CHANGING LANDSCAPES: JEWISH-CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS TODAY

This paper considers some of the similarities and differences in the contemporary encounter between Jews, Christians and Muslims. Despite the potential symbiosis, there are barriers to a trialogue with the three monotheistic religions and the author reflects on the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the sometimes harmful influence of collective memories: for example, Jews think of Christianity in terms of suffering and persecution; while Muslims have not forgotten the Crusades, and see in Western aspirations an old crusader mentality in a new guise. Commemorations of past events help preserve a sense of historical continuity and identity but a preoccupation (some might call obsession) with the past may be damaging if it results in a negative identity and self-understanding, especially if it becomes the only or primary lens through which reality and the changing world is viewed. One way to disarm an obsession with the past is to adopt a critical approach to it in order not to be become victims of an ideological ‘vindication’ of the past that is nostalgic, dogmatic, and sometimes irrational. If the past is approached critically, it can reveal new interpretations and understandings of the world that can be liberating and constructive. In their contemporary encounter with Muslims, Jews and Christians have much to discuss. Theologically, it is commonly argued that Islam is more similar to Judaism than Christianity since both have problems with Christian Trinitarian theology, stress religious law and the centrality of monotheism, and have no priesthood. The 2008 Muslim Letter to the Jewish Community, Call to Dialogue, initiated by Muslim scholars at the Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations in Cambridge, is an example of a contemporary attempt to demonstrate the commonality between these two faiths. However, the rise of modern political Zionism, the creation of the state of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have become major sources of tension between Jews and Muslims, not just in the Middle East but throughout the world. There are also important similarities between Islam and Christianity since both have a strong sense of mission to people of other religions and Jesus is revered by Muslims as a prophet. The 2007 letter from Muslim scholars to the Christian world, A * Founder and Director of the Woolf Institute, Cambridge. Email: Ed.Kessler@woolf.cam.ac.uk. This paper was first delivered as the CCJ Maurice Brunner Memorial Lecture on 19 October 2010 in Manchester. 1 ‘An Open Letter : A Call to Peace, Dialogue and Understanding between Muslims and Jews’ (25 February 2008), at http://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/cmjr/assets/pdf/letter.pdf. Ed Kessler, 'Changing Landscapes: Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations Today', Melilah 2010/3 58 Common Word, outlines the similarities between the two faiths. Tensions also exist, demonstrated by outbursts of violence between Muslims and Christians in Africa (e.g. Nigeria’s sharia riots in 2006 and again in 2008 in which hundreds of Muslims and Christians died) and the fall-out from Pope Benedict XVI’s controversial Regensburg address (2006), in which he was accused of fermenting anti-Muslim feeling. AntiChristian violence followed in parts of the Muslim world. Similarities and dissimilarities could provide the substance for fruitful and respectful debates. There are problems with this scenario however, partly because the three faiths, particularly Islam, have difficulty with their fundamentalists. For example, Islam’s Wahabi sect, which has a following among many Muslims, including among Diaspora communities in the West, seeks to return to an idealised form of certain early Islamic values, and strongly condemns many other forms of Islam, as well as other religions. Christian and Jewish fundamentalism also exists and is growing (alongside similar movements in Hinduism and other world religions). Jewish fundamentalists generally focus on issues related to the Land and State of Israel and many take hardline political positions. In recent years they have emerged as a significant political and religious force within Israel as well as in the Diaspora. Haredi fundamentalists not only affirm the literal truth of the Bible, but seek to impose many biblical and Talmudic laws and ordinances upon the State of Israel. Some, both within and outside Israel, have joined with Christian fundamentalists in calling for the building of a third Temple in Jerusalem. While largely secluded from mainstream society, following a tightly regulated lifestyle, ultra-orthodox beliefs and moral understanding of the world have similarities to those of some evangelical communities. Christian allies of Jewish fundamentalists believe the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 and the yet-to-be-built 2 ‘An Open Letter and Call from Muslim Religious Leaders to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI’ (13 October 2007), at http://www.acommonword.com/lib/downloads/CW-Total-Final-v-12g-Eng-9-1007.pdf. 3 ‘Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections’, Pope Benedict XVI’s Address to the University of Regensburg (12 September 2006), at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_universityregensburg_en.html. Ed Kessler, 'Changing Landscapes: Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations Today', Melilah 2010/3 59 Third Temple are theological prerequisites for the Second Coming of Jesus. Some of these same fundamentalists also actively seek the conversion of Jews to Christianity. Both Jewish and Christian fundamentalists reject modern scriptural criticism, particularly the documentary theory of biblical scholarship, the Darwinian concept of human evolution and are profoundly opposed to abortion and euthanasia. Christian and Jewish fundamentalist leaders have sometimes worked together, advocating a broad public policy agenda that opposes the strict separation of church and state and ‘secular humanism’, a pejorative term used to describe opponents of fundamentalism. Often, fundamentalists have a special loathing of co-religionists whose views do not fit their own: for example, the al-Qaeda movement(s) has been quite as prepared to kill other Muslims as it has Jews and Christians, Americans and British, and other perceived enemies. Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 has been a cause of controversy not only between Jews and Christians but also with Muslims. For Jews, the establishment of the state of Israel in the wake of Shoah was considered a miracle. However, for the Arab Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are Muslim, this marks the beginning of their Naqba, ‘the catastrophe’ in which approximately two-thirds of their population became refugees and lost control and ownership over the majority of the land they inhabited prior to the war of independence. In addition to the political conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Israel occupies the third holiest Muslim site, the al-Aqsa Mosque, located on the Haram al-Sharif, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in the Old City of Jerusalem. These holy places are at the centre of both religious ideology and rhetoric as well as the focus of much global attention (and contention). Their symbolic value to Christians, Muslims and Jews worldwide cannot be over-estimated. I will return to the subject of Israel later in this talk. The positive developments in Jewish-Christian relations, in the last 50 years in particular, are viewed with distrust by some Muslims who view it as an attempt to marginalise and disempower them. The recent creation of inter-faith structures, which includes Muslims alongside Jews and Christians (such as the Three Faiths Forum and International Council of Christians and Jews) may help to change this negative point of view. At the same time, more positive contemporary Muslim relations with Jews Ed Kessler, 'Changing Landscapes: Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations Today', Melilah 2010/3 60 and Christians are also dependent upon intra-Islamic discussions that would admit more internal diversity, and articulate and apply more generous attitudes towards other religions than the noisiest ones that emanate from some parts of Islam. For Christians, intra-faith conversation and relations (ecumenism) is also a recent movement, beginning in the early 20th century but which really gained momentum after 1948, the year the World Council of Churches (WCC) was founded. Originally the ecumenical Christian movement paid significant attention to Jews only as the objects of mission, but two factors caused a profound change of heart. First, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968) insisted that Jews were verus Israel, the true Israel, and that it was appropriate to speak of ‘the Church and Israel’. Then in 1965 Nostra Aetate affirmed ‘the sacred spiritual bond linking the people of the new covenant with Abraham’s stock’. The Faith and Order Commission of the WCC expressed its conviction in the same year that the Jewish people still have theological significance of their own for the Church and in 1982 Ecumenical Considerations on JewishChristian Dialogue was published. It argued that the Jewish people were full partners in dialogue: ‘The spirit of dialogue is to be fully present to one another in full openness and human vulnerability.’ Yet mission to the Jewish people was not repudiated, which reflected the many different views held by WCC member churches. For Jews, intra-Jewish conversations about Christianity have been much more limited and Claude Montefiore’s call for a Jewish theology of Christianity in 1923 has yet to be fully realised. Even Dabru Emet (‘Speak truth’), the cross-denominational Jewish statement on Christians and Christianity published in 2000, begins the process of reflecting on the place of Christianity in contemporary Jewish thought. Dabru Emet stresses that it is time for Jews to reflect on what Judaism may now say about Christianity and asserts eight points: Jews