She Had an Iranian Passport
Reflections from a recent mission trip to Turkey.
As I began writing this from the bedroom of my hotel in Istanbul, the Muslim prayers that piped through loudspeakers drowned the urban white noise of the massive city. The sound of honking car horns, revving motorcycle engines, and wailing police sirens all disappeared eerily.
We had traveled to visit Turkish missionaries that our church has supported for many years. And I hope we continue supporting them for many more years. Although their ministry harvest might seem relatively small to some, they have their hands to the plow and labor not in vain.
I’ll say a bit more about Christianity and the country of Turkey at the end of this post, but I’d like to start elsewhere. The first reflections I had in Turkey prove to be the ones that linger loudest: The people of the world simultaneously share so much and so little.
Our sameness and differences hit me while standing in the passport line when the woman directly in front of us took three passports out of her purse. She kept one and handed the others to her children, a small boy in a stroller and a young girl standing beside her. The little girl’s suitcase appeared kid-sized and made of bright pink rubber. The woman had a giant mom-bag, and out of the top of the bag poked a red tube of Pringles.
All three of their maroon passports had the word IRAN embossed in gold on the cover. And it hit me that just weeks ago my country dropped bunker buster bombs on her country, at least that’s what I remember them being called in the news. President Trump said in his press conference that no other nation could have done what we did so spectacularly. I believe that. Yet I stood there wondering what the leader of her country told her. The day after the bombing the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, actually flew to Istanbul to give a press conference, perhaps using one of the airport runways our plane used. I hadn’t listened to what he said and had to Google his name to write this paragraph. My passport is dark blue.
Standing in line, I realized the woman and I share so much of what it means to be human—both made in God’s image, both scarred by the fall, both well-acquainted with wrangling young children through an airport. We both need clothing and shelter. We need love and hope. We need Jesus. Our children like Pringles.
Yet she and I also share so little of our experience of the world, the same world but a very big and variegated world. Worlds within the world exist.
The temperature outside in Turkey rose above ninety degrees, and it felt at least eighty degrees in the airport. My wife wore a sleeveless shirt. The woman wore a full-length covering and a scarf over her head. Probably one-third of the women in the airport wore something similar.
How were this woman and I supposed to feel toward each other? We share human sensibilities, like the innate desire to seek transcendence in purposes larger than our own, for example. We both want to protect our loved ones. We both struggle to live moral lives.
Yet our religious sensibilities differ greatly—as did, I’m sure, our civic sensibilities about pride toward our respective nations. What place should healthy patriotism hold for each of us? More to the point, how should we respond when her impulses and mine, many of them subconscious, conflict? The Augustinian view of rightly ordered loves could help us if we could agree on the right order.
Standing there, I knew none of our likely differences could ever be discussed without an interpreter. Yet even with a shared understanding of words, how would one even begin to cross such a bridge? Or is it more like ten bridges? Maybe twenty? How does one ask another person whether it bothers them or blesses them to know that Isfahan no longer has weapons-grade uranium?
I tried to smile at her son. He didn’t smile back. They all looked super sleepy. So was I.
The time arrived for her to hand over her passport. Without any questions, the police officer flipped to the proper page, thudded the stamp, and let her and her children into Turkey. Next, he did the same for us. Never will I see her again in this life and likely in the next, though I pray otherwise.
Returning to where I began this post, juxtaposed with the beauty of a place like Istanbul, I struggle to comprehend the scale of spiritual lostness in Turkey. Maybe one Christian lives among every ten thousand people. The seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation, for example, exist as ruins scattered across this country we call Turkey. However, today, several of those seven cities have no church preaching the gospel. Their lampstand is gone. A city like Sardis (now called Sart), has a handful of Christians, I’m told, but no church. Contrast this with my context. I live a long way from the Bible Belt, but from my house in Harrisburg, I can put on my running shoes and easily jog past six churches I would gladly send any believer to visit.
When we worshiped in Istanbul on the Lord’s Day with our missionary friends, nearly one hundred believers filled the room, a veritable mega church. I didn’t know most of the songs, but I did smile after the call to worship when we sang a Chris Tomlin classic translated into Turkish. We closed the service with “Shout to the Lord,” and the phrase “all the earth” took on more meaning in the lines, “all the earth let us sing, power and majesty, praise to the King.”
I’m finding myself praying like never before that all the people of the earth—in all our differences and in all our sameness—would know that God sent his only Son into the world so that whosoever believes in him might have eternal life. Or to say John 3:16 in Turkish, “Zira Allah dünyayı öyle sevdi ki, biricik Oğlunu verdi; ta ki, ona iman eden her adam helâk olmasın, ancak ebedî hayatı olsun.”
* Photo by Asal Mshk on Unsplash
ANSWERING JIHAD by Nabeel Qureshi (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)
Nabeel Qureshi (former Muslim, now Christian) answers eighteen questions about Islam and jihad. Qureshi is also the New York Times bestselling author of Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. I think many readers, especially Christians, will find Answering Jihad accessible, thoughtful, and a help as we seek to “love God and love people” in a complex and sometimes violent world.
Nabeel Qureshi. Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward. Zondervan, 2016. 176 pp. $14.99.
Last summer, I met a Muslim mother. I’ll call her Asah. Asah had a young daughter who had recently become a Christian. As we talked, I was fascinated by what Asah told me about her daughter’s faith in Christ. She said something like, “I don’t want my daughter to have to be a Muslim. I want her to be free to choose, to make up her own mind.” Then she added, “I’ll be happy with whatever religion she chooses.”
The conversation was surreal and made me realize that Christianity is not the only religion that faces challenges with both nominalism and syncretism. Nominalism is when “followers” are followers in name only. Syncretism is the blending of orthodox religious beliefs with various other worldviews—in this case, the blending of Islam with the tenets of pluralism.
On the other end of the spectrum from Asah, however, are the radicals, the extremists, the mujahideen, the men and women who wear vests fitted with shrapnel and C-4 that explode in crowded markets filled with people shopping for dinner. On this end of the spectrum are the jihadists.
And it’s these two extremes which leave me—and millions of other people—with questions. Is there such a thing as “peaceful Islam”? Surely, there are peaceful Muslims; I know them. And if there are peaceful Muslims, who are the “real” Muslims, that is, which Muslims are authentic to the faith expressed in their canonical texts?
Answering Jihad
Last Sunday, a man in our church handed me a copy of Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward by Nabeel Qureshi. He told me that he was on the “launch team” for the book and he’d like me to read it. As a pastor, I have a stack of books a dozen high which I am to read. But after I looked at it closer, Answering Jihad didn’t go to the bottom but moved to the top.
I had heard of Qureshi because of his book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, which has received much attention (becoming a New York Times bestseller, for example), but I didn’t realize his erudition, his impressive educational resume. Qureshi is a speaker with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, holds an MD from Eastern Virginia Medical School, an MA in Christian apologetics from Biola University, an MA in religion from Duke University, and is pursuing a doctorate in New Testament studies at Oxford University.
Why This Book—Now?
In the preface, Qureshi tells some of his own story. After the 9/11 attacks he was forced to think about his Muslim upbringing like never before. In the end, Qureshi saw himself with only three options: apostasy, apathy, or radicalization. He chose apostasy and embraced Christianity. Although outspoken about his faith, until a few months ago, he never desired to address jihad publicly because the issues are so charged. “For the sake of keeping my message and intentions clear,” he writes, “I had decided to answer such questions on an individual basis rather than publishing a book on the matter” (p. 9).
But on November 13, Paris was attacked. Then on December 2, there were shootings in San Bernardino. Then on December 7, Donald Trump proposed a temporary ban on all Muslim immigration, specifically in light of the over four million Syrian refugees seeking asylum in the West. Then on December 15, Wheaton professor Larycia Hawkins was placed on administrative leave over her controversial actions and statements about Islam and Christianity. Now, Qureshi felt he had to write a response, to chart a “better way forward, a way that upholds both truth and compassion” (p. 11).
Answering Jihad is structured in a Q&A format around 18 relevant questions. The questions are broken into three parts. In Part I: The Origins of Jihad, he answers questions such as “What is Islam?”, “What is Jihad?”, and “Was Islam spread by the sword?” In Part II: Jihad Today, he answers questions such as, “What is radical Islam?” and “Who are al-Qaida, ISIS, and Boko Haram?” (Aside: After reading the scope of the violence, especially done by Boko Haram, I wrote in the margin of this section, “No words.” There really aren’t.) Finally, in Part III: Jihad in Judeo-Christian Context, he answers questions such as “How does jihad compare with the Crusades?” The book also has several appendices.
The Main Point
The rise of radical Islam is the result of a complex blend of 50 years of geopolitics, but Qureshi argues, radical Islam is not a “new” Islam, but rather a reformation to the original of the original, a return to the roots. Thus to the question, “Is Islam—true Islam—a religion of peace?” Qureshi says no. True Islam, the Islam most consistent with its canonical texts, is not peaceful. Therefore, as part of a better way forward, Qureshi advocates seeing a distinction between the teachings of Islam and Muslims themselves, who for various reasons may (or may not) hold to some (or all) of the violent aspects of Islam. Obviously, this is controversial and offensive to many. But in the context of his detailed, historical overview, this conclusion seems fitting.
I appreciated many things about the book, including how quickly the book was published. It has the contemporary relevance of a blog post yet the quality ensured by the gatekeeping of traditional publishing, which typically takes as long as 18 months. You don’t publish this book in a month or two without a team of motivated people and a gifted author who has thought deeply about the topics for a long time. Additionally, I appreciated how Qureshi rejects endless equivocation. In a fuzzy culture of supposed tolerance, he draws conclusions and makes recommendations, all without feeling like he has an axe to grind. If anything, the prose feels understated and calm, in an appropriate way.
I think many readers, especially Christians, will find Answering Jihad accessible, thoughtful, and a help as we seek to “love God and love people” in a complex and sometimes violent world. It’s not a book on public policy, though it can and should certainly inform those who craft it. “My suggestion,” he writes, “is that we engage Muslims proactively with love and friendship while simultaneously acknowledging the truth about Islam. This is not the final step in answering jihad, but it is the correct first step” (p. 148). And it’s a step I, personally, want to continue to take.