This evening’s talk, in which I propose to look at some aspects of the religious scene in the Middle East, I trust will help you to make a little more sense of this admittedly hugely enigmatic region: and I think must begin with a consideration of one of the issues raised during last week’s question and discussion session. ‘What is the difference between a Sunni and a Shii’a Muslim – and are there any significant consequences of it?’
It is a very good question and has flummoxed even those in politics and the intelligence communities who, one would expect, really ought to know. In October 2006, writing in The New York Times, Jeff Stein illustrated just how much a problem this was. He writes, ‘A ‘gotcha’ question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds.’ He continues. ‘But so far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies.’
Well, let’s lend our American cousins – and probably many others too! - a hand here. At the risk of offending purists or extremists at either end of the spectrum, I would say that there are only a few genuine religious differences – in prayer forms and ablution rituals, for instance, and, more importantly, in the selection and interpretation of the Hadeeth (the sayings of The Prophet). But the key issue of difference is undoubtedly that of the history and location of authority in respect of the line of spiritual succession to the prophet Muhammed. And so, of course, we immediately stray into the realm of politics!
On the one hand, Sunnis believed that any worthy Muslim could become the spiritual leader of the Islamic community after Muhammed’s death, whilst the Shii’a (originally Shii’at Ali or party of Ali (Muhammed’s cousin)on the other hand believed that only a member of the household of Muhammed, the ‘Ahl al Beit’, Ali, could be the legitimate heir. Schism resulted.
The Shii’a, who are concentrated in Iran, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, and Iraq, with strong minorities in The Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, India, Kuwait, and Eastern Saudi Arabia, venerate Muhammed’s family (‘Ahl al Beit’) and their line of twelve Imams, something the likes of the Saudi Wahhaabis and Al Qaa’ida - Sunni extremists, for example, consider to be idolatry.
For the Sunnis, who constitute some 85% of the Muslim world, the loss of the Caliphate following WW1 – remember, Attaturk abolished it in order to unite the Turkish people as a national, secular unity – was catastrophic, a loss seized upon by fundamentalist Sunnis but very much in reaction to Western cultural imperialism. So, Hasan al Banna, the Egyptian who in 1928 founded the ‘Ikhwaan al Muslimoon’ or Muslim Brotherhood, speaks of the ‘wave of atheism and lewdness’ that engulfed Egypt following the 1WW, and wrote as follows.
‘The victorious Europeans have imported their half-naked women into these regions, together with their liquors, their theatres, their dance halls, their amusements, their stories, their newspapers, their novels, their whims, their silly games, and their vices. Their schools and scientific and cultural institutes cast doubt and heresy into the souls of its sons and taught them how to demean themselves, disparage their religion and their fatherland, divest themselves of their traditions and beliefs, and to regard as sacred anything Western.’
He also saw, in his eyes most distressingly of all, that the clerical leaders had become compromised and corrupted by their alliance with the indigenous ruling elites who had succeeded the European colonial masters. His cause was subsequently taken up many years later by Osama Bin Laden, a Sunni.
Now just to put all this in perspective, I must just make three important points. First, that most mainstream clerics in each denomination, Sunni and Shii’a, recognise adherents of the other side to be legitimate Muslims - if, perhaps sometimes, somewhat misguided.
Secondly, the vast majority of ordinary Sunni and Shii’a Muslims get on just fine with each other – or at least until, for example, an extremist stirs things up, or there is a scarcity of something at issue – perhaps jobs or food – and then such divisions all too easily become convenient excuses for some pretty irreligious behaviour! And thirdly, if we take a particular contemporary clash between Sunni and Shii’a, in Iraq for example, we would have to acknowledge that the kind of sectarian fighting between them there is relatively recent in its genesis: it does not have a long history. Sunni and Shii’a cooperated in the 1920 rebellion against the British, whilst the riots of the 50s and 60s were either landlord/peasant or Communist/Baathist. No, it seems very much that the recent fighting was in large measure unleashed by the Americans and is to do, as I would maintain when it comes to the Sunni/Shii’a divide, all about group identity and group interests rather than, just as in Northern Ireland, anything remotely at all to do with genuine religious practise or principle.
But the Shii’a have been for hundreds of years an oppressed minority. This has given rise to a cult of death and martyrdom within the general atmosphere of the sect which, combining with a very fatalistic approach to life generally amongst Muslims – something which, to my mind, seems to generate and maintain the pretty pervasive atmosphere of fear in the Middle East - can make them a difficult people with whom to negotiate or see reason, at least as far as we Westerners are concerned.
A word or two about the Sufis, who were also mentioned briefly in last week’s discussion period. Sufism – a form of Islam which proves very attractive to Westerners because of its mystical and largely non-political character - arose primarily in reaction to the material and political excesses of the Umayyed Caliphs of the 7th and 8th Cs and also out of admiration for the lives and lifestyle of Christian monks of that period.
Sufism, which is ‘the science of the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else except God’ may be either Sunni, Shii’a, or a mixture of both sects, or of entirely independent authority. Their apolitical and mysterious characteristics have elicited suspicion and persecution from ruling Muslim or secular authorities throughout their history. However, they do not, certainly these days, threaten existing power bases with a view to taking their place, nor are they, for the most part, irresponsibly arcane in the way that are some cult and fringe Christian groups. In contrast to these latter groups (which are often pervaded by an over-emphasis on the leader or the spirit) - and, I would want to argue, offering a healthy corrective to them - Sufi spiritual leaders advocate respect for a balanced approach to spirituality that takes regard of the teachings and traditions of Islam. I suppose a rough parallel might be the Anglican tripod of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason: however, in my experience that Anglican tripod has too often been used as an excuse to obstruct the Holy Spirit, and in Sufism such a spiritually debilitating approach would be to strike at Sufism’s very core. A Sufi teacher, whose name I am afraid I do not have to hand, has this to say in this regard.
‘When we see someone in this community who claims to be able to guide others to God, but is remiss in but one rule of the sacred law – even if he manifests miracles that stagger the mind – asserting that his shortcoming is a special dispensation for him, we do not even turn to look at him, for such a person is not a Sheikh (one held in respect), nor is he speaking the truth, for no one is entrusted with the secrets of God Most High save one in whom the ordinances of the Sacred Law are preserved.’
A sound lesson in principle, I would say, for wise and faithful Anglicans too!
Let me try to give you a current context for some of the issues we are considering here tonight. The recent and continuing upheavals in the Middle East have called into question many of the old assumptions, some considered almost axiomatic, about the nature and character of the indigenous peoples, their religion, and their politics.
The convulsions in the Arab world are neither ‘secular’ nor ‘religious’. They are in fact refusals, especially on the part of the younger generation, to act according to the old European Orientalists’ prejudices. For example: that democracy is incompatible with Islam, that they are suckers for extremist dogmas like AlQaa’ida, or that fear of the authorities is so strong that change is almost impossible.
Now it is true that fear is a big factor in attempting to explain what goes on in the Middle East, and that helping people to overcome their fears is crucial to the creation of healthy Arab as well as Turkish and Persian societies. But, as I mentioned briefly the week before last, the young have been beginning to question and even refusing to submit to the old stereotypes, the old arguments, the old battles: for example, that it was their duty to oust Israel from Palestine rather than seek a compromise position. Again, the remarkable coming together in places like Freedom Square in Cairo of Muslims and Christians allied, together with the secularists, over the broad themes of democracy and human rights to demonstrate together, dogmatically refusing to respond with violence against an oppressive American puppet regime, was pretty much unprecedented. Christians were protecting their Muslim compatriots from the government security apparatus as they prayed, and Muslims the Christians as they celebrated Holy Communion there.
It is almost beyond doubt that the attacks on the Coptic Christians in Alexandria at the time were not undertaken by Muslim extremists but by instruments of the Mubarak Regime intending to sow antagonism and fear between Christian and Muslim. Again, my own investigation in Turkey into a well-publicised murder of two Western bookshop missionaries a couple of years ago revealed that the lone perpetrator had been put up to it and was high on drugs at the time. And that information came from the Armenian Christian manager of the SPCK Christian bookshop in Istanbul!
Now I am not saying, far from it, that Christians are not persecuted throughout the Middle East, but simply that cases are sometimes somewhat different in reality from how they appear or are sometimes presented by interested parties. As I found on so many occasions when attempting to understand or analyse something in the region, I had always to go through the discipline of asking myself the following three questions: With whom am I talking? Where am I? (Not in the sense of my own existential angst but of my geographical location.)Who is in charge locally?
You have to understand that the reply or explanation given to a particular question or issue will depend very much on whether I am having the conversation with a Muslim or a Christian, a peasant or a politician, in Damascus or Istanbul, and whether, for example, the local planning or police officer is at least sympathetic to the concept of indifferent justice.
Whilst our Archbishop is rightly concerned about the gradual de-population of the Middle East of the Christian minorities, whether through discrimination and persecution or simply the desire for greater opportunities for material and personal betterment elsewhere, one would have to take note of the very insular, old-fashioned, and defensive attitudes of some at least of the ancient Christian minorities. Understandable, given the history, yes; but the new underground churches are very much a sign of hope for the area; and if the ‘Awakening’ of the ‘Arab Spring’ is not high-jacked by Muslim extremists, and if its all-embracing character is not changed or stained, then a genuine pluralism might just result. One phrase, deliberately imprecise, coined to describe the new younger generation’s approach to combining political parties and religions across the spectrum has been ‘religious secularity’; this on the basis that such a deliberate oxymoron is necessary in order to convey such a miraculous fusion of interest in the fundamental human needs and aspirations for which they joined together to protest.
Rashid Ghannouchi of the Egyptian democracy movement illustrated this in this way.
‘We have continuously defended the right of women and men to choose their lifestyle. We are against the imposition of the head scarf in the name if Islam; and we are against the banning of the headscarf in the name of secularism or modernity.’ Or again, the rapid rejection by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood no less of Tehran’s insistence that recent Arab events are a replay of the Iranian revolution is certainly very encouraging. Some commentators even speak of a ‘post-Islamist’ generation, arguing that young people have realised that Islam is neither ‘the solution’ - as the extremist placards say, nor is it the cause of all the Middle East’s ills. That this idea appeals to liberal Arab intellectuals goes without saying: just how much it positively rather than negatively stirs the ordinary working classes is, I would want to suggest, another matter entirely. What is evident, I do believe, is that because of the Arab ‘Awakening’, no undemocratic regime in the world, let alone the region, may now feel itself safe if built on lies, bribes, and violence. But the problem remains, of course, that there are plenty of vested interests around just waiting or already planning to undermine this progressive union.
Ghannouchi almost certainly made his remarks with one eye on Turkey, whose form of democracy is often put forward as a model for Middle Eastern countries. So let’s now move north to consider the case of Turkish democracy, its genesis, and the place and experience of religion within this.
1923 represents a watershed turning point in Turkish history. The Ottoman Empire had existed from 1299 – 1922. Attaturk, realising how backward the Empire had become and how powerfully advanced in contrast had become the European powers, introduces a modern secular unitary republic which replaces its multi-ethnic, multi-religious predecessor. Attaturk, privately if not publically, is convinced that whilst Islam is an aspect of what it means to be ‘Turkish’, its classical interpretation had proved a ball and chain to the Ottoman Empire and would have to be reinterpreted for the modern society he wanted to create. The notion of ‘Turkish Islam’ I’ll come to in a moment.
Attaturk’s new modern, secular and ethnically Turkish national identity was detached from any Islamic or Ottoman ties and at odds with the myriad of ethnic and sub-cultural identities prevailing in Turkish society. It really was only by force of his personality and reputation as the country’s saviour that he was able to introduce his new idea. People’s legal status was defined in terms of obligations toward the state over the rights of citizens, and the social emphasis was on duty rather than freedoms. As, under pressure from European countries and after the death of Attaturk in 39, the country very gradually began to evolve into a more democratic parliamentary system, so religious, especially Muslim, and minority nationalist agendas, especially the Kurdish, began to question the Kemalist principles and organs controlling the state.
Although political Islam and fundamentalism – as expressed by the extremists we considered last week - is very much alien to Turkish culture (Attaturk even stated that ‘the religion of the Arab has held us back’; the Caliphate to be ‘a tumour of the Middle Ages.’), recognising the strength of religious sentiment, especially Islamic, amongst the ordinary people of Turkey, the government and military leaders become gradually, if always somewhat suspiciously, more sympathetic to this religious sentiment as an element in the new national make-up, and actually begin to promote a rosy synthesis of Turkish history, Kemalist republican ideals, and Islamic principles as a new interpretation of Islam – ‘Turkish Islam.’
The Kemalist ideology’s core principles were secularism, i.e. state control over religion; and nationalism, i.e. ethno-cultural homogeneity and territorial unity. Attaturk had introduced these in order to unify what was then a country of enormous size and variety in many things. The problem for the Kemalists was that too much indulgence of ethnic or religious individuality they perceived, often with good reason, as being divisive and undermining of the nation as a whole. And as the republic became more democratic – under pressure from America and Europe - so the minority causes prospered to the extent that as late as 1997 there was a ‘soft’ military coup – the military, the judiciary, and the bureaucracy are the guardians of Kemalist orthodoxy – undertaken to counter and suppress, in particular, Kurdish nationalism and increasing public displays of Islam or Islamism.
As far as the Christian minorities were concerned, although they were often treated as second class citizens and any signs of growth do seem to have been treated with suspicion and the denial of, for example, permission to build buildings or open or re-open colleges and institutes, they were free to practise privately and in their churches their own religion.
When I was there last year, it was very revealing to note how even a house church was allowed to exist, its windows open and familiar tunes gently but unashamedly filling the air - and this in the hearing of local policemen. Not only that, but in the window boxes instead of flowers were tracts and Turkish translations of the bible. Again, elsewhere, where the expat Anglican congregation was dying out in the Victorian built church –
‘It’s a shame; we’re just too old, uninteresting and uninterested,’ commented an elderly male churchwarden – new indigenous converts were growing new congregations that, within the constraints of law and culture, were actively reaching out to their Muslim neighbours. Yes, they weren’t many; and, yes, they had to be very careful: but what an example; what a genuine ray of hope – mirroring the same in the underground churches in Iran - for the survival of active Christianity in the region.
Tied to that hope, given the coming together of the religions and the secularists amongst the younger generations at least, I reckon is the teaching, example, and practice of one of the strongest Islamic groups in Turkey, the Revivalist Movement inspired by its leading figure, Fetullah Gulen. A teacher, educator, and preacher, his Sufi based and informed mainstream but not fundamentalist Islamic teaching - activist just as much as contemplative, respectful and tolerant of the presence of other religious groups in Turkey, and, most definitely, against the use of terrorism, centres on the principle of ‘hizmet’ or service to the common good. This form of Sufism is called NAKSHIBANDI and, in Turkey, stresses tolerance, piety, service, loyalty to government, openness to change, and secularism as not being incompatible with Islam.
They finance schools and universities, banks, hospitals, and news and T.V. channels. Fundamentalists consider such ‘liberal’ views heretical but forget, conveniently perhaps, that in the Ottoman era there never was a fully-fledged theocratic state like Saudi Arabia: it was simply assumed that truly religious Sultans would act justly and piously, whilst religion would be adaptable. Gulen would argue from his Sufi standpoint that Sharii’a Law was only for the private sphere, not the public. Public law has to be more flexible.
This is certainly a moderate Muslim viewpoint to note when Western clergy and politicians think of making a case, on the basis of the much disputed canons of political correctness, for the inclusion of Sharii’a law within the British judicial system. Suffice to comment here that I believe there must be sensible limits to the degree to which we try to appease or include Muslim sensitivities.
The practical, activist, inclusive character of this, let’s call it for convenience’s sake ‘Sufi-inspired’, political agenda, in part at least culturally determined Turkish Muslimhood, appeals to young secularists and atheists in Turkey and is seen by an increasing number of the Kemalist hierarchy as not threatening to or subversive of the national state. It also accords with EU demands that Turkey become more democratic and solicitous of minority issues if she is to gain membership. The Catch 22 situation for her however is that as she offers greater democracy and religious freedom, so she gives a home and strength to the very Islamist Muslims not only she but the EU are so concerned about. But on the other hand, the xenophobic attitude towards Turkey on the part of Sarkozy, Merkel, and other prominent European political figures raises within Turkey, and right across the political and religious spectrum, the question of whether it is actually in Turkey’s best interests to join the EU with its lame duck Euro and fiscally irresponsible members such as near neighbour Greece.
When I was in Turkey late last year, closer ties with Syria were being implemented, closer relations with Iran being cultivated. Turkey has not fought against Iran since1638, and many in Turkey fear that membership of the EU could result in Turkey’s dismemberment along ethnic lines – something commonly referred to in Turkey as ‘Europe’s revenge for Gallipoli’.
This shift in the national mood against Europe, disparagingly referred to as ‘The Christian Club’, results in greater pressure on the indigenous Christians in Turkey though no fault of their own. You see, it’s all very well the EU and the US presenting Turkey with a list of our demands and principles; but the actual cash value of these implemented I don’t believe was ever properly thought through before they were promulgated. Turks, who, like the Arabs, are suckers for conspiracy theories, are highly suspicious of the EU’s motivation and pretty unimpressed by the hypocritical treatment of minorities – especially Turkish – in the Europeans’ own countries, especially France and Germany. Indeed, it was fascinating to discover how much and how many Turkish Christians felt a greater affinity with their Muslim compatriots than they did with their fellow Christians in Europe!
I have mentioned before that politics and religion are very much intertwined in classical Islam, something which is also somewhat apparent in the life of the ancient Christian churches of the Middle East – some would argue, quite persuasively, out of necessity. But it does mean that such an attitude towards religion, constrained to some degree or other by the aim to survive at all costs, does result in a survivalist, insularist, status quo maintaining mentality. A classic example of this was of course the Monks of some of the Maronite monasteries in The Lebanon who were said to be more familiar and practised with their Kalashnikovs than they were with their bibles. It took the Pope himself to make them renounce their arms and return to their studies and their service.
And so while their future I think is pretty uncertain, pretty gloomy – there are wonderful, saintly, exceptions of course amongst traditional clergy in the region – it is, I believe, the new churches, the house churches and the underground churches, who are surely the future in the Middle East if there is to be one for Christianity.
I now come to and want to end this talk with a consideration of recent changes in Christian approaches to Islam. The March/April Barnabus Fund magazine published an excellent article on this which was not favourably received either by politicians or by the Anglican Liberal wing, or by the rose-tinted liberal Evangelical wing because it offered a considered, politically incorrect appreciation of how things actually are; which is why I want to raise the issues it raises as I look at what it says from the perspective of my own findings in Turkey and Syria.
As I have said before in these talks, Western liberals of the theological, social, and political sort tend to take, to my mind at odds with the reality both here and abroad, an all too rosy view of human nature and especially of the motives of those of a somewhat less ’Western liberal’ outlook on life.
When it comes to interfaith dialogue, such seeming generosity of spirit I consider to be too often not only naive in respect of the Muslim agenda – Sufis largely excepted; but unfortunately they are not usually the ones with whom our representatives are dealing – but decidedly undermining of orthodox Christian belief; and this to the extent that Muslims themselves – and I have very much in mind here conversations with Muslim converts – consider themselves to be being short-changed on the Gospel. In short, the swapping of truth for accommodation, and light for the decidedly grey: not so much ‘a firm foundation’, to quote the great hymn, more a woolly comfort blanket.
Interfaith dialogue really got going on the international scene in the 1950s with the World Council of Churches but had rather petered out by the 1990s. However, 9/11 changed things considerably, bringing both the curious and the fearful to talks amid such mention of ‘war on terror’, ‘war of religions’, ‘clash of civilisations’, etc. In particular there was much sympathy for the view that the Islamic terrorists were a lunatic fringe and very much an unrepresentative minority of an otherwise peacefully inclined Islam. Indeed, in Anglican and British political circles – poorly informed but energetically optimistic! – to question the essentially peaceful nature of Islam was, as Michael Nazir-Ali discovered to his cost, to be treated as a theological and political pariah.
What is essential to understand here is that it is not that the majority of Muslims are not peace-loving and opposed to terrorism, but that there exists in the ideas and creeds of Classical Islam an approach to the world that not only accommodates but advocates violence as a means to justify the end; that end being the recovery of what they consider to have been a God-given reward - the lands lost to ‘infidels’. Certainly what to my mind is very alarming is the reluctance of some mainstream self-styled moderate Muslims both here in England and abroad to condemn unreservedly the use of violence. Of course, just like Christianity, Islam is not a unified whole that speaks with one voice: there are many interpretations. But there are, even among those who do not advocate the use of violence, those who would seek to create in non-Muslim countries Islamic or theocratic forms of government and society that many here certainly would consider quite alien.
The Liberal myth that all reasonable people can be educated to welcome and live by Western enlightenment principles is not on any mainstream Muslim agenda I have yet come across.
But of course most governments and multinational corporations need stability in order to survive and prosper, and so not only have British government policies sought in various ways to bring the Muslim community into the mainstream of society, millions and millions of pounds, dollars, riyals, and dinars have been poured into new interfaith dialogue initiatives. Christian theologians have been encouraged as a result to reshape their theologies in order to embrace Islam, politicians using such inclusive language as the ‘Abrahamic religions’ in order to create the idea or concept of a stable – if only for political purposes – monotheistic system; the message being, ’forget about your differences - which are surely minor and ultimately resolvable, and don’t upset each other.’
But to join this particular club, in practice one has to eschew orthodox Christian claims to the saving uniqueness of Christ and instead reinvent him in his new postmodernist Liberal form. As with all heresies, it is very easy to take certain orthodox truths or elements of those truths and create not a new revealed truth but an artificial construct that satisfies the personal or political agenda. Of course, for many these days the idea even that any absolute truths exist in the realm of religion is anathema and, more importantly to politicians, such a belief is politically indefensible, indeed it would be suicidal.
Yes, it is generally always ‘good to talk’; but in the case of interfaith dialogue with Muslims, the assumption that there is on all sides a genuine desire to seek the truth is naive; remembering of course that the very concept of truth, especially in the realm of religion, is hotly disputed. But instability and terrorism, or at least too much of them, is bad for business; and so politicians and businessman have as a result been very energetic in their support of interfaith dialogue. For example, Western governments, through the medium of the Davos-based World Economic Forum, have founded a framework for interfaith dialogue aimed at improving relations between Islam and the West.
The Council of 100 leaders, which became C-1 World Dialogue in 2009 is replete with high profile churchmen. Its president is Tony Blair! Concomitant with the concerns of Western governments were those of Muslim ones, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Iran, who have sponsored conferences and issued scholarly rebuttals of Islamic extremist positions. But it would be somewhat naive to expect that all participants’ agendas were the same. The latter three, if not all, are certainly not interested in genuine dialogue
Interestingly, it was Pope Benedict’s 2006 Regensburg lecture – suggesting that Islam was violent and unreasonable - which caused outrage, quite understandably, amongst Muslims and which prompted the first Muslim reply from 38 Muslim scholars. It received no reply from the Pope. This then elicited an open letter to the world Christian community called ‘A Common Word Between Us And You’, which looked on the surface to be a well-intentioned and urgent plea for greater understanding, its presenting theme the two great commandments. In fact, it was really a call to Christians to convert and submit, and to deny the uniqueness and deity of Christ. It was not a matter – as anyone with any sure knowledge and experience of Islam would have warned – of dialogue or even accommodation but, instead, of subordination, a reaction - again quite understandable given the history we looked at in the first talk – against what they see not as a war against Islamist terrorism but rather a global crusade by Christianity against Islam.
One of the most high-profile responses to ‘A Common Word’ was the November 2007 ‘Yale Letter’, signed by over 300 Christian leaders which, to my mind, and to put it mildly, could best be described as a misguided and obsequious placatory exercise displaying an alarming synthesis of naivety and disingenuousness with regard to the issues involved. It is one thing to recognise – as I hope these talks have shown you – that Middle Eastern peoples have some very genuine grievances against and fears of US economic and cultural imperialism, as too of Israeli oppression and aggrandisement; but it is quite another to allow a misplaced albeit emotionally gratifying sense of guilt, combined as it is with theological scepticism and heresy, to produce an agenda that plays into the hands of both violent and non-violent Islamism, thus confirming their belief in the fundamental weakness (as opposed to a truly biblical vulnerability) of Western Christianity.
Most tellingly of all, I would argue – though such empirical evidence of the results of orthodox Christian faith and praxis are increasingly frowned upon and even derided by the academic and clerical hierarchies in the ‘progressive’ liberal West – is the testimony of Muslim converts themselves, who speak in terms of coming out of the darkness of Islam into the light of Christ, and of the peace and the joy this brings; all this to the extent that they are willing at great cost to themselves to be known as his followers, as ‘Maseeheeyiin’ (Arabic for Christians). Whilst Western Christians, increasingly in many instances, prefer to privatise their faith, the example of the persecuted of the Middle East is, surely, a challenging and inspiring one for those tempted to do so.
The great danger inherent in the ‘new’ socially and politically inspired ‘Christian’ approaches to interfaith dialogue is not only the inevitable reduction of Christ and Christianity to a kind of working compatibility with Islam but also the facilitating of the Islamisation of the West. (Here they directly parallel the Old Testament false prophets who cried ‘peace’.) Of course, if you do not believe in the resurrection, then Jesus may become for you exactly what he variously was for the 19th& 20th C Liberals - simply a reflection of a myriad of personal, philosophical, and cultural agendas.
A Christian’s duty is to preach and to practise love for all Muslims as human beings created in God’s image and for whom Christ died. We must distinguish between individual Muslims and the religious-political system of Islam in which many more than just a few fringe groups see ‘dialogue’ not as an intellectual engagement to resolve problems, but as a bridge they can walk over to further their own goals. We owe it to our persecuted brethren and to those genuinely seeking the Truth not to bow to the idol of political and social expediency.
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