Zwemer Center

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: Debate and Bible Study with Muslims

In this lecture, Vivienne Stacey explores the challenge of the programmed mind. Many people are trained to think and behave in particular ways. This can present a challenge when introducing new ideas, particularly when the ideas are in conflict with current thinking. How can we discuss the Bible and engage in fruitful debate with 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. If you want to access Carl Pfander’s book, it can be downloaded here.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Vivienne Stacey’s Lecture on debate and Bible study with Muslims: 

We’re going to look at the subject of the program mind. In the handout, which you have in your collection handbook, I’ve said the problem of the program mind, but I I’m I think I shall change it in the next edition if there is one, and make it the challenge of the program mind because the program mind, can be and is, as I hope to show, a a great possibility or challenge for us. Now, you might wonder what I’m talking about when I talk about the programmed mind, but I’ve decided that this is a very good way of describing, some of the, ways that that some Muslims think. There it’s like, having a program on your computer. It is brilliant, but it goes only one way.

It goes as it has been set. And, the particularly men, I think, have an overdose, Muslim men, of, the program Mind. I maybe I’m being a bit too, I’m just sort of joking a bit, but women don’t have this so much. They’re not so programmed, but let me just explain it. But I here I find 3 aspects of the program mind, 3 things that make, people think along a certain way.

There’s the learning by rote system in education, which stresses memorization more than comprehension. That’s certainly a program. It’s a way of education. I don’t really want to be critical of Muslims and, of, eastern ways or root systems because I find, some of the western ways of education also questionable. I find it questionable that we learn the theory and then do the practice.

I was just thinking recently how much Jesus, sort of he did things with his disciples, and they analyzed it afterwards as far as I can see. So I feel that that’s a perhaps it’s a more lively way, a realistic way, to live. The worker, as I’ve quoted before from the Fins, the worker is trained by his work. Get on with it and don’t sit for too long in courses, but, practice and then analyze and, then practice and discuss it in this way. So we’re not being necessarily critical, but it is a fact of life, I think, that the rote system in education, which stresses memorization more than comprehension, runs right through the Middle East and through Asia and probably Africa.

It in Cyprus, it operates, I notice, where I live. And then there’s the Islamic attention to detail with regulations for every aspect of life. I was once in a middle gulf Muslim country, a gulf state or gulf country, and, I was staying with an American family, and this American, worked with a Pakistani Muslim in his job. And the Pakistani Muslim learned that I was coming to stay. And he said I I and he learned that I was a writer.

He he said, I’ve never met a writer. I would like to meet her. So it was all properly set up in my host’s home that I should meet this young man. And when we were discussing, I was asking him what he felt about his visit to Mecca and how he enjoyed the Hajj and so on and so forth. And then I said, oh, yeah.

Well, we also I’m also on pilgrimage, but I’m not going to to Mecca, and I’m not, going to any particular city, except that I am like Abraham, and I’m seeking the city which is above. And I quoted, Hebrews. So he realized that I was quoting the bible, and I quote we were talking in Urdu, and I quoted it in Urdu. Anyway, he suddenly realized that pass possibly the Bible was in Urdu, his language. And, I said, yes, the Bible’s in Urdu.

And I said, I do have one copy with me. If you would allow me to present it to you, I I would be very happy to do that. So he was very pleased. So I gave, this much prayed for bible to him, and I went off to to another city and and then to a further city, and 3 weeks later came back to stay in the same place. So my host said, so and so, he’s, asked if he may have another interview with you, and, so he’s coming this evening, and, he’s got a question.

So I was wondering through the afternoon what the question was, and the the question turned out to be, where of I’ve read what you told me. You told me Genesis, you told me some of the Psalms of David, and you told me Matthew. So I’ve read all this, but I have a question. Where are the rules? Where are the regulations?

So we had a long chat about that. But, the Islamic attention to detail with regulations for every aspect of life. If you’re ever if you’re ever in charge of an institution as I once was, you might be responsible indirectly, at least, for some building. And, this was a major a minor matter. We needed to build a toilet somewhere in the grounds for a gardener.

So I don’t like, things that are built on the skew wiff, as we say, but, so I instructed how exactly the toilet and where it should be built. But, it was slightly off. It wasn’t very off. But the reason, of course, was that, it the position of a toilet is very important because of the direction of Mecca, and you shouldn’t squat in in the wrong way. You have to be not being sort of dishonorable to the direction for prayer.

So, well, I got on very lightly. I’ve only had a few inches. The toilet was off The building was off a bit, a few inches. But a a neighboring institution had its toilets smashed because they were directly facing Mecca in the way that, would do do dishonor to that direction. So for every aspect of life, there is a detail.

So there’s that, and it’s, part of the programmed situation. And then the emphasis on the memorization of the Quran. So we’ve been talking about that a bit earlier in the last, time, the last session that we had. The emphasis on the memorization of the Quran and the recitation of the Quran in Arabic, of course. So lots of people learn parts of the Quran.

Lots of children go to a Koranic school, a madrasah, and girls go, boys go separately. And, sometimes women who can’t read but, who are wanting to learn a bit of Arabic and how to say something of the Quran, they go to another time to learn to recite the Quran in the proper way, parts of it or all of it. So here is then what I’m calling the programmed mind, programmed by the rote system of education, programmed by the attention to detail for every aspect of life, regulation for every aspect of life, they automatically know what to say and do. And, the emphasis on the memorization of the Quran. Now I want us to look at this this, diagram, which will be in your folder or in your handbook, and you will wonder what I’m up to, but I hope I hope to make it clear in about 5 minutes.

So here, in the diagram, I want to explain how I think, the program mind in relation certainly to yeah. I would say in relation to the Quran and the subjects that Muslims discuss, got what I call, set up and, how this whole thing got fossilized. Well, when I explain it, it will be very clear. Well, until I’ve done so, it probably won’t be, but it arises actually, what I have to say, this debate form. This is meant to be a debate form.

It’s, is part of Urdu culture. There are 2 100,000,000 people who speak Urdu, so it’s quite well worthwhile learning. I keep you’ve got a lot of people to talk to. Urdu, is a was grew up as a kind of, came to being as part of the camp language. It was a camp language of the Mughals.

It belongs to the golden age of Urdu literature and to the famous Mogul kings like Jahangir and Akbar Akbar and few others of those famous people of the golden age of Islam in India. And, so Urdu became eventually the a court language as well, and it developed a lovely literature. But among its, cultural patterns was the debating form, and there were debates held. They were held between Muslim groups, one one group, one side of the debate, and the other the other. One of my Muslim friends said he was going to a debate, and I said, what are you gonna debate?

He said, we’re gonna debate whether the dead can hear. So when they’re waiting for the resurrection, can they hear or can’t hear? So I said yes, and the debate form, was not just related to Christian Muslim debates, which became famous in about, the 18, fifties, but, they relate to something much more in the whole cultural scene. So Muslims would debate with Muslims. Muslims would debate with Hindus.

Muslims would debate with Christians. But in this system, in the city of Agra, about 3 hours journey by train from south of Delhi in India, a very well known Muslim divine called Rahmatullah challenged doctor Fander. Doctor Fander was a a a church missionary society missionary, I think, from Germany event originally, and he was an apologist. He wrote, he wrote, eventually, some books and so on. Anyway, he was the resident clergyman, the resident Christian sort of apologist in the city of Agra, a Muslim city.

And, Rehmatullah, who was well known as as a leader of Muslims and Beta, challenged him, to a public debate. And he didn’t really want you can read Fandir’s diaries, and he didn’t really want to do it in public, but, he thought that, under the circumstances, he’d better do it. So the whole all the rules for debate were all set. You had to have, some judges. You had participants on each side, and the participants, there’d be a leader.

That would be Rahmatullah, and he would have a few assistants. He had 2 that I can remember. He had, Imad ad Din, and he had Sufta Ali, who I remember them because they became Christians later, but he had some others. And, Fander had Thomas Wolpe French. His biography is over there, a little pamphlet, a very booklet that I wrote.

Thomas Warpi French, who was a very young missionary at that point, and he must have had some somebody else as well. So there were the participants, and then there was the time frame, possibly 2 days that they would meet for so many hours. There were the subjects set, and at the end, there should be the winners and losers. Okay. Now the subject set for that debate and for practically all the debates between Christians and Muslims at that time were the unity of God, and that involved the question of the mistaken view of the Trinity, the divinity or sonship of Jesus, the reliability of the Bible, and the mission of Muhammad.

And, so that was all set up, and they debated, and you can read not only about the debates at Agra, you can read the text if you want in in Urdu, in Hyderabad. I’ve seen the texts, but I’ve not read them. So the debate form. But what happened after the debate in Agra was that, and I don’t really know who would be considered the winner, but, what happened was Rehmatullah, wrote to Fander a a a kind of small pamphlet, and then Fander wrote a small pamphlet back. And then these pamphlets started to get a bit fatter and, so they were small books, and then they sort of, in the end, turned into books.

So but then Rehmatullah went off to Mecca, and he took his his pamphlets and his books to Mecca, and they got them translated into Arabic. And some of this apologetic and polemical, material started to circulate Urdu setting in India, but in the Arab speaking world. And it became, there’s a lot of apologetic is when you defend your own faith. Polemical is when you attack and engage with a another faith, and a lot of this was polemical, unfortunately. Well, it so happened that as, time went by and we came into the 20th century, the frame the cultural framework, and I’ve put dots for it or sort of dashes, started to fall away.

But, when Christian men met Christian men, Muslim men and the other way around, they tended to talk in the coffee shops and the tea shops of the subcontinent and the the Arabian world too, in the coffee shops. They tended to talk on these 3 4 subjects. And I could guarantee that even today, from Morocco to Istanbul or from Morocco to even to parts of Central Asia, if, there were Christians and Muslims in a tea shop or a coffee shop, men, they would be discussing these subjects which somehow have got set in concrete. And the problem from my point of view, and I think from yours, is that because these are things that, first, the subjects are so set, they are also sort of answers that Muslims have got in their minds at programmed answers for programmed questions. And, the means that the Christian has to answer the Muslim objection.

So it means that the initiative is always with the with the Muslim, and the Christian is answering. So what I think we need are are new agendas, new subjects, and, for Christians to be to take initiatives. And women have got a better chance at that because they are not quite so caught into the this set agenda as men. So it’s good chance that you have, as women, to, to take initiative, to find different ways and new ways of discussing, the interaction of our faiths and presenting the faith of God in who reveals himself in Christ. So that’s, that’s a a major question.

So now, today, there’s some revival of the debate debate form by Ahmed DeDatt and Josh McDowell and a few others, and we do come across debates, in this part of the century. I remember that Sweetman, who is a theologian in Britain and is an expose on Islamic theology and some of his books, at least one of them is in the library here. I saw it last night. He had a he went around Pakistan in 1954, and he gay he debated with Muslims in public. We haven’t had many debates in public since then, but, until now when things are getting there’s there’s a bit more of that sort of thing.

But, he came to the last point in a debate, and he if he pressed one more point, he would have won that debate, but he didn’t press the last point. And so somebody came to him afterwards and said, why didn’t you, say this to finish and win that debate? And he said, I would have won the debate, but I would have lost the man. And, anyway but I’m wanting to say to you, that, as women, you have a greater opportunity in some ways than men. You don’t have to, you can you have a more, clear field.

You’re not so tied into the coffee shop agenda, which, is this, these things. You can take the initiative much more because, Muslim women are not quite so, caught in the program mind, at least on these issues. But they are affected by the rote system in education, the Islamic attention to detail, and the emphasis on the memory on memorization. But they are not quite so caught into this agenda. So look for other agendas in which you have the initiative, in which there is a possibility of really helping people to think and to, understand and to respond to Christ.

So I have listed some possible agendas. Sometimes, it can be taking subjects, somehow talking about subjects like suffering or abortion or purity or impurity. Some of these issues are very, much the concern of Muslims, and particularly women suffering. Abortion. And then the whole question of purity and impurity.

I mean, you can’t say your prayers at a certain time, the that is the purity, These are issues. These are things that, you could discuss at length rather than, you can introduce the subjects. You can talk to the things that are concerning the the right these issues of life, which concern, things that concern Hagar. There it wasn’t so much theology, but there was theology there, because we come to the God who hears, the God who sees. But, there are all these real human problems of, abuse and, of exploitation, problems of being a refugee.

How many million Muslim women are refugees? It’s 1,000,000. Some of these issues, attitude to suffering and so on. I have on this paper, as you see, listed things, but you can add to it. Studies on Exodus.

I don’t mean the book of Exodus. I mean going out. Exodus. Pilgrimage. I’m always on pilgrimage, I tell my Muslim friends, but, I’m not a pilgrim.

I I don’t get the title of Haji because I’m not there yet. Okay. Many possibilities. And I have but the things I’ve listed here are mostly biblical subjects, but we can there are many ways in which we can engage in deep conversations, I think, which I hope will lead to the study of the scripture. We can have I had a real change in my in my life when I I decided to work towards in-depth discussion based on scripture and with engaging, in bible study with Muslims, I didn’t make it my aim to have loads of conversations.

I I had them naturally as I traveled. Somehow or the other, we talked about this and that. But one off, that’s fine. But, pray that God will give you opportunity to to study in-depth with 1 or 2 Muslim friends. One friend, 2 friends.

I think it will make a difference to your your ministry, and, you will learn, as I have learned. I learned a lot from the people that I studied with. You cannot study the Bible with anybody and not both of you, some way or the other, learn, and it’s a rich experience. So we’re looking for people with whom we may do bible study. So think about the life of Christ with the references to the Old Testament.

That’s one possibility. Think about, selections from Genesis, the lives of the patriarch patriarchs. All of the basis, basic Christian theo Christian theological themes are in Genesis. They come out of a kind of experience of life and the records of what happened, which, are very meaningful to Muslims. They identify with many people and names in Genesis.

Then, you could study the themes of Exodus. I mean, not Exodus as a book, but themes of going out, Exodus. Themes of pilgrimage, themes of servanthood, themes about community, umrah, themes about the nations, issues of this sort. If you’re going to study a gospel, if you’re gonna study with a a mystic, a Sufi, then the gospel of John, I suggest, rather than the Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But, and Sufis, by the way, somebody mentioned Sufis the other day.

They are not a sect, but they because Sufis come from Shia background or they come from most quite a lot or from Sunni background. So a Sufi is a movement. Sufism is a movement. It’s a mystic. It’s the there’s the mystical movement within Islam.

So now I have here listed an evangelistic bible study which you could use with an individual or a group, And I have used this piece of scripture over 100 of times with individual Muslims and with groups. When I’m a guest in a house and they ask me if I will, lead some worship, Muslim home, I’m asked, several places in several countries. Okay? Then I like a passage like numbers 214 to 9 as the story of the brazen serpent. I like it or not the story.

I like to call it the record or the account, because if you use story in some languages, it means fiction. So you have to think about which language you’re using. It does in Urdu. So I’ll roughly, just in these 2 or 3 minutes, run through this, why it’s so appropriate. There’s the prophet mentioned, Moses, who’s known as Kalim Ulla, the converser with God, in both in the both the Old Testament and the Quran.

This prophet and his community were traveling. The the community is made up of tribes and groups of families. They were people who worshiped 1 god. They fasted. They prayed.

They gave alms. Their hearts were not always pure. And there’s a deep idea of sin in this, the breaking of relationship. They murmured against God, ingratitude. For the Muslim, it’s a sin, but, you can see here, it breaks relationship.

There’s, the severity of God’s punishment. These people were bitten, and some of them died. There’s God’s remedy for their sin. There’s the healing that came through the remedy. Who would not be healed?

Who what would happen to those who were not healed? Heal healing through faith. Now here, I would, emphasize that god is great. Muslims are saying this every day from every mosque in the whole world. God is great.

God is great. Okay? God is great. He can choose how he say he he saves. He chose to save, one family, the family of Noah, from the flood.

He he chose that way to save a family at that time. He chose the brazen serpent idea or actuality, if you like, that through the arrangements that he made, he would save a nation, at that time, his chosen nation. And in God who is great can choose his own ways, and God who is great chose a way to save the world. And, if you have a receptive audience, you can go on to John 3, verses 14 to 15. As Moses lifted up the servant, even so serpent, even so shall the, son of man be lifted up.

So that is, God who is great can choose his way. There’s always this objection by men to the cross. In Islam, not always, but often. Sometimes women don’t object because they don’t really understand that, but, it’s something that comes into the mind of Muslim. God is great, and you see his greatness in saving one family, in saving one nation, and his greatness in the arrangements he’s made to save the world.

From this passage in Numbers 21, you you learn about intercession. You learn about prayer, and you can, look through this and study it yourself, but I commend this passage for one off bible studies, or a starter before the, main course.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: Women in the Qur’an and the Bible

In this lecture, Vivienne Stacey explores how both the Quran and the Bible represent women. 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 women in the Qur’an and the Bible: 

This session is about Muslim women and scripture. And by scripture, I mean Quran and Bible. I mean their scripture and our scripture, but it’s it’s theirs their their their bible as much as our bible. And, personally, I like to read the Quran because I spend a lot of time thinking and working with Muslims, so I think it’s good if we study the Quran, which is for them scripture, and of course, the bible, which can be for all people scripture. But, so first of all, let’s be sure that we take a careful look at what many people hold in such high honor, the Quran.

It’s held in extreme honor because God is eternal. It’s one of his attributes where he’s he’s, well, he’s speaker. Let me say he’s speaker, and as the eternal speaker, he speaks the eternal word, which is the eternal Quran. But, we are wanting our Muslim friends, to read the Bible, and, I think it’s one of my ambitions always to be able to persuade Muslims to read the Bible, and I delight in studying the Bible with them and helping them in one way or another anyway to read it. There’s a great depth of devotion and reverence for the Quran, among Muslims, and there is an acknowledgment in the Quran, that it confirms the previous scriptures.

It confirms the law given to Moses, the Psalms which came down on David, and the Injeel which came down on Jesus according to the Quran. So the Quran confirms the word is tastiq. It’s, like confirming your ticket. It’s it’s stamped or it’s approved. It’s valid.

So the previous scriptures are confirmed. They’re not Muslims say that whatever is needed from them is included in the Quran, But there’s no reason why a Muslim should not be very open to reading part of the Bible because it is confirmed. Now here’s a a prayer which I believe I read the other day. It’s a prayer for readers of the Quran, but I want you to I’m going to read it, and you can see that it’s, a prayer with which we can closely identify. So we are people of the script of scripture.

We come near in our acknowledgment of 1 God, even though we view him differently. And, we come near in the question of prayer. Muslims and Christians are people of prayer. This was, a text, a prayer book bought in Cairo by, Constance Padwick and included in her book, of Muslim Devotions. You’ll find it, I think, in the library, Muslim Devotions.

It’s got a lot of prayers, and you would enjoy reading some of them. So here it is, increase our longing for it. And by this, the man person praying means increase our longing for the word of God in the Quran. Multiply our delight in it to the number of raindrops and the leaves on the trees. Through it, perfect our confidence in the guidance of the good and the glad tidings of men of spiritual experience.

Bring to our minds what we have forgotten of it. Teach us what we do not know of its radiant truths and secret touches of meaning. Make it for us an imam. Now an imam is generally a religious guide, a person, but make it for us an imam, a religious guide, and light and guidance and mercy in the abode below, here in this world, and the abode everlasting, and grant us the reading of it in the hours of night and the seasons of the day. So we can identify very closely with this prayer.

And, when I study with Muslims, I generally ask them, let’s pray before we look at the scripture, and we can not offend our Muslim friends by using a prayer of David, who is a prophet in Islam. Psalm a 119 verse 18, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. And then I often ask my Muslim friend, will you pray this prayer? Because, teaching people to pray is also appropriate in discipling. So they will not be offended to quote the words of the prophet David as a prayer, and there are other pieces that you can choose from the Psalms, very useful and wonderful prayers.

Here’s a collect which, I have sometimes used. I’ve read it. It comes from the Book of Common Prayer. Blessed lord, who cause all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, help us so to hear them to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest that through patience and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the hope of eternal life, which you have given in our savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

It’s a very, very ancient prayer, going back centuries. So when you’re doing bible study, teach your person studying with you to pray as well, to pray before reading. And, if you can get them to pray I I had a problem with someone with whom I studied Romans for a long time, and, this young man I’ve mentioned before. And he well, he thought I should do the praying, and I thought he should do the praying. And so we tried to work it out.

But he was afraid that he would make a mistake, so that’s why he was hesitant. So if you tar start with something simple, which is written, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law, He’s not like to make a mistake on that. So when he’s got confidence about that, then something a bit more. And then another person who, became a Christian, actually, and came to, we used to meet sometimes, who was my bank manager. And he always wanted me to pray because he thought I was more holy than him, and I assured him that, we would one in Christ, and, there wasn’t this trouble really.

So, he his prayers are just as valid as mine, but it’s quite difficult sometimes. So start early with prayer and scripture. Now here is the, key part of it, perhaps. How you read a holy book depends on your on your background. So Muslims who are schooled in things Quranic, will treat the Bible as they treat the Quran.

How would they treat it any other way? Because they don’t know another way. So whatever is their approach to the Quran, they will apply it to the bible. And I think herein for us lies something that we, need to think about very much. So let me tell you a bit about how Muslims, use the Quran.

I was once invited to a Quran reading. Ladies have groups of people who groups of ladies who get together, perhaps once a month or once in 2 weeks. It’s not a it’s not a well, you might call it a Quran study, but it’s a Quran reading. And in Banu, I remember being invited. I wasn’t able to go for some reason, but what would happen was, would there be, say, 30 women present, and they would read the whole of the Quran in one morning.

Now they would do it because if you look carefully at the Qurans you’ve got, you’ll probably find them divided into 30 sections, 60 sections, or a 120 sections. So if you’ve got a big group, it’ll be a 120. If it’s a medium sized group, they may use the 60 sections. If it’s a group of, 30, they’ll use 30. And everyone, has a section, section 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on.

And, everyone starts off at the same time, and they read aloud. And, if, if number 1 has finished and number 2 is behind, when you finished your section, you’ll help number 2, And so you you might be reading again, so to help her help her finish. So everyone will feel that they when they finished, it takes about 2 hours, that they have been greatly blessed because the whole of the divine scripture has been read aloud in their presence at that time. One of my friends, went to a Quran reading. It was a group of men.

It’s men who who meet with men and women with women for this, and, he was present and, observed. So the actual reading of scripture was very important to them even though they obviously only concentrated on one section. So if you give a gospel of Matthew to a Muslim and you don’t tell them how to read it, maybe, this lady will go home and and and decide, well, yes, I I I like that Christian, and it’s true. The Quran confirms the previous scriptures, and here is part of the previous scripture. I’ll read it.

And her natural way to read is probably to read aloud, and then she’ll read it fast aloud, and probably start at the beginning and get through the whole of Matthew in the same way that she would tackle a piece of the Quran if she was one of the 30, if you don’t tell her otherwise. And my mistake has been that, I’ve given out 1,000 and perhaps tens of thousands of scriptures in my time, but, it was only some years ago that I thought I better start giving instruction about how one should read. So how should you read? You pray first, and then you don’t have to read the whole lot quickly, aloud. You can read as aloud, but, better to take a a section, perhaps even a chapter or piece of a chapter, and read it and think about it and pray about it and see what God is saying to you about it.

And then in instructing a Muslim on this, if it’s time to explain them explain to them how you read the scripture this morning and and and what it did for you. Or if you could if nothing happened to you in the morning, it didn’t do much for you, try last Thursday or something, okay, So that they see how a scripture applies. Now I’ll just give you an example. I was flying from Lahore to Peshawar. That’s about an hour’s flight, in Pakistan, and, I was sitting next, to a a nice looking lady, obviously, middle class or upper middle class, and so I just greeted her.

We greeted each other, and then I, in my rather relaxed fashion perhaps, I just carried on doing something I was doing. But after a little while, she started talking to me. She was curious. I like curiosity. It’s very strong, draw.

Okay? So I tend to say nothing to start with, and then people get very curious. And so, anyway, so she asked me what I did in Pakistan, and, so I said, well, I’m working at a a bible training center, helping to train leaders, women leaders for the church in Pakistan. I have different answers according to what people ask me. They’re all true.

But, anyway, that’s one of them. Being a writer is another one. So she said, oh, she said, I’ve got a I’ve got a Christian maid. And I said, oh, really? Yeah.

She and she said, my my Christian maid, she says, your prophet, is alive, and ours is dead. So I said, oh, well, our prophet is alive. He is And I agreed with that, you see. I didn’t pursue that theirs was dead, but I thought, well, I’d never dare say that to a to a I wouldn’t have said that to her, but, good for the Christian mate that can say it and get away with it, and it’s remembered, and it’s thought about, and she tells a stranger on a plane. So so I said after a while, then, what do you do?

And she said, I’m in the air force. So I said, oh, I didn’t know Pakistan had women in its air force. And she said, yes. There are about 6. So I said, oh, so what do you do in the air force?

Oh, I’m a psychiatrist, and I help in screening candidates. So that’s what she did. Then she started attacking the Christian position, and she quoted Maurice Bucail, his book on Quran, Bible, and Science, if that’s the right way around, which first appeared in French and now is in many languages. Well, she couldn’t remember his name, so I supplied the name, but I knew the book. And so she so she went on, and I let her attack for a few about 10 minutes or so.

And then I said, well, have you ever read the Bible? And she said, no. And I said, well, do you think it’s fair? I mean, you’re a well educated person. Do you think it’s fair to attack a book you haven’t read?

And she eventually agreed. So I said, now, if I if I send you a copy of the Bible, will you read it? And she said, yes, she she would. Alright, so I spent another 5 or 10 minutes explaining to her how I read the Bible and how she might read the Bible, and, we talked about other things as well. So it was all sealed up, really.

When I got back, I was to send her a copy of the Bible, and, she would read it. So I wrote a letter when I sent the Bible. I wrote a letter saying all the things I had already said, so that she’s gotten down for the record about how to read. And, I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her again, but I suppose if I’d met her 15 years previously, I wouldn’t have thought so much about explaining to her carefully how she should read the Bible, but I realize that, there’s nothing else to go by, is it, if the Quran is your holy book and you know how people read it?

You’re obviously gonna apply whatever you know about the way to read a holy book to this holy book. Whether you think it’s so holy or not so holy is another matter, but you will consider it scripturate in a sense because the Quran confirms the previous scripture. Sometimes people use Muslim women use the Quran in different ways, but but we’re trying to help, the Muslim woman in in reading the bible. Now I suppose a large percent of Muslim women are illiterate, and I meet quite a lot of Muslim illiterate women. I met 1, when I was traveling by boat in Bangladesh.

You do most things by boat, it seems, in Bangladesh. And, so I was on this 3 hour journey. And I was sitting next to a woman on the boat, and she was a Muslim, and she spoke Urdu. It was her mother tongue. She must have been a Bahari or something.

I don’t know who she was exactly, but she spoke Urdu. And so we talked about all this and that, and, she didn’t read very much. I don’t I think she might have read a little, so, I asked her when we got on to the subject of Christian things, have you ever, do you know have you do you know any verses from the bible? And, no, she didn’t. Maybe I asked her, what is this around your neck?

And she said, oh, this is a charm. And I said, okay, well, I don’t think I said okay, but, this is a charm. I said, well, what’s in it? And she said, a verse from the Quran. So I said, oh, do you think God prefers his words around our neck or in our hearts?

And so she said, oh, well, in our hearts. So I said, shall I teach you a verse of God for you to put in your heart? And, she said that she’d like that. So I told her a verse of, a verse from the Bible. I actually used Romans 5 verse 8.

God commends his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So I taught it to her in Urdu. I explained it. She didn’t have any theological hang ups about it, because she didn’t know so much theology, I think. So there was no problem.

She was willing to accept that cry Christ died for her, and and she she studied the verse, learned the verse. And we went over it and over it and, explaining it as well. So she put it in her heart to hang to put there rather than to hang around her neck. And I gave her one of these nice calendar cards with the verse on it. We should cash in on the fact of rote learning.

I’m going to talk about rote learning later, but, there’s a great facility for rote learning. Some of these people are very good at learning by rote, much better than I am, and, memorizing and so on. So don’t let’s leave it I I admire the navigators. They use lots of texts to teach new believers, but what about lots of texts to teach people who we hope will believe? Because, rote learnings right into the culture, it’s right into the, Quranic way of doing things.

And if you can persuade a Muslim woman that, this is a word of God, Mostly, they will accept it is, and they will put it in their hearts. And I can tell you other women who’ve been influenced by a verse like that. I I get several of these. I I go in for them, and I I find them very useful, and I think I was, yeah, well, I don’t know if I’ve got time to tell you any more of my stories, but sometime or the other, I’ll tell you another story. So I want to stress that, we can use Bible verses like Romans 5 verse 8, we can use John 17 verse 3, and this is life eternal that we might know him, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.

Not too, revolutionary. It’s not too revolutionary because most Muslims would not regard Jesus as one of the 6 prophets, main prophets, but it has the idea of relationship. This is life eternal that we may know Thee, the only true God. Okay. One God.

1 Timothy 2 verse 5 to 6 a, there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Okay? Not too revolutionary, but it’s got the gospel there. There is one God, one God, one mediator. They’re used to mediators, and, one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

Okay. It’s, it’s a seed. It’s a word. It’s something that’s it’s a a very important type of seed, that kind of verse. So we could look out for these things.

I think the my basic point this morning is definitely Because people read the scripture that they have in certain way, they will apply it. I mean, if we’re given the Koran, we tend to look at it to start with as the way we look at the Bible, and we don’t appreciate it. And that’s why most of us don’t appreciate it because we haven’t studied its structure. We haven’t considered, how Muslims use it, and we’re looking at something from a different perspective. We have to try and educate each other, I think, But, we’re on strong ground because the Quran confirms the previous scriptures.

I mean, I give, these kind of cards to to taxi drivers, and, I have they’re not not women, but, anyway, taxi drivers. I give them to other people, give them to women in shops and so on when it’s appropriate, not in every part of the world, because it’s not appropriate to use literature in every part of the world. It’s a bit dangerous in some countries, but or offensive or anyway, I think it’s very valuable to be able to give these kinds of things. And, one woman I know, to whom I gave a card on which Romans 5 verse 8 is was written, She was illiterate. Well, when I went back to her home, she lived in a village, and I went back to her home once, and she said she had put her card into the Quran.

She had taught it to her children, this verse. And, so she put it inside the Quran, taught it to her children, and she was being visited many times by, by Christians, and she was acting as a midwife or birth attendant or something of this sort in her village areas. And, she came to faith. One of the Christians who visited her came and said to me, so and so is ready to become a believer, ready to come to Christ. So I said, well, okay.

That’s fine. She said, will you come with me and talk with her? So I said, well, I’ll come with you and you talk with her, but anyway, we went. I said, I don’t I think she should we don’t I said, I don’t think we should in any way we should suggest to her that she she accept Christ by herself. But, anyway, we went, and, we talked to her about the verse, Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and so on.

She did have a door. So, so I said, I’m gonna act this out. So I went to the door. I went outside the door, and I knocked and so on, and we did it all, acted it out. So we explained more, gave her more teaching, and said, well, when we’ve gone, why don’t you pray?

And you’ve you’ve learned a lot about Jesus and, not just this, but many other things. Okay? So you ask him into your life. And she did. She when we mixed we got in touch with her, she had invited him into her life.

And, as a birth attendant, she went to many homes, a midwife. So she had many opportunities, illiterate, really, but able to understand, able to to to do what we had done and give her, one of these and explain it, but able to freely move around that community. As far as I know, she’s still there, still doing it, not baptized. If she got baptized, I think she would be, extracted or, sent away from her home and community, but she’s getting on very nicely, this way. I hope the day will come when there will be many others and they will can be more open in their, faith and in their expression.

Meanwhile, she’s a quiet evangelist of our Lord Jesus Christ. So remember the power of learning by heart, pieces of scripture and helping other people to do that. Remember, to try to teach to pray and how to pray before reading the scripture. Muslims in the very first Surah asked to be shown the straight way, the way. Well, we we’re wanting, this kind of thing, and I’ve I have correspondence with Muslims who are doing exactly the same as me.

We are seeking the way. We are walking in the way. Christ is for us the way and the truth and the life, and, scripture, play plays a very large part in this. So this is Muslim women in scripture. We’re gonna go on and develop our thinking about the problem of the of rote learning.

I put it down in this sheet as the problem of the programmed mind, but I think I should have put the challenge of the programmed mind because it’s all problems have their challenges, and they can have creative, answers. So we’ll come to that next.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: Hagar And The God Who Sees Her

In this Lecture, Vivienne Stacey explores the biblical account of Hagar and how her life might speak to contemporary Muslim women. 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 Hagar and the God who sees her:

This morning, we’re going to look at, Hagar in the bible, and we’re gonna think about how she speaks, you know, in one sense to the modern world. It’s a very up to date story, the story of Hagar. She was a she sort of was a one parent was a one parent family. She was an abused woman. She was oppressed.

She fell into some of the problems that we see in society today. So she’s got a lot to say to the modern world. Anyway, I do acknowledge, a lot of inspiration for this study from Kat Karen Darnell, and the article that she wrote was the identity of a Muslim woman finding oneself in the religion of Hagar. And that’s 25 pages, I think, in her essay. So let’s look now at Genesis 16, and, maybe our friend here would read verse 1.

Okay. Okay. Now Sarah, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. So you want me to continue? No.

I think I’d like you just to stop at verse 1. That was at verse 1? Mhmm. Good. First, I should say that, maybe Hagar is one of the outstanding women of the Bible, but we’re put off by the bad press that she seems to get in Galatians.

If you remember in Galatians what said about her, Galatians 4 21 to 31, but I think we might pay more attention to her especially in the Genesis account. And she’s got a lot to say to us and to the Muslims of our time, Muslim women particularly, in regard to identity, relationships, polygamy, abuse, divorce, and some more things. Now her name, Hagar, does anybody know where it comes from or what it means or Hagar, it actually is some in in Egyptian Arabic, it’s pronounced, I think, Hajar. Hagar is it would be it would be a Hajar it would be sorry Haga Hajar it’s pronounced. So let me just show this on the write it down, because I want you to see the radicals here.

Let’s take the radicals. We were talking about radical letters the other day, or the other week, or the other month, or whenever you happen to be listening. So, hejya, on hejya. Alright. Now let’s say that, the g and the j are the same because it’s in in in Arabic, yes, in Arabic, where words are pronounced slightly differently in different parts of the Arab world, So you may get, the word Hajj in Urdu.

You may get you will get Hajj in some parts of the Arabic speaking word, and in Egypt, it will be Hag. So you see j and g is interchangeable in that pronunciation. Okay. Now the radical letters here are h, j, or g, and r. This word is connected with another word that you do know even if you can’t connect it quickly.

Can you think of it? The word Hijra, Hijra, Hijra or Hijeret in Urdu, Hijra in Arabic. It is the flight or migration. It’s the flight of especially used for the flight of Muhammad, from Mecca to Medina, and that is the historic start of of Islam. So Islam did not start when Muhammad was born.

It started when he migrated from Mecca to Medina. Correct, EJ? Right. Good. And, but Muslims, of course, think Islam is the original faith of mankind, and so Adam was the first Muslim, if you think of it in terms of the first one prophet who submitted, the first human being.

So this word, a Hidurah, and the word Hagar are Hajar, are linked. And the word actually in Hijirah, you get Mahajarin, Mahajir, refugee, and Mahajarin refugees. So and the name, this name Hajar, is found on a seal. It was found in Jericho by archaeologists. There’s a name on a seal there.

It could be a nickname. It could be refugee, sort of little refugee or something. It may have been a camp name that was given. According to al Bukhari, there there are 9 volumes of Al Bukhari as you’ve probably found out. In Hadith number 578, a tyrant gave Hagar as a servant to Sarah.

But we find in this account in Genesis that Hagar finds identity through her relation to the creator god, the covenant God of Abraham. We’ll see this as we go through. Verse 2. Okay. So she said to Abram, the Lord has kept me from having children.

So go sleep with my maidservant. Perhaps I can build a family through her. This was Sarah Sarai’s initiative. She goes by the name Sarai here until later she’s given the name Sarah. And in a way, she’s she’s blaming god for not having children.

She’s concerned with her own honor rather than with god’s honor. This seems to be her proposition. Verse 3. Okay. And then Abram, agreed to what Sarah said.

So after Abram had been living in Canaan 10 years, Sarah took his wife, Sarah his wife, rather, took her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar, and gave her to her husband to be his wife. Yeah. Thank you. It’s, Sarai, I think, here still, isn’t it? Oh, Sarai.

I’m sorry. Hagar is appears as a non person. She’s not spoken to. She appears to be an object under Sarai’s control. In verse 3, we find that the maidservant becomes the second wife, and Sarai plans to build on Hagar according to the custom to build her family on Hagar.

Not all translations will say, wife. They may say concubine. They may say something else. But in Hebrew, the word for wife is isha. Isha.

It’s I s h s h a h. That’s in transliteration. And it’s not the word for concubine, which is piligish. I probably pronounced it incorrectly, but never mind. You spell it as a transliteration, p I l e g e s h.

So it is the word wife that is used. So Abraham, like, many people of his time, but also like many Muslims, has 2 wives. Verse 4. Okay. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Now you see this, when she got pregnant, she felt the honor and spiritual joy as Abraham’s wife and a prospective mother of a great nation, but she despised Sarai. So she went from the honor of being chosen to the pride of despising Sarai. Verse 5. Okay.

Then Sarai said to Abram, you are responsible for the wrong I’m suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me. So Sarai wanted to expel Hagar from the camp. Abraham loved Hagar and it was illegal for him to expel her according to the code of Hammurabi, section 146.

So he was in difficulties here. Verse 6. Your servant is in your hands, Abram said. Do with her whatever you think best. Then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her.

Abraham gave Hagar to Sarai. Is it Abram there or I, it’s Abram? Abram. Abram. Yep.

No. No. It’s I also am using Abraham. We should remember that her names are not changed later. So Abram gave Hagar to Sarai, to treat her as she wished.

Even Abram could not treat his wives equally. And you know the injunction in the Quran is treat your wives equally if you you can have 1 to 4, and that’s in the Quran, Sura 4 verse 3. So Sarai afflicted Hagar, looking down on her. As a woman, Sarai should have respected Hagar. That was her arrangement after all.

Hagar fled from what she saw in Sarah’s eyes. She knew that she was in for trouble, and she knew the desert route to Egypt. She was Egyptian, and so so she fled. Now in verses 4 to 7, we read three things, particularly. We see false pride, false blame, and false neutrality among these 3, Sarai, Sarai, Abram, and, Hagar.

A verse would you read verses 7 to 8? Okay. The angel of the lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert. It was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?

I’m running away from my mistress Sarai, she answered. So this is the first visit by an angel in the bible. And, this spring, is Muslims call it Zamzam, and they still bring water back when they go on pilgrimage from the wet from the spring of Zamzam. Obviously, it wouldn’t be in the same place because Zamzam’s in Arabia. The angel’s first word was what was the angel’s first word?

Hagar. What what was the angel’s first word? Hagar. Hagar. So it’s the first time anybody’s used her name, and the this is the representative of God, and he used her name.

For the first time, somebody calls her by name. God knows us and he finds us. She began to forget her pride. If God cared enough to send his angel to talk to her, she would listen. Where have you come from and where are you going?

That’s what she’s asked, and she says, from the face of my mistress Sarai. She gives some respect to Sarai, my mistress, but, she draws attent also draws attention to her own growing identity by saying, my mistress, where are you going? She doesn’t have an answer to that. She didn’t want to bear her son in Egypt outside the camp where people didn’t know God. Identity tells us where we are going.

Identity begins by asking God, and destination and purpose become clear. Verse 9. Okay. Then the angel of the lord told her, go back to your mistress and submit to her. So this is the angel’s second speech.

There was some dysfunction in Abram’s camp, but god said, go back and submit. That’s the true Islam in one sense. Islam without a capital, Islam one, submission. Hagar must return to the eyes and hands of her oppressor. Hagar would raise her son where he could learn about God and submission.

If she had stayed as a refugee in in Egypt, she he wouldn’t learn these things. Hagar now this is an issue that many Muslim women face when to submit and when to stay. Sometimes they feel that things are so difficult that they must leave. When to leave? And we can see it.

Twice, Hagar left. Once, she did it off her own initiative, and another time, she did it under God’s guidance. When to submit and when to stay, when to leave. A question for abused women. Verse 10.

Okay. The angel added, I will so increase your descendants that they will they will be too numerous to count. So that’s a promise, God’s promise. Verses 12 11 to 12 is an enunciation and in 3 parts. You look for the 3 parts of this enunciation.

Okay. The angel of the lord also said to her, you are now with child, and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him, And he will live in hostility toward all his brothers. Now you notice the enunciation.

There are three things. It’s the enunciation of a son, the naming of the child, and a prediction about his future. He will have a possession. And Hagar, through this enunciation, is now will now be included with such women as Hannah, to whom an annunciation was given, with Elizabeth and Mary. You can compare this annunciation with the one to Mary.

First, the naming by Allah and the naming, it’s very interesting to see that it means Ishmael means God hears. It’s the word Shama, hearing in in Arabic, s h a m a, you can transliterate, hearing, is one of the seven attributes of early Islamic Theology. The 7 attributes are hearing, seeing, life, purpose, will, speaking, knowing. So God is all hearing, all seeing. He is life.

He is purpose. He is will. He is eternally the speaker. God in his, capacity is the, eternal speaker, speaks the eternal word which is the Quran, and knowing. So hearing is one of these, and the name of her child will always remind her that God hears.

So he’s a very important person, Ishmael. And, god hears the oppressor as well as the oppressed. That’s of an interesting point. He is concerned for the afflictor as much as for the afflicted one. Abuse must stop.

God hears. And then, verse 13. Okay. She gave this name to the lord who spoke to her. You are the god who sees me.

For she said, I have now seen the one who sees me. That’s a most interesting verse, very important verse. He is the one who sees me. Basir is the word, b a s I r. That’s, one of the seven attributes of early in early Islamic theology, hearing and then seeing.

So, basir. So God sees her and she sees God. Here we start, we see the beginning of a, or the continuing of a two way relationship. Versus 15 to 16, miss out, 14. 14.

Uh-huh. 14 to 16. That is why the well was called Bir La La Ro. Am I how do you say that? Just how it goes.

Bir La Ro. Okay. And it it is still there between Kadesh and Bered. So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had born. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

So here we’ve got then the name of the son Ishmael, hearing, and the name of the well in memory of the encounter when she, Hagar, sees is aware of this two way relationship, having the word beser as part of the name, see seeing. If we I won’t, let us read, but you could read at your leisure. Genesis 17, verses 15 to 16, God’s promise to Abraham. Verse 17, Abraham took it badly. Verse 18, he’s has he prays, oh, that Ishmael might live before thee.

And, so there’s that section in verse 20. As for Ishmael, says God, I have heard thee. But let’s go on to 21. 21. Genesis 21, verse 9.

Okay. But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar, the Egyptian, had born to Abraham, was mocking. So Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had born unto Abraham, mocking, mocking. So Sarah would have interpreted Hagar’s presence at the party as a threat to Isaac’s inheritance. Verse 20 sorry, verse 10.

Verse 10. And she said to Abraham, get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac. So this was a great problem for Abraham. God reassures him in verses 11 to 12. And if you listen here, you’ll see he he reassures Abraham about this family problem on 4 areas.

He says, don’t worry. Do what Sarah tells you. Through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned, but Ishmael is your son also. Verses 11 to 12. Mhmm.

The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. But God said to him, do not be so distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. In the next verse, verse 14, we find Abraham, he’s not stingy. He was generous.

But, he did what god said. And god told him he would care, he god himself would care for Hagar and Ishmael, and they had experienced enough of god to know this as well. So there was no need to give them extra things to carry, keep your luggage light. But Abraham and Hagar trusted the God who hears and sees. But again, Hagar becomes a refugee like many Muslim women too, especially, in places like Afghanistan and out of Afghanistan.

Hagar again becomes a refugee and got lost, but God guided her to Beersheba. This is verse 14, please. Mhmm. Early the next morning, Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy.

She went on her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba. Hagar brought the dying Ishmael Ishmael to the feet of God under the bush. He must have been a very wasted and weak 17 year old, Ishmael. She could carry him. He was must have been practically dying.

Verse 15. Yes. When the water in the skin was gone, she she put the boy under one of the bushes. And, but Hagar refused to accept Ishmael’s death. Verse 16.

Then she went off and sat down nearby about a bowshot away, for she thought, I cannot watch the boy die. And as she sat there nearby, she began to sob. And then God heard, God who hears and saw, the God who sees. Verse 17. God heard the boy crying, and the angel of god called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, what is the matter, Hagar?

Do not be afraid. God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. God confirmed the covenant promised, verse 18. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation. And then, the wonderful verse, verse 19, god opened her eyes, and she saw a well of waters.

This is not a miracle of water, but a miracle of seeing, spiritual seeing. Hagar gave Ishmael a drink from the spring, and He Puha took of his mother’s vision. Verse 19. Then god opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

And we are reminded that, out of our innermost being, according to John 3 verses 37 to 39, can flow rivers of living water. So So there is a very deep spiritual dimension here. The god supplied the water, but it was a miracle of seeing, And we could explore even more if we had time, and in our leisure how much Hagar has to say to the single mother, to the abused woman, to the divorced divorced divorcee, how much she can say to modern society and to modern, women and to particularly to Muslim women. Now when you maybe when you you’ve read this story and this account, this I prefer to call it a a record because it’s a true record. So maybe you’ve read it quite a number of times, but maybe you haven’t thought of it quite in this way.

So we have to start looking at the scripture and and thinking of it, how it have how we could, share with a Muslim sister, something that’s very relevant to her and actually quite relevant, to our world in general. And Hagar, has much to say. And because she’s mentioned in the traditions and she’s very well known, in Islamic thinking and record, people will want to pursue a study of of Hagar. So I invite you to do some more reflection and to add to this, to you can add to what’s, you’ve, perhaps, thought about this morning, and you tailor make your own bible studies for the particular woman that you’ve got. So you with you, that you’re sharing with or studying with, maybe if she’s someone who is despised in by her mistress or employer, then you can put a greater emphasis on that.

If she is someone who is becoming aware of her identity and starting to find her full identity in her relationship with God and, therefore, her proper identity in relation to other people, you can emphasize this. And, if she’s her mind is spiritually very open, then you can go further and look at other passages in the New Testament. So maybe, there’s we tend to have bad press about Hagar from Saint Paul, but he’s making a different point. He’s talking about the child of this, of promise and the the child of the law. He’s talking about some other issue, and he’s leaving aside everything else because he’s making that point.

But these points are extremely relevant as you see. The god who hears and the god who sees, the god who helps any woman or any man come to full identity as, as a servant and a friend of God and as one who takes his or her place in modern society.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: Muslim Perceptions of Westerners

In this Lecture, Vivienne Stacey explores how some Muslims might perceive Westerners and the impact this may have on Christian witness. 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 perceptions of Westerners:

I think that you’ve all read, miniskirts, mothers and Muslims, which has a subtitle modeling spiritual values in Muslim culture and it’s by Christine Malue. Christine is married, an Australian married to an Arab, and I first met them both in Egypt, but I have also met them in Morocco, and they do travel in other Arab countries. So she’s really talking about modeling Christian spiritual values in Muslim culture, which, I think we we are trying to learn how to model Christian values in in Muslim culture. So it isn’t just Arab, but her experience is mainly Arab. So I’m going to you have kindly each taken a chapter and, so we’ll work through the chapters of the book and each, 1 by 1, you will share a bit about how what you read and how you reacted to it.

And, if necessary, we will discuss and then go on to the next one. Other if there’s not much to discuss, then I will, just ask the next person. So, Ruth is going to, take the first chapter which is about modeling spiritual values in public and the sub headings for this relate to prestige and appearances. You know the book by its cover, it’s a proverb, I think. Nakedness exposed.

I don’t know what that means, but it will be revealed. Thank you. So she talks about in this chapter, three important aspects of the Muslim culture. First of all, appearance and hospitality and family ties are the big, things that she has mentioned in this chapter. It’s a practical expression of the ummah, or the community of Islam.

And it’s their view, how they view right and wrong. So as we go into a culture and and consider, maybe what we appear we think of of appearance, hospitality, and family ties, it probably isn’t the exact same thing as they view it. So it’s important for us to understand exactly how they perceive these things. In order for Muslims to perceive us as people of faith and principle, we need to express spiritual values in ways that they can recognize. Again, looking at how they perceive what’s happening around them, how they perceive what we do.

And if we don’t follow these principles, then we’re considered we, as missionaries, are considered indecent, we’re considered shocking, and even to the point of being naked, which is they talk about later on. But, we this implies to us that we need to be recognized as people that are decent and respectable and religious. So in terms of how we dress, in terms of how we act, in terms of the things that we say, these will all be important factors as how they perceive us. In the Islamic society, it’s a basically status focused, society, and she gives 4 different aspects of this, status focus, issue. 1, status is based on one’s social background, what kind of a background they come from in the family.

Secondly, family is more important than accomplishments. Here in the states, we emphasize a lot on or in the west, we emphasize a lot on, our goals, what we accomplish, professions, careers, but they really emphasize the family. Thirdly, people prefer to associate only with their equals, so they would not be associating with, someone in a lower class, it’s a more of a class society, and so, they would not be doing things with anyone other outside of their, their equals. And then fourthly, the amount of respect one receives is permanently fixed and attention focused on those with higher status in spite of any personal failing failings that they might have. So in other words, once you see a person or once they see us, our their respect for us will be permanently fixed.

When and so it’s extremely important that we we come across as a as a very, a person that is decent and respectable. In spite of personal failings later on, that’s not gonna make a big deal because it’s the the initial attention and focus that they have when they first meet us. Then she talks about, how this applies to us as as people going in. How can we influence all in all classes, and we can’t expect to influence all classes. We’ll be going into a certain area, and, basically, what she said is whatever class we live among, either high or low, we should love choose a level within it that will give us a position of respect.

Then the people will deem us worthy enough to have our words esteemed. They she talks about name dropping, Basically, if we can get to know some of the more respectable people in that in that class, then we’ll be respected more. And so, to her, it’s it’s not bad to throw in a few names of some people, leaders that are respected in that area, or in that that, city. When a culture is class rigid, we’ll find ourselves locked into a class where we, choose to live, work, and what kind of friends we have. So we need to live in an appropriate way and adapt to their culture, with the visual presentation important, and she talks about first Corinthians 9:19 through 23 as far as, not being a Jew.

Paul talks about being, whoever to whoever needs to be. I can’t remember how that verse goes. I was gonna I was bring gonna bring the scripture with me, and also she talks too as far as, okay, appearance, and we most of us know that you don’t have your shoulders exposed. Many times, even your whole arm has to be covered. Depending on where you’re at, your ankles needs to need to be covered.

And she mentioned brought out some things about gold. Many of us think that wearing a lot of gold is not well, first of all, most of us can’t afford it, but to them, it’s an extremely important thing that shows that you are respectable, that you are a person of class. And so even if we don’t have a lot of, money, we need to invest in something that looks good for them in some of the cultures. I think of where I was at in Africa, and it went really late to that specifically because most of them didn’t have much of anything to wear, let alone gold. But, the the Muslims and again, it depends on where you’re at and what kind of people you’re gonna be working with, but we have to really be sensitive to the people that the women that we’re working with.

So the Muslims recognize our appearance as a way of making a statement of faith. We need to bolster our our image by showing we are wise, mature, and meaning that we respect elders, that we follow the things that, hospitality, those things that are that are specifically, stated in the Quran. And how we dress is an important thing. One thing she mentions too is one of our primary goals in living for Christ among Muslims should be ministering to their fear of western moral corruption of their families. In other words, they’re afraid that because of our influence, our western influence, that the the families are gonna get ruined because there’s been so much, of the pollution of the west.

All the worst stuff goes over there, and and then they they fear that as far as breaking down their family. So we need to be exemplary in our life and how we relate to our our husbands, if you’re married, how we relate to men, and how we relate to people, and in all the things that we do. One thing she did mention as far as interpretation of modesty is we, here in the States, tend to look at the upper part of our bodies as as the stimulation that would would cause offense, whereas for them, it’s the the buttocks. And so, we need to be very careful as women, how we wear our dresses and how we walk. And so this is just some of the areas that she mentioned specifically, but, with a lot of focus in that area.

So Thank you very much, Ruth. That’s very helpful. I’d like to emphasize 1 or 2 things that came out of this. This whole idea of how you are perceived. You may you won’t be perceived the way you expect to be perceived.

You’ve got to try and envisage or find out how the people around you, the Muslims around you, how you are perceived. And, one thing I like to emphasize is be who you are, and I particularly apply it in the area of prayer. I’ve met I have Muslim friends who wondered, you know, when when do you Christians pray? We don’t see you praying. And I remember a family, a Christian family who went to live in a Muslim street, a street occupied all together by Muslims in in in a town in Pakistan, and they chose to live among Muslims, but and they kept open house.

They had some small children and children came in and out of their home, and they got to know their neighbors. If they got, someone called when they were due to have family prayers, they waited till later, till everyone had gone. So nobody knew when they prayed. Be who you are. We are people of prayer, so that we may have to take meth, steps to be seen, to be whom we are.

This is not hypocritical. This is not disobeying where it says close-up, go and close yourself off in your closets and pray quietly or secretly or whatever. No. It’s being seen to be who you are. So they decided to have prayers after the evening meal, whoever came and whoever came, they either invited well, they invited them to join them or or they gave them some opportunity to to sit quietly and wait or to come back again.

So everybody in the street, of course, then knew that at certain time after the meal, just after the meal, the whole family would pray. Now, I can think of a a principle of a a college, in the northwest frontier province of Pakistan, actually, Edwards College in Peshawar, a former principal. He used to say his own morning prayers, personal prayers, very early, perhaps 6 in the morning, and when the weather was good, and it in the winter it’d be rather cold, but, generally the weather was fine for sitting out at 6 AM. He didn’t sit out in the middle of his garden which you could do in the campus, so that people might see him praying. But he he did it.

I think he liked it. But he was being seen, perceived as a person of prayer. And, he was being what he was or he’s dead now. But, his pre his students respected him greatly because they saw him, reading his holy book and praying every morning at 6 o’clock. Always about that time, always in that place.

And, so they knew that here’s a Christian who does pray. So, we might think about that, be being seen to be whom we are, and it can imply in other areas. I think it’s good if we openly give thanks before meals, pray, and Muslims may see us doing that. And sometimes we may need to change the way we pray, it’s, better to say grace if you’re out in a restaurant, perhaps with your hands up, Then otherwise, they may think you’re just looking in your soup. And I can think of a very good example when I I prayed and I was having a meal by myself, in a restaurant because I was about to catch a plane the next day.

So I I prayed over my meal and then one of the waiters came later. He asked me, are you connected with the Bible Correspondence School? Now, I don’t know why he thought that but I I think he recognized I wasn’t Muslim. But he he Or recognized that I was a woman of prayer, and maybe I would He would know. I would know.

He wanted to get in touch. So I said, Well, I’m actually on the board of it. Yeah, what do you know, and we I found out what he wanted. But, I suppose if I had been thoroughly British, I, I wouldn’t, have I would have looked in my soup and so it would seem, and and said my quiet prayer. Well, I said a quiet prayer, but it was obvious I was praying.

You can get into very difficult situations sometimes, and, perhaps get a bit compromised. The worst example I can think of in my own experience is that I, most of the foreigners where I was living in the Punjab had at that time gone off to a convention, a Christian convention, and, only 2 foreigners were in the town. I was 1, and I had a next door neighbor. And, because of something has arose, he wanted to come and see me. So he he told his watchman looking after the guarding the place and looking after it, I’m just going to see miss Stacy and I’ll be back at 4 AM.

He was learning the language, Now, I think for fortunately, the the watchmen, realized he’s learning the language and that he was gonna be back at 4 PM. So, I hope that was the case. And then certainly, local Christians, I’d like to emphasize, are are not always, culturally sensitive to they they are to their subculture, but they’re not always to Muslims. I’ve had the experience of living in, within the Christian community and in the Punjab where Christians are, I mean, they’re not they’re a minority, but they are, in considerable numbers. I mean, 1,000 and probably, probably over a 1000000 Christian well, a 1000000 and a half or nearly 2,000,000 the frontier town where I lived were much more culturally adapted.

The frontier town where I lived were much more culturally adapted than the those in the Punjab. They didn’t like in the Punjab to say a salaam alaikum but in the frontier they did say Christians did say it and they didn’t feel there’s anything wrong with saying it, and I can’t see anything wrong with it. It’s, it means peace be upon you, and it’s peace of God of Allah be on you and we’ve talked about Allah anyway, haven’t we, that there’s no, it’s a very correct way of talking about God for a Christian or a Muslim. Then, I found that if I was giving some series of classes on Muslim Christian relationship, I could cut down my syllabus by at least a third because the people in the frontier, in my very great minority had become much more sensitive to to relating, and they weren’t so they were more relaxed as well. Strange to be.

Maybe that’s a bit strange that they should be so relaxed, but, they didn’t hedge themselves in and they related very well, I thought. And then on the question of the emancipation of women, freedom with dignity, I think this is something that we have to explore and, I mean, 1, it’s quite unnatural for us in a way, as Westerners, it would be very inappropriate in this frontier, town where I lived, to to to do too much laughing. In fact, we had actually, we did have a a Canadian who came, a nurse, and she was always laughing. This is very un Muslim for a woman to be seen If she could laugh at home with us, but, shouldn’t be going around the place laughing too much or laughing at all. And and not generally looking directly into the eyes of a Muslim, when speaking to him or her.

Her is alright, but, as a nurse she had to speak, doesn’t mean to say she couldn’t look at somebody sometime, but but, we have a custom of very much eye to eye contact in in the West and so we have to watch on things like that.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: The Wives of Muhammad

In this Lecture, Vivienne Stacey explores why learning about Muhammad’s wives is essential for Muslims. The prophet’s wives have served as an example for Muslim women throughout Islamic history. 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 wives of Muhammad:

So in this session then, we are, going to think about the Hadith a bit more, but particularly our subject is the wives of the prophet, the wives of Muhammad. Why they are so important is that they are models for the believer. Just as Mohammed is the ideal man, his wives have become models. They are called in Surah 33 and verse 6, the mothers of believers. The Quran itself calls them the mothers of believers.

So his wives are examples. So the role models are, the role models are the wives of Mohammed, so we better pay attention. Now I have a book here which, I got when I was visiting, an Islamic center and mosque in Hong Kong. I was given this free. It’s called the Ideal Muslim Husband, so I I thought I it’s interesting always to know what an ideal husband is supposed to be like, so I I dutifully read, the Ideal Muslim Husband, and I found it’s really a portrayal of Muhammad.

So in the same way, the wives of Muhammad have become ideals or role models, for Muslim women. And, role models that, Muslim men would like to find in roles they’d like to see in their wives or find in their wives. So we should we should pay fairly careful attention, to the matter of, the wives of Muhammad. You have best been reading chapter 17 of Phil Parshall’s book, and inside the community and knowing Muslims through their traditions. Maybe I just because we’re maybe I’ll just just read a little bit from it.

It says that Muhammad was over 50 years old when he married 6 year old Aisha. Aisha was his probably his favorite wife after the death of but after the death of Khadija. Khadija was his first wife, she was 40 when he married her, and she he was 25, and he never married anybody else until her death, so she is a model for believers. There some of the I some of the wives are more better known than others, and, but we cannot get away from the clear statement of the Quran, that mother where it talks about the mothers of believers, models, in other words, for believers as well. Let me just read 1 or 2 things from Phil Parshall’s chapter.

There’s the interesting someone yesterday mentioned or somebody previously in our studies, mentioned an important incident which occurred in the life of Aisha. Aisha was 18 when, Muhammad died. This incident is extremely controversial and unsettling. The story is repeated a number of times in the Al Bukhari collection of the Hadith, and this is Aisha’s version from Al Bukhari’s collection of what what happened. You can, I I don’t know if I should read it all, but, maybe I’ll read a little bit of it?

Aisha narrated, whenever, Allah’s apostle intended to go on a journey, he used to draw lots among his wives, and Allah’s apostle used to take with him the one on whom the lot fell. He drew lots amongst us during one of the battles which he fought. The lot fell on me, so I proceeded with Allah’s apostle after the revelation of the verse of the veil. I was carried on the back of a camel in my howda, or carriage, and carried downhill while still in a is still in it, when we came to a halt. So we went on till Allah’s apostle had finished from that battle of his and returned.

When we approached the city of Medina, he announced at night that it was time for departure. So So when they announced the news of departure, I got up and went away from the army camps, and after finishing from the call of nature, I came back to my riding animal. I touched my chest to find that my necklace, which was made of zippered beads, was missing, so I returned to look for my necklace and my search for it detained me. In the meantime the people who used to carry me on my camel came and took my howder, my carriage, and put it on the back of my camel on which I used to ride, as I as they considered that I was in it. In those days, women were light in weight, for they did not get fat, and flesh did not cover their bodies in abundance, as they used to eat but little food.

Those women therefore disregarded the likeness of the howler when lifting up, lifting and carrying it, and at that time I was still a young girl. They made the camel rise and all of them left. I found my necklace after the army had gone, then I came to their camping place and found no one who would respond to my call, so I intended to go back to go to the place where I used to stay, thinking they would muss me and come back to me. When I was sitting in my resting place, I was overwhelmed by sleep and slept. And then Safwan bin ul Mu’athalla, Aslami Aztakwani was behind the army.

When he reached my place in the morning, he saw the figure of a sleeping person and recognized me, as he’d seen me before the order of compulsory veiling was prescribed. So I woke up, when he recited the istruha, truly to God we belong and truly to him shall we return, Surah 2 156. As soon as he recognized me, I veiled my face with my head cover at once, and by Allah we did not speak a single word, and I did not hear him saying any any word besides his prayers. He dismounted from his camel and made it kneel down, putting his leg on its front legs, and then I got up and rode on it. Then he set out leading the camel that was carrying me till we overtook the army in the extreme heat of midday, while they were taking a halt or a rest.

Because of the event, some people brought destruction upon themselves and the one who spread the slander most was so and so. So this is the end of what is reported. Word quickly spread that Aisha had spent time alone with a young soldier. Rumour circulated that she’d had sex with a man. Mohammed became extremely upset and ordered Aisha to remain in her per parents home until he could determine the credibility of the accusations, and so on.

After some days, Muhammad became convinced of Aisha’s innocence. This was the occasion for the revelation of a new Quranic verse that set forth penalties for the sin of, slander. The prophet Elisha were then happily reunited. According to Aisha, narrated by Aisha, Abu Bakr, her father, came to me and hit me violently on the chest and said, you have detained the people because of a necklace. I kept as motionless as a dead person because of the possession of Allah’s prophet, of Allah’s apostle on my lap, though Abu Bakr had hurt me with the slap, and so on.

So there was a real to do about all this. Well it’s interesting to read it, and another very interesting matter pertaining to the Prophet’s wives I think is the matter of that Stuassa in her book, women in the Quran, the situation is that he he wants to marry, well, I’ll read it from here, there is a law that, a man should not marry the former wife of of an adopted son, so but marry but Muhammad wanted to do this, so he was given a special revelation about it, and it says, these revelations, dated by Muslim scholarship in the first 5th year after the Hijra are commonly linked with Zaineb bint Jahesh. Zaineb, the granddaughter of Abu al Mitalib, was Mohammed’s first cousin on her mother’s side. She had migrated early with her family to Medina, where the prophet, had arranged a marriage with her and Zayd ibn I Haritha, a former Arabian slave of Khadija whom the prophet had freed and adopted for a son. So this was not allowed, but Muhammad received a revelation, and this is included as one of the verses of the Quran.

I can’t find the reference here, but you can look it up in this book. It might be somebody’s got it. So these are revelations given a bit later to deal with situations which came up, during the progress of this new faith or as Islam spread and particularly in Medina in the later period there are revelations given to Muhammad which are included in the Quran, which deal with current things which arise. This was one of them. Anyway, we are, just to rather conclude rather briefly I think I think the basic thing that we have to think about is the models which and the kind of roles role models to which Muslims look.

If you go into a bookshop where women well, go into a Muslim bookshop or where books about Islam are sold or go into a mosque bookshop, go into large bookshops in Cairo, in Hong Kong, in Singapore, in London, in New York, and many of your cities probably, you’ll find textbooks for school school children and children’s books, and you’ll find some story or account of this wife of Aisha or this, or of Khadija. You’ll find stories about the and accounts of the wives of Muhammad, and they’re there because they’re role models, and so these kids should should read about it, and they should read about the heroes of the faith. Yeah? You have a question, I think. Yes?

Yes. I was wondering how similar, the Muslims with their traditions in the Hadith, how similar that is to the Pharisees in Jesus’ time when they had, I mean, they had parts of the scripture, but then they added all those traditions? That’s a good question. Yes. Once I gave a a gospel of Matthew, to a postmaster in a very small village where I was having a holiday or vacation area 7,000 feet up in the Himalayas, and, we used to go and collect our mail once a week.

I gave this postmaster a gospel of Matthew. I didn’t say very much about it, but, when I came back the next week to collect my mail, he said, I have a question, these Pharisees, are they the Muslims? So he saw a parallel between, the Muslims and and the Pharisees, not a not a matter of, hypocrisy or anything, but the kind of minute detail that the Pharisees were interested in. So yes, thank you for that question. So please do a little bit more, research or reading children’s textbooks about the wives of the prophets.

There’s a very good book in French on the wives of the prophets, but there are quite a lot of it, there’s quite a lot available in in other languages including English.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: Christians and Muslims Believe in One God

In this Lecture, Vivienne Stacey explores the shared beliefs of Muslims and Christians regarding one God – similarities and differences. 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 Christians and Muslims believe in One God:

I just wondered how many of you realize what the connection is between the word Islam and the word Muslim. The word Islam, as you probably know, means submitting to God, and Muslim is someone who submits to God, And in Arabic if you put an m at the beginning of a word often indicates the doer. So the person who submits to God is Muslim, the doer of the submission. Islam means submission, one who submits is who does submission is Muslim. The word m at the beginning indicates that.

We can say that, Christians and Muslims worship one God, and you will notice that sometimes I pray, in the name of the one God. In fact, I correspond also with Muslims in the name of the one God. I so I don’t say, your sincerely, I say, in the name of of the one God, and then I say something else perhaps and then I sign my name, I’m corresponding with a Muslim in Malaysia on in this way. We have that in common in the name of the one God and I always like if I’m preaching I like to start my prayer. I like just to start a prayer and I just say, in the name of the one God, the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

So god in Arabic is Allah, it means it comes from Hebrew, and the al is from sort of El, I think, and, the word really means the God. Now, some people feel that Christians shouldn’t use the word Allah, but if you’re an Arab you can’t use anything else because that’s what it is. And some translations of the bible in other languages it comes, for example the Pashtun new testament only has, it has Allah for the name of God. And, I have no problems. I some I wouldn’t mind saying in the name of Allah, the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

There’s no problem with that. And the word Allah forgot the name was current in Arabian poetry before the rise of Islam, and it was current, in other things in usage in in Arabic before Mohammed ever came, so it’s pre Muslim, pre Islamic, so we don’t need to have a hang up about using it. But so we can say what we all with Christian and Muslim worship one God, but the understanding about God is different. You might say that the subject is the same and the predicate, varies rather. It’s rather different.

The subject of the is one, but the interpretation or is different on these two sides. Now the most important concept after Allah for the Muslim is the Quran itself. The Quran for the Muslim is the eternal written word. It’s the the the preserved tablet on which the words of the Quran are written in Arabic is supposed to be in heaven, and, the Quran itself says that. It was revealed through the angel Gabriel or sometimes there’s a reference to the spirit or the holy spirit, but it was revealed, through the spirit or and to to Gabriel and he gave it to Mohammed in pieces or he Mohammed received it, and and wrote it down, or got it written down, and it wasn’t a whole thing or a surah at once, it was pieces that came at different times.

In the Christian side of things, we regard Jesus as the eternal living word. So it’s really the Quran is more parallel with Jesus if we’re gonna write do parallels, Jesus, has a higher place in than than Muhammad, the position of Muhammad in Islam is lower than the place that Christians give to Jesus. On the other hand, the Quran has a higher place as a written book than the bible. So we’re thinking in parallels then of the Quran and Jesus. And you could say, if I had to sum up in one sentence the differences between these two faiths, I would say that, in Islam, God reveals his will in a book.

So Allah reveals his will for mankind in a book, the eternal written Quran. And the Christian I concept is that God, Allah, reveals himself in the eternal living word, Jesus. So here we have a difference. That’s we can see why the focus in Islam is on on the book, and then the focus in Christianity is on the person Jesus. God reveals himself, in Jesus, the eternal living word.

God reveals his will, in a book, the eternal written Quran. And so if it’s his will is revealed in a book, that’s why many Muslims are saying, what do I do? And so we have we have traditions to help, there are traditions to help Muslims answer that question because everything can’t be in such a small book if if a Muslim, God reveals his will in a book, and all his will cannot be written for every bit of life in a small book the size of the New Testament. So we have these volumes of traditions which you’re going to see in the library, well, some of them anyway, and which we’ve been talking about this morning. So in one sense then, the bible is more akin to the traditions of Islam.

It in I would say that it’s possibly, it’s a little bit we should put it a bit higher up than than the traditions, but, if we’re going to make a parallel, it will have to be traditions and bible, and if we’re going to have a parallel of personalities, in Christian Muslim, so we’ll have Muhammad here, and then we’ll have Peter or Paul or one of the other apostles, over here, and generally I put Paul, but it could well be Peter or several, so, it will help you as you look at the Quran and look at the traditions, and it would help you not to make, too many comparisons at least between Mohammed and Jesus, but to realize that it’s a person that it’s sort of headed the list for Christians. It’s a book that’s headed the list, for Muslims. Muslims don’t like being called Mohammedans. Muslims don’t like being called Mohammedans because they they don’t worship Mohammed. Sometimes they venerate him greatly, but they don’t worship him.

We don’t mind being called Christians, followers of Christ, because we worship Christ. We worship God in Christ. We worship Christ. We worship the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I also find when I’m sharing with Muslims, that it’s very helpful to say, I believe in one God.

You can spend hours discussing it, trying to prove that God is 1, and 1 in 3 persons. So many Muslims think you worship 3 gods, but, rather than and there’s a place for explaining it, but it really bugs quite a number of people when Muslims, when they hear you say I believe in 1 God, because that’s a creedal statement, and the longer I live the more I’m saying some of the things in terms of creedal statement. I believe in 1 God, And I feel that, I might spend half an hour explaining how I see and understand the one God. But what’s going to remain in the minds of the customs officer who asked me, are you Muslim? Or, what’s going to remain in the mind of the schoolgirl who said you’re dressed this way rather like us and you speak our language, and but she realizes that I am not a Muslim.

So if I leave with her the idea that I believe in one God, not the idea, but if I make the creedal statement, it will be of great, help and, it will stick in her mind in a way that, discussion and argument doesn’t.

Vivienne Stacey Lectures: Muslim Women in the Hadith

In this Lecture, Vivienne Stacey explores how the Hadith (Muslim traditions) addresses Muslim women in Islamic traditions. 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.

The two books referenced in this lecture are:
Inside the Community: Understanding Muslims through their Traditions by Phil Parshall
Women in the Qur’an, Traditions, and Interpretations by Barbara Stowasser

For more by Phil Parshall, consider taking his course, Approaches to Muslim Evangelism on Pathwright.

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Vivienne Stacey’s Lecture on Muslims Women in the Hadith:

Thinking about women in the Hadith, and I think that you will have read, Phil Parshall’s, chapter 16 in his book. The name of the book? Inside the Community. Inside the Community and the subtitle? Understanding Muslim when you hear their traditions?

Understanding Muslims through their traditions, And so we’re looking at the chapter on women, and then we will look a bit at Stoa’as’s book, women in the Quran, traditions and interpretation. So our focus is on traditions, and so just a word about traditions, you’ve come across the word Sunnah, s u double n a h. The Sunnah and the traditions are basically the same. The word sunnah means the custom, habit, and usage of the prophet. This includes his behaviour, how he did things, his sayings and declarations.

These form a body of rules and examples to be followed in detail. For example, a man should trim his beard exactly as Mohammed trimmed his. There are all sorts of rules, and in the traditions, practically everything you could possibly think of is covered. And so this is so that, Muslims may walk in the the right way doing the right things. But the emphasis in the traditions is on what Mohammed did and what he said.

The traditions or hadith, as they’re called in Arabic, are the collections of the works and actions of of the words and actions of Muhammad, and sometimes included are those of his companions, the words and actions of his companions, his close band of followers. The word hadees, actually, in Arabic means piece of information, account, narrative, and record. Mohammed is regarded as the ideal man, the example, so it’s very important to know exactly how he spoke and acted. In Surah 33 and verse 21 it is written, verily, in the messenger of Allah, ye have an good example for him who looketh unto Allah and the last day and remembereth Allah much. So Mohammed was not the perfect man as Jesus is and was, Muhammad is the ideal man.

He is the pattern, but somewhere he prays for forgiveness for sin, And, in the Quran, it is so written, I think. So he is not considered perfect. He might be perfect in the generalities, but, he erred and strayed in some things. So he’s still he’s the example but not the perfect man. There are also traditions which are called hadith, Qudsi.

I don’t know if you’ve come across these, but it’s hadith like this, h a I t d I t h, and then kudsi, q u d s I. And these are special. They are words that are not written in the Quran which God spoke to Mohammed. So that’s, for example, one well well known hadith Qudsi is Allah has said, ask from me through mentioning my names. Ask from me through mentioning my names.

This is a hadith. This is a something that Mohammed received from God and is not incorporated in the Quran. Well I think that’s a probably yes we should mention the reliability of the traditions and I have already explained perhaps that each tradition has a text what I what is actually written that’s there’s the text, and you can write it, in English either m a t a n or m a t n, mutton. And, then that’s the actual text. This is what Mohammed is recorded as having said and but there is the chain, Isnad.

Isnad, I s n a d, is the stage the so and so Mohammed said it and actually you start up here in the end of the chain. So so and so heard from so and so who was told by so and so, that so and so said and so on right the way down till you come back to Mohammed. I’ll read it this way. It will go it will go like this. I heard a, a companion of Muhammad.

We’re saying a. He’s called a. Well, let’s say put it this way, the chain of Hadiths will be like this, f told me now a is just I’m using a f and a b c d, sorry, F told me saying E said, D had informed him saying E mentioned that he heard B relate, and this is what he heard b relate, I heard a, a companion of Muhammad, say to the apostle of God. And so then it goes, and then you get the text. But it goes through generations.

There were hundreds of thousands of hadith, hundreds of thousands of traditions. Those that were regarded as authentic were collected into 6 compilations during the 9th early 10th centuries. These there were other collections, but these 6 formed the canonical Sunnah. And then there’s the the ones that we all come across and that you could find easily, I think you’d find them in the library here at least some of them, you’ll find the Sahi, Sahi means genuine, of Al Bukhari. Al Bukhari, Al, and then Bukhari, b u k h a r I.

You would find the Jami, that’s the collection of Al Timidhi, Tirmidi, t I r m I d h I. There are others. There’s Muslim, not a Muslim, but his name is Muslim, m u r musli. He did a collection. And there is Al Nasai.

Yeah. Oh, yes. Here, I was talking about Eve, there’s the narrated by Abu Hurairah. The prophet said, were it not for Eve, no woman would ever betray her husband. See, that that is not according to Islamic theology because there shouldn’t be a spin off.

The idea was that Adam and Eve are were totally responsible for their own sin, and, it doesn’t there is not an original sin. There is a weakness, Mary and Jesus were the only people not touched at birth by Satan, according to Islamic tradition, another tradition. Everyone else was touched at birth, which results in being men and women being created weak, Not sinful, but weak. Under miscellaneous treatment, it’s interesting to see Abu Hurairah, he said he says, the prophet said a woman is married for 4 things, her wealth, her family status, her beauty, and her religion. So there seem that’s a it’s not entirely encouraging I find, And then there’s the story narrated by Abdullah bin Umer, I heard the prophet saying, an evil omen is in three things, the horse, the woman, and the house.

So and, the translator of this tradition, translating from the Arabic, he says, superstition is disliked in Islam, but if one should think that there are things of bad omen, one may find such a bad omen in a horse that is obstinate and not used for Jihad, Jihad, a woman that is sterile or discontented or impudent, a house that is not spacious or far from a mosque, that is not spacious, or far from a mosque, and near a bad neighbor. So the question might be how does a woman feel about being told she’s an evil omen? And you have below the account of Aisha who objected and that the Hadith is written, things which annul the prayers were mentioned before me. They said prayer is annulled by a dog, a donkey, and a woman if they pass in front of the praying people. I said, you have made us, women, dogs.

And, so there was, she was quite she was very young, she was 18 when her when Mohammed died, but she didn’t mind speaking up, and so she argued the the toss on this one. And then there’s a whole matter in the Hadith, which say that, many women will be found in hell. Many women will be found in hell. There is a hadith, and I can’t locate it, but for every 100 for every 1 no. For every 1,000 men in paradise, there will only be 1 woman, and for every one man in hell, there will be a 1,000 women.

And here’s another so I can’t tell you where it comes from when it’s from the hadith, but I can tell you here, I can read from a quote from Phil Parshall where he talks about, what was said by Abu al Khudri. Once, Allah’s apostle went out to the masala to offer prayer. He went out to the prayers, or he went out to offer prayer of al Fitr prayer. That’s the feast. Then he passed by the women and said, oh, women, give alms, as as I have seen that the majority of dwellers of hell fire were you, women.

They asked, why is it so, oh Allah’s apostle? He replied, you curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. Ingratitude is a great sin in Islam. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious, sensible man could be led astray by some of you.

The women asked, oh, Allah’s Allah’s apostle, what is deficient in our intelligence and religion? He said, is not the evidence of 2 women equal to the witness of 1 man? They replied in the affirmative. He said, this is the deficiency in your intelligence. Isn’t it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?

The woman replied in the affirmative. He said, this is the deficiency in your religion. So so we’ve got here then the prophet then further explains why the majority of dwell dwellers of hell are women. They are there because of their lack of intelligence, evidenced by the fact that their testimony in a court of law is only worth half of that of a man, and in religious matters, they are deficient because they cannot pray or keep fast during the time of their monthly period. They’re also declared worthy of hell because of their cursing and ingratitude to husbands.

And, well, this is, this is the hadith. The Hadith have got it a bit more loaded against women than, than and the Quran is, much more fair, I would from my perspective, and men and women are spiritually equal according to the Quran as we saw yesterday. The Hadiths have got some good things to say about women, but there’s some very bad things about women, and some of the feminists, as we’ll see next week in Islam, Muslim feminists, they’re not all women, but most of them are women. They, argue that, some of them argue, that the Quran, if we followed the Quran it would be okay for women, but if we, look at the Hadith then, some people only do look at the Hadith and or that somehow they hear it and they don’t read and they get these stories in the Hadith, but some of them rather funny and some of them, quite interesting. They get familiar with it and so they have the perspective of the Hadith on the position of women.

And so people like Fatima Miernesi, well she’s, she doesn’t hold with some of these traditions. For example, she, considered and she wrote a book which I’ll show you today or some other day called Forgotten Queens of Islam. Because she was showing that there were outstanding women rulers, queens, people who held political power of some sort or another, and, but she thought she’d tried out on her grocer. I think it was probably when Bayn Nazir became prime minister of Pakistan. So she went when she went to her grocer, she said, what do you think about a woman ruling a country, being the ruler of a country, what about Baynazir?

I don’t know if it was that time or not, but anyway she she asked him to see what he was gonna say. So he quoted a hadith, the country that is ruled by a woman, will never prosper. So, end of story I suppose, but, it’s not actually. And the Quran, is quite, clear about possibilities for women to have some leadership at least. Mohammed is said to have consulted his, wives and especially some of them, one of them or sometimes and several at other times, on on working matters.

He brought his work home, if you like. He he, he discussed it with his wives sometimes, he got their input, and we can see more about this. So we’ll, conclude then, think our thinking about women in the Hadith, and in the next session we’ll go on well we will continue it because we’re gonna think about the wives of Muhammad, Muhammad’s wives. So in a sense it’s still women in the Hadith or because they are mentioned in the Hadith, some of them. So that’s where we’ll leave it now.