Carving Multicultural Niches

Image of the subway Allahu Akbar "yeller"
that Right Girl posted at her blog

Conservative blogger Right Girl recently had a frightening experience in the subway. She writes:

I am totally shaken. On the subway on my way over to feed Kathy’s cat while they’re away at a funeral, it finally happened. Some deranged 6th Century Mohammedan lost it and began screaming ALLAHU ACKBAR, calling everyone racists, and talking about Bin Laden and rising up.

Read the full entry over at her blog, including how no-one did anything about it, security wasn't called, and the "deranged 6th Century Mohammedan" was left pounding on the subway doors.

Equally important is her comments section.

Yousaf on March 24 @ 10:12pm introduces himself as: "a former Muslim (now converted Christian)" and then goes on to berate Right Girl for "spinning more than a little yarn here; perhaps a little bit of propaganda mixed with a little hate."

I do agree that our conservative bloggers tend to up the ante when it comes to Muslims, and in this case Yousaf doesn't like Right Girl's:

[C]omments like "Some deranged 6th Century Mohammedan…." and "Mohammed continued to rage about Allah…" you really take away from your own credibility.

But, he doesn't stop there. He goes on to say:

But based on what you wrote alone though, all he really did was make some noise. I question how different that is from the occasional whino who graces his/her presence as they preach about how society wronged them and how the world is coming to an end.

Yes, a man who repeatedly shouts "ALLAHU ACKBAR" can be compared with "the occasional whino".

Yousaf continues:

Based on what you wrote, to accuse the person in this photo of being a terrorist is downright preposterous.

Well, Right Girl never said this man was a terrorist. She was explicit in her "accusation". She writes:

I would like to know if this is part of the city of Toronto’s protocol to deal with a terrorist threat on the underground. This guy was a lunatic who was unarmed - what if the next one is packing? Will the same level of incoherence apply to TTC staff?

Men who yell "Allahu Akbar" are known to blow off bombs attached to their chests, all in the name of Mohammed. In fact, Right Girl was quite generous to dismiss this guy as a lunatic. Anyone, deranged or not, who yells in this manner, should be treated like a potential suicide bomber/terrorist, based on innumerable pieces of evidence.

But, this account is about Yousaf, the Muslim who is a converted Christian. I find it strange that he goes on for four or five posts berating Right Girl's commenters. They are going on stereotype, sure. But it is stereotype founded on facts. People who yell "Allahu Akbar" in public places have a tendency to also detonate bombs. People who shout out "Jesus loves you" never have.

Writes Yousaf:

If someone screams out “Allah Akbar”, to me it’s no different if somebody screams out “Jesus loves you”.

Yousaf, the Christian convert from Islam, equates the Allah yeller with the Jesus lover. There is the final crunch.

Yousaf comments further on stereotypes:

Brown people are terrorists, the blacks are criminals, the hispanics are border jumpers...

Yousaf is most probably brown-skinned himself and feels that he will always be the target of this stereotype. Rather than deal with this minor problem in his life, he would rather that Canadians treat "Jesus loves you" with equal weight as "Allahu Akbar" despite our ample knowledge and proof that the latter could have us killed.

So, ultimately, like I said here with my discussion with Jeff (England) on "diluted" Muslims, even this "converted" (probably "diluted" in Jeff's terms) Muslim will be more loyal to his former Muslim brown-skinned group, and that his purpose "will not be to participate in the Western culture, and to save it at a crucial moment, but to carve [his] own multicultural niche".

His anger and fear at being unfairly stereotyped will be greater than his grasp of reality, part of which is to deal with the discomforts of looking like the group which terrorists come from. In order to squash this "racism", he is willing to say that "Allahu Akbar" is as benign as "Jesus loves you". That Islam and Christianity are the same. This, from someone who calls himself a Christian convert, and from Islam, no less.

InControl: A Christian (Sort of) Magazine

Here is a new Canadian online magazine which calls itself InControl Magazine and whose first lines define it thus:

InControl Magazine online is a Christian-based website that provides Canadians and International users with contemporary practical day-to-day online tools and resources that are geared towards helping people take control of everyday issues from a Godly perspective and consequently finding liberty in dealing with everyday encounters.

In the fourth paragraph of its "about us" page, here is what it says:

We believe that all religions lead to the same God. And because of that no one is excluded from being a part-taker of InControl Magazine. Although InControl Magazine is Christian-based, the content is consciously selected to serve all religions (Judaism, Muslim, etc)...

It is also geared toward:

A new, different and creative Christian magazine primarily for teens and generation Y.

I'm not sure if the ultimate agenda of InControl is to give the "Christian" youth a bit of slack, or if it is to attract the attention of other non-Christian theists. But, I think they're playing a dangerous game. Theologically, of course they have been proven wrong on the "God" issue. The God of the Muslims is different from the God of the Jews and the Christians. Even if they declare their similarities loudly, Muslims will not agree, and will not join.

So what is happening is that the Christian youth they convince to be more relaxed followers of Christ will be left with a wide open option on the true nature of God.

These irresponsible, and to be frank, flat out deceivers, are more dangerous than atheists, who at least call themselves something concrete and tangible.

I'm not sure what is ultimately the plan of these pseudo-Christian liars. But, given the force of atheism, and the even bigger energy of Islam, young people are prone to be hijacked by all kinds of things these days.

I've noticed that those who lack a strong fundamental belief are easy targets for those who propose strong fundamental beliefs. These days, it isn't even atheism. The big contender is Islam. People don't stay non-religious or half-religious for long. Yes, even atheism becomes a form of belief. But even stronger than that is Islam.

I sent the following letter to the editors:

To whom it may concern:

I read your new online magazine with great interest, and I thought it would be a strong force against the double-edged sword of atheism and Islam that is facing young people today. Both these groups have strong campaigns which attract young people to their sides (for example, look at the "atheist" bus ads now in view throughout Toronto, and the many recruiting methods of Islam including TV shows and sitcoms.)

Christianity is doing very little of that. In fact, it is one of the most timid movements of them all, and since it is in constant fear of being maligned by other groups, it conspicuously scales down its messages for outreach.

Your magazine is doing exactly that. Rather than put out a forceful message that Christians believe in the Old and New Testaments, and nothing else, you become all-inclusive and, with your illustrative phrase: “We believe that all religions lead to the same God”, you accommodate anyone who believes in some kind of God

By declaring the gods of Muslims and other theists as being similar to that of the Judeo-Christian God, you are not only theologically incorrect, you are also sending a dangerous message to the very youth you're trying to reach.

Islam is a strong and aggressive religion. It needs just a crack to get in, and once in, it will act precipitously and aggressively to take hold of the innocent bystanders. You have opened this crack by including Muslims as part of your magazine's focus, and thus endangered the Christians who participate. This is very irresponsible behavior.

If you wish an ecumenical magazine, please say so. Otherwise, Muslims (and other non-Judeo-Christian believers) have no room in a review that calls itself "Christian-based". It will only confuse your readers, and it might (although I pessimistically predict that it will) cause them to have a change of heart and leave Christianity altogether.

We need strong, confident messages from Christian leaders; not wishy-washy, unclear, sentimental messages about "All religions lead to the same God". That is false and deceitful, and will only spiritually harm your readership.

Sincerely,

Kidist Paulos Asrat

Belgian Converts Getting Their Own Flemish Mosque

'Cities against Islamisation' in Antwerp,
17 January 2008.

I have recently added Islam in Europe as another link to my blog roll. A recent post from there caught my attention, in view of the convert stories I have written about here and here.

Belgian converts are having a hard time following the Arabic in the cities' mosques, and have decided to open their own mosque with Flemish as the principal language.

Rates of converts are pretty high, with the Antwerp Imam seeing to one to two converts every day. Now this could be an exaggeration by the Imam, but even one to two every week is pretty high.

According to Islam in Europe, there are 150 Muslim converts in Flanders (seems a little low). But numbers are growing, and these dedicated new Muslims want to get into the business of worshiping as fast as possible.

What is more interesting, though, is that more than half of the citizens of this Antwerp suburb, where the mosque is being established, are Muslim.

My argument all along has been that with more Muslims in a certain location, the more likely the non-Muslim population is going to get influenced by them. You cannot get a sufficient number of converts to build their own mosque without this influential presence in the first place.

Ingrid Mattson's Strange Journey

Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in
Vatican City. I wonder if Ingrid Mattson went there?
[Click on image to see larger version]

[This post has been revised somewhat to include more biographical material, and some information on Mattson's "journeys".]

Ingrid Mattson is a Canadian convert to Islam. She is the President of the Islamic Society of North America. She recently was part of an ecumenical group of Christian, Jewish and Hindu leaders who participated in the traditional National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral following Obama's inauguration.

Mattson's ISNA has been linked with Hamas and terrorist activities. I am not particularly interested in this, since I will always presume that Islamic societies will at some point or other support, or even fund, Jihad-advocating groups, of which Hamas is certainly one.

What interests me is Ingrid Mattson's conversion. When I saw her photograph, I saw immediately that this was a white woman convert. Her face reminds me of countless women I see around me, with the rounded cheeks and small chins, who resemble no Muslim from a Middle Eastern country.

Sure enough, she is originally from Ontario, and her story is as intriguing as any.

She was a philosophy and fine art student at the University of Waterloo and worked as an archivist cataloging art slides in the university library. She traveled to Paris and spent whole days in the Louvre. She calls this episode in her life "The summer I met Muslims". She went to daily mass as a young girl and adolescent. But neither the art nor her Catholic faith was strong enough to keep her with her family.

Right after graduating from university - when she says that she had already started her "personal study of Islam" - she went to British Columbia by train for a tree-planting job for the summer (another one of those "summers".) She took with her Fazlur Rahman's Islam, which she had found in a bookstore a only few days before. She read this book on her cross-country train ride, at the end of which she decided to apply for graduate studies in Islamic studies. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The most intriguing comment she makes is:

[I]n the end, I found even the strongest reaction to a work of art isolating. Of course I felt some connection to the artist, appreciation for another human perspective. But each time the aesthetic response flared up, then died down. It left no basis for action.

What a strange thing to say! All those pietàs and Madonnas, all those crucifixions and portraits of saints? All those paintings of the infant Jesus? She left all that to go to Islam?

Which is what happened, as she describes it:

Then I met people who did not construct statues or sensual paintings of gods, great men and beautiful women. Yet they knew about God, they honored their leaders, and they praised the productive work of women. They did not try to depict the causes; they traced the effects.

If a young woman so imbued in the most beautiful productions of Western culture and Christianity cannot find the grace to remain in that culture and faith, what is it that pulled her away from it?

She does say that her studies in philosophy eventually led her to Existentialism.

In college, philosophy had brought me from Plato, through Descartes only to end at Existentialism - a barren outcome.

I've always said that where there is a barren and empty heart, an unbeliever's heart, which is nonetheless always searching for something, then this heart is easy prey for Islam.

Perhaps this is what happened to her. And this should be a warning to all those in the West. If you take belief, and specifically Christianity, out of the equation, it will get filled with something else, which ultimately will not be the "nothing" of atheism, but could well be the something of Islam.

And Islam is around us everywhere these days. Even Mattson, almost twenty years ago, found enough Muslim influence in her metaphorical and real journeys to make final, fundamental decisions in her life. And how much more susceptible we are now, with Muslim influences that much more dominant in our daily lives.

No Religion=Islam Convert

I was doing some research on Islam the other day, and needed to consult some books. I went to the Ryerson University Library, which is right in the middle of finals, so a little crowded.

Still, I went past the lady stacking books, and got to the section I needed only to find someone taking up the whole area. I waited a while, and then decided to ask the person if I could just get to the books I wanted. I realized then that she was an Indian-looking girl, holding a book simply titled "Islam", and since I felt I had already done the introductions, I asked her if she was doing a term paper on this.

No, she said, she is learning about Islam for herself.

Why, I persisted.

Because she has to teach it to her boyfriend who wants to convert.

What religion is her boyfriend, I wanted to know.

No religion, she said. Then, that he was actually a Hindu, but doesn't practice. And now wants to convert to Islam.

Oh, he's Indian, I said. But he was actually from Trinidad (large Indian population there), and her family comes from Pakistan. I wanted to ask her more, especially why her family wasn't helping her with the instructions, but time was pressing.

From no religion, to Islam. That is quite a step. Unfortunately, it isn't the first time I've heard this. I know of two weddings that have taken place recently between Muslims and supposed Christians.

Those Brampton 18 must be some role models. Promising more fun and adventure (and risk and danger) than a "no religion" can possibly provide.