I take no offense

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Jul 4, 2009 at 22:22

I got my Yusuf Ali translation of the Qu'ran from a campus Muslim fellowship while doing my Ph.D. I thanked them for their generosity, and the book is still on my shelf, consulted from time to time. I value knowledge of what other people think, even when I disagree with them.

Also, I have spoken to Muslim acquaintances about Jesus Christ and showed them passages in the Bible. I've even given Gideon New Testaments + Psalms and Proverbs to Muslims who have asked for them; at least if they seemed genuinely interested in reading rather than in desecration. I've even told them that Islam and Christianity cannot agree as long as the former (in the Qu'ran) declares that Jesus did not die on the cross while the latter sees in the crucifixion God's Suffering Servant making the final, perfect atonement for our sins--and hence sees the true death of Christ as the key to man's salvation. Indeed, the rate at which Muslim-background believers in Christ are catching up with Christians of Irano-Armenian or Irano-Assyrian heritage in the Iranian ethnic enclaves in America suggests that such work may be fruitful.

Race and Sama, some of us Christians do indeed take seriously the risen Christ's claim that all authority in heaven and earth has been given him, and that we are to make disciples of all nations (or, if you prefer the Old Testament, we urge the nations to "kiss the Son, lest ye perish in the way"--Ps. 2). While we may eschew using violence to do so, we will preach, distribute literature, and live the precepts we were taught until Kingdom Come. Also, we've been subjected to so much bigotry and verbal abuse from our Western "cultured despisers" that a bearded Muslim Da'wa guy handing out Qu'rans makes little difference to us.

Or, could it be, you, no less than Mohandas Gandhi, find something compelling about Jesus Christ?

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