Three Experts Speak on Islam
In two separate gatherings on the campus of Calvin College, three commentators on Islam recently spoke, in strikingly different ways, of the need to better understand Islam and its aspirations.
Omid Safi
Speaking at one of the conferences, "Islam Beyond the Headlines," Qmid Safi, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina, said Islam is usually portrayed in a highly sensationalistic and misunderstood way by the media. He spoke to a group that filled all of the tables in a large meeting room at the Prince Center.
The other conference, held in the Calvin Theological Seminary auditorium, was titled "Christ Above All: Engaging the Challenge of Islam.” Presentations were given by Mark Durie, an Anglican vicar from Australia and writer on issues related to Islam, and Diane Obenchain, professor of religion at Calvin College and an instructor in World Religions at CTS.
At the Prince Center conference, Safi spoke in the morning about the media and other issues and later about the biography of the prophet Muhammad. Various breakout sessions were held at the conference that was co-sponsored by the West Michigan Academic Consortium and the Kaufman Institute.
In his opening address, Safi said news outlets tend to publish stories under the rubric "if it bleeds, it leads." That means consumers regularly receive news that stirs emotions but in the process can perpetuate ethnic, social, and religious stereotypes, Safi said.
For instance, said Safi, newspapers and news shows were full in August andSeptember with stories about the controversy surrounding construction of an Islamic center near Ground Zero in Manhattan. They also featured the Florida pastor of a small church who threatened to burn a Qur’an, the Muslim holy book, in commemoration of theSept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City, Washington D.C, and a Pennsylvania farm field, where a terrorist-driven airliner crashed.
"Why do we insist on giving a platform to hateful idiots?" asked Safi. "For every hateful idiot, there are 100 people doing extraordinary work without being recognized."
While saying that news outlets often misrepresent Islam, Safi acknowledged that there are those who fear Islam because of what they believe the Qur'an has to say about Christians and Jews. But he said focusing on small parts of any holy book only provides minimal insight into what a religion believes and practices. For that matter, there are many sects and faces of Islam. People should focus on similarities and not the differences, which will always be there, he said.
Author of a biography of Muhammad, Islam’s prophet, Safi said people have many wrong ideas of who Muhammad was and how he lived his life.
What bothers him, he said, is that people fight about the differences between religions and religious leaders when military might threatens the entire planet and takes up resources that could be used to bring billions of young people out of poverty.
He called for more divinely-ordained prophets, such as Amos of the Old Testament, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the driver of the 1960s civil rights movement, to rise up and speak to the many ills besetting the world and how we, as children of God, need not despair, but should instead get busy addressing the complex issues that divide and threaten to destroy us.
Safi said the U.S. and other nations are in need of substantial reform that "can come from people who are deeply rooted in their communities and sustained by love . . . God has breathed into us his spirit."
With so many issues to deal with, why squabble over matters that make the headlines but really have no lasting impact on most people’s lives? he asked.
"Be you a Christian or a Muslim, you do not need to sanctify unjust policies," he said. "We need to join together to be voices for the voiceless—those who are too hungry, tired, and powerless to speak."
Mark Durie
At last week's conference, the two religious experts examined the basic beliefs of Islam, the role that the love and life of Jesus Christ can play in working with Muslims, and how Muslims tend to treat non-Muslims in Muslim countries.
Mark Durie and Diane Obenchain provided different approaches that Christians can take if they want to understand and work with Muslims. Durie’s was more academic and demanding. Obenchain’s was based more on using the message of the Christian gospel as seen through the life and heard through the words of Jesus Christ.
One of Durie's themes was that people should become much more aware of what Islam really teaches. "Islam means submission to Allah, and Muslims practice their faith through submission. They are slaves of Allah," he said.
Durie also spoke of how countless people in the West are not aware of this driving force to dominate that is so important in Islamic thought. "Muslims at the core believe they have a divine destiny to guide the world," Durie told the audience.
Diane Obenchain
Obenchain, a specialist in the beliefs of a range of faith groups, didn't talk a great deal about the current state of Islam and focused instead on how followers of Jesus Christ ought to respond to Muslims with love and understanding and the sure knowledge and faith that it is God, not man, who changes minds and hearts.
She said Christians ought to step into the Muslim world "as humble clay jars, bearing witness to God's self-offering love of Christ, bearing witness to the treasure of God's paying the debt of sin for us, and bearing witness to the comfort of God, the Holy Spirit, that is with us, teaching us, guiding us, into all that is love and truth."
Although her academic specialty is Chinese studies, she did learn about Islam from one of the world’s most well-known Islamic scholars—Wilfred Cantwell Smith—when she was working on her PhD at Harvard University.
"We need to become aware that there are numerous and vastly different traditions of faith in the world," she said. "No longer do people live in isolation from one another. We need to recognize others as people (who may have beliefs different from ours) as we work through commonly shared problems."
