October 15, 2018
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim: In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful, to our Christian brothers and sisters participating in the Parliament of the World’s Religions, greetings of peace. The mission of the Covenants Initiative is to disseminate the Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the world. In these covenants, our Prophet commands all Muslims not to kill or rob or damage the buildings of peaceful Christians, or even prevent their Christian wives from going to church, but rather to actively defend them against their enemies “until the coming of the Hour”, the end of the world. Consequently we accept these covenants as legally binding upon Muslims today.
Since the publication of Dr. John Andrew Morrow’s ground-breaking book, The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World in 2013, the Covenants Initiative has become an international peace movement. Some highlights: In 2016 we were contacted by Bishop Francis Kalabat, leader-in-exile of the Chaldean Catholics of Iraq, now living in the United States. Bishop Kalabat asked us to issue an initiative calling for the actions of ISIS to be declared genocide. This became the Genocide Initiative, which we posted as a petition on the Change.org website. In March of that year, the Fortenberry Amendment, defining the actions of ISIS as war crimes and genocide, was passed unanimously by the U.S. House of Representatives, followed shortly by a statement to the same effect by Secretary of State John Kerry. Our work was hailed in an article in the premier U.S. armed forces publication Stars and Stripes as one of the factors that led to the passage of the Fortenberry Amendment. And when ISIS burned St. Mary’s Cathedral in the Philippines in 2017, the governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao immediately invoked the Covenants of the Prophet to prove that this act was “un-Islamic”; we are confident that this was due largely to our efforts.
Islamophobia, unfortunately, is on the rise. The Council for American-Islamic relations recorded a 17 percent increase in incidents of anti-Muslim bias in the U.S. in 2017 over 2016, much of it undoubtedly due to the climate of fear created by the Trump administration. This was accompanied by a 15 percent increase in hate crimes targeting U.S. Muslims, including children, youth, and families, over the same period. As for 2018, CAIR’s quarterly report indicates that anti-Muslim bias incidents and hate crimes in the second quarter were up 83 and 21 percent respectively over the first quarter of this year.
We ask Christians to consider one simple proposition: that absolutely the best way to strike a powerful blow against Islamophobia, as well to hopefully change the minds of conservative Christians and others about the true nature if Islam—rather than simply preaching to the choir—is to dedicate themselves to collecting and promulgating the stories of the courageous actions taken by Muslims, at the risk of their own lives, to protect the lives and property of Christians under attack by ISIS in Iraq, in Syria, and elsewhere, in our own time. The Muslims of the city of Karbala in Iraq provided refuge for Christians fleeing ISIS; Kurdish Sufi Muslims helped Christians suffering attacks by ISIS in and around Mosul; in Syria, Hizbullah has defended Christians and Christian holy sites. After churches were burned down or vandalized in Canada and the United States. Muslims rallied to raise funds to rebuild them. There were also cases of Muslims making human chains around synagogues in France, and elsewhere, to protect them from Jew-haters, both so-called Muslims and members of the extreme Right. And when ISIS came after Christians in the Philippines, the Muslims of Mindanao gave them Muslim dress so they could blend with the local population, thereby demonstrating both “the promise of inclusion” and “the power of love.” We are now in the process of collecting accounts of such actions, which can be viewed at: ( )
Christians of good will, we need your help; we need it badly, and we need it now. There are many ways of protesting Islamophobia, but it is our considered opinion that the single most powerful witness in defense of Muslims is a firm commitment by both Christians and Muslims to spread the word of the heroic defense of persecuted Christians by Muslims in Iraq, in Syria, and elsewhere in the world, and of the Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad, in the spirit of which such actions are taken. We request—we implore—we challenge every Christian of good will to pledge to make these documents and these actions known to everyone from the local anti-Muslim agitator all the way up to the head of your state, and every state, as well as to your religious leaders and the members of your own congregation. If you decide to take this pledge, please inform us by contacting Charles Upton at cupton@qx.net.
We cordially invite you to attend our event at the Parliament, “An Offering of the Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad to the Christians of the World in the 21st Century,” featuring the speakers Dr. John Andrew Morrow, Charles Upton, Craig Considine, Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, and Jennifer Doane Upton, on Saturday, November, 3rd, room 714B, 6:00—7:00 PM.
Sincerely,
Charles Upton
For Dr. John Andrew Morrow
and the Covenants Initiative
cupton@qx.net
http://www.covenantsoftheprophet.com
Dr. John Andrew Morrow 