The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam (44 page)

5
. John Mott,
The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions
(New York: Young People’s Missionary Movement of the United States and Canada, 1910), pp. 60–61.

6
. For many evangelicals, the distinction of denomination is irrelevant, since it is linked to man-made hierarchies and rites, and not a direct experience of Jesus Christ.

7
. Peter Spartalis,
Karl Kumm: Last
of the Livingstones—Pioneer Missionary Statesman
(Bonn: Verlag Für Kultur und Wissenscheaft, 1994), p. 34.

8
. Sudan United Mission Archives, Lamont Library, Harvard University.

9
. Hermann Karl Wilhelm Kumm,
From Hausaland to Egypt Through the Sudan
(London: Constable and Co., 1910), p. 227.

10
. The pastor’s name has been omitted for his safety.

11
. “Nigeria: Jos, a City Torn Apart,”
Human Rights
Watch
, December 18, 2001.

12
. Mark Noll,
A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 1992), p. 380.

13
. Although this chapter, “The Bee,” speaks about the healing properties of honey, most chapter titles in the Quran may appear somewhat random to non-Muslims. Like the verses themselves, Muslims consider them to be divine revelation.

3. THE FLOOD

1
. Malaria, which, according to the World Health Organization, is the world’s foremost killer of children, leads to the deaths of an annual average of one million people, the majority under five years old, in sub-Saharan Africa.

2
. “Lost in Limbo,”
Economist
, August 27, 2009.

3
. See George Ochoa, Jennifer Hoffman, Tina Tin,
Climate: The Force That Shapes Our World and the Future
of Life on Earth
(London: Rodale Books International, 2005), p. 142, and Alexandra Olson, “U.N. Forum: Deserts Advancing Faster Than Development Funding for Poor Nations,” Associated Press, February 20, 2002.

4
. Ernest Zebrowski, Jr.,
Perils of a Restless Planet: Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 21.

5
.
IOM Policy Brief: Migration,
Climate Change and the Environment
(International Organization for Migration, May 2009).

6
. Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent,
Environmental Exodus: An Emergent Crisis in the Global Arena
(Washington, D.C.: Climate Institute, 1995); and Norman Myers, “Environmental Refugees: Our Latest Understanding,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
B:356:16.1–16.5, 2001.

7
. “In Search of Shelter:
Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement.”

4. DROUGHT

1
. Amin, Al Amin,
Almajiri and the Quranic Education
(Kaduna: Rishab Printing Press, 2001).

5. THE TRIBULATION

1
. “Nigeria Cartoon Protests Kill 16,” BBC News, February 19, 2006, at
news.bbc.co.uk
.

2
. “Revenge in the Name of Religion,”
Human Rights Watch
, May 25, 2005.

3
. “African Divide over Gay Bishop,”
BBC News, September 8, 2003, at
news.bbc.co.uk
.

6.
MODERN SAINTS AND MARTYRS

1
. In a letter to
The Independent on Sunday
, Cox claimed to have redeemed 2,281 slaves on eight visits to Sudan. (“This is no scam. The slaves are real,”
Independent on Sunday
, March 3, 2002.)

SUDAN

1
. In the Quran, the original Arabic word
islam
can be interpreted in different ways. Some translators simply use the
word
submission
or
devotion to God
to imply that all those who submit to God, including Jews and Christians (fellow people of the Book), are considered legitimate believers. Others translate
islam
to mean only Mohammed’s followers. The debate over
islam
’s true meaning indicates one of the growing fissures between liberals and conservatives within the religion today.

9. IN THE BEGINNING

1
. For
further discussion of the problems of longitude, see Dava Sobel’s book
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
(New York: Penguin Books, 1995).

2
. Aristotle,
Meteorologica
, translated by E. W. Webster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), book 2, part 5.

3
. Ab
I-Wal
d Muhammad ibn Ahmad.
Muhammad Ibn Rushd was born in al-Andalus, contemporary Spain, in 1126.

4
. Nicolas Wey-Gomez,
Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008), p. 70.

5
. Maps Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

6
. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
, translated by Mary M. Innes (London: Penguin Books, 1955) book 2, ll. 218–57.

7
. Maps Division, Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C.

8
. Oliver Dunne and James E. Kelley, eds.,
The Diario of Christopher Colombus’s First Voyage to America
(Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), p. 19.

9
. Wey-Gomez,
The Tropics of Empire
, pp. 88–89.

10
. Giovanni Vantini,
Christianity in Sudan
(Bologna, Italy: EMI, 1981), p. 33.

11
. Ibid., p. 34.

12
. The Prophet Mohammed’s early biographers first compiled accounts
of his life from the eighth to the tenth century. For further reading, see Muhammad Husayn Haykal’s
The Life of Muhammad
(Indianapolis, Ind.: North American Trust Publications, 1967).

13
. Richard Lobban, “The Slow Arrival of Islam in Christian Nubia.” Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa Program of African Studies, at Northwestern University, May 23–25, 2003.

14
. Vantini,
Christianity
in Sudan
, p. 24.

15
. Ibid., p. 207.

16
. The cross, too, was influenced by the religions that predated Christianity in Sudan; it was a version of the ancient Egyptian ankh
.

17
. “Railroads in Africa,”
New York Times
, August 23, 1891.

18
. Mansour Khalid,
War and Peace in Sudan
(London: Kegan Paul, 2003), p. 7.

19
. “General Act” of February 26, 1885.

10. FAITH AND FOREIGN POLICY

1
.
www.charitynavigator.org
.

2
. Samaritan’s Purse Annual Report 2006.

3
. “Christian Right Might Inflame War, Observes Fear,”
Africanews
63, May 2001.

4
. Jemera Rone of Human Rights Watch was trying to get the word out on this then little-known spree of massacres in the region of Darfur.

5
. Giles Fraser, “The Evangelicals Who Like to Giftwrap Islamophobia: The
World’s Largest Children’s Christmas Project Has a Toxic Agenda,”
Guardian
, November 10, 2003.

6
. The Communist persecution of Christians was real and awful. Inside the Soviet Union, Christians who would not recant their beliefs were bound to crosses and laid on prison floors, and then fellow prisoners were forced to relieve themselves on the victims’ faces, according to one witness, Richard
Wurmbrand, a Romanian evangelical pastor imprisoned in Romania for fourteen years, who testified before Congress in 1966. In his book,
Tortured for Christ
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1967), Wurmbrand also recalled seeing another prisoner forced to serve human excrement as Communion;
another, fed to hungry rats; another, forced to watch his son beaten to death.

7
. Franklin Graham,
Rebel with
a Cause
(Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 1995), p. 74.

8
. Ibid., p. 239.

9
. Amit A. Pandya, “Faith, Justice and Violence,” Stimson Center Report (Washington, D.C.: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2009), p. 34.

10
.
Wall Street Journal
, July 5, 1995.

11
. For a thorough discussion of the politics of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), see Allen D. Hertzke’s 2004 book,
Freeing God’s Children
.

12
. Other recent campaigns include anti–human trafficking and sanctions against North Korea.

13
. William F. Schulz, ed.,
The Future of Human Rights: U.S. Policy for a New Era
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 200.

14
.
New York Times
, March 21, 2001, and
Middle East Report
, March 29, 2001.

15
. William Martin, “The Christian Right and American Foreign Policy,”
Foreign
Policy
114, Spring 1999, 66–79.

16
.
www.1040window.org
.

17
. Elizabeth Kendal, “Cote D’Ivoire on Fire: West African Church at Risk,”
World Evangelical Alliance
, April 8, 2004.

18
. Amir Abdullah, “The 10/40 Window,”
Nida’ul Islam
, no. 20, September–October 1997.

19
. Graham,
Rebel with a Cause
, p. 187.

20
.
www.foxnews.com
, February 22, 2007.

11. “MISSIONARY MAYONNAISE”

1
. Darfur was an independent
sultanate of the Fur people roughly the size of France until 1899, when the British incorporated the territory into their colonial landholdings.

2
. Peter Martell, “Dancing Bashir Scoffs at Darfur Warrant,” BBC News, March 5, 2009, at
news.bbc.co.uk
.

3
. Khalid,
War and Peace in Sudan
, p. 65.

4
. Fergus Nicoll,
The Sword of the Prophet: The Mahdi of Sudan and the Death of General Gordon
(Sutton,
UK: Sutton Publishing, 2004), p. 194.

5
.
Times
(London), December 31, 1898.

6
. Nicoll,
Sword of the Prophet
, p. 9.

7
. H.D.S. Greenway, “A Case for Doctor Watson,”
Boston Globe
, April 3, 2007.

8
. M. W. Daly,
Empire on the Nile: The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 1898–1934
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 6.

9
. Robert O. Collins,
British in the Sudan
(London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 173.

10
. Tennyson crafted this epitaph for the Westminster Abbey gravestone of Charles Gordon, and it was published without the poet’s permission in
The Times
of London on May 7, 1885.

11
. Daly,
Empire on the Nile
, p. 253.

12
. Mansour Khalid,
War and Peace in Sudan
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 34, note 76.