Reflections on a Christian-Muslim Dialogue
This dialogue between Christians and Muslims could have happened in virtually any Western English-speaking country: Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, as well as the USA. In actual fact, it took place at a suburban mosque in Melbourne. A colleague and I took a group of 15 of our students for the purposes of exposure to Islam and meeting Muslims in the flesh, rather than just reading about them. On arrival, we were greeted by the local Sheikh, a Pakistani by origin, his son, who is born and bred in Australia, and another Sheikh who was visiting from Egypt
We were all led into the prayer room where we sat in a large circle, with all eyes trained on our Muslim hosts. After introducing ourselves by name, the Sheikh and his son addressed us for 15 minutes, presenting the basic information about Islamic belief and practice: the Five Pillars and the Core Articles of Faith. However, this seemingly gentle introduction included a sting in the tail, as we were informed that the Bible we hold dear is not in fact the original version: Jesus was given a single Gospel, declared the Sheikh. He added that as there are now four Gospels, plus one by Barnabas, it is obvious that Jesus’ original has been lost.
The presentation was then followed by a Question and Answer session, lasting over one hour; our Muslim hosts were certainly generous with their time. Refreshments were then provided for half an hour, during which time other young Muslims mingled with our students, engaging in innocuous but very clear Islamic da’wa (missionary outreach). The afternoon concluded with our group watching Muslim men perform the short afternoon prayers in the prayer room.
Such is the typical format of a group visit to a Muslim mosque, based on comparison with many previous such visits. But the content of the Muslim presentation and responses to questions was also very familiar, and was marked by five characteristic features.
The Muslim presenters were very congenial and, at times, jovial, giving the impression of being willing to answer any question, including some which are hard: the absence of churches in Saudi Arabia, compared with the prevalence of mosques in the West, the practice of slavery by Muslims; the problem of terrorism; the role of Jesus; the impersonal nature of Allah, and so forth.
However, our Muslim dialogue partners were equal determined not to really grapple with the hard questions in a self-critical way, preferring to whitewash Islam and Muslims and then move the discussion on. So one million Christians residing in Saudi Arabia do not have a church because they are all temporary residents. Moreover, slavery by Muslims was not such a problem really as the Muslims only made slaves of those captured in war (by implication, wars started by non-Muslims.)
The determination to avoid significant self-criticism was quite pervasive. The Muslim dialogue partners argued that radical terrorists are not nurtured by the Islamic sacred texts but rather misinterpret them. Furthermore, problems faced by Muslim societies in a myriad of ways merely result from the oppression of America. This feature has a particular benefit; blaming the outsider can shift the focus away from one’s own sense of accountability.
Furthermore, there is a clear tendency to emphasise the allegorical rather than the literal in interpreting the Qur’an. So references in the Islamic holy book to the hand and face of God are seen merely as allegories; similarly jihad is first and foremost a “struggle to establish the truth” which can take many forms, such as people sitting down and discussing faith. With such an approach, the speakers were able to distance themselves from their more troublesome co-religionists who quote text and verse of the Qur’an in support of their campaigns of terror in certain locations.
A further common feature of Christian-Muslim dialogue which was in evidence in the Melbourne engagement was the role of misinformation and revisionist history. So Saladin was presented in idyllic terms, with claims that he didn’t hurt a single hair on Christian heads when “liberating” Jerusalem in 1187. In fact, the conquered Christians were given the choice of buying their freedom at an exorbitant rate, or enslavement. Furthermore, the Muslim presenter insisted that no Jewish community remained in Palestine after the time of the Romans, so there were no Jews living in Palestine when the great Jewish immigration began in the 19th century. This is patently false, and represents a very common method of delegitimizing Jewish claims to any part of the Holy Land.
A further feature in evidence in the Melbourne encounter relates to issues of alienation and identity. One of the speakers, born and bred in Australia, mentioned that some people don’t accept him as a true Australian. At this there were murmurs of sympathy from the Christian visitors. However later, when challenged on his claim that there was no Islamic slave trade and offered a book to read on the history of Islamic slavery, the Muslim speaker in question declined, stating that he only reads books in Arabic! Time did not allow the obvious issue of self-identity to be followed through in that particular discussion.
Such dialogue encounters should never be left in mid-air. It is important to process the experience and draw appropriate lessons, of which two are key. First must be the conclusion that such visits and dialogues are very worthwhile. They certainly contribute to understanding and relationship building. Laughs were exchanged at the Melbourne dialogue, and several difficult moments were defused by a mutual willingness to have a positive encounter. But the second important lesson to be drawn is that Christians must be as forthright as the Muslims will inevitably be. It is especially important to take advantage of such encounters to challenge aspects of revisionist history, as well as injustices such as treatment of Christians in some Muslim locations. Dialogue only works if Christians, while remaining polite and courteous, speak their minds. This will avoid the kind of ludicrous situation described graphically by C. M. Na’im, a Muslim scholar who observed a series of Christian-Muslim dialogues, who wrote:
“The Christians usually began by denouncing the crusades, the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century colonial expansions into Islamic lands, and the more recent Cold War policies of the United States against various nationalist movements in the Third World. They readily identified themselves with the west and its history, only to castigate all western protagonists and proponents, past and present. Their Muslim counterparts began in the same vein. They denounced the crusades and argued that the same crusading spirit worked equally behind the colonial expansion and the unquestioning American support of Israel against the Palestinians. … The listeners nodded in agreement. One Muslim speaker mentioned the expulsion of the Moors from Spain as another such moment, and all heads were further lowered in sorrow and shame.Amazingly, no one asked how the Moors arrived in Spain in the first place, or what had brought Muslims to the land of the Testaments. It was as if there had been no imperial expansion of Islam, no Arab conquests of Syria, North Africa, and Spain. … the sword was very much present in the story of Islam’s expansion, too. When this acknowledgement is not made, interfaith dialogue soon turns into an incoherent comparison of Islam, a faith without history, and Christianity, a history without faith.”
The issues arising in this article are discussed in more detail in Peter G. Riddell, “Political and Social Issues in Christian-Muslim Relations: The Questions Christians Ask”, (Melbourne: MST Press, 2nd edn, 2017).
We were all led into the prayer room where we sat in a large circle, with all eyes trained on our Muslim hosts. After introducing ourselves by name, the Sheikh and his son addressed us for 15 minutes, presenting the basic information about Islamic belief and practice: the Five Pillars and the Core Articles of Faith. However, this seemingly gentle introduction included a sting in the tail, as we were informed that the Bible we hold dear is not in fact the original version: Jesus was given a single Gospel, declared the Sheikh. He added that as there are now four Gospels, plus one by Barnabas, it is obvious that Jesus’ original has been lost.
The presentation was then followed by a Question and Answer session, lasting over one hour; our Muslim hosts were certainly generous with their time. Refreshments were then provided for half an hour, during which time other young Muslims mingled with our students, engaging in innocuous but very clear Islamic da’wa (missionary outreach). The afternoon concluded with our group watching Muslim men perform the short afternoon prayers in the prayer room.
Such is the typical format of a group visit to a Muslim mosque, based on comparison with many previous such visits. But the content of the Muslim presentation and responses to questions was also very familiar, and was marked by five characteristic features.
The Muslim presenters were very congenial and, at times, jovial, giving the impression of being willing to answer any question, including some which are hard: the absence of churches in Saudi Arabia, compared with the prevalence of mosques in the West, the practice of slavery by Muslims; the problem of terrorism; the role of Jesus; the impersonal nature of Allah, and so forth.
However, our Muslim dialogue partners were equal determined not to really grapple with the hard questions in a self-critical way, preferring to whitewash Islam and Muslims and then move the discussion on. So one million Christians residing in Saudi Arabia do not have a church because they are all temporary residents. Moreover, slavery by Muslims was not such a problem really as the Muslims only made slaves of those captured in war (by implication, wars started by non-Muslims.)
The determination to avoid significant self-criticism was quite pervasive. The Muslim dialogue partners argued that radical terrorists are not nurtured by the Islamic sacred texts but rather misinterpret them. Furthermore, problems faced by Muslim societies in a myriad of ways merely result from the oppression of America. This feature has a particular benefit; blaming the outsider can shift the focus away from one’s own sense of accountability.
Furthermore, there is a clear tendency to emphasise the allegorical rather than the literal in interpreting the Qur’an. So references in the Islamic holy book to the hand and face of God are seen merely as allegories; similarly jihad is first and foremost a “struggle to establish the truth” which can take many forms, such as people sitting down and discussing faith. With such an approach, the speakers were able to distance themselves from their more troublesome co-religionists who quote text and verse of the Qur’an in support of their campaigns of terror in certain locations.
A further common feature of Christian-Muslim dialogue which was in evidence in the Melbourne engagement was the role of misinformation and revisionist history. So Saladin was presented in idyllic terms, with claims that he didn’t hurt a single hair on Christian heads when “liberating” Jerusalem in 1187. In fact, the conquered Christians were given the choice of buying their freedom at an exorbitant rate, or enslavement. Furthermore, the Muslim presenter insisted that no Jewish community remained in Palestine after the time of the Romans, so there were no Jews living in Palestine when the great Jewish immigration began in the 19th century. This is patently false, and represents a very common method of delegitimizing Jewish claims to any part of the Holy Land.
A further feature in evidence in the Melbourne encounter relates to issues of alienation and identity. One of the speakers, born and bred in Australia, mentioned that some people don’t accept him as a true Australian. At this there were murmurs of sympathy from the Christian visitors. However later, when challenged on his claim that there was no Islamic slave trade and offered a book to read on the history of Islamic slavery, the Muslim speaker in question declined, stating that he only reads books in Arabic! Time did not allow the obvious issue of self-identity to be followed through in that particular discussion.
Such dialogue encounters should never be left in mid-air. It is important to process the experience and draw appropriate lessons, of which two are key. First must be the conclusion that such visits and dialogues are very worthwhile. They certainly contribute to understanding and relationship building. Laughs were exchanged at the Melbourne dialogue, and several difficult moments were defused by a mutual willingness to have a positive encounter. But the second important lesson to be drawn is that Christians must be as forthright as the Muslims will inevitably be. It is especially important to take advantage of such encounters to challenge aspects of revisionist history, as well as injustices such as treatment of Christians in some Muslim locations. Dialogue only works if Christians, while remaining polite and courteous, speak their minds. This will avoid the kind of ludicrous situation described graphically by C. M. Na’im, a Muslim scholar who observed a series of Christian-Muslim dialogues, who wrote:
“The Christians usually began by denouncing the crusades, the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century colonial expansions into Islamic lands, and the more recent Cold War policies of the United States against various nationalist movements in the Third World. They readily identified themselves with the west and its history, only to castigate all western protagonists and proponents, past and present. Their Muslim counterparts began in the same vein. They denounced the crusades and argued that the same crusading spirit worked equally behind the colonial expansion and the unquestioning American support of Israel against the Palestinians. … The listeners nodded in agreement. One Muslim speaker mentioned the expulsion of the Moors from Spain as another such moment, and all heads were further lowered in sorrow and shame.Amazingly, no one asked how the Moors arrived in Spain in the first place, or what had brought Muslims to the land of the Testaments. It was as if there had been no imperial expansion of Islam, no Arab conquests of Syria, North Africa, and Spain. … the sword was very much present in the story of Islam’s expansion, too. When this acknowledgement is not made, interfaith dialogue soon turns into an incoherent comparison of Islam, a faith without history, and Christianity, a history without faith.”
The issues arising in this article are discussed in more detail in Peter G. Riddell, “Political and Social Issues in Christian-Muslim Relations: The Questions Christians Ask”, (Melbourne: MST Press, 2nd edn, 2017).