Islam and North America

Loving our Muslim Neighbors

Micah Fries, Keith S. Whitfield, Micah Fries, Keith Whitfield

• Publisher: B&H Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781462748426
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Love your Muslim neighbors. Motivated by a deep-rooted conviction that the North American church needs to be equipped for this important task, Micah Fries and Keith Whitfield have gathered a group of experts who are deeply invested in successful outreach to their Muslim neighbors. Unlike many resources that explore the topic of Islam as a dominant religion in the Middle East, IslamandNorthAmerica focuses on the presence of Islam here in North America. Answering questions about the commonalities between Christians and Muslims, freedom of worship, the Quran, and Sharia law, this book will equip North American Christians to think aboutIslamtheologically and missionally, engage their Muslim neighbors hospitably, and encouragereaders to find new opportunities for missional engagement in their own backyards.

PART 1

OVERVIEW OF ISLAM IN NORTH AMERICA

1

Islam, North America, and the New Multi-Faith Reality: How Now Shall We Live?¹

Ed Stetzer

In 1985, when a mosque opened in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, more than a few eyebrows were raised. Elizabethtown had a large Islamic population, and those Muslims supported the construction of a mosque and Islamic cultural center. Today, it still stands. And though the current imam is not a Muslim immigrant (he is from Ann Arbor, Michigan), this quintessential American small town is host to a growing Islamic community.

If you travel over to the eastern part of Kentucky, you will find the coal-mining town of Prestonsburg, where I went on my first mission trip. At that time, the little Episcopal church we worked with seemed like the odd one out among the Pentecostals and Baptists. Now, if you travel a few miles outside of Prestonsburg, you will find an elegant mosque tucked away in a narrow hollow.² Appalachia, long a home to poor coal-mining communities, is now host to a growing Islamic community.

We are in the midst of what the media have called the “Changing Face of America.”³ This transformation raises many questions. One foundational question is, what does it mean to be an American in the twenty-first century? Before 1965, most immigrants followed the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) profile. For the majority of Americans, immigrants were like “us.” They looked like “us,” they learned “our” language, and they believed as “we” did. Since the Immigration Act of 1965, immigration has looked different. The newer waves of immigrants are not white, they are not Anglo-Saxon, and they certainly are not Protestant. America is becoming a nation of multiple cultures and multiple faiths.

A recent Pew Research study estimates that 3.3 million Muslims lived in America in 2015, and projects their population to grow to more than 8 million by 2050.⁴ The actual numbers are difficult to determine because the data relies on Muslims in America who are willing to report. Many Islamic immigrants are reluctant to do so because of fear of discrimination. Their fear is not without reason, as half of the pastors in America view Islam as a dangerous religion that promotes violence.⁵ These are the same pastors whose Bibles tell them to make disciples of all nations.

The Christian church, in order to be faithful, must consider what it looks like to have a gospel witness in a country composed of many faiths. We believe the answer lies in learning to live in a multi-faith world.

Living in a Multi-Faith World

Some years ago, I attended an “interfaith” meeting in Chicago that hosted a number of Christian denominations as well as a variety of other faiths. The goal was to compare research findings on our respective faith communities. At one point I questioned if I belonged at the meeting. The facilitator explained that the research should lead to cooperative resourcing to help all faiths develop and grow. I did not sign up for that. At the appropriate time, and with my best smile, I raised my hand and said something like this: “I appreciate the funding that allows us to survey our churches, and I think it is helpful to use similar questions and metrics for better research. But I am not here to form a partnership to help one another. I want to help the churches I serve, and part of the reason they exist is to convert some of you.” Some participants in the room looked at me as if I had just uttered a string of profanities. Others nodded in agreement. Then the Muslim imam seated next to me said, in effect, “I feel the same way.”

Though the imam and I were minorities in that group of predominantly liberal Protestants, we represented the movements (evangelical and Muslim) within that meeting that were (and still are) actually growing in numbers. Both he and I believed in sharing our faiths and enlarging their reach. We did not think we were worshipping the same God or gods, and we were not there under the pretense that we held the same beliefs. In other words, our goal was not merging faiths, combining beliefs, or even interfaith partnership. We acknowledged that we were not of the same faith and that we would each be overjoyed if we could bring the other to the truth—not just our truth but the truth as we firmly believed it.

Without using the word, we were acknowledging that, in such a context, we in North America are multi-faith.

When people of different faiths are found together in a conference, neighborhood, or nation, they are best described as “multi-faith,” representing different faiths. “Multi-faith” might sound strange to some, yet the idea is significant if peaceful coexistence and mutual understanding in a crowded religious world are important—and I think they are. The Christian witness in North America depends on it.

We are long past the day when Christianity is the privileged religious voice in North America. Evangelicals lamenting “the former days” is no way forward. The future of Christian witness is learning to live with multi-faith neighbors who are now in the city centers, the suburbs, and, yes, even rural America, and loving people of other faiths, engaging them with the Christian message.

Multi-Faith Living Is Not Interfaith Dialogue

For years, people of various faiths have promoted “interfaith dialogue” in order to discover common ground and work together for humanity’s sake. That sounds good until we start digging below the surface.

Those involved in interfaith dialogue often approach it as if there are no fundamental distinctions between the faiths. By way of contrast, in a multi-faith world, we recognize that we are neither worshipping the same God or gods, nor pursuing the same goals. Furthermore, we are not offended by our mutual desire to proselytize one another. The central assumption among those in the interfaith dialogue business has traditionally been that, at their core, all religious people—Hindus and Buddhists, Muslims and Jews, Christians and animists—are striving for the same thing, and are just using different words and concepts to get there. We should therefore, the reasoning goes, be able to cooperate around common beliefs to improve society. But how true is that assumption?

This book is about a Christian missionary encounter with Islam in North America. So, the main focus is understanding Islam and how to engage it with the gospel. Nevertheless, to illustrate the importance of multi-faith interaction, let’s take a closer look at the four religions that represent about three-quarters of the global population.

Recent surveys indicate that, worldwide, there are 2.1 billion Christians, 1.5 billion Muslims, 900 million Hindus, and 376 million Buddhists.⁶ The most basic belief in each religion is the idea of God.

Within the various streams of Hindu thought alone, there are multiple answers to the question, who or what is god? Hindus may believe that there is one god, 330 million gods, or no god at all. The Vedas—the most ancient of Hindu scriptures, which are accepted by most Hindus as normative—teach that “atman is Brahman,” or “the soul is god,” meaning that god is in each of us and each of us is part of god. The common Hindu greeting “Namaste,” which means, roughly, “The god within me recognizes and greets the god within you,” reflects this belief.

In his apologetic for the Buddhist faith, Shravasti Dhammika, the author of several popular books on Buddhism, writes, “Do Buddhists believe in god? No, we do not. There are several reasons for this. The Buddha, like modern sociologists and psychologists, believed that religious ideas and especially the god idea, have their origin in fear. The Buddha says, ‘Gripped by fear, men go to the sacred mountains, sacred groves, sacred trees and shrines.’”⁷ So, for most orthodox Buddhists in the Theravada tradition, the concept of a personal, supreme being is at best unimportant and at worst an oppressive superstition. Mahayana Buddhism, a later development, has by contrast deified the Buddha and allows for his incarnations in especially worthy people who delay their eternal release—their nirvana—so that their accumulated merits may be transferred to their devotees. In other words, even Buddhism itself does not agree on the concept of God.

How is God conceived in Islam? In the Quran we read, “Say: He is Allah, the One and Only. Allah, the Eternal, Absolute. He begets not, nor is he begotten. And there is none like unto him” (QS 112:1–4). We find foundational Islamic beliefs about the character of Allah in this passage: He is unique. No other being is like him. He is sovereign over all things. He has always existed and will always exist. And he is the father to no one.

In contrast, Christians believe that there is one God, who is the Creator of the world. He is a personal God—a conscious, free, and righteous being. And he is not only a personal God but a God of providence who is involved in the day-to-day affairs of creation. He is a righteous God who expects ethical behavior from each of us. He expects his followers to live out their belief by loving him with all their hearts, souls, and minds, and by loving their neighbors as themselves (Matt 22:37–39). God, while one in essence, also reveals himself in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So, according to the four largest world religions, God is either one with creation and takes on millions of forms, or God may or may not exist, or God is numerically one and absolute, or God is one but exists in three persons. If we cannot agree on even the basic definition of God or his character, how can we say that all the major religions are on the same path toward the truth about God? Pretending that we all believe the same thing does not foster dialogue but in fact prohibits it. We must acknowledge that humankind is, in fact, multi-faith—with radically different visions of the future, eternity, and the path to getting there.

Being a Neighbor

Admitting that humans are multi-faith is only a beginning. We also need to be willing to live together with those whose beliefs are different from our own. This means allowing adherents of other faiths to live out their convictions without creating constant conflict. The world has seen too much pain and suffering as the result of followers of one faith using political or military means to impose their views on followers of another. So how do religions that are mutually exclusive peacefully exist side by side?

In the spirit of multi-faith dialogue, I would like to propose four foundational commitments that Christians can make:

1.Let each religion speak for itself.

2.Talk with and about individuals, not generic “faiths.”

3.Respect others who hold to different beliefs, just as you would expect them to respect you for yours.

4.Grant each person the freedom to make his or her faith decisions.

What would each of these look like in practice?

1. Let each religion speak for itself. A friend of mine living in India had an interesting conversation with a Hindu about Islam. In all sincerity, the Hindu said, “As you know, Hindus do not eat beef because we worship cows. Similarly, Muslims do not eat pork because they worship pigs.” He did not realize how false, even o...

Table of contents

• Foreword: A Call to Keep Going [Kambiz Saghaey]
• Acknowledgments and Introduction
• Part 1: Overview of Islam in North America
• Chapter 2: Overview of Global Islam and Demographics of Islam in North America [Steve A. Johnson]
• Part 2: Questions People Ask
• Chapter 4: Should We Defend Freedom of Worship for Other Religions? [Bart Barber]
• Chapter 5: Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? [Keith S. Whitfield]
• Chapter 6: What Does the Quran Say about Fighting Non-Muslims? [Ayman Ibrahim]
• Chapter 7: Do Muslims Want to Overtake America’s Political Structure and Institute Sharia Law? [Bob Roberts]
• Part 3: Great Commission Opportunities
• Chapter 9: Getting to Know Your Muslim Neighbor [D. A. Horton]
• Chapter 10: The Challenges Muslims Face in North America [Shirin Taber]
• Chapter 11: Muslims and the Great Commission: The Importance of Community [Ant Greenham]
• Chapter 12: Sharing the Gospel with a Muslim [Afshin Ziafat]
• Afterword: A Biblical-Theological Framework for Understanding Immigration [Miguel Echevarria]
• Editors and Contributors
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index