As-salaamu alaikum and a very Merry Christmas!
American Christians often send each other Christmas letters. Oddly, these letters rarely reference Jesus – or any of the other messengers of God, peace and blessings on all of them.
Christmas letters usually just provide a superficial summary of what the letter-writer and family have been doing during the previous year. Most of them are devoid of spirituality.
You’d think a Christmas letter would invoke angels, blessings, self-sacrifice, holiness, purity, miracles, redemptive love, dreams and visions, divine healing, hopes of paradise and aversions to hellfire, and so on. You’d expect a Christmas letter to be written in the spirit of Jesus, that most radical of spiritual healers and miracle-workers, who taught a vastly expanded form of consciousness based on universal love – a form of consciousness capable of turning ordinary life into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Though you don’t see much of this in Christmas letters, a trace of it survives in small acts of kindness performed at this time of year. Another trace can be seen in the glorious play of colored Christmas lights glinting on the snowy black-and-white winter landscape. Aldous Huxley explained in The Doors of Perception that the luminous colors of gemstones and stained glass are capable of transporting us into the world as it actually is, before our minds’ “reducing valves” impoverish it – an expanded state of consciousness not unlike the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus revealed:
“Thanks to glass, a whole building – the Sainte Chapelle, for example, the cathedrals of Chartres and Sens – could be turned into something magical and transporting. Thanks to glass, Paolo Uccello could design a circular jewel thirteen feet in diameter – his great window of the Resurrection, perhaps the most extraordinary single work of vision-inducing art ever produced.”
Huxley suggests that the stained glass of cathedrals was so extraordinary in its multi-hued luminosity, compared to what medieval people experienced everywhere else, that it catapulted them into an altered state of consciousness in which they were capable of grasping Christianity’s “deep message.” It was the contrast between the dull browns and greens of peasant life, and the resplendent rays shooting from colored glass, that did the trick.
Today, when the starkly black-and-white winter world is shattered by the dazzling colors of Christmas lights, you can get a taste of that kind of contrast.
Here in the snowy Wisconsin woods, a guy down the road has turned his yard into an amazing display of Christmas lights, complete with luminous Santas, shimmering reindeer, glowing Christmas trees, gleaming elves, and an elaborate and beautiful nativity scene. I wonder if he knows his Muslim neighbors appreciate his artistry…and love Jesus at least as much as most nominal Christians do.
If he watches Fox News, he probably thinks Muslims hate Jesus.
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| Muslims love Jesus and wish Christians would put Christ back in Christmas – but the Zionist media won’t tell you that! |
Even non-fans of Fox don’t seem to know, or care, that Muslims love Jesus and the story of his miraculous conception and birth. My wife tells me her liberal and progressive friends don’t seem to want to hear about Surat Maryam – regarded by Muslims and non-Muslims alike as one of the Qur’an’s most beautiful passages. Nobody celebrating the birth of Jesus could possibly find a more succinct and moving description of the Christmas story.
That’s right: The best short summary of the Christmas story is in the Qur’an. Christians might consider playing Surat Miryam – the most beautiful Christmas music imaginable – alongside “Silent Night” and the other classics.
Listen to Surat Miryam recited by Saad al-Ghamdi
But be careful: The truth about Muslims’ love of Jesus is dangerous. Congressman Mark Siljander, a saintly soul, was railroaded into federal prison for the crime of bringing Muslims and Christians together based on their shared love of Jesus (and the many other commonalities of the two faiths). Powerful forces don’t want Christians and Muslims to get along. The same powerful forces spread anti-Jesus sentiment through the media, and are bent on turning Christmas into a secular, materialist, consumerist hellhole of a holiday.
Jonas Alexis quotes Philip Roth on the Jewish subversion of Christmas:
“The radio was playing ‘Easter Parade’ and I thought, But this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin ‘Easter Parade’ and ‘White Christmas.’
“The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ – the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity – and what does Irving Berlin brilliantly do? He de-Christs them both! Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow.
“Gone is the gore and the murder of Christ – down with the crucifix and up with the bonnet! He turns their religion into schlock. But nicely! Nicely! So nicely the goyim don’t even know what hit ‘em. They love it. Everybody loves it. The Jews especially. Jews loathe Jesus.
“If supplanting Jesus Christ with snow can enable my people to cozy up to Christmas, then let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”
The simple truth is that Muslims love Jesus; while Jews (traditionally at least) hate him. Simply stating that universally-acknowledged truth can get you labeled an “anti-Semite.” That doesn’t make it any less true.
But hey, it’s Christmas, so let’s not talk about anything serious. We don’t want any family fights, do we? Especially not in the Family of Abraham.
So I will end by invoking the blessings of a certain secularist-materialist fat-guy who seems to have elbowed Jesus out from under the Christmas tree:
May Shaykh Santa, that jolly old Sufi, bring you the blessings of wisdom instead of all that plastic garbage from Wal-Mart you usually get.
Merry Christmas to you and your family from me and my family!
Good letter too, thank you.
I've noticed more people saying Merry Christmas lately and I think that it's a sign that people are awakening but I'm glad for articles like your letter that keep those thoughts in front of us.
Truth is the new stained glass!!
walaykum as-salaam!
Les Ra'uf Boyer
The Supreme Source sent Jesus, son of My beloved Mary, to walk the noble way of all the Prophets, those deeply cherished guides of humanity. Through the Prophet Jesus, The Source of Wisdom transmitted the Radiant Gospel, full of the same Light of Truth that streams through the Living Torah, resonant with the warning and guidance for those who turn with purity of heart toward Allah Most Sublime. the people of the Living gospel, called Christians, can continue to live wisely in the light of the Revelation granted to them through My beloved Jesus. Only those turning away fro Allah Most High who abandon the wisdom that flows to their own people, through their own Prophets, from the Source of Wisdom.
The Eternal Source now reveals through you, My beloved Muhammad, this sublime Book of Truth, which confirms and safeguards the
essential teaching of the Torah, the Gospel, and all the authentic scriptures that existed before them. Thus Jewish and Christian traditions should be accepted reverently in the light of the Glorious Qur'an that descends gracefully through you. But you should not accept any teachings or practices of these earlier traditions which have sprung from limited human conceptions, or which contradict the clear principles of Truth revealed through the Holy Qur'an.
The Source of Life has shown the Prophets of all nations harmonious ways of life and open gateways into the Radiance of Allah. The Source of Power could have united all peoples into a single nation, but Allah Most Merciful has chosen to manifest His Truth through various sacred traditions as teaching and testament for human beings.
If each spiritual nation practices faithfully the path revealed through its own Holy Prophets, then all humanity will return together to the Source of Love. When time ends, on the Day of Truth, Allah alone will clarify the variations and contradictions among historical traditions. While abiding on the earthly plane of Being, evaluate the paths of Torah and Gospel in the light of this Living Qur'an, that the Resonance of Allah is reciting through you. My beloved never allow your people to be drawn away from the fundamental principle of Divine Unity by contrary teachings that other traditions may maintain. These are human distortions of previous Divine Revelations that remain essentially pure.
Meditation on Holy Qur'an 5:49-52
The Heart of the Qur'an, Lex Hixon
http://www.abwoon.com/
http://www.biblio.com/
Kevin wa alaykum alsalam. Loved the letter and loved more Surat Mariyam I am sure many enjoyed it. Salam and Merry Christmas. I think you are making great important impact more than all 54 Muslim embassies in DC. All the best. Sami
Wa alaikum us-salaam my dear brother in Islam,
You have good intention may Allah increase you in knowledge and faith but your action goes against the truth and hence the true teachings of Islam. Christmas is a pagan celebration and has nothing to do with the true teachings of our beloved messenger, Eesa alayhisselam aka Yeshua, the Son of Mary. Truth will set them free. We must tell them the truth even if they dislike it.
Our position (i.e. the straight path of Islam) regarding Christmas should be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_1-4tNNTM
May Allah guide us all to straight path. Amin.
Salaams, brother! Thank you for that beautiful video. I personally don't celebrate Christmas. I'm a Muslim, and it isn't my holiday. But I'm living among Christians and lapsed Christians, and trying to communicate with them about underlying spiritual truth. Christmas isn't JUST a pagan holiday – it was created by the Church to promote Christianity by commemorating the same story told in Surat Miryam (along with the mistake of deifying Eesa.) At worst it's a Christian-Pagan hybrid. Today it has lost most of its connection with religion and become a shopping frenzy. Anyway, I think the best approach to dawa is to focus on commonalities (love of Eesa) rather than differences. Once the Christians understand we love Eesa, we can discuss how the Council of Nicaea invented the "Jesus = God" confusion to match the Roman deification of emperors, and turn Christianity into an imperial religion. If they look into it, they'll realize Islam corrects these mistakes and returns to the authentic teachings of the early Christians.
ah, kevin, so nice of you to be ecumenical. but, as usual, i have something different to suggest.
consider this. the archangel gabriel was not a nice guy. he knew perfectly well what he was doing when he 1) announced to the virgin mary that she would become the mother of god and then, a scant 500 years later, 2) told mohammed that there was only one god and his name was allah and he (mohammed) was god's prophet. plain and simple, the archangel gabriel helped set up two competing religious systems that delivered nothing but jihad, jihad, jihad versus crusade, crusade, crusade ad infinitum, ad nauseam. an instrument of treachery, masquerading as an "angel".
this isn't just my own idea. there seems to be a growing consensus among us who pay attention to the paranormal and the so-called extraterrestrial that we humans are the pawns of heaven and have never been dealt with fairly. we basically exist for the amusement and, as some suggest, nourishment of spiritual predators who pose to us in various forms in order to get us to ride conflicting tides of belief to our inevitable destructions and their ongoing glee.
the remedy for all this is simple: get wise. it's not just a matter of getting wise to 9/11, the new world order, the illuminati, elite masons, bilderbergs and rothschilds, or even the annunaki or reptilian masters and their grey ET acolytes. whatever the smoke-and-mirror show, you can bet we're not being dealt with fair and square, and it doesn't take much common sense to realize that, son of a gun, it would be pretty damn easy to deal with us squarely if these supra-entities had half a mind to do so, which they don't.
"god" can't even decide on its own name. what kind of a dummy is that? you get yahweh-jehovah, elohim, eli, "father", "trinity", and allah. it's so confusing that europeans resort to their generic "deus" or "gott", putting a capital letter on it, instead of using one of those conflicted semitic monikers. what kind of a deal–"covenant"–is that? sounds like no deal to me.
personally, i think the human race should simply grow up, get wise, and recognize our common interest, which is pretty simple–that of a civilized and peaceful existence in this life, in which we can explore our spiritual and intellectual frontiers. we are continually thwarted from this at every turn in our history by forces of which we ought to become suspect. there is no divinity looking out for us. rather, we need to assert our equality to these poseur divinities. whatever physical superiority they have attained–and there is reason to believe that they are nothing more than similarly mortal organisms which have developed a surpassing technological evolution–they are not morally superior. in fact, they are in violation of the real moral law of the cosmos, the simple, obvious ethics which immanuel kant so elegantly defined: honesty, a golden rule, and a categorical imperative.
You have talked about surat Miryam and I want to remember you the story of some Muslims who ordered from prophet to migrate to Abyssinia and they did that and their boss in this migration was Jafar ibn Abitaleb and they migrated and so it went till the infidels followed them and came to Abyssinia and wanted from the Abyssinian king to return the Muslims to Mecca and in this moment Jafar ibn Abitaleb read the surat Miryam for the king that his name was Najashi and he was a Christian after that he was surprised about Quran and Muslim and their right and beautiful Idea about Jesus and Miryam peace and greetings on them and fired the infidels who came to return the Muslims.
The proverb from certain Slovakian fairy tale says: the trait of true King is being right. The freedom perhaps an ability to find and love the righteousness, to realize the code of its beauty, the full humanity which a divinity perhaps cannot be complete without. At least judging from the very fact of being, impossible without its creation, without awareness, conscience, will and soul. Unfortunately such kingdom still doesn't much seem being from this world. Not even Jesus seems claimed something like that. But I believe one of his key appeals was, that it is us – perhaps Jews, Christians, Muslims, Sangha… even pagans, youth or old – people awakening from the pettiness of ignorant pointless hatred can hope, believe and humbly live in the greatness of the truth. To hone the honesty. Be saved and save. This, the very our, world. L’âme qui pour un instant d'infini, çà et là, tue la mort.
Thank you for your very gracious, well-written and seemingly benign "Christmas Letter." Personally, I would only hope that there are many other erudite and pacifistic Muslims throughout the world. Unfortunately, there is significant evidence to suggest the contrary. Until members [especially leaders] of the Muslim community can prove to me [and to millions of others by their actions and not just by lip-service] beyond a reasonable doubt that they can coexist peacefully with Christians, e.g., speak-up/speak-out against Muslim atrocities and they don't wish to impose Sharia Law within our country and elsewhere that flies in the face of our U.S. Constitution, I will continue steadfastly to thwart Muslim expansionism and Muslim religious intolerance/brutality whether it's in our country or elsewhere around the globe.
Meanwhile, Kevin, all the very best to you and yours and Happy New Year.
I don't think Muslims will ever be able to prove anything to you and people like you, because you're getting all your (mis)information from MEMRI and the Zio-mainstream media. Wake up.