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| A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide | 
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Sales Rank: 32266
Category: Book
Author: Mark D. Siljander
Publisher: HarperOne
Studio: HarperOne
Manufacturer: HarperOne
Label: HarperOne
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0061438286
Dewey Decimal Number: 261.27
EAN: 9780061438288
ASIN: 0061438286
Publication Date: October 1, 2008
Release Date: October 7, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Former Congressman and Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Mark D. Siljander takes us on an eye-opening journey of personal, religious, and political discovery. In the 1980s, Siljander was a newly minted Reagan Republican from Michigan who joined Congress in the same generation as Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, ready to remake the world. A staunch member of the Religious Right, he once walked out of the National Prayer Breakfast when a speaker quoted from the Qur'an. But after losing reelection, Siljander dove into the Bible to look for the passage in which the Bible says it is our job as Christians to convert others in order to save them from eternal damnation. He couldn't find it; in fact, he couldn't even find a passage saying that Jesus set out to form a new religion. This discovery was the first step on a spiritual and political journey that started with an in-depth linguistic study of the Bible and led to the discovery that Christianity and Islam share many base words and concepts. In his role as ambassador to the United Nations Siljander began sharing his insights on the connections between Islam and Christianity, with surprising results. A Deadly Misunderstanding recounts Siljander's amazing discoveries as he travels to some of the most remote and hostile places in the world?deep into Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, and India?forging deep ties with both heads of state and religious leaders. What he has learned could radically shift the contemporary religious landscape and help heal the rift between Islam and the West. No Christian or Muslim will be unaffected after reading this book.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
A Bridge to Peace December 17, 2008
For someone who has studied biblical languages, A DEADLY UNDERSTANDING is a fresh challenge to look at the commonalities in the sacred books of Christianity and of Islam. The author has woven together theological and word-meaning studies with a story of his using his studies through interactions with Christians and Muslims.
 Siljander Shares His Right Understanding of the Vast Extent of "Common Ground" That Islam Shares with Christianity December 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am not altogether the most completely qualified person to evaluate this book (however, neither are many others who have contributed their nonethess useful views about what Mark Siljander has written), but my own careful reading of the Holy Qur'an in meticulously precise translations has led me to suspect that most Muslims do not understand the full import of what Muhammad conveyed in the Quran. Even reading it in responsible English translation (e.g. the fine old Sales or Abdallah Yousuf Ali translations) reveals just how close the Quran is to the Old Testament, the New Testament Gospels, and to non-canonical Judaeo-Christian sources (O.T. deutero-canonical, Pseudepigraphal, and N.T. Apocryphal writings), and to much of the teachings and lore of the Orthodox and Oriental Eastern Christian Churches.
As this former Congressman, author Mark D. Siljander (who also had valuable experience as a diplomat), and his joint-author John David Mann discovered, I found during my mission to Istanbul and, more importantly, to the Turkish sector of Kurdistan (late 1997) under joint Kurdish partisan and Independent Lutheran auspices, that Muslims are surprisingly open to Christian witness that focuses upon Bible and Quran alike, and especially upon the often surprisingly great level of authority of Jesus for Muhammad and his followers. Fortunately, I already had read the eye-opening book, Sharing Your Faith With A Muslim, by Abdiyah Akbar Abdul-Haqq (Bethany House, 1980, available from Amazon and written from a believing Christian standpoint), which, along with this book, I strong commend to those who wish to follow up these connexions and which a reasonably well-informed Christian layman, without special training, can understand with some concentration and effort. There are at least several more books on this subject, which I have in my own personal book collection, but which certainly are of a more arcane and difficult level to read.
For those who wish to read about the book by this kindly former Congressman (with extensive quotes from it) before purchase, I would refer the potential buyer to the article about it ("Bridging the Islam-Christian Divide: Former Congressman Seeks to Correct a Deadly Misunderstanding", by Michael Ireland, in, among other periodical sources, Christian News (ISSN 0009-5516), vol. 46, no. 30 (28 July 2008), pg. 8-10, deriving from the ASSIST News Service. A later pair of essay reviews, Thomas Pfotenhauer's "Who Has the Real Jesus, Islam or Christianity?: Mark D. Siljander Thinks [That] It Could Be Both" and an unsigned reply, presumably by Herman Otten, "Only Christianity Has the Real Jesus", which also appeared in Christian News, in vol. 46, no. 46, on p. 14-15 (written for C.N., rather than taken from a syndicated press service), was disappointingly uncomprehending in some ways, although not entirely without some good points to make, especially if compared to many far more obtuse and worthlessly negative comments and reviews printed elsewhere concerning Siljander and his book.
There have been many vicious and slanderous attacks on Mark Siljander and this book of his on the part of Zionists (alike observant Jews, secular zio-nationalists, and so-called "Christian Zionists"). Their motives of stirring up fear, strife, and loathing between Muslim peoples, regions, and nations, on the one hand, and the prevailingly Christian (and post-Christian) West, on the other, have more to to do with promoting (so it seems to them) the interests of the Israeli state by such base propaganda than with serving the interests of truth and peace. This is not the forum to deal at length with such crass manipulation in the media, but the reading public at large should be aware of such efforts of Zionists and of their putatively Christian allies to discredit Siljander and to defame or vilify Islam.
The real crux (forgive the pun!) of the problem, as I, Siljander himself, and some others perceive it, is that there has been a disconnexion between what the Qur'an states and what Muslims themselves (as well as their adversaires) perceive to be its genuine meaning. Atop that, there are passages in the Qur'an that are ambiguous or obscure in meaning which Muslims have tended to interpret in a manner contrary to orthodox Christian teaching, but which such passages do not necessarily bear as a sole or correct exegesis thereof. These divergences between Islamic doctrine (as opposed to the message of the Qur'an itself) only serve to "widen the divide" between Christians and Muslims in ways that are not helpful. Abdul-Haqq and Siljander (only to consider two books at a level accessible to non-specialists) reconcile many Christian and Muslim differences in treating these issues.
Muslim "Fundamentalists" have misread the Qur'an as badly as many Christians have done so. Two such areas of blatant misinterpretation concern "Jihad" and the respective roles and norms of gender-specific dress, conduct, and social roles. Siljander deals especially well with the former, explaining what I myself was able to discern right from my first complete reading of the Holy Qur'an, that "Jihad" has little to do with the combative pugnaciousness and violence of "Fundamentalist" Muslim "warriors" (violently militant "jihadists") for the cause who resort to guerilla and even terrorist tactics and to the rhetoric of hate, vindictiveness, and coercion. Christians should not abet such ill-informed zealots by accepting, unquestioned, their vision of Islam and of what is appropriate to propagate it.
As for thorny matters of gender and sexuality, believers in Islam should attempt to understand and to apply what the Qur'an teaches about men's dress, modesty (not just for the ladies, according to the Islam's supremely definitive Sacred Text!), mutual deference, fidelity, and so forth. Even regarding homosexuality, the Qur'an (unlike too much of the Sunna, a.k.a. Hadith, and of the Shar'ia law), while severe in its comments and prescriptions, is less dire than the Old Testament's death-sentence edicts for some manifestion(s) of gay and lesbian sexual behaviour.
Given how inadequately Islamic tradition and jurisprudence concur with the spirit, and even with the letter, of the Qur'an, I can understand how one distinguished but still youthful Kurd, whom I have known in Diyarbakir and elsewhere, insisted that Islam must move to a "Qur'an only" basis of doctrine and precepts, casting the Hadith aside for determining what is normative in Islam, to reopen what Muslims term "ijtihad" (a phenomenon and concept which Siljander mentions explicitly only on p. 208, but which he implies throughout) to considerations entirely Qur'anic, apart from the sort of encrusted traditions that have distanced Islam unduly from Christianity! Sadly, too few Muslims share that brilliant young man's insights.
The greatest divide, the one of most significance, between Christianity and Islam, surely is the relative weight in each of Grace and of Law. Christianity, above all, is a religion of Grace, of the reconciliation of sinful man with the demands of an all-Holy God. While the Sovereign Grace of God is by no means a concept absent in Islam, the Qur'an emphasises Law and pious precepts to such an extent (and the Sunna often yet further) that it is hardly surprising that legalism and scrupulosity, obsession with the Shar'ia, dominate Islam. In Christianity, the sinner has the objective resort to God's provision, through Christ's propitiatory sacrifice of Infinite extent (because of His Divinity), of Grace to apply to cover a believer's sin, without in any way impugning God's perfect Holiness and His demand for complete perfection. God is both Holy and Compassionate in Islam, but, in the ultimate analysis, there is no adequate provision in Islam, according to its most Sacred Text, for reconciliation of man, inevitably a sinner, with God without loss of divine total (not merely relative) severity towards sin. This is the greatest divide between Islam and the Christian faith with which, unfortunately, Siljander does not deal adequately in what is otherwise so fine and probing a study of Islam.
In his eagerness to overcome barriers between Christians and Muslims and between their faiths (or shared faith from different angles, as Siljander views it), the sectarianly Protestant views of the book's author do not take into account some formidable hurdles for more traditionally Catholic Christians (especially for Roman and Uniate Catholics, Old Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, as well as some Anglican and Lutheran Christians and, partly, those of the non-Chalcedonian Oriental Churches). For us, Siljander's blithely stated dismissal of the pertinence and crucial importance for Catholic-minded Christians entailing such criteria as the Oecumenical Creeds, absolute Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy, the Visible Church (Christ's corporate Body on Earth, the Holy Ministry, etc.), the sacraments (lacking in Islam) as objectively efficacious and normative means of grace, the authority of Oecumenical Councils, and so forth, is unacceptable.
The stripped-down and individualistic Christianity of sectarianism (of the "Fundamentalists", the "Neo-Evangelicals", the "Charismatics" or "Pentecostalists", the "Cambellites", the "Adventists", the "Methodists", and of others) of Mark Siljaner and his pan-denominationalist co-religionists, and even of more decidedly "magisterial" Protestantism, can accomodate such unreconciled divides more readily than Catholic Christianity (broadly but not indiscriminatately defined) can tolerate the same with a good conscience. However, all Christians, if they ponder deeply and fully what Siljander, Abdul-Haqq, Bp. George K.A. Bell, and others like them have had to say and and to write about what Christianity and Islam share, should have a greater mutual understanding and respect than, sadly, they have tended to manifest in the past.
A number of fine Islamic scholars and activists currently active (e.g., Tariq Ramadan and Farid Esack) have militated for better understanding and "dialogue" of some kind between Muslims and Christians on questions of social issues, sexuality and gender, ideology, politics, tolerance, and other such issues, but Siljander and others who share his specifically religious motives deal with what is more fundamental, i.e. what the Qur'an and Bible say in common (to an amazingly large degree) and on what they differ (to surprisingly limited extent). For religious understanding, love of the souls of Muslims, and peace and harmony between the Christian and Muslim world and communities, books such as those by Siljander and Abdul-Haqq have an important role to play.
The Way Ahead December 11, 2008
For the last several years, my wife and I have hosted high school age Muslim exchange students from Europe and the Middle East. We do so intentionally. Our only 'agenda' is to learn from these students (we are middle-age baby boomers and empty nesters). We recognized years ago that the misunderstanding between the Christian west (primarily) and the nations and people of Islam were in fact, "deadly" and frankly, unnecessary.
Misunderstanding are opportunities for deliberate, intentional efforts to bridge the divide. Mark Sijlander's book is a fascinating journey that has taken him into contact with people, in strange places, in extraordinary circumstances, coupled with a persistent determination to be 'ordinary' and develop relationships that make an enduring contribution to establishing common ground among God's people.
Early in Sijlander's book, he discovers what has become perfectly clear to my wife and I:
"Something was profoundly wrong here, and I had the sense I just stumbled over what it was. It was the interpersonal relationships that were missing. We weren't engaging with these people person to person." (p.21). As my wife says in regard to our own experience with the blessing of living with Muslim exchange students, "we have seen the myths melt in our living room."
This book is certainly the chronicle of a spiritual sojourner as well. Sijlander evolves from a right wing fundamentalist to a follower of Jesus compelled by His love of Christ to take risks that only few would consider. However, simply by "trusting in the message we had to bring, and in the impulse to offer friendship, with no strings attached." (p.96).
The results of this approach to befriending others, sharing common theological beliefs, and honoring our respective faith persuasions is a testimony for the necessity to champion tolerance, understanding and religious pluralism --- in a world where the airwaves are dominated by the words and actions of relgious extremists of any and all flavors.
Yet, Sijlander's approach demands attention. As he writes, "These three words --- I am sorry --- are a foundation for beginning again, a small price to pay for restoring lost trust, and a necessary first step in moving forward constructively." (p.98).
I recommend this book. It is particularly important for Christians who do not understand the common ground we share theologically with Muslims regarding Jesus (Isa in the Qu'ran).
Thanks to Julie Burton at HarperOne and Mark Sijlander for this significant contribution. I will read this book again during the next 12 months and recommend it to others. This book maps out some superb coordinates for the way ahead.
Jesus - a model for diplomacy and friendship December 3, 2008
This is fascinating reading for all who are concerned about the world of Islam, Christianity, exploring ancient texts and how a bridge between people of faith is already occurring. It is an incredible journey of a politician, a man of faith facing his own questions, assumptions, prejudices regarding Islam and Christianity that have led him into the most unbelievable situations and circumstances.
A friend of mine in Washington recommended this book to me as a must read. I have to say that I do not think that I have read a more important book in the last few years that has serious implications for all peoples of faith, government and civil servants and diplomats. This book is about "a deadly misunderstanding dividing our world today that need not do so tomorrow." It is about common ground that we all share that will be key to our future of living together.
This is story of a passionate, Republican who's words almost got him killed. He tracks his time in Congress with what was happening in the world, particularly in the Islamic world and how this world and his world would more and more intertwine. He develops personal relationships with key Islamic and government leaders as well as Islamic friends which affects the way he looks at the world. It is also a book of humility as Congressman Siljander journeys back into his culture, his religious views, his upbringing and recognizes his worldview has been too narrow.
He starts looking at and studying the life of Jesus, particularly in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. He found some startling discoveries.
"A Deadly Misunderstanding" shows that if our diplomacy, our communication and our policies from the western world governments are not significantly altered, a minority of radical Islamist are going to increase in strength and the war on terror will continue to spread like wildfire. This book is the first book in a long time that comes up with some potential solutions regarding this bridge between people of faith that has given me hope. You will see diplomacy and things taking place behind the scenes that will be an encouragement to you.
I agree. This is a must-read book.
Living out the teachings of Isa November 29, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
By going to Muslim leaders, Mark utilizes his ex-Congressman's "edge" while actually doing what Jesus (Isa) taught. There is a way to relate to our "enemies" with love, forgiveness, blessing or "doing good", as well as prayer for and with them. Westerners, especially we Evangelicals, need to learn "bridge-building" instead of war and enmity. Mark Siljander shows us how, and it works! With a few Arab partners, I provide a bridge-building Arabic language web site which has attracted more than 300,000 visitors. 85% of them are Muslims who want to dialogue with Christians to build bridges of relationship. Don't make war; make bridges of relationship. Mark Siljander will inspire you and require you to rethink your view of the Muslim world. I live in that world, and I plead with you - do it now! They need to hear from a friend!
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