The tragedy in the Middle East, from a Christian convert’s perspective
Earlier this year, NPR’s “Consider This” interviewed a variety of Muslim Americans for an episode titled “Ramadan in a Time of War.” Interviewees expressed renewed fervor for prayer as they mourn and advocate for the safety and peace of friends and family in and around Gaza.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, people around the world — not only Muslims and Jews — have been grieving a tragedy with a complex history. Iran has since launched an attack on Israel and Israel has since moved into Rafah, further complicating the conflict and compounding the pain.
I’m often asked for my views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of my background as a former Muslim, now a Christian. As I speak publicly on this issue, I find that the Middle East conflict tugs at the human heart regardless of religion and ethnicity, signaling an often overlooked and misunderstood spiritual element. C.S. Lewis famously wrote that God shouts to us in our pain, using it as a megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Perhaps our own clamor since Oct. 7 distracts us from what God is shouting in recent months.
Much religious history for Muslims, Jews and Christians is set in this long-contested region. Because of this religious significance, when Israel was internationally recognized as a state in 1948, Jews felt a return to a spiritual home. Many Muslims saw it as an occupation that displaced them from their physical and spiritual home. Palestinian Christians, among the oldest Christian communities in the world, felt something similar. But how Muslims and even non-Muslims view this conflict has changed over time, in often unhelpful ways. Now, there is very little introspection or nuance.
Regardless of anyone’s geopolitical stance, we must agree that the events of Oct. 7 were abominable and without justification. We must not fall into the trap of “both side-ism” — one injustice or atrocity never justifies another, especially in the killing of innocents.
Yet, as we seek to understand, navigate and relieve the conflict to the best of our ability, I’m compelled by my Christian faith to employ a robust moral anthropology, one that addresses the world’s deepest questions about the human condition through the lens of the Bible.
That sacred text, which has influenced Jews, Christians and Muslims to varying degrees, teaches that every human bears God’s image yet is beset by inherent moral corruption. Christians call this our “sinful condition,” only alleviated and redeemed by God’s grace through Jesus’s atoning death on the cross and subsequent resurrection. In our sinful condition, we expect people to behave with moral virtue and gross vice regardless of their religion, nationality or political position.
The Bible’s description of the human heart accounts for a phenomenon where activists tear down photos of kidnapped children. The Bible adequately accounts for the kind of callousness it takes to look on footage of dead and starving children without reconsidering the intensity of a response. And yet it is the Bible’s declaration that we are each made in God’s image that gives objective justification to our concern about the suffering of innocents. Viewing the complex issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through this moral lens gives us a fuller picture that encompasses the spiritual aspect ignored by most historians and policymakers.
Consider the words of Micah 6:8, which instruct us to “act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.”
The humility that allows us to act justly and love mercy entails the kind of introspection that a dichotomized world finds unthinkable. A group of people are either the oppressors or the oppressed. They are either perpetrators or victims. They cannot be both. I’ve seen the tweets of “There are no ‘civilian Palestinians’” followed by “There are no Israeli ‘civilians.’” Judith Butler can say with a straight face that the events of Oct. 7 were just “armed resistance” while others call for making “Gaza a parking lot.”
The biblical description of humanity offers the nuance to seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly that our contemporary ideologies lack. We are beset with sin yet have infinite value. As we seek to walk humbly, we must remember that God’s love and offer of grace extends to all people. Jews and Arabs around the world continue to experience a sense of sorrow and loss that many of us in America will never know or comprehend. They cry out for justice and love with every breath.
As a person with Christian convictions, I see the cries of sorrow, justice and love coalesce at the cross of Christ, where Jesus experienced the sorrow of forsakenness to satisfy justice’s demand for payment for sin, which he does out of love for all of us. I reflect on what steps need to be taken personally and globally, remembering what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:1-2:
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” (NIV)
Our conversations, activism, fundraising, lobbying and even praying are worth nothing if not rooted in love and truth, expressed through honoring the dignity of every person made in the image of God.
Abdu Murray, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity, is a speaker and writer with Embrace the Truth. He has authored several books, including "Saving Truth" and "More than a White Man’s Religion."