Baptist Scholars Promote Book on Islamophobia While Interviewing Islamist Leader

Two Baptist writers who claim to champion religious freedom have gone on tour promoting a book about “Islamophobia” in the Christian church. Yet their book and public statements normalize Islamism—a movement that undermines the very freedoms they purport to defend.

Two Baptist champions of religious freedom and tolerance recently gave an interview to imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, who hosts a talk show broadcast by Muslim Network TV, a news outlet headquartered in Chicago. Anna Piela and Michael Woolf, a Chicago-based husband-and-wife team of ministers and scholars from the American Baptist Church, used the interview with Mujahid to promote their recently published book *Confronting Islamophobia in the Church: Liturgical Tools for Justice* (Judson Press, 2025). In so doing, Piela and Woolf helped normalize Islamism—a movement that undermines the very freedoms they claim to defend.

Does Islam have a privileged status when it comes to being shielded from critique?

In their text, the authors rely extensively on Baptist proponents of religious freedom such as Roger Williams to argue that Muslims should be welcomed into the fold of American civil and religious life with open arms. Invoking the writings of Krister Stendahl, the authors also argue that Christians should cultivate an attitude of “holy envy” toward Islam to improve how they practice their own faith and to exorcise from their world view the anti-Muslim beliefs that Christian intellectuals have been promoting for centuries.

“Islamophobia is not only what we see coming from conservatives [and] political figures who seem to be very hostile to Islam … It is sort of the air we breathe,” Piela said to Mujahid. “It is around us.”

Piela and Woolf’s choice of Mujahid as the confessor of the sins of American churches is odd given that he served as president of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) in the mid-1990s and has spoken at numerous ICNA events since. To put it mildly, ICNA is no promoter of peace, love, and understanding, but a font of Islamic supremacism.

In 2010, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) reported that, “ICNA’s magazine has featured interviews with terrorist leaders in Pakistan, called on youth to fight abroad in Kashmir, and honored like-minded extremist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and South Asia’s Jamaat-e-Islami.”

ICNA support of Jamaat-e-Islami is particularly troublesome given that, according to the IPT, Jamaat-e-Islami has been designated as a terrorist organization by several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. The organization has been linked to violent extremism and has engaged in activities that threaten global peace and security.

The authors’ alignment with Mujahid and ICNA raises serious questions about the integrity of their advocacy for religious freedom. Their actions appear to contradict the very principles they claim to uphold, suggesting a troubling compromise between the pursuit of peace and the promotion of ideologies that endanger it. As Micah 6:8 reminds us, we are called to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Such a call demands a commitment to truth and the protection of all people, regardless of their beliefs.

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