Making Peace with Islam

Isaiah 54:9-15
Luke 13:1-9


The Rev. David Smock

March 11, 2007

In our reading from the Hebrew scripture, God says through Isaiah that God has created a covenant of peace with all God’s people, and that if strife comes it does not come from God. And yet our world is filled with strife; we enjoy little peace. And much of our strife is directed at Muslim countries and even at Muslims in this country. Many Muslims have concluded that the United States is at war with Islam.

Several years ago, this country’s leading academic specialist on international relations, Samuel Huntington from Harvard, wrote a famous article and then turned it into a book called The Clash of Civilizations. He argued that in coming decades the principal fault lines dividing the world will be drawn along lines of religious division and that the most critical and divisive fault line is between nations that are predominantly Christian and those that are predominantly Muslim. He argued that we need to build our defenses against the Muslim world. When it appeared, the book aroused considerable controversy, but soon after 9/11 many in high places called Huntington a prophet whose prophecy was now being played out. They argued that we must contain Islam and take preemptive action against key Muslim states.

To draw such draconian conclusions from 9/11 and its aftermath has been both bad theology and bad diplomacy. As John Wimberly of Western Presbyterian Church asserted in a sermon a year ago, “We have allowed the actions of a few to create a caricature of the many. Associating Muslims with terrorism and extremism is as outrageous as associating Italians with mobsters, the Irish with the IRA or Colombians with drug lords. As Christians, do we think our faith is accurately portrayed by the Crusaders, the witch trials in Salem or an anti-abortion assassin?”

The attitude of the average American has grown increasingly hostile toward Muslims both internationally and domestically. Surveys reveal alarmingly negative stereotypes. And our government has not helped. Although President Bush has periodically made statements that mainstream Islam is not violent, various government bodies routinely impose surveillance on American mosques, infringe on the civil liberties of many Muslims, often bring false charges against Muslims, and impose very onerous restrictions on the travel of American Muslims. Not long ago five Muslim imams were thrown off a flight leaving from Minneapolis because they had prayed before they boarded the plane. Mahdi Bray, a prominent African American Muslim who lives in DC said afterward, “It is a shame that as an African American and a Muslim I have the double whammy of having to worry about driving while black and flying while Muslim.”

You probably read about the Virginia congressman who argued that the first Muslim to be elected to Congress should not be allowed to use a Koran for his swearing into office.

You may also have read about the case of a friend of mine, Prof. Tariq Ramadan, a very prominent Muslim intellectual based in Switzerland. He was active in some of my interfaith dialogue work, and then when he was offered a teaching position in peace studies at Notre Dame University, he was denied a visa and a work permit. More recently he was denied a visa to speak at Columbia University. Ramadan suspects that the reason he has been denied visas is because of his criticism of U.S. policy toward the Middle East. After refusing initially to give an explanation, the Dept. of Homeland Security finally said that Ramadan gave a donation to a Palestinian relief organization which at the time was not on any list of banned organizations.

I have been subjected to harassment by a very well known American Islamophobe who publicly accused me of cavorting with Muslim terrorists, when in fact I was working with very moderate Muslims committed to Islamic reform.

How much do those attacking Islam and Muslims really know about the religion? Islam teaches that Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all people of the Book. Islam recognizes Abraham, Moses, and Jesus to be prophets of God, along with the Prophet Mohammed. There are many references to Jesus in the Koran. Jesus is so highly regarded that Muslims believe that he could not have been crucified because God would not allow one of God’s own prophets to die so ignominiously.

Prof. Richard Bulliet who is an outstanding scholar of Islam at Columbia University has written a book entitled The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization. The argument he makes is complex but it is based on a historical analysis of the intermingling of Christian and Muslim communities in North Africa and Europe during critical periods of history. Medieval Spain was a model of tolerance with a Muslim government generating an inclusive and mutually supportive society for Muslims, Christians, and Jews. In addition he cites the profound impact that Muslim science and scholarship had on the life of Christian Europe. He compares the close similarities between Sufi brotherhoods in Islam with many movements within Christianity. Bulliet concludes by writing, “The case for Islamo-Christian civilization rests more immediately on the need of all Americans to find common ground with our Muslim diaspora communities at a time when suspicion, fear, draconian government action, and demagoguery increasingly threaten to divide us. Islamo-Christian civilization is a concept we desperately need if we are to have any hope of turning an infamous day of tragedy into a historic moment of social and religious inclusion.”

If any of you has read the Koran you will have discovered that parts of the Koran, taken out of context, are off-putting and worrisome. But the same is true of the Bible. When I was a teenager, I thought that the best way to deepen my faith was to read the Bible from cover to cover. I did it twice. I don’t recommend it. As with the Koran, the off-putting passages in the Bible are the exception rather than the rule and they are off-putting when they are lifted out of context.

Some Muslim extremists are violent. Our President likes to talk about Islamic terrorism and Islamic fascism. But we don’t talk about violence in Northern Ireland as Catholic terrorism. We don’t call attacks by extremist Israelis on Palestinians as Jewish terrorism. Moreover, Islam contains deeply rooted convictions and methodologies to promote peace, just like Christianity and Judaism. Islamic peacemaking is a central tenet of the faith.
The Muslim greeting “Salaam” means peace.

There is a general lack of awareness of the degree to which there is ferment within the Muslim world and a movement among moderate Muslims to recapture the initiative. USIP is helping Muslims in places like Pakistan, Palestine, and Indonesia to reinforce moderate Islam and to reform materials taught in some religious schools to strengthen messages of peace and tolerance. We are also contracting with a Sudanese scholar to edit a book which will demonstrate how many traditional Islamic teachings have been misinterpreted by extremists to justify violence and extremism.

The parable that Jesus taught about the fig tree tells us not to cut down the diseased fig tree, but rather to nurture it and feed it with love and nourishment so that it can become more productive. Christians shouldn’t condemn Islam because of the actions of a few extremists. We should join with moderate Muslims to enrich the peacemaking teachings in both of our traditions.

I have gotten to know Farooq Kathwari, who is a Muslim originally from Kashmir. Farooq is also Chairman, CEO, and principal stockholder of the Ethan Allan furniture corporation. He is a strong advocate for interfaith dialogue. He recently gave his prescription for fruitful dialogue between Muslims and Christians. The first requirement is for an absence of coercion with all parties agreeing to treat each other as equals. Second, participants must respond with empathy, to think someone else’s thoughts and feel someone else’s feelings. Third the participants must work to overcome misunderstandings and to build on a genuine desire to work together in partnership.

At the end of February I went with a Muslim colleague to Nigeria where we co-sponsored a high level meeting of Muslim and Christian leaders to encourage them to commit their respective communities to peace and nonviolence during the forthcoming elections. About half of Nigerians are Muslim and half are Christian, and tens of thousands have been killed in inter-communal clashes. At lunch one day during the meeting, an Anglican priest looked across the table at a prominent Muslim and said, “You may be surprised to hear this, but this is the first time that I have sat down with a Muslim in my whole life.” The Muslim looked at me and said “This is the first time in my whole life that I have interacted with a white person.” That is at least the beginning of dialogue and understanding. And it needs to happen in this country as much as in Nigeria.

It is time for our government to back away from its disastrous fixation on the so-called Global War on Terror. The Administration sees terrorists everywhere. There are terrorists, but there aren’t nearly as many as our government claims. Just two months ago our government collaborated with Ethiopia in its invasion of Muslim Somalia because we erroneously confused a conservative Muslim movement with a movement that wanted to export violence and assassination. We wrongly confused Islamism with Jihadism, which are quite distinct and separate.

The war in Iraq has created more terrorists than it has eliminated. And many Muslims around the world view the War on Terror as a global assault against Islam and Muslims, generating more hatred of the U.S. The current effort of the administration to create hysteria about the dangers posed by Iran are producing even more hatred and increasing the likelihood of another bloody conflict.

As John Wimberly said in his sermon, “If we continue to allow our opinion of Islam to be shaped by the most extreme members of that religion, the true nature of Islam will continue to be distorted and anti-Muslim bias will continue to grow. If it does, we doom our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to generations of bloody religious battles.”

The Christian Peace Witness Event at the National Cathedral on March 16 offers an opportunity to prayerfully reclaim our commitment to peace and particularly peace with Islam. If Christians reach out to our Muslim brothers and sisters both in this country and around the world, we can build a worldwide interfaith movement for peace.

Amen.