American Christians and Islam

American Christians and Islam PDF Author: Thomas S. Kidd
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691186197
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, many of America's Christian evangelicals have denounced Islam as a "demonic" and inherently violent religion, provoking frustration among other Christian conservatives who wish to present a more appealing message to the world's Muslims. Yet as Thomas Kidd reveals in this sobering book, the conflicted views expressed by today's evangelicals have deep roots in American history. Tracing Islam's role in the popular imagination of American Christians from the colonial period to today, Kidd demonstrates that Protestant evangelicals have viewed Islam as a global threat--while also actively seeking to convert Muslims to the Christian faith--since the nation's founding. He shows how accounts of "Mahometan" despotism and lurid stories of European enslavement by Barbary pirates fueled early evangelicals' fears concerning Islam, and describes the growing conservatism of American missions to Muslim lands up through the post-World War II era. Kidd exposes American Christians' anxieties about an internal Islamic threat from groups like the Nation of Islam in the 1960s and America's immigrant Muslim population today, and he demonstrates why Islam has become central to evangelical "end-times" narratives. Pointing to many evangelicals' unwillingness to acknowledge Islam's theological commonalities with Christianity and their continued portrayal of Islam as an "evil" and false religion, Kidd explains why Christians themselves are ironically to blame for the failure of evangelism in the Muslim world. American Christians and Islam is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the causes of the mounting tensions between Christians and Muslims today.

American Christians and Islam

American Christians and Islam PDF Author: Thomas S. Kidd
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691186197
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Get Book

Book Description
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, many of America's Christian evangelicals have denounced Islam as a "demonic" and inherently violent religion, provoking frustration among other Christian conservatives who wish to present a more appealing message to the world's Muslims. Yet as Thomas Kidd reveals in this sobering book, the conflicted views expressed by today's evangelicals have deep roots in American history. Tracing Islam's role in the popular imagination of American Christians from the colonial period to today, Kidd demonstrates that Protestant evangelicals have viewed Islam as a global threat--while also actively seeking to convert Muslims to the Christian faith--since the nation's founding. He shows how accounts of "Mahometan" despotism and lurid stories of European enslavement by Barbary pirates fueled early evangelicals' fears concerning Islam, and describes the growing conservatism of American missions to Muslim lands up through the post-World War II era. Kidd exposes American Christians' anxieties about an internal Islamic threat from groups like the Nation of Islam in the 1960s and America's immigrant Muslim population today, and he demonstrates why Islam has become central to evangelical "end-times" narratives. Pointing to many evangelicals' unwillingness to acknowledge Islam's theological commonalities with Christianity and their continued portrayal of Islam as an "evil" and false religion, Kidd explains why Christians themselves are ironically to blame for the failure of evangelism in the Muslim world. American Christians and Islam is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the causes of the mounting tensions between Christians and Muslims today.

Muslims and Christians at the Table

Muslims and Christians at the Table PDF Author: Bruce A. McDowell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780875524733
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This highly informative guide to sharing the Christian faith with North American Muslims offers important historical, cultural, and theological background on Islam and practical tips for tactful discussion with Muslims.

Christianity, Islam, and Atheism

Christianity, Islam, and Atheism PDF Author: William Kilpatrick
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 158617696X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Christianity, Islam, and atheism argues that Islam is a religion of conquest and subjugation and that in spite of 9/11 and thousands of other terrorist attacks thoughout the world, many in the West still do not know or admit this because it conflicts with their multiculturalism and their belief in the equivalence of all cultures and religions

American Islam

American Islam PDF Author: Paul M. Barrett
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374708304
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Vivid, dramatic portraits of Muslims in America in the years after 9/11, as they define themselves in a religious subculture torn between moderation and extremism There are as many as six million Muslims in the United States today. Islam (together with Christianity and Judaism) is now an American faith, and the challenges Muslims face as they reconcile their intense and demanding faith with our chaotic and permissive society are recognizable to all of us. From West Virginia to northern Idaho, American Islam takes readers into Muslim homes, mosques, and private gatherings to introduce a population of striking variety. The central characters range from a charismatic black imam schooled in the militancy of the Nation of Islam to the daughter of an Indian immigrant family whose feminist views divided her father's mosque in West Virginia. Here are lives in conflict, reflecting in different ways the turmoil affecting the religion worldwide. An intricate mixture of ideologies and cultures, American Muslims include immigrants and native born, black and white converts, those who are well integrated into the larger society and those who are alienated and extreme in their political views. Even as many American Muslims succeed in material terms and enrich our society, Islam is enmeshed in controversy in the United States, as thousands of American Muslims have been investigated and interrogated in the wake of 9/11. American Islam is an intimate and vivid group portrait of American Muslims in a time of turmoil and promise.

Who Is My Enemy?

Who Is My Enemy? PDF Author: Lee Camp
Publisher: Brazos Press
ISBN: 9781587432880
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Current discussion of Islam in America tends toward two polar extremes. On one hand is the notion that Christianity is superior to Islam and that Muslims are warmongers. On the other is the notion that all religions basically say the same thing and are peaceable. Theologian and critically acclaimed author Lee Camp argues that both these extremes are wrong. He introduces Christian and Islamic views on war and peacemaking and examines Christian and non-Christian terrorism to help readers confront their own prejudices. Camp shatters misconceptions about religious violence, arguing that American Christians often opt for an ethic that has more in common with the story of Muhammad than with the story of Jesus. This book shows readers how to respond faithfully and intelligently to Muslims in today's world as well as to the New Atheists who suppose that all religion is inherently violent. It provides balanced teaching on war and peacemaking, offering hope for reconciliation in a post-9/11 world.

American Apostles

American Apostles PDF Author: Christine Leigh Heyrman
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0809023989
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The surprising tale of the first American Protestant missionaries to proselytize in the Muslim world On November 3, 1819, Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons embarked from Boston on the first American mission to the Middle East. A year later they were joined by their friend Jonas King. Poor boys reared on hardscrabble New England farms and steeped in evangelical piety, they imagined themselves martyrs to the cause of converting the world. So too did their large and devoted following in the United States. Christine Leigh Heyrman's American Apostles brilliantly chronicles the first collision between American evangelicalism and the diverse religious cultures of the Levant. The founding members of the "Palestine mission" thrilled readers with tales of crossing the Sinai and exploring Cairo and Jerusalem. But their missions did not go according to plan. The Muslims of the Middle East showed no interest in converting. Instead of saving souls, the New Englanders found themselves engaging scholars in theological debate, marveling at the local folkways, and pursuing an elusive Bostonian convert to Islam. From the start, the American encounter with Islam was an unstable mix of crusading vigor and cosmopolitan curiosity. In the end, Heyrman argues that the failure of the foreign missions movement bolstered a more militant Christianity that became America's unofficial creed. The missionaries did not convert Muslims but they did transform themselves--with political and religious legacies that last to this day.

When Islam Is Not a Religion

When Islam Is Not a Religion PDF Author: Asma T Uddin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643131745
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
American Muslim religious liberty lawyer Asma Uddin has long considered her work defending people of all faiths to be a calling more than a job. Yet even as she seeks equal protection for Evangelicals, Sikhs, Muslims, Native Americans, Jews, and Catholics alike, she has seen an ominous increase in attempts to criminalize Islam and exclude Muslim Americans from those protections.Somehow, the view that Muslims aren’t human enough for human rights or constitutional protections is moving from the fringe to the mainstream—along with the claim “Islam is not a religion.” This conceit is not just a threat to the First Amendment rights of American Muslims. It is a threat to the freedom of all Americans.Her new book reveals a significant but overlooked danger to our religious liberty. Woven throughout this national saga is Uddin’s own story and the stories of American Muslims and other people of faith who have faced tremendous indignities as they attempt to live and worship freely.Combining her experience of Islam as a religious truth and her legal and philosophical appreciation that all individuals have a right to religious liberty, Uddin examines the shifting tides of American culture and outlines a way forward for individuals and communities navigating today’s culture wars.

American Islam

American Islam PDF Author: Richard Wormser
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802776280
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
Interviews with young American Muslims highlight an overview of one of America's most misunderstood religious groups, showing how Muslims maintain their traditions in the face of the permissiveness of American society. Reprint.

Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an

Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an PDF Author: Denise Spellberg
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307388395
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
In this original and illuminating book, Denise A. Spellberg reveals a little-known but crucial dimension of the story of American religious freedom—a drama in which Islam played a surprising role. In 1765, eleven years before composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson bought a Qur’an. This marked only the beginning of his lifelong interest in Islam, and he would go on to acquire numerous books on Middle Eastern languages, history, and travel, taking extensive notes on Islam as it relates to English common law. Jefferson sought to understand Islam notwithstanding his personal disdain for the faith, a sentiment prevalent among his Protestant contemporaries in England and America. But unlike most of them, by 1776 Jefferson could imagine Muslims as future citizens of his new country. Based on groundbreaking research, Spellberg compellingly recounts how a handful of the Founders, Jefferson foremost among them, drew upon Enlightenment ideas about the toleration of Muslims (then deemed the ultimate outsiders in Western society) to fashion out of what had been a purely speculative debate a practical foundation for governance in America. In this way, Muslims, who were not even known to exist in the colonies, became the imaginary outer limit for an unprecedented, uniquely American religious pluralism that would also encompass the actual despised minorities of Jews and Catholics. The rancorous public dispute concerning the inclusion of Muslims, for which principle Jefferson’s political foes would vilify him to the end of his life, thus became decisive in the Founders’ ultimate judgment not to establish a Protestant nation, as they might well have done. As popular suspicions about Islam persist and the numbers of American Muslim citizenry grow into the millions, Spellberg’s revelatory understanding of this radical notion of the Founders is more urgent than ever. Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an is a timely look at the ideals that existed at our country’s creation, and their fundamental implications for our present and future.

A Judeo-Islamic Nation

A Judeo-Islamic Nation PDF Author: Thomas Mates
Publisher: Hillcrest Publishing Group
ISBN: 1936780763
Category : Christianity
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
What religion do American "Christians" really believe in? Since the 4th century AD, true-to-the-Gospel Christianity has been a scarce commodity. Believers have always desired a religion more practical than the one in the Book - so much so that among politically active believers, Christianity long ago morphed into a religion more in line with the basic themes of Judaism and Islam (land, prosperity, justice, self-governance, and self-defense) than with the passive fatalism of Jesus and Paul. And since its beginnings in colonial New England, the American version of this Judeo-Islamic faith has continued to evolve, being reshaped time and again by the forces of history, national character, and even by advances in technology. A Judeo-Islamic Nation presents a new kind of religious criticism. Written by a scientist and nonbeliever, it presents an analysis intended not to defeat or marginalize religion, but simply to emphasize its human, evolving nature. A Judeo-Islamic Nation was written to stimulate a richer, more productive conversation between believers and nonbelievers, and between American Christians and Muslims. "This is a thoughtful examination of the role of religion in American public life. It shows how recent trends challenge both the traditional notion that religion is a private matter as well as the notion of a civil religion that unites everyone in the faith of Americanism." -Mark Juergensmeyer, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, author of Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State