40 Years in America

Meeting the Mufti

Frank Kaufmann

I have been blessed by God with a mission that itself reveals the nature and identity of Father. I work with religious leaders, which is also the primary work of Father. This means I see Father in the context of his own peers. I meet and work closely with the world’s greatest living religious leaders, and so I am privileged to be able to make direct comparisons to see how Father measures up. By the grace of God I forged an intimate relationship with the Grand Mufti of Syria. I met him first as a participant at a Muslim dialogue on family sponsored by the Council for the World’s Religions for which I was the director.

Through many early morning conversations I learned that Sheikh Kuftaro had a biography remarkably similar to Father, down to some of the most startling details. As I testified to Father, Sheikh Kuftaro eventually sought to meet Father. A hundred fascinating stories later the Grand Mufti sat across from True Parents in the reception room at East Garden.

Another 100 tales and testimonies later brings me to the point at which Sheikh Kuftaro agreed to attend a 3-day workshop at East Garden taught by Father! The workshop was one of the most fascinating things I had ever witnessed in my life.

The workshop had come to an end with only moderate success, when measured in the mystical essence of providence. A final lunch was underway, the Grand Mufti was to depart to return home about 45 minutes later, and there as a faint touch of heartache and anguish on the side of the Unification support team. The atmosphere was cordial, but not victorious, and so the final meal of the three days was about to be served. Before the food arrived, Father began to present essential truth one last time to Sheikh Kuftaro, and Kuftaro’s dogmatic resistance (though elegant) remained. Father fought like a man fighting for his own life. He never saw food appear and disappear from before him for the next 45 minutes. Father taught and taught, grabbing whatever fell within the reach of his hands. Bread rolls became the four-position foundation, a knife and a fork the perpendicular angle of the direction and force of True Love. The Mufti adhered to the final truth of Islam, and the encounter literally soared to dizzying spiritual heights. Time, and even space vanished, only the spiritual world quivered around us. The exchange was no longer verbal, it was absolute. We were not on terra firma, the atmosphere was electric. With minutes before departure, the Grand Mufti surrendered and beheld his own True Father, heaven wept, and the spiritual dominance of the atmosphere subsided. Suddenly we were back at the lunch table. People became physical, the food reappeared to our vision, the rolls scattered about as evidence of Father’s intensity and desperation. "I am sorry I had to be so tough on you," Father said back in the land of verbal communications, "but you were a real scoundrel." I myself have never been the same since that experience. I saw the True Father with my own eyes. I am sorry that we his own followers do not know him better.

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