While addressed to a specific group of Christian leaders, the fact that it is an open letter widely disseminated by the world media means that world public opinion is another intended audience. Furthermore, certain terminology in the letter, as well as the choice of Qur`anic quotations cited, suggest that the letter is also intended for the global Muslim audience. It is not unusual in Islamic discourse for different messages to be delivered to the different audiences. This is permitted by the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya (dissimulation) which allows Muslims to practise deception in certain circumstances. It appears that the Christian vocabulary of the letter is intended to guide Christian readers to the erroneous conclusion that Islam and Christianity are basically identical religions, focusing on love to God and to the neighbour. The hidden messages for Muslims are contained in the many polemical quotations from the Qur`an.
Now I confess that I'm worried that we allow taqqiya to be an excuse for being distrustful, but then even with that not factored in, it is not unreasonable to ask whether there are not nuances apparent to Muslim readers that would not translate well into our habitual fields of discourse. And I can think of many situations where messages are being composed and then read on more than one level, some of them significantly different.
I was pleased to see this response calls attention to something I have noted before in relation to 'Abrahamic Faiths' fora; that of marginalising religious communities that do not belong to Qur'anically acknowledged religions. So,
The letter looks at the world as if comprised only of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. There is no mention of other world religions like Hinduism, Buddhism etc., or indeed of secular and agnostic or atheist people in the world. This may reflect the traditional Islamic classification of non-Muslims into Jews and Christians on the one hand, and "infidels" or "pagans" on the other hand. While Jews and Christians are seen in Islam as worthy of a place in an Islamic society, albeit with a second-class status, infidels are not considered to have any place at all (indeed, according to classical Islam, they should be killed if they will not convert to Islam). This is perhaps why "infidels" have been marginalised in this letter.
Just so, we will need to be wary of colluding with this agenda. We need also to challenge constantly and firmly a further tacit assumption of the open letter.
... a basic fallacy of this letter is the view that Western states are basically Christian and that, when pursuing their national interests, religious Christian motivations are foremost in their minds. This is a very common Muslim misconception, and is an indication of how much more important their faith is to an "average" Muslim than to an average westerner
What may be even more concerning is the possible 'hidden' message/agenda of some of the letter:
many Muslim readers would detect in the very act of selectively quoting from the Qur`an a hidden message that this is not a letter of appeasement, but a call to Islam in the tradition of Muhammad and his Companions and of the early Caliphs. There the call is always to submit to Islam and to accept Islamic dominance.
For instance, the fatiha (sura 1 of the Qur`an) is quoted and presented as the greatest chapter in the Qur`an, reminding humans of their duty of praise and gratitude to God for his mercy and goodness. Included are verses 6 and 7:
Guide us upon the straight path. The path of those on whom is Thy Grace, not those who deserve anger nor those who are astray. [emphasis added]
In Muslim interpretations and commentaries on these verses, it is explained that those who deserve God`s anger are the Jews, while those who are astray are the Christians. Indeed, the Saudi-sponsored English translation of the Qur`an by Hilali and Khan explicitly incorporates this interpretation in the very text of the Qur`an:
Guide us to the Straight Way. The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the Way) of those who earned your anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians).
Most Westerners, reading the verse as quoted in the letter, simply do not realise what it means. But for Muslims reading the letter, the meaning is clear: a call to Christians and Jews to avoid God`s anger and judgement by accepting Islam.
Presumably that's how they can show unity by keeping the Wahhabis and their more radical offshoots on board. We need constantly to remember that certain central ideas about religion that we have are actually basically Christian and don't necessarily find equivalents in other faith-systems. A common misconception in the West is that all religions teach love of neighbour. While there is a level at which this is true, it is also misleading. For example,
The letter suggests that loving your neighbour is a concept common to both Islam and Christianity. But it ignores the fact that the Muslim concept of love for your neighbour can only operate within the limited scope of shari`a. Therefore in Islam there can be no absolute love for all humans, as in Christianity.
Westerners also tend to think that Love is central in ideas of God (even atheists for whom it forms a major plank of the argument against God but which would be sublimely unconnective with Islamic conceptions where the retort would be pretty much, "Tough, deal with it") but this is also not necessarily so. As the appendix notes;
God`s love is the central theme of the New Testament and therefore of the Christian faith. Love is God`s main attribute and very essence. The main message of the New Testament is that God is love in His very being, and that this love was revealed in Jesus Christ and His supreme act of love, His self-giving in his sacrificial death on the cross (John 3:16; 1 John 4:7-12).
In Islam, however, the focus is on submission, so love is never more than one of many minor themes. Modern Muslim apologists in the West sometimes assert that God is a God of love. This is not a concept which traditional orthodox Islam would accept, but appears to be a modern stance of adaptation to the environment they find themselves in. ... According to Islamic teaching, God`s essence and nature cannot be known. Therefore a statement like "God is love" (which appears in the Bible, 1 John 4:8,16) would be theologically wrong in classical Islam.
I wonder, in fact, how far Muslim converts from the West actually understand this in many cases. I also wonder whether there is a subliminal awareness that an implication of 'God is love' is plurality within unity and that is what is found hard. The appendix also alerts us to a major dissenting tradition within (but only just) Islam.
It was left for Islamic mysticism (Sufism) to try to redress the balance and introduce the theme of love into Islam. Sufism offered an escape from the dry and intellectual legalism of the orthodox Islamic teachers and scholars. It focused instead on the human yearning for an authentic personal experience of God. Sufism taught that this experience could be had by a spiritual interpretation of the Qur`an aimed at finding its secret meaning, and by the disciplines of asceticism, repetition of God`s names, breath control, meditation and trance.
And this is a hopeful thing for peace, since it is this tradition, with the kind of distinctive emphases just mentioned, that sidesteps the harsher aspects which become so clear with Wahhabism. Not surprising then that the major and bitter divide in Islam is between the Wahhabis and the Sufis; forget Sunni and Shi'a ...
Barnabas Fund: RESPONSE TO OPEN LETTER AND CALL FROM MUSLIM RELIGIOUS LEADERS TO CHRISTIAN LEADERS, 13 OCTOBER 2007
PS I've discovered from my stats that this post has been picked up by another site and there are comments about some of the issues from it over there.
No comments:
Post a Comment