I’m your neighbor, the boy next door, the guy around the corner, the dude down the street. From the outside, I might look unapproachable- like those guys on FOX news. But, on the inside, I’m a lot like you. I have fears. I have disappointments. I want my kids to go to good schools and do well. I want them to grow up and be fulfilled. I want them to be good people. I want to please God.
And I think I have the list memorized- what to do, what not to do, but I can’t keep up. On the outside, I try to be sure everyone knows I am religious, but on the inside I know that I’m no better than anyone else. I bow down in prayer 5 times a day, but when I’m there, I feel so alone. I don’t think I can’t keep this up. I’m lost. But I don’t see any other way. I don’t see any other option. If someone would just help me understand how to deal with how I feel and the struggles that I’m facing, I would listen.
The problem is, you are a 100 million miles away. But not just geographically, religiously and culturally as well. Everything I have been told about your religion tells me that you are completely wrong. In fact, for me, to honor God is to be nothing like you. And everything I see on TV from your culture is totally offensive.
You know, I once met a man from your country. And he gave me some religious materials, but I couldn’t read them. And all he kept saying was I should “get saved” and be “cleansed by the blood of the lamb”, but I didn’t understand him. In fact, he only spoke in English, so it was hard for me. Honestly, I was hoping that he would help my family. You see, we are really struggling financially. My family is also suffering from the same sicknesses over and over again and we don’t even know why- we have no health care. And my kids are not in school. They have to work to help us.
But, if you would just reach out to me and cross some of these barriers that stand between us…then maybe we could talk about this gap I feel between God and I. And if you would just help me understand how to bridge that gap and Who this bridge is…then, perhaps, I might walk across that bridge, as well.
-a friend of Muslims
Dear anonymous neighbor,
Thanks for leading me into this exercise in empathy. I’ve become so weary of the dehumanizing hate rhetoric towards Muslims that I receive regularly from Christian alarmists who think that fear and exclusion of profiled immigrants is somehow the solution to national security. Jesus’ Golden Rule has a flip-side — it implies a warning of the folly of such a lack of foresight, if not for me, certainly for my grandchildren.
You helped me to take a moment to view our culture through the eyes of those who want to honour God but (like me) yearn for him through smudged window. Dislocating my point of view helped me feel the weight of those chilling words, ‘To honor God is to be nothing like you.’ I ‘got it’ in a new way today.
Without such a reorientation to remind us that ‘We are all God’s offspring’ (according to the Apostle Paul), tragedies such as Norway recently experienced should be deemed as nothing short of inevitable. We cannot sow hate and reap peace.
I hear that the Muslim population in Western Europe will be in the majority by mid-century at the latest, even through childbirth of the existing citizens. I’m apparently supposed to be terrorized by the thought. What is it that I’m expected to do? Shall I run for the hills? Or lobby the government to … what? Sterilize Muslims? Ethnic cleansing? Cancel the democratic vote that will eventually bring a Muslim to power? What is really being suggested? Something ‘awful but necessary,’ to quote Anders Behring Breivik?
My proposal would be to make ourselves such a blessing that our place in the supposed forthcoming Islamic society would be indispensable to their wellbeing. But it feels like that opportunity is already slipping away.
Sobered,
bj