Dispatches from Al-Azhar in Cairo

It has been deeply interesting to participate this week in a dialogue in Cairo between Muslim and Christian scholars alongside a group of graduate students. This is a time of great sensitivity in Egypt  on account of recent events in Gaza, which makes it all the more important that such mutual engagements and study are still taking place. 

An unusual aspect has been the possibility of mutual discussion of some core concepts in theology and spirituality, with a particular focus on Sufi Islam. Such conversations break from the long standing convention that interfaith dialogue should only be about issues of shared practical concern. In this case, the continuities between aspects of Christian and Muslim spirituality and mysticism are fascinating to trace.*

Discussions about the content of faith are always profoundly challenging, since they pertain to beliefs which each side views as fundamental to the way that entire lives should be lived. Insofar as such dialogue can be successfully undertaken, these discussions offer a model of how very deep levels of disagreement can be managed with authenticity. Nonetheless, the concepts of tolerance and respect are easy to speak of, but much harder to live out in practice when we are confronted with important beliefs which we deem to be wrong. 

Managing to disagree well is, at its most challenging, when what we disagree about truly matters – as it surely does when we suppose beliefs to have eternal consequences for those who hold them. Recent conflicts and terrorism, as well as the wider course of history, remind us painfully of what can arise in the face of disagreement between people who consider themselves to be of faith.  

This aspect and the sensitivities entailed sometimes seems to be wilfully overlooked in the ever more secular West. The rashness of unexamined secular presumptions was made dramatically clear some years ago, at the start of one interfaith conference. The organisers, unthinkingly it seemed, simply informed the participants that it had to be accepted by all as a given that no one could legitimately lay claim to exclusive truth. The extremely high level Muslim delegation immediately felt they had no choice but to leave in the face of what they understood to be a requirement that they renounce their faith as a prerequisite to participation. They were only, with much difficulty, persuaded to stay on after this unconsidered but profoundly alienating presupposition of agnosticism was dropped by the organisers.

It was valuable also to see that deep differences of view can extend beyond the realm of what we might consider to be the purely religious, as we see in the case of how we understand human rights. There have been several important declarations of rights written from an Islamic perspective and these raise interesting questions as to why they were felt necessary. Is it that they capture rights claims somehow unique to Islam? Or is it that they merely seek to show that the Western concept of universal rights can be authentically located within uniquely Muslim sources of revelation?  

One thing that discussions have made clear is that there are many different approaches and schools of thought within both Islam and Christianity to such questions. This entails recognition that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not nearly as monolithic as many proponents often seem to suppose. It also reminds us that managing disagreement is as important within as well as between particular faith traditions.

All this demonstrates just how important and how difficult it can be to achieve what some have called that “deep pluralism” within which there is space to respect and live with others who hold views with which we deeply disagree. Nonetheless, the obligations of Christian charity – and our shared commitment to love our neighbours as ourselves – must entail that we strive mightily to succeed; with God’s grace, we should be assured that we can! 

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*Such continuities also point powerfully to philosophical connections of which Neoplatonism would be an example. While somewhat speculative in regard to early Sufism, the influence of this particular form of Greek philosophy on Sufi theology is clear by the late twelfth century. By then, the Andalusian Sufi Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) and his disciples had established the doctrine of the “unity of being” (waḥdat al-wujūd), based on emanation theory manifestly informed by Neoplatonic ideas. Ibn Arabi’s status as the “Greatest Master” (al-Shaykh al-Akbar) then assured the continuing presence of Neoplatonic ideas in subsequent Sufi theology — despite the varying fortunes of his overall metaphysics in later periods. 

Thus, by the thirteenth century, in which both the Muslim poet Rumi and the Christian Eckhart were born, there is a clear presence of Neoplatonic thought within both Islamic and Christian mysticism. (And it should be noted that for all that Rumi rebuked Mu’tazilite theologians for their rational approach, he still accepted the general framework of Platonist emanation theory). And by that time, Christian theology and philosophy had been significantly influenced through the reverse translation and recovery of original Greek Neoplatonic texts from Arabic into Latin starting from the late tenth century, with Platonic elements being preserved within what was overtly considered Aristotelian framing as is evident in even Aquinas.

The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Rector