Mediating Christianity and Islam (review)

Abstract

Mediating Christianity and Islam (review) Amin Malak Thomas F. Michel : A Christian View of Islam: Essays on Dialogue : Edited by Irfan A. Omar . Foreword by John Esposito Maryknoll , New York : Orbis Books , 2010 . 216 pp. ISBN 978‐1‐57075‐860‐7 . This is a significant and timely book worthy of the attention and admiration of Christians and Muslims concerned with interfaith dialogue. In this collection of fifteen essays, Thomas Michel offers a highly learned reading of some of the convergence points between these two great world religions, Christianity and Islam. His writings about Islam come with impressive credentials of a PhD from the University of Chicago in Islamic studies, forty years of pastoral service as a Jesuit in several Muslim countries, and a rich record of books and articles focused on mutual theological aspects of Christianity and Islam. The book’s fifteen chapters have been previously published as separate pieces over almost three decades. As such, the book lacks an organizing structure, but it does have a coherent unifying argument: the different topics covered connect and correlate integratively building up toward an enlightened discourse about Islam and its theological tenets. The book covers a wide range of issues such as creating a culture of dialogue, Biblical and Islamic perspectives on Hagar, Christian and Muslim perspectives on fundamentalism, Jesuit writings on Islam in the seventeenth century, and Qur’anic approach to ecology. Throughout, Michel writes not as an academic scholar, although he is eminently capable of that as manifested in some of the lengthily footnoted chapters, but as a public intellectual seriously engaged in building bridges of understanding between the two faith traditions and locating them in areas of mutual concerns. Thus, his emphasis in this inspired agenda is to foreground areas of similarities of intent and vision rather than apparent differences: “Muslims are fellow believers,” he writes, “who claim, like us, spiritual descent from the faith of Abraham in the One God” (189). In the shared spaces that Michel insightfully foregrounds and delineates, the reader is delighted to envision convergence not conflict, harmony not hostility, peace not prejudice. Nevertheless, memories, both old and recent, interfere in this dialogical process, especially with monumental events and concomitant injustices such as the Crusades, the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula, and the European colonialism of the last two centuries. Concerning colonialism’s suspect, supremacist slogans, such as “the white man’s burden” and “la mission civilizatrice,” Michel suggests sagely that they should be avoided when engagingly pursuing a meaningful dialogue. As well, we should all avoid exclusivist claims of possessing the truth. In such a noble, if complex, pursuit, Michel looks for parallel practices, rituals, and figures that illustrate the closeness of the two faiths. As an illustration of Michel’s pursuit of commonalities and shared values, he skillfully parallels the Muslims’ love for the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians’ love for Jesus: “Muhammad is not only a model of behavior, but a much loved exemplar. The deep affectionate love that Christians have toward Jesus expressed, for example, in Sacred Heart devotions, or toward Mary and the saints finds its parallel in the human affection that Muslims feel toward Muhammad” (186). Likewise, he highlights the ethics of pardon and peace as demonstrated in the writings of the Kurdish theologian from Turkey, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi in his magnum opus Risale‐i Nur, and the proclamations of Pope John Paul II. Both converge in their call for peace and forgiveness. While Nursi calls for forgiveness toward all those who have wronged one as a means to inner peace, John Paul II approaches peace through the two pillars of justice and forgiveness. Movingly and generously, Michel sums up his evaluation of Nursi by stating that “along with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Said Nursi must be seen as one of the twentieth century’s great exponents of nonviolent resistance” (115). On the other hand, Michel underscores the error of the commonly used term “Islamic fundamentalism.” He argues cogently that this coinage “does not have the same precision as when it is applied to Christians, but is rather a catch‐all for many diverse and often contradictory movements and interpretations of Islam” (98). Instead, Michel uses the term...