The Crescent Moon and the Cross

I attended a forum last night to hear Dr. Dan McVey speak on the topic of Islam from a Christian perspective. I expected to hear insight as to why Christianity is God's religion and that all Muslims are extremists, but that is not at all what was said. The purpose of this forum, as displayed on the opening slide of the Powerpoint presentation, was to achieve a better understanding.

To learn.

Of the 60 minutes that Dr. McVey had to speak, 45 of it was informative. Islam is this. Islam is that. Mohammed did this. Muslims do that. It was amazing to hear how much Dr. McVey, a Christian, knew about Islam. How and why did he know so much about this, and why do I need to know this? I'm not a Muslim, so why do I need to know the Arabic translation of the word "submit?" For your information, Islam is translated to mean "submit." Now you know.

Why does it matter?

The heart of the issue is that approximately 90% of Muslims have never met a Christian, but they claim to know a lot about us. On the other hand, a huge number of Christians have never met a Muslim, yet we claim to know a lot about Islam. How well do you know a person if you have never met them? How do I know if what I hear about Muslims is true? Knowledge suppresses ignorance.

The reason Dr. McVey knows so much about Islam was because he served as a Christian missionary in areas of Africa and Asia where the majority of religious people were Muslims. When I first heard this, I thought that he would have met heavy resistance because of the way Muslims are protrayed on TV, but that was not the case. He said, "Whenever someone approached me and found out that I was a Christian, they said, 'Praise Allah.'" Wait, I thought we were "infidels," but they are excited to see us? He had to know their religion to be an effective communicator with them. Knowledge suppresses ignorance.

Prior to this forum, I understood that not every Muslim is a terrorist, despite what several card-carrying members of the NRA might say, and Dr. McVey explained that of all the Muslims, the extremists we hear about so often on the airwaves make up the smallest population in the Islamic faith. Knowledge suppresses ignorance.

"What does jihad mean?" asked Dr. McVey. After a quick pause, the audience began to whisper, and a general consensus was reached that jihad is Arabic for "holy war," because that's what we have been told. Much to our dismay, we were wrong. Jihad means struggle, and this war that we often refer to in terms of jihad is actually a struggle against oppression, a retaliation of sorts. Knowledge suppresses ignorance.

Ultimately, I write this post as a declaration that I do not know everything about Islam, and my presuppositions on this religion and its followers is mostly flawed. I feel like it is reasonable to say the same for the majority of non-Muslims in this world. As Christians, we must begin converasations to bridge gaps between people of different religious, social, and racial backgrounds. We need to learn who they are and stop making judgements based on what they are. If we expect the same from them, we should start the process.

I also learned that is it written in the Qur'an that Muslims are encouraged to have civil discussions with Jews and Christians, so that we may all come to an agreement about our beliefs. Sounds reasonable. We did all start from the same spot.