Thank Goodness
A lot of people in the blogosphere have been commenting on the story of the Dutch bishop who favors using the word "Allah" to ease tensions between Muslims and Christians. Most are treating this as self-evidently wacky. Is it?
Could it possibly work? Just changing a term so the two religions can see they're praying to the same Supreme Being?
Well, first I guess we have to ask, are they praying to the same Being, or is there some difference? If they're different, I see two potential problems.
1) This is merely semantic subterfuge, and ultimately both sides will see through it, and tensions will remain the same.
2) It's asking Christians to give up or compromise on their religion, which they either shouldn't or won't do.
If they're the same, will it help? Once again, there are two potential problems.
1) This still smacks of appeasement--why should the Christians be the ones to give in? Won't this enourage more demands?
2) The tensions are there for other reasons (such as different ways to serve the same deity) and can't be swept away, or even significantly lessened, by this sort of tactic.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:36 AM
3 Comments:
I agree with your entire analysis, especially your final two points.
From time to time, I meet Christians who claim that Christians and Muslims "don't worship the same God." Often this is expressed as "We worship God, but Muslims worship Allah."
To rebut such a claim, it's useful to point out that Christians in Arabic-speaking countries use the same word -- "Allah" -- to refer to God as do Muslims. (This isn't the entire argument, of course. But it's one useful piece of the argument.)
If the tension in Europe regarding Muslims were the result of too many European Christians having this misconception, then this bishop's stance could conceivably help.
But anyone who has read a newspaper in the past five years knows that it's not. Indeed, there are probably now more secularists / atheists / agnostics in Western Europe than Christians, and I have seen no evidence that the European-Muslim friction is stronger among Christian Europeans than secular Europeans. Indeed, the Muslim complaints about European society usually are that it is too secular and libertine, not that it is too Christian and devout.
I heard a high Muslim official recently state that Arabic (at least as spoken in his country, which I think was Saudi Arabia) uses the same word for "Christian" and "secular." I took this to mean that Christian piety doesn't count to them. Since the Christians would not be observing Muslim rituals (e.g., praying 5 times/day) they were ipso facto secular.
But I disagree with the thrust of your query: "Why should the Christians give in?" It is (or should be) in the nature of Christianity to reach out unilaterally. It is a basic tenet of the religion that this can actually bring on understanding -- not necessarily "more demands."
My point was not that Christians shouldn't try to reach out, but that there's a problem (even the Bishop recognizes this) and giving in here won't solve it, but, if anything, make it worse.
Also, even if you feel the Christian thing to do is (and has been) reach out, this has traditionally meant to try to understand and help others, not to give in on questions of religion.
I might add that, as far as I can tell, the Bishop's ideas are not being taken very seriously.
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