The fact that Americans are uneducated is pretty clear from their race-driven politics that usually causes more problems than bring solutions. But worse is the lack of education among the very institutions tasked with educating, like Wheaton College, which declared itself an ignorant bastion of racist stupidity this week
By Ray Hanania
covering Chicago
City Hall
(1976-1992)
As a Christian, I’ve been to Wheaton, but I’ve never been to Wheaton College. Of course, Wheaton College might not mean anything to me as a backwoods, second rate educational institution that caters to the privileged children of farmers.
But this week, Wheaton somehow managed to push itself onto the international stage. Not winning major educational awards or an educational game show where their students could demonstrate their academic excellence on a national and international forum.
No, instead, the idiot administrators at Wheaton College, which defines itself as a Christian institution committed to the principle that truth is revealed by God through [Jesus] Christ,” decided to show the world just how stupid they really are out there in the farmland boonies in Chicagoland’s Western suburbs just north of Naperville.
A brilliant African American teacher at Wheaton College, Larycia Hawkins, decided to show some humanity towards American Muslims who have been targeted by racist hate in America because of the violence of a few terrorists who asserted their violence in the name of Islam by putting on a Hijab.
A hijab is basically a headscarf, and is not the clothing usually associated with oppressed women in the Muslim World, the Berqa which covers not just the head but the entire face (except a slit or mesh for the eyes), and the entire body. A hijab is much like the babushkas that Polish Catholic women would offer wear to their Christian church services, or a head scarf that many Christian woman wear especially when going to their Christian church services.
Posted by CAIR on FacebookHawkins was immediately suspended. But the colleges decided to double-down on their unChristian-like hate by deciding to declare, in the most idiotic and uneducated way possible, that they didn’t suspend Hawkins for wearing the Hijab in solidarity with Muslim victims of American racism, hatred and violence.
No. They suspended her for showing Christian-like compassion to members of another religion, Muslims, and particularly because of her writings and pronouncements describing her decision to wear the hijab in which she said that — Oh My God, can you believe this! — Muslims believe in “the same God” as Christians.
Hawkins wrote on her Facebook Page, “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,” she posted Dec. 10 on Facebook. “And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”
Let me just say that this African American woman has more compassion and Christianity in her than many Christians I know, and I know a lot because my mother was born in that city that today’s Christians, like those at Wheaton College, abandoned in 1948 to military oppression and suffering, Bethlehem.
Hawkins is the equivalent of a modernday Mother Theresa, and even Pope Francis, who she cited in the quote that Wheaton College has decreed is “heresy!”
Wheaton College immediately issued a statement declaring that Muslims do not believe in the same God as Christians.
LOUD BUZZER NOISE to indicate the wrong answer on the student education game show panel!
The truth is the idiots at Wheaton College exposed their own stupidity and their own contradictions of their declared mission statement — which goes on and on like it was a resurrection not of Jesus Christ but the Inquisition — that they believe that God is the one and only and Jesus is his “Lord of all, High Priest, and Advocate.”
In other words, Jesus Christ is the “messenger” of God.
Well, if the educators at Wheaton College were really “educators,” they might know a few facts. Things that are true, and not lies.
Yes, Islam is a different religion that does not believe that Jesus is the “son of God,” or that his mother Mary is “the Virgin Mary, as Christians believe.
Muslims do believe that Jesus, however, is a prophet of God, just like Moses, Abraham, Mary, the disciples who followed Jesus and conveyed his teachings to the world creating one of the most oppressive and brutal religions in the history of mankind, Christianity. More people were murdered by Christians priests during the Inquisition that at any other time in human being history.
Of course, maybe we could argue about that but Christians were among the most brutal in killing, murdering, raping, pillaging and shedding innocent blood of “non-believers.”
But the point is, Muslims are much like Christians. In fact, they are a lot like Christians. You see, Christians are an off-shoot of Judaism. Jesus was a Jew and a rabbi. Jesus died a Jew. He was worshiped as a Jew who was bringing new meaning to Judaism.
So Christians took the Old Testament of the Jewish people and added their own religious beliefs, such as the many books of the New Testament, to Create the Christian “Bible.”
Muslims did the same thing as did the Christians. Muslims believe that a man named Mohammed (Muhammad, Muhammed) heard the word of God and then conveyed that word to mankind in the form of the Quran (Qu’ran), in the Arabic language. The Christians took the stories and words of Jesus who conveyed “the word of God” to their followers, just like the Muslims did 600 years later.
If anyone should be screaming, it’s the Jews. Everyone stole their history to create a basis for their own.
The bottom line is this. Muslims, Christians and Jews all believe in THE SAME GOD. They just believe that this SAME GOD conveyed beliefs and directives through a different person. Jews believe God conveyed his word through Moses on Mount Sinai. Christians believe God conveyed his word through Jesus. And Muslims believe God conveyed his word through Mohammed, who is defined as a Prophet of Islam, NOT A GOD.
That brings me to the other Failing Grade Wheaton College gets over this ignorant response to an expression of Christian humanity by Hawkins, who by the way should really be put in charge of that screwed up unChristian-like college: The word “Allah” is an Arabic WORD for the One God. Yes, Allah is how not only Muslims but any Christian from the Holy Land describes the ONE GOD.
Jews refer to God as Yahweh, although they cannot pronounce the word publicly and use the terms Adonai or Elohim when referring t God in their prayers and Torah readings.
Christians refer to God in many ways, too. Jehovah, Theos, Kyrios, Lord, Our Father. And Muslims refer to the One God, too, as “God,” or, as I explained in Religion 101, “Allah.”
In fact, what is it that Jews, Christians and Muslims say when they express their devotion.
Jews say, “Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Shema Yisrael.)
Christians say, “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed by their name … ” (The Lord’s Prayer, the beginning verse of many different versions.)
Muslims say, “There is no God but God and Muhammed is the Messenger of God.” (The professing of faith.)
As I watched the TV coverage of the Hawkins persecution by the unChristianlike Wheaton College, I listened as supposedly educated students who agreed with their university insisted that Muslims do not believe int he same God as Christians.
But many students came to Hawkins side to support her and so did many organizations including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) which has been wrongly vilified by Christians, for political and racist reasons.
CAIR’s Chicago leader Ahmed Rehab posted a photo on his Facebook Page a the rally to support Hawkins this week with these typically kind and generous Muslim remarks: “Professor Larycia Hawkins who was suspended by Wheaton College for wearing the Hijab for a week in solidarity with Muslims and declaring that Muslims worship the same God as christians is still wearing the Hijab as she affirms her position at a massive press conference with other Christian leaders and Gerald Blake Hankerson of CAIR-Chicago. She affirms her Christian faith, her solidarity with Muslims and her compassion for all sides. A woman America needs. A woman we can all learn from.”
I agree. No one is more Christian than Larycia Hawkins. No one is less Christian than Wheaton College.
Wheaton College needs to go to confession and confess their sins, of course, they may not like Catholics either in their religious discrimination. I’m not sure. But I definitely know, Wheaton College must not be Christian at all to act like this.
Wheaton College was founded by Wesleyans who are an evangelical Protestant religious group who trace their heritage back to John Wesley. Wesley was the founder of the Methodist movement, which came out of the Church of England in the mid-1700s.
Larycia Hawkins is definitely a woman that American needs and a woman we can all learn from. Which is why she was suspended. Wheaton College really does not want its students to learn.
Should they even be accredited as an educational institution? Only God knows.
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.
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