Thousands and Thousands of Muslim Lighthouses Who Would Have Guessed It? Most certainly ALLAH is full of surprises. Who would have thought He would empower the very old body of the Priest Zechariah to enable his also old and even barren wife Elizabeth to bear a robust baby? And that baby from that elderly man and his elderly wife would become the courageous Prophet Yahya to Islam, and the Prophet John the Baptist to Christianity. Thus, this miracle baby from this very elderly man and woman grew up to become a mighty Prophet of ALLAH who struck terror into the heart of the mighty Roman Empire's puppet king, King Herod. Who would have guessed that a young virgin named Maryam to Islam and Mary to Christianity, would be empowered by ALLAH to bear a baby who would grow into a man whom the Holy Quran would eleven times call "The Messiah"? Who would have guessed that that Messiah would have humiliated the evil Israeli religious apparatus, the Sanhedrin, by being raised alive by ALLAH from death after that evil apparatus had wickedly manipulated the evil Roman Empire's occupying force to unjustly execute him? And who would have thought that ALLAH would have enabled one sincere orphan boy named Muhammed, to become wounded in his heart as an adult so that he would deeply grieve and be in deep pain over how his fellow desert people had abandoned the One True ALLAH and had chosen to worship families of gods? And who would have thought that the message of that one former orphan boy, that "ALLAH is ONE", would result that in the then far off twenty first century a vast net work of thousands and thousands of mosques throughout the entire world would continue to faithfully proclaim: "ALLAH IS ONE!". Thousands of 21st Century Lighthouses And who would have ever guessed the totally unexpected phenomenon that ALLAH is right at this very moment causing to occur? Right now, at the very end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, an amazing process from ALLAH has begun that no Christians and very few Muslims would have ever guessed that this would soon occur. Yet many members of both groups should have seen this amazing phenomenon coming, because from the five vivid examples I have just listed of the five surprises. Therefore, all serious Muslims and Christians should expect the unexpected from our One ALLAH. So today in the last month of the Christian calendar of 2008, an amazing process from ALLAH has begun, that in American street language will "blow the minds" of a vast majority of the world's Christians. Blood Under the Rug Thousands and thousands of mosques will begin setting the record straight. They will now begin proclaiming that the Holy Quran, when its message is understood correctly, does indeed boldly declare that the evil Jewish apparatus at the time of the Messiah was indeed guilty of his horrible murder. So that injustice does not continue to triumph, the Israeli's definite guilt for that unjust murder must no longer be swept under the rug by an inappropriate interpretation of one of the thousands of verses in the Quran. Rather, that extremely damaging inappropriate interpretation will now be exposed and corrected in every last mosque. It must be recognized what that incorrect interpretation has become. It is now a terrible, inexcusable cover-up for a very wicked murder of ALLAH's one and only Messiah by certain wicked leaders who were enraged at both ALLAH and at His compassionate Messiah. Yes, the Jews did evilly shed God's Messiah's blood. And yes, up until this moment, the Ummah, the worldwide, usually honest and honorable Islamic community, has deceived itself into the horrible mistake of sweeping every drop of that innocent blood under a cover-up rug. And the two major reasons for making that mistake may have been noble. Nevertheless, the good intention of those reasons does not make their error any less wrong or any less damaging to the long range welfare of the worldwide Ummah. Two Tragic Mistakes The first mistake is Muslim leaders thinking that GOD is too weak to defend the honor of His Messiah so that Muslims must defend the Messiah's honor rather than ALLAH defending that honor. Yes, somehow Muslim leader's have gotten it into their minds that ALLAH would never allow persons as wicked as the Jews were, to kill someone as righteous and as good as His Messiah. They wrongly conclude that if such a miscarriage of justice would have occurred that would have been a humiliation for ALLAH and thus an irreparable catastrophe. But the following reality is what they fail to factor into their fallacious, incorrect reasoning. If at what at first appears to be a catastrophe and a humiliation turns out not to be a catastrophe and a humiliation, but instead is a great triumphant victory and a great honor, then it is as if no catastrophe or dishonor occurred. Therefore, when ALLAH's Wisdom and Might raised His Messiah up alive, that great victory demonstrates that no actual catastrophe truly occurred. Rather, it was the initial murderers who were ultimately humiliated rather than either God or His Risen Messiah being humiliated. The second serious, far reaching mistake that Muslim leaders make is closely related to the first mistake just discussed. This is their mistake of putting all of their concentration on what one verse appears to teach rather than deeply thinking about what that one profound verse is intended to teach. Then they ignore or explain away what other verses in the Quran do teach. And they persist in this error so that they can stick with what they have made up their minds that the first verse teaches without truly pondering its deeper magnificent teaching. Thus, on the basis that An-Nisa first appears to dogmatically declare that the Messiah was definitely not killed, they get stuck in feeling that they must not understand this verse figuratively rather than word for word literally. And this unnecessary literal interpretation forces them to ignore or twist the teaching of Ali'Imran 3:55, An-Nisa 4:158, Maryam 19:33-34, Yunus 10:94 and the several verses that emphatically teach that the Quran confirms what the earlier Scriptures teach. And significantly those earlier Scriptures, which the Holy Quran teaches that Muslims are supposed to obey, overwhelmingly declare that ALLAH allowed His Messiah to temporarily die so that he could totally defeat death while also defeating the evil of the Israeli apparatus. And that is definitely not a catastrophe but a glorious triumph by ALLAH over wickedness when He raised His Messiah up alive, defeating physical death while simultaneously defeating the deadly evil of the Jewish leadership. Now Comes the 21st Century Excitement Once ALLAH empowers Muslim leaders to admit that there is a more correct way to understand this combination of verses which acknowledge that ALLAH brought about a victorious resurrection than the misleading way they have been previously explained, a glorious new sunrise will burst upon all Muslims. Yes, a tremendously exciting door will swing wide open for all of Islam. Sadly, that door remains shut until at least a few influential Muslim leaders choose to really be used by ALLAH instead of remaining bogged down in the rut of counter-productive, negative, badly anachronistic thinking. The execution was not about the Messiah's defeat. Instead the resurrection after the execution was about the glorious victory ALLAH gave to him for the benefit of all of humanity. That is, when these leaders shake loose from the chains of the cobwebs of doubt that have been woven around their minds, here is the excitement which will occur. The thousands and thousands of mosques that the Prophet Muhammed worked so tirelessly to lay the groundwork for, will each become dynamic, life protecting and life-changing lighthouses. These amazing lighthouse-mosques will unanimously be sending out five brilliant beacons of Truth, Life, Compassion, Love, and Justice. And these bright beacons involve ALLAH's living Messiah which He raised up alive. (An-Nisa 4:158) These life-impacting beacons emanating from the mosques of Truth, Life, Compassion, Love, and Justice will without a doubt have a vibrant, wholesome influence on the entire world. But it is vital to keep in perspective ALLAH's historical continuity. That without that one significant descendent of Abraham, the loved and highly respected Prophet Muhammed, laying the vital foundation for these multitudes of beacons of light - mosques, these virtual lighthouses would not be available today to be used by ALLAH in this mighty and necessary way. Ironically, this exceptionally wholesome and life-giving impact will be in vivid contrast to the life-taking away phenomenon which occurs when much of the current Jewish and Christian world chooses to be bogged down worshipping their new idol of choice. That horrible idol is the technological advances of modern weaponry so that they are able to bomb and kill with greater effectiveness and efficiency. Please forgive me for being so candid, harsh, blunt and violent about the choice that I think you will need to make. So please deeply consider the terrifying contrast in the choices. And I ask you to not allow your conditioned and acquired comfort with horrible human bloodshed to influence your choice. Which of these two contrasting options do you think will have ALLAH's blessing? Dynamic, life giving beacons of light openly expressing ALLAH and His Risen Messiah's emphasis on Justice, Love, Compassion, Truth and Life emanating from lighthouse-mosques? Or, will He bless tons and tons and tons of sophisticated but bloody killer weaponry which is blatantly, immorally and obscenely supported by much of Christianity and Judaism? Could this later option possibly be the option that the Merciful would want you to choose to dominate His world? So oh Muslims, this one insignificant servant of the One pleads with you to go for the five life-enhancing beacons from the lighthouse option. This is in contrast to the persistent appeal from the West to embrace the option of hiding behind the deceptive euphemism of security from rogue states and terrorism by purchasing from the West vast amounts of expensive, advanced and bloody weaponry. For the truth is that it is ALLAH with His Love, Compassion, Life, Truth and Justice who will ultimately defeat terrorism and injustice whether it be terrorism from small groups like Al-Qaeda, or terrorism from a large and mighty Military-Industrial Establishment such as drives the U.S. economy. May ALLAH and His Risen Messiah be with you and Islam as you choose one of these two contrasting options. Overly Simplistic There will be many who will be exceptionally critical of the apparent over simplicity of my audacity to boil exceedingly complex phenomena down to two extremely contrasting choices without addressing any nuances. They will somewhat correctly say that our pluralistic world with its broad variety of religious and political perspectives is much too complicated to reduce to a choice between a worldwide network of mosques being dynamic lighthouses rigorously proclaiming the overarching reality that ALLAH/GOD and His values must dominate in our world. So for me to make killer/bloody weapons as the opposite choice from Mosques, they see as ridiculous. They will say that this concept is as unhealthy, unhelpful and immature as the ridiculous George W. Bush over simplistic dichotomy of GOOD verses EVIL with everyone else who was unwilling to climb aboard the U.S. "GOOD" bandwagon, being labelled as EVIL. But before you find it too easy to totally dismiss to irrelevance the two vastly contrasting choices I have presented please keep the following four unpleasant realities in your focus. When you do, I don't believe you will find a radical choice to side with thousands and thousands of mosques proclaiming that GOD is near and that His Messiah will be our Judge on Judgment Day and that we are ultimately accountable to our God who is nearer to us than our jugular vein, in vivid contrast to our being accountable to man's latest theories and to his latest institutions, and to his latest weapons, to be so unreasonable or unrealistic. Four Unpleasant De facto Realities Despite stated good intentions, man's international institutions and multilateral agreements have a negative tendency to be designed to benefit the interests of the more powerful nations rather than the weaker nations which need assistance the most. Whether we like it or not, the U.S. is dominated by a powerful, hungry, pervasive and persuasive military-industrial complex. Making matters even worse is the fact this powerful complex which always faces pressing needs to use and sell its weapons, employs thousands of former high ranking military personnel as either lobbyists for the U.S. weapons/war industry or as weapons' salesmen to other nations. Whether or not an amazing man of apparent integrity, breadth, wisdom and depth such as Barack Obama is now our president for probably eight years, tragically it is deeply ingrained in the American mentality that Might Makes Right and war is how you solve problems even if that is not Barack Obama's mentality. But the evil military industrial complex will put enormous pressure on him to choose war. It is possibly a regrettable reality, that though she would not want to admit it, the new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, may employ a greater reliance on American military power in her diplomacy than will be helpful for other nations. As a point of fact, when she was being interviewed by Newsweek magazine when she was competing for the Democratic nomination for U.S. President, she gave a very strange but candid answer when asked a pointed question about her approach to international diplomacy if she were elected U.S. President. Her chilling reply was that the most important tool in her foreign policy toolbox would be Coercive Diplomacy. So now as Secretary of State tasked with improving U.S. relations with other nations, the cruel question is, has negative, counter-productive, coercive diplomacy now been cleansed from her mentality? Still, there is some validity to the criticism of the sharp dichotomy I have presented. Yet I only think the criticism has validity if critics lack an adequate appreciation of how far our world leaders have gone in only giving lip service to the important reality that GOD is always present with us and that he holds leaders accountable for immoral, unjust choices they make regarding the welfare of other nations. Instead of them possessing a pragmatic appreciation of a Living God who is constantly observing them, they consistently conduct their business as if He is only a vague, abstract GOD or that He does not even exist. Or, if they do acknowledge that He does exist, they sub-consciously think that He is not concerned about leaders' decisions or about punishing unjust activity or about unnecessary bloodshed. Therefore they de facto treat Him as being irrelevant. But George W. Bush has done even worse than treating GOD as irrelevant. Tragically, he has been a vivid case study of a powerful leader who appears to be the personification of a living hypocrite. He publicly proclaims to believe in the God of the Bible and His Risen Messiah. But then he stridently and arrogantly violates virtually every standard of civilized morality and every moral value that the God of the Bible and the GOD of the Quran stand for. And whereas the Prophet Ezekiel warned: “If you do not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you,” he, his Vice President and his former Secretary of Defense seemed to delight in foreign bloodshed. When and how the U.S. will suffer Ezekiel's promised consequences of bloodshed pursuing us is yet to be determined. If the U.S., under an enlightened and reflective Barack Obama can help the U.S. recover enough from the chaotic damage done both to the U.S. and to other nations by the human wrecking ball, and lover of bloodshed and the pathologically nationalist, George W. Bush, there will undoubtedly be renewed hope for constructive change for both the U.S. and the world under eight short years of dynamic Obama leadership. But there will be serious limitations placed on the good that will be accomplished by the leadership of this apparently gifted man, both by the nature of the U.S. political system and the complicated pluralism of the existing world order. And these factors will together bring serious and realistic constraints to what his leadership can accomplish. These constraining factors will also do much to limit world leaders from being more aware of how closely the Living GOD, who is not abstract, is observing their actions and policies. Regarding how leaders will actually make decisions, the past seems to indicate that the majority of leaders will continue to ignore GOD's values and in practice grind His humanitarian values to dust under their feet and will tolerate corruption. And if this status quo of ignoring or exploiting the needs of the world's more poverty stricken continues, then our world will descend into much more chaos especially brought about by fierce competition for limited resources and by the increased number of homicidal terrorists that injustice and social upheaval inevitably bring. But as strange as it may seem, in the pluralistic U.S., the possibility that our nation has policies which reject GOD's values which implicitly or explicitly breeds or facilitates terrorism, cannot be openly acknowledged or even openly discussed. Or, how more accountability to the Values of the Living God will lead to more justice and less injustice also cannot be openly discussed. This is because these kind of considerations are thought to be unsophisticated and religiously radical and are divorced from Kissinger's “real politic.” Ironically, these are germane issues which are never, no never, openly considered in the U.S. in more than an abstract way. In fact, I have listened to and watched many hundreds of hours of cable and major network news and have never once heard the following obvious phenomenon admitted and openly acknowledged as a causal factor of terrorism. It is an unwritten but strictly enforced code of ethics in the U.S. that U.S. leaders never, no never acknowledge that our foreign policy policies or activities are complicit in creating the climate which contributes to some nations becoming increasingly lawless so that they churn out young people, as noted Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid puts it, “who are filled with homicidal aspirations.” Though this horrible threat to the world has radically multiplied while President Bush has been in office with his bloody unjust policies, the U.S. is pretending to be a 21st Century Roman Empire, Governor Pilate. We symbolically wash our hands and blame everyone else for the shedding of so much blood and will admit to no responsibility for the blood baths that are occurring as major threats to the stability of societies. It is everyone else's fault. But we claim that the U.S. obsessed with blood foreign policy does not cause more bloodshed. So we continue in our denial that our foreign policy and our torture have no influence on causing young men and even women to dedicate their lives to bloody terrorism. So the harsh reality is this. It is not only the U.S. and the U.K. leaders who continue living in a self woven cocoon that is all too often devoid of reality. And the following is one exceptionally significant reality which virtually all world leaders ignore. Each and every foreign policy decision they will make, whether in the context of their own nation or in concert with other nations, involves the Living, Moral, Just God looking over their shoulders. Yes, He is with certainty evaluating the morality of each decision and is figuratively taking notes on how unjust decisions will affect these leaders eternal futures on Judgment Day. Regrettably, the main decision makers of our world are very preoccupied with maintaining an aura of sophistication while they force themselves to act as if a truly Just and caring God does not exist. Or, if He does exist, He is quite abstract and He ignores the moral nature of leaders' decisions. Therefore, when leaders make decisions regarding a new international order such as in the words of the brilliant Indian-American social scientist, Fareed Zakaria, “competition for resources like oil; food; commodities and water; climate change; continuing terrorist threats; demographic shifts” and nuclear threats, GOD is watching. He is evaluating and He is most definitely taking notes. But in a beautiful contrast to the contrived and ultimately destructive and dysfunctional sophistication of the world leaders, is the extreme beauty, simplicity and practicality of every man and woman being able to attend the GOD fearing and GOD acknowledging Lighthouse-Mosques where there exists an atmosphere where persons sincerely desire to please and obey God and are not concerned about self importance or in appearing to be functioning above the supposedly immature level of making their decisions while keeping in mind their accountability to the God who is very much alive and who demands accountability. So when that network of thriving, vibrant mosques exists where the Risen Messiah is welcome, there will be at least some positive impact on the leaders' choices. This will occur because the leaders will fear the opinions and pressures from the multitudes of truly GOD/ALLAH serving persons in thousands of Lighthouse-Mosques even if these leaders themselves will refuse to personally serve GOD. But with all due respect to how the current thousands upon thousands of current mosques function, at present they are not a sufficient counter weight to the all too often godless ways in which world leaders now operate. And until these mosques with explicit deliberateness unlock their chained doors so that ALLAH's now living, Risen Messiah can be enthusiastically welcomed, there is no way that these mosques can achieve the dynamism they must have in order to make a realistic difference in our vulnerable and broken world. But GOD is looking for Muslims to take the lead because current Christians are far too timid, fragmented and distracted. They9 also have an extremely limited vision for the pressing needs of the entire world. These obvious limitations of the especially Western Christians exist while the vast majority of Jews are excluders of ALLAH's own Risen Messiah and are preoccupied with nation building. Perhaps later, but at this crucial time they are not in a position to give any quality priority to the healing of other nations that so many non-Jews are in desperate need of. So please go for it, Oh Muslims with your expansive network of Lighthouse-Mosques where ALLAH's Risen Messiah will soon be welcome. And remember that it is the ALMIGHTY and His Risen Messiah who will be with you and who will lead you as well as bless you. back to "Late 2007 - 2009" page __________________________________________________________ _________________________________________ __________________________ _____________