After reading a recent letter from evangelicals to Muslims apologizing for the crusades, the war in Iraq and just about every offense in between, I feel that it is important (since I was not invited to sign the document) that I issue a formal apology as well.
No, I'm not Catholic. No, I can't trace my lineage to Sir William Moorcrusher or any other 13th-century knight errant. No, I do not have a history of discriminating against followers of Muhammad in word, thought or deed. No, that was not me in the alley last night firing my AK47 in the air chanting, "Death to Saudi Arabia."
You're confused.
I'm just apologizing for the fact that stuff like that happened and that I share certain cultural characteristics with those who have participated in the above activities. The bottom line is that I'm just trying to cover my bases with a heavy dose of good, old-fashioned American penitence: the apology.
Ahh ..... Now that I have that off my chest, I await the response of conciliatory Muslims worldwide as they apologize for raiding Jerusalem and thereby initiating the crusades in the first place, for their imperialistic attempts to take over Europe from the 9th through the 15th century, for killing and torturing my Christian brothers and sisters in places like Sudan, Afghanistan and Indonesia, for ... well, you get the picture.
How is my goofy little apology any more naive than that of a group of Western evangelicals, safely insulated from the bloody reality of the global Islamic-Christian conflict making an ad hoc statement of reconciliation with a bunch of moderate Muslim scholars, pasting it as an ad in The New York Times and then acting like they’ve accomplished something of significance? The conflict is not being fought at this level, so how can it be resolved at this level?
None of this means squat for the Arab warlord butchering the tribal Christian in Sudan or the Western missionary having an "interfaith dialogue" over Turkish coffee in a cafe in Amman. Yes, God is at work in the Muslim world, but His work is not that of reconciling Muslims to Christians or vice versa, but of reconciling Muslims to Himself through His Son.
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