Eight years ago I was living in North Africa with my family. One particular afternoon in September in a downtown cafe with local friends is still etched in my memory. Sipping strong Turkish coffee, I recall being transfixed by images beamed live on CNN of the Twin Towers burning on the cafe tv screens. Normally, the tv images would be of US rap stars or the likes of Britney Spears grinding away. That day, the crowded cafe full of Muslim students was watching a global catastrophe unfold that had more than a hint of Hollywood spectacle to it. My memories are of complete confusion and disorientation: posters of pop starlets and European football teams provided the backdrop to this startling vision of Western might crumbling. As first one tower fell, and then the next, the cafe hummed with cheers. I, the lone European, Christian stood utterly stunned.
We're accustomed to see this as a seminal global event. It was certainly seminal for me personally. Ever since that day I've felt a drive, yes, a calling, to try and give words and actions to a Christian engagement with Islam. These Muslims were, and continue to be here in Birmingham, friends and neighbours. But they are friends and neighbours carrying a weight of history: a weight that needs to be shared by Western Christians committed to understand and to love.
I'm currently reading a superb book by Scott M. Thomas, "The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations". He makes a good stab at formulating reasons for the impact of religion on the world stage in recent years. Contrary to recent publications that suggest "God is Back", as if he'd gone away somewhere in the meantime (those particular authors wrote a leader in The Economist in 2000 entitled "God is Dead"!), it is the irretrievable breakdown of secular modernity that is beginning to expose the fallacy that religion fades away as technology grows. Scott Thomas quotes Garry Wills saying wonderfully: "The learned have their superstitions, prominent among them is a belief that superstition is evaporating".
So, the challenge to the church is to demonstrate that the Christian faith is a belief that makes a difference for good in the world. As Luke Bretherton of King's College London said recently, though, all religions have got their share of mad aunts locked in the cupboard somewhere. Our own history is littered with sorry tales; tales that Muslims in particular know only too well.This Sep 11th then, I'll light a candle, pray for my Muslim friends, pray for peace, and pray that that we might all discover the fullness of the Prince of Peace: our true hope.
