25 October 24, Oxford
It has been a great week here in Oxford. I can barely remember all the encounters I have had along the way.
After my pratfall but otherwise good evening at Trinity College preaching and singing Sunday, our first encounter Monday was at Regents Hall. The “halls” as opposed to the “colleges,” if I understand correctly, are the colleges that were founded by specifici religious institutions. This particular one has assumed the now defunct Capuchin house and Benet Hall, the Benedictine one, so their alumnae can now still have a home here at Oxford. A very nice gesture from a Baptist Hall! We met with the very affable and seemingly brilliant theologian Prof Paul Fiddes, himself once president of this hall. (We ate lunch beneath his portrait.) Now retired, he is “simply” a research fellow. He has also been deeply involved, hence Aaron’s wanting me to meet him, in a joint Christian-Muslim initiative, called “Love and Religion.”
This is a project being run in collaboration with the Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Amman, Jordan. Its founder is Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan, who was the author of the world-renowned A Common Word. And that was my shock for the day… Had you ever heard of “A Common Word”? I, who have been involved in interreligious dialogue, including all my activities with the Tent of Abraham, working with Muslims, had not ever, so just imagine how few other Christians have?! Here’s the story…
Pope Benedict XVI gave a lecture at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006, on the subject of faith and reason. It focused mainly on Christianity and what Pope Benedict called the tendency in the modern world to “exclude the question of God” from reason. Islam also features in a part of the lecture. For some reason, the pope quoted a Byzantine Emperor’s strong criticism of Muhammad’s teachings. Pope Benedict clarified that this was not his own personal opinion and described the quotation as being of a “startling brusqueness … which leaves us astounded.” But that caveat did not help. Throughout the world a lot of people thought it was very insensitive of him to use the quote at all. And of course, many Muslims were very offended.
But what came out of it was amazing. First of all, one month later (October 13) 38 Islamic scholars, representing all branches of Islam, replied to the pope in “An Open Letter to the Pope.” And then a year later, 138 Islamic personalities co-signed another open letter entitled “A Common Word between Us and You” aimed at promoting interfaith dialogue. This is from the summary and abridgement.
“In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.
The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbour. These principles are found over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity. The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity. The following are only a few examples:
Of God’s Unity, God says in the Holy Qur’an: Say: He is God, the One! / God, the Self- Sufficient Besought of all! (Al-Ikhlas, 112:1-2). Of the necessity of love for God, God says in the Holy Qur’an: So invoke the Name of thy Lord and devote thyself to Him with a complete devotion (Al-Muzzammil, 73:8). Of the necessity of love for the neighbour, the Prophet Muhammad said: “None of you has faith until you love for your neighbour what you love for yourself.”
In the New Testament, Jesus Christ said: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. / And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. / And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)”
It then mentions this well-known Arabic phrase from Surah 3:64 of the Qur’an that refers to the 'ahl alkitab––“the people of the Book” (sometimes translated “People of the Scripture”). And by the way, this in and of itself is part of the common ground that we share with Muslims and Jews: we are the prophetic traditions, based on a revealed Word. And so the document goes on…
“In the Holy Qur’an, God Most High enjoins Muslims to issue the following call to Christians (and Jews—the People of the Scripture):
Say: O People of the Scripture! Come to a common word between us and you: that we shall worship none but God, and that we shall ascribe no partner unto Him, and that none of us shall take others for lords beside God. And if they turn away, then say: Bear witness that we are they who have surrendered (unto Him). (Aal ‘Imran 3:64)
The words: we shall ascribe no partner unto Him relate to the Unity of God, and the words: worship none but God, relate to being totally devoted to God. Hence they all relate to the First and Greatest Commandment. According to one of the oldest and most authoritative commentaries on the Holy Qur’an the words: that none of us shall take others for lords beside God, mean ‘that none of us should obey the other in disobedience to what God has commanded’. This relates to the Second Commandment because justice and freedom of religion are a crucial part of love of the neighbour.
Thus in obedience to the Holy Qur’an, we as Muslims invite Christians to come together with us on the basis of what is common to us, which is also what is most essential to our faith and practice: the Two Commandments of love.”
What’s interesting to note is that it quotes Jesus, though it doesn’t mention that Jesus is quoting Hebrew Scriptures. I’m kind of sad about that but if I ever use it, I will highlight that fact and so see all three Abrahamic traditions together in this. Obviously, that wasn’t the point of this particular issue, but still, Jews are a part of the “people of the Book”––'ahl alkitab, mentioned here. Also interesting to note that it does not insist on the second part of the shahaddah, “and Mohammed is his prophet,” only to acknowledge that there is only one God, assuming that it is the same God that Jews and Christians worship.
I was just astounded that I had never heard of this document, and I have spent a lot of time with it this week. To the point of trying to learn the Arabic phrase from Surah 3 verse 64 of the Qur’an on which it is based:
يَـٰٓأَهۡلَ ٱلۡكِتَٰبِ تَعَالَوۡاْ إِلَىٰ كَلِمَةٖ سَوَآءِۭ بَيۡنَنَا وَبَيۡنَكُمۡ أَلَّا نَعۡبُدَ إِلَّا ٱللَّهَ
Say, ‘O people of the Book, let us come to a common word between us and you.’
* * *
Tuesday, I took a train ride down to Winchester to meet Paul Inwood and Catherine Christmas, (Mr. And Mrs.). You may know that Paul is the very well-respected composer, and he and Catherine were two of the five (later six) members of the Collegeville Composers Group with whom I worked for ten years not he Psallitè project for Liturgical Press. We met I forget how many times mostly in California and England, and a few times in Minnesota to work together, usually for a week at a time composing three pieces of “essentially vocal” music for every Sunday and feast of the liturgical year (see the earlier blog about that) plus a whole set of Mass and ritual settings and a collection of bi-lingual music for funeral and weddings, with the addition of Anna Betancourt. I stayed with them by myself to work at least once and then Carol Browning and I came over several times, usually to Havant, in the Deep South where they live but one glorious week with Sisters of Pity near Windsor where, I like to say, they “spoiled the stuffing out of us” while we composed. (That is also, by the way, where I wrote “The Ground We Share,” having just come from my encounter with Imam Navid Baig and his Sufi group in Denmark.) Paul has had very severe health problems related to his kidneys, just got out from a five week stay in the hospital, is on dialysis, and quite frail, so I was honored that they made the effort to drive up and meet me and of course deeply consoled to spend time with the both of them. We had a fabulous meal at a brand-new Lebanese restaurant (only been open five weeks) served by a waitress-hostess from Slovakia, who kept calling us “my darlings” and “lovelies” and a waiter from Nepal who told us that the only Lebanese person there is the chef.
That evening I had an entrée into the full depth of old-world Oxford culture, at Pembroke College, one of the oldest and most prestigious. We were the guests of chaplain, the Rev Andrew Teal, a long time Oxford fixture who knows everybody (including the storied NT Wright!). We first attended Compline, very much like our experience at Trinity except that the choir was even more refined and sang more of the music themselves. Afterward adjoined to his warm over-crowded office––his “rooms,” I suppose you might say, where he also does his tutorials, over-flowing with books and all various sorts of things. He was dressed in his black robe and old-fashioned cleric collar that drops down in front like a sort of forked bib (like the French Christian brothers wear). At that point he got each of us an academic robe to wear because we were going for a formal dinner at the high table, higher than Trinity’s. Mine was awkward to keep on (over my standard beige jippa). It was a loud evening, with many students attending, and yes, it looked even more like Hogwarts, and a delicious meal. Then we adjourned to another large room for Second Dessert. There were two long tables fully set with only fully lit candelabras for light. We were all instructed (at this point it was just faculty and invited guests from the high table) to sit with someone new. I sat next to a woman who introduced herself as an “American historian,” not that she’s from America, mind you, but she teaches American history. There were plates of fruit and candied ginger set around and four after dinner wines (every place had four different glasses as well) that were passed around three times. And… a tin of snuff. It was my first encounter with snuff. I did not imbibe. My interlocutor seemed to seemed to have an ironic if not negative view of all the whole affair. She was from another college and rarely if ever attends the formal dinner. She said to me, with her head turned so no one could hear her, “It’s all very performative, isn’t it?” It was the tin of snuff that put the whole scene over the top for me. And of course, the immersion in a culture so very much unlike anything that is a part of my life.
Wednesday so far was the highlight. We were back at Pembroke, this time for a meeting with someone I referred to as the wunderkind, Fitzroy Morrissey, who at 33 years old is a historian of the Islamic world and a fellow at All Souls College. He has a DPhil in Oriental Studies, speaks Arabic and Persian, and teaches Islamic Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and Theology. He has two books to his credit already, one on Sufi saints, which was how Aaron got involved with him, and another popular book called A Short History of Islamic Thought, which I subsequently bought and am enjoying thoroughly. My conversation with him was like sitting in on a Masters seminar and he very generously let me pick his brain about several things. He did assure me that I was on the right track in my thinking about several things, but also pointed out areas where I can deepen my understanding and how to do that. Among other things he recommended an obscure book that compares Sufi mysticism with Taoism via Chung Tzu and Ibn al’Arabi, which Aaron consequently found on PDF. We had him record that line from the “common word” from the Qur’an on Aaron’s phone so we could get the best pronunciation. (Aaron prays in Arabic but doesn’t always trust his knowledge, which is the sign of a good and humble scholar.) He then treated us to lunch in the Senior Common Room, a lot less formal than the high table, and no robes and no snuff. There he asked me about my own work and listened very attentively. Along the way, even as Aaron and I were planning this trip, the idea congealed that this could serve the purpose of networking with some good folks to my work with DIMMID, especially around dialogue with Islam, and that is indeed what it is turning out to be, and I am thrilled by it. We are discussing along the way areas of possible collaboration. It seems like a hop, skip and a jump from Rome to here by comparison.
