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I promised to report back to you about Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo's lecture on Islam last Friday and Saturday. As I looked around the crowd and listened to their questions I got one impression: What these people heard about Islam really scared them. To keep things short, I will break up what Dr. Sookhdeo said into a few emails. First let me give you Dr. Sookhdeo's background. He was born to Muslim parents in Guyana in 1947. In 1964 while studying architecture in England he met Jesus and was born again. Dr. Sookhdeo graduated from London Bible College and pastored a church in East London for 20 years. In the 1980s he founded the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, which grew into the Barnabas Fund (www.barnabasfund.org) in 1993. Barnabas Fund exists to focus attention on and provide aid to Christians persecuted by Muslims. Dr. Sookhdeo is now an Anglican Canon, a position that has allowed him to attempt to help Parliament withstand the onslaught of Islam in Britain. Barnabas Fund maintains offices in several countries, including an office here in D.C. Dr. Sookhdeo is one of the foremost Western authorities on Islam. His knowledge of Islamic history, culture, theology, and law is encyclopedic, as is his knowledge of the interactions of Christianity and Islam through the centuries. All this one can learn from books, but Dr. Sookhdeo has a grasp of current conditions and political and religious trends in countries with significant Muslim populations that can only come from first-hand experience and having been raised a Muslim. That'll do it for this email but let me leave you with something Dr. Sookhdeo said that you have not heard on the news: If coalition forces - our troops - don't begin to protect Christians in Iraq we may see the death of Christianity there in just a few years. Before the first Gulf War, there were 1,500,000 Christians in Iraq. Today there are 600,000. The most intense persecution has come since the invasion in 2003. Christians in Iraq are now forced to pay the Jizya to support the fundamentalist insurgence. Armed men come to their homes, demand tribute money, and kill those who don't pay. This practice is based on 9:29 in Koran, the same verse we fought the Barbary Pirate War over. More in the next mail. |
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