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	Comments on: Guillaume Smit and the &#8220;Culture&#8221; of Islam?	</title>
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		By: Elmarie A		</title>
		<link>https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-8731</link>

		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Elmarie A]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 08 May 2010 13:15:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.discerningtheworld.com/?p=6284#comment-8731</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[ TRAIL OF TERROR
Christian question: &#039;Interfaith dialogue&#039; or &#039;useful idiots&#039;?
Growing trend to meet with Muslims rings alarm bells for some

The effort among some Christian  churches to meet with Muslims and dialogue about faith is a betrayal of the basic foundations of Christianity, asserts a critic of the developing trend.

&quot;Useful idiots,&quot; is how Christian talk show host and Muslim analyst Ingrid Schlueter assessed the participants in a recent interfaith dialogue session between the Acts 29 Network-affiliated Harambee Church and MAPS, the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, a group that has connections to the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

WND previously reported an expert on the advance of radical Islam in the United States says the Muslim Brotherhood is effectively employing a strategy of presenting &quot;Islam lite&quot; to organizations, including Christian churches.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the Sunni transnational movement founded in Egypt in 1928 that has spawned most of the major terrorist movements in the world, including al-Qaida and Hamas. It&#039;s aim is to make Islamic law supreme over the world.

The recent church plant, a spinoff of Seattle&#039;s Mars Hill megachurch, recently started a series of interfaith dialogue meetings with MAPS. Schlueter said there are complications. 

The effort among some Christian  churches to meet with Muslims and dialogue about faith is a betrayal of the basic foundations of Christianity, asserts a critic of the developing trend.

&quot;Useful idiots,&quot; is how Christian talk show host and Muslim analyst Ingrid Schlueter assessed the participants in a recent interfaith dialogue session between the Acts 29 Network-affiliated Harambee Church and MAPS, the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, a group that has connections to the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

WND previously reported an expert on the advance of radical Islam in the United States says the Muslim Brotherhood is effectively employing a strategy of presenting &quot;Islam lite&quot; to organizations, including Christian churches.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the Sunni transnational movement founded in Egypt in 1928 that has spawned most of the major terrorist movements in the world, including al-Qaida and Hamas. It&#039;s aim is to make Islamic law supreme over the world.

The recent church plant, a spinoff of Seattle&#039;s Mars Hill megachurch, recently started a series of interfaith dialogue meetings with MAPS. Schlueter said there are complications. 

Listen to an interview with Ingrid Schlueter: 
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&#038;pageId=149893

A source in Washington state who is close to the Acts 29 Network says another reason the series of interfaith dialogues is a cause for concern is the Acts 29 Network&#039;s and Pastor Mark Driscoll&#039;s connections with Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren. The best-selling author of pastor of the Lake Forest, Calif., megachurch also is involved in interfaith dialogue, Schlueter said.

Driscoll has participated in conferences at Warren&#039;s Lake Forest, Calif., church and was listed as a speaker at Saddleback&#039;s Radicalis conference for youth in February.

Driscoll&#039;s assistant declined to forward WND messages to Driscoll&#039;s voice mail and recommended WND fill out a request on the church website to obtain comment. But Driscoll has not replied.

Get the book that exposed CAIR from the inside out, autographed, from WND&#039;s Superstore!

&quot;It was April 20 when Rick Warren was at a Los Angeles synagogue with a group of imams and the rabbi from Temple Sinai. They were having an interfaith dialogue there,&quot; Schlueter said. &quot;This is happening. Whether it&#039;s Mark Driscoll&#039;s Acts 29 churches or whether it&#039;s Rick Warren, this is a growing trend and it disturbs me,&quot; the Crosstalk host said.

She said an April 22 edition of Jewish Journal included a photograph of Warren in which he appeared to be wearing a Muslim prayer cap.

&quot;When I see photos like this, I see the influence of Islam in the church has gone a lot further than we think,&quot; Schlueter said.

A spokesman from Warren&#039;s Texas-based publicity firm, A. Larry Ross Communications, said Warren was wearing an Ethiopian Jewish cap in the photo.

Observers said while that may be the case, it leaves a questionable impression.

A Massachusetts pastor who asked not to be identified said real interfaith dialogue means being who you are.

&quot;In real interfaith dialogue, each person brings their distinctives to the dialogue. Warren&#039;s donning of the Muslim cap in the synagogue is compromise,&quot; the pastor said.

Schlueter says appearances are important.

&quot;It still looks like a kufi or taqiya, the Muslim prayer cap. But it doesn&#039;t matter if it&#039;s a yarmulke or an Islamic prayer cap. The point is that because he&#039;s sitting with a group of imams, a lot of people will think it&#039;s a Muslim cap,&quot; Schlueter said.

&quot;When you do interfaith dialogue, you be who you are. So why didn&#039;t he participate as an evangelical Christian? Why did he compromise and wear something that will bring confusion?&quot; Schlueter asked.

It was a year ago when Warren addressed the Islamic Society of North American convention, explaining he wanted to promote interfaith cooperation.

&quot;I am not interested in interfaith dialogue but interfaith projects. As the two largest faiths on this planet – more than 1 billion Muslims and 2 billion Christians – as Muslims and Christians, we must believe in this. As more than half the world, we must do something to model what it is to live in peace, to live in harmony,&quot; Warren said in his ISNA speech.

Not all Christian leaders are alarmed by the developments. Harambee Church associate pastor Michael Ly, who&#039;s also the vice president of Peace Catalyst International, said the event was primarily to build relationships.

Ly said the event focused on discussing the two faith&#039;s perspectives on who Jesus is, but its purpose wasn&#039;t specifically aimed at evangelism.

Listen to an interview with Michael Ly: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&#038;pageId=149893

&quot;The event was to make more friends in the community and we have many neighbors who are our neighbors. There are as many as 75,000 to 100,000 Muslims in the Seattle-Puget Sound area. They&#039;re our neighbors,&quot; Ly said.

Ly said that CAIR officials didn&#039;t actually speak at the event, but were instrumental in helping organize it.

He said Washington state CAIR chapter president Arsalan Bukhari introduced him to the MAPS Redmond leader, &quot;but from that point on, wasn&#039;t super heavily involved in organizing the event.&quot;

&quot;But Arsalan helped get the Qurans we used,&quot; Ly said.

Calls and e-mails asking for comment on this story from Bukhari&#039;s office have not been returned.

Ly said the event was successful, and he maintains that the dialogue session achieved its objectives and opens the door for future evangelism opportunities.

&quot;There were a lot of new friendships made between Muslims and Christians who were at the event. We&#039;re going to continue to have ongoing dialogues with the MAPS Muslim community as well as ongoing dialogues about Jesus and other parts of our respective faiths with other Muslim communities through the Seattle area,&quot; Ly said.

Leaders of the Acts 29 Network and Warren aren&#039;t alone in their satisfaction with the trend toward interfaith dialogue.

Former Michigan Rep. Mark Siljander recently published &quot;A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman&#039;s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide.&quot; He&#039;s also the founder of the Virginia lobbying firm Global Strategies.

Siljander said the Harambee Church&#039;s actions and others like it are a positive step.

&quot;I&#039;m very encouraged. As a believer myself, I&#039;m very distraught over the strategy, not theology, applied by most Christians toward Islam. Outspoken Christians like Franklin Graham and others have caused tremendous and unnecessary gulfs between Christians and Muslims,&quot; Siljander said.

Graham recently was banned by the military from appearing at a National Day of Prayer event at the Pentagon because of his criticism of Islam&#039;s violence.

&quot;Most Christians for the most part, the outspoken ones, will criticize Islam, their book and their prophet and say, &#039;Let&#039;s sit down and talk about Jesus.&#039; Needless to say, that doesn&#039;t work,&quot; Siljander said.

&quot;In the book that&#039;s been out 14 months now, I say that we discovered that if you sit down with not only a respectful attitude, with Muslims, their holy book, their prophet and the culture, and do so with the enthusiasm about the person of Jesus, we find that the Holy Spirit will take hold and bring the conversation where He wants it to take,&quot; Siljander said.

Schlueter, however, calls such meetings simply propaganda tools for radical Islam.

&quot;Evangelical Christians are not seeing the false concept first of all of the interfaith services, where we share our view about Jesus and then the Muslims share their view about Jesus, is completely alien to the example in Acts chapter two,&quot; Schlueter said.

&quot;The apostles got up and preached Christ crucified, the hope of the world. What we&#039;re seeing now is &#039;let&#039;s sit down and talk about your view about of this and let&#039;s watch how you pray with your prayer rug and we&#039;ll show you how we pray as Christians and we&#039;ll all go away and have some tea and cookies.&#039; That&#039;s not evangelism,&quot; she said.

&quot;We&#039;re not calling for hatred or intolerance or anything of that nature. But I do believe it is wrong for Christians to go knocking on the door of a local mosque or local CAIR office and say we&#039;d like to have a Muslim official come to our church and we’ll sit and talk,&quot; Schlueter said.

&quot;What they&#039;re doing is being useful idiots for propaganda purposes by CAIR with its terrorist ties and effort to promote Islam within the United States, the rule of Islam and the promotion of shariah law. If Christians are not going to be more discerning than that they are serving as useful idiots and promoting a doctrine that is counter to the Gospel of Jesus Christ,&quot; she said.

Pamela Geller publishes Atlas Shrugs, which along with Robert Spencer&#039;s Jihad Watch, reports on developments of Islam in the West.

Geller said any CAIR involvement should be of concern for a Christian.

&quot;CAIR is a Hamas front, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case. Hamas is a jihad terrorist group. Several former CAIR officials are now in prison for terrorist activities. The FBI won&#039;t work with CAIR anymore, and is in fact investigating CAIR,&quot; Geller explained.

Geller also makes the tie between CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.

&quot;The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has called CAIR the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. CAIR&#039;s ties with the Muslim Brotherhood were, in fact, entered in evidence in the Holy Land terror trial. The Muslim Brotherhood&#039;s stated goal is one world living under Islamic law,&quot; Geller said.


CAIR headquarters in Washington

&quot;The Quran teaches that Christians are under Allah&#039;s curse for teaching that Jesus is the Son of God. The Muslim call to prayer calls Muhammad a messenger of Allah, and Muhammad taught that Christianity was just a twisted version of Islam. So what were the leaders of Harambee church thinking? What do the leaders of the Harambee church think of the worldwide persecution, oppression and subjugation of Christians living in Muslim lands?&quot; Geller asked.

&quot;By working with Hamas-tied CAIR, and letting the Muslim call to prayer sound in their church, they&#039;re showing their weakness and ignorance of the Islamic jihad program to conquer and subjugate Christians and other non-Muslims. They have submitted. They&#039;re cutting their own throats, and aiding their own worst enemies,&quot; Geller said.

P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry write in their WND book &quot;Muslim Mafia&quot; that Muslims want to Islamize Jesus.

They report the training manual for CAIR includes information about Jesus.

Among the materials CAIR distributes in its outreach efforts in the U.S. is the book &quot;Jesus: Prophet of Islam&quot; by Mohammad Ata-ur-Rehman and Muslim convert Ahmad Thomson. CAIR also launched a $60,000 advertising campaign on Florida buses with the message Jesus was a Muslim. The signs read: &#039;ISLAM: The Way of Life of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad.&quot;

One Islamic expert who formerly worked with the U.S. government on terror said Muslims even use the writings of disaffected Christian.

&quot;Muslims are making use of Bart Ehrman&#039;s commentaries on the New Testament, books that now deny the authority of the New Testament and portray Jesus as simply a man,&quot; he said. &quot;You will never hear a Muslim say that Jesus is the Son of God.&quot; 

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&#038;pageId=149893]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p> TRAIL OF TERROR<br />
Christian question: &#8216;Interfaith dialogue&#8217; or &#8216;useful idiots&#8217;?<br />
Growing trend to meet with Muslims rings alarm bells for some</p>
<p>The effort among some Christian  churches to meet with Muslims and dialogue about faith is a betrayal of the basic foundations of Christianity, asserts a critic of the developing trend.</p>
<p>&#8220;Useful idiots,&#8221; is how Christian talk show host and Muslim analyst Ingrid Schlueter assessed the participants in a recent interfaith dialogue session between the Acts 29 Network-affiliated Harambee Church and MAPS, the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, a group that has connections to the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.</p>
<p>WND previously reported an expert on the advance of radical Islam in the United States says the Muslim Brotherhood is effectively employing a strategy of presenting &#8220;Islam lite&#8221; to organizations, including Christian churches.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood is the Sunni transnational movement founded in Egypt in 1928 that has spawned most of the major terrorist movements in the world, including al-Qaida and Hamas. It&#8217;s aim is to make Islamic law supreme over the world.</p>
<p>The recent church plant, a spinoff of Seattle&#8217;s Mars Hill megachurch, recently started a series of interfaith dialogue meetings with MAPS. Schlueter said there are complications. </p>
<p>The effort among some Christian  churches to meet with Muslims and dialogue about faith is a betrayal of the basic foundations of Christianity, asserts a critic of the developing trend.</p>
<p>&#8220;Useful idiots,&#8221; is how Christian talk show host and Muslim analyst Ingrid Schlueter assessed the participants in a recent interfaith dialogue session between the Acts 29 Network-affiliated Harambee Church and MAPS, the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, a group that has connections to the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.</p>
<p>WND previously reported an expert on the advance of radical Islam in the United States says the Muslim Brotherhood is effectively employing a strategy of presenting &#8220;Islam lite&#8221; to organizations, including Christian churches.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood is the Sunni transnational movement founded in Egypt in 1928 that has spawned most of the major terrorist movements in the world, including al-Qaida and Hamas. It&#8217;s aim is to make Islamic law supreme over the world.</p>
<p>The recent church plant, a spinoff of Seattle&#8217;s Mars Hill megachurch, recently started a series of interfaith dialogue meetings with MAPS. Schlueter said there are complications. </p>
<p>Listen to an interview with Ingrid Schlueter:<br />
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&#038;pageId=149893"  rel="nofollow ugc">http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&#038;pageId=149893</a></p>
<p>A source in Washington state who is close to the Acts 29 Network says another reason the series of interfaith dialogues is a cause for concern is the Acts 29 Network&#8217;s and Pastor Mark Driscoll&#8217;s connections with Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren. The best-selling author of pastor of the Lake Forest, Calif., megachurch also is involved in interfaith dialogue, Schlueter said.</p>
<p>Driscoll has participated in conferences at Warren&#8217;s Lake Forest, Calif., church and was listed as a speaker at Saddleback&#8217;s Radicalis conference for youth in February.</p>
<p>Driscoll&#8217;s assistant declined to forward WND messages to Driscoll&#8217;s voice mail and recommended WND fill out a request on the church website to obtain comment. But Driscoll has not replied.</p>
<p>Get the book that exposed CAIR from the inside out, autographed, from WND&#8217;s Superstore!</p>
<p>&#8220;It was April 20 when Rick Warren was at a Los Angeles synagogue with a group of imams and the rabbi from Temple Sinai. They were having an interfaith dialogue there,&#8221; Schlueter said. &#8220;This is happening. Whether it&#8217;s Mark Driscoll&#8217;s Acts 29 churches or whether it&#8217;s Rick Warren, this is a growing trend and it disturbs me,&#8221; the Crosstalk host said.</p>
<p>She said an April 22 edition of Jewish Journal included a photograph of Warren in which he appeared to be wearing a Muslim prayer cap.</p>
<p>&#8220;When I see photos like this, I see the influence of Islam in the church has gone a lot further than we think,&#8221; Schlueter said.</p>
<p>A spokesman from Warren&#8217;s Texas-based publicity firm, A. Larry Ross Communications, said Warren was wearing an Ethiopian Jewish cap in the photo.</p>
<p>Observers said while that may be the case, it leaves a questionable impression.</p>
<p>A Massachusetts pastor who asked not to be identified said real interfaith dialogue means being who you are.</p>
<p>&#8220;In real interfaith dialogue, each person brings their distinctives to the dialogue. Warren&#8217;s donning of the Muslim cap in the synagogue is compromise,&#8221; the pastor said.</p>
<p>Schlueter says appearances are important.</p>
<p>&#8220;It still looks like a kufi or taqiya, the Muslim prayer cap. But it doesn&#8217;t matter if it&#8217;s a yarmulke or an Islamic prayer cap. The point is that because he&#8217;s sitting with a group of imams, a lot of people will think it&#8217;s a Muslim cap,&#8221; Schlueter said.</p>
<p>&#8220;When you do interfaith dialogue, you be who you are. So why didn&#8217;t he participate as an evangelical Christian? Why did he compromise and wear something that will bring confusion?&#8221; Schlueter asked.</p>
<p>It was a year ago when Warren addressed the Islamic Society of North American convention, explaining he wanted to promote interfaith cooperation.</p>
<p>&#8220;I am not interested in interfaith dialogue but interfaith projects. As the two largest faiths on this planet – more than 1 billion Muslims and 2 billion Christians – as Muslims and Christians, we must believe in this. As more than half the world, we must do something to model what it is to live in peace, to live in harmony,&#8221; Warren said in his ISNA speech.</p>
<p>Not all Christian leaders are alarmed by the developments. Harambee Church associate pastor Michael Ly, who&#8217;s also the vice president of Peace Catalyst International, said the event was primarily to build relationships.</p>
<p>Ly said the event focused on discussing the two faith&#8217;s perspectives on who Jesus is, but its purpose wasn&#8217;t specifically aimed at evangelism.</p>
<p>Listen to an interview with Michael Ly: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&#038;pageId=149893"  rel="nofollow ugc">http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&#038;pageId=149893</a></p>
<p>&#8220;The event was to make more friends in the community and we have many neighbors who are our neighbors. There are as many as 75,000 to 100,000 Muslims in the Seattle-Puget Sound area. They&#8217;re our neighbors,&#8221; Ly said.</p>
<p>Ly said that CAIR officials didn&#8217;t actually speak at the event, but were instrumental in helping organize it.</p>
<p>He said Washington state CAIR chapter president Arsalan Bukhari introduced him to the MAPS Redmond leader, &#8220;but from that point on, wasn&#8217;t super heavily involved in organizing the event.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;But Arsalan helped get the Qurans we used,&#8221; Ly said.</p>
<p>Calls and e-mails asking for comment on this story from Bukhari&#8217;s office have not been returned.</p>
<p>Ly said the event was successful, and he maintains that the dialogue session achieved its objectives and opens the door for future evangelism opportunities.</p>
<p>&#8220;There were a lot of new friendships made between Muslims and Christians who were at the event. We&#8217;re going to continue to have ongoing dialogues with the MAPS Muslim community as well as ongoing dialogues about Jesus and other parts of our respective faiths with other Muslim communities through the Seattle area,&#8221; Ly said.</p>
<p>Leaders of the Acts 29 Network and Warren aren&#8217;t alone in their satisfaction with the trend toward interfaith dialogue.</p>
<p>Former Michigan Rep. Mark Siljander recently published &#8220;A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman&#8217;s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide.&#8221; He&#8217;s also the founder of the Virginia lobbying firm Global Strategies.</p>
<p>Siljander said the Harambee Church&#8217;s actions and others like it are a positive step.</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m very encouraged. As a believer myself, I&#8217;m very distraught over the strategy, not theology, applied by most Christians toward Islam. Outspoken Christians like Franklin Graham and others have caused tremendous and unnecessary gulfs between Christians and Muslims,&#8221; Siljander said.</p>
<p>Graham recently was banned by the military from appearing at a National Day of Prayer event at the Pentagon because of his criticism of Islam&#8217;s violence.</p>
<p>&#8220;Most Christians for the most part, the outspoken ones, will criticize Islam, their book and their prophet and say, &#8216;Let&#8217;s sit down and talk about Jesus.&#8217; Needless to say, that doesn&#8217;t work,&#8221; Siljander said.</p>
<p>&#8220;In the book that&#8217;s been out 14 months now, I say that we discovered that if you sit down with not only a respectful attitude, with Muslims, their holy book, their prophet and the culture, and do so with the enthusiasm about the person of Jesus, we find that the Holy Spirit will take hold and bring the conversation where He wants it to take,&#8221; Siljander said.</p>
<p>Schlueter, however, calls such meetings simply propaganda tools for radical Islam.</p>
<p>&#8220;Evangelical Christians are not seeing the false concept first of all of the interfaith services, where we share our view about Jesus and then the Muslims share their view about Jesus, is completely alien to the example in Acts chapter two,&#8221; Schlueter said.</p>
<p>&#8220;The apostles got up and preached Christ crucified, the hope of the world. What we&#8217;re seeing now is &#8216;let&#8217;s sit down and talk about your view about of this and let&#8217;s watch how you pray with your prayer rug and we&#8217;ll show you how we pray as Christians and we&#8217;ll all go away and have some tea and cookies.&#8217; That&#8217;s not evangelism,&#8221; she said.</p>
<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not calling for hatred or intolerance or anything of that nature. But I do believe it is wrong for Christians to go knocking on the door of a local mosque or local CAIR office and say we&#8217;d like to have a Muslim official come to our church and we’ll sit and talk,&#8221; Schlueter said.</p>
<p>&#8220;What they&#8217;re doing is being useful idiots for propaganda purposes by CAIR with its terrorist ties and effort to promote Islam within the United States, the rule of Islam and the promotion of shariah law. If Christians are not going to be more discerning than that they are serving as useful idiots and promoting a doctrine that is counter to the Gospel of Jesus Christ,&#8221; she said.</p>
<p>Pamela Geller publishes Atlas Shrugs, which along with Robert Spencer&#8217;s Jihad Watch, reports on developments of Islam in the West.</p>
<p>Geller said any CAIR involvement should be of concern for a Christian.</p>
<p>&#8220;CAIR is a Hamas front, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case. Hamas is a jihad terrorist group. Several former CAIR officials are now in prison for terrorist activities. The FBI won&#8217;t work with CAIR anymore, and is in fact investigating CAIR,&#8221; Geller explained.</p>
<p>Geller also makes the tie between CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>&#8220;The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has called CAIR the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. CAIR&#8217;s ties with the Muslim Brotherhood were, in fact, entered in evidence in the Holy Land terror trial. The Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s stated goal is one world living under Islamic law,&#8221; Geller said.</p>
<p>CAIR headquarters in Washington</p>
<p>&#8220;The Quran teaches that Christians are under Allah&#8217;s curse for teaching that Jesus is the Son of God. The Muslim call to prayer calls Muhammad a messenger of Allah, and Muhammad taught that Christianity was just a twisted version of Islam. So what were the leaders of Harambee church thinking? What do the leaders of the Harambee church think of the worldwide persecution, oppression and subjugation of Christians living in Muslim lands?&#8221; Geller asked.</p>
<p>&#8220;By working with Hamas-tied CAIR, and letting the Muslim call to prayer sound in their church, they&#8217;re showing their weakness and ignorance of the Islamic jihad program to conquer and subjugate Christians and other non-Muslims. They have submitted. They&#8217;re cutting their own throats, and aiding their own worst enemies,&#8221; Geller said.</p>
<p>P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry write in their WND book &#8220;Muslim Mafia&#8221; that Muslims want to Islamize Jesus.</p>
<p>They report the training manual for CAIR includes information about Jesus.</p>
<p>Among the materials CAIR distributes in its outreach efforts in the U.S. is the book &#8220;Jesus: Prophet of Islam&#8221; by Mohammad Ata-ur-Rehman and Muslim convert Ahmad Thomson. CAIR also launched a $60,000 advertising campaign on Florida buses with the message Jesus was a Muslim. The signs read: &#8216;ISLAM: The Way of Life of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad.&#8221;</p>
<p>One Islamic expert who formerly worked with the U.S. government on terror said Muslims even use the writings of disaffected Christian.</p>
<p>&#8220;Muslims are making use of Bart Ehrman&#8217;s commentaries on the New Testament, books that now deny the authority of the New Testament and portray Jesus as simply a man,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You will never hear a Muslim say that Jesus is the Son of God.&#8221; </p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&#038;pageId=149893"  rel="nofollow ugc">http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&#038;pageId=149893</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
		
			</item>
		<item>
		<title>
		By: Amanda		</title>
		<link>https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1456</link>

		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Amanda]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:39:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.discerningtheworld.com/?p=6284#comment-1456</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Dr. Giullaume Smit:
&lt;blockquote&gt;We are Christians, making us brothers and sisters of Christians in other culture groups.&lt;/blockquote&gt;
From Jihad Watch:
&lt;blockquote&gt;
Somalia: Another church leader killed, after jihadist&#039;s wife caught her with six Bibles

Under Islamic law, non-Muslims are not allowed to propagate their faith, as was established in the Pact of Umar, which was concluded between Christians in Syria and Umar, and one of the four &quot;rightly guided&quot; caliphs of Sunni Islam: &quot;We shall not manifest our [non-Islamic] religion publicly nor convert anyone to it.&quot;

The Pact of Umar also states: &quot;If we in any way violate these undertakings for which we ourselves stand surety, we forfeit our covenant [dhimma], and we become liable to the penalties for contumacy and sedition.&quot;

In short, it&#039;s dangerous to be an uppity dhimmi. And if that constitutes a &quot;misunderstanding&quot; of Islam, as the apologists insist, it&#039;s been going on for an awfully long time, in awfully high places. Islamic Tolerance Alert. &quot;Islamic Extremists in Somalia Kill Another Church Leader,&quot; from Compass Direct News, October 1:

    NAIROBI, Kenya, October 1 (CDN) -- Islamic militants in Somalia this week killed a woman who led an underground Christian movement in the war-torn country.

    Sources told Compass that a leader of Islamic extremist al Shabaab militia in Lower Juba identified only as Sheikh Arbow shot to death 46-year-old Mariam Muhina Hussein at 2 p.m. on Monday (Sept. 28) in Marerey village after discovering she had six Bibles.&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/10/somalia-another-church-leader-killed-after-jihadists-wife-caught-her-with-6-bibles.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Read it all.&lt;/a&gt;]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Dr. Giullaume Smit:</p>
<blockquote><p>We are Christians, making us brothers and sisters of Christians in other culture groups.</p></blockquote>
<p>From Jihad Watch:</p>
<blockquote><p>
Somalia: Another church leader killed, after jihadist&#8217;s wife caught her with six Bibles</p>
<p>Under Islamic law, non-Muslims are not allowed to propagate their faith, as was established in the Pact of Umar, which was concluded between Christians in Syria and Umar, and one of the four &#8220;rightly guided&#8221; caliphs of Sunni Islam: &#8220;We shall not manifest our [non-Islamic] religion publicly nor convert anyone to it.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Pact of Umar also states: &#8220;If we in any way violate these undertakings for which we ourselves stand surety, we forfeit our covenant [dhimma], and we become liable to the penalties for contumacy and sedition.&#8221;</p>
<p>In short, it&#8217;s dangerous to be an uppity dhimmi. And if that constitutes a &#8220;misunderstanding&#8221; of Islam, as the apologists insist, it&#8217;s been going on for an awfully long time, in awfully high places. Islamic Tolerance Alert. &#8220;Islamic Extremists in Somalia Kill Another Church Leader,&#8221; from Compass Direct News, October 1:</p>
<p>    NAIROBI, Kenya, October 1 (CDN) &#8212; Islamic militants in Somalia this week killed a woman who led an underground Christian movement in the war-torn country.</p>
<p>    Sources told Compass that a leader of Islamic extremist al Shabaab militia in Lower Juba identified only as Sheikh Arbow shot to death 46-year-old Mariam Muhina Hussein at 2 p.m. on Monday (Sept. 28) in Marerey village after discovering she had six Bibles.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/10/somalia-another-church-leader-killed-after-jihadists-wife-caught-her-with-6-bibles.html"  target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Read it all.</a></p>
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		<title>
		By: Deborah (Discerning the World)		</title>
		<link>https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1454</link>

		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Deborah (Discerning the World)]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:55:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.discerningtheworld.com/?p=6284#comment-1454</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[In reply to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1446&quot;&gt;Amanda&lt;/a&gt;.

Yeah that&#039;s the tweet...

&lt;blockquote&gt;# @brianmclaren Hi Brian. I’m following your blog on Ramadan. The
respect I have for you increased because of your testimony. Guillaume Smit&lt;/blockquote&gt;

but now it&#039;s no longer there...vanished into thin air.



]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In reply to <a href="https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1446" >Amanda</a>.</p>
<p>Yeah that&#8217;s the tweet&#8230;</p>
<blockquote><p># @brianmclaren Hi Brian. I’m following your blog on Ramadan. The<br />
respect I have for you increased because of your testimony. Guillaume Smit</p></blockquote>
<p>but now it&#8217;s no longer there&#8230;vanished into thin air.</p>
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		<title>
		By: Amanda		</title>
		<link>https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1448</link>

		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Amanda]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:38:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.discerningtheworld.com/?p=6284#comment-1448</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[&lt;a href=&quot;http://emergingbracken.blogspot.com/2009/10/should-church-sell-all-its-property.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Guilaume Smit says:&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;We are Christians, making us brothers and sisters of Christians in other culture groups.&lt;/blockquote&gt;
Careful. Those who leave Islam get an automatic death sentence.
&lt;blockquote&gt;A wise theologian (Malan Nel) once said, to a hungry child in the street a plate of food is the message of Christ. We can preach salvation as hard as we want, but for a person who have no place to sleep, no hope in this world, no future, the message is hollow.&lt;/blockquote&gt;
The Bible says:
&lt;blockquote&gt;For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, &quot;I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.&quot; Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, &quot;Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.&quot; 
(1 Corinthians 1:17-31)
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
Jesus Christ said:
&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.&quot; Then they said to him, &quot;What must we do, to be doing the works of God?&quot; Jesus answered them, &quot;This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.&quot; So they said to him, &quot;Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, &#039;He gave them bread from heaven to eat.&#039;&quot; Jesus then said to them, &quot;Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.&quot; They said to him, &quot;Sir, give us this bread always.&quot; Jesus said to them, &quot;I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.&quot; So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, &quot;I am the bread that came down from heaven.&quot; They said, &quot;Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, &#039;I have come down from heaven&#039;?&quot; Jesus answered them, &quot;Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, &#039;And they will all be taught by God.&#039; Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me-- not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.&quot; The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, &quot;How can this man give us his flesh to eat?&quot; So Jesus said to them, &quot;Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.&quot; Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, &quot;This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?&quot; But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, &quot;Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.&quot; (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, &quot;This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.&quot; After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 
(John 6:26-66)&lt;/blockquote&gt;
In fact, the mission of the church is to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ&#039;s Name. Luke 24:47]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a target="_blank" href="http://emergingbracken.blogspot.com/2009/10/should-church-sell-all-its-property.html"  rel="nofollow">Dr. Guilaume Smit says:</a></p>
<blockquote><p>We are Christians, making us brothers and sisters of Christians in other culture groups.</p></blockquote>
<p>Careful. Those who leave Islam get an automatic death sentence.</p>
<blockquote><p>A wise theologian (Malan Nel) once said, to a hungry child in the street a plate of food is the message of Christ. We can preach salvation as hard as we want, but for a person who have no place to sleep, no hope in this world, no future, the message is hollow.</p></blockquote>
<p>The Bible says:</p>
<blockquote><p>For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, &#8220;I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.&#8221; Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, &#8220;Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.&#8221;<br />
(1 Corinthians 1:17-31)
</p></blockquote>
<p>Jesus Christ said:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.&#8221; Then they said to him, &#8220;What must we do, to be doing the works of God?&#8221; Jesus answered them, &#8220;This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.&#8221; So they said to him, &#8220;Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, &#8216;He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'&#8221; Jesus then said to them, &#8220;Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.&#8221; They said to him, &#8220;Sir, give us this bread always.&#8221; Jesus said to them, &#8220;I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.&#8221; So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, &#8220;I am the bread that came down from heaven.&#8221; They said, &#8220;Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, &#8216;I have come down from heaven&#8217;?&#8221; Jesus answered them, &#8220;Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, &#8216;And they will all be taught by God.&#8217; Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me&#8211; not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.&#8221; The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, &#8220;How can this man give us his flesh to eat?&#8221; So Jesus said to them, &#8220;Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.&#8221; Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, &#8220;This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?&#8221; But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, &#8220;Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.&#8221; (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, &#8220;This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.&#8221; After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.<br />
(John 6:26-66)</p></blockquote>
<p>In fact, the mission of the church is to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ&#8217;s Name. Luke 24:47</p>
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		<title>
		By: Amanda		</title>
		<link>https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1446</link>

		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Amanda]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:41:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.discerningtheworld.com/?p=6284#comment-1446</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Random Quote at DTW:

&lt;blockquote&gt;And during his lifetime, Abraham—like Moses, Jesus, and &lt;b&gt;Muhammad&lt;/b&gt; had an encounter with &lt;b&gt;God&lt;/b&gt; that distinguished him from his contemporaries and propelled him into a mission, introducing a new way of life that changed the world… How appropriate that the three Abrahamic religions begin with a journey into the unknown.” — Brian McLaren, Finding Our Way Again p 23&lt;/blockquote&gt;
Dr. Guilaume Smit tweeted:
&lt;blockquote&gt;# @brianmclaren Hi Brian. I&#039;m following your blog on Ramadan. The
respect I have for you increased because of your testimony. Guillaume Smit&lt;/blockquote&gt;]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Random Quote at DTW:</p>
<blockquote><p>And during his lifetime, Abraham—like Moses, Jesus, and <b>Muhammad</b> had an encounter with <b>God</b> that distinguished him from his contemporaries and propelled him into a mission, introducing a new way of life that changed the world… How appropriate that the three Abrahamic religions begin with a journey into the unknown.” — Brian McLaren, Finding Our Way Again p 23</p></blockquote>
<p>Dr. Guilaume Smit tweeted:</p>
<blockquote><p># @brianmclaren Hi Brian. I&#8217;m following your blog on Ramadan. The<br />
respect I have for you increased because of your testimony. Guillaume Smit</p></blockquote>
]]></content:encoded>
		
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		<title>
		By: Amanda		</title>
		<link>https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1445</link>

		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Amanda]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:11:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.discerningtheworld.com/?p=6284#comment-1445</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Here is the full transcription: &lt;a href=&quot;http://apprising.org/2009/09/shane-hipps-exposed/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The sermon transcribed below, preached October 5, 2008 by Shane Hipps, is called Wind in the Sail.&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;Mennonites and Muslims, they’re basically the same.&lt;/blockquote&gt;]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Here is the full transcription: <a href="http://apprising.org/2009/09/shane-hipps-exposed/"  target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The sermon transcribed below, preached October 5, 2008 by Shane Hipps, is called Wind in the Sail.</a></p>
<blockquote><p>Mennonites and Muslims, they’re basically the same.</p></blockquote>
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		<title>
		By: cecilia		</title>
		<link>https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1433</link>

		<dc:creator><![CDATA[cecilia]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:35:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.discerningtheworld.com/?p=6284#comment-1433</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[i got a little &quot;card&quot; i often send to people on the cell- it says: &quot;it is dangerous to sail the seas rudderless because you are forced to go where ever the wind blows you&quot;. there goes the sails! I&#039;m outa here! cecilia]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>i got a little &#8220;card&#8221; i often send to people on the cell- it says: &#8220;it is dangerous to sail the seas rudderless because you are forced to go where ever the wind blows you&#8221;. there goes the sails! I&#8217;m outa here! cecilia</p>
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		<title>
		By: Amanda		</title>
		<link>https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1415</link>

		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Amanda]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:18:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.discerningtheworld.com/?p=6284#comment-1415</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Enough of this beating about the bush stuff. 

&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/07/11/rob-bell-shane-hipps-peter-rollins-teaching-arts-and-crafts-no-never-cant-be/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shane Hipps&lt;/a&gt; has already spelled it out for us. He preached that religions are like sails. They may differ in shape, size and effectiveness, but they all catch the same wind, the spirit of god.

You can listen to Chris Rosebrough reviewing two of Shane&#039;s sermons on &lt;span class=&quot;removed_link&quot; title=&quot;http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2009/09/shane-hipps-pantheism-twin-spin.html&quot;&gt;Fighting for the Faith&lt;/span&gt;. The first one declares that all religions lead to the same spirit of god and the second one is about, wouldn&#039;t you know, enlightenment! That is it. That is what the emergent church is all about. Reaching people for Jesus, my foot. Christians who might be tempted to play with this fire should hear Chris&#039; warnings given throughout his review:
&lt;blockquote&gt;This is just an absolute satanic pack of lies, absolutely false.
Did I mention that Shane Hipps and Rob Bell are really good friends?[Shane preached twice in Rob&#039;s church&#039;.]
This is rank heresy!
I cannot believe what I am hearing!
It is called idolatry. It is called heresy. It is called apostasy.
You are sending yourself and the people listening to you to hell.
That is just rank heresy. This is pantheism This is not Christianity.&lt;/blockquote&gt;
Amen, Chris! Here are some quotes from the first sermon. I apologise for any mistake or lack of clarity. I encourage you to listen to Fighting for the Faith yourself. Shane Hipps:
&lt;blockquote&gt;So one of the things this shows us, just so that we are clear, for the Jewish imagination, the Hebrew way of thinking, wisdom was not just, you know, making good decisions or giving good advice. That is kinda how we use the word wisdom. We tend to minimise wisdom. For the Jews wisdom was the very DNA of God, the creative life force that gives birth to all things. That&#039;s what wisdom is. Really, really profound stuff.

However, at the same time that John was writing, there were a whole lot of Greek philosophers in religion and the Greek philosophers wrote extensively about this universal animating life force called the Logos.

John is the ultimate unifier integrator of two religious systems that have nothing in common. The Jews and the Greeks. Nothing in common. Nothing at all in common. Didn’t even use the same language most of the time. So, here John comes along and says hey, to the Jews, you know that thing that you are talking about, that wisdom, that beautiful wisdom that you talk about, yeah that, right, you know that, and to the Greeks he is saying, hey, you know that Logos, that mysterious, beautiful thing with light and fire and life, that, yeah right, that, both of those things, wisdom and logos, they are actually one thing. And they found full and complete expression in the person Jesus.

So here is what is so stunning. At a time when it was unthinkable to try and unify religions, John is basically saying your religion, totally valid, I love it. I am even using your language. And your religion, I love it. It is beautiful. I am even using your language, but I just want you both to know that there is something bigger than what you&#039;ve got.

There is something that transcends what you have. It doesn&#039;t nullify what you have. It doesn&#039;t get rid of what you have. It just moves beyond that. So John does this unbelievably beautiful thin of basically saying I wanna get past the religious divisions among us in our world. I don’t wanna get passed it. Jesus comes to bring us past it.

Jesus is the ultimate unifier of these various, diverse ways of looking at the world and the only way that anybody can ever see that is by looking at the interior not the exterior.

A black man and a white woman look very different on the exterior, do they not? They look very different from the outside. But on the inside, same longings, same needs, same need for love, for significance, for peace, same need for food. Very little separates us on the inside. Now this is really very easy to talk about when you are talking about people, isn&#039;t it? Yes, people look different on the outside, but on the inside, we are all the same. That&#039;s not what John is doing. He is doing it with religions. Mennonites and Muslims, they are basically the same.

 &#039;No, no, no. no, no, no. We&#039;re very different. I beg to differ.&#039;

Right? I mean, when you try and do this with religious systems, you&#039;re playing with very dangerous stuff. Because a religious system, what makes a religion a religion, is the thing that makes it different from other religions. A religious identity is derived from what makes it distinct. A religious identity is derived from our boundaries. We sing music this way. That&#039;s what makes us different.

We belief Jesus did this and so we follow Jesus that way. That is what makes us different. You don’t even believe in Jesus. We&#039;re different from you in that way. Even religions that have come along and said our religions beliefs, there are no distinctions between religions, is in fact a distinction. So these external things, religion is about making these distinctions and guess what, that isn&#039;t a bad thing. Having a distinct religious identity marked by some boundaries, knowing how you differ from other religions, isn&#039;t a problem. John isn&#039;t trying to get off that. He is trying to point beyond it.

Keep it, but move beyond it. To loose your religious identity is like losing a sail at sea. The sail is like religion. The wind is the spirit. You need a sail to catch the wind, to harness the wind. But you have got to realise that that sail isn&#039;t the wind. The sail is actually dependent on the wind. See here is the crazy thing. The spirit, the wind, doesn’t need sails in order for it to move about the world. The sails need the wind. So the spirit, in order for it to move and operate in the world have no need of religion, but we, those of us, made the way we are, for some reason, need sails in order to catch the wind. We need religious structures, external things, that we can touch and se and traditions and lineage that teach us so that we can better catch the wind.

Now some sails are built better than other sails. Some sails are bigger than other sails. Some sails are a different shape than other sails. And those differences matter and sometimes one sail is better than another sail, in the same way that some religions are better equipped to catch the spirit of God. Some religions are not as well equipped to fully capture and be compelled by the spirit. So it matters why that religion, why you chose it. It matters what it looks like. But don’t ever confuse the sail with the spirit, the sail with the wind.

Here is what is so confusing about this. John comes along and he says hey, both of you guys, you&#039;ve got great sails. They look awesome. I just want you to know it is the wind that I&#039;m interested in. He says Jesus became the fullness of that wind. So along comes us and we create a sail around that person! We go, now we&#039;ve got it. Whoo-oo! It is just another sail. Just because we claim Jesus as the centre of our religion, does not make us one and the same with the wind of God just because we have another sail. I happen to think it is a more effective sail than other sails.

This logos affects everybody, including Osama bin Laden, as long as he has got breath. In him is a spark of the divine.

My great hope is that this [communion] will propel you beyond these elements into the very presence of God.&lt;/blockquote&gt;
The emergent church has moved beyond Christianity. It is no place for Christians.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Enough of this beating about the bush stuff. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/07/11/rob-bell-shane-hipps-peter-rollins-teaching-arts-and-crafts-no-never-cant-be/"  target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Shane Hipps</a> has already spelled it out for us. He preached that religions are like sails. They may differ in shape, size and effectiveness, but they all catch the same wind, the spirit of god.</p>
<p>You can listen to Chris Rosebrough reviewing two of Shane&#8217;s sermons on <span class="removed_link" title="http://www.fightingforthefaith.com/2009/09/shane-hipps-pantheism-twin-spin.html">Fighting for the Faith</span>. The first one declares that all religions lead to the same spirit of god and the second one is about, wouldn&#8217;t you know, enlightenment! That is it. That is what the emergent church is all about. Reaching people for Jesus, my foot. Christians who might be tempted to play with this fire should hear Chris&#8217; warnings given throughout his review:</p>
<blockquote><p>This is just an absolute satanic pack of lies, absolutely false.<br />
Did I mention that Shane Hipps and Rob Bell are really good friends?[Shane preached twice in Rob&#8217;s church&#8217;.]<br />
This is rank heresy!<br />
I cannot believe what I am hearing!<br />
It is called idolatry. It is called heresy. It is called apostasy.<br />
You are sending yourself and the people listening to you to hell.<br />
That is just rank heresy. This is pantheism This is not Christianity.</p></blockquote>
<p>Amen, Chris! Here are some quotes from the first sermon. I apologise for any mistake or lack of clarity. I encourage you to listen to Fighting for the Faith yourself. Shane Hipps:</p>
<blockquote><p>So one of the things this shows us, just so that we are clear, for the Jewish imagination, the Hebrew way of thinking, wisdom was not just, you know, making good decisions or giving good advice. That is kinda how we use the word wisdom. We tend to minimise wisdom. For the Jews wisdom was the very DNA of God, the creative life force that gives birth to all things. That&#8217;s what wisdom is. Really, really profound stuff.</p>
<p>However, at the same time that John was writing, there were a whole lot of Greek philosophers in religion and the Greek philosophers wrote extensively about this universal animating life force called the Logos.</p>
<p>John is the ultimate unifier integrator of two religious systems that have nothing in common. The Jews and the Greeks. Nothing in common. Nothing at all in common. Didn’t even use the same language most of the time. So, here John comes along and says hey, to the Jews, you know that thing that you are talking about, that wisdom, that beautiful wisdom that you talk about, yeah that, right, you know that, and to the Greeks he is saying, hey, you know that Logos, that mysterious, beautiful thing with light and fire and life, that, yeah right, that, both of those things, wisdom and logos, they are actually one thing. And they found full and complete expression in the person Jesus.</p>
<p>So here is what is so stunning. At a time when it was unthinkable to try and unify religions, John is basically saying your religion, totally valid, I love it. I am even using your language. And your religion, I love it. It is beautiful. I am even using your language, but I just want you both to know that there is something bigger than what you&#8217;ve got.</p>
<p>There is something that transcends what you have. It doesn&#8217;t nullify what you have. It doesn&#8217;t get rid of what you have. It just moves beyond that. So John does this unbelievably beautiful thin of basically saying I wanna get past the religious divisions among us in our world. I don’t wanna get passed it. Jesus comes to bring us past it.</p>
<p>Jesus is the ultimate unifier of these various, diverse ways of looking at the world and the only way that anybody can ever see that is by looking at the interior not the exterior.</p>
<p>A black man and a white woman look very different on the exterior, do they not? They look very different from the outside. But on the inside, same longings, same needs, same need for love, for significance, for peace, same need for food. Very little separates us on the inside. Now this is really very easy to talk about when you are talking about people, isn&#8217;t it? Yes, people look different on the outside, but on the inside, we are all the same. That&#8217;s not what John is doing. He is doing it with religions. Mennonites and Muslims, they are basically the same.</p>
<p> &#8216;No, no, no. no, no, no. We&#8217;re very different. I beg to differ.&#8217;</p>
<p>Right? I mean, when you try and do this with religious systems, you&#8217;re playing with very dangerous stuff. Because a religious system, what makes a religion a religion, is the thing that makes it different from other religions. A religious identity is derived from what makes it distinct. A religious identity is derived from our boundaries. We sing music this way. That&#8217;s what makes us different.</p>
<p>We belief Jesus did this and so we follow Jesus that way. That is what makes us different. You don’t even believe in Jesus. We&#8217;re different from you in that way. Even religions that have come along and said our religions beliefs, there are no distinctions between religions, is in fact a distinction. So these external things, religion is about making these distinctions and guess what, that isn&#8217;t a bad thing. Having a distinct religious identity marked by some boundaries, knowing how you differ from other religions, isn&#8217;t a problem. John isn&#8217;t trying to get off that. He is trying to point beyond it.</p>
<p>Keep it, but move beyond it. To loose your religious identity is like losing a sail at sea. The sail is like religion. The wind is the spirit. You need a sail to catch the wind, to harness the wind. But you have got to realise that that sail isn&#8217;t the wind. The sail is actually dependent on the wind. See here is the crazy thing. The spirit, the wind, doesn’t need sails in order for it to move about the world. The sails need the wind. So the spirit, in order for it to move and operate in the world have no need of religion, but we, those of us, made the way we are, for some reason, need sails in order to catch the wind. We need religious structures, external things, that we can touch and se and traditions and lineage that teach us so that we can better catch the wind.</p>
<p>Now some sails are built better than other sails. Some sails are bigger than other sails. Some sails are a different shape than other sails. And those differences matter and sometimes one sail is better than another sail, in the same way that some religions are better equipped to catch the spirit of God. Some religions are not as well equipped to fully capture and be compelled by the spirit. So it matters why that religion, why you chose it. It matters what it looks like. But don’t ever confuse the sail with the spirit, the sail with the wind.</p>
<p>Here is what is so confusing about this. John comes along and he says hey, both of you guys, you&#8217;ve got great sails. They look awesome. I just want you to know it is the wind that I&#8217;m interested in. He says Jesus became the fullness of that wind. So along comes us and we create a sail around that person! We go, now we&#8217;ve got it. Whoo-oo! It is just another sail. Just because we claim Jesus as the centre of our religion, does not make us one and the same with the wind of God just because we have another sail. I happen to think it is a more effective sail than other sails.</p>
<p>This logos affects everybody, including Osama bin Laden, as long as he has got breath. In him is a spark of the divine.</p>
<p>My great hope is that this [communion] will propel you beyond these elements into the very presence of God.</p></blockquote>
<p>The emergent church has moved beyond Christianity. It is no place for Christians.</p>
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		<title>
		By: Amanda		</title>
		<link>https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1410</link>

		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Amanda]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:20:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.discerningtheworld.com/?p=6284#comment-1410</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Yes, Cecilia. It is very dangerous. So, why are emergent theologians indulging in the unbiblical practice of pushing the warm, fuzzy side of Islam on Christians? Brian McLaren said:
&lt;blockquote&gt;For many people, this observance is an expression of love … a tangible way to express love for God and for one’s faith community.&lt;/blockquote&gt;
He draws no distinction between Allah and the Lord of the Bible. Are we all worshipping the same God, but just in different faith communities? Come on! He says:
&lt;blockquote&gt;And it’s also a time-tested spiritual practice, which I’ll return to in a minute&lt;/blockquote&gt;
Brian is promoting spiritual practices, the goal of which is to experience transcendence and to realize, hey, all is one. He quotes &lt;span class=&quot;removed_link&quot; title=&quot;http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/blog/ramadan-2009-retrospective.html&quot;&gt;&#039;a Franciscan novice who joined in the Ramadan fast&#039;&lt;/span&gt;:
&lt;blockquote&gt;I’ve been in Jerusalem and Bethlehem for 3 of the 4 weeks of Ramadan and also have been very much inspired by the &lt;b&gt;discipline&lt;/b&gt; and &lt;b&gt;love&lt;/b&gt; of &lt;b&gt;God&lt;/b&gt; that is expressed in this &lt;b&gt;holy&lt;/b&gt; month. I am a Christian who has come to have &lt;b&gt;great respect&lt;/b&gt; for the Muslim &lt;b&gt;faith&lt;/b&gt;. I was invited to an iftar last week, to the home of a family I had never met before. I was received with &lt;b&gt;graciousness and hospitality&lt;/b&gt; and spent a lovely evening with people who were &lt;b&gt;not of my faith&lt;/b&gt;, culture or even language. A friend of mine, a Palestinian Muslim, spent a great deal of the month at the Al Aqsa Mosque, and participated in the daily fasting. He has suffered under Israeli occupation and conflict for over 60 years, yet I could see &lt;b&gt;the difference that this month made in his life&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/blockquote&gt;
Let&#039;s just skip over the lies about &#039;Palestine&#039;. This novice declares that expressing love to Allah through fasting, had, I take it, benefited this Arab? Do they not know what the Bible say about where idolaters will spend eternity? Do they not have any compassion? These emergent pastors are telling the sheep that the goats are onto some good fodder. Shameful.

Don’t blame the Muslims for the woes of this country and don’t blame the false teachers. Blame the Christians who put them in the pulpits.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Yes, Cecilia. It is very dangerous. So, why are emergent theologians indulging in the unbiblical practice of pushing the warm, fuzzy side of Islam on Christians? Brian McLaren said:</p>
<blockquote><p>For many people, this observance is an expression of love … a tangible way to express love for God and for one’s faith community.</p></blockquote>
<p>He draws no distinction between Allah and the Lord of the Bible. Are we all worshipping the same God, but just in different faith communities? Come on! He says:</p>
<blockquote><p>And it’s also a time-tested spiritual practice, which I’ll return to in a minute</p></blockquote>
<p>Brian is promoting spiritual practices, the goal of which is to experience transcendence and to realize, hey, all is one. He quotes <span class="removed_link" title="http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/blog/ramadan-2009-retrospective.html">&#8216;a Franciscan novice who joined in the Ramadan fast&#8217;</span>:</p>
<blockquote><p>I’ve been in Jerusalem and Bethlehem for 3 of the 4 weeks of Ramadan and also have been very much inspired by the <b>discipline</b> and <b>love</b> of <b>God</b> that is expressed in this <b>holy</b> month. I am a Christian who has come to have <b>great respect</b> for the Muslim <b>faith</b>. I was invited to an iftar last week, to the home of a family I had never met before. I was received with <b>graciousness and hospitality</b> and spent a lovely evening with people who were <b>not of my faith</b>, culture or even language. A friend of mine, a Palestinian Muslim, spent a great deal of the month at the Al Aqsa Mosque, and participated in the daily fasting. He has suffered under Israeli occupation and conflict for over 60 years, yet I could see <b>the difference that this month made in his life</b>.</p></blockquote>
<p>Let&#8217;s just skip over the lies about &#8216;Palestine&#8217;. This novice declares that expressing love to Allah through fasting, had, I take it, benefited this Arab? Do they not know what the Bible say about where idolaters will spend eternity? Do they not have any compassion? These emergent pastors are telling the sheep that the goats are onto some good fodder. Shameful.</p>
<p>Don’t blame the Muslims for the woes of this country and don’t blame the false teachers. Blame the Christians who put them in the pulpits.</p>
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		<title>
		By: cecilia		</title>
		<link>https://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/09/20/guillaume-smit-and-the-culture-of-islam/#comment-1407</link>

		<dc:creator><![CDATA[cecilia]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:59:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.discerningtheworld.com/?p=6284#comment-1407</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[McLaren: quoted: &quot;... every time I meet a Muslim who has observed the fast even once, I will have new and sincere respect&quot;. so for McLaren, the 1000&#039;s of Christians, many of them under persecution in Muslim control parts in the world, (these Christians) who fast regularly, praying for protection and guidance, AND living in peace with their Muslim controllers (from their side), for McLaren their fasting has no meaning what so ever (because he makes NO mention that as far as I know of, somewhere, of Christians who fast regularly). and here where I live, whole churches fast (regularly) for everything/anything they are seeking an answer from the Lord for. and going out of the Christian circle, what about the Hindu&#039;s different annual fasts? Oh wait, I forgot that McLaren is pro-Muslim. His focus is on the Muslim .. on Islam ... no wonder his focus is a bit blurred when it comes to clear reading of soli scriptura...
cecilia]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>McLaren: quoted: &#8220;&#8230; every time I meet a Muslim who has observed the fast even once, I will have new and sincere respect&#8221;. so for McLaren, the 1000&#8217;s of Christians, many of them under persecution in Muslim control parts in the world, (these Christians) who fast regularly, praying for protection and guidance, AND living in peace with their Muslim controllers (from their side), for McLaren their fasting has no meaning what so ever (because he makes NO mention that as far as I know of, somewhere, of Christians who fast regularly). and here where I live, whole churches fast (regularly) for everything/anything they are seeking an answer from the Lord for. and going out of the Christian circle, what about the Hindu&#8217;s different annual fasts? Oh wait, I forgot that McLaren is pro-Muslim. His focus is on the Muslim .. on Islam &#8230; no wonder his focus is a bit blurred when it comes to clear reading of soli scriptura&#8230;<br />
cecilia</p>
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