Sharing Lights on the Way to God: Muslim-Christian Dialogue and Theology in the Context of Abrahamic Partnership

Sharing Lights On the Way to God

CURRENTS OF ENCOUNTER STUDIES ON THE CONTACT BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIONS, BELIEFS, AND CULTURES GENERAL EDITORS REIN FERNHOUT JERALD D. GORT HENRY JANSEN LOURENS MINNEMA HENDRIK M. VROOM ANTON WESSELS

VOL. 26

Sharing Lights On the Way to God Muslim-Christian Dialogue and Theology in the Context of Abrahamic Partnership

Pim Valkenberg

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006

Cover illustration: ©Wladimir Zbynovsky, Ner Tamid, c/o Beeldrecht Amsterdam 2006 Cover design: Pier Post The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1799-6 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006 Printed in the Netherlands

Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

IX

INTRODUCTION

XI

CHAPTER 1 Hospitality: The Threshold to Interreligious Dialogue 1.1 Hospitality: An Underdeveloped Virtue 1.2 Friendly Manners – Unfriendly Faith 1.3 Receiving the Stranger: A Biblical Perspective 1.4 Hospitality: Philosophical Reflections and Political Consequences 1.5 Companionship at Table: Hospitality and the Holy

1 1 1 4 6 11 20

CHAPTER 2 Small Beginnings: Dialogue in Nijmegen, the Netherlands 2.1 An Unfinished Bridge: From the Study of Dialogue to Participation in Dialogue 2.2 Passing over the River: Encounter with the Islam and Dialogue Foundation 2.3 Building the Structures of Interreligious Dialogue in Nijmegen 2.4 The Situation of Muslims in the Netherlands

29

44 46

CHAPTER 3

55

29 34

The significance of Dialogue Between Abrahamic Religions 3.1 The Necessity of a Third Partner in Dialogue 3.2 Monotheistic and Abrahamic Religions 3.3 Not Abraham but the God of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar 3.4 Muslim-Christian Dialogue and the Role of Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael 3.5 Awraham and Sarah: a Jewish Interruption

72 76

CHAPTER 4

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Contexts and Meanings of Interreligious Dialogue 4.1 The Dual Sources of Contemporary Dialogue

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55 57 62

4.2 Forms of Dialogue and the History of Apologetics 4.3 Inequality in Dialogue: A Contextual Analysis 4.4 Levels and Aims of Dialogue: The Approach by the Roman Catholic Church 4.5 Dialogue in Practice: The Contribution of the World Council of Churches CHAPTER 5

The Future of Interreligious Dialogue: Multiple Belonging 5.1 Interreligious and Interfaith Dialogue 5.2 Theological Universalist Approaches to the Future Of Religion 5.3 Phenomenological Approaches to Religion: Multiple Belonging 5.4 The ‘Inter-’ of Interreligious Dialogue: Syncretism or Separation? 5.5 Practical Consequences 1: Prayer and Fasting 5.6 Practical Consequences 2: Emulating in Good Deeds CHAPTER 6 Three Theologies of Religions and the Role of Comparative Theology 6.1 Children of Noah: A Jewish Theology of Religions 6.1.1 Classical Sources 6.1.2 Three Contemporary Interpretations 6.2 Word and Spirit of God: A Christian Theology of Religions 6.2.1 Jacques Dupuis 6.2.2 Gavin D'Costa 6.2.3 S. Mark Heim 6.3 People of the Book: A Muslim Theology of Religions 6.3.1 Ismail Raji al-Faruqi 6.3.2 Farid Esack 6.4 Theology of Religions, Theology of Dialogue, Comparative Theology 6.4.1 Christian Theology of Religions: Sources and Models 6.4.2 Theologies of Interreligious Dialogue and Religious Pluralism 6.4.3 Comparative Theologies

87 97 101 108 113 113 117 124 134 148 150 163

164 165 169 171 172 177 180 183 185 188 193 193 196 200

CHAPTER 7 Lights on the Way: Spiritual and Theological Masters of the Past 7.1 On Sharing Lights 7.2 Thomas Aquinas and the Hidden Presence of God 7.3 Abu Hamid Muhammad al-GhazƗlƯ (1058-1111) 7.3.1 Approaches to his Life and Work 7.3.2 Deliverance from Error 7.3.3 The Niche of Lights 7.3.4 The Beautiful Names of God 7.3.5 Faith and Trust in God 7.3.6 On Knowing and Loving God 7.4 An Interlude on MuhyƯ al-dƯn ibn al-ǥArabƯ (1165-1240) 7.5 Maulana JalƗl al-dƯn RnjmƯ (1207-1273) 7.5.1 Life and Context of JalƗl al-dƯn RnjmƯ 7.5.2 RnjmƯ as the Poet of Love 7.5.3 God's Hidden Presence and the Dialectics of Self

211

211 213 219 221 227 235 239 243 251 254 257 259 260 262

CHAPTER 8 269 More Lights on the Way: Spiritual and Theological Masters of the Present 8.1 Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1877-1960) 271 8.1.1 Life and Context 271 8.1.2 The Damascus Sermon 274 278 8.1.3 Signs of Miraculousness 282 8.1.4 The Epistles of Light (Risale-i Nur) 8.1.5 The Nurçuluk Movement and Interreligious Dialogue 301 8.2 Interlude: Nada te Turbe (How to Find Your True Home 304 8.3 Fethullah Gülen (1938) and the Neo-Nur Movement 309 8.3.1 Gülen's Life and Context 309 8.3.2 Fethullah Gülen on Tolerance and Dialogue 312 8.3.3 Education as Central Concept in the Gülen Movement 319 8.4 Tariq Ramadan and the Future of Islam in the West 321 BIBLIOGRAPHY

329

INDEX

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Acknowledgements No book on interreligious dialogue can be written without the collaboration of many people. The most important people have been those Jews, Christians and Muslims who shared their faith experiences with me in several forms of dialogue. While their names will not be mentioned many times in this book, their faces have often been before my eyes in the process of writing. The same holds true for many of my students in religious studies and intercultural theology, both in Nijmegen, the Netherlands and in Johannesburg, South Africa. Since there is no lecturing without learning, students often teach their lecturers as well. I am fortunate to have many colleagues in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies with whom I could discuss several topics related to interreligious dialogue and theology. Frans Wijsen, Aad de Jong, Frans Jespers, Hedwig Meyer-Wilmes and Paul van der Velde are among them. Johannes A. van der Ven and Hermann Häring awakened my interest in the relations between religions long ago, and they continued to follow my thoughts on these matters critically. Georg Essen, who holds the chair of dogmatic theology in Nijmegen, has always encouraged me to go my own way. In fact, he convinced me of the necessity to write this book at this moment of my life. I am grateful to the board of the Faculty of Theology for granting me a sabbatical leave that made it possible to finish the book. It was a pleasure to be able to do some real research once again after several years of mainly management tasks. The University of Notre Dame in the United States gave me the right inspiration to do it. It was an adventure to go abroad together with my family, but we made a great many friends there: first of all, my mentor David Burrell, who was a real friend in his own inimitable way, but Mary Doak, Patrice Brodeur, Michael Signer, Marianne Farina and Asma Afsaruddin as well. Some of my fellow travellers along the path of dialogue and theology between Muslims, Christians and Jews have helped me greatly

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by sharing their ideas with me. Emrullah Erdem and Ertürk Alasag, Arnulf Camps and Jan van Lin, Henk Vroom and Anton Wessels, Carla Robertson, Janneke Teunissen and Greco Idema, Tzvi Marx and Tamarah Benima from the Netherlands; Cemal Usak and Kerim Balci, Thomas Michel and Claude Geffré from Europe, and finally from the United States Scott Alexander, Edmund Chia and Susan SchaalmanYoudovin from Chicago, and Francis Clooney, John Berthrong and Catherine Cornille from Boston. Finally, I would like to thank Jerald D. Gort and Hendrik M. Vroom for their willingness to include my book in the series Currents of Encounter, and Harm Oosting and Henry Jansen for their editorial assistance. I dedicate this book to my uncle, Louis Paul Vincent Bary (19252005), paratus semper ad satisfactionem omni poscenti ei rationem de ea, quae in nobis est, spe. Sed cum modestia, et timore, conscientiam habens bonam … (1 Peter 3: 15b-16a).

Introduction Many books on the relation between the world of Islam and the West have been written since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Christians of all sorts seem to be embarrassed by the apparent enmity of small but vociferous groups of Muslims, and respond by expressing their feelings of estrangement. While I was writing this book on a sabbatical leave in the United States, my home country seemed to lose its fame for tolerance in an avalanche of religiously motivated murders and burning of mosques and schools. Muslims feel threatened while right-wing politicians try to restrict their freedom of religious expression in the name of the Western values of Enlightenment. Meanwhile, two out of three Dutch persons are afraid of Muslims, according to the most recent statistics in January 2005. This book does not pretend to solve this problem directly, but it intends to indicate one of the possible ways toward a future, more fundamental solution. Since Christianity and Islam are sister religions together with Judaism as their elder sister, they are part of the same history initiated by God in his call to Abraham. Therefore, they may be brought together in a comparative reading of some of their sources to enlighten the path of those Christians and Muslims who want to continue the tradition of honoring God by promoting human values. Muslim-Christian Dialogue and Theology The subtitle of this book, ‘Muslim-Christian Dialogue and Theology’, might seem to be quite pretentious indeed. Is it really possible to shape a form of theology that may hyphenate two theological traditions that have not only been in constant conflict during most of their historical encounters, but feature as opposite blocks as well in the threatening ‘clash of civilizations’ at the beginning of the third millennium? Indeed, I must say that I am often overwhelmed by the atmosphere of enmity that surrounds us in the Western world when talking about Islam and Muslims, even among theologians. But at the same time I am convinced that this enmity is orchestrated by mass media

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that have a vested interest in exposing appeals to violence since conflict is what sells in the media. Those who believe in strictly separated religious identities may probably see my position in this book as heterodox and those who reckon themselves among the political realists may see it as ingenuous. They might be right, but I hope to offer some good theological grounds for my position in the following pages. The human reality of suffering may drive us to despair, but it obliges us to act responsibly as well (Knitter 1995: 116). More specifically, in a climate of growing distrust between Christians, Muslims and Jews, interreligious dialogue is necessary more than ever (Borrmans 2002: 18). This book starts with experiences of dialogue and explores the theological and spiritual foundations of this dialogue in the hope of enhancing its quality in the future. Jewish Inspiration for a Christian View of Islam Although this book is primarily concerned with interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims, the Abrahamic context of this dialogue implies that it should open itself to Jewish contributions as well. Jewish dialogue partners have in fact suggested some of the most important insights that structure my approach to Islam. The first insight is that dialogue is made possible by the fact that the partners differ, so that one should pay heed to the particularities of the traditions involved. The “dignity of difference” (Sacks 2002) made me pay attention to the context in which dialogue is developed and to the power relations involved. Moreover, this ‘Jewish’ attention to the particularities of the dialogue partner fits in well with a recent development in the Christian theology of religions, in which differences are seen as decisive (Heim 1995). Such a particularistic or contextual approach rejects the idea that religions give slightly different answers to the same questions, and that dialogue partners are therefore interchangeable. The method of comparative theology is based on accepting these differences (Knitter 2002: 173) since it tries to learn from the other tradition in order to enrich both traditions (Fredericks 1999). Taking the other seriously in his or her own terms means that I, as a Christian theologian, cannot simply start the dialogue by using my Christian categories. Even a theology of the Spirit that might seem to be the most promising approach to other religions from a Christian point of view, would not work with many Muslims or Jews who would immediately suspect that they were drawn into some new dis-

INTRODUCTION

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guised Christian project or even into a form of shirk (giving partners to God) that would derogate from the unity of God. Therefore, I decided to refer to the central symbol, not specific to any religion, of light in the title of this book. This symbol has the advantage that it is well attested in the Qur’Ɨn and the spiritual traditions of Islam, but may be recognized as an important symbol in the Jewish and Christian traditions as well. The second insight which underlies the basic attitude advocated in this book is indirectly based on the well-known Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. His philosophy can be summarized as a radical defense of the priority of the other as someone who summons me to take my responsibility. In a certain sense, Levinas gives an answer to the question “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), but he radicalizes the perspective. An average exegesis of the parable of the Good Samaritan, told by Jesus in answer to this question (Luke 10:30-36), would say that the Samaritan is the neighbor because he behaves in an ethical manner; but an exegesis inspired by Levinas (Bloechl 2000: 42) would say that the poor and robbed man is the Samaritan’s neighbor. In the perspective of Levinas, I cannot choose someone to fulfill the function of ‘neighbor’, ‘other’ or ‘stranger’ for me, but the stranger remains radically exterior, and precisely in this otherness he/she may be a revelation of God (Levinas 1992). In my view, this is a deeply religious approach to interreligious dialogue in which the partner becomes theologically relevant because he or she may become a source of knowledge about God. This perception of the stranger as a possible revelation of God implies that for me, as a European Roman Catholic theologian, dialogue with Muslims is a pre-eminent task, not only because of the present situation referred to at the beginning of this introduction but ultimately because of theological reasons. As Thomas Aquinas reminded us, the task of a theologian is to consider everything in its relation to God.1 As I hope to explain in this book, God is according to the Christian tradition to be found particularly in the form of a stranger. While Judaism is, because of its position as ‘elder sister’, the natural or preferred partner for Christians – which does not imply that 1

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.1 a.7 resp.: “Omnia autem pertractantur in sacra doctrina sub ratione Dei; vel quia sunt ipse Deus; vel quia habent ordinem ad Deum, ut ad principium et finem.”

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Christians treated Jews as real partners in history – Islam as the ‘younger sister’ is the model of the stranger who has largely been cut off from Christian theology. That is why Christian theologians may find traces of God in their theological dialogue with Islam. Precisely because Islam functions as the epitome of a stranger, it has always been seen as threatening to Christianity as well, not only in medieval times, but especially in modernity. This popular picture of Islam as a threatening religion is the second reason why dialogue with Muslims is so important for contemporary Christians in the Western world: if it is true that islƗm means submitting oneself to God, most Muslims practice this submission in their daily life in a way that might serve as a model for many Christians. In a cultural context in which this submission to God is so often disparaged after September 11, 2001, Christian theologians ought to step in and take sides with those who try to live their faith in a decent manner. Theologically speaking, this is not only a matter of courtesy or a preferential option for the poor, but it is a matter of recognizing the God of Christ and the Spirit in the stranger. Outline of this Book The combination of both insights structures this book as follows: the particular nature of the dialogue between Christians and Muslims as I have experienced it in the context of the Netherlands invites me to investigate the theological and spiritual background of my partners in dialogue in order to contribute to a form of God-talk in which Muslims and Christians may share their traditions as mutual incitements to a broader understanding of God. Accordingly, the first, largely descriptive part of the book is concerned with the particular nature of the dialogue between Christians and Muslims in the Netherlands in the context of the broader ‘ecumenism’ of Abrahamic faiths. My experience with several small beginnings of intra- and interreligious dialogue has taught me that we, European Christians, have a lot to learn from the strangers who are our interlocutors in these dialogues. As far as I am concerned, the most important thing to be learned is hospitality. This virtue is one of the conditions for the possibility of real dialogue, a ‘threshold to dialogue’, so to speak. But hospitality is important as a ‘theological virtue’ as well, since it refers to a spiritual attitude of receptivity for the

INTRODUCTION

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form in which God may reveal Godself. Therefore, the first chapter of this book will deal with this important virtue. The contextual nature of my approach to interreligious dialogue explains why the descriptive part of this book includes a chapter on the small beginnings of interreligious dialogue in my home town and university, focusing on the specific situation of dialogue between Christians and Muslims in the Netherlands (chapter 2). Since I have worked in some other religious and cultural contexts as well, I will try to show how the situation in the Netherlands relates to the relation between Christians and Muslims in other contexts, for instance in South Africa, the United States, or the Middle East. However, every dialogue between two partners threatens to become isolated and therefore exclusivist if it is not widened to include other partners as well. Therefore, it is important to be aware that the dialogue between Christians and Muslims cannot do without a third party that represents the voice of the ‘other’ interrupting the binary nature of the dialogue. For some obvious theological and historical reasons, Jews play the role of ‘implicated bystanders’ in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. The so-called ‘trialogue’ between these religions has recently been labelled as a ‘dialogue among Abrahamic religions’. The third chapter of this book sketches this Abrahamic dialogue as the larger context of the dialogue between Christians and Muslims; moreover, it offers an analysis of the special historical and theological conditions implied by the reference to Abraham or the reference to ‘Abrahamic ecumenism’ between the three religions (Kuschel 1994: 213-308). In particular, I will show how the theological approach of the French islamicist Louis Massignon still determines the prospects for and limits to the use of the word ‘Abrahamic’ as symbol of the dialogue between the three religions. The second part of the book gives an analysis of the term ‘interreligious dialogue’ and of the several theologies of religions that have been developed by adherents of the Abrahamic religions. It starts from the awareness that the dialogue between Abrahamic religions may become too narrow-minded or subservient to political or economic exploitation as several theologians of the so-called ‘Third World’ remind us (Esack 1997: 153). Therefore, it is important to give a contextual analysis of the phenomenon of interreligious dialogue in which relations of power and cultural dominance play an important part. As a consequence, it will be argued in the fourth chapter that a proper con-

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cept of interreligious dialogue cannot be limited to an exchange of words by specialists and religious leaders, but should be connected with both grassroots dialogue and spiritual dialogue. The fifth chapter gives a tentative analysis of the future of interreligious dialogue. If it is true that attention to interreligious dialogue is characteristic of Christian approaches in the latter part of the twentieth century, another approach may be needed in the twenty-first century. In this chapter, I suggest that the theological study of interreligious and interfaith dialogue should be connected to the phenomenological study of interactions between religions, especially of multiple religious belonging (Berthrong 1999; Cornille 2002). While it is in Asia quite common to say that people belong to different religious traditions at the same time, this phenomenon has hardly been studied in the context of the Western world and of the interaction between Abrahamic religions. The study of multiple religious belonging or participation in different religious rituals and forms of spirituality might be important for the future of interreligious dialogue since it is concerned with the most intense form of change that is implied in the preposition ‘inter-’. If different religions do not only exist side by side (as in ‘multireligious’ services or other occasions) but really start to interact with each other, both religious traditions begin to change. Yet this is exactly what is feared by so many Christians as ‘syncretism’. In this sense, the interactions between Christianity and Islam present some special challenges for Christians, of which I will give two instances at the end of this chapter. Traditional forms of theologies of religions form the subject matter of analysis in chapter six. Judaism, Christianity and Islam each have developed theological models to explain their relation to their Abrahamic partners that have been widened to include other partners as well in the course of history. Judaism developed the idea of the Noachide covenant alongside with the covenant at Sinai; Christianity developed the idea of the Word and the Spirit sent by the Father to the whole of creation. Finally, Islam developed the idea of the ‘People of the Book’ to include those who worshipped the one and only God in different manners. I try to show why and how these traditional models are insufficient as a basis for present-day interreligious dialogue because in each case the image of ‘the other’ is based on the image of ‘the self’ developed in the three traditions. At the end of this chapter I try to elaborate on a form of comparative theology developed by oth-

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ers (Burrell 1993; Clooney 1993; Fredericks 1999) in order to arrive at a form of theology that takes interreligious dialogue seriously as a locus theologicus or starting-point for reflection and that deepens the theological scope of this dialogue. The final chapters of this book contain exercises in this comparative Islamo-Christian theology in the context of Abrahamic partnership. Chapter seven concentrates on the Middle Ages as a period in which Christian and Muslim theologians may be fruitfully compared. In the research tradition of the Thomas Institute at Utrecht, the Netherlands, I use Aquinas’s theological notion of the ‘hidden presence of God’ as a guide for my reading of theological texts by Abu Hamid Muhammad al-GhazƗlƯ (1058-1111). While it would be quite obvious to compare Aquinas and al-GhazƗlƯ since they are widely recognized as theological authorities in the traditions of Roman Catholic Christianity and Sunni Islam, the differences between them are relevant as well for a comparative theology. In particular, Christian readers may ask what they may learn about God’s hidden presence from alGhazƗlƯ, and how this may contribute to their engagement in dialogue with Muslims. While al-GhazƗlƯ functions as major historical guide or ‘light’ for Christians in dialogue with Islam, Said Nursi (1876-1960) functions as major contemporary guide in the eighth and final chapter. Nursi is the writer of the Risale-i Nur (‘Epistles of Light’), a collection of spiritual expositions on the Qur’Ɨn that is widely read by contemporary Turkish Muslims, among whom Fethullah Gülen and his neo-Nur movement have gained some influence in the Western world as well. In Nursi and Gülen, we encounter an Anatolian sub-tradition that inspires many Turkish Muslims in Europe and the United States to engage in interreligious dialogue with Christians and Jews. So, the final chapter contains a theological reading of the major sources of my Muslim dialogue partners in the Netherlands. While the seventh chapter contains some small-scale exercises in reading MuhyƯ ad-DƯn ibn al-‘ArabƯ (1165-1240) and JalƗluddƯn RnjmƯ (1207-1273) in order to bridge the gap between the widely acknowledged heritage of al-GhazƗlƯ and the locally acknowledged heritage of Said Nursi, the final chapter compares Nursi’s and Gülen’s ideas about the development of Islam in the West with Tariq Ramadan’s recent publications on this topic. An interlude on Teresa of Avila’s famous poem, Nada te turbe (‘Let nothing disturb you’) shows how Christians may learn to appreciate

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important elements from their own tradition by reading and contemplating some of al-GhazƗlƯ’s and Said Nursi’s most important texts on tawakkul or trust in divine Providence. When different Muslim traditions begin to merge with several non-Western Christian forms of spirituality in saying ‘God alone suffices’, modern Western Christians may learn to understand in their Muslim dialogue partners what lays hidden in the spiritual depths of their own faith: “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).

CHAPTER 1

Hospitality: The Threshold to Interreligious Dialogue One of the main arguments of this book is that Christian theology, insofar as it has been inclined to interreligious dialogue, has concentrated too much on the prerequisites of dialogue from the point of view of the Christian tradition (Swidler 1987). The willingness to defend one’s faith “whenever you are called to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15) forms a venerable tradition of apologetics indeed, but it does not contribute much to interreligious dialogue itself. Since I want to develop a ‘theology of dialogue’ rather than continuing the tradition of a ‘theology for dialogue’ (Barnes 2002: x), I do not wish to linger on prerequisites of dialogue. As a sharp observer recently remarked, an elaborated theology for dialogue “may become an alibi just for postponing dialogue” (Lønning 2002: 38). Developing an elaborated Christian theology of religions may be at the expense of involvement in interreligious dialogue (Fredericks 2004: 26). There is, however, one preliminary point that I want to make, mainly because I know from personal experience how important it may be for the willingness to enter into dialogue. I am referring here to hospitality, a virtue that has almost disappeared in my Western culture, while it is highly esteemed in Arab and African cultures. Respect for strangers is an important human attitude, since it shows that we are aware of the particular situation of the person whom we meet in dialogue; it is a special religious attitude as well, since it is connected with the idea of being receptive to the eventuality of God’s manifestation in human history. Therefore, hospitality may be considered as a threshold to interreligious dialogue, and the lack of it as a serious hindrance for an encounter with human beings and with God. 1.1 Hospitality: An Underdeveloped Virtue Someone who is but moderately experienced in dialogues between people of different religions can probably tell more stories of failure

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SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

than stories of success. Interreligious dialogue really is a complicated process and there is little chance of flawless communication due to religious, cultural or social differences. Even if one intends to be considerate of the otherness of the dialogue partner, things may go wrong because of the many unnoted peculiarities of different cultural and religious behaviors, or simply because of clumsiness. Some Personal Experiences In the past several years I felt clumsy on different occasions when I tried to establish interreligious relations, because one of the seemingly unimportant details turned out to be an obstacle that turned dialogue into debate. For instance, when I invited two young Muslim women from the Arabic studies department of our university to discuss the problem of their identity as both Muslim and Western women with students from my class in the religious studies department, among the literature on the table was a book containing interviews with Muslim women from different cultural backgrounds (Brooks 1995). The Dutch translation of this book bore the title ‘Daughters of Allah’, showing some veiled Muslim women. This was considered to be offensive and even blasphemous by our visitors, because of the reference to female deities as ‘daughters of Allah’ in the so-called ‘satanic verses’ deleted from the Qur’Ɨn and the controversies about Salman Rushdie’s novel of the same name. Small wonder that the Muslim women felt insulted by this Dutch title and reacted accordingly, since they knew that their Qur’Ɨn explicitly denies that God would have daughters (Q. 53:21-2). So interreligious dialogue never began that day. On another occasion I invited an orthodox Jewish colleague of mine to talk about her experiences with the international students of the M.A. in Intercultural Theology program during a staff meeting of the theological department. As director of education for several years, I used to organize such staff meetings in a conference building twice a year. She said that she would come if she could have kosher food for lunch and I told her that I would do my best since the university had not had much experience with these kinds of wishes as yet. “Never mind,” she told me, “I will bring my own lunch.” But of course she was angry at me nevertheless when she heard that I had not taken the trouble to arrange kosher food for her, and she even ate her lunch separately from the others, both because of strict interpretation of dietary laws and because of the distance she felt from me and my or-

HOSPITALITY

3

ganization. I realized that I should not have taken her words as permission to refrain from trying to arrange a decent meal for her. Something similar happened a few years later when the department of theology in the Catholic University of Nijmegen premiered a video presentation that showed a Muslim and a Christian student in their first introduction to each other’s religious rituals. This video was produced to facilitate discussions on interreligious issues for pupils in secondary education; the department hoped that they would consider enrollment in theology and religious studies as well. The first video was to be presented to the Archbishop of Utrecht who was also the Chancellor of the department. He was supposed to arrive late in the afternoon but was held up by traffic. While we were waiting for the archbishop to arrive, I noticed that the Muslim guests became gradually nervous. It was in the month of ramadƗn and they waited to break their fasting after sunset. But of course, the usual get-together after such an occasion did not include any food suitable for iftƗr. They asked me if something could be arranged but the university catering was not used to this type of request. So, as soon as the formalities had finished, the Muslim guests slipped away to celebrate the breaking of the fast in their own homes and the Christian party enjoyed their drinks on their own. It left me with a strange feeling: a gathering that was organized to show the importance of interreligious dialogue for us as theologians turned out to express exactly the opposite. But it is not only the university or the department that errs in this way; I make the same sort of mistakes. In an introductory course on religion as a central theme in religious studies, I used to organize a dialogue meeting at the request of the students every year, so that they could practice observing an interreligious dialogue and participating in it. Last year, the students wanted to know more about religious diversity in the world of Islam, so I invited a progressive Egyptian Muslim woman, a Sunni and an Alevi Turkish Muslim, and finally a Baha’i. The date on which the dialogue was to take place according to the schedule of the course, appeared to coincide with the ‘id ul-fitr, which is one of the major religious festivals for Muslims. I therefore phoned the Muslim guests and asked them if this would create any problems for them, but they said they could come anyway. The Sunni Muslim, however, added: “in other cases, I would like to celebrate this festival with my family, but dialogue is a duty for every Muslim and therefore I will come.” Again, I took his courteous reply for assent and

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did not consider the matter until the evening of the dialogue. Generally speaking, the conversation between the guests and the students was interesting and stimulating, but when we evaluated it most of the students said that they had not gotten the impression of a real dialogue, since the conversation partners behaved so cautiously. When we analyzed the form of the dialogue, we found that the conversation remained at an informative level without developing into a more personal exchange of ideas and experiences. We concluded that the guests maybe did not feel safe doing so, since they did not really feel at home with us. We did not really welcome them as guests but placed them together at a table facing the group of students, without offering them drinks or any other form of hospitality. If we would have expressed our appreciation for their coming not only in words but in gestures and symbols as well, the chances for dialogue would have been better. 1.2 Friendly Manners – Unfriendly Faith I am often puzzled by the fact that such attention to the particular situation of our partners in dialogue is so often absent in the behavior of liberal Christians who say that they consider their partner’s faith as equal to their own faith, while it is often present among more conservative Christians who draw a distinction between the salvific influence of Christ in their faith and the utter frailty of other religions as human projects. Some years ago, when I attended a workshop on the relations between ‘Ecumenicals’ and ‘Evangelicals’ in the Protestant churches in the Netherlands, I noticed that Evangelical Christians often have a more considerate approach to Muslims because of their conviction that the Gospel tells them to treat others as equals at the human level. This is one of the reasons that the difference between ‘Ecumenicals’ and ‘Evangelicals’ is not as clear-cut as it may seem (Droogers et al. 1997). Reverend James Mellis of Youth with a Mission, for instance, says: “the problem is that people who are in favor of dialogue often have never talked with a Muslim, while evangelizing people live among them for a long period.”1 Likewise, a collaborator of the Gospel and Muslims Foundation quotes Bishop 1

From a lecture by Rev. James Mellis on “Communicating the Gospel in a religiously divided world” at a meeting of the Dutch Association of Mission Studies in Utrecht, October 30, 1998.

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Lesslie Newbigin’s famous saying on dialogue: “… the fact that we have to arrange such meetings may be a symptom of the fact that we are failing in the more elementary matter of day-to-day conversation with our neighbors of other faiths” (Droogers et al. 1997: 183). This statement points to one of the major problems in interreligious dialogue, and I will come back to this in the fourth chapter of this book. But it testifies to the fact that many Evangelical Christians stress the importance of living together with Muslims for a long time as a means of evangelization. In this manner they could develop an approach to Muslims that is often quite effective, because it starts with questions such as: “How can we, Christians, deal with our Muslim neighbors in the best possible way?” “How can we value their culture?” and “How can we get rid of our prejudices?” (Chapman 1996: 17-43). If one is trained as an evangelist in such a way, one really learns how to make Muslims feel at home. This approach may sometimes be a real attitude of hospitality, but it may also turn out to be a strategy in which the human approach is used to create a favorable atmosphere for receiving the truth of the Gospel. In such a case, hospitality is used as an instrument for proclamation and evangelization. In itself, there is nothing wrong with such a missionary attitude, but it becomes a problem when a friendly manner of presenting the Christian faith goes together with an unfriendly interpretation of the content of this faith. In such a case there is a strange contradiction between the identity of one’s faith and one’s acting as a human person (Van der Ven 2004: 165). This leads to an ambiguous form of hospitality: as human beings, religious others are to be welcomed, but as non-Christians they should be convinced of their lostness. Such an attitude presumes that interreligious dialogue would be an escape from the call to proclaim Jesus Christ (Kohlbrugge 2001: 118). This is not only the conviction of many Evangelical Christians, for instance in the Lausanne Covenant, but in certain documents from the Roman Catholic Church one may also find a peculiar distinction between the ethical and the theological dimension in one’s attitude towards strangers which leads to a form of fundamentalism (Bernhardt 1994). Ethically, one should consider others as equals who should be esteemed; but dogmatically, one should know that they are not equal. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for instance, gives the following interpretation of this equality

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in its document Dominus Iesus, on the unicity and salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the Church: Equality, which is a presupposition of inter-religious dialogue, refers to the equal personal dignity of the parties in dialogue, not to doctrinal content, nor even less to the position of Jesus Christ – who is God himself made man – in relation to the founders of the other religions. (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 2000: § 22)

The pastoral warmth of a pope who prays together with representatives of other religions for peace in the world seems to be in contrast with the harshness of this document Dominus Iesus. But in fact they form two sides of the same coin: a Church that lives in the conviction that it has received from Christ a unique and universal commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).2 Friendly manners may go together with an unfriendly faith, and this may create distrust in those who think that Christians are hospitalble only to facilitate their proclamation of the Gospel. But those who have a friendly faith and think that all religions lead toward the same end and that people of other religions are to be respected not only as human beings but also as believers may often fail to reach others at all because they do not attend to the hospitality prerequisite of any encounter, including dialogue. 1.3 Receiving the Stranger: A Biblical Perspective At the beginning of this chapter, I pointed out that hospitality seems to be a more or less neglected virtue in West European society, while it is a highly esteemed virtue in most other cultures. This difference can be partly explained by referring to the huge disparity between an affluent individualistic modern society on the one hand and agricultural collective premodern societies on the other. In this sense, it is clear that most Asian and African cultures are more in tune with those of the people living in the time of the revelation of Bible and Qur’Ɨn than with European culture. The importance of hospitality is not only a cul-

2

Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from the Bible and abbreviations of references to Bible books are according to The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition, Nashville TN (Catholic Bible Press) 1993.

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tural matter, but it is related to the contents of these revelations as well. Jewish Traditions In the Hebrew Bible the awareness of the stranger as a person to be reckoned with is omnipresent in Torah, not only because of social requirements but also because of the identity of the People of God (Kraan 1987; Görg 1988; Nicolai 1989: 31-44). The word ‘stranger’ (ger) does not refer to those outside but to those who were immigrants and lived among the people of the covenant for a while (Görg 1988: 204; Van den Eynde 1999: 5). But the importance of the Biblical notion of ‘ger’ is the fact that the people of Israel have been strangers themselves (Crüsemann 1993). This is formulated in a causal clause: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:21); “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). And, somewhat more extensively: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself; for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34). The function of the reference to the slavery of Israel in Egypt is to underline that God is the one who liberates the strangers; they are under God’s special protection. Since the history of the people of God in the Hebrew Bible is a history of migrants to a large extent, and since migrants are under the special protection of God, the attitude towards strangers is theologically significant, and hospitality is therefore understood to be not only a social but also a religious virtue. At the symbolic level Abraham is the model for this behavior. The story of Abraham as forefather in the Hebrew Bible begins when God calls him to become a migrant: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). Abraham’s travels bring him into contact with several cultures where he is received as a stranger, sometimes with peaceful and sometimes with troublesome results. Abraham remains a stranger, even in (Jeru-)Salem where he is blessed by Melchizedek (Genesis 14:19) or in his meeting with Abimelech (Genesis 20). But when Abraham pitched his tent at Mamre, he became himself the host for three men who visited

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him there. He showed his hospitality by saying “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on – since you have come to your servant” (Genesis 18:3-5). In the story of Genesis 18, the role of the three men alternates with the role of God who is introduced into the story as a voice asking questions and making observations and concessions (Genesis 18: 13.20) and the story concludes by saying: “So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the LORD” (Gen 18:22). In the Jewish tradition the hospitality of Abraham is seen as exemplary. According to one explanation, he is hospitable to the extent that he sees God in the three men; but in line with another explanation, he shows his hospitality by serving the three men even in the presence of God (Benima 2004: 19). With reference to Genesis 18:3: “He said: ‘My Lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant’,” the rabbis of the Talmud discuss the question as to whether Abraham, in saying ‘Lord’, addresses God or not. In this context, R. Eleazar and R. Hanina indicate that Abraham addresses God, asking God to wait until he finished serving his guests. This occasions Rab Judah to say in the name of Rab: “Greater is hospitality to wayfarers than receiving the Divine Presence” (bSheb 35b; tr. Silverstone 1935: 205). In another place of the Talmud, the saying recurs when discussing the virtues that will be rewarded in this world and those that will be rewarded in the world to come. R. Eleazar remarks that God may approve if Abraham serves his guests first: Come and observe how the conduct of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like that of mortals. The conduct of mortals [is such that] an inferior person cannot say to a great[er] man, Wait for me until I come to you; whereas in the case of the Holy One, blessed be He, it is written, and he said, My Lord, if now I have found…. (bShab 127a; tr. Freedman 1938: 632)

Finally, Rashi explains: “It [Adonai] is holy [referring to God] and he [Avraham] was telling God to wait for him until he will run and invite the travelers to come in” (tr. Davis, Kornfield & Walzer 1991: 174).

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Christian Traditions The Christian tradition has a similar story in which a stranger is received and turns out to be the Son of God who is recognized in the companionship at table (Luke 24:31). The men of Emmaus “meet their Saviour in the form of a stranger who explains the words of Scripture to them. By these words their hearts are set afire and their insight is awakened. In this manner, they perceive Christ as the Living One” (Valkenberg 2000: 3-4). This is, of course, in accordance with the words of Christ: “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me,” thereby identifying himself with the most humble people (Matthew 25:35.45). Therefore, the practice of hospitality is recommended as a form of contributing to the needs of God’s people in the new Christian community (Romans 12:13). For Paul, it is an important practical consequence of following in the footsteps of Jesus (Kampling 1988: 226). Yet again, hospitality is not only relevant at the ethical level but also at the theological level (Kampling 1988: 227). Therefore, Paul reminds the community in Galatia: “you … welcomed me as angel of God, as Christ Jesus” (Galatians 4:14). The author of the letter to the Hebrews uses the same category of ‘welcoming someone as an angel of God’ with reference to the story of Abraham and his guests in saying: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebr 13:2). The implication is clear: any guest might be a messenger from God. Following these biblical notions, both the Jewish and the Christian traditions have formed new ways of reminding themselves of the theological importance of hospitality. In the Jewish Seder liturgy, every family is supposed to open a door and to set apart a cup of wine and a chair for Elijah who is expected as the coming sign of the future redemption of the people of God (Whitlau 1985: 71). Christian monastics, in their turn, discover the importance of interreligious hospitality as a vision for the future to come (Standaert 2000: 284). The hospitality of Abraham even occasions one of the most important traditions about the Trinity, as can be seen in the famous icon by Andrej Roeblev where Abraham’s guests at the table are portrayed as Father, Son, and Spirit (Rikhof 1993). But it is in the context of dialogue between Christians and Muslims that the hospitality of Abraham receives particular attention.

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Muslim Traditions In the Qur’Ɨn IbrƗhƯm is one of the most important persons, because he was a real friend of God and the first monotheist. Thomas Michel (2003: 66) reminds us that Abraham is called a friend of God in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah 41:8), the New Testament (Romans 4:2) and the Qur’Ɨn (4:125). But his hospitality is praised as well in surat al-jariyƗt when referring to the honored guests of IbrƗhƯm (Q. 51:24-30): he receives these guests by offering them a good meal and a greeting of peace. Of course, in the faith of Muslims the guests cannot be associated with God, and therefore all attention is directed to the human qualities of IbrƗhƯm. His dedication to his task as host is proverbial, so that Turkish people are accustomed to speak about ‘the table of IbrƗhƯm’ or ‘the abundance of IbrƗhƯm’. A hadith tells us that Abraham never had a meal without guests, indicating that God will give plenty to those who know to give to the poor themselves (Uúak 2004: 15). It is therefore not surprising that the French islamicist Louis Massignon (1883-1962) not only pointed to Abraham/IbrƗhƯm as an important symbol for the dialogue between Christians and Muslims but to his hospitality as well. In doing so, he was led by his experience of the way in which he had been received by Arab Muslims in Baghdad. When he was imprisoned on suspicion of spying for France, his Muslim host interceded to get him out of prison. This experience, together with a series of near-death experiences in 1908 that caused him to take his Catholic faith seriously, stamped his perception of relations between Christians and Muslims in a quite mystical way (Basetti-Sani 1974: 42-47; Gude 1996: 27-56; Mouttapa 2002: 133-42). Hospitality became a true “generative theme” (Paolo Freire) in the life and spirituality of Massignon (Keryell 1987; 1993: 149-57). But it developed into a guideline for interreligious dialogue as well. Christians were called to go to the ‘strangers’ and become their guests: psychologically, they had to begin by learning the language, the categories, the doctrines of Islam from the Muslims themselves; this meant leaving one’s home and one’s critical point of view, and entering the Muslim’s home, seeing his way of looking at himself and at his faith. Only then could the Christian, in turn, give hospitality to the Muslims. (Gaudeul 1984: I, 322)

At the end of chapter five I will try to show how this interpretation of a ‘mutual hospitality’ by Massignon fits in with a model of ‘passing over and coming back’ (Dunne 1987: 1) in a Muslim-Christian theo-

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logy. According to this model, Christians have to explore the world of their partners in dialogue first and become guests there, before they may return to their own world and become hosts to their Muslim partners. The research on the role of Abraham in the Qur’Ɨn by Youakim Moubarac, one of the pupils of Massignon, reinforces the spiritual importance of this prophet and his hospitality (Moubarac 1972: 23). In the vein of the Abrahamic religions, however, attention should not be directed to the person of Abraham in the first place, but to the way in which the virtue of hospitality in his life was connected to his friendship with God. “Welcoming others is not merely good manners and a sign of civility, but for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, hospitality is an expression of faith and an act of worship of God” (Michel 2003: 68). 1.4 Hospitality: Philosophical Reflections and Political Consequences How does one deal with strangers? This might be one of the basic questions in every culture and, consequently, in many fundamental reflections about culture. It is certainly a basic theme in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur’Ɨn, but it is a fundamental question in ancient Greek and Roman literature and philosophy as well. Together, these are the constitutive sources for the European humanist tradition that has formulated its ideas about the importance of hospitality to strangers as an element of universal culture as well. Of course, in an introductory chapter like this one, I cannot even try to deal with these sources; but it is important for two reasons to say at least a few words about the philosophical reflections and the political consequences of the virtue of hospitality. In the first place, every theological reflection on interreligious dialogue must be aware of the fundamental importance of otherness that is implied by the prefix ‘inter-’ that cannot subsist on its own since it indicates a certain type of relation between the one subject or subjects and the other subject(s). This relation is such that the one and the other do not co-exist separately but are related in such a manner that they influence one another. The prefix ‘inter-’ therefore conveys the notion of mutuality and partnership. The emergence of the adjectives ‘intercultural’ and ‘interreligious’ in the recent history of theology indicates a ‘paradigm shift’ in which it is no longer possible to do theology without an

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awareness of the other. (Wijsen 2001: 224). While the possible future consequences of this mutual influence will be sketched in chapter five, a few words must be said here about the philosophical background of this type of relation. In the second place, every theological reflection on relations should incorporate an analysis of the context in which this relation is established. In this respect, the linguistic and philosophical analysis of the power relation that is implied by the word ‘hospitality’ will draw attention to the political consequences of this word. Hospitality and the Power of Self versus the Other In the previous subsection I suggested that the Hebrew word ger does not simply indicate every stranger, someone who is different from the speaker. If in Israel one would want to indicate that someone was an utter stranger to Israel’s culture, one would use rather the Hebrew word nokri. In distinction from nokri the word ger refers to the stranger who is in some way connected to the culture of the speaker. It indicates both difference (the stranger comes from a different culture) and similarity (the stranger comes to share the culture). But there is a certain order: first, strangers are perceived as people who are different, as can be seen by their appearance, habits and tongue. Secondly, the stranger is perceived as someone who wants to live in a certain relationship with the receiving culture; this means that differences will remain, but they are embedded in a kind of agreement to live together in the host culture. And finally, the process of inter-relatedness begins which implies that the stranger becomes acquainted with the new culture, while the receiving culture in its turn encapsulates some of the ‘strange’ values into its own identity. The stranger becomes a part of those among whom he has come to live, and the differing identities begin to shift under each other’s influence. The ‘self’ is no longer identified against the ‘other’ but as influenced by the ‘other’: Soimême comme un autre, oneself as another, as the title of the influential book by Paul Ricœur on identity goes. The English word ‘hospitality’ indicates a similar kind of relation. In one of his philosophical essays on hospitality, Jacques Derrida (1998: 34) refers to the Latin word hospes (‘host’) which could, according to E. Benveniste, be derived from hosti-pet-s, meaning “he who is in power of the guest in his own domain.” Being a host is therefore the prerogative of the pater familias. In this context it is interesting to note that the Latin word hostis (‘guest’) may refer not

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only to a stranger but to an enemy as well. Hence it is evident that the relation between a host and a guest is laden with tensions that must be regulated somehow by laws. Therefore, both the Latin hostis and the Greek xenos refer to a guest who enters into a mutual alliance with the host. The same holds true for the German word Fremde or the Dutch vreemde: it denotes someone who comes from afar but is now living within my horizon. “Strange-yet-familiar: only when related to each other do these terms convey the real question” (Sundermeier 2003: 67). This mutual alliance in a situation of inequality is exactly what specifies the ‘inter-’ of interreligious dialogue. It is neither a situation of friends nor of brothers but one of people coming from different backgrounds and trying to live together in a situation that is never religiously and culturally neutral. On the one hand, the host is the person in control, who may decide to receive the guest or not; on the other hand, the appeal of the guest to be admitted is almost absolute, to be mitigated only by legal relations. In this respect the horrifying story of Lot, who would rather hand over his daughters to the Sodomites than forfeit his duty as host (Genesis 19:8), shows that the virtue of hospitality knows its extremes as well. The conception of hospitality is therefore dependent on an analysis of the broader concept of the stranger, or in even more general terms, the other. In his Theology and the Dialogue of Religions Michael Barnes has pointed to the theological importance of the notion of ‘otherness’ as follows: ‘The other’ is at once a post-modern term of mind-bending obscurity and the heart of the Gospel reality: stranger, neighbour, potential friend, with whom so much is shared yet who often represents a difference which can only be comprehended in the silence of faith. Between these two poles, the fragmented world of post-modernity and the pages of the scriptural witness, another other, the otherness of God is revealed. (Barnes 2002: x-xi)

It is not coincidental that Barnes elaborates on this idea with reference to the Jewish philosopher and talmudist Emmanuel Levinas, since he may be seen as the strongest representative of a critique of the entire Western tradition of metaphysics in which all thinking remains oriented to the development of the self (Fritsch-Oppermann 2001: 225). Levinas, on the contrary, argues for an ethical priority of the other. In-

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deed, it may be said that exteriority or alterity is the foundational idea in his philosophy (Strolz 1992: 51). It is the encounter with the other that gives rise to the fundamental importance of alterity, since the face of the other appears to me as a basic question that uproots my existence. An important consequence of this analysis is that the other cannot be perceived as ‘another me’ any longer: it is the other that determines the self, not the other way around (Valkenberg 1998a: 45; Bulhof 2003: 212). “For Levinas the relation with the other is not to be derived from any capacities which we may possess in ourselves; the other is radically ‘exterior’ to our experience” (Barnes 2002: 76). In contrast with the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, whose other is to be received as a friend in a relation between the ‘I’ and the ‘You’, the other in Levinas is rather a stranger who demands to be admitted. This is not the place to work out a “biblically based theology of welcome and hospitality” (Barnes 2002: 63; cp. Samartha 1997: ix), but in the introduction to this book I have pointed to the importance of Levinas’s idea that the other is someone who is put on my path by God. It is not the self-sufficient I that chooses the other as a guest, but it is others who pose a question for my existence by presenting themselves to me. Jacques Derrida points to the fact that this implies a form of violence: the stranger is someone who represents a dangerous influence that breaks into the host culture. Therefore, laws are necessary to regulate the otherwise threatening relations. The absolute Law that is implied in an ‘ethics of hospitality’ is regulated by concrete laws that restrict the right to be received as a guest to certain times and places (Derrida 1998: 26). In this manner, the host remains in charge of the relation, since he determines the time and the place. He has the authority to refuse hospitality if he feels he is held hostage by the intruding strangers. Laws concerning hospitality are meant to alleviate this threat by domesticating the foreigner (Derrida 1998: 58. 92). With reference to this analysis by Derrida, Gianni Vattimo avers that hospitality is the new Christian mission in a post-colonial age (Vattimo 2003: 106). In its development Christianity has accepted secularism and laïcité as part of its own history in Europe; therefore, its role in the coming dialogue of cultures in Europe will be to function as a host that refers to the universal value of human reason. This hospitality, however, implies a radical kenosis in which the host becomes subordinate to the wishes of the guests, and admits the possibility that

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they are right in their claims. If Christians want to formulate their identity in such a dialogue between cultures and religions, it will be an identity of hospitality, which means that their guests are the ones who have the right to speak first (Vattimo 2003: 106). In a similar fashion, Ilse Bulhof asserts that acknowledging the radical otherness of the cultural other brings about a shock that can even lead to an experience of ‘being nowhere’ (Bulhof 2003: 204). Political Implications of Hospitality This appeal to a kenotic form of behavior in which we allow the other to uproot our existence brings us to the political implications of the notion of hospitality. A few decades ago, the summons to bracket the identity of Western culture and to receive as wholeheartedly as possible all political and economic refugees and displaced persons with their own cultural luggage would have been considered progressive. But nowadays, at least in the Netherlands, it is considered to be a hopelessly outdated point of view from what is sometimes mockingly referred to as ‘the leftist church’ of multiculturalism. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor is among the most prominent defenders of this approach in which the plurality of cultures and the dialogue among them is formative of the identity of human beings (Taylor 1992). At the political level Taylor argues in favor of a politics of recognition in which the assumption that cultures are to be treated as equal can be combined with serious respect for the otherness of the different cultures that are present in a society. This multiculturalism was for a long time the dominant view in the social sciences and the organizations for social aid; it was driven by the idea that different cultures should in principle be treated as equals. Against the long-standing Western tradition that considered its own values as universal values, anthropologists started to underscore the differences between cultures without ranking them immediately in a hierarchy derived from Western culture. In this manner, Clifford Geertz, for instance, in his approach to religion as part of cultural systems argues for an “anti-anti-relativism” (Geertz 1984). Such a postmodern view of cultures, in which there was no longer a universal standard for measuring the value of cultures but rather a polycentrism of relatively independent cultural values, influenced theological thinking about culture as well (Tanner 1997; Schreiter 2003). Several new institutions of intercultural theology that have been recently founded in Western

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Europe seem to be an offshoot of this multicultural approach (Houtepen 2003; Wijsen 2003). Many theologians seem to favor the ideas of multiculturalism and intercultural dialogue, possibly in reaction to the still widespread prejudice that connects monotheism with a monarchical and centripetal exercise of power. I have often wondered whether my rather positive valuation of the plurality of cultures and religions in Dutch society might be a matter of overcompensation for the not so peaceful history of Christianity’s relation with other religions. In academic debates on multiculturalism, I often noticed that theologians are maybe a bit more optimistic than philosophers or social scientists, which might induce one to think that theologians are sometimes a bit naive (Welters 2000). But, on the other hand, there are some very good theological reasons for endorsing and enjoying religious and cultural plurality, rather than fearing and condemning it. Against the quite common idea that a monotheistic religion would lead to a particular form of monarchial rule on earth, as Jürgen Moltmann argues in his Trinitarian theology, following Erik Peterson (Moltmann 1980: 207-17), the revelatory texts of these monotheistic religions can be read to indicate the usefulness of plurality on earth. The Jewish tradition, for instance, gives an interpretation of the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) that indicates that God wanted to spread the peoples over the earth since their unity displeased Him. Some modern Jewish explanations follow Rabbi Samuel ben Meir in saying that the people wanted to live in one place, against the injunction of Genesis 1:28 to multiply and fill the earth.3 It was the will of God that they should not live together in one place but spread and be different. One of these modern Jews is Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who writes in his book Dialogue with a Difference with reference to the story of Babel:4 God, the creator of humanity, having made a covenant with all humanity, then turns to one people and commands it to be different, teaching humanity to make space for difference. God may at times be found in the human other, the one not like us. Biblical 3

See Encyclopedia Judaica, s.v. Babel, tower of, vol IV (Jerusalem 1971), 24. For more details cf. Valkenberg 1998a. 4

Pieter Bruegel’s painting of the Tower of Babel (from 1563) is the cover illustration on my edition of this book.

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monotheism is not the idea that there is one God and therefore one gateway to His presence. To the contrary, it is the idea that the unity of God is to be found in the diversity of creation. (Sacks 2002: 53)

The Christian story of Pentecost shows a similar preference for plurality, since the people hear Peter and the Apostles preach and, as the text of Acts 2 repeats several times, “each one heard them speaking in the native language of each” (Acts 2:6.8.11). The Qur’Ɨn seems to allude to the story of the Tower of Babel when it says that God created all people as a single community, but later they differed (10:19). These words, however, may also allude to the differences between Jews and Christians. Now this difference is used by God as a test: “We dispersed them over the earth in separate communities – some are righteous and some less so: We tested them with blessings and misfortunes, so that they might all return [to righteousness]” (Q. 7:168; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 106). Therefore, God gave to each community their own messengers and their own rites to observe (Q. 10:47; 22:67), and God will judge between them accordingly. These ideas come together in a text that will be analyzed in chapter five: “We have assigned a law and a path to each of you. If God had so willed, He would have made you one community, but He wanted to test you through that which He has given you, so race to do good: you will all return to God and He will make clear to you the matters you differed about.” (Q. 5:48; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 72) The End of Multiculturalism? This strong religious endorsement of plurality might lead theologians to think optimistically about the future of religious pluralism. Such an optimistic point of view might seem outdated in the modern political arena of a country such as the Netherlands, where ethnocentric ideas about defending Dutch identity against the otherness of strangers hold sway, but it is in fact a long-standing tradition of hospitality for which the Netherlands has been famous world-wide – at least up to three years ago. In the awareness of most Dutch intellectuals, there is still a heritage of tolerance and hospitality that is connected with the names of such great political philosophers as Desiderius Erasmus, Hugo Grotius and Baruch de Spinoza (Derkse 2004). Apart from the fact that this heritage may in fact be a mythical ‘reconstruction of historical identity’ (Borsboom et al. 2003: 15), it is clear that there can be no such thing as limitless hospitality or tolerance. In the face of ex-

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panding violence motivated by fundamentalist forms of religions, philosophers and politicians assert the right to defend oneself and the values of a society characterized by the Western Enlightenment. Against the multicultural tradition in anthropology that is accused of leading to relativism, Ernest Gellner and others have developed a form of ‘secular fundamentalism of the Enlightenment’ that wants to exempt the values of Western modernity from such a relativism (Van der Veer 2002: 27). “What has happened to your Dutch liberal tradition of hospitality?” a German colleague asked me some time ago. I am not sure about the answer. It might be that we are still in a state of shock after the unprecendented events of September 2001 and May 2002, when the right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn, who took a stand against what he called the “islamization of Dutch culture” (Fortuyn 2001), was shot by an animal liberation activist a few days before the parliamentary elections. Fortuyn did not become the prime minister as he planned to, and the party that bore his name (LPF = List Pim Fortuyn) had a great electoral success but quickly lost favor because of internal struggles. The traditional libertarian right-wing party hastened to take over the issues that made Fortuyn prominent: controlling the influx of immigrants and restraining the influence of Islam on Dutch culture. A few months before, Fortuyn’s party had won the local elections in Rotterdam, a seaport with the most multicultural population in the country. For decades, the labor party had been in charge of the local government, but now the intellectual heritage of Fortuyn began to rule the city by dispersing immigrants and restricting the building of mosques. The murder of Dutch filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh in November 2004 by a Moroccan Muslim who sought to defend his atrocity as an act of jihƗd added fuel to the flames. Even the local newspapers in South Bend, Indiana, where I lived at the time, reported on the heated debates over Islam in the Netherlands. While the murder showed the fury of Muslim extremists over the seemingly limitless freedom of speech in the Netherlands that insulted their sense of the holy, Dutch teenagers showed their aversion to religious violence by burning down Muslim schools and mosques. The ideal of a multicultural society was drowned in seas of mutual fear. It is quite evident that this radical turnover in the Dutch political landscape has to do with the limits of hospitality (Dummett 2001). According to many politicians, the multiculturalists of the last century

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were naive in that they did not see the problematic side of the ideal of cultural pluralism. Fortuyn was right in stressing the values of the receiving culture but he overstated his case by giving the norms and values of Western culture in general and Dutch culture in particular a universal bearing (Fortuyn 2001: 49). Consequently, he put the blame for the unsuccessful cultural integration of immigrants in the Netherlands on cultural relativism. “If someone wants to live in our country,” he stated, “he or she should accept our values and accomodate himself to them” (Fortuyn 2001: 108). Pim Fortuyn, and with him a whole range of libertarian right-wing politicians like Frits Bolkestein, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders indicate three sources for these European norms and values: humanism, Judaism and Christianity (Prins 2004). The shape of the political debate on immigration nowadays in the Netherlands is largely determined by this hyphenated European identity from which Islam is explicitly excluded. Are we theologians and Islamicists naive when we try to show that Islam is not an external threatening force but that it has been one of the constitutive ingredients of European identity (Watt 1972)? Are we Christians naive when we say that our identity cannot be an armored identity against religious others, since we have to be aware of the Jewish stranger in ourselves? In political and academic debates I am often aware of this theological ingenuousness, but equally often I remember how some friends and teachers of mine live in a seemingly naive way because they want to take seriously the many words of Jesus encouraging them to direct themselves to the Kingdom of Heaven rather than to the wisdom of this world.5 There is a theological conviction behind this attitude of openness and reaching out to strangers that may be called a ‘theology of presence’, as exemplified by St. Francis of Assisi (Hoeberichts 1994). Such an attitude, whether it be called naive or not, presupposes the possession of something to be present with, both spiritually and materially. It is therefore the attitude of relatively rich people who can afford to be naive and not the attitude of the poor 5

For instance, the wisdom of this world prescribes not giving money to drug addicts when they come to your house with their tales about food and lodging. But I remember a conversation long ago with Wil Veldhuis, lecturer in dogmatic theology at the Catholic Theological University and a parish priest in Utrecht who said: “I would rather run the risk of being robbed of my wallet several times than not give money to someone at the moment when he or she really needed it”.

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who should, in the words of Jesus, be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Applying this contextual reading to the situation of Europe, it is my contention that Europeans (and North Americans) can afford to be hospitable because they have enough to share. This holds for theology as well, as I discovered in dialogue with theologians form the Middle East. Because of their longer history of living together with Jews and Muslims, Christians in the Middle East know better how to enact the dialogue of life together. But maybe Christians in Europe are better able to lead the way in the theological dialogue because they can afford to be liberal since they are in the majority and have greater theological resources (Valkenberg 2000a: 112). 1.5 Companionship at Table: Hospitality and the Holy The final section of this chapter will consider the religious importance of the virtue of hospitality, by connecting it with the idea of the holy and the possibility of sharing the sacred. At first blush, the very idea of the sacred seems to be contrary to the possibility of sharing, since the Latin word sacrum connotes the idea of a closed domain, separated from normal life or the profanum (Colpe 1987: 513). The sacred that is present in this holy enclosure is by definition not accessible to everyone. If something is really holy, it should not be exposed to strangers who might profane and thus misuse it. This is why there is so often a connection between religious fervor and the wish to purify the holy from all accretions: it is one of the connections between honoring God and religious violence (Valkenberg 2002). Religious people, on the other hand, also want to share what they have discovered in their life as holy, and therefore they invite others to participate in their communion with the sacred. The French Islamicist Louis Massignon expressed this as an almost holy duty in a Christmas meditation on the Muslims of his time: “For this abandoned people, there is only one work of mercy: hospitality; and it is by this alone, not through legal observances, that we cross the threshold of the sacred. Abraham showed it to us” (Massignon 1962: 285; tr. Mason 1989: 55). In his essays Massignon refers not only to Abraham but also to one of the most basic mysteries of faith according to the Roman Catholic tradition: the hospitality given by Mary in her consent to Gabriel: “let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38; Harpigny 1981: 85). Basing himself on a significant Patristic tradition, Massignon interprets this fiat by Mary typologically (Griffith 1997:

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197) as the readiness of the soul to meet God as its Lover, which he finds in the mystical poems of RnjmƯ as well (Massignon 1962: 28183). According to the Gospels, the hospitality of Jesus was almost proverbial so that it can be seen as one of the basic characteristics of his message. Jesus’ companionship at table is mentioned by Schillebeeckx (1979: 200-18) as one of the memories preserved by the disciples: they cannot fast as long as the bridegroom is with them (Mark 2:18-20). This behavior of Jesus and his disciples gave offense to the religious authorities of their time: “the Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’” (Matthew 11:19). The fact that Jesus sat at dinner in Levi’s house together with tax collectors and sinners (Mark 2:15) was seen as an extension of hospitality beyond the boundaries of normal Jewish behavior or halacha; but for Jesus it was a sign of the coming kingdom of God. When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous (Luke 14:12-14).

Schillebeeckx draws attention to the fact that this table companionship of Jesus with those that were considered outsiders in these days is mentioned several times in the Gospels according to Mark, Matthew and Luke. But theologically more influential is the fact that Jesus acted as host to his disciples at the Last Supper when he made the berakha at table and the accompanying rites of passing around bread and wine as a symbol of the relation between him and his disciples. Therefore, the stories about the risen Jesus in Luke (24:28-31), Acts (10:41) and John (21:12-13) contain references to this “eating and drinking together” as well. Again, Jesus is the host who eats and drinks together with his disciples. Among these stories, the story of the men of Emmaus has particular relevance for this book, since Jesus who first appeared to them as a stranger (Luke 24:18), later turned out to be their host in the breaking of bread (Luke 24:30). Schillebeeckx therefore can conclude: “The very pronounced interest in fellowshipmeals in the early Church is obviously grounded in Jesus’ own practice when he was alive on earth” (1979: 218). There might even

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be an allusion to the importance of table companionship among Jesus and his followers in the Qur’Ɨn (Parrinder 1995: 86-89) because the name of surat al-MƗ’ida (Q. 5: ‘the Table’ or ‘the Feast’ in the interpretation by Abdel Haleem) refers to a conversation between them as follows. When the disciples said, “Jesus, son of Mary, can your Lord send down a feast to us from heaven?” he said, “Be mindful of God if you are true believers.” They said, “We wish to eat from it; to have our hearts reassured; to know that you have told us the truth; and to be witnesses of it.” Jesus, son of Mary, said, “Lord, send down to us a feast from heaven so that we can have a festival – the first and last of us – and a sign from You. Provide for us: You are the best provider.” (Q. 5:112-114; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 79)

So, it is not strange that St. Luke twice mentions the breaking of the bread among the characteristics of the first Christian communities in Acts 2:42 and 47. However, the particular reference to the remembrance of Jesus indicated by St. Paul’s words: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26) give the sharing of bread and wine a holy character. Sharing bread and wine therefore lost its social character and came to be interpreted as an initiation rite in the tradition of the Greek and Oriental mystery religions in which only members of the cult were admitted to the sacred rites. In the second century, “[t]he cultic area of the church’s life, especially baptism and Eucharist, underwent a profound transformation as the sacraments became ‘mysteries’ to which not everyone had immediate access” (Rudolph 1987: 237). Those who were not yet baptized and those who were still catechumens had to be initiated before they could participate in the sacred liturgy. Problems concerning Sharing of the Holy In a further development of preserving the sacredness of the rites, the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox traditions in which the Eucharist is the holiest of sacraments officially admit only Christians who are in full communion with their churches to this sacrament. This question as to whether sharing holy things can only be a result of growing community between the churches or whether it should rather be one of the ways facilitating this communion is still one of the major stumble

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blocks in the contemporary ecumenical movement, at least in places where large Protestant communities are involved. This short historical sketch shows why the Christian tradition suffers from a grave ambiguity as far as the relation between hospitality and the holy is concerned. On the one hand, Jesus Christ who is the most striking instance of the sacred seems to indicate that those who want to follow him should extend table companionship to those ‘others’ who are not favored by the religious authorities. On the other hand, the traditions that hold the ritual remembrance of his life and practice in high esteem, exclude the religious foreigners from their table. It is therefore not surprising that the idea of a ‘sharing of the holy’ (communicatio in sacris) meets with a lot of resistance in these traditions (Valkenberg 2003c). The entry on communicatio in sacris in the second edition of the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche (1959), for instance, has a very negative tenor. It is usually forbidden for a Catholic Christian to participate actively in a religious ceremony of another Christian community; while participation of a non-Catholic Christian in a sacrament can only be allowed in some special cases. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church (and of the Orthodox Churches) not only the preservation of the holy plays a part here but its selfunderstanding as Church as well. In the most recent edition of the same Lexikon (1994), the restrictive approach remains, but reference is made to communicatio in spiritualibus as an encompassing term according to the Ecumenical Directory (1993). Recently, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has, in its document Dominus Iesus, once again underlined the difference between the Catholic Church as instrument of salvation and the other ecclesial communities (Congregation 2000: no.17). If there can be no access to the holy things of the Catholic Church for those who are not in full communion with this Church, how can there be any sharing of these holy things with those who have another religion? In this respect, there is an interesting tension between the official doctrine of the Catholic Church and the practice of its highest representative. While the rituals and practices of other religions cannot be put on a par with the rituals of the Catholic Church (Congregation 2000: § 21), John Paul II, who was the Pope from 1978 to 2005, prayed together with representatives of other faiths in a manner that seemed to presuppose the idea that these religions are more or less equal. At least, this is the critique that has been leveled against the

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Pope because of his remarkable initiative, the World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi in 1986 (Secretariatus 1987; Riedl 1998). This idea of equality between religions was one of the reasons for Archbishop Marcel Lefèbvre to leave the Church, and his followers go on criticizing the Assisi prayer gathering for the same reason (Riedl 1998: 14-15, 274-77). The Pope, however, was careful to avoid the idea of sharing prayer with other religions or of interreligious services. He did not pray together with representatives of other religions, but he prayed in their presence and they prayed in his presence. Since 1986 he has done so on several occasions, such as, for instance, his visit to the Umayyad mosque in Damascus in 2001 and his second World Day of Prayer in Assisi in 2002. While the difference between an interreligious prayer meeting and a prayer in the context of an interreligious meeting is theologically not without relevance, the main goal of such a meeting is to demonstrate how different religious leaders share a common concern for peace on religious grounds. Therefore, one may say that the practice of the Pope opens us to a form of interreligious communication, while the doctrines emphasized by influential parts of the Roman curia try to restrict this conversation as much as possible. The same tension is noticeable in other churches as well. In the immediate aftermath of the assault on the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001 the Dutch Council of Churches felt the need to organize an ‘hour of reflection and prayer’ that would be broadcasted nationwide by an Evangelical network. Because it was not yet clear who was behind the attack, the Council of Churches decided not to invite Muslim organizations since this could have a stigmatizing effect; but as the preparations for the prayer on September 15 advanced, it became clear that there was some interest from several religious organizations to participate as well. Since the co-organizing Evangelical alliance did not favor interreligious prayer meetings, the Council of Churches decided to keep the ‘hour of reflection and prayer’ within a Christian framework but to invite Jewish and Muslim organizations as auditors. In the meantime the prayer hour had become a national affair, and it was even discussed in a meeting of the national Cabinet, that suggested inviting Muslims as participants in view of the national importance of the prayer. Fortunately, the Council of Churches could find an imam who was willing to participate at such a short notice, but the Evangelicals expressed their objections once again: they were willing to participate if the imam would give an allocution, but they

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would not tolerate him praying to ‘his God’ in a Christian prayer hour. Therefore, imam Abdullah Haselhoef was forced to cut off the final part of his speech in which he wanted to address the God of Muslims and Christians but apparently not of all Christians.6 Friendship, Prayer and Hospitality This is not the place to enter upon a lengthy discussion of the possibilities for interreligious prayers in a Christian theology of religions (D’Costa 2000: 143-71), although I want to come back to this theme in the fifth chapter. For now, I want to end this chapter by pointing to Louis Massignon and his spiritual approach to Islam once more. Massignon, who became a member of the Franciscan Third Order in 1931 and took the name of IbrƗhƯm on that occasion (Gude 1996: 124), went to Damietta in Egypt a few years later as a pilgrim in the footsteps of St. Francis. It was at Damietta that St. Francis sought in 1219 to achieve by peaceful means what the crusaders could not establish by the sword, viz. the proclamation of the Christian faith to the Sultan. Francis was willing to offer his life for the faith of the Muslims. In a similar vein Louis Massignon together with Mary Kahil, an Egyptian woman, decided to offer their lives for the wellbeing of the Muslims. This was the beginning of the Badaliyya, a “sodality of prayer” (Gude 1996: 135) in which the Catholic participants vowed to pray for the salvation of the Muslim community by God. The Arabic word Badaliyya means ‘substitution’ and refers to the power of a few righteous people who are able through their efforts to effect salvation for others. While we may be more familiar with the Jewish legend about thirty-six Zaddikim who were able to save the Jewish people that has been made famous by the French novelist André Schwarz-Bart in his Le dernier des justes (Paris 1959), Massignon had discovered something similar in his studies of the great mar6

For a report and critical opinion on this matter in a Dutch churchrelated newsmagazine, see De Bazuin of October 19, 2001 (Vol. 84 no. 21). A Dutch Reformed theologian criticized my opinion in no. 24 of the same volume, stating that “chastity in prayer may be a form of respect for otherness.” Thanks to his appearance on this occasion, the Surinamese spiritual leader Haselhoef became a kind of national celebrity for a short while, until he was exposed as someone without a formal education as imam – although he rightly objected that there is no such thing as a universally recognized formal imam education in the Islamic world.

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tyr and mystic al-HallƗj and his idea of the AbdƗl (‘substitutes’) who turn away evil through their intercession with God. The first of these is Abraham who tried to save Sodom by his prayer. Because Abraham practiced it to a heroic degree, Massignon was led to consider him as an early example of mystical substitution and the related Muslim notion of the abdal or ongoing chain of substitutes throughout time. In this perspective the patriarch prefigures both Jesus and Hallaj, and his hospitality toward the stranger resonates far beyond his own story (Gude 1996: 120).

Massignon’s sodality was officially approved in 1947; it consisted of a weekly gathering on Friday and a private prayer three times a day at the time of the Angelus. In order to fulfill his vocation of intercessor for the Muslims better, Massignon asked to be ordained as a priest according to the Melkite rite of the Greek Catholic Church, so that he might pray in Arabic (Gude 1996: 179). There is an ambiguity in Massignon’s approach to Islam (Gude 1996: 135; Griffith 1997). On the one hand, the articles of the badaliyya sodality seem to suggest that he and his friends wanted to pray in order to bring Muslims into contact with Christ, “en affirmant par le ‘Fiat’ de Marie, le mystère de l’Incarnation divine que les musulmans veulent nier” (Keryell 1987: 375). Along this line one may see the Badaliyya as a missionary movement, and it has certainly been perceived as such by some Muslims (Griffith 1997: 206). On the other hand, Massignon saw Islam as a religion with a specific mission to reawaken the Abrahamic faith in God among Christians (Griffith 1997: 202). His life-long experience with Muslims was based on a strong personal faith and a sense of friendship (Mason 1988: 45). This idea of friendship and personal communion between some Christians and some Muslims was also the basic idea behind his badaliyya: it was a form of spiritual hospitality that could, in a time in which communicatio in sacris between Christians and Muslims was out of the question, give at least a foretaste of a future communion with God. One of the reasons why Massignon’s approach to Islam seems so fascinating and so outdated at the same time, is that it originates from a very strong personal experience of mutual hospitality between Christians and Muslims that is connected with a strong mystical attachment to some of the greater servants of God, among whom Abraham and al-HallƗj figure prominently. “Massignon’s experience is one of inter-religion; it is at once out of date, and strikingly modern. It is

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out of date in the language of its expression, but it is strikingly modern in being an experience of inter-religion” (Griffith 1997: 204). Such a spiritual feeling of connectedness in and through the holy is often based on long years of living together with Muslims, and on the friendships resulting from this coexistence. Therefore, the virtue of hospitality in interreligious dialogue is intimately connected with the art of friendship. Recently Christian theologians such as James L. Fredericks (1999: 173-177) and Paul F. Knitter (2002: 244-246) have drawn attention to the importance of friendship in interreligious dialogue. Testimonies of the power of friendship as a driving force in this dialogue are, however, much older (Burrell 2000). While one may make a distinction between the scholarly appeal of those who have really mastered the theology and spirituality of Muslim authors and the emotional appeal of those who stand out in their friendship with Muslims, both characteristics often go together (Van Nispen tot Sevenaer 2004: 13). This combination of scholarship and friendship is particularly noticeable in Louis Massignon, but it is equally strong in some of his compatriots, such as Henry Corbin, Louis Gardet and Claude Geffré, or in others who follow the same approach, such as Georges Anawati, David Burrell, Thomas Michel and Christian van Nispen tot Sevenaer. It will come as no surprise that most of them belong to a religious order or congregation. Indeed, the spiritual dialogue between monks and other adherents of religious orders has a special and foundational place in interreligious dialogue (De Béthune 2004; Colin 2004). Some of them even extended the idea of being present among people of other faith in a sphere of friendship and love to the utmost, as is the case with Charles de Foucauld or with prior Christian de Chergé and the other monks of Tibhirine in Algeria (Olivera 1997; Chenu 1999). This is not to suggest, of course, that only Christian monks are able to devote themselves to such an extent; the examples of Vietnamese and Tibetan Buddhist monks prove the contrary. My point here is simply to suggest that the spiritual dialogue as exemplified by Louis Massignon proved to be a very important basis for the renewal of Christian attitudes to Muslims in the twentieth century. I will come back to the role of spiritual dialogue in the fourth chapter, and to the role of Massignon with regard to the Abrahamic religions in the third chapter. But before that, I need to detail the personal experiences of dialogue from which I proceed. Therefore, the

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second chapter will describe the small beginnings of dialogue between Christians and Muslims in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

CHAPTER 2

Small Beginnings: Dialogue in Nijmegen, the Netherlands As I explained in the introduction to this book, my approach to interreligious dialogue is contextual or particularistic. This means that I do not want to speculate on interreligious dialogue in general, but rather stay close to the particular nature of the small-scale dialogue between Christians and Muslims in the part of the world where I live and work. Therefore, this chapter is dedicated to a description of the small beginnings of dialogue in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. In delineating some of the experiences in dialogue that underlie my theology of dialogue, I hope I will not weary those readers who cannot examine the references to Dutch literature. Though the inductive nature of my approach entails a description of its dialogical sources in some detail, I am more interested in the academic consequences of the particularities of the dialogue between Muslims and Christians in my own country than in a full description of dialogue as such. After all, this book does not aim at telling stories but at contributing to a Muslim-Christian comparative theology as an academic issue. But, as Jacques Dupuis shows in his masterful Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, the inductive method of this type of theology entails the primacy of interreligious practices in developing theologies of dialogue (Dupuis 1997: 17). This hermeneutical consideration explains the place of this somewhat autobiographical chapter in a book on Muslim-Christian dialogue and theology. 2.1 An Unfinished Bridge: From the Study of Dialogue To Participation in Dialogue As for many other Christian theologians, ecumenism was for me the first step to interreligious dialogue. I was born in Tilburg, a city in the southern part of the Netherlands that consisted almost entirely of Roman Catholics in my youth. I still remember the excitement when the first Protestant student – and a female one at that – entered our Roman

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Catholic high school. I went to Utrecht, a city in the middle of the country, to do my theological studies in an ecumenical environment. Utrecht was not only the place of residence of two – Roman Catholic and Old Catholic – bishops but also one of the centers of the Protestant churches in the Netherlands. It was therefore a suitable place for collaboration between the Catholic Theological University and the officially neutral but in fact Protestant department of theology of Utrecht University. In the 1970s, when I did my theological studies, ecumenical collaboration succeeded quite well, but later on, the tide turned and collaboration began to wane. In these years, I was not particularly interested in interreligious dialogue, but I was interested in the study of religions alongside dogmatic theology, which was the field of my doctoral thesis. Studying phenomenology of religions with Jacques Waardenburg at Utrecht University and at the same time dogmatic theology with Ferdinand de Grijs at the Catholic Theological University of Utrecht proved to be a peculiar but promising experience. A Program of Religious Studies In 1987 I began my work as a dogmatic theologian at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, in the eastern part of the Netherlands, near the German border. At that time the faculty of theology at this university was quite small, although it attracted students who subscribed to the academic standards of a critical hermeneutical form of theology made famous by theologians such as Piet Schoonenberg, Edward Schillebeeckx and Catharina Halkes. In 1990 the faculty initiated a program in religious studies as well, which focused on the interdisciplinary study of dialogue between religions and worldviews in the West European context. This new program was developed by the faculty of theology as a theological program, which therefore has a somewhat different character than programs of religious studies in the English-speaking countries (Kitagawa 1992), but the focus on interdisciplinary study of interreligious dialogue required a notable participation by the faculties of philosophy, humanities and social sciences as well. Both this cooperation between several academic disciplines with their different approaches, and the new focus on interreligious dialogue required some further study from a theological point of view. As one of the newly appointed staff members with a background in both systematic theology and the comparative study of religion, I was

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asked to develop the theological principles behind this program. One of these principles was that students should not only learn the basics of the world’s major religions, but that they should learn the basics of the Christian theological approach to these religions as well. Such a ‘Christian theology of religions’ has its place in the traditional theological curriculum in the department of fundamental (or foundational) theology that deals with the tenets of what is perceived as the true religion. While traditional Catholic fundamental theology wants to prove the truth of the Christian faith in its survey of religious truth claims, the fact of religious pluralism requires a different mode of ‘theology of religions’ in which interreligious dialogue is seen as a new way to investigate this traditional claim (Waldenfels 1985). As coordinator of the religious studies program, I wrote a memorandum in which I indicated how such a Christian theology of religions could form the theological identity of our religious studies program. At the same time, as a dogmatic theologian I participated in this program by lecturing on subjects such as Christology and Trinitarian theology. Because of the focus of the program on dialogue among religions, I widened the scope of these dogmatic subjects to include the question of God in the context of the Abrahamic religions, and the question of the uniqueness of Christ related to other savior figures. When the faculty of theology in Nijmegen had to merge with another theological institution in Heerlen, in the southern part of the country, I discovered that my approach to interreligious dialogue had much in common with the more pastoral approach followed by missiologists at the institute in Heerlen. Until then, I had not been aware of the fact that the theology of religions had been developed in the field of missiology as well. Extended conversations with Frans Wijsen resulted in a kind of division of labor: while I as a systematic theologian was supposed to start with the traditional Christian doctrine concerning other religions, he as a practical theologian took concrete examples of dialogue as his point of departure. This division between the deductive nature of a traditional theology of religions and the inductive nature of a Christian theology of interreligious dialogue (Dupuis 1997: 16-17) was a clear one but did not entirely fit in with my own approach. Is it really possible to start with theories about religious others, and take dialogue as horizon of one’s theology? Or should we rather follow the advice of Paul Knitter (1987: 178-200):

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begin with the practice of dialogue and build a theology of dialogue as a reflection on this practice? If Knitter and Dupuis are right – as I think they are – even dogmatic theologians cannot fruitfully develop a theology of religions without having had at least some experience with the practice of interreligious dialogue. In theory, it is possible to develop a Christian theology of religions at the highest academic level without ever meeting someone of a different faith; but in the practice of academic teaching, such a theory remains aloof from the reality of these religions. Moreover, I could not convince my students of the importance of dialogue without showing at least some experience with it. Therefore, I had to find partners in Abrahamic dialogue and a suitable way to communicate with their faith. In an academic context, the way to facilitate communication was to learn Arabic, in addition to the Hebrew that I had already mastered in my own theological education. But the academic context did not provide – and could not provide – any practice in interreligious dialogue, and therefore I began to look for dialogue partners in the place where I lived at that time, Utrecht. Interreligious Dialogue in Utrecht According to Nico Landman (1992: 297) some 22,000 Muslims, mainly from Turkey and Morocco, lived in Utrecht in the early 1990s. Although this number amounts to some 10% of the total population of Utrecht, initiatives in interreligious dialogue did not abound in the city. There was an interesting dialogue group connected with an association of Franciscans (Hartog 1996) but that would only start some years later. After a few years, the dialogue group stopped because no new perspectives opened up (Steenbrink 2000: 229). But certainly the Christian churches wanted to establish good relations with their Muslim neighbors and therefore they started an ecumenical foundation (ISKB: Interdenominational Foundation Churches and Foreigners) in 1985 with three part-time staff members.1 The female staff members concentrated on a project to facilitate encounters between Dutch, Turkish and Moroccan women (VOP: Vrouwen Ontmoetings Project, see 1

In their annual reports and their publications, the people of the ISKB Foundation explain that they use the term “foreigners” with some embarrassment as a simple collective name to indicate their fellow townspeople of predominantly Turkish or Moroccan origin.

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Rozema-van Geest and Zuidberg: 1996), while the male staff member concentrated on supporting organizations of Muslim immigrants (see Krikke, Rozema and Rozema-van Geest: 2000). My wife, who worked as a professional pastoral worker in one of the districts with many immigrants, was actively involved in the VOP instructing a Moroccan woman in the Dutch language. At the same time I tried to set up a dialogue project with Moroccans in the same neighborhood but did not succeed in setting the project on a firm basis. As a group of Christians from the Roman Catholic and Protestant parishes, we were able to meet with someone from the board of the mosque every now and then, but there was no continuity of Muslim participation. After a few attempts, we (the Christians) asked ourselves: How can we establish real contacts with them? What did we do wrong? Wieger Rozema, one of the staff members of the ISKB, explained this to me when he said that he was not interested in interreligious dialogue at all. “The people I am working with,” he said, “do not need dialogue, but they need good houses, they need jobs, they need to be treated as equals, without racism and without condescension. In a word, they need justice and not friendly words over a cup of tea.” He had experienced many times that the well-to-do Christians who wanted to engage in dialogue with Muslims lost interest when it came to changing the power inequality between them. Dialogue can sometimes be a cheap form of showing good manners while neglecting the real material differences between the partners (Valkenberg 1997: 92). On some other occasions Christians and Muslims who collaborate at the practical level confirmed this: as a Christian in the majority position, one must first show that one is trustworthy as a partner, for instance by providing for a better roof on a temporary mosque; only after that, can one talk about one’s faith (see Valkenberg 1998: 10). The implication that I drew from these admonitions was that intellectual dialogue should be rooted somehow in the dialogue of life. If this is not the case, one should approach such a dialogue with a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. As I will argue in the fourth chapter, interreligious dialogue should always be connected with an analysis of the context in which it is enacted.

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2.2 Passing over the River: Encounter with the Islam And Dialogue Foundation In Utrecht I was involved in a number of pastoral projects in which I could not really succeed in communicating with Muslims because of the ‘top-down’ approach inherent in such projects. However, when we moved from there to Nijmegen in 1998, I took the opportunity to take a different approach that would lead to more direct contact with Muslims. At that time there were about 5000 Muslims in Nijmegen, which amounts to some 3% of the total population (Landman 1992: 300; Te Grotenhuis and Scheepers 2001: 40). This is a rather moderate percentage, but it represents a huge development from a mono-religious to a multicultural and multireligious town. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the percentage of Roman Catholics was more than 70; at the end of the century, it sank to less than 30, while 66% did not belong to any institutionalized form of religion. In the meantime, the Jewish presence in the city decreased as well but for quite different reasons: in 1930 there was a considerable group of 4800 Jewish people, but after the atrocities of the shoah, only 57 were counted in 1947 (Te Grotenhuis and Scheepers 2001: 55). The Muslims in Nijmegen set up their first mosque in an old factory in 1976; between 1983 and 1986 the number of mosques grew from one to four, but at the same time the local authorities began to decrease their subsidies (Landman 1992: 45. 301). It is quite peculiar to know that the argument of the separation between church and state was used to stop support for mosques by a local government in which the Christian Democratic Party played an important role, while the largely left-wing socialist local government today is in favor of Nijmegen as a multicultural colorful city. The present mayor of Nijmegen for instance, who is a member of the socialist Labor party, defends the importance of religion as a social binding-agent as does her colleague Job Cohen in Amsterdam.2 These two mayors are themselves not religious, but they see the importance of the presence of religions in their towns. Nowadays the municipal information brochure put out by Nijmegen lists addresses of some nineteen Roman Catholic parishes, five 2

At the University of Nijmegen, Guusje ter Horst, mayor of Nijmegen, delivered a lecture of which an abridged version was published in the local newspaper: “Meer belang hechten aan religie,” De Gelderlander, May 27, 2002.

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congregations of the newly united Protestant Church in the Netherlands, and fifteen addresses of other Christian denominations. But addresses of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Baha’i groups are included as well, together with humanists, Freemasons and anthroposophical organizations. Meanwhile, I had become a member of the editorial board of Begrip Moslims – Christenen, a small-scale periodical devoted to the cause of mutual understanding between Christians and Muslims in the Netherlands. At the beginning of the year 2000, Begrip celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with a special edition on ‘Dialogue in 2000: Making Room for Each Other” and with a symposium at which there was a large Muslim participation. During this symposium, I met some members of a new Muslim group, the ‘Islam and Dialogue Foundation’. I found this meeting particularly interesting for two reasons. In the first place, the Muslims I met were young and bright, academically trained and professionally able, quite unlike the Muslims I met before in the Netherlands. In the second place, here was a group of Muslims who considered dialogue to be of paramount importance and thereby corrected the usual idea that it was the Christians who always talk about dialogue. I consulted their website3 with a view to establishing contact with their branch in Nijmegen, but it turned out that at that time they were only active in the Western part of the country. Dialogue with Muslims in Nijmegen Hardly two years later, though, after the dreadful events of September 11, 2001, it turned out that a Nijmegen branch of this foundation had been established, when my wife and I were invited to an iftƗr (breaking of the fast) according to a Muslim tradition of hospitality during the holy month RamadƗn. During this meal, one of the Turkish hosts introduced himself to me as Emrullah Erdem, coordinator of the Nijmegen branch of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation. Since he knew of my position at the university and of my interest in interreligious dialogue, he proposed that we work together in the future. And so we did. As a systematic theologian who had developed some knowledge of Islam by studying Arabic, the Qur’Ɨn and Hadith literature for a few years in the department of liberal arts, I was often asked to give lectures on Islam to Christians in parishes and other or3

www.islamendialoog.nl

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ganizations. I used to reply that I would prefer to lecture on relations between Christians and Muslims since I am not an Islamicist but a theologian interested in relations between religions. But now I began to see, especially since the negative opinions about Muslims grew stronger after September 11, 2001, that it is preferable to work together with Muslims in giving information about Islam and ChristianMuslim relations. The principle of mutuality in interreligious dialogue requires that we share the floor with Muslims and take first-hand account of their perception of Christian-Muslim relations in giving information about these relations to Christian groups (Valkenberg 2001). Therefore, I invited Emrullah to participate in a number of study group sessions on Christian-Muslim relations in a Roman Catholic parish. In these sessions we discussed the similarities and differences between the two religions, the history of defense and encounter between them, and finally some new initiatives toward interreligious dialogue. Moreover, I invited Mr. Erdem to participate in a dialogue session for first-year students in the religious studies program, together with Jan Huijsmans, a former student chaplain at the university and now chairperson of the Council of Churches in Nijmegen, and Tzvi Marx, a Jewish rabbi who was also a guest professor in our department. Experience of dialogue between representatives of Abrahamic faiths is of particular importance to the students because of its focus on interreligious dialogue, as I explained before. Finally, I invited a group of Muslims to participate in our annual meeting of faculty, students and alumni in which the relation between God and violence was to be discussed from the point of view of the different Abrahamic religions. It is perhaps typical of the academic situation in the Netherlands at the beginning of the twenty-first century that we were able to find a Jewish professor to delineate the perspective of his religion on ‘violence in the name of God’, while the Muslim perspective had to be given by an Islamicist from the department of liberal arts. With reference to the question of religion and violence, I was asked to give a lecture on the ambiguity of religions as regards the use of violence. When preparing this lecture, I noticed that all contributions to the debate on the relation between religion and violence seem to be biased. On the one hand, there are those who hold that religions are the main cause of violence; but on the other hand, adherents and leaders of the religions concerned often defend their faith by pointing to

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some peaceful core message. This highly ideological reconstruction of a religious ideal can of course be explained by the fact that this is to be expected if one is inundated by the multitude of media messages about Islamic fundamentalism and violence. But from an academic point of view, such a unilateral self-representation leaves me uncomfortable because I think that religion is related to our ultimate concerns and can therefore easily be used as a catalyst in cultural or economic conflicts (Valkenberg 2002: 8). In this respect I noticed what I consider to be an interesting contradiction in the self-representation of Islam by the Islam and Dialogue Foundation. On their website the Foundation presents its mission statement in rather irenic terms: we want to make clear that the essence of Islam is peace, mercy, grace and tolerance; that strife, violence and terror are out of place in Islam; and furthermore, that all religions have these principles in common so that we should refrain from all quarrels in order to lead our tormented earth to a peaceful and blissful future.4

In its printed public relations brochure, however, the Foundation includes the following English quotation: “Loving affection and detesting hate are the most distinguishing qualities of a heart exuberant with faith.”5 In my opinion, this quotation expresses the depth of real faith in God and its ambiguous nature much better than the somewhat idealistic mission statement. Since the quotation kept puzzling me, I asked Emrullah and other people of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation where it came from, but they said that they did not know its origin. After some searching, I discovered that the source of the quotation is probably the Turkish spiritual leader Fethullah Gülen, who is the originator of a multi-branched movement to which the Dutch Islam and Dialogue Foundation may be considered to belong as well (Yavuz and Esposito 2003). In a book containing Gülen’s speeches on dialogue, the following may be read: “The most distinctive feature of a soul overflowing with faith is to love all types of love that are expressed in

4

www.islamendialoog.nl (my translation of the Dutch mission state-

ment) 5

Brochure Stichting Islam & Dialoog (2001).

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deeds, and to feel enmity for all deeds in which enmity is expressed” (Gülen 2000: 198).6 Emrullah Erdem, for his part, invited me to give a lecture to a Muslim community on the occasion of ‘ashura, a voluntary day of fasting on 10 Muharram in commemoration of several prophets. In the shi’ite Muslim tradition, the day is especially devoted to the martyrdom of Husayn in the battle of Kerbela (10 Muharram A.H. 60). Since I was asked to elucidate the role of the prophet Nnjh or Noah in the Jewish and Christian traditions, I did some research on the interreligious character of the occasion of ‘ashura and the reference to the prophet Noah as well. Many Islamicists think that the yaum ‘ashura is probably derived from the Jewish liturgical calendar, in which there are several days of fasting connected with Yom Kippur (10 Tishri) or other historical events. In the Jewish tradition the story of the prophet Noah is connected with the concept of the Noahide covenant as a Jewish contribution to the theologies of religions to be discussed in chapter six. The Islam and Dialogue Foundation in Nijmegen began to organize iftƗr meetings on a larger scale as well, to which they invited not only representatives of other religions and other partners from cultural and social organizations but leading politicians as well. At the iftar on November 30, 2002 for instance, I was seated at a table not only with theologians but also with Guusje ter Horst, the mayor of the city of Nijmegen, and with Andreas van Agt, a former prime minister of the Netherlands. In the Footsteps of Abraham I Emrullah Erdem invited me and Rabbi Tzvi Marx to cooperate with him in organizing a manifestation to celebrate IbrƗhƯm as the forefather of Jews, Christians and Muslims. He worked as a freelancer with a Muslim background to develop projects to enhance the multicultural identity of the Biblical Open-Air Museum in Groesbeek near Nijmegen. This museum began as a Roman Catholic foundation aimed at showing aspects of the cultural milieu of Jesus Christ. At the turn of the century, however, the artistic direction of the museum was more explicitly multicultural and to a lesser extent interreligious as well. In June 2002 Muslims from Nijmegen and Arnhem had used the venue 6

A similar quotation may be found on the website of Fethullah Gülen: www.fethullahgulen.org

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of the museum to celebrate the ‘feast of the Prophet’. The local bishop, who had an important say in the affairs of the museum as it was still a Catholic foundation, did not like this new line. Referring to the original missionary purpose of the museum he wanted to preserve its Christian identity unadulterated rather than appear to present Jesus Christ as a prophet of God on a par with other prophets. The Board of Directors of the Museum, however, wanted to pursue the multicultural line as this was the only way to raise funds from government authorities. This led to a public conflict between Mgr. Anton Hurkmans, the bishop of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, and the directors of the museum, among whom the Christian democrat politician and former prime minister Andreas van Agt was the key person.7 Under these conditions, it was quite an adventure to organize a symposium on Abraham as forefather of three religions, especially since the goals of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation and of the museum were quite divergent. For the Muslim organization, engagement in dialogue and cooperation is a God-given task for which they appeal to the Qur’Ɨn (49:13): “People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into nations and tribes so that you should get to know one another. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most aware of Him: God is all knowing, all aware” (tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 339). The goal of the museum, however, is a secular one: to enhance the awareness of multicultural society in the Netherlands, and its relation to the cultures that shaped the world of the Bible. If religions are willing to cooperate in this task, they are welcome to do so. But they should accept the cultural conditions of Dutch secular society and its ideal of living together. For the Muslims of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation, this living together is part of God’s creation, so that a religious approach to contemporary society could not be subordinated to a cultural approach. In a similar way, according to the bishop of 's-Hertogenbosch, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ cannot be subordinated to a more general approach that stresses the common points of religions. The manifestation took place at a location called ‘ayn IbrƗhƯm (“Abraham’s spring”) in the Biblical Open-Air Museum. At this site, a Bedouin tent was built in order to display something of the culture and 7

For a short description of the conflict see the periodical of the Dutch province of the Roman Catholic Church: Een-twee-een 30 (2002): 387.

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lifestyle of nomadic people, including their hospitality. Near to this Bedouin tent, a modern tent was erected to house the event, where a few hundred people gathered under quite tropical conditions (including a huge thunderstorm) on June 8, 2003. As the mayor of the city of Groesbeek remarked in his retrospective comments on the event, the venue of this interreligious meeting might in the end leave a more lasting impression than its content, however important the latter might be for a theologian (Valkenberg et al. 2004: 11). The same holds true for its ritual dimension: the meeting was opened by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Marx who blew the shofar in remembrance of the fact that Jews celebrated their Shavuot, a few days before, to commemorate the revelation of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai. After this, Jan Huijsmans of the Nijmegen Council of Churches read from the Christian Bible to commemorate the feast of Pentecost, and Adem Eliaçik recited surat IbrƗhƯm from the Qur’Ɨn. After opening speeches by the mayor of Groesbeek and a local member of the European Parliament, and a word of welcome from the chairman of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation, the floor was given to Cemal Uúak, vicepresident of the Journalists and Writers Foundation who had organized a symposium on Abraham in Turkey in 2000. In an expressive presentation, Abdulkerim Balcı, a journalist working for the periodical Zaman in Jerusalem and London, showed his impressions of the journeys of Abraham. After this, the three principal speakers delivered their lectures from Jewish, Christian and Muslim points of view: Mrs. Tamarah Benima, former editor-in-chief of the periodical Nieuw Israelitisch Weekblad; Thomas Michel from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in Rome, and Ibrahim Özdemir from Ankara University. From a ritual as well as a spiritual point of view, the Mevleviyya Sufi dance of Sheikh Ahmad Dede and his whirling dervishes was less an intermezzo than one of the main parts of the program. Since I was asked immediately after this spiritual event to lead a panel discussion about the practical consequences of dialogue, I took the opportunity to say that a real dialogue should at least comprise the intellectual, practical and spiritual levels in order to bear fruit. As the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has stated on several occasions, since we are human persons living together, dialogue should be a matter not only of heads but of hands and of hearts as well (Secretariatus pro non-Christianis 1984; Pontificium Concilium 1991).

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Or, to put it differently: in order to be effective, an interreligious dialogue should have an intellectual, a ritual and a spiritual dimension. In the Footsteps of Abraham II A year later we organized a second symposium ‘In the Footsteps of Abraham’, but this time the initiative was taken by the recently established ‘Study group on Interreligious Dialogue’ attached to the Institute of Religious Studies at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. This group consists of students and faculty members who wish to offer their colleagues opportunities to participate in dialogical events as a way of contributing to the scholarly study of dialogue. Because Ertürk Alasag, the coordinator of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation in the Netherlands, is a student in the religious studies program and a member of this study group as well, it was quite easy to coordinate the organization with the Islam and Dialogue Foundation and to invite the Folkertsma Foundation for Talmudic Studies to cooperate as well. The organization of the symposium of 2004 by three different groups with different religious and cultural backgrounds was itself an exercise in intercultural and interreligious collaboration at the practical level. Because of the participation of a study group from the university, the 2004 symposium on Abraham was spread over two days, with a more specific meeting aimed at academic discussion in the auditorium of the university on the first day, and a public meeting aimed at interreligious dialogue in the biblical open-air museum on the second day. On both days the main speaker was Karl-Josef Kuschel from the University of Tübingen, Germany, whose book on Abraham in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions (Kuschel 1994) had been translated into Dutch in 2001. Kuschel’s first lecture was entitled “Under the Sign of Abraham: A Christian Theology of the Trialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims” (Kuschel 2004). We asked two Dutch Christian theologians to respond to this lecture. The first was Harry Mintjes who teaches Islam at the Theological University of Kampen and religious studies at the Islamic University of Rotterdam. Since he supervised the Dutch translation of Kuschel’s book, he could be expected to agree with most of its content. The second response came from Cees van der Kooi who has an endowed chair for the Theology of Charismatic Renewal at the Reformed Free University of Amsterdam and had published a critical reaction to Kuschel’s ideas about Abrahamic ecumenism (van der Kooi 2002).

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Van der Kooi’s main fear with respect to Kuschel’s proposal for an Abrahamic ecumenism is that this strategy of openness to other traditions will be pursued at the expense of the identity of the Christian tradition in which not only Jesus identifies himself with the Reign of God, but God also identifies himself with the person of Jesus and his way of life (van der Kooi 2002: 160). In his reply Kuschel said that he could respect the theological position of his opponent, but that he wanted to challenge him on the theological consequences of living together with Jews and Muslims. Van der Kooi answered that he was deeply moved by the fact that we live together now with Jews and Muslims as neighbors, but that this did not immediately affect his theological position. “When I use Christology as a criterion,” he said, “I am aware that this is a critique on my own life as a Christian in the first place” (van der Kooi 2004: 77-8). At the end of this theological discussion Kuschel and Van der Kooi agreed that the possibilities for a Christian theology of Abrahamic ecumenism depends on the right relationship between Christology and pneumatology. In chapter six I will show that this relationship is indeed crucial for a Christian theology of religions. It was salutary to have an opportunity to focus on the core theological questions evoked by the prospect of an Abrahamic ecumenism, since all speakers agreed that the public debate on Islam in Europe is dominated by political interests, and that these interests leave little room to discuss theological matters. Apart from that, it is good to show that dialogue is not merely an exchange of polite words as it is often presented in the press.8 As I will show in chapter four, theological dialogue is often closely connected to debate and even polemics. Therefore, it should be connected to more practical and more spiritual forms of dialogue, as was done by some of the students of the religious studies program who told us in the afternoon session how they tried to work with Kuschel’s book in their personal life. In the final round of discussion, the 80 participants engaged in an exchange of current and future initiatives to enhance interreligious dialogue in the Netherlands and Europe.

8

Elma Drayer called attention to this in her report on similar symposia in a national newspaper with a Christian background: “Eerbiedig zwijgen leidt nergens toe,” Trouw, May 29, 2004, p. 14.

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On the second day, before a larger public of some 200 persons, Kuschel gave his second lecture, entitled “Towards Abrahamic Spirituality and Ecumenism” (Kuschel 2004a). Responses were given from the Jewish and Muslim perspectives by Judith Frishman, professor in Talmudic studies at the Catholic Theological University of Utrecht and Ihsan Yilmaz, assistant professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.9 The afternoon session was dedicated to the attempt to build a bridge between theory and practice by gathering experiences from mostly female experts involved in interreligious dialogue. Finally, I met some representatives of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation in the academic setting once more when Cosmicus, a foundation aimed at building bridges between the world of Dutch education and science on the one hand and students from various cultural backgrounds on the other, asked me to chair a symposium on ‘Forerunners in Peace’ in the auditorium of the university in February, 2004. Before an audience of some 100 mainly Turkish students from several universities in the country, pivotal figures from several religious traditions were discussed: Erasmus of Rotterdam (by Petty Bange from the liberal arts department), Pope John Paul II and Fethullah Gülen (by Thomas Michel s.j.), Rabbi Nahman of Braslav, MaulƗna JalƗluddƯn RnjmƯ and St. Francis of Assisi (by Kerim Balcı) and finally the Dalai Lama (by Paul van der Velde from the religious studies department). Although there is no official relation between Cosmicus and the Islam and Dialogue Foundation, since Cosmicus directs itself more to intercultural than to interreligious dialogue, the program of the Cosmicus symposium (Celik et al. 2005) would fit in well with the objectives of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation. In fact, both foundations are fashioned after Turkish models. Behind them is the so-called Neo-Nur movement that takes its inspiration from Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen. Their influence helps to shape interreligious dialogue in Nijmegen. I will come back to these Turkish organizations and their activities in the next chapter, while their

9

Most unfortunately, Yilmaz was not able to read his paper personally since he could not enter the country because the Dutch embassy in London did not want to grant him a visa, even after intervention by Nijmegen University. Kerim Balcı read the paper in his place.

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spiritual backgrounds will be uncovered through an analysis of the works of Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen in the final chapter. 2.3 Building the Structures of Interreligious Dialogue in Nijmegen This catalogue of mutual invitations might cause readers to think that interreligious dialogue in Nijmegen was mainly the work of Muslims of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation and some Christians who collaborated with them. That would be a severe underestimation of the activities of others in a more institutional setting. Within the framework of the municipal initiative to celebrate a ‘multicultural week’ in March every year, a multireligious and multicultural service was celebrated every year with contributions from Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Baha’is. In some quarters of the town, Christians – some of them graduates of the religious studies curriculum of the university – organized interreligious celebrations together with Muslims and Baha’is as well. Toward the end of 2001, the youth choir from the Roman Catholic parish, where my wife was working as a pastoral worker, was invited to sing during a special service in the Turkish Eyup Sultan mosque in which representatives of different religions (Muslims, Christians, Jews and Baha’is) wanted to show their allegiance to the idea of a multicultural and multireligious ‘colorful’ Nijmegen. In the beginning of 2002, some politicians and church leaders suggested the idea of transforming an old chapel in the center of the town that had been used to house municipal archives into a center for intercultural and interreligious encounters or even a ‘House of Abraham’.10 At around the same time the Nijmegen Council of Churches took the initiative to found a Council of Worldviews and Religions in Nijmegen. Jan Huijsmans, the chairman of the Council of Churches explained that the new Council sought to foster better relations between various cultures and religions, to reduce all forms of discrimination and to bring together various groups in joint celebrations. Moreover, it could develop into a discussion partner for the municipal government in all matters related to religion and worldviews. The immediate reason behind the decision to found such a Council of Worldviews and Religions was the growing unrest between certain groups in the city in the aftermath of the September 11 suicide 10

See Peter Bemelmans, “Dromen van Huis van Abraham,” in De Gelderlander of January 7, 2002.

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bombings and the murder of the right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn in May, 2002. The Council of Churches in Nijmegen asked me to act as an adviser for the Council of Worldviews and Religions in process of formation. First of all, a Foundation had to be formed with a board of directors; we chose Charles Hamburger (BahƗ’Ư) as president, Emrullah Erdem (Muslim) as general member, and Paul Oosterhof (Christian) as secretary and treasurer. Next, the objectives of the Council had to be formulated; with a small group we agreed on the following formulation: “To promote knowledge, encounter and commitment among the worldviews and religious organizations and communities involved, in service of promoting multiform society in Nijmegen.” From these objectives, activities at four levels ensued: activities aimed at promoting mutual knowledge of the worldviews and religions involved, and their common values and norms; activities aimed at promoting encounter by organizing interreligious services and other meetings; activities aimed at promoting mutual respect and solidarity between members of worldviews and religions; and finally, activities aimed at strengthening the multicultural character of Nijmegen in its entirety. On September 21, 2003 the Council of Worldviews and Religions in Nijmegen presented itself to the public for the first time. The afternoon program consisted of three parts, according to the objectives of the Council. First came introductory lectures by Charles Hamburger, chairman of the council; Greco Idema, coordinator of a similar provincial Council in the northern part of the country; and Guusje ter Horst, mayor of Nijmegen. After an interactive theatre performance in which several encounters between different cultures, worldviews and religions were enacted, the presentation concluded with a celebration in which all nine participating worldviews (Anthroposophy, BahƗ’Ư, Buddhism, Christianity, Freemasonry, Hinduism, Humanism, Islam, Judaism) expressed their commitment to each other by reading a text and offering a symbol. This initiative fit in well with the plans of the city of Nijmegen to organize a number of activities under the heading “2003: Year of Encounter”. One of the powerful symbolic activities was ‘Nijmegen Eats’ in which neighbors were invited to cook a course for two neighboring families and to eat the three courses in the houses of the successive cooks. When our family went to the house of a refugee family

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from Sudan where we had the first part of our dinner on December 13, a member of the city council came as well to express his support on behalf of the city. He did this in a typically Dutch manner by offering a bottle of wine, not noticing that he had entered the house of an obviously Muslim family! I may refer to the beginning of the first chapter of this book to indicate both my appreciation for the fact that a secular government has begun to see the value of hospitality and what it entails, and my shame because of the fact that the intercultural awareness of the city council has not yet reached the level of realizing that offering a bottle of wine may lead to embarrassment in a Muslim family. Meanwhile, the Council of Worldviews and Religions decided to concentrate its activities for the year 2004/5 around the theme ‘Hospitality’. Apparently, the issue of hospitality was in the air …. 2.4 The Situation of Muslims in the Netherlands It might be helpful to indicate the larger context within which we began our dialogue initiatives in Nijmegen, in order to explain some of the characteristics of these initiatives. For this larger context, some basic information must be given about the situation of Muslims in Western Europe in general and the Netherlands in particular, since this situation largely shapes the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. A Short History of Immigration Muslims came to Europe in three or four waves (Antes 1994: 46; Nielsen 1995: 1). The first wave was the Muslim presence in Spain and southern Italy between the eighth and the fifteenth century, which left a rich cultural heritage but, due to the Reconquista, no lasting Muslim population. The second wave was the presence of Muslim populations in southeast Europe beginning in the tenth century, followed by a larger expansion in the Ottoman period. The final wave, which was the only one to reach the northwestern part of Europe, began only a few decades ago, due to three phenomena: decolonization, labor migration, and the influx of refugees (Antes 1994: 48). While the Netherlands had not been influenced by the first and second waves, the three phenomena of the third wave mentioned above contributed to a rapidly growing number of Muslims in the second half of the twentieth century. Few Dutch people now realize that the Kingdom of the Netherlands included the largest number of Muslim citizens apart from Brit-

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ish India before the independence of Indonesia shortly after the second World War (Steenbrink 2000: 201). While the Dutch Indies had some fifty million Muslims as inhabitants, hardly any Muslims came to the Netherlands. However, because the Dutch came to administer a largely Muslim country, many civil servants were trained to appreciate at least some of the local customs. This accounts for the fact that the Dutch part of the kingdom enjoyed, in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, a fair knowledge of Islam, as exemplified by academics such as Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje at the Univeristy of Leiden, even though few Muslims were present in the European part of the kingdom. The number of Muslims in the Netherlands did not increase much after the independence of Indonesia; it would only increase when Surinam (Dutch Guyana) gained independence in 1975. But before that, the number of Muslims had begun to rise as a result of labor immigration from Morocco and Turkey. In 1970 there were about 90,000 Muslim ‘gastarbeiders’ (foreign workers) in the Netherlands. Twenty-five years later the number had risen to some 630,000 (Rath et al. 1996: 4) because of two developments: first, the Dutch government allowed many foreign workers to bring their families to the country in order to live together as soon as it became clear that many of them wanted to stay in the Netherlands; second, the country has had a relatively liberal policy with regard to immigrants until a few years ago. The situation in the Netherlands is different from the situation in European countries such as France or Britain in that the majority of Muslims came to this country as foreign workers with the idea that they would leave this temporary residence as soon as they had earned enough money or the Dutch economy no longer needed them. Since they were only temporary citizens, they did not much bother about institutionalizing the religious duties of Islam. Moreover, they were not much concerned about integration or education, because they were planning to leave the country soon. The signal feature of Muslim foreign workers, however, is that they are “mainly composed of people from the lower classes … without significant religious and intellectual elites” (Antes 1994: 51). This feature distinguishes the situation of Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands sharply from that of Jewish immigrants to the Netherlands from the sixteenth century onwards. While the Jews adapted themselves to their new cultural context to such an extent that they were seldom perceived as cultural

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or religious strangers in the Netherlands, new Muslim immigrants were obviously seen as cultural and religious strangers who could threaten the European values of Dutch society (Valkenberg 2000a: 110). As it became clear that the foreign workers would stay in the country longer than they originally expected, the institutionalization of Islam in the Netherlands began to develop (Shadid and van Koningsveld 1991; Rath et al. 1996). This institutionalization developed along ethnical and political lines, yielding many different communities and mosque organizations in all major cities. The Dutch government stimulated the plurality of Muslim organizations by subsidizing any of them that developed cultural programs alongside their religious activities; moreover, its policy was to treat the Muslim organizations in the same manner as the Dutch churches that administered their own educational, cultural and other institutions. When the Muslim foreign workers were allowed to bring in their families, the specific form of institutionalization in the Netherlands resulted in a number of Islamic schools and later a university (the Islamic University of Rotterdam) as well. But this very proliferation of Muslim organizations made it quite difficult to bring them together in one representative body. This development reinforces the idea of a separate development of Islam as a ‘strange’ religion (Kraan 1993; Shadid and van Koningsveld 1995: 122; Steenbrink 2000: 207). The Development of Muslim intellectuals One of the major problems facing Muslims in the Netherlands is that they have, so far, almost no intellectual spokespersons able to develop something like a Dutch form of Islam (commonly called ‘polder-islam’). The imams of the Turkish and Moroccan mosques are usually sent to the Netherlands by their respective governments for a restricted period, so that they have little incentive to become acquainted with the Dutch language and Dutch culture. As a result, the Dutch people see them as strangers without any relation to the realities of the country in which they work. Current politicians want them to take compulsory courses in order to learn the basics of Dutch society. Another strategy that emerges from current political debate is the formation of a Dutch institute for the training of imams (Steenbrink 2000: 226). All this shows that Muslims and their official representatives are still considered strangers who have not sufficiently assimilated Dutch culture.

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The limited number of Muslims from Surinam or Indonesia or the even smaller number of Dutch men or women who have converted to Islam, mainly because of their marriage partners, do not change this overall picture of strangeness. Since Muslims of the so-called third generation are actively pursuing their education at the academic level, a new vanguard of Muslim thinkers in the Netherlands will soon emerge. But up to now there are almost no indigenous Muslim intellectuals in the field of comparative religion. There are a few well-known intellectuals who sometimes appear in the public media, like Mohammed Arkoun or Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (Arkoun 1989; Haleber 1992; Abu Zayd 1996; 2002), but they hail from African countries (Algeria and Egypt respectively). Although their influence may be important in the making of a modern, European form of Islam, many Muslims are of the opinion that their academic methods deviate from the traditional methods of tafsƯr (interpretation of the Qur’Ɨn). On the other hand, the vast majority of the professors at the Islamic University of Rotterdam are of Turkish origin. Time and again, a native Dutch Muslim like Sajjidah Abdus Sattar, Abdullah Haselhoef or Abdulwahid van Bommel gets some attention in the press, but this never lasts long, because they are sandwiched between different political and ethnical interests of the various Muslim groups. The upshot is that Muslims in the Netherlands are eagerly waiting for a credible intellectual representation in religious affairs. The debates over the headscarves or veils of Muslim women fit in well with the specter of threatening strangeness, although one is easily inclined to forget how common this way of head dressing was in most European cultures until recently (Antes 1994: 51). The debate on this issue is not as heated as in France, where the wearing of showy religious symbols is considered an infringement of the laïcité (secular nature) of French society.11 But the effect of the Dutch general law on equal treatment (algemene wet gelijke behandeling) is that some Christian schools are beginning to demonstrate the insignia of their faith publicly as a means for warding off Muslim students, since the law allows denominational schools to select their pupils on religious 11

Summary of the report by the French advisory commission to President Chirac, named after its chairman Bernard Stasi, in NRC Handelsblad, December 13, 2003.

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grounds as long as the school is clear enough about its own religious conviction. This may sometimes lead to a rather cynical functionalizing of religion with the slogan ‘crusade against headscarves’.12 The issue of headscarves is but one of the many possible problems that arise between Muslim immigrants and the indigenous population of European countries. One may say that the initial kindness of the Dutch people towards immigrants in general and Muslims in particular has gradually given way to a feeling of discomfort and dislike as the presence of these strangers became more visible in the streets. Ignorance and Fear – Breeding Ground for Growing Tensions A recent report on the feelings of autochthonous Dutch people respecting foreigners and Muslims shows an appalling mix of ignorance and fear (Kanne 2004).13 Ignorance, because 67% of the Dutch do not know any Muslim personally, while 65% of them admit that they have almost no knowledge of Islam, and another 16% of them say that they know nothing about this religion. Fear, because 16% of the population feels threatened by Muslims. This fear is caused by physical threats of alien young persons on the streets or by the more abstract threat of terrorism and the idea that Muslims want to impose the shariǥah. Of the total population, 36% has mainly negative feelings about Muslims, while only 15% has mainly positive feelings (47% has mixed feelings). Although 68% of the Dutch would agree with the idea that their children should become acquainted with different cultures, 48% of the population would move to a different neighborhood if they lived in a colored district. The most telling information in the report is probably that only 20% of the people would like to have more contact with foreigners, while 37% rejects such further contacts. While it is true that the history of the integration of Muslims in the Netherlands between 1965 and 2000 has in some senses been successful, this success mainly concerns economic matters and hardly extends to cultural aspects. It is also true that the Dutch cultural elite welcomed the influx of Muslims as a contribution to the multicultural society. Towards the end of the twentieth century, though, the ideal of a multicultural society began to fade and the feeling of those who say 12

“Kruistocht tegen de hoofddoeken,” NRC Handelsblad, November 22,

2003. 13

Summary of this report in De Volkskrant, June 26, 2004.

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that such a densely populated country as the Netherlands cannot take in any more immigrants began to gain momentum. As Michael Dummett observed in a critical analysis, there is a “hysteria concerning immigration” in Europe nowadays (Dummett 2001). Soon after his assumption of duties as prime minister of the Netherlands in 2002, Jan Peter Balkenende of the Christian Democratic party, said that he was opposed to the idea of a multicultural society and that he intended to stress the common values that bind us as Europeans more than former prime ministers did. While this sounds quite restrictive, the Christian political parties in the Netherlands do not generally oppose the growing visibility of Muslim faith in the Netherlands. Unlike their German or French colleagues, for instance, most of them do not have any objections of a religious nature against Turkey entering the European Union14. Some other political parties, however, have made the threat of Islam one of the main electoral issues in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. After the murder of Pim Fortuyn, a few days before the general elections of May 2002, the right-wing libertarians took over the issue of the threat of Islam, connecting it with the large number of immigrants. One of the politicians who quickly came into prominence in that year was Ayaan Hirsi Ali who lived as a Muslim in Somalia and then emancipated herself from this patriarchal religion (Prins 2004: 143-87; Veltman 2004). She took over the argumentation of Pim Fortuyn on Islam as a backward religion that does not fit in well with European values, such as separation between church and state, gender equality and freedom of sexual preference (Fortuyn 2001). She had to hide herself from the wrath of Muslims when she said that Muhammad was, according to modern standards, a pervert and a tyrant. Together with the entertainer and filmmaker Theo van Gogh, she produced a film, Submission, in which they accused the Islamic world of ignoring the fundamental rights of 14

This was an important issue in the Netherlands at the time because it was presiding over the European Union in December 2004 when the decision was to be taken whether to allow Turkey to enter the European Union or not. The Dutch Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (Academic Advisory Council for Government Policy) published a report on The European Union, Turkey, and Islam in June 2004 in which it stated that the Turkish form of Islam does not form any hindrance for the country to enter the European Union (source: Trouw, June 22, 2004; NRC Handelsblad, June 24, 2004).

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women by projecting QurƗ’nic texts on the bodies of nearly naked women. Two months later, in November 2004, Theo van Gogh was murdered by an angry Moroccan Muslim who declared this atrocity an act of holy war (jihƗd). While I was writing these chapters in the United States, the Netherlands seemed to lose its fame as an open and friendly country, as a number of Islamic schools and mosques, and some Christian churches as well, were bombed and set on fire. The growing tensions seemed to explode – but after a short while reflection and reason prevailed over violence. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, however, is still determined to raise the issue of the incompatibility between the religion of Islam and Western modern society. Together with Geert Wilders, an independent right-wing libertarian in the lower house of the Dutch parliament, she has to live and work under constant surveillance. Most Muslim spokespersons hasten to say that the threats against their lives on several ‘Islamic’ websites have nothing to do with mainstream Islam. But these Islamic threats may be perceived as a distorted echo of Hirsi Ali’s and Wilders’s manner of using war imagery to underline their political goals in which diminishing or even removing the influence of Islam on Dutch society looms large. A sad case of such war imagery is the appeal made by Hirsi Ali and Wilders in April 2003 to begin a “liberal jihƗd” against Islam. In a national newspaper, they stated that there may be situations in which liberal principles must be set aside in order to defend tolerance. Mosques where intolerance is preached and where recruitment for jihƗd is taking place must be closed. In order to protect freedom of religion in the long run, we must set this aside for some groups in certain cases .… In order to preserve a tolerant and liberal country, we must postpone even elementary rights and laws when we proceed against those who abuse them and want to remove them as foundations of our society. The only answer is a liberal jihad.15

The issue addressed by Hirsi Ali and Wilders in such a crude fashion is, of course, a real one: the problem of the limits of tolerance (Derkse 2004). In the previous chapter I referred to the way the opinions of the advocates of multiculturalism, who dominated the social sciences in recent decades, have been relegated to a minority point of view. Philo15

NRC Handelsblad, April 12, 2003. The two quotations are my translations from the Dutch.

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sophers and social scientists nowadays attack local authorities if they try to gloss over the problems created by Muslims or draw attention to the humanizing dimensions of religion. Religion is mentioned more and more as a relevant subject in the secular press, but in a negative vein. While Christianity is still the religion of the majority in the Netherlands, it is almost absent as a public factor, so that references to ‘religion’ in the secular press now denote Islam rather than Christianity. While Christianity seems to have lost its public plausibility among intellectuals in general, Islam is viewed as a relevant but threatening phenomenon. In this secular context it is perceived as a cultural and political threat rather than as a form of life in relation with God. Consequently, Muslim voices are heard as cultural or political voices; as religious voices, they are hardly audible in public debates, apart from some Islamist voices that always will attract the attention of the media (Shadid and van Koningsveld 1996; 1996a). What results is highly ambiguous: on the one hand, some groups of Muslims are initiating interreligious dialogues in several parts of the Netherlands; at the same time, the situation in the political arena and in academic public debates hardly encourages such a dialogue. After the secularization debate in which ‘religion’ was equated with Christianity, we now see a debate on immigration and religious violence in which religion has come to be associated with Islam. In Dutch public opinion Islam has become the most important religion and Muslims the only strangers to worry about. But, even as the situation seems to be becoming more and more unfavorable, responsible religious people continue to take the only way out: to communicate with one another, despite the differences between them.

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CHAPTER 3

The Significance of Dialogue Between Abrahamic Religions This chapter will explain why it is necessary to open up the dialogue between Christians and Muslims to a larger context. This larger context will be characterized as ‘Abrahamic’, referring to the forefather of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, or rather to the God who called him to emigrate from his home country and to begin a new phase of history. Before analyzing this notion of ‘Abrahamic religions’, however, I want to make clear what may go wrong if two of the three Abrahamic religions enter into dialogue together without bothering about the third partner. 3.1 The Necessity of a Third Partner in Dialogue It is my contention that one of the major functions of the term ‘Abrahamic religions’ is its capacity for enlarging the context within which the dialogue between Christians and Muslims takes place. It serves to indicate that a third partner is necessary to prevent the myopia which can easily and often does occur in a dialogue between just two of the three Abrahamic faiths. At the end of this chapter I will show how the ‘irruption’ – a term used in Latin American liberation theology to designate the impingement of the poor and excluded on the usual theological discourse – of the Jews is necessary for any theological dialogue between Christians and Muslims. But at the beginning of this chapter, I want to draw attention to the fact that from a contemporary European point of view, the ‘irruption’ of the Muslims is necessary as well for the dialogue between Christians and Jews. It is a well-known fact that the history of the relations between Christians and Jews is quite complicated. On the one hand, Christians need Jews as their theological partners in order to come to terms with their own identity, since Christianity originated as a distinct halacha (a way to fulfill the Jewish Law) within the broader context of Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaism. On the other hand, Christians have al-

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most always determined their identity at the expense of the Jews, which led to theological anti-Judaism and ‘dialogues’ with a view to converting Jews (Maccoby 1982) but also to political repression and even extinction in pogroms and crusades. Christians needed the Jews in order to understand their own Old Testament, but they needed to distance themselves from the Jews in order to be able to explain this Old Testament christologically (Cohen 1982). This led to a situation of asymmetrical dialogue in which Christians need Jews, but Jews do not need Christians. There is a specific theological ambiguity in the relations between Jews and Christians that is lacking in the relations between Jews and Muslims (Cohen 1994). The Theological Relevance of Dialogue with Jews for Christians Because the relation to Judaism is a part of Christian identity, Christians sometimes include dialogue with Jews not in their organizations for interreligious dialogue but in their organizations for intrareligious dialogue. Judaism is, in a certain sense, both ‘within’ Christianity (as part of its own identity) and ‘outside’ Christianity, as the primary religious ‘other’ for Christians (Barnes 2002: 31; Schoot and Valkenberg 2004: 56). Dialogue with Jews may therefore be seen to be in a category of its own (Forward 2001: 89-115), following the structure of the declaration Nostra Aetate by the Second Vatican Council (Ruokanen 1992; Barnes 2002: 29-54). The atrocities of the Shoah have brought the importance of their relations with Jews to the attention of Christians living in Europe in an unprecedented way, so much so that the insistence on relations with the Jews is sometimes seen as a peculiar theological bias of Dutch and German theologians by theologians from the Middle East (Mulder 2000). While it is clear that living together with Muslims is more important for Christians in the Middle East and the Jewishness of Jesus is theologically more important for theologians in Europe, the difference in context should not be the last word (Valkenberg 2000a: 108). For Christians in Europe, this means that the theological importance of the relations with Judaism as part of Christian identity should not lead to a comparative neglect of dialogue with Muslims. The otherwise very impressive study Der Stern der Erlösung by Franz Rosenzweig is an interesting case of what may go wrong if two parties enter into a very intimate and fascinating dialogue without realizing that Islam is the third party involved. In this work that was

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written in the trenches during the First World War in Europe and originally published in 1921, Rosenzweig presents a Jewish philosophy in which he contemplates similarities and differences between Judaism and Christianity. Islam is mentioned in a few sections as well, but always negatively, as if to serve as a foil to the Jewish-Christian dialogue (Poorthuis 1998: 138). It seems that Rosenzweig, who in his personal life hesitated between remaining a Jew and becoming a Christian, can only underscore the real meaning of faith in these two religions by designating Islam as the very opposite of this faith (Rosenzweig 1988: 202). Unfortunately, one also finds this kind of negative view of Islam among Dutch theologians who have contributed greatly to an awareness among Christians of the Jewish roots of their faith. The Dutch theologian K.H. Miskotte, for instance, denies that Islam is based on revelation; quite the contrary, it is a natural religion that runs against the grain of faith. For Miskotte and for a number of other Dutch Protestant theologians, Islam constitutes a relapse into heathenism. In this manner, mutual overtures between Christianity and Judaism are made at the expense of Islam (Wessels 2002: 38). It is this phenomenon of ‘blaming the third party’ that the term ‘Abrahamic religions’ seeks to overcome. 3.2 Monotheistic and Abrahamic Religions The dialogue between Christians and Muslims, of whose small beginnings in Nijmegen I have given an example in chapter two, has some characteristics of its own that differentiate it from other types of dialogue between religions. This implies that one cannot enter into dialogue with all religions on the same conditions; in some cases, the requirements for a dialogue with one religion may even impede dialogue with another. A relevant example may be the mentioning of the name of God. Hans Küng explains that he was able to win the support of Buddhists for the Declaration of a Global Ethic, issued by the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions, by leaving out all references to the name of God (Küng 1993: 69). But precisely this silence about God was one of the reasons for many Muslims to dissociate themselves from such a declaration. Even the progressive Muslim theologian Riffat Hassan thinks that a global ethic for Muslims should be based not on the Declaration of Human Rights but on the justice of God as revealed in the Qur’Ɨn (Valkenberg 1999: 36).

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Phenomenological and Historical Approaches This appeal to the One God who created the world and revealed his word to humankind is typical for a certain group of religions that can be referred to descriptively as West Asian or Semitic religions. In an initial phenomenological approach, one may draw attention to the fact that Christianity and Islam are both monotheistic religions. This phenomenological approach has been one of the major tendencies in the scholarly study of religion and it yields quite a few details about the characteristics of the religions concerned (van der Leeuw 1986: 17781, 418-21; Eliade 1958: 110-11; Goldammer 1960: 95-108). One may summarize these as follows: there is only one God, who is Creator of heaven and earth, and wants to be related to his creation by revealing his will to humankind by sending prophets with holy books. Hence these faith traditions may be characterized commonly as prophetic religions, book religions, religions of revelation, religions of the Law. This is certainly an interesting approach, but it fails to capture the core identity of the religions concerned. In order to delineate this identity, one must proceed from both an historical and a theological point of view. The historical point of view draws attention to the fact that Christianity and Islam, together with Judaism, assign a specific value to certain historical moments. In the New Testament, the letter to the Hebrews refers to the fact that God has spoken many times in human history but is now speaking in a new fashion: Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:1-3a)

Christians refer to the New Testament because they say that something new has happened in God’s speaking to us in the Son, while this speaking is at the same time in continuity with God’s speaking through the prophets of long ago. In a similar mode, the Qur’Ɨn endorses the messages of the prophets of old but claims a new authority over them:

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We have caused Jesus, son of Mary, to follow in their footsteps corroborating what was between his hands of the Torah, and We gave him the Gospel in which is guidance and light, confirming what he had between his hands of the Torah, as a guidance and an exhortation to the godfearing (…) and we have sent down to you the Book with truth, confirming what was before it of a Book, and as a guardian over it. (Q. 5: 45.47a; tr. Khatib 1984: 146)

According to this historical point of view, the name ‘Abraham’ refers to the beginning of the common history of the prophets, when God called him to become a migrant and the forefather of new peoples: “Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” (Genesis 12:1-2). The three religions elaborate the same history in three different ways, because they are related to it differently. Judaism claims to be an heir of Abraham through his son Isaac; Christianity claims to be an heir of Abraham, not so much as “our ancestor according to the flesh” (Romans 4:1) but as “the father of all of us” (Romans 4:16), referring to those who put their faith in God as Abraham did. Islam, on the one hand, takes over this idea of IbrƗhƯm as a hanƯf, a true believer in God, and on the other claims to be an heir through Abraham’s eldest son Ishmael. It is interesting to note that, in doing so, Islam combines the idea of a natural heritage, which is the point of departure in Judaism, with the idea of a spiritual heritage, which is the main tradition in Christianity.1 These different historical narratives of the three religions reflect their different positions in history, so that the genetic relatedness determines the way they see each other. Offering a comparative anthropology of the monotheistic religions, Jean Lambert has characterized this genetic relatedness as follows: L’approche des trois monothéismes est toujours commandée par l’ordre chronologique, où chacun d’eux trouve – par nécessité – son compte, tandis qu’il alimente durablement leur conflit. La succession historique conduit, comme il est naturel, chaque nouvelle forme à se percevoir comme dépassant ou accomplissant la ou les formes antérieures, lesquelles par contrecoup réagissent en se pensant comme plus fondatrices …. Au centre du dispositif chronolo1

Personal communication from Father Claude Geffré o.p., May 2004.

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gique le christianisme ne repère que son antérieur dont il se dit l’héritier légitime, et méconnait son successeur dont il ne comprend pas la présence, de telle sorte qu’une dissymétrie isole le sous-ensemble judéo-chrétien de l’islam, d’autant plus paradoxale aux yeux de ce dernier qu’il affirme en conduire le double héritage (Lambert 1995: 63-64).

Theological Approach The theological point of view underscores the exclusive nature of the one God: this God is not just one among many gods, but the only God worthy to be worshipped (van der Leeuw 1986: 180). Such a radical form of monotheism, in which ‘monos’ does not mean just one but ‘one and only’, is quite singular in history. It may develop as a critique – from a wisdom point of view – of anthropomorphic images of gods venerated in the temples: a real God who is Creator of heaven and earth can not be found in human sculptures. But it may also develop from a more prophetic point of view, as a protest against the abuse of power and the recognition that there is only one Power that guarantees the life of the poor. These two developments come to the fore in the Jewish scriptures, where they culminate in the universal monotheism of deutero-Isaiah (Isa 40-55). One may point to two texts that are of eminent importance in the Jewish tradition (Bleeker 1982: 175). The first text is the beginning of the ten ‘commandments’ or ‘words’ revealed on Mount Sinai: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments (Exodus 20:2-6).

The second text is the central Jewish creed of the Shema : “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD alone” (Deuteronomy 6:4a). In the English translation, the word with the consonants YHWH is rendered as LORD according to the Jewish custom of not pronouncing this word but replacing it with Adonai (Lord).

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The Hebrew text makes clear that it is this YHWH who claims to be the one who is worshipped as God (’El, plural ’Elohim). The first part of the shahƗda, the creed of the Muslims, says the same: ashhadu allƗ ilƗha illallƗh. The word Allah simply consists of the general Semitic name for God spelled with the consonants ’lh along with the definite particle: I confess that there is no one (who is to be my god) except The-God. In both cases, a definite God who reveals Godself at certain moments in history to his messengers and prophets claims to be the only one who is worthy to be called God. This colors the word èchad which is the last word of the shema and therefore a word loaded with special meaning for Jews: it is not just ‘one’, but ‘the only One who matters’. Again, Islamic tradition has a parallel credal formula in surat al-ikhlƗs: “Say: ‘He is God, One God, the Eternal Refuge. He begets not, nor has He been begotten, and neither is there any equal to Him’” (Q. 112; tr. Khatib 1984: 826). Now it is clear that such insistence on the fact that the LORD alone is God makes sense only in a context in which there are more claimants. Therefore, the form of monotheism that we encounter in the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’Ɨn may be described as a monotheism struggling to overcome the remnants of its polytheistic context. In such a form of monotheism the transcendental aspects of the One Creator are highlighted. But, as Karen Armstrong has argued in her History of God (Armstrong 1993), in the history of human conceptions of God there is a kind of wave-like movement that oscillates between a primarily transcendent conception of God and a conception in which the immanent side of God is given its due importance. Therefore, all Abrahamic religions contain traditions and periods in which the more immanent dynamic of God is highlighted as well. In this manner Jewish and Hellenistic speculations about the role of Wisdom (Chokma/Sophia) and Word (Logos) clearly form the background against which the role of Jesus Christ in God’s revelation was sketched by the author of the prologue of the Gospel according to St. John. In his sermon on the Areopagus, St. Paul refers to such immanent traits in the conception of God in Greek culture, showing that threats of polytheism were further away from the first Christians than the lure of panentheism: “… so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘in him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his

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offspring’” (Acts 17:27-28). There is a tendency to highlight the immanent features of the godhead here, but at the same time the personal nature of this God preserves him from being immersed in the whole of reality. Therefore, the Abrahamic religions have always treated mystical movements with care, lest the mystical union blot out the difference between God and creatures that is so characteristic of Abrahamic religions (Burrell 1993). But, on the other hand, it is fully legitimate to stress the immanent side of these monotheistic traditions. The contemporary situation of most Christians in Europe would be a case in point, in that they are likely to conceive God as an immanent power at work in the entire world rather than as a person who is concerned with individual human beings (Van der Ven 1998; 1998a). This does not mean that they are no longer monotheists, as is sometimes suggested by sociologists of religion, but it means that their form of monotheism highlights the immanent dimension of God and therefore inclines towards panentheism, while the classical tradition of monotheism had to combat polytheism and therefore rather highlighted the transcendent dimension of God. In summary, the form of monotheism that we encounter in the Abrahamic religions may be described as a dynamic phenomenon that oscillates between an overemphasis on transcendence in its emancipation from surrounding polytheism and a heightened stress on immanence in its inculturation in societies that favor panentheism. Over against polytheistic cultures, Abrahamic religions insist that there is but one God; over against panentheistic tendencies, they insist that God remains the Other who does not coincide with the sum of God’s creatures. 3.3 Not Abraham but the God of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar From a theological point of view, the term ‘Abrahamic religions’ is to be preferred as an indication of the specific characteristics of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. At the same time, however, the most proper theological characterization of these religions should not refer to Abraham but to the God who called him as a prophet. Moreover, the name of this prophet cannot be mentioned from a historical point of view without introducing some other important persons: not only Sarah and Isaac but also Hagar and Ishmael. Let us consider both of these points at length.

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The Theological Focus on God’s Call and Abraham’s Faith We will first look at the theological point of view. Cees van der Kooi is one of the few Dutch theologians who takes the phrase ‘ecumenism among Abrahamic religions’ seriously enough to criticize it from an Evangelical Protestant point of view, as I mentioned in the second chapter. He distinguishes between a Catholic approach that starts from human experiences and a Protestant approach that starts from God’s revelation. While the Catholic approach, as represented by the Second Vatican Council and by Karl-Josef Kuschel (1994), takes the stories about Abraham as its starting point, the Protestant approach focuses on God’s acting presence (van der Kooi 2002: 155). At this point I think that Van der Kooi is quite right, although I would hesitate to label the two approaches in the way he did. One of my problems with the approach advocated by Louis Massignon is that he, in his almost mystical devotion to Abraham, views him as a saint rather than as a prophet. But I do not think that the Second Vatican Council follows Massignon in his approach, and therefore I think that Van der Kooi is not entirely right in labeling this approach a ‘Catholic’ one. If it is true that Massignon’s statements on Abraham and Islam influenced some of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, a close reading of the texts concerned shows that there are considerable differences as well (Griffith 1997: 193; Goshen-Gottstein 2002: 174). The first text that mentions Abraham in connection with the faith of Muslims is to be found in a passage in Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitution on the Church (November 1964), one of the first documents of the Council. In a chapter about the ways in which people who have not yet accepted the Gospel are related to the people of God, the Muslims are referred to as follows. …[T]he plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, first among whom are the Moslems: they profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God who will judge humanity on the last day (Lumen Gentium 16; tr. Flannery 1996: 21-22).

This text is in fact stunning in its theological consequences, since it says that Christians and Muslims together acknowledge the Creator and adore the one God (Kuschel 1994: 263). Within this broad perspective, the Vatican Council mentions and acknowledges the claim of Muslims to profess the faith of Abraham. The name of Abraham is not

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mentioned here in reference to stories or experiences but to a certain type of faith: the faith of Abraham. The second text from the Vatican Council in which the name of Abraham is mentioned comes from Nostra Aetate, the declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions (October 1965). The history of this document is quite revealing (Graham 1966; Ruokanen 1992). Pope John XXIII wanted a statement on the relation with the Jews and asked Cardinal Bea to write a chapter that was to form a part of the declaration on ecumenism. It soon became a separate document, yet its scope was widened because some patriarchs of the Eastern Churches were afraid of the political consequences of such a declaration, which could be seen as a recognition of the state of Israel, which in turn would lead to difficulties for Christian minorities in Arab countries. Therefore, the chapter on the relations with the Jews was included in a new document on the relationship of the Church with non-Christian religions. This short document, which is often seen as a historic ‘milestone’ (Knitter 2002: 75) in the Roman Catholic theology of religions, has a centripetal dynamic. It begins by naming the central religious quests of humankind, and then focuses on religions of advanced civilizations, of which Hinduism and Buddhism are mentioned by name. Before discussing the relation with the Jews, which now comprises slightly less than half of the document, Nostra Aetate introduces the relationship between Church and Muslims as follows: They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to humanity. They endeavor to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own (Nostra Aetate 3; tr. Flannery 1996: 571).

Again, not the person but the faith of Abraham is the central focus here. And, very significantly, Abraham is characterized as someone who submitted himself to God, which is almost a quotation from one of the most important ayat on Abraham from the Qur’Ɨn: People of the Book, why do you argue about Abraham when the Torah and the Gospels were not revealed until after his time? … Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian. He was upright and devoted to God (Q. 3:65.67; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 39).

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The Arabic words translated by Abdel Haleem as ‘upright’ and ‘devoted to God’ require an explanation. The word hanƯf (upright) is sometimes translated as ‘monotheist’, since it refers to someone who “scorns the false creeds surrounding him and professes the true religion” (Wehr 1976: 210). The word muslim (devoted to God) in this case clearly does not refer to an adherent of the specific religion of Islam but to the religious attitude of someone who entrusts himself to God in loving obedience (Arkoun 1989: 29; Ramadan 2004: 206). The Second Vatican Council is right in stressing that Muslims eagerly link their faith to the faith of Abraham, since the Arabic root s-l-m from which both Islam and Muslim are derived, has ‘submission’ as its basic meaning (Brown 1994: 3) and is often used in connection with Abraham. In fact, the Fathers of the Council even acknowledge that Muslims originated this way of talking about Abraham as someone whose faith may be exemplary for all monotheists. It is quite probable indeed that Louis Massignon acted as intermediary for the Fathers of the Council in their adoption of this Muslim idea in their declaration (Griffith 1997: 195). Yet, in adopting it as they did, the Fathers of the Council avoided the problem inherent in the Qur’Ɨnic claim that connects the Kaǥba in Mecca with Abraham and his eldest son Ishmael (Q. 2: 125). While the theological claim resting upon the faith of Abraham is trustworthy, such a historical claim that rests on genealogy and veneration of Abraham in Mecca before the time of the Qur’Ɨn is quite problematic (Griffith 1997: 204-5). So, this genealogical dimension of the ‘faith of Abraham’, as proposed by Massignon, cannot be the basis of an ‘Abrahamic ecumenism’ (Kuschel 1994: 212). Therefore, the Second Vatican Council wisely acknowledged the claim of Muslims to a relationship of their faith to the faith of Abraham, the true seeker (hanƯf) and friend (khalƯl) of God, while tacitly passing over the implied genealogy between IbrahƯm and the Arabs. In doing so, the Council followed the basic guidance of St. Paul, according to whom the descendants of Abraham are those who live according to his faith (Galatians 3). But the crucial point of this reference to the faith of Abraham lies in its emphasis on the God in whom he trusted, and in this sense the Second Vatican Council does not refer to the saintly status of Abraham, but to his submission to God’s call. Therefore he is praised as a prophet in Islam, which is a function that brings one even nearer to God than saintliness (Nursi 1992: 507).

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Similarly, in the New Testament Paul draws attention to the fact that “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6, quoted in Romans 4:3). We may therefore conclude that the Second Vatican Council did refer to the faith of Abraham as the most important characteristic in which he prefigures the common faith of Muslims and Christians, and also of Jews. The faith of Abraham, however, should be seen as a reply to the words of God, so the best way to circumscribe the common root of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is to say that they all refer to the God who began something new in human history by calling Abraham. The Abrahamic cycle in Genesis begins with the voice of God: “Now the LORD said to Abram: ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you’” (Genesis 12:1). The author of the letter to the Hebrews alludes to a series of calls by God: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Hebrews 1:1). And a little further, evoking a series of faithful listeners to God’s call, he mentions Abraham once more: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). Finally, the Qur’Ɨn asks: “Who could be better in religion than those who direct themselves wholly to God, do good and follow the religion of Abraham, who was true in faith? God took Abraham as a friend” (Q. 4:125; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 62). At the second symposium ‘In the Footsteps of Abraham’ in Nijmegen, Karl-Josef Kuschel mentioned radical faith as the basis of an Abrahamic spirituality. Abrahamic spirituality means: preparing oneself without certainties because one is set on a path by God. This means letting go of that which is familiar when necessary; relinquishing that which one seems to have acquired. It means putting into perspective all that is earthly in the synagogue, church and ‘umma, in favour of a greater 2 God.

God is the One who begins something new in Abraham, leads him away from his old customs and forms of worship. And Abraham is a 2

The German text of Kuschel’s lecture was translated into English for that occasion by Mrs. Carla Robertson. For the Dutch translation see Kuschel 2004a: 91.

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man who puts his trust in God, even in the crisis of the akedah, the ‘binding’ of his son, whether this be Isaac or Ishmael. Therefore, the theological identity of these three religions is best expressed by a reference to the God who called Abraham and began something new in human history. A Critical Reading of Louis Massignon’s ‘Prayers of Abraham’ The theological argumentation in the preceding paragraph functions as a kind of warning to anyone who tends to speak about ‘Abrahamic ecumenism’ without due reflection. The focus here is not on the person of Abraham, but on the God who called Abraham to begin something new, and Abraham’s faithful response. There is, however, a second reason to be careful with references to Abraham as forefather of our common faith, and this reason derives from a more critical historical reading of the stories recounted so beautifully by Louis Massignon. Massignon (1883-1962) published an abridged version of his Trois prières d’Abraham, père de tous les croyants in 1949, and had it reprinted in the year of his death (Massignon 1962: 257-272) but there are older versions as well that go back to 1930 (Harpigny 1981: 80) or even to 1912 (Gude 1996: 118). Guy Harpigny writes about an ‘Abrahamic cycle’ to indicate the enduring importance of this theme in the life of Massignon (Harpigny 1981: 79-106), while Sidney Griffith (1997) terms the three prayers the ‘credo’ of Massignon for the same reason. I have already noted my admiration for the spiritual reading of the life of Abraham by Massignon, but there is another side to this story as well: the religious violence in the stories was spiritualized by Massignon, but its reality cannot be forgotten if Abraham be taken as a symbol for the commonalities of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Sherwood 2004). The violence in the stories corresponds with forms of religious violence enacted by Christians (and Jews and Muslims) on Jews and Muslims (and Christians); in this sense, Abraham may be a useful though ambiguous symbol.3 So we cannot pass over this violence. 3

I owe this suggestion to Thomas Michel s.j. in a reaction to the paper on The Importance of Abrahamic Dialogue for the Renewal of Christian Theology that I read at the conference on Religion and Peace in the Light of our Common Forefather Abraham in Istanbul, May 2004.

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The three prayers have their context in three moments in the life of Abraham. The first prayer is mentioned in Genesis 18 just after Abraham received three men by the oaks of Mamre, a scene of hospitality mentioned in the first chapter of this book. When the Lord mentions his intention to destroy Sodom because of its sins, Abraham supplicates as follows: “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” (Genesis 18:23). In the following verses Abraham haggles with God to save the city if even ten righteous people may be found, but in the end the city is destroyed and only Lot and his two daughters are saved. The narrator concludes: “So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had settled” (Genesis 19:29). In the meantime, however, the narrator relates a horrendous story: two angels visited Lot in Sodom, but the men of Sodom besieged the house because they wanted to ‘know’ the angels (the Hebrew yada’ often has a sexual connotation in the Bible). In a weird respect for the virtue of hospitality, Lot offers his two daughters “who have not known a man” (Genesis 19:8) but the Sodomites say: “This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them” (Genesis 19:9). The second prayer is especially significant in the relation between Christians (and Jews) and Muslims: it is Abraham’s prayer for the Egyptian slave woman Hagar and her son Ishmael when Sarah tells him that he should send them away because she did not want Ishmael to share the inheritance with her son Isaac (Genesis 21:10). The Hebrew Bible does not tell us that Abraham prayed; the narrator only says that he was distressed “on account of his son” (Genesis 21:11). Interestingly enough, the Bible does mention a prayer by Hagar and the little boy in the form of weeping, a prayer that is certainly heard by God: “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is” (Genesis 21:17). As God reveals Godself to Moses, another Egyptian at least in culture (Assmann 1997: 11), as YHWH, the One who Is and remains with his people because God heard their crying (Exodus 3:9.14), so God reveals Godself to Hagar as the One who hears and will provide what is needed to live for her and her son (Genesis 21:19). In the parallel story the revelation assumes even more relevance when Hagar gives God a specific name: “So she named the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are

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El-roi’, for she said, ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?’” (Genesis 16:13). In this story, the relation between God and Hagar and Ishmael remains intact, while Abraham breaks off his relation with her because of Sarah’s jealousy. But a few chapters before, in the Hebrew Bible, Abraham had downplayed his relation with Sarah as well by feigning that she was his sister and putting her in the harem of King Abimelech (Genesis 20:2). Quite rightly Abimelech says to Abraham: “You have done things to me that ought not to be done” (Genesis 21:9). Nor was this the first time; Abram had resorted to the same ruse before in Egypt (Genesis 12:13). The third prayer, according to Massignon, took place at mount Moriah where Abraham was about to offer his son. According to the Hebrew Bible, God said: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you” (Genesis 22:2). This story is fairly well known in the three Abrahamic traditions. In the Jewish tradition it is remembered as the akedah, the ‘binding’ of Isaac. In the Christian tradition, it is typologically connected with the Son who offered himself for the well-being of humankind. In the Muslim tradition the same story is told without naming the son (Q. 37:102-110), while it is connected with the name of IsmƗ’Ưl and the foundation of the Kaǥba as thanksgiving in later Medinan surahs (Q. 2:124-128). Therefore, the majority of Muslims say that IbrƗhƯm was ready to offer his son IsmƗ’Ưl, but there is some room for divergent opinion here (Wessels 2001: 169). According to Emilio Platti (1996), the Meccan surahs and older interpreters, as at-TabarƯ, suggest that Isaac accompanied his father,4 but the Medinan surahs and later commentaries connect Abraham with Ishmael as forefathers of the Arab people (Platti 1996: 100-04). Of course, all traditions have developed ways to excuse Abraham for his willingness to offer his son (after having sent away his first son, according to Genesis 21), and to show how God can make good come out of evil: the binding of Isaac is an important locus for theodicy. But the fact remains that Abraham, on a human level, was prepared to risk his human relations in favor of his faith in God. Indeed, this ambivalence can be found in all human expressions of monotheistic faith (Valkenberg 2002). 4

The reference in the index of the Qur’Ɨn-interpretation by Majid Fakhry, for instance, is to “Abraham, sacrifice of Isaac” (Fakhry 2000: 638).

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Feminist and Womanist Readings of the Story of Hagar Most authors construe the history of Abraham in these chapters as a history of a man with two sons and in the context of interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims they rightly insist on the fact that the two sons are equals in certain respects. For instance, although God establishes the covenant with Isaac (Genesis 17:21), Ishmael is circumcised as a sign of the covenant as well (Genesis 17:26). Moreover, God blesses Ishmael as well as Isaac, so that Muslims cannot be excluded from those who appeal to the God of Abraham (Kuschel 1994: 255; Wessels 2001: 172-74; Kuschel 2004: 5558). After all, both sons bury their father together in the cave of Machpelah (Genesis 25:9) as a sign of their good relations, which continues in the veneration of al-KhalƯl by both Jews and Muslims at the same place (Wessels 2001: 166). The most important victims of the violence in these stories are, however, women. In a certain sense this violence is repeated in interreligious encounters when men keep talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael without mentioning the God of Sarah and Hagar. Recent feminist and womanist interpretations have drawn attention to the person of Hagar as someone whose remembrance may be of special interest for the reading of Biblical texts by the female victims of patriarchal history, yet without making any explicit connection to the history of violence between Christianity and Islam. The disconcerting exegesis of the Hagar stories by Phyllis Trible in her book Texts of Terror shows how my reading of the stories, although it is fairly critical of the role of Abraham, still spares the highly ambivalent role of God. When we read the stories from the perspective of the female slave Hagar, it is highly disappointing to see God choose the side of the powerful, when God tells her: “Return to your mistress and submit to her” (Genesis 16:9). In Trible’s interpretation, Sarah is the leading lady in this drama, while Abraham is no more than a “silent, acquiescent, and minor figure in a drama between two women” (Trible 1984: 11). God, however, takes the side of Sarah twice, in Genesis 16:9 and 21:12. The God who sees the affliction of the Egyptian slave Hagar does not side with the oppressed like God would do when seeing the suffering of the slave people in Egypt (Exodus 3:7-8). This oppressive stance of God is the more stunning as the allusions to the liberation story in Exodus are so clear for the exegete who understands Hebrew. Hagar calls God El-roi, which may be

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translated (although the Hebrew is obscure) as ‘the God who sees me’, but this does not imply that God comes to her rescue. The second story in Genesis 21 offers another parallel with the Exodus story in the words of Sarah who commands Abraham to cast Hagar out (Genesis 21:10) like the Pharaoh who commands his servants to cast out the Hebrew slaves: When Pharaoh cast out (grš) the Hebrew slaves to save the life of his firstborn, God was on their side to bring salvation from expulsion. By contrast, the deity identifies here not with the suffering slave but with her oppressors (Trible 1984: 22).

The narrator of the story contributes to making Hagar invisible by saying that God heard the voice of the child after having related that Hagar wept and lifted up her voice (Genesis 21:15-16). Hagar seems to disappear from the story while God exalts the boy. In her reflections on Hagar’s story Trible says that “her story depicts oppression in three familiar forms: nationality, class, and sex” (Trible 1984: 27). Yet she was apparently not aware of oppression in the name of religion, since she focuses on the contrasting parallels between Hagar and the people Israel, while the place of Hagar in Islam is only mentioned in her final footnote. As a black womanist theologian, Delores Williams approaches the story of Hagar from a different angle: “the similarities between Hagar’s predicament and African-American women’s historic predicament” (Williams 1993: 7). She tries to read the story of Hagar as the story of a woman with a certain autonomy despite her position as a slave. In keeping with her womanist rather than feminist approach, she accentuates the remaining bond between Hagar and her God. Consequently, she sees Hagar, in her decision to run away from Sarah (Genesis 16:6), as “the first female in the Bible to liberate herself from oppressive power structures” (Williams 1993: 19). God is right in sending her back to her mistress because this is the only way in which her story can continue: “God apparently wants Hagar to secure her and her child’s well-being by using the resources Abram has to offer” (Williams 1993: 21). In her interpretation of Genesis 21 Williams underscores the Egyptian origin of Hagar and the possible similarities between El-roi, the God who sees, and the eye of the Egyptian God Ra. Since it is quite close to the Egyptian border, the wilderness of Beersheba in which Hagar finds herself provides new opportunities,

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one of which she takes to find an Egyptian wife for her son, thus securing the future of her heritage. The conclusion of Wiliams’s exegesis is that Hagar is, together with her son, a model for many black African families. “Hagar, like many black women, goes into the wide world to make a living for herself and her child, with only God by her side” (Williams 1993:33). These fresh feminist and womanist perspectives on the stories about Abraham, highlighting the role of Hagar, may also be relevant to the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. Such contextual readings of the stories in the Hebrew Bible can serve to guide our attention toward the forms of religious, sexual, racial and ethnic violence that are often implied in interreligious encounters. The name of Hagar ought to be attached to any critical reading of the stories about Abraham from the perspective of the oppressed. 3.4 Muslim-Christian Dialogue and the Role of Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael One of the main arguments in this book is that interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims will succeed only if it recognizes that these two religions have had a history of encounters characterized not by peaceful coexistence but by violence in words and deeds (Hagemann 1999; Janse 2000). Needless to say, the situation is hardly any better at the beginning of the third millennium of the Christian calendar. Yet it often happens that religious leaders try to divert attention from this by saying that their religion only seeks peace and that we should cooperate to make a better world together. As a scholar of religion this always gives me ambiguous feelings. On the one hand, it is necessary for the leaders of religions to show that they side with the peacemakers rather than with the terrorists. On the other hand, they may resemble those fraudulent prophets and priests who say “peace, peace,” when there is no peace (Jeremiah 6:14). Such myopic incantations form one of the reasons that make interreligious dialogue seem useless to many people. But we must also concede that the sight of a number of engaged religious leaders praying together for peace may positively affect people’s views of one another. Of course it will be difficult for believers to acknowledge the violent side of their religion when they are in a position in which they are constantly attacked by the spokespersons of the majority, as is the case with Muslims in the West these days. Bearing that in mind, people

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from the West are not in a good position to criticize Muslims for giving a rosy picture of their religion. Personally, I experienced these ambiguous feelings when I attended an international symposium on ‘Religion and Peace in the Light of Forefather Abraham’, organized by the Intercultural Dialogue Platform in Istanbul, in May, 2004. One full day of high-minded speeches by patriarchs, cardinals, muftis, and chief rabbis in the ancient multicultural surroundings of Mardin were followed by two days of no less high-minded speeches by some forty scholars from Turkey and the rest of the world. While admittedly impressive, most of it was utterly idealistic as well. To my knowledge, only three speeches mentioned the role of violence in the stories about Abraham. Beyza Bilgin from the ilahiyyat faculty of the University of Ankara told about her interviews with children regarding their perceptions of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac or Ishmael. Furthermore, Thomas Michel s.j. (Rome) and Scott Alexander (Chicago) concentrated on Hagar as someone who makes it possible to read the story of Abraham from the point of view of the victims. It will be clear by now why I think that such a critical, contextual reading will prove so crucial for the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. After all, for Muslims Hagar is not only connected with God’s special concern for the victims of injustice but also with the fate of refugees, since her name is closely connected with the hijra (migration) of Muhammad and some of his followers from Mecca to Yathrib. This event is so decisive in the Muslim conception of history that it forms the beginning of their calendar anno Hegirae. There is still another reason to concentrate not only on Abraham but on Hagar and their son Ishmael as well. In the Qur’Ɨn, there is probably a difference between a somewhat older tradition that focuses on IbrƗhƯm alone and a somewhat later tradition that concentrates on both IbrƗhƯm and IsmƗ’Ưl (Kuschel 1994: 192). Ever since their names were connected with the building of the Kaǥba in Mecca, their story has prompted a number of rituals in connection with the hajj or pilgrimage. There is even a rite connected with Hagar: running up and down between two hills, al-Safa and al-Marwa (Q. 2:158), is associated with Hagar’s running through the wilderness in search of water (Genesis 21:15-19; Wessels 2001:100). It may be an echo of these traditions that connected the religion founded by Muhammad with Ishmael and Hagar in the minds of the first Christians who encountered this faith before it developed the

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name ‘Islam’ to denote itself as a specific religion. When John of Damascus introduces this new religious movement at the end of his ‘Book of Heresies’ about a century after the hijra, he uses the following words to characterize it: There is also the religion/superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and deceives the people, being a forerunner of the Antichrist. It derives from Ishmael, who was born to Abraham of Hagar, and for this reason they are called “Hagarenes” and “Ishmaelites”. They are also called “Saracens”, which is derived from “made destitute by Sara”, because of what Hagar said to the angel: 5 “Sara hath sent me away destitute”.

Since this text is one of the earliest Christian reflections on this new phenomenon and for a long time certainly the most influential one, John of Damascus may be seen as “the real founder of the Christian tradition” concerning Islam (Daniel 1993: 13). He grew up at the Umayyad court of Mu‘awiyya in Damascus and had certainly been acquainted with the religion of the new rulers in Syria from the days of his youth. It is quite probable that some of the dialogues he mentions in his later writings go back to this time, but in these writings he feels it necessary to measure this new religion against the Christian norm of orthodox faith in Christ as God incarnate (Valkenberg 2001a). Consequently, he gives the new religion that he appends to his heresiology three names that show the “need to fit Islam into a Jewish-Christian frame of reference, rather than considering it in itself” (Gaudeul 1984: I, 29). Since, however, the three names are likely to reflect some early self-identification by Muslims as well, they may be read in a negative or a positive way, depending on the context (Davids and Valkenberg 2005: 80). The word ‘Ishmaelites’ may have a positive meaning, since it refers to an important tradition in the Qur’Ɨn and hadƯth literature, according to which Abraham, together with his eldest son Ishmael, introduced the cult of the one true God in Mecca at the place of the Ka‘ba (Q. 2:124-129). From the Christian and the Jewish points of view, however, the reference is not so positive, since Ishmael was the son of Hagar, an Egyptian female slave, and therefore less noteworthy than Isaac, the son of Sarah the first wife of Abraham. The Jewish5

Translation according to Davids and Valkenberg 2005: 74-5 with emendations suggested by Jerald D. Gort and Herman Teule. For the sake of clarity, I have changed the correct rendering of the Greek Agar into Hagar.

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Christian frame of reference also explains the negative tone of the two other designations that John of Damascus employs: ‘Hagarenes’ because of the mother of Ishmael, and ‘Saracens’ because she was humiliated by Sarah. Yet, these terms remain neutral in themselves and can even be seen as positive names for use in signifying the religious identity of Muslims. ‘Hagarenes’ may be one of the earliest identifications of this new religion, since we find this name in Greek and Syriac texts dating from about 640. It may mean ‘the children of Abraham through Hagar’, but for Muslims the Arabic word muhƗjirnjn first of all refers to those who partook of the hijra from Mecca to Medina (Crone and Cook 1977: 8-9). The name ‘Saracens’ may be explained to mean ‘people coming from the East’ or ‘Arab nomads living in tents’ (Le Coz 1992: 92). John of Damascus, however, gives an etymology (‘made destitute by Sara’: Genesis 16:8; Deuteronomy 15:13) that indicates how his theological framework determines the negative approach to this new religious phenomenon. The above qualifications notwithstanding, for many the figure of Abraham has become the preeminent symbol for interreligious dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims. Theologians and historians may have their objections, but the most important feature of a symbol is it efficacy. And in that sense, one may say that the symbol works. In several publications Leonard Swidler has documented fifteen years of interreligious dialogue between international scholars with Jewish, Christian and Muslim backgrounds under the title “Trialogue of Abrahamic religions” (Swidler 1992a; 1998). Karl-Josef Kuschel (1994; 2004a) has adduced other examples of the explicit use of the name of Abraham in initiatives to bring together people from Jewish, Christian and Muslim background in several European countries. Bruce Feiler (2004: 221-6) has initiated a number of Abrahamic dialogues worldwide. Muslims have taken the initiative for a trialogue of Abrahamic religions as well, not only in the Istanbul conferences mentioned above but also in the United States of America (al-Faruqi 1982). Moreover, the results of a joint Jewish-Christian, GermanIsraeli conference were published under the neutral title The Three Religions (Cohen and Heldrich 2002). The fact that the latter publication does not refer to the person of Abraham in its title, however, is significant for reminding us that every name and symbol is culturally and historically situated and therefore more apt in some contexts than in others. The reference to Abraham, initiated by Muslims and taken

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over by Christians as a label for their common heritage, is not so easily accepted by Jews, probably because they tend to associate Abraham with the history of Jewish particularity rather than with the common history of monotheistic faiths. This Jewish voice will have to be respected by Muslims and Christians if they want to be true to the purpose of ‘Abrahamic ecumenism’. 3.5 Awraham and Sarah: A Jewish Interruption According to the quotation by Jean Lambert in the second subsection of this chapter, the ‘genetic relationship’ between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam largely determines the nature of the relationship between these religions. Although the real relations between adherents of these religions may be shaped by the social, economic and religious context in which people of diverse religious traditions live together, the theological reflection on these relations is formed by the image that these religions have of themselves (Waardenburg 2004). The sixth chapter of this book will pay attention to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologies of religion that have developed from their selfimages, but a short introduction may be useful here as well to explain why the ‘genetic place’ of these religions as younger and older sisters influences their theologies of other religions. Islam, being the youngest religion, had to be clear about its relation to Christianity and Judaism from the very beginning. Although the Qur’Ɨn describes this relation in various ways, the phrase ahl al-kitƗb, ‘people of the Book’, is used quite frequently to signify the relation between Muslims, Jews and Christians. This phrase contains the Qur’Ɨnic theology of religions in a nutshell: apart from unbelievers, there is a category of people to whom God sent His prophets and His messengers with the Word of God. Although they did not preserve the Word of God in the way they should have done, they did not go completely astray. Therefore, Muslims may relate to them as ‘people of the Book’ and argue with them in the best possible manner (Q. 2:62; 16:125). In the course of history, the term ‘people of the Book’ was extended to the faithful of other religions as well, for instance to the Hindus in the Moghul empire. Christianity had to think about its relation to Judaism from the very beginning, and it coined the term ‘followers of the Way’ to indicate that in Christ Christians found a new halacha, a different way of fulfilling the Law within the broad spectrum of Judaism at that time

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(Valkenberg 1997a). This new way of being Jewish while following Jesus soon needed to be related to the various religious systems present in the Hellenistic cultural context as well, so the idea developed that the Word of God was not only incarnate in Jesus Christ but also spread its light in the various cultures of humankind. This idea of the Logos spermatikos, together with that of the Spirit of God working in the entire creation, forms the basis for classical Christian inclusivism (Dupuis 1997; 2002: 147-156). There is, however, quite a big difference between the Christian theology of Judaism and the Christian theology of other religions, for Judaism could never be perceived as a totally ‘strange’ religion as Christianity had taken over so much of its elder sister, even the Hebrew Scripture in the form of the Old Testament (Schoot and Valkenberg 2004: 56). Because they need a reference to Judaism for their own identity, most modern Western Christians are inclined to enter into dialogue with Jews rather than with Muslims. I am aware that this is especially true for German or Dutch theologians, because their awareness of the importance of Judaism as remaining other than Christianity is influenced by the atrocities of the shoah, yet this fact does not influence theologians in the Middle East to the same extent (Valkenberg 2000a). However, Christians always have had difficulty determining their theological distance from Muslims properly (Valkenberg 2000b). On the one hand, they tend to describe Islam as a heresy because it offers an approach to Jesus Christ that deviates from the norm of orthodox Christianity. On the other hand, they tend to miss the religious identity of Islam and describe it as some philosophical or political system because they do not want to accept any prophecy or revelation after the coming of Christ. John of Damascus and Thomas Aquinas may be seen as representatives of both tendencies, precisely because they did what they could do to perceive a new reality in their times, using their Christian theological norms (Valkenberg 1998b; 2001a). Judaism, the oldest sister of the three religions, has a similar approach to its younger sisters. In its theology of other religions, it subsumes Christianity and Islam under the general category of the Noahide covenant. The Jewish tradition developed the seven commandments (or rather prohibitions) of the Noahide Law in its interpretation of Genesis 9:1-17, as distinguished from the 613 commandments God gave to Israel at Mount Sinai. In a certain sense, Jews do not need any dialogue partners since they already have their cove-

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nant with God. Consequently, they see the existence of other monotheistic religions as part of the plan of God to bring the ‘ethical monotheism’ of Judaism to the goyim as well. Pinchas Lapide, one of the foremost promoters of dialogue between Jews and Christians in Germany, has made this quite clear with reference to the resurrection of Jesus in his dialogue with Jürgen Moltmann, translated by Leonard Swidler: If he had shown himself as the Resurrected One, not only to the 530 Jewish witnesses but to the entire population, all Jews would have become followers of Jesus. To me this would have had only one imaginable consequence: the church, baptism, the forgiveness of sins, the cross, everything which today is Christian would have remained an inner-Jewish institution, and you, my dear friend, would today still be offering horsemeat to Wotan on the Godesberg. Put in other words, I see in the fact that the Easter experience was imparted to only some Jews the finger of God indicating that, as it says in the New Testament, “the time was fulfilled”. For me that means that the time was ripe that the faith in One God should be carried into the world of the Gentiles. The Jews were already believers! … [T]here was needed a small Jewish yes to Jesus – that is the primitive community, together with Paul and his helpers. Finally, however, there was also needed a large Jewish no. For if there had been no large Jewish no, which you can read about in Romans 11 and in Acts 13, the entire church would have remained intra-Jewish – and to be honest, we did not need it. Since Sinai we have known the way to the Father. You on the other hand were very much in need of it. Therefore, your becoming Christian is for me a portion of God’s plan of salvation, and I do not find it difficult to accept the church as an institution of salvation. But please, you do not need to sprinkle sugar on top of honey, as you do when you wish to baptize us. The sugar on top of the honey is simply superfluous. We are already ‘with the Father’ and we know the way …. (Lapide and Moltmann 1981: 68-70)

The fact that Christians do need Jews for their self-identity but Jews do not need Christians because they already know the way to God gives the dialogue between adherents of these religions an asymmetrical character. Or, in the words of Zwi Werblowsky: the interest of the Church in Israel is essential, basic and inherent in non-Marcionite Christianity. The interest of Israel in the Church is accidental …. Judaism is a self-contained whole without any refer-

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ence to Christianity; Christianity conceives itself as a self-contained whole with the Old Covenant as its base. There is a fundamental difference of perspective. (Werblowsky 1958: 279)

In a similar vein, Jews do not feel the need to reclaim Abraham as a common forefather in the way Christians and Muslims do, since they have the feeling that Abraham is theirs from the very beginning. Reflecting his mixed feelings at the first conference on Abraham as symbol of the three religions in Istanbul in 2000, Alon Goshen-Gottstein observes that Jews have, up to now, paid little attention to this idea of Abraham as a common forefather and comes to the conclusion that this reference to Abraham is problematic from a Jewish perspective (Goshen-Gottstein 2002: 172). It is, in his view, a theological category that expresses the bias of one or more of the religions involved but does not adequately reflect the theological understanding of all three religions (Goshen-Gottstein 2002: 166). Moreover, Abraham is an unexceptional figure who is elevated to the rank of a defining feature to the three religions (Goshen-Gottstein 2002: 177). If we take a symbolic figure, he seems to suggest, we should rather take figures like Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. The problem with this suggestion is, in my eyes, that these three figures are too closely associated with the respective theologies of religion in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The possible value of a reference to Abraham as our common forefather might precisely work because he does not figure centrally in the traditional theologies of these three religions. He is not among the traditional prophets who are immediately identified with a religion, like Moses, Jesus or Muhammad. Because he does not bear the burden of this tradition of identity, Abraham may well be the symbol of a theological movement that seeks to establish better relations between the religions concerned. After all, the traditions concerning Abraham and the God who called him are related to the idea of beginning something new, and this is much needed in the relations between religions. Elsewhere in his article, Goshen-Gottstein writes that he would prefer a more neutral descriptive category. He discusses the possibility of ‘religions of the Book’ but discards this as directly indebted to the Qur’Ɨnic presentation of these religions (Goshen-Gottstein 2002: 178), while proposing the category of ‘elective monotheism’ instead. For my part, I would think that this category is too much indebted to a Jewish tradition to be neutral. In order to be effective, however, a

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symbol of cooperation between religions should be emotionally appealing. In this respect, one must state that Abraham works as a symbol, since – as I have mentioned before – a number of valuable new initiatives have been started in his name. Abraham may be a good symbol for human religious cooperation because the stories connected to his name present the bright and dark sides of human existence and may therefore appeal to religious feelings. Although I do not agree with his propositions, I am much indebted to Goshen-Gottstein, since he pointed out that the term ‘Abrahamic religions’ in its modern use originated with Louis Massignon (GoshenGottstein 2002: 173) and that its first context was, therefore, the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. Insofar as the Abrahamic dialogue still tends to be a dialogue mainly between Christians and Muslims, it is important that we pay special attention to the Jewish presence and Jewish contributions to this dialogue, even if this means that we have to face some thorny issues. Every dialogue that concentrates too much on a binary relation threatens to exclude the other. The phrase ‘Abrahamic dialogue’ means at the very least that no dialogue between two Abrahamic religions is adequate without opening the possibility for interruption by the ‘implicated bystander’. As the South African Muslim theologian Farid Esack has pointed out, however, there is also a danger that ‘Abrahamic dialogue’ excludes others if it functions as a dialogue of the powers that be, at the expense of the less powerful in the Third World who are not part of this Abrahamic ecumenism (Esack 1997: 258). It is no coincidence that the phrase ‘Abrahamic ecumenism’ has been coined by theologians such as Karl-Josef Kuschel and Leonard Swidler, who were trained as ecumenists. They knew very well that they used a notion developed within the frame of the Christian religion analogously when they wanted to use it in a wider setting. In both cases, though, ecumenism points beyond itself because the original meaning of the Greek word oikoumene points to the entire civilized world. In this sense, the importance of Abraham as our common forefather points beyond the Abrahamic religions as well, since an Abrahamic ecumenism is truly ecumenical only if it is at the service of the whole world.

CHAPTER 4

Contexts and Meanings Of Interreligious Dialogue This chapter and the next focus on an analysis of the words ‘interreligious dialogue’. While the next chapter will examine the meaning of the adjective ‘interreligious’ in connection with the future of dialogue as one form of encounter – among others – between religious people, this chapter considers the several historical contexts in which the word ‘dialogue’ has received its meanings. Although this word has its origins in old cultures and philosophies, it has become one of the catchwords in the last third of the twentieth century, so much so that it seems to have acquired magical properties. If one claims to want to engage in dialogue with someone else, one thereby indicates that one wants to listen and learn – and hardly anyone will object to that. Unless, of course, one has become suspicious because of historical experiences in which attempts at conversion have been made under the guise of dialogue. Jews and Muslims have reason enough to react somewhat wearily when Christians sound the trumpet of dialogue. Some fifty years ago, chastened by these historical experiences, Zwi Werblowsky, the Jewish historian of religion reacted as follows to the renewal of dialogue between Christianity and Judaism: Evidently the fresh demand does not envisage new insights but, in the first instance, an atmosphere of mutual appreciation and sympathy in which, for the sake of genuine human and spiritual contact, each partner to the debate or dialogue should repress his triumphant assertion of unquestionable superiority. It is equally evident that this repression is a matter of dialectical (or ‘dialogual’) method only. If it were serious and radical, the partners to the dialogue would simply be human beings and not deserve the specifications ‘Jew’ and ‘Christian’. (Werblowsky 1958: 273)

He continues: [I]f a dialogue means the opening up of one’s personality to the unpredictable impact of a total encounter in genuine communication,

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then no dialogue is possible where either side or both sides are committed to dogmatic truth or unshakable faith. Mutual understanding is a very good thing, no doubt, but is not the striving for it a matter of course among civilized men of good will? Why inflate it to the rank of a major, novel achievement to be called ‘dialogue’ (Werblowsky 1958: 282)?

When political and religious leaders face a crisis, they often try to avert it by appealing to initiatives for dialogue. One of the consequences is that the word dialogue has lost much of its expressiveness: If one listens to the current jargon, there is hardly an expression which seems to be less trivial than the announcement that a dialogue has taken place. Instead of saying anything of substance, the word tends to function as an excuse for a lack of serious argumentation and an unconditioned commitment to truth and reason. (Dupré 1994: 181-82)

Eric Sharpe noted some thirty years ago that the word ‘dialogue’ threatened to degenerate into a cliché, so that "[o]ne is sometimes almost forced to reflect that the cause of sympathetic inter-religious dialogue might be better served if the word were to be laid aside for a time" (Sharpe 1974: 91). Such a ‘moratorium on dialogue’, however, has not taken place nor is it likely to happen at the beginning of the twenty-first century; it is therefore useful to explore the several possible meanings of this word and the contexts within which it may be used. Quite in contrast to its abundant daily use, analytical studies of the history and meanings of the word dialogue are scarce. The Swiss theologian Jean-Claude Basset is one of the few scholars to describe the notion and the history of interreligious dialogue in a systematic fashion. According to his analysis, ‘dialogue’ is primarily a literary genre that may be used for dramatic, philosophical, polemical, pedagogic or spiritual purposes (Basset 1996: 13-18). Webster’s Dictionary of the English language gives four possible meanings of the noun and subsequently three meanings of the verb: 1. conversation between two or more persons. 2. the conversation between characters in a novel, drama, etc. 3. an exchange of ideas or opinions on a particular issue, esp. a political or religious issue, with a view to reaching an amicable agreement or settlement. 4. a literary work in the form of a conversation ….

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1. to carry on a dialogue; converse. 2. to discuss areas of disagreement frankly in order to resolve them. 3. to put into the form of a dialogue.1

Webster’s indicates, first of all, that dialogue may refer to a real conversation or to a literary form. Moreover, it indicates that dialogue is concerned with matters of politics or religion, and that is has to do with differences that have to be bridged. Bearing these aspects in mind, this chapter begins with a short survey of the origins of the notion of ‘dialogue’ and proceeds with an overview of some historical forms of dialogue. Then an analysis follows of the contexts in which dialogues take place, with special reference to the inequalities between the partners in dialogue. Finally, some of the major documents by the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches will be used to investigate the Christian approach to levels and aims of dialogue and the practice of dialogue. 4.1 The Dual Sources of Contemporary Dialogue Webster’s Dictionary gives an indication of some of the most important contexts in which the word ‘dialogue’ is used; it does not, however, indicate the origins of this word. In fact, the word ‘dialogue’ in its modern usage has a dual origin in Greek philosophy and Talmudic exchange (Heinrichs 1972: 226). It may be useful to investigate these origins and the subsequent history of the word in the encounters between religions somewhat, since this reveals some of the characteristics of the modern use of the word ‘dialogue’. ‘Dialogue’ in the History of Literature and Philosophy The English word ‘dialogue’ is derived from the Greek word dialegesthai, meaning ‘to talk, discourse’, while emphasizing the selection of words (legein) between (dia) people (Dupré 1994: 173). It is used as a literary genre by the writers of epics, tragedy and comedy, in which two speakers exchange their thoughts. Greek philosophers use the same literary genre to describe one of the methods through which they arrive at insights. The authors of the ‘Socratic conversations’ who captured the oral nature of Socrates’ inquiries (Clay 1997: 178) 1

Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, New York: Gramercy Books, 1996, p. 547.

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were the first to present this form of dialogue. In his method of question and answer, Socrates can certainly be seen as the grandfather of all Western approaches to dialogue (Forward 2001: 16). He is also the main speaker in Plato’s dialogues, which remain quite close to the literary genre used in the Greek comedies and tragedies. While the characters in dialogue are historical in Plato, Aristotle uses them to voice his own opinions. In the Latin world dialogus began as a literary form as well, before Marcus Tullius Cicero introduced it as a way of communicating philosophical inquiries. In Aristotle and Cicero dialogue has a function in teaching philosophy: “the author as speaker is in control of what his characters say, and thus little care is taken with characterization” (Clay 1997: 179). Three interrelated meanings can be distinguished:2 (1) representation of persons and their worldviews as a literary genre for the sake of entertainment; (2) reciprocal statements about a real or possible state of affairs with a view to mutual understanding for political or educative purposes; (3) an attempt to regain orientation by sustained reflection. The fact that the word ‘dialogue’ primarily refers to a literary genre is important for its use in philosophical and theological texts. As Vittorio Hösle observes, the fact that authors use several dramatis personae to represent different points of view in their texts, enables them to create a distance between themselves and the opinions represented in the text. The literary style of the Dialogus inter philosophum, Judaeum et Christianum by Peter Abelard in the twelfth century is a case in point. The (possibly Muslim) philosopher, the Jew and the Christian all represent certain aspects of Abelard’s complex personality, and it is no coincidence that the judge never reaches a final verdict on the 2

See the entry on “Dialog” in the Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie, ed. Jürgen Mittelstrass, Vol. 1 (Mannheim/Vienna/ Zürich: Bibliographisches Institut – Wissenschaftsverlag, 1980), 471: “… nicht bloß der Darstellung der Personen und ihrer Weltauffassung dienende Unterhaltung oder die literarische Fassung solcher Unterhaltungen … auch nicht bloß der gegenseitigen Mitteilung über das, was ist, oder sein soll dienende Verständigung oder die politische / pädagogische Fassung solcher Verständigungen … sondern der Versuch einer Reflexion auf die Ursachen des durch den Willen zum D. dokumentierten Verlusts ‚fragloser’ Orientierung und damit zugleich auch auf die Möglichkeiten ihrer begründeten Wiederherstellung ....”

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debate (Hösle 2004: 62). Since the author often leaves the debate between the characters in the text undecided, the readers have to take a position themselves: this is what makes a dialogue so pleasing to the modern palate. In this sense, we may learn from the literary form of ancient dialogues, where the greatest philosophers and theologians always indicate that one character in their considerations is never able to express the whole truth. In general, though, it is the second meaning of ‘dialogue’ given above that determined the literary products by Christian authors up to and including the Middle Ages. For them, dialogue was mainly an instrument to defend a truth they thought themselves to possess, although it could be useful to consider the arguments of others in order to defend this faith more ably. The third meaning might then catch the spirit of the modern word ‘dialogue’, in which it is equated with a form of philosophical discourse in which the other is respected as a human being in a specific relationship. A different analysis of the word ‘dialogue’, however, starts from ‘sustained reflection’ as an element in the third meaning of the word but puts it into a larger perspective as well. In this context it may be important to mention Raimon Panikkar’s analysis of the prefix dia- in the Greek word dialogos.3 As a theologian who is in dialogue with Christian, Hindu and Buddhist traditions not only as venerable historical facts but as experiences of life as well, Panikkar insists on the fact that dia-logue probes beyond the limits of Logos. In the revised edition of his book The Intrareligious Dialogue, he distinguishes between a ‘dialectical dialogue’ that remains within the orbit of logical reasoning, and a real ‘dialogical dialogue’ that envisages a spiritual encounter behind the words (Panikkar 1999: 28). Martin Forward gives a similar analysis of the prefix dia-: “‘dia-logue’ signifies worldviews being argued through to significant and potentially transformative conclusions, for one or more participants. It involves a much more consequential encounter” (Forward 2001: 12). ‘Dialogue’ in the Talmud and Jewish Philosophy This existential analysis of the word ‘dialogue’ comes to the fore as well in the use of the word in the recent history of philosophy. Its main thrust 3

Dia- means ‘through’, not ‘two’ (Bohm 1996: 6), as the neologism ‘trialogue’, used by Leonard Swidler and many others would suggest.

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is to do justice to the importance of the other as an independent person. The provenance of this connotation of dialogue in authors such as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, followed by Hans Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas, is Jewish rather than Greek (Friedman 1989: 78). Or, to be somewhat more precise: they use the Western tradition of philosophy but criticize it at the same time by going back to a basic datum of biblical revelation, viz. that being is not at the disposal of human beings. Therefore, we need others to exist (Casper 2002: 341). Martin Buber is recognized by many as the most important contributor to this ‘dialogical turn’ in modern philosophy, mainly because of his Ich und Du from 1923 (Sharpe 1987: 346; Casper 2002: 16), which is included in a larger collection entitled Das dialogische Prinzip (Buber 1965). It is, however, Emmanuel Levinas who emphatically points to the background of this dialogical principle in the Talmud, although he does not mention the word dialogue at all. He draws attention to the fact that the structure of Talmudic discourse is such that it preserves several opinions, even those that are not endorsed in the end. In doing so, the Talmud makes difference of opinion theologically valuable (Poorthuis 1989): it is a “controversy for the sake of heaven” (Magonet 2003: 48-61). The Talmud relates that the followers of Shammai and Hillel disagreed about a certain matter for a long time, until a voice from heaven decided that both opinions were to be considered as words of the Living God, while the matter was to be resolved in line with the followers of Hillel since they preserved the contrary opinion as well: R. Abba stated in the name of Samuel: For three years there was a dispute between Beth Shammai and Beth Hillel, the former asserting, “The halachah is in agreement with our views”, and the latter contending, “The halachah is in agreement with our views”. Then a bath kol issued announcing, “[The utterances of] both are the words of the living God, but the halachah is in agreement with the rulings of Beth Hillel”. Since, however, “both are the words of the living God” what was it that entitled Beth Hillel to have the halachah fixed in agreement with their rulings? – Because they were kindly and modest, they studied their own rulings and those of Beth Shammai, and were even so [humble] as to mention the actions of Beth Shammai before theirs (bErubin 13b; tr. Slotki 1938: 86).

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In an essay on the Jewish reading of Scriptures Levinas alludes to this Talmudic discourse by pointing to the characteristic pluralism of rabbinical thought in which multiple opinions of the scholars are seen as words of the living God (Levinas 1982: 125). Whereas the practice of dialogue in Greek philosophy may sometimes presume that only truth matters, rather than the name of the person who discovered the truth, the Talmud preserves the names of all participants. “There is always a lot of care taken in the Talmud to specify who said what: a true lesson taught is that in which the universal nature of the proclaimed truth allows neither the name nor the person of him who said it to disappear” (Levinas 1982: 105; tr. 1994: 84). The structure of Talmudic discourse is such that it constantly oscillates between two different opinions, so that the truth is to be found in the movement between the opinions rather than in one of them (Levinas 1983: 112). Poorthuis (1989: 406) comes to the conclusion that the basic differences between the interlocutors are, according to the philosophy of Levinas, the fundamental prerequisite for finding the truth. In the history of philosophy this reference to the Talmud may not be more than an interesting footnote. But for an analysis of modern uses of the word ‘dialogue’ in encounters between religions, it is important to know that this word not only has its roots in Greek and Latin philosophical works but also in the Jewish rabbinical debates on the meaning of God’s revelation. 4.2 Forms of Dialogue and the History of Apologetics These initial explorations into contemporary uses as well as enduring roots of the word ‘dialogue’ show how ambivalent a word this is. While the modern usage of ‘dialogue’ may suggest that this word indicates a friendly manner of speaking with another person in which one’s intention is to listen to and to learn from the other, the roots of the word suggest more debate than friendly conversation. Therefore, an analysis of historical forms of religious polemics (Dascal 2004) may contribute to a better understanding of the modern use of the word ‘dailogue’ as well (Valkenberg 2004a). Historically speaking, dialogue is a struggle to reach truth vis-à-vis others and therefore it conveys the notion of talking to strangers rather than with them (Valkenberg 1998b). Strange as it may seem for someone who observes the common discourse of people participating in religious, cultural or political encounters, dialogue has more to do with polemics than with irenics, since it is a form of apologetics, the

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art of defending one’s faith. An analysis of some historical forms of interreligious dialogue from both the Christian and the Muslim point of view will serve to elucidate this. ‘Debate’ and ‘Dialogue’ in the Muslim Tradition Let us begin with three forms of dialogue in the Muslim tradition, as the shifts in connotations of the words may be illuminating for changes in the Christian tradition. Since Islam is the youngest of the three Abrahamic traditions, it has had to reflect on its relation with the other traditions from the very beginning. Reflections on the possibilities of dialogue with the Arabs who did not believe the message of Muhammad, as well as with the Jews and Christians, date from the second and third Meccan period (Mir 2001: 531). Jews and Christians are usually addressed as ahl alkitƗb, ‘People of the Book’, which indicates God’s revelation as a common framework but also a locus for contrary readings. It is the task of the prophets to display the truth of this revelation, and argumentation is one of the means by which the truth may become known. The Qur’Ɨn mentions debate and disputation as one of the means by which the truth may come to light, but “in the overwhelming majority of cases, debate and disputation are assessed negatively” as signs of human ignorance (McAuliffe 2001: 513). This is the case, for example, in the first verse of snjrat al-mujƗdilah (the dispute): God has heard the words of the woman who disputed with you [Prophet] about her husband and complained to God: God has heard what you both had to say. He is all hearing, all seeing (Q. 58:1, tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 362).

Although it is used negatively, the Arabic word for ‘dispute’, jidƗl, is more meaningful in the Qur’Ɨn than the word for ‘dialogue’, hiwƗr, which is used in this verse as well with the meaning of ‘to talk with each other’. The Lebanese Shi‘ite theologian FadlallƗh draws the conclusion that Qur’Ɨnic texts about dispute and debate are more significant than the few references to ‘dialogue’ as conversation among human beings (Hassab Alla 1998: 163). IbrƗhƯm and Nnjh (Noah) are among the prophets who used to dispute with unbelievers, and it is IbrƗhƯm who is held up as an example for Muhammad in Q. 16:123: “Then We revealed to you [Muhammad], ‘Follow the creed of Abraham, a man of pure faith who was not

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an idolater’” (transl. Abdel Haleem 2004: 174). Contrary to their forefather, Christians and Jews differ about the practices of their faith, but “on the Day of Resurrection your Lord will judge between them as to their differences” (Q. 16:124b). Subsequently, the Prophet is admonished to treat them in a very specific way: Call people to the way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful teaching. Argue with them in the most courteous way, for your Lord knows best who has strayed from His way and who is rightly guided (Q. 16:125; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 174).

While mission and dialogue are frequently mentioned together in Christian theology, this text mentions mission (daǥwa) in one breath with dispute (jidƗl). Although the verb jadala seems to suggest almost the opposite of ‘dialogue’, since it may mean ‘to argue, dispute, debate’, and even ‘to quarrel, have an argument’ (Wehr 1976: 115), the next words, ‘in the most courteous way’ change the meaning of the sentence. The Prophet is to summon the Christians and Jews who quarrel with each other and to debate with them, but he must do this in the best possible manner: with wisdom and courtesy. This may sound quite contradictory, but it is exactly what has to be done if the truth of the One God is to be found amidst the bevy of contention among the heirs of Abraham. Another text from the Qur’Ɨn shows that God’s truth is connected both with human justice and God’s message: [Believers], argue only in the best way with the People of the Book, except with those of them who act unjustly. Say: ‘We believe in what was revealed to us and in what was revealed to you; our God and your God are one [and the same]; we are devoted to Him’ (Q. 29:46; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 255).

Among those who recognize only one God, the best form of dispute is possible, since they believe in God’s revelation and commit no injustice. It seems that this ‘best way of arguing’ comes rather close to dialogue, as some Muslims wanting to promote dialogue in the modern sense of the word contend (Talbi 1990), provided that all participants are aware that the truth of God’s revelation is at stake. In a later phase of the Muslim tradition, the institution of the majlis offers a practical example of such a ‘courteous way of arguing’. The word refers, among other things, to sessions debating various topics, organized by Muslim courts in the first centuries of Islam. It is “a salonlike session in a caliph’s or an emir’s court, in which scholars were often

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summoned for debate (jadal) and disputation (munƗzarah) about the important religious issues of the day” (Griffith 1999: 13). While these organized debates under Muslim patronage were quite open in nature and “very different from the later, court enforced disputations in medieval Europe” (Lazarus-Yafeh 1999: 8), the Muslim authorities laid down certain limits: it was forbidden to criticize Muhammad, the Qur’Ɨn and Islam openly. But apart from this restriction, the majƗlis (‘sessions’) organized by Muslim rulers come as close to an open exchange of opinions as possible between Abrahamic faiths. While some of the descriptions of these debate sessions are literary fictions, others refer to historical events. Sidney Griffith lists five such descriptions from Christian authors in Arabic and Syriac, referring to dialogues between Christians (mostly monks) and Muslim rulers (Griffith 1999). The most well-known of these texts is the account of the dialogue between the ‘Nestorian’ patriarch Timothy I and Caliph al-Mahdi at the end of the eighth Christian century, which has been published in several versions (Mingana 1928; Caspar 1977). Griffith mentions other manuscripts of dialogues in which Abraham of Tiberias, Theodore Abnj Qurrah, Elias of Nisibis and the monk George were involved, but other manuscripts go back as far as the very beginning of the Abbasid period (ca. 750 CE: Samir 1994). In the report of the dispute between Theodore Abnj Qurrah and several Muslim theologians in the court of Caliph al-Ma’mnjn, the caliph refers to the words of Qur’Ɨn 29:46 (“argue only in the best way”) several times to guarantee the bishop freedom of speech (Griffith 1999: 42-45). These words reflect the fact that these disputations in the majlis were ruled by a certain code of conduct towards others (van Ess 1976; 1997: IV, 725-30), which is certainly one of the first sets of ‘guidelines to interreligious dialogue’. Sarah Stroumsa (1999: 66) refers to the explanation of Q. 16:125 (“argue with them in the most courteous way”) in Muslim tradition as the theological origin of these guidelines. The literary reports by Christian participants in these sessions, on the contrary, were often quite rude towards the Muslim interlocutors, since they were clearly intended for co-religionists. They were meant to encourage other Christians who had to live under Muslim rulers, showing them how to defend the Christian faith in this context. Even those works that appear to be dialogical in form are in fact quite apologetic or even polemic (Poorthuis, Roggema and Valkenberg 2005: XI). When a Christian author speaks with sympathy about Muhammad as someone who walked in the way of the prophets, like Timothy who

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gave “perhaps the most generous assessment of his role in all of Arab Christian literature” (Griffith 1999: 16), he never belies the Christian nature of his argument. While the debate in the majlis might appear to be a dialogue in the modern sense of the word, it is clear that such a debate could never be without its consequences; some of the stories, both from the Christian and the Muslim side, tell us that the hero who did not renounce his faith ended up imprisoned or even killed. The idea of a ‘tournament of religions’, popularized in the novel The King, The Wise Man and the Fool by Shafique Keshavjee (1998), might have been the occasion for the Kuzari by Judah Halevi or the Nestor Chronicle in Russia, but the outcome of such a tournament was often a matter of life and death (Touati 1994; van den Bercken 1988). For those who know about the consequences of these dialogues for the Jews in medieval Europe (Maccoby 1982; Cohen 1982; Cohen 1994), the reasons for Jewish suspicion about Christian dialogue initiatives are obvious enough. Literary reports did not usually even try to be fair to the representative of the other religion, since they were written for apologetic purposes. In this respect, there is no difference between Christian apologetics and Muslim kalƗm literature, as will be explained below. It is significant that Muslims, if they want to show their commitment to modern interreligious dialogue, do not use one of the Arabic terms preferred by the Qur’Ɨn. Instead, they use the word hiwƗr which can be seen as a quite literal translation of the Greek dialogos: it literally means ‘alternation’ and thus comes to mean “talk, conversation, dialogue” (Wehr 1976: 213). It may mean ‘debate’ or ‘discussion’ as well, but the connotations of the words used in the Qur’Ɨn and the kalƗm tradition are absent here. The choice of a new word signifies a new era in the mentality of those Muslims who want to engage in interreligious dialogue. On the other hand, the element of earnest search for God’s truth remains present as well and therefore dialogue can never be limited to a cozy conversation. ‘Dialogue’ and Apologetics in the Christian Tradition The development on the Christian side reflects both change and continuity as well. In most Western languages there is continuity in the use of the word ‘dialogue’, while the meaning of the word has changed. In the latter half of the twentieth century Christian religious authorities have often used this word in an ambiguous way. On the one hand,

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the word ‘dialogue’ in the documents of the Second Vatican Council indicates a new mentality in which the Roman Catholic Church wants to embrace some of the basic values of modern Western public discourse, such as equality, openness, fairness and mutuality. ‘Dialogue’ is thus used by Roman Catholic teaching authorities as well as by the World Council of Churches to characterize a broad spectrum of relations. It covers communication within the several Christian traditions, ‘ecumenical’ communication between the Christian traditions, ‘interfaith’ communication between Christianity and other religions, and finally communication with non-believers and the modern world at large (Deretz and Nocent 1968: 135-39; Lossky et al. 2002: 310-23; Valkenberg 1997). On the other hand, while individual Christians may come to the conclusion that the different religious traditions are equally valuable in their approach to the ultimate Reality, most religious authorities insist on the uniqueness of their own religious tradition and of Jesus Christ in particular as the revelation of God. The Christian claim that Jesus Christ is the unique Savior of the world is well attested in the New Testament; but the same holds true for the affirmation that God wants to save the whole of humankind. Since every Christian theology of religions has to find a balance between these two statements (D’Costa 1990; 1992; Fredericks 1999: 13), one can often find an appeal to dialogue next to the assurance that a Christian cannot abandon the duty to proclaim Christ as the only Savior. In this context dialogue may be seen as part of the missionary endeavor that has made others wary of Christian appeals to dialogue (Kasimow 1999: 79; Van Gorder 2003: 10). This ambiguity is present, for instance, in the San Antonio Statement (1989) by the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches, where the tension between mission and dialogue is freely acknowledged: “we appreciate this tension and do not attempt to resolve it.” Kenneth Cracknell, who quoted these words in a devastating critique of the ambivalent theology and policy of the World Council of Churches, concludes that this ambiguity led to the marginalization of the dialogue activities of the WCC (Cracknell 1999: 105). Although the Roman Catholic Church did find, unlike the WCC, a theological foundation for its dialogue activities, the balance between dialogue and proclamation as parts of the missionary activity of the Church is delicate enough to lead to opposite interpretations. While Paul Knitter comes to the conclusion that

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there is a tendency to equate mission with dialogue in the most recent papal documents (Knitter 1996: 125-64), Jacques Dupuis convincingly argues that dialogue and proclamation are subsumed under the central concept of mission, for instance in the encyclical Redemptoris Missio (Dupuis 1997: 358-84). Dupuis has to admit, however, that some of the most open and forward-looking assertions on dialogue in the document Dialogue and Mission by the Secretariat for non-Christians (Secretariatus 1984) have been watered down in the document Dialogue and Proclamation (Dupuis 1997: 370). This document was published by its successor, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (Pontificium Consilium pro Dialogo inter Religiones 1991) together with the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. There is another ambiguity in the fact that the Secretariat for nonChristians had its name changed into the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, while the document issued by this Council under the influence of Redemptoris Missio is more cautious in its commendation of interreligious dialogue than the document published seven years before. The continuity in the use of the word ‘dialogue’ is related to the fact that this word has been, from the very beginning, part of apologetics (Griffiths 1991). The early Fathers of the Latin church used it primarily to indicate a literary form in which they made a stand against deviant opinions from a dogmatic point of view (Schmidt 1977: 109). In most cases, the literary form of dialogue was used as a means of argumentation to defend the Christian faith (for instance in St. Justin Martyr) or to oppose heretics (for instance in Origen). Whereas many of these literary works seem to be directed at adversaries, they were directed, in fact, at the writer’s co-religionists, in order to comfort their faith. It is my contention that most of the historical cases of dialogue and polemics belong to the genre of apologetics. They functioned as ways of defending one’s own faith by shifting perspectives between oneself and adversaries who raised objections because they had another faith or no faith at all. This interpretation of dialogue as a form of apologetics may seem strange to those who see dialogue not as a means but as an end in itself. For those among us inclined to civil exchange, dialogue is the opposite of polemics, because it looks for similarities and convergences instead of oppositions and divergences. Among theologians who are seriously engaged in a Christian theology of religions, however, there

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is some consensus that interreligious dialogue is meaningful only between believers, that is, between those who are willing to defend a certain religious tradition and willing to speak for themselves as well as to listen to one another. An interreligious dialogue, properly understood, should not only consider the points of agreement but also the real differences between religions (Arnaldez 1983; DiNoia 1992; Heim 1995; Carpenter 1995). It may be true that the traditional literary genres of Christian apologetics and polemics could be called ‘divergence literature’, whereas the modern preference for interreligious dialogue tends towards ‘convergence literature’ (Work 1997: 204). But there is more continuity between apologetic works written by Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages and modern books on interreligious dialogue than the average proponent of dialogue might think. Accordingly, someone as engaged in interreligious dialogue as Paul Griffiths wrote a short defence of the traditional discipline of apologetics as an essential component of interreligious dialogue (Griffiths 1991). lf it is true that there is much continuity between polemics and apologetics as ways of defending one’s faith in the Middle Ages and interreligious dialogue as a way of communicating one’s faith to believers of other faiths (and vice versa) in modern times, the study of apologetic and polemical texts, as well as of dialogues in the Middle Ages, gains fresh relevance (Valkenberg and Wijsen 1997; Valkenberg 1998b). In this respect several authors have pointed out that the Middle Ages, while ferocious and belligerent in many aspects, may teach us some lessons on ways to practice interreligious dialogue. With respect to the relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims, one may even say that the Middle Ages formed a privileged era for interreligious communication, because certain times and places knew a kind of intellectual equilibrium between these groups that disappeared from the fifteenth century onwards. So some of the exchanges of ideas in the Middle Ages can serve as fruitful examples today (Arnaldez 1993: 8). Another reason why the Middle Ages are often mentioned in connection with interreligious dialogue is that some of the Jews, Christians and Muslims at that time could understand one another quite well, because they wrestled with analogous intellectual problems. If communication between peoples of different cultural and religious backgrounds is to succeed, they will have to find a common language

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by means of which they are able to understand one another (Lapide and Panikkar 1994: 104). It has been argued that the language of philosophy was able to mediate communication between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages (Waardenburg 2004: 21). The provenance of this philosophical mediation caused a problem for the faithful as well, however, since the worldview of these philosophical texts seemed to leave aside the God of revelation. Consequently, the three traditions wrestled with an analogous problem of the relation between reason and revelation. According to many interpreters, this problem determined the construction of Aquinas’s so-called Summa contra Gentiles (Hoping 1997:10), making him a predecessor of the modern awareness of pluralism and secularism. But an analogous problem pervades much of the history of Jewish and Islamic philosophy (Sirat 1985: 5; Nasr and Leaman 1996: 3). It is therefore possible to write about Aquinas and dialogue (Fodor and Bauerschmidt 2004), not because he was personally engaged in interreligious dialogue but because he was deeply influenced by Muslims and Jews who wrestled with the problem of faith and reason in an analogous way (Burrell 2004: 71). Aquinas was aware of the fact that a theologian is someone who should speak about God not only to those with whom one shares the same faith but also to those who are strangers to this faith. In accordance with the rules developed by Aquinas concerning this issue, communication between Christians and Muslims (and between Jews and Muslims, for that matter) is regulated by the requirements of reason. The form of intellectual communication between Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages can thus be described as a philosophical theology (Gardet and Anawati 1948; Wolfson 1976; Burrell 1986; 1993). This form of theology was possible because the Christian method of apologetic theology was akin to the Muslim kalƗm which is often translated as ‘speculative theology’ or ‘scholastic theology’ but is characterized by its apologetic method as well (Gardet and Anawati 1948: 211. 237). Aquinas formulated the rules for such an apologetic conversation with people of other faiths in the first nine chapters of his Summa contra Gentiles, while he applied them to some Muslim and Jewish objections in his De rationibus fidei (Kenny 1996; Valkenberg 1998b; Schoot 2005). More precisely, he is talking to people of other faiths, not with them, since he does not directly respond to the Muslim interlocutor but tries to equip the Cantor with a strategy for responding

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(Burrell 2004: 86). According to his own rules, Aquinas does not bring Scripture into play, probably because he acknowledges the fact that Muslims do not accept the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament as Jews and Christians have handed them down. For his part, Aquinas does not accept the authority of the Qur’Ɨn, so that a proper religious communication between these religions would not be possible for him. In this sense, the absence of references to revelation may be seen as a sign of weakness as well: at the level of philosophical exchange, communication between Muslims and Christians in the Middle Ages was strong, yet there was little religious communication in the proper sense of the word since references to revelation were absent. Between Jews and Christians, however, the situation was different. Since they appeal to the same authoritative sources of God’s revelation, they have another means of communication in common, viz. the interpretation of their Scriptures. Therefore, Christians sometimes consulted a Jewish rabbi when they wanted to investigate the literal sense of the Old Testament (Smalley 1983). Moreover, since they had more in common with the Jews than with heathens (including Muslims), Jews were seen as a special category of disbelievers placed between heretics and heathens. Whereas acceptance of the same Scripture determines the mode of conversation between Christians and Jews, differences in the interpretation of these Scriptures determine the content of these conversations (Schoot and Valkenberg 2004: 5758). It will be quite clear by now that the mode of conversation in the Middle Ages (and in the early church as well) is very different from the courtesy and informality with which modern people associate the word dialogue. Most dialogues at that time were apologetic in nature and many of them had polemical overtones. Even though dialogue in the modern sense of the word seems to prevail in writings such as Peter Abelard’s Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian (Merks 2005) or Ibn Kammuna’s Examination of the Apologetics of the Three Faiths (Roggema 2005), the religious point of view of the writer colors his description of different viewpoints. Insofar as interreligious dialogue is concerned with religious truth claims, it cannot escape being polemical in nature (Valkenberg and Wijsen 1997: 5). The continuity in the use of the word ‘dialogue’ as a literary form, however, indicates a lasting awareness that one can defend one’s faith properly only if one has

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thoroughly examined not only the objections brought forward by one’s adversary but the mental attitudes from which these objections arise as well. In such a defensio fidei, the truth can only be found by identifying to a certain extent with the position of the adversary. This ‘dialogical’ attitude is often totally absent in medieval theological texts, but one may find traces of it in common scholarly procedures in search of true knowledge. The quaestio that originated as a method of reading the Scriptures in the context of the schools comes to determine the procedure of systematic theology in which the arguments pro et contra are carefully weighed (Valkenberg 2000: 186). This implies that the method of scholastic theology preserves a glimpse of the Talmudic procedures referred to in the first section of this chapter: it is a way of finding the truth in which otherness is respected by preserving the rejected opinion. 4.3 Inequality in Dialogue: A Contextual Analysis Thus far, my analysis of the word ‘dialogue’ has concentrated on historical forms of dialogue to show both differences and continuity with modern forms of dialogue to be surveyed in the rest of this chapter. The historical analysis pointed out how important it is to be aware of the circumstances under which people engage in dialogue, with special attention to the fact that every dialogue takes place within a constellation of power relations. One often hears that dialogue can take place only between equals. Leonard Swidler, for instance, when formulating a number of ground rules for interreligious dialogue, has the following to say about interreligious and interideological dialogue: Dialogue can take place only between equals - as Vatican II put it, par cum pari. Both must come to learn from each other. Therefore, if, for example, the Muslim views Hinduism as inferior, or if the Hindu views Islam as inferior, there will be no dialogue. If authentic interreligious dialogue between Muslims and Hindus is to take place, then both the Muslim and the Hindu must come mainly to learn from each other; only then will it be "equal with equal", par cum pari (Swidler 1987: 15).

Swidler is quite right, of course, to assume that dialogue requires of the partners at least the willingness to consider the religion of the other worth the effort of gaining some in-depth knowledge. But since most

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religions and their adherents operate with some taxonomy of religions (often even an implicit ‘theology of religions’), it will not do simply to declare that they should deem others their equals from a religious point of view. More importantly, in almost every society people are seldom equals with regard to their social, economic and cultural positions. Three types of inequalities may be relevant here: inequality within a certain religion; inequality between a majority and minorities; inequality between religions (Kranenborg and Stoker 1995; Valkenberg 1997). With reference to inequality within a religious system, it may suffice to give a quite simple example. In January 1993, the Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops in the Netherlands wrote a report on behalf of their ad limina visit to Rome. In this report they stated that the Dutch province suffered from a lack of communication and dialogue. In order to overcome this deficiency, they installed a committee with the task of promoting dialogue across the community of faith. This ‘Dialogue Committee’ published a report in September 1994, in which it wrote that dialogue should be an instrument for the promotion of communio between all those who together form the church: bishops, people employed in pastoral work, and the other faithful, both among themselves and with one another. In this prescription for dialogue, the difference in actual positions of the partners in dialogue is taken into account, while their mental parity is also underscored. In this context the committee refers to the words quoted by Swidler from the documents of the Second Vatican Council: dialogue should take place between equals. Now this is in fact a quotation from the decree on ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio, in which the Council deals with meetings of theological experts, adding that there should be equality in the level of representation (Unitatis redintegratio, § 9). When the Dutch committee widened the scope of this idea of equal representation to an ideal of equality in dialogue between bishops and the faithful within the same church, the word ‘dialogue’ was used to cover up the fact that bishops, pastoral workers and the faithful do not have the same function or authority in the Church. This seems to me to be a typical example of a way of speaking in which the word ‘dialogue’ is applied to a situation in which it does not fit well. If a call to dialogue on the interpersonal level does not go together with measures to create on the material level a situation in which real dialogue could become possible, it does not contribute to truth but rather hides the real truth.

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Dialogue between Majority and Minority Groups The same is true, obviously, in a dialogue between a majority and one or several minorities. The second chapter has sketched the situation of Muslims in the Netherlands as a growing minority but still very much a minority. The strong tones of islamophobia in the political arena and in the mass media push Muslims to the wall. In such a situation, dialogue may become a mere eyewash that in fact sustains the existing inequality. This is the reason why some Muslims argue for solidarity instead of dialogue. As I noted in the second chapter, similar reasons led a Christian social worker in Utrecht to be wary of the facile way in which his co-religionists engaged in dialogue instead of solidarity. In such a situation, the impulse to dialogue with Muslims seems to be a salutary private initiative that may conceal a deeper social evil. The virtue of a dialogic mentality seems to be characteristic of a majority who can afford to be tolerant and pluralistic. These are the virtues of affluence that are common and highly praised in our liberal societies in Western Europe. But, as a philosophical analysis of the word ‘tolerance’ points out, it is an ambivalent characteristic of those whose position is safe enough to bear whatever deviates from what they perceive to be the common norm (Derkse 2004). Those who tolerate others often reinforce the boundaries between their elevated status and the inferior status of minorities. From the point of view of the prophetic traditions, however, God does not side with those who tolerate but suppress the destitute. In this respect, the God of the Bible is notably intolerant, because this God opts in favor of those who are not held in high esteem by this common norm (Valkenberg 1999a). Those who are in a minority position do not tolerate the majority but try to tip the balance as they concentrate on developing their own cultural and religious heritage. They do not want a dialogue that leaves the situation unchanged; they must either demand justice as the only relevant prerequisite for a real dialogue, or refuse any dialogue at all. The attitude of minorities turning away from the dominant culture in a reaffirmation of their own religious and cultural traditions, is often labelled ‘fundamentalism’ by the dominant majority (Kepel 1991). This dynamics of tolerance and withdrawal complicates the dialogue between Christians and Muslims in Western Europe, which will be a real dialogue only if the difference between the positions of the partners in dialogue be taken into account. One of the reasons why a dialogue between women of the Christian majority and women of the Muslim mi-

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nority is relatively successful is that the differences between women as persons with low positions in both religions are less insurmountable, provided that some measures are taken to secure the equality of interests and the equality of possibilities and power (Speelman 1990). Moreover, the only successful dialogue will be a dialogue connected with the life of the participants, not a dialogue of mere words. The dialogue between women is likely to take place at the kitchen table rather than in a study room (Hurkens and van der Vleuten 1994). The dialogue at the kitchen table might prove to be more successful than the dialogue in the study room, because in this situation the already existing difference between representatives of a majority and those of a minority group is not reinforced by the difference between professional Christian theologians engaging in dialogue in their working hours and non-professional Muslim women undertaking dialogue on their own time. If the interests of the professionals from the majority group fix the agenda for interreligious dialogue, it will be doubly off balance; but if the interests of the women from the minority group fix the agenda, the dialogue could prove to be well balanced. This is one of the reasons why, in these circumstances, a dialogue about the conditions of the life of women as minorities in both Christianity and Islam is generally preferable to a dialogue that focuses directly on, for instance, the place of Jesus in the Qur’Ɨn. In an intrareligious dialogue between Christians from the Middle East and Christians from the Netherlands about the context of their theology regarding Judaism and Islam, theologians from the Middle East chastised European theologians eager to dialogue with Jews or Muslims similarly (Valkenberg 2000a). “We are living in a situation where we have known them much longer than you do,” they say. “And we do not understand why you are willing to risk your faith in such dialogues.” As minorities in countries in which Muslims and Jews are in the majority, they have a much longer tradition of living together with their Abrahamic partners, yet they are afraid of losing their identity in the kind of open theological dialogue favored by European theologians. On the other hand, I suggested that Christians in Europe might dare to go a bit further in the theological dialogue because we are in the majority and our faith is not directly threatened by the faith of a different majority (although others might see such a majority in the influence of secularism in the Netherlands). I do not need to deal with the third type of inequality at length here, because I have done this already in the previous chapter, and will come

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back to it in the sixth chapter. This type of inequality has to do with the genetic relations between religions that may place them in a different position vis-à-vis one another. For systematic and historical reasons, dialogues between Christians and Jews, and between Muslims and Christians or Jews, are often asymmetrical. This explains why these dialogues are often more difficult than dialogues between religions that are less burdened by these relations, such as Christianity and Hinduism, or Buddhism and Judaism (I am aware that I am now arguing as a European theologian; in India or in California the situation could be different). The three types of inequalities described can either reinforce or neutralize one another. On the one hand, the fact that Christians in the Netherlands want to dialogue with the few Jews left in their country more than the Jews do, could have to do with their position as a majority, with their theological position, or with feelings of guilt about the tradition of anti-Judaism and the Holocaust as well. On the other hand, the fact that Christians as a majority feel the need to engage in dialogue with their Muslim neighbors more than the other way round is balanced by the greater theological openness of Muslims for this dialogue. Finally, the fact that Christians are becoming a minority group themselves in a secular society gives them the opportunity to engage in a dialogue on a more equal footing. This situation of ‘disempowerment’ of all religions in Western Europe might offer a fresh possibility for a dialogue between more or less equal minorities.4 It might even be the case that Christians are less well equipped for dialogues about matters religious than Muslims, because secularization has made them forget their religious language and feelings. It is not surprising that Muslims often feel that they are religiously better equipped. 4.4 Levels and Aims of Dialogue: The Approach by the Roman Catholic Church It is not the aim of this chapter to sketch a history of the most important contributions of the Christian churches to interreligious dialogue, since this has been done already several times (Zehner 1992; Lønning 2002: 49-59). My short observation is based on the evaluation that the Roman 4

This notion of ‘disempowerment’ was suggested by Tzvi Marx of the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, in a discussion during a conference on Holy Scriptures, Values, and Plural Society in Amsterdam (Free University) in 1995.

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Catholic side has notably contributed to the awareness of different levels and aims in interreligious dialogue, while the World Council of Churches has most contributed to the practice of interreligious dialogue, together with some organizations of a more explicitly interreligious nature. An analysis of the use of the word ‘dialogue’ in recent documents by both the teaching authorities of the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches shows that this word is used to cover a number of quite divergent situations. The documents of the Second Vatican Council, for instance, apply this notion to five different types of relations: relations between different groups within the church; ecumenical contacts with other churches; relations with the Jewish faith; relations with other religions; and finally relations with the world (Kruttschnitt 1995: 193). The Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement even has separate entries for bilateral, interfaith, intrafaith and multilateral dialogues (Lossky et al. 2002: 310-23). But within the category of interreligious dialogue, many forms of dialogue may be distinguished as well, which contributes to the vagueness of the term ‘dialogue’. Since most people spontaneously identify dialogue with one of these forms, viz. the dialogue between representatives of religious bodies, they think that it is primarily an intellectual activity artificially separated from the usual life of religious people. Dialogue and Mission (1984) on Levels and Aims of Dialogue In this respect the 1984 document The Attitude of the Church towards the Followers of Other Religions – usually known and quoted as Dialogue and Mission – by the Vatican secretariat for non-Christians (from 1988 onwards: Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue) deserves closer attention. The text offers some reflections on the relation between mission and dialogue that has haunted Roman Catholic reflections on other religions in the last decades (Ariarajah 2002: 315). In its first part the document mentions some elements of the mission of the Church. It is already constituted by the simple presence and living witness of the Christian life …. There is also the concrete commitment to the service of mankind and all forms of activity for social development and for the struggle against poverty and the structures which produce it.

A third form of mission can be found in “liturgical life and that of prayer and contemplation,” while “the dialogue in which Christians

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meet the followers of other religious traditions in order to walk together towards truth and to work together in projects of common concern” is the fourth way in which mission may express itself. Finally, the document mentions “announcement and catechesis,” subjoining that “the totality of Christian mission embraces all these elements” (Secretariatus 1984: § 13). In an interesting parallel, the text in its second part mentions the many ways in which dialogue is defined as follows: Before all else, dialogue is a manner of acting, an attitude and a spirit which guides one’s conduct. It implies concern, respect, and hospitality towards the other. It leaves room for the other person’s identity, his modes of expression and his values. Dialogue is thus the norm and necessary manner of every form of Christian mission, as well as of every aspect of it, whether one speaks of simple presence and witness, service, or direct proclamation …. Every follower of Christ, by reason of his human and Christian vocation, is called to live dialogue in his daily life, whether he finds himself in a majority situation or in that of a minority. He ought to bring the spirit of the Gospel into any environment in which he lives and works, that of family, social, educational, artistic, economic, or political life. Dialogue thus finds its place in the great dynamism of the church’s mission. A further level of dialogue is that of deeds and collaboration with others for goals of a humanitarian, social, economic, or political nature which are directed towards the liberation and advancement of mankind. This kind of dialogue often occurs today in the context of international organizations, where Christians and the followers of other religions confront together the problems of the world. Of particular interest is dialogue at the level of specialists, whether it be to confront, deepen and enrich their respective religious heritages or to apply something of their expertise to the problems which must be faced by mankind in the course of its history. Such a dialogue normally occurs where one’s partner already has his own vision of the world and adheres to a religion which inspires him to action. This is more easily accomplished in pluralistic societies where diverse traditions and ideologies coexist and sometimes come in contact. At a deeper level, persons rooted in their own religious traditions can share their experiences of prayer, contemplation, faith, and duty, as well as their expressions and ways of searching the Absolute.

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This type of dialogue can be a mutual enrichment and fruitful cooperation for promoting and preserving the highest values and spiritual ideals of man. It leads naturally to each partner commmunicating to the other the reasons for his own faith. The sometimes profound differences between the faiths do not prevent this dialogue. Those differences, rather, must be referred back in humility and confidence to God who “is greater than our heart” (I John 3:20). In this way also, the Christian has the opportunity of offering to the other the possibility of experimenting in an existential way with the values of the Gospel. (Secretariatus 1984: §§ 29, 30, 31, 33, 35)

Sometimes the several dialogues distinguished in this text are called forms of dialogue, but the more adequate word, used in the text itself, seems to be levels of dialogue. As the text underscores, there is a single appeal to dialogue as part of the mission of the Church, but this dialogue takes place at different levels: the dialogue of life, the dialogue of collaborative deeds, the dialogue of theological exchange, and the dialogue of religious experience. In other words: dialogue implies living together, working together, talking with one another and sharing experiences and prayer. Each of the levels corresponds to a different aim of dialogue: the dialogue of life aims at mutual concern, respect and hospitality (§ 29). The dialogue of deeds aims at the liberation and advancement of humankind, or more specifically at “defend[ing] and promot[ing] together social justice, moral values, peace and liberty” as the document says in § 32, quoting Nostra Aetate (§ 3) on the relation between the Church and the Muslims. The goal of the dialogue of specialists is to “come to mutual understanding and appreciation of each other’s spiritual values and cultural categories and promote communion and fellowship among people” (§ 34), with reference to the general description in Nostra Aetate (§ 1). Finally, the dialogue of religious experience aims at mutual enrichment and fruitful cooperation for promoting and preserving the highest values and spiritual ideals of humankind (§ 35). To my knowledge, this text endorses the mutuality of dialogue more than any before or after: words like “mutual enrichment” (§ 44) and “mutual transformation” (§ 43) abound. Dialogue and Mission even acknowledges that not only Christians share their experiences of faith with their brothers or sisters of other religions, but that these others may want to share their experiences as well (§ 40). In this manner dialogue contains an element of mutual mission and witness that continues the historical tradition of apologetics without, however, its one-sidedness.

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Dialogue and Proclamation (1991) on Connections between Levels The document on Dialogue and Proclamation, issued by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue together with the Congregation for the Evangelization of People in 1991, repeats the core message of the 1984 document in a somewhat diluted form. It distinguishes between three uses of the word ‘dialogue’: first, reciprocal communication in the broad sense of the word; second, an attitude of respect and friendship that should permeate all activities in the evangelizing mission of the Church. But the specific use of dialogue as an integral element in this mission refers to “all positive and constructive interreligious relations with individuals and communities of other faiths which are directed at mutual understanding and enrichment,” the document says, quoting from Dialogue and Mission (§ 3), but adding the words “in obedience to truth and respect for freedom” (Pontificium Consilium 1991: § 9). In § 42, Dialogue and Proclamation repeats in a succinct form what Dialogue and Mission said about levels of dialogue, using however the less appropriate notion of forms of dialogue: There exist different forms of interreligious dialogue. It may be useful to recall those mentioned by the 1984 document of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (cf. DM 28-35). It spoke of four forms, without claiming among them any order of priority: The dialogue of life, where people strive to live in an open and neighbourly spirit, sharing their joys and sorrows, their human problems and preoccupations. The dialogue of action, in which Christians and others collaborate for the integral development and liberation of people. The dialogue of theological exchange, where specialists seek to deepen their understanding of their respective religious heritages, and to appreciate each other’s spiritual values. The dialogue of religious experience, where persons, rooted in their own religious traditions, share their spiritual riches, for instance with regard to prayer and contemplation, faith and ways of searching for God or the Absolute (Pontificium Consilium 1991: § 42).

Although this summary does not mention the elements of mutuality as clearly as the 1984 document did, it adds two important observations (§ 43). First of all, dialogue is not a matter of specialists but of all members of the churches, though not all in the same way. In the second place, the forms (or levels) of dialogue are interconnected. It is not necessary,

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therefore, to play off a soteriocentric concept of dialogue against a theocentric concept (Knitter 1987), because dialogue encompasses them both. Nor is it necessary to reduce the dialogue between religions to a common ethical core (Küng 1993), for the dialogue of deeds has to be connected with the dialogue of spiritual experience. This connection between the several levels and aims of dialogue may be the most important for a dialogue of specialists, to which the dialogue among theologians belongs. Without adequate connections to the dialogues of life, of deeds and of spiritual experiences, the theological dialogue remains bloodless, far from real life, far from real society, far from any real connection with God. In such a case, it is quite understandable that many people will think that interreligious dialogue is but a “sort of luxury item” (Dialogue and Proclamation, § 43) for specialists only. From my own experiences of dialogue, I know too well that it is tempting for theologians to engage in interesting meetings on dogmatic issues in an intellectual ghetto. Therefore, it is of crucial importance to establish connections with both the real world in which the dialogue of life and the dialogue of deeds take place, and the spiritual world which is indeed the “deeper level” (Dialogue and Mission § 35) that touches the encompassing aim of interreligious dialogue for theologians: to learn about God and from God through religious others. While keeping their identity intact, Christians must be prepared to learn and to receive from and through others the positive value of their traditions. Through dialogue they may be moved to give up ingrained prejudices, to revise preconceived ideas, and even sometimes to allow the understanding of their faith to be purified (Dialogue and Proclamation, § 49).

As examples of dialogues of experts that are connected with both the dialogue of life and action as well as the dialogue of religious experience, I could have mentioned specifically dialogues from the Asian continent, since the richness of religious traditions in this continent brings forth an equal richness in initiatives for interreligious dialogues that are both rooted in daily life and extend to the spiritual depths of human encounters (Kuttianimattathil 1995; Chia 2003). The works of Aloysius Pieris, for instance, are clearly scholarly works, but – as became clear when I met him in his spiritual center near Colombo – they are rooted in his experience of daily life with Buddhists as well (Pieris 1988; 1996).

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In the context of a book on interreligious dialogues between Christians and Muslims, however, I prefer to draw attention to a small-scale initiative to which I was recently invited as a guest: the Midwest Dialogue of Catholics and Muslims in the United States of America. This dialogue, a joint initiative of the Islamic Society of North America and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, began in 1996. The dialogue group consists of some thirty members, most of them paired participants from eight cities from five different states in the midwest of the USA. The Catholic members of this dialogue group tend to be engaged in pastoral work and are often responsible for ecumenical and interreligious relations in their diocese, while the Muslim members are sometimes (but not always) imƗms. Both Muslims and Catholics have a considerable number of women representatives. Since they usually know each other quite well at the local level by the local initiatives in which they participate, most Muslim/Catholic pairs come as friends. In this manner, they are able to establish relations between the intellectual dialogue and the grassroots dialogue at the local level. A small number of scholars who are asked to present papers and prepare common statements assist them in their meetings. John Borelli, the initiator of these meetings on behalf of the American bishops, underlines the importance of writing a theological text on revelation in a common process (Borelli 2004: 327), describing these meetings as retreats in which there is plenty of time for the spiritual dimension. Prayers, both Islamic and Christian, are a scheduled part of the meetings, but the spiritual dimension is present in some of the topics for conversation as well, such as, for instance, lectio divina: the meditative reading of Scripture as form of prayer (Borelli 2003: 5). Sister Mary Margaret Funk, who is one of the partners in this dialogue group, used her experiences to write a small booklet on Islam. As a Benedictine nun and executive director of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, she has extensive experience in the dialogue of spiritualities, while as a woman she is sensitive to the daily problems of living together as well (Funk 2003). Although a monastery can be quite different from a kitchen table, a sizeable participation of women in formal dialogues is usually the best guarantee for connecting an intellectual dialogue with both the dialogue of life and the dialogue of spiritual experiences.

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4.5 Dialogue in Practice: The Contribution of the World Council of Churches While the previous section of this chapter concentrated on the approach of the Roman Catholic Church to levels and aims of dialogue, this final section will deal with the practice of dialogue mainly as it is developed in the World Council of Churches. It may seem to be quite artificial to associate the Roman Catholic Church with a theory of dialogue and the World Council of Churches with its practice. This arrangement, however, is the result of an evaluation of the developments in the last decades of the twentieth century that reflects the strengths and the weaknesses of each of these Christian bodies. Through its centralized structure and the central authority of an ecumenical council, the Roman Catholic Church has a clear point of departure for gauging its relations to other religions in Nostra Aetate and the documents of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. The World Council of Churches, consisting of diverse churches with very different points of view on their relations to other religions, did not develop so explicit a theological point of view. However, the WCC has developed a convincing practice of dialogue, during which many theological questions have been raised (Ariarajah 2002: 315). Some Protestant theologians have distinguished several types of dialogue, such as discursive (intellectual) dialogue, human (existential) dialogue, secular dialogue aimed at joint action, and finally spiritual dialogue (Sharpe 1987: 347). The Swiss theologian Jean-Claude Basset even developed a refined typology of dialogue in which he mentioned several forms of dialogue, distinguishing between local and international dialogues, restricted dialogues (in the number of people participating) and larger dialogues, and finally bilateral and multilateral dialogues (Basset 1996: 315-24). As regards the types of dialogue, Basset mentions four categories of participants – lay people, priests, theologians, monks – with corresponding bases, horizons and styles of dialogue (Basset 1996: 324-42). Yet while Basset’s typology is interesting, it does not serve as a basis for the official policy of the World Council of Churches. In this respect, the typology of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has more consequences for its practice, for instance in the stress on the dialogue of spiritual experience as the type of dialogue that is most likely to touch the core of interreligious dialogue (Arinze 1999; Fitzgerald 2004).

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Pastoral Dialogue and Doctrinal Rigor – the Roman Catholic Church The practice of interreligious dialogue in the Roman Catholic Church is, however, a multileveled practice. It would be interesting to have an overview of the activities of local dialogue groups initiated or supported by this church. While such a survey can hardly be given in a book like this, it may be noted that Asia would probably be the continent with the greatest presence of such groups. It would be easier to give a survey of the activities of the Church by its leading representative, since most observers would agree that Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) has exercised enormous influence on the shape of interreligious dialogue worldwide, but this survey has already been given several times (Sherwin and Kasimow 1999; Borrmans 2002). So I can limit myself to concluding that a tension existed between the different aspects in the Roman Catholic practice of interreligious dialogue during the reign of this pontiff (Valkenberg 2002a: 157; 2003: 181). On the one hand, Pope John Paul II exemplified an open and pastoral approach to other religions that seems to favor a warm-hearted practice of dialogue. Often, practical initiatives such as a Day of Prayer with religious leaders, a visit to a synagogue in Rome or a mosque in Damascus, a sign of reverence for the Qur’Ɨn or a sign of repentance for atrocities committed in the past, came first, while a theological explanation for the behavior of the supreme pontiff in these cases had to be found later. On the other hand, the declaration Dominus Iesus by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and its prefect, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, exemplified a tendency to restrict any doctrinal consequences, in order to avert the danger of relativism. Now that Cardinal Ratzinger has been appointed Pope Benedict XVI in April, 2005, he incorporates the tension between the pastoral and the doctrinal approach to dialogue in his own person. The declaration Dominus Iesus (Congregation 2000) mentions interreligious dialogue only as part of the Church’s evangelizing mission, causing negative reactions among non-Christians once again (Fredericks 2003: 247). In a certain sense, the practical-pastoral openness and the theoretical-doctrinal strictness may well reflect the overall Catholic approach to interreligious dialogue, in which proclamation and dialogue are two complementary parts of a broader mission. The word ‘mission’, even if used in the sense of a mere presence among believers of other faiths, continues to create misunderstandings because of lingering associations with the historical expansionist role

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of the Church’s mission as a phenomenon supporting imperialist politics. Ambivalent Approaches to Dialogue – the World Council of Churches In the circles of the World Council of Churches, there is less tension between practice and theory because no accepted theory of interreligious dialogue has so far been developed. The famous Guidelines to Dialogue, developed by a group of theologians at a consulation in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 1979, formulate a number of conditions for interreligious dialogue but not a theory of dialogue (Samartha 1977). The so-called Baar Declaration developed by a group of theologians from the churches participating in the World Council in 1990 comes closest to such a theory, but it was not accepted by the seventh assembly of the WCC in Canberra a year later. The presentation by the Korean theologian Chung Hyun Kyung on the presence of the Holy Spirit in the religions of the world caused such turmoil that the word ‘syncretism’ dominated the discussions. So the Baar declaration had no chance of being accepted. Kenneth Cracknell mentions this as one of the many instances of the ambivalent theology and ambivalent policy that characterize the attitude of the World Council of Churches towards other faiths (Cracknell 1999). His critique is searching in showing the powerlessness of this ecumenical organization to come to terms with other religions: the initiatives to engage in interreligious dialogue that blossomed between 1965 and 1980 were gradually marginalized in the years following. Yet the World Council of Churches may boast of quite a remarkable series of interreligious encounters, among which the Christian-Muslim conversations compiled by Stuart Brown (1989) figure prominently. The grand scheme of a multilateral dialogue among Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians, such as the dialogue in Ajaltoun (Lebanon) in 1970, gradually gave way to more moderate bilateral dialogues, first on a global level, and later, after a series of carefully prepared meetings, on the regional level (Brown 1989: ix). It is tempting to see this process of diminishment as confirming Cracknell’s thesis that initiatives in the field of interreligious dialogue were gradually marginalized in the structure of the World Council of Churches (Cracknell 1999: 102. 108). In the new structure, the team on interreligious relations continues to take initiatives and publish their results in their biannual Current Dialogue. In 2002, the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches accepted the document

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Guidelines for Dialogue and Relations with People of Other Religions, a renewed version of the 1979 Guidelines in which they take stock of thirty years of organized dialogue (World Council of Churches 2002). But one wonders whether interfaith or interreligious dialogue continues to be a priority for the World Council of Churches. At the local level in the Netherlands I have noticed many churches economizing resources for interreligious dialogue, even though they confess that such a dialogue is necessary more than ever, due to the growing tensions between secular and religious groups after September 11, 2001. This raises the question of the possible future of interreligious dialogue. It may be the case that Christian churches still want to improve the relations between believers of different religious traditions, but that they have found other means to do so than interreligious dialogue. Will dialogue be as important in the twenty-first century as it was in the latter half of the twentieth century? Before I try to answer this question in the next chapter, I must acknowledge a certain myopia: in the last two sections on levels and practice of interreligious dialogue, I only considered institutionalized Christian approaches. To a certain extent, this has been a conscious choice, since it is Christian institutions that have most developed the practice and theory of interreligious dialogue. But the contribution of other organizations may also be important for the future of interreligious dialogue. The rich survey of initiatives and organizations by Marcus Braybrooke (Braybrooke 1992; 1994) shows that many but not all of them have a Christian origin. Their members are often but not always Christians, with some members of other faiths, who belong to their religious traditions in a free-floating way. As a result, traditional Christian churches have often treated them with disrespect, since they feared they were leading Christians to relativism. Yet they offer a significant complement to the initiatives of the institutionalized churches for two different reasons. In the first place, they are often able to promote dialogue of action better than the churches. Organizations such as the World Conference of Religion and Peace or the International Association for Religious Freedom have been instrumental in bringing peace to many places. The same can be said of the Communità di Sant’ Egidio, one of the new religious movements within the Roman Catholic Church. In the second place, they may indicate a plausible future path of interreligious dialogue, since many young people feel attracted to a free-

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floating association with religious ideas rather than to a vested religious institution. Another new religious movement within the Roman Catholic Church, the Focolare community, shares some of the characteristics of these interreligious associations. Forms of cooperation between new religious organizations inside and outside of the institutional churches may indicate new approaches to interreligious dialogue in the twenty-first century.

CHAPTER 5

The Future of Interreligious Dialogue: Multiple Belonging This chapter continues the analysis of the term ‘interreligious dialogue’ by looking to its possible future. If it is true that dialogue has been one of the major catchwords of the last third of the twentieth century, it is very well possible that the twenty-first century will witness a quite different form of interreligious encounter. This chapter explores the possibilities of multiple religious belonging as the future of interreligious dialogue (Valkenberg 2004). This can only be done, however, after a quick inspection of the adjective ‘interreligious’ and the way in which it colors the dialogue concerned. 5.1 Interreligious and Interfaith Dialogue The adjective ‘interreligious’ may be distinguished from three other adjectives that are often used in connection with it by people who sometimes fail to make a proper distinction between them. These adjectives are ‘multireligious’, ‘intrareligious’ and ‘interfaith’ dialogue. In all cases it may be necessary to explain why the word ‘interreligious’ is to be preferred in the context of this book. This task is easiest with respect to the adjectives ‘multireligious’ and ‘interreligious’. One does not often hear the construction ‘multireligious dialogue’, but one hears ‘multireligious education’ or ‘multireligious meeting’ or ‘muiltireligious prayer service’ quite often. As I said in the second chapter, the major distinction is that the prefix ‘multi-’ points to the fact that several religious systems are living together in a certain society, while the prefix ‘inter-’ adds to this the wish that these religious systems do not only live together as isolated entities but influence one another as an opportunity for mutual enrichment (Sterkens 2001: 63). Because the word ‘dialogue’ often has the same implication, viz. that both partners exchange their views in order to come to a certain level of mutual enrichment, it follows that ‘inter-

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religious dialogue’ is a much more common combination than ‘multireligious dialogue’. The distinction between ‘intrareligious’ and ‘interreligious’ depends on the definition one gives of the former. Christian theologians have presented two kinds of definitions. The Norwegian theologian and Lutheran bishop Per Lønning gives a definition in which intrareligious dialogue forms an encompassing horizon within a certain religious tradition for the interreligious dialogue with other traditions. It is a dialogue that is conducted within (intra) the domain of a religion, in order to facilitate or to apply an interreligious dialogue: “the interreligious adventure must be preceded, surrounded and followed by a network of intrareligious reflections” (Lønning 2002: 13). Raimon Panikkar (1999) and Jean-Claude Basset (1995: 353-5) use the word ‘intrareligious’ in a different sense in which the domain within which the dialogue takes place is not a church or a religious tradition but human religious experience and spiritual intuition. They insist that an interreligious dialogue can only be efficacious if it ends in a personal intrareligious dialogue in the spiritual mindset of the partners concerned. Interfaith vs. Interreligious: Protestant and Catholic Approaches The third distinction is not that easy to make: faith and religion are both typically Western and predominantly Christian ways to indicate what is common to the different human beliefs. While Roman Catholic documents almost exclusively use the words ‘interreligious dialogue’, the documents of the World Council of Churches usually prefer to speak about ‘interfaith dialogue’. In his entry on ‘interfaith dialogue’ in the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, Wesley Ariarajah usually speaks about ‘interfaith dialogue’ but he sometimes uses ‘interreligious dialogue’ as well, apparently without indicating any difference. The main difference between both words may, however, correspond to the main difference he indicates between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant theological orientation towards other religions (Ariarajah 2002: 313). While the place and function of Christ as Word of God and universal Savior is the unique focus of almost all Protestant theologies of religion, Roman Catholic theologies pay attention to the mediating function of the Church as well. Therefore Protestant approaches to dialogue tend to focus more on the personal faith of the partners in dialogue, while Roman Catholic approaches consider the ecclesiological and institutional aspects as well (Lønning 2002: 14-15). Protestants may prefer to talk about

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‘faith’ in order to indicate that dialogue is never between religious systems but between persons (Ariarajah 2003: 60). Catholics may refer rather to ‘religion’ to indicate the social and institutional nature of the faith of most dialogue partners (De Jong 2003). This awareness of the institutional dimension of dialogue moderates the picture of just two partners engaged in dialogue. On the one hand, religious institutions may retard the pace of the exchange because they are not ready to accept the risks that an individual may take in dialogue. But on the other hand, institutions may give individual dialogue partners the room to modify and even to change their faith – until, at a certain moment, they may decide that such an experiment is no longer good and that the dialogue should be restricted to more official points of view (Lønning 2002: 238; Sundermeier 2003: 74). This tension between the freedom of believers as individuals and as representatives of an institution is perhaps characteristic of the Roman Catholic Church as a clearly institutionalized form of religion over against the World Council of Churches with its more individualistic orientation to personal faith in Christ as Savior. Apart from that, the Protestant churches may prefer to use the term ‘faith’ because of the famous critique by Karl Barth leveled at religion as “the realm of man’s attempts to justify and to sanctify himself before a capricious and arbitrary picture of God” (Barth 1956: 280). Barth’s verdict on religion as unbelief from the point of view of God’s revelation in Christ, in § 17.2 of his Church Dogmatics (Barth 1956: 297-325) had an unparalleled influence on the Protestant theology of the twentieth century. Through the Dutch missiologist Hendrik Kraemer and his book The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World in preparation of the Tambaram meeting of the International Missionary Conference (1937), similar ideas influenced the later World Council of Churches to a large extent (Pranger 1994; Samartha 1996; Ariarajah 2002: 312). There could be a third reason for the prevalence of the term ‘interfaith dialogue’ in the Anglo-Saxon world: the influence of the Canadian scholar in comparative religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith (19162000). In one of his influential publications, Smith argued that the term ‘religion’ is a rather specific Western concept that reifies an endemic human quality to some objective reality. Moreover, it imposes meanings on other religious traditions that are alien to them (Cobb 1999: 27). Consequently, many theologians and believers of the world’s traditions of faith now eschew this term (Smith 1963: 114).

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Instead of ‘religion’, we can better refer to ‘faith’ as a basic orientation of human beings, a trust in the universe that is expressed differently in the belief systems of humankind (Smith 1979: 12). According to W.C. Smith, this basic trust is the original meaning of the term ‘religion’ as well, so he returns to this word in his later writings, but this time in the singular (Smith 1981: 3-20). The word ‘faith’, however, matches best the stress on personal trust that is central to Smith’s own concept of religious traditions and to the many partners in forms of interfaith dialogue who follow in his footsteps. The Role Of Institutions and Spiritualities in Dialogue My suggestion would be that this approach to personal faith as the distinctive quality to be dealt with in interfaith dialogue is endemic to a Protestant approach that points to the personal dimension of dialogue. This is certainly a core value of the dialogue of religious or spiritual experiences, but in my opinion interreligious dialogue is a somewhat broader concept because it involves the communal or eventually ecclesial aspect of dialogue. Therefore, it may be better to speak about ‘interreligious’ rather than ‘interfaith’ dialogue, in order to indicate that every dialogue has a social dimension and works best in groups instead of in couples (Donders 2002: 127). Smith is right, however, in identifying the reifying nature of the concept ‘religion’ as it is applied in daily usage. In this sense, ‘religion’ is a problematic word for describing the form of dialogues in the future, since it is connected with a Western, objectifying modern worldview that divides humankind into neatly separated organizations to which one may belong or not. In a postmodern period, however, in which believing may not imply belonging to any religious tradition, the word ‘religion’ fails to describe the full religious reality. One could try to overcome this problem with the remark that “religions are bound to be phenomena that have fuzzy boundaries” (Forward 2001: 14), but the fact remains that people may identify themselves as ‘religious’ for many reasons (Waardenburg 2004: 32), while many young people do not wish to identify themselves as religious at all. They are “occasional believers” (Jespers 2003: 41) who adopt a utilitarian approach to the religious market, choosing religious forms that provide them with meaningful experiences and rituals that enable them to live authentically. This may even lead to a situation in which less institutionalized forms of religion will have a larger following than the traditional religious in-

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stitutions. Since the word ‘spirituality’ seems to cover these new possibilities of ‘believing without belonging’ better than ‘religion’ does, it might be better to speak about ‘interspiritual dialogue’ or ‘dialogues between spiritualities’ as a possible future for interreligious dialogue, at least in Western cultures. At this moment, however, I do not know if adherence to spiritual experiences and rituals provide enough hold for people to engage in dialogue; it might be that these phenomena are simply too ephemeral and superficial to provide that quality of religious identity that is required for a dialogue (Cragg 1985: 162). Therefore, I prefer to investigate the possibility of mutual interaction between religious traditions as a possible future form of interreligious dialogue. The idea of interaction between traditions is clearly more in keeping with the word ‘religion’ as an institutionalized reality, while considering a dialogue between spiritualities would be more congruent with ‘faith’ as a more personal option. Before doing so, however, I want to pay attention to a different possible future for interreligious dialogue that seemed attractive to some of the most prominent theologians of religion until recently: the idea of a universal religion. 5.2 Theological Universalist Approaches to the Future Of Religion I am obviously aware that every thought about the future of religion in general, and about the future of interreligious dialogue in particular is like looking into the crystal ball of a fortuneteller. The data that we can find are too divergent: on the one hand, the relevance and plausibility of religion is still declining, at least in northwestern Europe. On the other hand, religion is gaining interest in most parts of the world, predominantly those forms of religion that seem to give a strong sense of identity: evangelical movements and forms of fundamentalism (Kepel 1991). The phenomenon of globalization seems to involve a globalization of religion with a concomitant revival of local religions (Juergensmeyer 2003). Among theologians and scholars of religion, an analogous set of contrasting tendencies may be witnessed. While many theologians defend the peaceful nature of the core values in religion and hope that they may somehow contribute to a better and more peaceful world (Knitter 1995), many scholars of religion underscore the ambivalent nature of religions (Juergensmeyer 2000). Their observations show that religious identities are always formed in a process of interaction

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between different religious traditions in certain historical and geographical circumstances (Smart 1989; 2003: 128). In their opinion, the future of religion is characterized not by universality but by difference and multiplicity. People pick and choose from the multi-flavored menu of religious traditions, in this way creating their own heavenly hodgepodge, whether consciously or unconsciously (Berthrong 1999; Gira and Scheuer 2000; Cornille 2002). They might just as well, however, refrain from this syncretism of foods and choose only kosher or halal food, in order to preserve what they consider to be a pure, unadulterated tradition. This means that most adherents of religious traditions will increasingly develop a multiple religious identity that leads to forms of multiple religious belonging, unless they choose to isolate their religious identity from external influences. Both possible developments seem rather uninviting to most theologians who have always had the propensity to a universal perspective in which religious traditions could contribute to a global world peace. From the perspective of 2005, such an ideal may seem a “cheery optimism” (Juergensmeyer 2003: 12), yet one should not forget that these ideals were proposed by some of the greatest theologians (or scholars of religion with a clear theological impetus) who made no small contribution to the impact of interreligious dialogue in the last decades of the twentieth century. Again, I must make the specification that I am concentrating on developments in the Christian world, while analogous observations could be made regarding the Jewish and the Muslim traditions. Toward A Universal Theology and Ethic About twenty-five years ago theologians in the Western world began to develop some new approaches to the study of religion, as they tried to break through the barriers of restricted concepts of religion that could not look beyond the insider perspective of one, mainly Christian, faith tradition. Of course, their approach was not totally new: scholars from Asia had been developing such an approach previously and, in the West, theologians like Ernst Troeltsch, Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner, to name but a few, had done the same. Many of them developed their ideas about religious plurality in the context of the ecumenical movement that tried to extend its vision of a future unity to the well-being of humankind (Van Lin 2002). A multilateral dialogue among Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims and Christians in Colombo (Sri Lanka) in 1974, for

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instance, had “Towards World Community” as its title (Brown 1989: 3048). This event and its vision were clearly connected with the preparations for one of the themes in the fifth assembly of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi, 1975, and the title of the Guidelines for Dialogue that were developed in Chiang Mai in 1977: Dialogue in Community (Samartha 1977; Pranger 1994: 101-61; Samartha 1997: 90130). In these reflections, the World Council of Churches tried to come to a new self-understanding as a community of Christians in the service of the world community. This new vision, however, met with great resistance at the Nai-robi assembly because many Christians feared a new form of syncretism (Klootwijk 1992: 44; Pranger 1994: 136; Samartha 1997: 91). During the 1980s, however, theologians began to write about religious pluralism in a new fashion, encouraged by their experiences of interreligious dialogue. I want to pay attention to some of them, describing three somewhat older examples as well as a more recent approach, realizing that I cannot do justice to them for two reasons. I must limit myself to a short description of their visionary contributions to interreligious dialogue, but more importantly I will describe them as figures of the past whose dreams contrast starkly with the realities of interreligious encounters in the twenty-first century. But they remain the proverbial giants on whose shoulders the younger generation of theologians may stand to behold new configurations of interreligious dialogue. One of the most influential among them has already been mentioned in this chapter: Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who distinguished sharply between the constitutive human experience of faith, as an experience of deep trust in reality and belief as the holding of certain ideas. From this distinction Smith draws the conclusion that faith is a constant virtue in the history of humankind, while religious traditions express this differently in their belief systems (Smith 1979: 13). This distinction between faith as a universal trust and beliefs as particular expressions in the religious traditions of humankind reminds one of the distinction made by the famous British philosopher and theologian John Hick between the Real as a transcendent ultimate reality and the different human expressions of this transcendent reality (Hick 1989: 235). This distinction, based on Immanuel Kant’s distinction between the noumenon (Reality in itself) and the phenomenon (reality as our minds are able to grasp it) is at the basis of the pluralistic hypothesis

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in the Christian theology of religions. Others have criticized it sharply as a religious conviction that says that differences between religions do not matter in the end (Heim 1995; Fredericks 1999: 103-18). It enables Cantwell Smith, however, to distinguish between the plurality of human belief systems or symbolizations of God or the Real on the one hand and the transcendent nature of the Godhead or Reality itself on the other. Whereas belief systems separate religious traditions, the common faith as an unconditional trust unites humankind. Consequently, Smith anticipates the future of religion as a concrescence of these religious traditions towards a universal theology of religion (Smith 1981: 181; Whaling 1999). Another early vision of a universal religion of the future has been conjured up by Leonard Swidler in his function as Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University in Philadelphia, U.S.A. He is the editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies and has widened his ecumenism to include the triadic dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims (Swidler 1992). In 1984 he organized Toward a Universal Theology of Religion, one of the first modern conferences on interreligious dialogue. In his preparatory paper he defends the possibility of an “ecumenical Esperanto” that would lead the way to a universal theology of religion and ideology (Swidler 1987: 20-26). His optimism is typical of the atmosphere of interreligious dialogue in the eighties. Judging from the situation at the beginning of the twenty-first century, such optimism is as naive as the dreams of the Esperantists who thought that Esperanto would become the universal language of the future. The third theologian with a wide vision is Hans Küng from Switzerland who, during his appointment as professor of Ecumenical Theology in Tübingen, Germany, expanded – as did Swidler – his research to include interreligious dialogue. His Projekt Weltethos set the scene for the Declaration of a Global Ethic (Küng 1993), adopted by the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago (Parliament of the World’s Religions 1993). In its tone this declaration is neither optimistic nor naive, but the dream of a future transcendent foundation for the whole of humankind lingers on, this time in the form of a common ethic. Strikingly enough, during the same years Leonard Swidler developed a Universal Declaration of a Global Ethic of his own, which functions in the context of the International Scholars’ Annual Trialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims (Swidler 1998).

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Dialogue and the Universal Perspective of Human Rights In recent years the Dutch theologian Johannes A. van der Ven, who holds a chair in comparative empirical theology at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, has developed a universal perspective within a more explicitly academic setting (van der Ven 2002; 2004; van der Ven, Dreyer and Pieterse 2004). Discussing the possibility of theological approaches within a new department of religious studies, he proposes a research design to study the conditions of interreligious dialogue. This design consists of four elements that characterize interreligious dialogue as a form of religious communication: exchange of information; comparison of similarities and differences; exchange of perspectives, and moving to judgement by coordinating perspectives (Van der Ven 1993: 51; 2002: 251). In a recent article, Van der Ven notes that theologians tend to criticize the pluralist approach while scholars of religion often see pluralism as a positive development (Van der Ven 2004: 151). This leads him to argue that interreligious dialogue should be approached not only from the ‘insider’ perspective of a participant but also from the ‘helicopter’ perspective of an observer. From this point of view Van der Ven sketches four styles of interactions between religions, two of them particularistic and the others universalistic. Dialogue, as a style of interreligious communication, is characterized by a universalistic approach, as distinguished from exclusivism and inclusivism as forms of a militant particularistic approach (Van der Ven 2004: 157). Most theologians, Van der Ven argues, are not able to engage in a real shift of perspectives. They think that it is enough to study another religion from their own point of view, but this is mere inclusivism and not an exchange of perspectives; or they take seriously the ‘option for the other’ and think that they have to convert to the perspective of the other and not just to take this perspective (Van der Ven 2004: 172). In order to avoid such mistakes, one should make a distinction between (a) the exchange of two insider perspectives, and (b) the shift between these insider perspectives and an observer perspective. This is exactly the operation that is required for the final condition of interreligious dialogue: judgment by coordinating perspectives. Van der Ven uses Paul Ricoeur’s metaphor of the judge who passes a tentative judgment to explain the complicated process of this judgment. First, the judge has to take both partners seriously and put her/himself into both insider perspectives. Next, the judge has to consider the validity of the argumentation by both parties, weighing the circumstances and reasons

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from an outsider perspective. Finally, the judge passes judgement, coordinating all perspectives involved from the position of a ‘third party’ above the two parties (Van der Ven 2004: 174). It is from this position above the religious parties that Van der Ven wants to approach interreligious dialogue, measuring the religions by criteria of truth and justice in which human rights play an important role. In this way Van der Ven links up with the positions of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and John Hick in their wish to take religious plurality seriously. This is the best way to ensure the future of religion; after all, empirical research shows that young people in different contexts prefer the option of religious pluralism (Van der Ven, Dreyer and Pieterse 2004: 557). I must confess that Van der Ven’s critique of most theologians is on the mark: they cling to their Christian point of view without realizing that in doing so they do not contribute anything to interreligious dialogue but only to the self-understanding of their own tradition. In the next chapter I will show that this is how theologies of religions work most of the time. Nor am I sure that the method of comparative theology fares better in this respect; I share much of Van der Ven’s critique of Ward’s and Clooney’s approaches (Van der Ven 2005: 135). I do not feel comfortable, however, with the way in which Van der Ven pleads for an “attestatory judgment” (Ricoeur) in which both the perspectives of self and other and the perspectives of participant and observer are coordinated. He is right in assuming that all theologians have to be able to switch between an insider perspective and an outsider perspective in order to do justice to their task. But if the final judgment is to be made from an impartial though not neutral perspective above the religions concerned, it must be made according to the epistemological procedure in the human sciences, according to Paul Ricoeur (Ricoeur 1981; Van der Ven 2002: 258). Although Van der Ven is aware that the relation between the theological and the scholarly study of religion is more complicated than the difference between insider and outsider perspectives (Sundermeier 1999; Van der Ven 2002: 263), he uses metaphors (‘helicopter perspective’, ‘above the parties’) that suggest a universalist tendency not unlike those of Wilfred Cantwell Smith and John Hick. In his stress on human rights as the criterion of truth and justice, he comes nearer to the position of Hans Küng and Leonard Swidler, although he reproaches Küng for falling short of the required exchange of perspectives (Van der Ven 2002: 254). In Van der Ven’s description, coordination of perspectives

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through judgment is the third condition for interreligious dialogue, but the conditions may also be part of the communication in the dialogue itself. In this case, however, I think that judgment can only be the last word in a dialogue between experts as described in the previous chapter. When a dialogue extends itself to the levels of the dialogue of life, of action and of spiritual experience as well, forms of communication would include not only mutual exchange of information and mutual understanding through exchange of perspectives but also cooperation and mutual commitment, without, of course, neglecting the important function of critical judg-ment. Van der Ven gives a very precise account of his epistemological position as a theologian who wants to promote the study of interreligious dialogue within the larger context of a scholarly approach of interactions between religions. Although I fully agree with these objectives, I cannot share his proposal for a coordination of the perspectives concerned in the form of an impartial judgment ‘from above’. His grand design for an interaction between religions from the perspective of human rights is simply too universal in its approach and too broad in its scope. With an appeal to the prophetic tradition within the Abrahamic religions, I would rather prefer a more specific approach that starts from the experiences of those who cannot claim their human rights but pray to the God who hears their voices. Such a contextual approach is suspicious of claims of universal values or a common world ethic (Valkenberg 1999a). This particular theological option claims to be faithful to some of the basic ideas in the prophetic traditions, while not denying the usefulness of other options in certain situations. With reference to the future of interreligious dialogue, I would like to defend two options that differ sharply from those of Van der Ven. In the first place, I would suggest that many scholars of religion do not see pluralism as the most likely religious option for the future but rather multiple religious belonging. In the second place, I suggest that the task of a theologian (in contrast to the task of a scholar of religion) with regard to interreligious dialogue in the future will not be to judge religious parties from the quite complicated position of coordinating two pairs of perspectives but to judge them from a perspective that coordinates both insider positions of the parties concerned. I will discuss this last possibility under the heading of ‘syncretism’ in the fourth section of this chapter, and continue this discussion when dealing with comparative theology toward the end of the next chapter.

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But first I want to consider the possibility of multiple religious belonging as an important feature of religion in the future. 5.3 Phenomenological Approaches to Religion: Multiple Belonging The preceding paragraphs introduced a complex discussion on the relation between theology and the scholarly study of religion, especially with regard to their cooperation in a department of theology and religious studies. It would certainly be too simple to describe the relation between theology and the scholarly study of religion in such a way that theologians approach the object of their study from the insider perspective of the religious participant, while scholars of religion approach it from the outsider perspective of the observer. Theologians have to use the perspective of an outsider as well, for several reasons. In the first place, theirs is a second order language: not the direct language of faith but the indirect language of thinking about faith (cogitatio fidei): theology gives a normative reconstruction of this living faith. In the second place, theologians always consider different points of view within the religious tradition to which they belong, and therefore have to exchange perspectives between these points of view and pass judgment on them. In the third place, they will have to distance themselves from their own religious tradition by adopting the perspective of an outsider because most theologians now consider their method as a hermeneutical operation in which they explain the faith of believers in such a way that it may be understood by those who do not believe or believe in a different way. As I explained in the last chapter, this method of apologetics, defense of faith, or kalƗm in the Muslim tradition, is in certain aspects not so different from the exchange of perspectives that is, according to Johannes van der Ven, one of the conditions for interreligious dialogue. Scholars of religion have different views on the relation of their discipline to insider and outsider perspectives. There are religionist, positivist and empiricist positions that clearly differ greatly in their perspectives on religion (Wijsen 2003: 44). Most scholars of religion will argue that their profession requires a distance from religious traditions, so they will mainly operate with the perspective of an observer. In the tradition of phenomenological approaches to the study of religion, they will want to describe and interpret religious phenomena without passing judgments of value on them (Waardenburg 1978: 15). They are well aware, however, that it is quite impossible to give an

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adequate description of religious phenomena without being able to put themselves at least partly in the position of the believers. During the time that I was one of his students at Utrecht University, Jacques Waardenburg described the position of a student of religion as follows: …the student of religion will take in the first instance the attitude of an outside observer towards the religion he studies. In this he must be detached from its fate whether it rises or falls, externalizes or interiorizes itself, lives or dies. It is his task to analyze the data and ascertain what is happening to the people in a given society, as far as the role of a given religion in it is concerned, especially where the meaning of their existence is at stake. He must make his diagnosis; and if his loyalty should lie anywhere, it is with the people he gets to know and understand through his work, rather than with their particular religion, philosophy or ideology. It is only in the actual carrying out of his research that the student may realize that he has become partly an insider, too; although this may be merely a short period and may have many reasons .… The result is that, with regard to the data under study, a kind of ‘understanding capability’ comes into operation, which may even take the form of a sort of mental participation. At this stage, too, the student’s striving after objective truth can very well remain unimpaired and his rational capacities can be pushed to their limit, when he can turn back from being a ‘half-insider’ and resume the status of an ‘outsider’. In this kind of research, with a certain degree of involvement on the part of the student, though not at the expense of his faculties, he finds himself to be caught up in creative dialectical tension between his stance as ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’ with regard to the subject under investigation. For him the ‘outside’ is the point of departure. It may be of interest to note in this connection that a similar kind of dialectic exists for those who adhere to a particular religion; here, however, the ‘inside’ represents the point of departure. The student on the one hand, and the adherent on the other, both enjoy a margin of relative freedom which allows them to become conscious of a given situation both from the outside – as ‘analyst’ or ‘observer’ – and from the inside – as ‘participant’ or ‘adherent’. The general human possibility of moving from the ‘inside’ to the ‘outside’ of a given situation (with numerous variations) is realized by a student, so to say, in reverse. Instead of the usual sequence, he is able to move from being an outsider to being an insider (at least partially, and if he wants to), and this process may happen in different ways

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.… The curious effect, however, is that in this way the student may somehow arrive at an ‘inside’ position with regard to the people he studies. From a philosophical point of view, this could be formulated as follows: the student’s ex-istence (his ability to detach himself from his own being) and his co-existence with other human beings are conditions enabling him to understand what has meaning for other people. (Waardenburg 1978: 47-48).

It comes as no surprise that the self-interpretation of the scholarly study of religion in the Netherlands has largely been influenced by its mostly subordinate position in departments of Christian theology. In the Netherlands, at least, this has caused scholars of religion to insist more on the characteristic quality of their discipline in its singularity than on the possibilities for cooperation with theological disciplines (Waardenburg 1978: 33). In other places the development of a liberal theology facilitated cooperation between theologians and scholars of religion with a more religionist outlook (Wiegers 2002: 21). A contextual analysis shows the truth of the statement that considerations of method and theory cannot be separated from the institutional context in which they are developed (Wiegers 2002: 25: Platvoet 2002: 141). The debate on the best way to coordinate insider and outsider perspectives and to cooperate between theologians and scholars of religion is determined, therefore, by a development in the institutional setting from a dominant position of departments of theology to an ascendancy of departments of religious studies. The possibility of several theological inside perspectives from six different religions cooperating within a department of the sciences of religion as an umbrella organization, envisaged by Van der Ven might seem a utopian dream in the situation of the Netherlands in 2002. Part of it could, however, be realized in the near future (Van der Ven 2005). Van der Ven refers to the results of empirical reseach in a number of contexts, suggesting that most common people in the future would look favorably on religious pluralism (van der Ven 2004: 151; 2004a). But what form would such an endorsement of religious pluralism take? As far as I can see, the results of research by sociologists and scholars of religion point in the direction of multiple religious belonging as the possible future context of interreligious dialogue in the twenty-first century. The fact that some theologians may see the transformation of particular religious traditions through their encounter with other traditions as the primary way into the future (Cobb 2002:

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27) may have to do with their particular point of view as theologians who are often not able to look beyond the boundaries of their religious traditions. I will come back to their hesitations in the next section. In this section I will first give some examples of multiple religious belonging from different contexts, followed by descriptions from the point of view of scholars of religion. In the final part of this chapter I will return to the viewpoint of a comparative theology of religions. Multiple Religious Belonging: Some Examples One of the major advantages of being a lecturer at a university is that one can profit from the experiences of the students, especially in an intercultural context. My first thoughts on the phenomenon of multiple religious belonging were formed by the stories of two students in the class on ‘Contemporary Christologies’ in St. Augustine College of South Africa, Johannesburg. The first student told me how her children made different and sometimes contrary religious choices, which she as a Catholic woman of Jewish origin found difficult to follow. “One of the reasons,” she told me, “why I am interested in recent reflections on the person and the meaning of Christ is that my American son defends his fundamentalist picture of Jesus, while my daughter who is at home in Sufi circles, gives a totally different perspective on the same Jesus. Two of my children, on the contrary, do not want to speak about Jesus at all.” She had six children, all of them religiously different, including an atheist, an orthodox Jew and a strict Evangelical Christian. “They are my children and I have to make sense of what they have become. In a certain sense, all of their opinions grew out of me. This is the reason for my theological studies.” Another student told me that he was now living in the house of his best friend, a Hindu who went out of the country for a year. He was allowed to stay in the house, if he promised not to cook any meat in the kitchen and not to remove the house altar. He was glad to be able to live there but felt uneasy about the fact that his friend did not allow him to practice his own lifestyle as a Catholic. He felt at home with Hinduism, but he did not feel at home with the colorful collection of divine images next to his bed, and he was wondering if he could hang a crucifix on the opposite wall. In the same vein, he wondered if he could bring his own pots and pans to cook his own meals. In the case of these students, my answer to their questions could not remain at the level of the rules of proper interreligious communication. They feel that religious plurality does not just exist outside

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them but in their hearts and minds as well. Although they were quite steadfast in their Catholic faith, they noticed that elements of other faith traditions played a part in their religious identity as well, and they were not sure what to think about it. Their questions went farther than the sometimes superficial flirtations with hybrid identities, ethnic ambiguities or fashionable forms of religion that one comes across in the popular press.1 The problems of having to live with multiple religious belongings in one family are recognized by several religious groups, especially by Jewish communities in the United States of America (Friedland and Case 2001). In general however, religious authorities do not look favorably on mixed marriages and other forms of interfaith life, since they fear a loss of identity (Berthrong 1999: 7091; Speelman 2001). The phenomenon of belonging in some way to more than one religious tradition may be most visible among younger people in the West, but they are not the only ones with multiple religious identities. The obituaries on the occasion of the death of the Dutch queen mother Juliana give a moderate but interesting instance of this.2 Being a member of the Dutch royal house, she was one of the most prominent representatives of the Dutch Reformed Church, which had been a state religion until the middle of the nineteenth century. Her personal faith, however, was much broader and included reincarnation, elements of anthroposophy, sacred dance and Gnosticism. In her religious practices, she used to go to Baptist and Catholic churches, and she even caused some disturbance when she received the Eucharist at one of her last public appearances. She was actively interested in the role that religions could play in promoting world peace, and participated in Jewish and Sufi rituals. Of course, this is not enough to verify a fullfledged multiple religious belonging, but it is remarkable that a woman who is aware of her symbolic function for the Dutch Protestants does not hesitate to be responsive to so many faith traditions.

1

Just one example: the growing popularity of rituals and symbols pertaining to the ancient Jewish mystical kabbala among pop stars, the most famous of course being Madonna who changed her name to Esther (NRC Handelsblad, June 26, 2004). 2

NRC Handelsblad, March 27 and March 30, 2004.

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Asia as the Cradle of Multiple Religious Belonging Generally speaking, the phenomenon of belonging to more than one religious tradition is characteristic of Asian cultures. It comes as no surprise that historians of Chinese, Indian and Japanese religions recently renewed the interest in this concept in Western discourse (Berthrong 1999; Gira and Scheuer 2000; Cornille 2002). I want to introduce this concept with reference to the main character in the novel Life of Pi by the Canadian author Yann Martel, winner of the Man Booker Prize 2002. One of the interesting things about the Indian boy Pi (in full: Piscine Molitor Patel) is that he is a Christian and a Hindu and a Muslim at the same time. His house is a temple that contains not only a picture of Ganesha and a statue of Shiva Nataraja but also the Cross and the Virgin of Guadelupe as well. A prayer rug lies in its own space, next to a copy of the Qur’Ɨn (Martel 2001: 45-6). Being a Hindu by birth, he learned from a pandit, a priest and an imam about their religious doctrines. Pi describes a hilarious scene in which these teachers come across the family on a Sunday walk: The wise men seemed annoyed when they realized that all three of them were approaching the same people. Each must have assumed that the others were there for some business other than pastoral and had rudely chosen that moment to deal with it. Glances of displeasure were exchanged (Martel 2001: 65).

After a theological dispute in which the teachers all claim that Pi belongs to their specific tradition, the pandit addresses his father as follows: “Mr. Patel, Piscine’s piety is admirable. In these troubled times it’s good to see a boy so keen on God. We all agree on that.” The imam and the priest nodded. “But he can’t be a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim. It’s impossible. He must choose.” “I don’t think it’s a crime, but I suppose you’re right,” Father replied. The three murmured agreement and looked heavenward, as did Father, whence they felt the decision must come. Mother looked at me. A silence fell heavily on my shoulders. “Hmmm, Piscine?” Mother nudged me. “How do you feel about the question?” “Bupu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God,” I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face. My embarrassment was contagious. No one said anything. It happened that we were not far from the statue of Gandhi on the esplanade. Stick in hand, an impish smile on his lips, a twinkle in his eyes, the Mahatma walked. I fancy that he heard our conversation,

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but that he paid even greater attention to my heart. Father cleared his throat and said in a half-voice, “I suppose that’s what we’re all trying to do – love God”. I thought it very funny that he should say that, he who hadn’t stepped into a temple with a serious intent since I had had the faculty of memory. But it seemed to do the trick. You can’t reprimand a boy for wanting to love God. The three wise men pulled away with stiff, grudging smiles on their faces (Martel 2001: 69).

Just like interreligious dialogue, this multiple religious belonging is a phenomenon that is quite common in most parts of Asia. While it is rather foreign to Europe, it describes very well how many religious persons perceive their religious identity in a new fashion under the influence of the reverse globalization that once brought the world religions from Asia to the West. A few examples will serve to illustrate the Asian origin of this phenomenon and Western susceptibility to it. In a book on Japanese religion, Jacques Kamstra describes how the population statistics of Japan in 1984 show that the total number of adherents of the different religions almost doubles the Japanese population. 112 million Japanese called themselves Shintoists, 89 million called themselves Buddhists, and 16 million belonged to another religion, while there were only 120 million Japanese in that year (Kamstra 1988: 9). The explanation of this phenomenon can only be that it is quite normal in Japan to belong to different religions at the same time. It has to be added, though, that the different religions often have rather different functions (Van Bragt 2002); for instance, while Shinto rituals may be important in connection with the beginning of life, Buddhist rituals may be important in connection with the end of life. Meanwhile, many Japanese think that it is a good idea to use Christian rituals for their marriage. A similar story could be told about Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism in China, about Shamanism, Confucianism and Christianity in Korea, or about the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Jains, the Sufis, the Baha’is and the Ahmadis of India. But multiple religious belonging is not only germane to Asia. One can think of African Traditional Religions in connection with Islam or Christianity in Africa or about the connection between African religions and local forms of Christianity in Latin America (Greenfield and Droogers 2001). Think, for instance, of Umbanda and Candomblé in Brazil, about Santería in Cuba or of the process of Creolization in the Caribbean (Vernooij 2003).

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Even in the West, multiple religious belonging seems to prevail in the religious identity of many persons. This is partly because religious identity has become more and more an individual affair, a personal configuration of a number of basic insights and beliefs that is no longer guided by any religious authority. The decreasing plausibility of institutionalized forms of religion in the West causes the new phenomenon of ‘bricolage’ or participation without belonging (Vroom 2003). Local religious traditions play a part in this new phenomenon as well, not only in the history of Christianization of Europe (Wessels 1994) but also at present. It is of course quite easy to point to New Age spirituality with its sources in hermetic traditions and Celtic religion as a case in point (Hanegraaff 1996). At the institutional level politicians in European countries like to talk about the Judaeo-Christian-humanistic heritage of European culture. In doing so, they seem to indicate at least three different sources, to which one should add Islam as well. Whereas multiple religious belonging seems to be an innocent but quite superficial pastime in many present-day “occasional believers” (Jespers 2003: 41), it is a very serious matter among some of the religious professionals. Although it may be a bit strange to see Franciscan nuns in the act of drawing mandalas, which is of Tibetan Buddhist origin, one cannot seriously be in doubt about their religious dedication in doing so. The same holds true for Cistercian monks practising Zazen. The way in which they practice this Japanese Buddhist form of sitting meditation is for them not alien to their Christian faith but may be an integral part of it. This points to an interesting discrepancy: at the practical or spiritual level double religious belonging may be an established fact, while some problems remain at the theoretical level. Some religious professionals have lived their lives in a double or multiple religious belonging in a authentic manner, yet were not able to give a sufficient theoretical justification for it. Consider the case of Dom Henri Le Saux or Swami Abhishiktananda, whom Jacques Dupuis quotes as follows: “I cannot be at the same time Hindu and Christian, and (yet) I cannot either be simply Hindu or simply Christian” (Dupuis 2002a: 71). The Sri Lankan theologian Aloysius Pieris talks about Christianity and Buddhism as two complementary traditions that are mutually corrective in their stress on agapic love and gnostic wisdom (Pieris 1988a; 1996). Raimon Panikkar, who has a Catholic Spanish mother and a Hindu

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Indian father, even embraces three religious traditions in his saying: “I ‘left’ as a christian, I ‘found’ myself a hindu, and I ‘return’ a buddhist, without having ceased to be a christian” (Panikkar 1999: 42). Levels and Forms of Multiple Religious Belonging This bewildering variety of multiple religious belonging raises some questions. Before I turn to the question as to what systematic theologians may think about this phenomenon, I want to mention four important distinctions that have been made by scholars of religious studies. The first distinction is between different levels of multiple religious belonging. In most of the cases, “the encounter with other religions is framed by one’s primary religious identity” (Cornille 2002: 4). This means that the religious identity of such a person remains roughly the same, but it is enriched by elements from other religious traditions. This may be caused by the wish to deepen one’s religious experience, but it may sometimes be a matter of gaining worldly esteem as well, as the example of Japanese weddings in Christian (Western) style shows. In some cases however, people experience a radical change in their religious identity, in such a way that it leads to a consecutive multiple religious belonging, normally called ‘conversion’. Finally, in some rare cases, persons may belong to multiple religious traditions simultaneously in such a way that they are able to speak several religious languages at the same time. This is not Esperanto, though it may remind Christians of the polyglottism of Pentecost. Next, there is the distinction between conscious multiple religious belonging and unconscious multiple religious belonging. While most people adapt elements from different religious traditions unknowingly, those who are in charge of religious or secular institutions can sometimes adapt elements from other religious traditions knowingly and willingly. In such a case, syncretism is used as a strategy to contain conflict and promote tolerance (Van der Veer 1994: 197). The Din-iIlahi, created by the Mughal emperor Akbar in northern India in the sixteenth century could be an interesting illustration of this point (Forward 2001: 23-5). In modern forms of interreligious dialogue the persuasion that some elements in another religion are valuable and should be integrated into one’s own religion can be a consequence of involvement in such dialogues. While dialogue entails the notion of a deliberate discussion of interpretations given by various religious traditions, syncretism involves incorporating ideas from a religion that

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are incompatible with one’s basic insights (Vroom 1989: 27). In a philosophical or theological analysis, syncretism may lead to problems if it implies that one embrace two incompatible belief systems, such as reincarnation and the resurrection of the body. But this theoretical problem may not be recognized by ordinary faithful at all, who may adhere to many diverging viewpoints without caring for their coherence, yet hoping to profit from multiple spiritual resources. Many Christians who are aware of the Jewish roots of their own religion may use elements, symbols or rituals of Jewish origin in their Christian faith. While such believers can integrate elements of various religious traditions in a plural religious identity or a multiple religious belonging, those who represent the religious traditions themselves often dismiss such phenomena as ‘syncretism’. The same phenomena that can be called multiple religious belonging from the perspective of the believer, can be called syncretism from the point of view of the traditions involved (Kamstra 1970). Interreligious dialogue is only one of the forms by which religions interact with one another; more often, they are mingled and mixed in all sorts of syncretism to form a heavenly hodgepodge. Therefore, syncretism is an inevitable reality (Kamstra 1989: 198), and it will probably be one of the main forms of interaction between religions in the future (Cornille 2002: 4). I will return to the theme of syncretism later. A third distinction that is relevant in this instance is the distinction between primal religions that give meaning to the world as experienced by an indigenous group and world religions that give meaning to any individual on earth, transcending the horizon of a particular worldview. In this context, Aloysius Pieris (1988a; 1996) talks about cosmic and meta-cosmic religions, adding that one often sees conversions from a cosmic to a meta-cosmic religion but seldom from one meta-cosmic religion to another. In those cases where multiple religious belonging to meta-cosmic religions prevails, primal or indigenous religions often play an important background function. They can be seen as a kind of matrix that gives the different world religions a specific coloring while connecting them to each other. Finally, not every world religion is equally receptive to this multiple belonging. It seems to be quite accepted nowadays that some people call themselves Christians and follow a Hindu way of life at the same time. The same holds true for the combination of Christianity and Buddhist practices. Yet the Abrahamic religions in particular

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seem to resist this kind of hyphenating, precisely because they are genetically related (Lambert 1995; Doré 1999). In a certain sense every Christian has to have a partial Jewish identity in order to be able to understand her own tradition. In this sense, every Christian is a syncretist from the start. But from the Jewish perspective it is not possible to be a Jew and a Christian at the same time. Similarly, the most difficult thing a Christian can think of is to be a Christian and a Muslim at the same time. But, here again, the dialogue of spiritual experiences may well prevail over dogmatic problems formulated by theologians and religious authorities in the dialogue of experts. 5.4 The ‘Inter-’ of Interreligious Dialogue: Syncretism or Separation? How is the phenomenon of multiple religious belonging related to interreligious dialogue? On the one hand, multiple religious belonging seems to be a phenomenon of real life, while interreligious dialogue in many forms suggests an artificial separation from real life. On the other hand, the word ‘multiple’ in multiple religious belonging seems to suggest a juxtaposition of religious identities in one person, while the prefix ‘inter-’ in ‘interreligious dialogue’ suggests a mutual influence in view of a mutual enrichment among different persons. With respect to the future of interreligious dialogue, my hypothesis would be that multiple religious belonging indicates one of the possible effects of interreligious dialogue on persons who engage in this dialogue for some time. To use the words of Raimon Panikkar: what could be separated as different religious traditions in an interreligious dialogue, becomes a new creative unity in the personal spiritual reality of intrareligious dialogue. This, however, evokes the notion of syncretism in the popular sense of a bricolage or mixture of elements pertaining to different religious traditions into a new form of religion. Syncretism as a scholarly notion has its origin in the history of religions (Colpe 1987a; Droogers 1989: 9) and the anthropological study of religions (Stewart and Shaw 1994) but it has been used by theologians with very negative connotations. Because a one-sided idea of syncretism might jeopardize the main argument of this book, it is important to rescue this term from such myopic connotations by comparing the notion of syncretism as used by theologians and religious authorities to its use in the scholarly study of religion. Next, I want to connect the notion of syncretism with the role of judgment in interreligious dialogue, as proposed by Johannes van der Ven. If the task of

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theologians includes passing judgment on religious traditions, and if this task is part of the interreligious communication that takes place in dialogue, then the question is whether this judgment should be passed from the point of view of the traditions concerned (one or several insider perspectives) or from the point of view of an impartial ‘third party’ as well. In other words: does the ‘inter-’ of interreligious dialogue imply a ‘third room’ between or above the parties from which they can be judged or is such a form of judgment undesirable? Origin of the Word ‘Syncretism’ and its Use in the Study of Religions The word ‘syncretism’ was probably formed from an Ionian variant of syn (together) and kratos (‘mixed’), which would produce ‘mixing together’ as a quite literal meaning (Colpe 1987: 218). There is, however, a very interesting popular etymology which derived the meaning from syn and the inhabitants of the island Crete in the following story told by Plutarch: “Though they often quarreled with and warred against each other, they made up their differences and united when outside enemies attacked, and this it was which they called ‘syncretism’” (quoted in Stewart and Shaw 1994: 3). Plutarch uses this habit of the Cretans as an example of brotherly love. The interesting thing in the quotation, though, is that syncretism apparently had to do with political factors from outside, and this leads Droogers to say that “the definition of syncretism ought to include the element of contesting .… Syncretism is in the first place contested religious interpenetration” (Droogers 1989: 20). In general, it may be said that ‘syncretism’ is never used to describe religion but to evaluate it positively or negatively (Van der Veer 1994: 209). After Plutarch, many philosophers and theologians used the word with a positive connotation. Erasmus, for instance, saw the mixture of Christianity with influences from classical antiquity as a positive development in the history of Christianity and used the word to promote reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants immediately after the Reformation (Van der Veer 1994: 196). The word received a negative connotation in the same context when a movement towards reconciliation in the form of communicatio in sacris between several Protestant denominations was branded as ‘syncretism’ by opponents. Since that time the term has “typically been heavily used but polemically loaded within the comparative study of religions” (Stewart and Shaw 1994: 5) and within the theological arena as well.

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Although many scholars would argue that it might be better to avoid such a loaded term in the study of religions, Droogers argues that the term retains its usefulness in a period of increasing daily contacts between religions, provided that attention is paid to the contested nature of this concept (Droogers 1989: 8.21). Stewart and Shaw are even more outspoken in this respect: [E]mbracing a term which has acquired – in some quarters – pejorative meanings can lead to a more challenging critique of the assumptions on which those meanings are based than can its mere avoidance …. [T]he very contentiousness surrounding the concept of syncretism puts us on the track of this volume’s central concern: the politics of religious synthesis and the competition between discourses about syncretism. (Stewart and Shaw 1994: 2)

While pleas in favor of syncretism are generally influenced by a postmodern approach to religion that resists the modern approach of cultures as rational wholes (Tanner 1997), anti-syncretism is often based on a discourse in which ‘purity’ and ‘authenticity’ are central concepts, thus stressing the boundaries between religions (Stewart and Shaw 1994: 7). From the point of view of social anthropology, many forms of inculturation would be labeled as ‘syncretism’, but theologians tend to distinguish ‘authentic’ forms of inculturation from syncretism. Typically, “syncretists are always the others” (Droogers 1989: 16) and the most common form of discourse is that of accusation by the religious powers that be. There are cases of theologians who choose the word ‘syncretism’ quite consciously as a positive description of their propositions. Stewart and Shaw (1994: 17) point to the case of the Korean feminist theologian Chung Hyun Kyung who, being accused of syncretism by many theologians because of her address at the assembly of the World Council of Churches in Canberra, chose to incorporate syncretism into her Asian feminist theology (Chung 1990). In general, though, theologians tend to approach syncretism negatively, because they measure it against the norm of a ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ religious tradition. In the Netherlands this has led to a rather polemical argument between a scholar of religion who approached the subject from a clear theological perspective and another scholar of religion who wanted to distance himself from this perspective as much as possible. The famous Dutch missiologist Hendrik Kraemer, who influenced the meeting of the International Missionary Council in Tambaram with his book The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (Kraemer 1938), had ac-

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cepted a chair in the history and phenomenology of religion at Leiden University the previous year. He devoted his inaugural lecture to the topic of ‘the roots of syncretism’, arguing that, although syncretism is a phenomenon in all religions, it is rooted in monistic religions as opposed to prophetic religions (Droogers 1989: 9). He intended to highlight – under the influence of Karl Barth – the discontinuity between human religious aspirations and the revelation of God in Christ. This theological judgement determines the conception of syncretism as an illegitimate mingling of religious elements (Kraemer 1937). In the same vein Willem Visser ‘t Hooft (1963) drew a sharp distinction between an appeal to the name of Christ by whom God has saved us all and an appeal to a common religiousness of all humankind that leads to relativism. It is largely due to their influence that the notion of syncretism “came to function as a theological and apologetic notion in the debate about the Christian response to religious pluralism” in the World Council of Churches (Pranger 1994: 30). With the Pauline idea in mind that the cross of Christ would be a sign of contention for the world, they feared that the dialogue program of the World Council of Churches would lead to syncretism. When one reads the memoirs of those involved in the preparations of the contribution on dialogue for the WCC assembly in Nairobi, one can still feel how deeply embarrassed they were by the resistance of many European Christians to even listen to the voices of religious others (Samartha 1996: 104-10; Mulder 1989: 206). A Lutheran bishop from northern Europe who was among the opponents of syncretism, changed his view after some mature thinking. If I for my part have one specific sin to confess in this connection, I am one of the many who for several years – following the ‘syncretism’ debate invited by the moderator M.M. Thomas at the WCC Assembly in Nairobi – cherished the term ‘syncretism’ as a negative heuristic principle. Such a methodological move demands a good deal more care and reflection than conservative participants in the debate were for a long time prepared to admit. This is the only observable issue where my reflection on interreligious dialogue may have bluntly changed over the years, as will hopefully be proven by the present study” (Lønning 2002: 24-5).

Yet a negative theological approach to syncretism remained powerful in European theology for a considerable time.

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When Jacques Kamstra accepted a chair in the history and phenomenology of religions at the University of Amsterdam, he dedicated a major part of his inaugural lecture entitled “Syncretism: At the Boundaries Between Theology and Phenomenology of Religion” to criticizing Kraemer because of his theological bias (Kamstra 1970: 16-25). As Michael Pye observes, however, a theological approach determines Kamstra’s critique as well (Pye 1971), which led him to polemical remarks like: theologians prefer to talk about interreligious dialogue, while ordinary people practice syncretism (Kamstra 1993: 213). In this manner the negative theological connotation of the term ‘syncretism’ influences the approach of many scholars of religion as well. Yet, as Stewart and Shaw remind us, this need not be a disadvantage, since it makes us aware of the contentious nature of the term. Theologians, on the other hand, must confess that every religion, including Christianity, has some syncretistic traits, so that “there can never be a pure form of Christianity, nor has there ever been one” (Bernhardt 1994: 66). Theologians from different backgrounds such as Wolfhart Pannenberg, Andrew Walls and Lamin Sanneh point to the ability of the Christian message to be translated into many different cultures as one of the major reasons for its worldwide success (Sanneh 1989; Walls 1996). Along this line they would have no trouble in accepting a certain degree of syncretism. The problem is, however, that the overwhelming majority of theologians see it as their task to promote the self-understanding and the possibilities for the future of one particular religious tradition, usually Christianity. By adopting the norm of a pure origin or historical form of this tradition, they end up measuring actual forms of religion with the canons of a normative identity without acknowledging the fact that this is, in fact, an ‘invention of tradition’ (Eric Hobsbawm). Ambivalent Theological Attitudes to Syncretism This ambivalence is visible in the approach to syncretism of two theologians who are generally favorable to interreligious dialogue. The first is John B. Cobb Jr. from the southwestern part of the United States who is mainly in dialogue with Buddhists. His methodological approach can be described as a combination of firm attachment to the (Protestant) Christian tradition and a genuine openness to other traditions (Knitter in Cobb 1999: 2). Since this openness in dialogue is an openness for mutual transformation, the dialogue partners should ex-

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pect their views to be transformed in this process. Because of his fear of relativism, however, Cobb does not want to talk about any common ground or criteria for interreligious dialogue, since these could only be developed in dialogue itself (Cobb 1999: 181). Cobb uses the Nairobi debate on syncretism as a warning against the idea that mutual transformation would lead to a new religion, composed of elements of different religions (Cobb 1982: 20). Although his insistence on mutual transformation could certainly be called a form of syncretism by others (Vetter 1989: 129), he would himself be careful not to use this word, since this would appear to jeopardize the feasibility of the Christian faith that he wants to defend as a possible option for the future (Cobb 2002a). Consequently, he has his doubts about multiple religious identity as a model for the future as well, since he would obviously prefer to remain attached to the Christian tradition with its good and bad sides and therefore its possibilities for transformation to the better. I do not see multiple belonging as the primary way into the future. The primary way is the transformation of the particular religious traditions, at least in the Christian case, through their new encounter with other traditions. (Cobb 2002: 27)

Raimon Panikkar is another theologian who shows an ambivalent attitude to syncretism. In an article on “Syncretism and Eclecticism Related to the Growth of Human Consciousness,” he distinguishes between eclecticism as an a priori approach that consciously tries to bring together different religious traditions from a transcendent point of reference and syncretism as an a posteriori approach which is the fruit of the historical inevitability that religions interact with one another the moment they become aware of their mutual existence (Panikkar 1975: 52-55). While eclecticism has an academic ring to it, syncretism is geared to human experience and practice. One would expect Panikkar to use the word syncretism with a positive connotation in his own theological works, but in most cases he rejects it as too facile a solution. His methodological principles in interreligious dialogue come quite close to those of John Cobb, since they stress mutual transformation without presupposing an established common ground. Such a common ground would be, in terms of his 1975 contribution, a form of eclecticism. His method is summarized by David J. Krieger in seven steps:

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1. one begins with a faithful and critical understanding of one’s own tradition – an understanding won with historical-critical, philological and phenomenological methods; 2. in the same way, an understanding of another tradition is acquired; 3. this understanding becomes conviction. One experiences a genuine conversion; 4. an internal, intrareligious dialogue begins between the two convictions; one searches for a common language capable of expressing the truth of both religions; 5. the internal dialogue becomes an external, interreligious dialogue when one lays one’s new interpretation before representatives of the other tradition; 6. steps 1-5 are presupposed for all partners in dialogue; 7. new interpretations are tested for their ‘orthodoxy’ in both traditions. If they are found inadequate, one returns to the level of the intrareligious dialogue and begins again (Krieger 1996: 202.223).

While the dialogue partners must look for a common language, they should not try to distance themselves from their own tradition by adopting an outsider perspective. Panikkar emphatically denies that the phenomenological epochè, understood as the putting aside of one’s personal religious conviction or suspending judgement on the validity of religious convictions, has any place in the encounter between religions (Panikkar 1999: 75-81). At one place, however, Panikkar uses the term ‘syncretism’ with a positive connotation in relation to the idea of religions as growing systems of faith (Panikkar 1999: 130). The Task of Theologians and the Future of Religious Interactions Although some other theologians have argued for a more positive understanding of multiple religious belonging and syncretism in the last years (Schreiter 1997:63; Geffré 2002: 97), the question still remains whether systematic theologians are able to respond to this new phenomenon in a positive way. This word, with its pejorative connotation, has become a symbol for the divergence of opinions between scholars of religion and systematic theologians (Droogers 1989: 14), mainly because theologians conceived it to be a threat to the identity of Christian faith. Judging from my own experience in interreligious dialogue, I am inclined to say that such a theological stance may be fatal for the future of religion. I will therefore put forward the proposal that theologians would serve the future of their religious traditions well if they stop condemning the phenomenon of syncretism on the basis of insufficient knowledge. Instead, they will have to distinguish between phenomena and tendencies in

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religions that promote interaction and dialogue between religions, and phenomena and tendencies that hinder interaction and dialogue. Firstly, systematic theologians would fulfil their task of preserving the Christian tradition for the future negatively by restraining their fellow Christians from condemning forms of syncretism without sufficient knowledge of what they are talking about. They have to criticize documents where Christianity is set off against other religions in a manner that does not meet the standards of the scholarly study of religion. Some assertions from the document Dominus Iesus may be a case in point. In its seventh paragraph the document sets off Christianity from other religions by distinguishing between theological faith as a supernatural gift of God in Christianity and forms of belief in other religions as the sum of human experiences and thoughts in search of God (Congregation 2000: 12). This distinction sounds like the Barthian separation between faith and religion, but in fact it is the ‘fulfilment model’ of Jean Daniélou that is quoted here, with its clear distinction between the supernatural faith of Christians and the natural beliefs of others (Fredericks 2003: 232). Even very cautious Roman Catholic theologians such as Avery Dulles would say that with this distinction the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith falls behind the results of the Second Vatican Council (Fredericks 2003: 233). Another point on which Dominus Iesus is unduly restrictive is its theology of the Holy Spirit. While Pope John Paul II turned to other religions on the basis of a clear theology of the world’s religions in which the Spirit plays an important part, “Dominus Iesus has surprisingly little to say about the pope’s theology of the Holy Spirit” (Fredericks 2003: 236). I will come back to the role of pneumatology in the Christian theology of religions in the next chapter. With reference to the effect of this document, one needs only to think about the distinct position of the Jewish faith to realize that Dominus Iesus is unnecessarily restrictive in its fear of relativism (Fredericks 2003: 252). A careful hermeneutical reading of these assertions would show that they are in most cases meant not as descriptions of outsiders but rather as encouragements to insiders. But when they seem to be talking about people of other religions, theologians have to be critical (Evers 2001: 239; Pope and Hefling 2002). A similar fear of syncretism seems to be behind some of the reservations of the Dutch bishops with regard to interreligious liturgical

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celebrations. When the Dutch Council of Churches discussed a memorandum on interreligious and multireligious liturgical services (Raad van Kerken 2003), the representative of the Dutch Roman Catholic bishops wished to include a phrase in this memorandum, stating that “services that aim at transcending the differences between religions are undesirable.” This would be in line with what the Dutch bishops said about interreligious services in their memorandum on the future of Catholic education. As long as the Roman Catholic Chuch has not formulated any criteria concerning interreligious celebrations, one has to be very careful, lest one give the impression that religions could blend together, or that people could be inspired to a syncretistic experience of religion. (Nederlandse Bisschoppenconferentie 2002: 28)

The Council of Churches did not explicitly take over the suggestion by the Roman Catholic representative, but it did state: Services that aim at transcending the differences between religions (so-called interreligious services) suggest a mingling that does not do justice to the several traditions and groups. (Raad van Kerken 2003: 32)

It would be quite interesting to give an analysis of this last sentence. Its interpretation depends on the meaning of the expression ‘to do justice to the traditions’. If the separate identities of these traditions are the only criteria, every form of syncretism is forbidden. This would mean that we try to preserve these traditions unadulterated and uncontaminated, which would, however, render them sterile, and therefore would not contribute to the survival of these traditions for the future. I do understand the theological motives behind the cautiousness of the Dutch Council of Churches that promotes multireligious services but discourages interreligious services. I do not agree with it, though: most of these multireligious services merely juxtapose religious texts and religious symbols without really relating them, by presenting the religious traditions as closed unities without the openness for each other that is part of their reality as well (Valkenberg 2005). This brings me to my second point. I would like to argue that for the sake of the future of a religious tradition, identity as a criterion should be supplemented by openness to other traditions (Valkenberg 2003a: 269). This is not only a humanitarian demand, but it char-

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acterizes the Christian tradition as well, since, as Claude Geffré has shown, openness to new situations belongs to the singularity of this religion (Geffré 2002: 101). In systematic theological terms, this double criterion would be Trinitarian in nature, since it consists of a balance between a Christological and a pneumatological criterion. The Christological criterion could be connected with the words of Christ, “He who is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30), meaning that everything should be measured against Christ as a positive norm. By contrast, the pneumatological criterion could be connected with the words “For he who is not against us is on our side” (Mark 9:40), indicating that the Spirit is at work in every religious interaction, as long as it is not against God’s revelation in Christ. This balance between continuity and newness is characteristic of Christianity, as its relation to Judaism makes clear. On the one hand, Christianity preserves the tradition of the Jewish Scriptures; on the other, it reads these Scriptures starting from the experience of a new revelation in Christ, and therefore it talks about the New and the Old Testament. The continuity is preserved, but it is interpreted anew with an eye on the signs of the times. One may think here of the aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII, but it is already visible in a word which is typical of the New Testament: kairos, the special moment revealed by God (Panikkar 1979: 17). If this conclusion is correct, Christians do not do justice to their own tradition if they focus uniquely on preserving identity and condemn most forms of syncretism. It is the task of systematic theologians, therefore, to distinguish the impulse of the Spirit in the several forms of syncretism (Schreiter 1997: 81-3). As Raimon Panikkar and others have made clear, the Spirit ever blows in interreligious and intrareligious spiritual practices before the theologians are able to make sense of it (Panikkar 1999: 93). The Third Perspective in Interreligious Dialogue At the end of this section, I would like to return once again to the question of mediation in interreligious dialogue: What does the prefix ‘inter-’ indicate? Some of the theologians mentioned in this section seem to argue that there is no room for a ‘common ground’ or a ‘third space’ in this dialogue, since this would reduce the dialogue to a mere extrapolation of the foundations indicated as ‘common ground’. Others argue that such a ‘common ground’ is necessary for mutual understanding

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(Vroom 2003b: 228). It is quite clear that there has to be a certain level of commonality between the dialogue partners to make dialogue between them possible. One may think here of the function of language or of certain common philosophical principles. One of the hotly debated issues in intercultural theology is, however, whether the conditions for dialogue, such as a common language and a common frame of reference, can ever be culturally neutral. A differentiated answer to this question cannot be given here; it is important, though, to point to the fact that a language or a philosophical framework functions within a particular culture which is, generally speaking, the culture of the majority. As Panikkar makes clear in his interesting dialogue with Pinchas Lapide, intercultural problems of understanding may often complicate even further the difficult task of interreligious dialogue (Lapide and Panikkar 1994). Johannes van der Ven raises the question of the necessity of a third perspective from the outside in the process of interreligious dialogue itself, including a judgment of its results. He points to the fact that it is not enough to be able to change from the insider perspective of one’s own religion to an insider perspective of another religion. Rather, it will be necessary for the future of interreligious dialogue to operate first of all from the perspective of an observer (van der Ven 2004: 151-2; van der Ven, Dreyer and Pieterse 2004: 511). Many dialogue partners, as well as many theologians developing models for interreligious dialogue, would consider such an outsider perspective as a threat. They would fear that the religious tradition to which they are attached would be judged by criteria that are foreign to that tradition. More importantly, many dialogue partners from non-Western cultures would fear a new form of imperialism in which Western criteria would be presented as universal criteria. I have mentioned this problem in the second section of this chapter. Nevertheless, I think that a dialogue that would proceed and be measured only by the criteria of the religious traditions concerned, is likely to slip into forms of religious myopia. So, an encounter between only two religious traditions cannot yield the decisive criteria that are needed for the religions to develop responsibly in view of the world at large. For that reason I have argued in the third chapter of this book that the term ‘Abrahamic religions’ indicates the necessity of a third partner. The third partner may be a third religion, but it may also be the ‘third space’ provided by secular society. It is a well-known fact that the best conditions for religions to encounter in freedom obtain when no religion has a

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majority position. Similarly, Western nations with their democratic laws may provide a better space for Muslims to practice their religion than some of the states that pride themselves on being Islamic states (Ramadan 2004: 66). As I will argue in the next chapter, the Abrahamic traditions are open to such an outsider perspective because in their self-definitions they are aware of the fact that they have to live together with other religions and so must develop rules on how to live together in a decent way. Of couse, these rules are developed from an insider perspective, but they are open to critique from an outsider perspective as well. Edward Schillebeeckx and Hans Küng are among the Catholic theologians who have wrestled with the question of how to combine these insider and outsider perspectives. Hans Küng develops a set of criteria to judge how religions may work together in view of a coming world peace; they will form the basis for his later involvement with the Projekt Weltethos (Küng 1991). Küng distinguishes three criteria for determining truth in dialogue (Küng 1987: 274-306) that have been developed in his involvement in the dialogue between world religions (Küng 1984). In the first place, he indicates the general idea of human reality (das Humanum) as an ethical criterion for being able to say that a religion that promotes humanity and humaneness is a good religion, while a religion that endangers these values is a bad religion (Küng 1987: 293). In the second place, he mentions a general religious criterion, viz. the authentic or canonical form of a religion which generally equals its original form. In the third place, Küng applies a specifically Christian criterion: the person and the spirit of Christ. Küng comes to the conclusion that true humanity is presupposed for true religion, while true religion is a completion of true humanity (Küng 1987: 304). Küng’s position has been criticized because it is still a very Christian way of looking at other religions and at non-religious worldviews (Cobb 1999: 168-78). Perhaps Edward Schillebeeckx fares better with his radical reversal of the old maxim, extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, into ‘no salvation outside the world’ (Schillebeeckx 1990: 5). He mentions two dialectically related criteria that play an important part in his entire work: “God’s glory is the salvation of the living man” (Schillebeeckx 1980: 790) and “Man’s salvation is the living God” (Schillebeeckx 1980: 804). He refers often to a famous saying by Irenaeus: Gloria Dei vivens homo. With reference to the problem of the inter-

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pretation and transmission of the Christian faith, Schillebeeckx mentions the same dialectical criteria in a different form: any contemporary expression of faith must be capable of being justified with respect to both the expressions in the Christian tradition and the analysis and interpretation of the present situation (Schillebeeckx 1990: 40). This implies that the context of a given understanding of faith is not neutral but belongs to the expression of faith itself. The background of this idea is Schillebeeckx’s theology of creation in which creation and human freedom go hand in hand. “The love of God and the love of humankind are not calculable: they both form one and the same divine virtue, although in a degree of tension” (Schillebeeckx 1990: 92). Philip Kennedy (1993: 93) is right in pointing at major similarities (not excluding differences) with Thomas Aquinas at this point of Schillebeeckx’s theology: It remains to be underscored once more that, as improbable as it may seem, all of Schillebeeckx’s explanations of God as creator are collectively and effectively an extended extemporization on a single maxim of Thomas Aquinas, to wit, each and every created thing stands as a constitutive reference to God (Summa Theologiae, I, q.1 a.7, ad1).

Because our human freedom is a created freedom, God and human beings do not concur at the same level but are analogous kinds of agents operating at different levels (Burrell 1993: 69). In such a theology of creation the context itself becomes theologically relevant, as is the case in Schillebeeckx’s critical hermeneutics of proportional correlation between texts and contexts (Schillebeeckx 1990: 42). One of the consequences is that a notion such as ‘human rights’, which would be considered mainly an outsider criterion by Van der Ven (2004: 166), becomes an insider criterion for Schillebeeckx. More importantly, however, both models show a basic openness to employing human values as criteria for religious traditions (Häring 2002: 283). This openness may be formulated in different ways. The philosophical analysis in Michael Barnes’s book Theology and the Dialogue of Religions might help here to elucidate the relation between these different ways. Barnes describes interfaith dialogue as “negotiation of the ‘middle’,” by which he means a mediation of the context of otherness: “all Christians speak out of a dimension of irreducible otherness which they encounter at the very heart of their own identity, the ‘middle’ of a world shared with others” (Barnes 2002:

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22). The idea of ‘negotiating’ the middle points to the fact that no dialogue is without risk, since it means the meeting of a stranger (Barnes 2002: 65; Magonet 2003: 91). As we saw in the first chapter, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida underlined the fact that the encounter with a stranger is a situation of potential violence. In his book Barnes refers to Michel de Certeau and his notion of “heterology” to indicate the other who “haunts” my presence (Barnes 2002: 71). In such a concept, derived from the strong notion of otherness in Emmanuel Levinas, there can be no easy ‘common ground’ between the self and the other, but only the “irruption of alterity” into the territory of the self (Barnes 2002: 98). In theologies influenced by Levinas, the preservation of otherness is a major concern, and the existence of a ‘neutral’ common ground for conversation is excluded. However, as Barnes indicates so well, Paul Ricoeur provides a corrective reading of Levinas in which he seeks to avoid extreme ‘other-centeredness’ by making space for selfdifferentiation in idem-identity and ipse-identity (Barnes 2002: 101). Ricoeur’s major question to Levinas is: “What about ‘other others’”? It seems that Levinas’s concentration on the position of the other excludes any third party in dialogue, and this is, as we have seen, what is necessary to open the dialogue to other parties involved (Barnes 2002: 115). While Levinas would indicate that there can only be a ‘broken middle’ as the ‘inter-’ of interreligious dialogue, Ricoeur tells us how the self can respond to the demand of the other without being reduced to mere passivity (Barnes 2002: 134). Levinas, however, continues to remind us that a certain passivity in the face of the other “is to be recognised as intrinsic to the Christian vocation itself” (Barnes 2002: 129). In other words, Levinas’s approach could remind Christians why they may never forget the Jews as the ‘haunting’ other in their life, while Ricoeur’s approach may tell them that they should open this dialogue to allow the presence of Muslims as ‘other others’, while remaining bound to the ‘primary otherness’ of the Jews, as Barnes puts it. The prefex ‘inter-’ in interreligious dialogue requires that dialogue partners be aware of the characteristic mode of communication between their religions and of the context in which this communication takes place. As Schillebeeckx reminds us, this context is theologically significant for those who believe in God as creator of heaven and earth. One of the consequences of this is that every interreligious dia-

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logue must recognize a larger context. This context can be specified in three levels, each of which influence the ‘inter-’ of interreligious dialogue: x The intra-religious context. Every religious context consists of an intricate web of sources and interpretations of these sources. The intrareligious criterion for interpreting these sources is a specific one (Küng’s Christian criterion), i.e. the person of Christ in Christianity, and the Qur’Ɨn in Islam. This intrareligious criterion determines how the partners perceive themselves and others. x The inter-religious context. In every dialogue, partners grapple with establishing basic references for religious communication. They try to find criteria that may function as common ground between them, whether they be directly religious in nature (e.g. ‘God’) or indirectly (e.g. ‘truth’ or ‘humanity’). Other religions are relevant to these criteria as well, since they participate in the debate in their terms. x The extra-religious context. Many dialogues can only take place because the context favors or allows religious plurality. Dialogue partners must be aware of the fact that they are surrounded by secular society that offers them the possibility to live their faith together with those who want to participate in the aims of dialogue without being adherents to these religions themselves. At this level, the idea of ‘humanity’ as criterion, goal and content of dialogue may be fully employed (Häring 2002; Van der Ven 2004). 5.5 Practical Consequences I: Prayer and Fasting The final sections of this chapter return to the idea of multiple religious belonging as a phenomenon that will influence interreligious dialogue in the future. I want to give two examples of how multiple religious belonging is in fact taking place between Christians and Muslims and indicate what this may mean for the future of interreligious dialogue. The first example is connected with two ritual phenomena that are common to both religions: prayer and fasting. For Muslims the five daily prayers as well as fasting during the month of RamadƗn belong to the five central pillars of their faith. Christians often recognize that Muslims may maintain ritual practices that no longer play the same role in their religion. One of my students in Nijmegen, writing her

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M.A. thesis on fasting, discovered that Muslims often observe the fasting of RamadƗn even when they do not consider themselves religious, because they find the atmosphere in the breaking of the fast after sunset (iftƗr) socially attractive. She discovered that fasting in the Catholic tradition used to have this social character as well, until it became diverted to a form of social activism (doing good for the ‘Third World’) in the latter half of the twentieth century. In recent times both Christians and Muslims have become aware of the importance of the respective traditions concerning Lent and RamadƗn in interreligious dialogue. As we saw in the second chapter, as Muslims start inviting those with whom they have become friends through dialogue to participate in an iftƗr, they begin to reflect on the meaning of this practice as well (Bakhtiar 1995). In the Netherlands the national Council of Churches distributes a letter for Christians to take along when congratulating Muslims on the occasion of ǥƯd ul-fitr, the feast of the breaking of the fast. The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue publishes such an annual letter as well. In the Message for the End of RamadƗn, published on Nov. 17, 2003, the Council reported a growing practice of mutual invitations between Christians and Muslims: During this special month the communal meal, iftƗr, which breaks the fast at the end of the day, brings family members and friends together in an atmosphere of joy. Quite often people of other religions are invited to share in this moment of conviviality, and there is a growing custom of Christians organizing an iftƗr for their Muslim friends.3

A Muslim friend of mine in the Netherlands told me that Christians sometimes consider the possibility of a double belonging because they are impressed by the Muslim practice of prayer and fasting. Similarly, Pope John Paul II has remarked many times how he admires Muslim fidelity to prayer and fasting (Sherwin and Kasimow 1999: 58. 65). The several occasions on which Pope John Paul II has organized days of prayer with other religious believers may be seen as an indication of his faith in the Holy Spirit as a power working in the religions towards universal unity of humankind (Fredericks 2003: 237). In view of the world 3

“Message for the End of Ramadan ‘Id al-fitr 1424 A.H. / 2003 A.D.”. This message can be read on the Vatican website: www.vatican.va/roman_ curia/pontifical _ councils/interrelg/documents

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situation after September 11, 2001 Pope John Paul II even asked Christians to pray and to fast on December 14, 2001 in solidarity with Muslim practice during RamadƗn. Msgr. Michael Fitzgerald of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue concluded: “Que les chrétiens se joignent aux musulmans le 14 décembre dans un esprit de prière et de jeûne apparaît donc particulièrement indiqué”.4 For some Christians who followed this pontifical suggestion, the very practice of fasting together with Muslims and breaking the fast together with them, may lead to a sense of double belonging. In the celebrated expression of John Dunne, they “pass over” to experience the meaning of another religious tradition and “come back again with new insight into our own religion” (Dunne 1987: 1-2). What began as an interesting theoretical parallel that may shed some new light on our own religion, may continue as a practice in which we participate in another religion by preparing ourselves for an iftƗr by fasting that day from sunrise to sunset in the way Muslims would do. Finally, when we, as Christians, invite Muslims to participate in our religious services during Lent and to share their rituals and experiences with us, this is a clear act of wilful and conscious syncretism. But is it to be condemned as a form of syncretism that does not do justice to the Christian tradition? Quite the contrary, I would state. The Christian tradition contains this beautiful Easter story of the men of Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). They meet their Lord in the form of a stranger. For me as a systematic theologian, this story expresses my deepest motivation to participate in interreligious dialogue, even if this may imply double belonging or syncretism. It is the conviction that the religious other is, in the final analysis, the place where God is present to show us, Christians and Muslims alike, a way towards the future. 5.6 Practical Consequences 2: Emulating in Good Deeds While the first example of multiple religious belonging of Christians and Muslims in practice was related to ritual practices, the second example relates to practical consequences of a Qur’Ɨnic revelation regarding the relation between religious plurality and God. The fact that I use the word ‘revelation’ indicates that I consider at least one text from the Qur’Ɨn to 4

Mgr. Michael Fitzgerald, ‘Réflexion sur la journée de prière, de jeûne et d’aumône le 14 décembre 2001’, also at: www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ pontifical_ councils/interrelg/documents

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function as the Word of God in the sense that it relates religious plurality to the will of God in a way that I found more convincing than the reflections in Dominus Iesus on this subject matter. From the perspective of a historian of religions, I can explain why Muslims are able to make better sense of religious plurality than Christians; but as a theologian, it leaves me with an uncomfortable sense of double belonging, since it leads me to consider the Qur’Ɨn to be a revelation of God at one point at least. This raises the question whether it is possible, for a Christian theologian, to belong in a certain sense to the Muslim tradition, while remaining, in his or her primary identity, a Christian. I think it is, albeit only at the first, quite superficial level of double belonging (Cornille 2002: 4). But the consequences are enormous, since it implies that one accepts at least one text from the Qur’Ɨn for at least one moment as a revelation of God that enlightens one’s own tradition. Some ten years ago I was one of the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church in the Faith and Order department of the Dutch Council of Churches. Together with the department on Interreligious Encounter, we organized a symposion on ‘Living Together – Believing Together’ in December 1995. When we were asked to prepare a publication on ‘Christology and Dialogue’ a few years later, we decided to include reactions of Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in this publication (Valkenberg 1998). Two Muslims, Seyfullah Korz and Omaima Korz-Noor, contributed a short article in which they showed how the Qur’Ɨn says that God holds each of us, believers, responsible for our deeds. In this context they quoted from surat almƗǥida a verse from the Qur’Ɨn (Q. 5:48) that has stayed in my mind since then (Korz and Korz-Noor 1998). This verse is sometimes used by Muslims in their reflections on the relation between Muslims, Christians, and Jews (Journalists and Writers Foundation 2003: 6; Ayoub 2004: 319). Khaled Abou El Fadl, for instance, quotes it after having written: “In a rather remarkable set of passages that, again, have not been adequately theorized by Muslim theologians, the Qur’an recognizes the legitimate multiplicity of religious convictions and laws” (Abou El Fadl 2002: 17). Other instances will be mentioned in the next chapter. Some Christian theologians mention this text as a key to Muslim-Christian dialogue, for instance Reinhard Leuze (1994: 317), Karl-Josef Kuschel (1998: 321) and Jean-Claude Basset (2000: 285). The Turkish writer Cemal Uúak (2004: 15-6) refers to a Turkish

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translation of a book by Michel Lelong that quotes the text even in its title: Si Dieu l’avait voulu.5 Text and English Interpretations of Qur’Ɨn 5:48 In the following paragraphs I will render the text from Q 5:48 in Arabic phonetic script and in three English interpretations by Muslim authors. In the commentary that follows these versions of the text, I will point out the theological significance of this text for me as a Christian theologian. At this point I will not enter the world of Islamic exegesis of this text (tafsƯr), which would require many specialized skills (Borrmans 1999; Van Nispen tot Sevenaer 1996). Instead, I will limit myself to a Christian reading of this text in order to contribute to the future dialogue between Christians and Muslims. (a) Wa-’anzalna ilayka al-kitƗba bi’lhaqq Musaddiqan limƗ bayna yadayhi min al-kitƗbi Wa-muhayminan alayhi (b) Fa-ahkum baynahum bimƗ anzala LlƗhu Wa-lƗ tattabiǥ ahwƗ’ahum ǥamma jƗ’akum min al-haqqi (c) likullin jaǥalna minkum sjirǥatan wa-minhƗjan (d) walau shƗ’a Llahu la-jaǥalakum ummatan wƗhidatan (e)walƗkin liyablnjwakum fi-mƗ ƗtƗkum fa-stabiqnj al-khairƗt (f) ilƗ LlƗhu marjiǥukum jamƯǥan fa-yunabbi’ukum bimƗ kuntum fƯhi takhtalifnjn (Qur’Ɨn surat al mƗ’ida, 5:48) And We have sent down to you the Book [that is, the Koran] with truth, confirming what was before it of a Book, and as a guardian over it [that is, the Koran was revealed as confirmation of all previous Books, and as safeguarding of God’s Law]. Hence, judge between them by what God has sent down, and do not follow their whims deviating from what has come to you of the truth. For each We have appointed a Shirǥah [that is, a Divine Ordinance] and a patterened path. And had God willed, He would have made you one nation [that is, belonging to one religion]; but that He may test you 5

Unfortunately, I have not been able to consult this book (Tougui 1986) which was honored with the Prix Constant-Daguet by the Académie française. The title of the Turkish translation is: E÷er Allah isteseydi (Istanbul: Yeni Asya, 1988).

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by what He has conferred upon you, (He willed it that way). Therefore, strive in competition for good deeds. To God shall be your return altogether, then He shall apprise you of that on which you were at variance. (tr. Khatib 1984: 146) And We have revealed to you [Muhammad] the Book in truth, confirming the scriptures [that is, the Books preceding it] that preceded it and superceding it. Judge between them, then, according to what Allah has revealed, and do not follow their illusory desires, diverging from what came to you of the Truth. To each of you, We have laid down an ordinance and a clear path; and had Allah pleased, He would have made you one nation, but [He wanted] to test you concerning what He gave to you. Be, then, forward in good deeds. To Allah is the ultimate return of all of you, that He may instruct you regarding that on which you differed. (tr. Fakhry 2000: 115-6) We sent to you [Muhammad] the Scripture with the truth, confirming the Scriptures that came before it, and with final authority over them: so judge between them according to what God has sent down. Do not follow their whims, which deviate from the truth that has come to you. We have assigned a law and a path to each of you. If God had so willed, He would have made you one community, but He wanted to test you through that which He has given you, so race to do good: you will all return to God and He will make clear to you the matters you differed about. (tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 72)

A Christian Reading of Qur’Ɨn 5: 48 Although most authors usually only quote the second half of the verse, the first part is critical because it gives an indication of the context in which the latter half must be read. At first sight, this context does not seem favorable for interreligious dialogue: the verses 44-50 contain a view of the history of revelation to Jews, Christians and Muslims of which the Qur’Ɨn is particularly critical, even insisting that Muslims should not take Jews and Christians as “friends” or “allies” (Q. 5:51 Fakhry; Abdel Haleem). The context of these verses in Medina is one of mutual critique rather than cooperation: the Jewish tribes have received their Torah and do not recognize the new revelation given to Muhammad. The critique is based, though, on a partial recognition that God has indeed sent revelations to Jews and Christians and on the awareness of the eschatological nature of truth. While Jews, Christians and Muslims disagree on these revelations, God will in the end reveal the truth. In the meantime it is the task of the Prophet to warn and to tell the truth accord-

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ing to what is revealed to him. A plurality of religions is recognized as a historical, temporary fact, but it has a deep significance as well: the religions must emulate one another in doing well. This QurƗ’nic theme reminds the Christian reader of the way in which St. Paul describes the relation between the heathen (goyim) and the Jews in his letter to the Romans. (a) The first sentence begins by placing the Book of truth that has been sent down to Muhammad within a series of books containing guidance and light: the Torah and the Gospel (5:44-47). While the Torah is mentioned first as being sent to the prophets for the Jews, subsequent verses begin with mentioning Jesus who confirms what has been sent before. It is significant that the Gospel is mentioned after Jesus, recognizing the Christian creed in which Christ and not the Gospel is the Word of God in the same sense as the Qur’Ɨn is God’s Word for the Muslims. Verse 48 begins by reminding us that God sent the Qur’Ɨn not to abolish previous revelations but to confirm them. This does, however, imply that the latest revelation has a kind of authority to judge the previous revelations. This ‘supersessionist’ and ‘perfectionist’ mode of thinking reminds us, of course, of the Christian attitude towards the Jews during most of its history. Translators and commentators differ about the exact meaning of the word muhayminan. If its meaning is similar to that of the word musaddiq in the previous sentence (Paret 1980: 123), then it would mean ‘safeguarding’, as Khatib translates. But if there is a tension between confirmation and correction of the older revelations, then Fakhry’s translation, ‘superceding’, would be more adequate. A Christian reader will, however, prefer the confirming meaning, bearing in mind that this gives Muslims a certain authority over the previous revelations (Khoury 1995: 101). (b) The second sentence is in the hortatory mode, telling us that Muhammad and his followers may use the new revelation as a criterion to judge the others. The Qur’Ɨn as a new revelation functions as an external norm to judge the dissent of Jews and Christians but also as an internal norm to judge deviant opinions in the Muslim community at Medina (Khoury 1991: 168). This sentence seems to reflect the danger that some of the followers of Muhammad would be enticed into conforming to these previous revelations. (c) The third sentence tells us that each community has received its own law and path. As in Q. 2: 148 these words may be interpreted dif-

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ferently. They may refer to Jews, Christians and Muslims who have received their own halacha or to different groups of Muslims (Khoury 1991: 166). In both cases, a distinction is made between the one foundation of their faith, referring to the oneness of God, and the difference in religious practices (Khoury 1995: 101). This distinction between one faith and different beliefs could remind one of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who was, after all, an islamicist. For a Christian reader, this sentence could indicate that the Qur’Ɨn allows Jews and Christians to abide by their own laws, since they contain guidance and light from God. This was the practice in the millet system of the Ottoman empire. Such an interpretation may do justice to the tension between the previous sentence in which Muhammad was told to judge the differences, and the next sentences that indicates that God has willed the differences and He will judge in the end. (d) The second part of the verse begins with a theological reminder: if God had wanted, He could have made a human community without differences; so apparently, these differences are meant by God as a help for those who believe. Mankind was a single community, then God sent prophets to bring good news and warning, and with them He sent the Scripture with the Truth, to judge between people in their disagreements. It was only those to whom it was given who disagreed about it after clear signs had come to them, because of rivalry between them. So by His leave God guided the believers to the truth they had differed about: God guides whoever He will to a straight path. (Q. 2: 213, tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 24)

One may conclude from this that “God could have created a unified umma but declined that option so that people might be tested and find their own way as morally accountable beings” (Denny 2001: 377). As many Muslim and Christian authors have remarked, the Qur’Ɨn here offers a theological reason for the fact of religious pluralism, although this acceptance of religious pluralism has been suppressed in later Muslim tradition (Abou El Fadl et al. 2002: 35). However, one of the earliest Muslim exegetes, Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 767) explains: “If God had so willed, He would have made all of you [plural] – O community of Muslims and the People of the Book – one nation (community) upon the

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religion of Islam alone.”6 While some Christian theologians could add that such an interpretation of the Qur’Ɨn apparently endorses the idea that religious plurality is not only a matter of fact but that it makes theological sense as well, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would see a danger of relativism in such a statement (Congregation 2000: § 4). Theologians such as Edward Schillebeeckx, Claude Geffré or Jacques Dupuis who hold the idea that pluralism is in accordance with the will of God hardly endorse a form of relativism (Pope and Hefling 2002; Valkenberg 2002a: 156). Nor does the Qur’Ɨnic statement lead to a form of relativism, since it uses the differences between people as an inducement to think about their Creator. Surat al-hujurƗt contains an important parallel that is often used by Muslims – for instance, the Islam and Dialogue Foundation in the Netherlands – as a Qur’Ɨnic foundation for dialogue: People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into nations and tribes so that you should get to know each other. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most aware of Him: God is all knowing, all aware. (Q. 49: 13; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 339)

Apparently, the knowledge of differences among human beings may be a way to make people aware of God and honorable in His sight. The most important contribution of the Qur’Ɨn to the debate in the Christian theology of religions may, however, lie in the conclusions drawn from this part of the verse. (e) The differences between religious communities are meant as a test to induce them to do good in a sort of competition. Form VIII of the verb sabaqa, used here, means “to try to get ahead of one another, seek to outdo one another, compete, vie; to try to beat one another” (Wehr 1976: 395). The Qur’Ɨnic idea is that the religious groups would function as mirrors for one another. If we, as Christians, see that Muslims perform certain aspects of their faith better than we do, this may lead us to look again at the tradition that we have received from God in order to see if we have such resources of doing good as well. Examples of prayer and fasting mentioned in the previous subsection fall into this category of ‘religious emulation’ or ‘spiritual em6

Personal communication from Asma Afsaruddin, July 2005, with reference to Tafsir Muqatil b. Sulayman, ed. ‘Abd Allah Mahmud Shihata, Beirut 2002, vol. 1, p. 102.

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ulation’ (Borrmans 1990: 40). The Qur’Ɨn has a similar idea in surat al-baqara (2: 148): To each there is a direction towards which he turns. So, vie with one another for the good deeds. Wherever you may be, God shall bring you all together. Indeed, God is Omnipotent over everything (tr. Khatib 1984: 29).

This idea of emulating one another in good deeds gives a strong underpinning for the Qur’Ɨnic idea of individual responsibility: Say, ‘Should I seek a Lord other than God, the Lord of all things?’ Each soul is responsible for its own actions; no soul will bear the burden of another. You will all return to your Lord in the end, and He will tell you the truth about your differences (Q. 6:164; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 93).

In some contexts, it is clear that some Jews and Christians are meant here as well: There are some among the People of the Book who are upright, who recite God’s revelations during the night, who bow down in worship, who believe in God and the Last Day, who order what is right and forbid what is wrong, who are quick to do good deeds. These people are among the righteous and they will not be denied [the reward] for whatever good deeds they do: God knows exactly who is conscious of Him (Q. 3:113-5; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 42-3).

In their ethical tasks Muslims, Jews and Christians are equals, according to the Qur’Ɨn (Reinhart 2002: 73). (f) The last part of the verse reminds us that all people will return to face God’s judgment in which He will tell them about their differences. There is no relativism here because the truth will be revealed by God, but it is an eschatological truth to which human beings are on their way. For Muslims, the revelation of the Qur’Ɨn will be the path leading to the truth, but Christians may point out that Christ is for them not only the path to truth but Truth itself (John 14:6; Valkenberg 1997a). While they are on earth, Christians and Muslims may use the truth as it is revealed to them to enlighten each other on their way to God, not only in the dialogue of words but particularly in the dialogue of deeds. We have appointed acts of devotion for every community to observe, so do not let them argue with you [Prophet] about this matter. Call them to your Lord – you are on the right path – and if they

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argue with you, say, “God is well aware of what you are doing.” On the Day of Resurrection, God will judge between you regarding your differences. (Q. 22: 67-9; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 213)

In surat al-baqara the context makes clear that these differences are a reason for Muhammad to reproach Jews and Christians: The Jews say, “The Christians have no ground whatsoever to stand on,” and the Christians say, “The Jews have no ground whatsoever to stand on,” though they both read the Scripture, and those who have no knowledge say the same; God will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning their differences. (Q. 2: 113; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 13-4)

A Qur’Ɨnic – Pauline Model of Spiritual Emulation A scholar of religion who reads this verse from the Qur’Ɨn may well remark that this scripture had to have a theology of religions because Muhammad was confronted with existing forms of Judaism and Christianity in Mecca and Medina. When he became aware of the similarities and the differences between these established religious groups and his own message, he developed a theological view regarding the relations between these religions in which both the similarities and the differences could find a place in the concept of the ahl al-kitƗb, the ‘People of the Book’. A Christian theologian, though, will be surprised at the richness of the theological and ethical contents, and may be reminded of the way in which St. Paul tries to make sense of the position of the converts from the Gentiles (goyim) to Christianity and their relation to the Jews. In his letter to the Romans he tries to give a theological reason for this “big Jewish no” (Pinchas Lapide) and this Gentile ‘yes’ to Christ in talking to the ‘Gentile’ Romans as follows: So that you may not claim to be wiser than you are, brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this mystery: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written, “Out of Zion will come the Deliverer; he will banish ungodliness from Jacob.” “And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.” As regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that,

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by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. (Romans 11: 25-31)

For me, as a Christian theologian, the words of the Qur’Ɨn about religious plurality as an incitement to emulate one another in good deeds put the words of St. Paul concerning the ‘salvific jealousy’ between Gentiles and Jews in a new light. In both cases God apparently wills religious plurality to help us on our way to God by being mirrors to each other. When Christians see Muslims fasting and praying, they may be reminded of their own religious practices; when Jews see Gentiles receiving Christ, they may be reminded of their own covenant. In several publications Karl-Josef Kuschel has embraced this idea of ‘emulating in good deeds’ as possibly the best theological foundation for the dialogue between Abrahamic religions (Kuschel 1998: 317-22; 2004: 62). The Qur’Ɨn does not endorse a liberal form of pluralism that would imply that anyone could find God in their own way. It endorses pluralism as a divine pedagogy, so to say: God uses religious differences to make people think about the meaning of these differences and God sends different prophets and revelations to indicate ways along which people can return to God by doing good. This approach to interreligious dialogue would fit in well with John B. Cobb’s approach in which ‘mutual transformation’ is a pivotal notion. Like Cobb’s theology of interreligious dialogue, it tries to go beyond absolutism and relativism (Cobb 1999) and contains elements of several approaches in the theology of religions. It is akin to a pluralistic theology of religions in underscoring the eschatological nature of truth: only God is Truth, while human beings know this Truth only partially as they are on their way to God. In this respect the Qur’Ɨnic approach has much in common with the ‘pilgrim approach’ advocated by two of my Nijmegen colleagues in missiology, Arnulf Camps and Jan van Lin (van Lin 1988; Camps 1997). The notion of ‘competition’, however, introduces a more inclusivist and maybe even Evangelical note into this approach as well. Christians need not be unfamiliar with the Qur’Ɨnic appeal to the people of the Book to discuss matters of faith in the friendliest way, as explained in chapter four. They might even be more familiar with the notion of effort (ijtihƗd) and emulation (tasƗbuq) on the way to God. As Jesus said: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate; for many, I will tell you, will try to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13: 24). For Dutch Catholics, this ‘exclusivist’ idea of faith as competition will be difficult to take, but

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for most American churches, it is a matter of course. This seems to be the frame of reference in some Pauline writings as well: “Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it” (I Corinthians 9: 24) and “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (II Timothy 4: 7). In this manner, believers from different religions will offer a mutual challenge, emulating one another not in words but in good deeds to make progress on their way to God. It is not a competition of religious people who claim to possess truth but a competition of religious people who have received truth (John 14: 6) yet are on their way to the whole truth (John 16: 13). While relativism and even facile pluralism tends to set people at rest because religious differences do not matter much, this form of mutual emulation puts them in action since differences are meant by God as means to learn from one another. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would have nothing to be worried about in this form of de iure pluralism, since it is perfectly compatible with mission and proclamation, as long as both parties accept the possibility of mutual mission and proclamation. A Christian reflection on this text from the Qur’Ɨn would, however, not be complete without at least some indication about how to proceed with such a dialogue of ‘mutual emulation’ in practice. Again, Saint Paul may provide a clue here: To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some” (I Corinthians 9: 20-22).

Giulio Basetti-Sani uses this text as motto for his description of the internalization of Islam in the life and work of Louis Massignon (BasettiSani 1974: 104). Massignon offers a prime example of a Christian for whom Islam has functioned as a mirror to understand his own Catholic form of Christianity better and more critically. His approach to Islam might be a good example of the future of interreligious dialogue as well, in which forms of multiple religious belonging will play an important part. This approach may also be summarized in the words of John

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Dunne: passing over to the world of the other and subsequently coming back to the world of one’s own religion. With reference to Raimon Panikkar’s intrareligious dialogue (Panikkar 1999), Jacques Dupuis mentions this ‘spiritual technique’ as an indispensable condition for interreligious dialogue.7 I would rather stress that it is developed in dialogue and contributes to a better understanding of both other and self in this dialogue. Edmund Chia, the former executive secretary of the office of ecumenical and interreligious affairs of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, calls this a hermeneutical spiral, in which going out to discover the riches of other traditions and coming back to discover new riches in one’s own tradition are elements of a continuing process (Chia 2003: 261). In general, according to the FABC, the process starts with the dialogue of life and the dialogue of action, and deepens through the dialogue of discourse and the dialogue of spirituality in which both parties work together. Again, the life and works of Louis Massignon might be a good example of such a process in which the Qur’Ɨnic-Pauline model of spiritual emulation leads to a Muslim-Christian theology (Gaudeul 1984: 336). Arnulf Camps talks about a maieutic method that gives birth to a new form of theology (Camps 1983; 1997). In the case of Massignon, such a theology might be called ‘Muslim-Christian’ indeed, because his entire life was transformed by his encounter with the Qur’Ɨn while he remained a Christian. The word ‘remained’, however, is too static; in fact, he was converted to Christianity through his encounter with the Arabs and their Qur’Ɨn (Basetti-Sani 1974; Gude 1996). He was a Christian in a Muslim way. While the scholar of religion would say that one person belongs to two religions, the religious person would say that two religions belong, in a certain sense, to one person (Mazzocchi 2000). Personal experience has priority at the level of the dialogue of spirituality which is the deepest level of interreligious dialogue. This process of spiraling to and fro between traditions may be called an exchange of perspectives in interreligious dialogue or a comparative theology in the study of religious traditions. Its result is often a form of multiple religious belonging that leads to new forms of theology in which elements from different traditions merge into a new 7

Jacques Dupuis, “Renewal of Christianity through Interreligious Dialogue,” lecture presented at a symposium on Christianity in dialogue on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the death of St. Francis Xavier, Utrecht, the Netherlands, Dec. 3, 2003. This lecture may be found at www.luce.nl.

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synthesis or perhaps a new form of syncretism which may be part of the future of interreligious dialogue. It may often be a rather invisible part, since isolated identities in forms of fundamentalism or confused identities in the form of relativism and indifference are likely to attract more people than the difficult tasks of intrareligious dialogue and multiple religious belonging. In the long run, though, some of the persons who developed authentic and plausible forms of multiple religious belonging might be the ones to illuminate future believers. They could well be the prophets and saints of a new ‘axial age’.8 In chapters 7-8 of this book, I want to contribute to the future of interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims by presenting some exercises in Muslim-Christian theology. Before that, however, I want to show how historical forms of theologies of religious others by Jews, Christians and Muslims have been determined by their own selfimages. To quote Camps (or rather, Piet Schoonenberg to whom he refers) once again: their hetero-interpretations have been dependent on their auto-interpretations (Camps 1997). It might be time to replace these hetero-interpretations by koino-interpretations (Camps 1997a) that are formed by processes of mutual transformation. Comparative theology will be presented in the next chapter as a possible Christian contribution to this mutual transformation in dialogue with Islam.

8

See Karen Armstrong, “Faith after September 11th”; review and discussion in De Observant (Journal of the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands), 23 (2002) no. 10.

CHAPTER 6

Three Theologies of Religions And the Role of Comparative Theology Judaism, Christianity and Islam have each developed their own forms of a theology of religions in which they tried to give a place to other religions from the perspective of their self-identification. A critical analysis of these theologies shows that they try to make room for the otherness of other religions, yet their self-definition remains the guiding principle for their definition of the other. Evaluating a survey of the ways in which Christians, Muslims and Jews constructed the relation between their religion and others, Jacques Waardenburg concludes: I submitted that the religious communities always wanted to prescribe how relations with outsiders ought to be seen. The way in which other religions were constructed from the point of view of one’s own religion largely served this purpose. I concluded again that these constructions of relationships between religions are normative and do not correspond to historical and social reality (Waardenburg 2002: 58; 2004: 30).

While Waardenburg’s evaluation is based on his approach as a scholar of religion, I would add, from a theological point of view, that these theologies of religions could not overstep the limits of inclusivism since they have been developed within the limits of one theological tradition only. Although the scope of these theologies is interreligious, their mode is intrareligious: they have been developed within a religious tradition with an eye on its relationship with other religious traditions (Lønning 2002: 12). Therefore, they can only serve as a preparation for interreligious dialogue and not as a result of this dialogue. This chapter shows how the three religions have developed theories about their relations to other religions that developed into theologies of religions. After that, the concept of a ‘theology of religions’ is analyzed and connected with more recent approaches to religious plurality: ‘theology of religious pluralism’, ‘theology of interreligious

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dialogue’ and finally ‘comparative theology’. Since the last chapters of this book try to develop a comparative theology originating from interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims, it will be important to see how such a comparative theology is related to the traditional theologies of religions and to a theology of interreligious dialogue in particular. It is my contention that a comparative theology may contribute to a future theology of interreligious dialogue by broadening the classical model of a theology of religions. Such a comparative theology aims at participating in more than one religious tradition and in doing so overcomes the limits of classical inclusive theologies of religions that draw from one source only. But, on the other hand, this type of theology remains close to the particulars of the religious traditions, and thereby avoids the lazy pluralism of a model in which all sources are considered to be equal. The Qur’Ɨnic-Pauline idea of ‘spiritual emulation’ is the driving force behind this form of theology that conceives dialogue as a form of mutual challenge on our way to God. 6.1 Children of Noah: A Jewish Theology of Religions Jewish authors would probably not agree with the term ‘theology of religions’ as an indication of their view on the relation between Judaism and other religious traditions. First of all, many Jewish authors do not like to use the word ‘theology’ since for them it refers to a Christian approach in which rational thinking about creedal formulae looms large, while Jews like to think about their religion as foremost a practical matter of following halacha. What is central in Judaism is not religion or theology but ethics. [T]he very concepts of religion and theology as the academy understands them today are Christian concepts … resulting in a clear differentiation between the realms of church and state and between theology and philosophy. Judaism (and Islam), in contrast, have no such conceptual differentiation between the profane and the religious realms (Langer 2003: 257).

Secondly, there is no special relation between the Jewish religion and other religions, since being Jewish does not necessarily imply being religious. Jewish identity consists of several elements among which religion is only one element (Abram 1993). So Jews may approach interreligious issues more in terms of the relation between the particular covenant between God and the Jewish people and a possible universal

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covenant that holds for humankind in its entirety. Belonging to the first of the three Abrahamic religions, Jews hardly developed the idea of a special relationship between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As I showed in the third chapter, the idea of Abrahamic religions has been developed within the context of the dialogue between Christians and Muslims and therefore is more meaningful to relations between these religions than to Judaism. Therefore, Jews will use other categories that are more important in their self-identification as Jews for describing their relations with non-Jews. Such categories may be framed in general terms as ethical monotheism and in more specific terms as the Noahide laws. The specific term ‘Noahide laws’ is most interesting, since it shows that the self-image of Jews as people who received a special law on Mount Sinai determines the image of others who received a more general kind of law. “[T]he concept of Noahide laws operates according to the most fundamental theological category of rabbinic Judaism and applies this modus operandi to the rest of the world” (Langer 2003: 267). Therefore, some major elements of a Jewish theory about religious others may be found by investigating this concept of Noahide laws. 6.1.1 Classical Sources In his study on the image of the non-Jew in Judaism, David Novak shows that the Noahide laws – more precisely the ‘seven commandments of the sons of Noah’ – give the framework for about every Jewish treatment of the image of the non-Jew (Novak 1983: vii). Historically speaking, this concept enabled Jews to think about the conditions in which Judaism could emerge as a separate identity. As a systematic concept, the idea of the Noahide laws parallels the philosophical idea of natural law giving the basic ideas of which the Jewish laws would be an elaboration (Novak 1983: 412). Interestingly enough, we cannot find a direct basis for these Noahide laws in the Torah. In Genesis 9 a covenant between God and Noah is mentioned, but the only commandment referred to in this context is the command not to eat flesh with its life, that is: its blood (Genesis 9: 4). The Talmud The Tosefta, a work from the second century C.E., is the first to give an explicit listing of the Noahide laws as follows:

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Seven commandments were the sons of Noah commanded: concerning adjudication, and concerning idolatry, and concerning blasphemy, and concerning sexual immorality, and concerning bloodshed, and concerning robbery, and concerning a limb torn from a living animal (Novak 1983: 3-4).

Subsequently, in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 56-59, we find an extended discussion in which the same commandments are mentioned as commandments for non-Jews. The context of this Talmudic discussion, however, suggests a situation in which non-Jews are judged by the Sanhedrin, referring to a situation in which a resident alien (ger toshab) would live among the Jews and fall under their jurisdiction. According to Novak’s hypothesis, the juridical construction of strangers as resident aliens preceded the concept of Noahide law (Novak 1983: 15). As we saw in the first chapter, the term ger did not apply to utter strangers, but to strangers who were in a certain sense familiar because they lived among the speakers. With respect to the Jewish religion, they could either have the position of a ger tzedeq, which means that they were proselytes, or the position of a ger toshab, which means that they followed their own religious customs. Discussing the rule in the Torah (Leviticus 24: 15) that “anyone who curses God shall bear the sin” the Mishnah concludes that ‘anyone’ apparently includes non-Jews (Sanhedrin 56a). With regard to the form of punishment to be applied to non-Jews for blaspheming the name of the Lord, the gemara differentiates between a native and a stranger, on the one hand, and a non-Jew, on the other. The Noahide laws are mentioned in the next baraita as follows: “Non-Jews (lit., ‘the descendants of Noah’) were commanded about seven commandments: Laws, cursing God, idol worship, incest and adultery, and bloodshed, and robbery, and a limb from a living animal” (Talmud 1998: 95). Having mentioned some other commandments that are supposed to bind non-Jews as well, the rabbis question the provenance of these laws, since the seven commandments cannot be found in the Torah. Rabbi Yohanan states that the commandments have been derived from the commandment to Adam: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat” (Genesis 2: 16). In the subsequent discussion of the Talmud, the sequence of the words in this verse from Torah is connected with the sequence of commandments to the sons of Noah as follows. The first commandment to establish a system of laws is related to the

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word ‘commanded’ and to Abraham through the words, ”For I know him that he will command his children” (Genesis 18: 19). The words ‘Lord’ and ‘God’ are related to the commandments concerning cursing God and idol worship that are connected with Leviticus 16:24 (“who blasphemes the name of the Lord”) and Exodus 20:3 (“You shall have no other gods besides me”) respectively. The prohibition against bloodshed is connected to the word ‘man’ and found in Genesis 9:6 “whoso sheds man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed,” while the prohibition against incest and adultery is connected to the word ‘saying’ which is reflected in Jeremiah 3:1 “It was said, If a man puts away his wife and she goes from him, and become another man’s.” Finally, the words ‘of every tree of the garden’ imply the prohibition against robbery, while the words ‘you may freely eat’ imply the prohibition against eating a living animal. The Talmud goes on discussing the words of Rabbi Yitzhak who gives a different interpretation by connecting ‘commands’ with idol worship and ‘God’ with laws (Talmud 1998: 97), but the most important point in the whole discussion is the awareness that the formulation of the Noahide laws can be found in Scripture. The differences of interpretation as to the number, formulation and provenance of these laws suggests, however, that this tradition does not derive from the biblical period. David Novak suggests that the concept of the Noahide laws has been a later development of the laws concerning the ger toshab or resident alien (Novak 1983: 15). The concept of resident alien implies that strangers can be held accountable for keeping a certain number of commandments before a Jewish court. Although the context of the discussion in Talmud Sanhedrin suggests such a situation, this can only have been reality in the pre-exilic period of Jewish history. In the Hellenistic period, however, a distinction must be made between those who practiced some of the Jewish laws in their process of becoming Jews and the God-fearers (sebomenoi) who observed some of the Jewish customs without wanting to convert to Judaism (Novak 1983: 22). While some scholars see these concepts of ger toshab and sebomenoi as the roots of the Noahide laws, Novak argues that the Noahide laws originated in a situation in which such intermediate categories between Jews and Gentiles were no longer possible, as the concept draws a clear distinction between God’s full covenant with the Jews on Mount Sinai and God’s minimal covenant with the non-Jews. Novak suggests that the second century C.E. may be a historical

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context in which such a clear-cut distinction between Jews and nonJews could have been developed (Novak 1983: 29). At that time it was, however, very much a theoretical construction and not a set of laws that had any practical significance. Therefore, rabbinic authorities used the concept to define a rational and universal ethical basis for humanity in its entirety. Moses Maimonides The same approach can be found in Moses Maimonides’s philosophical reflections on the Noahide laws. In his Mishneh Torah he indicates three sources for these laws, viz. Mosaic tradition, human rationality and the revelation of God in Scripture. While acceptance of Noahide laws by human beings other than Jews solely because of the political authority of Jews forms the weakest basis of these laws, accepting them on the basis of revelation forms the strongest case. However, it is also possible that human beings discover the Noahide laws on the basis of natural reason. Although the Noahide laws have a divine and not a human origin, they may be discovered by reason alone, although it is better to accept them on the basis of revelation. In Novak’s interpretation, the three ways to accept the Noahide law are typical of three groups of persons: resident strangers accept the laws on the basis of the political authority of the Jews, the saints among the Gentiles accept them on the basis of revelation and the wise men among the Gentiles accept them on the basis of reason (Novak 1983: 288-89). Each of these groups may achieve the bliss of the world-tocome by accepting the Noahide laws in their fashion. The third group consists of those Gentiles who, through prudential reasoning, come to embrace the Noahide laws; their method is morally adequate but theologically inadequate (Novak 1983: 290). In his explanation of the rational nature of the Noahide laws, Maimonides concedes that only the prohibitions of blasphemy and idolatry are immediately intelligible, while the other commandments have to be explained as pertaining to the improvement of the body or the soul. The second group relates to the Abrahamic religions in particular, since they accept the revelation to Moses and can therefore accept the Noahide laws on a religious basis. So, according to Maimonides, Christians, Muslims and Gentiles are able to live according to the Noachide laws and thus to reach the world-to-come but for different reasons. While Christians and Muslims are religiously superior to other Gentiles because they

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accept Torah, the nations of the world may have a portion of the world-to-come as well because of their moral virtue and intellectual excellence (Novak 1983: 303). 6.1.2 Three Contemporary Interpretations Despite Maimonides’s endeavor to underscore the rational nature of the Noahide laws, the concept is in itself too much indebted to the self-definition of Judaism in halakhic terms to be accepted by most modern Jewish scholars as a basis for interreligious dialogue with Christians and Muslims. Historically speaking, this notion has served to “overcome the halakhic prohibitions against interacting with idolaters by understanding their neighbors to be operating within categories permitted to Noahides” (Langer 2003: 268). But the notion seems to play hardly any role in modern Jewish approaches to dialogue with others. Jonathan Magonet, principal of Leo Baeck College in London and one of the most astute proponents of interfaith dialogue with Christians and Muslims, mentions the notion as “a possible starting point and … a Jewish contribution to the debate” (Magonet 2003: 78) but prefers to speak about other forms of universalism that are less halakhic in nature. He refers, for instance, to the notion that God made every human being in God’s image (Genesis 5:1) or to the Ten Commandments that have exercised great influence on both Judaism and Christianity. As Magonet admits, their influence on Islam is rather indirect and therefore the commandments seem to be less suited to dialogue with Islam. British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks mentions the concept of the Noahide laws as well. According to his interpretation, the dual covenant – the covenant with humanity after the flood and the covenant with one people on Mount Sinai – is important to balance concern with the universal and respect for the particular (Sacks 2002: viii). Despite his outspoken commitment to religious particulars, however, Sacks does not go into the particulars of the Noahide laws when considering the distinction between universal and particular demands made by God. As Jews we believe that God has made a covenant with a singular people, but that does not exclude the possibility of other peoples, cultures and faiths finding their own relationship with God within the shared frame of the Noahide laws (Sacks 2002: 55).

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Finally, Rabbi Irving Greenberg places the idea of the Noahide covenant in the perspective of tikkun olam (repairing the world) in which God enters into covenant with people in order to engage humanity in its own liberation (Greenberg 2004: 55). God’s covenant with the children of Noah is the first in a series of covenants in which divine pedagogy leads humanity to partnership in the process of repairing the world. The Noahide covenant marks the difference between the ideal world of Paradise, in which humans are not supposed to eat meat (Genesis 1: 27-30), and a real world, in which humans eat meat but are prohibited to consume blood (Genesis 9: 3-6) out of respect for the life inherent in it. According to Greenberg, the Noahide covenant is not restricted to the seven laws mentioned in the Talmud; it is even wider than the Maimonidean framework by which Gentiles may come to inherit the world to come. It is “no less than the master paradigm of the structured love relationship that links the Divine to the human and humans to the Creator’s cosmic plan” (Greenberg 2004: 56). In its universality the Noahide covenant facilitates human growth to responsible beings in freedom and equality, in order to repair the world together with God. It is the first of a series of divine commitments to help human beings in their fulfillment of this task. In contrast to the particular covenants that were to come after it, however, the Noahide covenant does not indicate a particular way of life rooted in the culture, language and heritage of the covenanted group. Conclusion The preceding interpretations of the Noahide laws by contemporary Jewish leaders show that they use this concept to universalize some of the basic notions in the self-image of Judaism as a religion. They apply Jewish concepts such as berit (covenant), mitzvot (laws), and halacha (way of life according to the Law) analogously to non-Jewish people. Some of them conceive the relation between the Law at Sinai and the Noahide laws as a relation between particulars and universality in such a way that the universal is seen as the basis rather than the fulfillment of the particular. Others, for instance Maimonides, use the model of the Noahide laws to differentiate between Abrahamic religions whose adherents embrace these laws on the basis of religious motivations and others who come to them on the basis of natural reason. In both cases, though, the model of the Noahide laws is used to sketch universal perspectives that seem to be in tension with the pre-

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ference for particulars as point of departure for interreligious dialogue that is – in my opinion – one of the basic contributions of Judaim to this dialogue. This may be one of the reasons for the fact that Jewish theories about religious others are relatively underdeveloped. 6.2 Word and Spirit of God: A Christian Theology of Religions The Christian tradition has developed such a profusion of theological reflection about other religions that theology of religions has become a field of its own in modern times. In his Introducing Theologies of Religions Paul F. Knitter gives a brilliant survey of the models in this field, the problems they try to solve, and the questions that they leave unanswered (Knitter 2002). Of course, these models are rooted in options one may find in the sources of the Christian tradition. Classical Sources The New Testament (like the Hebrew Bible or the Qur’Ɨn, for that matter) offers no uniform model for describing the relation between Christianity and other religions. Should the first Christians ever have discussed this topic, they certainly did not develop anything like a theology of religions. Therefore, the Biblical references to other religions are always implicit and liable to divergent interpretations. Therefore, the modern horizon of interpretation largely determines what one sees as the ‘biblical view of other religions’. Consequently, the new awareness of religious pluralism causes a more generous interpretation of the biblical data (Dupuis 2002: 18). I think that Gavin D’Costa is right in his remark that there is no basic biblical position on other religions but a basic tension between the confession that Jesus Christ has revealed God in a unique manner and the consideration that God wants salvation for humankind as a whole. Every Christian theology of religions has to recognize this basic tension between uniqueness and universality (D’Costa 1990; 1992). While large parts of the Christian tradition have unilaterally underscored the uniqueness of Christ and of the church, most modern mainline interpretations try to do justice to the universality of God’s will to save humankind as well. Therefore, the basic notion extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (‘No salvation outside the Church’) that has dominated much of the history of the Roman Catholic tradition is now no longer adequate (Sullivan 1992). In recent theology it has been replaced by a model that is Trinitarian in nature, proceeding from the dual mission

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of Word and Spirit to the world. This model has become prevalent in modern Christian theologies of religion – at least in its Roman Catholic variants – yet it is based on the Patristic model of the Logos spermatikos, the idea that the Word of God sowed its seeds in various religions and cultures of humankind (Dupuis 1997: 53-83). Such a Trinitarian model is based on the wish to heed Christian identity through an openness to other religions that ensues from the new awareness of religious plurality. Since it relates this identity not directly to Christ or the church but indirectly to the divine missions of Word and Spirit, this Trinitarian model establishes a paradigm shift in the Christian theology of religions (Valkenberg 2003: 169-74). Because of its paramount importance in contemporary debates, I will limit my survey of the Christian theology of religions in this chapter to this Trinitarian model (Valkenberg 2000b; 2002a; 2003a). First, I will show the paradigm shift from a Christocentric to a Trinitarian approach in the Catholic theology of religions in the works of its most famous proponent, the Belgian theologian Jacques Dupuis. Next I will show how Gavin D’Costa gives a somewhat different elaboration of such a Trinitarian approach. I will end by looking at the Trinitarian approach by an author with a Protestant background: S. Mark Heim. In a final paragraph I will argue that a pneumatological approach in the Christian theology of religions could radicalize further the impetus to openness by the Trinitarian approach, yet the question remains as to whether such an approach really would be significant for interreligious dialogue. 6.2.1 Jacques Dupuis Before his death in December, 2004, Jacques Dupuis has published a number of books that rank among the most authoritative in the Roman Catholic theology of religions. Having lived in India between 1948 and 1984, he published a book on the place of Christ in the dialogue with the world’s religions a few years later (Dupuis 1991). This book combines some of the characteristics of traditional European theology in its Christocentric approach with Asian theology in dealing with Hindu culture and theology. Dupuis formulates his basic question as follows: Is it possible to hold on to the uniqueness and the universality of Jesus Christ in the presence of religious pluralism? (Dupuis 1991: 192). While answering in the affirmative, Dupuis surely knows about the exegetical and the philosophical problems connected with this

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Christocentric position. According to many exegetes, this Christocentrism is a later development in the New Testament that is ad odds with the Regnocentrism of Christ. According to many philosophers and theologians, it leads to an exclusion of other religions as ways to salvation, and thus endorses a certain kind of Christian arrogance that has accompanied the ‘white man’s burden’ of colonial powers for ages. Dupuis, however, underscores the continuity between the connection made by Christ between the Reign of God and his own person and the explicit Christologies of the Christian tradition. Yet such Christocentrism must be distinguished from an Ecclesiocentrism that puts the church on a par with Christ and therefore the old adage, extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, must be replaced by a new one: all salvation is through Christ (Dupuis 1991: 97). This implies that Dupuis tries to combine a normative Christology with some elements of theocentrism in his theology of religions. While he rejects the more radical pluralist model that wants to build a theology of religions around the notion of the Reign of God instead of the person of Christ, he adopts some of its basic ideas. Dupuis concedes that the eschatological reality of the Reign of God is greater than the Church, but the uniqueness of Jesus Christ remains the only norm for a Catholic theology of religions. This uniqueness, for its part, is based on the personal identity of Jesus Christ as Son of God (Dupuis 1991: 206). His position in 1991 may thus be summarized as a theocentric viewpoint on the universe, together with a normative Christology, in the fourfold division of viewpoints in the theology of religions according to Peter Schineller or as an inclusivist position in the threefold division according to Alan Race (Dupuis 1991: 104-10). As Paul F. Knitter indicates in his survey of models in the Christian theology of religions, No Other Name? (Knitter 1985), this position is perfectly in accordance with Catholic mainstream theology since the Second Vatican Council. In Dupuis’ approach to the theology of religions Christ has a constitutive role and his Christology is certainly more orthodox than that of most theologians who adopt a pluralist approach (Dupuis 1994). Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism In his Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism Dupuis seems to be more radical, both as to the method and as to the contents of his approach. He adopts the perspective of the churches in the so-

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called ‘Third World’ in saying that the awareness of poverty and oppression on the one hand and the awareness of the religious other on the other have changed the theological horizon all over the world. Whereas these issues are quite new for theologians in the northern continents, the theological methods of liberation theology and the theology of religious pluralism have a longer history in Latin America, Africa and particularly Asia. Therefore, Asian theologians will take the lead in these new theological investigations, since being religious in Asia implies being interreligious (Dupuis 1997: 19; Phan 2004). While this theology of religious pluralism will, in Dupuis’ view, remain a theological and even confessional approach that does not hide its Christian provenance, it has to be open to other religions. In one of his most radical statements Dupuis says that this implies that religious pluralism is not only considered as a matter of fact but also as corresponding with the will of God (Dupuis 1997: 11). In this manner Dupuis asserts religious pluralism as a new and radical challenge to Christian theology, since it implies – when taken seriously by theologians – that religious truth can only be found in dialogue with other religions and worldviews. In his survey of Catholic theological perspectives on other religions in the period of the Second Vatican Council, Dupuis distinguishes between two theories that are often lumped together as inclusivist approaches. The ‘fulfillment theory’ suggests that people from other religions can be seen as holy insofar as they prefigure Christianity, while the theory of the mystic presence of Christ holds that members of other religions can be saved through their religious traditions (Dupuis 1997: 133-57). Dupuis favors this theory of ‘Christic presence’ in other religions because it takes the social character of religion into account; the ‘fulfillment theory’, on the contrary, denies the possibility that non-Christian religions may be salutary for human beings belonging to these religions. From his own experiences in the Indian context Dupuis criticizes the latter theory as a European construct invented by theologians and bishops who judge other religions without sufficient experiential knowledge (Dupuis 1999: 216). On the basis of the Asian experience of the presence of Christ in other religions, Dupuis tries to steer a middle course between exclusivism and pluralism. On the one hand, he does not want to give up the constitutive and normative role of Christ as the universal mediator of salvation; on the other, he opens the possibility for a plurality of

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ways to salvation. Adding a Trinitarian approache to his basic Christocentric position, Dupuis now seems to linger on the border between inclusivist and pluralist approaches (Merrigan 1998: 354). Consider the following statement: Our intention … consists in showing that a well-poised claim to oneness and universality for Jesus Christ leaves room for an open theology of religions and of religious pluralism. In particular, a Trinitarian Christological perspective allows for the recognition of the ongoing presence and activity of the Word of God and the Spirit of God. Such a perspective … makes it possible to affirm a plurality of ways or paths to human liberation/salvation, in accordance with God’s design for humankind in Jesus Christ; it also opens the way for recognizing other saving figures in human history. (Dupuis 1997: 281-82)

In Christological matters Dupuis’s position is fairly traditional, as it is based on the conviction that Christ as the Son of God is unique and universal in His salvific influence (Merrigan 1998: 349). He does not want to admit a discontinuity between the person of Jesus and the Christology of the church, or between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history, as some Indian forms of Christology are wont to do (Dupuis 1997: 152). However, he does make a distinction between Christ, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God, in order to prevent his Christocentric approach from falling into a sort of Christomonism (Dupuis 1997: 221). He develops a Trinitarian approach to religious pluralism, in which Logos Christology and Spirit Christology go together. More particularly, this model will “hold in constructive tension the central character of the punctual historical event of Jesus Christ and the universal action and dynamic influence of the Spirit of God” (Dupuis 1997: 207). Dupuis concedes that Christ is not absolute: God may effect salvation through the Word and the Spirit besides Christ. Therefore, he talks about the universal power of the Logos and the unbound action of the Spirit besides the inclusive presence in history of the mystery of Jesus Christ (Dupuis 1997: 316). Through this distinction, Dupuis wants to save some of the basic insights of Indian theologians, such as Raimon Panikkar, viz. that God’s universal saving power cannot be confined to one particular place in history. His elaboration of this idea, however, creates some problems. In the first place, Dupuis puts the Word or Logos of God alongside Christ, as if the second person of the Trinity can be separated in some way from Christ, or as if Christ, Lo-

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gos and Spirit can be made into a new sort of Trinitarian power of God (Dupuis 1997: 319-21; Schoonenberg 1991). Of course, the fact that God does not only send his Word in the person of Jesus Christ but also in certain prefigurations in classical culture is a well-known idea in the Fathers of the Church, but, according to them, this does not hold true after the incarnation (Dupuis 1997: 53-83). Dupuis, however, states that “even after the incarnation and the resurrection [of Christ], a divine action of the Word as such remains” (Dupuis 1999: 238). It would be unfair to suggest, however, that Dupuis sometimes considers the function of the Spirit in the economy of salvation apart from the function of the Word. This would not only be contrary to his Christocentric and therefore inclusivist position, but it would also make him liable to the accusation of relativism by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in its document Dominus Iesus (2000: § 9-12). The Notification on Dupuis’s book, published by the Congregation in January 2001 makes clear that there is no doctrinal disagreement on this point.1 This situation will make it more difficult, however, to develop a stronger pneumatological approach in the Catholic theology of religions (Haight 1999: 456; Fredericks 2003: 242). I will come back to this point at the end of this section. In ecclesiological matters Dupuis seems to embrace a position that has much in common with a pluralistic approach. When discussing the relation between the church and the Reign of God, he takes over some important notions from Indian theologians who stress the difference between the historical reality of the church and the eschatological reality of the Reign of God. In his interpretation of the papal encyclical Redemptoris Missio, he refers to documents by theological commissions of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences that point to the fact that, although one cannot separate the church from the Reign of God, it is possible to speak about other religions as paths to the eschatological goal of the Reign of God. This is a theologically legitimate possibility because the church is, by its very nature, provisional (Dupuis 1997: 357). He chides Paul Knitter for saying that mission may be subsumed under dialogue, but he criticizes a onesided explanation of the encyclical Redemptoris Missio as well that 1

See Notification on the book Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism by Fr. Jacques Dupuis s.j., dated January 24, 2001, on the website of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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would imply that dialogue is only a means for proclamation (Dupuis 1997: 365). Between these opposed reductions, Dupuis refers to the document on Dialogue and Proclamation by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and to the Theses on Interreligious Dialogue by the FABC Theological Advisory Commission, showing “how and why some of the most open and forward-looking assertions of the document have been toned down” (Dupuis 1997: 370). Theological Debates Dupuis’s shift from a clearly Christocentric approach to a more or less Trinitarian approach has not gone unnoticed. In the preceding paragraph I have mentioned some of the theological problems that go together with Dupuis’s approach that may be situated between an inclusivistic and a pluralistic approach. While the Louvain theologian Terence Merrigan tries to show – with the investigation against Dupuis by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the back of his mind – that Dupuis is actually an orthodox Roman Catholic theologian who occasionally gave in to the demands of pluralistic theologians while his inclusivist framework does not allow such a pluralistic discourse (Merrigan 1998: 355), Paul Knitter criticizes Dupuis from the opposite direction. Being a pluralistic theologian himself, he thinks that Dupuis does not succeed in bridging the gap between Christian theology and interreligious dialogue because he holds to a constitutive Christology in which everyone has to be saved through Christ (Knitter 1999: 328). While Dupuis wants to develop a Christology that is constitutive and relational at the same time, Knitter thinks that a constitutive Christology cannot be relational: “his bridge doesn’t quite make it to the other side” (Knitter 1999: 338). Only a representative Christology is able to do this: “as a representative savior, Jesus more readily can stand with others; as a constitutive savior, he stands alone” (Knitter: 1999: 348). While Knitter praises Dupuis for his ecclesiology but disapproves of his Christology, Gavin D’Costa’s criticism is the other way round. Because his theological approach is quite akin to Dupuis’s, his theological viewpoint merits a separate subsection. 6.2.2 Gavin D’Costa The Afro-Indian Roman Catholic theologian Gavin D’Costa is known as a harsh critic of pluralist models in the Christian theology of religions. His own position may be characterized as a clear form of inclu-

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sivism, based on a Rahnerian type of Trinitarian theology. He tries to do justice to the message of the New Testament by affirming both God’s particular self-revelation in the human contingency of Jesus Christ through the Word and God’s universal self-revelation in the human history through the Spirit (D’Costa 1990; 1992). While the reference to God’s self-revelation in Christ gives the Christian faith a distinctly normative identity, the reference to God’s self-revelation in the Spirit facilitates openness to other religions, since “the activity of the Spirit cannot be confined to Christianity” (D’Costa 1990: 17). In line with the Western tradition of the filioque, however, the Spirit is seen as revealed by Christ as well: The most important feature … is the way in which Christ is both the norm for understanding God and yet not a static norm, but one that is being constantly transformed and enriched through the guiding/ declaring/judging function of the Spirit (D’Costa 1990: 23; 1992: 152).

Such an inclusivist theology of religions does not, in a generous but gratuitous gesture, declare that all religions are revelations of God or paths to salvation, but it urges Christians to be attentive to the signs of the Spirit, while the person and work of Jesus Christ remain the norm for their knowledge of God’s self-revelation. For D’Costa, the Spirit of God is important, not only because it is at work in other religions as well but also because the Spirit guides the Church and explains the way in which God has revealed Godself in Jesus Christ. In this manner, D’Costa avoids the suggestion that the activity of the Spirit would be seen as complementary to the activity of the Word or the Son. Consequently, he criticizes Dupuis for having severed the link between Christology and ecclesiology. While Dupuis stands by the necessity of Christ for human salvation, he does not adhere to the necessity of the church for this salvation. This contradicts not only the selfunderstanding of the Roman Catholic Church but also the gist of the theological model that both Dupuis and D’Costa borrowed from Karl Rahner. The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity In his latest book, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity, Gavin D’Costa discusses the meaning of the affirmation in Roman Catholic doctrine that the Holy Spirit may be actively present in other religions. While making a case against Paul Knitter for a rather strict interpre-

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tation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council and later papal encyclicals, he tries to find some real openness to interreligious dialogue in these documents. Contrary to Jacques Dupuis, D’Costa argues that the presence of the Spirit is intrinsically related to the church. Referring to Redemptoris Missio, he makes clear … that this recognition of the Spirit’s transforming activity within other religions does not confer independent legitimacy upon other religions (in terms of their own self-understanding), because this very positive judgment is itself a Christian theological recognition (hetero-interpretation) and therefore relates to the reality of the trinity within the church. This is a very important move in the argument and must be clearly distanced from any pluralist or inclusivist reading (D’Costa 2000: 113).

So, it is possible to discuss D’Costa’s contribution to the theology of religions under the heading of a ‘turn to the Spirit’ (Knitter 2002: 87), yet for him the Spirit remains closely connected not only to Christ but to the church as well. Within the church the Spirit has the task to guide it in the truth on the way of Christ; outside the church the Spirit has a guiding task in alerting it to the possibility that God gives Godself through practices and traditions that can be found in other religions. The famous words about the Paraclete in the Gospel according to St. John do not denote a new revelation – that would be a complementary economy of salvation, in Dupuis’s terms – but indicate God’s power to reveal Godself further in God’s new creation. D’Costa draws the important conclusion that it is quite useless to talk abstractly about “the presence of the Spirit in other religions” as long as this makes no difference to the practice of Christians. Things can be changed in the church only through a real meeting of religions; but if the church does not allow itself to be changed, it is a sinful church. Since we have seen that the Holy Spirit may be active within other religions, if the church is closed to other religions, then the church will be guilty of being inattentive to the promptings of God which may lead it to greater holiness, truth and goodness. Being inattentive to other religions is a form of idolatry (D’Costa 2000: 133). In the first part of his book, D’Costa defended the thesis that there is no logical space for an inclusivist or a pluralist approach in the theology of religions: all approaches are exclusivist, and among these, the documents of the Roman Catholic Church show the greatest open-

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ness to other religions (D’Costa 2000: 22.100). One might say that his interpretation of these documents is far from radical and yet he reaches some radical conclusions on the basis of a fairly traditional position that is undoubtedly Catholic in its stress on ecclesiological aspects. One would almost think that Dupuis’s position – compared to D’Costa’s stance – is decidedly Protestant in its severing of Christological and ecclesiological aspects. 6.2.3 S. Mark Heim A real Protestant, sometimes even Evangelical Trinitarian theology of religions has been developed by S. Mark Heim, professor of theology at Andover Newton Theological Seminary. Together with Gavin D’Costa, Heim belongs among the sharpest critics of the pluralist approach. In his book Salvations (Heim 1995) he states that the pluralist approach is wrong in that it excludes precisely the distinctive value attributable to the particulars of actual faith traditions by saying that all religions are, in the end, equal. According to Heim, if one takes seriously the fact that not only Christianity but other religions as well claim that their path to salvation is the only true path, one should conclude that the diversity of religious paths results in a plurality of salvations. Heim agrees with Raimon Panikkar and Gavin D’Costa that the Trinity is the key to interpreting the theological significance of religious diversity, since it creates theological space for the diversity of religious ends (Heim 1995: 166). A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends Recently, Heim has elaborated his Trinitarian Christian theology of religions with reference to religious ends (Heim 2001; 2001a). Because he recognizes a plurality of religious ends, Heim seems to be more on the side of the pluralists than either D’Costa or Dupuis. However, Heim is clearly an inclusivist in asserting that people of other religions attain the religious end they expect, but this end is always related to the Trinity. A trinitarian perspective can affirm diverse religious ends as real, and the traditions that offer them as valid ways to relation with God. Any of these is preferable to no realized relation with God. At the same time, a trinitarian framework recognizes that these contacts with God are not identical in their meaning or result. A relation with God is not the same thing as salvation. Insofar as alternative reli-

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gious ends lack or rule out real dimensions of communion with the triune God, they embody some measure of what the Christian tradition regards as loss or damnation. (Heim 2001: 181-2; 2001a: 31)

Building on Trinitarian models by Raimon Panikkar and Ninian Smart together with Steven Konstantine, Heim suggests that communion with the Trinity as a religious end comprises three different dimensions: an impersonal dimension, a personal dimension, and a social dimension (Heim 2001: 157). These dimensions are to be found in the religious ends of other traditions as well, sometimes more clearly than in the Christian tradition. This clarity, however, is the consequence of a less complex way of expressing the relationship with the divine in these religions. Christians can understand the distinctive religious truth of other religions as rooted in the triune God’s real, specific relations with people in those traditions. On the one hand this provides a rationale for the Christian inclusive hope that such truths might lead people toward salvation, since the ends sought through such relations have an intrinsic ground in the triune God. But on the other hand, this perspective also provides the basis to affirm the separate reality of those religious ends in their own terms. In particular veins of relation, the distinctive religious paths and truths of other traditions exhibit greater purity and power than are usually manifest in Christianity. Limit can lead to such intensification. (Heim 2001: 198; 2001a: 45)

The Trinitarian theological model developed by Mark Heim certainly has the advantage that it takes differences between religions seriously. He does not, however, seem to strive for the same amount of theological openness towards these other religions as Jacques Dupuis does. For instance, neither he nor Gavin D’Costa would be willing to speak about “mutual complementarity” and “reciprocal convergence” between Christianity and other religious traditions, as Dupuis does (Dupuis 2000: 97). Dupuis, who tries to link Christian identity with openness to other religions, ends up with a mixture of inclusivist and pluralist approaches. Because D’Costa and Heim stress Christian identity more than openness to other religions, their Trinitarian approaches are less ambiguous and more evidently based on the dominant inclusivist tradition in the Christian theology of religion, sometimes even with exclusivist elements. In their case, however, theological clarity seems to have been reached at the expense of openness for dialogue.

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Conclusion In my opinion, Jacques Dupuis has explored the possibilities of a Christian Trinitarian approach to other religions to the fullest. He has ventured to build a bridge towards other religions and yet he has not succeeded in reaching the other shore because the materials of which the bridge has been made are so perspicuously Christian that no Jew or Muslim would dare to set foot on them. In this respect it is almost tragic to realize that the faithfulness of his theological endeavor to Christian tradition has come under suspicion (Valkenberg 2003: 187). I do not think that the models by D’Costa and Heim would help us any further on the bridge of dialogue, since their interpretations of other religions remain consistently on the Christian side. They succeed in preserving Christian identity, but they cannot build a basis for interreligious dialogue. Systematically speaking, Dupuis’s approach could be further radicalized by adopting a pneumatological approach in which the notion that the Spirit works in all religious (and non-religious) traditions of humankind would gain pride of place, without being domesticated by a normative Christology from the very start. Some theologians have begun to devise such a new form of constructive theology, for instance Peter C. Hodgson of Vanderbilt University (Hodgson 1994), while others gathered testimonies from the Christian tradition that could point into such a direction (McDonnell 2003). Such a pneumatological approach would, however, be confronted with two major problems. In the first place, it would have to compete against the weight of a Christian tradition that says, for instance, that the Trinity is undivided in its relation to creatures (opera ad extra sunt indivisa) or that one cannot hold that the salvific action of the Holy Spirit extends beyond the one universal salvific economy of the incarnate Word.2 In the second place, the notion of the Spirit as a power in non-Christian religions would be hardly more acceptable for Jews and Muslims than the notion of the Trinity. Because of these reasons, I surmise that no Christian theology of religions is appropriate as a basis for interreligious dialogue, as any such theology remains indebted to traditional notions that, while 2

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Notification on the Book ‘Towards a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism’ by Father Jacques Dupuis s.j., § 5.

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suitable for expressing the self-image of a religion, can only reflect otherness through categories of identity. Jewish models see other religions through Jewish halakhic categories; Christian models see other religions through Christian – Christological or Trinitarian – categories; the next section will show that Islamic models see other religions through Muslim categories as well. In the meantime, the models by D’Costa and Heim might point in another direction that will be pursued in the rest of this book: the model of a comparative theology that accepts differences between religions as its point of departure (Knitter 2002: 203). 6.3 People of the Book: A Muslim Theology of Religions Toward the end of the previous chapter we analyzed a particular example of a Qur’Ɨnic theology of religions in which the differences between the religious communities of Jews, Christians and Muslims were considered as possible incentives to emulate or even outdo each other in good deeds (Q. 5: 48). Yet other approaches to religions are represented in the Qur’Ɨn as well: shortly after the ayat just mentioned, we find a summons to keep Christians and Jews at bay and to refrain from befriending them (Q. 5: 51). Therefore, a Muslim or Christian theologian who wants to promote dialogue and cooperation between both religions will proffer an interpretation that highlights the ‘friendly’ sentence, while a Christian or Muslim who wants to promote mission or daǥwa with regard to the other religion will quote the less friendly sentence. Consider the following quotation of A. Christian van Gorder who urges his fellow Christians to be more compassionate with Muslims but in doing so creates an awkward opposition between “the tone of Jesus” and “the tone of the Qur’Ɨn”: Christians have estimated Muslims with sparse compassion and abundant simplistic fanaticism. Too often Christians have followed less the tone of Jesus and more the Qur’anic stance: “O Ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for your friends and protectors … verily God guides not a people unjust” (Surah 5:51). (van Gorder 2003: 23)

Van Gorder only quotes surah 5: 48 to show how God is responsible for bad things such as disunity, ignorance, idolatry and unbelief (Van Gorder 2003: 43). In such a context (“Twenty times in the Qur’an, God is said to lead the people astray”), the differences between religions are seen as a bad situation that has to be overcome as soon as

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possible, preferably by missionary endeavor. It is quite clear that the Qur’Ɨn may be interpreted differently and the supposed Qur’Ɨnic theology of religions depends on the eye of the beholder. Nor is this ambiguity the problem of the Qur’Ɨn alone: one may find the same differences in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures. I think that my Nijmegen colleague rabbi Tzvi Marx is right when he says “give a terrorist a peaceful text from Scripture, and he will make it a violent text; give a peacemaker a religious text advocating violence, and she will show how it advocates reconciliation” (Marx 2002; Valkenberg 2002: 12). Classical Sources Being the last of the Abrahamic religions, Islam has had to deal with a differentiated religious environment at the beginning of its history. Two major conceptions were formed in the debates between the first Muslims and their religious environment: jƗhiliyya and ahl al-kitƗb (Waardenburg 1999: 3). The term jƗhiliyya means ‘ignorance’ and refers to forms of polytheism among the Arabs. This term formulates a fundamental opposition between those who have true faith in one God – sometimes characterized as hanƯfiyya (‘monotheism’, the faith of Abraham) – and those who lack this true faith because they divide their religious devotion among a number of divine beings. The latter are called mushriknjn, ‘associationists’ or ‘polytheists’. Modern islamists such as Sayyid Qutb in Egypt used the same word jƗhiliyya to signal the fundamental opposition to true Islam of many states that call themselves Muslim states. The primary function of the term ahl al-kitƗb is to build not a contrast but a relation: it means ‘people of the book’ and refers to those who have received a divine Scripture and recite it. The word ‘book’ is of course of paramount importance for Islam as a religion and it is probably the most important word for understanding the Qur’Ɨn as well (Madigan 2001: 242). In several places the Qur’Ɨn tells of a heavenly Book (umm al-kitƗb or ‘mother of the book’) that has been revealed or rather sent down by God to several Messengers. While these books contain essentially the same message, this message has been received differently according to historical and cultural circumstances. In certain places the Qur’Ɨn and the Muslim tradition add the polemical note that the ahl al-kitƗb have changed their books deliberately in order to delete references to Muhammad as the final Messenger of

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God. This notion of tahrƯf or changing the authenticity of revelation may comprise not only a change of meaning or interpretation but actual substitution of words as well (ul-Huda 2003: 297). The basic approach in the Qur’Ɨn to the people of the book is, however, benevolent. Although the text is different, the books contain the same message of God and the same guidance to humankind (Madigan 2001: 247). The people of the book may be saved if they are faithful and act according to the laws in their books that contain God’s revelation. In most texts from the Qur’Ɨn it is clear that the Jews and the Christians are the main recipients of these books, but in some texts the Sabians and the Zoroastrians are mentioned among the people of the book as well (Q 2:59; 5:73; 22:17). They belong to a group between the faithful Muslims and the polytheists: they are often reproached for their internal struggles and their faithlessness, but they will be rewarded on the Day of Judgment if they live according to their books (Waardenburg 1999: 6). As Qamar ul-Huda notes, the relative openness of the term ‘people of the book’ has made it possible for subsequent Muslim commentators to add other religions with sacred scriptures and/or monotheistic tendencies to its number (ul-Huda 2003: 295). In the remainder of this section I will show how two modern Muslims interpret the meaning and the connotations of the term ahl al-kitƗb as a prominent feature of a Muslim theology of religions in an Abrahamic context. In keeping with the considerations at the beginning of this section, my choice of Muslim interpreters of the Qur’Ɨn will be determined by the goals of my research. Since I do not seek representativeness – which is almost impossible in the Muslim world as well as in the Christian and Jewish worlds – but understanding and cooperation between the Abrahamic religions, my approach will be deliberately biased (Valkenberg 2001). 6.3.1 Ismail Raji al-Faruqi The Palestinian Muslim theologian Ismail Raji al-Faruqi (1921-1986) was born in Jaffa and died in the United States as Professor of Islamic Studies and History of Religions at Temple University in Philadelphia. After having studied philosophy, Christianity and Judaism at Western universities and Islam at al-Azhar University, he held chairs in Pakistan and the United States. Because of his studies of both religions, he was particularly suited to promote understanding between Muslims and Christians (Esposito 1998: ix).

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Al-Faruqi’s article “Islam and Christianity: Diatribe or Dialogue” was published in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies in 1968 which marks, according to Leonard Swidler, “the period when Islam began to enter onto the more public stage of dialogue” (Swidler 1992: iv). In this article, al-Faruqi advocates a new era, the era of dialogue that is to replace the era of mission (al-Faruqi 1998: 246). The end of dialogue is conversion – not to Islam or Christianity but to the truth which is the religion of God. Al-Faruqi discerns three themes for this new era of dialogue: the innocent nature of human beings as part of God’s creation, the necessity to recognize God’s will and command, the moral vocation of the faithful in the world (al-Faruqi 1998: 256-58). At the same time, however, he admits to being pessimistic about the possibility that Christians (both Catholics and Protestants) will embrace this type of dialogue (al-Faruqi 1998: 269). In another article on “Islam and Other Faiths,” originally published in 1978, al-Faruqi examines the implications of Islam’s essential religious experience for other faiths. TawhƯd, witnessing that there is no god but God, implies that human beings are created by God as persons who are capable to act morally. Al-Faruqi examines the theoretical consequences for Islam’s relation to other religions under four headings: God, revelation, human beings, society (al-Faruqi 1998: 133-46). His basic stance is that Islam puts all human beings on equal footing, since all are God’s creatures and therefore able to hear God’s revelation and act accordingly. This natural capacity to hear and fulfill God’s will is named dƯn al-fitrah or ‘natural religion’ in the tradition of Islam and it is identified with islƗm in the broad sense of this word denoting all human beings who are willing to submit themselves to God (al-Faruqi 1998: 139). Although the distinction between Islam as a particular religion and islƗm as a basic human virtue is meant to make room for the faithful of other religions, the terminology itself shows a form of inclusivism that is no less condescending than the Catholic and Protestant forms of inclusivism rebuked by al-Faruqi. When he subsequently writes, referring to Islamic humanism as the basis for interreligious cooperation, that “[t]his brilliant theory of the other faiths presented by Islam is unmatched and unmatchable,” chances of dialogue will not be any better (al-Faruqi 1998: 151). The problem lies exactly where al-Faruqi sees the strength of Islam:

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The Islamic theory is particularly strong as regards Judaism and Christianity which it treats not as ‘other religions’ but as itself. Its recognition of the God of Judaism and of Christianity as its God, of their prophets as its prophets, and its commitment to the divine invitation to the People of the Book to cooperate and live together under God constitute the first and only real step towards religious unity of two world religions ever made. An Abrahamic unity of Judaism, Christianity and Islam based on the HanƯfƯ religion of Abraham, the dƯn al-fitrah, is a real possibility. It did in fact exist in the Muslim world until Western imperialism, colonialism and Zionism came to subvert it. Their effort, however, has been in vain. The Muslim will continue to believe in and work for this unity, confident that his God Whom he knows to be one as truth is one and the moral law is one, cannot but desire one religion, to be entered into by all men freely and deliberately, because it is itself when it is the result of personal conviction, not of a blind wager à la Pascal, but a certainty reached after a critical weighing of all the options, of all the evidence. (al-Faruqi 1998: 152-53)

If Islam treats all religions as itself, and if it considers itself the best model of a universal human religion, the otherness of other religions is at the best subsumed under the final authority of Islam. In an article on the role of Islam in global interreligious dependence, al-Faruqi seems to leave somewhat more room for other religions to live according to their own values and laws in their working together with Muslims. This article, originally published in 1980, specifies three levels of relations between Islam and other religions. One of the consequences is that al-Faruqi differentiates his earlier notions of ‘islamic humanism’ and ‘natural religion’. The first level concerns Judaism and Christianity as religions with a special status because Islam implies belief in their prophets and their books. Although I do not agree with al-Faruqi’s saying that Islam is unique in this respect, “[f]or no religion in the world has yet made belief in the truth of other religions a necessary condition of its own faith and witness” (al-Faruqi 1998: 74-5), this is certainly a very strong bond between the three religions. Al-Faruqi proposes to take ‘HanƯfism’ as the central notion for this group of religions, because they partake in the same monotheism. The second level concerns other religions that have, according to Islam, their own prophets. Because Islam teaches that the phenomenon of prophecy is universal, it teaches that the prophets of all times and places have taught one and the same lesson. The essence of this lesson consists of two elements: tawhƯd and morality. This essence is lived differently by the different historical religions.

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According to al-Faruqi, these differences are “de jure as long as they do not affect the essence” (al-Faruqi 1998: 80). When human beings do not want to accept this essence because of their wealth and power, they corrupt this original revelation while God sends new prophets to restore the divine message. The third level concerns the relation between Islam and all human beings, and it is here that the notions of Islam’s humanism and the basic religious nature of human beings can be applied, thus constituting an Islamic universalism (al-Faruqi 1998: 84). Dealing with the practical consequences of these levels of relations, al-Faruqi underscores that Islam did not only recognize the Jewish and Christian ummah as communities with their own values and laws but recognized the communities of other religions as well: Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Hinduism. [A]s long as Hindus and Buddhists did not fight the Islamic state, as long as they paid the jizyah or tax due, they must be free to ‘worship their gods’ as they please, to maintain their temples and to determine their lives by the precepts of their faith. Thus, the same status as that of the Jews and Christians was accorded to them. (alFaruqi 1998: 90)

On the basis of theoretical and historical considerations, al-Faruqi thinks that Islam’s contribution to global religious interdependence can be very significant, since Islam has had a long experience of living together with other religions and its religious essence shows more respect for them than other religions do. 6.3.2 Farid Esack Farid Esack is a Muslim theologian who differs in at least two respects from most other modern Muslim theologians. In the first place, he was born in South Africa, far from the ‘heartlands’ of Islam. His context has been largely determined by the struggle against apartheid. Because of his participation in a struggle for liberation, Esack’s book Qur’Ɨn, Liberation and Pluralism (Esack 1997) is quite similar in approach and method to Christian forms of liberation theology. Its contents, though, clearly match with the tradition of Qur’Ɨnic exegesis, as exemplified by Esack’s latest book, The Qur’an: A User’s Guide (Esack 2005). As his book On Being a Muslim (Esack 1999) testifies, his style is quite different from what is usual in Muslim theological circles, and therefore his conclusions are not likely to be accepted by conservative Muslims. Esack began his theological education in Paki-

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stan and South Africa. Being a political activist as well, he was appointed by President Mandela to work with the Commission on Gender Equality in post-Apartheid South Africa. Currently he holds a chair in Interreligious Studies at Xavier University, Cincinnati. In his book Qur’Ɨn, Liberation and Pluralism, Esack gives a new interpretation of the Qur’Ɨnic definitions of ‘self’ and ‘other’ “in order to make space for the righteous and just Other in a theology of pluralism for liberation” (Esack 1997: 14). As in every form of liberation theology, the hermeneutical insights on the Qur’Ɨnic theology of faith and unbelief are determined by the experiences in the practice of the liberation struggle against apartheid. Esack’s main question is: How do we, Muslims, value the contribution by non-Muslims in this struggle theologically? The key text for his analysis of iman as the original word for ‘faith’ in the Qur’Ɨn is Q 8:2-4: Indeed, the mu’minun are those whose hearts tremble with awe whenever God is mentioned; and whose iman is strengthened whenever His ayat [signs] are conveyed unto them; and who place their trust in their Sustainer. Those who are constant in prayer and spend on others out of what We provide for them as sustenance. It is they who are truly the mu’minun. (tr. Esack 1997: 117)

Esack concludes that faith is a dynamic term in the Qur’Ɨn: it may grow or diminish. Moreover, although iman as faith or trust refers to a personal response to God, it is intimately connected with righteous deeds. This implies that the term al-mu’minnjn (‘those who are faithful’) does not coincide with al-Muslimnjn in the sense of ‘those who are Muslims’, although it does coincide with muslimnjn in the sense of ‘those who entrust themselves to God’. Whereas some Muslims may not be faithful at all, some of the faithful may not be believers in the traditional sense of the word. According to Esack, this non-institutionalized notion of ‘faith’ determines the way in which the Qur’Ɨn talks about others. While he affirms that mushriknjn (‘associationists’) and ahl al-kitƗb (‘people of the book’) are the most important categories in the Qur’Ɨn, Esack is somewhat hesitant to use the notion of ‘people of the book’ in the modern context. First of all, this notion is contextually determined in the Qur’Ɨn, which means that we can find different layers of meaning in this notion, depending on the different situations in which Muhammad and his followers encountered groups of Jews and Christians. Because Jewish communities played an important role in Medina, the

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experiences with Jews are central to the notion (Esack 2005: 48), while much of the early Muslim understanding of Christianity and Christology seems to have filtered through to the Muslims in an indirect manner from the Jewish community, until much later, when a delegation of religious leaders from the Christians of Najran … came to Medina in 632. (Esack 1997: 151)

Therefore, one may not forge a general notion of ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ out of the particular circumstances in which Muslims encountered Jews and Christians in the first period. Esack points to the fact that Muslim scholars recognized this situation-bound nature of Qur’Ɨnic categories by adding others to the category of the ‘People of the Book’. For our present-day understanding of this category, it is important to be aware of the economic and political consequences of the thoughtless use of such a category: In the context of the political and technological power exercised by the Judaeo-Christian world, on the one hand, and Arab monetary wealth on the other, Muslim rapprochement with that world, based on the simplistic analogy that Jews and Christians are the contemporary People of the Book, could easily, and probably correctly, be construed as an alliance of the powerful. A qur’anic hermeneutic concerned with interreligious solidarity against injustice would seek to avoid such alliances and would rather opt for more inclusive categories which would, for example, embrace the dispossessed of the Fourth World. (Esack 1997: 153)

Because true faith in God is, according to Qur’Ɨnic criteria, immediately connected with social justice, the same holds true for its opposite: shirk or associationism. When the Qur’Ɨn attacks Jews and Christians, it attacks their feeling of superiority, their religious exclusivism, and their contempt for others. The Qur’Ɨn thus takes true faith connected with good deeds as the criterion for all religions. In doing so, it accepts religious pluralism not only as a fact but also as a legitimate situation. The Qur’an acknowledges the de jure legitimacy of all revealed religion in two respects: it takes into account the religious life of separate communities coexisting with Muslims, respecting their laws, social norms and religious practices and it accepts that the faithful adherents of these religions will also attain salvation and that “no fear shall come upon them neither will they grieve” (2: 62). These two aspects of the Qur’an’s attitude towards the Other may be

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described as the cornerstones of its acceptance of religious pluralism. (Esack 1997: 159)

This appraisal of otherness was obscured in the subsequent tradition of Muslim theology because the same feelings of superiority that the Qur’Ɨn rebuked in Jewish and Christian communities got the upper hand among Muslim communities. In the tradition of tafsƯr or Qur’Ɨnic exegesis, even texts that obviously accept religious differences such as 5: 48 (“to each of you have We appointed a [different] shirǥah (path) and minhaj (way)” and 22: 67 (“to every community, We appointed acts of devotion, which they observe; so let them not dispute with you in the matter, and call to your Lord. Surely you are on a right guidance”) have been explained differently. Esack concentrates on the history of exegesis of Q. 5: 48 – the verse explained towards the end of the previous chapter of this book – in which the difference between dƯn and shariǥah plays a major part. As Esack explains elsewhere, the word dƯn in the Meccan period refers to personal and individual commitment to God, while in the Medinan period it is made equal to Islam as collective commitment (Esack 1997: 129). While the shariǥah, the path leading to the source of water, may be different for different communities, there is only one dƯn. In their commentaries on Q. 5: 48, Muslim exegetes such as alTabari, al-Razi and Rashid Rida say that God allowed for a plurality of shariǥƗt in such a way that one shariǥah can supersede and abrogate another shariǥah, while God’s dƯn remains the same. According to Tabari, the verse therefore addresses the communities or earlier prophets who had preceded the Prophet of Islam. Rida, however, thinks that it refers to Muslims, the People of the Book and humankind in general. Esack asserts that the traditional Muslim interpretations are evidently inconsistent with the context of the verse; therefore, he prefers an alternative inclusivist interpretation (Esack 1997: 168).3 The gist of this interpretation is that the text addresses other communities coexisting with Muslims in Medina, and that it respects their Scriptures as paths and ways that enable them to vie with one another in righteousness towards God (Esack 1997: 170). What is not recognized in traditional tafsƯr is, according to Esack, that 3

The reference to Muqatil ibn Sulayman in the previous chapter, however, shows that Esack’s interpretation is not without precedent in early tafsƯr.

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the metaphor of competition (see also Q. 2: 148) implies that righteous deeds are not the monopoly of one single competitor; in the end, God will judge them. Esack concludes that the Qur’Ɨn explicitly distinguishes between the task of the Prophet with respect to the ‘People of the Book’ and with respect to others. Since the ‘People of the Book’ have been given divine Scriptures, they are to be challenged with respect to their commitment to these Scriptures or their departure from them. With regard to the others, the Prophet was to present the guidance of the Qur’Ɨn for consideration and acceptance. While the main task of Muslims with regard to the Abrahamic religions is to challenge them, the main task with regard to the others is one of proclamation (Esack 1997: 173). Conclusion It will be clear that Esack’s use of the concept ‘People of the Book’ to indicate the relation between the Abrahamic religions as one of mutual challenge and competition has many similarities with my own interpretation of Q. 5: 48 in the previous chapter. His interpretation of the relation between Islam and other religions is quite different from alFaruqi’s interpretation, while he applies the same hermeneutical procedure of deriving the meaning of ‘other’ from the meaning of ‘self’. Because Esack interprets the word islƗm not primarily as an established religion but as an act of faith and righeousness, he is able to say that the same dƯn is working in other religions under different forms of shariǥah. Again, Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s distinction between faith and beliefs systems comes to mind. In the fourth chapter of this book I have explained that this concept of faith has many advantages but some problems as well. For instance, personal faith seems to be quite disconnected from institutional religion. Esack’s model works, however, in a situation where people from different religious try to work together in a struggle for liberation and have to find a theological underpinning for their cooperation. In this sense, his model clearly belongs to a theological reflection on a dialogue of life and of works in a joint commitment to make a better society. As I suggested at the end of the fourth chapter, such forms of cooperation may be important forms of future interfaith dialogues.

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6.4 Theology of Religions, Theology of Dialogue, Comparative Theology The previous sections have led to the conclusion that in each traditional theology of religions, the perception of one’s own religion determines the perception of other religions. If a theology of religions draws from one traditional source only, nothing else could be expected. In fact, traditional theologies of religions obey a rule that goes for apologetics and polemics as well: much of what appears to be directed ad extra – that is: to other religions – is in fact directed ad intra – to one’s co-religionists (Valkenberg 2004a: 378). This is one of the reasons why it is important to develop a comparative theology that is able to draw from more sources, in order to supplement the traditional theologies of religion. Such a comparative interplay between various theologies, including theologies of religions, will serve the purpose of theological reflection on interreligious dialogue, since it directs our attention to the goal of this dialogue, that is: to know and to serve God in a better way. As I explained in the introduction with reference to Thomas Aquinas, a theological approach to interreligious dialogue aims at deepening our knowledge of God since faith ultimately relates to God and not just to human belief systems.4 In order to correctly survey the debate between theologies of religions and comparative theology (Duffy 1999) it is useful to sketch the history of these competing models: theology of religions, theology of interreligious dialogue, theology of religious pluralism, and finally comparative theology. Because the debate is endemic to the Christian tradition in which these models have been developed, this section will limit itself to Christian authors. It does not include, however, a full description of Christian theologies of religions, since this has recently been given by Paul F. Knitter in his Introducing Theologies of Religions (2002). 6.4.1 Christian Theologies of Religions: Sources and Models Christian theology of religions is one of many possible approaches to the study of religion. First of all, one has to draw a distinction between the various theologies of religions that have been developed within

4

See S.Th. II-II q.1 a.2 ad 2um: actus autem credentis non terminatur ad enuntiabile sed ad rem.

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different religious traditions and a more general philosophical approach that searches for an overarching theology of religion (Whaling 1999: 226). In this sense, one may speak of several Christian, Muslim and Jewish theologies of religions, although the word ‘theology’ does not have the same importance in the different traditions. Fundamental Theology on True Religion One of the most important traditions in Christian theology with reference to religions was developed in fundamental theology. In NeoScholastic theology a distinction had been made between theologia fundamentalis covering foundational aspects of theology and religion, and theologia dogmatica covering the basic tenets of Christian faith. The first part of fundamental theology dealt with the true religion that has been revealed to us by God and preserved by the Church (Van Noort 1929: xxvi). After a general theory of religion that included some extended thinking about revelation, the more specific part of the tract de vera religione considered Christianity as the true religion, but the religion of natural law and the religion of the Mosaic law as well (van Noort 1929: 95). These religions were not considered in themselves, however, but in their relation to Christianity – a relation that was traditionally conceived as one of preparation and fulfillment. It is clear that such a theology of religions can see other religions only as deviations from Christianity; they are measured according to their relation to this religion as an absolute norm. It has often been said that the declaration Nostra Aetate on the relation between the Church and non-Christian religions by the Second Vatican Council marks the beginning of a new era in the Christian theology of religions and this is certainly true. The declaration is, however, ambiguous because it shows many traces of traditional approaches in the theology of religions as well (Ruokanen 1992). The very title of the document refers to other religions as ‘non-Christian’ – a negative attribution that makes sense in a Christian reflection on its own identity but is not appropriate in a reflection that tries to take seriously the otherness of other religions. It remains very much at the level of a ‘hetero-interpretation’ of other religions with the ‘auto-interpretation’ of Christianity as its frame of reference, while only gradually including elements of a ‘koino-interpretation’ that emphasize “the communal and impartial advance of the partners in theological discussion” (Camps 1997: 132). It is true that Nostra Aetate draws our

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attention to commonalities between Christianity and other religions, but the very structure of the document shows that the nearness of these religions to Christianity is the main criterion for judging them – a procedure that is not so different from classical fundamental theology. In modern forms of fundamental theology (e.g. Waldenfels 1985: 33-38; 2002) other religions are primarily conceived as challenges for the Christian claim to be a unique and even absolute religion. Not only commonalities but also differences between religions are important as articulations of different ways to be religious. On the basis of the phenomenological insight that religious pluralism is a historical fact that will not be replaced by a universal Christian religion – at least, not in the short term – other religions give new impetus to the classical task of fundamental theology: to account for the hope and faith of Christians (cf. 1 Peter 3: 15). Fundamental Theology in an Ecumenical Era Traditional fundamental theology did not only include a treatise on ‘true religion’ but also a treatise on ‘the true church of Christ’ in which the true Church was compared to forms of Christianity that deviated from this norm. Again, the purpose of the comparison was to show how the criteria for a true church could be met only by the Roman Catholic Church. In the second half of the twentieth century, this procedure has given way to an ecumenical type of fundamental theology in which theologians want to learn from other Christian traditions as well. Moreover, the fact of religious plurality stimulated a ‘global ecumenical awareness’ that favored not only an intrareligious dialogue between Christian traditions, but also an interreligious dialogue between religious traditions (Küng 1984: 16). Hans Küng has developed a model in which the Christian theologian discussed important issues with experts on the world’s religions (Küng 1984). While his intention was to include a dialogue between theologians representing different religious traditions later on (Küng 1984: 17), Küng continued to write on other religions from the point of view of Christian fundamental theology in relation to the contemporary religious situation (Küng 1991a; 2004). The role of the theologian in this dialogue is twofold: he has to unfold the essentials of other religions and criticize them on the basis of Christian faith as well as exercise self-criticism of the Christian tradition in the light of other religions (Küng 1984: 21; 2004: 26). While Küng clearly crosses the boun-

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daries of traditional fundamental theology by envisaging a mutual challenge and enrichment (Küng 1984: 23) between different world religions, his basic stance is a Christian theology of religions. A theology of religions thus conceived is on its way to a global theology of religions (Whaling 1999: 264), but it remains indebted to the principles of Christian faith as well. The following quotation holds true for every Christian theology of religions developed by Christian dogmaticians or fundamental theologians: The Christian theology of religions might be described as that branch of theology which considers the nature and function of nonChristian religious traditions in the light of Christian faith in the salvific character of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (Merrigan 1999: 339)

It is, however, also possible to engage in a Christian theology of religions from a more philosophical point of view. Yet in such a case it might be better to talk about a theology of religion in the singular, because this approach aims at a more universal perspective on religion as such (Whaling 1999: 253). John Hick is certainly the most important representative of this approach: not only did he develop, together with Paul Knitter, the program of a ‘pluralistic approach’ in the theology of religions (Hick and Knitter 1987), but he has also given a superb philosophical defense of his position (Hick 1989; Badham 1990). Some other philosophers engage in a Christian theology of religions as well, but since they pay more attention to a comparative reading of texts, they might better be included in the category of ‘comparative theologies of religion’, such as Keith Ward of Oxford (Whaling 1999: 244-246; Ward 2000; Ward et al. 2001; Ward 2004) and Hendrik Vroom of Amsterdam (Vroom 1988; Vroom 2003). Finally, the theology of religion could be related to the scholarly study of religion such as the tradition of Religionswissenschaft in Germany (Pannenberg 1974: 361-374; Sundermeier 1999). This would, however, require a separate study. 6.4.2 Theologies of Interreligious Dialogue and Religious Pluralism The approaches mentioned thus far have developed theories about the relations between Christianity and other religions on the basis of an interpretation of the core meaning of Christian faith (theological approaches) or an interpretation of the core meaning of religion in general (philosophical approaches). This differentiates them from an ap-

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proach that reflects on the lived experience of dialogue with adherents of other religions. According to Volker Küster, such an approach may be characterized as a ‘theology of dialogue’ that differs from a ‘theology of religions’ but builds on it as well (Küster 2003:4). While a theology of religions is intrareligious in the sense that it starts from and remains within a certain belief system, a ‘theology of dialogue’ is interreligious in the sense that it includes the point of view of the dialogue partners in its own argumentation. Such a theology of dialogue that considers religious pluralism not as a problem but as a reality has mainly been developed where religious pluralism has its longest history and its greatest impact: Asia in general and India in particular (Kuttianimattathil 1995; Chia 2003). This is not to say that other continents have not developed their own practices and theologies of interreligious dialogue (Nwanaju 2004), but the real impetus for this new type of theology comes from Asia. The encounter between religions has characterized the history of Christianity in Asia, while “in Europe Christianity did not have such powerful religious alternatives” (Samartha 1997: 174). In India this has led to a new type of theology, characterized by a dialogical method: “The dialogical method of theologizing begins from the lived experience by Christians of the people of other religions” (Kuttianimattathil 1995: 611). It is the Indian experience of the practice of dialogue that determines the theology of dialogue (Amaladoss 1992; Fernandes 1994). In the introduction to his Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism Jacques Dupuis, who has worked in India for over thirty years, delineates this new method as follows: it is a form of contextual theology that gives a hermeneutical interpretation of the fact of religious plurality. Since the religious reality in Asia is such that “to be religious in the Asian context implies being ‘interreligious’” (Dupuis 1987: 19; Phan 2004), the religious other is an important starting point for an Asian theology of liberation (Pieris 1988). Moreover, together with Latin American liberation theology, this interreligious hermeneutical theology of dialogue “must be viewed as a new way of doing theology, in an interfaith context; a new method of theologizing in a situation of religious pluralism” (Dupuis 1987: 18). The theological importance of this pluralism becomes apparent when Dupuis says that religious plurality is not just a matter of fact but exists de jure (1987: 11). This is quite a radical statement because

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it suggests that pluralism is not something to be overcome but to be accepted as part of creation according to the will of God. To show that he is not the only one to connect the will of God with religious pluralism in such a way, Dupuis refers to two Dominican theologians: Claude Geffré and Edward Schillebeeckx (1989: 183). Yet this theological acceptance of pluralism is at variance with more traditional options in the Christian theology of religions. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2000: § 4) perceives such acceptance as a danger for the missionary task of the Church: “The Church’s constant missionary proclamation is endangered today by relativistic theories which seek to justify religious pluralism, not only de facto, but also de iure (or in principle)”. The tension between these approaches to pluralism is caused by different ways of experiencing religious others. In European traditional theology Asian majority religions are seen in a missionary perspective and, in this sense, the theology of religions in Dominus Iesus continues the principles put forward in Redemptoris Missio and Ecclesia in Asia. In the experience of Asian theologians, the religious adherence of the overwhelming majority of Asian Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims simply has to be taken seriously for what it is: a way of living faith. Because of the formative role of this experience of religious plurality, “the lead for building up a theological hermeneutics of religious pluralism will belong primarily, though not exclusively, to the churches in the African, and even more so in the Asian, continents” (Dupuis 1997: 19). In this manner the theology of religious pluralism may be considered to be a hermeneutical reflection on practices of interreligious dialogue. In this type of theology, reflection functions as a ‘second act’ following the praxis of dialogue, analogous to the method in Latin American liberation theology (Knitter 1987; Dupuis 1997: 17). If this analogy is correct, both forms of theology have a radically inductive method in which the practice of liberation and/or dialogue precedes and determines theological reflection: “praxis is both the origin and the confirmation of theory or doctrine” (Knitter 1987: 191). Yet Knitter does not draw another conclusion that seems to follow from this analogy, viz. that theology of interreligious dialogue should develop a preferential option for the religious other analogous to the preferential option for the poor in liberation theology (Knitter 1987: 183-88). As I argued in the first chapter, a theology of interreligious dialogue that is

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based on practices of dialogue could do more justice to religious otherness than a systematic theology of religions. Recent developments in the field of missiology, conceived as part of practical theology or the scholarly study of religions, seem to lead into a similar direction. To abide by and to safeguard the otherness of others has always been one of the most important tasks of missiology (Nissen 2002: 9). Missiologists allow themselves to be changed by the encounter with the other (Sundermeier 1997: 235). Understanding the stranger is the most important task, not only of missiology but of all forms of interreligious hermeneutics. As I already pointed out in the first chapter, the prefix ‘inter-’ in ‘intercultural’ or ‘interreligious’ has a specific meaning that should be distinguished clearly from a prefix like ‘multi-’ or ‘pluri-’. While talking about the multireligious society or about religious pluralism in itself indicates the awareness that there is more than one culture or religion to be reckoned with, it does not give a clue to the consequences of this differentiation. The prefix ‘inter-’, on the contrary, implies the idea of an ‘in-between’, even a mutual influence. Comparing a multireligious and an interreligious model in religious education, Carl Sterkens, for instance, comes to the conclusion that opponents of the multireligious model feel that this attitudinal aim does not go far enough. They want genuine dialogue, in which the partners criticise and modify each other’s ideas in a committed way …. [T]he interreligious model not only observes and describes the plurality, but also deals with it constructively (Sterkens 2001: 59, 63).

This can be done, however, in two different ways. In the first place, the prefix ‘inter-’ can be seen as denoting mutual influence, so that an intercultural or interreligious hermeneutics reflects on the way in which religions and cultures are transformed by their relations to other cultures and religions. In the second place, ‘inter-’ may also indicate a ‘culture-in-between’, a free space that mediates between the two cultures and religions (Wijsen 2003: 41-42; Küster 2003: 23-24). These two possible interpretations concur with the distinction in the previous chapter between a particularist and a universalist approach. While theologians with a universalist approach are inclined to construct a ‘metatheory’ in which the different religions may communicate, those defending a particularist approach stick to the traditions concerned and would rather have them intermingle in their own religious

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experiences – thus construing an intrareligious dialogue in the sense of Raimon Panikkar (1999) – than placing themselves in a ‘third space’ outside or above the religions concerned. Missiology, thus conceived as a reflection on encounters of religions and cultures in which both the identity of the Christian message and the otherness of other cultures and religions are guaranteed, is quite similar to interreligious or intercultural hermeneutics (Sundermeier 1999: 195-211; 2003; Küster 2001: 25-28) in which the prefix ‘inter-’ indicates ‘belonging to one religion while being deeply interested in another religion at the same time’, since this is a prerequisite to real understanding: “Nur wo beides da ist, die tiefe Faszination durch eine andere Religion und die feste Verwurzelung in der eigenen, kommt es zum Verstehen” (Sundermeier 1999: 204-5). 6.4.3 Comparative Theologies In his masterful introductory survey of contemporary Christian theologies of religions, Paul F. Knitter reduces the bewildering variety of approaches to four basic models. The first three of these, the ‘replacement model’, the ‘fulfillment model’, and the ‘mutuality model’ coincide roughly with the more familiar typology of exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist models. The fourth model, however, has recently been formed as a reaction to the inadequacies of the fulfillment and mutuality models (Knitter 2002: 173). This ‘acceptance model’, as it is called by Knitter, originates from the postmodern idea that religious traditions are radically different and that it is salutary to accept this difference. Unlike the mutuality model, it highlights the importance of differences between particular religious traditions, but, unlike the replacement and fulfillment models, it does not presume that one religion or one revelation replaces or subsumes all others. It is interesting to note that the three approaches brought together by Knitter in the category of ‘the acceptance model’ all originated in the United States of America: the ‘postliberal’ approach of George Lindbeck (also shared by Joseph DiNoia and Paul Griffiths, see DiNoia 1992; Griffiths 1991), the radical pluralist approach by S. Mark Heim (see Heim 1995; 2001), and finally the comparative theology approach (Knitter 2002: 177). The remainder of this chapter will concentrate on comparative theology as an approach in the theology of religions that seems best to serve as point of departure for the MuslimChristian theology advocated in this book. However, before con-

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centrating on the American authors mentioned by Knitter (Francis Clooney, James Fredericks, and David Burrell), I want to draw attention to a European form of comparative theology that might be considered to be a precursor of comparative Muslim-Christian theology. Yet again, there may be some Western myopia in my choice of authors, since comparative theology is not only a Western approach; it is enacted by Asian theologians as well, as can be seen in the impressive body of work by Aloysius Pieris (1988a; 1996) and Raimon Panikkar (1972; 1989; 2005; Prabhu 1996). Historical Forms of Comparative Theology Before embarking on this survey of models of comparative theology developed explicitly with reference to more than one religious tradition, we may consider the history of the notion of ‘comparative theology’ first. In his entry on comparative theology in The Encyclopedia of Religion David Tracy (1987) indicates two sources. In the first place, comparative theology has been developed as a historical subdiscipline of the science of religion, in which several forms of theology within religious traditions may be compared. In the second place, it has been developed as a more strictly theological approach in which authors use theological criteria to compare their own tradition to other traditions within the same religion, for instance Eastern Orthodox and Western Roman Catholic or Protestant traditions. In general terms, according to Tracy, comparative theology may be seen as “any explicitly intellectual interpretation of a religious tradition that affords a central place to the fact of religious pluralism in the tradition’s self-interpretation” (Tracy 1987: 447). In its method, comparative theology need not be systematic – since this is a requirement that not all religious traditions would support – but it is certainly hermeneutic, since it establishes mutually critical correlations between two distinct but related interpretations: on the one hand, the theological interpretation of the principal religious questions given a context of religious pluralism in an emerging global culture; on the other, an interpretation of the responses of a particular religious tradition to that pluralism. (Tracy 1987: 447)

According to this approach, comparative theology may be quite philosophical in nature, since it does not start from the point of view of a particular religious tradition, but correlates the major religious ques-

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tions of the time with the answers produced by several religious traditions. In this fashion, the philosophical approaches by Keith Ward (2000; 2001) or Hendrik Vroom (1998; 2003) can be included in the category of comparative theology. It might be more transparent, though, to reserve the term ‘comparative theology’ for a kind of comparison in which theological criteria determine the objective of the comparison and the way of proceeding. These criteria are not always explicitly mentioned but may be distinguished in a careful analysis. One of the most interesting comparisons between the normative claims of Judaism, Christianity and Islam has been made by Ibn Kammuna, a Jewish author writing in Baghdad just after the fall of the Abbasid dynasty. His work Examination of the Three Faiths (Perlmann 1971) presents itself as a comparative study of the claims by the three religions to possess the right pro-phetic tradition. In his argumentation Ibn Kammuna comes as close to a modern scholarly approach as an author from the thirteenth century can be, yet a careful analysis shows that he applies theological criteria from his own Jewish tradition to criticize the claims of Islam (Roggema 2005). Ibn Kammuna’s polite but trenchant critique infuriated the Muslims of Baghdad to the extent that he had to leave the town. The German Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher – often seen as the father of the modern hermeneutical awareness in theology – incorporates comparing religions into the framework of his systematic theology, while this comparative element predominates in the work of Ernst Troeltsch at the beginning of the twentieth century. In these cases, theological criteria determine both the objective of the comparison and its mode (Tracy 1987: 450). The same can be said of theologians such as Paul Tillich and Wolfhart Pannenberg. A somewhat different model of comparative theology takes the sacred Scriptures of the religions concerned as its point of departure. In the dialogue between Christians and Muslims the francophone Groupe de Recherches Islamo-Chrétien, formed in 1977 as an independent group of researchers with Christian and Muslim backgrounds, serves as an interesting example. Their basic assumptions are a climate of friendship facilitating free exchange of ideas on the one hand, and the requirements of scientific research on the other. The latter includes both profound knowledge of one’s religious tradition and adequate familiarity with the other tradition (GRIC 1989:2). The

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members of the group decided to study the Scriptures of both traditions because of their conviction that the mutual recognition of our respective scriptures raises serious questions that are at the heart of the friction between our religious traditions, and which have not as yet received an adequate reply. (GRIC 1989: 4)

This led to a new interpretation on both sides: a reassessment of the Qur’Ɨn in terms of the Christian faith (GRIC 1989: 47-76), and of the Bible in the light of Muslim faith (GRIC 1989: 76-86). Meanwhile, Roman Catholic systematic theology had developed its own mode of comparative theology, taking not Scripture but a certain traditional form of theology as its point of departure. Until the Second Vatican Council, the theological method in most Roman Catholic seminaries depended on medieval scholasticism. It was this argumentative method of scholastic theology for which the Muslim tradition of kalƗm could be considered an analogy. But, as Harry Austryn Wolfson made clear in his rich comparative history of this term, kalƗm was a development in all Abrahamic religions: in Arabic texts, it was a translation of the Greek word logos, but it could also be used as reference to a special branch of learning. Consequently, the term mutakallimnjn (“those who do kalƗm”) was used to indicate Jewish, Christian or Muslim theologians. Ibn Rushd, for instance, wrote about “the mutakallimnjn of the people of the three religions which exist today” (quoted in Wolfson 1976: 2). Therefore, one may speak about a Jewish and a Christian form of kalƗm, as Wolfson does (1976: 77111). Because of the resemblance between the rational methods used by Muslim kalƗm and the methods used by Christian scholastic theology, the word kalƗm is often translated as ‘speculative theology’ or ‘philosophical theology’ in the scholastic sense of this term (Watt 1985: 37; Abdul Haleem 1996: 71). This analogy between kalƗm and scholastic theology is the point of departure in a fascinating essay at comparative theology by Louis Gardet and M.-M. Anawati (1948). The specific place of kalƗm within the canon of Islamic sciences is caused by its prolific use of human reason (in this, it differs from fiqh) in discussing the articles of faith as its subject matter (in this, it differs from falsafa). Scholastic theology may be analogously situated between more ‘sapiential’ (or Augustinian) forms of theology, and philosophy. Yet the comparison between the method and content of Islamic kalƗm, on the one hand, and

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Patristic and scholastic theology on the other drove Gardet and Anawati to the conclusion that kalƗm is more akin to what is now called fundamental theology than to dogmatics, since Patristic and scholastic theology up to and including Thomas Aquinas remained oriented toward Scripture as its primary source, while Islamic kalƗm is more directly oriented toward its apologetic function (Gardet and Anawati 1948: 261. 258; Valkenberg 1998b: 26; 2000). The way in which Scripture is used in Christian apologetics, however, brings it close to the methods of kalƗm (Gardet and Anawati 1948: 312). This is an interesting result, since there is definitely some continuity between the ancient methods of apologetics and the modern situation of interreligious dialogue (Griffiths 1991). Moreover, it is now quite certain that there has been a culture of open debate in certain periods of medieval Islam (Griffith 1999). I will come back to this in the next chapter. Recent Forms of Comparative Theology The term ‘comparative theology’ is mainly used in contemporary scholarly research to refer to a particular group of theologians in the United States of America who have spent some years in Asia (Knitter 2002: 203). While the term is now often associated with developments in the American context, it must not be forgotten that comparative theology has been done in Asia as well, both by Christian theologians like Aloysius Pieris in Sri Lanka and by Hindu and Buddhist scholars. Moreover, in the United Kingdom and Continental Eur-ope a somewhat different school of comparative theology seems to be developing around the person of Keith Ward, professor emeritus at Oxford Univerity and his four essays in comparative theology: Religion and Revelation (Ward 1994), Religion and Creation (Ward 1996), Religion and Human Nature (Ward 1998) and finally Religion and Community (Ward 2000a). The main differences are probably that Ward extends his research to more than two religions and that his investigations are more thematically and more philosophically oriented than the investigations conducted by the group of scholars in the U.S.A. who remain closer to interpretations of texts. While the U.S. group around Francis Clooney at Boston College mainly consists of Roman Catholic theologians, the group around Keith Ward has a more

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Protestant outlook.5 A collection of essays, published on the occasion of Ward’s retirement as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University shows some of the characteristics of his approach (Bartel 2003). The same holds true for a number of contributions by Dutch scholars from the Free University at Amsterdam, with a reflection by Ward himself (Ward et al. 2001). In his Introducing Theologies of Religions Paul F. Knitter – concentrating on developments in the United States – presents compareative theology as a form of theology that tries to take a different approach to interreligious dialogue in a sense that is very similar to my wish to take interreligious dialogue seriously as a point of departure (locus theologicus) for theology. What would happen if Christians, in their efforts to develop a theology of religions, would start not with what Christian Scriptures and tradition have to say but what is heard in the sacred books and teachings of other religions? In other words, might the foundations for a theology of religions be found in dialogue rather than theology? (Knitter 2002: 203)

According to Stephen Duffy, theologies of religions may be characterized as a priori theologies with respect to interreligious dialogue, whereas comparative theology may be seen as a form of a posteriori theology (Duffy 1999). While Duffy thinks that these forms of theology may complement each other, James L. Fredericks, one of the leading comparative theologians in the United States, comes to the conclusion that the available models of Christian theology of religions do not succeed in providing Christians with the necessary tools to respond creatively to religious diversity (Fredericks 1999: 8). Some of them are able to show their faithfulness to the religious tradition to which they belong, but most of them are not able to help present-day believers make sense of religious plurality. In pluralist approaches, for instance, religious differences are declared to be religiously insignificant – which makes them significantly less interesting (Fredericks 1999: 115). The problems attending theologies of religions make clear how dubious this project is. Instead of using theology as a theoretical basis 5

During my visit to Boston in October, 2004, I noticed that the comparative theologians at Boston College cooperate with some of their Protestant colleagues at Boston University such as John Berthrong and Robert Cummings Neville.

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for dialogue, I propose to let dialogue be the basis, or praxis, of doing theology. Doing theology in dialogue with the others is not an attempt to provide a foundation or rationale for dialogue. Rather, what is called for is a theology that arises through dialogue. This is not a theology about interreligious dialogue, or a theology that justifies dialogue, but rather Christian theology itself carried out in dialogue with those who follow other religious paths (Fredericks 2004: 26)

Fredericks establishes two major differences between theologies of religions and comparative theologies. First of all, theologies of religions are theoretical approaches to religious diversity, whereas comparative theology is a process or practice and not a theory (Fredericks 1999: 9). Fredericks may overstate his case since some of the inclusivist or pluralist approaches pretend to start from the practice of interreligious dialogue as well: Paul Knitter, for instance, developed a model in which theology follows the practice of dialogue in analogy with the method of liberation theology, and Jacques Dupuis seems to adopt this method in the introduction to his Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Knitter 1987; Dupuis 1997). Fredericks is right, though, in arguing that actual dialogues with Hindus and others rarely shine through in the theoretical discourse of these theologies of religions. The second difference between both approaches relates to their dealing with differences. While theologies of religions focus on similarities and try to shape a theory that explains analogies between different religious traditions, comparative theologians try to learn from differences and deepen their own Christian tradition in doing so (Fredericks 1999: 168). In terms of the distinction between insider and outsider perspectives from chapter five, theologies of religions may be said to distance themselves from the traditions concerned in order to survey similarities, while comparative theologians refuse to step outside their own theological tradition. If this analysis of Fredericks’s point of view is correct, it raises a few questions. First of all, interreligious dialogue seems to be the point of departure for this type of theology and it seems to be its end as well, because this theology aims at helping Christians and Hindus to live responsibly and creatively with one another (Fredericks 1999: 168). Dialogue does not seem to be directly relevant for the development of this type of comparative theology, however, since its addressees are Christians who might use similarities and differences to enrich their own faith. In the process between the point of departure and the

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end, other religious traditions seem to function only for Christian selfunderstanding, since they are used as resources for Christians (Fredericks 1999: 151). In the second place, although the model of comparative theology refuses to take up a position outside the two insider perspectives of the religious traditions involved, it does not seem to treat these two perspectives as equals. The real challenge is to keep the tension between commitment to Christianity and openness to other religious truths creative, Fredericks says (1999: 170). In this respect, comparative theology seems to be akin to the approach of a scholar of religion who, in the words of Jacques Waardenburg quoted in the previous chapter, becomes a half-insider in another religious tradition, in order to return to his position as an outsider to that tradition. The comparative theologian seems to advocate only a weak form of multiple religious belonging, while theologians such as Raimon Pan-ikkar and Henri Le Saux would say that they experienced a more radical form of double belonging (Cornille 2002: 4) – though Peter C. Phan is probably right in underscoring the exceptionally radical position of Panikkar here (Phan 2003: 509). This distinction between a primary religious identification with Christianity, and a secondary religious identification with the partner’s religion seems to be crucial for the method of comparative theology, but it seems to lead to a bifurcation between two different levels of religious engagement as well: whereas comparative theologians should be intellectually well-versed in two different religious traditions, their religious affiliation remains distinctively Christian. As Francis Clooney says in a description of the form of comparative theology he endorses: this form of theology is distinguished by its sources and ways of proceeding, by its foundation in more than one tradition and by reflection that builds on this foundation, while the comparativist remains rooted in one tradition (Clooney 1995: 522; Renard 1998: 4). By insisting on its roots in Christian tradition, comparative theology may easily conform to the standards of Christian theology, yet at the same time renew it by a combination of historical and systematic methods (Renard 1998: 15). But Clooney is equally clear about the fact that this renewal extends to the comparativist as well: “the theologian must deal with the problems attendant upon crossing boundaries, as comparison turns out to be an event within the comparativist, who changes in the course of his or her effort to ap-

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propriate another tradition” (Clooney 1995: 529). John Berthrong, another Boston scholar of comparative theology, points out that one of the possible outcomes of this process may be labeled ‘syncretism’ (Berthrong 1994: 40), while at the same time he thinks that interreligious dialogue and multiple religious participation will not easily lead to dramatic changes in religious affiliation (Bertrong 1994: 182). Likewise, Clooney highlights the tension between “a necessary vulnerability to truth as one might find it and be affected by it in the materials studied, and loyalty to truth as one has already found it, lives it, and hopes according to it” (Clooney 1993: 5). Consequently, the distance between texts and reader is not as great as the term ‘comparative theology’ might suggest (Clooney 1993: 7). A comparative theologian is not only involved in reading and comparing texts but engaged in the faith and practices mentioned in these texts as well – this makes comparative theology a form of confessional theology (Clooney 2001: 26). Consequently, Christian convictions may remain intact, apparently without being deeply challenged by the viewpoint of another religion. Not because the immersion in the world of the text of the other religion is not deep enough or because the position of Christ as Savior would remain outside of the comparison but simply because comparative theologians approach other texts with a worldview that is so deeply shaped by the Biblical and Christian tradition that it would simply be unthinkable that these presuppositions would be eliminated by totally different presuppositions (Clooney 1990: 75). And yet, the reflection on conversion as one of the forms of multiple religious belonging in the previous chapter may lead comparative theologians to envisage the possibility of ‘passing over’ to the tradition of the texts in which they have immersed themselves, without ‘coming back’ to the tradition from which they originated. This possibility may be more threatening if one compares religions that are related to one another, such as the Abrahamic religions. Comparative Theology and Muslim-Christian Theology A final observation by Clooney may be used to introduce the way in which the method of comparative theology will be used in the remaining chapters of this book. Comparative theology is not just about comparing texts, but about comparing multilayered traditions that surround these texts, so to say, with a texture of interpretations (Clooney 1993: 22. 35). This has two consequences. In the first place, the text

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demands a commitment from the reader who should live up to the expectations that the text – imbedded in a religious tradition – expresses with regard to the lifestyle of the reader. This is the basic conviction behind the idea of a theological reading of Scripture as advocated by Stephen Fowl (Fowl 1997; 1998). If one reads a classical text by theologians like Thomas Aquinas or al-GhazƗlƯ, one cannot escape the feeling that their texts urge some practical consequences as result of their theological considerations: you, reader, you have to reframe your life if you want to be a true reader in this tradition. In the second place, the reading of a text from a theological tradition has to be connected with two worlds of interpretation: first, the existing world of interpretations in the religious tradition concerned which often leads to a multilayered world of interpretations inside a religious tradition as a space in which the debate over interpretations is waged and, second, the virtual world of interpretations from outside the tradition concerned. In this last case a Christian interpretation of a Muslim text may contribute not only to a rereading of the Christian tradition enriched with Muslim ideas but also to the dialogue between Christians and Muslims on the ideas embodied in the text and their practical consequences. Christian readers will decide whether such a re-reading contributes to the Christian tradition or not; Muslim readers will decide if it contributes to dialogue between them and Christians. In the two final chapters of this book I want to proceed along the lines just sketched, giving some exercises in Muslim-Christian theology with the dialogue between these religions as its point of departure. These exercises may also be seen as a contribution to developing comparative theology in the field of Abrahamic religions, which is still in the making (Knitter 2002: 207), mainly in strengthening the connection between interreligious dialogue and comparative theology. In keeping with the method of this book in its entirety, I did not choose the texts myself but will begin with those texts that seem to form spiritual nourishment for my Muslim partners in dialogue. Since they are mainly Turkish Muslims from the Islam and Dialogue Foundation, who refer to Fethullah Gülen as their source of inspiration, while Gülen’s main inspiration is to be found in the works of Said Nursi, the final chapter will be devoted to a reading of some of these sources. The Risale-i Nur is a body of texts by Said Nursi that presents itself as a commentary on the Qur’Ɨn, but it is of course only a minor part of the rich tradition of tafsƯr. It may be seen as a particular Ana-

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tolian Muslim subtradition from the first half of the twentieth century which may be connected to the Qur’Ɨn as its source through some intermediate texts that function as theological and spiritual interpretations. In the next chapter I will read texts by al-GhazƗlƯ as an intermediate interpretation of the Qur’Ɨn, since he is the greatest Muslim authority on the connection between theological (kalƗm) and spiritual (sufi) traditions. This fits in well with the way in which Nursi’s texts function in the Fethullah Gülen movement and with the way in which comparative theology should pay attention to the theological and spiritual dimensions of the texts concerned (Clooney 1994: 31).6 The connection between al-GhazƗlƯ and Said Nursi may be strengthened by paying more attention to two intermediate authors, viz. Jalalluddin RnjmƯ and Ibn ǥArabi than I have been able to do in this chapter. My method in reading the texts has been quite simple: I have just read through major parts of the IhyƗ ǥulnjm ad-DƯn by al-GhazƗlƯ and the Risale-i Nnjr by Said Nursi, noticing analogies between both texts and between these texts and my own theological and spiritual notions but also noticing major differences. These are usually the points where the reader develops either enthusiasm about the similarities or annoyance about the deviations from his or her expectations. I have tried to be as explicit as possible about my own theological background which has been formed by an intense reading of Thomas Aquinas. Therefore, I will open the next chapter with a short account of the interpretation of Aquinas that has inspired my reading – which is, of course, in itself also a subtradition within the gamut of interpretations of Aquinas who may himself be seen largely as an interpreter of Scripture (Valkenberg 2000).

6

Mrs. Jeannette Wolff, who studied with Francis Clooney at Boston College and received her M.A. in Religious Studies from the Radboud University, edits a newsletter on comparative theology in Nijmegen. The second issue of this newsletter (April, 2002) was dedicated to the subject of Spirituality and Theology as related to Comparative theology.

CHAPTER 7

Lights on the Way: Spiritual and Theological Masters of the Past This chapter focuses on the possible contribution of a Christian reading of Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-GhazƗlƯ (1058-1111 C.E.) to a Muslim-Christian theology. He may be called a theological and a spiritual master since he united in his person both traditions. More specifically, by choosing the Sufi path he made this way viable for the majority of Muslim scholars. In order to connect the comparative reading of al-GhazƗlƯ with the reading of Said Nursi in the next chapter, some attention will be given to Ibn al-ǥArabƯ and JalƗluddƯn RnjmƯ as well. However, we will begin with two preliminary subjects. In the first place, I will explain why I use the metaphor of ‘lights’ to indicate how the works of these spiritual and theological masters can help us on the way to God. In the second place I will clarify my own point of departure: Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-1274) and his theology on the hidden presence of God. 7.1 On Sharing Lights The aim of these exercises in comparative Muslim-Christian theology is to deepen interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims by investigating the spiritual and theological sources that motivate my Muslim partners to take part in this dialogue and to respond to these sources from the point of view of a Christian theologian who is involved in the Muslim tradition as well. When I started writing this book, I had Spirit of Dialogue in mind as its title. But while writing the previous chapter I noticed that an appeal to the word ‘spirit’ is likely to remind my Jewish and Muslim partners of the Christian Trinitarian approach to other religions – an association that would possibly jeopardize further possibilities for dialogue. At the same time, the metaphor of ‘light’ came up as a reference to a symbol that could be seen by all religions as a help on one’s way to God. More-

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over, the metaphor of ‘light’ would point to one of the major theological insights that I want to discuss in this chapter: the awareness that God cannot be approached in the same way as everything else in God’s creation. In the next section I will show how Thomas Aquinas expresses this awareness in the notion that we, despite all knowledge we might gather about God, still cannot know what God is. In one of his comparative studies David Burrell has coined the phrase “Knowing the unknowable God” for this insight (Burrell 1986). Light cannot usually be seen directly; but it makes it possible for us to see other things. In the same manner, God can be present and acting while human beings cannot perceive this acting directly in the same way as human actions. This basic insight regarding the difference between God’s acting as creator and human actions is another common point between the three Abrahamic traditions (Burrell 1993). The best metaphorical expression of this insight is, once again, light: “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light” (Psalm 36: 9). A few indications may suffice here to show the importance in the Abrahamic traditions of references to light as symbol of the hidden presence of God. As R.J. Zwi Werblowsky remarks, in the Hebrew Bible light is not only conceived as the beginning of creation (Gen. 1: 3), but it is a symbol of divine presence and salvation as well (Werblowsky 1987: 548). Some of the Qumran scrolls express the salvific connotation of light in their opposition between the ‘children of light’ and the ‘children of darkness’. The Jewish liturgy, first in the Temple and later in the synagogue, uses light not only as a metaphor for God’s glory (kavod) but also as a symbol that refers to God’s presence in God’s absence. While many symbolic forms of light are typical of the Jewish tradition, the ner tamid (eternal fire) that refers to God’s hidden presence by its uninterrupted shining, is represented in Christian and Muslim traditions as well (Wolfson 2004). In the Gospel according to John Christ calls himself ‘the Light of the world’ (John 8:12) – or the ‘Light of the Gentiles’, as the Second Vatican Council begins its fundamental text on the Church, Lumen Gentium – and he is believed to be “God of God, Light of Light” by Christians. Likewise, Christians took over many symbolic ceremonies including the use of oil lamps and candles in their liturgical settings but gave a new meaning to them in reference to Christ. The service of Light, including the Easter candle at the beginning of the Easter vigil, would be a significant case in point. At the same time, the Christian

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tradition points to the Spirit of God as an inner light in the hearts of the faithful, lumen cordium according to the famous sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus for Pentecost (Rikhof 2003: 83). Light symbolism plays an important part in most spiritual traditions as, for instance, in the prologue to Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum (Bonaventura 1996: 48). The awareness that God as Light is not visible to human eyes leads to such paradoxical phrases as ‘dark light’ in mystical writings from Pseudo-Dionysius to John of the Cross (Werblowsky 1987: 550; Schillebeeckx 1990: 100). For the Muslim tradition, it may suffice to refer to the ‘light verse’ in the Qur’Ɨn, which has been interpreted, among others, by both alGhazƗlƯ and Said Nursi because of its mystical significance: God is the Light of the heavens and earth. His Light is like this: there is a niche, and in it a lamp, the lamp inside the glass, a glass like a glittering star, fuelled from a blessed olive tree from neither east nor west, whose oil almost gives light even when no fire touches it – light upon light – God guides whoever He will to his Light; God draws such comparisons for people; God has full knowledge of everything – shining out in houses of worship. (Q 24: 35; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 223)

This ayƗt al-Nnjr is one of the most frequently interpreted texts in the history of tafsƯr (exegesis of the Qur’Ɨn). The commentaries come from all traditions in Islam: Sufi, theological and philosophical, Sunni and Shiǥite commentaries. The commentary by MullƗ SadrƗ from Shiraz, for instance, combines philosophical and theological, Sufi and Shiǥite elements (MullƗ SadrƗ ShƯrƗzƯ 2004: 12). 7.2 Thomas Aquinas and the Hidden Presence of God Before one embarks on a comparative reading, it is good to be explicit about one’s point of departure. My theological background has been formed by reading Thomas Aquinas both theologically and historically. Reading Aquinas theologically means focusing on the theological nature of his texts, whereas reading him historically implies taking into account the context in which he worked, the sources that influenced him and the ways in which his theology influenced later generations of theologians. In my dissertation (Valkenberg 2000) I showed how the theological nature of Aquinas’ systematic texts is connected with his notion of theology as sacra doctrina in which the theologian receives instruction of faith from Christ and other teachers

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and passes this instruction on to his pupils. Sacra doctrina equals sacra Scriptura because the theologian is by nature a reader and interpreter of Scripture. While the necessity of a historical reading of Aquinas may be obvious, the plausibility of a theological reading may be less so. Therefore, it may be good to explain one of its essential aspects in order to clarify the nature of my comparative reading of al-GhazƗlƯ. In the previous paragraph I wrote that ‘light’ may be a suitable metaphor for describing the manner in which God may be said to be present in God’s creation: just like the presence of light, this presence can be perceived only indirectly. The Abrahamic traditions, having developed a sizable amount of literature on the ways in which human beings can perceive the presence of God, were well aware that this perception and knowledge is almost always an indirect perception. The same holds true for the ways in which God can be known by human beings: this knowledge is not like the knowledge we may develop of other things. Because of the difference between God as creator and every created being, human knowledge of the Creator can only be analogical knowledge, in which the dissimilarities are at least as important as the similarities. In modern Christian approaches, this insight has led to various forms of negative theology but it may be found in some premodern approaches as well. In her book on the mystery of God in feminist theological discourse, for instance, Elizabeth A. Johnson refers to three insights from classical theology that may be helpful resources for the project of emancipatory speech about the mystery of God. All three insights may be derived from Aquinas’s theology: the doctrine of God’s hiddenness or incomprehensibility, the play of analogy in speech about the divine, and the consequent need for many names of God (Johnson 1992: 104). In more technical terms Edward Schillebeeckx seems to express a similar notion in one of his first theological contributions, dating from the middle of the twentieth century when the Nouvelle Théologie tried to find a place for its new epistemology in the environment of NeoScholasticism. In this contribution, Schillebeeckx looks for a non-conceptual element in our knowledge of God according to Aquinas, while remaining faithful to the Dominican tradition of intellectualism. Since the basis of human knowledge of God is always to be found in creatures, we can know of God only what creatures tell us about God (Schillebeeckx 1968: 162). This knowledge of God has a conceptual

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side but also a side that transcends conceptuality. While a likeness between creatures and God exists, this likeness escapes the reach of our conceptual knowledge. Because of the difference between Creator and creatures, God as res significata transcends our human ratio nominis. This leads Schillebeeckx to attribute a certain amount of ‘agnosticism’ to Aquinas: Again and again, whenever he asked what we really know of God, Aquinas gave the same answer – firstly, ‘quid non est’, and then, in immediate association with this, ‘qualiter alia se habent ad ipsum’. In other words, the modus divinus of a perfection can only be negatively and relatively situated. (Schillebeeckx 1968: 174)

Or, in somewhat more familiar terminology: Summing up Aquinas’s view of this problem, then, we must say that we know God positively, but that we cannot form any conceptual representation in our minds of God’s own mode of being, the modus eminentiae. To this end, we can only appeal to nomina negative and relative. That is to say that our conceptual representation is negative and relative (because it is creaturely), but as the expression or a positive and affirmative content which, however, remains, by definition, unexpressed and implicit. (Schillebeeckx 1968: 175-76)

From this point of departure Schillebeeckx goes on to explain Aquinas’ views on the role of the via affirmativa, the via negativa and the via eminentiae in the analogy of God and creatures, an insight that would remain an essential part of Schillebeeckx’s later theological writings (Schillebeeckx 1990: 76-77; 2005: 17). The ‘Utrecht Hypothesis’ on God’s Hidden Presence in Aquinas At the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht, the Netherlands, Thomas Aquinas is read theologically with special attention to the dialectics of the ‘hidden presence’ of God. Of course, such a reading takes its starting point from Aquinas’ texts, such as the opening words of the hymn Adoro Te Devote attributed to him. In the words Adoro te devote, latens Deitas / quae sub his figuris vere latitas, the godhead is adored as One who is truly hidden under the sign of the Sacrament (Rikhof 2003: 64). But, as with every reading of a classic text, this reading inserts itself into a tradition of interpretation of the text. In the case of the Utrecht reading of Aquinas, the Nouvelle théologie of the 1950s and more particularly Edward Schillebeeckx’s historical and theological reading of Thomas Aquinas under the influence of his confrère Marie-Dominique Chenu

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might be called its indirect source. Its direct source is the interpretation by David B. Burrell of Aquinas’s treatment of divinity in the first quaestiones of his Summa Theologiae as an exercise in grammar in which Aquinas does not so much give a well-defined doctrine of God as a reflection on the boundaries of creaturely language on the Creator (Burrell 1979: 13). In other words, the first pages of the Summa do not refer primarily to attributes of God but to formal features of our language about God (Rikhof 1988:21). In subsequent publications Burrell has shown how the dialectics of knowing the unknowable God is a common feature of those traditions that take into account the fundamental distinction between Creator and creatures (Burrell 1986; 1993). It is precisely this unfolding of the consequences of the philosophically complicated category of ‘creation’ that motivates Aquinas to talk about God “not only as he is in himself, but as the beginning and end of all things and of reasoning creatures especially” (Summa Theologiae I.2 prol.; tr. McDermott 1964: 3). This has as a consequence that “we cannot know what God is, but only what he is not; we must therefore consider the ways in which God does not exist, rather than the ways in which he does” (STh. I.3 prol.; tr. McDermott 1964: 19). Burrell concludes that the language that we use for created things must be used in a very special way if applied to the Creator; and yet we can use this language because the Creator is the beginning and end of all things (Burrell 1993: 11). The specific nature of this ‘Utrecht reading’ of Aquinas may be gauged by considering a polemical exchange of ideas between Jan Aertsen and Herwi Rikhof in the Dutch periodical Bijdragen (Aertsen 1994; Rikhof 1995). Aertsen, who worked together with the theologians of the Thomas Instituut for some time, mentions two characteristics of what he calls the “Thomas of Utrecht”: a special interest in Aquinas as theologian and a special stress on the linguistic element in his theology. Aertsen, however, sees a difference between Burrell and the Utrecht theologians: while Burrell has a philosophical agenda in making Aquinas understandable for the Anglo-American philosophical world in its linguistic turn, the Utrecht theologians use Aquinas’ attention to language to develop a theological hypothesis according to which theology is concerned with divine grammar (Aertsen 1994: 57). Aertsen gives a number of arguments for his conviction that the “Thomas of Utrecht” is not the real Thomas Aquinas, including the argument that such a negative ‘linguistic’ reading is a one-sided

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reaction to a Neo-Scholastic reading in which Aquinas is said to develop a philosophical doctrine of God. Consequently, Aquinas’ assertion in the prologue to STh I.3 that ”we cannot know what God is, but only what he is not” is taken as a negative statement without its underlying positive affirmation in the famous quinquae viae of STh I.2 that reason may prove the existence of God from his being the cause of all things (Aertsen 1994: 66). Aertsen points to the fact that the via negationis is but one of the three ways that are to be considered with respect to our natural knowledge of God. Aquinas accepts the tradition of apophatic theology but envelops it in his final summary on the knowledge of God by natural reason (STh I.12.12) as follows: The knowledge that is natural to us has its source in the senses and extends just so far as it can be led by sensible things; from these, however, our understanding cannot reach to the divine essence. Sensible creatures … are nevertheless effects depending from a cause, and so we can at least be led from them to know of God that he exists and that he has whatever must belong to the first cause of all things which is beyond all that is caused. Thus we know about his relation to creatures – that he is the cause of them all; about the difference between him and them – that nothing created is in him; and that his lack of such things is not a deficiency in him but due to his transcendence (tr. McCabe 1964: 41).

Furthermore, Aertsen denies that Aquinas begins his doctrine of God by formulating rules on how to talk about God with respect to divine simplicity as a formal feature (Burrell 1979: 18), asserting that the compositeness of created things does not refer to a formal feature of our language but to the mode of being of these things (Aertsen 1994: 68). In his reply Herwi Rikhof, director of the Thomas Instituut, points to the fact that Aertsen passes over the theological backgrounds of the ‘Utrecht hypothesis’. To begin with, one cannot reduce this hypothesis to paying attention to Aquinas’s remarks on language. It is true that Aquinas pays close attention to the status of our God-language, but as a theologian he is aware of the fact that this language is derived from the language of Scripture in the first place.1 This is why Aquinas starts his Summa Theologiae by discussing the status of theology as sacra 1

“These two emphases on Aquinas as an apophatic theologian and on Thomas as a scriptural theologian converge in the work of the scholars associated with the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht” (Bauerschmidt 2004: 181 nt. 34).

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doctrina (Rikhof 1995: 435; Valkenberg 2000: 9-11). Moreover, Aquinas’ words regarding God as the “beginning and end of all things” in the prologue to STh I.2 clearly betray his theological viewpoint on God as creator of heaven and earth. As the context of the analysis by David Burrell makes clear, he recognizes this theological characteristic of Aquinas’ language as well: his insistence that Aquinas “is engaged in the metalinguistic project of mapping out the grammar appropriate in divinis” (Burrell 1979: 17) is an aspect of creation as a “central though often hidden element in Aquinas’ philosophical discourse” (Burrell 1979: 136). In his later publications Burrell gives an extensive treatment of the importance of the connection between God and creation, not only in Christian theology but in Jewish and Muslim thinkers as well (Burrell & McGinn 1990; Burrell 1993). In this respect Aertsen would agree with Burrell and Rikhof that the texts on natural knowledge of God in STh I.2 cannot be seen as an apex of philosophical inquiry but must be seen as the beginning of a theological inquiry on the relation between God’s being and human knowledge. Rikhof points to the fact that Aquinas’ procedure would seem quite shocking to those who expect him to end up with a clear doctrine of God. He does not begin with what we can say about God, but he begins by removing all forms of compositeness as not applicable to God. Therefore, he starts with divine simplicity (STh I.3) which is, in fact, the result of a series of negations: God is not a body, not composed of ‘matter’ and ‘form’, not composed of ‘genus’ and ‘species’, etc. While Burrell contends that this is a grammatical analysis, Aertsen prefers to read it as an ontological interpretation, because, according to Rikhof’s analysis, Aertsen does not see that attention to language does not detract from attention to being. In this respect, Rikhof says, Aertsen’s interpretation has much in common with NeoScholastic interpretations (Rikhof 1995: 445). Finally, Rikhof points to the theological background of Aquinas’ ‘negative’ approach: if we cannot know what God is but can only know God as creator or cause by considering creatures as the effects of God’s creation (STh I.12.12), this yields as positive result that we become aware of our position as creatures. We cannot comprehend God’s essence or see God’s essence as long as we are in this life. Our situation as creatures imposes limits on our language about God, which language can be only analogical. Aquinas’ negative language

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makes us aware not only of what we are saying but also of our situation as creatures. Again, Aertsen seems to suspect that such a form of knowledge cannot be real knowledge. For a theologian who knows that this expurgated God-talk is embedded in sacra doctrina as receiving and transmitting the instruction of faith to others, the result is not that negative (Rikhof 1995: 449). This discussion might seem quite technical and rather remote from Christian-Muslim dialogue, yet it specifies my point of departure in reading al-GhazƗlƯ and other Muslim authors. Starting from the ‘Utrecht hypothesis’ about the hidden presence of God that is exemplified in the theological approach of Thomas Aquinas, I want to explore whether Muslim theologians display a similar awareness of limits and possibilities of knowing the unknown God. My presumption here is that the category of ‘creation’ as used by Christians and Muslims indicates such an awareness of the relation between Creator and creatures, since this word expresses both a connection and a fundamental distinction. While the notion of ‘fundamental distinction’ implies that the difference is so immense that hardly any language seems to be able to bridge it, the notion of ‘connection’ suggests that the difference has been bridged by a God who was willing to bestow being on creatures in such a way that they may participate in God’s being (Burrell 1999a: 216). Against a certain tendency in the Utrecht hypothesis to underscore mainly the negative side of this theological approach, while leaving the positive side unexplored, I want to do justice to both sides in my research on differences and similarities between Christian and Muslim ways of specifying this relation between Creator and creatures. One way to do this is to pay special attention to the last of the three Thomistic instruments mentioned by Elizabeth Johnson: the need for many names for God. This will connect the central place of Aquinas’ question concerning naming God in STh I.13 (Burrell 1979: 58; Rikhof 1988) with the Muslim tradition of al-asmƗ’ al-husnƗ: the ninety-nine beautiful names of God. 7.3 Abu Hamid Muhammad al-GhazƗlƯ (1058-1111) One of the features that distinguishes the theological nature of comparative theology from a more historical approach is that comparative theology is not particularly interested in questions of literary influences. Since Thomas Aquinas was born more than a century after alGhazƗlƯ, he could have been in contact with his work, and indeed

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Aquinas mentions the name of Algazel a few times. These few quotations, however, would give a skewed impression of al-GhazƗlƯ’s position, since they only summarize philosophical positions in the world of Islam. Since there was no real theological communication between Muslim theologians and Latin Christianity in Aquinas’ time, as I explained in chapter four, research into structural affinities and dissimilarities in the deep structure of theological texts is more promising for theological purposes (Burrell 1989: 173). In reading some of al-GhazƗlƯ’s theological works I will not, however, refer to such affinities time and again, because my aim is to contribute to interreligious dialogue with Muslims. Keeping Aquinas’s theological approach at the back of my mind, I will show how a theological reading of al-GhazƗlƯ may contribute to Christian theology – while hoping that some Muslims will read Aquinas to see how he may contribute to Muslim theology. From a certain point of view it would be quite obvious to compare Aquinas and al-GhazƗlƯ (and Maimonides, for that matter) since they have a comparable position as theological authorities in the religions concerned. Richard Gramlich, for instance, says that al-GhazƗlƯ is in the opinion of most Muslim and non-Muslim scholars the greatest theologian of Islam (Gramlich 1984: v) and the same could be said of Aquinas in Christian theology. Of course, this position of authority is debatable – and in fact it has been debated from time to time: both Aquinas and al-GhazƗlƯ (and Maimonides, for that matter) have been condemned as non-orthodox by some rival groups but both have subsequently been considered authoritative theological voices in their respective theological traditions for a long time (Küng 2004: 448). Some remarkable differences between both theologians should be noted as well, however. While al-GhazƗlƯ evidently is a “pastoral theologian” in the sense that he “set out to provide an overall structure of religious living for spiritual seekers” (Renard 2004: 45), Aquinas, though not lacking in pastoral attention, does not show this pastoral or practical side everywhere in his systematic works. While he does show concern for practical matters in the theology of human fulfillment, virtues and sacraments in his Summa Theologiae (Farina 2005), such concerns seem absent in Aquinas’s theology on God and creation. This aloofness might lead one to conclude that al-GhazƗlƯ might better be compared with Augustine or Bonaventure (Burrell 1987: 176). In fact, Heinrich Frick has compared GhazƗlƯ’s Munqidh

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with Augustine’s Confessiones as two instances of spiritual autobiographies (Frick 1919).2 A comparative theological reading of Aquinas and al-GhazƗlƯ brings to light some affinities and some differences at the structural level of their theological inquiries, because they wrestled in different contexts with analogous problems (Burrell 1987: 180; 1989: 173; 1999: 148; 2000: 68-74; Küng 2004: 438).3 In my reading of al-GhazƗlƯ, though, the basic idea that acquaintace with Thomas Aquinas may provide good access to al-GhazƗlƯ’s theology is more important than explicit comparisons. It would be tempting to focus such a comparative theological reading on al-GhazƗlƯ’s magisterial IhyƗ’ ǥUlnjm al-DƯn (the ‘Revival of the Religious Sciences’), and in due time I will consider some paragraphs to small selections from this work. Before that, in order to gain a better understanding of the context of his life and work, I want to pay attention to three different works of a smaller scale, viz. his spiritual autobiography Munqidh min al-DalƗl (‘The Deliverance from Error’), his treatise MishkƗt al-anwƗrƯ (‘Niche of Lights’) on the socalled ‘light verse’ in the Qur’Ɨn, and his treatise on the ninety-nine beautiful names of God. To begin with, however, I will show the diversity of the ways in which theologians, Islamicists and other scholars have approached al-GhazƗlƯ and his work in the twentieth century. Of course, this cannot be more than a short survey, but it sheds some light on a particular form of Christian-Muslim dialogue. 7.3.1 Approaches to his Life and Work Many authors have expressed their astonishment at the fact that so little is known of the life of Abnj HƗmid Muhammad al-GhazƗlƯ, who lived from 450 to 505 according to the Muslim calendar, and from 1058 to 1111 according to the Western calendar. If one takes his Munqidh as an autobiographical work, it still does not yield much bio2

On a metaphysical level, the transformative effect of the encounter with the divine would be the point of departure for comparing Bonaventure with theologians from other, even non-Abrahamic theological traditions (Carpenter 1995: 174). 3 I am grateful to Sister Marianne Farina C.S.C. for sharing the comparative theological approach in her doctoral dissertation, Moral Goodness and Friendship with God: the Moral Teachings of Aquinas and Ghazali with me.

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graphical evidence, apart from the fact that GhazƗlƯ’s main interest in this work was not biographical at all. The main facts of his life may be enumerated quickly (Bouyges 1959: 1-6). Abnj HƗmid Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad alGhazƗlƯ was born in Tnjs in present-day Iran in 450/1058. For his studies in fiqh (religious law) and kalƗm (theology), he went to Nishapur where he was introduced by JuwaynƯ to the Ash‘arite system of theology. After JuwaynƯ died, al-GhazƗlƯ was protected by the Saljuqid vizier NizƗm al-Mulk, who founded a famous academy, the madrasa NizƗmiya in Baghdad, where al-GhazƗlƯ went to teach in 484/1091. Although his post was a very prestigious one, al-GhazƗlƯ left it to withdraw completely from public life in 488/1095. In his Munqidh he writes about a serious crisis, yet its precise nature is not exactly known. Nor is it known where al-GhazƗlƯ stayed during his lengthy retreat; he probably went to Syria and Jerusalem, made a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, and then went back to Syria. From 493/1099 on he seemed to have been in Tnjs once again, where he led a retired life in a Sufi community. In 499/1106, al-GhazƗlƯ returned to teach in the NizƗmiya academy at Nishapur, only to retreat once again to his former existence at Tnjs in 503/1109. He died there a few years later, in 505/1111. These sudden changes suggest that al-GhazƗlƯ’s life was strongly influenced by both external powers (political or theological influences) and internal struggles (philosophical, theological and spiritual questions). In his Munqidh al-GhazƗlƯ alludes to such influences several times, but their precise nature remains unclear. The title of this work,4 al-Munqidh min al-dalƗl (‘The Deliverance from Error’) seems to indicate some severe troubles, since Muslims will associate the verb dalla (‘to err, to go astray’) with the last word of surat al-fƗtiha: “those who have gone astray.” So the title of this ‘spiritual autobiography’ echoes the last sentence of this famous Qur’Ɨnic prayer: “Guide us to the straight path: the path of those You have blessed, those who incur no anger and who have not gone astray” (Q. 1: 6; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 3). The title of al-GhazƗlƯ’s principal work, IhyƗ’ 4

The full title continues with a second part of which there are two versions: “what saves from error and manifests the states of the soul,” and “what saves from error and unites with the Possessor of power and glory” (McCarthy 1980: xxv).

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ǥulnjm al-dƯn or “Revivification of the Religious Sciences” implies a similar solicitude: apparently GhazƗlƯ thinks that true religion and study of it is endangered or even extinct in his time. Titles of Arabic books are often more pathetic than their English equivalents, yet they indicate a sense of distress that probably lies behind al-GhazƗlƯ’s decisions to quit public life, resume it and quit it once again. Meanwhile, these sudden changes make it possible to divide GhazƗlƯ’s life into four periods: his student life and first teaching period, his first retreat, his second teaching period, and his second retreat. While most of the works analyzed in this chapter have been written by al-GhazƗlƯ in the period of his first retreat, between 1095 and 1106, his Munqidh clearly belongs to a later period since in it he refers to his having resumed teaching; it might have been written between 1107 and 1109 (Bouyges 1959: 71). Approaches to al-GhazƗlƯ Because al-GhazƗlƯ is, according to many, one of the greatest theologians in the history of Islam, his works have been studied by many other theologians, not least among them Christians. It is remarkable that some of them studied parts of GhazƗlƯ’s works that seemed to represent an approach at variance with their own theological preferences. Two Dutch Protestant theologians, for instance, defended their dissertations on al-GhazƗlƯ at Leiden University around the time of the Second World War. A closer look at these two dissertations may be instructive for the contexts in which Muslim authors are studied by Christian theologians and the approaches that they take. In 1938 Herman Henry Dingemans defended his thesis on the ‘book of love’ from al-GhazƗlƯ’s IhyƗ’ ǥUlnjm al-DƯn. In this work Dingemans joins the Dutch tradition of orientalism: he mentions not only A.J. Wensinck as the supervisor of his thesis but Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and Ignace Goldziher as his sources of inspiration (Dingemans 1938). These names are connected with the beginnings of the modern study of Islam in Western Europe. Goldziher (1850-1921), a Hungarian Jewish scholar, often went to Leiden and had frequent contacts with Snouck Hurgronje (Waardenburg 1962: 11-15). He clearly sympathized with al-GhazƗlƯ’s turn to Sufism and mentioned his book on love for God as a favorable exception among theological works (Waardenburg 1962: 70). Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (18571936) was a civil servant in the Dutch Indies between 1889 and 1906

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and had a position at Leiden University before and after that period. Contrary to Goldziher, Snouck Hurgronje did not particularly sympathize with Islamic mysticism, which he described as alien to proper Islam. In general, his approach to Islam was much more detached than that of Islamicists like Goldziher or Massignon (Waardenburg 1962: 77-8). The same detached attitude is visible in the thesis by Dingemans, supervised by Arend Jan Wensinck, Snouck Hurgronje’s successor, who published an introduction to al-GhazƗlƯ’s thought in 1940. Dingemans distances himself from less scholarly approaches by the Spanish priest Miguel Asín Palacios and others who apparently felt more affinity with al-GhazƗlƯ’s mystical inclinations (Dingemans 1936: 8-10). Herman Henry Dingemans did not pursue a scholarly career as an Islamicist but served in the Dutch Indies, just as Snouck Hurgronje did. The connection between the study of al-GhazƗlƯ and the question of Islamic mysticism in the Dutch Indies is even clearer in the second thesis. This thesis was defended by Arend Theodoor van Leeuwen at Leiden University in 1947, under the supervision of the famous Hendrik Kraemer who was at that time Professor of the History and Phenomenology of religion. Kraemer (1888-1965), who influenced the International Missionary Council with his book The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (Kraemer 1938), worked as a missionary in the Dutch Indies from 1922 to 1928 and from 1930 to 1935 (Waardenburg 1973: 643). He wrote his dissertation on a mystical text from Java, the most important island of the Dutch Indies. Like many Protestant theologians working as missionaries, he became fascinated by the phenomenon of mysticism but could not give it a place in his own theological approach. Mysticism reminded him of monistic religions in which syncretism thrives and collides with the totally different approach of prophetic religions (Kraemer 1956: 403). He therefore disagreed with Tillich’s method of reconciliation, which culminates in mysticism (Kraemer 1956: 443). For the same reason, he did not agree with what he and his pupil Van Leeuwen would call the ‘Catholic approach’ to al-GhazƗlƯ. In this context a short fragment of his wonderful book World Cultures and World Religions: The Coming Dialogue from 1960 is worth quoting, including the footnote: Ghazzali had great significance for the development of philosophical-theological thinking in mediaeval scholasticism, for two reasons. This towering figure in Muslim theology, who went through a

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stormy inner crisis, made his peace with orthodox Islam by interpreting it in a mystical way – [footnote] In his famous work, also known in the Latin West, the Ihya’ ǥUlnjm addƯn (i.e. revivification of the Science of Religion, that is to say Islam). The great Spanish Orientalist Asin Palacios therefore interprets Ghazzali as having produced in his works, written after his crisis, a Christianized version of Islam (cf. Asin’s Islam cristianizado). This very interesting attempt is fully understandable in a Roman Catholic theologian, who is at the same time a great scholar in Arabic and Islam, because the mediaeval theologians who still have great standing in R.C. theology are all pervaded by a spirit deriving from a latent or patent synthesis of “Faith” (revelation) and mysticism [end of footnote] – thereby securing a legitimate place for mysticism in Islam; a problem which had remained for many centuries undecided. (Kraemer 1960: 48)

From his point of view, Kraemer notes many similarities between Thomas Aquinas and al-GhazƗlƯ: their theological approach, the structure of their works, the problems they face and the solutions they try to find and not the least the way in which they try to combine rational thinking and mysticism (Kraemer 1960: 50). In the end, though, Kraemer cannot live with such a combination; for him, there can only be an antinomy between self-awakening and revelation, between mythology and history and between mysticism and incarnation (Kraemer 1960: 374-75). Arend Theodoor van Leeuwen did not only write his thesis on alGhazƗlƯ under the supervision of Kraemer, but he followed him in many respects, as missionary worker in the Dutch Indies, as afamous theologian in the circles of the World Council of Churches and finally as a Barthian theologian subordinating dialogue with the world religions to dialogue with secular society in its Marxist form. His book Christianity in World History (van Leeuwen 1964) is no less visionary than Kraemer’s The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. Nevertheless, this thoroughly Protestant theologian ended his theological career at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, some twenty years ago. Just like Kraemer, he had an eye for differences and possibilities in the fields of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. Therefore, his thesis on the person and work of al-GhazƗlƯ and his approach to other interpretations of this Muslim theologian are of major interest. In the introduction to his dissertation van Leeuwen remarks that all interpretations of the life and works of al-GhazƗlƯ are strongly in-

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fluenced by the theological and spiritual backgrounds of the interpreters, even if they present themselves as scholars of religion. He distinguishes three traditions of interpretation. In the first place, the Roman Catholic interpretation by authors such as Miguel Asin Palacios, Carra de Vaux and Max Horten (Van Leeuwen 1947: 4-8) who mainly try to find harmony between al-GhazƗlƯ’s inclination towards an ethical and mystical type of religion and the same type of religion in the Roman Catholic Church. The second approach is characterized by Van Leeuwen as an interpretation that places al-GhazƗlƯ in the history of culture and tries to find the key to his personality in some Western philosophical or cultural influence on Islam. In this group Van Leeuwen mentions the classical orientalist interpretations by Wensinck, Goldziher, Snouck Hurgronje and Macdonald (Van Leeuwen 1947: 9-13). The third approach is called the ‘modernist’ interpretation since it has been influenced by modern subjective and romantic ideas of religiosity. The two authors mentioned here, Heinrich Frick and J. Obermann, are Van Leeuwen’s main interlocutors, because the biases of modernity are most evident in their interpretations. Underscoring the fact that his own interpretation is theological, Van Leeuwen sketches al-GhazƗlƯ as an apologist of Islam. Against the Roman Catholic “harmony-mania” (Van Leeuwen 1947: 8) that sees mysticism as the apogee of his work, Van Leeuwen underscores that al-GhazƗlƯ wanted to save the essentially conservative religious system in which he lived (Van Leeuwen 1947: 39). Against the subjective modernist approach he emphasizes that alGhazƗlƯ did not write a spiritual autobiography or an apology for his personal choices, but an apologia pro vita sua that was meant as apologia pro doctrina sua at the same time (Van Leeuwen 1947: 22). The main thesis of his book is that al-GhazƗlƯ was a reformer who wanted to canonize mysticism in the broader tradition of Islam yet failed because he could not control the growth of extremely pantheistic mysticism despite his authority in the world of Islam (Van Leeuwen 1947: 12). Both Dingemans and Van Leeuwen are but minor figures in the history of the interpretation of al-GhazƗlƯ. Yet they contributed to the Western orientalist approach that has dominated scholarly research of al-GhazƗlƯ. Needless to say, Van Leeuwen did not only unmask the theological bias of others but openly showed his own theological bias as well. For me, as a Roman Catholic theologian, it is clear how his

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theological background caused him to interpret al-GhazƗlƯ with the same suspicion that marks his general approach to other religions – bearing in mind that another author from a different background may unmask my theological presuppositions as well. In the meantime, it is significant that the study of al-GhazƗlƯ by Western scholars of religion and theologians has been very isolated from Muslim traditions of interpretation. Even Richard McCarthy only mentions one or two Muslim names in his summary of scholarly approaches to GhazƗlƯ’s Munqidh (McCarthy 1980: xxiv-lx). The fact that I cannot add many names of Muslims scholars shows that comparative Muslim-Christian theology with reference to al-GhazƗlƯ is still in its infancy. 7.3.2 Deliverance from Error Although al-GhazƗlƯ wrote his Munqidh min al-dalƗl somewhat later than the other works that will be surveyed in this book, it is good to begin by analyzing some major aspects of this work, since it gives a basic idea of the context of al-GhazƗlƯ’s writing. The Munqidh, albeit not an autobiography in the modern sense of the word, describes the Muslim world in which al-GhazƗlƯ lived, and delineates the functions of philosophy, theology, authoritative teaching and Sufism in this world. Nowadays, it may function as guide for those who look for spiritual guidance as well, mainly because al-GhazƗlƯ’s doubts seem akin to those of many students of religious studies, while his search for true knowledge is not unlike the quest for authenticity in modern forms of spirituality. When I studied al-GhazƗlƯ’s Munqidh for the first time, I had these modern questions at the back of my mind, as I was preparing a seminar for graduate students of our religious studies program in Nijmegen. This seminar on ‘the spiritual autobiography of al-GhazƗlƯ in the area of tension between dogmatics and spirituality’ was offered in 1996 jointly with the incumbent of the chair of spirituality, Dr. Kees Waaijman. Two years later we offered a similar course on the spiritual poems of Jalaluddin RnjmƯ. The close collaboration with the study of spirituality (Waaijman 2002) and the many exchanges during the seminars have stimulated and enriched my readings of al-GhazƗlƯ and RnjmƯ. For my interpretation of GhazƗlƯ’s Munqidh I use Farid Jabre’s edition of the Arabic text, together with his French translation (alGhazƗlƯ 1959; Jabre 1959). William Montgomery Watt has published an English translation of this work, together with the second book of

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al-GhazƗlƯ’s IhyƗ’ ǥUlnjm al-DƯn, under the title The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazálí (Watt 1994). Richard Joseph McCarthy’s translation (McCarthy 1980) has been republished as Al-Ghazali’s Path to Sufism and his Deliverance from Error (McCarthy 2000). If I have used words such as ‘spiritual autobiography’, ‘spiritual crisis’ and ‘search for true knowledge’ in the previous paragraphs, I must hasten to add that these words cannot be taken in their modern sense, since al-GhazƗlƯ was a spiritual seeker in a very different time and with a very different idiom. Yet the quest for God expressed in this idiom may be familiar to those of us in the modern West who read his books with some awareness of our Christian background. In his introduction to the new edition of McCarthy’s translation, David Burrell draws attention to some sentences from the Munqidh that might appeal to those of us who are in academic positions, a sort of daǥwa that is not unlike the effect of comparative theology on the alert reader, according to Francis Clooney. Al-GhazƗlƯ writes: I reflected on my intention in my public teaching and I saw that it was not directed purely to God, but rather was instigated and motivated by the quest for fame and widespread prestige .… Mundane desires began tugging me with their chains to remain as I was, while the herald of faith was crying out: “Away! Up and away! Only a little is left of your life, and a long journey lies before you! All the theory and practice in which you are engrossed is eyeservice and fakery! If you do not prepare now for the afterlife, when will you do so? And if you do not sever these attachments now, then when will you sever them?” (tr. McCarthy 2000: 53-54)

If one wants to be a follower of true religion, one has to be aware of the choices one makes in one’s life and one’s motives in making these choices. This practical appeal that is so conspicuous in al-GhazƗlƯ’s texts is somewhat equivalent to the practical applications in Thomas Aquinas’ sermons (Valkenberg 1987). Yet, while systematic theology and practical application are two different genres in Aquinas, they are parts of the same genre in al-GhazƗlƯ. The difference can be explained as a matter of personal style, but the religion concerned entails some difference as well: while Christianity is more concerned with right doctrine, Islam (and Judaism, for that matter) is more concerned with right practice. Thus, when al-GhazƗlƯ writes that the aim of his work is “to give you an account of my travail in disengaging the truth from amid the welter of the sects” (tr. McCarthy 2000: 17), this ‘truth’ is in-

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timately connected with certain religious practices, exemplified by the religious customs of Sufi tarƯqƗt or brotherhoods. The first part of the Munqidh contains a survey of the different ways in which al-GhazƗlƯ tried to find the truth. He distinguishes four ways that would lead, according to the adherents of these ways, to truth and salvation. The diversity of these ways is a source of uncertainty, for every group claims to have found truth, and therefore alGhazƗlƯ – not being able to live with conformism (taqlƯd) and authoritative knowledge – set out to find the truth for himself from his youth. In this inquiry he uses a rather strict definition of ‘true knowledge’: Then it became clear to me that sure and certain knowledge is that in which the thing known is made so manifest that no doubt clings to it, nor is it accompanied by the possibility of error and deception, nor can the mind even suppose such a possibility. (tr. McCarthy 2000: 20)

This definition sounds a bit like René Descartes’ concepts claires et distinctes. Indeed, the self-induced fundamental doubts of GhazƗlƯ are not unlike Descartes’ methodical doubt, but the character of the search for true knowledge is quite different in both authors (Van Leeuwen 1947: 31-39). GhazƗlƯ describes himself as a “skeptic in fact, but not in utterance and doctrine” (tr. McCarthy 2000: 23), since he could not rely on sense data or rational judgement nor could he believe the Sufi claim that the present life is like a state of sleep compared with the afterlife. His doubts ended not with rational proofs but by means of “the effect of a light which God Most High cast into my breast. And that light is the key to most knowledge” (tr. McCarthy 2000: 23). Saved by God’s Light The interpretation of the words “by a light (nnjr) that God the Highest threw (qadhafa) in my breast (sadr)” (al-GhazƗlƯ 1959: 13) is of major importance for our understanding of the work in its entirety. The word ‘breast’ refers to the heart as the seat of the intellect and basis for human understanding (McCarthy 2000: 89). The word ‘light’ refers to God in the first place, as our reading of GhazƗlƯ’s MishkƗt al-anwƗr will make clear. In line with the famous ‘light verse’ in the Qur’Ɨn, it may refer to several phenomena in the created world that reflect this light in a more or less pure form. The purest form would be, for alGhazƗlƯ, the light of the Prophet (nnjr mishkƗt al-nubnjwa, “the light of the niche of prophecy,” al-GhazƗlƯ 1959: 39), while the verb ‘to cast,

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to throw’ suggests a form of revelation as well. So it seems that alGhazƗlƯ was freed from his doubts when God gave him a special illumination. The effect of this light is that the breast (heart) is expanded so that it is able to receive the truth, as it is said in the Qur’Ɨn: “He whom God wishes to guide aright, He dilates his breast for submission to God” (Q. 6: 125, tr. McCarthy 2000: 23). In my interpretation, somewhat contrary to McCarthy (2000: 90), the point would then be that human beings may and must search for the truth in all directions, but that real truth comes to them only when God illuminates their heart. This requires an attitude of being “most diligent in seeking the truth,” since, as GhazƗlƯ explains, “that light gushes forth from the divine liberality at certain times, and one must be on the watch for it” (tr. McCarthy 2000: 24). My Christian reading of alGhazƗlƯ would suggest that he ascribes his salvation to a combination of being receptive to God’s grace and actively seeking the truth for oneself. Neither activism nor quietism is the right attitude for one who wants to find the truth and live accordingly. If my interpretation is correct, it may clarify why al-GhazƗlƯ did not find this truth with three of the four groups whose claims to truth he investigated. The first group consists of the mutakallimnjn who practice kalƗm, i.e. rational theology or, more precisely, defensive apologetics (Gardet and Anawati 1948; McCarthy 2000: 82). They are described as people “who allege that they are men of independent judgment and reasoning” (tr. McCarthy 2000: 24). One may expect alGhazƗlƯ to reproach them for their exaggerated confidence in the powers of their reasoning. The same criticism would apply to the second group, the philosophers (al-falƗsifa), although at this place al-GhazƗlƯ criticizes them less than the apologetic theologians. One may wonder why al-GhazƗlƯ is so critical of those whose theological approach is so akin to his. A likely answer would be that he chides them with overconfidence in reason with respect to sacred matters. A comparative theologian may think of Karl Barth who applies St. Paul’s analysis of the relation between Gentiles and Jews to the relation between atheists and the church in his commentary on Romans 9-11. In a certain sense, Barth writes, God has less problems with people who are honestly non-religious than with people who fashion God’s image according to their secret desires. God likes the heathen better than the church because they have no religion on which to pride themselves (Barth 1924: 314-409). In a similar vein, confi-

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dence in reason is more adequate in philosophers than in theologians, because the latter are dealing with matters divine. Apart from this, al-GhazƗlƯ thinks that the science of kalƗm actually has a limited purpose: A group of the mutakallimnjn did indeed perform the task assigned to them by God. They ably protected orthodoxy and defended the creed which had been readily accepted from the prophetic preaching and boldly counteracted the heretical innovations. But in doing so they relied on premises which they took over from their adversaries, being compelled to admit them either by uncritical acceptance, or because of the Community’s consensus, or by simple acceptance deriving from the Qur’Ɨn and the Traditions. Most of their polemic was devoted to bringing out the inconsistencies of their adversaries and criticizing them for the logically absurd consequences of what they conceded. This, however, is of little use in the case of one who admits nothing at all except the primary and self-evident truths. So kalƗm was not sufficient in my case, nor was it a remedy for the malady of which I was complaining. (tr. McCarthy 2000: 26)

This passage reminds me of the beginning of the so-called Summa contra Gentiles by Thomas Aquinas and his awareness that the manner of speaking to theological outsiders is determined by the kind of argumentation accepted by them. Such a form of theology that defends one’s faith with a view to outsiders is determined by the rule, quidquid recipitur, secundum modum recipientis recipitur (Valkenberg 1998b). Therefore, ǥilm al-kalƗm cannot simply be translated as “the science of Theology” (Watt 1994: 27), because al-GhazƗlƯ refers to a very limited and historically determined form of theology. Fighting non-believers and heretics may lead to an apologetic or political victory, but it does not lead to the kind of certainty for which alGhazƗlƯ is looking. Although he wrote a number of polemical works against philosophers and the bƗtinƯya, these are certainly not alGhazƗlƯ’s most important works. Thus, even if his polemical work, Radd al-jamƯl, against the divinity of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels is authentic (Wilms 1966: 33-40), it would not be the best way for Christian readers to meet al-GhazƗlƯ as a theologian. In his Munqidh al-GhazƗlƯ goes into a lengthy discussion on the merits of philosophy and the various categories of philosophers. Apparently, their profound thinking influenced him more than the mediocrity of the mutakallimnjn. Yet the third group might be even more important, since their thinking was an imminent danger to the

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world of Sunni Islam, even though it presents itself as an authentic Muslim tradition. Al-GhazƗlƯ refers to this third group as bƗtinƯya (alGhazƗlƯ 1959: 15), which can be translated as the ‘people of the hidden meaning’, those who have a certain madhhab al-taǥlƯm (alGhazƗlƯ 1959: 28), a ‘theory of instruction’. This group relies on the instruction of an infallible religious leader, who is said to be the only one who can explain the hidden meaning of God’s revelation. Contrary to theologians and philosophers, they do not trust in reason at all but accept guidance from a religious authority. As Jabre notes, this form of Shiǥite Islam posed a political threat for al-GhazƗlƯ since one of the ‘people of the hidden meaning’ murdered his patron NizƗm alMulk (Jabre 1959: 14. 85). In his criticism of this group GhazƗlƯ follows Sunni Islam: if Muslims need any ‘authoritative instruction’ (Watt 1994: 45), it should come from the Prophet and not from some obscure hidden Imam. If the Qur’Ɨn and the sunna of the Prophet do not provide solutions for our problems, we should follow our independent reasoning and personal effort (ijtihƗd). In other words, it is important to have the right combination of trust in God’s revelation and trust in our own reason against those who only rely on teachings of the hidden Imam (al-GhazƗlƯ 1959: 30). Tasting the Sufi Way to God Al-GhazƗlƯ reconstructs his life as a quest for knowledge in which he, after not having found the certainty he was looking for in the first three groups, finally arrived at the fourth group, the Sufis. He began to study the books of the Sufi masters but found that the truth of Sufism can be learned only by doing it: Then it became clear to me that their most distinctive characteristic is something that can be attained, not by study, but rather by fruitional experience and the state of ecstasy and ‘the exchange of qualities’. How great a difference there is between your knowing the definitions and causes and conditions of health and satiety and your being healthy and sated! And how great a difference there is between your knowing the definition of drunkenness … and your actually being drunk! … Similarly, too, there is a difference between your knowing the true nature and conditions and causes of asceticism and your actually practicing asceticism and personally shunning the things of this world. (tr. McCarthy 2000: 52)

In the first sentence of this quotation, al-GhazƗlƯ uses three words that are of paramount importance for his understanding of Sufi mysticism.

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The first word, which is translated by McCarthy as ‘fruitional experiences’, literally means ‘tasting’ (dhawq); it refers to a kind of immediate experience that one has to undergo in order to be able to enjoy it. This experience evokes the delights of drinking wine and the ecstasy of drunkenness as elaborated by RnjmƯ. In his comparative reading, McCarthy mentions the Vulgate version of Ps. 34:8, Gustate et videte quoniam suavis est Dominus (“O taste and see that the LORD is good”, McCarthy 2000: 103). The second word, hƗl, refers to a state or condition of the soul that is different from its ordinary state, while the third word, tabaddul al-sifƗt, refers to an exchange of attributes or qualities. While the second term is usually taken to refer to a state of ecstasy, the third term is usually taken in a moral sense: it refers to the moral qualities that the Sufi path entails. The translation “moral change” (Watt 1994: 57), however, would be misleading since it omits the divine origin of this change. The word sifa is a technical term for the attributes of God and we will see in our reading of al-GhazƗlƯ’s treatise on the beautiful ninety-nine names of God how each attribute or name of God may be appropriated by human beings in order to draw them nearer to God in this human life. Again, there is a strong connection between the theoretical and the practical level in alGhazƗlƯ – as in Sufism at large. Al-GhazƗlƯ then relates how this ‘exchange of qualities’ begins to change his life. At the beginning of this subsection I quoted a part of this text on how he wanted to leave his life of public teaching. However, the subsequent sentences are interesting as well: Thus I incessantly vacillated between the contending pull of worldly desires and the appeals of the afterlife for about six months, starting with Rajab of the year 488 (July, 1095 A.D.). In this month the matter passed from choice to compulsion. For God put a lock upon my tongue so that I was impeded from public teaching. I struggled with myself to teach for a single day, to gratify the hearts of the students who were frequenting my lectures, but my tongue would not utter a single word: I was completely unable to say anything. (tr. McCarthy 2000: 54)

As I read al-GhazƗlƯ with Thomas Aquinas in mind, I could not ignore the obvious analogy with this Christian scholar and saint who is reported to have stopped his theological work all of a sudden, after a mystical experience while celebrating the Eucharist on Dec. 6, the feast of St. Nicholas in 1273. When questioned by his secretary Reginald of Piperno why he put aside his theological work, Aquinas

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said: “Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me” (Weisheipl 1974: 321). This is the reason why he left his Summa Theologiae unfinished. Thomas Aquinas died within a year after the experience that changed his life, but al-GhazƗlƯ disappeared from public life and wandered around for a long time as if to enact the journey of the soul towards God with his own body. He describes this Sufi path to God as a way that begins with purification of the heart and ends in a state of being lost in God. In order to avoid misunderstanding, al-GhazƗlƯ adds that this state of annihilation (fanƗ’) may be seen as the goal of the Sufi path from a certain point of view but, from another point of view, as its very beginning. Somewhat surprisingly, he continues by inserting a section on the true nature of prophecy and its special character. In my analysis, there are two reasons for this section on prophecy here. In the first place, the reference to prophecy is important as the basis of Sufism: contrary to the ‘people of the hidden meaning’, they do not derive their authority from a hidden Imam but from the Prophet of Islam and his sunna. Such a reference is necessary to make sure that the Sufi path to God does not wander from from the path of the Muslim law – after all, al-GhazƗlƯ was a scholar of fiqh or jurisprudence, and his fame in Muslim circles stems from this. In the second place, al-GhazƗlƯ acknowledges that not everyone can be a Sufi and therefore, this special way (tarƯqa) has to be seen in connection with the broad way (sharƯǥa) on which all Muslims walk toward God as Truth (haqƯqa). This connection between the Sufi way and the way of the ordinary faithful is precisely the reason why al-GhazƗlƯ accepted a post as teacher once again. I saw, then, that for such reasons as these the faith of the various classes of men had become so weak. Also, I considered myself so skilled a practitioner in exposing such sophistries that exposing them was easier for me than downing a mouthful of water, because I had studied deeply their sciences and methods – I mean the methods of the Sufis and the philosophers and the TaǥlƯmites and the distinguished ulema. It then flashed into my mind that engaging in that activity was a matter destined and inevitable at such a time: “What will solitude and seclusion avail you when the disease has become endemic, the physicians are sick, and men are on the brink of perdition?” (tr. McCarthy 2000: 69-70)

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Al-GhazƗlƯ is reminded of the responsibility of every Muslim intellectual: because they have knowledge of the path that leads to salvation, they are responsible for spreading this knowledge. Again, this reminds me of Aquinas’ analysis of sacra doctrina in the very first question of the Summa Theologiae: this is a knowledge that theologians received from Christ as their teacher (al-GhazƗlƯ would say: “a light from the niche of prophecy”) and that they have to pass on to their students as a step towards the salvation of humankind (Valkenberg 2000: 9-11). It is precisely because of human salvation that such a doctrina secundum revelationem divinam is necessary alongside the other (philosophical) disciplines (STh I 1.1). For Aquinas, the Magister in sacra Pagina had to read Scripture, discuss Scripture and preach Scripture with his students at the same time; for al-GhazƗlƯ the true ǥƗlim or knowledgeable person does not only seek the isolated comfort of the soul’s contact with God but is able to explain the meaning of religious practices to the people as well. Since this is the note on which the Munqidh min al-DalƗl ends, Watt is right to connect this work with the second book of the IhyƗ’ ǥUlnjm al-dƯn to justify his title The Faith and Practice of al-GhazƗlƯ. Therefore, it would be biased to look at the more speculative doctrines of al-GhazƗlƯ only and forget that his writings often have a very practical side as well. Although most Christian authors – including myself – like to quote from the last quarter of the IhyƗ’, we should not forget that three quarters of this book deal with the fundamental practices of faith. The first quarter is about the ǥibƗdƗt, the religious observances of the Muslim, while the second quarter deals with the ƗdƗt, religious customs. In these writings al-GhazƗlƯ is often very specific, for instance, on what to pray at what hour of the day. The books on dhikr (constant commemoration of God), duǥƗ’ (invocation of God) and wird (specific time for additional private worship) that form books nine and ten of the IhyƗ’ are very detailed in their instructions and sometimes give the impression that a pious Muslim should always be praying (al-GhazƗlƯ 1996). In this sense, al-GhazƗlƯ seems to be not far from from the monastic tradition in Christianity. 7.3.3 The Niche of Lights Some specialists give 500/1106 as the most probable date for this text (Bouyges 1959: 66), while others date it toward the end of alGhazƗlƯ’s life in 505 (Deladrière 1981: 23). The late dating may be in-

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fluenced by the fact that the work is marked by Sufi influences. It consists of a detailed interpretation of the famous ‘light verse’ (Ɨyat al-Nnjr) from the Qur’Ɨn (24:35) which goes as follows: God is the Light of the heavens and earth. His Light is like this: there is a niche, and in it a lamp, the lamp inside a glass, a glass like a glittering star, fuelled from a blessed olive tree from neither east nor west, whose oil almost gives light even when no fire touches it – light upon light – shining out in houses of worship. (tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 223)

Attached to this light verse is a hadƯth that says: “God has seventy veils of light and darkness; were He to lift them, the august glories of His face would burn up everyone whose eyesight perceived Him” (tr. Buchman 1998: xvii). The treatise on the light verse and the saying from the hadƯth has three short chapters. In the first chapter al-GhazƗlƯ analyses the various ways of using the word ‘light’ at different levels of communication between God and human beings. In the second chapter he gives a more direct interpretation of the light verse and in the final chapter explains the hadƯth. With respect to the use of the word ‘light’, al-GhazƗlƯ remarks that God alone is the real, true Light, and that all other uses of the word are metaphorical uses. Or rather, I say – without trepidation – that the name ‘light’ for things other than the First Light is a sheer metaphor, since everything other than Light, when viewed in itself, has no light of its own in respect to its own self. On the contrary, its luminosity is borrowed from another, and this borrowed luminosity is not supported by itself, but rather by another. (tr. Buchman 1998: 15)

The word ‘metaphor’ (majƗz) indicates that GhazƗlƯ gives an analysis of our way of speaking. He starts by saying that ‘light’ refers to manifest things for ordinary people. Yet for those who are familiar with further levels of reality, the ‘elect’ (khawƗss) and the ‘very special people’ within this group (khawƗss al-khawƗss), the real light is God and they know that if they use the word ‘light’ for things that derive their light from God, they speak metaphorically. This manner of speaking is based on the relation between God and other things as Creator and creatures. In the second section of this chapter, I showed, following David Burrell’s analysis of Thomas Aquinas, that this relation implies two things: a fundamental difference and the possibility of overcoming this difference. In his explanation of the light verse, al-

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GhazƗlƯ refers to the fundamental difference by saying that God is the only Light that has light of its own, while the luminosity of all other lights is derived from this Light. While the idea of ‘light from light’ in the Qur’Ɨnic light verse may give rise to a Neo-Platonic cascade of lights or to Christological elaborations, the strict limit of tawhƯd (confessing the Oneness of God) in Islam points to the fundamental difference between God and all other things. What God and creatures have in common is their being, but again this being is characterized by a fundamental difference: From here the Gnostics climb from the lowlands of metaphor to the highlands of reality, and they perfect their ascent. Then they see – witnessing with their own eyes – that there is none in existence save God and that “Everything is perishing except His face” [28: 88]. [It is] not that each thing is perishing at one time or at other times, but that it is perishing from eternity without beginning to eternity without end. It can only be so conceived since, when the essence of anything other than He is considered in respect of its own essence, it is sheer nonexistence. But when it is viewed in respect of the ‘face’ to which existence flows forth from the First, the Real, then it is seen as existing not in itself but through the face adjacent to its Giver of Existence. Hence, the only existent is the Face of God. (tr. Buchman 1998: 16)

Those who have real knowledge, the ǥƗrifnjn (translated as ‘Gnostics’ by Buchman) realize that God is the only one who has real existence, and that creatures can only be seen as having existence in their relation to God. It is the most peculiar nature of creatures that they are really ‘nothing’ apart from God’s relation with them. This basic expression of the fundamental difference between creatures and Creator is expressed in the Christian tradition by the idea of creatio ex nihilo, which refers not only to God’s creating everything without using any pre-existent matter but principally implies that creatures are nothing apart from their Creator. Some Muslim traditions elaborate on this point by what Western orientalism has called ‘occasionalism’: the idea that creatures would be nothing if God does not create their being in a creatio continua, which entails that created beings do not exert any causality without God. In his commentary al-GhazƗlƯ agrees with the idea that creatures do not exist apart from their Creator – yet this may lead to experiencing a kind of union with God that has to be explained cautiously:

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The gnostics, after having ascended to the heaven of reality, agree that they see nothing in existence save the One, the Real. Some of them possess this state as a cognitive gnosis. Others, however, attain this through a state of tasting. Plurality is totally banished from them, and they become immersed in sheer singularity. Their rational faculties become so satiated that in this state they are, as it were, stunned. No room remains in them for the remembrance of any other than God, nor the remembrance of themselves. Nothing is with them but God. They become intoxicated with such an intoxication that the ruling authority of their rational faculty is overthrown. Hence, one of them says, “I am the Real!”, another, “Glory be to me, how great is my station!”, and still another, “There is nothing in my robe but God!”. The speech of lovers in the state of intoxication should be concealed and not spread about. When this intoxication subsides, the ruling authority of the rational faculty – which is God’s balance in His earth – is given back to them. They come to know that what they experienced was not the reality of unification but that it was similar to unification. (tr. Buchman 1998: 17-8)

Although the Neoplatonic idea of ‘light from light’ would suggest a unity of existence between Creator and creatures and although some of the most advanced Sufis experienced such a unification, al-GhazƗlƯ keeps his distance: it is not a real unification (lam yakun haqƯqa alittihƗd) but something similar. In this way he safeguards the basic difference between Creator and creatures that is crucial in Muslim theology. Moreover, he has an ethical reason for his distance as well: if some Sufis experience unification with God, they may claim to exist beyond the boundaries of sharƯǥah and the religious duties of ordinary people. This cannot be true Islam: This is an error that makes some of the travelers slip into license and roll up the carpet of the outward statutes. It may even happen that one of them will abandon the prescribed ritual prayers and suppose that he is in perpetual prayer in his innermost consciousness. (tr. Buchman 1998: 33)

Just as in the Munqidh, al-GhazƗlƯ carefully maintains the connection between the more ‘intimate’ relation to God of the Sufi way and the more ‘ritualized’ relation to God of the common people. Al-GhazƗlƯ did not underscore this connection in order to make Sufism acceptable to Muslim orthodoxy – although this might have been its consequence – but because it was a practical consequence of his insight that we can talk about God only in metaphorical language. Even those who think that they experience unification with God have to be aware of the fact that they belong to the same ummah (community) as the ordinary

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faithful. The Sufi tarƯqa functions only if it is part of the larger sharƯǥah. This pastoral concern of al-GhazƗlƯ reminds me of St. Paul’s similar concern about food sacrificed to idols: some of the Corinthians may think that they do not need to avoid this type of food, since they know that there is only one God. But it is better for them to show consideration for those who might be offended by their behavior (1 Corinthians 8: 1-13) In the final part of the MishkƗt al-anwƗr, explaining the hadƯth of the veil, al-GhazƗlƯ mentions the different levels of knowing God once again. Many people do not understand that God’s attributes are different from human attributes, which may lead to anthropocentrism. But those who have the most perfect understanding know that God is beyond all human understanding They have arrived at an existent thing that is incomparable with everything that their sight has perceived. Hence, the august glories of His face – the First, the Highest – burn up everything perceived by the sights and insights of the observers. Thus, they find Him too holy and incomparable with all that we described earlier. (tr. Buchman 1998: 51)

Al-GhazƗlƯ then explains the meaning of “the august glories of His face … burn them up” as follows: “In their essences they are effaced and annihilated. They become extinct from themselves, so that they cease observing themselves. Nothing remains save the One, the Real” (tr. Buchman 1998: 52). Instead of the language of ‘unification’, alGhazƗlƯ uses the language of ‘annihilation’ which is deemed to be more orthodox since it preserves the difference between God and human beings. This matches his insistence that God is incomparable, and thus he is clearly in line with Aquinas’ insight that the last thing we know about God is that we do not know what God is. Yet he combines this ‘negative’ insight into God’s incomprehensibility with the ‘positive’ insight that God can be found by those who practice the laws of Islam at their own level. 7.3.4 The Beautiful Names of God At the beginning of this chapter I referred to the Christian theologian Elizabeth Johnson who mentioned three insights by Thomas Aquinas as helpful resources for emancipatory speech about the mystery of God (Johnson 1992: 104-20). The third insight is the awareness that God can be named by many names, since no name is able to exhaust

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the reality of God. The other two insights, viz. the hiddenness of God and the analogical nature of our God-talk, play a part in the doctrine of the many names of God as well, as can be seen in Aquinas’ discussion of the names and words used by us in our God-talk (STh I 13; Rikhof 1988). The awareness that God has many names and that no name is able to express God’s essence has a pronounced place in Muslim tradition. The Qur’Ɨn summons Muslims to call on God, because “the best names belong to Him” (Q. 17:110). Bukhari mentions a hadƯth that says that God has ninety-nine beautiful names, and many Muslims recite these names by counting the beads of their subha. The Muslim subha looks so much like a Roman Catholic rosary that my dictionary gives “Muslim rosary” as a translation; yet the habit of counting beads while meditating or praying has been taken over from Hindu and Buddhist sources, as Wilfred Cantwell Smith reminds us on the first pages of his Towards a World Theology (Smith 1981). Together with this practice of reciting al-asmƗ’ al-husnƗ or ‘the beautiful names’ of God, a literary genre of its own came into being, explaining the significance of each of the names, and relating the different names to different pious practices. While some of these works are concerned with popular piety and may even include magical devices, other works are more geared toward philosophical and theological considerations (Gimaret 1988). Al-GhazƗlƯ wrote such a philosophical and theological treatise on the ninety-nine beautiful names of God during the period in which he retreated from public life, shortly after his IhyƗ’ ǥulnjm al-dƯn. In the first part of this work he gives some considerations on naming God, while the second part treats the characteristics of each name separately, adding some practical advice as well. Finally, he mentions some of the names of God that are not found in the classical list of asmƗ’ al-husnƗ. In the first part of the text, al-GhazƗlƯ deals with some of the typical issues in the Muslim tradition, such as the consequences of the fact that God reveals most of God’s names in the Qur’Ɨn, which makes the names different from God’s attributes. Moreover, any Muslim commentator has to show how the many names do not endanger the basic tawhƯd or confession of God’s oneness. As in Thomas Aquinas, the ‘negative’ approach’ outweighs the ‘positive approach’ (Borrmans 1990: 60):

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This is the way in which one should understand the one who says “I know God” and the one who says “I do not know God”. If you were to show a piece of intelligible writing to a reasonable person and say to him: “do you know its writer?” and he said “no,” he would be speaking truly. But if he said “yes: its writer is a man living and powerful, hearing and seeing, sound of hand and knowledgeable in the practice of writing, and if I know all this from [the sample] how can I not know him?” – he too would be speaking truly. Yet the saying of the one who said “I do not know him” is more correct and true, for in reality he has not known him. Rather he only knows that intelligible writing requires a living writer, knowing, powerful, hearing, and seeing; yet he does not know the writer himself. Similarly, every creature knows only that this ordered and precisely disposed world requires an arranging, living, knowing and powerful maker. (tr. Burrell & Daher 1992: 36-7)

Al-GhazƗlƯ’s reasoning looks similar to Aquinas’: because creatures mediate our knowledge of God, we only know God’s names and attributes, not God’s essence. We will hear a similar form of reasoning by Said Nursi in the next chapter. Yet, as David Burrell suggests, al-GhazƗlƯ is more interested in the practical consequences of this unknowability of God than in its speculative aspects (Burrell 1987: 179). In his view, religious practice “can bridge the otherwise unbridgeable gap between the names and the nature of God” (Burrell 1989: 177). Al-GhazƗlƯ builds this bridge by distinguishing several levels in our use of the names of God. We can just receive them and accept them as part of revelation. We can also long to participate in the knowledge of these names by making ourselves familiar with them. Finally, we may try to acquire whatever is possible of these names, and imitate them in our lives. In this context, al-GhazƗlƯ distinguishes between two ways of knowing God: discursive knowledge (usually identified with the Arabic word ǥilm, or knowledge of the intellect) and experiential knowledge (usually identified with maǥrifa, or knowledge of the heart). As examples, GhazƗlƯ uses sexual pleasures and the sweetness of sugar: an inexperienced young man will not know about these pleasures when they are described him, but he will know them as soon as he experiences (or ‘tastes’) them. Now, the problem is that we cannot know God experientially; this way is closed to us in our life as human beings. We are left with an inadequate comprehension that is humanly expressed by the various attributes and names of God.

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This amounts to saying that when we know God most high to be living, powerful and knowing, we are only knowing ourselves, as we only know Him by way of ourselves .… For a man cannot understand anything unless he has in him something corresponding to it …. For each person only understands himself, and then compares his own attributes with those of God the most high. Yet His attributes are too exalted to be likened to ours! So this will be an inadequate knowledge in which imagining and resemblances are preponderant. So it needs to be complemented by the knowledge which denies any likeness, and which rejects any grounds for commensurabilities, even though the name be shared. The second way – the one that is closed – consists in one’s waiting to attain all the ‘lordly’ [i.e., divine] attributes to the point of becoming a ‘lord’, much as a boy waits until he matures to experience the pleasure of intercourse. But this path is closed, since it is impossible that this reality be attained by anyone other than God the most high. There is no other way to authentic knowledge than this, yet it is utterly closed except for God the most high and holy One. (tr. Burrell & Daher 1992: 40)

Real knowledge of God is, according to al-GhazƗlƯ, an eschatological ideal for human beings. It is like the beatific knowledge of the blessed in heaven, according to Aquinas, who likes to refer to the second letter of Peter where it says: “Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Yet Christian and Muslim mystical traditions state that it is possible to “have the first fruits of the Spirit” (Romans 8:23), to ‘taste’ a glimpse of experiential knowledge of God if we have the right attitude. In his lessons and councils in relation to the ninety-nine beautiful names of God, al-GhazƗlƯ shows us how we can develop this attitude. With reference to the first name of God, AllƗh, for instance, al-GhazƗlƯ gives the following counsel: Man’s share in this name should be for him to become god-like [ta’alluh], by which I mean that his heart and his aspiration be taken up with God – great and glorious, that he not look towards anything other than Him nor pay attention to what is not He, that he neither implore nor fear anyone but Him. (tr. Burrell & Daher 1992: 52)

In his considerations on the names of God, al-GhazƗlƯ is attentive to the specific relation between Creator and creatures that implies both infinite distance and intimate connectedness. With respect to the name al-ǥAzƯz, the Eminent, he distinguishes three aspects: someone is so significant that few exist like him; someone who is greatly needed;

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someone to whom access proves difficult. That God is ‘the Eminent’ in a perfect sense means, among others, that human beings cannot reach God in the sense of comprehending God’s essence. In his analysis al-GhazƗlƯ stresses the distance, but in his counsel he stresses the connectedness: One is ‘eminent’ among people when God’s people have need of him in matters most important to them, like the next life and eternal happiness. That is exceedingly rare and difficult to attain, except by those who hold the rank of prophet – may God’s blessings be on all of them. Their eminence is shared with those who, in their time, are distinguished by being close to their level, like the caliphs, and the prophets’ heirs among the scholars. The eminence of each one of them is in proportion to their elevation in rank above easy access and participation, and is measured as well by their concern for guiding creatures. (tr. Burrell and Daher 1992: 66)

Al-GhazƗlƯ discusses the names ‘the Manifest’ and ‘the Hidden’ together, since God is “hidden in His manifestation by the intense way in which He is manifest” (tr. Burrell and Daher 1992: 134). In other words: God is concealed from creatures by His light (1992: 136). This analysis of al-GhazƗlƯ’s discussion of the beautiful names of God again shows how his approach to the ‘hidden presence of God’ ends in some advice to apply intellectual knowledge of God in the practices of our faith, in order to participate more and more in the beauty of God’s names, and to concentrate fully on the hidden presence of God in our lives. His explanation of tawhƯd, confessing that God is One, in the IhyƗ’ ǥUlnjm al-DƯn fits in with this approach. 7.3.5 Faith and Trust in God Al-GhazƗlƯ wrote the forty books of his IhyƗ’ ǥUlnjm al-DƯn during his long retreat between 488/1095 and 499/1106. A literal translation of the title of this work would be ‘Revivification of the Sciences of Religion,’ but a less literal translation like ‘Reviving Religious Knowledge’ (Gianotti 2001: 4) would give less cause for misunderstanding, since the life project of Al-GhazƗlƯ is not a science of religion in the modern sense. I have already suggested that the IhyƗ’ is not a work of speculative theology but a work of practical theology. In terms of Muslim science, it is a work of fiqh, jurisprudence, rather than a work of kalƗm. One may divide the forty books into two halves, the first of which deals with jurisprudence and the second with Sufism (Gramlich 1984: 1),

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but GhazƗlƯ accentuates the practical consequences of Sufism more than its speculative reasoning, if only because he is aware that one cannot reveal the knowledge of the mystical elite to the general public. In the first book, ‘the Book of Knowledge’, al-GhazƗlƯ distinguishes between the knowledge of God’s essence, which is impossible for us human beings, and the knowledge of God’s attributes and acts, which is available to us on the basis of the Qur’Ɨn. While the first part of the IhyƗ’ deals with religious practices – the ‘external’ side of religion – the second part deals with the matters of the heart and the soul – the ‘internal’ side of religion. After an introduction on the matters of the heart and the soul, al-GhazƗlƯ first discusses attitudes that widen the distance between religious people and God; next, in books 31-40 he discusses attitudes that bring them closer to God. Books 31-36 are conceived in Sufi terminology as descriptions of six stations on the way to God: repentance (book 31), patience and gratitude (book 32), hope and fear (book 33), poverty and renunciation (book 34), faith and trust in the One God (book 35) and finally love, yearning, intimacy and contentment (Gramlich 1984: 6-16). As Annemarie Schimmel’s famous Mystical Dimensions of Islam shows, the order and the number of stations along the Sufi path to God may vary, but al-GhazƗlƯ certainly mentions the most important ones (Schimmel 1975: 98-186). In this subsection, I will give an analysis of book 35 on “Faith in divine Unity and Trust in divine Providence”, using David Burrell’s translation (al-GhazƗlƯ 2001); in the next subsection I will add a few words on book 36. Trust in God as Source and Consequence of Faith in One God While tawhƯd, professing faith in One God, is certainly the dogmatic core of Islam, tawakkul, trust in God, is at once its source and its practical expression. If I am right in my analysis that GhazƗlƯ’s IhyƗ is oriented to religious practices (first part) and the inner attitudes that bring human beings nearer to God (last quarter), then tawakkul might in fact be of more importance to GhazƗlƯ than tawhƯd. A correct understanding of this form of ultimate trust is important as well to overcome widely accepted misunderstandings regarding the ‘fatalistic nature’ of Islam. As Burrell remarks: What sort of concept is tawakkul: trust in divine providence? It entails accepting whatever happens as part of the inscrutable decree of a just and merciful God. Yet such an action cannot be reduced to

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mere resignation, and so caricatured as ‘Islamic fatalism’. (Burrell 2001: xx)

Discovering this spiritual basis of tawakkul (from the fifth form of the verb wakala, ‘to place one’s confidence in someone’) is, in my opinion, one of the most important issues for a theological and spiritual dialogue between Christians and Muslims. Far from asserting that Muslims are fatalistic, I would say that most Western Christians are overly activistic; thus, they can learn something from the spiritual attitude of others. We can understand this form of trust better if we see how al-GhazƗlƯ distinguishes it from the hazardousness commended in the Bible by the evil spirit in Matthew 4:6, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Yet trust in God should also be distinguished from trust in human beings and the world around us, since God acts in a way different from human beings. This “analogous character of agency” (Burrell 2001: xvii) is another consequence of alGhazƗlƯ’s insight into the hidden presence of God. He explains this very well in his work on the ninety-nine beautiful names of God, when explaining the meaning of the expression “God suffices” (hasb Allahu) with reference to the name Al-HasƯb, the Reckoner. The attribute of being sufficient cannot be said of anything else in its essential reality, since nothing strictly suffices for anything except God, while God alone suffices for everything. This means that all things receive their existence from God and that their existence perdures and is made perfect by God. Then al-GhazƗlƯ goes on to explain how we should understand this: Do not imagine that when you need food, drink, earth, sky, sun, or the like, that you need something other than Him, or that He is not all you need. He is the one who supplies all you need by creating food and drink, heaven and earth, so He is all you need. Nor should you think that God is not the one who protects and suffices in the case of an infant who needs his mother to nurse him and care for him. Indeed, God – great and glorious – suffices for him, since He created his mother and the milk in her breasts, as well as the guidance needed for him to swallow it. He also created the tenderness and love in the heart of the mother, so that she [will] enable him to devour her milk, calling him to it and prompting him to do so. Now sufficiency is only attained by these means, and God the most high alone possesses the ability to create it for the infant. Should it be

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said to you that the mother alone is sufficient for the infant and that she is all he needs, you would believe that and not say: but she is hardly sufficient for him since he needs milk and how can a mother suffice for him when there is no milk? Rather you would say: indeed, he needs milk, but milk also comes from the mother, so he needs no-one else except the mother. But you should know that milk does not come from the mother, but together with the mother comes from God – may He be praised and exalted, and from His graciousness and generosity. For He alone is all that each thing needs; nothing [except He] exists which alone suffices for anything at all. Rather things depend on each other, while everything depends on the power of God – may He be praised and exalted. (tr. Burrell and Daher 1992: 110-11)

Al-GhazƗlƯ shows his practical approach in the introduction to book 35 of the IhyƗ’ ǥUlnjm al-DƯn by remarking that trust in God, as one of the highest stages in the way of religion, must be realized in one’s life in such a way that it is in keeping with faith in divine Unity and with tradition and revelation. Starting from everyday experiences, he distinguishes four stages in faith in divine Unity. Those who speak the words of the Islamic creed ‘there is no god but God’ with their lips only belong to the first stage, while those who also believe it in their hearts belong to the second stage. The third represents those who bear witness to [faith in divine unity] on the path of interior illumination by means of the light of truth, and that is the stage of those who are ‘drawing near,’ which takes place when one sees many things, but sees them emanating in their multiplicity from the Almighty One. The fourth stage is that of those who see only unity when they regard existence, which is the witness of righteous ones and those whom the Sufis call ‘annihilated’ by faith in divine unity. For in the measure that they see only unity, they do not see themselves at all. (tr. Burrell 2001: 10)

Again, al-GhazƗlƯ distinguishes the faithful according to different stages with words that are frequently used by Sufi writers. The hypocrites are left behind at the first stage, while the ordinary faithful remain at the second stage. The third stage belongs to those who see God at work everywhere as the single agent behind everything that happens. Aquinas’ method in his Summa Theologiae, ‘to consider everything in its relation to God’, would be a good example of this stage, but many reflections by Said Nursi (see the next chapter) could be mentioned as well. The fourth stage radicalizes faith in God’s unity even further in designating God as the Only One in whose Existence

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my existence is annihilated. Al-GhazƗlƯ alludes to the concept of fanƗ’, annihilation, in which the self is obliterated in the presence of God’s all-encompassing existence. This concept was developed by Muhyi al-Din ibn al-ǥArabi and JalƗl al-Din RnjmƯ whose ideas are summarized in the remainder of this chapter. Al-GhazƗlƯ is aware that this fourth stage may be easily misunderstood in a sense that would erase the fundamental distinction between Creator and creatures and lead to identifications such as ana l-haqq (‘I am the Truth’) by the famous mystic al-HallƗj. Such an identification could not be tolerated by orthodox Muslims since ‘the Truth’ is one of the ninety-nine names of God. At least some of GhazƗlƯ’s texts may be read as almost advocating a similar form of monism (Anawati and Gardet 1986: 51), yet he warns his readers that a discussion of the fourth stage is not in keeping with the character of the IhyƗ’. Since trust presupposes exactly the kind of difference that a monistic tendency would want to erase, tawakkul or trust in God belongs to the third stage of faith in God’s unity. Thomas Aquinas used a different kind of approach to remove all compositeness in God in his treatment of divine simplicitas in Summa Theologiae I.3. According to Burrell, Aquinas possessed – at least in part due to Muslim philosophers – a set of instruments that was more finely attuned to securing the distinction between Creator and creatures by showing how God’s simplicity defies our usual concepts (Burrell 1989: 175). At the same time, the constant attention to the practical level in al-GhazƗlƯ shows what Aquinas left undeveloped (Burrell 1989: 178). The Relation between God as Agent and Human Agency In order to see the right relation between faith in God’s unity and trust in God’s providence, it is necessary to think about the relation between God as agent and human beings as agents, since trust implies a particular perception of this relation. Al-GhazƗlƯ explains that one needs to avoid two extremes. One cannot say, as the Jabarites did, that God determines human actions to such an extent that they are constrained and not free to act nor can one say, as the Qadarites did, that human beings have real freedom to choose how they act. Al-GhazƗlƯ’s solution, in accordance with the dominant Ashǥarite tradition, is that God creates all human actions, while human beings ‘acquire’ (kasb) or ‘perform’ these actions (Burrell 1993: 79; 1999: 137). A famous verse related to the battle of Badr forms the point of departure:

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It was not you who killed them but God, and when you [Prophet] threw [sand at them] it was not your throw [that defeated them] but God’s, to do the believers a favour: God is all seeing and all knowing. (Q 8:17, tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 111)

Al-GhazƗlƯ explains that this verse implies that God acts and Muslims acted at the battle of Badr, but each in a different way or at a different level: the category ‘acting’ is used here for God and human beings in an analogical way. Yet in the measure that the truth is revealed to those inquiring, they will know that things are quite the opposite, and they will say: O linguist, you have posited the term ‘agent’ to signify the one who originates, but [in that sense] there is no agent but God, so the term belongs properly to Him and metaphorically to whatever is other than Him. That is, you must bear with the way in which linguists have determined it. When the authentic meaning happened to roll off the tongue of a certain Arab [Bedouin], whether intentionally or by chance, the Messenger of God (p.b.u.h.)5 gave him his due, saying: ‘the most apt verse ever spoken by a poet is the saying of Labid: “Everything except God is empty”’. That is, everything which does not subsist in itself, but has its subsistence from another, from the point of view of itself, is nothing. (tr. Burrell 2001: 46)

Al-Ghazali relates the insight that God is, in a certain sense, the only true agent to our trust in God as follows: And if faith in divine unity brings about insight into the effects of causes, abundant faith in benevolence is what brings about confidence in the effects of the causes, and the state of trust in divine providence will only be perfected, as I shall relate, by confidence in the trustee [wakƯl] and tranquility of heart towards the benevolent oversight of the [divine] sponsor. (tr. Burrell 2001: 47)

In the remainder of the first part al-GhazƗlƯ argues that our world is the best possible world – a text that has been one of the keystones of Islamic theodicy (Ormsby 1984: 38-74). In the second part he distinguishes stages of trust in God in a way similar to the distinction in stages of faith in God discussed above. 5

After mentioning the name of the Prophet, pious Muslims will add the eulogy salah Allah ǥalayhi wa-sallama (may God bless him and grant him salvation). This eulogy is given in Arabic characters in Burrell’s translation, and is mostly rendered as ‘P.b.u.h.’ (= Peace and blessings be upon him) in modern English. Similar eulogies are used in case of the Companions of the Prophet and of other prophets such as Moses and Jesus.

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Stages of Trust The first stage belongs to those who place their trust in God in the same manner as they would trust a trustee (wakƯl). There is some real trust and confidence in God’s security and solicitude here, but the relation between God and those who trust in God is not very intimate. In the second stage this relation is like the relationship of a child to his mother: …he knows no one other than her, he takes refuge in no one other than her, and relies only on her. When he sees her, he hangs onto the hem of her skirt in every situation and never lets her go. If misfortune strikes him in her absence, the first thing to fall from his lips is ‘mother’, just as the first desire to stir in his heart is for his mother, for she is his refuge. For he is already confident in her security and her sufficiency and her compassion – a confidence not without some keen sense of discrimination connected with it. (tr. Burrell 2001: 60)

Characteristic of this second stage is the intimate, personal relationship in which the faithful rely utterly on God but not without an awareness of being different from God. This awareness of difference disappears in the third stage, which is characterized by a total submissiveness on the part of the faithful. Al-GhazƗlƯ uses an image that might seem less suited to our Western taste than the personal image of the second stage: the image of a corpse being washed. The third stage is the highest: it is to be in the presence of God Most High, whether active or at rest, like a corpse in the hands of the one washing it, differing only in that while one regards oneself to be dead, the eternal omnipotence moves one to action, as the hand of the one washing it moves the corpse. Such a one is confirmed in his certainty by the fact that he is a channel for action, willing, knowing, and other attributes, in such a manner that nothing happens by constraint, for any expectations regarding how things will proceed with him will be made known clearly. Such a one differs from the child, for the child takes refuge in his mother, cries and hangs onto the hem of her skirt, running after her; but this one is rather like a child who knows that his mother is looking for him whether he screams for her or not, that she is carrying him whether he hangs on the hem of her skirt or not, and that she will extend her breast to him and give him to drink whether he asks for milk or not. This station of trust in divine providence results in one’s leaving petitionary prayer and asking behind him, confident in His magnanimity and solicitude, and that he will be given an invitation more gracious than he could have asked for. (tr. Burrell 2001: 61-62)

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When I read this text for the first time, I was mistaken in thinking that the image of a corpse being washed would suggest a total passivity, but this is not al-GhazƗlƯ’s point. Rather, his point is connected with the idea of kasb mentioned earlier and with the Sufi notion of fanƗ’, to the effect that God is the only acting factor, while the human soul and body surrender themselves totally to God’s actions. On closer inspection, the image is strikingly similar to what St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans: But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. (Romans 8: 10-11)

The third stage of trust in God according to al-GhazƗlƯ is not that different from relying on what Christians would call God’s grace, since this type of trust knows that God will give us regardless of our asking, or, as al-GhazƗlƯ (1996) puts it in his reflections on prayer, God knows what we want, even before we ask it, but he gives it to us in a manner that is best for us. Once again, GhazƗlƯ connects the three stages of tawakkul with the daily life of the faithful. Usually, our trust in God belongs to the first stage, while it will only be more intense – according to the second and third stages – in rare cases and during short periods of time. Yet human beings may train themselves to trust God more fully and therefore the Sufi language of states and stages has its practical side as well. Al-GhazƗlƯ spends the major part of the rest of his book by explaining how one may maximize this trust in God as the expression of one’s faith in God without being irresponsible. GhazƗlƯ’s reply to the question as to how one can lead a life of trust without being foolish certainly reminds me of the literature of the Desert Fathers or of certain Buddhist regulations for the Sangha. Even in a state of total reliance on God, one has to distinguish between necessary and superfluous means of living. In other words, one has to observe the sunna (habitual practice) of God: These are those in which other means following after them are arranged according to the planning of God and His will in an uninterrupted and invariant order. This is like having a meal put before you when you are hungry and need it, yet you did not lift a finger to prepare it, so you say: “I am one who trusts in God, and

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the condition of such trust is renouncing effort. Lifting a hand to do it would be effort and action, like chewing it with the teeth and swallowing it, in accordance with the palate being higher than the digestive organs”. But this is pure idiocy and has nothing to do with trust in divine providence. If you were to wait for God Most High to create satiety in you without bread, or to create in bread a motion towards you, or to enjoin an angel to chew it for you and see that it reaches your stomach – that would simply display your ignorance of the practice [sunna] of God Most High. (tr. Burrell 2001: 73-74)

Finally, a last example that makes us aware of the fact that we are social beings, even if we concentrate our lives on trust in God: If one were isolated in one of the ravines of a mountain in such a way that there were no water or grass, and no traveler came upon him there, yet he were to sit down to trust in God, he would thereby be a sinner, bringing about his own destruction. It would be like the story of the ascetic, who left the city and stayed at the foot of a mountain for a week, saying: “I will not ask for a single thing until my Lord gives me something to sustain me”. A week passed and he was about to die, for no one gave him any sustenance. So he said: “O Lord, if you are to keep me alive, give me the sustenance which you have set aside for me, and if not, take me to yourself”. To which the great God responded, by way of inspiration: “By my strength! We will not give you any sustenance until you enter the city and sit there among the people”. So he entered the city and sat there, and one person came to him with food and another with drink. He ate and drank, and became apprehensive within himself because of that. Then God Most High revealed to him: “Did you want to attain to my wisdom with your asceticism in the world? Did you not know that providing for my servants by the hand of my servants is dearer to me than providing by the hand of my power?”(tr. Burrell 2001: 76-77)

7.3.6 On Knowing and Loving God In this final part of my comparative theological approach to Abnj HƗmid Muhammad al-GhazƗlƯ, I wish to summarize my findings and point to a few important venues for further comparative theological research. At the beginning of this chapter I explained that my comparative theological approach to al-GhazƗlƯ started with the question as to whether I would find in his works something similar to the notion of the ‘hidden presence of God’ which I took as a central category in comparative theology from my theological reading of Thomas Aquinas. I found this indeed but in a manner quite different from Aquinas. The

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main difference may be that al-GhazƗlƯ seems to be aware of God’s incomprehensibility but seems to care less about this than Aquinas did. I can think of two reasons for this difference. In the first place, alGhazƗlƯ works with a notion of ‘exoteric’ and ‘esoteric’ knowledge in a way that reminds one of Maimonides. He can suggest that it is possible for human beings to bridge the abyss between creatures and God in the higher stages of their Sufi way to God, while realizing that it is in fact God who is the only one able to bridge the gap through experiences about which it is not expedient to write in a work of a general nature. In the second place, al-GhazƗlƯ may care less about the hidden presence of God as a theoretical notion because he is more concerned with its effects on human actions. As I said before, alGhazƗlƯ is a very practically oriented theologian or, rather, he is primarily not a theologian at all but a man of fiqh whose main duty is to explain jurisprudence. These two reasons are related to the strengths of al-GhazƗlƯ’s works as a topic for a comparative theology that is geared to interreligious dialogue. They suggest that the connections between the mystical level, the theoretical level and the practical level are very strong in al-GhazƗlƯ, which makes him a guide for interreligious dialogue not only at the level of theological experts but at the levels of religious experience and of ritual lifestyles as well. Just as it is important to connect the dialogue of life, the dialogue of experts and the dialogue of spiritualities, it is also important to connect the experiential, the speculative and the practical side of his works if one wants to explain al-GhazƗlƯ properly. Two notions that express this connection between the experiential, speculative and practical sides in al-GhazƗlƯ’s works are ‘knowledge’ and ‘love’. These are two notions that might prove to be extremely fruitful in comparative theology. As far as knowledge is concerned, it would be interesting to study the interplay between ‘ilm and ma‘rifa as ‘discursive’ and ‘experiential’ knowledge in the largely practical orientation of GhazƗlƯ’s works and to connect this to GhazƗlƯ’s idea of the unknowability of God (Shehadi 1964; Burrell 1987). A good beginning might be to read book 21 of the IhyƗ’ on the ‘Marvels of the Heart’, which contains the principles of his psychology and epistemology (Gianotti 2001; Renard 2004: 298-326). The second notion is the notion of love which has been frequently studied in GhazƗlƯ. The notion of love may be more fiery in Islamic

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mystics like RƗbiǥa al-ǥAdawiyya, Abnj Mansnjr Ibn Husayn al-HallƗj or JallƗl-al-din RnjmƯ, but it was al-GhazƗlƯ who made the notion acceptable to Muslim orthodoxy (Anawati and Gardet 1986: 81). I began my reflections with Dingemans’ Dutch dissertation (1936), but MarieLouise Siauve from France (1986) and Binyamin Abrahamov from Israel (2003) have presented monographs on this subject as well. One interesting aspect of these three authors is that an interreligious element is more or less part of their approach as well. From the Christian point of view, the notion of love has been the subject of many apologetics, in which the Christian idea that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16) is contrasted with the absence of such an idea in Islam. Even Hans Küng seems to lapse into such an apologetic notion when he says that the Qur’Ɨn does not attribute love to God, while contrasting this with the loving God of Jesus (Küng 1984: 147-55). By contrast, Louis Gardet (Anawati and Gardet 1986: 77) points to texts such as “Say: ‘If you love God, follow me, and God will love you and forgive you your sins; God is most forgiving, most merciful’” (Q. 3:31; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 36) and “You who believe, if any of you go back on your faith, God will soon replace you with people He loves and who love Him” (Q. 5:54; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 73). David Burrell suggests that GhazƗlƯ “can be said to offer an entire philosophy structured on the relationship of love between creator and human creatures” (Burrell 1993: 135) which allows him to speak of a mutual relation of love between Creator and creatures in Islam without blurring the distinction between them. The idea that Islam has no notion of mutual love between God and human beings may be overcome, then, by reading al-GhazƗlƯ’s book 36 on ‘love, yearning, intimacy and contentment’ from the IhyƗ’ (Burrell 2000: 78-84). This book has been translated into French (al-GhazƗlƯ 1986) and Dutch (Dingemans 1936: 49-158) but not into English according to Western scholarly standards (Küng 2004: 835 nt.124). While the entire IhyƗ’ ǥulnjm ad-dƯn has been translated and published by Pakistani and Bengali Muslim authors, these translations are not easily accessible and, moreover, they do not comply to the standards mentioned above. A coordinated effort to translate and publish all forty books of the IhyƗ’ by a team of Islamicists and learned Muslims remains, there-

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fore, a major desideratum in the scholarly research on Abnj HƗmid Muhammad al-GhazƗlƯ. 7.4 An Interlude on MuhyƯ al-dƯn ibn al-ǥArabƯ (1165-1240) Although Ibn al-ǥArabƯ is one of the most important authors in the history of both Islamic philosophy and Islamic mysticism, I will refer to his works only for comparative purposes. My approach to Ibn al-‘ArabƯ as a possible caravansary along the journey between al-GhazƗlƯ and Said Nursi means that I cannot do justice to him in the same way as I attempt to do justice to the two main stations of my sketch for a Muslim-Christian comparative theology. Said Nursi refers to alGhazƗlƯ as an authority in the world of Islam twelve times in his Risale-i Nur. He is not only Imam GhazƗlƯ but hujjat ul-Islam, the major authority in the Muslim world as well (Nursi 1998: 39). JalƗl aldƯn RnjmƯ is mentioned a few times as well, mainly as the ‘lover of God’ (Nursi 1992: 236) and as the founder of a Sufi order. Most of the times he is mentioned as mevlana, our Master (Nursi 1998: 17). Ibn al-ǥArabi, however, is mentioned fifteen times as a saint but also as a somewhat problematic authority. Nursi was asked several times by some of his students to give his opinion on some of Ibn al-ǥArabi’s writings. In most cases, the questions refer to his understanding of ‘the unity of existence’, an expression that has been misunderstood many times in the history of Islam. Therefore, I want to summarize its background very briefly. Context and Meaning of ‘Unity of Existence’ MuhyƯ al-dƯn ibn al-ǥArabƯ, commonly called Ibn ǥArabi in the West, is also known as Shaykh al-Akbar, ‘the greatest Master’. He was born in Murcia in Muslim Spain in 1165 and died in Damascus in 1240. He wrote a large amount of works in which he gave a synthesis of Islamic law, philosophy and theology and other sciences in the mode of Islamic mysticism. As William Chittick notes, Ibn al-ǥArabƯ is often quoted in the West as a Sufi thinker who favored the unity of religions (Chittick 1994: 3). He is, however, most famous for his theory of the ‘unity of existence’ or, in Arabic, wahdat al-wujnjd. Although the term wujnjd may be translated as ‘being’ or ‘existence’, its primary meaning is ‘to be found’ and hence ‘to be’. Apart from the fact that the expression ‘unity of existence’ cannot be found in Ibn al-ǥArabƯ’s works and represents a later tendency in

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Sufi thinking, it belongs primarily not to philosophical discourse but to an experiential context. It was in the context of Ibn al-ǥArabƯ’s desire to find and to ‘taste’ (dhawq) God that the idea of a unity of being found occurred (Chittick 1989: 3). Just like al-GhazƗlƯ, Ibn al-ǥArabƯ tried to take the central Islamic tenet of tawhƯd seriously by saying that God is the only one who is ‘to-be-found’ (wujnjd) in the absolute sense of this word. Moreover, apart from God there is no ‘to-befound’ and thus everything participates in the oneness of ‘to-be-found’ or existence. In this context William Chittick remarks that ‘existence’ is like ‘light’: it cannot be perceived in itself but only insofar as it is a characteristic of creatures. So the oneness of existence is always ‘colored’ by the multitude of existent beings (Chittick 1994: 16). Just like Aquinas and al-GhazƗlƯ, Ibn al-ǥArabƯ states that we cannot know wujnjd in itself, yet we know something of it because we have knowledge of ourselves and what exists around us. We are created by God to actualize a certain amount of this wujnjd in ourselves in order to realize our true nature. If someone does so, he or she may be called an insƗn al-kƗmil, a ‘perfect human being’. Such a human being realizes wujnjd to the fullest and becomes a friend of God. When Said Nursi tries to explain the meaning of this ‘unity of existence’ to his students, he confesses that these are very deep ideas which may also be dangerous if they are explained by people who are less intelligent and saintly than Ibn al-ǥArabƯ. His explanation reminds me of the second state of tawakkul according to al-GhazƗlƯ: The mark of passionate love is to want never to be separated from the beloved and to flee desperately from such separation; to tremble at the thought of parting, to fear distance from the beloved as though fearing Hell, and to abominate transience; to love union with the love of one’s own spirit and life, and to yearn for closeness to the beloved with the longing for Paradise. Thus, through adhering to a manifestation of Divine immediacy in all things, those who took the way of the Unity of Existence disregarded separation and distance; supposing union and meeting to be permanent, they said: “There is no existent but He;” through the intoxication of love and as demanded by the ecstasy of permanence, meeting, and union, they imagined that in the Unity of Existence was a most pleasurable way of illumination whereby they could be saved from the dreadfulness of separation.” (Nursi 1997: 110).

Said Nursi thinks that such an attitude may lead some mystics to forget the reality of other existing things:

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The degree of Necessary Existence is so stable and real, and contingent existence is so insubstantial and pale that many of those who have investigated creation, like Muhyi al-Din al-‘Arabi, have reduced the other levels of existence to the level of delusion and imagination; they said: “There is no existent save Him.” That is, it must not be said of other things that they have existence in relation to the Necessary Existence. They stated that they are not worthy of the title of existence. (Nursi 1997: 296).

According to Said Nursi, the assertion “There is no existent save [God]” implies a negation of the existence of the universe (Nursi 1997: 389), but this need not be since Ibn al-ǥArabƯ recognizes the reality of the manifoldness of nature, yet this multiplicity, though real, does not have the same ‘existence’ as God has. In itself it has no existence but ‘borrows’ its existence for a moment from God who is real existence (Chittick 1994:17). While discussing these matters at several places in his work (Nursi 2000: 58-61), Said Nursi takes care to safeguard Ibn al-ǥArabƯ from errors, while explaining that some of his ideas may be dangerous in the minds of those who do not see the difference between a literal and a metaphorical explanation: Teaching this question of the Unity of Existence to people at the present time causes serious harm. Like when metaphors and similes pass from the hands of the learned to those of the common people and knowledge passes from scholars to the ignorant, they are thought to be literally true, so too when elevated truths like the Unity of Existence pass to the heedless and to the common people plunged into causes, they are thought to be Nature, and cause … significant instances of harm (Nursi 2000: 369). Yes, himself, Muhyiddin was rightly-guided and acceptable, but in all his works cannot be the guide and instructor. Since he very often proceeded in the realities without balance, he opposed the rules of the Sunnis and some of the things he said apparently express misguidance. However, he himself is free of misguidance. Sometimes, a word may appear to be unbelief, but the one who spoke it is not an unbeliever …. Muhyiddin said: “Those who are not one of us and do not know our station should not read our books, for it may be damaging for them.” Yes, at this time it is harmful to read Muhyiddin’s books, especially the matters about the Unity of Existence. (Nursi 2000: 371)

This short survey of the reception of Ibn al-‘ArabƯ’s concept of wahdat ul-wujnjd in the works of Said Nursi may suffice to give the impression that Ibn al-‘ArabƯ forms an important link in the chain that

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connects Said Nursi with al-GhazƗlƯ within the Muslim tradition. Bilal Kuúpinar is of the opinion that, although Nursi differs from both Ibn al-ǥArabƯ and JalƗl al-dƯn RnjmƯ in the more mystical aspects of their works, al-GhazƗlƯ and Ibn al-ǥArabƯ are the Muslim scholars with the greatest impact on both RnjmƯ and Nursi (Kuúpinar 2003: 152). 7.5 Maulana JalƗl al-dƯn RnjmƯ (1207-1273) “When I began studying Sufism more than thirty years ago,” William Chittick wrote in 2000, “few people knew about Sufism; nowadays everybody seems to know” (Chittick 2000: vii). Indeed, in the same year Franklin D. Lewis began his impressive study on JalƗl al-dƯn RnjmƯ with a paragraph on “Rumi-mania” in which he indicated that RnjmƯ is now the best-selling poet in the United States, and that his name is widely known in spiritual centers, many of which have no connection to Islam at all (Lewis 2000: 1-5). It is not that difficult to collect an anthology of writings by RnjmƯ that would convey the idea that, for him, institutional religions were of minor importance compared to a personal relationship with God. In reaction, Ibrahim Gamard who became a Muslim in 1984 complains about a lack of accuracy in popular versions of RnjmƯ’s poetry – he wants to underscore that RnjmƯ was a devout Muslim and dedicated follower of Prophet Muhammad (Gamard 2004: x-xi). It is true that RnjmƯ is very popular in spiritual circles and also in interfaith dialogues that concentrate on personal spiritual experiences. His poems are so expressive and powerful that they can be read without much knowledge of the religious and cultural background from which they originated, yet if one wants to do him justice, one should read them with some knowledge of this background in mind. In this respect, I cannot do full justice to RnjmƯ since I do not read Persian and must therefore rely on some of his translators such as Reynold Nicholson and Coleman Barks. I did, however, study RnjmƯ’s poems as expressions of processes of spiritual transformation together with Prof. Kees Waaijman for a graduate course at the Catholic University of Nijmegen (Waaijman 2002: 15457. 298-302; Valkenberg 2003b). There are many similarities between JalƗl al-dƯn RnjmƯ on the one hand and al-GhazƗlƯ and Ibn al-ǥArabƯ on the other concerning the hidden presence of God in the Sufi path to God. Because of the different form in which RnjmƯ expresses himself, these similarities are not immediately visible. Although RnjmƯ may be closer to Said Nursi than

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others because he is considered to be a citizen of Anatolia since he is buried in Konya, Said Nursi does not allude to RnjmƯ’s poems very often but mentions him sometimes in connection with the thesis of ‘unity of existence’ that Nursi finds problematic in Sufi thinkers and particularly in Ibn al-ǥArabƯ. At one point in the seventeenth Word, Nursi quotes a poem that might be RnjmƯ’s most famous one, the Song of the Reed: Hearken to this Reed forlorn, Breathing, even since ‘twas torn From its rushy bed, a strain Of impassioned love and pain. ‘The secret of my song, though near, None can see and none can hear, Oh, for a friend to know the sign And mingle all his soul with mine! ‘Tis the flame of Love that fired me, ‘Tis the wine of Love inspired me. Wouldst thou learn how lovers bleed, Hearken, hearken to the Reed!’ (RnjmƯ 1995: 31; tr. Nicholson)

Said Nursi then gives the following comment: The flutes are pure and powerful as though issuing from a heavenly, exalted orchestra. The mind does not hear from them the sorrowful plaints of separation, that foremost Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi and all lovers hear, but dominical praise and laudation and grateful thanks offered to the Most Merciful One, the Ever-Living, the SelfSubsistent. (Nursi 1992: 236)

Bilal Kuúpinar is right in concluding that there is a clear-cut difference between RnjmƯ’s and Nursi’s understanding of ‘affliction’ or ‘trial’ (Kuúpinar 2003: 156). For RnjmƯ, the whole of earthly existence is marked by the separation between lover and Beloved, and he accepts this as a feature of human life. For Nursi, on the other hand, nature sings the praise of its Creator and God is ever present in God’s creation. While RnjmƯ contemplates the union of lover and Beloved as a dynamic interplay between fanƗ’ (annihilation) and baqƗ’ (abiding), Nursi stresses baqƗ’ while being hesitant about fanƗ’, not only because he fears that the boundary between God and creatures might vanish in the unity of existence, but also because, for him, God is more manifest than hidden. In the following short description of the

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life and works of RnjmƯ, I will concentrate on those aspects that are important in understanding his position in the mystical tradition of Islam between al-GhazƗlƯ and Said Nursi. 7.5.1 Life and Context of JalƗl al-dƯn RnjmƯ JalƗl al-dƯn RnjmƯ, who is called ‘our Master’ by his followers – MaulƗna in Arabic or Mevlana in Turkish – was born in Balkh in the northern part of modern Afghanistan in 1207. Mongol invasions forced the family to flee to Anatolia where JalƗl al-dƯn succeeded his father as teacher in a madrasa (a religious boarding school associated with a mosque). Because he spent most of his life in Konya in present-day Turkey, JalƗl al-dƯn was later called RnjmƯ, which refers to (countries of the) Byzantine Empire. Although he married and had several children, the most important events in RnjmƯ’s life were related to spiritual friendships (Chittick 1983; Schimmel 1992). In 1244 RnjmƯ met Shams al-dƯn TabrƯzƯ, a somewhat enigmatic wandering mystic, under whose influence RnjmƯ started to have ecstatic experiences of mystical union that led him to sign his poems with the name of Shams al-dƯn – there was no longer any distinction between lover and beloved. RnjmƯ’s students and particularly his sons did not like this spiritual friendship at all. They forced Shams al-dƯn to disappear and told their father that his friend had returned to wandering. RnjmƯ reacted by writing mystical poems, later published as DƯwƗn-i Shams-i TabrƯzƯ, ‘the collected writings of Shams from Tabriz’. Underneath the evident distress over the separation from Shams (the name means ‘Sun’), RnjmƯ’s poems evoke a deeper distress over the separation from God, the real Sun: Shams had become for RnjmƯ a mirror in which he could contemplate the Divine Beloved (Chittick 1983: 4-5). After some time RnjmƯ developed a second spiritual friendship, this time with SalƗh aldƯn Zarqnjb who was said to possess not even a decent knowledge of the Qur’Ɨn, which reportedly gave offence to the students and sons of RnjmƯ once again. At the request of HusƗm al-dƯn ChalabƯ, one of his students, RnjmƯ wrote a second collection of poems, the MathnawƯ yi MaǥanawƯ, which can be translated as ‘Couplets of Spiritual Meaning’. Apart from these two volumes of poems in Persian, RnjmƯ collected a number of aphorisms, mainly from conversational talks with his students, to form fihi ma fihi, which is Arabic for ‘potpourri’. When the Mongols captured Konya, they left RnjmƯ in peace, so he could continue to teach his Sufi disciples until his death in 1273. His

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disciples formed the Mevlevi order, a Sufi brotherhood that follows the teachings of RnjmƯ. After having been banished from public life under the secularist regime of Mustafa Kemal in the Turkish republic, this Mevleviyya may now be seen once again in Konya and many other places with their characteristic music and dance performance (samƗǥ), in which the dancers rotate while the leader meditates (dhikr) on the names of God (Lewis 2000: 423-66). Because of this characteristic dance they are sometimes called the ‘whirling dervishes’. During one of our symposia in Nijmegen, a group of dervishes was present and danced while their leader, Shaykh Ahmed Dede performed the dhikr (Dede 2004). 7.5.2 RnjmƯ as the Poet of Love The titles of William Chittick’s monographs on RnjmƯ (The Sufi Path of Love) and on Ibn al-ǥArabƯ (The Sufi Path of Knowledge) indicate how these two Sufi masters have been perceived differently by later generations: Ibn al-ǥArabi as the philosopher who tried to incorporate certain Neo-Platonic notions into the world of Islam and RnjmƯ as the poet who tried to do the same with the experience of love. Yet separating Ibn al-ǥArabƯ’s knowledge from RnjmƯ’s love would be as unjust as separating the God of the Philosophers from the God of the Mystics, as Karen Armstrong suggests in her famous history of human images of God (Armstrong 1993), nor do I want to suggest that Chittick separates these Sufi masters in such a way. The difference in perception of both thinkers has to do more with their personal constitutions and literary styles than with different directions of their thinking. While the influence of Ibn al-ǥArabƯ on RnjmƯ cannot be proven, it is quite clear that they lived in the same spiritual atmosphere (Lewis 2000: 286). Yet the notion of the hidden presence of God may be found in RnjmƯ’s works in a different way than in al-GhazƗlƯ or in Ibn al-ǥArabƯ. In the first place, RnjmƯ frequently uses the metaphor of love to indicate how the love between human beings may be a similitude of the love between the Sufi and God. In the second place, the hidden presence of God is visible in the dialectics of self. The soul or self (nafs) has to be left behind and finally annihilated if one is to reach God, but the final stage on the way to God comprises not only annihilation (fanƗ’) but abiding (baqƗ’) as well. I will limit myself to these two themes in the remainder of this chapter.

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The reason why RnjmƯ has been named the poet of love is that love (mahabba) and ardent love (ǥishq) is clearly the central theme of his work (Chittick 1983: 194). When RnjmƯ refers to love as a disturbing power that changes our lives, he may refer to experiences in his own life, but he also refers to the encounter between the Sufi and God: Love has taken away my practices and filled me with poetry. I tried to keep quietly repeating No strength but yours, but I couldn’t. I had to clap and sing. I used to be respectable and chaste and stable, but who can stand in this strong wind and remember those things? A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself. That’s how I hold your voice. I am scrap wood thrown in your fire, and quickly reduced to smoke. (RnjmƯ 1997: 104, tr. Barks)

In the next poem, RnjmƯ shows that love is an attribute of God and that the lover reaches him more quickly than the ascetic does. The opposetion between the lover who is intoxicated with the wine of divine love and the ascetic who prefers to remain sober may be interpreted as phrasing the spiritual differences between RnjmƯ and Said Nursi (Kuúpinar 2003: 162). The mystic ascends to the Throne in a moment; the ascetic needs a month for one day’s journey. Although, for the ascetic, one day is of great value, yet how should his one day be equal to fifty thousand years (Q. 70: 4)? In the life of the adept, every day is fifty thousand of the years of this world. Love (mahabbat), and ardent love (ǥishq) also, is an Attribute of God; Fear is an attribute of the slave to lust and appetite. Love hath five hundred wings, and every wing reaches from above the empyrean to beneath the earth. The timorous ascetic runs on foot; the lovers of God fly more quickly than lightning. May Divine Favour free thee from this wayfaring! None but the royal falcon hath found the way to the King. (RnjmƯ 1995: 102, tr. Nicholson)

RnjmƯ often refers to the experience of love as an experience that erases the differences between lover and Beloved. I will give some ex-

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amples of this in the next subsection, while referring the reader to William Chittick’s detailed exposition on this subject in his book on RnjmƯ (Chittick 1983: 194-231). 7.5.3 God’s Hidden Presence and the Dialectics of Self As the famous Song of the Reed indicates, the experience of love often begins with the experience of separateness that may lead to an experience of unity: How should not I mourn, like night, without His day and the favour of His day-illuming countenance? His unsweetness is sweet to my soul: may my soul be sacrificed to the Beloved who grieves my heart! I am in love with grief and pain for the sake of pleasing my peerless King. Tears shed for His sake are pearls, though people think they are tears. I complain of the Soul of my soul, but in truth I am not complaining: I am only telling. My heart says it is tormented by Him, and I have long been laughing at its poor pretence. Do me right, O Glory of the righteous, O Thou Who art the dais, and I the threshold of Thy door! Where are threshold and dais in reality? Where the Beloved is, where are ‘we’ and ‘I’? O Thou Whose soul is free from ‘we’ and ‘I’, O Thou Who art the essence of the spirit in men and women, When men and women become one, Thou art that One; then the units are wiped out, lo, Thou art that Unity. Thou didst contrive this ‘I’ and ‘we’ in order to play the game of worship with Thyself, That all ‘I’s’ and ‘thou’s’ might become one soul and at last be submerged in the Beloved. (RnjmƯ 1995: 33-34, tr. Nicholson)

One of the exigencies of this love is that the lover transcends the ‘soul’ or the ‘lower self’ (nafs). The comparative reader will recognize this theme in Christian spirituality: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-5). In RnjmƯ, however, the dialectics of the annihilated self and the abiding or subsisting self in the encounter between lover and Beloved is a central theme. One of the poems just mentioned ended with the

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words “I am scrap wood thrown in your fire, and quickly reduced to smoke”; it continues as follows: I saw you and became empty. This emptiness, more beautiful than existence, it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes, existence thrives and creates more existence! (RnjmƯ 1997: 105, tr. Barks)

One of the consequences of this emptiness is that God acts through human beings. In this respect, RnjmƯ’s reflections, albeit in a different form, are not far from al-GhazƗlƯ’s explanations about human actions as created freedom: Consider the difference in our actions and God’s actions. We often ask, ‘Why did you do that?’ or ‘Why did I act like that?’ We do act, and yet everything we do is God’s creative action. We look back and analyze the events of our lives, but there is another way of seeing, a backward-and-forward-at-once vision that is not rationally understandable. Only God can understand it. Satan made the excuse, You caused me to fall, Whereas Adam said to God, We did this to ourselves. After this repentance, God asked Adam, Since all is within my foreknowledge, why didn’t you defend yourself with that reason? Adam answered, I was afraid and I wanted to be reverent. Whoever acts with respect will get respect Whoever brings sweetness will be served almond cake. Good women are drawn to be with good men. Honor you friend. Or treat hum rudely, and see what happens! Love, tell an incident now that will clarify this mystery of how we act freely and are yet compelled. One hand shakes with palsy. Another shakes because you slapped it away. Both tremblings come from God, but you feel guilty for the one, and what about the other? These are intellectual questions. The spirit approaches the matter differently. Omar once had a friend, a scientist Bu ‘l-Hakam who was flawless at solving empirical problems but he could not follow Omar into the area of illumination and wonder. Now I return to the text, “And He is with you wherever you are,” but when have I ever left it? Ignorance is God’s prison; knowing is God’s palace We sleep in God’s unconsciousness; we wake in God’s open hand. We weep God’s rain; we laugh God’s lightning.

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Fighting and peacefulness both take place within God. Who are we then in this complicated world-tangle, That is really just the single, straight line Down at the beginning of ALLAH? Nothing. We are emptiness. (RnjmƯ 1997: 26-28; tr. Barks)

In this poem God is envisaged as an all-encompassing reality into which the individual lover is ‘absorbed’ – without losing its individual existence – in such a manner that this existence is characterized by emptiness. Of course, this may be seen as a radical interpretation of tawhƯd in the sense that God is the only truly existent being. In the same way, it may be seen as a radical interpretation of tawakkul in the sense that lovers entrust their whole existence to the Beloved. This is wonderfully expressed in one of RnjmƯ’s more homely images about a chickpea that is fearful of losing its existence in the cooking pot. Look at a chickpea in the pot, how it leaps up when it is subjected to the fire. Whilst it is boiling, it always comes up to the top, crying ceaselessly. ‘Why are you setting the fire on me? You bought me; why are you tormenting me like this?’ The housewife goes on hitting it with the ladle. ‘Now’, says she, ‘boil nicely and don’t jump away from her who makes the fire. I boil thee, but not because thou art hateful to me; nay, ‘tis that thou mayst get savour and become nutriment and mingle with the vital spirit. Such affliction is no abasement. When thou wert green and fresh, thou drankest water in the garden: that water-drinking was for the sake of this fire. God’s mercy is prior to His wrath, to the end that by His mercy thou mayst suffer tribulation. His mercy is prior to His wrath in order that the stock-in-trade, which is existence, should be produced; For without pleasure flesh and skin do not grow, and unless they grow, what shall Divine Love consume? If, because of that requirement, acts of wrath come to pass to the end that thou shouldst give up thy stock-in-trade, Yet afterwards the Grace of God will justify them, saying ‘Now thou art washed clean and hast jumped out of the river’. Continue, o chickpea, to boil in tribulation until neither existence nor self remains to thee. If thou hast been severed from the garden of the earth, yet thou wilt be food in the mouth and enter into the living. Be nutriment, energy, thought! Thou wert milky sap: now be a lion of the jungle! Thou grewest from God’s Attributes in the beginning:

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pass again into His Attributes! Thou wert a part of the cloud and the sun and the stars: thou wilt become soul and action and speech and thought. The life of the animal arose from the death of the plant: Hence the injunction, ‘Slay me, O trusty friends,’ is right. Since such a victory awaits us after death, the words, ‘Lo, in being slain I live,’ are true’. (RnjmƯ 1995: 81-82, tr. Nicholson)

The classical source for the dialectic between fanƗ’ and baqƗ’ in Sufi literature comes from the Qur’ Ɨn: “Everyone on earth perishes; all that remains is the Face of your Lord, full of majesty, bestowing honour” (Q. 55:26-27; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 354). In this verse both verbs, faniya ‘to pass away, to perish’, and baqiya, ‘to remain, to continue to be’ are used. As Chittick remarks, the term fanƗ’ has been the focus of Western scholars since it reminded them of Hindu and Buddhist concepts like nirvana and moksha,6 but it has to be taken together with baqƗ’ as its contrast (Chittick 1994: 59). According to alGhazƗlƯ’s explanation in the Mishkat al-AnwƗr, “everything is perishing but His face’ would mean that no true self will perish as long as it is turned toward God and reflects his Light. But the self that only reflects itself will perish (Chittick 2000: 47). Ibn al-ǥArabƯ’ explains it as follows: everything that dwells in the domain of distance from God will be annihilated, but everything that is near to God will remain (Chittick 1994: 59). RnjmƯ does not give such a systematic explanation, but it is clear from his verses that annihilation means leaving the lower self behind in order to attain the higher self which has its real existence within God (Chittick 1983: 179). Thus, parallel to the Muslim creed, ‘there is no god but God’, one may say: ‘there is no self but the Self’ (Chittick 1983: 181). Or, to use another image, “inside this new love, die.” (RnjmƯ 1997: 22, tr. Barks) In another poem RnjmƯ uses the text of Qur’Ɨn 36:32, “all of them will be brought before Us”, to show that something of the human being may remain in the presence of God. All human faculties are impermanent: they are naughted on the Day of Resurrection; Yet the light of the senses and spirits of our fathers is not wholly perishable, like the grass. 6

I would suggest that the term Ğunyata in Japanese Buddhism (for instance, the Kyoto school) is probably a better parallel than moksha.

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Those who have passes from the world are not non-existent: they are steeped in the Divine Attributes. All their attributes are absorbed in the Attributes of God, even as stars vanish in the presence of the sun. If you demand authority form the Qur’Ɨn, recite the text, “All of them shall be brought into Our Presence (muhdarnjn).” The person denoted by the word muhdarnjn is not non-existent. Meditate on this, so that you may gain certain knowledge of the everlasting life of the spirit. The spirit debarred from everlasting life is in torment; the spirit everlastingly united with God is free from barriers. (RnjmƯ 1995: 179, tr. Nicholson)

My last quotation from RnjmƯ is a short story from the fihi ma fihi collection. It is similar to the famous story of the moth and the candle from the same collection that tells us how human beings are irresistibly attracted to God as to the Light that they need to live. At the same time, however, contact with this Light implies the end of their existence as human beings. God is present in our lives as a hidden power that attracts us to draw closer to this Light that will change our lives without, however, taking it away. When a fly is plunged in honey, all the members of its body are reduced to the same condition, and it does not move. Similarly the term istighrƗq (absorption in God) is applied to one who has no conscious existence or initiative or movement. Any action that proceeds from him is not his own. If he is still struggling in the water, or if he cries out, “Oh, I am drowning,’ he is not said to be in the state of absorption. This is what is signified by the words Ana ’lHaqq “I am God”. People imagine that it is a presumptuous claim, whereas it is really a presumptuous claim to say Ana ’l-‘abd, “I am the slave of God”; and Ana ’l-Haqq “I am God’ is an expression of great humility. The man who says Ana ’l-‘abd, “I am the slave of God” affirms two existences, his own and God’s, but he that says Ana ’l-Haqq “I am God’ has made himself non-existent and has given himself up and says “I am God”, i.e. “I am naught, He is all: there is no being but God’s.” This is the extreme of humility and self-abasement. (RnjmƯ 1995: 184; tr. Nicholson).

In a process of comparative Muslim-Christian theology, Christians may discover that the dialectics of fanƗ’ and baqƗ’ is not that different from what the Christian tradition tells us about the future of humankind in words inspired by Gregory the Great from the Preface of the Mass for the Dead: vita mutatur non tollitur, our life will be changed, but it will not be taken away. Thomas Aquinas read this text as an in-

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terpretation of Philippians 3:21: “He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory” (Valkenberg 2000: 94). In Pauline terminology, the ‘flesh’ which is roughly equivalent to RnjmƯ’s nafs, will be replaced with the Spirit of Christ: So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. (Romans 8: 12-14).

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CHAPTER 8

More Lights on the Way: Spiritual and Theological Masters of the Present This final chapter connects the analyses of Muslim and Christian spiritual and theological authors from the Middle Ages with the present. Because my Muslim-Christian comparative theology aims at promoting dialogue between Muslims and Christians primarily in my own Dutch context, the choice of authors is determined by this context. In the second chapter of this book, I have described the small beginnings of dialogue between Dutch Christians and Turkish Muslims in Nijmegen. Since the Islam and Dialogue Foundation is the most important Muslim partner in this dialogue, the aim of this book may be reached by investigating their sources of inspiration. As the Dutch Islam and Dialogue Foundation is connected – more in terms of spiritual leadership than in terms of formal allegiance – with the Turkish Journalists and Writers Foundation and its many branches, Fethullah Gülen, who is the source of inspiration of this Foundation, will be among the authors investigated in this chapter. The movement around Fethullah Gülen is, however, one of the major groups of a larger movement in Turkey and abroad, the Nurçuluk or Nur (light) movement. This movement may be characterized as a community inspired by the Said Nursi’s Risale-i Nur (Epistles of Light). Although Said Nursi (1877-1960) and Fethullah Gülen (born in 1938 or 1941) never met each other, it is quite clear that Nursi forms a major source of inspiration for Gülen, while the latter may be seen as a person who modernized and universalized the major ideas of the former.1 Yet out of respect for Said Nursi, Fethullah Gülen refuses to be called his pupil; for the same reason, his followers are not formally seen as part of the Nurçu movement. At the same time, 1

Agai (2004: 125 nt. 421) remarks that most reliable sources mention 1938 as Gülen’s year of birth, whereas official documents often mention 1941. Contrary to most other souces he gives 1879 as Nursi’s year of birth (Agai 2004: 65).

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sociologists of religion and political scientists point to the close ties between both movements and like to identify Gülen’s followers as the neo-Nur community (Yavuz 2003c: 19). The previous chapter began with a section on one of the possible interpretations of Thomas Aquinas as the theological background of my comparative reading of al-GhazƗlƯ. While this chapter does not originate in a form of Christian theology but in the practical experience of dialogue, I will insert an interlude in which I explicitly refer to some Christian parallels to some of the most important theological and spiritual insights discovered in my analysis of texts by al-GhazƗlƯ and Said Nursi. I want to show how these insights are expressions of a basic spiritual experience that is present in many non-Western cultures, while it seems to be marginalized in modern Western Christianity. More particularly, I want to draw attention to the idea that ‘God alone suffices’ as a foundational element in human experience which is translated by Christian and Muslim theologians into the idea that human beings have received their existence from the Creator. While the notion that God alone suffices may seem rather exclusivist and quietist in the eyes of modern Western Christians, al-GhazƗlƯ’s analysis of the difference between the mutual relations among creatures and their relations with their Creator may show that such a trust in God does not detract from cooperation among human beings. Having dealt with Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen as the most important contemporary Muslim authors in this chapter, I will then compare the way their followers present themselves as Muslims in the West with another Muslim way of construing the future of Islam in the West. On this topic the Swiss Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan has written several pioneering studies. Yet, while the followers of Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen are able to reach many Turkish Muslims in Europe and North America, Tariq Ramadan’s sharp analysis remains more or less an intellectual affair. On the other hand, Ramadan’s keen analysis of the paralyzing effects of minority complexes is able to free modern Muslims from ethnic boundaries. Because a relevant form of Islam in the West requires both spiritual movements and philosophical analyses, a connection between both forms of modern Islam in the West may be promising for Muslim-Christian dialogue in the future. The bold confidence of American Muslims that the future of Islam is in their hands was among the most unexpected of my experiences in the United States. Because they may be right, in sha’Allah, I under-

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stand why the University of Notre Dame wanted to have Tariq Ramadan in their midst – but for the same reason I can see why the powers that be prevented him from coming. 8.1 Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1877-1960) Said Nursi is usually called Bediuzzaman by his followers, which means ‘eminent sign of the times’ (Mardin 1989: 77). While this sobriquet originally referred to his quick mastery of languages, it later came to summarize the meaning of his person and work for his followers: according to a well-known hadith, the Prophet predicted that God would send someone in each century of the Muslim era to the community to renew and revive their religion. While al-GhazƗlƯ would certainly match the profile of such an innovator of faith with his IhyƗ’ ǥulnjm ad-dƯn, Said Nursi could qualify with his Risale-i Nur as well (Leaman 1999: 323). 8.1.1 Life and Context Because Said Nursi frequently speaks of the ‘Old Said’ and the ‘New Said’ in his works, it has become customary to divide his life into the period of the Old Said (1877-1920) and of the New Said (1920-60). Said Nursi was born in Nurs, one of the villages in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. He was educated in several traditional Qur’Ɨn-schools or medreses around his birthplace. During this time he managed to learn a large number of texts by heart, but he was not satisfied with the educational system. When he completed his studies, at about fifteen years old, he was entitled to be called ‘teacher’ or shaykh. It was at this time that the name of Bediuzzaman was given to him. Although he never joined one of the Sufi orders or tariqƗt, he was deeply influenced by reading the works of some of the Naqshbandi shaykhs. In 1895 he founded his own medrese in the city of Van, where he combined traditional religious teaching with modern sciences, as he saw that traditional teaching was not able to give answers to the new problems of modernity. In some of his writings Said Nursi said that he decided to spend the rest of his life in the defense of the Qur’Ɨn when he read in a paper that the British political leader Gladstone had said that the Muslims could only be defeated if the Qur’Ɨn could be taken away from them. He wanted to expand this school into a university in eastern Anatolia as the sister university of al-Azhar in Cairo; in 1907 he went to Istanbul to gain support for this

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idea from Sultan Abdülhamid. His fame had made some of the ǥulama jealous and this led to his arrest and incarceration. Somewhat later, in 1908, he became a supporter of the ‘constitutional revolution’ as the only way to save the Ottoman Empire. He became politically very active and gave many speeches that made him famous. In 1911 he gave a sermon in the Umayyad mosque of Damascus that was to be published as the ‘Damascus sermon’. At the same time he published some of his discussions with the ǥulama and the leaders of the Kurdish tribes in two volumes: ‘Reasonings’ and ‘Debates’. In the same year he accompanied Sultan Mehmed Reúad on a tour through Albania and Macedonia as the representative of the eastern provinces and succeeded in obtaining some money for his university plans. During the First World War Said Nursi led a group of students, teaching them and fighting the Russian invasion at the same time. He wrote his first commentary on the Qur’Ɨn, IsharƗt al-IǥjƗz, the ‘Signs of Miraculousness’ at the front.2 After two years as a prisoner of war, he returned to Istanbul in 1918, where he was rewarded with a prestigious membership in the DƗrü’l Hikmeti l-IslƗmiye, a learned institution attached to the Shaykh ul-IslƗm with the aim of solving modern problems by the use of Islamic jurisprudence. He wrote a number of works and was politically very active until he withdrew from politics in 1920. In several parts of his Risale-i Nur Said Nursi tells of his hesitations regarding the best way to defend the Qur’Ɨn in the new world after the First World War and the defeat of the Ottomans. He initially tried to defend the Qur’Ɨn with a combination of political activity and modern philosophical thinking but later concluded that this was only diverting him from the essence of his task. In 1922 he went to Ankara in order to support the new Turkish government and was invited to address the National Assembly and defend the role of Islam in the new republic. He was, however, overruled by a pro-Western and secular majority. Although Mustafa Kemal offered him some posts in the new government, he declined and went back to Van in 1923. During the period 1924-1935, many public signs of the influence of Islam were abolished: the Caliphate, the office of Shaykh ul-Islam, the medreses

2

It is interesting to note that Franz Rosenzweig wrote his Stern der Erlösung (Star of Redemption) under similar circumstances.

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and the Sufi tekkes, the Arabic alphabet and finally the Arabic call to prayer. Said Nursi lived a life of seclusion in prayer and contemplation, and did not want to be involved in politics and Western ways of thinking any more. In 1925 the eastern Anatolian provinces revolted against the new government and, although Said Nursi did not agree with this rebellion, he was exiled to the Western part of the country, first in Burdur, later in Barla. In these years of exile Said Nursi began writing Qur’Ɨnic meditations and epistles that were copied and spread by his students. A large collection of these essays in manuscript form would later be classified and published in the Risale-i Nur (‘Epistles of Light’) collection, the main work of the ‘new Said’. Between 1926 and 1932 he wrote essays and letters that would be published in the first and second volumes of the Risale-i Nur: Sözler (‘Words’) and Mektnjbat (‘Letters’). Because these writings attracted more students, the authorities exiled him to Isparta and then to Eskisehir Prison. Nursi and some of his followers were charged with opposing reforms of Islam and belonging to a secret political organization. A new period of imprisonment and exile in various places began, which would last until 1949. Nursi wrote, mostly in prison some more meditations and defences of his position presented during trials in several courts. These writings were collected in the third and fourth volume of the Risale-i Nur: Lemǥalar (‘Flashes’) and ùuƗlar (‘Rays’). In the 1950 general elections, the Democrat Party defeated the Republican People’s Party and proclaimed a general amnesty. Because the new party intended to allow greater religious freedom, Nursi began to support their policy. This cautious involvement in politics during the last years of his life caused some authors to speak of a ‘third Nursi’ (Vahide 1999; 2003). During these years, arguing that Christians and Muslims should together combat all forms of atheism, Said Nursi sent a volume of his works to the Vatican and established contacts with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Istanbul. In 1956 Afyon Court (the same court that sentenced him to prison in 1948-1949) finally gave permission to publish printed copies of the Risale-i Nur which, until then, had always been copied by hand. From now on, copies of the work could be spread all over the country and many dershanes or study houses were formed. Said Nursi had always said that the Risale-i Nur, as an exposition of the truths of the Qur’Ɨn, was a more important teacher than he himself in person. In this respect

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concentration on a text – and on the Qur’Ɨn through this text – formed an innovation in comparison to the old forms of spiritual education that focused on the person of the shaykh as spiritual master. In the last decades of the twentieth century Said Nursi’s writings were published in large numbers, not only in Turkish but in Arabic and in English translations as well.3 Some major conferences, both in Turkey and the United States, help expand his fame among scholars of religion. In most countries in Western Europe, however, his name is not very well known nor is he numbered among the great revivers of Islam in the twentieth century. Time will tell whether European Islamicists have overlooked some important publications that came to Europe with Turkish Muslims or whether Said Nursi and his work will turn out to be a local phenomenon that is not important for the future of Islam in the West. 8.1.2 The Damascus Sermon A quick glance at the Damascus sermon is of interest because it shows some of the main convictions of Said Nursi at a time when he was still very much a public figure. He delivered his khutba or Friday sermon in the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus in early spring 1911. As a publication, however, the original Damascus sermon is surrounded by later additions, mainly on the occasion of its Turkish translation some forty-five years later. This results in multilayered texts, as is often the case in the complicated editions of Nursi’s works. In the case of his Damascus sermon the situation is even more complicated since the printed edition shows the ‘New Said’ commenting on the words of the ‘Old Said’ (Nursi 1996). The most important remark of the ‘New Said’ is that the ‘Old Said’ diagnosed the sicknesses of the Muslim world and gave some “lessons from the pharmacy of the Qur’an” (Nursi 1996: 27) that indicated how the world of Islam could regain strength. Due to the two world wars and twenty-five years of despotism in Turkey, these events did not happen in the years after 1911, but they would happen in the fore3

Because of the three editions I refer to the several collections of the Risale-i Nur not only with page numbers from the English translation but also with the number of the Word, Letter, Flash or Ray as well in Roman numerals, so that readers of Turkish or Arabic may find the quotations in their editions as well.

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seeable future. “For the Old Said spoke prophetically in that lesson of forty years ago as though he was seeing the wondrous teachings of the Risale-i Nur and its effects” (Nursi 1996: 18). Such words are not particularly unpretentious, and they are often repeated in the Risale-i Nur itself: they contain the most powerful medicine for all the problems of the Muslim world. Yet it would not be correct to charge Nursi with arrogance, since the healing power comes from the Qur’Ɨn as the source from which the Risale-i Nur flows. An example from the seventh Ray, also called ‘the supreme sign’, in which a traveler is led to acknowledge God’s existence by observing the wonders of creation, will substantiate this: Since the traveler lived in the present age, he looked first at the Risale-i Nur, flashes from the miraculousness of the Qur’an; he saw its one hundred and thirty parts to consist of luminous points drawn from that Book of Discernment, or well-founded explanations of its contents. Even though the Risale-i Nur is valiantly struggling to diffuse the truths of the Qur’an in all directions, in this obstinate and atheistic age, no one can defeat it, which proves that its master, its source, its authority and its sun, is the Qur’an, heavenly not human speech. (Nursi 1998: 156-57)

To be fair to Said Nursi, one has to acknowledge that the many selfassured phrases about the way in which the proofs in the Risale-i Nur destroy all forms of unbelief are in fact derived from its being an explanation of the Qur’Ɨn. Yet the rhetoric of eminence applied by Said Nursi has a dangerous side, since some of his followers tend to see the Risale as a ‘holy text’ with special status in the Nurçuluk movement. While Nursi explicitly denied being a ‘saint’, referring to the Risale-i Nur instead, this text may gain a charisma that can be used in a process of individualization (Mardin 1989: 181) as well as in a new literalism whereby Nursi’s texts become “semisacred” (Yavuz 2003b: 297). Islam and Christianity in the Damascus Sermon As is customary in Nursi’s writings, the Damascus sermon starts by evoking the text from the Qur’Ɨn that he wants to explain: “Do not despair of God’s mercy” (Q. 39:53). He then describes the situation of the Muslim world as one of backwardness in comparison with the Europeans who seem to flourish in scientific and material development. He indicates six sicknesses that cause this backwardness and six treatments of these sicknesses with medicines from the Qur’Ɨn. The

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first sickness is despair and its antidote is hope. It is in this context that Said Nursi assures his hearers that “the future shall be Islam’s and Islam’s alone” (Nursi 1996: 27). It is typical of the old Said that he looks to the political arena for indications of other powers willing to embrace Islam. In rhetorical fashion he ends as follows: O my brothers who are here in the Umayyad Mosque and those who are in the mosque of the world of Islam half a century later! Do the introductory remarks, that is, those made up here, not point to the conclusion that it is Islam that will be the true, and spiritual, ruler over the future, and only Islam that will lead mankind to happiness in this world and the next; and that true Christianity, stripping off superstition and corrupted belief, will be transformed into Islam; following the Qur’an, it will unite with Islam? (Nursi 1996: 35-36)

A Christian reader of this text will probably feel some ambiguity. It is quite remarkable that a Muslim scholar explicitly refers to Christianity in a sermon for a Muslim audience back in 1911. Because of the antiEuropean tenor of his sermon, it is significant that Said Nursi does not associate Christianity with the West in order to denounce both. Thomas Michel, one of the first and most prominent Christian scholars to study Nursi’s texts with a view to better understanding between Muslims and Christians mentions this positive approach (Michel 2003: 2032) but does not mention the unmistakable inequality in the role of Muslims and Christians. Said Nursi wants to reverse the political and economic situation of 1911, when the Ottoman Empire was weakening and the European powers were gaining strength. The only way to do this was to be faithful and to put all hope in God. There is, of course, a trace of condescension in his remark that Christianity may unite with Islam and be transformed into Islam if it sheds superstition and corruption. This remark may even be seen as a not so subtle form of daǥwa: Christians may join the true religion if they purify their own religion. Yet, as modern Muslim theologies of religion like those of al-Faruqi and Esack summarized in chapter six argue, it is not a call to join Islam as an institutionalized religion but to join islƗm as the basic human virtue of submission to God. The right interpretation of Nursi’s text will, moreover, have to take its future tense into account. It matches Muslim eschatological views in which Christianity will be a second power next to Islam in combatting atheism. This will be the explicit vision of Said Nursi in his Risale-i Nur:

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At that point when the current appears to be very strong, the religion of true Christianity, which comprises the collective personality of Jesus (Upon whom be peace), will emerge. That is, it will descend from the skies of Divine Mercy. Present Christianity will be purified in the face of that reality; it will cast off superstition and distortion, and unite with the truths of Islam. Christianity will in effect be transformed into a sort of Islam. Following the Qur’an, the collective personality of Christianity will be in the rank of follower, and Islam, in that of leader. True religion will become a mighty force as a result of its joining it. Although defeated before the atheistic current while separate, Christianity and Islam will have the capability to defeat and rout it as a result of their union. Then the person of Jesus (Upon whom be peace), who is present with his human body in the world of the heavens, will come to lead the current of true religion, as, relying on the promise of One Powerful Over All Things, the Bringer of Sure News has said. (Letter XV; Nursi 1997: 78-79)

For many followers of Said Nursi, this idea of a future cooperation between Christians and Muslims against the forces of secularism is the main motive for engagement in interreligious dialogue with Christians. Nursi writes elsewhere about this cooperation of true Christians with Islam as an interpretation of a hadith according to which Jesus will kill the Dajjal, a form of the Antichrist, and of another hadith that says that Jesus will come and perform his prayers behind the Mahdi (Messiah) and that he will follow him (Flash V; Nursi 1998: 108). Again, this will sound a bit ambiguous for many Christians; they will feel subordinated to another religion that is purer and more powerful and they will have the idea that their Savior is subordinated to a Prophet with a different message as well. But they have been able to live under such political circumstances for centuries, not least in the Ottoman Empire. They may be aware that Islam demonstrates the same sense of superiority that they have demonstrated toward the Jews. And if the condition to purify their religion may be applied to Islam as well as to Christianity, there is no reason why Muslims and Christians can not cooperate, as long as the fight against materialism is seen as a spiritual and not a military war (in terms of spiritual Muslim traditions, as a ‘greater jihƗd’ instead of a ‘lesser jihƗd’, Motzki 2002: 56). The second sickness mentioned by Said Nursi in his Damascus sermon is the lack of truthfulness in social and political life. This lack of truthfulness led him to leave the political arena some ten years

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later. The antidote for this evil is honesty. The third evil is enmity, and its medicine is love. In this context Said Nursi gives the following moral lesson: “The thing most worthy of love is love, and that most deserving of enmity is enmity” (Nursi 1996: 49). This sounds like a shortened form of the quotation from the brochure of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation in the Netherlands that I retraced to the works of Fethullah Gülen (see chapter two). In his approach to religious and political differences Gülen applies this moral lesson as follows: we should approach others with loving kindness, even if they are our enemies. But if they persist in their enmity, we should be realistic and not extend our tolerance too far (Gülen 2004: 94). Since Gülen sets this approach alongside Jesus’ recommendation to turn the other cheek, there is an echo here of an apologetic argument that opposes Qur’Ɨnic realism to Christian idealism. The fourth sickness is disunity, forgetting the bonds that bind us together. When Said Nursi prescribes Islamic unity as a medicine, this refers to the context of 1911: the Ottoman Empire still existed, but several voices pleading for independence of the Arab nations could be heard. According to Said Nursi, Turks and Arabs are brothers who belong together in the world of Islam. The fifth sickness is – according to Michel (2003: 29) because Nursi’s text is not entirely clear – despotism which can be cured by an attitude of dignity and the sixth sickness is individualism which can be healed by mutual consultation, according to the ideal of the Qur’Ɨn (42:38). In his final reflections Thomas Michel reaches the conclusion that Christians may use the analysis and the remedies of the Damascus sermon for the challenges of the twenty-first century, because Said Nursi uses virtues such as faith, hope and love which are well-known in the Christian tradition as well. He uses them to empower Muslims against sicknesses that can also be recognized by Christians (Michel 2003: 32). 8.1.3 Signs of Miraculousness Although the recent English translation, Signs of Miraculousness, of the Arabic work IshƗrƗt al-IǥjƗz fi Mazann al-IjƗz presents it as the sixth volume of the Risale-i Nur, it stems from the period of the ‘Old Said’. Said Nursi wrote this work in a fairly traditional style according to the rules of tafsƯr (Qur’Ɨnic exegesis). While the Risale-i Nur takes separate verses from the Qur’Ɨn as points of departure for sometimes

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extended treatises, the Signs of Miraculousness represents a style of commentary that remains close to the text. One of the characteristics of the genre of iǥjƗz (‘inimitability’) is that it pays close attention to the word order in the Qur’Ɨn, starting from the theological presumption that God must have had good reasons for revealing His word in this order. Such a genre is not very different from the search for a deeper meaning in the word order or numerical value of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words in Scripture by Jewish and Christian readers. Although most modern exegetes hold this genre in contempt, mainly because it is often used in antimodern strategies culminating in the claim that ‘the Bible is right anyway’, the idea of hidden meanings in the word order and numerical value of the Bible resurfaces in the popularity of certain strands in Cabalist literature. The Christian theory of the threefold or fourfold sense of Scripture may be seen as a more scholarly form of the same basic idea that every word in Scripture should have at least one meaningful sense (De Lubac 1959). The idea that God “has ordered everything in a most meaningful way,” as Aquinas states in reference to the book of Wisdom (8:1 “and she orders all things well”), is one of the basic keys of Patristic and medieval exegesis. Moreover, it forms a cornerstone for Aquinas’ teaching on divine providence (STh I. 22.2). Yet in the world of Islam the idea that the text of the Qur’Ɨn is ordered in a meaningful fashion has greater plausibility, because the Qur’Ɨn itself is regarded as the greatest miracle. We will come across this idea in the Risale-i Nur several times, but iǥjƗz literature as such is built upon it. For the purpose of this comparative reading of Said Nursi, two small examples of the procedure in the Signs of Miraculousness may suffice. The explanation of snjrat al-FƗtiha, the first chapter and ‘opener’ of the Qur’Ɨn, begins with a statement of Nursi’s purposes: So know firstly that our aim from these indications, is a commentary on a number of the symbols of the Qur’an’s word-order, for [one aspect of] its miraculousness is manifested in its word-order. Indeed, the embroidery of its world-order is its most brilliant [form of] miraculousness. And know secondly that the fundamental aims of the Qur’an and its essential elements are fourfold: divine unity (al-tawhƯd), prophethood (al-nubnjwwa), the resurrection of the dead (al-hashr), and justice (al-‘adƗla). (Nursi 2004: 19)

Since the first words of this chapter and of almost every surah in the Qur’Ɨn are the same, bismillƗh al-rahmƗn al-rahƯm (‘in the Name of

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God, the Merciful, the Compassionate’), Said Nursi says that these four aims of the Qur’an should be present in these words. Divine unity is expressed in the prefix ‘bi-’ of the first word, while prophethood is implied in the implicit instruction to say these words aloud. Justice and beneficence are implied in the word ‘rahmƗn’, while the resurrection of the dead is implied in the word ‘rahƯm’ (Nursi 2004: 201). More specifically, the word ‘bismillƗh’ is given the following interpretation: ‘In the name of Allah (BismillƗh)’ is like the sun, which illumines itself as well as others and is self-sufficient. Thus, the ‘In (bi-)’ is related to the verb that is implicit in its meaning; that is, ‘I seek help from it;’ or the meaning usually associated with it; that is, ‘I swear by it.’ Or it is related to the implicit ‘Say!’ (Qul), which necessitates a subsequent ‘recite!’ or ‘read’ (iqrƗ’) to denote sincerity and divine unity. As for ‘name (al-ism)’ know that Allah has names pertaining to His essence, and names pertaining to various sorts of action, such as Forgiving, Provider, Giver of Life, and Dealer of Death, and so on. They are various and numerous because of the multiplicity of the relations of His pre-eternal power with the different kinds of beings. Therefore, ‘BismillƗh’ is an invocation, seeking the agency and connection of divine power, that its connection might be a spirit for man and a help for him in his actions. ‘AllƗh:’ the proper name of Allah is a comprehensive summary of all the attributes of perfection, for it implies the Essence, unlike other proper nouns, in which there is no necessary implication of attributes. (Nursi 2004: 21)

This attentiveness to word order, possible meanings of words and contexts within which the words are used is quite analogous to the type of close reading of biblical texts in the form of divisio and expositio litterae by medieval exegetes. Since the Bible may be seen as the Word of God as well – although this word is applied in a different sense by Christian and Muslim exegetes – every word may be significant. At the beginning of the second chapter, snjrat al-baqara, Nursi gives a second explanation of the first word, bismillƗh. He tells us that the repeated use of this word in the Qur’Ɨn has a certain meaning: You should know that as a whole the Qur’an is sustenance for hearts and strength, and its repetition causes not boredom, but for the most part delight and pleasure. Similarly, in the Qur’an are parts that are the spirit of that sustenance and strength; the more they are repeated, the more brilliantly they shine, scattering lights of truth and reality…Similarly, in the ‘BismillƗh’ there are different facets, some expressing the seeking of help and blessings; some looking to

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the subject [of the sura in question], indeed, its aim; others indicating that it is an index of the fundamental points of the Qur’an. Also contained in the ‘BismillƗh’ are different levels [of meaning], those of divine unity (tawhƯd), and declaring Allah free of human attributes (tanzƯh), and praise, and divine glory (jalƗl) and beauty (jamƗl), and that of working righteousness (ihsƗn), and so on. The ‘BismillƗh’ also infers various ordinances: for instance it indicates divine unity, prophethood, the resurrection of the dead, and justice; that is, the Qur’an’s well-known four [main] aims. Most suras have [only] one of them as its primary aim, while the rest are secondary. So why shouldn’t one of the BismillƗh’s facets or ordinances or levels [of meaning] have a particular relation with the spirit of the sura [in question], and be the topic of that context, indeed, a concise index of all those aspects and levels?” (Nursi 2004: 37).

Lucinda Allen Mosher has noted that it is no coincidence that the IǥjƗz ends with Q. 2:32: “Glory be unto You, we have no knowledge save that which You have taught us; indeed, You are All-Knowing, AllWise.” From Nursi’s personal point of view, the stopping-point (i.e., Snjrah 2: 32) of this early opus informs all the rest of the Risale composed from then on: God is the only source of any and all knowledge the Risale conveys. (Mosher 2003: 189)

Indeed, this supplication is very often quoted in the Risale-i Nur and it certainly expresses one of the key points of Nursi’s spirituality. In one of his later glosses between square brackets, he refers to it as an inspiration: [In a manner entirely outside my will, this verse occurred to me when I came to the end of most of the Words (Sözler) and Letters (Mektûbat). Now I realize that this commentary was concluded with the same verse, and that all the Words are a sort of true commentary on it and a sparkling stream issuing from its ocean, and at their conclusions pour [back] into it. It is as though all the Words gush forth [and begin] from the verse here at the end of this commentary. Hence, ever since that time [when the commentary was written] I have been unable to finish expounding the verse that I might begin its second volume.] (Nursi 2004: 277)

In the Risale-i Nur, Said Nursi sometimes adds similar remarks between square brackets in his texts: for instance, “[Although on several occasions I intended to write … in detail, permission was not given, so they shall be written briefly and in short]” (Nursi Word XIV A; 1992: 185). Although these words could be interpreted as referring to permission by worldly authorities (permission to use paper and pen), I

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tend to think that Said Nursi uses the passivum divinum, referring to God as source of his inspiration. At some other places, he is clearer about such occurances: for instance, “I had no intention of writing this treatise .… Then suddenly I felt a compelling impulse to write it … saying, ‘I place my trust in God,’ I began … it was clear that Divine favour was with us and there was need for the treatise. God willing, what has been written is sound” (Nursi Letter XIX; 1997: 235). The experience that some parts of the Qur’Ɨn could be explained only at certain times and places is part of what Nursi calls ‘coincidence’ or tawƗfuq. This word also refers to the fact that some copies of the Qur’Ɨn have certain names or signs written in exactly the same place on several pages. This is considered to be one of the signs of miraculousness of the Qur’Ɨn, yet it is significant that Said Nursi alludes to similar forms of tawƗfuq in some of his own works as well such as the pattern of alifs in some hand-written copies of Word XXIX or Flash XIX (Nursi 1998: 282; 2000: 199). Again, such a claim can be understood properly only if one sees the Risale-i Nur as a commentary on the Qur’Ɨn to the effect that some of the signs of miraculousness of the latter may be visible in the former as well. 8.1.4 The Epistles of Light (Risale-i Nur) The Risale-i Nur, “one of the most important documents in modern Muslim intellectual history” (Abu-Rabiǥ 2003: 77), has a quite complicated structure. Unlike the Signs of Miraculousness, it does not follow the word order of the Qur’Ɨn nor is its structure systematic, because quite different topics are dealt with one after another without any apparent relationship (Mardin 1989: 161). Although the four printed volumes coincide roughly with successive periods in Said Nursi’s life, several parts have been moved to other volumes because of thematic relationships. The four parts of the Risale-i Nur contain some 130 treatises, some of them extremely short (one page only) and some rather long (more than a hundred pages). Some texts are quite simple in the sense that they seem to have been written in the same breath, while other texts are extremely elaborated with footnotes, addenda and glosses. Sometimes the original text is almost hidden behind later commentaries by Said Nursi or – less frequently – by the first students of his works. ùerif Mardin may be right in asserting that one can discover the inner structure of the Risale-i Nur only by placing oneself in the footsteps of those to whom the texts were addressed (Mardin

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1989: 161). Being only a recent student of the Risale-i Nur, I propose using the four fundamental aims of the Qur’Ɨn as explained by Said Nursi in his Signs of Miraculousness as a possible key to an interpretation of the structure and main themes of the Risale-i Nur as an exposition of the Qur’Ɨn. Structure and Main Themes My hypothesis is that the structure of the Risale-i Nur may be discovered by taking as our point of departure Said Nursi´s desire to explain the four aims of the Qur’Ɨn as a revelatory explanation of the new situation in which the New Said found himself. The four aims are Oneness of God (TawhƯd), Prophecy, Resurrection, and Justice; the main axis of meaning in the first parts of the Risale-i Nur is the connection between TawhƯd and resurrection. More specifically, the first reflections of the New Said circle around the idea that the universe in its transitory status refers to its Maker, and therefore refers to the possibility of resurrection. This is certainly the case in Word X which is, according to ùukran Vahide (1999: 227) the first part of the Risale-i Nur in the historical order. These first reflections are often presented as parables. Word X begins with a text from the Qur’Ɨn as the point of departure for what follows. In this case it is Q. 30:50: “Look, then, at the imprints of God’s mercy; how He restores the earth to life after death: this same God is the one who will return people to life after death – He has power over all things” (tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 260). The text continues as follows: Brother, if you wish for a discussion of resurrection and the hereafter in simple and common language, in a straightforward style, then listen to the following comparison, together with my own soul. Once two men were traveling through a land as beautiful as Paradise (by that land, we intend the world). Looking around them, they saw that everyone had left open the door of his home and his shop and was not paying attention to guarding it. Money and property were readily accessible, without anyone to claim them. One of the two travelers grasped hold of all that he fancied, stealing it and usurping it. (Nursi 1992: 59)

In this parable the first traveler represents those who do what they like, since they think: “There is no one to care for this place.” The other traveler, however, knows that there are laws in the country, that

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there is a king, and that the other traveler will be punished. He says to his companion: “This land that you see is a manoeuvering ground. It is, in addition, an exhibition of his wonderful royal arts. Then again it may be regarded as a temporary hospice, one devoid of foundations. Do you not see that every day one caravan arrives as another departs and vanishes? It is being constantly emptied and filled. Soon the whole land will be changed; its inhabitants will depart for another and more lasting realm. There everyone will be either rewarded or punished in accordance with his services.” That treacherous emptyheaded one retorted rebelliously: “I don’t believe it. Is it possible that a whole land should perish, and be transferred to another realm?” His faithful friend then replied: “Since you are so obstinate and rebellious, come, let me demonstrate to you, with twelve out of the innumerable proofs available, that there is a Supreme Tribunal, a realm of reward and generosity and a realm of punishment and incarceration, and that just as this world is partially emptied every day, so too a day shall come when it will be totally emptied and destroyed.” (Nursi 1992: 60-61)

While the opposition between the transitory nature of this world and the permanent nature of the world to come is the explicit theme of Q. 30:50 and therefore of Word X, the other aims of the Qur’Ɨn are present as well: the aim of tawhƯd in the figures of the King and the Supreme Tribunal, the aim of justice in the opposition between realm of reward and realm of punishment, and the aim of prophecy in the implicit question: How can we know whether there is a King of this world who will pass judgement on us? Some other stylistic characteristics are visible in this short quotation as well. Said Nursi does not only address his brother at the very beginning of the tenth Word, but he addresses his nafs as well. As we saw in the last chapter with reference to RnjmƯ, the word nafs may mean ‘oneself’ but also ‘one’s soul that is still attached to the old situation’. The New Said addresses the Old Said to go along with him on his path of reflection. A bit further on, in the introduction to the second part of the tenth Word, Nursi says that the contrast between the foolish and the trustworthy man corresponds with three other oppositions: the instinctual soul and the heart; the students of philosophy and the students of the Qur’Ɨn; and the people of unbelief and the Community of Islam (Nursi 1992: 70). Several authors have remarked that while Said Nursi views Western science in a positive light, he views Western philosophy in a negative light. While it might be true that this

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is one of the characteristics distinguishing the ‘New Said’ from the ‘Old Said’, I certainly do not subscribe to Taha ǥAbdel Rahman’s suggestion that philosophy be made a servant and follower of wisdom (ǥAbdel Rahman 2003: 206). It might be better simply to concede that Nursi, due to the way in which European philosophy was used during the Turkish process of secularization, could not develop a sense for the contribution of non-religious philosophical insights. In fact, Nursi uses philosophy in his reflections all the time. But in his view it had to be subordinate to his major goal of explaining the Qur’Ɨn. The ‘School of Joseph’: Spiritual Transformation in Exile At the beginning of the previous paragraph, I formulated the following hypothesis: structure and main themes of the Risale-i Nur may be uncovered by taking as the point of departure Said Nursi´s desire to explain the four aims of the Qur’Ɨn as an elucidation of the situation in which the New Said found himself. His objective in writing the Risale-i Nur can be summarized as ‘the revivification of the Islamic sciences’ – which happens to be the title of al-GhazƗlƯ’s main work as well. While the ‘new Said’ still uses exegesis of the Qur’Ɨn as the main instrument for his thinking, he no longer looks to the political arena as a means for establishing his goals. Instead, he builds a new community of ‘students’, focused on the Risale-i Nur as a modern explanation of the Qur’Ɨn, in which the wisdom of the religious world (the ‘light of the heart’) and the progress of the scientific world (the ‘light of reason’) will be united (Abu Rabiǥ 2003: 76). Fethullah Gülen will elaborate on this idea after Nursi’s death. This development in the life and thought of Said Nursi bears some striking similarities with a major dynamic in fundamentalist movements, according to Gilles Kepel who argues that fundamentalist movements ‘from above’ that focused on politics have gradually been replaced by fundamentalist movements ‘from below’ that rather focus on educating new individuals (Kepel 1991: 268). I certainly do not want to call Nursi a fundamentalist, although one may call him an Islamist since he wants to go back to the Qur’Ɨn as the root of Islam in order to heal present-day Muslim society. The point that I want to make here is that one can often see a switch from an ‘activist’ discourse, oriented to changing the structures of society, to a more ‘quietist’ discourse, oriented to changing the minds of people, beginning with a small group of dedicated followers. The development from the

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‘Old Said’ to the ‘New Said’ suits this pattern and brings him closer to the position of al-GhazƗlƯ in the last phases of his life. The new situation that the writings of the New Said seek to elucidate is characterized by exile and imprisonment. These are not only the external conditions in which Said Nursi wrote, but they form the starting point for his spiritual development as well. In Rays XI-XV, written during his stay in Denizli prison (1943-1944), Said Nursi refers to this situation as the ‘school of Joseph’, since Joseph “languished in prison for a number of years more” (Q. 12:42, quoted by Nursi 1998: 214). The ‘school of Joseph’ has two aspects. In the first place, Said Nursi learns to interpret his situation of exile not as a reason for despair but as an incentive to have trust in God. This is expressed in the sixth Ray as follows: One time while in a dark exile, on a dark night, and in a dark state of heedlessness, the mighty universe of the present appeared to my imagination as a lifeless, spiritless, dead, empty, desolate, ghastly corpse. The past, too, appeared to be dead, empty, deceased, and dreadful; that boundless space and limitless time took on the form of a dark wilderness. I had recourse to the prayers in order to be saved from my state of mind. When I said: ‘Salutations’ in the tashhahud, the universe suddenly sprang to life. It was resurrected taking on a living, luminous form, and became a shining mirror of the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One. I saw that with all its living parts, it was continuously offering the salutations of their lives and their vital gifts to the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One; I understood this with ‘the knowledge of certainty,’ even with ‘absolute certainty.’ (Nursi 1998: 120)

Prayer helped Nursi transform his experience of loneliness and despair into an experience of vitality and thankfulness to the Creator of the Universe. While his description of this experience reminded me of Blaise Pascal and his Pensées, Muslim readers will recognize how solidarity in prayer forms a new community. This idea of a new community through prayer and learning is the second aspect of the ‘school of Joseph’. The idea of turning a prison into a school of learning, where fellow prisoners may come to know the essence of Islam, forms an interesting connection between Said Nursi and Malcolm X, one of the great models for Afro-American Muslims (Jamat-Everett 2003). Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad uses two Arabic words to characterize this experience as a transformation from ghurba (estrangement) to uns (companionship). She adds that readers of Nursi’s works in the Arab

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world like the position of the ‘Old Said’ better, while Turkish readers, especially those working in Europe, like the ‘New Said’ better because they recognize their own situation of adversity and alienation in his situation. His life provides an example of how it is possible to conquer the profound sense of loneliness and alienation experienced by the immigrant in an alien and hostile environment. It sets a paradigm for survival, for seeking solace and affirmation from God by attempting to dwell in His presence. (Haddad 1999: 309)

The sources of this transformation are to be found in three Islamic virtues: faith in God (imƗn), trust in God (tawakkul) and finally patience (sabr). I think that Haddad is right in her analysis of the central theological values in the spiritual process of Nursi’s transformation. In the following paragraphs, I try to substantiate my hypothesis on structure and main themes of the Risale-i Nur by giving a survey of this process because I think that this may be recognized by Christians as the basic spiritual attitude of many of their Muslim dialogue partners. In al-GhazƗlƯ’s IhyƗ’ we have seen the same relation between faith in the one God and absolute trust in Him, while his Munqidh indicated the possible role of ghurba (the experience of be-ing absent from home) as a formative element in his spirituality. In the interlude on Teresa of Avila I will try to show how this form of trust, found or rather received through the hardness of exile is often con-nected with sabr, a virtue that connotes endurance rather than patience. This power to resist the times and to hope that things will get better is one of the main characteristics of faithful who try to live their faith as migrants among strange people and customs. In Said Nursi it has the connotation that this world is but a shadow in comparison with the world to come. For Christian readers the Sermon on the Mount may come to mind, and especially the deep trust of not worrying about tomorrow recommended and exemplified by Christ: Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles that strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:31-33).

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Faith in One God In my analysis of the basic theological and spiritual contribution of the Risale-i Nur to contemporary dialogue between Muslims and Christians, I want to concentrate on the three sources of transformation mentioned by Yvonne Haddad: imƗn, tawakkul and sabr, or faith, trust and endurance. The first source of spiritual transformation, faith, may be identified with tawhƯd as first aim of the Qur’Ɨn according to Said Nursi. In a reflection on Q. 47:19 “So [Prophet], bear in mind that there is no god but God” (tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 332), which is a reflection on the divine name AllƗh, Nursi states that the manifoldness of creatures refers to the One God, just as the many names of God refer to divine Unity (Ray II; Nursi 1998: 18). Moreover, the order and beauty of creation makes clear that there can be but one God: These genuine, powerful, faultless, utterly brilliant instances of beauty and loveliness which are visible in all the levels of the universe and all its realms of beings, and have spread everywhere, demonstrate with complete certainty that the ugly, harsh, abhorrent, wretched former situation, which the association of partners with God necessitates, is impossible and illusory. For such ghastly ugliness could not exist hidden under the veil of such genuine beauty. If it was found there, that true beauty would be untrue, baseless, futile, and illusory. This means that the association of partners with God has no reality, its way is closed, it has become stuck in a bog; what it posits is impossible and precluded. (Nursi 1998: 23)

Such reflections on the beauty of nature as sign of the Oneness of God are extremely frequent in Nursi. Because he is in exile, the world of nature speaks more to him than the world of civilization; Nursi’s worldview is very much a rural Anatolian one. One frequently comes across expressions such as ‘the book of Nature’ that testifies to God together with that other book, the Qur’Ɨn. At the level of the texts in the Risale-i Nur, it seems that Nursi starts with nature and finds the indications of God in nature confirmed in the Qur’Ɨn, but at the level of the deep structure of the text it is the other way round. Since the whole text is meant to be a commentary on the Qur’Ɨn, such indications are in fact derived from the Qur’Ɨn itself,4 as, for instance, in the 4

The thesis that Scripture plays a similar role as primary source of Thomas Aquinas’ systematic theology that developed from his primary task to explain Scripture to his students, is elaborated in Valkenberg 2000.

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third Ray which is a commentary on the following verse from the Qur’Ɨn: In the creation of the heavens and earth; in the alternation of night and day; in the ships that sail the seas with goods for people; in the water which God sends down from the sky to give life to the earth when it has been barren, scattering all kinds of creatures over it; in the changing of the winds and clouds that run their appointed courses between the sky and earth: there are signs in all these for those who use their minds. (Q. 2:164, tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 18).

The Arabic word for ‘signs’ in the quotation above is ƗyƗt and the same word is used to indicate the verses in the Qur’Ɨn. So the Qur’Ɨn itself may be seen as source of the idea that two kinds of ‘signs’ refer to God: the verses in the revealed Book and the signs in the ‘book of nature’. Kelton Cobb analyzes the hermeneutical moves behind Nursi’s use of the metaphor of the ‘two books’ as follows: [H]e has made use of a hermeneutic that shuttles between the Qur’anic text and the observable world in both directions. He justifies this on the basis of his Qur’anically derived metaphor of ‘the book of the universe,’ but then uses this second book as permission to return to the Qur’Ɨn with understandings of the world and its potentialities that he has acquired first from reason and then attributes secondarily to the Qur’Ɨn, sometimes with difficulty. Nevertheless, his worldview is primarily, and quite elegantly, Qur’anic. He privileges revelation over reason, although he allows for both. (Cobb 2003: 147)

Sometimes, Nursi speaks explicitly about nature as a book: A book, particularly one in each word of which a minute pen has inscribed another whole book, and in each letter of which a fine pen has traced a poem, cannot be without a writer; this would be entirely impossible. So too this cosmos cannot be without its inscriber; this is impossible to the utmost degree. (Nursi 1992: 70)

Whereas the beauty and order in nature refers to the unity of God in a positive way, the transitory character of nature refers to God in a negative way. With reference to the evening prayer, for instance, Nursi remarks that the day passes with sunset, while God remains forever (Nursi 1992: 56). The tenth Word, for instance, concludes: Considering the utter disparity between – on the one hand – this state of affairs which we see together with the universal fusions of life and the swift separations of death, the imposing gatherings and the rapid dispersions, the magnificent revolutions and the great

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manifestations, and – on the other hand – the petty fruits we see briefly attained in this transient world, the temporary and insignificant purposes of beings that pertain to this world, we conclude that the non-existence of the hereafter would mean attaching to a little stone wise purposes as great as a mountain, and to a great mountain, a purpose as petty as a small stone. No intelligence or wisdom can find this acceptable. (Nursi 1992: 98)

As I indicated above, faith in God and faith in the hereafter together form the most important topics of the Risale-i Nur. In an addendum to the tenth Word, Nursi says that about one-third of the Qur’Ɨn speaks about the hereafter and that it proclaims this truth with thousands of verses (Nursi 1992:111). In speaking about the hereafter, Nursi sometimes uses a more pastoral discourse, as when he writes to a friend on the occasion of the death of his child (Letter XVII, Nursi 1997: 10003) or when he refers to the faith of children that makes it possible for them to accept the death of a brother or playmate (Ray IX, Nursi 1998: 203). The general impression is that the ‘positive’ references to a God present in creation and revelation outweigh the ‘negative’ references to the hidden presence of God. Nursi knows about the limits of our human knowledge, but in general he seems to be quite confident that one may find God through these ‘signs’ and ‘references’ in creation and revelation. In his references to the second source of transformation, trust in God (tawakkul), however, there seems to be more room for such a negative approach, since God’s presence is not that evident after all. Trust in One God The second source of spiritual transformation, tawakkul or trust in God, can be said to form the connection between the more speculative virtue of tawhƯd and the very practical virtue of sabr. Said Nursi often reflects on this special virtue with reference to Q. 3:173, “Those whose faith only increased when people said, ‘Fear your enemy: they have amassed a great army against you,’ and who replied, ‘God is good enough for us: He is the best protector’” (tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 47). Since this text reflects a situation of ghurba in which the faithful can trust God alone in the face of the extreme violence of their enemies, this is certainly one of the key texts in the Risale-i Nur. Q. 3:173 is often quoted together with Q. 9:129: “If they turn away, [Prophet],

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say, ‘God is enough for me: there is no god but Him; I put my trust in Him; He is the Lord of the Mighty Throne’” (tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 127). This text reflects another situation of adversity in which people do not want to listen to the words of the Prophet. In both quotations, the same Arabic words are used, hasbunƗ / hasbiya ’llƗhu, meaning ‘for us / for me, God is sufficient’, and niǥma al-wakƯl / ‘alayhi tawakkaltu, meaning ‘how perfect a trustee is He / in Him have I put my trust’. Christian readers may be reminded of the final words of the hymn Te Deum: “O Lord, let Thy mercy lighten upon us as our trust is in Thee. O Lord, in Thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded”. In the second Flash Said Nursi gives both quotations from the Qur’Ɨn and, moreover, personal advice that shows the intimate relationship between trust and endurance: During World War One, a blessed person in Erzurum was afflicted with an awesome disease. I went to visit him and he said to me complaining bitterly: “I have not been able to place my head on the pillow and sleep for a hundred nights”. I was much grieved. Suddenly a thought came to me and I said: “Brother, the hundred difficult days you have spent are now just like one hundred happy days. Do not think of them and complain; rather look at them and be grateful. As for future days, since they have not yet come, place your trust in your Compassionate and Merciful Sustainer. Do not weep before being beaten, do not be afraid of nothing, do not give non-being the colour of being. Think of the present hour; your power of patient endurance is enough for this hour .… Mobilize all your strength for this present hour, and think of Divine mercy, reward in the hereafter, and how your brief and transient life is being transformed into a long and eternal form. Instead of complaining bitterly, give joyful thanks.” Much relieved, he said, “Praise and thanks be to God, my disease is now a tenth of what it was before”. (Nursi 2000: 25-26)

The religious conviction that God alone suffices is, for Said Nursi, an important part of his answer to the most difficult theological question of all – the question of theodicy: Why did the good God allow evil? Just like Al-GhazƗlƯ, he appeals to the notion of tawakkul in his effort to solve the problem of theodicy (Ormsby 1984: 38; Aydin 2003: 215). In one of the not so many explicit references to Al-GhazƗlƯ Said Nursi refers to the beauty of creation once again in the second Ray: Now come and behold the wondrously attractive beauty within the order, cleanliness, and balance; it has made the vast universe into a splendid festival, an exhibition of highly decorated works, and a

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springtime with freshly opened flowers. The vast spring too it has made into a beautiful flower-pot and gorgeous bunch of blooms, and to each spring it has given the form of a magnificent flower with hundreds of thousands of adornments which opens every season on the face of the earth. All the flowers of the spring it has beautified with every sort of decoration. Yes, through the beautiful manifestations of the Most Beautiful Names, which possess the utmost beauty and loveliness, all the realms of beings in the universe, and all the members of each, manifest such beauty according to their capacities that Hujjat al-Islam Imam Ghazali said: “There can be nothing better or more beautiful than what exists in the sphere of contingency”. Thus, this all-encompassing, captivating beauty, and general, wondrous cleanliness, and all-pervasive, exceedingly sensitive balance, and comprehensive and in every way miraculous order and harmony, are such proofs and signs of Divine unity that they are clearer and more brilliant than the light that indicates the sun at noon. (Nursi 1998: 39)

With regard to the question as to why God created evil, Nursi answers that the creation of evil (by God) is not evil but rather the ‘acquisition’ (kasb) of or desire for evil by human beings. He gives the classical answer that what appears to us as evil can be something good from God’s perspective (Nursi 1997: 62). The twenty-sixth Flash, containing ‘hopes, lights and solaces for the elderly’, deals with the text “For us God suffices, and He is the best Disposer of Affairs” (Q. 3:173) in the fourteenth Hope (Nursi 2000: 321-26) in which six levels of this verse are explained. Nursi begins as follows: The summary at the start of the Fourth Ray, on the luminous verse For us God suffices, describes how having been isolated from everything by ‘the worldly’, I was afflicted with five sorts of exile. Due to the heedlessness arising from distress, I looked not to the consoling lights of the Risale-i Nur which would have aided me, but directly to my heart, and I sought my spirit. I saw that an overpowering desire for immortality, an intense love of existence, a great yearning for life, together with an infinite impotence and endless want were ruling in me… I bowed my head in despair. Suddenly, the verse, For us God suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs came to my assistance, summoning me to read it with attention. So I recited it five hundred times every day. The more I recited it, of its many lights nine levels of its meanings were unfolded unto me, not only at the level of ‘certainty at the degree of knowledge,’ but at that of ‘certainty at the degree of witnessing.’ (Nursi 2000: 321)

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In the fourth Ray (Nursi 1998: 70-90) and the fifth chapter of the twenty-ninth Flash that is attached to this Ray because of the affinity of both texts (Nursi 1998: 91-96) he explains the same verse in a similar fashion. Many years before, in the sixteenth Letter, Nursi used the text as a motto for his description of the difference between the ‘Old Said’ and the ‘New Said’. In this text Nursi shows the relation between trust in God and patience and forbearance in the face of illtreatment and other forms of evil (Nursi 1997: 87). Just like al-GhazƗlƯ, Nursi recommends a life of frugality, trusting that God is the best disposer (Nursi 1997: 88). The nineteenth Flash, on frugality (Nursi 2000: 189-99), elaborates this point in great detail. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad quotes a text from Nursi’s Arabic works in which he highlights the importance of the experience of trust in God in facilitating the transformation from estrangement to companionship. [Lo and behold] I was enveloped by an extraordinary estrangement and began to think, and suddenly I said: Praise be to God! And, I wondered how it is possible to withstand all this cumulative darkness and the interlocking kinds of estrangement! My heart sought succor, saying: O Lord, I am a lonely stranger, weak without power, sick and disabled, an old man without choice. So I say: help, help. I hope for pardon, and draw strength at your door, O my God! Lo and behold, the light of faith, the overflowing of the Qur’an, and the kindness of the Merciful, began to supply me with strength which transforms those five kinds of dark estrangement into five luminary circles of companionship (uns) and joy. So my tongue began to repeat: “God is sufficient for us! Most excellent is He in whom we trust” (S. 3:173); and my heart recited the gracious verse: “Now, if they turn away (O Muhammad) say: God suffices me. There is no God save Him. In Him have I put my trust, and He is Lord of the Tremendous Throne,” (S. 9:129). (Haddad 1999: 309)

The same combination of Q. 3:173 and 9:129 recurs repeatedly as the final word in Nursi’s defence in Denizli Court: in the twelfth and fourteenth Ray (Nursi 1998: 316. 371). Patience and Endurance Another text frequently quoted by Said Nursi is a short invocation of God as ‘the Enduring One’. Nursi had a habit of opening his letters with the formula “In His Name be He glorified!” together with a verse from the Qur’Ɨn, “There is not a single thing that does not celebrate His praise” (Q. 17:44, tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 177). He explains that

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this verse was the first truth from the Qur’Ɨn that became clear to him (note in Nursi 1997: 21). In the same way he used to sign his letters with the invocation: “The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One!” (El-BƗkƯ Hüve’l-BƗkƯ in Turkish; Nursi 1997: 29 and passim). This phrase refers to God as al-BƗqƯ in Arabic, one of the ninety-nine beautiful names of God that may also be translated as ‘the Everlasting’ or ‘the Eternal’. According to al-GhazƗlƯ, al-BƗqƯ relates God’s existence to our future, saying that it will endure, while al-QadƯm relates God’s existence to our past, saying that it always has been (al-GhazƗlƯ 2001: 146-47). The Qur’ Ɨn indicates that God remains, while everything else will pass away: “Everyone on earth perishes; all that remains is the Face of your Lord, full of majesty, bestowing honour” (Q. 55:267, tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 354). In this sense al-BƗqƯ corresponds very well with Nursi’s opposition between the transitory nature of all creatures and God’s everlasting presence as well as with the connection between TawhƯd and Resurrection as aims of the Qur’Ɨn. The third Flash gives an interpretation of a verse from the Qur’Ɨn, Q. 28:88, that is quite similar to the text just quoted: “Do not call out to another god beside God, for there is no god but Him. Everything will perish except His Face. His is the Judgement and to Him you shall all be brought back.” (tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 251). In his commentary Nursi remarks that the invocation “the Enduring One, He is the Enduring One!” is a special prayer in the Naqshbandi Sufi order. Its recital, he claims, isolates the heart from everything else and focuses it on God. Thus the first time he utters: “The Enduring One! He is the Enduring One!”, it severs his attachment to transitory beings; he leaves those objects of love before they leave him and he is thus cleared of his fault. It declares that love is restricted to the Enduring Beloved, and expresses this meaning: “The only Truly Enduring One is You! Everything other than You is transient. One that is transient certainly cannot be the object of attachment for my heart, which was created for everlasting love, for ardour lasting from pre-eternity to post-eternity. Since those innumerable beloveds are transitory and they leave me and depart, before they do so, declaring The Enduring One, You are the Enduring One! I shall leave them. Only You are immortal, and I know and I believe that beings can only be immortal by Your making them so. In which case, they should be loved with Your love. They are not otherwise worthy of the heart’s attachment”. When in this state, man’s heart gives up innumerable objects of love; seeing the stamp of transitoriness on their beauty

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and loveliness, it severs its attachment to them. If it does not sever it, it suffers wounds to the number of its beloveds. The second The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One! Is both a salve and an antidote for those wounds. That is, “O Enduring One! Since You are Enduring, that is sufficient, You take the place of everything. Since You exist, everything exists”. (Nursi 2000: 30)

In the eleventh Flash Nursi describes another spiritual crisis in which the practice of prayer serves as a compass, while appropriating Q. 9:129 serves as guidance: At a time this poor Said was trying to emerge from the Old Said, his intellect and heart were floundering among truths in a terrible spiritual storm resulting from lack of a guide and the pride of his evilcommanding soul. They were being tossed around, rising and falling, sometimes from the Pleiades to the ground, sometimes from the ground to the Pleiades .… And when, at the time on that spiritual journeying I saw myself under awesome pressure overwhelmed by truly burdensome loads, I followed the matters of the Practices touching on that situation, I experienced a lightness as though all my burdens were being lifted from me .… At one time, I saw myself in a strange world resulting from a state of mind produced by contemplating death and affirming the proposition ‘Death is a reality’ .… While in that truly strange and sorrowful state of mind, help reached me from belief and from the Qur’an; the verse, But if they turn away, say: “God suffices me, there is no god but He; in Him do I place my trust – He the Sustainer of the Throne [of Glory] Supreme!”, came to my assistance, and became like a safe and trusty boat. My spirit boarded the verse with complete confidence and joy. I understood that besides the verse’s explicit meaning, an allusive meaning had consoled me so that I had found tranquility and serenity. Yes, its explicit meaning says to God’s Noble Messenger (Peace and blessings be upon him): “If the people of misguidance turn away, shun your Shariǥa and Practices and do not heed the Qur’an, do not worry. Say: ‘Almighty God is enough for me. I place my trust in Him. He will raise up others in your place who will follow me. The throne of His rule encompasses everything; the rebellious cannot escape outside its bounds, nor do those who seek assistance remain unaided.’” While its allusive meaning says this: “O man! And O leader and guide of mankind! If all beings leave you and depart for non-existence on the road of transience; if living beings part from you and hasten down the road of death; if people abandon you and enter the graveyard; if the people of neglect and misguidance do not heed you and fall into darkness; do not be anxious. Say: Almighty God suffices me. Since He exists, everything exists. So those who have departed have not gone to non-existence; they have departed for another of His realms. And

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out of His infinite generosity and from among His innumerable soldiers, that Owner of the Sublime Throne sends others in their place. And those who have entered the graveyard have not been annihilated; they have departed for another world. He will send other officials in their place. And He can send obedient servants who follow the true path in place of those who fall into misguidance. Since it is thus, He takes the place of everything. All thing cannot take the place of His regard and attention.” (Nursi 2000: 81-83)

In the twenty-sixth Flash Nursi gives a similar explanation of both the Naqshbandi supplication and the quotation from the Qur’Ɨn (Nursi 2000: 312-13). While the previous texts centered on the idea of God as Enduring, the next quote gives an idea of the human attitude that is apt to incorporate this quality in one’s life. It is from the tenth note of the seventeenth Flash: Know, O heedless, confused Said! Attaining to the light of knowledge of God and looking on it, and seeing its manifestations in the mirrors of signs and witnesses, and beholding its proofs and evidences, necessitates your not examining it with the fingers of criticism. Do not examine critically every light that passes over you or occurs to your heart or appears to your mind, nor criticize it with the hand of hesitation. Do not stretch out your hand to catch hold of a light that appears to you. Rather withdraw from the things that cause heedlessness, be turned to the light, and wait. (Nursi 2000: 175)

Patience is the attitude of the believer who knows that everlasting life is more important than the vicissitudes of this earthly existence: “However difficult and distressing this world is for him, since he sees it as the waiting-room for Paradise, he endures it and offers thanks in patience” (Nursi 1992: 50). He is convinced that “the power of patient endurance given to man by God Almighty is adequate to every misfortune” (Nursi 2000: 24-25). It is quite clear that such a power can only be given by a God who is willing to draw near to human beings, since they are not able to bridge the qualitative distance between Creator and creatrues. At the end of the fourteenth Flash, Said Nursi uses some expressions that may remind Christians of the concept of grace: O unhappy man struggling within a boundless impotence and endless want! You should understand just what a valuable means and acceptable intercessor is Divine Mercy. For Divine Mercy is the means to an All-Glorious Sovereign in Whose army both the stars and minute particles serve together in perfect order and obedience.

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And that All-Glorious One and Sovereign of Pre-Eternity and PostEternity is self-sufficient, He is utterly without need. He is rich without limit being in no respect needy of the universe and beings. The whole universe is under His command and direction, utterly obedient beneath His majesty and grandeur, submissive before His sublimity. That is Divine Mercy for you, Oh man! It raises you to the presence of the One absolutely lacking any need, the Eternal Sovereign, and makes you His friend, addressee, and well-loved servant. But just as you cannot reach the sun, are far from it and can in no way draw close to it, although the sun’s light gives you its reflection and manifestation by means of your mirror, in the same way you are infinitely distant from the Most Pure and Holy One, the Sun of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, and cannot draw closer to Him, but the light of His Mercy makes Him closer to us” (Nursi 2000: 140).

Although in the works of Said Nursi the notion of the infinite distance prevails on the more intimate notion of God’s nearness, the latter notion is by no means absent. Lucinda Allen Mosher (2003) is right in her assumption that an analysis of the prayers in the Risale-i Nur might give more insight in the spiritual background of Nursi’s work. It would be very useful to extend the scope of comparative theology to a comparative analysis of prayer formulae. As Mosher indicates, this would also provide an entry to the moral dimensions of Nursi’s discourse (Mosher 2003: 184). Prophecy and Miracles In the foregoing reflections, I have indicated how the connection between divine Unity and Resurrection as aims of the Qur’Ɨn is one of the main themes in the Risale-i Nur. Yet Prophecy as third aim of the Qur’Ɨn is by no means less important, as is exemplified by one of the most famous parts from the Risale-i Nur, the nineteenth Letter dedicated to the miracles of Prophet Muhammad. This sizeable treatise (Nursi 1997: 116-263) was the first part of this collection to be translated into English. Nursi commends his own writing by saying that it has been written in an unusual style, without any written sources, and that it contains many examples of tawƗfuq or ‘coincidences’ to the effect that it will not cause boredom or displeasure in its readers. I must confess, however, that I had great difficulty reading this treatise because of my modern Western theological bias that does not set great store in miracles in the way Nursi did. Yet comparative theologians are to pay particular attention to these differences, since

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critical reflection on these differences may enable us to learn the most (Fredericks 1999). The first point of critical reflection might be that most Western readers may be familiar with the fact that the dynamic equivalent of the position of Jesus Christ in Christianity is not Muhammad but the Qur’Ɨn, so that Christians should refrain from speaking about Muslims as ‘Muhammadans’. Consequently, the miraculous nature of the Qur’Ɨn is often presented by Muslim mutakallimnjn as the most important argument for this religion, while miracles wrought by Muhammad were deemed to be of less importance (Poorthuis, Roggema and Valkenberg 2005: XVI). Said Nursi, however, reports no less than three hundred miracles by the Prophet, all founded on sound asƗnid (chains of authorities) and testified to by many people. Although Nursi points out that many of these witnesses had critical minds, while their testimonies were included by the most critical collectors of ahƗdith (traditions), such reasoning is only convincing for those who accept the authenticity of such traditions. Like all forms of reasoning about miracles, it is a form of circular argumentation based on faith for those who accept this faith, which does not matter as long as it is recognized as such (Goris et al. 2004: 33). Said Nursi is aware of the fact that these miracles cannot be evident, since this would jeopardize the value of faith: He [Muhammad] was, indeed, honoured with paranormal phenomena in order to prove his prophethood to obstinate unbelievers, and from time to time performed miracles as the need arose. But his miracles never occurred in such an obvious fashion as would have compelled everyone to believe, whether willingly or unwillingly. For, in accordance with the purpose of the examinations and trials that man is to undergo, the way must be shown to him without depriving him of his free will: the door of the intelligence must remain open, and its freedom must not be snatched from its hand. But if miracles had occurred in so apparent a way, intelligence would have had no choice; Abu Jahl would have believed as did Abu Bakr, coal would have had the value of diamonds, and no purpose would have remained for testing and accountability. (Nursi 1997: 122-23)

This is an important remark that brings Nursi’s understanding of miracles closer to the tradition of reasoning to which I adhere. In his treatment of the appearances of Christ after his resurrection, Thomas Aquinas uses the same argument: miracles cannot take away the value of faith (STh.III 55.5). The “religious ambiguity of the universe,” as

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John Hick (1989: 73) calls it, is not erased by miracles. In this sense I feel comfortable with the Patristic and medieval tradition of explaining the references to miracles in the New Testament as tekmèria or signa: they are ‘signs of the Kingdom of God’, which means that their importance lies in their pointing to God’s salvific agency on earth. Yet I am aware that my approach to miracles differs from traditional Christian (or Muslim) approaches in that it does not accept the credibility of miracles as a necessary consequence of faith. In this respect my approach is formed by the modern tradition of historicalcritical exegesis of the New Testament. One of the major problems in most forms of theological dialogue between Christians and Muslims is that Western Christians generally accept this modern rational approach to their Scriptures, while most Muslims do not. It would be counterproductive, therefore, if I would use this critical approach in judging Nursi’s texts on the miracles of Muhammad, although it obviously influences my reading these texts. In interreligious dialogue it is of major importance to use the Patristic and medieval principle of pia interpretatio (‘benign interpretation’) as exemplified by Nicholas of Cusa (Bocken 2005: 178). If we meet people of faith, we should presume that differences are important but that understanding them is always possible if we try. We should therefore be cautious in our interpretation of what is not immediately clear to us and proceed by questioning the meaning of these differences rather than by asserting them. Therefore, it is better to ask why it is important for many Muslims to see Muhammad as a man of miracles, even if this is at variance with the orthodox view of normative Islam. I can give only a provisional answer to this question here. This answer may find a starting point in Karen Armstrong’s observation that the Abrahamic religions all acknowledge a dynamic tension between transcendental and immanent aspects of God. In some situations they feel the need to stress the transcendent aspects in order to safeguard the profound difference between Creator and creatures; in other situations they feel the need to bridge the distance by stressing the immanent aspects of God (Armstrong 1993). Even though the prophet Muhammad does not bridge the distance for Muslims in the same way as Christ does for Christians – Muhammad, praised as he may be by Muslims, always remains a human being – a need arose among Muslims to find a model for their lives where the Qur’Ɨn could not provide such a model. In the first

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instance, the sunna of the Prophet, comprising a number of traditions on what he did and said in certain situations – in short, a summary of his life (sƯra) – was accepted as the outstanding model for Muslims. Later on, the need was felt in Sufi spirituality and Muslim apologetics to elevate the status of the Prophet even further, in order to explain why he was the seal of the prophets and the most perfect human being. As Qamar ul-Huda points out, the life of the Prophet functions as a model in the mystical traditions of Islam (ul-Huda 2003: 280). He is the kƗmil insƗn, the perfect human being, and pious Muslims try to live in conformity to his example as much as possible. On the one hand, miracles gained pride of place in the kalƗm tradition in which the prophethood of Muhammad was postulated over against the prophethood of Moses and Jesus. If working miracles is one of the most important chararcteristics of prophethood, as many Jews and Christians argued, Muhammad should be credited with many miracles. In Muslim apologetics this was the way to outbid Jewish claims that Moses was a more reliable prophet than Muhammad, and Christian claims that Jesus was closer to God than any one else (Roggema 2005: 54; Schoot 2005: 157). In the course of history the miracles of the Prophet were used more and more as an apologetic weapon and this determines their use in Said Nursi as well. For the Christian reader of comparative theology, the principle of pia interpretatio would also imply that one should be careful in condemning phenomena in other religions before having examined the same kind of phenomena in one’s own religion. Only if I can understand why Fatima, Lourdes, Medjugorje, and even the contested appearances of Our Lady of All Peoples in Amsterdam are so important to many Roman Catholics can I begin to understand why the miracles of Muhammad are so important to Said Nursi and his followers. Finally, it may be that Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s remark on the dynamic equivalence between Christ and the Qur’Ɨn does not work for all forms of Islam (ul-Huda 2003: 285). In Said Nursi’s works the Qur’Ɨn and the Prophet seem to be standing on the same level. In ‘the Supreme Sign’, for instance, Nursi speaks about the Prophet as “the Pride of the World and the Glory of the Sons of Adam, through the majesty of the sovereignty of his Qur’an” (Ray VII; Nursi 1998: 156). If Nursi sometimes seems to obliterate the distance that exists in normative Islam between the Qur’Ɨn as the uncreated Word of God and Muhammad as its human messenger, he does heed the distance in

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the case of his own person. He does not want to be called a shaykh or a pir as followers of Sufism name their masters, because it would make him, rather than the text of the Risale-i Nur, the center of attention. He sometimes considers himself to be a hodja (teacher; Nursi 1997: 85), but in other cases he signs his writings as “a student of the Risale-i Nur,” and this is to be taken seriously. One of the reasons why his writings are sometimes so voluminous is that, instead of deleting anything, he commented on it from a new perspective, as we saw in the case of his Damascus sermon. Yvonne Haddad writes: “He believed that his reflections were inspired by an outside source. He himself re-read them in order to gain guidance. He taught his students that the Epistles were their real teacher.” (Haddad 1999: 307). 8.1.5 The Nurçuluk Movement and Interreligious Dialogue One of the reasons why Said Nursi cannot be seen as a Sufi shaykh is that a text and not a person is the bearer of charisma in his view on religious education. Consequently, he calls his followers ‘students of the Risale-i Nur’ and reckons himself among them. The main instrument of religious education is not the personal experience of the master but the Risale-i Nur as a contemporary explanation of the Qur’Ɨn. This basic view determines the way in which the Nur movement (Nurçuluk in Turkish) has spread: it consists of dershanes, ‘reading houses’ where students live together and read the Risale-i Nur on a weekly basis (Yavuz 2003b: 297). Being part of such a reading house influences the decisions in life for many young Turkish men and women; it is their way of becoming aware of the fact that they are modern Muslims (Özdalga 2003). Hakan Yavuz estimates the number of dershanes in Turkey today as five thousand, suggesting that the number of students participating in these reading circles could be between two and six million. In the European ‘diaspora’ there are some dershanes as well: fifty-seven in Germany, seven in the Netherlands, four in Austria, two in Belgium and one in Sarajevo (Yavuz 2003a: 13). In Germany the Nurçuluk movement is important enough to be included by the Roman Catholic bishops in their survey of important Muslim organizations, which is part of their report on Christians and Muslims in Germany (Deutsche Bischofskonferenz 2003: 38). The organization of a social movement in study houses and reading circles enables it to concentrate on education as a typical modern phenomenon, and thus “the dershane institution helps its members to be

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both modern and Muslim at the same time” (Yavuz 2003b: 297). It is a way to democratize Islamic knowledge and to spread it beyond the circles of the ǥulamƗ (Muslim scholars) and the Sufi brotherhoods. Although Nursi’s writings are not easy and sometimes reflect the situation of rural Anatolia in the late Ottoman Empire, they are now read by modern academics, businessmen and civil servants in an urban environment. The students of the Risale-i Nur do not only connect religious wisdom and modern sciences but form a huge social and economic force as well. Therefore, these dershanes are among the most powerful sources of social capital in Turkey, including some basic moral values such as honesty and trustworthiness (Yavuz 2003b: 308). After Nursi’s death in 1960, the Nur Movement disintegrated into several groups that give their own interpretation of the Risale-i Nur, often connected with regional, ethnic and social differences. In Europe the Nur movement is dominated by the followers of Fethullah Gülen, who will be introduced after the interlude in this chapter. But before that, a final word must be said about Nursi’s attitude toward interreligious dialogue, especially with Christians. In the twentieth Flash, written in Isparta in 1934-1935, Said Nursi reflects on sincerity, guided by the Qur’Ɨn: “We have, indeed, sent down the Book to you in truth; so worship Allah professing the religion sincerely to Him” (Q. 39:2; tr. Fakhry 2000: 462). He mentions that Isparta is a place where no rivalry exists between the pious people, the followers of the Sufi way, and religious scholars. But the people of religion often seem to be divided, while the worldly and the neglectful, the misguided and the hypocrites seem to cooperate without rivalry (Nursi 2000: 201). Nursi summons the Muslims of different orientation to work together: “consider that union with the people of truth is a cause of Divine succour and the high dignity of religion” (Nursi 2000: 203). In a footnote he adds the tradition that he had already mentioned in the Damascus sermon, viz. that at the end of time “the truly pious among the Christians will unite with the People of the Qur’an and fight their common enemy, irreligion,” adding: And at this time, too, the people of religion and truth need to unite sincerely not only with their own brothers and fellow believers, but also with the truly pious and spiritual ones among the Christians, temporarily refraining from the discussion and debate of points of difference in order to combat their joint enemy – aggressive atheism. (Nursi 2000: 204)

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It is probably because of this reason that Said Nursi sent a copy of a part of his Risale to the Vatican in 1950 and visited the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Istanbul in 1953 (Vahide 2003: xxii-xxiii). Although he does not mention the text, he must have been guided by the following verses from the Qur’Ɨn as well: You [Prophet] are sure to find that the most hostile to the believers are the Jews and those who associate other deities with God; you are sure to find that the closest in affection towards the believers are those who say “We are Christians,” for there are among them people devoted to learning and ascetics [priests and monks]. These people are not given to arrogance, and when they listen to what has been sent down to the Messenger, you will see their eyes overflowing with tears because they recognize the truth [in it]. They say, “Our Lord, we believe, so count us amongst the witnesses. Why should we not believe in God and in the truth that has come down to us when we long for our Lord to include us in the company of the righteous?” (Q. 5:82-84; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 75-76).

I did not want to suppress the first half of verse 82 on the Jews, although I hasten to add that the different valuation of Jews and Christians reflects the situation in Yathrib (Medina) where Jews, in contrast to Christians, formed an ethnic and political power. Since the present situation is different – although many Muslims and Christians in the Middle East may have their own ideas about that – it is not good to favor dialogue with Christians at the expense of dialogue with Jews. Within the context of the Abrahamic religions (see chapter three), Jews should be included in dialogue. The further development of the mainstream Nur movement went into that direction. The Yeni Asia who favored spreading the Risale-i Nur by printed rather than handwritten copies gained the upper hand and supported closer ties with Western countries and the Abrahamic religions (Yavuz 2003b: 310). The followers of Fethullah Gülen pursued this path, but they also engaged in a more nationalistic discourse since Gülen did not distance himself from the military coup in 1980. When Gülen went to the United States in 1998, he adapted to a more global perspective in which the West, in his view, provided the best conditions for true Islam to grow (Yavuz 2003b: 316). The Yeni Nesil (New Generation) movement, on the other hand, tries to spread Nursi’s ideas by promoting academic research, including more critical readings from the Western and the Arab world (Yavuz 2003b: 311). Therefore, both the Fethullah Gülen movement and the Yeni Nesil

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group promote the circulation of Nursi’s writings and ideas in the Western world. 8.2 Interlude: Nada te Turbe (How to Find Your True Home) Nada te turbe nada te espante Todo se pasa, Dios no se muda. La pacïencia todo lo alcanza. Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta: Sólo Dios basta.

Let nothing upset you, let nothing startle you. All things pass; God does not change. Patience wins all it seeks Whoever has God lacks nothing: God alone is enough.

This poem (tr. Vogt 1996: 32-33) is probably the most widely distributed text by St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), although many faithful who pray or sing this poem probably do not know that she is its author. In this interlude in the last chapter I want to pay some attention to this poem since it strikes a fundamental spiritual tone that may be recognized by many Christians and Muslims as the very core of their faith. The poem is used as a song in liturgical settings in a somewhat shortened form and with a slightly different translation: Nada te turbe, nada te espante. Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta Nada te turbe, nada te espante. Solo Dios, basta

Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. Those who have God lack nothing. Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. God alone suffices.

I first heard and sang the song in the Netherlands; the Spanish version was included in the repertoire of one of the choirs in our parish, probably under the influence of the ecumenical community of Taizé in France, where it is used as well. The Taizé translation into English is rather free: “Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten; those who seek God shall never go wanting. God alone fills us” (Taizé 2001: no. 50). During the months in which I worked at the University of Notre Dame the song was frequently sung in the small chapel of the international university village where a sizeable number of faithful had a Latino background. The Latino students who accompanied our singing

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used to include this song during the communion rite as a popular addition and within several weeks we knew it by heart, since it was not included in the official English hymnal or in the Spanish supplement. It was precisely the fact that it was added without being officially included in the liturgy that drew my attention to this song as an expression of a popular form of Hispanic and Latino spirituality. A few months later, on the occasion of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Basilica of the university, the liturgy included no less than two versions of the song.5 John Kirvan uses the same poem, ‘the bookmark of Teresa of Avila’, as the title for a selection of her texts in a series of Thirty Days with a Great Spiritual Teacher, published by Notre Dame’s Ave Maria Press (Kirvan 1996). In this book it is not necessary to go into the exact details of the historical circumstances under which Teresa wrote her poem. Suffice it to say that she, a Christian woman of Jewish descent, lived in a society “whose tensions and anxieties were more like those of modern South Africa than Europe in the last quarter of the twentieth century,” as Rowan Williams, now the Archbishop of Canterbury, says in the preface to his study of her life and works (Williams 1991: vii). Her life was marked by severe illnesses, suspicions about her imaginative visions, opposition by political authorities and bitter enmity in the Order of the Carmelites to which she belonged. Deirdre Green summarizes her situation as follows: “as a conversa, as a woman, as a mystic and visionary, and as a reformer, Teresa was very vulnerable” (Green 1989: 143). In the late Middle Ages and the period of the Counter-Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church considered independent women to be a major threat, most of all if they had mystical inclinations, were Jewish by birth and wanted to reform the religious order to which they belonged. Teresa’s vulnerability to these forms of mistrust, together with her weak health, was the mental background for the invocation ‘be not afraid’. At the same time, such an invocation be-

5

The one version, as printed above, has Jacques Berthier as author, adapted by Steven Warner, while the other song has Jaime Cortez and Steven Warner as authors. My source is the booklet for the Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Nuestra Señora de las Américas, Basílica del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, 9 de diciembre, 2004. – Thank you, Dorris, for sharing this with me, as well as so many ideas that shaped this interlude.

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trays an enormous power, yet Teresa is aware that this power is not hers: God alone is enough to surmount all difficulties. It is the same mental vulnerability, together with an enormous trust in God as the source of hope in the face of the difficulties of life that I recognize in different forms in the writings of al-GhazƗlƯ and Said Nursi. Both went through periods of exile in their lives and both found the strength that enabled them to endure this situation. This strength, they testify, lies in concentrating on the sole power that matters: God. Nada te turbe is an incantation indeed, for the situation in which the song is prayed nowadays by many Latino immigrants in the United States is not one of rest, security and affluence. And yet it is a song of hope because there is a rest, a security and a richness that is more important than the poverty, the anguish and the uncertainty of their daily lives. I saw something similar ten years ago when I visited my wife doing some practical training in the northern part of Ghana. Religion is a very public affair in this country and in the sourthern part one sees trotros driving with too many people on board but with full trust in God’s provident care: GOD WILL PROVIDE is the text on many of them. In the middle part of the country, proud of its Ashanti heritage, the texts on the buses are in the Akan language. Gye Nyame, ‘except God’ has almost become the national symbol of Ghana as it indicates that God’s almighty power is sufficient. This expression of faith in God came to my mind when I read GhazƗlƯ’s or Nursi’s expositions of tawakkul, but in Ghana it is connected with Christian spirituality as well. In one of the halls of Legon University near Accra, a foundation stone had the Latin text, Nisi Dominus, which refers to the first words of Psalm 127: “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” In the northern part of the country, where life is more difficult because of the desert climate, the maxims on the buses are simpler; Goddey is what we saw in most cases, which is Pidgin English for ‘God is there’. To my mind, goddey summarizes the contents of Teresa of Avila’s poem in one word. Whatever happens, God is there; we will see. The development workers in northern Ghana did not like this mentality, because they thought it was a form of resignation. The British governor must have thought the same when he told the White Fathers who wanted to establish a mission in the region that it was better to let the people become Muslims because that would suit them better. This was a form of ‘divide and rule’

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politics, of course, but it corresponded all too well with Western prejudice toward Islam as a fatalistic religion. My interreligious reading of al-GhazƗlƯ and Said Nursi has been an intercultural reading of several Christian traditions at the same time. It has taught me that what is often called fatalism by Westerners is in fact a clever way to survive in adverse conditions and, above all, an admirably deep trust in God. Pacïencia, patience, is often considered to be solely passive, yet sabr is a highly acclaimed virtue in Arab cultures, as the list of translations in the Wehr dictionary tells us: “patience, forbearance; composure, equanimity, steadfastness, firmness; self-control, self-command, self-possession; perseverance, endurance, hardiness” (Wehr 1976: 501). It is the virtue of knowing when it is time to act, as al-GhazƗlƯ makes clear when dealing with al-Sabnjr as one of the beautiful names of God (al-GhazƗlƯ 1992: 149). Many Christians in the West have developed a blind spot for the kind of trust in God’s providence that lies behind this spirituality, whether it be African, Hispanic, Arab or Muslim spirituality. At the end of her quest for God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Karen Armstrong says that the future of God can be cherished only by those who take the time to look after their souls. At the same time she is afraid that this will not be easy in our Western affluent society where information stimuli abound (Armstrong 1993: 455). The same is probably true for deep trust in God’s providence and the form of endurance that ensues from it. The gist of comparative theology is to learn from other religious traditions in order to be able to enhance the quality of our interreligious dialogue. I think that we can learn from al-GhazƗlƯ and Said Nursi that trust in God’s providence is a spiritual value and endurance is a virtue that we have tended to forget in our Western activism. But it is one of the most important aspects of monotheism as well. The concept of ‘Monotheïsm’ may be translated as Solo Dios basta or as hasbunƗ ‘llƗhu, since ‘God alone suffices’ is one of the main implications of the creedal formula that ‘there is only one God’. This may sound like an exclusive demand of an imperial God and yet such trust in God does not keep religious people from building social relationships among human beings. But ultimately God is the One to be trusted. A similar radical message can be read in the New Testament as well, for instance when St. Paul, describing the faith of Abraham,

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talks about “the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4: 17). In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus expresses it a bit differently: “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6: 33). On several occasions Jesus implies that those who want to follow him have to make radical choices: “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9: 60). In his very first article that was published at a time when Roman Catholic theologians used to quote the Bible according to the Vulgata translation, Edward Schillebeeckx kept referring to an unicum necessarium as an uncompromising demand that Christians have to bear in mind when they want to engage in dialogue with contemporary humanism (Schillebeeckx 1945: 89. 595. 603. 608). Schillebeeckx derives this “supernatural exclusivism” (Borgman 1999: 112) from Jesus’s words to Martha who was worried about the behavior of her sister Mary: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10: 41-42). This type of Evangelical radicalism summons us, Christians and Muslims, to dedicate our lives to God as the One who creates our human freedom. Along this line Muslim Sufis, from al-GhazƗlƯ to Ibn al-ǥArabi to RnjmƯ, have explained tawhƯd as ‘God alone exists’. The Christian idea of creatio ex nihilo and the Muslim idea of excluding innerworldly causality convey the same conviction that we would be nothing if it were not for God (Gye Nyame: “Except God”). To use al-GhazƗlƯ’s image, babies need milk and their mothers to feed them, but both milk and their mothers come from God. Along similar lines Teresa of Lisieux came to the conclusion that tout est grace (“everything is grace”). All these insights from the Christian and Muslim traditions are, to my mind, expressions of the hidden presence of God that is so marvelously summarized by Burrell in his analysis of ‘created freedom’, indicating how faith and trust in God must go together with acting as responsible human beings on earth (Burrell 1993; Valkenberg 1994).

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8.3 Fethullah Gülen (1938) and the Neo-Nur movement The relation between Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen is comparable to the relation between Ramakrishna (1836-1886) and Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) in their effort to bring Hinduism to the West at the end of the nineteenth century. While Ramakrishna was a holy man and a teacher who did not travel much nor meet many people, Vivekananda translated Ramakrishna’s ideas for a larger public and traveled widely to make them known (Clooney 2003: 320). In a similar way Fethullah Gülen popularized and modernized many of Said Nursi’s writings for a larger public, particularly in the West. While Vivekananda rose to fame by his address to the first meeting of the Parliament of the World’s Religions at Chicago in 1893, Fethullah Gülen addressed the same Parliament at Cape Town in 1999. Yet, as Thomas Michel indicates, Gülen contributed to spreading Said Nursi’s ideas more by his activism in the area of education than by his thinking and writing (Michel 2002). Therefore, I will add a short section on education to the sections on Gülen’s life and his writings on tolerance and dialogue. Because the personal life of Fethullah Gülen is more or less at the service of building the movement that is sometimes referred to as the ‘Gülen Movement’ and sometimes as the ‘neo-Nursi’s’, I will discuss the man and his movement at the same time and not in two separate sections. 8.3.1 Gülen’s Life and Context M. Fethullah Gülen was born in Erzurum, a little town in Turkish Anatolia in 1938 or 1941 (Agai 2004: 125). He was educated at the local madrasa where he graduated in 1958. One of his teachers, Muhammed Lütfi, introduced him to the Sufi path in the tradition of JalƗluddƯn RnjmƯ and Yunus Emre (Gülen 2002: 3). He was appointed preacher and head of religious education in Izmir, Turkey’s third largest province, where he began to attract students. In most of his preaching and teaching in Izmir, he utilized Said Nursi’s ideas on ethics and the natural sciences. Although he never met Nursi, Fethullah Gülen adopted not only his ideas but also major characteristics of his ascetic lifestyle (Yavuz 2003c: 20). Something of this lifestyle and the personality behind it is visible in the many photographs that show Gülen with several figures of authority and famous persons (Gülen 2000: 381-6; 2002: 65-72). As far as I can judge from these pictures, Gülen is remarkable for his simplicity, his

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almost diffident look and the consequent absence of a tie. Gülen is quite aware of the symbolic character of his public personality: not only in his words but also in his moral behavior he is the model for his followers. They recognize in Gülen what Gülen himself recommends in the Prophet: he was someone who practiced and represented what he preached (Gülen 2004: 106). And so is Gülen for his admirers (Gülen 2002: 8). M. Hakan Yavuz divides the life of Fethullah Gülen and the movement that bears his name into three periods. The first period began when Gülen was appointed to the Kestanepazarı Qur’anic School to teach courses on Islamic sciences in 1966. In this period, he began building his own network and spreading his own ideas. Yavuz characterizes these ideas as religiously conservative and nationalist but at the same time open to Western ideas such as democracy, capitalism and tolerance (Yavuz 2003c: 21). Consequently, the Gülen movement – or neo-Nur movement – is nourished by a combination of modern and premodern ideas. Although Gülen himself is rather open to changes in gender relations and thinks that wearing headscarves is primarily a cultural and hardly a religious matter, his followers tend to be more conservative and practice a quite rigid segregation of the sexes (Yavuz 2003c: 29; Agai 2003: 56). In this first period Gülen concentrated on gathering his students into a religious community with the aim of forming them into a new generation of pious but modern Muslims. These first followers of Gülen developed their own forms of community in the dershanes of the Nur movement and the ‘lighthouses’ of the new movement, where university students came together to pray and to discuss social issues. They focus their attention on developing an adequate Muslim ethics and on reconciliation between Islam and science. Yavuz argues that the atmosphere in these lighthouses or dormitories is very much influenced by Sufi ascetism, although Gülen is not a Sufi in the strict sense of the word. The moral perfection at which these communities aim requires a life of strict discipline and self-sacrifice (Yavuz 2003c: 34). As I wrote above, this way of building a new generation of morally superior human beings may be called a form of Islamism – in the non-pejorative sense – because it refers back to the ideals of the first Muslim community but looks forward as well to a better Muslim community. Such a future community is characterized by a combination of Muslim ethics, modern sciences and de-

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cent personal behavior; in this combination it seeks to be a sign of light in modern societies. The second phase of Gülen’s life was marked by an expansion of the ideals formulated in the first phase. Because of the changing political context in the beginning of the 1980s, Gülen began developing close ties with state institutions and became a nationwide public figure in the 1990s. The Gülen movement began to spread its ideas through newspapers, journals and radio and TV broadcasts. The privatization of the education system in 1983 gave Gülen’s followers ample opportunity to implement his educational ideas in a great number of private schools, not only in Turkey but in countries in central Asia and southeastern Europe as well. While his religious ideas remained largely conservative, Gülen’s political outlook became quite liberal, emphasizing democracy, freedom of the press and a free market economy (Yavuz 2003c: 38). In his preaching Gülen underscores the moral values of Islam and the model of the prophet Muhammad as a liberal, open-minded, bridge-building person. Gülen’s openness includes Western values and other religions as well. This combination of traditional Muslim spirituality and modern Western values explains the great attraction of the Gülen movement for many socially and economically prominent persons in Turkish society. Gülen is very successful in attracting private funding for his public and educational activities and the Journalists and Writers Foundation is now the most powerful civil foundation in Turkey. Hakan Yavuz concludes that Gülen’s followers used the market economy and the mass media to establish what he calls “an unprecedented Islamicization of the public sphere” in Turkey (Yavuz 2003c: 42). This process of ‘islamicization’ led to a counterattack by the military elite in their ‘soft coup’ of February 28, 1997. Presenting themselves as heirs of Kemal Atatürk’s secularization, they curtailed the influence of Islam in the public sphere. Gülen justified the military campaign against radical Islamist groups, but he was attacked by voices in the media as a threat to the secular nature of the Turkish state. Gülen, who had succeeded in balancing secularist and Islamist powers until then, became the target of accusations from both sides in the third phase of his life. The secularist leaders claimed that he was an Islamist-in-disguise, while the leaders of the Yeni Asya Nur group said that his involvement in politics made him unfaithful to the memory of Said Nursi. While Nursi had preferred exile above

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compromise, Gülen tried to protect himself, they asserted. Gülen and his movement found a way out of this thorny situation by widening their vision while stressing their allegiance to the Turkish nation. The Journalists and Writers Foundation began to concentrate less on Islamic issues and more on building forms of consensus among important groups in Turkish society (Yavuz 2003c: 45). At the same time, Gülen exchanged his nationalistic stance for a more liberal and global perspective, leaving Turkey for the United States for reasons that are not very clear. Some say that he went there for medical reasons; others say that he lives there in exile. A third possibility might be that Gülen thinks that the future of Islam lies in the West, a position that will be defended by Tariq Ramadan in the next and final section of this book.6 Although he has been interviewed many times in 2004 and 2005 (Saritoprak and Ünal 2005), Gülen does not appear to be very active any longer as a public figure. This might give some credibility to the opinion that his ‘exile’ has mainly to do with his health.7 8.3.2 Fethullah Gülen on Tolerance and Dialogue Although many books have been published in the name of Fethullah Gülen (Gülen 2000; 2002; 2004; 2004a), these books are actually compiled by others from Gülen’s speeches and occasional writings. His book Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism, for instance, which was his first book to be translated into Dutch, consists of short considerations on Sufi concepts for a larger public, each about three to four pages in length (Gülen 2002a). The form of his writings confirms the name of Gülen as a preacher and columnist rather than a scholar, an activist rather than a thinker (Michel 2002). Yet this does not imply 6

Hakan Yavuz (2003c: 45) gives the following quote by Gülen from a private interview in Philadelphia in 2000: “By visiting the States and many other European countries, I realized the virtues and the role of religion in these societies. Islam flourishes in America and Europe much better than in many Muslim countries. This means freedom and the rule of law are necessary for personal Islam. Moreover, Islam does not need the state to survive, but rather needs educated and financially rich communities to flourish. In a way, not the state but rather community is needed under a full democratic system”. 7

Medical treatment is the reason given for Gülen’s stay in the United States on the website of the Gülen organization: www.fethullahgulen.org.

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that his writings are superficial. Short as they are, Gülen’s texts are often rich in content because they are nourished not only by the Qur’Ɨn and the traditional hadith collections but also by the writings of Said Nursi to the effect that one cannot understand Gülen without considering his links to Said Nursi (Yavuz & Esposito 2003: vii). Yet at the same time Gülen’s writings differ greatly from Nursi’s, not only because of stylistic differences but mainly because of Gülen’s acceptance of Western modernity. In his columns Gülen often defends modern notions such as democracy, tolerance, and dialogue and, in doing so, frequently refers to Western writers and scholars, including philosophers and theologians. His main goal is to show how the values of Islam deepen these Western concepts, and he uses Said Nursi to show the roots of these concepts in the world of Islam. The neo-Nur movement might be one of the most interesting modern phenomena in the world of Islam because of the joint influence of Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen. While Gülen’s writings would be superficial if they were not rooted in Nursi, the latter’s writings would hardly be relevant for the modern era without their offshoots in Gülen’s works. In his writings on love, tolerance, and dialogue, Gülen frequently refers to both RnjmƯ and Nursi as models who lived their lives with these concepts as central values. He likes to quote Nursi’s words “love is the essence of creation” (Gülen 2000: 195). The words ‘tolerance’ and ‘dialogue’ appear on almost every page of his writings, and he explains that a Muslim should by nature be inclined to dialogue, since the very name muslim refers to someone with whom others may feel secure. He quotes the Prophet, saying that true Muslims are “those who harm no one with their words and actions, and who are the most trustworthy representatives of universal peace” (Gülen 2000: 248). Gülen takes this saying of the prophet Muhammad as his hermeneutical rule for reading the Qur’Ɨn: the normal situation of relations between Muslims and others should be a situation of peace; if the Qur’Ɨn calls Muslims to war, this should be read as an exception to this rule. Thus, for instance, the verse “You who believe, do not take Jews and Christians as allies: they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them – God does not guide such wrongdoers.” (Q. 5: 51; tr. Abdel Haleem 2004: 73) is explained as follows:

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We can see some stern expressions in the Qur’an. However, they refer to extremists. In line with this delicate spirit of the matter, Bediüzzaman in one place says that it is possible to establish dialogue and friendship with Jews and Christians and do every kind of work with them in social life. He indicates that the Qur’an’s prohibition regarding not taking them for friends pertains only to those matters of belief in Judaism and Christianity that do not conform to Islam. Otherwise, generalizing on rules that pertain to specific conditions, specific people and specific subjects, would mean accepting the Qur’an differently than it really means. So, we should not sacrifice anything from our style. (Gülen 2004: 115-16)

In fact, Gülen says, we should see peace between religions as the normal situation recommended by the Qur’Ɨn: “peace is best”, says the Qur’Ɨn (4: 128), and this should be the general rule (Gülen 2004: 167). “Peace is essential to Islam; war is accidental and dependent on certain reasons and conditions” (Gülen 2004: 172). If the Qur’Ɨn therefore deviates from this general rule of commending peace, there must be a specific reason for it. Enmity between Muslims, Jews and Christians is an exception that is always determined by a specific context and may not be generalized. For this hermeneutic rule Gülen refers to a rule in tafsƯr (Qur’Ɨnic exegesis), saying: “In order to conclude that a verse refers to a particular people, it must be established both clearly and historically that the verse in question refers to them exclusively” (Gülen 2000: 260). As Jane Dammen McAuliffe shows, many Muslim exegetes have been aware of the rule that such reproaches in the Qur’Ɨn refer to particular situations in which the behavior of some Jews and Christians occasioned such revelations (asbƗb al-nuznjl; McAuliffe 1999: 110). At the practical level, Gülen started initiatives for interreligious dialogue by meeting with religious representatives, including the Pope, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople and the Turkish Chief Rabbi. Moreover, in a spirit reminding one of Said Nursi’s solicitation of Sultan Mehmed Reúad, he proposed opening a university in Urfa – a city in eastern Turkey considered to be the birthplace of Abraham by many Muslims – where scholars and students from the three Abrahamic traditions would be present (Gülen 2000: 284; Saritoprak and Griffith 2005: 336). Again, he refers to RnjmƯ and Nursi in defending his openness to other religions:

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But first of all, education is a humane service, for we were sent here to learn and be perfected through education. Saying: “The old state of affairs is impossible. Either a new state or annihilation”, Bediüzzaman drew attention to solutions and the future. Saying that “controversial subjects shouldn’t be discussed with Christian spiritual leaders,” he opened dialogues with members of other religions. Like Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, who said: “One of my feet is in the center and the other is in seventy-two realms (people of all nations) like a compass,” he drew a broad circle that encompasses all monotheists. Implying that the days of brute force are over, he said: “Victory with civilized persons is through persuasion,” thus pointing out that dialogue, persuasion, and talk based on evidence are essential for those of us who seek to serve religion. (Gülen 2000: 319-20; 2002: 84)

Fethullah Gülen counts RnjmƯ and Nursi among the models for his students to follow (Can 2004). But he is aware of the fact that we can now go further in interreligious dialogue than they could, because the times have changed: The attachment to God of the people of love like Mawlana, Yunus, Hodja Yasawi and Bediüzzaman is much, much greater than ours and their fallibility is much, much less than ours. For this reason, they made undeniable efforts regarding love, affection and tolerance, and they greatly influenced those around them on this matter. But if we evaluate them within the period they lived, none of them saw the level that has been attained today by believing people as a result of their efforts regarding dialogue and tolerance. In fact, each of them had to face unbecoming treatment; in comparison with what they suffered, the treatment we face is almost nothing. Bediüzzaman says concerning the suffering they had to bear: “Do they think I am an egotist who only concerns for himself? I have sacrificed my whole life and had no time to think about my afterlife to save the community’s faith. My whole life has passed on the battlefronts, in prisons, or in this country’s jails and courts. There is no oppression I have not seen or injustice I have not suffered. I have been treated as a criminal at courts; I have been exiled from town to town like a tramp. But if I see the faith of my community secured, then I even agree to burning in the flames of Hell. For while my body is burning, my heart will be like a rose-garden.” In spite of all these difficulties, none of these men of love saw in their own time the degree of acceptance that today’s representatives of dialogue and tolerance have received. Their messages did not have the same impact on the public as the messages of today’s heroes of tolerance have. I think that if they were to live in this century and see today’s trend toward dialogue and tolerance, they would ask, “How have

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you been successful with dialogue throughout the world? What’s your secret?” In order to hold a distinction that was not destined for these giants of light because the conditions were not appropriate, it is necessary to persist on this way. Yesterday an important person said to me, “Some circles that were strongly opposed to believers until yesterday are now greatly supporting and commending them.” Actually these are an indication of the acceptance that God has put in the hearts of those who are on the earth for its representatives. Not seeing this would be ingratitude, and seeing it but not giving thanks for it would be another dimension of unbelief. (Gülen 2004: 108-09)

Fethullah Gülen is aware of the fact that he is able to reap the harvest of interreligious dialogue because his predecessors sowed the seeds of love and tolerance. This is a reason to be thankful and to honor our forerunners on the path of love, tolerance and dialogue, because they made our present situation possible (Celik et al. 2005). The optimism of this particular text construes an opposition between the adversity of Nursi’s times and the prosperity of Gülen’s. This might be typical of the second phase in Gülen’s life, but it is not characteristic of his life as a whole. Particularly in the first phase and to a lesser extent in the third phase as well, Gülen’s texts are characterized by what Yasin Aktay calls a ‘diasporic discourse’ (Aktay 2003: 133). With this term Aktay refers to the rupture between the Ottoman Empire and the secular Kemalist Turkish state that has created a radical sense of estrangement in the mind of many Islamists. They felt like strangers in their own country. Aktay describes Gülen’s life as a journey from the culturally conservative and highly pious population in Erzurum to the large secular cities of Edirne and Izmir. In the late 1960s Gülen was prosecuted for Nurçu activities, and after the military coup in 1980 he could not appear in public until 1986 (Aktay 2003: 143). During this period, Nursi’s life in exile became Gülen’s most important model, so that he experienced Nursi’s ghurba (Haddad 1999) in his own manner: Although exile is an objective reality for an individual, ghurba is a mood, a consequence of this reality that one can overcome by psychological will power. Haddad tries to show how Nursi overcame the ghurba mood caused by the objective conditions of his exile by passing through a diasporic mood. Having been influenced deeply by this legacy, Gülen, too, undoubtedly passed through similar phases. Although he came from the Nurçu tradition, he differed from the main-

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stream movement by supplementing his views with diverse sources of knowledge in addition to Nursi’s Risale-i Nur. In effect, he developed a separate branch within and outside the general Nurçu movement. Although he never departed completely from Nursi, sharing with him a strong mood of diaspora, he also differed from Nursi in developing a peculiar way to overcome the diasporic conditions. This way is Gülen’s different approach to politics and the state apparatus. His approach, as shown previously, was to effect a reconciliation with the foreign body politic (Aktay 2003: 145). Following Aktay’s analysis, one could describe the three periods in Gülen’s life as, respectively, feeling a stranger in one’s own country, feeling at home in one’s own country, and feeling at home in the global world. At the same time, however, tawakkul as trust in God and sabr as endurance are still important for Gülen (Yavuz and Esposito 2003: 112. 129). Yet I did not come across many texts on this subject by Gülen, and I am inclined to think that he is too much of an activist to abide by such ‘passive virtues’ very long. They are part of the heritage he received from Nursi and they are part of his Sufi training as well, but on the basis of these roots Gülen sets himself the task to build a new and open Muslim community (Michel 2005). The major problem in this community-building project is the gulf between faith and the secular sciences. In this respect Gülen does not differ from Said Nursi. In an analysis that reminds one of Said Nursi’s Damascus sermon he points to three basic weaknesses in the Islamic world and three ways to overcome them: “Ignorance is defeated through education; poverty through work and the possession of capital; and internal schism and separation through unity, dialogue, and tolerance” (Gülen 2000: 320). Gülen and Nursi would agree on ignorance and discord as basic problems, but – in my analysis – they would not agree on poverty. Apart from the fact that Nursi would probably not consider poverty a problem, he would certainly see frugality and not capitalism as its solution. Although Gülen is an ascetic person, he commends capitalism for his followers. Nursi would agree with Gülen, however, that ignorance is the greatest problem, and that education is the most important medicine for the Muslim world (Gülen 2002: 84). Before I proceed to show how Gülen develops education as the most important element for the neo-Nur movement, I want to point to a particular problem in Gülen’s approach to dialogue as an antidote to schism and separation.

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Gülen’s Concept of Dialogue Fethullah Gülen’s approach to interreligious dialogue is connected with his views on unity and tolerance in such a way that he argues in favor of a dialogue that only deals with the common points while neglecting the differences. This approach characterizes his explanation of the Qur’Ɨnic verse on not taking Christians and Jews as allies. The same approach can be seen in a text on “The Necessity of Interfaith Dialogue” that was presented at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Cape Town, December 1999.8 “For interfaith dialogue to succeed, we must forget the past, ignore polemics, and focus on common points” (Gülen 2002: 34). This point is repeated by Gülen time and again: Compared with the common points among us, the things that require separation are extremely insignificant .… We should ignore the differences between us and the followers of other heavenly religions. (Gülen 2004: 55)

Such an appeal to ignore the differences runs the risk of narrowing interreligious dialogue down to polite conversation that is not very relevant when religious violence determines the larger context of this dialogue. The Second Vatican Council seems to make a similar kind of mistake when, in Nostra Aetate § 3, it summons Christians and Muslims to forget the enmity of the past when trying to build better relations. Such appeals are appropriate in a context in which fellow believers have to be convinced of the value of dialogue with other religions. Yet in actual interreligious dialogues, focusing on common points can only be a preliminary phase. When two parties meet with great suspicions, forgetting about differences and enmities of the past can be a useful educational strategy. Yet when the dialogue goes on, the ‘reconciliation of memories’, as well as a careful analysis of the differences, are indispensable issues. There might be a second reason for Gülen’s stress on unity and tolerance. In a situation in which Islam is mentioned time and again as an intolerant and even violent religion, it may be useful to dissociate 8

I gave a detailed interpretation of this text in my contribution “Fethullah Gülen’s Contribution to Muslim-Christian Dialogue in the Context of Abrahamic Cooperation” at a conference on “Islam in the Contemporary World: The Fethullah Gülen Movement in Thought and Practice” at Rice University, Houston TX, November 12-13, 2005. See www.fethullahgulenconference.org.

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oneself from this image and to show the potential of Islam for tolerance, dialogue and promoting the unity of humankind. Yet this is a defensive and apologetic strategy that threatens to ignore the role of violence in religion. Like all forms of apologetics, it tends to distort the ambiguous nature of religion that I found so marvelously expressed in the quotation by Fethullah Gülen referred to in chapter two: “The most distinctive feature of a soul overflowing with faith is to love all types of love that are expressed in deeds, and to feel enmity for all deeds in which enmity is expressed” (Gülen 2000: 198). In the context of Abrahamic dialogue, Jews may remind Muslims and Christians of the importance of paying attention to differences and particularities in interreligious dialogue. I remember that this was one of the most important points of discussion between my Jewish and my Muslim colleague when we travelled as an ‘Abrahamic team’ to a conference organized by the Gülen movement in Istanbul (Valkenberg et al. 2004: 136). While most Christians in the West nowadays like to stress the common points between their faith and their Jewish ‘elder sister’, Jews tend to find the differences more interesting. And while Christians always have felt the need to underscore the differences between them and Islam as their ‘younger sister’, many Muslims nowadays want to discuss the similarities. This peculiar situation of opposed interests in dialogue may be explained not only by the genetic relations between these religions but primarily by the global context in which the Christian partner in dialogue as a rule is the most powerful partner. As I explained in chapter four, one of the most important prerequisites for dialogue is attentiveness to this larger context and, as a result of this, a willingness to let the agenda of dialogue be determined by those who are not in power. For Christians, such a disempowerment could result in their talking about differences in dialogue with Jews, and about common points in dialogue with Muslims. 8.3.3 Education as Central Concept in the Gülen Movement In his article on Fethullah Gülen as educator, Thomas Michel points to the fact that he was introduced to the educational institutions of the Gülen movement in the Philippines, Turkey, and Kyrgyzstan before studying Gülen’s writings where he found the theoretical impulses for founding these institutions (Michel 2003b: 69). My experience in the Netherlands was somewhat similar: the first iftƗr for which I was invited by the local branch of the Islam and Dialogue Foundation – see

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chapter two – took place in a boarding school for boys. Only later did I hear more of their dialogue activities and became interested in their spiritual sources. Since religious education is not the subject matter of this book, I cannot go into the details of Gülen’s writings on education (see Gülen 2000: 305-49; 2004a: 193-214). I only want to point out that Gülen’s stress on education as an Islamic value to lead people out of jahiliyya or religious ignorance may sound very similar to the way in which Islamist movements use education as a means to build a better and more Islamic society. The difference is, however, that the Gülen movement stresses not so much the religious but rather the moral values of Islam and that the schools of the movement explicitly refrain from teaching Islam (Agai 2003: 62). In Turkey the schools follow the state curriculum, while there are many non-Muslim students and teachers working in schools founded by the Gülen movement in other countries (Michel 2003b: 71). The objectives of Gülen’s educational activities are different from those of Islamist approaches in that Gülen does not want to establish an Islamic state but a democratic state with pious but modern Muslims (Agai 2003: 55). From a Christian point of view, Thomas Michel points to the fact that Gülen’s educational system does not want to promote Islam as a separate religion but islƗm as a basic virtue: In this broad sense of Islam, or submission of one’s life to God, it can be said that the schools established by the Gülen movement have as their inspiration an ethical vision rooted in Islam but not limited in its expression to members of the umma (community). When Gülen speaks of forming students who are dedicated to living according to humane qualities and moral values, and who adorn their outer world with all kinds of virtues, he is proposing a kind of universal ethical code that he as a Muslim has learned from Islam. It is equally obvious that he does not consider virtues, humane qualities, and moral values to be the exclusive possession of Muslims; the schools welcome non-Muslim students, and no attempt is made to proselityze. (Michel 2003b: 82)

In the long run, the greatest significance of Hodjaefendi Fethullah Gülen might not be his contribution to the concept of interreligious dialogue but his educational system that combines Muslim values and qualitatively very good modern education. In this respect Gülen has certainly realized many of Said Nursi’s ideals. Yet it is possible to criticize Gülen’s educational ideas as somewhat premodern by point-

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ing to the fact that his educational system might lead to isolation instead of openness. Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim who is born in the West, has recently proposed a more radical option of being a Muslim in the West. 8.4 Tariq Ramadan and the Future of Islam in the West The final section of this book focuses on the role of Muslims in the Western world. One of the problems inherent in the form of modernization that Fethullah Gülen gave to Said Nursi is its stress on Turkish national identity. It sounds paradoxical that Gülen opened his organization to Western influences while at the same time embedding it more deeply in Turkish cultural and social structures. Consequently, the Fethullah Gülen movement is not likely to develop into a transnational form of Western Islam. Even if many Muslims in European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands belong to this movement, it will not be easy for them to find many adherents without a Turkish (or sometimes Kurdish) cultural background. Although they may attract some Western adepts who are interested in an open form of Islam, they will have difficulty attracting many Muslims from Arab, African or Asian countries. In this respect, there might be a possible discrepancy between the modern and Western-oriented form of Islam prevalent in the Gülen movement and the culturally determined form of this movement. It may evolve into an important organization for openminded Muslims in the world of modernity, but it might as well remain a cultural ghetto. I sincerely hope that my exercises in comparative theology in this chapter have shown the strengths of Said Nursi’s and Fethullah Gülen’s contributions to interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims in the context of Abrahamic partnership. As Paul Knitter points out, one of the characteristics of comparative theologians working in line with the ‘acceptance model’ is that they – unlike theologians working in line with the ‘mutuality model’ – do not want to tell their dialogue partners what to do (Knitter 2002: 209). Yet comparative theologians may not only be thrilled with the theological strengths they discover in the other tradition but may also be worried about the weaknesses uncovered. While the Nurçuluk and neo-Nur (Gülen) movements certainly contribute to the renewal of Muslim scholarship, a better method would be to enter into alliances with groups and individuals that have different strengths and different

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weaknesses. Tariq Ramadan may be such a person who could help to develop a Western form of Islam. Tariq Ramadan was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1962 (Waardenburg 1997). His father, Saïd Ramadan, was a pupil and the son-inlaw of Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. When Hasan al-Banna was murdered in 1949, Saïd Ramadan took over the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood until it was banned from public activities in Egypt. In 1953 he went to Switzerland to continue his activities for the Brotherhood and founded an Islamic Center in Geneva. The fame of his grandfather and his father works to the advantage and to the disadvantage of Tariq Ramadan. He profits from the fact that they were famous in the Muslim world and yet suffers from their fundamentalist tendencies, as it would be called nowadays. Therefore, many Muslims consider him to be someone who may speak with authority, while many non-Muslims fear that he is a fundamentalist in disguise. They point to the fact that some close relatives of Tariq Ramadan are still active in Islamist organizations and defend legal sanctions such as the stoning of adulterous women. While Tariq Ramadan does not share these views, he refuses to condemn them openly since this would undercut his position as one of the most prominent Muslim spokespersons and teachers in the French-speaking parts of Europe and, moreover, it would bring him into open conflict with the shari‘ah as it is usually interpreted.9 Tariq Ramadan, who looks like a young and rather innocent scholar and who speaks rather disarmingly, has been the center of several heated political controversies. In 1995, for instance, he was not allowed to enter France because the government feared that the public peace would be disturbed. A few years later another French minister waged a fierce debate with him, while some prominent French intellectuals accused him of anti-Semitism because Ramadan wrote that the point of view of Alain Finkielkraut, Bernard-Henri Lévy, André Glucksmann and Bernard Koushner was partly determined by their being Jewish. These controversies are due to the French national notion of laïcité which entails a very strict separation between church and state and is contrary to the Islamist ideal of com9

Interview with Tariq Ramadan by Pieter Kottman, in NRC Handelsblad, February 22, 2004, p. 35

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bining the state and religion (dƯn wa-daula). This leads to problems in the French banlieus with their large groups of young angry Muslims. A final contested point is the reason why France refused to join the Bush administration in their war on Iraq in 2003; while the French intellectuals mentioned above say that the French government refused because they were afraid of a rebellion by young Muslims, Ramadan replies that these Jewish intellectuals use the defense of Israeli politics as their only criterion. Internationally, Tariq Ramadan’s star rose quickly in these years. In 2000 Time mentioned him among the hundred most prominent innovators for the twenty-first century, precisely because of his idea of creating an independent European Islam.10 Having written a Ph.D. on Friedrich Nietzsche, he was appointed professor of philosophy at the College of Geneva and professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Fribourg. In 2004 he was to start at the University of Notre Dame as professor of religion, conflict and peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, but he was not allowed to enter the United States. Although Tariq Ramadan received his visa in February 2004, this decision was reversed in July as a consequence of the USA Patriot Act, a form of legislation approved after September 11, 2001 that made it possible to revoke a visa from an alleged member of a terrorist organization without giving reasons for it.11 A commentary by Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, a proIsrael advocacy group who defended the decision of the Bush administration, shows that the controversies on Ramadan’s alleged ‘antiSemitism’ might also have played a role in the decision to revoke his visa.12 The American Academy of Religion, on the other hand, stated that such a decision would endanger academic freedom.13 Entries by Professors Peter Walshe, Michael Signer and Asma Afsaruddin in the Observer, the independent newspaper of the University of Notre 10

See www.time.com/time/innovators/spirituality

11

“Muslim scholar has visa revoked,” in Chicago Tribune, August 24,

2004. 12 13

Commentary by Daniel Pipes, Chicago Tribune, August 29, 2004.

Letter Regarding Dr. Tariq Ramadan by the Executive Directors of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the American Academy of Religion to the U.S. Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security, August 30, 2004.

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Dame, showed how considerations regarding academic freedom, power balance, political correctness and constructing religious identities are all involved in this case. Tariq Ramadan’s decision to resign his faculty appointment in December 2004 marked the saddening failure to import his European ideas about the future of Islam in the West into the United States. I was not directly involved in this affair, but as a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame during these months, I was a close observer. Having read much more documentary materials than I can present here, I came to the conclusion that the poisonous relation between the State of Israel and the Palestinian people in the Middle East overshadows many political and religious debates in the United States and makes interreligious dialogue between the Abrahamic religions very difficult there. It would have been very interesting to see the interaction between Tariq Ramadan who claims that he is in the position, because of his family background and his growing up in the West, to prevent a clash between the Muslim world and the West, and a number of Muslims in the United States who think that the future of the world of Islam will be made by Muslims in the United States (see chapter four). This interaction did not take place yet. Therefore, I will limit myself to the most important features from Tariq Ramadan’s recent book, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. The most important point in Ramadan’s rather new approach – although it will come as no surprise to those who have read Ramadan’s earlier books, notably To Be a European Muslim (Ramadan 1999) – is the appeal to his fellow Muslims to take leave of their minority complexes and to “develop a self-confidence based on a deep sense of responsibility, which in Western societies should be accompanied by real and constant action for justice” (Ramadan 2004: 77). Tariq Ramadan agrees with Fethullah Gülen that Western countries might provide a very good context to live as a faithful Muslim, but he grounds this idea in a thorough discussion of the concepts dƗr al-IslƗm (‘the abode of Islam’) and dƗr al-harb (‘the abode of war’). In the old binary vision, the world was divided into areas where Muslims reigned and areas that had to be conquered for Islam. If the main criteria for qualifying as dƗr al-IslƗm are related to safety and security for Muslim citizens, then “the description dar al-islam is applicable to almost all Western countries, while it can hardly be given to the great majority of actual Muslim countries” (Ramadan 2004: 66). Ramadan proposes

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speaking about the West as dƗr al-shahƗda, ‘the abode of witness’, because it is the center of a new world order in which Muslims must bear witness to their faith once again. This witness is weakened by the fact that Muslims in the West are deeply divided into national and social groups, lacking a sense of community and a sense of (self-)critical awareness that goes with it (Ramadan 2004: 108). The main argument of Tariq Ramadan’s book is that Muslims in the West have the responsibility to develop the four dimensions of their identity in Western culture while remaining faithful to the Islamic sources as fundamental frame of reference (Ramadan 2004: 8283). These four dimensions, in which belief and good practice go together, will form the basic structure of the remainder of my survey of Ramadan’s book. 1.The core of Muslim identity is formed by faith, practice and spirituality. Ramadan deals with these matters in chapter five on ‘spirituality and emotions’ in which he opposes the modern tendency to speak about spirituality instead of religion. In this context, Ramadan is rather critical of Sufism as an individual and private enterprise that relegates Muslim practice and ritual to a second-rate position (Ramadan 2004: 119). This part of Ramadan’s book is unnecessarily polemical, showing that his approach to Islam is more concerned with its intellectual and ritual dimensions than with its spiritual dimensions. Al-GhazƗlƯ insisted on the value of ritual practices as much as Ramadan does, yet he did not distantiate himself from Sufism, because it was there that he found the deeper meaning of these practices. 2. The second layer of Muslim identity is concerned with understanding the texts and the context. In the first part of his book Ramadan gives a survey of six ways of reading the Qur’Ɨn that represent the major tendencies among contemporary Muslims (Ramadan 2004: 2430). He distinguishes between scholastic traditionalism (reading the texts through the filters of established juridical traditions), salafi literalism (rejecting the mediation of the juridical schools, accepting only the text in its literal form), salafi reformism (trying to find an unmediated reading by practicing ijtihƗd or individual interpretation), political literalist salafism (seeking to establish an Islamic state as the context for reading), liberal or rationalist reformism (trying to assimilate Muslims to the West) and Sufism (reducing the text to the inner life of the faithful). Tariq Ramadan’s own interpretation belongs to the trend of salafi reformism which is based on the works of the

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great Muslim reformers from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, among which Tariq Ramadan includes not only JamƗl ad-DƯn al-AfghƗni, Muhammad ǥAbduh and RashƯd RidƗ, but Said Nursi as well (Ramadan 1998: 145-53). In the eyes of Ramadan, the most important salafi reformer is, of course, Hassan al-Banna; in this sense he remains faithful to his own family tradition. Muslims in the West now have the responsibility to come to a new understanding of the basic texts of Islam, starting with an interpretation of the new context within which these texts are read (Ramadan 2004: 80). 3. The third dimension of Muslim identity is education and transmission of the message. In his chapter on Muslim education Ramadan is remarkably critical of the model of the Islamic school – referred to as the ‘parallel educational approach’, focusing on Islamic institutions as alternatives for public institutions – since this model would produce artificial ‘Islamic spaces’ and cut off young Muslim students from the society surrounding them (Ramadan 2004: 131). Ramadan argues for a complementary educational approach in which the form of education that society provides for all children is complemented by what Muslims want to pass on to their children. This is very important since it allows children to live together with others amid the ordinary realities of their society (Ramadan 2004: 134). I consider this paragraph to be a careful but trenchant critique on the parallel educational approach of Fethullah Gülen and his movement. 4. The final dimension of Muslim identity is action and participation in society. Tariq Ramadan argues that Muslims should become active participants in the societies in which they live, including forms of political representation. Moreover, he thinks that Muslims should be more aware of the economic principles in the Muslim tradition, and offer more resistance to the reigning economic system. Again, Tariq Ramadan and Fethullah Gülen would not agree on this point. Toward the end of his book Tariq Ramadan includes a chapter on interreligious dialogue, in which he demonstrates how the Qur’Ɨn shows that knowing the religious other is an indispensable condition for knowing one’s own religion (Ramadan 2004: 203). He shows how the six different types of reading texts in the Muslim tradition developed their own theology of religious others. He seems to have a somewhat narrow notion of interreligious dialogue, as he thinks that those who participate in dialogues are often cut off from the believers in their own religious communities. Therefore, it is important to de-

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velop a process of ‘intracommunal’ – or intrareligious – dialogue, in order to facilitate interreligious dialogue. Furthermore, in dialogue the partners should read each other’s Scriptures in order to inspire meditation and questions (Ramadan 2004: 210). Finally, it is important to go from the dialogue of specialists to the dialogue of action. Our experience of fifteen years of joint action in South America, Africa, and Asia has convinced us not only that this path is necessary but also that it is the only way to eventually change minds and build mutual respect and trust. (Ramadan 2004: 211)

Tariq Ramadan brings up some interesting suggestions for the future of interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims in the West. Some of his proposals bear likeness to the ideas of Farid Esack in their radical progressiveness, while others show that Ramadan is embedded in a conservative tradition of jurisprudence. His salafi reformist position is nourished by traditions that are conspicuously different from the type of reformism represented by Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen. Yet both types of reform are able to contribute to a new form of Islam in the West if they outweigh each other’s weaknesses. One of Tariq Ramadan’s problems is that his voice is very much an individual voice, so that it can only be strengthened if it meets with response in Muslim communities. In this sense, spiritually strong communities like the neo-Nursi movement need individuals who challenge them with their sharp intellects, while individuals need communities to give more power to their acumen. It is a matter of fact that the future of Islam in the West will profit from such intracommunal or intrareligious dialogues between Muslim groups and individuals. From the point of view of comparative theology, I can only offer my analysis of theological and spiritual strengths in Muslim texts and movements, while pointing to similar texts and movements in my own Roman Catholic Christian tradition. Both in the Netherlands and in the United States Catholics have gone through a process of emancipation that is similar to the process in which Muslims are presently engaged. Such similarities may be strong incentives to strengthen dialogue-minded movements in both religious communities. Yet, in the end, we can only act trusting that our agency is in the hands of God who – as Muslim authors end their religious reflections – knows best: AllƗhu a‘lam.

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Index Abdel Haleem, M., 22; 65; 153; 157 Abdel Rahman, Taha, 285 Abdülhamid, sultan, 272 Abduh, Muhammad, 326 Abdus Sattar, Sajjidah, 49 Abhishiktananda, 131 Abimelech, 69 Abou El Fadl, Khaled, 151; 155 Abraham, 7-11; 20; 26; 39-40; 59; 65; 68; 73; 75; 79; 184; 314. See also IbrƗhƯm faith of, 64; 66 House of, 44 Abraham of Tiberias, 90 Abrahamic, xii dialogue, 319 ecumenism, xv; 42; 63; 67; 76; 80 partnership, 321 religions, xiv; 55; 57; 62; 80; 134; 145; 159; 168; 170; 192; 209; 299; 303; 323 spirituality, 66 team, 319 Abrahamov, Binyamin, 253 Abram, Ido B.H., 164 absorption in God, 266 Abnj Qurrah, Theodore, 90 Abu Rabiǥ, Ibrahim M., 282; 285 Abu Zayd, Nasr Hamid, 49 academic freedom, 323 acceptance model, 200; 321 acquisition, 292 acting, 230; 248 action, 263; 326 for justice, 324 activism, 285; 309

ǥAdawiyya, RƗbiǥa al-, 253 Aertsen, Jan, 216-19 AfghƗni, JamƗl al-dƯn, 326 Africa, 131; 174; 198 African Traditional Religions, 130 Afsaruddin, Asma, 152; 156; 323 Agai, Bekim, 269; 309-10; 320 agency, 245; 248; 327 agnosticism, 215 Agt, Andreas van, 38-39 ahl al-kitƗb, 76; 88; 184; 189. see People of the Book Ahmadi’s, 130 akedah, 67; 69 Akhbar, 132 Aktay, Yasin, 316-17 Alasag, Ertürk, 41 Alexander, Scott, 73; 152 AllƗh, 61; 280; 288 Amaladoss, Michael, s.j., 197 ambiguity, 36; 92 American Academy of Religion, 323 analogical language, 219 analogy, 214; 248 Anawati, Georges C. (also: M.M.), 27; 95; 203; 230; 247; 253 annihilation, 234; 239; 260 Antes, Peter, 46-47; 49 anti-semitism, 322-23 apartheid, 188 apologetics, 87; 90-91; 93-96; 104; 124; 204; 226; 278; 300; 319 Arabic, 32 argumentation, 231

368

SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

Ariarajah, S. Wesley, 102; 108; 114-15 Arinze, Francis, 108 Aristotle, 84 Arkoun, Mohammed, 49; 65 Armstrong, Karen, 61; 162; 260; 299; 307 Arnaldez, Roger, 94 asbƗb al-nuznjl, 314 ascetism, 261; 310 Ashǥarites, 247 ‘ashura, 38 Asia, 106; 118; 129-30; 174; 19798; 201 FABC, 176 Asín Palacios, Miguel, 224-26 Assmann, Jan, 68 Augustine, 221 authenticity, 136; 145; 227 authority, 220; 227; 254 axial age, 162 ƗyƗt, 289 Aydin, Mehmet S., 291 Ayoub, Mahmoud, 151 Baar declaration, 110 Babel, tower of, 16 Badaliyya, 25-26 Badham, Paul, 196 Bahai’s, 3; 130 Bakhtiar, Laleh, 149 Balcı, Kerim, 40; 43 Balkenende, Jan Peter, 51 Bange, Petty, 43 Banna, Hassan al-, 322; 326 baqƗ’, 258; 260; 266 al-BƗqƯ, 294 Barks, Coleman, 257 Barnes, Michael, s.j., 1; 13-14; 56; 146-47 Bartel, T.W., 205 Barth, Karl, 115; 137; 141; 225; 230

Basetti-Sani, Giulio, o.f.m., 10; 160-61 Basset, Jean-Claude, 82; 108; 114; 151 bƗtinƯya, 232 Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, 95; 217 Bea, Augustin Cardinal, 64 Begrip Moslims – Christenen, 35 belief, 119; 141 believing without belonging, 117 Benedict XVI, 109 Benima, Tamarah, 8; 40 Benveniste, E., 12 berakha, 21 berit, 170 Bernhardt, Reinhold, 5; 138 Berthrong, John H., xvi; 118; 128-29; 205; 208 Bilgin, Beyza, 73 bismillƗh, 280 Bleeker, C.J., 60 Bloechl, Jeffrey, xiii Bocken, Inigo, 299 Bohm, David, 85 Bolkestein, Frits, 19 Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, 213; 221 book, 184 of nature, 288-89 Borelli, John, 107 Borgman, Erik, 308 Borrmans, Maurice, xii; 109; 152; 157; 240 Borsboom, Ad, 17 Bouyges, Maurice, 222-23; 235 Braybrooke, Marcus, 111 breaking of the fast, 148 bricolage, 131; 134 Brooks, Geraldine, 2 Brown, Stuart, 65; 110; 119 Buber, Martin, 14; 86 Buchman, David, 237

INDEX Buddhism, 130-33; 138; 250 Buddhists, 151; 188; 198; 204; 240 Bukhari, 240 Bulhof, Ilse N., 14-15 Burrell, David B., c.s.c., xvii; 27; 62; 95-96; 146; 201; 212; 21621; 228; 236; 241; 244-45; 247; 252-53; 308 Cabalism, 279 Camps, Arnulf, o.f.m., 159; 16162; 194 Can, ùefik, 315 canon, 145 capitalism, 310; 317 Carmelites, 305 Carpenter, David, 94; 221 Case, Edmund, 128 Caspar, Robert, 90 Casper, Bernhard, 86 Catholic approach, 63 Celik, Gurkan, 43; 316 certainty, 231-32 Chapman, Colin, 5 Chenu, Bruno, 27 Chenu, Marie-Dominique, 215 Chia, Edmund, f.s.c., 106; 161; 197 Chittick, William, 254-57; 25962; 265 Christ, xiv; 74; 114; 137; 148; 154; 157; 175; 179; 208; 235; 267; 287; 298 as Savior, 277 as universal mediator of salvation, 174 mystic presence of, 174 Christian Scriptures, 184 Christianity, 53; 130; 132; 134; 276 Jewish origin of, 133

369 Christians, 56; 76; 80; 89-90; 9596; 100; 147; 153-54; 158; 162-63; 168; 183; 185; 189; 202; 206; 211; 277; 302-03; 314; 318; 321; 326 Catholics, 107; 327 Evangelicals, 4-5; 24 Christology, 42; 127; 143; 151; 182 constitutive, 177 representative, 177 Chung, Hyun Kyung, 110; 136 Church, 114; 176; 178-79; 230 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 84 Clay, Diskin, 83-84 Clooney, Francis X., s.j., xvii; 201; 204; 207-10; 228; 308 Cobb, John B., Jr., 115; 127; 13839; 145; 159 Cobb, Kelton, 289 Cohen, Jeremy, 56; 91 Cohen, Job, 34 Cohen, Mark, 56; 91 Cohen, Nili, 75 coincidence, 282 Colin, Sr. Bruno-M., 27 Colpe, Carsten, 20; 134-35 coming back, 208 commitment, 207-08 common ground, 143; 147-48 common language, 140 common points, 317 communicatio in sacris, 23; 26; 135 communication, 96; 123; 147; 220 communio, 98 Communità di Sant’ Egidio, 111 community, 286; 324; 327 companionship, 286; 293 companionship at table, 21 comparative reading, xi

370

SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

theology, xii; xvi; 161; 164; 183; 193; 200-01; 204-05; 208-09; 252; 307; 321; 327 competition, 156; 159; 192 Confucianism, 130 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 5; 141; 156; 176; 198 Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, 93; 105 contentment, 244; 253 context, xii; 33; 146; 148; 269; 319 extra-religious, 148 inter-religious, 148 intra-religious, 148 contextual analysis, xv approach, 123 conversion, 208 Cook, Michael, 75 cooperation, 80; 123; 183 Corbin, Henry, 27 Cornille, Catherine, xvi; 118; 129; 132-33; 151; 207 Cosmicus, 43 Council of Churches, 24; 36; 4445; 149 Dutch, 142 Council of Worldviews and Religions, 44-46 covenant, 165 Cracknell, Kenneth, 92; 110 Cragg, Kenneth, 117 created freedom, 308 creatio continua, 237 creatio ex nihilo, 237; 308 creation, 216; 218; 290 as connection, 219 as fundamental distinction, 219 beauty of, 288 order of, 288

Creator distinguished from creatures, 216 creatures, 219 Crone, Patricia, 75 cross, 137 Crüsemann, Frank, 7 culture, 15; 18 Current Dialogue, 110 D’Costa, Gavin, 25; 92; 171-72; 177-83 daǥwa, 89; 183; 276 Dalai Lama, 43 Damascus, 272 Daniel, Norman, 74 Daniélou, Jean, 141 dƗr al-harb, 324 dƗr al-IslƗm, 324 dƗr al-shahƗda, 325 Dascal, Marcelo, 87 Davids, Adelbert, 74 Davis, Avrohom, 8 De Béthune, Pierre, o.s.b., 27 De Certeau, Michel, 147 De Chergé, Christian, 27 De Foucauld, Charles, 27 De Grijs, Ferdinand, 30 De Jong, Aad, 114 De Lubac, Henri, s.j., 279 debate, 42; 87-88; 91 Declaration of a Global Ethic, 120 Dede, Sheikh Ahmad, 40; 260 defensio fidei, 97 Deladrière, Roger, 235 democracy, 310; 312; 319 Denny, Frederick Mathewson, 155 Deretz, J., 92 Derkse, Wil, 17; 52; 99 Derrida, Jacques, 12; 14; 147 dershane, 273; 301; 310 Descartes, René, 229

INDEX Desert Fathers, 250 despair, 275 Deutsche Bischofskonferenz, 301 dhawq, 233; 255 dhikr, 260 dia-, 85 dialogue, xii; 81-83; 85; 87; 89; 91- 94; 96; 105; 133; 176; 183; 186; 205; 269; 312; 316-18; 326 aims of, 102; 104 as historical event, 90 as literary fiction, 90 as literary genre, 82-84 asymmetrical, 101 forms of, 104-05; 108 grassroots, xvi

institutional aspects of, 114 intercultural, 43 levels of, 101; 104 monastic, 27 of action, 105; 161; 326 of deeds, 104; 106; 157; of discourse, 161 of experts, 252 of life, 20; 33; 100; 104-06; 161; 192; 252 of religious experience, 104-06 of specialists, 106; 326 of spiritual experience, 108 of spiritualities, 161; 252; of theological exchange, 10405 of words, 100; 157 personal dimension of, 116 practice of, 102; 108-09 spiritual, xvi theological, 20 theory of, 108 Dialogue and Mission, 93; 102; 104 Dialogue and Proclamation, 93; 105

371 differences, 17; 94; 160; 200; 206; 236-38; 249; 297; 299; 317 dƯn, 191 dƯn al-fitrah, 186 dƯn wa-daula, 322 Dingemans, Herman Henry, 223; 226; 253 DiNoia, Joseph A., 94; 200 Dionysius, (pseudo-), 213 disempowerment, 101; 319 disputation, 88-89 distance, 300 distinction, 247 doctrina, sacra, 235 Dominus Iesus, 23; 109; 141; 151; 176; 198 Donders, Sjef, 116 Doré, Joseph, 134 double belonging, 131; 150-51 Drayer, Elma, 43 Dreyer, Jaco S., 121-22; 144 Droogers, André, 5; 130; 134-37; 140 dual participation, 164 Duffy, Stephen, 193; 205 Dulles, Avery, 141 Dummett, Michael, 18; 51 Dunne, John S., 10; 150; 161 Dupré, Wilhelm, 82-83 Dupuis, Jacques, s.j., 29; 31; 77; 93; 131; 156; 161; 171-79; 181-82; 197-98; 206 Ecclesia in Asia, 198 èchad, 61 eclecticism, 139 economy, 326 ecumenical movement, 118 ecumenism, 29; 80; 120; 195; 225 education, 285; 301; 309; 317; 319-20; 326 effort, 159

372

SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

Eliaçik, Adem, 40 Eliade, Mircea, 58 Elias of Nisibis, 90 El-roi, 70-71 emancipation, 327 Eminent (name of God), 242 Emmaus, men of, 9; 21 emptiness, 263-64 Emre, Yunus, 309 emulating in good deeds, 159 emulation, 154; 159 mutual, 160 religious, 156 spiritual, 157; 161; 164 encounter, 45 endurance, 287-88; 291; 296; 307 Enlightenment, 18 enmity, 277; 318 epochè, 140 equality, 98; 100 Erasmus, Desiderius, 17; 43; 135 Erdem, Emrullah, 35-36; 38; 45 Esack, Farid, xv; 80; 188-92; 276; 326 eschatology, 276 Esposito, John L., 37; 185; 313; 317 estrangement, 286; 293; 316 Europe, 14; 19-20; 56; 130; 198; 276 situation of Muslims in, 46 Evangelicalism, 117 Evangelization, 5 Evers, Georg, 141 evil, 292 except God, 306 exchange of perspectives, 121; 123-24; 161 exclusivism, 179; 181; 200; 308 exegesis, 278-79; 285; 299 exile, 286; 288; 292; 311; 316 existence, 255 experience, 233; 255; 261

spiritual, 270

FABC, 161 FadlallƗh, 88 faith, 65; 115-16; 119; 141; 189; 192; 288; 290; 298-99; 317; 324 practices of, 235 Faith and Order, 151 Fakhry, Majid, 69; 153-54 falsafa, 203 fanƗ’, 234; 247; 250; 258; 260; 265-66 Farina, Marianne, c.s.c., 152; 22021 Faruqi, Isma'il al-, 75; 185-88; 192; 276 fasting, 148-49 fatalism, 244; 307 fear, 18; 50; 244 Feiler, Bruce, 75 Fernandes, Angelo, 197 Finkielkraut, Alain, 322 fiqh, 203; 234; 243; 252 Fitzgerald, Michael L., 108; 150 Focolare community, 112 Fodor, Jim, 95 Folkertsma Foundation, 41 Fortuyn, Pim, 18-19; 45; 51 Forward, Martin, 56; 84-85; 116; 132 Fowl, Stephen E., 209 France, 322 Francis of Assisi, 19; 25; 43 Francis Xavier, 161 Fredericks, James L., xii; xvii; 1; 27; 92; 109; 120; 141; 149; 176; 201; 205-07; 298 free will, 298 Freedman, H., 8 freedom, 105; 146 Freire, Paolo, 10 Frick, Heinrich, 221; 226

INDEX Friedland, Ronnie, 128 Friedman, Maurice, 86 friendship, 26-27; 105; 202 Frishman, Judith, 43 Fritsch-Oppermann, Sybille, 13 frugality, 293; 317 fulfillment model, 200 theory, 174 fundamentalism, 99; 117; 285; 321 Funk, Mary Margaret, o.s.b., 107

Gadamer, Hans Georg, 86 Gamard, Ibrahim, 257 Gardet, Louis, 27; 95; 203; 230; 247; 253 Gaudeul, Jean-Marie, 10; 74; 161 Geertz, Clifford, 15 Geffré, Claude, o.p., 27; 59; 140; 142; 156; 198 Gellner, Ernest, 18 Gender Equality Commission, 189 genetic relations, 59; 76; 101; 319 Gentiles, 158-59; 167-68 George, monk, 90 ger, 12 ger toshab, 166-67 Germany, 301; 320 Ghana, 306 GhazƗlƯ, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-, xvii; 209-11; 213; 219-22; 224-34; 236; 238; 241-43; 246; 248; 245-55; 265; 270-71; 285; 287; 291; 293; 306-08; 325 ghurba, 286-87; 290; 316 Gianotti, Timothy J., 243; 252 Gimaret, Daniel, 240 Gira, Dennis, 118; 129 global context, 319 perspective, 311

373 theology of religions, 196 Global Ethic, 57 Glucksmann, André, 322 God, xiii-xiv; 148; 155; 193 acting of, 212; 246 as Creator, 147; 218; 236; 270 attributes of, 240; 266 Eternal, 294 Enduring, 293-94; 296 Everlasting, 294 faith in, 244 friendship with, 11; 255 hidden presence of, xvii; 21112; 215; 243; 252; 257; 290; 308 immanence, 61-62 incomprehensibility of, 214; 239 kingdom of, 307 mercy of, 297 names of, 214; 219; 240-42; 280 oneness of, 283 providence of, 306 quest for, 228 simplicity, 217-18; 247 submission to, 276 transcendence, 61-62 trust in, 244; 246; 251; 270; 305; 307; 327 unity of, 279 unknowability of, 252 will of, 156 Word of, 76; 150; 154 God alone suffices, 245; 270; 291; 307 Goddey, 306 Gogh, Theo van, 51 Goldammer, Kurt, 58 Goldziher, Ignace, 223; 226 Görg, Manfred, 7 Goris, Harm, 298 Gort, Jerald D., 74

374

SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

Goshen-Gottstein, Alon, 63; 79 Gospel, 154 grace, 250; 296 Graham, Robert A., s.j., 64 Gramlich, Richard, 220; 243-44 gratitude, 244 Green, Deirdre, 305 Greenberg, Irving, 170 Greenfield, Sidney M., 131 Gregory the Great, 266 Griffith, Sidney H., 20; 26-27; 63; 65; 67; 90-91; 204; 314 Griffiths, Paul J., 93-94; 200; 204 Grotius, Hugo, 17 Groupe de Recherches IslamoChrétien, 202 Guadalupe, Our Lady of, 305 Gude, Mary Louise, 10; 25-26; 67; 161 guest, 13 guidelines, 90 to dialogue, 110-11; 119 Gülen movement, 309; 319; 321 Gülen, Fethullah, xvii; 37-38; 43; 209; 269-70; 285; 302-03; 30810; 312-13; 315-21; 324; 32627 Gye Nyame, 306

Habermas, Jürgen, 86 Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, 286; 293; 301; 316 hadƯth, 74; 236; 298; 312 Hagar, 62; 68-74 Hagemann, Ludwig, 72 Haight, Roger, s.j., 176 hajj, 73 hƗl, 233 halacha, 21; 55; 76; 86; 155; 164; 170 Haleber, Ron, 50 Halkes, Catharina, 30

HallƗj, Abnj Mansnjr Ibn Husayn al-, 25-26; 247; 253 Hamburger, Charles, 45 Hanegraaff, Wouter, 131 hanƯf, 59; 65 hanƯfiyya, 184; 187 Häring, Hermann, 146; 148 Harpigny, Guy, 20; 67 Hartog, Yassin, 32 Haselhoef, Abdullah, 25; 49 Hassab Alla, Waheed, 88 Hassan, Riffat, 57 headscarves, 49; 310 heathen, 230 Hebrew Bible, 7; 61; 77; 96; 184 Genesis 1, 16; 170 Genesis 2, 166 Genesis 5, 169 Genesis 9, 77; 165; 167; 170 Genesis 11, 16 Genesis 12, 7; 59; 66; 69 Genesis 14, 7 Genesis 15, 66 Genesis 16, 68; 70-71; 75 Genesis 17, 70 Genesis 18, 8; 68; 167 Genesis 19, 13; 68 Genesis 20, 7; 69 Genesis 21, 68-71; 73 Genesis 22, 69 Genesis 25, 70 Exodus 3, 68; 70 Exodus 20, 60; 167 Exodus 22, 7 Leviticus 16, 167 Leviticus 19, 7 Levitcus 24, 166 Deuteronomy 6, 60 Deuteronomy 10, 7 Deuteronomy 15, 75 Isaiah 40-55, 60 Isaiah 41, 10 Jeremiah 3, 167

INDEX Jeremiah 6, 72 Psalm 34, 233 Psalm 36, 212 Psalm 127, 306 Hefling, Charles, 141; 156 Heim, S. Mark, xii; 94; 120; 172; 180-83; 200 Heinrichs, J., 83 Heldrich, Andreas, 75 hermeneutics, 124; 146; 190; 192; 197-98; 201; 289; 313 of suspicion, 33 heterology, 147 Hick, John, 119; 122; 196; 299 hijra, 73; 75 Hillel, 86 Hinduism, 127; 129; 133; 172; 308 Hindus, 132; 151; 188; 198; 204; 206; 240 Hirsi Ali, Ayaan, 19; 51-52 hiwƗr, 88; 91 Hobsbawm, Eric, 138 Hodgson, Peter C., 182 hodja, 301 Hoeberichts, J., 19 Holocaust, 101 honesty, 277 hope, 244; 275; 306 Hoping, Helmut, 95 Horten, Max, 226 Hösle, Vittorio, 84 hospitality, xiv; 1; 5-15; 17-18; 20-22; 26-27; 46; 68; 103-04 host, 13-14 Houtepen, Anton, 16 Huda, Qamar ul-, 185; 300 Huijsmans, Jan, 36; 40; 44 human rights, 146 humanism, 188 humanity, 145; 148 humankind unity of, 318

375 Hurkens, Helma, 100 Hurkmans, Mgr. Anton, 39 HusƗm, ChalabƯ al-dƯn, 259 Ibn al-ǥArabƯ, MuhyƯ ad-DƯn, xvii; 210-11; 254; 256; 265; 308 Ibn Kammuna, 96; 202 Ibn Rushd, 203 IbrƗhƯm, 9-10; 73; 88. See also Abraham Idema, Greco, 45 identity, 14-15; 17; 19; 39; 42; 55-56; 58; 77; 79; 100; 117; 131; 140; 142; 172; 178; 181; 194; 200; 325 normative, 138 primary religious, 132 ǥƯd ul-fitr, 149 iftƗr, 35; 38; 149-50; 319 ignorance, 50; 317; 319 iǥjƗz, 278-79 ijtihƗd, 159; 232 illumination, 230 ǥilm, 241; 252 Imam, 232 imams, training of, 48 imƗn, 189; 287-88 immanence, 299 immigrants, 18-19; 47; 51; 287; 306 imperialism, 144 imprisonment, 286 inclusivism, 121; 177; 180-81; 186; 200 inculturation, 136 India, 130; 197 Indonesia, 47; 49 inductive method, 198 inequality, 98-100 insƗn al-kƗmil, 255 insider perspective, 121-24; 126; 135; 144; 206-07 instruction, 232

376

SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

integration, 50 inter-, 11; 13; 147 interaction, xvi intercultural, 199 interfaith dialogue, 114 International Association for Religious Freedom, 111 interpretation, 209; 215 auto-, 162; 194 Christian, 209 hetero-, 162; 194 koino-, 162; 194 Muslim, 227 Roman Catholic, 226 spiritual, 210 theological, 210 interreligious, 113; 199 prayer, 24 reading, 306 services, 142 interreligious dialogue, 114; 134; 195; 204; 209; 252; 318; 323; 327 aim of, 106 as form of religious communication, 121 as point of departure, 206 future of, 111 study group on, 41 interreligious prayer, 24 intimacy, 244; 253 intrareligious dialogue, 100; 114; 134; 195; 327 Irenaeus, 145 irruption, 55; 147 Isaac, 62; 68-70; 74 Ishmael, 62; 65; 68-70; 73-74 ISKB (Interdenominational Foundation Churches and Foreigners), 32 Islam, xiv; 3; 53; 134; 276 in the West, 270; 274; 321; 327

Shiǥite, 232 Sunnite, 231 threat of, 51; 53 islƗm, 192 as virtue, 320 Islam and Dialogue Foundation, 35; 37; 39-41; 43-44; 156; 209; 269; 278; 320 Islamic University of Rotterdam, 49 Islamic values, 320 islamicization, 311 Islamism, 310; 320-22 Islamist, 285; 319; 323 Israel, 323-24

Jabarites, 247 Jabre, Farid, 227; 232 jƗhiliyya, 184; 320 Jains, 130 Jamat-Everett, Ayize, 286 Janse, W., 72 Japan, 130 Jespers, Frans, 116; 131 Jesus, 277-78; 300 Jesus Christ, 77; 79; 145 Son of God, 173; 175 uniqueness of, 92; 172-73 universality of, 172 Jewish Scriptures, 143 Jewish identity, 164 Jews, xv; 48; 55-56; 61; 70; 7677; 79; 87; 89; 91; 95-96; 100; 128; 147; 151; 153-54; 158-59; 162-63; 165; 167; 183; 185; 189; 277; 303; 314; 318 JHWH, 60 jidƗl, 88-89 jihƗd, 18; 52; 277

liberal, 52 John, 61; 179 John XXIII, Pope, 64; 143

INDEX John of Damascus, 74-75; 77 John of the Cross, 213 John Paul II, Pope, 23; 43; 109; 141; 149-50 Johnson, Elizabeth A., 214; 219; 239 Joseph, school of, 286 Journalists and Writers Foundation, 151; 269; 311-12 Judah Halevi, 91 Judaism, xii-xiii; 34; 134; 141; 143 judgment, 121; 123; 135 Juergensmeyer, Mark, 117-18 Juliana, Queen 128 justice, 99; 280; 283-84 Justin Martyr, 93 JuwaynƯ, 222 Ka‘ba, 74 Kahil, Mary, 25 kalƗm, 91; 95; 124; 203; 231 kƗmil insƗn, 300 Kampling, Rainer, 9 Kamstra, Jacques, 130; 133; 138 Kanne, Peter, 50 Kant, Immanuel, 119 kasb, 247; 250; 292 Kasimow, Harold, 92; 109; 149 Kemal, Mustafa, 260; 272; 311 Kennedy, Philip, o.p., 146 Kenny, Joseph, o.p., 95 kenosis, 14 Kepel, Gilles, 99; 117; 285 Keryell, Jacques, 10; 26 Keshavjee, Shafique, 91 khalƯl, 65 Khatib, M.M., 153-54; 157 Khoury, Adel Theodor, 154-55 Kirvan, John, 305 Kitagawa, Joseph Mitsuo, 30 Klootwijk, Eeuwout, 119

377 Knitter, Paul F., xii; 27; 31; 64; 92; 106; 117; 138; 171; 173; 176-77; 178; 183; 193; 196; 198; 200; 204-06; 209; 321 knowledge, 232; 237; 244; 252; 260 analogical, 214 discursive, 241 esoteric, 252 exoteric, 252 experiential, 241-42 Kohlbrugge, Hanna, 5 Koningsveld, P.S. van, 48; 53 Konstantine, Steven, 181 Kooi, Cees van der, 41-42; 63 Korea, 130 Kornfield, Nachum Y., 8 Korz, Seyfullah, 151 Korz-Noor, Omaima, 151 Kottman, Pieter, 322 Koushner, Bernard, 322 Kraan, J.D., 7; 48 Kraemer, Hendrik, 115; 136-37; 224-25 Kranenborg, Reinder, 98 Krieger, David J., 139-40 Krikke, Hans, 33 Kroc, Joan B., 323 Kruttschnitt, Elke, 102 Küng, Hans, 57; 106; 120; 122; 145; 148; 195; 220-21; 254 Kuschel, Karl-Josef, xv; 41-43; 63; 65-66; 69; 73; 75; 80; 151; 159 Kuúpinar, Bilal, 257-58; 261; Küster, Volker, 197; 199-200 Kuttianimattathil, Jose, s.d.b., 106; 197 laïcité, 14; 49; 322 Lambert, Jean, 59; 76; 134 Landman, Nico, 32; 34 Langer, Ruth, 164-65; 169

378

SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

language, 144 Lapide, Pinchas, 78; 95; 144; 158 Latin America, 174 Latino spirituality, 305 Lausanne Covenant, 5 Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava, 90 Le Coz, Raymond, 75 Le Saux, Henri, 131, 207 Leaman, Oliver, 95; 271 lectio divina, 107 Lefebvre, Marcel, 24 Lelong, Michael, 152 Lent, 149 Leuze, Reinhard, 151 Levinas, Emmanuel, xiii; 13-14; 86- 87; 147 Lévy, Bernard-Henri, 322 Lewis, Franklin D., 257; 260 liberation, 104 liberation theology, 198 light, xiii; xvii; 212; 214; 229; 236; 255; 296 Lindbeck, George, 200 literalism, 325 locus theologicus, xvii; 205 Logos spermatikos, 77; 172 Lønning, Per, 1; 101; 114-15; 137; 163 Lossky, Nicholas, 92; 102 love, 244; 252-53; 260-61; 277; 313; 316 Lumen Gentium, 63; 212 Lütfi, Muhammed, 309 Ma’mnjn, Caliph al-, 90 maǥrifa, 241; 252 Maccoby, Hyam, 56; 91 Macdonald, Duncan Black, 226 Madigan, Daniel, 184-85 madrasa, 259; 271; 309 Magonet, Jonathan, 86; 147; 169 Mahdi, Caliph al-, 90 Maimonides, 168; 220; 252

majlis, 89 majority, 99-101 Malcolm X, 286 Mandela, Nelson, 189 Mardin, ùerif, 271; 282 Martel, Yann, 129-30 Marx, Tzvi, 36; 38; 40; 101; 184 Mason, Herbert, 20; 26 Massignon, Louis, xv; 10; 20-21; 25- 26; 63; 65; 67; 69; 80; 16061; 224 Mazzocchi, Luciano, 161 McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, 88; 314 McCarthy, Richard Joseph, s.j., 222; 227-30; 233 McDonnell, Kilian, o.s.b., 182 McGinn, Bernard, 218 Mehmed Reúad, Sultan, 272; 314 Mellis, James, 4 Merks, Karl-Wilhelm, 96 Merrigan, Terence, 175; 177; 196 metaphor, 236; 238; 256; 260 mevlana, 254 Mevleviyya, 260 Michel, Thomas, s.j., 9; 11; 27; 40; 43; 67; 73; 276; 278; 309; 312; 317; 319-20 middle, 146 Middle Ages, 94 Middle East, 20; 56; 77; 100; 303; 323 migrants, 7; 287 millet, 155 Mingana, A., 90 minority, 99-101 Mintjes, Harry, 41 Mir, Mustansir, 88 miracles, 297; 300 Miskotte, K.H., 57 missiology, 31; 199; 200 mission, 89; 92-93; 102; 109; 160; 176; 183; 198

INDEX Mittelstrass, Jürgen, 84 mitzvot, 170 modernity, 312 Moltmann, Jürgen, 16; 78 monasticism, 235 monotheism, 17; 58; 60-61; 184; 187; 307 elective, 79 ethical, 78; 165 moral values, 319 Morocco, 47 Mosaic law, 194 Moses, 79; 300 Mosher, Lucinda Allen, 281; 297 Motzki, Harald, 277 Moubarac, Youakim, 11 Mouttapa, Jean, 10 muhƗjirnjn, 75 Muhammad, Prophet, 79; 90; 155; 257; 297; 299-300; 313 Mulder, Dirk C., 56; 137 MullƗ SadrƗ ShƯrƗzƯ, 213 multicultural, 44-45 society, 51 multiculturalism, 15-16; 18; 53 multiple religious belonging, xvi; 113; 118; 123; 126; 128; 13031; 134; 140; 148; 162 conscious, 132 consecutive, 132 levels of, 132 simultaneous, 132 unconscious, 132 multiple religious identity, 118 multireligious, 113 multi-religious services, 142 Muqatil ibn Sulayman 155; 191 mushriknjn, 184; 189 muslim, 65 Muslim Brotherhood, 322 Muslims, 34; 44; 47; 55; 63- 64; 70; 72; 75; 77; 80; 91; 95-96;

379 99-101; 107; 147; 151; 153; 162-63; 168; 185; 198; 202; 211; 277; 303; 306; 314; 318; 321; 326 Alevi, 3 in the West, 270; 324 Sunni, 3 mutual challenge, 164 commitment, 123 enrichment, 104 influence, 199 transformation, 104; 139; 159; 162 mutuality, 37; 196; 199 mutuality model, 200; 321 mystical union, 259 mysticism, 224; 226 nafs, 260; 262; 267; 284 Nahman of Braslav, 43 Naqshbandi order, 271; 294; 296 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, 95 natural law, 165; 194 natural religion, 186 Nederlandse Bisschoppenconferentie, 142 neighbor, xiii neo-Nur movement, 270; 309; 313; 317; 321; 327 ner tamid, 212 Nestor Chronicle, 91 Netherlands, xv; 17-18; 29; 99100; 126; 301; 304; 320; 327 situation of Muslims in, 46; 53

Neville, Robert C., 205 New Age spirituality, 131 New Testament, 58; 92; 96; 143; 171; 307 Matthew 4, 245 Matthew 6, xviii; 287; 308 Matthew 10, 20 Matthew 11, 21

380

SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

Matthew 12, 143 Matthew 16, 262 Matthew 25, 9 Matthew 28, 6 Mark 2, 21 Mark 9, 143 Luke 1, 20 Luke 9, 308 Luke 10, xiii; 308 Luke 13, 159 Luke 14, 21 Luke 24, 9; 21; 150 John 3, 253 John 8, 212 John 14, 160 John 16, 160 John 21, 21 Acts 2, 17; 22 Acts 10, 21 Acts 13, 78 Acts 17, 62 Romans 4, 10; 59; 66; 308 Romans 8, 242; 250; 267 Romans 9-11, 230 Romans 11, 78; 159 Romans 12, 9 1 Corinthians 8, 239 1 Corinthians 9, 160 1 Corinthians 11, 22 Galatians 3, 65 Galatians 4, 9 Philippians 3, 267 2 Timothy 4, 160 Hebrews 1, 58; 66 Hebrews 11, 66 Hebrews 13, 9 1 Peter 3, 1; 195 2 Peter 1, 242 1 John 3, 104 Newbigin, Lesslie, 5 newness, 143 Nicholas of Cusa, 299 Nicholson, Reynold, 257

Nicolay, Corry, 7 Nielsen, Jørgen, 46 Nietzsche , Friedrich, 323 Nijmegen, 30; 34-35; 41; 44-45 nirvana, 265 Nissen, Peter, 199 NizƗm al-Mulk, 222; 232 Noah, 38 Noahide covenant, 38; 77; 170 laws, 166-68; 170 Nocent, A., o.s.b., 92 Noort, G. van, 194 Nostra Aetate, 56; 64; 104; 108; 194 Nouvelle théologie, 214-15 Novak, David, 165-68 Nnjh, 88 Nur movement, 43; 301-02 Nurçuluk, 269; 321 Nursi, Said, xvii; 43; 65; 209-10; 213; 246; 254-56; 258; 261; 269-71; 273; 275; 277-78; 281; 283-84; 286; 288; 290-93; 29698; 300; 302; 306; 308-09; 311-17; 320-21; 326-27 Nwanaju, Isidore, 197 Obermann, J., 226 observer perspective, 121; 124; 144 occasional believers, 131 occasionalism, 237 Old Testament. See Hebrew Bible Wisdom 8, 279 Olivera, Bernardo, o.c.s.o., 27 Oosterhof, Paul, 45 openness, 142; 172; 178-79; 181; 207; 311 opposed interests, 319 oppression, 174 orientalism, 226 Origen, 93

INDEX Ormsby, Eric L., 248; 291 other, xiii; 12-13; 86; 103; 147; 161; 165; 189; 192; 326 primary, 56 otherness, 11; 97; 146; 183; 187; 191; 194; 200 Ottoman Empire, 155; 276-77 outsider perspective, 122; 124; 126; 145; 206 Özdalga, Elisabeth, 301 Özdemir, Ibrahim, 40 Palestinian people, 324 panentheism, 61-62 Panikkar, Raimon, 85; 95; 114; 131-32; 134; 139-40; 143-44; 161; 176; 180-81; 200-01; 207 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 138; 196; 202 pantheism, 226 paradigm shift, 172 Paret, Rudi, 154 Parliament of the World’s Religions, 57; 120; 309; 317 Parrinder, Geoffrey, 22 participation, 150; 241; 326 particularist approach, 199 particularity, xii; 169 Pascal, Blaise, 187; 286 passing over, 208 passivity, 147 pastoral approach, 109 patience, 244; 287; 293; 296; 306 Paul, 154; 159 peace, 72; 313 interreligious prayer for, 72 Pentecost, 17; 132 People of the Book, 157-58 Perlmann, Moshe, 202 Peter Abelard, 84; 96 Peterson, Erik, 16 Phan, Peter C., 174; 207 phenomenological approach, 124

381 philosophy, 95; 144; 227; 231; 255; 284 pia interpretatio, 299-300 Pieris, Aloysius, s.j., 106; 131; 133; 197; 201; 204 Pieterse, Hendrik J.C., 121-22; 144 pilgrim approach, 159 Piperno, Reginald of, 233 Pipes, Daniel, 323 Plato, 84 Platti, Emilio, o.p., 69 Platvoet, Jan, 126 pluralism, 155; 159-60; 180-81; 191; 198; 200 as will of God, 160; 174 Plutarch, 135 pneumatology, 42; 141; 143; 182 polder-islam, 48 polemics, 42; 87; 90; 93-94; 96; 231; 317 polycentrism, 15 polytheism, 61-62 Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, 40; 93; 105; 108; 149-50; 177 Poorthuis, Marcel, 57; 86-87; 90 Pope, Stephen J., 141; 156 poverty, 173; 244; 317 power relations, 97 Prabhu, Joseph, 201 practice, 198; 324 Pranger, Jan Hendrik, 115; 119; 137 prayer, 148-49; 235; 286; 295; 297 preferential option, 198 presence, theology of, 19 primal religions, 133 primary religious identification, 207 Prins, Baukje, 19; 51 proclamation, 5-6; 93; 160; 176

382

SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

prophecy, 63; 187; 234; 283-84; 297 Prophet, 232; 277; 299-300; 309; 313. see Muhammad prophethood, 279; 300 prophetic tradition, 123; 202 Protestant approach, 63 providence, 251; 279 purity, 136 Pye, Michael, 138 Qadarites, 247 al-QadƯm, 294 quaestio, 97 quietism, 285 Qur’Ɨn, 58; 61; 88- 89; 96; 148; 151; 154; 157; 184; 190; 209; 265; 271; 275; 288; 298; 300; 303; 312-13; 325-26 1, 222; 279 2, 65; 69; 73-74; 76; 155; 15758; 185; 190; 192; 280-81 3, 64; 157; 253; 290; 292-93 4, 10; 66; 314 5, 17; 22; 59; 151-53; 183; 185; 191-92; 253; 303; 313; 317 6, 157; 230 7, 17 8, 189; 248 9, 290; 293; 295-96 10, 17 12, 286 14, 40 16, 76; 88-90 17, 240; 293 22, 17; 158; 185; 191 24, 213; 236 28, 237; 294 29, 89-90 30, 283-84 36, 265 37, 69

39, 275; 302 42, 278 47, 288 49, 39; 156 51, 10 53, 2 55, 265; 294 58, 88 70, 261 112, 61 aims of, 283; 285 miraculousness of, 282 Qutb, Sayyid, 184

Race, Alan, 173 radicalism, 308 Rahner, Karl, 118; 178 RamadƗn, 148-49 Ramadan, Tariq, xvii; 65; 145; 270; 312; 321-27 Ramakrishna, 308 Rashi, 8 Rath, Jan, 47-48 Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal, 109 Razi,al-, 191 reason, 95; 168; 170; 230; 232 receptivity, xiv; 1; 230 reconciliation of memories, 318 Redemptoris Missio, 93; 176-77; 179; 198 reformism, 325-26 Reign of God, 176 Reinhart, A. Kevin, 157 relativism, 111; 157; 160; 176 religion, 115-16; 192 ambiguous nature of, 318 cosmic, 133 meta-cosmic, 133 religious studies, 30-31; 124; 126 Renard, John, 207; 220; 252 renunciation, 244 repentance, 244

INDEX replacement model, 200 research, 202 resident alien, 166 strangers, 168 responsibility, 324 resurrection, 280; 283; 294; 298 revelation, 95-96; 137; 150; 168; 188; 194; 229; 232; 240; 28990 Ricœur, Paul, 12; 121-22; 147 RidƗ, RashƯd, 191; 326 Riedl, Gerda, 24 Rikhof, Herwi W.M., 9; 213; 21519; 240 ritual, 238; 325 Roeblev, Andrej, 9 Roggema, Barbara, 90; 96; 202; 300 Roman Catholic Church, 92; 102; 108-09; 112; 114-15; 305 Rosenzweig, Franz, 56; 57; 86; 272 Rozema, Wieger, 33 Rozema-van Geest, Paulien, 33 Rudolph, Kurt, 22 RnjmƯ, JalƗl al-DƯn, xvii; 43; 21011; 227; 253-54; 257-59; 261; 263-64; 266; 284; 308-09; 31315 Ruokanen, Miikka, 56; 64; 194 Rushdie, Salman, 2 Sabians, 185 sabr, 287-88; 290; 307; 317 Sacks, Jonathan, xii; 16; 169 sacra doctrina, 213; 218-19 sacred, 20; 23 saint, 63; 254 salafism, 325-26 SalƗh, Zarqnjb al-dƯn, 259 salvation, 235 samƗǥ, 260

383 Samartha, Stanley J., 14; 115; 119; 137; 197 Samir, Samir Khalil, 90 Samuel ben Meir, 16 Sangha, 250 Sanneh, Lamin O., 138 Sarah, 62; 68-70; 74 Saritoprak, Zeki, 312: 314 Scheepers, Peer, 34 Scheuer, Jacques, 118; 129 Schillebeeckx, Edward, o.p., 21; 30; 145-47; 156; 198; 213; 215; 308 Schimmel, Annemarie, 244; 259 Schineller, Peter, 173 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 202 Schmidt, Peter L., 93 scholars of religion, 140 scholasticism, 203 Schoonenberg, Piet, s.j., 30; 162; 176 Schoot, Henk, 56; 77; 95-96; 300 Schreiter, Robert J., 15; 140; 143 Schwarz-Bart, André, 25 sciences, 284; 317 Scripture(s), 96; 192; 202; 204; 210; 214; 217; 235 senses of, 279 sebomenoi, 167 Secretariat for non-Christians, 93; 102; 104 secular society, 39; 144; 148 secularism, 100; 277 secularization, 285; 311 self, xvii; 147; 161; 189; 192 dialectics of, 260 self-definition, 169 self-identification, 163; 165 separation, 258 Shadid, W.A., 48; 53 shahƗda, 61 Shamanism, 130 Shammai, 86

384

SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

Shams al-dƯn TabrƯzƯ, 260 SharƯǥah, 50; 191; 234; 238; 322 Sharpe, Eric J., 82; 86; 108 Shaw, Rosalind, 134-36; 138 shaykh, 274; 301 Shehadi, Fadlou, 252 Shema, 60 Sherwin, Byron L., 109; 149 Sherwood, Yvonne, 67 Shinto religion, 130 shirk, 190 shoah, 77 Siauve, Marie-Louise, 253 sickness, 275 sifa, 233 Signer, Michael, 323 signs, 289 Sikhs, 130 Silverstone, A.E., 8 similarities, 206 sƯra, 300 Sirat, Colette, 95 situation, 146 Smalley, Beryl, 96 Smart, Ninian, 118; 181 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 115-16; 119-20; 122; 155; 192; 240; 300 Snouck Hurgronje, Christiaan, 47; 223; 226 Socrates, 84 South Africa, 127; 188 Speelman, Gé, 100; 128 Spinoza, Baruch de, 17 Spirit, xii; xiv; 77; 110; 141; 143; 172; 175; 178-79; 182; 213; 267 spirituality, 117; 325 Islamic, 311 Standaert, Benoît, o.s.b., 9 Stasi, Bernard, 49 stations, 244 Steenbrink, Karel, 32; 47-48

Sterkens, Carl, 113; 199 Stewart, Charles, 134-36; 138 Stoker, Wessel, 98 stranger, xiii; 7; 11-14; 17; 19; 48- 49; 53; 147; 150; 199 Strolz, Walter, 14 Stroumsa, Sarah, 90 subha, 240 submissiveness, 249 Sufism, 40; 127; 130; 210; 227; 232; 234-35; 238; 240; 243; 246; 249-50; 254; 257; 260-61; 271; 294; 302; 310; 317; 32425 Sullivan, Francis A., 172 Sundermeier, Theo, 13; 115; 122; 196; 199-200 sunna, 250-51; 300 Ğunyata, 265 supplication, 281 Suriname, 47; 49 suspicion, 318 Swidler, Leonard, 1; 75; 78; 80; 85; 97; 120-22; 186 symbol, 75; 79 syncretism, xvi; 110; 119; 132-33; 135-40; 142; 150; 162; 207; 224 systematic theologians, 141; 143 TabarƯ, Ali al-, 69; 191 tafsƯr, 152; 191; 209; 213; 278 tahrƯf, 185 Taizé, community of, 304 Talbi, Mohamed, 89 Talmud, 86-87 Erubin, 86

Sanhedrin 166-67 Shabbath, 8 Shebu’oth, 8 Tanner, Kathryn, 15; 136 Taoism, 130 tarƯqa, 234

INDEX tasƗbuq, 159 tawƗfuq, 282; 297 tawakkul, xviii; 244; 247; 255; 264; 287-88; 290; 317 tawhƯd, 186-87; 237; 240; 243-44; 255; 264; 283-84; 290; 294; 308 Taylor, Charles, 15 Te Deum, 291 Te Grotenhuis, Manfred, 34 Ter Horst, Guusje, 34; 38; 45 Teresa of Avila, xvii; 287; 304-06 Teresa of Lisieux, 308 terrorism, 50 Teule, Herman, 74 theodicy, 69; 248 theological reading, 213 of Scripture, 209 theology, 124; 227; 230 a posteriori, 205 a priori, 205 comparative, 207 fundamental, 194-95; 204 intercultural, 15 liberation, 188; 197 Muslim-Christian, 209 negative, 217 of creation, 146 of dialogue, 1; 164; 197 of religious pluralism, 164 pastoral, 220 scholastic, 203 systematic, 220 theology of religion, 196 universal, 120 theology of religions, xvi; 163; 171; 182; 193; 200 Christian, 31 Christocentric model, 172 Jewish, 77 Muslim, 76 pneumatological approach, 172; 176

385 Roman Catholic, 64 trinitarian model, 171; 175 third partner, 144 necessity of, 55 third party, xv; 122; 135; 147 third space, 143-44; 199-200 Thomas Aquinas, xiii; xvii; 77; 95; 146; 209-13; 215-17; 21921; 225; 228; 231; 233; 236; 239 241-42; 246-47; 251; 255; 270; 279; 298 De rationibus fidei, 95 Summa contra Gentiles, 95; 231 Thomas, M.M., 137 tikkun olam, 170 Tillich, Paul, 118; 202; 224 Timothy I, Patriarch, 90 tolerance, xi; 17; 52; 99; 310; 312; 316-18 Torah, 154 Tosefta, 165 Touati, Charles, 91 tournament of religions, 91 Tracy, David, 201-02 tradition, 146; 203; 208 invention of, 138 traditionalism, 325 transcendence, 299 trialogue, 75 Trible, Phyllis, 70-71 Trinity, 143; 180 communion with, 181 Troeltsch, Ernst, 118; 202 trust, xviii; 116; 119; 286-88; 290-91; 293 truth, 85; 88-89; 97-98; 105; 145; 148; 154; 229; 277 eschatological, 157; 159 true church of Christ, 195 true doctrines, 228 true knowledge, 227; 229 true practices, 228

386

SHARING LIGHTS ON THE WAY TO GOD

true religion, 194 Truth (as name of God), 247 truth-claim, 96 Turkey, 47; 51; 311; 320 ǥulamƗ, 272; 302 ummah, 238 Ünal, Ali, 312 understanding, 140; 299 unification, 239 uniqueness, 171 Unitatis redintegratio, 98 United States of America, 107; 128; 205; 311; 325; 327 unity, 317 of existence, 254-55; 258 universalism, 118; 121; 123; 169 universalist approach, 199 universality, 171 University of Notre Dame, 323-24 uns, 286 Uúak, Cemal, 10; 40; 151 Utrecht, 30; 32 Vahide, ùukran, 273; 283; 303 Van Bommel, Abdulwahid, 49 Van Bragt, Jan, 130 Van den Bercken, Wil, 91 Van den Eynde, Sabine, 7 Van der Leeuw, Gerardus, 58; 60 Van der Ven, Johannes A.,5; 62; 121-23; 126; 134; 144; 148 Van der Vleuten, Harriëtte, 100 Van Ess, Josef, 90 Van Gorder, A. Christian, 92; 183 Van Leeuwen, Arend Theodoor, 224-26; 229 Van Lin, Jan, 118; 159 Van Nispen tot Sevenaer, Christian, s.j., 27; 152 Vatican Council, Second, 63; 66; 92; 98; 102; 194; 212; 318 Vattimo, Gianni, 14-15

Vaux, Carra de, 226 Veer, Peter van der, 18; 132; 135 veils, 49 Velde, Paul van der, 43 Veldhuis, Wil, 19 Veltman, Cees, 51 Vernooij, Joop, 130 Vetter, Tilmann, 139 violence, xii; 14; 17-18; 20; 36; 67; 70; 72-73 Visser ‘t Hooft, Willem, 137 Vivekananda, Swami, 308 VOP (Vrouwen Ontmoetings Project), 32-33 Vroom, Hendrik M., 131; 133; 144; 196; 202 Vulgata, 308 Waaijman, Kees, 227; 257 Waardenburg, Jacques, 30; 76; 95; 116; 125-26; 163; 184-85; 207; 223-24; 322 wahdat al-wujnjd, 254; 256 wakƯl, 249 Waldenfels, Hans, 31; 195 Walls, Andrew F., 138 Walshe, Peter, 323 Walzer, Abraham B., 8 Ward, Keith, 196; 202; 204-05 Watt, William Montgomery, 19; 227; 231-33 Wehr, Hans, 65; 89; 91; 156; 307 Weisheipl, James A., o.p., 234 Welters, Ron, 16 Wensinck, Arend Jan, 223; 226 Werblowsky, R.J. Zwi, 78; 81; 212-13 Wessels, Anton, 57; 69-70; 73; 131 West, 308 western Islam, 320 western world, 309; 311 Whaling, Frank, 120; 194; 196

INDEX whirling dervishes, 260 White Fathers, 306 Whitlau, W., 9 Wiegers, Gerard, 126 Wijsen, Frans, 12; 16; 31; 94; 96; 124; 199 Wilders, Geert, 19; 52 Williams, Delores S., 71-72 Williams, Rowan, 305-06 Wilms, Franz-Elmar, 231 Wisdom, 61 witness, 324 Wolff, Jeannette, 210 Wolfson, Elliot R., 212 Wolfson, Harry Austryn, 95; 203 women, 52; 70; 99; 107 role of, 43; 107 Word, 61; 172; 175; 178; 182 Work, Telford, 94 World Conference of Religion and Peace, 111

387 World Council of Churches, 92; 102; 108; 110-11; 114-15; 119; 136-37; 225 World Day of Prayer for Peace, 24 world religions, 133 Yavuz, M. Hakan, 37; 270; 30203; 310-12; 317 yearning, 244; 253 Yeni Asya, 303; 311 Yeni Nesil, 303 Yilmaz, Ihsan, 43 Yitzhak, Rabbi, 167 Yohanan, Rabbi, 166 Zehner, Joachim, 101 Zoroastrians, 185; 188 Zuidberg, Gerard, 33