{"id":30536,"date":"2011-10-13T00:05:33","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T07:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=30536"},"modified":"2014-12-30T21:27:57","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T04:27:57","slug":"the-brittleness-of-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2011\/10\/the-brittleness-of-islam.html","title":{"rendered":"The Brittleness of Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Westerners spend a lot of time fretting about the strength of Islam.\u00a0 I\u2019m not so sure<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Islamic authorities will provide counseling to a dozen Malaysian\u00a0 Muslims to \u201crestore their belief and faith\u201d after they attended a\u00a0 community dinner at a church hall, a royal sultan said Monday.<\/p>\n

The case has triggered worries among officials in\u00a0 Muslim-majority Malaysia that some non-Muslims were trying to convert\u00a0 Muslims. Proselytizing of Muslims is punishable by prison terms of\u00a0 various lengths in most Malaysian states.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sorry, but behavior like that is not a sign of strength. It is a sign of profound weakness and brittleness. I mean, come on! Lunch with a few Methodists requires some hysterical intervention? Talk about not ready for adulthood or civilization! I believe that such a brittle culture will not, in the end, be able to survive a real encounter with the gospel. I doubt, in fact, that it can even survive an encounter with Western secular consumer culture. If Christian culture, with all its spiritual resources to draw on, is in a struggle here, how much more with the barren and dessicated thing that is this brittle and fragile Islam be in crisis? Indeed, much of the violence of Islam is precisely due to its interior fragility.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Westerners spend a lot of time fretting about the strength of Islam.\u00a0 I\u2019m not so sure: Islamic authorities will provide counseling to a dozen Malaysian\u00a0 Muslims to \u201crestore their belief and faith\u201d after they attended a\u00a0 community dinner at a church hall, a royal sultan said Monday. The case has triggered worries among officials in\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Brittleness of Islam<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Westerners spend a lot of time fretting about the strength of Islam.\u00a0 I'm not so sure: Islamic authorities will provide counseling to a dozen Malaysian\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2011\/10\/the-brittleness-of-islam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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