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Thousands of tents housing Muslim pilgrims are crowded together in Mina near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
I’ve camped out at some of the big Jesus Music Festivals before, but it never looked like this! From the Big Picture - The Hajj and Eid al-Adha:
Yesterday marked the end of the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha, or “Feast of Sacrifice” - which also marks the end of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. One of the pillars of Islamic faith, the Hajj must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by any Muslim who has the ability to do so. This year, nearly 3 million Muslims made the Hajj, without major incident, and are now returning to their homes across the world. Muslims who stayed closer to home celebrated Eid al-Adha, commemorating the the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son to God. Traditional practices include ritual prayers, the sacrifice of animals (usually sheep), distribution of the meat amongst family, friends and the poor, and visiting with relatives. (41 photos total)
I am participating in the 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World. Here is today’s entry on the Hui people in Beijing.
BEIJING
Population: 15,380,000
Ethnic Han Chinese: 96%
Major Muslim group: Hui people (approx. 2% or about 280,000)
There are about 12 million Hui in all of China.
The Hui people trace their ancestors back to Muslim traders, soldiers, and officials who came to China during the seventh through fourteenth centuries. These men settled and married local native (Han) Chinese women. The Hui have so well assimilated into the Chinese society that they are almost indistinguishable from the Han Chinese, except in dietary and religious practices.
There is very little if any Christian witness to the Hui Muslims in general. There are no known believers among the Muslim Hui in Beijing. Beijing is the capital of the People’s Republic of China, The city was founded more than 3,000 years ago, and was regarded as the capital of China for over 850 years.
Prayer Starters:
- May God open doors for Chinese believers in the Messiah to proclaim Christ to Muslims.
- May God cause the Muslim Hui people in the Beijing area to seek the true God.
- Pray that Chinese believers can be agents of blessing and positive change for the city and the Muslim population.
If you would like to participate in the 30 Days of Prayer, you can click here for daily prayer summaries via e-mail or click here to subscribe to the 30 Days RSS feed.
Related posts:
There has been a lot of talk around the web since the Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey came out last week. One of the most controversial findings in the report was that a majority of those affiliated with a religion did not believe their religion was the only way to salvation. However, new information shows that the actual question posed to survey takers may have been interpreted in different ways. Terry Mattingly reports:
In one of several questions probing the role of dogmatism in American life, interviewers asked adults which of two statements better fit their beliefs: “My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life” or “many religions can lead to eternal life.”
The results leaped into national headlines, with 70 percent of those affiliated with a religion or denomination saying that many religions can bring eternal salvation … But there’s the rub. It’s impossible, based on a straightforward reading of the Pew Forum research, to know how individual participants defined the word “religion” when they answered.
“We didn’t have a set of interview guidelines or talking points that we used when asking that question,” said Greg Smith, a Pew research fellow. “The interviewers didn’t say, ‘Well, that means someone who is a member of a different denomination than yours’ or ‘that means someone in a completely different religion than your religion.’ So people may have answered that in different ways.”
There is no way — based on this round of research — to know precisely how many believers have decided to reject what their faiths teach, if those faiths make exclusive truth claims about salvation and eternal life. Thus, said Smith, the Pew Forum is planning follow-up work.
I thought the numbers in the survey seemed questionably high. I am guessing that many (not all) Christians interpreted the question to mean different denominations rather than different religious faiths. In fact in the same article Mattingly refers to a new survey by the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Research team which specifically asked Protestants if they believed people can find eternal life through “religions other than Christianity.” Only 31 percent agreed “strongly” or “somewhat.”
See related posts:
Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey
New Study Finds Fewer Evangelical Universalists than Reported
From the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life:
U.S. Religious Landscape Survey:
A major survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith. A majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, for instance, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation. And almost the same number believes that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion.
Here is another chart from the same report showing the major religious traditions in the United States:
See related post: Pew Forum Religion Survey Skewed?
Yesterday’s message in the Life of Samuel series was called Losing God in Religion, taken from 1 Samuel 4:1-22. If religion is supposed to bring us closer to God, then how is it possible to lose God in religion? It is very possible, and this incident in 1 Samuel 4 shows us how it happened to the Israelites, and how it can also happen to us today. Here is a brief outline of the message:
How can you lose God in religion?
1) You can lose God by emphasizing ritual over relationship (1-5)
- Depending on human wisdom rather than God’s word
- Trying to manipulate God for your own purposes
- Focusing on religious objects rather than God
- Expecting God’s blessing without repentance
2) You can lose God by following a false religion (6-9)
- Not recognizing the one true God
- Holding on to misinformation
- Believing you can fight against God and win
3) Nothing is worse than losing God (10-22)
- Losing God is worse than defeat
- Losing God is worse than death
- Nothing can compensate for losing God in your life
Note: Click on the Sermons tab at the top of the blog for this and other messages.
Vox Day waxes eloquent on the New Atheists:
This trio of New Atheists, this Unholy Trinity, is a collection of faux-intellectual frauds utilizing pseudoscientific sleight of hand in order to falsely claim that religious faith is inherently dangerous and has no place in the modern world. I am saying that they are wrong, they are reliably, verifiably and factually incorrect. Richard Dawkins is wrong. Daniel C. Dennett is wrong. Christopher Hitchens is drunk, and he’s wrong. Michel Onfray is French, and he’s wrong. Sam Harris is so superlatively wrong that it will require the development of esoteric mathematics operating simultaneously in multiple dimensions to fully comprehend the orders of magnitude of his wrongness.” (Vox Day; The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, pp. 13-14)
HT: Evangelical Outpost
The Economist recently ran an article on the Bible versus the Koran. The article focused mostly on the business side of marketing the two books but had some interesting things to say along the way. Here are some excerpts from the article.
CHRISTIANS and Muslims have one striking thing in common: they are both “people of the book”. And they both have an obligation to spread the Word—to get those Holy Books into the hands and hearts of as many people as they can …
Spreading the Word is hard. The Bible is almost 800,000 words long [while] … the Koran is a mere four-fifths of the length of the New Testament … Yet over 100m copies of the Bible are sold or given away every year. Annual Bible sales in America are worth between $425m and $650m; Gideon’s International gives away a Bible every second. The Bible is available all or in part in 2,426 languages, covering 95% of the world’s population.
The Koran is not only the most widely read book in the Islamic world but also the most widely recited (”Koran” means “recitation”). There is no higher goal in Muslim life than to become a human repository of the Holy Book; there is no more common sound in the Muslim world than the sound of Koranic recitation.
Reciting the Koran is the backbone of Muslim education. One of the most prized honorifics in Islamic society is “hafiz” or “one who has the entire scripture off by heart”. Do so in Iran and you get an automatic university degree. The great recitors compete in tournaments that can attract audiences in the hundreds of thousands—the world cups of the Islamic world. The winners’ CDs become instant bestsellers …
There is a difference, however, between getting and understanding a Holy Book. Here both Christianity and Islam suffer from serious problems. Americans buy more than 20m new Bibles every year to add to the four that the average American has at home. Yet the state of American biblical knowledge is abysmal. A Gallup survey found that less than half of Americans can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis), only a third know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount (Billy Graham is a popular answer) and a quarter do not know what is celebrated at Easter (the resurrection, the foundational event of Christianity). Sixty per cent cannot name half the ten commandments; 12% think Noah was married to Joan of Arc. George Gallup, a leading Evangelical as well as a premier pollster, describes America as “a nation of biblical illiterates”.
Muslims greatly prefer to read the Koran in the original Arabic. Yet the archaic language and high-flown verse, while inspiring, can also be difficult to understand even for educated Arabic speakers. And only 20% of Muslims speak Arabic as their first language. Illiteracy rates are high across the Muslim world. Many students of the Holy Book do not understand much of what they are memorizing.
What are your thoughts on the article?
HT: Evangelical Outpost
Super-size me. Looks like somebody ate too much turkey for Thanksgiving. Meet George, an extremely fat hedgehog found by a wildlife aid group on the side of the road along with his friend Mildred, which is normal-sized.
Unclear of the concept. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to be an official observer for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. In a recent speech to his militia in Iran, Ahmadinejad said, “If the White House officials allow us to be present as an observer in their presidential election we will see whether people in their country are going to vote for them again or not.” Will someone please explain to the president of Iran that George Bush is not even allowed to run in this election?
Also unclear of the concept. The Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, California offers Sunday School classes for the children of atheist parents. “One Sunday this fall found a dozen children up to age 6 and several parents playing percussion instruments and singing empowering anthems like I’m Unique and Unrepeatable, set to the tune of Ten Little Indians, instead of traditional Sunday-school songs like Jesus Loves Me.” (HT: Stand to Reason)
The month of Ramadan begins today (September 13 - October 12 for the year 2007). Ramadan is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar and the most sacred month of the Islamic year. Muslims believe that the first verse of the Qur’an (Koran) was revealed to Muhammad during Ramadan in AD 610. Each year at this time Muslims fast during the daylight hours for the whole month. In addition to fasting, Muslims are encouraged to read the entire Qur’an.
30-Days International produces a “30-Days of Prayer for the Muslim World” Christian prayer guide coinciding with Ramadan each year. The booklet contains daily readings with prayer points, informative background articles, a list of titles for further study and a resource section featuring ministries and services focusing on the Muslim world. There is also a Children’s Edition with quizzes, stories and maps. You can order the 52-page booklet here, or you can sign up for the free email version which is distributed daily during the 30 days of Ramadan. Free pdf versions of the adult and children’s editions are also available for download.
I have signed up for the daily emails and look forward to participating in this prayer effort. If you are a Christian, would you consider participating also? Here is an additional challenge. When you consider that Muslims around the world are committed to fasting and reading through the entire Qur’an this month, how much time are you investing in prayer and Bible reading?
HT: Between Two Worlds
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