Every day at noon, the azhan, or Islamic call to prayer, echoes out from the halls of the Mosque at the city center of Ohrid, Macedonia. It’s impossible to miss, finding the ears of salespeople behind the counters of pearl shoppes, pedestrians jay-walking across one-way streets, and tourists who turn their heads, trying to discern the direction of the sound.
The first time I heard it, it stopped me dead in my tracks. It freaked out a few of my teammates, who shrugged and walked a little further in the opposite direction, leaving it behind. The Statement of Faith, Kalimah, is one of the five pillars of Islam, and the man singing it over the loudspeaker always reads it as if it was the last thing he was going to do.
Maybe that’s why it always turns my head.
Maybe it’s because I watched devout Muslims stop what they were doing at the refugee camp at marked times during the day and drop to their knees to pray, regardless of where they were standing or what they were doing. “Why don’t they all do that?” A volunteer wondered aloud. All I could do was marvel, What are things we Christians do that demonstrate to the world just how seriously we take our faith?
Or maybe it’s because sometime in the last few weeks, working with predominately Muslim men and families, I’ve continued to look inside my chest in order to watch this thing called a heart shift and grow in curiosity and love for the people worshiping Allah.
If your only experience with Muslim people are the bleached and sanitized video clippings you see on CNN or FOX News, yet you’ve developed a viewpoint of the Middle East that leaves little room for argument, chances are you’re about as well-informed as a kid trying to drive a vehicle after watching a YouTube tutorial. For the sake of millions of Muslim and displaced refugees, please don’t lift your voice on behalf of the crisis or news headlines in the Middle East (or get behind the wheel of a car).
Instead, take a closer look at yourself. You might look hard enough to realise that you are a refugee, too.
If you’re a Christian, would you want Westboro Baptist Church to represent your religion? No? But why not? They’re on the news, they worship the same God you do.
If you’re a frat boy, would you want the actions of the John Hopkins Sigma Alpha Epsilon boys who raped a freshman girl to be the representation brought to mind when people talked about your fraternity? Why not? You’re a pledged frat boy, too, aren’t you?
If any of this sounds ridiculous or patronizing, it’s because it is. Seeking to represent a group of people in any way because of the outrageous actions of a few, regardless of religious affiliation or education, is absurd.
Evil people will always find a way to be evil. And evil delights in nothing more than creating an atmosphere of fear so strong that it literally paralyzes good people from pushing back against the darkness.
Christians seem to forget that the battle has already been won. Evil lost, and Jesus triumphed. Any battle that we fight here in this world is an opportunity to express a higher love and invite people into relationship with Christ.
We miss that chance when we take it upon ourselves to decide who is worthy of honour.
Now, Jesus never tells us to be idiots, or to be naïve. He took evil seriously, and so should we. But Jesus never let evil dictate where He went, how He loved, and who He welcomed.
Right now, evil people want to create just enough fear to cause us to turn on one another. When we displace our fear to a group of people, a religion, or a crisis, evil takes another step forward.
We’ve seen that evil is willing to die for what it believes in – hatred, slander, murder, oppression, and apathy.
Most of us will never be faced with the explicit choice to choose Jesus Christ or to keep our lives another few years. The sacrifice asked of us instead is a daily one – will we push back the darkness with our lives now?
God’s kingdom is in us. His courage is in us. His love is in us. And we choose when to advance it.
Would you die for what you believed in?
And, if not –
Why exactly do you believe it, anyway?