Concern has broken out at talk of a mosque broadcasting its call to prayer across an Oxford suburb – including the offices of the Church Mission Society. Christians would do well to pause for thought, says Ida Glaser What is going on in Oxford? Recent news stories suggest Muslims are trying to impose an amplified three-times-daily prayer call on an unwilling public from its big new mosque on the east of the city. Following the first report in
The Oxford Times last November, concerns have been raised.
These concerns have so far been about religious messages being relayed into public space, and public order: how loud would the
adhan be? Would it adversely affect community relations? What would happen to house prices? A further cause of concern is that the call to prayer is not traditional in the UK.
Yet, no application to broadcast the
adhan has been received by the council to date.
I argue that such concerns should not determine either the attitudes or actions of Christians, as people called to be 'salt' and 'light' in the world.
I see two dangers which grow out of the history of Christian–Muslim relations, and which often tempt us away from what really matters:
- that we want political power for Christianity and slip into acting out of anger and or superiority
- that we grant political power to Islam but slip into acting out of fear or inferiority.
Our only hope for resisting such temptations is to fix our eyes on the one who resisted such fierce temptations to security and to power.
Questions of culture, religion and power were no less acute in first-century Palestine.
One that Jesus’ contemporaries posed to him was, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?” It elicited an answer that Muslims have seen ever since as a schizophrenic division between sacred and secular: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”
Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we permit the amplified
adhan or not? It is not that such questions are unimportant, but that the criteria for deciding them have nothing to do with cultural identity or political balance.
While God’s calling of a people and his promise to them of a land indicates his concern for society and therefore for politics, the length of Israel’s exile and Jesus’ systematic refusal to take political power indicate different priorities.
While Islam looks back to the prototype Islamic state in Medina, the New Testament has the crucified Christ and the scattered, persecuted Church.
The whole purpose of the socio-political community established by God was the blessing of all other communities. His agenda, Jesus’ agenda, our agenda, is the salvation of his world.
We need to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s – to take our place within society. But it is more important that we give ourselves to God and put his agenda first.
The real question in a Christian response to the
adhan issue is, therefore, how can we co-operate with God in the spreading of his kingdom?
Kenneth Cragg, in his classic
Call of the Minaret (first published in 1956), suggests that we hear the
adhan not only as a call to Muslims but also as a call to ourselves – a call to meet Muslims, to understand Islam, to serve Muslims, to put right the many misunderstandings, to explain the Gospel clearly, to patient prayer.
Perhaps God is opening for us an opportunity to honour Christ among Muslims. Perhaps the real question is not what is best for the Church or British society but what is best for the welfare – the eternal as well as the temporal welfare – of Muslims?
Ida Glaser is CMS missiologist-in-residence and was formerly director of Faith to Faith, a Christian consultancy on other faiths.
Over the coming weeks, CMS will be publishing more resources online to help Christians to reflect on and understand Islam better.