Shreveport celebrated a World Religion Day; a taxpayer subsidized propaganda meeting for the uninformed, lazy and gullible. It’s like a job fair, but for proselytization. At least eighteen churches, synagogues, and mosques were superficially represented.
Rosie Ticey on Sunday saw what she calls a rainbow of religion. …
“Really, God led me here. All are different but yet the same,” Ticey said as she pointed out her three daughters. “They don’t know they volunteered, too.”
No. We’re not the same. While Christians and Jews worship the same God – though Christianity proclaims Jesus as a deity as well – Muslims do not. They will specifically say so, if you ask the right way.
Let’s be clear: we do not worship the same God that Muslims worship. Muslims reject the deity of Jesus Christ. The Quran claims that God is “unknowable” yet our God has gone to great lengths to make Himself known – to the point of incarnation! There are many fundamental differences – this is not a level of disagreement akin to the Catholic/Protestant divide, which is large enough.
But I’m just some bozo with a blog; don’t take my word for it. Take John Piper’s. Just because another religion is monotheistic doesn’t mean we’re all on the same page. And acting as though we are has been my chief complaint about the flawed and failed outreach by Christian leaders to the ummah. These leaders inadvertently affirmed – as the ummah would see it – the superiority of Islam. And to their credit – Muslims rarely compromise their faith the way Christians do. We have often put on the trappings of Islam – veiled ourselves, etc. – to make Muslims more comfortable. A devout Muslim woman would not dream of removing her burkha for our comfort when she doesn’t even remove it for her own. And her attitude is the correct one; she should not compromise what she believes is a tenet of her faith for the sake of others. Rather, it’s incumbent upon us to persuade her she’s wrong and we’re right; that she should join us. Compromise and obfuscation are not effective debate methods.
Gehrig spent a few minutes talking with Mohammed Rayyan, of Bossier City, who was working at a booth for local followers of Islam. He said the event helped to dispel misconceptions that his religion is only for violent extremists.
“They think it is a religion of war and killing,” the 24-year-old said. “It is a religion of peace — you can read it in the Quran.”
Certainly – Sura 9:5 makes that abundantly clear. Peaceful, indeed.
