As well as this website, I also have a YouTube Channel. It doesn’t tend to get much traffic and I primarily use it to store and share video training materials to support my primary focus of encouraging and equipping people for urban ministry.
Sometimes a video gets a little bit more attention but this particular video stands out.
It stands out not just because of the number of views it received but because of the level of interaction with lots of comments coming in. Not only that, but those commenting were unusually exercised, offended even and agitated. So I had lots of comments, often highly personal to tell me that I was naive, stupid and promoting something dangerous, likely to put my life at risk and endanger the very existence of my country and possibly Western civilization itself. That’s quite the pressure to put on one little YouTube channel with less than 100 subscribers.
Now, a lot of the comments were not from Evangelical Christians which is itself interesting for a couple of reasons. First, because in a number of countries, including places like France, Spain and Austria, Evangelicals would be regarded in exactly the same way as these people seemed to regard Muslims and Islam, an outside and dangerous threat best kept out. Secondly, because here in the United Kingdom, there would have been a time when a range of religious groups would have been treated as sects and had similar restrictions imposed on them that is being pushed for against Muslims, that would be true of dissenters (free church), Roman Catholics and Jews. We haven’t always benefited from religious tolerance and freedom. Jews, free church dissenters and Catholics have all at times been treated as dangerous Interlopers.
Thirdly, whilst most of my interlocutors there were not Evangelical Christians, it is fair to say that I’ve heard the same kinds of arguments from Evangelicals. And that’s why it is worth picking up on the point here.
The problem, the failing that leads to offence being taken and to that level of heat boils down to three points. First, most of those seeking to argue with me didn’t seem to be able to follow the distinction between critique of Islam and how we engage with individual Muslims. The result was that Muslims were described as an invasion, I was told that people, who bluntly have tended over the 50 plus years of my life to treat me with greater courtesy and respect, not to mention, shown more interest in what I believe than those debating with me were a dangerous threat to me personally. They also didn’t seem to have spotted that in the video I actually talk about Islamists and Islamisation or political Islam if you will. I simply happen to have observed as many others have that Islam is not a homogeneous mass both in that we cannot assume that all Muslims are following some programmed download and in that there are different strands to Islam.
Secondly, there was a lack of attention to the context and nature of what I was saying. They missed, even though I frequently sought to drive home the point in responses, that I was speaking to help Christians involved in urban mission think about their lives and witness. This means, at one level, that it doesn’t matter for the purposes of this video as to what might be the intent of Islam at a political or ideological level. Our job is to think through our responsibility. The Bible helpfully makes that clear. We are to make disciples. This means we are called to love people regardless of whether they love us back. After all, God loved us whilst we were still his enemies and Jesus both called us to and set an example for how to, love our enemies.
Not only that but actually, this is the best strategy of dealing with Islam as a political ideology. In the same way that I”ve argued that you don’t defeat Putin by cutting off ordinary Russians from Western culture, so too, you don’t defeat Islamist and Islamising agendas by cutting off ordinary Muslims from Christians and the Gospel. You need to do the opposite.
Thirdly, it is, of course a pessimistic position. It doesn’t realize that “he who is in us, is greater than he that is in the World. Nor does it give space for the powerful work of the Holy Spirit. It is God who can change lives and given that this is the strategy that Jesus charged us with, we can trust him to do it.
The idea of getting to know and love our Muslim neighbours should not be controversial, certainly to Evangelicals. I hope it is not.
Faithroots 