Graham stands by comments on Islam

While saying he is called to love people regardless of their faith, evangelist Franklin Graham on Sunday wouldn't back away from his recent statement on a national news program that Islam "is a very evil and wicked religion."

In a prepared statement released to The Observer through a spokesman, Graham said his Samaritan's Purse ministry in Boone will continue providing millions of dollars in aid to Muslims in need around the world. But he did not take back the controversial comments aired Friday night on "NBC Nightly News" and repeated on cable stations.

Those pieces were based on an interview Graham gave last month near Wilkesboro, at the dedication of a chapel in his parents' name, when he said: "We're not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."

In his prepared statement Sunday, Graham said: "It is not my calling to analyze Islam or any other religions, though I recognize that all religions have differences. In the past, I have expressed my concerns about the teachings of Islam regarding the treatment of women and the killing of non-Muslims or infidels."

Graham, 49, does not plan to comment publicly on the issue, and only will release Sunday's statement in response to questions.

His response comes a day after his ministry's Operation Christmas Child began processing 1 million shoe boxes in Charlotte for needy children overseas - including thousands destined for largely Muslim nations.

His comments were challenged by former Charlottean Ali Akber, who helped organize a meeting between local Jews and Muslims after Sept. 11, before he relocated to Maryland.

"That's spreading hatred," said Akber. "It is the same God. We just don't worship the same way. We all believe in God and charity and worshipping and not doing any evil."

Franklin Graham's views run counter to those expressed on Sept. 17 by President Bush, who called Islam "a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world."

It also stands in contrast to the message delivered by Graham's father at the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance service at the National Cathedral in Washington, on Sept. 14. "We come together today to affirm our conviction that God cares for us, whatever our ethnic, religious or political background may be," Billy Graham preached. "The Bible says that he is `the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles.'"

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword.

CCWoody, suppose someone would just quote this passage you gave us and said that militaristic religion that speaks of the sward rather than peace. You know full well that that would be incorrect. Why make the same mistake with regard to Islam or any other religion?

Your strive for purity of the heart and the deapth of religious feeling is admirable. Do not go so far, however, as to deny the same purity of heart in other people. Live and let live.

You who deny that Jesus is the Christ, God in the flesh, will be rewarded for your hatred of God!

If I doubt that we cure cancer in the denxt decade, does this mean I hate curing cancer? If I doubt the truthfulmess of your words, does that mean I hate you? Clearly, not.

Yet, just because Muslims and Jews do not accept divinity of Jesus --- to the best of my knoledge, the followers of both religions accept him as a moral voice --- you immediately assume that they hate Jesus?

This is clearly wrong and hateful on your part.

The more important question, CCWoody, is this: do you have a passport? You should get up and travel a bit. And, if you do, leave your fellow church-members behind. Go to the Holy Land on your own, and mingle with all sorts of people from around the world. Go to Turkey, where you can touch eternity on every step. Go to Andalusia and see how the former Goths and Slavs, Berbers and Roma (Gypsies) live together. Go see the world a bit, you should get out more often.

Well, Mohammad based his religion on extractions from Jewish writings and Christianity, together with ideas of his own, allegedly provided by an opportune appearance by the Angel Gabriel. Mohammad recognized, as do his followers, the God of the Old Testament as his God, as do Muslims today. Further, although they deny the divinity of Christ (Islam is a more rigorously monotheistic religion than Christianity is), they consider Christ to have been the greatest of Prophets next to Mohammad. Also, they recognize the Old Testament Prophets as being prophets themselves.

I wasn't aware of Mohammad having ever raped any eight year old kid.

If you have read any of my other posts, you would realize I am hardly an apologist for Islam. I realize my anti-Islamic rhetoric has at times excessive, but, considering what we experienced here, understandable. I regret any excesses. People should be judgfed as individuals. That is the AMERICAN way.

However, there are MANY different Islamic sects, like there are different Christian sects. Fundamentalist Islamic groups like the Wahabist nut-cases which engineered the Twin Towers catastrophy are as far from other Islamic sects, like the Sufis (which they have murderously persecuted) as say, Franciscans or Mennonites are from Grand Inquistors.

A lot of what we associate with Moslims in general, are really individual cultural practises not necessarily enjoined by Islam. For instance, Islam requires both men and women to be modestly dressed. Men should be covered at all times from the waist down, and women should have their torsos and limbs covered in public. The all encompassing body shrouds used by Afghans, i.e. burqas, are an an Afghan cultural peculiarity, not an Islamic tenet. It was not so long ago in America that women with exposed legs or men with bare chests were not viewed approvingly (i.e. Victorian period).

The Koran does not say that Moslems must kill Christians or other nonbelievers. That's just ignorance on the part of people who are repeating things said by other people who also do not know what they are talking about. If you're going to say that a religion is hateful, then you should learn a bit about it first.

The problem isn't the Koran, which is considered the "Holy Word" equivalent to the Bible. The problem are the hadith, which are the alleged sayings of Mohammed, but without the care and scholarship of the Koran. Many moslems question their authenticity, and they don't have the same stature as the Koran. It is some of the hadith which can be said to advocate violence, but acceptance of the hadith is far from universal among moslems. In fact, it's the varying acceptance of the hadith that leads to many of the schisms we see in the islamic world. But the Koran does not advocate the killing of nonbelievers, and so all of islam isn't tainted. A bit like some of the whacked-out radical Christian sects that tarnish our own history.

Study the crusades a bit. The moslems treated Christians and Jews far better than the Christians treated either jews or moslems. The real author of radical islamic fundamentalism was the Egyptian writer and activist Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by the Egyptian authorities in the mid-1960's for inciting resistance to the regime. But that guy didn't even exist until the 20th century, and Islam has a far, far older history than that. It's not the religion -- it is certain practioners of and sects within that religion that are the problem.

The bottom line is that people who claim that islam is an evil, violent religion are only revealing their own ignorance and lack of historical knowledge.

The troublesome point at the moment is that most of the world's religions in recent years have eased off a good bit on vehemence and quit killing the people who believe differently. World Trade Center aside, Islamic people in several parts of Africa and Asia are fairly busy trying to thump the people they proclaim infidels. Indeed, they are rather unkind to one another in parts of the Middle East where Islam in one form or another is 90% or more of the total population. I suppose we could say that after a few centuries of infidel-thumping and internicene battling,most Christians, though not absolutely all of them, quit being so violent about religious matters. For that matter, the followers of most religions don't seem to get too worked up about what other people believe. The Islamic cultures seem to be the ones who are still either so faithful or so backward in this respect that they go in for archaic attitudes. No wonder they are not currently neighbors most people in the world would relish having in massive numbers.

Very nicely put! BTTT.

The only caveat I have --- for myself as well as others --- is that we should not be attaking their holy books. There is a difference between a religion and a church: ther latter is made up of fallable people who may, and do, commit folly and atrocities.

We should fight the "Muslim church" in the Arab world, which declaerd war on us a long time ago. We should not be shy saying so: yes, it is not individual countries we are at war with, it is the Muslim clerics who teach hatrid.

It is unproductive and wrong to seek out passages from holy books that seem to justify the "evil" nature of any religion.

Look through the previous posts. Passages in the Bible about the G-d's "sward" do not make Christianity evil. Nor does the prescribed stoning of adulterers, which we do not practice. We should not commit the same mistakes with regard to other religions.

I enjoyed reading your post, thanks.

I agree with Franklin Graham. Thank God literally that he has the guts to stand up and speak the truth. I support President Bush but as a Christian he is getting a little to close to the Muslims by hosting them at the White House for a dinner marking the beginning of Ramadan. This is DANGEROUS SPIRITUAL TERRITORY! We need to pray that our President does not lose sight of his Christian values and beliefs while trying to pacify the muslim world. THIS COUNTRY WAS FOUNDED ON JUDEO CHRISTIAN VAULES NOT ISLAMIC MUSLIM VALUES!

Well, if you read the Old Testment, the God of the Old Testament enjoins the Jews to commit some really horrific acts against "unbelievers" (idolators if you will). In today's society, these would be viewed as "war crimes".

Granted the PERSPECTIVE of God held by Muslims and Christians and Jews is different, but because their PERSPECTIVE of God is different from ours, does not mean they recognise another God.

According to Muslim belief, both Christians and Jews are "people of the book", as they follow the old Bible upon which Islam is in part based. Accordingly, Christians and Jews are not to be stopped from practising their faith or forcefully converted. This is a distinction Muslims make between the latter and pagans who worship idols. Hence Muslims themselves feel Christians and Jews worship the same God Muslims worship. In a sense they view Christianity and Judaism as an unevolved arrested faith in the same sense that Christians tend to view Judaism or Protestants tned to view Catholicism.

The entire subject of Islam and Christianity and Judaism is a difficult one. Just as Christianity comes in different sects, so does Islam. While there are certain elements of Islam that westerners find difficult to accept, there are certain other asapects of their faith that are commendable - their modesty, their dedidication to charity, to devotion to a monotheistic God, etc. I must confess that I have an ambivalent mind on this subject and really can't decide how to view these people or their religion.

Check out site http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/sufism1.html if you are interested in a less well known sect of Islam - Sufism - a sect that has saints and was viewed by many theologians in the past as being close to Gnostic Christianity.

It is unproductive and wrong to seek out passages from holy books that seem to justify the "evil" nature of any religion.

For a Christian, it is essential and right to mark the Koran as such a book. Mark peaceable Muslims themselves for mistreatment or injustice? Absolutely not. Mark their Holy Book as proceeding from an evil source? Absolutely. That is all part of being as wise as serpents but as harmless as doves.

Graham deserves applause from Christians even as he is excoriated for his words by the PC crowd.

Probably because they believe that Judaism and Christianity are defective religions in the sense that they have been "replaced" by Islam as the most recent and last relevation by the Deity to man.

I believe that at one time Jews were executed for attempting to convert Christians to Judaism, probably for the same reason.

It is unfortunate that two people who ostensibly worship the same God can become divided over issues of faith. The part of Islam that I find most difficult to acept as a westener is the concept of a theocratic state.

On the other hand, those very things which many fundamentalist Christians find offensive about a secular state - exclusion of God from public life, ramapant immorality, coddling of criminals, etc, are things which devout Muslims also find offensive and are arguments they could well put forth for their concept of a theocracy. We have, however, seen how this can get carried away in the case of the Taliban and from our own cultural experiences of Catholic Europe and the reign of Puritans and Cromwell.

I find it humorous, if somewhat sad, that anyone who asserts that islam is not an "evil" religion is part of the "PC crowd." I made a point of doing some reading on islam before, during, and after my deployment for the Gulf War. Like any book, including the Bible, you could take a single sentence out of context and draw some pretty heinous conclusions. Overall, though, the Koran does not advocate violence or hatred.

The problem, in part, is that we hear the phrase "radical fundamentalism", and incorrectly assume this means that it's practitioners are taking the Koran literally. They're not. What they are doing is focusing on some hadith that generally have been discredited by most islamic scholars. As bizarre as it sounds, the true roots of what passes for "fundamentalism" are to be found in the 20th century.

Fromour cultural perspective it is more like paedophilia than rape. On the other hand, in Christian Medieval Europe it was not unusual for women of eleven, twelve or thirteen to be given in marriage to older men.

Remember that a vast cultural and temporal divide separates America of the twenty first century from Arabia of the eight century. Failure to recognize changing times is one of the abysses into which these modern-day Islamic fundamentalists frequently fall

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