Some Muslim men, involved in an interfaith gathering at a Latter-day Saint chapel in Australia, were graciously permitted to use one of the rooms there when it came time for their salaat prayer. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
For me, one of the most important principles in writing about the religious beliefs of others is this one: Those about whose religious beliefs one is writing should be able to recognize their religious beliefs in what has been written.
They may say that the author has expressed one or more elements of their belief in a somewhat unaccustomed way. That happens sometimes. But they should be able to recognize it as their own. One of the best compliments that I’ve occasionally received from Muslims about my writings on Islam is that I’ve gotten it “right.”
I would be quite unhappy if they were to have said the opposite. If the person whose religious faith has been “explained” is protesting “No! no! no! That’s not right! It’s not accurate! We don’t believe that!” then the wannabe explainer hasn’t done it right.
I can’t count the number of conversations about my own religious beliefs that I’ve had with others, especially with often quite exercised evangelical Protestants, in which they’ve said to me “You believe x!” and I’ve responded not only that, no, I don’t believe x but that, in fact, I’m unaware of anybody in my church who believes x. To which the challenger then responds “But that’s what your church teaches!” To which I’ve replied that, in all of my (now) many decades as a member and a missionary and a teacher and a writer and a sometime leader for my church, and as a long-time resident of Utah and a long-time professor at my church’s flagship university, I’ve never taught or been taught x as Church doctrine. “Well, that’s still what your church believes!” answers the challenger. And, sometimes, if the challenger is especially well-equipped, he or (very occasionally) she will present me with a decontextualized supporting quotation from Journal of Discourses 14:234 or from an obscure 1950s book by a long forgotten member of the First Council of Seventy or a onetime Institute teacher that seems to endorse x. Seldom if ever, by the way, a passage that the challenger discovered on his or her own via serious research. Instead, it’s typically one that he or she came across while skimming through an anti-Mormon website.
Such conversations are tiresome and, in my opinion, quite without value. And I’m not much more enthusiastic about such conversations when they concern Islam, rather than my own faith.
Right now, one such conversation is going on elsewhere on the internet about whether Muslims worship Muhammad. To which the answer is, simply, that they don’t. Period. And I strongly suspect that, if the person asserting that they do were to line up, say, a thousand practicing Muslims of reasonable intelligence and to ask them “Do you worship Muhammad?” he would receive one thousand resolute negatives. Some of them perhaps a bit on the passionate side.
Do Muslims venerate Muhammad? Yes. Absolutely. Do they call down blessings upon him and upon his family and upon his “companions”? Yes, they commonly do. But there is a strong, bright line between that and actually worshiping him. To associate or join anything else with God in worship is considered shirk (شِرْك) — pronounced sheerk: literally, “association,” but, more broadly, “polytheism” — and shirk is the worst sin, indeed the unforgivable sin, in the lexicon of Islam.
Jenessa Sheffield as Vilate Kimball, in “Six Days in August”
I have some good news and some bad news. And they are the same news: A friend reports that the Orem outlet of Deseret Book is sold out of DVD and Blu-ray copies of Six Days in August. Which suggests that people who want to secure one or more copies of the film as Christmas gifts (or, as has been suggested over at the Peterson Obsession Board, as gag gifts for seasonal white elephant parties) may want to consider procrastinating the day of their repentance no longer. (I don’t know the state of the inventory at other Deseret Book stores.) The film is also available, of course, from Deseret Book online. But I suspect that, here too, delay would not be very prudent. Not, at least, if you’re hoping to have the film in hand by or before Christmas Day.
Thanksgiving Point, at the north end of Utah Valley (fair use)
Alan and Karen Ashton bestowed an inestimable gift upon Utah Valley when they created Thanksgiving Point. And their annual Luminaria display of Christmas lights takes Thanksgiving Point to a whole new level. After we visited Luminaria last night, a five-year-old granddaughter announced that “This is the best place ever!”
Some of the ruins of the Temple of Wiracocha at Raqch’i, near Cusco in Peru (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
“When the Spaniards arrived on Peruvian shores in 1532, they were mistaken for Wiraqocha, a bearded white god who had sojourned among them in ancient times. This god had travelled through the Andes on a perfect 45 degree angle of the north-south axis of the planet. They called it the Holy Path, and the ancient Andeans built temples to worship him in each of the settlements he visited along the path. In these temples they performed sacrifices, initiation, and endowment ordinances. Some of these are still performed today in their sacred vestments, including their signs and tokens.”
Please note that this article is “part of our book chapter reprint series,” which always appears on Thursdays. It is not an article in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. Journal articles, which are distinct from book chapter reprints, appear on Fridays. And Friday is a different day than Thursday. (Some followers of this blog have found the distinction difficult.)
Christmas lights at the Mexico City Mexico Temple. (Image of unknown provenance; if there are copyright concerns, please contact me at [email protected])
Over the past several years, I’ve written a number of Christmas-related columns for, first, the Deseret News and, now, Meridian Magazine. Here are links to a few of those that I did for the Deseret News. I’ll try to share some of the other links over the next few days. One or two out there might perhaps find one or two of them worth a brief glance:
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