Christian Living

As I Muse On The Muslims

by Dr. Henderson Ward
12/06/15
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He was five feet four inches tall, pot bellied, sleepy in appearance and he loved cooking. Whenever we had a meaningful break, which occurred about three times every day, he would go to the kitchen and cook some food and always offered me some. Not particularly fond of Southern Asian cuisine, with its penchant for spicy, peppery, curried extravagance, I would take some but sparingly.

The food always tasted good, and despite my superficial reluctance, the next time he offered I said “Okay”, because he was my friend and we were colleagues.

He was from Pakistan.

He was a Muslim.

All this occurred in the United Kingdom while I was working as a manager over there.

Then I relocated to Barbados, where I am now, and a few years after my relocation this man walked into my office, hands outstretched in greeting and with a big smile. Who was this?

Yes, the Pakistani.

The same Muslim colleague I had last seen in the U.K., but now on engineering contract for a short while in Barbados.

I knew he was a Muslim because he told me so; but he never prayed that I noticed, he never recited verses from the Quran, during the month of Ramadan he acted no different from other times, he loved drinking alcohol, and socializing; and he acted in no way that made him different from anyone else.

Yet he was a Muslim.

In truth he was as normal, balanced, friendly, sociable and decent a human being as one could wish to meet or befriend.

Yet he was a Muslim.

Some people even reading the word “Muslim” unsettles them, they are terrified of having Muslims around them. I’ve even heard of people refusing to travel on the same airplane as people dressed as Muslims – because they were afraid of what might happen.

Currently, some Muslim extremists are causing havoc across the globe, and the mainstream media, like it always does, are forefront and centre in distorting, magnifying and trivialising everything into alarming sound-bites, and we are as a consequence, even more so, apt to regard the world as suffering from a “Muslim problem”.

The plain truth is that there in no “Muslim problem” and the perception that there is, is one of the evils inflicted on our spiritually impoverished world.

Some Muslim extremists murder umpteen French citizens (an appalling act of terror; absolutely) and suddenly everyone, it seems, is baying for the blood of Muslims. Some Presidential candidates in the USA are even advocating that Muslims be registered, and quarantined, as if they are dangerous animals, and others are dredging up all kinds of mindless, reactionary ideas.

But such wanton aggression, and slaughter of the innocents, are not confined to Muslim extremists.

We had a Christian young man, Dylann Storm Roof, ( he was reported to be on the roll of the local Lutheran congregation), who murdered nine people who gathered for Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. And it was a Christian man, 57-year-old Robert Lewis Dear Jr., who opened fire inside a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado Springs, killing three people,  including a police officer, and injuring more than six.

Another plain truth, when Christians carry out terrorist acts, is that there in no “Christian problem”, and never has been. Just because some Christian extremists do horrible things (remember the Crusades) does not mean that they are acting in the name of Christ.

It has always been so. It will always be so.

I am not a Muslim sympathiser, am deeply opposed to their theology. But if you read the tenets of their faith, it is clear that their faith does not include the terror that we are witnessing across the world.

Whatever some people may  think, Islam is a religion of peace. True adherents of Islam are peaceful, and the vast majority of Muslims are living in, and want to continue to live, in peace.

So where is the rub?

People have, from the start of religion, always attached themselves to people of the faith, but have never practiced the tenets of that faith and were consumed only with their selfish agenda.

There are many Muslims, like my friend that I mentioned at the start of this article, who are Muslim only in name. They don’t cherish the ideals of Islam, they have no wish to be good examples of that faith, and they have neither a proper understanding of nor an affectation for the book that is the Quran.

The same thing is true of some who call themselves Christians.

The plain truth is that in the United States of America people of colour have more, much more, to fear from so-called Christians than from Muslim extremists.

It was the so-called Christians down in the Deep South who habitually lynched black people with impunity; aided and assisted by the so-called Christians law enforcement apparatus.

It was so-called Christians groups, like the Klu Klux Klan, that bombed black Christian churches, and terrorised people of colour and Jews for decades. And reports suggest that the practice is still ongoing.

The real and persistent problem facing us today is that spiritual, religious bodies are reluctant or downright opposed, to effectively dealing with their “jihadists”.

The Roman Catholic church needed the intervention of the nation’s police forces before they began dealing with their pedophile, abusive priests.

They are “jihadists” pastors extorting money from church coffers for their own highfalutin lifestyle, and teaching false doctrine to a pliable and duped audience, and yet they are tolerated.

The truth is that Muslims are no different from the rest of the world.

A bold truth, which we ignore to our shame and hurt, is that secular man, that person who is not converted, is ever on the prowl to exploit human difficulty and differences for gain.

There is money in war, big money, so watch them go to town.There is opportunity for wealth and power in confusion and terror; are you taking note of the pushers?

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12)

Tell that to those who are offering mindless nonsense in response to serious, existential problems. Adolph Hitler thought he had the answer to the “Jewish problem”.

When Peter was touched by madness, Jesus was not silent, “Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus. Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:10-11)

Peter’s way was not the right way, it was not Jesus’ way, it was and is not the way of the church.

“For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.’ (Luke 6:32)

The church needs to stand strong, and not let the mainstream media pollute its mind with hate for a people, no matter how violent some of their members are.

Love works; all that is required is for us to give it a fair chance.

Enough said.

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