Still Running Off at the Keyboard

“Jews, Muslims, Christians—we are all children of Abraham and people of the Book.” Not so, says the French historian Alain Besançon, writing in Commentary. “What Kind of Religion is Islam?” is a hard-hitting critique of what Besançon views as a false ecumenism eager to find commonalities with Islam that do not exist. Not incidentally, this misguided effort disadvantages Judaism since it is claimed, for instance, that Islam honors Jesus and Mary while Judaism does not. But the Jesus/Issa honored in the Koran as a messenger of Allah is not the Jesus whom Christians worship, writes Besançon. He is supposedly born of Mariam, the sister of Aaron, and is neither a redeemer nor a mediator between God and man. And, of course, he does not die on the cross, since a double is substituted for him. Moreover, Allah is not the God of Abraham who reveals himself through historical events, but a distant and impersonal power that makes everything happen immediately; not through the nature and history of his own creation but according to his omnipotent whim. Thus the determinism and fatalism at the heart of Islamic religion. “These then,” writes Besançon, “are some of the elements that conduce to misunderstanding when Christians and Jews approach Islam. Such outsiders may well be struck by the religious zeal of the Muslim toward a God whom they recognize as being also their God. But this God is in fact separate and distinct, and so is the relation between Him and the believing Muslim. Christians are accustomed to distinguish the worship of false gods—that is, idolatry—from the worship of the true God. To treat Islam suitably, it becomes necessary to forge a new concept altogether, and one that is difficult to grasp—namely, an idolatry of the God of Israel. To put it another way, Islam may be thought of as the natural religion of the revealed God.” The concept is indeed difficult to grasp and not, I think, entirely convincing. Yet Besançon’s critique is a necessary caution against the kind of interreligious dialogue that slides too easily into wishful thinking. “The Qur’an,” he writes, “is neither a preparation for biblical religion nor a retroactive endorsement of it. In approaching Muslims, self-respecting Christians and others would do better to rely on what remains within Islam of natural religion—and of religious virtue—and to take into account the common humanity that Muslims share with all people everywhere.” Christians seeking dialogue with Muslims have to begin somewhere, and Besançon’s bare minimum is one starting point. Despite the fundamental differences that he underscores, however, other Christians and Muslims may, with eyes wide open to the difficulties, try to tease out greater religious commonalities. This is one of the great tasks of this century, and the alternative to pursuing it may be open-ended and unlimited warfare between Islam and the infidels, meaning chiefly Christians and Jews.