Understanding the Arab culture and Muslim religion is the first step in easing the current climate of highly charged emotional tension between Arab Muslims and Western Christians, Arab Christians say.
During a recent symposium on the Middle East, sponsored by Samford University and The Alabama Baptist, Wadi Haddad, former deputy corporate secretary of the World Bank, and Martin Accad, academic dean and director of the Institute of Middle East Studies at Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon, urged Christians to seek to understand Muslims with respect and humbleness.
Haddad noted that this can most easily occur in the academic arena, where questions and beliefs can be explored with openness.
Understanding is also needed when relating to Arab Christians. Nabil Costa, executive director of the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development, said not many non-Arabs know that Arab Christians exist or that God is working in the Arab world.
Arab Christians also face misconceptions at home from those who associate them with the West, assuming that Western countries represent Christianity and its norms and values. This places a responsibility on the shoulders of Western Christians to understand how their actions at home affect Christians abroad and can endanger them.
Other misconceptions Costa listed include thinking that all Arabs are Muslims, all Muslims are Arabs and all Muslims are terrorists.
Haddad said increased understanding is not meant to justify acts of violence carried out by Muslim extremists. It is needed so Christians can understand how to reach out to those of the Muslim faith.
Accad said some of the misunderstandings about Islam may come from the seeming contradictions that are heard today.
Some say Islam is peaceful, while others say it is a violent religion; some say it is tolerant, and others say it is intolerant of other faiths. These probably stem from two time periods in the life of Islam’s founder, Mohammed.
These two periods — the Meccan and Medinan — influenced the formation of Islam and still influence it through the Quran — the Muslim holy book.
The Meccan period is Mohammed’s childhood through adulthood in the city of Mecca and the start of his revelations about Islam. The more peaceful and tolerant verses in the Quran reflect this period and urge Muslims to get along with Christians and Jews.
The verses from the Medinan period reflect his time in the city of Medina, where he became disillusioned with Christianity and Judaism and felt betrayed by their followers. These verses include the calls for jihad — holy war — and suspicion of other faiths.
This paradigm led to the formation of two branches of Islam — Meccan Muslims, who are more moderate, and Medinan Muslims, who are more radical.
The culture of the Arab world also causes tension, Accad said. The Middle East tends to be a more deeply religious society in which religion is communal, while the West is a more secularized society, in which religion is privatized, based on personal preference.
In a deeply religious community — whether Muslim or Christian, Accad noted — religious leaders are gatekeepers who help protect adherents from themselves. Social structures and cultural values are in place to preserve the community and continuity of life. Life is viewed holistically as the individual, family, faith, society, culture, government and politics are integrated into one “religious reality.”
Therefore when one part of the religious reality is threatened, the whole of the religious community is threatened, Accad said. The community members are required to react in order to protect it as in the case of the cartoons about Mohammed that sparked worldwide protests by Muslims.
The mistake Western Christians often make is viewing Islam as a faith preference instead of as this reality. When that happens, they are applying a Christian, Western worldview to the situation.
In today’s world, however, there is a widening gap between the radical and moderate arms of Islam. The present global socio-political climate empowers radicalism and silences the voices of the moderates who might speak out against the violence but would then be seen as siding with the “Western enemy,” Accad explained.
Christians can work to remedy this both through understanding the situation and by seeking political and social justice that would empower the moderate voices of Islam. Political justice calls for Western foreign policy to view the Middle Eastern nations as partners, not as a chessboard on which to play out political games that will only benefit the West, Accad said.
On the social side, he noted that radicalism thrives on social injustice and poverty.
He suggested that Christians work to establish programs that will foster social justice and extinguish the fodder for extremism. Christians can also establish institutes of learning because through education people can begin to understand the importance of freedom of choice, Accad said.
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