Thank-you Rowland Croucher for a very thorough and detailed book review/summary 18.8.06, of Dr Durie's book on Islam "Revelation: do we worship the same God; Jesus. Holy Spirit, God, in Christianity & Islam" ( http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/17938.htm )

I was very appreciative of the effort made. But there are surely few issues more urgent than this one?

I will get the book as well.

But I was uneasy about its tone--as I think you were Rowland when you suggested that in your experience friendship was likely to get further than polemic. But you also said you happened to enjoy Durie's "telling it like it is" approach. I can imagine! You always were one who relishes a good debate!

But it IS polemical! He has picked on all the areas of conflict and high-lighted them. It is certainly no good hiding our heads in the sand about these differences, but what does he hope to achieve thereby? what is his motivation? what are the assumptions he starts with?

You quoted Geoff Blackburn in another article "Is The Muslim Religion Evil?" (http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/16016.htm ). Geoff cited St Francis of Assisi, who in 1219, being appalled by the Crusades, went to meet Al Kamil,Muslim army leader, stayed with him, finding him a deeply spiritual man, and sharing with him his understanding of Jesus, and PRAYED WITH HIM . What were St Francis assumptions? He apparently believed they COULD pray to the One God, known by different names. ("Allah" simply means "The One"). What is the ontology of this ONE? In a universe, there can only be ONE ETERNAL! We can all feel the "pull" of this Divine OTHER, even though we interpret that pull differently. But if there is only ONE REALITY, (Whom we Christians believe has reconciled us to Himself once and for all in Jesus), we surely have to learn to let his Sound (name) vibrate our souls until we resonate on HIS wave-length? I would put my money on St Francis's approach .

Frank Laubach, Christian missionary to Muslim Mindanao in the Philippines, inventor of the "each-one-teach-one" literacy strategy, also travelled this way too. When he was in despair while trying , unsuccessfully, to teach the people to read, ( from the Bible which the Muslims were suspicious of}, to his intitial horror, God told him to teach them to read from the Koran--which he eventually did! And he found dimensions in the Koran that enlarged his own soul--the emphasis upon doing the will of God in EVERY SINGLE ACTIVITY . (He described the effect of this deliberate practice upon his spirituality in "Letters of a Modern Mystic"). He in turn then 'expanded' the spirituality within the Koran by sharing with those he taught from within his own mystical experience of Jesus in everyday life--and he became known and loved, even by the Muslim Imans, as "A man of God"--and from there became remarkably successful in his literacy programs

I simply don't see a"polemical approach" as the way to go. There surely is need for an utter dependence upon the ONE Holy Spirit and the Providence of God that is operating in every moment for good in every human being.

Have any of us had experience of thus sharing with devout Muslims --- listening to their stories, feeling the warmth of their love for God, resonating with the glow in their eyes as they recount their experiences of God?

If we adopted Mark Durie's approach, we wouldn't make 'first base'!

Blessings and cheers!

My response:

Hi

I'm with you, and I read again recently the St Francis of Assisi story and appreciated that great man's spirituality... ('Greatest Christian since Jesus?' Probably).

And, yes, I've been reading Frank Laubach for years: great man (visited his institute on Mindanao Island when I was there in the 1970s)...

There are I think at least three dimensions to this whole issue: theological, pragmatic and idealistic...

*Theologically*, as Lesslie Newbiggin and others have pointed out, we have three options: pluralism (all religions are salvific), inclusivism (God is there somewhere in all faiths but is most completely revealed in Jesus) and exclusivism (only Christianity is true: all other religions are essentially in error). Conservatives like Mark Durie - and Peter Cotterell, whose book One God I'm reading at the moment and will send as a summary/review to this list - tend to be exclusivist, and thus highlight the differences between say, Islam and Christianity. And, yes, they tend to resort to polemics to do that...

*Pragmatically*, what do we do with the *ideology* which produces Islamic terrorists? Is there any parallel at all with the 'appeasement' issue with Hitler? (I'm having a discussion on another list with a Jew who says the wars of the Old Testament can be justified as 'pre-emptive', because it's OK to kill others if there's no other option before they are likely to kill you and yours.) Was Reagan wrong in calling the Soviet Communist *system* an evil empire?

*Idealistically* we have people like Francis, who tend to view the whole issue through the lens of persons-to-be-loved rather than systems to be vilified as evil. And unless each of us is doing that with other human beings our ideology - Christian, political, whatever - is likely to be terribly flawed. (Which is my problem with folks who have a strong view about 'homosexual sin' who do not really know any homosexuals personally, as friends, as persons to be respected and loved for who they are...)

Now... is it possible to combine dimensions of all three of these broad options? I have the feeling that if we don't 'name the evil' in systems - whether Christian or Islamic or whatever - we're being naive wishful-thinking Chamberlain 'appeasement' types. And theologically we have the 'Cornelius factor' - a guy 'NQR' - 'not quite right' - but the commendatory comments Luke makes about him put some of my Christian acquaintances into the shade.

I'm being introduced to a Muslim leader at the moment, and want to dialogue with him personally about all of this, rather than read about it in books, or form opinions through 'ships in the night' contacts with these people. I don't trust myself to form a decent opinion/attitude without a deep friendship or two...

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Shalom! Rowland Croucher

September 4, 2006