2015

Just before Easter weekend 2015, I had the flu. Sometimes the flu comes with mild symptoms; sometimes the symptoms are severe. In my case, it was the latter. Even seven days later, when I thought I was recovering, the cough continued with such severity that I coughed and coughed until my body ached. On Wednesday evening, a week after I got the flu, I was talking with a friend on the phone when we were interrupted by my uncontrollable cough. I went to bed that evening harassed by the devil. I spiraled down as my mind was crippled with anxiety over the following questions. 

As previously mentioned, in my teaching at seminaries I have told my students that Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, Abu Bakr Naji and Fouad Hussein, are going to become so famous that they will overshadow Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Finally it happened, although not exactly how I thought it would happen. ISIL is the product of the writings and thinking of these three men and others. In my first blog on this subject, I gave a bird’s eye view of five men whose writings have had the greatest impact on ISIL, and then in the next blog I addressed three more. In this blog I will address the last two. The first eight addressed in the previous two blogs were:

For years in my teaching at seminaries, I have told my students that Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, Abu Bakr Naji and Fouad Hussein are going to become so famous that they will overshadow Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Finally it has happened, although not exactly how I thought it would happen. ISIL is the product of the writings and thinking of these three men and others. In the previous blog, I gave a bird’s eye view of the first five men whose writings have had the greatest impact on ISIL.

For years while teaching at seminaries, I have been telling my students that Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, Abu Bakr Naji and Fouad Hussein were going to become so famous that they will overshadow Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Finally it happened – but not exactly how I thought it would. ISIL is the product of the writings and thinking of these three men and others, whom I will address very briefly in this blog and the next two. In this blog I will give you a bird’s eye view of the first five, and in the next two blogs I will address the next five. My hope is to whet your appetite and motivate you to go deeper and learn more about these men and their influence through your own research. 

ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, was the first name that was given to the organization since its territory was in Iraq and Syria. The acronym in Arabic “Dae’sh,” has four Arabic letters, D, A, E’, Sh. D stands for al-Dawla (state), A stands for  al-Islamiya (Islamic), E’ stands Iraq and  Sh stands for Sham (Levant). Sham nowadays stands for Damascus or Syria but in its historical Islamic context Sham or Levant included Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. So a more accurate translation of the acronym DA’ESH is ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. As ISIL’s vision grew larger it changed its name to IS which stands for Islamic State. Their vision is far bigger than Iraq and Levant. They want to expand into Asia, Africa and Europe.   

I have the privilege to teach at several seminaries in the United States and sometimes in Canada. I teach an intensive course, six to eight hours a day for five days, Monday through Friday, and at a later date the students send me their book reports and course papers. The only exception is at the Colorado Springs branch of Fuller Seminary, where I teach the course over four weekends. The smallest number of students that I have had in the past was six, and the largest was twenty-five. 

Another year is behind us, along with the ups and downs that we have experienced. May the year 2015 be a year of rich time in the Scriptures as we live our lives in a broken world.