Answering Islam W/@TheAlMaidahInitiative

Hey everyone, the following conversation is a continuation of a series we did last year with a good friend

James Raymond It was called Muhammad and the origins of Islam. This is a continuation of that series entitled answering

Islam Recorded all the same day. This is gonna be a three -part series. We're gonna be talking about Really how to understand

Islam given the current geopolitical climate. This was recorded last year

So we hope you'll find this as a fascinating conversation Additionally on top of having

James in the studio if you remember when he was on we have another guest I bars who is really fascinating to talk to him as he is somebody who is a former

Muslim who grew up in Turkey Now Christian have very unique perspective So I hope you really enjoy the next three parts of this series and as a reminder

Cultish here is a 100 % crowdfunded ministry It's because of her supporters like you

Who've been able to generously give and help us out the last few months that we've been able to have this content come out to You on a weekly basis and to make sure that everything is accessible to you for free without a paywall

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Consider giving generously as we want to be able to continue our mission to be able to give you resources to impact

The kingdom of the Colts in this case give you resources on Answering Islam so all that being said enjoy this upcoming three -part series

All right, welcome back ladies and gentlemen to cultish. My name is Jeremiah Roberts one of the co -hosts here joined by Andrew once again

Thanks for joining us back man Absolutely, man excited to be here. It's gonna be a blast awesome

We're back with our good friend James who gave us a good three -part linear overview of the kind of this historical linear

Timeline cover India Indiana Jones timeline going here and there and everywhere just talking about how

Islam came to where it was today Good to have you back my friend. Thank you still haven't changed my clothes. Yes.

I know I know I Yeah, I lost my team my sweatshirt. So definitely the studio always gets warmer as it progresses throughout the day

So Andrew, I noticed you're without a sweatshirt now, too So we're definitely thin out as much as we can We're also joined by your friend

I bro who came along with you good to have you good to have you here Awesome man, so we are the first three part of our series.

We kind of gave just a historical Timeline is of Islam and really the trajectory of where we are headed is to really talk about What it's like to dialogue and engage in the

Muslim world. So we figure you know, we're talking yesterday I thought hey, you know what? Let's let's bring you in to think you'd be a great valuable contribution to this conversation so just tell everyone just a little bit about yourself your background and And what this conversation means about you why is this whole

Conversation important to you. So connective tissue to the last episode, right? We talked about the

Mongol invasions We talked about the Ottoman Empire the modern nation -state of Turkey and then everything that's happened in the

Muslim world for the last hundred years including Afghanistan and I was represents all of that to some capacity

What's awesome? That's quite a spotlight. Thank you. I mean look at him. He looks like Kublai Khan with a modern haircut

Marco Polo series, that's right So a little bit about myself

I am a Turkish believer. I was born in Turkey in 1974 my father is an

Afghan from Northern Afghanistan. He's in Uzbek. My father was a

Muslim Poet he he wrote poetry to inspire the freedom fighters in During the

Soviets and and during the attacks of the Taliban to inspire people to keep fighting when he

Started doing his political activity. He got on the radar of the king of Afghanistan. His name was Zahir Shah and My father eventually had a price tag on his head

So he had to leave in the middle of the night with a couple of his friends and they walked across the mountains of Pakistan Tried to get asylum in Pakistan and then

Iran and then eventually in Turkey where he met my mother became a

Turkish citizen, but in the mid 70s, my my country was

Trying to be destabilized by the Soviets So my dad said

I've already been through enough political turmoil in my life, and I I don't want to go through this again I'm gonna move my kids somewhere.

So we we he went and looked at France Germany in the United States, but everybody knows that you know, the streets in America are paved with gold, right?

It was a place he wanted to go to. Yeah, and You know, that's where we landed.

We landed in New Jersey. I grew up a Muslim kid around Italians and Italian Catholics and Irish Catholics and Hispanics and and Haitians And we never really fit in really anywhere

You know, we ate on the floor and people had you know Normal people sit at a table, right?

We ate at a floor and the rug was hanging on the wall and as I grew up I Kind of started coming into conflict with Islam.

First of all, because my my friends were not Muslim. I didn't have my people I didn't have my community around me.

We were the only Muslim family around and as I got older I experienced a

Kind of hypocrisy from people who said that they were Muslim now my father's political following some of them followed him over to the

United States and started coalescing around him And we would house them for the weekend in our home.

And I remember there was one time where My my mother who hosted all these people who took care of them

You know a hand and foot bringing them tea and food and doing all the dishes and all the cooking Came to them after they had prayed and Brought them tea and when when she walked out of the room you know, they started making fun of her because she was

Turkish and she didn't speak Farsi and I think that was like a flashpoint moment for myself because I remember looking at that moment and being like if that's

Islam I don't want to have anything to do with it I slowly started this distance myself from from that and I started doing what other 16 year olds do you know 14 15 16 year olds do

I started doing drugs, so I started hanging out with You know the burnouts and and I was hanging out with musicians.

I was a very very bad musician And I started, you know

Doing things that I shouldn't have done and I'm not very good at those things. I was always getting caught So by the time

I was 23 years old, I was facing some steep consequences for my actions

And I remember I had my moment of truth I was handcuffed to a bench in the Trenton City lockup next to a

Transvestite prostitute who was looking at me and licking his lips and I you know, they don't handcuff you behind your back, right?

They handcuff you underneath the bench so I was just so high and coming out of it and then

I'd come to and I'd look and This guy was you know staring at me and like I like to tell people that's when

I started calling upon the name of the Lord I Started looking at my choices.

I got out. They released me on my own recognizance and then I wound up Walking out of that that police precinct and thinking that I couldn't stop

I Couldn't stop doing the things that I that I was doing and I remember asking God for help

And that kind of opened a spiritual journey for me where I started looking at different world religions

I looked I have a tattoo on my arm I have a tattoo on my arm of a yin -yang in the shape of a

Sun and that's kind of sums up The religion I had created for myself. I call it transcendental pharmaceutical ism

Right a little bit of drugs and some Eastern philosophy and a whole lot of hippie stuff and Led Zeppelin so After I was, you know going through this process started evaluating world religions and and where I landed again

Was I believed in a God I believed in one God. I didn't believe in praying my ancestors.

I didn't believe in multiple gods After all, who was I talking to when

I got out of the jail cell. Mm -hmm, and then in my search I Talked to my dad.

My dad was very knowledgeable and well connected and I told him everything that I was going through and then

I Asked him spiritual questions about Islam as well But if you understand Islam, you understand that, you know, my dad who knew a lot about Islam Was not going to answer my questions.

He wanted me to go to an imam and He knew people so he was gonna try and get me trained as an imam and I was on board with this

I thought this was a great idea because you know one it provides structure to it's gonna answer all my questions

And you know, it's a path right in the middle of chaos. We all want paths and You know one day

I'm gonna write a book titled a funny thing happened on the way to the mosque Because that was my path a musician that I was working with his girlfriend introduced me to her friend who was a born -again

Christian And long story short She invited me to church and I said sure let's go

And that church wound up being a Messianic synagogue in Philadelphia, and I don't know if you know your audience is familiar with Messianic synagogues

They're Jews that believe in Jesus, but worship in a Jewish context in a Jewish way So when you walk into a

Messianic synagogue, like I did that night people are wearing prayer shawls But it's kind of charismatic worship and they're dancing

And blowing shofars and everything else like that. And it's just it's pretty wild and for me.

It was just a cultural experience And then the rabbi gets up and starts giving a sermon and I just literally was staring at the carpet back in 1997

I didn't have a cell phone And During the message the rabbi said one line he said

Saddam wants to destroy Tel Aviv, but Yeshua won't let him do that and I remember thinking who's

Yeshua? Yeshua if you don't know is the Hebrew name for Jesus and It was like I was sitting there and it was like the lights came on around me and This thick powerful presence drew close to me and it was so thick

I couldn't lift my head and I heard him clearly say I'm Yeshua and I didn't say anything.

There wasn't like a like a like an altar call or anything like that I just remember thinking I'm coming like this was what

I was looking for And then after the service, you know I just sat there the rest of the time pondering

After the service their young people told us about another messianic congregation closer to me that was in Philadelphia.

I was in New Jersey And I went there two weeks later and I wound up staying for 15 years And then you know,

I was involved in ministry. I was a youth pastor there for a long time and then I moved to Seattle with my wife and then three children and I went into ministry with a friend of mine who runs a messianic synagogue in North Seattle and He hired me to be his assistant rabbi

Yeah Bars, let's look. Well, that's first of all, I've got the goosies when you said that it was like it was

Yeshua He's like I'm Yeshua. I gave me the goosies, man I was getting goosebumps there when you said that backing up to um when you were young growing up What did you think about Jesus?

Were you ever taught didn't did anyone ever talk to you? so Jesus a funny funny thing is

I went to Catholic school my parents had a delicatessen in Princeton and it was right across the street from the deli so my parents sent me to Catholic school for five years and It didn't make any sense right to me because everyone else got to participate in Catholicism except for me

They made me sit there So we'd go to mass and everybody would go up for communion and everything like that and me and the other you know

Hindu kid would sit there and twiddle our thumbs And I would just remember staring at this big statue of this guy on a cross, you know in this room

And it's not a knock against Catholics. They were all very nice It just wasn't what I was being taught at home

And then, you know, there were several instances where I would go home and my father would essentially deprogram me

So I would tell him about what I learned in school and then he would say well, you're not you're not, you know

Catholic You're Muslim. You're Turkish. It's your identity This is this is what

Turks believe and you know, he would essentially just take Jesus out of the equation

Wow yeah, um, so just just some things to maybe they need to give some connective tissue of my own is that you know in our

Last series you're kind of giving some syncretistic Talking about the syncretistic involvement of just Muslim as Islam as a whole

Like you are like one microcosm and just a whole Group or segment what

I'd want to call it just people all throughout the world who have you know An underlying worldview ideology belief system that like need to be reached in this in this demographic

So like with all that you see like with all that with all your background

And James you could probably jump in here in a second with all your background and given a quick summary of of all

That you know and have been through like what do you think is most important about what James is doing? I think what we're doing is measurable because Christians don't understand

Islam and Muslims don't understand Christianity. There is a huge amount of informational discrepancy between them

You know my my parents and a lot of the Muslims I grew up interacting around just had a conception of the

West, right? it was a conception that all Americans are Christians and therefore all

Americans are You know godless because they might say that they're

Christians But look at the way they live look at the things that they do look at look at you know I don't know.

Look at the wars in the Middle East. Look at all of those things and it just became like a straw man argument for them it was easy for them to be able to deflect and not have to get into things because The Quran was essentially like giving them permission their

Islam was essentially giving them permission to just say well, you know They're not they weren't saying they were infidels, but it's an undercurrent

Yeah, and I think what we do And what James is, you know Kind of brought about by his efforts with Almeida is is to kind of bridge this gap like bring people to the table have conversations the stuff we produce is fantastic and Honestly, it's taught me a lot and I grew up Muslim, right?

Maybe you could both answer this give your own thoughts in this could you mention that the both both tribes don't understand each other

They misunderstand each other. So from both your perspective, what's the biggest thing that Christians that misunderstand about Islam?

And what are the biggest things that Muslims misunderstand about Christianity? Yeah, so I think the things that Christians generally misunderstand about Islam is

I think we're used to thinking in terms of Sola scriptura and we're used to thinking in terms of a conservative liberal spectrum

Right, so our experience in church is yeah sure you have some different denominations but in general you either believe the

Bible or you don't and The people who believe the Bible look a lot like each other even if you have some, you know

John MacArthur's and Jeff Durbin's and you know, and some, you know, some people who are more charismatic right in general

We kind of believe in the same thing and the same causes and stuff like that. Yeah, and then there's the Liberals who you know fly rainbow flags and have a different course, right?

So we're used to thinking in that terms that you if you believe the book Then you do you look like this if you don't believe the book you look like this

Stereotyping. Yeah. Yeah, and In general that works in Christianity because the source material is, you know concise it's

Accessible and if you're gonna take it all seriously, it's not like it, you know You read three chapters of the Bible a day. You can have read it in a year

Yeah in Islam, it really isn't like that because it's not a solar script or a religion

Mm -hmm. It doesn't believe it isn't I mean, we know like a guy who believes in the Quran as the kind of This the sort of final authority in practice.

We know one of them. He's great. We love him, right? But that's not how most people think about it Most people it's much more like Roman Catholicism but lacking a pope in a lot of ways

Yeah, so it's this complicated web of people and traditions and history that you know people relate to so We don't understand the complexity of the different points of view here

So we think so the West has tended to think yeah, Osama bin Laden Conservative Muslim your neighbor who is nice is a liberal

Muslim because if they were conservative they'd be doing the suicide bombings and stuff Right. All right, that's that's that's kind of a misconception on the

Christian side It's not as bad as it was now and say like 2003, but that's still that's still there to some extent and then you know,

I think in general the straw man we often make about other religions is We think is we think of Christianity versus other religions as faith versus works, right?

But no other religion out there believes in salvation through works alone It's a it's a mix of you know faith and good deeds they get a person's power.

Yeah, so Muslims believe that God is merciful. They believe they have to rely on that mercy

But they But there's there's the works are a huge part of it, too Like, you know, most other religions are so I think it's just an unnuanced idea

Yeah, and you take the average Americans idea of what Islam is You can find a you can find that it's true in one case or another

But it's definitely not like universally applicable, yeah, and then conversely I think

People in the Middle East think of Christianity as either Roman Catholicism or MTV So they think of it as this, you know huge sort of formal, you know thing and Or they think of it as something with with no rules at all, which is just you know

You know wild sex all the time, right? You believe in a God who slept with Mary and produced a demigod and now you're all sleeping with each other makes perfect sense

Kind of thing, right? That's the kind of that's the general way

So in general what Muslims think of Christians though is they think there were nice people with completely incoherent ideas, right?

No, that's good. And what about your and what's your perspective to like the coin saw it bounce off of him?

Like what do you think are the biggest? Misunderstandings both sides have of each other. I think that Islam particularly in the

Middle East tends to view Christianity through a political realm political lens, right so A lot of the things that have happened particularly with the

West like I guess you would from their perspective from the Muslim perspective you would say like kind of meddling right interfering or whatever and That's not what

Christians do That's not what Christians are supposed to do. So Essentially, it becomes a game of caricatures, right?

Like what's the caricature of the person in the West? That makes it easier for me to live over here in the

East and then what's the character caricature of the person in? The East who makes it easier for me to understand what they're doing over here in the

West so for instance if you see a person who's

If I tell people that my father is from Afghanistan, you know They automatically think that my dad wore a big turban and had a big bushy beard

You know and and his wife like had a head covering or you couldn't see her face at all, right?

And that's not at all what he was like, that's not at all what my family was like, you know So when you explain to people, you know when you're a kid for instance when you're

Muslim But then also in light of other things that have happened. So in the 80s there was the bombing in Lebanon and I told a

Christian soldier American soldier that I was a Muslim and he freaked out on me Because he was like my friends died over there.

Yeah, you know like Muslims are trying to kill Americans, you know And and I mean was my mom trying to kill you like Yeah, no was my was my dad trying to kill you.

We lived three doors down from this other family We never tried to kill them. Yeah And I find that when

I go to the Middle East when I visit my mother there it's the same problem, right It's again a game of caricatures, right?

Like this is what the West operates. Like this is what Americans think this is what Israelis think and you know the more you go into I guess you would say like Conservative Islamic territory in the

Middle East the worse the caricature gets What was it like for you experiencing going through and processing 9 -11?

So I was a believer already But while I was growing up My father being politically active just had all of these publications lying around and occasionally there would be some in English and being my dad's essentially like Translator of his thoughts into English, you know, whether it was the electric bill or a letter.

He wanted to write to somebody Some of it was in English and I'd read about this guy named

Osama bin Laden who was Practicing state -sponsored terrorism and how you know elements in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were funding him and You know when 9 -11 happened

I wasn't I was shocked just like everybody like the way it happened and everything else like that But when people started associating it with Osama bin

Laden for me, it was more like The gears just finally clicked like oh, yeah,

I've heard about this before This is the guy who was active in Afghanistan This is the guy who you know, my father would like talk about and I'd be like, yeah, whatever dad, you know

So processing that was hard and then you know, I was working in a maintenance organization at a university on the

East Coast and I kind of my friends started to distance from me because of my like my

Spiritual and you know national background before I became a believer And it was just kind of like this lonely period

I remember It's a good thing. I had my congregation. Yeah, you know, they loved me and That never happened, but my parents were super afraid of what was going on I remember leaving work that day to go be with my family.

I called my mom. She was crying. My father didn't say anything and You know,

I had to just be the one that was there as a believer assuring them that you know God's in control.

He loves you. You know, it was actually a moment where I was able to talk to them a little bit about the gospel But in the long run, you know

Dealing with it dealing with 9 -eleven and living on the East Coast and I was dating a girl who lived in Nutley, New Jersey and I would drive from New Jersey, you know past Manhattan on the outside on the

New Jersey Turnpike and I just watched this fire It was smoke coming up and and then it was replaced by lights going up to the sky

And it was something that I just kept on thinking about the conflict Between how

I was raised and where I was then. Yeah Andrew do it before you on the sex site next to him.

Do you have any thoughts or questions you want to ask? Yeah, I was wondering about like your relationship with your parents after you came to Christ.

Like what was that like? It was it was strained

They didn't like that. I got saved and they really didn't like that. I got saved around Jews And they got really conspiratorial about it.

I Had to move out. I was living with them when it happened I had to move out for a couple years and just kind of like you know

Figure out who I was what my identity was in Christ, you know learn to have a quiet time without you know

My dad standing over me going, you know, that's a false religion. You shouldn't do that I mean he deprogrammed me when

I was young. I'm sure he thought that he could deprogram me when I was older. Yeah Yeah, um, so we're also we're really making the segment and this is all been so great so far

I really appreciate everyone's contributions so far We're really gonna be focusing in on just the Islamic sources and how the average

Muslim relates to those I know for me, like I said, you speak of September 11th. A lot of things we're gonna talk about I associated with You know 9 -11 and the whole geopolitical world

But again, these sources have the year like thousands of years of history as you we talked about in the previous episode

But um, what's a good starting point to really talk about that? Do you want to maybe add some webbing in here about?

That that modern Muslims when alone because this is a bit an area of like defining terms Really, you know bridging the gap as far as like dialogue goes like what do you think is the best starting point for all this?

For people who can understand that Well yeah that's something we need to make sure we have a lot of time for But as far as I wanted one thing is a helpful case study here we're talking about Osama bin

Laden and 9 -11 and stuff like that is understanding like How Osama bin

Laden's position? Exists right because it's not you don't just open up the

Quran It says you know when your enemies get too powerful crash a plane into their buildings, right? Right. There's no skyscrapers

There's no airplanes when the Islamic source materials are produced But what someone like Osama bin

Laden is gonna do and this comes through an interpretive tradition called It's from starts with Ibn Hanbal who he talked about like two episodes ago

Then a guy called Ibn Tamir who is a Muslim during the Mongol invasions then the guy called

Syed Qutb who starts a movement during the Muslim Brotherhood times and basically their thinking is that Most conservative

Muslims would believe that it's inappropriate to wage jihad And the word jihad means struggle, right?

It doesn't inherently the word doesn't necessarily mean fighting it could mean in a struggle as well in the Islamic sources

It means armed fighting though. You read the book of jihad in Sahih Muslim. It means it's a book about warfare but most conservative

Muslims don't believe it's legitimate to Fight a holy war unless you have a caliph

Unless it's defensive So basically what these scholars like Syed Qutb and Ayman al -Zawahiri and then

Osama bin Laden did Was they kind of built their case like this? Yes, correct.

You cannot wage jihad without a caliph However, if the Quran says if somebody is making mischief in Muslim lands then you can fight them and What could be more mischievous than having?

American boots in American military bases in Arabia near the holy cities of Mecca and Medina This is you know, this is an invasion.

This is This is territory and the reason America was there by the way was to stop Saddam Hussein from invading

Kuwait Nevertheless that put us there to protect our interests So they saw this as you know

Provocation and as a reason that our blood was legitimate for them. They had a righteous quest So So then okay, but still in Islam generally that people frown upon killing civilians in warfare

So, how do you justify that and what they did is they took a verse from a hadith from Sahih al -Bukhari which says that the

Muslim the person who funds a Muslim warrior while he's on jihad gets the same reward as the soldier himself

So if the Muslim Benefactor gets the same reward as the

Muslim warrior then the American taxpayer who funds the mischief in the

Muslim lands through their taxes in the US military is therefore a legitimate target for the

Muslim for the for jihad Right. Hmm, so you can see that they're making their case by appealing to several principles, but you can also see how a

Conservative thoughtful Muslim could argue with all of those and say, okay, that's not the right equivalent This isn't exactly how this should be happening and You know, yes, that's what that's how you can start to see the nature of how people have to relate to these things

In order to make their case So it's just you're much more complicated than people want it to be.

Yeah, it's also Yeah Yeah Because earlier

I could have heard you guys wrong We were talking about one person specifically will hold the

Quran is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for them That's their objective standard. Yeah, the majority of people that are in Islam don't hold that so how can they have a sole objective standard to say it's not correct or it is correct in terms of Let's say attacking taxpayer citizens.

How do they have any form of Moral objective standard to say that this is definitively

Islam if the Quran is not the sole infallible rules faith in practice Well, here's the thing and we're getting and we're getting back to the last hundred years again at one point

The system depended on having a government with one central figure who could say that kind of thing

Right, he could say I am the caliph. I represent all Muslims. You do not represent

Islam. Stop doing that and Now there's a power vacuum and everybody's trying to fill it

So without that sort of central leadership structure You have all these different types of scholars drawing different things from the different Islamic sources kind of constructing different versions of Islam and the only real point of appeal is

The scholars well our scholars say this well our scholars say this. Well, those aren't the real scholars No, those aren't the real scholars, right?

You just you're in this You know a kind of infinite cycle of arguing about human authority and that's kind of one of the central problems in the

Islamic world today Hmm. Hmm. I think it's also important to understand that where Islam and radical jihadism are today didn't happen in a bubble right like it was, you know the tactics are inspired by Political revolutions that have happened in the last hundred years like Rhodesia for instance or You know what the the track that the

PLO took and then what the track that Hamas took and what their Justifications were and then how that turned into you know

What al -qaeda did and then now what Isis has done in other groups so fun fact the foot is not a fun fact

It's a horrible fact that the first suicide bombers In the

Middle East were organized not by radical Muslims, but by a atheist

Japanese communist woman What inspired by the kamikazes in the

Japan using the Second World War? Wow, what's what was the purpose? Well, so basically

If you really look at the into the origins of kind of Israel and Palestine, it doesn't start as a religious conflict

It really starts in some ways is almost like a leftist civil war So all of the early

Israelis were you know, mostly kind of very very socialist kind of borderline Communist and most of them like Ben Geron, for example, the first Prime Minister of Israel didn't believe in a god

So or he's a Most agnostic right and he was you know, left -wing.

It was very socialist And a lot of the early resistance to them were different Socialists who were taking up the sort of Palestinian cause as part of their cause.

It's only later that both the Palestinian and Israeli population start getting more, you know religious.

So that's why the Palestinian cause actually been a left -wing cause longer than it's been a

Muslim cause in some ways at least at least not with that kind of intensity And so you have all sorts of people getting in there so if you've ever seen the movie, you know 12 days and in Tebbi There's a flight hijacked from Israel and taken to Uganda by I mean the people that did that were

German communists. Hmm. So there's always been this kind of very complicated connective tissue there that You know, you read

Osama bin Laden. There's there's there's some spring things of Karl Marx in there, too Yeah, well, that's where the marriage of tactics happens, right when you take a left -wing, you know a hard like leftist tactic like terrorism and then, you know kind of Add your own flavor to it, right and then gradually like you were talking about it evolves into a religious cause and not a spiritual

Cause yeah, I'm sorry religious cause and not a political, right? How does so with everything we've discussed so far in this episode?

What is how does Like how does that help in you know?

Make creating relatability to the Muslims you've been in dialogue with because I mean obviously this is their world, too

So they have knowledge of it and I think that's I'm assuming that's probably very helpful though, right?

Yeah, it is helpful. And I think Like being able to be fluent and this stuff is great.

But I think what's Almost as helpful with much less work is just having the mind that understands that it's a complicated web

Yeah And allowing place for the individual in front of you to be able to express their own place in that Rather than you assigning them a place to that, right?

yeah, and and having some sort of category of this and you know, if you're somebody who's interested and Nuanced right that gives you so much space to make friends with people from these cultures.

Yeah Yeah, when I talk to my relatives about it It's important to remember that, you know, we disagree on a lot of things but at the core of it we love each other

You know, and if I'm called to be a Christian, I'm called to love everybody right and to show them the love of God Regardless of how

I'm treated right or what they think of my opinions And then that was you know a challenge, but it's also exactly what

God wants me to do And I think you know when we're reaching out to Muslims I have strong feelings about you know,

Hamas and and and Gaza and everything particularly being in a messianic synagogue for so long and we were recently having a conversation with a

Palestinian and we were trying to help this person find a job and During the conversation while I'm like working my phones and emailing all my friends and you know, you have anything for this person the conversation turned to Israel and Gaza and You know that person's like perspective that you know to my

Jewish friends would be very hurtful And you know, you have to soldier through those moments

When you find disagreement with people and remember what's important, right? There's a person across from you who was looking for hope and What they've been fed is whatever the world feeds them

And whatever, you know, they grew up in about what reality is But we know as Christians that our reality is hope what we're what we're called to do is believe in this everlasting hope that comes from the

Son of God and having a relationship with him and Understanding that he's the one who's going to come and fix this

And you know kind of trying to make sure that you land in that place and then Transmitting that to someone else regardless of whatever the dynamic is

Yeah Is there a distinction between in just both of your interactions between you might call it cultural

Muslims people are just Muslims because that's the Peter just they raised up one up in versus Muslims who are familiar with recite how the

Quran memorized and really follow The five pillars go to go to the you know Friday Friday to the mosque

Like is there a distinction between the two? Yeah, you've observed for sure. There is a big distinction between the two some people take it really seriously and they're really striving to kind of you know base their life on the

Quran and the Sunnah that you know traditions about Muhammad and There are some people who are trying to appear that way and there are some people who are sort of more cultural

Muslims But the thing is with the more cultural Muslims is that there's not quite as hard a distinction there between then there is between Christians and cultural

Christians, right? So the three of us would look some look at somebody who goes to church for Christmas you know never really praise and you know, just you know acts

Christian at family gatherings our Category for that person is a non -christian right most likely

But in Islam That person wouldn't be perceived as a non -muslim they just be perceived as a sort of like, you know weak

Muslim and but what you'll find is that a lot of sort of cultural Muslims you meet kind of have this sense of Yeah at one one day

I should be more religious But I don't want to do it now because I don't want to lose my individuality in my own personal dreams

But one day when I'm older Then I'm really gonna start focusing in on the religion and learning it because it'll ultimately be good for me

But it just feels a kind of contradiction for the things I want now Yeah, and Islam kind of you know allows for that category for several reasons

One is that hell is temporary for Muslims in Islam, right? So you could go to hell for a while, but then eventually get out.

Yeah, I would be one of those As long as you truly are Muslim, then you should in theory will be okay eventually.

Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? I Mean, I think you know, I was just having a conversation with another

Turkish believer About How Islam has become politicized in a country like Turkey, right that is full of that kind of Muslim Muslims in Turkey a lot of them, you know have never read the

Quran. It's all cultural You know, the country was founded on secularism but Islam is definitely the religion of the people there and how that gets leveraged and and what happens when that Political Islam political cultural

Islam gets leveraged over a bunch of people and how it kind of drives them to fear, right? They wind up fearing the nations outside of them

Actually Turkey today kind of reminds me of Germany, you know prior to World War two There's there's a lot of people who are being misinformed and being fed, you know, this kind of nationalistic

You know in Germany was Christianity, but it's a nationalistic Islam Yeah, and I think that that's what winds up happening, you know, people are viewing it.

Whatever filter is the loudest Whatever voices are the loudest in the Muslim world that are speaking to them are the ones that they're buying into And in a secular, you know, like I grew up a secular

Muslim my parents My mother is definitely a secular Muslim. My father wasn't but you know

The the hardest part is dealing with the lack of Reliable information and the ability to transmit to them reliable information

Andrew do you have any questions or what comes to mind? Yeah, I'm just thinking about in terms of having conversations with our our

Muslim neighbors In in what ways would you guys find would be the most beneficial?

Way to start a conversation Would it just be really just talking to them like a normal person and just trying to understand where they're coming from And where they're at and then leveraging your conversation about Jesus in that way

Yeah, I mean if you're a normal person that works fine All right, we're done

Um, I like basically I think what I'm trying to do when I meet with anybody from any worldview is

Just kind of get to understand them as an individual. So if somebody tells me they're Muslim, I want to know things like okay

Where did you grow up? Where did you get your information about Islam from have you taken this seriously your entire life?

Do you take it seriously now? Are you you know and Where's your information coming from?

Like that's one of the first things I'm trying to kind of figure out with someone, right? I was why is that so important for the information part because I know you're just saying that to you

I bar about information Why is that really important? Well, we're gonna get like really into that in the next segment here but basically again as you've seen through all these sort of sects of Islam and As we've been talking about how we don't have like a sort of central authority

Not even the Quran and we'll explain why that is Later that you you kind of have to have people who can kind of like organize this for you to some capacity

It's very difficult to go in by yourself with the Quran and say okay, I this is this is Islam as I understand it

So it kind of almost forces you to rely on external sources So knowing where someone's getting their information from is going to tell you a lot about a person

So if somebody says yeah, I read the Quran I recite in Arabic I study in my own language and I go through you know, five

Hadith a day online And I go to this the mosque and I listen to the

Friday sermons They're gonna have something that's a little bit more historically Orthodox than somebody who says yeah,

I learned everything from my dad Probably. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I Kind of tend to think as an answer to your information question that we live in an age of information manipulation and I Feel like you know, take the

Quran for instance, right it took the resurrection of Jesus and and Made it into a

Gnostic heresy You know, it took out the fact that he was the Son of God. So the information has a different starting point, right?

So when you want to talk to them about Jesus They have a different starting point than say like a secular

Jew, right who just believes maybe that he was Jewish And you got to kind of find the spot where you can have that conversation

I mean my experience is a little different for me because I Used to be Muslim and when

I tell them I was I'm not I wasn't I'm not a Muslim anymore The more religious they are the more it kind of shuts the conversation down I tend to think that you know as Christians what

I've noticed is Muslims watch the way you act So you can tell them that you're a

Christian you can say that, you know I go to church every weekend and and my kids read

Bible stories and everything else like that But if they see you out there, you know Getting hammered all the time or know that you're cheating on your wife or something like that They're gonna discount everything you say now that doesn't mean that you have to be a perfect person to approach a

Muslim but you have to have it in the back of your mind that They're going to be looking at your actions and then they'll evaluate your words, right?

No, that's no No, that definitely makes sense, especially, you know, how relational you know, that culture is just even even from my experiences

When it comes to even two and this is maybe maybe we could this so we can always we can unpack this

But like how familiar you said a lot of Christians are not familiar the Quran, but it also cuts both ways

Yeah, I've also have a good amount of even times We're talking about Islamic sources and how the average Muslim relates to them

There's also a lot of Muslims who aren't really that familiar that as well, too It's just sort of something they know that's just there

Yeah, yeah, correct and even somebody who's serious about Islam Generally is gonna isn't gonna have a very like systematic understanding of the

Quran either Because it's not the way they've been trained for the most part so in general what the average

Muslim is Told is that you The individual are not qualified to understand the

Quran and the Islamic sources properly so what you need to do is find somebody who has studied it properly and Learn from that person

Proper hadith science Yeah Proper hadith science for somebody who studied proper hadith science because you're you you're not qualified to understand all this

Your level of Arabic isn't high enough a scholar. Yeah a scholar. Yeah so basically you think of it like like the medieval

Catholic Church in In the medieval Catholic Church in Europe where the

Bible is in Latin and The way a person relates to the Bible is listening to what their priest says

About the Bible and trusting in the authority of the church In the same way the average

Muslim thinks that the Quran is too difficult for them to understand and The real goal of the

Quran is to recite it in Arabic in order to get blessings So think of it almost like, you know, like a Hail Mary or something.

Yeah, it's something you recite and you get blessings from that So very rarely is somebody gonna be and not never but rarely is a

Muslim You meet gonna be kind of like going through the Quran chapter by chapter Verse by verse, you know studying the meanings and trying to get it in context and everything like that Because the perception is that I either want to be a scholar or I don't and if I don't want to be a scholar then

I shouldn't do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What are some other like sources that the modern

Muslim would sort of relate to like? We're starting the Quran What are some other sources?

I mean obviously pilgrimages are big part of As Protestant Christians is not really part of our tradition at all

Like how does the modern -day Muslim relate to the pilgrimage aspect of Islam?

Well, so the pilgrimage is basically once in once every Muslims lifetime every

Muslim Is supposed to make a pilgrimage to Mecca And they believe if they do that all their sins up into that point in their life are forgiven

And they have to that once in their life, so, you know, it's it's a big part of their psyche But isn't necessarily a huge part of their day -to -day thinking except a lot of the people who are more cultural

Muslims Try and save that for later All right, because if you if you have a credit card and you know, you're gonna get like everything paid off No matter how much it is one day.

I mean you're gonna spend on that Yeah, it's you got a jail -free card, right? So you want to like you don't know what bad stuff you've done

So you want to you know have that sometime Not too late

But not too early either right you gotta cash it in just at the right time. It's also really expensive to do it

Yeah, but there's also you mentioned too and we were having entered that there are some people who sort of do a

They do it on behalf of someone else They do a pilgrimage on behalf of someone else. Tell them about that and that was fascinating to me.

Yeah, so with the Hajj There is something in the Islamic sources Which is really interesting is that if if you have a relative who has failed to complete the

Hajj Either because they're too sick or they're actually dead You can actually if you've done your own

Hajj you can go on Hajj on behalf of someone else and that Person will be forgiven based on your actions in those moments

So in general Muslims like don't like the idea of substitution But it does exist in small ways within Islam in a context like that So my parents went on the

Hajj and to them it was you know, kind of exactly what you're talking about It was this thing that they did when they were old

You know and they had enough money to do it And it becomes like this really, you know

It's kind of like when you're when you're older and you know You're like your grandmom starts praying more right or like your parents start praying more when they get to a certain age

For them it was a it was a touch point, you know, it was important to them And as Christians, you know, we're like, well we go to church every weekend, right?

like If I'm gonna save up for a big trip Is it gonna be Disneyland or is it gonna be like a vacation in Hawaii or something like that?

But for them, you know, they had planned on it They planned on it and then they finally had enough money to do it and they did it.

Yeah interval questions you have Yeah, so they take that pilgrimage to Mecca what's inside that big box in Mecca I mean a lot of people have probably seen the images of thousands of people just around like that that box thing

What what is in there? What's what is that about? I'm sure you can find the internet We'll tell you lots of things but basically nothing

The important part of that for them though is the black rock which is a meteor that fell down from the sky and was sort of Before is the before the time of Islam and it's kind of in the corner.

So you see this, you know silver section with this glass Window and everyone tries to kiss it because Mohammed kissed it

And that's kind of the centerpiece of everything. Oh Wow, okay, or they're the mother boxes from the

Justice League movie. Yeah Yeah So, you know in addition to the the

Quran right as far as sources the very important one for the modern Muslim is gonna be I'll YouTube Which is

Arabic for the YouTube What I mean by that is

You know, the average Muslim is gonna get their Islam You know conversation by conversation piece by piece clip by clip

You know a piece here a piece a piece there And it's gonna be really kind of put together by this sort of like very vast range of you know

Voices in this and so you have other Islamic sources like we talked about the Hadith for example

But I say the average Muslim is even less likely to be like reading the Hadith themselves

Even though at least from the like the original books or something, but they'll hear pieces here and there for sure

Mm -hmm. I also think that the ones who are more serious about it well, we'd call them

Dawa Bros and James can under you know can explain that a little bit better, but they

Look for scholars they agree with. Mm -hmm. I once had a two -hour conversation with Someone about how he believed that Jesus was a

Muslim based on several passages and yeah, you know in our back and forth Kept on pulling out his phone

You know going to his favorite scholars and he kept on looking and scanning till he found an opinion he agreed with and then that would be his answer

So, you know YouTube is definitely it the internet There are you know, like Zakir Naik.

Yeah, you know his own website and all this other stuff and people will go to him Yeah, I mean both of us.

I mean we were all someone in the same age range So we've seen the involvement of like social media pre Facebook.

I mean, I'm sure we all had our myspace profiles at some time I did, you know with our favorite song. We all we all learn coding, you know

Well, thanks Tom, but uh, you know, it's been very I'm just very curious like have you seen

Especially think about you just in the first three episode just how synchronistic the whole movement has been

Have you seen some involvement of syncretism or just a variety of what people believe in? Conjunction with the rise of social media and different influencers because all of them have to have their own taste and petri dish of maybe

You know the Sunni perspective that she has perspective and all the different perspectives I mean you being an upground up from a background in Turkey is probably very unique and distinct from someone who may have grown up in like Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan like and but then having the ability be connected to people like all around the world

Have you seen have you seen the similarity with that with the involvement of social media? Yeah, it's interesting and I'd say that like with a lot of the sort of the differences in the sects

For the average person. It doesn't necessarily impact them all that much Yeah, because a lot of these are kind of like, you know

High level sort of scholarly or they're either high -level scholarly or the geopolitical things that the average person is actually discouraged from Thinking about too much.

Yeah So Sunnis and Shias, for example pray differently which kind of would weird them out if they went and prayed together

But for the most part, you know, and they have different stories and they have and their stories have different heroes and different villains

So you start talking about history? They'll get they might get angry with each other But it doesn't necessarily affect their day -to -day life all that much, especially if they're living in like a non -muslim country

Like if you're if you're a Shia living in Saudi Arabia, you're going to know what the differences are

If you're a Sunni living in Iran, you're gonna know for sure what the differences are But if you're a

Sunni or Shia living in like the West those differences really don't run into each other yeah all that much

So with the kind of things people post on social media for sure touch on that a little bit

But there are other things that are like are really fascinating about it. So for example, right Classical Islamic scholarship

Considered it Haram like forbidden to like, you know paint, you know human forms so when photography came out

They didn't they didn't leave it as right to take pictures of people But when you have to start interacting in the

Muslim world you start to have to people have people traveling with Passports, yeah, so then you have these

Islamic scholars who issue a ruling saying, okay, you can take a picture It's not forbidden, but only so you can get a passport, right?

And so working with a bunch of Afghan refugees, you know, some of the older ladies They don't even have a picture in their possible.

They have like a thumbprint instead Hmm so it's things like that where Islam is kind of the

Islamic world is kind of constantly kind of like trying to adapt to all Of these and there's kind of arguments about these things. Yeah, so for sure it comes up But they're kind of in ways you wouldn't expect.

Hmm I mean when I got my green card when I was a kid did my parents didn't put a picture on it And I think that was the reason why

I think that the older kids, you know We're old enough to understand that why they needed a picture. But yeah for me they didn't there's no picture on it.

Mm -hmm Yeah, so in summary, I mean we're talking about Islamic sources and how the Islamic average

Islam relates to them like you're gonna find that out probably as a by as a byproduct of Introducing yourself to them like listening to them and really just ask questions and see what they actually say versus having an assumption about them

Like as you were stating earlier Yeah, so I think the thing you need to do though is you need

You need to have both you need to have an understanding of what the sources are and what they say and you need to see how people relate to them and If you understand both of them, that's when you really start to see this you know contrast happen between those things and you see how the average person actually

Actually relates to them and you'll find and if you start studying Islam you'll just you'll learn a lot of things and you'll be surprised to find like Muslims don't actually, you know, no and I When I started getting into this

I kind of kept learning things and being surprised I'd kind of quote something to somebody and they're like, where's that? I don't haven't heard that. I don't think that's in the

Quran Like yeah, it's right here. Okay. I have to go talk to my mom about that Kind of thing.

Yeah, so If you only talk to people You won't understand the sources and if you don't understand the sources, you can't see how people are deviating from the sources

But if you're only in the sources, you won't understand the people either when you have a good grasp of both then you can start to see where the disconnects are and where these ideas are coming from or where they're not coming from and Just get a strong right air of it all

Okay And you have a lot of those resources for you for people to kind of get their feet wet on you have that on your

YouTube Channel, right? Yeah for sure. We should definitely as we get into more of the sort of key differences We should definitely talk more about that.

But yeah, you can find that on our YouTube channel We talk about that all the time. All right.

Excellent. Excellent. So what we're gonna do is that we've gone here about it 55 minutes I feel like there's a lot more we could talk about which we are

It's so fascinating and this has just been so eye -opening. So I was also thank you for joining us Your perspective is very much appreciated and and very much

I feel like I've learned a ton here just sort of I feel like I've just been like a fly in the wall almost as much as I as much as I can

So all that being said, I thank you all for listening into this is part four powerful part four

We're doing part four. And so this is we're just trekking on through so hope you all are enjoying this extended series

One last time in case PS someone just By chance this happened to be for some weird reason the first time they're listening to this part of this conversation

Listen to the first three, but where can people find out about your YouTube channel and where's your home base for you? Yeah, so we are the al -maida initiative on YouTube.

You can find us on al -maida org, it's a L dash M a

ID a H Org, you can get to the YouTube channel from there. You can get to our podcast from there

And anything else we do as well Or you can just kind of Google us or you can search for my name as well

You should find us you can also find James Raymond on tick -tock. Yes, that's that's yeah nice We don't

I don't like using tick -tock, but I do because you know YouTube has bought us thousands tick -tocks tens of thousands

Yeah, I know you got a compromise. Okay tens of thousand versus Chinese spyware giving up all the information

I may get a burner phone. That's what I do or or or our source or endless

Teenagers doing the gritty. Yes, exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, I thank you all for listening in We will talk to you all next time on cultures

We jump into part five as we talk about understanding and engaging the world of Islam.