"Building Faith Neighbours With Canadian Muslims"
A Sermon Preached by Dr. Amir Hussain
August 2nd, 2009
Dr. Amir Hussain is Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. His most recent book is Oil and Water: Two Faiths, One God (Kelowna: Copper House, 2006).
Sisters and Brothers, greetings and good morning. Al-salaamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatahu. Peace be upon you and the mercy and blessings of God. I am honoured and humbled to talk with you this morning about Muslims and members of the United Church of Canada being faith neighbours.
I begin with thanks. In Islam, the opposite of belief is not unbelief, but ungratefulness. The unbeliever is the one who does not give thanks to God. My thanks to Rev. Bruce Sanguin for inviting me here, and for all of his work in putting this service together. Thanks also to Neil Weisensel for the wonderful music. . . .and, of course, my thanks to all of you for being here.
I am from a quiet, sleepy little town, El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los ánheles Del Río de Porthiúncula (or the Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels on the River Porthiúncula). This town is sometimes known as Los Angeles.
I am your faith neighbour in three different ways, first of all geographically. I’m your neighbour to the south. Secondly, I’m your inter-faith neighbour, as I’m a Muslim. Thirdly, I am also an INTRA-faith neighbour.
In addition to being a Muslim, I’m also an adherent member of the United Church of Canada, through Trinity-St. Paul’s on Bloor Street in Toronto. I have been privileged to be involved with the United Church for over 20 years. That involvement has ranged from teaching regularly at the Naramata Centre, and also having taught in the past at 5 Oaks and Dr. Jessie Saulteaux, being an observer at the 35th General Council in Fergus in 1994, presenting at the Banff Men’s Conference last year, writing occasionally for the Observer, as well as for several collections published by the United Church Publishing House, to speaking at United Churches across the country. Growing up in Toronto, I became connected to Trinity – St. Paul’s through their outstanding work in faith, social justice, music, and the ministry of women.
In other United Church settings, I’d keep thinking, that’s not how we do it at TSP. Which of course got me to thinking, who is the WE here? I asked to formalize my relationship with TSP, not to convert, but also to be something more than a regular Muslim visitor. I became an adherent in 2004 in a service performed by Karen and Hal Llewellyn.
As I said, I am from Los Angeles, so let me talk a little more about, well, me! Not to be self-indulgent, as I know Angelinos have a reputation for self-indulgence, but to provide you with a bit of context about who I am.
I came to theology through the understanding of stories
My friend Ted Chamberlin is a University Professor at U of T. That’s the highest rank, for people whose work is of international importance. For some reason, he seems to prefer Halfmoon Bay to Toronto, which I don’t quite understand. Ted’s a professor of comparative literature. When asked what we do universities, Ted says it is simple. We tell Stories. We call the old stories teaching, and we call the new stories research.
I experienced that first hand when I came to U of T. If you told me in my first year, 1983, that as a Canadian Muslim I would end up being a professor of theology at a Catholic university in Los Angeles, I would have said you were crazy. Studying Blake and Shakespeare led me to studying the Bible, and from there to studying the Qur’an and my own Muslim tradition.
My mentor was Wilfred Cantwell Smith, the greatest Canadian scholar of religion in the 20th century. He founded and directed the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal in 1951, before moving to Harvard in 1964, where for two decades he directed the Centre for the Study of World Religions. He and Muriel then moved back to their native Toronto where they attended Bloor St. United Church until his death in 2000. One of Wilfred’s most important books was 1981’s Towards a World Theology. The subtitle of the book reflected Professor Smith’s life-long work, “Faith and the Comparative History of Religion”. In that book, he argued that our various religions traditions were best understood when taken together, or to use his words, “that their several histories, individually already complex, can be understood, and indeed can be understood better, and in the end can be understood only, in terms of each other: as strands in a still more complex whole.
What they have in common is that the history of each has been what it has been in significant part because the history of the others has been what it has been. This truth is newly discovered; yet truth it is, truth it has throughout been. Things proceeded in this interrelated way for many centuries without humanity’s being aware of it; certainly not fully aware of it. A new, and itself interconnected, development is that currently humankind is becoming aware of it, in various communities”. That is exactly what we are trying to do here, to promote interfaith dialogue and understanding. To show the deep connections in our religious history, Professor Smith began with the story of Leo Tolstoy, his Confession from 1879, published in 1884...
How many of you are familiar with Tolstoy? The story of his “conversion” It is the story of Barlaam (the hermit) and Josaphat (the Indian prince). In the story, the Indian prince Josaphat is converted from a life worldly power to the search for moral and spiritual truths by Barlaam, a Sinai desert monk. Russian, Byzantine, Muslim, Manichee, Buddhist Boddhisatva becomes “Bodasaf” in Manichee
Forward in time, Gandhi, who founded Tolstoy farm in Durban in 1910 In America, King, influenced by Gandhi
We are connected to each other...
How many of you are familiar with the document, A Common Word Between You and Us, a letter sent in October 2007 by several hundred Muslim leaders to important Christian leaders. The letter focuses on the two great commandments, which I learned from the gospel of Mark, 12: 28-32.
The two great commandments are love of God, and love of one’s neighbour. For me, interfaith dialogue is at the heart of the Christian message. My favourite gospel is Mark, the earliest gospel.
I read it each year to help me become more familiar with Jesus, an important prophet for Muslims.
We heard the story of the Syro-phonecian woman in Mark’s gospel (7:24 to 30). Those 7 short lines vexed me from time I read them as a graduate student:
Mark 7:24-30: From there [Jesus] He arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but He could not be hidden. For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about Him, and she came and fell at His feet. The woman was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by birth, and she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. But Jesus said to her, “Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” And she answered and said to Him, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs.” Then He said to her, “For this saying go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter.” And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out, and her daughter lying on the bed.
When I first read this story, I had a number of problems with it, chiefly that this didn’t seem to be a gentle and loving Jesus. In the story, he’s tired, and so he goes to the coastal regions of Tyre and Sidon. I can relate to that, as looking at the water is a nice way to rid yourself of your worries. The woman asks not for help for her, but for her daughter. She is in a triple category of being othered, she is a woman, a foreigner and a non-Jew. Jesus as much as tells her that he comes not for her or her kind, but for the chosen, the children.
The only way I could make sense of this was through one of my teachers, Bill Klassen, Jesus as God with a twinkle in his eye, all-knowing, who knows what she knows, knows what she is going to be able to say.
I learned from Fr. Elias Mallon a different interpretation. We read this as docetics, who think of Jesus only in his divine nature. We forget the humanity of Jesus. What if we heard this as Jesus learning from the foreign, non-Jewish woman his role? That he is come for all, not just the chosen. Or to echo a song by Canadian singer, Bruce Cockburn, 1991’s “Cry of a Tiny Babe”, written in Toronto:
There are others who know about this miracle birth / The humblest of people catch a glimpse of their worth
For it isn’t to the palace that the Christ child comes / But to shepherds and street people, hookers and bums
And the message is clear if you have ears to hear / That forgiveness is given for your guilt and your fear.
God’s grace is open to all of us, not just to those in one particular tradition. In the passage from the Qur’an, the scripture for Muslims, that we heard before the meditation, the Qur’an does speak about the creation of humanity, and which people are better than others: “O humanity! Truly We [God] created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes that you might know each other. Truly the most honoured of you in the sight of God is the most God-conscious of you. Truly God is Knowing, Aware” (49:13).
There are four key points in this verse. First, the passage is addressed to all of humanity, and not specifically limited to Muslims. Second, the passage mentions that the creation of humanity into distinct groupings comes from God and is a positive value. Third, it encourages people to transcend their differences and learn from each other. Finally, the passage does not say that Muslims are better than other people, but that the best people are those who are aware of God.
This, for me, is the heart of interfaith dialogue. Not that we attempt to convert each other, but that we help each other to find that is meaningful in our own traditions. This is what being a good faith neighbour is all about.
What can we do at a National Level to create faith neighbours?
Since 1980, the National Christian Muslim Liaison Committee has existed as an official vehicle of dialogue. Led by the United Church of Canada, there have been a number of conferences and workshops on interfaith dialogue. Several useful resources have been produced as a result of these workshops. In 2004, the United Church published a study document entitled That We May Know Each Other: United Church—Muslim Relations Today. The subtitle of the document was indicative of its goal: “Toward a United Church of Canada understanding of the relationship between Christianity and Islam in the Canadian context.” That document was circulated to various Muslim groups before it was publicly released. This interfaith work also involves the attendance of non-Muslims at Muslim rituals and celebrations and the attendance of Muslims at non-Muslim religious ceremonies. The result is an “Islam” that influences and in turn is influenced by the other traditions with which it comes into contact. As a result of the interfaith dialogue in a city such as Vancouver, many non-Muslims are aware of some of the basic elements of Islam.
What can we do at the congregational level? We can partner with individual mosques or Islamic centres. Example of Muslim Christian Consultative Group in LA.
For many of us, it is religion that is crucial in giving us meaning about our lives and the world in which we live those lives. This is a tremendous opportunity for us as Muslims in the secular setting of Canada, very different, for example, from the disestablishement of religion in France. Professor Smith emphasized that faith was a personal matter. This is the heart of interfaith dialogue, because institutions and organizations do not dialogue – people do. Transformed relationships and understanding come from the discussions that take place between people.
This is what we can do at the individual level, make a Muslim friend. The first step towards learning about Islam, then, is not to pick up the Qur’an and begin reading, or to observe prayer at a mosque. One starts by finding a Muslim friend with whom to speak. In large communities this is not a problem, since most everyone is in some kind of contact with Muslims. In smaller or more homogeneous communities, the range of options are admittedly more limited, but it is surprising how many mosques and informal Muslim associations exist outside the main urban centres. One’s dialogue partner may be a neighbour, a doctor at the local hospital, a teacher, a restaurant owner, a university professor, a cab driver, a factory worker, a motel owner, or the manager of an ethnic grocery store. Sometimes one can make an acquaintance by working alongside people of other traditions in social justice or service projects such food banks, blood drives, or other charitable causes.
As religious people, we may share a common belief that it is our duty to help each other. I am reminded here of a quote I once heard, where someone asked a Christian minister about the quote from the Book of Genesis, where God asks Cain about his brother Abel. Cain responds with the famous line, “am I my brother’s keeper?” Many of us adopt that line, that we are not responsible for, and to, our brothers and sisters. This particular minister answered in a different way. “Am I my brother’s keeper? Yes, because I am my brother’s brother”. We have lots of examples of people from different religions working together to help each other. Here, in Canada, in 2004, who did we vote as the greatest Canadian in the CBC Poll? We voted Tommy Douglas as the Greatest Canadian. How many of us remember him, that the reason that we have socialized medicine in Canada was because of him? And it was his Christian roots in the social gospel movement that spurred him. Not that it was his neighbourly duty, but his Christian duty to take care of his neighbour. In my own small way, I do some work with the Valley Interfaith Council in the San Fernando Valley where I live, and the North Hollywood interfaith food pantry. In the current debates about immigration, we see many religious groups stepping forward to help people without demanding to see their identification, as some politicians would have us do.
As Muslims, particularly as North American Muslims, we need to become more visible as individuals and communities as participants in North American life. You can help us to do this, as we have much to learn from you here. We can increase this participation in a number of ways. We can encourage our children to value the arts and humanities. We have a large number of Muslim doctors and lawyers and businesspeople. Where are the Muslim writers and artists and musicians and filmmakers and actors and journalists? We should encourage our children in these fields. If we want our stories told in the media, we need to do this ourselves. Zaraqa Nawaz has done this here in Canada with her CBC television show Little Mosque on the Prairie.
We are neighbours to each other. That is a very important metaphor. Again, I think of Wilfred. Let me end with this story about him. Someone asked Wilfred, “Professor Smith, are you Christian?” He thought for a moment and responded, “Am I Christian? Maybe I was, last Tuesday, at lunch, for about an hour or so. But if you really want to know, ask my neighbour.”