We scooted into our Uber outside LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Somewhere along the route to Brooklyn, our driver, Ahmed, let us know he was fasting for Ramadan.
“Ahh, the holiest month for Muslims,” I said. “No food or water, till 6 P.M. You must be famished.” (It was 4 P.M.)
I saw him grinning in the rearview mirror, and with a lift in his voice, declared, “You know, you know. You know about my faith.”
“Are you reading daily from the Quran?” I asked, since Ramadan commemorates the revelation of that book.
And so, we talked.
After sharing with him some of my encounters with Muslims in Yemen many years ago, and in India, he told me some of his story. He spoke of his devotion to his faith, of how his mother and father had emigrated to the U.S., and of the trials his wife and young child endured, all of them living in the same house with his parents and grandmother.
“But I want to honor my parents,” he said, “They have been good to us. They are devoted to the faith, especially my grandmother.”
After telling him of my faith in Jesus Christ and explaining that, unlike Islam, Christians view Him as more than a prophet but also as our Savior, Ahmed told me he was grateful to live in the U.S., where we could both freely practice our faith.
These are tense times for devotees of Islam, followers of Judaism, and believers in Jesus Christ to encounter each other. And if we aren’t intentional, we hunker behind walls that others have built. When I saw the Arabic name of the Uber driver, a negative thought skirted across my mind, “Islamist.” The nomenclature, stoked by the media, hoists a flag of caution. Instead of seeing open doors for conversation, we turn away and hide in our silence, smoldering in disgust for individuals we do not know.
Of course, we are not to be naïve. It would be foolish to ignore the possibilities of danger. Sleeper cells, awakening to Iran’s call, hear the order “death to America.” And the Quran itself, the holy book that Ahmed reads daily, can be interpreted to justify violence, as it has been by ISIS, the Taliban, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The hospital where my father worked, Jibla Baptist Hospital, the place I befriended Muslims, was closed in 2002 because Islamist militants murdered three International Mission Board (IMB) workers—William Koehn, Dr. Martha Myers, and Kathleen Gariety—in the hospital’s outpatient clinic.
But the Apostle Paul, a Jew who converted to Christ while living under the foreign boot of Rome, wrote, “Be not overcome by evil but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
And about a hundred years later, a Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, penned the words, “The best way to avenge thyself is not to become like (the avenger).” (The Meditations, VI.7).
We are the losers if we disallow the possibility of conversation simply because others’ beliefs are contrary to ours.
Ahmed stopped the car. “We are here.” When he saw that I tipped him, he smiled, “Oh, you do not need to do that. You are both kind people, yes, you are so kind.” And with a partial bow, “You have been kind to me today.”
Far away, bombs drop. Closer to home, violence threatens.
But, in embracing Ahmad, for at least a moment, I felt the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.
Walking away, I wondered if Ahmed had initially been as cautious to talk to us as we were to him.
And I think I may have heard the words of the 14th-century Christian saint, Julian of Norwich—who lived during the violence of The Hundred Years War (which used religion as a propaganda tool) —ever so gently whispering, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
And it will.
And of that I am certain.