Blogger and missionary Arthur Davis has responded directly to Mark Durie’s piece on our site last week. Davis is currently serving with his family in Tanzania, country whose population is about a third Muslim. In his Eternity piece, Durie asked “What is the real Islam?”. In his response, Davis asks what he believes to be the bigger question: “Who gets to define Islam in the first place?” 

“The great challenge for us is not so much whether we’ve understood Islam as whether we know Muslims. As part of our love for our Muslim friends, let’s ask them what Islam is to them.” Read more >>  

At home, John Dickson, a founder of the Centre For Public Christianity and senior minister in an Anglican church in Sydney, wrote to his congregation this week to encourage them in a time of unease and strain in the community. In it, he speaks of the two groups of people who are rushing to either attack or defend Islam, the problems with both approaches and how he believes Christians should respond.

“In the end, I have a simple thing to say, and I feel a strong sense of God’s pleasure in saying it. Common sense and Christian faith urge us to shun both a naïve recasting of Islam as the mirror-image of liberal democracy, and a hateful projection of our own tribalism onto Australian Muslims. Instead, let’s go out of our way in the coming weeks and months to pray for the Muslims around us and to convey love and friendship toward them.” Read more >> 

To read Mark Durie’s article Muslims need truth and love, click here.

Feature image Giuseppe Milo via Flickr