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The Five Pillars of Islam in the Bible?

The second installment of the Basics of Islam, Trevor shares some similarities between Christianity and Islam and how this came about.

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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of The Five Pillars of Islam in the Bible?:

 

 

Alright. So in the beginning, God created everything from a spoken word. He created Adam from dust, gave him life, gave him a helper named Eve, placed them in a garden surrounded with beautiful trees and animals, and told them not to eat from one very specific tree. Adam and Eve ate from this tree, and as a result, they received God’s punishment. Both Islam and Christianity teach this exact same creation story.

 

Once again, Muslim terrorists. A terrorist. Islamic extremist. Extremist terrorists of the country. Random justice brutal endeavors.

 

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It is a warning. Welcome educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Alright. So I think a lot of people are a bit taken back by the similarities that exist between Islam and Christianity, and they wanna know where are the dividing lines.

 

Yeah. I always get confused about that stuff. So The more I hear. Right. And so in the last episode, I said the the dividing lines really go after Ishmael and Isaac.

 

But we have to go a little bit further back. There is an earlier dividing line, and it’s Adam and Eve. Granted, they have a very similar creation story. There is a few nuances that are are different, and I think they’re pretty significant. Alright.

 

Because wait. Because the story you just told, the creation story, is saying both are the same. Right. And I was careful about how I said it. Okay.

 

Yeah. Go ahead. Show me. So they the Adam was created, from a clot of dirt in Islam and and God breathed life into him technically. And, Eve, is in Arabic is is given to Adam as a helpmate and they’re told not to eat from the tree of life, actually.

 

Not the tree of good and evil, which is the Christian narrative, but the tree of life. And they do. One of the reasons that they eat from the the tree of life is they’re deceived by the serpent who is considered to be the shaytan or Iblis or Satan Right. The devil. And they, basically, what happens is they forgot, what God had said.

 

That’s the way that it’s worded. So this is a huge difference, right, because man’s chief problem in Christianity isn’t forgetfulness. Right. It’s depravity. It’s a desire to, shake our fist in the face of God and have our own will, not his.

 

Rebellion. Yep. So the chief, problem in Islam is is not, rebelliousness so much as it is forgetfulness of the guidance of Allah. So does it does it explain it by saying like a long time past? No.

 

No. It doesn’t. I think that that man is prone to forgetfulness. And that and now Muslims do not believe in original sin, but I do think that they believe that man’s memory is corrupted somehow. And and I think actually when you read the text, you do see a little bit of original sin in that the only ones that are, not sinful the only one that’s specifically mentioned is not sinful is Jesus and that’s in one of the hadith that says that at the birth of a child, there’s a cry because he’s touched by the shaytan.

 

Except for Jesus, he was not touched by the shaytan. He lived a sinless life, and the placenta were sinless, even though they weren’t. Even though they weren’t and they say that they weren’t. That’s just, it’s sort of a standard of belief. Right.

 

And they do have a hierarchy of sin. There are grave sins, you know, like shirk, which is the greatest thing you could do wrong, which is adding a partner or an associate to God. Oh, like heresy. Well, it’s it’s up the unpardon it’s not unpardonable. I mean, it could be forgiven, but if you die in shirk, meaning that you’ve given God some sort of partner like a trinity, then you will, enter the hellfire for that.

 

Wow. Okay. Go back. So, that’s a big deal. So, you were talking about forgetfulness.

 

So, yeah, they forgot the guidance of Allah. Adam asked forgiveness. God forgives them in the garden and then removes them from the garden. Now, here’s the difference, right? They’re not removed from the garden as punishment.

 

They’re removed from the garden because it was always God’s intention to remove them from the garden. So, this was a tough one, right? I was meeting with a Muslim and sharing the gospel with him and he asked me, he said, do you think Adam and Eve were forgiven in the garden? I had never thought about it. Have you, have you ever thought about that?

 

No. I had never thought about it and I told them I had no idea that I’d I’d look it up and come back. And I went back to him and I said, you know, I don’t know. And I said, I know that they tried to cover their shame with leaves and they were insufficient and so God killed an animal and covered them with animal skins. Right.

 

For sacrifice. Right, and covered their shame with a sufficient covering, at least one that was foreshadowed for the ultimate sufficient covering, covering in Christ, right, according to Hebrews. Because there has to be the shedding of blood. Otherwise, there’s no forgiveness of sins. Interesting.

 

So, they’re covering their skin and their sin. Yeah. You like that, do you? Yeah. That’s an original error.

 

So I I told him I didn’t know. And he he wanted to know from me why did God remove Adam and Eve from the garden. Now, what I was taught was because God wouldn’t be in the presence of sin. Right. The more I thought about that, that didn’t necessarily work because God was where is God not?

 

You know, I mean, he’s a friend of Abraham. He’s present in all places and all times. He dwells in the temple and all of these I’m I’m thinking to myself, something’s not right with this. So I go back to the scripture and I look, and they’re actually removed from the garden and the scripture’s clear about it. I don’t know why we don’t teach this, but they’re removed from the garden so they won’t eat at the tree of life.

 

Right. And live forever. Yeah. And and, you know, they have to, they’ll receive death. And fear of death is pretty significant both in the Muslim and Christian worldview.

 

So, you know, eventually Christ comes and he frees us from this. You know, death has no sting and and Christ overcomes death and all of this. And so, anyway, looking at the, at the creation account, before Adam and Eve are taken out of the garden in Islam, they’re given a promise. And the promise is a promise that God will send them messengers that will remind them to follow the guidance in the path of Allah. Okay.

 

Like prophets. There you go. Okay. Prophets, messengers. So not all, this is a little bit funny, but not all prophets are messengers, but all messengers are prophets.

 

So, the messengers are those that have a book. You have the Torah, which is given to Moses. You have the Psalms, the zabur, which is given to David. You have, the injeel, which is given to Jesus, the gospel. And then you have the Quran, which is given to Muhammad.

 

So those are the messengers of Allah, and then you have the prophets of Allah, which would be like Abraham, Isaac, Adam, Noah. You just said that they gave the gospels to Jesus? Yes. The Muslims are they cannot make any distinction among any of the messengers of Allah. They’re not supposed to make any distinction of any of the messages given by Allah and the gospel is one of the messages given.

 

But it’s a it’s a testimony account of Jesus’ life and death? Yeah. We’ll get to that. Okay. Yeah.

 

We’ll get there. We’re still in Genesis. But the the key is is that they’re given a promise. They’re given a promise there in Genesis that God will send them messengers that will guide them onto the right path, that will bring to memory all the things that they’re supposed to do and say. So man’s problem is forgetfulness and they have everything within them capable of following the guidance of Allah because he’s given them messengers and messages Interesting.

 

Through these texts. Now, Christians are also given a promise in Genesis. Uh-huh. You remember what it is? Yeah.

 

It’s the, Genesis chapter 3. Some call it the proto uangelion. You read your Greek days. 1st gospel. 1st gospel.

 

Right. So it’s the idea that, the curse of man is is going to be that the, seed of the woman will come through pain, which we’ve got kids to prove it. Mhmm. That’s painful. And that the we don’t actually know, but we hear.

 

We’ve heard Thank you for the correction. And, yeah, our wives are like, what? You don’t know. So, anyway, you have the the the seed of the woman that comes, and it says that the serpent will strike the the heel and that the the the seed of the woman will crush the serpent under, crush his head, essentially. You see a wonderful depiction of that in the Passion of the Christ.

 

With the Wonderful. Yeah. It’s pretty intense. But, anyway, so we’re given a promise of a deliverer. Do you see the difference there?

 

I mean, there’s a there’s a diversion that happens right there at the beginning of the 2 creation narratives where one is promised messengers and messengers and one is promised a deliverer because no matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you try, you aren’t going to be able to do what you need to do to perfectly fulfill the law of God. Mhmm. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And this week’s sponsors are. Zweimer Center.

 

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Talks about Muslims and and tells them on the computer that we love you. Very nice. The Swimmer Center equips the church to reach Muslims. The Swimmer Center has been educating people about reaching Muslims before it was cool. Big difference.

 

Right? That’s huge. So, this has to come into play when you’re sharing the gospel with Muslims. You have to recognize that they do believe that they have everything inside of them that they need in order to, please God. Oh, that’s so interesting.

 

So when you go to them and you say, you know, do you have sin in your life? They’re gonna say no. Right. Because because that’s not the issue. No.

 

The issue isn’t sin. The issue is, can first of all, can God forgive my sin? And the answer is yes. They would say that God is merciful and God is compassionate. I’ve even had some Muslim say that I believe God is more merciful than you do.

 

Wow. And when he explained himself, he said that you think that God needs a sacrifice to forgive. I say that God can speak forgiveness. And so that was a interesting perspective from a Muslim. Right.

 

And then you talked about justice and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. It’s hard though because Muslims don’t necessarily feel like the justice of God and the mercy of God necessarily need to coexist, that God can call something just in one moment, and then the next moment call it unjust. And they’re okay with that because he’s God, he’s transcendent. And so, you have these really big issues when you approach it from an apologetic sort of worldview.

 

When you’re gonna try and explain God, they’re gonna look at you and say, I don’t need you to explain God. I’m okay with not understanding how this works. Right. God doesn’t have to play by his own rules. Yeah.

 

So, you have to take a different approach. Character, I guess, even. Yeah. But there is a couple things that come out here that are huge points for evangelism. One is there’s a terrible fear of death.

 

In, with Muslims? Yes. Okay. Terrible fear of the day of judgment because Mohammed himself would never say that he knew what would happen to him on the day of judgment. So, how could any other Muslim in the world say that they know that God’s gonna be merciful to them on the day of judgment?

 

Wait. So he brought it up and he said he doesn’t know? So there’s this hadith where this woman, is burying her husband, and she says the prophet comes walking by and she’s addressing the dead body and she says, O Abu Asai, may Allah’s mercy be on you. I bear witness that Allah has honored you. And the prophet says to her, how do you know that Allah has honored him?

 

She replied, I do not know. May my father and my mother be sacrificed for you, oh Allah’s apostle, but who else is worthy if not this guy? And as to him, by Allah, death has overtaken him and I hope the best for him by Allah, though I am the apostle of Allah and I do not know what he will do with me. And so he was basically telling the woman, don’t presume upon the grace of God. And that’s a very kind of overarching principle throughout Islam.

 

Most of the Muslims I’ve encountered would say, yeah, on the day of, judgment, I hope that God will be merciful, Insha’Allah, you know, if God wills. But there’s never this sort of presumption or this assurance, of salvation. Mhmm. And it’s totally different than Christianity where we really emphasize the security of our faith. Absolutely.

 

We approach the throne of God with confidence, resting assured and not in our works, but in the works of Christ. Right. So that’s that’s pretty huge. And there’s one other hadith that I think is pretty meaningful when it talks about, the forgiveness of God and it says, warn your nearest kinmans, kinsmen. Open.

 

Yeah. Let me try that again. Oh, man. This is Adasai Bukhari. Those of you that read the Hadith, I know it’s if you don’t, don’t worry about it.

 

But basically, what he says is, oh, people of Quraysh, this is one of the largest tribes in, at the time in Mecca, save yourselves. I cannot save you from the hellfire, from Allah’s punishment. He says of his own aunt, Osafya, the aunt of Allah’s apostle, I cannot save you from Allah’s punishment. Of Fatima bint Mohammed, that’s his own daughter. My my own daughter.

 

Ask of me anything of my wealth, but I cannot save you from Allah’s punishment. So in in in Islam, Mohammed is not a mediator and Muslims should agree to that. Any orthodox Muslim would agree that Mohammed cannot mediate between man and God. Right. And he’s not divine.

 

He’s not divine anyway. That would be shirk. That would be the unpardonable or not unpardonable. That would be the horrible sin of attributing some sort of divine quality to him, which is why you have so much issue whenever there’s a drawing of Muhammad. That’s one issue, that’s one part of the issue.

 

What do you mean say that? Well, they don’t want him to be drawn. You can’t draw the prophets, particularly Muhammad. You shouldn’t be drawing him because they don’t want him to be uplifted into divine status and people begin to start worshiping the messenger Oh. Rather than God himself.

 

We just we just don’t think like that in the West, but it it is true. True. Like, you have these big billboards with, like, Taylor Swift on it, and there’s there’s an idolatry there. Well, think about when Islam came about with the icons and the, you have the 6th, 7th century and you have all of the heresies going around Right. In the 6th and 7th century and Islam comes into being at that point.

 

So, you can see why right at the beginning, there are laws against drawing prophets, making images of prophets, including Muhammad, and all the all the other things that we see with all the heresies going on in the 6th, 7th century. And also not attributing divine qualities or adding partners to God. What’s going on in the 6th 7th century? Actually, 3rd, 4th, and 5th century with the early Christian church is trying to figure out the nature of Christ. Right.

 

That’s where all those heresies came from, right? Exactly. So you might see Islam as a direct polemic actually to the trinitarian nature of Christianity. Interesting. Yeah.

 

It’s it’s kind of interesting because you just kinda think that they both developed these both these religions developed in a vacuum, like, separately. No. No. Same area. Yeah.

 

Right. Right there. Influencing one another and and such. Right. I I know that’s probably gonna cause offense on both sides, but I’m just thinking out loud.

 

Oh, no. Muslims wouldn’t be offended at all by the idea that Islam is, greatly influenced by Judaism and Christianity. Yeah. No. They that’s a given.

 

As a matter of fact, they you can’t really have, Islam without Judaism and Christianity. Okay. So you were talking about, some of the differences in creation, the creation account and what they lead to. Right. Well, then you get into the prophets.

 

You get into Abraham and Isaac and Ishmael, which we talked about. Right. I’ve said before. Right. You get into the law, the which is given, and all a lot of the law which you see in Islam, you can actually find in the bible.

 

Really? Well, think about it. Like, let’s thing about the 5 pillars, for instance. You have shahada or confession. Okay.

 

That goes right in line with the Shema. Right? The lord your god is 1. Oh, yeah. Deuteronomy chapter 6.

 

Right. Right. You have the lord your god is 1. And then you have, Jesus giving the Lord your God as 1 and then love your neighbors as you love yourself. So, I mean, even in the New Testament, you see Paul giving somewhat of a Shema or a creedal statement where he says, there is no god but one, for even if there are so called gods in heaven and on earth, There are many lords, yet there is only one god.

 

And here in 1st Corinthians, chapter 8 verse 6, you see, there is but one God, the father, from whom all things come and for whom we live, and there is but one Lord Jesus Christ. Alright. This week’s sponsors. CIU. CIU.

 

CIU educates people from a bib Biblical. Biblical world review World view. Real world review. CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. Now, you hear the Shema in Judaism.

 

You see Paul’s, statement here in Corinthians. And then when you hear in Islam, there is no God but God and Mohammed is the messenger of God, you can see where they’re picking up on some of these, 7th century ideas about creeds. Right. Yeah. That’s I see that very clearly.

 

But there’s a couple of others that are weird to me. Well, let’s let’s just go through the the 5 pillars. So next, you have salat. Right? Okay.

 

So salat, you pray in a certain direction. You face towards Mecca, but not originally. Whenever Islam was in Mecca, you faced you faced Jerusalem. So where do they get this idea of direction of prayer? In first Kings 844, you have direction of prayer.

 

In the facing of Jerusalem in prayer. In Babylon, right. So you have all of these moments, in the Old Testament where you have a direction of facing in prayer. You have the performance, the you have a direction of facing in prayer. You have the performance, the performing of wadu, the washing, ritual washing before prayer.

 

We see that same thing in the Old Testament. Right. You see prostration and forms of prayer in the Old Testament. Times of day of prayer, you see the 3 times of day there in Daniel. Right.

 

And then in the New Testament, you see, was it Peter and John walking up at the appointed time of prayer in the book of Acts? In the Psalms, you have 7 times a day prayer. In the church I attend, we have morning, evening, and midday prayer. So times of prayer, forms of prayer, liturgy, a lot of these things come from Byzantine Christianity right there where Islam is sort of developing in Arabia. Okay.

 

But explain the direction again. Well, originally originally, they were facing Jerusalem towards the temple. So that’s where God dwells and that’s why? You know, that’s a good question. I really have no idea how that came about.

 

We need to ask Old Testament scholar why the direction towards the temple, but I’m assuming, yeah, that that would be why. But there’s no temple for Well, Muhammad Muhammad did go to the temple mount in a night journey. It’s one of the few things that some people would chalk up as a miracle because Muhammad said he had no miracles, but Muhammad did travel in what’s known as the night journey to the temple mount. And then from there, he ascended into the heavens and that’s where he receives from, I believe it’s Moses who goes and talks with God, comes back down, and gives them how many times a day they can pray. And I don’t remember the first number.

 

I think it’s something like 50. And then there’s a negotiation. Right? This is but this would be too much for humanity to bear. So he goes back up, negotiates, comes back down 10, he goes back up, comes back down with 5, and it’s finally settled on 5.

 

So the 5 times a day prayer is not something that comes out of the Quran. It actually comes out of the Hadith. Okay. So I’m kinda getting confused a little bit. So Mohammed goes to the Jewish temple in his dream.

 

Yes. The Jewish temple. Temple mount, right, in Jerusalem. You seem totally okay with this. Well, like I said from the beginning is they don’t see, Muslims will have no issue with seeing Judaism and Christianity as being foundational in Islam.

 

But they don’t see themselves as Jewish or Christian. No. They see even Adam as the first Muslim. See, that’s one of the mistakes people make when you ask, who’s the first Muslim? They’ll say, Muhammad, but they’ll say, no.

 

Adam. Adam was the first Muslim. Muslim is just one who submitted to God. And all of these messengers that came through Judaism and Christianity were bringing the final message, the highest form of the message, which would be Islam, correcting things from before. Wow.

 

This my mind is getting blown right now. So you have Judaism and then Christianity comes with the gospel. Jesus corrects things from Judaism, and then you have Mohammed who corrects things that the Christians got wrong. So the things that Christians got wrong according to Muslims is they wanted to worship Jesus. And so Islam comes and says, nope.

 

He was only a messenger. He was a prophet. He had a message, but he was not to be worshiped. That’s So that’s a common understanding, what you just said. Absolutely.

 

Absolutely. And I think the way that it’s explained, I remember one time when he mom explained it to me this way. He said, if you think about it, Judaism is like grade school and, Christianity is like high school, and Islam is like college. So I thought that was kinda funny the way he explained it to me, but, yeah, that was his take. So it this, okay.

 

I might be a little bit off here, but this reminds me of, like, maybe the way Christians view Jews. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. You, like, you have the truth, but there’s much more.

 

There’s something that you didn’t realize that Jesus actually came. The Messiah is actually here. Right. And then, Muslims would say, well, you know, you know, Jews and Christians, you guys are missing something. Exactly.

 

And that’s why you see so many crazy. That’s why you see so many similarities. That’s why you see, so many things that are in Islam. You can say, woah, wait a second. There is a biblical basis for that.

 

Dudley Woodbury wrote an excellent article, titled, Reusing Common Pillars and he’s talking about the biblical basis for the 5 pillars in Islam and all the the, verses that we were mentioning earlier, I think, are expounded on in that article. But it’s worth it’s worth looking at because you even have, Exodus chapter 30. You have Moses talking about making a bronze basin and this basin stand for washing, place it between the tent of meeting and the altar and put water in it. Aaron and his sons washed their hands and their feet with water from it. And does that sound familiar?

 

Yes. It’s something that Muslims perform every time they go for prayer. They have to perform wadu or ritual washing. Okay, so what about the pilgrimage? You know, pilgrimage is a tough one.

 

I don’t know exactly where that would come from, but I do know, you know, if you were to think about, Judaism at that time and Christianity at that time, they are still making pilgrimage back to the temple. That’s why in Acts chapter 2, you have people from every nation under heaven. They’re there for the feast of weeks. And so you still have to travel back to Jerusalem for pilgrimage to make sacrifice. And so, it wouldn’t be far fetched for me to think that pilgrimage would just be right in there interpreted when everything shifts from Mecca to Medina in 6/22, that pilgrimage shifts to Mecca at that point and that there’s an emphasis on going back to Mecca for pilgrimage.

 

Mecca was already considered to be a pilgrimage center for, at that point in time, pagan pagan idolaters. But Oh. They were already going to the Kaaba. And it’s interesting because Muhammad, cleanses the Kaaba. The Kaaba, that thing we talked about with Ishmael, and his father Abraham building, according to Muslims, when Mohammed comes on the scene, he cleanses this Kaaba and he removes all of the idols with the exception of Jesus.

 

I I believe it’s the tradition says that he left a picture of Jesus and his mother. So you have all of that right there in the beginnings of Islam. So can we talk about the Kaaba for a second? Well, we gotta get through these pillars quickly, and then we’ll go into the Kaaba. Jihad.

 

That’s not a pillar. Isn’t it isn’t it something that they they add to the pillars too. Right? I think most Americans add it to the pillars, but Muslims do not. I thought I said I’ve heard so many people say, I don’t know.

 

That’s the hidden 6th pillar of Islam. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I heard it is. Yeah.

 

So there’s 2 types of jihad. Well, we’ll talk about jihad later. Let’s just think of the pillars. You have salat. That’s the prayer.

 

It happens at certain times, times of day. Also, biblical basis for that having certain times of day of prayer. You can see that in Leviticus. You can see that in also acts like I mentioned Ramadan, the idea of fasting, ritual fasting. Yeah.

 

Yeah. Yeah. So, fasting from the fast in Islam is a fast from, sex, food, water and and smoking. Smoking. Right.

 

Right. And so it’s a difficult fast. I know I’ve done it twice. Once, I didn’t survive it. The other time, I did.

 

I attempted it twice, I should say. And once, I did the whole time. But it’s a difficult thing when people say, oh, I don’t understand. Doesn’t seem so hard. They eat every night.

 

I’ve done extended periods of fasting without, food. Mhmm. And I’ve done extended periods of the Ramadan where you fast and you eat at night. I don’t think one is easier than the other. They’re both very difficult.

 

Because Ramadan’s sun up, sun down. Yeah. But no water. That’s the tough one. I can deal with some hunger pain.

 

Water think about water. Water is tough. And especially since Ramadan this year comes in the summer. Oh, right. And last year and the year before.

 

And we are in the south. That’s right. So then you have zakat or the giving of your wealth. It’s a little less than our 10%. It’s, I believe, 2 point one fourth or 2.5 percent of your wealth.

 

Yeah. 2.5. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where, if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad.

 

So if you wanna be a part of the show, you like partnering with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know. 2.5%. Literally, 2.5. I believe so. This is the problem without working from a script, man.

 

I don’t remember the exact Audiences, we don’t we don’t work in a script. We don’t have a script. Based on memory. 2.5%, I believe, is correct. But that’s still kind of a really particular number.

 

But go ahead. So was 10? 10 percent is a particular number? Not as particular as 2.25. 25.2.5.

 

We’re going with 2.5. 2.47. Yeah. So, then you’ve got the Hodge. It’s the everything to Bert works on the lunar calendar.

 

That’s why it shifts every year. Like, the Hajj isn’t the same every time every year. Ramadan isn’t the same every time every year. Eid, so on and so forth. But while they’re there yeah.

 

They don’t have an Easter egg. Oh, but while they’re having, their Hajj, they’ll perform a lot of these rituals that we’ve talked about, like running back and forth from Safwan to Marwan. Yeah. Yeah. How far is that?

 

Hagar’s journey. I’m not really sure. I mean, is it, like, miles and miles and miles? No. I think you can see the 2 mountains.

 

They’re basically on each side of the city. Okay. But it’s still, I mean, you you know, it’s hot. Wait. They’re walking?

 

Yeah. Well, some run. It depends, man. You get all kinds of different furries. But I’m just thinking it was a car, like, driving my car.

 

I’m sure some people get in the car, you know, older people. Right. Right. I don’t think you would see some young buck jumping in a vehicle to drive back and forth. I mean, that’d be a little bit being loose with the interpretation.

 

Right. Embarrassing. But they do oh, we just had a little bird fly right into the window. Right. I think he’s okay.

 

It’s the Lord’s blessing. Alright. Anyway, so, then you’ve got your Hajj. Right? Yep.

 

So those are your 5. And really quick with that 6 pillar, there is no 6 pillar of jihad, but I think all Muslims are supposed to practice this idea of jihad. You hear the greater jihad, the lesser jihad. The greater jihad, according to the majority of Muslims, is the inner turmoil or struggle. Jihad just means struggle.

 

Okay. That’s what the word means. So is jihad is the personal interpretation or the struggle for interpretation to out of the Quran. So jihad in and of itself isn’t bad. It just means struggle.

 

So there’s a struggle, like, this battle between spirit and flesh. That’s the greater jihad that so many Muslims reference. But But the vast majority of the use of the term jihad in in the in the traditions and the and the biographies is is war. That’s the vast majority. Right.

 

That’s what we hear on the news. Either way, it’s not a pillar. There are only 5. Okay. So explain to me the struggle.

 

Are you talking it sounds like inner sin. No. I think that’s what with inner sin? Right. I think that’s how a lot of Muslims would describe it, a struggle between flesh and spirit.

 

But their but their view on sin is not it’s it’s almost secondary, it sounded like, from what you were talking about, forgetfulness. I, yeah. I don’t think that there is nearly as heavy an emphasis on sin in Islam as there is in Christianity, and I think that’s because there is less of an emphasis on the holiness of God. So we emphasize jihad a lot more just because it tickles our ears in the news and we hear all of this stuff that’s going on. And so we think jihad is a huge thing in Islam, but it’s not a huge thing.

 

Almost every Muslim I’ve ever encountered references jihad as that internal struggle. I have met 1 or 2 Muslims in my lifetime that see jihad as they really want to engage in war on behalf of Islam. And war would be like fighting violent. Fighting. Yeah.

 

I mean, think about it in the context of the 7th century when all this comes about. They are fighting with tribes. Right. They are, struggling, and you need to recruit people to fight so that you can get the city of Mecca because in 6/22, they’re expelled from Mecca. Mohammed escapes, goes to, Medina.

 

And all of the while, the goal is to get back to Mecca. And so jihad becomes a political means, a spiritual means to regain the city of Mecca. So Which you see religions do that a lot. Absolutely. Absolutely.

 

Okay. So yeah. We’ll go into the next show. We’ll talk about the, the text. Yeah.

 

That was super interesting. Yeah. Well, this one I thought was super interesting. The text. Hope listeners feel the same or just might be you and me sitting here talking to each other.

 

Yeah. I love hearing Trevor’s voice. Alright. So radio voice, Eric. So tell me tell me, about next week’s the the text.

 

So because that’s not enough for me, bro. Well, I mean I’m not gonna listen to a podcast that’s about text. No. It’s text messaging. Well, we’ve already got we’ve already got, Peter Riddell talking about the Quran.

 

So we’re not gonna talk a about the Quran, but we will talk about the Hadith, which I say that the meat and potatoes of the religion comes from the Hadith, not the Hadith. Really? The Quran is relatively small and somewhat ambiguous, whereas the Hadith Short is the New Testament. Right? Yep.

 

About that size? Right. New Testament. Right. But the Hadith, on the other hand, I mean volumes and volumes and volumes about what Mohammed did, what Mohammed said, approved of, or silently approved of by silence, that’s where you get your meat and potatoes in the media.

 

Oh, I can’t wait. Alright. Thanks for listening.

Islam, Missions and Spiritual Warfare with Dr. Jerry Rankin

The Church often forgets that Muslims are not the enemy. Satan is. Listen in to hear Dr. Jerry Rankin share from his experiences in Indonesia and his study of the Word of God.

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Jerry Rankin – Spiritual Warfare: The Battle for God’s Glory

Jerry Rankin – Spiritual Warfare and Missions: The Battle for God’s Glory Among the Nations

Check out Dr. Rankin’s website… contact Dr. Rankin to get access to his full Spiritual Warfare Teaching.

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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Islam, Missions and Spiritual Warfare with Dr. Jerry Rankin: 

 

 

If we think about what’s happening in our country with fear of Islam, fear of Muslims, fear of a global spread of Islam, and there’s a lot of fear. Is there a spiritual warfare element to all of that? Well, I I absolutely. And this is just a subtle way that we wouldn’t readily recognize is of is of Satan, but he erodes our faith. I mean, we go into that questioning and doubting whether or not the gospel is really effective to to get through to this guy and whether or not he’ll respond.

 

And we fear that he’s going to, become angry, you know, and, we’re we’re afraid of the the reaction. Well, faith is the victory believing God when God said, I will be exalted in the earth, you know, that the power of the gospel is the power into salvation. Well, we begin to kind of question and doubt and say, well, not in this situation. Well, not against a Muslim. Okay.

 

Where is that coming from? It’s not coming the reality that God’s word has given to us. Well, once again, Muslim terrorists A terrorist. People is not irrelevant. It is a warning.

 

Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast. The official podcast of the Swimmer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Alright. We are live, and we have, doctor Jerry Rankin in the studio today.

 

Jerry, it’s good to have you back. Thanks. Great to share with you. So, doctor Rankin has written a couple books, and the topic that we’re gonna discuss today, we’re gonna be talking about spiritual warfare. 1 of the books was spiritual warfare, battle for God’s Glory and the other one, Spiritual Warfare and Missions: The Battle for God’s Glory Among the Nations.

 

So, you know, just looking at the news this week, we see the idea of spiritual warfare. We immediately think of like the state of good and evil and we see this Jordanian pilot that was burned alive by ISIS this week and, you know, this is just a good display of how evil is constantly on the forefront of our minds because we see it happening happening in the world. Well, when you throw out the, idea of spiritual warfare, you get an immediate connotation. Well, this is just the battle between good and evil in the world today. Or you you talk about a a personal devil or or literal, you know, satanic influences.

 

You know, you immediately realize that the, atrocities and the cruelty, the oppression in the world, just the immorality, and sensuality is related to satanic influence. And, we’ll speak about those external manifestations, which are certainly valid, but we are often defeated and distracted, especially in our mission, in our Christian walk, and and in our witness because we fail to realize that we’re actually engaging in a spiritual warfare against, a very real enemy that does not want god to be made known and to be worshiped and to be glorified. Okay. But before before we get into that, Jerry, I just have a question and I I hope it’s not doesn’t come off as off putting. I I was actually saved in a in a Pentecostal revival and have kind of run the full gambit of of denominations.

 

And I was a little bit surprised, honestly, that, as a Baptist that you wrote a book on spiritual warfare. How did you, get interested in this topic and is this something that’s regularly discussed in the in the Baptist denomination? Just because my my own experience, I was kinda and I’m probably misled in that. So how did you get interested in this? Well, actually, it’s it’s not discussed very much in Baptist and other, denominations in our normal church in Christianity.

 

We we think, in fact, it’s probably sold a lot of books because people think, oh, I’m go. Here’s a prominent Baptist leader that’s gonna write him on on exorcism and, you know, casting out demons. Yeah. I would’ve bought book. Yeah.

 

And, I think Howard owns that book. And, actually, I think this is a part of of Satan’s strategy because his success demands darkness, anonymity. He works in secrecy, and, actually, exposing him and bringing his strategy and tactics to light is a big part of walking in victory and defeating his influences through temptations and self centeredness and things that defeat us in our Christian walk. So the book is actually, you know, people are gonna be disappointed. We deal with the external manifestations, which is certainly real and valid, but that’s not where the real battle is, especially in our mission task of of reaching the nations.

 

Alright. So for me, it it like, if I was, recognizing that there was spiritual warfare happening all around me, what do I what do I do with that? How do I how do I start, fighting back or or or what? What do I do? Okay, Howard.

 

You’re you’re jumping to my conclusion. You know? That’s we we need to identify and understand the reality of spiritual warfare in the first place. And, I go back to when I first became interested, begin to gain insight into this was as a new missionary, many years ago. How old were you as a new Well, I was 20 7.

 

I was a young, naive, enthusiastic missionary, confident of my call, confident of the power of the gospel, you know, to save the lost. And I thought that I would arrive on the shores of Indonesia. And never mind, it’s the largest Muslim country in the world, but that the pages of acts would unfold with multitudes being saved every day. Right. So you’re saying that we shouldn’t we shouldn’t believe that?

 

Yeah. Of course. I kinda had the same impression myself. You learn quickly. And, you you know, I was somewhat disillusioned as well as disappointed to find that even though we had open opportunities to clearly proclaim the gospel, that people were largely indifferent and sometimes antagonistic to the message.

 

And I came to understand that expecting a Muslim in Indonesia to respond to the gospel was not unlike asking a blind man to read a newspaper. Okay. Because What do you mean by that? Well, Paul said in Corinthians 4th chapter, the god of this world has blinded the unbelieving, lest they should hear and see and turn again and be saved. And it began to to make me aware, there’s another element here.

 

There’s a spiritual element. There’s an enemy that is blocking the minds and understanding of the lost so that they do not receive Christ. In fact, Paul said in his testimony to king Agrippa, when God had called him to proclaim Jesus to the gentiles, to the nations, that it was to open their eyes to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God. Okay. But I think for some of our listeners, I think they would be right now in their cars or wherever they’re listening to this kind of revolting a little bit because it sounds like you’re saying that people don’t have a choice.

 

Like, for this Muslim man, he’s not going to be answering what his, what what he thinks, what his heart or his mind or as a human being thinks, but really because he’s controlled by the powers of Satan. What would you say to that? Well, I I’m going to explain that, and scripture is very articulate about warning us and alerting us against the reality of the enemy. I mean, we’re told to be on guard, to be alert, to be serious, to be sober, that we have an enemy. And, it’s not just that free choice that he doesn’t want to believe, or he can’t perceive and really understand the gospel.

 

There’s another element that’s there. And we neglect the spiritual warfare. Yeah, we’re not gonna have much success when we try to, impact the the dominions of darkness. Why is it I mean, obviously, being Westerners, but more so, are you saying that maybe that Satan has deceived us into thinking in spiritual warfare only in terms of the demonic manifestations and so that we’re ignorant to the ways in which he’s blinding people to even hearing the gospel. And so we don’t engage the enemy in prayer before we begin to preach the gospel.

 

Is that part of the strategy that you’re alluding to? Well, it it is. And in a more personal way, we’d like to just dismiss Satan’s influence and that which is blatantly evil, which a good Christian would readily resist. But we don’t recognize, well, why does he tripp us with little sins? Why are we always getting into dissension and conflict because of our self centered efforts?

 

That that’s just my human nature. We don’t recognize this is Satan’s strategy to defeat us and to deprive God of being glorified in our lives. So you’re saying that these little sins or the the disunity that happens or the backbiting that Christians oftentimes face, has an element of spiritual, attack. Yeah. Exactly.

 

But let let’s get back to the task of missions, especially in confronting the the Muslim world. And so as Paul said in Acts 26 18, we need to realize their eyes are blinded to the truth. Okay. How can their eyes be opened to recognize the truth? If they’re in darkness, how can they come to the light?

 

Well, he says they’ve got to be delivered from the power of Satan that has them in bondage, and this is in the Muslim world, but any lost world. Lost people in America and and others, cultures, to to bring them into the power of god, and especially the challenge of the, the Muslim world. You remember the parable of the sower, in the 8th chapter of Luke, especially, Jesus talks about the 4 kinds of soil as you sow the gospel. Some’s going to be fertile, and people are gonna be responsive. You’re going to find a harvest.

 

Others are going to be appear receptive, but they don’t really come to full belief. It doesn’t take root in their hearts. You know, it’s choked out. Sometimes it’s it’s a cultural and societal issues and, you know, that keep them from coming around fully. But then he talks about the hardened beaten down pathway where the seed never takes root, never gets into the soil.

 

And we could certainly describe that as the Muslim world. I think the last formidable barrier of global evangelization, a resistance to the seed. Remember, in Jesus explaining the parable, what happens to that seed? First of all, he said, the birds come and take it away. And then he says explicitly in verse 12 that the birds are the devil, That he comes and takes away the seed.

 

So we don’t often are frustrated when we have an opportunity to share the gospel, the plan of salvation, why it’s not received, why people don’t believe that Satan literally takes them away. Jesus describes Satan as a liar, as a deceiver. So we need to take seriously what he’s trying to help us to understand that there’s no truth in Satan. So if if others are deceived about the truth of Christianity, the truth of the gospel, who is it that’s deceiving them? What are the lies that they are believing?

 

Revelation speaks of of Satan as deceiving the nations. So there’s something more at work here than than just a deficient methodology and a deficient witness. But when we think about spiritual warfare, I’m I’m just being honest. I’m sure somebody might not like what I’m about to say. But I I just don’t like to talk about Satan because I don’t wanna look stupid.

 

You know what I mean? In the in the 21st century, if you come at it from this kind of dualistic worldview where there is good and there is evil and there is God and there is Satan, people are like, oh, look at this guy. That’s that’s that’s neat. He has this belief that there’s a God and a Satan. And so, although in my heart I believe these things to be true and I definitely believe in aspects of spiritual warfare, I’m almost hesitant to ever talk about them because people think you’re either incredibly and over the top focused on Satan and kind of incapable of rational thought or the other end of the spectrum whereas you act like Satan doesn’t exist at all.

 

And that’s kind of the camps that I find a lot of people in. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And this week’s sponsors are. Zweimer Center. Zweimer Center.

 

The Zweimer Center. The Zweimer Center. Zweimer Center. And what does the Zwehmer Center do? Talks about Muslims and and tells them on the computer that we love you.

 

Very nice. The swimmer center equips the church to reach Muslims. The swimmer center has been educating people about reaching Muslims before it was cool. Well, I would I would just readily say what a subtle, clever, strategy of Satan. Right.

 

Right. No doubt. Distort your thinking, to inhibit your give you a reluctance to acknowledge it because the scripture teaches us of that reality, and we’re told to resist him, to stand firm against him. You’d think the Bible said ignore the devil and he’ll flee from you. Yeah.

 

To the contrary, you ignore him, and what the Bible teaches us rather than being alert makes us vulnerable. And, you know, it it’s kinda like, any coach will tell you, you know, on the basketball court. The best defense is a good offense. When we talk about spiritual warfare, we’re naturally inclined, okay. How can I protect myself from it?

 

How can I barricade myself? What’s the defense against Satan’s temptations and and and the work of Satan? Well, you don’t wanna get so, obsessed with Satan that you’re focused on him as if there’s a, you know, the devil made me do it, you know, and excuse all our behavior, or there’s a demon behind every bush. Like a coach will tell you, the best defense is a good offense. You can keep the other team from scoring, but if you aren’t putting points on the board, you’re not going to win.

 

So what the scripture tells us is to walk in the spirit. Put on the lord Jesus Christ. Put on the armor of god. We have an offense that will protect us and give us the victory, but you’ve gotta be aware of the battle and the reality of the enemy. But, you know, one of the key passages, and and they’re prolific passages if we just notice this.

 

In Philippians chapter 6 verse 10, we’re told to be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. Well, that’s a pretty comprehensive description of why we have evil, why we have, suffering and oppression, why we have such, immoral, behavior, in in our world. We’re to be strong in in the Lord and stand against the schemes of of Satan, understanding his nature and his tactics as as it’s described here.

 

You can’t expect me to stand firm against an unseen, devious enemy. The subtle and clever in how he is leading me into sin or just neglecting living for the Lord and serving him. But in Christ, we have the victory. And so it’s not a defense. It’s it’s taking the offensive.

 

And Christ is the one when we put on that armor of God, he gives us wisdom. He gives us discernment. He gives us boldness and courage to to proclaim the gospel. It’s like an army battalion. When are they most vulnerable to attack?

 

When they think the enemy is nowhere nearby, and they can just take a little r and r and relax. But when are they most vigilant? When they know they’re approaching them and right over the next hill, they’re going to be vigilant to repel that attack. Well, that’s the exact picture Jesus has given us. The scripture continually says, we have an enemy that is prowling about like a roaring lion, seeking to devour us.

 

His attacks are always imminent, but we don’t dwell on that. We need to realize that he’s given us the power of God’s spirit. Remember, the great commission is preceded by the words of Jesus in Matthew 2818 that all power is given unto him in heaven and in earth. I mean, there is no power that exceeds the power and authority of Jesus Christ. And based on that premise, we’re to go and make disciples of all nations.

 

That includes the peoples of the Muslim world. Well, how do we do this? Because we’re told that Jesus goes with us in all of that power and authority. So we need to have learn how to appropriate the power and the victory that we’ve given in order to engage, this warfare. You know, god is not going to entrust his power to someone who is casual about living for the Lord and trusting in Jesus Christ because the scripture tells us that faith is the victory.

 

In fact, it it’s it’s tied to to the the whole element of spiritual warfare in that armor of God in Ephesians, the 6th chapter, that we’re to take the shield of faith that quenches the fiery darts of the evil one. All of those lies and deception, we’re going to quench those. We’re gonna recognize truth and reality. We’re not going to be deceived if we have faith. So thinking in terms of the American church, thinking in terms of daily life, we we don’t we don’t live this way.

 

I don’t think most of us anyway. If we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t live as though the prince of the power of the world is is truly that the, the evil one is prowling around like a roaring lion. We we tend to live pretty comfortable, nerf lives. And so in that sense is the American church largely deceived, do you think? I think very readily so.

 

In fact, getting a little little ahead of me because I was gonna talk about some ways that that Satan does deceive us to inhibit us fulfilling the mission of God effectively. I mean, the scripture just described him as the the god of this world, you know, the principalities and powers of the air. Does Satan have anything to do with raising up godless totalitarian communist societies that close countries from a missionary witness? Well, I I think obviously so. Yeah.

 

We interpret that as political and, issues and so forth. But if he’s the god of this world and is seeking to keep God from being made known and deprived of his glory, Satan’s behind keeping countries closed. Is he behind persecuting believers in the church to try to squelch the advance of the gospel? Well, exactly. But his strategies cannot stand against the providence and power of God.

 

I mean, there’s no country where the gospel has not been proclaimed. He’s discovered that persecution is actually feeding the growth of the church. Okay. So when we’re when we’re thinking about Muslims, if we if we get rid of the idea that spiritual warfare is always about demon exorcism, and kind of the extreme ways in which we see it in Hollywood, what are some ways in which spiritual warfare is happening in everyday life as people try to witness to Muslims? Well, anything that keeps us from witnessing, I think Satan is actually behind it because he doesn’t want us to be effective witness.

 

He creates fear in our hearts. Fear doesn’t come from God. He gives us courage and boldness. He That’s a really interesting point because if we think about what’s happening in our country with fear of Islam, fear of Muslims, fear of a global spread of Islam, and there’s a lot of fear. Is there a spiritual warfare element to all of that?

 

Well, I I absolutely. And this is just a subtle way that we wouldn’t readily recognize is of is of Satan, but he erodes our faith. I mean, we go into that questioning and doubting whether or not the gospel’s really effective to get through to this guy and whether or not he’ll respond, and we fear that he’s going to, become angry, you know, and, we’re we’re afraid of the the reaction. Well, faith is the victory, believing God. When God said, I will be exalted in the earth, you know, that the power of the gospel is the power into salvation.

 

Well, we begin to kinda question and doubt and say, well, not in this situation. Well, not against a Muslim. Okay. Where is that coming from? It’s not coming from the word of God.

 

It’s not the reality that God’s word has given to us. And so he erodes our faith. He creates fear in our hearts, just a a shyness and intimidation of never even confronting them with the claims of Christ. In this show, we talk a lot about the media, and it’s really interesting. I feel like one of the tools that media uses is fear.

 

And, that I I think that just kinda totally lines up with what you’re saying how, fear erodes our faith or Satan’s purpose is to continue to erode our faith to our faith to where we’re, misguided till we don’t love Muslims, you know, like like Christ tells us to. Well, that that’s true. And, when we discuss a whole method of, of witnessing, showing the love of Christ, you know, relating to someone with respect and seeking to understand them, that opens the doors of people’s hearts. Satan doesn’t understand love. He doesn’t understand self giving, sacrifice, willingness to suffer, willingness to die.

 

He thinks he uses that to intimidate us and keep us from from being the witness that we should. Alright. This week’s sponsors. CIU. CIU.

 

CIU educates people from a bib Biblical. Biblical world review. World view. Real world review. Kids say CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ.

 

You know, I was thinking the other day actually about, Peter’s denial of Christ going to the cross. Have you ever read much and thought much about this idea when he says get behind me, Satan to Peter? What is what is really he’s saying to Peter? What is it? Is it the thought?

 

Is it the denial of what God wants to do to receive glory? How does that tie in with spiritual warfare? Well, Peter had a distorted value, just like most Christians today. You know, we pray for missionaries. What do we pray for?

 

Safety, you know, that no harm will come to them. When the very thing that would plant the gospel is shedding blood, giving one’s life a willingness to suffer, people stand amazed in in the response to people that would realize that the gospel’s not just a religion you chose to follow, but is something worth giving your life to and following, And that opens hearts to the gospel as nothing else. And that’s not our prayers because we’re like Peter. Oh, we don’t want that to happen when it’s the very thing that would bring the redemption of the world. And so where was this coming from?

 

Okay. He was being sifted by Satan, and he got his values straightened out as we see in the book of acts. Well, I’m kinda curious. We talked a little bit earlier about the the idea of Satan being the prince of the power of the air and, you know, the earth being what does that look like? Is is the earth under the power of the evil one?

 

Has God actually given this dominion to the evil one when he promises to give Jesus all of these things in the temptation? Is that something that he actually has authority to give Jesus? What are your thoughts on all of those ideas? Well, I think that does give us, the temptation of Jesus does give us some insights into that. In Luke, 4 verses 5 and 7, we read that Satan showed him all the kingdoms of the world and said, all of these have been handed over to me, and I’ll give them to whoever I will.

 

And I’ll give them to you if you’ll fall down and worship me. Well, now what intrigues me about this, of course, Jesus didn’t succumb to that temptation. I mean, he was Right. Coming to claim the kingdoms of the world for the kingdoms of God. He didn’t succumb to that.

 

But what what intrigues me is he never questioned the right of Satan to make that claim. That’s that’s exactly what I was wondering. I I thought the same thing. So why why is that? And so you you think, well, when were they handed over to him?

 

When did he get all these dominion? Well, you go back to the fall in Genesis. Who was supposed to have dominion over the earth? Man was. He created and gave into man the dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and all and, of course, in listening to the lies and deceit of Satan, they relinquished what had been given to them by God.

 

But lest we be too hazy quick to blame Adam and Eve, in our sin nature, we’ve been doing that ever since. Everyone continues to listen to his deceit, become self serving, live for themselves what they can gain rather than, you know, serving God and, you know, bringing His kingdom up on earth through doing God’s will. It seems like in churches today, we don’t really emphasize that a lot. Do you think that, if churches recognized, that, like the Ephesians 2 passage where, this world, you know, at this time belongs to Satan. Do you think that would, increase our motivation to engage in spiritual warfare?

 

Well, I don’t know about that. You know, 1st John 5 19 says, we are of God, but the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And the reality is where Christ is not known, even where he’s been proclaimed, you know, in a so called Christian nation, but where people are not following and worshiping the lord, the countries, the nations, the peoples, the cultures are the dominions of darkness and dominions of Satan. But I think Okay? There’s a big, cruel, evil world out there.

 

Yeah. Let’s just stand there. Okay. There’s a big cruel evil world out there. Right.

 

That’s interesting. Kinda hide behind our church doors and sing our songs and, you know, our fellowship rather than engaging that world. And Jesus makes an amazing statement in the 16th chapter. Matthew said that I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Gates are a defense mechanism.

 

We’re to put hell on the defensive. You know, we’re not to be Alright. That so this is really interesting. You’re it sounds like you’re basically saying that we’re the ones on the defensive, and we should be on the offensive. Think of this?

 

Are you saying think of this? Are you saying that when Christians go and they proclaim the gospel in these areas of the world, these areas of the world where Christ is not yet known and we bring the church, we plant the church, we have worship, we have the body of Christ, that that is in fact spiritual warfare. Well, it is And, yes, we need to engage the enemy. We need to engage a lost world because that’s the manifestation of the power of evil and Satan that is seeking to deprive God of his glory among the nations. But one of the reasons is we don’t understand that it’s a warfare, that there’s a battle, and we don’t understand the schemes and track tactics of our enemy, and so we’re so easily, deceived.

 

It’s so interesting. Whenever you say enemy, the just being really honest, the thing that pops into my head is Muslims, fundamental Muslims. Yeah. Or or some other world systems. Right.

 

Right. And so, of course, because of our show, but what what you’re clearly saying is that it’s not the Muslim people. It’s Satan. It’s Satan and his tactics. It’s it’s going after the things of God to take away the glory, to erode our faith, the things that you’ve been talking about.

 

Well, exactly. And and we need to to move it into a larger context of the, you know, the the kingdoms of the world. You know, if it’s a battle between Satan and God, it’s all about his kingdom, God being glorified among all peoples and all nations. The Muslims are are a part of that. And we need to understand the influence in which they’ve been ingrained into what they believe with strong conviction that it doesn’t match up with the reality of who God is and the truth of the kingdom of God, and and there are generations, literally 100 of years of indoctrination that have convinced him.

 

Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. Christians worship 3 gods, which is blasphemous. The Bible’s corrupted. All of which creates barriers. Well, who’s wanting to create a barrier from their understanding the gospel and being able to experience redemptions and come into the kingdom of God?

 

And often these are barriers are not our religious differences, but in social and cultural, ways of thinking. We can argue all day about the merits of Jesus and Mohammed, the Bible and the Quran. And one of the reasons we don’t engage this is is, again, our lack of faith to realize truth will prevail and that we’re going on mission from the perspective of a victory that has been assured. So this is one of my own kind of I think I really got this from Warren Larson, but the idea that people always want to point back to Islam is being inherently violent and Islam is, you know, going to produce violent wicked people. And kinda one of the things he used to say was Islam isn’t the problem.

 

It’s the heart of man and the evil one. He would always put the emphasis on it’s not one particular religious system that produces wickedness. It’s the heart of man and and Satan. Does that sound like a lot more of what you’re saying in the idea of spiritual warfare? Right.

 

And and whatever we say in applying this to reaching the Muslim world, we don’t need to to target them and isolate them for the same thing in an agnostic American humanist and secularist, you know, Buddhist or animist in the spirit world. They’re all very sincere in what they believe and what they practice, but they’ve been deceived, for generations in their culture and their society. And so what will deliver them from this is the truth and the power of the gospel. Alright. So I have to ask this question because a student tweeted something out of a class that I almost got in trouble for because there was no context.

 

That’s why I don’t like Twitter sometimes. There’s no context. And the the tweet was, I don’t think Islam is the most dangerous religion and the next part was Christianity is. And that’s all they put. And of course, I didn’t say that.

 

What I was saying is that even Christianity can deceive people into believing that they know God, that they know Jesus just because they’re a part of a church or they were born in a certain country and that’s deceptive and even more so than Islam because they think they’re okay. And so in Islam, there’s clearly a rejection of Christ. But in somebody that’s maybe just a nominal Christian, they’ve grown up in a Christian country, could Satan use that in deceiving them as well? Well, there’s no question about it. Okay.

 

I feel better then. There’s, you know, it comes down to is it aligned with the truth of scripture and God’s word. That reveals the truth and reality. And every reference in scripture to spiritual warfare is in the context of victory. The battle between the spirit and the flesh against worldly values, that we’re so subjected to in in our world today are just the the self centered, selfish interest and pride of the fleshly nature.

 

Materialism? Absolutely. God has given us victory over this, and every reference is how we can walk in victory and be filled with the spirit and the power of God’s word. But if Satan can erode our faith, we may be a good Christian, faithful to church every day, and believe, you know, give intellectual assent and never really appropriate what we’ve been given in Christ. So when you think in terms of victory, I love I love that term.

 

But just to be honest, in a lot of my in a lot of areas in my life, I don’t know if I feel full of faith the majority of the time. What would you say to that, for the average Christian that struggles with, you know, being full of faith, going against that fear that you talk about Satan constantly puts in front of us? What would you say to that Christian? Well, a simplistic answer would just be to quote scripture in Romans 10 where faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And the reaction I often have with students on that is, okay.

 

How much time do you spend in God’s word relative to time you spend on the Internet, watching television, and shares? A lot of TV. I’m just gonna put that out there. So Lies. Okay.

 

So which one is going to have the greater influence on your thinking and your perceptions toward life and so forth? When you feed on God’s word, that’s what’s constantly building your faith. Do you know God is going to be exalted? The gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed among all nations. There will be people from every tribe and nation and language, including Muslims, gathered around the throne of God.

 

So that’s what builds your faith comes from the word of God. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad. So if you wanna be a part of the show, you wanna partner with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know.

 

I love like, whenever I hear spiritual warfare, I think about, you know, like, people using, you know, oil. Yeah. I’ve I’ve had experiences with oil. Right. And then, you know, hands on prayer and things like that, but you bring in a love for the word, as a as a as spiritual war as a as a tactic again, to to battle in spiritual warfare.

 

And I I think that’s pretty amazing. Now, I was thinking too as you were talking, could another tactic of spiritual warfare be being active in sharing our faith? Just thinking about the idea of God’s glory and and as if we’re promoting that and sharing our faith with people and whether or not we’re struggling to believe something, but just resting assure that the word does say this. I might be afraid of Muslims because of something I saw on TV, but regardless, I’m going to share my faith. And could that be a part of increasing our faith?

 

Just being in the process of it. Well, that’s a that’s a good example because Satan didn’t have to get us to adopt a sinful lifestyle or trip us up with temptation and lust all the time. There’s sins of omission as well as sins of commission. And we’ve been told by Christ to be witnesses to the ends of the earth. And when we fail to witness, we’re being disobedient.

 

Okay. Who’s causing us to be disobedient? You know, so it’s not just a sinful behavior and an immoral lifestyle, but failing to do what Christ told us. So, again, that’s the offensive. You know, it’s not a defensive way we protect ourselves and our faith and our religion against all this evil in the world and, all of the kind of beliefs that are being thrown at us, in humanism and materialism and naturalism and some other society.

 

Yeah. And and against Islam and winning the battle, you know, discussing who can cause their perception of truth to prevail in arguments against Islam is positively proclaiming the gospel. If I could just share one one story. And I learned very quickly, in working among Muslims on the mission field, just amazed. And it it really reflects in the book of Acts.

 

You know, why were they so effective? The gospel take root and spread spontaneously. All they were doing was lifting up Christ in a bold, positive witness. And that that’s just what became the model. And I continue to stand in amazement why people, Muslims, came to faith in Jesus Christ knowing they were turned out of their homes, they were ostracized from their community, Their lives were threatened.

 

They lost their job. Why would they turn away from their culture, their society, their traditional religion, and embrace this belief to become a follower in Jesus Christ. The reality is there is no explanation except the power that indwells the message of the gospel. So if we’re not proclaiming the claims of Christ boldly setting before them, not in an aggressive way of trying to proselytize, but just in a positive lifting up, proclaiming Christ, this is what I believe, it gives them pause and something to evaluate and think about and the power to draw them to Christ. Yeah.

 

I actually was, you know, just thinking even in our witness, Satan is so crafty. Right? I mean, even in our witness and our desire to be engaged in the Great Commission and preaching the gospel, He can easily turn that into pride and arrogance and absolutely turn that against the glory of God. And so we have to be on guard in the idea of him being a roaring lion is probably much more subtle than we often think. It reminds me of CS Lewis and the Screwtape Letters.

 

Doctor Anken, have you read Screwtape Letters? Oh, yes. I love that book because of the idea that he puts forth, you know, it’s kinda whether you’re overly obsessed with Satan or you don’t think he exists with at all, Satan’s fine with either of those twosix two extremes. And so that’s a lot of what we’re talking about today in screw tape letter type mentality. Right.

 

It’s it’s not about Satan. I mean, but we do need to be aware there is an enemy and not be deceived about that. And we need to be aware of what we’re taught about. I mean, I I could go through a study on the his favorite fiery darts. You know, what is so effective?

 

Unforgiveness, pride. Wow. You know, just the things that defeat us, and we’re not even aware of it. It. Yeah.

 

Give us a what’s happening. Give us a couple more of those because I don’t think we associate those with spiritual warfare. How do you mean unforgiveness and pride? Just even those 2. Well, Paul Paul explicitly says, you know, those I forgive, I forgive for your sakes lest Satan gain a foothold.

 

Wow. And in in Ephesians 4, he says, you know, let not sun go down on your wrath. Let Satan, you know, get a foothold in our lives. And so that’s that’s as explicit as it could be. And then, you know, it just goes on and on.

 

You know, their their strongholds, their pride, their their dissension and conflict among believers, all of those are just, you know, driven by our fleshly nature. Going back to Muslims, what are some practical tips, for engaging in spiritual warfare, especially in sharing our faith with Muslims? Well, I think we’ve talked about it. Yeah. You know, 1, be be strong in our faith.

 

And, you know, I I actually had to to convince myself, but but the it just really grew with a powerful conviction. As as I lived among them, as I sought to reach them, these are people whom God created and loves. That was something that’s hard I mean, that doesn’t come naturally, though. Well, it doesn’t. It doesn’t.

 

You’ve got to to make yourself believe that truth and know God created them. He loved them. Jesus died to save them, just as he died to save me. And the 4th thing is, and the power of God is sufficient to save them. Now once I started doubting and believing that, my witness was eroded.

 

But believing those four things, you would just see people. I mean, you just see people as this is an object of God’s love. This is someone that Jesus died for. God’s power is sufficient to save him. I may not see it, you know, but I had to believe that.

 

Okay. So I’ve been looking through the Bible here recently and wondering this, and you you’ve kind of tapped into it. So I have to go down this rabbit trail for a second. Bear with me. Is it possible that man being created in the image of God that when we consider world history in the constant destruction of the quote other, racism, slavery, world powers dominating other powers, a constant jockeying for position and always fearing the other.

 

Is this tied into this idea of Satan’s desire for god’s glory and destruction of other human beings who are made in god’s image? Exactly. No question about it. And, you know, we just see that as kind of a cause effect in our world order Right. And societies and the nature of man.

 

And, again, I go back to Satan doesn’t want us to recognize that he’s he’s behind it. The word devil comes from diabolin, kinda like the Spanish, diablos. Diablos. Yeah. It’s almost a transliteration, which means adversary.

 

Satan is set against God being glorified in our lives, the individual Christian walking in victory. He’s against churches being spiritually vital, impacting their community and culture. He’s against the mission of God being fulfilled and the gospel being taken to the nations. So take all the practical aspects, countries closed to the gospel, visa restrictions, missionaries being hit with illness and having to come home. Listen.

 

Anyone set on fulfilling the mission of God has a great big target on them, and Satan’s coming after them. And it’s the subtle ways. Just dissension, conflict, family structure, stressed and strained, and, you know, children getting illness, accidents, you know, taking people off the field. We don’t attribute that to the spiritual warfare, but what is it that’s deprived God from being glorified and made known among the nations? Your your view in spiritual warfare is, is pretty refreshing.

 

I think that, you know, a lot of people are afraid to become the kind of person that sees demons behind every bush. But you just say, hey. We’re in a battle. This is real. This is affecting us on the practical level and on the daily level.

 

We need to be aware of it. Right? And we need to continue to live for the glory of God, to continue to fill ourselves with faith, to to continue to to move forward with the gospel. This is yeah, I I I don’t think people see this as spiritual warfare oftentimes, and I think this is incredible that you’re you bring this to light. Well, it’s over simplistic not to, you know, explain it in more detail and from a biblical perspective.

 

But, yeah, we’re we’re to be on the offense, not on defense. The best defense is a good offense, and faith is the victory. Believe God. Believe what he said. Accept his word as reality, and engage the battle.

 

Doctor Rankin has a a few resources, of course, the 2 books that we mentioned earlier in the podcast. And then, of course, the, he has, he’s just informed us that he has a a couple seminars. Yeah. That’s the tough thing is if we try to put together a podcast on spiritual warfare in, you know, 45 minutes, it’s impossible to talk about the depths of what he studied here. And so I think we can link those things.

 

Right. We wanna point you to those things because I know that some of you guys are gonna be really interested in in hearing all this stuff. So and I know that doctor Rankin really, really wanted to share just, you know, as much as he could, but obviously on this, in this format, it’s not gonna work. But, we’ll definitely put that on our website. For everybody, this is, Trevor and Howard.

 

Thank you so much for listening. Again, iTunes reviews really, really, really help. Thank you guys for, following us for so long. It’s already been 19 weeks, I guess. Yeah.

 

And, we’re really excited about how much we’re growing and how you’re spreading. Keep those comments coming. We’ve had a lot of people, even on the mission field, which has been really cool sharing and, being, encouraging to us and what we’re doing. So, again And I’m not gonna lie that this whole conversation about spiritual warfare, and I even mentioned to doctor Rankin earlier today, I I am getting the sense that I am encountering a little bit of spiritual warfare. So pray for us.

 

Pray for us, those of you that do listen and appreciate the show. Howard and I have even had a couple conversations about, spiritual warfare here recently. So we do recognize that as as Jerry, you pointed out, being on the the the front line of trying to get people to love Muslims is engaging in enemy territory. And so do do pray for the show. Pray for the, people that participate as well.

 

Yep. Again, thank you for listening.

A Christian Response to Drawing Muhammed

The news outlets had a heyday with Pamela Geller’s art contest where artists would compete for a $10,000 prize by drawing the Islamic Prophet, Muhammed. This event, not long after the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, seemed simply to be a stunt to fuel hatred against Muslims in the U.S. How should Christians respond to events like these and does condemning such an event constitute a rejection of freedom of speech?

MUSIC:

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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of A Christian Response to Drawing Muhammed: 

 

 

Extremists are, are alive and well. They are not dead, and their video is not gratuitous, and it irrelevant. It is a warning. Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast. The official podcast of the swimmer center for Muslim studies where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor.

 

Alright. We’re doing a show, Howard and I. No guests today because it’s been a while. We’re not interested in guests today. That’s right.

 

We have, decided that it has been far too long since we’ve done our own show and we have a, you know, something in the media that was definitely for you early listeners, a boom goes to dynamite moment this week. But before we get to that, we want to say thank you to our reviewers. We get a lot of reviews lately, I think on our, iTunes website. Yeah. I think we’re up to 26.

 

Yeah. Yeah. 26. We were giving like a weekly update and then all of a sudden we stopped checking because we figured people stopped giving reviews. Right.

 

But no. I mean and they’ve been really, really gracious. There’s this one, in particular one reviewer said, when it comes to sharing the gospel I would trade all my apologetics training for what I’ve learned from this podcast. Why, thank you. Boom.

 

I did not expect that, but okay. Apologetics is excellent for my walk with Christ, just not evangelism as much. I had God boxed into my very nice American dream. He loved me and Americans, and his justice would reign on those evil Muslims. Then I became friends with a Muslim girl my age and so That changes everything.

 

Right? You become friends with a Muslim. Right. They become human. Okay?

 

Muslim girl my age and started listening to this podcast. Woah. Did that shake things up? God is so much bigger and greater than I realized. Learning to see things through his eye their eyes, sorry, finally had opened doors that I never imagined.

 

I never knew how God had hidden the keys to his kingdom in the Muslim religion, giving them so many beliefs that are just right for making them pre Christians. Yeah. So and it keeps going on and on. It’s a it’s a really really nice review and we just wanted to say thank you because we sometimes don’t mention that some of the feedback we get from our listeners but it really does make a difference for why we do what we do. Absolutely, it matters that people are listening.

 

And so, anyway Yeah. And you you mentioned in there to turn up the sound and you mentioned Trevor turn up the sound. I just wanna say that I don’t have anything to do with the sound. That’s all Howard. Yeah.

 

Okay. In my defense, the one time I did do the sound, it was horrible. It was when we did Naveel Jabbour, and the sound was so messed up. We had to buy software to fix it. Right.

 

Because I did the sound. Right. And and even when we bought this software, it wasn’t, like, fixing it well. But, anyway, the point is I’m not a sound engineer, and so I’m I’m learning along the way. So I really appreciate everyone’s, patience and grace, and all that good stuff.

 

Some Howard, an encouraging word. He does good man. It’s been good. Yeah. I mean, we don’t what we’re doing and we’re doing it.

 

So like this is really good. Yeah. This was all kind of started on a whim about, I don’t know, 6 months ago. It is a bit bizarre that it’s been going for this long and Right. We’re starting to get some momentum, but here’s the deal.

 

This is where you guys come in. Yes. Please. Spread the word. Yes.

 

Get people to listen. Understand that we’re talking about this in a little bit different way than what they’re seeing in the media and we need to have a little bit more diversity in how we look at the world. And we try to always bring it from the perspective of how does, our Christian world view how should we view this? How should we view this in light of scripture, in light of missions, and try to make things a little bit more complicated than the 32nd sound bite we hear in the news. Right.

 

And we know it’s so hard because you podcast listeners, I mean, we’re different. I know that not everyone even knows what a podcast is or how to get on 1 but you might have to just grab their phones, you know download an app do it, subscribe them, post it on Facebook, whatever, Twitter, whatever you want to do because we need, to get the word out because we really want to influence people, towards you know what, what, God, you know, how God sees Muslims where he wants to see them come to know him. So, anyway, thanks for the reviews. They’re very encouraging. We haven’t had any hateful reviews yet.

 

So if if you if you’re wanting to do one of those, just don’t. Don’t. It would hurt our feelings. We’re sensitive people. We do get some hate mail but, we get far more encouragement than we do hate mail.

 

So thanks so much guys for your encouragement. Right. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And this week’s sponsors are. Zweimer Center.

 

Zweimer Center. The Zweimer Center. The what? Zweimer Center? Zweimer Center.

 

And what does the Zweimer Center do? Talks about Muslims and and tells them on computers that we love you. Very nice. The Swimmer Center equips the church to reach Muslims. The Swimmer Center has been educating people about reaching Muslims before it was cool.

 

Alright. Let’s do it this week. What do we got, Howard? Okay. This is on Howard’s insistence that we talk about this issue.

 

I’m more of a, I don’t really want to talk about it. Okay, well we really need to talk about it because we’re talking about the exhibition, right? Depicting the prophet Muhammad, put on by an organization headed by a woman named Pamela Geller. And okay so for those of you that didn’t know is that she made this contest or this organization made this contest and they offered a $10,000 prize for those that drew pictures of Mohammed, and it was of course really really controversial and it was kind of playing off the, Charlie Hebdo. The Charlie Hebdo tragedy.

 

The Danish cartoon drawings Right. Way back when. Right. Right. And so she’s been getting a lot of attack, but at the same time, everyone’s she achieved the impossible.

 

At this point in time in the United States, you are in one camp or the other. No matter how much you want to say you’re balanced or you try to you try to speak in a balanced position, everybody always pigeonholes you into one camp or the other. She achieved the impossible where she has both liberals and conservatives hating on her. So I mean, in that sense, I was like, wow. You know, you can’t say that this was politically motivated because you even have Bill O’Reilly condemning the woman and then you also have MSNBC and CBS and everybody.

 

Everybody’s upset with what she did. Yeah. And that makes sense because it sounds like she was inviting she wanted, fundamentalists to come and attack fundamental Muslims to come and attack. And it just seemed really irresponsible. But I was really surprised at how many artists had sent in entries.

 

It was 350. And the artist that actually got, that won the 10,000 dollars prize he started posting it all over Twitter and social media because he wanted to get the artwork out there. I figured he would kind of run and hide at that point but he did not. But okay, so Trevor tell me why exactly you didn’t want to talk about this. I just don’t like to talk about well, 1, Mohammed because I know it’s such a a touchy subject for so many of my my Muslim friends.

 

Right. Yeah. I I guess because there’s there’s 2 issues here. Right? Mohammed is a controversial figure and, draws a lot of attention both positive and negative from all over the world.

 

Most I think it’s the most popular first name in the world. As a matter of fact, I was watching a show, Big Bang Theory. Not not ashamed to say that I watch that. It was actually quite funny. And, one of the guys says to the other guy who’s, you know, one of those really brilliant people in the world that has no social skills.

 

He says to him, you’re never gonna guess who I ran into today. And he said, Muhammad Lee. And he said, who is Muhammad Lee? And he said, well, it’s just statistical, you know, deduction. Muhammad is the most popular first name in the world and Lee is the most popular last name.

 

So I just said Muhammad Lee. So in that sense, like, you know, when all of this came out, Muslims responded. Some Muslims responded quite well, but we didn’t get to see that in the news. Right. Because that’s not newsworthy.

 

Right. Some Muslims decided that draw a picture of your best friend who’s named Mohammed, just a person, as a way to counteract the, what they considered hatred or hate speech of this contest. Right. So you have the the controversy with it’s Mohammed and then you have the other controversy where we’re dealing with free speech. And this is where it gets really, complex for me anyway.

 

Yeah. Go ahead. Well, as Christians, how do we deal with with free speech? I mean, I’ve I’ve lived in a country where there was not free speech and I don’t think I would want it that way. Right.

 

That’s that’s really extreme. Right. And but on the other hand, as a believer and a follower of Christ, I don’t believe that I’m entitled to free speech because I think that my tongue is also brought into the submission under the submission of Christ. So there’s there’s a conflict, an internal conflict that I personally have. Right.

 

Because just because you’re able to do it, doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Well, yeah. There are some things I can’t say because I’m a follower of Christ. Like, I I can’t I can’t be hateful. Right.

 

Just because you have the freedom, you have the freedom, you have the of Christ. Like, I I can’t I can’t be hateful. Right. Just because you have the freedom doesn’t mean yeah. Because that would, def you know, defile your your beliefs.

 

So the question is, is that what Pamela Gellert does? Well, I think the issue is is that we have okay, so here’s the hard thing, you have a lot of Christians that are wanting to say, you know, I don’t like what she did, I think what she did is wrong, but I value free speech enough that I’m not willing to condemn what she did. Right. And they can’t speak to it because then it would they would be pigeonholed in one side. Yeah.

 

It’s Which is what we’re afraid of here. Yeah. It’s a slippery slope. Right? If you say she shouldn’t have done it, that’s wrong, inciting violence, and you shouldn’t do that, then people say, so you’re against free speech.

 

Right. Which you know what? Maybe that’s what I’m saying. I’m not a 100% sure where I stand on this. As a believer, I don’t know that we are as entitled to these rights as we think we are.

 

That’s what I I guess I’m a little bit hesitant about. I guess what I’m saying is not only should it have not been done, but I think Christians maybe shouldn’t be so quick to say I’m not willing to to condemn what she did because I wanna uphold free speech. Right. And it’s because it’s more nuanced than that. It really is.

 

Yeah. And I tell some of I mean, you heard we were fishing the other night and I mentioned to Howard, you know, we really you don’t have as much free speech as we often say. You don’t really have the freedom to say anything you want. I mean, you could walk into Walmart on, Black Friday and and shout fire and you might incite violence, you know, you could have, start a mob and you know what? You’re gonna get in trouble for that.

 

Right. You can’t do that. Of course, airplanes, you can’t say bomb or anything like that. Right? Can you imagine?

 

I’m thinking of, meet the parents the movie. Yeah. Bomb on an airplane. Yeah. No.

 

You can’t. You can’t walk on an airplane. Try it and call us and let us know how it goes. No. Don’t don’t don’t associate with us.

 

Wait. Real quick funny airplane story. I was flying to Louisiana. I was speaking at a conference and the conference one of those lectures that I had to give that I hadn’t finished was Islam in the 21st century and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. So I’m going through my lectures and my lectures are all image driven PowerPoints.

 

Right? No, no words, just images. So there’s 9:11, there’s Bin Laden, there’s Aynman Zawahiri, there’s Sayyid Qutb, all these, you know, men responsible for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. And I look behind me and the person sitting behind me is staring at my computer, like, she just could not take her eyes off it. And all I’m thinking is, this is a bad idea what I’m doing right now.

 

So I had to put my computer away because I’m on a plane. Can you imagine if you’re sitting next to a guy that’s sitting there looking at pictures in line? Looking at your computer. I was just thinking you were making a presentation. Oh, yeah.

 

No. No. She’s looking over my shoulder, and I’ve got pictures of Bin Laden. I’ve got pictures of Zohar, and all and she’s just sitting there looking at it, and I’m thinking this woman is probably about to have a heart attack. Right.

 

No. No. No. I would’ve I would’ve reported you to the to Marshall. You would’ve dove on me and put me in a headlock.

 

Alright. This week’s sponsors. CIU. CIU. CIU educates people from a bib Biblical.

 

Biblical world review Worldview. Real world review. CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. So, anyway, sorry. Yeah.

 

So you I’m just saying, I don’t know that you have a 100% free speech. I’m not sure we really understand what that means, but I do, I have lived in another context where you couldn’t say anything. You could go to jail for just speaking out against the government. Actually, can you give us an example of that because I know that you have a couple of stories. Well, I mean I have friends that would speak out against the government and the next thing they know they’d find themselves the next morning in the police station and then maybe even exiled to an outer island.

 

Do they know why? Oh, of course. I mean, the the police but the police told them. Yeah. There could be a rumor.

 

This person said this about this particular, ruler or this person said this about this particular part of the royal family or this dictator and then next thing you know they’re gone, you know. And so, you can’t just say whatever you want in those countries and I don’t want that, of course. Right. Right. Right.

 

We’ve lived into that. And so, but the question is, you know, we were talking about this just this morning. Maybe all things are permissible but not beneficial. Right. And as a believer, we do have to uphold biblical values far and above, maybe our constitutional rights.

 

Is that okay to say? What do you think? Yeah. Yeah. I think so too.

 

The what would you say that, what was the main problem with what Geller did? What how does that affect, our relationships with Muslims? Because, you know, I think that people would, Muslims would assume that Geller would be a representation of Christianity. Correct? Because she’s American.

 

Sure. I mean, 78% of Americans claim to be Christians, and so they think Christian nation, this is what Christianity this is an attack of a Christian this is Christendom, Western Christendom attacking Islam again. That’s what they would that’s how it would be, the propaganda that would go out in the Muslim world. Right. And this is this this news has gone throughout the whole world.

 

And I have no idea what Pamela Geller’s faith stance is. I’ve not looked at the Right. But I wouldn’t want to make that claim. From a Christian standpoint though, why why was it such a big deal for her to do this? Why would this affect what we do or what we believe as Christians?

 

Well, I think that the new testament’s, pretty clear on this. This isn’t a gray area that we’re supposed to be careful with how we speak. Not to let unwholesome talk come out of our mouths, to season our conversations with salt, to, not curse, brother, and then also to, you know, bless God and curse man with the same tongue of which man is made in the image of God. I mean, the bottom line here, the thing for me is, like, I saw a, Facebook post and this is one of the reasons I’m not on Facebook and it was a student that showed it to me. It said Texas to ISIS 0.

 

And I was like It was referring to the 2 gunmen that had come Right. That the police had shot. And of course, you have to. These guys show up and they’re wanting to kill people and and they’re wanting to do an act of terrorism in the name of defending, their prophet Mohammed. Right.

 

But still, like, 2 people are dead. And I don’t know. Like, even if these guys are doing wrong, there’s still something that seems not right about gloating in the death of an enemy. I mean, that’s from the Psalms, you know, but we we get really confused when we, I don’t know, confuse or conflate our our faith and our our nationalism and our love for our country and also our love for god and are those two things always compatible? I’m just not sure.

 

It’s a really confusing thing. Yeah. But There’s a lot to think about there. Yeah. Something that I always teach because I’m a youth pastor, something I always teach is that, you know, there is a lot in the nuance of things.

 

Like, it’s easy to come up with dogmatic arguments, you know, set up straw men about what you believe so that, you can, you know, imaginearily debate, you know, people that, you know, these, these really shallow arguments against your faith, and then you just knock them down and impress everybody. But then when it comes to the real world, I think, you have to deal with the nuance. You have to deal with the gray issues and and wrestle with them. I think this is one of those things where, you know, I think a lot of people come down hard on one side or the other, but I think there’s a lot more to it than that. And the and I think the tough thing is, you know, we’re dealing a little bit with, the constitution, constitutional trying my my best to be careful here, but we do realize that, I would I would think that as Christians we would want to uphold religious freedom, But oftentimes it seems like we’re only willing to do that so long as it’s the right religion.

 

Yeah. We would want to uphold the right for people to, pray or, have, religious attire in public schools, but so long as it’s the right religion. And this is the same thing that France has been dealing with. Right? So we kind of have to make up our minds.

 

Do we want a secular society like France where they implement this concept of la cite or secularism, where you can’t wear a headscarf, you can’t wear a cross, you can’t wear a kippah, you can’t have anything any particular religion, but also not infringe on the rights of the people to exercise their religion. And so, we want to uphold a society where the government will not promote any particular religion, but also not infringe on the rights of the people to exercise their religion. And so that means that come Christmas time, there’s going to be the manger scene, but then come, Eid, they’re gonna want that day off for for their Eid celebration. It’s complicated. Right?

 

It’s not so easy. And and and holidays would I’m just thinking about holidays, like, they would that would be a a big deal, I think, if, government, you know, workers all got off on every religious holiday. You see what I’m saying? People start making them up, you mean, like, best of us? Well, not not just that but just, just being really complicated you know I think.

 

Yeah, so that’s, that’s interesting. But I think what we have to recognize is that we, we do value democracy. We do value the majority of the people. Right? And, right now, Islam, Muslims are not the majority in the United States and so, it’s a confusing thing.

 

And like I said, I I wrote an article, gosh, probably 3 months ago about Islamophobia in the church and man, I got some really mean responses, like, almost like I hated America or something. And I, I was tempted to respond but I didn’t because it just feels like no matter what you say, people are trying to categorize you and I think that’s a first in our country. I think it hasn’t been like that in a very long time historically, where people don’t know you by who you are or what you believe or what you say, but they simply know you as either which party are you in. Right. We can polarize people.

 

Yeah. So And, so you don’t hate America. Of course not. No. Something that we talk about often because Trevor and I both have been in missions for years and traveled overseas all over the place and something that we always are reminded that when we come back to America, we feel like we’re coming home.

 

Absolutely. You know, and it’s a it’s a wonderful it’s wonderful thing. It’s not one of those things, you know, people are like, if you don’t like America, get out. You know, like, no. No.

 

No. We like America. This is this is not the point. But I I think that, that God has called us to, you know, to go above even our patriotism, you know, to to follow him, be to be devoted to him even beyond that and to allow him to influence us more than even our politics. You know?

 

Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad. So if you wanna be a part of the show, you wanna partner with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know. And so what it comes down to is I I see that there’s often a polarization even within young Christians.

 

So, millennials out there. I don’t what is the age group of millennials? What does it go to? About 34? I’m I’m right on the cusp.

 

Really? Yeah. I’m like the last year of the millennial and I think you’re a gen x er. Right? Yes.

 

I’m so sorry. Old. I’m young. You’re on the border. Anyway, what I see with the millennials is there’s an apathy towards government, an apathy towards any sort of political ideology at all.

 

And so you have this sort of polarized view. Again, like, the spectrums. On one end of the spectrum, you have those that say that, you know, what? Give to Caesar. What is Caesar’s?

 

Give to god. What is God’s? I will have no involvement whatsoever in politics and I will pursue pacifism and and just allow God to work through government systems and I won’t have any role in it. Mhmm. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have those that believe that, there is still the scripture that teaches that we do believe that it is is the role of the church to have the kingdom of God, the the will of God as it’s done in heaven here on earth and you can do that through political discourse.

 

Right. Justice and science. Right. So there’s these two radical ends of a spectrum, and I just see that the millennials tend to, be on the end of the spectrum where they’re completely apathetic. And the baby boomers are very much on the side of, like, political discourse and involvement and something there has to be some sort of middle ground there.

 

Right? But I don’t see it happening anytime soon. I work with a lot of college students and I see a lot of apathy. Right. Well, they they’re looking at, changing the world outside of government.

 

You know? These, startups and, you know, Kickstarters and such and trying to, you know, start an NGO and such. But, yeah, it is an interesting, situation, but I I think that we should think on it. And I would love to hear, not hate, but, some of your thoughts on it because, everything that I’m hearing on Twitter or Facebook or editorials and such are, pretty extreme. So I’d like to hear what, what you guys, are thinking about it.

 

Yeah. I think the kinda across the board is, what what Pamela Geller did, I think everybody pretty much agrees was wrong. It incited people to violence. And, the loser is the 2 young men that lost their lives. That’s that’s the ultimate wanted to believe something so badly they’re willing to lay down their lives for it.

 

And, it’s sad that they, wanted to believe something so badly they’re willing to lay down their lives for it. So in looking at all of this, how does how does a Christian view all of this? I think that we appreciate the fact that we do live in the country that we live in and that the constitution is an amazing document. Maybe the most amazing man made document, historically, and a lot of other countries have been built off of it. Sure.

 

But also recognizing that as Christians, we do have a higher Christians, we do have a higher calling and that our, our history has some pretty ugly spots. We have to realize where our country has done well, where our country has failed, and realize that no matter when we’re failing or doing well, we are actually called to live above reproach of even, our own Americanism and follow Jesus and make sure that that our Americanism doesn’t become our stumbling block. And I think that’s why I like that reviewer’s post. She was talking about, how, she had figured it out that god loved me in America and hated the evil Muslims. And I thought, wow.

 

Like, I think a lot of people probably find themselves in that place. Right. By default. Yeah. You know?

 

Yeah. It’s a public area. With it. Yeah. Jesus in America.

 

Yeah. I think it was Keith Green in the eighties, that would remember traveling to India said that, you know God’s not American, he’s not even Republican. Right. And I, I think I remember first hearing that I was like really? I like I just didn’t even think in terms of that.

 

Yeah. So, yeah, there’s a lot to think about. I hope that you guys as you’re driving your cars or, you know, washing your dishes or doing whatever and listening to this that you are wrestling with this just like we are. And, again, you know, write us at, Zwemer Center atgmail.com. Check out our website.

 

Read our articles. We actually have a article, written by, Matthew Stone Matthew Stone, on this actual, topic, and so we’ll hopefully be releasing that, somewhat soon. And I think he has, a lot of good a lot of good things to say about that. Yeah. It’s it’s a complex issue and just, continue to pray for the Muslim world and continue to pray for Muslims here in this country that are starting to feel that polarization.

 

And I think that’s my biggest concern is that you have Muslims that feel like they have to toe a line all of a sudden, like, who side am I on? Let’s hope that, they meet a follower of Christ that shows them that there is a higher calling a higher calling than being on one side or the other, but simply following Jesus, which I think ultimately is the solution. So Right. Yeah. Well, thanks for listening.

 

Remember to write reviews. Yes. Comments at truth about muslims.com. Write in. We’ll try to do more of these features where we highlight a review or comment on email.

 

Yep. So thanks.

The Spirit World of Islam with Warren and Carol Larson

Dr. Larson opens the door on the Spirit World of Islam by sharing stories and beliefs of folk Islam.

RESOURCES:

Fazlur Rahman – Islam and Modernity

Bill Musk – Unseen Face of Islam

MUSIC:

Theme Music by: Nobara Hayakawa – Trail

Sponsor Music by: Drunk Pedestrians – Mean

Interlude Music by:  LeBon – Man, Damscray – Rural Metric Seven, Trans Alp – Gnossienne N4, The Magick Traveling Backpack Band – Prelude at Last, Chris ZaBriskie – The House Glows with Almost No Help, John Stockton Slow Drag

 

 

Here starts the auto-generated transcription of The Spirit World of Islam:

 

 

In Pakistan, the country erupted. The American embassy was burned. Several reading rooms in different large cities were destroyed, and, our home was attacked by some students who got out of control. It was we were under military, martial law at that time, and then it was dismissed. And then a fraction, a group of them came and decided, Oh, we’ve got foreigners living here.

 

And they came to our house and burned our vehicles out in the yard and broke into the house and we were in a back bedroom. And, then the men finally thought, well, they’re going to get us. So, the men went out and, yeah. Then when the men went out, some of them ran and then some of them grabbed the other guys, were taking them off to the mosque. And finally the police came.

 

And when the police came, it sort of all calmed down. The police took several of the students and put them in jail. Yeah. So then, Warren and the other fellas, they went to the police and said, please let the kids go. We don’t know that you’ve got even the right people.

 

You’re just holding young kids in jail, college students, and, they said, we can’t do anything about this because it’s come from, Islamabad, the headquarters. And, but anyway, they said to them, we forgive them. We don’t have any grudges against these kids and just please let them go. And then, several days later, when eventually they were released, then people from the city came over to thank us. And a lot of them said, some said at that time that we see a difference between you and us.

 

As Christians, you forgive your enemies and those who do you harm, whereas we don’t. Once again, Muslim terrorists. A terrorist. Lot of innocent people. Extremist is not irrelevant.

 

It is a warning. Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast. The official podcast of the Swimmer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Alright.

 

We have doctor Warren Larson in the studio today. Doctor Larson is the, former director of the Zwemer Center For Muslim Studies and was the, instrumental in bringing it to Columbia International University. So, doctor Larson, great to have you here. Thank you. And, the topic today, is the spirit world of Islam, really the spirit world of Muslims.

 

When we think about, Muslims, it seems that we can create sort of the whole belief system around orthodoxy. But from what I’ve known from you over the years is that sort of the meat and potatoes of the religion, can sometimes be much more spiritual and unorthodox rather than just sort of straight from the Quran. Does that seem fair? Yeah. It it it a good word for it would rather than be spirit world, it’s almost like the spiritual world because that’s the worldview.

 

In other words, they’re living in that in that world, and it’s a spiritual world view, involving spirits and fear and and dreams and curses and evil eye and stuff like that. So it’s it’s it’s a whole world view. Is this all in the Quran, or is this something that’s complete sign kinda separate, like the superstitious part? Or I don’t know how even how to phrase it, but yeah. Yeah.

 

I mean, it’s a good question. I, I’ve just, taught this course. I’ve just gone through it for the online course, and I was holding my Quran in the hand, in a hand when I was talking. And I did it for effect, but also kept finding verses in the Quran that are foundational to focus on Islam. In other words, the world view of the spirits, the, fear of the evil eye, the fact that you can only get healing through some magic in some cases.

 

So in other words, the in the time of Mohammed in 7th century, that was basically the worldview, and it didn’t Mohammed didn’t leave it behind. Muslims have, they brought it right with them into Islam. So it’s there. So you spent 23 years, living and working in in Pakistan. Is there what was your first encounter where you realized that the daily life of Muslims was much more spiritually, connected than maybe you as a Westerner were expecting?

 

Yes. Well, I had the, in some ways, the disadvantage of knowing very little about Islam. We when when I went out with my wife, in 1968, I was a very young man, 24 years old, knew nothing about Islam, coming from Northern Canada. Had never met a Muslim because there weren’t any there from that part of the world. And so I had never taken a course on Islam.

 

And so when I got to Pakistan, I knew nothing, and I knew I knew nothing. And, the advantage, I guess, was that I was willing to learn. And the first thing that struck me about it was that I saw these shrines. The country is daunted with with shrines all over the place. You can drive down the road and you see these shrines which is cemetery and, flags and and things.

 

There’s a tomb there of a saint. And you drive down the road and you see these shrines, and it just hits you right in the face. Oh, could you describe them a little bit more? Like, were they colorful or were they big? They were they varied.

 

You can get a simple shrine, but the the the the primary characteristic is a tomb. In other words, some saint has been buried there. And, the thing that catches your attention, I guess, are the flags, the bits of cloths that people have left. In other words, they’ve come. They’ve, primarily women, have come and they’ve given a prayer.

 

They have tied a piece of their clothing on as a reminder to the saint and, I guess a reminder to God that they’ve made this request. So they go to these shrines to make a request? They do. And the Okay. The saint is basically, an intermediary between God and man.

 

So you don’t go directly to God. You go to that saint who has some kind of spiritual power and you go there and you say, you know what? I don’t have a son or something like that. Something that’s very grievous, a great burden on the heart, particularly thinking of woman of a woman who hasn’t been able to have a son. She goes there and she makes this request with the hopes that through the through the saint, the the power of that saint, she’s going to find, be able to have a son.

 

So this is a woman that you you know that was pursuing sort of an answer to prayer through the connection with a saint. Well, I I know all kinds of women, but I can just give you an example, of a woman who actually worked for us. She was a young woman. Her name was, Barakat, which means blessing. It’s a very common word in the, in, in in Muslim and, you know, Muslim languages it means blessing.

 

It comes from Hebrew but, it’s Arabic and Urdu and all that. And this little girl couldn’t have a son. She had tried. She was married. She prayed for a son.

 

She wept for a son. She pleaded for a son. She never had a son. Finally, she went to the pier, to the saint. So she went there and she wanted a son.

 

Next year, what happened? She had a son. And she called him Pir Baksh. And Pir, of course, is the word for sate. And Pir, of course, is the word for saint.

 

And bahxis means given, so the translation of that would be given by the saint. And so she just went to the saint every day? Or No. The way it works is that these saints are a dime a dozen. There’s all kinds of saints.

 

And so, the one that she went to was about 20 miles from where we lived. And, every year during a special time of the year is what they call a a birthday, a birthday and a death day together. So the 4 4 days of the year is this, celebration when people go there and celebrate the birthday or the death day of the saint. Now I suppose you could go at another time, but I suspect that she went there at this what they call an, Urs, which is the birthday of the saint. She goes there.

 

She makes this request. And, you know, who who knows? I’m not to judge whether this actually happened, whether she relaxed and had a baby. We we don’t know. But she did have a son, and they called him Bir Baksh, given by the saint.

 

So on these birth death days, was it the belief that the the saints were more effective at that moment, more powerful at that moment? Or No. Does it just happen to be that time when they went? The the what I mean by birth death day, they they’re the same. They they they celebrate the, the birthday and the death day at one time that this saint was born and he died.

 

And the thing of it is is that, even if the saint has died, there is a descendant. In other words, because it’s through a line. In other words, from from 1 from father to son and all the way down. You trace your your lineage back, and it goes all the way back to Muhammad. So that’s what I mean by birthday, death date.

 

That’s when they remember this saint. So you mentioned earlier, this idea of the evil eye. The spirit world and the and the practices that are involved, it’s not always about just receiving blessings, isn’t it? It’s sometimes about protecting themselves or a family member from maybe the attacks of evil. So how how does that get worked out in these Muslim countries?

 

Yes. Exactly. In other words, Muslims are scared to death that somebody’s gonna put the evil eye on them, meaning that they will cause them harm. And the the the trouble is is you don’t know who might have this in air in innate power. It it could be a a neighbor, an older woman.

 

We won’t pick on older women but, you know, it’s a widow. Somebody has she’s basically helpless. She’s a widow. She doesn’t have anything to to to depend on. But if if she has that power, then people are gonna respect her.

 

They’re gonna be afraid of her. They’re going to try to avoid her, lest she you get on the outs with her. You might have a dispute with her. You might have an argument with her with her. There is a danger that she could come by.

 

She could put her evil eye on you, perhaps on your water buffalo, on your goat, or something like that, and so you will suffer harm. And so people live with this this fear that maybe somebody will put the evil eye on me. And if something bad has happened to me, has it happened to me because of this evil eye? Now you said they’re in fear. Are they like, you’re saying they walk around in fear, like that’s one of the things that’s in the back of their head always?

 

Well, I mean, if you don’t know somebody that that could harm you, so it’s going to cause fear. Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly.

 

That’s traumatic. Yes. To walk around in that. Right. The worldview is, like I said, you know, curses, blessings, and all of this kind of stuff and and a whole lot of fear.

 

So that’s the way I think I could summarize it. Because if you don’t know what’s gonna happen or why it happened or if it could happen or should it happen, you know, fear of the future. So this is, there’s quite a bit of fear. Right. So what what do they do to defend themselves or to cope at least?

 

Well, they do, various and sundry things. They use amulets. They, amulets in which are written verses of the Quran. They use the hand of Fatima, which is, she was the daughter, one of the 4 daughters of, Muhammad. He never had any sons unfortunately.

 

But one of his daughters was named Fatima and she is known to be someone who can protect them. And you often in the Muslim world, you’ll see a hand. A black hand. And that hand is held up, you can see it on buses. You can see it on doorknobs.

 

You can see it on necklaces. And that hand is the hand of Fatima and is supposed to protect you from the evil eye. Now there are other things too, charms and amulets and so on, but the hand of Fatima is primarily a protective amulet against the evil eye. And so how did Fatima get this reputation? I’m not sure.

 

But, you know, when you’re Mohammed’s daughter, that stands for a lot. That means a lot. And, she just, she’s just a prominent person. She was the wife of Ali. We don’t wanna go into a whole lot of, historical stuff here, but Ali was the is the one that the Shiites, you know, really love and remember, and Fatima was his wife.

 

And so the the Shiites, I think a lot of Fatima, but, not only the Shiites. Fatima is a big name. It’s almost like sort of a Mary type of a, you know, people will venerate Mary. Well, Fatima is in a sense very much venerated for her ability, for her power, and people depend on on this. I know in the country that that we lived in, you didn’t ever wanna say anything nice about something.

 

Like, for instance, wow, that’s a beautiful house you have there. That’s a beautiful car. Oh, wow. What amazing children. You have just such wonderful children.

 

Right. Because it was seen as a potential of possibly bringing you a curse. Yes. Is this the same Is it carries throughout the Muslim world? This idea of cursing and It is.

 

Exactly. It it could be, an envy. In other words, if someone looks at that beautiful house that you’ve built and and is envious, then, that you could cause harm to that house or cause harm to the family. And so what they will often do on that house is they’ll somewhere in the foundation or perhaps somewhere in the house, they’ll write the word, God willed it. And so that phrase is used and overused again.

 

I mean, in in, formal Islam or or or Orthodox Islam, the word is a good one. God wills it. He has willed it. So but in spirit world of Islam, they use the thing as magic. In other words, this is a magical phrase that you would use.

 

God is And if you say it, as you you mentioned, if if, you know, you say this is a beautiful baby and it probably is, then you’re supposed to say, God willed it. So that would would if if you if you admire the baby, that’s okay, provided you say after that, Marcella, because by admiring the baby you could be envious and you could bring harm. I mean, how does the woman know? Do do how does anyone know that you don’t have envious, look, or in your eye or something like that? So afterwards you always say, Mahershal.

 

And believe it or not, believe it or not, the hadith says something about when you have physical relations with your wife, you’re supposed to say Bismillah, which is of course a little different than Ma’Shellah, but it’s a close thing because it’s Bismillah means in the name of God. And the reason why the you’re supposed to do it, you say Bismillah because it could be that the child possible to have a child because of the union would be a devil. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And this week’s sponsors are Zwammer Center. Zwammer Center.

 

Zwammer Center. The Wammer Center. Zweimer Center. And what does the Zweimer Center do? Talks about Muslims and and tells them on the computer that we love you.

 

Very nice. The swimmer center equips the church to reach Muslims. The swimmer center has been educating people about reaching Muslims before it was cool. You see, this shows you really the extent to which, the feel in other words, the feeling of the spirit world and the power of Satan to harm everything and to, so, yeah, it’s just quite amazing to me to think about it that, you’re even supposed to say Bismillah. So in in your experience, when you meet, in Pakistan, when you meet with people, was this, like, a real sense where people actually believed it as a whole, or did you find that there were, like, a lot of people that were skeptical?

 

Like, I don’t believe that. That’s just what my mom believes or grandparents believed. Well, I mean, it it is basically the world view of ordinary Muslims. So ordinary Muslims makes up most of the Muslim world. You know, 70, 75 percent studies have been done statistically.

 

You’ve got 3 quarters of the Muslim world are into folk practices. Now it’s true that, education, Western education and there is a lot of Western education in the Muslim world. You have, you know, huge universities like University of Punjab in Lahore or University of Karachi. These are huge. They’ve got some Western influence and they’ve got some foreign teachers in there probably and there’s an appeal for Western education.

 

However, however, the world view is still there. Even I sometimes tell my students that even though a person like Bayn Azir Bhutto, who was twice prime minister of Pakistan, who who was educated in Oxford and Harvard, a beautiful woman who who who rose to that position. I read her book called Daughter of the East, and when she was up against when her back was against the wall when she was in trouble, the book says that she went to see her saint in the southern part of Pakistan. So in other words, it’s not just poor Muslims, but it’s also, rich people too who will often appeal to the saint and who are afraid. I mean, you’re you’re, you know, you’re asking a good question, about whether educated people or thinking people really question this.

 

I think a lot of people live by those fears that someone could put the curse on me. I mean, this is not just, illiterate women or or illiterate people that hold these views. Right. And and as a Western person, I imagine that if I ever heard and I have heard stories of where, someone had been, you know, had the evil eye put on them, and it it it actually affected them. It’s easy for me to just basically come up with excuses rationalizing why there’s a scientific explanation.

 

But in this case, have you ever heard of people that have actually been affected, and how do you explain that? Well, see, I wouldn’t try to explain it because, if your perception is that it’s going to harm you, and I think that’s the greatest harm that can be done, fear. In other words, I don’t know that I would ever be afraid. Personally, of course, I’m a Christian, So I I don’t know. I mean, I know the evil powers are there.

 

The evil spirits are there, and I do know that Satan is very active and Satan is very powerful. However, as for how efficient it is, I can’t say. All I can say is that the greatest harm that can be done to you is to be afraid and to be fearful. And and this goes for ordinary people. In other words, ordinary people, if they’re afraid and totally filled with craven fear that this is gonna happen to them, then they’re gonna be suspicious.

 

They’re gonna be suspicious of neighbors. They’re gonna suspicious of friends. It’s gonna affect relationships and all of those kind of things. So I would say that, apart from the physical harm that might come, the greatest thing is the matter of fear that it engenders or generates. Have you, or your wife ever been approached by a Muslim that had been felt had felt like something had cursed them?

 

Well, yes. That too, but even closer than that. My wife tells a story that she thought that somebody had put a curse on her. I remember when I was a little girl in Sunday school, there was a missionary story from Haiti. And in that story, there was a story about a witch doctor, and they had a voodoo doll.

 

And they would poke pins in the voodoo dolls, so it would put a curse on people. And where we lived in our city, we were just a few blocks from a lady who put curses on people and households and things. In fact, my very good friend, when her husband died, a few months after that, my friend went with her sister-in-law to this house. Her sister-in-law had was wanting the woman to do something. And just sitting there in the room, my friend, Aziz, said to this woman, have you ever put a curse on our family?

 

And the lady went absolutely quiet, and she said, well, have you? And I’m sure she said, yes, I did. But it didn’t work right. It killed your husband and it was supposed to kill you. And, since that woman lived in my neighborhood, there were several times when I would be in the house and I would literally have the feeling of a needle going into me.

 

And because I had that story as a child of the witch doctor and the voodoo doll, The Lord just brought into my mind immediately that there’s a voodoo doll of you. And I would just stop what I was doing, and I would speak out loud, and say, devil, get out of here. I am a child of the king. I am covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. I am his child.

 

You have no power over me. Go. And it would be over. So in the sense of the spirit world, the Muslims would argue that this is really the work of of Satan. They they also believe in the existence of Satan.

 

A lot of listeners might not even be aware that there’s a belief in Satan and there’s also a belief in demons, the jinn. Right. Right. So these jinn or or the demonic powers of Satan, they’re fairly active in the lives of Muslims so far as they think. Correct?

 

I mean, daily activity Yes. Going on. Yes. There is. There’s a lot of recognition of the jinn and evil spirits.

 

And the interesting thing about it is is that Muslims think that some of the jinn are okay. There are good jinn and bad jinn. And, for instance, the Quran, getting back to your question on the Quran. In the Quran, it says that at one point in the in the history of Mohammed when he was down really low and that point in his life would have been rejected in this city, this city of Mecca, he preached from the Quran. And he read, like, he recited the Quran.

 

And it says in the Quran that the jinn gathered around and they were quiet. In other words, they listened to it. So there are by by and large, they they think of jinn as harmful, but then on the other hand, some jinn are not too bad, they’re they’re not too malevolent, and so there is this, contradiction that is a bit strange. There’s different kind of gin and we could ask about which are the good and which are the bad. So so I have a Muslim friend that asked, I asked her.

 

I said, do do you believe in in jinn? And she said, Oh, of course not. And, I said, Really? And, she said, Yeah. She said, Do you believe in Jin?

 

I said, Well, I do believe there are demonic spirits. And she said, oh, me too. And so, so then she started to tell me a story and she said in her home, they, there was a djinn living in the home. Oh. And they were terrified of this thing.

 

Okay. And it would, in the middle of the night, make noises and go around almost like you would hear in the west of a ghost story. Really? So they, hired someone to come. I’m assuming appear, one of these saints to come and cleanse the house.

 

Oh. And so they came in with the Quran and they walked around the home and everybody else left and they told them not to come back until a certain time. And after they came back, the man was standing outside and they said they had cleansed the house. Right. And the djinn had agreed to stay in this one particular room in the home and not to open the door and to leave that room for that particular djinn.

 

And they said they lived for the next few years in that home, and they never went in that room. Wow. Yeah. Well, that’s very interesting. I mean, they they can’t deny it because one whole chapter in the Quran, it has 114 chapters in one whole chapter in the Quran.

 

72 is called Al Jin, the gin. So it’s chucked full of gin. Another thing is, I just keep coming back to this, question of the influence of, the spirit on the Quran. You know, the very 2 last two chapters of the Quran were given about the jinn because someone, according to the, the biographies, according to the hadith, put a curse on Mohammed. And Mohammed couldn’t work.

 

And then he had a dream. And in the dream, he hears 2 angels talking. And one angel says to the other, what’s wrong with this man? And the other angel says, somebody’s put a curse on him. So what he did was he went to the well, that his own well.

 

He emptied out the water and, he was given magic. Through magic, he got rid of these jinn. And then you had inspiration, what you call, for a surah 1 13, chapter 113 and 146 and verses in 1 and 7 verses the other. And for each of those verses, in other words, it was sort of a a prayer, and that’s how he got rid of this curse. In the news, you don’t see much about folk Islam or the spiritual world of Islam.

 

Is it something that, like, nobody brings up? Because on one level, it I mean, for me as a Western watcher of news, it sounds like Islam is very much akin to, like, Judaism or Christianity in the sense that, you know, we have God, but we don’t really talk about the super spiritual stuff. Right? Is this something that they they try to hide? Or it’s, maybe the Muslims in the West that just, you know, no longer ascribe to folk Islam?

 

What do you what Right. Because the Western world, we don’t allow for it. In other words, for one thing, we’re too scientific. We we deny basically, the existence of Satan or the devil, or we deny the evil spirits. We it’s like Trevor said a minute ago.

 

Our worldview really puts very little credibility to this whole worldview. You know, the best book I can think of is called the unseen face of Islam written by Bill Musk. A wonderful book, evangelical, Christian. I wrote this book, it is just a marvelous book. He calls it the unseen face of Islam because it’s something that’s hidden.

 

In other words, it’s not something that we talk about or even that Muslims talk about. But, I think it’s, Bill Musk who gives the illustration that it’s like an iceberg. You look at an iceberg and the top is what you see is like orthodox Islam. You see the 5 practices that that they do. They say their prayers.

 

They go on Hajj, the pilgrimage. They do all these kind of things. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Down below is really this whole realm of, of folk practices, popular Islam, the the real Islam of the of the ordinary Muslims. So that’s really, I think, true in the sense that that’s what people are thinking about.

 

That’s what their their worldview is. Now on our show, what we try to do is we try to encourage listeners to approach Muslims, talk to them, have relationship, start up questions. I think one of the things that might be now, maybe a hindrance, is that, they might have some concern, you know, about some of the things that you’ve been mentioning. Like, okay. If if they do believe that this this spiritual world exists like Christians do, right, then should I approach Muslims because of maybe I might be cursed or evil eyed.

 

If they weren’t afraid of terrorists, they might be they might be afraid of being cursed at this point. So, Oren, you gotta give us some kind of encouragement. Some kind of What do we what do we do now, as far as being able to the gospel obviously must speak to this stuff. Well, you know, I sometimes tell my students that, from my experience in Pakistan, the most precious verse that Muslims would run across, when they were doing Bible correspondence courses that we offered, Or talking to them if they were reading the the the New Testament on their own. The most precious verse that they could ever have read.

 

And they said this is Matthew 11 28 to 30. Come on to me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I’m meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest to your souls. That’s one illustration. But another one is, just recently reading John 5, where here is a man who has been, laid up for 38 years.

 

Okay? And he says when Jesus gives him healing, he says, you know what? I have tried. Tried what? He says, I’ve tried to get help.

 

He said, I’ve gone down. And just before I get there, somebody else steps in. You know, you think to yourself, these these folk Muslims, they are trying to cope with life. But oftentimes they can’t do it. And apart from the help of Jesus, of course, physically, Jesus can minister to them and we should pray for healing, but more than that, spiritual healing.

 

No. We don’t have to be afraid of put them putting a curse on us. I think, as we’ve mentioned before, we have the power of Christ. We have the, the power of the Holy Spirit. We don’t fear.

 

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Biblical world review World view. Real world review. CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. Muslims are often afraid of one another. I don’t think they’re afraid of us, and I don’t think we need to be afraid of them.

 

But, but I think that, we need to walk in the in the power of Christ, in the victory of Christ, and and witness boldly of of him. You know, when you think of it, Jesus is really, much more powerful than anyone that that they have ever trusted in. So, we have Christ and we preach Christ. I don’t know if that answers your question or not. It might not.

 

No. I think it does is that the gospel speaks to this, that Christ is powerful. He has control over wind and waves. He has control over the demons. The demons know who he is.

 

These are stories that while here in the West, they’re kind of you could preach on these stories, but I don’t know that they’re gonna connect with a lot of people because we don’t live a life where we’re thinking of demoniacs and we’re thinking of, you know, controlling wind and power and and being able to do all of these things and healings, maybe if from a Pentecostal tradition. But other than that, there’s not much of that discussion happening in the West. But those are the stories that in the Muslim world would probably have some of the greatest impact. Well, that’s true. I think we have to be open to miracles.

 

And that that said, I don’t think that it’s not just, a matter of miracles. Somebody has a miracle and then they’re gonna come to faith. I’m not saying that, but we have to be open to miracles and we also have to do more than pray for healing. What I mean by that is Jesus healed people, but it it wasn’t enough just to heal them. And he wanted them to fully embrace him as as Messiah and Lord.

 

And so that’s what we work for too, when we’re with Muslims. I mean, Muslims, you you can you can say to them, well, you know, Jesus is the only one that’s gonna help you in this case. He’s going to deliver you, and he’s he’s the one that can provide a husband for you or a wife for you or deliver you from this sin and on and on and on, but that’s not enough. I mean, it’s not enough for them to see Jesus as the great healer. They have to see him eventually as the only one, the only savior, and God incarnate, and and they have to come to that place.

 

Otherwise, it’s not enough. It’s not enough to even to have a miracle. You know, Muslims are having dreams, and a dream is good. But a dream is only the beginning. For instance, right now I’m praying for some Muslim friends of mine that they might find job, employment and on and on and on.

 

And it’s possible for that Muslim, to say well, that that’s all I need is Jesus, the miracle working Jesus. The truth is that what they need is Jesus the savior. Jesus to forgive my sins. Jesus, and I need to repent of my sins and believe on him as savior and lord. In other words, that’s that’s the point I was trying to make that, we’re not just talking about a miracle or or a dream or something like that.

 

It’s not just a need at the moment. Not just a full filling a felt need. Right? But I think here in the west too, there are some folk practices going on in Western evangelical churches. Some of the times when you hear in the ways in which people pray, it almost seems like there is an attempt to manipulate God or to get God to do something on your behalf.

 

And so we too have to be careful in the way in which we approach God. Yeah. I mean, you raise a good point because this, whatever you wanna call it, pagan belief or something, you know, it’s it’s really across the board in Hinduism and and and Islam and Buddhism and so on. Really, the basics are there. It’s really animism at its best, and that’s that’s really the world view.

 

And and it’s like you say that it’s in Christianity as well. But you will sometimes wonder about these folk Muslims. Are they trying to manipulate God or are they trying to keep Satan in place? It’s really both because they’re afraid of Satan. And on the other hand, they are trying in one sense to manipulate God, to get God to to do what they want, to God to protect them, God to fulfill their need.

 

God to give them what they want. God to give me the spouse. You know, there’s, there’s sorcery. They sometimes use in folk Muslims to, to put on a to capture what they call a woman. And there’s a special verse in the Quran that they would use.

 

Another verse they would use to bring peace. Another verse so you see, really, it’s it’s quite a thing. It’s it’s use of the Quran in various ways to get what you want because that’s really the the goal to to impenite God, sort of force God’s hand. About the woman, is it like you’re talking about like a love spell kind of thing? A love potion.

 

Howard has a wife. I don’t know why he wants to know this particular version. So Yeah. I think I I think as a matter of fact, it comes out of chapter 12, which is the story of Joseph. And you know that Joseph had this problem with the woman who tried to seduce him.

 

Right. And there’s a verse in there, and I think they take that verse, write it in in an amulet, and and a strong, what they call a practitioner, for whom you’d pay a lot of a lot of money, and who has a lot of power. And the purpose would be that you you want to, capture this woman. You see, you don’t have a wife or whatever. Maybe you you have a wife, but you want another one.

 

So you work some kind of magic to get control of her, and then you gain control and marry her. Okay. So I had a, a quick question that was kinda confusing me. Folk Islam or anything that’s folk to me sounds like the the the the side of that religion, right, that isn’t really mentioned in their in their holy books. It’s just kind of like a practice that the people just, you know, they they practice it.

 

You know, it’s it’s not really a a precedent anywhere else in in their holy books. But with Islam, it sounds like the folk Islam, the stuff that you’re talking about is in the Quran Right. In the Hadiths and some of the other stuff. So I’m just thinking, but if you have it in the Bible too, some of the things that we’re very uncomfortable with, I mean, the idea of holding up a snake and looking to it to be healed sounds quite folkish when we think about it as Westerners in the 21st century. And so, I mean, donkeys speaking and those types of things.

 

We just have to be, I don’t know. Yeah. That’s That’s my that’s sorry. That’s a good point. But but even the word folk is, you know, you sort of apologize for the use of some of these terms because they’re not so clear.

 

Right. Folk, the word folk is basically the word popular. This is what ordinary Muslims do. But I take your point, that the world view, the very foundation of Islam is very much mixed with animism. And it’s in there.

 

It’s not just something that, has been added on or adopted along the way that they’ve picked up from the from, Hindus or Pagan Christians or somebody. But it’s right there from the beginning, and, it is true. Matter of fact, Islam has rejected some of this stuff. It has tried its best, but but again, the it’s somewhat contradictory because it for instance, it speaks against magic. But then, in the other, hand on the other hand, it will say that, oh, by the way, the only way to get rid of jaundice is through magic or, the scorpion.

 

In other words, this is the it it it it speaks against it. It it condemns it but on the other hand, there are some things according to the hadith when you when you compare them to that it does, it does Prescribe it. It only describes it, but it says that you can use it, as long as you say god is 1. Another question I had. So as a Christian, when you’re dealing with animistic societies, oftentimes, it’s a power struggle.

 

From what I understand. I’ve obviously not dealt with animistic societies as a person. But, you know, like, where they have to see that that your god is is far more powerful than their god because, you know, it’s the you like, you talk about the animism. It’s all about fear, appeasing the god so that they can live in peace or do whatever. Right?

 

Do whatever they want. So do you find that with Muslims, that practice folk Islam, that we have to, you know, kind of follow that that same way. Yeah. Well, I mean go ahead. No.

 

I I’m thinking prophets of Baal, Elijah power encounter. I mean, we do have a biblical basis for some of this, sort of stuff happening. Precisely. Yes. In fact, I would say that every Muslim who comes to Christ is a power encounter because after all, the kingdom of this world, Satan himself is opposing it.

 

And God who is, the God of grace and mercy and love and the savior, he is actually, this is god’s kingdom coming in conflict with Satan’s kingdom. So every, in fact, every person that comes to faith, Satan is trying to hang on to them. And so this is in fact a power encounter. I think this is true. We talk about power encounters, truth encounters, all of those kind of things.

 

And Trevor has just mentioned 1st Kings 18 where Elijah runs into the, the problem of the Baals and, then he takes the bull by the horns. He ends up after it’s over, he kills off, 400 prophets of Baal and maybe did 450, I guess it is. Maybe killed off another 400 of Asheroth. And, then Elijah runs for Jezreel. He thinks it’s over, but then Jezebel is still hanging on and so that’s why, Elijah gives up, sort of go goes, you know, in despair.

 

But but let’s remember, I think I often think of that chapter, that whole story that God wins the end. He’s sovereign. And even though Elijah is depressed and discouraged in that power encounter but it it does show you too how persistent Satan is in his, his efforts to control. Now I I think that, there are all kinds of power encounters in the scripture, like even John 4, the Samaritan woman, and and people that Jesus spoke to. Some he healed.

 

Yes. There are the the scripture is full of power encounters that constantly Jesus is confronted with it, and we are as well. I think of 1 missionary. There’s a book called the Shadrach the Apostle of Java, and this is a a missionary from Uh-huh. The island of Java.

 

Right. And local missionary. And, one of his strategies was to purchase the field that the village in which he was trying to preach the gospel, they would always set aside Right. A field that was dedicated to the spirit world. Yeah.

 

And he would purchase that field and everybody would say, well, nothing will grow there. He’ll die. Anything that gets produced there will be cursed and he would produce that field and do it well through the what he wouldn’t say it was a power encounter, the power of God. He would grow his vegetables and show that the Right. The power of the Holy Spirit that indwelled him was greater than that Right.

 

Of the spirit of this world and that was one of the moments where villages would begin to turn their attention towards the gospel. Right. So Yeah. No. Yeah.

 

He had a tremendous, he had tremendous success with the gospel, that fellow. He did, some pretty strong contextualization, but, I mean, he did have, some good success with with Muslims. So, you know, just to kinda summarize all of this stuff. Right. So when you meet when you when our listeners meet with Muslims now.

 

Right, they’re gonna be, you’re you’re saying, like, even the fact that, their hearts are maybe even turning towards Christ is a a victory in a power encounter. Right. So what would you say to, our listeners as they as they’re trying to reach out to Muslims in their, in their neighborhood, in their schools, in their jobs? How would they approach it from the from what we’ve been talking about? Well, one thing is felt needs.

 

I mean, Muslims have felt needs. They have, desires. They want to do well in their business. They want they wanna succeed. They wanna get married.

 

They wanna see their kids pass an exam. The mother is praying that her son will pass the exam and and that they’ll find a, so I think the best thing we can do is that every chance we get, is that we pray for Muslims on the spot. We pray for them. We tell them we’re praying for them. And, we, we give give God the glory in every chance we we have, enter into their lives and their felt needs.

 

And, this in itself is a great witness because Jesus does answer prayer and Muslims know this. The fact is they know that, at least most Muslims are pretty appreciative of our prayers, and so that’s one thing we can do is pray for them. And you know that’s not very western in a sense to do that, but it’s it’s very important, I think, to pray at every opportunity and every chance and understand the felt needs of Muslims and and do our best to pray for them. Yeah. I think we have to keep in mind that the Muslims do have some understanding of Jesus being able to raise the dead.

 

Right. Right. Cleanse the leper, heal the sick, give sight to the blind. These are all things in which he does in the Quran. Right.

 

And so there’s already a context for the power of Christ. And so yeah. No. That’s true. That’s true.

 

It’s a very good thing. And we can build on that. We don’t getting back to something that was said before, I don’t think it’s a good idea to say to them or to think that my God is not the same as your God and so on like that. There is a great difference between God and the Quran and God and the Bible. But I think that some things that Muslims know about God are quite true.

 

That he is the creator. He is all powerful. He is merciful and so on. And so, I think we can build on that, build on what they know, because if you say to them that, my god is not the same as your god or my god is stronger than your god, I think you close doors, to them. And so I would say try to build on what they know, what they know about God, and what they know about Jesus and things like that, and hopefully they will be able and willing to learn more.

 

I mean, it isn’t easy. It is a power encounter really, of the strongest nature for a Muslim to come to faith, not just, because of the opposition of Satan, but the fact that Satan uses family, social pressures, apart from the theological stuff. The social pressures that would try to keep that Muslim from ever coming to Christ are tremendous. And and that is very important to keep in mind when you talk to Muslims. Alright.

 

So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad. So if you wanna be a part of the show, you wanna partner with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know. I think of a very vivid story. One person, where we, actually worked with a person.

 

They this family was very close to us. We knew them well. They came to us one day. They’re Muslims, both of them. And they said, you know what?

 

We’ve had to move out of our house. We can’t stand it anymore because there is a pressure in that house. And when at night, we go to bed, there is this, almost like a a being lays on top of us and weighs us down and burdens us. And it’s not just us. It’s the children too who feel us.

 

And so we’ve moved out of that house. Can you help us? So, we went over there. I went over there and my wife Carol went and we took some other fellas, who work with us, pastors, a couple of former Muslims, and we went into that house. And we sprinkled water in the corners, and we prayed in the name of Jesus.

 

We sang songs room by room within that house. We went through that as a symbol that the house was being cleansed. The family then moved back into that house and she told us, she said to us, that they never had any trouble after that at all. What about healings? Yes.

 

I think, if I look think back of it, we probably should have prayed more for healing, than we did, but we did see people healed. A woman had cancer. We prayed for her, and the family said that she was completely healed. It was a funny thing that when we went and prayed for her, I can remember that we weren’t in the mood for it. We were, you know, I don’t know whether Carol and I were, had some kind of an argument or something, but but I just remember that we didn’t feel like it.

 

We didn’t they asked us to come and pray for her, and we didn’t feel like it at all. We thought, you know, this isn’t gonna work. We’re not in the mood for praying. But we went there. We went to her bedside, and, you know, normally men aren’t allowed in a situation like that.

 

But here this girl was definitely sick and, at death’s door and something, so we prayed for her and the family said later, they came back to us and they said she’s healed. We didn’t expect it. I mean, it was a sort of an incident where she was healed. And then other times, it would seem like, you know, you would pray for healing and something, but and and it didn’t necessarily happen. But but but just to to make note of the fact that God is sovereign.

 

He heals when he, wants to, but we did see incidents of God’s healing and this was one of them. I was wondering if I could tell another story. Alright. It’s about my wife and it’s one that she, is embarrassed to tell. And it’s because there was a time when she was called to the bedside of a little girl.

 

We had a neighborhood girl who was, there was 5 or 6 kids in the family. 3 of them were deaf and dumb and they could be there all day playing with our boys, and, it was really no problem. I would write the names of everything in order to roll over the furniture and house, and then, so that they would learn that things had names. And their father was a school teacher, and he, they had made up their own sign language so they could communicate. And, one day the little girl, Shahzadhi, never came over, and she was several days without coming.

 

So I went out of the house to see what was wrong, you know, if there was some reason they weren’t allowing her to come or what it was. And she was very sick. And so I talked to a Pakistani doctor I knew, and they decided it was typhoid. So then every day, I bought the medicine, and every day I would go over there and see that the child was taking it properly, and sponge her off because they would always keep them wrapped up really warm instead of letting the fever, you know, cool the body down. And one time when I was in their home, the father was there and the older brothers were there, and so I was trying to be rather quiet because often it wasn’t Nick’s company, but they were there.

 

And I just felt God say to me, pray for them. Pray for Shaz Artis healing. Well, there are a lot of people standing around the bed including the father who is a teacher. And Carol thinks to herself, you know what? I can’t do it.

 

My Urdu is not good enough. You know, I don’t speak the language well well enough and I’m gonna make mistakes and this her father’s a teacher and I’m gonna be embarrassed and so she didn’t do it. And she felt afterwards terribly rebuked that she hadn’t prayed. Eventually the little girl got better but Carol said, you know, God wanted me to pray and I didn’t do it. I should’ve.

 

He’s forgiven me for it. But she said, when God wants you to pray for somebody, do it. Do it. You know, it’s true that we get embarrassed. One of my students right now is wanting to pray for people in Arabic but she’s feeling, you know, my Arabic isn’t good enough and I’m gonna be embarrassed.

 

And so I told her this story and it it’s true that we need to be bold in praying, even another language because it isn’t easy sometimes to to pray for people. But, but that was a lesson that Carol learned, I think early in our missionary life. It’s interesting that you say that story because the one encounter I had that was clearly a spirit world encounter. A friend of mine, young man, was throwing up blood. He was sick, constantly vomiting blood.

 

And he asked if I would come to his home one evening because there was going to be an imam that was gonna come and they were gonna have a special ceremony for his healing. Yeah. Yeah. And so I didn’t know what to do and so I just came. And sure enough, there’s, an imam like I had never seen.

 

He was quite a older guy, but had no sort of appearance of the other imams. Not special robes or anything, just almost like an old fisherman. And he was taking things and riding them in in davehi in Arabic, the local language, and putting them into a bowl and they were dissolving in the water. And then the the young man was to drink the water and I felt this overwhelming sense that I was to pray and rebuke the devil and proclaim the power of Christ. And I was so afraid, I began to shake and I thought I was maybe having a panic attack or something.

 

I just couldn’t say anything and I was terrified. What if I say the wrong thing? What if God doesn’t heal? What if they’re angry at me? What if I had I had all these doubts.

 

Mhmm. And so I said nothing. And I sat there quietly and I left the room Room. So discouraged and feeling like, man, what did I do? What did I do?

 

So I’m, yeah, I think that’s one of those times where you do, you look back and you say, when the Lord, gives you the opportunity, pray. Right. And when you fail and you forget and you don’t, accept the fact that the Lord has forgiven you and the next time Right. Pray. Yeah.

 

You have to walk in grace Yeah. And forgiveness. Yep. That’s true. That’s a good word.

 

Well, Warren, thanks so much for being with us. Yeah. Thank you. You bet. It was a pleasure.

 

All you listeners out there, remember to check us out on iTunes, to subscribe, please. We need more subscribers. And, of course, write reviews. They really, really help. And, make sure you guys are visiting the new website at zwemercenter.com.

 

That’s zwemercenter. I think you know how to spell that, not the British way, the western way. It’s wimmercenter.com.

Understanding Muslim Worldview with Dr. Jerry Rankin

It’s so easy to assume that everyone thinks like you. Dr. Jerry Rankin shows how different a person’s worldview can be and what that means when you try to share Christ with them.

RESOURCES:

Roland Mueller – Author Page at Amazon.com

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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Understanding Muslim Worldview:

 

 

Understand, okay, you you can win an argument. You can try to convince them of that, but but it’s problematic in that you’re trying to get them to change their whole life’s orientation. You’re knocking the legs out from their understanding of reality. And you can convince them and win the argument, but but you’re not gonna win the war. Once again, Muslim terrorists A terrorist.

 

Extremist. Extremist. These America. These Muslim extremists are, are alive and well. They are not dead, and their video is not gratuitous, and it certainly is not irrelevant.

 

It is a warning. Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast. The official podcast of the swimmer center for Muslim studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Okay.

 

We are with doctor Jerry Rankin in the studio today, and we are going to be discussing worldview, particularly the conflicting worldviews between Christians and Muslims and how this is often perceived as a barrier to sharing your faith with a Muslim. So it’s really good to have doctor Rankin back with us again. He has had 40 years working in the International Mission Board, 17 of those years as president, and 23 of those years is working with Muslims in Southeast Asia. So we always appreciate the the wealth of knowledge that he brings to the table. So, Jerry, thanks so much for joining us again to discuss worldviews.

 

Well, it’s good to be with you, and, I think this is a very important topic in understanding of communicating the gospel cross culturally. Christians, especially in America, have not had much experience with that. We all witness from a theistic worldview and just make the assumption, you know, everybody believes in God. You know, they understand man is a sinner, and, you know, it’s easy to explain to them why Jesus is the only way because he died for our sins and believing on him. But, when you witness to people of other religions and other cultures, we don’t really understand world views, that they’re viewing reality from a different perspective.

 

Yeah. Could you kinda go into that a little bit more? What is what exactly is a worldview? Because I don’t hear that term, you know, tossed around even even in social media. I mean Right.

 

I think missions, missionaries missions, people, mission schools, and seminaries, we talk about worldview nonstop. Though and what is the German term, the Weltchenchung, the worldview. But what exactly is a worldview? Well, first, it needs to be said, it’s not one’s knowledge of global geography. Well well done.

 

Well done. You just throughout that world. I said, oh, yeah. I’ve traveled a lot. You know, I know where countries where countries are on the map.

 

No. It’s not how you view the world, geographically such as that, but it’s how particular cultures seek to make sense of life. It impacts their values, their relationships, their behavior, their morality, the supernatural. Now, we see cultures, differences in cultures, how people dress, the different food they eat, you know, their social order, their customs. That’s evident.

 

That’s the their their culture. Worldview is more subtle. It’s the unseen that affects, okay, what do they really know and think about God? And what is man in relation to God? What is their sense of the afterlife and the spirit world?

 

That’s that’s a worldview because all of that works together in a dynamic that makes sense to their life and their community. So in in some sense, we could say worldview helps us to make sense of the world in which we live. It’s how we view the world, almost like a pair of glasses that we would put on, spectacles. We view the world through these lenses that we have. Exactly.

 

And people grow up knowing this is how the world works. And it’s unthinkable that anyone would think of these things from a different way. And so that’s why they have trouble bridging a barrier. When we’re talking about God, when we’re talking about eternal life, when we’re talking about sin, it has altogether different meanings from someone from another society. For example, Eastern mysticism, there’s no concept of God.

 

You know, there’s no responsibility for sin. So so you’re saying there’s different worldviews even within our culture in America, because you’re you’re talking about sin and and and and, you know, God and all these kind of things, and there’s a lot of people in the states that don’t, believe that. But we do kind of have somewhat of a similar worldview. So there’s, there’s all these other elements, is that what you’re saying, to worldview, like their faith, their upbringing, yeah, the region of the of the United States that they live in, that kind of thing? Well, it is, and it’s, played out in in very practical ways.

 

I remember hearing a story of a American friend asking his Chinese had gone to a funeral of a relative. And he asked him, when is your deceased relative going to eat that food you’ve just placed on his grave? And the Chinese friend replied, well, when your deceased relative smells the flowers that you placed on his grave. So, you know, Why why do we do these things? You know, what what do we really believe, you know, about afterlife?

 

There was a time when everyone thought the world was flat. That was a worldview. And to believe differently was heretical. People got killed because there’s some burning at the stake for that kind of, dissension. So how how much of our view affects our lifestyle.

 

Stuff. Okay. So let’s think about for ourselves. It’ll help us kinda see our own worldview. How much of what we do in our Christian faith is a result of worldview that might not necessarily be scriptural?

 

Do you know what I mean? Like, are there things that we do and practice in our faith that maybe they’re not necessarily biblical. Maybe they’re not anti biblical, but we do them because it’s more cultural and part of the way in which we view the world. Christmas trees. Yeah.

 

Nice. Howard is against Christmas trees. If you people can believe that Howard is against Christmas trees, it’s true. I’m not. I’m not.

 

Well, in in more subtle ways, you know, Western culture is very individualistic. We make our own decisions. You know, we have the freedom to do that, choose our own lifestyle and so forth. That is unthinkable in most other cultures who are communal cultures. You don’t make an individual decision apart from approval of the clan or the elders or unless they make that decision as well.

 

And and that’s just a, you know, simple way that our Christian witness is affected. We we try to confront individuals, get them to repent, believe, and accept Christ and believe. And they hadn’t passed this through, you know, their their elders, the areas of accountability and responsibility. That’s why many missionaries are discovering, you know, group conversion and small group evangelism so that they come to Christ as community, you know, rather than extracting individuals is the way to impact lostness in other cultures. And so would you even say that that would, basically, influence the way we even read our Bibles as individuals?

 

It it does. We’re we’re reading our Bibles from a a certain worldview and perspective of our understanding of God that is very thoroughly ingrained, you know, in American culture and history, and how we relate to them. Others read the same Bible, and they’re filtering a different thing. For example, when I lived in Thailand, I remember a missionary giving me an orientation and said, okay. You use John 316.

 

For God so loved the world. Okay. First of all, Buddhists don’t believe in God, so you’ve missed them already. They have no concept of what you’re talking about. So loved, they have no concept, self self serving erotic love.

 

Well, that’s not what you mean. And the world is the cosmos that you’re trying to get delivered from through enlightenment and a kim nirvana. Why would anyone love the world? You know, that is the opposite of the materialistic things you want delivered from that. So so you just the whole world view, you missed him with our terminology, all the way down the line.

 

Just thinking in terms of of individualistic, societies. I mean, I remember even here in the United States, I worked with a, Korean church for 5 years and did interviews with a lot of the students and came to determine that even the idea of ethics, why do I make the decisions that I make? Well, it isn’t necessarily because of any particular punishment. It’s really because I don’t wanna bring a great deal of shame upon my parents having failed in something. And so their ethic was communal.

 

It was a communal ethic, not an individualistic one, not based on a coercive violence or a fear that they might go to jail, but really I don’t wanna, you know, make my parents look bad. And that was really interesting even though some of them had been raised in the United States. They still had that world view of how, ethics happened, which is interesting. That kinda blends over to other cultures, especially, Muslim cultures. I think we can make that explain.

 

It’s it’s we’re we’re we’re ingrained to what’s right and wrong. You know, you do what’s right, whatever the consequences. If people are hurt, if they’re offended, you know, you you speak truth. You do what is right. In other cultures, it’s a shame honor worldview.

 

You don’t do anything to embarrass or shame your family, or your culture, or your religion. You live for their honor. And so you have to understand that is why they would kill their own children if they convert to Christianity or if a daughter is is found in in adultery, that they would actually kill it. They have brought such shame on their their family. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors.

 

And this week’s sponsors are Zwammer Center. Zwammer Center. The Wammer Center. Zweimer Center. And what does the Zweimer Center do?

 

Talks about Muslims and and tells them on the computer that we love you. Very nice. The Zwemer Center equips the church to reach Muslims. The Swimmer Center has been educating people about reaching Muslims before it was cool. And, it’s why saving face this is exasperating from Americans.

 

When I have my car repaired, you know, well, I need it this afternoon. Okay. It’ll be ready this afternoon. The mechanic knows it’s not gonna be ready that afternoon, but he didn’t want me to lose face. You know, he doesn’t want to lose face right now, so he tells me something he knows is not true.

 

And, you you just have a whole different perspective of life. Yeah. It is interesting. You know, of course, I’m Korean. Growing up Korean, it was very, very difficult for me to, you know, grow up in a western mentality, but live in an eastern kind of culture, and vice versa in in many ways just going to school.

 

But, it’s kinda funny now that I’m older. It kinda just tickles me a little bit because my senior pastor at our Korean church, whatever he says, we have to do. And I’m American, so I just basically said, no. No. I can’t do that.

 

And so he’ll say, we’ll pray about it. And that’s his way of saving face. He helps me to save face. He saves face, and we both know I’m not gonna do it, but he just says pray about it. And so it is interesting.

 

I think for Westerners, myself included, it’s really hard to kinda get into the mind, of these Muslims, especially with the worldview. Could you share a little bit, any other distinctions that you found, between Muslims? One that is very prominent is, the the sacred and the secular. And in our Western worldview, and I’d say this has permeated our Christian worldview as well, though it shouldn’t, we clearly delineate to what is sacred and relates to God and our worship and the rest of life and and what is what is what is secular in the world out there, and our job and our family and schooling and and everything else we do and relationship with neighbors. You mean like being a Sunday Christian?

 

Oh, you said it. That’s what I was thinking of. I mean, Sunday Christian and that sort of it. Well, and and we just think in our our behavior and what we do in right and wrong is, you know, we we conform to society rather than driven by, you know, a relationship with God and what he’s leading us to do and what honors and glorifies him. We kind of set that aside.

 

And this is our prayer life. This is our morning devotional life. This is going to church. But in the Muslim world and most other cultures, religion and rest of life is so entwined, you can’t really separate it from culture. It affects everything they they do.

 

Consider following Christ, actually changing their religion, you’re impacting every aspect of life, and it gets very complex and complicated and difficult for them to understand and comprehend that. I don’t know about you, listeners, but, my mind is being blown right now. So the idea that, worldview, this undercurrent, just kind of actually shapes even the way we process, scripture, process truth, process experiences. And, you know, I know as a as a Christian, you know, we feel a lot of guilt. You know?

 

And for doctor Rankin to, you know, basically say that that’s a lot of an, an individualistic construct, you know, as opposed to as opposed to what a lot of other cultures feel, like, you know, being shame based and not feeling guilty. It it it’s a whole different feel of, of what it means to do wrong and right and our motivations for it. So with Muslims, you’re saying, that it might not necessarily be, having to do with, guilt motivating them or wanting to do what what is right or what is wrong from a individual sense. But as a communal sense. This is who we are.

 

This is our people. We’re not separating into compartments. We are Muslim. Well and we normally that plays out in our Christian witness presenting the plan of salvation. Mhmm.

 

You know, it this is all sacred. This is all religious, you know. And and it doesn’t Right. Impact life altogether and take that in consideration. And Christian witnessing to Muslims, you know, trying to transcend those world views is like trying to merge Duck Dynasty and Downton Abbey.

 

I mean, can you can you imagine taking those two reality shows and the sitcoms, the scripts, the language, the values, and Duck Dynasty and Downton Abbey being merged into one program. There’s such a conflict of cultures there. I’d I’d watch that. Wait. No.

 

No. Which which one are which one’s Christian? Which one’s Muslim? Yeah. Well, the point is they’re just radically different.

 

And but that’s a good way for us to perceive of, trying to cross world views. And so you’re saying that we kinda prevent ourselves from even sharing the gospel because we separate in our own worldview, religion, and everyday life, secular. Well, we may be a diligent witness and know how to communicate the gospel in the context of our worldview. And what I’m saying is that doesn’t work when you’re trying to communicate that to someone with a different worldview. Right.

 

Okay. I get what you’re saying. I mean, like like prayer. I mean, to the Muslim, prayer is not communion with a personal God who hears and answers those prayers. He’s just quoting, you know, ritualistic, you know, slogans and statements and texts that, you know, that’s just repetitive.

 

But there’s no concept of a personal, loving God that’s hearing and responding to your prayers. So Yeah. The worldview is is altogether different. It it’s all these concepts that are kind of we use in everyday language, but it means something totally different to them. Well, I think about even as Americans, we have a little bit of a view that says you pray alone in your room.

 

Or if you fast, you do it alone and you don’t tell anyone. Or if you’re practicing some other spiritual discipline, you do it alone and you say nothing. And so, I’ve met some Muslims that are like, oh, I I just didn’t know Christians prayed because they don’t pray publicly whereas a Muslim a lot of the Muslims I’ve known, it’s very much a they’ll make it a point to let you know it’s time for prayer because it’s something that you show. It’s an act of being pious and faithful in your religion. And so, whereas, we’re trying not to offend somebody by praying publicly, a Muslim’s thinking, well, they must not believe in God because they don’t ever pray.

 

I’ve never seen them pray once. And so, it’s a very different way of looking at the world. We come from a society that says you keep your prayer life in your house, you know, your religion and your politics. You don’t bring them out publicly. And you go over to a Muslim world, and it’s like, well, your religion and your politics, that’s the first things that we’re gonna talk about.

 

And so, it’s different world views. Well, the, you you know, there’s a lot in common because Christians and Muslims both have a theistic worldview. And there’s really a lot of common in believing in 1 God, you know, Sovereign, Almighty, Creator, God. And I would use that commonality often in in witness, you know, you’re you’re Muslim. I’m a Christian, you know, but we have a lot in common.

 

You know, we below both believe God and worship him and, you know, want to please him and want to serve him. But, you know, we have this this, often then I always ask, but but do you know him? You know, and that would just be a ridiculous question. Well, of course not. You know?

 

He’s so transcendent, so high. You know, you can’t know God. He’s not a personal God. And I would just simply say, can I tell you how I came to know God and relate my testimony experience, which was just a strange phenomenal type thing for them to even hear and consider? But I wasn’t imposing that on him, that you need to worship my God and know him and understand him.

 

I was sharing how I came to know god. And that would usually open the door to begin to discuss our contrast in world views, concept of God and sin and afterlife, and, some very productive conversations that would really, open people’s hearts. Alright. This week’s sponsors. CIU.

 

CIU. CIU educates people from a Biblical. Biblical world review. World view. Real world review.

 

Yeah. Kids CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. So when we think about trying to communicate sin with a Muslim, I mean, just in my own thought, I’m thinking, there’s a hadith in in Islam that basically it says something along the lines of if Allah has shielded something that you’ve done wrong in the night, don’t let it be revealed in the day. And so, for a Western missionary to come over and say, so do you have sin in your life? I mean, it’s a it’s a foolish question.

 

I mean, they’re not gonna admit it. Whereas, we have this worldview that says, you know, if you’ve, you know, sinned, that you should confess your sin and let things in darkness come to light. And they’re having a worldview that says, hey, if God’s allowed something to be covered in the darkness of night, don’t bring it to Revelation in the day. And then we ask the question, do you have sin in your life? And we can’t figure out why.

 

Like, why doesn’t this Muslim admit that he has sin in his life? And we’re speaking 2 very different languages. First of all, about the nature of sin, and second secondly, whether or not we should tell people about our sin. Well, that that’s a good illustration of the conflicting worldview. We know that they’re sinners.

 

They know what sin is, but there’s no responsibility for sin. And for the Christian, we’re gonna be judged on the basis of our sin. That’s what separates us from God. We’ve got to find some way, you know, that can cancel out those sins that we can stand before a just God. It has nothing to do with the Muslim hope of afterlife and paradise.

 

I mean, it’s just dependent on an arbitrary punitive god, Insha’Allah, you know, if God wills. And so there’s no responsibility to do anything about your sin. And so often our discussion, just like strangers passing in the night, we’re discussing 2 different concepts. And so, for our listeners out there who like, we’ve been encouraging every week, for the most part to witness to Muslims or to share with Muslims, how would you give them advice to, overcome these worldview differences? Well, understand, in in discussing worldviews, for example, you want them to believe in God.

 

You want to accept them accept Jesus Christ as exclusive, savior, from their sins. Understand, okay, you you can win an argument. You can try to convince them of that. But but it’s problematic in that you’re trying to get them to change their whole life’s orientation. You’re knocking the legs out from their understanding of reality.

 

And you can convince them and win the argument, but but you’re not gonna win the war, you know, and really, get them. So you need to understand the the similarity, what is meant by these words. And I think one of the greatest approach approaches to ask your question is ask them to explain their worldview. You know, just ask questions. What do you believe about God?

 

You know, well, what do you believe? We’re all sinners. You know, God is a holy and righteous God. How does this affect our relationship with God and hope of, what happens to us after we die? What’s your concept of paradise and and how you get there?

 

And let them explain that. And often you’ll find they have some real difficulties making sense of what what they believe. And through that kind of dialogue that’s in a context of respect and understanding and sincerity in wanting to know opens the door for you explaining your worldview, not just the plan of salvation, but what’s behind your beliefs about God? Yeah. And something you just said, I never really even thought about.

 

But, because Muslims and and a lot of these other cultures do not separate, they don’t compartmentalize their secular and sacred lives. And, so when you do, basically ask them to to follow Jesus if they wanna follow Jesus, when they do, they are actually switching entire world worldviews, the way they perceive, the way they are, perceived in community, how they relate to others. And that is a that is a I think that’s a miracle, actually. Well, to just show how it affects their their lifestyle and their whole orientation and worldview, I found it’s it’s not often religious differences and arguments. You know, we want to isolate it.

 

It’s back to our sacred and secular. You can pigeonhole a religious arc, but it it affects life. I remember talking with a Muslim that just seemed to have a heart that was open, I mean, such a readiness to become a follower of Christ. And the barrier he asked me, if I do this and become a Christian, who will my daughter marry? I mean, it never occurred to me that that would be problematic.

 

Well, I mean, what’s the issue here? They will hawk their life savings and go into debt in order to pay a dowry and marry their daughter well. If they don’t, shame will go with them the rest of their life and all of their family. In following generations, I would I mean, that’s the thing. We can only think in terms of my life, maybe my kids’ lives if I’m really wide, you know, down the road my grandkids’ lives, but they’re thinking in terms of generations that they won’t even get to meet.

 

So we we aren’t talking on that level. I mean, we’re just talking about some spiritual concepts of faith and following Christ and don’t understand the context a worldview. Another one I often countered was if if I do this and and become a Christian, follow Christ, and you could see that the understanding was there, you know, the readiness Right. The truth of this. But but the barrier there, where will I be buried?

 

Yeah. Then again, not in the Muslim cemetery. I mean, what a dilemma to put your family in, nowhere to dispose of this deceased body because he had become a Christian, and, you know, it’d be blasphemous to be married in our our cemetery. And and I think for us as Westerners, we just think, oh, you know, like, we always go against our parents or, you know, we don’t have a problem doing that. That’s there’s such a precedent for that in our culture.

 

But for these countries, right, for these Muslims, that would be, you know, turning their entire world upside down. And, and probably the most prominent, one that’s reflected here is, Muslims as as well as others. You know, once they consider, okay, the only way of salvation is through Jesus Christ. Now, if I do this and affirm that’s what I believe, what am I reflecting about my grandparents, my ancestors, others who are dying without Christ? I’m affirming that they’re in hell.

 

And it’s easier not to accept the truth of Christ than have to live with that reality of the mistake of the lostness of those who don’t know Christ in their family, the ones they love. And this might be a little bit Western in thinking, but maybe they even they’re even affirming that everyone else is wrong. Everyone in the community, their their their their ancestors. I mean, that’s it’s pretty tragic. I think it’s a huge decision.

 

And in a communal culture, realize how difficult that is. Well, not not just that, but if if they’re thinking in terms of there’s no separation between the secular and the sacred, in following Christ, it means I agree with everything that the US does in foreign policy because it’s a Christian nation. Mhmm. I agree with everything that happens, and I’m always for Israel and on Israel’s side because it came from a Christian nation. That’s the way they’re viewing it, that this is a Christian sort of us against them mentality.

 

And so, for them, the shifting to following Jesus really gets muddied with a whole lot more than it probably should because they can’t even separate themselves. And some Christians, of course, don’t want to separate that either. But, for them, it’s like, I don’t want to be culturally like you. And I think that the gospel probably has room for them to be able to retain a lot more identity than sometimes we think. It’s almost like you’re undoing this worldview and it’s such a complex thing, but we have to trust that the Holy Spirit’s in the process.

 

Right? I think that’s the assurance that we have. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

 

So, you know, the real challenge is, you know, we just see it as, building a faith bridge. How can you convince them of the truth of Christianity, you know, the gospel of Christ, you know, that Christ died for your sins and, you know, how it’s essential to believe on him. You know, that’s that’s a very narrow niche that you’ve you’ve got to build a worldview bridge before you can build that faith bridge. You’ve got to talk about the gospel in a way that makes sense in the context of their worldview. Something that popped into my head as you were talking, but they all, you know, they also have to see it in their, in your daily life.

 

They don’t they can’t see it separated the way a lot of Westerners try to. And And that’s something that Trevor’s always mentioned, you know, like, you know, when they see you acting out like a Christian when they don’t have to, it it’s pretty astounding. And so, yeah, that’s that’s pretty amazing. Well, I’ve seen this, of course, in in the love and compassion that’s shown for Christians. In fact, there was a massive response to you remember the tsunami in Asia when 100 of 1000 were killed, villages devastated.

 

It was Christian humanitarian agencies and churches that that swept into there with aid and rebuilding and ministering to the people. And the question began to ask, where are all our Muslim brothers, you know, from the Middle East and, you know, the leaders and so forth? Why aren’t they here pouring aid? And and there was some. You know?

 

But it wasn’t with the love and compassion of boots on the ground and people showing compassion there. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad. So if you wanna be a part of the show, you wanna partner with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know.

 

And you see in their world view, an attitude of vengeance. You know, when you’ve been harmed, somebody’s killed, you have the, you you know, their their worldview authorizes revenge, and he just create this killing cycle. Why is there such lack of appreciation for the sanctity of life that they would so readily, you know, just just kill, and suicide bombers, and committed to destruction, and so forth, thinking that would gain merit. How radical that worldview is compared to a Christian’s compassion who wants to save people or administer to them medically in times of suffering and so forth. So that witness helps to bridge world views more than any of our words or our rational arguments would do.

 

And I and I think that even we as Americans need more of that because if you think in terms of a lot of people want to, forget the passages where we’re called to love our enemy. And I’ve, you know, I’ve constantly said, I’ve never said that these radical Muslims aren’t Muslim. There are definitely some radical Muslims out there. That’s not really the point for me. The point is even the radicals need to hear about Jesus.

 

We often forget that the gospel is supposed to transcend our own culture and worldview, and we’re supposed to follow Christ first and not allow that to be watered down by, you know, even our secular worldview, our postmodern worldview, our modern worldview. I think about even apologetics. Right? I I watch people try apologetics with Muslims and they’re approaching it from a very modern worldview argument. You know, I make my my point and I can test it and I can prove it.

 

And a Muslim’s looking at you thinking, sorry, buddy. I’ve got a theistic worldview. All you really needed to say was God preserves His word and that would have been enough. You know, instead, we wanna we wanna explain how this can be proved from textual criticism. And they’re thinking, why are you even testing your Bible?

 

What’s wrong with you people? So, anyway, it’s a really interesting conversation worldview. And I think, one of the ways that I’ve seen it described, for those of you that haven’t really thought about it much, is the tip of an iceberg. You see the tip of the iceberg and that’s kinda the visual aspects of things that represent worldview. But underneath the the water is the worldview.

 

That’s what’s The tip of the iceberg is culture and some of the things that you can actually see. But underneath that gigantic iceberg that might be 10 times the size of what you can see is the world view. It’s submerged beneath the surface. Sometimes we aren’t even aware of it. And, we do.

 

We have to build bridges. Well, especially with Islam, we need to realize we’re communicating from a religious niche in isolation of the rest of life so much. Now we’re talking about afterlife and Christian character and you know, sin and so forth. But they’re seeing this as all of life. It’s not just an isolated niche of what you believe about God and what you what you do about sin.

 

And so if we could kind of sum up, well, how do you approach it? There’s a lot that can be read and understood. And But seek to understand what they believe, to ask questions, but seek to understand what they believe, to ask questions very respectfully, showing an interest. And that invariably leads to an opportunity for you to express your worldview, what you understand about God, and our our need for salvation, not in a confrontational way of preventing and trying to persuade them, but just testifying to your experience. Okay.

 

If they’re hearing this, they’re evaluating that and your worldview in a very significant way because it’s such a contrast to what they believe. And then, to present in a way that makes sense in their worldview, You know, trying to explain salvation, from their perspective of sin and the afterlife, the nature of God, in a way that they understand not arguing about right or wrong, your which is right, which is wrong, but just, in that context. And it’s when you communicate in that worldview that then you can begin to lead them to a faith bridge that applying it to them. But all of that is predicated on building a relationship bridge, of developing a relationship of trust where you can have these kinds of conversations. Doctor Rankin, as we wrap this up, what, are there any resources, any books that you’d recommend our listeners to read if they’re interested in this topic?

 

I’ve got one offhand, Roland Mueller’s book, The Message, The Messenger in the Community is what it’s called. He he’s the one who wrote Honor and Shame, and I’ve actually, written him and asked if we could get him on the podcast, but he has an excellent book about, honor shame paradigms and culture and how to present the gospel in the context of an honor shame community. And it’s done differently. Howard, you would really appreciate it, you know, coming and being raised in an honor shame society and our honor shame So that that’s a really good one. Doctor Anck, do you have any that you particularly like?

 

There’s a little book that that I’ve used and shared with my students, simply called Bridges. It’s published, self published, and it’s online by TSP Press, that describes how to build these kinds of worldview bridges to Islam and other religions as well. And then the other one is, Nabil Jabbour’s book. That’s all about Muslim worldview. I think it was across through the eyes of the crescent and that gives a good explanation of Muslim worldviews.

 

And so, and even within Islam, there’s a variety of worldviews. There’s definitely some things that go across the board, but there’s some variety as well. But think of that in terms of, you know, Hindu worldviews and animistic worldviews, there’s so many different ways in which people view the world. If you come from an animistic background and you think everything that happens in the world is spiritual, well then, it’ll be really complex for us who come from a modern worldview where, you know, if somebody’s sick, it doesn’t have to be because the demons put a curse on them. It’s because, you know, they have not taken washed their hands and they picked up something and put it in their mouth and now they’ve got a bacterial infection or something like that.

 

So very different ways of of viewing the world. Well, that’s it for this week’s show. Thank you, doctor Rankin for coming in and, enlightening us. This has been a really good actually a good podcast. But, again, listeners, please, please, please, iTunes reviews, tell us what you think.

 

Comment at truthaboutmuslims. Dotcom. Comments@truthaboutmuslims.com. Thank you. Comments attruthaboutmuslims.com.

 

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Syria, ISIS and the Role of Women with Dr. Moyra Dale

What do Muslim women living in Syria think about ISIS? And is there a movement among Muslim women across the globe?

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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Syria, ISIS and the Role of Women:

 

 

Alright. So we were living in Jordan at the time, and we’d gone up to Damascus, to join a group. But the only contact we had was one phone number. So my husband went off to try and find a phone and sort out this contact. And I was left standing, by the road of a really busy square in Damascus.

 

Traffic everywhere, a hot day, bags around my feet. Quite frankly, on the edge of tears, wishing I was anywhere else. I just said goodbye to my parents, I was homesick, I didn’t understand the culture and the language. It was a miserable time. And as I stood there in the sun, I heard a voice behind me, and a guy in one of those little kind of tent kiosks was calling out, and he put a chair in the shade for me to sit on.

 

So I went back and I sat there, and by the time my husband came back, the glass of mint tea had come out, sweet mint black tea, and I was feeling so much more refreshed and better, not just by the seat and the tea, but by this guy’s generosity to a total stranger. Well, once again Muslim terrorists. A terrorist Islamist and people extremist terrorists of the country. Random justice is brutal and deadly. News flash America.

 

These Muslim extremists are are alive and well. They are not dead, and their video is not gratuitous, and it is not irrelevant. It is a warning. Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast. The official podcast of the Swimmer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media.

 

Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Alright. So we’re back. This is Truth About Muslims podcast. So excited about today’s, episode.

 

What are we gonna do today, Trevor? We’re gonna do that again. That was messy. Alright. I gotta loosen up my jowls.

 

Yeah. Okay. Alright. We hear we’re back. Hey.

 

Why don’t you take a shot at it, buckaroo? You tell him, man. You tell him. Alright. We’ve got a great show today.

 

We have a special guest coming all the way from Australia, doctor Moira Dale. Right. So who is Moira Dale? Moira has 2 PhDs. 2.

 

2 PhDs. Still working on my first. Actually, not even started. Yeah. PhDs.

 

I don’t know how you go for 2 of them, but she did. She just finished her second one. And, first one was done in education, particularly focusing on, women’s literacy in the Muslim world. Weird. Yeah.

 

She spent 2 decades, in the Middle East and, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. So Wow. Thinking about the context of what’s happening in the world, the recent, Jordanian pilot issue Yes. Even when we were talking with Jabur looking at Zarqawi coming from Jordan. Yeah.

 

Everything going on in Egypt with the Muslim brotherhood. Right. And then this will be the first perspective we’ve had about Syria. Right. And she’s been on the ground.

 

You said 20 years? You said 2 decades? She’s got 2 decades of experience. So her and her husband, Lauren, were working, in the Middle East for 2 decades. And then, while they were in Syria, she did a lot of research on a woman’s mosque program.

 

She actually joined the program and spent a lot of time with the Muslim women and then, did a research PhD on that. Actually, that’s a THD. So 2 doctorates, on a women’s mosque program. So she’s a wealth of knowledge about, Islam, about ethnography, studying of culture, religion, identity, and she is an adjunct professor at CIU. And she is also an adjunct research fellow at Melbourne School of Theology.

 

And? And what? She’s, you’re working on your PhD. Right? She’s she is my doctoral advisor.

 

Right. So you gotta have to rest her a little bit. Yeah. No. It’s So I’m gonna make you look good, bro.

 

Don’t worry about it. I’m gonna have a lot of dumb questions and you just make it. No. You just tell her that I never even see Trevor because he’s just cranking out this thesis. All he does is All he does is write this thesis.

 

Oh, my gosh. I wish I had my friend back. That’s what I’m gonna say. Yeah. Yeah.

 

That’ll that’ll be good for me. So anyway, without further ado, let’s give Moira a call in Australia. Here we go. This is we’re gonna Skype. No Australians accents this time.

 

So calling Moira to Alright. Here we go. Here we go. Oh, there we go. It’s working.

 

Hi, Trevor. Are we online? Yeah. Moira, how are you? Really good.

 

Thanks. Great to hear from you. How are you doing? You too. I’m doing really well.

 

This is my friend Howard Key. Hi, Moira. Hi, Howard. Good to hear you. I’m excited to talk to you today.

 

Thanks. So we’ve been, talking a lot about ISIS. I mean, almost to a point, Moira, where I’m kinda like, I wanna talk about something else besides ISIS. But it is in the media nonstop. And so, you know, with your experience having been on the ground in Syria, we’re hoping that you can give us a little bit more insight than what we see in the media.

 

Yeah. I’d like to do that and also to widen the picture beyond, IS, because it’s only one of the big players in Syria even though it’s dominating the Western media. I don’t know if you guys have ever walked into one of the old Syrian houses, that are sort of rooms built around a courtyard where the extended family would have lived around. And then you’ve got this courtyard usually with jasmine and orange trees and a fountain. And and the rooms are full of patterns.

 

The floor and the tiling and the wall and the roof. And I wouldn’t have believed you could put so many patterns together and it could still look lovely until I’ve been to Damascus. And Syria is kind of like that. There’s so many different ethnic groups and religious sects, and they all kind of fit and work together. So you mean kinda like a mosaic?

 

It’s it’s like a different groups and different peoples and ethnicities and tribes and beliefs and all of that’s happening in Syria? All of that. It’s incredibly complex. I I kinda wondered if I could give a a very quick overview of Islam in Syria Please. Which which kind of shows when they came into place.

 

But stop me if it gets a bit complicated. Oh, Howard will stop you if it gets complicated. I’m the guy that knows nothing. I’m protecting the listeners. Syria’s got a great history.

 

I mean, it goes right back to the times of Abraham, comes up in Genesis 14 and 15. But with Islam, it hits Syria quite quickly. Mohammed died in 632. And the General Khalid ibn Waleed in 634, under the second caliph, came into Syria. He brought his army through the desert, led a surprise attack and conquered Damascus in 635.

 

So there’s always been this famous landmark, big mosque, where his burial place was. The guy who introduced Islam into Syria, and it’s quite, I don’t know, ironic that it was bombed by the regime in 2013. It suffered a lot of bomb damage since then. So quick question, Moira. Prior to this second, leader, this this caliph coming in and and bringing Islam, was this part of, a Christian empire of the Byzantine Empire and then Islam comes?

 

Okay. Yeah. It was under the authority of the Byzantine Empire at the time. So it mostly ruled from what’s now Constantinople. And then when the Muslims came in, there was a shift from Aleppo being the administrative center down to Damascus, which has been the capital since then.

 

So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And this week’s sponsors are Zweimer Center. Zweimer Center. The Zweimer Center. The Zweimer Center.

 

Zweimer Center. And what does the Weymers Center do? Talks about lessons and and tells them on the computer that we love you. Very nice. The Swimmer Center equips the church to reach Muslims.

 

The Swimmer Center has been educating people about reaching Muslims in Korea with school. So so this whole concept of fighting between the Sunni and Shia, this is really at the core of a lot of what’s happening right now in Syria. Correct? It’s still happening today. Yeah.

 

Yeah. It’s a bit like you got Catholics and Protestants. The Protestants split it up from the Catholics and then just kept splitting. Well well, most of the splinter groups and the more sectarian groups have come out of Shiite Islam. But are they do they consider themselves Shiites still?

 

Yes. Yeah. You sounded like there’s more to that. Does it depend who you ask? Yeah.

 

Yeah. There’s a few exceptions. Because a lot of Sunnis, especially the, the IS people wouldn’t consider Shiite Muslim at all. Yeah. There’s a few variations around there.

 

So it sounds like, Moira, just to break it down, we have Islam Mohammed dies. You have the first four major leaders of Islam there in Mecca. It comes out of Mecca and into Syria, into Damascus. You have the first major Islamic empire, the Umayyad empire, which comes out of the Middle East and sweeps all the way across Northern Africa and all the way up into Spain, into modern day Cordoba, and this is sort of the beginnings of the sweeping of Islam. It all kind of flows right out of Damascus, Syria.

 

Yeah. It does. And Syrians look back to that as as their golden age. I mean, many people feel, look, the south of Spain belonged to us. We’re still linked with it.

 

It was all part of us. Is there any kind of spiritual significance to a caliphate, to coming into power, like, that that they see as a need? Like, this is a major goal that all Muslims think that this would be, something that needs to happen? Yeah. I think there’s a a longing for it in the hearts of many Muslims because there’s this this unity of, well, it follows the golden years, the 4 rightly guided caliphs after Mohammed.

 

It preserves the unity of state and religion that more conservative Muslims believe in. So there’s a lot of people want something like that, which I think is why you get some of the more extremist splinter groups right around the world in Saudi, Malaysia, Indonesia, Somalia, buying into al Baghdadi. I’m just at the moment reading through the document that’s come out of IS about the role of women and being translated into English by the Pylium Foundation. And their whole view is far more conservative, even in the more conservative women I’ve studied alongside in one of the mosques in Damascus. So IS is beginning to lose a bit of influence, a bit of ground, I think, at the moment.

 

Even though it’s dominating the Western news. Yeah, what I am hearing is that, more and more friends are saying, if this is Islam, either this extreme form that IS is promoting or this fighting against each other, then I don’t want anything of it. So there’s more open, there’s more interest happening in camps right around than ever before. But it’s at horrific cost. So I pray for a limit to bloodletting, but I also pray for God’s spirit to be acting in power.

 

So people in Syria see some of the things that ISIS is doing or is IS is doing and approve, but the violence is what’s keeping them from fully being on board. Yeah. Or it goes both ways. They’re attracted. And then I don’t know if you, came across recently the story of a young 15 year old in Syria who ran away from home to join the IS camps, but then was a bit shocked that they weren’t actually praying.

 

It was more about more than about prayer. And he was given the choice of going on the front line or becoming a suicide bomber. He said he figured that the best way of getting out was being a suicide bomber. So he got sent to a Shiite mosque to bomb them, saw that they were praying and said, why are we killing these guys? They’re Muslims.

 

Handed himself in and said, can I please go back to my mother? So he he went looking for true religion, a pure religion that was really theologically motivated. And when he got there, he said this has nothing to do with Islam and he was disgusted. It’s what it sounds like. Yeah.

 

15 year old boy. That’s crazy. Yeah. That’s right. So so there’s a lot that’s attractive about IS in terms of the morality that they’re enforcing.

 

I heard of one story about a shopkeeper who left when his town got taken over by IS. And he got rung up by the IS commander saying, we’ve had to break into shop. We need supplies. We want to take How much do we owe you? He did a quick calculation over the phone.

 

And when he got back again, he found the money left in the till and the place locked up again. Interesting. But that but that’s not always the case. Right? Because we hear, like, horrifying tales of, like like, sex slaves and and, killing of children and stuff.

 

And and that doesn’t sound like it kinda adds up to what the morality that they’re enforcing. It sounds like a must beg. Yeah. Well, yeah. It adds up to morality if you’re within the, Sunni Islamic camp.

 

And if you’re outside, then you’d have no rights. Right. And so they they’re they’re able to do whatever they want to do at that point. Yep. Yep.

 

Wow. That’s tough. Well, that that would make sense as far as incentive for joining, anyway. I mean, if they’re gonna take over the land, if they’re gonna be in your city and they’re gonna have power and money and influence, that would be pretty good incentive for somebody to join up. They don’t necessarily need to have the theological motivation.

 

Just simply the fear of becoming second class or possibly killed. But but at the same time, there’s, there’s only a select group that would be accepted to IS. Yeah. Yeah. But if so, if you’re a Sunni Muslim, if you’re fighting on the side of a rebel, then you’ve got no weapons and no uniform, and you see IS as disciplined, has uniforms, has arms, or you’re, you wanna be a hero?

 

No, there’s lots that’s attractive about joining them. So concerning the other Shiites, the Alawites, the other, small groups that are considered non Muslim, do they have the option of converting to avoid being killed? Yep. Yep. That would be their option.

 

Oh, so there are options there. But not obviously, not a good option. But yeah. Yeah. But but few people would, I mean, why would you leave your identity, your family, all that makes you who you are?

 

Right. So so so when you think Syria, it’s a really variegated kind of nation. I I work from the area I lived in, which was very conservative. And women, mostly because it was conservative, not Islamic, would be have the black hair by a headscarf and part of their face covered. Then I’d go across to where I used to attend the MOS program or where we’d teach, and it’d be a very wealthy area.

 

So you’d see women there in young women in blue coats and white headscarf if they’re conservative, but also both, Sunni Muslim, certainly Druze and Ismaili and others dressed without failing in really form fitting, quite revealing shirts, skirts, all that kind of thing. Wow. There’s a whole range of there’s a whole range of practice of the different communities that people belong to. Well, I like I like, Moira, that you’re pointing out the the diversity and the complexity because I do think it helps us to realize that, I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t this way in Australia.

 

Maybe you could tell us a little bit about how it is. But here in the United States, it’s us against them. There’s a lot of them and they being said and not a whole lot of nuance when it comes to Muslims. Is it that way in Australia as well? Alright.

 

This week’s sponsors. CIU. CIU. CIU educates people from a bib Biblical. Biblical worldview.

 

Worldview. Real world review. Yeah. Could say. Yeah.

 

CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. Perhaps a little bit more nuanced, but for, yeah, the average person who just gets overwhelmed by what’s coming through the media, there’s a lot of uncertainty. It’s not as strong as an us and them. We have less troops in there. To help us with more of a personal touch, could you give us some, some personal stories about, the women that you’ve worked with?

 

So, let me tell you about a few of the women I interacted with. Let me start I’ll give them a few names just to protect them a bit. Okay. There’s the woman who ran the program. So I I sat in a study program women’s study program in a mosque, attended their lectures for a couple of years.

 

And I have to say, an awful lot of what I listened to as I sat there, I would have heard in any evangelical church teaching about how to live godly lives, how to cope with spouses who weren’t at all devout and weren’t interested in God, how to bring up your children, how to manage prayer and reading their scriptures, the Quran and things, and and the demands of housework and daily life. So this was like a a bible study or a Quran study? This is a Quran study, and how did you get in? Yeah. It took me a little while.

 

I sort of started I met her first at a graduation ceremony for women who’d memorized the Quran. And then I was invited to, this leader, Buddha Al Habash, to her place where she talked to expatriate women about Islam and then gradually she said, Yeah, okay, come along to the mosque. But she was very open. I think, a lot of mosque programs would have had me for a little while as a convert, but not been happy as I just kept sitting there. And I I have some sympathy with that.

 

How many churches would like a Muslim researcher sitting in for a couple of years taking notes? Right. We would not. We would not. Most churches would not allow.

 

Right. Be very uncomfortable with it. So this particular, woman study that happens in the mosque, is this common? I mean, I know you’ve spent 20 years in the Middle East working with Muslims. Is it common for women to have this sort of program in the mosque, like a women’s group?

 

It’s a whole really interesting move that’s happening worldwide around Islam, where women are moving into mosque space and moving into textual teaching far more than they ever used to before. In the past, women prayed at home, men prayed in the mosque, but now there’s more and more classes for women. And actually even in this IS document I keep referring back to, there’s only One is if they’re doctors and nurses or teachers. And One is if they’re doctors and nurses or teachers and or doctors and teachers. But the third one is if they want to go out and go to religious classes.

 

So so how did this all start? What was what changed? I think the things driving it are, twofold. 1 is a growth in women’s literacy around the world, just generally. At the same time, it’s a whole increasing access to religious materials through printed pamphlets right through to satellite, CD tapes.

 

So women are able to interact with these materials. And and the growth of conservative Islam is also generating more religious material. So it’s kind of feeding each other. It’s amazing that you point this out as being a global movement because we just had this week our first woman’s mosque in the United States. It opened up in LA.

 

There’s a woman imam. Only women are allowed. And I was reading this and I was thinking, I have to get this to Moira, and I totally forgot to send it to you. But now that we’re talking about it, I’ll send it on. But the first women’s mosque in LA, California opened this week.

 

Good. Send it on, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing who the imam is. And interestingly, when I asked, Ansehuda, the teacher of this program, at a time when, Amina Wadud, who’s a black American Muslim, was leading mixed prayer and generating a lot of controversy. I said to her, what do you think about all this? She said, well, there is this tradition about a woman in Mohammed’s time who asked permission to lead her household in prayer, and he gave her permission.

 

So there is a support for it. So even though she was very conservative in her dress and her public teaching, she was a little bit more radical in her private views, I think in some ways. Another woman I spent a lot of time with was an Alawite woman. She taught in the university program teaching Arabic, and I took a lot of private lessons with her. And I’d go up and visit her.

 

Again, the Alawites, the women don’t usually cover their heads. And in Alawite understanding, the men get the knowledge as they get older. The women aren’t supposed to have religious knowledge. They’re sort of from a a a lesser creation than the men. And there was this kind of scare story going around that one other white woman had actually heard her husband praying and went dead, dead, stop.

 

She went deaf from hearing her husband’s prayers? That was a story that was told, Trevor. I’m not going to verify it, but it was a way of saying to the women, don’t get religious. This is men’s business. Do when her kids get sick or if she has do when her kids get sick or if she has along to be more religious?

 

She’s got 2 options. She either gets a little bit more Sunni, which she’s not, but maybe she starts praying or reciting the Quran. Or she goes into folk Islam and starts using amulets to protect her children. Okay. So what is an amulet?

 

Give us some ideas on amulets in Islam. Oh, wow. There’s a whole range of them. They can be fairly orthodox. One orthodox way is to write verses from the Quran or the names of a prophet on a piece of paper.

 

And then you either wash the paper in oil, if you want to put it on the body, for healing, if you’ve got a sore part of the body, or else you wash it in water and you drink it if it’s something internal. That’s a fairly common one. And that’s orthodox? Yeah. Yeah.

 

That’s quite orthodox. Wow. Okay. Would this be the equivalent of anointing with oil for Christians? The for healing, you anoint someone over the head with oil, gather the elders around.

 

So some Muslims feel it’s okay to go, to an imam, have something written on the Quran and drink it as a healing property? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

 

No. I think that would be a parallel that they would understand very well. In fact, I have used that with some of my friends. Oh, okay. What what are some of the other folk practices that Muslims, particularly women will often engage in since they’re not allowed to be more religious in some sense?

 

Well, and also if you’re a woman, I don’t know if you’ve talked about the rules of purity, you can’t do the 4 or 5 prayers or fast or read the Quran if you’re impure, which is when anything passes your body boundaries. Gas, liquid, solids, or if you vomit or if you go to sleep. So that includes all your bodily functions, sexual intercourse, all that kind of thing. Which means that women are effectively for most of their life, unclean for 1 month 1 week out of 4, which means they can’t pray. So I’m looking at Howard’s face here and he he’s I think he’s a bit shocked about all of this.

 

So farting is completely, forbidden and you’re in an impure state. And so in one sense, like, if you’re in the mosque and if anybody’s ever been to the mosque and seen the form that you actually take for prayer, you could see how that could easily happen and you really should go back and reperform the washing to get back into a purified state and then rejoin the prayer. You know so all of these bodily discharges. Now for Christians that are listening, they’re like, this sounds crazy. They haven’t read Leviticus, I don’t think.

 

Does that sound accurate, Moira? That sounds really accurate. And actually, when you look at the New Testament, you can see that purity was a major concern for the Jews at the time. The more I read it, the more I see it’s in almost every page of the New Testament in one form or another. So, yeah, Jesus really spoke into this whole area.

 

So that means that women are constantly looking for ways both to express their devoutness to God, but also get the blessing they need to care for their family. So, with with my own neighbors, I lived in a household where a building where everyone in the different floors were different brothers in the one extended family. So I’d join the sister in laws and the mothers and the sisters every so often when they’d recite the Quran. So that’s a way of bringing blessing on the house. They’d put bottles of water with the lids off in the center and those bottles would then gain blessing.

 

The Quran’s broken into 30 sections, equal sections. And every woman would take 1 or 2 or 3 sections and just recite it quietly to herself. So everyone’s sitting around in a circle quietly reciting different So we have a funny question. I’m I’m sure other people are wondering too. When you say participated, what does that mean?

 

I’m I’m sure other people are wondering too. When you say participated, what does that mean? Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad.

 

So if you wanna be a part of the show, you like partnering with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bring this show to the world, then email us and let us know. For me? Yes. Right. They did ask me to join in.

 

Usually, our doctor just attended. Okay. And did they appreciate your presence, or was it an awkward sort of thing? Because I think a lot of Christians assume, like, sitting with a Muslim while a Muslim’s participating in a religious thing. Maybe the Muslim doesn’t want them to be there.

 

But what was your experience being around during the prayers, during the recitation of the Quran? How were you received? Always welcomed, because Arabs are inherently hospitable. And certainly, the women just included me as part of the extended household. Also, if 1 or 2 of the women were in a time of uncleanness in the month, then they weren’t able to participate.

 

So in that sense, I’m just sitting out like they are. Oh, okay. So you wouldn’t be alone. Right. Okay.

 

So is there particular New Testament passages that speaks to this idea of purity? Because we don’t think in these terms normally. We think in terms of sin and guilt, and you’re saying it sounds to me like Muslims think more in terms of purity, uncleanliness. Is there New Testament passages that would be very powerful, maybe, to a Muslim woman, that’s dealing with these issues every day? I think there are.

 

And one of the most power and like I said, we just don’t, from our position, realize how deeply ingrained in the New Testament is. But one of the most powerful passages to me is Mark 5, and the same collection of stories comes up in Luke, where you start with Jesus healing the Jairusine demoniac, and then you’ve got Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the flow of blood. Now when you look back at the Levitical categories, those are all issues of defilement and uncleanness. So you’ve got a man who’s full of unclean spirits, and you’ve got pigs. And then you’ve got a woman who’s got a flow of blood, so touching her should defile Jesus.

 

And a dead body, again, should defile Jesus. But what actually happened is that the unclean spirits are thrown out, and the man is healed again. Oh, and there’s booms in there too, another area of defilement. You’ve got the woman touches Jesus. Jesus isn’t defiled, but the woman is healed.

 

You’ve got Jesus touching a dead body. He’s not defiled, but life pours back into the young girl. And so I I think what this is saying is that while in the old Testament and in Islam and most other groups, defilement is contagious, in Jesus, purity becomes contagious. See, when we read those stories, Moira, we’re not even thinking in terms of defilement. We don’t think about the demoniac.

 

We don’t think about the graveyard. We don’t think about the pigs. We don’t think about the blood. We don’t think about, lepers. And what you’re saying is that rather than the defilement actually coming on to Jesus, it’s Jesus’ purity that is transferred over and covers the defilement and how powerful that would be to a Muslim woman.

 

Yeah. Absolutely. It’s extraordinary. It’s like it’s like we’ve got this passage in Romans which says there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. When I read this, to me, it’s the gospel writer saying, there is no defilement from anything you have done or from anything anyone has ever done to you.

 

And I think that is so powerful for people in any culture. Yeah. Particularly for a culture where defilement is still the law of the land. I mean, I I can’t stress how many times I’m asked by Muslims, so do you eat pork? Do you drink alcohol?

 

And I’m thinking, you know, most Christians are thinking, this is kind of a silly question. Like, what’s the big deal with pork and alcohol? And I’m thinking, you know, the question that they’re asking you is a whole lot bigger than just pork and alcohol. It’s really a question of purity, of are you defiled? Can you really approach God?

 

And Right. We really make a mistake when we answer yes or no, don’t we? Yeah. Absolutely. Because for Muslims, life is binary.

 

You’re either pure or impure every moment of every life, and that shapes everything you do with faith. It’s it’s a totally determining category. And I think initially, I used to to go back to that verse about it’s what, I remember visiting a friend in hospital, and this was when I’m back in Australia, and the Quran was beside her bed. And I said, are you reading it? And she said, no.

 

I can’t because that time the month. Are you allowed to read your bible when you’re unclean? Oh, wow. So do I say yes and make her think it’s okay to read the Bible when you’re unclap what what goes on? And and I think, initially I would have gone back to the verse, it’s only what comes out defiles you.

 

And while that’s true, I actually understand it slightly differently now. For Muslims, like with the Jews, you have to do all this washing in order to purify yourself again. There’s all these rules of how you purify yourself and how you wash. And my understanding is that that is still needed just as the Jews couldn’t pray and couldn’t come to God and couldn’t interact with their scriptures until they were purified. You’ve got all those jars of purification in the in the wedding of Cana.

 

So my understanding is that justice sacrifice was essential for the old testament, and it stopped not because it’s been superseded, but because it’s been completely fulfilled in Jesus’ sacrifice. In the same way, we still need to be purified, but we are When I read when I read the bible and when I pray I do. But I have been so purified in Jesus that that purification obviates and is bigger than every other possible way of purity. Just like his sacrifice fulfilled and went beyond every other sacrifice. Yeah.

 

It it goes back to when Jesus is asked questions and, you never see Jesus just give a yes or no. He usually goes right to the heart of the question. And I think sometimes when Muslims are asking those questions, they’re asking much deeper theological questions than we realize. And by answering, yes, I can pray, during that time of the month, then you might actually be giving them the wrong impression. You might be saying that I don’t need to be purified, that I can just read whenever.

 

And the reality is no, you do need to be purified and that’s what Christ has done. An opportunity to witness for Jesus actually gets bypassed because it’s simple yes or no question. Yeah. Totally. And you know, it’s one of the things I love about hanging out with Muslim friends and people of other religions is I learn so much more about my own faith.

 

I just There’s stuff I would never have understood in the bible, had other people and other religions not sent me back to say, what’s the bible really say about this issue that’s so important to them? Well, that was a good good stuff from doctor Moira Dale. And it sounds really good through Skype. You know, this that was all the way in Australia. Yeah.

 

We had a couple a couple glitches, but otherwise Right. Yeah. Let’s okay. Yeah. Anyway, so, thank you so much for listening, to Choose About Muslims, podcast.

 

Anyway, reviews on iTunes really, really help. Thank you so much for listening. Comments at truthaboutmuslims.com. Any questions, comments, let us know. Yep.

 

And, this is us signing out.

A Muslim Saved My Life with Don McCurry