Beautiful images of the Muslim world…
Now that the drama of Qur’an burning churches and 9/11 has passed, I wanted to share some images I found online that are amazing and moving. They come from a post on Boston.com and are images of Muslims from around the world throughout the month long holiday of Ramadan.
For most Americans, Islam remains a strange and scary religion and Muslims are tolerated at best. Interestingly, this is precisely how many Muslims feel about Christians in Islamic countries (though the levels of tolerance for Christians are much less in many Islamic nations). And during times of heightened “patriotism” in the US, it’s easy to get the sense from listening to people’s rhetoric and attitudes that Muslims are the enemy and are trying to take over and destroy the world.
Of course, there are many within Islam who have expressed this desire and certain streams of Islam emphasize it. However, there are also many within Christianity who have expressed the same desire in the name of Jesus and many militant aberrations of the Gospel that have reared their ugly heads throughout history. Many Muslims still associate “spreading the Gospel” with the Crusades, remember! So if we’re ever to be able to see one another in genuine love, it’s going to take the overturning of stereotypes built up over centuries. These images go a long way in doing just that, I believe.
Here are a few of my favorites from the article:
Be sure to check out the rest of the pictures, along with descriptions of each of the above, at Boston.com’s Big Picture article.
Whenever we as Christians are tempted to demonize Muslims, let us remember such images and see them through the eyes of Jesus, who came into the world to break Sin’s grip over persons from every tribe, language, people and nation. As His followers, we can still boldly preach the Gospel–even concluding, on the basis of Galatians 1, that the religion of Islam is ultimately not from God and a twisting of the true Gospel of Jesus–but we can do so with compassion, charity, generosity and love for our Muslim friends, family and neighbors.
If we truly demonstrate self-sacrificial love, then disagreements in religious claims will be much less inflammatory and the Gospel will gain a fair hearing among many who would otherwise point to the behavior and attitude of Christians as a reason for not listening to what we have to say. I’ve found this to be true with my Muslim friends, with whom I have been able to have open and honest discussion and debates.
We don’t have to fall into an impotent interfaith universalism that says everyone’s right and all religions that pray to God/Allah are the same. Nor do we have to fall into the “Us vs. Them” mentality that seeks to burn one another’s Scripture or imprison those who convert (both still happen regularly around the world unfortunately!).
Let us as Christians by all means continue to disagree with the core beliefs of Islam. But let us never see Muslims as anything less than bearers of the Image of God who are every bit as human as we are and every bit as loved by Jesus.
Salam, shalom, peace,
JM
[For more on the claims of the Gospel in contrast to the claims of Muhammed (and Joseph Smith), listen to this message I gave a few years ago. For an excellent hypothetical discussion between the Apostle Paul and Muhammed, see Mike Licona’s little book “Paul Meets Muhammed.” Also, be sure to check out articles by my fellow Examiners Qasim (National Islam Examiner) and Julie (Baltimore Muslim Examiner).]
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