Clarification appended.
On Monday and Tuesday of last week, this campus was host to the spectacle of the so-called Soulwinners Ministries. A religious action group founded by Michael and Tamika Venyah, hell-bent on “taking this world for Jesus,” Soulwinners Ministries spent time on the campus proclaiming their take on the Bible and their beliefs. Apparently, Michael Venyah believes “Christians do not sin” and that homosexuals and other groups are hurtling toward an unavoidable eternity of damnation. Although he conceded that at one point in the distant past he was a sinner, he claimed that he no longer sins. The irony in this is that Soulwinners held its campus crusade in the amphitheater of the Nyumburu Cultural Center, an on-campus center devoted to promoting diversity, cultural plurality and a spirit of tolerance.
In the days following last week’s winning of souls, the reaction on the campus has been a mixture of anger, disgust and incredulity. The Campus Crusade for Christ, in conjunction with the Pride Alliance, held an event in the same venue at which professed Christians publicly admitted their sins, in a commendable display of cross-cultural solidarity against the crime of ignorance. Everyone agrees that Soulwinners does not represent mainstream Christianity, or even some of the most divergent branches of Christianity for that matter. And everyone recognizes the fact that the existence of Venyah’s beliefs in no way undermines the true message of all-inclusive love and forgiveness that Christianity and the Bible represent. Yet it seems that some of the very same people who are so quick to dismiss the so-called Soulwinners as heretical and confused accept with equal haste the suggestion that extremist and radical individuals such as Osama bin Laden are representative of the religion of Islam as a whole.
As someone who prides himself in his own culture and religion, along with his knowledge of the culture and religion of other people, it disturbs me to see and hear ignorance against Muslims and Islam. It bothers me when people fail to recognize the distinction between Muslims, who can be of any racial or ethnic background, and Arabs, not all of whom are Muslim. It irks me to hear comments that suggest all Muslims subscribe to the radical beliefs of a small but demonstrative minority, and it confused me this past week when people whose prejudices place Christianity in the good pile, and Islam in the bad pile, agreed when Christians denounced the Soulwinners as aberrant, but argued with me when I denounced al-Qaida as atypical of the majority of adherents to Islam.
After Sept. 11, and on countless occasions before and after those events, Muslims across the United States and beyond have time and again rose in unison to decry the actions of their wayward brethren, much like members of our university’s Christian community did last week. It is the ignorant belief that all of Islam is radical, along with the words and actions that accompany this startling sentiment, that actually propagates the existence of extremism in the religion. People who know nothing about Islam and its adherents, and who broadcast their ignorance through foolish statements such as classifying Persian Iran as an Arab country, should educate themselves on a religion that is in actual fact closely related to Judaism and Christianity and shares many of the same beliefs, parables, and historical protagonists. With my unique background as someone born into and raised in a Christian household from a country where a large number of the population is Muslim, I simply cannot accept the baseless insinuation that a majority of Islam accepts radical beliefs as Quranic truth.
In today’s day and age, with extremism a main focus of public attention, it is important that we as a people always meet ignorance with condemnation. No matter where, and from which religion, that ignorance stems from.
Ademola Sadik is a sophomore finance major. He can be reached at asadik@umd.edu.
