Editorial for June 16, 2005
By Jim White
Have you ever wished you'd kept your big mouth shut? I have. You, too? I imagine that's how pastor Creighton Lovelace feels after such an indignant reaction to the message he posted on his church sign: “The Koran needs to be flushed!”
Responding to the report in Newsweek that led first to a retraction and then to a basic substantiation that a Koran had been dishonored in this way by guards at Guantanamo, Rev. Lovelace placed in public what many had probably said privately.
Who would have thought that a little church in a quiet mountain hamlet of 7,400 people in western North Carolina would gain national attention because of a few words spelled out on the church sign? If he is like most preachers, he is accustomed to people largely ignoring what he says. Unlike so many others who are beating this poor preacher black and blue with their tongues and pens, I think someone should come to his aid.
Don't misunderstand me; I am not speaking in defense of his message. But, I am pleading for grace. I rather suspect that Brother Lovelace had no idea how or why Muslims react to such a dishonoring of their sacred book. Like the kid who whacked the hornet's nest with a stick, he got the surprise of his life.
According to Faysal Sharif, the Virginia Baptist Mission Board's missionary to Muslims in our state, it is difficult for Christians to understand the devotion Muslims have for the name of Allah and the Koran. Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and a scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, and Sheikh 'Atiyyah Saqr, former head of the Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee, advise in an August 2003 entry on their website that “once, we are done with papers or magazines with writings of Qur'anic verses or prayers or Names of Allah, etc., we must not simply throw them or discard them as we would do with any other ordinary stuff; rather we must dispose them off [sic] in a respectable manner.”
Did you catch that? He is not speaking of the Koran (Qur'an) itself. He's talking about newspapers and magazines that contain the name of Allah or a single verse of the Koran. According to the authors, these papers and magazines may be shredded and then be discarded or they may be burned (although they advise against burning them indoors because it may be unsafe! Would it cause an international incident if I added “Duh?”). The sheikhs continue, “It is impermissible to cast the papers containing one or more verses of the Qur'an on the ground or throw them in an unclean place so long as they contain even a single word of the Qur'an. If one does this deliberately, he will be considered a disbeliever.”
No wonder the Muslim world took offense at the idea of the Koran itself being consigned to the sewer. For a “holy man” of the Christian faith to endorse it causes Muslims to get rather worked up. Still, pastor Lovelace is not the first person to do something without completely understanding how it would affect his neighbor, and, if human nature holds, he won't be the last.
Perhaps this is a good time to do a little self-analysis. Without condemning this pastor or casting aspersions upon North Carolinians because he is, after all, one of them, perhaps we should take issue with how insensitive we are at times to people who disagree with us. When Jesus was asked by an expert in the law, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. According to Jesus, neighborliness transcends racial, social, economic and, we might presume, even religious barriers. And how are we to treat our neighbors? You know as well as I. A little love goes a long way in attracting others to Christ. A lot of love goes even further. Faysal Sharif declares that it was not superior preaching that caused him to abandon Islam and embrace Christianity. It was superior loving that paved the way to the cross.
There's one other thing that bothers me about the church sign business. Brother Lovelace said he wasn't trying to disparage the Koran; he wanted to emphasize the place of the Bible. It is a lesson many folks never quite learn that one never lifts himself by putting down another.
So, what's on your church sign? Not the one on the lawn in front of your building. I speak of less-than-respectful attitudes we hold and of actions that refute our professed love for the world. It is easy to say “God loves you and so do I,” but it has a hollow ring unless it's authenticated by the way we live.
Jim White is editor and business manager of the Religious Herald.