Talk:A Common Word Between Us and You

Footnotes not appearing

Hi all, the reference section and external links section not appearing even though they're in the code page. Thanks to somebody who knows what they're doing for help in sorting this out.

origins

A section should be added explaining that this letter is a follow up to a smaller letter last year, which had been a response to Pope Benedict's Sept 2006 speech that linked Islam to violence and quoted a Byzantine emperor’s description of Muhammad as “evil and inhuman." CClio333 (talk) 21:20, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Official Website: Comments

Dear Bless Sins,

Thanks you for your comments on the article. Your comments "comments of anyone (i could post a comment as well) can't be considered reliable sources" have been duly noted. I have reworded that section in response.

Do please note that the paragraph simply serves to give an idea of the range of scope of the responses on the Official Website: it doesn't claim the comments are correct or accurate. As such, a reference to where the comments can be found is given. I.e. this paragraph in the article is only claiming that commentators say such-and-such, not that the comments are accurate.

To discuss this further, or if you have any problems concerning this, please feel free to write on this talk page.

Regards, 210.49.195.223 (talk) 01:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I remove the whole section on comments as it was pure OR. I suggest you take a look at WP:Reliable sources & Wikipedia:Verifiability. To put it bluntly, comments on a website are not usually appropriate for wikipedia as we are an encylopaedia not a newspaper or blog. We need reliable secondary sources for most of what we cite. If a reliable secondary source discusses the comments then ir may be appropriate to mention this in the article. But summarising the comments (mostly positive) as well as a wikipedia editor picking and choosing comments from random people to put in the article is not appropriate. Nil Einne (talk) 15:56, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Issues not address

As it stands, this entire section appears to be OR. If another source has discusses the letter and mentioned issues not discussed in the letter, ir would probably be appropriate to mention this. However it is not approriate for an editor to read the letter and decide what issues are not discussed in the letter, that by definition is OR. Unless references are found, the section probably should be removed Nil Einne (talk) 16:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

"Reaction" - Unexplained deletion of negative responses

An edit on 15:34, 4 October 2009 has deleted significant paragraphs containing negative reaction. These have been restored under a new heading "Negative Reaction". If you have sufficient justifiable reason to delete them, please discuss here first. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.76.58.140 (talk)

Removal of Negative Reactions

Some conservative political commentators such as the leading Jewish American political columnist Mona Charen,[5] have criticized it for failing to address the main complaints against the customs and practices of some Muslims, particularly in parts of the Islamic world, including: Robert Spencer, an American conservative commentator, writes, "The persecution of Christians is the primary indication of the letter’s inadequacy as the basis for any real dialogue between Muslims and Christians. Genuine dialogue must focus, or at least be cognizant of, the reality of what separates the two parties. Nothing can be resolved, no genuine peace or harmony attained, except on the basis of confronting those differences."

Robert Spencer refers to a so called persecution of Christians by Muslims, but this distorts the fact that it is overwhelmingly the case that Muslim countries are societies in which Christians and Muslims are able to live in a state of peace and harmony. Arab Christians have lived under the rule of Muslim Governments since the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. In fact the relations beween Arab Christians and the Ottoman Empire were often better than they were with the Byzantine Empire. Jordan and Syria are excellent examples of pluralistic societies in which historically rooted Christians and Muslims are abble to live together in peace and harmony. Where there is tension between Muslims and Christians, it is often the case that the root cause lies in the proseletising activity of western evangelical Christians, intent on imposing their own brand of exclusivist Christianity. When one considers the enormous financial power that is wielded by such evangelicals, and the fact that their religious culture is heavily influenced by western materialism, it becomes clear why Western evangelical activity in Muslim countries is sometimes regarded with profound unease. Such evangelical activity is not only a threat to traditional Muslim societies it is also a threat to traditional Christian societies. When one factors in the enormous financial resources which support western evangelical activity it becomes clear why Muslims themselves feel persecuted by Christians. The Common Word seeks to identify common ground for dialogue. Muslims themselves are only too aware of the many areas of difference which currently exist between their faith and that of Christianity. The fact that such differences do exist is no basis on which to reject the kind of dialogue sought by A Common Word. Spencer's comments rejection of the Common Word's adequacy as a basis for dialogue just does not stand up to scrutiny.

On 28 November 2007, Patrick Sookhdeo of the Barnabas Fund, interdenominational Christian aid agency, published an analysis of the letter. In it, he pointed out some significant issues which he feels are not addressed. His analysis claimed that, while the letter implies that there is a global war on Islam by Christianity, it gives no indication of sorrow for current or historical wrongs inflicted on Christians by Islam; nor does the letter acknowledge that Muslim actions may have contributed in any alienation between Christians and Muslims. Sookhdeo's analysis also claimed that the letter has no acknowledgement that in many areas - such as parts of Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, Indonesia and Pakistan - rather than Christianity fighting a war to destroy or displace Muslims, the reverse is the case.

There is a global war on Islam when one considers the effects of western consumerism on the ability of traditional Muslim societies to exist. One can construct a sound argument to say that the future environmental well being of the world is much more likely to be undermined by the western consumer's infinite demand on finite esources, than it is by the activity of extreme Muslim fundamentalists, however wrong that activity might be. In terms of historical wrongs committed by Muslims on Christians, the argument cuts both ways. When one considers the violence of the Christian crusades, and contrasts the violence inflicted, for example, by the Fourth Crusade on Byzantium, a Christian city, with the self discipline of Saladin's troops, it becomes difficult to support the line that western Christians themselves are any less guilty of committing historical wrongs than certain branches of Islam. War can take many forms. It is not just about thhe firing of bullets. Western cultural imperialism is itself a war on traditional societies. It is often the case that 'underdogs,' which is what Muslims are in economic and military terms, resort to violence in physical terms. The fact that such examples are so limited, in comparison to the size of so many recent western military expeditions, makes one surprised that Muslim extremism is not more endemic than it currently is. Patrick Sookhdeo's comments are just not sufficiently grounded in the reality of the situation to be considered worthy of inclusion as legitimate criticism of A Common Word which is characterised, above all, by a tone of reasonableness.

On 23 January 2008, a video of Christian writer and pastor John Piper appeared on his website, www.desiringgod.org, in which Piper comments on "A Common Word". In it, John Piper expresses "a profound disappointment" at the response written by the Yale Divinity School, "Loving God and Neighbor Together", published in the New York Times. He believes those who signed it ought to be more careful about what they lend their support to, as it has no clear statement of the Christian belief. He states that the Yale response omits the fact that the love of God is the love of God uniquely expressed through Jesus Christ, as the propitiation for our sins because he died on the cross and rose again; and that Islam rejects all of these. Piper states that, "...to talk in vague terms as though the love of God being a common standing place is to deceive... Jesus said, 'If you reject me, you reject the one who sent me. Muslims do reject Jesus Christ as the Son of god, Son of man, crucified, risen saviour of the world." Piper believes that it is this distinctive Christ which is to be commended to Muslims as the basis of tolerance, and why Christians don't kill as a way to win disciples. He states, "We would be happy to sit down with any Muslim group and commend Christ to them, and let them talk to us about their prophet. But we're not going to... talk in vague language about how we have the same God, and the same love of God, call Muhammad a prophet, call Jesus a prophet, quote Scripture selectively so that it sounds just like the Quran. We're not going to do that."

Muslims revere Jesus Christ as one of the great Prophets. Their interpretation of the Personhood of Christ does not conform to that defined by the Chalcedon Council. However, the Chalcedon definition of Christ was rejected by many Christians, including those in communion with the Patriarchal Sees of Alexandria and Antioch. Many Christians would regard western evangelical emphasis on Christ's historical identity, rather than his timeless, cosmic identity, as a dangerous imbalance. It is quite clear that Piper's interpretation of what it meanns to say Jesus Christ is the Son of God is very different from what other Christians would claim that means.To say that Christ is an excusive figure, when the Church Fathers made it clear that Christ is the manifestion of the logos, the seeds of whom are present in the heart of every human being, is to seriouslu misunderstand the universal nature of Jesus Christ. Not only do Muslims revere Jesus Christ as one of he great prophets, they also believe that he will com again to judge the world. Muslims themselves are not rying to imply that the Qu'ran and the Bible are the same at all. For Muslims the Qu'ran is the Word incarnate, in the same way that, for Christians, Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh. In regard to the nature love, Muslims understand love in the sense of the meaning of the word for love used by Christ – agape. Agape is not some sentimentalised distortion of the meaning of love. Instead it means a state of consciousness in which the lover has come to participate in the energies of God. Such an individual has transcended selfhood to such an extent that there is no longer any distinctionn between subject and object. To say therefore, that the kind of love revealed by Jesus Christ can in any way be considered as exclusivist is not intellectually sustaianable.

In June 2008, former Muslim prayer leader and British-Asian Christian polemicist Sam Solomon, published a polemical tractate entitled, "The Truth about A Common Word". Solomon's view is that if Islamic leaders were serious, they would declare void all Quranic texts which discriminate against Christians and Jews, and which describe them as, "kaffirs, apostates, polytheists"; they would discard the Apostasy [from Islam] law throughout the Islamic world; and they would advocate a new Islam which recognizes the equality of all human beings without regard to religious belief, and the right of Muslims to change religious beliefs.[9] Solomon also writes, "Given that the 138 Muslim scholars represent the collective mind of the Islamic world… their veiled attempt to make Islam look peaceful and good, even having elements that are allegedly common with Christianity, has in the final analysis produced a very unsatisfactory set of arguments. They want us to believe that Islam is the model of peace, and just like Christianity, full of love of God and of man. But we have shown that all their arguments cannot be supported by their own Islamic sources: Qur’an, Sunnah, Hadith, Tafsir, fatwa."[10] The Pilcrow Press, which publishes Solomon's tractate, argues that Islamicists plan a politico-religious takeover of Great Britain and the establishment of the caliphate there.[11] It is argued by some that the publisher aims to prey on people's fears by such arguments.

It is invariably the case that religious texts, from all Sacred Traditions, contain statements that appear to contradict core teachings about the need to love God and one's neighbour. In this respect the Quran is no differerent from other Sacred Texts, including the Bible. Sacred texts are intended to convey Truth to a variety of levels of understanding. This is why, for example, Benedictine monks read the Bible 'in lectio divinis.' To insist that, because the Quran contains texts which may appear paradoxical to the rationa mind, is to take a very naive and intellectually impoverished approach to the interpretation of Sacred truth

The response from Catch the Fire Ministries notes that the letter's invitation to "come to a common word" actually represents an invitation to accept Muhammad as the final prophet, and to endorse his writings and authority, meaning that those who accept the letter's invitation are in effect accepting Islam as the [only] true religion. The Catch the Fire Ministries response believes that those who have signed the Yale Divinity School's response have failed to see A Common Word's pitfalls, and should consider withdrawing their signatures: however, doing so could be interpreted by some Muslims as a refusal to submit to Islam, giving a Quranic mandate to perpetrate Jihad against any who do so. Catch the Fire Ministries also indicate that although it is important to love and live in peace with Muslims, and to respect their beliefs, violence does not usually stem from the Christian side.

The claim that violence is rooted in one side rather than thhe other is highly debatable, especially considering the huge industrial, economic and military strength of the western world. Common Word is not an attempt to invite people to accept Muhammad as the final prophet. It is quite simply a attempt to identifty two areas of common ground between Islam ad Chrstianity, which might be conducive to the furtherance of harmony and good will between the two religions. —Preceding comment from Mark Jenkins added with permission by Sulayman Hart (talk • contribs) 08:26, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I think some of the seemingly sourced negative reactions (such as Mona Charen's or Sookhdeo's) should be summarized in the article regardless on the views of their authors. The analysis here does not change anything from the point of wiki guidelines. WikiHannibal (talk) 13:23, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I have added back some of those criticisms when they came from notable people. Veverve (talk) 02:38, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

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