Christians who pray to Allah?

Two years ago at an evangelistic tent meeting, I was confronted with a difficult dilemma as the guest speaker attacked those who "pray to Allah." I was reminded of this dilemma last week by news of Christian opposition to the construction of a mosque in New York City.

With Rev. Pat Robertson and Sarah Palin leading, national Christian politicians have challenged the construction of a mosque near where the two WTC towers came down, because it would desecrate the site where many victims are interred. So now, Christians and Muslims who have worked together since 9/11 to make the NYC mosque a center of religious understanding and a place of peace between Muslims and Christians must struggle against the loud voices of bigotry in America.

The many people of good will in Big Horn County have a message for these folks. We here know about religious bigotry since the introduction of Christianity, when Crow and Cheyenne people began to suffer religious divisions. In the past decades respect has built for our different religious expressions. We are now better able to work together for the common good. This contrasts with our national religious and political leaders, and major media pundits. They should listen to us.

I'd like to tell them about my dilemma of two years ago.

With my wife and me were our good friends, a family from Kenya, the father a Christian pastor and theology student, his wife a teacher, and their two young daughters. I knew our friends have Muslim friends, and participate freely with them in religious dialogue, parenting and schooling children, and other affairs. I knew also from them that there are many Arabic speaking Christians in Kenya whose Arabic Christian Bible proclaims the message of Jesus the son of "Allah," because their Christian Bible uses the Arabic "Allah" instead of the German "God", or Crow "Akbaatatdia," or Cheyenne "Ma'heo'o," or Spanish "Deo," for the Supreme Being, initially unnamed in ancient Hebrew.

I could feel their discomfort at hearing an American Christian evangelist speak so negatively about a religion with which they are intimately acquainted. I was equally shocked with his ignorance about the millions of Christians worldwide who read their Christian Bible in Arabic, with its many references to "Allah," the equivalent of our German word "God."

I felt compelled to leave. But I had many friends present in the congregation that evening, and did not want to just get up and leave with our guests. I caught myself imaging the piece of my mind I would like to tell the evangelist, since I had no reasonable way to give it to him. I sat and pondered.

I thought about the millions of born-again Christians who pray to Allah in the name of Jesus. I thought about the fact that Muslim-majority armies have not for centuries invaded nor are currently occupying by force any Christian-majority nation, while Christian-majority nations' soldiers are doing so in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought about the significant portion of all Muslim fundamentalists who are pacifists, while Christian fundamentalists have largely forgotten their pacifist history.

Most of all, from two years service in the Far East, I remembered that the vast majority of the world's Muslims, far from being obsessed with a passion to kill Christians, know how to live together peaceably with Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and other faiths, shopping at the same stores, their children attending the same schools and playing in the same parks.

In the tent meeting, the rhetoric increased in intensity. All who use the word "Allah" to invoke the Supreme Being in prayer were lumped together with the militant Islamic extremists responsible for the World Trade Center bombing. I began regretting my silent assent to what the speaker was saying.

Suddenly I felt myself standing up, interrupting the evangelist with these words,

"You must be mistaken, since I know Christians who pray to Allah in the name of Jesus." The congregation froze. He responded by reasserting his condemnations, insisting I was mistaken. I asked him if he approved of the German, Crow and Cheyenne words for the Creator, but not the Arabic word. After the service I left a note requesting dialogue on the issue. There has been no response.

This prompted an interesting discussion with our friends, who were at least as shocked as I was with my behavior at a Christian service of worship.

Next morning, just before their departure, we prayed for deliverance in the Christian media from the frequent undercurrent of bigotry against Islam. We praised God for the few Christian media speakers who follow Jesus' example with religious conflict as recorded in John chapter 4 of the New Testament. Then we parted.

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David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034