Ten years ago, Rev. Robert Schuller, veteran host of "Hour of Power," the weekly televised church service, had never even met with a Muslim. Now the white-haired minister was basking in praises from two leading African-American Muslims in a Villa Park mosque.
 
    "I've been watching Rev. Schuller for approximately 30 years and have long been inspired by the 'Hour of Power,' " Rev. Louis Farrakhan told the crowd of Muslims, Christians, Jews and Sikhs at the interreligious event Monday.
 
    Wallace Deen Mohammed, the most prominent orthodox imam in the African-American community, recalled that his father, Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, warned him white people were devils.
 
    Still, he said, "In my 20s, I watched the 'Hour of Power,' [and] I didn't see any devil."
 
    Schuller, 75, ministers to a 10,000-member Christian congregation at the glass Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif. But his "positive theology of self-esteem" also appeals to many non-Christians, who watch his show in countries as far away as Azerbaijan.
 
    In the Chicago area, "Hour of Power" airs at 6 a.m. Sunday on WBBM-Ch. 2.
 
    Schuller has been touring to promote his new autobiography, "My Journey." But after the Sept. 11 tragedy, Schuller said, he wanted to do more than peddle books.
 
    "I wanted to have evenings of hope," he said.
 
    So he spoke at an interfaith event where religious leaders all but outdid one another in their testimonies of positive change.
 
    For decades, Schuller said, he was a proponent of the kind of proselytizing that pushed Muslims to become Christians. Then he realized that asking people to change their faith was "utterly ridiculous."
 
    Mohammed's change came when he rejected his father's exclusionary views.
 
    "My fellow man is humanity," he said.
 
    Farrakhan said that since a 1999 deathbed conversion he had moved from a nationalist Islam to a more universal Islam that saw the value of all faiths.
 

    "I'm a Christian. I am a Muslim. I am a Jew. I am a Sikh. I am a Buddhist," he told the crowd.
 
    Schuller's first interaction with a Muslim group came four years ago, when Mohammed invited him to give the opening sermon at the Muslim American Society's New Jersey convention. And in 1999, he was asked by the grand mufti of Syria to preach in Damascus.
 
    "When I met the grand mufti ... I sensed the presence of God," he wrote in his autobiography.
 
    The two men, he said, focused on similarities, not differences.
 
    "We didn't discuss theological details that might distract us ... from hearing the voice of a crying child," he said.
 
    Nor did they talk about whether non-Christians were going to hell.
 
    "In a world with crying children we have no time," he said.
 
    "The purpose of religion is not to say, 'I have all the answers, and my job is to convert you.' That road leads to the Twin Towers. That attitude is an invitation to extremists," he said.
 
    After Sept. 11, he said, the emphasis should move from proselytizing "to just trying to help everybody who had hurts and hopes."
 
    Mohammed concurred, telling the crowd, "I just love the company of another believer. I don't even think of his religion."
 
    He told Schuller: "I love you, Christian brother. You have a friend."
 
    Kareem Irfan, the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago's chairman, said he liked the spirit of the gathering.
 
    "It was great to see leaders come forward and preach the gospel of solidarity," Irfan said. "I found that to be very inspiring. Rev. Schuller's writing and speeches made it clear that he takes an expansive approach to religion. He has a lot of followers outside the traditional circles."
 

CCCInc Note:

"interfaith" contradicts Eph4:5 "One Lord, one faith," "grand mufti" equates with 2Cor11:14 "from proselytizing" denies, rejects Mat28:20

Jn14:6...Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
 
Acts4:8...Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders of Israel:
9 "If we this day are judged for a good deed to (a) helpless man, by what means he has been made well,
10 "Let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom GOD raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole.
11 "This is the 'stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.'
12 "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.

    For the first few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Willow Creek Community Church Senior Pastor Bill Hybels was increasingly bothered by reports of hate crimes and misinformation about Islam.
 
    "I am so concerned by the gap between Muslims and Christians that is growing week by week by week," Hybels said, "and I thought Willow could do something about that."
 
    That something was to have Hybels' church in South Barrington, one of the larger Christian churches in the country, invite a local Muslim leader, Fisal Hammouda, to talk last weekend about Islam to a total of 17,000 churchgoers spread over four services.
 
    "There are some Americans and some Christians spreading rumors and half-truths that the Koran encourages violence," Hybels told his congregation Saturday. "Well, you take some stuff out of context and we've got major problems."
 
    Hammouda, a U.S. citizen who emigrated from Egypt in 1969, is an engineer and an imam, or religious leader, in the Islamic Center in Naperville. He had visited Willow Creek in March as part of the church's world religions weekend, and he and Hybels had continued to talk in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks.
 
    Because of that familiarity between the two men, their discussion was at times light-hearted--they even joked about converting each other--but also somber as it turned to politics and violence.
 
    The 45-minute interview is a familiar format at Willow Creek, with Hybels talking with Hammouda onstage in a 4,500-person auditorium.
 
    Hybels asked Hammouda questions that he said were drawn from hundreds of e-mails he had received from fellow "Creekers."
 
    "As it started to look like it might be Osama bin Laden ... who directed the attack, what did you think?" Hybels said.
 
    Hammouda said that at first he thought "it couldn't be a Muslim," explaining that the holy book of Islam, the Koran, does not allow violence against innocent people. "The Koran says: `Who kills an innocent life, it's as if he killed all humanity.' "
 
    The imam also discussed the strong ties between Christianity and Islam.
 
    "We believe in Jesus, more than you do in fact," said Hammouda, drawing laughter when Hybels, smiling, ventured to disagree.
 
    Muslims consider Jesus and other biblical figures to be Islamic prophets, Hammouda explained, though not as important as Muhammad, the faith's main prophet.
 
    "We call you 'the people of book.' We have all the prophets from the Bible," he said.
 

    That fact alone surprised many in the audience.
 
    "I didn't know they believed in Jesus," church member Elizabeth Perez, 60, of Zion said after the service. "I thought it was interesting how much we have in common."
 
    Laughter rolled through the audience again as Hammouda, discussing the true definition of a "jihad," or holy war, said it even could refer to a personal holy war to overcome, say, a desire to eat more candy.
 
    But unease took hold when the conversation turned more serious and political, as when Hybels asked Hammouda, "Why do some Muslims hate the U.S. as much as they do?"
 
    Hammouda said many Muslims see U.S. decisions about Israel, Iraq and Yugoslavia as "inconsistencies in our foreign policy" that favor non-Muslims.
 
    Some members of the audience seized on these points.
 
    Hammouda "still professes hate for Israel," said Marilyn Stoken, 69, who was visiting the church with her daughter, Leslie, 38, of Wheeling, who has been a member for two years.
 
    After the service, Hybels said in an interview that the goal of the event wasn't to change longstanding views.
 
    "I don't know that many views needed to be changed," he said. "I think questions were answered."
 
    Judy Barrie, 30, of Mundelein said the interview "opened up doors to communicate and showed [Muslims are] people just like we are."
 
    That is the kind of impact Hybels had hoped for.
 
    "It gave us a greater sense of assurance that maybe, despite all of our differences, we can get along," he said.