wfn.org | LWI 2009-036 Christians Urged to Look to Luther for Insight on Relations with Islam

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Christians Urged to Look to Luther for Insight on Relations with
Islam

German Scholar Calls Luther’s Introduction to Qur’an “An
Early Act of Enlightenment”

BUDAPEST, Hungary/GENEVA, 9 July 2009 (LWI) – Martin Luther,
the 16th century Protestant Reformer, can help Christians today
to accommodate Islam in western societies, a German
constitutional expert told a Lutheran World Federation (LWF)
consultation in Budapest at the end of June.

Dr Gerhard Robbers, professor of public and constitutional law
at the University of Trier, recalled how Luther, introducing a
German translation of the Qur'an, said, "Read the Qur'an to
understand Islam better, to understand Muslims better, and in the
end, read the Qur'an to understand yourself better."

For Robbers, this statement was a true, and early, "act of
enlightenment" and a good example of trying "to understand the
other," something much needed in today's Europe marked by
increasing religious pluralism.

Twenty years after the fall of communism, the Budapest
consultation gathered representatives of Lutheran churches in
Europe and beyond on 26-29 June to discuss "Church and State in
Societies in Transformation."

Robbers said a major challenge in the transition in which Europe
now finds itself is "attributing an adequate legal status to
Islam and Muslims." In his paper "New forms of pluralism as
challenging and transformative factors," he emphasized that
Europeans need to remember how much Islam and Christendom have in
common. 

"Many in Europe have forgotten what their culture owes to Muslim
thought," he observed, pointing to the influence on medieval
Europe of Islamic ideas in philosophy, medicine, mathematics,
economics and diplomacy.  

"Many key features of the laws of international diplomacy have
origins [in] Muslim legal culture," said Robbers. "And certainly
religious tolerance, at least the tolerance for those religions
which have the Book in common, comes from Muslim thinking." 

He suggested seeking parallels between Lutheran and Islamic
thought in areas such as the role of Scripture - Luther's concept
of sola scriptura -, the place given to the realm of God and the
understanding that clergy are not required as mediators between
believers and God. 

"In Lutheranism, there is no necessity to have clerics, no
necessity to have hierarchical clergy," noted Robbers. "It is
very similar in Islam." (364 words)

A contribution by Stephen Brown, managing editor of Ecumenical
News International, who reported on the consultation for LWI.

>*        *          *

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