is valid until heaven and earth passes away
AT SOME point whilst I was still at school my heart began to turn away from Christianity. I believe a large part of this was teenage selfishness – seeing life in a wholly negative light, despite its reality. And maybe, too, there was a shyness of my beliefs. I remember a friend from church congratulating …
THE QUESTION asked of me regarding the acceptance of one book of the Bible and rejection of others, could equally be asked of the various denominations of the Christian Church. For in fact it is the case that there is great difference between denominations even now with regard to which books are accepted as canonical …
THIS IS a question I was once asked when I sought to draw attention to the teachings of the Letter of James. This has been my way on various occasions, for historic parallels have been drawn between early Judaic-Christianity and Islam. The question, of course, is a perfectly fair one and it is one which …
THE NATURE of the news media is that in general it only reports bad news; the exceptions may include sports news, visits by statesmen and royalty, finance news, and the like. We would not expect to see a report on the news dealing with the wonderful weather which hit Albania today, or the absence of …
TO CONSIDER the issue of tolerance, we must work in the light of the teachings of the religion, not with the situation of the day in mind. For while we may wish to argue that Christianity today is a tolerant religion, this could not be said of all times in history. If Islam were to …
DURING MY days of ignorance, when caught in the grip of sin, I used to say, ‘God curse me, let me burn in hell.’ As an agnostic living in the slipstream of a contemporary reinterpretation of heaven and hell, such a remark was so easily said. It was as if to say two things: I …
OF THE Christians, I have only ever heard Roman Catholics use the phrase God Willing. We just need to turn the pages of English history to discover that there is good reason for this. It was only a few centuries ago that the Anglican Church engaged in theological debate on the topic of freewill and …
I HAVE dipped into several books on Islam authored by Christians and the most common charge seems to be that the Qur’an misunderstands the Trinity. Christians do not worship three gods as Muslims often claim, these authors argue, but one God made up of three co-equal parts. This claim, I believe, is itself based on …
THE QUR’AN addresses those who do not believe in God and asks them to consider the world around them, in which the signs of creation are evident. This is how the non-Muslim, A.J. Arberry, translates one such verse: ‘Have not the unbelievers then beheld that the heavens and the earth were a mass all sewn …
It is an undeniable fact that Christians and Christianity are often derided in the popular press, in comedy, in literature and numerous other outlets. More often than not these occurrences go unchallenged and even unquestioned. When the attack is on Islam by contrast, the argument goes, the response is one of public outrage. ‘They would …
“I CAN’T believe how many black men are becoming Muslim in London… after the way they treat their women.” I once heard this statement being made one evening a long time ago, before I knew anything about Islam. The above statement makes an assumption about Islam, even though it does not assert that assumption directly. …
Nicky Gumbel, 1994, Searching Issues, Kingsway Publications, England p.31 I WAS reading Searching Issues by Nicky Gumbel (of Alpha / Holy Trinity Brompton fame) recently and I came across the above statement in the second chapter, ‘What About Other Religions?‘ The question I want to address here is whether this is true. The actual context …
ONE OF the biggest disservices to Islam has been to put it into the ‘Ethnic religion’ category in the thoughts of many, along with Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, but probably not Judaism. Many people consider Islam the religion of Pakistanis (which is odd, as it has its roots in Arabia).
A friend sent me an article in the last few days by a sister about her choice to wear hijab. It was like others I had read before: a defensive response to the perceptions of others. ‘So next time you see me,’ the author concludes, ‘don’t look at me sympathetically. I am not under duress …
