Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia calls for the destruction of churches in the Arabian Peninsula

Can you imagine the Archbishop of Canterbury or even the Pope calling for the destruction of mosques in Europe? You can expect the predictable outcry that would cause. Most of the Muslim world and the Western media will erupt into a frenzy of heated criticism, with usual shrill cries of ‘bigot’ and demands for apologies. Yet the recent remarks by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, that churches in the Arabian Peninsula should be destroyed have gone almost unnoticed. Only a few media organisations like Russia Today have given this any publicity.

The Grand Mufti made his controversial remarks in response to a question from a Kuwaiti NGO, the Society of the Revival of Islamic Heritage. He cited the Prophet Mohammed, who said the Arabian Peninsula should exist only under one religion. Of course, in Saudi Arabia the Mufti already has his way because there are no churches there. The Saudi government has never allowed the construction of any church in the country or for non-Muslims to meet and worship.  Other Gulf States do allow some Christian worship but with very strict restrictions in place.

What the Grand Mufti said will have an impact. He is not some marginal figure but the chief religious authority of Saudi Arabia, one of the main centres of Sunni Islam. His remarks should therefore be taken seriously.

Compare the reaction to the Grand Mufti’s remarks and the outcry over one obscure American pastor last year. It seemed as though the future of world peace was at stake when Pastor Terry Jones threatened to burn a Koran. Never mind he had a following of only about thirty people. Even Western leaders like President Obama stepped into the controversy with all the accompanying apologetic handwringing.

Can we expect David Cameron, Barrack Obama or Hillary Clinton to issue similar criticisms of the Grand Mufti’s remarks or even speak about the plight of Christians in Saudi Arabia? I doubt it very much. The American and British elites have very close relations with their Saudi counterparts, the House of Saud. In return for oil, America provides Saudi Arabia with a security guarantor; and despite a terrible human rights record, Western leaders are careful not to criticise Saudi Arabia publicly. Even the official report into the 9/11 tragedy was heavily redacted so as not to offend Saudi Arabia from where most of the hijackers came from.

All this highlights the issue of “reciprocity,” which Pope Benedict XVI has constantly talked about. As Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith says in the Catholic Herald, reciprocity means “effectively that Muslims should grant to Christians the same freedoms that Christians grant to Muslims. Just as the Italian state has allowed the building of a mosque in Rome, our holy city, so should we be allowed to build a church in Riyadh or even Mecca.”

It may be highly optimistic to expect to see a church in Riyadh or Mecca, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to at least question the controversial remarks made by the Grand Mufti. Just as Muslims are allowed to freely worship in non-Muslim countries, Christians should have every right to worship in Muslim countries.

Syria's religious pluralism at stake

Syria is in turmoil. Inspired by uprisings in other Arab countries, Syrian protestors have taken to the streets and denounced the autocratic rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Protests have spread to several cities, and it is estimated by the UN that at least 1,100 people have been killed by the security forces.

What is particularly sad about this is that Syria has for long been a beacon of religious pluralism and freedom in a largely intolerant region. Syria has many minorities. Arab Sunnis are the majority but other Muslim sects form a sizeable portion of the population. A further 8-10% of the people are Christian. In recent years many Iraqi Christian refugees have fled to Syria in the wake of bloody persecution in their homeland.

The government and security forces are dominated by the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam. This is largely a legacy of French colonial rule. In order to keep Sunni nationalism in check the French co-opted the services of the Alawite community, promoting them to high positions in government and the military. The Alawites went from being a despised downtrodden minority to rulers of their country – a fact deeply despised by the Sunni majority.

Although the Assad regime is authoritarian it has been good for the Christians and other minorities. The regime has kept in check the influence of militant Islamists. Christians are able to worship and practice their faith without much interference, although evangelisation among Muslims is strongly discouraged. A return to Sunni majority rule could lead to their violent suppression and, in the worst case, a sectarian bloodbath similar to that in Iraq. This is why many Christians in Syria have largely stayed away from protests. They are afraid of what may replace the secular Baathist regime.

In a letter to Western leaders, the Syria-based head of the Melkite Greek-Catholic Church, Patriarch Gregorios III, appealed for them to "ask the heads of state of Arab countries to work for real development... But don't encourage revolutions". He said:

“The situation has deteriorated into organised crime, robbery, fear, terror being spread, rumours of threats to churches... Fundamentalist groups are threatening citizens and wanting to create ‘Islamic Emirates'... Christians especially are very fragile in the face of crises and bloody revolutions! Christians will be the first victims of these revolutions, especially in Syria. A new wave of emigration will follow immediately.”

Thus far external powers have not called for regime change like they have in Libya. This is because by and large the main players – Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and America – prefer to see Assad remain in power than face the more destabilising consequences of regime change in a highly sensitive area. It is true that Syria has provided some support for terrorist groups such as Hizbullah and Hamas but, as Reva Bhalla of STRATFOR says, regime change could potentially lead to greater support for such groups:

“It is not a coincidence that Israel, with which Syria shares a strong and mutual antipathy, has been largely silent over the Syrian unrest. Already unnerved by what may be in store for Egypt’s political future, Israel has a deep fear of the unknown regarding the Syrians. How, for example, would a conservative Sunni government in Damascus conduct its foreign policy? The real virtue of the Syrian regime lies in its predictability: The al Assad government, highly conscious of its military inferiority to Israel, is far more interested in maintaining its hegemony in Lebanon than in picking fights with Israel. While the al Assad government is a significant patron to Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among other groups it manages within its Islamist militant supply chain, its support for such groups is also to some extent negotiable, as illustrated most recently by the fruits of Turkey’s negotiations with Damascus in containing Palestinian militant activity and in Syria’s ongoing, albeit strained, negotiations with Saudi Arabia over keeping Hezbollah in check. Israel’s view of Syria is a classic example of the benefits of dealing with the devil you do know rather than the devil you don’t.”

The Assad regime is certainly coming under increasing strain, but for the time being it is holding together. Considering that Alawites were once second-class citizens less than a century ago, there is a deep-seated fear of a reversal of Alawite power. For that reason the Alawites are sticking together.

Only time will tell of course what will happen in Syria. My wife’s best friend is a Christian lady from Syria. She never fails to impress us with her strong religious faith and good Christian values. She is understandably worried about the safety of her family members and the fate of her homeland. Syria is a beautiful country steeped in history where the ruins of Crusader castles and citadels still dot the landscape. It would be a tragedy if the religious pluralism that has existed there for many years descends into sectarian violence. Please pray that this doesn’t happen and that all communities in Syria continue to live peacefully together.

Arab spring or Christian autumn?

The dominant reaction in the West to the spread of revolution was one of enthusiasm; some commentators even spoke of an “Arab spring” in North Africa and the Middle East. It was widely believed that the resulting political changes would be for the better, leading to the establishment of real freedom for the region’s peoples – including its Christian minorities – and of Western-style democracy. An important reason for this optimism was the apparently secular character of the revolts: they appeared to have little or no religious dimension, and certainly not to be Islamic revolutions on the Iranian model.

If this were so, the uprisings would indeed be good news for the Christians of these nations. For years they have suffered discrimination in many areas of life, restrictions on their freedoms by the authorities, and outright violence from the Muslim majorities. If the twilight of the old regimes really did herald the dawn of freedom, Christians could hope at last to take their place as equal members of society and to practise and share their faith in peace and safety.

Sadly, however, the widespread positive response to recent events in misplaced, even naïve. North African and Middle Eastern concepts of freedom and democracy, shaped by centuries of Islamic domination, are simply not the same as Western ones. So, for example, when political leaders commit themselves to “support freedom,” they do not intend to include religious freedom in this, and their Muslim audiences do not understand them to do so.

Nor can religion be separated from politics in any Muslim context, where the two are inseparably connected. For most of the people involved in them, the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings are not “secular” revolutions; they are profoundly religious events, waiting to be led by the strongest religious players.

The best organised and funded groups among the rebels in Tunisia and Egypt are the Islamist movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, who are aiming to play a leading role in the future government of their countries. There is already significant evidence of their growing influence in the post-revolutionary fervour:

The return of Islamist leaders Rashid al-Ghannoushi and Yusuf al-Qaradawi to Tunisia and Egypt respectively, amidst great public enthusiasm; the latter led a million people in prayer in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

The appointment of an Islamist judge to head the committee drawing up Egypt’s new constitution.

The sudden and sharp upsurge in anti-Christian violence in Egypt, involving not only Islamist militants but also the Egyptian authorities.

The outcome of recent events in North Africa and the Middle East is impossible to predict with confidence at this stage. But the essentially religious character of political events in Tunisia and Egypt, and the presence there of powerful Islamist groups, raises grave concerns for the future of Christian communities in those countries. If Islamism does seize control of the various revolutions, whether slowly or suddenly, it will impose a much stricter Islamic character on politics and society, threatening the very survival of Christianity across the region.

Please pray that the Arab spring does not become a Christian autumn.

Source: Barnabus Fund

9/11 overshadowed by controversy

Nine years on an angry America, still reeling in the wake of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, mourned the victims of the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. This year the anniversary was overshadowed by two controversies: the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’, and Pastor Terry Jones’ threat to burn copies of the Koran. Fortunately Pastor Jones did not go ahead with his stunt and everybody breathed a sigh of relief. Emotions had been running very high in the Muslim world. There had been protests in a number of countries, and President Yudhoyono of Indonesia warned that the act could threaten “peace and international security.” General Petraeus warned the event would endanger the lives of American servicemen and women.

I heard on BBC Radio 4 how Muslims in America were increasingly feeling under siege. I can understand why they feel uncomfortable right now with the acrimonious debate about the Ground Zero Mosque still raging, but I question whether they are really ‘under siege’. Even after the 9/11 attacks American Muslims did not face any major acts of retribution. I think that will be the case this time too. Whatever their feelings of victimization, they are a far cry from the real discrimination many Christian minorities face in many Muslim majority countries.

James Corum, Dean of the Baltic Defence College in Estonia, writes in The Telegraph:

In many Islamic countries, Christian minorities – including the descendants of the earliest Christian communities in the Middle East – suffer under laws that make them second-class citizens. Not only do they have fewer legal rights, but the exercise of their faith is cruelly regulated by governments in the name of Sharia. In America, we criticise the plan to build a mosque near the 9/11 murder site even while agreeing that American law provides the clear right of Muslims to do such a thing. But in many Muslim nations no Christian can build or even repair a church without approval (usually not forthcoming) from a hostile government ministry.

Much worse, murder, kidnappings, forced conversions and attacks against Christians by radical Muslims are common in the Islamic world, especially in the Middle East and in Pakistan. Every year, hundreds of Christians are murdered by religious fanatics. Even when a Muslim government disapproves of such violence, officials and police often stand aside and allow the attacks rather than confront a politically powerful radical Islam.

In short, Christians are today living in one of the great eras of persecution. That persecution comes from a minority of Muslims – but an influential minority. Christians should use this day to educate the Western public about the suffering of fellow Christians, and to confront peacefully the rulers and populations of Muslim nations with their failure to maintain rights supposedly guaranteed by the UN Charter.

The suffering of Christian minorities in many Muslim majority countries is largely ignored by the mainstream media. Western leaders are even aware of the issue but stay silent on the matter lest they complicate relations with Muslim countries. The consequences of Pastor Jones' actions if he had gone ahead with them would have been extremely severe for Christians living in Muslim majority contexts. The Koran is regarded by Muslims as the literal word of God transmitted from heaven, so to destroy it is the ultimate sacrilege. I’m sure Christ would not have approved of deliberately offending and provoking others to the point of violence. But He probably would approve of Christians standing up for the basic human rights of their brothers and sisters in Christ.

It is surprising that the eccentric pastor of a very small Pentecostal church in Florida, known for previous public-seeking misadventures, managed to attract so much attention. Fuelled by the internet, 24 hour news and media sensationalism the story grew bigger and bigger until it became the main news of the day. Pastor Jones certainly didn’t speak for the vast majority of Christians or America. The event was condemned by all mainstream Christian churches, President Obama, Hillary Clinton as well as many ordinary Americans. Yet the media handed this man a megaphone to speak to the world. I’m sure there are some sections of the media that are secretly delighted a ‘Christian pastor’ could have made such a huge error of judgement. They have milked this story for it was worth.

Unfortunately I feel many Muslims throughout the world still feel Pastor Jones represents Christians and the west. This is what some of the more extreme elements within Islam want Muslims to believe. A sense of victimization and hurt only aids their agenda. For this the media must take some of the blame.

Book review: "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam" by Reza Aslan

I have just finished reading Reza Aslan’s book “No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam”. I enjoyed it very much. Written in a lucid, precise and highly readable style, Aslan describes how Islam came into being in Arabia, which up to that time had a polytheistic religious culture. The ancient Arabs worshipped many Gods including the God of the Jews and the Christians. Then came Muhammad - the founder of Islam – who, after receiving the Revelation at Mt Hira in 610AD, preached a message of absolute monotheism and declared “there is no God but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger.” Aslan narrates the lives of Muhammad and his Companions who established the first Muslim community (“Ummah”) in Medina, their battles with the powerful Quraysh tribe and their eventual victory, and the subsequent evolution of Islam after Muhammad’s death.

Aslan knows his subject very well. It does often read like an unapologetic defence of Islam, which he acquiesces in the introduction, yet he is critical of the rise in Islamic extremism (Islamism) in recent times and sets out some ideas for reform at the end of the book. The diversity of Islam owes to “dozens of conflicting ideas about everything from how to interpret the Prophet’s words and deeds to who should do the interpreting, from whom to choose as leader of the community to how the community should be led.” These arguments often led to conflict, but also gave birth to various sects. Apart from the main Sunni or “orthodox” branch of Islam are the Shia and Sufi sects, both of which came into being as reactionary movements. Aslan goes into some detail about Sufism, the eclectic mystical tradition within Islam.

Muhammad was a very different kind of figure from Jesus Christ (whom he greatly revered), yet he strove to bring about radical religious, social and economic change in pre-Islamic Arabia. Aslan makes some interesting comparisons between Islam and Christianity, although his knowledge of the former is much better than of the latter. He says Christianity is an ‘orthodoxic’ religion; it is principally concerned with one’s beliefs in God while Islam, like Judaism, is an ‘orthopraxic’ religion, where it is one’s actions that makes one an observant follower. The five pillars of Islam are: “salat,” or ritual prayer (performed five times a day); “zakat,” or the paying of alms; fast (“sawn” in Arabic) during the month of Ramadan when Muslims believe the Quran was first revealed to Muhammad; the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca; and the “shahadah,” or profession of faith, which initiates every convert to Islam. Only the last pillar requires belief rather than action. Unlike Christianity, Islam is a communal religion; it abhors monasticism and reclusive individualism. The Quran also categorically derides celibacy as being against God’s command to be “fruitful and multiply.”

Aslan traces the roots of modern day Islamic fundamentalism to the influence of people such as Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762) as well as the experiences of the colonial period. Shah Wali Allah’s emphasis on orthodoxy, to strip Sufism of its “foreign” influences (e.g. Neoplatonism, Persian mysticism, Hindu Vedantism) and restore it to a former unadulterated form of Islamic mysticism, sparked a number of “puritan” movements in India like the Deobandi School. What angered political reformers, such as Jamāl-al-dīn al-Afghānī (1838-97) and Hassan al-Banna (1906-49), was the hypocrisy the British showed in preaching the values of the Enlightenment while cruelly pillaging the natural resources of their conquered lands and suppressing appeals for liberation. Al-Banna formed the Muslim Brotherhood, which was conceived to be an Islamic social movement “to present Islam as an all encompassing religious, political, social, economic, and cultural system.” Later, the movement underwent a more radical transformation under the influence of Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), who asserted the new ideology of Islamism which “called for the creation of an Islamic state in which the socio-political order would be defined solely according to Muslim values,” and he envisioned this process to be a “cataclysmic, revolutionary event.”

The book describes how the puritanical, fundamentalist sect of Islam known as Wahhabism became established in what is today Saudi Arabia. Thanks to oil money and Saudi evangelism, Wahhabism has now infiltrated every corner of the Muslim world, and it is the ideology of al-Qaeda. Aslan says that despite 9/11 and subsequent terrorist acts against western targets, “what is taking place now in the Muslim world is an internal conflict between Muslims, not an external battle between Islam and the West. The West is merely a bystander – an unwary yet complicit casualty of a rivalry that is raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story.” This is not the “clash of civilisations” but a war within Islam between scores of first- and second-generation Muslim immigrants, indoctrinated in the democratic ideals of their new homes, and the bigotry and fanaticism of those who have replaced Muhammad.

Being a young boy who fled to America with his family during the Iranian Revolution, Aslan is able to narrate the events of that historic period well and how Iran was transformed into “a fascist country run by a corrupt clerical oligarchy committed to snuffing out any attempts at democratic reform.” Yet he says that democracy in the Middle East is possible because “it is pluralism, not secularism, that defines democracy,” and Islam has had a long commitment to religious pluralism. If America, which is “unapologetically founded on a Judeo-Christian – and more precisely Protestant – moral framework,” it should be possible to have Islamic democracy through a path of secularization.

Aslan compares the current conflict in Islam to the cataclysmic events of the Reformation in Christianity. The book ends with the sentences: “The Islamic Reformation is already here. We are all living in it.” What is happening in Islam, says Aslan, is an internal conflict about who will write the next chapter in its story. It’s an alluring thought and I sense his passion about his own faith makes him believe that this is the case. The book does have its biases, but for anyone who wants a fairly balanced introduction to Islam I recommend this book.