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By Steve Blow sblow@dallasnews.com Published 19 September 2010 02:28 AM
Over and over you hear it said: If Muslims oppose terrorism, why don't they stand up and say it?
If that has been you, Mike Ghouse ought to be your hero.
It is hard to imagine that anyone has worked harder than the Carrollton resident to demonstrate the peaceful and moderate side of Islam.
And that effort includes personally visiting Dallas' First Baptist Church last Sunday just to put a friendly face on the "evil, evil religion" that the Rev. Robert Jeffress denounced a few weeks before.
"It was wonderful," Ghouse said of the visit. "We were so warmly received."
He hopes a quick chat with Jeffress will be the start of deeper discussion about Islam and the importance of respect between religions.
"I want to have a dialogue with him, not to say he is wrong but to share another point of view," Ghouse said.
The 57-year-old Muslim was born in India and has lived in the United States for 30 years. He owns a small property management firm. But most of his day is devoted to building bridges between people of different faiths.
"It is my passion," he said in his distinctive raspy voice.
He has been a guest a dozen times on Sean Hannity's TV and radio talk shows. "I don't like the way Sean cuts me off, but I have to honor him for giving the American public a semblance of another point of view."
Ghouse said he can understand fear and criticism of Islam because he went through a time of similar feelings. As a teen, he was troubled by passages of the Quran. He called himself an atheist for a while.
But he said deeper study led him to realize the Quran had been purposely mistranslated down through history.
In the Middle Ages, European leaders commissioned a hostile Quran translation to foster warfare against Muslim invaders.
Later, Muslim leaders produced another translation to inflame Muslims against Christians and Jews.
"It was all for politics," he said.
Ghouse said he hopes to present Jeffress with a modern, faithful translation and challenge him to find evil verses.
"If he can, I will convert. I will join his church," Ghouse said. "If he can't, I will call on him to retract his statements and become a peacemaker."
Ghouse acknowledges that deep problems persist within Islam. "Three steps forward, two steps back," he said with a sigh.
And he agrees that mainstream Muslims have not done enough to counter violent images of their faith.
"That is very true," he said. "But part of it is that many Muslims have given up hope that we will ever be heard."
He said repeated denunciations of terrorism seem to fall on deaf ears.
And some efforts have backfired - like the proposed Islamic information center in New York. He said it should be hailed for furthering the moderate Muslim cause.
Instead, it has deepened hostility toward Muslims.
I have been astounded by the amount of anti-Islam propaganda that circulates via e-mail. Tons of it has come my way in the last few weeks.
One theme is that people like Mike Ghouse can't be trusted, that Islam encourages deception.
But Ghouse says actions speak louder than words. And he points to elections in Muslim nations.
More than half of Muslims live in countries with some degree of democracy. And time and time again, Islamist parties are overwhelmingly rejected in favor of secular, mainstream parties.
"The religious parties don't get more than 3 percent of the vote," Ghouse said.
Polls show deep mistrust of Muslims. "But the most important question in those surveys is: 'Do you know anything about Islam?' " Ghouse said. "Most people say no."
What keeps him going is faith in Americans, he said.
"The majority of Americans, if they know the truth, they will change their minds."
Like most of the right-wing conservatives, Pastor Robert Jeffress lives in a bubble believing in self-aggrandizing information, and aggressively seeking to take advantage of his microphone to get ahead of others in the business of influence. He has done that both in politics and religion and has failed miserably. Continued: http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2012/12/texas-faith-is-religious-rights.html
Texas Faith: Is the Religious Right’s considerable influence on politics over?
The Texas Faith blog is a discussion among formal and informal religious leaders whose faith traditions express a belief in a transcendent power – or the possibility of one. While all readers are invited to participate in this blog, by responding in the comments section, discussion leaders are those whose religion involves belief in a divine higher power or those who may not believe in a transcendent power but leave room for the possibility of one. Within this framework, moderators William McKenzie and Wayne Slater seek to bring a diversity of thinkers onto the Texas Faith panels.
This week’s question has two parts: 1) Should Christian conservatives in the future follow Jeffress’ advice and avoid making prudential issues in which voters can disagree part of their central moral agenda? And 2) even if they do, will it make any difference? Is the era of religious right’s considerable influence on politics a thing of the past?
MIKE GHOUSE, President, Foundation for Pluralism, Dallas
Pastor Jeffress is a politician in the religious garb, not a good politician but the one scanning for opportunities to his advantage, his advice is yet to make sense.
Like most of the right-wing conservatives, he lives in a bubble believing in self-aggrandizing information, and aggressively seeing to take advantage of his microphone to get ahead of others in the business of influence. He has done that both in politics and religion and has failed miserably.
When the evangelicals ganged up on Romney, and unleashed Santorum as the conservative candidate, Jeffress came down on Romney, ruefully representing the Baptist Church and denouncing Romney’s Mormonism. The Moderate Republican majority dumped Santorum and other candidates with sectarian views and opted for Romney, who represented moderation at that time, but when Romney donned on the conservative avatar to clutch the nomination, Jeffress was out again with an embarrassing compromise; supporting Romney.
The moral agenda of the conservatives is to stand firmly against abortion, and same sex marriage, whereas Americans want to live by the First Amendment: government out of religion and their lives. Ironic as it may sound, the conservatives wanted to impose their views on others, and go against the very essence of constitution they purportedly want to uphold. If I were his congregant, I would have advised him to preserve the dignity of church and stay out from falling flat on his face again.
On religious side, Jeffress made a preposterous statement, “Qur’an is a false book written by a false prophet….” to a standing ovation from his congregation. He knew he was wrong and did not take up my challenge, “that if he finds faults with Qur’an, I will convert to his Faith, if not, I asked him to be a blessed peace maker that Jesus had wanted us to be. We held the Quraan conference anyway with 10 non-Muslim religious clergy and honored him for causing the truth to be otherwise. Details at www.QuraanConference.com
The era of religious right’s considerable influence on politics is indeed a thing of the past.
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Published in Dallas Morning News. Message from all contributors at:
http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/2012/12/texas-faith-is-the-religious-rights-considerable-influence-on-politics-over.html/
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Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker and a
writer on pluralism, politics, peace, Islam, Israel, India, interfaith, and cohesion at work
place and standing up for
others as an activist. He is committed to building a Cohesive America and offers
pluralistic solutions on issues of the day at www.TheGhousediary.com. Mike has a
presence on national and local TV, Radio and Print Media. He is a frequent guest
on Sean Hannity
show on Fox TV, and a commentator on national radio networks, he contributes
weekly to the Texas Faith Column at Dallas Morning News, fortnightly
at Huffington post, and
several other periodicals across the world. His personal site www.MikeGhouse.net indexes everything you
want to know about him.
