Frater: Thank you for sending this article along. Christianity Today,
when its origins and agenda are understood and allowed for, can be a
very useful resource but not everything it says should be taken as
Gospel. It is significant that 'CT' seems concerned only with
'evangelicals'. Catholics (of whatever branch) are rarely on their radar
for very long.This is because ther majority of their core constituency
are only 1 or perhaps 2 generations removed from 'down home'
Fundamentalistic Dispensationalist types who regard the historic Church
(at least in the abstract) as little more than the 'red whore of
Babylon' etc. The Anglican Church has functioned in the Levant through
the Episcopal Church of the Middle East (Jerusalem) and the Anglican
Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf.Many of the Anglican congregations meet
in chapels in the British Embassy compounds or else in their own Church
buildings in such places as Qatar or Bahrain. The RC Vicariate of Kuwait
publishes a weekly newsletter and they have their own parishes (3 I
think) in Kuwait City and environs. Let us remember that there are
significant 1st century Christian churches in Egypt, Iraq and Syria
(There are over 17 million Christians of the historic Church in the
area). All of this will be jeopardised if Bush finally goes off the
rails and attacks Iraq. We need to keep the issue of human rights in the
region (not just Saudi Arabia) alive but in a quiet and indirect way.
The Arabic peoples are a proud people and the surest way to NOT achieve
a result is to insult them. When I was a parish priest in California I
was good friends with a Muslim who ran a package store. He supplied the
wine for Mass gratis and we had good discussions. His son (Mohammad)
came to our parish Chistmas party. We also need to do all we can to end
the agony of the Palestinian people and put the pressure on Bush et.al.
(as individuals not necessarily as a jurisdiction in every case) to
demand that Tel Aviv obey the UNO regulations relevant to that
situation. We demand Iraq 'obey' but apparently only Baghdad must
conform. This hypocrisy rankles in the Arab world and you may be sure
they know all about it. Saudi Wahhabism is about the same as Jerry
Falwell or Pat (700 Club)Robertson is to the historic Church. We must
not become what we claim to deplore. Thanks again for sharing this
article. I also commend Christian Century as a magazine that often has
something worthy to say about the Middle East. Blessings on the Feast of
the Presentation of the BVM. GDVW+
>
> I hesitated to send along article because of its length.  While cleaning
> out  old computer files, it surfaced and I reread it.
>
> Its worth at least a quick skim for insight it provides into the
> Byzantine  politics of Saudi Arabia.
>
> Charles
>
> --------------------------------
> How to Confront a Theocracy
> The most effective way to address the human rights disaster in Saudi
> Arabia  may be to let Muhammad do the talking.
> By Jeff M. Sellers | posted 07/03/2002
>
>
> I was sent to these Arabs as a stranger, unable to think their thoughts
> or  subscribe to their beliefs, but charged by duty to lead them forward
> and to  develop to the highest any movement of theirs profitable to
> England in her  war. If I could not assume their character, I could at
> least conceal my own,  and pass among them without evident friction,
> neither a discord nor a critic  but an unnoticed influence.
> —T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1926
>
> Every year Saudi Arabia lands on or near the top of lists of violators
> of  religious freedom, and every year the royal family that rules the
> kingdom  could not care less. The United States has formed an alliance
> with this  intransigent opponent of human rights for reasons that
> parallel the charge  given to Lawrence of Arabia. Leading Saudi Arabia
> forward into unfathomable  wealth by developing its oil industry, the
> United States has found the  partnership profitable for both economic
> and geopolitical interests.
>
> U.S. oil companies arrived in Saudi Arabia a generation after Lawrence
> helped lead Arabs in their revolt against World War I–era Turks. Like
> the  Christians who often work for these and other companies, Lawrence
> had no  illusions about the limits of his ability to assume Arab
> character. But he  did defer to his host culture, accepting its ways as
> a point of departure,  and his example in war may yet have something to
> teach us about spiritual  battles for human dignity.
>
> Beheadings Every Friday
> In 1992, December 25 fell on a Friday, the Muslim day of rest, when
> pastor  Oswaldo "Wally" Magdangal was to be hanged in the Saudi capital
> of Riyadh  for blaspheming Islam. Shari'ah law requires beheading for
> "apostates"—those  who renounce Islam—as well as for murderers, and no
> Friday passes without at  least one such execution in the public square
> following the noon prayers,  rights organizations say. Hangings are
> reserved for "blasphemers" like  Magdangal. Foreigners of non-Islamic
> faiths can worship legally in private  in Saudi Arabia, but the
> 42-year-old Filipino pastor was arrested after his  growing house church
> had become too noticeable. On December 23, Magdangal  wrote out his last
> will and testament for his wife and young daughter.
>
> Religious police had tortured every part of his body in trying to force
> him  to renounce his faith in Christ. Embracing Islam would have won his
>  immediate release. Initially the religious police, or muttawa'in—a
> vigilante  force with a hierarchy and membership extending into
> government and other  sectors—beat him throughout 210 minutes of mocking
> interrogation. They  handed him a pencil and paper and demanded names of
> other Christians he  knew. He refused.
>
> "Eventually I was so weak, they placed the pad of paper in my lap, and
> they  forced the pencil into my hand," Magdangal told CT. "I was
> weeping, and I  said, 'Lord, you've got to help me here,' and I began to
> write the names of  Billy Graham, Charles Spurgeon, and others. After a
> few days, they were so  mad, because they'd been all over Saudi Arabia
> looking for those people."
>
> During interrogations—which included flogging of his back, his palms,
> and  the soles of his feet—the muttawa'in did not state charges against
> him. Only  when he answered that he agreed with an article predicting
> the ultimate fall  of Islam in Christ for the Nations magazine (which
> the muttawa'in found in  his home) was the basis for the eventual
> blasphemy charge established.
>
> Magdangal was not allowed to speak during his high court trial, which
> Muslim  clerics held in secret.
>
> "I was shaking with pain; I was trembling with fear," Magdangal says. "I
>  kept asking them to get my wife, but that led them to tell me in strong
>  words to stand silent—not to say a word or I would suffer the
> consequence of  every word I spoke. That's when I just broke down, and I
> just wept and  wept."
>
> By then the lower court had read some charges—preaching a message
> different  from the Qur'an, "building" a church—but only hinted at the
> blasphemy  charge. Magdangal would learn of the blasphemy verdict before
> he knew the  charge itself: a muttawa'in officer interrogating him, Lt.
> Bader Alyaya,  said his case had become "very serious" and that he was
> going to be hanged.
>
> "He motioned around his neck like a noose, and then he pulled the noose
> above his head in a motion with his hand," he recalls. "I knew that
> people  guilty of blasphemy are hanged to death for three days, to send
> a strong  warning to the Muslims not to turn to another religion, and
> for Christians  to not try to reach the Muslims."
>
> Magdangal describes a sensation of fire or lightning striking him in the
>  chest. "It felt like there was something within me that was getting
> ready to  explode, and as I opened my mouth, the words came out: 'I
> shall not die but  live and declare the works of my Lord, for no weapon
> formed against me shall  prosper, for greater is he who is in me than he
> who is in the world,' "  Magdangal says. "That's all I said. And then I
> bent over, and I wept, and I  wept, and I wept."
>
> Normally Saudi authorities do not tell the condemned of their sentence
> until  the day of their execution, so as to forestall appeals and
> protests,  Magdangal says. Sometimes the authorities go the extra step
> of leading  prisoners to believe they are being released just before
> executing them.
>
> Magdangal knew only that the Philippine embassy had filed protests of
> his  detention, which went unheeded, though soon Amnesty International
> also was  monitoring his case. As executive secretary to the Saudi
> director of Defense  and Civil Aviation, Magdangal had close friends
> high in the Saudi  government, including members of the royal family—and
> even in the  muttawa'in—who only gradually had become aware of his
> arrest. Muttawa'in  officers warned each of Magdangal's high-level
> friends to stop advocating  for him.
>
> The threats worked. But a general secretly told Magdangal's wife to
> inform  Fidel Ramos, then-president of the Philippines, that the case
> had become  "very serious."
>
> "The reality is that in Saudi Arabia the majority of the people, even
> those  in the government, are not aware that the Muslim clerics are
> persecuting  Christians," Magdangal says. "Even among the Muslim
> clerics, not all of them  are aware that some of their colleagues are
> persecuting Christians."
>
> Fresh off victory from Saudi soil in the Gulf War, the U.S. Congress and
> the  White House joined with human-rights organizations to appeal for
> Magdangal's  life—unbeknownst to him. By December 23 he had settled in
> his heart that he  was going to be executed.
>
> "I was heavily burdened for my wife and my daughter," he says. "I
> pictured  myself hanging between heaven and earth, and I said to the
> Lord, 'I would  ask you to order the Devil himself to deliver my spirit
> to the gates of  heaven. And when I take my first step inside the gates,
> before you separate  me from the evil, give me the privilege to strike
> the Devil right in his  face.' "
>
> Magdangal then prayed that if he were spared, he would be a voice for
> the  persecuted. Shortly before midnight, the prison commander arrived
> with  orders to deport Magdangal. "Even at that point, from the prison
> to the  airport, I was very terrified because the two officers with me
> were  interrupted on their radio by Muslim clerics who were yelling,
> fighting my  release, and telling them to divert the car and bring it
> somewhere else to  kill me," he says.
>
> Now president of Christians in Crisis, an advocacy group based in
> Sacramento, California, Magdangal later learned from a friend high in
> the  muttawa'in that military advisers were vying with clerics for the
> ear of  King Fahd bin Abdul al-Aziz Al Saud—whose mandate in Saudi
> Arabia, the  clerics reminded him, was to uphold Shari'ah.
>
> "The war was still very fresh, and Saddam Hussein was still a major
> threat,"  Magdangal recalls. "The military advisers were saying, in
> essence, 'King, we  are under such pressure from the friendly
> nations—what is one person  compared to what we are facing from Saddam
> Hussein, and all the benefits  that might be diminished as a result of
> executing this person?' "
>
> King Fahd ordered Magdangal to be expelled within 24 hours. According to
>  Magdangal's muttawa'in contact, 500 Muslim clerics resigned their state
>  posts in protest.
>
> September 11
> Magdangal believes the advent of U.S. sorties against Iraq in the Gulf
> War  triggered a wavelet of Saudi persecution of Christians that led to
> his  arrest. Islamic leaders, fearing closer ties with the United States
> would  tighten the rein on them, decided to attack Christians while they
> could.  They would not arrest him until months later, but muttawa'in
> raided  Magdangal's house hours before U.S. bombing began.
>
> A decade later, the U.S.-Saudi relationship is much more contentious as
> America pressures its key regional ally, largely in vain, for
> cooperation in  the "war on terrorism"—and this as the two countries
> hold opposite  allegiances in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict raging in
> the foreground of  the Saudi conscience. It is virtually impossible to
> know what effect the  convoluted and secretive U.S.-Saudi relationship
> might have on persecution  levels in Saudi Arabia, but kingdom observers
> see signs that the royal  family is steadily corralling the religious
> police.
>
> Charles W. Freeman Jr., president of the Washington-based Middle East
> Policy  Council, was U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf
> War. He  believes the uprightness of Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abd
> al-Aziz Al Saud,  half-brother of the stroke-impaired King Fahd and to
> some extent the de  facto ruler, will favorably influence the
> muttawa'in.
>
> "Particularly under Crown Prince Abdullah, the muttawa'in are very much
> subdued and on the defensive," Freeman says. "And one of the reasons
> he's  able to rein in some of the more fanatical elements of the Saudi
> populace is  that he himself has a well-justified reputation for being a
> pious and godly  man."
>
> The government recently struck a blow to the clerics following a March
> 11  fire at a girls' public intermediate school in Mecca. As 835
> students and 55  women teachers fled the building, several members of
> the muttawa'in beat  them back because they were not wearing their long
> black cloaks and head  coverings. They also beat civil defense workers
> trying to rescue the girls.
>
> This interference reportedly caused some of the 14 casualties. The
> government not only fired the head of the General Presidency for Girls'
> Education—a powerful institution controlled by the clerics—but also
> abolished it in function. The regime folded it into the Ministry of
> Education, according to Virginia Sherry, associate director of the
> Middle  East Division of Human Rights Watch.
>
> "This is an incredibly radical move, and this full-scale critique in the
>  Saudi press of the religious police is a new development," Sherry told
> CT.  "There's been no indication that the government is going to
> publicly rebuke  the religious police, but I was completely surprised
> that heads rolled and  that with one pen stroke the entire agency was
> abolished."
>
> In addition, since September 11 the Saudi government has instructed
> clerics  to preach a more tolerant version of Islam, Sherry notes.
> "There's  speculation as to whether or not that's posturing for a
> Western audience,  but it's also clearly intended to rein in the
> clerics," she says.
>
> Freeman, who has also been assistant secretary of defense for
> international  security affairs, says Abdullah is trying to find ways to
> open the kingdom  and make it more tolerant, even in the area of
> religion.
>
> "Certainly the discovery that Osama bin Laden was able to recruit Saudis
> to  his cause—his cause being to overthrow the Saudi monarchy, with the
> attack  on the United States being merely a means to that end—actually
> set off quite  a bit of soul-searching in the kingdom," Freeman says.
>
> A slight easing of religious intolerance could emerge from such
> reflection,  both Freeman and Sherry say. Freeman notes that Abdullah
> has considered  allowing Christian organizations with medical programs
> to help attend to the  thousands of wounded Palestinians who are treated
> in Saudi Arabia. And he  calls a speech that Abdullah gave to the Gulf
> Cooperation Council last  December "very remarkable, because it reflects
> a spirit of soul-searching  and self-criticism that is not too often
> seen among leaders anywhere, much  less in the Arab world."
>
> Whether such setbacks for the muttawa'in make them more dangerous or
> less to  underground churches in Saudi Arabia is a murky matter.
> Traditionally, such  cornering of the religious animal can cause the
> muttawa'in to strike with  more ferocity.
>
> "The religious authorities and their police force are putting constant
> pressure on the civil authorities to be more Islamic—including to act
> stronger against Christian activity," says one rights advocate based in
> the  United Kingdom. "At the moment, and as a result of September 11,
> the  government is more vulnerable to pressure from the religious
> elements."
>
> 'morally Depraved' Critics
> The clerics' power—including the leverage to topple the
> government—cannot be  discounted. In the royal family's precarious
> position between the forces of  modernity and traditional clerics, Saudi
> rulers generally have tried to  appease religious dissidents rather than
> clamp down too severely, says  Dudley Woodberry, a pastor in Riyadh in
> 1976–79 and dean emeritus and  professor of Islamic Studies at Fuller
> Theological Seminary.
>
> Indeed, The New Yorker reported in its October 22, 2001, edition that
> electronic intercepts of conversations in the royal family show the
> regime  is so insecure that it has funneled hundreds of millions of
> dollars in  "protection money" to fundamentalist groups that would
> otherwise overthrow  it. Some of the Saudi funds went to Osama bin
> Laden's Al Qaeda group,  according to the report.
>
> "The dilemma one faces," Ambassador Freeman told CT, "is that those who
> are  most opposed to the royal family are either themselves murderers,
> that is,  morally depraved people, or they resemble the followers of the
> late  Ayatollah Khomeini in their vision of a future that is even less
> tolerant  than the prevailing one. That is, the dissidents who are
> sitting in London  are not arguing for a more open and tolerant society;
> they're arguing the  opposite, as Khomeini turned out to do for Iran."
>
> With restive, unemployed youth stuck in a cracked economy increasingly
> filling their ranks, Saudi extremist groups could lash out at the
> 870,000  Christians among the country's 7 million foreign workers
> (nearly a third of  the country's population). If the response of a
> Saudi underground church to  queries by Christianity Today is any
> indication, fear still weighs heavily  in the atmosphere—all members
> felt answering questions could jeopardize  their safety. One Western man
> daring to reply anyway said that since 1998,  the Christian community
> has been through several periods of arrest,  detention, and deportation
> of leaders.
>
> "Most of those began with Christians being 'too visible,' " he told CT.
> "These have been almost entirely Asians, and they pay the greatest price
> in  terms of lost leadership, loss of income, and harassment from
> employers and  religious authorities. Quite honestly, I do not want to
> answer your  questions. Am I being overly cautious or gun-shy? I don't
> know."
>
> Concerned that descriptions of his life in Saudi Arabia would provoke a
> crackdown, the Westerner nevertheless said he hoped this article would
> "inform Christians about the intolerant, close-minded attitude of Saudi
> Arabia and much of the Muslim world. Christians need to know this."
>
> The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom knew this well,
> recommending—unsuccessfully, given obvious diplomatic sensitivities—that
> the  State Department designate Saudi Arabia as one of nine "countries
> of  particular concern." The commission dismissed the Saudi claim that
> non-Muslims are permitted private worship. The Saudi definition of
> "private  worship" is vague, and underground worshipers have been
> "arrested,  imprisoned, deported and harassed by the authorities,"
> according to the  commission.
>
> Appealing to Muslim Roots
> Saudi Arabia tops the lists of religious freedom violators for the same
> reason its rulers don't care about such lists: In a theocracy entrusted
> with  preserving a narrow Islamic "purity" and the shrines in Mecca and
> Medina,  denial of religious freedom is integral to the country's
> cultural identity.  As Crown Prince Abdullah has said, the two holy
> shrines are the "primary  restrictions" on change. "Our faith and our
> culture are what drive the  country," he once said. Somehow, though,
> other Islamic countries have  cultures far more tolerant than Saudi
> Arabia's.
>
> Saudi Arabia is a charter member of the United Nations, and yet it
> brazenly  disregards the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
> which asserts the  right to profess, propagate, and change faith. But
> U.N. ideals may not be  the best starting point for transforming a
> medieval theocracy.
>
> Saudi Arabia was founded on the Muslim equivalent of the
> Reformation—Wahhabism, which in the 1700s rejected the religious
> accretions  of previous centuries to return to the authority of the
> Qur'an. Shari'ah is  its constitution. Whereas the Christian Reformation
> eventually encouraged  the separation of church and state, Saudi Arabia
> grew out of an alliance in  1744 between the political emir, Muhammad
> ibn Saud, and the Islamic  reformer, Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab.
>
> With religion and the state thus wedded, the U.N. Universal Declaration
> of  Human Rights carries about as much weight in Saudi Arabia as a
> treatise on  secular humanism would for conservative televangelists,
> Middle East  observers say. Rather than start with institutions and
> documents that are  Western in essence, better to address Saudis on
> their own terms—Islam's  historical writings. Letters attributed to
> Muhammad in the Tabaqat of  9th-century historian Ibn Sa'd, for example,
> allowed Christians in Najran  (in today's southwestern Saudi Arabia) to
> have churches and priests. Fuller  Seminary's Woodberry used to
> distribute copies of these letters while pastor  of a house church in
> Riyadh.
>
> "We circulated these letters basically to let the government know that
> at  least Muhammad had allowed the Christians that were in the area to
> continue  to worship and have priests as long as they were loyal
> citizens," Woodberry  says.
>
> Avoiding the unenviable position of trying to interpret Islam for
> Saudis,  church members limited themselves to passing out copies of the
> letters.
>
> "We did it first in English, and then I gave them Arabic copies as
> well,"  Woodberry says. "It uses the sources that are considered
> important to them."
>
> Likewise, the Qur'an says Jews and Christians belong to a category of
> people  protected from aggression. Some references in the Qur'an also
> suggest that  the Sabeans, probably a gnostic group in south Arabia,
> were also protected  people, Woodberry says. That extra category has
> enabled the government of  Indonesia, for example, to protect the
> religious freedom of Hindus and  Buddhists. And there is a plethora of
> history in which Islam peacefully  coexists with other faiths.
>
> How do such Islamic documents go over with those of the strict Wahhabi
> faith? "Wahhabism emphasizes going back to the original sources of the
> faith, the Qur'an and Muhammad, so it's very impressive to them if you
> can  point out that Muhammad allowed the Christians the freedom to raise
> their  children as Christians, and to have churches and priests,"
> Woodberry says.
>
> He does not dismiss appeals to the U.N. charter. But any international
> pressure, Middle East observers say, must be applied gently in light of
> the  Muslim clerics' fury at the generally corrupt regime seen as too
> friendly to  the United States. "We never felt that the royal leadership
> was that much  against us, but their position was tenuous enough that
> they didn't want the  same thing to happen to them that had happened to
> Iran when the Shah was  overthrown," Woodberry says.
>
> Ambassador Freeman also suggests appeals to the human rights inherent in
>  Islam. He notes that the Qur'anic injunction to submit to Allah
> presupposes  choice and liberty of conscience, and that "Islam is very
> clear that there  can be no compulsion in religion."
>
> Most Saudis, with the notable exception of some in the royal family,
> would  counter that according to the hadith (teachings attributed to
> Muhammad)  "there can be no two religions" in Arabia, but Freeman says
> this probably  applied only to Mecca.
>
> "There are so many other things said in the Qur'an about respect that I
> suppose the correct interpretation might be that there can be no
> proselytizing of the native population in Arabia," he says. "But I don't
> see  why that should be interpreted as expatriates or temporary
> residents of  Saudi Arabia being denied the right to worship as they
> consider right."
>
> Freeman holds out hope that, with some loosening of religious controls,
> Christians could earn the right through social service ministries to be
> heard about human rights. "It might be that an offer by a Christian
> church  not to proselytize in Saudi Arabia, but to inspire by example,
> to minister  to those who are maimed in the intifada by the Israeli
> occupation, might be  timely," Freeman says.
>
> This indirect route, compared with direct protest, is a quieter, more
> concealed, less conspicuous influence. Supporting Abdullah's efforts to
> gain  entry into the World Trade Organization, thereby opening Saudi
> Arabia to  more outside influences, would be another way of indirectly
> promoting  human-rights issues, Freeman adds.
>
> There is, however, a place for overt protest. Though the effects of
> agitating for human rights are disputed—sometimes they result in more
> severe  persecution—in the long term, it is usually helpful that rogue
> regimes know  the international community is watching.
>
> The Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin
> Sultan,  declined to answer questions posed by Christianity Today via
> e-mail—such as  how he would advise Americans to address Saudi
> human-rights issues—but  keeping such concerns before Saudi officials
> plays its part in the overall  strategy. Polite, respectful inquiries
> about human rights can be sent to  Prince Bandar at, believe it or not,
> topgun@.... (Top Gun is one of the  ambassador's favorite movies,
> an assistant says. It also should be noted  that since 1979, U.S.
> military sales to Saudi Arabia, including a state of  the art command
> and control system for the Royal Saudi Air Force, total more  than $50
> billion.)
>
> The Human Rights Game
> To be sure, Saudi Arabia is "playing the human rights game," according
> to  Sherry of Human Rights Watch. It has signed U.N. women's rights and
> anti-torture conventions, for example. And, last October 1, Saudi Arabia
>  adopted its first written penal code.
>
> Saudi officials have not made the new penal code available to rights
> organizations, but agency workers suppose it will give force of law to
> the  Qur'an-based "administrative regulations."
>
> These include the 23-year-old "regulation" against torturing prisoners.
> Amnesty International documented a 1996 case in which a Sudanese man
> signed  a murder confession—by Saudi authorities forcing his thumbprint
> onto a  declaration of guilt—after police suspended him by thrusting
> steel poles  through his knee and elbow joints. He was later executed.
>
> "The Saudis have a slew of administrative regulations on, for example,
> detention procedures, prison conditions, and access to prisoners,"
> Sherry  says. "The penal code might very well take all those regulations
> and codify  them into something that is a law. Whether they're adhered
> to is a different  matter."
>
> Any such progress will come slowly, and criticism of the proud Saudis
> will  not be the primary agent for change, says David E. Long, a retired
> foreign  service officer who worked in the region.
>
> By appealing to Saudi sources of authority and offering to serve in
> their  social causes, Western Christians might, like Lawrence of Arabia,
> make the  Saudis' struggle our struggle. That would entail finding a
> spiritual basis  of mutual interest as powerful as the mundane one of
> oil for security. It  also may mean identifying a common enemy—the
> Devil, as Magdangal prayed  before he was to be hanged—rather than
> labeling each other as Satan. It's a  lofty undertaking, but Long, a
> former counter-terrorism official and author  of The Kingdom of Saudi
> Arabia, notes that jihad has to do mainly with  spiritual struggle.
>
> "Jihad is the suppression of vice, maybe by force, and the encouragement
> of  virtue, maybe by the sword, but nevertheless it's a broader
> concept," he  says. "There's enough in Islam that is parallel and
> compatible with human  rights that we could say, okay, fine, if you look
> at everything by Islamic  law, but we encourage you to look at the human
> rights elements in  Islam—after all, this is 'God's word.'"
>
> Jeff M. Sellers is an associate editor at Christianity Today.
>
> Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information. July
> 8, 2002, Vol. 46, No. 8, Page 34
>
>
>
>
>
>
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