Questions for God: What Does God Think of Muslim Terrorism?
Matthew 5:43-48
March 20, 2011
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
As Connie mentioned last week, we are doing a fun, but challenging sermon series during Lent, which is “Questions for God.” Between January and Ash Wednesday, we collected over twenty questions that our members would like to ask of God. The questions were challenging, some unexpected, and all very good. Our question for this morning, “What does God think of Muslim terrorism” was one of those questions.
As I try to share what I think is God’s answer to this question, I want to start with a question of my own: Do you remember where you were on 9/11? If you were old enough to understand what was taking place on 9/11, you remember. I had a profound experience on 9/11 because of how I experienced God in the aftermath.
When the events of 9/11 began, I heard about them through our church secretary, Michelle. I was in my old office, which is now the prayer room and library of the church. She came down to my office and told me that a plane had just crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings. Fifteen minutes later, she told me that another had crashed into the other building. At that point we realized that something terrible was going on. Fifteen minutes later she told me that another plane had crashed into the Pentagon. All of us at the church at the time were stunned and confused.
Later that morning I went home for lunch, where our sitter was taking care of our two year-old daughters. As I sat at my kitchen table, I kept an eye on CNN on the television in our family room as it replayed the events of the morning. I was crushed by the trauma, and by the thought of all those people dying. But as I sat, I also looked outside my kitchen window, which overlooked the Zelienople airport in the valley below. Do you remember how clear and beautiful that day was? The day was stunningly crisp and clear. As I looked out the window, a flock of geese flew by. I was struck by the fact that the geese didn’t seem to know or care about the World Trade Center buildings being destroyed. In fact, the whole world outside my window was still at peace. It didn’t know to be scared, upset, and confused. I kept looking back-and-forth between the two scenes. And in the disparity of the two I sensed God’s guidance. It was as though God was saying to me, “This all looks terrible. And it is awful. But I am still in control of everything, and my will and peace will outlast all of this. Be still and know that I am God.” Since then I’ve realized that the terrorists were not doing God’s will, and that God’s will would work everything out.
A lot of things changed on 9/11, but nothing more than in how we looked at Muslims and the Islamic faith. Prior to 9/11 we generally looked at Islam as another religion rather than as an evil religion. Most people were pretty ignorant of the Muslim faith. If they thought at all, they may have thought that it was a religion much like Christianity. Or they thought that it was another religion, but inferior to Christianity. Some, thinking about the Intefada in Palestine, or Hamas, might have linked Islam with violence, but that certainly wasn’t the dominant opinion. Whatever they thought, most people never thought that the religion itself would spawn terrorists—at least not like this.
Today, many people argue over just how evil Islam is. I’ve heard so many pundits and pretend prophets proclaim Islam to be an evil religion that teaches its adherents to become terrorists or to support terrorism. This change has been kind of shocking to me because of my past experiences with Islam.
Back in 1994, when I was working on my Ph.D. dissertation, I studied Islam,… a lot. In our dissertations we were supposed to study our topic not only through the lens of Christianity, but also through two other lenses: social sciences and what was called a “non-adhered to religion”—a faith other than our own. I chose Islam. I spent a year reading whatever I could on Islam, and learned a lot about it. What I read was not books on a violent, terrorism-generating faith, but a religion of peace that called its adherents to a personal, communal, and societal struggle for God’s will, justice, and peace. I’ve had a hard time reconciling what I studied with what so many were saying, post-9/11.
After 9/11 I wondered if I had made a mistake. I read more on Islam, and did some work to engage with Muslims. You may remember that in 2003 we invited Farooq Hussaini, the president of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, to talk with our members. I had originally met him when he spoke at the dedication of the Jewell in the Woods chapel at the Woodlands Foundation. When he came and spoke, it was clear that he was a gentle man of faith, and he clearly said that what the terrorists did went against Islam. Interestingly enough, a year later, when everyone was asking why moderate Muslims weren’t speaking out against Muslim terrorism, he wrote a long letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette condemning terrorism, which was placed in the back of the paper.
This past fall, we took members of Calvin Presbyterian Church and our presbytery to the Islamic Center to visit them. It was clear from our visit that these were not terrorists in the making. They were very happy to have us there, and many of the members sat with us during the talk, and were smiling because of this Muslim/Christian dialogue. Actually, that visit cemented my belief that Islam doesn’t sponsor terrorism. Setting up the visit was a bit comical. I had called them in August to set up our visit and left a message on their voice machine. After no one called me back three weeks later, I called again. The next day I got a call from the Imam, and we set up the visit for a Thursday in September. Two hours later I got a call from the same Imam, saying to me that he picked up a message that I wanted to bring a group to visit the Islamic Center. I told him, “Yeah,… I just spoke with you two hours ago.” He said, “You did? Remind me who you are again.”
When we showed up for the visit, it was obvious that they had forgotten about us visiting. They had to scramble to get chairs for us so that we could sit and observe their evening prayers. My conclusion: if these people were terrorists, we have no fear, because they can’t even organize a visit, let alone a terrorist plot.
Since 9/11 I’ve done more reading about Islam, and what I’ve concluded is that the problem is not Muslims, but fundamentalism of every stripe, whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or even what I would call political or constitutional fundamentalism. Fundamentalism creates ideologies that lead people to violent acts, whether they are physical, social, or psychological violence. But more on that later. My conclusion is that what I originally thought of Islam is the same as it was back in 1994—it is mainly a religion of peace.
The problem is that people of violence can hijack even religions of peace, and it happens not only in Islam, but in every faith, including Christianity. Look at Christian history. We have a history of violence, despite the fact that our tradition and the gospels teach non-violence. Look at what our passage says about how we are to treat our enemies: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven…” How do you turn this into some of the stuff Christians have done. For example, the Crusades of the 11th century were incredibly violent. Most people don’t realize that in the first Crusade the Christians never even made it to the Holy Lands, so they attacked the Christian city of Constantinople instead. Over time Christians took control of the Holy Lands and were much more brutal towards the Muslims and Jews than the Muslims had ever been to the Christians and Jews. We also have the Catholic Church inquisitions of the 16th through 17th centuries, which used violent torture against anyone suspected of being heretics. You had violence of the Roman Catholic Church against Protestants, and in England’s case, violence of Protestants against Catholics and vice versa. You had harshness and violence in some of the American colonies against non-Puritans or non-Anglicans. Only the colonies of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island enforced tolerance. Even in the last century you had the rise of Christian terroristic violence by white supremacist groups against African Americans and those of other ethnicities. And today you have fundamentalists like the Rev. Fred Phelps (who, ironically has been accused of abuse by his own adult son) and the Westboro Baptist Church, which protests at the funerals of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, committing psychological terrorism against grieving families.
Islam does have one major difference with Christianity that allows terrorism to find a home in it easier than in Christianity, and this difference allows fundamentalist adherents (make no mistake, the terrorists are fundamentalists) to abuse the religion. While Christianity teaches turning the other cheek, loving enemies, and treating our persecutors well, Islam, like Judaism, does teach “ an eye for an eye,” if it is in self-defense or defense of someone innocent. Another problem, seemingly is the idea of jihad, although the term has been hijacked by Muslim fundamentalists. If you were to define the word “jihad,” what would you say it means? Most of us would say “holy war.” And you would be wrong. Only the fundamentalists interpret is at “holy war,” and it’s an interpretation that has really only existed for the past 50 years of Islam’s 1400 year history.
The term, jihad, is a term that literally means “struggle.” For 1350 years, Muslims understood that struggle to be a personal, familial, communal, and societal struggle to do God’s will in all of life, a struggle to bring peace and justice for the poor to all areas of life. It wasn’t until 1951 that the definition changed among many Muslims. A Pakistani journalist and politician named Abul Ala Mawdudi, believing that the West was looking to crush Islam, promoted jihad as an armed struggle against oppression. He was heavily influenced by Marxist thought that had spread throughout the world during the 20th century. His writings were picked up by an Egyptian named Sayyid Qutb, who became influential in the Muslim Brotherhood, which many of us have heard about in connection with the democracy movement in Egypt. Qutb embraced the idea of jihad as “holy war,” which led the Muslim Brotherhood to eventually attempt to assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian dictator, and to eventually assassinate Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat. The vast majority of Muslims don’t believe that jihad means holy war. But, Osama bin Laden spent time in Eqypt studying with the Muslim Brotherhood, although now he has nothing but contempt for them because in the past twenty years they’ve changed and now condemn violence while promoting a democratic vision for Egypt.
So, what does God think of Muslim terrorism? God doesn’t have so much a belief about Muslim terrorism as God has a belief about terrorism in general. It is clear from our passage, and from a Christian perspective, that God is against terrorism of any kind. It goes completely against what God intends for the world. Jesus is the one who shows us what God intends. Look at his teachings. Our passage shows us. The Golden Rule shows us. The Great Command to love God with all our body, mind, heart, and soul, and others as ourselves shows it. And Jesus’ life demonstrates God’s intention. Jesus was terrorized. He was arrested as an innocent, falsely imprisoned, tortured, and crucified. Instead of calling for holy war, he said, “Father, forgive them for the do not know what they are doing.” And our belief in the resurrection shows God’s intention, which is to respond to human violence not only with peace, but with grace.
Even in Islam terrorism is against God’s will. Islam teaches that we can only wage war in self-defense, and that even in waging war or protecting ourselves, no violence can be done against the innocent. The terrorists warp this idea to say that anyone who lives in America, because it is a democracy, is no longer innocent. That’s an abuse of the Muslim faith. Also, since it’s beginning, Islam has taught a tolerance of other faiths, teaching that all other faiths are from God. They believe that their religion is the preeminent faith, but that all faiths are an attempt to live under God’s will, and so should be respected. Just as we’ve learned about Christians, that doesn’t stop some Muslim countries and governments from abusing the faith and attacking those of other faiths. But in Islam’s history, it has a better history of tolerance than Christianity does. Christian tolerance is a relatively new phenomenon of the last 100 years.
The real problem of terrorism—whether Islamic, Christian, IRA, Falun Gong, White Supremicist, Black Panther, communism, or even American constitutional terrorism—is that it devalues people while valuing only ideals. I believe the problem of terrorism is part of a bigger problem of fundamentalism in every religion. Every terrorist is a fundamentalist who cares more about their ideals than about the people their ideals are supposedly for. And this kind of fundamentalist, reductionistic thought is what promotes falseness. Let me give you an example of this kind of falseness. Back on December 6th of 2010, Glenn Beck said about Islam and terrorism that estimates of how many Muslim terrorists promoted in the media is wrong. He said that the media says that only about 1% of all Muslims are terrorists, but that the real number is 10% of Muslims are also terrorists. He then lamented that the media won’t tell the public this truth.
Doing the math on about Beck’s claims tells you how silly they are. You can Google my math if you like. There are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims in the world (compared to about 2.2 billion Christians). If 10% of them are terrorists, that means that there are 160 Muslim terrorists in the world. Now, if you took all of the armies in the world, it adds up to only 73 million soldiers. If Beck is right, then the number of Muslim terrorists in the world is more than double all the militaries in the world. That’s preposterous, but it doesn’t stop him from falsely teaching about the connection between Islam and terrorism. In fact, even if the number is 1.6 million terrorists, that means that there are more terrorists than are presently soldiers in the U.S. military, if you include reservists. At present, there are approximately 1,136,000 members of the U.S. military. The point? There is so much misconception about Islam and it’s connection to terrorism, it hides the fact that even in Islam terrorism goes against the teachings of the Quran.
To me, here’s the reality. God’s not only against terrorism, but you can see God’s response to terrorism—especially Muslim fundamentalist terrorism—in the Middle East. The democracy movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Iran, Bahrain, and more is how God is working. The thing you have to realize about the way God works is that God doesn’t combat terrorism like we do, with military power. God combats terrorism with time, patience, and compassion. And make no mistake, God is at work. You can see this in the fact that terrorism doesn’t work. You would have a hard time finding successful examples of terrorism of any kind actually successfully bringing about lasting, positive national change. It hasn’t worked in Northern Ireland, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, of even in America. God is at work, and God is working to overcome terrorism of every kind.
You know, back in 1976 I had a revelation in a high school class. It was on a warm spring day when our teachers took our class outside. We were sitting in the grass, having a discussion of the age our world was in, and what we thought the coming age would be. A lot of my classmates promoted that we were entering an age of peace, unity, etc… I had a moment of prophetic clarity. It doesn’t often, but occasionally I do get glimpses. When it was my turn, I said that we were going to enter into an age of terrorism. I remember this event so much because of how quickly my classmates dismissed what I said. I guess ego sharpens memory, and their dismissal bruised my ego. I look at the past three decades and I think I was right to some extent.
But I’m also having a bit of a prophetic vision now, and I see us as entering a new, post-terroristic age. I believe that we are seeing the beginnings of the death of terrorism. Make no mistake, acts of terrorism will always be around, but I see global terrorism diminishing as a force. Why? Because God is at work to overcome this violence. We just have to trust.
Amen.
