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Apologia Report 14:13
April 2, 2009
Subject: Islam: "Most racially diverse religious group in the US"
In this issue:
APOLOGETICS - philosopher Alvin Plantinga's rise to prominence
ISLAM - America's youngest, most racially diverse religious community
+ when NOT to agree with Osama Bin Laden
ORIGINS - who's who among scientists identifying themselves as Christian
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APOLOGETICS
Keith A Mascord's book, Alvin Plantinga and Christian Apologetics [4], is appreciated by reviewer Daniel B. Gallagher "due to its clear presentation and candid critique. [T]he book will readily find a niche in the expanding body of literature dedicated to one of the most important living Christian apologists." Further, "Mascord explains that Plantinga, more an epistemologist than an apologist, has preferred negative apologetics (arguments against those who challenge belief) to positive apologetics (arguments aimed at persuading others to believe)." Gallagher makes it evident that this book is quite technical. For example, Mascord traces how Plantinga developed his impressive philosophical skills and explores issues such as whether or not Plantinga is truly Augustinian in his philosophical orientation. (If that sort of thing is beyond you, be encouraged, I don't think I could do a good job of explaining why someone is "more an epistemologist than an apologist" either! - RP) Mascord’s book offers a welcome opportunity to gain insights about one of the Christian faith's contemporary champions. Theological Studies, 70:1 - 2009, p240.
(For those who wish to chase the academic connections, Plantinga is associated with Reformed Epistemology along with Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Alston. Kenneth Boa and Robert Bowman classify this under Reformed Apologetics along with presuppositionalism in Faith Has Its Reasons [5]. And, for a look at something written by Plantinga, see Warranted Christian Belief [6]. - RV)
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ISLAM
"US Muslims: young, diverse, striving" by Jane Lampman -- "A 'national portrait' of Muslim Americans ... by Gallup, depicts the youngest and most racially diverse religious community in the country....
"Muslim Americans, for instance, are among the most highly educated religious groups in the US, second to Jews. ...
"'The poll shows that the past eight years have taken their toll on Muslim Americans, particularly youths,' says Dalia Mogahed, executive director of Gallup's Center for Muslim Studies.
The Muslim community includes by far the highest proportion of young adults (18 to 29 years), with 36 percent in that category, compared with 9 percent of Protestants, 17 percent of Catholics, 23 percent of Mormons, 16 percent of Jews, and 18 percent of the US population.
Muslim youths generally speak in positive terms about their lives, expressing satisfaction with their jobs and standards of living. Yet they are the least likely to consider themselves to be 'thriving,' with 40 percent agreeing, compared with 69 percent of young Jews and 61 percent of Protestant youths. Also, a bare majority of young Muslims say they are registered to vote, far lower than others of their age.
"Overall, 64 percent of Muslims are registered, compared with 81 percent of the general population. Some of the lag in political participation relates to immigrant families, says Amaney Jamal, a Muslim-American who teaches politics at Princeton University in New Jersey. 'It takes some political socialization before they are fully ready to participate.' ...
"In the political realm, US Muslims are spread more evenly across the spectrum than are other religious groups. Thirty-eight percent describe themselves as moderate, with 29 percent saying they are liberal and 25 percent conservative.
"In fact, although Muslims have a socially conservative image, they are the most likely group after Jewish-Americans to call themselves liberal. Seventy-nine percent voted for Barack Obama, the highest percentage of any religious group. ...
"Voices of Muslim Americans from various walks of life appear in the report, and a predominant theme is civic involvement. ...
"At the same time, Muslims are struggling for a greater sense of unity within their own community. Gallup finds they are by far the most racially diverse religious group in the US: thirty-five percent identify as African-American, 28 percent as white, 18 percent as Asian, and 1 percent as Hispanic. Other religious groups surveyed are from 76 percent to 93 percent 'white.'" Christian Science Monitor, Mar 3 '09, <tinyurl.com/cd3ylg>
"Learning to Live With Radical Islam" by Fareed Zakaria -- the author wants us to "understand the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism." Westerners tend to think that "all these Islamists advocate global jihad, host terrorists or launch operations against the outside world" [but] in fact, most do not." And, "no Afghan Taliban has participated at any significant level in a global terrorist attack over the past 10 years—including 9/11. ... [A]nd many factions have little connection to Osama bin Laden. Most Taliban want Islamic rule locally, not violent jihad globally."
The Pakistani government is making an effort to "divide the camps of the Islamists between those who are violent and those who are merely extreme.
"Over the past eight years such distinctions have been regarded as naive." Zakaria believes that it is just the opposite.
"After the end of military rule in 1999, 12 of Nigeria's 36 states chose to adopt Sharia. ... In 2002 The Weekly Standard decried "the Talibanization of West Africa" and worried that Nigeria, a "giant of sub-Saharan Africa," could become "a haven for Islamism, linked to foreign extremists." [1]
"But when The New York Times sent a reporter to Kano state in late 2007, she found an entirely different picture.... 'The Islamic revolution that seemed so destined to transform northern Nigeria in recent years appears to have come and gone,' the reporter, Lydia Polgreen, concluded. ... Other news reports have confirmed this basic picture." [2] (Others, such as the evangelical Compass Direct news service sponsored by Open Doors, see a different trend as emboldened Muslims commit wide-scale violence against Christians in northern Nigeria. [3] - PC)
"While some of this puritanism is now mellowing, southern Iraq remains a dark place. But it is not a hotbed of jihad. And as the democratic process matures, one might even hope that some version of the Nigerian story will play out there. 'It's hard to hand over authority to people who are illiberal,' says former CIA analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht. 'What you have to realize is that the objective is to defeat bin Ladenism, and you have to start the evolution. Moderate Muslims are not the answer. Shiite clerics and Sunni fundamentalists are our salvation from future 9/11s.' ...
"'We won the war in Iraq chiefly because we separated the local militants from the global jihadists,' says Fawaz Gerges, a scholar at Sarah Lawrence College, who has interviewed hundreds of Muslim militants. 'Yet around the world we are still unwilling to make the distinction between these two groups.' ...
"Even the Washington Institute, a think tank often associated with conservatives, appears onboard. It is issuing a report this week that recommends, among other points, that the United States use more 'nuanced, noncombative rhetoric' that avoids sweeping declarations like 'war on terror,' 'global insurgency,' even 'the Muslim world.' Anything that emphasizes the variety of groups, movements and motives within that world strengthens the case that this is not a battle between Islam and the West." We should get suspicious when we agree with bin Laden, who "constantly argues that all these different groups are part of the same global movement." Newsweek, Mar 9 '09, <www.newsweek.com/id/187093>
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ORIGINS
"The Greening of Jesus" by Mark I. Pinsky in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin (37:1 - 2009) reports on "a two-week fellowship session on science and religion at the University of Cambridge" where Pinsky found that "among our other lecturers at the Templeton-Cambridge program were major figures in science, from cosmologists to biologists to particle physicists, who pronounced themselves believers. ...
"By and large, they reject creationism and intelligent design, embracing the concept of 'theistic evolution,' a God-created, billions-years-old universe." The essay constitutes a good who's-who summary. <www.tinyurl.com/d56yot>
The GetReligion blog, where we first learned about the above item, offers an interesting analysis of weaknesses in Pinsky's presentation. <www.getreligion.org/?p=8402>
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Sources, Digital:
1 - <www.tinyurl.com/c5nvxq>
2 - <www.tinyurl.com/cdjbkm>
3 - <www.tinyurl.com/dl4m6v>
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Sources, Monographs:
4 - Alvin Plantinga and Christian Apologetics, by Keith A Mascord (Wipf & Stock, 2007, paperback, 233 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/cwrp95>
5 - Faith Has Its Reasons: An Integrative Approach to Defending Christianity, by Kenneth D. Boa and Robert M. Bowman Jr. (Paternoster, 2006, paperback, 608 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/cps2r3>
6 - Warranted Christian Belief, by Alvin Plantinga (Oxford Univ Prs, 2000, paperback, 528 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/cd399j>
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