A former Muslim who is now a pastor is telling Christians to stop fearing Muslims and to discern what they really should be fighting against.

Thabiti Anyabwile, senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman on the Cayman Islands, says Christians need to think first rather than let their emotions dictate how they react to Muslims and Islam.

“We live in a world where failing to understand real and significant differences that matter to people not like us can result in things like hijacking, bombings, and bullets flying,” said Anyabwile during the recent “Think: The Life of the Mind & the Love of God” conference organized by Desiring God ministry. more >>

The Texas State Board of Education is scheduled to consider a resolution Friday that would ban “pro-Islamic, anti-Christian” textbooks.

Randy Rives, who authored the resolution, contends some past Texas social studies textbooks were favorably biased toward Islam – devoting more text lines to the religion than Christianity and praising Muslims as “empire builders” while criticizing Crusaders as “violent attackers.”

Other critical allegations include one against the “sanitized” wording that some textbooks use in defining jihad, which reportedly exclude religious intolerance and aggression against non-Muslims, and “whitewashes” Islamic culture. more >>

Muslim leaders, including some representing large organizations, issued a statement Monday calling for a week of dialogue next month on the divisive Park51 project.

The hope for the interfaith dialogue is to help end growing anti-Muslim rhetoric in the nation over the proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero. The Week of Dialogue is scheduled for Oct. 22 to 24, during which mosques across the nation are encouraged to open their doors to non-Muslims.

“And that’s why we’re opening this to a true and open conversation among Americans on how to shape this project to reflect what America is,” said Nihad Awad, head of the Council on American Islamic Relations, while standing in front of the proposed site for Park51 on Monday. more >>

The proposed site for the Islamic center and mosque near the former World Trade Center is not sacred, says the Muslim cleric who envisioned the project.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, said Monday it is an “absolutely disingenuous” argument to call the planned site for the Park51 project “hallowed ground.”

“[W]ith a strip joint around the corner, with betting parlors, to claim it is hallowed ground is … it doesn’t make sense – it doesn’t add,” said Rauf at the office of the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank. “So let’s clarify that misperception.” more >>

As many as 40,000 people gathered near New York City’s Ground Zero Saturday on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to protest the planned Islamic center and mosque two blocks away.

But according to Agence France-Presse and other mainstream media outlets, only about 2,000 people participated in the rally. The exceptionally large difference in figures is intentional, claimed organizers of the anti-Park51 demonstration.

“Crickets are chirping in taqiyya (Arabic word for concealing, guarding) media newsroom nationwide (although they were all there),” complained Pamela Geller, who organized the rally. “There has been no coverage.” more >>

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Islamic center and mosque near ground zero, managed to persuade some centrist evangelicals this week to endorse his interfaith peacemaking initiative.

Leaders of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good – which includes former National Association of Evangelicals vice president Richard Cizik and Mercer University Christian ethics professor David Gushee – said they embrace Rauf’s peacemaking initiative with “all our hearts.”

“We see it as especially impressive in light of the hatred and bigotry currently being directed against the Muslim community, Cordoba House, and Imam Abdul Rauf himself,” they stated in an announcement Thursday. more >>