Tag Archives: islam

taxi

I turned the key. The engine chuntered, whirred…and stopped. I tried again, and again. Same result. I sighed. I was stuck by the side of a back street, somewhere in Pakistan, with an immobile vehicle.

This is not an ideal situation. Before coming to Pakistan we received thorough safety and security training, and much of it seemed to revolve around attempting to avoid precisely the kind of situation in which I found myself. Alone, stuck, on a hot day. Diplomats in this position would be calling their emergency contact number and having a helicopter buzz in to pick them up, but people in my position don’t have access to that kind of thing. The day was hot, and getting hotter. A trickle of sweat ran down my back in a particularly insidious manner.

Suddenly a taxi approached. It is always easy to tell when a Pakistani taxi is approaching. It makes a sound like two pounds of rusty screws inside a tin bathtub being thrown down a flight of stairs. The rusty bathtub approached and I hailed it with enthusiasm and not a small amount of panic. I explained to the friendly driver what my predicament was, though no explanation was really necessary: clueless foreigner, immobile car – breakdown. It’s not as though I was stopping to enjoy the view, which consisted of a few half-dead shrubs, a rusty dumpster, and a great deal of dust.

“No problem” said the taxi driver. “Push it, it’ll start ok”.

I went to the back of my own car and started pushing, regretting almost immediately my decision to buy a black car. The taxi driver was in the front seat. I pushed, and sweated, and my palms sizzled audibly, and the car started moving. After a few seconds I broke into a slow jog and the engine chugged into life. The car drove away, slowed down, turned round, and came back to me. I never once entertained the notion that the taxi driver would do anything else. Pakistan is rather wonderful in that way.

I thanked him and offered him some money. He refused, of course. I insisted, of course, and of course he refused again. I smiled and stuffed it into his top pocket.

The next day I got the battery changed. Fewer breakdowns, hopefully, but also fewer opportunities to be blessed by an unexpected person.

Garbage, and God’s Love

March 23, 2016

God, Pakistan

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IMG_20160312_1047179_rewind

We were sitting outside the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore. A light rain was falling. We huddled underneath a large umbrella and sipped the cups of chai which we had ordered. We needed the warmth from the tea as much as the caffeine, in much the same way that people in England drink tea to dispel the murky chill of February days more than for the actual taste. My son looked around.

“I don’t think God can love people here” he said sadly.

I was surprised by this. My wife and I have made a point of teaching our children that God loves all people equally. This is a fundamental tenet of our Christian faith, and a great number of cruelties in the world can be directly attributed to the mistaken belief that some people are more loved by God than others. I asked him what he meant.

“Look at all the garbage” he said mournfully. “How can God love people when they don’t care for the world he created?”.

I looked around. There was, indeed, a lot of rubbish. Paper cups, empty crisp packets, cigarette packs, crushed juice boxes – the detritus of a thousand tourists was strewn all around the courtyard in front of the mosque. During our train journey to Lahore we had looked out of the window to see immense piles of trash heaped up on the sides of the railway embankments, flung carelessly out of houses and left to fester. It is a part of life in the developing world that we have not yet learned to deal with.

“Well”, I said, “do you remember how Mummy and I told you that we love you always, even when you’re naughty?”.

He nodded.

“We do that because God loves us even when we’re naughty” I continued. “Even when we do bad things, God always loves us. So we should always try to be better”.

He was silent for a while, looking around at the heaps of rubbish strewn around the courtyard of one of the most magnificent mosques in the world. Then he said:

“That’s a lot of love”.

Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?

January 18, 2016

God, Pakistan

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Sometimes it seems as though it is impossible for a week to pass without a confrontation between the worlds of Islam and Christianity. My family and I came to Pakistan to be ministers of peace, yet peace between these two faith movements, whether in Pakistan or elsewhere, is proving to be a rare and precious commodity.

It is not so much the headline-grabbing atrocities of Islamic State that worry me, though goodness knows there are too many of them. What worries me is that the fear and mistrust between Muslims and Christians is percolating down to every level of society: in government circles, in the media, and onto the streets of every city in the West. Battle-lines are becoming entrenched at a very personal and local level. This is deeply concerning, since it is at precisely those levels that this division needs to be healed.

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One recent example of this is the case of the Wheaton College Professor who is facing the sack for wearing a hijab to class and claiming that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. This thorny issue raises its head again and again and has become something of a litmus test for anyone working in Christian-Muslim relations, a divining rod for either religious intolerance or wishy-washy liberalism, depending on how you look at it.

So what do I think? Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? My answer is simple: which Muslims? And which Christians?

After all, this is a debate in which complexity is scorned. We all want an easy answer, a glib articulation of our belief, an opinion which can be defined in a single Facebook update, and yet the complexity of the question is too vast to contemplate. There are around 2.2 billion Christians in the world and perhaps 1.6 billion Muslims. Are we honestly saying that all Muslims have the same belief? Or, for that matter, all Christians? Are we really so arrogant as to presume that we can gaze into the head of every single Muslim on the planet to determine how they conceive the nature of God to be?

Do I worship the same God as the blood-soaked footsoldiers of Islamic State? Absolutely not. The question itself is repugnant. The nature of the God they serve is as far removed from that of Jesus Christ as the east is from the west. But what about my friend Saira, a devout Muslim who organises her local youth to clean up rubbish in her area and organises inter-faith events, at significant personal risk, to heal communal tensions? What about the Muslims in the UK who filled sandbags and organised food donations for those affected by flooding? Or my landlord, who pays for vegetables to be grown in his garden and leaves them for the poor to collect so that they can eat? I sometimes feel as though these Muslim men and women are better Christians than I am.

Or, to look at the question another way, do all Christians worship the same God? Donald Trump claims to be a Christian, yet his gun-toting, selfish, hateful idiocy is hardly redolent of the fragrance of Christ. The KKK claimed to be Christians, as did Fred Phelps, he of “God Hates Fags” notoriety. Yet so do the Catholic nuns who run a leprosy hospital in Rawalpindi, and Pope Francis who washed the feet of Muslim immigrants, and St Francis of Assisi who went to the Egyptian Sultan to preach peace during the height of the Crusades.

I believe in the uniqueness of Christ. I do not believe that all religions are the same. Yet it is foolish of us to think that Islam is homogenous, that everyone bearing the name “Muslim” has beliefs identical to everyone else. Is it possible that some seek to follow the same God as me? Not only possible, I believe it is certain. Jesus commended the faith of people as implausible as Roman centurions, tax collectors, and Samaritans (who, let’s not forget, were the enemies of the Jews). In this debate, as is so often the case in the collision between Islam and Christianity, we need to recognise complexity, act with compassion, and have the mind of a Christ who transcended narrow boundaries.

Sorry if you were expecting a single sentence answer…

Monsoon Community

August 3, 2015

Pakistan, Snippets

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We were sitting in our bedroom on Sunday afternoon when the rain came. It came suddenly, without warning – from sunny skies to a torrential downpour in two seconds, as though God had flicked a switch and opened the heavens. In an instant the sky turned dark as black clouds hovered menacingly overhead. Sheets of water cascaded from the sky, and screams of delight echoed around our neighbourhood.

In the UK people complain about rain. However, in Pakistan, especially during the sweltering summer months, it is deeply loved. The intolerable heat and humidity vanish in an instant as the clouds break: a cool breeze blows through the houses and people feel, for the first time in days, that they are able to breathe again. Rain is wonderful, a gift, an occasion for rejoicing.

I dashed downstairs with the children. Giggling loudly, they ran into the street, jumping up and down for joy. Our landlord, normally a sober and respected doctor, took off his shirt and danced in the street. His son and my son jumped on their bikes and went careering up the road, steering through immense puddles and overflowing gutters. Our neighbours were out as well, playing in the puddles with their sons and daughters. One even brought out his hosepipe and sprayed our kids as they ran past, laughing wildly. We were drenched, all of us, instantly and completely, as though we had just walked through a waterfall.

We got to know our neighbours: the man from two houses up who was playing with his daughter, the respected old man from across the road who smiled indulgently at my daughter kicking water from a puddle, the teenaged girl from a few houses down who walked silently up and down the street with her iPod plugged into her ears, smiling quietly as the rain poured down her face. Later our landlord’s wife brought out a plate of fresh pakoras and another of doughnuts which the children rapidly devoured before running back into the street. Everyone was smiling, the habitual hassles of Pakistani life dissolving in the rain.

One of the great strengths of Pakistan is its communities. Though largely lost in the West as we become ever more individualistic, community still exists here. The social network is strong: neighbours advise us to put hats on our kids during the winter, recommend good schools or doctors, share festivals together. We say “salaam-aleikum” to everyone we meet, and they do the same to us. It would be strange not to. In the UK we look largely to the government to provide a social net for us: advice, healthcare, money, security. In Pakistan these roles are done by the community, and there is a beauty and strength in this that the West has mostly lost. We share joys, sorrows, food, advice.

And rain.

The Truth about the Pakistani Church

July 29, 2015

God, Pakistan

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A Pakistani Christian friend of mine recently travelled to the UK, Ireland and the USA to speak about Pakistan. He visited a number of churches and Christian organisations and spoke about Christian work in Pakistan, highlighting the opportunities for Christians to promote education, healthcare, and community cohesion. He would then pause for questions.

In London someone in the audience put their hand up and said “What about Asia Bibi?” – a Pakistani Christian lady who has been on death row in Lahore for several years for allegedly committing blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed.

He was surprised, but answered the question.

At his next speaking engagement he did the same presentation, again asked for questions, and again someone in the audience put their hand up and asked about Asia Bibi.

This happened in Belfast, Dublin, Oxford, Southall – and then all over again once he got to the USA. The first question that the audience asked was, without fail, about Asia Bibi. Often the only topic that people raised was persecution – and this in spite of the fact that his presentation had been positive, mentioning the positive aspects of life in Pakistan and the many opportunities for Christians to contribute to Pakistani society. For some reason people in the Western world have got the impression that life for Pakistani Christians is an unrelenting slog of suffering, persecution, oppression, and suicide bombings.

Here’s the truth: it isn’t.

It really isn’t. Somewhere between 1-2% of the population of Pakistan is Christian. Although that is a small percentage it amounts to several million Christians – not that dissimilar from the number of Christians in modern Britain. And almost all of the time they go about their lives like everyone else in Pakistan: going to work, putting their kids through school, buying food, worrying about rising prices, and drinking tea with their friends and family.

Does persecution happen? Yes, of course. Incidents of mob violence and individual harrassment happen every year. Yet we need to put this in perspective: if a few hundred Pakistani Christians suffer persecution each year, it represents a tiny proportion of the whole Christian community. That doesn’t make the incidents of mob violence any less repugnant and heinous – last year a Christian couple were burned alive in a brick kiln, the year before that 118 Christians were killed when two suicide bombers attacked All Saints church in Peshawar – but it puts things into context. Shi’a Muslims, for example, suffer persecution far more frequently than Christians do.

We ought to keep calling out for justice for Pakistani minorities who suffer. It is a key human rights issue and a betrayal of the vision for Pakistan that its founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, had, when he said that Pakistan would be a refuge for people of all faiths or none. Yet we must also be sure to keep this in perspective, to view isolated incidents in the context of the whole of Pakistan, and to refuse to let fear and anger blind us to the truth.

It might also be worth remembering that Jesus himself told his disciples “the world will hate you because of me” and “in this world you will have trouble”. It won’t make the trouble any less pleasant, but at least we won’t be so surprised…

Ramadan and Muslim Generosity

July 3, 2015

God, Pakistan

1 Comment

It is currently the holy month of Ramadan, during which time devout Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. This year is the most challenging Ramadan for many years, since it coincides with both the intense summer heat and the longest days of the year, meaning that Muslims who do fast (abstaining not just from food, but also from water) are enduring terrible hardships. Over a thousand people in Karachi, the great port city of southern Pakistan, have died due to a heatwave coinciding with the month of fasting.

Yet this is also a month of great charity. It comes as a surprise to many to learn that Pakistanis donate more money to charity, as a proportion of their income, than any other nationality. These charitable inclinations are given especial prominence during Ramadan, when people are encouraged to think of those less fortunate than themselves.

A few days ago I sat down to order dinner to be delivered to our house in the evening. Alongside the many options for delivery – Chinese, pizza, fish and chips, and of course the whole plethora of delicious Pakistani dishes – was one option to buy food for the poor. The process is simple: you order food, submit your order, and a short while later a motorcycle courier comes round to your house. Instead of delivering food he collects money from you, returns it to the restaurant, and dinner is provided to a needy family.

Much is written, these days, about the dangers of Islam. Many in the West point to recent terrorist attacks in Tunisia, France and Kuwait in order to claim that Islam is inherently violent, despite the fact that only a minute percentage of Muslims actually encourage violence and an even smaller percentage actually carry it out. These critics presumably think that the actions of 0.2% of a population reflect the will of the population as a whole, by which flawed logic all French people could be labelled as anti-Semitic, all Britons as arrogrant aristocrats, and all Koreans as enthusiastic dog-eaters.

Nonsense, of course. Far more indicative of Muslim intentions is the quiet, undemonstrative will of Pakistani Muslims to care for their fellow Muslims, and they will continue with this quiet charity for several more weeks, while the armchair racists of the West continue to rant and rave.

What Normal Islam Looks Like From My Bedroom Window

March 6, 2015

God, Pakistan

1 Comment

In Pakistan the backs of houses are usually where laundry is done. Guests would be invited into the front rooms, which are decorated and furnished to honour those visiting the family, while menial tasks such as cooking and washing are done at the back. The rear of our house backs onto the rear of the houses on the street above ours, and so it is that when I go out to put in laundry or check to see if the hot-water boiler is still functioning I inevitably encounter our neighbours. Their balcony is where they, too, do their laundry, hang their clothes, or come out to lie on a charpai (traditional bed) to warm themselves in the sun. I try not to linger; the rear of the house is normally the place where women come to relax, and I don’t want to make them feel uncomfortable by intruding on their private space.

Our bedroom is also at the back of our house, meaning that our bedroom windows looks out over their balcony as well. Every morning and evening while tackling the stream of emails that ping into my inbox I look out to the our neighbours come out to pray. They take down their prayer mat, orient it towards Mecca, and kneel down to go about their prayers. They close their eyes, their lips moving in silent piety, they bow down, they look left and right, and they go through the simple routine just as millions of Muslims do several times a day, in Pakistan and around the Muslim world. Their prayer routine is simple, undemonstrative, calm, elegant, and peaceful.

Islam has come under intense scrutiny in recent years. The actions carried out by a tiny minority of Muslims have resulted in every single Muslim in the world being viewed with suspicion, as if 1.2 billion Muslims are somehow responsible for the violent fanaticism of a few thousand. No matter that this is blatantly illogical and deeply unfair; no matter that this is akin to considering all Indians culpable for the actions of a handful of rapists or blaming every single Chinese person for the corruption of a few Party officials – this is how the world seems when you absorb the crass and foolish generalisations of the media. Islam, it seems, stands accused of having a problem.

Except for the overwhelming majority of Muslim people, that is. After living in Pakistan for four years normal Islam seems, to me, pretty normal. Quiet, pious, polite, undemonstrative, peaceful. Confident, yet humble. These are the characteristics of Muslim people as I have come to know them after living amongst them for four years. It is a long, long way from the violence and intolerance flaunted around the tabloids of the Western world.

I go out to get the laundry out of the washing machine and my neighbour looks up from his chair where he is sitting to read the newspaper.

“Salaam aleikum!” he calls cheerfully. “Peace be upon you!”.

And upon you too, friend.

As a Christian, I Respect Muslims

December 1, 2014

About us, God

Remembering Syria

November 18, 2014

God, Travel

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Back in 2007 I went to Syria and Jordan on holiday. I flew with a friend to Damascus, travelled to Hama and Homs, visited the astonishing Crusader castle of Krak des Chevaliers, and wandered around the old city of Damascus with my jaw hanging down. I had long been interested in Byzantine history and the history of the Middle East and the experience of seeing everything first hand was unforgettable. We walked, took buses, ate in local restaurants, drank mint tea, and gaped at such a remarkable and historic country.

What struck me most was the hospitality with which we were greeted. That trip probably marked the beginning of my love affair with the Islamic world. Even in 2007 Syria was reckoned, at least in the West, to be a dangerous and hostile place – not quite noxious enough for Bush to include it in his notorious “Axis of Evil” speech but certainly worthy of an Honourable Mention. The reality we encountered was entirely different. On our first night we stayed at a Catholic guest-house run by nuns – and quite openly too, there being little to no hostility between Syrian Muslims and Christians. Armenian and Orthodox churches were everywhere. We walked down Straight Street in Damascus, site of St Paul’s historic meeting with Ananias, and were greeted warmly and with no fear whatsoever. We visited Christian monasteries which didn’t even bother to post security guards at the gate. Everyone we met was kind to us.

That was when I began to realise that we needed to start distinguishing between the politics of a country and the opinions of its citizens. The Syrian government was a long way from a democratic haven but I realised how unjust it was to connect those policies with the Syrian people. We Westerners affix labels to places like Iran, Syria and Pakistan and lazily assume that the labels are also transferable to the people of those countries – but this is not so.

And now I read the news and am heartbroken by what Syria has become. Millions of refugees forced from their homes by the barbarity of Islamic State. Thousands killed. A civil war that shows no signs of ending. Fundamentalists from around the world seemingly in competition with each other to reach new heights of murderous savagery. Who would have thought, in the aftermath of 9/11, that new evils would arise to make even that mass slaughter seem civilised by comparison?

I want to remember the Syria I encountered in 2007, a place of remarkable harmony and welcome, not the Syria that we see now. I also want to remember the words of Habbakuk, a prophet in the Bible, who looked at similar cruelty and barbarity and received consolation from God:

²How long, Lord, must I call for help,
    but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
    but you do not save?
³Why do you make me look at injustice?
    Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
    there is strife, and conflict abounds.
⁴Therefore the law is paralyzed,
    and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
    so that justice is perverted.

The Lord’s Answer

⁵“Look at the nations and watch—
    and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
    that you would not believe,
    even if you were told.