Seyyed Hossein Nasr - Islamic-Christian Dialogue

8/2/2019 Seyyed Hossein Nasr - Islamic-Christian Dialogue

1/20

THGMUSLIMORLD Vol. LXXXVIII, NO. 3-4 July-October, 1998

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN DIALO GU E -PROBLEMS A N DOBSTACLES TO BE PONDERED AND OVERCOMEIntroduction

During the past half century Islamic-Christian dialogue has turned froma rivulet into a roaring river, from an occasional conference to numerousmeetings, oral and written exchanges and round table discussions takingplace year around in nearly every corner of the globe from Australia andMalaysia to the Arab world, from Europe to America and Canada. Duringthis period much of both a scholarly and a theological nature has beenwritten and debated including numerous studies of historical encountersbetween the two religions and even journals are now being published de-voted solely to this subject. Likewise, basic theological and ethical issueshave been discussed and as a result a more favorable climate of discoursehas been created in many circles within both religious communities. Onecan cite the regular meetings organized by the Vatican and the World Coun-cil of Churches with various Islamic bodies in both the West and the Is-lamic world. Then there are the Selly Oaks colleges in Birmingham inEngland devoted to Muslim-Christian understanding as there are the cen-ters at Hartford and Georgetown in America and at Balamand Universityin Lebanon devoted to t he same goal.

From the Islamic side regular conferences on this subject have beeninstigated and organized in Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Iran and many otherMuslim lands, while some of the leading Muslim authorities and organiza-tions-both Sunni and Shi


2/20

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE 219by the other as a divinely ordained path for salvation in the strictly reli-gious sense of the term. In this essay our goal is to deal wi th some of thesebasic problems and obstacles rather than the issues which have alreadybeen resolved at least to an appreciable extent and in a manner that issatisfactory to the mainstream if not to all sectors of each community. Weshall deal with these outstanding problems and obstacles under the fourcategories of theological issues, freedom of worship, missionary activity,and attitudes toward modernism and secularism.

Theological IssuesDespite all these decades of dialogue, the central issue of the accep-

tance by Christianity and Islam of each other as veritable revelations, with-out destroying the traditional meaning of revelation (the riwbjf of theIslamic tradition) has not been totally settled. Granted that i t is easier forIslam to accept Christianity as an authentic message from Heaven thanvice-versa, difficulties remain on both sides although in this particularissue Christians have a higher hurdle to surmount than do Muslims. Anumber of Christian theologians such as John Hick among Protestants andHans Kiing among Catholics have stepped forward as theologians to facethis problem squarely, but most of the influential Christian theologians,even among Catholics and Protestants wishing to carrying out serious reli-gious dialogue with Muslims, find it difficult to go beyond the literal mean-ing of I am the way, the life, and the truth and e,Wa ecceIesi2m nu/%saA~5,Many try to stretch the meaning of such sayings, including believ-ing that Christs grace can include Muslims in its embrace, without how-ever accepting the Quranic revelation as such as a revelation from God.

In general a great deal of polite diplomacy seeks to veil authentic theo-logical issues among which the question of the incarnation and the Trinityloom as being formidable in any Muslim-Christian debate. Here mostMuslim thinkers, while accepting the Quranic dictum about the divineorigin of Christianity, attribute these central Christian doctrines to misin-terpretations of Christs message and the alteration /)+h7j of the text ofthe New Testament and do not distinguish between the trinity (/a/U?h)strongly opposed by the Quran and the orthodox Christian understandingwhich does not in any way neglect the unity of God although, needless tosay, the emphasis on unity is different in the two religions and a unitar-ian interpretation of the Trinity as demanded by the Islamic perspectivecan only be carried out on the esoteric level.

In a sense of course all the issues discussed in this essay are theological, but in this contextby theological issues we mean those dealing with theology in the more strict sense of the term.


3/20

220 THE MUSLIM WORLDFrom the Christian side, however, few attempts are being made to

interpret these doctrines metaphysically and esoterically and even in themore traditional circles wh ere these doctrines are still fully accepted, theyare interpreted as dogmas rather than metaphysical truths. When the Trin-ity is considered completely iii firoinkand identical with God as Unity sothat Unity has no significance outside of the Trinity, one of whose mem-bers then becomes incarnated in history, it is very difficult if not impos-sible to come to basic theological understanding with Islam or Judaism forthat matter. Furthermore, some like John Hick who do seek to interpretthe doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity in such a way as not toimpinge upon the unity of the Divine Principle are not considered as or-thodox; nor are they accepted by the mainstream Christian theologicalcommunity.2 A s for Muslims, outside Sufi circles there are many who arenot willing to follow the Quranic doctrine of the universaIity of revela-tion to its conclusion and accept Christianity in its traditional and millennia1formulation as an authentic religion whose central doctrines must containthe kernel of the truth which must be interpreted in an esoteric and meta-physical manner beyond their literal interpretations in order to bring outtheir profound accord with the doctrines of Unity /a/-tarv~i?fi.

If anything, the theological debates of the last few decades betweenIslam and Christianity demonstrate clearly that, to repeat a saying of FrithjofSchuon, complete accord between religions is not possible in the humanatmosphere but only in the Divine stratosphere. Furthermore, ecumenismin order to be efficacious, that is to reach inner unity without doing injus-tice to the diversity of external forms revealed by Heaven, cannot but bean esoteric ecumenism.3 If we remember that in the climate of Chris-tianity esoterism is to be found in sanctity and in Islam sanctity in esoterismwhich is found primarily in Sufism,4 it becomes clear why in fact manymajor theological problems have not received a proper solution in thepresent day context by those seeking common accord between Islam andChristianity. On the level in which such solutions are sought, that is onth e formal level, by scholars of religion and theologians even i f they bemotivated by good intentions, i t is simply not possible to reach an accordwhich would do full justice to the Islamic and Christian perspectives with-out distortion. The best that one can do in such cases is to have respect

* O n our debate with Hick on major theological issues in Muslim-Christ ian dialogue see A .Aslan. Religions and the Concept of the Ul timate-An lnterview wi th John Hick and SeyyedHossein Nasr, fs/a/~7/k[/ar/er(1,40 (1996): 266-83.W e use the te rm esoter ic to mea n the inw ard dimension and inner rea l ity of things and notoccul t ism w i th wh ich i t i s of ten confused in academic s tudies of rel igions.See F. S c h u o n , Ch/-i////b/,/iil.-Es~aj~/J ESO/C~L-ci/mc/u~~m.rans . G. Poli t(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1985).Ibk!. 167.


4/20

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE 221for the other and for the Muslims at least to remember the Quranic verse,And argue not with the People of the Scripture (including Christians)unless it be in a mostly kindly manner, save with such of them as dowrong; and say: We believe in that which hath been revealed unto usand revealed unto you; our God and your God is One , and unto Him wesurrender ( S. 29:46--Pickthall trans. modified). The rest should be leftin Gods Hands.

And yet , esoteric ecumenism has also taken place as one finds in thewritings of many traditionalist writers foremost among them Schuon him-self but also many from traditional Christian circles who are at once tradi-tionalist and universalist. The problem remains that a chasm separatesthe fruit of such efforts from the ordinary dialogues carried out by manyscholars and theologians of both sides who are either impervious to suchwritings or are opposed to the esoteric dimension of their own tradition.Here it may be added that it is quite paradoxical that so many exotericreligious scholars espouse more easily modernistic ideas which undercutthe very foundation of their faith than esoterism which could not butstrengthen that foundation. In any case the basic theological issues be-tween Islam and Christianity remain unresolved on the formal theologicallevel while on the metaphysical and esoteric level the truths of the tworeligions reside in harmony which transcends all tensions that lie in therealm of differentiation below the state of principial Unity. It is perhapsbetter therefore to accept on the formal level certain difference as beingprecisely irreducible on that level and then go on to cultivate mutual re-spect even if one is not able to gaze at that principial Unity in which allformal differences are resolved.

A second major set of theological questions involves salvation and theanswer to basic question of wh o is saved. Although there are of coursedifferences in the Christian idea of salvation and the Islamic one of />I@,enough similarity exists based on the common doctrine of the immortalityof the soul and the reality of posthumous states of the inferno, purgatoryand paradise to allow us to ask the question in this form across the reli-gious boundaries of Islam and Christianity. For Christians to extend thepossibility of salvation beyond the redemption offered by Christ is diffi-cult indeed. But so is condemning all Muslims to hell-fire at least for Chris-tians of conscience who have had first hand experience of pious Muslims.Some have tried half way solutions such as extending Christs redemptivegrace to Muslims and considering them as Christians without knowingit . Obviously such solutions are rejected out of hand by Muslims.

See ou r K/~lori./cdgea/,d/~eSac/en(Albany.Y: The State Universi ty of N ew York Press ,1991).chapt e r n i ne . 280-308.


5/20

222 TH E MUSLIM WORLDOn the Muslim side a most unfortunate narrowing of faith has taken

place during the past century among many believers as one of the con-comitant effects of modernism on the Muslim soul and the reaction to it.Traditional Islamic literature is replete with assertions that if Christiansor Jews were to live according to the tenets of their religion, they wouldbe saved. This is perfectly in accord with the teachings of the QurBn.Furthermore, it was always argued that the QurBn and the Shim-$ orderMuslims to protect the lives, property and religion of the People of theBook. Now if their religion would simply lead them all to hell, why wouldGod order Muslims to protect them and their religion? This would be amonstrosity against both the justice and the mercy of God.

In the last few decades, rather than perpetuating and expanding thisattitude of earlier generations in respecting the religions of the People ofthe Book as leading those who follow it earnestly to salvation, manyMuslims, hardened by attacks against them by both Christian missionariesand secularists, have begun to propagate, often with fanaticism, the ideathat all non-Muslims are k2f% in the theological (and not metaphorical)sense and condemned to eternal damnation. Although much of the harden-ing of this atti tude is a reaction to blatant attacks against Islam, there is nodoubt that the result has been to eclipse to some extent the universalistperspective of Islam itself in certain circles concerning the question who issaved, to which traditional Islam and especially Sufism have always an-swered those who follow their religion faithfully, if it be an authentic re-vealed religion which would certainly include Christianity.

In the current dialogue between Christianity and Islam there are ofcourse many groups on both sides with differing degrees of universality ofperspective. But whatever the perspective of the two sides might be, i t isimportant to bring out the question of who is saved to the center of thestages of dialogue and discuss it rigorously. It is not only difficult butfutile to carry out religious dialogue religiously between one party whichconsiders itself as future inhabitants of paradise and its opponent partywhich the first party considers as occupiers of hell. There are groups onboth sides who hold such views openly but then they do not usually carryout religious dialogue. For those who do so, however, i t is imperative toavoid falling into provincialism at the very moment in their history whenit is most essential to re-assert the universality of perspective which isstated so clearly for Muslims in the QurBn and is inherent in the Islamictradition. This universalism is in fact in the deepest sense the very mi9013d&e of Islam.

A third set of theological questions concerns sacred law. In the mod-ern world law is seen as being completely distinct from theology while inIslam law, being seen essentially as Divine Law, is not only related towhat in the West is called theology but plays the same central role in


6/20

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE 223Islam as does theology in Christianity. It is, therefore, appropriate to dis-cuss the Islamic and Christian attitudes toward divine and secular law inthis section dealing with theological issues.

Both Muslims and Christians contrive in their dialogues, and espe-cially in more popular discourse on the mass media, to criticize the otherside on the basis of their understanding of divine and secular law. Theidea of Gods laws is certainly of much importance in Christianity evenin this secular age as seen in the constant recurrence of its discussion onsuch current issues as the abortion debate. And yet law is seen in theWest as primarily secular law and historically the Christian churches haveeasily accepted the difference between Gods laws which are moral andspiritual and secular laws which govern the everyday life of people. Infact laws are supposed nowadays to change according to the will of thepeople and also according to the whims of that strange new deity thetimes which in the mind of so many who speak of the spirit of the timesor the Zei&iikt has come to replace in many ways the function of theAei22e Geiktor Holy Ghost.

The Islamic view of the Divine Law or al -S ha r~ as totally different.6Rooted in the immutable sources of the Q urbn and Hadith, this Law pos-sesses a trunk, which has remained firm and steadfast throughout the ages,and branches which have grown according to different temporal condi-tions. In this perspective the Divine Law molds society and not societythe Divine Law. And this Law is no more outdated because it belongs toseventh century Arabia, than the Sermon on the Mount would be out-dated because it was pronounced two thousand years ago in Palestine.

In Muslim-Christian debates, the Muslims have shared with Christiansin their lack of comprehension of the view of the other side concerninglaw, but most of the pressure has come from the Christian side. Few Chris-tians sympathize with Muslims who wish to return to the laws of theirreligion which were forcefully changed during the colonial period, whilein general Muslims have been more sympathetic to Christians who wishto cont inue to live according to their traditional moral laws in a hedonisticsociety. Strangely enough, such Christians, many of whom are Evangelicalsand new born Christians, are those most opposed to Islam and the attemptof Muslims to live according to their religious laws as do such Christiansthemselves. In this domain traditional Jews, who possess a Divine Lawrooted in the Bible, have a similar conception of Divine Law as do Mus-lims and could perhaps one day play a greater role in clarifying this issuein the West for both themselves and Muslims.

We have explained these differences in o u r k/cz/s S J I ~Rez/i/ies of Is/b/n (London:HarperlCollins. 1994).chapter IV . 93-120.


7/20

224 THE MUSLIM WORLDIn any case a major obstacle to Muslim-Christian understanding is the

concept of Divine Law versus secular law which also involves the wholeidea of a religious versus civil society as well as religious and secular po-litical authority. Without the development of mutual respect of the twosides for each other in the understanding of Divine Law in relation tosecular law, genuine respect for each others perspective and the reachingof accord on certain basic issues will not be possible.

This question is of course clearly related to the relation between spiri-tual and temporal authority. There are still too many Christians who findfault in Islam because its founder was also the ruler of a human commu-nity and because Islam has never separated religion from politics. Thereare also many Muslims who believe that Christ by giving unto Caesarwhat is Caesars made religion an otherworldly affair and marginalizedthe significance of religion in human life leading finally to the seculariza-tion of the West. Yet, at the same time many Muslims also claim that theseparation of Christianity from politics in the West is only outward andthat there are hidden links between the two which are revealed from timeto time as in 1992 through the type of reaction shown to the tragedy of themassacre of Muslims by Christian Serbs by supposedly secularized West-ern governments devoted to human rights.

There is no way for either Islam or Christianity to impose its viewson law on the other, although the modern West in distinction from Chris-tianity is seeking to impose its views of politics in relation to religionupon the whole world and to privatize and ghettoize religion-to usethe expression of a Catholic sociologist-globally as one sees in the West.For Muslims and Christians there can be no triumphalism if one is seek-ing mutual understanding. Each side must understand that the figures ofboth Christ and the Prophet, one of whom refrained from all matters ofthe world and the other immersed himself in it in order to transform i t ,were divine possibilities that had to be realized and were therefore real-ized by God and that both exemplars do in fact come from Him leadingto two different perspectives on the relation between spiritual and tem-poral authority. Furthermore, each side must learn to respect the per-spective of the other side beyond all transient opportunism. Each sidemust also be able to distinguish between the principles involved and con-tingencies which of necessity partake of the imperfections belonging toth e domain of political action.

Finally among theological issues one must mention the fact thatstrangely enough with the approach of the millennium, one of the theo-logical issues where Christianity and Islam possess more common viewsand accord than any other two religions, that is eschatology, has also be-come a major point of contention between certain strands of Christianityand Islam. Both Islam and Christianity believe in an end to human history


8/20

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN DIALO GU E 225marked by divine intervention which for both religions involves Christand his return. Moreover, the theater for the final events leading to theend of this world is identified by both religions with Jerusalem. Manytheol6gical dialogues of the past few decades have brought out these simi-larities, which, however, are not still well known by most ordinary Chris-tians in the West.

What is paradoxical, however, is that with the approach of the millen-nium certain Christian groups, identified by some scholars as ChristianZionists, have adopted a virulent anti-Islamic attitude especially as far asthe destiny of Jerusalem is concerned and highly support the completeJewish domination of the city not because of their love for Judaism-forthey believe that later the Jews will become Christians-but to carry outwhat they believe to be stages of human action necessary to prepare forthe return of Christ. While some leaders of these groups openly take onan anti-Islamic stance in the Israeli-Palestinian question, others go furtherand openly identify Islam with the force of the anti-Christ. One hardlyneeds to emphasize how damaging are the virulent and crazed views ofsuch groups to Muslim-Christian understanding and how unfortunate i t isthat eschatological doctrines of the two religions, which should constituteone of the main bases of accord between the two religions, should be usedby certain Christian groups to ferment hatred against Islam on every levelfrom the spiritual to the political.

Freedom of WorshipDuring the last few years many Christian groups in the West have

complained about the lack of the freedom of worship for Christians in theIslamic world while there is freedom for Muslims to worship in the West.Certain have argued that there should be strict reciprocity and that theWest should also curtail the freedom of worship of Muslims in the Westa~cordingly .~his issue has been repeated during the past few years espe-cially in Great Britain and America but also in Germany, creating, on thebasis of the lack of knowledge sometimes combined with malice, a majorobstacle to Muslim-Christian understanding.

To clarify the issue, it is necessary to bring our clearly the principlesas well as the facts involved. First of all historically, there was always

' A case in point is that in 1996 in the debate at Oxford, England, to build a ne w edifice forthe Center of Islamic Studies, som e wrote in a local paper that Oxford should not allow minaretsamidst the Church spirals of Oxford ( in fact the e difice is not a mosque and does not have aminaret) becau se n o churches are allowed in the Islamic world. An Englishman soon r emindedthe readers of the newspaper in question of what the sky lines of cities like Cairo or Beirut,combining minarets and spirals, really look like.


9/20

226 T H E MUSLIM W O R L Dgreater right of worship for Christians in the Islamic world than for Mus-lims in the Christian world as can be seen in the destiny of Christians inthe Islamic world and Muslims in Spain, Portugal, Sicily and many otherregions during and at the end of the Middle Ages when the West was averitable Christian civilization. All one has to do is to compare the for-tunes of Christians and Muslims in the two peninsulas, namely Asia Mi-nor and Iberia, which exchanged hands between the followers of the tworeligions during the fifteenth century. Today, even after five centuries ofthe rise of secularism in the West, there are more Christian churches inpresent day Iran alone than there are mosques in all of Western Europe.Despite sad exceptions and the fact that the life of religious minoritieswas not ideal in all Islamic societies (or for that matter other societies),Muslims have in general guaranteed the freedom of worship of Jews andChristians under their rule through the ages as a result of which some ofth e most ancient forms of the rites and practices of these religions havesurvived within the Islamic world to this day, including the Aramaic mass,long after they were lost elsewhere.

Furthermore, in general the freedom of the practice of religion in theWest is due not so much to Christianity-although there are notable ex-ceptions to this assertion-but to the curtailment of the power of Chris-tianity by secularism and secularist ideas of civil liberties and rights whichgrew out of the American and French Revolutions. * While the Puritansruled in New England on the basis of a Christian theocracy, there wascertainly no freedom of worship for the Native Americans, while count-less natives were killed by Catholic Spaniards and Portuguese in Centraland South America precisely on the pretext that they were "savages" andnot Christian, not to speak of giving them the right and freedom of wor-ship. Nor was this attitude confined to the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies. In later periods many instances concerning the right of Muslims toworship freely in Europe came up , sometimes defended by European gov-ernments for political reasons while being opposed by local church au-thorities. It is well known how long it took to finally receive permission toconstruct a mosque in Rome where tens of thousands of Muslims resideand what battles are being fought right now in the suburbs of Washingtonto build a new campus for an Islamic school, the opposition coming notfrom ordinary citizens most of whom are in accord with the plan, butfrom a few Christian ministers who keep preaching their opposition al-though there are also many Christians who have supported the plan forthe new campus of the school.

By this assertion w e do not mean in any way to defend secularism or praise its curtailingthe power of Christianity in the W est but on ly to state a historical fact.


10/20

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE 227W hen on e speak s of the f r eedom of w orsh ip in the I s lamic wor ld andth e We st in Musl im-Chr ist ian and not only poli tical term s , one m ust faceth e issue w i t h hones ty a nd object ivity . In most of th e Is lamic wor ld today

there i s as mu ch f r eedom of w orsh ip fo r Chr i s t ians as there is f reedom ofw orsh ip for Muslims in the West not to spea k of the m uch g reater influ-enc e tha t minor i ty Ch r i s ti ans exerc i se on Mus l im au thor i ti es in D2r d-hlin, th an vice-versa . Yet, th e intens i ty of a t tach m ent to the teachings ofth e rel igio n, perfo rm anc e of r i te s , belief in the theological ten ets of th efai th and s imi lar factors for Musl ims today must be co m p ar ed w i t h t h eEurop e of 1400 and not of the present day. I t is not only ten percent ofMusl im Egypt ians , Syr ians or Pers ians w ho pe rform thei r dai ly pra yersan d at te nd m osque s as is the case of the populat ion of so m an y W es t e r ncoun t r i es an d especia lly Europe as f ar as church a t t endan ce is concerned .Th e f reed om of w orsh ip for Chr is t ians in the Is lamic wor ld m ust be u n-ders tood in l ight of th is basic reality an d the realization that this freedo mdoe s not c om e f rom the impos i t ion of secular ism in the Is lamic w or ld , asi t has d on e in the W est , but f rom Is lam i tself .

And tha t i s w hy p recisely w he n discuss ing th e ques t ion of the f re e-do m of wo rsh ip cer t a in r e lig ious f ac tor s en te r in to play wh ich a re no tiden t i ca l be tw een I sl am a nd Chr i s t i an ity bu t whic h need to be t aken ab -so lu te ly in to cons idera t ion . C hr i s ti an i ty d id no t a r i s e in E urope bu t c am ef r o m P a l e s t in e an d d o es n o t h av e a h o l y l an d , a t er m used in th e Q u r ban d n o t t h e B ib le , i n t h e s am e way t h a t d o I s l am an d J u d a i sm . L i k ewi se ,the spaces of a Chr i s t ian chu rch have a d i f f e ren t func t ion than d o th espaces of a mo sque or a H indu Tem ple . A Muslim or a H indu cou ld walkinto St . Peter s Basi lica w i thou t an y offense to C hr is t ians except perh ap sa t the t ime of mass , wh erea s ne i ther a Chr i s t ian nor a Mus lim m ay goin to a Hindu t emple wi thout caus ing se r ious o f fense to Hindus . A s forMus l im p laces of wo rsh ip , som e can be v is it ed l ike churc hes whe n i t isnot th e t im e of pray ers , wh i le oth ers usual ly adjace nt to tom bs of saintsar e closed to non-Mu slims. Respect am ong religions requ ires not to sear chfor o r impose un i formi ty bu t to r espec t such d i f fe rences and m ore ge ner -al ly the di f ferent ways in which the sacred manifes ts i t se l f in var iousrel igious universes .

N ow , wi th in the Is lamic wor ld the re i s an ar ea des igna ted accordingto Muslim belief by God Himself through the Prophet as a holy precinct/&xam/ encompass ing the area of Makkah and i t s environs up to Ma-d inah . On ly Mus l ims a re a l lowed wi th in thi s a rea an d Chr i s t ians shouldnot com plain that s ince they al low Musl ims to vis it th e Va t ican, then w hythe y are not afforded equ al access on the basis of s tr ict reciprocity. H owthe sa cred ma nifes ts it se lf in each religion is depen den t upon the DivineWill for those who accept the authentici ty of that rel igion. In Is lam theholy a rea o f Makkah and Madinah posses ses th i s un ique f ea ture as do


11/20

228 THE MUSLIM WORLDcertain sanctuaries such as those of Moulay Idris in Fez, Ras al-Husayn inCairo, the tomb of Ali in Najaf, the mausoleum of (Ali al-Rid2 , the eighthShi


12/20

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN DIAL OGU E 229not only by the government. While the situation is deplorable, one thatneeds to be corrected as soon as possible, i t must also be realized thatthere are also complicated political and economic issues involved and thatin any case this phenomenon should not be a source of contention be-tween Christianity and Islam in their mutual dialogue for better under-standing any more than should the torching and burning of several mosquesin America during the past decade.

Another category of countries are those in which the lack of freedomof worship has been raised specifically as an issue by Christian groups inthe West, chief among them being the Sudan and Saudi Arabia. From whathas been said already it should be clear that the case of these two coun-tries is in fact very different. In the Sudan there are of course many Chris-tians with close contact with missionary groups from the West and receivingpolitical and even military support from them, while a war goes on whichis far from being between Islam and Christianity although there is rivalrybetween the two religions in seeking to woo to their ideas followers of theAfrican religions who still survive within the Sudan. There is also thequestion of material help given to missionaries with wide range politicalramifications. All of those factors have naturally affected the question ofthe freedom of worship in certain areas marred by tragic wars and battles.To keep bringing up the case of the Sudan (or even Saudi Arabia) in theWest as proof of lack of freedom of worship in the whole of the Islamicworld is to say the least disingenuous and hardly contributes to betterrelations between the two religions. One wonders how the West wouldreact if a major Muslim leader would visit a Western country's Muslimswithout permission of that country's political authorities. Still lingeringcolonial struggles must be taken exactly for what they are and not madeuse of religiously at least by those seeking earnestly rapprochement be-tween the two religions.

As for Saudi Arabia, as already stated, its heartland at least presents aspecial case related to the structure of the Islamic religion which must berespected accordingly and which could not be altered by Muslims underany conditions, whether they be Saudi or non-Saudi. The fact that Saudiculture sees the whole of the domain under its jurisdiction under thesame light is another matter based upon strong historical traditions whichit is for the people of that country to evaluate and act upon. The argu-ment that since there are no churches in Saudi Arabia, therefore, oneshould not allow the Saudis to build a mosque in the West, is totallyerroneous. It is as if Muslims were to say that since the Vatican does notallow mosques in Vatican City, there should be no Catholic churchesallowed in the Islamic world.

Freedom of worship also involves the question of conversion and apos-tasy. Christian missionaries often criticize Muslims for branding a Muslim


13/20

230 THE MUSLIM WORLDwho converts to Christianity as an apostate /hz~tad2$ hose punishmentis death according to the dictates of the SharIa. First of all let it be saidthat if such a promulgation had been carried out strictly historically andespecially in modern times, there would not have been all those Paki-stani, Bangladeshi or Black African Christians of Islamic origin who arepresently living as Christians in the Islamic world. Secondly, the Shari(ainjunction against apostasy was in the context of the presence of the Is-lamic state in which turning away from Islam implied not only a religiousact but also treason against the state.

Present day conditions necessitate a re-thinking by Muslims of thiswhole issue in light of the immutable principles of the Sharfia, which mustnow be applied to situations where the question of treason to the state,also punishable by death in many Western countries to this day, does notapply. There is in fact a movement afoot among traditional authorities inIslamic Law to rethink and reconsider the status of Muslim conversion toanother religion in the context of the present day situation. The problemhas not been as yet solved in a final manner but the process of addressingit has begun in Egypt, Iran and elsewhere. The situation is of course stilldifficult in that the political dimension of the issue has not at all disap-peared as can be seen by the strong concern of Western circles for thehumanrights of let us say Pakistani Christians even when they calumnizeth e Prophet of Islam. This is done under the banner of the defence of freespeech while the same circles show little concern for the rights of freespeech of the Muslim citizens of the same countries as long as their gov-ernments are pro-Western.

In any case in this whole debate about the freedom of worship, thepoints discussed briefly here must be kept in mind by both Muslims andChristians and one should constantly remember the actual realities on theground including th e vast number of Christian churches which existthroughout the Islamic world. One should also remain aware of the factthat while Muslims in the West enjoy economic and political power waybelow what their numbers would warran t, in the Islamic world and alsomany African countries, where the governments are s t i l l supported byWestern powers, exactly the reverse is true. Furthermore, as we shall seeshortly, missionary activity is often combined with cultural and politicaldomination by alien forces so that reactions against such phenomena mustnot be confused with the curtailing of the freedom of the right of worship.Missionary Activity

Needless to say, one of the most contentious issues in the dialoguebetween Islam and Christianity is missionary activity. Both Christianityand Islam envisage themselves to have a global mission and are thereforerivals in many areas of the world, but at this moment of history there is


14/20

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE 231such disparity of power and wealth between the two sides, that the situa-tion cannot but lead to serious contention and even conflict at least incertain areas. For centuries there was the rivalry of the crescent and thecross especially in the Mediterranean world. Each side in addition to itsreligious message possessed its own military might and distinct culture.But even across battlefields commerce continued and ideas were ex-changed. The Christians came to the Islamic world with the Bible in theirhand and if we put aside the Crusades many of them sought to practicethe charity and poverty of Christ. Then during the colonial period, therearrived Western powers supporting the missionaries and the Bible on theone hand and wielding the sword on the other. Lest one forgets, duringthe colonial period missionaries were almost always supported by the mili-tary power of the West, even of governments such as that of France whichwas persecuting Catholics within its own border. This phase was in timefollowed by educational and medical crusades which had as its conse-quence the destruction of the unity and homogeneity of Islamic civiliza-tion. Even when some Christian missionary schools in the Islamic worldwere secularized, they remained major centers of missionary activity al-though now for secular humanism. Many missionaries were in fact happyto destroy the faith of their Muslim students even if this did not lead totheir becoming Christian. It is not accidental that some of the most viru-lent anti-Western nationalists in the Islamic world learned their secularnationalism in such missionary schools,During the past few decades Christian missionary activity has increasedbut now often wed to current Western consumerism and commercialismas far removed from the poverty preached by Christ or St. Francis ofAssisi as possible. I t is through the lure of worldly things combined witha diluted form of Christianity that many are wooed away from Islam.With all the syringes, libraries, employment advantages and now wealthon the one side and the lack of them on the other, the level playing fieldof the earlier centuries has been destroyed causing often anger and reac-tions to the much wealthier Christians on behalf of the majority Mus-lims, especially in times of economic difficulty as can he seen in the recentevents of Indonesia,

It is of the utmost importance to discuss in all honesty this question ofmissionary activity from the perspective of the two sides. Each must ofnecessity allow the freedom of being witness to its faith in the world domi-nated by the other. But one must also deal with other questions resultingfrom the earlier close association between missionary activity and colo-nialism and what some have called cultural imperialism. Although Chris-tianity no longer possesses the dominant position i t held once upon a timein the West and perhaps needs to send missions to re-Christianize theWest itself, still Christians would protest strongly if Muslim missionaries


15/20

232 THE MUSLIM WORLDhad private airfields in Western countries and if Christians were to seethat the children of most of their social, political and intellectual eliteswent to Islamic schools supported financially not by local Muslims but byforeign Muslim governments.In this sensitive issue there is also the looming presence of modernWestern culture, which, although secular in most of its basic features, hasbeen espoused during the past few centuries by Western Christianity as ifit were Christian. This predominantly anti-religious culture has thereforebeen propagated among Muslims by many Christians as if it were part ofthe Christian message. When it comes to the consideration of creating averitable Christian presence among Muslims in modern times such fig-ures a s Pere de Foucault and Louis Massignon have been truly exceptional.Indeed, the major obstacles set on the road to Christian Muslim under-standing cannot be removed without taking into full consideration the pres-ence of what we have had the occasion to call the silent third partner inthe current Muslim-Christian dialogue, namely, modernism in all its modesand ramifications.

Differing Attitudes Towards ModernismIt is strange that despite countless books and articles that have been

written concerning theological modernism in Christianity on the one handand Islam and modernism on the other, in depth little attention has beenpaid until now to the role of modernism, that silent third partner in allits ramifications in the Muslim-Christian dialogue. lo There are those inthe Christian camp who complain why Islam does not modernize alongth e lines of Christianity and evaluate contemporary Islam accordingly. Infact most Western studies on Islam are completely determined by thisunstated prejudice that modernism is a positive force to be taken seri-ously not as an adversary but as source of emulation, with the result thatIslamic realities are judged and evaluated by the degree to which theyaccommodate modernism with little attention paid to what modernismhas done to Christianity and its role in Western societies during the pastfe w centuries. Every Muslim who deviates from Islamic orthodoxy, con-

There a re now some s i gns of change in this at t i tude in certain Christ ian circles. bothProtes tant and Cathol ic , which are t rying to present Chri s t iani ty to the non-Western worldi n d e p e n d e n t of the part icular em bell ishmen ts of Western civi l ization.l o By moder nism w e do not mean what i s s imply contemporary. but a par t icular worldviewwhi ch p l ace s man ra t he r t han God a t t he cen t er of things and w hich arose in the West duringthe European Renaissance , spreading from the e ighteenth cen tury onw ard to other par ts of th eglobe. R . G u h o n , 2 % ~O/>is / h e Ah?f/em IVoAL t rans. 0.Osborne (Ghent , NY : Sophia

Peren nis e t Universa l is , 1996);a l so W.N . Pe r ry , Cha//c/ges/oa Secukw Socic/y O a k t o n ,VA:The Foundat ion for Tradit ional Studies, 1996).


16/20

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE 233s idered in i t s wides t and most univer sa l s ense , is immediately aggran-dized in W estern ci rc les as the next poss ible Mar t in Luthe r and those w hodo not dep ar t f rom the t r ad i t iona l norms a re usual ly neg lec ted , no ma t te rhow profound the i r thoug ht , by W es te rn scho la r s w ho a re usua lly t r a inedto s tudy change r a ther than perm anenc e an d to bes tow the ep i the t of sig-ni fi can t on ly to wh at chang es and no t to w hat r eas ser ts the perm anenta n d t h e e n d u r in g .

O n the M us lim s ide , s e r ious Mus lim th inker s a re puzz led w hy Wes t -er n C hr is t ian theology al low s it self to be so seriously affected by passingphilosophical t r ends and by the sc ien t i sm which has now s taked i t s c la imas a r ival rel igion in the m ode rn w or ld . Com par ing Chr ist iani ty to Is -la m , Musl ims are a t a loss to expla in why every f ew decades the verybases of Chris t ian theology seem to undergo major changes i f not in allc i rc les , a t least in the l ibera l s t ran ds of Chr ist iani ty w hich are the veryelements usual ly car rying out dialogue wi th Is lam. If on the Chr i s t ians ide it has been the e cum enis t s w ho a re usual ly l ibera l and modern i s t sof ten in confrontation wi th thei r o w n co-rel igionis ts, on the Is lamic s ideno su ch s imilar ecu m enis m equa ted wi th modern i sm ex is ts . Pu tt ing afew mo dern ized scholars asid e, most of those intere sted in dialogue withChr is t iani ty on the Is lamic s ide have rel ied upon what one might cal lQuranic ecu m enism and th e long tradit ion of Suf ism on the o ne ha ndan d the Shari


17/20

234 T H E MUSLIM WORLDinnovations in the understanding of God from the traditional manner thatCatholic and Protestant theology have understood Him and certain currentviews of the Divinity in evolutionary theology 2 /aTeilhard de Chardin orprocess theology ab ohn Cobb via Alfred North Whitehead. 2Every religion has of course its own inner dynamic and specific his-tory. However, in carrying out religious dialogue between two religions, itmust be understood clearly how elements of change drawn from the secu-lar realm have influenced or continue to influence one or both sides. Ifafter long discussions Muslims and Christians come to a common under-standing concerning, let us say, the meaning of the Trinity or the nature ofrevelation, this understanding will be of little avail if the views of one sidechange subsequently in a serious fashion. For the Muslim Allah still sits onHis Throne Lal-$r5& and rules the universe and he can hardly understandwhy after two thousand years Christians are now in need of debating Godsgender along with His immutability and perfection and why there is changein basic theological views every few years.

For several centuries Western Christianity has allied itself with mod-ern Western civilization with its essentially secularist outlook based onsecular humanism, rationalism, empiricism, nationalism, evolutionism,scientism and skepticism. It has also for the most part refused to ally itselfwith other religions still breathing within a sacred universe, preferringoften an anti-religious Western secularist ally to a non-Christian but reli-gious one. This position has been of course a choice made by WesternChristianity, or at least much of i t, and it cannot be the concern of Islamor any other religion. But its consequences must be taken seriously intoconsideration if there is to be any dialogue in depth beyond platitudes anddiplomatic gestures,

The understanding of how the kingdom of man came to replace thekingdom of God13 n the West is a matter of the greatest import for allfuture religious dialogue between Islam and the West. Muslims are ingeneral unaware of the deeper meaning of modernism and the dynamicswhich transformed medieval Christian civilization, which like Islam wasbased on faith, to the modern and now post-modern world. Many of themore traditional Islamic thinkers in carrying out debates with Christiantheologians think and act as if they were facing St. Bonaventure, St. Tho-mas or Nicholas of Cusa, and despite two centuries of domination by themodern West still suffer from the lack of an in depth understanding ofmodernism.

For the whole question of change and permanence in the traditional and modern contextl3 See T. Lindbom. The Tares a/ id /he Good GrC7hi,rans. A. Moore (Macon, G A : Mercer

see S. H. Nasr, Kiioivledge arid /he Sacred 221ff.University Press, 1988).


18/20

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN D IA LO G U E 235In order to remove this obstacle in dialogue, it is essential to take full

cognizance of the third apparently silent partner and to realize that infact this partner, although its voice seems to go unrecognized, is far frombeing silent and in fact wields pervasive influence. What is needed is tohave both sides of the dialogue recognize fully the significance of the pres-ence of modernism in current religious dialogue and to understand fullyhow modernism affects this dialogue on various levels from the purelytheological, to the social and political, to the scientific and technological.What is at stake here is not only making possible better understandingbetween the two religions, but also to enable each side to understand howand why the forces of modernism have affected or not affected the otherside. The future of the religious history of the world will of course dependon the attitude of various religions toward the banner of forces and ideasunfurled in the world by modernism in the light of their own sacred andimmutable principles and teachings. One cannot be sure that this attitudewill be the same among Christianity and non-Christian religions and cer-tainly until now at least it has not been the same for Western Christianityin comparison with all other non-Christian religions and even OrthodoxChristianity, Judaism in its Western manifestation being an exception.

What is certain, however, is that a serious intellectual effort is neces-sary to bring out the impact on religious dialogue of modernist and nowpost-modernist ideas concerning the nature the Divine and of man, of in-telligence and knowledge, of the meaning of life, of the structure and ori-gin of the universe and many other fundamental issues, which are also ofcentral concern to all religion and therefore cannot hut affect Muslim-Christian dialogue. This effort must also pay attention to the very differ-ent way in which these ideas, many of which issued from the EuropeanEnlightenment and claimed for themselves universal application, have in-fluenced Christianity on the one hand and Islam on the other. If one mightuse the metaphor of a happy marriage in the Christian sense as the goal ofserious religious dialogue between Christianity and Islam, i t might be saidthat here even more than in ordinary human life a rnF/itge ti /roisis im-possible and religiously unacceptable. Nor can its presence be accepted ina marriage seen through Islamic eyes since the third element, being of asecularist nature, does not even belong to a religious universe and cannotparticipate in a religious marriage. Rather, the third partner must be rec-ognized for what it is and not allowed to dictate relations between Islamand Christianity which, with the presence of this silent par tner, willalways remain shaky and unstable on the theological level although use-ful accommodations can always be made on the practical, social and po-litical levels.


19/20

236 THE MUSLIM WORLDConcluding Comments

The obstacles mentioned above must not be considered to be insur-mountable. They are discussed here not to cause discouragement but topresent the reality of the present situation beyond political niceties anddiplomatic decorum. Problems must first be stated in honesty before theycan be solved. We believe, in fact, that with good will, love for truth andcharity, rather than passion, fanaticism and love for power, most of theseobstacles can be overcome. What is needed is to understand and acceptfirst of all the universal metaphysics and perennial wisdom in light ofwhich it is possible at least for the few who are universalists to assert theuniversality of the Truth while accepting each revelation of the Truth as aunique revelation to be deeply respected as being the result of Gods Willand reflecting some aspects of His Wisdom. Then it is necessary to re-member the following verses from Islamic and Christian sources: Whatis the life of this world but play and amusement? But best is the home inthe other world. (S.6:32) and But seek first the Kingdom of God and Hisrighteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (Matthew 6. 3 3 )I t is therefore a sin in the theological sense of the term to put worldlyexpediency before the basic goal of religion which is to live according toGods Will and die in the state of grace, to use a Christian term. There isalso the need, mostly on behalf of Christianity in whose domain modern-ism was first born and nurtured, but also by the modernized Muslims, torealize that there is no way to make peace between Islam and Christianityon the one hand and secular and agnostic humanism on the other. Fireand water cannot he harmonized together.

As the challenges of the modern world become ever more pervasiveand overwhelming, and as unprecedented crises ranging from the destruc-tion of the natural environment to the total desecration of life by techno-logical penetration into the very structures of the web of life threaten toan ever greater degree the religious conception of life, Christians andMuslims will discover to an ever greater degree that they have much morein common with each other than they have differences. Confrontationbetween the two religions still persists in lands as far apart as Indonesia,the Sudan, Albania and Nigeria, but these rivalries and confrontations caneasily be overcome through the realization of the much greater danger toboth religions of the globalization of an avid consumerism which is de-vouring to an even greater degree the souls of men and women and de-stroying with incredible rapidity the very fiber of life upon which humanexistence here on earth depends. Let us hope that the problems and ob-stacles mentioned here can be overcome by turning to the spiri tual. intel-lectual and ethical teachings of both traditions and through casting onesgaze upon the azure heaven, the luminous symbol of the Divine Empy-


20/20

ISLAMIC-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE 237rean, from which both religions have descended with the same task ofguiding their followers back to their original paradisal abode.

In Divine Love there is no difference between the monasteryWherever it may be, there is manifested the light of theand the tavern of ruins,14Face of the Friend (Hafiz).

George Washington Uiiiversi2yWashington,DC SEYYEDHOSSEINASR

l4 T a v e r n of Ruin or khs/z%%/is h e symbol of the Suf i cente r in c lass ical Pers ian poetry .

Documents

Seyyed Hossein Nasr - Islamic-Christian Dialogue