When Anna Piela and Michael Woolf’s Confronting Islamophobia in the Church crossed my desk, I placed it on the stack of books I need to read. Judson Press released the book as a new resource for equipping Christian communities to address anti‑Muslim bias with theological depth, pastoral care and courageous faith.
The authors have taken on one of America’s deepest prejudices: Islamophobia.
Then the USA went to war with another Muslim country – Iran, a nation governed by Shiite Muslims. As the number of outrageous comments about Muslims grew among MAGA and evangelical preachers, Confronting Islamophobia called me by name and shouted, “Read me.”
Among the most troubling comments have been those by Republican leaders.
“We need more Islamophobia, not less. Fear of Islam is rational,” Florida representative Randy Fine wrote on X. Earlier Fine commented, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Republican Rep. Andy Ogle of Tennessee insisted, “Muslims don’t belong in America.” Sen. Tommy Tuberville has singled out Rep. Ilhan Omar, D–Minn., for attacks, saying, “If people like (her) love this way of life back home, why don’t you just move the hell back?”
This recalls the MAGA slogan, “Send them back” crafted by President Donald Trump’s desire for Muslim members of Congress to be sent back to their alleged home countries. Tuberville also has called for Omar’s arrest.
Tuberville has joined members of the “Sharia Free America Caucus” to share “the importance of protecting Americans from Sharia Law,” according to a release from the senator’s office.
The authors of this new book, unlike Ogle and Fine and Tuberville, actually know what they’re talking about.
Anna Piela
As my fellow American Baptist, Piela is a scholar of gender and Islam. She earned a Ph.D. in women’s studies from the University of York and serves the ABC Metro Chicago region as a co-associate regional minister, supporting the work of the White and Multicultural Collaborative.
Michael Woolf
Woolf holds a doctor of theology degree from Harvard Divinity School. He is an ordained American Baptist Churches USA and Alliance of Baptists pastor and serves as senior pastor of Lake Street Church of Evanston in Illinois.
Since 9/11, mistrust and hatred of Muslims have been growing and now is a runaway train steered by the Trump administration. Piea and Woolf’s Confronting Islamophobia takes direct aim at this virile fear.
Their study of Islamophobia appears at a kairotic moment. There is an outbreak of anti-Muslim fear rampant among MAGA evangelicals.
Among those, for example, is Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas. There may be a straight line from Puritan theologian and pastor Jonathan Edwards to Jeffress. Edwards believed Islam was one of “two great kingdoms which the devil …. erected in opposition to the kingdom of Christ.” Catholicism was the other one.
Like Edwards, Jeffress primes the fear of Muslims in his books and sermons.
Will there be another 9/11-style attack on America? Will ISIS create a Muslim caliphate in the Middle East? These are questions Jeffress raises in Countdown to the Apocalypse: Why ISIS and Ebola Are Only the Beginning.
“Islam is a false religion and inspired by Satan himself, who Jesus said came to steal, kill and destroy,” Jeffress stated during a Sunday service at First Baptist.
Jeffress says there are as many as 75 million “radical Muslims” in the world today and claims that number is a conservative estimate.
“They are militant Muslims who follow the teaching of the Quran. They take seriously the words of Sura 9:5, the famous ‘Sword Verse’ that justifies violence in the name of Islam: ‘Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”
“Every effort to combat this fear of Muslims is worthy of consideration.”
Jeffress piles on the alleged atrocities. “They kidnap in the name of Allah. They destroy churches in the name of Allah. They behead in the name of Allah. We don’t have to ponder about any of this. Look at their name. In every version, it starts the same way, ‘Islamic State.’ These are not disgruntled factory workers who get drunk and then start shooting people. No, they are killers who kill in the name of Muhammad the prophet, following the teaching of the Koran, as part of their loyalty to Islam, the supposed ‘religion of peace.’”
Jeffress lauds Christians as better than Muslims. “You don’t have that with Christianity — 2.2 billion Christians in the world — we don’t have 100 million Christians running around trying to chop people’s heads off or bomb and maim, and I think Trump is telling the politically incorrect truth that needs to be told.”
There is the simple formula: Bad Muslims. Good Christians.
Every effort to combat this fear of Muslims is worthy of consideration. Thus, Confronting Islamophobia is a necessary and hopeful work
There is much to admire in Confronting Islamophobia:
- Integration of Christian worship and the Revised Common Lectionary
- An interfaith emphasis: Jewish, Christian, Muslim
- Exploration of concepts of religious liberty, hospitality to the stranger and charity toward other faiths
- Clear-eyed appraisal of the Islamophobia among Christians
- A call to repentance
- Emphases on hope, reconciliation and relationships
- A scholarly and accessible resource for guiding congregations to overcome Islamophobia
Our best hope is to recognize phobia as a disorder that requires attention and perhaps counseling. According to Harvard Medical School, a phobia is a persistent, excessive, unrealistic fear of an object, person, animal, activity or situation. It is a type of anxiety disorder. A person with a phobia either tries to avoid the thing that triggers the fear or endures it with great anxiety and distress.
Primary evangelical fears include homophobia, xenophobia and Islamophobia. It is unlikely evangelicals suffer from Albanophobia (fear of Albanians) but Afrophobia (fear of Africans) is more likely. I doubt evangelicals suffer from hoplophobia (fear of firearms) or tyrannophobia (fear of tyrants). They show signs of phronemophobia (fear of thinking) and cenophobia or centophobia (fear of new things or ideas).
Confronting Islamophobia offers pastors another tool in combating unnecessary fears among church members. I recommend reading, teaching and implementing the book.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.