What Mohammed the boat captain thinks

I love going to the gym in the mornings. It gives me a chance to watch the news. It also gives me a chance to compare the differences between the major networks and how they cover the events of the day. Last Friday as I was working out on the treadmill, I caught a glimpse of CNN's analysis of what's happening in Egypt. The CNN storyline emphasized the precarious situation that President Obama faces, and the difficulty of navigating through the thorny issue of demonstrating loyalty to a key ally on the one hand and protecting the image of the U.S. as a promoter of democracy and human rights on the other hand. Fox News--predictably--portrayed the protests as a Muslim Brotherhood-led coup, as if there's no possible alternative between a U.S. backed secular human rights abuser and Shariah. The pundits can say what they want, but the reality is it's not their opinions that matter, it's the opinion of the Arab street that matters. Which is why I recommend my good friend Carl Medearis's book Tea with Hezbollah.

A few years back, Carl Medearis and Ted Dekker took a journey to the Middle East for the sole purpose of interviewing people whom the average American views as "the enemy", people like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Bin Laden family, and leaders in Hamas and Hezbollah. Along the way, they also captured the opinions of ordinary Arab Muslims. While they were in Egypt, a man named Mohammed took them on a tour of the Nile. The following is a brief excerpt of an interview between Ted Dekker and Mohammed the boat captain.

Ted: What are the most important issues facing you and the world today?

Mohammed: Number one, to find work. Number two, to be able to eat. Number three, to build a house. Number four, to get married. Number five, to live in peace. I was in the '73 war, but war ruins everything. I just want to find a wife and live in peace.

Ted: What do most of your friends think about America?

Mohammed: America is controlling the world. They treat no one fairly, and if I told you anything else, I would be lying.

I saw on the news this morning that the tear gas canisters fired on the Egyptian protestors say "Made in the U.S.A." I wonder what Mohammed and his friends are thinking now?

Both sides of the "culture war" need to broaden their human rights agenda

Last week, radical Muslims in Pakistan began terrorizing the Christian minority in the town of Gojra. At least 9 people were killed, over a hundred homes were burned to the ground, and several church buildings were destroyed. The reign of terror has lasted several days and has spread to neighboring areas. I get daily reports from my Christian friends in Pakistan and, as far as I can tell, what’s happening is eerily similar to the anti-Christian violence that took place in India last year where, according to Asia News, around 500 people were killed.

Unless human rights advocates worldwide and the U.S. government in particular puts pressure on the Pakistani government to clamp down on attacks against Christians—and to repeal the blasphemy law that allows Muslims to trump up charges against anyone who supposedly “insults Islam”—more Christians will likely be killed. Pakistan’s Christians have been complaining for years that the Western media has largely overlooked their plight. They also say that their government fails to protect them from Islamic extremism, discriminates heavily against them when it comes to jobs, civil services, and even aid relief when natural disasters strike. Think Earthquake 2006.

To be sure, Christians in the global south aren’t the only group suffering under the weight of religious oppression. Even in Pakistan, some say that the Shiite minority has it harder than the Christians. In Sri Lanka, people in the Tamil minority (comprised mostly of Hindus) feel that the Buddhist majority oppresses them. There’s also India’s caste system and its treatment of the Dalits (the untouchables in Hinduism); arguably history’s longest standing system of religiously motivated apartheid. Still, when it comes to oppression against religious minorities, the ones doing the oppressing seem to get a free pass—especially when it comes to persecution against Christians. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot in the media about the persecution of gays and women in Iran, hardly a peep about Iran’s brutal crackdown on Muslim converts to Christianity.

That’s my beef with the so-called “secular” media and, to a lesser extent; secular human rights advocates. Now for the bombshell directed at my own side. If you haven’t guessed already, I’m an evangelical Christian. I despise the label because it conjures up a lot of negative stereotypes, but for lack of a better term, that’s what I am. I think that many, if not most, Americans see evangelical Christians as either indifferent to or ignorant of human rights issues. I got a sense of this when I attended a local Amnesty International meeting a few months back. It was my first time there and the leader made a snide remark against “Jesus people” because she assumed that there couldn’t be anyone like me at the meeting.

I left the meeting feeling sad. I realized that somewhere, somehow, a lot of people got the impression that the more a person loves Jesus, the less that person’s going to care about human rights. I decided to test this impression by sending out an e-mail to hundreds of my evangelical friends asking them to sign a petition for the release of Aung Sun Suu Kyi, Burma’s leader of the democracy movement that has been unjustly imprisoned for the last 19 years for the “crime” of winning a democratic election. I received very few responses, but one response stood out. “I want to make sure this is actually from you and not some left-wing propaganda.” I don’t fault the person for doing his due diligence. I’m just saddened that such a clear-cut unambiguous issue had to be cast into terms of left verses right, liberal verses conservative. A genuine human rights issue was slain at the altar of the “culture war.”

So here’s my proposal. Many evangelical Christians like me would like to see secular media and human rights advocates put a greater emphasis on the vastly under-reported persecution of Christians worldwide. On the other hand, I sense that secular media and human rights advocates would like to see evangelical Christians like myself take a larger role on issues like nuclear disarmament, torture, women’s rights, racial discrimination, and the freeing of people that have been unjustly imprisoned because of their religion, political persuasion, and—yes—sexual orientation.

Frankly, I agree. I’d like to see my evangelical brothers and sisters play a larger role in human rights issues. Abortion and gay marriage will likely always be a stale mate, but that doesn’t mean that evangelicals and non-evangelicals can’t work together on a vast array of other human rights issues. Thankfully, there are organizations like Jim Wallis’s “Sojourners” and Ron Sider’s “Evangelicals for Social Action” that are ahead of the curve on this one. Unfortunately, the numbers aren’t large enough to change the current stereotype of evangelicals as that of depraved indifference to human rights issues. If both sides would broaden their agendas, remove the planks from their own eyes, and reach out to the other side, perhaps we could work together to make a better world.

Aaron D. Taylor is the author of “Alone with a Jihadist: A Biblical Response to Holy War.” Aaron can be contacted at http://www.aarondtaylor.com Follow Aaron on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aarondtaylor

Note to missionary critics. Religious freedom in Mauritania is a human rights issue

Mauritania is a land of striking beauty. With sand dunes lined against the sky, Bedouins riding camels in the countryside, and flying beetles that look like they come straight from the abyss of the Apocalypse; Mauritania is a land of extremes—extreme beauty, extreme hospitality, and lately, extreme religion. As the world mourned the death of Michael Jackson, another man went not so quietly into the night, though largely unnoticed by mainstream media.

On Tuesday, June 23rd 2009, an American Christian worker named Chris Leggett was gunned down by Al Qaeda for the alleged “crime” of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. To give you an idea of what kind of man Chris Legget was, the 39-year old native of Cleveland, Tennessee not only taught computer science in a low-class neighborhood in the capital city of Nouakchott, he also, according to the Cleveland Daily Banner, worked with the prison systems to train and equip women and young boys to re-enter society, directed a training center providing training in computer skills, sewing, and literacy, and oversaw a micro-loan program which fostered the growth of hundreds of small businesses.

Although the miniscule media coverage has been fairly straightforward, I was saddened to see some of the nasty comments on the Huffington Post when Ahmed Mohammed posted the Associated Press story on the site. Although a few of the comments unequivocally condemned Leggett’s murder for what it is, a cowardly act of violence motivated by extremists, far too many seemed to think that Leggett was somehow “asking for it” because of the nature of his work in a Muslim land, as if Chris Leggett somehow deserved to die because of his passion for sharing his faith.

One commenter wrote, “Well, you know, it is their country. You go walking around with arrogant disregard of their laws, you better be prepared to pay the consequences. Non-story.” Another commenter cut from the same cloth replied, “I agree. It doesn't take much intelligence for non-military Americans to keep out of these countries. You not only go there at your own risk - you ask for it.”

My beef isn’t so much with the Huffington Post (who likely has little control over what people comment on the site), but to the people who made those nasty comments (there were some that were far worse) I would like to say feel free to criticize Christian missionaries working in Muslims lands, but I hope you realize that you’re criticizing from a position of privilege. Many of you live in countries that allow you to choose your religious beliefs without fear of torture, imprisonment, or death. Hundreds of millions of Muslims live in countries that deny them that right. How do you know that out of the worlds’ roughly 1.2 billion Muslims, that some of them don’t want to hear another perspective?

Chris Leggett most likely wasn’t banging the Bible over anyone’s head, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few curious Muslims quietly asked him about his religious beliefs. After all, most Muslims I know—unlike most Westerners I know—like to discuss religion in every day conversation and enjoy hearing other people’s perspectives. If a few of these same Muslims through peaceful dialogue came to the conclusion that Chris’s beliefs were correct, where’s the crime in that? If Chris Leggett did break Mauritanian law, then it was an unjust law that he broke. Last time I checked, breaking unjust laws is called civil disobedience. Acts of civil disobedience have been crucial to every major advance in human rights.

As a matter of fact, there are hundreds of secret believers in Mauritania right now. Many of them have been abducted, tortured in horrific ways, and forced to name their fellow believers—while the Mauritanian government looks the other way. According to many persecution watchdogs, the persecution of Christians in Mauritania is particularly ferocious, but the same story can be found in countless other countries like Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Syria, and Pakistan. It’s time that the decent people of the world wake up to the fact that roughly a billion people live under governments that don’t allow them the freedom to obey their conscience in choosing their religious beliefs. The right to choose one’s religion is the most basic of human rights. After all, why should human rights apply to everyone except for Muslims?