62-year old Sir Elton John is a 5-time Grammy award winning singer and songwriter. He is also a gay person, and proud of it. And he is against religion. He once famously said : ’From my point of view, I would ban religion completely.’” In a recent interview with Parade magazine, Sir Elton John called Jesus a “compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems.” Predictably, Christians reacted strongly to this statement. But, as Kuwait’s Al Watan Daily reported, even Muslims are offended by this remark.
Why would this be offensive to Muslims? Dr Adel Al-Dumkhi, an Islamic scholar said that what Sir Elton John said is “a violation of human rights”. Then he added: “Religious figures should be respected. This offends Muslims also, not just Christians, as Jesus is highly venerated by all Muslims; I do not think it is enough to merely criminalize an offence on what is sacred.”
Dr Adel Al-Dumkhi also said: “A member of the Salafi Alliance in Kuwait, Salem AlـNashi, explained that making such accusations without any supporting evidence requires legal measures be taken. AlـNashi also stressed that the statement has ’caused millions of Muslims and Christians pain’ and asked that respect should always be there.”
What about reactions from Kuwait’s Christian community? Pastor Emanuel Ghareeb from the National Evangelical Church said: “I was shocked by such a statement. The purity of Christ of course dispels such implications.” Bishop Camillo from the Catholic Church said that “such a statement is stupid.”
Sir Elton John also said: ”On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don’t know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East—you’re as good as dead.”
Gay Christian groups said that Sir Elton John had, with his statements, reopened debate on homosexuality and the church.
Over in Britain, a spokesman for the Church of England said: “Sir Elton’s reflection that Jesus calls us all to love and forgive is one shared by all Christians. But insights into aspects of the historic person of Jesus are perhaps best left to the academics.”
Stephen Green, director of Christian Voice, said the gay claim was “a desperate cry for attention”. But Jeremy Marks, founder and director of Courage, a Christian organisation for Gays and Lesbians, said: “None of us know and will never know what Jesus’s sexuality was. Certainly people’s perceptions of relationships between men, and men and women, were different then and would be unrecognisable today. I think he is explaining how he sees Jesus in his life and wants to encourage other people to see that too.”
Sir Elton John reacted along similar lines. He said: ”I think everyone’s individual faith is their own business. And I do believe in Jesus, and I do believe he was a compassionate person. And I see him from my point of view, and that’s just my point of view, as a compassionate gay person - someone who was persecuted, someone who forgave people. That’s how I see him. That’s my idea of faith. If I’ve offended anybody, Idon’t see why they should be offended by it, because I’m not saying, ‘That’s how he definitely was.’”
What did Sir Elton John think of the backlash to his remarks? He said: “I don’t really want to cause a controversy, and I didn”t know it was going to be a sidebar to an article that was a great article, and I think Parade have been a bit sneaky about that.” In other words, Sir Elton John is saying that while he did make the comment “as part of the conversation during the interview”, he didn’t think the comment was going to be included in the article. Sir Elton John said: “Parade magazine did a kind of a sneaky thing and put it on their Web site that I said this.”
But why are Christians so upset? William Donohue, President of Catholic League said: “Jesus was certainly compassionate, but to say he was ‘super-intelligent’ is to compare the son of God to a successful game-show contestant. More seriously, to call Jesus gay is to label him a sexual deviant.”
Stephen Green, director of Christian Voice said: “The Bible says Jesus was without sin and that rules out homosexuality.”
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