Conservative Catholicism and Liberal Islam

I just finished reading Thomas F. Madden's Empires of Trust: How Rome Built--and America Is Building--a New World, and I'm planning to write a couple posts shortly reviewing the book and the ideas it presents. As a prelude of sorts, however, I'd like to revisit some thinking I did a while back:


A month or so ago I finally had the chance to read Steven Vincent's account of life outside the green zone in post-war Iraq: In The Red Zone. It's a very fair book, and worth a read whether you support the war in Iraq or not. The author, since then killed in Iraq by militants, was a New York art reporter who watched the attacks on 9-11 and supported the Iraq war. Having supported the war, he felt like he should go over and see what was really happening over there. The book has the advantage of being writing from a culture writer's point of view rather than a political writer's. And although Vincent starts out as an enthusiastic supporter of the project, he ends unsure whether it's possible for democracy to flourish in Iraq. (I'd be curious to read later work by him and see what he thought of the elections and the provisional constitution, both of which post date his book.)

This reminded me of my long held intention to read more about Islam, so I pull off the shelf the copy of Living Islam (now apparently out of print) by Ahbar S Ahmed which I'd bought on remainder some nine years ago and had been meaning to read ever since. Living Islam is half cultural history, half apologia (think a very, very light weight version of Letters To A Young Catholic with lots of pictures and basic intro information.)

True Religious Tolerance and Dialog

There has continued to be some very interesting discussion about pope Benedict XVI personally baptising Magdi Allam.

Sherry Weddell continues to fear that turning the baptism of an Islamic-born, politically controversial journalist into a global media event will have tragic repurcussions for Christian converts and missionaries living in the Middle East and North Africa.

Abu Daoud reponds to her concerns.

(Incidently, if all blogsphere argument was as civil and thoughtful as the Sherry/Abu Daoud exchange, it would be a pretty wonderful thing.)

Zenit has posted the full text of an editorial letter dealing with his conversion which Magdi Allam sent to the newspaper at which he works. (HatTip: Blackadder) From that letter by Allam come some interesting thoughts:

Dear Director, you asked me whether I fear for my life, in the awareness that conversion to Christianity will certainly procure for me yet another, and much more grave, death sentence for apostasy. You are perfectly right. I know what I am headed for but I face my destiny with my head held high, standing upright and with the interior solidity of one who has the certainty of his faith. And I will be more so after the courageous and historical gesture of the Pope, who, as soon has he knew of my desire, immediately agreed to personally impart the Christian sacraments of initiation to me. His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.

For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the abuse and the violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice. In Italy there are thousands of converts to Islam who live their new faith in peace. But there are also thousands of Muslim converts to Christianity who are forced to hide their faith out of fear of being assassinated by Islamic extremists who lurk among us. By one of those “fortuitous events” that evoke the discreet hand of the Lord, the first article that I wrote for the Corriere on Sept. 3, 2003 was entitled “The new Catacombs of Islamic Converts.” It was an investigation of recent Muslim converts to Christianity in Italy who decry their profound spiritual and human solitude in the face of absconding state institutions that do not protect them and the silence of the Church itself. Well, I hope that the Pope’s historical gesture and my testimony will lead to the conviction that the moment has come to leave the darkness of the catacombs and to publicly declare their desire to be fully themselves. If in Italy, in our home, the cradle of Catholicism, we are not prepared to guarantee complete religious freedom to everyone, how can we ever be credible when we denounce the violation of this freedom elsewhere in the world? I pray to God that on this special Easter he give the gift of the resurrection of the spirit to all the faithful in Christ who have until now been subjugated by fear. Happy Easter to everyone.

So it seems that in Allam's mind there is also a very real significance to this to members of the ex-Muslim convert communities in Italy and in Europe as a whole, who may find themselves with little protection against retribution for their "apostacy" when government and church authorities are so focused on respecting "cultural diversity" that they fail to reign in its more dangerous elements.

Finally, Routers reports that several Islamic scholars associated with the A Common Word initiative towards better Islamic/Christian dialog have voiced regret that the pope baptised Allam so publically, seeing this as a public blow to dialog.

Aref Ali Nayed, a key figure in a group of over 200 Muslim scholars launching discussion forums with Christian groups, said the Vatican had turned the baptism of Egyptian-born journalist Magdi Allam into "a triumphalist tool for scoring points."....

"The whole spectacle... provokes genuine questions about the motives, intentions and plans of some of the pope's advisers on Islam," Nayed, who is director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Amman, said in a statement.

"Nevertheless, we will not let this unfortunate episode distract us from our work on pursuing 'A Common Word' for the sake of humanity and world peace. Our basis for dialogue is not a tit-for-tat logic of reciprocity."

Reading all this, however, I find myself wondering if Benedict's aim in all this is to make a statement about the nature of true religious toleration and dialog. There has been a tendency in the '60s for many to downplay the importance of conversion in favor of "dialog". I'm sure that nearly all of us know a few converts who were initially told by some priest or layperson, "God just wants you to be the best person that you can be where you already are. We don't 'convert' people anymore."

Even when things are not taken to this extremity, it often seems to be held that religius toleration and dialog requires that the parties not talk about the fact that, by virtue of belonging to very different religious traditions, they to some degree hold that the others have false beliefs and would be better off converting.

Benedict is no political and cultural fire-breether, but he is a thoughtful and holy man who is in no sense afraid of difficult and unpopular truths. I wonder if the pope, who according to Allam immediately agreed to personally receive him into the Church when Allam made the request, means with this action to make a statement that he will bring to the table when he meets with scholards from the A Common Word initiative in November: Toleration means not merely ignoring and minimizing points of difference, but respecting the conscience of others even in the face of grave and important points of difference.

True progress in the dialog between Islam and Christianity must mean not only respect for all that is good and shared by the two traditions, but also an acknowledgement that we do indeed differ on profound and important questions of faith, and that despite this members of both faiths must respect the freedom of conscience of the others.

Tolerance, in its real sense, must mean not merely minimizing the differences between us, but treating each other with respect while acknowledging our differences.

Pope Benedict Baptises ex-Muslim Convert

Each year, the pope personally baptises a small number of converts to the faith during the Easter Vigil mass celebrated in St. Peter's Basilica. This year, one of the seven adult converts the Pope Benedict XVI baptised was Egyptian-born Magdi Allam. Allam's wife and children are Catholic, and he has for years been a figure in Italian media circles -- controversial for his criticism of extremism in the Muslim world and his support for Israel. In regards to his Islamic upbringing, Allam says that he was never a fully practicing Muslim (he didn't pray five times a day facing Mecca), although he did make the Hajj pilgrimage with his mother twenty years ago.CNN covers Allam's conversion here.

Abu Daoud of Islam and Christianity blogs about the pope's baptism of Allam and hopes it may have a positive impact on others thinking of becoming Christian in the Muslim world.

SherryW of Intentional Disciples is concerned that having a convert from Islam baptised on international TV by the pope presents an incendiary image and overly associates the Christian missionary message with Allam's at-times incendiary views about the Middle East.

Abu Daoud responds to her concerns with a second post here. Among his comments, this struck me has particularly interesting:

Christians in MENA [Middle East/North Africa] will indeed live with this for years. They will live with the image of the best know Christian in the world baptizing a Muslim. It will give them hope. It will encourage other Muslims to convert. It will, in a few Muslims' minds, occasion the question, "What if I left?" Most of them have never even considered the possibility. Many of them don't even know that people DO leave Islam.

This is great news for the Catholic Church as well as the mission to Muslims. Muslims respect the Catholic Church and the pope because he is powerful. That is a language that they can understand. They know that he holds more sway around the world Christians than does any single person in Islam. They know he has a country of his own. They know his office is very ancient. These things, to the Muslim mind, and specifically to the Muslim Arab mind are often attractive. Becoming a non-denominational Christian with no clear affinity or relation to anyone else is not always appealing to a Muslim considering conversion.

While I have a lot of respect for Sherry and the Sienna Institute, I'm more inclined to follow Abu Daoud's thinking on this than hers.

A Common Word: Islam and the Limits of Dialogue

Christopher Blosser writes about A Common Word, an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI on the part of 130+ Islamic scholars from all branches of Islam, calling for deeper and more open dialogue between Islam and Christianity. (He provides a follow-up post with more Christian reactions to the letter here.)
The origins of this apparently lie in the pope's Regensburg address, in which he talked about the intimate connection between faith and reason, and used traditional Islamic teaching as a counterpoint to that example. According to a John Allen column (quoted by Blosser in his post) the scholars who started the initiative felt that the Vatican was only willing to deal with Islam at a diplomatic level, not a theoligical one:

Hossein charged that the Vatican has rebuffed attempts to engage Muslims in theological conversation, instead concentrating on the diplomatic level.

“Muslims thought of choosing a small team of 4-5 people, leading Islamic thinkers, to be able to have a dialogue on the deepest theological issues with the Vatican, including the pope himself,” in the wake of controversies over Regensburg, Hossein said. “At least, that’s the condition I put down. Nothing came of that, there was no response from the Vatican.”

Esposito said he too was aware of a high-level attempt to open a new channel of dialogue with the Vatican by Muslim leaders after Regensburg that was rebuffed.

“Most of the response that has come from the Vatican, after the Islamic protest and all of these things, has been diplomatic, not theological,” Hossein said.

The Common Word letter attempts to underline common religious beliefs which could serve as the basis for ongoing dialogue:

The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbour. These principles are found over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity. The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity. The following are only a few examples:

Of God’s Unity, God says in the Holy Qur’an: Say: He is God, the One! / God, the Self-Sufficient Besought of all! (Al-Ikhlas, 112:1-2). Of the necessity of love for God, God says in the Holy Qur’an: So invoke the Name of thy Lord and devote thyself to Him with a complete devotion (Al-Muzzammil, 73:8). Of the necessity of love for the neighbour, the Prophet Muhammad r said: “None of you has faith until you love for your neighbour what you love for yourself.”

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ u said: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. / And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. / And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)
...
Thus in obedience to the Holy Qur’an, we as Muslims invite Christians to come together with us on the basis of what is common to us, which is also what is most essential to our faith and practice: the Two Commandments of love.

The letter goes on to quote extensively from the Qur'an and from the Torah and the New Testament to underline the common elements of monotheism and love of neighbor in the three religions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The site also includes a number of responses from Christian and Jewish leaders.

Certainly, this is an encouraging thing to see coming out of a large number of Islamic scholars. From what I understand, theological and juridical consensus in Islam is often achieved by the number of scholars who endorse a particular interpretation of the Qur'an -- and so seeing 130+ scholars from throughout the Islamic world endorse something like this is an encouraging sign, though I'm not in a position to know how the signatories rate within various national and theological groups in the Muslim world.

But aside from the undoubted point that a call for peace (especially if it results in more peaceful co-existence where Christians live under an Islamic majority) is much more encouraging than the reverse -- what should we as Christians make of this?

While I respect the sincerity of the signatories of A Common Word, and agree that the three great monotheistic religions do share in common principles of love of God and love of neighbor, I'm not clear how much of the deeper dialogue which they wish the Vatican were more open to is actually possible. For once we have discussed the love of God and love of neighbor, where exactly could we go from there? The one-ness of God, it would seem, and yet here we immediately run into one of the great historic differences between our faiths. Islam does not admit as possible that God should be three in one. And while explaining the Trinity in such terms as to be understandable to a Muslim audience would be a worthy occupation, if a consensus on this were achieved my understanding is that this would consist (for the Muslims) of rejecting traditional Islam. You cannot, so far as I can understand, both accept the trinity and be a good Muslim.

Which brings us to the central problem of religious dialogue: What exactly is the goal? Clearly in such areas as dialogue with the Orthodox Churches, the goal is a reunion of the great historic branches of Christianity. But in holding interfaith dialogue between Christians, Jews and Muslims there is clearly no possibility of reunion short of conversion. And while I'm very much in favor of our non-Christian brothers converting, I doubt that that is the goal of the Common Word signatories.

Thinking about this, it occurs to me that in historical terms it is much easier for the children to hold out desire for dialogue than for the parents to appreciate it. Thus, as Christians we may affirm that the Jews hold true to God's original covenant, and remain in a sense His chosen people, even while believing that in Christ the old covenant found its fulfillment. In that sense, Christians can see a fair amount of point in holding dialogue with Jews because we hold their beliefs to be true within a certain context, though not the fullness of truth.

However, from a Jewish perspective, Christianity is a corruption of the truth that was already full. If Christ was not the promised savior, than there's really not much to be said from the Jewish side, so far as I can tell, other than: "Please don't persecute us, and when you're ready to give up this savior-already-came nonsense, we're happy to talk."

The same problem, it seems, arises when Muslims want to hold dialogue with Christians. Perhaps open-minded Muslims are ready to grant that Christianity is mostly true so far as it goes (though can we maybe gloss over a few major dogmas like the Trinity, the Eucharist, etc.?) and in that sense are open for deeper theological dialogue. But from a Christian point of view the entire revelation of Mohammad is a human invention/delusion at best, and at worse something rather more sinister.

At that point, no wonder the Vatican seems more eager to pursue things on a diplomatic than a theological footing. At the level of achieving greater peace between Christians and Muslims, there's much to be achieved. At the level of theological dialogue...

Well, I think there are probably good things to be achieved there, but they would need to be achieved through a very non-goal-oriented approach. That, I think, has been the problem with many recent attempts at inter-religious dialogue. Too often these things seem focused on "let us agree on something we can sign together" rather than "let us attempt to find a way in which our beliefs can be presented to each other through a theological/philosophical language that both of us can understand". There would, I think, be a value in achieving some sort of common theological language that would allow Muslim theologians to understand what Christians mean by things like the Trinity, the Eucharist, etc. Then, at least, we could be clear on it is that each other are talking about. But I'm not clear if that's the sort of dialogue that people are looking for.

Apologetics: Tahriif

Abu Daoud writes about the Islamic teaching about the tahriif of the Bible, the Arabic word means "corruption" and the teaching is that Jesus and the Old Testament prophets received an exact word-for-word revelation just like Mohammad, but Christians and Jews later corrupsted the writings of these prophets. This is used to explain any contradictions (of which there are of course many) between the Koran and the Bible, which according the Koran is indeed the word of God.

Abu Daoud produces three arguments against the tahriif; the first two will sound familiar from other Christian apologetics, but the third seems to spring from a bit more of a Middle Eastern mindset, and thus is interesting, but a little alien.

Islamic Apologetics: Original Sin

Abu Daoud of Islam and Christianity shares a specimen of Islamic apologetics from a Muslim website:

Q. Jesus sacrificed himself to save mankind and deliver us from the sin, why did not Muhammad do so?

A. You did not study history enough and you did not know unfortunately what happened to Jesus, peace be upon him. Jesus, peace be upon him, did not sacrifice his life for our sins. And if it were to be true, Jesus would have been sent by God as the first child of Adam to save our sins. We human beings are born without sin, pure. Again, Jesus, peace be upon him, was not crucified. Go back and find who the one crucified was. If you don’t know, we will tell you. Jesus in as much as God brought was a hypocrite whose name was Juda, became his look like and then people crucified him thinking he was Jesus.

Abu Daoud explains, "I include this sort of thing on the blog not to frustrate non-Muslims, but to show them what Islamic thinking looks like. This sort of idea is what you face every day when you live with Muslims and you share the Gospel with them."

Raymund Lully, Missionary to Islam

Abu Daoud of Islam and Christianity had a piece up yesterday profiling Raymund Lully, a 13th century courtier in the court of James of Aragon who, after an intense conversion experience at 30 became a third order Franciscan, studied philosophy and theology, and went on several missionary trips to convert Muslims to Christianity.

From the Christian History Institute (quoted in Abu Daoud's post) comes this about Raymund's conversion:

Raymond Lull would have seemed an unlikely person to remind the church of its missionary vision. A court gallant (that is, a fashionable ladies' man) and poet, he squandered his life in frivolity, romantic stories, love poems, and seduction. He was thirty before that changed.

But Jesus Christ, of his great clemency,
Five times upon the cross appeared to me,
That I might think upon him lovingly,
And cause his name proclaimed abroad to be...

It is reported that Lull's conversion was precipitated by a shock. He tried to lure a beautiful woman into a few moments of pleasure in bed with him. With quiet dignity, the woman revealed her breast to him--cancer-eaten. In a flash, he saw the futility of his lusts, and later transferred his love to the eternal Christ.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

From that time he seemed to be inspired with extraordinary zeal for the conversion of the Mohammedan world. To this end he advocated the study of Oriental languages and the refutation of Arabian philosophy, especially that of Averroes. He founded a school for the members of his community in Majorca, where special attention was given to Arabic and Chaldean. Later he taught in Paris. About 1291 he went to Tunis, preached to the Saracens, disputed with them in philosophy, and after another brief sojourn in Paris, returned to the East as a missionary. After undergoing many hardships and privations he returned to Europe in 1311 for the purpose of laying before the Council of Vienna his plans for the conversion of the Moors. Again in 1315 he set out for Tunis, where he was stoned to death by the Saracens.

Raymond's literary activity was inspired by the same purpose as his missionary and educational efforts. In the numerous writings (about 300) which came from his facile pen, in Catalonian as well as in Latin, he strove to show the errors of Averroism and to expound Christian theology in such a manner that the Saracens themselves could not fail to see the truth. With the same purpose in view, he invented a mechanical contrivance, a logical machine, in which the subjects and predicates of theological propositions were arranged in circles, squares, triangles, and other geometrical figures, so that by moving a lever, turning a crank, or causing a wheel to revolve, the propositions would arrange themselves in the affirmative or negative and thus prove themselves to be true. This device he called the Ars Generalis Ultima or the Ars Magna, and to the description and explanation of it he devoted his most important works. Underlying this scheme was a theoretical philosophy, or rather a theosophy, for the essential element in Raymond's method was the identification of theology with philosophy. The scholastics of the thirteenth century maintained that, while the two sciences agree, so that what is true in philosophy cannot be false in theology, or vice versa, they are, nevertheless, two distinct sciences, differing especially in that theology makes use of revelation as a source, while philosophy relies on reason alone.

The Arabians had completely separated them by maintaining the twofold standard of truth, according to which what is false in philosophy may be true in theology. Raymond, carried on by his zeal for the refutation of the Arabians, went to the opposite extreme. He held that there is no distinction between philosophy and theology, between reason and faith, so that even the highest mysteries may be proved by means of logical demonstration and the us of the Ars Magna. This of course removed all distinction between natural and supernatural truth. Unlike Abelard's, however, Raymond's rationalism was of the mystic type: he taught expressly that, for the understanding of the highest truths, reason must be aided by faith; that once faith has flooded the soul with its radiance, reason, enlightened and strengthened by faith, "is as capable of showing that there are three persons in one God as it is of proving that there cannot be three Gods".

Despite his life of missionary activity and martyrdom, Raymund Lully was never declared a saint because of his belief that philosophy and theology were identical, a belief that was eventually condemned (sixty years after his death) by Pope Gregory XI. However his life of missionary activity is certainly admirable, and his work on a medieval logical engine sounds like the sort of thing that Umberto Eco would thrive on.