A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide (Hardcover)

by Mark D. Siljander (Author)
Key Phrases: paradigm crash, deadly misunderstanding, United States, New Testament, Western Sahara (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Former congressman Siljander began his career as a zealous evangelical Christian, convinced that the Qur'an was devil's work. In this memoir, Siljander recounts his paradigm crash after discovering that much of what he'd been taught about his faith was nowhere in the Bible, and that the Christian and Muslim religious texts are surprisingly compatible when studied in their original languages. He has since made it his life's mission to find common ground between Christian and Muslim worlds, meeting with a dizzying list of political and religious leaders in the process. The result is an engaging story (despite somewhat stilted dialogue) sure to surprise and inspire many. Though he has no formal background in linguistics or religious studies, Siljander is deft at providing balance when discussing controversial subjects, and careful to show support from academics. Though his theological argument is based almost exclusively on the study of Muslim and Christian scriptures, in the current atmosphere it's hard to argue with his dictum for what's needed: Making friends with the people you thought you hated. It's that radical, that simple and that necessary. (June)
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Review
A Deadly Misunderstanding is a must-read for all seeking to know the heart of God. Mark not only provides thoughtful solutions for the monumental, geopolitical challenges of our time, but also provides nourishment for the soul -- Todd Hendricks, TH Properties

Resolving existing hostilities between Muslims and Christians will require that we deal with the ideas behind the guns. This book does a masterful job of pointing the way. -- Dr. Douglas M. Johnston, President and Founder International Center for Religion & Diplomacy

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1 edition (October 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061438286
• ISBN-13: 978-0061438288
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #38,986 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Siljander Shares His Right Understanding of the Vast Extent of "Common Ground" That Islam Shares with Christianity, December 13, 2008

By	Gerald Parker "Gerald Parker" (Rouyn-Noranda, QC., Dominion of Canada) - See all my reviews

I am not altogether the most completely qualified person to evaluate this book (however, neither are many others who have contributed their nonethess useful views about what Mark Siljander has written), but my own careful reading of the Holy Qur'an in meticulously precise translations has led me to suspect that most Muslims do not understand the full import of what Muhammad conveyed in the Quran. Even reading it in responsible English translation (e.g. the fine old Sales or Abdallah Yousuf Ali translations) reveals just how close the Quran is to the Old Testament, the New Testament Gospels, and to non-canonical Judaeo-Christian sources (O.T. deutero-canonical, Pseudepigraphal, and N.T. Apocryphal writings), and to much of the teachings and lore of the Orthodox and Oriental Eastern Christian Churches.

As this former Congressman, author Mark D. Siljander (who also had valuable experience as a diplomat), and his joint-author John David Mann discovered, I found during my mission to Istanbul and, more importantly, to the Turkish sector of Kurdistan (late 1997) under joint Kurdish partisan and Independent Lutheran auspices, that Muslims are surprisingly open to Christian witness that focuses upon Bible and Quran alike, and especially upon the often surprisingly great level of authority of Jesus for Muhammad and his followers. Fortunately, I already had read the eye-opening book, Sharing Your Faith With A Muslim, by Abdiyah Akbar Abdul-Haqq (Bethany House, 1980, available from Amazon and written from a believing Christian standpoint), which, along with this book, I strong commend to those who wish to follow up these connexions and which a reasonably well-informed Christian layman, without special training, can understand with some concentration and effort. There are at least several more books on this subject, which I have in my own personal book collection, but which certainly are of a more arcane and difficult level to read.

For those who wish to read about the book by this kindly former Congressman (with extensive quotes from it) before purchase, I would refer the potential buyer to the article about it ("Bridging the Islam-Christian Divide: Former Congressman Seeks to Correct a Deadly Misunderstanding", by Michael Ireland, in, among other periodical sources, Christian News (ISSN 0009-5516), vol. 46, no. 30 (28 July 2008), pg. 8-10, deriving from the ASSIST News Service. A later pair of essay reviews, Thomas Pfotenhauer's "Who Has the Real Jesus, Islam or Christianity?: Mark D. Siljander Thinks [That] It Could Be Both" and an unsigned reply, presumably by Herman Otten, "Only Christianity Has the Real Jesus", which also appeared in Christian News, in vol. 46, no. 46, on p. 14-15 (written for C.N., rather than taken from a syndicated press service), was disappointingly uncomprehending in some ways, although not entirely without some good points to make, especially if compared to many far more obtuse and worthlessly negative comments and reviews printed elsewhere concerning Siljander and his book.

There have been many vicious and slanderous attacks on Mark Siljander and this book of his on the part of Zionists (alike observant Jews, secular zio-nationalists, and so-called "Christian Zionists"). Their motives of stirring up fear, strife, and loathing between Muslim peoples, regions, and nations, on the one hand, and the prevailingly Christian (and post-Christian) West, on the other, have more to to do with promoting (so it seems to them) the interests of the Israeli state by such base propaganda than with serving the interests of truth and peace. This is not the forum to deal at length with such crass manipulation in the media, but the reading public at large should be aware of such efforts of Zionists and of their putatively Christian allies to discredit Siljander and to defame or vilify Islam.

The real crux (forgive the pun!) of the problem, as I, Siljander himself, and some others perceive it, is that there has been a disconnexion between what the Qur'an states and what Muslims themselves (as well as their adversaires) perceive to be its genuine meaning. Atop that, there are passages in the Qur'an that are ambiguous or obscure in meaning which Muslims have tended to interpret in a manner contrary to orthodox Christian teaching, but which such passages do not necessarily bear as a sole or correct exegesis thereof. These divergences between Islamic doctrine (as opposed to the message of the Qur'an itself) only serve to "widen the divide" between Christians and Muslims in ways that are not helpful. Abdul-Haqq and Siljander (only to consider two books at a level accessible to non-specialists) reconcile many Christian and Muslim differences in treating these issues.

Muslim "Fundamentalists" have misread the Qur'an as badly as many Christians have done so. Two such areas of blatant misinterpretation concern "Jihad" and the respective roles and norms of gender-specific dress, conduct, and social roles. Siljander deals especially well with the former, explaining what I myself was able to discern right from my first complete reading of the Holy Qur'an, that "Jihad" has little to do with the combative pugnaciousness and violence of "Fundamentalist" Muslim "warriors" (violently militant "jihadists") for the cause who resort to guerilla and even terrorist tactics and to the rhetoric of hate, vindictiveness, and coërcion. Christians should not abet such ill-informed zealots by accepting, unquestioned, their vision of Islam and of what is appropriate to propagate it.

As for thorny matters of gender and sexuality, believers in Islam should attempt to understand and to apply what the Qur'an teaches about men's dress, modesty (not just for the ladies, according to the Islam's supremely definitive Sacred Text!), mutual deference, fidelity, and so forth. Even regarding homosexuality, the Qur'an (unlike too much of the Sunna, a.k.a. Hadith, and of the Shar'ia law), while severe in its comments and prescriptions, is less dire than the Old Testament's death-sentence edicts for some manifestion(s) of gay and lesbian sexual behaviour.

Given how inadequately Islamic tradition and jurisprudence concur with the spirit, and even with the letter, of the Qur'an, I can understand how one distinguished but still youthful Kurd, whom I have known in Diyarbakir and elsewhere, insisted that Islam must move to a "Qur'an only" basis of doctrine and precepts, casting the Hadith aside for determining what is normative in Islam, to reopen what Muslims term "ijtihad" (a phenomenon and concept which Siljander mentions explicitly only on p. 208, but which he implies throughout) to considerations entirely Qur'anic, apart from the sort of encrusted traditions that have distanced Islam unduly from Christianity! Sadly, too few Muslims share that brilliant young man's insights.

The greatest divide, the one of most significance, between Christianity and Islam, surely is the relative weight in each of Grace and of Law. Christianity, above all, is a religion of Grace, of the reconciliation of sinful man with the demands of an all-Holy God. While the Sovereign Grace of God is by no means a concept absent in Islam, the Qur'an emphasises Law and pious precepts to such an extent (and the Sunna often yet further) that it is hardly surprising that legalism and scrupulosity, obsession with the Shar'ia, dominate Islam. In Christianity, the sinner has the objective resort to God's provision, through Christ's propitiatory sacrifice of Infinite extent (because of His Divinity), of Grace to apply to cover a believer's sin, without in any way impugning God's perfect Holiness and His demand for complete perfection. God is both Holy and Compassionate in Islam, but, in the ultimate analysis, there is no adequate provision in Islam, according to its most Sacred Text, for reconciliation of man, inevitably a sinner, with God without loss of divine total (not merely relative) severity towards sin. This is the greatest divide between Islam and the Christian faith with which, unfortunately, Siljander does not deal adequately in what is otherwise so fine and probing a study of Islam.

In his eagerness to overcome barriers between Christians and Muslims and between their faiths (or shared faith from different angles, as Siljander views it), the sectarianly Protestant views of the book's author do not take into account some formidable hurdles for more traditionally Catholic Christians (especially for Roman and Uniate Catholics, Old Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, as well as some Anglican and Lutheran Christians and, partly, those of the non-Chalcedonian Oriental Churches). For us, Siljander's blithely stated dismissal of the pertinence and crucial importance for Catholic-minded Christians entailing such criteria as the Oecumenical Creeds, absolute Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy, the Visible Church (Christ's corporate Body on Earth, the Holy Ministry, etc.), the sacraments (lacking in Islam) as objectively efficacious and normative means of grace, the authority of Oecumenical Councils, and so forth, is unacceptable.

The stripped-down and individualistic Christianity of sectarianism (of the "Fundamentalists", the "Neo-Evangelicals", the "Charismatics" or "Pentecostalists", the "Cambellites", the "Adventists", the "Methodists", and of others) of Mark Siljaner and his pan-denominationalist co-religionists, and even of more decidedly "magisterial" Protestantism, can accomodate such unreconciled divides more readily than Catholic Christianity (broadly but not indiscriminatately defined) can tolerate the same with a good conscience. However, all Christians, if they ponder deeply and fully what Siljander, Abdul-Haqq, Bp. George K.A. Bell, and others like them have had to say and and to write about what Christianity and Islam share, should have a greater mutual understanding and respect than, sadly, they have tended to manifest in the past.

A number of fine Islamic scholars and activists currently active (e.g., Tariq Ramadan and Farid Esack) have militated for better understanding and "dialogue" of some kind between Muslims and Christians on questions of social issues, sexuality and gender, ideology, politics, tolerance, and other such issues, but Siljander and others who share his specifically religious motives deal with what is more fundamental, i.e. what the Qur'an and Bible say in common (to an amazingly large degree) and on what they differ (to surprisingly limited extent). For religious understanding, love of the souls of Muslims, and peace and harmony between the Christian and Muslim world and communities, books such as those by Siljander and Abdul-Haqq have an important role to play.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Living out the teachings of Isa, November 29, 2008

By	Eagleman (North Africa) - See all my reviews

By going to Muslim leaders, Mark utilizes his ex-Congressman's "edge" while actually doing what Jesus (Isa) taught. There is a way to relate to our "enemies" with love, forgiveness, blessing or "doing good", as well as prayer for and with them. Westerners, especially we Evangelicals, need to learn "bridge-building" instead of war and enmity. Mark Siljander shows us how, and it works! With a few Arab partners, I provide a bridge-building Arabic language web site which has attracted more than 300,000 visitors. 85% of them are Muslims who want to dialogue with Christians to build bridges of relationship. Don't make war; make bridges of relationship. Mark Siljander will inspire you and require you to rethink your view of the Muslim world. I live in that world, and I plead with you - do it now! They need to hear from a friend!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is more than just a book, October 21, 2008

By	Abdelazim M. Elsiddig "Abdel" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Mark Siljander's work is more than just a book. It's a spiritual journey by Mark and his praying partners. The road less traveled those partners took together have lead them to heights no one had experienced before in real life. I have the pleasure and honor to be among those very lucky few who have contributed to that journey. Mark made it easy for us to live that dream of bridge-building across religious and cultural barriers. The next step is to pass this positive experience down to the upcoming generations through praying partners and study groups. "A Deadly Misunderstanding" was not meant to be read and resold like we usually do with other books. It is rather a call for every reader to think of ways to contribute to the process of peace-making through positive perception and correct understanding of our own scriptures and the common grounds we have with "others". The ultimate goal is a better and safer world for all! Amen.