Monthly Archives: May 2026

While Hindus get credit for inventing the early prototype of chess, Muslims really launched it forward after they conquered Persia in the mid-600s AD. They standardized their stylized version of the pieces and wrote some of the earliest chess books. Traders took the game west to Spain and beyond. 

Centuries later, many of the best chess players in the world are Muslims. At 21 years of age, an Uzbek named Nodirbek Abdusattorov is the number-4 player in the world. All eyes are also on Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, a 14-year-old Turkish teenager who is currently 32nd in the world. 

Here’s where the mess comes in: Islamic scholars throughout the centuries have tended to say chess is haram or forbidden. It doesn’t show up in the Quran, but the Hadith has something to say about it. The reasoning generally goes like this:

1. Gambling is bad and chess might involve gambling. But it usually doesn’t. 
2. Chess pieces could be seen as little idols, especially knights that usually resemble horses. Some scholars say this can be overcome by putting hoods on the horses!
3. Chess might distract you from God, from prayers, worship and other good works. I think the scholars have something here! Of course, I have never put off my wife, children or godly duties for a chess game. But I can imagine how that might happen! 😉

As in last week’s Muslim Connect on marriage, chess is another point where the scholars’ rules are not always lived out. The fact that there is a Saudi Chess Federation is one solid data point. 

If you play chess, and why wouldn’t you, let’s let Muslims sort out the haram/halal issues with it. In the meantime, follow my friend Kelly’s example: Get an account on chess.com, start playing games (the 3-minute version goes by quickly), and when you get matched up with an opponent from a Muslim country (each profile shows a small flag!), reach out and start a conversation! Let me know how it goes if you try this or have questions. 

Need a bed time story for a child or grandkid? You can hardly beat the biblical narrative of Joseph’s life from Genesis 37 to 50. But, heads up: You’ll want to skip over the PG-13 Judah/Tamar interlude in Genesis 38! 

This scandalous story has it all: Family drama, sex, power shifts and a fairly happy ending. In preparing preach to on it this Sunday, I’ve done a medium dive into the idea of levirate marriage, the social custom at the center of the Tamar and Judah vignette.

The idea is that a brother-in-law (Latin: levir) has family responsibility to marry the widow of a brother who dies. This serves to keep land and wealth in the clan and provides protection for widows who might otherwise be out in the wind. It also tends to fade in inverse proportion to female literacy! 

I wondered if levirate marriage is, or was, found in Muslim cultures. Turns out the Quran and the Hadith forbid compelling anyone to marry someone else. In one case, Muhammad told a dad who’d married off his daughter that she got to choose! (Oddly, she said she was cool with the marriage, just wanted to know if she had a say!) If everyone is ok with it, a brother-in-law can step up to the plate for his dead sibling. 

In spite of the evidence against levirate marriage in Islam, it has been practiced, at least until recently, in a variety of Muslim people groups. This illustrates the tension between cultural practices and orthodox Islam. As in Christianity, sometimes the words of the book are easier to know than to practice. 

What if you’re eating potato chips three meals a day? What if you’re only offered potato chips for snacks at school or work and when you relax in the evening? And what if all the cool, beautiful and powerful people are eating potato chips? Even if you occasionally snuck a piece of broccoli (a step in the right direction), you’re still going to be sick and oily.

Something has been bothering me for a bit: How does US military action against Muslims affect my psyche, my kids, maybe even the broad sweep of American culture?

The question right now isn’t the degree to which military actions are justified or moral, although such ideas merit consideration. Rather, how do those actions affect us?

Here are some gut-churning realities:

1. The US has been at war with Muslim countries for most of my adult life. If we pin Operation Desert Storm in 1990 as the starting point, around half of the US population has known hardly a day in which we were not fighting Muslims.
2. If you’re going to keep fighting Muslims and keep getting elected (Both sides have done this!), you must portray Muslims as evil, enemies and wholly “other.”
3. The “potato chips everywhere” metaphor is this: We used to take action against Communism (We still do a little.). We used to engage in war on drugs (We still do some.). But for over half my life it’s been Muslims! They’ve been enemies on the battlefield. They’ve been villains in movies and books. They’ve been the boogie man, the dirty, sneaky savages in countless efforts to gain or retain political positions. A piece of broccoli here and there will not do the trick.

Shame on us and God have mercy. 

Is this because of Israel and our desire to protect that country? It is the oil? Is it because they’re are easy to identify and caricaturize? Probably all that and more. 

What are we to do?

For starters: Be the broccoli. Read and share the counter-narrative, starting with Jesus and going on from there. And ask God for a new day, not a new villain. We’ve had so many over our short history. But a fresh light inside and going forth from our country so that the glow from the “city on a hill” is the love of Christ, not the flash of a muzzle or the launch of a missile.