WASHINGTON, Aug 14 — US President Barack Obama yesterday backed construction of a proposed mosque and Muslim cultural centre near the site of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York — a project opposed by US conservatives and many New Yorkers.

“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practise their religion as anyone else in this country,” Obama said at an event attended by diplomats from Islamic countries and members of the US Muslim community.

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” he said.

Earlier this month a New York city agency cleared the way for construction of the centre, which will include a prayer room, two blocks from the site of the September 11 attacks, popularly known as “Ground Zero.”

“This is America and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable,” said Obama, who has made improving ties between the United States and the Muslim world a cornerstone of his foreign policy.

About 2,750 people were killed on September 11 when hijackers from the Muslim militant group al Qaeda crashed two passenger planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, an event that traumatised Americans and sparked the US invasion of Afghanistan and the Bush Administration’s “war on terror.”

Families of those killed in the attacks have mounted an emotional campaign to block the mosque, saying it would be a betrayal of the memory of the victims.

Conservative politicians such as former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, a Republican former Speaker of the House of Representatives, have also called for the project to be scrapped.

Mark Williams, a spokesman for the conservative Tea Party political movement, said the centre would be used for “terrorists to worship their monkey god.”

With the rhetoric growing more heated, Obama decided yesterday to make his voice heard.

Obama was speaking during an iftar dinner he hosted at the White House. Iftar is the evening meal when Muslims break their daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

He said the First Amendment of the US Constitution had established the freedom of religion “and that right has been upheld ever since.”

Al Qaeda also was not synonymous with Islam, Obama said.

“Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam — it is a gross distortion of Islam,” he said. “These are not religious leaders — these are terrorists who murder innocent men, women and children.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has firmly supported the community centre project as have many religious organisations in the city. However, 53 per cent of New Yorkers oppose it, according to a Marist Poll this week.

At least one additional legal challenge looms but the city agency’s August 3 ruling will clear the way for construction of Cordoba House, which will include a 500-seat auditorium as part of a 13-storey Muslim cultural complex.

Since coming into office, Obama, a Democrat, has worked to reach out to Muslims, many of whom felt targeted by the “war on terror” and by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In a speech in Cairo in June 2009, Obama called for a “new beginning” in ties between the United States and Muslims, saying that extremists had exploited tensions between Muslims and the West and that Islam was not part of the problem. — Reuters - The Malaysian Insider

Does it matter what religion we belong to? — David D. Mathew

AUG 12 — Last Tuesday, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 9 to 0 in favour of allowing the demolition of a building near the World Trade Centre site to make way for a 13-storey Islamic cultural centre and mosque.

Plans for the construction of the proposed mosque drew strong criticism from American politicians such as Sarah Palin who last month Tweeted to say:”Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing”.

She tweeted again later, saying to New Yorkers:”Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real.”

Palin was not the only one opposed to the building of the mosque.

The National Republican Trust paid for a provocative advertisement called “Kill the Ground Zero Mosque” which replayed scenes from September 11 with a background voice saying”On September 11, they declared war against us. They want to build a thirteen-story mosque at Ground Zero. This ground is sacred. That mosque is a monument to their victory. The mosque at Ground Zero must not stand.”

Despite such opposition, the path is now finally open for the project to proceed.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in a stirring speech given following the Landmarks Preservation Commission vote, stated that the government had no right whatsoever to deny Muslims the right to build a mosque.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbours grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values — and play into our enemies’ hands — if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that,” Bloomberg said.

“On 11 September 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked ‘What God do you pray to?’ ‘What beliefs do you hold?” the mayor said, before finishing by noting that political controversies may come and go but there is no neighborhood in New York that is off limits to God’s love and mercy.

It is difficult to be a Muslim in many Western countries.

Religious bigots are quick to play up fears and remind everyone of not only September 11 but also the dangers of creeping Islamisation.

Last year, a Muslim convert named Carole was barred from swimming in a public pool in France because she wore the burkini — a three-piece swimsuit she bought in Dubai consisting of a headscarf, tunic and trousers.

Early last month, France’s Lower House of Parliament overwhelmingly approved a ban on wearing burqa-style Islamic veils. This is part of a concerted endeavour by the French government to “protect French values”.

Let us strive not to make it difficult for people to be Christians or Hindus or Buddhists or any other religion in Malaysia.

Let us not allow a situation where people say that it is difficult to be a Sikh in Malaysia.

Let us stop asking the question “What God do you pray to?” when approving permits for religious places of worship.

Let us stop asking the question “What God do you pray to?” in all aspects of our lives.

It is a personal matter and one that should be respected as such.

In December 2005, while some members of the congregation were preparing for Christmas, the state authorities demolished a church of the Orang Asli in the Kampung Orang Asli Kuala Masai, Johor settlement.

This was done on grounds that the church was built illegally on state land despite the fact that the state had already promised the land to the Orang Asli as reserve land in exchange for the Orang Asli moving out of their original land located in the Stulang Laut area.

Let us strive to keep places of worship intact and bend over backwards to prevent destruction of the same. Destruction of places of worship must be a thing of the past.

If there is one country that could be a model for interfaith co-operation, it would be Malaysia.

But we have to start trusting each other. We’ve got to stop haggling over words used during worship, the number of places of worship each other has and the distance required between each place of worship.

Let us not forget that those who fought for this country’s freedom belonged to all faiths. Those who suffered at the hands of the Japanese belonged to all faiths.

Let us not forget that our multi-culturalism and multi-religionism are what makes us who were are.

Let us not forget that the Rukun Negara urges the belief in God. So who are we to curtail or halt the people’s wish to worship and believe in a God that they so choose.

Malaysia is a godly country. We are made up of so many religions. Perhaps it is the sum of all our prayers that has prevented Malaysia from descending into the dark realm of killings in the name of God, perpetual burnings of places of worship and violent religious mobs.

We put a toe into such waters shortly after the High Court ruling in the “Allah” case but matters calmed down without too much damage.

Let us take a lesson from New York and try to avoid similar situations from happening.

Let us defend the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion and learn to trust again.

Religious terms, mosques, churches and temples are not symbols of power or a matter of one-upmanship. They are our fellow man’s way of worship and nothing else.

Any act which infringes on the freedom of religion is not a lawful exercise of power but an exercise of tyranny and bigotry.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or the publication. The Malaysian Insider does not endorse the view unless specified. - TheMalaysian Insider

JUNE 12 — I suppose it is good to know that you are the God’s chosen, as the Israelis obviously do, and don’t they flaunt their special position! They believe that not only is God on their side, but, better still, for them, they know that the man wielding the greatest power on  earth, Hussein Obama, presently US President, is at their beck and call, like all the rest of the occupants of the White House in post-war America.

The self-proclaimed Bastion of Democracy, in reality, is nothing more than a subservient proxy of the Zionist ruling clique, the regime that has shamelessly exploited the holocaust into an art form.

Jews, while playing on humanity’s collective guilt by squeezing the last milligram of sympathy from us for the dreadful sufferings of their people at the hands of the Nazi criminals, have themselves behaved even worse than the terrorists of the Third Reich as they have not shown even a “dram of pity” (with apologies to Sybil Kathysagu) to the Palestinians whose country they have occupied since the establishment of the Jewish State more than six decades ago. The holocaust, exploited to the hilt, was nothing as compared to the unimaginable heights of cruelty inflicted over several decades on an innocent population whose only sin has been to resist the illegal occupation of their land. The Jews may not agree with this, that what they have done to the Palestinians is even more cruel than being thrown into gas chambers. At least, so some people maintain, the victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau died a relatively “painless” death. And some others even go so far, and I distance myself from this barbaric view, as to say that the “final solution” that the Germans inflicted on the Jews was not complete and final enough.

Surely even in the name of the survival of the Israel State, the end cannot, in this case, justify the means. I have not always seen eye to eye with Mahathir, and some cynics say it is my loss, not his, but for once he was dead right when he gave the Israelis a backhanded compliment by saying how a tiny nation could exert so much power and influence on the world stage, and best of all, by using proxies to fight their wars for them.

I have always been sympathetic with, and fully support the idea of a secure Jewish State: they have as much right as anyone else to live their own lives, but I have become totally disappointed and disenchanted with the unconscionable acts of inhumanity and aggression on a people who have been driven from their homeland and kept in the world’ largest open air prison that is Gaza.

The Jews justify their destruction of Palestinian lives and properties by saying that Hamas have been firing rockets into “Israeli villages” forgetting to understand the root cause of the problem.

If we care to look at the dozens of UN Security Council Resolutions (66 at the last count, and counting) that have been totally ignored by the Israeli in the full knowledge that the leadership of the most powerful nation on earth, that extension of the Jewish state generally known as the US is so besotted and beholden to Jewish money that whatever their personal feelings in respect of the situation in Israeli occupied territories, it is powerless to do anything in the face of the powerful Jewish Washington Lobby. Calls for sanctions have been vetoed time and time again.

It is amazing how successive presidents of the US have allowed themselves to be led by the nose and kept on a short leash by a gang of thugs and state-sanctioned terrorists whom the US government declares to be its most important allies in the Middle-East. What a sad commentary on a people who fought for their independence by overthrowing English colonial rule and, later the American Civil War only to become Israel’s foot soldiers.

The US Government must come to terms with the rapidly shifting world opinion against its patently diabolically unjust and inhuman Israeli-Palestinian policies because quite apart from issues of morality and human rights, there is the issue of peace and security that seemed so important to the US Government that it fought two major wars to topple Sadam Hussein of Iraq on the flimsiest of excuses and now fighting little wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of their “war on terror.”

The war on terror will not stop until the Palestinian issue is put to rest by doing what is just and fair. The Israelis must learn to respect the rest of humanity. God’s chosen people must learn to choose peace, justice and global security. America must distance itself from the Star of David and, in the process, rid itself the Jewish cross, to the eternal gratitude of God’s people everywhere.

If I am angry because of what the Jewish State has done to dehumanise a proud and innocent people, I am even more angry with the Arabs whom I despise with all my heart. That they could stand on the sidelines and watch the cruelty, humiliation and dehumanisation of fellow Arabs is utterly disgraceful because

God has bestowed upon them enormous oil wealth and they could have used it for the greater good of mankind. If I have little time for the Arabs, the Egyptians take my prize for the lowest form of human life and I do not really need to explain why in the context of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. May God forgive me for my dark and ugly thoughts!

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is the Imam of Masjid al-Farah in New York City and the founder of the American Sufi Muslim Association. A popular interfaith speaker, he teaches Islam and Sufism at the Center for Religious Inquiry at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan and at the New York Seminary. He spoke with Beliefnet recently about his book “What’s Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West.”

The name of your book is “What’s Right with Islam,” and sections of it address “What’s Right with America.” What is right with both?

What’s right with Islam is what’s right with America, in the sense that the fundamental ideals of Islam, the idea of what the right society should be, are very similar to what the American idea of what the ideal society should be, as expressed in our founding documents.

When Jesus was asked what are the greatest commandments, he said “love God with all your heart” and, co-equal to that, “love thy neighbor.”

Islamic jurors basically expanded it. They said all the law–how God wants us to live–is to protect and further five fundamental human rights: the right to life, freedom of religion, family, property, and mental wellbeing. What I do in the book is map that to the American Declaration of Independence.

It’s interesting that you call America a sharia-compliant state.

It really means there’s a religious commandment to build the right society, to have a sense of social justice and a social safety net, to have laws that take care of human beings, that aren’t prejudiced against people.

You say that, contrary to what some non-Muslim Americans believe about Muslim countries, such societies can be religious and yet respect other religions and not be dominated by one religion.

Absolutely. To a large extent that’s what happened in much of Islamic history. It may not have been ideal. But, for example, [during] the Ottoman caliphate, Greeks lived throughout Turkey. Two-thirds of Smyrna was Greek until 1922.

So there are definite precedents for a Muslim country to be more tolerant than perhaps some people today perceive.

Yes. But in the 20th century, the Muslim world created a vision of religious nationalism. Turkey, for example, had to be ethnically Turkish. Kurds, Armenians, other minorities didn’t have a place in such a vision of a nation-state.

Towards the end of book, you outline a solution for the apparent conflict between the West and Islamic nations. What are the highlights?

The ultimate vision is to instate in the Muslim world the notion of multiculturalism, which is part of our heritage and history, part of the fundamental, mainstream ideals of Islam. We also have to improve the separation of powers [idea] that we have developed in the West. What’s brilliant about the United States system of government is separation of power. Not only the executive, legislative, judicial branches, but also the independence of the military from civilians, an independent media and press, an independent central bank.

You also outline responsibilities for non-Muslim Americans, for Western media and businesses. What are they?

The business world can help in transmitting to the Muslim world the notions of capital formation. What leads to a successful economy is the financial infrastructure. Helping people create wealth.

You’re saying if we’re more interconnected financially, that might help overcome tensions?

Yes.

About the media: Muslim leaders frequently condemn terrorism, but many non-Muslim Americans don’t seem to be aware of that. Why is there the perception that no one is speaking out?

The media is not amplifying the message of these condemnations as much as they could. Another reason is that American foreign policy has contributed to a lot of the rage and anger in the Muslim world. It’s important that America is seen as even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It’s also important that America not be seen as a marketer of ethics which are not acceptable not only to Muslims, but to believers, whether they are Muslims, Christians or Jews. We don’t like pornography, something which reduces family values, the violence we see from Hollywood. That’s the picture people are seeing of America.

You talk about all Americans voting with our pocketbooks with regard to Hollywood. What can American Muslims, specifically, do to help defuse tensions?

We want the Muslim-American community to be the mediator, to say to each side “the picture you are seeing of each other is false.” That’s why the book [addresses] what’s right with America and what’s right with Islam. We have to look at what is right in both traditions and see how similar they are.

You say U.S. Muslims are uniquely positioned to help “wage peace.”

Correct.

If you personally had been completely in charge of the American Muslim response to 9/11, what would you have done?

Well, we did condemn the actions of 9/11 saying it was outside of Islam. It was condemned by nearly every Muslim nation and scholar.

We encouraged people to understand that Islamic values are part of the Abrahamic system of values. Our commandments are the same as those of Judaism and Christianity. We tried to address the issues that fueled it, issues of power and economics. People in the Muslim world feel disempowered and economically deprived.

After 9/11, we ran an essay by Khaled Abou el Fadl, who said he would have encouraged Muslim Americans to visit Ground Zero and bring, say, a flower. What you’re talking about is obviously more broad-based.

Yes, those things are very powerful symbols of American-Western sharing in the grief and mourning for what happened. I’ve participated in a number of different interfaith memorial services for those who have died.

But beyond the mourning, the real issue is the diseased, dysfunctional relationship between the United States and the Muslim world–understanding it through courses and attacking the root causes. If we address these causes, change will happen rapidly.

Some Christians point to violent passages in the Qur’an. Other Christians point out there are similarly violent passages in the Bible. Do Muslims tend to downplay these Qur’an passages just as Christians do with the Bible? For example, at a Christian church service in America, you’re unlikely to hear a Bible passage where people are urged to kill each other even though such things are in the Bible. Is it the same with the Qur’an? Would such passages be read at mosques?

They are certainly not mentioned as the meat of the religion. Having said that, [some] groups feel that Islam is under attack–a few young males say, “the West is engaged in a crash of civilization, they want to destroy Islam, we have to protect it.” So they would draw from these controversial passages in the Qur’an.

Just a ballpark figure: What percentage of American Muslims, if they went to the mosque on Friday, would hear these violent passages from the Qur’an preached?

Next to zero. Hardly anybody would–and after 9/11, it really went down to zero. Those type of speeches did exist, but after 9/11, those types of preachers have basically recognized the damage of what they have said.

What do you wish writers like Bernard Lewis, who have been very critical of Islam, understood about Islam? Your book points out that they are not getting certain things.

I wish they would speak more of the multicultural heritage of Islam and point out that the conflict is not one of religion but one of issues of power, issues of economics. It’s not religion so much; it’s a way of thinking how to structure societies.

What they contend is a problem with the religion of Islam is really a problem with the mindset of people or governments or people in power. Fascism can exist under any ideology. Fascism can exist under Christianity, which happened [with] the Inquisition in Spain or other parts of Europe. Fascism can exist under atheism, like what happened under the Communist world. It can happen under Islam, which has happened with the Taliban. Some people even believe the McCarthy era in this country was the closest we came to a fascism under democracy.

But we must not confuse fascism with Christianity and say that what happened in the Inquisition came out of Christian ideology. We have seen fascism now in the name of Islam.

What have you been hearing from the U.S. Muslim community about profiling at, for example, airports? How do you see the situation and what do you wish would happen?

There’s no doubt we’ve been profiled since 9/11. The Patriot Act has kind of made Muslims… there’s a sense of “guilty till proven innocent” rather than the other way around. Certainly the Cat Stevens [detainment] and the [Tariq] Ramadan incident.

Cat Stevens becomes a Muslim and talks about Muslim issues and that’s looked at differently. Madonna takes Jewish Kabbalism. We don’t say that because Madonna practices Jewish mysticism and has gone to Israel, she’s embraced the philosophy of Sharon or she is becoming a rabid, anti-Arab settler-type person. So why should we associate Cat Stevens, who has become a practicing, devout Muslim, with terrorism?

Some Islamic charities are being investigated for terrorist ties. Have you seen what you consider to be reputable Islamic charities being financially damaged?

Well, it’s become very difficult to send money abroad or receive money from abroad; everything now has to go through hoops to make sure it’s legitimate–which is certainly understandable.

We believe that a certain portion of every charity has been legitimate. To say that you have connections with terrorism is a very gray area. It’s like the accusation that Saddam Hussein had links to Osama bin Laden. Well, America had links to Osama bin Laden–does that mean that America is a terrorist country or has ties to terrorism? It’s that type of logic. - Beliefnet

The U.S. began as a haven for Christian outcasts. But Islam may fit our current zeitgeist.

By Michael Wolfe

Americans tend to think of their country as, at the very least, a nominally Christian nation. Didn’t the Pilgrims come here for freedom to practice their Christian religion? Don’t Christian values of righteousness under God, and freedom, reinforce America’s democratic, capitalist ideals?

True enough. But there’s a new religion on the block now, one that fits the current zeitgeist nicely. It’s Islam. Islam is the third-largest and fastest growing religious community in the United States. This is not just because of immigration. More than 50% of America’s six million Muslims were born here. Statistics like these imply some basic agreement between core American values and the beliefs that Muslims hold. Americans who make the effort to look beyond popular stereotypes to learn the truth of Islam are surprised to find themselves on familiar ground.

Is America a Muslim nation? Here are seven reasons the answer may be yes.

Islam is monotheistic. Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians. They also revere the same prophets as Judaism and Christianity, from Abraham, the first monotheist, to Moses, the law giver and messenger of God, to Jesus–not leaving out Noah, Job, or Isaiah along the way. The concept of a Judeo-Christian tradition only came to the fore in the 1940s in America. Now, as a nation, we may be transcending it, turning to a more inclusive “Abrahamic” view.

In January, President Bush grouped mosques with churches and synagogues in his inaugural address. A few days later, when he posed for photographers at a meeting of several dozen religious figures, the Shi’ite imam Muhammad Qazwini, of Orange County, Calif., stood directly behind Bush’s chair like a presiding angel, dressed in the robes and turban of his south Iraqi youth.

Islam is democratic in spirit. Islam advocates the right to vote and educate yourself and pursue a profession. The Qur’an, on which Islamic law is based, enjoins Muslims to govern themselves by discussion and consensus. In mosques, there is no particular priestly hierarchy. With Islam, each individual is responsible for the condition of her or his own soul. Everyone stands equal before God.

Americans, who mostly associate Islamic government with a handful of tyrants, may find this independent spirit surprising, supposing that Muslims are somehow predisposed to passive submission. Nothing could be further from the truth. The dictators reigning today in the Middle East are not the result of Islamic principles. They are more a result of global economics and the aftermath of European colonialism. Meanwhile, like everyone else, average Muslims the world over want a larger say in what goes on in the countries where they live. Those in America may actually succeed in it. In this way, America is closer in spirit to Islam than many Arab countries.

Islam contains an attractive mystical tradition. Mysticism is grounded in the individual search for God. Where better to do that than in America, land of individualists and spiritual seekers? And who might better benefit than Americans from the centuries-long tradition of teachers and students that characterize Islam. Surprising as it may seem, America’s best-selling poet du jour is a Muslim mystic named Rumi, the 800-year-old Persian bard and founder of the Mevlevi Path, known in the West as the Whirling Dervishes. Even book packagers are now rushing him into print to meet and profit from mainstream demand for this visionary. Translators as various as Robert Bly, Coleman Barks, and Kabir and Camille Helminski have produced dozens of books of Rumi’s verse and have only begun to bring his enormous output before the English-speaking world. This is a concrete poetry of ecstasy, where physical reality and the longing for God are joined by flashes of metaphor and insight that continue to speak across the centuries.

Islam is egalitarian. From New York to California, the only houses of worship that are routinely integrated today are the approximately 4,000 Muslim mosques. That is because Islam is predicated on a level playing field, especially when it comes to standing before God. The Pledge of Allegiance (one nation, “under God”) and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (all people are “created equal”) express themes that are also basic to Islam.

Islam is often viewed as an aggressive faith because of the concept of jihad, but this is actually a misunderstood term. Because Muslims believe that God wants a just world, they tend to be activists, and they emphasize that people are equal before God. These are two reasons why African Americans have been drawn in such large numbers to Islam. They now comprise about one-third of all Muslims in America.

Meanwhile, this egalitarian streak also plays itself out in relations between the sexes. Muhammad, Islam’s prophet, actually was a reformer in his day. Following the Qur’an, he limited the number of wives a man could have and strongly recommended against polygamy. The Qur’an laid out a set of marriage laws that guarantees married women their family names, their own possessions and capital, the right to agree upon whom they will marry, and the right to initiate divorce. In Islam’s early period, women were professionals and property owners, as increasingly they are today. None of this may seem obvious to most Americans because of cultural overlays that at times make Islam appear to be a repressive faith toward women–but if you look more closely, you can see the egalitarian streak preserved in the Qur’an finding expression in contemporary terms. In today’s Iran, for example, more women than men attend university, and in recent local elections there, 5,000 women ran for public office.

Islam shares America’s new interest in food purity and diet. Muslims conduct a monthlong fast during the holy month of Ramadan, a practice that many Americans admire and even seek to emulate. I happened to spend quite a bit of time with a non-Muslim friend during Ramadan this year. After a month of being exposed to a practice that brings some annual control to human consumption, my friend let me know, in January, that he was “doing a little Ramadan” of his own. I asked what he meant. “Well, I’m not drinking anything or smoking anything for at least a month, and I’m going off coffee.” Given this friend’s normal intake of coffee, I could not believe my ears.

Muslims also observe dietary laws that restrict the kind of meat they can eat. These laws require that the permitted, or halal, meat is prepared in a manner that emphasizes cleanliness and a humane treatment of animals. These laws ride on the same trends that have made organic foods so popular.

Islam is tolerant of other faiths. Like America, Islam has a history of respecting other religions. In Muhammad’s day, Christians, Sabeans, and Jews in Muslim lands retained their own courts and enjoyed considerable autonomy. As Islam spread east toward India and China, it came to view Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism as valid paths to salvation. As Islam spread north and west, Judaism especially benefited. The return of the Jews to Jerusalem, after centuries as outcasts, only came about after Muslims took the city in 638. The first thing the Muslims did there was to rescue the Temple Mount, which by then had been turned into a garbage heap. Today, of course, the long discord between Israel and Palestine has acquired harsh religious overtones. Yet the fact remains that this is a battle for real estate, not a war between two faiths. Islam and Judaism revere the same prophetic lineage, back to Abraham, and no amount of bullets or barbed wire can change that. As The New York Times recently reported, while Muslim/Jewish tensions sometimes flare on university campuses, lately these same students have found ways to forge common links. For one thing, the two religions share similar dietary laws, including ritual slaughter and a prohibition on pork. Joining forces at Dartmouth this fall, the first kosher/halal dining hall is scheduled to open its doors this autumn. That isn’t all: They’re already planning a joint Thanksgiving dinner, with birds dressed at a nearby farm by a rabbi and an imam. If the American Pilgrims were watching now, they’d be rubbing their eyes with amazement. And, because they came here fleeing religious persecution, they might also understand.

Islam encourages the pursuit of religious freedom. The Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock is not the world’s first story of religious emigration. Muhammad and his little band of 100 followers fled religious persecution, too, from Mecca in the year 622. They only survived by going to Madinah, an oasis a few hundred miles north, where they established a new community based on a religion they could only practice secretly back home. No wonder then that, in our own day, many Muslims have come here as pilgrims from oppression, leaving places like Kashmir, Bosnia, and Kosovo, where being a Muslim may radically shorten your life span. When the 20th century’s list of emigrant exiles is added up, it will prove to be heavy with Muslims, that’s for sure.

All in all, there seems to be a deep resonance between Islam and the United States. Although one is a world religion and the other is a sovereign nation, both are traditionally very strong on individual responsibility. Like New Hampshire’s motto, “Live Free or Die,” America is wedded to individual liberty and an ethic based on right action. For a Muslim, spiritual salvation depends on these. This is best expressed in a popular saying: Even when you think God isn’t watching you, act as if he is. – Beliefnet

America and the West have been victims of violent extremists acting in the name of Islam, the tragic events of 9/11 being only the most egregious of their attacks. Western officials and commentators are consumed by the question, “Where are the moderates?” Many, seeing only the extremism perpetuated by a radical few, despair of finding progressive and peaceful partners of standing in the Muslim world.

However, reconciling Islam with modernity has been an imperative for Muslims before it became a preoccupation for the West. In particular, the process dates back to the 19th century, when what became known as the Islamic reform movement was born in Al Azhar University in Cairo, Islam’s premiere institution of learning.

At the Dar al Iftaa, Egypt’s supreme body for Islamic legal edicts over which I preside, we wrestle constantly with the issue of applying Islam to the modern world. We issue thousands of fatwasor authoritative legal edicts—for example affirming the right of women to dignity, education and employment, and to hold political office, and condemning violence against them. We have upheld the right of freedom of conscience, and of freedom of expression within the bounds of common decency. We have promoted the common ground that exists between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. We have underscored that governance must be based on justice and popular sovereignty. We are committed to human liberty within the bounds of Islamic law. Nonetheless, we must make more tangible progress on these and other issues.

We unequivocally condemned violence against the innocent during Egypt’s own struggle with terrorism in the 1980s and 90′s, and after the heinous sin of 9/11. We continue to do so in public debates with extremists on their views of Islam, in our outreach to schools and youth organizations, in our training of students from all across the world at Egypt’s theological institutions, and in our counseling of captured terrorists. As the head of the one of the foremost Islamic authorities in the world, let me restate: The murder of civilians is a crime against humanity and God punishable in this life and the next.

Yet, just as we recommit to reinforcing the values of moderation in our faith, we look to the United States to assume its responsibility for the sake of a better relationship between the West and Islam.

First, it is essential that the U.S. confront the fear and misunderstanding that has often pervaded the public discourse about Islam, especially in the media.

Second, while we must strive to reinforce the common principles that we share, we must also accept the reality of differences in our values and in our outlook. Islam and the West have distinct value systems. Respect for our differences is a foundation for coexistence, and never for conflict.

Finally, there must a true commitment to the rule of law, and to sovereign equality, as the legitimate basis for international relations. While some of the divide between Islam and the West lies in the realm of ideas, it lies mostly in the realm of politics. The violence and the aggression to which many Muslim countries have been subjected are the main sources of a deep and legitimate sense of grievance, and they must be addressed.

Israel’s occupation of Palestine must be brought to an end; its continuation is an affront to the fundamental tenets of justice and freedom that we all seek to uphold. In Iraq and Afghanistan, full sovereignty and independence must be restored to their people with the withdrawal of all foreign forces. President Barack Obama’s historic address to the Muslim world from Cairo on June 4 was a landmark event that opened the door to a new relationship between Islam and the West, precisely because it acknowledged these imperatives. Yet much work needs to be done by both sides.

This week in Washington I am participating in the Common Word Initiative, a group of religious leaders hosted by Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. While the focus of this initiative has been to foster dialogue between Islam and Christianity, I will call for its expansion to include representatives of all the Abrahamic faiths. The road ahead will be difficult, but we can, God willing, arrive at a more peaceful future together.

—Dr. Gomaa is the Grand Mufti of Egypt.

By Laurie Goodstein

Dec 20, 2009

The religion with the most adherents on the planet is Christianity, and few people would say they are unfamiliar with the story of its founder and prophet, Jesus. The second largest faith is Islam, and yet there is boundless ignorance among non-Muslims about the story of its founder and prophet, Muhammad, even after 9/11 set off a global panic about whether Islam fuels terrorism.

Since then Muhammad has been defined by his detractors: who have called him a terrorist, a lunatic and most colorfully — by the Rev. Jerry Vines, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention — a “demon-possessed pedophile.” Even Pope Benedict XVI, whatever his intention, created an uproar by unearthing a remark from a 14th-century emperor who cited Muhammad’s contributions to religion as “only evil and inhuman.” Is this the prophet of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims?

It may be time then to put down the biographies of John Adams and Ronald Reagan and devote a little attention to Muhammad. But beware. Several new biographies picture Muhammad through the lens of a suicide bomber, and ultimately these books reveal more about suicide bombers than Muhammad.

To glimpse how the vast majority of the world’s Muslims understand their prophet and their faith, Karen Armstrong’s short biography is a good place to start. The volume is part of a series called “Eminent Lives”: small profiles of big-name subjects by big-name authors.

Ms. Armstrong, best known for “A History of God,” is a scholar and a former nun with a genius for presenting religions as products of temporal forces — like geography, culture and economics — without minimizing the workings of transcendent spiritual forces.

She profiles Muhammad as both a mystic touched by God on a mountaintop and a canny political and social reformer. He preached loyalty to God rather than tribe; reconciliation rather than retaliation; care for orphans and the poor; and in many ways, empowerment of women, which will be a surprise to some. The Koran gave women property rights and freed orphans from the obligation to marry their guardians: radical changes at a time when women were traded like camels.

Ms. Armstrong writes: “His life was a tireless campaign against greed, injustice and arrogance. He realized that Arabia was at a turning point and that the old way of thinking would no longer suffice, so he wore himself out in the creative effort to evolve an entirely new solution.” In a nod to her subtitle, “A Prophet for Our Time,” she argues that as of Sept. 11, 2001, we have entered a new historical era that requires an equally thorough re-evaluation.

This notion that we have entered a new era was one of the reasons that Ms. Armstrong decided to revisit a subject she had already covered in 1992 with “Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet.”

Muhammad (570-632) was born in a nouveau riche Mecca. Unlike most Arabs, the Meccans were not nomads but traders and financiers who profited from the caravans that stopped in Mecca for water from its underground spring. The site was holy to the Bedouin because it housed the Kabah, a cube-shaped granite building that was tended by Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh.

Muhammad was orphaned as a child and taken in by relatives, but his fortunes changed at the age of 25 when he married Khadija, an older widow who hired him to manage her caravans. At 40 Muhammad declared he had been seized by a terrifying force and commanded by God to recite scripture.

Khadija was his first convert. At first he shared his revelations with a small group of friends and family members, who became his disciples, “convinced that he was the long-awaited Arab prophet.” As Muhammad, who was illiterate, recited new passages, believers wrote them down: a compilation that became the Koran.

The Meccans were offended by Muhammad’s preaching that the ideal was submission. (Islam means submission.) He taught that the proper way to pray was to bow, forehead to the earth, “a posture that would be repugnant to the haughty Quraysh,” Ms. Armstrong notes. Muhammad also insisted that the Meccans abandon the worship of their three stone goddesses, because there was only one God, Allah.

Muhammad and his followers were exiled to Medina, 250 miles north of Mecca. He did not conquer Medina so much as form alliances and win converts. But there were epic battles with the Quraysh and other tribes, and Muhammad was a fighter and tactician.

“Muhammad was not a pacifist,” Ms. Armstrong writes. “He believed that warfare was sometimes inevitable and even necessary.”

This is why some passages in the Koran are rules for warfare. Terrorist groups cite these selectively — or contort or violate them. The Koran says not to take aim at civilians; some terrorist groups declare all Israelis to be combatants because Israelis are required to perform military service.

Ms. Armstrong declines to stand in judgment of events that have scandalized other biographers; as when Muhammad falls for the wife of his adopted adult son and takes her as his fifth wife. Ms. Armstrong writes: “This story has shocked some of Muhammad’s Western critics who are used to more ascetic, Christian heroes, but the Muslim sources seem to find nothing untoward in this demonstration of their prophet’s virility. Nor are they disturbed that Muhammad had more than four wives: why should God not give his prophet a few privileges?”

Muhammad ultimately took back Mecca and reclaimed the Kabah, still the destination for the Muslim pilgrimage. Ms. Armstrong argues that he prevailed by compassion, wisdom and steadfast submission to God. This is the power of his story and the reason that more parents around the world name their children Muhammad than any other name. – The New York Times

Biography – Reverend Jerry Vines

Jerry Vines was born in Carrollton, Georgia near Atlanta in 1937. Before attending seminary, he pastored his first church, Centralhatchee Baptist Church, at the age of 16. He was educated at Mercer University, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and Luther Rice University before pastoring in churches in Alabama and Georgia. While pastor of Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama he was elected President of the Alabama Pastors’ Conference. He relocated to Jacksonville in 1982 to co-pastor the First Baptist Church with Homer G. Lindsay, Jr., and in June 1988, he was elected President of the Southern Baptist Convention and served two terms. During his first 20 years at First Baptist, he baptized 18,177 people and oversaw the building of an $8 million preschool building, a $16 million auditorium and four parking garages, totaling almost $14 million. Vines also was influential in starting the First Baptist Church Pastors’ Conference which drew thousands of ministers and church works from across the world. Vines announced his retirement from First Baptist in May 2005 and preached his last sermon as pastor of the church in 2006 at the close of the 20th annual Pastors’ conference. He has since started his own ministry, Jerry Vines Ministries. This ministry is an outreach to further educate pastors in different areas of the ministry. Vines is married to the former Janet Denney and they have four children and seven grand children.

Controversy

Vines sparked controversy in June 2002 for remarks he made at a Southern Baptist Convention conference that were critical of Islam. Referencing Ergun and Emir Caner’s book Unveiling Islam, Vines said that “Allah is not Jehovah… Jehovah’s not going to turn you into a terrorist that’ll try to bomb people and take the lives of thousands and thousands of people,” and that “Christianity was founded by the virgin-born Jesus Christ” while “Islam was founded by Muhammad, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives, and his last one was a 9-year-old girl.”^[1] This reference was to Aisha, who is said to have been about nine when her marriage to Muhammad was consummated, according to several hadith, or stories of Muhammad.^[2] The comments stirred a brief national debate on “Islamophobia” and the demonization of Islam in relation to the War on Terrorism. Vines initially defended his comments and invited “Muslim scholars to explain their own documents to us all.”^[3] He also refused to apologize for the statements or to meet with local Muslim leaders.^[3] He was heavily criticized, but was defended by fellow Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell, who wrote a letter supporting him. Falwell was asked about the letter during a 60 Minutes interview in October, and sparked an even greater outrage by declaring that he considered Muhammad a terrorist.^[4] He later apologized for his comments.^[5] When the story was covered by NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw on February 25, 2003, Vines finally broke his silence on the issue, claiming that his statements had been overemphasized in media reports, and that he had not intended to evoke hate. - Wikipedia

Open Letter to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

Your holiness,

With regards to your lecture at the university of Regensburg in Germany on September12th 2006, we thought it appropriate, in the spirit of open exchange, to address your use of a debate between the Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a “learned Persian” as the starting point for a discourse on the relationship between reason and faith. While we applaud your efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism in human life, we must point out some errors in the way you mentioned Islam as a counterpoint to the proper use of reason, as well as some mistakes in the assertions you put forward in support of your argument.

THERE IS NO COMPULSION IN RELIGION

You mention that “according to the experts” the verse which begins, There is no compulsion in religion (al-Baqarah 2:256) is from the early period when the Prophet “was still powerless and under threat,” but this is incorrect. In fact this verse is acknowledged to belong to the period of Qur’anic revelation corresponding to the political and military ascendance of the young Muslim community. There is no compulsion in religion was not a command to Muslims to remain steadfast in the face of the desire of their oppressors to force them to renounce their faith, but was a reminder to Muslims themselves, once they had attained power, that they could not force another’s heart to believe. There is no compulsion in religion addresses those in a position of strength, not weakness. The earliest commentaries on the Qur’an (such as that of Al-Tabari) make it clear that some Muslims of Medina wanted to force their children to convert from Judaism or Christianity to Islam, and this verse was precisely an answer to them not to try to force their children to convert to Islam. Moroever, Muslims are also guided by such verses as Say: The truth is from your Lord; so whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve. (al-Kahf 18:29); and Say: O disbelievers! I worship not that which ye worship; Nor worship ye that which I worship. And I shall not worship that which ye worship. Nor will ye worship that which I worship. Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion (al-Kafirun: 109:1-6).

GOD’S TRANSCENDENCE

You also say that “for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent,” a simplification which can be misleading. The Qur’an states, There is no thing like unto Him (al-Shura 42:11), but it also states, He is the Light of the heavens and the earth (al-Nur 24:35); and, We are closer to him than his jugular vein (Qaf 50:16); and, He is the First, the Last, the Inward, and the Outward (al-Hadid 57:3); and, He is with you wherever you are (al-Hadid 57:4); and, Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God (al-Baqarah 2:115). Also, let us recall the saying of the Prophet, which states that God says, “When I love him (the worshipper), I am the hearing by which he hears, the sight by which he sees, the hand with which he grasps, and the foot with which he walks.” (Sahih al-Bukhari no.6502, Kitab al-Riqaq)

In the Islamic spiritual, theological, and philosophical tradition, the thinker you mention, Ibn Hazm (d.1069 ce), is a worthy but very marginal figure, who belonged to the Zahiri school of jurisprudence which is followed by no one in the Islamic world today. If one is looking for classical formulations of the doctrine of transcendence, much more important to Muslims are figures such as al-Ghazali (d.1111 ce) and many others who are far more influential and more representative of Islamic belief than Ibn Hazm.

You quote an argument that because the emperor is “shaped by Greek philosophy” the idea that “God is not pleased by blood” is “self-evident” to him, to which the Muslim teaching on God’s Transcendence is put forward as a counterexample. To say that for Muslims “God’s Will is not bound up in any of our categories” is also a simplification which may lead to a misunderstanding. God has many Names in Islam, including the Merciful, the Just, the Seeing, the Hearing, the Knowing, the Loving, and the Gentle. Their utter conviction in God’s Oneness and that There is none like unto Him (al-Ikhlas 112:4) has not led Muslims to deny God’s attribution of these qualities to Himself and to (some of) His creatures, (setting aside for now the notion of “categories”, a term which requires much clarification in this context). As this concerns His Will, to conclude that Muslims believe in a capricious God who might or might not command us to evil is to forget that God says in the Qur’an, Lo! God enjoins justice and kindness, and giving to kinsfolk, and forbids lewdness and abomination and wickedness. He exhorts you in order that ye may take heed (al-Nahl, 16:90). Equally, it is to forget that God says in the Qur’an that He has prescribed for Himself mercy (al-An’am, 6:12; see also 6:54), and that God says in the Qur’an, My Mercy encompasses everything (al-A‘raf 7:156). The word for mercy, rahmah, can also be translated as love, kindness, and compassion. From this word rahmah comes the sacred formula Muslims use daily, In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Is it not self-evident that spilling innocent blood goes against mercy and compassion?

THE USE OF REASON

The Islamic tradition is rich in its explorations of the nature of human intelligence and its relation to God’s Nature and His Will, including questions of what is self-evident and what is not. However, the dichotomy between “reason” on one hand and “faith” on the other does not exist in precisely the same form in Islamic thought. Rather, Muslims have come to terms with the power and limits of human intelligence in their own way, acknowledging a hierarchy of knowledge of which reason is a crucial part. There are two extremes which the Islamic intellectual tradition has generally managed to avoid: one is to make the analytical mind the ultimate arbiter of truth, and the other is to deny the power of human understanding to address ultimate questions. More importantly, in their most mature and mainstream forms the intellectual explorations of Muslims through the ages have maintained a consonance between the truths of the Qur’anic revelation and the demands of human intelligence, without sacrificing one for the other. God says, We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves until it is clear to them that it is the truth (Fussilat 41:53). Reason itself is one among the many signs within us, which God invites us to contemplate, and to contemplate with, as a way of knowing the truth.

WHAT IS “HOLY WAR”?

We would like to point out that “holy war” is a term that does not exist in Islamic languages. Jihad, it must be emphasized, means struggle, and specifically struggle in the way of God. This struggle may take many forms, including the use of force. Though a jihad may be sacred in the sense of being directed towards a sacred ideal, it is not necessarily a “war”. Moreover, it is noteworthy that Manuel II Paleologus says that “violence” goes against God’s nature, since Christ himself used violence against the money-changers in the temple, and said “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword …” (Matthew 10:34-36). When God drowned Pharaoh, was He going against His own Nature? Perhaps the emperor meant to say that cruelty, brutality, and aggression are against God’s Will, in which case the classical and traditional law of jihad in Islam would bear him out completely.

You say that “naturally the emperor knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war.” However, as we pointed out above concerning There is no compulsion in religion, the aforementioned instructions were not later at all. Moreover, the emperor’s statements about violent conversion show that he did not know what those instructions are and have always been. The authoritative and traditional Islamic rules of war can be summarized in the following principles:

1. Non-combatants are not permitted or legitimate targets. This was emphasized explicitly time and again by the Prophet, his Companions, and by the learned tradition since then.

2. Religious belief alone does not make anyone the object of attack. The original Muslim community was fighting against pagans who had also expelled them from their homes, persecuted, tortured, and murdered them. Thereafter, the Islamic conquests were political in nature.

3. Muslims can and should live peacefully with their neighbors. And if they incline to peace, do thou incline to it; and put thy trust in God (al-Anfal 8:61). However, this does not exclude legitimate selfdefense and maintenance of sovereignty.

Muslims are just as bound to obey these rules as they are to refrain from theft and adultery. If a religion regulates war and describes circumstances where it is necessary and just, that does not make that religion war-like, anymore than regulating sexuality makes a religion prurient. If some have disregarded a long and well-established tradition in favor of utopian dreams where the end justifies the means, they have done so of their own accord and without the sanction of God, His Prophet, or the learned tradition. God says in the Holy Qur’an: Let not hatred of any people seduce you into being unjust. Be just, that is nearer to piety (al-Ma’idah 5:8). In this context we must state that the murder on September 17th of an innocent Catholic nun in Somalia—and any other similar acts of wanton individual violence—“in reaction to” your lecture at the University of Regensburg, is completely un- Islamic, and we totally condemn such acts.

FORCED CONVERSION

The notion that Muslims are commanded to spread their faith “by the sword” or that Islam in fact was largely spread “by the sword” does not hold up to scrutiny. Indeed, as a political entity Islam spread partly as a result of conquest, but the greater part of its expansion came as a result of preaching and missionary activity. Islamic teaching did not prescribe that the conquered populations be forced or coerced into converting. Indeed, many of the first areas conquered by the Muslims remained predominantly non-Muslim for centuries. Had Muslims desired to convert all others by force, there would not be a single church or synagogue left anywhere in the Islamic world. The command There is no compulsion in religion means now what it meant then. The mere fact of a person being non-Muslim has never been a legitimate casus belli in Islamic law or belief. As with the rules of war, history shows that some Muslims have violated Islamic tenets concerning forced conversion and the treatment of other religious communities, but history also shows that these are by far the exception which proves the rule. We emphatically agree that forcing others to believe—if such a thing be truly possible at all—is not pleasing to God and that God is not pleased by blood. Indeed, we believe, and Muslims have always believed, that Whoso slays a soul not to retaliate for a soul slain, nor for corruption done in the land, it shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether (al-Ma’idah 5:32).

SOMETHING NEW?

You mention the emperor’s assertion that “anything new” brought by the Prophet was “evil and inhuman, such as his alleged command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” What the emperor failed to realize—aside from the fact (as mentioned above) that no such command has ever existed in Islam—is that the Prophet never claimed to be bringing anything fundamentally new. God says in the Holy Qur’an, Naught is said to thee (Muhammad) but what already was said to the Messengers before thee (Fussilat 41:43), and, Say (Muhammad): I am no new thing among the messengers (of God), nor know I what will be done with me or with you. I do but follow that what is Revealed to me, and I am but a plain warner (al-Ahqaf, 46:9). Thus faith in the One God is not the property of any one religious community. According to Islamic belief, all the true prophets preached the same truth to different peoples at different times. The laws may be different, but the truth is unchanging.

“THE EXPERTS”

You refer at one point non-specifically to “the experts” (on Islam) and also actually cite two Catholic scholars by name, Professor (Adel) Theodore Khoury and (Associate Professor) Roger Arnaldez. It suffices here to say that whilst many Muslims consider that there are sympathetic non-Muslims and Catholics who could truly be considered “experts” on Islam, Muslims have not to our knowledge endorsed the “experts” you referred to, or recognized them as representing Muslims or their views. On September 25th 2006 you reiterated your important statement in Cologne on August 20th 2005 that, “Inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot be reduced to an optional extra. It is, in fact, a vital necessity, on which in large measure our future depends.” Whilst we fully concur with you, it seems to us that a great part of the object of interreligious dialogue is to strive to listen to and consider the actual voices of those we are dialoguing with, and not merely those of our own persuasion.

* * *

CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM

Christianity and Islam are the largest and second largest religions in the world and in history. Christians and Muslims reportedly make up over a third and over a fifth of humanity respectively. Together they make up more than 55% of the world’s population, making the relationship between these two religious communities the most important factor in contributing to meaningful peace around the world. As the leader of over a billion Catholics and moral example for many others around the globe, yours is arguably the single most influential voice in continuing to move this relationship forward in the direction of mutual understanding.We share your desire for frank and sincere dialogue, and recognize its importance in an increasingly interconnected world. Upon this sincere and frank dialogue we hope to continue to build peaceful and friendly relationships based upon mutual respect, justice, and what is common in essence in our shared Abrahamic tradition, particularly “the two greatest commandments” in Mark 12:29-31 (and, in varying form, in Matthew 22:37-40), that, the Lord our God is One Lord; / And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy understanding, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. / And the second commandment is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. Muslims thus appreciate the following words from the Second Vatican Council: The church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to humanity. They endeavor to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own. Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet; his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly invoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting. (Nostra Aetate, 28 October 1965)

And equally the words of the late Pope John Paul II, for whom many Muslims had great regard and esteem: We Christians joyfully recognize the religious values we have in common with Islam. Today I would like to repeat what I said to young Muslims some years ago in Casablanca: “We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection” (Insegnamenti, VIII/2, [1985], p.497, quoted during a general audience on May 5, 1999).

Muslims also appreciated your unprecedented personal expression of sorrow, and your clarification and assurance (on the 17th of September) that your quote does not reflect your own personal opinion, as well as the Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone’s affirmation (on the 16th of September) of the conciliar document Nostra Aetate. Finally, Muslims appreciated that (on September 25th) in front of an assembled group of ambassadors from Muslim countries you expressed “total and profound respect for all Muslims”. We hope that we will all avoid the mistakes of the past and live together in the future in peace, mutual acceptance and respect.

And all praise belongs to God, and there is neither power nor strength except through God. © 2006

SIGNATORIES

(listed in alphabetical order)

1. H.E. Ambassador Dr. Akbar Ahmed

Professor of Islamic Studies, American University in

Washington DC.;Former High Commissioner of Pakistan

to Great Britain

2. Dr.Abdul-Karim Akiwi

Professor, Ibn Zahr University, Agadir, Morocco

3. Dr. Ahmad Mahrazi Al-Alawi

Professor, Qadi Ayad University, Marrakesh, Morocco

4. Dr. Batool bint Ali

Professor, Faculty of Arts, Rabat, Morocco

5. Dr. Salwa El-Awa

Department of Theology, University of Birmingham

6. Dr.Abdullah Mohammad BaHaroon

Head, Ahqaf University, Yemen

7. Dr. Maimon Barish

Professor, Qadi Ayad University, Marrakesh, Morocco

8. H.E. Dr. Issam al-Bashir

Former Minister of Religious Affairs;Secretary General

of the International Institution for Moderation, Sudan

9. H.E. Allamah Abd Allah bin Mahfuz bin Bayyah

Professor, King Abd Al-Aziz University, Saudi Arabia

Former Vice President; Minister of Justice; Minister of

Education and Minister of Religious Affairs, Mauritania

10. Dr.Ali Benbraik

Professor, Ibn Zahr University, Agadir, Morocco

11. Dr.Abdul-Fattah Al-Bizim

Mufti of Damascus, Director of the Fath Institute, Damascus

12. Dr. Roger Boase

Queen Mary & Westfield College, Uni. of London, UK

13. Dr. al-Arabi Al-Buhali

Professor, Qadi Ayad University, Marrakesh, Morocco

14. Shaykh Muhammad Hisham al-Burhani

Faculty of Shari‘a, University of Damascus, Syria

15. Professor Dr. Allamah Muhammad Sa‘id

Ramadan Al-Buti

Dean, Dept. of Religion, University of Damascus, Syria

16. Professor Dr. Mustafa Çagˇrıcı

Grand Mufti of Istanbul

17. H.E. Shaykh Professor Dr. Mustafa Ceric

Grand Mufti and Head of Ulema of Bosnia and

Herzegovina

18. Dr. Jill Cressy

Department of Education, University of Birmingham

19. Dr. Ahmad Fakir

Professor, Ibn Zahr University, Agadir, Morocco

20. Sayyid Abdullah Fidaaq

Islamic Missionary, Saudi Arabia

21. H.E. Shaykh Ravil Gainutdin

Grand Mufti of Russia

22. Dr.Buthaina al-Ghalbzuri

Professor, Faculty of Arts, Rabat, Morocco

23. H.E. Shaykh Nedžad Grabus

Grand Mufti of Slovenia

24. Professor Abdul-Haqq Ismail Guiderdoni

Director, Institut des Hautes Etudes Islamiques, France

25. Ahmad Bin Abdul-Aziz al-Haddad

Mufti, Department of Islamic Affairs, Dubai, UAE

26. Shaykh Al-Habib Ali Mashhour bin Muhammad

bin Salim bin Hafeez

Imam of the Tarim Mosque and Head of Fatwa Council,

Tarim, Yemen

27. Shaykh Al-Habib Umar bin Muhammad bin

Salim bin Hafeez

Dean, Dar Al-Mustafa, Tarim, Yemen

28. Shaykh Abdul-Razzaq Al-Hallabi

Religious Instructor at the Umayyad Mosque,

Head, Fath Institute in Damascus, Syria

29. Professor Dr. Farouq Hamadah

Professor of the Sciences of Tradition, Mohammad V

University, Morocco

30. Dr. Mustapha Bin Hamza

Professor, University of Mohammed I, Morocco

31. Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson

Founder and Director, Zaytuna Institute, California, USA

32. H.E. Shaykh Dr. Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun

Grand Mufti of the Republic of Syria

33. Shaykh Seraj Hendricks

Former Chair, Muslim Judicial Fatwa Committee,

South Africa

34. Dr.Mawlai al-Hussayn Al-Hian

Professor, Qarawiyin University, Morocco

35. Dr. Abdul-Aziz Al-Hifadhi

Professor, University of Mohammed I, Morocco

36. H.E. Dr. Saeed Abd al-Hafidh Hijjawi

The Mufti of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

37. Dr. Abdul-Razzaq Hurmas

Professor, Ibn Zahr University, Agadir, Morocco

38. Shaykh Yasmin Mahmoud Al-Husari

Head, Husari Islamic Foundation, Egypt

39. Dr. Shaykh Izz Al-Din Ibrahim

Advisor for Cultural Affairs, Prime Ministry,

UAE

40. Professor Buthayna Al-Ibrahim

Director, Centre for Women’s Leadership Training,

Kuwait

41. Dr.Abdul-Rafi’ Al-Ilj

Professor, Wali Ishmael University, Meknes, Morocco

42. Shaykh Muhammad Naiem Al-Irqsusi

Preacher, Iman Mosque in Damascus, Syria

43. H.E. Professor Dr. Omar Jah

Secretary of the Muslim Scholars Council, Gambia

Professor of Islamic Civilization and Thought, University

of Gambia

44. Dr. Haifaa Jawad

Department of Theology, University of Birmingham

45. Shaykh Al-Habib Ali Zain Al-Abideen Al-Jifri

Founder and Director, Taba Institute, UAE

46. Sayyid Umar Hamid Al-Jilani

Islamic Law scholar, Hadramawt, Yemen

47. H.E. Shaykh Professor Dr. Ali Jumu‘ah

Grand Mufti of the Republic of Egypt

48. Dr. Larbi Kachat

Director, Islamic Cultural Centre, Paris, France

49. Professor Dr. Abla Mohammed Kahlawi

Dean of Islamic and Arabic Studies, Al-Azhar University

(Women’s College), Egypt

50. Dr. Ibrahim Kalin

Director, SETA Foundation, Ankara, Turkey

Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, College of the Holy

Cross, USA

51. Dr. Salah ul-Din Kuftaro

Director, Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro Foundation, Syria

52. Professor Dr. Mohammad Hashim Kamali

Dean, International Institute of Islamic Thought

and Civilization (ISTAC), Malaysia;

Professor of Islamic Law and Jurisprudence,

International Islamic University, Malaysia

53. Dr. al-Munsif Al-Karisi

Professor, Qadi Ayad University, Marrakesh, Morocco

54. Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller

Shaykh in the Shadhili Order and Senior Fellow of Aal al-

Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought (Jordan), USA

55. H.E. Shaykh Ahmad Al-Khalili

Grand Mufti of the Sultanate of Oman

56. Dr. Mohammad Kharabut

Professor, Qadi Ayad University, Marrakesh, Morocco

57. Dr. Muhammad bin Kiran

Professor, University of Ibn Tufail, Qunaitara, Morocco

58. Shaykh Dr. Ahmad Kubaisi

Founder of the Ulema Organization, Iraq

59. Dr. Karima Laachir

Dept. of French Studies, University of Birmigham

60. Sayyid Ahmad Alawi Al-Maliki

Lecturer, King Abdul-Aziz University, Saudi Arabia

61. Dr.Al-Jilani Al-Marini

Professor, Sidi Mohammed Ben Abd Allah University,

Fez, Morocco

62. Allamah Shaykh Muhammad bin Muhammad

Al-Mansouri

High Authority (Marja’) of Zeidi Muslims, Yemen

63. Dr. Yousef Meri

Scholar -in-Residence, Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic

Thought, Jordan

64. Shaykh Abu Bakr Ahmad Al-Milibari

Secretary-General of the Ahl Al-Sunna Association, India

65. Dr. Jawid Mojaddedi

Assistant Professor, Rutgers University, USA

66. Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

Poet and author, USA

67. Mr. Shafiq Morton

Voice of the Cape Radio, South Africa

68. H.E. Dr. Moulay Abd Al-Kabir Al-Alawi

Al-Mudghari

Director-General, Bayt Mal Al-Qods Al-Sharif Agency;

Former Minister of Religious Affairs, Morocco

69. Dr. Ibrahim Rashed al-Murikhi

Head of the Shari‘a Court, Bahrain

70. H.E. Shaykh Ahmad Hasyim Muzadi

General Chairman of the Nahdat al-Ulema, Indonesia

71. Mr. Sohail Nakhooda

Editor-in-Chief, Islamica Magazine

72. H.E. Professor Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr

University Professor of Islamic Studies, George Washington

University, Washington D.C, USA

73. Dr. Aref Ali Nayed

Former Professor at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and

Islamic Studies (PISAI), Rome; Advisor to the Cambridge

Interfaith Program,Faculty of Divinity,Cambridge, UK

74. Professor Sulayman S. Nyang

Howard University, USA

75. H.E. Shaykh Sevki Omerbasic

Grand Mufti of Croatia

76. Dr. Yahya Sergio Pallavicini

Vice President, Comunità Religiosa Islamica, Italy

77. Dr. Eboo Patel

Founder and Executive Director, Interfaith Youth Core,

Chicago, USA

78. H.E. Dr. Muhammad Rashid Al-Qabbani

Mufti of the Republic of Lebanon

79. Dr. Saliha Al-Rahuti

Professor, Faculty of Arts, Rabat, Morocco

80. Shaykh Osama Abd al-Karim Al-Rifai

Scholar and preacher at the Abdul-Karim al-Rifai Mosque,

Damascus, Syria

81. Shaykh Sarya Abdul-Karim Al-Rifai

Imam, Mosque of Zayd bin Thabit Al-Ansari, Syria

82. Al-Habib Muhammad bin Abdul-Rahman

Al-Saqqaf

Scholar of the Islamic Sciences, Saudi Arabia

83. Dr. Muhammad Hasan Sharhabili

Professor, Qarawiyin University, Morocco

84. H.E. Dr. Mohammad Abd Al-Ghaffar Al-Sharif

Secretary-General, Ministry of Religious Affairs,

Kuwait

85. Dr. Muhammad Alwani Al-Sharif

Head of the European Academy of Islamic Culture and

Sciences, Brussels, Belgium

86. Imam Zaid Shakir

Lecturer, Zaytuna Institute, California, USA

87. Dr. Al-Arabi Bu Silham

Professor, Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco

88. Dr. Milodah Shem

Professor, School of Law, Rabat, Morocco

89. Shaykh M. Iqbal Sullam

Vice General-Secretary, Nahdat al-Ulema, Indonesia

90. Shaykh Dr. Tariq Suwaidan

Director-General of the Risalah Satellite Channel

91. H.R.H. Prince El Hassan bin Talal

Chairman, Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, Jordan

92. Professor Dr. H.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad

bin Talal

Chairman of the Board of the Aal al-Bayt Institute for

Islamic Thought, Jordan

93. H.E. Ayatollah Muhammad Ali Taskhiri

Secretary General of the World Assembly for Proximity of

Islamic Schools of Thoughts (WAPIST), Iran

94. H.E. Shaykh Naim Trnava

Grand Mufti of Kosovo

95. H.E. Dr. Abd Al-Aziz Uthman Al-Tweijri

Director-General of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization (ISESCO), Morocco

96. H.H. Justice Mufti Muhammad Taqi Uthmani

Vice President, Dar Al-Ulum, Karachi, Pakistan

97. H.E. Shaykh Muhammad Al-Sadiq Muhammad

Yusuf

Grand Mufti of Uzbekistan

98. Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad Winter

Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies, Divinity

School, University of Cambridge, UK;

Director of the Muslim Academic Trust, UK

99. Dr.Wahbah Mustapha Al-Zuhayli

Head, Department of Fiqh and its Schools, Faculty of

Shari‘a, University of Damascus, Syria

100. H.E. Shaykh Muamer Zukorlic

Mufti of Sanjak

- Islamica Magazine

An Interview with The Archbishop of Canterbury | Rowan Williams

The Common Word Dossier

An Interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury

The Head of the Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, speaks to Islamica about the challenges ahead in improving Christian-Muslim relations, and his concerns about the direction of the Christian community in an increasingly secular Britain

Islamica | 02 March 2009

ISLAMICA: In your speech at the Zaki Badawi Memorial Lecture 2007, organized by the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS), in conjunction with Lambeth Palace, you speak about Islam, Christianity and pluralism. The late Dr Badawi was an ardent proponent of interfaith understanding. Given your experience of the Anglican and Muslim communities, what, in your view, would be the actionable priorities from which we can derive measurable improvements in interfaith understanding?

DR ROWAN WILLIAMS: The two main priorities are at two different levels. At the level of theory, I think we need to go on talking more about our understanding of faith in society: Christians tend to see Muslims as making no distinction between the religious and the political; Muslims tend to see Christians as having no effective doctrine of social morality. At the level of practice, it has to be learning how to inhabit a neighborhood together—how to work together for a moral and humane environment at street level, at city level and in the international context. These questions come together when we try and think through the relation between divine law and the law of the society we’re actually in, for example; or when we reflect on what God’s view is of economic justice and what our current global economy takes for granted. How do we live with the awareness that divine and human law don’t always fit together, without assuming that the only answers are “privatized” religion (a typical Christian temptation), or some attempt at theocracy (a certain kind of Muslim temptation)? How do we work with what is constructive and God-oriented in our social environment, neither ignoring it nor seeking to take it over and dominate it?

The Chair of AMSS UK, Dr Anas al-Shaikh-Ali, spoke at length of the dangers of succumbing to a “climate of fear” and education as the prima facie force of reform. In your own assessment of rising levels of Islamophobia, how far do you believe focusing on effective change through the national curricula is a viable long-term strategy?

It is definitely a long-term strategy, but we need such long-term vision in a world of quick fixes. But it won’t work if the study of Islam becomes the study of some exotic and alien thing. Muslims living in the West and coping with the often-chaotic Western cultural agenda honestly and creatively are the best educators in this connection. Young non-Muslims in schools need to hear from the real-life young, educated and professional Muslims in their environment, not just to have a picture of distant cultures.

The late Dr Zaki Badawi’s visionary leadership of The Muslim College included establishment of interfaith courses to consolidate multicultural understanding and effect intelligent, and enlightened discourse with members of other faiths. In your opinion what wider implications does an award like the Building Bridges Award, presented to you by the AMSS UK at Badawi’s Memorial Lecture, have over and above that of recognizing the outstanding achievements of far-sighted individuals and the merits of their work?

I was humbled and rather astonished to receive the award; but what I think it recognizes is that there are contexts in which it is possible to discuss differences with candor in a spirit of friendship. It’s a happy coincidence that the annual seminar I chair on Christian-Muslim dialogue—a seminar in which Zaki was a deeply valued member—is also called “Building Bridges”. Zaki was always keen to insist that Muslims should learn from Christians about Christianity just as Christians should learn from Muslims about Islam—so that we don’t assume too quickly that we know what the other is talking about! But that means facing our differences with patience—taking real time to understand.

In recent times, there has been a general rise in evangelical movements across the various Christian denominations and increasingly thorny questions posed by progressive theologians, together with the reassertion of conservative faith perspectives, in particular, from Africa, South America and Asia. As head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, how do you propose to address the challenges of maintaining doctrinal unity across this broad spectrum?

I wish I had a neat answer to this! But for me the doctrinal essentials are already contained within the actions we perform—in the sacraments and the disciplines of prayer. When we find ourselves saying things that make nonsense of these basic practices, we have left the doctrinal heart of things behind. And when we find ourselves reading our Scriptures in ways that are in tension with these practices, something has gone wrong. So my constant hope is to bring people back to these essentials—most of all to the central belief that the Christian Church exists not by human choice and planning but because of a specific action and call uttered by God in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If we believe this, we may find it possible to argue our other differences within the Church a bit more patiently. It isn’t just a standoff between people with a “conservative” attitude to doctrine and people who are “liberal”—that’s a lazy bit of journalistic labelling. It’s to do with where you see the centre of things—in ideas alone or in those ideas embodied in the shape of common life and prayer and the constant acknowledgement of our indebtedness to God.

With the emergence of modernity, the values of individualism and freedom of expression have become defining qualities of “enlightened” societies. This seems to have led to tensions between institutionalized interpretation of religion and an increasingly personalized interpretation. Though, of course, all religions must, at some level, operate in the personal domain, it still seems important to strike the right balance between institutionally informed scholarship and individualism. This seems to affect certainly both Christianity and Islam. How do you see this challenge and how do you expect to address it?

This relates very directly to the preceding question, doesn’t it? There is a tendency to approach religious faith in a “consumerist” spirit—what can I get from it?—and to ignore the element of a call to service and loving devotion. Christianity and Islam both have a major task in challenging pure individualism: not in the name of suppressing diversity or liberty of thought, but so as to demonstrate that the fulfillment of the person’s destiny is a shared wisdom, not just an individual set of convictions. One of my favorite Christian writers said that it was crucial to distinguish between the individual and the person—the person being the individual when he or she has grown up into the fullness of relationship with others and with God.

Today, we see some theological schools having their conception of God subordinated to scientific principles and subject to the Laws of Nature rather than being, let’s say, to their Creator. Yet others are comfortable with a divide, externalizing God from His Creation and therefore not subject to His Laws of Nature. What is your perspective on this?

For traditional Christians—and in this respect I am certainly one—the Law of God, both in the processes of nature and in the ordering of human affairs, flows from and reflects the Being of God. God is not subject to any external law or force, and so is the source of all law; yet this does not mean that His Law is only the decision of an arbitrary eternal will. He wills in accordance with His own nature; His commands are the free and untrammelled expression of what He is. I think some of the medieval discussions in which Christian, Jewish and Muslim thinkers were all involved bring this out very clearly. All our traditions have some schools or elements that stress divine will and can make it sound arbitrary or irrational; but all also have elements that connect will and divine nature.

Recently we have heard an increasing amount of voices declaring that the God of Muslims is different from the God of Christianity and Judaism. Others continue to underscore that the God of Muhammad is the God of Abraham and of Jesus (peace be upon them all). Within each of the Abrahamic faiths, while there are debates about nuanced differences of the conception of God, there has traditionally been agreement about His being the same Entity. Do you conceive of God as the same Entity across the three monotheistic faiths?

This is a more complex question than it may seem to be. Certainly, when I look at the way in which God is understood in the Abrahamic faiths, it seems to be the same kind of being that is spoken of—eternal and free and purposive, just and compassionate, sovereign over the universe. We all agree about the divine nature, it seems, and we have much of the same history in common. But between the three monotheistic faiths, there is evident disagreement about how to speak of the divine person. For Christians, it is impossible to speak of—or speak to—God without the acknowledgement of the divine agency in Jesus bestowing upon us through the divine Spirit the freedom to call God our Father. We think in terms of God as first a source of life, but then also as an eternal response to that source—both a giving and a receiving within God’s life, with Jesus Christ as the historical embodiment of that everlasting response of loving devotion to the everlasting gift—and also as the “overflowing” of that divine loving mutuality in the Spirit. And so we speak of God in “three persons”—a very misleading phrase in many respects, as it doesn’t mean that God is three individuals, or that the “real” God is accompanied by lesser beings. It’s more that God is eternally actual in a threefold movement and interrelation, like a chord of music. So I recognize that we are speaking about the same divine nature; yet when we pray a real difference appears. It is this closeness in thinking about what God is and the difference in how we understand our relation with Him and the character of His personal action that makes the dialogue so absorbingly interesting and challenging. I have several times had to speak about basic Christian doctrines in a Muslim context, and the great challenge is to see if I can make what I’ve just been saying at all intelligible to the philosophically educated Muslim. That for me is an enlargement and enrichment in itself.

Since 9/11, Muslims have been feeling increasingly beleaguered. We, the mainstream Muslims, seem to be caught between on one side the indiscriminate collateral damage befalling us from the War on Terror and on the other the efforts of extremists within Islam to define themselves and their religion in one-dimensionally hateful terms. Indeed the War on Terror and the extreme Islamists seem to feed off each other, consuming the middle ground in the process. Many attempts have been made by mainstream Muslims such as with the Amman Message without “moving the needle” or getting noticed more broadly. In your view, what other actions can mainstream Muslims take to help unwind this destructive process and make their voices heard?

I think it is important to help people understand that many Muslim “radicals” are those who have largely turned their backs on the actual tradition and history of Islam, repudiating the whole history of interpretation and discovery—very much like the Christian fundamentalists who behave as if there had never been a history of reading and discussing the Bible. But I think also—and I hope I speak with proper caution and humility here—it matters that the rest of the world hears Muslim voices that are not trapped in a narrow self-image as victims. The reduction of a whole complex set of global conflicts to a series of variations on one theme, the victimisation of the Islamic world, leaves many outside Islam baffled and frustrated. Granted the absolutely un-deniable fact of huge anti-Muslim prejudice and the rhetoric of some in power in the West, the truth is surely more complex. Both the Western Christian and post-Christian world and the Islamic world in the West and East need to be self-critical about their history; both need to get out of reactive and resentful postures. And, to go back to an earlier answer, the active presence of the young and educated Muslim in public debate and in the processes of education and opinion forming is going to be crucial to moving beyond the reactive rhetoric of mutual blame.

What ought to be the role of religion in British public life in the 21st century? Is the emphasis upon restating core Christian values as the bedrock of the nation’s spiritual inheritance, or is it upon an inclusive Christian leadership of public religion in an increasingly multifaith Britain?

We need to be clear that communities of faith are primary contributors to the health and openness of society; and that means that we must continue to challenge the widespread idea, connected to the French variety of secularism, that religion should never be seen in public. A sensible political order, I believe, is one in which the state secures the liberty of religious groups and their freedom of conscience, but also engages them in collaborative projects, educational and social, for the common welfare. In an historically Christian country, where the Church has a specific public identity and therefore a particular sort of “leverage”, it’s natural that the Church should be in something of a coordinating role here: the fact that the Church of England has representation in every community still means something. But this has to be fleshed out—as in practice it regularly is—by the Church being willing to act at times as the defender or advocate of religious minorities in the public sphere. I’m a bit cautious about the language of promoting “Christian values” if those values are seen as exclusive of others or as denying what we actually share with the other faiths. But equally I’m not keen on a pluralism that pretends we haven’t got a largely Christian history or that refuses to use the resources of the mainstream churches creatively in our public life. A culture that recognises its dominantly Christian roots as a matter of history certainly doesn’t have to be hostile towards minorities or ideologically oppressive. I think we have a reasonably good balance in the UK about this; the threat is from a historically and religiously illiterate secularism which imagines that, if we are a “multifaith” society, this means that all religions are equally irrelevant and equally to be tolerated as private eccentricities. Neither the Church nor Islam can regard this as the right way forward. I am strongly committed to the idea that the Church has to use its resources for the sake of all communities of faith in Britain, so that all may play their proper role in public. The support that has been forthcoming from many Christians for Muslim schools is a good example.

As the Vatican has done previously, will the Church of England seek to state in clear theological terms the relationship between Islam and Christianity, as it rightly does quite naturally with Judaism, in the 2008 Lambeth Conference?

­As it happens, we have been working on a document that is meant to clarify our interfaith vision, and we hope it will be discussed at the Lambeth Conference. It is important to remember, though, that the Anglican Church worldwide is a far less institutionally unified body than the Roman Catholic Church, so that we don’t generally have completely binding statements. The important work is done by the international networks of the Anglican Communion, in this case our interfaith network, which seeks constantly to build relations and strengthen local cooperation.

Is the government’s rebalancing of its relationship with British Muslims, in counter-terrorism terms in autumn 2006, as stated by the Minister for Communities and Local Government, unbalancing relations between faith communities in the UK? And if so, how ought the Church of England and the other faith communities respond?

I’d guess that a British Muslim, faced with some of the governmental language of recent months and years, might well feel that he or she was being treated as primarily a problem, and that they might equally feel that it would be welcome to be regarded as simply a particular kind of citizen among other kinds of citizens. I wish we could get to this point. And I’d like the government to think about how it positively encourages Muslim citizenship not only by worrying about it as an issue but by providing—as the Prime Minister has said—a social and international vision that people of deep moral and religious conviction think worth supporting.

Without wishing to appear boastful, the readership of Islamica Magazine tends to be open-minded, intellectually discerning and spiritually aware. Beyond the scope of your answers to the foregoing questions, what would be your most important message to them?

I’d refer back to the very first answer. Carry on contributing to public debate at every level about these basic issues of common moral vision in society; don’t be afraid of self-criticism; in every context, ask, “How do I, with others of different conviction, help to build an inhabitable human neighborhood?”

Do you believe that the Common Word document recently endorsed by 138 leading Muslim clerics and leaders could be instrumental in promoting reconciliation between Muslims and Christians?

The Common Word statement is a welcome contribution, not least because it quotes Jewish and Christian scripture directly and so tries to engage other faiths in their own terms and on their ground, which is essential to proper dialogue. I’m sure it will open some new doors in constructive relations between us.

Dr Rowan Williams was Professor of Theology at Oxford; he was made Bishop of Monmouth and then Archbishop of Wales before becoming Head of the Anglican Church as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002. He has written works on theology, spirituality and poetry- Islamica Magazine

by Khaled Fouad Allam

The attacks on the Twin Towers perpetrated by Al Qaeda, the massacre of the children in Beslan by a Chechen fundamentalist group, and the massacres in Algeria for which the GIA has claimed responsibility – are these a product of Islam as such, or are they a product of the present historical condition of Islam? Is violence really genetically embedded in Islam?

Pope Benedict XVI tried to respond to this serious and disturbing question from his former place as a professor in Regensburg by citing suras and verses from the Qur’an, and stories about the prophet Mohammed.

The Holy Father cited a famous verse from the longest sura in the Qur’an, the ‘Cow’ sura, composed of 286 verses. This is a sura which – to clarify the pope’s assertion – is not part of the suras of Mecca, but rather of those of Medina: “No coercion in matters of faith.”

It must be recalled that the Qur’an is composed of 114 chapters called suras, and is subdivided internally according to the origin of the suras. The suras called Meccan correspond to the beginning of the Qur’anic revelation, and depict a solitary Prophet, one without the awareness of forming a community, a development that would take place from 622 until 632, the date of the Prophet’s death.

In the Medina period, in which the first Islamic community was structured, the revelation continues. For Mulims, this means that prophecy continues to inspire the community. The suras called Medinan are the ones that structured Islam from the juridical, political, and social point of view, and are of a less eschatological character than the Meccan ones.

The difference between the Meccan and Medinan suras is, therefore, extremely important, because various debates on this point have arisen within Islam. For example, a few years ago a famous Sudanese theologian and intellectual, Mohammed Taha, asserted that the Medinan suras, which are the most political suras of the Qur’an, correspond to the mental and psychological context of seventh-century Islam, and that the prophet Mohammed, never having seen the definitive compilation of the text of the Qur’an, would probably not have included the Medinan suras in the Qur’an, but in another text.

Following these assertions, the Sudanese regime condemned Taha to death for apostasy, and he was hung in 1983.

The Holy Father is thus bringing up an immense problem concerning the Qur’an’s real position toward the question of violence.

The problem is truly complex, because the text of the Qur’an cannot be thought of like an ordinary book: it requires a special approach to be clarified and interpreted. The famous Averroes, in his treatise entitled “The harmony of religion and philosophy,” asserted: “There exist in the divine law, the Qur’an, passages that have an ulterior meaning, which men must interpret through rational demonstration, and cannot be interpreted literally.”

The tool of commentary on the Qur’an is essential. Already centuries ago, classical theology had brought to light the contradictions within the Qur’an among verses that cancel each other out, and resolved the issue by asserting that when two principles contradict each other, the positive principle overrides the negative one.

The famous verse cited by pope Benedict XVI can be read according to two opposite interpretations.

According to classical theology – and according to theology of the liberal strain – this verse should override all the verses that incite violence.

But today, in a situation characterized by the monopoly of neofundamentalist theology, it is that verse which is in fact abrogated, in the sense that many don’t take it into account at all, like the Salafi, for example.

The problem is therefore not so much what the Qur’an contains, but what inspiration human beings draw from it, from revelation. Because all societies produce violence, but not all of them resolve the question of violence using the same methods.

Christianity, for instance, as brilliantly demonstrated by René Girard, resolves the problem of violence through the figure of Jesus Christ and his crucifixion.

But in Islam, everything rests upon the ability of individual human beings to choose between good and evil, as a verse in the Qur’an says: “God does not change men’s way of life until they first change.”

But for this to happen, the Qur’an must be put back into the hands of every Muslim – which means breaking the terrible chain of fundamentalism that proclaims itself the only bearer of the truth.
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[The articlet was published on September 13 in the most important liberal Italian newspaper, La Repubblica. Its author is Khaled Fouad Allam, an Algerian-born Italian resident, professor of Islamic studies at the universities of Trieste and Urbino, and widely read and listened to in Catholic circles. The date of this commentary should be noted. The article was published the morning after the pope’s address in Regensburg, when much of the Muslim world had not yet unleashed the onslaught of invective and violent acts that would fill the newscasts of the following days, and force the Islamic voices not in agreement to be silent.]  –

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/87841?&eng=y

Alhaj’s note:

Emphasis is Alhaj’s and Allah knows better.

Extract:

The lecture on “faith and reason“, with references ranging from ancient Jewish and Greek thinking to Protestant theology and modern Secularity, focused mainly on Christianity and what Pope Benedict called the tendency to “exclude the question of God” from reason. Islam features in a part of the lecture: the Pope quoted strong criticism of Islam, which he described as being of a “startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded”.

In three paragraphs at the beginning of the speech, Pope Benedict quoted from and discussed an argument made by the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in a 1391 dialogue with an “educated Persian” (who remained unnamed in the Pope’s lecture), as well as observations on this argument made by Theodore Khoury, the scholar whose edition of Manuel II’s dialogues the Pontiff was referencing. Pope Benedict used Manuel II’s argument in order to draw a distinction between the Christian view, as expressed by Manuel II, that “not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature”, and an Islamic view, as explained by Khoury, that God transcends concepts such as rationality, and his will, as Ibn Hazm stated, is not constrained by any principle, including rationality.

In part of his explication of this distinction, Pope Benedict referred to a specific aspect of Islam that Manuel II considered irrational, namely the practice of forced conversion. Specifically, the Pope (making clear that they were the Emperor’s words, not his own) quoted Manuel II Palaiologos as saying: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only bad and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The Pontiff was comparing the Islamic teaching that “There is no compulsion in religion” with what Pope Benedict described as the newer teaching that allowed “spreading the faith through violence”; the latter teaching being offered by Pope Benedict as an unreasonable one, on the belief that religious conversion should take place through the use of reason. His larger point here was that, generally speaking, in Christianity, God is understood to act in accordance with reason, while in Islam, God’s absolute transcendence means that “God is not bound even by his own word”, and can act in ways contrary to reason, including self-contradiction. At the end of his lecture, the Pope said, “It is to the great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.”

Key paragraphs

Quoted below are the three paragraphs (of sixteen total) which discuss Islam in Pope Benedict’s lecture:

“I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on — perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara — by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur’an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between — as they were called — three “Laws” or “rules of life”: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur’an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point — itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole — which, in the context of the issue of “faith and reason”, I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that sura 2, 256 reads: “There is no compulsion in religion”. According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”. The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood — and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: “For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.” Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Muslim R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.^{[4] “}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_XVI_Islam_controversy

Note:

Emphasis is Alhaj’s