6 Arrows, in reply to your questions from last night, about peaceful Muslims and who they are, there are others with more experience than I, but I will answer out of my own knowledge and what those around me told me.
First, you asked if they were aware that the Koran taught them to kill the infidel. The Koran, as a document compiled of the sayings of one man after his death, is not the most cohesive collection. I put this link up earlier in my discussions (on Wednesday and Thursday): http://thecripplegate.com/can-isis-be-considered-real-muslims/. In both the Koran and in Islamic tradition, precedent can be found for both peaceful and radical Islam. So, the question is, why do some choose peace and others choose war?
First, a great deal depends on the teachers. The Koran is written in Arabic, and most of the Muslim world does not speak Arabic, much less the classic Arabic of the Koran. While translations exist, like the Catholics of the Reformation era, most Muslims would not consider a translation to be lawful. So, as I heard in the testimony of one Iranian convert (Iranians speak Farsi, a Persian dialect), as a young teen he could quote the Koran entirely from memory and didn’t understand a word of it. Sometimes, when we went into the city for supplies, we could watch television with most programming coming out of the Middle East; and I remember coming across an imam (they were like televangelists) who was speaking in English, but when he wanted to quote the Koran, switched to Arabic chant. Add to that that the majority of impoverished villagers are illiterate, and they really do depend on what their teachers tell them about Islam. Again, a bit like the state of the Catholic church during the Middle Ages.
A related factor to how peaceful their teachers are is the type of Islamic sect they follow. Most people know about the Sunni and Shia divisions – there are further divisions within them – but there is a third way that is found throughout Islam, Sufism. Sufism is the mystical side of Islam, which seeks to know Allah on earth through personal purity and virtue. The most familiar aspect of Sufism to Westerners is the Dervish order, which seeks unity in spinning trances. Sufism is the brand that was most popular in the area where I was. Sufists generally choose a teacher that they follow, like the rabbinical custom of Judaism; and pictures of their chosen teacher are placed in their homes, their business and in the windows of their vehicles. I witnessed one such teacher come to the village for a preaching. The car passed surrounded by a crowd on foot who chanted the teacher’s name, some running to touch the car, while vans crowded with passengers, some hanging on the outside, followed the car. The preaching lasted all night. Since Sufism seeks inner peace, it is more likely to peacefully coexist with others (there are exceptions). Thus, Sufists have been attacked and murdered by extremists groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism#Current_attacks
“The woman who took part in the ISIS-inspired San Bernardino massacre is linked to her native country’s most notorious radical mosque, American officials believe.
Sources have told Daily Mail Online that US officials handed over information to their Pakistani counterparts about links between Tashfeen Malik and the Red Mosque in Islamabad.
The mosque is infamous for its links to violence and authorities in Pakistan are now considering taking action against its preacher, Maulana Abdul Aziz, after the disclosures by US officials.
It is unclear currently how law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the US have connected Malik to the mosque.”
Yet another aspect which prompts peaceful living is something they have in common with the rest of us. They are human beings. Despite our fallen condition, we all have a desire to love and be loved, to be at peace with those around us, and in short, just live our lives. It is no accident that the majority of these extremist groups are made up of young people. That is the age when people are most restless, when they want to find out who they are and what their place in life is. That is not to diminish the fact that these extremists are acting evilly nor to deny that Islam is an important motivation to them. But I remember watching a documentary about the Symbionese Liberation Army, that 1970s group that kidnapped Patricia Hearst, and one of the former members was interviewed; He said, reflecting on his past, that in middle age, when you are trying to raise a family and pay the mortgage, none of the things that you were passionate as a young student seem to matter so much anymore. So it is with Muslims – most of them are just trying to raise their children and pay the bills. In the extreme poverty and daily struggle to live of the place I was in, there was little time for radical ideas.
I have observed elsewhere that extremist groups tend to rise and recruit out of refugee camps, where the normal routine daily life is severely interrupted and people become incapable of bettering their lives or working for the future. The pull for young people there is similar to the pull of gangs in ghettos. The other place they recruit from is from young people who are relatively prosperous and better educated, but, like the young people who were attracted to the like of the SLA in the 1970s, want to prove themselves. I have some understanding of their mindset. I have mentioned before how ATI brainwashed its young apprenticeship students to think they were the cream of the Christian crop. I even learned to think that Christians around me were lesser than I, including my parents. If only, I thought, they followed the seven basic principles of spiritual success as preached by Gothard more faithfully, they wouldn’t have so many problems. I would try harder to follow those basic principles, even denying myself things that were innocent and I enjoyed, in order to be more pleasing to God. When I read this description of a young Muslim woman who was nearly drawn in to ISIS, I recognized the pattern: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/26/radicalisation-islam-isis-maysa-not-thinking-my-thoughts-not-myself.
When I have listened to the testimonies of those who have become Christians out of radical Islam, I hear over and over, their delight in being able to take joy in the things that humans enjoy. One man, who with his wife as young people were involved in the 1979 Iranian revolution and in the formation of Hezbollah, spoke of his joy that now he could enjoy music. In my music research on YouTube, I came across a discussion on an Arabic music video on the lawfulness of music in Islam. Some insisted it was lawful, but there was one commenter who bluntly said, “No music is not lawful in Islam, but I listen to it anyway even though I know I’m sinning.” I knew exactly what he was talking about – ATI materials suggested that reading novels was sinful, but I loved to read them anyway. During my spiritual struggles with fears of my salvation, I destroyed many books that I had previously enjoyed. The comparison made me understand how a Muslim young person could enjoy modern life, then come suddenly to a realization of his/her own mortality and swing violently in the opposite direction, trying to purge anything sinful, and atone for past failures. The difference between them and myself was that eventually, I came to an understanding that I can only please God through Jesus Christ. Most of them do not know that.
“Democratic lawmakers visited a mosque on Friday to show solidarity with Muslims in the wake of rising anti-Islamic rhetoric. They also showed resistance to any attempts by Republicans to restrict Syrian refugees from entering the country.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., attended prayer service at a Northern Virginia mosque on Friday. The visit was in response to try and tamp down rising anti-Islamic rhetoric, but comes at a time when Congress is beginning negotiations on how to fund the government.”
“The mosque has controversial ties to terrorists, as Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan was reportedly worshiping there. The mosque also previously had an imam, typically known as a prayer leader, named Anwar al-Awlaki that the government believes was a recruiter for terrorists.
Shaker El-Sayed, the imam that led prayers on Friday, called for an end to harmful anti-Islamic rhetoric and no retaliation from his congregation.”
Tied in to the fact that Muslims are human being, and not orcs (J.R.R. Tolkien reference) or a human virus (as I have seen them described in some places on the internet), is another motivating factor for them being peaceful – they are capable of caring for others. Not everyone in the village was our best friend, there were a even a few enemies; but many had developed deep friendships over the years. Team members told me of a couple of occasions where that friendship was demonstrated. These were times where a real threat to the team’s safety had arisen. In each of these cases, a friend or group of friends acted to warn the team of danger, and in one instance, they reassured the team that they would give them their personal protection. There were many cultural barriers and misunderstandings often arose out of those cultural barriers, but they showed themselves capable of being patient and did not always assume the worst of us. The employees of the place I worked sometimes would dispute wages and days off with the team, and things got a bit tense a one point. As a newcomer, I was not directly involved in the disputes but I was nevertheless, one of the team. I tried to treat the employees as I believed Christ would have me treat them. Some of them seemed quite friendly, others kept their distance, but respectfully. When I was so sick at the end of my stay, the day they had to evacuate me out of the village two of those employees came to see me. One of them had been one of those most involved in the disputes, and I was never sure how well this employee liked me or any of us. This employee burst into tears, seeing me lying there, struggling to breathe. That was only the second time I ever saw any of the adults cry – they are generally fearful of showing that much emotion. The employee cared that much for me, and I never knew it.
We have a nation of youth without God. The peace and unity of Islam can be very alluring. And then the rebellious nature of youth, somebody flips the switch to “we must spread this peace and unity by all means” and a radicalized Muslim emerges.
“The amount of violence from the pro-life cause has been unbelievably rare,” he said. “Considering the level of commitment and passion that pro-lifers bring to the pro-life movement, to have so few instances of violence … particularly in the last few decades, it’s hard to say then that this one shooter—who, by the way, has many, many marks of being really not in his right mind on almost any level—is representative of the pro-life movement.”
On the other hand, while not all Muslims are violent, history is rife with systematic expressions of violence in Islamic belief. …
I have been around a number of Muslims of different ages. I have found them to be more polite and honest than the average Americans I deal with each day. Their children are more polite, they are less likely to divorce, or to become drunks or drug addicts.
Their beliefs are horribly false, although not as far from truth as those of American popular culture. There are some nominal Muslims, but the term “fundamentalist Muslim” is a misnomer. As we know, “fundamentalist” is a Christian term created a century ago to distinguish Bible believing Christians from those who call themselves Christians but deny essenential doctrines of the faith. There is no group of Muslims who deny the essential beliefs of Islam. This is why you don’t see perverted marriages performed in Mosques or parades of perverts in Saudi Arabia or Iraq.
The perfect storm is that there is a group of Muslims prone to violently attack other groups. The leaders of these extremists are helped by the fact that Western leaders and popular culture create the impression that Westerners are drunken, baby-killing, money-loving deviants.
I have decided that some of my friends like Trump for the same reason that I like Putin. We don’t like them for who they are or what they support. We like them because of what they are against – horrible, dangerous and stupid things that much of the West supports and the rest of the West is afraid to criticize.
Roscuro, I saw your cripplegate link the other day, but didn’t have time to read it until you reposted it today. Thank you for that.
I read the comment section at that link, and I’d have to say that the commenter named Jason addressed some of what came to mind as I read the article, especially his first two paragraphs:
Because there is allowance granted to Muslims to lie to uphold a desirable peace (such as in families), protect ones-self, or further the cause of Islam, it is difficult to know if the document written to the monks was intended to deceive them with false peace or was actually a treaty of sorts.
The verses about not killing all include the clause that there is an exception for cases of justice. It would be interesting to look into what constitutes “justice” in those statements.
“Justice” is a murky term, dependent upon who’s defining its meaning.
The thing that keeps coming to mind for me in this whole discussion is, as a parent, what is my (and my husband’s) responsibility to the children God gave us, in terms of providing for them? You’ve already said that we are not guaranteed safety in this life, and I agree, yet are we to not provide any measure of protection to our children because we aren’t guaranteed safety?
(I’m not suggesting you believe that, Roscuro, I’m just tossing out here what I’ve been mulling.)
Does showing hospitality to those who may potentially have radically different belief systems trump our parental wishes to exercise caution in whose ideologies we allow our children of various levels of maturity and impressionability to encounter on a regular basis?
Does providing for one’s family include providing protection from influences we believe they are not yet able to handle? Or does that show lack of faith? Lack of hospitality?
And could making disciples of all nations — the cripplegate article’s closing paragraph said, Christians are in a war for making disciples of all nations, by the grace of God, through the message of his love in Jesus Christ crucified and risen. — be applied by starting first with one’s family, and later applied to the broader outside world when the children are firmly grounded in the faith, that false beliefs are likely to hold much less sway with them?
We disagree with the homosexual agenda, some people refuse to use their talents to support the wedding.
We disagree with the direction of education, some people refuse to put their children in the system, others become teachers.
We disagree with whatever, and we act.
How do we disagree with Islam and yet help Muslims? It goes back to sending help.
Speaking of cultures, doesn’t it seem like American/Western/Christian culture is not seen as a real culture by many on the secular left. It’s kind of like they see it as blank sheet on which real cultures are to be overlaid. Does anyone see what I mean.
KBells, I think the Left hates the historic American Christian culture more than anything. In their minds, they prefer Native American culture, modern secular culture, African culture, Eastern mystic culture, even Islamic culture. Islamists can’t kill enough of them to change their minds.
That is because we are the bad guys, who stole the land from the nice people who had it before. Unlike any of the other cultures who quietly live inside their own boundaries, respecting the space of all others.
The latest trend seems to be to make fun of liberal whites who are trying to do what they think they are suppose to do. Add to that the prohibition against Cultural approbation, then our choices are racist, dufus or thief. 🙂
6 Arrows, the questions you ask are the hardest for me to answer, as I’m keenly conscious that I do not have those family ties and concerns you speak about, at least not to the same extent. Paul’s statement that the married will have a harder struggle in the flesh used to irritate me, as it seemed to belittle the struggles of being single; now I begin to understand what he meant.
On the team, there were several families with children. I had some conversations with the parents on the challenges of raising children on the field. Many of the concerns were health related, the climate was difficult for adults and seemed even harder on growing children. They did have to monitor how, where and when their children spent with the village children, not due to any religious concerns, but because of other influences. In places filled with poverty and hardship, children grow up too quickly and learn too much, too soon. Some of the team children had a harder time adjusting than others, but it helped when parents taught them to view themselves as part of the team. Most of the team children participated actively in church and prayer meeting. Generally, from what I observed and was told, the team children thrived on the field and were pretty normal. Returning home when it was time for college was the greater culture shock.
I do have close ties to my nieces and nephews. As I care very deeply about each of them, I try to consider how these things would affect them. Quite honestly, I cannot think that it would affect them any more negatively than all the other things they already have to face in our culture. My eldest niece is growing up so fast, already a teenager. She and I will discuss many topics. Last week, she brought up the attacks in Paris and the bombing of ISIS. She, without my prompting, expressed concern at the negative attitudes she saw towards the refugees. She also touched on gay marriage, expressing bewilderment at the idea. She is mature, almost beyond her age, and her concern when considering a book or film, is how her next younger sibling will handle it. He is rapidly approaching the teenage years, and is much more of a dreamer. She and I both wonder how he will handle the grim realities of the world he is in. Their parents have raised them carefully, neither sheltering them entirely nor overexposing them; but each of them is very different in how they view the world and react to what is around them. I cannot protect my nieces and nephew from all they will have to face; I can only pray, and trust that the Lord knows what is best for them.
As I’ve said before, there is room for differing opinions on how to help the refugees. However, I do not think that the addition of a Muslim family to one’s neighbourhood need affect how one raises one’s children. I don’t know that I would recommend that a family with children actually take any strange family to live for an extended period of time with them, regardless of religious affiliation. I have myself experienced what happens when one child knows too much and spends a lot of time with children in another family. But interacting as neighbours is an entirely different matter; in that scenario it should be entirely possible to field one’s children’s questions about the religion of the neighbouring family. When I went to college, I had only heard of Muslims in theory (I grew up in a rural area populated almost entirely by people of European descent). Nobody had demonstrated or advised how to interact with them, although I did hear a lot about what they believed. There was one in my class. To my surprise, she really seemed to like me; and we interacted amicably, even having a dialogue about religion. I’m no great evangelist, and I thought afterwards of all the things I could have said. That was my first encounter, very different from what I had been led to believe. I had to navigate myself through all the ideological pitfalls, and I felt isolated from my church because most of them never seemed to consider the issues that I was facing, except to dismiss them as signs of the last times.
One quick comment: If exposure to radical Islam is the concern, I would point out, practically, that every young adult with access to social media and the internet is already facing that exposure. ISIS recruits via those tools.
Roscuro, I want to thank you for your very thoughtful comment. (As I type this, tears are filling my eyes.) Your perspective, and the care with which you expressed it here, means a lot to me. I wish I had more time for dialogue, but I have to get off the computer now and tend to other things.
You have certainly encouraged me to pray more fervently about all this, and that is ALWAYS a good thing.
I love your heart. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Twenty years ago we had a very bright, spiritually mature young lady in our youth department. After college she served for many years as a missionary in Tunisia. Her ministry was primarily to young Muslim women. Eventually, she received notice that her life was in danger and she came home. In recent years she has ministered to foreign students at a major university.
I think Muslim refugees pose some danger. However, the danger they pose is relatively slight and is to our physical lives. The danger posed by modern American popular culture is to the souls of our children and grandchildren. On some moral issues, Muslim immigrants may actually be our allies.
Well, I’m not an expert on the entire Muslim world, so I cannot speak to everything. However, I would say that the situation in Indonesia is not analogous. Islam reached the country sometime in the 1200s. So, Indonesia was Islamic long before the formation of first the Dutch East India Company and then the Dutch colonial administration. The way the Dutch administered did not endear the Indonesians to European influence. Brother Andrew, in God’s Smuggler, described his experience of the final Indonesian War for independence – and it sounds like the worst of the Vietnam War with the Dutch frequently in the wrong. Indonesia then fell under a dictator, as did many former European colonies. They threw off that yoke, but in the process have become more Islamic. Islamic groups have long been part of Indonesian nationalism, and it would not be unreasonable to think that perhaps Indonesians resent Christianity as a remnant of the colonial era, in the way nationalist Hindus regard Christianity in India – some Hindu groups are trying to get Christians to reconvert. We should pray for our Indonesian fellow believers, but I found it interesting to read their perspective: http://www.worldmag.com/2015/11/southeast_asian_squeeze. So, Indonesia is a long established Islamic nation with a colonial past with a relatively new Christian minority. That is a much different situation than in the West, and even more so in North America.
That is the story that brought up my question. They mention the Muslims being willing to coexist as long as the Christians or whoever are willing to take a lower status. And they are apparently becoming more ….strict? more fundamental? going back to coverings. It appears it is becoming a more adherent belief.
It seems, when Catholics take their belief around, they allow a muddling of the local belief with Catholicism. It appears the same happens with Islam, but as time passes, they are pulled or pull themselves more into the center of the belief. Not in Catholicism so much, but in Islam. Or is that just how I see it and not necessarily so?
I fell asleep and got to the dog park too late, it was almost dark and everyone had gone. So we drove out by the cliffs and listened to the President in the radio.
He did call a terrorist attack a terrorist attack, so he’s following along at least 🙄
And what’s with all the time spent talking about our (in his mind) rampant discrimination against Muslims? Huh?? As someone said, that’s a complete reality disconnect. There are hardly roving mobs in the streets beating up Muslims.
And he was partisan as always (with a few digs, naturally, at the Republican congress). Oh, and gun control. We need more gun control.
Wandering Views 
6 Arrows, in reply to your questions from last night, about peaceful Muslims and who they are, there are others with more experience than I, but I will answer out of my own knowledge and what those around me told me.
First, you asked if they were aware that the Koran taught them to kill the infidel. The Koran, as a document compiled of the sayings of one man after his death, is not the most cohesive collection. I put this link up earlier in my discussions (on Wednesday and Thursday): http://thecripplegate.com/can-isis-be-considered-real-muslims/. In both the Koran and in Islamic tradition, precedent can be found for both peaceful and radical Islam. So, the question is, why do some choose peace and others choose war?
First, a great deal depends on the teachers. The Koran is written in Arabic, and most of the Muslim world does not speak Arabic, much less the classic Arabic of the Koran. While translations exist, like the Catholics of the Reformation era, most Muslims would not consider a translation to be lawful. So, as I heard in the testimony of one Iranian convert (Iranians speak Farsi, a Persian dialect), as a young teen he could quote the Koran entirely from memory and didn’t understand a word of it. Sometimes, when we went into the city for supplies, we could watch television with most programming coming out of the Middle East; and I remember coming across an imam (they were like televangelists) who was speaking in English, but when he wanted to quote the Koran, switched to Arabic chant. Add to that that the majority of impoverished villagers are illiterate, and they really do depend on what their teachers tell them about Islam. Again, a bit like the state of the Catholic church during the Middle Ages.
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A related factor to how peaceful their teachers are is the type of Islamic sect they follow. Most people know about the Sunni and Shia divisions – there are further divisions within them – but there is a third way that is found throughout Islam, Sufism. Sufism is the mystical side of Islam, which seeks to know Allah on earth through personal purity and virtue. The most familiar aspect of Sufism to Westerners is the Dervish order, which seeks unity in spinning trances. Sufism is the brand that was most popular in the area where I was. Sufists generally choose a teacher that they follow, like the rabbinical custom of Judaism; and pictures of their chosen teacher are placed in their homes, their business and in the windows of their vehicles. I witnessed one such teacher come to the village for a preaching. The car passed surrounded by a crowd on foot who chanted the teacher’s name, some running to touch the car, while vans crowded with passengers, some hanging on the outside, followed the car. The preaching lasted all night. Since Sufism seeks inner peace, it is more likely to peacefully coexist with others (there are exceptions). Thus, Sufists have been attacked and murdered by extremists groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism#Current_attacks
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And yet she passed the vetting process……
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3346618/ISIS-loyalist-woman-San-Bernardino-massacre-linked-Pakistan-s-notorious-radical-cleric-mosque-known-center-fundamentalists.html
“The woman who took part in the ISIS-inspired San Bernardino massacre is linked to her native country’s most notorious radical mosque, American officials believe.
Sources have told Daily Mail Online that US officials handed over information to their Pakistani counterparts about links between Tashfeen Malik and the Red Mosque in Islamabad.
The mosque is infamous for its links to violence and authorities in Pakistan are now considering taking action against its preacher, Maulana Abdul Aziz, after the disclosures by US officials.
It is unclear currently how law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the US have connected Malik to the mosque.”
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Yet another aspect which prompts peaceful living is something they have in common with the rest of us. They are human beings. Despite our fallen condition, we all have a desire to love and be loved, to be at peace with those around us, and in short, just live our lives. It is no accident that the majority of these extremist groups are made up of young people. That is the age when people are most restless, when they want to find out who they are and what their place in life is. That is not to diminish the fact that these extremists are acting evilly nor to deny that Islam is an important motivation to them. But I remember watching a documentary about the Symbionese Liberation Army, that 1970s group that kidnapped Patricia Hearst, and one of the former members was interviewed; He said, reflecting on his past, that in middle age, when you are trying to raise a family and pay the mortgage, none of the things that you were passionate as a young student seem to matter so much anymore. So it is with Muslims – most of them are just trying to raise their children and pay the bills. In the extreme poverty and daily struggle to live of the place I was in, there was little time for radical ideas.
I have observed elsewhere that extremist groups tend to rise and recruit out of refugee camps, where the normal routine daily life is severely interrupted and people become incapable of bettering their lives or working for the future. The pull for young people there is similar to the pull of gangs in ghettos. The other place they recruit from is from young people who are relatively prosperous and better educated, but, like the young people who were attracted to the like of the SLA in the 1970s, want to prove themselves. I have some understanding of their mindset. I have mentioned before how ATI brainwashed its young apprenticeship students to think they were the cream of the Christian crop. I even learned to think that Christians around me were lesser than I, including my parents. If only, I thought, they followed the seven basic principles of spiritual success as preached by Gothard more faithfully, they wouldn’t have so many problems. I would try harder to follow those basic principles, even denying myself things that were innocent and I enjoyed, in order to be more pleasing to God. When I read this description of a young Muslim woman who was nearly drawn in to ISIS, I recognized the pattern: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/26/radicalisation-islam-isis-maysa-not-thinking-my-thoughts-not-myself.
When I have listened to the testimonies of those who have become Christians out of radical Islam, I hear over and over, their delight in being able to take joy in the things that humans enjoy. One man, who with his wife as young people were involved in the 1979 Iranian revolution and in the formation of Hezbollah, spoke of his joy that now he could enjoy music. In my music research on YouTube, I came across a discussion on an Arabic music video on the lawfulness of music in Islam. Some insisted it was lawful, but there was one commenter who bluntly said, “No music is not lawful in Islam, but I listen to it anyway even though I know I’m sinning.” I knew exactly what he was talking about – ATI materials suggested that reading novels was sinful, but I loved to read them anyway. During my spiritual struggles with fears of my salvation, I destroyed many books that I had previously enjoyed. The comparison made me understand how a Muslim young person could enjoy modern life, then come suddenly to a realization of his/her own mortality and swing violently in the opposite direction, trying to purge anything sinful, and atone for past failures. The difference between them and myself was that eventually, I came to an understanding that I can only please God through Jesus Christ. Most of them do not know that.
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And Democrats continue to enable the radicals.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/dems-visit-mosque-to-show-solidarity/article/2577676
“Democratic lawmakers visited a mosque on Friday to show solidarity with Muslims in the wake of rising anti-Islamic rhetoric. They also showed resistance to any attempts by Republicans to restrict Syrian refugees from entering the country.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., attended prayer service at a Northern Virginia mosque on Friday. The visit was in response to try and tamp down rising anti-Islamic rhetoric, but comes at a time when Congress is beginning negotiations on how to fund the government.”
“The mosque has controversial ties to terrorists, as Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan was reportedly worshiping there. The mosque also previously had an imam, typically known as a prayer leader, named Anwar al-Awlaki that the government believes was a recruiter for terrorists.
Shaker El-Sayed, the imam that led prayers on Friday, called for an end to harmful anti-Islamic rhetoric and no retaliation from his congregation.”
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Tied in to the fact that Muslims are human being, and not orcs (J.R.R. Tolkien reference) or a human virus (as I have seen them described in some places on the internet), is another motivating factor for them being peaceful – they are capable of caring for others. Not everyone in the village was our best friend, there were a even a few enemies; but many had developed deep friendships over the years. Team members told me of a couple of occasions where that friendship was demonstrated. These were times where a real threat to the team’s safety had arisen. In each of these cases, a friend or group of friends acted to warn the team of danger, and in one instance, they reassured the team that they would give them their personal protection. There were many cultural barriers and misunderstandings often arose out of those cultural barriers, but they showed themselves capable of being patient and did not always assume the worst of us. The employees of the place I worked sometimes would dispute wages and days off with the team, and things got a bit tense a one point. As a newcomer, I was not directly involved in the disputes but I was nevertheless, one of the team. I tried to treat the employees as I believed Christ would have me treat them. Some of them seemed quite friendly, others kept their distance, but respectfully. When I was so sick at the end of my stay, the day they had to evacuate me out of the village two of those employees came to see me. One of them had been one of those most involved in the disputes, and I was never sure how well this employee liked me or any of us. This employee burst into tears, seeing me lying there, struggling to breathe. That was only the second time I ever saw any of the adults cry – they are generally fearful of showing that much emotion. The employee cared that much for me, and I never knew it.
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We have a nation of youth without God. The peace and unity of Islam can be very alluring. And then the rebellious nature of youth, somebody flips the switch to “we must spread this peace and unity by all means” and a radicalized Muslim emerges.
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Vacuums. Personal, cultural, national or global. They will be filled.
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What kind of country advertises its lack of arms?
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Ours apparently? 😉
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There is that freedom of speech again.
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http://www.worldmag.com/2015/12/making_distinctions_between_two_mass_shootings?utm_source=hootsuite
_______________________________
“The amount of violence from the pro-life cause has been unbelievably rare,” he said. “Considering the level of commitment and passion that pro-lifers bring to the pro-life movement, to have so few instances of violence … particularly in the last few decades, it’s hard to say then that this one shooter—who, by the way, has many, many marks of being really not in his right mind on almost any level—is representative of the pro-life movement.”
On the other hand, while not all Muslims are violent, history is rife with systematic expressions of violence in Islamic belief. …
________________________________
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I have been around a number of Muslims of different ages. I have found them to be more polite and honest than the average Americans I deal with each day. Their children are more polite, they are less likely to divorce, or to become drunks or drug addicts.
Their beliefs are horribly false, although not as far from truth as those of American popular culture. There are some nominal Muslims, but the term “fundamentalist Muslim” is a misnomer. As we know, “fundamentalist” is a Christian term created a century ago to distinguish Bible believing Christians from those who call themselves Christians but deny essenential doctrines of the faith. There is no group of Muslims who deny the essential beliefs of Islam. This is why you don’t see perverted marriages performed in Mosques or parades of perverts in Saudi Arabia or Iraq.
The perfect storm is that there is a group of Muslims prone to violently attack other groups. The leaders of these extremists are helped by the fact that Western leaders and popular culture create the impression that Westerners are drunken, baby-killing, money-loving deviants.
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I have decided that some of my friends like Trump for the same reason that I like Putin. We don’t like them for who they are or what they support. We like them because of what they are against – horrible, dangerous and stupid things that much of the West supports and the rest of the West is afraid to criticize.
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Roscuro, I saw your cripplegate link the other day, but didn’t have time to read it until you reposted it today. Thank you for that.
I read the comment section at that link, and I’d have to say that the commenter named Jason addressed some of what came to mind as I read the article, especially his first two paragraphs:
“Justice” is a murky term, dependent upon who’s defining its meaning.
The thing that keeps coming to mind for me in this whole discussion is, as a parent, what is my (and my husband’s) responsibility to the children God gave us, in terms of providing for them? You’ve already said that we are not guaranteed safety in this life, and I agree, yet are we to not provide any measure of protection to our children because we aren’t guaranteed safety?
(I’m not suggesting you believe that, Roscuro, I’m just tossing out here what I’ve been mulling.)
Does showing hospitality to those who may potentially have radically different belief systems trump our parental wishes to exercise caution in whose ideologies we allow our children of various levels of maturity and impressionability to encounter on a regular basis?
Does providing for one’s family include providing protection from influences we believe they are not yet able to handle? Or does that show lack of faith? Lack of hospitality?
And could making disciples of all nations — the cripplegate article’s closing paragraph said, Christians are in a war for making disciples of all nations, by the grace of God, through the message of his love in Jesus Christ crucified and risen. — be applied by starting first with one’s family, and later applied to the broader outside world when the children are firmly grounded in the faith, that false beliefs are likely to hold much less sway with them?
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We disagree with the homosexual agenda, some people refuse to use their talents to support the wedding.
We disagree with the direction of education, some people refuse to put their children in the system, others become teachers.
We disagree with whatever, and we act.
How do we disagree with Islam and yet help Muslims? It goes back to sending help.
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Speaking of cultures, doesn’t it seem like American/Western/Christian culture is not seen as a real culture by many on the secular left. It’s kind of like they see it as blank sheet on which real cultures are to be overlaid. Does anyone see what I mean.
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KBells, I think the Left hates the historic American Christian culture more than anything. In their minds, they prefer Native American culture, modern secular culture, African culture, Eastern mystic culture, even Islamic culture. Islamists can’t kill enough of them to change their minds.
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That is because we are the bad guys, who stole the land from the nice people who had it before. Unlike any of the other cultures who quietly live inside their own boundaries, respecting the space of all others.
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Yes, we are very white and very bad. Even I learned that back in the dark ages when I was in college. 🙄
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The latest trend seems to be to make fun of liberal whites who are trying to do what they think they are suppose to do. Add to that the prohibition against Cultural approbation, then our choices are racist, dufus or thief. 🙂
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6 Arrows, the questions you ask are the hardest for me to answer, as I’m keenly conscious that I do not have those family ties and concerns you speak about, at least not to the same extent. Paul’s statement that the married will have a harder struggle in the flesh used to irritate me, as it seemed to belittle the struggles of being single; now I begin to understand what he meant.
On the team, there were several families with children. I had some conversations with the parents on the challenges of raising children on the field. Many of the concerns were health related, the climate was difficult for adults and seemed even harder on growing children. They did have to monitor how, where and when their children spent with the village children, not due to any religious concerns, but because of other influences. In places filled with poverty and hardship, children grow up too quickly and learn too much, too soon. Some of the team children had a harder time adjusting than others, but it helped when parents taught them to view themselves as part of the team. Most of the team children participated actively in church and prayer meeting. Generally, from what I observed and was told, the team children thrived on the field and were pretty normal. Returning home when it was time for college was the greater culture shock.
I do have close ties to my nieces and nephews. As I care very deeply about each of them, I try to consider how these things would affect them. Quite honestly, I cannot think that it would affect them any more negatively than all the other things they already have to face in our culture. My eldest niece is growing up so fast, already a teenager. She and I will discuss many topics. Last week, she brought up the attacks in Paris and the bombing of ISIS. She, without my prompting, expressed concern at the negative attitudes she saw towards the refugees. She also touched on gay marriage, expressing bewilderment at the idea. She is mature, almost beyond her age, and her concern when considering a book or film, is how her next younger sibling will handle it. He is rapidly approaching the teenage years, and is much more of a dreamer. She and I both wonder how he will handle the grim realities of the world he is in. Their parents have raised them carefully, neither sheltering them entirely nor overexposing them; but each of them is very different in how they view the world and react to what is around them. I cannot protect my nieces and nephew from all they will have to face; I can only pray, and trust that the Lord knows what is best for them.
As I’ve said before, there is room for differing opinions on how to help the refugees. However, I do not think that the addition of a Muslim family to one’s neighbourhood need affect how one raises one’s children. I don’t know that I would recommend that a family with children actually take any strange family to live for an extended period of time with them, regardless of religious affiliation. I have myself experienced what happens when one child knows too much and spends a lot of time with children in another family. But interacting as neighbours is an entirely different matter; in that scenario it should be entirely possible to field one’s children’s questions about the religion of the neighbouring family. When I went to college, I had only heard of Muslims in theory (I grew up in a rural area populated almost entirely by people of European descent). Nobody had demonstrated or advised how to interact with them, although I did hear a lot about what they believed. There was one in my class. To my surprise, she really seemed to like me; and we interacted amicably, even having a dialogue about religion. I’m no great evangelist, and I thought afterwards of all the things I could have said. That was my first encounter, very different from what I had been led to believe. I had to navigate myself through all the ideological pitfalls, and I felt isolated from my church because most of them never seemed to consider the issues that I was facing, except to dismiss them as signs of the last times.
One quick comment: If exposure to radical Islam is the concern, I would point out, practically, that every young adult with access to social media and the internet is already facing that exposure. ISIS recruits via those tools.
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Roscuro, I want to thank you for your very thoughtful comment. (As I type this, tears are filling my eyes.) Your perspective, and the care with which you expressed it here, means a lot to me. I wish I had more time for dialogue, but I have to get off the computer now and tend to other things.
You have certainly encouraged me to pray more fervently about all this, and that is ALWAYS a good thing.
I love your heart. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Blessings.
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Twenty years ago we had a very bright, spiritually mature young lady in our youth department. After college she served for many years as a missionary in Tunisia. Her ministry was primarily to young Muslim women. Eventually, she received notice that her life was in danger and she came home. In recent years she has ministered to foreign students at a major university.
I think Muslim refugees pose some danger. However, the danger they pose is relatively slight and is to our physical lives. The danger posed by modern American popular culture is to the souls of our children and grandchildren. On some moral issues, Muslim immigrants may actually be our allies.
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Setting aside radicalism, having them as neighbors is fine. But what has happened to Indonesia?
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Well, I’m not an expert on the entire Muslim world, so I cannot speak to everything. However, I would say that the situation in Indonesia is not analogous. Islam reached the country sometime in the 1200s. So, Indonesia was Islamic long before the formation of first the Dutch East India Company and then the Dutch colonial administration. The way the Dutch administered did not endear the Indonesians to European influence. Brother Andrew, in God’s Smuggler, described his experience of the final Indonesian War for independence – and it sounds like the worst of the Vietnam War with the Dutch frequently in the wrong. Indonesia then fell under a dictator, as did many former European colonies. They threw off that yoke, but in the process have become more Islamic. Islamic groups have long been part of Indonesian nationalism, and it would not be unreasonable to think that perhaps Indonesians resent Christianity as a remnant of the colonial era, in the way nationalist Hindus regard Christianity in India – some Hindu groups are trying to get Christians to reconvert. We should pray for our Indonesian fellow believers, but I found it interesting to read their perspective: http://www.worldmag.com/2015/11/southeast_asian_squeeze. So, Indonesia is a long established Islamic nation with a colonial past with a relatively new Christian minority. That is a much different situation than in the West, and even more so in North America.
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That is the story that brought up my question. They mention the Muslims being willing to coexist as long as the Christians or whoever are willing to take a lower status. And they are apparently becoming more ….strict? more fundamental? going back to coverings. It appears it is becoming a more adherent belief.
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It seems, when Catholics take their belief around, they allow a muddling of the local belief with Catholicism. It appears the same happens with Islam, but as time passes, they are pulled or pull themselves more into the center of the belief. Not in Catholicism so much, but in Islam. Or is that just how I see it and not necessarily so?
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The President is speaking tonight. Should be interesting. Or not. I’ll probably miss at least some of it due to my dog park schedule.
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Doesn’t the dog park have one of those big tv screens up?
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So, I’ve heard the grandmother does NOT have custody of the baby. She’s in CPS custody.
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I fell asleep and got to the dog park too late, it was almost dark and everyone had gone. So we drove out by the cliffs and listened to the President in the radio.
He did call a terrorist attack a terrorist attack, so he’s following along at least 🙄
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And what’s with all the time spent talking about our (in his mind) rampant discrimination against Muslims? Huh?? As someone said, that’s a complete reality disconnect. There are hardly roving mobs in the streets beating up Muslims.
And he was partisan as always (with a few digs, naturally, at the Republican congress). Oh, and gun control. We need more gun control.
So there. That’ll all work, right?
Another year and we’ll be free of him, at least.
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If the grandmother lived with them, there’s no way she didn’t know what was going on.
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And go Rubio.
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Unfortunately, there has been some anti-Muslim violence, but nothing that could be called “rampant” that I know of.
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