Monthly Archives: November 2024

Thanksgiving Day may be the most Christian of holidays. Gratitude is certainly an appropriate response to a God who has blessed us as thoroughly as he has. 

Since you may have family visiting today and you need to get busy telling them how much God loves Muslims, I’ll be brief. 

I am grateful for:

• As I write this morning, the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah seems to be holding. 

• I’ve recently been reminded of the tenacity of workers dedicated to befriending and connecting with Muslims nearby and very far away. 

• Having taught a couple Perspectives Lesson #15 classes this week, I’m rejoicing to think of the global band of just-graduated Perspectives students being released into the world! 

• I’m thankful for believers, both red and blue, who will continue to swim upstream by loving immigrants, even if we head into very xenophobic times.

• Finally, I’m grateful for you. Thank you for taking the time to open and read Muslim Connect and, to the degree God gives you grace, put what you learn into practice. 

(If you’ve got a moment to set your fork down and let me know what you’re thankful for, I’d be happy to join you in your gratitude!)

Have you ever loved something that most people disdain? For instance, sauerkraut, velcro sneakers or the Chicago Cubs. I love a city like this: Bradford, UK. It’s beautiful, set in the God-designed, soul-nurturing moors of northern England and its streets smell like curry! On the other hand, its glorious days are in the past and, unbelievably, some don’t see the balti-scented boulevards as a good thing. Go figure! 

Bradford’s population is about a third Muslim, the highest of any city in the UK. Among Muslim leaders there is concern these days about a bill that will have its first vote in Parliament next Friday. The bill calls for liberalizing the UK’s approach to assisted dying. 

Muslims and Christians largely agree on issues of suicide, euthanasia and physician assisted death. The shared conviction is that God alone has the right to both give and take away life. Of course, the particulars are gut-wrenching. Having not stared these things directly in the face, I hesitate even to write about them.

As Christians our challenge is to understand the Bible and apply its teaching with grace and love. 

Muslims in Bradford and elsewhere in the UK face an added challenge. Having felt slighted in the distribution of palliative care in the midst of Covid, they now wonder if the advance of assisted death might further diminish their hope for help. 

It’s a classic conflict between the majority who says, “This is how we do it now,” and the minority who pleads, “But that is not how we do it, nor has it ever been.” 

When Auntie’s life is in balance, the doctor seems to be leaning hard one way and you’re sure Allah’s looking down with a stern eye, these decisions are brutal. 

For a quick look at how Christians might view these issues check out this article from Britain and this from our friends at Denison Forum. 

As the Christmas train begins to pick up steam (We’re like 40 days away!), I’m wondering how much I should buy this year and how much I should eat. Sorry if this is too personal, but I have a history of overindulgence in both. 

At our house we’re aiming to mess up the tracks just a bit by implementing an idea from The Advent Conspiracy: We plan to take a long weekend (Thursday dinner to Sunday lunch) and eat nothing but beans, rice and tortillas. (And maybe an egg or two.) This will be a micro-step toward understanding how some people always eat, toward recognizing that life is more than what we put in our mouths. 

In Christian history, we’ve had forebears who’ve gone full bore in this. Ascetics who lived in caves, ate little, wore scraps and never kissed nobody. In the process some went crazy, but others met God in ways I can’t imagine. 

Islam doesn’t really celebrate or remember Muslims who’ve done this, though I imagine there must have been some. They do have an ascetic concept called Zuhd. As you’d guess, understanding of Zuhd varies enormously, but one writer captures it like this, “The actual definition of Zuhd is to detach one’s heart from this world.”

“Zuhd means to focus on the next life, but without neglecting one’s portion of this world. . . .Zuhd is necessary for attaining contentment and inner peace.”

If this takes your mind back to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, good for you. “Seek first the Kingdom. . . .” and, well, you know the rest! 

Maybe a key thing this Christmas is to not just merrily rattle down the tracks of our culture. Let’s at least sit up and poke our heads out the window once in a while and look around. Maybe grab the stop cord and slow the whole train down. Remember we serve a Savior who on the one hand made wine out of water, but on the other was himself the very bread of life. 

When’s the last time you turned in a paper for a class? Me: Just before lunch today! My wife and I, along with a couple other guys at church, are taking a course called Gateway that focuses on the Evangelical Free Church’s core doctrines. Today’s paper was about the Bible. 

It got us thinking about how Muslims and Christians think differently about the Quran and the Bible. 

Of course we both think our scriptures came from God. But how they got from God to us is different. Muslims believe the content of the Quran was given to Muhammad in a series of revelations from Allah through the angel Gabriel. 

The Bible on the other hand was God-breathed or inspired, meaning the Holy Spirit guided the Biblical writers to ensure what they wrote was the word of God while allowing for their individual personalities and writing styles.

The Quranic revelations reportedly came over the course of 23 years. While the Bible took, depending on how you look at it, between 250 and 1500 years! Along with the lengthy time line, we have a variety of authors, from many cultures, writing in a variety of genres and languages. 

Unlike the linguistic variety of the Bible authors, Muslims believe that God spoke the Quran only in Arabic. As a result, the Quran carries the most authority when it’s in Arabic. In contrast, thanks to God’s work through a vast cadre of dedicated and skilled workers, the whole Bible has been reliably translated into around 700 languages and the New Testament into 1500! 

Both Christians and Muslims believe God speaks to them through their holy books, guiding them to right living. Many Muslims further believe that the actual physical Quran has spiritual power and most give a great deal of respect to the actual book. 

Jesus shows up in both books: As a talking baby and a revered prophet in the Quran and as The Way, the Truth, and the Life in the Bible. 

I have so many questions for you! (My answers in parentheses)

Are you going to vote? (Yes, once) Have you voted yet? (Nope) Who are you going to vote for? (Not sure yet) Who’s going to win? (Only God knows, and He’s not telling me!)

[If you’ve no concern for the upcoming U.S. election, please forgive this national-centric Muslim Connect.]

Since you’re a part of the Muslim Connect tribe, I can make three somewhat educated guesses about you: 1. You wish there were fewer abortions in our country. 2. You’re more concerned about immigrants as people than “immigration” as a political issue. 3. You’d like the Muslims you know and those you don’t, both here and abroad, to suffer less. 

If those guesses are even ballpark accurate, you may be wrestling with this election. If you are, guess what: You’re on the struggle bus with many Muslim Americans! 

• Polls show Muslims not voting Democrat in the numbers they did in the previous election. 

• The mayor of Hamtramck, MI, the country’s only Muslim-majority city endorsed Trump! 

• This Reddit discussion shows some of the angst, the variety of perspectives and challenges Muslim voters face in next week’s election. 

Do you sense the challenge Muslims face? “If I vote for Harris, am I abandoning my brothers and sisters in Gaza and Lebanon?” “If I vote for Trump, am I asking for Travel Ban 2.0?” If I vote for Jill Stein, am I just wasting my time?” (These, of course, are just a sampling of the perplexing issues.)

It’s gut wrenching, isn’t it? May God give us all wisdom. And may Christ have mercy on us all. 

My election prediction? Whether we walk through the valley of the shadow of death or sit at a table in the presence of our enemies, God will continue his kingdom building work. Christ will have mercy on us all.