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Saying Christians and Muslims can be friends, a Muslim scholar from Canada gave 15 reasons why they should to a downtown Tulsa audience Friday night. But a Christian minister from Tulsa who used to be a Muslim questioned the tolerance of his former religion and asked whether a program such as Friday's, held at the Tulsa Convention Center, could even take place in a Muslim nation. The Rev. Reza Safa,)(picture left)pastor of Fishermen's House Church in Tulsa, and Jamal Badawi, a member of the Islamic Society of North America Fiqh Council, were the featured speakers at the event, which was sponsored by the Islamic Society of Tulsa. The debate stemmed from comments Safa made last summer at an anti-terrorism rally in Tulsa. Muslims against terrorism attended the rally and reportedly were offended when Safa said Muslims could not be friends with Christians. Badawi, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, told the crowd that members of the two religions have many reasons to be friends with each other. Among those he enumerated were a mutual belief in one universal God, a belief in the sanctity of human life, a commitment to justice, and respectiveteachings of mercy for all Badawi said Muslims as a people are imperfect, "but who isn't?" He said that although some Muslims distort the words of the Quran to support their own agendas, the term "holy war" is nowhere to be found in the book. Safa countered that many Muslims apparently do not agree with Badawi's interpretation of the Quran. Evidently, he said, those people "don't understand the Quran, but Dr. Badawi does." [[[[[[Safa, who was born and raised in Iran as a Shiite Muslim before converting to Christianity as a young man, said he receives death threats on a weekly basis from Muslims around the world. He said Muslims can freely claim that Jesus was not the son of God but that everyone has to be extremely careful about what they say about Muhammad or face the consequences.]]]]]] Badawi challenged anyone to find a negative word about Jesus in the Quran. A lot of the cause for misunderstandings about what the Quran says lies in the translation of its terms, Badawi said. He also said that words in Arabic are subject to multiple meanings, which he said can add to the confusion. Badawi said passages must also be read in the context of the times in which they were written. Safa projected lengthy excerpts up on the screens inside the Convention Center's Conference Hall to support his arguments. He said he did this to counter claims that he was only "pulling verses" out of the Quran to support his claims about Islamic intolerance.[[[[[[Despite Badawi's statements about the common ground between the Bible and the Quran, Safa said he didn't see how the two can truly be reconciled-particularly on the issue of who Jesus was. He said there "is not a single Islamic nation today that treats Christians right." Safa said "religious intolerance is the official state policy" of Saudi Arabia and that for 1,500 years Christians have been persecuted-some even killed-in Muslim countries for their beliefs.]]]]]] Badawi acknowledged barriers that get in the way of friendship between members of the two religions. Among these, he said, are media stereotypes, a focus on the views and actions of extremists, and what he referred to as "post 9/11 guilt by association."He said there is no justification in Islam for aggression against innocent people.
PS:Reza is a man of God that has spoken the truth here-even tough-he still has all his family back in Iran and they can get killed at any minute for his minsitry here in the US.He spoke the truth on Friday.May God bless him....
As in the days of Noah....
