Posted on 04/04/2003 7:15:21 PM PST by SlickWillard
wo evangelical Christian organizations whose leaders have outspokenly denounced the Islamic faith are among the aid groups waiting at Iraq's borders to take humanitarian relief — and a Gospel message — to a nation whose people are predominantly Muslim.
The situation presents a dilemma for the Bush administration, which does not want to alienate its strong Christian evangelical constituency but cannot afford to have the war in Iraq perceived as a crusade to Christianize a Muslim nation.
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said yesterday that it was not the administration's responsibility to determine which groups will provide aid in Iraq. But he distanced President Bush from the leaders' past remarks.
"The president knows that Islam is a religion of peace," Mr. Fleischer said in an interview. "It doesn't matter to him who says it is not. He disagrees with anyone who holds that point of view."
The two evangelical groups, the Southern Baptist Convention and Samaritan's Purse, have been in the forefront of Mr. Bush's supporters.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, says that since the war started, about 800 missionaries have volunteered through its International Mission Board to take spiritual and physical aid to Iraqi communities.
A past leader of the convention offended many Muslims and other religious leaders last year when he said that the prophet Muhammad was a "pedophile" and a "terrorist."
Samaritan's Purse is a relief group run by the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is a son of the evangelist Billy Graham and who gave the invocation at Mr. Bush's inauguration. Staff members of the organization are in Jordan and Kuwait readying water purification equipment and medical supplies for use in Iraq.
Mr. Graham provoked controversy last year with a book and interviews arguing that Islam is inherently evil and violent.
Asked this week about those statements, he said: "I haven't seen anything that has changed my mind. I love the people of Islam, I love the Arab world, I've been there many times and have many friends. I just disagree with their religion, and they disagree with me."
Muslim leaders said yesterday that while Iraqis needed aid, the American government should limit the work of groups that express antipathy for the faith of the people they are purporting to serve.
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations in Washington, said: "I think it would be inappropriate for these people to have any kind of American government support at a time when the entire Muslim world suspects that there is currently a war against Islam. This kind of activity could only be perceived as confirming those suspicions."
Mr. Hooper accused the two Christian aid groups of being more interested in making converts than in rebuilding Iraq. "They seek out the most vulnerable in a society and use a wildly disproportionate power relationship to almost coerce people into leaving their faith," he said.
Evangelicals believe that by sharing the Gospel with non-Christians, they are following Jesus' imperative to "make disciples of all nations." In recent years, missionary groups have focused on what they call the "10-40 window," the latitudes that include most of the Muslim world.
The Southern Baptists and Samaritan's Purse said they had advanced beyond the old stereotype of the Christian missionaries who used bread as bait to win converts.
"Evangelical missionaries don't go to make a sales pitch for changing your religion," said Mark Kelly, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists' missions board. "Evangelicals are motivated by their own experience of God's love and how it's changed their lives, and by a desire for other people to understand that God loves them and wants to have a personal relationship with them."
About 97 percent of Iraqis are Muslim. But Mr. Graham pointed out in an interview that Christianity predated Islam in Iraq, and that his group had been invited into the country by local Christian churches to assist Christians, although it also plans to supply aid to Muslims.
"When we provide medicine or food, I'm not doing it in my name, but we do it in the name of God's son," he said. "But we don't force it. It's not a carrot on the end of a stick."
Samaritan's Purse, based in Boone, N.C., has a projected 2003 income of $194 million. It has received government contracts in the past, but has also run into trouble for putting preaching before aid.
In Saudi Arabia, which has strict prohibitions on Christian activity, the group surreptitiously distributed missionary tracts in the first gulf war. In El Salvador, where evangelicals and Roman Catholics vie for converts, Samaritan's Purse workers held prayer meetings before teaching villagers how to build temporary homes after a 2001 earthquake. The group, which had a contract from the United States Agency for International Development, was warned by the State Department not to mix religious and relief activities.
The development agency, known as U.S. AID, is charged with deciding which groups receive government contracts to offer humanitarian aid; other groups may enter Iraq on their own. In a briefing on Wednesday, the agency's administrator, Andrew S. Natsios, announced $20 million in contracts to six nongovernmental aid organizations, none of them Christian missionary groups.
The overtly evangelical groups have caused concern for other Christian groups that have not expressed hostility to Islam.
Donna Derr, associate director for international emergency response with Church World Service, the aid arm of the National Conference of Churches, said, "In some countries we've seen organizations very actively couple their aid with proselytization, and that creates some very difficult dynamics."
Ms. Derr said the activities of one group she would not identify led the government of Indonesia, a Muslim country, to evict all nongovernment groups from one region.
He forgot to mention "plagiarist" too. When you remove the Biblical references from the Koran, all you have left is the drug induced meanderings of a cave-dwelling arab.
What was it Nixon said? "Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain." I wonder if it works in reverse.
Oh vomit. This is just disgusting. Someone needs to shut down the Nationcal Council of Churches and stop funding idiots like Derr. Could it be that Indonesia is run by Muslims who hate Christians and want to make sure that Christians live in squalor? Could it be Indonesia wants to rid the Maluccas and other regions of Christians and wants to have a news black out on the Indonesian Army's activities -- so Christians agencies and NGOs were kicked out? The views of this "Ms." Derr and this article by Goodstein are both putrid examples of leftist cerebral atrophy.
Where did you get that from? Mohammad was an illiterate, who wasn't even christian before his "conversion", he worshipped sand spirts and jinns and stuff (think alladin and the magic lamp junk). His knowledge of the bible, was very poor as him, his family, and everyone he knew, only knew the most very basics in regards to Judaism, and christianity, all based on his experiences in dealing with them as a trader (and not a very good one). Some scholars believe that the reason the quran has Mohammad contradicting parts of the new testament (i.e. jesus wasn't crusified, he was a prophet, etc) might be, because of his poor knowledge of the bible. (or, as a I believe, Allah was actually the devil, screwing with his head).
Better to have groups that don't believe in and ridicule the God that Muslims proport to share with Christians?
Sounds like a plan.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.