“Prophet Peter Popoff” during a broadcast interview


By: Ali Ismail

0778-842 5262 (United Kingdom)

aliismail_uk@yahoo.co.uk

IS "PROPHET PETER POPOFF" GENUINE?

Religious broadcasting is controversial and opinion is divided



I remember that back in 1997, when I was in a particularly bad way, I was reduced to working as a kitchen porter for an employment agency in the course of which work I learnt a great deal about the world of catering.

While in one of the large kitchens they sent me to I got acquainted with a young Algerian man with whom I exchanged bits and pieces of news and views in between spates of work on the faulty dishwasher. One of the things he said that has stuck in my memory was that the Arabs were, in practice, helpless in the face of Western power and that “America is like a god” as far as the affairs of most of Mankind was concerned.

My guess is that his “take” on the international situation is echoed in many a pavement café and kasbah all over the Middle East. When one looks more closely at the United States of America and considers the question of exactly who is occupying the driving seat over there, the usual East of Suez viewpoint is that the USA is driven by the Jewish/Zionist lobbies.

Well, no doubt the Hebrews are both rich and powerful Stateside and there is a temptation to attribute ultimate potency to them, as Mahatir Mohammed, the retired prime minister of Malaysia does. That, I submit, is a superficial view.

Although the USA is by definition and by law a secular country with no official state religion as stipulated by its constitution, religion has always played a dominant role in both public and private life there. The Founding Fathers were all devout Christians and many of the early waves of immigrants came over because of religious persecution.

Even today, both domestic and foreign policies are driven by religious considerations in the USA, in all of the states. Not many people who are well informed about that nation will disagree.

But whose religion and what religion? I think the truth may surprise many if not most of our readership.

Before I proceed further, I want to say that as a journalist and as a member of the Muslim community, I do, perforce, visit mosques and other places of Islamic worship where young Muslim men are to be found.

The principal concerns of these youthful Muslim males seem to orbit around problems not unconnected with social exclusion, careers and gender relations matters. What seems to be left out is that there are religious issues as well.

A typical Muslim in a Muslim majority country has no option but to toe the Islamic line or face total and utter ostracism verging on risks to life and limb. Consider the recent furore about the man in Afghanistan who “converted” to Christianity and was subsequently declared to be insane, possibly in order to protect him.

In a non-Muslim majority country such as the United Kingdom and the USA that is not the case. The denizens by descent of these lands are perceived to be participants in more technologically and even more socially advanced civilisations and, as a result, their dominant religion can be viewed, by reflected glory, as either a cause or as a product of pre-eminence.

The traditional religion of the West, since over a thousand years, is Christianity.

Of the three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – Judaism does not go of out of its way to convert people. The other two do. At this time Islam is, in terms of numbers, the world’s fastest growing religion but it is Christianity which seeks to and does influence the thinking, feelings and behaviour of the earth’s most powerful people.

The typical Muslim complaint that the Jews drive America is, as I have stated above, probably a superficial view. True, the Jews do own and manage gigantic undertakings such as Hollywood and the retail sector. However, at bottom, the Jewish proportion of the total population is in the region of 2.5% with no significant conversion rate. The dominant religion – socially, spiritually and financially – is Christianity, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.

As stated above, Islam makes sure that once a person is known to be a Muslim and he lives in a Muslim majority nation, he is shielded from conversion attempts by “infidel” influences by all the force of legal and social sanctions. In Saudi Arabia it is unlawful to proselytise on behalf of any religion other than Islam, for example.

In Europe and North America that is emphatically not the case. In many regards Christianity, especially its fundamentalist wing, is aggressive and bold and forward leaning. One only has to visit Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park to see and hear fundamentalist Christian orators who have studied Islam hard and long doing everything in their considerable power to add Muslims to their flocks. One of them quotes ayahs from the Holy Qu’ran by heart and demolishes most of his Muslim opponents with his knowledge, energy and verve.

Not all of the United Kingdom’s Muslims live in or near London and even among the ones who do only a tiny minority actually go to Hyde Park on Sunday afternoons to hear the Christian speakers.

The principal thrust of fundamentalist Christianity is television.

On both sides of the Atlantic the fundamentalist Christian lobbies are wealthy and powerful. Furthermore, they sincerely believe that they became that way because of their version of Christianity - by means of tithing.

In the UK the section of society which attends the Church of England and the other Protestant denominations (and a little bit the Roman Catholics as well) is the most influential part of society. Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair are all professing firm Christians and were brought up as such.

In the USA, the Bible Belt, as exemplified by the Southern Baptists, dominates a great deal of American thinking and behaviour. No American president in his right mind will consider leaving them out of his thinking when deciding policy.

So Christianity is the name and television is the game. When a Muslim gets accessed by zealous Christian preachers in the UK, that does not usually happen at Speakers’ Corner or in church or at school or in the workplace. It happens right at home in the midst of his family circle through his own television receiver, especially if it is connected to one or other of the networked channel bundles, most of which include American religious stations.

Thus it was, gentle reader, that I got acquainted with Prophet Peter Popoff. Basically, I selected the religious category of the programme selector on our remote control and in next to no time at all I was listening to the Prophet telling me how he was going to save my soul, improve my love life, enrich my finances, promote my career and raise me socially if and only if I listened ho his message and converted to his holy cause.

That was a heady brew for someone born and raised in the environment of Sunni Islam.

Out of curiosity I ‘phoned up the contact number and was rewarded, after the second call, with postal communications from the Prophet. He informed me that he had been praying for me from before dawn and that he had special messages from the Almighty for me and that virtually every aspect of my life and afterlife was about to undergo a sea change, but there was a catch.

The catch was that I had to prove my “obedience” by paying him money. Furthermore, it seems that the reward is always just around the corner and very soon after the next payment but it never arrives. It is apparently just another example of the donkey pushing its own carrot as it walks along.

I made enquiries and contacted Brian Karjala of Christian Issues on the Internet.
This is what he wrote to me by e-mail:

“I believe that education of the public is one of the most effective weapons in the fight against frauds like Peter Popoff. In March of this year I recorded a television interview with Denver's FOX News about Popoff's scam which I was told will air in that city this month of May on the network's prime-time newscast. “Anyone with a genuine or desperate need and a belief in God who is unaware of Popoff's unbiblical/unethical methods is vulnerable to his fraud. “Anything you could publish about his fraud in your news reports will be helpful...as Popoff's reach is worldwide. Of the letters I've received from people who have been victimized by Popoff's scams include many people from the UK.”

This can be taken to be a warning to young Muslims in the British Isles Because we are from cultures which do not tolerate divergent views, we are susceptible to people who might be religious fraudsters. We are like children who are raised in such spotlessly clean homes that, in the rough dirty world outside, their immune systems are too weak and too inexperienced to cope with the health hazards.

With regard to general religious broadcasting, however, some people approve. Mrs Budrey Ghouse of St John’s Wood, London says: “ It is very good promoting religion through television. I think that by doing this it is very good. People can learn a lot and they can watch it at home.”

Clearly, this is a debate which is destined to go on for a long time.

THE END

This article was published on 1st June 2006 in the Bangla Mirror newspaper, the first English language weekly for the United Kingdom's Bangladeshis - read all over the world from the Arctic to the Antarctic.