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David Wheaton: Perhaps you watched the Boston Marathon bombings that killed four people and injured more than 200 others and wondered, “Why would two young Muslim men, who were granted political asylum in America years ago, educated in our schools, and received financial aid from U.S. taxpayers, set off two bombs in order to murder and maim as many Americans as possible?”
It’s a very good question. It has been said that, “All Muslims are not terrorists … but almost all terrorist attacks against America are committed by Muslims.”
Why is this? What is it about Islam — or perhaps about America? — that leads two young Muslims to murder the people that have actually taken them in?
Mark Durie, an Australian pastor and author of three books on Islam joins us from Australia The Christian Worldview all the way from Australia.
Many pastors are trying to find common ground between the Christian faith and Islam, for instance the document that came out a few years ago in America, A Common Word Between Us and You signed by many evangelical leaders and the leaders of Islam. Why have you focused on the critical differences and pointed out some of the negative aspects of Islam?
Mark Durie: I think we do have precious common ground with Muslims, but it’s in our humanity, not in faith. I think it’s really important to hold love together with truth, and not to abandon one for the other, or to pit them against each other. Truth means acknowledging the differences, which are great and significant, and not glossing over them or pretending they don’t exist. When you’re dealing with a very different faith it takes an effort and care to really understand those differences. That’s been part of my work, to help people understand what seems incomprehensible, what those differences really are.
DW: The Free Republic reported on April 15, saying this, “Shortly after terror bombs exploded and murdered over 12 people at the Boston marathon – I guess that’s an incorrect number – members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah were reported to be dancing in the streets of Gaza, handing out candies to passers by. The head of an Islamic organization in Jordan, the Muslim Salafi group, said he’s ‘happy to see the horror in America’ after the bombing attacks in Boston. ‘American blood isn’t more precious than Muslim blood,’ said Mohammad al-Chalabi, who was convicted in an Al-Qa’ida-linked plot to attack US and other Western diplomatic missions in Jordan. ‘Let the Americans feel the pain we endured by their armies occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and killing our people there.’”
Reportedly some people in the Muslim world celebrated the Boston bombings. The vast majority of the Muslim world not condemn it – I know there were some select Muslims who did.
MD: I think there are certainly Muslims who regard the West and America as the enemy and rejoice in what they regard as inflicting pain and harm on their enemy. So there are some like that. I think some Muslims in American also really prefer to emphasize that Muslims are the real victims – that’s a theological theme in Islam, that Muslims are the victims – so they don’t want the attention to be taken away from that. Also some Muslims don’t want to apologize for Islam. It causes them distress to have to engage with this [incidents of Islamic terrorism] and they resent being held to account for their faith. So there’s a deeper denial sometimes, at least among Western Muslims about Islamic radicalism. All these factors sometimes make it difficult for Muslims to engage.
