almaswithinalmas

August82012

St. Philip's Episcopal Church Hosts Iftar Dinner For Islamic Society of Joplin Whose Mosque Was Burned In Fire

Joplin churches are holding a special ceremony for members of a mosque destroyed in a suspicious fire.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Joplin churches planned to gather Wednesday evening at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church as a show of support for the Islamic Society of Joplin. They’ll be taking part in an “iftar,” which is a meal to break a fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic Society of Joplin’s mosque was destroyed in a fire early Monday. Federal officials have been working to determine whether the fire was arson, but said Wednesday it’s unclear when they’ll know if the fire was set.

CAIR says the groups participating Wednesday night include the South Joplin Christian Church, United Hebrew Congregation, First Community Church and Peace Lutheran Church.

islam Christianity interfaith solidarity awesome iftar Ramadan

April82012

The Muslim Jesus: Dead or alive?

Abstract

According to most classical Muslim commentators the Quran teaches that Jesus did not die. On the day of the crucifixion another person – whether his disciple or his betrayer – was miraculously transformed and assumed the appearance of Jesus. He was taken away, crucified, and killed, while Jesus was assumed body and soul into heaven. Most critical scholars accept that this is indeed the Quran’s teaching, even if the Quran states explicitly only that the Jews did not kill Jesus. In the present paper I con- tend that the Quran rather accepts that Jesus died, and indeed alludes to his role as a witness against his murderers in the apocalypse. The paper begins with an analysis of the Quran’s references to the death of Jesus, continues with a description of classical Muslim exegesis of those references, and concludes with a presentation of the Quran’s conversation with Jewish and Christian tradition on the matter of Jesus’ death.

Happy Easter!

Things I wish I didn’t read because my life is currently a mess, and this has only succeeded in making my imaan a mess. Suffer with me.

Christianity Easter islam Isa (AS) Jesus

March122012

Green Faith Raises Provocative Questions || Inside Islam

Here on Earth and Inside Islam radio host Jean Feraca then asked each panelist why they emphasized environmental conservation in this life, when each faith tradition speaks to the importance of the afterlife. “What’s the point?” Feraca challenged.

Don Quintenz, a practicing Baha’i and environmental educator, emphasized that the Baha’i faith embraces all previous spiritual traditions, and that the messages of all prophets focus upon moderation, reflection, and compassion. Quintenz referenced the life of the Buddha as an example of how humans can embrace a worldly existence, even one that is often filled with states of suffering.

Huda Alkaff, a Muslim environmental activist and ecologist, emphasized the Day of Judgment and God’s consideration of each human act as motivation for her eco-activism. She also said that her decisions to pursue environmental justice in this life have been informed by ecology and its recognition of life’s interconnectedness. Alkaff sees God’s requiring humans to serve and protect and her own dedication to improving the lives and surroundings of humans, animals, and natural environments as connected to God’s final decision about her place in the afterlife.

Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman talked about how we are all created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, and how we are obliged to protect life and dignity, important foundations of environmental orientations. Throughout the event, and similar to Alkaff, Zimmerman emphasized the social justice angle of eco-activism. She also highlighted the recent success of interfaith cooperation in stopping the Keystone Pipeline legislation from passing Congress. Zimmerman reminded audience members, both secular and religious, that the success of that civil disobedience required the combined efforts of religious leadership, congregational members, and secular environmental groups and individuals.

Pastor Tim Mackie emphasized his efforts to bring about a greater recognition of human connectivity through church sermons. Mackie spoke of his congregation’s projects aimed at poverty reduction as an example of eco-consciousness, and of his congregants’ love for Jesus that increases through activism. Similar to the other panelists, Mackie spoke of justice and human actions in the present world as directly related to one’s state in the afterlife.

islam Baha'i Faith Judaism Christianity interfaith green environmentalism

February232012

Vatican Requests 1,500-Year-Old Bible Held In Turkey

The Vatican has allegedly issued an official request to examine a 1,500-year-old Bible that has been held in Turkey for the past 12 years, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

The Bible reportedly contains early teachings of Jesus Christ and is written in gold lettering on animal hide in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, which was the native tongue of Jesus.

According to a report by National Turk, the Bible was seized from a gang of smugglers in a Mediterranean-area operation. The report states the gang was charged with smuggling antiquities, illegal excavations, and the possession of explosives.

Today’s Zaman reports that the Bible is under high security and that a Turkish daily newspaper, the Star, claims the book could be a copy of the Gospel of Barnahas — a controversial text which Muslims claim is an addition to the original gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — that was suppressed.

In it, Jesus is said to have predicted the coming of the Prophet Muhammad.

Due to its value as a cultural and religious artifact, even photocopies of the pages could be worth between 3 and 4 million Turkish Lira, or about 1,703,233 U.S. dollars.

So weird I was reading the wikipedia on this Gospel just a few days ago. Check out this link on the Gospel of Barnabas, a very controversial Gospel. It seems that many think it was created by Muslims, but it’s interesting that the Vatican wants to look at it!

Christianity Controversial texts Turkey Vatican islam Prophet Muhammad

February92012

The Spiritual Beauty of the Judean Desert (PHOTOS) || Huffington Post

Located between Jerusalem and Jericho, the Judean Desert provided an inspiration to thousands of hermits who lived here in the early Middle Ages. With its breathtaking, rugged beauty, it was the perfect setting for those searching spiritual fullness in the emptiness of the desert.

Today only a handful of monks live here, but the desert and its stunning monasteries continue to attract thousands of visitors from all over the world.

With its majestic cliffs and arid rocks stretching to the sky, the Judean Desert is a spiritual place of eerie beauty.

During the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., it hosted a community of several thousand monks drawn by biblical stories and in search of a soulful experience. Away from earthly temptations, they lived a life of privation and isolation inside the dozens of caves scattered around this mountainous desert.

The desire to retrace the footsteps of early Christianity is still bringing pilgrims and tourists, said Elisa Moed, founder and chief executive of Travelujah.com, a faith-based website that provides resources for Christians traveling to the Holy Land.

“This is where John the Baptist resided. He was a hermit, and part of really experiencing the footsteps and really understanding the roots of Christianity is to come here and take a look at the wilderness and the landscape and try to understand the lifestyle of John the Baptist,” she said.

The prophet Elijah “also spent his time in the Judean wilderness, Jesus spent time in the Judean wilderness. So, yes, it’s a very important and very integral part of coming to the Holy Land and experiencing the Holy Land is to come into this wilderness,” she said.

With its source of natural water, the gorge of Wadi Qelt in the West Bank, located a 20-minute drive from Jerusalem on the way to the Dead Sea, provides a green respite amid the arid landscape of the Judean Desert. This is where the Bible says the prophet Elijah lived, and it is the spot chosen by fifth-century hermits. In a reminder of the modern Middle East, vehicles must pass through Israeli and Palestinian checkpoints on the trip.

Visitors come here to visit the monastery of St. George built in the late 19th century on the site of an earlier monastery destroyed by the Persians in the year 614.

Today a small community of Greek Orthodox monks resides here, allowing visitors to view the monastery.

Christianity Judaism islam spirituality deserts

February62012

The Craziest Light Show Ever. Period. (Click for Video)

Have you ever been to church and seen the light? Well at the recent Light Festival in Ghent, Belgium, the Luminarie De Cagna created an LED cathedral that lit up the entire city of Belfortstraat with a glowing psychedelic aura. The result is arguably beautiful enough to make anybody a believer.

The LED Cathedral mixes Romanesque and Renaissance architecture with glowing rainbow ornamentation. It stands 91 feet tall at its peak and is made of 55,000 LED lights.

this pic makes my eyes hurt light show Christianity churches art Cathedral

December172011

“

This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.
Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.

No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries. No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses.
Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.

No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them. If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray. Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants.

No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).

”

Prophet Muhammad (SAW)

In 628 C.E. Prophet Muhammad (s) granted a Charter of Privileges to the monks of St. Catherine Monastery in Mt. Sinai. It consisted of several clauses covering all aspects of human rights including such topics as the protection of Christians, freedom of worship and movement, freedom to appoint their own judges and to own and maintain their property, exemption from military service, and the right to protection in war.

islam Christianity interfaith

December152011

Christian Clergy To Lead Interfaith Demonstration Against Lowe's || CAIR

The African American Ministers Leadership Council (AAMLC) in conjunction with the Highland Park NAACP this Saturday will be holding a demonstration in Allen Park, Michigan in response to Lowe’s capitulation to anti-Muslims bigots by pulling their advertising from TLC’s “All-American Muslim” reality show. AAMLC invites all people of conscience to join the demonstration for religious tolerance against bigotry.

WHAT: Interfaith Demonstration Against Lowe’s

WHERE: Lowe’s, 23111 Outer Drive, Allen Park, MI

WHEN: Saturday, December 17 at 11am

CONTACT: Pastor Charles Williams II (AAMLC) at 313-303-8002 and Pastor David Bullock (Highland Park NAACP) at 313-917-3115.

NAACP islam Lowes intefaith Christianity

December42011

One True God – not as popular as you might think || Razib Khan

The above results are from an Ipsos MORI from last summer. Please note, the opinions above are restricted only to those who asserted a religious affiliation. Obviously in Saudi Arabia this is irrelevant, as nearly the whole population has a religious affiliation. But it is important in Japan, because there nearly 2 out of 3 individuals in the survey reported no religion, so these are results from the minority who reported having an affiliation (mostly Buddhist). As they say, read the whole thing. Here are some conclusions I drew from these data:

- Even in Saudi Arabia 25 percent of the population would not sign on to a very exclusive reading of their religion. This is not surprising to me. Very exclusive adherence to the proposition that all non-believers are damned is often hard to adhere to in any marginally cosmopolitan circumstance. Obviously there are people who will agree that Gandhi is in hell (this is a litmus test used to smoke out heterodox deviation in some fundamentalist Protestant churches in the USA), or that their close friend is going to hell, but when push comes to shove most people flinch. There seems to be a wide range in responses to this question about religious exclusivism, and I think that’s probably due to differences in priming.

- I have gotten into arguments with Hindus and New Atheists about the exclusive nature of Christianity online. My argument is that they tend to confuse fundamentalist Protestantism with Christianity qua Christianity. If I we believed that Christianity had a basis in truth this sort of attitude might make sense, but as that is not the case I don’t see the line of reasoning where non-Christians can assess who is, or isn’t, exhibiting more fidelity to Christianity. Granted, you can think of religion as a mathematical system where you can test propositions by inference from axioms. But I don’t think that’s too useful, though I see its logical coherency (and even in that case, it is trivially obvious to show that “fundamentalists” are themselves often revisionists who play fast & loose with what might “plainly” be inferred from the source text of a religion). The reality is that in most developed nations the vast majority of Christians no longer adhere to a position exclusivism which has come to make the Abrahamic religions particular distinctive. In fact, if you look at the survey in the results it indicates that Hindus in India are as exclusive in their understanding of their religion as Christians in the United States!

- Speaking of Hindus (and Buddhists to a lesser extent), these data speak to a difference between Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic religions. Though Hindus are not quite as universalist as Swedish Christians, matching social development they are quite tolerant. The Hindu model in India in a religious sense mixes a moderately high level of commitment with an acceptance of pluralism. This is pretty much the stereotype of Hindus in relation to Abrahamic faiths. In contrast, you have the Muslim model, which combines high levels of commitment with low levels of pluralism. Finally, you have the developed nations model, excepting the USA, which combines low commitment and high pluralism. India and the USA seem to occupy similar space in many ways in these data.

- Finally, in these results Turkey and Saudi Arabia seem to be positioned at the two poles of Islamic piety. I think that that is actually a good choice, as all other data indicates that Tunisia and Egypt would fall in the middle of these extremes (Tunisia closer to Turkey, Egypt to Saudi Arabia). What does that tell us? If you look at the results you’ll see that Turks as a nation seem to express attitudes and sentiments not too far from those of the USA. As I’ve long said, this is an important insight about the Islamic world: one of the most organically secular Muslim nations is in the same zone as the most pious of Western nations (along with Poland and Malta). In many ways the American Republican party today is probably analogous to moderate Islamists of the AKP; though I would suspect that the AKP has a larger “tail” of social conservatism than the Republican party.

Saudi Arabia Indonesia religion interfaith islam Hinduism Buddhism Christianity

November212011

The end of Arab Christianity || Gene Expression || Razib Khan

Anthony Shadid has a poignant piece up, … But There’s a Slim Hope in History, on the specter of extinction facing Arab Christianity in the wake of the Arab Spring. This is an issue which I think most of my Left-liberal friends simply seem unable to confront forthrightly: ethnic and religious cleansing are often the consequences of populist national self-determination. This isn’t a speculative proposition, the history of Europe is a testament to this, as well as what occurred in newly independent European colonies (e.g., the fate of Indians in Burma and Chinese in Vietnam). This reality is often emphasized by a sort which is very rare in the United States: cosmopolitan imperialists. To these partisans of the old regimes the Austro-Hungarian Empire is often held up as an ideal. This ‘prison house of nations’ was notoriously fractious and muddled, held together only by the history of the House of Habsburg. To illustrate this in a manner accessible to modern Westerners, Jews were often arch-imperialists because they saw themselves as likely receiving a better deal in a situation of imperial ethno-linguistic pluralism than in the possible nation-states where they would be a prominent minority overshadowed by the majority (I think the subsequent history of Jews in the inter-war states does confirm this fear as being grounded in reality). Additionally, in the mid-19th century it was reported that some military units resorted to English as their lingua franca! (the language being popularized by migrants who had returned from the United States).

This section of the Shadid piece emphasizes the broader concerns in the Arab world today:

Rare is the Arab politician today who would specifically endorse secularism; the word itself in Arabic is virtually a synonym for atheism. In an otherwise triumphant tour of North Africa, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey unleashed invective from all stripes of Islamists when he endorsed a rather tame take on secularism, namely that the state would treat all religions equally.

Across the region, the climate seems to have grown more inhospitable, more dangerous. In places like Egypt and Syria, authorities have cynically fanned fears and biases to fortify their power. In the military’s bloody response to a Christian protest in Cairo in October, Egyptian television referred to Copts as though they were foreign agitators bent on subversion, calling on “honorable citizens” to defend the army. Religious stalwarts often speak rightly of Islam’s long tolerance of minorities. But these days, the talk feels condescending; minorities are asking for equality, not benevolent protection.

There are two points which I always think are worth emphasizing: moderate Islamists in the Arab world probably occupy a position which is analogous to Christian Reconstructionists and Dominionists in the West. Any analogy between ‘Christian fundamentalists’ in the USA and ‘Muslim fundamentalists’ collapses because of the radical difference in intent and plausibility of execution of that intent. In much of the Muslim world the dominant religion has already attained the undisputed position of power and legitimacy which Christian Reconstructionists can only dream of. It is understood that non-Muslim religions and peoples exist and persist only at the suffrance of Islamic law and values. The genuine ‘moderation,’ or more accurately reconciliation with a minimum level of norms acceptable to Western liberal democracy, of Turkish Islamism has less to do with the nature of Turkish Islam than it does with the range of opinions of the general Turkish population. That range of opinion is at least analogous to a very religious Western nation, like the United States (e.g., only a marginally greater number of Turks accept Creationism than Americans). There is simply no analogy to the distribution of beliefs and orientations found in Western nations within most Arab societies. The Libyan government installed by Western military power explicitly asserts that its laws and actions will be grounded in Islam. Consider how chilling most Western liberals find a similar assertion by conservative Christian Western politicians? The anti-Jewish attitudes common across the Arab world also hearken back to an older time in the West. Whatever hostility Arabs as a whole may have toward the state of Israel, they often seem unable to separate individual Jews from that hostility, and rather manifest a very old and nasty sentiment which is reflected in parodies like Borat (in part because of the forced expulsion of Jews after World War II from many Arab nations means that very few Arabs encounter individual Jews in the flesh).

islam Christianity Arab uprisings controversial

October192011

Beautiful St. John’s Bible Features Hand-Drawn Images, Calligraphy; Apostles Edition To Be Gifted To The Morgan Library And Museum

Bible art Christianity

2PM

Beautiful St. John’s Bible Features Hand-Drawn Images, Calligraphy; Apostles Edition To Be Gifted To The Morgan Library And Museum

Bible art Christianity

August222011

A Ramadan Story Of Two Faiths Bound In Friendship

Pastor Steve Stone put an unusual sign outside his church.

“It said, ‘Welcome to the neighborhood, Memphis Islamic Center,’” he laughs. “It’s been seen all over the world, now.”

Stone invited the Muslim community to celebrate their holiday inside his church while their own cultural center was under construction nearby. It was the beginning of an unusual alliance that’s still strong a year later.

“Obviously we were taken aback, but in a very positive way,” says Danish Siddiqui, a board member of the Memphis Islamic Center. “Muslims, we tend to think of ourselves as good neighbors,” he tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Laura Sullivan, “but Steve beat us to the punch and put up that sign — and all we had to do was knock on the door and introduce ourselves.”

islam Christianity interfaith

August202011

Russell Simmons' Message To Churches, Mosques and Synagogues: DO YOUR JOB!

Let me say this, as the Chairman of The Foundation For Ethnic Understanding – it is the solemn and fundamental obligation of ALL religious institutions and leaders to fight relentlessly for understanding and reconciliation.

Because the tenet of every religion from East to West is peace and salvation. And the only way that we all can reach this state is through dialogue, debate and the light of understanding.

The haters will always hate. Hatred is their oxygen. You can drudge up grievances from the past and anxiety about the future in every moment – but the only moment we have is the one we live in now – it is in this moment, today, right now, that we can make a difference.

When we see a moment where we can advance the condition of our human existence, we need to grab that moment, listen, engage, and become our better selves. It is a crying shame that this did not happen this weekend at Rabbi Schneier’s synagogue, but that’s nothing.

It will happen. Jews and blacks are tied by the bounds of history to understand and appreciate each other’s struggles and striving for inclusion, acceptance and understanding.

But it is to the institutions – the synagogues, the mosques, the churches, the temples – that I address this statement. DO YOUR JOB! Dig deep into the roots of your religions and fight for peace, through reconciliation, understanding and love, which is the universal feeling that binds us all.

Russell Simmons interfaith islam Judaism Christianity

August152011

"Girls were not allowed to converse except from 6 to 9 p.m. each Friday. They were not allowed contact with their families during their first month, or with anyone else for six months. By that time, Roxy said, most girls are 'broken,' having been told that their families have abandoned them, and that the world outside is a sinful, dangerous place where girls who leave are murdered or raped."

motherjones:

Women isolated from secular society, scarred for life, and beaten for crossing the religious authorities. Kandahar? No, Missouri. And conservatives keep the system running.

news investigations christianity religion children christian nightmares fundamentalism

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