Why Muslim-Christian Understanding is Stupid

Georgetown University, like many other religiously concerned academies across the nation, has taken up the standard of “interreligious dialogue,” in a well-intentioned effort to heal the theological rift that supposedly divides our world. There is a well-funded Muslim-Christian Understanding program, which offers undergraduates a certificate once they've proven to understand Muslims and Christians sufficiently.

As the standard line goes, ethnic and religious conflict are the new fault lines inherited by the 21st Century, threatening the very success of globalization and harmonious interconnectedness. This threat crops up in the acrimony between the Jews and the Muslims in the Holy Land, the Hindus and the Muslims in Kashmir, or the Christians and the Muslims in the Philippines, Nigeria, Chechnya, Bosnia, Lebanon, and countless other worldwide flashpoints. Furthermore, as evinced by the previous sentence, this “clash of civilizations” usually falls into the template of Muslims vs. (insert any other religion here).

A Manichean struggle exists between two diametrically opposed forces. Such framing is similar to the Cold War framing of free capitalist democracy vs. International Communism. And indeed, in the War on Terror, the forces of Islam have inherited the dark mantel of the Bolsheviks as the new enemies of freedom. This new Enemy has many now-familiar names: al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamo-Fascism, etc. Conversely, in the Muslim world, this duality is now embraced in reverse, with the standard of Islam as the Good, and the Other (Zionism, the Great Satan, etc.) as the Evil.

Which brings us back to “Muslim-Christian dialogue.” It is an effort by progressive religious authorities and intellectuals to bridge this bipolar divide. If only the two faiths could understand and empathize with each other, then peace would reign. If only Christendom understood that Jesus is the second most important prophet in Islam. If only the Muslim umma recognized its common pan-Mediterranean history with European Christianity. If only Westerners knew what contributions to the “Western” arts and sciences Medieval Islam made, how the Andalusian scholars preserved the works of Plato and Aristotle to reintroduce Dark Age Europe to its own Greek heritage. If only all three Abrahamic faiths would recognize their common God and patriarchs. Jews and Muslims alike consider Ishmael the father of the Arab people, and his brother Isaac the father of the Jewish people. Could not the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions exist side-by-side as brothers—distinct, yet tied by blood?

Yes, they could! Once the Archbishop of Canterbury and the erudite ulama at Cairo’s al-Azhar Madrassa offered up enough “understanding,” coexistence will be magically achieved...

This project is a failure for two reasons. First, and most importantly, it acknowledges and internalizes the fiction of the aforementioned “clash of civilizations.” Notions of difference are socially constructed, and change over time. Religion, much like race, takes on very different identities, depending upon how it is framed. Secondly, it labors under the fallacy that people hate each other for academic theological reasons—reasons that can be reconciled through civil debate and “understanding.”

Kosovo is now the seventh nation wrenched from the ashes of the former Yugoslavia. Less than a generation ago, Kosovars, Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, Slovenians, Montenegrins, and Macedonians simply self-identified as “Yugoslavs.” There was very little religion to be seen amongst Tito’s citizens. Then, in the mid-1990s with Tito and the Soviet Union a distant memory, they all miraculously became sorted as Muslim “Bosnians,” Catholic “Croats,” and Orthodox “Serbs.” Some politicians rose using ethnic power bases and decided that each newly-coined group needed its own land. Some European diplomats agreed and immediately gave their official recognition to the breakaway nations. Lines were drawn on paper, and labeled with their proper ethno-religious label. In Bosnia would go the Muslims, in Croatia would go the Catholics, and in Serbia would go the Orthodox. But, as it turned out, there were some Serbs in Bosnia, some Bosnians in Croatia, and a bunch of Albanians in Serbian Kosovo. The rest is history. Suffice to say, there weren't many Bosnians shouting "Allahu Akbar" or Serbs with giant Crusader crosses in that particular conflict. The crucible of killing in among the southern Slavs was only religious in the nominal sense, and theological understanding will be unlikely to extinguish the still-smoldering landscape.

For over a century under British colonial rule, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians were “Indians.” Then, miraculously during the 1940s, they became Muslim “Pakistanis” and Hindu “Indians.” Later, in 1971, “East Pakistanis” magically became “Bangladeshis.” Never mind that “Hindu” India had more Muslims than “Muslim” Pakistan (India has the third highest number of Muslims of any other nation on earth, except Indonesia and Pakistan). In 1948, a line was drawn on paper, about two million people were slaughtered in the mad dash to find their way into their proper new religio-national space. Six decades hence, Muslims and Hindus take turns burning whole trains full of innocent people to death. Perhaps the two groups could reach common ground over their mutual love of setting commuters on fire.

Almost all of Iraq’s Christians—and most other religious minorities—have suddenly since 2003 found that their millennia of lineage in the Fertile Crescent doesn’t matter anymore. People who were all Iraqis in 2002 are now Sunni, Shi’a, Christian, Kurdish, etc. Lines are being drawn in paper and in blood, and hundreds of thousands are now casualties of the new scramble for classification and power. Was this a failure of “dialogue?” Did the Sunnis and Shi’a live in relative peace for twelve centuries in Iraq through theological discussion? Or perhaps, was theological debate the very culprit for perceived difference and resulting strife?

In the United States, we think of people with light skin as “white.” At the turn of the century, Irish immigrants were “black.” The term “WASP” (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) is a carry-over from the age when “Catholic” was a derogatory “racial” category, used pejoratively like “Jew” often still is. Polish people were “Pollocks,” Ukranians were “Bohunks,” Germans were “Krauts,” Italians were “Wops,” Jews were “Kikes,” and Canadians were “Canucks.” Did we heal these rifts by having Catholic-Protestant dialogue? Did the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope call a symposium?

The truth of the matter is that most Christians haven’t read the Bible, even those who attend weekly Church. It’s pretty darn long. A large proportion hasn’t skimmed more than a few pages. If asked, they would completely fail to explain the nuances of the Holy Trinity, the degree of divinity and humanity constituting the identity of the Christ, the relative importance of faith verses good works, the relationship between Original Sin and Divine Grace, or the weight given to free will and determinism. Do most Christians know that women should wear a hijab-like veil in church?

The Qur’an is just as long, and perhaps more opaque to the untrained eye. It has no traditional narrative format, parts seem contradictory, its revelatory maxims often shift according to when they were received by the Prophet (the prohibition against drinking alcohol is only the most interesting example). For this reason, the reader can cherry-pick the Qur’an as a work of peace or of war, see Allah as a God of stern punishment or tender grace, and frame their relationship with other faiths as being between the common dhimmi (“Peoples of the Book”), or the arch-enemy kuffir (“refuser”) who must be converted or slain.

Open the Old Testament and randomly point to a passage. If you do this enough, you will eventually find something very troubling. Perhaps a passage filled with Divinely-sanctioned genocide, incest, rape, or a whole host of other subjects that tend not to make it into sermons at Church or Temple.

So where does a through understanding of these texts leave us? Will a rich Lebanese Maronite Christian banker really get along with his Shi’ite unemployed neighbor because they both like Jesus? Will the fact that both trace their religious ancestry to Abraham help the young Hezbollah fighter to reapproach with the radical Zionist settler? Will the Pat Robertson suddenly change his tone toward the Muslim enemy if her knew that the Bible and the Qur’an both sanction polygamy?

Whenever I mention Pakistan or Pakistanis to my mother, she drifts to the same warm impression she has of a Pakistani co-worker she’s enjoyed working with for years at her college. With a smile, she eagerly relates what intelligence and integrity he has. She’s never been to Pakistan, knows almost nothing about it, knows even less about its majority-Muslim religion, and this co-worker is just about the only Pakistani she has ever known. But for the rest of her life, perhaps, she’ll associate Pakistan and its sons and daughters with positive notions of “intelligence” and “integrity.” In this way, she’s like most Beiruti shopkeepers, Indian farmers, and Iraqi lawyers. Until all the politicians and academics stepped in to tell them what to think about certain people, their neighbor was simply the simple man with the charming smile, who’s daughter went to school with theirs, and who’s wife made great hummus.

This, and not academic dialogues, is how people have understood and related to each other since the beginning. And so it shall be for the future.