Love: a Common Word between Evangelicals and Muslims?

Humanity's ability to live together in peace and harmony-and the very lives of both Christians and peaceful Muslims in many parts of the world-are threatened by radical Islamic elements. The World Evangelical Alliance and a major Muslim organization have agreed to work together to combat threats to their shared values and articulate a positive alternative. This article explains why such an effort is justified and how it hopes to make a global impact.

Contemporary Islam, 2010

Humanitarian Islam is a global movement that seeks to restore rahmah (universal love and compassion) to its rightful place as the primary message of Islam, while positioning these efforts within a broader initiative to preserve and strengthen a rules-based international order founded upon shared civilizational values. The inspiration for Humanitarian Islam is the unique example of the 15 th /16 th-century Wali Songo ("Nine Saints") who proselytized Islam Nusantara ("East Indies Islam")-rooted in the principle of rahmah-stressing the need to contextualize Islamic teachings and adapt these to the ever-changing realities of space and time, while presenting Islam not as a supremacist ideology or vehicle for conquest, but rather, as one of many paths through which humans may attain spiritual perfection. Established by leaders of Indonesia's 90-million-member Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the Institute for Humanitarian Islam and Center for Shared Civilizational Values work with a group of closely affiliated organizations including Nahdlatul Ulama; the NU's 5-million-member young adults movement, Gerakan Pemuda Ansor; LibForAll Foundation; and Bayt ar-Rahmah, which helps coordinate the global expansion of NU operations. The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) was founded in 1846 by Anglican, Baptist, Scottish Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregationalist leaders from the British Isles, as well as by prominent representatives of American and European Protestants, the latter especially from Germany. It is the largest international organization of evangelical churches, representing over 600 million Protestants and national evangelical alliances in 140 countries. WEA seeks to strengthen local churches through national alliances, supporting and coordinating grassroots leadership and seeking practical ways of showing the unity of the body of Christ. Evangelicals are recognized by their high regard for the Bible as the Word of God that guides their daily lives; the conviction that salvation is only received

Muslim World, 2020

Few, even are the contributions of authors from Middle Eastern Fundamentalist-Evangelical Protestantism that touch upon the relation with other faiths except from a missiological, evangelizing-proselytizing perspective. Recently, a Lebanese theologian from this community changed this habitus and produced a monograph on Christianity and Islam from an evangelical attention to the idea of "dialogue" and interreligious interaction. In 2019, Martin Accad, the Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut, published a book titled, Sacred Misinterpretation, on the subject of Christian-Muslim dialogue. While Accad personally reflects a very tolerant, embracive and open-minded appreciation of his growth and life as Christian with Muslims in Lebanon (something the writer of this review has also experienced in a similar way in his birth-land, Syria), Accad concedes fully the, rather, globally realized conviction that religions and their relations are core-components of conflict. Nevertheless, Accad also construes the primary motivation and belief of his book's discourse on Christian-Muslim dialogue are "the idea that religious discourse can also contribute significantly in working toward peaceful relations between populations with rival ideologies" (p. 6). How can religions become part of the remedy prescription instead of one of the conflict ingredients? The transformation of the role of religious interrelations and communication in our living context, Accad suggests, lies in reviewing the Christians' and Muslims' theological reasoning about each other: "Our theologies have been fundamental to our understanding of one another, and our murky relational history seems to indicate that our mutual perceptions have been largely negative" (p. 7). It is this essential role of theologization in the history of interreligious relation between Christianity and Islam that makes theology "a foundation of dialogue", Accad believes, so that the premise of his argument becomes: "Your view of Islam affects your attitude to Muslims; your attitude, in turn, influences your approach to Christian-Muslim interaction, and that approach affects the ultimate outcome of your presence as a witness among Muslims" (p. 7). Accad's discussion and analysis all over the book become, then, pieces assembled together, on the basis of the above-mentioned premise, to create what he calls "the SEKAP spectrum of Christian-Muslim interaction". SEKAP stands for "syncretistic, existential, kerygmatic, apologetic and polemical" (p. 8). From all these trends of interaction between Christians and Muslims, Accad leaves all those who resonate to interrelationality and focuses on the one that centers around theology: He opts for the "kerygamtic interaction" option, deeming it the most fruitful and peaceful position between the two extreme options of syncretism and polemics. According to him, this option more than any other enables the exploration and finding of the most 'Christ-like' symptoms in Islam and the Muslims. For Accad, this

The increasingly politicized presence of Muslim communities in Britain today is raising issues not only for society in general but for other faith communities as well. Among these the Evangelical constituency, including the members of various Christian diasporas, is struggling to find a coherent response which is true to its Bible-based, activist roots. This thesis discusses the relationship of religion to the theoretical notion of the public sphere. Specifically it hypothesizes an Evangelical micro public sphere as the framework for an empirical exploration of the responses of British Evangelicals to Muslims since the events of 11th September 2001. It describes the formation, composition and discourse of this sphere drawing on data gathered from books, articles, lectures and interviews with key participants. The data reveal a marked tension, indeed a polarization, amongst Evangelicals, with an increasingly sharp disagreement between ‘confrontationalists’ and ‘conciliators’. A detailed analysis of the interaction of this sphere with Muslims, the national media and church leaders follows, leading to a concluding discussion of the future trajectory of the British Evangelical movement. Whilst it is still too early to say whether Evangelicalism will be strengthened or weakened, its encounter with Islam is likely to be an increasingly significant factor in British public life for the foreseeable future.

JAAR 85 (2017): 277-80

2006

Two books, Islam & the West Post 9/11 1 and Islam and the West: reflections from Australia, 2 cover a range of theoretical issues, regional-specific topics and case studies that explore issues related to the theme of Islam and the West. These are but two in a great flood of publications. Interest in contemporary Islam is high. The stakes are high. If global warming is a cause for concern, the idea of an interreligious meltdown between Islam and Christianity-which between them encompass the majority of the entire population of the globe-cannot be lightly brushed aside, given today the upsurge in "fundamentalist" (I use this expression cautiously) ideologies and related assertive, even terrorist, activities. But there are two other recent books which argue, in effect, that a meltdown is by no means inevitable, and that, indeed, the prospect for friendship between the peoples of these two great religions is eminently possible and supremely to be desired. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, in his The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity, remarks that "Islam is an inalienable and inseparable part of the Abrahamic family of religions and considers itself to be closely linked with the two monotheistic religions that preceded it. Islam envisages itself the complement of those religions and the final expression of

2011

The paper looks historically at factors in Europe that affected Christian interaction with Muslims before 9/11. It then considers what has happened since, with the greatly increased profile of Islam caused by several factors outlined. It considers changes within Christian and Muslim Communities, and at Christian responses to Islam. An extensive section considers contemporary approaches to mission with Muslims theologically and practically, in ten areas. The conclusion provides evidence for why Europe in general, and Britain in particular, are pivotal for the development of a constructive approach to Muslim Christian relations, and a sensitive approach to mission. Mission and Muslims in the Contemporary British and European Contexts The context has changed drastically since the Edinburgh Conference of 1910. At that point, engagement with Islam was something happening elsewhere, within the old ‘mission field.’ This meant, in the main, the Middle East, parts of Africa and the Asian sub...