Isaac and Ishmael, Together Again

A stray thought popped into my head tonight—apart from the fact that the West has been historically primarily Christian, why have the militant atheists appeared to focus almost exclusively on attacking Christianity? Why not Islam? So, I went to every blogger’s first resource, Google, and did a search for “books atheism Islam,” and was a little surprised to see 8.9 million hits. Apparently, there is no love lost between the militant ‘new’ atheists and Mohammed.

Ten Years

It is right and appropriate to jump on the bandwagon of everyone remembering 9/11. It has fundamentally shaped how we have interacted with the rest of the world, almost as much as WWII. Yes, I still maintain that WWII has so far had a greater impact that 9/11, but it had a 60 year head start. Given time, 9/11 may well surpass it, though both world wars set the stage for 9/11 in how the Middle East was carved up by the fading colonial powers. We did very little to alleviate those problems and thus have inherited them.

It has shaped my life directly as well. While I don’t know anyone personally that was lost that day, one very close friend lost a friend in the towers. Another acquaintance lost a brother I think in the Pentagon. Friends from grad school were on the observation deck the Saturday 3 days before. Mike remarked to me in an email shortly afterwards, “I remember standing on the roof and thinking how solid it was.”

Malaise

A cartoon from some magazine sometime back showed a classroom. On the chalkboard were two words, “ignorance” and “apathy.” Two stoners are in the back row and one looks up at the board with great effort, and with further strain reads the words slowly aloud, and asks his buddy, “what do those words mean?” His friend doesn’t even bother to look up when mumbling, “I dunno and don’t care.”

Malaise is just a cool sounding word, but if you have it, it’s hard to be excited about it.

Dad and I were talking tonight about how agitated so many Christians are about the state of our nation and all up in arms in Tea Party rallies and the like, yet, there are churches protesting “The Response” time of worship and prayer, and the stadium at best looks like it will be 20% full.

Creating Society

My grandmother recently closed her greenhouse nursery after nearly 50 years of business, and gave me one last chance to go through her remaining inventory, so I drove two hours down and back. I needed to gas up partway back, just outside San Antonio.

While inspecting the plants on how well the plants were travelling, the man at the next pump commented on the need to keep them covered with a tarp (which they were). He inquired how far I had to go and whistled, but commented he knew that area because a friend’s horse was stabled near there. As he told where, I laughed—it was less than a mile from my house and I have to pass it every day.

He then commented that he used to work in Austin, and in fact had been in Austin last year on the day that a disgruntled man flew his private plane into an IRS office there. Not only that, but his job was to work on an AC unit on the roof across the highway from the building and he saw the whole thing happen, and showed me pictures he took with his phone. I commented that I saw the smoke from my house near the stables, halfway across the county, minutes after it happened.

From there we progressed to those we knew who were impacted directly by 9/11, or whom we nearly lost there.

This man and I never exchanged names. Our conversation was only about 10 minutes long, but we parted as comrades of a sort. We discovered commonality, and the deeper we went, the more commonality we had.

Common experiences, common tragedies, common living. These things bound us together. In a real, though tiny sense, it strengthened our society at large. When we talk with each other we reaffirm that which holds us together, and strengthens that bond. We may be a nation that, in a sense, worships the individual, but we must still remain interdependent as human beings and as a society. It is sort of like that series of commercials where someone helps someone in a small but needed way and is observed by a third person, who proceeds to aid another and so on until in an Escher-like fashion we return to the original scene. There are subtle but real threads that we have a hand in weaving or ripping.

Isolation destroys society because it causes us to forget that we are interdependent and that we are a society, culture, tribe, tongue, nation, world, etc. We forget commonality, and assume difference, leading to suspicion and/or apathy. Reaching out and interacting reminds us that the other person is part of our ‘tribe’ and therefore we are part of theirs. Even short, shallow interactions like my gas station conversation serve to remind us of these things.

There are many examples of this throughout history. One of my favorites is from WWII. The Germans and Allies honored truces on Christmas Day. On one battlefield, the Allied troops in their foxholes began to sing Christmas carols. After a time, they heard the Germans join in from their foxholes. For a few, all too brief hours, they shared in their humanity and their faith.

As faculty in today’s universities, it is far too easy to become isolated in our offices or labs, interacting only to teach a class impersonally or direct our research group or go to a dreaded meeting, then back to our cave.

Ask yourself, what is your society? How vibrant is it? How can you heal or strengthen it?

SDG

Inside the Jihad

I have nearly finished an amazing book, “Inside the Jihad,” by Omar Naisiri (pen name). He is a Moroccan-born Belgian citizen who worked for the French and British secret services as a spy in terrorist rings during the 1990’s.

The book tells the amazing story of his life, how he got involved in a terrorist group and turned off by its extremism, and so turned double agent. He shares his struggles with his faith as a Muslim and sympathy for the terrorist cause with his Western upbringing and aversion to the extremes to which his colleagues would go.

One of the things that impresses me is their passion for the purity of their faith, as they understand it. I found myself comparing their view of God and His holiness with ours, their faithfulness to spiritual disciplines and living a spiritual life with ours.

Their view is very legalistic, yet the sincerity of their devotion is without question and admirable. If sincerity were a mark of salvation, we would do well to follow their example. However, there is no relationship with Allah—they would find that idea ‘ta-hout’ or of Satan. Our concept of freedom in Christ is not only completely foreign, but licentious and blasphemous. Innovation and progress are to be avoided.

Nasiri shares why they are so angry, and the reasons are manifold and complex. They view many of the governments of Islamic countries as being puppets of the West, when they should be subservient only to Allah. Secular governments are tahout. They are angry and ashamed that they are forced to fight against the West with weapons made by the West, and in particular hate the Uzi because it is Israeli. They see Jerusalem as a holy site that belongs to Islam alone, because it is the only true religion. They hate the ‘corrupting influence’ of the West that draws their people into temptation away from pure Islam, and so on. Sometimes the reasons seem almost circular, and he doesn’t always explain why they feel the way they do, so some things seem very illogical.

He explains that the concept of the individual and freedom of thought are fairly rare. It can be both a very egalitarian society and yet authoritarian. The sophistication and thoroughness of the training in the camps is truly astounding.

If you have any interest in understanding the terrorist situation, Islamic culture, and the roots of 9/11, I strongly recommend this book. It is graphic and coarse in places, yet he tells a richly detailed story that will keep you riveted. His moxy is inspiring and evidence of God’s hand in His life is evident. I suspect the Lord may have plans for this man. Read his book and pray for him.

SDG