Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. Phil Parshall; Why Muslims are Angry:
Yes. And, Trevor, you travel all over the the US and you teach, in churches primarily, right, with the Zwemer Center? So tell us a couple stories about that, and we’ve been talking about some of their interesting theme. So go ahead. Well, in 2010, Time Magazine’s, cover article, was Islamophobia in America, and that kinda prompted my thinking with Islamophobia in America, I can see, but what about Islamophobia in the church?
And so I wrote an article that just said Islamophobia in the church with a question mark. Not making the case that it was there, I just was really curious how the church felt about it. Alright. So since then I’ve, spoke in several churches, and I’ve kind of come to a conclusion regarding this. Pray tell.
Well, a lot of times, there’s, an overwhelming sense of fear of Muslims. And, they there’s a hard time, what I’ve noticed, is for a lot of Christians to separate Islam and Muslim, and so they think, and oftentimes they may not even know. Some Christians would say, you know, all Muslims are this or Islam teaches this and they’re kind of just becoming almost like, repeating kind of parroting what they see in the media. Okay. You said fear.
What do you mean fear? Like, they’re fear afraid for their life? Okay. So, yeah. No.
That’s true. Actually, there’s one particular story. So I got a call, from a a church. I won’t say the denomination or location, but this particular church, said we had a a Muslim come into our service last week, and we have some questions. Personally, I was excited thinking, yeah.
Alright. Muslim came in the church. Let’s reach him. There you go. And, I said, so tell me exactly what happened.
They said, well, this Muslim, he came into our church, clearly from the Middle East. Now I have no idea how they knew he was clearly from the Middle East. Right. But I’ll give it to him. Clearly from the Middle East.
Right. Because all Muslims are from the Middle East. Right. Not really. Anyway, clearly from the Middle East.
And, as as this was the pastor, he said, as I finished preaching the sermon, the man, he he stood to his feet and he walked to the front and he confronted me. What do you mean? He he began to question, points of the sermon, ask him specific points about Jesus. Like, when he was angry? I couldn’t really figure out.
I was asking him, did he seem upset? Upset? And he said, no. He wasn’t upset, but he was very direct. So he was just basically asking questions?
Exactly. Okay. And, I said, so what what happened? And how did you answer his questions? He said, I really couldn’t.
I was so afraid. And I was like, well, what were you afraid of? And he said, well, he had his hands in in his pockets. You see? Kind of, I’m assuming he was wearing a sort of maybe a Shahwar kameez or something like a robe.
He had his hands in his front pockets and he said he wouldn’t take his hands out of his pockets. And, all I could think was, I need to get everybody out of here quickly as I can. Quickly as I can. My deacon, who was over to the right, was watching. You know, I’m thinking he I picture him having a hand kind of twitching with his concealed weapon.
Woo. Yeah. Seriously. Like, say when? But this is this is true.
And he says, and, he was concerned for my safety. And so, I kept talking to him and I told him, you know, we just needed to leave. We need to get out of the church because his number one concern was the safety of his Flock? Yes. The safety of his people.
Now, I don’t know where he got this scripturally speaking. It’s that theology that says the safest place to be is where? God’s will. In the center of God’s will. Someone should have told Paul.
Alright? Paul would have He did not get that memo. You know, how many times beaten with rods? Right. Yeah.
That’d go through that list. Yeah. All things, momentary, light affliction. But anyway, you know, I kinda I understood where he was coming from. I I get that.
You know, you you do you watch the media. There is a certain level of of fear factor. Right. And, I see And a lot of churches now are getting security. Yes.
And there have been, shootings in churches, not by Muslims, but, Like crazy people. Like crazy people. Mhmm. And there have been a few shootings at mosque, strangely enough, by also crazy people, but, not Muslims again. But, anyway, so I get where he’s coming from and so I said, so, how can I help?
He said, it would be really helpful if you would, arrange something to speak to our whole denomination about what to do if a Muslim comes into your church. Mhmm. I said, that’s a fantastic idea. Right. It’s compelling.
Yeah. And I’m thinking, way to go, man. You know, drop the ball on the first one. You were a little bit afraid, but you did the right thing. Yeah.
You recognized that you were operating out of this fear. Right. Let’s reach these Muslims. There you go. So he says, what should we do?
And, I said, well, let’s do it. Let’s let’s call together. Denominational meeting. We’ll meet at the sort of headquarters place and, get as many pastors to come as you can. He said, what should I title?
And I said, title it exactly that. What should you do when a Muslim comes into your church? Wait. So how many pastors showed up? Let’s see.
More than a dozen, less than 20. Right. But a good good good number for a denominational. Right. Just it’s from this denomination of the city.
Right. From the city that they were in. Right. So that particular group, more than a dozen, less than 20, they’re sitting in a room, nice room. So I get, my mentor at the time, doctor Warren Larson, and I say, Warren, here’s the opportunity, man.
We’ve got all these pastors. They’re excited. They wanna know what do we do when a Muslim comes into our church. Can you participate with me on this? He said, sure.
What do you want me to teach on? I said, you teach on, basic beliefs and practices and then diversity within Islam. I’ll teach I’ll teach on practical evangelism, how to start a conversation about Jesus, particularly working within the context of Muslim belief systems. And then, we even brought a Muslim background believer, a girl that was a convert, that she was gonna share her testimony. So, I’m like, man, we got this dynamic presentation.
We’ve got all these pastors. Here’s an opportunity to do something great. And, Yeah. It was not what I was anticipating. What happened?
We, it’s not What happened? I have mixed emotions. Like, it’s funny, but it’s not funny at all. It’s really quite strange. It’s tragic.
Yeah. We, we went in and doctor Larson gave his presentation. And then, I came up. I gave, my presentation about practical evangelism. And, then the young girl who was a convert from Islam shared her testimony.
You know, doctor Larson and I are both over on the side, you know, tears in her eyes hearing her Right. Beautiful. Amazing testimony and then, oh, man. I was really surprised because as I was anticipating that everybody was gonna have the similar response of, like, motivation to reach out and love Muslims and have a lot of questions. Yeah.
Not not the case. There was a little bit of a confused look, and somebody with the first comment question said, this really isn’t what I thought it was gonna be. And, which prompted us to kind of say, well, what were you anticipating? Yeah. Like, I’m kidding.
They said, well, really, we were under the impression that this was gonna be more of a security protocol. What we should do if a Muslim comes into our church? How should we be able to get them out as quickly as possible, separate them from the congregation in case there’s the potential of some sort of violence? We should, you know, train teams how to get them out of the church. But why would they ask the Zwemer Center to do that?
That was the bizarre thing. I’m not really sure, and that’s what, Warren said. You know, we’re we’re not security experts. We actually want Muslims to come into church, and, we’re the What’s up, Chad? We’re probably the worst people to ask.
Terrible. Because our suggestion would be take them to your home, have dinner them, and share the love of Jesus. Befriend them. Yeah. So it was a really Ouch.
Disheartening moment. It was probably my first year. Yeah. My first year working with the Zweimer Center. And I remember on the ride home asking Warren, like, is it always like this?
And, unfortunately, the church and say, yes, the church is Islamophobic. It’s not. It’s not. There are some within the church that most certainly are. Right.
So, I mean, we know that it’s widespread, but it’s not all negative. There are some happy endings. There are some happy stories. There are some churches that have responded more positively. So I don’t wanna give this, you know Infuse infuse this with happiness, please.
Yeah. It’s not so bleak. One one other particular story. I was asking a church in a city that was next to a university if they would, consider using their, youth, their college group and their space to be able to reach out to the Muslim Student Association at that particular university. Right.
Great strategy. Yeah. So I said, we’ll we’ll come in. We’ll do some training seminars. We’ll give you some strategies on how to, create good friendships and be able to live a life that would be meaningful, and display the gospel to the Muslim, student population at that particular university.
Makes sense. And the pastor, I kid you not, looks across at me and he says, Yeah. I I don’t think we’re gonna do that. And I said, well, any, you know, if it’s about money, like, this is free, if it’s by any He stopped me and he said, honestly, I just don’t like Muslims. Wow.
And I I paused for a second. Appreciate your honesty right there. Appreciate your honesty. Well, I was waiting for, like, a crack of a smile, like, thinking he’s making a joke. Yeah.
But he said waiting for a long time. So I said, do tell. Do tell. There’s a story there. Yeah.
And it wasn’t about the media. It was about a negative experience he had had, within the mission agency that he had formerly worked for. He was a missionary previously. Not to Muslims, but in a in an area where there were other Muslims. And he had a negative experience and in his heart he had just developed a sort of hardness towards the Muslim world and I’m you know, I get it I get where he’s coming from and I say Like what you said all the resources were that were supposed to be going to the people he was trying to reach or instead going to Right.
Yeah. There was kind of a reshifting and putting more emphasis on reaching the Muslims in the country rather than the group he was trying to reach, and there was sort of a little bit of a deep seated bitterness there from that. And so More emotional basis, not necessarily logical. Yeah. And it and it wasn’t a based on what he’d seen the media, I’m sure that had some effect, but it was really something that had happened a long time ago.
And I said, alright. Tell you what. How about I give you this little booklet that that YWAM Publishing puts out called 30 days of prayer. I think it’s 30 days of prayer dot net. And, it’s about praying for Muslims through the month of Ramadan.
And, why don’t you just pray for for Muslims and at the end of the 30 days I’ll come back and having prayed for Muslims for 30 straight days, if you still feel in your heart like you just don’t like Muslims, then, you know, it’s not on you. You know you’ve asked the Lord to remove this this bitterness and you’ve asked the Lord to intervene. He didn’t and I will stop asking you. But, at least, let’s pursue some prayer before we just write off the whole Muslim outreach thing because they had such a strategic location. I really felt like it would be a good thing.
And so here we go. Hold on right there. I just want to say that I’m so impressed with your response. Right? In my mind, all of these things are going to you’re you’re a missionary.
You were a how dare you? Of all the people, but you’re like, hey, let’s make a deal. No. I’ve gotten used to it. I’m so impressed.
No. The very first time that I had this sort of experience, I I went home. I actually left work early. Yeah. Yeah.
I told I’d be taking my boss. I told my boss. I’m going home. And he said, what’s wrong? I said, I don’t know how to handle this.
I’m so disheartened. I’m so frustrated. I’m disappointed. I had so many emotions. I felt like, you know, I was being rejected.
The Muslims were being rejected. Jesus was being rejected. Right. Everything was Which is true. Yeah.
That’s all true. But now I’ve kind of gotten to the point where it’s like none of that’s helpful. And so I just try to help the person realize that, despite maybe some of their experiences and some of their own, influences that they still can come overcome and still love. Right. Baby steps.
Baby steps. Baby steps. So I said, let, you know, pray 30 days. And, I know that’s a lot, but on day 3, he calls me. This is this is a mission ex missionary pastor.
Right? So he he can he can pray. He can pray. Yeah. He can pray.
30 days. That’s no big deal. Okay. So day 3, he calls me and he says, I need you to come down, to the church and, I would like to talk with you about something that’s happened. So I’m, you know, kind of curious.
I have no idea what he’s gonna say. Right. Getting goose goose pimples. I’m I’m done praying is what I’m thinking in my mind, honestly. This could be good or bad.
And so I go and I say, so what’s going on? And he said, you know, after you left, I gave it some thought and, you know I’m a man of my word, so I began to pray and I prayed for the Muslim world on day 1 and day 2 and day 3 my computer breaks and, that was a Friday and he needed his computer so that he could work on his sermon and have his sermon for church on Sunday. So, he took it to the local computer repair shop. He said, while he was at the computer repair shop, he asked the guy at the at the front, sermon on Sunday. And the man says, absolutely.
You’re gonna go straight to the front, you know, pull out the pastor card. And so straight to the front This this is the south. Right? That’s right. This is happening in the south.
So, you know, okay. Yeah. Pastor card gets you things down here. Yeah. Sweet tea.
You get extra sweet tea. Anyway, pulls the pastor card, front of the line. Guy says, I’ll have it back to you tonight. And he says wonderful. And so he tells him come back, we close at 6.
Just come right back at the end of the day, and I’ll have it for you. So he goes home, you know, does this thing comes back at at 6 o’clock, gets back at 6 o’clock and there’s the guy with his family and tea and food and you know what’s coming. You know what’s coming. Right? What?
I’m on the edge of my seat. He says he says, what what’s going on? And he says, well, I I told my wife that that you were a pastor and she wanted to meet you and my children of course wanted to be here and we wanted to just give you food and show hospitality and just, you know, you study the holy books and this is such a good thing and what an honor and privilege and please there’s no charge. I’ve done it for, you know, fix your computer for free. And he said this man was just oozing kindness.
And he says, wow, this is so great. Thank you so much. You guys are so kind, you know, and he starting to have a, you know, little snack and some tea. And he thinks in his head, where where are you guys from? Yeah.
He’s trying to be clear. Clearly, not American. Right? Right. Because Americans don’t do that.
Yeah. Where are you guys from? FedEx store. And, the man says, oh, we’re from Iraq. And he goes, I didn’t know that are you you’re Christian?
Oh, no. We’re Muslim. And he at that moment, it all kind of clicked. You have those moments where you’re like The holy spirit is doing something. Uh-huh.
And I’m getting messed with. Yeah. So I love those times. Yeah. I love it better when it happens to other people.
Yeah. Seriously. Whenever the holy spirit speaks so clearly to your heart, you’re just like, yes. Okay. I’ve been wrong.
Sorry. So anyway, he calls and he, you know, he tells me the story and I’m just like, yes, this is like the greatest story ever. And I said, so we’re good. He’s like, yeah, we need to move forward. We need to go for it.
And it was it was really an amazing story. So, there are there are positives out there that happen. There are not all negative stories. I don’t wanna paint this bleak picture. There are Christians out there that are loving the Muslim world and one in particular that I like is Phil Parcel.
Right. Phil Parcel’s got an amazing message that he delivered a lecture that he gives at Columbia International University. Without further ado, here it is. Okay. Why Muslims are angry?
I’ve actually been asked to give this lecture. I always give it, when I teach, wherever. This is, I think, an important part of our Christian, commitment to kind of understand where Muslims are coming from. So I pick out these few verses. Okay?
Starting at verse 43. You’ve heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Well, that’s easy enough to do. And I think some of us are falling into that trap now because the enemy obviously is Islam. They’re threatening.
They’re active. They’re doing dastardly acts. Of course, they’re our enemy. So we love our little holy click and we hate those who are on the outside known as enemies, known as terrorist Muslims. But I tell you, love your enemies.
Now we’re going counterintuitive. This is not the way we would normally move at this point. How can we love these people who are doing such terrible things and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your father in heaven. There’s even a, like, a qualification there. You’re to be sons of the father, you gotta love some people.
And you gotta love some people that may not be very attractive and may not be the people that you wanna embrace. So if you demonize Islam and Muslim first of all, if you demonize Islam to a great extent, naturally, you’re gonna fall into the trap of demonizing those who follow that terrible system. And then if you demonize them, I’ve never met anybody that wants to hug a demon. Right? One of Satan’s representatives.
You wanna be away from them. Flee from them. Fight them. And this is natural reaction. And this is what’s going on in America and around the world today.
It’s it’s really heavy stuff that’s out there, and I understand that. Who wants these bombs that are going off and that could’ve taken down a couple passenger jets if they have been successful, all the things that are going on. Now what I’m gonna try to do in very few minutes here is take you on a journey of why Muslims are doing some of these dastardly acts. And this the the goal of this is not for you to accept what they are doing today. That is not the goal of this time together.
What the goal is to say, first of all, that not all Muslims are doing those acts. And secondly and and probably most importantly for this presentation, I want you to see what is driving the machine. For the Muslims who would not themselves be involved in a terrorist act, but they themselves are thinking, the giant is falling, it’s good for this giant to fall a bit and to be humbled. Though they themselves would not engage in the actual act. So what’s behind all this?
Let’s move forward and, take a look at some of the issues that we can see here with the historical timeline. Let’s start with the death of Muhammad in 632 AD, and most of us have not really gotten into this issue of, wow, why didn’t Islam just finish off at that point? It should’ve. I mean, God’s in control. God’s sovereign.
God would have known that this whole false system is going to come up and draw people away from himself, at which it is done, And I myself have pondered the question more than probably you have because I’ve had 44 years in Asia working among Muslims. And I’ve said, god, why didn’t you just take care of this at the start? Okay. So we live with reality, not ideals. Right?
And we don’t try to penetrate beyond a certain level the mind of God, the acts of God, the the deeds and decrees of God. So we’re stuck with what we got. Right? So the death of Muhammad in 632, and at that point, they’re just a bunch of guys on camels in in the Arabian Peninsula and the prophet is dead. And they gather around the prophet’s body and they’re weeping.
The prophet is gone. The prophet is gone. Let’s all go back to our tribes and our homes. It’s all over, folks. And then one of the early guys stood up and said, if Muhammad is your god, then take off.
But if God is God, then let us worship the God of Muhammad, not Muhammad. He is not our ultimate leader. God Allah is our ultimate leader, and so therein began this this really unbelievable expansion of Islam in the first 100 years of Islam. That we look here and just see how in 635 they were up in Palestine, over in Iran and Iraq, and then they started moving across North Africa. They went into Spain.
They were stopped at the battle of Tours in 6 in 732 AD. And at that point Charles Martel was able to defeat them, push them back into Spain. They stayed in Spain until 14/92, then pushed back into North Africa. And so this is just a 100 years of these guys, and you can say it anywhere you want. You can say, oh, this is Satan induced.
You can say it’s all done by the sword, or you can say it’s all done because, they had to pay a tax if they didn’t become a Muslim, or whatever explanation that is kind of lost in the fog of history. Still, the the bottom line is they had this fantastic expansion that pretty well wiped out a lot of the church, especially across North Africa with the exception of the Copts in Egypt. And so, Islam had, an ethos. Go into all the world and preach Islam to every creature. For every creature who doesn’t know Islam, doesn’t know the Quran, doesn’t know the the the revelation of God.
They’re going to hell forever, and they’ll burn in fire, and we have the message of deliverance. So come to Islam. Come to Islam. We’ll sacrifice. We’ll give up our home.
We’ll give up our family. We’ll give up our land, and we’ll go into all of this area around the Mediterranean and in the and in the east of, Arabian Peninsula, and we’ll preach the good news of Islam. Now some people have said to me, authentication of Christianity is acts, first couple chapters. It could have all stopped. Instead, these first apostles received the spirit of God and they went out and preached Christianity and they were effective, and and today, we have what we have in the world today because those guys were endued with the spirit of God, endued with the vision, willing to be martyrs, and they went out and they were successful.
So, okay, good. I’m not disputing that. But I wanna wake up your eyes and your minds to the fact that this is what was going on with Islam. So in case you don’t think there can be a counter religion that is false, which I accept it is false, that can do this type of thing. Let me clue you in, it can happen, it did happen.
And so Islam went forth. And then they came into this golden age where they felt that, they could be on the cutting edge of things of, discovery, And you see just some of these things in science. And from 750 onward, architecture, they were really great in, astronomy. And then up in agriculture industry, chemistry, math. All these things now, I’m not saying from 500 to 1500 AD is is a total millennium of, degradation in the church and in the west, but I wanna tell you there were some bad things going on in what’s called the dark ages.
Right? But here, the Muslims look back to this age and said, we got it going. We really made things happen. And I think even the most objective or subjective historian will say, this was their day of, of forward movement. But this was curtailed in about 10/96, when the Pope and others got together and they said, okay.
We’ve got to go and get Jerusalem and Palestine back for the faith. Back that’s where Jesus went. He was born, died, raised. So we need to get that land back. It’s there by Muslims.
They’ve been sitting there since 635 AD. And so they sent out the Crusaders, and they went out from the various countries in, Europe, and they moved across the northern part of the Mediterranean and over and down into, into Jerusalem, and the fights and counter fights, there were 8 major crusades, And back and forth, it went. Each side with an absolute commitment. The Muslim side, they said, well, Mohammed came to Jerusalem in the night journey, and he passed through Jerusalem, and he went up to heaven. He came back to Jerusalem, went back over to Mecca.
He actually was supposedly, literally, to have done that. That’s called the night journey. So Jerusalem is a 3rd most holy city for Islam. You’ve got to understand that to try to understand what’s going on today. 3rd most holy city.
For Christians, holy. For, Jews, a holy city. And so, at this point of history, there was a tremendous lot of emotion going. It was also a time of great warfare between the different countries and peoples and tribes in Northern Europe and Europe. And, so out the Crusaders went with this vision for 200 years back and forth, back and forth with new troops going out, people dying, whatever.
Some of you may have seen the film The Kingdom of Heaven. Actually, that film is one that really highlights what went on in the crusades. It’s it’s pretty accurate film, with Saladin on the Muslim side and what went on. So, we have a very close Arab Christian friend, Syrian, and, we visited him in Syria, and he said, do you wanna see the largest crusader fortress that it was ever built back in those days, in the 1100 and 1200. I said, of course.
He said, well, it’s not far from my home in Northern Syria, Northwest Syria. He said, we used to go there and have picnics. I said, take me there. So our whole family, our daughter and her whole family, Julie and me, we went and, we visited this crusader palace. On on the left there in the front, you can see, probably a person.
It shows how little that is and how big this crusader fortress was. 2,000 men and many, many horses. And so we walked up in there and went in through it, got up on top. We saw an indentation in the roof, and we said, what’s that? It didn’t have anything there.
It’s just that something had been there. And they said, well, that was a table. I said, what kind of table? They said, the table of the knights. And the knights would sit around this table and plan their murderous expeditions of burning, raping, looting, as they went into Muslim areas that have been held since 635 AD, and they wiped them out trying to establish a foothold and a permanent outpost of Christianity within Palestine.
It did not work. And after 200 years, they gave up that quest. So next came the Ottoman Empire and the 15, 1600, and you can again see in the different colors for different dates where the Ottoman Empire spread. And after that, colonialism. And this one blows my mind, because they were basically Christian countries that engaged in colonialism.
Christian in the broadest term. Okay? I’m not saying these were evangelical bible believing, ineritus, but they were basically known as Christian people, Christian nations of one type or another, and they sent out people in a major, major quest to open up all of these countries around the world to their influence and to conquer them. To conquer them. Now they weren’t trying to conquer them for Jesus, they were trying to conquer them for trade, for money, for economic reasons.
I want to tell you, this blows my mind, how these small European countries had enough people to send, and I’m just thinking Muslim this morning, to send to Islamic countries. And so we look at this colonial influence on Muslim populations, that little island of Great Britain, and you just go through all those countries, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Spain, Germany. The Dutch had the big and we just go through it. Spain, Germany. The Dutch had the biggest Muslim population in Indonesia.
How could these few Dutch people go in there? Well, what they did was they got local militia. Right? And they had the money, and they paid them off. And then the traders came after them, and the traders came and started the economic engine going.
And after them, who came? Somebody help me. After the fighters, the conquerors, the traders, came the missionaries. Okay? Pith helmet, bible in hand, we’re ready to take them on.
And they had, unusual opportunities. Not total carte blanche opportunities, but many good opportunities try to win Muslims to Jesus. And, even the USA got into this with the Muslim population of the Philippines and Portugal. Major Muslim people groups in in China and CIS were exempted from Western colonial occupation. But I’ve just given you Muslim countries.
Now as you look at that, you would say, well, why didn’t Islam capitulate to the so called Christian invaders, and the missionaries who came, and the churches that were built on the army compounds, why didn’t they just say, Allah has failed us, Allah doesn’t live and give up their faith and call it quits during the period of colonialism. God is dead. We are defeated. Their god, whoever that god of some type of Christianity is, has won. Did they do that?
Was there a great movement toward Jesus Christ during this colonial period? Answer, no. There was not. So what was the rationale that Muslims used? Well, Allah is testing us.
Allah is testing us And we have to go through the trial, and through the difficult period of time, and we’ll come out the other end. And so this was the rationale they used, much like the Chinese Christians. When communism took over and they said, okay. It’s tough now, but it’ll get better. So then we get to economic subjugation.
Now what do I mean by this? Colonialism’s gone by 196065. Algeria is one of the last countries to, end colonization by France. And, so they’re free, but they have no money. And so now comes a very degrading type of process.
They’ve got to go to the former colonizers and, begin to ask for money, ask for assistance, and then the UN comes into play here. What’s the UN come into play here for? Because the West said, hey, you got 2 choices, you countries. You can go to the communist bloc and vote for them in the UN and, they can be your saviors economically. They didn’t have any money.
They didn’t have much to offer. Or option, you can come to us and we will give you money, but in the United Nations, when there’s a vote, you will vote for us. And if you don’t vote for us, the goodies stop. So this was a process that was going on at this point. Well, that went on for a while until oil got in the picture in the early seventies.
Not the discovery of oil that happened back in the thirties in Arabia, but the idea that oil now can be used as a tool. Something that can actually, give them the financial resources that they need to move forward. And out of that oil, and the OPEC, and the Muslim countries coming together came power. And, then they began to say, well, God is blessing us. And fundamentalism revival just came and began to surge.
And, so that is something we’re still dealing with today. How fundamentalism is fueled by every time you go get a, a tank load of gasoline, there’s a danger that part of that money of oil that has come from the Middle Eastern countries, Muslim countries, that some of that can filter out to fundamentalism and to terrorism. Okay? Then we come to Palestine, and I don’t even have a moment to give to this. Huge complex issue.
All I can tell you is this, I’m giving you the Muslim side of the coin. You pretty well know the other side of the coin. In Palestine issue, the Muslims have been sitting on the land from 635 a d until 1948, after the 2nd world war, and the Jews came out of the holocaust, those who survived. And they said, we want our land and and the world is aghast. And they said, what do you want?
And they said, we want our land. And they said, well, our land. Somebody said, well, how about South America, the new Israel? How about Kenya? The new is part of Kenya, new Israel.
No. Where do you want the new Israel? Not we don’t want the new Israel, we want the old Israel. We want it in the land that God gave to us and our forebearers and our prophets. It’s in the bible.
The Muslims are sitting there hearing that. They’ve been sitting on the land for 1300 years. How long does it take to establish squatters rights? And they’re saying, what? You’re telling us to leave our land and land is precious outside of the West.
You guys don’t have an understanding of how land is so precious to people in Africa, and Asia, and South America as part of the psyche. It’s my identity. And now I’m being told I gotta leave the land in 1948 because in the United Nations, they all took a vote and said, the new nation of this Israel is established. And then came this fantastic, terrible holocaust against the people who were on the land and pushed off the land, and a small remnant stayed, and Israel became a state. And then the whole Palestine thing has just been boiling, boiling, boiling, because the people the the Muslims on the who went out as refugees says, we will not give up the struggle until we’re back in our land.
And somebody says, we’ll write a letter in these days to Obama, say, dear president Obama, please ask the Jews to leave the land so we go back to our traditional ancestral land. And they laugh. Letters are not gonna do a thing. What’s going to take the world’s attention? It’s terrorism.
It’s doing something dastardly, horrible. And then suddenly at that point, the world begins to say, we gotta talk, we gotta talk. We gotta get the Jews together, gotta get the Muslims together, we gotta find some way out of this terrible situation. And so out of this is come this cauldron of of, anger anger. Kill the Jews.
And so then, we come to some of the real hot spots today. Afghanistan, Iraq, where American forces are resident. And I, some years back, went to the Air Force Academy. I met with some Christians right on campus. And, I gave this lecture, parts of it.
And this idealistic young cadet came up Christian. And he said, you told me that we can never win in Islam in, Afghanistan. I’m telling you, we will win in Afghanistan. I wonder where that young cadet is today. Because Russia with a common border to Afghanistan, with all its armaments, everything that they had to push into Afghanistan failed and fled.
Who are we to think as we bring in our armaments through Pakistan, which is a failed state, which is full of terroristic Muslims, who are blowing up our fuel trucks as they make their way from the port of Karachi up to the border and over to Kabul. Who are we to think that we could ever win in Afghanistan to people who say, no foreigner will ever occupy us for any period of time. We will fight. We will die, but no infidel will stay on our soil. This is our soil.
And so they go and they live in in in the rocks. They live in the caves Because of this tremendous dedication that this is our land. And we’re sitting in Iraq, and we’re sitting in Afghanistan. And it’s a very sad thing that we’re going to lose so many people in an issue that, in reality, we can’t win. This is my view, and you can have your say at lunch.
Okay? And, you can give a counterargument, and I’d be very willing to give you the time to do that. Now I realized that after all these years sitting among Muslims that maybe I’ve got just a bit jaded in in one direction. Okay? But I’m trying to get you to see what the other side is when this side over here about how terrible they are, has been said ad nauseam by the press and in the church, and to the point that Christians hate Muslims.
I got a letter today. Just it gave about 6 adjectives of how terrible Muslims are, particularly terrorists, of course. But what it’s so hard to delineate terrorists, Muslims, and the Muslim that lives next door that’s a nice person that I’ve lived among for all these years. I love Muslims. I’ve had the privilege to embrace them, to be in their homes, to be a part of them, and, and I just think that’s a Christian thing to do.
Okay. So here’s just Iran and straight to Hormuz, a hot spot with Iran beginning to move toward nuclear armament, which I think definitely they will, without any doubt. Western Christian immorality, another point of conflict. They say, you you, in your country, you are supposed to have some type of morality and ethics, but look at the stuff that that comes out of the West. This is antithetical to Islam.
Sex in the city, the bathing suits, terrible pig meat, and alcoholic drinks. And and they throw all that together and say, well, that’s Christians and that’s the West. And so this jades their view and makes them angry that this group of people are sitting in Afghanistan, are sitting in Iraq and attacking our people and killing our people. And often, those drones that are up there, the predators that are up there are shooting down those missiles and they can’t be exact and they’re killing our women and children. Do you don’t think they’re angry?
You don’t think that leads to a terrorism? If my mother has been killed in one of these drone attacks at 30,000 feet with a missile coming down on my house, You don’t think that makes me wanna go up and take up arms and kill anybody that I can on the other side? Don’t be naive. Don’t be naive. And so these issues, one last one here, and I think this is pretty important.
This this is kind of a horrible list of items, but as you look at some of those words around there, and you just try to place yourself in the subjugated side, the the poor side, the economically deprived side, the the side that’s being attacked. And you see the West, particularly the US, it’s hard for them to see the good points when you got bombs coming down on your town. Think about it a minute. Hard. And so they look on this group of words that may depict some of those issues.
On Sunday, around 10 AM, in a church in Baghdad, Iraq, Muslim terrorists came into that church and just started shooting and throwing hand grenades. This last Sunday. And this gentleman, priest, he was there a couple days before this was when this picture was taken. He was killed. Many in his congregation was killed were killed.
Photo was taken several days prior in the back, and you can barely see it. The Arabic line behind him reads Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a witness and a martyr in Nazi jails. His last word this priest you’re looking at right now, his last words as he died is, I’m a martyr for Jesus. He could have left. All of those congregation, they could have gone to Jordan, they could have gone to Lebanon.
They could have got out, but they wanted to be a light and salt and testimony, and they’re dead today. 58 are dead and dozens more in hospital severely wounded. Martyrs for Jesus. And I look back to myself, and I think, how easy life is? How comfortable the bubble is?
How nice the comfort zone is. And I say, these Muslims have got to see another side of a white face or a black face who’s an American, or they’ve got to see the love that Jesus Christ talked about that somehow we put aside. Love your enemies. Embrace your enemies. Pray for your enemies.
I’ve had 2 serious threats on my life, Abdul and Datu in Manila. We had a little reading center. A few of you’ve been in that reading center. Just right on the sidewalk, we put, pieces of literature out, and inside, we’d show the Jesus film in Muslim languages. And Datu about drove me crazy.
Datu is this little Muslim guy, and he hated me, and he hated Christianity, and he hated what we’re doing. For 6 months, he came every almost every day. I hated going to that reading center to try to witness to Muslims for Christ. I did it for 22 years in the afternoons. And I hated going because Datu would come.
And he kept getting worse and worse. I think he was on drugs. I don’t think the big thing was Christianity. I think he’s just wanted money extortion. But anyway, I was his goal.
I was a target. He wanted whatever I could give him. Day after day after day, he came. And so finally, he came one day, and he was completely out of it. He was screaming, yelling, I’m gonna kill you.
I’m gonna kill you. You use sexual vulgarities, the whole 9 yards. And as I looked at this guy out of control, I felt he’s gonna kill me. For the first time in my life, I felt this was a serious thing where I would go to be with Jesus in the next few minutes. And, so I went in and told all the Muslims who are watching the film to please leave.
This is right in the middle of one of the most, very violent areas of Manila, and it’s also in the adjacent to the Muslim community. It’s where we had our reading center. So I said, please leave. And they left in a hurry, because they were scared of this guy. I was scared.
And so I’m there facing him and he continues to scream out. And then a Muslim from next door, my friend, who was a guard next door, didn’t have a gun or anything, but he was a friendly person that I’d cultivated relationship, a Muslim from the same tribe, same language group as Sadatu, who’s screaming and yelling at me, came over and he stood between us, and he quieted him down and finally got him to leave. After the guy left, I said, you took a big risk. He said, well, he said, he had a bulge. This is where Muslim he said, us Muslims, we keep our gun or our knife right here.
And he had a bulge there, and I knew he’s gonna kill you. And I could not allow him to kill you. Does he know something about love that we don’t know? That he would risk his life for a guy of an alien religion, a false religion, a copier religion, that he would risk his life for me as a Muslim against the Muslim. What do we know about love?
What do we know about embracing? What do we know about going here in Colombia out to the mosque? Some of you have gone. I praise God for that. Zweimer Center has taken some people to to the mosque, and, to reach out, embrace them.
This is what I’m asking for this morning. I’m asking a little bit further than that. I would not go another direction in my life for anything in the world. God has given me the most wonderful wife, 49 years 5 months today. And it has been the privilege.
We met in in our Christian college, so this is great hunting grounds, guys. Go and girls, go for it. But I’m here today because of her in a human sense. She has been everything to me. Our our love relationship is passionate.
We’ve never failed in faithfulness. And I’m just so grateful that she has sustained me a more mercurial temperament, as you might have imagined as I’ve talked. She’s been there to embrace me, love me, encourage me all these years. But we’ve had the joy of loving Muslims. We’ve had the joy in Bangladesh of starting a strategy that’s that’s led our team.
Dave Cashin’s here. Dave was part of that team, he’s professor here, and seeing tens of thousands of Muslims come to Jesus Christ in Bangladesh, where there was nothing prior to 1975. Went to Philippines, almost nothing among the Muslims there, and the team got together and tried new strategy and new things. And today, there are 100 and 100 of Muslim converts in the Philippines that there never was before. To God be the glory.
But we’re not gonna achieve that by sitting here, embracing each other, and loving each other when God talks about risk. I’ll be 73 tomorrow. There’s a limit to what the human body has in this life. I’m ready to pass the mantle to you. I envy you as you are on the stepping stone of going out and saying, god, what do you have for me?
I’m ready. I’m ready. And that’s the challenge I give. The challenge of Islam that you may seriously consider that as one of the most meaningful impacts that can have on your life and on your Christian experience and on the world today, 1,200,000,000 Muslims. Alright.
So that was Phil Parchel, and this is going to be a 2 part podcast. I know we don’t normally do that, but, this is gonna be pretty long. Yeah. I think that partial brought up a lot of interesting points that we need to, discuss. So let’s let’s do that in a in a 2 part series.
Right. So go see us in the next podcast. It’s gonna be the part 2 episode 4, and we’ll be continuing Islamophobia there. We’ll see you then.