Government school classroom assignment on world religions in discussion and Islamophobia gone wild

The Shahadah (first part ašhadu 'al-lā ilāha illā-llāh - I testify that there is no god (ilah) but God (Allah)), the creed of Islam. The letter Alif is highlighted in red to demonstrate its different usage in Arabic scripture. This illustration was designed in order to teach the letter Alif, but not the creed itself! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At a Virginia high school (Riverheads High School in Staunton) understandably a lesson in calligraphy for ninth-graders has caused an uproar among some parents. But the Virginia school district is defending the classroom assignment that required students to practice calligraphy by writing the Muslim statement of faith,

 “There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

For the first part the Christian Americans should not be afraid because they too should believe that there is only One God, only Allah the Elohim Adonai, Hashem Jehovah. the God of Abraham should be the only One true God for Jews, Christians and Muslims.

It can not be called bad to have during a world geography class to have the students to feel how it is to live in a certain area and to dress like the people who live in such area.  I would call that a very good integrated lesson.

The lesson of the day focused on world religions, among them Islam. As part of the assignment, social studies teacher Cheryl LaPorte had her ninth-grade students copy a piece of Arabic text known as the shahada, which is the most common Islamic creed. 

Recitation of the shahada in public is the first formal step in conversion to Islam. However, according to school officials, the ninth-graders were not asked to translate the statement or read it aloud.

Students were also shown copies of the Koran, and female students were invited to try on a scarf as part of a lesson about the Islamic concept of modest dress.

Parents being infuriated to see that their children learned Arabic should know that it is a language spoken in many countries and in case Westerners would be able to read and understand it they could understand much more what is written on slogans and in books and could answer the right way to those speaking about the Arabic books or saying something wrong what would so called be written in those books.

It is also totally wrong to think a teacher would indoctrinate her pupils by talking about the Islam faith or any other faith and to have their kids reading the books of that faith.

Parent Kimberly Herndon was infuriated when her son came home with the assignment sheet from Mrs LaPorte’s world geography class.

‘When I saw the language, the Arabic language, immediately I had a bad feeling come over me,’ the mother of six told NBC29.

Herndon, who is a devout Christian, accused the teacher of indoctrinating unsuspecting students into the Islamic faith. The mother has not sent her son back to school since the incident and said she would be willing to take this case all the way to the US Supreme Court if she must.

‘She [LaPorte] gave up the Lord’s time,’ Herndon said of the religious lesson when speaking to the Staunton News Leader. ‘She gave it up and gave it to Mohammed.’

The Augusta County parent on Tuesday organized a meeting attended by more than 100 people at Good New Ministries to discuss the controversial calligraphy lesson.

Debbie Ballew, a former English teacher who was present up at the public forum, said had she asked her students to copy a passage from the Bible, she would have lost her job.

Strange that the teacher would have lost  her job when she would have asked to copy a passage from the Bible. Even more strange that such an exclusion would take place in the United
States of America which always shouts it is so proud about her constitution including 'Freedom'.

‘Out of an abundance of caution’

after consulting with law enforcement Augusta County School Board President Eric Bond noted that there was no specific threat to students but announced Thursday that schools would be closed Friday over security concerns sparked by parents’ outrage in response to an Arabic calligraphy lesson.

Recitation of the shahada in public is for many considered the first formal step in conversion to Islam. However, according to school officials, the ninth-graders were not asked to translate the statement or read it aloud.

 Bond said

It’s a sad state of affairs when we’ve reached the point where children can’t even learn what Arabic or Islam is without offending someone’s fragile sensibilities.

 

There are countries, like Belgium where religious education is obligatory and children have to learn about all major religions of the world. As such they learn about the monotheist faiths and about several heathen religions. Having to read the Torah, Nevim, Kethuvim Aleph, Kethuvim Bet (or Messianic Scriptures or New Testament), the Koran and certain Buddhist and Hindy sacred scriptures they can get a pretty idea what the believers of those faiths should follow.

In lots of faiths we do see that fundamentalist can get so strong because many followers of them do not get to know their Holy Scriptures very well.

In many countries we also see that lots of people do not know their own Sacred Scriptures, and that is why we see lots of them not living according to the faith rules of the books they are so called to follow.

Having children to know the other culture can best be done by dumpling them under in such a culture.

This is a very good way to have children getting an idea about a culture and about how people who live in a certain area can feel themselves or how they have to live.

Ideal would be to have them dress, eat and having to do the same activities as others would have to do in the region studied or when it would be about camps and torturing to have a sort of experience what it would be in such a camps and under such interrogation. In Latvia (Letland) people can have such an experience how it was under Soviet regime. In the Riga camp special tours are organised to 'undergo' one day or 'a day and a night' a similar experience the prisoners would have had. Many people eyes are opened by such experiences and come to appreciate the values of the democratic free countries much more.

Congratulations for the teacher who dared to tackle the difficult subject and has done a lot of preparation to work out her class.

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Koran fragments found in UK library are among world's oldest, says university

The University of Birmingham in central England may be the proud owner of fragments of one of the world's oldest surviving copies a Koran manuscript which may even have been written by someone who knew Prophet Mohammad, researchers said on July 22nd.

Muslim tradition says the prophet received the revelations of the Koran  between 610 and 632 — but it wasn't written down immediately. The first leader of the community after Muhammad's death, Caliph Abu Bakr, ordered the book to be written and it was completed by the third leader, Caliph Uthman, in 650.

Radiocarbon dating indicated that the parchment folios were at least 1,370 years old, which would make them one of the earliest written forms of the Islamic holy book in existence.


The manuscript was part of the university's collection of 3,000 Middle Eastern documents which was acquired in the 1920s by Alphonse Mingana, a Chaldean priest born near Mosul in Iraq.

His trips to acquire the manuscripts were funded by Quaker philanthropist Edward Cadbury, whose family made their fortune in chocolate, to raise the status of Birmingham as an intellectual centre for religious studies.

"The parts of the Koran that are contained in those fragments are very similar indeed to the Koran as we have it today,"

David Thomas, professor of Christianity and Islam, said.

 "This tends to support the view that the Koran that we now have is ... very close indeed to the Koran as it was brought together in the early years of Islam,"

"(These fragments) give us glimpses into potentially how something which we now call the Koran might have been used in this early period and how it might have been recorded,"

said Sajjad Rizvi, Director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.


The leaves, held in the university's Mingana Collection, contain parts of chapters 18 to 20, written with ink in an early form of Arabic script known as Hijazi.

"This is indeed an exciting discovery,"

said Muhammad Isa Waley, lead curator for Persian and Turkish manuscripts at the British Library in London.

"A lot of people from Birmingham and all over the country will love to see it,"

said Muhammad Ali, the administrator at Birmingham Central Mosque.

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Pope Francis says Catholics must become evangelisers

Pope Francis I who becomes more and more popular because of his own simple attitude has issued his first apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), following the synod of bishops on the new evangelisation in October 2012.

The Gospel in itself is a bringer of Good News and tells us the story of how Jesus brought the Word of God to the people and instructed his followers to do likewise, evangelising all over the world.

“The Joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus,” the Pope wrote, inviting Christians to “a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ.” said the Pontiff to a number of people in St Peter’s Square on Sunday.

Those who call themselves Christians should know that they have to follow their leader of whom they got their name: Jeshua the Christ. Jesus Christ gave his followers commandments and his instructions focused on the love of his Father, the Only One God and on his Father His commandments.

In the evangelisation we should give an emphasis on God’s saving love before proclaiming doctrines and follow the “way of beauty,” the Pope said. Patience and “respectful and compassionate listening” are also a key part of evangelisation, he added.

“The Gospel tells us to correct others and to help them to grow on the basis of a recognition of the objective evil of their actions, but without making judgments about their responsibility and culpability… our personal experience of being accompanied and assisted, and of openness to those who accompany us, will teach us to be patient and compassionate with others, and to find the right way to gain their trust, their openness and their readiness to grow,”

Pope Francis also explained a “profound connection between evangelisation and human advancement,” saying that the

 “Gospel is not merely about our personal relationship with God”

 and that religion cannot be “restricted to the private sphere,” but is concerned with society, since

 “all Christians … are called to show concern for the building of a better world.”

As he correctly said "all Christians" which includes the protestants, trinitarian and non-trinitarian Christians. 

Naturally the 48,000-word document covers a wide range of Catholic issues including abortion, the role of the papacy in the 21st century and the question of women priests.

Many may look at the decline of priests or pastors, but for the Catholic church father the issue of women priests was “not open to discussion”.

Matters which are connected with our encountering other people, to talk to and about, area also written about in the document, including the global economy, the plight of the poor and the relationship between science and religion. He also discussed ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, making specific reference to Islam.

“In order to sustain dialogue with Islam, suitable training is essential for all involved, not only so that they can be solidly and joyfully grounded in their own identity, but so that they can also acknowledge the values of others, appreciate the concerns underlying their demands and shed light on shared beliefs,” the Pope said.

“We Christians should embrace with affection and respect Muslim immigrants to our countries in the same way that we hope and ask to be received and respected in countries of Islamic tradition. I ask and I humbly entreat those countries to grant Christians freedom to worship and to practice their faith, in light of the freedom which followers of Islam enjoy in Western countries! Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

Not only the Catholic Church can learn from this apostolic exhortation. It should be  “a challenge to everyone, without exception.”

The joy of the Gospel, the exhortation’s very title, should embrace all Christians. By all our actions we should convince others of the truth of that Gospel.

The pope said.

“It presents a vision for the pattern of life of the Church present throughout the world, for parish life, for the work of the preacher, for the catechist, for the bishop, for the business person and the politician and for the ministry of the Pope himself.

It contains a radical look at the crisis of poverty in our world and at the role of economics. 

It offers a new light on the Church’s social teaching and calls for dialogue between faith, reason and science, with our fellow Christians, with the Jewish community, with other religions and with society, especially in the context of religious freedom.

This dialogue about faith, reason and science was already started by the Christadelphians in "Stepping Toes", with articles like:

• Bible containing scientific information
• The mythical conflict of science and Scripture (1)
• The mythical conflict of science and Scripture (2)
• Science and the Bible—Do They Really Contradict Each Other?
• Are Science and the Bible Compatible?
• Science and Religion Harmonized (Once and For All…)
• Reconciling Science and Religion

Our world may have developed into the 21st century, but that does not have to mean that science has conquered religion and made it not necessary any more.

Contrary to his previous encyclical writing Lumen Fidei, released in July, essentially based on the work of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, this Evangelii Gaudium is very much his own work.

Apostolic exhortations are often based on deliberations of synods of bishops, and although this one takes into account the October 2012 synod on the new evangelisation, last June, Pope Francis informed the ordinary council of the Synod of Bishops, which is normally responsible for helping draft post-synodal apostolic exhortations, he would not be working from their draft.

Instead, the Pope said, he planned to write an “exhortation on evangelisation in general and refer to the synod”, in order to “take everything from the synod but put it in a wider framework”.

For the full text of Evangelii Gaudium go here.

For key quotes from the Pope’s document, go here.

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Chrislam

Dit weekend, zal de Memorial Drive presbyteriaanse Kerk in Houston samen met christelijke gemeenschappen in Atlanta, Seattle en Detroit een serie van preken beginnen die is ontworpen om een oecumenische verzoening tussen christendom en Islam te produceren.

Sommigen voelen dit als ongepast aan en noemen het denigrerend: "Chrislam".

Nochtans wil de wereld niet naar een Chrislam evolueren maar zou het wel goed zijn als de drie zogenaamde monotheïstische godsdiensten met elkaar zouden verzoenen en niet in elkaars vaarwater ten strijde trekken.
Voor sommigen is het een steen des aanstoots dat naast de preken de zondagsschoollessen zich zullen centreren op de geïnspireerde leerstellingen van de Profeet Mohammad . Voor hen kan het niet dat Korans in de kerkbanken naast de Bijbels zullen geplaatst worden.

Het begrip van Chrislam, nu omhelst door zulke predikanten als Rick Warren en Robert Schuller, blijken opgedoken te zijn uit een programma met de betekenis van te "houd van uw buur" in  Gratie Genootschap Kerk in Atlanta, Georgië.

Dat is juist de boodschap die Christus ons heeft mee gegeven. Hier ligt onze taak als Christenen te tonen waar wij naar toe moeten gaan en welke weg samen in gemeenschap kunnen afleggen, gelovigen, anders gelovigen en niet gelovigen. Daar ligt de kracht van het Christendom. Het hoeft niet te vrezen indien het degelijk gefundeerd is. Anders zal het zich wel vragen moeten stellen.

Lees hier meer over: > CHRISLAM SPREADS THROUGHOUT AMERICA

De rol van de Vader en zijn Zoon

Bertus Span, een Nederlandse straatprediker, bracht volgend voorbeeld betreft de genadigheid van de Vader en de rol van Jezus.

Volgens Bertus is het niet verstandig om direct de confrontatie aan te gaan met Moslims. "Wanneer je direct beweert dat God een Zoon heeft, lopen ze gelijk weg. Ik probeer hen langzamerhand in ons gesprek de weg tot God te wijzen. In de Koran staat God op een onbereikbare hoogte. Maar ik geloof dat het wel mogelijk is om naar God toe te komen. Ik kom dat vaak met het voorbeeld van een koning in een Arabisch land. Hij kwam met het idee om iedereen die overspel pleegt 50 stokslagen te geven. Maar wat moest hij doen toen zijn dochter overspel pleegde? Vervolgens zei die koning: straf mij maar. Zo wil God ons ook vergeven, maar er moet wel voor betaald worden. Op die manier wijs ik hen op Jezus Christus."