Toward a Muslim Theology of Migration

Abstract

This chapter is a starting point on the journey toward a Muslim theology of migration, a first word and certainly not anything like a last word. It is also important to point out at the outset that this chapter is a theological reflection on migration, not one concerned with the political realities (which are legion) of Muslim migrants. It is a chapter grounded in the teachings of my mentors, Muriel and Wilfred Cantwell Smith. When Wilfred finished his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, he wanted to learn more about Islam and Muslims. Since the Muslim population in Canada in the 1940s was small, he and Muriel moved to India, which before Partition in 1947 had the largest Muslim population in the world. In the first half of the last century, then, migration for Muslims often meant non-Muslims coming to them. In the second half of the last century and in our current one, migration for Muslims usually means moving to countries where the majority of the inhabitants are non-Muslim. From Wilfred and Muriel, I learned the distinction between “faith” and the “cumulative tradition.” There is certainly a cumulative tradition from which individual Muslims draw the narratives of their lives. But it is those lives in connection with their individual communities that are of interest to me, those narratives that must be allowed to exist in the plural.