By Rev. Matt Koerber
I met Ashur* when I visited Iraq five years ago. He is friendly and quick to make newcomers feel welcome. We were almost complete strangers when he invited me to his house for dinner with his family. I am thankful that we could stay in touch (mostly through mutual friends). Ashur is part of a minority ethnic group in Iraq that is historically Christian. He lives in the United States now and hopes to work for the US Army. I initially interviewed him about what it was like to be a refugee, but we talked so much about the complexities of being a Christian in a Muslim majority country that it made sense to publish the interview this week. When I called Ashur to ask if I could interview him for the blog he responded with characteristic enthusiasm. He assured me, “I’m gonna answer with the only truth that I know. Be prepared!” He is quick to smile and invite you into his confidence. The outwardly friendly persona can initially hide the fact that he has had a very difficult life. “My family was born in Baghdad, but because of being Christian you cannot stay at the same place for all of your life. It depends on the political situation, and your religion can affect the place where you live. My father and mother grew up in Mosul, which is the ancient city of Nineveh. My father was an engineer and worked for a private company outside of Baghdad. After his work project ended, we moved back to Mosul where he lived with family. At that time the government started to harass people who were not part of Saddam’s Baath (political) party.” Ashur loves the history of Iraq and used the occasion to launch into a discussion about the social fabric of the region. He continued, “The thing that you need to understand is that in Iraq there are inhabitants from different ethnic groups: Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, and Izidis. In all of the cities of Iraq, you can find Christians. They were there before the Arabs.” I knew from my brief visit to Iraq that in that part of the world there is no distinction between religion and ethnicity. To be Kurdish or Arabic is to be a Muslim. And to be Assyrian or Chaldean is to be a Christian. One Iraqi friend once told me that he spoke “the Christian language.” What he meant was that he spoke Assyrian. But that is how people talk about it. It is how they think about the entwined nature of religion and ethnicity. Most of the Assyrians have connections to the Orthodox Church. It is the part of the world close to where the Biblical adventures of Jonah and Daniel occurred, and where some of the earliest Christian monasteries and chapels were built. Not far from where Ashur lived, was the hometown of the prophet Nahum. For years, the local Jewish community had maintained what they believed to be his tomb. However, the Jewish inhabitants of Iraq have mostly been driven from the area and now the ancient synagogue housing Nahum’s grave lies in ruins. Ashur is proud of his people’s history and eager to share its importance. “The language of our people is called Assyrian, but it is – as far as I know – very similar to the Aramaic which Jesus would have spoken,” he told me. In a world dominated by Arabic, it is often hard to keep the language in use. He continued, “Growing up, the only place that I retained my language was in church. Some people go to church to be religious, but many go to retain their language.” I asked him what it was like to grow up as a Christian in Iraq. “I grew up in a Catholic school in Nineveh. It was a very good school, and at that time in the 80’s many rich and politically important families sent their kids to these schools. They believed it was the best education… But there were challenges for my family – my father couldn’t find a job. Being a Christian and not having family connections made it really hard. It is not like in America where you just apply for a job. You have to know someone. My uncle was part of an opposition party, which was under government investigation. That made it even harder for my father. They took him to the police station to be interrogated. They wanted him to be an informer, but he refused. The police told my father, ‘as long as Saddam lives you will go hungry.’ After that, the only jobs he could get were under the table.” But political and religious ties are not the only relationships which mattered in Iraq. Their Muslims neighbors felt a responsibility to help out. In spite of ethnic and religious differences, members of the community reached out. This is the complex web of life in the Middle East. “Our neighbors would help us to get a job (with under the table pay). The Arab neighbors had connections,” Ashur said. This is another difference between the Middle East and America; “In Iraq, neighbors see each other in their gardens and greet each other. We will invite each other to eat. Connections are more strong there.” But as the political situation grew more tense, life got even more difficult for Ashur’s family. “They took my father for 40 days in the late 1980’s. He was tortured and then released. After 1991 (and the First Gulf War), it started to get really dangerous for Christians of Syrian origin. (Other Christians from different tribes were not persecuted.) Then, my family moved to the Kurdish region, to the city of Zakho. After ‘91 they started to declare their own government in the Kurdish region. In those days there were only a couple of hundred families in Zakho. Now it is a bigger city.” I asked him how things were different in Zakho. He told me, “In Zakho, it was a very different story. These people were Kurds. They still live with a tribal mentality. They are not radical Muslims.” I know from experience that the Kurds have a strong sense of ethnic identity. They have been persecuted by many Arab groups over the years and are generally very tolerant. They had felt the heavy hand of Saddam. There are museums which enshrine the memory of Kurdish civilians killed in a gas attack by Saddam’s army. In my experience, the Kurds were delighted by the outcome of the Second Gulf War as it solidified their semi-autonomous position and further shielded them from the attacks of their neighbors. To this day, the question of Kurdish independence haunts all geopolitical debates in the region. Ashur told me how things again changed after the Second Gulf War. He said that Kurdistan (the informal name for the Kurdish region of Iraq) was quick to embrace the Americans and they began to see job growth. After finishing college, Ashur began to work for the US Army as a translator. He spent 2 years in Mosul and after the occupation returned to Kurdistan where he began to teach at an English language school. But while things were looking up for Kurdistan, things were getting harder for Ashur in his personal life. After his father died from cancer, Ashur felt the burden of caring for his family. He decided that his best opportunity for work was to try to emigrate to the United States. There is a special immigration visa for people who had worked in the army and who were experiencing persecution. Ashur applied for the visa and came to the U.S. in 2014, where he lived for a time with his former army captain. He struggled to find a job and after a traumatic bout of appendicitis he returned to Iraq. Back in Iraq, his options grew dim and hope faded. Ashur began to despair of life itself. In the depth of despair, Ashur encountered his faith in a new and vibrant way. “When I was young, my family went to church. I always had a feeling that God was with me. But I didn’t know Jesus until my father died. I knew him in my head, but not his presence. Because we lived in a Muslim society – where they don’t believe in the Trinity – there were times in my life that I did not really want to pray to Jesus. But he touched me and changed my life. At my lowest point, I was sitting on the roof of a building looking off the edge of the third story. I honestly began to think about jumping. But Jesus met me in that place. I felt as if he grabbed me. I knew that he was real. And everything good happened after that.” After that crisis point, Ashur made a personal commitment to read the Bible every day. In the midst of great personal turmoil he has kept that commitment and found it to be a source of spiritual life. He returned to America where he stayed with a friend that he knew from Iraq. He has worked hard in a variety of low paying jobs but has finally been received into an army training program and the promise of a solid career. I asked him to reflect on the complexities of his life in Iraq. He told me, “I love my Kurdish neighbors.” But he was also wary of the wide range of interactions that were possible. “There is a spectrum of ways that my Muslim neighbors might interact with me. Since Saddam fell, Kurdistan has become more religiously observant. Some people can start off friendly – religiously moderate – and then they change. Some people get drawn towards radicalization. There are a lot of signals that help me determine if a person is safe. How they dress, how they talk to women. Ashur expressed concerns about processes that shifted some people towards radicalization. Often, people who feel like they have few options and little hope can be easily swayed. He has concerns about what might be taught in a particular mosque and expressed a belief that some housed recruiters for more radical expressions of Islam. He described his perception of how this might play out. “There are people that you know in the community that will disappear for a period of time. You know that they are doing something wrong. Someone came to him and recruited him to do something violent. Poverty is a big factor. A lot of these people who are poor are the ones who disappear.” The varied experiences that Ashur has with Islam are not easily reconciled. On one hand, he summarized the experience of Christians in the Middle East as being very difficult. “If you are a Christian, you are still a second-level citizen.” On the other hand, he is thankful for the hospitality of many Muslim neighbors and misses the communal nature of Middle-Eastern life. Perhaps it would be best summarized by an observation he made about daily life back in Iraq. “You have to take each person one by one,” he said. “You have to get to know people.” *Ashur’s name and personal information have been changed for the safety of his family still in Iraq. By Kevin
This is the most difficult piece I have had to write for this blog. I have split it into two halves. In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the experience of growing up in an Islamic country. Today, I will write about growing up as a Christian amongst Muslims. I hope to distinguish between Islam as a system on one hand, and Muslims as individuals on the other. While the relationship between the two is complex, it is my belief that we too easily conflate the two. If there are things in one of these posts that conflict with your views, I ask for your patience, and suggest that you read the other half. There are things about the Malaysian Islamic authorities and government that I have purposefully left out, because even expressing the views I have may put my family and friends back in Malaysia under scrutiny and at risk. You may notice, in addition, that we have removed my last name from the blog to protect my family’s identity. My wife invites you to share a drink with me if you want to hear more. My views of Islam as a system (discussed in my last post) have evolved since I was a child, for two reasons. First, my perspective is informed by having inhabited multiple cultures, something I gained from having lived in the West in more recent years. Second, I believe the increasing Islamization of Malaysia has sped up – it is a much bigger factor now than it was when I was growing up. But deeper than those views, and more impervious to time, has been the deep affection for individual Muslims borne out of first-hand experiences I have shared with them while growing up. My deepest affinities for Muslims got rooted deep within me before the present wave of Islamization hit Malaysia. It takes a village I grew up in a racially (and consequently, a religiously) diverse neighborhood. The Muslim Mak Ciks (literally, Sister-Mothers; the Malay equivalent for Aunty. In Malaysia, every adult acquaintance is an Uncle or Aunty) helped raise me. My parents tell me that when I was a baby, our Muslim next-door neighbor would rub my belly with an herbal ointment if I was crying to help me sleep. A different Mak Cik would walk me home from school when my parents needed someone to get me. The Mak Cik across the street was my third grade math teacher. When any of my family were sick (especially my dad, who had long bouts with cancer), they would be ready to drive us to the hospital or provide meals if we needed. Last summer, many of them came to my wedding reception in Malaysia and shared in our joy, generously giving us traditional Malay gifts of glassware and linens. Every Eid al-Fitr (the festival marking the end of Ramadan), there were at least 4 or 5 Muslim neighbors I would be expected to visit and share a meal with. Sometimes, there would be so many invitations my family would have to strategically send me to some on my own. I would be welcomed like a nephew. These families would show up at my family’s home at Christmas. When I moved to the US, I found the relatively insular family celebrations of holidays an oddity. The Muslims I grew up amongst embodied what it meant to be a good neighbor. They loved me, a Christian, as themselves. This did not change even as the public sphere in Malaysia faced the pressures of Islamization. While Islamist leaders and politicians in Malaysia have warned Muslims against sharing in the religious celebrations of non-Muslims (for fear of tarnishing their faith), our neighbors seem to view sharing life with us as central to their faith, even if (maybe especially because) we are not Muslim ourselves. When I visit home, I meet these Muslim Uncles and Aunties. We reminisce and catch up, and they are proud of me and how my life has gone, as Uncles and Aunts are with their own nephews and nieces. On our last trip, several of them had the chance to meet Evelyn. They welcomed her into the neighborhood, unconcerned with her otherness. One Mak Cik handmade and delivered her special chicken pot pie for us to eat on Christmas Day, even though she was weak from her own cancer battle. Muslim brothers I attended a public school in Malaysia, with a racially and religiously diverse student body. I am ethnically Chinese, while almost all Muslims are ethnically Malay. Friendships across religious and ethnic lines were common as I grew up, but are becoming less common with Malaysia’s creeping Islamization polarizing people and sowing seeds of suspicion and fear. I weep for future generations of Malaysians who may never know the deep friendships I have shared with my Muslim friends. These are people I have played countless hours of soccer with, shared meals with, and even talked about my faith with. In a country where sharing one’s faith with Muslims is illegal, the likeliest way they will encounter the Gospel is through friendships with Christians. In turn, I have learned much about Islam through my friendships with them. Friendship made us willing to listen to each other. I don’t know if any of my Muslim friends will ever come to believe in the God revealed in Jesus the way I do. I don’t know how any of our conversations will have affected their beliefs. But I think these friendships still matter because they are not merely means to an end of conversion. There have been periods of racial violence in Malaysia’s past, primarily between the Malay Muslims and the ethnic Chinese. I have no doubt that many of my Muslim friends would have given their lives to protect me, a non-Muslim, if violence of that sort were to return to Malaysia. Would I, a Christian, lay my life down for them? It’s a question I have asked myself this past week. Love thy neighbor Why have I told you about these friendships? I view these friendships as forms of resistance against the fear and resentment that can fester between different communities (particularly between non-Muslims and Muslims). I view them as the means by which Christians love their neighbors as themselves. In my last years in Malaysia before moving to the US, this became more difficult. The creeping Islamization made it harder to distinguish between the system of Islam that I grew fearful of on one hand, with the Muslim friends I knew and loved on the other. I began to wonder if my Muslim friends even recognized the erosion of religious freedom that I felt due to the actions of an Islamist-leaning government. Though our friendships went deep, it was hard to resist being conditioned to fear Muslims – had they become my enemies? I will never know how I could or should have overcome my fear in order to move towards them. My increasing awareness of the effects of Islamization in Malaysia should not have made me fear; it should have driven me to deeper compassion and friendships with them. It is easy to demonize and fear a group when we do not have friendships with individuals from that group. Even with the personal knowledge I have of my Muslim friends, this fear is hard to shake. How much greater is the fear when it is bolstered by a lack of knowing individual Muslims? Does our fear prevent us from seeing individual Muslims as the image-bearers they are? Does this fear prevent us from moving towards the Muslims in our neighborhoods with open arms and friendship? Are we more concerned with our own safety than the safety of refugees and displaced peoples from Islamic countries? In my last post, I suggested that an awareness of Islam as a system was necessary for informing our engagement with Muslims: we need to be aware of how it can influence individual Muslims. However, no knowledge or perspective about this system changes the call to love them as neighbors, even at great personal cost. I’m convinced that our Muslim neighbors here in the US need the friendship of the church. This friendship may be uncomfortable. In addition to crossing cultural barriers, some may worry that befriending Muslims may imply a tacit endorsement of Islam as a system. To this, I would say two things. First, we cannot properly understand Islam as a system separate from individual Muslims. Second, if we place preconditions on our love for others, we fail to understand the power of the Gospel. In fact, this friendship may be costly. I can attest to how much it costs the Malaysian church to love Muslims. Even if the system and structure of Islam in Malaysia exerts great power against the church, the church is not exempt from loving its neighbors, some of whom may in fact be enemies. I believe the same call of Jesus to lay down our lives applies to us in the US, for we are part of the same church he has called. By Kevin
This is the most difficult piece I have had to write for this blog. I have split it into two halves. In today’s post, I write about the experience of growing up in an Islamic country. Tomorrow, I will write about growing up as a Christian amongst Muslims. I hope to distinguish between Islam as a system on one hand, and Muslims as individuals on the other. While the relationship between the two is complex, it is my belief that we too easily conflate the two. If there are things in one of these posts that conflict with your views, I ask for your patience, and suggest that you read the other half. There are things about the Malaysian Islamic authorities and government that I have purposefully left out, because even expressing the views I have may put my family and friends back in Malaysia under scrutiny and at risk. You may notice, in addition, that we have removed my last name from the blog to protect my family’s identity. My wife invites you to share a drink with me if you want to hear more. I’m woken up at 5:39 a.m. by the local mosque’s muezzin (the person appointed to read public prayers) reciting the Adhan. Every neighborhood in Malaysia has several mosques, and each broadcasts its prayers via loudspeakers. Allāhu akbar (God is great), they begin each morning, heard by all. The nation’s Muslims (who are mostly ethnic-Malay and make up over 60% of the population) are called to begin their day in prayer. The non-Muslims (consisting mostly of ethnic Indian and Chinese Malaysians) are woken up with them, even if they are not called to the same prayers. Life in Malaysia is punctuated and driven by the rhythms of Islam. It has been this way for generations. Malaysia is a former British colony. When (then) British-Malaya gained independence in 1957, the nascent constitution left the country with a mixed religious identity. Freedom of religion is a right, but only for non-Muslims, as proselytizing Muslims is against the law. In addition, Muslims cannot renounce their faith without incurring consequences from the state. Due to the large number of Muslims and Islam’s historical roots in the region, Islam has always had a strong influence on public life. Growing up, I took Islam’s influence as a fact of life. Some of it was positive; we got many more days off school due to various Islamic holidays. Some of it was common sense; during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims fast during the day, non-Muslims were told to eat discreetly. To me, this was simply being a good neighbor. Some of it seemed necessary due to the population’s composition; various jobs and positions in society, particularly within the government, were out of reach for non-Muslims (e.g. in 9 of Malaysia’s 13 states, the state government’s head must be a Muslim, by law). For the most part, I grew up loving my country’s social fabric. Muslims were just another community of faith worshipping alongside Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians. It wasn’t merely coexistence; the diversity enriched our culture. I grew up joining neighbors and friends celebrating their religious holidays. Celebrating Eid al-Fitr (the festival marking the end of Ramadan) at my friends’ homes – and having them over to celebrate Christmas at mine – remains a precious memory. Malaysia has long boasted of its cultural diversity and harmony. Over the past 20 years, there has been a gradual shift in how Islam’s influence in Malaysian public life was expressed. The public sphere in Malaysia is increasingly controlled by Islamists: Muslims who believe that Islamic principles should dictate legal, public, and political activity within a state.* While “revolutionary” Islamists may use violence to achieve this, those in Malaysia consist mainly of “reformist” Islamists who seek to Islamize the nation using democratically gained political power. The historical reasons for the creeping Islamization are complex.** In its simplest form, it has been driven by Islamist groups and individuals courting a Muslim-majority electorate by promising to secure Islam’s position of power within the country. This has taken on multiple forms. For non-Muslims, there has been increased scrutiny and (dare I say it) persecution. Here are some examples:
The Islamists involved in some of the examples above may be individual Muslims, but I am concerned mainly with their use of Islam as a system to wield power over non-Muslims in the public sphere. However, the same system and power can be used on Muslims. It is vital to recognize that Muslims are a diverse group, many of whom do not seek to wield power in the service of Islam as a system (as Islamists do). As challenging as things have become for non-Muslims, I believe the creeping Islamization in Malaysia has oppressed my Muslim neighbors most of all. Some examples:
Understanding and engaging with Islam is extremely complex. My experience and history in Malaysia enables me to make the distinction between Islam as a system and Muslims as individuals. This allows me to see that it is not a matter of Us vs. Them, because Christians are not the only ones who face difficulties within a Muslim-dominated society; Muslims are often severely oppressed, and stopped from hearing the Gospel. How can we serve these people in need if we do not see them as individuals? At the same time, I do not believe we will be equipped to engage with and serve them if we do not recognize that Muslims in Muslim-dominated societies are often embedded within a system of Islam influences the way they think about and practice their faith. Here in the US, many barriers have been removed (e.g. there is no law prohibiting sharing our faith with Muslims), and Islam as a system does not have the same power in the public sphere. Engaging with Muslims demands wisdom to discern how each individual Muslim relates to Islam as a system. But more than anything else, it requires us to see Muslims as neighbors we are called to love. Here in the US, I am not woken up by the Adhan. Some mornings, I wake up half-expecting to hear it. I sometimes miss it, along with the Muslim friends I have left behind in Malaysia. * I make no claims about whether it is due to a particular (correct or incorrect) interpretation of Islam’s teachings (as Matt Koerber said, only Muslims are in a position to judge what constitutes “true Islam”). I am simply describing what is observable: that these groups and individuals have sought political power with the stated goal of securing Islam’s influence over society (and by extension, securing the security of Muslims). ** See Islamization in Malaysia: processes and dynamics by Abbott and Gregorios-Pippas (2010) for a comprehensive analysis of the historical factors that led to this. *** Allah is simply the generic Arabic word for God, which has been used by followers of all the Abrahamic faiths for centuries. By Rev. Matt Koerber
We had anticipated from the beginning that the fifth week of the blog would be its most challenging. We reserved this week for a discussion on “Engaging with Islam.” After a one week break from the blog, we returned to find that the topic is more challenging than ever. The newspaper headlines remind us that this topic is relevant for all of the wrong reasons. On Monday, May 22, a suicide bomber killed 22 civilians at a concert in Manchester, England. The bomber had been reported to the authorities as a suspected terrorist when he previously expressed the views that "he was supporting terrorism" and "being a suicide bomber was okay". The Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the truth is unclear. The alleged bomber was a British citizen, born in England to Libyan parents who came to the country as refugees. Classmates reported that he had become increasingly religious and that he had traveled to Libya on several occasions. At some point, he became radicalized. On Friday, May 26, ISIS gunmen attacked a tour bus full of Coptic Christians, leaving 29 dead. Coptic Christians represent about 10% of Egypt’s population and have been targeted for violent persecution with increasing regularity during recent years. To quote a director from human rights group Amnesty International, “This terrifying wave of attacks has seen Coptic Christians in North Sinai hunted down and murdered by armed groups. No one should face discrimination – let alone violent and deadly attacks – because of their religious beliefs.” These particular incidents are part of an ongoing trend of violence associated with Islam. Many Muslims condemn such attacks, but the backlash can make life difficult for Muslims living in the West. For example, the Manchester police reported a spike in threats against Muslims in their community after Monday’s bombing. Also on Friday, May 26, in Portland, Oregon, two men were killed while defending a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf. It appears that the attacks may have been motivated by animosity towards the religion of the two Muslim women. (It is unclear whether the attacker was mentally competent.) Closer to home, personal friends of mine have expressed the increasing difficulties that they experience as Muslims living in Pittsburgh. These challenges are particularly relevant to our political dialogue about refugees. This past Fall, there were heightened concerns about Syrian refugees being resettled in the United States because many of the refugees are Muslims. As a candidate, Donald Trump highlighted the fears of some Americans when he called for a ban on Muslims entering the country. Since becoming President, his executive order travel bans have created controversy and legal uncertainties. Beneath the challenging questions of political policy lie more important questions, ones that strike close to the central purpose of this blog. How should Christians think about Islam and Muslims? How should this affect our views on refugees and immigration?Over the course of the next week, we will include a number of different voices from people who are deeply involved in this issue. But for both Kevin and me, this topic is deeply personal. I have been privileged to travel to both Iraq and Turkey, and last summer my family and I spent two months working with Middle-eastern refugees in Athens, Greece. I have close friendships with many Muslims and I am privileged to have many Muslim neighbors. But the situation is even more personal for Kevin. His home country of Malaysia is predominantly Muslim. He knows first hand the challenges of living as a religious minority in an Islamic country while also enjoying rich friendships with many Muslims. Like many of the other issues that we have faced, it is worth saying at the outset that this is complicated. It is our conviction that many of the predominant approaches towards Islam are fundamentally flawed. Westerners often find the issue to be foreign and confusing, thus gravitating towards simplistic approaches of understanding. These simplistic approaches for understanding Islam and our engagement with it are inadequate for the task at hand. Let’s consider two competing approaches and then try to sketch a third approach which better represents the facts. Simple Approach #1: “All Muslims are Terrorists” In light of the claims of ISIS to be the representatives of true Islam, and in light of the expressed religious convictions of many high profile terrorists, it seems like a short step to draw a one-to-one connection between Islam and religious violence. People who take this interpretation typically assume all Muslims are inherently violent. It may even be assumed that they are under-cover agents who are committed to religious conquest. What this view fails to regard is that Muslims are not a monolithic group. Throughout the world, many different expressions of Islam are found with different views of religious violence. Individual Muslims believe a wide range of things, and I am thankful to have many personal friends who are both Muslim and committed to peaceful coexistence. Simple Approach #2: “Islam is a Religion of Peace” I want to be clear: I do not believe that it is simplistic for a professing Muslim to say that their religious system is committed to peace and nonviolence. I am thankful for the many who do so. What I am thinking of here is the propensity for (well-intentioned) non-Muslim Westerners to offer their assessment of what constitutes “true Islam.” I believe it is only appropriate for a Muslim to speak about “true Islam.” An outsider is not in a position to make those claims. We can only speak of “true Islam” if we believe that Islam is true. What we can know is this: just as there are many Muslims in the world who affirm the peaceful coexistence of different religions, there are also many people who affirm the necessity of religious violence in the name of Islam. I certainly have a strong preference for the practice of peace-loving moderate Islam over hardline Islam. But it seems that many Westerners are tempted to turn a blind eye towards expressions of religious violence associated with Islam in the name of being “inclusive.” This sort of wishful thinking does not allow us to think carefully about the real-world challenges that that we are facing. A Third Way Rather than make blanket statements about the true nature of islam, or claim the ability to judge the true intentions of every Muslim, it is far better to think about the issue in a different way. We can move forward by distinguishing between systems of thought and the individual people who associate with a particular religion. First, Islam is a religion that has a history and a central book (the Quran). We can examine this history and we can read the book. There are varied approaches to interpreting the Quran and we can talk with people about their approach. We can also make observations about the nature of government and individual freedom in Islamic-dominated countries. These sorts of questions are essential as we seek better understanding between Islam and the West. When we start with presumptions about the true nature of Islam, we short circuit this process. To put myself on record, I believe that there is significant reason for concern in regard to basic human freedoms found in many Muslim-majority countries. Second, individual Muslims are unique persons, made in God’s image, with dignity and value. Each person may have differing beliefs about religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and other important matters. Experientially, I have found it easy find common ground with many Muslims. In many cases, I have found shared commitments to religious nonviolence and towards safeguarding the dignity of all people. To share a specific example, two years ago I wore a shirt commemorating the Christian victims of ISIS. Since I play soccer with many Muslim friends, I was slightly uncertain of how I would be received. Not only did my friends express deep concern and sympathy towards the victims, as well as a deep hatred towards ISIS, many wanted to buy a similar shirt to express solidarity. I want to go on record to say that I have had a large number of deep relationships with Muslim friends. I cannot write about this topic without recognizing the admirable qualities these friends of mine possess. My life would be impoverished without these friendships. I am also reminded that throughout the world, religious violence takes a heavy toll on the Islamic community. “Muslim-on-Muslim violence” is a significant problem in many countries, especially between opposing factions. Furthermore, a measure of humility is required when considering this issue, since Christians have also used religious texts to support their injustices. (See: the African Slave Trade.) Finally, we should remember that Jesus calls Christians to love their neighbors. This command to love directs us to engage with people as individuals and seek their good. We can sometimes find amazing common ground with Muslim neighbors. But even in the absence of common ground, we are called to love our enemies. Loving our enemies does not mean that we take foolish risks or naively assume that everyone is safe. But as a follower of Jesus, I am not excused from loving, even when people are committed to religious violence. Throughout the week we will hear other voices address this complex matter. We do not expect to resolve something this challenging in a few posts, but I hope that we can begin to model a different manner of engaging with this issue. By Rev. Matt Koerber
When Fais and his family moved to the United States in 2009, they landed across the street from us. They had been granted asylum in the United States after the post-war chaos in Baghdad, Iraq forced them to flee. It didn’t take long for us to become friends and share life in many ways. Recently, I asked Fais if I could interview him for this blog to share his experience as a refugee. He was eager to oblige. We were already scheduled to visit a mortgage broker today and planned to do the interview afterwards. I had been walking with them through the mortgage process – it is complicated enough when English is your first language – but things ran long, and as we drove home we started to look for a time to reschedule. Fais was riding in the passenger seat while his son drove. Now a college student in Pittsburgh, Ibrahim had offered to sit in for the interview. Fais speaks English well, but with an accent. Ibrahim arrived in the US just after becoming a teenager, and now speaks English without an accent. As we started to talk, the story unfolded. Sitting in the back seat, I couldn’t see their faces, but I could tell from Fais’ voice that it was an intimate story. “You know I was kidnapped,” said Ibrahim. I did know, but we had never talked about it together. The story hung over everything I knew about their past. Fais had told me about it, in a fairly general way, but I had never talked about it with Ibrahim. It is not the sort of thing that comes up naturally in conversation. “Are you willing to talk about it?” I asked. “Sure.” Ibrahim replied nonchalantly, but I don’t think it is a story that he tells often. “Things were different after the war. People didn’t go outside much anymore. I always would play in the streets and play soccer with my friends. But after the American soldiers arrived we stayed inside. We played a lot more video games.” Fais had worked with the government before the war and like many Iraqis, the fall of Saddam introduced a difficult period in their lives. As he told me later, “In those days, no one had money.” One morning Ibrahim left the house in the morning to pick up some groceries. On the way, he stopped at a friend’s house to grab a video game that he had left there the day before. He noticed a suspicious car parked outside, but didn’t think much of it. As he reflected back on it, Ibrahim remarked that the family he visited was known for being pretty well off, and may have been the targets of a kidnapping plot. Ibrahim may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. After leaving, he was followed to the store. A strange man in a brown jacket followed him into the market. “In our neighborhood, everyone knew each other,” said Ibrahim. “When this guy, that I didn’t know, started to ask me questions it made the store owner nervous. He told me to wait around till he left. I waited awhile and when it had seemed that he was gone, I left to walk home.” But he was not alone. Ibrahim was followed across the street and as the man drew closer he was joined by two other men. “The strange thing was, I was right in front of the school when they grabbed me,” said Ibrahim. A black car rolled up immediately and he was thrown into the back seat. The kidnappers punched him and yelled in his face. Apparently, setting him on edge would enhance the negotiation to follow. “All I could think about was my mom,” Ibrahim told me. “I was wondering, ‘How is she feeling right now?’” Back at the house, Fais was getting nervous. He didn’t know where his son was, and his fears rose quickly. A quick turn through the neighborhood revealed that no one knew where he was. In those days, kidnappings were not uncommon. Often, they did not end well. “I knew right away, that someone had taken my son,” said Fais. Over a decade later his voice still cuts out some as he tells this emotional story. Five minutes after returning home, the phone rang. Young Ibrahim had been able to give his home phone number to the kidnappers and they called with their demands. “You son is with us. Don’t call the police. Don’t call anyone. Give us the money and you can get him back.” “Ibrahim, I am here.” Fais told him, when they handed the phone to his son to prove that he was alive. “I am going to get you.” His only option was to comply as much as possible and hope that these kidnappers were “honest”. “I don’t think that anyone would have helped anyway,” said Ibrahim, matter-of-factly. “In those days, the government had bigger things to worry about.” Fais became a little more animated as he rehashed the events of the story, “I told them that they could come to my house and take anything that we had. Come, I have two cars, you can have them. Take any of my possessions, but give me my son…but they wanted cash.” They asked for the equivalent of $150,000. At the time, it was an incredible sum of money and practically impossible to get. It would require selling nearly everything they had and borrowing money from relatives, but in the end, they scraped together enough money to make a reasonable counter offer. It was possible that they would take the money and still kill Fais. But he saw no other reasonable course of action. They arranged a meeting point on the highway and Fais presented himself in plain sight to show that he was not followed. Fais walked forward to the cars that pulled off the road towards him. Ibrahim was in the back seat, flanked by men on each side. “You have my son. I have your money. Just give him to me and we will leave.” Both parties acted relaxed and friendly so as to avoid suspicion. The exchange progressed smoothly. Fais took his son’s hand, determined to never let it go. They briskly left the scene, caught a taxi and returned home. “It must have been a relief,” I said. Fais didn’t understand me at first. Maybe the word needed translation. Maybe it was an understatement. Maybe, in hindsight it was seen to be just the beginning of the struggle. The kidnappers were Shia Muslims, a minority Muslim sect, which happens to be predominant in Iraq. Violence between them and the majority Sunni Muslims colored the post-Saddam landscape with the red of shed blood. As Sunni Muslims, Fais and his family would have been naturally suspicious, but now they knew that they were targets. The kidnappers actually called to confirm the request, and offer their future protection. But now that they had paid a ransom, word might spread. Future kidnappings would become even more likely. They knew that they had to leave. Three months later they sold their remaining possessions and hired a private driver to take them across the closest border to Syria. They left with nothing but their clothes, some blankets and their remaining money. After a year in Syria, where there were no options for work, they moved again to Jordan. Here Fais got a job as an accountant for a baker and they applied for asylum with the United Nations. After an intensive and extensive interrogation and vetting process, the family was cleared for resettlement, and three years after fleeing Iraq they found refuge in the United States. A relative lived in Pittsburgh, so it was a natural destination. Pittsburgh is a world away from Baghdad. Their family is safe and the challenges that they faced have knit them together in a tight bond. Each of the four children are either in college or working in the area. “It was not easy to get settled here,” said Fais. “Not easy at all. It is still not easy.” Perhaps he was thinking of the nearly two-hour meeting that we had with a mortgage broker. “We just want to live and to be friendly with everybody. Just like how we lived in our country.” As our interview wound down, I added the words that I have heard Fais say many times over the years. “We have much to be thankful for.” |
AuthorMatt Koerber is the senior pastor at City Reformed Presbyterian church. This is his personal blog that he also asks guest writers to participate on. Archives
August 2018
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