In my planning for this post, I had noted down the gist of what I am about to say:
"'Love thy neighbor' doesn’t include Muslims."
Yes it does.
I suppose I could end it there, because that is what Jesus taught Christians. To rationalize away our responsibility to love others, as Christians, is unacceptable and sin. But I think we need to think in more depth about why I feel the need to write this piece.
You see, back when we left evangelicalism as a family, the final straw was overt racism. But the disregard for the lives of Muslims was what put me into therapy around 2015-2016. I could not understand my faith community as Christian anymore, because they were railing against Muslims, spreading lies about refugees, and claiming Muslims were terrorists.
Meanwhile, we were at the start of a major and ongoing refugee crisis, where the largest displaced people groups were of Muslim cultural beliefs. There were also Christians being persecuted and forced out of their homes, but the response to the most vulnerable people in the world was a selfish and fearful, "go home," from a majority of evangelical Christians.
This hit me on a personal level, and I remember I couldn't figure out why I was so upset until I broke down talking about the attitudes towards Muslims I was hearing from Christians online and in the local church, in conversation. American Christians were heartless. It didn't matter what facts or figures or statistics or experts or historical precedent said, they dehumanized Muslims as the enemy. Never mind evangelicals have their own gun nuts and racists within their pews that they continue to tolerate. Never mind many of those who shouted the loudest didn't know any Muslims personally. Nope, they just wrote off the whole group of people, without a clue what Muslims believe, without regard for the sufferings of families no different to their own, except in religion.
It made no sense to me, because I had been deceived about the nature of their faith. I had thought that evangelical Christians believed in the God I love, who is a "Father to the fatherless, a defender of widows," who advocates for the poor, the foreigner, and who instructs His people to welcome the stranger. I have had to conclude that evangelicals in America mostly don't know the God I love in any real and living way. It's that serious.
Luke 10:25-37 New International Version (NIV)
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” 27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]” 28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” 29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ 36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” 37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Footnotes:
Luke 10:27 Deut. 6:5
Luke 10:27 Lev. 19:18
Luke 10:35 A denarius was the usual daily wage of a day laborer (see Matt. 20:2).
New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
I'm not going to preach here. We can all read the Scriptures for ourselves and we know what is right and wrong. I am not going to say anything to try to convince anyone that "not all Muslims" are extremists, nor am I suggesting extremism is somehow not a risk for that community, as it is for our own, as Christians. Fundamentalism is any faith is potentially dangerous, and any religious group can fall into extremism.
Certainly, as a Christian, there are beliefs within Islam that I do not accept as true. We disagree. But my best conversations about faith were with Muslims I went to school with- they kept me thinking, and we loved each other. I had more kindness on a human level from them in their homes and lives than I've had from most American evangelicals. There is a richness in several of the cultures around the world where Islam is established; there is honor and respect and humility and depth of friendship and hospitality- and a bunch of ordinary people going about their business raising their kids and trying to survive- just like we are in America. We are all just people.
We have a global refugee crisis, and the overwhelming response of the evangelical church in America was to vote for the guy who would ban Muslim refugees. We failed to love our neighbor; how could we possibly claim to love our enemies?
The argument is that we don't let our enemies in our house. Here's the thing: Muslim refugees weren't our enemies until we said they were by banning Muslims. They were just people trying to survive, and many Americans treated them as enemies because we were turned against them by lies and propaganda from religious extremists of our own. I read memes and statements on social media throughout 2016, shared by naive evangelicals, that smeared refugee men as invaders, when the men go first to provide for the family! (You'd think the evangelical complementarians would understand that honor code.)
Every single incidence of alleged or proven bad behavior by refugees was augmented to smear them online, while those sharing that crap had no one in their life who was Muslim, had no idea what devout Muslims believe, and wouldn't listen if you shared your experiences and studies of Islam- even from a Christian perspective like the Zwemer Center. Furthermore, Breitbart fed American conservatives a steady diet of hatred, including outright lies about events in Europe. It didn't matter that I read the local reports about the incident in German and found several blatant slants in the Breitbart write-up. American evangelicals didn't want the truth; they just wanted to blame refugees for existing. There was no reasoning with that. And it hurt, because I grew up as a foreigner overseas. I identify more with the refugees than with American evangelicals.
American evangelicals would tweet and retweet these hate pieces against Muslims, or anecdotal stories from "friends in Europe" from the comfort of their homes, while real people, already traumatized by war, walked all the way from Syria to Scandinavia, and were rejected by everyone, especially America.
Then, instead of rejecting the nationalist bully who smeared all Muslims as terrorists and rejected refugees -adding insult to existing injury- plus to this day retweets hate groups, evangelicals overwhelmingly elected him.
It means nothing how much the evangelicals give to Samaritan's Purse. There is nothing pro life about rejecting refugees or demonizing Muslims.
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