Part I of II on Christian engagement with Islam
'Why are you here if you hate us?'
Dena Nicolai
CAIRO, Egypt – Mere days after the horrific events of September 11, 2001, former American President George W. Bush asked in a speech to Congress, “Why do they hate us?” By “they,” he meant extremist Muslims, such as those who had carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center, and those who claimed responsibility for it from the mountains of Afghanistan. But for many North Americans, and North American Christians in particular, “they” sounds like Muslims in general.
Nine years later, on a bus in Damascus, Syria, a Muslim woman turned to Amber Blom-Younan, an American working with the Mennonite Central Committee, and asked, “Why are you here if you hate us?” “You” meant Westerners and “us,” Muslims.
Today, both Christians and Muslims are continually confronted by news stories that seem to exemplify the fear, mistrust, and hatred that exists between them. In Germany, a pregnant Muslim woman is stabbed to death in a courtroom after testifying against a man on defamation charges that he called her a “terrorist” and an “Islamist” in a previous incident. In Nigeria, hundreds of Christians are killed by Muslim herdsmen in some of the worst religious clashes in years. In Spain, a girl is expelled from school for wearing a headscarf, while in Egypt local Coptic priests cannot obtain permits even to renovate their churches.
In North America post Septem-ber 11, there is a continual dialogue regarding Islam and how we should (if at all) engage it, and the opinions are varied. The debate stirs Christians as well, and the sensitivity of the topic is matched by the strength of emotion attached to it. It remains clear, however, that Christians today must challenge the hatred and misunderstanding on both sides. Though everyone suffers when extremists of any stripe resort to violence, continued hatred, fear, and mistrust cannot be the answer.
Cultivating fear
Within Islam, fundamentalists spread the word that the average Muslim must fear the cultural messages of the West – messages about immorality, the status of women, sexuality, and so on – that Muslims find offensive. They tell them to be afraid that the West will infiltrate and damage the Muslim umma (community). They recall the history of Western imperialism and hegemony in Muslim states, and warn that the West is trying to change their way of life.
In the West, Christians who use the word “danger” to describe Islam talk about a threat to our freedom, our democracy, and our faith – our way of life.
The resulting fear – on both sides – denies the other’s humanity and leads to questions like “Why do they hate us?” Muslims turn Christians into symbols of a “crusading West,” and we in turn look at all Muslims as “radical terrorists.” As Christians, we should work to move past typical Orientalist and Western stereotyping of Muslims (and often Arabs in general). These stereotypes only serve to heighten mistrust, as we simultaneously turn Muslims into caricatures and accuse them of inciting hatred without considering our own role in propagating fear and misunderstanding.
The sad fact is that the fundamentalists themselves – those who twist religion to suit their means – feed off our fear. What would they do, where would they go, and who would they gather to their ranks if they could not scare and provoke us? And if we are afraid, do we not have more to fear than Islam? These are some of the questions we must ask ourselves if we seek to move beyond where we are now.
The plank in our own eyes
I live in Cairo, a city of 16 million people, most of whom are Muslims. I walk the streets in safety, even as a woman alone, as I have walked the streets of other Muslim Arab nations as well. My experience has been that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people, inasmuch as the vast majority of Christians are peaceful. They are not interested in killing Christians, or committing violence against Westerners. However, in the minds of many Christians, these peaceful Muslims are the exception. Yet, when Christians commit violence and justify it with Scripture, we call them the exceptions.
Before deciding whether or not Islam promotes peace, we have to consider whether or not Christianity promotes peace. This leads to historical nuances, such as Just War theory, and examples like the Spanish Inquisition, the Bible verses inscribed on American military firearms, and the role of Christianity and the Crusades in the Middle Ages. And for every Christian who says, “The Crusades and those who kill abortion doctors do not represent true Christianity,” there is a Muslim who says, “Al Qaeda is not Islam” and “We do not claim Osama Bin Laden as our own.”
We must also take care when using Qu’ranic verses to generalize about Islam or Muslims as a whole. Verses can be taken from the Qur’an and the Bible to justify almost anything, if one knows where to look. For example, couldn’t someone use the book of Joshua to arrive at a distorted view of how Christians look at God?
As Philip Jenkins, a professor in the department of History and Religious Studies at Penn State University in Pennsylvania, argues, “to say that terrorists can find religious texts to justify their acts does not mean that their violence actually grows from these scriptural roots. Indeed, such an assumption itself is based on the crude fundamentalist formulation that everything in a given religion must somehow be authorized in scripture. . . . If Christians or Jews want to point to violent parts of the Koran and suggest that those elements taint the whole religion, they open themselves to the obvious question: what about their own faiths?”
On the defensive
Today, books and narratives (by authors such as Mark Gabriel or Wafa Sultan) are popular within some Western Christian circles. I can’t deny the validity of stories and narratives such as Sultan’s, but we must also ask ourselves if we would want a Muslim’s primary image of Christianity to come from, for example, a Christian convert to Islam or a former Christian who had left the faith altogether.
Narratives such as Sultan’s, as valuable as they may be within a certain context, often add to Muslims’ feelings that the West “hates” them.
“We speak cheerfully about Islam being the next great threat (or alternately the next great mission field) now that the Communist world has disintegrated, but how does that sound to our Muslim neighbours?” writes Dr. Jonathan Ingleby, Head of Mission Studies at Redcliffe College in England.
It is no wonder that, as one Catholic priest in Jerusalem points out, “Islam still lives in a situation where it feels attacked and aggressed – it is always in a situation of self-defence.” When Westerners in Cairo engage in dialogue with Muslims in Egypt or other Muslim nations, they often find themselves solely listening, as their Muslim counterparts assume that before engaging in two-way conversation it is necessary to defend themselves against assumed Western stereotypes. While this is explicable, the defensive attitude that is created by misunderstandings prevents true conversation and makes it even more difficult to form authentic relationships.
In order for any true dialogue to take place, both sides must move past stereotypes and fear into a place of honest conversation, where the question is no longer “Why do you hate us?” but is instead, “I see you as a real person. Now where do we go from here?”
Part II of II on Christian engagement with Islam
Be not afraid: Embracing the Muslim 'Other'
Part I of this series discussed the mutual fear, mistrust, and hatred that seems to exist between Christians and Muslims, culmin-ating in the question “Why do they hate us?” that is being asked on both sides. As we as Christians acknowledge our responsibility in challenging these feelings, we can hopefully see Muslims as real people instead of an entity to be feared, and begin to answer the question, “Where do we go from here?” Part II gives some direction for the continued journey of responding to this question.
CAIRO, Egypt – Croatian theo-logian Miroslav Volf, professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School, writes and speaks often about those he calls “the other” – those we see as being different from us. For Christians today, there is perhaps no better representative of “the other” than Muslims. Volf says “I have to will not to see the other as an enemy but as a potential friend. I have to will to see the other not as a diminishment, but as an enrichment . . . and, of course, the reason why we are not willing to embrace the other is that we are afraid.”
One of the steps in moving past this fear, says Volf, is forming relationships with the other. When we invite Muslims into our homes, when we engage them as co-workers in our workplaces, and when we respect their culture when visiting Muslim countries, we form relationships in which honest dialogue can take place. This includes asking Muslims hard questions when appropriate, and being willing to answer the hard questions they may ask. We might ask Muslims about the treatment of Christian (and other) minorities in Muslim nations, the role of violence in breeding violence, and the fact that the moderate Muslim voice is not as loud as it could be. As we do this, we must recognize priest and scholar Colin Chapman’s point about the struggle between moderate and radical Muslims for the “hearts and minds” of “the Muslim masses in the middle”:
“Unfortunately it is not always easy to engage in dialogue with convinced Islamists. Perhaps therefore one of the things we need to pray for is that while our governments in the West protect themselves against terrorism and at the same time try to address the root cause of terrorism, moderate Muslims all over the world will be able to engage with Islamists, pointing to alternative and genuinely Islamic models of how to change the world.”
Knowledge overcomes fear
We fear what we do not know, and therefore part of forming trustful relationships involves learning about “the other,” on both a personal and larger level. Most colleges and universities today offer courses on World Religions, and, increasingly, on Islam in particular, open to the general public. Your home churches can also order and offer short courses on Islam, or Muslim-Christian relations – Anglican Scholar Colin Chapman has a solid one (Cross and Crescent), as does California’s Fuller Seminary (The World of Islam). Learning more about the history of Western imperialism in Muslim countries is helpful as well. Says Chapman, “[Western Imperialism] has left a big scar in the minds of Muslims and they still feel they are suffering and humiliated almost because of continuing Western imperialism in new forms.” Don’t underestimate what this means, even to Muslims who are permanently settled in the West.
It’s also important to differentiate between religion and culture. For example, Female Genital Mutilation (female circumcision) is often attributed to Islam. However, ardently Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia expressly forbid it, while it is practiced widely in many Christian communities in Sudan. Other issues that might make us point to Islam include the poor treatment of women and the related tragedy of honour killings. While both are pressing issues in many countries in the Muslim world, they also exist to a certain extent in some Christian communities in more traditional cultures in the Middle East. Therefore, honour killings should be addressed not solely as a religious problem. When reading news about the church in Muslim countries, we should take care to remember that although Christians certainly suffer discrimination and in some cases, persecution, even Christian priests in these regions have pointed out that their problem is that they are a minority. Like other minorities, they suffer a loss of human rights under a majority power in countries ruled by autocratic regimes. Therefore, when we pray for and call for freedom for the church in these countries (as we should) we should also pray and call for freedom for all suffering minorities.
We should also push ourselves to find and read the good news and the positive changes in the Muslim world, because they do exist. Changes such as the creation of a YouTube channel by Queen Rania of Jordan, where she has invited viewers to give their opinions of the Middle East, and has then discussed those views and general stereotypes of the Arab Muslim World. Or the opening of the first coeducational college campus in Saudi Arabia (America’s Princeton University did not become co-ed until 1969). Or last year’s successful parliamentary elections in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world. Or finally, the courage of thousands of Iranians who took to the streets to protest the corruption of last June’s presidential election and to condemn dictatorship.
When Westerners talk about the great Islamic threat, Iran often comes out at the top of the list. We watch videos of protests in which Iranians walk through the streets chanting “Death to America,” and it seems scary. My experiences in the Middle East, however, are nothing like that. I’ve never met anyone more fascinated to meet North Americans than Iranians. On a recent trip to Damascus, Syria, I supervised 30 college students from the US, and we encountered large groups of Iranian religious pilgrims, visiting holy sites in Damascus. Time after time, they approached us – wanting to talk, wanting to use what English they knew, wanting to take photos with us, wanting to reassure us that they in fact did not hate us.
These Iranians were fascinated to meet “real” Americans – to see “the other” in person. It was a learning experience for all of us. To meet, to talk, and to realize that we had nothing to fear.
Walking in the Others’ shoes
Christians should also be willing to listen to what Muslims have to say about us and about themselves – to walk in their shoes, so to speak. Volf challenges us “to see the other through their own eyes. What is that other’s self-understanding? Equally important, I think, is seeing myself with their eyes. Then, as we are seen, we can exchange perspectives. It is only through exchanging perspectives that we can gain an adequate perception both of ourselves and of the other.” As one Calvin seminary student commented, “I love Volf’s point. I want to know why a Muslim would want to be a Muslim . . . what he or she sees as beautiful in Islam.” There are a myriad of ways to do this – from personal conversations, to reading literature by Muslim authors, or to enjoying the humour in television shows like Little Mosque on the Prairie (created by a Muslim woman).
As we build friendships, we can also build on commonalities between the two faiths. These commonalities include our call to let God into every area of our lives, our focus on humility before a majestic God, and our care for those less fortunate. As Philip Jenkins dreams in The Next Christendom, “In an ideal world, Christians and Muslims . . . would be engaged in a friendly rivalry as to who could best help the poor, without thought of who was gaining the greatest numbers and influence.”
The perfect love of Christ
When Amber Blom-Younan was asked “Why are you here if you hate us?” on the bus in Damascus, her answer was, “Actually, I love living in Syria, and I love Syrians. In fact, I’ve even brought my family here from America to visit.” The smile on the Muslim woman’s face in response signified that something had changed, one person at a time.
Instead of framing Islam as a threat and Muslim-Christian relations as a war to be won, we should remember the love of Christ, which the Apostle John calls “a perfect love that drives out fear.” And in this love, we should say a resounding “amen” to what Anglican priest and scholar Kenneth Cragg notes in his book, The Call of the Minaret: “the objective is not, as the Crusaders believed, the repossession of what Christendom has lost, but the restoration to Muslims of the Christ Whom they have missed.”
Dena Nicolai (dena.nicolai@gmail.com) lives and works in Cairo, Egypt. She is originally from Edmonton. For those interested in learning more about Christian-Muslim relations, she recommends Colin Chapman’s Cross and Crescent: Responding to the Challenge of Islam. Part II of this series, Be Not Afraid: Embracing the Muslim ‘Other,’
will be in the May 24 issue.