THE ATTRACTION OF ISLAM It was Cairo in July...
Burrell, David B.
THE ATTRACTION OF ISLAM A community of faith & care David B. Burrell Imagine trying to talk to people in Bangladesh, who have seldom met a Christian, about Christianity. Where would you begin?...
...A dull, depressing story, no...
...Hadith instructs Muslims to attend each decision in life in the light of Judgment Day...
...That is why there is such a palpable spiritual thirst in the West...
...Others have adopted the contradictory stance of condemning the West's social ills while celebrating its hegemonic goals...
...In this context, a cool yet passionate voice addressing our religious ambivalence and malaise comes from the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks...
...If we want to understand the attraction of Islam, we must first acknowledge our own shadow side...
...Salient features of our own faith can be understood while respect for theirs is maintained...
...Some Christian groups are struggling to find out how to respond to this inner disintegration and to temper the West's global over-reach...
...Given these religious convictions, it is not surprising that Muslims begin each undertaking with the invocation: b'ism Allah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim ("in the name of God the merciful and compassionate...
...While one can hardly claim that all Muslims advert explicitly to these theological connections in their religious practice, the fact remains that Muslim society is marked by a palpable sense of the presence of God...
...In the umma, divine revelation offers a "straight path" to a life that accentuates what is noble over what is base...
...In fact, the Muslim story of humanity in the face of God's gift of the Qur'an parallels Paul's declaration in the Letter to Titus: We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, and led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, despicable, and hating one another...
...How to jazz it up...
...David B. Burrell, C.S.C., is Hesburgh Professor of Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame...
...Yet Ramadan also focuses on the practical needs of the poor, and in so doing touches a more substantive communal chord than our current obsessively materialist observance of Christmas...
...The fact is, while Western military and cultural influence may seem to be on the rise, liberal society's much-vaunted individualism and materialism are eroding the moral foundations of the West from inside...
...Ask African Americans what attracts them to Islam and they will frequently respond in these terms: Their daughters find respect, their sons an honorable way to make a living, the elderly are honored...
...Understanding this similarity-cum-difference is crucial for any relationship with Muslims...
...As my hosts drove me home in a midnight traffic jam, I reflected on how much the children had enjoyed the evening: not being old enough to fast, they still got to stay up nearly all night as the family feasted...
...This asceticism presents both a personal act of gratitude and a communal enactment of social life that the revelation itself portends...
...Fortunately, a growing number of Americans are taking advantage of our pluralistic society to learn how to "share in difference...
...We all need to combat stereotypes and chauvinistic passions...
...Let me begin to explain the theological and cultural attractions of Islam by sketching what Muslim friends have taught me...
...But what is so interesting-and critical-in encountering another, if somewhat foreign, faith, is our response to it...
...Similarly, being obedient to the Qur'an and to other guidelines stemming from the teaching and practice of the Prophet (hadith), helps create a community that models the serene, peaceful act by which God freely created the universe...
...Substitute "Qur'an" for "Christ Jesus" and "community" [umma] for "Holy Spirit" and you have the story Muslims tell of God's graciousness to them-and to anyone graciously shown the way to return to his or her creator...
...And from my own experience, I can vouch that learning about Islam has usually been a challenge: a mix of fascination and fear, of expansion and contraction...
...Will Herberg's fifty-year-old classic, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, has been supplanted by "Jew, Christian, and Muslim...
...For the holy month culminates in a prescribed annual almsgiving, amounting to a tax on one's wealth and property, to be distributed in the coming year to those in need...
...What might motivate us to seek such an under-standing of Islam...
...How might this work...
...Conversations of this sort often prove taxing...
...Part of the reason for that alienation, I believe, is that the transforming power of our original revelation-be it Torah or Jesus-is no longer available to many of us...
...In short, these men and women stretch my own sense of what it means to grow in faith, hope, and love, yet in a direction intimated by the best of what I know and believe...
...His recent Dignity of Difference (Continuum) suggests that it is courageous people of faith and their allies in other religions who can jointly understand and perhaps redress the ills of the world...
...For the attraction of Islam can most often be traced to the palpable sense of community in the umma, an attraction not unlike what the early Christian communities exerted in the Roman Empire...
...So in trying to convey the dynamic attraction of Islam, both here and in wide stretches of the world, I will speak primarily of the faith of my Muslim friends in very different societies...
...It behooves us now to cultivate those relationships with our Muslim neighbors, so that we may come to serve more fully as mediating partners in the three-way conversation among Muslims, Jews, and Christians...
...A final example should help make clear how fruitful I have found the interaction among the Abrahamic faiths...
...Nonetheless, we can appreciate the parallel between book and person in the Muslim practice of dhikr (or meditative recitation of Qur'anic verses), which is akin to our receiving Communion...
...Furthermore, focusing on the decisive parallel of Qur'an to Jesus avoids fruitless wrangling about our respective books while it allows us to draw analogies that recognize differences...
...Yet they can also return us to a living appreciation of the ways in which our faith can sustain us in a critical posture vis-a-vis our respective societies, and prevent us from falling into a collective reaction against "the other," especially one hardened by "religious" justifications...
...Now, it stands to reason that those who find these practices enlivening will be proud of their community (think of the Christian urge to evangelize), and that the more assertive will want to share their belief, sometimes even with an unnerving militancy...
...The yearning for community that pervades much of Western society today stems from our corporate economies and how they affect the nature of work and family life...
...The observance of the month-long fast of Ramadan offers another palpable example of Islam's communal attraction...
...The fast lasts each day from sunrise to sunset, and the entire community takes part...
...Muslim piety and practice can help open our eyes to God's real presence among us...
...Haven't they gone wrong...
...The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce reminds us how useful a third party can be when any bipolar relation reaches an impasse (marriage counseling offers perhaps the best example...
...I had always been amazed at the upbeat attitude of Muslims toward Ramadan (I never approached Lent that way) until I took part in the fast-breaking meal one July evening in Cairo...
...Think of it like this: While Christians believe that Jesus is the Word of God made human, Muslims believe the Qur'an is the Word of God made Arabic...
...At that same time, I was initiated into the embrace of Muslim hospitality-a dimension of Islam that, with its emphasis on generosity and community, never fails to impress Westerners...
...Haven't Western society and values triumphed, our economic and military hegemony been extended across the globe...
...Probably with talk about saints, holy men and women who led inspiring lives...
...It is also evident in Anwar Sadat's answer to a BBC query concerning why he risked his life to go to Jerusalem: "When I die and meet Allah, I want to be able to say that I had done everything possible for peace...
...One cannot but think of early Italian or Polish immigrant communities in the United States, of the Mormons, and of the historic black churches...
...But when the goodness and kindness of God our Savior appeared, Christ Jesus saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit (3:2-5...
...Pushing Sacks's thesis to the next logical step: I believe it is the lived encounter with persons of other faiths that can reveal why the West so often alienates others...
...and ihsan, the appropriation of this revelation in a life reflecting the goodness of God...
...When the fast is broken each evening, groups gather for a hearty meal followed by communal prayer...
...That is reflected in the "in sh'Allah...
...Haven't we got it right...
...I would suggest that it is more likely to come through friendships than through official "dialogues...
...Bukhari, one of the early collators of stories relating the Prophet's life, explains that the Muslim way has three facets: islam, or the response to God's revelation of returning all to the One from whom we receive all...
...In coming to appreciate Islam, we may learn how to reappro-priate neglected aspects of our own tradition-and in so doing, to enrich all parties...
...Moreover, as we learn to listen and respond, we will see how the three Abrahamic faiths have increasingly come to meet in the American religious environment...
...632), Islam came to dominate much of the world, from the borders of Europe to China...
...Many find this yearning for community met in a palpable way in Islam...
...In Europe, this provoked the Crusaders' military response, the failure of which was reversed only five centuries later, when, in the mid-eighteenth century, a tide of Western colonization reached new levels with British victories in India and Napoleon's 1799 conquest of Egypt...
...And why should we be interested in conversing with Muslims...
...They challenge us to acknowledge and to neutralize the shadow side of our respective faith traditions, long abetted by flirtations with power and fanaticism...
...What excites me about these exemplary men and women is how their faith-filled lives challenge my own religious practice, revealing dimensions of my own failure to be more human...
...In contrast to leaving people to fend for themselves, Muslim families are both encouraged and supported by the larger family of faith...
...Perhaps with Jesus Christ, and then with the challenge to state religion that his followers posed, and then the organization of those followers into "churches" and the subsequent spread of Christian churches and splinter groups...
...Since the Muslim lunar months travel around our solar year, Ramadan can come, as it did this last year, when days are shorter, or during the long hot days of summer...
...Paul alludes to this in his letter to Titus...
...That ambivalence, albeit on a grander scale, has marked Western encounters with Islam from the start...
...For example, living in Jerusalem some twenty years ago, I first experienced the Jewish shabbat (Sabbath) in such a way that I was able to reappropriate the ancient Christian perspective on Sunday as the "eighth day"-a true celebration of the original gift of creation made luminous in the Resurrection...
...Our revelation is in a person, not a book...
...Isn't Islam itself beset by violent paroxysms of cultural and theological self-understanding...
...which attends referring to any future event ("God willing...
...Within a century of the Prophet Muhammad's death (a.d...
...Still, even this can spur a conversation in which proselytizer and listener learn something about each other's faith in practice...
...imam (or "faith"), our belief and trust in what God has revealed...
...So Ramadan has for Muslims something of the children's delight toward this religious obligation, much as Christmas does for Western Christians...
...In hearing these tenets of belief, what quickly becomes evident is the parallel between Islam and our own central statements of faith-a parallel that yet displays a profound difference...
...Indeed, for Muslims- as for Torah-observing Jews and some Christians-these obligations are felt as privileges that mark observers as recipients of a gracious revelation from the merciful Lord of heaven and earth...
Vol. 130 • January 2003 • No. 1
