A Muslim perspective....I had a young man from United Arab Emerits skype me out of the blue and he has talked to me on and off about various things over the past month or so. He is a Muslim and through skype messaging I was able to share with him as he cared for his grandmother in the last days of her life. I did not have as much contact with him since he moved to Egypt for study, but we reconnected in this last week. He tells me he has heart failure and is not expected to live long. I have promised to email him every day talking about life etc. In my last email I asked him to tell me about his religion and why he liked it. He replied with the following words.... (His English is not the best but a million times better than my non-existent Arabic!)
my religion give me the permenant happiness and the islam give me the chance to face this pain and this fatal disease
iam thanking god everyday that iam muslim and when i was child i learned how to help people the islam told us not to hate each other and help the people as possiable as you can and talk wthi christians and show them the beauty of islam
its enough for me that islam learn me how to respect every one in this life no matter if he is rich or poor
thank you keep going on sending updates of your life
It is a very different picture of Islam than we get from other sources. We often hear from the war fostering-barrier building fringe of the Muslim faith. Mind you I saw a survey the other day with the percentages of USA evangelical Christians who endorse torture as a tactic... it was quite staggering. Christianity too has a war fostering-barrier building fringe that we are embarrassed by. I am hoping Hameed will stretch my mind and broaden my experience in the months ahead.
Running alone tonight... I have not really run seriously for about three weeks. My hamstring was playing up and I felt a rest would do it good. I have a running friend who usually runs with me Sunday nights. As well as helping to encourage each other's fitness we share our week's journey with each other. Tonight however I had to run alone. I ran 9.5k and I think my hamstring stood the test. While I enjoy running alone and sorting the world out in my mind, I did miss my usual Sunday evening company. I have had a Sunday night friend (I used to run with my church organist on a Sunday evening) to debrief with now since 1992 and you get to depend on this once a week therapy. It felt nice to be running again though.
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