension caused by the skewed perspectives of some individuals. The situation today in Britain, is one we as Muslims cannot afford to ignore, hoping it will go away if we do no engage it directly”

Abdullah al Andalusi, Speaker on Muslim current affairs and co-founder with me of M.D.I  
 
Inshallah, I will be chairing/moderating this debate. Event Details: 6:15pm, 10th December 2009, Conway Hall, Holborn, London. Go to the MDI site for more details

The ‘Jihad on Trial’ Debate: A Burning Issue Arising

I chaired the recent Muslim Debate Intiative debate between Muslim speaker Sami Zaatari and London Councillor & the head of the Christian Alliance Party, Alan Craig on the topic ‘Jihad on Trial – Is Jihad justifiable?’

During the Q&A time a questioner raised a point stating that Ibn Ishaq narrated that the Prophet (peace be upon him) ordered the burning of a mosque and it was duly burnt together with its people inside it. To cut the long story short, a Muslim member of the audience, Adnan, offered him ten thousand pounds (£10,000) if he could produce this reference from Ibn Ishaq where the burning of people is mentioned. When the gentleman left, he handed in the reference to me to look at, and I passed it on to Adnan and he found the following:

“He [the Prophet] called two of his followers and said, “Go to this mosque, whose people are unrighteous; destroy it; burn it.” So they departed in haste and took a blazing date-branch to the mosque. Although there were people in it, they burned and destroyed it.” [Ibn Ishaq: The Life Of Mohammad, ed Micheal Edwards, London Folio Society, 1964, p. 159.].

Adnan emailed me today:

‘It seems like that I owe this gentleman ten thousand pounds (and 5 thousand to Abdullah for the MDI funds, as he too wanted to take me up on that). Nevertheless, when I checked the Arabic text, I found it to be as following:

سيرة ابن هشام – (ج 2 / ص 529)

[ أَمْرُ الرّسُولِ اثْنَيْنِ بِهَدْمِهِ ]

فَلَمّا نَزَلَ بِذِي أَوَانَ ، أَتَاهُ خَبَرُ الْمَسْجِدِ فَدَعَا رَسُولُ ؟ اللّهِ صَلّى اللّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلّمَ مَالِكَ بْنَ الدّخْشُمِ ، أَخَا بَنِي سَالِمِ بْنِ عَوْفٍ وَمَعْنِ بْنِ عَدِيّ أَوْ أَخَاهُ عَاصِمُ بْنُ عَدِيّ ، أَخَا بَنِي الْعَجْلَانِ فَقَالَ انْطَلِقَا إلَى هَذَا الْمَسْجِدِ الظّالِمِ أَهْلُهُ فَاهْدِمَاهُ وَحَرّقَاهُ . فَخَرَجَا سَرِيعَيْنِ حَتّى أَتَيَا بَنِي سَالِمِ بْنِ عَوْفٍ وَهُمْ رَهْطُ مَالِكِ بْنِ الدّخْشُمِ ، فَقَالَ مَالِكٌ لِمَعْنِ أَنْظِرْنِي حَتّى أَخْرُجَ إلَيْك بِنَارٍ مِنْ أَهْلِي . فَدَخَلَ إلَى أَهْلِهِ فَأَخَذَ سَعَفًا مِنْ النّخْلِ فَأَشْعَلَ فِيهِ نَارًا ، ثُمّ خَرَجَا يَشْتَدّانِ حَتّى دَخَلَاهُ وَفِيهِ أَهْلُهُ فَحَرّقَاهُ وَهَدّمَاهُ وَتَفَرّقُوا عَنْهُ وَنَزَلَ فِيهِمْ مِنْ الْقُرْآنِ مَا نَزَلَ { وَالّذِينَ اتّخَذُوا مَسْجِدًا ضِرَارًا وَكُفْرًا وَتَفْرِيقًا بَيْنَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ } . . . إلَى آخِرِ الْقِصّةِ .

‘The passage in Arabic sums everything up. It is stated very very clearly that “wa tafarraqu ‘an hu” which means that they, the people, went away from the mosque (please note that in the passage the identification for the two companions, who were sent to accomplish the task, is dual (muthanna), while in this case (wa tafarraqu) the identification is in plural sense (jam’a), which simply means that the people who were present dispersed away from the mosque. The questioner (from the debate) was certainly right when he said that there is such a passage in the translation of Ibn Ishaq, however, what he didn’t know was the fact that the translation he read grossly misrepresented what the primary text says. This is confirmed by the translation of the same passage in the translation of Alfred Guillaume (which is what I thought the man was quoting from):

“…And he summoned Malik b. al-Dukhshum, brother of B. Salim b. ‘Auf, and Ma’n b. ‘Adiy (or his brother ‘Asim) brother of B. al-’Ajlan, and told them to go to the mosque of those evil men and destroy and burn it. They [dual] went quickly to B. Salim b. ‘Auf who were Malik’s clan, and Malik said to M’an, ‘Wait for me until I can bring fire from my people.’ So he went in and took a palm-branch and lighted it, and then the two of them [dual] ran into the mosque where its people were and burned and destroyed it and the people ran away from it.‘ [The Life Of Muhammad: A Translation Of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, tr Alfred Guillaume, Oxford, 2007, p. 609.]

Adnan concludes his email with an important lesson for us all:

‘This teaches us a good lesson and that is to take every thing translated by the Orientalists with a big pinch of salt (especially when it carries serious consequences in a dialogue or a debate). Some of the Orientalists have done very good work but there are others who deliberately misrepresented the text of Islam. Even the Guillaume translation was heavily criticised by Tibawi. In fact the translation of the above passage has its own problems. For instance he (Guillaume) translates the word “haddamahu” to mean “they [dual] destroyed it” while it does not mean that rather the word means “they [dual] demolished it”. There are many problems with this translation which were spotted by A. L. Tibawi in his “Arabic and Islamic Themes: Historical, Educational and Literary Studies, 1976, p. 25-52.” ‘

So, Abdullah no funds for MDI this time

Wassalam.

© Paul Williams 2009

Open Letter to Islamophobe Dutch MP Geert Wilders

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS

Rant Number 369 29 October 2009

Open Letter to Islamophobe Dutch MP Geert Wilders

Dear Mr Wilders,

They say you can only take a horse to the water, you can’t make it drink. But human beings are not horses. Unlike animals, they can be reasoned with. I offer these few remarks in the faint hope you are amenable to reason.

It is about your recent speech to the Alliance of Patriots in New York. In which you paint an apocalyptic picture of ‘the Islamization of Europe’. You describe some European cities with Muslim neighbourhoods in lurid terms. It is a world ‘where women walk around in figureless tents…Their husbands, or slave holders, if you prefer, walk three steps ahead’. Mr Wilders, I live bang near one of those areas in West London. I often visit Whitechapel and Edgware Road – parts of our colourful Londonistan – I have never seen a Muslim woman walking behind her husband. Rather, the mothers stroll about in a proud, dignified manner, alongside the men. Nothing in their behaviour suggests a subordinate role, let alone slavery. And there are tons of lively, even feisty Muslim girls wearing all sorts of gear. True, they may not, as a rule, behave like permissive, liberated females, baring the flesh, hugging and kissing partners in public, no. I would even guess most of them don’t sleep with boys before marriage. But since when are chastity, modesty and self-restraint so bad? The traditional, Christian mores of the Western civilisation which you claim to uphold used to prize such things, no?

’25 per cent of the population of Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now’. Lies, damned lies and statistics, someone said. But if you want native Europeans to stay numerically supreme, how about encouraging them to have more children? To urge them not to use contraceptives, the pills? To give up abortion? To bolster family values? Stop bashing Islam. Embrace the Christian religion in its conservative, sound traditions and all will be kosher.

‘Thousands of mosques across Europe. With larger congregations than churches’, you notice. Well, whose fault is that? Do perhaps Muslims stand at church doors, stopping the eager faithful from worshipping the Lord? Methinks you should rather address yourself to Christians. ‘Look at Muslims’ you should say. ‘Look at how many regularly pray. How keen they are on the observances of their religion. You should do the same.’ Exactly. The flourishing of mosques across Europe should serve as a stimulus to Christians. A window of opportunity. As an urgent reminder to get back to their vital, life-giving roots – the worship of the One True God. Why blame pious Muslims for the faults of lukewarm or nominal Christians, eh?

In Amsterdam ‘gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims’. Awful, if true. Funnily enough, I recall the words of Pym Fortuyn, the gay right-wing politician murdered by a fanatic. ‘I have nothing against Moroccans – I have slept with so many of them.’ From Andre Gide to William Burroughs, the Arab world has been one of artistic gays’ favourite fun destinations. Tangiers’ nickname was ‘Sodom on Sea’. Homophobia can’t be all that endemic amongst Arabs, I should imagine.

‘The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.’ How bizarre. First, a godson of mine has been to Auschwitz, on a school trip. Part of a programme to learn about wartime horrors. School curricula in Britain do in fact include projects about WWII and persecutions of Jews and other people. London’s Imperial War Museum has a holocaust section, which I viewed just the other day. What’s more, TV channels force-feed viewers with a daily, obsessive dose of films and programmes about the war and Germany’s crimes. If anybody should complain about this state of affairs, it should be Germans. It fuels Germanophobia, the lurking, masochistic English vice. Do today’s Germans deserve such constant pilloring? After all, isn’t Germany amongst the strongest supporters of your beloved state of Israel?

The Prophet Muhammad. Had he been ‘a man of peace…like Ghandi and Mother Teresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was…’ I won’t quote the rest, as it would be distasteful. Muhammad certainly did not found a religion like the Quakers, no. And he is definitely different from figures like Buddha and Jesus. However, why you did not compare him to a prophet and lawgiver like Moses? Muhammad had the Jewish tribes of Banu Qurayza slaughtered, you write. Well, Exodus 32:25 has Moses ordering the Levites to slay those who had worshipped the Golden Calf, about 3000 men. ‘Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the Lord’ Moses told the slayers. Hardly like Gandhi, would you agree?

You are silent about Moses, I suspect, because in your speech you wrapped yourself in the mantle of defender of Israel. Mr Wilders, this Anglican priest is opposed to the destruction of the state of Israel. Because I am a Christian, Jews are rather important to me. I support both a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. A modest-sized Jewish Vatican in the Holy Land is the realistic solution. Bernard Wasserstein’s thoughtful book, ‘Israel & Palestine’, points the way. Wasserstein shows how your fantasy of Israel as a heroic outpost of the West against the incoming Jihad is nonsense. Indeed, Israeli society today needs immigrants as much as Europe does. And they won’t be Jewish immigrants. Despite your astonishing garbage about rising anti-Semitism in France (headed by a Jewish President!), Jews worldwide are happy where they are – they not migrating to Israel – or should I say ‘Isra-hell’, as my Israeli friend Ronen once wrote?

Ok, you don’t like Muslims. Yet they are not going to go away. Your case is analogous to that of the man whose garden was infested by ladybirds. They were everywhere. He didn’t like them. He tried several methods to get rid of them. Sprays, insecticides, this and that. Nothing worked. The ladybirds kept being around. Indeed, they multiplied. The guy was getting obsessed with them, growing paranoid, bitter, haunted. Eventually, he sent an e-mail to a wise old friend, an experienced gardener: ‘What should I do about the damned ladybirds?’

The reply came: ‘I suggest you learn to love them’.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

Thoughts on Evangelical Christianity

In this talk (link below), Sheikh Abdal Hakim offers some thoughts on the increasingly assertive evangelical trend in Christianity, and how Muslims can constructively repsond to it. He emphasises firstly the importance of the Qur’anic principle of responding with what is better, and not being dragged into the abusive slanging matches so often sadly seen on Internet discussion fora and elsewhere. He then outlines some of the important points of discussion that can be had with committed Christians who want to engage in respectful dialogue. These points include: the importance in all religious traditions of God’s love for the poor and outcast, and the problems of being identified with worldly, especially military, power; the importance of respecting that the Divine Love makes redemption available throughout history, not only during a defined period; and the need to deconstruct the stereotype often imposed upon Muslims (as on Jews in the past) as being legalistic. As the sheikh points out, the Muslim theology which considers God, while the source of Justice, as absolutely free in His Love and Mercy to forgive who He chooses seems a lot less legalistic than a theology that considers mankind’s sinfulness a debt that He must collect.

Cambridge Khutbas

Muslim reaction to Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time

Sam Jones guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 October 2009 22.00 BST

The mood among worshippers gathering outside at the East London mosque today was one of indifference and irritation rather than fear and loathing.

“They can have their voice heard and that’s fine,” said Jalal Ahmed, a local maths teacher. “We’re here to contribute, we are British and we love this country. They have their say and I have my say. As long as we don’t have a big fight over it that’s fine.”

Rhuksana Begum, a 22-year-old politics graduate, agreed. “I don’t particularly like Nick Griffin,” she said. “[But] he’s highlighted the misconceptions about Islam. In a democracy you have to allow it and it gave him a good chance to show how wrong he is.”

A man from East Ham, who did not wish to be named, was angrier with the justice secretary than the BNP leader. “Nick Griffin’s just like that, that’s his party and I’d heard all his views before. But Jack Straw was trying to promote cohesion when he created all the chaos over the veil,” he said.

Salim, 39, a car dealer from Newham, said that while he had agreed with Griffin “about the war in Iraq and about the gays”, the BNP leader had embarrassed himself. “People know he’s a hypocrite. He can’t run away any more.”

That cautious optimism was echoed by Aminul Haq, 33, a carer from Bethnal Green. “Compared with other Europeans and westerners, Britons have a very good idea of the rest of the world and so they aren’t bothered by Griffin and they’re not racist. Some disgruntled people might follow him, but the majority of British people won’t.”

What the Christian Church did when it had political power over people

I originally wrote this post in October 2008, and due to a conversation I had yesterday with Alan Craig – Head of Christian Peoples Alliance Party about apostacy, I decided to put it on my front page again. He has promised to write a reply and post it on his blog.

Muslims today are often accused of advocating an intolerant faith; a faith that compels belief and punishes converts to other religions. Whatever truth there may be in such allegations it is salutary to remind ourselves that contemporary Christianity, as seen in the Roman Catholic Church for example, is a far cry from how the Church behaved towards ‘disbelievers’ when it had total power over the people.

I was perusing works of Catholic theology in my library recently when I came across a work entitled ‘Summa Theologiae’ by St Thomas Aquinas, (A Concise Translation by T. McDermott).

According to Wikipedia, ‘Aquinas is held in the Catholic Church to be the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood (Code of Canon Law, Can. 252, §3). The works for which he is best-known are the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles. One of the 33 Doctors of the Church, he is considered by many Catholics to be the Catholic Church’s greatest theologian and philosopher. Consequently, many institutions of learning have been named after him.’

St Thomas Aquinas, basing his teaching on the New Testament, has some interesting things to say about how the church treats ‘disbelievers, heretics and apostates’:

Disbelief

In Luke we are told: ‘Go out into the country roads and lanes and compel people to come in, that my house may be full’. So some people are to be compelled to believe and enter the church. But only people who had once accepted the faith: pagans and Jews can’t be forced to believe since believing is a matter of will. The faithful if they have the power, may use it to stop such disbelievers hindering the faith by blasphemy or propaganda or openly persecuting it. This is the reason Christians frequently wage war on disbelievers: not to force them to believe but to stop them hindering the faith.

However, disbelievers who once accepted and professed the faith – heretics and apostates – can be compelled, even physically, to fulfill their promises and hold to do what they once professed. For even though making a vow is a voluntary matter, keeping it is an obligation. So adopting the faith is voluntary, but sticking to it once adopted is obligatory.

Heresy

About heretics there are two things to say. Their sin deserves banishment not only from the church by excommunication but also from the world by death. But the church seeks with mercy to turn back those who go astray, and condemns them not immediately but only after a first or second warning. If, however, a heretic remains stubborn, the church, despairing of his conversion, takes care of the salvation of others, separates the heretic from the church with a sentence of excommunication and delivers him to the secular courts to be removed from the world by death.

from Summa Theologiae by St Thomas Aquinas (A Concise Translation by T. McDermott) pp339-340

Jihad on Trial – Is Jihad justifiable?

In the current political climate, with the war going on in Afghanistan, political instability in the middle East, and multiple insurgencies against occupation and oppression on-going throughout the Muslim world, what is the correct response to this for Muslims who affirm belief in the Quran?

Does Islam command a blindly violent approach, or does it command passivity? Are there only two options? Is the Quranic concept of Jihad the reason for the suffering and predicament of the Muslim world, as some Western critics have claimed, or is it Western materialist foreign policy? Is there another explanation altogether?

Muslim Debate Intiative proudly presents a debate between International Muslim speaker Sami Zaatari, and London Councillor & the Head of the Christian Alliance Party, Alan Craig – on the topic

‘Jihad on Trial – Is Jihad justifiable?’.

(Inshallah, I’ll be moderating this explosive debate (not literally explosive I hope )

Admission cost: Discretionary donation
Seating: 100+

For directions and further information about this and other debates go to our website:

MDI

Just another day at the Office

Today a stranger came into my office and told me he is dying of cancer. I work as a funeral arranger in London and I am no stranger to grieving families visiting me to arrange the funerals of loved ones. He wanted information about being buried in a cemetery, and to chat.

But meeting this man today was different. He told me that originally he came from a middle eastern country. He had never been seriously ill in his life before but was told by doctors that he had just 6 months to live.

He is also a Catholic. Yes, he believes in God, he told me, but did not believe in life after death. I gently asked him why? Because when you are dead that is it. Scientists had shown that there is no life after death, he claimed.

In any other context I would have advanced the Quranic argument that if God made us then he can resurrect us after our deaths. But professionally I am not permitted to say these things.

But he seemed cheerful enough. When he first heard the doctor’s news about the cancer he became depressed, he said, but then he asked himself what he wanted to do with the remaining months of his life and decided to enjoy each day as it comes. It’s a beautiful world, he said.

After he left I felt saddened and yet inspired by my encounter with him. And privileged. A complete stranger walked into my life today and disclosed the most personal things about his life.

Just another day at the office…

Government anti-terrorism strategy ’spies’ on innocent: Data on politics, sexual activity and religion gathered by government

by Vikram Dodd

guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 October 2009

The government programme aimed at preventing Muslims from being lured into violent extremism is being used to gather intelligence about innocent people who are not suspected of involvement in terrorism, the Guardian has learned.

The information the authorities are trying to find out includes political and religious views, information on mental health, sexual activity and associates, and other sensitive information, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Other documents reveal that the intelligence and information can be stored until the people concerned reach the age of 100.

Tonight Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, branded it the biggest spying programme in Britain in modern times and an affront to civil liberties.

The intelligence is being gathered as part of the strategy Preventing Violent Extremism – Prevent for short. It was launched three years ago to stop people being lured to al-Qaida ideology and committing acts of terrorism.

The government and police have repeatedly denied that the £140m programme is a cover for spying on Muslims in Britain. But sources directly involved in running Prevent schemes say it involves gathering intelligence about the thoughts and beliefs of Muslims who are not involved in criminal activity.

Instances around the country include:

• In the Midlands, funding for a mental health project to help Muslims was linked to information about individuals being passed to the authorities.

• In a college in northern England, a student who attended a meeting about Gaza was reported by one lecturer as a potential extremist. He was found not to be.

• A nine-year-old schoolboy in east London, who was referred to the authorities after allegedly showing signs of extremism – the youngest case known in Britain. He was “deprogrammed” according to a source with knowledge of the case.

• Within the last month, one new youth project in London alleged it was being pressured by the Metropolitan police to provide names and details of Muslim youngsters, as a condition of funding. None of the young Muslims have any known terrorist history.

• In one London borough, those working with youngsters were told to add information to databases they hold to highlight which youths were Muslim. They were also asked to provide information, to be shared with the police, about which streets and areas Muslim youngsters could be found on.

• In Birmingham the programme manager for Prevent is in fact a senior counter- terrorism police officer. Paul Marriott has been seconded to work in the equalities division of Britain’s biggest council.

• In Blackburn, at least 80 people were reported to the authorities for showing signs of extremism. They were referred to the Channel project, part of Prevent.

• A youth project manager alleges his refusal to provide intelligence led to the police spreading false rumours and trying to smear him and his organisation.

• One manager of a project in London said : “I think part of the point of the [Prevent] programme is to spy and intelligence gather. I won’t do that.” In another London borough wardens on council estates were told to inform on people not whom they suspected of crimes, but whom they suspected could be susceptible to radicalisation. One source, who has been involved in Whitehall discussions on counter-terrorism, said: “There is no doubt Prevent is in part about gathering intelligence on people’s thoughts and beliefs. No doubt.” He added that the authorities feared “they’d be lynched” if they admitted Prevent included spying.

Ed Husain, of the Quilliam Foundation, who has advised both Labour and the Conservatives on extremism, said: “It is gathering intelligence on people not committing terrorist offences.” Husain, whose group receives £700,000 in Prevent funding, believes it is morally right to give law enforcement agencies the best chance of stopping terrorists before they strike.

Serious concerns that the Prevent programme is being used at least in part to “spy” on Muslims have been voiced not just by Islamic groups, but youth workers, teachers and others. Some involved in the programme have told the Guardian of their fears that they are being co-opted into spying. They did not want to be named, fearing they would lose their job.

Some groups have refused its funding. In several areas the provision of funding is explicitly linked to agreeing to sharing of information, or intelligence, with agencies including law enforcement.

Traditionally in Britain intelligence is gathered by the police and security services. Prevent is trying to turn community, religious and voluntary groups into information or intelligence providers.

Prevent is run by the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism, part of the Home Office. It is widely regarded in Whitehall as being an intelligence agency.

The OSCT is headed up by Charles Farr, a former senior intelligence officer, with expertise in covert work. Also senior in the OSCT is another former senior intelligence officer. The Guardian has been asked not to name him for security reasons.

Chakrabarti said she was horrified by the revelations. “It is the biggest domestic spying programme targeting the thoughts and beliefs of the innocent in Britain in modern times,” she said.

“It is information-gathering directed at the innocent and the spying is directed at people because of their religion, and not because of their behaviour.”

The Home Office said: “Any suggestion that Prevent is about spying is simply wrong. Prevent is about working with communities to protect vulnerable individuals and address the root causes of radicalisation.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

On Islam (and what I believe)

Muhammad (pbuh) said,

‘If anyone bears witness that there is no deity save God alone, who has no partner, that Muhammad is His Servant and His Messenger, that Jesus is God’s Servant and Messenger, the son of His Handmaid, and His Word which he cast into Mary and a Spirit from Him, and that Paradise and Hell are real, God will cause him to enter Paradise, no matter what he has done’

(Bukhari & Muslim)

Excellent Christian Rant

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS

Rant Number 366 6 October 2009

The Greatest Crime

Stumbling through a pathless thicket, you absent-mindedly break a twig off a tree. Then you freeze. In agony, the tree trunk is crying out: ‘You have torn my limb away! Have you no pity?’ Astonished, you behold thick, dark blood dripping away from the broken branch. It is true. The tree is alive!

‘You’ are in fact the poet Dante. Making his way through the second level of the seventh circle of Hell. In a rough wood, Dante comes across the shades of suicides. Changed into the shapes of trees – quite rightly, in the Sorrowful Kingdom those who in life have done violence to their own bodies are denied a human shape. Moreover, fierce harpies pick off their leaves, causing regular, unending torments.

Vivid poetry but only poetry. Mercifully, because I would never wish people like Kerrie Wooltorton to undergo a similar fate in the hereafter. Poor Kerrie was the depressed woman who, according to the Daily Telegraph, took poison after signing a living will. She then called an ambulance and was taken to hospital. There she handed the medics a note – she desired them to make her passing comfortable but not to stop her from dying. So, fearing prosecution or even being struck off if they tried to save her life, the doctors let her die. RIP? Not according to Christian teaching, I fear.

St Thomas Aquinas calls suicide crimen maximum – the greatest crime. First, it is a sin against God, the author of man’s being. Because the creature has no right to dispose of himself arbitrarily, against the will of the Creator. (A similar argument is advanced by Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo.) Although the Bible has no explicit divine command against self-killing, the prohibition is implicit. Significantly, the lowest figure in the Gospels is a suicide, Judah Iscariot, Christ’s betrayer. His desperate end is emblematic of the depth of his degradation.

Second, suicide is a crime against self. Against the love which naturally every person cherishes for himself. Such love is not to be equated with selfishness. ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’, the highest moral injunction in the New Testament, presupposes as the highest standard of care a natural inclination to self-preservation. In other words, self-love. A people who regularly and systematically cut off their limbs, starved themselves to death and threw themselves down cliffs, might be the denizens of a science fiction planet – they could not be those we know on planet Earth. That is why self-destruction is deeply unnatural – contrary, opposed to the gregarious social drives which the provident Creator has implanted into human nature.

Third, suicide is a crime against society, or, as they say today, ‘the community’. Against the rampant individualism of our time, this may sound a bit totalitarian but it is not. Himself an inveterate individualist, the priest accepts that man is a social animal. Anyone outside this norm is either a beast or a god, Aristotle affirms. Someone not human. Even if ‘the community’ sounds rather impersonal, think of family, loved ones, friends. Kerrie’s own relations – how have they felt when she took her own life? Was it fair to them?

I myself have known someone who committed suicide. His name was Nick Duc. ‘Frank, we failed him’, my friend C. told me at the time. ‘Had we really cared for Nick, had we really shown him our love, he would not have done it.’ Maybe. Or maybe, had Nick cared for us, been aware of our hurt, he might have thought twice about doing what he did, who knows? The point is that no man is an island. Every person fits into a network of relationships. Suicide does not just kill a single person, it wounds, it offends many others. That is what Aquinas meant by a crime against the community.

Dante, note, does not absolutely condemn all suicides. Noble Cato, who stabbed himself to death rather than survive the destruction of Roman freedom by Caesar’s tyranny (liberta’ va cercando ch’e si cara, come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta), is in Purgatory, not Hell. That means that eventually he will attain salvation. The idea is that freedom is so precious that it is all right to sacrifice your life for it. I agree. For a just cause, a soldier may rightfully die for his country, hearth and home. But Cato’s sacrifice smacks of Stoic pride, ethical aloofness, a sense of inhuman superiority. Liberty being already lost, his sacrifice was for nothing. Dante’s poetic Muse dimmed the poet’s theology, I feel.

‘…the Office ensuing is not to be used…for any who have laid violent hands upon themselves’ directs the rubric for the Burial of the Dead in the Anglican Prayer Book. The historical doctrine of the Church of England never beat about the bush – self-killing is so absolutely sinful that suicides should be denied burial in consecrated ground. Now the Labour Government has passed the Mental Capacity Act, which makes living wills into law. Another piece of devious secularism, another bit of demolition of this country’s legal and ethical safeguards. Consequently, if a physician ignored a living will and saved his patient (isn’t that his job?), he might find himself charged with assault. Did any of the 26 Episcopal bums-on-seats in the House of Lords warn about the unchristian implications of the living wills? The grave perils incumbent upon them, such as abuse by relatives and endless litigations? Did any mitred pate utter any whimper of criticism? I know I am naive but…insh’allah someone did.

Nick Duc and Kerrie Wooltorton, where are they now? Unbelievers and sceptics will scoff at the very question. Of course, death is the end. Survival is a chimera, an illusion, a savage superstition. The Christian faith disagrees. Kerrie and Nick have not perished. None of us will. (Condemnation is not the issue – besides, the idea that fear of hell would deter anyone from sinning sounds these days as quaint as belief in Red Riding Hood.) But, please, check out the question the grieving children ask of Aliosha Karamazov at the end of Dostoevsky’s great work, Brothers K.: ‘Is what religion teaches true? Is there another world? Shall we meet our dead friends again?’

Check also, pray, Aliosha’s reply.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

Does Allah Love You?

By Jinan Bastaki

Allah’s Love

Much is said about the first two of the three components in our relationship with Allah: fear, hope and love. But less is said about Allah’s Love. And this is important to know, because by realizing Allah’s Love, those of us whose hearts are hard are softened; those of us who feel deep inside that we can never be forgiven will be awoken with hope; and those of us whose relationship with Allah is mechanical will be enriched.

Not Just Fear

For many people, the relationship with Allah has become either that of fear or of something ritualistic: “I have to pray, so let me just get up and do it. If I don’t pray, I’ll go to hell.”

Fear is important, but at the base of our relationship with Allah is love. In the following Hadith Qudsi, Allah demonstrates the nature of His relationship with us:

“Myself, Mankind and Jinn are in a great serious state. I create them, then they worship other gods that they make for themselves; I bless them with my bounties, then they thank someone else for what I sent them; My Mercy descends to them while their evil deeds ascend to Me; I endear them with my gifts even though I have no need for any of them while they alienate themselves from Me with their sins even though they are desperate for My help.

Whoever returns to Me, I accept him no matter how far he is; and whoever turns away from Me, I approach him and call on him. Whoever leaves a sin for my sake, I reward him with many gifts and whoever seeks to please Me, I seek to please him. Whoever acknowledges My Will and Power in whatever he does, I make the iron bend for his sake. My dear people are those who are with Me (i.e. whoever would like to be with Me, let him supplicate to Me and remember Me). Whoever thanks Me, I grant him more blessings; whoever obeys Me, I raise him and endear him more. Whoever disobeys Me, I keep the doors of My Mercy open for him; if he returns to Me, I bestow him with My Love since I love those who repent and purify themselves for My Sake. If he does not repent, I still treat him by putting them in hardship to purify him.

Whoever favors Me over others, I favor them over others. I reward every single good deed ten times over or seven hundred times over to countless times over. I count every single bad deed as one unless the person repents and ask for My Forgiveness in which case I forgive even that one. I take into account any little good deed and I forgive even major sins. My Mercy supersedes My Anger; My Tolerance supersedes My Blame; My Forgiveness supersedes My Punishment as I am more merciful with My slaves than a mother with her child.” (Madarij As-Saalikeen by Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziya)

What is amazing is not a servant who seeks to get closer to his Lord, but that the Lord endears His servant to get closer to him. Many of the ahadeeth that I will recount are those ahadeeth that we already know; yet reading them one after the other shows us the extent of Allah’s Love and Mercy. Allah says, “If my servant comes closer to Me a hand span, I come closer to him or her an arms-length; and if he or she comes to Me walking, I come to him or her at speed.” (Bukhari)

Sometimes we despair, yet the above ahadeeth show us how silly that is. All we have to do is turn to Allah, return to Him and remind ourselves of these words: If we go to Allah walking, He will come to us with speed. The Prophet (pbuh) told us of another way Allah shows His love to us:

“Our Lord (glorified and exalted be He) descends each night to the earth’s sky when there remains the final third of the night, and He says: Who is saying a prayer to Me that I may answer it? Who is asking something of Me that I may give it him? Who is asking forgiveness of Me that I may forgive him?” (Bukhari)

We have to see – Allah doesn’t need to be like this with us. All He has to do is command, and we should obey. If we don’t obey, it’s our loss. And many of us do not even deserve to have such a relationship with Allah; yet we are told this in order for us to strive to build this relationship of closeness with Allah. We are told this so we never despair and so our hearts fill with love, awe and amazement at our Creator’s Love and Mercy. Ali (R) truly understood this relationship, and this is why he said that if he were given the choice to be judged by his parents on the Day of Judgment, he would refuse. Why? “Because Allah is more merciful to me than my parents.”

When Allah loves a servant

“When Allah loves someone he calls to Jibreel (as) saying, ‘O Jibreel, I love such and such a person, so love him.’ Then Jibreel will call to the (angels) of the heavens, ‘Allah loves such and such a person so love him.’ And the angels will love [that person]. And then Allah will place acceptance on earth for that believer.” (Bukhari and Muslim)

It would have been enough for Allah to say that He loves a person, for what more could someone want? But because Allah is Al-Wadood (the Loving) and Al-Kareem (the Most-Generous), He declares this love to the Angels, which does not stay in the heavens but descends to the earth because Allah puts acceptance of this person in the hearts of people.

So who is eligible for this love?

“…God loves those who do good” (Surat Al Baqara, 2:195) ”
“…God loves those who repent to Him, and He loves those who keep themselves clean” (Surat Al-Baqara, 2:222) ”
“…God loves those are mindful of Him” (Surat Aal-Imran, 3:76)

“…God loves those who are steadfast” (Surat Aal-Imran, 3:146)
“…God loves those who put their trust in Him” (Surat Aal-Imran, 3:159)
“…God loves the just” (Surat Al-Maida, 5:42)

So not only does Allah love the Prophets (as), the Companions (ra) and the scholars, but all the people listed above as well. And though those who repent are those who committed sins, maybe even grave sins, Allah loves them because they return to Him. By being one of those people above we are eligible to be loved by Allah.

Look at another manifestation of Allah’s love. He says in a hadith qudsi: “Whosoever acts with enmity towards a closer servant of Mine (wali), I will indeed declare war against him.” (Bukhari)

And who are the awliya? ”Now surely the friends (awliya) of Allah – they shall have no fear nor shall they grieve – those who believe and are conscious of God.” (Surat Yunus, 10:62-63)

Allah continues in the same hadith qudsi, showing us how we can be of the awliya: ”Nothing endears My servant to Me than doing of what I have made obligatory upon him to do. And My servant continues to draw nearer to Me with the supererogatory (nawafil) so that I shall love him.”

That’s it? Start with the obligatory and then add the things that are sunnah? Then what happens?

“When I love him, I shall be his hearing with which he shall hear, his sight with which he shall see, his hands with which he shall hold, and his feet with which he shall walk. And if he asks (something) of Me, I shall surely give it to him, and if he takes refuge in Me, I shall certainly grant him it.” (Bukhari)

Our problem is that we invest so much in people’s love, yet forget that the everlasting love is that of Allah. Some of us are taught to believe that because of our sins, we can never be eligible for this love, yet nothing could be further from the truth. The examples above are only a tiny glimpse of Allah’s dealings with us. May we always be of those who have hope in Allah’s Love and Mercy and seek to get closer to Him. Ameen.

The above was adapted from a lecture by Amr Khaled.

suhaibwebb.com

Should God be de-radicalised? MDI Debate: Wednesday 30th Sept 2009

I’ll be moderating this MDI debate:

My opening statement:

Hello, good evening and welcome to the Muslim Debate Initiative’s public event, ‘Should God be de-radicalised?’.

My name is Paul Williams. Our title this evening reflects modern anxieties about the level of religious involvement in the political spheres of life. The term ‘radical’ is being increasingly used by secular authorities to describe those of a religious persuasion who dare to desire a link between their theological beliefs and an epistemological basis for governing human societies. The debate today is not literally whether God should be deradicalised, rather it is about how far religion is and should be involved in man’s social life.

The question of whether God (whether or not you believe in him) should be de-radicalised, is a moot point, considering that it is the human perspective of how far God should penetrate the affairs of man. This question forms the basis of contemporary discourse that activist secularism and political theism seeks to influence. In essence, today’s debate focuses on the key question – should society keep religion separate from state?

This event is hosted by Muslim Debate Initiative (MDI), an intellectual, political, and theological initiative, formed by experienced Muslim researchers, debaters and speakers, aimed at encouraging inter-community debate, discussion and dialogue. MDI believes that only through frank and open discussion and debate can deeper understanding be gained, relations between different communities be improved, and hopefully, the breaking down of prejudice and false conceptions. It is with this in mind, that we invite our honoured guests to come and present to you today’s event entitled ‘Should God be de-radicalised?’

The Speakers

Abdullah al Andalusi
Abdullah is a former Christian who embraced Islam at a young age, and has studied Islam in depth since he was 18. He also has an academic background in Computer Science. Abdullah has had a long experience in working for Islamic revival and the establishment of Islamic shariah in the Muslim world.

His activities involve speaking at community centres, universities, colleges and appearances on various TV programmes. He is experienced in debates with Atheists, Secularists and Christians, and has be involved in public and radio debates with Atheists and Christians.

Bob Churchill

Bob studied Philosophy at the University of Warwick and Queens University, Canada. He worked in communications and marketing, then systems development, before joining the British Humanist Association in January 2008 as the Membership and Web Manager. He now liaises with local humanist groups, manages membership communications, and has been responsible for the BHA’s online presence during the “Atheist Bus Campaign”. He has represented the BHA on radio and television and has discussed philosophy, religion, values and Humanism in public debates and “interfaith” forums.

Venue and Time:

Date: 30th September 2009

Time: 6:15pm

Venue: Abrar House, 45 Crawford Place, London, (Nearest station: Edgware Road [tube])

Disgrace: A New Report Details Religious Abuse at Guantanamo

Michael Peppard, professor of theology at Fordham University, writes:

Last winter, I wrote for these pages about reports of religious abuse at Guantánamo (“The Secret Weapon,” December 5, 2008). Among the abuses that had been reported were desecration of the Qur’an, prevention and mockery of prayer, and sexual assaults intended to undermine piety. I argued that the victims of religious abuse considered it worse than anything else they had endured at Guantánamo, though allegations of this kind of abuse have been mainly ignored by the American media.

Some readers responded to the stories of abuse in my article by insisting that terrorists are trained to lie. I couldn’t prove they were wrong. If you had asked me when I wrote the article which of the abuse claims I thought was most likely to have been fabricated by detainees, I would have said it was the stories of forced prostration before a makeshift shrine to a false god. It seemed too outrageous. What could contradict America’s commitment to religious freedom more than coerced apostasy?

But there it was in the recent Senate report on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. Listed among the many techniques designed to increase a detainee’s stress level during interrogation was “forcing him to pray to an idol shrine.” Other forms of religious abuse were also acknowledged by the report: the prevention of prayer, grotesque methods of sexual harassment, and the forced shaving of the beard and head, which was intended not only to violate Islamic norms but also to emasculate the detainees, one of whom was even made to wear a burqa.

Until recently, we could only speculate about the origins of such techniques. But the widely held suspicion that many interrogation methods at Guantánamo had been reverse-engineered from the SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) military training program has now been confirmed. Those who instructed Guantánamo’s interrogators used training slides that recommended “religious disgrace” as a method to “defeat resistance.” Elsewhere the Senate report refers to the religious beliefs and practices of the detainees as “taboos” and “superstitions,” language that suggests an attitude of contempt for Islam.

Acts of religious humiliation remain legal at Guantánamo. In Rasul v. Rumsfeld, four British nationals brought a civil suit against ten U.S. government officials. The four claimed they had been illegally detained and mistreated at Guantánamo. Their case was based in part on allegations of religious abuse, which were upheld in the District Court. In January 2008, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided against them. The Supreme Court later ordered the case to be reviewed by the Court of Appeals, which again ruled against the plaintiffs in April 2009. But the issue of religion at Guantánamo had gained another airing. The Appeals Court’s majority opinion again insisted that the plaintiffs were not among the persons protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which their lawyers had cited in their case. But the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 also prohibits “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment,” and who would pretend that religious abuse does not fall into this category? Judge Janice Rogers Brown, in a concurring opinion based on different reasoning, encouraged Congress to revise RFRA for a new era, in which “prolonged military detentions of alleged enemy combatants” are now “part of our consciousness.” If Congress had considered a Guantánamo-like situation when the law was being drafted, she argued, “it likely would have prohibited, subject to appropriate exceptions, unnecessarily degrading acts of religious humiliation.”

One word was surprisingly hard to find in the Senate report: Qur’an. Why? After all, desecration of the Qur’an is by far the most widely alleged form of religious abuse among former detainees. But in the report the Qur’an is mentioned only as a “comfort item” that may be removed from a detainee’s cell to weaken his resolve. Apparently, we are to believe that several carefully planned violations of the tenets of Islam were encouraged at Guantánamo, but that desecration of the Qur’an-the ubiquitous symbol of Islam in every cell-was not allowed.

But then, it’s hard to tell, since many portions of the report are blacked out, including lines in sections about religious abuse. Maybe references to the desecration of the Qur’an were judged too incendiary for the general public. The government knows that if such desecration were officially acknowledged, this would be the lead story in newspapers all over the Muslim world. The harm that would come from such a disclosure might outweigh the good of transparency.

Consider the case of Muntathar Al-Zaydi, the Iraqi journalist now famous as the “shoe thrower.” What was it that stoked his rage? When the London Times asked his family why he turned against the United States, his brother mentioned a May 2008 incident: a Marine in Fallujah had used the Qur’an for target practice. It was an iconic event that tarnished the image of the U.S. military in the region and threatened the security of Baghdad. “He talked incessantly about the subject,” said Al-Zaydi’s brother.

Nothing threatens America’s national security more than the perception that we are at war with Islam. We are not. But to change that false perception we must first change a disgraceful policy.

from Commonweal

New Translation of Qur’an

Penguin Classics have just published a new translation of the Qur’an by the scholar Tarif Khalidi. The Times Literary Supplement hailed it as ‘A landmark in the history of English translations of the Quran’.

Tarif Khalidi is Sir Thomas Adam’s Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University (the oldest chair of Arabic in the English-speaking world), and also Director of the Centre for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the same university.

In his Introduction he says the following about the history of the Qur’anic text. I have put some significant statements in bold.

‘So far as one can determine its general contours, early Muslim scholarship on the Qur’an emanated from circles close to the Prophet Muhammad (c. 570-632) and involved, in its beginnings, the collection and preservation of revelation. For the first twenty or so years of its existence, copies of the Qur’an, in whole or in part, were in possession of venerable collectors dispersed by the Muslim conquests in the diverse regions of the new empire. Because of this dispersal and subsequent political and ideological alignments we possess several contrasting, sometimes conflicting, accounts of the Qur’an’s earliest history. Eventually a dominant narrative emerged which held that a committee appointed by the third caliph ‘Uthman (r. 644-56) assembled one definitive copy of the text, disseminated it in the major urban centres of the new empire and ordered all other copies destroyed.

This master narrative holds that the caliph’s edict caused a great deal of distress to possessors of private or family copies of the pre-’Uthmanic text was indeed one of the causes of the rebellion which ended in the caliph’s murder in 656. Nevertheless, Muslim scholarship has preserved examples, in the form of lists, of the variant readings of these early texts. In almost all cases, however, such readings concern very minor variations in grammar or dialect and add nothing of substance to the ‘Uthmanic text, the one that is in our hands today. This narrative has not gone unchallenged in both Muslim and non-Muslim circles, but it has withstood the test of time and of recent and dramatic epigraphic and textual discoveries. The result is that Islam has possessed a definitive sacred text from a very early point in its history. There are simply no ‘apocrypha’ where the Qur’an is concerned. We can therefore be confident that what we possess today is in all essential respects the Qur’an that Muslim narrative tells us was circulated by caliphal fiat somewhere around the year 650. Numerous historical problems remain, but these need not concern a reader who wishes to encounter the text directly, with minimal contextual demands.’

(ppxii-xiii)

A Beautiful House

Abu Hurayrah said that the Messenger of God said, “The relationship between me and the prophets who came before me is as the analogy of a man who built a beautiful house, but in which the space of one brick was left incomplete. The onlookers go around it, admiring the beauty of its construction, with the exception of the place of that brick. Now I have filled up the place of that brick: in me the building is completed, and in me the messengers are completed.” (Bukhari & Muslim)

Abu Hurayrah said that the Messenger of God said, “You will not enter Paradise until you attain to faith, and you will not attain to faith until you love one another. Shall I tell you of a thing to do that will make you love one another? Spread peace among yourselves.” (Muslim)

Mind the Gap! Some recent reflections on Christology

I have just received through the post (thank you Amazon!) a book I’ve been trying to get my hands on for ages: Christology and the New Testament: Jesus and his Earliest Followers by Christopher Tuckett. In case you didn’t know, Tuckett is Professor of New Testament Studies in the University of Oxford and author of several books including Reading the New Testament: Methods of Interpretation, Luke and Q and the History of Early Christianity.

I went straight to the final chapter entitled ‘Jesus’ Self-Understanding’ (pp 202-226). I was eager to find out how he assessed the evidence. Here are some of his conclusions (italics in the original):

Son of God

Did Jesus think of himself as in any sense Son of God? For many this is perhaps the most important question of all to ask about Jesus’ self-understanding, showing some clear continuity between Jesus and later Christian claims. We should be alert to the possibility – even probability – that, even if Jesus did think of himself as in some sense a/the son/Son of God, this may not have meant anything remotely similar to what later Christians meant in using that phrase of Jesus.

Sonship seems here to imply a relationship of trust and confidence, reflected too in some of the Q sayings about God as the ‘father’ of the disciples. It probably does not indicate any idea of ontological being, at least at the level of Jesus. Language of divine sonship, as we have seen was thoroughly at home in a Jewish context, indicating perhaps a special relationship to God characterised by obedience and trust on the side of the human being, and by special choice or favour on the side of God. Jesus’ God-talk seems to fit perfectly well into this mould. But it does not suggest that the one referred to as the ’son’ of God is in any sense a ‘divine’ being.

Jesus very probably saw himself as a son of God. As such he claimed a special personal relationship with God and a closeness to God. As such too he claimed the right to enable others to share in that relationship. But the latter should warn us against seeing Jesus’ sonship as ‘unique’ in the sense that later Christians claimed Jesus’ divine sonship as unique and qualitatively different from that of other human beings. If anything Jesus’ own ideas of his divine sonship work in precisely the opposite direction: to unite others to enable them to share in the relationship to God which he claimed to enjoy himself.

We have looked at a number of facets of the Jesus tradition to try to recover something of Jesus’ own self-understanding. One must say that, at the end of the discussion, the conclusions may be more than a little imprecise. So much of Jesus’ ministry is not directly concerned with his own person: it is focused on God and on the needs of other people. We thus have to deduce possible facets of Jesus’ self understanding from what is implied quite as much as from what is said explicitly. That there is an ‘implicit Christology’, in the sense of a ’special position/role’ occupied by Jesus and implied in his actions, seems undeniable. Trying to gain greater precision is much harder. In some sense Jesus seems to have regarded himself as a prophet with a mission that would arouse hostility and violence against himself. He was willing to accept that violence, convinced that he would be ultimately vindicated by God, and may have used the imagery of the vision of Daniel 7 to express this (albeit perhaps a little cryptically). He may have had some idea of ‘messiahship’ as not totally against his own beliefs about his role, though it would seem that many aspects often associated with messiahship were probably not part of a programme which he would accept as his own. In all this he claimed a close personal relationship with God, expressed through an idea of sonship, but which others would share with him.

All this probably distances Jesus’ own self-understanding by some way from later claims about Jesus to be the unique Son of God, meaning by that a fully divine member of an eternal Trinity. There may be also something of a gap between Jesus’ self-understanding and the views of his earlier followers (who may not quite have reached the stage of Chalcedonian orthodoxy immediately!). Does such a gap matter? It is that question which we address very briefly in the Postscript.

To Christians: Why Attack the Prophet of Islam, Have you read the Bible?

When a ’scholar’ begins to look a little silly…

On Mon 31/08/09 I sent the following email to ‘Servetus the Evangelical’ the author of The Restitution of Jesus Christ (see my post below)

Hi there

I agree with your general position on Christology and therefore welcome your contribution to the ongoing debate about the historical Jesus.

I have a question:

You say, ‘When the contest ends, I will e-mail all visitors who guessed me correctly, telling them they won….I plan to reveal my identity on September 29, 2011′

If we correctly guess your identity before the deadline why won’t you own up and reveal yourself? It is certainly possible that many people could correctly guess your identify and its seems somewhat artificial to keep up your anonymity in the meantime for up to 3 years: ‘The contest will end in three years…’

A final thought: I do hope you are reasonably well known in the evangelical world or there will be folk who will feel they have been taken for a ride…

best wishes

Paul

I received the following reply:

Servetus the Evangelical does not comment on questions about his identity.

Servetus the Evangelical
Author of The Restitution of Jesus Christ

This odd and somewhat defensive reply and the ‘guess my identity’ game make him look ridiculous…

Remembering Servetus–Past and Present

Biblical scholar professor James Tabor wrote yesterday, ‘Michael Servetus is surely one of the most remarkable men of history, though he is largely unknown in general circles. He was born in Spain in 1511 and died in 1553, at age 42, burnt at the stake as a heretic by John Calvin’s Geneva Council. He was a brilliant scientist and his field was primarily medicine, but it was his theological views that led to his universal condemnation by both Catholics and Protestants. Servetus rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, and although he maintained belief in the virgin birth, he denied that Jesus was God. He was fluent in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and in his primary work, De trinitatis erroribus (”On the Errors of the Trinity”), he ably argued that the Bible itself, in neither Old Testament nor New Testament, supported the subsequent Trinitarian notion of Jesus as God.

There is a bit of buzz on the Internet these days, among Christian evangelical circles, regarding a modern writer who calls himself “Servetus the Evangelical,” who has penned a new book titled The Restitution of Jesus Christ. The author, who has chosen to remain anonymous, is apparently a well-known Evangelical Christian. He plans to divulge his true identity on September 29, 2011, the 500th anniversary of Servetus’ birth.

You can visit his website at servetustheevangelical.com, where you can read excerpts of the book, purchase the whole, or try your hand at guessing the author’s identity based on clues posted on the first of each month.

I obtained a copy of the book and I have to say I am much impressed. It runs 600 pages, is thoroughly researched and documented, and fully in touch with the massive amount of scholarly discussion currently available on the “Christology of the New Testament.”

Whoever the author is, he has surely done his homework, and given his staunchly conservative stance on the inspiration of the New Testament documents, his attempts might well end up having quite an impact on the growing “biblical unitarian” or “One God” movement that is making significant inroads within a variety of evangelical Christian circles.’

Albert Einstein – Does Evil Exist?

Christians Fasting this Ramadan

In this year’s month of fasting, Rev Dr Brian D. McLaren’s observance of Ramadan with Muslims is a wonderful testimony to the spirit of Ramadan. Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, pastor, and networker among evangelical Christian leaders and thinkers. He is a popular author of a number of books including: The Secret Message of Jesus, A New Kind of Christian, Finding Our Way Again.

He writes in his blog:

Ramadan is the Muslim holy month of fasting for spiritual renewal and purification. It commemorates the month during which Muslims believe Muhammed received the Quran through divine revelation, and it calls Muslims to self-control, sacrificial generosity and solidarity with the poor, diligent reading of the Quran, and intensified prayer.

This year, I, along with a few Christian friends (and perhaps others currently unknown to us will want to join in) will be joining Muslim friends in the fast which begins August 21. We are not doing so in order to become Muslims: we are deeply committed Christians. But as Christians, we want to come close to our Muslim neighbors and to share this important part of life with them. Just as Jesus, a devout Jew, overcame religious prejudice and learned from a Syrophonecian woman and was inspired by her faith two thousand years ago (Matthew 15:21 ff, Mark 7:24 ff), we seek to learn from our Muslim sisters and brothers today.

Muslims observe Ramadan in the same basic way world-wide: they fast from food, water, sex, etc., from dawn to dusk. We Christians who are joining in the fast will share these four common commitments:

We, as Christians, humbly seek to join Muslims in this observance of Ramadan as a God-honoring expression of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness. Each of us will have at least one Muslim friend who will serve as our partner in the fast. These friends welcome us in the same spirit of peace, fellowship, and neighborliness.

We will seek to avoid being disrespectful or unfaithful to our own faith tradition in our desire to be respectful to the faith tradition of our friends. For example, since the Bible teaches us the importance of fasting and being generous to the poor, we can participate as Christians in fidelity to the Bible as our Muslim friends do so in fidelity to the Quran.

Among the core values of Ramadan are self control, expressing kindness, and resolving conflicts. For this reason, if we are criticized or misunderstood by Christians, Muslims, or others for this endeavor, we will avoid defending ourselves or engaging in arguments. Instead, we will seek to explain ourselves humbly, simply, and briefly when necessary, connecting with empathy to the needs and feelings of others as we express our own.

Our main purpose for participating will be our own spiritual growth, health, learning, and maturity, but we also hope that our experience will inspire others to pray and work for peace and the common good, together with people of other faith traditions.

May God bless all people, and teach us to love God and love one another, and so fulfill our calling as human beings.

I’ll share my personal story about deciding to join in the fast in the next few days, and I’ll also share regular updates and reflections here on this blog (brianmclaren.net) leading up to, during, and after Ramadan.

Time to boycott Israel

Neve Gordon

guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 August 2009

Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv and Oxfam has severed ties with a celebrity spokeswoman, an actress who also endorses cosmetics produced in the occupied territories. Clearly, the campaign to use the kind of tactics that helped put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is gaining many followers around the world.

Not surprisingly, many Israelis – even peaceniks – aren’t signing on. A global boycott can’t help but contain echoes of antisemitism. It also brings up questions of a double standard (why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights?) and the seemingly contradictory position of approving a boycott of one’s own nation.

It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organisations, unions and citizens to suspend co-operation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country’s future.

The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews – whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel – are citizens of the state of Israel.

The question that keeps me up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that my two children as well as the children of my Palestinian neighbours do not grow up in an apartheid regime.

There are only two moral ways of achieving this goal.

The first is the one-state solution: offering citizenship to all Palestinians and thus establishing a binational democracy within the entire area controlled by Israel. Given the demographics, this would amount to the demise of Israel as a Jewish state; for most Israeli Jews, it is anathema.

The second means of ending our apartheid is through the two-state solution, which entails Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders (with possible one-for-one land swaps), the division of Jerusalem and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return with the stipulation that only a limited number of the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to Israel, while the rest could return to the new Palestinian state.

Geographically, the one-state solution appears much more feasible because Jews and Palestinians are already totally enmeshed; indeed, “on the ground,” the one-state solution (in an apartheid manifestation) is a reality. Ideologically, the two-state solution is more realistic because fewer than 1% of Jews and only a minority of Palestinians support binationalism.

For now, despite the concrete difficulties, it makes more sense to alter the geographic realities than the ideological ones. If at some future date the two peoples decide to share a state, they can do so, but currently this is not something they want.

So if the two-state solution is the way to stop the apartheid state, then how does one achieve this goal?

I am convinced that outside pressure is the only answer. Over the last three decades, Jewish settlers in the occupied territories have dramatically increased their numbers. The myth of the united Jerusalem has led to the creation of an apartheid city where Palestinians aren’t citizens and lack basic services. The Israeli peace camp has gradually dwindled so that today it is almost nonexistent, and Israeli politics is moving more and more to the extreme right.

It is therefore clear to me that the only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure. The words and condemnations from the Obama administration and the European Union have yielded no results, not even a settlement freeze, let alone a decision to withdraw from the occupied territories.

I consequently have decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that was launched by Palestinian activists in July 2005 and has since garnered widespread support around the globe. The objective is to ensure that Israel respects its obligations under international law and that Palestinians are granted the right to self-determination.

In Bilbao, Spain, in 2008, a coalition of organisations from all over the world formulated the 10-point campaign meant to pressure Israel in a “gradual, sustainable manner that is sensitive to context and capacity”. For example, the effort begins with sanctions on and divestment from Israeli firms operating in the occupied territories, followed by actions against those that help sustain and reinforce the occupation in a visible manner. Along similar lines, artists who come to Israel to draw attention to the occupation are welcome, while those who just want to perform are not.

Nothing else has worked. Putting massive international pressure on Israel is the only way to guarantee that the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians – my two boys included – does not grow up in an apartheid regime.

The Islamist

There are Christians of my acquaintance who I have the upmost respect for: because they are intelligent and have an unusual appreciation of Islam and Muslims. One such is Father Frank, a Priest in the Church of England. He sent me his latest thoughts today, and I want to share them with you:

FATHER FRANK’S RANTS
16 August 2009

The Islamist

Once the priest stood outside a West London mosque, enjoying a bit of a spat with a moon-faced, zestful young man. All about his notion of a resurgent Islamic caliphate. ‘Pie in the sky’ I told him, insensitively. ‘Just as likely as bringing back Byzantium.’ After calling me a ‘kafir’ he turned away, to harangue someone else. ‘Go with God’, I wished him, and quickly forgot the meeting. Until one day in April 2003 when I recognised the boy’s chubby face in the papers. His name was Asif Hanif. He had blown himself up in a bar in Israel. Huh! I thought. ‘I have met Britain’s very first suicide bomber. Fancy that.’ I even felt impelled to write a letter to The Times, reflecting on the boy’s motivation. It got me a few irate messages from readers who thought the poor priest was condoning suicide bombing. Wot! Me? Too much of a pussycat for anything remotely resembling that, believe you me.

Now once again I have been reminded of wretched Asif. Thanks to Ed Husain’s The Islamist, purchased second-hand in a Chiswick Oxfam bookshop. A book rather fascinating for me to peruse, as I happen to know quite a few of the characters in it, Asif being one of them. (I myself am conspicuous by my absence: dommage!) It is a critique of radical Islamic & Islamist bodies in Britain and elsewhere. Hizb UtTahrir – the party of liberation – being the chief among them. A story based on the writer’s personal experience. Meaty stuff. And not without its entertaining bits, like the one about the fiery Muslim activist who boasts of his preference for Balkan blonde concubines. Anyway, I trust the author means well. Still, I have a bone to pick with him.

‘This book is a protest against political Islam’, the preface boldly states. Which immediately caused me to wonder what Ayatollah Khomeini would have thought. You see, while visiting Iran recently I learnt of an instructive anecdote about the father of the Islamic revolution there. Many years before the Shah’s overthrow, the head of Savak, the feared secret police, had paid Khomeini a visit. Aware of the Imam’s high religious status, as well as of his influence with the masses, in order to deter him from attacking the regime, the shrewd Savak boss tried an unusually insidious argument. ‘You are a man of God. A spiritual person. Why do you want to soil yourself by meddling into politics? Politics is dirty. Politics is devious. Politics is corrupt. Politics is mendacity. Lies. Badness. Imam, leave politics to us. We can dirty our hands. But you should keep yourself clean from political filth. So, it is best for you if you leave politics to us.’

Khomeini’s terse response however was not quite what the secret policeman expected: ‘All of Islam is politics.’ Indeed, in another context Khomeini noted how the Qur’an contains a hundred times more verses concerned with social and economic matters than with matters of ritual, prayer, diet and so on. And that cannot be gainsaid. Of course, tafsir, interpretation, is the next, obligatory step when it comes to sacred texts. Whether the meaning of any contentious verse can be explained away is another matter. But Khomeini’s general point seems irrefutable.

Whilst roundly rejecting political Islam, Ed Husain embraces the more inward, Sufi tradition, which he personally finds congenial. No doubt such approach has won him a good number of friends in Britain. Although we have a state church and a state religion, the influence of Christianity in the public realm is virtually nil. That delights our rulers. Jesus Christ, who triumphantly rose from the grave and redeemed the whole world, is strictly confined to the one hour slot on Sunday morning, followed by coffee and chat with the vicar. They love ‘Churchianity’, an exclusively private, harmless, emasculated and frankly useless type of religion. Islam too will be quite acceptable, providing it turns itself into the Friday, mosque equivalent of the Church of England. In sum, good Muslims are those who underwrite the secularist paradigm – religion as a private affair. Bad Muslims, all the others. Diggit?

Our Ed wields Sufism as a kind of stick to beat Islamists with. However, not all Sufis have been and are quite as quietist and as apolitical as he assumes. In 1453 Sufi dervishes egged on the Turkish armies to conquer Constantinople and the Mevlevi order in Ottoman times took full part in the Turkish military campaigns in Europe. The famed Safavid dynasty in Iran took its name from a Sufi brotherhood which captured Tabriz in 1501. In Sudan, Somalia and Libya Senussi Sufis fought against French and Italian colonialists. In such fraternities, you cannot easily distinguish between religious and political affiliations. Which rather drives a four coach and horses through Ed’s argument. I am glad he found his peace through ‘nice’, spiritual Sufis but he might as well have joined more combative ones.

I shouldn’t be too tough on the author of The Islamist. He strikes me as a decent, civilised and courageous kind of human being. One not afraid of telling the truth about Arab racism, for example, as he found himself in Saudi Arabia seen ‘as an inferior hindi, or Indian. In the racist Arab psyche, hindi is as pejorative as kuffar. In countless gatherings I silently sat and listened to racist caricatures of a billion people by Saudi bigots’, he writes. Having myself lived in the neighbouring, putatively happy state of Qatar, I can aver Ed is right. Racism towards brown-skinned people from the Indian subcontinent and other third world people is rampant in the Gulf. Of course, that is not the teaching of Islam. Just another example how neither Christianity, nor Communism nor Islam can change what I would call fallen human nature.

Shabab is a word Islamists apparently use about themselves. It’s Arabic for ‘the young’. In this case, the lads. Lads who, forgive me, are intrinsically silly, as all youth. Lads who in other times would have found an outlet for their ardours in the Foreign Legion or in monasteries or the Army. Today, in the moral and spiritual wasteland which is present-day Britain, Islamic radicalism, sometimes of the violent variety, offers itself as maybe the main opportunity for silly shabab to inject some daring meaning into their lives.

The solution? Honestly, only philosopher Benedetto Croce’s advice comes to mind: ‘Ya shabab! O youth! Grow older as quickly as you can.’

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

Why we need to be very careful what we say…

Introducing the atheist’s nightmare: the humble banana. Yes, argues Kirk Cameron, the banana and hand are perfectly made, one for the other. Proof positive of a creator behind the universe. Watch the video reply below…

Should Apostates Be Executed?

I’ve been mulling over this issue recently, and though I’m no scholar, I would like to outline the arguments that traditionally Christians and Muslims have used for and against the execution of apostates in an attempt to clarify some of the arguments involved.

Historically, Muslims and the Christian Church have attempted to justified this punishment and I have noticed that their respective theological arguments are remarkably similar. So I’ll discuss this remarkable convergence of views and also show why I think Jesus would have defended the capital punishment of Jewish apostates.

comments, as always, will be welcome.

I’ll post it here when I’m done…

UPDATE: I’ve had to commit time to other projects and so I can’t complete my research into this hot issue. So in lieu of this I’m posting a piece by Tim Winter that I broadly agree with. Its taken from Age of Jahiliyah

HOW DOES ISLAM DEFINE APOSTASY? IS IT PERMISSIBLE FOR A MUSLIM TO CONVERT TO ANOTHER FAITH? HOW CAN LAWS AGAINST APOSTASY AND BLASPHEMY BE RECONCILED WITH THE KORANIC INJUNCTION OF “NO COMPULSION IN RELIGION”?

Traditional human communities believe that truth leads to salvation, and error to damnation. It is probable that very many religious people in a variety of denominations still believe this. Historically, religiously-faithful princes have therefore seen it as necessary to use the coercive power of the state to forbid apostasy. One of the most powerful and persistent manifestations of this understanding in history was the Inquisition, which was definitively abolished in 1834. Protestant countries also respected this drastic principle; in fact, the first converts to Islam in Britain were impaled on stakes. In a Hindu context, ‘apostasy’ was often classified as violation of caste rules and boundaries, and similarly drastic consequences could follow. After the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1253, Buddhists who converted to Islam were routinely put to death.

The four canonical schools of Sunni Islamic law, and also most pre-modern Shi’a jurists, recommend similarly drastic penalties, although the judge is enjoined to ‘look for ambiguities’ in order to avert the death penalty wherever possible.

The Ottoman Caliphate, the supreme representative of Sunni Islam, formally abolished this penalty in the aftermath of the so-called Tanzimat reforms launched in 1839. The Shaykh al-Islam, the supreme head of the religious courts and colleges, ratified this major shift in traditional legal doctrine. It was pointed out that there is no verse in the Qur’an that lays down a punishment for apostasy (although chapter 5 verse 54 and chapter 2 verse 217 predict a punishment in the next world). It was also pointed out that the ambiguities in the hadith (the sayings of the Prophet) suggest that apostasy is only an offense when combined with the crime of treason. These ambiguities led some medieval Muslims, long before the advent of modernisation, to reject the majority view. Prominent among them one may name al-Nakha’i (d.713), al-Thawri (d.772), al-Sarakhsi (d. 1090), al-Baji (d. 1081), and al-Sha’rani (d.1565). The debate triggered by the Ottoman reform was continued when al-Azhar University in Cairo, the supreme religious authority in the Arab world, delivered a formal fatwa (religious edict) in 1958, which confirmed the abolition of the classical law in this area.

Among radical Salafis and Wahhabis who do not accept the verdicts of the Ottoman or the Azhar scholars, it is generally believed that the majority medieval view should still be enforced.

The best discussion of the controversy is the book by Mohammed Hashim Kamali, “Freedom of Expression in Islam” (Cambridge, 1997).

© Paul Williams 2009

Sufism-lite or classical Sufism?

Zaytoon88, a regular and valued contributer to this blog, wrote a comment on my post Islam: Religion or Ideology. He makes such a good point about Sufism that I wanted to share it. He writes:

Salam Paul,

I have found an interesting article on Imam Shamil, a Sufi leader from the Caucases, written by Abdur Raheem Green. Here is the part that is most relevent to this post:

“The second reason I chose the Imam was in no small part because he was a Sufi from the Naqshabandi tariqa. In these days when Jihad has become synonymous with terrorism, Wahabism and Salafist some Sufi’s have unashamedly used this atmosphere of confusion and fear to lay all the blame at the Wahabist door and to portray the Sufi path as entirely peaceful and pacifist, and the internal and spiritual Jihad espoused by themselves as the only authentic and valid Jihad. It seemed a perfect opportunity to remind them, ourselves and others how short sighted, shameless and ultimately false such sectarian opportunism is. It certainly hasn’t fooled Robert Spencer of Jihad watch. Most of the great Mujahids resisting European Imperialism were Sufis. Sheikh Abdul Qadir Al Jeziri, who actually met Imam Shamyl on hajj, and discussed guerrilla warfare tactics together. Sheikh Abdul Qair fought the French for ten years, until the sheer brutality of the French army massacring civilians forced him to give in. Shah Waliullah in India,and of course in the last century Omar Mukhtar in Lybia. All could be described as Sufis.

Differences, I suspect, we will always have, but these should kept between us. Whatever differences we have as Muslims, we can and must present to those who are ready to destroy us a united front.

‘Verily, Allah loves those who fight in His Cause in rows (ranks), as if they were a solid structure.’ Surat-as-Saff (61), ayah 4)”

I posted this excerpt from Sheikh Green not because I am a Salafi . I am not. As a matter of fact I have great respect for Sheikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller and am currently trying to apply my fiqh based on his masterpieces of translation ‘Al-Maqasid’ and ‘Reliance of the Traveller’. I am merely illustrating that the historical revision of certain orginizations and think tanks in their portrayal of Sufism as a somehow Secular liberal Western-friendly “version” of Islam is sorely mistaken. The great Sufi sheikhs of the classical Islamic era were among the staunchest supporters of the Khilafah and the defense of Muslim lands and we must salute their courage.

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité?

A French woman who converted to Islam has been banned from wearing a “burkini” in a swimming pool outside Paris

Today’s Daily Telegraph says:

The woman, named only as Carole, 35, was told that the garment, a swimsuit that covers most of the body, was “inappropriate” clothing for a public baths.

Pool staff said her three-piece Islamic swimsuit she bought in Dubai – consisting of a headscarf, tunic and trousers – was against pool regulations and unhygienic.

They had “reminded her of the rules that apply in all [public] swimming pools which forbid swimming while clothed,” said Daniel Guillaume, a manager at the pool in the suburb of Emerainville.

The ban was imposed as President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government is considering an outright ban on all Islamic dress, such as the head-to-toe burka or niqab, that it considers a “sign of subservience” and “not welcome” in France.

“Burkini” is derived from the words bikini and burka.

Carole, who converted to Islam aged 17, said that one lifeguard had initially given her permission to wear the garment.

She said: “When I bought it I was told it would afford me the pleasure of swimming without revealing my body, which is what Islam recommends.

“I called three swimming pools in my area and a lifeguard of one at Emerainville asked me to come and put my burkini on so he could make up his mind.

“He saw no problem with it, but warned me he alone would not have the final decision.”

She bought a season ticket for the pool for herself and her children and was initially allowed to swim several times.

But on Aug 1, she was suddenly banned from wearing the burkini because it was against hygiene regulations.

Yannick Decompois, the district swimming pools director, said: “This has nothing to do with secularism, but is a simply a hygiene problem. For the same reasons men are also banned from wearing shorts.”

“The error was to have let her through in the first place,” he said.

Carole, however, said she was “made to understand it was a political problem”.

“For me, it’s segregation and I am going to fight to try and change things,” she said.

Earlier this year Mr Sarkozy invoked the wrath of radical Muslims in France and abroad by saying burkas “debased women” and were not welcome in France.

“We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity,” he added.

André Gérin, a Communist MP, who is heading a parliamentary commission looking at whether to ban the burka, yesterday said the burkini was “militant provocation” and should be banned.

“There is a political and militant project behind this outfit – perhaps even gurus who are whispering to her to play the victim and publicise her complaint,” he told Le Parisien.

Some swimming pools had already caved into women-only sessions, he said, but this was apparently “not sufficient for fundamentalists”.

“What they want is a world of burkas,” he warned.

France is home to Europe’s largest five million Muslim population. In 2004, it passed a law banning students from wearing veils and other religious symbols in schools.

===============================================

Just to demonstrate that not all European countries espouse secularist fundamentalism, Sweden apparently follows a more enlightened path:

‘Swedish public pool to rent out burkinis. In a nod to women not wishing to reveal too much, an indoor public swimming pool in Sweden has begun renting out burkinis, full-body swimsuits that cover everything but the face, hands, and feet.’

Sweden’s News in English

Righting wrongs…

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said:

“God will definitely enforce the settlement of all the dues to those entitled to receive them on the Day of Judgment, even the wrong done to a hornless goat by a horned goat will be addressed.” [Sahih Muslim, #6252]

A word from George Bernard Shaw…

“I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him – the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity.”

- George Bernard Shaw

A word from H.G. Wells…

“The Islamic teachings have left great traditions for equitable and gentle dealings and behavior, and inspire people with nobility and tolerance. These are human teachings of the highest order and at the same time practicable. These teachings brought into existence a society in which hard-heartedness and collective oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other societies preceding it….Islam is replete with gentleness, courtesy, and fraternity.”

- H.G. Wells

The Islamification of Europe?

Before I confronted my own Islamophobia I was very worked up about the alleged Islamification of Europe. This is a very common anxiety amongst Europe’s ‘indigenous’ population, and has been fuelled by a utube video that has had over 10 million hits. This video makes some startling predictions about the Islamification of Europe over the next few decades. Some Christians like our good friend Jay Smith (and others at Acts 17 ministeries) have made much out of this scaremongering to frighten people about Islam and Muslims.

Fortunately the BBC has done some research into the video’s predictions which exposes the truth about these claims:

From BBC news:

A big YouTube hit makes startling predictions about the Islamification of Europe over the next few decades and has been viewed more than 10 million times!

But can you believe what it says?

This seven-and-a-half minute video “Muslim Demographics” uses slick graphics, punctuated with dramatic music, to make some surprising claims, asserting that much of Europe will be majority Muslim in just a few decades. It says that in the past two decades, 90% of all population growth in Europe has been Muslim immigration.

In France, it says 30% of those aged 20 and younger are Muslim, with the birth rate for Muslim families massively exceeding that across all families. It says France will be an Islamic Republic within 39 years.

In the UK it says the Muslim population has risen 30-fold since the beginning of the 1980s.

But are any of the video’s statistics true?

Of the video’s claims that 90% of Europe’s population growth since 1990 is due Islamic immigration, only a fragment is true. Immigration is the main driver of population growth according to EU statistics and in some exceptional years, 90% of population growth has been down to net inward migration.

But that includes all immigrants coming into the EU, not just Muslims.

It is the claims made about individual countries that are most striking. The video says that a typical French family has 1.8 children but that French Muslim families have 8.1 children.

No source is given for this information and the French government doesn’t collect statistics by religion. So it is impossible to say what the precise fertility rates among different religious groups in France are.

But no country on earth has such a high fertility rate and in Algeria and Morocco, the two nations which send the largest numbers of Muslim immigrants to France, the fertility rate is 2.38, according to the UN’s 2008 figures.

In the Netherlands, according to the video, half of all newborns are Muslim, and in 15 years half the population will be Muslim.

But the Dutch office of statistics estimates that Muslims make up only 5% of the population. For Dutch Muslim women to produce half the nation’s babies, they would have to be giving birth at at least 14 times the rate of their non-Muslim neighbours.

Is 25% of the Belgian population Muslim, as the video asserts? No. The Belgian office of statistics points to a 2008 study which suggests the real figure is just 6%.

The video also states that the Muslim population of the UK has grown 30-fold in the past 30 years. They get the figure by estimating that the British Muslim population has risen from 82,000 to 2.5 million.

The firm data is in the 2001 census, which counted close to 1.6 million Muslims in England and Wales. That number will have risen since 2001 so 2.5 million is not impossible. The 2011 census will be looked to for clarification.

However, according to Dr Andrew Hinde, a demographer at Southampton University, the 82,000 figure is a gross under-estimate. “If you take the 1981 census there was no question asked on religious belief,” he says, “but if you take those born in Pakistan and Bangladesh as a minimum estimate of the number of Muslims in 1981, it’s about 300,000.”

That would mean the growth rate has been significantly slower than the video suggests.

But the video doesn’t just rely on statistics, it also uses an official Government statement. It quotes it as saying: “The fall in German population can no longer be stopped. Its downward spiral is no longer reversible. It will be a Muslim state by the year 2050.”

The statement in question was made by then vice-president of the Federal Statistics Office, Walter Radermacher, who is now chief statistician of the European Union. He says that while it is true he said Germany’s population was in decline, the last part of the quote [in italics] is just an invention. He said nothing about Germany becoming a Muslim state.

“The quotation which reads as if the German government believed that Germany will become a Muslim state is simply not true,” he says. “There is no source which can be quoted that the German government has published such an expression or opinion.”

Inexact science

The video also claims the German government believes the number of Muslims in Europe will double to 104 million.

Mr Radermacher adds: “That is not true. The German government does not believe that the Muslim population will double in the next 40 or 50 years. There are no reliable sources that give a proof for that assumption.”

Population projection is an inexact science. No-one knows how many Muslims will be living in Europe or anywhere else by 2050. The current trends suggest that by 2050 Europe will have a bigger proportion of Muslims, although nothing like the level suggested in the video.

But the big assumption here is current trends. Levels of immigration and fertility change over time.

It is certainly true that immigrant communities often have higher fertility rates but over time these usually fall into line with the indigenous population. This might not happen with Muslim immigrants. But nobody can know and that’s why, according to Dr Hinde, it is so hard to guess the future.

“In the 1930s there were population projections made of the UK that by the end of the century the UK population would be 20 million. Well, it turned out to be 50 million.

“That’s how far out you can get when you’re moving 40 or 50 years down the line and not taking into account the uncertainty.”

see also this important study Disproving the Muslim Demographics sums

Has the Qur’an Been Perfectly Preserved? Bassam Zawadi vs. Nabeel Qureshi

Answering Muslims have posted the debate on the Qur’an between Bassam Zawadi and Nabeel Qureshi on their site.

Nabeel writes this comment on his debate:

‘As I post this video, I have to say this: simply debating this topic was a victory. Never, at least to my knowledge, had the Quran’s preservation been challenged in the forum of public debate. As a result, most Muslims I know make statements like “There has never been a Quranic variant!” or “There’s only ever been one version of the Qur’an!” or “No verse or chapter of the Qur’an has ever been in dispute!”

Because of this debate, Muslims everywhere will now know none of these claims are true. Bassam has tried to defend the Qur’an by saying “Hey, it’s okay if none of those statements are true – God planned it that way.” As you will see me say in the debate, it’s fine with me if you want to give a theological reason explaining the basic problems with the Qur’an – at least you’re acknowledging them! This is a far cry from the average Muslim’s position.’

———————–

I had the privilege of moderating this fascinating debate. Objectively, I felt that Bassam had a better grasp of the primary sources. This is due in part because he can actually read them in Arabic whereas Nabeel has confessed (in his debate with me) that he cannot understand the language.

But Nabeel’s triumphant and slightly arrogant tone in the passage above mars what was in fact a superior and erudite debate between the two speakers. I learnt a great deal from both protagonists. In my view it was the best debate in the MDI series.

One final point: an old cliché has it that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, and Nabeel threw lots of them.

True, many (or even most?) Muslims know nothing about the Quranic variants, but all the Muslims of my aquantance knew about this fact.

But Nabeel in his gleeful criticism of Muslim ignorance overlooks a similar problem in his own backyard: I would guess that the vast majority of evangelicals know nothing of the research done by biblical scholars over the past 150 years, which has demonstrated the following:

that the four gospels are not written by eyewitnesses, but by unknown figures many years after Jesus’ ascension

that the New Testament is now believed to contain forgeries such as II Peter and the pastoral epistles (I & II Tim and Titus)

that close study of the Pentateuch in Hebrew suggests that Moses was not the author of the first 5 books of the Bible

that the gospels contain material that was added to the original texts by unknown scribes, which are therefore not part of the original gospels: for example the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8 and the resurrection narrative at the end of Mark’s gospel. There are other corruptions/additions to the NT text that are well known to scholars.

But priests, pastors and ministers who are trained in seminaries and institutions of higher learning know about these things but for some reason fail to pass on this knowledge to their Christian congregations.

So Nabeels crowing over the Muslims is quite distasteful in the light of the massive ignorance of his own evangelical church about the textual realities of the Bible.

Therefore I conclude: that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones!

A Concise List of Arabic Manuscripts of The Qur’ān Attributable To The First Century Hijra

Recent Post from Islam Awareness:

The study of ancient manuscripts of the Qur’an is steadily gathering pace. In decades past, a few scholars have compiled lists of Qur’anic manuscripts attributable to the 1st century hijra. Although helpful, these lists contain only the barest details, usually only the name of the manuscript concerned or sometimes even less. With this in mind, we have constructed a Concise List Of Arabic Manuscripts Of The Qur’ān Attributable To The First Century Hijra, that contains additional details providing further insights into these valuable manuscripts, accompanied by full bibliographic references. A discussion of how scholars date early Qur’anic manuscripts and an assessment of the value of these manuscripts is also provided along with some detailed mathematical calculations. Should one ponder over this list, they will come to the appreciation scholars involved in this field of study suffer from an embarrassment of riches. Quite simply, there is no other work from the Late Antiquity that comes close to the Qur’an in terms of the number of their earliest manuscripts including textual content.

Senior Christian Theologian Accepts Muhammad as a Prophet of God

Taken from Hans Küng on Prophet Muhammad (Part 4)

Hans Küng, as an ecumenical Catholic theologian, began his scholarly life by dealing with problematic issues within Christianity. But in the course of time, he became interested in contemporary common issues not only for Christians, but also for people of other faiths.

According to W. G. Jeanrond’s classification of Küng’s theological development, his reflection on theological method and the discourse between Christianity and world religions began in the early 1980′ s in order to promote inter-religious dialogue (105). In this context, he published his major work Christianity and World Religions: Paths of Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism in 1984. In each part of this book, first of all, he pays attention to scholarly accounts of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and then provides a detailed critical response to each one as a Christian theologian.

As a scholar interested in world religions, Küng has tried to understand them anew as a Christian theologian and to create a positive environment for Christians to relate to adherents of those religions. In so doing, he studies the status of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) from the Christian perspective in a number of his writings, namely: Christianity and the World Religions, Christianity and World Religions: The Dialogue With Islam, and Muhammad: A Prophet?.

We will examine Küng’s views on the status and prophethood of Muhammad in light of these accounts.

As a leading Catholic theologian, Küng, with special reference to Nostra Aetate, openly and boldly invited the members of the Catholic Church to officially acknowledge Muhammad’s prophethood if they wanted to establish better relations with Muslims. In this connection, Küng underlines:

The same church must, in my opinion, also respect that the one whose name is absent from the same declaration out of embarrassment, although he and he alone led Muslims to pray to this one God, so that once again through him, Muhammad, the prophet, this God ‘has spoken to mankind’. (“World Religions” 129)

Later on, too, he notes the necessity of acknowledging Muhammad’s prophethood by all Christians in the process of Christian-Muslim dialogue by maintaining that:

the Christian who wishes to engage in dialogue with the Muslims acknowledges from the outset his or her own conviction of faith that for him or her Jesus is the Christ and so is normative and definitive, but he or she also takes very seriously the function of Muhammad as an authentic prophet. (“Ecumenical” 124)

In our opinion, because of these two bold statements, Küng’s views deserve to be taken seriously. Not least because his remarks that in our pluralistic age in which more and more people from different religious traditions are living and working together, it is no longer possible for Christians to accept the distorted Medieval images of Prophet Muhammad such as false, lying pseudo prophet, a fortune teller, and a magician.

On the contrary, he stresses the need to develop a new and positive Christian understanding of Muhammad. To do this, he says it is necessary first of all to take into consideration the historical context of Muhammad’s prophethood and his message within the stream of the religious history of all humanity.

From this methodological perspective, he remarks:

Muhammad is discontinuity in person, an ultimately irreducible figure, who cannot be simply derived from what preceded him, but stands radically apart from it as he, with the Quran, established permanent new stands. (“World Religions” 25)

From this passage, David Kerrrightly concludes that Küng takes the discontinuity as an essential element for his evaluation of the originality of Muhammad’s prophethood (Kerr 437). By using this exposition, Küng advocates that “Muhammad and the Quran represent a decisive break, a departure from the past, a shift toward a new future” (“World Religions” 25).

Also, Küng argues that there is no one more worthy of being called a prophet than Muhammad in the whole of religious history, and this is because of his claim that he was no more than a prophet, who came to warn people. He says “when the history of religions speaks of “the prophet” tout court , of a man who claimed to be that but absolutely nothing more, then there can be no doubt that this is Muhammad” (25).

Küng draws attention to the similarities between Muhammad’s prophethood and the prophets of Israel in order to expose the significance of Muhammad for Christians an essential element for his evaluation of the originality of Muhammad’s prophethood (Kerr 437). By using this exposition, Küng advocates that “Muhammad and the Quran represent a decisive break, a departure from the past, a shift toward a new future” (“World Religions” 25).

Küng draws attention to the similarities between Muhammad’s prophethood and the prophets of Israel in order to expose the significance of Muhammad for Christians. He says that like the Old Testament prophets, Muhammad based his work not on any office given to him by the community (or its authorities) but on a special, personal relationship with God.

Muhammad was a strong-willed character, who saw himself as wholly penetrated by his divine vocation, totally taken up by God’s claim on him, exclusively absorbed by his mission. Muhammad spoke out amid a religious and social crisis.

With his passionate piety and his revolutionary preaching, he stood up against the wealthy ruling class and the tradition of which it was the guardian. Muhammad, who usually calls himself a ‘Warner’, wished to be nothing but God’s mouthpiece and to proclaim God’s word, not his own.

Muhammad tirelessly glorified the one God, who tolerates no other gods before him and who is, at the same time, the kindly Creator and merciful Judge.

Muhammad insisted upon unconditional obedience, devotion, and ’submission’ to this one God. He called for every kind of gratitude toward God and of generosity toward human beings. Muhammad linked his monotheism to a humanism, connecting faith in the one God and his judgment to the demand for social justice; judgment and redemption, threats against the unjust, who go to hell, and promises to the just, who are gathered into God’s Paradise (25–26).

Here, Küng explains the status of prophet Muhammad to Christians by presenting three important steps for them to determine that self same status. First, it is necessary for them to take into account the specialties of Muhammad’s teaching. Second, to compare them with the teachings of previous prophets i.e. Old Testament prophets, in order to observe their similarities. And lastly to make their decisions about his status by considering those similarities.

Küng continues to draw attention to the similarities of the teachings of the Biblical prophets and Muhammad by urging Christians to read the Quran and the Bible, especially the Old Testament, to find answers to the following questions:

Do not these three Semitic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — have the same origin? Does not One and the same God speak loudly and clearly in these religions? Does not the Old Testament’s ‘Thus says the Lord’ correspond to the Quran’s ’say’, as the Old Testament’s ‘go and tell’ matches the Quran’s ‘take you stand and warn’. (26)

He says that if Christians do this, it is impossible for them to answer these questions negatively. Thus, he concludes that “it is only dogmatic prejudice when we [Christians] recognize Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah, as prophets, but not Muhammad” (26).

Like Watt, Küng urges Christians to take into account the effect of Muhammad’s teaching on his followers in seventh-century Arabia. He says by following that message, those people

were lifted to the heights of monotheism from the very worldly polytheism of the old Arabian tribal religion. Taken as a whole, they received from Muhammad, or rather from the Quran, a boundless supply of inspiration, courage, and strength to make a new departure in religion, toward greater truth and deeper knowledge, a breakthrough that vitalized and renewed their traditional religion. Islam, in short, was a great help in their life. (27)

Küng also reminds Christians of the following facts when dealing with the questions about Prophet Muhammad. He says it is well known today that one fifth of the world’s population “are all marked by the exacting power of a faith that, more than practically any other, has shaped its followers into a uniform type”; and those people, Muslims, share a “feeling for the fundamental equality of all human beings before God, and international brotherhood that has managed to overcome barriers between the races” (26-27).

These quotations from Küng imply that the right way for Christian appreciation of Prophet Muhammad is to take into account the observable benefits of his message on his followers. In other words, according to Küng, it is necessary to move away from theology to the practical effects of the message on the life of its followers in order to reach a right conclusion about that faith. By implying this, it seems that Küng adopts a similar approach to both Smith and Montgomery Watt.

Finally, Küng moves to outline the theological meaning of this recognition of Prophet Muhammad for Christians. He begins by showing that in the New Testament there are statements which indicate that after Jesus there is the possibility of authentic future prophets. But, Küng restricts their mission to witnessing Jesus and his message by making it comprehensible for every age and every situation (27–28).

Within this context, in the last stage of his examination of the status and prophethood of Muhammad, Küng regards Muhammad “as a witness for Jesus — a Jesus who could have been understood not by Hellenistic Gentile Christians, but by Jesus’ first disciples, who were Jews, because, with this Jesus tradition, Muhammad reminds the Jews that Jesus fits into the continuity of Jewish salvation history” (126).

And he emphasizes that “this Muhammad” can be a “prophetic corrective” and “prophetic Warner” for Christians in order to inform them that the one incomparable God has to stand in the absolute center of faith; that associating with him any other gods or goddesses is out of the question; that faith and life, orthodoxy and orthopraxy, belong together everywhere, including politics (129).

In one of his papers which was delivered at Edinburgh Theological Club, Küng maintains that “I can, as a Christian be convinced that if I have chosen … Jesus as the Christ for my life and death, then along with him I have chosen his follower Muhammad, insofar as he appeals to one and the same God and to Jesus” (Watt 84).

As we have observed above, as an Ecumenical Catholic theologian and leading defender of inter-religious dialogue, Küng tries to reassess the status and prophethood of Muhammad in the light of modern day developments in Christian-Muslim relations. By doing this, he examines the issue from both practical and theological perspectives.

In view of our examination of his standpoint within the context of these two perspectives, we may draw the following conclusions. First, according to Küng, all Christians, both officially and individually, need to make some correction in their approaches to Prophet Muhammad’s status in the process of Christian-Muslim dialogue so that their views will not offend Muslims.

Second, while doing this, it is necessary to take into account the similarities between Prophet Muhammad and the Old Testament prophets, and the observable fruits of his teaching on Muslims. In this issue, Küng argues that like the Old Testament prophets, Muhammad, too, deserves to be called ‘prophet’ by Christians.

From the Muslim understanding of prophethood, there is no problem in Küng’s argument, since according to Islamic teaching there is no difference between prophets (Al-Baqarah 2:285).

However, from the Christian point of view his argument needs further clarification to avoid ambiguity. For, what Muslims understand by this term differs from what Christians understand.

Third, from a theological perspective, according to Küng, the New Testament allows the continuation of prophecy after Jesus Christ as long as they witness to him in every age and in every situation.

Therefore, Küng acknowledges Muhammad’s prophethood by seeing him “as a witness for Jesus” not as understood by Hellenistic Gentile Christians but by his first disciples and also as a “prophetic corrective” for Christians. In our opinion, there are two significant implications of these arguments.

The first is that Christians may have an opportunity to revise their own understanding of Jesus by taking into account Jewish Christians understanding of Jesus, since according to Küng there is a great similarity between the Quranic and Jewish Christians approach to Jesus (“Religious Situation” 105 (ff)).

The second is that being a “prophetic corrective” for Christians seems to be compatible with the Prophet’s teaching as long as this is understood as just one of his duties among others.

For example, in the Quran, Christians are invited to give up their extreme views about Jesus not his teaching. Although these are positive implications, when Muhammad and Jesus are compared, Küng always seems to make Muhammad inferior to Jesus.

There is another negative implication here for the development of Christian-Muslim understanding. If the mission of Prophet Muhammad is restricted to witnessing to Jesus in order to make him intelligible for every age and every situation, then there is no difference between Prophet Muhammad and the Gospel authors and even Church authorities and missionaries. This certainly reduces the value of Prophet Muhammad not only in the eyes of non-Muslims but also Muslims.

To be continued…

See also: A Roman Catholic US Marine Discovers Islam

Reading the NT in its historical context…

A Muslim friend emailed me this interesting question about the imminence of the End in Paul’s New Testament letters. I have interspersed my answers in bold

Assalamu Alaykum Paul,

You stated:

“The apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians speaks of Christians as people who ‘wait for [God's] son from heaven…who rescues us from the coming wrath’ (1 Thess 1.10). Later, Paul adds that ‘we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep’ (1 Thess 4.15). He does not say, ‘those who are alive (which could refer to some far future and as yet unknown group), but ‘we who are alive’, thus showing his expectation that the Lord will come before Paul’s death. Furthermore, Paul boldly claims that this is ‘the Lord’s own word’ (1 Thess 4.15).”

How would you refute Shamoun who states:

Paul often uses “we” in a corporate sense, choosing to identify himself with the people he is writing to. Note the following example:

“For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether WE ARE AWAKE OR ASLEEP, we may live together with him.” 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10

In the context of the earlier teaching in 1 Thess 4:15 where Paul speaks of the End within the lifetime of those then living, this quote must be understood as further clarifying that whether we ['we' meaning the recipients of Paul's letter cAD 50] are still alive or have died, we will live with Jesus. Paul showed no awareness that Jesus’ return would be delayed by thousands of years.

Other examples include:

“By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise US also.” 1 Corinthians 6:14

Again, he will raise us – ‘us’ meaning those who Paul writes to around AD 50. Not ‘us’ 2000 years later.

“It is written: ‘I believed; therefore I have spoken.’ With that same spirit of faith WE also believe and therefore speak, because WE know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise US with Jesus and present US with YOU in his presence.” 2 Corinthians 4:13-14

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we need to remember who ‘us’ and ‘we’ are. It is not referring to Shamoun thousands of years later.

These passages clearly show that Paul wasn’t necessarily expecting Christ to descend during his lifetime since he speaks of his being raised from the dead to be with the Lord Jesus.

these passages show no such thing.

Further confirmation that Paul wasn’t necessarily expecting Christ to descend before his death can be found in the Apostle’s second epistle to Timothy:

“For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come FOR MY DEPARTURE. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day–and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” 2 Timothy 4:6-8

Firstly, Paul did not write this letter. It is a forgery as most Christian scholars now know.

Secondly, as these same scholars recognise this forgery demonstrates the slackening of the eschatological fervour in the early church, when it became clear that Jesus had not returned as originally thought. So II Timothy is evidence for my argument not Shamoun’s
Finally, even if it were true that Paul did in fact believe that Christ was going to return during the Apostle’s lifetime this still would pose no problem. The Lord Jesus had already warned his followers that his return would be like a thief in the night:

So even if Paul was dead wrong in his letters about Jesus’ return within his own lifetime it wouldn’t matter! But Shamoun believes in the inerrancy of the Bible so it would matter enormously. The Bible would contain a significant error.

“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be br oken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour WHEN YOU DO NOT EXPECT HIM.” Luke 12:35-40

And:

“Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief.”
1 Thessalonians 5:1-4

The Lord Jesus also made it clear that only God knows the day or hour of Christ’s return:

“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.” Mark 13:32-33

“So when they met together, they asked him, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them: ‘It is not FOR YOU TO KNOW the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.’” Acts 1:6-7

Being prepared for Jesus’ return at any moment is one thing, but the NT teaches in many places that it will happen very soon (see Revelation 22:18 and many other places in 1 John, James and Paul).

Important teaching about the End is found in 1 Cor 15:51ff. When we do exegesis on a biblical passage we ask ourselves at least three questions: who wrote the text? when was it written? and to whom was it written to?

1) Paul wrote 1 Corinthians (no one seriously doubts this)

2) it was written in the 50s of the first century (no one doubts this)

3) the recipients are the church members in Corinth (no one doubts this)

It is very important to bare these three facts in mind when we read Paul.

So now read the verses:

51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. Fo r the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

Do you see my point? Paul in circa AD 50 is telling the Corinthians in circa AD 50 that we will not all sleep (ie die), but those of us who are alive and those of us who have died, all of us will be ‘raised imperishable’ etc.

Shamoun, like most Christians, has de-historicised Paul’s teaching. The ‘we’ in Paul becomes the we of all Christians over the last 2000 years. After all, they think, its God’s eternal Word, addressing all peoples at all times. But this perspective distorts Paul’s teaching in its original historical context. This de-historicising of Paul is the reason most Christians don’t see the problem at all, and why they get a nasty shock when they study the Bible academically at university. University courses in the Bible teach exegesis of the text, ie its original, historical meaning.

One last passage is worth mentioning: Mark 13 (and the parallel passage in Matthew 24).

I won’t quote the whole chapter, but it is clear that Jesus teaches that the End of the world will occur within the generation of those then living, ie in the first century. See especially Mark 13:30.

The great Christian writer CS Lewis said that this verse was the single most difficult verse in the entire Bible for Christans to read…

regards

Paul

Evangelical Review of ‘Escaping from Fundamentalism’

For Christian readers of this site I thought I would post a perceptive review of James Barr’s book (called Beyond Fundamentalism in the American edition). It is written by the evangelical scholar William J. Abraham

Beyond Fundamentalism
By James Barr
Philadelphia, Westminster, 1984. 195 pp. $9.95.

James Barr is the Jack Dempsey of modern Anglo-American theology. Outside the ring he is a perfect gentleman; inside it he is a ruthless opponent. Over the years, Barr has attacked fundamentalism with fervor and skill. In this book, he has changed his role from that of a critic and iconoclast to that of a pastor and shepherd. That in itself makes this book a remarkable and courageous tract for the times. Some friends and foes will be tempted to read it as part of Barr’s own struggle to escape from an earlier past. This is otiose and false. Barr has correctly perceived that fundamentalism is a very serious force to be reckoned with in the modern world. It is a major factor within Christianity and shows no signs of abating. Church leaders and scholars cannot ignore it if they intend to be realistic about their listeners and readers. Besides, many find their way to a genuine faith in Christ within fundamentalism, and they need help to cope with its complexity and its intellectual structure. Hence this book is extremely important for Christendom as a whole. I can think of no one, be it layperson, student, pastor, or scholar, who would not benefit from it. Certainly it is essential reading for those seeking to escape from fundamentalism.

Beginning with the issue of biblical inspiration and authority, Barr sets out to evaluate the central religious assertions of fundamentalism. He covers such issues as Jesus and the Old Testament, justification by faith, the divinity of Jesus, miracles, prophecy, and creation. In dealing with these matters, the general strategy is straightforward. Barr starts on the fundamentalist’s own ground, the content and character of the Bible as it is. He then proceeds to show how Scripture rarely supports the exact theology built up by fundamentalist thinkers. Either the Bible contradicts the fundamentalist position, points in another direction, or states the matter more subtly. Hence fundamentalist theology rarely, if ever, fulfills its own boasted promise. The whole argument is a model of sustained clarity and rigor. Aside from an occasional lapse where he appeals to alternative logical possibilities rather than alternative practical possibilities, Barr invariably establishes his case. Fundamentalists will prefer to ignore rather than answer his arguments.

But Barr wants to do more than win an argument. What was implicit in his earlier work on fundamentalism is quite explicit here. Barr wants to foster the development of a genuinely evangelical vision of the Christian faith. Hence he seeks to show that a penetrating evangelical faith can still be derived from Scripture, provided, of course, that evangelicals take the trouble to extricate themselves from the rigidity of the recent past and honestly set about developing a serious theological alternative. This is a costly move to make within evangelical circles, but Barr is right to insist that it must be made if evangelicals are to remain loyal to Scripture rather than to the traditions about Scripture into which they have been initiated. This will not be easy theologically. Barr, perhaps without fully realizing it, shows how difficult it is to integrate what we know about the nature and content of the Bible into the fabric of a living faith. Thus, anyone concerned to think deeply about the authority of Scripture could well begin with this book as a stimulus. Barr in his asides identifies very graphically some of the issues that need to be addressed.

Two words of caution are needed, however. Some readers may only know fundamentalism through Barr’s writings. If this is so, they should know that Barr is using the term “fundamentalism” polemically. The real target of Barr’s attack is not so much the old fundamentalism of the 1920s, which has recently been revitalized by figures like Jerry Falwell, but the conservative evangelicalism of the recent past. Barr has not acknowledged that there was a genuine and costly break with fundamentalism in the neo-evangelical movement of the last generation. To that extent, I think his reading of recent evangelicalism is much too abrupt and simplistic. Yet his basic criticisms of the recent past remain secure. In particular, Barr is correct to say that the doctrine of Scripture is by far the weakest element in the whole tradition. Secondly, given Barr’s success in demolition, many readers will be tempted to hold that the renewal of evangelicalism is quite impossible, especially so if they judge that in this volume Barr as iconoclast still wins out over Barr as pastor. Yet this judgment would be premature and unfounded. Surely it is true that the best traditions produce the best rebels. Barr is one of the best rebels evangelicalism has ever produced. So its resources cannot be entirely bankrupt.

William J. Abraham
Seattle Pacific University
Seattle, Washington

taken from:
theologytoday

Escaping from Fundamentalism

My recent contacts with Christians has highlighted a problem that is becoming increasingly widespread in the world, namely Christian fundamentalism.

Many good folks who enter into the active life of Christian faith enter it through the gateway of fundamentalism (as I did). But it is just as true that many of those who do so come to feel after some time that it is a deeply inadequate form of religion. But finding a way out is difficult. Making the transition to a different understanding of the Bible, of faith, and of theology can be a time of deep uncertainty and even of severe personal suffering. Fundamentalist groups will do nothing to help the struggling person who becomes convinced that he must leave it and find a different world of faith.

So as a service to those struggling Christians who want an authentic faith free from the prison house of fundamentalism, I strongly recommend the excellent book by the Old Testament scholar James Barr, who has done the church a great service in this book and in many others:

Escaping from Fundamentalism.