Today we wrap up our
month-long sermon series on what Christians can learn from other religions, and
we do so with the religion of Islam. When I teach this faith in my World
Religions course at the college, I always challenge my students with the rather
obvious truth that this is the faith about which American Christians have the
most negative stereotypes. All of us are bombarded with misinformation, both
about Islam and those who practice it, at every turn. So if ever there was a
call for us to own up to our own negative preconceptions and to fight them off
with a truly open mind, today is the day.
I also like to start my teaching on Islam with that same
quotation from sociologists John Monaghan and Peter Just that I mentioned last
week. They write, “Many of the great
world religions began as revitalization or reform movements of some sort.”
Islam is no exception. The prophet Muhammad lived from 570 to 632 AD, so both
Judaism and Christianity were flourishing in the Middle East by the time he
came around. While Muhammad grew up in a polytheistic culture with countless gods,
he also had a deep, personal awareness of and respect for both Judaism and
Christianity. But he also believed that both those fellow Abrahamic faiths were
flawed and in desperate need of reform.
The most significant thing Muhammad took issue with in his
ancestral faiths was the fact that Judaism and Christianity were not lived out
on a daily and hourly basis. Muhammad’s contention that Jews and Christians
weren’t living out their beliefs on a regular basis can hardly be disputed.
Even today, we have a huge percentage of Christians who come to worship on
Sunday but don’t really DO what Jesus called us to the rest of the week.
Muhammad loved Jesus and saw him as the most significant prophet in history. Did
you know that Muslims recognize Abraham as the father of their faith, just like
Christians and Jews do? Muslims recognize Moses and Joshua and all the prophets
right up through Jesus of Nazareth! Muhammad and all Muslims see Jesus as one whose
teachings were divinely inspired and well worth following. What Muslims don’t believe is that Jesus is the son
of God, and the reason they don’t is that they are strict monotheists. Equating
Jesus or anyone with God divides the one God into many. So Muslims honor and
revere both Jesus and his message. What bothers them is that Jesus’ followers
don’t follow Jesus’s teachings. Muhammad felt the same way about Jews and the
Torah – great laws, right on track – but rarely followed consistently.
So in Muhammad’s revelation – recorded in what is now the
Koran – he ramped up the call to faithfulness and faithful living …BIG time. Close readers of the Koran will find tons of
parallels to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The difference, though, is
that the Koran doesn’t really give one the choice
of following or not. The word of Allah MUST
be followed. And so what we see in the Koran is this ramped up attempt to get
people to faithfully follow God’s law – 24/7/365. We see this most clearly in
the Koran’s teaching about prayer. While Christians and Jews are advised and
even admonished to pray, Muhammad called for people to pray 5 times per day –
every single day, and at the same 5 proscribed times: sunrise, noon, 5 pm,
sunset, and bed time. And so, faithful Muslims DO this – 5 times a day, every
day, no matter what. I might have mentioned in a previous message that my
eldest brother had a Muslim business partner, Moshin Meighi. And no matter what
was going on in their day – what meetings they had or client calls or whatever
– when any those 5 prayer times came around, Moshin excused himself, got his
prayer rug out, and hit the deck. I taught and lived with Muslim students in a
couple boarding schools, and it was the same with them – 5 times a day, no
matter what. In Islam, practices are non-negotiable. They are not optional. Muhammad’s
reform of the other Abrahamic faiths sought to get people to practice what they
believed, seven days a week. And I am thankful for Muhammad’s reforming
impulse.
We
see this same desire to bring people’s actions in line with their beliefs in what
Muslims call “Zakat” or giving to the poor. Judaism and Christianity, as you
know, recommend that we share what we
have with the poor; Islam requires
that it be done and that it be done at
a particular percentage of one’s income. For a Muslim giving these alms to the
poor is no more optional than paying one’s income taxes; again, it’s non-negotiable.
So I think one of the things we Christians can learn from
our Muslim brothers and sisters is the value of really putting our money where
our mouth is, of truly, regularly, consistently DOING what our faith calls us
to do. That is what all of our morning scripture passages called us to, right? “Faith
without works is dead!” James writes. “A tree is known by its fruits,” Jesus
said. There is tremendous devotion within the faithful Muslim community, and
that is probably one of the main reasons Islam is growing so rapidly, while
Christianity is declining at an unprecedented rate. As one of my favorite
contemporary Christian theologians, Shane Claiborne once put it, “We don’t
really know if the message and teaching of Jesus would work, because we’ve
never really tried it.” Ouch!
The other thing that must be understood about Islam is
that it is truly a religion of peace. The very word “Islam” comes from the root
“salam” which means “peace.” Islam can also be translated as “submission” as in
submission to God,” or Allah, as they call him in Arabic. Our Western media - and
sometimes even our government -would have us believe that Islam is a violent
religion that endorses terrorism. And, to be sure, there are factions – tiny,
radical sects within Islam who have perpetrated awful things, supposedly in the
name of Allah. But to judge Islam on the behavior of these sectarian fanatics
is no more accurate than judging Christianity on the basis of those who carried
out the crusades, endorsed Hitler, bombed abortion clinics, or terrorized
homosexuals.
Yes, some awful things have been perpetrated by Muslims,
just as some pretty awful things have been perpetrated by those claiming to be
Christians. But every religion has its radical factions and evil-doers. And newspapers
don’t sell and television ratings are not raised by the stories of what good,
peace-loving folks in the religious mainstream are doing.
I want to tell you my 9-11 story, because it taught me a
lot about Islam. On the fateful day, I was serving a boarding school in Exeter,
New Hampshire. Our school was truly international; we had students from every
continent and from over 100 countries. September 11th happened to be
the day that new students, new ninth graders, were being dropped off on campus.
14 and 15-year-olds from Japan, Thailand, Eastern and Western Europe, South
America, and places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, India – countries with
high concentrations of Muslims.
Now the “lucky” families had flown in on the 10th
and stayed in hotels within a few hours of our campus. They were driving in and
dropping their young teens off with us when the towers went down. The less lucky
were in the air on the morning of 9/11. Several of those kids would later tell
me that they looked out their plane window at 20,000 feet to see two F-15’s at
each wing pointing down – as in get out of the sky right now. It would take
those students almost a week to get to us.
I’ll never forget those Muslim mothers and fathers and
how angry they were at the terrorists. They were absolutely horrified that this
kind of god-less, gutless murder could be perpetrated in the name of Islam, in
the name of their peaceful, loving Allah. As angry as so many American
Christians and Jews were, I never saw anyone so angry, so embarrassed, so
betrayed as these faithful Muslim parents were in the wake of 9/11.
Our dorm became a refuge for the next week. None of the parents
– Muslim or otherwise – wanted to leave their 14-15 year-olds at such a time.
So our dorm went from housing 70 boys to housing about a hundred of their
parents as well. For almost a week we lived together, ate together, prayed
together, and tried to make sense of this awful, senseless tragedy together. As
people began to leave, I remember several Muslim mothers coming to me, thanking
me, and making me promise that I would protect and watch over their sons. They
feared anti-Muslim backlash, even though the 9/11 terrorists were no more
Muslims than Hitler was a Christian.
What we Christians can learn from the Muslims I was with
on 9-11 is that we must never, ever judge a religion or the people who practice
it on the basis of its violent, fundamental fringes. The Muslims of the
mainstream are extraordinarily peaceful, devoted, prayerful people. In Muslim
cultures there are people called Muezzin who stand on the highest balcony of
the minarets with a bullhorn, calling the faithful to pray. I don’t know about
you, but I could really use a Muezzin in my life, to get my attention – maybe
even with a bullhorn - reminding me to pray throughout the day. So I’ve decided
to do the next best thing. I’ve programmed my phone with 5 prayer alarms each
day, just a little special beep – my own personal cyber-Muezzin - to remind me
that this IS the day the Lord has made, and I need to rejoice and be glad in
it! “Pray Toby! Pray. You don’t need to say anything…just be with God and
listen.” I’m hoping some of you will join me in this attempt to do a better job
of practicing what we preach and praying throughout the day.
Islam is a beautiful faith, full of beautiful people.
Some of them, to be sure – like some Christians – have gone astray, left the peaceful
mainstream of their faith in favor of some awful, violent corruption of it. But
I’m grateful to Yahweh for the prophet Muhammad and for his impulse to reform
Judaism and Christianity, to urge us to be doers
of the word and not hearers only. And I’m especially grateful for his
Koranic revelation about prayer and the tremendous benefit of submitting
ourselves to God at least five times throughout the day. And now, if you’ll
excuse me, I think it’s time to pray…Amen.
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