Christianity, the Enlightenment and Islam

I've already noted a while back that this whole thing with "Three Faiths' fora" and Abrahamic religions is not something we, as Christians, should jump at, in fact we should suspect, perhaps, the Islamic theological perspective that they favour. So it's a bit interesting to have a different kind of 'co-belligerency' proposed here: Christianity, the Enlightenment and Islam - ABC Religion & Ethics - Opinion:

"Ayaan Hirsi Ali ... concluded her recent article on the ABC's Religion and Ethics website, 'Seeking God, but finding Allah,' by praising Pope Benedict XVI's stance on Islam and calling for an alliance between atheists and what she calls 'enlightened Christians' in their struggle against a common foe."

It's interesting to see such a proposal from an Atheist camp. However, despite my skepticism about Abrahamic faiths as a way of divvying up the religious universe, I'm not so sure about this one. I'm not sure that 'co-belligerency' is a good way to go. It smacks of Girard's mimetic violence thing and I think that it probably is not the way of Christ.

The article itself -which simply starts with Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a foil- goes on to give a lot of good reasons why we should both look askance at the proposal and also give it some consideration. Perhaps we should expect that from the likes of John Millbank. There's also some good observations about the similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam which are the kind of thing that 'beginners' in the endeavour would do well to look over. Altogether a nice, brief and helpful reflection.