Stereotypes

by Gene Shelburne

Holy wars rage across much of our world today as radical Muslims vie to gain political control of their nations by slaughtering all who dare to oppose them.

News reports from Egypt and Algeria, from Afghanistan and the Sudan, tell of mindless massacres of thousands of innocents. Just moments ago I read the umpteenth story of such killings. An AP report says sixty Algerians died, most of them with their throats slit, because they violated radical Muslim edicts.

My friend and colleague Dr. Alan Meenan, a Presbyterian minister, tells of diving into a ditch to escape the bullets and bombs of Muslim-flown Sudanese planes attacking a Christian village he visited in south Sudan.

Hence the Western world stereotype of Muslims. Unfortunately, in America the words “Muslim” and “mayhem” and “massacre” belong in the same sentence, as we conjure up images such as the senseless World Trade Center bombing.

But stereotypes are seldom accurate, whether they apply to Methodists or Muslims.

Not many miles from the Sudan, on the slopes of Mt. Elgon in Uganda, my missionary nephew Ian and some of his team knelt to pray in a field, when a native man appeared from lower on the hill. He wore the traditional kanzu (ankle-length shirt) that marks a Muslim imam.

“What are you doing on my property?” he inquired.

“We’re praying for you and for all your people who live in this region,” Ian told him.

“Then you are welcome,” the property owner said.

When their prayers were done, Ian and his friends stopped at the imam’s home to thank him.

Graciously, Ian told me, the Muslim leader welcomed the white missionaries into his humble house, where his wife served them a delicious native meal. A meal that continued long after their host excused himself to go to the village to lead his people’s evening prayers.

Ian said, “We drove away from that home hoping that one day the imam and his people would receive our Gospel as warmly as he welcomed us into his home.”

Having often been embarrassed and ashamed of the stereotype my neighbors have of my own denomination, I was delighted by Ian’s tale that so totally explodes the stereotype of another faith. Judge others as you would want to be judged, only by their wisest and best.