KJC Korea
Journal Central

Islamophobia is one of the fastest-growing hate crimes both in the East and the West. It is not uncommon nowadays to witness Muslims being unfairly accused of threatening world peace, and for that reason, even normal Muslims have been mistreated and even systematically discriminated in their workplaces and daily life. What makes Islamophobia even more disturbing is that this hate crime is not simply a social issue anymore but some Christian groups or individuals are often actively involved in spreading fake news about Muslims and end up contributing to the social construction of Muslims as public enemies. This paper argues that Islamophobia is not only caused by the lack of social or political understanding of who Muslims are, but is heavily motivated by a distorted eschatology or the lack of a sound biblical worldview. Furthermore, it also emphasizes that imitating the examples of Jesus is critically essential in order to overcome Islamophobia. This paper will focus on the words and deeds of Jesus as found in the story of the Samaritan woman in John’s Gospel and examine how Jesus’s examples of embrace affect our understanding of anthropology, eschatology, and community and thus show us a way forward in loving Muslims as our neighbors.

This study argues that oral transmission must be utilized to evangelize Kyrgyz Muslims and suggests directions that will contribute to the development of techniques that are appropriate for contextualization. Most Muslims have been living in oral transmission based cultures, and deftly learn and communicate through oral transmission. Therefore, Quran and Hadith, the central texts for their faith, have also been taught and learned through this technique. In contemporary culture, such techniques are carried on not only to continue religious traditions. The historical experiences of Muslims inform how preservation of history through memory can shape worldview and tie their communities. Oral transmission holds a particular significance to Kyrgyz Muslims. The Epic of Manas is a central poem to their religious nationalistic identity, formulating their worldview and identities. As the heroes that appear in the epic are all strong believers in Islam and Shamanism, Kyrgyz consider Folk Islam, the intermix of Shamanism and Islam, to be essential to Kyrgyz Islam. In order to share the gospel with people in oral transmission cultures, we must identify myths, lyrics, and music that form national identity, and the Epic of Mana is exemplary for Kyrgyz cultural identity. A Church in Kyrgyzstan utilizes oral transmission of the Epic of Manas as a tool to disciple people. This unique case, which is not observed in any other place in Central Asia, suggests a potential in developing an oral transmission technique that is appropriate for Kyrgyz. Contrived independently by a local Church leader, such a method has been proven to be fruitful in disciple training. When using this technique, believers who recite the Bible are experiencing how the Gospel follows wherever they go, perpetually reminding them to live by God’s will. In addition, when interacting with others, having memorized scriptures in their minds adds confidence in sharing the gospel. While reciting Bible verses through replicating the oral transmission of the Epic of Manas is an excellent contextualized approach for Kyrgyzstan, additional reinforcements can be made to optimize this method. Directly reciting verses does not fully utilize the forte of dictative narratives. Even though adding cadence allows the written text to be transmitted orally, simple recitation lacks narrative and still possesses dominantly literary qualities. The reason why the Epic of Manas holds cultural significance not solely due to the way it is transmitted; rather, it is due to the grandiosity of its narrative that is transmitted orally. The Bible has a meta-narrative that progresses from creation-corruption-redemption-restoration. Numerous stories of each person converge with this meta-narrative. As a result, arranging Biblical stories as chronology can redress Islamic narratives that are innate in Kyrgyz people and transform their lives through accepting Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is imperative for local leaders and missionaries to contrive strategic arrangements of Biblical stories that fuse with folk tunes and meters.

It has been called Dhimmi which is a few non-Muslims who have lived in majority Islamic societies. It is argued that Islam insist that the Dhimmi system showed the tolerance of Islam in terms of protecting Dhimmi. However, Christianity argues that the Dhimmi system was a system that showed Islamic discrimination such as Jizya, Kharaj, and pressure to convert to Muslims, and persecution. In Indonesia with the largest Muslim population in the world, Christianity is a minority, the discrimination and restrictions faced by Indonesian Christianity are similar to the situation of Dhimmi. However, the Indonesian church survived by keeping the faith and this was a sign of the kingdom of God and carried out mission as a missional presence. Furthermore, mission as dialogue is a missional method that goes beyond the missional presence of the Indonesian church toward Islam. Through dialogue and encounters focused on common interests and seeking peaceful coexistence with moderate Indonesian Muslims, the Indonesian church can witness to Christ.

Uyghur Muslims are an ethnic group that suffers from various difficulties due to the Chinese government's policy of "sinicizing Xinjiang Uyghur Islam" and advocating "de-sinicization of Uyghur Islam" in response to this policy. The suffering of Uyghur Muslims caused by this is expressed in various forms such as human rights violations, economic poverty, ethnic conflict, loss of national history, dilution of ethnicity, confrontation with Hui Muslims, and persecution of Uyghur Christians. In the mission to Uyghur Muslims who are experiencing these kinds of hardships, there are few examples of mission strategies designed from the perspective of understanding the sufferings from multiple perspectives and how to testify the gospel to the 'people who are suffering' so far. Therefore, this paper begins with the awareness that there is a need for a study to understand the suffering of Uyghur Muslims. In keeping with this argument, the purpose of this study is twofold. The first is to understand what the sufferings of Uyghur Muslims are. The second is to study the religious and ethnic identity that drives Uyghur Muslims to endure suffering. Understanding the sufferings of Uyghur Muslims will be an important foundation for designing a mission strategy suitable for their situation.

This article explores the relationship between Chinese and Malays in Malaysia from a historical and missiological perspective. Modern Malaysia was formed by pursuing mutual interests through political, economic, and religious complications with Britain, the Chinese, and the Malays. The spread of Chinese economic and political influence has been causing a backlash from other ethnic groups, especially the Malays. Malaysia, a multi-ethnic country, has been advocating a unified Malaysia since its foundation, but the conflict between Chinese and Malay ethnic groups has continued due to the “May 13 Incident”, “New Economic Policy” and a series of religious disputes. In particular, the post-Corona government’s pro-Islamic policy is intensifying this tension, as is the case with Ebit Lew. In this situation, Chinese Christians must first realize that Christian ministry is inevitably accompanied by hardships. And they need to be true friends with Malays in a “receptor-oriented method” to understand them and share their needs, especially during Covid 19. In addition, Chinese churches should be more actively involved in the interests of the state and society, based on holistic ministry and public theology that encompasses evangelism and social concern.

Despite the Islamic concept of taḥrīf, which teaches that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures have been altered or misinterpreted, some of the post-quranic scholars of the medieval Islamic world were known to have appropriated them rather liberally in their Qurʾān commentaries and historical narratives. This paper focuses on the celebrated works of the quranic scholars, such as al-Ṭabarī, al-Thaʿlabī, and al-Qurṭubī, to examine their engagement with the extra-quranic sources, specifically in their exploration of Saul, David, and Goliath (Q 2:246-251). Previous scholarship has treated al-Ṭabarī’s History of the Prophets and Kings and al-Thaʿlabī’s Lives of the Prophets quite independently, but no sufficient study has been done to shed light into gauging the remarkable nature of their appropriation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament sources in bolstering their Islamic agenda. Along with comparing the historiographical exposition of al-Ṭabarī and al-Thaʿlabī, this study provides an additional comparative vantage point by probing into al-Qurṭubī’s quranic commentary, whose tendency is to minimize the incorporation of the extra-quranic material, albeit embracing al-Ṭabarī’s reports. The analysis of this inquiry yields that both al-Thaʿlabī and al-Qurṭubī subscribe to al-Ṭabarī’s History in their exegetical treatise, but markedly deviate from one another in their deployment of the Jewish and Christian material. However, this does not imply that these post-quranic scholars compromised their understanding of the Qurʾān in their zeal to extrapolate the interpretative lacunae by means of the Jewish and Christian traditions. Rather, a careful examination reveals that all these Muslim scholars strove to articulate the Islamic ideals through skillfully adapting extra-quranic data with due reverence for the Qurʾān—a revealing fact that the religious texts of the two monotheistic traditions served as a buttress to better define their Islamic legacy.