A paper read to the AGM of the Hull & District Theological Society on 21 May 2008 by the Rt Revd John Brown, Hon. Asst Bishop of Lincoln and sometime Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf
The ‘buzz-word’ today is, of course, ‘dialogue’. As I begin this survey of a vast subject I need to remind myself that dialogue is a matter of attitudes and relations as much as words. Since the 7th century CE there has always been some kind of relationship between Christians and Muslims. In pre-Islamic Arabia the Nestorian Christian missionaries did not live in isolation from their pagan neighbours and the Monophysite Christians from Abyssinia built a great cathedral in Sana’a (Saba in Arabia Felix, today’s Yemen). The prophet Muhammad was a trader and travelled the spice and incense routes. The writings showe that he related with Christians as they crossed the tribal and pagan desert land, In the Qur’an we read: ‘You will find the nearest in affection to those who believe are those who say, “We are Christians”. That is because there are among them priests and monks, and because they are not proud.’
As the Muslim conquest took hold from the middle of the 7th century (Muhammad died in 632 CE), arrangements were made for Christians who were given dhimmi (i.e. protected) status on payment of the gizya (i.e. obligatory tax). In the post Muhammad period Christians and Muslims began to lead their separate lives. The consideration of the Muslim conquerors was exemplified by the second Caliph ‘Umar who captured Jerusalem. He refused to receive the capitulation in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and he made a treaty with the Patriarch which stated the following: (Umar) grants to the people of Aelia (i.e.Jerusalem) security of their lives, their possessions, their churches, their crosses…. they shall have freedom of religion and none shall be molested unless they rise up in a body. They shall pay a tax instead of military service … and those who leave the city shall be safeguarded until they reach their destination.
The relationship aspect of dialogue is always very important. St John of Damascus lived from 675-753 CE. His grandfather was governor of Damascus until the Byzantines surrendered to the Muslim Arabs in 635. St John of Damascus himself was born with an Arab name, probably into an Arab family – Mansur ibn Sergu:n.
For many centuries Christians held senior and trusted positions in the civil service of a number of Muslim administrations, as in Syria and Iraq, and the Copts in Egypt; but they probably did not engage in formal dialogue except at the level of academic interest. John of Damascus in his writings on heresy (e.g. De Haeresibus) hardly touches on Islam and concentrates on Christian heresies.
In his “Heresy of the Ishmaelites” John speaks of a Muslim who was influenced by an Arian monk. He quotes passages of the Qur’an where it honours Jesus Christ; e.g. Surah 112:2-3, Christ unbegotten; 4:171, Christ the Word (Logos) of God; 43:59, Servant of God; 19:28-29, the Virgin Birth. Then, John states that Muslims say that Christ was not crucified, nor did he die. On Golgotha there was substitution. In heaven Christ assured God that he had never claimed divine Sonship.
In the early Middle Ages Christian writers often had their works translated into Arabic, and Jews, Christians, Muslims and pagans usually managed to live together in peace.
Some Christian writers began to show boldness and engaged in polemics with Muslims. The method used was not usually an appeal to scripture but rather an attempt to prove that Muslims had got it wrong! John of Damascus himself was very much a polemicist and says a number of times that Muslim Christology is simply “worthy of laughter”. This is not a good basis for dialogue!
The Nestorian church (properly called the Church of the East) was a very significant and energetic missionary church that spread throughout Arabia and eastwards into Persia, India and on to China. In the 8th century the Patriarch was Timothy I and he moved the headquarters of the church from Ctesiphon to Baghdad; he frequently met with the Caliph. There are Minutes of some of their dialogue and these show that relationships had developed to enable real dialogue to take place. Their talk was civilised and non-confrontational, but they did not lead anywhere (i.e. they agreed to differ!).
that Muhammad should perhaps be identified with the Paraclete! Dialogue was rather arid, as in this extract from a dialogue between Timothy and Caliph al-Mandi (775-785). It relates to the Trinity:
Caliph: “If there are three, how can they be one?”
Timothy: “The three are three persons, not three gods. They are three persons in one Godhead”.
We would not think this very helpful today. This kind of dialogue gets bogged down in syllogistic argument which does not really work. Listen to Timothy’s explanation: “One is the cause of three, O King, because this number one is the cause of the number two, and the number two that of the number three. This is how one is the cause of three, as I said, O King”. And on and on and on! The Caliph’s reply goes on to show the absurdity of using mathematical and quasi-logical structures to explain the Holy Trinity. This is a major cause of stumbling in Christian-Muslim dialogue even today, as I know from my dialogues with the Grand Mufti of Oman….
In the 9th century a Nestorian scholar, Ali al-Tabari, converted to Islam aged 70 and wrote against the validity of Christian doctrine; especially on the ground that it offended monotheism. This referred to the Muslim doctrine of shirk which means associating anything or anyone with alla:h that is not alla:h; thereby raising questions about the doctrine of the Trinity, until the present day).
Quite a lot of Muslim writing is propaganda but some of it before the 10th century admits of contradictions in the Qur’an and suggests that some texts should be viewed
metaphorically. (e.g.’Amr al-Gahiz 776-869 CE). There are also attempts at dialogue and establishing relationships by formal correspondence. Extant letters, for example, between two civil servants in Baghdad. Some of these may reveal a device used by both Christians and Muslims, whereby correspondence would be invented by a single author and used to expound
each faith and begin discussion on aspects of each. In the 9th century the scholar Al-Kindi did this and had lasting influence.
For example, in the 12th century his work was translated into Latin by the monks of Cluny when Peter the Venerable was abbot, and it was still published and read by the 16th century Reformers. The Arabic text was re-issued in the 20th century.
Al-kindi’s work in dialogue has been of great influence in making Christians think carefully about both Islam and Christianity. In this extract from his correspondence with al-Hashimi we have a flavour of al-kindi’s approach: “As for us (God make you prosper) we do not say that God (Praise and Glory to Him) has a mate, nor do we say that He acquired a
child, nor do we claim that He has an equal. We do not describe God (Praise and Glory to Him) in any of these base and abominable terms that smack of anthropomorphism”. Al-kindi goes on to assert that the Quran has been corrupted by Jewish converts: “The Jews trap you and they fabricated those stories which they tell on the roads or in the streets”.
Al-kindi says that the Quran asserts that “Christ our Lord, the Saviour of mankind, made claims which he never made in fact”.
The process of dialogue was chiefly if not exclusively in the northern and eastern countries that had converted to Islam; e.g. Greater Syria and Baghdad. The countries along the southern shores of the Mediterranean were silent as far as Christianity was concerned and it gradually ceased to exist in any significant form, apart from Egypt with its strong apostolic traditions (St Mark) and the Coptic influence.
In Spain the new Muslim rulers respected and protected the Christians, who paid the gizya. Spanish Christians, especially the young men, were “intoxicated with Arab eloquence” (Alvaro: Letter 854 CE). But another aspect in Spain was that circumcision was apparently common for both faiths. Spanish bishops sometimes referred to Muslims as pagans, but they attributed Muslim power to the sins of Christians. In the 9th century in Cordoba two Christians were falsely accused of insulting the Prophet and were executed. This brought out a rush of Christians who swore before the Governor that Muhammad was a false prophet, and they were martyred.
There is the pervading sense that wherever Christians lived under Muslim rule under dhimmi, they paid the gizya and kept their heads down. They were concerned about their own identity. Any relationships between the two faiths were in the form of small-scale discussions, letters, pamphlets and so on, and this is how dialogue developed in the Middle Ages.
Early in the 10th c. (910 CE) Greeks massacred the Muslims in Cyprus with the result that Cypriot Christians were taken to Baghdad as slaves by a Muslim expeditionary force.
There were conciliatory letters from Patriarch Nicholas I to the Caliph of Baghdad and a search for settlement.
In the 11th-12 cc Islam was in turmoil because of internal quarrelling and power bids. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was destroyed by Hakim the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt (1010 CE) while the Ummavads in Baghdad saw their influence and territory much reduced because of the Seljuk (Turkish) invasion.
The Byzantines tried to take advantage of all this upset but then the West – emerging from the Dark Ages – began to take an interest and the Crusades were as much about enmity towards Byzantium as about enmity towards Islam and the desire to re-occupy the Holy city and Christian sites. At the same time there was a good deal of scholarship in
this period but it was chiefly polemical.
Monastic scholarship e.g. Cluny
Jewish scholars were also involved. AI-Ghazali is the most famous scholar of this period, a great apologist for Islam and a considerable (for this period) critical scholar of the Bible. He wrote commentaries on the Christian scriptures; for example, in commenting on John 10: 30-36 which describes how the Jews took up stones against Jesus for claiming union with God the Father. AI-Ghazali uses analogy to show that, while God informs the sensory parts of a human being and energises them (sight, hearing, feeling, speaking and so on), God the Creator is not actually present in each one of the senses severally. In other words, he says, we habitually use metaphors and this is what Christ habitually did in his teaching method. Understanding of Islam was aided a great deal by monks and much work of understanding the two faiths was done in the silence and peace of monasteries. This was especially true of the Benedictine community of Cluny in southern Burgundy when Peter the Venerable of Vezelay and Cluny was active; in his time the Qur’an was translated into Latin.
Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd influencing Thomas Aquinas
Time does not permit me here to expand on the new learning in the Renaissance period and the emergence of a real viable Europe. The significant influences were the Dominicans and the Franciscans, with Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi and Raymon Lull in particular. Christian scholars, especially Thomas Aquinas, were influenced by the work of Muslims on Aristotle, The two, apart from al-Ghazali, whose names and works are still used in the western world, are Avicenna (Arab name ibn Sina) and Averroes (Arab name ibn Rushd). Avicenna lived from 980-1037 CE and was an Iranian by birth. He studied medicine and philosophy at Bokhara and perhaps his most famous work is called Book of Healing (kita:b ash shifa:) a treatise on Aristotelian philosophy. Averroes lived from 1126-1198 CE and was born in Cordoba of a very influential family. He studied philosophy, theology, law and mathematics and wrote on Aristotelian logic and philosophy. These two, together with Christian commentators like St Thomas Aquinas, changed the face of theology altogether. The church had until then been deeply influenced by St Augustine and neo-Platonism; with the new learning all that was to change, together with the Christian understanding of Islam and vice versa.
Real developments did begin at this time in the willingness to engage in dialogue between the two faiths; and not only in the catholic western world or in the Arab Muslim world. Dialogue began to take place, together with writings and scholarly activity, in Armenia, Byzantium and the Chaldean communities.
In England it was still early days, although there was activity in some of the monasteries (e.g. Adelard of Bath Abbey), and even into the 14th century John Wvclif was writing about Islam, but in the spirit of wishing to disprove its teachings by countering it with bits and pieces of scripture and condemning what he (and many other Christians) perceived as the promiscuous lifestyle of Muslims.
Perhaps it would be possible to say that, in the medieval period, the Christian and Muslim worlds, at least as far east as Iran, were beginning to wake up to the challenge and opportunity for dialogue. On the academic level St Thomas Aquinas believed that scholars from both faiths could and should meet and correspond, while St Francis of Assisi had a more mission-orientated approach. When we reach the present day (hopefully soon, I hear some of you saying!) we shall see that both these approaches are now much in vogue.
15th to the 18th centuries.
I must now move on and say that between the 15th and 18th centuries not a lot happened by way of Christian-Muslim relations. There was an interest in Arabic studies in the universities, but that petered out, more or less until the 19th century, when we discover, for example, Edward Pusev spending eighteen hours each day on Arabic language studies, but not, I think Islamic studies. Of course, a very great deal was going on in Europe, especially with the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, so encounters with Muslims were not a priority. Politically, things were changing rapidly. The Arabs were expelled from Spain and Europe, and the Ottomans became bitterly divided. The memory of the Crusades did more than linger. With the beginnings of western missionary endeavour the situation worsened as Muslims withdrew into their ghettoes and Christians began to feel that any contact with Muslims was a hopeless cause. It has to be recognised also that the Protestant missions were not willing to learn from the gentler approach of medieval scholarship and they entered the Muslim world with the sole intention to achieve conversions to Christianity and without any real desire to learn about other faiths.
This, I think, was especially noticeable in India, where the Christian encounter with other faiths was much more than simply Christian-Muslim. After the religious turmoil of the 16th century both Protestants and Catholics were prepared to be aggressive evangelists towards all who did not agree with them.
I have skipped quickly over the 15th-18th cc for the reasons given, but I will mention the 16th century Gospel of Barnabas which is not of course one of the canonical gospels. But it refers to Abraham and Isaac and, when it comes to the story of the sacrifice on the mountain, the Gospel of Barnabas asserts that the sacrifice demanded is that of Ishmael (son of Abraham and the servant girl Hagar) who (it says) was seven years’ old when Isaac (son of Abraham and Sarah) was born. When Jesus was asked about the story (Abraham/Isaac) in the
Torah, I quote: “Jesus asserted with a groan, ‘It is so written, but Moses wrote it not, nor Joshua, but rather our rabbis, who fear not God’”.
This takes us back to the Muslim belief that Ishmael is the father of the Arab peoples, while Isaac is the father of the Jews. The Gospel of Barnabas shows Muslim influence.
19th and 20th centuries to 1945.
So we come nearer to our own times, remembering how important for Christian-Muslim relationships the years between 632 CE and the beginning of the 19th century were, positively and negatively (an example of the negative could be seen in the growing violent clash between Christian missionaries and Arab Muslim slave-traders.
The chief influences of the 19th century affecting our subject were:
• the industrial revolution;
• the decline of the Ottoman Empire;
• the Colonial expansion;
• the growing missionary movement;
• the humiliation of Islam.
The industrial revolution brought political upheavals in Europe, characterised for example by the growth of secularism with emerging ideas of democracy and equality. We recognise the influence of people like Wilberforce and Karl Marx and everywhere the rapid urban expansion. All of these factors, with their effect on global trading and face-to-face
business contact, especially in India and with the opening up of the African continent, were often perceived as a threat to Islamic domestic, social, economic and political ways of doing things; and with a good deal of justification. Muslim nations were no longer in a position to do much about this and, as the Ottoman Empire gradually declined, Muslims increasingly felt humiliated. Greece, Serbia and Rumania were freed from Islamic influence and control (1832 and 1878); Egypt became a British Protectorate, Tunisia a French Protectorate and Algeria a colony. At the end of the 19th century the death of General Gordon in Khartoum was quickly avenged by Kitchener and the Sudan became a Condominium under British control. After World War I the Ottoman Empire came to an end and the Caliphate was abolished in 1924. The Ottomans were quickly replaced by the Ataturk revolution and Turkey became formally secularised. In the early 1930′s, as Hitler’s influence increased, the Jewish migration to Palestine began, heralding the mot traumatic changes imaginable in the relationships between the western powers and Arab Muslim and Christians alike throughout the Middle East.
Between the two World Wars oil was discovered in the Gulf and the Gulf sheikhs quickly understood that they could not develop any of this new resource without western technology. So, with the influx of thousands of western (Christian) technocrats the ancient, dignified and relatively quiet life of the desert sheikhdoms, described by writers such as Gertrude Bell, Freya Stark and Wilfred Thesiger, disappeared. At the same time the Muslim rulers of the Gulf States recognised that this new revolution would need to be serviced, so that many thousands of skilled and non-skilled workers, many of them Christian – doctors, nurses, teachers, municipal workers, domestic servants – were brought in from the Indian sub-continent, Sri Lanka, the Phlippines, Korea, the Sudan, Palestine, Egypt and Nigeria, with the result that the Gulf region became a fascinating mixture of Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist. And so it is today.
The missionary movement into the Muslim world, as elsewhere, took off in a big way. It tended to parallel colonial expansion even, some would say with some justification, until after World War II. Many of us today who have followed in the footsteps of the earlier missionaries would consider the churches’ attachment to political ambitions a huge mistake. At the same time, and especially into the 20th century, missionaries from the Church Mission Society, the Reformed Church in America and the Missionaries of Africa (The White Fathers), gave people like myself a thorough grounding in the new ideas of missiology which were largely based on the principles of being a Christian presence among Muslims, especially in the work of schools, hospitals and social relief, as in the work among Palestinian refugees in the aftermath of 1947. This very different approach to Muslims also brought about real encounter between Christians and Muslims by way of serious Arabic language and Islamic studies. Anglican missionary societies in the 20th century produced Arabists and Islamicists like Kenneth Cragg, Constance Padwick, Spencer Trimingham, Montgomery Watt, Charis Waddy and many others; these were the teachers of my generation and our task was to prepare indigenous Christians for ordination and other vocations.
On the Muslim side, thoughtful Muslims began to realise that, because Islam, especially under the Ottomans, had become corrupt and seriously immoral, Christians were not surprisingly prone to judge Islam by these aberrations. So the 19th and 20th centuries saw the beginnings of a revival among Muslims of an interest in those things that had so marked out Islam in the medieval period – e.g. philosophy, scholasticism, architecture and literature; and all these influences paved the way for the exciting developments in Christian-Muslim relationships from the end of World War II and into the present.
1945 to the present day.
It seems as if each generation has adopted the prevailing political and social agenda on which to base its attitude to different faith systems. Our times are no different and, in harmony with the post-1945 passion for discovery and new learning, together with the movement of entire communities, such as the creation of a Patriarchate of the Iraqi Church of the East in Chicago, the interest in inter-faith issues, especially between Christians and Muslims, has become a major factor in university curricula and almost a major industry in political, social, economic and religious circles from the United Nations outwards.
In modern times there have been many attempts by Muslim scholars to show that, with a revised understanding of the Christian gospels, it would not be too difficult to reconcile Christianity and Islam. Times allows me to give only one example of this, which is in an introduction to “The Gospel according to Islam” by A. Shafaat (Vantage Press New York 1979).
Shafaat says that a new gospel is justified in the 20th century because of modern scholarship and much “critical research”. He says that these advances help us to reassess the person and work of Jesus Christ and to do a better job than “the ancient New Testament writers”. Shafaat goes on to say that the four canonical gospels “contradict each other on almost every point” and this is recognised by Christians”. The Quran with its ninety three verses about Jesus provides part of the foundation for a new gospel. Muslims are qualified to assist in creating a new gospel because they believe Jesus is Christ, anointed by God; this “qualifies them as Christians”. If the basis of Christianity is belief in a merciful God, in Jesus as Christ, and that human beings should be devoted to God and serve their fellow humans, then “any Muslim will love to be called a Christian”.
In what is almost a parenthesis, Shafaat mentions the Muslim denial of the Trinity, but says that “many millions” of Christians have serious reservations about this doctrine and other 4th century dogmas.
Well, this is all well and good, and it is a kind of modern approach; but does it pave a way for genuine dialogue or only for theological argument? For example, Shafaat says that historical and critical research pave the way for a new gospel, but fails to bring out that historical and critical research of the Quran is forbidden; therefore how can Quranic verses about Jesus be subjected to examination? Again, he speaks of many variations of Christianity, but fails to explainhow a new gospel acceptable to Christians and Muslims alike would cope with the numerous Islamic sects.
I shall end this talk by speaking in ‘note-form’ of my own participation in inter-faith dialogue during the past 30 years; this will set out some of the things that have cheered me and some of the things that have given me some dissatisfaction and food for thought.
On the academic side have been
• working with Prince Hassan of Jordan and a:l albe:t Royal Foundation for Islamic Studies in Amman.
• working with St George’s House, Windsor and people like Bishop Cragg, Professors Hans Kung and Henry Chadwick.
• working with the White Fathers at their Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Vatican.
• collaborating with the Arabic and Islamic programme at Selly Oak.
These conferences are a privilege, but they raise problems. They are, with the exception of the White Fathers, assemblies of theorists- Christian theologians theologising and Muslim jurists and historians making pre-prepared speeches.
I now sit apart from the big conferences and let a younger generation take over, recognising however that they are middle-aged! And this is where my unease comes in. For I see that the crucial importance of Christian-Muslim dialogue lies in the day-to-day lived out attitudes and relationships which are possible when the People of the Book – ahl al-kita:b – take the trouble to meet in their local communities -Bradford, Slough, Wolverhampton, Scunthorpe, Grimsby & Cleethorpes – and talk about their beliefs and learn about the beliefs of others in the context of needing to work out what is necessary for the well-being of their communities.
We have plenty of reports to be going on with, as I have demonstrated. Now is the time for pastoral practice and the meeting of faithful minds.
For me, the best experience was after my retirement when the RC University of Sacred Heart in Connecticut invited me to Auschwitz for a conference of Jews, Christians and Muslims on ‘Violence and the Path to Peace.’ There were many speeches, given by Chief Rabbis and rabbis, by Grand Muftis and lay Muslim scholars, by cardinals, bishops and lay Christians. It was an important occasion, bringing together the children of Abraham within the context of terror. But it came to life towards the end when we were all taken on a tour of Auschwitz/Birkenau. We saw the awful living quarters, which were really dying quarters, but then Jews, Christians and Muslims walked silently along the Birkenau railway track, trying to imagine the feelings of those — Jews, gypsies, known homosexuals, enemies of the Nazi regime — as they shunted towards the gas chambers at the end of the track. And we stood in the memorial garden built over the foundations of these death chambers and listened to the Hebrew readings which remembered the dead. And then, totally spontaneously, one of the Arab delegates, a Palestinian woman, began to pray in Arabic, I asked if I might say the Lord’s Prayer in Arabic, and others said their prayers. And we all realised that this was dialogue, real longing for mutual understanding. In that moment we learned that God too must always be included in the meeting point, in the coming together of the children of Abraham, of ahl al kita:b, the People of the Book, if we are to destroy our idols and build up the City of God.
