Hub Talks: Dr. Craig Considine & Charles Upton

I mean everyone and welcome to our hub talk on Christian and Muslim perspectives on loving thy neighbor with dr. Craig Constantine and Charles Upton many thanks to Bosma III Sandoz watt ensemble for performing to our speakers Craig and Charles to everyone at hub foundation in Hub nine to five for making this event possible including our founder Sam hare bawd I'd also like to thank all of you our guests for supporting this event tonight we're doing something unique Christians Muslims and others are too often forced to defend themselves but tonight dr. Craig Constantine and a Catholic academic will discuss the plight of Muslims in the US and Charles Upton a Muslim scholar will focus on the plight of Christians and others in the Middle East I believe we will discover that love thy neighbor must be more than a slogan or a nicety that real love requires standing up for vulnerable and persecuted individuals and communities both Christians and Muslims are too often painted with broad brushstrokes as intolerant extremists because of the actions of governments and groups that claim to represent these face yet both groups as well as people from other traditions are often targeted because of their faith we mustn't allow others to define and divide us I am pleased to host two eminent scholars who are taking practical steps to speak out for and defend their neighbors from other faiths we'll start with with dr. Constantine who tonight is speaking on Muslims in America dr. Craig Constantine is a u.s. Catholic of Irish and Italian descent from Massachusetts he is based at the Department of Sociology at Rice University dr. Constantine holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin a master's degree from the University of London and a bachelors from American University he is the author of numerous and articles including Muslims in America examining the facts and a Catholics love of Islam dr. Considine is an educator activist and proponent of religious pluralism as well as stronger Christian Muslim relations dr. Constantine's new book Muslims in America is among the most informed and accessible studies on the subject I consider it the best book to dispel stereotypes since John Esposito's what everyone needs to know about Islam Craig is an heir to great Christian scholars such as Louis Masek known and Thomas Merton who offer a more sympathetic assessment of Islam and a more loving embrace of Muslims please join me in welcoming dr. Craig constantly good evening everyone peace be with you all Salaam alaikum I'm going to give a little gratitude before I get into my talk I'd first like to thank Sam here Bob and the hub nine to five for making this possible beautiful unique space one that I've actually never seen Zachary gave Miriam and I a tour so it's a it's a beautiful spot Zachary I'd like to thank you as well for helping coordinate this event the hub foundation of course for standing for these three words that you see in front of you three words that I think I try to live my life by on a daily basis and at least I hope to and of course Bosma address and a SWAT ensemble for putting me in a trance before I got up on stage that was really beautiful so thank you for that so I have 30 minutes and I have this talk broken down into kind of five parts I'm gonna start with kind of providing a frame of thinking let's call it a theory in academic terms I then want to shift slightly to some facts that are coming out of the book that Zachary had mentioned these facts pertain not only to anti-muslim sentiment in Islamophobia but also towards the experiences of American Muslims and how Americans get their information about Muslims from there I want to shift slightly to Christian identity and what it means to be a Christian in contemporary America because my perspective in tonight's event is to speak from a Catholic perspective I'm going to then shift slightly to the contemporary inspirations that I think we can all look up to and we can leave here with a call to action which I will I will end with so here we go I'm going to start with a quote from a Swiss American psychiatrist named Elizabeth kubler-ross not sure if anyone's familiar with Elizabeth kubler-ross I see some hands she's the author of the groundbreaking book called on death and dying it was published in 1969 it's still quite influential in in a lot of fields so she introduced her theory of grief five stages of grief with which I think a lot of people in here might be familiar with but there's a quote from this book on death and dying that I think is really important to a talk on loving thy neighbor so here's the quote she says there are only two emotions love and fear all positive emotions come from love all negative emotions from fear from love flows happiness contentment peace and joy from fear comes anger hate anxiety and guilt kubler-ross continues she says it's true that there are only two primary emotions love and fear but it's more accurate to say that there is only love or fear for we cannot feel these two emotions together at exactly the same time they are opposites if we're in fear we are not in a place of love when we're in a place of love we cannot be in a place of fear so what she is suggesting here kubler-ross is that I think ultimately we have a choice do we love or do we live in fear interestingly enough about 10 years ago I was at MIT in Boston where I was born and raised I'm from Needham Massachusetts as Zach said of Irish and Italian descent I had the honor of sitting in Noam Chomsky's office the fame linguist and philosopher and dissenter of a lot of domestic and foreign policies that the United States engages in and I was doing a study on Muslims in America and we asked him a question what does it mean to be American and he said just two words myth which goes to you know Plymouth Rock and all of these kind of historic ideas but then he said fear and he said fear is the one common thread that runs throughout American history he says we are a very frightened country and we live in a time today where I think the one of the boogie men or boogie people happen to be Muslims but if you go back into American history we know Native Americans Irish Catholics Jews Italians Mexicans and and so on and so forth so we're living in a time in which Muslims happen to be one of the targets so what is the fear that is running behind Islamophobia but I think I'll get into that in a little bit but I think we also need to think about like what is what is fear like what what is that term and when I was preparing for this talk I came across a Indian yogi and a seeker and a mystic his name is yogi Yasu dev I was actually unfamiliar to his work prior to watching this YouTube video and he said a couple of things that I think really do capture fear and as I'm talking about this keep in mind the context of Muslims in America and also Christians he says that fear is first when you define it you have to define what it is not so it is not nurturing it is not relaxing it is not reassuring perhaps fear is wanting control that these negative emotions come out because you feel like you've lost control of something perhaps fear is living too much in your own mind perhaps it's living in isolation perhaps fear is something like putting boundaries around yourself and not wanting to leave those boundaries perhaps fear is just wanting protection and he continues perhaps fear is about the present not about the present but rather what might happen so he's essentially ends by saying fear is the non-existent so fear is what you might think of something happening so when we think about in the context of Muslims in America Sharia law some of you may not be familiar with Sharia law in essence it's Islamic law defined literally as the way to the watering well for Christians it's like the Ten Commandment it's a way of life and what we see in this country a lot of the fear around Sharia is actually it's myth it's propaganda it's a non-existent threat this idea that less than 1% of the United States wants to overthrow the United States Constitution and implement some law that is going to dictate everyone's lives even though most most Muslims in this country don't actually see Sharia law that way they actually prefer to be governed by national laws constitutional laws so that's kind of love and fear like that's kind of I'm going to bring you on a little guide a little journey on what these two terms mean and in the context of my own experiences but also Muslims in America so for Christians and for the Christians in the room you might be familiar Pope John Paul he was a for Pope Benedict and before Pope Francis and in his first homily as Pope he said with an exclamation point do not be afraid do not be afraid he is encouraging Christians to be courageous because when you have courage you don't have room for fear courage is not the absence of fear but the overcoming of fear so how do we actually overcome this fear that we're seeing in the context of Muslims but also more broadly what we're seeing happening to Muslims in this fear around them it's also happening to multiple other minority populations in this country so don't be afraid he said that over 30 years ago it remains useful advice especially for Christians because if you're actually a Christian right you must believe that you are safer in God's hands than your own and we should take care and I'm speaking to Christians now we should take care of the future and preach compassion and love for all without distinction because once Christians do that people will know Christians for their love and not for the fear that a lot of people see Christians having fear in Islamophobia by Islamophobia anti-muslim sentiment inextricably linked you cannot separate those two things from happening or from occurring at the same time the tide of Islamophobia of anti-muslim sentiment has swept over the entire country and there's an ongoing list of shameful Islamophobic acts that have happened in recent years and sorry to bring us down but I think it's important to recognize the severity of the issue before we can find solutions Muslims in this country have been shot and killed execution execution style in their homes they have been beaten in their stores their school and on the streets mosques have been torched to the ground Mosque doors have been covered in feces and torn pages of the Koran had been felt had been found at the doors of mosques Muslims have been fired for wearing hijabs and for praying politicians in this country have claimed that 85% of mosques are controlled by so-called Islamic extremists and that Islam is a political system not a religion and thus not protected by the cherished First Amendment so why do these acts happen why do people or how do people come to certain views that lead them to going into a mosque taking some gasoline in a blowtorch and deciding to torch it how do people come to that conclusion or to that act of course it has to do with fear but we're not born fearful I don't think we're a program to be afraid of things so how do we how are we programmed to get to a point where we hold or if some people might hold anti-muslim views so I'm gonna read some statistics I think for those quantitative nerds in here I think you'll appreciate these and these are documented in the some of the research that I've been carrying out so there was a Public Religion Research Institute survey carried out in 2015 which found that more than 6 and 10 Americans have seldom or never had a conversation with the Muslim so more than 6 and 10 have never had a conversation with the Muslim furthermore 83% of Americans say they know little or nothing about Islam 83 percent of Americans say they know little or nothing about Islam the lack of exposure to American Muslims and it's connection to Islamophobia is also highlighted by the pure Pew Research Center in 2014 a Pew poll revealed that 38% of Americans know a Muslim which means that 72% don't so similar findings Huffington Post and YouGov they carried out a poll in 2050 again similar findings 55% of Americans had either a somewhat or unfavorable view of Islam while 25% said they were not sure how they viewed the faith so big picture not good not good at all so how do people come to this conclusion Christopher Bale a sociologist at North Carolina he is arguing that the media is a big contributor to why people hold these these views so he did a study he collected 1084 press releases from 120 organizations which included Muslim and Christian groups evangelical groups and he found that the press releases that were more emotional that focused on violence that were more sensationalized tended to be the press releases that actually got published into media sources lexis Nexis academic and CNN also did a joint also did a joint study from 2011 and 2015 and it found that US news media gave drastically more coverage to attacks by Muslims particularly foreign-born Muslims Muslim migrants then by non-muslim offenders so when you do that obviously you start a lot of Americans might start thinking okay violence is equated with Islam which is equated with Muslims when you see the term terrorism also the same pattern of thought Muslims terrorism that's the enemy the study also found that on average Muslim perpetrators of violence had 449 percent more coverage in the media than attacks carried out by non-muslims four hundred and forty nine percent which is massive Zachary earlier had mentioned John Esposito a scholar at Georgetown University he also carried out a study and this is focusing on media from 2001 to 2011 he analyzed a bunch of different media outlets and in 2001 % of all new stories in the Western media focused on Muslim militants let's call them while just over point one presented stories of ordinary Muslims the mainstream majority let's call them that by 2011 the 2% of stories has risen to 25% of Muslim militant images fanaticism terrorism and violence while the coverage of ordinary mainstream Muslims remained at 0.1 percent so if you can kind of follow where I'm going here fear an anti-muslim sentiment it's organized we're taught to think certain ways in a way it's a form of brainwashing and I don't think we need to be afraid of that term of brainwashing and propaganda we get information from somewhere but if the media outlets are only presenting a certain image of a certain group of people and if you're only presenting terrorism as this or that inevitably the people are going to be fearful so Islamophobia is learned and there's also another study a great book if you want to go home and check this out it's called the real bad Arabs real bad Arabs excuse me in 2004 written by professor Jack Shaheen who great scholar who has has recently passed on but he analyzed the entertainment industry films Hollywood films over 1,200 films he actually enter analyzed he found that 932 out of the 1200 depicted Muslims in a negative light which is kind of this brown bearded violent misogynistic terroristic betrayal Islamophobia is learned fear is learned essentially so how do Christians grapple with this reality with this development I would suggest that we have to start reimagining what it means to be a Christian when Christians in this country have reached a point where they think that hating Muslims is a matter of common sense or a matter of fear theological or religious principle I think it's safe to say that Americans American Christians in this country are not simply at a crossroads but at a crisis point the percentage of evangelicals I'm going to provide some facts here the percentage of evangelicals in this country in 2015 who said that religious freedom in the u.s. has declined over the past decade rose from 60 percent in 2012 to 77 percent in 2015 so just three years ago 77 percent of evangelical Christians feel like they are being discriminated against in this country again fear the defensive 'no stat us christians and evangelicals are feeling in this country another stat in 2012 54% of white evangelicals supported giving preference to traditional judeo-christian values that number rose to 76 percent in 2015 now note this term judeo-christian values coming out of the 1970s before reagan came into power this idea that America is somehow linked to stories that were written a long long time ago in the Middle East Islam is always left out of that that term judeo-christian even though Jews Christians and Muslims arguably I think trace their roots back to Abraham so what do we do about that some of you may be evangelicals maybe not if you aren't maybe you can have a conversation with some evangelicals over the next couple of weeks so what do we do I think Christians and not simply evangelicals we have to start facing confronting real-life circumstances rather than simply through theology or religious principles we have to start thinking about other realities let's call that human interestingly evangelical Christians again and I don't mean to be singling them out but the data actually shows that this is the population that has the most anti-muslim views white evangelical Christians like guns but they don't particularly like migrants or refugees especially compared to other demographics they are in favor of the death penalty but they're indifferent to the impoverished and and I think blind to racial and gender inequalities but I think while those realities exist the issue the hatred the fear it's deeper Christians claim to read the Bible and hear the teachings of Jesus but simply because you hear does not mean you can understand there's a difference there many Christians in this country think that Muslims are condemned to eternal hell and that poor people get what they deserved or Muslims who are violently attacked on the street actually get what they deserve Christian's today in this country and I'm broadly speaking here I think they seem to be governed by fear and not love governed by fear not love fear is what is driving I think a lot of the social and political issues that we see happening around us today for believers in a religion whose Scripture teaches compassion many Christians in this country appeared to be breathtakingly cruel so let me be more optimistic now let me talk about love I'm sure some of you saw the wedding the Royal Wedding that happened maybe a month ago there's a man named Bishop Michael Curry he is a an Episcopalian Bishop and he gave a message on the redemptive power of love the redemptive power of love and he turned to dr. Martin Luther King jr. and he quoted dr. Martin Luther King and I'll read that quote King jr. said we must discover the power of love the redemptive power of love and when we do that we will make of this world old world a new world for love is the only way Bishop Currie added and you have to watch this youtube video and I literally watched it three times I think I cried every time he said that there's power in love there's power and love and don't underestimate it don't even over sentimentalize it there's power power in love he goes on to say there is something right about love as well and there's a reason for that feeling the reason has to do with the source we were made by our Creator by a power of love and our lives were meant and are meant to be lived in that love that's why we are here so what he's saying I think is that love heals love can transform us love can call us into action when I think about this too I also think of the old Jewish saying tikkun olam to hear to heal a fractured world to heal a fractured world and we can do that with love so in terms of reimagining ourselves as Christians some of us in here may be quite tight let me say that with how you view Crowe you view Jesus rather than viewing him through the lens of divinity or theology why don't we simply put those matters aside whether he's the son of God or not and just view him as a revolutionary as a revolutionary that stood for social justice he sparked a movement grounded in the unconditional love of God and the world from the water to the soil to the trees to the neighbors to ourselves unconditional love his revolution called on people to live that meaningful change meaningful action that you have to live that love and when you do that you not only change your own life but you can change the world Jesus's love actually carried him into contact with the alienated people so that they might experience not only love but healing and we can turn to the story of the Good Samaritan which i think is treated as such a simple Christian tale that everyone knows it's a parable everyone knows it non-christians know it but we don't live it when Jesus was asked by a lawyer who is my neighbor Jesus responded with the following he said a man was so this is a story a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and the man fell down among robbers who both stripped him and beat him and departed leaving him half dead by chance a certain priest was going down that road when the priest saw him he passed by on the other side in the same way a Levite also when he came to that place and saw the man down passed by on the other side just walked by but a certain Samaritan as he traveled came where that man was when he saw him he was moved with compassion he came to him and bound up his wounds pouring on oil and wine he set on him he set him on his own animal and he brought him to an inn and he took care of him on the next day when he departed he took out two denarii which is money and he gave them to the host and he said to the host take care of this man whatever you spend beyond that I will repay you when I return now which of these three he said to the lawyer do you think seem to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers that's the question the lawyer said he who showed mercy on him then jesus said to him go and do likewise that's from Luke chapter 10 verses 30 through 37 now why do why don't Christians when a mosque is torched why don't they go to that mosque and be neighborly obviously there's no simple answer to that question but note two in the story of the Samaritan Jesus did not limit his compassion in his love for his own nationality his own race or his own religion the Samaritans at the time the Jews the Hebrew Jews tended to look down upon Samaritans they were kind of this this isolated strange people living off in the distance so Jesus specifically chose the Samaritan to show that the Samaritan can do good and does do good when I was in Columbia Tennessee this was in 2008 I was spending time with a very very small Muslim community that just had their mosque torched by a member of the Christian identity movement it's a white supremacy movement and the local bishop of a church gave the MA the keys to his church to the local Muslim community where I'm from or where I live at the moment in Houston Texas the Viktoria Islamic Center was also torched to the ground right after Donald Trump took his inauguration a local Jewish community went to the mosque leader and gave him the keys to the synagogue and said here you go unconditional love doesn't matter Jesus was moved by love not fear to Jesus to love the neighbor as you love yourself was to practice justice towards other humans and we have so many passages in the New Testament that talk about love that we need to lift up these these verses Christians Muslims non-christians non-muslims everyone needs to lift these up Corinthians chapter 13 verse 4 some of you may know this this was read at my sister's wedding I actually read this and this is a very powerful quote love is patient love is kind it does not envy it does not boast it is not proud it does not dishonor others it is not self-seeking it is not easily angered it keeps no records of wrongs love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth it always protects the truth always trusts and always hopes and it always perseveres Pope Francis is a leader that I think is doing his best to uplift that vision not only of Jesus and Christianity but of humanity in 2017 in April of 2017 he was in Cairo Egypt at a peace conference and he pulled absolutely no punches when he said he called on Christians and Muslims to join in building a new civilization fueled by love and by pluralism in early 2014 Pope Francis called on human beings to end the culture of indifference and the culture of indifference why don't we care and I'm not saying that to Christians and simply Muslims humans why aren't people moved by what's happening on the southern border by children being ripped away from parents like how do we actually get people to start caring about that to end that culture of indifference Pope Francis has a recommendation he suggests that we start engaging in the culture of encounter the culture of encounter another way of kind of understanding this I call it deuce deuce is an acronym de UCE and it stands for the following the D is dialogue we have to start talking with one another at a very very basic level the best way to do that break bread have food with people once you have that dialog then you can really start educating one another you can bring out the books you can talk about the news and you can sit down and you can start dispelling myths once you properly educate then we can get to that you which is understanding that's when the light bulb can go off and we can really start making progress when we educate and we understand then we can join and we can commit the C stands for commitment that's when we can hold the same principles we can hold the same vision and when we do that the e is engagement that's when we can go out into the world and work together that is the culture of encounter so to end this my thirty minutes is up I'll take about one more minute so love you know I think we tend to just think about it as a personal experience you love your father you love your mother you love your partner what Jesus was saying and what all the sages were saying from Prophet Muhammad to Moses and on down the line love is more than that love is a law of life it's a law of life that we are human beings coming from a single creator and we're coming from creation love when we reach that point and when we engage in that and when we live love we can really get to a higher state of consciousness that frees us from fear frees us from negative thoughts negative feelings and negative actions when you love and when you transcend fear gone or all these negative things in our life fear guilt judgment greed envy arrogance and the egos stubborn need to be right when we live love not just talk about love when we live love we know that we're actually all connected that we're not divided amongst races and religions that we are a human family a human body and that it's each and every one of our responsibilities to become one with humanity there's no separation when we love we are all children of the Living Creator and what affects one affects us all a pluralist unum out of many one that is one of the mottos of the United States and I think we need to think deeply about what that actually means so let me leave with a call to action hopefully we can all pledge today right now that living love should be our intention 24/7 365 living love should be the agenda of every interaction it should be the prescription for every ill and really it should be the expectation of every single circumstance live love thank you thank you dr. Constantine for that stirring talk I for one could feel your sincerity and you know really really honor your voice standing up for Muslims in this time and and I'm also reminded just briefly of two two verses from the Quran which speak of fear that the first says whoever believes in this message ie Muslims or the Jews Christian Sabian's whoever believes in the one God and works righteousness no fear shall come upon them neither shall they grieve and the other refers to the the Friends of God or the Saints and it also says about them no fear shall come upon them neither shall they agree to our second speaker tonight Charles Upton who will be speaking about Christians and others in the in the Middle East Charles Upton is an American Muslim sage based in Lexington Kentucky his written works on metaphysics poetry social criticism and the path of Islamic Sufism some of his major titles include the system of Antichrist truth and falsehood and post-modernism and the New Age folk metaphysics the virtues of the Prophet and day and night on the Sufi path with dr. John Andrew Moro Upton conceived of the covenants initiative which is a declaration signed by Muslims around the world calling for the protection of Christians and all human beings including Muslims themselves from Isis and similar groups Charles was raised in Marin County where he lived for 56 years he's a veteran of the 60s counterculture a San Francisco poet with a background as a peace activist in response to the US war in Vietnam and military support in the house Salvador in 1988 he was initiated into Sufism in 2004 he left California for Kentucky with his wife Jenny and again in 2013 he encountered the the work the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with Christians of the world and co-founded the covenants Initiative allow me to add that I consider Charles among our great American elders and sages he is perhaps the leading representative of the traditionalist or perennial aschool while also at times being a friendly critic and an heir to the French metaphysician Rene gano or Sheikh Abdul Wahid Yaya please join me in welcoming Charles Upton thank South Korea mark Witt for his gracious invitation to me to come here and his you know his help and his support of us and in our travel and you know he took care of everything and made it easy for us for my wife and I and also of course Sam her bod who's you know has quite a conception going here on many levels I'm very impressed so so I'm gonna read my speech to make sure I don't go on and on and on and but before I do I want to say two things first you know my wife Jenny is a Christian and and you know we figured if if a Muslim like me and a Christian like her could get along then anything is possible and and as she said just just today you know religion isn't something that divides us this because we both realized that God is one there's one God different nations different religions use different names for him the Antiochian christians of syria used the name allah in their divine liturgy when they're you know which is their version of the mass so different names William Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet and that's what he meant secondly just I'm gonna end this with a few quatrains from Jalal add-in Rumi and I just want to say that I really wanted to see if Rumi could be turned in a song lyrics in other words you know regular meter that turned in into I am big pen Tama tour and so I just wanted to say that first that this you know this will touch upon you know love between neighbors you know love for of Muslims for Christians in the in the Mideast but that's you know that's the midpoint it starts from it starts from God and it goes through these situations that are rigorous difficult situations that we're facing the world now in it and then it returns to God that's what everything actually does that's that's the circle so so this unknowing this Muslim perspective sown loving thy neighbor the theme of my talk is love of neighbor in the context of Islam in the context of religion that is not in that of clinical social work or secular social justice in other words as Jesus of Nazareth peace and blessings be upon him made clear in his command when it comes to love God comes first in one way it is true that we can't love God unless we have first learned to love our neighbor but in another and more primary way we can only love anyone or anything at all because God has loved us first all true love is from Allah returns to Allah and as the actual presence of Allah this love is not always easy it carries the qualities of mercy and beauty but also the qualities of majesty and rigor as the Irish poet WB Yeats said love is like the Lions tooth the rigor of beauty is perfectly expressed by the muslim poet of Andalusia even all captor Nome in the following six lines I remembered Salima when the passion of battle was as fierce as the passion of my body when we parted I thought I saw among the Lance's the tall perfection of her body and when they bent toward me I embraced them the French poet pol Heavy D said something I've never forgotten there is no such thing as love only proofs of love in the Interfaith world there are plenty of Protestants of love between the faiths diplomatic gestures smiles boughs hand clasps embraces photo opportunities but where is the proof the wedding ceremony may be beautiful and moving but the proof of the marriage does not lie in what nowadays is often called a piece of paper it lies in the reality of for better for worse for richer for poorer in sickness and in health until death do us part yet an essential part of love is respect and an important part of respect is distance as the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote love consists in this that two solitudes protect border and salute each other are several ways to godlike our marriages to our spouses are a unique intimate sacred and not to be adulterated by any foreign elements the proof of the love of the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him for his brother prophet Jesus of Nazareth and the religion he founded is enshrined in the prophetic covenants treaties concluded by the Prophet Muhammad with the various Christian communities of his time and these covenants themselves would have been mere pieces of paper except for Muhammad's declaration that they came to him by a hollows inspiration his command that all Muslims abide by them until the coming of the hour the end of the world and his warning that all who violate them will earn a laws curse here is the English translation of the text of the first covenant granted by Muhammad to the ancient monastery of st. Catherine at Mount Sinai in the name of Allah the most compassionate the most merciful this covenant was written by Muhammad to the son of Abdullah and proclaimer of the proclaimer and Warner trusted to protect allows creations in order that people may raise no claim against Allah after the event of his messengers for Allah is all-mighty wise he has written it for the members of his religion and to all those who profess the Christian religion in east and west near or far Arabs or non Arabs known or unknown as a covenant of protection if anyone breaks the covenant herein proclaimed or contravenes or transgress its commands he has broken the Covenant of the law breaks his bond makes a mockery of his religion deserves the curse of Allah whether he is a sultan or another among the believing Muslims if a monk or pilgrim seeks protection in mountain or Valley in a cave or until the fields in the plain in the desert or in a church I am behind them defending them from every enemy I my helpers all the members of my religion and all my followers for they the monks and the pilgrims are my protegees and my subjects I protect them from interference with their supplies and from payment of taxes save what they willingly renounce there shall be no compulsion or constraint against them in any of these matters a bishop shall may not be removed from his bishop Britain or a monk from his monastery nor Hermit from his tower nor shall a pilgrim be hindered in his pilgrimage moreover no building from among their churches shall be destroyed nor shall the money from their churches be used for the building of mosques or houses for the Muslims whoever does such a thing violates a laws covenant and descents from The Messenger of Allah neither poll tax nor fees should be laid on monks bishops or worshippers he's not referring to all Christians but you know monks and hierarchs and you know those you know who are attached in monasteries at least whether they be wherever they be on land or sea in east and west and north and south they are under my protection within my covenant and under my security against all harm those who also isolate themselves in the mountains or in sacred sites shall be free from the poll tax land tribute and from tie their duty on whatever they grow for their own use and they shall be assisted in raising a crop by a free allowance of one Kedah unit of dry measure in every our dog equals 6y about equal 24 rub our other measures for their personal use they shall not be obliged to serve in war or to pay the poll tax even those for whom an obligation to pay land tribute exists or who profess possess resources in land or from commercial activity shall not have to pay more than 12d Fromm's ahead per year oh no one shall an unjust tax be imposed and with the people of the book there is to be no strife unless it be over what is good it's a reference to a Quranic verse we wish to take them under the wing of our mercy and the penalty of vexation shall be kept at a distance from them wherever they are and wherever they may settle if a Christian woman enters a Muslim household she'll be shall be received with kindness and she should be given opportunity to pray in her church there shall be no dispute between her and a man who loves her religion whoever contravenes the Covenant of Allah and acts to the contrary is a rebel against his covenant in His Messenger these people should be assisted in the maintenance of the religious buildings and their dwellings they will be aided in their faith and thus they will be aided in their faith and kept true to their allegiance none of them shall be compelled to bear arms but the Muslims shall defend them and they shall never contravene this promise of protection until the hour comes and the world ends as witness to this covenant which was written by Muhammad and son of Abdullah The Messenger of Allah may the peace and blessings of allah be upon him to all the Christians as sureties for the fulfillment of all that is prescribed here in the following persons set their hands ok the signatures of the witnesses to this covenant include those of for future colleagues Abu Bakr Umar Uthman and Ali along with those of many of the prophet's companions Muhammad issued similar covenants to many Christian communities in Arabia Iraq Syria and Armenia as well as making covenants with the Jews the Zoroastrians and the sabaeans all these documents have similar provisions along with special features relevant to specific communities before the fall of the Ottoman Empire the Ottomans at the end of World War 1 the prophetic covenants were known to most literate Muslims and virtually all scholars of in the Muslim world as well as many Western scholars they were attested to by Muslim historians and in many cases renewed annually or semi-annually by caliphs and Sultan's they formed the basis for official Ottoman policy toward religious minorities when the Ottoman Empire fell however the covenants began their descent into obscurity since they were seen as little more than the irrelevant documents of a defunct bureaucracy then in 2013 five years ago the memory of the prophetic covenants was resurrected in epoch-making book by dr. John Andrew Moro entitled the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the world which I was privileged to co-edit and to which I contributed a foreword by next summer pretty quick dr. morrow yes Abdul Alim Islam a Native American from Quebec who converted from Catholicism to Islam in his teens was denouncing Isis before the House of Lords in London as part of his European tour to spread word of the covenants and that was the only the beginning this has been quite a ride as part of my forward I composed a declaration addressed to Christians inviting Muslims to declare themselves legally bound by the covenants of the Prophet this declaration formed the basis of what was to become an international peace movement known as the covenants Initiative it was signed by many prominent Muslim scholars along with Muslims from all walks of life in many parts of the world the declaration reads we the undersigned hold ourselves bound by the spirit and the letter of the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him with the Christians Christians of the world and the understanding that these covenants if accepted as genuine have the force of law in the Sharia today and nothing in the Sharia as traditionally and correctly interpreted has ever contradicted them as fellow victims of the terror and godlessness the spirit of militant secularism and false religiosity now abroad in the world we understand your suffering as Christians through our suffering as Muslims and gaiter gain greater insight into our own suffering through the contemplation of your suffering may the most merciful of the merciful regard the sufferings of the righteous and the innocent may he strengthen us in full submission to his will to follow the spirit and the letter of the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the world in all our dealings with them in the name of the law most gracious most merciful praise be to Allah the Cherisher and sustainer of the world's the covenants Initiative is a quintessential example of committed scholarship in order to gather material for his book dr. morrow traveled the world searching for prophetic covenants an obscure libraries and ancient monasteries later on he issued an appeal to all institutions possessing copies of the prophetic covenants to provide authentic texts and photos of the original original documents in some cases just ahead of Isis who were also searching for them but only to destroy them we were in a race and with Isis they were they were looking for these documents to to burn them because they outlawed Isis in the name of the Prophet and they obviously did not want these documents to survive in the course of his quest he brought many little known and unknown documents to light after which he supervised a translation in publication in 14 languages his work garnered expressions of support from Bartholomew Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church from Theophilus the third patriarch of Jerusalem from dr. Mohammed gumming aha of al-azhar university from a number of Catholic prelate sand from the ayatollah khamenei Supreme Leader of Iran a copy of the book was personally presented to His Holiness Pope Francis even the highlights of the coven's initiative over the past five years are too numerous to mention they include numerous speeches by dr. moral and mosques at Muslim conventions and interfaith gatherings and numerable articles and interviews in print podcasts radio and television formats as well as a televised televised presentation in Abu Dhabi before the ambassadors of several Muslim nations in 2016 the Cup 2016 the covenants initiative was contacted by Bishop Francis Kalibak leader in exile of the Chaldeans calyx of Iraq now living in the United States in the United States Bishop kala Bhat asked us to issue an initiative calling for the actions of Isis to be declared genocide this became the genocide initiative which we posted as a petition on change.org on the change.org website in March of that year the fortenberry amendment defining the actions of Isis as war crimes and genocide was passed unanimously by the US House of Representatives followed shortly by a statement to the same effect by Secretary of State John Kerry our work was hailed in an article in the premier US Armed Forces publication Stars and Stripes as one of the factors that led to the passage of the Fortenberry Amendment and when Isis burned st. Mary's Cathedral in the Philippines in 2017 the governor of the autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao immediately invoked the covenants of the Prophet to prove that this act was Una's Lama we are confident that this was largely due to our efforts to people with a few friends like Craig Constantine and you know a few other people who would come in and help us from time to time you know I mean and this is not something that two people can do so we have to assume that someone else was ultimately behind it but the bottom line is the covenants initiative and its expansion into an international peace movement was entirely based on the work of one committed scholar dr. John Andrew Moro my contribution was to recognize the value of what dr. Amaro had achieved to convince him of its unique importance for this historical moment and to prevail upon my publisher to publish it this catapulted me into five years of activism in a time in my life when I was certain that this sort of commitment to lay several decades in my past very well then but what next as it turns out Craig Considine dr. morrow Abdul Malik Mujahid my wife Jenny and myself will be speaking at the Parliament of the world's religions in Toronto this coming November the title of our presentation will be a presentation of the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad to the Christians of the world in the 21st century with my wife Jenny representing the Christians of the world you know she's been through Christianity from one end to the other and you don't want it you know if you present it only to the Catholics in the Orthodox we'll say what about us and Sonja she's perfect solution to that problem we're turning now to the theme of my talk which is love of neighbor I wish to emphasize the touch love is not a passive virtue as the proper prophetic covenants attest this love must express itself as active help and defense whenever possible such organization says the shoulder-to-shoulder campaign a coalition of mostly Christian churches have come to the defense of Muslims in the u.s. against the rising tide of Islamophobia which is certainly due in part to trumpets administration policies but when offered what we offered to reciprocate in obedience to the command of our prophet by doing what we could to defend Christians from their enemies in the u.s. some years ago it was estimated that around 100 churches per year are burned in the United States most of them is small and rural and that's that's something we don't hear about when I when I gave that statistic which is only one groups you know small groups estimation but they've been following and I gave that to my Muslim physician friend faz Khan in New York and he said what who is shocked he'd never heard that and many of us have never heard that either because you know this this is an oppression that's going on that is very obscure because it happens among people who tend to be discounted in this society okay when we when we said how can we reciprocate to shoulder to the shoulder to shoulder campaign they could think of no way to respond defending the other was part of their moral worldview but admitting that as Christians they might need some defending themselves was not and the unfortunate fact is that Christianity and Islam in common with many other groups are now largely in competition over who is the most victimized and therefore the most entitled dr. murrow's research however indicates that the number of nations of the world persecuting Christians and the number persecuting Muslims are roughly equal and while such groups as Isis in Al Qaeda have certainly killed more Muslim than Christians including Shia Sufis and traditional Sunnis they have also massacred plenty of Christians as we know largely driving them from their ancient homelands in Syria and Iraq though of course the total number of Muslims killed in the wars that followed in 9/11 Dwarfs all other death tolls plenty of moving examples exist now we get to the actual supposed subject of this talk plenty of moving accounts exist of the defense of Christians by Muslims in Iraq and Syria in recent years and an email to me doctor Moro who certainly has no love for the Assad regime writes the city of Karbala served as a refuge for Christians fleeing from Isis they knew they were safe among the Shiites the followers of the family of the Prophet Kurdish Sufi Muslims also helped Christians in and around Mosul Hezbollah has proudly defended Christian holy sites and Christians there are plenty of stories of the Syrian army coming to the rescue of Christian communities take the case of the monastery of st. George alum IRA and the valley of the Christians in Syria they have a covenant of the Prophet they were surrounded by top fury terrorists hell-bent on destroying the monastery killing the monks and destroying the covenant of the Prophet the Syrian army came liberated the region and liquidated the tuk Furies for those who don't know who were tuk fury it is a corrupt theory among some Muslim scholars that any member of religion or any member of Islam that is not of their sect can legally be killed that's what the tuk Furies are when the covenants Initiative made its debut at the Bilal mosque in Lexington Kentucky in 2013 I expressed my belief that forces exist in the world today who are actively attempting to turn the religions against each other in order to weaken them in response a Muslim from the Indian subcontinent told the story of those nights in his native city when unknown parties would throw pig carcasses into mosques and drag slaughtered cows into Hindu temples predictably resulting in Muslim Hindu riots the next day this and many other indications suggest to me that the Metta strategy of the global elites is to neutralize all the religions after all why should an elite cadre of oligarchs backed by global finance who aspire to world domination sit back and do nothing when the beliefs and aspirations and moral standards of billions of people are determined by outmoded religious institutions that those oligarchs do not control now let's see did I put this page okay here we go the anti-muslim sentiments of Donald Trump are no secret no question after after he has opened his mouth hate crimes against Muslims have skyrocket in this country what is not as clearly admitted or known however by many by many are the actions of the Obama administration to fund and arm Isis and al-qaeda as proxy armies against Syria Iran and ultimately Russia terrorist groups who have mastered both Muslims and Christians have killed more Muslims as the Christians partly because there's simply more non terrorist Muslims that than Christians and their areas of operation to be killed those who can see no relationship between such atrocities abroad and the growing Islamophobia as well as the cultural soft pogrom against Christianity in the United States are not in my opinion seeing the whole picture those Christians who are aware of the rising tide of anti-christian sentiment early in the u.s. are usually conservatives who distrust Muslims while liberal Christians who are willing to partner with Muslims and will often not admit that such anti-christian sentiment exists which is why they tend to exercise very little vigilance in situations where self-defense is clearly called for this is one of the frustrating ironies that the covenants Initiative said to contend with it's very hard for Muslims to obey the Prophet for the prophetic covenants by defending Christians when Christians see no need to defend themselves a Muslim leader who wishes to remain anonymous reported to us that at a meeting at the Obama White House in 2016 a delegation of Muslim leaders was told the following by one of the national security advisors quote Isis is now losing territory in Syria in Iraq therefore Isis fighters will be coming home to the u.s. home to the u.s. home to the u.s. Muslim leaders we want your help in reintegrating these fighters into u.s. society how charitable of the president reintegrate these fighters into u.s. Society for which federal grant funds are available when hearing this the Muslim leader in question said to himself does this woman realize that Isis has a hit list of u.s. Muslim leaders some of whom are in this room it is clear from this and many other indications that the US government has been running mercenaries under the banner of Isis and al-nusra and the Free Syrian Army in Iraq in Syria and Iraq just as it trained and armed salvadoran death squads in the 1980s since as far as we know no actual record of that White House meeting exists we began scouring the web for evidence of a government government plan to Rio to integrate Isis fighters into the u.s. our fighting our findings appear in dr. murrow's article welcome home Isis the Obama administration's plan to reintegrate foreign terrorist fighters at the same time as the Obama administration was sponsoring the growth of Isis a historical fact attested to by a defense Attell intelligence agency memo obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act addressed by Seamus Milne in his June 2015 article in The Guardian and finally admitted to in an interview by Ben Rhodes and deputy secretary of security adviser under Obama at the same time as this was happening our little Christian Muslim dialogue in Lexington Kentucky was hosting speakers from Homeland Security the FBI the federal Attorney's Office and the State Department in other words the very same people who were funding and arming Isis to kill Christians and Muslims in Syria were sponsoring interfaith Amity between Christians and Muslims in the United States this in my estimation represents a two-pronged attack against religion ultimately all religion since we're Christians and Muslims to meet and profess friendship under the auspices of their common enemies represents a serious undermining of their independence and this pincers movement against religion the strategy of terrorism aldrin alternating with co-optation is certainly not limited to the United States of America the origin the true form and purpose the detailed history and the names of the actual sponsors of this assault all need to be exhaustively researched in answer to the question what can I do that many of you may now be asking I have two suggestions first I invite all interested Muslims to sign the covenants initiative which is available on our website on this first table here I've got two piles of pay a pages one has the URLs of a lot of the allegations I'm making in this talk so you can research them for yourself and the other one is the other one is actually a poem I put together from some of the quatrains of Rumi which I wanted to make singable in English so it came out in iambic pentameter so so in answer the question what can I do at cetera etc sign the covenants initiative secondly for years I have imagined a network of Christians and Muslims pledged to defend each other whenever either group is attacked the coven's initiative does not have the resources to organize such a network on her own yet elements of it the shoulder-to-shoulder campaign for example already exists the first step towards creating or expanding such an alliance would be to convene a conference to discuss this possibility out of which would come a number of ongoing working groups tasked with thoroughly researching the global attack on religion and developing strategies to counter it let Muslims and Christians never forget however that the first step in any such effort should be prayer specifically prayer to God for his strength and guidance if the mention of God and prayer in this context seems jarring or out of place this simply indicates the low ebb to which true religion has fallen in our world God is the end therefore we must never forget to place him at the beginning and since my own spiritual path is Sufism I will end this talk with a poem I arranged from the quatrains of Jalal add-in Rumi the most famous master of our way specifically to remind us that as the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him said this world is nothing more than a lone tree in the desert under which the weary traveler can rest for a while before the caravan passes on here is the poem o friend our friendship makes a mighty union where you might walk I'll be the earth for you in the creed of lovers it's a dark transgression through your eyes to see this world but not see you I'm glad this world can never make me happy I'm glad to be drunk though not by drinking wine why would I need to hear some other story when endless blessings rise from my secret glory may the heart of love never look upon this world what's worthy to be seen by love but love the day I die I'll cast away these eyes if gazing on this world they turned from love how long to see and smell this passing scene it's time to meet that one of perfect grace and the mirror of his face I'll see my form and the mirror of my heart I'll find his face the fruit will set on the blossoming branch someday the hungry Falcon will seize the Dove someday his image herbs and flows when will it stay it will come to live inside your heart someday thank you thank you both so much for those talks and I thought we'd begin by by flipping your topics a bit so I'd like to start with with dr. Constantine you've written what I consider one of the best introductory works on the covenants religious pluralism and civic rights in a Muslim nation and analysis of Prophet Muhammad's covenants with Christians can you discuss why you find this text meaningful thank you I think it's meaningful because the covenants are a bridge between perceived worlds I think we live in a time of excuse me sorry of binaries where we see these terms being floated around like Islamic civilization Western civilization the United States versus the world etc etc and the covenants are actually a way of imagining the United States in imagining American national identity as being synonymous and compatible with Islamic values so when we think about something like a civic nation in this country we imagine this as a nation that is not your sense of belonging is not predicated on your race or your religion etc etc what makes you in America are your inalienable rights which are protected through the law through a constitution that's what it means to be a civic nation versus an ethnic nation or a racial nation in which your sense of belonging is determined by your birth so the covenants are suggesting actually no they're proclaiming that Christians are part of the Ummah they're part of an Islamic state or an Islamic nation that you don't have to necessarily follow a particular creed to be protected by the state and in terms of religious pluralism Diana Eck at Harvard University is one of the top scholars on this concept of religious pluralism and she calls it the energetic engagement of diversity it's not simply tolerance what she's saying is tolerance is not enough in our current era you know when you think of the term tolerance it's quite standoffish for parents in here you might tolerate a child which is not bad but it's also like you know you tolerate etc this country has has had its ups and downs in terms of incorporating religious diversity America is kind of like this ever this never-ending ongoing project but in terms of energetically engaging with diversity I think a lot of what Charles was saying you know with the shoulder-to-shoulder campaign you know it's you're you're energetically engaging not simply with ideas but with people and you're committing yourselves to protecting certain communities and that is clearly what the covenants also do so the covenants are there a bridge there a bridge between perceived worlds and I thought it was it was valuable to contribute that piece of scholarship thank you and and and and now asking you to address dr. Constantine's topic the Charles can you speak on how the love of God of Jesus of Christianity and even your wife Jenny who's a Christian as you mentioned inspires your work with the covenants initiative well it could not have been done unless in the context of love those who are not in that context would look at the covenants and see nothing much they're not relevant not interesting whereas if you realize what I mean it's very touching the way Muhammad you know he's his korchi ality in these Dockins toward toward the Christians it's more I should actually tell a story that dr. Moreau brought forth in his book the covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the world the story is that and that this is is told by the Bedouin units of the Sinai and by the Christians and so you might call it apocryphal but there's a lot of reason to believe it actually took place we know that Muhammad was a caravan leader and according to this story one of the places he supplied on his caravans was st. catherine's monastery near mount sinai and there was a day when he came in with his Caravan and he was resting after the trek i see him he was leaning against a wall or against a tree i don't know which and one of the monks saw above him an eagle was hovering and the monk said this has got to be a sign so the monks came to him and said could you write us a document where you will place this under your protection and he says well Who am I I'm just a caravan leader I can't protect anybody no so well no I think this is this is a good thing you know if you'll do this and he's all right so since he could not write you know he he put his handprint and ink and put it on this document that I guess the monks had you know told him what they were gonna say and later on when Islam expanded politically militarily into that area the Covenant was renewed and expanded which is and that's the version that I quoted so I mean that's this is love you know Mohammed it was Christians who first recognized that he was going to be a prophet there was a a monk Syria there was a honey which is a you know a sect of monotheists waiting for the next prophet in Arabia and then there was the monk of st. catherine's monastery and they all said you know you have a great destiny you will be a prophet and it was the christian leader of Abyssinia at the time the Negus who gave oppressed muslims sanctuary in across the Red Sea in Ethiopia when they were under oppression in Mecca so this is all love and you just you can feel the radiance of of Muhammad's love for his brother prophet and and for you know a brother revelation because the Quran says you know this is not a new revelation that this is a confirmation of what's going before including Torah and gospel you know and Muhammad made that real by offering his protection to Christians you can tell Oh dr. moral wonders at the light verse it wasn't suggested partly by what's called the Lambada which is the hanging lamp that you will find in Orthodox churches with a candle in it who knows but obviously there was a great love because the Prophet love those who love God and when he saw the love of God he was moved and so the love of God becomes the basis of human Brotherhood in love between human beings there's no other basis everything outside of that is some kind of self-interest thank you [Applause] before I open it up to the audience for questions I'd like to ask you both one more question and see if we can't you know maybe offend everyone else in the room that we haven't already no seriously it seems that you know there's a relationship between wars in the Middle East fought by the u.s. under the the Bush and Obama administrations in Afghanistan Iraq Syria Libya Yemen and the xenophobia that we now see under the Trump administration with migration to you know not only the US but also Europe can you can you speak to how you know there's a there's a symbiotic relationship between you know these these wars abroad and and fear at home well I'd say this often oftentimes what I say Islamophobia and the ISIS narrative of Islam are two sides of the same coin oftentimes what you see are people that are sympathetic to anti-muslim views or people that are happened to be Muslim who are sympathetic to anti-christian views have the same understanding of faith of religion they oftentimes use the same quranic passages to justify their actions so I think the government in this country in DC the national government really needs to come to terms with its hypocritical decisions because we're really just fueling adding fuel to the fire so I don't know Charles what you you might be more passionate about this one I I agree entirely you know I've made that point myself that the reading of the Quran of the Islamophobes and of Isis and their ilk is is pretty pretty close you know but um well Trump and Obama you know to two sides of the same problem Obama in in sort of the the what has become the unfortunate tradition of this country is you know we'll keep the problems in other nations will fight our Wars proxy wars or whatever elsewhere and we will try to keep the people at home happy and will preach you know tolerance domestically while we kill millions internationally so what happened as Trump just reversed that you know his treatment of of Muslims in this country is you know the plight of Muslims is much worse in this country after Obama after Trump but on the other hand Trump really has been serious in going against Isis where he is now it's hard to tell whether he's been captured by the same forces that were really behind Obama's policies it's hard to tell you know he's very he's very erratic ambiguous and scary kind of person and you don't know what he's gonna do next but there was that moment when you know he was feeling very good about Russia and he wanted you know to have rapprochement with Russia and there was that moment you see what happened with Russia was we're saying well they you know that they're going on another expansion you know that's dangerous and we always remember what Hitler did and now maybe Russia is gonna do the same thing and they've occupied the Crimea well the Russia could be a very dangerous force in the world but when they occupied the Crimea what was happening is we were we were afraid that we're going to intervene in Syria and get in the way of our running of Isis in our support of Isis against the Assad regime you know and we didn't want Russia to come in so we were pressuring them to the point where we were close to denying them their read their black seaports so Russia occupy the Kermit Crimea is saying you're not going to deny our are these ports and what happened next is that the Russian Navy sailed and came to Syria and stood behind the Assad regime which is a very evil regime I mean I miss I'm afraid politics is not black and white Assad is bad news he's a true dictator a true despot yet under him the Christians have had a degree of protection which under Isis and al-qaeda you know nothing so Russia there was that moment when when Trump came in and knew nobody knew what was going to happen in there and there was you know the policies were not solid and this is when Putin said now we can go into Syria you know and I don't know if he could have done it now but he did it then and because of that Isis has been defeated largely they're going after the last strongholds of Isis and Iran now where the whole movement began and that wouldn't have happened under Obama because Obama helped create Isis I do not believe it would have happened under Hillary Clinton but it did happen perhaps almost by accident under Trump so we have two sides of the evil of hatred of Islam Obama you know doing terrible attacks and because really Isis is an attack against Islam you know certainly they have massacred a lot of Christians and Yazidis and you know whoever else they could get their hands on what they are is a fifth column partly of mercenaries paid by the United States those are the ones who get to come home Isis come home these are the paid professional top mercenaries that the US has been sponsoring the the cannon fodder who has to stay as Russia or the United States or whoever finally bombs them into into oblivion are the foolish believers who think that you know young fools who come from around the world thinking that they were defending Islam by joining Isis you know they're expendable but the important people are these mercenaries who are not necessarily Muslims at all they have a they have a wardrobe of many different ethnic costumes that over the years they will swell let's see what what the race or religion we supposed to be this year in this war oh we can do that you know we've we've got to we've got our routine no all worked out he's because people and these are the people that the Obama administration was welcoming home under the smokescreen of saying well you know we're gonna simply want to help the young foolish Muslims who didn't know what they were getting into when they joined Isis and you know they saw how terrible it was Nelly want out and you have to help them that was the smokescreen maybe some of that was going on but the purpose of that of that program was to run what is come to be called a rat line a rap line of mercenaries coming back from Syria in Iraq you know into a you know protective custody cushy cushy protective custody in the United States until they could use for some free future war so you know Obama Trump six of one and half dozen of the other I mean one of the challenges I think which which Craig brings up in you know the other side which you're referring to Charles is that you know life in the u.s. for American Muslims is much harder now under the trump administration and partially because of the points that you're bringing up but I'd like to thank you both and and you know open it up to the audience to ask ask anyone here if you have questions for our speakers everybody so I take it dr. Upton from your analysis of the situation in Syria you don't very much by the notion of the rebels at the make much of a distinction between is true that's correct I mean there certain distinctions can be made but there are both mercenaries and tuk Furies among the Free Syrian Army and of course we've not just been supporting them we've been supporting all nusra which is simply an element of al Qaeda you know that changed its name and started to take arms and and funds from us and and strategic directions so yeah IIIi don't think I think the ID of the moderate rebel is a myth yes I believe that the only way to stop fear and to love God is to get rid of the blasphemous doctrine that God would eternally damned some people to hell the script Jewish and Christian scriptures say that every knee will Bend and every tongue will praise God so I believe that in the end God will purify and will heal all of us of our wickedness and will save and will bring to paradise or heaven every single human being and unless this is believed if people believe that the God they worship will torture his enemies for all eternity then what could be wrong if I kill my enemies if God does this to his enemies so we have to believe that God loves all of us and will in the end save all of us Thank You Angela amen I agree a hundred percent I think the question is how do we achieve that reality in people's minds you know I think hatred and bigotry and the spread of propaganda is big business for some people like this has been well documented in the Islamophobia industry the spread of anti-muslim information and knowledge is lucrative it's a lucrative business and I'm sure the same can be said on the other side of the spectrum in this country with with Christian theologians and these televangelists and so on and so forth so it's going to take a real concerted effort by people of conscience to start implementing these ideas at a practical level in people's minds and in their hearts because there's always going to be people who are going to disagree and they have power and they have in so I agree I think collectively be interesting to see how all of us could put our heads together and figure out how do we actually eradicate that totalitarian idea that you're talking about Charles is you know as I mentioned one of the leading scholars and the the traditionalist school which you know one of its hallmarks is the idea that you know to quote an endo Kumaraswamy all paths lead to the same summit which you also find in the Quran but I'd like to also ask you Charles to discuss this point I would be glad to discuss that but first I would really like to address this gentleman's question or statement on a more theological level from the standpoint at this point of the Eastern Orthodox Christianity the Eastern Orthodox teach a God is love and God only loves God does not condemn anyone and yet there are people who hate love and cannot stand it and the more love you show them the more they suffer and the more they scream and protest and say no you're taking away my reality you're ruining you know my my identity you're taking or you're violating my boundaries I don't want this love and there's plenty of people like that those are the people who have sent to themselves to hell because they cannot stand the love of God they run and God lets them go because they've got free will but well what does one say in terms of the doctrines of the traditionalist school are also called the perennial lists I don't like to necessarily talk about that school as if it had its own doctrines it does more or less in some ways but it's it's just this it's a great introduction to all through the great religions of the world and I began at introduction basically in the counterculture in the San Francisco Bay Area when people were running around every religion they could find you know it was very promiscuous it wasn't entirely Arius but there was a great truth-seeking behind it you know people would be a Buddhist or they don't want to do this now I'll be a Hindu and this and this or you'll become a Jesus Freak you know but there so I essentially grew up in a context where all these religions were looked at as as alternatives or as possibly all valid you know but when it comes to the traditionalist writers reneging known and under Kumaraswamy virtue of Xuan Martin Ling's Titus Burkhardt and and actually many others they've raised this this understanding of the you know the God has sent more than one revelation to to humanity they've raised that to the probably the highest level of expression that we've ever had which as Zachary says is also the position of certain verses of the Quran but you know I think the bottom line is though if you recognize sanctity if you know what a saint is then you will see well whether I agree with the theology of this or that or understand the theology of this or that religion these people are saying Rama Krishna and Rama no hoshi and hinduism they're real Saints saint john maximovich of shanghai and san francisco who died in the 60s and his his relics are in a Cathedral and Geary Street San Francisco a real Saint you know and and among the Sufis the great Saints you know by Ossie bastami and you know just the longest list you know of truly God realized holy people if you recognize holiness and the Buddhists certainly plenty of saints there so if you know what Saints are you could say well maybe I can't figure out how they became mistakes through this strange theology that I don't understand but I gotta admit it because if I know if I know that God is love then I will know who he loves and I will see he loves these people because they are his Saints and that's that's the bottom line for me the validity more than one religion so Salaam aleikum walekum Salam I want to do you just kind of open my eyes right now when you spoke about the flip side of the coin it's the same thing I just remembered about in Mujahideen and now the Taliban so maybe you can shed a little bit more light on that and now the other thing I wanted to ask you about the Sharia the Sharia law there's a lot of fear among people I keep hearing it because I'm also part of the interfaith that there is a but isn't that a a code of living for a Muslim and it has nothing to do with the non non-muslim of course and then we are hearing this like just yesterday Trump talked about the immigration in England the culture has been changing what is that fear of a migrants and immigration and other people kind of intermixing with with the Americans and other white nations or the Western nations when it comes to immigration you know the white race is afraid because the birth rate of the white race is down and you know the people from other nations are getting drawn into a demographic vacuum and that is that is terrifying to white people but where did they lose the heart for life that they did not want to have children how did that happen that's the other side of it you know I'm not going to blame you know the the white race for having too few children or blame the immigrants for coming into that vacuum it's just that's that's the way you know that that's the dynamic you know and certainly so many immigrants are simply running from their lives and therefore their lives and they're running from wars that the Western nations particularly the United States have have you know imposed upon them and you know but it's it's also necessary to understand that I mean no nation can simply have absolute open absolutely open borders or will cease to be a nation we have to have a rational immigration policy which we have not had one of the purposes for illegal immigrants mostly from Latin America in this country is well it's great for union-busting you have a lot of people come in here who can never unionize because they're illegal who can be deported at any time who have effectively no civil rights and they and they they can you know they can be controlled and then they can weaken the labor movement the people who were opposed to immigration in illegal immigration not opposed to rational immigration or compassionate openness to people who have real needs in other nations but just horas borders the people who are opposed to this included Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers movement who's a you know one of the breaked leftist heroes of California and also Russell Means of the American Indian Movement because you know they see how from their point of view illegal immigrants are you know hurting their livelihoods we're not just talking about you know we always say well white people don't like other other nations because they have this idea that immigrants are taking away jobs in a lot of cases that is foolishness not in all cases but certainly if you know one of the major Latino leaders the major Latino leader of the United States was opposed to illegal immigration and also a major leader the American Indian Movement then you know we need to look again about immigration there are two sides to that and I'm afraid Donald Trump has no nuance in his mind about you know he's not gonna look at two sides of anything it's so much simpler just to stir up racism and racial hatred and you know get a certain percentage of the population behind you automatically and so I think Trump is trying to fix a real problem but he's making it immensely worse because you know he has no compassion in terms of this fear of the migrant and this idea that migrants or refugees or immigrants are going to be you know migrating to US soil and changing the culture that's that argument is a white nationalist argument I'm sure you know if you go to Breitbart you see it there but I think if we look at some significant scholarship that has been developed in in recent years there's a really good book by a scholar from I believe it's Columbia mom Donnie and he wrote a book good Muslim bad Muslim essentially what he's saying if I could wrap it up in a nutshell it's the conflation of Muslims over there somewhere in the world with Muslims here on US soil that conflation should never happen it shouldn't happen for any community but Muslims seem to have to deal with that depiction more so than Christians like when a Christian identity movement in Nigeria goes and kills Muslims no one is asking me a Christian or other Christians to speak on behalf of that issue so people need to recognize the uniqueness of the u.s. Muslim population and experience the entire Ummah is represented in the United States so we have to collectively as a nation get out of this monolithic mentality everything has to be at least it's perceived to be a monolith so Muslims are a monolith therefore Sharia is also a monolith even though Sharia is implemented differently in different Muslim majority countries around the world it's implemented in different Muslim populations and Muslim communities in this country and I write about this in in my book like a really interesting quote that was given by an imam and he said most Imams actually don't even really talk specifically about Shah in mosques because it's so complicated and most people just can't follow the intricacies and the details of how rigorous that understanding and that education is just to end on on a fact and polls have shown this Sharia as you mentioned it's a way of life so when you have state legislatures around this country actually putting into law banning foreign law which we all know is Sharia I mean that is completely unconstitutional a hundred percent unconstitutional but interestingly most u.s. Muslims overwhelmingly prefer to be governed at the national level not by any Saudi Arabian idea of Sharia they prefer the Constitution that's what they prefer and Sharia is something understood by a huge chunk of the US Muslim population according to the data as something that is practiced and understood at a private level and sometimes it involves marriage contracts and stuff like this so people just don't even know what Sharia I'm talking non-muslims they have no idea what it even means well I think we'll have to wrap it up there but I want to thank both dr. Constantine and Charles Upton for joining us for your love expressed I think through courage tonight and a willingness to speak up for the neighbor and please please give them a round of applause [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Hub Talks

Views: 2,212

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Id: NqGnR5gqPcQ

Length: 108min 1sec (6481 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 26 2018