The Muslim Times has the best collection for rational understanding of Christianity and interfaith tolerance. Please see the listing at the end of this post
Source: NPR
By Fariba Nawa
In a hotel conference room in Denizli, Turkey, about 60 Iranians sing along to songs praising Jesus mixed with Iranian pop music. When the music stops, American pastor Karl Vickery preaches with the help of a Persian translator.
“I’m not famous or rich. But I know Jesus. I have Jesus,” he says, with a Southern drawl. The Farsi-speaking Christian converts shout “Hallelujah!” and clap.
Vickery, who’s part of a visiting delegation from Beaumont, Texas, then offers to pray for each person in the room.
Women with hair dyed blond and short skirts and clean-shaven men in slacks stand up to pray in unison. Vickery puts his hand on one woman’s head and speaks in tongues. One man closes his eyes as tears fall. Another woman raises her hand and shouts “Isa,” Jesus’ name in Arabic and Persian. The room smells of sweat.
Among the parishioners are Farzana, a 37-year-old hairdresser from Tehran, and her daughter Andya, 3, who runs around, taking photos with her mother’s cellphone.
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Categories: Christianity, Collection of articles, Interfaith tolerance, Iran, Islam, Middle East, The Muslim Times, Turkey
Muslim leaders who want to keep their flock should read this very carefully. These converts to Christianity did not find a new god Jesus, for that is easy to refute, we have a dozen articles here in the Muslim Times alone.
These converts found a small loving and personal church where they can interact with other loving families without burdensome theocracy.
Read the line, “Women with hair dyed blond and short skirts and clean-shaven men in slacks stand up to pray in unison.” We may not like our women to get into short skirts, but see these women would have been nobody in Iran, hidden behind their burqas, and now with blond hair, they are eligible to all the rights and lure the West has offered the women.
Some of this is really genuine. Islam gave a lot of rights to women 1400 years ago and now the West has given them more, full personhood, no need of Walli to get married, no question about if their testimony is always equal to men or not, excluding polygamy, full inheritance and not half and some more.
We can put different spins on these rights and keep defining the context or see things as clearly as we should and catch up to the 21st century realities.
Let us give our women choice and education, respect and security so they can choose well.