First, the apostasy. From an article on wnd.com:
Dozens of Christian churches, from Park Hill Congregational in Denver to Hillview United Methodist in Boise, Idaho, and First United Lutheran in San Francisco to St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church in Honolulu, are planning to send "a message both here at home and to the Arab and Muslim world about our respect for Islam" with a time to read the Quran during worship this Sunday...
The aim of the program, which is promoted by social activists behind the Faith Shared website, is to counter the message from Islamic activists who say opposition to their religion is the product of what they call a cottage industry of hate.So the Interfaith Alliance and Human Rights First is calling on Christian clergy to read portions of the Quran during their services Sunday.
The readings, supporters say, will "counter the anti-Muslim bigotry and negative stereotypes that have erupted throughout the country in the past year and led to misconceptions, distrust and in some cases, violence."And from the Faith Shared website itself:
Tensions around Islam in America have erupted throughout the country in the past year, leading to misconceptions, distrust and in some cases violence. News stories on the rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry and violence abound, with graphic and often searing images of the antagonists, the protagonists and the battlegrounds where they meet. All too often, media coverage simplistically pits Muslims against would-be Qur’an burners, neglecting any substantive representation of where the majority of Americans actually stand: a shared commitment to tolerance and freedom. We are committed to ensuring that the storyline changes dramatically in 2011 by helping to create an environment of mutual understanding and respect for each other’s faith traditions...
Faith Shared asks houses of worship across the country to organize events involving clergy reading from each other’s sacred texts. An example would be a Christian Minister, Jewish Rabbi and Muslim Imam participating in a worship service or other event. Suggested readings will be provided from the Torah, the Gospels, and the Qur’an, but communities are encouraged to choose readings that will resonate with their congregations. Involvement of members from the Muslim community is key. We will also provide suggestions on how to incorporate this program into your regular worship services. And we will assist local congregations in their media and communications efforts.The "Faith Shared" website subtitle reads, "United in Prayer and Understanding." Yet everything about this horribly misguided effort reveals that its organizers and supporters are lacking in any sort of understanding of the issues at hand. They appear to know nothing of either Christian or Muslim doctrine.
Firstly, there is absolutely no "faith shared" between Christians and Muslims. Islam is a pseudo-monotheistic pagan religion completely at odds with Christianity, and its teachings on Christ are an amalgam of ancient heresies, similar to Arianism (it denies the divinity of Jesus Christ), and with a strong Docetist component (it denies that Christ was crucified; the Koran states that another was crucified in his place). Islam also strongly denies the Triune Nature of the Godhead, and through its relentless, supremacist theological jihad seeks to sway Christians into agreeing with its extreme monotheism. When a Christian assents to the Muslim teaching that we worship the same god, he has implicitly denied Christ and committed apostasy, for in Islam, Jesus is merely a prophet, not the Only Begotten Son of God. Islam openly claims to properly understand and venerate Jesus, seeking to co-opt Christ as a prophet of Islam. This blasphemous teaching subverts every aspect of authentic Christian dogma, seen most shockingly in Islamic eschatology, where Jesus is expected to return again, but to "break the crosses and kill the swine" — in other words, to destroy Christianity — before taking a subservient position behind the Muslim messiah, the Mahdi.
Thus, to allow or assent to any Islamic doctrine is to deny Christ and commit apostasy.
Not only is there no "faith shared" between Christians and Muslims, but there can be no "uniting in prayer" either. Since Muslims pray to a false god, a Christian is forbidden to join with them in prayer. How could one who has been baptized into Christ say "Amen" to a prayer offered to a false, pagan deity?
Furthermore, the Islamic opening prayer includes a specific petition which explicitly invokes Allah's condemnation on "those who have incurred his wrath, and on those who have gone astray." Muslim commentators have always understood this to refer to Jews and Christians. From Mark Durie's website:
The best-known chapter of the Quran is al-Fatihah ‘The Opening’. This sura is recited as part of all the mandatory daily prayers – the salat –and repeated within each prayer. A faithful Muslim who said all their prayers would recite this sura at least seventeen times a day, and over five thousand times a year.
Al-Fatihah is a prayer for guidance:
In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of all Being,
the All-merciful, the All-compassionate,
the Master of the Day of Doom.
Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for succor.
Guide us in the straight path,
the path of those whom Thou hast blessed,
not of those against whom Thou art wrathful,
nor of those who are astray.
This is a prayer asking Allah’s help to lead the believer along the ‘straight path’. As such it is true to the heart of Islam’s message of guidance.
But who are those who are said to have earned Allah’s wrath, or gone astray from the straight path? Who are these people who deserve to be stigmatized in every Muslim’s prayers, each day, hundreds of thousands of times in many Muslims’ lifetimes.
Ibn Kathir’s commentary explains the meaning of this verse as follows:
These two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them. … the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why ‘anger’ descended upon the Jews, while being described as ‘led astray’ is more appropriate of the Christians. … We should also mention that both the Christians and the Jews have earned the anger and are led astray, but the anger is one of the attributes more particular of the Jews. Allah said about the Jews, ‘Those (Jews) who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath’ (Sura 5:60). The attribute that the Christians deserve most is that of being led astray, just as Allah said about them, ‘Who went astray before and who misled many, and strayed (themselves) from the right path’ (Sura 5:77).
Ibn Kathir goes on to cite a hadith in which Muhammad clarified the meaning of this sura:
Imam Ahmad recorded that ‘Adi bin Hatim said, … he [Muhammad] said: ‘Those who have earned the anger are the Jews and those who are led astray are the Christians.’
The verse from Sura 5 which Ibn Kathir refers to concerning Jews is:
Shall I tell you of a recompense with Allah, worse than that? Whomsoever Allah has cursed, and with whom He is wroth, and made some of them apes and swine, and worshippers of idols – they are worse situated, and have gone further astray from the right way. (Sura 5:60)
And the verse concerning Christians:
People of the Book, go not beyond the bounds in your religion, other than the truth, and follow not the caprices of a people who went astray before, and led astray many, and now again have gone astray from the right way. (Sura 5:77)
It is remarkable that the daily prayers of every Muslim, part of the core of Islam, include a rejection of Christians and Jews as misguided and objects of Allah’s wrath.
Sadly, tragically, the Faith Shared effort is united in apostasy and misunderstanding, and is the offspring of the centuries of anti-Christian drifting which has occurred in the West, coupled with the ascendancy of the secular mindset, which has been gathering strength for the last century. The extent to which more and more "Christians" adopt the beliefs and attitudes of the Faith Shared effort, is the extent to which the great falling away can be seen to have progressed.
The address given by Metropolitan Jonah (Asceticism and the Consumer Society) to a diverse audience from over seventy countries — including many Muslims — at Acton University last week, was a pattern for proclaiming the Orthodox Gospel, even while building bridges and reaching out to non-Christians where we may genuinely do so, as is evidenced in this excerpt:
The solution we are looking for is the Cross of Jesus Christ. It is His Cross that heals a fallen creation, a fallen humanity, and me as a sinner. Reflecting on the appropriateness of Christ’s death on the Cross as a public proclamation of God’s love for humanity, St Athanasius the Great writes: "[I]f the Lord’s death is the ransom of all, and by his death 'the middle wall of partition' is broken down, and the calling of the nations is brought about, how would he have called us to him, had he not been crucified? for it is only on a cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. Whence it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also and to spread out his hands, that with the one he might draw the ancient people, and with the other those from the Gentiles, and unite both in himself. For this is what he himself has said to all: 'I, when I am lifted up,' he says, 'shall draw all men to me.'"
The Christian ascetical life, that is the life of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, the works of mercy and obedience, is the application and the appropriation of the Cross to my life. It is the means by which I both enter into a life of communion with God and become myself a sacrament of that communion for others. This is possible because at its most basic level, asceticism “is the struggle of the person against rebellious nature, against the nature which seeks to achieve on its own what it could bring about only in personal unity and communion with God.” Our “restoration” to a life of personal communion with God and so our personal “resistance” to the powers of sin and death, “presuppose a struggle” within each human heart that is often lacking in contemporary society and even our churches.
This struggle IS the ascetical life and as an Orthodox Christian I believe that I cannot effectively preach the Gospel if I neglect my own person podvig, my own personal ascetical struggle to live a life in conformity to Christ. So clearly I am not referring here to “just any kind of asceticism.” Fasting, for example, simply to make ourselves more attractive to others is also a type of asceticism; it is the false asceticism of consumerism that encourages rather than mortifies our egoism. Likewise we can work longer hours so that we can simply own more things. This too is a false form of asceticism because it too is grounded in egoism.
The asceticism that is needed to preach the Gospel, and so offer hope and healing to those gripped by the materialism and despair of secularism and the false idol of consumerism, is the kind of asceticism by which we “resist death in our own bodies.” This happens I believe only by our “conformity to the example of Christ, who willingly accepted death so as to destroy death.” As with worship, we may disagree among ourselves as Jews, Christians and Muslim as to the source, content and form of the ascetical life. But is it so daring to say that, on anthropological grounds at least, we agree among ourselves that “Every voluntary mortification of the egocentricity which is ‘contrary to nature’ is a dynamic destruction of death and a triumph for the life of the person” and so society?
Can we not as religious believers and as men and women of good will, in our own lives, in the lives of our respective communities and in our society at the very least foster a renewed appreciation and practice of asceticism?