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On two separate occasions, John Thomas, the general minister and president of the United Church of Christ, has shared a public venue with Imam Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society. (Here is Hugh Fitzgerald's piece on Bray.)
I met Bray when I was speaking in Boston a year or so ago. He sweet-talked me and the audience during the Question-and-Answer period with a smooth series of empty assertions, including a claim that he had never heard of the Islam that I had sketched out during my talk, which is tantamount to saying he never heard of Osama bin Laden, or Omar Bakri, or Abu Bakar Bashir or all the rest. He also promised me that soon, in the interests of common understanding and mutual good fellowship, he would arrange for me to visit a mosque and engage in friendly dialogue there. But in that, of course, Bray was strictly grandstanding for the benefit of the audience, showing the face of Islam as all sweet reason in the face of the evidence I had presented about jihad and Sharia supremacism. I never heard from Mahdi Bray again, and did not expect to -- for I suspect that Mahdi Bray knows that I know what he has said and done in the public sphere.
John Thomas, however, apparently does not. But he should.
In September 2005 he appeared on the same stage with Mahdi Bray at a rally protesting the Iraq war. Details here.
More recently, and more troubling, they co-authored a letter in support of workers rights that appeared in the Hartford Courant.
To the uninformed, this would appear to be nothing more than an interfaith effort to promote economic justice, but those who have paid any attention to Mahdi Bray's career have reason to wonder if John Thomas and the Christian denomination he leads are being used in an effort to legitimize and mainstream someone who has exhibited an indifference bordering on outright contempt for Jews.
An affidavit available here describes two troubling episodes in which Bray was involved. (Note that the plaintiffs' attorney is none other than the indomitable Debbie Schlussel.) These events have been widely reported.
"In October, 1998, Bray coordinated and led a Washington rally of 2,000 people, during which he played the tambourine as the crowd repeated, “[L]et’s all go into jihad, and throw stones at the face of the Jews.”
And:
"On December 22, 2000, Bray organized and spoke at a rally outside the White House, at which the emcee and crowd chanted responsively in Arabic, 'oh Jews, the Army of Muhammad is coming for you!'"
This Dec. 22, 2000 instance is reported in Steven Emerson's important book, American Jihad. The full quote in the book is "Khaybar, Khaybar oh Jews, the Army of Muhammad is coming for you!"
Khaybar was a city in Arabia of the Banu Nadir -- a Jewish tribe. The Muslim Prophet Muhammad attacked and conquered it in 628. The Jews there were massacred, enslaved, or made to pay heavy taxes (jizya) for the privilege of remaining in the area -- as I will detail in my book The Truth About Muhammad (coming this fall from Regnery Publishing). How Muhammad treated the Banu Nadir -- conquest and subjugation -- became a foundation of the dhimmi laws imposed on non-Muslims by Islamic law ever after. To play the tambourine while Khaybar is invoked in a laudatory manner is thus troublesome to say the least.
Just as troubling was another instance in which Bray raised his fist in support of laudatory statements of Hamas and Hezbollah. Details of this event, which took place in 2000 are available here.
Yes, these instances are several years old. Maybe Mahdi Bray doesn't feel this way anymore. But has he issued any public disavowal or denial of these events? Has John Thomas spoken to Bray about these issues?
Posted by Robert at June 2, 2006 6:47 AM
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John Thomas and other Christian and Jewish clerics who endulge in these interfaith events are fools, victims of wishful thinking. The whole undertaking of interfaith dialogue with Islam is a fools errand. What is needed is for this little charade to end. Muhammed and his religion are very bad.Muhammed is a pyscho-path, case closed. I don't see how anyone who has read first hand Islamic material can't see that.(As I have.) If these leaders haven't done that,then they have no-business, being in the infaith dialogue business.If they have and they see no problems they are have no standing as moral leaders and the brand of religion they peddle is as morally vile as the worst of Islam.They are in the same moral category as German Protestant Church leaders who handed Jewish background Christians under thier care over to the Nazis in WW2.Western Christianity it seems has become so much irrelevent, morally retarded, sentimental touchy, feely mush,which this whole dialogue thing is a symptom of. Both militant Islam and morally retarded Christianity are things humankind can do well enough without.
One thing that should be looked at in this particular case is the fact that John Thomas represents a very liberal mainline Protestant denomination. It is well known that these denominations are very anti-Israel and pro - Palestinian. It would be useful to know more about John Thomas and his views concerning Israel. Me thinks that he is probile an example of what Hugh calls an " Islamo-Christian" a category which is overfilled with members and leaders of liberal mainline Protestant churches.
( Full disclosure: I am seminarian for a mainline Church and could be get in serious career trouble for my views on Islam. I am considering a conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.)
Posted by: abdulalshirk![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 2, 2006 8:44 AM
The United Church of Christ is a mainline Protestant denomination that's only a step away from the Unitarian Universalist Association in their leftist social-political agenda. UCC, like the Presbyterian Church, which is divesting stocks in Israel, is yet another church which has sold out to Islamists.
Posted by: northernvirginiastan at June 2, 2006 8:47 AM
It is hard for many, not only John Thomas, to quite believe that the outward and outward affability of someone does not prevent that someone from wholeheartedly accepting, a belief-system that, aside from the Five Pillars of ritual, inculcates, as part of its Total Regulation of Life and Complete Explanation of the Universe, a clear division between Believers and Infidels.
Mahdi Bray is not someone who simply was born into Islam. A convert to it, his words and deeds (see above, and the link given above) suggest someone who enthusiastically promotes, and justifies, those aspects of Islam that some born into Islam are trying to ignore, trying not to have to confront.
The appointed or elected head of any organization cannot ignore the usefulness, to someone like Mahdi Bray, of having such a person's name associated. And that head must realize he has a duty of due diligence -- of finding out exactly what it is that is contained in the Qur'an and Hadith (and that means reading the Qur'an with understanding, repeatedly, and also comprehending the interpretive doctrine of "naskh" or abrogation, which essentially causes the far harsher, later verses to prevail over what softer ones exist.
Here's what John Thomas owes his flock. He owes them study of the figure of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil. He owes them a few weeks or perhaps a summer of uninterrupted reading of websites conducted by ex-Muslims, including www.faithfreedom.org, and www.secularislam.org. He owes them a reading of Ibn Warraq's essay on Islam and Fascism, which can be found by googling "Ibn Warraq" and "Islam and Fascism." He owes them a reading of the Calcutta Qur'an Petition. He should find out why 60-70 million Hindus were murdered by Muslin invaders over several centuries. He should read "The Dhimmi" and "Islam and Dhimmitude" and above all, given his position, his responsibitilities, his duties, "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam."
Then he might read "Why I Am Not a Muslim" and "Leaving Islam" by Ibn Warraq. He might read what Bishop Nazar-Ali in England has to say, or the reports of the Barnabas Fund on the destruction of churches and mass killings of Christians in the Moluccas. He could find out about what happened, and why, to the Bamiyan Buddhas, to Hindu temples all over India and a year ago, in Kuala Lumpur. He could find out what has happened to Hindus in Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and in Afghanistan under the Taliban. He could find out what happens to venerable churches and monasteries in Kosovo. He could find out, all about, the war of the Christians in Nigeria for Biafra, and he could read, thoroughly, the Ahiara Declaration of Col. Ojukwu in 1969, and his denuncation of the "jihad" by the northern Muslims -- and he could find out what Egyptian pilots did in that war. He could read about the Arab slave trade, that began far earlier, that claimed many more victims (because that slave trade specialized in seizing young black males who were castrated on the spot, with only 10% -- according to Jan Hogedoorn in "The Hideous Trade" -- surviving to arrive at the Islamic slave markets of the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey). He could do all these things, and many more.
And then, if he still likes the idea of associating his name with Mahdi Bray, who is presenting himself now in the guise of the promoter of "social justice" -- this whole business of Islam as "social justice" appeals to those who, economically marginal, are looking for a vehicle for their discontent, and since they know nothing of the role of slavery, at every level, as an institution in Islam (slavery cannot be outlawed within Islam; there never was a Muslim William Wilberforce; only outside pressure forced Muslim states to formally abolish slavery, with Saudi Arabia doing it as late as 1962; it continues, of course, in Mali, and the Sudan, and elsewhere, and the treatment of non-Arab workers in Saudi Arabia, including those Filipino, Thai, Indian workers, so ill-treated, abused by their masters in every way you can imagine (occasionally a few manage to escape and tell their tales, when their Saudi masters make the mistake of taking them with them to London or Florida or Virginia).
John Thomas has a task, all right. He owes himself, and his flock, the intense study both of the texts of Islam, and of the history of Islamic Jihad-conquest, and subjugation of non-Muslims of every kind -- Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians (where are those Zoroastrians? What happened to them? Why are there now so few?), Hindus, Buddhists, and others.
"Whereof we do not know, thereof we should not speak." He may think he did not speak about Islam. But in allowing Mahdi Bray to link his name with Thomas's, he has promoted, unwittingly, the man, Bray, and his cause, Da'wa.
Islam has nothing to do with "social justice" -- just look at the distribution of wealth and power in every single Muslim country, starting with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It is not an accident that only one Muslim country has had something like democracy, tempered by coups, and that is Turkey, the Turkey in which Kemal Ataturk systematically constrained Islam from the 1920s on, and where the cult of Ataturk replaced the cult of Muhammad.
Thomas owes himself, and his flock, a study of Muhammad -- he should read Sir William Muir, Tor Andrae, Arthur Jeffery. He should read "The Quest for the Historical Muhammad," and "The Legacy of Jihad" -- anthologies of scholarly writing by students of Islam.
He should listen to Ludwig. He should be wary, and in the end beware, of smiling, plausible Mahdi Bray.
But if he wants to start right now, why doesn't he start with the recent book by Ayaan Hirsi Ali? In fact, why doesn't he make it a a point to talk to Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Azam Kamguian, Irfan Khawaja, and all the other highly articulate defectors from Islam, who can tell him a thing -- or two.
Posted by: Hugh at June 2, 2006 8:50 AM
I think Hugh's last comment is a keeper and I will add it to my burgeoning file of intellectual ammunition for those discussions that will crop up around the dinner table this summer.
Perhaps Regnery would publish a compilation of Hugh's work. I'd certainly purchase a copy or two.
Posted by: eve_anne_gelical at June 2, 2006 10:04 AM
Yes, Robert, he does. The United Church of Christ is a consumer-driven body which exists to serve those who do not want to bother with all the moral scruples of real Christian churches, but still want the fun of meeting on Sundays and go through the forms of a Christian community. It is, roughly speaking, to evangelicalism what ECUSA is to Catholicism: an imitation that keeps the forms but deliberately loses the substance, in the name of a misunderstood and facile universalism. These people are always the sworn supporters of all Muslim causes; perhaps because the thought of the Jewish origin of Christianity, with all its emphasis on law, prohibition, and right behaviour, makes them rather ill at ease.
Posted by: Paolo at June 2, 2006 10:46 AM
cosmicAvenger: they will never admit that they ever did anything wrong. I guess that Laban is going to be praised for smoking out those hate-ridden Islamophobes from under their tolerant disguises. And I have no doubt that a number of people will be found in the Western left to make the same reasoning.
Posted by: Paolo at June 2, 2006 10:48 AM
Can we discuss things without the Middle School language? I am very glad that Danish clerics are taking their stand against Islamic clerics, and it is important work. However, people need to remember that people look at this board and see the postings. This is an opportunity for people to make serious arguments and comments. If outsiders see what appears to be nothing more than "belching" in words, they will be turned off.
Posted by: Worry at June 2, 2006 10:59 AM
Will the Muslims not continue to say that "Jesus" is a minor prophet, one of lesser stature than Mohammad, who never died on the cross, never returned after conquering Death, and never said that "it is not what goes into a person's mouth, but what comes out of it than renders them 'unclean'" [which renders Islam's dietary/'sabbath' manias fallacious]?
If Muslims will not give up these tenets of their "faith", then what is there to such "interfaith dialogues"?
A One Way Street is what Islam preaches.
All that these naive 'Christian' folks will gain, by entering the Islamic cul de sac, is to end up smashed against the adamantine dogma of the pedophile "prophet" Mohammad.
I hope their have ecumenical airbags in their hybrid "vehicles".
(Three cheers for the Danish pastors, who at least seem to have read the New Testament and the Koran... for a refreshing change.)
Posted by: profitsbeard at June 2, 2006 11:17 AM
In the mind of John Thomas a "dangerous fundamentalist" is a Christian who actually believes the Nicene Creed is true. Muslims are Third World people: the ones we are supposed to serve.
Posted by: Malta_1565 at June 2, 2006 12:03 PM
MT 5:13 "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
What useful purpose does this John Thomas serve?
Posted by: Ozi_bloke at June 2, 2006 10:16 PM
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