Zwemer Center

Relating, Understanding & Communicating with Muslims

In this lecture, Vivienne Stacey discusses the importance of Christians winning the person rather than the argument with Muslims. She reminds us of the importance of not only receiving the gospel by faith but also sharing the gospel by faith and with prayer. These lectures were given at Columbia International University in partnership with the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies. The Zwemer Center was founded in 1979 and exists to offer comprehensive courses on Islam, facilitate research, foster dialogues, offer seminars, conduct training, and provide resources for effective Christian witness and ministry among Muslims. We also have a course study guide for these lectures that you might find helpful.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Vivienne Stacey’s Lecture on relating, understanding, and communicating with Muslims:

Well, you’ve all been meeting Muslims at a mosque, I hope, sometime in the last few weeks. And, so I’d like just to make a few observations about a Christian’s approach to a Muslim, and I think there are 3 key words, relating, understanding, and communicating. Some people want to start with communicating. It’s not the way to start. The way to start is relating, understanding, and communicating.

So from 1 of 2 of your descriptions, it sounds as if you have been relating, and you’ve been listening. So that’s a move to understanding, and then you’ve been sharing, which is communicating. You’ve seen the you’ve, seen the overhead, and, you have the diagram of a Muslim and a Christian meeting each other, and it’s mind to mind thinking their way. They’re not going to make so much effort to think your way, but they may make some, as you’ve seen. And feeling their way and then getting inside their shoes, walking their way.

There is a limit to that, but it’s an idea of identifying, of understanding, Understanding. Understanding how they think, understanding how they feel, understanding their customs, their worldview, their culture. It is we who have to really go out to meet them. But I think the greatest challenge that we have as Christians is to love Muslims. To love Muslims, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to love our friends, but to love to love Muslims. And I just want to give you 5 pointers. A loving approach to win the person rather than winning the argument. It’s much more important to win the person rather than winning the argument, and there sometimes can be a difference there. 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 15, does anybody remember what that verse says? 1 Peter 1 1 Peter 315.

If you’ve got it, will you read it out? 1 Peter 115 sorry. 1 Peter 315. Peter changed his attitudes considerably. Anyway, this shows something of his attitude.

1 Peter 115, please. 1 Peter 315. What’s the matter with me? Okay. But in your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord.

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who ask you to give a reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect. With gentleness and respect. So winning the person rather than the argument, really, because it might be a violation of respect to push the point to win the argument rather than refrain and let the person perhaps make their own conclusion. And then secondly, a believing approach to our Muslim friends, to Muslims. The gospel needs to be shared with faith as well as received by faith, and I’ve pondered this a lot.

Hebrews chapter 4 verses 23. Maybe somebody would look that up and read us in a minute. But, it is ironical that we invite Muslims to believe on Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and do not believe sometimes that they can or they will. I’ve met many Christian workers, and sometimes I have a bout of it myself. Will these people believe?

How difficult it is. Will they believe? But we are those who believe ourselves, and we’re asking other people. We’re inviting people to believe on our friend and lord and master and savior, Jesus Christ. It’s ironical if we invite people to believe and do not believe that they can believe.

So you have to chew over that sometimes in your ministry. And, Hebrews 4 verses 2 to 3, what does that say? For indeed, we have had good news preached to us, just as they also. But the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have for we have believed enter that rest just as he has said.

As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Is that what one of the verses today? Have you got to further than 4 or that’s verse 3. Oh, okay. Although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.

Okay. That’s fine. Thank you. So the point is quite clear that some with some, it’s not mixed with faith. Esther John, whom I spoke of the other day and who we read about and who died for her faith, she told me about she said, I believed, but, my relatives also heard that it was not for them mixed with faith. But, we have to present with faith the faith that they can believe. And thirdly, a prayerful approach. You remember how Paul was so keen that his people should come to Christ. Romans 10 verses 1 to 3. Would somebody read that?

Romans 101 to 3. He had an amazing compassion and burden, you might say, for his own people. We we see it in chapter 9 as well. He says, I’m speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying.

My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I must myself were were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race. That was his burden for his people. But then, in verse in chapter 10, somebody read that, please? 10 verses 1 to 3.

Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God is for Israel that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness have not submitted to the righteousness of God. Thank you. And this is the apostle to the Gentiles.

He he was so concerned for the Jews, but he was called eventually to be the apostle to the Gentiles. So he had a wide concern, not just for his own people, but we catch a glimpse of his prayerful concern. And then fourthly, an informed approach, an informed approach. Would someone look up 1 Kings 19 verses 14 to 18? You know this passage.

It’s the passage which, in which, Elijah says, I even I am only am left or something like that. That, there are she he reckons that he’s the only person who hasn’t bowed the knee to Baal, in his land. Now he got his statistics very badly wrong. So would you mind reading, 1 Kings 1914 to 18, please, somebody, a nice loud voice. Then he said, I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the sons of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, torn down thine altars, and killed thy prophets with the sword. And I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it away. And the Lord said to him, go return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus, and when you have arrived, you shall anoint Hazael king over Aram. And Jehu, the son of Nimshi, you shall anoint king over Israel. And Elisha, the son of Shaphath of Abalmi Holah, and you shall anoint as prophet in your place. And it shall come about the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu, shall put to death.

And the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha will put to death. Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him. So he was 6,999 out, wasn’t he? When he said Ionian left, and, we better be careful about statistics. Let us have an informed approach.

I I once met, well, I’ve met several young men who went to a very staunch Muslim country and thought they must give the gospel package, and so they distributed tracts and and gospels and got arrested. And I said, why did you do such a foolish thing? I said to one of them. I’m getting rather direct in my old age, but anyway. So he he said, well, if we hadn’t if we didn’t, then how would they hear? And I said, well, what about all those Pakistani Christians in that country and the Indian Christians? They’re living there. You came for a short time and you blitzed the city. I mean, they’re having a quiet and steady witness. And he said, well, I didn’t know about them.

So I said, you should do your homework. And, here’s the scripture for it. I mean, I’m sure he was very depressed, was Elisha, but probably he guessed there were more, but I don’t know. Okay. And then a sympathetic approach.

Now, fifthly, Paul in 1 Corinthians 9 verse 19 says, though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave of all that I might win them all. To the Jews, I became as a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the law, I became as under the law that not though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law, not being without law towards God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak.

I have become all things to all men, that by some means by all means, I that I might, by all means, save some. I do it for the sake of the gospel that I may share in its blessings. Well, it’s you might debate long about what this means, and I spent I’ll spend the next meal probably discussing it with somebody for Navy, but there is sympathy here. There is the willingness to lay aside any cultural baggage or, any, political baggage or any, what you might call imperialistic baggage in order to become all things to all peoples. So here it is, these approaches or this this spirit.

I think a prayerful approach is extremely important, and I had I’m always impressed by the Koreans and the way they pray. In Saudi, they impressed the Saudis because the Saudis said, who are these people who get up before we do to pray? And they’re not Muslims. So they observed the Saudis, and, I mean, the Saudis observed them, and they made an impression. When I went to Korea, I’ve been three times.

Last time I went, I said, well, I admire you Koreans, and this is what I’ve seen in Saudi. I admire your prayers and the way you pray, but I want to ask you a question. And, the question is, well, 1 5th of the world is Muslim, 20% of humanity. I’d just like to know what percentage of your prayers are for Muslims. And, lots of I met Koreans who’d never prayed for Muslims, but, I think it’s certainly changing.

I’m not suggesting that we, you know, do 20% of prayers for these and 20% of for Hindus and all the rest of it. But I am suggesting that in the hearts of a praying people in a nation marked by prayer, there should be a a very great concern to to pray for for Muslims as well as in our own hearts, of course. Now, when you suddenly meet a Muslim, say as you did yet in in the mosque and you may yet again, or when, our pastor here met his hairdresser, who gave him a kind of beard that’s gonna be look a bit more like Mohammed’s beard, and so he’ll probably meet another Muslim very quickly because he’ll recognize the beard. Okay. Well, what sort of Muslim is he or she?

She we’re thinking of practicing, saying prayers, visiting mosques, visiting shrines, nominal, secular, literate, illiterate, wealthy, poor, or middle class, urban or rural, man, woman, or child, old or young, well or sick, Sunni, Shia, Sufi, or any other sect, More influenced by materialism, more influenced by communism. From what country? Refugee, immigrant, tourist, student, convert, and so on. Variety. No stereotype here.

So you do need to have some idea, and you will do as you engage in conversation. Then there’s another matter that I need to underline. Muslims and Christians use quite a lot of the same vocabulary, religious vocabulary. The word salvation, for example, comes once in the Quran as a noun. It comes in Surah 40 and verse 44.

Once as a noun, several times as a verb to save that comes in the Quran. And the word is najat or it’s in the Quran, it’s najah, the word for salvation, And then, it’s najat. So, I think you could write it najat, or, that would be Urdu, naj, sort of a, najar. And if you want to see it in Arabic, it’s Arabic. And if you wanna see it in, this is.

So this word then, noun, once so what does it mean? It obviously doesn’t mean the full thing that salvation means in the bible. And if you can make a chart in your mind or on your paper, and you and as I draw it now, you can see it easily. There are 3 sections here. The first is the past, and the second is the present, and the third is the future. And the future, we divide into 2 sections, have heaven and hell. So salvation for the Christian is a word that encompasses the present, the past, the present, and the future. Through Christ, we are freed and, cleansed from the sins of the past. Through Christ, we have abundant life in the present. I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.

And, through Christ, we know that we have forgiveness of sins, and therefore, will be in heaven. We know that our names are written on the book of in the book of life, and that we will escape hell. But the use of the word in the Quran, the one use as a noun, refers only to possible deliverance from hell. It’s not even deliverance from hell. It’s, it’s, it’s a question mark. Maybe by the mercy of God, I will be delivered from hell. It has nothing to do with the past or the present. The word refers to the future, and then it’s a question mark. So it’s a very small word, not a very big word. Same word.

So if you hear salvation on the lips of the Christ of a Muslim, maybe you have some different meanings. Let me illustrate it with another word. The word was for sin. There’s 3 major words for sin in the Quran. Most of them, 3 of them 2 of them refer to ceremonial sins, breaking the rules or breaking the practices of Islam.

And one has an an ethical content to it, falling short, and that comes 5 times in the Koran. But let’s just think of me in my hideout in the northwest frontier province of Pakistan talking to my Muslim neighbor. And we will have some tea together, and we will chat. And we will agree that we are both sinners. So it would seem that we’re talking the same language, but in some ways, we’re not. Because I mean that, I was born in sin. I am a child of Adam and Eve. I am a descendant of Adam and Eve, and I have inherited sin. In sin did my mother conceive me. And that’s not just referring to a way of conception and all that.

It’s it’s it’s the original sin. Original sin. So I am born in a state of sin, and I confirm that I am born in a state of sin by the sins that I do. But my Muslim neighbor, she explains, I am a sinner. She says, I am a sinner, but she believes that, she was born weak, as it says in Quran, surah 4 and verse 28.

Somebody could look that up. Sura 428, it says that man is created weak, and the traditions teach that all people were touched at birth by Satan except for Jesus and his mother. So she was born in a state of innocence, not a state of sin. But she does sins, and therefore, she becomes a sinner. So here we are agreeing that we’re sinners.

We agree over the word, but the meaning in that word is different. So in our conversations with Muslims, we will have to put deeper meaning into some of the words that we both use. Repentance. Repentance is from sin. Okay.

Well, your definition of repentance depends on your definition of sin. And we could take very many words like this. The meanings are different, or the content of the meaning of one word is in one faith is a 10th or a very little compared with the other faith. So even using the same words, does not finally help us to communicate. We have to understand how they think and put more content into the meanings of those words, and we have to explain it not generally by theology with Muslim women, but by good illustrations. And so I asked my Muslim friends, well, what happens when you when you cook, say, dal and, a mixture of dal and something or the other, and you don’t clean out the outs you clean the outside of your vessel, but you don’t clean the inside, and you add more the next day. And you don’t clean the outside the next day, and you add some further amount. Well, they say on the 3rd day, it will certainly be awfully. It’ll be horrible. It’ll be terrible.

And I say, well, what about us? If we just clean the outside and get us get cleansed on the outside and there’s no radical cleaning inside, then what? Or what about measles or some or chicken pox? Less chicken pox is better. What would you think?

I mean, supposing you treat this spot, well, then pride comes out there. And if you treat that, well, some other sin comes out there, and so you can go treating the spots. It takes a long time, and sometimes they reappear in different places. What we need is something that changes the inside so that the spots don’t keep on coming out and the the whole thing is dealt with from within. You have to collect illustrations.

Proverbs help you in that. I collect proverbs. I collect Arabic ones and Urdu ones and Punjabi ones and English ones, and or even a few others. One fish makes the whole pond dirty. That’s a Punjabi proverb.

It’s an Urdu proverb as well. They understand it very well. One fish makes the whole tank dirty.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: The Veneration of Muhammad

In this lecture, Vivienne Stacey discusses how many Muslims tend to venerate Muhammad. This may include the celebration of his birthday and imitating him as the best of God’s creation. The veneration of Muhammad is often a unifying practice for Muslims and may even be continued for some Muslims who become Christians. These lectures were given at Columbia International University in partnership with the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies. The Zwemer Center was founded in 1979 and exists to offer comprehensive courses on Islam, facilitate research, foster dialogues, offer seminars, conduct training, and provide resources for effective witness and ministry among Muslims. We also have a course study guide for these lectures that you might find helpful.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Vivienne Stacey’s Lecture on the veneration of Muhammad: 

I would like us to consider the subject of Muhammad veneration. Muhammad veneration. When I went to the Muslim world in 19 fifties, there wasn’t as much Muhammad veneration going on as there is now. Muhammad has always been very venerated by his followers, but there have been periods when there has been more veneration than at other times. And we are in a period in in history when the veneration of Mohammed is increasing.

Early in this, say, in the fifties, there would not be processions, and the birthday of Muhammad would not be widely celebrated by processions and other celebrations. But now wherever Muslims are, it seems that the birthday is certain to be celebrated. And, I know that about 10 years ago, there was a procession in Britain starting off from Hyde Park in London, where the sort of speaker’s corner is. It’s a public place for talking. And there were 5,000 Muslims who processed through the streets of London celebrating, the the, prophet on his birthday, which is also thought to be the day on which he also died.

It’s the only thing in Britain that totally unites Muslims. In that procession, there would be people from every possible grouping of Muslims. And, one of the reasons for the increase of Muhammad veneration seems to be, desire to find a unity in the household of Islam. Every Muslim honors the prophet of Islam, And, since the fall of the caliphate in the twenties, the focus of unity has been lacking, and, so there’s a growing desire to honor Mohammed and to venerate him, and to so it kind of naturally draws people of every, background, together. The other focus of unity is the implementation of sharia law, and we read of country after country, which is either turning back to Sharia law or wanting it.

We read of I Nigeria and, Sudan, Pakistan, many countries. Those also that already have it, like Saudi, Saudi Arabia. So let’s look at this veneration of the prophet of Islam. It’s quite remarkable in some ways. Muslims, don’t worship Muhammad, but he has extraordinary veneration from his followers, and it has been so from very early on in Islam.

I’ve got here a paper by Bishop Michael Nazir Ali, Pakistani, who became eventually a bishop in the church in England, Church of England. He’s Bishop of Rochester. And, he has this study on a Christian assessment of the cult of Muhammad veneration. Now, even in a poem which is used in schools, there is some evidence in Pakistan of Muhammad veneration. And I quote from a poem of Malana Zafar Ali Khan, which is being taught in schools in Pakistan. And one statement is this in the poem. Though my link with the divinity of God be severed, may my hand never let go of the hem of the chosen one. Now the chosen one is Mohammed. So though my link with the divinity of god be severed, may my hand never let go the hem of the chosen one. Amazing.

In other words, one’s relationship with the transcendent god is a distant one, and it’s only through one, Mohammed, that one dares even to approach the throne of God. And then outside, shrines, like outside the or part of the shrine complex of Hazrat, Datagunj Bakhsh. That’s one way he’s described. He’s a Sufi saint. He’s the patron saint of Lahore, and hundreds of thousands of people go to that shrine every year.

It’s the largest shrine in Lahore. And there are those who provide music near the shrine. They sing what are called koalis, and Muhammad is praised in verse. And often, this takes the form of deification, although this is banned in Islam, of course. There is one god.

If Muhammad had not been, God would not have existed. Yeah. If Muhammad had not been, God himself would not have existed. Extraordinary. It’s poetry, don’t forget, so there’s poetic license, but it’s, seems very strange.

It’s an allusion to the close relationship Muhammad is supposed to have with God. And in the media in Pakistan, Muhammad is often given the title, savior of the world. He’s sometimes given the title lord of the universe. These things, Muhammad never claimed for himself. So the practice of Muhammad veneration is accompanied by a high doctrine of the person of Christ. And I find it very interesting to study a poem like the Casita Buddha, The prophet’s mantle is the translation of it, and, it’s, like a you know, it’s very interesting to see what people use for the devotional aids. So do people use daily light here sometimes? I don’t know. They do you use daily light? Okay.

Well, that’s quotation from scripture, but sometimes you have some kind of devotional aid. A devotional aid early on in Islam was this. A is a poem in praise of a well known and respected person. And, this issue of encounter you’ve met Encounter Now, documents for Muslim Christian Understanding, published, in Rome by the Roman Catholics. This is a translation, and an explanation about this poem. And, the writer says, or the editor of this article, the value of the poem, as far as Christians are concerned, is that it gives a very good picture of the Muslim idea of their prophet and also the basis of such popular religion in the Islamic world. And, I first came across this poem about 25 years ago when I was staying with my Muslim friends in the city of Hyderabad in India. She gave me some bedtime reading. She gave me some prayers that she had written, and I still have that book, and she gave me, a copy of the Casita Burda. And I was so fascinated, I stayed out half the night copying it, not realizing that it’s available in about 80 languages, that it’s, well known, throughout the Muslim world.

And, anyway, it’s become part of my reading since, and I’m going to read some sections of it to you. It was first written in Iraq. And it’s used very much for the prophet’s birthday celebrations. It here the the person who’s edited this, it says, this poem stands alongside other Arabic and Swahili material recited at mauludi, Maudi Maudi Maudi Maudi no. It’s not right.

The celebrations for the prophet’s birthday in that group of devotional symbols, which makes the faith live for it is its adherence. So it’s it’s a very, very popular poem, probably the most popular religious sort of aid at all in the Muslim world, written by a man, a religious very religious and respected Iraqi, really, as he was. He lived in Basra, I think, and he wrote it after receiving healing, and he wrote it to praise Muhammad. So I’ll quote it to you, some of it. You’ll get the idea of Muhammad veneration, certainly.

It’s a translation. Verse 33 is about 100 and something verses, how could the poverty of such a one summon to the love of this world? Why but for him, that’s Mohammed, the world would not have come out of nothingness. But for him, that is Muhammad, the world would not have come out of nothingness. Muhammad, lord of both worlds and both races.

Both races means men and jinn. And both peoples, Arab and non Arab. Verse 36. He is the friend whose intercession is to be hoped for, assaulting every kind of fearful threat. Verse 37.

He summoned to God, and those who furly firmly grasp him. The question here might be whether it’s Muhammad or God are firmly grasping an unseverable rope. But certainly here, it’s Muhammad. He excelled the prophets in bodily form and character, nor did they approach him in deed or in honor. Verse 31 41.

For it is he whose inner meaning and outward form are perfect, Wherefore, the creator of souls chose him as a friend. He is free from peer, rival or peer in his excellent qualities, so that the essence of goodness in him is undivided. Verse 45, for the excellence of the apostle of god has no limit, which may be expressed by word-of-mouth. Verse 51. Nay, the sum of knowledge concerning him is that he is human and that he is the best of all God’s creatures. And here’s an interesting one. Next verse, 52. And every miracle performed by the noble apostles was only brought into connection with them through his light. So he didn’t perform miracles, but he is the source or the light that, causes the miracles that Jesus did or the miracles that any other of the Rusul or prophets did. Verse 53.

He is the son of excellence, s u n. They are its planets, showing its beams to people in the darkness. How noble is the appearance of the prophet who was adorned by a character including all goodness and and marked with cheerfulness. I can think of 1 or 2 verses from memory. Blessed is the man who has kissed the dust of the grave of the monarch of mankind.

I think it’s giving you an example here. I don’t probably, you can look at this text, and we’ll put it in the, we will put it available for you. And if you’re studying anywhere in the world, you probably can get a copy in your local language, if they if it’s a language used by Muslims, as well as the English. You can try. But extraordinary I do also quote a certain amount of it in my book on women in Islam, which I think everyone will have.

So it’s a remarkable poem. You it’s not really fair to base theology on poetry, But the idea in the poem is, that Muhammad there was a divine light in Muhammad, so there’s a divine light. He is the nur or the light, which illumin so much that came before he was even born. It’s going back a bit to some of, Platonic and Christian mixture, I think, here. Now I had a difficulty when I was staying with my Muslim friend, because, I read with interest the things that she gave me.

But I found that whatever I said in praise of Jesus, she appropriated for Mohammed. So when I got back to Pakistan, I asked Michael Nazir Ali, you know, what do I do? I I spent these days with my friend, and I didn’t whatever I said about Jesus, she she said, Muhammad is this, and Muhammad is that. He’s the lord of the worlds. He’s, he’s all these things that you read in this poem.

He said, well, why don’t you concentrate more on the sufferings of Christ? So when I meet people who are very involved in the veneration of Muhammad or who like to take what I say about Jesus and say, well, Muhammad was even better, or he there’s a sort of comparison. I talk about the sufferings of Jesus. They don’t take those and put them on Muhammad. So there is a clue or a way in here in relation to to the sufferings of Christ and how to share.

There there’s another poem which is used in Turkey. It’s called Mahaba. Mahaba Mahaba. Welcome. Sorry about my pronunciation, but anyway, welcome. It’s the the most, famous part of this poem is well, sometimes the whole poem is used, on the prophet’s birthday, and also on memorial days of his death, which is the same day, actually, and other people’s death. So it’s used at funerals. And the most famous part of the poem, sing is when creation sings when the light of Muhammad begins to radiate on the night he was born. This very much reminds me of the ode on the morning of Christ’s nativity, if you happen to know that by John Milton. The chill marble seems to sweat as each familiar power forgoes his wonted seat.

So as the gods start to tumble down, because Christ is born, it affects the universe. That’s Milton’s thought. Here it is, the same kind of idea, the idea that creation sings when the light of Muhammad begins to radiate on the night he was born. Its preexistent light, nur. Well, here’s a quotation so that you can have the exact words.

Welcome, oh high prince, this is to Mohammed. Welcome, oh high prince, we greet you. Welcome, oh one who is not separated from God. Welcome, o intercessor for the sinner. Welcome, o prince, of this world and the next.

Only for you, time and space was created. That’s well into Turkish thinking. It’s recited at funerals, as well as on the birthday of Mohammed. So we need to look at these devotional manuals and, aids that Muslims use, so that we get some idea of, of how they are looking at things. To some Muslims, this will be offensive, but, this is the it comes out of the desire, I think, to find God nearer. God is so far off in Islam. And, Muhammad veneration and its increase. Okay. Would you is there any question you would like to ask about it? I do want to not be unfair to Muslims.

In poetry, you can be extravagant, and, it would be true poetic license. But there is an extravagance here, which is goes rather far. And now you see in Lebanon, and in Pakistan, and in Egypt, in London, much more celebration of the birthday of Mohammed, part of venerating the prophet, I believe, part of seeking that unity between people of every, part of every section of Islam. I don’t think it’s a deliberate plan to celebrate that unity, but it’s the natural growing veneration of the last of the prophets of Islam, the greatest of the prophets of Islam, in a world which is getting torn apart in different ways. It’s as they’re bringing together a focus on Muhammad, which may lead to a focus on on on God.

But, so if you’d like to ask some questions, that’s in order, and we’ll just that’s fine. You’re on tape. You can mention your name if you like. Yeah. So, any comments? Jay, you have a comment? Let’s also, for me, I’ve seen just over and over just how central of a role Mohammed plays in life by Muslim friends, particularly when it comes to the hadiths. I mean, the sunnah of the of the prophet. You know, it’s just how he ate, how he joined, how he sat, Just circulating him. It just goes beyond even more than what Christians when we when we talk about our obedience to Christ, it’s never how he dressed, how he wore his hair, how he sat, how he drank.

But it was, you know, there’s just a totally different dimension of of discipleship that I see in contrast. Yes. There’s a much greater emphasis on imitating, in a true proper sense, what he did and said in in like you, if you Muslims who I think our our brother, who was here yesterday, he met a Muslim for the first time about 2 days ago when he went to have his haircut, and he’s getting the beginning of a beard. And, I think that he got it cut. I mean, he didn’t realize until he’s walked through his haircut, that the brother was a Muslim.

So he he asked him, do you go to church? Which where do you go to church or something? He said, well, I’m a Muslim, and so on and so forth. So I think he’s got a beard that’s gonna identify him as a Muslim. So I expect he’ll meet his second Muslim fairly, very quickly. But this is a totally different approach, isn’t it, as you’re saying? I have a deep respect for the way that some Muslims follow their prophets. I’m never gonna forget, staying in one Asian city. And, I was near a place where there was some Muslim celebration. It was the celebration of the night of the when the Quran commemorating the night when the Quran came down.And, so there were some special services. But I was just walking down the street. We’re near this, and, I came to a corner, and I couldn’t see around the corner. It was a corner of a building. So I was just about to turn when I heard someone singing, and here was a obviously, a religious leader, Muslim religious leader, and he was singing a chorus, just like a chorus, a chorus about Jesus. 

The only difference was that it was about Muhammad. But with devotion and with love and just for his own worship and his own, he didn’t know there was anyone was around the corner, and he was walking the other way. I just it touched me. And, I just wish that he was praising Jesus. So women are involved in this.

Sometimes, verses from this casita, this poem that I’ve been reading pieces of, I used, if someone’s ill, you read certain verses in case of illness, and you read certain verses, to come for some other trouble that you might have. And it was a poem written to praise Muhammad, because Muhammad through, because of healing that seemed to come through through Muhammad, god’s healing through Muhammad somehow. This man was healed from a very serious illness, so he thought he should write something to praise Muhammad. Have a look yes, Laurie? When Muslims become Christians, is a part of that renouncing belief that Muhammad is a prophet, or does it ever kind of crossover for a while before they come to that realization?

I mean, I I would you restate the question? State it again for me because I I don’t quite clear. Yeah? When Muslims are converted to Christianity, have you do they sometimes carry with them the veneration of Mohammed for a while before they realize that he’s not a prophet of God, or is that an immediate renouncing of him? No.

Quite sometimes they carry over. They I think any of us carry over something from our past when we come to Christ. We unless we’ve been very small children, we’re gonna take something over. Now this is where I think the discipling and teaching is very important for, someone who’s a new believer. And, also, I I am not happy with some of the teaching, which, allows baptism but doesn’t teach a renunciation of Satan and all his works.

I I’m not just I’m not thinking so much of of this, but, there are many things which are clearly the works of Satan. And if there is not teaching given about the cut or the I I would not be encouraging a person to renounce Islam. Islam is a culture as well as a a religion, so you don’t renounce your whole heritage. But, involvement in the occult in any way, and this this could be there’s an involvement in the occult if you’ve used surahs from I mean, verses or other from the poem like this. I would prefer that the convert him herself or himself, would reach the stage when they consciously realize that Muhammad is not a prophet in the New Testament in the biblical sense, and therefore, don’t continue an allegiance in that way.

And I think this is part of our responsibility is to teach the Old Testament or to teach the bible so that particularly the Old Testament, so that it’s not a teaching just about Jesus, so that Jesus doesn’t just replace Muhammad in the new believer, but, the new believer has a concept of of God and a knowledge of God, the triune God, God in the Old Testament. And I remember that there was a Moroccan convert who said, you Christian workers, you, teach us about Jesus, but you don’t give us teaching so that our concept of God changes. So you’ve got a a groundwork which doesn’t change, and you’ve, swapped Muhammad for Jesus and then realized that Jesus is, is to be worshiped. But but if the if the background and the and the whole sort of area of theology stays, then there’s a Muslim concept of God. And, and Jesus comes into the picture, and, there’s not enough foundation.

And so some Muslims who became Christians have gone back into Islam, says this convert, because there hasn’t been enough teaching about the overall view of God, in the bible. But you would never confront a new believer about Mohammed, you would just let them learn about the Bible and come to that Personally, I wouldn’t. If they bring it up, then I would discuss, but I personally wouldn’t. What would you do, EJ? But maybe you do it with men and not with women, but still we’ll listen.

Well, I take the approach of, definitely praying in that in that realm that the holy spirit, the true holy spirit would open our hearts and minds to see spiritual nature of of the practices that they’ve been involved in. Because I think there has to be a deep work of repentance Yes. In all areas of life, you know, renouncing Satan in all of his works. Yes. Renouncing Satan in all of his works.

And I think that’s the key there. And I Yeah. And I’ve seen in one situation, a young Moroccan girl when she came to know the Lord, it was just like the lights went on. Okay. And difference between light and darkness.

Yeah. Okay. So we rely on the, work of the Holy Spirit, and we pray for that deep work, which is the work of repentance. Thank you.

Muslim Women & Folk Islam (black magic and the evil eye) Pt. 3

In this lecture, Vivienne Stacey discusses how Muslim women deal with the supernatural, the occult, and power encounters in folk Islam. This session addresses the issues of black magic, charms, amulets, the evil eye, illness, healing, dreams, visions, and prayer in Islam. Muslim women often live in fear of curses. Learn how to address issues like the use of charms and amulets for protection from evil in Islam. These lectures were given at Columbia International University in partnership with the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies. The Zwemer Center was founded in 1979 and exists to offer comprehensive courses on Islam, facilitate research, foster dialogues, offer seminars, conduct training, and provide resources for effective witness and ministry among Muslims. We also have a course study guide for these lectures that you might find helpful.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Vivienne Stacey’s Lecture on Muslim women and Folk Islam (black magic and the evil eye) Pt.3: 

This is the 3rd session on Muslim Women, the supernatural occult and power encounter, I’d like us to consider, black magic. You probably know the difference between black magic and white magic. White magic has a good objective, and black magic has a destructive purpose. Neither are good, but, one is geared to helping, and the other is geared to destroying. And once I I I was in a village in the Punjab, learning Punjabi, and, I had, we experienced a lot of attacks from practitioners of black magic.

This is what I’ve described in my book, Christ Supreme Over Satan, so I hope you’ll read the book. And, the kind of things that happened, sudden illness, nightmares, shapes in the darkness, the scorpion at the head of the bed. That’s not supernatural, but it seemed to be rather unusual in that sitting sitting, situation. Strange knockings, peculiar bloodstains with unnatural patterns, all this and more. God’s demonstrated his power by instant healing, keeping 1 of us not 2 of us, sorry, as I said, perhaps I mentioned, one of us always awake and watching and praising god.

We were given a spirit of praise, a wall of light marking a compound across the square where devil worship was practiced, and the banishing of fear as we all prayed together. Zechariah chapter 2 verse 5 mentions a wall of fire, God’s protection. The exercise of our Christ giving authority of binding the power of Satan sometimes freed the way for the proclamation of the gospel, and the render, practitioners were rendered ineffective. And we saw a breakthrough spiritually in this area, people coming to Christ. I want to touch on the subject of illness, and healing, and prayer.

Sometimes illness is directly satanic. I used to put this at the bottom of my well, once I never had this as a list of possibilities for an illness, but when I got a bit wiser, I I put it then at the bottom of my list of possibilities, but now I keep it very near to the top of the possibilities. So if I were to have a fever of a 102 or 3 this evening, it would I would treat it first as something from Satan, which can be dealt with in a minute by commanding, by praying, to ask Jesus to deliver me from this and to heal, and that would be that. Then I might try some aspirins if that didn’t happen to me immediately, and after that, I might try and get in touch with the health clinic. But, because of our western background in general, we tend to, look for other sources, perhaps from for illness.

Obviously, some illnesses have other sources, but it’s still a tool of Satan. Luke, if you remember, healed instantly through the power of Christ, the, the mother-in-law of Peter, Luke 4 verses 38 to 39. And he was a doctor, and he was a precise, historian. And, there, he uses the word, he says that Luke didn’t do the healing. Jesus did the healing. Sorry. But he uses the word, Jesus rebuked the fever. He rebuked it. Now rebuking is dealing with a person, is dealing with Satan. And Luke is very exact in his medical terms.

He talks about the healing through Peter and of the man at the gate of the temple, and he talks about ankle bones being strengthened. He uses a medical term, but in this particular case, he understands what happened as being a a spiritual, intervention with nothing to do with medicine. He rebuked the fever. So healings, god still can heal miraculously, as as you probably know, but it’s not to discount medical science and to discount natural means. Jesus sometimes blessed natural means for healing of people.

Then the matter of visions and dreams. Muslims sometimes have evil dreams. Sometimes we have nightmares. But, God can use and does still use visions and dreams, and it seems that he’s using an increase of visions and dreams. One of the three main influences of bringing Muslims to Christ, it seems, in the last few years has been dreams.

Dreams in half the cases of 30 who were studied Muslims who came became Christians in Pakistan. And, the other factors were the love of Christ in a person and study of the scripture in some way or another. A friend of mine who lives in North Carolina, she wrote a letter in March of 1994, and she said, the 27th night of the month of Ramadan or Ramadan is very precious to Muslims. It’s the nearly the end of the month of fasting. They asked God for special revelations that night, and to some, he appears telling them about Jesus, the lamb of God.

So it’s a night to pray for. Pray that Muslims will who are expecting some special revelation from God, pray that God, in his mercy, will reveal and speak to them through dreams about Jesus. Now, I never question a Muslim who tells me, that he’s, she has had a vision of Jesus. I don’t try to find out if it’s from Satan or if it’s from God. I say, if you want to know more about this Jesus, here, in this book, I can read to you, and we can study more about this Jesus because it’s all here.

So don’t worry about it, whether it’s from Satan or from don’t try and probe it on that one. Just take it. And, if it’s of Satan, you’ll you’ll soon find out. But, it might not be necessary, and you may, just be able to do study scripture. 35%, it’s reckoned, of all recent Turkish conversions, were probably in response to dreams and visions as Jesus as the son of god. And I I know some lovely stories of people who’ve had visions and how, and maybe you do, dreams, and how, they have come to Christ eventually because of that. And actually, at my own conversion, I had a vision of Jesus. I didn’t say it very much when anybody asked me to give my testimony because it didn’t seem very culturally relevant. But now, I’ve decided to come up clean, you know? And and it relates well with Muslims, of course, if you share that point.

Charms and amulets. Muslims, I I think I’ve already told you about what I say to women who who’ve got charms around their neck, and, I ask, what’s in that? And they say a word a verse from the Quran, and I say, does God prefer his word around your neck or in your heart? What do you think? They think the heart, and then I try to teach them of word of god if they would like to learn it.

Curses in the evil eye, I’m gonna put a book on the reserve list of, not a book, an article about, the evil eye, and, an article by somebody who worked worked in Pakistan. The question about the evil eye, Muslims are very afraid of the evil eye, and, we can help Muslims in sharing about how we are under God’s eye, and how we are under his protection. He guides us with his arms, says the psalmist in Psalm 32 verse 8. We do not need to be afraid. So my conclusion, really, I’m thinking about all these things, is that after I’ve lived now for 40 more than 40 years and worked in Asia and the Middle East and traveled in all the continents, that folk or Quran folk Islam, popular Islam, and Quran ic Islam are inextricably linked in especially in that the Quran seems to host animism.

There’s unquestionably evidence of satanic activity in folk Islam. There is a need to pray for the breaking of the bonds and the release of the captives among the people of the mosque and the people of the shrine. And in ministering to Muslim women and to Muslims in general, we are involved in areas of spiritual warfare against Satan, who certainly manifests his power in can counterfeit miracles and the supernatural and the occult. But it’s only part of his strategy to use the supernatural, and I’d like to remind you that the New Testament gives more emphasis to Satan’s attack through human frailty than to his use of the supernatural. All Christians are therefore involved in spiritual warfare, as it is not a warfare which focuses only on the supernatural manifestations of evil.

We need to seek God’s protection before becoming involved in power encounters. Renouncing the devil and all his works are often part of the early baptismal formulas of the church. In sometimes, in some places, baptism was for followed by the administration of the oil of exorcism. The lack of a dib liberate renunciation of the devil may account for why some converts revert to Islam. They have never fully been set free.

We need to reflect on the biblical evidence that unbelievers need release from bondage, and why the declaration of Christ as liberator is generally more meaningful to Muslims than the promise of the assurance of the forgiveness of sins. It’s two sides of the same gospel, but where is the emphasis? I think release from bondage. Teaching always, and signs and wonders sometimes should be the general pattern of our ministry as it was for Paul. In Romans 15 verses 18 to 19, we read this.

The guidance, filling, and anointing of the spirit are the requisites for an effective ministry, to Muslims and to all people. We we rely not on our methods and our rituals, but on the power of the living triune god. We focus not on evil spirits, but upon the Holy Spirit. We focus not on the problems and the active we don’t face focus on Satan, but upon Christ. We face focus upon god and, serve him like that.

You will have all, received in your handbook this, you’ve already got this, I think, this diagram, which is a comparison of Koranic Islam and popular Islam. So as a kind of summing up of what we’ve been thinking about in these three last, cassettes and lessons, we find this very useful chart, by made by Bill Musk. And, you see down the middle of it, the six articles of of Muslim faith. It’s easy to remember, Islam has 5 pillars. That’s to do with the practice.

It has 6 articles of basic faith. It has, in early Islamic theology, 7, attributes of God, and then we have 99 names of God. You can remember some of these numbers quite easily. So one God. Okay? But the practitioner of folk Islam believes in one God, as does, the more orthodox Sunni practitioner. All Muslims believe in one god, in his angels, in his books, not just book. There were other books, book given to Abraham, which, cannot be found. The Psalms to David or the law to Moses, the injil to Jesus, and to Muhammad, the seal of the prophets, the Quran. So his his books, his apostles, his judgments, and his decrees.

So when we think of this in terms of Quranic Islam, we’re thinking of the one god, the monotheistic confession of faith. When we’re thinking of it in terms of popular Islam, we’re thinking of the magical uses of the names of god. How to say a god a name of God, which might help you with your memory or in your planting of carrots, if you’re a farmer. And, his angels in Koranic Islam, servants of God to do his will. And for the practitioner of folk Islam, a much greater concern with jinn and, demons, not unaware of angels, but the emphasis on is on the negative.

His books, Koranic Islam, the encoding of God’s several self revelation. God has revealed his will in a book that is, or in books. Bibliomancy, the magical use of the book, and biblioluntary, the worship of the book. Vehicle, his apostles, they are vehicles of God’s self revelation. Muhammad is an apostle of God, a Rasul. A Rasul has a Rasalat, a message, a written message. So the 6 main prophets in Islam are Rasul as well as Nabi. Nabi is the word in Hebrew and, and in Arabic for prophet, but those who have a written message are Rasul with a with a Rasalat, which is the written message. And so, David Moses and David and Jesus and Mohammed are among those who had books. His judgments, the ethical focus of man man’s life, that’s the f emphasis in folk in Koranic Islam.

But in, popular Islam, there’s the emphasis on spirit life after death, and people are very scared of cemeteries, actually. Don’t want to walk past them, at the at an even time when the sun is setting or even later. I mean, 1, I don’t like walking past cemeteries, particularly, if it’s rather lonely and solitary, but I don’t have any particular fear of, the spirits around. I pray for protection, but there’s an emphasis on this in in popular Islam. The omnipotence of God, in Quranic Islam is the way that the concern for his decrees, his, what he will do and does is is expressed.

But in in popular Islam, it’s a kind of sanction used by saints, sorcerers, and other religious practitioners. They are trying to manipulate God rather than to be controlled by God. So that will help us, and then I’d like to ask you a question. I’m gonna put, show you this, other chart. Well, maybe I can’t find it, but, I’ll ask you then. 786, what does 786 mean to you? I’ll tell you how it’s used in Pakistan while you’re thinking about it. If a student’s going to do an exam, for example, write a 5,000 word essay for a professor, the student would write at the head of the essay 786. And, if you were going to invite me to your wedding, Ruth, if you were going to invite me to your wedding, you would write at the head of the invitation, 786 if you were a Muslim in Pakistan, And, if you were getting a hired ride in a taxi, you probably see 786 written up. 786?

Okay. It’s the numerical equivalent of the Arabic letters. There’ll be a handout in your papers. It’s the bismillah 786. Every letter, a alpha is worth 1. And the next letter is bismilla. It’s, well, the first letter is b, bay bismilla. It’s worth 2, and the next one is seen. Sheen is worth 19. So you count up the numerical value of each of these letters, and you get 786. So it’s shorthand to say at the head of your wedding in invitation, in the name of God, the merciful lord of mercy. It’s shorthand to say at the end beginning of your exam paper or your essay, the merciful Lord of mercy, in the name of the merciful Lord of mercy. But it can be used as a kind of protection. So when I, yeah, when I travel by taxi, I often see this in the taxi or in the rickshaw, 786. When you get aware of it in Asia, you’ll see it everywhere, particularly in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

In North Africa and other parts of Africa, you’re much more likely to see the hand of Fatima. The hand of Fatima, and that’s a protection against the evil eye. In fact, often there’s a little eye in the middle of the palm You’ll find in you’ll eventually find in in your collection of papers, this which explains it. Now, to conclude, I could, put this up, but I think we’ve all gone we’ve gone through this, So, what is folk Islam? Folk influences in Islam beside, include underlying animism, particularly in areas where there’s been Buddhism or there is Buddhism and Hinduism.

And was animism prevalent in pre Islamic Saudi Arabia. There’s an emphasis in an evidence of the occult in Muhammad veneration, certainly in saint veneration, where we find that people go to shrines for blessing, healing, meet meditation, request, family, custom. And because they can’t go to Mecca, not all Muslims, if there are a 1,000,000,000 of them can go to Mecca, 2,000,000 a year. So what’s the substitute? Going to shrines.

Sufism, there is some element of the occult underlying some of that. Practices, well, we’ve got the amulets and the uses of the names of god. The zikr, the constant repetition of the names of god almost sends you into a trance eventually. Relations between folk Islam and Quranic Islam, I’ve already gone into those close relations, which I think showed I hope to I have shown, I think, that the Quran hosts some of these animistic ideas and practices. Spiritual warfare, we need protection.

We need to know how to bind Satan, render him ineffective. We need, the press the call upon God and his hosts for his protection. We need to use prayer and scripture. Cleansing of houses, I’ve gone into that because of the ground, the builders, the previous tenants or owners, and the environment. These are reasons for cleansing in the name of Christ somewhere where you’re gonna live.

And methods of I I’ll probably go into this another, in another session, but, I’ll conclude by appearing perhaps to join the Pentecostals, which I don’t actually belong to Pentecostals, but I’m a Christian open to the Holy Spirit. So let me just explain here. The sword of the spirit, is the rhema of God. The sword of the Spirit is the is the word of God, and the word here is not logos, it is rhema. Rhema, as I understand it, is the use of logos in a particular situation. 

And I think in our spiritual warfare, we will need, both a defensive and an offensive weapon. The the scripture is a defensive weapon, and it’s an offensive weapon. So in in sickness and, when we’re confronted with sickness and there is a need for healing, we can sometimes quote the scripture. If we’re if we’re afraid, the scripture says so many times, hundreds of times, fear not. We can be strengthened by scripture.

Sometimes someone feels extremely guilty, and, there is some need for almost absolution. I’ll explain that if you want to in detail, because I expect it raises questions, but you sometimes need to pronounce that someone is forgiven. Forgiven, not because you forgive them, but in the name of Christ, you give them assurance that their sins are forgiven. You want to question me on that, I have no doubt, but so I don’t have time at the moment. Rima in spiritual assault.

Jesus, when he was attacked by Satan in the wilderness as his temptation, he uses he uses the scripture. Satan uses as well, but he took it out of context. The use of rhema, the word of God, in intercession and praise. And, so when I think of a cleansing of a building, I would say the name of Christ should will be praised, and there will be the reading of scripture. And then in exorcism of evil spirits, again, one way of even testing that they are present is to quote scripture like a scripture which mentions the blood of Christ.

You’ll get violent reactions from evil spirits if you read 1 John 1 and come to the place where the blood of Jesus goes on cleansing us from all sin. Generally, that’s so. That I mean, it’s so that his blood does, but it sometimes, it has a reaction with an evil spirit. But, in confession of Christ at baptism, whoever believes and confesses with the mouth and believes in the heart, the confession with the mouth may relate to scripture and, in blessing other people. Peace be with you.

I might I sometimes use that. Christ used it. There are other words of assurance that we can give to one another. Let us think about the sword of the spirit, which is the rhema of God. Logos used much more in the scripture than rhema in the New Testament, but rhema, as I look at it, is the particular application of scripture to the particular situation in going on at the time.

So let’s conclude our thoughts about, Focuslam and spiritual warfare and power encounter by reminding ourselves again that our focus is on the triune God, on Jesus and not Satan, and on the Holy Spirit and not evil spirits. Praise be to the name of god. Praise be to god. Let us pray. We thank thee, o god, father, son, and holy spirit. We worship thee. We magnify thee. We exalt thy holy name. We praise thee that thou hast given us victory in Christ, that greater is he that is within us than he that is against us. We thank thee that for every situation in which thou has put us, that has give us all that we will need.

Lord, we humble ourselves before thee now. Cleanse us afresh through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Fill us again with thy holy spirit, and grant that we, in worship and in service, may live and die to thy glory. In the name of Jesus our lord. Amen.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: Muslim Women & Folk Islam (exorcism and relics) Pt. 2

In this lecture, Vivienne Stacey continues discussing how Muslim women deal with the supernatural, the occult, and power encounters in folk Islam. The issues of relics and exorcism are addressed in this 2nd part of the Folk Islam lectures. These lectures were given at Columbia International University in partnership with the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies. The Zwemer Center was founded in 1979 and exists to offer comprehensive courses on Islam, facilitate research, foster dialogues, offer seminars, conduct training, and provide resources for effective witness and ministry among Muslims. We also have a course study guide for these lectures that you might find helpful.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Vivienne Stacey’s Lecture on Muslim women and Folk Islam (exorcism and relics) Pt. 2: 

So and this is the second in our series on Muslim women, the supernatural, the occult, and power encounter. And, we’ve dealt with the general thoughts about revealed religion and folk religion, and we’ve thought about miracles at shrines. Now relics. Well, we’re familiar with relics. The Roman Catholics, have quite a lot of relics, and sometimes high Anglicans seem to have some.

And it’s not an unusual concept in the Christian traditions, nor, of course, in Islam. Now I had an experience about 20 years ago, which, changed my views to some extent. I went as a visitor to see the Badshahi mosque in Lahore in Pakistan. I’d been before, but I went again. And when I’d gone before, there was not it was a normal orthodox Sunni mosque, probably the largest in the world, but, it vies with the mosque in Delhi, as to whether it’s the largest in the world and whether it’s how do you estimate a mosque?

By the the dome part and the size of that or the courtyard for prayer and so on. Anyway, very famous Mughal building, going back to the 16th century or a bit earlier, Badshahi mosque in the Haw. But this time when I went, there was an exhibition on, and it was an exhibition of 27 relics. And I found it very strange, that in the center of an Orthodox mosque or in the buildings connected with the Orthodox mosque, as you came in the main entrance and you turned right, you could go to this exhibition, which had a school of Orthodox theology attached to it, where students studied to be prepared as leaders in the or Sunni, faith. I found it very strange to find this evidence, to me at least, of folk religion.

And, first, I made it I I went in the line through. Every relic was under glass, and you if it’s reasonably small, it’s it’s sort of eye level. And displayed there, some of it’s a bit larger, was Mohammed’s walking stick and 3 of his sandals, his underwear, his banner with magic squares on it, Fatima’s handkerchief, Fatima’s prayer mat, dust from the battlefield at Karbala, that battle of 661 AD in Iraq. Some of the viewers got as near as possible to the relics, and they were rubbing their hands on the glass. I I saw 2 women ahead of me.

When they came to the dust of the battlefield of Karapala, where, Hussein was killed, and, where it’s the shears marked the beginning of their it’s a very, very significant battle, involving Ali and his 2 sons, Hassan and Husayn, and they are regarded the ones killed were regarded as martyrs, and it’s celebrated every year in the time of Maharam. And you’ve probably may have seen processions or pictures of processions of men cutting themselves, and it’s that’s in identifying with the suffering of those leaders of 661 AD, who were killed in Karbala. Karbala is a center for pilgrimage as well. But these women were rubbing, their hands on the glass near to the dust of that battlefield and then rubbing their hands on their face, transferring the blessing of being near to that place to themselves. And they were crying.

So I realized that they were Shia, probably. So this Orthodox mosque and its school of theology were attracting Sunni and Shia Muslims, and Pakistan is 90% Sunni, 10% Shia, and attracting both those who are orthodox and those who are engaged in Focal Islam. And this, in a sense, was a Focal Islam kind of exhibition. I have the 27 things listed somewhere, but, it was a very interesting experience. Relics. And sometimes, there’s a mosque in, Surinaga in Kashmir, which has, some of the hair of Mohammed. Somebody wrote an article once on the rape of the lock, but, it’s a poem written a title of a poem that Pope, actually, Alexander Pope Pope, wrote. But anyway, a hair of Muhammad becomes a relic. And, there are lots of different relics around. The tooth of Muhammad becomes a relic.

Oh, there were 3 teeth in this exhibition too of of, they weren’t Muhammad’s, but, I think from his companions or people in the time of Muhammad who were closely associated with him. Well, I think this is folk Islam. Exorcism. Yeah. Exorcism.

The first time I heard Muslims, engaging in exorcism was in Muscat. Muscat is the capital of the Sultanate of Oman. It it gets even hotter than than, Colombia. There’s a Persian poet who says, that Muscat reminds the panting sinner of his future deaths destiny. I’ve been thinking about it when I walk outside here, but but, definitely, it’s hotter.

Muscat is surrounded on 3 sides by mountain and the 4th side by the sea, and, things echo quite well in that part. It’s a very ancient, capital, and I went there first in 1969 when the oil the effects of oil hadn’t transformed this the capital area. But I heard one night Muslim exorcists at work, for hours in the evening and early part of the night, they were trying to cast out evil spirits. And it was listening to the chanting of the exorcists and the shrieks of the afflicted. It was a kind of eerie and chilly experience.

I talked to some friends. I was staying with a lady who who spoke excellent Arabic. She was an American, and, she’d been there many years, and she had many, Muslim friends, and she took me visiting to visit meet some of her friends. 1 of her friends had a problem with an evil spirit and had been to a Muslim exorcist. Sometimes, they are made okay.

So you can have a successful exorcism, by these Muslim religious leaders who exercise this or I should say, engage in exorcism. But what is the source of it, of course? That is the question. And how long will the cure last? And what is the state of the person who got into it in the 1st place and has got out of it in the 2nd place by the same power, power of Satan.

Now I never intended to get myself involved in Christian exorcism, and I never intended to write a book called Christ Supreme Over Satan. I intended to write all the other things that I have written so far. That one, I wrote because I somehow, my experience got enlarged in this field of folk religion, and somehow, I got thrown into situations, particularly, I in the cleansing of houses, but also in in the helping people who are demonized, or you might say, possessed. I think I prefer to say demonized. It’s nearer to the Greek, but taken over by Satan.

So out of obedience, I wrote this book. And, I didn’t have so much trouble and but, in writing it, but the people who, some of one of our guests had a lot of trouble when she came. I was writing the book. She didn’t know I was writing this book. Satan, beat up on a few of my friends. But, god, sort of kind of protected me in the writing or it might have been very difficult otherwise, I suppose. I don’t know. But so, I my I’ll share share my own feelings about exorcism. I don’t get involved in it unless I’m absolutely sure God wants me to be involved in this particular case. And actually, I I was involved in an exorcism in in this last month in Cyprus.

About 3 months ago, I was hearing from a member of the bible class, which I lead in the church, about the problems of a certain person. And I was giving I think this person thought that the other person was being attacked or had some something was happening as far as evil spirits were concerned. Anyway, this person in the study group, would come to me for advice on how to deal with this situation. And so I was just in this position of of giving advice, which was fine. I wanted, anyway, to to train.

I I’m we now, I could say, have a team in the church which which could, help in cases of exorcism. And but when, after a few weeks, things mounted up, and so I decided that I would join with this person and with the couple who were involved, who the wife was in problems about the spirit. And so in my home, we had a we had lunch together and then a session. And I I really One never knows what will happen, and one has to We had prayed about it, and we had prepared ourselves. Anyway, so what did happen what I do is analyze afterwards what happens, and you get the principles, and it was very clear.

For 45 minutes, I questioned the woman who was having trouble, and I asked her, what is your relationship to Jesus? What is your relationship to the Father? What is your relationship to the Holy Spirit? I probed and I probed. And it became clear that, although she’d gone to church for many years, and although she she, perhaps thought that she was Christian, became clear that she certainly wasn’t a committed Christian, and there was some doubt.

I I didn’t want to say, you’re not a Christian or you’ve never believed, but I probed and I probed. I think she realized that her ground was shaky. And I also warned her, if anything is cast out by the power of Christ, if there is no filling from God, then more powers can come. Then the second half of the conversation, as I analyzed it, was another sort of probing from me on her encounters with the occult. Now she told me of several, once something that happened 30 years ago, something that happened 20 years ago, and something else.

But, then we got to, she didn’t tell me what happened 1 or 2 years ago in Kenya. She didn’t tell me about the witch doctor, who was scared to come back into their compound on one occasion, but who worked as their gardener, and whom she’d sat. But anyway, this came out in the I don’t know why, you see. Why did she tell me these other things and somehow forget to tell me the thing that was nearer and even more sinister? So after these two lines of talking, and with some help from my friend whom we who with whom I’d been praying and telling and advising, I said, let’s spend a time let’s pray.

And, I said to this woman, if you may pray, you pray. She obviously didn’t want to pray, but the husband prayed I prayed, and the husband prayed. And then suddenly, I saw my friend, standing over the woman with her hands not not touching her, but with her hands here, and commanding the evil spirit to leave. And then the evil spirit left, and this woman started to praise the Lord. And we praised the Lord.

We were all full of joy and praise, and, we were I I don’t sort of cry or weep very easily, but I was, we all had tears, and it was a joyful ending. Okay. Well, I’m using I want to use this as this is a recent thing, but there what is so important is x is diagnosis. If you’re not sure if someone is demonized, then don’t proceed. We were sure when it came to it.

And when I compared notes with my friend afterwards, she had said she thought this this was the case before the lunch party and the session afterwards. And I said, I thought so too, but, there was no doubt by the time when we had gone through the questioning. And, then now things don’t always they sometimes take a long time. Like, when I was helping in the invitation of a Christian doctor in Egypt in his hospital, and I I told you I joined I said, 3 hours a day, I’ll join you. The whole system the whole matter was not cleared up when I was there, but it was wonderfully cleared up for about 3 months later.

And this woman, who whose touch with Islam seemed to be that her parents had taken to her her to a shrine when she was young, baby or no. Not a baby, but a child. And, she came from a Coptic background, not Muslim background. But she I she was, I had to make my own diagnosis before I would join the team. It had to be done everything had to be done through Arabic translation.

And, when I had cross questioned her about her relationship with Jesus, it was quite clear that she didn’t really know him, although her husband did. And, I said to my translator, I want to pray for this woman, but don’t you don’t need to translate. I’ll pray in English. She didn’t know English. And in my prayer, when I came to the place where I said, by thy stripes, we are healed, when I quoted Isaiah, I referred, you see, to the death of Christ, to the suffering of Christ, to the blood of Christ.

Then this woman was violent. She was sitting there, we’d had a talk and so on, and and she was sitting there while I was praying, but she didn’t know that I mentioned the blood of Christ. She didn’t know that I mentioned, by his stripes, we are healed. But she it took 4 people to hold her down. And, this each night, it was a bit like this, and they would take her in on front of the, they’d take her in the main part of the church.

We were in the church. And, in Arabic and in English, 2 members of the team or more would command the evil spirit to come out. We’d say where to come out, and we’d, praise the name of Jesus. We would do many things, but it was very stubborn. It was very difficult.

But she was wonderfully healed, and what the evil was cast out. And, I went back to that hospital about 2 years ago. This episode took place about 4, 5 or 6 years ago. And, I met her husband. She was back in the village, but he has a wonderful ministry.

He, works in the hospital. He’s, able to read the bible. He’s not otherwise literate, but he he’s able to read the Bible. And she and he, do visit many places in villages and share about Jesus and his salvation and his deliverance, and they have a very wonderful ministry. Well, I can give you I can tell you about Muslims who are have been troubled, but I can’t tell you what you’re gonna be facing when you go to these interesting places that I’ve been reading about in your report your questionnaire and so on. I was reading through last night. Okay. Turkey and, and you’ve been to Kenya and Northwest China and various other interesting places. I don’t know what you will face, but, and you may not come across this kind of thing at all. Don’t look for it.

Look for a folk Islam, but don’t look for involvement in in exorcism. But if god calls you in a particular situation, he will give you wisdom for that situation. He gives some of his gifts, he gives them temporarily for situations, particular situations. He gives gifts permanently to some people. I think the person I worked with in my bible study group, she has a gift of healing, and I think it’s a permanent gift of healing. So as I see her operate, she we have a prayer service sometimes after church. People come, and, 2 of us will pray with that person. But there have been quite a number of wonderful healings, and, not always, but, but people appreciate the prayers. So she has that ministry. I don’t know whether she has a ministry of exorcism or not.

She and I both were together in this situation a month ago, so there is a gift being exercised. I think it’s good if it’s a team. You need a team, and, and God will only give his glory to himself. He will not give his glory to another. If you have a team, it’s a team effort, and and you acknowledge God. I think it would be very dangerous to be acknowledged as an exorcist, anyway. It’s dynamite. It’s like handling dynamite. Don’t look for it, but don’t be afraid either. God gives whatever is needed for whatever situation you do get into.

So how now I’ve been much more involved in the cleansing of buildings, and I have strong ideas about that, the cleansing of buildings. I would advise you to think carefully about any place that you live in, any house that you take, any flat or apartment that you, go to live in. I had a small cottage built for me when there was no room left in the other buildings of the hospital, and it wasn’t wise for a single person to live out in the town. So I had the pleasure of designing my own little cottage and praying with my friends that the money would come for it, and it did. So now you’d think just moving into a a cottage, newly built on a Christian compound, even though it’s in a remote part of the of Asia, that you might not need to cleanse it.

And I think there are reasons why one should cleanse. There are 3 4 reasons. You don’t know what happened on that land before. We don’t know what happened on that land. You never know what’s happened on the land, what has been done.

There might have been a terrible battle there. There might have been all sorts of ghastly things might have happened. We don’t know what was on that land. We don’t know how the builders built. I know that every building in Afghanistan is built, with a the builders have a kind of doll. It’s an image. It goes to the highest point of the building. It’s to appease evil spirits. It’s an insurance policy. It’s a safety protection. It’s appeasing evil powers as they build. Okay? Well, I don’t know what they did to my cottage. They might have put a charm in the wall. They might have done a little sacrifice, maybe a blood sacrifice or something, on the foundations, and I didn’t know.

They were Muslim builders. I don’t know what they did and how involved they were in folk practices, but I’d like to be sure there’s no influence from it. So that’s the second reason. The third reason, if it doesn’t apply to a new building, but you don’t know what the people who had your apartment before did in it, I have, I was asked to help in the cleansing of a house, actually, in Toronto. It had some very weird signs.

It had been inhabited for some years by some practitioner of, occults. Don’t know what she did, but she was a kind of witch. And it was a very uncomfortable house, and there were peculiar signs, which I saw, and, occult signs. Anyway, with 2 other people, we went, 2 of us, 4 or 3 of us, went through every room. In each room, we praised God.

In each room, we prayed for the cut well, first we cut prayed for the casting out of evil. We we read Scripture and we praised. And we if it was the bedroom, we prayed and praised. We prayed that people would sleep well. In the sitting room and dining room, we prayed that people would eat and relax well.

But first, in every room, we prayed for the cleansing of the room. You might say, why every room? I don’t know. I just, have found that it’s wise to go to each part, and if it’s a flat roof, to go to the roof and, to go out into the garden or yard. It’s interesting that who the person who came afterwards to live in that place said what a wonderful peace there was in that home, in that house, but it’s because God had cleansed it.

So think about it. There’s a fourth reason. There are, sometimes, there are activities and influences from outside. Somebody once brought a person to my flat in Paphos, and said that, she would this lady would like to join the bible class. So when we chatted over tea for about an hour or so, this lady said, I think you I should tell you that I’m a spiritualist.

I’m a spiritualist or a spiritualist. And then she proceeded to tell me all sorts of things that she powers that she had. On another occasion, I had 2, a couple a fine Christian couple were there for a meal, and I had invited a Cypriot and his, Australian friend who was an Italian, extraction. And this Italian chap, he said, I’ve got power over 3 pints of spirits. So my friend said, well, what do you do with that power, and why do you have it?

And so on. Quite obvious. They’re both in got involved in new age, these 2 young men. Okay? So we had special prayer for the cleansing of my flat afterwards. Interestingly enough, when I was having my siesta before they came and before I knew anything about this kind of background, I had a terrible nightmare. So I had gone through the flat before they came and prayed for God’s protection. So it’s dynamite, some of this. But why if you are the servant of the lord, why should you have unnecessary hassle? You can have a very simple service.

Don’t have to shout it from the rooftops. So just a few of you going through your place where you’re gonna live, and praying for for cleansing and giving thanks to God, reading the scripture. Why, were Mildred White not Mildred White, Mildred Cable and Francesca French, who worked in China, they said, the housewarming oh, no. That’s not the one. Yeah.

The Christian’s home or tent must ever be holy ground, even although all around be evil, for the embassy is privileged land. And here, the ambassador, the ambassador of Christ, enjoys extraterritorial rights. So your home, your base, it matters. And if, you have known its cleansing and its security, that’s it’s very important to have a place that you know is cleansed and, secure. And sometimes, there’s a need for for further cleansing.

It doesn’t need a service, but you need to pray, Lord, the spiritist has been here. Cleanse this place. Fill it with your glory. And, so I ask you to consider about the cleansing of buildings. I have even been involved with a pastor in the cleansing of a church in one of the Arabian countries. Satan has a go, but, the son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. So let us count on this, and let us have secure bases for our ministries wherever we go.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: Muslim Women & Folk Islam Pt. 1

In this lecture, Vivienne Stacey discusses how Muslim women deal with the supernatural, the occult, and power encounters in folk Islam. These lectures were given at Columbia International University in partnership with the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies. The Zwemer Center was founded in 1979 and exists to offer comprehensive courses on Islam, facilitate research, foster dialogues, offer seminars, conduct training, and provide resources for effective witness and ministry among Muslims. We also have a course study guide for these lectures that you might find helpful.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Vivienne Stacey’s Lecture on Muslim Women and Folk Islam Pt. 1

We’re studying the subject of communicating through festivals and rites of passage, through festivals and rites, communicating the gospel through festivals and rites. Rites of passage was of birth, marriage, death, and a few others that, are meaningful, to Muslims. I’d like I’d like someone to read Romans chapter 5th, 13 verse 15, which is really about the importance of building relationships. So would someone read Romans chapter 12 verse 15? Rejoice with those who rejoice.

Mourn with those who mourn. Thank you. So we are trying to identify with our Muslim friends, rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn. At the beginning of our, study, I’d like to emphasize the the Muslim interest in practice. Muslims are often asking, what do you do?

If someone gets married, how do you do it? What is done at the ceremony? When a child is born, what are the practices? And I focused, as you have discovered, on on death and burial. So what do you do, is what they ask quite often.

And I think the gospel of Christ can be communicated as much through the practices of believers as through the, festivals and through the beliefs. William Miller, who worked for 40 years in Iran, wrote a very useful booklet, a letter to his Muslim friend, explaining the beliefs and practices of Christians. I suppose if you were writing this in North America or something like this or in Britain, you might just write on the beliefs of Christians. You wouldn’t want to stress the practices, but he does do this because he knows that Muslims come, and they we, in the course of our living, interact with them, and they ask, what do you do? And they want, it’s an opportunity just as much as going and sharing in a festival, to explain what happens at the wedding, and maybe they come to attend the wedding.

And, the funeral, what happens when a Christian dies? What happens? Not only they want to know the belief, but the practice, and that’s probably what they want to know more because they think it’s so important what exactly you do. Certainly, in the Muslim world, the whole cycle of festivals, and for that matter, practices, rights, through the year, involve women tremendously. I remember staying during the month of fasting, staying a night or 2, with an off he was an army officer and his wife, and my friend was a friend of the of the wife, and so that’s how I came to be in their home at that time.

And it really hit me when I thought, well, she has to get up in the very early, middle of the night, really, to give breakfast to her husband about 3 AM because he’s gonna fast, and she will fast right through until sunset. And then there’s the children. They have to have their meals, they’re small, at the ordinary time. And then there’s these 2 guests, and we volunteered to just, join in the fasting, and for her not to do extra things for us, But she did. She didn’t think that we were really, wanting to fast.

We I both of us would have happily fasted, but she thought it was part of her responsibility as a hostess, I think. And we weren’t actually keeping the month of fasting, so obviously, we’re not weren’t strong candidates. But anyway, but how it turns up to how it affects the life of women. And not just women, it’s students. I’ve been in Cunard College in Lahore during the month of fasting, and many of the Muslim students, the majority are Muslim, they will keep the fast.

And it’s quite difficult to keep their attention if you’re trying to teach in a situation like that. If, it affects the life of the country considerably, things slow down. Everything is, I would say, hampered, but maybe that’s you see, that’s my perspective. But, it’s certainly makes things very different and is a strain. More people lose their temper during the month of fasting, it seems, than the rest of the year.

There’s a lot of quarreling because of the pressures of doing this for a month. Not everybody fasts, but it affects women, particularly. Now, there are all sorts of other festivals besides the wealth the world known ones, like the Eid al Fitr or the Eid al Azhar. There are and the celebration of the birthday of Muhammad, those festivals, most people, e. They Milad, the celebration of the birthday of Muhammad, and other festivals well known through the whole Muslim world.

But there will be also special festivals relating to local saints, and some of these are not so local. People come from all over the world to attend the what is called the Urs, URS, which means it’s the anniversary, of the day in which the saint attained his union with God. Is Ursa actually means marriage, and, these are mostly Sufi saints. I have been to the shrines of quite a few Sufi saints and witnessed what some of the things that go on. I can think of the, Nizam ad Din Shrine Complex in Delhi.

It’s a very, very large, Sufi shrine with mosque. It has a a a langar, a kitchen to to serve 100 of of pilgrims coming to the shrine every day. You can get a free meal. And there are shrine shops, you can buy not buy, but you can give an offering, to get a bowl which has on it inside the bowl written, one of the verses of the Quran, and it’s a bowl, that’s used to put water in and pray over or say some, name of god over it. And it’s useful to give to a child, and it may heal that child.

But don’t try buying these things. I did it once because, it’s got a word from the holy book of Islam, the eternal book in their thinking. So you can’t buy the eternal word of the eternal god. You can make an offering for it. And I maybe I told you that I on this basis, I I changed my way of selling bibles into offerings for bibles, because, that’s what they do about a Quran.

I’ve I once, when I go to buy a new Quran, except that I bought one here, and I didn’t do it here, but, but when you want to get a new Quran in a in a Muslim country, you ask what is the offering for it? You can’t buy the eternal book, and, it would be downgrading it, wouldn’t it? So you off you find out what the offering is. So the shrine complex has got shops, and it’s got, stalls, shall we call them. It has it even has a kind of living complex for the people, the wives of the and the families of the people who maintain the shrines.

And there’s a well known book, which you would enjoy reading, I think, called Frogs in the Well. It’s on the bibliography. Frogs in the Well was written by a sociologist who spent a year, I think, actually in Delhi, in this shrine complex, getting to know the wives of the, leaders of the on the workers at the shrine. People come from all over India, all over Delhi, all over the world to this very famous shrine complex. Anyway, she talked with the women.

She learned Urdu, and, this, Jeffrey is her surname. Pamela Jeffrey, perhaps, I can’t remember. But, she asked them all sorts of things about their lives, and they hardly ever left the shrine. So she said, asked them more questions than this, and they said, well, we’re like frogs in the well. They were tied in to this place where their husbands worked, And probably, in 20 years, some of them never left that.

There’s a station, just a railway station just by the side of the shrine complex so that pilgrims and people coming can easily reach it. But these women, because of what their husbands was doing and because they were keeping the veil and they were segregated in very conservative style, they stayed there all the time. Frogs in the well, so she called her book that. Now, let’s just think about this. During the fast, if you you It’s probably better, generally better, to call on your friends in the evening after the breaking of the fast.

Sometimes they’ll invite you to join in the breaking of the fast. That’s when you, eat a few dates and drink some water. The main meal is later. But I I have joined in, in the breaking of the fast, because I’ve been staying with Muslims who were keeping it. But don’t go and visit your Muslim friend in the middle of the afternoon or if it’s, or even before anytime before the breaking of the fast in general, because they will feel that they need to give you some tea.

Or because they know you’re not fasting, they will feel obliged to to do something in the way of hospitality. And that would be difficult for them and embarrassing for you. So, I mean, that’s just a guideline. There’s no law about it, but just a suggestion. The fast and the feast, the fast is celebrated. I could put it with the festivals because it leads up to one of the great festivals, but the 2nd greatest in Islam, the Eid al Fitr, at the end of the month of fasting. So I class it with this, with festivals. It’s celebrated differently in different countries, and I have been in Saudi during the fast, Saudi Arabia, and everything is, fairly somber. But I’ve been in Yemen when everybody looks forward to it, and they they sort of live it up every night. The women, collect together in the area, and the men collect together, and they really enjoy the enjoy it.

I mean, they eat at night, as you may know, but but they they really have fun. And I’ve been there with them in their fun, so I I know that they enjoy it. And about 4 o’clock in the morning, they will or 3 o’clock in the morning, they’ll go back to cook, to the breakfast before dawn, and then they’ll be fairly, tired during the the day. But they have to look after their children, of course, but it goes on like this. But Yemen, if you go to Yemen, you you can have a really good time, and it’s a very good time for interchanging.

You if you’ve got 4 hours or 5 hours and your people are relaxed, they women together, talk, and so you can interact, and there’s quite a lot of fun in this way. And I went with a an American who was my hostess, and, she speaks excellent Arabic. And, we, I could see how well she could interact with these people. Well, let’s look at 1 or 2 specifically. The Eid al Fitr festival is the breaking of the fast.

It marks the end of Ramadan. It’s called sometimes it’s called the Little Festival, and I like to compare it with Christmas, which for the Christians is is the Little Festival. You might not think so from the way the church celebrates Easter and Christmas, but it’s actually Easter is the is the big festival. Easter is the primary festival of Christians celebrating the resurrection. And, if we’re gonna compare, then the little festival in Islam, is the Eid al Fitr after the the festival, the breaking of the fast, and the main festival, which we can compare with Easter, is the Eid al Azhar, the feast of festival of sacrifice, which takes place 20 no.

70 days after the end of the month of fasting. Ramadan is the Arabic for the month of fasting, and Ramzan is the Urdu, so I sometimes interchange as I speak Urdu. So what happens then on Eid al Fitr, the festival at the breaking of the fast? All the men go off to the mosque or to the what is called the Id Ga. You’ll see it here on your handout, Id Ga. It’s a special, large, open place set aside for such gatherings, because sometimes the courtyard of a mosque is not large enough, for the number of people who, go. And, sometimes there’s a in many towns, there is an Eid Gar. Eid means festival. Maybe you say it in Arabic, Eid. And then in, Ga means place, and there it is.

It’s just this field, if you like, or an open area. And, after that they have prayers and and worship and listen to a sermon, they go home for other festivities. The women do not generally go to the mosque or special prayer prayers, but pray at home, and they’re busy cooking choice dishes. And everybody wears new clothes, and they often exchange gifts. It’s good to rejoice with those who rejoice and to relate to people in their festivals, and you will find that in different ways they will include you in some way or another if you are if you’ve got Muslim friends.

Then the main festival of Eid of the year, the Eid al Azhar, is the festival of sacrifice. And the sacrifice, is made by pilgrims at the beginning of their pilgrimage, but it’s it’s celebrated all through. Even sort of weeks before, you see lots of goats around, and you see an extra supply of of sheep, and even of, of buffalos, and I don’t know. It depends what the country goes in for, particularly. Camels will qualify as well, actually.

They’re all destined for sacrifice, on that day, and I think we should read about this. Would somebody from their Quran, preferably from Yusuf Ali’s use What am I saying? Yusuf Ali’s rendering, is that Yusuf Ali? Yeah. Would you read the second 22nd Surah and verses 33 to 37?

Here, it’s commanded that the this sacrifice should be made, and this is one of the celebration. Now, it’s not in general a sacrifice for sin. It’s a sacrifice in commemoration. Commemoration of the intention of Abraham to sacrifice his son. And it doesn’t, in that part of the Quran, I think, specify which son.

Would you read it, please? This is I believe it’s, ayat 34. Thank you. To the people, did we appoint rights of sacrifice that they may celebrate the name of Allah over the sustenance he gave them from animals fit for food. But your god is one god.

Submit then your wills to him in Islam and give those and give thou the good news to those who humble themselves, to those whose hearts, when Allah has mentioned, are filled with fear, who show patient perseverance over their afflictions, keep up regular prayer, and spend in charity out of what we have bestowed upon them. The sacrificed the sacrificial camels we have made for you as among the symbols from Allah In them is much good for you. Then pronounce the name of Allah over them as they line up for sacrifice. When they are down on their sides after slaughter, eat eat thereof and feed such as beg not, but live in contentment, and such as beg with new humility, thus have we made animals subject to you that you may be grateful. It is not their meat nor their blood that reaches Allah.

It is your piety that reaches him. He has thus made them subject to you that you may glorify Allah for his guidance to you and proclaim the good news to those who do right. Verily Allah will defend from you all those who believe. Verily Allah loveth not any that is a traitor to faith or shows of gratitude. Thank you. Mhmm. Good. So it’s there. Now, I just, maybe it’s difficult to look at this diagram, but, here we are. I’m indebted to Dudley Woodbury for setting me on this line of thinking of comparing, the sacrifices or the commemorations, in Judaism, Islam, and the Christian faith.

And so when we look at this greatest of all festivals for Muslims, which they celebrate around the world and, to which sometimes they invite us in one way or another, I have stayed with a Muslim family at the time of this celebration, and I shared in with my hostess as we went round, giving some of the meat of the sacrifice to the poor people or not so poor people. She was very wealthy, my hostess, and, she went she gave you’re supposed to give a third of the sacrifice away. You give a third to the religious leaders, and you give a you keep a third to eat with your family. So sometimes Muslims will send some meat from the animal, as a token of friendship. Send it to your home.

Sometimes, in some countries, Christians don’t feel free to take it, and I feel this is a great pity because, this is not meat sacrificed to idols. It’s commemoration. It’s not even a sacrifice for sin or anything. It’s it’s a commemoration of of Abraham. And so if they feel close to you, they want you to share in some way. So if you’re not actually there for the feast, they will send you some meat. So we could all ask 7 questions about Eid al Azhar. We could ask what is commemorated, And I’ve already said, mose the commemoration of Abraham in his intention to sacrifice his son. What is the significance of the sacrifice? How does the worshipper prepare?

What is sacrificed? Who is saved or blessed? Who provided the sacrifice, and how is it commemorated? And you can compare this with the Passover, ask those same seven questions. You can compare it with Good Friday and ask those same questions, and you can compare it with the Lord’s Supper. It’s an interesting study. It’s worth spending some hours, working through this and thinking it through. You won’t be able to, probably go into a detailed study of this sort with your Muslim friend, but you might for maybe. I don’t know. One never knows.

But, there are many points. I’ll just highlight a few points of, what should we say, bridges. Who provided the sacrifice, for example? The Quran clearly says that God provided it. That’s what we read also in Genesis. God provided the lamb, and Ishmael, Isaac was not, offered. In the Quran, the the main description is in Surah 37 verses 102 to 109. I wonder if somebody would read this for us. Could you then see you’ll find an answer to another of these seven Surah Surah 37 verses 102 and 109. And probably, if we were looking at a biblical passage, we would look at Exodus 12, the story of the Passover.

I have it. Then when the sun reached the age of serious work with him, he said, oh, my son, I see in vision that I offer thee in sacrifice. Now see what is thy view. Thy son said, oh my father, do as thou art commanded. Thou wilt find me if Allah so wills one per practicing patience and cons constancy.

So when they both patience and constancy. So when they both when they had both submitted their wills to Allah and he had laid him prostrate on his forehead for sacrifice, we called out to him, oh Abraham, thou has already fulfilled the vision. Thus indeed do we reward those who do right. For this was obviously a trial, and we ransomed him with a momentous sacrifice. Oh, and we left this blessing for him among generations to come in later times.

Peace and and salutation to Abraham. Yes. Thank you. So can you think of another point, a bridge here in thinking between comparing the Christian idea or the Jewish idea of the sacrifice. There’s, the idea of, with the Jews of the sacrifice at the time of the Passover, the first Passover. So what’s in the Quran that, parallels that? Which verse or? What about verse a 107? The numbering may be different if you have a different, version, But number, verse 107, then we ransomed him with a tremendous victim. Then we, that is God, ransomed him, that is Abraham, with a tremendous victim, with a a great sacrifice.

And all this terminology actually is is Jewish, and, it’s, Jesus we think of as the ransom for sin. So we ransomed him with a tremendous victim, with a with a a sheep or a goat or a cow or a camel, a great offering, a great sacrifice, and god provided it. We ransomed him. God provided the sacrifice. So we can find parallel parallels here.

There’s a it’s not a sacrifice for sin, except I think in 1 or 2 traditions, the idea of a sacrifice for sin comes in Islam, but in general, it’s not there. And people are sometimes rather vague about what the sacrifice is for. So just try to work through this and look up the references. Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, John 121. I mean, sometime or the other in conversation, these things will come up, and you will have a natural opportunity to take some idea from what they are involved in to what or how it also speaks to your heart and how.

There’s a a preparation for this, but please, study these, from your handout and sheet. One other I think we will in this next the next time you study, whether you’re studying a long way away in distance learning or here, we will in the next session or the next study, we’ll continue looking at festivals, and then we will, take think about the rights, and we’ll think particularly in the rights about death and burial. We’ll focus on one right and go along with that. Give you an idea to how you might then take another right, like marriage, and go deep into that. You can do that as part of your personal studies and observations.

So communicating the good news through festivals and rites, Let us rejoice with those who withdraw rejoice, and let us mourn with those who mourn.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: The Risk of Muslims Following Jesus

In this lecture, Vivienne Stacey discusses some of the risks that Muslims often face when deciding to follow Jesus. She shares some of her own experiences and the loss of dear friends who suffered for their faith in Christ and even paid the ultimate price of martyrdom. These lectures were given at Columbia International University in partnership with the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies. The Zwemer Center was founded in 1979 and exists to offer comprehensive courses on Islam, facilitate research, foster dialogues, offer seminars, conduct training, and provide resources for effective witness and ministry among Muslims. We also have a course study guide for these lectures that you might find helpful.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Vivienne Stacey’s Lecture on the risk of Muslims following Jesus:

What you’ve been reading is, Ken Old’s account of the two times that he met Esther and what he knew about her. Perhaps I should start by, telling my side of it, what I know about her. I knew her very well because she came, to the United Bible Training Center and was my student for 2 years. She is, about my age. She was about my age, and, we used to enjoy playing badminton together and we used to do a lot of visiting in Muslim homes in the villages around the town where we were living.

And she would give her testimony and I would give some explanation slightly more, say, a theological, something from the Bible or something else but she particularly could speak from her own experience of being a Muslim and coming to Christ and her desire was to train, so and that’s why she was at the Bible Training Center so that she could be, used by God in further and sharing the good news with her people as she said. Now, I had the opportunity of course, to ask her many questions because she I saw her every day and I asked her on one occasion how she became a Christian, and I asked her to write it out later because I thought it would make a good kind of tract. So she did write it. It didn’t become a tract because it seemed it was too dangerous to publish, and we it’s never been published as a tract in Pakistan. I I think it could be probably now, but it became one of the authentic records.

It’s the only piece of writing about her apart from her letters and number of which I have, which we still have, so it’s a couple of pages that tells how she came to Christ. I also took photographs, individual photographs of each of my students and I’m so glad I did because I think I’ve got one of the good best photographs of her. So she’s one of the 20th century martyrs, but, I want us this afternoon just to look at her story if you like or her it’s it’s, it what’s what happened. It’s real, very real, to see what principles we can draw out of this. But let me just tell you a little bit.

She told me, that she came to Christ primarily through seeing the love of God in her teacher and through studying the scripture in this Christian school, which to which she went when she was 16 or 17, transferred for some reason from 1 a government school to a mission school. In that school, they required this bible study and scripture study, I think probably every day, And, she was given Isaiah 53 to memorize, and she said she told me, how in memorizing this actual text, she came to know Jesus, and she went through it with me. Who has believed what we have heard? Well, she said, we Muslims, we’ve we’ve heard. But, what have we believed and have we believed?

To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? To whom has God revealed himself? And she said, I don’t see that my people, that I, we haven’t, had this revealing of God. You remember Muslims are looking, to see what is the will of God and so they’re looking for the, rules and the regulations to know how to do his will. But, the personal encounter, where is it?

She that was a question she had. And then about Jesus, she said, well, yes, he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or comeliness that we would look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. She said, yes, we honor him as a prophet, but but no one wants to go further than that. We have despised him.

I have despised him, and I have rejected him. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but as one from whom men hid their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. She was getting very close to Jesus in her teenage years in that school. And, she realized that though we call him prophet, yet we don’t fully esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

And she remembered that the the Quran, although it agrees that Jesus, was willing to die, that the Jews planned to kill him and actually did. It doesn’t go further than that. It’s the Quran does not entirely deny the crucifixion because it admits that Jesus was willing to die and the Jews intended to kill him, but, there is a denial of the actual crucifixion and a state, so the Quran, really out of a desire to protect a prophet of God from shame, denies the very essence of what is the Christian message, the death and resurrection of Jesus. But she understood. He was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities, and upon him was the chastisement that made us whole. And with his stripes, we are healed. And then she said, and all we like sheep have gone astray, but the lord has turned but we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. And when she grasped this, she said, I came to know Jesus. And, that was a conversion for her.

A very costly step. She continued to receive teaching through the scripture lessons, of course, but also, personal help and a a bible to read at school, but she couldn’t take it home. And then came a year later, the creation of Pakistan, independence granted to India and to Pakistan, and the creation of these 2 nations in the well, one created and one, just born. And her family were devout Muslims, obviously, a loving family and devout Muslims. But So they thought they should go to the land created in the name of Islam.

The name, which The very name of the country means land of the holy, Pakistan. So they set out by ship, from Madras and came to Karachi. And in Karachi, she she had no Bible and no New Testament. She had memorized some, and somehow as you have read, word got to a missionary in Karachi asking her to visit this this girl, whose name at that time was Camar. And, so, Marion Logoson, whom I know, she knew, she’s gone to her heavenly home, but, I did meet her sometimes.

She, went to visit Esther, and Esther quietly asked her for a New Testament. And Esther told me, I read the New Testament secretly 27 times. She used to keep it hidden, and she knew that she needed to. And so for many years, I suppose 5 6 or more years, she wasn’t she didn’t make her oak open declaration of faith until 1955 when she was baptized in Sahiwal, which is about halfway between Karachi and Lahore. But until she stole out of her home when there was rioting in the city and sought refuge with Marion Logoson, she her discipleship was a a quiet one of love and obedience in the home, but she couldn’t, go to worship and, she was very glad to have this her New Testament and glad to have an occasional visit from a Christian.

When the question of her marriage came up, she generally found reasons to, they did talk to her about it, her family. She managed to avoid a marriage with a Muslim because she had read, be not unequally loked together with unbelievers and she wanted to follow that. In the end, it became too difficult for her and so she decided that she must leave her home and so she took a horse and rick, a kind of Tonga, horse and cart kind of arrangement which you hire, and it took her to Marion Logoson’s school. And then quickly, Marion sent her with some other staff member who was going up towards Sahiwal and she got to Sahiwal and Sahiwal became her second home. Well, a costly discipleship that, baptized in 1955, I think that she came to the United Bible sent training training center in 1957, certainly by 58.

She said I want to be more prepared and study the Bible so that I may reach my own people, Muslim people in this country. And that’s how I came to know her. She was a delight to teach. I I’ve got memories of, I I am sure that if she had known that she was gonna die by the age of 30 because of her beliefs, she would have agreed that I mean, she wouldn’t have questioned God about it. She she if the cost was gonna be that great, she would be willing to pay it.

And I remember teaching her, teaching the minor prophets, and we studied the book of Habakkuk and, where it says at the end, I remember her face lighting up, though the fig tree doesn’t, bear fruit or nothing blossoms. I can’t remember the exact text. Though there’s no no nothing in the stall and so on. I better read it because I’m murdering the lovely poetry of Habakkuk, so which is perhaps not the right word. So in habokote, if you find it before I do, you might, mention it.

You got it? Anybody got habit yeah. Oh, yes. I got it. Though the fig tree do not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no yield no fruit.

The flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. And that joy, I I remember her face lighting up at this. Because for thing her, things had been difficult. She didn’t know they were gonna be more difficult, but, I have no doubt that, such was her commitment and love for the Lord, that she would have pressed on.

And after she had, graduated, she went to work with this lovely American couple who who worked for many years in in Pakistan and to live in their house. And it happened on a night when there were people camping around because there was a pastor’s conference taking place. So in the grounds and just close, there were friends, but somehow, someone stole in and murdered her on the night of 31st January 1960. It was a shock to everybody. I happened to be in England at the time, and, but God had prepared me to hear this news.

On the way out of Pakistan on going on leave to England, I had stopped at Sahiwal because Esther was there and a friend of hers and another student of mine called Martha, they were both there and trains stopped for half an hour sometimes at a station, so they came to have a chat. And, I thought what a privilege to work as, a colleague with these 2, this these kind of people and I was looking forward to, as I know Martha was, to, many times of fellowship with Esther. Anyway, in Britain, I couldn’t sleep one night, and I was near at my home church, where I didn’t have relatives then at that place, but I was staying there. I couldn’t sleep, and so I was looking through the books in the room where I was, and there was a book by Geoffrey Bull, God holds the key, and I don’t know if it’s about page 35. I can give you the exact reference, but there’s a whole paragraph about, those who have died for Christ.

And, one sentence, which is was very much in my mind as I read, and I noted in my diary, actually. I didn’t know I was gonna hear about Esther and about the next day, but, it was said, Geoffrey Ball said, the early Christians were not concerned with living long, but in dying at the right time. So I put this in my diary. Next day, I had a letter from Martha saying our our sister, Esther, has gone to heaven. So I I was extremely, shocked as everybody was.

And she was she’s 1 in a million or more, 1 in 10,000,000. There was a police search of her belongings and, there was there were 2 police inquiries. It was never proved, who killed her, but it seemed that it was probably an a relative. But the police officer was asking about whether she about marriage arrangements that might be made, Christian ones and whether there was a man on the scene. And anyway, he he went through her letters and all that was left and, that she left and, in the end, he said he found a book booklet by Sadasundar Singh, The Pearl of Great Price, and he he looked at this and, maybe read it, and he said, as the summary, he said, this girl was in love with your Christ.

So that was his, conclusion on, going through her papers and her letters. Now, I would like us to just think about the principles that come out from this, what I’m calling a case study. The scripture influenced her to Christ and the love of God in a person. Those are 2 tremendous principles. And, somebody in Pakistan, a Finnish theologian, he he, lectured in the Christian Studies Centre in Rawalpindi, and he did a kind of study of 30 Muslim men in Pakistan who had become Christians, And, he studied them over a period of 5 years, and partly to find out what influences brought them to Christ, and three influences.

All of them, in one way or another, had some touch with Christians in whom they saw the love of Christ. And all of them, in one way or another, through radio or through tracts or through reading the bible or through correspondence school, correspondence courses, they all, had some interaction with the word of God. And 15 of them over 15 of them, 16, the more than half, he says, became had visions and dreams of Christ. Esther didn’t have a vision or a dream, but she was very influenced by the love of Christ in a person and the scripture. Okay.

Now something else would you like to draw out from this? Yes? What what gives us the right to put individuals such as this sister in in danger with their families I don I don’t think she considered, and I don’t think the people who were working with her and helping her, thought that she was in such as much danger as she was. She was very much prayed about by her and others about whether she should go home at all and and, and and whether she should write home. So I think that everything was done as carefully as could be done in that situation.

And she, being in her late twenties at that time, you know, took full responsibility for what what she did. And she she wanted to be at the United Bible Training Center. She wanted to work, near Sahiwal, where she had been baptized and she worked actually in a village, with this couple. It was about some 20 or 30 miles from Sahiwal. It seemed a very safe situation to live in the home of a missionary, missionary couple, very suitable for her.

So I I mean, I I feel that, you know one can We don’t have any right, but on the other hand if it’s if it’s full consultation and, the Holy Spirit seems to guide this way, then we must all take whatever risks for ourselves or for others that are needed. Some I I know others who’ve been, Afghans, who’ve been martyred. I am deeply influenced by by 2 people, by an Afghan martyr and by this girl. I have her photograph in my flat, and I wonder, I feel that, why should she be killed and why should I live so long? And I I I see I just don’t understand, but I believe.

Yes? Also, just in in response to that, if you were to ask you know, if we were to, be in heaven and ask Esther John if it was worth it, she would definitely say it was. Yes. And the the other friend of mine I mentioned, in the chapel service, he’s the one who said, suffering teaches you to love more the person for whom you suffer. He he very much knew that he stood the risk of losing his life, and he suffered torture and much hardship as a Christian disciple.

God amazingly helped him. God does not abandon people in their suffering and then When he was in prison in Afghanistan, he he had a coat and his fellow prisoner in the cell didn’t. And he he gave his coat to his fellow prisoner, but he says, I was never cold. And that’s quite remarkable if you think if you know the country, the climate of Afghanistan, it’s about as in the winter, about as cold as Colombia is hot. How do you, though, respond to, I have a lot of friends and family that are asking that question.

How can I, you know, go to to minister to Muslims when, I know that they might be killed? Yeah. Can you answer someone who’s Yes. I could. I mean, I’ve had other Muslim friends who came to faith in Christ, who, one I think of particularly, she couldn’t face the cost.

And I I can’t blame her in any way. She said to me and to a friend as we were talking, if I make an if I become baptised, I will be drugged by my family, and I will be sent to a village, to live in obscurity and under surveillance and being drugged, I mean that’s gonna that’s what’s gonna happen to me. She was highly connected, one of her relatives was an ambassador of Pakistan to one of the neighboring countries and so on. She came from a good family. So And I had to ask myself, what is the What right do I have, to invite people to faith when it’s gonna be so costly?

But I I I’m quite clear about the answer. The answer is that it is not I who invite. It is Jesus who invites. And so so I’m just his messenger. And, so whatever the cost to me, I must invite.

And, whatever the cost to them, that They have to make that decision. And I I say to people who are going into dangerous situations or whatever situation, the safest position, the safest place to be is in the center of the will of God and, I possibly will go to some dangerous place and deliberately, but I’ve I think if I don’t go, I disobey God. And the safest place I can be is in the centre of his will. This is the true Islam. This is submission to God.

This is the the faith with obedience and with love. So this is what we invite people to, and this is what we walk in ourselves. I would like to have met the teacher in Madras who so showed God’s love. Yeah. She probably knew what, that’s she must have known that Esther came to Christ.

So it’s often people who, in their particular jobs, not not missionaries, not tent makers probably, but, teachers, doctors, nurses, almost an illiterate midwife in a in a Pakistani village, those who in their lives show the love of Christ. This is a very convincing this is a very convincing, matter for, a Muslim. And, I know of 1 Muslim who, saw a pastor, an Arab pastor in one of the Gulf countries who came from another country not a Gulf country and just the way he and his wife went shopping in that the bazaar in one of those strongest, Islamic countries, he was so impressed by the way he treated his wife. He followed them and want and he wanted to meet the man who treated his wife this way. Eventually, he got he was able to do this and be eventually welcomed into the home.

But it was, seeing God’s love worked out in a in a natural situation. Person these people were not even aware of it. This man eventually became a Christian and this couple were the reasons really, seeing God’s love in that way so even how you walk down the street and talk to somebody or the other can, God, we don’t know how God is gonna work. We have a great responsibility. Love is a very is the greatest of the drawing forces in the world and it is fully exemplified in our Lord Jesus Christ who is still drawing Muslims and people of other ways of life and beliefs to himself.

So we have this great privilege of being called to be disciples. It is disciples who win disciples. So maybe, let’s close with a prayer. We praise thee, oh lord, for the life and for the death and for the certain hope of everlasting life, which is Esther John’s. We thank thee for her example.

We thank thee for the glorious company of martyrs, for those who have washed their robes white in the blood of the lamb. We thank Thee therefore, the church triumphant in heaven, help us as we, in the church down here, press on to make known the glorious gospel of Christ. Let us, O Lord, walk in obedience. Let us walk in love and let us walk in faith. We ask it in the name of the one God, the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

Amen.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: Praying with and for Muslims

In this lecture, Vivienne Stacey explores some of the similarities and differences between Muslim and Christian prayers. She includes practical tips and praying with and for Muslims. These lectures were given at Columbia International University in partnership with the Zwemer Center for Muslim Studies. The Zwemer Center was founded in 1979 and exists to offer comprehensive courses on Islam, facilitate research, foster dialogues, offer seminars, conduct training, and provide resources for effective witness and ministry among Muslims. We also have a course study guide for these lectures that you might find helpful.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Vivienne Stacey’s Lecture on praying with and for Muslims:

In this session, we’re gonna think about Muslims and Christians at prayer. Here is a great link between us and Muslims. They are people of prayer, and we are people of prayer, And piety and devotion are part of everyday life for all Muslims, not all Muslims, perhaps, and not all Christians, perhaps. But piety and devotion are part of everyday life for every convinced Muslim and every convinced Christian. In Islam, we are, quite aware of the daily ritual.

You cannot live in a Muslim country without being aware of the daily ritual. You probably will be woken up by the call to prayer, and it’s at dawn. I try to discipline myself that whenever I hear the call to prayer, I pray for Muslims. I sometimes get so used to hearing the call to prayer and switching off in a way that I don’t always remember, but that’s what my my my ambition is, to pray 5 times a day for Muslims when I hear the call to prayer. The Muslim the call to prayer is chanted in Arabic.

It’s the call to prayer is actually called the Azaan. In Urdu, maybe it’s the azan in Arabic. I’m not sure, but azan, we say in Urdu, same word. It means call, call to prayer, but and the one who does it, he has an m in front of him, you see, his name and his title, if you like, Muezzin. See, it’s the same root, 3 radicals, but Mu’ezin is the one who gives the call, and he gives the call to the ezam.

Sometimes the text varies of what is called out according to whether the mosque is a Shia mosque or a Sunni mosque. When you’re going to a mosque, you it’s good if you know whether it’s Sunni or Shia. You’re going to a Shia mosque tomorrow, perhaps. No? Oh, yes.

A Sunni mosque. Yes. I did know that. Sorry. So you’re visiting a Sunni mosque.

Now here’s a translation in the paper that you’ve got in your handbook, about here’s one translation of the call to prayer. There’s a the last line of it is only used in the morning, but god is most great, and that’s said 4 times. In the in the previous study that we had about scripture or the program Mind, I kept on saying, God is great, so here it is. And 4 times in the call to prayer, so that’s 20 times a day, isn’t it? 4 times 5.

I testify there is no god but god, said twice. I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of god, said twice. Come to prayer. Come to success. God is most great.

There is no god but great, but God, but and then prayer is better than sleep. I like that one. I try to get up then, but so the bottom line here, whenever we who are Christians hear the call to prayer, let us hear let’s hear it as a call to pray for Muslims, and it’s good. There’s nothing very offensive about the call to prayer, except that we, as Christians, do not testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God. And I try I talk about the prophet of Islam, I talk about the prophet, but I try not to, talk about him as if he were my prophet.

But I don’t want to offend Muslims, so I’m very careful. And sometimes, when I’m talking with a Muslim, I give an honorific title. I talk about Muhammad in, using an adjective which would give him some honor, but I cannot give him that honor of prophethood. Otherwise, I would be a Muslim. And then ritual prayer, this is the salat, that’s the Arabic, or the namaz, which is the urdu.

Generally, it’s the same word. You could use salat in Pakistan, and you would be understood, of course, but we do use namaz, which means the same thing. And Salat is the second of the 5 pillars of Islam. I think you’re getting familiar you with the with the 5 pillars, if you’re not already. The first is the saying of the creed, which makes you a Muslim.

Muslims all declare it. There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his prophet. The second is, the prayer, and then we have, the giving of alms, and we have pilgrimage. We have, one I’ve missed, fasting. Is that 5?

Good. Ritual prayers can be said in private, particularly women do that, or at the mosque or a special prayer area in the mosque for women, sometimes. Usually, women say it at home, and I think that if we have Muslim guests, we should make provision to for them to pray if they wish. And if I have a Muslim friend who’s visiting for some hours, and I know she’s a, sort of devout practicing Muslim, I ask her, do you want to have a quiet corner to say your prayers? And, I ask I give her that opportunity.

She may or she may not. And, sometimes when I’m staying with Muslims, I have a friend in India I’ve stayed with, and she says, she will say to me, I’m just going to pray. She’s gonna do her salat or her namaz, so that’s okay. So I say, yeah. Well, I’ll say my prayers, and, and sometimes I take up my New Testament as well and what I got forgot a bible.

So I take that opportunity to, to say my prayers. I found it very when I first met, this friend of mine, I met her in London where we were both students, and the first time I went to call on her in her hostel, I had to wait for 10 minutes while she finished her prayers, and and that was a great shock to me. I mean, I’m not used to I’m used to waiting for people for various things, but I had never waited for anyone to say their prayers before, but it made an impression which I can remember even now after about 40 years. Anyway, I don’t have any problems adjusting on this. The first surah is recited as part of the daily ritual prayer all over the world.

So this surah is recited at least 5 times a day by every Muslim who is a says his prayers or says her prayers. Not all Muslims are so practicing, but, that’s true for in Chris Christian circles as well. The first surah, praise be to Allah, lord of the worlds, the beneficent, the merciful, owner of the day of judgment. Thee alone we worship. Thee alone we ask for help.

Show us the straight path, the path of those whom thou has favored, not the path of those who earn thine anger, nor of those who go astray. Sometimes, Muslims ask, how do you pray? Or what is your creed? Meaning, what is the equivalent of there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet? I don’t recite the Apostle’s Creed, and I don’t recite the Nicene Creed for the for them in answer to that.

I recite, John 17 verse 3. This is life eternal that we might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou Jesus, whom thou hast sent. That’s I say is an equivalent. It’s a statement of the same length, but we do have a lengthier statement, which I could show you if you would like. Anyway, pilgrims recite the following invocation in Arabic thousands of times during the 1st days of the pilgrimage and before going to Mount Arafat.

You call us here. We are here, oh god. We are here. We are here. There is none beside you.

We are here. Praise and good deeds belong to you and the empire. There is none but you. Now it’s, it’s very helpful. I have all the text of what pilgrims say when they go, on the main pilgrimage to Mecca.

Very useful to know what they do and what they say. So we can say, Christians, like Muslims, should be seen to be people of prayer. I’ve already, in another session, said we should be seen to be who we are. Sometimes Muslims have asked me, how many times a day do you pray? So I say, well, I have my own prayers early in the morning.

I pray at breakfast, and I pray at lunch, and I pray at supper, and I join with my group in the where I’m living, family prayers in the evening. So that must make how many? Oh, it makes 5. Right. But, and then I may give some other answer.

But, Muslims think the set prayers are very, very important, but it doesn’t rule out for them personal and formal prayer. Du’a, both is an Arabic word, word, for informal personal prayer, and Muslims do go in for that. My my friend that I have stayed with in India, she said to me, you know, I don’t know how I would manage if I couldn’t pray about my problems. And now she’s not talking about the 5 days a day prayer. She’s talking about about this.

So it means a lot to her personal informal prayer, which consists of invocations or requests or intercessions or memorized or prayer or extempore prayer. She gave me a book of prayers that she had written, and I still have it in Cyprus. So the literal meaning of du’a is a cry or a call. If you can see into the devotion of somebody, you get some idea of where they are, what they’re seeking. So it’s good to dip into, sort of records of people’s prayers.

There’s another book of prayers that you might come across. It’s a book of compiled by Kenneth Bishop Kenneth Cragg. He it’s called Alive to God, and he has on one side a Christian prayer, on the other side a, Muslim prayer, this which is similar in some ways. So he has this, the we if you were going through the formal prayers, the salats or the nimars, if you went through all the texts, you would find a problem. You wouldn’t be able to identify as well as you can identify with the first surah that we’ve got here, because it prays for blessings on Muhammad and his family.

So I can say the first surah, but I can’t ask for blessings on on Muhammad and his family. But, anyway, we’re we’re not saying what we’re going to use each other’s prayers. We’re thinking, okay. They are people of prayer. We are people of prayer.

So I think that’s, it it’s helpful when we say to Muslims that we’re praying for them. I’ve had Muslims say to me, I’m praying for you, when they know how to I have a difficulty, and I take the opportunity every now and then to say that I’m praying for them. But I also like to take the opportunity of praying with Muslims if they if they are willing. And I have prayed with 100 of Muslim women individually. They are much more happy for us to pray than we are to volunteer to pray is my experience.

I was quite hesitant, but now I’m not hesitant at all. And, one has to be sensitive and not necessarily volunteer on every you don’t take every occasion, but out of 9 out of 10 cases, it would be quite appropriate if a Muslim has told you about her problems or the child is obviously sick, that you offer to pray. And in your handbook, you’ll find a section. The handbook is has actually everything that’s in here. It’s this text.

And in this, you’ll find, a section about praying, with Muslim women. And, when I pray with Muslim women, I tell them before I ask them, well, you this this child is sick. Before I leave, would you like me to pray? If I pray, I will pray in the name of Jesus, the Messiah. I make that clear.

I make it clear that I’m going to pray in that name. They I don’t think I’ve ever been refused on the question of praying for someone who’s who’s sick. They have been very happy for me to to pray. Now I prepare, my general way of praying with a Muslim aloud. I prepare in that I put in more if I were gonna pray in a Christian home for a sick child, I would not do it in exactly the same way.

So first, I would praise God more at the beginning because Muslims are pretty high up on praising God. They as you see, they are praising. So I praise God that he is creator, that he is provider, that he is redeemer. I I I just have about a sentence or so very clearly praising him. I don’t call him father generally because that’s rather implicating Muslims who don’t regard God as father.

If they regarded him as father, they would become Christians if they truly did. Like Bilqis Shaikh, she says, I dared to call him father. That’s her the title of her life testimony, as it were. A Christian. She became a Muslim.

She was a Muslim, became a Christian. I dared to call him father. It is such a daring for a Muslim to call God father that it really leads them to know Christ. It’s a daring that brings them into the family of God. So I don’t want to implicate, those who are listening into something by my prayer, which is I know is not probably they’re not ready for.

But then I will go on, to name the person for whom I’m going to pray, because I feel so many Muslim women and children are never named before God. It is my great privilege to name somebody before the god and father of the lord Jesus Christ. It’s my great privilege to pray for Muslims in their presence. So I want to name them. I’ll name the child that’s sick.

I’ll name the mother. In fact, it’s nobody else’s name to them before god. And then I will make the particular request. I might quote from scripture. I sometimes quote the prophet Isaiah by whose who says about Jesus, by his stripes, you are healed.

So I might quote a prophet because the words of a prophet, have more power for in the minds of a Muslim than the other words, the words of a prophet. So I might quote the words of the prophet Isaiah or the words of, Jesus, But I don’t use scripture as an evangelistic tool in prayer. It has to be prayer. It’s genuine prayer. So I do it in my own prayer sometimes.

I I pray using quoting scripture. You do it sometimes. It’s, quite in order. It’s done in the acts of the apostles and many other places. But the disciples under persecution quoted from the Psalms and so on.

And then I will conclude the prayer in the name of Jesus, the Messiah, or Esa ibn Eim Maryam, the son Jesus, the son of Mary. The other 5th thing I do in preparing my prayer, that my mind so that I will know how I’m going to pray with a Muslim when the opportunity comes is in the choice of vocabulary. So I won’t choose words which, religious vocabulary, which, might put them off. I’ll choose, religious vocabulary, which maybe is common to both Christianity and Islam? I’ll, it depends on the course on the language that you’re using, but, Christians in Pakistan are most are quite strongly influenced by Hinduism because at the turn of the century, many from outcast cast Hinduism came into the Christian church.

So the Christian church in the Punjab tends to have a subculture, which has its some of its origins for vocabulary in in Hinduism. There’s nothing wrong with some of the stuff that comes in, but, it’s not very good for using it when you’re praying with Muslims. And, I just can’t think of a particular example, but if you look in your handbook, you will find, 1 or 2 examples on that. And I’ve written out in this, booklet and in your handbook, I’ve written out prayers that we could use, in praying for the sick. I’ve also written out a small prayer, for use when you visit someone who’s gonna have a baby, a Muslim woman you’re visiting who’s looking forward to or or not looking forward to the birth of a child.

I talked to lots of midwives who, visited. I talked to some in Morocco and Afghanistan, who, visit in homes, and we we kept on hammering away at this brief prayer to try to find, make it suitable. And it mentions if you look at it in your text, in your handbook at some time, you’ll you’ll find that it mentions that, Mary mentions Mary and and her son, who were delivered from the from the safely from the pain of childbirth and, to pray that, like Mary, you will, this woman may be freely be be freed and, have safe, childbirth. Now I would urge you very much, to to think about putting praying with Muslim women very, very high on your list, and I don’t think that Muslims are gonna be they will probably welcome it. I go to a home, a Muslim home in Bahrain, and I’ve been going there.

Every time I go to Bahrain, and I must have been there 25 times or more, every time I go, I get in touch with this family because they like to me to come and visit them, so I quite often go as I’ve been I was introduced first by a doctor who was treating one of the members of the family, and, but the women members of the family, didn’t know Arabic. They were Pakistani. They knew Urdu at that time. This was 25 years ago. So I was asked if I would translate, so I went in that capacity.

And before I left, the host asked me, will you pray? Oh, no. The it’s the doctor urged me to, and she asked the host that I might pray for them, so I did. I wouldn’t have taken the initiative. But every time every time from thereon, the head of the family has collected his 22 family members also or told them to come or they came, and and I’ve been asked to pray for that family.

And my prayers get a little bit longer, and I sometimes introduce a couple of verses of scripture. They’re very happy. Sometimes I say, well, I was at the meeting with the Christians this morning and I was reading to them, this verse, and I told them this and this and this. Okay. But, the whole family is there.

Now they all speak Arabic, but and I I don’t really speak much Arabic, so I carry on, and we have have prayers in Urdu. And, the the leader of the home, the the man who is my host, his he says, when you pray, I fear fear then I feel the nearness of of God. And there is something about it’s not evangelism, but it’s it’s standing in the presence or sitting in the presence of God, and so he is definitely working and present. Perhaps there’s something very moving sometimes to even to listen to somebody, praying if they’re really in touch with God. Somehow, some of this comes across to him at least.

And, he now he I bring him books, and he likes reading Christian books. He’s got the the Cross of Christ by John Stott in in in Urdu. He’s got a whole range of things that over the years I’ve brought him, and I’m sure that not just he reads, people in that house. And he’s he’s grown. He’s listened to Kenneth Craig when Kenneth Craig has come to Bahrain and given public lectures about the Christian faith and Christianity and Islam.

He’s coming nearer. He hasn’t come to faith, but, but we recognize each other as people of prayer and people of faith and people of devotion. And praying with women or praying with men for that matter, if you’re a man, this is very important. We are so close in this desire to speak with God, to come before God in some way, to submit, as it were. So let us use this wonderful privilege that Muslims will so often graciously grant us, to pray, pray silently if necessary, but to pray for them in public if they wish.

At the hospital bed side, there are often opportunities. There are no member no end end really to this. So I start early in your time. Don’t wait till you’re, sort of middle aged, and then I’m trying to encourage you to learn from my own slowness. So praise be to god, lord of the worlds.