Distinctly Welcoming

Patrick Sookhdeo and the Barnabas Fund - some reflections

I've been out and about for several days, doing teaching for trainee ordinands in St Albans and Bristol and speaking to some postgrad students in Oxford. It's been very stimulating and I've found a great deal of openness to a constructive engagement with Islam in Britain. At the same time, I'm realising that the mental furniture of so many Christians is decked out with threatening shapes of what Islam is and aspires to be through the publications and articles emanating from the Barnabus Fund. I write this post with genuine hesitation, because Patrick Sookhdeo is a fellow Christian and I want to honour and respect his heart for mission and his concern for the persecuted church; the persecution of which is an uncomfortable reality in so many Muslim countries and even within Muslim communities here in the UK. Patrick speaks with some learning and from the hard realities of being a Muslim convert to the Christian faith. But there is a big "but" coming.....

Only the other day, I received a Barnabas Fund email newsletter offering a critique of the "A Common Word" document that had been sent by a number of international Muslim leaders to Christian leaders as a statement of the basis of dialogue at the end of last year. The tone and Christian theology underlying Patrick's conclusions to this effort at dialogue, very typical of his writings, are what I'd like to unpack. Anyway, deep breath, I'll respond to several specific points in the Barnabas Fund newsletter, "A Common Word: a path to progress?":

1.  Patrick begins by highlighting the tale of Hartford Seminary in the US which, so he  says, was originally a missionary training college with "good Calvinist foundations" and now has a student body that is  35% Muslim and a centre for Islamic chaplaincy training, all because it started on a path of understanding Islam and seeking dialogue between Christians and Muslims. The lesson seems to be that any form of dialogue is a slippery slope to syncretism, compromise and the watering down of truth. I take as my model Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected, "full of grace and truth" who "heard us", listened, incarnated amongst us, took on our humanity but also challenged us. Dialogue is the essence of the life that is "God with Us".....and, yes, he's right, it's risky, but it's part of what we should do and be.
2. The Barnabas Fund response does highlight some genuine inadequacies in the "A Common Word" document. There are major omissions (what about Judaism?, what about the doctrine of apostasy? is "love of neighbour a true pillar of Islamic teaching?) but it is not intended to be "the final word": it is a start, a preliminary to some needed and significant discussions. Are we as Christians to be mean-spirited, cynical, arrogantly waiting for "them to get themselves in order" before we engage in relationship? Again, the way of Christ would, surely, say no.
3. Patrick provides a scathing critique of a "Yale Document" response to A Common Word which can be found on the A Common Word site and has been signed by a host of evangelical leaders and theologians. To suggest that some of those signatories are no longer trinitarian because they quote "The New Testament" as opposed to "The Holy Bible" and refer to "the Prophet Muhammad" out of respect to their Muslim audience is more than a little outrageous. The letter does not purport to be a deep and meaningful theological response (read Daniel Madigan's letter if you want to see the best of those) but a statement of intent and goodwill.
4. The practice of "taquiyya" is invoked by Patrick. This is the Arabic principle of dissimulation, of  presenting a false image to those in power in the furtherance of Islam. It is a doctrine that has a basis in Islamic history and is often used by the Barnabas Fund to cloak the efforts of progressive Muslims with a veneer of suspicion and deceit. Whilst recognising the reality that exists within some Muslims, brandishing this term about actually mitigates against the vulnerability that Christians ought to bring to relationships and that Patrick highlights as so different to the Muslim faith. To beat people with doctrinal truths whilst failing to embody them makes us, at best, hypocrites and at worst agents of division.

At the end of the day, the message from Patrick is "here be monsters": back off, don't trust, and until they prove themselves worthy, do not give any ground to Muslims. The Jewish philosopher Leo Strauss, writing in the 1930's was posed with the problem of what being a Jew meant in Nazi Germany. To survive, you had two choices: assimilation or emigration in order to set up a new Zion. The first option meant that you were denying everything you stood for as a Jew. The second option meant that you betrayed all that it was to be a Jew because you could not assert and grab what could only be received as a gift from God. As we reflect on our Christian response to Islam in Britain, taking in controversial issues like the planned public calls to prayer in Oxford, covered by Ruth Gledhill, we face a similar tension. How do we present the Christian faith in the public square, without falling into the trap of losing the very sense of what it means to be a follower of Christ?

Patrick concludes his letter with the suggestion that the naivety of western Christians is actually exacerbating the suffering of Christians in Muslim majority lands. Let's hear the voices of the suffering church, campaign, speak out and pray.....But let's also be vulnerable and loving, without fear or favour to our Muslim neighbours. Any other route is just not of Christ.

Things are Never as Simple as they Seem

The late lamented Joe Strummer once said in an interview, "I'm smart enough to know how stupid I am". As I wade into my PhD reading, trying to get a handle on "Anglican trends in political theology" (.....alternatively, what the CofE has thought over the years about its relationship to the rest of society), it's been the most unnerving experience. You embark on any study with the usual amount of baggage, preconceptions, prejudices, hoping to find things that confirm what you already think. Most annoyingly, you end up discovering ideas and approaches that challenge how you viewed things and, sacre bleu, changing (?).

Quoting another icon of the punk era, Paul Weller sang, "The more I see, the more I know, the more I know, the less I understand". I have to confess that the lefty, anti-establishment side of my personality has viewed the church's privilege in society (yes, there's still plenty of it around) with dismay. We must junk all our holds on society and culture and place ourselves intentionally at the edges and on the margins: the church's only authentic influence is when it foregoes power, I might say.

And then I think, and read, and reflect....see the new society of Revelation coming out of the testimony of the faithful, believe and hope that even, yes, the political structures of a nation can be redeemed......And it gets just a tad bit more complicated, (reading Oliver and Joan O'Donovan at present if you want some clues). It's a dilemma that I believe needs airing in the emerging church. In all the talk of deconstruction, of renewal, of experimentation, how do we hold onto the church's mission for the entirety of the society? Dare we detach the micro missional community from the macro questions of our world? (In that vein, I'm encouraged to hear that Brian McLaren, all-round good-guy American writer and church leader, is addressing an audience at the Davos Forum in Switzerland this week).

So, with a sheepish smile to my anabaptist friends, I do wonder whether there is something about the church being a voice for the nation: a benchmark for public services, politics, accountability and economics. The knotty problem that I have to wrestle with over the next few years is how it ought to do that in the midst of a diversity of faith allegiances. Finding the answer in the suffering Christ is where I suspect I'll find a renewed convergence with anabaptists.

Is Evangelism a Sin?

I hope you like the snappy suit and groomed profile of the evangelist beaming at you here! Well, evangelism takes a whole range of guises and, not unlike that closely associated word "evangelical", is in danger of becoming a dirty word in our plural age. On Tuesday 10th June, Global Connections are organising a day seminar looking at aspects of evangelism and ethics as they arise in various contexts where the church may be challenged to think again. We have a stellar line-up and, if budgets allow, may even arrange for white silk suits to be worn by each speaker!
Ben Edson: will be reflecting on the particular context of spiritual searchers and how evangelism can have any substance in a pic'n mix consumerist, plural context.
Robin Thomson of South Asian Concern: will consider the current efforts by some senior Hindu leaders to ban evangelism as they seek to enforce pluralism as the only doctrine, as they see it, that can sustain peaceful coexistence between faiths.
A Muslim background Christian will talk of her experiences of conversion and the ethics of evangelism amongst Muslims when the costs to new converts, their families and communities, can be so high.
Andrew Smith of Youth Encounter will be reflecting on our language of evangelism and conversion as it addresses the ethics of work amongst children
Rev Dr John Corrie, lecturer at Trinity College, Bristol, will offer a summing up biblical reflection that offers a way forward for ethical evangelism in our plural age.

It's a cheap day, £15 all in, at the headquarters of CPAS in Warwick, the West Midlands. See details here: go to the Forums section, into "Faith to Faith" once you have joined Global Connections. Big issues for the church in mission....there'll be times for discussion and a panel debate. Be there!

An Audience with A Grand Mufti

The other evening I attended a local mosque to hear the "Grand Mufti of Bosnia", Dr Mustafa Ceric. The school kid in me was quite pleased to meet a Grand Mufti; it's one of those titles that is as snigger-inducing as it is mysterious. I found out later that a Mufti is someone who has the authority to pronounce a fatwah so I ought to be more careful.

Anyway, this senior Muslim cleric was visiting Birmingham as part of the programme of "Radical Middle Way" events to encourage sincere and committed Muslim faith robustly engaged in the plurality of Britain. Dr Ceric was fascinating: advocating personal piety in prayer and reading of the Qur'an, shari'ah law for governance in Muslim family and financial matters and thirdly, the exercise of reason in a confident encounter with the rest of society.

One neat observation on his part was that "Muslims like each other but have no respect for one other. Non-Muslims don't like each other but respect each other". In essence, he was saying that Muslims need to be credible in a society where you are valued by your learning and your productiveness. It is the combination of Muslim unity coupled with the use of wisdom and rationalism that will make them a force for good in wider Europe, so he says.

It's the kind of stuff that is relevant to the discussions on no-go areas. Here is a Muslim voice, speaking to a conservative, non-academic mosque community, and challenging Muslims that their faith ought to be outward looking and be able to learn from non-Muslims without needing to compromise. The issue is real, but there is hope in voices like Mustafa Ceric for the wider good. As Christians in Britain, and in the world, dare we pray for Muslims, that they may find a way forward; help them in this process so that the church might be a blessing to all? As hordes of teenage Muslims, in their sneakers, baggy trousers and prayer hats filed out in the rain, I wasn't sure how many of them got the references to Weber or even the wider debate to which Ceric's qur'anic references referred to so I remembered that grumpy prophet again: "seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."

No-go areas - digging deeper

I've been pondering awhile on Bishop Michaell Nazir-Ali's comments on "no-go areas" in our inner city created by Muslim communities, and trying to make sense of the range of opinion out there. The issue, not surprisingly, gained some energy in Birmingham where a number of clergy, including our own and the diocesan interfaith adviser published some comments in the local press that have generated their own stir.

The debate is exceedingly complex and is in danger of being held hostage on the one hand to the paralysis of political correctness and on the other to the cultural supremacism of Christendom. The thing is, and this is where Bishop Michael is correct, a debate is needed. My concern is that brandishing words like "no-go" and coupling this with a seeming return to church hegemony in society is no way to deepen the quality of the debate.

What kind of society do we want? Are we happy for Britain to continue apace with ever-widening economic, cultural and religious separation? These questions are vital for the church and for the whole of society. And these questions are not merely social, political and economic. Factors like poverty, housing and education policy all contribute to the vast chasm in the values and aspirations that exists between sections within even one city like Birmingham. In these, non-Muslim communities are arguably more culpable because the motor for such separation is greed (witness the "white-flight" from our city centres, a flight that the church sometimes aids and abets).

However, and this is where I take a gulp, there are some very definite cultural and theological features to much of traditional Islam that give an added dimension of concern to the debate. There is an undercurrent in orthodox Islamic theology that aspires to self-governance and majority and accentuates the need for self-reinforcing communities and to some extent, self-referencing. Care needs to be taken here because this is by no means inevitable nor necessary, but the trajectory of Islamic understanding tends towards separation. At the extreme end of this separation, there are the voices of terrorism and arcane attitudes to women, science and education. There are harsh realities littered among the ideals that do need to be faced. For the vast majority of Muslims in communities like ours in Birmingham, though, the self-referencing provides for mosque worship, halal butchers, family networks and sharia business practices. These, of themselves, are not problematic, but we do need to provide for a for mixing and sharing our stories, for a public square that offers mutual challenge to faith and secular alike that can enhance our contribution to the whole.

Big complex questions. And fab questions for the church. Basically, if we dare to pose these questions to  Muslims and secular multiculturalists, we need to have answered questions about our own contribution to the good of the whole of society. It is perhaps this latter deficiency that Bishop Michael lapses into that undermined so much of his contribution to the debate.

Do I live in a no-go area?

In yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, criticises multiculturalism in the UK and warns of no-go areas dominated by Muslims and governed by shariah law. You can read the article here. Tomorrow, I'll be walking my kids to school in one of the boroughs with the highest concentrations of Muslims in the country. The fact that we will see lots of hijabs, curry houses, Asian sweetshops and a couple of mosques on the way does not make it a no-go area and, frankly, it will be a pleasure for me to be back home after family sojourns in the Gloucestershire countryside.

The bishop's comments highlight just how complex the issue of Muslim presence in the UK is. There are legitimate questions as to the level of interaction between communities; those questions as legitimate for suburban white sink estates and leafy rural villages as much as they are for inner city Muslim communities. Indeed, for some of the local Muslim youth, shopping in downtown Solihull carries its own intimidating freight and potential for "no-go".

And then there are the bishop's references to our "Christian" country: its laws, values and character. I struggle even more here. I recognise a huge amount of Christian influence in Britain, a history that should not be erased from the collective memory, but it is a mixed legacy that is also infused with arrogance, privilege and some significant and good influences from secular modernity (NB - sadly it wasn't Christians who championed equal pay legislation and prohibitions against racial and gender discrimination).

Things aint so clear cut and, sadly, clumsy generalisations like those in the Sunday Telegraph article are in danger of feeding into a xenophobia that has little to do with the gospel we espouse as Christians. Surely a robust Christian faith does not require that  the Christian faith is privileged or that no other faith can be in the public square?

Young British and Muslim

I've just received my copy of Philip Lewis' new book, "Young, British and Muslim". Philip is a lecturer at Bradford University's Centre for Peace Studies, was a mission partner with CMS in Pakistan and is part-time interfaith adviser for the Diocese of Bradford. This book is a must-have for getting a feel for the the issues facing young Muslims in Britain today and takes its cue from a series of interviews with Muslims including their very honest challenges to community leadership. It's well worth getting hold of and even has a foreward by Channel 4 newscaster Jon Snow and recommendations from notable journalists such as Madeline Bunting. Philip is a world-class scholar of Islam and brings his depth of knowledge to provide a respectful but accessible introduction to the subject. Buy it here. And while on the subject, spare a prayer for Pakistan: for peace, for leadership of integrity and courage and for grace on all sides.