An ongoing conversation about America, the Middle East, and Jesus

by Carl Medearis

Much of my attitude over the years towards the Muslims I’ve met has been – let’s see how much I can teach you in the shortest amount of time possible. Only in the last few years have I been open to learning things from them. I’ve come to believe that it’s in the place of wide-eyed, open-hearted discussion that they will, in fact, learn the most from me anyway. The more open I am to them (honestly open), the more they will be open to hear what I’m saying and thus learn from me.  It’s human nature 101.

So with that in mind, here are five things that all of us can learn from a Muslim. There are many more, of course, but these are the first five that come to mind.

1. Pro-family. I remember one of the first times I spoke with an Arab Muslim friend about how we send our kids off to college in other states, many times 1000 miles or more away from our home.  We do it because we want to “teach them to grow up and be independent.”  My friend was horrified. “Why would you do such a thing to your kid,” he said. “Don’t you love them?”

The Muslim way is to keep your kids as close to home for as long of time as possible.  They go to the University closest to home. When they graduate, they get a job in the same city and they begin building their own house – on top of dad and mom’s.

Muslim families are not perfect. Not by any stretch. They are still people, men and women, with passions and selfishness that tear them apart just like here in the West. But you will never see divorce lawyers advertising their services on TV.  My kids who grew up in Lebanon, never had a single friend from a broken family – now, here in the States, many of their friends are kids of single parents.

Pro-family values are the norm in the Muslim world.  Abortion happens, but is socially taboo.  The words “same-sex marriage” are not even thought of, let alone heard.  James Dobson would be a hero there.

We can learn a lot about family values from our Muslim friends.

2.  Honoring the old and the young. These are two things, but they fit so well together and flow out of point #1 that I thought I’d put them here together.

I remember the first wedding we went to in Lebanon. Children were running around during the wedding, Giggling, laughing. Acting…well…like children.  I remember we thought “Why don’t they have any control over their kids. They’re acting up and no one seems to care.”

Kids are always in the middle of everything in the Muslim world.  In fact, in some ways, kids rule. Parents bend over backwards (to a fault) for their kids’ wishes.  Meetings are interrupted by kids.  Nothing is too important for kids. Because they are the most important thing!

Likewise, the old are not discarded.  No nursing homes.  The kids take care of their parents until they die.   When the old man speaks, everyone listens. Even if he rambles.  You don’t tell grandpa to be quiet.  They listen to their elders.

We have a lot to learn about how we include our kids and our elders in our busy lives from the Muslim world!

3.  Fear of God. It is in vogue today in the western Christian world to think of God as our buddy. There is the one time Paul calls him “Abba” or “Daddy” but there are 100’s of times the scriptures remind us to “fear God.”  (The #1 command given in the Bible).

For sure, it’s a fine line. A balancing act between fearing God and allowing him to love and adore you like an earthly dad would do with his newborn baby.  And I’m not suggesting Muslims have that balance right.

But God does consume them. They’re thoughts and actions are more often God-centered then ours in the West. There is a sense of his presence in the mundane things of the world.  An awe.  A reverence that some of us are missing.  You would never talk lightly of God – even if you’re a relatively secular Muslim. God is still God.  The culture drips with a god-ness that ours has long since lost.

Muslims fear God and we can learn from that!

4.  Muslims revere their Holy Book in a way that we don’t. I remember I was studying the Qur’an with a Shi’ite sheikh and I leaned over and ran my finger down the pages.  He didn’t like that.  “Don’t touch the Qur’an” he said.  I told him we underline our Bibles when we find a verse we like.  He was horrified. Besides defiling the Bible, he made the point that we should “like” all the verses. “How can you have favorites between the things God says,” he exclaimed.

Again, I don’t want to overstate the point here. I personally believe that many Muslims put too much emphasis on the written word (in Arabic) and not enough on the living Word.  But the honor and esteem they give the Qur’an could be adopted by many Christians I know in their attitude towards the Bible.

Having a small New Testament in your back pocket (and then sitting on it) or having your quiet time while sitting in the restroom is unthinkable to a Muslim.  To them, the Qur’an is a book with the very words of God (same as we think of the Bible). So therefore, they should treat it almost in hushed tones.  Total respect and dignity.  It is God’s Word. Don’t mess with it.

Now, truly, this can lead to a lack of willingness to dissect and wrestle with it as we do the Bible – which isn’t always healthy!  So, there are potential downsides to anything we do (since we’re human).  But we can learn something from our Muslim friends about how we think of and treat God’s word – the Bible.

5. The level ground.  When you attend a mosque for noon prayers – and if you haven’t, you should – you will see lines of men bowing with their faces to the ground in prayer. Long lines of men, in rows.  Shoes off.  Standing. Kneeling.  Bowing.  And then again. For about 15 minutes. All in unison.  The great equalizer. All facing the same direction and saying the same thing.

Now we think of this as boring, irrelevant rote memorization. Not very “real” is what I’ve often thought.  And again, I’m not defending their religion – not at all. I like the way I pray.   (Anyway, as I get older, the chances of me kneeling and standing and then repeating that motion several times, becomes less and less likely)!

But there is a power in everyone doing something together.  The rich next to the poor. The black African Muslim next to the fairer-skinned wealthy Lebanese businessman. All our equal in God’s eyes and this is a wonderful picture of that equality.  Not perfect for sure, but an attempt at it in a very tangible way every day at noon.

We can learn from Muslim to be One.  They call it the Ummah. The Community or Family.  It is also our desire to be one with each other, but I don’t know if we’re doing that any better than our Muslim friends.  But we can learn from them

This is a lot to take in. Frankly we’re not up for learning much from other cultures or religions.  It can even offend us to think about this.  But there’s just no way we can live in this interconnected world thinking we’re the only ones who have everything right.

Now….we do know Who has it all right.  A person, not a religion.  Jesus, not our culture or any of our ways, has it completely right.  And we hope to reflect him as much as possible. But let’s not mistake him for America or for what we’ve called Christianity.  They are not the same!  We love and follow Jesus, the Christ, the King. May he Reign and may we learn!