Thoughts after the Middle East

In Mafraq, Jordan at the hospital where Aunt Collyn Schmidt worked, an old Christian couple hosted us for the afternoon. The husband was born in the West Bank, and we pummeled him with questions. "Why is the West Bank talked about so much and why is it shaded differently on the map?" I asked, simply. He smiled and said, "That's a hard question." He told us about spending joyful Christmases as a boy in Bethlehem in the Palestian West Bank. All the hotels would be full, he said, so European and American children would pile into his house. Now, he said, nobody wants to visit the West Bank.

He went on: the peace and prosperity of the Middle East depend on Israel. Israel is give up the West bank. That would solve most problems, he said. As for the war in Iraq, he warned us, it won't end soon, so long as America supports Israel. Eagerly I asked about the fall of Islam, and he assured me, "It will fall soon, like Communism fell--maybe in the next ten or twenty years."

Certainly, the mindset of Muslims is changing. People are tired of Islam's restrictions, and they want to be rich and free. Also, the West's relativism makes Muslims more tolerant of all religions. MTV lures the youth away from radicalism. Terrorism, one pastor told me, is only a reaction of fear against the encroaching West.

But Drew objected to the old man's comparison. Islam isn't like Communism, he said. It's older and deeper. And Islam is religious in a way that Communism never was, and that makes its roots go deep. Millions of people set their whole lives on Islam; it is an empire of hearts and minds. Yes, Islam's roots are deep like the roots of an old oak tree, but Christians all over the world are praying for it to fall. One day it will.

Sam