Is Jesus Christ Welcome in Islam?

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority released a list of more than 1,600 words that it considered to be “vulgar, obscene or harmful” and ordered phone companies to block text messages containing those words.

However, an official from the authority told Agence France-Presse that it would review and shorten the list before issuing the ban. It did not list a time frame.

Included in the list of “vulgar, obscene, or harmful” words were the words “Jesus Christ.”

“If the ban is confirmed, it would be a black page for the country, a further act of discrimination against Christians and an open violation of Pakistan’s constitution,” said Father Nadeem John Shakir, secretary of the commission for social communications for the Pakistani Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

Article 19 of the 1973 constitution of Pakistan states:

Every citizen shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression, and there shall be freedom of the press, subject to any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interest of the glory of Islam or the integrity, security or defense of Pakistan or any part thereof, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, or incitement to an offense.

Apparently, the words “Jesus Christ” are not considered “in the interest of the glory of Islam,” although the Koran mentions Jesus twenty-five times, more often, by name, than Muhammad.

Jesus is considered to have been a Muslim (i.e., one who submits to the will of God), as he preached that his followers should adopt the “straight path” as commanded by God. Islam rejects the Christian view that Jesus was God, or that he died on the cross and was resurrected from the dead. Judas Iscariot is given the role of having been crucified. The Koran emphasizes that Jesus was a mortal human being who, like all other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God’s message.

Muslims believe that Jesus (Isa) will return at a time close to the end of the world. According to Islamic tradition which describes this graphically, Jesus’ descent will be in the midst of wars fought by the Mahdi (lit. “the rightly guided one”) against the Antichrist (al-Masīh ad-Dajjāl,and his followers. Jesus will join the Mahdi in his war against the Antichrist. Eventually, Jesus will slay the Antichrist, and then everyone from the People of the Book (ahl al-kitāb, referring to Jews and Christians) will believe in him. Thus, there will be one community, that of Islam.

After the death of the Mahdi, Jesus will assume leadership. This is a time associated in Islamic narrative with universal peace and justice. Jesus’ rule is said to be around forty years, after which he will die. Muslims believe that God will hold every human, Muslim and non-Muslim, accountable for his or her deeds at a preordained time unknown to man, but apparently at the death of Jesus in the end times. Traditions say Muhammad will be the first to be brought back to life. Presumably Jesus will be raised from the dead a second time, since the Koran emphasizes the inevitability of resurrection, judgment, and the eternal division of the righteous and the wicked.

Islam is the state religion of Pakistan and about 95-98% of Pakistanis are Muslims. Sunnis comprise 80-95% of the Muslim population, while Shias the remaining 5-15%.

The Mahdi doctrine is common to both Sunnis and Shias.

The U.S. government has had a tenuous relationship with Pakistan, strained recently by the revelation that Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabod, only about 40 mi from Rawalpindi, military headquarters in Pakistan.

Although there is a political mending of fences between the U.S. and Pakistan, I suggest there is an irreconcilably deep divide between Christianity and Islam…certainly in each’s eschatology.

Steve Jobs' Last Words

Back on August 24^th this year, the world learned that Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple. It was only a matter of time until his death a few weeks later on Oct. 5^th. The world had lost one of its most brilliant innovators…the mastermind behind Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes. He was compared to Thomas Edison and even to Leonardo da Vinci. He was only 56, succumbing to pancreatic cancer.

His eulogy was given by his sister, Mona Simpson on Oct. 16, 2011, at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University. Below are excerpts. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html?_r=1

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.

What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.

Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”

“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his wife Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.

Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.

His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.

He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.

Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.

He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:
“OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”

Biographer Walter Isaacson relates that Jobs, a self-proclaimed Buddhist, began questioning the meaning of life and God in the past few months before his death.

“I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God,” recalled Isaacson. “He said, ‘Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it’s cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated. Somehow it lives on.’”

Isaacson continued, “Then he paused for a second and he said, ‘Yeah, but sometimes I think it’s just like an on-off switch. Click and you’re gone.’ He paused again, and he said, ‘And that’s why I don’t like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.’”

As a Catholic theologian, I was fascinated by the last words Jobs spoke  “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.”

Steve Jobs had traded his time for human progress. Not for personal pleasures. This was not a man who spent his time building homes or custom yachts or who otherwise obsessed with how to spend his billions on himself. And no one would say of him that he ever seemed to have a lot of spare time on his hands. There is little doubt in my mind that the Higher Power Jobs wondered about turned the “on” switch for him in all its brilliance.

It would be no surprise to me in eternity to learn that Jobs’ last words were followed by “Well done, my good and faithful servant… Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ”