The Cool Water of the Koran (Part II)
"Though all the trees in the earth were pens, and the sea and the seven seas after it were to replenish them, yet would the Words of God not be spent." -- Koran (31:27)b
This is the second Letter on Islam written in response to a non-Muslim writer:"The Koran is to Muslims what Jesus is to Christians."
by Salim Mansur
Dear friend:
I will address you as a friend even though all I know of you is from your letters. I trust in calling you a friend we will set between us a relationship of some mutual respect.
I find your letters smoking with anger. I understand why you are angry, and there is much to be angry about. But anger clouds reason, impedes the understanding, and makes our response to evil often ineffectual, even counter-productive. Even righteous-anger must be tempered with reason for justice to be done, and for good to triumph over evil.
You need to pause and drain your heart of anger that it might begin to feel and hear the sublime music around you, for it is through the heart that we hear that music that is heavenly and transcendent. And if you want to behold Him, as the psalmist in the Bible pines to “behold the beauty of the Lord,” you must wipe the stain of anger from your eyes.
Our history is of our making. The monuments to our triumphs and ruins are statements about ourselves; testaments to how we have conducted our affairs between our arrival and departure from this world. The best we inherit is the gift of freedom by which we endear ourselves to each other; and the worst we confront is the struggle with freedom’s enemy.
The jihadi Muslims are one such enemy of freedom, and since there can be no peace with them as they preach and practice violence, they must, as were other enemies of freedom, be eliminated. The conflict between freedom and tyranny is but another name for the eternal struggle between good and evil, between belief and unbelief. In this conflict the God of Abraham is not an entirely neutral and distant on-looker. Far from it. He is an active participant in the ranks of those who fight for freedom.
The reason is simple. There can be no belief without freedom, and tyranny is unbelief or belief in false deities whether these are graven images or ideologies at war with freedom.
The Koran declares, “No compulsion is there in religion.” Any public demonstration of religion brought about by coercion is merely another form of idol-worship. Faith is not faith unless it is freely found and not compelled. This is the paradox that confounds those who desire peace and yet deny God. Securing freedom requires the preparedness and willingness to fight those who are enemies of freedom. How else will freedom be won and tyrants defeated?
Tyrants and those who serve tyranny are infidels or unbelievers, and fighting them when they seek to spread their tyranny is a righteous effort sanctioned by the Koran. Whether misguided or innately evil, the jihadi Muslims, by conflating politics and faith to deny others the right to choose for themselves how to live, are tyrants and hence unbelievers.
The Koran, as with the Bible or any sacred text, can be cited by the devil for his purpose. Discernment is needed to distinguish between the devil in disguise and the genuine seeker after truth prepared to fight in defending his freedom. The test between truth and falsehood is to be discerned in the conduct of individuals. As the Bible counsels “by their fruits you shall know them.”
You question, however, the nature of the Koran and you deride the fundamental belief of Muslims that the Koran is truly God’s Words as revealed to Muhammad as God’s messenger. You are not alone in this questioning and derision of Muslim belief following the horrific events of September 11, 2001. I am neither surprised nor angered. The Holocaust brought many Jews to question the very existence of God; that if He exists how could He be seen as good if He allowed such horror to be visited upon them?
The Koran was revealed in time and space. This revelation of God’s Words shaped the destiny of a single human being, Muhammad, and made him an instrument of God’s plan for a portion of mankind. Then the Revelation to Muhammad, after his death, is redacted into a text that became the basis of an empire and civilization in the name of Islam.
The Koran and the history that unfolds after its Revelation have become inextricably bound together. Today it is an immense difficulty to imagine the Koran outside of and apart from this history and to read it afresh. It is the same difficulty as reading the Bible without reference to the history of the respective peoples involved in shaping their lives and the environment around them.
And yet that tireless effort is constantly required if the pristine message of the Koran is to be heard. The Koran is to Muslims what Jesus is to Christians. The Koran is divine in its origin, and it exists outside of time and space though it descends into the material world of human beings with the resulting consequence of being variously understood and exalted, or misused and abused.
The common mistake made by non-Muslims, and many Muslims as well, is to draw a comparison between Jesus and Muhammad. Setting aside, and not disputing, Christian belief about Jesus being divine (for this is a matter of belief as is Muslim belief about the Koran being God’s Words), Muslim belief in Jesus – of his special status by the nature of his birth and by the powers he possessed as divine favour – is informed by the Koran. Muhammad, unlike Jesus, is a mortal as the Koran insists, and like any other mortal will be accountable for his deeds on the Day of Reckoning.
Jesus is not bound by history, and his presence to Christians is immediate and redemptive. Similarly, the Koran is not bound nor limited by history, and God’s Words reach us in the here and now if we are receptive to them.
It is odd for anyone to insist that the Koran must be read and understood within the framework of reading provided by those who came after Muhammad in the early centuries of Muslim history. This insistence freezes the meaning of the Koran for the living generation of Muslims and those as yet unborn. It imprisons the Koran within a the reading made by the dead generations of Muslims, it denies the very possibility of reform.
Such insistence runs counter to what is asserted in the Koran, that its meaning is inexhaustible; that the past is but a lesson and not a foreclosure on the future. The Koran was not revealed for the raising of an empire as occurred in the years following the demise of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, nor was its meaning emptied when that empire withered and fell.
What is the central message of the Koran? It is to re-awaken man (speaking generically, not exclusively in gender terms) to recognize the One Reality, God – Eternal, Incomparable, Self-Sustaining – as the Source of all of creation. This recognition and its acknowledgement is the primary covenant between God and man. From this constant covenant comes man’s responsibility to take his freedom signified by the spirit God breathed into him as life neither lightly nor in vain. Those among us who trample upon and seek to abridge this freedom are the ones at war with God’s spirit. They are the ones who need to be fought and defeated.
This core message of the Koran is neither exclusive for Arabs among whom Muhammad was born, nor has it been denied to others at different times and different places. This message is like the eternal life-giving water, and as water – it being the universal metaphor for life and living – it takes the shape of vessels into which it is poured.
The jihadi Muslims are people belonging to the fraternity of bigots who quarrel over the shape of the vessels carrying water. Believers quench their thirst with water heedless of the vessel from which it gets poured.
If the irony does not escape you then you will recognize how in abusing the living faith of a people, in those who take the Koran as God’s Words, you have placed yourself in the company of jihadi Muslims whom you detest. In that company you continue the quarrel with over the shape of vessels while the water within eludes you and your thirst is not quenched. If you would instead choose to drink water freely from any vessel that is pleasing to you, without denying others the same right, I would remain committed to protecting our shared freedom. And I would protect it as best I could as both your friend and a believer in God’s Words revealed as the Koran.
Respectfully,
Salim Mansur
“From water God made every living thing.”
-Surah Number 21 Ayah Number 30, Koran
The first letter of “The Cool Water of the Koran” is HERE.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario and a syndicated columnist in Canada and the United Kingdom. A Muslim native to Calcutta, India, and a noted Islamic scholar, Prof. Mansur has written extensively on Islamic extremism and the challenges facing contemporary Islam.
Prof. Mansur, If only millions of people like the letter writer and myself could read your letter, maybe a lot of the mis-understanding about Islam would disappear! I am a disbeliever of any religion and therefore an infidel. But I have always respected others for their beliefs and not worked or tried to dissuade them of those beliefs. Your letter went leagues and miles toward righting some of my long held ideas about Islam. I especially was struck by the “shape of the vessel” analogy. Keep up your GOOD work. I will also sign my letter as, ‘your friend’ Everett R Littlefield
I believe the word God in the Koran is Allah. The Jewish God Jehovah and the Islamic god Allah are two different entities.
It takes much more than words to establish the basis for trust. Mr Mansur’s letter is more an appeal to naivete and ignorance than anything else. There’s too much violence in the name of Islam coming from too many continents to be lulled by soothing words of harmony.
Islam needs to undergo a very significant reformation. Current events indicate the exact opposite is happening. There’s no place for theocracy in the west.
So when I read Mr. Mansur’s words, the overriding thought running through my mind is ‘Words are cheap – you need to walk the talk’. I’ll say a prayer for both the ‘infidel’ and muslim innocents that will have their lives extinguished in the name of Allah before today is done.
This may be from a “moderate Muslim” but it still allows for belief in no God but Allah. There is not the smallest nod to any other belief being in any tiny way valid. No, Islam, only Islam, forever Islam. Sorry professor, but that just doesn’t cut it.
Most of the statements about the “coolness” of Islam could as easily be found in the Christian Bible or the Jewish Tanakh. I understand that the professor calls the “jihadists” bigots, but he fails to mention the fact that the Qu’ran demands that ALL Muslims seek to defeat the unbelievers and to deliver them to the fold as converts, dhimmis, or dead.
Pardon me if I choose not to sign my message, “Friend.”
Spinoneone
Prof. Mansur,
Would you welcome an online discussion with Robert Spencer (http://www.jihadwatch.org/spencer/) or Andrew Bostom (http://www.andrewbostom.org/)?
As others have noted, letters such as this really don’t go far enough.
And, professor, we don’t need to go outside of Muhammed’s lifetime to already see the practical implications of Koranic doctrine. The blood and guts were already flowing with Muhammed at the helm. So what if later commentators spurred Muslims to spill more blood and guts? And everyone knows that the context of the “No compulsion in religion” is of the early Koran when Muhammed was weak. Plus, even if there is “No compulsion in religion”, it is driven by a desire to keep other religious communities around in order that they may pay the jizya and provide psychological satisfaction to Muslims by being dominated. Wow, I get to keep my religion so long as I pay an extra tax? Sign me up, that sounds awesome!
The Koran is fine as a manual to create a primitive, simple civilization based on tribe and clan. The problem, obviously, is that history and humanity have moved on from such simplicity into more complexity. Tough if you can’t keep up. Science and modernity are going to keep putting the pressure on you until your simplistic system cracks.
I personally don’t care about metaphorical BS like comparing to Koran to cool water, all of which metaphors appear in a variety of religions and can hardly be considered original or even relevant. No, the only thing that I care about with any religion is how it treats non-believers, since I don’t believe in any of them. On that score, Islam fails most miserably, both in terms of the severity of the failure as well as its current-day virulence.
Another problem, professor, is that you are, if you are sincere in opposing the jihadis, just as much a target of theirs as anyone else. Only, as a Muslim, you have the option of reverting to their interpretation of Islam at the “right time”, i.e. when the sword is over your head when they accuse you of apostasy. You think I, or any reasonable person, should take your sincerity at face value in that context? On what basis? That you’re a nice guy? Just as it’s said “There are no atheists in foxholes”, I doubt there are Muslim apostates who won’t join the jihad when the chips are down. Simple cost-benefit analysis tells me that’s the optimal choice for “moderate” Muslims once their more radical brethren make enough inroads to power.
Before the entire beast can fill the space, first the camel’s nose must come under the tent. No man who loves liberty can love Islam. Few enough men raised in the beneficence of Western Civilization love liberty as it is. Islams advance only reveals to us our true weakness, hypocrisy, and illusion, if we ever cared to look. “Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort, and advantage.” That is the only thing we share.
Salim Mansur sounds like a Sufi. I had a friend at work that was a Sufi, and as an old time Protestant Christian, I felt a connection. He made is seem that there could be an individual relationship with the better messages in Islam, a love, if you will.
Unfortunately, when I read pronouncements from the the many Saudi funded Imam’s that have dominated the mosques around the world, I hear a legalistic unforgiving message that has no human heart.
The common etymology of Allah and the Hebrew Elohim has been established for a long time. The Jewish theologians have confirmed since the 9th century C.E. that Islam represents the same monotheistic revelation as Judaism. Jews do not use the term Jehovah, which is a late Christian corruption of the ineffable name YHVH which is not vocalized with the presumed vowels. Believing Jews do not pronounce the name of God at all, referring instead to Adonai or Hashem. The God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims is the same. Arab Christians also refer to God as Allah. People who offer opinions in these areas should do some basic research.
Stephen,
As a philology student of many years, your argument is on the same level as me saying that because the singer Madonna calls herself the same name as the historical mother of Jesus, they share the same attributes. I don’t care about the name, I care about the attributes. While Islam and Judaism agree on some of the attributes of god (creator not created, eternal), they disagree on some that are much more fundamental to human life on earth (Is god a slave-master (Islam) or a loving father and fair judge (Judaism))? Does god have one moral code for all time (Islamic sharia) or does the moral code evolve through time (the Biblical prophecies)? These are the “day-to-day” religious issues that can’t be resolved by some appeal to a theological unity between Judaism and Islam. At that level, the unity is so abstract as to be utterly useless, even as a basis for the precious “dialogue” that appeasers always try to initiate with Muslims.
Also, those Jewish theologians were wrong in “confirming” that Islam is “of a piece” with the Judaic revelation, in my opinion. What would “confirming” even look like in a theological context? Muhammed just stole from other religions and then added in his own egoistic tenets. How is that a “revelation”, much less one that can be “confirmed” as the same as “the same” as the Judaic revelation? If Jews sincerely believe this, they are not half as intelligent as I have thought. People used to believe that vacuums couldn’t exist in nature, too, and that turned out to be wrong, so just because a belief has been around since the 9th century doesn’t make it correct. I’m not a Christian or a Jew, but I think both those groups have every right to tell Muslims to stick it where the sun don’t shine when Muslims say they are part of the “Abrahamic brotherhood” of religions.
This is a fine essay.
At different times in world history, the difference between Catholic and Protestant, those who take different sides in the debate over predestination, Christian and Jew, rich and poor, etc., has been taken to be a sound reason for war, murder, torment, and exile.
I am perfectly willing to criticize negative aspects of life and governance in various Islamic countries.
But I am unwilling to lump a billion people into the category of “deluded savage worshipppers of a slave-owner-god” who understand only violence.
Yes, the difference between Muslim and non-Muslim is, for some, a valid reason in the minds of far far too many these days to commit acts of violence.
But it need not ever be so– just as the difference between German and non-German, Communist and non-Communist, Catholic and Protestant, white and non-white need not.
Also, this reductionist view of a minority of Muslims ought not be trumpeted and embraced by the US and our allies.
Bad things have and will be done by bad people acting in what they believe, with apparent sincerity, to be the views of the god Muslims worship. And we have and will continue to fight those people.
But we must not lapse into the simple, damaging, errant belief that these differences are Now and Forever the Most Important Thing Ever in the History of World Civilization, and a global anti-Muslim jihad is an effective or appropriate way to handle the situation.
Elvis,
It’s a historical fact that there were colonists in the US that did not support the Revolutionary War. There were also those who did not want to fight Communism. Both of those groups turned out to be wrong, just as I think you will turn out to be wrong.
You don’t seem to understand the dynamics of political Islam. It doesn’t matter if the supporters of jihad are a relatively small percentage of Muslims. That small percentage will run policy because they are more committed to a vision than the majority. Anyone who’s studied the history of Nazism will be able to understand that small minorities can dominate policy in a country if they are ruthless enough. Read up on the history of the “Night of the Long Knives”, on which “moderate” Nazis were eviscerated by the more radical ones, setting in motion the events leading to WWII. I don’t understand why more people don’t realize this, but apparently it’s not a history lesson that’s been clearly understood.
venivedivicious,
That’s all fine, but like the Germans and the English and the Russians, bad people and bad ideologies don’t endure for all time. Fundamentalist Islam is a phenomenon with its roots in the 20th century, a nativist response to external pressures and internal failures.
As I wrote above, “we have and will continue to fight” Islam-inspired terrorists. But fighting Communism didn’t involve invading all that many Communist countries. Fighting Islamic terrorism might not either. (Terrorism and Communism are, of course, very different as to their capabilities, goals, methods, and animating philosophies).
As I understand it, we agree that Islam-inspired terrorism is a very serious and bad thing that demands a very serious and well-considered response. We disagree as to whether it makes an eternal foe of 1/6 of the Earth’s people.
Also, my corruption of your username is a nod to the fine Hives album of that name.
Also, venividivici, the lesson you’ve drawn from the history of Germany under the Nazis is that everyone bad is akin to Nazi Germany. That is not so.
Adolf Hitlers don’t just pop up on the world scene like dandilions. Doesn’t mean that Osama bin Laden isn’t a seriously bad guy, but not even seriously bad guys are Hitler.
Not every moment in world history is Munich. People like Newt Gingrich, who believed themselves tough-minded students of history, were wrong to compare Ronald Reagan to Neville Chamberlain for talking to Mikail Gorbachev.
An entire empire, spanning half the globe, was built on the principles laid down in 9.29. It sure would be nice to see some intelligent people discussing that one during this sahwa Islamia which shows no signs of slowing down or temporizing on violence any time soon. Not that other passages aren’t important, but the fact so few people are familiar with the basics does not exactly fill me with hope.
It would help if you understood the concept of abrogation when approaching Sura Nine – one of the last written by Mohammed’s followers. Oh sorry, the unreconstructed word of God. God can’t organize passages into their natural and coherent order, apparently.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/009.qmt.html
Dear Professor Mansur,
Your letter was very interesting and informative, except that I cannot help feeling it has been strongly influenced by Christian thought rather than the Muslim tradition. You assert there can be no belief without freedom, but in Islam there can be no free will at all given God is All Powerful and All Knowing. Modern Muslims in the West may like to deny this, but I do not know of any pre-Modern Muslim who has ever asserted otherwise.
You assert that freedom means freedom from idolatry, but that is just another way of saying that men are free if they have no right to choose. You defend a totalitarian religious ideology and assert that men are free when they obey like slaves. This is absurd. The only real freedom is to believe and worship as you, an individual, sees fit and not to allow the Imams to determine what is polytheism. When you go further and claim that the fight against tyranny is the fight against polytheism, what you are asserting is the 1984 dictum that Slavery is Freedom. The fight against tyranny is the fight against anyone who claims to hold a monopoly on the Truth and to be the sole possessor of the Keys of Heaven.
The Quran proclaims there was no compulsion in religion, but that was abrogated by Muhammed when he was powerful enough to enforce Islam. Before he took Mecca there were no Muslims in that city. After, there were no pagans.
Again to assert that there is no Faith unless it is freely chosen is to assert a Christian, not Muslim, view. In Islam orthopraxy is what counts and that can be enforced. Only Christians insist on people being “Born Again”. Forced conversion has long been a Muslim practice and one that is not yet dead.
The problem with Jihadis is that they do not have to misquote the Quran. They have support for what they do in the Quran, the aHadith and the Sira. Muhammed oppressed others, he murdered girls for singing songs about him, he stole, raped and allowed his men to. The Devil is not misusing the Quran for that purpose or at least you have failed to explain how the Jihadis have done so. It is true that the Bible says “by their fruits you shall know them.” By that measure, Islam’s fruits are illiteracy, dictatorship, oppression, terrorism and violence. The Muslim world nowhere presents a healthy, free and prosperous society without large non-Muslim minorities.
You assert that a common mistake made by non-Muslims is to draw a comparison between Jesus and Muhammad. That is true, but by denying the evidence of the Quran and aHadith, by asserting Muhammed did not sin, Muslims makes that comparison every day.
I fail to accept that being honest about Islam means any comparison with the Jihadis. We are all called to be honest about ourselves, our beliefs and the world around us. If the Jihadis understand their religion correctly, so much the worse for Muslims. If they do not, you have no provided any evidence of that fact. Either way, we have no obligation except to search out the truth because the truth will make us free. If you call that defaming your religion, so be it. It will not change the fact that the Quran contains errors and Muhammed married a six year old girl.
Yours
HeiGou
Elvis,
I am aware that internally corrupt ideologies have a tendency to fall over the long term without outside military intervention. But, you have to admit there’s a tradeoff between not doing anything versus doing something to hasten the fall, in terms of how long it takes. According to this theory, Saddam would have fallen eventually. The problem is that in the decades that took, the cost of containing him would also add up. Oh, there’d have been fewer gruesome headlines, but more costs for, e.g. monitoring troop movements within Iraq. The question then becomes would you rather pay a small amount for a long time or a large amount for a short time.
Add in to the mix the fact that, whether Saddam had it or not, WMD technology is floating around, and time becomes a much worse enemy, making the cost of trying to wait out a Saddam’s collapse much riskier.
The reason I used the “Night of the Long Knives” example is because it fits the principle that extremists can drive out moderates, especially if the extremists exhibit more ideological purity than the moderates and the ideology they are following is anti-democratic.
Prof Mansur, your audience can’t be non-Muslims. They are not the “misunderstanders” of the beauty of Islam. By their fruits, you shall know them. I just look around and have observed the Muslim world, since 9/11.
I see hatred, bigotry, violence and oppression everywhere. Some places worse than other places. I see this hatred, bigotry and violence justified by reference to the Muslim religion.
What do I know? I’m an outsider, I don’t speak the language and it’s a different culture. Am I wrong to take these Imams, Mullahs and Ayatollahs from Orange County, to Al Azhar, to the UK, to Algeria to Indonesia at their word?
How can so many “religious” scholars “misunderstand” their own religion? Yes, Christianity is used to justify the hatred and bigotry of the nutballs at the Westboro Baptist Church. But they have no followers, they have no contributors, they have not committed terrorist attacks to the acclaim of Christians worldwide. Judaism has produced fringe nutballs.
In both religions, in the 21st Century, they are just that, fringe nutballs. The hatred and bigotry of the Westboro Baptist Church is the mainstream of Islam. We see this kind of hatred and bigotry coming straight out of the Great Mosque in Saudi Arabia, out of the premier University of Islam, Al Azhar in Cairo, out of the Islamic tv preachers followed by tens of millions of Moslems.
Prof Mansur, please focus efforts on the correct audience, that is, speak to fellow Muslims. Organize like-minded Muslims. Become the dominant strain in Islam. That’s your job. As an outsider, I can only watch and see what Muslims do and say. I can only watch the almost daily mass murder, primarily of Muslims in Iraq. I’ve heard no condemnation of mass murder in the name of Allah. I’ve seen no support for the US and the Coalition, who are valiantly trying to stop the violence in Iraq from Egypt or Saudi Arabia. What I see is simply an unending incitement to murder from everywhere in the Muslim ‘Civilization’.
My mind will be changed by actions, not accusations that I ‘misunderstand’ Islam.
I wish you success, Prof Mansur. Your success will save the lives of tens of millions of Muslims and prevent future wars. Bottom line, end the jihad and that will end the war.
Words and their meaning. Yours… “The Koran is to Muslims what Jesus is to Christians.”
To me a Christian….God revealed himself in the flesh (Logos) as Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was God as a man …without sin and the embodiment of Love.
The Koran is a book written by a man . Jesus wrote no book ….Jesus as God wrote with his finger in stone , The Ten Commandments .
There is no comparative similarity between Jesus and the Koran .
I do not accept the premise
of your statement.
THE MEANING OF ISLAM
I HAVE HAD MANY Muslim friends, and cherish their friendship. All of them have been moderate, with no intention to hurt anyone; “Lucky is the man who has an Arab for a friend.” However, Islamists are different, in complex ways. My comments may seem muscular, but they are not designed to violate the basic Golden Rule of reciprocity. Controversy occurs in all religions.
UNTIL MOHAMED, most Middle Eastern peoples worshiped multiple deities, with disagreement over who was the highest god, or “Allah”. For at least 5000 years, the moon god was usually the “Allah”. Mohamed appears to have adapted this by eliminating all gods but the moon god, named it Allah, and asserted himself as His messenger. There seems to be no better explanation of why Islam displays the half-moon on mosques, flags, and myriad other places. Most Muslim scholars acknowledge that the Koran is based on Bedouin values and culture. Mohamed said Islam descended from Judaism, and Christianity, and claimed these religions as a subset of Islam, but nothing actually proves this, or explains the huge discrepancies between the ideas about God and Allah. A fair comparison of the values, directives, teachings, and goals of Allah (as interpreted by Mohamed and his Bedouin disciples) seem to have very little to do with the God of the old and new testaments. The Koran mainly concerns rules of conduct in tribal life in war and peace. Many troubling parts of the Koran advocate hate, murder, and revenge, particularly regarding the subjugation and/or genocide of other cultures, especially Jews and Christians. The Golden Rule, the heart of most other important religions, does not seem to be emphasized. Unfortunately, these historical thought patterns recur in current Islamist thinking. Islam was spread almost entirely by war, and it seems incredible, but Islamists actually seem to want to impose Bedouin culture on the West.
SHOULD MUSLIMS work to reform their religion so that it can adapt to the changes demanded by democratic society? Democracies have a right to insist that their citizens do not promulgate anti-semitism or other hate. Of course, mainstream Muslims are moderate, and avoid these extremes. However, one can argue that Islam needs to rethink how it will integrate itself into democracies. Other religions are constantly remaking and re-interpreting themselves, and so must Islam. For non-Muslims, we must work to convince our co-religionists that our problem with Islamists lies in dealing with their hate, not their religion.
Noone seems to have mentioned yet how sad it is to try and love an object the same as a Person.
What a pitiful equation it is to say that a book is the equal of a Person.
When you go to bed at night which would you want beside you? If you were on your death bed would you want your loved ones to send you a book? Can a book love you back?
Who is richer? The person whose heart is filled by the love for a divine Person? Or the person whose heart is in love with a book?
Who is richer? The Christian who experiences the Love of God poured freely abundantly and directly into their hearts and is then healed and motivated by that love and driven by that love through life towards heaven? Or the Muslim who is filled with their own love for God and who, driven by a lack of enough contact with God, strains (greater jihad) under his own meager power to impress God and to have fleeting contact with Him and strives to earn from Him the healing and connection that we all want and then receives that happiness only after death?
Think about this only for a minute and you will see the difference between adoring the Word of God in a living Person who sacrificially came down to complete our healing (salvation)and adoring a book as the Word of God sent from a distance like a get well card exhorting us to make ourselves better with our own power.
I’ll take a beautiful Person, a Person who is indeed water for the soul over a beautiful (for some anyway) collection of words any day.