The History of Islam

John: American Christians are not any different from many Christians in different parts of the world, and the misunderstanding of Islam is not exclusively a Christian problem. Many Muslims doesn’t understand their on faith. If they did, we wouldn’t be having the problem that we’re having. There’s a deep misunderstanding of Islam across boards — it’s both Muslims and Christians.

But when it comes to America, I think, for me, the misunderstanding of Islam is that we don’t really get a sense of the depth of sectarianism within Islam. The sectarian divide is deep, and it’s palpable. If Americans don’t take time, we can easily be co-opted to one side or the other. My fear is that is going on and that Americans have been co-opted into some of these sectarian wars and battles in the Muslim world, and we need to be smart on that.

The other thing, of course, is that we as American Christians because of 9/11 see every Muslim as a potential terrorist. That for me is very, very dangerous, because when you began to demonize everybody of that faith, you run the risk of dehumanizing them and you run the risk of punishing them — implicitly or explicitly harm to these vulnerable people. So for me, the misunderstanding of Islam and of Muslims, we have a lot of work to do in educating our people and helping them to understand that not every single Muslim is a potential terrorist.