October 2019
Book Review
Although published five years ago and available only in French, this book deserves to be far more widely known than it is. It is a ground-breaking work surveying forty years of failed dialogue between mostly Catholic priests and Muslims. Since 1975 the papers from these conferences have been published annually in Rome in the journal Islamochristiana (IC) by the Pontifical Institute for Arabic Studies and Islamology (PISAI). A great number of quotations in La Mésentente are from this journal IC, while other cited passages are from books published by participants in the interreligious dialogue.
This illuminating and sobering work is one of several on Islam by Marie-Thérèse and Dominique Urvoy, the former a professor of Islamology, medieval Arab history, and the Arabic language at the Catholic Institute of Toulouse, and the latter a professor of Arabic thought and civilisation at the University of Toulouse II. The book consists of forty-two chapters on topics placed in alphabetical order, from “Abraham” to the “Unity of God.” It is subtitled, a dictionary of the doctrinal difficulties of the Islamo-Christian dialogue.
Loaded forum
Twenty-Four Muslims and twenty-four Christians have long been meeting in Rome every two years, or else are ready to gather there at any time of crisis. However, the Muslim press completely ignores this forum and does not publish its declarations to Muslim audiences. Among the Muslim participants are five former Christians, but there is no former Muslim among the Christians, for he would not be heard. Aref Ali Nayed protested vigorously in this forum when the Egyptian Magdi Allam was baptised by the pope in 2008. The public baptism of a Muslim was seen as a hostile gesture, a provocation. Although converts from Christianity are publicised without repercussions, those from Islam to Christianity are forced to hide even in Europe for fear of “sanctions” from the Muslim community.
Clerical compromisers
Sadly, quite a number of priests who participate in these interreligious dialogues are islamophiles ready to make fundamental concessions about doctrine for the sake of brotherhood and peace. They are the ones Cardinal Ratzinger was addressing in Dominus Iesus. Due to the justification of pluralism emerging from this dialogue, Ratzinger affirmed that the revelation of Jesus Christ is definitive and complete. Dominus Iesus was based on Vatican II’s Dei verbum, the Catechism, and Pope John Paul’s Fides et Ratio, and was approved by the pope. Nevertheless, Jean Marie Gaudeul, the director of the Secretariat for Relations with Islam in Rome, reacted in 2000 with a diatribe against it, charging that Ratzinger’s assertions were not well supported by council documents. He even asked how we could say that Muslims live something elaborated by human beings when Islam puts objectively at its centre a revealed truth in continuity with biblical revelation. This is a sample of the fundamental concessions being made by Catholic churchmen involved in talks with Muslims.
Dialogue of the deaf and masochistic
Little wonder that forty years of dialogue have produced such lean results and are reaching an impasse. Christian participants dare not bring up topics like exegesis, a critical view of sacred texts, the status of women, or the equality of believers and non-believers. If they demand reciprocity from Muslims it is taken as criticism. Yet Muslims demand that Christians “reciprocate” by having the very same veneration for Mohammed that they have for the prophet Isa [Jesus], and every reservation is taken as an insult. They also demand that Christians accept the Koran as the Book of God. Accepting those demands, of course, would mean becoming a Muslim.
Maxime Rodinson, a Jewish Marxist orientalist who observed the interreligious dialogue in Tripoli in 1976, said that he witnessed “masochism” on the Christian side and “absence of self-criticism” on the Muslim side. In the chapter titled “Abraham,” we learn that Rene Dagorn, in his 1981 book, declared that there was absolutely no Arab tradition before Islam about Abraham being the forefather of the Arabs. Dagorn’s own confreres in dialogue, such as the islamophile Michel Orcel, tried to downplay his book. They rejected his indisputable historical findings out of their passionate attachment to the Abrahamic origin of Islam. Claude Geffré and Michel Cuypers also insisted that God’s covenant with Abraham included Ismael and his Arab progeny.
Critics flee/Christians cower
In the chapter “Sciences Humaines,” we find that except for a few intellectuals, Muslims do not accept any historical criticism of their traditional sources and are hostile to historical analyses. Even authors reputed to be “reformers” such as Ali Merad are opposed. While Christians believe that God inspired Sacred Scripture but left room for human expression, Muslims believe the Koran was dictated word for word by God to Mohammed, leaving no room for human expression. God being the only speaker, they use the Koran as a source of undoubted facts. It is perilous for them to compromise on this issue.
In IC 1978 we learn that Fazlur Rahman, as a result of saying that the Koran is both divine and human — divine because God is at the origin of prophetic writing and human because there is a human author — had to flee from Pakistan and find refuge in America. In IC 1981, Mohammed Talbi, the Tunisian historian who is a pillar of dialogue, recounts how the Marxist Dr. Sadiz Gala Al-Azm dared to criticise Islam in 1969, saw his book suppressed, and also had to flee to America.
In IC 1989, Abdelwahab Boudiba says he regrets that self-criticism exists only among hidden circles of Muslims and that a public critique of Islam always comes from the exterior, often from former Muslims.
Amazingly, Christians involved in dialogue with Muslims will often attack converts from Islam whose testimony is not as conciliatory as they want it to be. For example, in 2010 the sincerity of Joseph Fadelle’s conversion to Christianity was questioned in a negative review of his book by Jean Marie Gaudeul, and bookshops in France have refused to sell books from the Quabel-editions founded by Mohammed-Christophe Bilek, a convert from Islam.
The "same God"?
Both Muslims and Christians in dialogue have claimed that the God of Muslims and the God of Christians is the “same God.” Even Pope John Paul II affirmed it at Casablanca in 1985 and again in Lebanon in 1990. In 1975, the islamologist Roger Arnaldez, a champion of interreligious dialogue, likewise said that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. However, by 1997 Arnaldez was having second thoughts. Now he asked, who is this one God? He noted that deists like Voltaire also believed in one God and were monotheists. He then concluded that philosophically Muslims and Christians have the same God, but not theologically.
Interestingly, converts from Islam to Christianity, who have made the change at the risk of their lives, are “absolutely certain that the God of Islam is not the God of Christianity.” They insist on it at a time when many priests in Europe refuse to receive Muslims who want to convert and tell them it suffices for them to be good Muslims.
Mohammed-Christophe Bilek, founder of the website for converts from Islam called “Notre Dame de Kabylie,” says he was “ébloui” (dazzled) by the discovery of the Gospel: there Jesus does not make me submit but makes me love Him in all liberty, teaches me that God is our Father, loves me, and wants to give me life and divinise me in Jesus Christ. Bilek then asks, “Did God create us free or slaves?” According to our answer, our God is “not the same.” He says he means the God of the Koran, not of Muslims, for they are “my human brothers and may tomorrow be my brothers in Christ.” Yes, provided that priests are brave enough to receive them.
Aversion and triumphalism
Muslims do not have Christologists in the way that Christians have Islamologists. They avoid the study of Christianity and only want to know how to refute it. For example, those at the head of the Islamic Centre in Madrid have lived in Spain for a number of years but still do not speak Spanish and ignore the faith of the Spanish people around them. One reason for this is that the Koran states about a dozen times that the Torah and the Gospel were altered or falsified (tahrif). Another reason is that they are repelled by kenosis (the voluntary self-abasement of Christ in becoming human; Phil. 2:6-7) and can’t conceive of a religion under the cross.
Moreover, the Koran in Sura 61:9 predicts the “absolute triumph” of Islam, so “triumphalism” marks the discourse of most Muslims. Mohamed Talbi even justifies the violence perpetrated by Mohammed in the Sira, his official 9th century biography, arguing that without that violence Islam would have vanished. The Muslims’ “collective sense of superiority” is also based on Sura 3:110, which calls the community founded by Mohammed “the best community that has been made to arise for men.” This praise is not conditional but absolute: the “best” (kuntum).
Christ denied
In the chapter on “Christ” in La Mésentente, we learn that long before Islam arose, Christian Arabs were naming the Messiah “Yasu,” a name which means “God Saves.” In the Koran Jesus is reduced to “Isa,” a mere mortal prophet who precedes Mohammed. Muslim participants in dialogue, like Mezri Haddad and Mohamed Talbi, think that if Isa had lived longer he would have become a warrior chieftain like Mohammed.
Since there is no Original Sin in Islam, there is no need for the Redemption. Hence Muslims deny the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. In the Koran, Isa himself denounces Christians for worshipping him as God, because in doing this they commit the unpardonable sin. In the chapter on “Pardon,” we learn that the God of Islam will forgive all sins except associationism, which is the sin that Christians commit when then “associate” a man (Isa) with God.
Muslims teach that Christians are ahl al-kitab, people of the book. But to accept this name is to accept the Islamic view of Christianity and reject the Incarnation. For in Islam, the Word of God is a book, but in Christianity the Word of God is the Person of Jesus Christ.
Implacable dominator vs loving saviour
Muslims and Christians also have a very different idea of the Covenant. The Lebanese islamologist Antoine Moussali says that in the Christian perspective the biblical Covenant was transformed in Christ from a master-servant relationship to one of love. But in Islam, God made a pact where He is always sovereign and the Muslims always his vassals. Francois Jourdan, in his 2007 book, writes that the God of Islam is not the saviour of the human race, but its dominator. It is worth noting too that Koranic verses on Mary come only out of apocryphal writings, not the New Testament. Also Islam alleges that Fatima, Mohammed’s daughter, had the same privilege of a “virginal birth.”
Problematic common prayer
In the entry on “Praying Together,” we learn that Muslims have pushed for prayer in common, but this is problematical. Praying together can mean either doing it side by side while not using the same formulas, or else using the same formulas and so being in communion with those of another religion. In 2007, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, gave a firm “no” to the latter, saying it would be syncretism. Nevertheless, we read in La Mésentente of a disturbing trend among Catholic priests toward syncretism. For example, Abbot Christian de Chergé (killed by Islamic terrorists) did his lectio divina in both the Bible and the Koran and called Christ the “only real Muslim.”
There is also danger in borrowing prayers from Islam. In the chapter on “Sahada,” the Muslim formulaic prayer which is their testimony of faith, we learn that if a person pronounces the Sahada in front of witnesses, he is considered a Muslim from that moment, is thereafter obliged to fulfill all the duties of a Muslim, and cannot retreat without becoming an apostate (murtadd) deserving of the death penalty.
No more compromise and cowardice!
In IC 2006 Giovanni Rizzi said that after Vatican II, Nostra Aetate was unjustifiably used for pastoral reasons in the dialogue with Muslims. Add this to all the other causes of our forty years of failed dialogue. La Mésentente is a call for Christians, especially priests interacting with Muslims, to stiffen their spines and stop being intimidated by the “triumphalism” of their counterparts in dialogue. Our Lady has promised that her Immaculate Heart will triumph. And so, with the Queen of Heaven on our side, what is there to fear?