Dialogue is not a departure from faith…

Jonathan Smith, project manager at Campusalam (Lokahi Foundation), just sent me the following excerpt from an unpublished paper on mission and da’wah. I find it extremely interesting and very insightful on the subject of the event "Conver(sa)tion" taking place at St Ethelburga's in London on the 23rd November (see below).

Islam and Christianity share the distinction of being religions with the largest groups of followers worldwide due to the missionary efforts of their adherents. The rapid growth of these missionary religions from their points of inception in historical Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula has been the source of no small amount of conflict, which continues into these modern and post-modern times. In addition to competing for followers among other religions, Christian mission and Islamic da’wah (meaning call or invitation to Islam) remain a major point of contention in Christian-Muslim relations.

The modern age ushered in interfaith dialogue as a new approach to improving relations between faith communities. The development of an ethics of mission and da’wah has been a central issue in this ongoing conversation. A groundbreaking dialogue on this subject was held in Chambesy, Switzerland in 1976. Attended by Muslim and Christian scholars and religious leaders, this week-long dialogue session concluded with a joint statement on some ethical guidelines for mission and da’wah.[1] Further interfaith discussions on this topic have taken place, notably a session organized by the Interreligious Office of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1999 on “Religious Freedom, Community Rights and Individual Rights.” More recently, participants in the “Critical Moment in Interreligious Dialogue Conference” highlighted ethics of mission as one of the most divisive issues between religious communities.[2]

While these important dialogues have resulted in agreement on broad ethical principles of mission, such as the freedom to bear witness in a non-coercive manner, frank dialogue on the actual methods used by missionaries has been largely neglected. The Chambesy joint statement clearly denounced mission involving coercion on both sides and singled out the misuse of aid as a tool for proselytisation.[3] Yet the use of aid as a tool for mission is still a common practice among Christian missionaries, as publicly demonstrated by missionaries bringing in food and Bibles to Iraqis on the heels of the invading U.S.-led army.[4] The co-chair of the 2005 WCC conference, Imam Abdul Rashied Omar, has noted that “the deeper challenge for both Christians and Muslims committed to interreligious dialogue and peacebuilding is to go beyond mere declarations of the right of any individual to change his or her religion and decrying the use of inappropriate means to entice the person to switch his/her faith. Instead, Christian and Muslim interreligious leaders and activists need to urgently find creative ways of making such positive affirmations a key part of the modus vivendi of convivial relations between the two communities.”[5]

It is likely that this issue, central to Christian-Muslim relations, has been avoided by some because of its challenge to the idea of dialogue itself. Dialogue on conversion and mission is a bit like the elephant in the room; we know it is there and it is important, but we shy from talking about it because of the way that proclamation fundamentally challenges dialogue. Talking about conversion, especially by those who actively support mission to the other community, is almost akin to discussing a desire to annihilate the other side. It is an open admission to the fact that dialogue may result in a change of allegiances, which is highly threatening to the idea of interfaith dialogue where the “other” is a member of a different religious community.

This fundamental challenge that mission and da’wah present to dialogue largely explains the only recent adoption by evangelical Christians of an approach to dialogue with Muslims without an explicit goal of conversion. Evangelical Christians are an influential group worldwide, not least in the United States. They are the Christian group in greatest need of dialogue on the ethics of mission, as they often support the more controversial methods of evangelism. The more traditional evangelical approach can be summed up by Larson, a Christian missionary to Muslims: “Conversion must always be the ultimate aim of dialogue— never an end in itself. Christians do not primarily enter dialogue with Muslims to enrich each other’s faith— they want Muslims to be converted!”[6] From such a perspective, dialogue for other goals such as shared action or improving relations between groups could be seen as abandoning the primary calling of Christians.

The reluctant approach to evangelical dialogue with Muslims has changed in significant ways following the attacks of September 11 and the responding “war on terror”. Some western evangelicals have taken definite steps toward dialogue, notably in the Conflict Transformation project, a series of dialogues and shared action between U.S. Muslim religious leaders and academic and faculty members of the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary. More recently the Muslim-Christian dialogue around the Common Word document has been supported by American evangelicals. In a joint statement from the latest meeting, Christian and Muslim participants affirmed that "Dialogue is not a departure from faith…[I]t is a legitimate means of expression and an essential tool in the quest for the common good."[7]

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[1]Christian Mission and Islamic Da’wah: Proceedings of the Chambesy Dialogue Consultation (Leicester, UK: Islamic Foundation, 1977).

[2]Current Dialogue (34), February 2000 (Geneva: World Council of Churches). http://www.wcc coe.org/wcc/what/interreligious/cd3419.html; for more details on the “Critical Moment in Interreligious Dialogue Conference” see http://www.oikoumene.org/interreligious.html.

[3] Christian Mission and Islamic Da’wah, p. 101.

[4]Johanna McGeary and Bobby Ghosh, “A FaithBased Initiative,” Time Magazine, April 21, 2003. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1004671,00.html

[5] A. Rashied Omar, “The Right to Religious Conversion: Between Apostasy and Proselytization” Occasional Paper #27, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (University of Notre Dame: 2006). http://kroc.nd.edu/ocpapers/op_27_1.pdf

[6] Larson, “Critical Contextualization and Muslim Conversion,” International Journal of Frontier Missions (Vol 3:4, October to December 1996) 191.

[7] “Christian response to ‘A Common Word’ signed by 300 Christian scholars,” Official Website of “A Common Word (November 17, 2007), http://www.acommonword.com/index.php?page=media&item=527