The Severe Penalty for Muslim Babies

Tifl! Walad! Bint! Tifl in Arabic means baby. Walad is boy and Bint is girl. Having often observed up close Muslim parents loving their children, I have consistently been impressed with the love and care showered upon each of them. Every child is most certainly treated as a precious gift from ALLAH in the Muslim homes I have had the privilege of visiting.

Therefore, there is one particular circumstance affecting especially Palestinian Muslims which consistently injures my own heart. That is, if I myself were a Palestinian parent who had had my own land taken from me and given to the Israelis, I believe that my own mind and heart would burn with resentment towards Israeli policies if not towards Israelis themselves. In fact, I believe this resentment would be deeply bothersome even if I had been convinced that a particular interpretation of the Scriptures reveals that it is the will of the GOD of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (who was renamed Israel) for their descendents through Israel to return to the land of Palestine and to establish a nation there.

This deep resentment and even rage and hate could well exist in my mind and heart due to the following conviction that I firmly hold. I deeply believe that it could never be the will of the One GOD who is committed to love and justice to desire a people with a supposedly special relationship with Himself to treat the vulnerable descendents of Ishmael in unjust, often vicious and contemptible ways. But that is the way that especially Arabs have observed Palestinians being treated. This is even though the first son of Abraham, Ishmael, was circumcised first and therefore was under the sacred covenant of circumcision several years before Abraham’s second son, Isaac, was even born and then included under his father Abraham’s special covenant of circumcision.

Then another usually unrecognized circumstance makes it all the more contemptible that today’s Jews would treat today’s Arab Palestinians with the disrespect and injustice with which they treat the precious persons whose land they have often stolen or illegally occupied. That is, without Ishmael’s family’s aid, the present nation of Israel would not exist. So Israel owes its very existence to Ishmael’s family.

Ishmael’s Family Rescued Future Israeli Nation

Readers of the Hebrew Scriptures are quite familiar with how nine of the older brothers of the Prophet Jacob, who was later renamed Israel, decided to murder their younger brother Joseph for whom they had an intense, jealous hatred. And Scripture readers are also familiar with how their own greed drove them to modify their plan from murdering him to the slightly lesser crime of selling their hated younger brother into permanent slavery in the country of Egypt. But there is one exceptional important detail that Bible readers conveniently do not notice when they read the Chapter 37 Genesis account of Joseph being sold into supposedly permanent slavery.

That conveniently unnoticed but exceptionally significant detail concerns that identity of the persons to whom ALLAH entrusted the exceptionally important task of safely transporting the virtual savior of the future nation of Israel to Egypt. For the merchants or traders whom ALLAH in His own wisdom chose to safely transport Joseph to his new home in Egypt were the grandchildren and nephews of Ishmael, Jacob/Israel’s uncle. So this family of Ishmael were the especially chosen "Ishmaelites”, whom GOD trusted to transport the very precious Joseph away from his murderous older brothers, to the nearby foreign land of Egypt. So it was the very near descendents of the first son of Abraham who was circumcised to live under Abraham’s covenant that GOD uniquely chose to make certain that the virtual savior of the family of the prophet Israel arrived in Egypt safely. This had to occur in order for Joseph to fulfill his own special purpose of preserving the family of Israel from either death by the coming famine or a destructive fragmentation of the family.

Therefore, in view of GOD’s special choice of using the initial descendants of the son of Abraham in this unique way, it becomes especially ironic that the present descendants of the Prophet Jacob/Israel would be so unappreciative of the descendants of the first son of Abraham, who was Ishmael. Because it was this family who played such an important role in rescuing them from famine and thus preserving the Jewish race which brought GOD’s very Messiah into this world.

But despite this unique role in preserving the entire Jewish nation that the near descendants of Ishmael played over 35 centuries ago, do we observe in Israel today a deep deserved appreciation of those who virtually saved their forefathers from starvation so many centuries ago? Absolutely not! In contrast to what should be normal human thankfulness and appropriate appreciation we observe most Israelis nurturing an obsessive contempt for the descendents of their former virtual saviors. Significantly, this hostile rejectionist attitude, in GOD’s sight must be symptomatic of Israel’s later near total rejection of His Risen Messiah. He also was totally unappreciated by the Israeli power structure and thus became their illegally executed Messiah almost twenty centuries ago.

But the average Palestinian and other Arabs are mostly unfamiliar with the long ago historical assistance that ALLAH provided through the Prophet Ishmael’s family for the grandchildren of Isaac. Thus, this timely aid prevented their potential starvation or at the least their disintegration as a family unit. But my own awareness of this historical assistance by Ishmael’s family plus my own awareness of the extensive persecution of Palestinians by Israel makes me quite sympathetic to the street rage of most Arabs toward the U.N. imposed present nation of Israel.

In addition to the land that has virtually been stolen from the Palestinians, there is the illegal Israeli colonialization that has continued; the siege and lockdown of the Gaza Strip which at the least was the major contributing factor to the disproportionate blood bath in Gaza; the humiliating strip searches that Palestinians, male and female, are exposed to: the refusal to give building permits to Arab residents in occupied East Jerusalem; consistently demolishing hundreds of homes which Israel classifies as illegal dwellings; continually reclassifying a growing number of roads so that they are confined to only Israeli traffic; and the construction of a separation wall that has not only stolen additional Palestinian land but has divided up Palestinian land making the West Bank even more non-functional.

The above are only a few examples of the ways that it is deliberate Israeli policy to consistently degrade and humiliate Palestinians without dwelling on the thousands of very questionable imprisonments, beatings, and often intentional killings.

Therefore, as a person who reads and studies the Scriptures, I am absolutely convinced that the GOD who has graciously allowed Jewish people to return to the land of Palestine and establish a nation, never, never intended for that nation to be the nation of exclusivity, arrogance, injustice, oppression, and murder that it has become. Consequently, I am convinced that the way the current nation of Israel is conducting its relationship with the exploited, vulnerable Palestinians has resulted in the ALLAH of Love and Justice being as enraged at current Israeli soldiers and policy makers as is the small Muslim girl in Gaza. This enraged child has seen half her brother’s head blown off and has found the crushed bodies of her mother and father in the demolished ruins of what was once their joyful home. Is it any wonder that GOD Himself is ashamed of the current Israeli nation when this quote was in a December, 2008, Time Magazine from the Israeli current Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert: “When I saw how the Palestinian civilians were being killed in Hebron, I was ashamed to be a Jew.”

Poisonous Seeds of Hate

With the way the situation is currently going, even if U.S. Middle East Envoy George Mitchell is wildly successful in persuading Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to cooperate, and even be successful in persuading Hamas to accept Israel’s permanent existence, neither he nor the just, wise and fair President Barack Obama, will be able to accomplish one particularly important aspect of the healing process: removing and healing the hate in the hearts of children who now are filled with rage toward Israelis.

We will turn to the awful U.S. prison of Guantanomo (Gitmo) in Cuba for a relevant example of the rage that the U.S. and Israel have inspired. Analysts on cable TV have estimated that the hate and rage that this U.S. prison has generated in the Mid East against U.S. policy has recruited far more than two hundred recruits for Al-Qaeda for every one person that has been imprisoned in Gitmo despite how wonderfully successful the prison promoter and Gitmo defender, V.P. Dick Cheney, claims that that prison has been.

Similarly, all kinds of observers including child psychologists, social workers, etc. have been warning any one who will listen that deep seeds of hatred and rage have been sown into the hearts and minds of especially Gazan children by the Israeli’s bloody assault on Gaza and their generally unjust and oppressive practices toward all Palestinians. Furthermore, these specialists ominously warn that these seeds of hate, if they are not at least partially healed and eradicated, will cause these children to blossom into dedicated long term adult Israeli haters in the coming years. And the chances are that many of these permanent Israeli haters will seek to die as martyrs and suicide bombers in order to express their rage and revenge toward the people and nation of Israel who were the sowers of their seeds of hate. Yet, this is the dreaded future for both Israel, the Palestinians and for other Arabs if true healing does not begin to occur. Yet, no one ever seems to factor into this ugly dilemma that there is ALLAH’s Risen but rejected Messiah who is waiting to help, whose heart is breaking because his help is being rejected.

Islam, not Israel, will soon Welcome ALLAH’s Healer

Israel has gone on record as totally rejecting GOD’s Risen Messiah. Traditional Christianity in the U.S. has largely rejected the possibility of the Risen Messiah being part of the healing process because of our policy of keeping the true Messiah separated from political solutions, so we substitute bombs, bullets and coercion to replace truly win, win diplomatic healing and healing that would involve ALLAH’s Risen Messiah.

So, it is a new, vibrant Islam which is in a new relationship with the Risen Messiah that holds the majority of the solution for not only the poisonous hate that Israel with U.S. complicity has sown into the hearts and minds of severely psychologically wounded children who are now filled with hate. According to President Carter, the U.S. gives Israel ten million dollars per day. This money supports Israel’s inhuman, unjust policies. Yet, as a further insult to all Arabs, 60% of American voters supported Israel’s bloody invasion of the vulnerable Gazans. But Islam can now hold the potential solution to helping to marginalize the Israeli nation’s huge present propaganda advantage that that nation uses to manipulate the nominally Christian West. This advantage is largely due to Judaism’s supposed much closer relationship with Christianity than Islam supposedly has. But this major false propaganda advantage will suddenly begin to evaporate and disappear when a few leaders in Islam decide to become courageous rather than timid, and objective rather than tradition driven when it comes to eliminating their incorrect understanding of An Nisa 4:157 and 158.

Yes, the very future of Islam’s constructive influence for good and for justice will suddenly take a giant leap forward in the Middle East as soon as ALLAH finds a few Muslim men and/or women to be courageous, objective, and prayerful about the true intent of these two profound verses.

The Wonderful Key

Yes, these two verses are the Key. The correct understanding of An-Nisa 4:157, when that verse is appropriately understood in combination with the correct understanding of the next verse, An-Nisa 4:158, the key to healing has been found. Then, when a few courageous Muslims will exercise courageous leadership in understanding that ALLAH has never intended for An-Nisa to be taken literally and be understood superficially so as to excuse and exonerate First Century Jewish leadership for their horrible public murder of ALLAH’s Messiah, new hope and new healing will become a precious part of the future for every Muslim baby and child throughout the entire Muslim world. So no longer will every Muslim baby born to a Muslim family experience an automatic life sentence of always being denied the love and healing presence of ALLAH’s own Risen Man from West Bank Bethlehem.

The Audacity to Cancel Hope

One particular book by the new U.S. President Barack Obama, which helped his positive personality become known to people throughout the world was his book “The Audacity of Hope”. Are we not all thankful that he did not write “The Audacity of Hate?” But what Muslim leaders don’t seem to be aware of this. By their refusing to understand the true intent and true meaning of An-Nisa 4:157 and 158, they have effectively had the audacity to cancel ALLAH’s wonderful gift to them of “hope personified” in the person of His Risen Man from West Bank Bethlehem. For in interpreting those two profound verses in a superficial way, they cancel his temporary death and permanent resurrection to new eternal life. Thus these misled leaders have thrown away a wonderful Christmas gift of Hope for every young and old Muslim throughout this entire world. Yes, with the present status quo, these Muslim leaders have replaced hope with hate.

Could not that personal gift from ALLAH of hope to replace hate, have been of great benefit to 13 Saudi young men before they were psychologically manipulated to sacrifice themselves to become murderous martyrs on 9/11: Will not that hope instead of hate even now bring needed healing to the hearts and minds of thousands of Palestinian, Gazan, and Lebanese children who have seen their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers blown apart by Israeli bombs? Or if the Israeli leaders or even U.S. leaders like Cheney and Bush truly had the living hope of the living Messiah reigning in their hearts instead of the worship of weapons, and their commitment to the devaluation of human beings, would they so casually kill and maim Palestinians, Gazans, Lebanese, Iraqis and Syrians?

Consider this negative reality. Because of the audacity of every Muslim leader to irresponsibly interpret the two aforementioned verses in the Quran in a superficial literalistic way, they have done something even more drastic than what has been accomplished by the leaders of the great country of China. Chinese leaders have made certain by their policies that each and every baby born in their great nation will never hope to experience the love and friendship of a brother or a sister or of an aunt or an uncle. This joy is now being denied every Chinese child.

But just as callously audacious as the Chinese Communist leaders are, the Arab Muslim leaders also have offended ALLAH. They have made it their personal responsibility, by their false teaching, to deprive each and every baby born to a Muslim mother and father of a gift from ALLAH of wonderful living hope. Their babies will always be prevented from ever having the hope and joy of experiencing a precious friendship with ALLAH’s own now Risen and now living Messiah from West Bank Bethlehem. Think of this. He defeated death in order to be eternally present with each and every person who will choose to have him as their Risen Messiah and as their precious Savior.

Jeremiah Wright’s Godly Influence

The Republicans in this nation were mightily attempting to win the election against the Democrats. The Democrat, Hillary Clinton, was also trying to win the nomination to become the Democratic President elect instead of Barack Obama. A third major factor in the character assassination of Pastor Jeremiah Wright was that all the major news organizations were competing to make as much news as possible, whether it was negative or positive.

Therefore, when a film clip became available showing Barack and Michelle Obama’s close friend and pastor, Jeremiah Wright, virtually shouting the almost treasonous words in one of his fiery and emotional sermons, “God damn America”, a feeding frenzy began. The context of why he said the words became virtually lost. In our unquestioning patriotic America, no context of criticism of America could reasonably justify such a violent outburst of extremism against our nation that we are taught to consider as virtually always righteous and just.

But the reality is that this very intelligent man, in my opinion, was sincerely attempting to be GOD’s faithful servant in exposing some of the areas where this nation is strongly displeasing GOD especially in its foreign policy, and is therefore bringing judgment upon itself. But a candidate who is attempting to win the votes of Americans to become their President cannot be closely associated with someone who would go to this extreme in speaking truth to power.

Beyond the extremism of Pastor Wright perhaps unwisely using the strong word “damn” against America, there were certain quite positive values that Jeremiah Wright possesses which seemed to have had a constructive influence on the developing mind of Barack Obama even before he became a presidential candidate.

1. As a pastor he was not reluctant to speak truth to power.
2. He was quite willing to speak of justice for the Palestinians and speak against the unconditional U.S. support of the oppressive policies of the Israelis.
3. Instead of being blindly patriotic, he encouraged his listeners to think in terms of justice and accountability similar to how the ancient Prophets taught in Old Testament times. (It is significant to note that the Prophet Jeremiah/Yeremiah who Jeremiah Wright was named after, also got in deep trouble with blindly patriotic officials for his not also being blindly patriotic - even more trouble than Pastor Wright got into for his severe criticism of U.S. government action and policies.)
4. From Pastor Wright, Mr. and Mrs. Obama were both exposed to strong teaching about the extreme priority that accountability deserves. This was reality based on the certainty that they would both appear before the Risen Messiah in Judgment. There they will answer for the just or unjust ways and the honest or dishonest ways and the noble or ignoble ways they had conducted themselves on this earth.
    
   Regarding the influence it appears that this teaching had on Mr. Obama and the lack that such a teaching had on President Bush is this contrast. President Bush often made reference to the judgment of history vindicating his decisions and actions. However, like no recent President, Senator Obama even before his election, on more than one occasion has made reference to his conscious reality that he would be answering to the Judgment of GOD for his policies and decisions.
5. In the Biblical and historical teachings of Pastor Wright, the Obamas were undoubtedly heavily exposed to how it was the sustaining hope relating to both the suffering of the Messiah and his ultimate resurrection which had sustained the Negro slave ancestors of Mrs. Obama. For instance there was probably no other line in no other Negro Spiritual that sustained Mrs. Obama’s ancestors more as they picked cotton under the blazing sun in the south for hour after endless hour than these precious words. "Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen…Nobody knows but (the Risen) Jesus."
    
   Yes, it was the hope against hopelessness that sustained an enslaved, kidnapped people during one of the greatest prolonged assaults against human dignity that has every occurred in the history of the human race. And ironically, just as George Bush murdered innocent people in Iraq while supposedly honoring the Risen Messiah, this prolonged degrading crime was perpetrated by white Southerners who, like President Bush, also claimed to honor GOD’s Risen Messiah. But they actually mocked him as George Bush mocked him by his murders in Iraq and by so openly supporting Israel in their unjust oppression of Palestinians.
6. In Pastor Wright’s church, the Obamas observed a sincere religious community both honoring the Risen Messiah and consistently reaching out in supportive love to those in physical, psychological, financial and spiritual need.
7. In this church they also observed many wholesome examples of loving and responsible parenting of young children which any young couple profits from and needs.
8. In this Holy Spirit and Pastor Wright-led church, the Obamas observed a positive, community impacting organization that consistently utilized responsible delegation.

But in contrast to the positive values being passed on by Pastor Wright, both the zealous media and candidate Obama’s rivals portrayed the GOD fearing prophet like Pastor as a hysterical extremist. Because in mainstream patriotic America, it is implicitly forbidden for a Christian pastor to categorically condemn America’s actions even if certain national policies and actions deserve categorical condemnation.

For the Scripture’s opposite teaching, observe the categorical condemnation the original Prophet Jeremiah leveled against his own nation, Israel. This open condemnation by the Prophet resulted in Jeremiah’s constant harassment and his many arrests. As an example of his condemning rhetoric, he wrote in Jeremiah 2:14: “On your clothes men find the life blood of the innocent poor though you did not catch them breaking in. Yet in spite of all this you say, “I am innocent.’”

Applying this verse’s principle to the U.S. and Iraq, we have: “On U.S. clothes, men find the life blood of innocent Iraqis though we did not find any weapons of mass destruction. Yet we say, ‘The U.S. is innocent.’”

But despite the Scriptures open portrayal of GOD condemning predator nations as guilty when they shed the blood of victim nations, it is only the very courageous U.S. pastors who will risk condemning the U.S. for the blood this nation has shed in a victim nation. In the minds of a majority of our patriotic citizens, the most that they will allow a pastor to do is to condemn the U.S. for hurting our own nation and having our own personnel die and be maimed. But pastors are not approved when they condemn the U.S. for shedding innocent blood in an innocent foreign nation. Yet, at least the new President Barack Hussein Obama was consistently exposed to this Justice orientation toward U.S. guilt by a Godly pastor who sincerely supports justice as well as being a devoted follower of ALLAH’s own Risen Bethlehem Man.

Therefore, whereas it was conventional wisdom to severely criticize candidate Obama for his long association with Pastor Jeremiah Wright, I am convinced that it was GOD’s will for now President Obama to have been exposed to the strong justice concepts that poured forth from the lips of this GOD-fearing man. And those words he heard will make this President a far more just President in our dealings with foreign nations. But sadly, he will need to maintain distance from such an outspoken man of justice as Jeremiah Wright in order to have the continued approval of U.S. voters. For as a nation we appear to be far more interested in U.S. global supremacy and to extend our hegemony than to see global justice flow like a mighty river.

Present Muslim Mocking of ALLAH’s Messiah

As someone who has thought and prayed and then thought some more about the true intent of An Nisa 4:157 and 158, I could probably give almost a dozen reasons that would probably be disregarded to as to why Muslim leaders are very wrong in the way they force Muslims to understand these two profound verses. But the following ten statements reveal how far Muslim leaders are willing to go in order to avoid acknowledging the great authority that ALLAH has proven that he has awarded his own Messiah after he endured a torturous public murder by enraged jealous Israeli leaders.

1. Most influential Muslim leaders do not care if all Muslim babies grow up never being allowed the privilege and the advantage of knowing that the Quran’s Messiah defeated death rather than being forced to believe that he was secretly aided by ALLAH to escape from death. Because it is more important to these leaders to continue to worship the tradition of denying the resurrection than it is to provide hope, help and encouragement to Muslim children by providing them with a victorious Messiah rather than a negative caricature of a Messiah to be ashamed of.
2. Most influential Muslim leaders do not notice that they put the Holy Quran in the position of seriously contradicting itself by the way it repeatedly insists that the Quran confirms the earlier Scriptures. Then these leaders distort the Quran in order to blatantly deny everything the previous Scriptures clearly teach about the public murder of ALLAH’s Messiah and how ALLAH victoriously raised him from death. They are forced to take this position of making the Quran to contradict itself in order to be able to deny the glorious resurrection which would force these leaders to acknowledge that ALLAH has given His Risen Messiah authority over all people and nations. Yet these leaders are not willing to acknowledge that the Messiah now possesses this authority.
3. Most Muslim leaders would rather disobey ALLAH regarding acknowledging His Messiah’s death and resurrection than to acknowledge the authority the Risen Messiah now has which has been proven and confirmed by ALLAH by his triumphant resurrection.
4. Most Muslim leaders are quite comfortable with throwing what justice demands out the window by not holding First Century Israeli leaders to a reasonable standard of justice for being responsible for murdering their Messiah and the world’s Messiah. Because if they acknowledge that ALLAH victoriously raised him from death that would prove the Messiah has authority that they do not want to admit that he has.
5. Most Muslim leaders appear to prefer that many Muslim young men and women would find their hope in murderous terrorism and in suicide bombing rather than enjoy the hope that comes with a commitment to a now Risen Messiah. Because for these leaders to acknowledge the resurrection of that now living Messiah explicitly implies an authority for that Messiah that they do not want him to have even though their acknowledging that authority would save so many innocent lives.
6. Most Muslim leaders are quite willing to appear to seriously reduce and mock the majesty of ALLAH Himself by making even ALLAH complicit in a ridiculous CIA-type scheme. They claim that ALLAH provided a look-a-like who was torturously interrogated and then torturously executed instead of admitting that it was the Messiah who endured the torturous death and the torturous execution. They then claim that the virtuous ALLAH secretly snuck the Messiah away instead of ALLAH victoriously raising him up from a three day death. So they refuse to acknowledge a victorious triumph over both a torturous interrogation and a torturous execution. Instead they involve the majestic ALLAH in a ridiculous scheme where he apparently cast aside His own majesty instead of majestically raising His Messiah up alive after three days of death. Because if they acknowledge his ALLAH empowered victorious resurrection, this would give the now Risen Messiah an authority these leaders are envious of him having. (Their own envy and jealousy of the now Risen Messiah is similar to the envy and jealousy that drove Israeli leaders to illegally demand that the Roman occupier, Governor Pilate, must illegally execute him.
7. The majority of Muslim leaders do not desire that a truthful account of the death and resurrection of the Messiah be known because a fabricated account that even lowers ALLAH’s integrity, conveniently satisfies their need to deny what they view as the dreaded resurrection which inconveniently validates the authority which they are strongly opposed to the Messiah having.
8. These Muslim leaders are quite willing to sacrifice the benefit of every Muslim Palestinian child on their sacred alter of the tradition that he was not murdered by the Israelis and so did not rise from death even though the opposite of that extreme theological position is much more in line with what the Quran actually teaches when An-Nisa 4:157 and 158 are viewed thoughtfully rather than superficially. Muslim children would benefit because that more feasible and defensible theological position would help predominantly Western nominal Christians who hold much economic, political, military and cultural power to feel much more supportive of the new Muslim position over the old “no death” position. But this benefit for the future of Muslim children is not important to certain Muslim leaders who cannot see further than the end of their noses, because they prefer to continue to be free of the authority of a truly Risen Messiah. even though their rejection gives a disadvantage to every baby born into Islam.
9. Though the Messiah is referred to eleven times in the Quran as Messiah and is acknowledged as being eminent in the next world, and is obviously given authority in the earlier Scriptures which the Quran confirms, most Muslim leaders have little concern over what ALLAH’s will is regarding His Risen Messiah. They much prefer having their children even living under the oppression of the injustice of the Israelis than to acknowledge that it is GOD’s will for His Messiah to reign over a spiritual Kingdom which his resurrection proves that he will lead. So it is not ALLAH’s will that is now considered important to many Muslim leaders no matter what dqamage is done to children.
10. It is not important to most Muslim leaders that ALLAH is seeking for Muslims to now fulfill responsibilities for His spiritual Kingdom which have been abandoned and neglected by now weapons-worshipping Christians and Risen Messiah-rejecting Jews. But it appears that at this time that most Muslim leaders would also rather remain in a rejectionist mode regarding ALLAH’s own Risen Messiah rather than to accept the authority that his resurrection confirms.

A Spiritual Warfare Victory by Stephen

Why has such a gruesome Israeli murder of the first martyr after Yahya (John the Baptist) and after Isa (Jesus) been written about in this paper? Because I am sincerely attempting to show that Muslim leaders must finally realize that the Holy Quran allows for Muslims to believe that ALLAH’s Messiah Isa truly did defeat death. Thus, the martyr Stephen reveals to Muslims opportunities for there to be realistic alternatives for those who wish to fight Israeli aggression and Zionism which are in contrast to the terrorism and suicide options that today attract so many concerned and enraged young Muslims. For all that is needed is for a few Muslim leaders to finally escape from their narrow jail cell of a shallow, superficial understanding of An-Nisa 4:157 and 158 to a more reasonable understanding. When that escape occurs, a new door of unique opportunity will burst open for those Muslims whose hearts are severely wounded over the continued injustice of Israeli policies toward oppressed and exploited and humiliated Palestinians that gaurantees a horrible future for today's Palestinian children who will be tomorrow's Palestinian adults.

We observed in the courageous experience of the martyr Stephen (The Acts 7) how much can be accomplished by practicing spiritual warfare rather than warfare using explosives, bombs, bullets, rockets, and roadside bombs. With only his very confrontive words to the Israeli officials about the gross sins of their ancestors including their vicious murder of ALLAH’s own Risen man from Bethlehem, Stephen virtually broke the Israeli officials’ teeth, when they became so enraged. For their hate for him was brought to the surface as a direct result of his confrontive words combined with his genuine devotion to the Risen Bethlehem man. So their teeth that they broke by their violently gnashing them would remain as painful reminders of his psychological defeat of them though they remained physically alive. In contrast Stephen ended up enjoying living spiritually with his precious Lord in Heaven even though his body was physically maimed and bloody on earth.

But that was not the only giant victory won that day by the brave martyr Stephen. The young Israeli official Saul who was guarding the coats of the stone-throwing murderers had his own conscience so devastated by watching the needless murder of the obviously innocent Stephen that he soon changed his name to Paul. Then he became by far the most important and fearless leader of the First Century followers of the amazing Risen man from West Bank Bethlehem and even suffered stonings himself.

The Brave Turkey Man Erdogan

There is no present day group that has a more opposite approach than Stephen to defeating the wickedness of Israel than the want-to-be martyrs living in the Israeli open air prison of Gaza who are members of Hamas.

Understandably, responsible leaders in such pro-American nations as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan do not know how to handle the legitimate rage against Israeli injustice that causes Hamas to be totally rejectionist towards Israel as a distinctly racist nation. And they express their rage by launching sporadic rockets into Israel and by refusing to accept the racist nature of Israel as a nation in their midst.

While critical of the loud silence of these Arab leaders regarding the Israeli slaughter of around 650 Gazan civilians by the Israeli slaughter machine, Lebanon’s Daily Star correspondent had these quotes from Turkey’s enraged Prime Minister Erdogan. He stated: “Israel will be cursed for tears shed by mothers. Israel will be cursed for the children and the defenseless women who died under bombs.” After these quotations in the Daily Star, Mr. Habtoor adds this question: “Where is the Arab leader who can speak with such eloquence of Palestinian pain?”

Without taking sides regarding certain leaders support or lack of support of Hamas’ broadly supported rejectionism, the following is my conviction. Once a few bold Muslim leaders understand the real truth of An-Nisa 4:157 and 158, they will provide all Muslims the opportunity that the martyr Stephen had to bond with the Risen man from Bethlehem. Then much more progress will be made by them in limiting and modifying cruel Israeli injustice than any rockets, roadside bombs, and suicide missions are accomplishing now. Plus the fact that this new openness to the Risen man will open spiritual and psychological doors to the West that will cause the West to be much more appreciative of the legitimacy of the Palestinian’s struggle against U.S. supported and U.S. sponsored Israeli injustice and abuse.

Another reality that this new appreciation by Muslims of the Risen man will be accomplished is this. No longer will every last Muslim baby remain unaware for his or her entire life of a wonderful reality. Now each child will come to realize that the Messiah of the Holy Quran is not a loser who was aided by ALLAH to flee from death. In a magnificent contrast, he is a winner who was empowered by ALLAH to triumph over both the wickedness of certain Israelis as well as triumphing over death.

For there is no way that it is ALLAH’s will that Muslim children throughout the world continue to believe that the Messiah of the Quran is an inferior loser. That is just not the case. He is a risen first class winner of whom each Muslim can be eternally proud. As for the Muslim leaders who teach Muslim children to deny this truth, ALLAH will ultimately deal with them.