Children of Abraham

Richard L. Shafer[1]

 

I recently read through ISLAM: OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS[2].  I was heartened to find some of these authors also seeking common ground among the Abrahamic faiths.  So this month, let’s just look at the views of John L. Esposito[3] on the question of whether Islam’s values and “western” values are compatible or in conflict.[4]  Esposito says they’re compatible.

 

He makes these points:

Ž     Islam is a religion with strong Jewish and Christian roots, and so we naturally share much with each other.

Ž     When we westerners discuss Islam, we often fall into an “us and them” mentality which automatically obscures the diversity which exists on both sides of the religious divide.

Ž     All religions change over time.  All three Abrahamic faiths have their “factions” – the orthodox, the reformist, the fundamentalist, and so on.

Ž     The western religions have experienced centuries-long struggles, while the Muslim community has been somewhat limited by authoritarian governments, and colonialism from the West.

Ž     Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, provides a “framework of faith and meaning” that has transformed societies.  Each of the three has been used to justify violence and oppression too.

Ž     We westerners often don’t recognize that Christianity and Judaism breed their own extremists.

 

“We” seem to need “them” – people of other religions -- to look down upon.  We’d had African Americans (some were our first Muslims), and Jews, and Native Americans for centuries.  A hundred years ago in America, the newest immigrants were the Italians, the Irish and the Polish; and in the west especially, the Spanish-speakers.  Many of them were Roman Catholics. And now we have Muslims as our latest “them”. 

 

But we share much with them, just as we have with these other minority groups.  We share a desire for peace, safety and security for our families.  And we share a strong faith in the one God, and a need and want to worship our God, in our own ways.

 

Within the Muslim community, as within Christianity, lively debate continues about scripture, modernism, pluralism, and separation of religion and government.  “We” need to remember our own Christian history as we try to understand Muslims’ interactions with democracy and the western world.  Where religion encounters society, things can become difficult, but we can help to ease the way.  Let us seek to understand, accept, love and forgive “them” as they move forward on their own courses of development, and “we” on ours.  Aren’t these the values (and the actions) that the new-born Jesus wants from us?  Merry Christmas!


[1] This is one of a series of occasional columns in which the author, raised in the Christian tradition, searches for common ground and common history among the teachings, beliefs and practices of the Abrahamic faiths --  Islam, Christianity and Judaism

[2] edited by Jennifer A. Hurley, Greenhaven Press, San Diego, 2001

[3] Esposito is professor of religion and international affairs and director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.

[4] In the same book, Srdja Trefkovic argues that Islamic values cannot be reconciled with Western values.