Ali Ataie – ChristianMuslim Dialogue Francis of Assisi & Sultan of Egypt Rev. Andrew Lobban &
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
I've I've just cast a spell over every
I'm just kidding.
I might go over the 15 minute by
a couple of minutes. Sorry about that. But
I talk really fast.
So thank you for being here.
There
are 2 areas that I'd like to comment
upon. You can think of these as being
sort of descriptive and prescriptive.
First, I want to describe the historical backdrop
behind the encounter between Saint Francis of Azizi
and the Sultan of Egypt, Mohammed Al Kamal.
Secondly, I wanna talk about, the significance that
the encounter has for us today
and how it can serve as a model
for contemporary interfaith dialogue.
So let me say a few things initially
about the history
that I think is of vital importance in
terms of context or setting the stage.
In the description of the event, of this
event, we were told that when our 2
interlocutors
met in 12/19
during the 5th crusade,
it was during a time of rampant Islamophobia
in the Christian world.
And that's true,
but it's important to know that the phobia
really went both ways.
We have to be careful about the application
of a double standard.
Interestingly, in our contemporary
postmodern sort of Zeitgeist,
it is actually becoming more and more politically
incorrect to even suggest that one can be
hateful or bigoted toward Christians,
especially ethnically European Christians,
whom postmodernists
imagined to be at the top of some
power hierarchy,
yet also at the bottom of some metaphysical
intersectional pyramid.
So just as there is Islamophobia,
that's a reality,
Christianophobia,
and yes, it's a real word,
is also a reality.
So as Muslims, I think we should realize
that anti Christian sentiment
is essentially anti religious sentiment
and that quite often the only reason why
anti Christian elements don't turn their vitriol
upon Islam and Muslims is because it's not
considered politically or socially
acceptable to do so.
In time, they will. And if they hate
the Bible, eventually they're gonna hate the Quran.
Now the the false state or sort of
status quo
of the entire premodern world
was warfare and conquest. Both sides were engaged
in it.
The Abbasids,
the Fatimids,
the Umayyads, the Byzantines.
In those days, there were no international
treaties among nation states
within defined borders.
In the middle ages, the world comprised of
various
competing empires
whose borders were constantly
expanding and contracting
due to perpetual
expansionist militarism.
That was simply the way of the world
back then.
So,
I mean, I'm not making
excuses for the Crusaders.
The Crusaders who came into Jerusalem in 10/99
slaughtered men, women, and children. In fact, any
non European, so even Jews and Christian Arabs,
were massacred.
That was sheer barbarism.
That's terrorism.
There's no doubt about it.
That method of warfare,
I believe, is transhistorically
condemned.
But perhaps we can allow ourselves to give
primacy
to dispassionate reason over emotion,
so that we can at least try to
understand why Pope Urban II declared the 1st
crusade in 10/95.
Now in the film,
the highest leadership of the Catholic church is
consistently depicted as evil and immoral.
That's clear from the film, at least my
assessment of it, but I think this is
a bit disingenuous
and misleading.
After all, it was the Catholic church that
canonized
Saint Francis just 2 years after his death,
so the Church recognized immediately what kind of
man he was.
The film does not mention that it was
pope Innocent the third, the very man who
called for the 4th 5th crusades,
who actually met Francis after having a dream
about Francis
and authorized the establishment of the Franciscan order
of brothers and sisters.
So I think it's, easy, even a bit
lazy,
to simply criticize people that are in positions
of power.
But the reality is history is far more
nuanced. We need to be more sophisticated.
I'm certainly no fan of Pope Innocent the
third. He certainly spewed a lot of anti
Muslim rhetoric, but we still have to be
we still have to try to be more
objective when it comes to reading history.
Now in the centuries leading up to the
crusades,
the Muslims had conquered the island of Sicily
in southern Italy
and had attempted a couple of times to
capture Rome itself.
3 of the 5 major centers of Christianity
had fallen to the Muslims, Alexandria, Antioch and
Jerusalem.
Muslim armies had conquered most of the Iberian
Peninsula
and there were Muslim flags at the gates
of Constantinople.
That's the city of Constantine,
the first Christian emperor.
Again, this was status quo,
perpetual expansionism.
Everybody was doing it.
But the event that really set Europe off
occurred in the year 1009,
10/09,
when an overzealous Fatimid caliph named Al Hakim
partially destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
This is the holiest church in the world
for christians.
I call this the 9 11 of the
medieval world.
For the next almost 90 years, anti Muslim
sentiment
went viral across Europe.
After all, they argued what kind of inhuman
heathen would desecrate the very tomb of Jesus
Christ
and what kind of Christian would just sit
idle and watch it happen.
So people were moved by emotion,
pathos, which is very powerful,
and simply could not see through the demonizing
and pseudo speciating
of the Muslims in general.
The irony is the caliph's action was absolutely
in direct contradiction
to the Quran itself,
which says explicitly that the preservation of houses
of worship,
and it names churches, temples, monasteries, and synagogues,
was a primary duty of any Muslim polity.
But as one of my teachers once said,
Europeans are a very forbearing people,
but when they get angry, watch out.
Now regarding the encounter
of the 2 men on the battlefield at
in 12/19.
The big question is what actually happened?
I mean, Francis was in the Muslim camp
for weeks.
I think we need to separate what is
most likely fact from what is most likely
fiction.
It is agreed upon
by the earliest of Franciscan
biographers,
Thomas of Celano and St. Bonaventure,
that Francis' intention was twofold:
to convert the Saracen sultan to Christianity and
thus end the conflict
or to win the crown of martyrdom.
Francis went to Damietta
with a group of friars to convince Mohammed
Ad Kamil
to believe in the Christian gospel.
And you know what? I actually respect that.
The prophet Mohammed said,
He said, love for humanity
what you love for yourself.
And if you really cared for someone,
wouldn't you want good for them?
So Francis, in his heart of hearts, wanted
good for the Sultan.
And he believed that the gospel, at least
his understanding of the gospel,
was the greatest good that he could offer
him. He risked his life to save the
Sultan's soul from his perspective. I respect that.
And I think the Sultan respected it as
well.
So it seems to me that there wasn't
simply an exchange of faith journeys, as the
film seems to indicate.
I believe there was a full on debate
with Saint Francis and Illuminato
on one side,
and the sultan and his court theologians on
the other.
Each side was trying to convince the other
that they knew the truth about Jesus Christ,
peace be upon him. It was a debate
that focused on Christology,
positive and negative Christology. In other words,
what is the Christ essentially
and who is the Christ in particular,
as well as what is not the Christ
essentially
and who is not the Christ in particular.
This is confirmed by Saint Bonaventure who wrote
that
Saint Francis preached fervently
about the trinity
and about the savior.
Of course, the Quran confirms the virgin birth
of Jesus, the miracles of Jesus, the messiahship
of Jesus,
and even intimates the second coming.
However, the Quran explicitly repudiates the divinity of
Jesus, his literal begottenness as a pre eternal
son, as well as his alleged vicarious atonement.
In fact, the crucifixion itself
seems to be denied by the Quran.
The Quran also suggests that the Christian scriptures
have suffered a degree of textual corruption
at the hands of various sectarian scribes
and or exegetical misreadings
performed by pre- and post Nicene
Christian authorities.
So there's a lot to talk about.
I don't think it was a 2 week
2 week vacation
for Francis and Illuminato.
I don't think they were trading recipes with
the Sultan,
which is what interfaith dialogue has largely become
today.
And I think it's because people are just
so afraid of offending each other
and not being intellectually and spiritually honest.
Saint Bonaventure mentioned something interesting. He said at
some point in the debate, Saint Francis proposed
a trial by fire.
This might have been the last straw for
Francis.
He wrote that Francis challenged the so called
priests of the sultan to walk through an
inferno.
If Francis survived the fiery walk, then Christianity
must be true.
If the Saracen priests survived, then Islam must
be true.
In my mind, this story has a key
marker of a myth.
It is a meaningful emulation of prior narratives.
Bonaventure seems to envision the Egyptian sultan
and his priests
as an anti type of the Egyptian pharaoh
and his court magicians,
while Saint Francis is the new Moses.
Ori imagines the heathen sultan to be an
anti type of Nimrod,
while Saint Francis resembles Abraham, who was cast
into a fire yet survived,
at least according to the Talmud in the
Quran.
Even if the story were true, the fact
that Mohammed Al Kamal did not take up
the challenge is no indication that he doubted
his faith.
One of the fundamental aims of Islamic law
is the preservation of life.
To answer such a challenge would have been
construed
by the Sultan as reckless,
foolhardy,
even fanatic,
rather than courageous or pious.
If the story is true, I can imagine
Sultan Mohammed Al Kamal
cracking a little smile in Saint Francis and
saying,
no, we're cool with that.
I'm paraphrasing, of course.
In the Quran's nomenclature,
interfaith
interfaith debate is called the Jidal,
not Jihad, Jidal.
And the rules of are mentioned explicitly in
the Quran.
The Quran says
Call to the way of your Lord
with wisdom and beautiful exhortation,
and debate with them in ways that are
beautiful. Now Muslim exegetes, they take wisdom and
beautiful exhortation
to mean academic sophistication
and with a pleasing disposition
or Aristotle referred to as effective logos and
ethos,
key elements in the art of persuasion.
Jidal or debate is different than munavara in
Arabic
or a disputation.
Jidal debate is trying to convince your opponent
of your position,
what you believe to be the truth.
Whereas in Munavara,
both sides are working together in an attempt
to uncover or arrive at the truth, similar
to a Socratic dialectic.
At the end of the day, the sultan
and the saint
agreed to disagree
or as the Quran says,
You have your religion,
you have your beliefs and I have my
religion and I have my beliefs.
Actually, I heard an atheist one time quote
this verse and say, this is the most
tolerant verse in the entire corpus of religious
literature I've ever heard in my life.
So this is a good model for contemporary
interfaith dialogue.
Both sides conducted themselves with respect
while being academically rigorous,
yet did not compromise in their essential beliefs.
This does not mean that they didn't learn
from each other or enrich one another. They
certainly did.
The prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, is
reported to have said that wisdom is the
lost property of a believer.
Wherever he finds it, it is his.
I imagine that the sultan was impressed by
the piety,
the incredible courage, and the humility of Saint
Francis,
while Saint Francis was no doubt impressed
by the Muslim focus on prayer,
quest for knowledge, and reverence for scripture.
Francis was willing to see through the emotional
appeals
to his irascible soul
and to meet and dialogue with an actual
Muslim.
That takes a lot of courage.
In conclusion, both the Sultan and the Saint
were men of principle.
They took the religions very seriously.
The problem nowadays in my view is a
tendency for religious people to constantly bend over
backwards
in order to conform their essential theological and
moral principles
to the current zeitgeist
or the spirit of the age
rather than choosing to stand firm for their
essential beliefs and defend their sacred texts
even in the face of harsh criticism
and potential ad hominem attacks.
Yes, legal issues,
jurisprudential
issues,
and the implementation of certain rulings in the
sacred law
do contain a dynamic aspect
that responds to changing
societal circumstances. In other words, there is a
mutable or variable mechanism
that is internal to religious legal theory,
as understood by traditional authorities.
But essential theology
and morality do not change.
They are immutable.
Many now think that by watering down traditional
beliefs and principles we can create some
new meta religion of world unity
where truth is subjective and everybody gets a
medal.
In this imaginary
post truth utopia,
objectivity
and normativity are thrown out of the window
in favor of subjectivity
and existential
self invention,
all under the guise of tolerance.
The dominant philosophy in academia and society in
general is internally contradictory.
It doesn't even make any sense.
Its credo is the only absolute truth
is that there is no absolute truth.
The advocates of this philosophy are dogmatically
opposed to dogma
and are highly intolerant
of intolerance.
Now, Paul of Tarsus is someone who is
often criticized by Muslim historians and apologists.
Despite all the problems that come with him,
he was at times, I must admit, very
profound.
He said in Romans chapter 12 verse 2,
do not be conformed to this age,
but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind.
In other words, let God
not the Zeitgeist
transform you
so that you might learn his will.
This reminds me of a hadith of the
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, when a
man came to him and said, O Messenger
of God, give me some advice that is
uniquely coming from you that no one else
could tell me but you.
And the prophet said,
The prophet said to him, say, I believe
in God
and stand firmly
and resolutely
upon that.
And don't be afraid of people who reproach
you for your beliefs.
Both the saint and the sultan, I believe,
were men of such
resolution.
Thank you so much.
Good evening and peace be with each and
every one of you.
I, first and foremost, want to give thanks
to God for the opportunity to be here.
I'd also like to thank, Sister Faryal Masri,
Brother Munir Safi, of course, Doctor. Ali Atayyeh,
and also just all of those in our
past, many of whom we will never know
the names of, who made it possible for
all of us to be here tonight.
As was so clear from the movie that
we just saw,
there are times in our history where simply
sitting in this room and having dialogue
would have had spears and swords pointed directly
at our throats.
And it is only through the tireless efforts
and the willingness to risk life and limb
that peace of the sort that we enjoy
now has been won.
And, we can never kid ourselves into thinking
that peace is static.
It must be won and re won by
every generation,
and that same courage and willingness to take
risks and step outside our comfort zones
is something that we're all called upon to
do
every day of our lives, and I believe
that's exactly what we're doing here tonight. And
I am just so thankful
for that opportunity.
Now I think I need to fill in
I know you saw a little bit of
a personal biography, but just, for those who
are unaware
of the biography of the church I represent,
I need to share a few details because
they are highly relevant to
how we're going to speak about the movie
that we just saw. So
I am part of the Episcopal Church, which
is the American branch of Anglicanism,
otherwise known as the Anglican Communion,
and that has its roots in the Church
of England.
Now there was no such thing as a
separate Church of England until the middle part
of 16th century. In other words,
3 centuries after the time that we saw
covered here.
There had already been a split between Western
and Eastern Christianity in the 11th century,
but Western Christianity
remained more or less united
for another 5 centuries after that.
When that split occurred,
more so than what were known as the
continental reformers, so the ones
in Central and Western Europe but not the
British Isles,
The reformers in the British Isles weren't interested
in separating themselves
theologically
or liturgically
any more than necessary
from their Roman roots. As a matter of
fact, queen Elizabeth the first, who
reigned as monarch and also to some extent,
although the bishops would never wish to admit
this,
lead theologian over the process of the English
Reformation,
had it as her goal
to hold as much of the realm together
as possible, and that meant appeasing staunch Catholics,
staunch Protestants,
and everybody in between. And so
our church became known as the broad middle
way or the great compromise
between Catholicism
and protestantism.
So that's kind of the seat
from which I am speaking.
It means you're gonna get a slightly different
perspective than you would likely get from someone
who had been trained
and raised up in the Roman Catholic
church, and, honestly, perhaps a little bit less
depth of knowledge of the Catholic roots of
this, but I have some to offer.
So first and foremost,
what is the primary
principle
of American criminal law which we inherited from
British common law?
You learn you learn this in, you know,
4th grade
civics.
Thank you. Presumption of innocence. Innocent until proven
guilty.
Everybody please hold on to that in your
heads, because
innocent until proven guilty is not the governing
principle of criminal law everywhere in the world
or throughout all of history.
For example, the Napoleonic
code,
which formed much of French law for a
good deal of their history and is actually
still inherited
by, the more Francophone parts of North America
such as Quebec or the State of Louisiana,
is a little more on the guilty until
proven innocent side. So
under innocent until proven guilty,
in any situation where there is an accusation
of wrongdoing,
the burden of proof lies with the accuser.
The default
assumption
is that the accused did nothing wrong
and is not to be deprived of life,
liberty, or property.
Obviously, the precise opposite
applies when we have a principle of law
that says guilty until proven innocent.
Hold on to that.
A little bit of historical background
in addition to, what doctor Atay already
offered us for what was going on at
this time.
So he spoke of Pope Innocent the Third's
authorization
of the formation of what was known as
the Order of Friars Minor
or the Franciscans. And every time you saw
one of the scholars interview that had an
o f m
after his name, that stands for order of
Friars Minor, the Franciscans.
And this was the first of 2 of
what were known as the mendicant movements
of the high middle ages. And a mendicant
is a poor beggar.
So the idea was
that these religious orders would be formed of
men and then later of women
who would voluntarily
give up most or all of their worldly
goods and pleasures.
The key three vows in these mendicant orders
are
poverty,
chastity, and obedience.
That's giving up quite a lot of what
we tend to enjoy in human life.
And that the following of God, the following
of Christ
would be done in that manner.
Well, the second order to come about, and
it was only a few decades later, was
known as the Dominican order, not surprisingly founded
by Saint Dominic,
and also,
known as the Order of Preachers.
Slightly different emphasis, but also voluntary poverty, chastity,
and obedience. And as you might guess from
the title,
the emphasis in the Dominican
order was to preach.
Preaching was no longer considered the property
of only trained and honestly relatively wealthy and
powerful priests and theologians.
It was considered now the property of poor
friars,
and it was considered something to be done
in the gutters and in the streets, not
only in cathedral pulpits.
The word was to be brought to the
least and the lowest of society
who often never made their way
into the halls of power that were the
churches and cathedrals of the time.
Now,
what is surprising
about pope Innocent the third's willingness
to authorize these mendicant orders
is what it did to the power dynamic.
There was a subtle sub narrative going on
at this time.
Not only
did it turn the power scales upside down
in a lot of ways, but it also
introduced, or I should more accurately say reintroduced
into the theological
dialogue of the church
something that had been pushed to the margins
or off the table altogether
for several centuries,
and that was the philosophical traditions
of ancient Greece and Rome.
Tertullian,
a theologian
from many centuries earlier, had famously said,
what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
And what he was about was basically saying,
I see way too many Aristotelian
and platonic influences
creeping their way into Christianity.
Christianity
needs to remain
a pure tradition in terms of its Judaic
roots
and its very simple focused belief in Jesus
Christ of Nazareth.
That's it. Thank you very much. Keep all
this philosophy out of here.
Well, anyone who has read the gospel of
John can say right from
the beginnings of Christianity,
there is some Platonism and some Aristotelian
philosophy in there. John clearly
brought those Hellenic influences right into the scriptures.
So Tertullian
was really fighting a losing battle, but nonetheless,
for nearly a millennium,
the church really fought that one hard.
And during that 13th century,
people such as Saint Dominic and his protege
Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was our arguably the
most famous scholastic theologian to do this,
brought this back in full force.
But guess where they got the idea?
What was the condition of your of Northern
European Universities in the 13th century? And I'll
give you a hint. It wasn't good. Academic
life in that part of the world had
been quite dormant for several centuries. Not, however,
true of the Muslim lands of North Africa.
Not, however, true
of the Muslim lands of North Africa, of
the Middle East, and the southern part of
the Iberian Peninsula.
And there was one theologian in particular at
the University of Cordoba in Inrashid, is that
the correct name?
Imrashid. Imrashid. Okay. I for forgive me for
mispronouncing
it,
who had brought
Aristotelian philosophy
very much back into the forefront of theological
dialogue.
It was under his inspiration
that Aquinas then began to do the same
as well as many of his academic
cohorts in Northern Europe.
So all of this is going on,
and pope Innocent the third is sitting there
in the Vatican wondering what on earth do
I do? Do I squelch it,
or do I give it the church's stamp
of approval
and go with it? And I think it
can be argued
that his dream and his encounter with Francis
was a real turning point and a chance
for his heart to turn, something that the
movie really didn't
portray
because it only showed maybe the earlier parts
of his papacy,
and it gave him the courage and the
foresight to authorize this.
So back to what I began with,
the subtext
shifted at that point.
Because when you decide
that purity is to be valued above all
else,
That any influence that you cannot
argue is directly
at the center
core of your faith,
needs to be seen as suspect. It needs
to be seen as foreign,
and it needs to be squelched at nearly
any cost.
You're operating according to the principle of guilty
until proven innocent.
The burden of proof is on the accused
and not the accuser.
When, however,
you allow something like the mendicant orders to
flourish,
you're then rather operating on the principle of
innocent until proven guilty because the mendicant orders
not only expanded the church's horizons
politically and economically
by reaching out to those who were generally
considered simply the sheep,
the the masses to be
evangelized and spoken to in the simplest terms
possible, but otherwise mostly ignored by the church,
but rather put them at the center.
But they also
expanded the church academically
and theologically
by being open to influences
from Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy
and from the Muslim world.
This was a decision to go
with innocent until proven guilty.
Now the reason I say decision
is because we humans are never going to
get clear direction
on which of those two principles is going
to be our governing one
from anything outside of ourselves.
Our scriptures can be read to say either.
It depends on how we choose to interpret
them. Our religious traditions can be seen to
bolster either.
When Fariel came to me and invited me
to speak to this, she said the same
thing that you heard her say at the
beginning of the film.
I
hear all over the place people say religion
is at the root of all of our
problems, of all of our conflicts,
and I wanna have a dialogue about how
religion can be at the root of the
solution to those problems
and those conflicts.
And this movie shows how complex that is
because religion was actually at the root of
both.
It was at the root of the conflict
and the bloodshed,
and it was at the root of the
peacemaking and the bridge building that occurred there.
So we have to make the choice.
Are we going to be people of faith
who operate according to the principle
of innocent until proven guilty? Because if we
do,
everything that seems strange and new and foreign
to us,
our first assumption is
let's embrace this,
let's let it
in, let's see what God might have to
say to us that we've never heard before
through this encounter,
through this person,
through this idea.
But if we choose guilty until proven innocent
the assumption is if it looks and sounds
foreign,
it is something to be treated as suspect,
perhaps even dangerous enemy,
something that we might need to strike down
violently if it won't stop pestering us. Which
principle are we going to choose?
And I completely agree with what my colleague
said. In choosing innocent until proven guilty,
we are not moving in the direction of
some sort of subjective
monochromatic
faith
and worldwide ideology.
Absolutely
not.
The Christian principle
of Jesus Christ as God incarnate,
as fully divine, can remain as the core
of our
faith. And yet we can look out at
a world that to a large extent
challenges or disagrees with that proposition
and see it as a friendly place
and see the tensions and the agreements
as opportunities
to grow and certainly not opportunities for conflict
bloodshed and suffering.
So what I will leave you with
is
that subtle transformation that remained largely unnamed and
that we still struggle with today of 13th
century
can be a blueprint for how we move
forward.
Can we simply make the decision for no
other reason
than we see historically
the results that it gets us as opposed
to the results that the opposite decision gets
us
to be people of innocent until proven guilty.
Thank you.
Okay. Now, we're opening for question.
Do we have another microphone?
We can take this
one.
Currently on the board of the Eden Area
Interfaith Council, which is over the hill, Castro
Valley, Hayward,
the unincorporated area, San Leandro.
And I just thank
our reflectors very much.
It resonated with me
in many ways. But as a Christian
and having been born in a country where
Christianity is the
the majority, the dominant religion.
One of the things that I have learned
from
living in other countries
where
the majority religion was different
and a lot of dialogue and a lot
of learning
about other faiths
is how little I know about my own
faith.
Because
my experience and my family has a lot
of diversity of theology and Christianity. There are
some very fundamentalist people and some very progressive
people.
But my experience of
the more progressive end of Christianity
is that
in our churches. We do a bad job
of teaching Christianity.
We do a bad job of teaching theology.
It sort of ends around middle school or
high school where people get confirmed, and then
that's when they stop going to any kind
of study.
And one of the things that really impresses
me about Islam
is the continual
opportunities
and expectation
for learning and for,
reflection.
So,
I guess I will say that
the main lesson that I have learned from
interfaith dialogue is
that it helps me
be a better Christian,
partly because it challenges me to learn more,
and really learn
that there's not just one idea, not just
one theological tradition in Christianity,
but also
to learn from how other faiths
answer similar questions.
And and that that helps me understand
God better.
You know, if I may,
and
one thing that,
your comment just brought to mind for me
was a very personal and
arguably one of the most illuminating
and one of the most painful conversations I've
had in my life that occurred
this past summer, just a few months ago.
I attended a workshop over at Princeton Seminary
that was put on by the Black Theology
and Leadership Institute at that seminary,
and I was one of only 2
not African American participants.
And as the week went along, one of
them came to me and,
with a rather inscrutable look on his face,
just made the comment off the cuff. He
said, you know, you should be really angry
because your ethnicity has been stolen from you.
And I said,
I I need to follow it wasn't a
good time. I said, we we have to
follow-up on that one. He said, okay. So,
about a day later, he sat down and
he said,
the problem
with being white in this part of the
world
is that you define yourself entirely by what
you are not.
So
you are not a minority race. You are
not,
the generally, the poorest component of society. You
are not the ones being targeted by police.
But what are you?
What is your food? What is your music?
What is what is the core of your
soul? And it's all over the map.
And that was really kind of difficult and
painful to hear, but I think a similar
thing can be said in religion. When you
become the politically dominant religion in a land,
you sort of lose your soul in that
transaction,
and you start to define yourself by what
you are not.
And I think you pointed to it in
the way we do education in the church.
We we seem to think it's enough to
say what we are not
and to forget the incredible richness. I mean,
those of us who who've been to seminary
know you just begin to scratch the surface.
You could spend 10 lifetimes
delving into the richness
of what Christianity is, just like you could
spend 10 lifetimes delving into the richness of
what Judaism or Islam or Buddhism or any
of the world's great and beautiful traditions are.
And yet somehow we have it in mind
that, you know, through a few weeks of
formation and a special ceremony around about age
13,
we've done enough formation.
So anyway, that
I I don't have a great answer, but,
I think at least it calls the problem
into clearer focus.
Just very quickly, I think also,
well, I think this is,
many of the our our our children who
go into secular institutions,
they just don't have
the intellectual
capacity to be able to
challenge what they're hearing in some of these
philosophy classrooms,
and they feel very inadequate.
And,
they're constantly being told that they're just sort
of,
slightly more evolved apes, and everything's just reduced
to materiality,
and and they feel a bit inadequate
challenging these ideas.
And I think, as you said, reverend, I
think people of religion
should teach our children
what what we are,
whether that's in the image of God. Right?
This is something that's mentioned in Genesis. And
and although that wording is not used in
the Quran,
there is a hadith of the prophet
where he said and this is there's some
weakness in this tradition. Some of the Muslims
might say that, oh, brother, that's a weak
hadith. Muhammad al Ghazali quotes this hadith.
That god created Adam in his own image.
Now what is the image here? Because god
is beyond
or, is beyond space, time, and and and
in matter.
Imam Khazadi says,
that it's that the human being has reason.
Right? That the human being is an animal,
but the human being is the rational animal.
This is the differentia,
to use Aristotelian
nomenclature,
And this is affirmed by Aquinas as well.
So there's something about
about our reason that makes us special.
And I think when we get rid of
that,
there's gonna be dire consequences in the world.
If we're just flesh and blood
I mean, people say the problem with the
world is is is religion.
Right? I think it's radical ideologies.
Maoism is a type of religion.
Stalinism is a type of religion.
You're just matter. You're reduced to flesh and
blood. You're cattle. We can mow over you.
There's nothing incorruptible or special about you. You
don't have a soul,
this type of thing.
So it's important to, I think, to stress
this idea
made in the image of God. However you
take that to mean, it's found in all
three traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
I have a question. Ever since
I was a child
and maybe I'm not a scholar or you
can answer it.
The thing is as Muslim, we believe from
Adam
and all the prophets in between
to the last one as Mohammed.
The only difference I see
is
Jesus. We believe him as a prophet
and not the Son of God.
And but all the other teachings I'm trying
to read.
I read many books and are still reading.
So I don't see
much difference
between all these three religions.
Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam.
So
when there's
some kind of a discussion or arguments and
all that, to me, it doesn't make much
sense
because to me,
everybody we all are the same and we
believe in the same thing.
If we do believe in different
as a Muslim
than Christian or Jews,
then maybe you can explain it to me
so I can have a better dialogue
with my Yeah. Interfaith group.
Because whenever we go, we all agree what
we are as humans.
And
Yeah.
Thank you for your for your question.
I would say that in in principle,
Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
If if you open up the Quran and
and read
for 10 minutes, it'll become abundantly clear to
you
that,
the Quran
is saying that the God of Abraham is
God.
Right? Not some other god, some moon god,
or something like that as some some anti
Muslim polemicist like to point out. Muslims worship
a different no. It's it's the God of
Abraham.
So in principle, it is the same God.
Now the way that we theologize about this
God is certainly different,
and those differences have meaning, I think.
In the Quran, there is a clear critique
of of trinitarian
theology.
There's there's there's just no way around it.
It's it's in the Quran.
If you if you read, the letters of
Paul,
there there's a clear critique
of how Jews interpret their texts,
that they've misinterpreted text. They didn't see the
Messiah who is Jesus.
So there are differences,
and those differences again have have have meaning.
But again at the fundamental core of the
religions,
what do these three religions, the Abrahamic tradition,
what what if you can sort of boil
these religions down to
one fundamental belief, what is it? Well, I
think I think the great masters of the
past have done that.
I think,
in Mark chapter 12, when a Jewish scribe
came to Jesus
And he said to him, what is what
is the greatest commandment?
Right? And what does he do? What does
Jesus do, peace be upon him? He quotes
from the Torah,
the Shema,
here, or Israel, the lord our god, the
lord is 1.
God is 1.
Christians believe god is 1.
Right? Now, 3 persons but one essence. We
won't get into it.
But it would be it would build it
would to be it would it would be
me building a straw man and tearing it
down to say Christians are tritheistic
because that's not what they believe. Christians do
not believe in 3 gods. They believe in
1 god and manifest in 3 persons. Now
that's not totally
kosher to use that word for us
because you have to be
a
a
a, Unitarian
monotheist,
to have these sort of correct theology or
the orthodox theology.
But, nonetheless, Jesus says god is 1,
and you shall love the lord thy god
with all thy heart, soul, and strength, and
love your neighbor as yourself.
No other commandment is greater than these 2.
This is what he says. Now Rabbi Hillel
or some say Akiva
was asked the same question in the 2nd
century by his students.
What is the Torah in a nutshell?
And he said, Deuteronomy
64, 65,
Leviticus
1918,
God is 1. Love God with all your
heart, soul, and strength. Love your neighbor as
yourself.
A great Muslim scholar, Imam al Razi,
great Persian exeget of the Quran,
he said he defined Islam,
that that Islam is
worship of the creator and showing compassion and
mercy towards his creation.
So that those fundamental principles are important.
And we can certainly talk about the differences
and there are differences.
But,
I think it's important
nowadays, especially, for people of religion,
to come together,
and
and obviously have open and honest dialogue, but
also understand that there are people who don't
want religion to exist in the world anymore
and
view religion as something that needs to be
eradicated.
Right?
Assalamu alaikum.
Thank you both for being here.
I had a question actually
about,
there was a documentary I saw called Islam
Empire of Faith, which I was supposed to.
Like I thought I heard my own voice
to myself.
So,
about like the, about the you were talking
about in a,
a ruler who
sepulcher.
Testing. Testing.
I know I sound like a little kid
but that's not my fault.
Is it? Is it better? Okay. Sorry.
Maybe they don't want me to ask this
question. I don't know.
But,
at the time if you can go into
that story a little bit, either from both
perspectives
about that, was he a,
not an imam, but somebody that destroyed the
holy sepulcher? But I remember in Islam and
prayer of faith, they mentioned that the one
that did it was more of an exception
to the rule, that most Muslim rulers at
the time were protecting Christian sites.
But this is something that happens still today,
right, where
somebody does something extreme
whether a Muslim or a Jew or an
atheist or whatever or a Christian,
and then we think,
unfortunately,
every side will start thinking that's the rule
instead of the exception to the rule. So
how do we even as regular everyday people,
I like to use the term instead of
letting them
hijack our faith, you know, get back or,
you know, the the narrative or make sure
that people understand
that, yes, those are bad things if somebody
does it,
but they're not always
the rule. They're, like, kind of the exception
at times, you know.
I think it's a beautiful question, and that
that phenomenon
absolutely
happens.
Far as I'm concerned, the answer is is
relatively simple, and it's the only thing that
works.
We do this.
We we make the effort
to have dinner together and to talk
and to have encounters.
I think that the narrator of the movie
said it extremely well.
It's awfully hard to not see the humanity
of the other when you're actually face to
face and the other demonstrates the very characteristics
that you know full well represent what it
is to be human.
And if we get together, we see that
over and over again, and it takes some
time because
in a situation like what you describe,
the first reaction's probably going to be like,
the green people are all evil because they
burned down my temple. Well, I just had
dinner with 10 green people last night, and,
actually, they
were intelligent,
compassionate,
perfectly delightful people. Oh, well, those were the
exceptional green people.
But if you have a 100 such encounters
with ever increasing numbers,
that narrative just begins to get weaker and
weaker until it finally collapses.
Yeah.
Yeah. Unfortunately, this was an an incident that
happened that,
that provoked
worldwide condemnation,
by the vast, vast majority of the Muslims
around the world. Like I said, it was
like the 9:11 of the of the middle
of the world, and you can imagine something
like that happening today. The vast, vast, vast
majority of Muslims absolutely condemn those actions and
say that they are, antithetical to the the
spirit of the the actual teaching of the
religion.
I think part of the problem is a
crisis of knowledge.
People don't value religious knowledge anymore. In the
Islamic tradition, knowledge is of central importance. The
prophet said,
There's some weakness in that. Seek knowledge even
to China
or that the acquisition of knowledge is an
obligation upon every Muslim, male and female.
So Muslims place,
teaching licenses,
pedigree,
on on a pedestal.
You know, it's interesting there's a story in
the synoptic gospels where
some Pharisees come to Jesus and they say
to him, under whose authority do you do
these things?
Right? So they wanna know who's your rabbi.
Right? So who did you study under? Who
do you think you are?
So,
of course, Jesus didn't study with anyone because
God reveals to him the truth and that's
what Muslims and Christians believe.
But Jesus' answer is a bit evasive and
he says, well, John the Baptist,
was he a prophet or not?
They say, well,
I don't know. We don't know. And so
he said, I'm not gonna tell you under
whose authority we do this. So what they
want to know is who is his rabbi.
And one of the interesting things about Judaism
is that the the oral law was meant
to be oral.
So Orthodox Jews believe that 2 Torahs were
revealed to Moses on Sinai,
the Pentateuch or the Chumash, the 5 books
of Moses, but then also
the oral law that was given to Moses
that was not meant to be written down.
So a way that you can check the
pedigree of a so called rabbi is not
him simply spouting out verses from the written
Torah. Anyone can memorize anything.
Right? You can get anyone to memorize anything.
Is do you know the commentary of so
and so rabbi on that verse? Do you
know what this rabbi says about that or
that rabbi? What does the oral law say
that you can only get through teaching license,
through sitting with masters
as a way to sort of,
checking one's,
true scholarship?
So that's really important.
You know,
extremists, they they know what one of my
teachers said, extremists, they know what a text
says,
but they don't know why it says it
or how to apply the text.
Right? And that's,
extremely important,
in order to have
a a a well grounded understanding
of the tradition itself.
So knowledge is of is of central importance,
I would say
that. And this this caliph, he was a
Fatimid caliph,
and, he might have been psychotic according to
many of his biographers.
He's called the Nero of Islam.
Nero was off his rocker,
you know.
So
that was unfortunate he did that because that's
what started this wave of anti Muslim sentiment
because of his actions.
Yeah. Yeah. Anybody want to ask a question
before I ask why?
Thank you.
I think I've seen this documentary one time
before, and what I I liked about it
is at the beginning, it talked a little
bit about the neuroscience
too, about the fear and the dehumanizing
of the other.
And I know that a lot of times
when we're trying to do cross cultural things
and interfaith dialogue, we try to
keep a position of curiosity.
You know, tell me about that. But I
don't think that's our natural human inclination,
and I was just curious about what you
had to say about that
in general or from a religious perspective
about seeing the other and dehumanizing the other
and maintaining that perspective of curiosity.
Well, I'd like to suggest a theological answer
to that. I won't go too much into
the neuroscience, but I think the neuroscience
actually parallels
the story. And, of course, it's a story
that all of the 3 of the Abrahamic
faiths share, and that is the fall of
Adam and Eve early in the book of
Genesis.
Which tree did they eat the fruit of
that God commanded them not to eat? The
tree of
the knowledge of good and evil.
It's fascinating
that that is considered the original or the
cardinal sin of humanity
is to eat of the fruit of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
What that means to me
is that it's actually not
our nature
to judge
on
a snap scale
a word or person, an action, a circumstance
as good or evil,
that that is the condition we inherited from
our original sin.
It is our nature to maintain that,
posture of curiosity
that you said, and that that is actually
god's intention for the creature made in god's
image and likeness.
When we make those snap judgments and decide
something is good or evil long before
our senses have even had a chance to
absorb that which we're judging,
We're acting according to our sinful condition rather
than our divine nature.
That is that's my theological answer.
Yeah.
The Quran actually,
and this verse was paraphrased in the in
the film
that,
that part of the,
will of God was to create humanity
as diverse in order for people to get
to know each other,
to interact, to work together.
There are several verses in the Quran where
the Quran says where god is speaking and
says that I could have made you all
one nation, but I didn't do that.
We could have all been the same.
So I do believe that
well, Aristotle once said, all men and using
men as mankind generically,
all men desire to know. Everyone has a
curiosity to know.
And that's something that's good,
and that's something that's natural,
and that's something that,
should stay with us for the rest of
our lives.
I've noticed that people who,
young people who become sort of,
you know, like a like like a sophomore.
Right? A sophomore means a wise moron.
Right? When they're sophomoric, they think they know
something. So you hear them speaking, you're like,
yeah.
Good.
Yeah. Good job.
But I think the older people get, the
more sort of tassy turn. The less the
less they speak
because they begin to understand that I don't
really know anything,
you know. And you'll notice that with wise
people, that they don't talk that much,
and that's good. They seek to know. They're
they're they're contemplative people.
And that, again, comes back to this idea
of the acquisition of knowledge as being a
lifetime
endeavor.
So the world is very nuanced.
Getting to know people is extremely important. Coming
to events like this is very, very important.
I hope people have learned at least one
thing,
coming here.
And it makes us realize that we we
really have a lot to learn.
And that's a that's a good I think
it's a good natural
curiosity to have.
Some people are afraid to change the way
that they
that they think and the way that they
perceive the world, and that's the whole lesson
of the allegory of the cave when the
man came back.
Plato was onto something.
He's an incredible person.
When the man came back and he was
telling the people in the cave, this isn't
real, they began to beat
him. Of course, it's what are you talking
about? No. I've seen oh, you sit down.
Keep watching. And now he's blind because he
can't see the shadows anymore because the sunlight
affected his eyes.
So there's gonna be people like that in
the world.
Right?
So
keeping an open mind is very, very important.
I want to say something. The score today
is 5 to 0. Women are the winning
today. They are asking most of the questions.
Uh-uh. One guy. Do you want to ask
a question? Oh, we get 1. 1 to
My question to the panel is
if,
whether
religion religious ties
are stronger than cultural ties or vice versa.
Some sometimes we see people of same religion,
they kill each other. Sometimes there's a cultural
difference. Sometimes
different cultures,
same religion.
Yeah.
I agree with doctor Atayo. Woah.
I would suggest
that,
a
a yes or no answer to your question
would be to oversimplify
the situation.
I would say the very fact that you're
asking the question
opens up exactly
what we ought to be looking at. Because,
certainly, I I cannot speak responsibly for any
other faith,
but within the Christian faith, there are absolutely
cultural factions and tribes.
Many of those dividing lines are arguably
clearer and brighter dividing lines
than are the dividing lines between identifiably
different religions.
So it is a very complex landscape. I
mean,
there are certainly forms of Christianity and forms
of Judaism, for example,
that consider themselves
much closer brethren
than various Christian sects would one to another.
But to say that one dominates the other,
it you really, I don't think can go
there.
But I I I think it's a brilliant
question, and
the reason it's such an important question is
because it disarms the conflict.
Because when
a friend of mine once said, you know,
when you see a big problem, make it
bigger.
And the wisdom of that is basically saying,
you know, when you see these religious strifes,
point to the fact, no. Actually, there's way
more strife than that.
But in doing that, that sort of almost
points to the absurdity and the comedy of
it.
Because after a while, when you realize, no,
that's not one thing we're fighting over, it's
a 1,000 different things we're fighting over,
Well, what's the point of that?
Yeah.
Ditto.
I don't necessarily see a dichotomy between culture
and religion. Certainly, there's,
I think the 2 will will intermingle at
some level. One of my teachers use the
analogy of, like, different color glasses, empty glasses
that you pour
Islam into. So if you look at the
glass, it's the same water but it has
a different color.
So there there's if you look back at
the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, there
were certainly
cultural practices of the Arabs,
that he continued, that he confirmed, that he
thought were good. The Arabs at the time
in the pre Islamic era, they were they
were people of forbearance. They came to be
they came they,
tended to be very chivalrous people,
very hospitable people, but they would have these
cultural practices as well that were very harmful.
For example, they would practice female infanticide
and that was very common amongst them.
And one of the first things that he
said one of the very first things he
said was,
to stop that practice,
Wa'adul Banat.
So that's a cultural practice that he vehemently
disagreed with.
What was I going to say?
I think I'll leave it at that.
It's it's a it's a very deep topic.
Is it on? Okay.
First of all, I wanna thank you for
having this presentation today. We've come away with
a lot of new knowledge and things to
think about.
My question is, and I may have missed
this in the movie.
We're talking about conversation and exchange.
How did those 2 communicate?
Francis would have been speaking either Italian or
Latin, and the sultan would have been speaking
Arabic.
So did they have interpreters and they just
didn't put them in the movie?
Francis knew Arabic. No.
I do you know? I don't I don't
know.
I mean,
it's plausible that the sultan knew Latin.
He had a classical education.
He probably learned
Greek a little bit.
He probably knew some Hebrew.
I mean, the the in the Ottoman period,
15th 16th centuries,
in order for a Muslim scholar to be
a professor at one of the Ottoman universities,
they would have to know the Torah, the
Bible, Greek, Latin,
Arabic, all these different languages,
because you have to read these things in
primary texts.
It's I I my guess would be that
the Sultan knew some Latin.
God knows, but
that would be my guess. Probably a little
bit of that as well.
You know, maybe they,
I I don't know.
So,
in the discussion over, you know, how do
we have good interfaith dialogue, there have been
kind of 2 categories of answers coming out.
One of which I think we do very
well at at events like this which is
the idea of just sitting down at the
table with other people, so you can humanize
them and have personal humanizing relationship with them.
And I think that certainly for the people
showing up in rooms like this that we're
already doing pretty well at that,
and
I think I probably not just speaking for
myself and say that my, you know, main
problem isn't that I really needed to be
disabused to the notion that Muslims are non
human monsters.
So we we I think I've started building
a good community that can get to that
level, but there was the other thing called
for in these talks which is to really
have the the high level
academic, philosophical, theological debate. Where would we go
to hear more of what it sounds like
when you 2 are speaking
at a much higher level than maybe I
could get with my limited knowledge of my
own faith, talking someone about their personal beliefs,
about their limited knowledge of their faith,
but but to have the the
hard hitting,
whether it's as a debate or a disputation,
but
intellectually honest,
engagement
of religious ideas at the trained theologian level?
Well, you asked where do you go, and
my honest answer to that question is I'm
not sure.
We may need to build what you're describing
and rather than find it already in existence.
But
there's a reason that that we sort of
keep coming back to the entry level conversation
because
the degree of trust and goodwill, and I
really emphasize trust, that has to exist
in an environment
for conflict to be healthy and life giving
is very high.
And the general trust level in the sea
societal sea in which we're swimming right now
seems to be at a historical
low.
So it's not I totally agree with you.
And I think you and I were discussing
this before, dinner. It's, it's irresponsible
and, and really stifling
to always just do the trust building and
then not do what comes after that.
But the trust building has to be done
over and over and over again to build
that environment. And, also, it it takes a
certain kind of theologian, doctor Atayya,
talked about the value of knowledge.
And there are sects of all of our
major world traditions right now that not only
devalue but actually hold knowledge as highly suspect.
Anything that smacks of the scholarly or of
the nuanced
is
deemed heresy,
before it's even given a chance to see
the light of day. So to create an
environment where where knowledge matters
and knowledge even that pushes back against what
we believe is our knowledge
is heard and valued even if it's disagreed
with,
that that is something that takes time and
doing to build up, and and that's work
that is never done.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I mean, at Harvard University,
they used to have
debates amongst professors and, you know, they still
do these things. And
they're still around, but they're not very provocative
nowadays or they're seen as divisive, so they're
not, you know, sort of advertised as it
were.
And and then again,
the the culture of a lot of these,
institutes of higher learning
in the west in particular,
is that
religious
people are are are divisive, and they're they're
they're antiquated. They're old fashioned.
They're judgmental.
They're they're they're phobic of this, that, and
the other.
So we're not even going to entertain,
their opinion. We're not gonna give them a
platform to even speak because then that just
makes
them look like we value their opinion or
it's worth even putting on stage.
So, that's the post truth sort of reality
we live in. Truth is meaningless.
You know, it's this type of philosophy of
existentialism
that existence precedes essence. There's no such thing
as human nature. You make your own essence.
You define yourself.
Right? This is what our young people are
falling into,
and it's it's it's destroying their world. They
don't know what to do with it. I
mean, it sounds really good and everything, but
then you push a little farther and the
rhetoric just turns into nonsense. It doesn't mean
anything. They actually give an award now for
the most nonsensical book written by an academic.
I mean, it doesn't make any you read
it's like you go to
and I apologize if this is offensive, but
if you go to like the MoMA,
the Museum of Modern Art,
you're you're just looking at, you know, scribbles
on a page and you're like, is this
art?
Their literature is like that too. Post modern
literature is just is just nonsense. It doesn't
make any sense at all.
What is this person trying to say? So
a confessional Catholic, for example, sitting in a
classroom is hearing this sort of highfalutin language,
oh, I must be an idiot. I can't
follow what this person is saying. Not knowing
this person
is not saying anything.
The emperor is not wearing any clothes.
It's nonsense.
And they think, well, you know, I'm just
I'm just I'm just an antiquated simpleton. I
don't get it. So I'm just, you know,
I'm I'm gonna give up this religion and
and,
that's what's happening. You have a rise of
nones now, n o n e s.
They don't affiliate with any type of religion
because they're convinced
that these religions are the cause of all
evil in the world.
Right?
So anyway Yeah. We have the last question.
Oh, I get the last one.
Just to go back on trust,
I think one of the things to keep
in mind with these discussions
is that
it requires you not just to have curiosity,
but to be willing to step outside of
your comfort zone.
And to be have trust, you have to
have vulnerability.
You have to be open to
not knowing,
not knowing the answers, to making mistakes,
to putting yourself out there and perhaps looking
stupid at times.
And we don't tend to like to do
that too much. It takes a certain
courage to do that, a certain willingness
to put yourself out there, which can be
difficult,
especially in today's times, especially if you're doing
it even from a position of not wanting
to offend or to hurt.
But it means
being out there and admitting you may not
know the answers.
Can can you just wait? There is another
question. So you answered the 2 and this
gonna be the last. And if anybody want
to stay after are you willing to stay
a little bit longer?
Yeah. If anybody
want to stay longer, they will you know,
we can continue answering the questions.
Thank you.
Mine's more a comment, actually. I think at
this very moment in time, I think both
communities
really need to be working together because there's
places in the world where both Christianity and
Islam are under attack, you know, in places
like communist China, where, you know, the Uighurs
and even Christian churches have been destroyed. So
I think we need to kind of come
together and and support each other in this
aspect because, you know, if there's if there's
Christians who are offended by
the media or anyone talking about Jesus, Muslims
should be there too because Jesus is as
important to us than as as Christians. Likewise,
you know, Christians should also
identify that we believe in the same prophets
as you do too, so you should feel
the same sense of love in that sense.
So I think I think
we should now start thinking about how these,
you know, atheistic
concepts are now really hammering down upon religion,
and we need to really work together because
it's it's becoming very dangerous out there in
the world. And I I don't wanna make
it sort of, you know, fearful comment in
terms of, like
it's more to be
having a sense of working together.
Right? So we we we need to really
preserve,
our religions, and they're so important, I think.
Well, thank you for that. And and I'd
just like to make a a comment on
top of that.
Thank you for everything you said.
The question and the challenge I would throw
out is,
can we find the motivation and the means
to come together
even without
an external human enemy?
Be that atheism, be that communism, be that
whatever it is.
And for that, I would quote, again, Paul
of Tarsus, and even as a Christian, I
have to admit he is problematic in a
lot of ways.
But, one of his brilliant verses is our
struggle is not against enemies of flesh and
blood, but against the powers and principalities of
this present darkness.
And I think it's really important to remember
that
what appears to be enemies of flesh and
blood is just a paper tiger,
and we are all in the spiritual struggle
together. And if there is an enemy,
it's the powers and principalities of the present
darkness
and not that person across the room or
across the globe.
Okay. If if anybody like to leave, you're
welcome. If you want to stay, we'll continue
with the question.