Praying with Muslims
I was hoping to wait until my mind went away from Islam before I wrote again, but my mind seems stuck on the idea of Christianity and Islam. I had class again last night, and the questions and comments went back again to "how to convert Muslims." The general assumption is that if we could just sit down with Muslims and "prove" to them that their religion is wrong, then they will be converted into "the faith."
It would be pointless to say all the ridiculous things about this line of thinking, and I will try to avoid the temptation. But I think the fundamental assumption doesn't have to be a bad one. To want to convert Muslims to Christianity could actually be an act of love...especially for people who believe all Muslims will spend eternity in hell if they don't convert.
This lies the confusion for me. At the core of the questions and comments in my Islam class, is not love but fear. Many evangelical Christians seem to be pretty scared of Islam. I'm not sure if the fear stems from thinking all Muslims are terrorits that are destorying the world, or whether it has something to do with the fears and doubts in their own hearts about their own faith. I shouldn't make assumptions.
Whatever it is, I'm pretty uninterested in proving Muslims wrong. I think it could be exciting to discover some commonality between Christianity and Islam. For example, could Christians begin to pray Muslim prayers? Christians pray Judaic prayers often, even contemporary ones, and at the heart of Judaism is a greater rejection of Christ than that of Islam.
I've attempted to pray Muslim prayers as a Christian. Is it so absurd to pray the poetry that comes out of Islam to Jesus? What is hard for me is wondering whether this could be a place of reconcilation for Christianity and Islam, or whether my prayers are actually a great disrespect to Islam. Thoughts?
posted by Daniel Leonard @ 4:40 PM
3 Comments:
Daniel,
First of all, I'm so glad you're blogging. Please keep doing so. I love reading it.
I've been thinking of you recently, especially as I've been reading Saul Bellow's Dangling Man, which is a fine novel of young-mannish existential questioning and distaste for the foolishness of the common man.
I have a hard time thinking about anything other than Islam either, although the bent of my thoughts differs radically from yours.
I would guess that your fellow students, like the rest of America, are mostly scared of Muslims and the violence the radical members of their faith commit, rather than the perceived truths of their world-view. While it's true that most Muslims are peace-loving, etc, the ones we encounter in our media and culture are not the calm ones--they're the ones calling for the head of the Pope. Dispelling these fears where they're unjustified, and dealing with them when they are (which they often are: when a religious group calls for the destruction of all non-members, alarm is a perfect reaction), seems more important that figuring out how to convert them, is what your class should be dealing with.
But I'm sure you know that.
Keep us updated.
Fresh,
It's exciting to hear you thinking through Islam and our relationship as Christians to it. Praying Muslim prayers...Why not? Except that their are countless Christian prayers you could be praying that have a very similar feel to Islamic prayers, but I don't think there is anything wrong as long as you are praying to Jesus...Who knows if it would offend a Muslim? It probably would offend some, but what doesn't offend anyone?
You also spoke about fear being the driving force behind many in your classes desire to convert Muslims. If our faith, our "Christianity", is an ideology, than what we are offering isn't Christ. Rather were offering a system that we're comfortable with that happens to use Jesus as it's central figure.
We all fall into this trap. We go from having a relationship with the living God to becoming proud of it (in the comparitive sense, that my faith is better than someone elses). We've missed the mark and lost Jesus in the process.
Rather than fight ideological battles, why not befriend a Muslim and engage in a relationship with a follower of Allah? I suspect we're afraid we'll find out we're not as different in the many places of our lives as we think. The only thing we have to offer a Muslim is Jesus, and we can only offer Jesus out of love, otherwise it's not Jesus were offering.
I'd rather be a devout Muslim than a lapsed Christian.
I doubt it would offend Muslims if you prayed "like a Muslim" since Muslims are just as eager to convert Christians as the Christians in your class are to convert Muslims.
But, as a theological matter, Muslims believe Jesus was only a man, and not the Son of God, so if your faith requires you to believe that Jesus was the son of God, died on the cross, and was resurrected, than I imagine your Muslim prayers would not offend Muslims but might offend Jesus. (I believe even well-intentioned blasphemy offends Jesus)
Alternatively, if you believe this is the only way to establish "inter-faith dialogue" then your only decision is which is more important.
At the root of all this, I think, is the wrongheaded notion that we must all pretend to believe the same thing in order to get along. There is a subtle tyranny in the idea that religious belief is only valid when it doesn't offend others and that, when push comes to shove, it is better to surrender our beliefs to accomodate others.
It seems to me that real respect comes from a genuine understanding of the other person and their convictions. Real respect, I dont' think, asks someone to fudge aspects of their faith to be more palatable to a certain audience. (For example, would you expect a Muslim to "act like a Christian" whenever white people are around just to avoid making them feel uncomfortable?) So why should Christians?
I don't think the key to improving relations between Christians and Muslims is pretending that we have the same religion. There are certain theological differences (who is Jesus?) that cannot be reconciled between those two religions.
However, if you want to promote understanding, I think the key is to emphasize the similarities in Muslim and Christian social teachings - the commandments that emphasize charity(love) and the golden rule. Focusing on the fact that we have common ethics is a more solid basis for respect than pretending that our prayers are interchangeable.
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