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Christian - Muslim Relations

20/6/2021

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​​ Islam is the second largest religion in Scotland. We’re used to women wearing the hijab, men wearing the shalwar kameez and mosques visible in every part of the country. For someone of my age this seems a fairly new development. I grew up in a country that was predominantly white and Christian but increasingly became multifaith and multicultural after a wave of immigration in the 1950s and 60’s when jobs were available in transport and industry. Muslims had in fact been in Scotland long before that but living in the suburbs of Scotland’s largest city I had never seen or heard of them even though many of the early immigrants made a living going door to door peddling merchandise. I do have a clear picture of a Sikh man walking down my street with a suitcase and being amazed at this stranger wearing a turban. No doubt he too was a peddler but he never came to our house. I must have been about 8 or 9 years old at the time and my first encounter with a different world, a world that was eventually to become so central to my adult life through the work of interreligious dialogue.

Part of the work of dialogue is to get to know the other which includes recognising and acknowledging our shared history. Like all history, this has good and bad aspects to it, aspects that can be dormant in our community psyche and influence our attitude to one another. This is certainly true for Christian – Muslim relations. Events such as Arab expansionism that defeated the Christian Byzantine Empire, establishing an Arab Empire that dominated most of the known world; the crusades that fought for Christian control of Jerusalem; colonialism that brought Muslim countries under European control can make us suspicious and unsure of one another. It’s not so long ago that there were calls for an apology for the violence of the crusades – something that has died down since the attack on the World Trade Centre.  

There is of course much good in the history of relations between our two faiths and indeed between Scotland and the Muslim world, an account of which can be found in Bashir Maan’s book, ‘The Thistle and the Crescent’, which outlines contacts between Scotland and the Arab, Muslim world through pilgrimage and trade. The society that pilgrims and traders encountered was a materially rich and culturally sophisticated one. It was the Arabs that translated many of the Greek works of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle into Arabic thus keeping them alive for such influential theologians as Thomas Aquinas whose theology was a dialogue between the philosophy of Aristotle and the truth of Christianity which he knew from the Latin translations of the Arabic texts. Duns Scotus too studied the works of Muslim philosophers as did many scholars and academics in medieval Britain. The great Muslim centres of learning, Cordoba, Toledo, Cairo, Baghdad were the forerunner of universities and gave much to the world. They established libraries, developed mathematics and astronomy, invented the telescope, compass and the pendulum. They brought the art of Chinese papermaking to the west in the 800s and set up pulp and paper mills for papermaking and money making.

It was through contact with the Muslim world that coffee, the ‘Mahometan Berry’ was brought to Britain by diplomats, travellers and traders in the 17th cy. It was advertised as a beneficial for health. “Its proponents argued that coffee made the drinker, more active, more hard working, more productive” and “the drink of the Protestant Work Ethic because it stimulated the mind of the drinker“(Maan P.128). There were also detractors who denounced it for resulting in what they called Turkish and not Protestant sobriety, leading even to conversion to Islam. The introduction of the English translation of the Qur’an, translated by a Scot, Alexander Ross and the wearing of Turkish dress in the coffee houses added to this notion.

Alexander Ross was not the only Scot who was enthralled by Islam. Michael Scot (1175 – 1232) a famous Scottish philosopher, translator, mathematician, and astrologer studied in Muslim Spain at Toledo. He learned Arabic and was one of those scholars who translated Arab treatises into Latin, thus making them available to Europe. Bashir Maan tells how he accompanied Emperor Frederick, for whom he worked, on his crusade of 1228 and, because he could speak Arabic, played an important role in the negotiations for the peaceful recovery of Jerusalem between the Emperor and Sultan Al-Kamal whose offer of peace had been refused.  Al-Kamal is the same Sultan whom St Francis Assisi met when he travelled to Damietta in Egypt, hoping for martyrdom but finding instead a fellow man of God. One story goes that Francis and the brother accompanying him stayed for a week, another that they stayed for three weeks but all are agreed that they recognised one another’s holiness and spent their time talking of the things of God.  This is often taken as an example of interfaith dialogue and St Francis seen as the patron saint of dialogue. It’s good and intriguing to know that we Scots have a connection with that event.  

There’s much more to the history of Christian – Muslim relations. Knowing just a little of it reminds me of our interconnectedness and hopefully adds depth to our dialogues and encounters.   

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Remarkable Women

7/6/2021

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I have just watched a very moving film of the work of my community. It was a video filmed 27 years ago when we celebrated the centenary of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Scotland.  At that time there were 77 sisters, now there are 27 and we are all a lot older. Over the years sisters have died, some have moved to our communities in England, and some have simply left religious life, deciding it wasn’t the best context for them to live and grow.  And no young people are joining anymore – at least in Europe – so we are an ageing group of women. But what amazing women we are! And what an inspirational community we belong to though of course in the hustle and bustle of everyday life with its ups and downs we’re not always aware of that.

As it happens, I had been thinking of it recently when I was asked to be part of a panel of inspirational women which is a project of the Religions for Peace UK Women of Faith Network. Joining me on the panel – virtually of course – were two remarkable young women. Zara Mohammed, a young Scottish who has recently been appointed as the youngest, first Scottish and first female Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, whose appointment caused a lot of media interest and Umetesi Stewart, a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide who now lives in Scotland with her husband and two beautiful daughters. Umetesi’s story was particularly difficult to listen to – how she hid in the fields under banana trees during the rains to escape the killers who went from house to house, killing everyone. She lost 40 members of her family, including her mother and brother.  Yet now she is grateful for the gift of life, saying it was not her time to die, and is determined to be an ambassador for peace, telling her story in the hope that one day our world might be rid of such atrocities.

Each of us was asked to speak about how our faith had supported us through the barriers and challenges we had overcome.  Just as human beings, all of us must face barriers and challenges but mine seem nothing compared to that of Umetesi.  Working as a woman in a religiously conservative institution like the Catholic Church, however, there have been challenges and criticism as women changed their understanding of religious life and a lack of understanding about the importance of the work of interreligious dialogue – at least at the local level though Catholics including Bishops and clergy must give notional assent to it as it’s now an important part of Church teaching.

Reflecting on this question I was aware what strength there was in belonging to a community of women committed to service and the growth and development of people and the planet. Although situated within a patriarchal, hierarchical, religious society, women religious have a certain independence to determine their own way of life and to pull resources, both material and spiritual. They have been given opportunities for education and self-development and the possibility for engaging in social action.  This has given them a vision and sense of belonging to something greater than themselves and the support and confidence to challenge unjust structures and weave a meaningful life for themselves even in the face of male, clerical disapproval. Perhaps you remember ‘Nuns on the Bus’ during Donald Trumps campaign?

Within the Catholic Church, religious life has always offered women an alternative to marriage and like all institutions it has gone through changes according to the time in which it lives. My own community was founded during the French Revolution to educate poor women and girls at a time when education had suffered, and women needed an education to be self-supportive.  The first schools opened by the sisters were in the new industrial towns and taught skills that would be able to give women an income if they needed it. The way of life became institutionalised over time and the sisters lived a regular life of prayer in the convent, going out during the day to schools but living quite apart from the rest of society in convents. That changed with the Second Vatican Council when sisters were asked to go back to the origins of their communities and renew their way of life so that it was more relevant to the modern age. We realised that much of our work in formal education was behind us and we extended our vision of education to include works such as interreligious dialogue, spiritual direction, psychotherapy and counselling, special needs education, parenting and leadership skills.  

Seeing this being carried out in the film was impressive. It was obvious that each of us belonged to a network of supportive and committed women. What we did, we did not do in isolation so that each of us then had a network of colleagues and friends with whom we engaged and worked – a vast web of relationships.  And we are only one small group of women here in Scotland. Thinking of our global community, of those contacts who then have their own networks, the web of goodness is vast. This world wide web of commitment and service is all around us but often invisible. But for those of us who have the eyes to see it is a sign of hope and encouragement that in the end “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well”.
 

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    I am  a Catholic nun, involved in interfaith relations for many decades.  For me this has been an exciting and sacred journey which I would like to share with others.

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