The Truth about Muslims Podcast equips listeners to think critically about media, Muslims, and the mission of God. Since 9/11, people are asking “What is really going on in the Muslim world?” “Is the media giving us the whole picture?” “Do we have reason to fear?” As Christians, “How should we respond?” Join hosts, Trevor Castor and Howard Ki in exploring what God is doing in Muslim ministry and how he is using missionaries throughout the Muslim world. You can listen on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music or YouTube.
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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Missions in a War Torn Muslim Land with Missionary Brady – Part 2
It is a warning. Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast, the official podcast of the Zwemer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Alright. So welcome back to Truth About Muslims podcast.
And again, we are interviewing Brady, and I’m just gonna be really honest. I I’m really, really excited just because I wanna hear stories. I’m a story nut, man. That’s why I like This American Life and all these other podcasts because that’s what I’m all about. I love stories, and I preach, and so I gotta have stories to tell.
And Brady is apparently a wealth of stories, we’ve come to find out. And as if you heard the last podcast, this is obviously part 2, and we we broke into 2 parts because we wanted to give you, the listeners, the joy of enjoying these stories. Like, we are gonna enjoy these stories. And I I haven’t heard all the stories, but, like, this is I’m I’m I’m giddy. Yeah.
Me too. Because you you really do need to go listen to part 1 first because he’s kind of broken down a little bit of what we see when we see the sedan and just shown the complexity of what’s going on there. And so, now, he’s gonna We ended with him talking about how he doesn’t know exactly what’s happened at the the Bible college where he was teaching because he’s been out of the country. And so, we’re gonna pick up with what they were doing in ministry, how they ended up having to leave the country, and sort of what he hopes to see when he comes back. So, Brady, ready for part 2.
Alright. Now, as we start, I just I just have to say I’m gonna be a little shameless here. I’m gonna shamelessly recruit. Do it. Time.
Do it. Okay? This is your this is your platform. I have permission to do that? Absolutely.
Okay. Alright. So as we get started, I just have to say that that, our work specifically in South and South Sudan and Sudan has been one experience after another of watching God show up Mhmm. And do just amazing things. So I that is my recruiting tool is come open to watch God work.
Alright? So I don’t That’s a good recruiting tool. Yeah. I would yeah. I don’t yes.
You don’t have to be, and there’s a line of things that a lot of people wanna list that you have to be in order to come into missions. You don’t. You just have to be available. You have to be willing to grow. You have to be willing to be sensitive to the movement of his holy spirit Mhmm.
And obey. Just do it. Just go and watch him work. It’s fun. Alright.
So share with us some ways in which God is working, some things that would give us a little bit of insight as to how we should really get over there and see more. Oh, man. Okay. Well, let me tell you a story about a trip that I took. It I’m excited.
It makes sense in retrospect. One of those stories where it’s like, what is going on? And then when you look back, you’re like, oh, okay. I see it now. But, so I live in a town called Maylut, and I need to get to another town called Molokol.
That’s 3 hours away. Okay? 3 hours by the only truck that really works in South Sudan is a Toyota Land Cruiser. It’s just it’s solidly made, and we abuse those things. So it’s not a luxury vehicle?
No. No. It’s not. Alright. How long how long is a 3 hour trip in Sedan?
Because 3 hours here, I’m thinking, 300, you know, 200 miles. How far can you go in 3 hours in Sedan? Just so we have some context of what the roads are like. Okay. In kilometers, 120 kilometers.
So you’re maybe looking at I could do the conversion here. I don’t know. Maybe 80 miles. Yeah. Woah.
In 3 hours. Yeah. That’s 3 hard hours of driving. So Explain what a hard hour of driving is like in We don’t have hard hours. We have rest stops.
So give us a hard hour. Okay. So we don’t we don’t have any paved roads, in between that area. So you’re you’re running on tracks. You’re sharing the road with tractors, and tractors have a a way of digging up the road.
And so, oftentimes, you come to points where, you actually you’re high centering all the time. You’re What is high centering? That’s where the ruts are so deep that your wheels when you when you drive, your wheels don’t hit dirt anymore. Like, you bottom out. Yeah.
You’re bottomed out hanging, so your wheels are spinning. No. So you actually have to you use something called a high lift, and you jack up your car, and then push it sideways. No. So that your wheels can actually get back on the ground terra firma.
So it’s not that you’re driving 20 miles an hour the whole time. It’s that you’re having to stop and do, like, 20 minutes worth of work to just even be able to drive. So so on this 3 hour trip, like, how many times would you would you high center? Depends on the skill of the driver. So, like, what?
You got skills, don’t you? Oh, I got skills. Like, 2, 3 times? I remember one time driving. I was trying to teach this lady how to drive.
In Sudan? A missionary. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, okay.
This is a good experience. She should be learning. Well, you have She should be learning. Okay. You have something called U bolts.
U bolts, and they actually hold your axle to your suspension. That’s a good thing to have. It is. And so you drive along, but we’re high centering, hitting these rocks, and they’re snapping the the bolts on the the u bolt screw. Like, it’s the bolt that screws on and holds it together.
That’s bad. Well, yeah, it’s bad. So then we run out of extra u bolts. So the suspension bring extra u bolts with you? My come on.
That’s that’s beginner. That’s that’s that’s a silly question. Master. Okay. You don’t have u bolts in your car?
Or that lift that you were talking about, that jack? Yeah. The high oh, man. Yeah. So anyway, so we’re driving along.
She snaps a bunch of these. We’re we’re tying it together with rope. No. We’re trying to figure out how to keep this axle, yeah, to the suspension. Anyway, so it was terrible.
We’re letting them into town. So, anyway, so if you’re gonna teach someone yeah. Teach them on a tarmac road, not on the not on the dirt road. Tarmac would be like a paved road. Paved road.
That was that was totally my fault, the rabbit trail. Alright. You had this 3 hour 3 hour tour. Gotcha. This is gonna be a 3 part podcast.
Yeah. Just kidding. Alright. So, wait, the first problem here is we don’t own a vehicle. Alright.
So I need to make this trip, but we don’t have a vehicle. So what you do is you just kinda listen around. Go to Hertz or Yeah. Enterprise. You listen around.
If someone’s on their way or traveling through, you just say, hey, can I bomb a ride from you? And so I went to one of our neighbors. He works for a nongovernment organization called an NGO. And so I went to this NGO and I said, hey, do you have a truck that’s going down to a mall call? And he said, actually, yeah.
I need someone to deliver it. I was like, I’m your man. And I know how to drive. Yeah. Just give me some U bolts.
That’s right. Yeah. Back to U bolts. So we have a rule in South Sudan that you never do anything alone. We’re there to make disciples.
If you’re doing something alone, you’re doing it wrong. I thought you meant, like, danger, but go ahead. Yeah. Well, oh, there is that too. Yeah.
No. But you’re you’re talking about, like, if, for instance, I’m building a fence. Yep. I need to find people to build a fence with me. Yep.
Not because you need help, but because you want disciple. Absolutely. Right. Okay. Yeah.
If you think discipleship happens in the classroom, yeah, you’ve got a problem. Listen up academia. Yep. So it needs to happen outside. It needs to happen doing something actually non academic related.
That’s when students begin to talk. Hey. You’re from Africa. So, I had the unfortunate event where a student said, I don’t I’m not trying to be rude, but I’ve learned way more from hanging out at your house than I have in the classroom. Oh.
And I it was like a backhanded compliment, I guess. Yeah. I said Sorry. Am I my intuition. Am I able to tell this story, or what’s going on?
Go for it. Go for it. Sorry. I’m in 80 d moments here. Yeah.
Sorry. Just shows that we’re really comfortable with you, Brady. Keep going. Bring it. I wanna hear it.
Alright. So You mean it’s a snap. That’s right. We’re hopping in this truck. And so I grabbed the maintenance man.
I’m like, hey. Let’s go. And then as we’re pulling out, I look at my 8 year old son, and I say, hey. Why don’t you come along? And he’s all gung ho for it.
So he hops in the truck. So we’re pulling away and the owner, the NGO guy says, oh, yeah. He has this problem overheating. Oh, okay. Alright.
So we go we get this big, Jerry can of water and throw it in the back so that we can fill up the radiator every now and then. So we’re heading down the road. And, I mean, we think bush country here. Think, out of Africa. I mean, think dirt road in the middle of nowhere.
And we see these 2 guys under a tree with a motorcycle. So we stop and ask, you know, what’s going on? And they say, oh, our motorcycle broke down. And this is lion country, you know? You wanna you just don’t leave people on the side of the road.
My head. Okay. My head is about to explode. Okay. You just stopped.
You saw somebody on the side of the road and you just stopped? Oh, absolutely. You don’t you don’t just pass people by. It’s lion country. So Well, yeah.
That that’s the other thing that blew my mind. Okay. So anyway, so we get these guys and we’re like, yeah, motorcycle’s not working. Can’t fix it. So we imagine driving a motorcycle knowing that there’s lions out there.
You know? I I hats off to these guys. They’re, you know, that’s, I saw lions in the zoo and they just sit there. So I just figured it’d be fine. But, but apparently, in real life, they attack.
It’s like that rabbit in front of the greyhound. He’s just like, this is fun. Oh, jeez. I cannot even imagine. You just made me wet my pants a little bit.
Anyway, so okay. So we load these guys in the back of the pickup truck. They get the motorcycle out here and then load these guys up. And we start going well. Sure enough.
The car truck just stops working as it should. It’s just going slower and slower. So we lift up the hood. We pour water in. You know, we we do this over and over.
I mean, we’re 5, 6, 7 hours into our journey, and the car is going just so slow. And this is the 3 hour journey? Yeah. That’s right. Okay.
So I’m trying to figure out you know, I’m trying everything I know how to do to fix on this truck, and it’s just not working. It’s hot, but I have no idea if that’s the problem. Well, we run out of water. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And this week’s sponsors are Zweimer Center.
Zweimer Center. The Zweimer Center. The Wamers Center. Zweimer Center. And what does the Zwemer 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. Well, sure enough, the car truck just stops working as it should.
It’s just going slower and slower. So we lift up the hood, we pour water in, you know, we we do this over and over. I mean, we’re 5, 6, 7 hours into our journey, and the car is going just so slow. And this is the 3 hour journey? Yeah.
That’s right. Okay. So I’m trying to figure out, you know, I’m trying everything I know how to do to fix on this truck, and it’s just not working. It’s hot, but I have no idea if that’s the problem. Well, we run out of water.
I mean, we’ve used this whole Gerry can of water. We’ve used our drinking water. You know, we’ve we’ve used all our water and here we are in the middle of the bush. Well, the 2 motorcycle guys are like, oh, yeah. We know we know of a river.
It’s just over there. And so when an African says over there, then you don’t know if that’s like, a week or if it’s wait. Did you just say a week? A couple miles. Yeah.
You just you don’t know how far it is for them to go and come back. Is is it rude is it rude to ask, like, what do you mean what do you mean by over there? Kilometers, please. Yeah. I know.
You know, if you’re not used to measuring life in kilometers, then I suppose that, that’s a hard answer to give. Anyway, so these yeah. Sure. Why don’t you take the jerry can and go? So these guys disappear.
And Like, they’re walking. You have their motorcycle at least. Right? So you know they’re coming back. Oh, that’s a good point.
Yeah. Yeah. I have their motorcycle. So, yeah, they’re coming. They’re coming back.
He’s pulling up the wind. He’s not thinking like an American at all. I just I I know. I am. I’m just right.
We’re like, we have we have their motorcycle. Okay. Keep going. Anyway, so these guys disappear. And good to their word, they come back, but we pour the water in and nothing happens.
I mean, the truck’s just not moving anymore. So we’re we’re getting ready to sleep just in the truck that night. So we’re getting ready kinda That’s so weird. In in the cab, I hope. Well, I’m in the cab.
I feel bad for the guys in the back, you know. But not bad enough to not sleep in the cab. Me and my 8 year old boy are gonna be here in the cab. Holler if you need a nah. Who knows what would happen that night?
But so He just says it so nonchalantly. He is not thinking like an American. Go ahead. So here we are. We’re we’re there.
And then all of a sudden, headlights appear. And they you know, coming from behind us. And so they get closer and closer. Sure enough, this guy pulls up. We explain to him, look.
This is what’s going on. We can’t get the car to run. He comes, jumps out. He’s doing all kinds of things. He sucks out the filter with his mouth.
Like, what? Yeah. I didn’t do that. So he climbs under the car and slices my fuel line that goes from the fuel tank to the engine. Right?
My mouth just dropped out there. Yeah. So he’s sliced the thing in it. Yes. Mine did that too.
And I was like, oh, lord. What just happened? But then he goes in gonna take my gas. Yeah. Yeah.
What’s going on here? He goes into his truck, pulls out this little other piece of tube, and, like, a neurosurgeon splices this line back together again and brings me a section of it. And he’s he has me look in it and it’s just solid blocked. So there is no fuel getting to the engine. That was what was causing it.
Wait. So he cut it cut that part out? Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how he found it.
I don’t know how he knew that was the issue, but it’s pitch black. And this man shows up and just totally saves us. Yeah. That blows my mind too that he just dries up in the middle of the night or however what it’s it’s after dark. It is dark.
And he stops on this old road on in line country and stops to talk to you. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Then okay. Sorry.
If you remember our first podcast about community, you just don’t leave people alone. Oh, that’s so cool. You have to say hi. You have to see if people need help. So anyway, we get going.
It’s nighttime. And the cities do something where they set a a curfew, where they shut the roads going in and out of cities, just so for security reasons. Would they, like, blockade them, you mean? Absolutely. Okay.
Okay. It’s blockaded, and they have men with guns who who guard that. So we pull up to this checkpoint and, you know, doing the usual negotiations. Who are you? Where are you going?
What do you want? And I, you know, I explained who I am and that I didn’t anticipate the car having so many troubles. And you don’t look Sudanese. Oh, no. Well, no.
No. I I’m not. And so I’m not. Okay. So, you know Brady’s White, just for the audience, just in case you’re wondering.
So this guy, he’s just, nah, it’s not gonna happen. So I go back and I John Cena to Jake the snake. No. Jake the snake’s real old, isn’t he? He’s not Yeah.
WWF. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember WWE now.
Yeah. Back in the old school. I know. He’s w sorry. Go continue.
Tag team where you slap the head. Oh, yeah. It’s his turn. So the maintenance man, remember, he’s with me. Oh, right.
He goes he starts working on him. He’s like, look. This white this white guy, he has no idea who he is. You know, he’s he’s clueless about stuff, so please just let him through, you know, that whole thing. Ignorance.
Yeah. So, anyway, he tries that. Soldier’s like, look, man. You came after dark. I’m not gonna let you through.
Wow. Okay. So holding holding fast. So Wait. Is your son scared at this point?
I’m glad you brought up the son. Yeah. So no. Isaac’s, no. Not at all.
Not at least been. He’s pretty hardcore. So I in fact, you you know, he Yeah. Anyway, we’ll get to that. So Okay.
He’s sitting in the pickup at this point and the soldier walks by, sees this little white face in there and is like, oh, salaam alaikum. My son just answers back, Alaikum Assalam. And they begin chatting. And so, they start In English? Your son’s Arabic is better than yours, isn’t it?
It is. Wait, wait. He’s chatting in Arabic or English? Arabic. Sorry.
That was Arabic. And so I mean, I knew that part, but I just figured that, you know, that’s the greeting and then they would speak in English. No. No. No.
No. This this soldier had no English. And so, you know, he starts chatting, but he’s pretty excited that this 8 year old kid speaks Arabic. So they start chatting back and forth, talking about their favorite foods. And then What?
The soldiers, like, well, so you’re gonna marry a Sudanese. Right? I mean, because an American make can’t make you kiss at an obama you. And so I was Wait. Wait.
I don’t know what that meant. Yeah. You explained that? Kiss what? It’s like kimchi Howard for Koreans.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s like slime and Play Doh. Oh, it’s a food? Yes.
Why did you say kiss then? No. Kissra. Okay. That’s what the food is.
Yeah. Yeah. So how are we just making clothing? I don’t know. So the the she he’s saying that the the American woman couldn’t make this dish.
Right. Okay. Okay. I’m gonna So he he has to marry a Sudanese girl. And and so, you know, they begin talking like that, laughing.
They’re having a good time. Sure enough, the soldier comes back to me. He’s like, look. Your kid has much better Arabic than you. I knew it.
He’s like, the kid can go. You have to stay. You know, we like him. There’s something about Africans. They feel like they they have a right to chew me out for my Arabic.
Woah. They’re really Yeah. Like, your your Arabic’s awful. How long have you been here? You’re you speak like a 4 year old.
Come on. But our language is really easy. Kids know it. Okay? Right.
But they don’t mean it maliciously. Right? No. They’re, like, making fun of you kinda thing? It’s a half serious, half, like, come on, man.
Yeah. Get dragged together. Yeah. Exactly. But he does say this soldier comes over.
He’s like, look, his mom’s gonna be really worried. So why don’t you guys just hop in the car and go? I’m like, oh, yes. Wait. Wait.
Wait. The soldier said that to you? Soldier said that his mom is going to be worried. Well, that the Isaac’s mom might. Right.
Right. Yeah. So he he’s like, lucky you guys need to go. So so we hop in the car and we take off. So I’m lying there in bed that night thinking to myself, god, you’re mean.
Yeah. 3 hour journey. And it’s like 15 hours, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, nothing went right that day.
Right. It was just awful. And I’m thinking, god, come on. Yeah. I was the good Samaritan.
Right? I picked up those 2 motorcycle guys. Right. And what did you get for it? Right.
I wasn’t that terrible? And then he did start reminding me. He’s like, you you don’t actually own a truck, do you? And, who who brought you a truck? And God’s just kinda like, oh, yeah.
I did. And then, oh, yeah. You didn’t know where water was and you ran out of water? Uh-huh. Who brought you 2 guys who didn’t know where water was?
God’s just like, yeah. That was me again. And then who brought you a guy who knew exactly what was wrong with your truck? Yeah. That was me.
And then who got you through the checkpoint? That was your 8 year old son. But Who I formed. That’s right. In his momma’s womb.
Amen. And his brain to speak Arabic. That’s right. So, I mean, that’s the perspective you need to take when you’re doing ministry in Africa is way like, you can complain about all the things that don’t go right, or you can sit there and be marveled at the way that God is there at every step doing something amazing. But but that’s not just ministry in in Africa.
Right? That would be that I mean, when you said that, that rang true for me all the time. I think about, I mean, I get so frustrated at petty things. Like, my wife knows my pet peeve if I lose something in the house. Where are my keys?
Where are my phone? And, like, I’m a I’m a really calm person. I can deal with big crisis and be calm, but I lose my keys, I just lose it. My my kids are like, alright. Stay away from dad because he’s, you know, he’s he lost his keys or he lost his phone or you know?
And it’s just crazy. And and I think that’s a a really good point where how God is present even in the midst of circumstances when things don’t go right. It’s not that God is present when everything’s perfect. Right. Right.
And I think that’s such a human, you know, tendency. Yeah. We so, thinking in terms of having that perspective, where we need to look at where is God working as opposed to where is God not working. What should we see when we think of Sudan? Since we’ve narrowed it from not just thinking of Africa but thinking of Sudan, what we see is, you know, chaos, war, violence.
How should we see it from God’s perspective? That’s a good one. It reminds me of a story. I like it. Yes.
So, we’re sitting there one day, having a picnic. And, we have bees. We have a lot of bees. Like honeybees? You know, killer bees?
Oh. They’re called They’re like African bee killer bees that we see in the movies. They’re called Africanized honeybees. What’s their killer bees? Well, that’s what a killer bee is.
It’s an Africanized honey bee. And a honey bee is calming. The honey bee is very gentle. So you take an African bee, gentle it down, and that’s a killer bee. We have the origin.
We have the African bee. So these guys, you walk by That’s terrible. Yeah. Why does everything in Everest You wanna kill you. Ends.
Yeah. The the roads wanna kill you. The I mean, everybody else wants that’s why everybody helps each other because everything is trying to kill you except for the people. Well, sometimes the people, but, you know, like, you get what I’m No. I’m I’m thinking, like, surviving a day is, wow, God really did something here.
We survived today. Jesus, I’m I’m I’m alive. That’s right. That’s right. So here we are.
We’re we have these bees around, and so the kids know about, you know, stay away from bees. And literally, I can walk by. And if I’m looking at the hive, they’ll come out and buzz me. No. What they’ll do, they’ll come and they just kinda buzz your hair.
What is that? Wait. Wait. What does buzz your hair mean? Well, yeah.
They actually like cute, Trevor. Dive bomb you. But they don’t sting you. No. But that’s their warning.
They’re like, keep moving or else something bad is coming out. So they know they recognize your eyes. That’s crazy. It’s weird. So I I literally, you should see me.
I put my head down and I just walk like, like a total humble Right. They’re kings. Humbled by these bees. They’re kings. That’s what I’m yes.
They rule. They rule our campus. So anyway, so we we have these bees around. We’re having our picnic. My youngest boy is throwing rocks, which is natural.
But he happens to hit one of these trees. No. Oh, yeah. These bees get furious and just light him up. What?
So he comes running towards us bringing all the bees. And we I mean, you just know it. You hear this zzzz and he takes He’s screaming, I’m assuming. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
So you hear a swarm of bees? Yeah. That’s right. Cloud of bees. Everybody just shoots off in crazy directions trying to find shelter.
So he comes, I look at his back and he’s just he’s got a bunch of bees on his back. My wife picks him up, starts, like, football, you know, Heinz Moon. Oh, yeah. I think this. Superhuman strength.
Right. I grabbed him and ran. Running with him. I’m trying to get the bees off, but I don’t know why I did this, but this is what I did. I didn’t wanna use my hands because I didn’t wanna sting my hands.
So I took off my shirt. Nice. Good thinking. Take the shirt off with the swarm of bees. Right.
I like it. That’s okay. Okay. Don’t judge me. No.
It’s too late. No. Just kidding. So I’m here. I’m whacking my son with my shirt.
Right. Trying to get the bees off. Right? My wife is screaming, trying to run as I’m whacking her and my son with my shirt. Aims not all the way on.
That’s right. She puts the boy down. I pick him up. So I have no shirt. I’m football carrying this.
I played rugby. So I was used to this. Mhmm. Right. And so I took off running as fast as I could.
And eventually, I got away from the bees. Actually, a lady said, come hide in my house. And so, we hid in her house. There’s that community. Yeah.
Of course, that would happen. And so Okay. So I’m hiding in her house, and, you know, I don’t it’s the grapevine is very active. So then soon people are all talking, oh, you know, the white people got stung by the bees. And so the white people got stung by the bees.
Don’t they know any better? I know. I know. So we all go and we meet in, it’s actually our faculty lounge which is basically, a screened in porch. So it’s got screen on it Right.
So the bees can’t get us. So we’re hiding in this porch pulling out stingers from my youngest son. Oh, man. Wait. How old is he at this time?
Twenty 6 so he would have been 4 or 5. Oh, my gosh. It’s so young. Okay. Stingers.
And it’s so funny because you can tell who’s been stung because you balloon. You really balloon big. Like, if it stings you on your head, it’ll actually shut your eye because it Wow. Swells so much. Wait.
And your son has multiple on his back? Yeah. We had 7 that we pulled out of him. And so, you know, we’re trying to take care of him. And then who do you see but one of our students?
Andrew Nita is a unique man. He’s from the Mabon tribe. He’s an older he’s probably 50 years old, but he works harder and just is more committed to Christ than I think anybody I’ve ever met. So Andrew Nitza starts walking by outside. We’re like, Andrew, Andrew, there’s bees.
You know, you gotta get inside. And he just kind of waves but ignores us and begins walking towards the tree where the bees are. Oh. Andrew pulls up a chair and sits down underneath the hive. Alright.
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Mhmm. So Andrew Nita starts walking by outside. We’re like, Andrew, Andrew, there’s bees. You know, you gotta get inside. And he just kind of waves but ignores us and begins walking towards the tree where the bees are.
Boom. Andrew pulls up a chair and sits down underneath the hive. And we’re seeing this swarm all around him. And they’re doing the whole, you know, hitting him in the head, trying to get him out of there. You can see this.
Oh, yeah. You can see a swarm of bees. And so they’re doing this to him, but he continues to sit there just calmly, almost like a statue. And so, you know, we’re taking care of Josh. We’re trying to get the swelling down and things like that.
And, about an hour later, I end up finding Andrew Nita and he has some stings on him. Just asking him, Andrew, what were you doing? You know, how is your head? Because he was getting stung. Andrew begins to share with me that, bees often will pour their wrath out on the nearest person.
And so by going and sitting there and actually sacrificing himself, the bees wouldn’t go further than him. They wouldn’t come towards us. They wouldn’t go towards other people in the village. They would only stay with him. And it just this was 2 weeks before Easter.
And I’m thinking to myself, what picture of Christ is more, real than what Andrew did? Andrew did not, you know, throw the rock at the bees. He did not cause them to become angry, but he sacrificed himself to sit down, to take that wrath until the bees calm down and go back to their hive. And that wrath went no further than Andrew. Well, just like Christ did that for us, took the wrath of God so that we don’t have to pay that.
Dude, man, what a what a cool story. So you asked me about faith in Africa. You asked me about what are we seeing? And we’re seeing people like Andrew Nita. People who are living their faith out in radical ways.
They for the sake of Christ, out of love for him, out of service to him, that’s the stories that are coming out of Africa. Can we go to, what happened in Paris, with, the Charlie Hebdo, massacre. And then shortly after that, Boko Haram, you know, attacked in Nigeria. But you just don’t see the coverage that happens in, you know, in the Boko Haram in in Nigeria, that you did with Paris. Paris was, like, huge.
And Boko Haram had killed, what, like, was, like, 2,000? Yeah. 2,000. And and you just didn’t see that much, and people weren’t really talking about it. But Charlie Hebdo was everywhere, internationally even.
So, like, I want just wanted to hear your viewpoint on it, you know, from being on the ground in Africa and that at that region and just to hear what you saw? Mhmm. That’s a really good question. I you know, I you’ll just get my opinion. You’ll get my viewpoints here.
You know, you have journalists reacting to the death of fellow journalists with Charlie Hebdo. Ah. You have a western response to a western crisis, in France. You have in some ways, you have it’s an attack on free speech. And so it’s something that we struggle with here and we identify with freedom to express our views is something we cherish.
And so it almost felt like it was an attack on us, that we need to stand up for this, with the people of Paris, with Charlie Hebdo, as, you know, these terrorists came and and killed those people there. It’s almost tribal, kinda like what you were talking about. We have so many identifying Marx. Yeah. Freedom.
It was an attack on freedom and democracy and That’s right. Western secularization, freedom of speech, all of those things that we identify with as Americans. Whereas these radical terrorists, we have we don’t identify with at all, hardly. Or 2,000 brothers in Christ, which is so bizarre to me. I guess, Brady, that’s what I’m wondering.
Like, why is it that 2,000 people die at the hands of radicals in Nigeria and that we don’t really blink an eye? I mean, you mentioned even in the first episode, first part of this podcast, something like 10,000 have died in the civil war. I mean, and we don’t hear about it. Maybe we don’t wanna hear about it. We don’t look for it.
But I just feel like shouldn’t the church be more aware of the suffering of its brothers and sisters in Africa than we currently are? I think so. It’s it’s hard. Yes. It’s hard because it felt like we could name the issue.
It felt like we knew who were who were the good guys and the bad guys and where they’re coming from and what’s at stake when it’s Paris. But then when we look at Boko Haram in Nigeria, you you ask yourself, who are these people? Right. And what are they doing? And why are they mad?
And why are they killing each other? Right. And you just end up feeling like, boy, I I can’t identify at all with what’s going on, and it’s just more bad news from Africa. And so you just end up tuning it out. You end up being like, well, there it is again.
And I I and so I feel that there’s that fatigue that people get when they hear about Africa. Yeah. There’s a scene in the movie Hotel Rwanda where they’re filming the genocide that’s happening and the guy, Paul, who’s running the hotel walks in and he sees the footage of what they were filming from the slaughtering that was happening in the streets. And, when they see him walk in, they say, no. No.
Shut it off. Shut it off. And he said, no. No. No.
People need to see this. He said, the Western world needs to see what’s happening. That way, people will come in. They will step up and and help us in the situation. And the cameraman turns to him and there’s this moment where he says, I wish that were true but people are gonna watch this and they’re gonna say, wow.
That’s really bad. And then they’re gonna go back to eating their dinner. And that scene in that movie, man, that just stuck with me. It stuck with me. Alright.
Here’s another recruiting moment. And this is where I’m gonna, for a second, just say we need lifers. We need people who are going to absolutely invest everything into coming and serving Christ. The solutions aren’t simple. The the issues aren’t simple.
The coming in and, you know, giving clothes and food and and sandals and aid aid is so destructive. Giving these things Hold on a second, Ray. We gotta we gotta expound on that. What are some of the ways in which you see aid being actually destructive and causing more problems than actually helping? Alright.
Let’s say your your job is you sell shoes. And, you know, what you do is you make and sell shoes. And then all of a sudden, some donor comes in and he provides shoes for the entire county. You know, 50,000, 60,000 shoes who just lost their business. You know, let’s say, you’re a farmer.
You sell your food in the market. Some aid organization comes in, and they’re now offering cheaper. I I mean, they’re giving away food. No one’s gonna buy your crops anymore. You can’t start a business.
Why why do we not think think of that stuff? I’ve never thought about that before. Why would you want to I mean, farming is so hard. Why would you wanna farm when someone’s just gonna provide you food? When someone’s just gonna step up to the plate and actually give it to you for free.
It it it hinders the step forward that people need. So you have countries like Tanzania where the president has actually said, we will not accept any aid. And so he stepped up to that plate, and he said, yeah. Sure. We’re gonna grow slower, but it’s gonna be us growing.
It’s not gonna be this foreign just donations that’s causing us to grow. It’s us actually stepping up to the plate and doing the work and growing ourselves. And what what about finances for, like, government programs and education, all that kind of stuff? Would you consider that still that part of that aid that’s destructive or cut that out too? Boy, now you’re asking some serious policy questions.
Sorry. Maybe you can just be all about Jesus. Right. I don’t know. I just tell people about Jesus.
Yeah. It was just in my head. I was just wondering. No. I there’s massive, okay.
Yes. There is help. The problem is, often, it’s a donation to a government or that ends up being a donation to that man’s mansion or his bank account in another country. Oh. Alright.
So if you’re going to give without accountability, you’ve now just corrupted someone. You’ve not helped him. You’ve corrupted him and sent him down a path of corruption. So it it is hard. Giving aid properly is extremely difficult, and donors have an attention pin span like a squirrel.
Like they’ll give and then they’re on to the next thing. Right. So it’s it’s hard to do aid well. And that’s why I’m asking for lifers. I want people who are gonna come in and actually invest their life.
Because that is what we need. People are gonna dig under the surface issue. People are gonna actually invest themselves into a community so that they’re not simply giving help, but they’re receiving help. That is the healthiest way to give aid is when you are a recipient of aid from the community yourself. Right.
You’re actually living in community. Absolutely. Right. Have there been, by the way, when it comes to the foreign aid, it’s a huge topic. And probably, we shouldn’t have thrown it on Brady, but we had to.
But there’s a book there’s a book, toxic charity, that I think is a helpful resource. And we’ll we’ll add that to the show notes as well. And it just talks about some of the shortcomings of aid. And there’s a couple articles we can put in there too that have been written by some some colleagues on aid. I wanted to ask, what are some of the times where you’ve really felt like you were a recipient from the community?
Is there anything that comes to mind in ways that you’ve received from the community that you were that you went to minister to? That’s good. I, it’s exciting that missions now is not a western thing. My colleagues are Ethiopian, Nigerian, Indian, Filipino. These are men and women who are sent by their churches in these countries as missionaries to serve in Sudan, in South Sudan.
So that’s cool. That’s so cool. And the perspective that they bring to the work, it just mellows and balances us out so well. My first place that I went to in South Sudan actually, it’s, North Sudan is a Blue Nile state, and we found ourselves trapped by a river. So 6 months, 4 months out of the year, it would rain, and this river would grow so big that we couldn’t cross it.
Well, you can cross it. I remember one time Probably shouldn’t cross it. Yeah. I you know, you can swim across it. So I’m I’m watching these guys.
Oh, you’re not talking about a boat. You’re talking about swimming. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Swim across. Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I love how Brady’s just like, yeah.
Yeah. I was thinking of fairies. You’re right. I’m totally thinking of fairies. And everyone in that’s listening is thinking of fairies too.
Just wanna say that. Go ahead. Alright. So, you know, I’m watching these guys cross and, you know, you go way upstream because the river’s rushing madly. So then as you’re swimming across, you’re dragged downstream quite far.
So you walked upstream, and then they strip down. And then you hold your clothes with one hand above your head as your other arm is swimming across so that your clothes remain dry. So you’re swimming across a raging river, one handed. Yeah. So I Are there crocodiles?
No. Not in this river. No. Yeah. That’s that would make you wanna swim really fast.
Are there lions? No. Just kidding. Hippos. So so I decided, yeah, sure.
I’ll I’ll give this a try. Well, you’re not thinking like an American. You’re not. This might be a little too much information. No.
No. Please. At the time, I was a boxer man. Oh. So You got down to your skivvies.
Yeah. So I Everywhere you You know, everybody’s down to their skivvies, and I I have my boxers. Well, you know, when you hand wash your clothes, that elastic just I know where this is going. It never tight back up. Yeah.
Right? I’m in the dryer. I jump in this river and I’m committed. I got my clothes committed. And I got my other free arms, you know, going well soon.
The river goes to my, boxers. You’re neither nether regions. Yes. And they’re around my ankles. So, you know, I quickly So now you’re swimming with 1 I mean, without any movement of your legs.
Well, right. It’s it’s more like drifting. It is. Is it that way? You’re drifting.
I’m trying to stay up and keep my clothes above me. My hands, you know, trying to go in the water to, you know, pull up my boxers and then try and swim again. So I’m, like, bobbing up and down. You should see the concern on the people, like, on the side. They’re like, this American doesn’t know how to swim.
This white guy doesn’t know how to swim. I know. But they don’t really know what’s going on underneath the water. Right? Right.
I mean, because it’s very, very turbid, very dirty water. Right. You can’t see through it. Holy cow. I almost drowned that day.
That was awful. Wait. Wait. Can I ask, were your did your clothes remain dry? I can’t remember.
I’m trying to look at the Did you not know? Did you not know? Did the box Did the box did the boxers stay on? The buy it depends on what you define as on. Did I permanently lose the boxers?
No. I I ended up keeping them around my ankles. Alright. But, so okay. So that’s trapped.
That was trial. Okay. River. Okay. So I so there’s this river.
And so we’re thinking to ourselves, man, the community and ourselves were trapped by this river 4 months out of the year. That means we can’t get to the market. We can’t get to the clinic. We can’t get to the roads. We can’t get to the schools on the other side.
Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. So this is just across, like, the way.
It’s not like like you leaving the city. It’s, like, everything. Like, to get to just normal things that you need every day. Right. Right.
So so we’re stuck on this river. So then friends and I were talking about it, and we’re like, you know what? I’ve watched Indiana Jones. That bridge looks like, you know, that little, like, hand The rope bridge? Yeah.
The rope bridge. Why can’t we build suspension bridge. Yeah. Yeah. Why can’t we build a bridge?
It was a rope bridge. I’m not so okay. It was suspended, but it was a rope bridge. Right. Right.
We have rope. Right? So, it’s like, oh, man. So, I’ve seen goats walk on those kinds of bridges. Yeah.
So, goats? They’re not humans. Okay. Go ahead. They do have way better balance.
Right. So, man, so we we start pursuing this. And pretty soon, I get connected with this group called Bridges to Prosperity. And they’ve done the research that you build a bridge across these rivers and the community flourishes. Because for 4 months, they were stuck.
They were dying literally because they couldn’t get to the clinic. No way. So now you build a bridge and then the community flourishes because they can go back and forth. And so this this excellent organization has done this around the world. And so they offered their plans to me and said, hey, why don’t you take these and build this bridge so they don’t build it for you?
They just give you the blueprints? Oh, yeah. Totally. Oh, yeah. Of course.
You said prosperity. I just assumed they came out and built a bridge for you. No, sir. That’s the other thing I like about them is they it’s solid because they do not work. They don’t do the work for the community.
Okay. They allow the community to build the bridge themselves. That’s kinda counterintuitive, but I get what you’re saying now. So what would be the problem if they if they came out and built the bridge? What would be some of the things that would happen?
Oh, my goodness. So ownership is a huge thing. Who owns that bridge? If no one owns the bridge, then who’s gonna fix it when something Oh. Oh, and, you know, so if someone starts damaging the bridge, whose responsibility is it to Protect it.
Protect it. And so what they found is absolutely, the community is able, with these instructions, to build their own bridge. And they protect it. They own it. They keep it alive.
You know, do the maintenance that needs to happen to it so it stays safe for the community. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Fantastic group.
Alright. So you got blueprints? Got blueprints. So then we start on this 2 year adventure of building this bridge. What?
Yeah. It takes 2 years to build a rope bridge? No. It it shouldn’t. But I I went to bible school Right.
And now I’m building bridge. So 2 years. That’s good, man. That’s good. That is actually good.
I think I think your bible school needs to expand its degree program to bridge Oh, maybe an engineering minor. Okay. And you said weed. I was thinking in my head, was it your missionary team, or was it, like, the community? The community.
Okay. So we had 5 tribes in our community. So the most important thing was to sit down with those leaders and to say, hey, do you want this? And when they said, yes, we want it, then it was, well, then who are you gonna provide to help build this bridge? What what were those conversations like when you said, Do you want this?
I mean, how long did that process take? What were some of the Yeah, describe the conversation. I mean, did you say, Do you want this? And suddenly, one tribal leader stands up and says, what? Okay.
Well, I alright. Set the scene. We’re with communities that have are completely, education hasn’t quite reached there yet. So the actual bridge concept of a bridge, it doesn’t exist. So we actually made one out of brick and string and little pieces of wood to show what the bridge would actually look like.
You’re saying that these people haven’t seen a bridge before? Right. Was there a word in the language even for the bridge? I had to Yeah. We used Arabic.
Kubri is the bridge word. But then to actually show it to them, I had to, you know, actually answer a lot of questions about this is what’s gonna happen. And then the fact that you walk over the water, like this, you know, it it’s hard to think about and to actually put it there. I’ve never thought about the concept of a bridge being foreign to anybody. True.
And that’s so wild. Okay. Keep going. Okay. So Alright.
So get the community together. So when I say we, we’re talking about, at one point we had 90 people who are working on this bridge together. Woah. So, you know, it was yeah. Anyway, so I was very involved.
Sometimes you felt like you weren’t doing any work. You were just, like, helping people not to keep going in this vision of building a bridge. It’s the slower way to go. But in Africa, we have a saying that if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.
I like that. So that’s the idea of, hey, if I can build this bridge with an NGO and some money and I can do it by myself for the community. I’ll get it done 5, 6 months. But if I wanna do it together, if I wanna do it as a community, then it’s gonna take longer. And it did.
It took 2 years, you know, to build this bridge. So here But you could have brought over a short term team and built it probably in 2 weeks in the summer with a short term missions team if you had got these construction guys to come over. I mean, that’s really what we end up seeing a lot of times. Yeah. That’s the methodology.
Right. Right. And I I think it’s flawed. Wow. So that’s what I’m saying.
My recruit is for long term. Anyway, so Lifers. Lifers. So we run into this granite rock. Okay?
This so you have to dig down to make these anchors, and we ran into this granite boulder. And it was, it’s about the size of a large semi truck. It’s just a huge granite stone. And and you guys don’t have like, what kind of equipment are you guys? Like, you don’t have trucks?
You don’t No. So bulldozers and No. No. No. We don’t have anything.
So we’re using Home Depot, rental, jackhammer. I wish. I wish. So I literally just longing in his voice. Yeah.
We’re talking 6 months for this stone, and that is hammer and chisel. That’s trying everything we can do. Get out of here. They chiseled that thing out of there, and it took 6 months. Well, I, you know, I tried everything.
And so I ran into a missionary. He’s like, oh, yeah. You know what you can do? You pour diesel on the rock. Let the diesel soak into the stone and then light it on you pile wood on top of the stone and light it on fire.
Oh, it’s fire. It’ll be like a bomb. You know? The diesel will soak into the middle and then it will burn from the inside. I’m picturing a MacGyver move here.
It’s not a bomb, but it does heat it so much that it cracks. Right. The rock cracks, and they can pull it out in pieces. Kind of a bomb. But you said a semi truck.
This is the size of a semi truck. It was massive. It was absolutely massive. So we’re working on this thing, working on it, and it would crack. I I give them that.
It would crack, but it’d be like in 2 inch, 3 inch layers. No. So I mean, literally, 6 months of finding wood and pouring diesel and trying to It’s not working. Like, I was so discouraged. Is the community still participating?
Yes. But they’re very discouraged too. If, you know, you got a whole wood all this distance and light it on fire and then you get 2 inches off of a semi truck? Any fights breaking out amongst the community? They’re all looking at you like, who is this guy?
I really follow him. Yeah. Are they are they mad at other tribes because some tribes are working harder than others? Like, is it that kind of stuff going on? No.
You do you do have to keep everybody involved and working and things like that. And I I have to admit, I was not good. It was hard. It was hard to keep everybody involved at this point. People get discouraged.
Right. You talk about a bridge, and 2 year well, there’s a year and a half later, there’s no bridge. Like, what’s going on here? I said that would be hard for anybody Right. Sure.
To make it happen. Right. So then so one day, I’m just walking back, to my house, and I’m so discouraged. And I’m walking up the road, and Steven Ademu, who’s a Nigerian, Nigerian missionary, he’s been sent by his church to come and church plant and then to work in education there. He comes up to me and says, Brady, what what’s going on?
And I say, look, Steven, I don’t know about this. I’ve been working on this rock, and I we’ve done everything we know how to do, and we can’t break it. And Steven just looks at me and says, have you prayed about it? I love it. I love it.
That’s good. No. I haven’t prayed about it. I’m very sorry. Don’t Pray about rocks.
Why would I pray about a rock? I know. It just doesn’t enter in. It doesn’t come right from my worldview. Right.
And Steven, like, boom. That’s the first thing he thinks about. Move mountains. So we go down there and we have this prayer session on this rock. And and then we’d light one more fire.
And we we lit it, and then it we spent that night just wondering what’s God done gonna do. 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 and then we’d light one more fire. And we lit it. And then we spent that night just wondering what’s God going to do? Sure enough, we go down the next morning and it has cracked. It is cracked in exactly the dimensions we need in order to build the rest of this And I bet the Nigerian guy was like, yeah.
Duh. Duh. Wait. So how long did you bomb. How long did you work on this stone, this granite, before you meant you you talked to this, this man that told you to pray.
How long was it? I would say 6 months. I would say Oh my gosh. So you you were working for 6 months, and then he comes around and says it, and you’re just like, why didn’t I do that before? Like, god, you’re mean.
Yeah. That’s a good that’s a long lesson. It is. It is. It’s one of those long, long lessons.
But imagine the look on people’s faces when they’ve seen that we’ve prayed over this. Who gets the glory? Right. God got the glory for the building of this bridge. In in this village, they were they were Muslims.
Now we had 2 tribes that were Muslims and then 3 tribes that were Christian. Working together working together, this was massive. So this was a huge, testimony to the Muslims to see. Absolutely. And so the bridge day celebration when we opened the bridge I got it sounds good.
Bridge day. Yeah. I got to sell it. You know, just share about the story and just how it’s the power of God that actually allowed us to accomplish this accomplish this bridge. But it’s also the power of God that actually allowed us to accomplish accomplish this bridge.
But it’s also the power of God that actually allows us to cross over from death to life. Oh, man. John 5 24. Alright? He Jesus Christ allows us to cross from death to life.
He is the bridge. Only him. And to be able to share that with I couldn’t bring together a 1,000 people. Oh, there were a 1,000 people there? Oh, easily.
And that bridge day celebration brought all 5 tribes together to celebrate the opening of their bridge. In fact, we named it Unity Bridge because of that. It brought everyone people together. I think that’s a a good story about how, demonstrating the gospel, indeed, and actually living the gospel, building something, not bringing it in from the outside, not having a team come and build it, but actually getting the community together. I can’t imagine all of the times they were spending together and how God was using that with the Christians and interacting with the Muslims and how God was using that for His glory.
Absolutely. Good stuff. Yep. Yep. Good stuff.
Okay. I’ve gotten a couple practical takeaways. But I want you to get real practical with us. I heard so far, I’ve heard, go with people. Yeah.
Bring somebody along. You know, if you’re going to to do something, bring somebody along. If you’re doing it alone, you’re doing it wrong. Alright. And the other thing that I heard just now loud and clear which is pray.
Oh my goodness. Yes. Yep. And that, you know, I need people to step out in faith because when you step out in faith, who gets the glory? Who’s actually accomplishing things?
Who’s working? It’s God. When you step out, it’s God who gets the glory. It’s God who gets to step in and be the hero. And that’s what we want.
Yeah. Me and Trevor were talking last night about just kinda how humanistic thinking has kinda crept into our our theology as Christians in the West. That was just, like, really about mankind. And, when you really look at the word, scripture, you can’t just help but realize that it’s all about the glory of God. It’s all about God.
And, I mean, that’s just an incredible reminder. I think that it’s just easy to think about our problems, our situation, our benefits, all you know, us, us, us. But then when you start flipping on its head and you see God and the whole goal is to bring glory to God, I think that just makes us deadly healthier, as Christians and really become light, salt and light, because it really isn’t about us. And I love what you’re talking about with the community because I just don’t I I really want to see this, actually, I am seeing it, I think, in in little pockets where there’s this, rising up of of people that want to be more community, minded in the states. Mhmm.
And I think we’re just at the very beginning. I know that God’s probably been working at this for a long time. But as we become more global, I think that’s the thing that kinda sticks to us more and more. We’re starting to see it. I think social media is even a part of that.
Right? Just this desire for community. They don’t even know it. They just they just have that. So, anyway, those are just incredible, I think, incredible points, a takeaway.
You know, this this podcast, you might have thought, you know, well, you know, Brady shared a lot of stories, and we were trying to trying to piece together, you know, Africa and and Sudan and what was kinda going on there. But I I hope that the takeaway for you guys is just this faith that God is moving and that we can be a part of it. And and not just to, you know, just listen to this podcast and just, you know, be at home, just being like, oh, wow. I wish I could have that life. But really, to kinda take up that call that Brady had had mentioned, he wants lifers.
And and I know that he also means, like, not just in the Sudan, but, you know, just as Christians, if we live this way Yes. You know, world Christians, these these guys that, Christians, if we live this way Yes. You know, world Christians, these these guys that that are aren’t thinking about themselves. They’re thinking in terms of community. They’re thinking in terms of the glory of God.
That it would make this incredible impact. Absolutely. As we as we come to a close, we started this session by saying you had to leave the country. Why did you leave? And you’re getting ready to return as I understand it.
What are you hoping to see when you go back? This is, this is hard. I got a letter, yesterday that my director wrote and he said it looks like we’re gonna keep the college closed for a year. And here I am. I leave in 8 days to go back.
What am I doing? What are what are we gonna do? And yet, this whole year, my wife and I have been praying, Lord, what do you want from us? And we’ve just felt his confirming call. You need to go back.
You need to go to these edges. You need to to go where there is no chance for people to get education. My wife and I are educators. So we love that area. We that’s where we wanna be.
And we felt God confirming that call. And yet now I get a letter. They’re gonna keep the college closed. Right. God, what are you what are you doing?
Mhmm. And yet, when I look back and I see the way that God has worked specifically in these direction in these situations, I’m confident. I’m ready. I’m ready to step into the void, not knowing what it’s gonna look like on the other side Right. But totally confident in my God that he has something planned for me, for us, for our family as we go back.
So I I don’t have any answers. South Sudan still is in the middle of a civil war. There’s still conflict between these tribes. That was tough, you know. Do you put your family in that sort of situation?
I remember flying we fly in these little Cessna airplanes. And, one time one of those planes got stuck in the mud as it was taking off. And so didn’t get enough speed and clipped a tree and actually flipped over and crashed with some of our missionaries inside. No one was killed. But I remember thinking about that.
Like, that’s our planes. That’s what we take in. And wondering, you know, God is are you gonna keep us safe? Are you have you called us here really? And so we get on that plane.
And as we’re flying in, I looked down, and there is a rainbow circling the shadow of the plane on the cloud below us. A rainbow. A sign from God to Noah that he was going to preserve him. To preserve humans. And here he is looking down just seeing that rainbow, seeing god say, I’ve gotcha.
I’ve got you in my hands. And being willing to follow him even if it does mean suffering. Even if it does mean he’s gonna use me in ways that maybe I I I didn’t wanna choose that, but I trust him that he’s gonna glorify himself through me. I’m ready for that. I’m ready to take that step.
And it’s a growing experience. I mean, I wasn’t at this step 5 years ago, but, you know, God keeps working on me and keeps growing me. So I go back to a torn apart country, a closed college, a school that is in desperate need of more teachers, students that are ill prepared for college. You know, they’ve got families that are been torn apart by this war. It’s not a great environment to learn in.
And yet, I’m ready. I’m ready to go and see god work. Well, I think listeners are all gonna agree that I’m hoping somehow we can get in touch with you on satellite phone because I know people are gonna be praying for you. Okay. And so those of you that want to pray, you can pray for Brady and his family.
God knows exactly who they are. He knows exactly where they are. All of you need to be praying that, God would have his will in their lives and that they would be used mightily, for the kingdom. I think it’s been really encouraging. Those of you that maybe feel led to respond to that, lifer challenge, contact us at comments attruthaboutmuslims.com.
We will connect you, specifically with, Brady’s mission to connect you with the work they’re doing. Those of you that that feel led to, maybe even support that particular mission and what they’re doing there, let us know, and we’ll make those connections for you. So, Brady, thanks, man. This has been awesome. It’s an honor.
Again, listeners, thank you so much for listening to Truth About Muslims, podcast. ITunes reviews really, really help. I know that I keep harping on that, but, I know that sometimes people forget. And I I listen to a lot of podcasts, and, you know, that’s kinda slips my mind. But, we’re real people and, you know, reviews really help because we wanna get the word out.
We really believe in what we’re doing here. We’ve had incredible feedback. Thank you guys for commenting and responding. And, here shortly, we’re gonna start, responding to people’s comments because now we’re getting so many and and and some questions too that we wanna start, answering those. But thank you so much for listening.
We’re really blessed that we actually get the opportunity to do this for a child. Just pray for us too, just like, I don’t know, Trevor mentioned a couple of podcasts ago. Please, keep us in your prayers, and, yep. Thanks.
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You have never heard this perspective on the Sudan! Missionary Brady shares what Americans can learn from Sudanese Christians.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Missions in a War Torn Muslim Land with Missionary Brady – Part 1:
You’re listening to truth about Muslims podcast. Thank you guys so much for being here with us. And we’ve got a special guest in the studio today. Mr. Brady is what we’re gonna call him.
We’re not gonna give his last name because he’s doing a lot of his work in Africa. He has spent 20 years of his life in Africa. He spent more time in Africa than not and, he’s gonna be returning here soon and has graciously agreed to sit down with us and kinda help explain what’s happening on the continent of Africa. This is funny because every time I think about Africa, I think about, like, us being ignorant. You’re just, like, Africa, like, it’s like a small city, but it’s like it’s like an entire continent.
So people are like, oh, you’re you’re from Africa, but, like, they’re very there’s actually countries there. The diversity is quite insane. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of the documentaries, like, where the guys drive their, dirt bikes from South Africa all over to Cairo. You just see that that continent has a huge amount of, you know, ecological diversity, geographical diversity, ethnic diversity, religious diversity. I mean, it is so complex that, Brady we are super excited to have you here to make it all make sense for us.
So, welcome welcome. Thank you very much. So, let’s let’s kinda kick it off. How exactly did you end up in Africa? I mean, you just don’t meet a whole lot of people that that spend their time in Northern Africa these days.
So how did that come to be? Actually, I grew up there. My dad is a doctor, missionary doctor. And so I when I was 4 years old, he moved our family over. And I grew up, in in Kenya.
And, during my years in Kenya, I actually met my wife over there. And, yeah. You know, good place to go shopping for a wife. No. Is it?
I’m just joking. The dowries are way too high. Now your your wife is actually American as well. She is. She is.
Her father and or her parents were working in Uganda in the country next door, and we both attended the same boarding school and started dating and, we’re married a few years later. So that that brings new meaning to missionary dating. That’s right. That’s that’s right. Yeah.
So, and I also hear you’re pretty good rugby player. Oh, I enjoy a good rugby game. Yeah. I’ve I’ve I’ve wanted to, try my my game of rugby, but I’m pretty sure I’d get hurt. Yeah.
You’re a triathlon person. You’re really small. You’re very, very small. I’ve seen rugby games, and they’re not small. Yeah.
I don’t know how I would do. Probably not well. So, help us understand a little bit of the complexity here. When we look at Africa, what we see in the news is chaos. I mean, in one word, we we think chaos.
We see Ebola. We see Boko Haram. We see Al Shabaab. We see kidnapped, girls. We see just, you know, killing, violence, chaos, darkness.
What is it what do you see in Africa? I appreciated your comments earlier. When you talk about Africa, you’re talking about an immense land. You’re talking about diversity beyond scale. And so I really wanna pull back from that and let’s not talk about Africa.
Let’s talk specifically about certain regions. Because we know when something happens, let me use the example of the United States. Something that happens here, you know, you don’t get all worried, about something that happened in California or in Seattle. Yeah. We don’t think about California.
No. No. So I I I let’s back off of, let’s say the United States of America. Let’s, you know, talk about our region and our people and the specific culture and the things that are going on in that region. It really helps.
But when you lump it all into one continent, how are you ever gonna It’s too much. Consolidate. Yeah. Yeah. You can’t.
So let’s back off of that and when you start looking at a region and how far these countries have gone in such a short amount of time, it’s mind boggling. Okay. Stop right there. What do you mean? Like, what have you seen that they’ve come so far?
Because, like, you know how Trevor had just said, like, it’s like you know, like, we we just see media bites. I want to hear what’s happening on the ground, like, what’s really going on. So you just said they’ve come a long way. So what does that mean? Like, explain that.
The majority of people in Kenya who have a bank account don’t have a brick and mortar bank account. It’s all on their phone. They have pioneered mobile banking. The United States is so far behind Kenya when it comes to mobile banking. Okay.
A little bit of mind blowing here. You’re suggesting that there are places in Africa that have superseded the technological connectivity that we have here in the United States. We are learning how Kenya is doing it. Nice. So I I mean, and we’re talking okay.
We’re talking a country that 60 years I mean, they just got their independence 60 years ago. I mean, the movement and the mass education that happened in these years, the way they have stood up and have created a flourishing democracy is amazing. Wow. It’s amazing. We have lessons to learn from Africa.
Alright. I’m I’m liking where this is going. What are some other lessons that we have to learn from Africa? I’m thinking particularly in the idea of missions in the church and theology. I’ve been doing a lot of reading with African theologians and finding great comfort in some of the things that are being said, some of the ways in which they view God.
How can we learn from the spiritual world views of Africans, as Americans and Westerners? That’s a really good question. You you don’t have to have an answer. It was just something I was wondering. I was gonna say, like, wow.
We just went really deep. I thought this wasn’t gonna be deep. Well, I I Yeah. I was just thinking spiritual worldview, you know. Brady, when you’re there, is there things that you see where you’re like, wow, I’m learning a lot from the ways in which the way Africans view the world that, Americans don’t, westerners don’t.
Right. Like, the church needs to pick up in the west. Well, I this has been harped on before, and so why not? I’ll jump on the bandwagon. But the issue of community, we talk about it.
But when it actually comes down to dollars and cents, when your friends in need in America, you’re not the one who’s going over and housing them and feeding them and, you know, doing life together. We have insurance. We have, you know, savings. We have figured it out so that we do not have to be dependent on one another. You know, none of my life is so intertwined with another that his success becomes mine.
We’ve it’s just who we are. We’ve created ourselves independent. I’ve never thought about insurance or savings or anything like that. I mean, independence doesn’t just mean, that we can, you know, do any everything on our own, but it means that we’re really separating ourselves from other people. That’s I’ve never thought about it that way.
That’s really cool. So thank you for jumping on that bandwagon bandwagon. Yeah. I’m I’m thinking just in the terms of retirement. I mean, we tend to do retirement so our kids don’t have to take care of us.
Yeah. Yeah. And that that that’s a very western kind of a new idea. When you think about it, the rest of the world is thinking, Why wouldn’t my kids want to take care of me? Is there something wrong between me and my kids in the future?
I remember telling my students one day that often when parents get old, they move into a home with other old people and, the children continue on with their lives and even the children often do not contribute to the care of their parents whether it be financially or socially, whatever it might be and just the jaws of the students just drop and it’s just it’s like you have shunned your relationship, your duty to your own parents. What sin could be greater than that? Wow. So here we are figuring life out and we’ve got it so that we can continue our lives and succeed financially in many ways. But they look at us and say you’ve lost it.
You’ve lost the true meaning of life, which is that dependence on one another that is that love and care and Cost that comes from community. So man, we have a lot to learn. Yeah from the African church, from the the idea of taking community to a whole new level and putting, putting meat on the words that we say. And I think it needs to come from within the church. Like we should be the ones that are really showing that first.
I I think so. It just makes sense. It’s kinda what we’ve been taught, but we don’t we don’t do that. That’s right. Yeah.
It needs to come from within the church first. Alright. I I have another question. I know this is kinda switching gears. Sorry for Trevor’s deep, deep, deep question.
I I I’m ignorant about most things when it comes to, you know, like, different regions in the world. I’ve traveled a lot, but there’s just so much. You know? And I don’t read all the news. But, like so this Sudanese conflict in northern southern Sudan, like, it just seems really confusing because, like, the the media is, like, throwing around around names of, you know, groups, and they’re fighting.
And it doesn’t really make clear why they’re fighting. Could you kind of explain all that stuff? Because I, you know, I don’t need to All that stuff. Just All of it. Just all of it.
Out right now. In, like, 2 minutes. Could you make it really pithy so you can still do the next question? Reader’s Digest version of what’s going on with all of the conflict. Okay.
Not all, but just your take on it. Okay? Thank you, Trevor. Mhmm. Wow.
Good friend. Wow. That’s that’s good. Little bit of history. So you’ve got a little strip along the Nile where we’re talking 2000 years ago.
You have Christianity spread down the Nile and into Ethiopia. So you have churches in Ethiopia that are 2 1000 years old. Alright. So they trace back their Christianity. They’re the oldest churches in the world.
Okay. So this is one of those moments where you’re like, what? We we don’t think of Christianity in its sort of cradle of having any association with Africa, but we have to remember, you know, Augustine Augustine North Africa. Right. Yep.
Egypt. Yeah. This is this is sort of one of the cradles Yeah. Of the spread of Christianity. Largest libraries, that where the real thought came where the Septuagint was translated.
I mean, you just, man, you just have so much history there. And then that spread down into Sudan, and started the Nubian Kingdom. Basically, the kings converted to Christ, from missionaries and held on to that. And we’re actually a very well developed kingdom called the Meroe Kingdom. Well, when the spread of Islam happened, it came by storm.
And it took over Sudan and it student Northern Sudan has been Islamic ever since. Wait. Wait. Ever since then? Ever since.
Yeah. So we’re talking the 900 around there. Wow. Okay. So the and the the type of Islam that it is, is related to Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia.
So they take a lot of their cues from Saudi Arabia. Look up to them, and are very, very conservative. So if you’re wondering right now, like, Wahhabism, like, what is that? That would be the ultra conservative strictest interpretations of law strictest, way of dress strictest way of dealing with, you know, stoning for adultery, removal of a hand for stealing. Don’t think of Sharia law as being this one sort of way of looking at life.
There are different interpretations and that Wahhabism is by far the most, strict and often violent. Mhmm. So so for example, when Saudi Arabia actually expelled Osama bin Laden, in 95, where did he go? Sudan. Sudan.
Yes, he did. I’ve, actually driven through his farms where he had started farming, sorghum there. But that just shows you how conservative it is and then how welcoming it is to very conservative Muslims. So right now it the label, we don’t use Wahabiism or Wahhabism, but Salafist is the name that they give themselves. A very conservative.
I would walk into a store in Khartoum and into a solophist store and they would greet me but they wouldn’t shake my hand. They would not look at my wife or ever shake her hand. They’re very very conservative. So when you’re thinking of Salafist, you’re thinking of, current ISIS, Al Qaeda, all of the people that we talked about in the history of Islamic fundamentalism all with that stream of thought with the Salafism. So, the most radical sects that we see today that are very theologically minded, they are coming from that same stream.
So just queuing people in as we go. Go ahead. That’s good. And and the the goal really of a of a solophist is that the kingdom of God is here. That it is the duty and the responsibility of Muslims to spread Islam.
And they’re given many different ways to do that. And in Sudan, the goal the southern part of Sudan was largely ignored, undeveloped. It, the people themselves are black. They’re non religious well, they’re not non religious. They’re pantheist.
They’re animist. They believe in the spirits, in the rocks and trees. And so Islam tried to spread south and it did that economically. It did that by sending imams down and planting mosques, but then it did it militarily. Quick question before we hit that.
You said that, the southern Sudanese were black. What does that mean for the Northern Sudanese? Think, think Arab. Think, brown. Think Egyptian.
So they they’re not the same? No. No. No. No.
Okay. It’s very different. I think this is one of those times where we are we just remember that the idea of drawing nation states and geographical boundaries oftentimes didn’t take any consideration of tribal and ethnic identities. And so just because you have a country doesn’t necessarily mean that the entire country will be the same group of people. So you’re saying in the north, we primarily have Arabs and in the south, primarily black Africans.
That’s correct. Alright. So the the strategy is to go promote, Islam through planning mosque, giving some, you know, financial incentive taking care of people, providing food, education, all of those things and it didn’t take so much? Right. So often a soliphist will often support a Koranic school and that’s, you know, you go and you memorize the Quran over several years.
Well, the southerners were not interested in this. Southerners live in a very fertile land. Some people say that if you were to plant, say wheat in South Sudan, you could feed the entire continent of Africa. It’s that fertile. I I never thought of it that way.
Like, I was thought, you know, it’s like desert or something. You know, like I don’t know. I just, you know, me, American minded, but just No. Okay. Keep going.
So that’s Northern Sudan. So Northern Sudan is very dry. It is fertile along the Nile, but then you have large areas where they don’t have fertile land. And so the South beckoned them and then Chevron found oil. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors.
And this week’s sponsors are Zweimer Center. Zweimer Center. Zweimer Center. The Weimer Center. Zweimer Center.
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Woah. Everything changes. Yes. It does. So that gold Texas tea.
That’s in Texas, man. Well, Sudanese tea. We actually call oil the black snake because there’s one I haven’t heard before. It is okay. There’s so much benefit that comes from oil, but there’s such a high cost to it that the southerners have started calling it a black snake Because of the pain that it has caused them.
Yeah. So give it go into detail there. What is what do you mean? So North Sudan decides we want that oil. We want that land.
So what they’ve done now is what they do is they outfit Antonovs which are Russian airplanes and they have a large bay door in the back. So mid flight, they’ll open that door and they fill 55 gallon drums full of explosives and push them out on markets. So that what they’re doing is they’re chasing away the people from that land. Now it sounds like you’re saying, these northern Muslims, Arab Muslims, brown Muslims are flying, strangely enough, Russian aircraft and bombing southern black Muslims. So you have Muslims killing Muslims.
This isn’t necessarily theological as much as it is about skin color. Is that a fair assessment? In some areas, for the example Darfur, you have Arab Muslims killing black Muslims. Now in South Sudan, you would just have Muslims killing non Muslims So it depends on the region that you go and the I mean economics religion, tribe is really a driver in all of this and it’s hard to overstate the identity that comes from tribe. Yeah.
You had mentioned before we started this interview, we were I was asking you about, Northern Sudan and Southern Sudan. Like, it’s the same country. So if the Northern Sudan Sudanese are, you know, the actual government, why the the Southern Sudan would be their land. So why wouldn’t they just go over and and take what they want? Because it’s their country.
And then you had mentioned it was different tribes and how that was totally totally different. So kinda can can you kind of explain that? Because I think as Americans, we don’t get that except for loosely because of our states, you know, in in the US. But could you kind of explain that? Texas might get it.
Texas might get it. Texas definitely. I think they do get that. Yeah. They’re definitely a tribe.
And isn’t that interesting that Texas has its own identity and I it’s kind of it’s socially drilled into them from when they’re a kid. You are from Texas. Don’t mess with Texas. That’s right. And it’s, you know, it’s it’s actually part of their culture, their upbringing, and that’s exactly how it is in South Sudan.
So that you we meet people along the road, and I know exactly which tribe they’re from because they have scars on their face. Each tribe has unique scars. So, for example, the Dinka tribe has 6 lateral scars across their forehead. Woah. When they’re 9, 10, 11 years old, they are sat down and they’re not allowed to cry while this happens.
But a razor blade or a piece of grass is used and they slice 6 lines from ear all the way across your forehead to the other ear. Do 6 lines. Child doesn’t make a sound and then ash is rubbed in there so that the wound doesn’t heal. It heals into a bump. So I can, from a good distance, see these 6 lines across this man’s head, and I know exactly what he is a dinka.
So I can greet him according to his tribe. But when you’re 9 years old, you’re given this identity, and you’re told you are a dinka. You will marry a dinka. You will protect the dinka. You will, you know, be a Dinka forever.
You can’t hide those scars. It is on your forehead, and that’s your identity. Just the thought of the process of creating that identity in a visual way that is so, in some ways, seemingly traumatic, you know? And then to think of it in terms of that identity, it sounds like you’re saying, supersedes all other identities. Nationalistic identity, religious identity, political identity, you you name it.
Right. The the ethnic or tribal identity is the the the top. That’s that is yeah. It’s the foundation of your identity, and you wear it wherever you go. So it influences all of your decisions, who you’re gonna stay with.
You know, the idea of community that we talked about earlier, so deep. So you can be a Dinka man and literally walk across the country. And every town you go in, you simply walk up to a man with the same scars on his head. He will house you. He will feed you.
He will take care of you until you need to go. Okay. So this brings to light that documentary if we’ll we’ll put it in the show notes, the, children of Darfur that that come to, the The Lost Boys of Sudan is what it’s called. National Geographic did it. And they come, and when they ask them about what it’s like in America, he says, Americans are not friendly.
You you cannot go up to somebody’s house even though you’re all Americans. Mhmm. And he said, but in Sudan, if you are lost, you can ask somebody, can you show me the way? Do you need someone to walk with you? And he said, but in America, call the police and say, who is this man?
Why are they at my house? And, eventually, they’re told by the community that shopkeepers are intimidated by them traveling in groups, and so they’re not allowed to walk together anymore. And, of course, we’re thinking they have such freedom now here in America, but in some ways, they feel like they’re completely trapped. They don’t have a sense of identity anymore. They can’t even walk with their brothers.
We don’t even think about that. Right. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you want to 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. So so you’re saying that these Sudanese, in the South, they’re they’re not gonna be watching TV wondering what’s happening or they will, but, not to the degree of they’re wondering what’s happening with the nationalistic government. They’re they’re really identified with that tribe. So when the national national government comes down and says, you know, we’re we’re trying to push you guys off the land so that we can take this land, they’re just like, no way. Like, that’s just no.
I don’t have any allegiance to you really. You know, that like, that’s not gonna happen. Is that what you’re saying? Absolutely. Yeah.
If you try and take Adinkas land from him. Oh, man. You’re ready for a fight. Now these are men who they’re like Davids. Like they protect their cows from lying.
You know they these are serious warriors. Lions. Lions. You know, so this is this is stuff that you don’t fool around with. These are men.
Warriors. So I mean the North tried and tried. They they even labeled it a jihad. So they recruited people. After you graduated high school, you then need to go and serve with the military although it’s not the formal military.
You join the jihad and you go and fight against the Southerners to move them off their land. This is by law. Yes. You can’t get into university unless you showed that you had fought. Oh, my gosh.
So you have people in North Sudan, they’re like, I don’t wanna fight. They, you know, they don’t have any vendetta against these people in the south, but they can’t get into university unless they do. And so you’re saying that this is economically driven. They want they want the oil. Yeah.
They want the fertile land, but they’re labeling it religious. Absolutely. I think it’s crazy just to think it’s not just economics. It’s it’s ecologically driven. They want they want grazing land.
Mhmm. We don’t even think in those terms anymore, but we’re I think if you were in even the United States years back, that might make a little more sense where grazing was an issue. But in in the Sudan, that is the major issue that there’s no grazing land up north. It’s in the desert. They gotta go south, and they’re grazing on land that’s not theirs, and it causes a lot of, conflict.
That’s right. So how do the for thinking of Darfur, for instance, you said it was Muslim killing Muslim. How do the black Muslims respond when they see their northern supposed brothers bombing them? And this is this is where you see God opening up and working in ways that we could never anticipate or plan for or create ourselves. But Darfur, 10, 15 years ago, was one of the least reached places on the earth, just a 100% Muslim.
And now because of this, the the poor people and different tribes are fleeing to the south, those that are black and being persecuted. And what we’re finding is they are extremely open to the gospel. They’ve just lost everything physically, but then also spiritually. Their own brothers have just tried to kill them. And so they’re they’re spiritually hungry, and when we show them the gospel, they stand up and they say, this is truth.
Wow. This is life. And so we’re seeing seeing for the first time in history a for church. This is exciting. What what happens with that tribal identity, though, Brady?
That’s what comes to my mind immediately is does the gospel supersede does the Christian identity, the identity of the global Church, supersede that ethnic identity? I mean, even coming from an American perspective, I think that we have not quite figured that out yet. As long as people have been Christian and multiple generations of Christians, people sometimes don’t see themselves as Christian first, American second. And that’s just for a nationalistic identity, which I don’t think in this sense is as strong as maybe this tribal ethnic identity. Do you see the gospel penetrating, changing that identity where they really could see tribes loving each other that historically have not?
Yeah. I, you know, I’ve struggled with this thinking, you know, how how would Americans relate to this? But I I we do have something. That’s denominationalism. What have you done, Brady?
Don’t go there. No. Don’t go there, please. I know. But that hey.
These are brothers and sisters in Christ, but they automatically judge one another. Right. Will either relate or socialize or not socialize with one another based on their denomination. Right. And when it comes down to actually working together, oh, don’t worry.
Gonna happen. I know. Isn’t that crazy? Or it happens, but just really limitedly. You know, like, they’re just not really willing to, you know, give themselves over to one another, you know, in community.
Yeah. And so then we look, oh, those Africans, that’s just terrible what they’re doing. It’s called just being deceived, I think. Well, it’s it’s we’re a little bit blind to that until you get to come here and point it out to us. But, especially with that word denominationalism.
Thank you. Well, I I I think that’s the closest I can relate to it. No. That’s spot on. Keep going.
So the church, yes, the church in Africa struggles with this because they do they have a tribal identity that is literally scarred across their head. So when it comes to the church, they worship in a different language. They worship to a different style of music. Alright, so that that is a barrier. It is there.
I’m not gonna lie. It’s a reality in the churches that we work with. Okay. Wait. So you’re saying, like, for instance, you you mentioned the Dinka people.
Right? So they would have their own church and they would worship in a certain way that another people group wouldn’t? Yeah, fascinatingly enough we work with, 2 tribes and you know different missionaries actually both with the same organization, but different missionaries came to those people. So the one tribe that worked among the Uduk completely banned any sort of instruments including the drum. And they did this because they saw drums being used to call up the spirits.
And so they made a hard and fast line. There will be no drum beating in the church just so that they could separate themselves from the tribes. Well, other missionaries went to another tribe called the Maban. And they brought extra drums. Basically, yeah.
So they came in the different approach of let’s redeem the drum beating and the Mabon are unbelievable drum beaters. And so now they’re both actually the same denomination called the Sudan Interior Church. But one beats drums and one doesn’t because of the history of the missionaries that came. Wow. So it’s exciting because one of my students actually from the Uduk tribe wrote his thesis, his bachelor’s thesis on should Uduk beat drums now?
Because he’s thinking over this issue. He’s reading scripture. Right. Scripture says you can use instruments. Right.
Make a joyful noise. Exactly. So he’s coming at it. Okay. I see the point that the missionaries brought but this is our faith and we’re we need to rethink this issue.
I think that puts a lot of pressure, I think, sometimes on the the missionary. Have you ever felt like, man, I I wanna be certain that I’m not exporting my Christianity to Africa. I mean, granted, you’ve spent more of your life in Africa than America so that you’ve got a little bit of a leg up there, I think. But for for some listeners that are thinking I’ve wanted to missionary in Africa. I’m sure right now they’re going, I’d be afraid I’d export my own, you know, way of doing Christianity.
It’s, Trevor, it is a miracle that Christianity has taken on such, that that the let me speak for the Kenyan and Sudanese church has taken on such an identity of their own with Christianity for how much missionaries brought culture with their Christianity. I I’m just so impressed that Kenyans have been able to shed the culture more and more and grab on to the heart of the gospel, which is exciting. That’s fantastic. So as far as identity goes with the with the 6, you know, scars, in some of these tribes, they have all these different types of markings. When they come together, do you find that there is still this, acceptance that, that would be foreign to the US, like with Baptist getting together with Episcopalians and vice versa and Methodists?
And would you find that that that they’re more accepting than than even we are as denominations? That’s a good question, and I would say as long as things are going well They’ll kind of keep operating in their own domains. Does that make sense? So here if, you know, everything is going well in the church, the church just kinda does its own thing. It doesn’t need anybody else.
So it’s gonna operate. It’s gonna have its own youth group, and it’s gonna have its own outreach, and it’s not gonna work with other denominations because things are going well. But when things get rough, that’s when you start stripping away. You start stripping away denomination. You start stripping away tribe.
And it goes back to those people who have been touched by the gospel. The scars of Christ overcome the scars on your forehead. Just thinking about those terms, that idea of being able to present the gospel looking at the scars of Christ as being your identity marker, I mean, when you said that, I literally felt a little bit of chills because that doesn’t mean a lot to me. I’ve never thought of scars as an identity marker. But to someone in Sudan, they could see the scars of Christ as being this is your new identity in Christ.
That would be powerful. It is. It is. And it’s powerful. We had 2 old guys.
They’re the oldest guys in our class sitting in the front seat. I’m sorry, the front desk of the class. Gabriel and Zachariah. And Gabriel’s from the New Era tribe and Zachariah is from the Dinka tribe. So these are actually the 2 largest tribes in Sudan, and they are they’re basically brothers, but they’re enemies of one another.
They steal cattle from each other. They kill each other’s people. What? In in some of the Nuwer tribe areas, in order to kind of become a man, you go steal cattle and kill a Dinka man. No.
What? So that’s part of Wait now. Yeah. You’re not talking about centuries ago. You’re talking about now.
Well, I’m sure it happened centuries ago too. This is Oh my gosh. Wait there in the and what are they sitting in class for? So okay. So I I teach at a Bible college, and these are are 2 pastors sitting next to each other.
See, some I I also teach at a Bible college, but I don’t think I’ve ever had any students sitting next to each other that I think would probably have come from this sort of, history. This tension. This is a serious tension. Okay. I’m dying to hear.
Keep going. Tell us okay. You’re in a Bible college. You’re teaching. There’s 2 students in the front.
They traditionally, like 2 gray beards. These are older guys. Right. And they, you know, have killed okay. Okay.
Keep going. Keep going. So it okay. December 15, 2013, the vice president and the president of South Sudan, president Adinkha, vice president is a new heir. Same tribes as these students that are sitting in this front row.
Okay. There is a massive disagreement that turns violent, and the Dinka soldiers in Juba go and begin to slaughter men who are Nuer. Nuer find about this. They’ll find out in their homeland, round up any Dinkas there, and begin to slaughter them. No.
This so since This is last year. 2013. Well, it’s 2015, but yeah. So over the last 14 months, we’ve seen well over 10,000 people killed simply because of their identity. Oh, my goodness.
So when this fighting broke out, Gabriel is in town. Gabriel lives in Dinka Land. The place where the college is is Dinka Land. Gabriel’s a new air. This is not good.
Okay. The police police come to his home, grab him, and take him to the police station. Wait. The Dinka police. The Dinka police.
Which at this point police is relative to I’m Dinka. The tribe. Right. Okay. So this is where people disappear.
Yeah. Oh, gosh. So you wanna talk about police corruption all of a sudden, throw some tribal identity in the mix, and it gets real shady real quick. Okay. So give me a So Gabriel goes Oh, Gabriel.
Yep. Gabriel goes to prison, and his classmates find out about it. They come to their Dinka brothers who are the policemen Mhmm. And say, we know this man. Mhmm.
This is a man of God. His identity in Christ supersedes his identity as a tribe. So we are willing to stand for this man. Please let him go. Wow.
And based on their testimony, Gabriel was released, and they helped to get him out of Dinka Land in a sense to escort him out so that he would not be put in this situation again. Oh my gosh. So the gospel does. It gives you an identity that supersedes Christ. Okay.
A quick quick question about Gabriel. What what kind of marks, would he have? That would people just be able to tell on the street that he wasn’t Dinka? Yeah. Yeah.
Actually, you know, I mentioned that Dinka and the Nuer are brothers. What do you mean? Historically. So they are very similar in their tribes. So actually, a lot of the new air have 6 scars too.
But they also, depending on your region, what Gabriel’s face is covered in is they look like dots. And what has happened there is they take a thorn, and they put it into the skin and lift it up, slice it a little bit, and then put ash in there. So he’s got raised dots all over his cheeks and his chin, all over as long as well as the 6 lines across his forehead. So they know? Yes.
Yeah. Wow. That’s, I mean, I think that’s Wow. That’s, I mean, I think that’s a demonstration of the earlier question is, do you have hope or see that that identity can be, yeah, that Christ identity can supersede? But But I think it’s also a clear demonstration of a love for an enemy because that enemy, it doesn’t have to be your enemy because they specifically did something to you.
I think that’s the way we think of enemy because we can be very individualistic. But enemies can be just entire tribes or entire families, feuds, and to show that amount of love for the enemy. What did that what kind of effect did that have on the rest of the students in the Bible school? I I haven’t been able to be in contact with a lot of them. Since the war, we’ve been out of the country and haven’t actually had contact with a lot of the students.
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So that was, our interview with Brady. We decided to make this into 2 parts because the stories and he’s about to just unleash a storm, a store a visceral storm of stories. I don’t think we had any idea what we were getting into at the beginning, and we just seeing all the stuff about identity and what God is doing in Sudan has been so good that we said, alright, we have to stop here and make this a 2 parter. And so, we ended with, he hasn’t been, back, and so they had to leave the country. And so, we’re gonna pick up there with what ministry they were doing and what caused them to leave and what they’re expecting to see when they come back.
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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Interview with A Christian Navy Seal on “American Sniper”:
Here’s what actually happened. Howard and I were just, like, hey, we should talk about, American Sniper one day. And then we just actually started talking about it and it’s gonna become the intro to a podcast. Right. It it is.
You’re actually part of a very authentic moment right now. Yeah. Yeah. We’re just talking about it, like, just talking about it. Dude, that was the most awkward ending of a movie I have ever been at.
Right. Dead silence. That’s how it was for us too. Nobody talked. And then they showed the pictures.
Oh my gosh of the procession. It was a 200 mile procession. 200 miles, dude. Alright. So it may have been that every showing was sold out.
And so, Joe and I didn’t go until 9:45, and it was 12:30 at night. And maybe I was a bit emotional because of the time. I don’t know. But, dude, I was holding back just plain straight weeping Yeah. When that live foot like, the real footage of the processional.
I thought that was the most moving part. But they they said it was 200 miles of procession from from Arlington, Texas where his funeral was. They they filled that stadium, and then all the way to where they buried him. 200 miles people are alongside the road. You saw this fire truck Yeah.
With the with the ladders. Ladders with the flags. Amazing. Yeah. No.
I remember when that happened. I didn’t I didn’t draw the connection, though. I had no idea that I was going to watch a movie about that guy. Wait. Oh, okay.
So you remember about that guy, but you didn’t know it was that guy in the studio? No. I remember when a Navy SEAL died, I remember watching the procession and just thinking this is very moving Yeah. To see that many people, that kind of response And and and not only feeling the emotion even then. Right.
And not only that, like, Jeff, you remember what he was talking about what typically happens when a Navy SEAL kinda goes out and writes a book or whatever? Right. He gets blackballed, but did you see his casket? You know how they they, they take the Trident pin, that gold pin that has the Navy Seal Trident Right. That you get after, a butts.
After actually, after you’re totally a part of a nail Navy Seal Team 6 or Navy Seal Team, and they they hammer it into the casket. Right. In most funerals, you’ll see, like, 6, 7, 8 of those trends. His his casket was covered covered in seal pins. Wow.
Like, all these seals had come down and hammered those their pins into that casket. It was crazy. I think that’s I think that’s how it ended, wasn’t it? Like, the boom, the final hit. Right.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I just remember it being dead side. Yeah.
Like, so how do you come back from that, from being a sniper? And then, you know, what our show is about is reaching Muslims. And this guy, you know, of course, Chris Kyle has spent his career, killing insurgents, people that are trying to attack his, his groups that he’s protecting, like the marines and the army. Right. And, he he’s seen evil things he describes in his book.
I read his book and watched the movie. And so he he describes these things, and he describes these certain men as evil, like evil. Mhmm. And so, like, how do you come back from that? Doing what we do and him doing what he does.
It’s kind of like this real extreme, you know, separation between the way we think and the way he thinks, even though he considers himself a God fearing man. Right. Loves Jesus, reads the Bible, you know, that kind of thing. So it was really interesting. I I don’t know.
This book really hit me because at the same time, like, I love America. Once again, Muslim terrorists A terrorist slaughtered innocent people extremists. These are the total terrorists of the country. They’re random terrorists and brutal endeavors. Newsflash 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 Zwemer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media.
Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Alright. So we’ve got a we’ve got a great interview today. We are going to be calling a personal friend. Great friend.
Yeah. Family member, actually. Not mine but Trevor’s. Yeah. Yeah.
You kinda like family. He is my family. I love that guy. So, we’re gonna call a Navy SEAL, a retired Navy SEAL, SEAL team instructor. Can’t give a whole lot of detail about what SEAL team he was on and when he served or any specifics about combat missions.
But just to say that we’re gonna have a Navy SEALs perspective on, what is it like to be a Navy SEAL, specifically, his faith. He’s got an interesting story that we’re gonna kinda unfold today, which is what does it mean to be a Navy Seal and also love Jesus? Right. Are they mutually exclusive? Actually, a lot of people would ask that question.
Yeah. And I think American Sniper kind of awoken those questions for people. Right. Because he was, apparently a man of faith and also was tasked with a very difficult job. So we’d like to get this guy’s opinion.
So let’s give him a call. Alright. This week’s sponsors. CIU. CIU.
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Yeah. CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. Oh, like the sound quality. It’s iPhone. I hope he answers.
Oh, maybe that’s voice mail. Hello? Jeff. Jeff. Hey.
What’s up, brother? Are you still powered? Nothing. I’m just excited about talking to you, man. You like to talk to old people too, That’s that’s right.
We don’t think you’re old and we’re getting up there too. I just turned 38. I thought it was pretty cool to talk to my grandma when she right before she passed away too. Just so I could figure out Wow. What we’re getting back in the day.
We’re we’re not looking at this as a last interview thing before you die kind of thing. Right. Last words of wisdom is, before you hit the grave. So It feels like it with this weather. What’s going on?
Well, you know, with the American Sniper, did you did you see the movie yet? Are you going to see the movie? I just I just saw the movie this last weekend. Oh, great. Good.
Because Yes. I did. Howard and I both saw it, this past weekend. And it just it really stirred a lot, I think, for both of us considering what we’ve been talking about, on the show for the last, gosh, it’s been like 16 weeks doing this. And, Howard, just share a little bit about some of the things that you you realize when you’re reading the book and then as you watch the movie and then we’ll we’ll get to kinda hearing Jeff’s view on it.
Right. So, you know, as I was reading the book, he he used language like, you know, savages and how evil they were. Right? And and I would have to agree, you know, that the the people that he was kinda dealing with, the insurgents, these guys that were just, you know, violent, you know, and some of the things that they were doing. But at the same time, I was thinking, like, how does he come home and, be a Christian and continue to love people, when his mindset has been, you know, like, so altered, you know, the way he looks at people.
And, and so I I don’t know. That’s kind of the question that kinda sticks in my head. How do you come back from that and and love people like Jesus tells us to love people? And when Howard asked me, I basically said, I have no clue, but I think I know a guy who would. And so that’s what we’re calling about.
So tell us a little bit yeah. Go for it. Back back when, during Vietnam and guys would get a flight back to the States, there was a lot of problems with that. A lot of guys had PTSD, nobody recognized it. And then in the earlier stages, you know, when I first was active duty, we’d go out and do missions in other countries and fly right back in the country and go home and be with the family and it was difficult.
But right now, as part of Special Forces, what guys do now after their deployments, usually a 9 month deployment, is they’ll take a month to decompress in a intermediate area, in between where the fights at and before they come home, they’ll have to spend 2 to 3 weeks decompressing from the war zone before they come back with a with, and they’re with family. And what they found out is because they can decompress and get stuff off their shoulders and think about things kinda kinda get everything back into perspective, they’ve got a lot less issues when they get home. So knowing that they didn’t have that, when you were active duty and working in special forces, what was the process like? First, just just going out there, I mean, did was it kind of a we’ve gotta get ourselves fired up? Did you have to have sort of, a story of who the enemy was?
I mean, what was that process like as a as a special forces off working in in the military? Well, a lot of times, you would know specifically well, when I was when I was first active duty, it wasn’t like it is today where you’re going out and you’re going out in a big convoy. I was with, you know, when it I was with SEAL Team 3 and with SEAL Team 6. And when we went in, basically, we had a specific mission. And if we got in a firefight, most of the time, things had gone really bad.
A success a successful mission meant we got in, did whatever we needed to do, and then got back without anybody knowing we were there. And that was the whole goal. The SEALs were a lot more secretive back then, and, I think things worked out a lot better than when there was less publicity about the missions and everything we do. So what was the feeling like knowing that you guys had engaged in something and nobody else knew about it? That’s gotta create some sort of, feelings for individuals that participating in such huge things and nobody knows.
Yeah. It it’s, you you wonder to yourself, well, will will people ever know? You know, it’s there’s there’s a lot of, humility in there. And, I’ve talked to, Trevor about this be before, but, we called the the shields on the West Coast, the Hollywood shields, the ones that just won the fame and fortune. And the ones that were on the East Coast, the the ones that 2 24, 6, and 10, they were actually the operational guys that would go to war every day and then come back.
But it was different back then because if you were looking at it to get the fame and fortune and to get recognition for what you were doing, it was looked at really bad and you were putting a certain category whereas if you were just wanted to be operational, be, you know, full of mud and out and fighting the good fight, then, you were looked at a lot different. Chris Kyle in his book, he kinda talks about, like, why he wrote the book. And I I kinda understood that, Seals got blackballed whenever they went, you know, sold a book or movies or whatever. But Chris Kyle was like, you know, somebody else is gonna tell this story and they’re not gonna honor the people, that I fought alongside with or saw that, you know, had lost their lives. And so I wanted to do that.
Do do seals just generally look at that as, like, he’s lying? He just wants to get famous? Or, you know, do they really take that in, into consideration? Well, personally, I I took that into consideration, and there have been some seal books, you know, that, these guys just come out with eye disease. You know?
I did this. I did that. I did that. Eye disease. I like that.
Eye disease. But, Chris really didn’t. Chris told a story, and, I I I kind of felt about it, the same way as, the guy who shot Bin Laden. He’s basically telling the story for a reason, not for himself, not for the fame and fortune, but just getting the story out there, so people know, basically what families go through and what, what seals go through. You know, Jeff, in in thinking about eye disease, I think Howard and I would both fully agree that we know a lot of different, you know, guys in our lives and you are like the least eye disease infected person I think I’ve ever met.
Yeah. Like, you have every reason to have eye disease and we have yet to find it. Right. I agree. I agree.
But but, you know, and and it’s it’s completely opposite of what you need to be like before you jump out of a plane at 35,000 feet in the middle of the night with oxygen on and a full rucksack. I mean, you’ve gotta think to yourself, okay. I’m bulletproof. Nothing’s gonna happen. You know?
You gotta be completely at the opposite side. And I realized a long time ago, gosh, you know, I I I don’t wanna be like that because I’d seen a lot of other people that were like that. And, I just recognized that it wasn’t wasn’t, what god wanted for me. Yeah. So I did notice that in the book.
Also, lone survivor, Marcus Marcus Littrell. Both of those books in the beginning, it’s just that you get this sense that they really had to be convinced that they’re bulletproof. And so you’re talking about how it’s, like, detrimental to your faith and what god has called you to do. So, like, what did you have to do to kinda, go down that journey to to to kinda change the way you thought about yourself? Well, at first, I wasn’t a very strong Christian when I was doing stuff.
So when, for example, I was parachuting, you know, you’re always going through in your mind, all the malfunctions that could happen, you know, as you’re pulling your parachute, as you’re under canopy, as you hit the ground, as you’re going in to do the mission, as you’re flying up in the plane, is something gonna happen to the plane? But I always, I wasn’t really a Christian. I was more of a deal maker with God. God, if you get me through this and I think I could say the Lord’s prayer in probably about 10 seconds. Nice.
You know? Our father who art, heaven, hell, be thy name, Tim. You know, I wanted to spend the rest of my time worrying about what was gonna happen. You know? So so most of my earlier time was spent making deals with with God.
Basically, Lord, if you get me out of this situation, I’ll do this. Lord, if you if you land me safely or if you, you know, don’t let that bullet hit me, I’ll, you know, basically, be a priest and devote my life to you for the rest of my life. Just get me out of this one thing. And then, after that one thing was gone, then, basically, I just forgot all about, you know, any deal that I made with the Lord and, until, until probably about 3 quarters of the way through my career. So what what was the moment, Jeff, that really changed everything?
Well, I was I was a SEAL instructor and, basically just, thinking thinking myself bulletproof, still making deals with God. And my, daughter, Trevor’s beautiful wife Katie, told me I ought to go to this, church Easter play. And so, I went to the church and sat in the back pew close to the back doors where I could get out in a hurry. And, basically, they were putting on a passion play. And when the soldiers came down to get Jesus out of the Garden of Gethsemane, they had live torches in their hand.
And when they walked by me in the aisle, I felt that heat hit the side of my face, and I felt as if the Lord was telling me, Jeff, that’s where you’re going because you don’t have a relationship with me. Wow. And that’s the moment everything in my life changed, because I realized I don’t want to go to Hell. I wanna I wanna have a relationship with Christ, and that’s when my life changed. And basically, that’s about the same time that I got out of the Navy, on a Friday, and on Monday, joined the Air Force and, started my 2 year pararescue career.
So was your coming to faith did that have anything to do with shifting from maybe more of an offensive Combative. Combative role to now you’re rescuing people? Is that at all related to your your faith journey? I think it did, but I think it was all part of God’s plan too. I when I when I look back on it, of course, it does because, you know, I was jumping out of the planes and and diving and, you know, shooting and looting and going, you know, going after bad guys, as a seal.
And then, once I got saved and crossed over in the airports, now I was going in, rescuing guys and rescuing down pilots and, you know, going ships that went down and planes that went down, and, the motto was, that others may live with a little angel. You know. So, it it was all God’s perfect timing. And was that a relief, like switching? Like like, thank goodness that I don’t have to take anyone’s life, or was it more like, oh, this is just, you know, part of my job in the military?
Well, it what switched was I wasn’t making deals with God anymore. Now I realized when I was for example, when I accidentally you know, after after I was a Christian and in the Air Force as a p j, I was, out in a Humvee out in the desert, and I drove over some land mines, and they didn’t go off. And I realized God is just taking care of, you know, just taking care of me. I realized, you know, it wasn’t where I had to make a deal with him anymore. I was, you know, I’m one of his children.
He’s taking care of me. He’s washing over me. Can can we ask about that story, driving over land mines? Like, what what exactly? Yeah.
Yeah. How did How did that happen? Blow by blow. What had happened What had happened, it was, in the earlier days of Iraq, and myself and my commander moved were moving real full, far forward in the desert. Basically, it was when the inspectors were in there looking for, bombs and stuff like that.
We were there to basically get those guys out if they needed to get out in a hurry. And we went to this camp that was way way out in the middle of nowhere, and I dropped off my commander at a tent with all these other commanders for a briefing. And then I went to go park the Humvee and got lost like I always do. Even in Walmart, I got no sense of direction. And, I I came up over the top of this ridge and these two guys are staring at me with their mouths wide open.
And I thought, oh, boy. I’m in trouble. I’m not supposed to be here. So I pulled over, and I parked the the the Humvee, and I went and I found where we were breathing, and I crashed out for the night. But the next morning, I woke up.
And, I came outside my tent. There’s a big commotion. And, a bunch of guys were pointing right next to my tent. There was some Humvee tracks. The ones that I’d made the night before and all around the Humvee tracks were landmine signs.
But I didn’t see them because they’re at night. But I’d driven right through that, and everybody was amazed that a vehicle had driven through there. And at that time, I just pictured an angel on each tire just saying, how many times we’re gonna have to do this for this guy. Are we gonna save his life? Constantly saving his life.
He’s making deals. Watch out for this guy’s 24 hour thing. Now now I know you can’t share any details about combat missions as a SEAL. Are you able to give any details about where you’ve done some work, maybe contract work, in Iraq? Anything that you’ve experienced not being a Navy SEAL that’s kind of changed your views on how war happens?
Well, yeah. One of the one of the big things that happened is when I was civil once I was civil service, I was in Fallujah, and I was putting in smart cameras around the base. And, this was something like I’d never done before. I was with, conventional forces. I wasn’t with special forces anymore.
I was putting them in for regular Army, regular Marine, guys out in Camp Fallujah. And, we started getting, bombed and mortared. And, I I I just couldn’t it was it it started, you know, like day 2 that we were there and then just started picking it up. But it was, especially on Sunday morning. It would be like about a dozen different mortars going off all around the camp, but they were indiscriminate.
And, it would land, you know, whether it landed at the little store that they had, whether it landed on the medical facility, whether it landed on the chapel one time. I mean, you never knew where these bombs were gonna hit. And I’ve never been in a situation before, where where it was just indiscriminate who got killed. And so these what the what the, I believe it was the Sunnis were doing, would they were driving past and they would jump out of their vehicle, you know, about a mile away, and they’d launch a rocket towards the base, get back in their vehicle, and keep driving. And so these, you know, we had construction battalion guys on the base that as soon as these rockets went off, they would go over, you know, clean up the bodies, clean up the blood, and everything like that just to try to keep morale up in this camp.
Oh my god. Point where this was a it was a daily daily thing. And, you know, whether you’re go you know, if there’s constant you know, if after, you know, the first one to go off, everybody tried to hit the bunkers. But, you never knew where that that that, you know, how close it was gonna go off that first one. Yeah.
There was a minute in the in the movie when I was watching and and the American Sniper’s communicating with his wife and trying to say everything’s fine. And I had I had just flashed back because I remember when you were in Fallujah and you would call home. And I was actually Katie and I were staying at the house at that time. We had just come off the mission field. And yeah.
And just remembering thinking you were basically, everything’s fine. Yeah. Everything’s great. And then I would get on the phone when you’re like, man, pray for me. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors.
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Yeah. And just remembering thinking you were basically, everything’s fine. Yeah. Everything’s great. And then I would get on the phone when you’re like, man, pray for me.
It is not fine. Not praying for me. It is not fine. Still thinking about it. Yeah.
I mean, to to Katie and Ellen, that was very yeah. I had my little satellite phone, and every time a motor would hit, it would give me enough time to just hit the off button, you know, when I was talking to, you know, talking talking to anybody else. But I knew I needed prayer, and I was telling everybody else everything was fine. But, once you got on the line, I tried to just, like, steal my guts and you pray as soon as I can, pretty now. That’s crazy.
So you mentioned that this was a very different experience. It’s what for our It was. It was. It it actually, didn’t make sense to me. So when I got back from that trip, my wife, Ellie, said, you know, that I had changed.
I was really cold. I was different. Wow. And she thought I was fooling around on the side because I was just different. I didn’t realize anything was different, but, I I I remember thinking to myself how indiscriminate everything was and how it just, you know, any second just could be boom and you really don’t even hear the boom, you’re just gone.
But, she said that, I became distant and, that that, you know, I I mean, I’m now still working out and I was still running and stuff like that, trying to deal with stress working out. But, it wasn’t until, a few years after that when I was finally diagnosed with PTSD. And it just made so much sense to me that, this is why I get anxious. This is why I feel like, oh my gosh, I’m gonna have a panic attack or I’m gonna have a heart attack. And now that I’ve learned what it is and what it’s from, and, I’m obviously on meds for it, but, it’s it’s just, whenever I I I get anxious or have a feeling like, you know, something’s gonna happen, someone’s coming around the corner, or this is about to happen.
I just, you know, think about the Lord, say Jesus to myself, and I just got a calm about me now that I realized what it is. And it’s just your mind can just go so many places and, you know, you don’t even know it’s doing it. So you so you developed you developed PTSD not in active duty but later. Exactly. Because on active duty, like I said, you know, if we had to get in a firefight, the mission was basically, you know, a failure.
Right. So you just didn’t you just didn’t find yourself in those positions and Exactly. Wow. That’s crazy. But I did I did find myself in the position where, you know, I’m always, you know, they trained you to scan for threats, you know.
So when you walk into a room, I I still find myself looking to see what everybody has in their hands because that’s the the way you’re trained when you’re going into rooms to to get people or to, you know, get hostages out. You’re always looking just like a cop does for a weapon in the hand. Mhmm. The first thing you’re looking for. So so when we’re driving, my wife says, now I know you know, after watching that movie, she goes, now I know why you’re, you know, still looking 2 miles down the road when you’re driving down there and you’re worried about that truck that’s way up there.
You know, it’s it’s just trying to perceive those danger areas still in the back of your mind. Mhmm. You need to be able to teach Howard some of that. Sometimes I think he’s unaware of the situations around him. I’m always unaware.
That’s why I’m so happy. I’m happy all the time. So, Jeff Jeff, nowadays, you’re working with the Marine Corps in Special Forces. What’s the story that kinda is in the military regarding Muslims? How does all this connect your faith in in Muslims?
Because I know, you know, with Katie and I and our and our love for Muslims, and we’ve talked a ton about what does it mean to be a follower of Christ in the mission of God. But how does all this work for you being, you know, Navy Seal, Special Forces, and now training Special Forces when there’s definitely a story in the military regarding the Muslim world? Well, you know, the the Muslims are just such a small threat to I I work for MARSOC now, the Marine Special Operations Command, and it’s just that’s just a small area that they’re thinking. I mean, they’re thinking China. They’re thinking North Korea.
They’re thinking Philippines. Their missions are all over the world. And what I’ve noticed about the Christians that I’m working with is those are the strongest operators. They have the inner strength and inner fortitude where they’re gonna do the very best that they can possibly do because they’re doing it for Christ. Whereas other guys are the guys that, well, I’m just gonna do this for a few years and then find something else.
They don’t really have the devotion to, do their best as you would for Christ. So, I can recognize a lot of the warriors that we have here at just because of, the way they act because they are Christians. From a soldier’s perspective, like, you know, I do I do hear, like, how you’re talking about their work ethic, their passion to do their very best for, Christ. Do do you feel like from a soldier’s perspective, they have a problem, with the kind of work that they do? Because, you know, a lot of it is, is war, and war is taking lives and and conquering, you know, you know, battles and and and and things like that.
Did they have a hard time, you know, putting that together with Christ? You know, it that’s that’s where the decompression comes in. There are there are some that have there’s there’s a lot of explosive ordinance guys that I work with that, have whether it be shell shock, you know, from an explosion. And they don’t like to say they have it because they’re not supposed to have it if they’re a EOD guy. But, you know Yeah.
That makes sense. A lot of a lot of those guys, they they do exhibit, pretty severe symptoms if they aren’t Christians. Now the ones that are Christians, complete opposite, you know, still devoted to duty. They’re able to put things in place in their mind and to put that, that action that they’ve gotta do into place and into perspective with, you know, why God has put them on this earth. You know, God wants them to do the best job that they can.
Even the soldiers. Doing that. Yeah. Exactly. Just just like being a cop.
Just like being a firefighter. God wants you to run into that fire and save people. He wants you to go get the bad guys. Go get the booger eaters. You know.
So, you’re gonna do the best you can, you know, with the training that you got. Right. And and so with, with, you know, of course, you’ve been on the ground over there, in the Middle East too. What what what happens? Like, I I I see soldiers, making friends with, interpreters.
Like, I hear a lot of the interpreter stories that are coming kinda coming back. And then on the same side, you know, they have, insurgents. You know, like, so how are soldiers, separating, the 2? Do they just use terms like you said, like bad guys and then there’s the good guys, but they’re still kind of the same religion, same, you know, people? Yeah.
I think it especially for for, like, when I was overseas, you’re in and you’re, you know, going down the street. Not everybody’s bad guys. You’ve got a mission to get one guy. So, what you think about the people around you are the same you think about, you know, when you’re in the States about people, you know, that are around you. You you you you feel compassion for the children and, and the women, you know, and and the men you you think of skeptically, like they said in the movie, you know, military age type men.
Right. You you you kind of, you you you try not to, but you are stereotyping because it could be a threat. Right. And, and for these guys to experience like he did, like Kyle did in the movie, a threat from a child or from a woman, that’s gotta be very, very difficult because that’s not that’s not very common and that’s not not what you train for. Yeah.
I think that was one of the most intense scenes when the the little boy picks up the the rocket launcher. Right. And He’s like, don’t pick it up. Don’t pick it up. Because I think from what you’re saying, Jeff, and I hadn’t really thought about this, but in some ways, soldiers get to see a more well rounded view of the Muslim world because they do interact with Muslims that aren’t the bad guys than maybe even some Americans who only get media.
Right. Exactly. Exactly. They do. And and what we would always try to do is interact with, with the local populace because you’re you’re trying to fit in and the the big military, you know, win the minds and hearts, you know, that’s, that’s something that, I think the while the military has put it out in policy is what they want to do.
But I think that’s all been a part of all, for example, training the other forces. We go on a lot of exercises, special operations guys do and work with other special operations in other countries. And to go to these guys’ house and to share meals, I mean, it’s just so special. You you you never you know, you’re never gonna experience this type of, hospitality or this type of treatment ever again. And it’s different in every country you go to.
And so you try to experience as much as you can. And if you’re not doing that, you’re just, sitting back at the camp or or sitting back in the tent and, you know, it’s you’re not getting as much as you could out of, out of the deployment or or or or what you should be doing out there. Yeah. I I just I just see, like, how much of a struggle this must be for the soldiers because on one hand, they do they do, experience the hospitality, like the friendships and, like, just, you know, the the beauty of of the people and and what they do. But at the same time, everyone’s a potential, dangerous person.
Right? A potential, enemy. And it must just it just must drive them crazy, to be able to open up their hearts completely, you know, and, and and just enjoy the experience. Obviously, it’s not sightseeing. They had they’re there for a job.
But at the same time, the government’s like, hey. You know, we wanna win their hearts and minds too. And I can see how the soldiers would struggle with that. Yeah. Yeah.
Exact and and, back when I was active duty too, I I spent a lot of time, over in Asia and with the families and the people over there and but we come we’d, you know, we’d be right back in the United States the next day, you know, after whether I was in, Malaysia or, you know, after drug runners or something like that. I’d be back in the States, and then interacting with regular people, somebody do something to tick me off and I just think to myself, you know, if this was the day before yesterday, you know, if I would’ve done, you know, it it’s it’s a lot different. Different. So so that decompressing really that that really is key for these guys coming back now. I just want listeners to know what it was like to date, you know, Katie as a 15 year old knowing that, Jeff was a Navy SEAL.
Pretty intense. Tense I’m feeling him right now. Jeff, tell us a little bit about the, the ministry that you’ve been involved with here lately and some of the the things that you got to participate in for soldiers that do return home. Yeah. I, our church, said that, hey, This guy has put together a program to help, people with PTSD.
And so, I got in contact, with this organization and, gosh, I wish I could give you the website. It’s the website is still coming up to speed, but, it’s it’s they’ve got different, soldiers from different fights, different, you know, airmen. They’ve got marines. They’ve got, SF soldiers. And we’re all talking about how the Lord has moved in our life, in regards to PTSD and how he has turned all that pain that we have experienced into something that we can deal with now and something that we could understand.
So so, they got a a institute. It’s called the PTGI Institute. Like I said, the website isn’t up and running yet, but we’ve got bibles out. They’ve they’ve probably made, they said, I think, 8,000 of these latest print Bibles with the different testimonies from the guys inside of them. They’re moving into the prison ministry with a lot of these bibles, but they’ve also got permissions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to give them to, all everybody in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard.
So all the chaplains in the military are receiving these. And it’s it’s just something that, guys can turn to because it still is a stigma in the military to say that you have PTSD. But what I’ve recognized is there’s so many other types of PTSD, not only from combat, but from traumatic experiences. And the there’s so many, experiences that you can have as a child that can give you PTSD in a certain form or fashion, whether you relate to what had happened to you by a smell or a sound or or something you see. But relating to that kind of puts you in a nervous state, it’s all a form of PTSD.
But this, this program basically, lets you talk about it with other Christians and lets you know that, hey, God recognizes it. And, he realizes everybody does have issues. And, if you work with God that, you can resolve these issues, and you can feel better about yourself, and you can deal with your PTSD. That’s cool. Jeff, I have a question.
If, for our listeners on the show, let’s say, you know, we had some soldiers on active duty. They came back and they are Christians, but they’re having a hard time, loving Muslims because of what they experienced, during, active duty. What kind of advice would you be would you give to those guys? Get into the word. Get in the word and and and see how god wants you to treat everybody else around you.
I mean, just if you if you actually start reading the Bible and getting into the word and finding out how God wants you to be one of his soldiers, not your own, then I think there’s there’s a lot of healing that could that can take place right right away getting yourself in the word. Are there any, like, support groups that you know of that, they could be a part of? I you know, I I know that this would probably be a pretty niche thing. But Well, there’s there’s, Biblica, and that’s, biblica.com, is the organization that helped put together this PTSD bible. Like I said, the joint chiefs of staff have approved it for distribution, so there should be Bibles with most chaplains office Wow.
Offices. And if they’re not with the chaplain’s office where they’re at, then they they, should be able to request them. But, biblical, biblicabiblica.com, does have a lot of resources for soldiers with PTSD. Yeah. I’ve I’ve checked out that that bible and and your stories in there and then even some of the other stories.
It’s a very I think it’s a powerful tool. It just kinda shares how some of the struggles that people have had coming back and with their families. And and I just gotta say, I’m I’m I’m super proud and impressed because I think the way that things could have gone for you and I know you would obviously point it all back to Jesus, but I’ve never sensed anything but love, brother. And I appreciate you. Awesome.
Awesome. And I and, you know, right back towards you guys, I’ve I’ve listened to your podcast, and I am just so impressed. And, I didn’t wanna mess it up with with the guy that didn’t know a whole lot. You said booger eaters. Less than I said.
Booger eaters. It’s impressive what you guys are doing, and I absolutely love it. Yeah. Very impressive. We we appreciate you bringing, a perspective that’s much needed, which is basically that, you know, we’ve gotta hear what it’s like for the soldiers that interact with Muslims and how difficult it must be for them to also reach out with the love of Christ.
And I think you’ve modeled it well, Jeff. I think so too. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
Thanks so much, man. Thanks for spending time with us today. Alright. God bless you guys, man. Love you.
Love you too. Bye. Bye. Good to see you. 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. Alright. So that was that was great.
Yeah. That was I I don’t know. I I just never get to spend a lot of time talking to Jeff about, like, the past and stuff. So this is really kinda cool, this venue, to do this. I’m telling you, since I’ve known him, since I was 15 years old, I’ve tried to get, like, a real live seal story.
Right. Noodling it. Yeah. Like, noodling it to the Yeah. Just like, yeah.
Come on. Give me and nothing. Right. Nothing. And that’s why I say no eye disease.
Oh, yeah. Because he just has such a humility about him and Yeah. He better talk about other things. You know? Yeah.
He does, man. He’s like that. Yeah. He just has a real sense of humility. So, like, you, me been impressed by.
And a couple of guys. Right? We come around, hang out, and we do this, like, hero worship thing with him. Right? Like, man, Jeff, you’re the man.
You’re the seal. You know, like, could you beat up these guys? You remember when we’re younger, we were like that? Trevor and I’ve known each other for that way. I still wanna hear story.
You and Trevor have known each other for about, like, 18 years, is it? Like, 17, 18 yeah. Like, we we’ve been best friends for a long time. And so, therefore, I’ve known Jeff for a really long time. And every time we get together, we do this here worship, and he does not fall for it.
No. He might tell, like, a little joke or a little quip, but, like, it’s never been, like, this full on, like, yes, worship me. Like, he it’s just never been that way. So I I don’t know. You get around other guys, like, I’m guilty of this myself, but, like, you you start, like, telling hardcore stories, which Yeah.
They’re not that hardcore. Yeah. Scarce stories. You get around Jeff and you’re just like, oh, yeah. Here comes a good one.
And then nothing. Right. Nothing. Right. And and and he’s just not interested.
And it’s not that he’s aloof. He just he just he’s very, very, you know, humble, gracious. He laughs it off and then he’ll change the subject and Yeah. That’s it. I I’ve always been keen fully aware that I could have my windpipe removed at any given moment.
That’s right. One false move to catch Katie. But, yeah, he’s just been yeah. Great great guy. Yeah.
So, so if you really, are interested in kind of the the the topic that we brought up today, and wanna read American Sniper or Lone Survivor, there’s a lot of things that, we’ve been talking about just over the the episodes, that apply, to, you know, what you’ll you’ll find in that in those books. Just to kinda warn you to our more sensitive listeners, there is a lot of cussing and, violence, in there. So be know to, be mindful of that. I thought you were talking about our podcast. I was like, what?
No. No. No. No. About those books.
If you’re listening to this recording when I wasn’t around or or reading those books. But I I I always find it really interesting to to delve into anything Muslim, to be honest with you now. Yeah. Because I’m like, oh, you know, this is this is kind of interesting because this is what I’ve been learning or we’ve been talking about on the show. Mhmm.
And, and and seeing those things come alive in people’s lives and their stories, like, you know, American Sniper or Lone Survivor or whatnot. Yeah. That’s pretty neat. You know, there’s a lot of media, controversy surrounding the movie right now. And one of the things that I am I am uber sensitive about is if I feel like they’re that Muslims are being overgeneralized.
In any sense, you know, I’ve been accused of like, you know, he’s always defending the Muslims. And it’s true. A lot of times I am because I feel like they are being marginalized or overgeneralized and I don’t like it. And but you know what? Actually, when I watch the movie, I’m not really sure where some of this media stuff is coming from where people are saying that it really made Muslims out to be bad because when when there was the whole sniper thing going on, I remember, leaning over to Joe in the movie as as he was talking to his wife, and and I said, you know, I really wish they would just show that this other sniper has a wife too just to kind of humanize that both people in war are people.
And they did. They did that. And I thought they actually did a really good job of not making it a Muslim thing but making it just about war. Right. Good guys, bad guys and of course, you know, depending on which side you’re on will depend on who the good guy and the bad guy is.
And yeah, so I didn’t get I didn’t get some of the things that the media hype was coming out with about it being anti Muslim. Right. And I did like what Jeff had said about, you know, there there’s good guys and there’s bad guys, and not everybody’s a bad guy. And when you’re walking down the street and you’re interacting with, you know, children and and, other men, you know, there there is potential obviously in a war zone, but, there’s a there’s separation. And it’s not just like, hey, let’s get those Muslims.
It didn’t feel like that at all. And you know what? One of this most surprising facts that I’ve heard about, warfare in the Middle East. I think this was in the first Gulf War. They said more people had come to faith in Saudi Arabia, than ever before in history because of the, American GIs.
Well, actually, the foreign GIs that were were over there. Wow. Baptizing people in the in the deserts and sharing the gospel with their friends, that they had made. So, you know, we’ll have to fact check that, but I read that before and I was just like, wow. It is really interesting when, you know, war happens.
There’s a lot more that happens than just killing. Sure. That’s right. There’s a story of humanity that kind of happens, crises and overcoming and Yeah. So, in redemption even, and so it is really interesting to think that that part of it.
Well, we know that God uses it. As we’ve said in the past, he uses the wrath of man to praise him, but we also see in church history that it was the Roman soldiers, with the spreading of the gospel with the Roman empire in the Right. First centuries of the church that was Right. Turned the diaspora. Yeah.
Yeah. So, good stuff. Well, that’s it for this week. We hope you continue to listen. And, I you know, the more we’re finding out about the way podcasts work, and we are new at this, we found out that reviews on iTunes really make a big difference as far as people listening.
We’re up to 14, I think. Right. And, most of those people I don’t know. I I think there’s, like, a couple people I know, on there, and I appreciate those people, but it’s really exciting when I get people that I don’t know that are writing reviews, and that they’re positive because I’m kinda surprised sometimes. But, please, if you haven’t and you’re listening to this, please write us a review because that that really helps a lot, and we really Muslims so much, but maybe they’re you know, somebody that’s maybe they’re not interested in about, Muslims so much, but maybe they could benefit from just hearing Jeff’s story about PTSD and serving in the military.
You can just pass on one episode. Maybe the rest of the episodes aren’t they’re not ready for those yet, but maybe they just came back. Maybe they’re because I know that we’re on a break between, Nabil Jabbour, we because I know that we’re on a break between, Nabil Jabbour, which will start again next week. But if you did like this, you know, then send us send us in your comments. Comments at truth about muslims dot com.
And, we’ll we’ll try to do more because we apparently have a lot of people that we know that are interesting. We could just ask them to come and be on the show. Right on. Yep. So, anyway, thank you for listening.
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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Practical Muslim Evangelism from the Life of Henry Martyn:
Once again, Muslim terrorists A terrorist Islamic extremist. These are the terrorists of the country. Random justice and brutal endeavors. Newsflash America. These is not irrelevant.
It is a warning. Welcome to the truth about Muslims podcast, the official podcast Swimmer Center For Muslim Studies, where we help to educate you beyond the media. Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. You are listening to truth about Muslims podcast. Truthaboutmuslims.com.
And what we try to do every week, and and if you’re a regular listener, what you’ll notice, what we try to do is that we wanna help Christians, to be able to see Muslims outside of what the media, tells us about them and to actually see them as people as Christ would. Yeah. I mean, in the past few weeks, even over Christmas, there’s been a lot in the news about Muslims, and, we’re gonna get into some of that today. In particularly, I was thinking about the, the stuff going on in Australia. Yeah.
The I think that’s, like, the perfect example. And what’s what’s, this is what hurts me a little bit is that this wasn’t done by Christians per se, this thing that we’re about to talk to you about. It’s just normal people. We don’t know. They might be Christians.
Yeah. I’m I’m hoping they are. I’m hoping they are. But there there’s been this huge huge, uprising, not uprising, but does this movement A social media movement. Right.
Basically, a couple weeks, last week, Howard was really sick. And, he sent me he sent me a text and said, hey, have you have you seen I’ll ride with you, The hashtag and I thought no. I have no idea what you’re talking about. He said you gotta watch it. He said maybe it’s that I’m a little bit sick, but it almost made me cry.
So I mean I was I was I was really emotional. I don’t I don’t know. Listeners, please, if you, if you feel this way, then, you know, you you get what I’m saying. But, like, when I’m sick, I just kinda get emotional. I I I actually cried in the Apple ad.
Apple put out this, you know, these little blurpees. There’s so good, this Apple ad. Christmas ads. And I I seriously, I was I was crying. And I showed my wife, and my wife is an emotional person too.
My wife, she just looks at me like Oh, that’s a good ad. What’s the matter with you? Well, Howard Howard sends me this, this text saying you gotta check out, I’ll ride with you. And I had no idea what it was, but I you know, I was humored because he said it almost made him cry, which means it probably made him cry. Right.
It did. So I I went and I checked it out and seriously, I got teary eyed myself. Right. And I wasn’t sick And I’m not a very emotional person. It Yeah.
Yeah. So there’s this article. It was, Australians just showed the world exactly how to respond to terrorism with hashtag I’ll ride with you. And if you’re not familiar with hashtags, I don’t I don’t know, all of our relationships might not know, go to Google. Right?
And you can basically you you type in the the the pound symbol, and you can type in, you know, without spaces, just any kind of topic. And people put it on Facebook, people put it on Twitter, and, you know, you can click on those, and it’ll take you to other feeds that show all those people that have used that hashtag. So it’s pretty cool. And in this hashtag, it was I’ll ride with you. So, Trevor, you take this story now.
Well, I mean, basically, we’re dealing with the the hostage crisis in downtown Sydney, Australia. And so this is classic, basically what’s happening all around the western world something happens, it’s perpetuated by it’s done by by Muslims and it’s done typically in the name of Islam And so there’s an automatic response usually from the people to think, well, there we go. There’s the true nature of Islam. All Muslims are blank. Islamophobia.
There you go. And so, basically, the Australians responded in a completely different way. I mean, it was it was seriously challenging, and I do hope that as Christians we would be humbled by this response, I think and maybe these people are Christian. Maybe they’re not. I don’t know, but go ahead, Howard.
What? Yeah. So there’s this woman, Rachel Jacobs. She’s tweeting, and she writes, in a 2 part tweet. And, and this is dot dot dot.
And and the and and the Muslim woman next to me on the train silently removes her hijab. And this is after they find out this hostage situation is happening. The, some of the attackers put the, is an Islamic flag in the cafe window. And then after that, it says, I ran after her at the train station. I said, put it back on.
She’s talking to this Muslim woman. Put it back on. I’ll walk with you. She started to cry and hugged me for about a minute, then walked off alone. And so after that, right after that, somebody writes another, another tweet and just says, you know, if there’s anybody else out there, you know, if you regularly take, you know, so and so bus, wear and wear religious attire and don’t feel safe alone, I’ll ride with you.
Just hit me up for a schedule. And then then that person writes, maybe start a hashtag. What’s, what’s in hashtag I’ll ride with you? And then literally, it was like a in 12 hours, a 150,000 tweets without hashtag I’ll ride with you pops up where people are just going crazy just saying, I’ll ride with you. If you’re wearing religious attire and you don’t feel safe, I’ll ride with you.
This is where I’m this is the bus I’m riding. This is the train I’m riding, subway I’m riding. I’ll ride with you, and it’s all over Australia. It was so cool. And for me, it was just it was encouraging because I think sometimes you feel like, I don’t know, you see so much hate and you see so much frustration.
And to see a 150,000 people all being willing to say, hey. If if you’re Muslim and you wear the hijab, I’ll ride with you. That that, for me, was a very encouraging moment and knowing that there are people out there that can still display the image of God. Believers are non believers in my mind that kind of Sacrificial love is the image of God being displayed in humanity. I was encouraged by it I don’t know that I got as weepy as Howard, but I did get a little weepy.
Well, I read some of the other tweets, and this one was from a Muslim woman. She says, I was gonna drive to work tomorrow, but seeing the outpouring of support changed my mind. Hashtag I’ll ride with you. Thank you. See you on the train.
I thought that was so cool. I thought that was so cool, because, I mean, the Australian people and I, you know, I know some Aussies and, oh, last week’s Peter Riddell, another Aussie, and it was, it it’s really kinda neat to see how they just think differently. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I I would hope for our, our American public that we would we would follow suit, and especially the church, especially the church.
Yeah. We should be the first saying I’ll ride with you. I will love you. I will be a friend. I will be, a fellow citizen that is about, you know, people.
So Right. Anyway, Howard, in one in one thought I just had, I did see this, about a I think it was about a year ago with an American soccer player. What do you mean? High school soccer team and the young Muslim girl came out to play soccer, and the the referee told her she couldn’t wear hijab. Oh, right.
Right. Right. Right. And, the FIFA had already ruled on this that you’re allowed to wear that as part of the uniform, but this referee wouldn’t let her play. And so the next time that ref was, reffing, the entire team showed up wearing the hijab in support of their Muslim friend.
I mean, that’s that’s pretty amazing love and care for a friend. And so they just kinda stood with her and wore the the job and Right. Yeah. Anyway And you know what my guess would be? My guess would be that those girls on that team, that are standing in solidarity with their Muslim friend would, actually never have a problem seeing Muslims as human beings.
No. Because they know one. Right. And that that’s what I hear actually with kids, like, you know, I’m a youth pastor and all the kids that I deal with. They don’t really have problems with Muslims because they know Muslims at school, and they’re friends with Muslims at school.
So it’s not like this monster that that media portrays. But I think a lot of Americans, we don’t we don’t know enough Muslims. And that’s what kinda leads us to the next point because we were gonna actually talk about, Henry Martin today. Yeah. Yeah.
Life of Henry Martin. So we’re gonna do some practical Muslim evangelism from the life of Henry Martin. And and on this show, you hear a lot of our our our guest speakers come in or, interviews, talking about, you know, just reaching out. And I love this I’ll ride with you. This woman, you know, just sits next to this woman on a train and and tells her, no.
No. No. Don’t take it off. Don’t take off your hijab. You know?
I’ll be with you. I’ll walk with you. You know? And it’s like just that human touch. And I think that’s a I think that’s a great segue to this practical evangelism because, you know, Trevor and I were talking about how hard it is to, you know, you get kinda get confused with all the information that’s kinda coming at you, maybe even on this show, and you’re trying to think about, you know, how am I gonna actually do this?
So Henry Martin, who is no longer alive, it’s, you know, a 100 200 years ago, but he has some great, great stuff. So, Trevor, take it away. Yeah. Well, we gotta start with David Brainerd because Henry Martin was one of those young guys that had read the diary of David Brainerd and was so inspired that he felt like he wanted his life to emulate David Brainerd. And it’s uncanny how much their lives sort of parallel.
They both died young. Both. I mean, what David Braynard, 29 and and Harry Martin, I think was 31. 31. That’s correct.
Yeah. Yep. So, Howard, you’ve read, Diary of David Brainerd. Yes. Give us a little bit on David Brainerd first.
David Brainerd was huge impactful in my life because, you know, I don’t know about you, but in this day and age with, you know, missionaries and stuff like that, people try to create some hype. You know, like, we’re trying to get support. We’re gonna do great things for God and all this kind of stuff. And David Braynard’s diary is nothing like that. It, you know, talks about his story, his, what had happened in his early childhood.
But, Prone to melancholy. Right. He had depression. He struggled with all these kind of things. But, you know so he was going, he gets saved when he’s around 21, meets the Lord for real, and then, he decides to go into Yale.
I think, actually, he was planning on going to Yale before that, but, you know, it’s for his seminary degree. Yeah. I don’t think most people realize that Yale was at one point a theological institution. Right. And they still have an MDiv program at Yale, and they do still do theology, but that was really the bread and butter of Yale back in the day.
Right. A lot of these colleges were like that or universities died. Leagues. Right. Anyway, so David Braynard goes there, but he gets expelled because this great awakening happens.
Like, spiritual things are going like, people are going crazy. Students are, like, are meeting the Lord and, like, all these miraculous things are happening. The problem was that the students were more on fire, more zealous zealous for Jesus than the faculty. Right. And the faculty wanted it to stop.
They’re like, this is ridiculous. Right? And so they they, they get, Jonathan Edwards. To come in. They’re like, let’s get Jonathan Edwards in here and he’ll calm him down.
Right. And then Jonathan Edwards proceeds to preach on, like, the exact opposite. He was basically saying that this was an awakening. This was a move of God. And, of course, the faculty weren’t happy.
No. They weren’t happy. And they actually come up with some rules Yeah. Saying, like, if anybody anybody suggest that the faculty or the trustees or, you know, deans, if anybody suggests any of these faculty and administrative people are somehow carnal. Yeah, hypocrites.
Hypocrites. Unconverted men. Unconverted. The first punishment will be, I think it was public repentance. Right?
You have to confess in the hall. Okay. Right. Confession in the hall. In front of everybody.
And then the second one is expulsion. And and David Braynard, and this is the other thing I noticed about missionaries is missionaries, I think, are a different breed of people. They’re they’re more akin, I think, in my heart to to, like, entrepreneurs where they just kinda they they go after it. You know, they just go after it. They lack the prefrontal cortex.
Right, there’s no, oh, warning, warning, you know. He just went for nothing. Words coming out of my mouth, oh no. And so, he says this ridiculous thing, and I wanna I wanna read it to you. Okay?
He says of one of his tutors, he says, has no more grace than a chair. Mhmm. And that he wondered why the rector did not drop down dead for fining students for their evangelical zeal. So I think he was probably just saying this with his buddies. Right?
Right. Just goofing off. He’s just like, man. That guy’s like, you know He has no no more grace in that tree right there. Right.
You know? But he gets turned in. Yeah. He gets turned in and he gets expelled. Full on expelled.
So the direction he was going. Yeah. The direction becoming a pastor, getting his MDiv, and all that good stuff. And he was, like, the top of his class. This was his junior year, his 3rd year.
Done. Like yeah. And and, And he got tuberculosis. Right. And he had tuberculosis.
He was spitting up blood. His 2nd year, he had to actually leave. Yeah. His 1st year, he got measles. So I don’t know what was going on.
So if there was a reason to be prone to melancholy, he had it. Right. And so he, you know, he gets this opportunity because, you know, he wanted to be a missionary to the Indians and he thought that had died. But then he was approached by this organization. And get this, it’s the sponsorship of the commissioners of the society in Scotland for propagating Christian knowledge.
The Scottish will take him on c o s s p c k. Yeah. That’s a good acronym there. Well, anyway, so they they, you know, they they pick him up, and he becomes a a missionary to the Indians. You know what, though?
He’s still I mean, in reality, he’s a pretty ineffective missionary so far as how we measure these things. Right? This is what I love about the difference between our economy and God’s economy because we’re looking at this and if we only were living as contemporaries of David Brainerd, we would have probably sneered and been like, man, not not too effective. Right. Because, I mean Handful of converts?
Yeah. There were converts. Handful. But they weren’t, like, in droves. He wasn’t leading entire tribes to the Lord kind of thing.
And he dies at such a young age of tuberculosis. But wait. There is Jonathan Edwards is the one who cares for him, his daughter, Jerusha Edwards. Alright. Nicholas Sparks has got nothing on this story.
This is, like, the ultimate Nicholas Sparks love story coming out summer 2015. Right. So and so, you know, after enduring all these hardships, David Braynard basically comes home because he’s dying of tuberculosis. And, his mentor is, like, Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Jonathan Edwards loves him.
He’s the actually he’s the guy that actually compiles his diary. Mhmm. But he’s but he’s in love. David Raynard’s in love with his daughter, Drusha. Drusha is in love with David Raynard.
So she nurses him, basically until he he passes away. And, Jonathan Edwards knows, he knows that his daughter will get tuberculosis if she does this. And she she does. She gets tuberculosis and she dies. I’m not I could be mistaken on this.
I don’t think that I am. This could be Christian urban legend. But I think she dies a year later on Valentine’s Day. Oh, really? I’m serious.
That’s depressing. No. That’s Nicholas Sparks novel. The the thing is, on an interesting side note is my, my middle daughter, my well, I have 2 daughters. My second daughter, her middle name is Drusha because that that that whole thing just that sacrificial love just really on both parts, on Jonathan Edwards’ parts and Drusha’s parts, just really just, it spoke to me in such a deep degree.
So I I named my, my second daughter Jerusha, middle. But you need to look that up, that February 14 thing, because I’m pretty sure it’s true. Anyway, let’s move on. It was not a podcast on David Brayner, but we have to talk about David Brayner to get to Henry Martin. Yes.
Because you kind of get the idea of what David Brayner went through. And Henry Martin, when he reads this, he’s overwhelmed, kind of like I was. And then go And every other missionary since then has been so inspired by David Brainerd story. And it kinda makes you realize that the people that we often prop up as the leaders of Christianity, we would not have propped up David Brainerd. Right.
Because he was down in the dumps. He was suffering and he was quiet. Oh, he Jonathan Edwards actually made this point. He said he wished he was more like David Braynard because David Braynard, when he looked at nature, he didn’t care. Where Jonathan Edwards would walk through the woods and be lost in God, you know, being in the nature, just being so moved by nature.
But David Braynard was so focused. He didn’t care about nature. He was depressed. He was just he even had a hard time loving the people that he was called to. It was really interesting.
It’s real vulnerable, real real life. And isn’t there a moment where he actually goes out to pray and he comes out of his prayer and he has melted the snow around him. Right. And, some of his prayers And he melted snow with prayer. Some of his prayers that were really gut wrenching is that he really was lonely.
Like, he wanted another Christian brother to come and they could talk about God and and mutually encourage each other. It was so so depressing. We He felt so alone. We would have definitely told David Braynard to get get in counseling and and just not to do ministry, but somehow God used that part of his life to be what ministers to so many other people. Right.
And I think that’s pretty encouraging because there’s a lot of folks out there that are like, man, I’m just not wired like some of these radical guys. And I’m thinking, well, thank God. Because we need the whole body of Christ. We need the David Brainerd. We need the melancholy, those who are suffering with real issues of depression and things and to to speak into the life of the body of Christ.
So, anyway, spoken to Henry Martin’s life, inspired Henry Martin. Henry Martin goes out as a missionary to the subcontinent of India. He’s traveling around northern India ends up in Persia translates the Bible Persian Arabic There’s another, Urdu, and he’s just this prolific bible translator incredibly effective in bible translation. Very young. Very still very young.
Very young. Also, there’s a love story there. You can go read that in his own, diary writings, but he has a love story too. There’s a a deep love he has for this woman back home, but she does not want to go to the mission field and they’re kind of parting of ways for the, Henry Martins pursuing, the the missionary life and it’s a pretty intense story. But from Henry Martin, we see these principles of evangelism and this came out of an article that was written, for Urbana several years ago.
I just kinda came across it. And as I looked at these principles of evangelism that come from the life of Henry Martin, I realized something. If I’m only given 20 minutes and somebody says give me the the the overview, what should we know about ministering to Muslims, I go to this. Wow. Wait, you’ve taught this in class too.
Yeah. No. This is what this is the last lecture I give and I teach a course on Muslim evangelism. The very last lecture is on these seven principles. Because I say, if you forget everything else, remember this because anybody can do this.
And, listeners, remember, I’m the guy that doesn’t know anything. I’m just kinda here on the ride and I’m hopefully somewhat entertaining. But, anyway, Trevor is saying these things that I’m I haven’t even heard them yet, so I’m pretty excited about it. So go away. I mean, go away.
Go get out of here. Go ahead, Trevor. Alright. I’ll start with, Henry Martin’s realization that his, he went he went with the original intention of because again, he is brilliant like David Brainerd top of his class brilliant in mathematics and everybody said he was selling himself short by going to the mission field that he could have become one of the brilliant minds. Instead, he joins the Anglican church and becomes an Anglican missionary.
Wow. Now, when he gets out to the field, he’s thinking that I’m gonna convince these Muslims through mathematics, through reasoning, through all of, you know, his brilliance. He’s gonna use apologetics, basically, math to witness to No. This is what he comes to realize. And Raymond Law had a similar approach.
He says, frigid reasoning with men of perverse minds seldom brings men to Christ. How powerless are the best directed arguments unless the Holy Ghost renders them effectual. Oh, I like that. We should not talk like that anymore. I know.
And we don’t even say Holy Ghost. I don’t know. Maybe you come from Pentecostal Church, but I like it. Holy Ghost. So he basically says that his reasoning was useless and that none of his arguments were working and so he takes a totally different approach and believe it or not, it’s a relational approach.
So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors and this week’s sponsors are. Zwammer Center. Zwammer Center. Wamers 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 Wehmer Center equips the church to reach Muslims. The Swimmer Center has been educating people about reaching Muslims before it was cool.
Okay. Go ahead. Alright. So principle number 1, share your testimony. Whoo.
Your story. Right? We’re all about that now anyway. Yeah. So hit mark.
Yeah. Got it. Share your testimony as to how you experience forgiveness of sins and peace with God through Jesus Christ. And those two components of your testimony, forgiveness of sin and peace with God, are key. And can I say, like, I know that some of you guys maybe grew up in the church and don’t feel like you have a, like, a dynamic testimony?
You weren’t, like, a gangster and shooting people and doing drugs and stuff. But, you know, like, I think to a Muslim, whenever they just hear, like you just said, Trevor, right, peace, they have peace with God, I think that’s mind blowing. And then forgiveness of sins. Right? Because, Trevor, you had mentioned earlier in some other podcast, like, you know, how Muslims can, you know, deal with their sin, right, with, with Allah.
And it’s, about doing the things that they’re supposed to do. Right. Right? But it’s not really about is it is there a cleansing of sins with with Muslims? No.
Not not in the sense that we see it. There is a whole heavy burden because they know that even, the prophet of God, Mohammed, they would say would have to they wouldn’t say he was a sinner, but they know. They read in the text that he had to ask for forgiveness. And so if he himself had these issues that he was dealing with and needed forgiveness of God, how much more do they? And so there’s a very little hope in that.
And so asking the Lord to forgive them of their sin is a daily thing, but I don’t know that they can ever truly know. Okay. No. Let me take that back. They can’t truly know if their sin has been forgiven.
They can say that we trust that God is merciful. That’s why They can’t know. So that’s why if we have total peace knowing that our sick sins are forgiven, that God has completely forgiven our sins, it’s radical to them. It’s radical to say that I can approach the throne of God with confidence. Okay.
That’s a radical Say that point again so that we can kinda review it. So what’s the point? Share your testimony as to how you’ve experienced forgiveness of sin and peace with God through Christ Jesus. Okay. Cool.
Yeah. Principle number 2. Alright. Remember, share your testimony. Principle number 2, appreciate the best in your Muslim friends and attribute these qualities of God these qualities to God working in their lives.
Alright? Appreciate the best in your Muslim friends and attribute these qualities to God working in their lives. He goes on to say the same goes for elements of Muslim culture that are genuinely approved of by God. Okay. So let’s go to the image of God.
We were all created in the image of God. Right? Mhmm. So when we see people acting out in our true natures of who God had created us to be, he says to cling to those things? Cling to those things and give God the glory.
So, like, if you see somebody loving somebody well, even if they’re not a believer, attribute that quality that that person has to God working in their life. It’s bigger. Right? I mean, when you look at a Muslim and they say, you know, I’d like you to meet my mother and, she lives with us and we care for her, I I immediately say, man, I thank God that you’ve been faithful to care for your mother, to honor your mother, to honor your father that way. That’s amazing.
And Wow. Praise be to God for your faithfulness to your parents. And, you know, I can’t help but think that that would be an encouragement to the missionary as well, to stop seeing their people as just completely lost, hopeless, you know, like, ugly or, broken. You know, just seeing them in completely negative, but rather that this is like you’re kinda looking for what God has already been doing. That’s right.
You’re looking for where is God working in their life because he is. Even if we don’t even if they’re not believers, we can assume that God is still working. Right. So and then there’s that second part that says the same goes for elements of Muslim culture that are genuinely approved of by God. Some of you guys might be thinking exactly what would that be.
Uh-huh. Right. What part that culture would be approved of by God? Well, something that comes to my mind is the hospitality. We talked about this with Shireen.
Right? Shireen, the the hospitality of Islamic culture is, astounding. Like, I I remember when I was, in, in Mumbai, and it was Eid, and I got invited in. I just started talking to a guy. Like, what’s going on?
Everyone’s wearing religious garb. It was a Muslim sector. And I’m like, what’s going on? And they’re like, oh, we’re celebrating Eid. And so they bring me into their house.
I’ve never met these people. I just came out of my hotel room. They brought me to the house, fed me food, helped me they asked me to help them slaughter a goat. Actually, 2 goats. And then, yeah, and then I’m eating and meeting their family.
We’re just talking for a couple hours and it was amazing. And you could literally just say, I’m so thankful to God for your hospitality. Right. Clearly, I can see this is Paul in Acts 17. Right?
Clearly, I can see that you’re a religious people. Oh, right. So he’s not talking to believers when he says that. But I No. I can I can talk to a Muslim and say, I thank God for your hospitality?
You have displayed a care for me that only comes from God, and I thank him for that. I mean, that’s that’s okay to do. You’re not you know, somebody might be thinking, oh, but you’re affirming, you know, Allah is the true God. In my mind, there is only one God. Okay?
So I’m okay with God knows who I’m talking about. Right. And which will lead to other conversations probably. Exactly. Because they might might just ask, what do you mean by God?
And there we go. Here’s the conversation. And and for me, when I explain God, I mean, ultimately, the the best representation I have of God is is Christ. Right? Fully God, fully man.
Alright. Number 3. What was number 2 again? That’s right. Appreciate the best in your Muslim friends, and the same goes for, aspects of Muslim culture that are genuinely approved of by God.
Number 3, keep your message centered in Christ. Speak about the grace of God and how this is transmitted through Christ. Keep it centered on Christ. Become an expert at bringing every conversation back to Jesus. Okay.
So can you give me an example? Let’s see. So maybe maybe they’re gonna ask you a question like, hey. So what are your thoughts about Mohammed? And I have this principle that says you do not have to make Mohammed look bad in order to make Jesus look good.
Right. You’ve mentioned that before, and that’s good. So take the conversation from that to go, you know, I know a couple things about Mohammed, but I’m sure I’m more interested in what you know about Mohammed. What I really know a lot about is Jesus. Could I tell you about him?
Oh. Bring it back to Jesus. Keep the message centered. Every time they try to sidetrack it, well, what do you think about Israel and Palestine? And say, you know, I think that Jesus weeps for the, the plight of the Palestinians and the plight of the Jews.
He he weeps for all of mankind. And then go into a story. If they say, well, what do you think about, you know, I I know that I’m not a bad person and say, you know, I got the story about Jesus where he talks about, his disciples. They were really mad because the disciples weren’t washing their hands before the they ate. And Jesus says, do you not know that it’s not what goes into man that defiles him but that what comes out of man defiling them?
And people are really good at washing the outside of cup and all the while the inside of the cup is dirty. Be really good at bringing every story back to Jesus and talking about something that he did. Right. You know? They could be like, man, it’s a nice day.
I’m like, you know what? There’s a story about Jesus and how he’s able to calm the sea and calm the weather. Right. They’re like, what? Tell me.
I’m serious. Right. Because they’ll be interested. Laughing at me like I’m being like, I’m joking, but I’m not joking. I’m being very serious and that Muslims are very interested in Jesus and keep the message centered on him.
Right. That’s cool. Yeah. Number 3, keep the message centered on Jesus. Number 4, Invite your Muslim friends to study the bible.
Dave Cashin. There you go. Invite your Muslim friends to study the bible. And don’t don’t say study. I know we have bible studies.
That’s just weird to to other people of another faiths. Like, you study the book. Oh, I What does that mean? Maybe it’s like coming to a, a church event if you say, let’s come, you know, have a bible study. No.
I I think it’s like studying an academic text. Oh, okay. Yeah. That too. You you read the scripture.
For them, it’s we recite the the Quran. For us, if we say study the bible, that’s weird. And they they feel like they’re not prepared. Like, it’s a is there gonna be a test? Oh, or is there gonna be a mom there or, someone religious that that has the credentials maybe?
Yeah, so just ask them. I’d like to share a story with you from scripture and then just memorize a couple. Know some stories from scripture or ask them to read it. Would you read the story? You know, it’s Christmas time and say, for instance, Christmas.
We talked a little bit last week about Muslims and Christmas, but then you might say to them, what does the Bible say anything about the birth of or does the Quran say anything about the birth of Jesus? And they’ll say, well, yes. And there’s a story about Zachariah, Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist. There’s a story of Jesus and his virgin birth for Mary. And so, there’s all these sort of similarities.
And then you could say, would you like to read the whole story and bring them to Luke chapter 2? Yeah. And we just read that to the kids. Yeah. For Christmas.
Yeah. Yeah. All through Advent, man, reading Yes. Over and over again. Advent.
God sent the angel Gabriel to the Mary Yeah. Which master. Emmanuel means God with us. Oh, yeah. Okay.
Keep going. Number 5, pray for your Muslim friends. That’s so good. Just pray for them. And I don’t mean, like, at night when no one’s around, like, yeah, pray for them too at that time, but actually, ask them.
How how are you doing? Could I could I pray for you? When you go and I I I make it a point if if possible. Okay. Good example.
I just met a couple guys, a few weeks ago, went into their home, had some tea, hung out. And as I was leaving, I said, before I leave, can I just take a minute and pray and thank God for you guys and ask his blessing on your home? All 3 guys were like, absolutely. That’s so cool. Absolutely.
Yeah. So pray. Number 6, create a favorable environment in society through good works that minister to human need What? That’s not where I thought you were going. I know.
I know. It’s like social justice, right? Yeah. Do good things Do good deeds. Yeah.
Do good. Drink coffee. Yeah. What’s the that’s the world view of the Muslim. Right?
Do you do good deeds? Because if you’re a religious person, you will be doing good deeds. Oh, I get it. Yeah. So that’s all connected.
Right. It’s almost like putting your, your, Putting your money where your mouth is? Money where your mouth is. I I was, like, putting you something. Some I don’t okay.
Yeah. Putting your money where your mouth is. Like, do are you really religious? Oh, yeah. Show me what you’re doing.
Okay. So, I know this is getting long, but I have one one quick story. My wife and I met this one family, and we, brought them cookies. And we’re trying to love them and share the gospel with them, but we never really got to talk to them about Jesus because their father wasn’t in town. Did I share this story already?
I don’t think I did. Their father wasn’t in town. And I had this, you know, my wife and I talked about it. We thought, we really don’t wanna be sharing things with these girls, and the wife without the father being present. Let’s wait.
He’ll be back eventually. And turns out, like, he was gone for a while, like, 6 months. Woah. And so for 6 months, we just loved this family. Brought them firewood, helped tutor in math, English, helped bring food, whatever we could do to bless this family.
When the father finally came home, they said, we’d like to have you over for dinner and meet our father. So we came for dinner, and we sat down. And for the first 20 minutes of the meal, he just told us about how every night his family would call and say how much love they felt from our family. And This is a true story? This is a true story.
How much love that he had felt from our family for 6 months and that he knew when he got home, when he sat down with us that he wanted to communicate to us that they have never met anybody like us and that he our his family was now our family and that even if he wasn’t there, we had his permission to be in his home with his children, with his family. It was amazing. Wow. And so I said, you know, you know, as a new newly adopted son, I I do have I do have one I do have one request. I said, I’ve been waiting 6 months to talk to you about this because I didn’t wanna do it without your permission, but I would love to be able to share with your children, you and your wife, your whole family, what the Bible says about who Jesus is.
You said that? Yeah. I said, I am a follower of Jesus. I’ve committed my life to following him, studying him, and I even teach about him, and I’d love to teach that to your family. And what did he say?
He said, I trust because of your life. This is what’s key. Right? I trust because of your life that you know more about God than me. And anything you wanna share with my family, you can.
Gosh. I did not expect that response. So and and trust me, people. I am not a I have not always been a social justice do good type of person. I’ve been a very much preach the word, preach the word, and that changed my perspective in realizing that word and deed together is a powerful combination and that God wants us to live the gospel.
What a cool story, man. Yeah. Alright. Number 7, and I love this one. For all our Pentecostal brothers out there, trust the Holy Spirit.
Trust that the Holy Spirit is the one who’s gonna work in your Muslim friend. Don’t worry so much about I have to convert them. I have to convince them. I have to do, you know, some you know, I gotta listen to truth about Muslims enough that I can have enough knowledge to go and, you know, pull out this, magic recipe. It’s the holy spirit is the one who brings people to Christ.
That’s so good. I think a lot of people forget. I forget. Yeah. We feel like it’s it’s on us.
But, you know what? It’s God’s mission. He’s the one who draws people to himself. It’s the love of God that draws people to repentance. It’s our job to introduce them to the person of Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to do the work of convicting their heart of sin.
Cool. Yeah. So those are seven principles from Henry Martin. So this is the last thing that we wanna say. Christmas time, we said that we were gonna say something about, you know, Muslims and, Christmas and how they celebrate that kind of thing.
So we’re just gonna give you a little blurb about it. So, Trevor, tell us what we’ve been kinda, like, researching and thinking about and reading the Quran and Yeah. Well, we were looking at the Quran and and even hearing a few different Muslim scholars talk about Christmas. And what it comes down to is that a lot of Muslims are divided on this issue because a lot of Muslims wanna participate in Christmas. They wanna give gifts.
They wanna say merry Christmas. They wanna have Christmas parties with their friends. Yeah. And so the hardliners, you know, are saying no because Christmas is about, the incarnation and the accepting of Jesus as the son of god, and the Quran, you know, explicitly denies the incarnation of Christ. So they say no merry Christmas, no Christmas for Muslims.
And then the more liberal Muslims are like, well, we’re really just celebrating the virgin birth of Christ, the angel Gabriel. Right. Which is in the Quran. Yeah. I mean, the angel Gabriel, you know, Mary becomes pregnant.
She was a virgin. She’s given a a child who is to be assigned for all the peoples. I mean, that’s right out of Luke. And he is the messiah. The is the the chronic term for Jesus, Jesus the messiah.
And so they’re okay with saying, you know, well, we wanna be a part of Christmas. It’s really just this kinda thing. Thing. You know, we’re not celebrating Jesus as the son of God. We’re just saying that Jesus is here, and it’s a happy time.
So Muslims are really divided about this, but I think it’s a great time to talk about Jesus to your Muslim friends. Right. Just like we always said, you know, hey, what do you think about Christmas? What’s going on there? What do you guys do?
Do you celebrate Christian? Do you not Christmas? Do you not think? You know? And it’s not really that stupid of a question because I think sometimes people are like, well, of course, they’re not Christians.
Why would they celebrate Christmas? But it’s you know, the virgin birth, let me say it again, the virgin birth is in the Quran. The virgin birth. Right? Is in the Quran.
You know? Zechariah is in the Quran. I mean, this Yeah. He’s he’s made mute because he needs a sign from God that this is really gonna happen, John the Baptist, to be born, and the angel says, well, it’s fine. You won’t speak.
Right this is all in the Quran you know so it’s like it’s not a stupid question because they do see that that Jesus was obviously special a prophet a sign. He actually speaks from the cradle. A prophet. He’s called a word from God. Yeah.
He speaks from the cradle, defending his mother’s chastity and claiming his own prophetic status. Right. And, the gospel of Thomas if I’m not mistaken. So anyway so it’s not a stupid question just to see where they stand and just even talk about it then. So it’s kinda cool.
I think they wonder too, like, the lights, the trees. They have a lot of questions and half the time, we don’t have good answers. No. We have a lot of questions. Yeah.
One time I was putting up Christmas lights and I had a Muslim friend holding the ladder and this was, I think I’ve talked about it before. One of a close friend of my wife and I, she was holding the bottom of the ladder and I was on a 15 foot extension ladder reaching up to like the top of a second floor trying to get lights and I hear her and she’s praying as she’s holding the ladder, this rickety old ladder. And I said, hey, are you praying? And she says, says, yeah, I’m praying. I said, what are you praying?
And she says, I’m praying you won’t fall, Insha’Allah. And, Insha’Allah means if God wills. And I was like, do you mean to tell me you think God could will that I fall from this thing? She said, no, of course not. I said, why did you say inshallah?
It was just a really funny, funny time. But anyway, just live life with Muslims. Get to know them, be their friends, talk about Christmas and what it means to you and especially what Jesus means to you. Alright. This week’s sponsors.
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Real world review. Kids it. Yeah. CIU educates people from a That’s it for me and Trevor. We want you to we hope that you have a merry Christmas and an awesome New Year or have had a merry Christmas.
Hey. 12 days of Christmas, Anglicanism. Right. And then a and a and then a happy new year. God bless everybody, and thank you guys for listening.
It’s a it’s a real blessing. We’ve been looking up on our stats, seeing what what nations and where, like, our listeners are. We’ve got fans in Thailand. Yeah. In Turkey, Australia.
Saudi Arabia. The UK. Excuse me? Yeah. Kona.
Kona. Kona. Yeah. And so Portugal. We’re just kinda like, okay.
And and we keep moving up steadily on the on the Podomatic charts or whatever. I think our our our highest, we were like a 30 number 31 out of Yeah. Like, on the Christian charts. We’ve even got, like, 3 reviews now. Right.
I’m positive. Hopefully, there’ll be more, but yeah. But, yeah, even then. And and we just really are blessed that you guys would be listening. So thank you so much, and this is, this is it for Howard and Trevor.
Yeah. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.
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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of ISIS in a Nutshell: Dr. Nabeel Jabbour – Part 3:
Once again, Muslim terrorists A terrorist. Islamic extremists now. These terrorists of the country. They have random dramas and brutal endeavors. News flash America.
These 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. Alright.
So we are on part 3 with the podcast with doctor Nabil Jabbour talking about the history of Islamic fundamentalism. Right. And this is titled ISIS in a nutshell. Yeah. I mean, we’ve gotten to the point where, you know, podcast 1, we talked about, the ideology of ISIS and sort of where it had its birthplace in Colorado Springs in Washington, New York with Sayyid Qutb.
Yeah, that was cool. And then we went from Sayyid Qutb to Ayman al Zawahiri. Talked a little bit about Hassan al Bana with the creation of the Muslim brotherhood but really focused on the relationship between, Sayyid Qutb, his trip in America going back to Egypt, and then his influence with his death in 1966 on the life of Ayman Zawahiri who will eventually become the leader, today’s leader, of Al Qaeda. Right. And then how that became the well, the Muslim Brotherhood and how that all led to all this fundamentalism that had kind of rose up Right.
Because of Kaptev’s thoughts and And then how Zawahiri and bin Laden met in Peshawar in 9:11. Right. And then how that led to 9:11. And then, today, he’s gonna start with, the creation of ISIS. What does it mean?
Right. What is their plan? What’s really the difference between ISIS and Al Qaeda? Right. And, what are we supposed to think when we hear what’s going on in the news with ISIS?
Yeah. I don’t know about you, but, like, of course, you know, I’m not an insider. But, whenever I see the news and ISIS and what they’re doing Actually, any kind of these terrorist attacks, it just seems senseless to me. But I I’ve just been informed by Trevor that they actually have a plan. Yeah.
And so we’re gonna, Nabil Jabbour is gonna talk about that. Yeah. He mentions a couple names but doesn’t, build on those names. And so, after the show, if you’re thinking when he mentions these, you know, Fuad Hussain and Suri and Nagi, like, what are these guys? What what where do these names go?
We’ll talk about that after the show. So just bear with us. And after you hear the, the show, we’ll we’ll talk a a little bit about the plan of Al Qaeda looking looking at it from actually 911 forward. Right. Don’t get lost in the names.
Yeah. That’s right. Well, enjoy. Alright. This week’s sponsors.
CIU. CIU. CIU educates people from a bib Biblical. Biblical world review. World view.
Real world review. K. C. CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. So could you give us an explanation?
Give us ISIS, ISO, IS. What exactly is this group? How did it become what it is today? We only see it happening in the news this year, but I’m guessing there’s a longer story there as to how it came about. The original name is in Arabic.
It’s an acronym, dash, 4 letters, d a, then a letter which is doesn’t exist in the English vocabulary, English alphabet, which is the Hain letter, and then she she s h. These four stand for, an Islamic state in Iraq and Sham or, modern translation, Syria. But the word Sham is an ancient word for, that stands for ancient Syria. That includes Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. So that’s where we get the law on.
Was called Da’a Shem. So in their Muslim vocabulary, their goal was not just an Islamic state in Iraq and Syria, the Syria we know today, but larger than that. So I heard, for instance, secretary Kerry refer to it as ISIL rather than ISIS, which is more accurate. Islamic State in Iraq and Levant. Levant is that area that included the four countries of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.
Later on, they began expanding their vision to see an Islamic State and a restoration of the caliphate. The Islamic State doesn’t have to be geographically connected. For instance, Boko Haram in Nigeria. If one day they decide to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, can declare themselves as members of the Islamic State and submit to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi as the caliph. And and some groups have already begun doing this.
Correct? I mean, even in Indonesia and Africa. So but provided there is territory, there is land that occupy and they control. So was this the goal in Afghanistan with Al Qaeda, with Ayman al Zawahiri in Bin Laden? Were they hoping for the Islamic State to begin there in Afghanistan?
And then with the US invasion, that plan was thwarted. And then, you know, unwittingly, the invasion of Iraq set up a new place. Yeah. That’s right. So how did they come to be?
Who is this, Baghdadi? How did he come to be? What what happened between the US killing, Zarqawi? I believe it was 2,006 to 2014 with ISIL ISIS that we see in the news today. If we go back a little bit in history, Muslims after the death of Mohammed in 632, they had caliphs.
The caliph in those days had tremendous deal of power. They were the equivalent of a pope and an emperor in one person. And over the centuries, they had they existed in several countries where the the capital was. Finally, it ended up in Istanbul in Turkey, and it lasted there for a few centuries. In 1924, the last caliph, Sultan Abdul Majid II, was banished by Kamal Ataturk when Kamal Ataturk declared Turkey a secular republic.
Since then, the Vatican they don’t call it Vatican. I’m calling it the Vatican of Islam has been vacant. So there has been a longing in the hearts of many of many Muslims, especially the fundamentalists. When will we ever have a man who will unite all Muslims around the world under his leadership as the caliph where the caliphate is is restored. So Abu Bakr al Baghdadi declared himself as caliph Ibrahim, which is not his real name.
And, so he he’s now the caliph of the Islamic State. Now Islamic is very clear that it is Islamic, but many Muslims do not see it representing true Islam. They see it as a heretical understanding of Islam. Secondly, state. How much is it a state?
I’ve been reading that, they have police. They have security. They are trying to become a state, but with guerrilla warfare approach and being a state, how do these 2 mesh? Strategically, they withdraw from land occupied if it serves a purpose. How can they rule?
How can they govern? This is a test to how far they can go and how long they can last. So where did they come from? It seems like they just popped up out of nowhere, but I’m I mean, I suspect, I mean, I’ve even read reports about this particular leader, Baghdadi, being imprisoned at at camp, Bukha in, in the Iraq war with the invasion. So how is is there a connection between the the Baathists that were imprisoned, the radicals that were imprisoned in the creation of ISIS?
Yeah. For years in teaching at seminaries, I told my students about 3 men, Abu Musa’ab Asuri, Abu Bakr Najee, and Fuad Hussain. And I would tell my students you’ve never heard of these names. One of those days, these names are going to be very famous. Recently, I found out that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIL or the Islamic State, is a product of the works of these 3 men.
What these 3 men have written as a strategy for the future of Al Qaeda, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi adopted. So ISIL is the result of these three men, plus Syed Qutb applied. What I mean by it, the teachings of Syed Qutb put into practice. He didn’t do them. He wrote about jihad in a militant approach, but he didn’t practice it himself.
But Abu Bakr al Baghdadi is practicing what Kut brought about. Furthermore, Zarqawi at one time mentored Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, and Zarqawi was the warrior in representing Iraq, and he is responsible for the death of so many in Iraq and for igniting sectarianism in that country. Yeah. I remember reading an article, where Zawahiri really was wanting to fight, the jihad against these Muslim governments, and Zarqawi was wanting to fight against the Shiites because he felt like he could bring in a larger group of people if there was the sectarian violence going on. And so Zarqawi being this, you know, wicked, you know, like we mentioned earlier, bloodthirsty, sort of leader.
I don’t know that it almost seems like whenever one wicked person dies, another one is raised up, and sometimes it’s even worse than the one before. That’s true. Because violence escalates. So we have these these people, they’ve spent time in prison. There’s the Abu Ghareeb.
Is there any relation there with what’s happening today? Immediately after the Iraq war, many people were arrested and put in prison. Most of them were the loyalists of, Saddam Hussein and belonged to the Ba’ath party of Iraq. The Abu Ghraib prison scandal was a turning point. Any one of us can go to the Internet and just Google Abu Ghraib, and the photos we see are really shocking.
Mhmm. As a result of that scandal, they started quickly looking at the multitudes of people that were imprisoned, Iraqis imprisoned. And they found that 80% of them were innocent, and they got released. So imagine somebody leaving prison after being there for a year or 2 and being tortured by Americans and coming and telling the extended family how he was treated, stripped naked, tortured, etcetera. How would these people view Americans after that experience?
So the the Iraq war, Americans thought we will be received, with rejoicing and the flowers and you know, because we came to liberate them from the dictator. But after the Abu Ghraib scandal and the photos that were released, people saw a different face of America, and the hatred and prejudice against Americans became a tool to recruit more and more people. Now in ISIL, a good percentage of the people in ISIL are ex military people in the Saddam Hussein army. So they are qualified and equipped and trained. They know how to drive tanks.
Most probably, there are pilots. If they can capture airplanes, fighters, they can use them. And so, ISIL is the product of all these factors. Sayed Khotb, Suri, Abu Bakr Najee, Fuad Hussein, and all these people together, plus Zarqawi, brought ISIL into existence. And a a social issue, a political issue, it’s almost like Nabilah just seems like it was the perfect storm.
You have the the ideology. You have the, political fallout. You have a vacuum of power, and ISIL just fills it. That’s right. That’s right.
And, the the war in Iraq empowered the Shiites in Iraq. They were treated as a minority because Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, and he treated them as second class. After the American invasion, the picture was reversed where the Shia ice took power, and Nuri al Maliki abused power and, you know, kind of treated the Sunnis as second class citizens. So these Sunnis are fed up with the Shiites, and when the ISIL movement started, they were ready to welcome them and cooperate with them. And so this is why we’re seeing so many Muslims coming from all over the world to participate.
Yeah. And Sunnis are about 90% of the Muslim world, while Shiites is a minority, maybe about 9%. They are mostly in Iran, in Iraq, a little bit in Bahrain, and in Lebanon. While the rest of the Muslim world are Sunnis. And so they are coming to help their brothers their their Sunni brothers against the Shiites, whom they perceive now as a heretical kind of Islam.
You know, people assume that, the situation against dismantling and destroying ISIL, as the president declared, is not an easy goal, and it cannot be accomplished in few years. Perhaps containment is more accurate description of what we can aspire to in the near future, and the near future could be several years. So, dismantling and destroying could take 20 or some people say even 50 years. The the challenge is difficult in with ISIL for various reasons. For instance, Iran is a Shiite country.
The biggest winner as a result of the Iraq war was Iran. And got empowered. And Iraq and Iran have a history. Yeah. And so, nowadays, it’s an interesting situation.
Iran perceives ISIL as the enemy, and America perceives ISIL as the enemy. So American airplanes are hitting ISIL, and Iranian airplanes are hitting ISIL, but in different areas so that there will not be a direct clash. So this is one of the ironies of of of the war in against ISIS. The enemy of my enemy has become my my friend in some way. That’s right.
Then you come to the issue of Turkey. Turkey is a key player. But for years, Turkey has been allowing recruits to fly to Turkey and cross the border to Syria and join ISIL. America is trying to pressure Turkey to do the right thing and close its borders and not allow these terrorists to join But ISIL is, Turkey is putting conditions of the, regarding their willingness to cooperate with the United States and its allies. They want the war to be against Bashar al Assad, the Syrian president.
Mhmm. While the Syrian president is the enemy of ISIL. So why should you weaken Bashar al Assad at this time, and ISIL takes fills in the gaps where the Syrian army gets defeated? So it is extremely complicated situation regarding Syria and Iraq. I think, Nabeel, what I find so interesting is that who used to be our enemy is now our ally, who might at one point become our enemy again.
And when you look at the Middle East and you look at the history, since the very drawing of the borders, it’s just been been a mess. Yeah. And do you, at some point, do you foresee redrawing of borders in the Middle East to give Shiite countries and, you know, Kurdish country, the Pashtun in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I mean, a lot of this stuff that’s happening, it seems to be very much related to, I don’t wanna sound ignorant here, but people not thinking through when they drew certain borders and not recognizing the sectarian violence. And so do you foresee any redrawing of borders coming into the future?
End up like that sometime in the future. But for instance, take Kurdistan. The Kurds used to be in land which currently are parts of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. All four countries were against these Kurds establishing a state carved from these 4 different countries. Now, with the 1991 Iraq War the Gulf War the No Fly Zone was established and Kurds started gaining power and started having the dream of becoming a Kurdistan.
Now they are actually, an independent region in Iraq, which is called Kurdistan, With Syria, parts of it, is is becoming also part of Kurdistan. Turkey is worried. What if the Kurds in Turkey rebel against Turkey? Iran is worried. What if they rebel against Iran?
So this adds another factor to the complications. I I guess what I’m getting from our our conversation today is that it’s much more complicated than just religion. It’s much more than than a theological issue. Yeah. There’s political things going on.
There are social issues. This is this is a complex complex. And remember, Kurds are Muslims. So when you think of the Kurds fighting ISIL in Syria, so, you know, Muslims fighting fellow Muslims with different kind of understanding of what Islam is and who is a real Muslim. I think one of the big things which is happening these days is Muslims are going through an identity crisis of who is a real Muslim.
And who’s gonna get to be the one who defines that? Yeah. For instance, in Egypt nowadays, I heard that our, out of 80,000,000 people, there might be about 5,000,000 atheists. Wow. So people are getting tired Yeah.
Of Islam. They see that kind of Islam, and they say we don’t want to become. Like, if Islam is what ISIL claims Islam to be, I do not want to be a Muslim. Yet, at the same time, this is a window of opportunity When people dare to think and dare to doubt, they could be open to the gospel. The Muslim world is more ready than ever for the gospel because of what they are going through regarding an identity crisis.
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. Alright.
That was Nabil Jabbour, with an interview with Trevor. And, again, we would talked about, ISIS in a nutshell. I hope you I hope you guys liked it. Yeah. Howard, what did you think ISIS in a nutshell?
I mean, I’m just kinda going along with, this ride just piecing everything together just kinda like, oh, okay. So that’s where they came from. This is how it kinda because to be honest, when I watch the news or hear the news, I get lost in people’s names and then I just kinda check out. I’m like, oh, that’s that’s tragic. I just kinda wanna know what they did.
But now this is kind of explaining how it got formed, what what they’re thinking, how things are, shaping up. And, and and you’re about to share what their plan is, I guess. Yeah. And, you know, some of this is obviously speculation. We, the the, you know, a lot of this comes from Muslim writers that claim to work with Al Qaeda and have sort of an idea and inside track on what Al Qaeda is up to.
And it’s really a little bit eerie when you look at what they were writing back in 2005, 2004 after the attack on 911 Right. And what’s actually happened since then in the last decade. Wait. So, they’ve been moving along? Oh, yeah.
They’ve been accomplishing goals? Yeah. Well, you know, the idea some I think some members of Al Qaeda were a little bit, disappointed with 911. What do you mean? They didn’t feel like they were ready to do something of that that level of significance that would draw the US out.
You remember how, Doctor. Jabbour was talking about Al Qaeda really wanted to overextend the United States and its military campaigns. Yeah. And that’s why they had the attack on the US coal. And 911 was to draw them out.
Well, some of Al Qaeda’s inner core leadership didn’t agree about drawing them into Afghanistan because they felt like Afghanistan was going to become the new, Islamic State. You know, it’s kinda like Okay. Let’s think about it from a biblical perspective when we think about Abraham. You know, he makes a promise. God makes a promise to Abraham that He’s gonna make him into a great nation.
And we know from our studies that, in order to be a nation, you need a couple of things. Right. You need people, you need land. Right. A law.
Yeah, law. Right. You need leadership, all of these different things. And so, the Islamic State took a similar approach in that in order to form this Islamic State, this empire with a new caliph, which would eventually be the leader, they needed people, which they had, groups of people coming to Afghanistan. And more growing every day.
Right. Yeah. But they needed land. And so, what the Taliban provided for them in Afghanistan was a certain level of safe haven for operation. And that’s what they had been searching for, all throughout the nineties.
And that’s why, you know, Zawahiri was arrested in Dagestan because you have these sort of failed states that they continue to go into. They’ve been in, you know, they’ve been in North Africa. They’ve been in Yemen. They’ve been in Afghanistan. They’ve been in Pakistan.
And they’re always looking for failed states where they can have their own land to launch this sort of movement. Wait, wait, wait. So, failed states meaning, like, states that they can come in and take over? Exactly. Where there’s like a failed government, a disenfranchised people, a very big sense of injustice, and they can offer something.
And so, they don’t come in and just rule with an iron fist. They actually will come in and begin offering, money, provision, care, and they do all this typically through the mosque. And so, the same thing that’s why the Taliban, when they came into Kabul originally, when they came in, it was sort of like, Oh, these guys are great. They’ve freed us from the mujahideen. Right.
Against injustice. Right. They did a lot of good things like that in the beginning. And then, when you have power, that absolute power that corrupts absolutely, then the people are like, Wait a second. These guys aren’t the people we thought they were.
And so, the Taliban was eventually disliked by the people. Well, Al Qaeda has a similar, track record? Yes. So they wanna go in. They wanna state.
They they attack on 911, and then, the US invades and dismantles the Taliban, and now they have no state to work from. And so some people, particularly this guy Suri that he mentions, felt like that was too, you know, preemptive. Like, they shouldn’t have done that yet. They weren’t ready for that sort of level of attack. Interesting.
So they go in and they attack and it does do what they wanted it to do, but they didn’t feel like they’re ready on the back end. Well, I think they were hoping that they would have to attack multiple places at one time Uh-huh. And overextend the army. But when they came in and just quickly dismantled the Taliban, they they felt like, well, there goes our state that we were working from. Interesting.
But, of course, Aiman Zawahiri, the leader of Al Qaeda, says, no. This is exactly what we wanted. So there’s a little bit of a division going on in Al Qaeda about how this thing went. And so, what was the plan after that? Okay, so then, the other guy that he mentions is, Fuad Hussein, who, is supposed to be a radical Jordanian.
He was good friends with Zarqawi. And Zarqawi is also Also Jordanian. Right. That’s right. I just found that out.
Oh, good. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. He’s he’s he’s from, southern, Zarka, in Jordan. That’s how he gets Zarkaoui.
Anyway, he’s Jordanian, and, dark how we is the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Mhmm. Now, I’m on Zawahiri and dark how we never really get along that well. Oh because Zarqawi feels like we shouldn’t be attacking the US. We shouldn’t be fighting with the US.
We should be fighting against secular Muslim governments, particularly Muslim governments that are Shiite. Right. Because if we can draw the sectarian violence, that’s when we’ll begin to draw Muslims from all over the world. The Sunnis against the Shiites. So, he has this kind of apocalyptic eschatological, you know, war in his mind.
And Zarqawi and, Zawahiri just had 2 very different approaches. Zarqawi wanted to fight the Shiites. Zarkawi felt like it was time to fight against the west, and that’s where those 2 kind of they clash. But but Zarkawi was really, really successful. Yeah.
Yeah. No. He was. He but he was brutal. Even with the beheading of Nicholas Berg in the 1st Iraq War, he was condemned immediately by Zawahiri for being too brutal.
Really? Yeah. So, he didn’t Zawahiri didn’t like this idea of the sectarian violence. I don’t think he saw it as being too effective that it would really, draw the sympathy from the Muslim community. He thought the better enemy would be the West.
Right. So, how we thought the better enemy would be fellow Muslims that are Shi’ites that we don’t even consider Muslim. Yeah, they called them heretical. That’s what, Jabbour said. Right.
They don’t even consider the Shiites Muslim. And you know what? Honestly, I think Zarqawi was right. Wait. Wait.
Wait. Wait. Why? Well, because with the Islamic State in Iraq, they’re drawing way more, favorability and attention. Because of the sectarian violence.
Right. But doesn’t it seem like the the house of Islam, so called, doesn’t it seem like it’s more divided and more, you know, fractured or No. No. Not when you think about Sunni and Shia because Sunni and Shia is not the house. They don’t the Sunnis don’t look at Shia as part of the house.
I mean, that that division happens a long time ago with the the divisions between the Sunni and Shia, and it’s gotten to the point now where the Sunnis don’t consider the Shia Muslim. Okay. But what do the Shiites do enough to cause such, hatred? Because, like like, from what Jabur was saying that that these, Sunnis are are, are are coming in to ISIS to battle against the Shiites. There’s not a lot of Shiites.
They’re they’re they’re a minority group. Yeah. 10 10%. Right. Yeah.
So, like, what did they do that was bad enough to all these Sunnis to say, yeah, let’s take up arms against these guys and Well, if you think about the Shiites, like after the US I think Jabbour mentioned this after the US invasion of Iraq and then the leader goes from Saddam Hussein to, a Shiite leader, Maliki. And then, all of a sudden, the Shiites have power and they don’t build bridges. Right. Because Saddam as soon as Saddam Hussein, he kinda treated, treated, the the Shiites as a secondary, like, a second class citizen. Right.
And now they’re in power. Power, they did the same thing to the Sunnis. Except that they’re a small smaller group. Well, what ends up happening is that the the Sunnis are mostly, I think he mentioned this too, released from prison and they form a pretty powerful coalition to go and take back control of the government. And their enemy is the Shiite government.
And so, that’s what draws so many people from all over the world is they’re fighting against the Shiites and they’re also fighting against Assad in Syria. And so, you have this war let me just read Fuad Hussain’s, perspective on this because I mentioned him in the beginning and I haven’t gotten there. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Gotten there.
So the the master plan, really outlined by Fuad Hussain in 2005. He produces what’s called, a book called The 2nd Generation of Al Qaeda. Okay. And it’s a biography kind of of Zarqawi, his movement, And that’s where he starts to talk about the master plan of Al Qaeda and what they’re gonna do. And so let’s just look at what he says.
He says that the initial stage is called the eye opening. The open the eye. No. The awakening. That’s stage 1.
And the awakening is really the striking on September 11th that’s going to, strike the head of the serpent, America, essentially. And then American troops will, attack. Right. Retaliate. And he’s hoping, He says in the plan that the one of the hopes is to draw America into, Baghdad, which is part 2, the second stage of the master plan.
He says that? Well, this is after. And so, I mean, obviously, this is 2,005. Oh, so he knows? Right.
But he says that This is happening. This is a part of the plan. Okay. The end the end of the end of stage 1 is when the US goes and invades, Baghdad. When soon as they enter Baghdad, he says, now we’re in stage 2.
The second stage is called the eye opening, and that will last until around 2006. He says, Iraq will become the recruiting ground for young men eager to attack America. Wow. And and this is, again, like Jabbour said, was connected with Israel, like, how US became the enemy. Right.
Right. Right. Right. Right. Okay.
Even more so than Israel. Right. And he says that electronic jihad and the Internet will propagate Al Qaeda’s ideas. Now, that’s what I find fascinating because he’s saying this back in 2005. And the biggest thing that we saw this weekend on television was that the recruitment of all of these people, these radicals ideal, radical Islamists in France and, you know, Belgium and Denmark and UK and all over is all happening online.
And that was in 2005, you said? Yeah. He says that there’s gonna be, an electronic jihad. And he says also with that, they’re going to begin to propagate Al Qaeda’s ideas online and that Muslims will be pressed to donate funds through online donation and giving. And we’re seeing all this now.
Wow. I never even thought about that. Like, how that made could make such an impact financially. Oh, huge. Huge.
The 3rd stage is called, he calls the arising and standing up. And that’s gonna last from 2,007 to 10. Al Qaeda will focus on Syria and Turkey. Oh my gosh. Right?
Okay. And then Wait. Wait. Wait. Time out.
Time out. This is might be ignorant on my part. But what’s happening in Turkey? I know the US is pressuring them to close the borders, but they’re not closing the borders. Right?
And so all all these tariffs are going from Turkey, but what is what else does it have to do with anything? Well, I think you have to realize that what he’s saying is that it’s gonna start in Iraq Uh-huh. Spill over into Syria and then over into Turkey. And this is the beginnings of this Islamic state. Right.
This is the land taking. Yeah. Okay. So this was 10 years ago that he was talking about. Right.
But he’s the strategy. So Turkey His timeline is 2,007 to 2,010. Right. So he’s a little bit off and and they’ve not been quite as successful. But Turkey is not closing the border so that says a lot still.
Right. And Turkey I don’t think Turkey would say that they’re out of, out of trouble with any of this. Yeah. Makes sense. And so, 2,007, 2010 focus on Syria and Turkey and then, begin directly to confront Israel in order to gain more credibility with the Muslim population.
So, those that didn’t join in with the sectarian violence against the Shiites, once there’s some, confrontation with Israel, then we’ll get sympathy from the rest of the Muslim world, we’ll begin to recruit even more, essentially. Right. And that’s really interesting about what, Nabil Jabbour says, was talking about how there was a chance at peace. Yeah. With, with Middle East and and Israel, but then it wasn’t taken.
Yeah. That’s that’s that’s crazy. And so this now becomes part of his plan, to, the the enemy thing where, like, you know, an enemy your enemy, you know oh, my enemy of my enemy. What is it? What Yeah.
The enemy of my enemy is my best friend. Apparently, I don’t have any enemies, so I don’t have to ever say this thing. But, you know, but yeah. Me once. Yeah.
But the point is, like, that’s that’s brilliant. You you ever notice on the media that these guys just don’t seem, they’re not portrayed as intelligent, they’re just kind of, you know, animals? It’s just, you know, like They’re not violent anything through. Right. But, apparently, these guys have a plan and that’s actually, I think, more frightening.
Yeah. No. I I would say that the leadership does have a plan. They are well backed financially. They are well backed, militarily.
They are well backed and trained, and they have a radical ideology that they can back up theologically. So, I mean, in that sense, there’s no, fanaticism, you know, just this kind of Yeah, it’s, it’s well thought through. Right. It’s the vast majority of people following those people that I would say I don’t think you could say the same thing of. Yeah.
But they don’t necessarily need to be the intelligent ones, I guess, really. They just need to be the ones that are doing the atrocities or doing the They just need to buy in. Yeah. Okay. So, a Hold on.
We got another stage. In the 4th stage I’ll save my question. Okay. So the 4th stage, this will last until 2,013. Al Qaeda is to bring about the demise of Arab governments.
And so I would assume that includes North Africa, Egypt. And so you almost wonder with a lot of the things that were happening back with the Arab spring if there, you know, there’s so much going on that there’s not the ability to keep the consistent timeline but I think there’s already some movements to do that destabilize Arab governments, get the people really frustrated, and then have these movements happening all throughout the Arab world. And so, you have things happening like with Boko Haram in Syria. You have things happening with all of these groups across the Middle East. Yeah.
Something you said to me that surprised me today was, that, was it Al Qaeda or ISIS was, actually going after Boko Haram to to try to recruit them to join? Yeah. I had this really interesting discussion with a guy from Afghanistan. And I was asking him about his home village and he said, you know, it’s largely under the control of the Taliban and they’re pretty ruthless. And he said, but he just had spoken with his cousin here recently.
And he said, there are new people here and they’re Arab and they say that they are with ISIS. Isn’t that crazy? With the Taliban. Yeah. That they are trying to there are Arabs coming in and trying to take over the Taliban and basically say, hey, we’re we’re the new it’s it’s it’s kinda like, mafia.
Yeah. You know, like turf wars. Right. And the and the the new guys. And they work together at in some point because it doesn’t sound like he wasn’t saying they went to battle.
They went to war with each other, just kinda came in and started infiltrating and And saying that we’re the new we’re the new mafia in town, basically. Wow. So, anyway, this is kinda the the way that it goes. And that’s why you have groups in Indonesia saying, hey, we’re with ISIS. You have groups in Africa saying, hey, we’re with ISIS.
Right. And then these weird terrorist attacks across, you know, the western world and some of them say they’re with ISIS. That’s right. Even in France, one guy says, I’m with ISIS. The other guy says, oh, no.
I’m with the Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula. And so there is a certain level of, what are the definitions for? I would say one of the definitions of a movement is when it grows beyond its original people. Oh, right. And that’s So it doesn’t have to be intentional start to claim.
I think that’s what concerns me more than anything is there is a certain level of a movement happening here that isn’t necessarily tied to any one particular leadership group, but the ideology that ties them all together, you know, is a hatred towards the West, the injustice, of Israel and a desire to see sort of an Islamic state that will conquer and flourish this wonderful unique chronic generation that existed in the 7th century that kind of propagates all of this. Right. They don’t they don’t even know who they’re following, but they know that, you know, who they’re against. They might not know who they’re for, but they know who they’re against. Right.
So, anyway. Alright. Keep going. 4th stage. What does he say?
Middle East and this was interesting. Meanwhile, attacks against the Middle East and the petroleum industry will continue which is so interesting because look at the price of gas right now and look at the petroleum control in Iraq with ISIS. America’s power will deteriorate through constant, expansion of its circle of confrontation so it’s hoping to draw the US out even further which, thankfully, we’re not involved in anything, but who knows? By then, they’re gonna launch electronic attacks to undermine the US economy. Now, some people are thinking, come on.
This is, like, conspiracy theory. But it is something to be said that ISIS was able to hack in to some of the US department. What was it? The Twitter feed of, was it the White House this past weekend and they put in ISIS? Do you did you see that?
No, I didn’t. Alright. Let let me double check on that before I say. But they they were able to infiltrate something within the government that was it should have been concerning to people. I think it probably was concerning to most people but they’ll promote the idea of using gold as the international medium of exchange and collapse the dollar which some people, at least from the Muslim world’s perspective and also the Russians and the Iranians are propagating this, is that that’s why the U.
Al Qaeda and the Islamist movement will attract powerful new economic allies such as China. Europe will fall into disunity and then it will come to the final stage of total confrontation by 2020. The world will realize the, real meaning of terrorism and there will be a definitive victory, that would have been achieved by Al Qaeda and all of its affiliates. And so, this kind of total confrontation, that’s the apocalyptic sort of, you know, world war in the world. Right.
But the but I guess the question is, is this ISIS or is this Al Qaeda? Is it or are they because I know that Al Qaeda just kinda just tried to disband, ISIS at one point. But then are they are they working together again, or is this just kind of like we just lump them all together? I have not heard anything lately from Zawahiri talking about the, you know, the confrontations that happened between Al Qaeda and ISIS. I haven’t heard anything here lately.
Mhmm. So who who knows? It’s kind of out. Yeah. It’s kind of one of those might makes right.
Like, it doesn’t seem like Al Qaeda, like Zawahiri, really has a handle on what’s happening. It seems like the influence of ISIS in, Iraq is much more significant than Zawahiri’s. And I say that because they actually have land. Yeah. Because now they they they’re they’re a force to be reckoned with.
Yeah. They have land. They have military training. They have weapons. They have money.
They have oil. Yeah. So And it’s some of the most bizarre stuff going on. Like, they’re they’re selling oil to, you know, groups like Assad, who they’re actually against. There’s so many bizarre things happening Yeah.
That it’s almost Well, well, you’re like, what? What? Well, Nabil Jabbour was talking about how Iran was attacking and we’re attacking, you know, so they become kind of allies in this weird, you know, battle. It’s really interesting. Okay.
So this is the question. Alright? And maybe this will be the last question because it’ll be such a great question. Yeah. But I’ve been I’ve been thinking about it.
I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. So formulate it well. If ISIS or Al Qaeda, whoever, if they get to this point of, well, a certain point. I don’t know what point that would be. But they legitimately have a lot of power.
They’re rewriting, the maps, the government, the government control of, of the Middle East and maybe Afghanistan, Pakistan, maybe these these major Muslim countries. Do they will they be able to have enough power to say what goes with the rest of the world, Muslim world? Will Baghdadi become the caliphate? Like, is that possible by just taking so much control? You know, right now, it’s Iraq and, in Syria.
But what if it does happen to Turkey? What if what if, you know, like Iran falls somehow or some of these other nations, you know, and then the Boko Haram, right, in Africa? What if there’s other groups like that become recruited? Is there a certain point where Baghdadi could actually become the Muslim caliphate, the the pope of Islam, basically? Is that possible?
Because right now, everyone’s like, no way. This is not happening. We don’t agree. You know? But if they continue to grow like this, is that possible?
I don’t I don’t think so. And and here’s why. People will try to make the case that Islam can be unified if they just go backwards to the 7th, 8th century unique Quranic generation that existed at the time of the prophet Mohammed. And then, the unique, uniquely guided caliphs that came after these 4 these 4 caliphs, that came after Mohammed. Right.
Because they would say that those 4 caliphs this is the the fundamentalist now they’re gonna argue that those 4 caliphs were legislating everything by God. They were operating under the sharia. They were operating under the banner of Islam, not under the banner of any nationalistic identity, not under the banner of an ethnic identity. And they have this really rose colored lens at which they view this, unique Koranic generation. Okay.
Then it’s just not true. That unique Koranic generation never existed. From the very beginnings of Islam, you have assassinations of of leaders, including some from those those 4 original caliphs. Oh, okay. And you have groups already splintering and deciding what is Islam supposed to look like.
And you have the, you know, the Umayyads and the Abbasids, these two large dynasties that form and they start to attack one another. And so, I don’t think that there is any, system that’s built upon an ideology whether it be Islam or a political ideology or you name it, whether it’s democracy, communism, anything, you know, Pax Romana, look at history. Yeah. And I think that if there’s one particular ideology that you think is going to unify the world politically, then you just you don’t know history. So you’re just saying that they’re so spread out that it’s it’s it’s gonna be impossible?
Not not not not geographically, but, you know, just ideologically. Just the way everyone thinks their even their theology. And they’re people. They’re people. Mhmm.
They’re not gonna be able to pull this together. I mean, think about us as the church filled with the Holy Spirit Right. Trying to pull it all together, working with, you know, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church and the evangelical church. There’s so many tribes, you know, especially of thinking and and trying to unify that all under one unified front and we’re we’re we’re indwelt with the Holy Spirit of God. Right.
And that’s still not happening. Yeah. Yeah. So, why would we assume that there’s gonna come a time where all of these, you know, radical Muslims that what time has shown is that as they get power and they get more power, they get more corrupt and they get more wicked and then eventually They’re overthrown. They’re overthrown most likely by their own people.
Yeah. And that’s why, you know, you have ISIS going in and fighting against Al Qaeda in Syria. And Al Qaeda in Syria is like, wait a second. Yeah. Hold on.
Thought we were on the same team. You know what I mean? Refer to the master plan. So, I don’t Yeah. Did you guys not get the handbook?
Yeah. So, I don’t I don’t think that it’s something that is realistic. Now, there is some legitimate concern though with areas like Israel because there is nuclear weapons, Pakistan with, groups like the Taliban and and more radical groups within Pakistan that want, you know, that would be my biggest concern is that they have access to nuclear weapons. Not so much that there’s a real legitimacy to a new Islamic empire me. I don’t see it.
I just don’t see it happening. But I do see that individuals will continue to do things and then small groups will continue to gain power and do things. And I think when history looks back on this, they’re gonna see that the 3rd World War started right after the 2nd World War. Well, that’s not very comforting. Thank you, Trevor.
Well, I’m just saying. I really think that’s the way the historians will look at it. I think they’re gonna look at the drawing of nation states after World War 2 and the removal of, colonialization and, you know, they’re gonna look at this and say that the the Third World War was really Yeah, these are the factors leading up to Right. And 9/11 will be a turning point. The invasion of Iraq will be a turning point.
The establishment of Israel, 19 48 will be a turning point. So, you look at all of these turning points between establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, establishment of Israel, Syed Qutb and his book Milestones, the invasion of Russians into Afghanistan, the overthrow of the Russians, and then the Mujahideen- With the help, with the help of the U. S. Right, and then the Mujahideen- Right, bin Laden. And the formulation of Al Qaeda with Bin Laden- Right.
And then the attacks in North Africa and the embassies in Africa and the U. S. Coal, and you look at all of that together which we need to put together a timeline you look at all of that together, and I think any historian looking back a 100 years from now is gonna say, Yeah, the 3rd war really started right after the end of the 2nd World War with the drawing of nation states, and some people were just not okay with the way that happened. Yeah. And they’ve been fighting this stuff.
More, more than not okay, right, because of bloodshed and and all that stuff is happening because of that. Right. And so, I think what we what we end with is exactly with what Nabil Jabbour ended with. That the Muslim world is in an identity crisis. And we need there there’s there’s an opening right now that the Muslim world has never seen before and that’s where Christ needs to come in.
And so, we need to not fall prey to the temptation of the evil one, to not love the Muslims with the the love of Jesus. Like, that’s what we have to we have to respond in love and with the gospel. Right. Because with this, there becomes a lot of opportunity, just like Namil Jibor was talking about. There’s that that statistic about the atheists and he said Egypt, right?
Was that correct? Yeah. I think it was Egypt. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
5,000 atheists, which is, you know, you’re talking about Egypt. Yeah. You know, that’s that’s pretty crazy, which means it doesn’t even say that for, the the the part about being atheist, that that doesn’t bother me so much as, I’m thinking about all those people that are on the fence. Right. You know?
Because if if 5,000 are actually atheist, then that means there’s a lot more that are on the fence. Right. And that’s kind of where, I think we come in as Christians. Mhmm. And change the face of that nation, change the face of, you know, the Muslim world now, as we come into contact with more and more Muslims that are on the fence?
Yeah. I think we can’t lose sight of the fact that God uses the wrath of man to praise him and that he is the one who can turn the heart of a king as the streams of water. I mean, we cannot lose the fact that God is involved in all of this somehow. We can’t lose sight of that. If we do, then we’ll fall into deep, you know, depression and conspiracy theories and who knows what else.
And fear. You know? Because I kinda had that sense when you’re like, the next world war, I’m like, I don’t want that. You know? I I I just kinda had this, you know, sense of fear that was gonna come over, but then just being reminded, like, hey.
Let’s not let’s not forget what our what we’re called to do. Even in the midst, doesn’t matter what’s happening. Whatever circumstances, we’re called to, to be salt and light, right, to to share the gospel, to, you know, to to change our circumstances through the Holy Spirit, through the work of Christ. Yeah. And called to pray.
Yes. Yeah. So if you’re listening to us, Don’t be discouraged. Don’t be, yeah, don’t be discouraged. Be remember, that, that God has a plan.
Yeah. Be encouraged that, I mean, just yesterday, I was talking with a guy from Pakistan and just telling him, about Jesus and just to see his face and his excitement about the gospel. There are so many Muslims out there that are open to the gospel right now. Yeah. Don’t be discouraged.
Tell people about Jesus. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And this week’s sponsors are Zwammer Center. Zwammer Center. Zwammer Center.
Welles Center. Zwamer Center. And what does the Zwamer Center do? Talks about lessons and tells them on the computer that we love you. Very nice.
The Wehmer Center equips the church to reach Muslims. The Swimmer Center has been educating people about reaching Muslims before it was cool. So, Trevor, this weekend, your wife went out of town and you recorded 12 hours? Yeah. I went out Of interviews?
Yeah. I went out into neighborhoods looking for, Muslims. Wait, wait, wait. I don’t even know what that means. So I took the bus and, Wait, the city bus?
Yeah. I took the bus. That’s true. My wife had the car. Uh-huh.
Took the bus, went to an apartment complex, and literally walked around until I saw a Muslim. And I know that’s totally profiling, like, Well, how do you know what a Muslim looks like? I just know, okay? And so, I see a guy walking and I just shout, like, ‘slam alaikum.’ And he replies, ‘walaikum, salaam.’ And I walk over and I was like, You shouted at him? Okay.
I shouted at him, you know, like, Hey. But, yeah, hey, okay, that’s better. Peace. Peace. And then, what did he say?
He said, Do we know each other? And I said, No. And I said, I just I thought you were Muslim. And he said, I am, and I’m new here. And I said, Well, welcome.
I said, I’m so glad you’re here. And he said, Oh, come to my house. I want you to meet my family. And so, I spent the next 6 hours with that guy. Get out of here.
No, I kid you not. Wait, wait, wait. I don’t know you. You’re, he says he’s new here, and he says, Welcome. I want you to meet my family.
Yeah. So I go meet his wife, meet his kids, and hang out for about 6 hours and eat some really good food. It’s so funny because, know, I told them my wife and kids are out of town, and he was like, oh, well, you have to stay for dinner, of course. You know? Oh, yeah.
Because you’re not gonna get fed. That’s right. Right. So I stayed there. We’re gonna feed you.
I stayed there till, like, 10 o’clock at night. Then I woke up the next morning, went back, and then found another family and hung out with them. Did you shout at them too? Yeah. Yeah.
It’s my strategy. Shout hello. Like, who’s this white guy? If you only had one strategy for Muslim evangelism, what would it be? Shout hello.
Look somebody right in the eye and say hi. Yeah. You know, something else that you just said. You said welcome. But it’s kinda interesting.
Like, you’re coming on his turf where he lives, and Americans probably would never think about this, but he’s just like, oh, well, he’s an American, and he’s saying welcome. That’s pretty neat. Yeah. Okay. So you went to another interview.
Or we we should we should say that loosely because you were just shouting at people that you just saw. And he said, Hi? And then what? What happened? Like No, just, well, the one guy, of course, says, yeah.
I’m going over to my friend’s house. I said, oh, great. Can I come? And he said, sure. You should meet him too.
So I go over. We meet his friend. And then, I asked his friend just to tell me a little bit about what was it like to, come to America because he had been here a while. Oh, okay. And, he shared a story with me.
And, it was a really powerful story, just very much a classic immigrant story of struggling for the American dream. And he’s he’s getting there. And it’s it’s pretty amazing. And, afterwards, I said, Well, I’ve gotta run. I said, I’ll come back another time.
We’ll have, you know, tea. I think I drink so much tea this week and I feel I still feel jittery. You’re super caffeinated. Yeah. Yeah.
Black tea, man. That’s boat and stuff. Yeah. So as I was as I was getting ready to leave, he said, wait, wait, wait. Don’t leave.
And I was like, okay. I don’t know what I’m supposed to and he said, I’ll be right back. And so I don’t know what he was going to do. But he went to tell his son to manage a store or whatever. And he came back over and said, can we talk some more?
I said, Okay. And he said, I wanna hear your story. And I said, You do? And he said, Okay. Wait.
Wait. What time on? You said you had to leave. Yeah. And he wanted to talk some more.
Right. Okay. And I really did need to go. I was hungry. I had eaten but I didn’t eat enough and I knew I had a long drive.
I was supposed to speak somewhere that night, and I wanted to rest a little bit before I got on the road and drive. And all you’ve been drinking is tea? Okay. Yeah. And juice at that point.
So, you know, I was I said, okay. You wanna hear my story? And he said, yeah. And, so I said, well, where do you want me to start? And I’m not joking.
This is no exaggeration. We had only known each other about 4 hours at this point. And he said, you know, I’ve lived in America a long time. I’ve met a lot of Americans. And he said, but you’re different.
Wow. And I said, why? And he said, it’s something about your face, the way you smile, the way you listen, how you make someone feel comfortable even though you just met them. And he said Wait. Wait.
So, he felt bad from you? Yeah. All of that. Right. And I’m just sitting there listening, you know.
But I accredit that to the Spirit of God. You know me, Howard. It’s not me. No, you’re a good listener. So, anyway, I was I was sitting there.
You have an open face. Yeah, I have a yes face, I guess. So, anyway. I have a yes face. Okay.
Keep going. I said, I said, would you wanna know why I’m that way? And he said, yes. And, I said, well, how much time do you have? It’s a long story.
And he said, as much time as it takes to find out, he said, I suspect there’s something very different about you, and I don’t know where it all begins. And I said, Where do you think it begins? He said, It must begin with your parents. Yeah, that makes sense for a Muslim, you know, the way the Muslims think. Yeah.
And so, of course, I talked about my parents and the good things that I learned from my parents and I I also shared with them a little bit about how my parents divorced. And he kinda looked at me with a look of shock and he said, I don’t understand. Your parents divorced. And I said, Yeah, they did. And he said, Then how?
How did you become Oh, I see. The person that you became? So he thought that that because they divorced, that would have mean That I would be off. Right. Something would be wrong with you.
Okay. And, honestly, you know, part of my coming to know Christ was through my parents’ divorce, really rooting in in my faith, was at that time. So that’s what I turned to. I said, well, it was at that time that I did feel, alone. I did feel like nothing was making sense and that was the time that I began to pray and I began to read the Bible and I began to take serious what it meant to follow after Jesus.
And he said, What what do you mean? And so, I just sat for the next 20 minutes about what does it mean to follow Jesus. Who is Jesus? What has he done in my life? And just shared my testimony for 20 minutes.
And I’m talkin’ at points. He’s just getting misty eyed like, this is an amazing story. Wow. And I’m looking at him and saying, be sure that the the credit goes to God because I’m sure, without Jesus, I would not have become the person that I am today, that it’s only by the grace of God. And he he fully agreed Wow.
And said, We have to talk more. We have to talk more. So Did did you say Esau or Jesus? I just said Jesus. His English was fairly good.
Okay. And he’s not an, Arabic speaker. If, you know, he was an Arabic speaker, I would have probably referred to the Arabic term, but he, he knew English well enough. Right. Well, that’s pretty cool.
So you just yelled at a guy who led you to this guy and you shared his test your yelled at a guy who led me to another guy who led me to another guy. And so, this all happened over a period of Friday for about 6 hours, Saturday for about 10 hours. Sunday is the Sabbath, so I just chilled and watched some football. Yeah. And then Monday to the guy who finally, I was able to sit with.
And the other guys, I was able to share things with and pray with as well, but not to the level I did with the guy on Monday. Something was different about that meeting where he was genuinely more interested in why I was the way that I was. That’s interesting, man. So, yeah. Go to an apartment complex.
Yeah. What a testimony to like how easy it is. No. I I gotta give you one blunder though. Okay.
One time, I was at the public library and, in walks probably 5 or 6 women in the full niqab, which is like the full black dress where all you can see is their eyes. Oh, really? Yeah. In the library here? In Richland County Library.
Okay. And I see them walking down and I mean, every eye in the library was staring at these women. Sure. You know what the headscarf and then a cob is supposed to prevent, it actually drew attention. Yeah, right.
Especially in the States. So, everyone is staring and there’s, one young boy with them and one man. And so, I immediately, as they come down the escalators if you’ve ever been to the children’s library, you know what I’m talking about. I love that library. So they come down the escalator and they’re all walking around looking for books, young girls and moms and everything else.
And, there’s one man and I walk over to him and I say, Assalamu Alaikum. And he goes, I’m sorry. I don’t remember how to say it. I’m not Muslim. And I was like, what?
I said, I don’t understand. And he said, Actually, this is my, sister’s family. My sister is married to a Muslim man so these are all like her family. I’m actually not Muslim. Interesting.
So, he’s just guiding them around. But even then, Assalamu Alaikum still turned into a great conversation with a guy that didn’t know Arabic, that wasn’t Muslim, and so we just talked for a while about, you know, what I did and why I wanted to meet him as a Muslim. So, what was the blunder? I don’t see what the blunder was. I’m just saying it doesn’t always work.
You might shout a slum like somebody they might not be. And then it’s like, I’m I’m from Brooklyn. Yep. That’s why I’m You know what I’m saying? You might say you might say something to somebody assuming they’re Muslim and you’re like, well, I’m sorry.
You’re not actually Muslim. You just kinda look Muslim to me. It was the 7 ladies that They just profiled you. Yeah. Yeah.
I’ve done it with somebody that was Indian, too. They were Hindu and I thought they were Muslim. I thought they were from Pakistan. They were probably speaking Urdu, but they were actually speaking, Urdu but they were Hindu. But they weren’t offended probably, right?
No. They actually knew how to respond but then when they said that I wasn’t, they weren’t Muslim. Yeah. It’s a great question, though, to ask somebody. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Even you go in somewhere and you could say, Are you Hindu, Muslim, Christian? Like, just ask start with that and they’ll say and they’ll kinda laugh. And, oh, I’m Muslim.
You know? Yeah. Of course. Look at me. Yeah.
So, anyway. Anyway, so, that’s it for the show. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed those stories. And, again, please, we we like this interaction.
So if you have any stories where you’re going around, yelling Shouting at people. Shouting at Muslims, you know, obviously greeting, not yelling at them. Shout the right thing, shout Allahu Akbar or something like shout hello. We wanna hear we wanna hear your story, so write in. And, please, again, reviews help on iTunes.
Yeah. We are up to 11, I think. No. 10. 10.
Yeah. Right. It it just helps. I I think when people check out our podcast, they’re like, oh, these guys have some reviews. This is actually pretty good.
So, thank you guys so much for listening. Yep. And if you have any comments, write in truth about, comments at truthaboutmuslims.com. Alright. Bye.
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Here starts the auto-generated transcription of The Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and 9/11: Dr. Nabeel Jabbour – Part 2:
In the studio, we got the privilege to have, Nabil Jabbour Mhmm. Doctor Nabil Jabbour, who’s expert on fundamentalism. Yeah. Islamic fundamentalism. That’s his That sounds better.
Yeah. Fundamental Islam. Islamic fundamentalism. Craziness. I mean, that’s what he did his doctorate on.
Yeah. So and, he is a, a Christian, Arab Christian. Arab Christian born in Syria. Syria. Right.
Lived in Lebanon. Right. So he definitely has this insider’s perspective that, we get to listen to. It’s pretty awesome. Right?
Hey. But we, just a kind of a technical thing. We just wanted to apologize for some of the sound quality. Just sometimes recording is not as, smooth as it as it needs to be. Basically, what it comes down to is Howard wasn’t here, and, he said the sound would be fine.
Just go for it, and I messed the whole thing up. Apparently, I just realized that I’m the sound engineer. Yeah. I don’t know why he just now realized that. I’m pretty sure that was in the, initial agreement.
Right. Right. With the agreement, what have you. The the fact that he knows sound and I don’t. But, anyhoo, so, just Just bear with the the audio.
You’ll get used to it and we’re getting some software clean it up. And Right. So if you just listen if you listen to part 1 and you were just, like, man, this audio quality was, you know, suffering, I’m gonna re upload it, corrected, fixed, polished, made it a little bit prettier. It’s gonna be definitely much easier to listen to. So if you wanted to listen to it again, have at it.
If you if you skipped it because it was just too hard to listen to, then listen to it again. And then we’re gonna do the same thing for all the rest of the podcast because we believe the content is so important. We’ve been sitting here for the last 2 hours working on the, sound quality due to my not knowing anything about Sam. Right. Hey.
I’ll admit it. I’m wrong. I’m wrong. But I’m not going anywhere. So this is, the I mean, hopefully, the sound quality would be pristine Yeah.
From here on out. From now on, if Howard’s on vacation, I am due. Right. So Alright. Let’s get to it.
Yep. So, a little bit of a preview of what what’s happening. So or a little bit of a of review of what happened in the last podcast. So we’re following, following the story of Sayyid Qutb. Sayyid Qutb.
Right. And then, he basically gets to the point where he is, hanged. 1960 6 In Egypt. Khutab is hanged in Egypt. He refuses to recant for writing, milestones.
Right. Which was passed out in pieces from prison. Mhmm. And it has become the the the textbook. Yeah.
I’d say the premier text. Right. Of fundamental, Islam at this point. Right. And so now this is where our story picks up.
We’re going beyond Qatub and moving on to Right. I think he ended last week with the question was, was there anyone there that was influenced by the death of Sayyid Qutb? And that’s when doctor Jabbour mentions the, blood of the martyrs. Right. To see the church.
Right. When we talked about the Islamic view was Right. What was it? The it nourishes the roots. Right.
The tree. The tree Right. Of Islam. So, yeah, there is a one one guy in particular that was present and greatly impacted in somebody that you’ve all heard of. Whether or not you recognize his name or not, you’ve heard of him.
Right. And, something just to say before, it’s like, I really enjoy the way, Jabil Nabil. Nabil. Javor, just kind of breaks it down into a story. Like, you’re following these guys’ lives and kinda seeing how all these, ideas are formed and how it’s gained momentum.
Mhmm. And I I you know, I what surprised me is I think I actually did have kind of this feeling of, sadness, when Goethb was hanged in just in my mind. I think because I kind of I I kinda know where he was coming from in the beginning where, you know, he really just wanted to be close to God. Right. Right?
And then he is encounter he encounters all of these, you know, these injustices and how it it it kinda mars him. Yeah. And there’s a common denominator, that I’m just now noticing here after studying these fellows for a while. We’ll we’ll talk about it after we get through all of the sort of biographical approaches and looking at everybody, but there’s a common link here that that I didn’t notice until here recently. And, it’s it’s prison time and and suffering while they’re in prison for their belief systems.
And that sort of creates almost, nativism. Right. Well, it takes what might be started off as a reforming idea, and then taking that into a fanatical idea. Right. Because even though Sahid could have never did anything, fanatical, his, certainly, his text is what is producing a lot of Right.
A lot of it today. And I think that the fact that he wrote this in prison, which is a crazy stark contrast from the letters that Paul is writing in the New Testament from prison. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And and, you know, something that I think about that, that, these guys who are writing, you know, their their thoughts in prison, they must be thinking, is this worth me suffering for?
Do I believe this so much that I’m willing to actually lose my life and in the end you see Sayaka to do that? I mean he gives up his life Right. Refuses to recant. And and we’ll see now the impact of that on this particular young man. Right.
So without further ado, here we go. 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.
So after the death of Sayid Qutb, there’s this guy, Ayman al Zawahiri, who’s the current leader of Al Qaeda. How does the death of Sayyid Qutb affect, or does it have an effect on Aiman al Zawahiri? Aiman Zawahiri was a university student when in 1966, when Sayyid Qut was hanged. Actually, the uncle of Aiman Zawahiri, the brother of his mother, was the lawyer of Sayyid Qutb. To start with, this lawyer was the student of Sayyid Qutb, and later on, his became he became his lawyer.
And so can you imagine this lawyer every day coming back home to the extended family after spending several hours with Sayed Kotb in prison listening to him, and he comes and tells the extended family detailed stories about Sayed Qub and what he perceived about him as a a pure Muslim who really loves God and wants to do the will of God. And so Aiman Zawahiri will sit and listen to these stories and absorb them, and with time, Sayyid Qut became more and more one of his biggest heroes. And so then, when Sayyid Qut was hanged in 1966, Ayman Zawahiri was leading a cell group, secret cell group, at the university, and they were he was discipling these these guys using the book Milestones, which was a banned book. So he has a direct impact on Zawahiri’s life? Big time.
Okay. So how does Al Qaeda come to be? What is the the beginnings of sort of Zawahiri’s movement from being a student to where he is today as the talking about 1966 when Al Qaeda came into existence in the 19 nineties. Okay. There is a long period of time.
So during, the early seventies, a movement started at the universities in Egypt called Algamahat al Islamiyah, where more and more students, the the men were growing beards, women started more and more covering their hair and wearing the hijab. Even an niqab, which shows only the eyes, started appearing in Egypt. And Aiman Zawahiri was very much involved in the in this movement at the universities. Okay. And so do these movements come out of a certain theological school that come in Basically, they were influenced by Islamic fundamentalism and more specifically by Sayyid Qut and Hassanal Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood.
So the death of Sayyid Qutb and the death of Hassanal Abana did nothing to stop these movements at all. The fire. Fueled the fire. On that country. Okay.
So what what gets Zawahiri and Bin Laden? Where do they come into play? Because eventually, they’re the beginnings. This comes later on. I am Anzalwahiri finished his, medical school and became a physician, actually, a surgeon.
And but he was more of involved in religious activities and politics, Islamism, political Islam, than practicing medicine. And with time, he started an organization, or he was involved in an organization called Jihad Organization, and he was, well, in close ties with people who assassinated president Sadat, in 1981. And during the court proceedings, he was, of course, arrested along with many others. And during the court proceedings, when the press was allowed to enter the court and witness the events, because he was able to speak English. He was bilingual.
He became the spokesman of the prisoners, and, they were tortured by the police. And, so his fame internationally started during these court proceedings when he was the spokesman of the prisoners. Wow. So how does he go from prison? Did did they were they attempting to, give him the death penalty as well?
No. But something important happened. When he was imprisoned, an incident took place where an officer in the prison slapped him on the face. Mhmm. Right away, he slapped him back.
This is unthinkable in an Egyptian situation. So he became known as the man who slapped back. So he started becoming famous and recognized as, you know, somebody different by the prisoners. And then, so he was tortured more than the others. His most painful experience was he betrayed his closest friend.
He cooperated with the police by telling them, of a way that they can arrest him. Yeah. He abandoned his own friend. Yeah. Wow.
Because the torture was unbearable, so they pro they made him promises that if he will help in the arrest of this famous Muslim fundamentalist, who was a very close his perhaps one of his closest friends, they brought this man after the arrest and put him in the same cell with Aiman Zawahiri. Oh, my. Yeah. So one of his most painful experiences that he wrote about by saying that, the most difficult thing in life is to be, the cause of betrayal Mhmm. Of somebody who who is a very close friend.
Well, they put them together in the prison, and that man tried to escape, and he got shot and killed. And he he probably feels responsible for the death of his friend? Yeah. Later on, he was released from prison, so he knew that life in Egypt is not safe anymore. Mhmm.
So he, he left and started, working in with the Red Cross as a physician in, Peshawar, Pakistan. Okay. Osama bin Laden in at the same time moved from Saudi Arabia, from Jeddah, you know, from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Peshawar, and that’s where they met for the first time. So what is what is drawing all of these people from all over the Arab world to Peshawar at this point? That’s a very good question because at that time, the Russians were in war, with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
And, many, Muslim fundamentalists were volunteering to join, Muslim fundamentalist groups that are willing to fight the Soviets, the atheists. They looked at them as atheists. And so it was the best training situation for Muslim fundamentalists in warfare. And so the city of Peshawar was full with Muslim fundamentalists. People can buy weapons, and, you know, and at that time, the CIA was empowering some of those groups, and they were perceived as mujahideen during president Reagan’s time.
And, later on, they felt betrayed that America who was helping us stand against us. Yeah. I mean, I’ve read some of the articles that talk about, the Russians are the the disbelievers. And so, you know, the Americans are are the Christians and the Muslims are coming together to fight against the disbelievers. And then once the Russians are gone, you know, America has no connection and a lot of those those mujahideen are now the biggest problem for the United States.
You reminded me of something very important, Trevor. At that time, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Mhmm. And, the United States government offered Saudi Arabia assurances that they will protect Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden had, at that time, a big number of mujahideen who are available, who were trained in in guerrilla warfare against one of the biggest armies in the world, the Soviet Army Mhmm.
And they believed they conquered them. And so he came to the royal family in Saudi Arabia, and his father, the father of Usain bin Laden, was the owner of a huge company that built palaces and mosques in Saudi Arabia and closely connected to the royal family. So Osama bin Laden came to the royal family and said, don’t invite Americans to defend you. We will come. The mujahideen will come from Afghanistan, and we’ll defend you.
Of course, they didn’t listen to him. They listened to, the United States government, and so Osama bin Laden felt that the government of Saudi Arabia betrayed Mohammed the prophet by allowing foreigners to exist in in Saudi Arabia. And just thinking about it from their their theological lens, it’s as though god gave them this victory against the Russians, and then the Saudi Arabia wouldn’t trust god to give them victory against Right. Wow. Somebody was mentoring Osama bin Laden at that time, a Palestinian imam.
His name is Azam, a z z a m. And Osama bin and Aiman Zawahri, at the same time, wanted to influence Osama bin Laden. So every now and then, he’ll write a paper and show it to him, and through these papers, he was influencing his thinking. Azzam was assassinated at one time, and some people think that, Aylman Zawahiri was behind it in one way, but he denies it. And, during the funeral time, he was there praising Azzam.
From that time on, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri became close friends. Osama bin Laden provided the money and the contacts, while Ahmad Zawahiri provided the leadership of Al Qaeda, and they formed this organization called Al Qaeda, and Arabic means the base. It used to be called Al Qaeda, the solid base. They dropped the word solid and kept the word base. And Aiman Zawahiri became man number 2.
So out of 12 men on the leadership team that Osama bin Laden was heading, 9 of them were Egyptians, and they were the men of Aiman Zawahiri. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And this week’s sponsors are. Zweimer Center. Zweimer Center.
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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. So we have the the Muslim brotherhood with Hassanal Bana, which we talked about, before. We have Saeed Khutb, and then we have Zawahiri in Azzam and now Bin Laden.
And Bin Laden and Zawahiri become sort of the the figurehead is Bin Laden, of course. He has the money. He has the connections. And all of this kinda happens in Peshawar fighting on you know, not technically on behalf of the United States, but we kinda look back now and see in cooperation with the United States against the Russians. So what does, what is Al Qaeda’s strategy from the beginning?
Their strategy was to force America to overextend itself, because the more it extends itself in territory, the weaker it becomes. So when America finally became the enemy of Al Qaeda, the by the way, the primary enemy has always been Israel. Okay. Explain that a little bit in more detail. What do you mean the primary enemy?
At the Muslim world, almost 1,700,000,000 Muslims in the world, they belong to different countries, different ethnicities, different colors, but for things all Muslims tend to agree about. Whether they are in Pakistan or Nigeria or Lebanon or United States or Canada, they tend to agree on 4 things. Number 1, God is 1. Mhmm. Secondly, Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Number 3, the Quran is their holy book. Number 4, Palestinians experience injustice, and the West turned a deaf ear to their grievances. Is this part of the establishment of the Muslim brotherhood? Is that there in the very beginning with the creation of these movements in order to fight on behalf of the Palestinian injustice that they that, you know, whether real or perceived that they see this as an injustice and that’s why these groups begin? We assume in the west that Muslims’ biggest need is freedom, and democracy.
And reality, what they’re looking for is justice. So it’s 2 different paradigms. We have our paradigms. We assume that their biggest need is freedom and democracy. In their in their case, they believe that their biggest need is justice and security.
These are the 2 big things for Muslim countries. And I think part of the problem we’re experiencing in the Middle East and the Arab world is difference in world views and difference in perspectives. So they see injustice committed against the Palestinians, and it has been going nonstop since 1948, and there are events that prepared for that event. And this, they see as the longest injustice in history for any nation on earth. We don’t often think of it in those terms.
You’re right. We we look at the Muslim world and we think they need democracy. They need freedom in our worldview. In their worldview, it just seems like we’re looking at 2 completely different Yeah. Ways of life.
Yeah. So thinking back to the beginnings of Al Qaeda and their strategy to, have the United States overextend itself, what are some of the things that they begin doing to implement that strategy? For instance, the US coal was hit by a boat full with, explosives, and this was during the last year of president Clinton. They wanted very much America to attack them, but they didn’t. America did not do that.
And so they felt, like, a sense of, defeat and pessimism that what they were hoping to accomplish was not accomplished. So they started doing planning for something bigger, something Yeah. That will be, you know, kind of demand a response. News, big time. And so they they recruited people to come from Europe, like one of them is Muhammad Atta.
Muhammad Atta was living in Germany, and he is an Egyptian. And he saw Germany full of cathedrals, but no Christians practicing a relationship with god. So he saw the empty shell of Christendom rather than a living relationship with Jesus Christ. And in 1982, he was watching the news, and, he saw Israel invading Lebanon, South Lebanon. And he got so angry that he wanted to become a fundamentalist.
So he went to mosque and started asking, how can I have training in Afghanistan? So he found a somebody to help him, and he went to Afghanistan and got the training along with others. And they were given orders to do a certain thing at the right time. So they came to the states, and, they were, you know, by more they spoke more than one language. They trained some of them trained as pilots.
And the 9 the 2,000, and 1 attack took place in on 911. And this was the the event that would demand a response? Yeah. And that response took place with the invasion of Afghanistan 3 weeks after the events. I personally think I wish the US administration had a different approach rather than go for a regime change in Afghanistan, removing the Taliban.
If they immediately hit Al Qaeda on the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, it could have presented better results in terms of demolishing the core of Al Qaeda at that time, which was relatively very small. Instead, they wanted to do a regime change, and we’re still stuck with the consequences of that time. By the way, president Bush, at that time was grooming somebody who was a moderate leader called Masrud, who was being prepared to become the new president of Afghanistan, but Ayman Zawahiri organized an attempt to assassinate him through 2 people who played the role of journalist, Arab journalist, and 1 the photographer had explosives in his camera. Instead of the video, they had explosives. And these 2 men committed suicide, and at the same time, killed Mas’ud.
So the guy who was groomed to become the new president was assassinated by Aiman Zawahiri’s men. So Al Qaeda doesn’t I’m I think I remember at this point, there was great hope that Al Qaeda was dismantled, but it sounds like they just grew. They escaped. They escaped and even multiplied. The of course, you have Al Qaeda core, and then you have Al Qaeda Aspired, and Al Qaeda affiliates.
So the core of Al Qaeda was on the borders at that time during the 911 event. Mhmm. If America hit right away, the whole world was sympathetic with the United States. Instead, they prepared for a war that takes time. And, by that time, all these people escaped from that place, and it became a different objective.
Rather than Al Qaeda, it became, regime change and, conquering a Taliban. And then from there, we see the invasion of Iraq, which, of course, is surrounded with so much controversy. At that point in time, is there Al Qaeda going on in Iraq? Because now, of course, with with Isis, we see, Iraq is where everything is is kind of being played out. And, I mean, I know that we have Zarqawi there in Iraq, but with the invasion of Iraq, how impactful was that with what we see happening today?
You mentioned Zarqawi. Zarqawi belonged to Al Qaeda, and he was in Iraq, and he was a bloodthirsty kind of person, and started fighting the Shiites. In other words, the move towards sectarianism between the Sunnis and Shiites became big time with Zarqawi. He he’s responsible for the assassination, for the killing of so many Shiite Muslims in Iraq. Furthermore, the assassination of another prominent Islamic imam who was groomed to take a position of leadership in Iraq, he also was he he, was responsible for his death.
Well, finally, America was able to kill Zarqawi, but by that time, violence escalated so much, and, in Iraq by the way, the Iraq war, one whole year before the beginning of the Iraq war, in 2,002, March in 2,002, an important conference took place in Beirut, Lebanon for the Arab League. The Arab League is a an annual event that takes place every year where the presidents and kings of the Arab world meet together to discuss their burning issues. And are are other countries involved in these discussions or is this the Arab League meets together? Okay. Arab countries.
Okay. And during that year, in 2,002, one whole year before the Iraq war, they met in Beirut, Lebanon. Every year, they meet at a different capital. That year, it was in Beirut. And, at that time, king Fahd of Saudi Arabia was sick.
He didn’t attend. Representing him was prince Abbala who is now the current king of Saudi Arabia. He was authorized with all the power of Saudi Arabia, financial and political, etcetera, and his aim was to convince all the Arab countries, the 22 countries, to commit to a peaceful relationship with Israel. It was a difficult conference. Finally, he was able to convince every one of them.
Wow. The last 2, the most difficult 2 were Libya and Syria. Finally, even Libya and Syria committed. He was so elated. Of course, he was all the time on the phone with King Fahd, telling him the progress and the news.
When the conference was over, right away, he flew to the states and went to Crawford, Texas, where president Bush was on vacation. And I assume he tried to persuade president Bush and the administration that the road to transforming the Middle East does not go through Baghdad. It goes through Jerusalem. He tried to convince them, we will help you with Saddam Hussein. We know that he is a sadist, and he is a dictator.
But the road to transform the Middle East is focused on peace between Israel and the Palestinian. If that huge challenge is solved, everything else will be easy to deal with. They wouldn’t listen to him. Because invading Iraq would have put all of that. None of that would’ve happened had the invasion of Iraq.
Yeah. That’s that’s a a really that’s a heavy moment to think about how history the world has changed from that one moment. Yeah. That one decision. Alright.
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Biblical world review. World view. Real world review. Can’t say CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. Howard, what’d you think, man?
I know that’s the first time you’ve heard that. I was there during the interview. So what’d you think? Yeah. No.
I mean, you you know, like, the first thing that kinda comes to my mind is that, man, there’s a lot of names. And Yeah. I I think for you listeners, you probably you know, if you haven’t been keeping up with this, you know, maybe you think you’re overwhelmed by the names. But I’m also really just overwhelmed by how much humanity is in this entire process of, the growing fundamental, Islam, growing into action and execution, like, how how it’s actually coming into being. And, there’s, like, stories behind it.
There’s, like, people behind it. And And I thought that was really interesting because sometimes you on the news, like, you hear a story and it’s just this execution, but you don’t know any story behind it. You don’t know what’s happened, you know, to to to bring them to this point of extreme, you know, you know, in some in some cases, sacrifice where they blow themselves up. Mhmm. I’m talking about in their worldview or their their their eyes, but, but also just, you know, extreme violence.
And there’s gotta be a story behind it because, you know, like, just we were talking about in a couple podcasts before. Well, a lot, I guess, podcasts before. But we were talking about the homegrown terrorists, like, how they go from just a normal girl that reads Harry Potter and wants to become a bride of Isis. Right. Right.
And and there’s gotta be a story behind it, and it’s really neat to hear the story of how this developed. And it really I I don’t know the word that I keep, the theme that I keep hearing about is injustice. Yeah. I thought that was definitely interesting when, Nabil says that we have our perception of what the Muslim world needs, freedom and democracy. And from what he was saying from the Muslim world view is what they want is justice and security.
Right. And you know what? Like, not to put a too fine a point on it. But the, you know, the idea, I think, behind injustice, I think that rings true for all of humanity. So it kind of makes it more accessible to me.
Because, like, for instance let’s go back to the American Revolution. I mean, the American Revolution was started because of a series of injustices that we believed as Americans that well, you know, as as British That’s right. Colonists. You know? But we believed that it was so unjust, you know, some of the things that they were doing, the British, motherland.
Right. Yeah. We’re doing that, you know, we felt like we needed to fight against it. I mean Right. To go to war.
Taxation without representation. Exactly. Yeah. And you have people that will rise up. And, you know, that’s what’s really interesting and and not to minimize anything that any of these people have done.
We we recognize and I think Howard and I would agree that the anybody that would take the life of another person, regardless of whatever their ideology is, that that that can be a really difficult call. Even even people that are doing it as a as a job. I’m sure it’s difficult and hard to do that. And these guys that do it out of a religious ideology, while I understand, understand, I think, where they’re coming from and I think that’s what Nabil does a good job of is helping us to understand where they’re coming from. It it really just feels like so wrong.
Yep. It never it never excuses it. It’s just so wrong. And I think back in even in our own Christian history where that’s been done, and I just think, what were you thinking? Right.
It’s just so extreme. Right. You know? Even I mean, today, you know, we we have discussions about heresy. And, you know, in Christian circles, there that, you know, once in a while, you find somebody that’s a heretic that people would call a heretic.
Right. Yeah. But nobody’s going to kill them. Not that I not that I’m aware of or at least I don’t think anybody would approve of it. Right.
Right. Not like the good old days burning at the stake. That’s the kind of the I think some people feel that way. Like, oh man, when we used to burn people at the stake, and I’m thinking, really? Right.
You that’s the good old days. I don’t know. Right. And and the other thing is that we on the other hand, we separate ourselves so much from that history that we’re like, oh, we would never do that. Oh, yeah.
That’s not that far away. Right. Exactly. So when you look at the Muslim and I’m not saying that, again, just as Trevor is saying, that it’s okay. It’s not at all.
But you look at the the the the radical Muslim, you know, that believes that terrorism is their calling or you know? They wouldn’t call it terrorism, but you know what I’m saying? The idea that they they would go to that length, you know, that’s not that far removed. No. And I think where we are.
Well, what doctor Jabbour does a good job of is humanizing people by giving sort of the backstory. And then you see where they’re coming from. And I think it’s okay. Like, okay. Let me just give a brief example.
So if I talk about the the establishment of Islamic fundamentalism and the rise of Islamic extremism within, you know, this current century and I’m giving that lecture at a church, I’m always a little bit hesitant because I’m afraid people will feel like when you tell their side of the story that you’re somehow being unpatriotic or being affirming them. Right. And I think Nabil Jabeur does an excellent job, particularly in his book, about trying to understand what are the underlying causes both, individually, you know, these people as individuals, and then also the context of which they’re in. Right. And then also the systems that are in place globally that kind of all work together to get these guys to become what they end up becoming.
And Zawahiri is a good a good example of that. Mhmm. So I mean, he I’m not a 100% sure but I believe he was 14 years old when he started, working in some of these more Islamic, extreme or fundamentalist, groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. He was a young guy. Yeah.
So super influenced. And you can see, I thought that was interesting that Sayed Qutb’s lawyer was his uncle. Mhmm. Iman Zawahiri’s uncle. Right.
And you can see pictures. If you go online, you can type in Zawahiri and you see him now as this old man and but you can also find pictures of him in black and white and even, I believe there’s some video footage, if I’m not mistaken, of him basically protesting his being in jail as a young man. And he’s a young guy. Right. Sacrifice.
Full of fire. Right. Yeah. So, anyway, there’s a Wait. I want you to go back to what we were talking about before, like, how we’re not that far removed.
Just clear that up because, I’m thinking that, but I think it’s probably coming from a lot of our conversations of, you know, like what we would do if we were in that situation. Right? And Well, I’ve had conversations with Christians that feel like, you know, what would we do if there was a a Muslim president and he started making decisions that we didn’t agree with as Christians? And I’ve see I’ve heard some Christians and some of the things that they’ve come up with and it concerns me. Right.
Because it sounds like what they’re doing. Yeah. Because there there there’s a there’s a perception at least, and maybe even a reality of injustice. Right. Feeling as though they can’t fully be Christian and then there’s some underlying belief systems about the foundational, heritage of the country.
And so, it’s not so far to see how a person can can go from being a, you know, fundamentalist in any religious ideology, a fundamentalist to quickly having those fundamental core values, imposed upon or stepped on. Right. Or, you know, an injustice or oppressed. Right. And then you feel the need to rise up to protect.
You feel the need to rise up in order to, you know, propagate your your ideology. And so, we’ve we’ve seen it in history. It’s not that far. And I and what I meant by not that far removed is, these guys are still alive. You know, we’re not talking about 100 of years ago.
Yeah. We’re talking about 1966. Right. So anyway, Ayman Zawahiri, current leader of Al Qaeda. He was definitely the mastermind, I think, in 911.
Bin Laden was, by all means, the leader of Al Qaeda. But as far as the, you know, the real the real brains of Al Qaeda, I think Zawahiri was, was there. He’s the guy that made it happen. Right. Then Bin Laden something about him being more like a figurehead.
He had the contacts, the money. Contacts, money, charisma. Right. Yeah. The face the face of.
Right. Yeah. But Zawahiri’s, now and, you know, the things that are happening today with with Iraq and I thought that was interesting too when, doctor Dibour was talking about Iraq and Al Qaeda today. So the next episode really is when we get into what’s going on today in Iraq with ISIL or ISIS or IS depending on who you ask. Right.
So but, Zawahiri is there at the beginning. One of the things that’s interesting, I just wanna point out something that, Zawahiri said. Let me see if I have this quote here. Yeah. He says, it was after 9:9:11.
You know, he we said something along the lines of, George w Bush was addressing a joint session of congress and said Americans are asking, why do they hate us? And the response that was given let me just pull up the quote so I can get this right, is, they hate what they see right here in this chamber, a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self appointed. They hate our freedoms, our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, and our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. And I think that’s what Jabbour was getting at is that we have this idea that the Muslim world needs democracy and freedom.
Right. That would solve all their problems. Right. And so, I am on Zawahiri and this was actually in response to the headscarf ban in France. Alright.
Okay? Now we’ll get in a different episode. We’re gonna talk about France, but this is just kind of leading into that. When you think of, Zawahiri, he says, about the headscarves and he’s talking about the the West, the reason that that they’re against the West. And he says, the Zionist Crusader West.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah. That’s all of us did, I guess. Right? Yeah.
Loaded terminology. Considers freedom sacred as long as it’s the freedom to steal the wealth of others. Wow. When freedom becomes a means of resisting the West, it becomes terrorism. The burning of villages along with their people in Afghanistan, demolishing houses over their sleeping residents in Palestine, and the killing of children in Iraq and stealing its oil under false pretext, tormenting of prisoners in the cages of Guantanamo.
Let’s see what else here. The right, the United States has granted itself to kill any human being, arrest anyone anywhere, the banning of nuclear weapons everywhere except Israel. All these crimes show the scope and the extent of its savagery and its war against Islam and Muslims. Wow. So that says a lot more than what Bush said.
Right. And, I mean, I think we all knew that there was probably more to it but if we really wanna understand where, you know, the enemy is coming from, you can because their their their message is out there. And Zawahiri has had that message and he’s been around for a while. He’s not a guy that just kinda popped on the scenes. Actually, the the Boston bomber is being, tried.
They’re they’re picking the jury right now. And whenever the the Boston bombings happened, I thought it was interesting because people were saying, where are these guys from? And they’re from from Dagestan. And the question was, nobody has ever really done anything in Dagestan that was, related to terrorism. But guess who was arrested in the late nineties in Dagestan?
Who? Aiman Zawahiri. Oh. And so they’ve been looking for something this whole time. Right?
Since the beginning of the the Muslim brotherhood and the formation of Al Qaeda and the invasion taking over of Iraq, taking over of, or Afghanistan and now Iraq, this Al Qaeda movement has been looking for one thing in particular and this is the reason, and this is next week’s episode, this is the reason why Baghdadi has claimed to be the Islamic caliphate and Bin Laden never did. Interesting. So that’s what we’re gonna hear. Next week? Yep.
That’s awesome. Alright. Well, thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you for all of your, really cool reviews, actually, on iTunes. Yeah.
If you could, and you’re listening to this podcast, you really love it, you know, write a review. It really helps us out. It makes a big difference. And feel free to write us questions, comments. The email address is comments at truth about muslims.com.
Yes, please. And then we’ll try to address, some of those comments, on the show. And if not, maybe just, on the, comment board, especially if there’s a lot. And I think there’s probably gonna be a lot. And just to let you know that Trevor and I aren’t the kind of people that, don’t listen.
We we do wanna hear what you have to say. We do wanna, engage in that and, you know, give it a fair shake. Yeah. And we do realize it’s polarizing content, guys. Trust me.
This isn’t an easy discussion to have. Right. And we think about that a lot. And so I know that even if you don’t agree and still listen, because we have podcast listeners like that, they listen to us, I think they like us, they don’t agree with us, and that’s okay. Then I’m okay with that.
So, I mean, I think that’s that’s a pretty cool thing. Anyway, so, yeah. Comments, write in, and also, write reviews for us. Yep. See you next week.
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Okay. So before we even get into the show, I think we just need to say a word about how, this is one of the harder shows to do because it’s so in the media right now and there’s been 17 people that have lost their life. Real people with souls. Yeah. Yeah.
And so the loss of life is, is real. People have are mourning and, people are pleading with with God or or whoever for answers. And, we just we need to take a minute and recognize that there’s been a huge loss in in France and just make sure that we are praying for France, for the French people, both Muslim, non Muslim. Pray for the church in France that they would find this as an opportunity to show the love of Christ. So before we get into any of this, because the last thing I would wanna do is talk about something that is so polarizing, and anybody get the impression that because we’re trying to understand where Muslims are coming from, that we’re somehow on the side of those that are the extremists because we’re not.
We’re not at all. Right. Yeah. But we do need to talk about the the foundation of what happened and why, from the Muslim perspective, why it happened. And it is important to understand, these guys because I think, ultimately, it’s through understanding that we can, dispel some fears and then also find openings to be able to share our faith.
It was Samuel Zwemer that said a 100 years ago that if we don’t understand the social, prejudices that that Muslims will have, it’ll be a difficulty in us being able to share our faith. So hearing where they’re coming from that would create kind of this, this horrific event, might give us an opportunity to share our faith in Christ. Right. Let’s get back to the show. Once again, Muslim terrorists.
A terrorist attack Islamist extremist. 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. And I know that we said we have a 4 part series, but this episode, we have to just bring a short episode regarding what’s going on in France right now because it’s all over the news and everybody’s wondering what is going on. Can we call this mini podcast? We’re gonna call this a mini podcast. Or a mini cast.
I think that’s actually a thing. No. I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of that. Fine.
It’s a mini cast. Anyway, in the news today, Charlie Hebdo. Yeah. It’s been in the news, for 4 or 5 days here. Right.
And I’ve been following off and on. I think I’ve got it sorted out in my brain. Howard, do you have it sorted out in your brain? No. And do you have it not happened?
Not at all. But No. No. I mean, I’ve read I’ve read the the facts of it. But, you know, like, I don’t know if we’re just interested in the facts.
If we wanted the facts, we could just go to Yahoo or Huffington or whatever. Good point. Good point. So we’re not the facts here. So that’s not the point.
The point is the thoughts behind it, and you have an interesting theory. Well, yeah. I well, yeah. I was You’ve put some thought into this obviously because you you you’ve been dealing with this kind of thinking. Yeah.
Well, I put thought into this back in 2007. Prophetic. I wrote a paper about the banning of the Islamic, hijab in France. Okay. Wait.
Time out. The hijab. Right. The head covering. You’re saying that this has to do with a head covering?
No. I’m saying that’s part of it. Alright. Go ahead. I would never put something of this gravity down to one particular thing.
But, I mean, I think that was kind of the beginning of what we’re seeing today. You’re seeing a connection? Oh, yeah. Okay. I wanna hear it.
Well, I mean, let’s see. 2003 is the, when the headscarf well, actually, the first problems arise in 1989, and it’s now known as the scarf affair. In 1989? Yeah. If you just go and look, look up the scarf affair.
It’s October 3, 1989 when 3 Muslim girls are expelled from middle school for refusing to remove their headscarves. Wow. This is in France. Yeah. Headmaster says, you know, this is a republic.
He’s operating under the principle of what the French call la cite. I don’t know if I said that with a correct French accent. You’re not French. No. No.
But I like to try accents. No. That’s more Spanish. That’s Italian. I have no idea.
Sorry. Just keep going. Alright. So the scarf affair, took place in, like I said, October 3, 1989. Fused to remove their headscarves and the headmaster of the middle school, expelled them, essentially.
Spelled them? Like, they can’t come back? Not suspended? Expelled. Yeah.
Actually, the, there’s been several that have been expelled since then because eventually, this turns into, a big question and it goes to the highest court in France and the court rules on November 27, 19 89 that the wearing, of signs of religious affiliation is not in the con is not in contradiction to the principles of la cite. So they’re allowed to wear their headscarves after that. So the the most Well, that was fast. You said, like, this happened in October and then they they had a ruling in November. Yeah.
Apparently, the French legal system works quicker. Yeah. I’m I’m thinking at least a year. Well, the In America. I think, the Boston bomber alleged Boston bomber, I should say, is on trial now.
They’re picking the jury. And I say alleged now because I have an opinion on the matter. I just say that because in our illegal system, it’s supposed to be innocent till proven guilty. I have no idea. I haven’t read any of the evidence.
So, anyway, yeah. So they decide that you can wear the the headscarf, but then it resurfaces again when the, a new minister of education, comes around and then on September 20, 1994, he says that overt religious symbols should be prohibited in all schools. And that works with everybody. Like, so the Christian guy won’t wear a cross? No.
Oh, man. I’m so glad you mentioned that. He actually said that it was it didn’t apply to, crosses or the Jewish kippah. Mhmm. I don’t know if I said that right either.
Kippah. You’re not Jewish. It’s okay. Yeah. So those are not the religious symbols he was referencing.
And so, specifically, this was, what Muslim immigrants saw or even Muslim French citizens saw as, an attack on Muslims that they couldn’t wear their headscarves again. Well, what about, like, Punjabis or, like, you know, people that wore, like Yeah. The Sikhs were also, told they shouldn’t wear their headscarves. But they have, like, really long hair. Yeah.
I’ve never looked at it from the SEEK perspective so I don’t really know how that worked out but I know there were some SEEK children also that were, pulled out of school basically because it was, and and that was kind of the point I was making in the paper when I wrote it and and I wrote this, 7 years ago. And the reason that I wrote it was I felt like it was a little bit of an injustice on the behalf of a young Muslim girl to be forced to choose between religious devotion Right. And, school. Yeah. You know?
Which shouldn’t be in contradiction. No. No. And I think the part of the point that I was making in that paper, was that if you isolate, that’s not a good idea. Yeah.
So the whole point of it and actually, Howard, it came from a a trip that we had. Do you remember when we went to the, Cherokee reservation? Right. So So we went to the Cherokee reservation, and I remember hearing the, Cherokee chief share his story, you know, hear the Cherokee side of things. Right.
Which was tough. It was. It was a depressing day. It was. And, you know, obviously, looking back in history, it’s like 2020 vision and you can easily say, you know, how did they make those decisions?
The Trail of Tears is such a sad story. Right. You know, Andrew Jackson fighting alongside of the Cherokee against the Creek Indians and then when Andrew Jackson is president issuing, the removal of Indians from Indian lands and then the trail of It was just really hard to hear the Indian, the native American perspective and I remember listening to his perspective and thinking, I have I see something similar happening right now with immigrants in, with a movement towards national identity. And this is all part of the the beginnings of a national identity. This is all post, World War 2, the forming of nation states and then kind of getting everybody to have a national identity except the French have been doing this since the the revolution.
And so the French Right. Idea of a French identity really big to them. Oh, absolutely. It’s big to the world. Right.
That changed the world because it went from having a religious identity where the religious, the spiritual powers, and the temporal powers were 1 and the same and the school systems were run by the church to now French society would be, a secularist society where there would be no it would be utter and complete separation of church and state. If you think that the United States, its views on separation of church and state are fuzzy, French, it’s not. There is no connection with church and state because there was such a, Backlash. A back well, a backlash and it it was what, you know, kinda prompted and was very influential in the French Revolution. So this is very core this is at the very core of French society.
Right. And so, when you have something as important as nationalism to the French, anything that comes against that or they perceive to come against that Yeah. Well, if there’s if there’s something that’s setting yourself apart as other. Right. And this is a key this is a key thing to think about throughout all of history.
If you look at the the formation of western society, if you look at even before, western society, if you just look at societies throughout the history of the world, you will see that the other, the quote unquote they, is always an issue. There’s always a desire to make everyone sort of the same and similar. And when there’s an other, the other oftentimes ends up becoming marginalized, oppressed, persecuted, and this this is kind of a reoccurring theme throughout history. Alright. This week’s sponsors.
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Okay. So so how does all this connect to what’s happening today? Well, eventually, they give the headscarf is banned. In January, 2004. Oh, they overturned it and became banned.
Right. The headscarf ban was passed in legislature in 2004 and it stipulated that in primary and secondary schools, the wearing of signs of religious clothes, through which pupils ostensibly express religious allegiance is forbidden. That’s their their terminology. Wow. So, they walk into schools and they’re all of a sudden non religious.
Right. And so Wow. That’s when that’s when, for Muslim females, anyway, those that do wear the headscarf and I just wanna point this out. Not all Muslim women wear the headscarf. Right.
And some women see the headscarf as an, a sign of oppression and some women see the headscarf as a sign of identity and belonging. Some women wear the headscarf because their parents want them to. Mhmm. Some women wear the headscarf despite their parents’ desire for them not to wear the headscarf. Scarf.
And so, there’s a full gambit here of people wearing the headscarves. Right. But bottom line, the ban, on the headscarf where I thought this might end up becoming problematic is the school system in France, much like the United States, is a place for assimilation. Right. You know what I mean?
Yeah. By that That happens in every school. Right. So what your kids are in what grade? All My my oldest is in 9th grade.
Let’s let’s All the all the way right. All the way to kindergarten. So do do you remember 3rd grade for your kids? Yeah. Actually, yeah.
They remember the state flower. They go to the state house. Mhmm. They learn the state motto. Right.
And every kid in the United States is learning about their state. Like, there is a curriculum that kinda puts us all on the same page. Yeah. You know what I mean? You learn the same things.
You know the same things. Yeah. So French schools aren’t so different. And the reason I brought up I don’t know how I got off of the, the Cherokee, but the one of the saddest parts of that story this all ties together. This all ties together.
Okay. One of the saddest parts of that story I don’t know if you remember this, Howard, but the when the chief was sharing that they set up Cherokee boarding schools. Do you remember him talking about that? There were Cherokee boarding schools. Basically.
What happened? So these Cherokee boarding schools were established and the point of them was that they were forbidden to speak their native language. Oh, yes. Do you remember? Yeah.
They were forbidden to speak their native language. They were forbidden to wear their dress. Their hair was cut. Like, all of the things that made them Cherokee. Right.
Made them different than the national everything that made them Cherokee, that gave them a Cherokee sense of heritage, a Cherokee sense of identity was taken away. Right. But why would they do that? A submission. Right.
Because and I think this is the point. When you look back in history, obviously, it’s clear. And at the time, I’m sure there were people that didn’t think it was a good idea. But in in some sense, it was they were the other, and you can’t have a nation existing within a nation. That was kinda some of the things that were being said politically at the time.
Right. They’re a nation. We can’t have a nation within a nation. We need to assimilate them to be American first, Cherokee second, if at all. Right.
So with with France, they have a similar issue because they have a former, they they colonized Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and, you know, these portions of North Africa which are primarily Muslim and now they have a lot of Muslim immigrants, quite a few actually. I think it’s almost 10% of the population. Right. That’s what I hear. So if you have all of these Muslim immigrants and you want them to have a sense of French identity, then I think by telling them they can’t wear the headscarves, having them choose between religious devotion and French schooling, what ends up happening is some parents will pull their kids out of school, send them, homeschool or maybe even abroad to go to school in an Islamic school and it ends up actually making the problem worse, I think, because then you have an isolationist mentality.
We’ve been marginalized. We’ve been The the thing the thing they’re fighting against actually comes to pass because of the fight. Yeah. I think so. Right.
I think so. I think that’s part of it. I’m not saying that’s everything. I’m not saying this has everything to do with the, the headscarf but it is it’s not a coincidence. In 2004, 2 French journalists were kidnapped in Iraq, by terrorists that demanded that friends that France end the ban on headscarves.
Interesting. In Iraq? In Iraq. So this was seen as a kind of global attack on Islam and that’s what often ends up happening with the fundamentalist. Something can happen and they’ll see it as an attack not on just those Muslims but the entire Muslim community, and then it will become an issue abroad.
Right. And so they responded. Right. And so even Ayman Zawahiri, who’s the current leader of Al Qaeda, he mentions the banning of the hijab in France as being consistent with, you know, he mentions Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo. Wow.
Israel. All these injustices. Right? Exactly. So he sees this as just one more thing.
So you can see this is this problem has been boiling for a long time and, the French, I think, are probably they’re probably sick of it. I mean, they don’t know what to do. We have, you know, a secular government there. I said we. It’s not my government, but they have a secular government.
There’s a commitment to this national unity, a commitment to secularism, and then you have these these immigrants that are rightfully there. I’m sure there’s some that are illegal, but those that are rightfully there that wanna practice their religion and they’re viewing this idea of separation as church and state is that it’s supposed to protect citizens from a force of religion. So, they should be free to practice their own religion, choose their own religion, and not be barred from public education because they have something that is of religious devotion. Yeah. It’s interesting here to notice the the differences in viewpoint.
From the French, it’s like, no. We’re just trying to make everybody unified under, you know, the the French flag, you know, the the France. And and then they’re just like, no. But you’re barring the the way we we live out our faith, and we’re teaching our children to live our faith. That’s interesting.
Yeah. And I think if if, you know, the people that are that were banning the headscarf, they would just hope that there would be no religion at all. So in some sense, the Muslims as immigrants are a threat to fringe identity because fringe identity, the way I see it, is is a secular society. Right. So, you know, that being said, you can see how, there there’s already sort of a context for frustration with some Muslims there.
Right. And these guys that are doing this and and this is horrible. I mean, how many people died? 17, I think is the latest? Yes.
Which is where one of them got their training. Right. And so they’re they’re and you have right there actually is where Anwar Al Aulaqi, the American that was killed by the drone, he was the leader of the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Arabian Peninsula. And then you have another guy saying that he’s doing it in the name of, the Islamic State. He’s a part of ISIS.
And so it’s just another one of those things where you you see all of this happening in the news and you’re trying to make sense of it all. And I think all I could read from from looking at it all is there’s a lot there. There’s a history there with colonialism. There’s, one one news reporter actually called it the the Paris massacre Mhmm. Which is ironic because there is something else called the Paris massacre which was the massacre.
Nobody knows the numbers but it’s suspected up to 202150 was the highest number that I saw of Algerians that were killed in Paris in 1961. From what? What happened? There was a peaceful demonstration, wanting Algerian, autonomy. They wanted their own country.
They wanted the colonial reign to end. They wanted the French out and they were protesting in France and, police opened fire and killed 200 people. They called it the Paris massacre. So this is the largest, I think, attack on French soil since that attack. So there’s a lot connected there.
Yeah. It it it is really interesting that whenever you look at, how a pot can start to boil, if if you are right where this begins with this isolation, you know, mentality where you’re just gonna start to either, bring people into your national identity. If they look like you and act like you, they’re okay. Or you isolate them if they’re not okay. And then there’s this, you know, this backlash that happens, but it takes time and builds.
And and then all of a sudden, you start to see all these connections, especially when you’re thinking about what, Nabil Jabbour said last week about the Muslim mind with wanting justice. Mhmm. You know? And then when they see this enough to where the Muslim community is outraged, you know, enough to you know, for these Iraqi terrorists, I guess, to hide to to kidnap Yeah. Those 4 demanding them to stop the the ban on the headscarves.
It’s really interesting. And and I think to western minds, I can’t I can’t help but think, but it must be just like, hey, but it’s just a it’s just a headscarf. Like, you know, somebody told me I had to take off my cross, my, like, my cross necklace, like, would that be that big of a deal? Would I would I fight over it? Would other Christians in other regions, you know, take up arms?
And, like, it probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but we don’t think the way they’re thinking. No. And there’s a history. Like I said, you have to take it in context with Algeria, with colonialism, with, French secularization. And, I mean, France has a huge problem on their hands now because they they want their society to go a certain direction and they have, I guess you could call it an immigration problem because the immigrants aren’t, you know, legally there and they don’t want it to go in that direction and this is this is something that’s happening in all of Europe.
Right. It just Francis is the is the headliner because of this. Right. But, I mean, Switzerland, banned the building of of mosque. Yeah.
You told me that. That shocked me. Yeah. So this is this is this is a problem in a lot of Muslim countries because you have so many Muslim immigrants coming into Europe and living in Europe and then the big question is how do we assimilate them into society so that they feel apart, that they feel like they can succeed If there’s an isolationist, you know, agenda or a, you know, let’s marginalize the the immigrants, It’s gonna be a cauldron for, more more radicals. Right.
I don’t know what the solution is, and I’m not saying that that that they’re doing it all wrong. I’m just saying that this is the Muslim perspective. So the show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And this week’s sponsors are Zwammer Center. Zwammer Center.
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Very nice. The Zweimer Center equips the church to reach Muslims. The Swimmer Center has been educating people about reaching Muslims before it was cool. You know, something that I also found really interesting is that, you remember we talked a couple of podcasts ago about the I’ll hashtag I’ll ride with you in Australia and the response that was totally not Islamophobic. And, and and yet here in France, and I know obviously the circumstances are much different, but there was these attacks on, things Muslim.
Like, for instance, there was 2 dummy grenades thrown into a mosque. I thought that was really interesting. I wonder if there was a connection with, maybe, like, this nonviolent terrorist kinda act. Another one was a prayer room. Somebody came in and shot twice.
Didn’t hit anybody. Mhmm. Like, he shot up in the ceiling up into the ceiling. And then with a dummy grenade. And then somebody spray painted, you know, Arabs go home or something like that or no Arabs, no more Arabs or I can’t remember exactly what the wording was.
But it was nonviolent in the sense that, you know, they weren’t, setting fire shooting or what. But, you know, in Germany, of course, there was that fire, in that other newspaper that had reprinted some of, Charlie Hebdo’s, the comics Uh-huh. Dunes. But anyway, so it was interesting to see kind of the different the different national responses and how much tension there probably is already. I don’t know what the political situation or the Islamic situation with, Australia is, but I wonder if that has to do with, how much boiling has been happening, you know, per se.
You know, the boiling of of people’s discontent on both sides. Right. No. I think that’s why we, you know, the show is called Truth About Muslims, meaning we wanna just say what we see, you know, the media what the media is saying, the parts that are true, and then also what media is not saying that’s also true and I think it’s important to recognize, I haven’t seen a lot of media reports about this, but during the march, you know, there was 3,000,000 people that marched including a lot of Muslims that were marching, you know, saying that they don’t want this either. They wanna live in a society at peace, but they also wanna retain some religious identity and they don’t see the 2 as incompatible.
So this idea is Islam and democracy, are they compatible? This has been a debate that’s been going on for a while. Right. It’s not gonna get settled anytime soon. I wanna say 2 2 other things.
1, the, there was a a police officer that was killed that was assigned to Charlie Hebdo to protect the, the employees. He was killed in the process and, you know, it’s kinda interesting because people are making comments and I even saw one of the, someone that wrote in was asking, well, where are the moderates? Why don’t they ever stand up? Why don’t they ever say anything against the radicals? But this guy was Muslim and so he was there.
He was defending, a newspaper that really was ridiculing his faith, you know, by, you know, the cartoons with Mohammed. But he was still there to protect free speech as a Muslim and he died and he lost his life. The other one was a a Muslim and I saw this in an Israeli newspaper which I was really pleased about. The the there was a kosher grocery store, of course, where people were murdered as well. Right.
But one of the heroes of that was a Muslim, guy that was working at the store who took people down into the freezer, got them into the freezer, shut the freezer, and then eventually, I believe the story said he he kinda told them, wait here. I’m going out to see if it’s safe. And, I mean, he’s a hero. Yeah. And he’s a Muslim guy.
And he worked at a at a kosher grocery grocery store. So I think that’s the the bottom line is that we do have to figure out, in my opinion, especially after talking with Nabil Jabbar, I can see how one area that we have to work on is empowering those that are Muslim that also see themselves as being at peace with society. Right. Telling their story too. Yeah.
And over and over, we just find that it is really a lot more complicated than it seems. Yeah. And and I was just kinda cracking up before the show started. You said that your next door neighbor, he’s what, 17, 16, 7 year old? Yeah.
He’s, 6, 17 years old. And then you asked him, like, so what did he say? Oh, man. I said, hey, did you hear about what what happened in France? Is anybody giving you a hard time at school?
He’s a Muslim kid. Yeah. I’m I’m kinda just looking out for him, you know, because I was kinda concerned for him, backlash even at his own school. And he said, no, not really. And I said, oh, okay.
I’m surprised. I guess, I just assumed kids would have asked him and he goes, well, you know, actually now that I think about it, some kids were like, hey, man, why are why are, why did Muslims do this stuff in France? And he said, I just kinda looked at him and he said, I don’t know who these people are. Why are you asking me? It’s classic 17 year old example.
Right. I speak for these people. Yeah. Right? Like, what what are you doing, man?
Why are you asking me? I did. Yeah. Anyway, to leave you with this, the French prime minister in his speech when he was talking about this, it was interesting to hear his perspective. He says that we’re at war but not at a war against religion, not against a civilization, but war to defend our values which are universal.
And then he said, it’s a war against terrorism and radical Islam against everything aimed at breaking solidarity, liberty, and fraternity fraternity. Then he says, our compatriots, and citizens who are Muslim by confession and culture are also the victims of terrorism. This is perhaps the most important message, the refusal of this confusion. Jihadism tries to create that confusion. So it it was really kind of interesting how he kinda brings it around saying, you know what?
Remember that it’s not, you know, our our Muslim citizens per se. You know, trying to bring back that unity, but then making Jihadism the enemy, Which is obviously smart on his part, but, do they buy it? I guess is the question because it really it really comes down to how do they live every day? How do people treat them really every day? How how are the laws formed that, allow for their, you know, their civilization or their their living, their communities?
Yeah. I think this is a bigger problem for Europe than it is for the United States. I think, you know, we see it in Germany with the chancellor talking about the failure of multiculturalism. We’ve seen it in the UK with the prime minister talking about multiculturalism. And the kind of the word of the day in Europe right now is our attempts at multiculturalism are failing.
And so, I don’t know what that means for the Muslim community in Europe. I don’t know what that means for the European non Muslim community in Europe other than it’s going to be a long bumpy road moving forward. Right. But the neat thing is that we do get the chance to learn from each other because we can see it. We can see what people are trying and what people are doing.
Maybe that’ll make it faster. Yeah. And let’s hope that the that the church sees an opportunity here to respond in love and provide an alternative solution than either secularism or radical Islam. Maybe there’s another way. Maybe maybe the church, could see this as an opportunity to really display the love of Christ to both, the French and the Muslims and everyone.
Right. So that’s it for the mini cast. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a mini cast.
Pray pray for France. Pray for French leadership. Pray for the Muslims. Pray for the non Muslims. Just pray for France.
I mean, they’re suffering right now in France. Right. And we wanna hear what you guys think about it. Again, comments at truthaboutmuslims.com, and, please write reviews and listen and tell your friends and, all that good stuff. It really helps a lot.
Thank you for listening.