Qur'an

On September 12, at least sixteen Gainesville area pastors will read from the Quran as a response to the Gainesville church that has designated September 11 as "Burn a Koran Day". (photo of Quran at the Museum of Natural History in New York City by *Muhammad* on Flickr)

In Saturday’s New York Times, Scott Shane points out the impact of the hysteria being whipped up, primarily by Republican politicians, over the Park 51 project in New York. By falsely conflating a Muslim community center with the radical extremists who attacked the World Trade Center in 2001, these politicians are fueling recruitment for the same types of radicals:

“I know people in this debate don’t intend it, but there are consequences for these kinds of remarks,” said Brian Fishman, who studies terrorism for the New America Foundation here.

/snip/

“When the rhetoric is so inflammatory that it serves the interests of a jihadi recruiter like Awlaki, politicians need to be called on it,” Mr. Fishman said.

A Reuters article goes into more depth on the subject:

Religious scholar Aslan blames "Islamophobia" that he said was being whipped by the Republican Party establishment.

"They are making religious bigotry — just as they made anti-immigrant sentiment — part of their political platform," Aslan said. "Democrats in the most cowardly fashion have completely caved in to this challenge."

There does seem to be evidence to support Aslan’s assertion. From the same article:

Newt Gingrich, a leading Republican and possible presidential candidate, has called the proposal an "assertion of Islamist triumphalism."

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said it was "creating more division, more anger, more hatred." Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin called it "a stab in the heart of … Americans who still have that lingering pain from 9/11."

Worse still, religious "leaders" are jumping in. Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, let loose a stunning statement avowing that "the seeds of Islam" are inherited from one’s father, and so President Obama is Muslim.

In a somewhat related vein, TalkToAction.org this week provided us with documentation of the extent of radical fundamentalist Christian pressure on military troops, where failure to attend a Christian rock concert resulted in punishment at a Virginia military base:

For the past several years, two U.S. Army posts in Virginia, Fort Eustis and Fort Lee, have been putting on a series of what are called Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concerts. As I’ve written in a number of other posts, "spiritual fitness" is just the military’s new term for promoting religion, particularly evangelical Christianity. And this concert series is no different.

On May 13, 2010, about eighty soldiers, stationed at Fort Eustis while attending a training course, were punished for opting out of attending one of these Christian concerts. The headliner at this concert was a Christian rock band called BarlowGirl, a band that describes itself as taking "an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God."

As if that isn’t enough, Talk To Action pointed to this article in the base newspaper praising the concert and the band:

Following the Apostle Paul’s message to the Ephesians in the Bible, Christian rock music’s edgy, all-girl band BarlowGirl brought the armor of God to the warriors and families of Fort Eustis during another installment of the Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concert Series May 13 at Jacobs Theater.

With their unique heavy metal-alternative rock-contemporary Christian music blend, sisters Alyssa, Lauren and Rebecca Barlow rocked the full house of Soldiers and family members with selections from their latest project “Love & War” as well as other selections from earlier albums.

When newspapers from military bases refer to our country’s soldiers as "warriors" to whom a group is bringing "the armor of God" at the same time that one of our country’s two major political parties is leading the charge to label all of Islam as a radical, violent religion, is it any wonder that Muslims around the world get the impression that the United States is at war with Islam?

Shane’s article in the New York Times also makes passing reference to "a Florida pastor’s call for making Sept. 11 ‘Burn a Koran Day.’" Sadly, that "Burn a Koran Day" is scheduled here in Gainesville, Florida where I live. Even though the Gainesville Fire Department has denied the burn permit application, Dove World Outreach intends to carry through with its plans.

Fortunately, there is an appropriate response being planned in the Gainesville religious community. The Creative Seminole brings us a very informative interview with Larry Reimer, a Gainesville pastor (full disclosure: I am a member of United Church of Gainesille where Reimer is pastor).

Reimer’s response is embodied in the title of The Creative Semiole’s post: "If they can burn it, we can read it." Here is a portion of the interview:

When asked about how he came about with the idea, “Almost right away, members of the congregation here asked me, ‘what are we going to do about this?’ Originally, I had the intention of giving [Dove Center] no more attention in the media. But as I thought about it, I asked myself what we could do that would be effective and proactive in promoting cooperation among our religious relatives.”

I prodded further about religious relatives. “Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all part of the Abrahamic tree of faith. We all believe in the same God, and in many aspects we are all trying to accomplish the same goals. And in Islam, there are things that I think any follower of any other religion could learn from. Take prayer, for example. In Islam, one prays at least five times a day. The discipline to do that? Few of us have it. And like Christianity and Judaism, there is a strong call to love God and your neighbor.”

The Creative Seminole informs us that Reimer will have at least fifteen Gainesville area clergy join him in reading from the Quran on September 12.

Later on in the interview, Reimer hits on a description of how American religious fundamentalists are misrepresented as mainstream in the foreign press much the same way as our press gives in too often to the radical right’s attempts to portray all of Islam as typical of the radicals who attacked the US:

Then I ask him why he thinks these negative attitudes toward Islam exist. “The average American inherently assumes that Islam is violent and decidedly anti-American because we haven’t taken the time to experience Islam from an individual perspective or as a faith up close. A friend of mine was in Egypt when news of Dove Outreach’s Qur’an burning hit, and he told me that it was represented as mainstream Christianity, much in the same way that the violent acts we hear about here are represented as mainstream Islam. Here, Islam is still associated with terrorism. The acts of September 11th were not acts that were Islamic in nature. They were acts of fanatical extremists. And fanaticism is not confined to any one faith. I think that there’s no better time than September 12th to remind ourselves of this, and to read from Qur’an in worship to point out how much we really do have in common.”

Sadly, the Gainesville pastors who are attempting to remove the stigma from Islam will not get the level of press coverage that Dove World Outreach will get, but I very much appreciate their attempt to provide a deeper understanding to their congregations.

Update August 22: There are now over 25 Gainesville area religious groups that will participate in the reading on September 12. Readings will be from the Bible, Torah and Quran.