The Power of Praise and Worship

Here's an excerpt from chapter 15 (The Vow of Praise) of my new book, The Power of Praise and Worship, coauthored with Terry Law:

The ride into Baghdad was harrowing. General Sada was behind the wheel, zigzagging along the airport road at breakneck speed. I glanced over at the gauges. The speedometer sat on 100 miles per hour. “Why are you swerving back and forth?” I asked, half-holding my breath.

“There are lots of RPG’s [rocket propelled grenades] launched in this area,” he explained, “and I’m making us harder to hit.”
Our guards in the car behind us sped around us as we neared the first stoplight into town. It was red, but they kept going, swerving straight into the lanes for oncoming traffic. The general sensed our fear and calmly explained.

“The suicide bombers wait at intersections,” he said. “They look for VIPs and foreigners, so they can maximize their kills.” I suddenly felt very foreign. Going fast and running red lights suddenly didn’t seem so bad after all.

Over the next five days we met with most of Iraq’s major leaders: President Jalal Talabani; National Security Advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie; Minister of Planning Barham Saleh; the Ayatollah of Baghdad, Hussein al-Sadr; and finally with Prime Minister al-Jaafari himself.

We presented our thousands of petitions to the Prime Minister, and then I posed a question: “Sir, when Muslims come to America, we allow them freedom of their religion. We let them build mosques and share their message with anyone who wants to listen. Are you willing to guarantee Christians the same rights in Iraq?”

It was the first time in my life that I had confronted a head of state. He looked at me, and before he could answer I added a second question. “We sent our young men and women over here to die for the freedom of the Iraqi people. We believe that one of the most basic freedoms is freedom of religion. If an Iraqi citizen should decide to change to another religion and is persecuted or killed for it, is that not the most basic abuse of human rights possible?”

I moved straight to the point. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights2 has been signed by most of the nations of the earth, including Iraq in 1948. Would you be willing to include it in your new constitution?”

For more than an hour the prime minister avoided answering me, switching from one subject to another. By the time we left I thought that perhaps our visit had been futile. But two months later, when the new Iraqi constitution was published, all of our requests had been honored in Articles 39-41 and 43.

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