So I was just walking through FoxNews.com as part of my morning routine when I couldn’t help but notice this front-page story, linking to Michael Yon’s latest post about a tremendously encouraging and humbling circumstances in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad. I know I said an earlier post that I wouldn’t write much more about the war, but I read this article and got so excited I couldn’t help myself.
Why am I so excited? The articles are about the call of Iraqi Muslims in Dora to their Christian neighbors and friends that fled Baghdad after al Qaeda came in, asking them to come home. Yes, you read that right. The Muslims are asking the Christians to come home, to come back to Baghdad. What’s even more humbling from this American Christian’s perspective is that the Muslims helped restore St. John’s Church in Baghdad; placing a cross atop the dome and yesterday, they attended the first mass en masse as a show of solidarity with their Christian friends. Is that awesome or what?? It totally flys in the face of what much of America has been lead to believe about Muslims and their relationships with Christians in recent years. Michael’s article is full of pictures, but the captions under two in particular struck me:
[When al Qaeda arrived and began persecuting Christians] It was the local Muslims, according to LTC Michael [an American Lieutenant Colonel], who first came to him for help to protect the Christians in his area. That’s right. LTC Michael told me more than once that the Muslims reached out to him to protect the Christians from al Qaeda. Real Muslims here are quick to say that al Qaeda members are not true Muslims.
and
Today, Muslims mostly filled the front pews of St John’s. Muslims who want their Christian friends and neighbors to come home. The Christians who might see these photos likely will recognize their friends here. The Muslims in this neighborhood worry that other people will take the homes of their Christian neighbors, and that the Christians will never come back. And so they came to St John’s today in force, and they showed their faces, and they said, “Come back to Iraq. Come home.” They wanted the cameras to catch it. They wanted to spread the word: Come home. Muslims keep telling me to get it on the news. “Tell the Christians to come home to their country Iraq.”
How amazing is that? I can’t put into words what hearing this does for my soul and the joy it brings. This only reinforces the truth that the negative views of Muslims that far too many of us western Christians are based solely on the actions of a few and on a general ignorance of true Islam. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no scholar when it comes to Islam and its true teachings, but I hope to learn more throughout my life and hopefully love members of another faith as sincerely and tangibly as these Iraqi Muslims have loved their Iraqi Christian neighbors and friends.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens
(Psalm 8:1)
