Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Muslims… Political Pawns?:
Here are your hosts, Howard and Trevor. Truth About Muslims, episode 7. Alright. Today’s topic is, Muslims, are they political pawns? We’ve got a big midterm election coming up tomorrow in South Carolina.
Right. But first, before we go any further, we wanna talk about our sponsors. Sponsors. Columbia International University educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. Right.
Love that school. And also, Zwemer Center. They’ve been focusing on Muslims since before it was actually cool in in the media. 35 years. 1979.
Mhmm. So check them both out at ciu.edu. And then, zwemercenter. Dotcom. Right.
So, did you like that kind of how we split that up? Yeah. Yeah. That worked. That we don’t even plan that.
It just kinda happens. Naturally. Alright. So let’s first talk about, yeah. What what what’s been happening?
I was I was telling Trevor about the Saturday Night Live this last Saturday. Chris Rock hosted the show, and he really did some interesting things. Yeah. It’s always interesting when you have something tragic in a society and you’re not sure when you can begin making jokes about it. And apparently, Chris Rock has decided now is the time.
Right. I mean, he talks about the Freedom Towers. Of course, just found out that, they’re they’re the stores, I guess, it’s opening. They’re they’re moving in. I think tenants are moving in today.
Office, offices have been rented. Right. And so and everything. Chris Rock and his monologue has a lot to say about the Freedom Towers, how he’ll never go into one of those things. And, I don’t know.
Like, it it is a kind of attention. I think in one point, in people’s life, I think comedy is something that really does heal, something to be able to laugh at, maybe even a type of normalizing. Yeah. You know whenever you start making jokes and then you see people’s faces and it was just too soon? Right.
And it did have that feel. Right? Like, so you’re watching the video, and you guys can check this out on, like, Hulu or whatever. But, like, it’s you can tell the audience is not sure if they should laugh, clap, what they should do. There’s some points in the silence.
City. Right. It’s New York City. So it’s really I mean, it’s there. It’s the it’s at their home.
And he even brings up the Boston Marathon bombing, and is is making jokes about it. So I I don’t know. And not only that, but they had a whole skit on ISIS and Right. The shark tank. Yeah.
So it’s it’s worth checking out because I think it gives a little bit of a hint as to where we’re at culturally. You know, comedians do a lot like musicians. The artists kinda show where you’re at as a culture and you can kinda just evaluate these cultural texts. And I think that Saturday Night Live, although some may disagree, I think Saturday Night Live is a good cultural text. It is.
It is. Because it kinda gives you an idea of what, people are thinking or or actually even shape what people are thinking. Because maybe, Chris Rock is able to laugh at this stuff, and maybe he’s teaching Americans how to laugh at this stuff. And therefore, now more comedians are gonna be following suit. But the question I have for us, and I’d like to hear from you listeners too, is, is comedy helpful to the church, and her view of Muslims?
Or does this hurt? Does it does it really kinda create that division still? Caricatureizing characterizing? I wish I could talk. Our view of Muslims, you know, and and, and, like, ISIS.
And I know that, you know, the argument would be, you know what? They weren’t they weren’t making fun of Muslims. Right? But then you have ISIS, these guys, with Arabic writing on these billboards as they’re trying to make their pitch to to the Shark Tank, you know, the the fake shark tank cast. Well, that’s kind of the point, and we’re gonna get into that a little bit later in the show.
But in in some ways, they were making fun of Muslims because on the one hand, people want to disassociate ISIS from Islam. But on the other hand, Islam is, or ISIS is very much connecting themselves with Islam. So Right. Yeah. It it was a very interesting show.
It’s worth checking out. And I think we need to put in the show notes also, Howard, do you remember the, the parody? I believe it was some some Pakistani Muslims that put on a parody about ISIS themselves. So even the Muslim world is beginning to, joke and kind of make light of some of these things that are happening because I think it at least creates a space where people can talk. And so Right.
And I think it also is an interesting tool to, for, for those Muslims that aren’t, you know, associating with themselves with ISIS to separate themselves from ISIS by making fun of them. Right. Exactly. But I thought I don’t know. It feels different when Americans are doing it and when not when non Muslim Americans like Chris Rock are doing it or the cast of SNL are doing it as opposed to actual Muslims that are saying, hey.
No. This is not who we are and therefore make fun of it. I don’t know. It just feels different. It’s kinda like when I can make fun of Asians because I’m Asian.
There you go. That’s right. But when I do it, somehow, it’s not cool. Right. So it’s it is interesting.
And I I I’m not saying that we have an answer or I have an answer. I just find it interesting that there is this cultural dynamic that comedy brings and and kind of shifts the way we think about things. Yeah. But it does prove the point. I think, I was teaching a seminar this past weekend, actually, last week, and I said, they asked me to give a little bit of an overview of what the seminar was gonna be so that people could attend.
And I said, you know, we’re gonna talk about Muslims. We’re gonna talk about ISIS because Muslims, ISIS, Muslim extremism, Islam, Mohammed, it’s like talking about the weather now. It’s something that people just talk about. Right. It’s everywhere.
And so I think Saturday Night Live proved that point. One of my colleagues said, well, maybe they just talk about it so much around here because we work at a Christian institution of higher learning. And I thought, no. I think this is pretty much the conversation going around, in the United States. And one thing that I wanna bring up because I know today’s topic is, about politics because we have an election tomorrow.
But, we had a, gosh. I can’t say the the senator’s name. It was, chief of staff of 1 of the, representatives that wanted to study at the Zwemer Center. He didn’t end up coming to study, but he did come to, view the program, have lunch, and just kinda discuss, studying for his master’s degree at Columbia International University through the Zwemer Center. And when I asked him, what what has peaked your interest in studying Islam, it was fascinating.
He said that Islam is all anybody wants to talk about in Washington. Really. Yeah. And he said the problem was that all of these people were talking about Islam. All of these people had all of these opinions about Islam and his conclusion was that nobody really knew what they were talking about.
You know, we’re gonna talk about Reza Aslan. Is that that how you pronounce his last name? Aslan. Aslan. We we chronicle an idea.
Yeah. Obviously, a CS Lewis fan. But he makes this cool point, in one of his video interviews on Huffington Post. And he’s talking about how, like, Ben Affleck, you know, with his debate with Bill Maher and Sam Harris. He’s she says, Bill, Ben Affleck is just this kind of normal guy, that doesn’t know much about religion, and he puts Sam Harris in that same group.
Yeah. And Sam Harris touts himself as somebody that knows a lot about Islam. But I, you know, I do think it is, it is peculiar that there’s a lot of people talking about Islam but don’t really know what it is. No. And that’s a scary thing when everybody has sort of these, hard and fast opinions about something, especially when it includes 1,600,000,000 people.
Right. Because this is real. I mean, we’re not talking about, you know, some fixed fictitious group of people. We’re talking about people that are in our country that are Americans, that are blue, blue blooded. Red blooded Americans.
Blooded Americans. Red blooded Americans, right, that that, that care about our country. And at the same time, we’re we’re handling it, I think, with, irresponsibly, I think, in a lot of cases. The question today, regarding Islam and politics and I think the reason that this is so important is you’ll see whenever there’s an election coming up whether it’s a midterm election or a presidential election more and more the topics begin to shift towards radical Islam. It almost becomes a what would you call it like a political slogan.
Right. So I started to look and see. I wondered if anybody had done any research and if you if you’re aware of a research project that’s been done on this I’m curious. Has anybody done any research looking at the, media with Muslims whether or not that escalates during election years? I was just curious myself.
What’d you find? No. I couldn’t find anything. I was actually, looking, and I couldn’t find anything before the show, but I was kinda curious as to whether or not that was true because it seems that way. Right.
And I don’t know if I’m just you know, it seems that way to me. But here’s here’s kind of the thing that I did come up with as I was searching that out is that, you know, we tend to think of our perception as, reality. You’ve you’ve heard that saying. Right? Perception is reality.
Right. What we think is what we yeah. Okay. So this is what people perceive of Muslim immigrants in the United States. Are you ready?
Bring it. In 14 different countries, the survey was done. And they would ask them what percentage of your population do you think are Muslim? The average American that they asked believed that 15% of the American population was Muslim. Okay.
The actual percentage of Muslims in the United States is 1% or a little less than 1%. Get out of here. Yeah. So they’re 15% versus 1%. Are you serious.
Yeah I’m serious. Now here’s the here’s the catch right. I mean if people believe that Muslims represent 15% of American citizens you can imagine why they could very easily become political pawns as as it says in the title of the show. Right. And so But 1%?
Well, Pew Research has it at 0.6%. Okay. That’s still a tiny, tiny, tiny number. No. It is.
It is. But we perceive Muslims to be so, you know, just sort of widespread throughout American culture and, you know, you can just begin to think that, there is Muslims on every corner, and the reality is it’s a pretty small number. It’s a really insignificant number of Muslims living in the United States. Right. So but here’s the other one that was really interesting.
They asked them, what do you believe the percent percentage of Christians are in the United States? Okay. What what is this one? They believe that the number of Christians was 56% when in reality it is are you ready? Drumroll.
I can’t even make that with my mouth. I can’t either. Alright. Oh, that’s pretty good. Oh, that’s pretty good.
Yeah. Alright. So they believed it was 56% Okay. Of Americans are Christian and in reality it’s 78%. What?
78%. What? So here here’s what it comes down to. When asked about, Muslims, they way overestimated and when asked about Christians they way underestimated. Right.
And that that’s the perception, held by a lot of Americans. Okay. And so when we’re talking about Christians, because I know this is what people are gonna be thinking, they basically ask, do you believe in Jesus? Well, of course, in that number, they’re including, evangelicals, protestants, Catholics. Right.
Altogether. Exactly. Okay. Alright. So 70 that’s that’s a ridiculous number, but okay.
Yeah. That’s a lot. But But if you if you have this perception as a believer that, well, first of all, as a believer, I know that I’m in the minority. Right. You start to And that Muslims are creeping to become the majority.
Right. That’s gonna affect the way in which you view the world. Well, you have in the media all the time people talking about birth rates, especially in Europe. Right? Muslim birth rates are, like, quadruple or some, you know, ridiculous number beyond what normal Europeans are birthing.
Right? Because, the Muslims are just popping up babies, apparently. Baby factories. And and so people are afraid. They’re like, well, you know, by this time, you know, in 10 years or 15 years, you know, the the general population will be the minority.
Okay. So I saw that YouTube video and you even have they’re they’re quoting in the video, Muammar Gaddafi. Okay. Which I’m thinking, really? We’re gonna take Muammar Gaddafi’s sort of word on how, Muslims are gonna take over the world?
Like, they’re using it as a quote. Like, you see, even Muammar Gaddafi has said this. Okay. Anyway, I haven’t seen the video. So what does it say?
What’s what’s going on with it? This is a real we gotta put add that to the show notes. There’s a there’s a YouTube video that starts off with, like, and it’s like Muslim immigration. It it almost sounds like one of those guys doing a, a movie preview or a trailer. Trailer.
Yeah. So it’s like Muslim immigration. Within 20 years, Russia will become a 100% or a majority Muslim country. The entire Soviet Union is gonna and it’s just kind of the scary, like, oh my goodness. I had no idea.
You know, France is gonna be Muslim in 10 years. Russia is gonna be Muslim in 20 years. China is gonna be Muslim. And and the whole point of the video is the world is gonna be Muslim in like 50 years. Right.
And And so they they do the mathematics for you. They actually show you based on birth rate because the average So it’s by birth rate. It’s not through, you know, like, where they’re reaching out and converting people to Muslim to Islam. No. No.
It’s just it’s just birth rate. Okay. So they do this, this model, and they show you that the average birth rate in France for a a non Muslim French citizen is, you know, 1. K. And the birth rate, or less than 1, I think it was.
It was, like, 0.8%. I don’t know what a 8% of a child looks like, but 0.8%. And then the average birth rate of a Muslim was, like, you know, 7. And so they did the mathematics to show you that they 7? Yeah.
No. I’m serious, man. I wanna play the video right now just so we can see it. And so you’re you’re watching it and you’re just sitting there like, oh my goodness. It’s over.
You know? Like We had a good run, guys. France is gonna be Muslim in 10 years. What else? Oh, Russia too.
Okay. Germany too. Norway too. Belgium too. And so you just start to have this, you know, this footage.
And then all of a sudden, there’s just no hope. And then they get to America. And here was the kicker. You’ll get you’ll like this, Howard. Okay.
The only thing that was keeping America not majority Muslim within, like, 10 years, it’s gonna take, like, 25 years or something ridiculous like that is the Hispanic population. I was just gonna say the Hispanic. Yeah. That’s right. So, that’s a shout out to me madre, Arorita Escobar.
Yeah. So the the Hispanic population is actually what’s keeping the Muslim population at bay. And so you watch this and it’s pretty convincing. And I’ve seen it. Churches have used it in their services because at the end and I don’t know who produced it, but at the end, it was basically like, so get out there and share the gospel with Muslims before they take over the world.
Wow. But here here’s Fear tactic. It’s a fear tactic, and it’s utter and complete nonsense. Yeah. Tell me.
Enlighten me because I’m kinda scared. I just Howard’s looking it up right now on his computer like I had no idea. I was just thinking of an invasion of babies. Little little, Muslim and, baby invaders. Right.
It’s coming in. I’m like, oh, no. Okay. So here’s the idea. It’s not a static model.
Okay? So, think of Muslim friends that you have here in the United States. Maybe their parents come in and they have 7 children because the mortality rate, you know, is quite different in say Pakistan or Afghanistan or Iraq. Right. So it is quite normal to have 7, 6, you know, something, like that children.
But you come to the United States. So are your 7 children also going to have 7 children? Well, the answer is no. Right. Because they’re gonna fall into the culture.
Enculturation, basically. Yeah. They’re gonna acculturate. They’re gonna lose some of their old culture, take on some new culture. They’ll probably, within that second generation, marry a fellow Muslim probably even from the same ethnic background.
But what about the next generation, the 3rd generation? And then eventually, you end up with a 4th generation that is saying, well, I don’t even know if I want to marry somebody from that cultural background. They might consider themselves more American than they do, Iraqi. They might consider themselves not even Muslim or just Muslim in name only. They might not even marry a fellow Muslim.
They might not have kids at all. Yeah. Actually, not even 4th generation. Like, if you look in Koreans, I’m I’m Korean. There we go.
Let’s get personal. Howard, tell us about the 1st generation Korean because you you can speak to this. Right? I mean, 1st generation Koreans versus 2nd generation Koreans. There’s some gaps there.
Right? There’s a huge difference, and it’s a crisis because Koreans are staunchly Korean. Mhmm. They moved to the states, and they want their kids to be Korean. Mhmm.
And not just in, you know, in in skin color skin color or just, you know, not just in in name alone, but, like, for real through and through, food. Yeah. Cold language. Especially language, to know their history and all that kind of stuff. But do you still find Koreans, this we call them 2nd generation, the kids that were born, to immigrant parents in the United States?
They’re they’re marrying Westerners or Well, wait a second. You married a Westerner. Right. So you’re a classic example. I’m on the fringe.
I’m on I’m a I’m daring. But But that’s a good example. Right? I mean, Koreans are experiencing the same thing. You can’t assume because the first generation had these sort of, this ethnic identity or these, practices that were maybe religious or cultural, political, that those things are necessarily going to carry on.
Right. And something that’s really interesting is that my grandparents, they had, like, I’m not even kidding. My grandfather had 2 wives, and I think he had, like, 6 yeah. But at the same time, not not not, not married, you know, and divorced or lost one. No.
I mean, he was married same time. So your grandfather was a polygamist? Correct. In the United States? No.
He actually moved to the States with, his first wife. And Yeah. Very interesting. And his second wife stayed in Korea. But he had, like, he had, like, 16 kids, maybe even more than that between the 2.
And my father, he only had 2, me and my little sister. So And then Howard picked up the pace. Right. I have 5. So I try to meet in the middle, trying to be a little bit more, you know, traditional, I guess.
Actually, my wife retained that part of his career when I My wife just really enjoyed being pregnant. She just loves babies. Oh, man. But that that’s a good that’s a good point. I mean, your your your grandfather had 16.
Your parents had 2. Right. And so there’s no it’s not a closed system where you can just do this exponential math mathematics and say, hey, this is what we’re gonna end up with. Right. Just theory.
I mean, we know that the reality is not oftentimes line up with theory. But anyway, that video is a good example. It’s another one of those sort of, fear tactics. But one of the other reasons that I think Muslims, always seem to come up to the forefront when it’s an election year I was kind of looking at some of the latest research that was done by the Pew Foundation and one of them was the public’s view of the global threats facing the US. Guess what’s at the very top?
Number 1. Let me get that drum roll again. Number 1. ISIS and Al Qaeda. Wait.
That’s the number one threat? The number one global threat facing the United States is ISIS and Al Qaeda. Interesting. 70 percent above North Korea above Iran and and their nuclear program, above Russia and its tension with its neighbors, above Ebola, I can’t get started on that. Above above climate change.
That’s really interesting. Israeli Palestinian, ISIS and Al Qaeda. So you could understand if you’re running for political office and you know that 70% of Americans see radical Islam as its number one global threat to our safety and well-being, then you have to talk about it. Right. That’s the hot button.
They’re gonna sit on that button all day long. Just keep pushing that button. Right. Exactly. So you, now they’re obviously within the political parties there’s some discrepancy.
The Republican Party has sees ISIS and is radical Islam as a higher threat than, the Democratic Party. So that’s why you might see, Republican candidates speaking about it more than Democratic candidates. Yeah. But the and, see, this is the thing that we’re kinda coming back to in the show is that the problem is I think these the the hot button per se is really affecting the way Americans think of Muslims. Yes.
I mean, we’re painting in these broad strokes that every Muslim is ISIS. Ultimately, you’re walking around afraid. Yeah. You know? I didn’t know the numbers were that high, where they’re just walking around thinking that this is the number one global threat to the US is ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Yeah. And I don’t know, man. So, like, back to our question on our show is, are Muslims political pawns? Well, I mean, they’re certainly being used in some ways, whether we would wanna say their political pawns or not. We’ll we’ll let the listeners decide.
But one one of the statistics that I saw that was fascinating. Okay. So you have Republicans there right at about 78% that see ISIS as a major threat so they’re higher and you have the Democrats at 65%. So they’re a little bit lower but they also that’s a that’s a majority. Right.
See ISIS is a major threat. Then you have the Tea Party. Okay. Would would that be on the republican side? Well, they they, did a special, survey of the tea party.
Okay. 91%. Of course. So 9 in 10. Right?
I mean, 9 out of every 10 Tea Party members say that, yes, this is the big threat is is ISIS. So you’re saying that the Democrats, Republicans, and Tea Party would actually agree on something? This is something we can all agree on. Right. And it’s a hot button.
It’s the hot button. So this political season, this is what people are gonna be talking about. Yeah. And it’s why you see all of these ads talking about radical Islam. Right.
And which leads me to, this interview that was on Huffington Post with, John Bennett. Oh. This is our boom goes the dynamite section. Right. But even before, I wanna kinda talk about some of the things that he says.
I mean, he says some really inflammatory things that kinda lead me to questions that I wanna ask of you. And I know that, you know, like, right now, there’s other guys that you wanna ask too, but just kinda wanna hear your viewpoint. But the whole idea is Bennett is just talking about how Islam well, the first thing he says that’s really interesting is that Islam is not a religion. That’s right. Islam isn’t even a religion.
He says it’s a social political system that uses a deity to advance its agenda of global conquest. He’s really excited about that too because every time he’s interviewed, that’s what he says. He’s like, got it memorized. Islam isn’t even a religion. That’s his hot button.
So, apparently, if you are, if you are a Muslim, then you’re a part of this social political system. Yeah. So okay. Good. Well, anyway, the point is that he says these interesting things, and one of the things that he says that I found that really kind of was made me question some stuff is about Islam.
Is the root of Islam really, bringing us to be, bringing them to become terrorists like Sam Harris would would suggest or Bill Maher. Does that is the the does the crown really support that? Right. Okay. So here’s my view.
First of all I don’t think that any non Muslim should be making these huge claims about what Islam actually is. So and that goes on both sides. So we have, both president Bush, president Barack Obama, and I’m sure the next president as well will probably say the same thing. All 3, will probably have the same conclusion that Islam is a religion of peace. Okay.
Yeah. So so both Bush and Obama and I say whoever’s elected next will say Islam is a religion of peace. And then you have a probably a larger majority of politicians that say, that Islam is in fact violent, that the true nature of Islam is a religion of violence. And this has a lot of strong evangelical voices behind it too. And I won’t name any names but you just need to go online and look.
And there’s a there’s a large group of evangelicals saying that Islam through violence intends to conquer the world. Right. And so my perspective is that I don’t think that we need to be talking about Islam as a religion of peace or Islam as a religion of violence. I don’t know that Barack Obama, George W. Bush, or any of these evangelical leaders have the leg to stand on to say what Islam is because they’re not practicing Muslims.
Okay. Although some people would argue Barack Obama is a practicing Muslim. I understand. Somebody are like, woah. Woah.
Wait a second. Wait a second. Obama’s a Muslim. No. None of them are practicing Muslims and so I don’t think that they can I don’t think they should even be trying to discuss what Islam is because they’re not Muslim?
We need to just ask the Muslims. Okay. But can’t but we can talk about it though, right? No. We can we can talk about it and we can say that, hey, certainly there are those Muslims out there that are peaceful.
And so obviously there are Muslims that say Islam is a religion of peace. And then there are Muslims out there that are most certainly violent and so we can say that Islam can be a religion of violence as well. You have both. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. That’s way too simplistic to take the complex religion of Islam that is 1,600,000,000 people that has been around for more than a 1000 years and has had all of these different expressions since the very beginning.
Right. You have opportunities for Islam to display itself in very violent forms and you have opportunities where Islam has for instance a golden age where it’s at the height of society and it’s producing some of the best architecture the world has seen some of the best. You have astronomy. You have medicine. You have mathematics.
You have philosophy. You have all of these wonderful things. It is like a renaissance before the renaissance ever happened. And so you cannot just say well if we’re looking at 9th 10th century Islam that Islam is a religion of peace and high higher learning. Because the 9th 10th century aren’t the only centuries in which Islam is existed.
But we don’t like that, Trevor. No. It’s so much easier to just make a simple statement, right? Islam is a religion of peace. I I just want Islam is a religion of violence.
I just want 3 points. Just give me a yes or no. Yeah. Just tell me what I need to know so I can just go away and make my own, you know, conclusions. Well, let’s do it with Christianity.
No. We need to, but that’s not fair. We’re we’re talking Let’s pick a century, alright, of Christian history. Hey. You remember when we had 3 popes?
Yeah. Yeah. That was a good time. That was a really good time. Nobody would wanna do that.
Nobody would wanna pick, say, maybe the 13th, 12th century of Christianity and, go ahead and say, let’s look at that century of Christianity. Let’s take out the theologies that are being produced and let’s go ahead and make an all encompassing statement about what Christianity is based on that one particular time. But okay. Let me play the devil’s advocate here. So but with Christianity, okay, we have some horrible history where we’re burning heretics at the stake.
We’re not doing things that are Christ like. We’re selling, you know, tickets into heaven kinda thing. You know? Yeah. We’re we’re doing some horrible things.
Mhmm. However, the where we are today has kind of produced this type of fruit where, in general, Christians are known for being well okay. Alright. Go ahead. In general I just stuck my foot in my mouth.
But general you know, hopefully, genuine Christians that you meet on the street are, you know, they’ve waived the banner of love. I’m just thinking, like, in political terms where Christians are known for hating everything. But but you you know what I’m saying. Like, in on on the ground, you’re gonna meet people that that profess Christ, and they’re probably gonna be pretty loving. That’s kinda their their hallmark.
That’s, like, who they are as far as that religion has produced. Christianity has produced this type of person. In Islam, John Bennett We’re just talking about the monks. Right? I mean, that’s the Right.
Okay. I mean, Howard, you have to determine what what point in history are we talking about. Are we talking about today? Are we talking about in the United States? Are we talking about in the South?
Are we talking about in Right. It’s all a huge shift in Oklahoma. How about just this one particular guy in Oklahoma who is claiming to be a believer and he’s telling everybody that they need to be wary of any Muslim. Right. I mean, there’s certainly not much love in, what I would say Christ like character coming out of a lot of the rhetoric that we see being spewed from some Christians.
You’re right. You’re right. You win. So we have to be very we have to be very careful about how we, impose sort of what what we’re gonna use to be the judgmental factors of any particular religion if if we’re not willing to do it ourselves to our own context. We need to be careful.
Right. Because we we all have obviously differing views of Christianity. I mean, look at, Westborough Baptist Church, The Hate Church. Moe, but but they’re not Christian. Yes.
That’s what we say. Yeah. We do. And so let’s think of it in those terms. I would say when when my atheist friend comes to me and says you Christians are a bunch of bigots.
Right. You Christians are a bunch of racists. You Christians are a bunch of, people that hate, and they have a whole list and I just wanna look at them and say, why don’t you quit defining for me who I’m supposed to be? Who I’m supposed to be? What I believe.
Let me tell you. Just because you saw all these other people that believed all these other things and you wanna tell me what I’m supposed to be because of what Westborough Baptist did or because of what happened in this particular century of Christian history. Or your Sunday school when you were a kid and somebody was mean to you. How infuriating is that? It is.
So why do we do it to Muslims? Because we can. Because it gets us elected, Trevor. Yeah. It gets us elected.
No. We we have to be careful. I I I don’t wanna use the word fair, but I just wanna feel like saying I don’t only reason I don’t like the word fair is my son says, oh, it’s not fair. But he doesn’t mean it. Yeah.
He means I didn’t get my way. I think I think what we’re at here is 3rd grade theology. Right. Again. Treating people the way we would want to be treated.
So, Howard, I don’t know how you feel about it when somebody comes along and pulls one verse out of the Bible and says, you see, the Bible is a violent text. Right. I wanna knock them in the nose. Is this is this a safe place for this? Yeah.
And show that it’s a violent act. You got me again. You got me again. But we do that with Muslims. And now here’s the reality.
Is Islam capable of producing violence? That’s I think the big question that we were we were talking about earlier because this particular representative, he was saying that, the true nature of Islam. And I have, colleagues that would argue there is a true nature of Islam and it is violent. So let’s let’s hear that perspective as well. Right.
So tell me. Well, okay. So how do you how do you end up with people reading the same text producing very different ideologies and theologies and practices? Interpretation. There you go.
You have people. Right? Yeah. That’s where everything goes awry. Dang it.
It’s always the problem. You have people people reading and interpreting. And so when you think about Islam, you can think about it in terms of historically. Let’s put it into terms that, we can understand for a Christian sake. Think about the Catholic Church all the way up until the reformation.
Yes. You as a Christian as a Catholic did not have the freedom to read the text for yourself and come up with your own interpretations. Those were kind of handed down. Well, not only that. Most of the population probably were illiterate at that time.
There you go. You weren’t even reading the text. You didn’t get that opportunity. And it was in Latin. Mhmm.
And the service was in Latin. Okay. So you you Sorry. I get carried away. So within, a similar context within Islam, they also have sort of, I guess you could say like the Catholic Church they have these schools of law that are going to hand down sort of the ways in which things need to be interpreted in the ways in which Islam needs to be lived in the certain context of the time.
And so throughout throughout the history of Islam, you have different representations and they’re figuring out ways how do we want Islam to be lived out in the 21st century. So that’s what exists within the majority of the Muslim world. So kind of like a, a living breathing Islam, a folk Islam, the people Islam. Well, I mean just an orthodox Islam that you have these certain teachings and you have these certain beliefs and practices and how those practices get fleshed out. Well, that those those determinations are not made by a guy reading his Koran in his room at night.
Okay. But you do have some people that have these kind of off the wall interpretations where they say no we need to be, fighting against the infidel. And so they take these verses out of the Quran and they say that we want to fight the jihad, the holy war, or we want to struggle against the West and they come up with their own interpretations. And then you have these splinter groups like the Salafi Muslims, which would be a good example for the jihadists that you have in ISIS. And now, I know what you’re thinking, listeners are thinking, so you’re saying that if they just read it themselves, they would all come up with this radical interpretation and that’s we have to stop doing that.
That’s not what I’m saying. Okay. I’m saying it’s possible. But the vast majority of Muslims and the vast majority of the commentators and the scholars are not coming to those conclusions but you do have some individuals that are coming to those conclusions. I don’t know if you guys can hear it or not but there’s my dog again.
It’s just about every time during the day that mailman comes by my dog goes crazy. We try to record around the mailman. So Mailwoman. Anyway, so, within Islam, you have to have the consensus of the scholars, which is extremely difficult to do. Right.
Because they’re all over. There you go. And so there’s all of these things that have to happen within Islam before these sort of rulings take place that are gonna kinda depict the way the religion goes. And so you’ve had that throughout the history of Islam. And so when you have this one particular guy, for instance, for ISIS or Ayman al Zawahiri or any of these other, radical leaders, they’re kinda off on their own.
Now, they do have a following. It’s not a large following, but they’re off on their own. They’re outside of the bounds of what would be considered orthodoxy. Okay. Got it.
I’m checking with you. So the big question is, well, which is the true interpretation? There is none. I I say no. Well, let me ask you how are what is it?
What does it mean? What makes a person Muslim? Submission to God. Alright. Submission to God.
Anything else? The 5 pillars. Okay. Five pillars. Am I doing okay?
No. Okay. Let’s let’s think about this for a second. Do you know any muslims? Yes.
Of the muslims that you know do you know any that don’t participate in the 5 pillars? Well, the pilgrim pilgrimage, right, is one. Right. But some some Muslims cannot. Right.
But all the other Muslims, you know, are regularly giving the zakat, the the the tie that they’re supposed to be giving. They’re probably not. Okay. That’s my guess. Yeah.
I mean, I didn’t really ask them, but, you know, just looking at tithing in the church. Let’s just look at fasting. They’re all fasting the whole month of Ramadan faithfully. Right? That’s a tough one too, man.
Because, in Ramadan Ramadan, you can’t you can’t even smoke. Right? Right. And you can’t have sex. Nope.
But you know Muslims I mean, pause. How many how many times do you remember being in Muslim countries where you would see Muslims that the more you got to know them that some of them would show up at your house because you could eat Ramadan. Right. Right. Right.
Right. But were they Muslim? Yes. Right? Because they said they were Muslim.
Uh-huh. So if we get down to it, if you have somebody that says, hey, I’m a Muslim and they have this sort of basic belief and practice, who are we to come along and say, no. You’re not. We’re not even part of the community to be, you know, sort of throwing people out of the community. But you have Muslims that have this wide array of belief and practice.
Some are fasting some are not fasting. Somebody well they have to at least be a believer in one God. Listen I’ve met Muslims that are clearly when it comes down to it atheistic in their belief, but yet they still call themselves Muslim. I I guess I could see that with Christians. There are a lot of Christians that believe some things that are pretty wonky, but would still consider calling themselves Christians.
Yeah. And so Christians have a hard time answering what does it mean to be Christian, but we’re so good at saying what it means to be Muslim. Yeah. You’re right. So in in in my opinion, let’s stop determining what makes a person Muslim and let’s start asking Muslims, are you Muslim?
Right. And if the answer is yes, well, tell me about that. What does it mean to be Muslim? But despite all that, the the the big question is, okay, so and I had a colleague asked me this recently, if I just read the Koran with the correct historical interpretation and use, the best hermeneutics possible, will I come up with a radical interpretation or a peaceful interpretation? They want a yes or no answer, of course.
Right? Yeah. And I said That’s what I want. It’s not that simple. It is way too complex to just break it down into this sort of what will I get?
Yes or no? Radical or not radical? Because you have all of these different, ideas. So one for instance that we have to talk about. This will help us to understand and I hear people throwing this around even our our politician friend threw this word out there.
He talked about abrogation. Right. And so he says that well, what people need to realize is that Islam has some peaceful stuff but it also has a ton of violent stuff. I think he said 99 or 90% of it was violent. He said 90%.
Clearly, he’s not read the Quran because 90% of the Quran is not violent. Yeah. But there is violence. Certainly, there’s violence. But the violent parts of the Koran, do tend to come in the later part of the Koran.
Now, here’s the deal. When you’re looking at the Koran, it’s not in chronological order. Kind of like the Bible. Right. The New Testament letters are not in chronological order.
They’re in order, longest to shortest. Well, I don’t remember the New Testament that way as well. Right? Long, letters of the longest to shortest. Well look the Koran is the same way.
You have the first chapter called the opening. And then from that point on it’s the longest to shortest. And so there’s no chronology. And so most Muslims don’t know the chronology. Most Muslims don’t actually even read the Koran I would say because it needs to be read in Arabic and it needs to be recited.
It’s not even a text that’s really supposed to be read. It’s supposed to be recited. Okay. And then within that, the text doesn’t follow a chronological order. So how do you know well, you could get a list of the chronological order of the Quran and read it in that way if you wanted.
You mean they don’t have like 50,000 translations like we do in English? Well, they’re starting. They’re starting with some translations. They would be called interpretations though because interpretive decisions are made when you change it from the Arabic to the English. But you know what?
The same things happen when you interpret, when you translate the Bible. Right. Remember your first year of Greek? Oh, my gosh. It was so stressful.
Yeah. You start realizing make these decisions and Yeah. You realize that people make interpretive decisions when they translate. So anyways, that happens in the Quran as well. So they don’t call them translations.
They’ll call them interpretations. But this idea of abrogation is the idea that the, if there’s 2 verses that are in any kind of contradiction that the later is going to cancel out the earlier and it just so happens in Islam that the more violent interpretations are later. Right. So if you know that reading in chronology in chronological order that’s going to affect the way you interpret the text. Right.
But here’s the problem. Not all Muslims agree with abrogation. What? Yeah. That’s the thing.
You can say, well, there you go. It’s as simple as that. If the more violent text are in the end and the more violent text have abrogated the peaceful text, then islam is there by violent. I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Yeah.
I don’t know why I’m surprised because look at Christianity with dispensationalism or or covenantalism or Arminianism or Calvinism or give me any other ism. Right. It’s all it’s like a different interpretation. I mean, they’re just looking at it from different perspectives and come up with different things and, even responses, behaviors. So there’s there’s division within the Islamic scholars as to whether or not abrogation even exists within Islam.
So for John Bennett to come around talking about abrogation To just break it down into this very reductive sorta, oh, yeah. Later scans earlier, later is more violent. That’s what it is. That’s it’s violent. It’s way too simple.
Right. So the way that it kind of breaks down within the two worlds, some would say that the abrogation doesn’t actually apply to the Quran. So, do you wanna hear the verse of abrogation that is often cited? Yeah. We do not abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten except that which we bring forth one better or similar to it.
So, that’s out of, Sura 2, 106. That’s the verse of abrogation. So, So, it sounds like it it’s talking about clarifying verses. Almost like what a lot of Christians would refer to as progressive revelation. Right.
Another another topic. But but what it would say is so some Muslims would say that nothing is canceled. Something could be clarified but if anything is ever cancelled it has nothing to do with the Quran. It could however be substituted to cancel something that might have been revealed in the previous text that were revealed because the Quran is clear that God revealed other messages through Moses for instance the law. So the Torah or the Torah revealed to Moses Muslims are supposed to adhere to.
Wow. And then you have the zeboor, the Psalms, which were revealed to the prophet Daoud David. Wow. And then you have the Injil or the gospel that was revealed to Esau Almasy Jesus. And so if there’s contradiction between those previously revealed scriptures in the Quran and the Quran should supersede or abrogate the previous scriptures.
But that’s not necessarily to say that there’s abrogation within the Quran itself. Right. Superseding itself. There you go. So some Muslims, they disagree about whether Quran even, abrogation exists in the Quran.
And then there are those that say, well, it can exist in the Quran. Quran and if there’s anything that contradicts, which I’ve yet to find a Muslim that has any that has ever said there’s any contradiction in the Quran. Yeah. I guess that’s probably not something that they would advertise or No. And so even if there was abrogation in the Quran, the the process of abrogating something is so strenuous.
I mean you have to have complete consensus of the scholars there. It has to apply to Islamic jurisprudence meaning that there’s a law. It can’t be just sort of this one verse that’s out there and doesn’t necessarily mean something. It needs to be maybe Muslims couldn’t eat this food but now they can eat this food very similar to Jesus in the New Testament law. But it needs to be a clear command from Mohammed substituting something.
There needs to be complete knowledge of the chronology of the revelation which sometimes in the Koran there’s not. And so this is a huge, huge issue in Islam. Not something to just be kinda spouted off as a political slogan and then expect Christians to walk away and say, well, there you go. It’s easy. I didn’t I didn’t realize it was so easy.
So what would you say that our response should be as educated listeners There you go. Of this kind of, political jargon and and reductionism? What do you think our response should be? Because I think ISIS really is probably something that we do need to talk about, continue to deal with in politics because it does affect our world. Right?
Mhmm. But at the same time, not to just kind of take everything hook, line, and sinker, with what these what these politicians are using to, get their get themselves elected, I guess. Yeah. I think, 1, it isn’t the job of a Muslim to determine the true nature of Islam. Isn’t the job of a non Muslim.
A non Muslim. Yeah. Right. Muslims are debating that amongst themselves and I don’t know that they’re ever gonna come to a complete solution. But I I don’t understand why the non Muslim world feels as though it has this obligation to kind of declare the true nature of Islam when they’ve not studied themselves.
You know, I think it had probably has to do with the fact that they need to figure out who are we shooting at. Yeah. I mean, is that bad? I mean, is it because we need to know clear cut enemies. That’s I think Vietnam was a a great example of that.
It was really, really hard when you couldn’t figure out who your enemy was. And so it was almost like they had to kind of invent this enemy to make them a little bit more clear. I don’t know, man. I just kinda feel like with Muslims, like, it’s so easy for Americans, for us as a public to just take all this stuff in just so that we can have an enemy. We wanna know who to blame.
That’s a dangerous game. Right. Dangerous game. And I think the one of the big problems is that when when Muslims attempt to speak out, I don’t know why we do this. And and for some reason, I see Christians doing it probably more than any other group.
We tell them, well, you don’t understand the true nature of your own religion. It’s a little presumptuous. Right? And and so it’s like Sam Harris when he was drawing his concentric circle saying, well, at the core are the radicals. Right.
And so it’s Like, that’s the foundation. That’s what, yeah, Islam is. That’s the truest Islam. Yep. So that that in my mind seems a bit bizarre.
What do you stand to gain by convincing a Muslim that he doesn’t understand his own religion and that he should really be radical? Yeah. Calling the the peace, peaceful ones, ones, nominal. Nominal as though they don’t understand. Yeah.
That that’s bizarre to me. So I I think here’s what here’s what we take away from this. One, it really doesn’t matter what you know about Islam. What you know about Islam and what you know about what the Quran says, just go ahead and assume that that doesn’t matter. What matters most to you is what does the Muslim sitting across from me believe about Islam?
What does he or she know about Islam? Right. That’s more important. Right. And that also leads us to relationship.
Yeah. And so same finding that out and same thing with Mohammed. I hear Christians, I mean, I think probably more Christians, non Muslims have written about Mohammed than Muslims. Wow. And so, we need to stop telling Muslims, hey.
Let me tell you about Mohammed. And start asking them. You know, what do you believe about Mohammed? And so, 2. And then with Mohammed, you need to stop criticizing Mohammed especially believers because you do not need to make Mohammed bad in order to make Jesus look good.
That doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would we compare the 2? Why do we bring the 2 up together? Let’s just talk about what we know, which is Jesus. Right.
And they’re interested. Absolutely. They’re interested because Jesus is all through the Quran more than 90 times mentioned in the Quran. Right. And so we need to talk about Jesus.
And, they probably look at us as okay. Well, they know about Esa. They know about Jesus. Yeah. So they’re probably interested to talk about that and, yeah, more so than we we think.
Yeah. So, and so not talking, telling Muslims what they believe, not telling Muslims about what they should believe about Islam or about Mohammed, talk about what we do know. When you see some sort of political rhetoric that gets forwarded to you in an email, I would say that here’s sort of the filtering mechanism that I encourage people to consider. Is what you’re reading causing you to love God more and to love Muslims more? And if if the answer is if the answer is yes, forward it on.
Go for it. Right. But it causes you to hate, to generalize, to To be fearful, to be whatever, you know. Big at your thoughts. If it’s if it’s causing you to be, fearful and hate or any of those sort of things, then and don’t don’t forward it.
You might even wanna email the guy or girl back and just say, you know, this sort of stuff is not helping us in what we’re called to do with Muslims. And in anything that causes a stumbling block for you, to do what you know you’re supposed to do as a believer, you should get rid of. Yeah. That because, I mean, that’s how we kinda live our faith too. I mean, things that cause us to stumble, not even just with Islam, right, but just as Christians, we try to eliminate that.
Yeah. Yeah. And we know that we’re called to love. We know that we’re called to share the gospel with Muslims. We know that we’re called to introduce them to Christ and ask them to follow Christ.
We know that. And so if there’s something else in our life that is causing us to stumble towards that and not not do that or stumble before we get to that, we should get rid of it. Right. This kinda leads us to our carpe diem of the day, which is Reza Aslan. Aslan.
And, so he kinda said something that, the reason why we gave him the carpe diem this, this week is because he does something that kinda helps us with our our vision. What we try to do here is to kind of enlighten people, to to help people see in a different perspective, help them to understand. And his quote is most people, the vast majority of people who have lived a lived experience of religion, bring their own political and social and economic and ideological perspectives and prejudices to the scriptures. It’s precisely why 2 people can read this exact same verse of scripture and come away with absolutely conflicting, opposing interpretations of it. This is so basic.
Why is it why is this hard for people to understand? And it’s kinda like what we were talking about with, trying to, you know, pigeonhole, Muslims saying, hey. This is what you believe when it’s not that simple. And I love that he just be able to he’s able to share that and and share it in just such a clear way, man. It’s the people.
And just like Trevor was saying, it’s the people that that make the difference. It’s not just, the the scripture by itself. It’s when people read it and put actions behind it that change everything. Yeah. One interesting thing about Reza Aslan is he’s got, well, that’ll be our our recommendation for resources.
His book, No God But God, which is an actual excellent resource. But he wrote another book here recently. I didn’t care for as much, but he was highly criticized for writing it because he is a Muslim writing about Jesus. Right. I mean, that was amazing to me that, it was a Fox News anchor that was basically saying that you should not be writing about Jesus because you don’t follow Jesus.
You’re a Muslim, and Muslims should not be writing about Jesus. And I’m thinking to myself, how many Christians have written about Mohammed? Is it is it because I don’t follow, a certain religion that I can’t have opinions or think about other religions and Reza Aslan is more than qualified to write a book, on religion and even Jesus. But he was criticized highly for writing his book on Jesus. One thing that I would have focused on is the fact that he thinks that he probably could affirm the death of Jesus on the cross.
And I’m thinking here we have a Muslim writing that the death of Jesus on the cross Right. Instead of focusing on that, we focus on the fact that, well, you shouldn’t be writing about Jesus because you’re Muslim. Yeah. Which is strange because Isah is or Jesus is in the Quran. Yes.
Yes. Definitely. And he he was referring the death of Jesus and we were kinda writing him off. No. No.
Explain that, like, in 10 seconds. Why that’s so, you know, such a big jump for a Muslim to to to believe? Well, you you have a verse in the Quran that says they boast that they killed the Christ, but they killed him not. It was only made to appear to be so. And so Muslims look at that and they say that Jesus wasn’t actually crucified, but somebody was, either crucified in his place or he really didn’t die on the cross.
Maybe he went to the grave still alive. So there’s even within the belief about Jesus’s death on the cross. There’s a variety of belief systems around that within Islam. But the majority would say that he didn’t die on the cross. Somebody else died in his place.
Right. So Reza Aslan say saying that aligns more, with what we believe. Right. And and and within historical Islam, within the oldest commentaries, the death of Jesus on the cross was certainly a possibility. And so he was simply saying that it’s a possibility that maybe he did die on the cross.
And, yeah, it I can’t get over the fact that when a Muslim was wanting to talk about Jesus, we told him he’s not allowed. Right. Alright. So why should we read No God But God? What is that about?
Well, that’s, Reza Islam’s sort of theology of Islam, looking at Islam, understanding Islam in the history in the context of history. He is a western scholar. He is Iranian by birth, lives in the United States. Actually, I don’t know if he lives in the United States. He may live in the UK, but he’s he’s got a degree in, sociology.
He’s got a a PhD, as well. But he’s he’s a, in my opinion, a refreshing sort of viewpoint on looking at Islam rather than just kinda having these books that are Islam is this or Islam is that. He kinda broadens it a little bit for us. Right. Okay.
Well, we still wanna hear your comments, especially on some of the questions that we talked about today because your, your input really kinda helps us guide the show where you’re interested, and we really thank you for listening. Yeah. And I’m kinda curious if you guys would write in, whatever states or whatever countries, you live in. I know that we have, listeners probably coming from a lot of different backgrounds. Are do you do you sense that Muslims are used as political pawns?
Are is Islam always in the discussion with, pawns? Are is Islam always in the discussion with, elections in in your part of the world or in your state? Just curious. Right. Love to hear from you.
So that’s it for this week. We’ll see you next week.