Jesus Fatwa

I often find my head spinning in an era of fake news, alternative facts, and a never-ending stream of media (social and otherwise).  We live in an age of information overload and information manipulation.  My brain just doesn’t have the bandwidth available to process and evaluate all of it.   

In the midst of this flood I am attempting to build an ark to take shelter in.  Rather than just barely treading water trying to make headway into the sea of noise, I have chosen instead to direct my energy by looking backwards to the origins and history of our faith.  I don’t mean or intend to ignore serious issues in our world today, but I need to find a way to rise above and to not be held captive

So I have decided to study church history.  And I have chosen Justo Gonzalez’s Story of Christianity as my guide. 

I’ve only made it through the first 200 years of the church.  But during that time, the experience of the early church was one of being misunderstood, misrepresented, and scapegoated.  The young Christian church, being a minority faith throughout the Roman Empire, was an easy target by those in power.  Christians were misrepresented as…

     atheists - because they didn’t believe in the Roman pantheon of gods; 

     cannibals - because they were said to eat flesh and drink blood when they gather for worship;

     incestuous - because they spoke of love toward “brothers” and “sisters”     

These outlandish rumors were more or less easy to refute.  Harder still were the philosophical misunderstandings that they were haters of human kind and were presumed to have worldviews that were incompatible with Roman civilization. 

At extreme points persecution broke out, Christians were scapegoated for disasters and tragedies, and restrictions were placed on where they could live and/or travel. 

This history of our faith stood out to me even more by attending the recent Jesus Fatwa events held at the Masjid Saad Foundation in Sylvania.  “Jesus Fatwa” means “Jesus Commandment.” Specifically, you shall love your neighbors as yourself (Mark 12:31 and Matthew 22:39).

It wasn’t a dialogue per se, but rather a chance to listen and learn more about the faith and practice and experience of our Muslim neighbors.  We have many Muslim neighbors, after all; Toledo is home to the number two per-capita population of Arab and Muslim Americans in our country.

It is said that one of the greatest gifts that we can give to another is to truly listen to them.  So while the Jesus Fatwa event wasn’t intended to be a true dialogue, it was nonetheless a significant way to practice Jesus’ commandment to love your neighbor. 

As I listened, one of the things that became very clear, is that Muslims in our world today feel compelled to speak up and defend themselves against being misunderstood, misrepresented, and scapegoated.  The reminds me of what I'm reading about the history of the early church.  The persecution may not be as intense or violent, but the underlying social and relational animosity and mistrust towards this religious minority in our country is very real and alive today.  I don’t think I’m saying anything new by naming this. 

There were times during the Jesus Fatwa events that I became frustrated.  Particularly when some people would make comments like “well, we pretty much all believe the same things.”  There are significant differences in our faiths, so I find such simplistic clichés to be unhelpful and also dishonest. 

But that’s not to say there aren’t many significant similarities.  In regards to Christians and Muslims, our shared history of needing to defend ourselves against false stereotypes is one of those significant similarities. 

In an October 2015 speech, Iranian Muslim scholar Navid Kermani gave a speech upon accepting the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade association.  In his acceptance speech, he held up the example of an Orthodox Syrian priest named Father Jacques Mourad.  Father Jacques’ community in Syria was facing persecution by ISIS.  Yet even up unto his point of abduction, Father Jacques continued to stress how ISIS was distorting true Islam.

Navid Kermani expressed his disappointment when other Muslims like himself brush aside the horrors of ISIS by simply saying that violence has nothing to do with Islam.  In his view, for him as a Muslim to simply dismiss it is not enough.  However, when a person of another faith, a Christian Priest, who is currently under threat from ISIS, defends Islam, that kind of defense of one’s enemy displays inner greatness.

Navid Kermani goes on to say, “Love of one’s own – one’s own culture, one’s own country, (one’s own faith), even one’s own person  - proves itself in self-criticism.  The love of the other – of another person, another culture, and even another religion – can be far more effusive and (generous).” 

These words of the Muslim scholar Navid Kermani remind me of something Jesus said about removing the log in one’s own eye before removing the speck in your neighbors eye. 

As I think about what this means for how we love our Muslim neighbors in our city and in our country, I think it leads us to three very practical and basic postures. 

1. Listen.  Listen to our Muslim neighbors as they defend themselves against misrepresentation.  And listen to our Muslim neighbors as human beings full of hopes, fears, and daily concerns just like everyone else.  
2. Let Muslims interpret their own faith to us.  Much as we Christians have ways of understanding the violence of the Old Testament in light of the fuller revelation of God in Christ, many Muslims like Navid Kermani, and those who presented at the Jesus Fatwa, have resources within their own faith understanding to self-correct and self-interpret.  I don’t like when non-Christians, Atheists, or other faiths presume to tell me the true meaning of Christianity.  And we are called to treat others as we want to be treated – another one of Jesus’ fatwas. 
3. Finally, we love our Muslim neighbors by sharing our faith openly and honestly with them.  It does no good to lie or ignore serious differences.  And why would we not want to share the ways that Jesus has transformed our lives by the grace and truth of God?  For true dialogue to take place, we must not only listen but also speak.  But we must keep in mind that this takes time.  This is not just a matter of listening once or twice and then concluding that we’ve gotten that over with, so now we can get on to the business of speaking and arguing.  With centuries of tension, misunderstanding, and misrepresentation in both directions, this takes time.  But perhaps, if we do steps one and two regularly, and over time, God will open up doors to move into this third step. 

Much like with the early church, people who are willing, wise, and mature, can easily distinguish ridiculous rumors from truth if they just take the time to do so.  Deeper philosophical and theological differences will naturally require more serious engagement with respect and honesty.

My take-away from this learning event is this: 

Let us as Christians take Jesus’ words seriously.  Let us love our neighbors as ourselves.   The early church faced gross exaggerations and mischaracterizations.  Let’s not do that to our Muslim neighbors.  Let us hold ourselves accountable to refute and resist the ridiculous rumors of our Muslim neighbors that circulate within our own churches, families, and friendships. 

And if we do that, and do that well, consistently, and with conviction, then I believe we will then get on to more mature matters of engagement and dialogue.