Steps to co-operation
The Pope, Benedict XVI,
sincerely regrets that certain passages could have
sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim
faithful.
Both Christianity and Islam aspire to the Divine.
There is no cause for the spiritual to be
irrational.
Both religions call for forgiveness, love and
brotherhood.
It is to this great logos, the Word, to this
breadth of reason, that Christians invite our
partners in this Dialogue of cultures.
Both the West and Islam must recognise and
overcome their demons, then will begin the true
dialogue to benefit both.
The response to terrorism is not robust.
Respectable Muslims saying “violence is not the
Islamic ideal” when violence has become Islamic
practice (to hundreds).
So what’s the solution? Peace through strength
squared! Weakness and concessions embolden
aggressors. Every show of strength pushes back
jihad.
Muslims must find positive role models rather
than jihadists. Martyrs feed on the self-esteem
crisis of young Muslims. Positive history lessons
could praise Muslims.
On confrontation, how can the rancour be ended
between Israeli-Arabs? Half people in the Middle
East are under 18, said King Abdullah of Jordan, so
Education must be used to open minds to consider the
suffering.
Between Islam and Christianity, dialogue is
difficult but necessary but we can help by not
equating Islam with the evil done in the name of
Islam.
Ecumenical dialogue must focus on points in
common rather than difference.
Western leaders try to take account of
sensitivities of Islamic believers. We are entitled
from Muslim leaders to reciprocal sensitivity of our
culture.
The ideal of Islam should not be allowed to
obscure the Islam of historical and contemporary
fact.
As a Muslim, I accept criticism of how Islam is
practised by some Muslims today – but it criticism
should be with care and stand up to scrutiny.
Holy wars and spreading the word by the sword -
was the Byzantine Empire, occupying foreign land,
established and maintained through love and
consensus?
In Christ’s words, Christianity distinguished
between that which is Caesar’s and that which is
God’s.
Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for
humankind before demanding humankind respect them.
As a Muslim living in the West, I have non-Muslim
friends, work with non-Muslims and we get along just
fine. They know everything on the media isn’t true.
They are educated, and know human prejudice gets us
nowhere.
Christians are not allowed to worship in Saudi
Arabia.
Muslims, show us that you and your children are
integrating into our society where you claim you
wish to live.
We (In Britain) may decide to abandon or replace
these (Christian) foundations and we may one day
give Islam or other faith, equal status with
Christianity.
Let UK public authority be careful not to assume
Christianity has been disestablished on our soil, or
that Islam has been established on our soil.
Muslim community leaders (in UK) can say all they
want about Islam being for peace, but it is clear
that not all Muslims see it like that.
For a long while now, they (Muslim extremists in
UK) have spread resentment and rage among their
people. We have lacked will, self-preservation to
resist it.
Current attempts to stamp our the evil of
terrorism is naïve.
“We need to sit together – Muslims, Christians,
Jews and the rest of religions, to find common
ground for peaceful co-existence,” the Iraqi
Ambassador said.
Muslims must come to terms with the fact that
much of the trouble lies within their own
communities, a tiny festering sore of fanatics.
The right to freedom of speech is the right to
express one’s ideas in written, spoken or artistic
form without danger or coercion or suppression.
If Muslims want religious freedom in the West,
Christians should have equal right to follow their
faith, in Islamic states, without persecution.
In the Koran it states that God will not change
the good condition of the people as long as they do
not change their state of goodness themselves.
Taking offence, and any excuse real or imagined
will do it, is a blackmail strategy.
The growing use of claimed offence to suppress
legitimate debate is deplorable.
One side has tacit permission to be as venomous
and inflammatory as it pleases while the other must
continually genuflect apologetically.
A devout Muslim living in the West must aspire to
live under sharia law.
If a discussion or a dialogue can be only on your
terms, then there’s little hope of it being useful.
The primary aim of Christian-Muslim discussion is
to avoid conflict.
Islam unlike Christianity makes no distinction
between sacred and secular.
The Koran is a total religious law which
regulates the whole of political and social life.
A multi-faith society is not consistent with
Islam’s inner nature.
Let us argue against the idea that violence can
be justified in any religion.
Violence is incompatible with the nature of God
and the nature of the soul.
When we wake up we think about improving life and
what can be built; Bin Laden awakes thinking of
slaughter and what can be destroyed..
While the Pope rejects the simplistic notion that
Islam is evil, he is convinced that some of its
doctrines are morally indefensible.
The Pope’s view is that a profound ambiguity
about violence lies at the heart of Islam.
 In Darfur is a Muslim massacre of other Muslims.
Why aren’t there demonstrations about that in the
Muslim world?
The Pope emphasises that the Islamic
understanding of God is radically different from
that of Christians.
The Islamic idea of God is so transcendent that
He cannot be seen in terms of human reason.
The Christian way is to look at this through
faith and reason.
One Muslim theologian points out other schools of
Muslim thought say differently (Indian Sanskrit
speaks of an unapproachable, ineffable nirguna
Brahman and the saguna Brahman which has qualities
humans can relate to.)
The Pope’s remarks were at best ill-timed and
unhelpful. But the response, seeking to silence all
criticism absolutely?
Islam could instead have met the Pope’s comments
with measured, reasoned debate?
The Pope allegedly linked Islam with violence and
the burning of his effigy followed…..
How can Western leaders square (in the current
period) the spreading democracy by force with the
religion they profess to follow?
The statement the Pope used was from six
centuries ago – the institution of the papacy still
functions as though it were the 14th century too.
When Christians in history defended their faith
and values by violence, they behaved contrary to the
spirit of their founder - I’m not sure Muslims’
actions are un-Islamic?
The RC Archbishop of Southwark said the Pope
should not apologise for criticising the idea that
you can be violent in the name of God.
Nazi policy was not one of prejudice and so on,
but of total annihilation of an entire population in
Europe.
Not one Jew sought in the name of Judaism to blow
themselves up in public places to kill
fellow-citizens, destroy the very fabric of
societies in which they lived, overthrow governments
(St David’s Hotel, Jerusalem 1948?)
Violent protesters, insulted that Islam was
called a violent faith, failed to grasp that their
own actions were graphically proving that very
point.
Christianity also spread itself by the sword
before the Reformation ended its own religious wars.
Too many extremists are ready to over-interpret
any comment or perceived slight, and reaction is
magnified by Internet technology.
Those looking for offence will never be easily
appeased.
Christianity and Islam have rarely sat easily
together but tolerance must not be (allowed to be)
deliberately destroyed by the intolerant.
Talk of the impossibility of integration is
pushing Muslims to the margins of society.
One Muslim scholar, in the UK, says he is “trying
to build bridges between two worlds that don’t know
each other very well.” |
