I would appreciate it if you did not mix my reply with that of another poster who is making his own point, Joseph Z.
When I say live among them, I mean like in the 80's I lived in a country that was more than 90% Muslim and here in Davao for well over five years I was the only Christian living in the apartment building with three mosques within sight of my balcony. My regular travels take me to islands where the Muslim population is also more than 90%.
Again,
the problem is not your credentials with regard to living among Muslims. This has nothing to do with anything.
I'm relaying what I have witnessed in my 30+ years of traveling and studying Islam.
And I am relaying the viewpoints of people whose communities have lived under Islam for 14 centuries and counting in Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, etc., and who themselves lived under it for their entire lives (were born as second class citizens under it, in fact) before coming to the United States. In some cases, my first time meeting some members of the community were people who had just arrived from the Gulf states the day before my meeting them, in other cases they were temporary residents in the USA on student or work visas, etc, I think they knew quite enough about what life is like with Islam and among Muslims.
I have met Muslims in several countries and from all kinds of backgrounds.
Same here.
Most Muslims I have encountered in my lifetime, and it's a lot, don't view the al Fatiha in the same way you do. That tells me that those who see it as condemning Christians and Jews is quite small and not representative as the majority.
And that does what to the traditional interpretation? And that does what for the people who do view it that way? And that does what for the actual text as written and understood by the earliest Muslim generations? It seems as though you are trying to say "I know lots of Muslims, and they don't agree so you're wrong"...well, everyone I know knows more Muslims than you do, and they do not say that it is some tiny number who view it that way, so why the heck should I believe you and not the people from my own Church w
ho actually come from the Middle East where they are the native people there, rather than being missionaries with their own agendas?
Sorry to disappoint you, but I felt the prayer by the GOP representative was inappropriate.
In case you didn't notice, I agreed that it was inappropriate, and the my point was not whether or not anyone would see the prayer itself as appropriate, but that the very same logic you have used to try to claim that al-Fatiha is not offensive can be used to explain away the 'offensiveness' of the "every knee shall bow" portion of the prayer which was objected to on theological grounds by the Muslim. After all,
I don't find that portion offensive, and
most Christians don't find it offensive and don't interpret it as being explicitly anti-Muslim, so why should any Muslim be offended by it?
See? That's a lousy defense, and that's what your attempt to 'educate' me about al-Fatiha comes off like. Cut it out. I'm not falling for it just because you've lived in Islamic countries, as though that has anything to do with anything to begin with.
Mentioning President Trump and Israel, two divisive issues in the US among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in her prayer wasn't necessary.
Again, I agree and that's not the part of the prayer that I've ever mentioned in this thread.
She should have went with a less divisive, non-denominational prayer like countless Christian representatives have done before her.
Yeah, and where's the "less divisive, non-denominational" form of Surat al-Fatiha? Oh, that's right...there isn't one, despite your assurances.
Two commentaries out of how many?
Two commentaries
of what weight? This is like saying "You
only went to St. Athanasius and St. Cyril to explain the incarnation."
Also, how many more would you need, really? We can go top shelf to bottom, but that's not what this is really about anyway.
Common sense tells us that if this Muslim prayer was offensive or was intended to be, it would have become an issue after all this time.
What on earth are you talking about?
It always has been! Read some classical Christian sources. Mor Bar Salibi tackles it in his
Response to the Arabs, pointing out that it makes no sense to say that the Christians were led astray on one hand and acknowledging on another (as is found in other places in early Islamic writings) that the apostles were aided directly by the power given to them of God to banish Satan, because this leaves the only source of deception to be God Himself -- so that essentially 'God' is wrathful towards the Christians for something that he himself has done/caused to happen. That's a pretty stupid God the Muslims have, basically. And again, this was in the 12th century, and is far from the earliest such work we have. (See also St. John of Damascus, Abu Raita El Tikriti, etc.)
Your not having heard of it before doesn't mean that this wasn't a fairly standard approach to Islam among those who were first encountering the Qur'an, although they weren't all as methodical or detailed as Mor Bar Salibi was. (John of Damascus, for instance, doesn't go through as much of the text itself, probably because it was less firmly set in his day than it would've been by Mor Bar Salibi's day.)
They have been doing this for quite some time:
Muslims Condemn
Yeah...they condemn terrorism now, but how does this add up to apologies for the historical rape and pillaging of Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Mesopotamia, etc. as demanded by Fr. Zakariya? It doesn't. Muslims won't apologize for any of that, because of course in the version of history they are fed by their leaders, it is
good that all of those things happened. They are not prompted to self-reflection, as the west (rightly) is in the wake of horrible atrocities like the NZ mosque shootings, because of course you cannot mess with certain facts of Islamic history without getting in trouble for causing 'offense' to Islam and Muslims.
Here's a Muslim author, Fatima Naoout, to explain it, so that I'm not accused of simply presenting my own view:
Bottom line: You can spend as much time among Muslims as you want, and you can live in 'their' countries and all this, but you cannot make the history that they refuse to face anything other than what it is (and no Muslim who doesn't want to risk his own skin says that the conquests or raids were a
bad thing/a thing to be apologized for), and you cannot make their anti-Christian/anti-Jewish texts other than what they are.
