Broadcasting from the west side of Big Brother City in the heart of Gridlock County, where preaching with impact is like plowing pavement because people continue to place their hopes in unsatisfying things. This is the Frederick Faith Debate, sponsored by Putman Plumbing and Heating. How can we make you smile? Faith Debate is online. wfmd.com keyword faith takes you right to our page there you'll find podcasts of this show news items links to all sorts of religious traditions and the faith debate blog our blog is your blog so email me troy skinner at clear channel.com i post what you send me Eighteen times a day, Monday through Friday, that's 90 per week that go up. I encourage you to pop in and see what the folks are sending me to put up there on the Faith Debate page. On the Faith Debate show today, we have Jonathan Schweitzer, the senior pastor at Crossroads Valley Church, back for some more bludgeoning of our hapless guest. He can defend himself, but he's hapless in the sense that he's going to be totally unprepared for the bludgeoning until he counter-punches and puts John in his place, making him say, how do you say sorry in Arabic, John? Asfi. Asve, over and over and over again. Yes, John has been learning Arabic. He knows like 12 words now. Yes. And we're joined this week by Khalil El-Shazly, a longtime old friend of the show. His memory is better than mine. He says it's been seven or eight years, which seems almost impossible. It's true, but it probably is. I mean, I have no reason to doubt you. All of our kids have grown up in the meantime. Exactly. Yeah, it's unbelievable. Not us, though. We stayed the same. Just as young and foolish as ever. We look exactly the same. We do. Khalil al-Shazly is the member of the Board of Trustees for the Islamic Society of Frederick and, like, eight years ago was president of the Islamic Society of Frederick. But you only do that for a limited period of time. Two years, something like that? It's a three-year term, renewable, one term, and then... Until they wear you out, squeeze every little bit of energy out of you. You get torn out very quickly. Bring in the new guy. Very quickly. So he still knows the secret handshake until they change the secret handshake on him and don't tell him what it is. All right. So, by the way, it occurs to me that last week we ran out of time before I could tell you what I've been reading. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you at the end of today's show what I've been reading lately, but I am going to mention a book that I haven't read lately, but I have read. That'll make up for me missing last week. Okay. All right. So The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I read that. That's a book I read. You said it. You had to admit it publicly. I watched the movie. All the Catholics are gonna, you know, speak up now. By the way, I will say this, since you mentioned the movie, Khalil, the movie's horrible. Absolutely horrible. It's one of the worst major motion pictures ever made. The book actually was pretty entertaining. It's a page-turner. Yeah, I wanted the movie to keep all the exciting, cool twists and turns out of history, going and everything, but it just didn't do it. Dan Brown is a gifted author, I think, as far as pop culture authors go. Obviously, his view on Christian church history is completely out the window, but that's a case for another show. Yes. If we could get him on here, we could maybe get Dan Brown to say, how do you say that again? uh... osprey osprey has asked me to a woman as if to to a man as phrase when a woman says it says as they are she says it's a massive see i was at the you know when you learn a different language it's difficult to keep up with you know what a woman speaking she says certain thing but when you're speaking to a woman you say sir another thing that's a very gender-specific language over a feminine masculine beast language very strong specific i'm actually rather proud of you john cuz i mean you have even learn english yet And you're already taking on another language. That's very impressive. All right, so we have Khalil on, so it's a perfect opportunity for me to ask this question. It's been true my whole life, but it seems like in recent months it's been more true than usual. The Middle East is, like, on fire! Yeah, it is. What is going on? Yeah. It's always been on fire. But it seems like, is it just the American media pays more attention in different seasons? His response has all kinds of meaning. Yeah, it's very casual. We'll get to that in a minute. It's always been on fire. Yeah, of course it's on fire. It's always been on fire. We're talking about the Sahara Desert. You'd want it to be cold? So, OK, I mean, I guess we'll end up talking about why it's been on fire for all of these years. But this is the question I have for you in the immediate, and then we'll get into the finer points of what's going on over there. Is it true that it's always kind of the same, and we as Americans just kind of take a renewed active interest in it from time to time, making it seem like it's getting worse or better? Or does it actually have ebbs and flows where, man, somebody who lives there says, okay, I don't know if we can take another day of this, or, yep, that's just another day at the office, this is how we live in this constant conflict? There's no constant or standard answer for that. It all depends. Unfortunately now the world's controlled by big interest groups and big companies and big lobbyists and all depends. You're interested in the Middle East now, you're not interested in Central Africa. There are massacres in there, people are massacred right and left, nobody cares because there's no oil, there's no diamond, there's no uh... uranium uh... nothing that's scarce that everybody wants at the same time uh... but for the middle east it's because of sir rich and natural resources uh... you have oil uh... which is hot commodity and then also we have uh... political religious interests uh... by certain groups so when you have that mix and also people fight over uh... real estate uh... put all of this together if you end up with a lot of trouble so some of your thing is not necessarily any worse now that it was a year ago or ten years ago it's it's it's it has been has been the same it's just uh... the sad thing about it is that there are a lot of innocent people who get killed every day and depends on the topic of the day or the interest of the day whether you shed some lights on it or not. Yeah, you were going to say something, and I kind of cut you off there, John. Well, you know, last time that we had Khalil on the show, we were coming out of 9-11, right? I mean, that was the reason we had him on the show, not the last time we had him on the show, the first time we had him on the show. And then for the couple years afterwards, a year, two years afterwards, there was a major rush, as it were, in the United States to try to understand Islam. right in the big question was always whether or not any of the muslim anybody from the muslim community islamic community would be willing to admit some of the uh... some of the faults that uh... that the terrorists were uh... Committing you know some of some of the problems that the the terrorism that they were committing We're a long way from all that terrorism And I even feel like even as we're talking with you that were that like the tone of our discussion is different From what it was back then not that there couldn't be terrorism not that there aren't still Taliban and al-qaeda and now there's is you know Isis Isis is how would you call it? Yeah, is that is and I'm gonna need by the way. I think Jonathan's not alone and because that's a newer It's a newer name for us in America. I don't know if it's been around. I don't know a lot about it. Maybe you know a little bit more about it than we do. But before we get into that, I'm just setting the tone that since we've had you on the show, we've had a number of different times some of these Ahmadi Muslims on. Those guys are kind of what I call Jeffersonian Muslims. I don't think we've had you on since we had some of those guys on. And they're very quick to admit some of the different faults and even to speak publicly and say Muslims need to stop being so violent. And their theology is slightly different from, I think, what we might call orthodox Islam. But I'm just saying that I'm trying to get my head around that for the first time in seven years we're talking To to a Muslim that is a little bit more orthodox, and we haven't had that I think we always a lot You know we tend in this country to label people so you have to label someone I'm not orthodox by no means First of all, it's would you say that you follow the Quran and Islam and the teaching of the prophet is middle of the way. You are not to the far right and not to the far left. You are in the middle of the road and you are discouraged in the Quran and the Sunnah of the prophet from being on either the far right or the far left. Seek somewhere in between. There is no extremism in islam you know far liberalism and islam there's no such thing and i thought we are so fascinated in this country we have to label people something but i hear your heart on that week but hopefully you can hear kind of my perspective on it is if what you're saying is true for islam and all muslims would or you would agree that you are in the middle east on fire right now first first of all we have to separate the religion of islam from what muslims are so-called muslims do and i think the first one first time we talked we talked about okay when you say terrorism me you hand thing or just like most of the media outlets associate islam or terrorism i mean the gentleman who killed seventy five muslims in norway he will be killed them in the name of christianity and somebody called him a christian terrorist bill o'reilly when knots on the air because somebody called the christian terrorist Like, the terrorist is reserved only for a Muslim when he commits a crime. So, associating the word terrorist with Islam is absolutely wrong. It's wrong all the way around, unless you start calling Jewish when they commit a crime Jewish terrorist, Christian when they commit a crime Christian terrorist, Atheist when they commit a crime Atheist terrorist. I'll give you an example. Virginia Tech. The student who killed all the 30-some students, in the beginning, from his looks, everybody thought he was a Muslim. Nobody ever called him a terrorist. Not to date, anyone called him a terrorist. The gentleman terrorist generally is not somebody from your own nation, but it's somebody from another nation that is trying to use violence to terrorize. He was a foreigner. He was not American. But he was a student from the Far East. And they didn't call him a terrorist. Nobody called him a terrorist. Does the guy down at Virginia Tech? The guy down at Virginia Tech, nobody to date ever called him a terrorist. But I think it makes a fair point, and we can hear that and learn to have a little empathy. Because he's not a Muslim. Part of the reason for that, though, is because the media is unwilling to call anybody a terrorist. The media outlawed all language of terrorism. Except Muslims. Boy, even about Islam. I mean, okay, so Fox News is willing to use that language. No, they all do. But the other media outlets have stayed away from anything that's going to make Islam look bad. They all do. Systematically, they all do. I will say that there was a time when that was overwhelmingly true, but I think that there has, to Jonathan's point, there's been a strong shift over the last five years or so for the mainstream media to start to get away from that. No, look at the Boston Marathon bombers. everybody was quiet in the beginning until they found out that all the from cheshire the cheshire mother that muslim terrorist all of the sudden muslim terrorist slam slam slam slam slam slam but it was true about them that they'd that their uh... environment that was that they were muslim and that they were agitating as a part of some more extreme muslim groups against the united states i mean the facts of that case came out very clear that those guys were acting according to their understanding i'm not talking about your understanding according to their understanding that they're acting we have muslims homegrown terrorist or non muslims in this country but no one will be here to call them terrorists but they do it all the time because they're not muslims in fact uh... eric holder is talking all the time that he's worried about extremist uh... terrorism on the right that there's going to be exactly coming out of the conservative but does anyone all the time does anyone call them christian Yeah, he does all the time. Does it call him Christian terrorist? Yeah. Well, they call it far, right? And they say that they have exact religion. Yes, they do Religion is never an issue. Listen, you're speaking to somebody who spends a lot of time watching How it is that that the spirit of the age in the United States is is moving against Christianity and I'm telling you that that they are openly Claiming that anybody that follows the Bible to be the Word of God, you know that they use all the language that identifies very clearly that is Christian So welcome to Muslim's club, then. So you shouldn't be using the same thing that they're doing against Muslims. I think we can learn to have an increased measure of empathy to hear how that goes. So let's call the terrorist a terrorist. Let's call the criminal a criminal, but let's not associate the religion with them. Okay, what's the definition of a terrorist? A terrorist, anyone who harms civilian or property that's not his own. harms, meaning they use violence to try to breed terror. You could harm in many, many, many, many, many different ways. Okay, what's the difference between a terrorist and a criminal? All condemned by Islam. Sure. What's the difference between terrorist and a criminal? Terrorist and a criminal. Yeah, what's the difference? You have some money. I'm poor. I steal it from you. So criminal is like smaller crime. Terrorism is bigger crime. No, criminal, a guy who kills someone's wife or someone's husband for money or lust or for whatever. That's criminal. Sure. I'm going to ask you the same question in a second, your definition of terrorism and criminal and all that. I'm just trying to get a working definition. Right. Well, I want to see what your working definition is. You can't even agree on the definition of terrorist. That's why I'm asking the question. That's why I'm having the discussion. I'm trying to figure out what do we mean by that. That's the voice of Jonathan Schweitzer. He's Senior Pastor at Crossroads Valley Church. I'm Troy Skinner. We're joined this week by a member of the Board of Trustees for the Islamic Society of Frederick Khalil Al-Shazly. You're listening to us on 930 WFMD. So, if I ask you, John, Terrorist what is that and how is it different from a criminal because I haven't I have what I think would be a working definition for myself I'm wondering if your answer will be similar to what I would say right so I think that I would say that it's a guy that is going to use violence or terrorism to breed fear and So he's somebody who's not able to wage war on a large level, and so he uses acts of violence to breed terror in the group of people with whom he disagrees, in order to advance his purposes and get on the public stage, so that everybody around the world and the news can hear and see what he's doing. Then would you call the militia that liberated the U.S. from the British terrorists? Because the British called them terrorists. i would not the military do not a group to just malicious trying to find the british army in this country trying to liberate this country about the british called in terrorist yeah it does not fall in that and i have to agree that we have to look at each situation very carefully in fact uh... since the time that i have uh... known you and that seven years i had the chance to sit in on a class in uh... in israel up in uh... arco that was being taught by uh... colin chapman who has lived in egypt and uh... ministered in the air for a long time uh... in he was talking about uh... islamist in in his describing the different groups of islam the ones that are maybe a little bit more in a mystic is a muslim he's a christian that's trying to happen with the issue in the middle east uh... i I'm always, I always have reservations. But please listen, because I think you will be less reserved. Go ahead. Because what I'm going to tell you is that he's of the opinion that the West and most Christians don't pay close enough attention to the differences in the groups of people that are Islamic, that are Muslim. And he argues that it's really a small minority that use violence in a political way to push their purposes. And as I listened, I listened closely. I asked him hard questions. And he's arguing that if the rhetoric was toned down, that we could have better discussions with those that are in the Muslim world. And so anyways, all I'm saying is that he convinced me that some of that was the case. But he recognized that it does seem to be the case that if you're, say, in the West Bank, for example, and you have those different groups, some that are just living by the Koran, Sharia law, they're not trying to attack anybody. And then there's some that might be a little bit more animistic, maybe like the guys that Gypsies, what do you call them? They're not gypsies, but they're Arabs and they they they more travel from place to place still There's a word that they use for him over there It's kind of a black term. It's a dark, you know, they're kind of a dark anyways there's those guys in but his point is that that the the violent extremists have a very good ability to control the whole society in those nations where they're active. And so, for example, in In Egypt, right? So I'm going to give a perspective, and I understand that you're probably going to disagree with it. Of course. That's why you're here. But my perspective of Egypt is that when Islam got into power, that the Muslim Brotherhood ... I have stories of people that I know personally that have family in Egypt that were Coptic Christians that were forced to pay $30 a day jizya taxes. uh... to extremists that were forcing them while the muslim brotherhood was was uh... was in control and in that uh... that thousands of congress christians were fleeing for their lives in that context and so if it looks like to me that even though there's many muslims that are not violent that the violent ones in the politically oriented wield a lot of influence okay those groups who forced them to pay money when they uh... government entity or just common criminals well this is what it was hard to tell because exactly because that's exactly going to be my point we can talk about the head of the muslim brotherhood what was his name morrissey morrissey the president was uh... pushing things through not really that uh... from from the west and look like he was trying to islamicize all of egypt the deep government which ousted morrissey uh... he didn't enjoy much power really the they dissolved his parliament uh... because uh... the high courts the all-new barack's regime it's the deep government and now they're surfaced again yeah so uh... did they put you know whenever you have to have a revolution i don't this year the counter-revolution myself or she didn't have power mercy was doing a lot of the kind of things that i see obama doing not really not that he was acting outside of the constitution not really acting in a unilateral way that that is not like he was that is not correct and this is a lot of the nation this was all the counter-revolution that doesn't mean i'm saying that obama's trying to islamicize i'm just saying that it was similar tactics no no no no it's it's uh... it's totally it's totally different uh... what was happening as he was trying uh... to improve the country economically is trying to get all the all the corrupt to pay the price, the people who tax evaded to try to collect taxes, and in a very short period of time, he really improved the economy. Now it took a turn to the worse because the counter-revolution came back and They swallowed the country right now, and now the country's going down the spiral. It's amazing how different our perspectives are, because my sense is that the economy was falling apart while Morsi was there. No, not really. No, no, no. He was being fought. All of the Christians that I know, all the Coptic Christians and others that were in Egypt, lived in fear of their lives increasingly, and they started fleeing the country while Morsi was in charge. That was fused primarily by Listen to this. I'm listening. The Christian Baba, because they wanted to ask. So you're saying the Christians were fleeing for their lives because the Christian Baba? No, no, no, no, no, no. The Christian church, the Christian church was- Baba mean church? The Baba, no, the Pope. In Egypt, the Christian pope in Egypt, they call him Baba. Oh, the father. The father. Because he's a Coptic bishop, so he's a father. They were forming a coalition with the coup regime behind the scenes to instill fear in some Christians. And actually, all the bombing that happened was by the Mubarak regime and the Ministry of Interior, which was against Morsi. So actually, during the revolution, the ones who are protecting the churches with the Muslim Brotherhood, and Tahrir Square, when the Muslims were praying, the Christians would form a circle to protect them. And on Sunday, when the Christians prayed, the Muslim Brotherhood was surrounding them to protect them. That's what was happening in Tahrir Square. Okay, but the impression that I have is that these extremists were getting away with enough that Christians were fleeing for their lives. No, no, no. Muslim Brotherhood do not believe in virus. So who was it that was attacking the Christians there? They were the thugs of Mubarak regime. The same thugs still exist today. So you're saying that they were not even Muslim? No, no, they're thugs. Thugs don't have religion, my friend. Okay, so you're saying they weren't even doing it in the name of Islam. They were thugs. No, they were thugs doing it on behalf of the regime. Absolutely. I mean, I can't even begin to have a discussion because everything that I saw on the news, you're denying all of it. I'll tell you something you probably never knew about me. I grew up in an area which was predominantly Christian. Sure. It was named after a church. In Egypt? Yes. It's called Deir el-Malak. Deir el-Malak. Which is a church of an angel. Deir is church? Deir is a church. Yeah. Or Deir is a daughter, a house of worship. Okay. Malak. Angel. I grew up with Christians. I lived with them. I ate with them. I went to school with them. We played soccer together. We went out together. Religion was never an issue. My oldest, my eldest brother was born in... And I hear a lot of this when I've been in these countries, even before, you know, when I read about what, before 1948 in, you know, Palestine, that they, that there was a, a working together, a living together that they had done for centuries that wasn't driven by political ambitions and that things definitely got confused when the political ambitions... My eldest brother was born in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Even the street was called the Jewish street, which predominantly Jewish. The one who babysat my eldest brother was Jewish. She didn't have any babies, so she asked my mom, okay, I'll take him and babysit him while you go out shopping for groceries. Growing up there, religion is never an issue. It became an issue when first time ever when the British were occupying Egypt and people are demonstrating against the British. So the first thing they started doing is trying to pin the Christians against Muslims. Of course, the leaders at the time, because they were not appointed, they were elected within their denominations. They recognized that. So demonstrated hand by hand. The head of Al-Azhar and the Baba of the church, they demonstrated together, hand by hand, against the British. Now, I remember- Second time that happened- I remember seeing and hearing about those kinds of things. Second time it happened in my lifetime, when Sadat was in deep trouble politically. So he instigated some friction between Christians and Muslims. And there were some fightings and killings on both sides, and police went in, cordoned the whole area, and so that, because of that, he arrested all the leaders. Let me see if I understand what you're saying. You're saying that that for all these years christians and muslims lived with one another they have a little relative peace but that in the context of some of the uh... nineteen hundreds and beyond uh... there's political uh... players that have come in on both sides and some claiming to be muslim some claim absolutely and that those political political players fomented problems where there doesn't need to be absolutely let me just look at it and i'll get along together with one of those gentlemen given uh... uh... a lecture about a book I'm not going to say his name, I'm not going to advertise for his book, but he claimed that, you know, in predominantly a large Muslim population, you either convert to Islam or you're killed. Because this is the teaching of the Sharia. And I debated with him, and he mentioned Egypt. I said, wait a minute. I was born in Egypt. I grew up there. And I told him where I grew up and everything else. And I said, well, if what you're saying is true, Islam has been in Egypt for over 1,400 years. If that is the truth, what he says, according to Sharia, according to his distraction of Sharia, if you're non-Muslim, you live under a Muslim population, you either convert or you get killed, then there wouldn't have been a Christian or a Jew in Egypt today. Okay, so let me tell you the places where that's happening. Well, we're going to have to do that in next week's show or something like that. This is the Frederick Faith Debate. We're out of time. Jonathan Schweitzer, Khalil Al-Shazly, thank you for being on the show. Thanks to our sponsor, Putman Plumbing and Heating. How can we make you smile? Jonathan's reading The Church and the Jews, The Biblical Relationship by Dan Gruber. So I can't tell you what I'm reading, but I'm telling you what he's reading. Until next week, I want to thank you so much for listening. 167 and a half hours from now, we will continue this spirited debate, and I'm going to swing back around next week and talk a little bit about our definitions and language usage, and John can hold his thought that he was wanting to share just a second ago, and we can get that in the next week's show as well. Again, thanks for listening. God bless.