Hijab-Wearing Wheaton College Prof. Responds to Critics Who Question Her Devotion (Interview)
A Wheaton College professor has responded to critics who have questioned her devotion to her Christian faith after she announced last week that she will wear a hijab to show solidarity with Muslims during her celebration of the Advent.
Larycia Hawkins is an associate political science professor at the respected Illinois-based evangelical higher education institution Wheaton College, the alma mater of world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham. Hawkins posted on her Facebook page last Thursday that she will wear a Muslim headscarf throughout the Christmas season. During her interview with The Christian Post on Monday, Hawkins maintained that her post was miFsunderstood by many Christians.
In her post last Thursday, Hawkins made the assertion that Christians and Muslims "worship the same God," a statement that she says has provoked the most criticism.
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"There is pushback on the idea that we worship the same god but taking that a step farther to assume that I am conflating Jesus and Muhammad, the prophet. That is where the pushback has come primarily," Hawkins told CP.
"I am not making any kind of equivalency between two religions and the prophet Muhammad and the prophet Jesus, that is not what I said but that, people have taken."
Hawkins posted a follow up Facebook post Sunday night, which included a link to a Huffington Post article that states that many Arab Christians have worshipped a God named Allah for centuries and adds that many Christians have long believed that "Muslims worship the same God that they do."
"Whether or not you find this position, one held for centuries by countless Christians (church fathers, saints, and regular Christian folk like), to be valid, I trust that we can peacefully disagree on theological points and affirm others like the Triune God (albeit there are differences here as well — Athanasian Creed, anyone?), the virgin birth (or Immaculate Conception depending on your persuasion), and the Resurrection," Hawkins wrote. "Let there be unity in our diversity of views about all of the above."
Hawkins admits that another contested part of her Facebook post from last Thursday was when she decried an attempt by her home state, Oklahoma, to ban Sharia law. Although her comment could have been construed as her saying that Sharia law should not be banned in the U.S., she explained the Constitution has supremacy of the land and Sharia law could never be passed.
"I was just pointing out that according to the Constitution, there can be no other laws — the Supremacy Clause. The Constitution is the law of the land, so there is no Sharia law that could be established in the United States by any state legislature," Hawkins told CP. "If there was a state legislature that tried to implement it, the Supremacy Clause will strike it down immediately. The idea was really to say that this was another form of Islamophobia to pass these preemptive anti-sharia laws."
