The "2 Daniels" affair.

Daniel Scot and Daniel Nalliah recently lost a case brought against them by the "Islamic Council of Victoria" in Australia, under that state's "anti-vilification" laws. The case arose out of comments made by Daniel Scot at a seminar which caused offence to some Muslims sent to monitor the content. I first became aware of the case when I read a report of the case in the August 2005 edition of "Evangelicals Now" published in the UK.

Personally I was shocked by the report but not for the reason the correspondent
might have wished. I was dismayed by [a] what the report seemed to confirm was said at the seminar and [b] by the graceless tone of the article itself. If you
are sufficiently interested you'll need to check it out for yourself because I am not repeating that tosh here. [Evangelicals Now, August 2005, page 9]. Make up your own mind.

People have remonstrated with me that this is simply an issue of "freedom of speech". Okay, I can understand that. Maybe it is a bad idea to have a law
regulating what might/might not cause offence to people of different faiths.
Perhaps people should have the right to say crass things without fear of prosecution. I don't have a problem with that as an argument. But I do
think that this case bears further examination than it's caricature currently
allows. We must be careful to distinguish between defending the "freedom of
the pulpit" to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, and condoning any
and every abuse of that public platform by preachers speaking "off-message".
Uncritical support of the "2 Daniels" may backfire; here are a few of my
"rules of engagement" for anyone to comment on.

1] If Christians go head to head with the law of the land they need to make sure that it is done for the right reason and in the right way. As a Christian I believe that we should apply the test of "causing no offence but the offence of the Cross",
by this standard what was said at the seminar does not pass muster. "Tap-room
theology" is for the tap-room to justify not the church, sometimes such comments are all too human [say after the London Bombings when people are
frightened] and as such can be forgivable, but they are certainly not Christlike.
I believe that we should model the grace we preach.

2] It is one thing to critique a belief system, it is something else again to single out a particular faith group for wholesale condemnation. To do this in God's
name - as the article seems to suggest - escalates the stakes again and sadly
shows that we ourselves have become Jihadists/Crusaders in our own way!

3] The Daniels perceptions of Islam may be technically correct for all I know,
but what they say the Koran teaches isn't automatically translated into direct
action by it's readers. This is self evident, not all Muslims turn to terrorism.
Which suggests to me that there are shades of opinion within Islam. It could be that Daniel Scot has a particular view of Islam borne out of his own difficult time in Pakistan. If so, why didn't some church leader at one of the series of seminars say to him, "Brother, I am concerned that some of the things you have been saying will appear ungracious and unkind. It may be that what
you have said could bring the gospel into disrepute and such language is unlikely to win over our Muslim neighbours. It may be that your teaching is deeply influenced by the very difficult experiences you have had in Pakistan. Let's talk it over". No evangelical church I know of allows uncritical access to it's public platfrom for people to speak "off-message".Perhaps if the Australian evangelical church had drawn a distinction between defending the "freedom of the pulpit" against state interference while dissociating itself from the intemperate sentiments expressed on that occasion it would not now be caught up in an unholy mess, which can only be described as a "culture war" - which has nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and has more in common with ultra-right wing politics. This campaign may prove to be very costly - not least to Daniel Scot himself.

4] It is very unscientific but I've trawled through some Christian websites which comment on Islam. It seems to me that the discussion is almost always in terms of "threat" or a coming "Clash of Civilisations". A few seem to relish the prospect of a war between Islam and The West. The question I want to raise is have Christians so sold out to "The West" that we have lost sight of where our true citizenship actually lies? Is the church engaged in a "culture war" at the expense of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ? Do we have confidence in the Gospel - or do we give way to fear and hostility towards those we are called to love? This alone may distinguish us from the far-right.

Concluding Thought:
Let's assume that the world is indeed destined to spiral down into a "Clash of Civilisations", imagine the world 50 years from now living in the aftermath of a Third World War, and attention turns to the role played by the evangelical church in the run up to that conflict. Will they conclude that the church fanned the flames of that conflict, or that they modelled grace to a world bent on war?