Exploring the Connections

Christians urged to forge new, positive relations with Muslims

Ekklesia News

By agency reporter
23 Oct 2008

Christian communities should improve their knowledge of Islam, be good neighbours to Muslims and bear witness to their faith in an appropriate manner, according to an international group of church leaders and experts on Christian-Muslim dialogue.

These were some of the recommendations put forward at an 18 to 20 October 2008 consultation aimed at developing an ecumenical Christian theological understanding of dialogue with Islam. Convened by the World Council of Churches (WCC), it gathered some fifty church leaders and experts on Christian-Muslim dialogue in Chavannes-de-Bogis, outside Geneva, Switzerland.

Participants acknowledged a history of "mixed" relationships between Christians and Muslims, with both positive and negative dimensions. On their part, Christians have seen Muslims both as friend and rival, neighbour and stranger.

However, participants agreed, Christianity teaches to love the neighbour regardless of race, gender or religion. Even more, Christian self-understanding is challenged and deepened through relationships with Muslims, while Christians themselves are renewed by entering into dialogue with them.

For this dialogue to be fruitful it needs to be sensitive, including a careful use of traditional Christian language like mission, witness and conversion. And both church leaders and communities need to be educated in the knowledge of Islam as Muslims live and present it.

While attitudes among Christians towards Islam are diverse and rich, different contexts and experiences of living together with Muslims inspire different theological approaches.

The consultation identified a number of issues to be addressed in further dialogue with Muslims, among others: human rights, conversion, concepts of secularism, pluralism, and citizenship, as well as the use of religious symbols for political ideologies and religiously motivated violence.

Participants also recommended further Christian-Muslim collaboration on issues such as social and economic justice, climate change, peace and healing of memories.

Organized by the WCC together with a number of Christian World Communions, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and the Roman Catholic Church, the consultation is a continuation of an ecumenical process launched by the WCC in response to "A Common Word," a letter signed by 138 Muslim scholars and addressed to Christian leaders around the world in October 2007.

Rather than producing a written response to the letter by the Muslim scholars, the goal of the consultation was to provide a space for churches and communions of churches to share their initiatives and theological resources for engaging with Muslims, and to identify substantial issues for Christian theology in relation to Christian-Muslim dialogue.

Participants agreed on the need for further ecumenical exploration of theological issues pertaining to Muslim-Christian dialogue and invited the organizers to facilitate the process. A report on the consultation, including the presentations delivered and an account of the findings will be published by the end of the year.

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Additional information on the consultation: http://www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/eng/a/article/1722/living-in-community-the.html

WCC programme on Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation: http://www.oikoumene.org/en/programmes/interreligiousdialogue.html

Muslim and Christian women show how religion can build peace not conflict

Ekklesia
By agency reporter
18 Sep 2008

In the comfort of a simple Swedish meeting room, 25 Christian and Muslim women have been meeting to talk about how religion, which is often blamed for conflict and violence, can also move people toward peace and cooperation.

When the Rev Marika Palmdahl welcomed the participants in the meeting “Moving towards a peace through religion” which was held 4-7 September and co-organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and Teheran's Institute for Interreligious Dialogue (IID), her white collar band raised some questions.

"Does this mean she is a woman priest?" some wondered. Really, Palmdahl is a pastor of the Church of Sweden and in charge of inter-religious dialogue in the Gothenburg diocese, which hosted the meeting.

The 25 women from Iran, USA, Pakistan, Senegal, Palestine, Sweden and other European countries discussed issues related to the role of women in interreligious dialogue, and had the opportunity to exchange experiences with Swedish families, and local Christian-Muslim women groups.

The process of asking questions and finding answers together was the foundation of the gathering. From religion and modernity to secularism, from integration of immigrant communities to civil courage and conflict transformation, and from minority majority dynamics to a feminist approach towards peacemaking, the women wrestled with many issues. They shared their concerns about education, media and human development, and reflected on the challenges they face as women in peacemaking.

“The dialogue in this meeting makes us all understand the issues we face as women. This not only affects the work we do back home, but influences the way we initiate dialogue in our own countries and communities,” says Bibifatemeh Mousavi Nezhad, director of IID, who emphasizes the need of highlighting women’s voices in Christian-Muslim dialogue.

The journey of working together through dialogue began, when the IID hosted the first meeting of this project in Tehran on 24-28 November 2007. The backdrop of Iran for this debate was unique as it involved women participants from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America along with the Iranian women. These women - policy makers, journalists, educationists, doctors, NGO workers, religious scholars and filmmakers - were able to add numerous dimensions to the dialogue essential to create an impact on peacemaking.

“It is wonderful to see how the first results of this dialogue process are taking shape,” said Rima Barsoum, WCC programme executive for inter-religious dialogue and cooperation. Among the concrete results is an educational resource on “Women and Interreligious dialogue” which includes four case studies from Iran, USA and Sweden The collection describing the resources and methodologies used by Christian and Muslim women for building relationship of trust and cooperation will be published in early 2009.

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More on WCC work on strengthening inter-religious trust and respect: http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=3143

An inability to tolerate Islam contradicts western values

by Karen Armstrong
The Guardian, July 21, 2007

Free speech is now the rallying cry of escalating tensions, but we can also use it to expose double standards on both sides

In the 17th century, when some Iranian mullahs were trying to limit freedom of expression, Mulla Sadra, the great mystical philosopher of Isfahan, insisted that all Muslims were perfectly capable of thinking for themselves and that any religiosity based on intellectual repression and inquisitorial coercion was "polluted". Mulla Sadra exerted a profound influence on generations of Iranians, but it is ironic that his most famous disciple was probably Ayatollah Khomeini, author of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

This type of contradiction is becoming increasingly frequent in our polarised world, as I discovered last month, when I arrived in Kuala Lumpur to find that the Malaysian government had banned three of my books as "incompatible with peace and social harmony". This was surprising because the government had invited me to Malaysia, and sponsored two of my public lectures. Their position was absurd, because it is impossible to exert this type of censorship in the electronic age. In fact, my books seemed so popular in Malaysia that I found myself wondering if the veto was part of a Machiavellian plot to entice the public to read them.

Old habits die hard. In a pre-modern economy, insufficient resources meant freedom of speech was a luxury few governments could afford, since any project that required too much capital outlay was usually shelved. To encourage a critical habit of mind that habitually called existing institutions into question in the hope of reform could lead to a frustration that jeopardised social order. It is only 50 years since Malaysia achieved independence and, although the public and press campaign vigorously against censorship, in other circles the old caution is alive and well.

In the west, however, liberty of expression proved essential to the economy; it has become a sacred value in our secular world, regarded as so precious and crucial to our identity that it is non-negotiable. Modern society could not function without independent and innovative thought, which has come to symbolise the inviolable sanctity of the individual. But culture is always contested, and precisely because it is so central to modernity, free speech is embroiled in the bumpy process whereby groups at different stages of modernisation learn to accommodate one another.

It has also, as we have been reminded recently, become a rallying cry in the escalating tension between the Islamic world and the west. Muslim protests against Rushdie's knighthood have recalled the painful controversy of The Satanic Verses, and last week four British Muslims were sentenced to a total of 22 years in prison for inciting hatred while demonstrating against the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that Muslims are irretrievably opposed to free speech. Gallup conducted a poll in 10 Muslim countries (including Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) and found that the vast majority of respondents admired western "liberty and freedom and being open-minded with each other". They were particularly enthusiastic about our unrestricted press, liberty of worship and freedom of assembly. The only western achievement that they respected more than our political liberty was our modern technology.

Then why the book burnings and fatwas? In the past Islamic governments were as prone to intellectual coercion as any pre-modern rulers, but when Muslims were powerful and felt confident they were able to take criticism in their stride. But media and literary assaults have become more problematic at a time of extreme political vulnerability in the Islamic world, and to an alienated minority they seem inseparable from Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the unfolding tragedy of Iraq.

On both sides, however, there are double standards and the kind of contradiction evident in Khomeini's violation of the essential principles of his mentor, Mulla Sadra. For Muslims to protest against the Danish cartoonists' depiction of the prophet as a terrorist, while carrying placards that threatened another 7/7 atrocity on London, represented a nihilistic failure of integrity.

But equally the cartoonists and their publishers, who seemed impervious to Muslim sensibilities, failed to live up to their own liberal values, since the principle of free speech implies respect for the opinions of others. Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as any other form of prejudice. When 255,000 members of the so-called "Christian community" signed a petition to prevent the building of a large mosque in Abbey Mills, east London, they sent a grim message to the Muslim world: western freedom of worship did not, apparently, apply to Islam. There were similar protests by some in the Jewish community, who, as Seth Freedman pointed out in his Commentisfree piece, should be the first to protest against discrimination.

Gallup found there was as yet no blind hatred of the west in Muslim countries; only 8% of respondents condoned the 9/11 atrocities. But this could change if the extremists persuade the young that the west is bent on the destruction of their religion. When Gallup asked what the west could do to improve relations, most Muslims replied unhesitatingly that western countries must show greater respect for Islam, placing this ahead of economic aid and non-interference in their domestic affairs. Our inability to tolerate Islam not only contradicts our western values; it could also become a major security risk.

· Karen Armstrong is the author of The Battle For God: A History of Fundamentalism

A woman I know was murdered

From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSB
December 21, 2006, Vol. 4, No. 29

A woman I know was murdered in September, a fact which in itself is bad enough. But this woman was not the victim of a random shooting or a back alley mugging or a rape or even of the far too common problem of domestic violence.

No, this woman was murdered because she was doing what women are not allowed to do.

I met Safia Amajan, an Afghan women, in Geneva in 2004. We were in Switzerland as delegates to the first assembly of "The Women's Global Peace Initiative." This U.N. partnership organization emerged out of Kofi Annan's "Summit of Spiritual Leaders" in 2000 was a millennium event that called for the inclusion of women in world affairs.

I have her picture in my photo album. There we are arm-in-arm, smiling into the lens of history at this life-changing moment when the appearance of women as a class on the world stage would finally broaden the world agenda, would at long last raise the concerns of the other half of the human race to the level of the real, to the level of the significant.

Safia, the Minister of Women's Affairs in the province of Kandahar, was shot in the back seat of a taxi on the way to her office. Her most significant work was opening six schools for girls -- in defiance of custom, despite opposition. (Read more.)

After a series of death threats she had asked for protection but never got it. Instead, two motorcyclists ambushed her taxi, shot at her through the car window and sped away. Being a woman who advocates for women's issues is clearly a dangerous, if not suicidal, thing to do. At best, some would say, it is a very unwise, unacceptable -- even immoral -- thing to do.

They say that maybe now, another woman dead, women will learn not to go where women must not go, will learn not to do what women have no right doing.

After all, the history of women, like the history of oppressed peoples everywhere, is clear: Just tell them no and they'll go away, right? Just ignore them and they'll disappear, right? Just tell them what to do and they'll get back in line.

Well, maybe. Then again, maybe not. Not if the world is going in the other direction, as it now seems it well may be. Science no longer argues for the inferiority of women, for instance. Anthropology and history take note of their early status. Medical research now studies women as women rather than simply as subsets of men. Statisticians count them as separate human beings now. And pollsters even include them in their surveys.

Anyway, whose world is it? Now, that is the fundamental question.

After all, women are the majority race. If God doesn't like girls, S/he certainly made a lot of them. And they're beginning to figure it out.

In fact, when I heard about Safia's death, I figured I ought to tell somebody about the meeting I never thought I'd attend so whoever killed her could get prepared for what's coming.

The Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equity 2006, or WISE, met in New York City in November. Organized by the American Society for Muslim Advancement, it brought together more than 100 Muslim women -- some of them in headscarves, many not -- from 26 countries, from Afghanistan to the United States.

And they all had credentials and bios that read like the yellow pages of an international telephone book: They were physicians and teachers, writers and communication professionals, political scientists and specialists in the Qur'an, sociologists of religion and Arabic scholars, human rights activists and lawyers, artists and poets.

They are, in other words, highly educated and deeply involved in both religious and social issues, both local and global.

Most of all, they are committed to the development of the role of women in Islam. This was a meeting of Muslim feminists. Actually, it was a meeting of Muslim women leaders.

What were they doing in New York? They were organizing an international network of Muslim women for the sake of changing the world.

They talked about the difference between sharia law and the Qu'ran in much the same way that Western feminists talk about the difference between canon law and the Gospel.

They called for the recognition of women imams or prayer leaders and the ordination of "10 muftia in 10 years."

They discussed the organization of a women's shura, an advisory council of women that would interpret Islamic law for the religious leaders of a region.

They created a global fund for women designed to prepare women in Islamic jurisprudence in order to eliminate discrimination against women based on sexist interpretations of religious law.

In fact, they sounded a lot like us.

These are the women the West thinks do not exist.

I don't know who murdered Safia but I do know that they wasted their time. There are thousands of other women just like her out there. And they will not be denied either the fullness of their humanity or the integrity of their religion. This is the spirit no amount of killing can kill.

According to The Independent," Fariba Ahmedi, a female member of parliament who attended the burial, said: "Those enemies who have killed her should know it will not derail women from the path we are on. We will continue on our way."

From where I stand, those people who think that feminism is a Western fad which will either eventually go away or can simply be ignored, need to listen again. The roar we hear behind us is the sound of the whole wave of women around the globe for whom the Will of God means a great deal more to them than the historical suppression of women done in its name.

From where I stand - Vol 4, No. 21

Franz, where are you when we need you?

Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, National Catholic Reporter, Sept 22, 2006

Let's put it this way: The world in which we're living with its scramble for big oil, its rising sense of nationalism in a globalized world, its tendencies to economic imperialism, its capacity for global terrorism as well as Neanderthal militarism and its rising sense of anti-Americanism is at a very sensitive period in human history.

In fact, in a setting like that, we may well be precariously poised on the brink of a new Franz Ferdinand moment.

In that case, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist seeking independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire unleashed a catastrophic series of events. As a result, the world found itself plunged into a period of wars that lasted for more than 40 years and killed more than 70 million people. It wasn't so much what the assassination of an obscure Austrian Duke did to the world as it was what it catapulted so many others into doing in response.

It might be important for us to remember in our own time how it is that seemingly benign situations, given the right environment, can become potentially lethal.

In our own times, for instance, fundamentalism everywhere, including here, is more than enough to kindle a global fire.

And now an unexpected spark has come from the strangest place of all: the Vatican.

This week the pastoral, the political and the professorial dimensions of the present papacy of Benedict XVI found themselves on a fast-track to collision with forces far beyond the arena in which he spoke.

The world has been debating for over a week now whether Pope Benedict XVI simply forgot that he was a universal pastor and international politician as well as past professor or simply didn't care to attend to all three roles at one time. Whatever the case, in one university speech all three facets of this current papacy came into play.

In this speech, universal pastoral sensitivity, as well as the political responsibilities that come with the papacy, seem to many to have been abandoned. In their place, his long-time identity as professor -- meaning someone who has the luxury, indeed, the responsibility to pursue abstract ideas free of the social consequences of their implications -- had free rein.

But it wasn't the subject matter of the lecture that was the problem. The question of the nature of God is, in fact, an ancient one.

Christians, Benedict XVI reminded us - using the words of John's Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word, the Logos" -- hold that God, by nature, cannot do the unreasonable. On the other hand, those in Islam (as well as some Christian theologians like Duns Scotus and Benedict) argue that God transcends all human categories. God, that is, can do a thing whether it looks reasonable to human beings or not.

Benedict, of course, argued for the traditional Christian view. Otherwise, he pointed out, violence in behalf of faith -- "jihad" -- could be practiced in the name of God. That, he went on, is simply a rational impossibility for the God of peace and love.

But then, for no clear reason, Benedict quoted from a 14th century conversation between the Christian Emperor Paleologus and a Persian scholar . In the conversation, Paleologus contends that the Prophet Mohammed brought forth "only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Then and there, the academic subject becomes a pastoral one, a political one, a social one, a current one.

Then and there the speech raises two major problems for the Islamic world -- and so for us.

The first problem is that Muslim scholars maintain that the word "jihad" most commonly means that the Muslim must make an "effort" -- must struggle -- to live life in accordance with the teachings of Mohammed. It is incumbent on all Muslims at all times -- just as "avoiding the occasions of sin" is part of Christian discipline, as well. "Holy war," as jihad, is at most a secondary meaning of the word that has become common to radical Islamic fundamentalist groups, but not to the Islamic community in general.

The second problem is that Muslims see the words of Paleologus, and so of Benedict XVI, as a direct insult to the Prophet Mohammed. It is, purely and simply, blasphemy to accuse the prophet of being either inhumane or evil.

The outcry against the pope and the speech was swift in coming. Some called the references to a 600-year-old theological debate in an otherwise benign speech "tragic;" some called it "unfortunate;" a few called it brave -- and, if not politically smart, definitely necessary. But by the time the news cycles had made their way around the globe for a day or two, no one was calling it insignificant.

Whether or not it was right or wrong for the pope to say what he did, one thing is now clear, certainly to the world, hopefully to the pope: what popes say, however much they mean it to be an academic conversation starter, transcend the academic.

But it must be clear to the rest of us, as well, how easy it is to light a tinder box when we fail to acknowledge what we ourselves have committed against others in the name of religion.

It is Christians who call God "rational" who, in that God's name, have done a history-full of irrational things to other religions and to Christians themselves. In times past, Christians drove Jews and Muslims out of Europe. We slaughtered Jews in pogroms and Muslims in the Crusades.

In the New World, Christians converted Indians at the end of a sword and persecuted gays and kept slaves and suppressed women. We watched white Christians burn crosses in the front yards of black Christians -- and then burned those black Christians themselves.

We have all sinned in the name of religion.

If we want as Christians to begin a dialogue on the role of violence in religion, we need to cite some of our own sins as well as theirs.

And frankly, I'd leave both Mohammed and Jesus out of it as we do.

We had all better learn to talk so Christian a language that there is no doubt about its meaning.
From where I stand, a teacher friend of mine has it right. She taught her public communication students the basics of communication when she told them, "I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."

And that goes for all of us, pope and people alike. Otherwise, Franz Ferdiand may rise from his grave only to find us no wiser now than we were in his time. And maybe on the brink of 40 more years of war, as well.

'Christendom ideology' hampers Christian-Muslim relations, says think tank

The continuing confusion of Christianity with the dominant assumptions and institutions of Western society is the chief barrier to the renewal of the churches and better relations with Muslims and others, says the UK think tank Ekklesia.

Its call for a conscious reversal of ‘the Christendom settlement’, which links the interests of the church with the preservation of the status quo, includes a rejection of arguments against Turkey’s accession to the EU and a call to respond to the Muslim ‘Day of Anger’ against the Pope with a “dialogue of love”.

In an article published yesterday, Ekklesia co-director Simon Barrow says that senior Christian leaders have become “accustomed to operating from a position of power, prestige and protection”, and that this makes the Pope’s recent miscalculation over quoting a Christian Emperor in his recent German university speech “natural, if unintentional”.

The think tank says churches are “urgently challenged to deconstruct the colonial and military symbols which have become part of their faith”, pointing out that the central Christian image for God is a wounded healer, not a crusading warrior.

A post-Christendom church should reject violence and coercion, make the distinction between church and state clear, and argue against any attempts by politicians to have ‘God on our side’, says Ekklesia.

The think tank’s call comes at the same time as the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, has told the BBC that Europe’s “Christian identity” should be preserved and that Turkey’s admission to the European Union might risk “mixing cultures”.

Ekklesia says that such an approach is “profoundly mistaken”. The church should seek “difficult exchange not convenient isolation” with people of other convictions, it argues. It should also stop treating Christianity and Western culture as if they were the same thing, and should commend the Gospel through the peaceful witness of “communities of example”, not by attempts to impose Christian labels or rules on plural societies.

Today aggrieved Muslim leaders from Qatar to Qom and Gaza have called a ‘Day of Anger’ against the Pope. They say his apology for the impact of quoting an ancient attack on Muhammad is insufficient and that he should be “humbled”.

Ekklesia says that the best response to bitterness is “a dialogue of love”. It commends a Muslim initiative to help rebuild churches recently attacked in the West Bank and Gaza, and points to the recent exchange between US Mennonite theologian David Shank and Iranian President Ahmadinejad as “small signs of hope in a climate of bitterness and fear”.

Barrow argues that “Christendom is in retreat. But it is also in denial.” He cites the Catholic maintenance of a powerful City State, the Church of England’s “jealous guarding of Establishment”, and attempts by the US religious right to impose its views through money and power.

Continues the Ekklesia co-director: “It is these realities, together with the flag-waving and military chaplaincy that sometimes accompanies them, which makes it difficult for many Muslims (not just ‘radicals’) to understand the true difference between Christianity and Western interests. This remains the case even though the majority of Christians are poor, black and located in the global South; and even though a clear majority of the world’s churches have been highly critical of US-led military adventurism and the ‘war on terror’.”

Ekklesia commends the Pope’s view that linking violence to God is both wrong and incoherent, but says that if constructive conversations are to be had about distortions in Islam, they must proceed from practical repentance about the way Christendom was spread by the sword.

Adds Barrow: “We’re not being soft-headed about the very serious problem of religious violence. What we’re saying is that the calling of the church is to wage peace, and to refuse identification with policies based on the idea that might begets right – in whoever’s name they come.”

[See also: Redeeming Religion in the Public Square, by Simon Barrow; and Faith and Politics After Christendom: The church as a movement for anarchy, by Jonathan Bartley]