wfn.org | [ENS] Listening: Christian-Muslim Forum inaugurated with address from

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Episcopal News Service
Listening, Learning & Epiphany

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Christian-Muslim Forum inaugurated with address from Archbishop of
Canterbury

Photographs are available online at:
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/40/75/acns4099.cfm

[ENS, SOURCE: Anglican Communion News Service] Archbishop of Canterbury
Rowan Williams' addressed the inaugural meeting of the Christian-Muslim
Forum January 24, 2006. The full text follows:

Prime Minister, friends it's a very great delight to be able to welcome
you
here on this, I hope, historic occasion.

Although today is overshadowed very seriously for all of us by our great
loss in the death of Zaki Badawi earlier today, this event also helps to
focus something of what we might hope for in the work of this forum.
Because
one thing that certainly could be said of Zaki was that he managed to
make
Islam ordinary and expected, a part of the British scene. Someone who
was a
spokesman for an important and recognised element in the British
community
overall. Someone who spoke, you might say, for Muslims as citizens of
this
country.

And in a way that is part of the agenda of the forum, as it evolves.
We're
looking for conversation and co-operation between two communities of
faith
that will remind the whole of our society that faith is a perfectly
normal
activity for human beings, indeed those of us who are committed would
say
that it's the most normal activity you could possibly imagine. And
instead
of being an eccentricity, practised by slightly weird British people and
very very strange foreigners, it's just something that belongs in the
fabric
of civic life in this country and which makes, I dare to say, an
irreplaceable contribution to the civic life of this country.

We are not people of faith because we want to make a contribution to
civic
life; we are people of faith because we believe that what we believe is
true. Nonetheless, we need to say in a society that's both sceptical and
chaotic at the moment, that the commitments of faith to human dignity
and
liberty are essential to the life of a healthy society. I think that the
presence of the Prime Minister with us here tonight is testimony to the
fact
that this is something increasingly recognised in our public life. What
we
do here in terms of Christian Muslim co-operation and conversation, is
part
of two wider pictures. One of them, as you've been reminded, is the
picture
of interfaith co-operation overall. The new forum takes its place
alongside
other more established networks which seek to promote understanding and
co-operation. But the other wider picture is the international one, and
it's
very interesting to look back at the last decade or more in which this
forum
has been growing
 to maturity, and see how it takes its place alongside a whole
international
programme, working for understanding and co-operation.

My predecessor put in place a number of vitally important initiatives in
this respect, it was he who began the work which has led to the
establishment of this forum. It was he who oversaw the beginnings of the
dialogue that we continue between the Church of England and al-Azhar in
Cairo. It was he who, of course, saw through the formation of the
Alexandria
declaration with the hopes that that provided of religious communities
in
the Holy Land contributing to reconciliation there.

And that international situation is something which becomes more and
more
evident and immediate to us in this country, day by day. As our whole
world
evolves the old idea of nation states with impervious boundaries becomes
more and more improbable and unreal. We are all involved like it or not,
in
global conversations and exchanges. Our political habits, our religious
convictions are no longer to be seen as local peculiarities, they are
part
of one story across the world.

Just before Christmas, my wife and I spent a week in Pakistan. A very
eventful week where I think it is fair to say we were worked to our
limits
and almost beyond, but a week, which opened up any number of
conversations,
opened any number of doors, with repercussions here. Before we went we
asked
both Christian and Muslim Pakistani communities in this country what
they
might want to hear from Pakistan when we visited there. When we were in
Pakistan, we were repeatedly questioned about what was happening in
Christian Muslim dialogue in this country. And that was a very vivid
reminder at all sorts of levels, of the interlocking world we live in.
And
one phrase which sticks with me from that encounter in Pakistan was
something which came out in one of the several meetings we had with Ijaz
ul-Haq, the minister for ethnic minorities and religious affairs in
Pakistan. He spoke of how easy it was to pursue dialogue and friendship
at
the level of elites, 'Now,' he said, 'now we must
 take this to the villages'. Well, we may not have villages in the
United
Kingdom that are quite like villages in Pakistan, but the principle is
the
same.

This is not about elites, this is about ordinary people talking to each
other in ordinary circumstances and working together on the needs and
the
challenges that face us all. The challenges that are represented by an
educational system which is not always easy for minorities. The
challenges
represented by international affairs, the challenges by the gulfs that
open
up between young people and their elders in all areas of our community,
the
challenges of sustaining our commitment to family life and its values in
a
culture that again doesn't always seem to affirm them very clearly.

But all that, of course, is to present a rather negative picture, and in
taking it to the villages, I wouldn't want us to think that we were
primarily concerned about damage limitation and reacting to crises. We
want
to uncover for one another, and in one another, and for the wider world;
that richness of humanity which faith contains, and that, too, was
something
affirmed very powerfully in many of our encounters in Pakistan before
Christmas. In spite of the very deep tensions there are there, in spite
of
the sufferings endured by a Christian minority there, often harassed and
persecuted by ignorant neighbours, in spite of the sense of
vulnerability
that Pakistan, like the rest of the Muslim world feels, in our world
generally today, the willingness of people to engage with one another,
take
risks with one another, even there, was hugely impressive and inspiring.
And
we came back from that visit with a real sense of enormous possibilities
in
Pakistan, barely yet beginning to
  be realised.

Well, our challenges and our possibilities are both extreme in the world
as
it is, but the other thing which was said to me in Pakistan more than
once
and which I am happy to repeat here, is that we have to get out of any
remnants of a mindset which thinks in terms of a clash of civilisations.
That rhetoric does the rounds every so often, it depends on indifferent
history, over bold projection and, generally, mutual ignorance. We can
do
better than that, and the Muslim Christian Forum here in Britain is
designed
to help us do better than that, to think not of a clash of
civilisations,
but of a shared religious humanism in the proper sense of the word
'humanism', a commitment to the dignity and the liberty of human beings
made
to serve God. Human beings who find their fullest freedom and the
deepest
joy in the service of God, and who in sharing that together, have
something
to offer to society around which nothing else can offer. It's a very
ambitious vision with which to begi
 n the work of the Forum, but I think that is where all those involved
want
to start. And they would see it as I've said not only as something for
this
country, but as something which ought to be making a contribution to a
global challenge.

It's easy to talk about these things abstractly so I'll end by quoting
to
you a story I came across recently from a most unlikely quarter. The
book
I'm reading from is an excellent book by Brian McClaren, an American
Evangelical, pastor of a large independent church in the Washington DC
area.
The sort of Christian pastor who arouses a certain amount of anxiety in
the
breasts both of Muslims and of more liberal Christians, not to say
columnists in some of our newspapers. The book is entitled, though, 'A
Generous Orthodoxy' and it has a long and extraordinarily moving chapter
on
his approach to people of other faiths. Towards the end of this chapter
McClaren quotes from another writer from the same background telling a
little story about an encounter in the Washington DC area not long after
September 11. One day my daughter saw a woman walking towards us covered
in
a veil and asked the inevitable 'What's that, Mummy?' 'Emma,' I
answered,
'that lady is a Muslim from a faraway pl
 ace and she dresses like that and covers her head with a veil because
she
loves God. That is how their people show they love God'. My daughter
considered these words, she stared at the woman who passed us, she
pointed
at the woman and then pointed at my hair and further quizzed 'Mummy, do
you
love God?' 'Yes', I said, 'I do; you and I are Christians and Christian
ladies show their love for God by going to church, eating the bread and
drinking the wine, serving the poor and giving to those in need. We
don't
wear veils but we do love God'.

After this Emma took every opportunity to point to Muslim women during
our
shopping trips and telling me 'Mummy, she loves God'. One day we were
getting out of our car in our driveway at the same time as our Pakistani
neighbours. Emma saw the mother beautifully veiled and pointed at her
and
shouted 'Look Mummy - she loves God'. My neighbour was surprised, I told
her
what I had told her what I had taught Emma about Muslim ladies loving
God,
while she held back tears this near stranger hugged me saying, 'I wish
all
Americans would teach their children so, the world would be better'.

That perhaps is -- as simply as that --- what we have to teach; that,
perhaps, is what the Muslim Christian Forum by the Grace of God can
achieve,
thank you for being with us this evening.

(c) Rowan Williams 2006

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