Ще з іншого джерела:

Let me summarize some of the points mentioned above and with which I am concerned in this book:
1 That scholars in International Relations (IR) concerned with religion and its relations to world
politics are in general and with varying degrees of awareness rhetorically constructing a powerful
modern myth. The myth is that there is an essential difference between religion and politics, or
religion and the modern state, which in turn rests on a deeper preconception of the essential
distinction between the religious and the non-religious.

2 That this myth is a foundation of modern liberal capitalist ideology, transforming a historically
contingent discourse into a powerful set of global assumptions about the order of things. The myth
of selfequilibrating
markets and the rational self-maximizing Individuals who ‘play’ them appear as natural, common
sense realities, obscured for centuries by irrational religious traditions. Liberal capitalism, as
theorized by the science of economics, appears as inevitable and in the immutable order of the
world.

3 That there were multiple origins of this myth, especially the encounter of Christian European
powers with non-European peoples and the new needs of classification that arose in colonial sites.
There is therefore no single starting point for its articulation. However, its Anglophone formation
achieved crucial early clarification from around the late seventeenth century.

4 That the discourse in IR, and indeed the formation of IR as a secular discipline, is part of a wider
rhetorical construction which is being reproduced by scholars in neighbouring academic domains
such as political economy or economics, sociology, political theory, anthropology, religious studies
and literary studies. Wherever discourses on ‘religion’ are being reproduced, the imagined
veridicality of the non-religious secular is also tacitly constructed. Greater interdisciplinarity
between IR and neighbouring disciplines such as religious studies is therefore necessary for a
correct analysis of the categories involved and the unblocking of collective intellectual energy which
might eventually give rise to a radically new imaginaire.

5 That this academic production is a significant if apparently small part of a broader array of
agencies for the reproduction and dissemination of the myth, including constitutions, courts, state
agencies and the media. Without a critical awareness of this broader context within which IR and the
academy generally is located, IR experts, like those in neighbouring disciplines, will be unable to
see the outcomes of their own contributions to the production of this myth.

6 In agreement with some IR experts, I argue that the discourse on religion as a privatized right is a
modern invention which is ineluctably connected with the invention of the non-religious state and
the secular domains, notably ‘politics’ and ‘economics’. However, I offer an alternative historical
view of the decisive emergence of both religion and the secular state as an Anglophone binary
apparatus, dating this pair from around 1680 in the writings of powerful and well-connected non-
conformists such as John Locke and William Penn, who were
involved in a power struggle with established dominant interests, the colonial connection with North
America, and the development of state bills of rights culminating in the US Constitution near the
end of the
eighteenth century. This fills in a gap between the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) and the cluster of
diverse, momentous events of the late eighteenth century, including the US Declaration of
Independence, the US
Constitution, the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens, the
advances in science and technology, the articulation of economics and its transformation from moral
theology into a
technically neutral language of naturally rational processes. At the level of metaphysics and in very
general terms is the invention of the concept of the world as a self-subsistent and self-explanatory
system of matter
that does not require the Trinitarian, Monotheistic God of Christian theology as a hypothesis.

7 Finally, an indication of the globalizing dominance of the religionsecular ideology is the

reproduction of the basic form of the written Constitution every time a new nation is constructed or
reconstructed, along with other indicators of Anglo-American civility, such as the destruction of pre-
existing modes of authority and practice accompanied by the growth of ‘rights’, corporations, property
markets, and the pool of wage labour.

What’s Wrong with Essentializing Religion in Political Science?

Assuming that religion is inherently magical, emotive, dogmatic, or anything “inherent” at all is
essentializing and dehistoricizing a varied, context-dependent, and amorphous set of practices,
social relations, texts, and actors. While theologians engage in the hermeneutic analysis of sacred
texts, frequently debating among themselves which is the most accurate representation or
interpretation of a given religious tradition (i.e., the method of “apologetics”), social scientists
generally focus instead on how and/or why political, economic, and social events and processes
interact with religious traditions. The distinction between disciplines should not be considered
absolute, but it is important to highlight when dissecting problematic oversimplifications of religion
that tend to resurface in some social science research. Assigning a fixed and essential ontology to
religion results in several analytical and normative problems in political science.
First, essentializing religion often leads the scholar to miss the range of roles a particular act, idea,
or actor might play in international relations. For instance, scholars might treat religious identity as
the most important form of identity (over other ethnic, racial, gender, national, or other identities).
Such privileging of religious identity—in scholarship, as well as in legal and political institutional
contexts—can actually lead to more entrenched divisions among certain communities. As Campbell
(1998) noted in Bosnia, Lynch (2011B) in the war on terror, and Hurd (2015) in the context of
debates about religious freedom, privileging religion as “the” primordial identity misses the
complexity of sociopolitical interactions and creates the possibility of “fortifying the lines of
division” in religious terms Religion in International Relations. Instead, “religious identity … may
overtake other identities, compete with them, or take a back seat to them (and this hierarchy of
relationships may change over time). Religious identity may also be interpreted through other
identities”.
Second, essentializing religion can privilege certain kinds of being over others. One example
concerns whether or not religion can be reduced to “belief.” While common definitions of religion
in international relations often include a reference to practice or ritual, many scholars often
designate belief as the central defining characteristic of religion. This is problematic because
focusing on religion as belief, “writes out of the picture alternative spaces and practices … in which
religion is lived as ethics, culture, and even politics, but without necessarily belief”. Thus, those
studies that define religion as belief are leaving out other important aspects of religious adherence.
While relating “belief” to situated and interpreted action by religious adherents can provide a way
out of this problem, a significant and problematic trend is to focus almost exclusively on belief, as
seen most clearly in international religious freedom laws. This jurisprudence, which tends to allow
more freedom for belief than practice, results in “privileging one, typically Protestant understanding
of religion over others”.
Essentializing religion also often contributes to a secularist bias, wherein scholars are effectively
blinded to the ways that secular phenomena can have similar problematic effects as religious
phenomena. For example, scholars often focus on the ethical problems associated with religious
proselytism, especially in aid and development settings, but neglect the similar negative effects that
neoliberal market-based solutions can have in those same environments. Moreover, a secularist bias
can lead a scholar to neglect how putatively “secular” ideas, policies, and processes can shape
theologies of aid, such as when some Christian and Muslim aid organizations employ discourses of
neoliberalism to advocate particular concepts or programs. Similarly, Mona Kanwal Sheikh points
out that so-called “nonreligious” principles of secularism and freedom, like some interpretations of
religious doctrine, can “provide vehicles of social mobilization, give legitimacy to and moral
justification for violence, demonize opponents and cast a conflict in transhistorical terms,” through
the call to defend one’s country, for example.
Finally, essentializing religion dehistoricizes the concept and the scholar’s own role in the
production of knowledge vis-à-vis religion. Timothy Fitzgeral argues that by relying on analytical
categorizations of the religious, the secular, and the political, international relations scholars are
reinforcing the normative categories that constituted common notions of modernity, and are thus
engaging “in an ideological project” that often results in “domination and exploitation.” By
essentializing religion and separating it from secularism or politics, scholars are using their authority
to construct or reinforce conceptions of religion (as well as secularism, modernity, liberalism, and
other concepts that are central to modern political life), which has real effects in areas of security,
Religion in International Relations

Assigning inherent characteristics to religion often neglects the range of roles that so- called
religious actors, practices, and ideas can play in social life, often resulting in skewed or erroneous
claims about the salience of religious actors, traditions, beliefs, and practices in conflict or peace. In
order to avoid oversimplification and dehistoricization, scholars should reexamine the ontology of
religion in international relations and approach the study of religious actors and action through the
lens of reflexivity and ethics, as well as through new developments in securitization approaches.
Alternative Approaches to the Study of Religion in International Relations
Focusing on religious ethics-in-action moves analyses beyond Enlightenment and other
essentializing assumptions about the inherent nature of religion to better understandings of why
religious global actors choose specific courses of action over others. To do this, scholars should both
reexamine their own conceptions about what counts as religious and situate specific principles,
practices, and identities within broader contexts, in order to understand how religious actors
navigate ethical choices. Several approaches, including the securitization approach and the neo-
Weberian approach, among others, can provide paths forward for accomplishing these goals.
Scholars must first reexamine and reevaluate their ontologies of religion (i.e., how they define
religion and the assumptions that go along with those definitions). What counts as “religious” differs
across time and space and scholars are notoriously unable to pin down a concrete definition of
religion. As Max Weber (1991, p. 1) asserted in his classic tome, Sociology of Religion, “To define
religion, to say what it is, is not possible at the start of a presentation such as this” (also quoted in
Lynch, 2009, p. 383). Thus, when examining so- called religious actors or phenomena, scholars
must be reflexive—actively engaging with their own assumptions about what it means for someone
or something to be religious. In any given scholarly examination of religion in international
relations, scholars must ask what it is about a particular phenomenon or actor that makes it/her/him
religious according to the scholar’s own definition and why that might matter for the analysis or
argument. For instance, typologies of faith-based organizations often view certain practices,
symbols, and relationships as indicative of the relative religiousness of a given organization
(Hefferan, Adkins, & Occhipinti, 2009; Jeavons, 1998; Monsma, 1996; Sider & Unruh, 2004; Thaut,
2009). Scholars need to assess what is gained or lost by identifying certain organizational
characteristics (e.g., the use of prayer, a Christian identity, the distribution of aid in a mosque) as
inherently religious, while assuming other characteristics (e.g., a humanitarian ethos, participation in
a campaign to distribute mosquito nets, a workplace free from symbols of the Christian cross) to be
nonreligious or secular. What is at stake in such categorizations? Taking an ontological stance that
views what counts as religion, or what counts as religious, as part and parcel of socioeconomic and
political processes
places scholars in an intellectual space wherein they understand their own authoritative power in
assigning meaning to religious actors and phenomena, while also allowing for more specificity in
understanding how those actors and practices we call “religious” operate in international relations.
Such a reflexive and socially constructed ontology of religion pushes the scholar to rethink how she
can best understand why an Islamic humanitarian organization or a Christian social movement might
or might not proselytize, include prayer in its activities, employ the discourse of development
specialists, or participate in an advocacy campaign or protest (Schwarz, 2016).
In order to understand why so-called religious actors might engage in certain activities (including
activities of peace or violence), some scholars (Toft et al., 2011, p. 219) advocate for paying closer
attention to different forms of religious theologies. However, as Sheikh (2012, p. 377) notes, “The
danger in evaluating theological concepts through a priori analyses detached from their adherents is
that they can end up being highly speculative about the link between religion and action.” Religious
texts (here we use the term “text” in a broad sense to also include religious oral teachings and
practices) can often include seemingly contradictory prescriptions, and religious actors are tasked
with how to interpret those texts. In this way, religious texts are living documents and religious
traditions are “living traditions” (Appleby, 1999; Lynch, 2009; MacIntyre, 2007; Salvatore &
LeVine, 2005), rather than static and easily identified blueprints for how to live.
Second, in order to deal with the interpretation problem, scholars need to contextualize the practice,
principles, and identities of religious actors within broader histories and geographies in order to
understand how such actors navigate ethical choices. While the securitization approach helps
explain problematic foreign and domestic policy implications resulting from the essentialization of
religion, scholars must go further in contextualizing the tensions among religious actors and within
religious traditions. One important step is to look beyond religious doctrine to the way in which
religious actors interpret that doctrine through practice. There are several conceptualizations of how
to do this, including the ethics-based approaches of neo-Weberianism and “positive ethics,” as well
as a relational dialogical approach.
An ethics-based approach to the study of religion treats religion not as static doctrine, but as
practice. The neo-Weberian approach focuses on moral reasoning and how notions of the common
good are shaped by actors and their experiences (Lynch, 2009, p. 399; also see Lynch, 2014). It is at
base a form of constructivism that does not essentialize religion as an inherent motivator of conflict
or peace. Instead, such an approach focuses on how actors “bridge the gap between doctrine, ethics,
and action in particular contexts” (Lynch, 2014, p. 280). The neo-Weberian approach draws on Max
Weber’s insights into the ways in which religious actors practice religious doctrine through specific
rituals and choices, but that those practices themselves are shaped by a variety of geographical,
historical, and other contextual factors. “As a result,” Lynch (2014, p. 282) writes, “religious
adherents constantly navigate experiential, ritualistic, and doctrinal terrains in deciding how to act.”
Lynch builds on Weber’s ethical framework by focusing on the ways in which religious
communities draw on doctrines, past courses of action, and current situational factors to debate
among themselves the best ways to interpret specific texts and how to act according to their
conceptions of the common good. The neo-Weberian approach moves past essentialist notions of
religious doctrine and action to understand how religious individuals and communities navigate
complex social spaces where ethical choices are not simply informed by predetermined
interpretations of religious doctrine, but are discussed, challenged, and navigated. Using this
approach to deepen the analysis of the securitization of Islam and Muslims, for example, we could
examine the tensions in Muslim-majority societies regarding both U.S. bases in their countries and
the failure of their own authoritarian governments’ responses to social and political problems. We
should go further, however, and examine as well the tensions in different groups’ understandings of
the meanings of jihad (including internal versus external struggles for justice) and the requirements
of peace, salaam, or Islam. Both contextualization and understanding the range and tensions among
meanings allows a richer understanding of religious interpretation and practice, and assists in
preventing an oversimplification of complex contexts and identities.
Anthropologist Saba Mahmood proposes a similar approach she calls “positive ethics” (drawn from
the works of Aristotle and Michel Foucault). She writes, “An inquiry into ethics from this
perspective requires that one examine not simply the values enshrined in moral codes, but the
different ways in which people now live these codes.… What is consequential in this framework is
not necessarily whether people follow the moral norms or not, but what relationships they establish
between the various constitutive elements of the self (body, reason, volition, and so on) and a
particular norm”. Taking these religious ethical struggles seriously, positive ethics and neo-
Weberianism entail contextualization of a particular religious actor or group and its practices and
traditions, highlighting the “common good” or ultimate goals it wants to achieve, and probing the
range of ethics and actions that are interpreted as legitimate for achieving it. Because ethics-based
approaches treat religion as a socially constructed category, they are also well suited to engage in a
reflexive reassessment of the ontology of religion.
Similarly, Erin Wilson articulates a constitutive approach of “relational dialogism” that “highlights
the multifaceted nature of religion itself” for studying foreign policy, while understanding
articulations of global justice by religious actors in ways that move “beyond dualism”. According to
Wilson, dialogism allows for the fluidity of concepts and ideas, while relational thinking (here
Wilson draws on Prokhovnik) views those ideas and concepts as “existing in relationships.”
Employing such an approach in the study of religion vis-à-vis global justice and other areas of
international relations enables the scholar to “emphasize the connections that exist” within
dichotomies of religious–secular, irrational–rational, problematic–beneficial, and others . Rather
than treating religious actors, beliefs, and practices as inherently good or bad, relational dialogism
shows how they can be both and neither. Furthermore, a relational dialogical approach encourages
the scholar to think beyond her own assumptions about religion by, for instance, focusing on other
nonreligious intersections of identity in interreligious peace building .

Relational dialogism treats “religion” and its related ideas, practices, and actors as fluid and
relational, rather than static and distinct. While Lynch’s and Mahmood’s ethics-based approaches
focus on the interpretation of religious guidelines for a wide range of actions and ethics, Wilson
focuses on global justice and foreign policy issues. Yet each of these scholars moves away from the
dualism inherent in reified conceptions of religion.
Moreover, like securitization theory, these approaches help to pinpoint areas of potential defusion
and redefinition of problematic interpretations and assumptions by scholars, pundits, and those they
study. According to securitization theory, when an issue or set of actors becomes securitized (either
by religious actors themselves or by those who oppose them), the conditions enabling violence are
heightened. This leads to the necessity of “desecuritization” where possible (Sheikh, 2011), in order
to avoid conflict as well as the reification of religious identities, traditions, and practices. In the
securitization framework, religion is not a predetermined problem or threat, but becomes one
through specific discourses and practices. The neo-Weberian and other dialogical, ethics-based
approaches, in turn, point to the internal workings and tensions as well as internal-external
interactions of religious traditions in their contexts. In a similar vein, we assert that studies of
religion in international relations, in order to avoid the bad–good, problematic–beneficial, conflict-
prone–peaceful dichotomies, should, instead treat religion as socially constructed practice and
discourse.

Conclusion
Ultimately, scholars should turn from studying something called “religion” to examining traditions,
actors, practices, and ethics deemed “religious” by specific actors and/or analysts. Religion (and
secularism) is instantiated through practice, by particular actors, who interpret their traditions
through the lens of their socioeconomic and political contexts as well as ethical imperatives.
Analysts’ attempts to understand religion as “a” factor that is ahistorical in nature can capture
elements of these practices, actors, and traditions, but ultimately risk essentializing specific religious
traditions or actors in ways that miss much of their ethical and political import and influence.
The debate between scholars who employ religion as a static variable opposed to “secularism,” and
those who emphasize (a) the range of ethics, interpretations, and actors within religious traditions as
well as among them, and (b) the intersectionality of religions and secularisms in historical context,
will no doubt continue. Moreover, debates internal to each type of perspective are also important to
note. Scholars who view religion as a variable that either causes or does not cause particular
outcomes debate its role in producing violence and opposing or supporting democracy (for an
interesting discussion of Islam and secularism in Senegal, for example, see Stepan, 2000). Those
who insist on contextual understandings of religious interpretations present a range of perspectives
on several issues, including the degree to which they see secularism as inevitably a byproduct of
Christianity, the degree to which they wish to erase any divide between religion and secularism
versus probing more deeply the ethics of those who call themselves either religious or secular, and
the degree to which they simply critique the religious-secular divide versus develop alternative
approaches to address its complexities.
Examinations of both religion and secularism as categories and historical developments should
move beyond the European context to those that focus on other intersections and other areas of the
world (e.g., the relationship between Hinduism and Buddhism in India and China, and the
intersections between Islam and West and North African religions, among many others). Such
expanded research trajectories could examine more deeply questions of identity, relations between
belief and practice, and the constitutive relationship between them and politics in different parts of
the world. Such a trajectory might also merge with the call to develop a new subfield of
“international political theology” (IPT), as advocated by Vendulka Kubálková (2000, 2003), in order
to understand the range of developments regarding the quest for meaning in international relations.
Whether or not a specific field of study is required, future research will undoubtedly continue the
examination of practices, ideologies, and traditions of religions and secularisms in different parts of
the world, their interconnections with political and economic processes, and their ethics regarding
pressing issues of their times.

Islam and Christianity: a long, complex and crucial relationship

Some see the world as increasingly polarised, and fear the “clash of civilisations” predicted by
American academic Samuel Huntington in 1996. It is not hard to find evidence that seems to
support this – with the violent activities of groups such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, Boko
Haram in Nigeria and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. After the attacks of 9/11 fear of Islam
grew rapidly in the US where analysts suggest that right-wing evangelical Christians and others
spend more than $40 million (Dh147m) a year producing wilfully Islamophobic material.
Attitudes have hardened in Europe too, with offensive cartoons ridiculing the Prophet
Mohammed appearing in newspapers in Denmark, France and elsewhere. Under the aegis of the
French official policy of laicite a ban has been placed on the public wearing of the hijab.

After terrorist bombings in New York, Madrid and London – and repeated attacks on Christians
in Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and Syria, which threatened to drive Christianity entirely from the lands
that were its cradle – it is not hard to argue that Christian-Muslim relations are at a low point not
experienced since the days of the Crusades.

And yet it is Muslims who are the chief victims of the increased violence in the Middle East.
Today some 70 per cent of all refugees in the world are Muslims. A minority, although a sizeable
one, has managed to escape by moving to Europe – a development which, thanks to the
incitement of populist politicians, has served to put new strains on relations between Islam and
Christianity.

But men such as Pope Francis show there is another side to this story. Since he was elected in
2013 this pope has encouraged the Catholic Church to intensify its dialogue with Islam. Muslims,
he has told Christians, are their brothers and sisters.

In what amounts to a manifesto for his papacy, the document Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the
Gospel), he tells Christians they must "avoid hateful generalisations" about Muslims. Instead,
they should remember that, despite "disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism" the truth
is, "authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence".
Fine words were not enough, he insists. Fruitful dialogue with Islam means that "suitable training
is essential for all involved". Actions are required, too. "Christians should embrace with affection
and respect Muslim immigrants to our countries in the same way that we hope and ask to be
received and respected in countries of Islamic tradition," though he adds, pointedly, "I ask and I
humbly entreat those countries to grant Christians freedom to worship and to practise their faith,
in light of the freedom which followers of Islam enjoy in western countries".

Other Christian denominations are responding to contemporary tensions in a similar way. The
Anglican Church has established initiatives for Muslims and Christians to study Scripture
together, discuss the social challenges the two communities face, and identify common action
against violence, poverty and injustice. The Orthodox Church has set up a programme to explore
the theologies of Christianity and Islam. Other groups of Christians are focusing their joint
Muslim-Christian initiatives on contemporary ethical questions about the role of the family,
gender relations, new scientific and medical technology, and the environment. In the US
thousands of churches have now initiated study programmes on Islam and joint projects to build
housing for low-income families. There has been a dramatic increase in courses on Islam in
North American colleges and universities.
Christianity and the Prophet Mohammed

Muslims and Christians have never been quite able to make up their minds about one another. In
his early years the Prophet Mohammed saw his teaching as very much in continuity with the
traditions of Judaism and Christianity. He expected that Jews and Christians, having Abraham
and Moses as common ancestors, would accept his prophetic message as a continuation of their
own. All were “People of the Book” who had received revelations of God in written texts.

Christian writers disagreed, often vehemently, but the disagreements were largely theological. In
practice, relations between Muslims and Christians were good. While pagans in conquered
territories were expected to convert to Islam, Christians and Jews were given the status of
“dhimmi”, which allowed them to practise their religion in private and govern their own
communities. In return they paid a poll tax. Though Byzantine polemicists insisted that Islam was
a plot to destroy the Christian faith, other Christians saw Islam as “the rod of God’s anger” to
deliver them from the oppressive rule of the Orthodox in Byzantium.

Muslim rulers in Egypt and Syria would employ Christians in important positions. Greek was
used rather than Arabic as the first language of the Umayyad court. In the ninth century Islam
inherited the learning of the Hellenist tradition. Muslim leaders even founded an academy to
translate the works of Greek philosophy, science and medicine into Arabic. In this way many of
the classic texts of the Greek and Roman world were preserved during Europe’s Dark Ages and
were eventually restored to the West at the Renaissance.

Distinctly Islamic contributions in the spheres of law, architecture, science and technology were
similarly transmitted to Europe. There is even a suggestion that the treatment of religious
minorities during the Ottoman Empire – where four religions, known as millets, were officially
recognised: Islam, Orthodox Christianity, Armenian Christianity and Judaism – suggests that
toleration within a pluralist society was an Islamic rather than a western invention.

The Crusades

During the Middle Ages relations became more strained. Competing dynasties vied for power in
both the Muslim world and in Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire. As the medieval period
progressed, relations deteriorated. In 1095 Pope Urban II launched the first of a series of the
Crusades, which were to scar relations between the two great faiths – inflicting a wound from
which the two cultures have never fully recovered.

One of the great myths about the Crusades is that they were launched for primarily religious
motives. The truth was more complicated. As with so many conflicts between Christianity and
Islam over the millennium that followed, territorial and economic considerations stoked the
religious rhetoric. In fact, the First Crusade came about through a complex set of factors
including the desire of Pope Urban to reinforce the power of the papacy. Christian rulers were
also ambitious to increase their sphere of military, political and commercial influence. Merchants
and bankers were as significant as knights-at-arms and footsoldiers. But the religious bombast,
which was used to stir ordinary Christians to fight, also served to intensify the medieval Christian
vision of Islam as a moral threat.

Historians now agree that there was no moral equivalence in the initial behaviour of the
competing armies. When the Crusaders stormed Jerusalem in 1099 they left few Muslim men,
women or children alive. Where Islam made distinction between the dhimmi and the pagan, -
Christianity did not; Saint Bernard – from whom the crusader Frederick Barbarossa received a
cross before battle – ruled that killing for Christ was not homicide but malecide (the
extermination of injustice) and pronounced, "To kill a pagan is to win glory, for it gives glory to
Christ." The Crusaders even massacred Eastern Christians, either through ignorance or prejudice
about notional heresy.

Small wonder that Pope John Paul II, to mark the Millennium in 2000, issued an apology for the
Crusades and an era in which the Christian cross came to represent what the former Archbishop
of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, called “the language of the powerful, the excuse for oppression,
the alibi for atrocity”.

By contrast, when Salah al-Din (Saladin) recaptured Jerusalem in 1187, during the Third
Crusade, his Muslim troops were as magnanimous in victory as they had been tenacious in battle.
Christian civilians were spared; so were most churches and shrines. That contrast explains why it
was such a blunder for former United States President George W Bush, after the September 11
attacks in New York and Washington in 2001, to unthinkingly deploy the word “crusade” when
talking about America’s intended response. One moderate Mufti said that the words of President
Bush “recalled the barbarous and unjust military operations against the Muslim world”. Osama
bin Laden and his followers – both before and after 9/11 – took delight in referring to all western
military forces as “crusaders”.

The peace treaty signed by Salah al-Din and Richard the Lionheart, King of England, placed
Jerusalem in Muslim hands but allowed Christian pilgrims access to the city. It was good for the
economy. As so often was the case in the centuries to come, territory and treasure, rather than
religion, were the realpolitik that governed Muslim-Christian relations.

Co-operation and cohabitation

Yet even amid the tensions of the Crusades there were more friendly counter-currents. During the
Fifth Crusade, in 1219, the Christian saint Francis of Assisi crossed the battle lines to visit the
Muslim leader Sultan al-Malik al-Kamel, nephew of Salah al-Din. Entering into enemy territory,
St Francis was arrested and taken to the Sultan who, perceiving his captive to be a holy man,
received him with courtesy.

After three weeks of dialogue, Francis left Egypt. Thereafter the saint was respectful of Muslims
to the point that he encouraged Christians to emulate them in prayer and prostration, and to join
Muslims – and others – in service to all, setting aside the differences in their religions. Francis
specifically told his followers not to try to convert the followers of the Prophet Mohammed. In a
quid pro quo the Sultan later granted control of Bethlehem and parts of Jerusalem – and a
corridor to them from the sea – to Christian worshippers, reserving the Dome of the Rock and the
Al Aqsa Mosque for Muslims, and the Temple area for Jews.

Again, it was under Muslim rule that the most harmonious period of cohabitation between the
three Abrahamic faiths took place. In medieval Andalusia, in the southern part of Spain, for
around 250 years – between 756 and the turn of the millennium – Muslims, Christians and Jews
lived in untroubled proximity and even mutual appreciation.

It was called the convivienca (living together). Christians and Jews were given prominent
positions in the court of the 10th century Caliph as translators, physicians, engineers and
architects. Jewish and Christian entrepreneurs flourished away from the feudal rigidities of
Christian Europe. The Archbishop of Seville had the Bible translated into Arabic. Muslims,
Christians and Jews studied together at the university of Cordoba, founded in 968. The classical
texts which had been translated into Arabic in the early medieval period were rendered back into
Latin and Greek, paving the way for the efflorescence of learning which was the European
Renaissance.

theologian John of Segovia and humanist philosopher George of Trebizond were both
campaigning for a Christian-Muslim peace conference. The Catholic theologian Nicholas of
Cusa, in “perhaps the most tolerant examination of Islam in the late medieval West”, explored the
idea of the ultimate unity of all religions.

Shared vision and points of divergence

It is not difficult to understand the basis of that visionary notion. Islam shares many common
elements with Christianity, and with Judaism. All are monotheist, believing in a single God.

In each faith God intervenes in human history, acting through prophets and angels. In each
religion divine revelation is recorded in sacred texts. All share the God of Adam, Abraham and
Moses. Each believes it has a special covenant with God.

Peace is central to the teachings of all three faiths. All hold that humankind will be held
accountable on Judgment Day when eternal reward and punishment will be meted out. Muslims,
like Christians, believe that Jesus will return to earth before the day of judgement.

Muslims also venerate Jesus and his mother Mary (who is mentioned more times in the Quran
than in the New Testament). Both faiths believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. Both believe that he
performed miracles such as healing the blind and raising the dead.
But there are many points of difference. Muslims believe that though Jesus was condemned to die
on a cross he was miraculously saved from Crucifixion. They believe, like Christians, that Jesus
is alive with God, yet they insist he was human not divine. They believe, like Christians, in the
Holy Spirit – but suggest that the Spirit is the Angel Gabriel (who revealed the Quran to the
Prophet Mohammed over a 23-year period) rather than the third person of a Trinitarian God. The
Trinity, to Muslims, represents a division of God’s oneness, and is therefore a grave sin
bordering on polytheism. Where internal Christian disputes have focused primarily on theology,
in Islam the major debates and disagreements have been on religious law and practice.

Again, all this emphasises a deep ambivalence on the part of Muslims towards Christians. A
number of verses in the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, the Hadith, call for
Muslims to treat Christians and Jews with respect as fellow recipients of God’s divine message.
The Quran tells Muslims that they will find Christians “nearest to them in love” yet it warns them
not to make them close friends. These caveated, or even contradictory, impulses have manifested
themselves in Muslim attitudes to Christians over the centuries – and the incongruity has been
reflected back in Christian attitudes to Muslims.

Colonisers and missionaries

The fall of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Christian empire, to the Muslim Turks in
1453 signalled the end of an epoch. It was mirrored in Spain by the final expulsion of Muslims
from Andalusia at the end of the same century. As the medieval world gave way to the early
modern one, the focus of Muslim-Christian relations shifted significantly.

Moghul India – grew internally weaker and began to decline. At first Europe took no advantage
of that – it was preoccupied by its 17th-century internal wars of religion. But later, after its
Industrial Revolution, it grew in strength economically, technologically and militarily and
established colonies in Muslim lands in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, West Africa, India and South-
East Asia. European nations such as Greece, Serbia and Romania won independence from
Muslim rule.

The European colonial authorities replaced Muslim and indigenous cultures and systems with
those of western missionaries – and later secular educators – who entrenched negative
perceptions of Islam. The writer Edward Said later characterised these as “Orientalism”: a way of
looking at Arab-Islamic peoples and their culture as exotic, backward, uncivilised, irrational and
dangerous. By comparison, western values were portrayed as enlightened and progressive.

Many in the Muslim world felt humiliated by a colonial system that undermined their society,
education, religion and culture. Some joined militant anti-colonial resistance organisations, which
grew in strength after the Second World War end campaigned for independence from the colonial
yoke.
A number of Christians, too, were uncomfortable with this subordination of Islam. At the Second
Vatican Council in the 1960s, the Catholic Church shifted its attitude to other faiths, and Islam
and Judaism in particular. Vatican II issued a document, Nostra Ætate, which urged Christians
and Muslims “to strive sincerely for mutual understanding” and “make common cause of
safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace and freedom”.

The Catholic Catechism went further. It asserted: “The plan of salvation also includes those who
acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold
the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on
the last day.”

Protestant Christianity was marginally less sympathetic. Its founder, Martin Luther, had insisted
that any post-Christian religion was false by definition. Its passionate insistence that salvation
came only by faith in Jesus Christ made it less accommodating, though Protestants and Muslims
shared an iconoclastic dislike of the religious images so beloved by Catholics.

The man who was perhaps the most prominent Catholic leader in the 20th century, Pope John
Paul II, was a strong advocate of better relations between Christianity and Islam. The first Pope
ever to visit a mosque, in Damascus in 2001, he told a massive crowd of Muslims in Casablanca:
“We believe in the same God, the one God, the Living God who created the world … In a world
which desires unity and peace, but experiences a thousand tensions and conflicts, should not
believers come together? Dialogue between Christians and Muslims is today more urgent than
ever. It flows from fidelity to God. Too often in the past, we have opposed each other in polemics
and wars. I believe that today God invites us to change old practices. We must respect each other
and we must stimulate each other in good works on the path to righteousness.”

Two sides of the new world order

It might have been expected that the economic globalisation of the late 20th century would
improve relations between Muslims and Christians even as it eroded traditional social and
religious structures. Global communication improved. Increased immigration around the world
brought Christians and Muslims into closer proximity with one another. At least a third of all
Muslims today live in non-Muslim countries, some 30 million of them in Europe. Societies have
become multicultural, multiracial and multireligious.

But in the Muslim world many resented the increased influence of the West and its value
systems. Bodies such as the World Bank, the IMF and the UN Security Council seemed to control
Muslim economies in the developing world – where young Muslims generally received a
western-style education. The West’s backing of the state of Israel, with the support of right-wing
evangelical Christians, was an added problem, even though many other Christians were more
sympathetic to the Palestinians.
Muslim societies, with their different range of understandings of Islam, reacted to this western
dominance in different ways in the final decades of the 20th century. Some sought to reconcile
Islam with the contemporary world. Others saw the answer in a secular pluralist state. Others
turned to an Islamist revival, advocating a more theocratic model which integrated Sharia and
state law – as happened in Iran, Pakistan, Sudan and Afghanistan, and is having an increased
influence in Turkey, Nigeria and the world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia.