May 13, 2012

A Pakistani refugee who is a member of the Ahmadiyya, an Islamic minority sect, carries his daughter as he is released from a detention centre in Bangkok. PHOTO: REUTERS/ FILE

As a rejected son, how do you celebrate Mother’s Day? Who enjoys the breakfast tray? Who receives the flower bouquet?

That’s my story. But it’s not my biological mother who rejected me. It’s my motherland – Pakistan.

So on this Mother’s Day, let me have a heart to heart talk with you – my motherland. You don’t want to accept my love; that’s your choice. I have learned to deal with that. But please answer my questions, for I have lots of them.

Why did you abandon me? Why did you institutionalise hatred against me in schools, workplaces and houses of God? Why did you throw me at the heap of your putrid, discriminatory legal system? Why did you exhume my people and not even shed a tear? You were not my step-mother; then why did you treat me like Hansel and Gretel?

Only because I remained resolute to call myself an Ahmadi M _  _  _ _ _ ? See, you cannot even handle a hint of my identity. But isn’t it true motherland, that the father of our nation, Quaid-e-Azam, promised all children of Pakistan equal status and equal rights when the nation was born?

As for me, despite the fact that I moved to a foreign land, it was hard to move on. For days, I couldn’t eat or sleep well. For months, I worried about your weather. For years, I dreamed of your streets. And for over a decade, I pulled all nighters to watch your cricket matches, frantically praying for your success. I argued with my Indian friends – yes, there is nothing wrong with having Indian friends – how Pak-pride was not a fallacy.

There was an element of fallacy though, I now realise. Like other nations, you also served us the soup of patriotism, mixed with indoctrination. How you indoctrinated the nation to forget about the Munir commission report of 1953, how the textbooks programmed us to believe that we won the 1965 war, and how generations were brain washed in believing that a National Assembly has the right to copyright Islam. Just a few weeks ago, I gagged on that soup when I claimed that we won the 1965 war. After reviewing history books, encyclopedias, and YouTube clips, I threw up the contaminated ingredients of the soup. We did not win the 1965 war. The facts were clear.

But who cares about facts in Pakistan these days? Facts are dry. Propaganda is juicy. It is juicy to blame everything on a conspiracy theory. Go ahead. Blame me for being an “agent of the west who got an American visa on a plate.” Never mind the two decades of my hard work at school. Never mind the more than two million Pakistani Ahmadi residents, with no prospects of getting a visa, who are still facing daily rejection at your hands.

Motherland – I understand. You don’t appreciate this conversation. You are hurting too. So here is an analgesic; I still remember you. The Rockies remind me of Swat and the meat balls taste nothing like the koftas (remember, the secret nickname of my high school chemistry teacher was also kofta!) The Main Street brings flashbacks of Lahore’s Mall road and Jersey shore is not the same as Clifton.

You are 65-years-old motherland and I recognise you need me. You need the millions of Pakistanis who were shunned to distant shores, many because of religious differences. We could be helping your systems, building your institutions, treating your patients. And we would love to.

But your preferences are weird motherland. You release convicted terrorists and arrest Ahmadi students. You embrace politicians with fake degrees and reject scholars with Nobel Prizes. You glorify the charlatans but nullify the bona fide.

Don’t worry about me; my adopted mother has treated me well. I don’t fear discriminatory laws. I don’t fear mob attacks. I don’t fear a National Assembly telling me how to define my faith.

Vindicate yourself motherland. Take some bold decisions. Come out of isolation. Instead of converting to Mullah’s radicalism, revert to Quaid’s Pakistan. Espouse true Islam by cherishing the values of equality and absolute justice for all. Don’t allow politicians to use religion as a wedge issue. Come to the 21^st century as a pluralist country committed to standing shoulder to shoulder with the modern world.

Whenever that happens, you will find me holding a breakfast tray and a flower bouquet. Whenever that happens, I will say, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

Read more by Faheem here, or follow him on Twitter @FaheemYounus

He was trying to find his way.

While driving to the mosque for my Friday prayers, I saw him in my back view mirror, fidgeting with his GPS on a hot summer day. Driving up on Park Heights in Baltimore with a car full of children, this visibly Jewish man with a long wavy beard and thick black glasses was clad in a black suit. Say whatever you want, but this much was obvious: He had made some tough choices to please his G-d.

So why would your or my God not reward him for his commitment? What if this man was an organ donor? A volunteer firefighter? A caring neighbor? An honest trader? How could anyone declare with certainty that this man cannot go to heaven?

I don’t know how, but people say this all the time: “He cannot go to heaven because he does not believe in [insert your Prophet or God's name here].” According to a 2008 Pew survey, one in five Christians in America believe that non-Christian faiths cannot lead to salvation. That number soared to 60 percent for white evangelical Protestants who attend church once a weak.

Frankly, I would have checked out of my faith, Islam, if it took such a position. Thank God (or Allah) that it doesn’t.

Islam recognizes that the Jewish man mentioned above, who was probably lost and finding his way, is not alone; we are all trying to find “the way” in our own way. So it guards humans from the temptation of declaring who goes to heaven and who doesn’t by proclaiming that “grace is in the hands of Allah. He gives it to whomsoever He pleases” (57:30).

Then why do people from almost every major religious tradition, including Islam, insist on some version of “I am the way and no one comes to God but through me”? They love to quote those parts of their Scriptures without a broader context. You know why? Because it’s leverage — it’s self serving and it feels good. Did I tell you that a majority of such people are typically born into the same faith that they sell as “the way”?

On the contrary, Islam’s holy Quran provides not one, but many ways to the heaven (29:69). Yes, some are straight — like belief (3:85) and good deeds (5:10) — while others are convoluted. It’s like going to New York City. You could take the bridge, tunnel, ferry or simply fly into the Big Apple.

God’s grace though, truly leads the way to salvation. “He forgives whom He pleases and punishes whom He pleases (5:19)” to me, assures that no matter which way you take, you won’t hit traffic, accidents or bad weather.

To the Jewish man mentioned above, some Muslims may say: No way! How can a Jew or a Christian ever go to heaven? To them I present this from Quran: “Surely, the Believers, and the Jews, and the Christians and the Sabians — whichever party believes in God and the Last Day and does good deeds — shall have their reward with their Lord, and no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve (2:63).”

How can the Quran charge Jews and Christians of the notion of an exclusive heaven and then turn around to claim the same?

This is not a fringe interpretation, applicable to Jews and Christians only. Prophet Muhammad (sa) paved the way to salvation — ultimately for all humans — in a famous narration from the book of Muslim, “A man said: By God, God will not forgive so-and-so. At this, God said: Who is he who swears by Me that I will not forgive so-and-so? Verily, I have forgiven so-and-so and have nullified your good deeds.”

Islam neither believes in an eternal hell nor in an exclusive heaven.

After the next traffic light, the Jewish guy driving behind me made a left turn. I came to the mosque, praying that may God guide him to the shortest, straightest, safest way to his destination.

Faheem Younus is an adjunct faculty member for religion/history at the Community Colleges of Baltimore County and a clinical associate professor at the University of Maryland. He can be reached at Faheem.Younus@Ahmadiyya.us

Follow Dr. Faheem Younus on Twitter: www.twitter.com/FaheemYounus

Is the Trayvon Martin’s case pitting the Church against the State?

It seems so. On April 11, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a nationwide grassroots campaign titled “Second Chance to Shoot First” aiming to repeal the stand your ground laws. In a statement released by the Mayor’s office he said, “It’s now clear: the NRA’s ‘shoot first’ laws that have passed in 25 states have undermined the integrity of the justice system, and done serious harm to public safety.”

The church, particularly the white church, didn’t launch any campaigns.

What could the church say? Half a century of experience has shown: racially motivated crimes — regardless of whether Trayvon’s alleged murder was one or not — cannot be eradicated by legislature alone. Think about it. Why a nation with the Bill of Rights, 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, Civil Rights Act, anti-Discrimination Act, Affirmative Action, anti-hate laws and a whole host of anti-discrimination policies would continue to struggle with race relations? Simple. A prejudicial belief is a prerequisite for a prejudicial practice. The state dictates practice; the church shapes belief.

That’s why the real solution lies not with the state, but the Church. The white church, that is. When the church insists upon the belief that all human races come from Noah, his three sons and his wives, when Sunday schools instill the belief that blacks were the descendants of Ham who was cursed by his father, when the pulpit fails to reject the doctrine of “the curse of Ham,” then we need a different campaign.

In addition to “Second Chance on Shoot First,” my America yearns for a white pastor to launch a “Church’s Chance to Uproot Curse” campaign.

Even the data calls for such a campaign. The multiracial congregation project shows that Christian leaders are failing to gather racial hues to the local pews. More than 92 percent of American congregations are not multiracial (where the term “multiracial” is defined as a congregation having no more than 80 percent of any one racial group) and churches in some areas are 20 times more segregated than the nearby public schools.

Wait! Wasn’t it half a century ago when Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, “The most segregated hour of Christian America is 11 o’clock on Sunday morning?” Talk to your black friends. They still feel the curse.

While some, like Rev. Alan Brumback of the Central Baptist Church in the town where Trayvon was shot, have stood by the African American communities at the time of this tragedy, none of the white pastors have made race relations a calling. Just scan through Time Magazine‘s list of 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America — 24 of whom are white, by the way — and you see that they tacitly agree to “work” on the race issues but fail to make it their top agenda.

Rick Warren of Saddleback, Calif., admitted in a recent ABC interview that, “I think one of the most prevalent sins around the world is racism” and pledged to “work for racial equality.” Whatever that means. Franklin Graham agreed to work with the NAACP but his spokesperson said “there’s no game plan for how he plans to work with the effort.” And the most influential Joel Osteen of the Lakewood Church in Texas, who famously said, “You may live or work around a bunch of weeds, but don’t let that stop you from blooming” has not made any commitments to even work on this issue.

Is my hope to witness a “Church’s Chance to Uproot Curse” campaign completely dashed?

Rest assured, despite all the efforts to repeal stand your ground law, racial prejudice will stand its ground in America unless the white church sees Trayvon’s tragic death as their chance — not a challenge. A chance to show that Acts 17:24, 26 — “God … made every nation of men to live all over the earth…” — can accomplish more than the Civil Rights Act when it comes to the belief that all human beings have a common origin. A chance to show that the genesis of interracial hatred can be neutralized by sincerely preaching Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female.” A chance to adopt the slogan; “There is no favoritism with God” (Romans 2:11).

Forget about the “most influentials.” I will go to my white friends and pastors in the area and urge them to take up race relations as their calling. Let’s not waste the “Church’s Chance to Uproot Curse.”

Dr. Faheem Younus is an adjunct faculty for religion and history at the community colleges of Baltimore County. He blogs at www.muslimerican.com.

Follow Dr. Faheem Younus on Twitter: www.twitter.com/FaheemYounus

The National Database and Registration Authority’s (NADRA) refusal to change MPA Rana Mahmood’s religion from “Islam” to “Christianity” has many boxed in.

A plethora of questions have arisen. Is this a human rights violation? Will Mahmood be considered an apostate if his records were to reflect that he left Islam? How can you change someone’s faith with a stroke of a pen?

But no one is talking about the real question: Why do we have a “religion box” on our legal documents anyway?

Say that and you essentially open Pandora’s Box. After all, in a 97% Muslim majority country, what good can come out of knowing someone’s religion? What are we really trying to achieve except demonising, harassing, and isolating the 3% of Pakistan’s Hindu, Ahmadi, Christian and other minorities who have made equal if not more sacrifices for the creation and preservation of Pakistan?

When Pakistanis travelled internationally in the 1960s, religion was not mentioned anywhere on their passport. Things were different. We elected our first president, won a war against India and our average annual GDP growth rate was 6.8% – the highest for any decade in the history of Pakistan. Suffice it to say, we were free thinking people who refused to be boxed in.

Then came Ziaul Haq in the 1980s, pitting one Pakistani against another, by creating a “religion box” on the national passport. And do you know what many didn’t know? This box was to devour the whole society, not just the travelling class. So in the year 2000, the box swelled up to encroach on the Computerised National ID Cards (CNIC).

For the present generation of Pakistanis – the one going to universities and applying for jobs – the “religion box” is becoming almost ubiquitous. Whether they are applying for admission in the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore or looking for a job in reputable companies like Engro or Dawood Hercules, they must face it.

Thanks to the “religion box” in the 21^st century, folks like Rana Mahmood will go through unnecessary suffering. A Pakistani Muslim would grudgingly suck up to his Christian servant to buy alcohol, Engro would conveniently bypass a Hindu for a promotion, University of Engineering and Technology would covertly impede Christians from their hallowed grounds, mullahs would blithely prevent Ahmadis from performing Hajj, and 97% of the nation would deliriously sign a declaration that they have no clue about.

Voila: what a fully boxed in country!

The supporters of the “religion box” don’t do as big a disservice to Hindus, Ahmadis, Christians, (or any Muslim sect who might be next on the list to be declared non-Muslim) as they do to Islam itself. This pettiness is an affront to a faith rooted in universality.

And to those who are “proud” of the “religion box” I can only wish some international exposure. Don’t go to Europe and America for a lesson. Just look at the passports, national ID cards and application forms in the most populated Muslim countries – Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Iran, and Turkey – and you won’t find the “religion box” anywhere.  Heck, even Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates don’t see a need for it. See how lonely your pride is?

Rana Mahmood’s case did not happen in a vacuum; it is a consequence of a horrible policy. A policy that violates basic human rights, discriminates between equal citizens, tramples over simple logic, and isolates Pakistan internationally.

Changing Mr Mahmood’s faith on his CNIC is like moving him from one box to another.

Instead let him freely embrace his faith and get rid of this box of discrimination from every document and every application form in Pakistan.

This will take someone to think outside the box.

“The white man is the devil.”

This is what Malcolm X used to say.

“I shall never rest until I have undone the harm I did.”

This is what Malcolm X came to believe.

What changed such a divisive and hate-filled man into someone who fought for racial harmony?

The Hajj.

After performing the annual Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj, Malcolm X wrote in 1964, “There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the non-white.”

Meanwhile in Florida, half a century after Malcolm’s passing, the death of a 17-year-old unarmed African American, Trayvon Martin, at the hands of a half-white man makes one wonder: Where is the Christian Hajj?

For a change, please resist the temptation to reject the whole argument since it’s coming from a Muslim. And let’s not make a big deal out of the fact that the killer (George Zimmerman), a catholic altar boy, was half-white. Instead focus on the next Trayvon Martin. We all know he exists. We all know he is not a criminal. We all know he will be shot by a white man. So do we have a platform where Christians from all races can gather to change deadly stereotypes?

Far from it.

Forget about a universal gathering; the multiracial congregation project shows that Christians are failing to even bring all racial hues to the local pews. More than 92 percent of American congregations are not multiracial (where the term “multiracial” is defined as a congregation having no more than 80 percent of any one racial group.) Churches in some areas are 20 times more segregated than the nearby public schools. Things haven’t changed much from half a century ago, when Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted, “The most segregated hour of Christian America is 11 o’clock on Sunday morning.”

So it’s fair to ask: How come Muslims — despite their problems — have recognized man as man, but Christians, who believe in a man embodying the turning of the cheek, could not protect so many Trayvons?

The conclusion is inescapable: the white church — not the state — has failed to instill true love for the black race by answering fundamental biblical questions. Questions like, how could all human races come from Noah, his three sons and his wives? Are black people the result of a curse on Ham? Does the Scripture prohibit interracial marriage?

That apathy is so palpable after Trayvon Martin’s death as much of the outcry is emanating from black America. In Florida, students from 19 predominantly black high schools demonstrated to demand justice. Across the nation, only black church leaders are calling for Zimmerman’s arrest. Even the White House, according to an official Twitter feed, invited only black faith leaders to learn more about government services.

There are reasons for it. Starting from Billy Graham’s mercurial positions on race relations to the interracial lethargy of the Christian Telegraph‘s “Ten Most Influential Christian Leaders,” none has attempted to take on race relations as a calling. Despite their international clout, none of white Christian leaders have attempted to engineer a “Christian Hajj.”

The Muslim Hajj, while commanded by God, truly became a symbol of unity and brotherhood by the call of Prophet Muhammad, who in 630 C.E. declared in front of a multiracial gathering of 100,000 Muslims, “a white man has no superiority over a black man nor a black has any superiority over a white except by piety and good action.”

Trayvon’s death is an opportunity for white church leaders to make it their calling, as it has been done before. White Quakers, white Methodists, white Presbyterians and white Catholics have all argued that Christianity and slavery were incompatible. Abolition would carry over into the Civil Rights Era, with millions of white Christian-Americans rejecting any notion of racial superiority. And if it weren’t for millions upon millions of white voters in 2008, we would not be saying “President Barack Obama.”

A similar effort by the white churches is needed this time. Neither repealing the “stand your ground” law nor appealing to commemorate “hoodie days” will solve the problem.

We all know a Zimmerman exists in the future. We all know he is white, prejudiced and armed. As a first step, that future Zimmerman must experience interracial harmony at his church or he will shoot, subconsciously believing the black man is the devil.

Dr. Faheem Younus is an adjunct faculty member for religion and history at the Community Colleges of Baltimore County and a clinical associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He can be reached at Faheem.Younus@Ahmadiyya.us

Follow Dr. Faheem Younus on Twitter: www.twitter.com/FaheemYounus

I thought the question was so absurd to begin with, that it would go away on its own.

I was wrong.

Four years later, that absurd question, “Do you think Barack Obama is a Muslim?” keeps nagging the American psyche in national and regional polls – despite ample data to the contrary. In 2009, a Pew Research Center poll showed that one in ten Americans believed President Obama was a Muslim; the number jumped to one in five by 2010. So when last week, one in two Republican voters in the states of Mississippi and Alabama reaffirmed the same phobia, I had to say something.

Enough!
US President Barack Obama waves while speaking during “Lawyers For Obama” luncheon and campaign event at the Palmer House Hilton on March 16, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI – AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Data isn’t enough to convince these pollsters, it seems. So here are my top five reasons to stop painting the president as an undercover Muslim by asking this question:

1. The president has answered the question, repeatedly.

They alleged that his father was a Muslim; he denied, saying his father was an atheist. They alleged that he attended a Muslim school in Jakarta for two years; he provided evidence of also attending a Catholic school for the same duration. They alleged his liking for the sound ofAzan – the Muslim call to prayer; he presented his 20-years long association with the United Church of Christ. They alleged he was a Muslim by birth; he responded that he was “a Christian by choice.”

2. If a bunch of loose correlations are enough to call Mr. Obama a Muslim, then you might as well declare Thomas Jefferson to be a Muslim too!

Jefferson’s view of God, Jesus, and biblical miracles is far more aligned with the Muslim understanding than the Christian doctrine. Like Muslims, Jefferson believed in a Creator whom he invoked in his writings. Like Muslims, Jefferson believed Jesus to be a reformer and not the son of God. Like Muslims, he believed that Jesus never even claimed to be the son of God. Like Muslims, he did not believe in the biblical miracles of Jesus literally walking on water or resurrecting to the skies. And like Muslims he owned a personal copy of the Koran. Who knows? He may have used it to incorporate the principles of equality (4:125), life (5:33), liberty (10:100) and pursuit of happiness (62:11) in the Declaration of Independence.

Isn’t it ironic that President Obama, a man who has repeatedly declared his commitment to Christianity faces unending questions about his faith, but Jefferson, a man who repeatedly denounced core Christian beliefs, stands tall and revered in a monument? Anyway, back to number 3.

3. The question is a dirty trick; a trick that does not work.

The demise of Donald Trump’s presidential bid followed by the political decline of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry – all guilty of demonizing Muslims –are a testament that voters are not seduced by this “every-Muslim-is- an-enemy” mentality. And don’t be fooled by the recent success of Rick Santorum. His campaign will soon end up right next to Newt Gingrich’s: on life support.

4. The question is an insult, not to the president or the Muslim faith, but to our Constitution.

A document that allows any American born citizen over the age of 35 to run for the office of the president, regardless of his or her religion, a document that codifies the presidential Oath to office to make it faith-neutral, “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States…” is too sacred to be trivialized by such bigoted questions.

5. We know the right question to ask.

Surprisingly the right question did not come from the Muslims, or the Democrats, or atheists but from the core of Republican party itself: Colin Powell. During a 2008 “Meet the Press” interview, Powell pushed back: Is there something wrong with a seven year old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president (one day)?

I neither plan to invite President Obama to a Friday prayer service nor wish to posthumously convert Thomas Jefferson to Islam. I just would like the pollsters to ask the right question in the future polls: Is there something wrong with a Muslim running for the president of United States?

Many seven-year-old Muslim Americans are waiting for the answer.

Dr. Faheem Younus is an adjunct faculty for religion and history at the community colleges of Baltimore County. He blogs atwww.muslimerican.com.

By Faheem Younus  |  09:47 PM ET, 03/18/2012

Do Ahmadis only have the right to remain silent? PHOTO: FAHEEM YOUNUS

In 1966, nearly 180 million people in the US received Miranda rights – the right to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination.

Half a century later, a religious community in Pakistan, another country of nearly 180 million people, is facing a rather caustic version of the Miranda rights. They don’t have the right, but a duty, to remain silent.

The religious group is the Ahmadiyya community.

Two recent events frame the issue aptly. First, on January 29, 2012, clerics organized an anti-Ahmadiyya rally in Rawalpindi, attended by 5,000 madrassah students, chanting threatening anti-Ahmadiyya slogans and demanding to take over a 17-year-old Ahmadiyya ‘place of worship’. Then on February 11, 2012, approximately 100 lawyers, from the Lahore Bar Association, rallied to ban Shezan drinks on court premises.

So while the clerics have the right to incite violence against Ahmadis, by publicly calling them ‘worthy of death’ and madrassah students have the right to wall chalk phrases like, ‘hang them all’, schools have the right to expel Ahmadi students and lawyers have the right to ban Shezan - Ahmadis, on the other hand, have the right to remain silent!

Is it not true that the right to remain silent assumes a right to free speech in the first place? Something the Ahmadis have been long deprived of?

Unlike the Miranda rights, this ‘right’ to silence is by definition, self-incriminating. Try to voice your opinion as an Ahmadi and you may land in jail under section 295-B/C of Pakistan’s penal code offers pending a three year imprisonment simply for exercising your right to free speech. Try voicing dissent, and you may end up in a graveyard. Even after death, the mullah menace has the right to white wash Quranic verses like ‘God is gracious, ever merciful’ from an Ahmadi’s tombstones.

Consequently, hundreds and thousands of Pakistani Ahmadis, including myself, have tearfully migrated to other countries, but not without sustaining one final jab; the passport application.  It requires 97% of Pakistan’s Muslim population to complete a declaration stating that not only do they consider all Ahmadis as ‘non-Muslims’ but they also declare the founder of Ahmadiyya Community to be an ‘impostor’. While I have never met a Pakistani Muslim who refused to sign this absurd declaration, Ahmadis do scratch it out. Their passports are thus stamped with the word ‘Ahmadi’ and the plight of their right to remain silent continues.

For decades, the Ahmadi perspective was systematically hushed under the pretense of ‘sensitivity’. But organizations like Amnesty International are now calling it, ‘a real test of the authorities’. And 0nline newspapers and opinion pieces by courageous Pakistanis have started challenging the suffocating status quo.

For the Pakistani government, there is a way to be good again. Rein in the mullah, stop defining who is and who is not Muslim, and subject the medieval anti-Ahmadiyya laws to a modern paper shredder. Give Ahmadis the right to free speech before offering them the right to remain silent.

Finally, the Ahmadiyya diaspora is choosing to expose this oppression by speaking up. The mullahs and their proxy politicians will have to deal with the bitter truth.

Maybe a glass of Shezan could have helped to sweeten the bitterness. But then I guess that’s just too Ahmadi.

The plot went like this: The clerics called for candidates with “true” Muslim values, the masses demanded a “Muslim candidate for a Muslim state,” the leaders proved their “Muslimness” by quoting scripture and calling others lesser Muslims, and the candidate who was able to appease the clergy privately and please the masses publicly held on to power. The never-ending horror in the name of religion is what followed in Pakistan.

A somewhat similar fusion of church and candidate is apparent in this Republican primary season, where nearly every Republican candidate — except Ron Paul, who would not and Mitt Romney, who could not — has been a rabble-rouser, playing the religion card to rally the conservative Christian base.

Since I have seen a secular country morphing into a theocracy at the hands of a religious fanatic, trust me when I tell you: The aggressive display of theology in our political discourse by the Republican Party in general and Rick Santorum in particular is chipping away at the Jeffersonian wall of separation between church and state.

Realize, though, that I do want to hear what my candidates believe in — what shapes them, what riles them, what motivates them. But that is different than saying, “At the end of the day, I’d rather have a president who worships the same God as I do.” (A voter in South Carolina actually said that to a New York Times reporter.)

While Article Six of the United States Constitution provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any US Office or public Trust,” such voter preferences become a de facto religious test for the candidate — a test that he or she must pass.

Rick Santorum has no plans to fail that test. Back in 2002, in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter, he blamed President John F. Kennedyfor making a distinction between private religious convictions and publicly held positions. More recently, he is winning over voters in the Rust Belt by claiming that President Barack Obama‘s agenda is “not a theology based on the Bible,” but “a different theology.”

As Mr. Santorum’s rise to the top of the GOP field demonstrates, this “I-am-the-real-religious-candidate” strategy works. It worked for Zia-ul-Haq when he won the 1984 referendum by asking Pakistanis, “Do you wish Pakistan to be an Islamic state?” And it seems to be working for Mr. Santorum as he is essentially asking GOP primary voters, “Do you wish America to be a Christian state?”

In Michigan, an upcoming battleground that happens to be Mitt Romney’s home state, evangelical Christian voters prefer Mr. Santorum over Mr. Romney by 51 percent to 24 percent, while Protestants in general favor Mr. Santorum by 47 percent to Mr. Romney’s 30 percent, according to a poll released in Detroit Free Press last week.

To argue that candidates like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain lost despite their public displays of Christianity, and therefore we need not worry about Mr. Santorum, would be a fatal error of judgment. It’s not only about winning; it’s also about changing the norms of political discourse between voters and candidates. Over the past 50 years, Pakistan’s religious parties have never won more than 12 percent of the vote. But playing the religion card publicly has conditioned the politicians to declare their “Muslimness” and conditioned the masses to the point that a political rally now sounds like a mosque sermon.

So let’s demand a separation between church and candidate. Mr. Santorum, don’t talk about who belongs to which “stripe of Christianity”; embrace all the stripes, colors and stars. Don’t hint about who is the real Christian candidate; instead, be the real American candidate.

For those who see nothing wrong with this public amalgamation of church and candidate, please consider viewing the horrors of the pseudo-Islamization of Pakistan — the once secular and currently sixth-most-populous country in the world. Chances are, you would say no to a sequel.

Faheem Younus is adjunct faculty for religion at the Community College of Baltimore County. His email is faheem.younus@gmail.com.

People do crazy things for religion.

Take for example hundreds of families belonging to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Chantilly, VA, trying to self-fund a mosque for the past decade. In an extremely friendly lending environment, the women from these families sold $500 dresses, their husbands made $5 kabob rolls, and their children cooked $.50 brownies to raise funds. And the Community’s executives, instead of lobbying governments for petrodollars, dug into their checkbooks to donate — urging others to reciprocate.

Photo credit: Patch.com / Mary C. Stachyra

Well, on the eve of Jan. 29th, someone went crazy at this under-construction mosque in Chantilly VA: it was vandalized. All the custom glass windows on thefirst floor were shattered, leaving behind rocks, beer cans and a financial damage of $60,000.

There is a bright line distinction, though, between both crazy acts: one is driven by knowledge and love, while the other by ignorance at best, and hatred at worse.

This is not the first time such ignorance (or hatred) was directed at a mosque. Google the term “mosque vandalized” and you find 244,000 results. Just within 10 days of bin Laden’s death, three mosques were vandalized in New York, Maine, and Portland; so one more in Virginia is hardly ground breaking news.

What is news is the fact that we still know so little about these Muslims. Who are they? Why do they want to come to “my” community?

As an Ahmadi Muslim, allow me to tell you who we are.

Since 1924, members of the oldest Muslim organization in America have advocated loyalty to one’s country of residence. Instead of religious extremism, they are focused on education — hailing the first Muslim Nobel Laureate (in Physics) in 1979. Instead of male chauvinism, Ahmadi Muslim fathers empower their daughters, helping them to win Rhodes scholarships. And instead of confused pessimism, this community commemorated the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by raising more than 10,000 units of blood in collaboration with the American Red Cross. Pretty crazy, right? Or call it “Psychicemotus,” if you want to use a fancy word from the Grammy award winning musician Yusuf Latif ‘s album, also a respected member of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA.

On the topic of vandalism though, a thought may cross someone’s mind about the brutal church burnings and atrocities committed against minorities in Muslim countries. It’s shameful. It’s contrary to what Islam teaches, “Allah did not repel some men by means of others, there would surely have been pulled down cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques, wherein the name of Allah is oft commemorated (22:41). Therefore, the Ahmadiyya Muslim community has publicly denounced such horrific acts.

I wonder how a mutual understanding of each others’ belief would impact the minds of those who vandalize a house of God; no matter whether we call it a church, synagogue, temple, or mosque.

But all is not lost in this battle against a pocket of ignorance. As the word spread, not only that other Muslims reached out to help but local churches also extended notes of sympathy, synagogues expressed support, and non-Muslim friends asked where to send a check. Look at the largest mosque in Northern Europe and one of the largest mosques in North America , both self-funded and belonging to the worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, and one thing is clear: We seek your prayers, not payers, to take this peaceful mission forward.

The perpetrators left the crime scene in dark, but it’s heartening to see our nation and its constitution standing by our side in broad daylight. Stones can shatter a glass window but they cannot touch our iron resolve.

We are coming to Chantilly, VA to join hands with anyone interested in making this world a better place. Whether that is by feeding the hungry, providing free medical care to the indigent, cleaning a highway, or raising a good child. We are coming to Chantilly, VA because it is our community too.

Steve Jobs famously said, “We’re here to put a dent in the universe.” A universe plagued by hunger, disease, poverty — and so much tumult. Throwing rocks at a mosque or whining about them, only puts adent on our nation’s face. We are all better than that.

Let’s join hands as neighbors and pledge to go crazy — good crazy — and make that dent in the universe.

Follow Dr. Faheem Younus on Twitter: www.twitter.com/FaheemYounus

Get this. After Denver Broncos won against the Pittsburgh Steelers on January 8th, one such friend called me, frantic. He believed that Tebow’s evolution into this charismatic evangelical Quarterback posed a threat for Muslim Americans like his teenage son. Poor Tebow had no idea that his innocent 80-yard touchdown pass, against the Pittsburgh Steelers, had triggered such a panic.

The story is multilayered though. My friend’s son was drifting away from Islam for a while. Partly because of some tough questions. Questions like why his Imam at the mosque did not practice what he preached, and why his father degraded women, and why the family elders refused to even acknowledge issues surrounding homosexuality and… you get the point, right? His father sent him to the Imam for answers who exercised, shall we say, unnecessary roughness. So the boy immersed himself in beer, football and his Christian friends.

Now imagine the options for this Muslim teenager. On one side was dogma, while the other side had football, friends, booze, and a touchdown pass that people were calling, divine. Ouch!

Even if the Imam was comfy cozy, his clout was no match to the status of a rookie whose name is now practically a verb. Who knew if even a 130 people subscribed to the Imam’s Facebook page (that is, if he had one) in comparison to Tebow’s 1.3 million fans. We knew that 23,000 people followed the first ever Muslim congressman Keith Ellison on Twitter in comparison to Tebow’s 900,000 plus followers. And while neither the Congressman nor the Imam had the privilege to be showcased by a network documentary, Tebow had been the subject of one by ESPN titled, “The Chosen One.”

Yikes! See how a sweet young man, who committed the sin of openly committing to God, became a threat for an entire group of people?

This limited pitched battle is a small flick compared to the proselytizing war between evangelical Christianity and Islam — worldwide. With both sides taking pride in preaching the message, each new territory influenced is typified as a first down; and each convert, a field goal. Even though the score, worldwide, stands at 2.2 billion to 1.8 billion in the favor of Christianity, Islam is rapidly closing the gap in what appears to be the fourth quarter of human civilization.

In such a tight race for religious market share, brand Tebow could be a cause for concern.

My friend had such concerns. So he pleaded me to: “Please talk to my son and confirm that he does not look at Tebow’s performance as ‘miraculous,’ that he does not believe God is micromanaging the outcomes of the 2011 Football season, that he is not going to convert to Christianity.”

“People don’t convert because of football games” I retorted since a 2009 report by the Pew Forum on religion and Public Life stated that more than one-quarter of American adults (28 percent) leave the faith in which they are raised in favor of another religion — or no religion at all. And their reasons to leave were complex. Religious dogma, conflict between religion and science, and a desire to intermarry between religions were all factors, in addition to others, leading to conversions. Catholics and Protestants were, in fact, losing large numbers to the “unaffiliated” category — the fastest growing group — since three people move into it for every person moving out.

If data means anything, then Brand Tebow is not the threat to my friends’ son; his own flawed understanding of Islam is. And he is not likely to lose his “market share” to Evangelical Christianity; he is likely to lose it to atheism and agnosticism.

So as promised, two days before the game between Broncos and Patriots, I asked my friend’s son: Do you think Tebow’s evolution into this phenomenal champion for Christianity has the potential to affect a Muslim mind like yours?

“Tebow’s evolution…” he said with a wicked smile and then added, “No way. Tebow should first reconcile the concept of ‘evolution’ with his Christianity.”

Then came Tebow’s crushing defeat; at the hands of New England Patriots.

My friend was relieved — more by Tebow’s defeat as compared to his son’s response.

But the reality is: Brand Tebow is here to stay; just like his son’s tough questions for Islam and Christianity.