The Peril of Other People's Faiths

The Peril of Other People’s Faiths
JOSHUA 23:1- 16

In the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. State Department financed visits to universities and seminaries in the United States by Muslim scholars from abroad as part of efforts to foster mutual understanding between “the Muslim World” and “the Christian World.” An amusing effect for me during one of these visits was to discover that the foreign Muslims and I, as a foreign Christian, had a conviction in common: that religion and state are much more interwoven in the United States (where they are constitutionally separate) than they are in Europe (in countries where they are constitutionally linked). This observation generated a storm of protest from U.S. members of the relevant discussion. Not long after this event, I took part in a symposium on Muslim banking in our city; Muslim banking operates in a way that seeks to work within the terms of the Koran’s ban on lending for interest; Jews and Christians usually ignore the equivalent Old Testament law...