WHEN YOU ARE DYING:
A Personal Exploration of Life, Suffering and Belief
Additional Chapters
BY PHILIP WETHERELL
Published by Gilead Books at Smashwords
Copyright ©Gabrielle Grace 2011
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Chapter 1: Christians and Other Faiths
Chapter 1: Christians and Other Faiths
In my early years I lived close to the equivalent of today’s Heathrow Airport –Southampton Docks. Excluding ferries to Europe, I was told, over half those who left or arrived on these shores came through Southampton. We knew the day and time by the colour of the funnels seemingly gliding over the rooftops.
I have only one childhood memory of anyone of a different colour and none of other faiths. Immigration had created our society over centuries, but apart from Jews, no significant numbers of other faith communities were known outside small areas of London and other major cities. Southampton was then just a transit point.
I returned to my home town in 1980 as Religious Education Adviser in a team of seven. I ran a Resource Centre and was available to all schools. The team could offer support to the whole city because the reduced population of the now combined city-centre parishes. Bombing made the first impact, followed by mass exodus to new Council Estates – and 15,000 Asians, mainly Hindu and Sikh. One Primary School had just one white family, and was famous for its staged celebration of Divali. The parish sold one of its little-used churches to a Sikh group – the first Church of England worship centre to be sold for use by another faith.
Before then I had worked in Leicester. A local story about the Indian community was that Leicester City Council had advertised in Idi Amin’s Uganda, suggesting that asylum seekers should not come to their city as there was no room for them. Arriving in Britain, they knew the name of a destination other than London. They joined the largely Indian community which lived beyond what was then called the ‘Khyber Pass’ – a flyover which led to a street full of wonderful clothing stores and sweet shops. I got involved because I had sent a donation from a local charity. To avoid accusations of favouring family or home village I was asked to become Secretary of the group managing the fund. I made visits to all the Temples (sadly, mostly old school rooms or dis-used churches rather than anything resembling the glorious ancient temples in India). There was also a fund-raising event in which thirteen different ethnic groups were each given thirty minutes to perform a demonstration dance and then show a simpler version for everyone to join in.
Different parts of many of our cities would give a different experience of other faiths, but even in visits to nearly fifty countries on behalf of church agencies I had little contact with or discussion about other faiths and particularly about Islam. Thirty years after being in Leicester things have changed. Muslims are much more obvious, partly because they reacted to negative public feeling particularly following suicide bombing in London. For seven years from 2000 I caught a bus to work in south-west London and got off opposite Brixton mosque. Every time radical Islamists were in the news I could feel hostility on the response was always an increase in the obvious identity, particularly in the dress of women, of those proud to be Muslims. This increased hostility even more, and it even affected me as I had a beard without a moustache and often wore an Afghan hat – the seat next to me stayed empty for a long time.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has encouraged sensible debate on the relationship between religious and secular or state law by beginning to look at how some aspects of Muslim Sharia Law might be used by agreement among that community in Britain. The Archbishop delivered the lecture in his academic style on how faith communities with their own internal laws and regulations (some already accepted within the British system) should relate to civil law. What got the press going was that he made Sharia Law his example. They largely ignored the text of the lecture given by Rowan Williams, preferring, just as many do when using the Bible, to take words and phrases out of context. The Sun suggested that he had said Muslims could ignore British divorce laws, which was nowhere in the text. The same newspaper implored us to “bash the bishop” and put two page 3 girls g outside Lambeth Palace distributing leaflets against the Archbishop. Even the BBC joined in, by interviewing the same bishop who was already trying to divide the church on the issue of homosexuality (see the chapter on Homophobia). Sadly, this is what we might expect from the media on a day when there was little other news, suggested one of the Archbishop’s supporters on that same BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme. Another comment saw elements in the press of anti-clericalism, anti-intellectualism and racism. Support from the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, also given on the same programme, was largely ignored in the rest of the media. In July 2008 the Lord Chief Justice also suggested Sharia Law could be used that way and a commentator from the Muslim community pointed out that 90 percent of such cases were resolving marital issues and there would be no conflict with national law.
Just two weeks before the Archbishop’s lecture the Pakistan born Bishop of Rochester, on the conservative right of the church, had spoken of no-go areas for non-Muslims, castigating successive governments for failing to promote “an integrated vision for Britain based on its Christian foundations” and suggested the multiculturalism being pushed by a secular government has had disastrous consequences. Again the press picked this up, with the right-wing tabloids in particular enjoying doing so, though no real evidence of his claim appeared.
The debate around multiculturalism, religious pluralism and nationalism is now perhaps more intertwined than ever. But much of the debate we hear is misinformed and based on pre-existing prejudices. Perhaps because they know that their readers are even less informed than them, the media had been as happy to find support for Bishop Nazir-Ali as they were to find opponents to Archbishop Williams. Through supporting a Pakistani-born Christian Bishop they could claim they were not being racist, anti-Islam or anti-immigration. ‘Britishness’ came to the top of the agenda. Being ‘too nice’ to Muslims was, in the mind of most of the press, just another failure at top level.
Faith, behaviour and conflict
The link between Islam and terrorism has been high on their agenda since the destruction of New York’s Twin Towers and the London suicide bombings. Anyone travelling by air in recent years will have experienced the results of increased anxiety about repeat incidents. And it is true that in addition to the terrorism experienced in western societies in USA, UK, and Spain, millions more are affected by radical Islamists; women and girls were particularly discriminated against during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan and many Iraqis are victims too. In the UK too we hear stories of forced marriages and family violence, particularly when a young woman has acted independently in leaving or forming a relationship in a way not acceptable to the wider family. But we can find similar stories within other faith groups. A recent report on at least 5,000 children being isolated, tortured and even killed by Christian groups in Nigeria after being denounced as witches(1) shows there are still elements within Christianity which justify violence (see the chapter ‘War and Peace for more on this). Within Hinduism the scriptures (both the Vedas and Upanishads) are still seen by many to justify, if not to be the cause of, the caste system and the inhuman treatment of the outcast Dalits(2). In Judaism, radical views on possession of the West Bank have also lead to occupation and the ill-treatment of resident Palestinians.
Followers of all faiths can attempt to fulfil their hope for domination through conflict, and ‘faith’ issues at international level have been one the causes of incidents across history. The British civil war in the C17th was an example of dispute between parties of Christians, but the Inquisition in Roman Catholic Europe was different. During the Spanish Inquisition some Spanish Jews fled to Turkey, where even today there is a Spanish-speaking Jewish community. For Jews this was a repeat of their experience at the time of the Crusades, when after their experiences of rape, murder and pillage they, as well as Orthodox Christians, welcomed the Muslim victory. The mixture of religion, culture and politics are not only obvious in the Shia/Sunni divisions in Iraq. In Britain it was difficult from the Reformation until the C19th to be anything but ‘Church of England’ in order to succeed in many roles in society; Jews were discriminated against in much of the Christian world, often connected with local business success but condemned for being the killers of Jesus. A new book by Kevin Spicer(3) deals in depth with the cooperation and support given to Germany’s National Socialism by Roman Catholic clergy. At the same time Japanese Buddhists supported their own government’s militarization. Sikh/Hindu, Sikh/Muslim and Muslim/Hindu conflicts in India have erupted at times in history too, despite the peace that is proclaimed in their religious texts.
No faith is especially condemned by these examples – but they show that distortion of the principles of each faith is equally possible. The distortion can be caused by external but related factors from tribalism and racism to sexism and other examples of ignorant selfishness. But these external factors do not excuse the mis-use of scriptures or other faith principles in acting against other communities.
All conflicts have a mixture of causes, and people of all faiths can turn to scripture to justify their actions, even if there are other real motives. It is important therefore to look at Biblical and other faith documents. One of the similarities between conservatives (this oddly includes ‘radical’ Islamists) of all faiths is that they take selected sections of ancient documents and apply them literally to present times. Some Christians and some Jews justify the occupation of the West Bank from Old Testament words on the presence of God on earth. For them, God will not return again until the ‘Promised Land’ has been reclaimed. Most Christians will disagree and see the promised return in more personal terms. In the Old Testament there are many nationalistic and militaristic sections which suggest Yahweh wants his ‘chosen people’ to destroy other faiths adherents. Deuteronomy 13 tells of how those who have occupied the ‘Promised Land’ should treat “base fellows” who have drawn people to “other gods”: “…you shall inquire and make search and ask diligently; and behold, if it be true and certain that such an abominable thing has been done among you, you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, destroying it utterly, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword” (Deuteronomy 13:14-15). This was something apparently carried out after the success of the siege of Jericho: “And they utterly destroyed all that [was] in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword” (Joshua.6:21). The reasons for people believing that God supported or justified their actions are complex but show the links there were between a people’s origin, their community survival and their faith. They were all part of surviving in an uncertain world. The ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland showed the same links closer to home and our time – the faith identities ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ were used as much as ‘republican’ and ‘nationalistic’ to describe communities which felt isolated and threatened; perhaps relatively higher percentages actually attended church, but both sides over-emphasised selected sections of experience, history and faith to back up their cultural concerns.
Inter-faith in scriptures
A careful look at the words selected to be the ‘scripture’ in all faiths shows a much broader view of relationships as those faiths developed. Muslims would not accept that the Qur’an was ‘selected’, and in Christianity and other faiths too many people believe that words came directly from God. For me it is more helpful to see knowledge and ideas developing but, regardless of views on that, we have to start with what was written.
a. Jewish and Christian scripture
In the case of the Old Testament it is useful to understand that the books were not written in the order they are presented, with the primitive story of Sampson and Delilah among the earliest.
Understanding of god grew slowly, as did that of the way people should deal with each other. The Old Testament is certainly not always negative to outside people, with the story of Hagar perhaps the most significant (Genesis 16:1-16, 21:8-21). This Egyptian slave girl is taken on by Abram to bear children. Tension between her and Sara leads her to flee once she realises she is pregnant. Significantly, she is in Sinai, where laws acquired by the people of Israel included “you shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry” (Exodus.22:21-3). In the words of Trevor Dennis(4), she ”is just one of four people in genesis to hear the language of promise from god’s own lips, and she a woman, a slave, an Egyptian.”(p.67) a great nation will result from the birth of her son, Ishmael. Dennis sees this as one of a number of annunciations in scripture, but then goes further. “for the appearance of Gabriel to marry, Luke took the Hagar of them at least, for Hannah will be another. In one sense, if we compare her to marry, the honour done to Hagar is more remarkable.” (p.69) this is because it is god himself and not an angel, who speaks to Hagar. And this was the abused slave, not of the chosen nationality or faith.
We can find the same in the New Testament too. The good Samaritan is the hero often seen to demonstrate the ‘principles rather than rules’ aspect of Jesus’ teaching, but it is not just about denigrating those religious leaders obsessed with purity. It is also about how.
Someone from a rival group has a better understanding of how god wants us to be. In Luke 7:1-10 we hear of the good centurion who had built a synagogue for the local Jewish community. His servant needed healing but all Jesus was required to do was to “say the word” and he would be healed. Jesus says “I tell you, nowhere, even in Israel, have I found faith like this” (v.9).
Another encounter came from breaking the rules of two faiths. Again it is a Samaritan, but this time a woman at a well who Jesus asks for water. They both break their rules in having a dialogue which leads to a proclamation about living water followed by the conversion of many in the woman’s town of scar through her testimony. A Samaritan woman thus becomes the first evangelist in john’s gospel (John 4:4-26; 39-42).
But the most significant story is of a gentile woman, a Phoenician from Syria. (Mark 7:24-30). In answer to her request for her daughter to be healed, Jesus tells her “let the children be satisfied first; it is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” - Jews should get the message of salvation first. Her challenge is that the message should go wider. The food is partly wasted, it falls from the table and there are plenty of ‘dogs’ ready to receive it; healing is for all. Some see this as Jesus testing the woman and not really denying the chance of healing on race or religious grounds. For others it is the unique time when the human part of Jesus is challenged and he accepts that he is wrong. The one who achieves this is a gentile woman from another part of the world.
b. Qur’an
Christian scripture obviously does not mention Islam but the Qur’an is as ‘liberal’ and as accepting of others as Jesus in many respects. “We believe in God, and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to all prophets from their Lord ... we make no difference between one and another of them, and we bow to God (Qur’an 2, 136). Muslims therefore believe that all the listed prophets received the same revelation as there was only one to be given, but that some of this has been distorted – such as in Christianity. Some of other faiths would say that not all the mentioned faith leaders could be seen to be teaching the same thing, but each had an important role in getting people to understand more about what faith meant. Another important passage about the Jewish, Christian and Muslim followers – the ‘People of the Book’ – confirms, in addition, that followers of other faiths should be more than respected: “Those who follow the Jewish scriptures, and the Christians and the Sabians – any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord (Qur’an 2.62).
As other scriptures, the Qur’an is a product of a particular period of history [traditional Muslims would disagree] and the interfaith material relates to that time. In some instances, people of other faiths were seen as good or bad according to their behaviour, rather than their actual beliefs – much as Jesus himself dealt with non-Jews. In the Qur’an, Jewish rabbis and Christian monks are identified in this way: “Lo, many of the (Jewish) rabbis and the (Christian) monks devour the wealth of mankind and debar (men) from the way of Allah. They who hoard up gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah, unto them give tidings (O Muhammad) of a painful doom” (5.82). That is simply a prediction of what will happen to the rich, who are castigated by Jesus in much the same way.
In other places Christians and Jews are seen to be in competition – as perhaps all three faiths really were - and almost made fun of “And the Jews say the Christians follow nothing true, and the Christians say the Jews follow nothing true; yet both are readers of the (same) Scripture”. The answer is that there will be final judgement, not present action “Allah will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that wherein they differ” (2.13). Some more negative sections suggest Muslims should not be friends with Jews or Christians (though here, differently from the previous quote, Jews and Christians appear to be friends: “O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people”. Again the members of the two other faiths are seen as morally not perfect and the fear is that this will spread - there is no command to act against them. There are many other sections of the Qur’an in which followers are urged to proclaim that only Allah is right, but nothing contradicts that initial quotation that Jews, and Christians are among those who believe in Allah and the last day and will all have the same reward “on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve” (2.62).
While it is true that members of other faiths living today in Islamic societies sometimes have to obey strict interpretations of Islamic belief (women not allowed to drive, alcohol forbidden, etc.), Islam itself cannot be forced on anyone. Forced believers would not be accepted by God. “There is no compulsion in religion; truly the right way has become clearly distinct from error; therefore, whoever rejects Satan (and what he calls to) and believes in Allah, he indeed has laid hold on the firmest handhold” (2.256). All this is there to see, though there are sections which appear to diminish women’s rights in particular – and much more so than the antiquated Christian view of the man as “head of the household”. There are issues over which many involved in human rights issues have strong criticisms, including homosexuality, on which most Muslims agree with their sharpest critics within the Christian faith.
But all arguments using scriptural texts are selective and I could certainly be accused of picking the most welcoming texts. I admit that, much as I do when selecting biblical texts. In addition, within some present day Muslim communities any action or words spoken against them are seen as hostile and can cause violent reactions. The words of the Qur’an quoted above may in theory be accepted, but members of those other faiths are perceived by many Muslims as not keeping to their own guidelines. The same words may be ignored either because opponents are seen as outside any faith commitment, or because their behaviour is seen to be against a traditional interpretation of the Qur’an and the honour given to Mohammad.
An example of this was heard again on the Radio 4 Sunday programme, exactly a week after the Rowan Williams controversy, when the Dutch cartoonist Kurt Vestigor was interviewed in his protected home. His cartoon of Mohammed wearing a bomb as a turban had been published again because those threatening him had been arrested. He justified this in terms of the need for freedom of expression in a country whose laws are tolerant of all faiths – and again there were demonstrations and death threats. A spokesman for the newspaper argued that the news agenda should not be set by the intolerant and their threats. In response, the head of Muslim Council of Britain’s Interfaith Relations Committee, Ibrahim Mogra, said that right of the freedom of expression should take into consideration and “not trample on the feelings and sensitivities of others”, but also that these violent reactions were wrong: “Islam does not give us the right to take the law into their own hands and threaten, intimidate or even murder individuals who do anything wrong as Islam would declare it to be wrong.” He added that those plotting against the cartoonist should be brought to justice.
That moderate view may be there among the majority of educated western-based Muslims but as in Christianity, there is a wide variety of views, including liberal. On the same day that the Guardian newspaper reported the abuse of children by Christians in Nigeria noted above it told of Moez Masoud, is one of a growing group of new presenters of Islam using satellite TV to advocate a modernisation “… in a stylish goatee and western clothes, Masoud, 29, was preaching about Islam in youthful Arabic slang. He said imams who outlawed art and music were misrepresenting their faith. He talked about love and relationships, the need to be compassionate toward homosexuals and tolerant of non-Muslims.”(4) The article concludes: “He advocates prayer five times a day, peace toward all and abstinence from alcohol, sex outside marriage and violence. Beyond this, he says, Islam is suffering from a crisis of interpretation. ‘I’m sure Osama bin Laden knows a lot of the Qur’an,’ he says, ’But when a Muslim celebrates when the Twin Towers collapse, you have a big problem.’”
This is not just a 21st Century phenomenon. On holiday in France I came across a chapel dedicated to seven saints. These had apparently become imprisoned and abandoned by Emperor Decius in the C3rd but had miraculously survived 200 years to their time of release. Their story is told slightly differently in chapter 18 of the Qur’an (300 years, maybe fewer men) but in the C19th a Turkish businessman in the area began to advocate a joint recognition of them. Still today there are joint annual celebrations at the chapel.
All this recognises and puts into context the wider truths about all faiths – that there are many different interpretations of written texts that each is linked to culture and history, and they influence and are influenced by events. In scriptures there are elements of recognition of other faiths, but many ignore these if they feel their own values are being challenged, or use words out of context to back up views arrived at from other experience.
Terrorism
The issue which most westerners are concerned about, and certainly on which our media concentrates is terrorism. Terrorism is not unique to the minority within Islam. Japanese Second World War suicide bombers were inspired by both Shintoism and Buddhism and both Christians and Hindus have been involved in Sri Lanka. Action by that Islamic minority has been justified by taking verses out of context from the Qur’an, forgetting the violent situation in which it was written, when some adherents of other faiths were themselves in violent opposition to the growth of the Muslim faith. The vast majority of Muslim scholars and leaders refute their interpretation and condemn their actions as politically motivated.
The word perhaps most mis-used in this context is jihad. The Arabic root for this is jahada which means to strive for a better way of life. Related words are translated as endeavour, exertion, effort, strain, diligence and fighting to defend life, land and religion. It is the last of these which has had obviously different interpretations. The most used verses are in chapter nine of the Qur’an: “Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them” (9.5) and “Fight those who believe not in God nor the last day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by God and his apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of truth even if they are people of the book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9.29). (“Jizya” is a tax on non-Muslims living in Muslim countries). It’s immediately obvious that there are few absolutes even in these short quotes. Were all those in the twin towers “pagan”? Certainly not. Christians are not “pagan” in Muslim eyes and there were Muslims working there too. And if people pay the jizya that excludes those members of other faiths from action against them if living in Muslim countries. Today, the jizva is seen as something more nominal – it is the willingness to accept and live within the local culture which is more important. Christians in Pakistan might complain that is being too positive.
The sections quoted above can only be seen to support violence if taken out of context. The chapter in general is about those who have broken agreements or treaties. It also speaks of the need for dialogue and time to be given to negotiation. War is forbidden when agreements remain in place, and those outside the faith who are regular in prayer and exercise charity should be accepted. There are other phrases such as 9.13 that are also guides to its interpretation, as any action can only be against those who “have violated their oaths, plotted to expel the apostle, and were aggressors by being the first to assault you”.
While the words are sometimes taken to justify violence, they clearly go against other teaching. Life is not to be taken unless there is a just cause. “Nor take life - which Allah has made sacred - except for just cause. And if anyone is slain wrongfully, we have given his heir authority (to demand qisas or to forgive): but let him not exceed bounds in the matter of taking life; for he is helped (by the Law)” (17.33) This comes in the middle of a section on moral behaviour, and is seen by most scholars to mean that the innocent should not be killed.
Keith Ward gave a Gresham College lecture on “Holy War – Religion and Violence” which I have used in part above to identify verses and find helpful reactions. He summarises his section on the jihad by saying:
The general teaching of the Qur’an is that if people are not convinced by the superiority of Islam, then the issue must be left to God, not decided by force of arms. Indeed, to impose Islam by force might be seen as self-defeating, since true Islam is submission to the heart of God, and that cannot be compelled. The traditional Islamic view is therefore that, while forces that make Islamic practice impossible or that are actively hostile to Islam must be opposed- and that is part of jihad – Muslims should live in peace with others who are not hostile(5).
I also found the University of South Carolina’s website to be a useful place for research, having three translations of the Qur’an into English and dealing with a number of ‘misconception’ areas. On terrorism, it says:
It should be clear, then, that "Muslim terrorist" is almost an oxymoron: by killing innocent people, a Muslim is committing an awesome sin, and Allah is Justice personified. This phrase is offensive and demeaning of Islam, and it should be avoided. It is hoped that as the general level of public awareness and understanding of Islam increases, people will keep "terrorism" and "Islam" separate from each other, not to be used in the same phrase.(6)
If words are kept in context and taken together, there is little difference between the Christian and Islamic views of ‘just war’. The Qur’an allows defence of attacks on its faith, and retaliation, but following verses always impose conditions. 2.193 requires fighting in response to attack until both justice and faith in God prevail. Taken out of context, parts of the Qur’an are sometimes used wrongly, but the reasons for terrorism are much deeper and wider, and Qur’an is wrongly used to back these up.
Christian views of the Qur’an
So how should Christians regard the Qur’an? The ‘jihad’ is assumed to be a cause of war and violence, but just as we see Jesus’ words within the wider context of his principles and values, we should do the same for Islam and the Qur’an. Just as we excuse the violence, tribalism, denigration of women, slavery, pettiness of regulations and miracle myths of the OT as relating to an earlier understanding of the divine, so we should treat the Qur’an in the same way. It was written later, but related to its time and current thinking. Even conservative Christians will often accept that the Old Testament [though not always the New] is not now relevant because it deals with a very different culture. Many rabbinical scholars believe that Jews should rigorously question their scripture, but seeing words of the Qur’an also as adaptable because they originated at a time of different knowledge of the world is still difficult for many Muslims.
Satisfying conservative groups within both faiths is almost impossible, as each sees themselves as being on the true path. Each will justify their position by quoting their own scripture and digging into the other to find words to challenge apparent opposites to their own. As always, this is a selective process. My own above selection of Jesus’ view of other faiths and his values has shown how we should recognise their value and learn from others. I’ve tried to do the same from the Qur’an. But for both it is important to understand a little of the circumstances in which the Qur’an was written. While Christianity grew slowly, with a variety of authors in its scriptures and only had to cope with major international issues when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Islam had to deal with difficult political and military issues from the beginning. Muhammad faced violence for his reform movement and became both a military and new community leader. Scholars have detected differences between the words that came to Muhammad in Mecca and Medina. Just as many Christians see the Holy Spirit as guiding the hands of New Testament writers, so Muslims see Muhammad as the conveyor of God’s Words.
Related to this again is the issue of how much ‘scripture’ can be brought up to date. Sikhs have an interesting view on this right from their beginning. Their founder, Guru Nanak, saw how difficult change would be in a culture deeply influenced by the caste system. He began a system of succession, with future gurus showing how their faith could be applied to particular circumstances. Three gurus died as a result. The tenth and last, Guru Gobind Singh, instructed them to follow the scriptures, focussing on the instructions for responsible living. It was now mature enough for followers to heed Guru Nanak’s principles of religious tolerance, gender equality and social justice, applied to changing circumstances. This is more difficult in Islam than in Christianity. Christians can argue that the Holy Spirit didn’t stop work with the New Testament writers, but Islam is much more focussed on the words transcribed by their founder, and even translations are not generally accepted as the true Word. This reinforces the views of those who for whatever other reason to do with history, personal situations, received discrimination or a feeling of helplessness in the current world set-up, feel that the Qur’an supports their violence. It is clear that specific interpretations give the back-up for the reaction to the Danish cartoons as well as the terrorist violence. Moderate Muslims will use the Qur’an to counter extremism just as Christians will use the Bible but, to my mind, the only way such views will change in any faith and the advocates listen to moderates (or even liberals) is by dealing with the causes rather than arguing from the book.
Positive Views
Richard Holloway is one of people I have taken note of before. He ended another Gresham College lecture in April 2000 with this:
“I have tried to be positive ... of the great religious systems of east and west. It would have been just as easy to be negative, to point to their excesses. I could have underlined the way the religions of the east inculcate a kind of fatalism that allows obvious social evils to go unchallenged, and I could have pointed to the pathologies that often characterise Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, all with a tendency to the unlovely excesses of fundamentalism. Lionel Blue pointed out perceptively that these three religions all have different ways of going mad, or produce different types of neurotic personalities. Judaism tends to produce obsessive-compulsives, Christianity sadomasochists and Islam megalomaniacs. We could use that insight as an instrument for probing the shadow side of each faith system. On the other hand, we could emphasise the contribution each tradition has made to the god of humanity. From the perspective of critical realism, we could say that each in its own way, from the very different and historical circumstances, has responded to the mystery of the possibility of transcendence that seems to haunt mankind. Our wisest response to the fact of different faith systems should be what the Bishop of New Westminster in Canada calls ‘grounded openness’; we can be grounded in our own tradition, with no desire to leave it, while remaining open to other traditions and the costly commitment they evoke from their followers. There is a generosity about that approach which seems entirely appropriate to people who live, as we all now do, in multicultural societies” (7).
The same week as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lecture the real cost of the Iraq war was revealed in the USA. In addition to the then 4000 soldiers killed and 70,000 wounded, the effect on relationships with many countries, and the cost to Iraq in its weak government, massive migration and internal slaughter between Sunni and Shia, there is also the financial cost. Now believed to be three trillion dollars (very different from Donald Rumsfeld’s suggestion of 50 - 60 million dollars), had that money been spent on aid, cultural exchanges and economic development in the Middle East beyond Israel (the USA’s largest receiver of ‘aid’) then the story might have been very different. There would have been little impetus for terror, less support for those wrongly using the term jihad, and our dealings with Islam might concentrate on the kind of issue the Archbishop of Canterbury was raising – how we accept other faiths and how each has to live with not only other faith groups but also the wider cultural and community expectations which all faith groups can find equally challenging.
We (Western Christians) need to understand that the source of terrorism is a misreading of the Qur’an in a particular historical context in which, despite some oil wealth, many Muslims feel that the end of their former Empire and its power have led to exploitation. The background is therefore in resentment about power and its misuse. Though this is difficult to conceive of in the Muslim world, to my mind an important first step has to be an understanding that words relate to a particular piece of history. As in Christianity this could hopefully be done without removing any Principles but seeing rules within a particular context. This need to relate to modern reality has to be an important step and can be done without denying the origin or value of those words. This was reinforced by Dr Mona Siddiqui in her ‘Thought for the Day’ on 3rd April 2008, at a time when the cartoon issue had come into the wider world again. She quoted Ben Elton saying: "There is no doubt about it, the BBC will let vicar gags pass but they won't let imam gags pass." She went on to say “In a world where everything is up for critique, nothing remains sacred any more, why should faith - and, for that matter, one faith - be exempt from global commentary? In a world where freedom of expression is paraded as the ultimate triumph of robust democracies, faith is only one aspect of society with all its weaknesses and strengths; it must remain open to both protection and objection. You also need freedom of speech not just for people you agree with”. She concluded: “For me, religion is not weakened but strengthened by humour. The ability to see the bad with the good, the problems as well as the gifts of faith demands that we be honest and reflective, able to engage with a wide array of cultural and social perspectives. The ability to see ourselves as others might see us is a sign of humility. The ability to laugh at ourselves is a sign of confidence and maturity, that we take neither ourselves nor what we believe to be the only moral arbiters of society. Laughter not only connects us to each other but lifts the soul - as E.E. Cummings said, the most wasted of all days is one without laughter”.[8]
Would not the shared humour of people who respect each other’s ideals and live as friends be a good place to start?
Mutual Respect
Another ‘Thought for the Day’ reinforced for me the idea that mutual respect rather than unique claims would help our world be fairer and less worrying.
Beginning with the role Christianity has played in Britain, Indarjit Singh went on to talk of the arrival sixty years ago of the Empire Windrush with the first organised and invited group of immigrants. Others of many faiths and cultures then followed, and as he pointed out: “The challenge, then and now, was how to find a new equilibrium of trust and respect to prevent ignorance, suspicion and prejudice harming community cohesion”. [9] He then recalled a similar situation in India some four hundred years ago:
“Before Muslim incursions and settlement, most people in India also shared a generally common history with a bit of a superior attitude to the rest of the world. The conquering Muslims were considered barbarians and the Muslim invaders were equally dismissive of the majority Hindu population. It was against this background that the Sikh Gurus taught the importance of respect between different religions and cultures. Guru Arjan asked a Muslim saint Mia Mir to lay the foundation stone of the Golden Temple to show his respect for the followers of Islam. He also added verses of Hindu and Muslim saints in the Sikh Holy scriptures the Guru Granth Sahib, where these were in line with Sikh teachings, to show no one faith has a monopoly of truth. In his own compositions he wrote of the importance of recognising the same one God of us all, who is both, Allah and Ram, and God and Jehovah; the Creator of all that exists. He also emphasised the Sikh teaching of the equality of all human beings”.
I agree with his conclusion: “Today, respect for beliefs of others, and recognition that we are all members of one human family, remain twin pillars for harmony in our increasingly diverse society”, though I would like to add a third pillar – trying to understand the core ‘Principles’ of other faiths.
References
1. Tracy McVeigh, Child Abuse in the name of God, The Guardian Weekly, 21/12/2007, pp.38f.
2. Details in: James Massey, Dalits in India, ISPCK, 1995 and David Haslam, Caste Out, CTBI, 1999.
3. Kevin P Spicer, Hitler’s Priests, Northern Illinois University Press, USA.
4. Kevin Sullivan, ‘Islam lite’ or faith of the future? The Guardian Weekly,
21/12/2007, p.40.
5. Keith Ward, Holy War- Religion and Violence, Gresham College, 2/11/2007, downloadable from www.gresham.ac.uk
6. University of South Carolina, web site: www.usc.edu/dept/quran
7. Richard Holloway, Living with other faiths, Gresham College lecture, April 2000, p.11f.
8. Dr Mona Siddiqui, Thought for the Day, BBC Radio4, 03/04/2008.
9. Indarjit Singh, Thought for the Day, BBC Radio 4, 24/06/2008.
I grew up in Southampton immediately after the Second World War. No-one in our street had a car - the only one that ever came was the doctor’s - and we played cricket on the road (six and out if the ball went into a neighbour’s garden). There was plenty of unused land around, some cleared following enemy action, other places just not developed in the way that they would be now. One favourite area for games as well as catching tadpoles and newts and sticklebacks was a marshy area full of ponds created by bomb craters – the result of targeting a nearby spitfire factory. We walked there, played all day and returned safely home. Horses were left to feed there; scout groups used it for day and night games.
Now it has been filled in, ‘made safe’, and is a boring park. But in the real sense of being safe, things have changed. Children do not go there on their own. Streets have more traffic, but that’s not the reason. We are obsessed with health and safety. Parents as well as organised groups would feel unsafe to let five year olds go there without direct and close supervision. We are frightened of abusers, accidents, and being sued for lack of responsibility. Liability and fear have taken the fun out of childhood; children don’t play in the way that I did. Adults wouldn’t dare touch a child who had fallen over (as I often did). Something about being together and also reacting to each other has gone.
For ten years from 1997 I was lucky to live in one of five flats in a ‘shared house’. There were no separate utility charges according to usage, we helped the planet with just one
shared washing machine and we worked on the house and garden together. Anyone buying a flat had to agree to share both costs and work and be approved by the other house occupants. The scheme had started in the 1970’s but, by the time we came to sell, estate agents and solicitors hated it. Likewise, most potential buyers were put off by the shared values and asked questions about what happened to make sure that people who used four lights paid more than someone using two, and didn’t like our answer.
The wider world and Isaiah’s vision
My memories represent some of the changes we have become used to - changes in ‘community’. In the wider world there are very different examples. These are nations, tribes and religious groups.
2008 was little different from previous years, beginning with the dispute over election results in Kenya leading to communities dividing along tribal and party lines – which in part, with minorities often becoming refugees within their own country. Protesters were shot, and even the well-educated minority was seemingly split along the same lines. This was just one example of what happened and is still happening in many parts of the world. On the last Sunday in January Radio 4’s morning service commemorated the Holocaust and also reminded us of the ethnic and religious community brutalities that have occurred since. In a piece read by a woman from Rwanda, herself a victim of such a conflict, we were reminded of places from Uganda to Bosnia and present day Darfur. Disputes in Tibet and parts of eastern China came to our attention close to the Beijing Olympics, and Russia created huge international tension through using the divided communities in Georgia as an excuse to occupy part of the country. Towards the end of the year attention moved again to Africa and the abuse of rural communities by bandits, rebel groups and government troops alike, in both the eastern Congo and the Central African Republic.
2009 and 2010 were much the same: Pakistan and Iraq suffered enormous casualties from radical Islamist suicide bombers unhappy with government; this country’s public and media counted the number of British troops killed in Afghanistan, in part due to internal divisions; Somalia and the Yemen continued also with their internal divisions, and weak governments – one resulting in piracy, the other in terrorism. Zimbabwe continued to be divided on party lines despite the similar agreement to that in Kenya and, similarly, is fundamentally tribal-based. Probably the most divisive on faith grounds was the over-reactive Israeli response to Hamas in Gaza and the continued building of settlements in Palestine, with electricity and water often unavailable to non-Jews, whose land had been stolen.
The inability to deal with climate change showed that many political leaders did not see the world as one community.
The United Kingdom is not absent from the community problems list. One theory is that in developed countries failure in areas as diverse as child crime, family breakup, percentage of adults in prison are all part of the problems in the developed economies which are the most unequal. Only the USA and Portugal are worse than the UK. At the other end are Sweden and Japan. The debate around bankers’ bonuses in both the USA and UK surely is related to this? (This is explored later in some detail.)
It all makes me think of that wonderful piece in Isaiah on the ‘Peaceful Kingdom’ (Isaiah 11:1-9) which images for us a community in which previous hostilities disappear. From those verses the part that enlivens our imagination is the idea of cows and bears eating together, lions eating straw with oxen, and babies playing with poisonous snakes. For the rural-living people of Isaiah’s time this is a wonderful illustration of the preceding verses about the behaviour of leaders and the principles under which rulers should operate so that societies would flourish.
Our own community is nowhere near that vision and is divided in so many ways, including the hostility by many towards Muslim groups and immigrants. There are many examples of an underlying lack of respect for each other. At the root is lack of knowledge, obvious in the two places I have most recently lived in. In the rural community hardly anyone has knowledge of or contact with ethnic minorities or other faiths. Their opinions about both are often very open. Their assumption is usually that we had left inner-city London because of that or because of crime and violence. In Peckham there was surprise that in a small town and nearby villages we have supermarkets, a cinema showing the latest films, the current holder of the “best fish shop in the UK” award, and healthcare easily matching that in cities. There is also the myth that you have to be around for thirty years before you are viewed as a resident and your neighbour will speak to you.
The animal imagery in Isaiah might be hard to follow for many children today, particularly in urban areas. Milk apparently comes from tankers and not from cows, bread is from a shelf and not from flour or wheat, and the thought that the Christmas turkey was once probably a live imprisoned bird has not even occurred to them. That separation from the agricultural world is just one small sign of the increased compartmentalising which we seem to be in.
Despite much more travel and availability of information we seem to know little about each other and in some cases to have little thought for each other. Our worlds have become much more private, and the balance of personal rights and feeling for community seems to have changed. Even as tourists, so many people are cocooned in a replica of their home culture and make few links with host communities – we travel in what have been called ‘mobile ghettos’.
The compartmentalising of our world and separation of personal from community is obvious at every level. Why is it we now see signs on our own trains and buses telling us we should give up seats for the elderly – something previously assumed to be normal– and at the same time parents claim the right of a seat for their child rather than using their laps and allowing others to sit? Just a complaint from an aging grumpy ex-commuter? Maybe, but in an article in The Guardian on 28/01/08 Madeleine Bunting narrated a slightly different transport experience of children being shoved and pushed out of the way when trying to get on commuter buses. “Being pushed, sworn at and squeezed” was something her 12 year old daughter was familiar with – she smiled at her mother’s naivety. That illustration comes from an article, entitled “From buses to blogs, a pathological individualism is poisoning public life”. She wrote of how aggression erupts, how blogging is now used to express aggressive personal themes without regard for others (and this is seen as therapy by some). What is being lost is the ability to listen and the option to agree to differ. An added danger is that in response we “withdraw into bunkers of the like-minded, vacating the territory of solidarity and common purpose”.
These commuter stories may seem just tiny examples of the lack of care for each other and the way we fail to take seriously Isaiah’s wonderful vision of community. But there are serious things happening in our community in the UK which show the same personal preferences and lack of ability to accept difference. The obvious example is urban youth violence.
Urban violence
I recently lived for ten years in Peckham. Twenty years ago it was known for its flat-dwelling under-achieving but strangely lovable Del Boy of Only Fools and Horses - and that TV image of a white working-class, petty criminal world was what the rest of the UK knew of Peckham. Then things changed. While I never experienced violence – nor did my wife, who lived there for twenty years – it is now known for violence, particularly amongst black young men.
First there was Damilola Taylor, the boy murdered on the staircase of some since pulled-down Peckham flats. That case is still not resolved. That went out of the news but then a woman was shot holding a baby at a Christening Party. While the story that emerged was both terrifying and sad, we all hoped this was again an isolated incident, and that the world would not re-make its image of a violent corner of London. Then in one week in 2007 a fifteen year old boy was shot in his bed, three days earlier less than a mile away a man was shot dead and another seriously injured. The day before a man was stabbed to death. Similar incidents in London estates hit the news through 2007 and 2008 - so many that they hardly made national headlines any more. A Police report in August 2008 spoke of a youth street murder in London roughly every two weeks. The Police also said that knife crime was actually down compared to previous years, but the media continued to concentrate on this part of community life.
One newspaper said “Peckham has tried to improve its image since the killing of the ten-year old schoolboy Damilola Taylor, who bled to death after being stabbed with a broken bottle in 2000. That crime came to symbolise the extent of violence that was blighting certain parts of inner-city Britain”. Violent crime has in fact decreased, but seems to be concentrated in poor areas – the places once known for their neighbourliness.
The new poor?
Before the events of that terrible week I had a sermon planned for the following Sunday based on the Gospel reading “Blessed are the poor” (Luke 6:20). I was going to have my usual go at the rich, and attack the churches and individual Christians who seem to think the opposite - that wealth is God’s reward. But then I listened to a social worker interviewed on the radio. He said that the problem was the lack of relationships - a new kind of poverty. It came to me that the Gospel was saying something to us for our present time.
The day after the killing a radio report about posh new housing estates spoke of no space for community, assuming that everyone would get out of their houses and move around by car and have no relationships with any neighbour. It seems we are encouraging the poverty of relationships at all levels - while poverty in terms of income and resources are an important factor, the new poverty is far wider.
It reminded me of something said to me by a teacher in another urban area: “The only place where children now speak to an adult is in school - and I have 30 of them. At home they either all watch TV together and don’t talk or go their separate ways to watch their own in their bedrooms, or play games on computers or spend the evening texting or on-line. They don’t do things together as a family. They don’t eat together, they don’t talk, they don’t play, and when younger they don’t have bed-time stories. They don’t know how to relate. No-one teaches right and wrong. In one sense families don’t exist”. Was she going a bit over the top?
The socially poor
George M Soares-Prabhu teaches theology in India, and has written on biblical uses of the word ‘poor’(1). Using the language expertise needed for this kind of analysis, he shows how the Old Testament has a much wider understanding of the poor than does the New (p.154). The various words in the Old Testament translated as ‘poor’ words can mean materially needy, socially oppressed or spiritually lowly, whereas the New Testament has a more uniform use of the word ptōchos whose origin is ‘to crouch’ or ‘cringe’, describing someone who survives in their destitution by begging. In only three uses of the word (including Luke 6:20 about which I had planned to preach) are the poor seen to be privileged in some way. Are those who will be specially blessed going to receive this because they are spiritually poor (as Soares-Prabhu suggests most traditional Western theologians would claim), or are they rewarded because they are socially poor? “This tendency to spiritualise the poor of the Beatitudes which cuts across all denominational differences and brings together exegetes who would otherwise agree on scarcely anything else, is a good indication of the extent to which exegetical trends are in fact determined by the spirit of the times” (p.155). He then suggests that modern theologians, perhaps influenced by socialism, are more likely to see things differently. (Interestingly, he does not explore whether third world theologians were influenced in the same way). Those Jesus spoke to and about were destitute because of prevailing social conditions, including exploitation by religious leaders. He also supported the illiterate, the socially outcast, the physically disabled, and the mentally ill. All these are victims and reduced to “a condition of diminished capacity or worth” (p.156). Soares-Prabhu concludes that therefore the poor are a sociological group.
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