Why I signed the "Christian Response" to the "Common Word Between Us"

An Unpublished Response to Richard John Neuhaus, Public Square Comment “Islam and Christianity: Changing the Subject” First Things (February 2008)

March 28, 2008

I am one of the signatories of the “Christian Response to a Common Word Spoken Between Us” whose name was published in the New York Times of November 13, 2007. While I admit that the letter was rather effusive, reflecting Arabic style, but I did not read it as “supine.” Rather, as a Jewish follower of Yeshua HaMashiach, and as a scholar of Islamic history teaching Middle Eastern Studies at a major evangelical Christian university, two particular passages of the “Christian Response” resonated for me. The letter expresses two ideas that Jews would like to hear acknowledged by Christians and Muslims, as often as possible: an acknowledgment of our shared pasts, and our responsibility as citizens and believers for the acts committed by our countries and people of our faiths throughout history. Although accepting individual responsibility for acts we have not done personally is ethically complex, acknowledging the sinfulness of humanity over the centuries is fundamental to improving human relations in humility as we face the future.


The first passage reads:

“A Common Word Between Us and You (sic) identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam which lies at the heart of our respective faiths as well as at the heart of the most ancient Abrahamic faith, Judaism. Jesus Christ’s call to love God and neighbor was rooted in the divine revelation to the people of Israel embodied in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18).”

The core ideas here, that God created us, that He called upon us to worship and serve Him, and to treat one another with dignity and respect, is one that is too easily dismissed by those who want to focus on our differences.

Although great progress has been made in recent years, many Jews, Muslims, and Christians still know remarkably little about one another’s beliefs. The fundamental importance of the Hebrew Scriptures to all three religions is not widely known or accepted at the popular level. Today, Islamic anti-Semitism and anti-Christianism are fueling the attacks on Israel and the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world. At the same time, some Christian apologists claim that Allah is the “moon god,” a pernicious idea that is making its way increasingly into mainstream evangelical culture. By neglecting to understand the historical development of all three religions, important bridges between them are being sundered at the popular level, where hate finds a ready medium. While it is extremely important to understand the sharp differences between the three religions, it is equally important to understand their commonalities as well.

After centuries of rejection by Christians, the connection between the Christians and Jews has been transformed by the rejection of the teachings of contempt and supercessionism that denied the roots of Christianity in Jewish culture. Although many Christians, surprisingly, remain unaware of their problematic connection to the powerful anti-Semitic strands in the history of the Church, they must understand that they are often associated with Jewish suffering. Perhaps evangelicals prefer to see anti-semitism as an aberration, but it is an historical fact that should not be dismissed as of no concern to the contemporary Church.

Among Muslims, a type of the Marcion heresy that threatened the Early Church has taken root among salafis who reject the historicity of Muslim origins and their connection to the religious texts and teachings of Judaism and Christianity. Ahistoricism in Islam has legitimized the rejection of continuity—and connection—among the three monotheistic religious traditions, a rejection that lies at the heart of the difference between radical and moderate Islam. The majority understanding of Jews and Christians as Peoples of the Book along with the Muslims, has been rejected in favor of associating them with pagans and heretics, as taught in the Hanbali tradition.

The doctrine of the “uncreated Koran” has made the rejection of the Arab, pre-Islamic past as a period of darkness unworthy of study has become increasingly important, preventing Muslims from engaging in “higher criticism” to better understand the teachings of Muhammad. As in the West in the early modern period, Muslims fear that subjecting the Koran to historical examination will lead to disbelief. This fear has prevented Muslims from seeing the continuities—and differences—between their scriptures and the Bible. Such studies are still in their infancy, despite centuries of Islamic tradition based upon grammatical and syntactical studies of the Koran as well as “Orientalist” scholarship, efforts which the Muslim public finds extremely suspicious. Nevertheless, the spread of Wahhabism, which teaches a literalist interpretation of the Koran, has led to renewed interest in Koranic Studies worldwide and may lead to a deeper and fuller appreciation of the influence of Jewish and Christian ideas in Arabia and the development of Islamic civilization.

The other idea that Jews and Muslims would like to hear Christians is stated in this way:

“Before we ‘shake your hand’ in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.” The letter continues; “...[W]e want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades [ Jews would like to see “The Inquisition, Pogroms, and the Holocaust” inserted there, along with “the Crusades”] and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the "war on terror") many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors.”

While the historic record is complex, today’s Christians must understand that they are associated in non-Christian minds that the savagery of the pogroms along the Rhine and the slaughter of innocent Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims by the Crusaders remains at the center of Muslim sensibilities. In the War on Terror, the U.S. did not have to leave the infamous Abu Ghraib detention center standing. Scholar Kanan Makiya and filmmaker Michael Wood helped Americans understand the brutality of Saddam Hussein in the ‘80s and '90s: the first thing we ought to have done when we arrived in Baghdad was to tear down that infamous symbol of Saddam’s tyranny. Instead, we are forever saddled with the images of Americans as brutalizers in a war that is being fought in the name of freedom, and in which our sons and daughters are still laying down their lives.

While Christians today may forget that at one time Christianity was the “state church” in the Middle East, Muslims and Jews have not. Muslims see the United States as a Christian country, one of a long line of regimes that have sought to impose their power by homogenizing the faiths and cultures of the Middle East and Central Asia in the name of stability. While the United States is totally different from the medieval Christian and Islamic empires that ruled the Middle East, as outsiders we are pegged as aggressors, and our support of Saddam in the ‘80s, his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iran, our preservation of his rule through the ‘90s which led to genocidal policies against the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq, and which also deployed economic sanctions against the common people rather than Saddam’s Baathist supporters, led undeniably to great suffering. Can we not acknowledge our sins in allowing Saddam to rule for so long, despite his crimes against humanity, before 9/11? Is it not a sin that we failed adequately to defend our own nation against attack?

Of course none of the signatories to the letter would want to become subjects of an Islamist regime, as some critics of the letter speciously have suggested we’d prefer! As an American who has long accepted the necessity of warfare in the Middle East as the lesser of evils in the last resort, I have found the failures of our foreign policy and intelligent establishments shocking and incredible. Like many other Americans, I hope that the final word is not out, and that one day we will learn the full truth about all of the disinformation that we have endured since the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait.

For the full text of “A Common Word Between Us” and the Christian Response, see: http://www.yale.edu/faith/