Abstract
In a world that is ravaged by the torments of sacred fury and violence, there is perhaps no other subject that calls for serious academic study more than interreligious relations. This book deals with the varied and complex Christian responses to Islam in Nigeria. In the twenty-first century, no one can ignore the complex paradigms connected with the precarious relationship between Christians and Muslims all over the world. Since the seventh century, Christians and Muslims have interacted with one another in a variety of ways. It is truly a relationship that is satiated with both meaningful engagements and baffling ambiguities.1 The interaction between the two religions has run the gamut from constructive dialogue, lethargic encounters, open conflicts, to internecine violence. Jean-Marie Gaudeul has aptly described these dimensions as “encounters and clashes.”2 Nonetheless, nowhere is the need for interreligious cooperation and understanding more pressing than within the sphere of the largest religious communities. Christian-Muslim encounters offer a perspective for understanding our contemporary world and future world order. We are confronted with encounters and relationships that have religious, economic, and political ramifications.
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Notes
For detailed studies of different models and voices in Christian-Muslim relations, see Nasir Khan, Perceptions of Islam in Christendom: A Historical Survey (Oslo: Solum Forlag, 2006);
A. Hourani, Western Attitudes Towards Islam (Southampton: University of Southampton, 1974);
B. Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches Toward the Muslim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984);
Michael Frassetto and David R. Blanks, eds., Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999);
Montgomery Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misperception (London and New York: Routledge, 1991);
Yvonne Y. Haddad and Wadi Z. Haddad, eds., Christian-Muslim Encounters (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995);
Jean-Marie Gaudeul, Encounters & Clashes: Islam and Christianity in History, 2 vols. (Rome: Pontificio Instituto di Studi Arabi e Islamici, 1990);
N. A. Newman, ed., The Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue: A Collections of Documents from the First Three Islamic Centuries (632–900 A.D.) (Pennsylvania: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, 1993)
Kate Zebiri, Muslims and Christians Face to Face (London: Oneworld, 1997);
Hugh Goddard, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations (New Amsterdam Books, 2000);
O. N. Mohammed, Muslim-Christian Relations: Past, Present, and Future (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999);
M. A. Anees, S. Z. Abedin, and Z. Sardar, Christian-Muslim Relations: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (London: Grey Seal, 1991);
and H. P. Goddard, Christians and Muslims: From Double Standards to Mutual Understanding (London: Curzon, 1995).
A good study of the demographic distribution of Muslims all over the world is Byron L. Haines and Frank L. Cooley, eds., Christians and Muslims Together: An Exploration by Presbyterians (Philadelphia: Geneva Press, 1987)
For a good introduction to the global dimension in world religions, see Mark Juergensmeyer, ed., Global Religions: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), 56.
See Richard W. Rousseau, Christianity & Islam: The Struggling Dialogue (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2005).
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “Islamic-Christian Dialogue: Problems and Obstacles to be Pondered and Overcome,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 2 (July 2000): 213.
Runnymede Trust (Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia), Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All (London: Runnymede Trust, 1997).
Desmond Tutu, cited in www.excellentquotations.com, accessed on March 13, 2013. Charles Kimball adds more emphasis to this dimension. According to him, “within the religious traditions that have stood the test of time, one finds the life-affirming faith that has sustained and provided meaning for millions over the centuries. At the same time, we can identify the corrupting influences that lead toward evil and violence in all religious traditions.” See Charles Kimball, When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 5.
Ninian Smart, Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000), 5.
The word “encounter” captures the complexity and the dynamism of the interaction among Christians and Muslims in Africa. The word can be traced to the Latin contra, meaning “against,” or to the old French encontrer, which refers to the meeting of rivals. The word underscores the ambivalence that is involved in relationships and interactions. For a good analysis of this perspective, see Benjamin F. Soares, “Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa,” in Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa, ed. Benjamin F. Soares (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 3.
For a good analysis, see Martin Buss, “The Idea of Sitz in Leben—History and Critique,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 90 (1978): 157–70.
Kenneth Cragg, Sandals at the Mosque: Christian Presence amid Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 19.
For a good analysis of this perspective, see Dale T. Irvin, Hearing Many Voices (Lanham: University Press of America, 1993).
Paul F. Knitter has developed four models to account for the various Christian responses to Islam. They are: replacement, fulfillment, mutuality, and acceptance. This first acknowledges that Christianity is the only true religion. The second model affirms the elements of truth and grace in other religions. The third states that there are many true religions, without saying that one religion is superior to the other. The last model affirms the diversity of religions without the need to create a common ground among them. See Paul F. Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002.
Sulayman S. Nyang, Islam, Christianity, and African Identity (Vermont: Amana, 1984), 84. Lamin Sanneh has however cautioned that Sudan is the only black African country where these two processes worked effectively. He affirms that in the rest of the continent, one can only speak of the use of the sacred Arabic language as the most visible sign of Islamization.
Lamin Sanneh, West African Christianity: The Religious Impact (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983), xvi.
Kwame Nkrumah, Conscientism (London: Heinemann, 1964), 93–94.
Ali Mazrui, “Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. John L. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 264.
See Madeleine Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007).
Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel Shah, God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), 32.
For further discussion on this issue, see Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
On the shift in world Christianity, see Dana L. Robert, “Shifting Southward: Global Christianity since 1945,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (April 2000): 50–58, Philip Jenkins, “The Next Christianity,” The Atlantic Monthly 290.3, (October 2002): 55–68, Wilbert R. Shenk, “Recasting Theology of Mission: Impulses from the Non-Western World,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (July 2001): 98–106,
Peter C. Phan, “A New Christianity, But What Kind?” Mission Studies 22.1 (2005): 59–83,
Paul V. Kollman, “After Church History: Writing the History of Christianity from a Global Perspective,” Horizons 31.2 (2004), 322–42; Philip Jenkins, “After The Next Christendom,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research (January 2004): 20–22.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, “Muslim-Christian Interrelations Historically: An Interpretation,” in his On Understanding Islam: Selected Studies (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter., 2000), 262.
See Peter C. Phan, Being Religious Interreligiously: Asian Perspectives on Dialogue (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004) for an excellent analysis of multireligious belonging, especially pp. 60–78. According to him, “if non-Christian religions contain ‘elements of truth and grace’ and if they may be considered ways of salvation from whose doctrinal teachings, sacred texts, moral practices, monastic traditions, and rituals and worship Christianity can and should benefit through dialogue, then there should be no theological objection and canonical censure against someone wishing to be a Christian and at the same time to follow some doctrinal teachings and religious practices of, for example, Buddhism or Confucianism or Hinduism, as long as these are not patently contradictory to Christian faith and morals” (65–66).
See also Catherine Cornille, ed., Many Mansions? Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002). However, an African perspective would have added a much-needed dimension to the case studies examined in the book. Some of the avid practitioners of multiple religious belonging are Swami Abhishiktananda, Charles Foucault, Thomas Merton, Bede Griffith, Raimon Panikkar, and Aloysius Pieris.
Raimon Panikkar, The Intra-religious Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 2.
For a good discussion of the historical development of Hinduism, see A. L. Basham, The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Shankara (788–820), one of India’s greatest saints and philosophers, provides a good analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of the Advaita Vedanta tradition. He was an embodiment of tremendous wisdom and holiness that he was viewed as an incarnation of Shiva; hence the name Shankara, which means, “he who brings/bestows blessings.”
Chandogya Upanishad, The Upanishads, trans. Swami Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester (New York: Mentor Books, 1957), 46.
For his analysis of the dipolar connections between the plurality of religions and the plurality of victims, see Aloysius Pieris, An Asian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988);
Aloysius Pieris, Love Meets Wisdom: A Christian Experience of Buddhism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989);
and Aloysius Pieris, Fire and Water: Basic Issues in Asian Buddhism and Christianity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988).
This is the central argument of Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization,” Foreign Affairs 72.3 (1993): 22–49.
Kate Zebiri, Muslims and Christians: Face to Face (Oxford: One World, 2000), 2.
Paul F. Knitter, “Common Ground or Common Response? Seeking Foundations for Interreligious Discourse,” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 2 (1992): 114.
Samuel Huntington, quoted in Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 20–21.
Ataulalla Siddiqui, Christian-Muslim Dialogue in the Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), 54.
Amir Hussain, “ Life as a Muslim Scholar of Islam in Post-9/11 America,” in Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions, ed. Daniel L. Smith-Christopher (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007), 139.
Charles Amjad-Ali, “Theological and Historical Rationality behind Christian-Muslim Relations,” in Islam in Asia: Perspectives for Christian-Muslim Encounter, ed. J. P. Rajashekar and H. S. Wilson (Geneva, Switzerland: Lutheran World Federation, 1992), 14.
For a good analysis on the dignity of the other, see Edward E. Sampson, Celebrating the Other: A Dialogical Account of Human Nature (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993).
It is important to point out here that the idea of Otherness is new to African studies. Elias Bongmba used the idea of the Other, based on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, to study the ethics of witchcraft. See Elias K. Bongmba, African Witchcraft and Otherness: A Philosophical and Theological Analysis of Intersubjective Relations (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001).
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© 2014 Akintunde E. Akinade
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Akinade, A.E. (2014). Interpretations: Toward a New Approach in Christian-Muslim Encounters. In: Christian Responses to Islam in Nigeria. Palgrave Macmillan’s Christianities of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137430076_2
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