{"id":374,"date":"2008-01-27T00:09:25","date_gmt":"2008-01-27T04:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godandculture.wordpress.com\/?p=374"},"modified":"2008-01-27T00:09:25","modified_gmt":"2008-01-27T04:09:25","slug":"a-common-word-islams-trojan-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/a-common-word-islams-trojan-horse","title":{"rendered":"‘A Common Word’: Islam’s Trojan Horse"},"content":{"rendered":"

In October of 2007,\u00a0138 Muslim clerics\u00a0produced a letter adressed to Pope Benedict XVI and “to the leaders of\u00a0all the world’s churches, and indeed\u00a0to all Christians everywhere”\u00a0seeking common ground for cooperation between Christianity and Islam. It is in reality a continuation of the original “open letter to the pope” written by 38 Muslim clerics<\/a> in October 2006 in response to The Pope’s Regensburg Lecture<\/a> in\u00a0September of 2006 in which he quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor citing the inconsistency between Islamic holy war, or conversion by compulsion, with what the Q’uran itself teaches about compulsory conversion: it’s against it.<\/p>\n

This new\u00a0letter,\u00a0timed for release on the first anniversary of the original open letter to the Pope, \u00a0has come to be known as ‘A Common Word Between Us and You.’<\/a>\u00a0It focuses on what both the Q’uran and the Bible ostensiby say about loving one’s neighbor in the name of the One who is Love (Allah and\/or Jehovah).\u00a0 The Introduction to the Letter says in part:<\/p>\n

Muslims <\/span>and Christians together make up well over half of the world\u2019s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbour. These principles are found over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity. The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What could possibly be wrong with seeking dialogue and cooperation\u00a0between Muslims and Christians? Wouldn’t many of the world’s tensions be relieved if Muslims and Christians could learn to live together in peace?<\/p>\n

The Yale Center for Faith and Culture, representing a wide spectrum of evangelical Christianity,\u00a0was quick to issue a conciliatory response<\/a> to A Common Word (much to the dismay of conservative theologians within evangelicalism) which says in part:<\/p>\n

We receive the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians world-wide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors.<\/p>\n

Muslims and Christians have not always shaken hands in friendship; their relations have sometimes been tense, even characterized by outright hostility. Since Jesus Christ says, “First take the log out your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Matthew 7:5), we want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the “war on terror”) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors. Before we \u201cshake your hand\u201d in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But is A Common Word Between Us and You<\/em> what it appears? Dr. Peter Sookhdeo is the International Director of the Barnabas Fund <\/a>and Director of the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Islam. Dr. Sookhdeo is also\u00a0a convert to Christianity from Islam and an internationally recognized authority on Islam. We discussed ‘A Common Word’ on one of my recent programs.<\/p>\n

What we have here is a Muslim polemic and second, Islamic Dawah because Islamic Dawah is Islamic mission. It’s taking the message to unbelievers to say to them, “This is who we are, this is what we are. We are very close to you. What is going to be the next step.” Islam at this moment in time, and the authors of this letter, are concerned with how they are going to make their faith appealing in such a way as to be embraced.<\/p>\n

Now, I fully understand that there is a huge diversity in the 138 scholars. Not all of them may have this as their intention. The dilemma is, given the nature of Islam, practical Islam, and many of those who signed up from the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood, and others, we have to look at the nature of their faith, how they see it, and how they are wanting it understood and proclaimed in our day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem with interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians is that we are not speaking the same language. What Islam means by love in its relationship to God and neighbor is not at all what Christianity means by the same terms:<\/p>\n

The point about the open letter is this: love of God is not central in Islam; it is submission. Their own theologians, both past and present, would say, “Love is an attribute. Love is not in the nature of God. That’s blasphemous.”<\/p>\n

Secondly, Islam does not teach love of neighbor. What it does is to define the duties one would have towards people around you according to shari’a. If I may give you a simple illustration: Last weekend the Al Azhar University in Cairo, which is the foremost theological institution in the world in Sunni Islam, issued a fatwah on reconversion, people who have converted to Islam are now not just to be apostate and killed, but rather their body parts are to be cut off until they die. Two of the signatories of the Yale response are the senior leaders of the Al Azhar. So the question is this: how can they on the one hand affirm ‘love of neighbor’ and on the other hand call for, effectively, the crucifixion of converts of Islam to Christianity? And this is where the issue of truth has become crucially important.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reality is that it is very possible that the intention of the letter is to infiltrate Christianity with the message of Islam, softening any opposition to its teachings, so as to prepare Christians for an all-out embrace and ultimate submission to Islamic teaching, which after all is the goal of Islam: submission of every human being to Allah.<\/p>\n

Looking at the common letter and the words which describe it out of the Q’uran, it sounds good until you look at the verse of the Q’uran in the context, and then you discover it is a dawah context, it actually attacks the Trinitarian position. So whilst on the surface the words are ok, when you look at it from the context you have a real problem.<\/p>\n

Secondly, when the Yale letter responds by speaking of the Abrahamic faiths, it presupposes that Jews, Christians, and Muslims derive their faith from a common source, and so we are “Abrahamic faiths.” That presupposes that our understanding of God is the same. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, based on both the Old and New Testaments, we can accept the common understanding of God. In the Islamic tradition their understanding of God is radically different. And so, it’s difficult to understand how we can use the term “Abrahamic faiths.”<\/p>\n

But furthermore, I would agree (and I’m sure we all would) that it is important for Muslims and Christians to sit together and discuss common problems which we all face in our world today. I think meetings of such a nature, I think is essential. Secondly, that Christians must love. At no point are we called to hate anyone. Christians have no enemies; we love our enemies. But herein lies the dilemma. If we’re going to sit down and discuss, what do we discuss? Is it fine points of theology which we have in common? Or is it going to be society, how we live together? So what is the position of Christian minorities in the Muslim world, human rights, and religious liberty? If we’re going to talk about, therefore, our understanding of God in that context then it must begin to shape that kind of discussion. And this is where I think the\u00a0Yale letter has fallen short, because it mixed up theology with practice. Practice says, “Yes we can discuss; yes we can love our enemies, but nowhere do we embrace the ideaology of our enemies.” Nowhere are we called to embrace the principles of Islam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But just how much damage has been done to ‘the faith once for all delivered to the saints’ by Christian leaders who signed the Yale response apologizing for ‘the war on terror’?<\/p>\n

If I may touch on a crucial issue within the Yale letter, which has caused us all much concern, that is the apology. It does say some Christians, in fact many Christians, may wish to apologize for the Crusades. But then it goes on to link the Crusades with, it says, “the excesses of ‘the war on terror’ which many Christians may wish to apologize for.”<\/p>\n

Now American citizens may or may not agree with what their government have and are doing in the context of the Muslim world, on wars on terror. And they have every right to disagree or to agree. But to say that that is a ‘Christian’ war, and the ‘war on terror’ is a Christian act, I believe is woefully wrong and is now putting Christians in the Muslim world at risk, and also our troops at risk because the Muslims are now saying, “See, we told you. We were right and you were wrong. Christians are violent and they’re brutal and their ‘war on terror’ is hurting all of us, and here are Christians having to apologize for that. I don’t believe that the Yale signatories would have wanted that. I think those who wrote this letter (the Yale response)\u00a0got it wrong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In October of 2007,\u00a0138 Muslim clerics\u00a0produced a letter adressed to Pope Benedict XVI and “to the leaders of\u00a0all the world’s churches, and indeed\u00a0to all Christians everywhere”\u00a0seeking common ground for cooperation between Christianity and Islam. It is in reality a continuation … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}