Daily Times: VIEW : The irony on who speaks for Islam — Qasim Rashid
As survivors painfully clean their bloodstained churches, mosques, and malls, we’re all once again left asking
How ironic.
I stayed up all night writing a rejoinder to an anti-Islam politician who insists that Islam is a violent faith. Instead, I’m met by Al-Shabab who brutally murder 59 non-Muslims in Nairobi, Kenya, the Taliban who blow up a church and kill 85 Christians in Peshawar, Pakistan, and the Pakistan police who deface and destroy three Ahmadi Muslim prayer places in Sialkot, Pakistan.
Each of these terrorists has decided to write his own bigoted narrative on Islam. The terrorists never asked for my opinion — much less approval — but proceeded as heroes in their own cowardly minds. As survivors painfully clean their bloodstained churches, mosques, and malls, we’re all once again left asking the questions: is the narrative these terrorists fight the right one, or is someone willing to right this wrong and write the right narrative on Islam?
I’ll give it a go.
I could tell you about Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) written pact with all Christians that said: “Christians are my citizens and by God I stand against all that displeases them.” I could tell you about the time Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) stood up for a funeral procession, and when someone objected that the deceased was a Jew, Muhammad rebuked, “Was he not human? Did he not have a soul?” I could tell you about Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) rules of war in which he forbade offensive attacks, forbade killing women, children, the elderly, priests, male non-combatants, destroying trees, burning anything, or even harming animals.
What an absolutely powerful message written by Mr. Alim! I felt extremely humbled reading it. It felt to me like I could feel the emotions he was feeling as he wrote it. Oh, were that it be published by every major news outlet worldwide and embraced totally by all who read it. Someday, somehow, those of us that believe what Mr. Alim expressed, no matter what our beliefs and faiths are, will overcome all the evil, in all its forms, that stalks this earth.
Dear Mr. Adams: Much as I would love to take the credit for this piece, it was not written by me but by Qasim Rashid, the author of “Wrong Kind of Muslim”. You may wish to pick up that book and you will find it even more powerful than this article. Thanks.
Do we have love in our hearts or do we give lip service……………….
Pope tells catechists to reach out to others in name of Christ
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The church needs good catechists, who love Christ, live out the Gospel in their lives and courageously go to the margins of society to share the gift of faith with others, Pope Francis told catechists from around the world.
“Let us follow him, imitate him in his dynamic of love, of going to others, and let’s go out, open the doors, have the audacity to strike out new paths to proclaim the Gospel,” he said Sept. 27, in a talk that was both improvised and drawn from a text.
Seated behind a large wooden desk facing his audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI hall, the pope joked that he was going to make just three points, “like the old-time Jesuits used to do: one, two, three,” he said to laughter.
Many in the audience hall took notes, closely following the pope’s words. Hundreds of catechists were in Rome for a three-day international congress hosted by the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization.
The pope thanked them for their service to the church and said being a catechist isn’t a job or a title, it’s a vocation, an approach to life.
It starts first with being with God, getting to know him and conforming one’s life to the Gospel — a task that lasts a lifetime, he said.
Being close to God means praying to him, talking with him and letting him “watch over you,” he said, which “warms the heart and keeps the fire of friendship with the Lord alive.”
Not everyone, especially busy mothers and fathers, can spend a lot of quiet time in prayer before the tabernacle, where Christ is truly present, he said.
But everyone can find some way to be and stay with Jesus because, if not, “if there isn’t the warmth of God, his love, his tenderness in our heart, how can we — poor sinners — warm the hearts of others?”
The second thing catechists need to do, he said, is imitate Christ by going outside of themselves and be there for others.
Receiving the gift of faith and having Christ at the center of one’s life, “pushes us out,” compels Christians to go outside their ego and reach out “to others in Christ’s name.”
This dynamic of receiving and then giving is like the diastolic and systolic pressures at work in the bloodstream, he said. Without both of these forces at work, the catechist’s “heart stops beating, he cannot live.”
But this gift of faith must be total, 100 percent: “You don’t take a cut for yourself,” he said, “This is not a bargain.”
The third thing to do is to not be afraid of striking out into the unknown, like Jonah was when God told him to preach to the pagans in Nineveh.
Jonah’s fear, the pope said, was because “he was rigid” and thought he had the truth staying right where he was.
But “God is not afraid of the outskirts,” he said, and “is always beyond our mindsets.”
“God is creative, he’s not narrow-minded, and for this he is never rigid,” the pope said. God “welcomes us, comes to us and understands us.”
While the Gospel does not change, catechists need to be creative and know how to change themselves, adapting themselves to the people and circumstances they encounter.
“To stay with God it’s necessary to know how to go out, to not be afraid of going out” into the world, he said.
“If catechists let themselves be taken over by fear, they’re wimps, and if catechists are laid back they end up being a statue in a museum, and we have plenty of them, right?”
When a room is closed up tight, the air gets stuffy and the people inside get sick, he said. A similar sickness occurs when Christians are closed up within themselves, their group, their parish or their studies, he said.
But Jesus did not say, “Go and make do,” he said, “Go, I am with you.”
“This is our beauty and our strength: If we go, if we go out to bring his Gospel with love, with real apostolic spirit, with (confidence), he walks with us, goes before us.”
Even though it may seem too far away “and perhaps we are a little hesitant, in reality, he is already there. Jesus is waiting for us in the heart of that brother, in his wounded flesh, in his oppressed life, in his soul that lacks faith.”
Who speaks for Islam is a core issue of the Muslim world today. Even a large section Muslims is not prepared to hear what the Guardian of the Two holy shrines says. The chaotic condition of his later-day Ummah was predicted by the Holy Prophet and prescribed subsequent remedy which is the advent of His promised vicegerent.