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Sermon - August 15th, 2010
World Religions: Islam
Rev. Gwen Drake
Genesis 16:1-12 & 21; 8-14
Prayer: O Holy One, let us listen with open minds and open hearts. May your grace and love flow freely through us. Amen.
Here’s the challenge of preaching a sermon on Islam in a short history lesson. In the year 637, the Muslims took Jerusalem from the Christians. In the year 1099, the Crusaders took it back. In 1187, Jerusalem was back in the hands of the Islam. In 1917, the British recaptured it on behalf of Christianity.
That’s in the Holy Land. There is also the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the attack of 9/11, the controversial plan for the building of a mosque near ground zero and the question: Is Christianity and Islam now engaged in a clash of civilizations? Some claim Islam is a religion of terror and many, many Americans and Christian use words of fear and hate when asked to describe in a few words what Islam is.
I believe it is imperative that we learn and try to understand Islam. The religion and the people are not going away. Over one billion people—roughly one-fifth of the world’s population—identify themselves as Muslim, the second largest world religion. It is very possible in our lifetime, there will be more Muslims in the world than Christians. This thought is scaring a lot of people! I believe we have a choice. We can face this thought and this religion with fear or we can face it with curiosity. I choose to face it with curiosity. An American columnist wrote, before 9/11, “No part of the world is more hopelessly and systematically and stubbornly misunderstood by us than that complex of religion, culture and geography known as Islam.”
We share the same Abraham and Sarah story. We are both “people of the book.” We believe in one God who speaks to people through prophets. We both believe in a Judgment Day.
The word Islam is related to the word salaam, which means “peace.” Muslims greet each other with words that mean “Peace be upon you.” And respond, “And upon you be peace.” The word Islam means “submission” or “surrender.” Islam is the path of submission. Muslims are “submitters” who seek peace in this life and the next by surrendering themselves to the one true God. They do this first and foremost by prostrating themselves in prayer. The Arabic term for mosque, literally means “place of prostration.” Five times a day, 365 days a year, for more than a millennium, Muslims have responded to the call to prayer.
The Muslim would say Islam began with God, not with Muhammed. “In the beginning God…” only they use the Arabic word for God, Allah, the God. God created the world and human beings, the first man was Adam. The descendants of Adam and Eve led to Noah, who had a son named Shem. The descendants of Shem led to Abraham. Abraham and Sarah couldn’t have children so Abraham took a mistress, Hagar, and gave birth to Ishmael. Meanwhile, Abraham and Sarah did have a son, named Isaac. In Sarah’s jealousy, she had Abraham banish Hagar and Ishmael. According to the Koran, Ishmael went to the place where Mecca rose up. His descendants flourished in Arabia and became Muslims.
Mohammed was born into a chaotic world. The times called for a deliverer. Now, I could talk about Mohammed for the rest of my sermon. Instead, I challenged you to look into his life and read about it. His story is very interesting. He is known as the last true prophet. He was a shepherd, a merchant, a hermit. He was in exile for awhile. He was a soldier, a lawmaker, a prophet-priest-king, a mystic. He was an orphan, a husband, a father, a widower, and always a human being. He considered it a major miracle that the Koran was written through him. The Koran isn’t Mohammed’s words, it is God’s word, recited by Mohammed, memorized by his followers, and recorded with God preserving the accuracy throughout. It is believed that the Koran continues the Old and New Testaments. To an outsider, like us, the Koran is difficult and confusing to read. However, when it is recited in Arabic it is vocal phenomenon. Translations do not even begin to portray the emotion and the mystery, the rhythm and melodic cadence. The Koran is directly doctrinal. It proclaims the unity, omnipotence, and mercy of God and the total dependency of human life on God. In the Koran, God speaks in the first person and describes God’s Self, and God’s law. The Koran is not about the truth; it is the Truth. The Koran is absolutely central to the Muslim religion and life.
The Koran is to Islam what Jesus is to Christianity. It is thought to be God’s definitive and final revelation. The Koran is about twenty percent shorter than our New Testament. The Koran is written this way: “We say to you, Mohammed, tell the human beings to do this.” Or, We say to you, humanity, do that.” Or, “Human beings, don’t you understand?” The Koran is held in the highest esteem. You would never set the Koran on the floor. You would never put it on a coffee table just to gather dust. It is believed to be the actual words of God.
In the Koran there are stories of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Jesus, and John the Baptist. There is a whole chapter about Mary, the mother of Jesus. These stories are not exactly the same and a Muslim would say that where the Koran and the Bible disagree, the Koran is correct because it is God’s definitive word.
So in the Koran are the Five Pillars of Islam. These are obligations and the cornerstone of being Muslim. The first and central pillar is their profession of faith: “I bear witness to this truth. There is no god but God and Mohammed is the messenger of God.” This is their only creed. To become a Muslim, you testify to this creed, proclaim it out loud with understanding and intent in the presence of witnesses.
The second pillar is prayer, five times a day, facing Mecca, with their heads all the way to the ground, at work, at play, at home. “Praying is spread throughout the day as a reminder to keep on the path,” a Muslim leader said recently.
Fasting is the third pillar. Ramadan has just ended, when the Muslims fast for a month from sunrise to sunset. It commemorates Mohammed’s first vision in the cave and the flight from Mecca to Medina.
The fourth pillar is charity. A small percentage of their income goes to the poor and needy—once a year, typically about 2.5% of one’s income.
The fifth and last pillar is the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are physically and financially able.
Now, you would think that since the Koran is believed to be the literal words of God, and should be taken literally, that all Muslims would believe the same. Nothing is further from the truth. There are many interpretations of Islam. There is no Muslim pope, like we have in Christianity. Islam is a huge tent theologically. There are fundamentalists, feminists, legalists, mystics, progressives, moderates—the list sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?
The most basic division in Islam is the split that happened following the death of Mohammed. Mohammed’s recitations from God did not include who his successor would be. A split occurred over the question of authority. And because of that split we have the Sunnis and the Shias. The Sunnis constitute roughly 85 percent of the world’s Muslims. And the Shias—the remaining 15%.
To understand the role of Islam in the world today, we need to understand its view of self-sufficiency and its solution of submission. That is the foundation Islam is built on. The Sufi mystic, Rumi, writes, “The idol of your self is the mother of all idols. The goal of Islam is to replace the idol of your self with submission to Allah, then you will have a “soul at peace” in your life and in the next life in Paradise.
We need to understand the Islam is one of the great religions. It is growing faster than Christianity. It is a key player in the Middle East, Asia, and is growing rapidly in Europe and North America. Stephen Prothero writes in his book about the great religions, “The nineteenth and twentieth centuries may have belonged to Christianity. The twenty-first century belongs to Islam.”
Islam is not just what is in the Koran, it is not just the Five Pillars, and the laws and doctrines. It is people and children, mothers and fathers. And within this religion is a group of people who give their life’s work to look beneath the Koran and the Five Pillars. They are the Sufis. When Stephen Prothero asked a Muslem in Jerusalem about the importance of the Five Pillars, he shook his head “NO!” and pointing his finger at his face, the man insisted that Islam could stand up perfectly straight without any of the five Pillars. Real Islam, he said, has nothing to do with law and everything to do with experience. It is about a heart-and-soul connection between the person and God. It needs no rituals, no rules, he said. In fact, rituals and rules only take us away from what is Really Real, he said.
Adam Hamilton wrote: “When we think of Muslims, unfortunately many of us today think of Muslim extremists. That is not what I think of…visiting their mosques I was welcomed with open arms. I can only pray that our Christian congregations would welcome Muslims with the same warmth. There is much for us to learn from our Muslim cousins.”
The Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Education writes about Islam, her religion, “To lead a God-centric life, we need to be grounded in faith, which means believing in the which we cannot see or measure in a laboratory…we also need guidance, what God’s prophets and revelation provide. However, beyond the theory, people need hands-on training to put God first.” She writes that the Five Pillars are the tools that free hearts from the “shackles of earthly addictions.” She says, “Deep and regular connection with God through the five daily prayers gives us perspective and spiritual strength often worn away by the clamor of life’s immediacy.”
We share much in common with Muslims. We are both evangelistic religions. We are cousins in faith, as Adam Hamilton said. If we believe the Muslims are our enemies, Jesus told us to love our enemies. If we believe they are our neighbors, Jesus told us to love our neighbors. We need to get to know them and understand them. Fear is our barrier. Judgment is our barrier. And it is the same with them as a Muslim leader shared with Adam Hamilton:
“Muslims are probably as frightened as anybody else—if not more frightened. So reaching out to them is very important. If you find some of them unable to reach back, perhaps it is due to their fear and the current political crisis. Muslims are good people. They are trusted. They are hard working. They have families.”
The three religions who share the Abraham and Sarah family of origin are dysfunctional at best. In Muhammed’s “night journey” from Mecca to Jerusalem, Muhammed is said to have prayed with Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Will we ever learn to pray together today?
Amen.