Answering Yasmine

Some post I put up recently offended a young convert to Islam, Yasmine, who wrote me this:

I don't know if You ever get this but I hope that one day you educate yourself and I really mean to educate yourself because I haver read all of your posts and some are decent while your arrogance and ignorance is apparent in your opinon and writing style. I am a muslim convert and I invite you to my blog, come a check if I am oppressed and if my faith is so evil.

I ignored her unfounded judgment of me and responded that I would pray for her salvation and:

I'm sorry you made such a tragic mistake by converting to Islam. I read your blog and you seem to be a thoughtful, but emotional, young person and I'm afraid your emotions led you to a religion that is fine on one level but also has a very dark side (jihad, terror, suppression of women, and a God that doesn't care enough about you to give you a clear path to heaven -- outside of jihad).

My comments generated a torrential response from her, which I will fisk herewith:

I am emotional? On the contrary, I am strong and strive for human excellence. so to improve myself in every aspect is very important to me.

I based that statement on her own writings, a blog post about having children that was awash in emotions.

Wish you were a little more open minded and dared to think outside the box for once. I have not done a mistake, I have made the best thing I could ever do in my life and that was to convert to Islam...

I wonder why she thinks that. Christianity offers an excellent moral structure and a clear path to salvation. Islam clearly has some great rules for morality and social structure.

But it also has some terrible ones that the rest of the world's religions have done very well without. As for salvation, in Christianity it's simple; it is based on faith, not works. But in Islam, it's works:

"Then those whose scales are heavy, they are successful. And those whose scales are light are those who lose their souls…"

Further, Islam promises

"... a Paradise as vast as the heavens and the earth, which awaits the God-conscious, who spend for charity in time of plenty and in time of hardship, and restrain their anger, and pardon their fellow men, for God loves those who do good."

Whereas Jesus told us that faith alone will open the doors to heaven, Allah makes no such promise, and the Muslim must always wonder whether he's been God-conscious enough, giving enough, forgiving enough to achieve Paradise, living in doubt ... unless, of course, he takes the Jihad route. More on that in a bit.

I was not just a christian before but a practicing christian. who has read and studied the bible extensively. Who had moralities and respect for all humans beings. Do you?

I would hope I pass this test. I've read the Bible every day for over 12 years ... well, I missed a handful when the alarm didn't go off ... but I've read it front to back twice and most of its books three or four times. I've been to Bible studies, have been attending the same men's group for five or so years, have heard a ton of good preachers in church and on the radio. Not that any of that matters at all, because it's the Spirit that brings the experience alive -- something Yasmine should understand:

Say, the Holy Spirit has brought the Revelation from thy Lord in Truth, in order to strengthen those who believe, and as a Guide and Glad Tidings to Muslims. (Quran, 16:102)

Before I became a Christian I was in turns a "practicing" but not reborn Christian, a student of Buddhism, Tantric yoga and various mystical doo-dahs taught by a bunch of phony poobahs. For a time I even delved into the mystical Islamic Sufi sect, so I've been around the block a bit, even knocking on Allah's door.

The culmination is that I have "moralities" and respect for most human beings, but certainly not all. I do not, and never will, respect human beings who recruit terrorists, or human beings who blow themselves up on crowded streets, or human beings who fly airplanes full of innocents into buildings full of innocents.

Perhaps I should double my Bible-reading time .... Yasmine goes on,

I would not sit there and proclaim to be righteous person when you slander a faith you know nothing about. you are only a media slave. Even I a twently year old knows better to make judgments by media because apparently you are not Muslim. I dare you to learn about it and you'll see what I mean. Will you? I don't know. there are people that will be forever be blind no matter what you tell them.

Readers of C-SM should get a pretty good chuckle out of the "media slave" call-out. Yasmine has every right to ask me to study her religion, but until her religion drags itself out of its bloody past and reforms, I have the right to say, "Why waste the time, especially when I've got a perfectly great religion of my own?"

I would suggest to start fromt the bible because that is how I came without being aware I desired Islam. Alhamdulilah (Thank God). I did not even know about Islam then.

This is a very curious girl who has lived through an experience I cannot understand. I cannot understand how a book so full of love and sound teaching could lead someone to a religion that has comported itself so badly ever since Mohammed started spreading his revelations by both the sword and the book.

if you are such a good pious chrsitian (practicing) I suggest for you to refer to me where it explains the trinity and where Jesus proclaims to be God. He called himself a messenger and I will show you all the proofs you need to but not to convert you but to verify your bigoted mindset. inshallah (if God wills).

Bigoted mindset? Pot calling kettle black?

But I'm glad Yasmine asked. There are so many places in the Bible where the Trinity is addressed, and even more that proclaim Jesus to be God -- not a mere messenger like Mohammed. Yasmine must have missed these verses; I hope she will read and understand them because they are wonderful:

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him.

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments.

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world -- our faith.

Who is the one who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who Testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

For there are three that testify:

the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. [Trinity]

If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for the testimony of God is this, that He has testified concerning his Son.

The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son.

And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not walk in the life. (1 John 5: 1-12)

And these, some of the most beautiful words ever written:

In the beginning was the Word (Spirit), and the Word was with God, and the Word Was God.

He (Jesus) was in the beginning with God. (The Trinity)

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkeness did not comprehend it. ...

And the Word (spirit) became flesh (Jesus), and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1-5, 14)

I will freely admit that I don't understand the Trinity, but I am in awe of it and looking forward to the day when I will understand it -- a day not on this plane.

But I anticipate Yasmine would retort that I'm quoting John, not Jesus. Then let's see what Jesus himself has to say about it:

So the Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules.

But Jesus replied, "My Father never stops working, so why should I?"

So the Jewish leaders tried all the more to kill him. In addition to disobeying the Sabbath rules, he had spoken of God as his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.

Jesus replied, "I assure you, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and tells him everything he is doing, and the Son will do far greater things than healing this man. You will be astonished at what he does.

He will even raise from the dead anyone he wants to, just as the Father does. And the Father leaves all judgment to his Son, so that everyone will honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. But if you refuse to honor the Son, then you are certainly not honoring the Father who sent him. (John 5:16-23)

Unfortunately, we must break our reverie and return to a subject as awful as the Trinity is awesome: Jihad.

Jihad? Means struggle not holy war although it can also be reffered to that just like the crusades and missionariy tactics used by some chrsitians. that take advantage of poor countries to only benefit from there desparity to convert them.

The Crusades were a thousand years ago and were the response to Islam's overthrow of the Holy Land. And missionary tactics like those of Jihadists? Show me one. Missionaries convert by the Word and the Spirit, not the sword and C-4. My Christian missionary friends dedicate their lives not just to bring them to Christ; they also dedicate their lives to lifting up the poor, bringing better medical care, education and opportunity to the people they work to bring to Christ.

The phrase "take advantage of poor countries to only benefit from there [sic] desparity [sic] to convert them" makes me wonder if Yasmine is only "a media college prof slave." It sounds like the sort of twisted view of the world that a left-leaning Islamic studies prof might say to a young gal as open to new ideas as I was when I was in my 20s, my dabbling years. (But how do we explain her horrific spelling and punctuation?)

I've heard Yasmine's "jihad means struggle not holy war" thing so many times I suppose the Muslims think if they say it often enough, we'll believe it. The problem is the word "not." To be accurate, Yasmine needs to say "jihad means struggle and holy war." Maybe not to her, but to many, many Muslims including one you may have heard of, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

Zarqawi’s exposition of Islamic theology as he sees it is most revealing. “There is no doubt,” he says, “that Allah commanded us to strike the Kuffar (unbelievers), kill them, and fight them by all means necessary to achieve the goal. The servants of Allah who perform Jihad to elevate the word (laws) of Allah, are permitted to use any and all means necessary to strike the active unbeliever combatants for the purpose of killing them, snatch their souls from their body, cleanse the earth from their abomination, and lift their trial and persecution of the servants of Allah. The goal must be pursued even if the means to accomplish it affect both the intended active fighters and unintended passive ones such as women, children and any other passive category specified by our jurisprudence.” (source)

Paradise is guaranteed to those who “slay and are slain” for Allah: “Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth” (Qur’an 9:111). Christianity offers no such route to heaven.

you can go ahead and assume I came to Islam due to my emotions but I don't care what an hateful prejudiced unpious not God fearing Man's evaluations.

Salam (peace), Yasmine

How do you get to peace if before you meet someone, before you know anything about them, you leap to a conclusion that they are "hateful prejudiced not God fearing?"

I don't believe I have ever said anything hateful in C-SM or elsewhere about run-of-the-mill Muslims who don't go around beheading journalists, blowing up buses filled with Israeli school children ... or for that matter, calling for the annihilation of all Jews. I have always been careful to differentiate between "Muslims" and "Islamists." Yet here I am hateful and prejudiced.

I have never said anything in C-SM that would indicate that I am not pious, but because I choose (thank God!) to be pious to God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus instead of Allah and Mohammed, I'm just an infidel to be loathed.

Peace, Yasmine.