The Apex of Islamic Civilization? Not really...

The greatest Turkish architect and mosque builder was the brilliant Sinan (1489-1588), who was born a Greek Christian, and who learned his engineering skills while a janissary. A former Christian used a former Byzantine church [the Hagia Sophia] as the model for the glorious mosques that awed visitors to Turkey and are today seen as the apex of Islamic civilization.

Jenkins in The Lost History of Christianity, p 194

Islamdom in the USA

'Understanding Muhammad' by Ali Sina

Here is a book that looks very interesting, written by an ex-Muslim who is trying to analyze the pyschology of the Prophet.

Understanding Muhammad, by Ali Sina

If any one has read this please let me know, and let me know what you thought.

"People think that threats aimed at Muslims who've become Christians only happens in Muslim countries like Morocco or Iraq" says Johanna Marten, team leader of the Arabic work at the Gave foundation, an inter-church organization which helps churches with missionizing among asylum seekers. "Many people in the Netherlands have no idea of the problems that Muslims in the Netherlands encounter when they become Christian. They don't know that also in the Netherlands there are concrete threats and attacks in the name of Islam."

From HERE.

Pray for Kyrgyzstan

There is ongoing violence in this largely-Muslim central Asian country. Pray that God would bring something positive out of all of this, and that justice and mercy would be present in all hearts, and that the Gospel would go forth.

Kyrgyz violence: Kyrgyzstan struggles to quell ethnic massacres

Check out their population stats HERE.

Edinburgh 2010: Reflection 2

Lack of initiative in Islamic societies

The people also expect their leaders to do miracles, to save them, and take care of them from cradle to grave. This condition spills down to the rest of society. As a child I remember my grandparents’ hands being kissed by poor villagers who needed something. My grandparents often refuse the bowing and the kiss, but are often pleased by it. Servants submit to their masters, workers to their bosses and children to their parents. Maids often have to express total respect and submission and very often to physical and sexual abuse. There is a sad dependency for one’s welfare upon the graces of any one above you in the Moslem hierarchy of submission. Since initiative is stifled, most people wait for things to happen to them rather than change things on their own. Thus dependency becomes the norm. Slavery may have been abolished officially, but it is alive and well in a different form called submission.

Nonie Darwish, ex-Muslim

Handlery on Islam and Democracy

The 64-thousand dollar question is whether Islam does fit into a democratic system. In a way, the question is not a question. It has been answered numerous times, both in theory and in the praxis. Alas, the results unearthed have always been the wrong, that is non-PC ones. The central problem issues from the concept of the desirable relationship between state and church. Even in case of the devout, in the advanced democratic and mainly Western entities, the principle of separation prevails. Here one would argue that the arrangement is to the benefit of both the worldly and the spiritual order. Islam’s tradition considers that the state is a worldly expression of the heavenly order. This determines not only the purpose of the state but also makes it subject to the supervision of those whose mandate comes from God.

Brussels Journal. HERE.

Templar disciplines and rules

Pope Honorius II (d. 1130) approved the following rules of conduct and discipline for the order in 1128:

• to recite vocal prayers at certain hours;
• to abstain from meat four days in the week; to cease hunting and hawking;
• to defend with their lives the mysteries of the Christian faith;
• to observe the seven sacraments of the church, the fourteen articles of faith, the
creeds of the apostles and Athanasius;
• to uphold the doctrines of the Two Testaments, including the interpretations of the church fathers, the unity of God and the trinity of his persons, and the virginity of Mary both before and after the birth of Jesus;
• to go beyond the seas when called to do so in defense of the cause;
• to retreat not from the foe unless outnumbered three to one.

from 'The Knights Templar' in The Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained by Brad and SHerry Stelger. 2003.

Growth of the Protestant Church in Turkey

There is a great new article in the Spring edition of the International Journal of Frontier Mission by James Bultema, who has done some very interesting research on the Protestant Church in Turkey. There were two large growth spurts and this is how he accounts for them:

During these four and half decades [1960-2005], you see one period—from 1988 to 1994—that towers over other periods with respect to the growth rate. The reason for that spike in growth is quite simple: the New Testament in modern Turkish was printed and distributed, beginning in mid 1987. We had another spike from 2000-2002, and that is because the whole Bible in modern Turkish was first printed and distributed at the beginning of that period. (Bultema 2010: 28)

Check it all out over at www.ijfm.org.

"Leaving Islam?" ads in New York

NEW YORK (AP) - The questions on the ads aren't subtle: Leaving Islam? Fatwa on your head? Is your family threatening you?

A conservative activist and the organizations she leads have paid several thousand dollars for the ads to run on at least 30 city buses for a month. The ads point to a website called RefugefromIslam.com, which offers information to those wishing to leave Islam, but some Muslims are calling the ads a smoke screen for an anti-Muslim agenda.

From HERE.

The Temple and Empire killed God

The new issue of St Francis Magazine just came out and it looks like it will have some good material. I am especially looking forward to Madany's article on the Trinity. He is an excellent interpreter of Islam.

For now though I leave you with this juicy tidbit from Miller on p 507:

Here is what I would regard as very a fundamental disjunct between
Islam and Christianity: The Cross is itself the revelation of the
absolute incapability of Empire and Temple to address the deepest
needs of the broken icon. The cross reveals to us how the Temple
and the Empire, when given free reign, actually kill God. How different
is this from Islam, where the proof of God’s choice of
Muhammad was his ability to harness both Empire and Temple to his
aims? We should not be surprised by this though: the polis is made
up of people, and if our anthropology is different, then so will be our
politic. “He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has
lifted up the humble.”

Check the whole thing out here.

Tradition and Evangelism

Pat argues that being strongly rooted in the tradition of the Church is in fact essential in regards to the ability to fruitfully evangelize. I think I agree...

As we become ever more aware of our inextricable human rooted-ness in history and tradition, it seems to me all the more important to embrace, explore, and yes, when necessary, reform, that tradition. Contrary to some popular thought, anchoring oneself in a tradition is more conducive to inter-traditional dialogue than claiming an autonomous distance from any tradition.

Hence, the Christian Tradition must needs be maintained--through study, through interaction, and through liturgical/sacramental practice--in order to continue to provide a "solid rock" on which to build our evangelistic efforts.

From Think, Ubu, Think! Share your thoughts either here or there.