Christians can learn from fundamentalist Muslim mistakes

[Guest guest]

On Faith

 

Rev. Mike Young

"But maybe it is time that we look at how we use, and sometimes

misuse, our own biblical heritage to support our current prejudices."

 

 

Saturday, October 2, 2004

 

http://starbulletin.com/2004/10/02/features/onfaith.html

 

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Christians can learn from fundamentalist Muslim mistakes

 

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In the first months after Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Muslim

communities were largely locked down in shock and fear about being

blamed for the terrorist attacks.

 

Many Muslims around the country have commented upon the support and

encouragement they received from outside their Muslim communities,

including statements by President Bush.

 

The standard version is that Islam is not the enemy, but that

Islamist extremists have hijacked at least the religious rhetoric

and the language of the Quran in the service of their terrorist

activities. We have been treated to dueling quotes from the Quran:

peace from one side, jihad and fatwa from another.

 

In the past year, a new phenomenon is emerging: Books, articles, Web

sites and public statements are saying that a "reformation" is

needed in Islam. Not only that, but Western Muslims in societies

with religious freedom and free speech are acknowledging the special

position they are in.

 

The history of interpretation of the Quran is not monolithic. It has

differed from era to era and area to area. In recent centuries,

along with Western colonialism and hegemony (read: oil), the

interpretation has largely become more and more literal and

repressive.

 

The Christian West has a biblical quotation for it: "The letter

kills but the spirit gives life." As we in the West respond to all

of this, it is seductively easy to become self-righteous. As most

Muslims see their religious heritage as one of peace, so we in the

Christian West see our religious heritage as founded in and on the

Prince of Peace.

 

But the truth is that we are haunted by the same demon. Our

religious conservatives have also insisted upon a literal

interpretation of our sacred literature, beginning interestingly

enough at about the same time. But even in more liberal, standard

brand denominations, we priests and pastors have generally not

shared with our congregations the biblical scholarship and exegesis

that we learned in theological school.

 

Witness the surprising popularity (and profits) of the books from

the Jesus Seminars! Our own people were hungry for solid meat and

historical context, for serious biblical scholarship and solid

theology grounded in something more than third-grade Sunday school

lessons.

 

We have helped create, or contributed to, the atmosphere of

literalism in interpreting both our own sacred literature and that

of Islam. It is we who have tended to treat religion as a set of

ideological propositions to be "believed in," rather than a quality

of human and interpersonal relationships to be nurtured.

 

If our Bible is to be read as literally as we seem to assume that

their Quran is, then we must re-examine the Book of Joshua and

finally learn the lesson of the last half of the Book of Jonah. Read

in proof-text fashion, our Bible can be read as the heritage of a

violent and bloodthirsty God.

 

Do most of us read it that way? Of course not! Most of us peruse its

pages for the wisdom and insight to feed healthy, sustaining

community.

 

And so do most Muslims peruse the pages of the Quran!

 

We are in no position to tell Islam how to recover, or discover,

post-colonial understanding of its own sacred literature. That they

must do for themselves. But maybe it is time that we look at how we

use, and sometimes misuse, our own biblical heritage to support our

current prejudices.

 

Perhaps together we might inaugurate a new "Reformation" that frees

us from the tyrannies our respective religious pasts and our

collective conflicted present. We both have our fundamentalists who

are distorting the heritage of our religious geniuses to create

conflict where there might be community.

 

 

 

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The Rev. Mike Young is minister of First Unitarian Church of

Honolulu.

 

 

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