Bishop Nazir Ali’s address for Opportunity International given in Sydney

I’m very glad to be here, of course, tonight, and I look forward to some response from the audience and some discussion of the issues we face. It is obviously a subject that is very sensitive and yet at the same time extremely relevant to the world in which we live.

I want to begin with some general observations about the nature of religious awareness or a spiritual sense. Research is discovering more and more that religious awareness or a spiritual consciousness is something that is innate in human beings. It is not acquired, it is not a virus with which people are infected from outside but we are born with it, it is deeply wired into the human psyche. And so we can say that human beings are naturally spiritual, whatever expression of spirituality they may adopt. And this is also being said about children, that they have an inborn sense of the spiritual, which, as a matter of fact, is sometimes driven out of them by grown.

Of course religion is a very personal matter, a deeply personal matter. It puts us in touch with our spiritual roots. It points us personally to what is beyond us to the transcendent. But it also has a social dimension, and that is something that is pertinent to what I have to say tonight. Quite often the function of religion in terms of social cohesion is pointed out. And it is true that for many societies religion provides the glue that sticks people together in particular communities and that it often lies at the root of many of our laws, our institutions and our values whether that is acknowledged or not.

But that is not all. Religion does not just have a conservative function. Particularly with Judaism, Christianity and Islam it also has a function of social criticism, what might be called the prophetic dimension. That is to say it enables those who are oppressed, for example, to organise themselves against the powerful. It enables people to work for social renewal. It makes it possible for individuals to raise their voices against what they may see as injustice in society. This prophetic critical role of religion we cannot ignore in our own context.

Of course we all know that religion can go horribly wrong. In recent years I have seen with my own eyes the linking up of religion with a particularly vicious kind of chauvinistic nationalism. At the height of the Bosnian conflict I went on behalf of Christian Aid to see how Christian Aid and Islamic relief were working together in Bosnia and it was quite clear that some forms of religion had become as it were the veneer for a very nasty kind of chauvinistic nationalism. And nowadays of course we are aware of the way in which religion, particular kinds of religion, have got associated with terrorist activity. More of that in a few moments.

But of course if religion goes wrong, then it is not unique in that sense because there are other basic aspects of the human condition which also go wrong. The love between people – that can go wrong. Many of us have experience of that. Patriotism. I arrived in Australia on ANZAC Day, I think it was, I mean it is a wonderful display of patriotism but we all know how patriotism / love of ones nation can become excessive and excluding. So that can go wrong. Even entrepreneurial flair, dare I say in the presence of Opportunity International, can go wrong and result in the exploitation of people rather than in a good stewardship of creation. So religion is not alone in terms of human activities, if it does go wrong from time to time.

However, it is also worth noting that in the last Century, by which of course I mean the 20th Century, that the greatest reasons for violence, for oppression, for the denial of human freedoms, have been secular ideologies – National Socialism, Stalinism, the Cultural Revolution in China and of course most recently the Baath party in Iraq. These were all avowedly secular movements that have brought about a great deal of suffering to humanity, so religion has no monopoly here either

But coming to my subject, both Christians and Muslims represent two of the world’s religions. They are both missionary religions and they are both spreading quite quickly across the globe. And this is one of the reasons why Christians and Muslims should be talking to one another, getting to know one another, making sure that we live in a peaceful world in peaceful communities in peaceful nations. There is now no option, if ever there was about this. And so our subject matter tonight is very important indeed.

I just want to say a little bit about the background to Muslim/Christian relations and then something about the contemporary situation with some issues for the future that are relevant.

Now in terms of history, there was never a time when Christians and Muslims were not living together, talking to one another, having to relate to one another. They have always been in some kind of encounter with one another. This, along with Judaism is something that is quite unique to Muslim/Christian relations. The prophet of Islam, from the earliest days was, aware of a Christian presence in Arabia in itself, in trading missions which he carried out on behalf of a woman who was his employer who later became his wife, he came across Christians in countries like Syria. And indeed it was in those countries that Islamic tradition claims his mission was first recognised. So Islamic tradition will name two monks called Bahira and Nestur who were supposed to have recognised that there was something special about the prophet of Islam even before he began his work. His wife Khadija, who had been his employer, who was considerably older than him, seemed to have Christian relatives and there is a record of them and their interaction with Muhammad the prophet of Islam and their influence indeed on him. All the time that Khadija was alive their marriage was monogamous, and some have taken that to mean that she had a Christian background.

When the prophet began his mission in Mecca it was strenuously opposed by the pagan Meccans because they were engaged in a cult of the so called daughters of Allah – Alat, Al-Manet and Al-‘Uzza – and Mohammad’s preaching of Monotheism, of the oneness of Allah, who could not have daughters was opposed by them rather like the Ephesians opposed the preaching of St Paul because it threatened the cult of Artemis of the Ephesians, “great is Diana of the Ephesians”, they said, you remember at the time of the riot.

When persecution became unbearable for the early followers of the prophet he remained behind in Mecca himself, but he sent his followers into exile as refugees into the Christian kingdom or the Christian empire of Abyssinia or Ethiopia, where they were received by immigration officials (as refuges always are) who interrogated them, as refugees are even today as you know. But the interrogation was rather different from what might happen today. It was theological interrogation. The Negus, the ruler of Ethiopia and his officials wanted to know what these people believed about Jesus and about Mary. And the Muslims said that they believed that Jesus was a Word from God and a spirit from him and that he had been born of a virgin. This appeared to satisfy the Ethiopian officials and they were given refuge on that basis. This act of hospitality by a Christian people has a place of great honour in the Muslim story, the early Muslim story.

When Mohammad went to medina and acquired temporal power, there was certainly considerable tension between the Muslims and Jewish tribes and certain unpleasant things happened to some of the Jewish tribes, which we must in all honesty record. But quite soon he promulgated something called the Constitution of Medina in which the rights and duties of all the different religious communities were recognised and they were placed on an equal footing. So that was the first Islamic state and when Muslims say to me that they want to have an Islamic state here or there, I often say to them is it going to be like the Constitution of Medina, the first, the most primitive example of an Islamic state.

Later on Mohammad concluded treaties with both Jews and Christians in many different ways. When the Christians of Najran came to visit him, he accommodated them in the mosque of the prophet in Medina, where of course Christians are not allowed these days on pain of death. But they were accommodated in the mosque and eventually there was again a theological dialogue, and on the basis of that dialogue a treaty was concluded. The Christian of Najran asked the prophet of Islam what he believed about Jesus. And again Mohammad said that he believed that Jesus as a word from God and a spirit from him and so forth. And the Christians then said, “is he the son of God”, to which of course the prophet replied “no”, having opposed the cult of the daughters of Allah he could hardly now say that Allah had a son after all! I mean we have got to understand the Muslim denial of the sonship of Christ. So the Christians of Najran then said, “well whose son is he then? If you acknowledge the virgin birth, that he has no human father, who’s son is he?” And those who know Arabic will know that people are often called by their father’s name, by being the son of their father. Osama Bin Laden is a clear case – Osama who is the son of Laden. “Well whose son was Jesus, then?” they said.

Now, the Koran gives two answers to this question. Overtly so. The first is, that Jesus is the son of Mary. So what was in Jewish Christian polemic, a title that was used as an insult about Jesus was turned by Islam into a title of honour. Jesus, the Messiah, the son of Mary is said about Jesus again and again in the Koran.

Secondly, the Koran asks the Christians a counter question – whose son was Adam? And the answer, then, that is given is that just as God created Adam out of nothing so by his creative word he created Jesus in Mary’s womb, out of nothing. Kun-fa-yakunu – be and it was, it says, a formula that Muslims often use to speak of God’s creative power.

The point that I am trying to make about the prophet of Islam’s relationship with Jews and Christians in the context of peninsular Arabia, is that during his lifetime, these communities were tolerated and indeed treaties were concluded with them.

Very quickly of course, after the death of the prophet, Islam spread outside Arabia. It was beginning to do so already during his lifetime but it spread very rapidly into what was then the Christian Middle East. It spread into Syria, into Egypt into Palestine, into Mesopotamia, it began to knock at the doors of Byzantium. The Persian Empire, which was the other great superpower to Byzantium in those days, fell very quickly.

But as far as the Christian Middle East is concerned, many of the great cities were surrendered to the Muslims peacefully. The gates of Damascus were opened for the Muslim armies by the family Almansur – the family of the one who was later to become St John of Damascus. The Melkite governor in Egypt surrendered, and the gates of Jerusalem were opened fore the Muslims by the patriarch Sophronius who invited the caliph Umar to pray in the church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Omar declined to do so saying that if he did the Muslims would use this as an excuse to turn the church of the Holy Sepulchre into a mosque. So he went outside and prayed. And of course if you have been to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, you will remember that the mosque of Umar is right outside. So he was right about a mosque being built where he prayed.

Although many of these countries and cities surrendered to the Muslim armies there was, it has to be said, in those early days, sometimes without the knowledge of the Caliph, the destruction of Jewish and Christian communities. The Jews and Christians of peninsular Arabia were expelled on the basis of a prophetic tradition that Arabia should have only one faith. It’s a tradition that I regard as dubious because the prophet himself never did anything like that during his lifetime. But that is what happened to them.

Some communities were destroyed, others were dispersed, sent into exile not allowed to remain in their original homes. And there was also gradually a system of structural discrimination that was put in place. Now when the Muslim armies arrived in predominantly Christian countries, which of course had Jewish populations, they had to rely on their Christian and Jewish subjects for much of their administration that had to be carried on, and even some of the judicial work. So the codes of Justinian and Theodosius were taken over almost wholesale by the Islamic system simply so that daily affairs could carry on as they had been.

The structured discrimination took various forms, of course, which you can still see reflected in many Muslim countries. For example, a Muslim man could marry Christian or Jewish women, but Christians or Jewish men could not marry Muslim women. Eventually a system was established which is called the Dhimma – a word which means “responsibility”- which meant that the Muslims would protect the Christians and the Jews, later on the Zoroastrians, and later on even people of other faiths, as long as they did not claim equality with Muslims, that they accepted certain kinds of civil disabilities that were opposed on them. For instance they had to wear a special kind of dress, they could not ride on horses but had to ride on donkeys, they had to give way to Muslims, they had to pay a special tax, their houses could not be higher than Muslim houses, their churches could be maintained and repaired with the permission of the Muslim ruler but no new churches or synagogues could be built and so forth.

This system of the Dhimma survived from the earliest time of Islam, from the 7th or 8th century right up to the 19th. And it was because of these different factors of dispersal of discrimination and so forth, that the Christian majorities of countries like Egypt and Syria were gradually reduced to minorities.

Now, the thing about the Dhimma is that it is both an advance and a problem. It is an advance because it tolerated people of another faith within the Islamic polity at a time when this was not usually the case. I mean it was not the case in Western Europe, for instance. So in that sense it was a genuine advance, if you like. But it was a problem because it institutionalised discrimination against certain groups of people. There were certainly outbreaks of persecution from time to time and it removed groups of people from decision-making and from government for centuries.

However, if we look at the Dhimma we also have to look at the development of the Islamic empire. Not under the first dynasty of caliphs the Ummayad dynasty, but certainly under the second dynasty, the Abbasids, the Islamic empire flowered into a very great civilisation and people have asked how did these people who came from the desert produce this civilisation? Well there are many different answers that can be given to such a question. One of course is that they wanted to develop themselves into that kind of civilisation. But what is not so often acknowledged is that the Christians and Jews played a major role in the development of Islamic civilisation intellectual material and even spiritual. For instance, the major part of Greek philosophical, medical and scientific works were translated generally by Christian translators who were quite often clergy, either from the Greek or from Syriac into Arabic. Of course Muslim commentators and practitioners took over what they learnt from these translations, embellished them and improved them, and eventually quite a lot of this corpus of Greek learning was taken back to Western Europe by Jewish traders. So all three communities were involved in this exercise of civilisation building and when Christians look at what is best in Islamic civilisation they can be proud of the contribution that they themselves have made to it.

There were two great disruptions to this civilisation. The Mongols who invaded the Middle East and Europe from Central Asia and, of course, the Crusades which began as a response to the actions of Seljuk Turks in the lands of the bible. The Crusades were an attempt, initially, at containing the Seljuks and opening up access to the Holy Land for pilgrims. Those who suffered most, however, when the original aim was lost were the Eastern Christians. Nor were the Crusades directed solely at Muslims. There were Crusades against the Jews, Western heretics, like the Albigenses and against the city of Constantinople.

Eventually the Arabs lost primacy as it were in the Muslim world and they were replaced by various groups of Turkish rulers – the last of which were the Ottomans who established the great Ottoman Empire. And under the Ottoman Empire the Dhimmi system of protected peoples, was refined to its finest point so different denominations of Christians, of Jews, of other religions, almost became nations within the empire and were treated like that.

Things remained like that up to the 19th century when growing western relations with the Ottoman Empire – military and commercial – started to put pressure on the Ottomans to modify and eventually abolish the Dhimma. And this was done by successive edicts of the caliph in the middle of the 19th century. The minorities, at least in theory, were given equal rights with Muslims, there was a long period after the last edict in which a very despotic ottoman caliph took over and literally everyone’s rights were forgotten then, including Muslims. But in the early part of the 20th century in the Arab world because of these edicts and, to some extent, dissatisfaction with ottoman rule a nascent nationalism emerged which is called the Nahda, or the period of renewal. And for the first time Christian Arabs played a very significant role in the re-emergence/renewal of a sense of Arab ness among the Arabs. Out of all proportion to their numbers. Even in the early 20th century the number of Arab Christians was much greater than it is now, because of emigration and all sorts of other reasons. But they played a very significant part and if you look at the history of political parties in Egypt, in Iraq in Syria you will see that they had many Christian leaders and even founders. Michel Aflak, for instance - the great Baathist leader, the founder of the Baath party - lived in retirement in Iraq even when Saddam Hussein was the president and he took precedence over Saddam Hussein when he was alive.

So Arab nationalism accepted theoretically, intellectually, what the edicts of the ottoman caliphs had decreed. It accepted that people were to be citizens in the new Arab states regardless of religion.  Now of course the creation of Israel and the exodus of Jews from Arab countries meant that this was now restricted very much to Christians and Muslims. But of course up until 1948 the Jews were w major part of the scene. Some 20% of the population of Baghdad was Jewish until 1948. and it wasn’t just Arab nationalism, but other kinds of nationalism also emerged. For instance Turkish nationalism, which replaced the decaying Ottoman Empire and which had a particular attitude to Islam just as Arab nationalism had, where Islam was seen as an aspect of culture and no more than that. Indian Muslim nationalism which wanted a separate homeland for the Muslims because it was felt that without that they would not be able to preserve their identity and Christians in what is now Pakistan supported the Muslims because they thought that a minority which had the experience of oppression would not oppress another minority. That, of course, has not proved to be the case, but that was the hope.

Certainly to each of these nationalisms the Christians made a signal contribution if you think of the constitutions of Islamic states that were written in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, you will find that Christian jurists like Chief Justice AR Cornelius of Pakistan made a signal contribution to the emergence of Muslims states. This is a paradox but its true and Sir Norman Anderson in England as well.

So what happened then? Why did Arab nationalism recede into the background? Why is Turkish nationalism even today struggling? What happened in Pakistan from the great vision of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to a state that became to some extent theocratic?

Well, there are all sorts of answers that can be given to this but the return to Islamism, or the turning to Islamism one should say, to the view that Islam could provide all the answers for polity, for the economy, for living together, there are several reasons why this began to happen and people began to turn away from nationalistic ideologies.

The first is undoubtedly the experience of colonialism. People began to feel increasingly that it was during the period of colonialism that Muslim nationalist leaders had learned their ideologies of one kind or another and that they were not home grown, they were not Muslim in inspiration and that in the end they would remain an exotic plant in Muslim soil. This experience of colonialism was reinforced by the experience of neo-colonialism. Many of you will remember of course what happened at the time of Suez, which Muslims certainly understand as an experience of neo-colonialism. But also, for instance, when a moderately socialist government was elected in Iran in the 1950s this was destabilised by Western powers because it wouldn’t give them oil concessions. Prime minister Mossadegh was removed and the Shah was brought back. The Islamic Revolution of 1978 and 79 is reaping the harvest of the removal of Mossadegh – a secular socialist leader – and installing the Shah in his place.

But, neo-colonialism also surfaced later on in the situation in Afghanistan where the West armed, trained and financed different kinds of very extreme Muslim groups simply to make sure that Afghanistan became the Vietnam of the Soviet union, which of course it did but once again almost every terrorist movement now in the Muslim world has its origins in the killing fields of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

So colonialism and neo-colonialism and their corruption of the Muslim elite. If you read the work of 19th and 20th century Islamic reformers, they certainly rail against the West and what was then a colonial situation. But they give almost equal time to condemning the corruption of their own leaders. And today also, many Islamist movements, not necessarily extremist at all, will focus on how Muslim countries have been ruined by the excesses of their own leadership. So that was another reason.

The failure of both Command Economy Socialism on the one hand and of Capitalism on the other, in the Muslim world. So Command Economy Socialism, which still survives in some places, resulted in inefficiency, in corruption, in a lack of goods in the shops, it made the poor poorer and even the rich became poorer in some situations! And capitalism, where it was tried in countries like Iran and Pakistan, made the rich richer but it made the poor poorer. And if you think of the revolution in Iran, it started in the slums of South Tehran, much improved since the revolution, but still you can see what it might have been like. And it moved from South Tehran to North Tehran where the Shah was trying to build a kind of Switzerland. So those I think are the main reasons why people moved from nationalistic ideologies to Islamist solutions.

Now if I may outline very quickly some issues that we are facing because of what has happened through the course of history. I am sorry that this is such a potted history, but I don’t have time for greater detail.

The first question that nearly every Muslim country is facing is the relationship between religion and the state. The answer that some Islamist movements are giving is that the relationship is one of coercion – the state and Muslims living in it need to be coerced into being fully Islamic. However, there are many Muslims who see that this is not the way. I was in dialogue with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Pakistan. He wrote an article and I wrote a reply and so forth. In his article he said the role of Islam in Pakistan is not to impose an Islamic state, but to persuade Muslims in following the way of Islam. Well I have no difficulty with that whatever. But whether it is coercion or whether it is influence is a key question in terms of the relationship of religion to state – and not just in the Muslim context. This is also a question in Britain, it is also a question I expect in Australia.

The question of theocracy is always around the corner in Muslim contexts but I have to say that whenever movements in the Muslim world have advocated theocracy, they have been very quickly marginalized. The Kharijites – the people on the outside, the people who were expelled – were the classic theocrats. La hokan illa lillahi – No rule but that of God alone. But they were never mainstream. Mainstream Islam has always had intermediate institutions. The Caliphate itself is an intermediate institution, the judiciary. Many other examples can be given in the religious, political and social spheres.

Another issue in this area of relationships between religion and state has to do with government by consent. I use that term advisedly, because the term “democracy” is a loaded word and it is my fear that some people will try to impose forms of democracy that have originated in other contexts on Muslim countries and they will once again be seen as exotic and will not take root and actually will cause further disruption and disturbance.

But in many Muslim contexts, there are customs and traditions of government by consent. I was very pleased when in Afghanistan there was no attempt to impose Western forms of democracy but the Loya Jirga - which is not particularly Islamic but a traditional way of gathering people together - was used modified so that, for example women could participate in it, and that it has produced a solution, at least for the time being. Similarly in Iraq I hope that the temptation to introduce American democracy where everybody is elected from the person who takes your refuse away to the local Judge, that temptation is resisted and that Arab customs of Shura (consultation), of baica (of acknowledging leadership) are used to develop local forms of government by consent varying from one place to the other, of course.

And then there is the $64,000 question, which is that of the development of the Sharia, of Islamic law. Now many Islamist movements claim that the Sharia is given, that you cannot change it in any way, it cannot develop. This is quite wrong, because in three of the four main Sumni schools of law there are principles of movement in the Sharia, which allow the jurist to engage with the context, and in each school there is a different way of doing it. This is also the case in Shiite Islam. I was talking to some senior Ulama in Iran some time ago and they said that the relationship between revelation and reason is crucial for Shiism, especially in relating Sharia contexts.

There is only one, school dominant in Saudi Arabia, which does not allow any taking into account of the context but many others do and we look forward to engagement on this question, Muslim thinkers have begun to write about this now.

One other very big question in Muslim/Christian relations has to be on the justifiability of conflict in the context of international order, the need to keep peace. Christians are used to the “Just War” theory, as some have, of course, applied recently in the conflict in Iraq. I have done so myself. But Just War theory now has to be adjusted to new kinds of conflict, which are emerging because they are not war in the formal sense very often. But the point I want to make now is not so much about that, but in Muslim/Christian dialogue we need to bring about an engagement between Just War Theory as Christians have held it and the Islamic idea of Jihad.

I said this once to some American officials, and they said “Oh Bishop, we know what Jihad is we don’t need you to tell us”. I think it is very dangerous for the west to misunderstand the concept of Jihad, which is a very broadly based one in Muslim tradition. The word, as you know, comes from the root verb “jahada” which means to make an effort. And one expression of it ijtihad is used by jurists precisely to relate the law to context. But the word jihad is also used in many other senses. The sutis – the Islamic mystics – use it in terms of overcoming the lower self so that the higher self, the spiritual self, has control over the lower self. But even in the case of armed conflict jihad quite often means the permissibility of conflict when Islam is in danger.

In the 19th century when some Wahabbi movements wanted to wage jihad against the British in India, many Muslim leaders like Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, said “no, Jihad would not be lawful in this context because Islam is not in danger”. So I think it would be profitable for Muslims and Christians to talk together about Just War and Jihad, because some convergence on when conflict might be justifiable - to prevent terrorism, for instance - would be very useful for the International situation, to say the least.

There is then the question of reciprocity. This is a word that we hear quite often. Reciprocity for me does not mean tit-for-tat. It doesn’t mean because Muslims can have a Mosque in Sydney therefore Christians must have a church in Rujadh, though some people might argue for that. It really means that Muslims and Christians, wherever they may be, together should be committed to respect basic human freedoms. Freedoms of expression, of worship, of speech wherever they are and whenever they have influence

And finally, there is the relationship of poverty to terrorism. This is not a straightforward matter but it is hugely important for us. It is certainly true that many of the leaders of terrorist movements are not from the poor. They are very rich and certainly very well educated and they have acquired technological expertise. But they USE the poor to further their aims. This is certainly the case with Al-Qaeda, it was the case with the Taliban that those poor children whose parents could not send them to ordinary schools who were sent to the madarssas in Pakistan and Afghanistan were radicalised by people who did have the resources and who put the recourses to work in these thousands of religious schools.

So fiscal reform in Pakistan, which President Musharraf began, which has now run aground to some extent I am sorry to say, was very important because without fiscal reform a state can never provide the infrastructure that will help the poor. Education – government regulation of the madarssas is vital, and again there has been some partial success in that area but the widening of the syllabus, making sure that people are aware of what is going on in the rest of the world is crucial if the children in these schools are not to be brainwashed. But alongside that, measures to enable people to earn a decent living, to enable them to have skills so that they can get a job.

And I think it is here that the work of Opportunity International is so important in the Muslim world, to give people the means to earn their bread, perhaps to employ one or two people and it is from that, that there will be a genuine challenge to the kind of poverty that is such a breeding ground for extremist movements of all kinds. I urge Opportunity International not to forsake the Muslim world because things are difficult. We should not just be looking for short-term gains, for reports that read well and reassure our supporters. What we need is faithful, committed and long-term presence. It is that which will make a difference.

Thank you.

The Rt Rev Michael Nazir Ali
Bishop of Rochester
May 2003