Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
January/February 2008

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Pastoral letter

from Revd. Ross Collins, St Mary's Church

Happy new year! What will it hold for you? For us as Christians? The end of 2007 saw familiar uncertainties another peace conference over Palestine (with little to show for it), more squabbles over Mugabe's rule of Zimbabwe - as well as some less familiar ones. The now infamous 'Teddy' saga in the Sudan caught at least me by surprise. What was even more surprising was seeing the Sudanese government scrabbling to be seen as moderates, this being the government which is pursuing destruction, rape and killing on a vast scale in Darfur and has, with its predecessors, inflicted similar evil on Southern Sudan over most of the last fifty years. Maybe the fate of an English teacher will help focus our minds better on the plight of those in that country whose suffering is somewhat greater than a couple of weeks in prison, unpleasant though that was. I somehow doubt it.

More realistically, the episode will probably go down in our collective memory bank as much for the evidence of the incomprehensibility of much of the Islamic world, and the troubling clash of civilisations that results from that.

I'd like to counter that with a more optimistic story of contemporary Islam. In November, I spent 5 days in Istanbul, where I had been asked to present a paper at the 7th International Islamic Symposium organised by the Nur community.

To those of you used to academic symposia (unlike me), I think you would have found it quite unusual. The symposium opened in front of a crowd of 10,000 people (mostly young) with live TV coverage on one of Turkey's main channels. Each session was attended by up to 1,000 people who listened intently to what the different speakers had to say. The theme of the conference was 'Justice' and there were contributors from all over the world, including an Iranian Mullah, a guardian of the shrine of Mecca, and Iraqi Shiite and a former vice-president of Bosnia.

As well as the 40 Muslim speakers were 10 Christians from the UK and USA, one German Jewish theologian and a remarkably cantankerous Buddhist (if such a thing is possible). Why were we there? The symposium was organised by the Nur community, a movement within Islam which follows the teachings of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, an Islamic thinker who lived in Turkey between 1872 and 1960. In most ways, he was a conservative, orthodox Muslim, yet he wrote much about the necessity of engaging with Christians - not to convert or subjugate them, but to work with them as equals in the pursuit of justice and to counter the effects of aggressive, individualistic atheism.

Over more recent years, the movement founded in Nursi's name has taken off and now numbers over 10 million Muslims across the world. Remarkably, it transcends the Sunni-Shiite divide that causes so much trouble within the Islamic world. But it is perhaps even more remarkable that such an orthodox, mainstream Islamic group should come to see its identity being forged at least partly in engagement with Christianity. I know of no comparable group within Islam.

While there were some remarkable people at the symposium, perhaps the most impressive were two young Turkish women. Hajib-ed (wearing the Islamic headscarf, as were all the women), attractive and great fun, they were incredibly well-versed in Christian as well as Islamic theology, articulate and insightful. They were both on their third theology degree, studying in the USA, and gave a picture of what is possible for a Muslim woman that is unrecognisable from the stereotype held by many in the West.
One of the themes that came up often from the floor was the sense that Islam is misrepresented by the Western media. While this was hardly surprising, the reaction from speaker after speaker was. Rather than attack the West, denounce the USA, etc, the response was that Islam should counter this impression by showing that Compassion (as one of the names of Allah) was central to it. As they said, Muslims should be forgiving, open, respectful and penitent. While the dozen Westerners were treated with great honour, I don't think our presence at the back of the hall amongst a thousand Muslims caused this response.

My own paper was on how absolute poverty is, to both the Islamic and Christian traditions, an affront to their fundamental values and that we should seek to work together to combat it. If you're interested, there's a copy of it on the St Mary's website under the sermons link (www.stmarybarnes.org).

What was the result of all this? It's difficult to say. This was the second symposium with non-Islamic participation and, although we were treated exceptionally well, it is too early to say how deep the engagement with Christianity is or whether our representation rather provides merely an exotic cameo, albeit an honoured one. Some of the speakers did try to engage with the Western tradition, but only time will tell if that becomes as central to the Nur community's identity as their founder's teaching would suggest is desirable. There is a fault-line between Western and Islamic thinking which comes through the role of post-Enlightenment critical thinking in our academic and religious traditions. Generally, we appreciate that strand of our identity as something which encourages individual freedom, democracy and human rights. On the other hand, we have lost a lot of the respect for earlier thinkers and traditions which was so evident in the way Islamic scholars treated the life and thinking of Said Nursi. As a result, we have lost some of the strong sense of identity and community that was obvious at the symposium.

The possibilities for what can be achieved with the Nur movement do not just depend on their own openness or our receptiveness - it also depends on the position within Islam that they have. While I have already noted their transcendence of the Sunni-Shiite divide, I do not know the extent of their credibility and influence within Islam as a whole.

The Nur community have established a centre in Durham University, scholarship programmes for students in the USA and are looking for further, albeit lower-key, conferences outside Turkey. I look forward to being part of that. It seems there are genuine possibilities for constructive engagement between Islam and Christianity here and, to me, that can only be a good thing.

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