THIS work promises much. In particular, to root interfaith dialogue in the Prophet’s biography (sira), thereby legitimising its importance for Muslims today. The heart of the book — a reworking of the author’s Melbourne University doctoral thesis — identifies six prophetic “dialogues”, which illuminate, respectively, relations with Christians (chapter 3), Jews (chapter 4), and the Byzantine and Sasanian empires (chapter 5). The latter, she claims, anticipates the dialogue between civilizations.
A final chapter compares and contrasts contemporary Christian-Muslim dialogue in two countries, one where Christians are in the majority (Australia), the other where Muslims are (Malaysia). Two introductory chapters provide material on “dialogue” as a concept, as well as exemplified across a range of Islamic disciplines and embedded in the Qur’an and Muhammad’s normative practice (Sunna).
Dr Ghazali brings to the study practical experience as a deputy director of the University of Malaya’s Centre for Civilisational Dialogue (UMCCD), established in the late 1990s, as well as a senior lecturer in that university’s Department of Aqida (Islamic creeds) and Islamic Thought. Here, then, is a contribution on interfaith relations from a female, Muslim scholar from South-East Asia, with sustained experience of a “Western society”. Further, the issues of peaceful co-existence are real and pressing in Malaysia, with its large ethnic Malay majority and significant Chinese and Indian communities. While some two-thirds are Muslim, there are significant Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu communities.
Dr Ghazali’s intentions are admirable. She wants to foreground the Muslim narrative of peaceful co-existence which she detects in the Prophet’s life and example, reminding Muslims of such an imperative, and thereby undercutting hostility towards the non-Muslims, weaponised by violent extremists such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
Alas, despite these admirable aims, the promise of the book is not realised. First, the author’s English is unequal to the task, and time and again her meaning is unclear (this hardly reflects well on her doctoral supervisor and co-author, Dr Kamal, or Routledge proofreaders). Second, a limited and somewhat eccentric choice of “dialogues” simply cannot support the weight of meaning which she would have them carry. Third, and fatally, the author uses the term “dialogue” in such an expansive and elastic way that it divests the term of analytical rigour or explanatory power.
Across the book, “dialogue” is used for virtually any conversation, communication, or interaction with some religious content. The influential anti-Christian polemicist, Ibn Hazm (d. 1086 CE) is presented as an exponent of Interreligious “dialogue”. Another “dialogue” involves a Bishop of Najran — an urban centre in pre-Islamic South Arabia — receiving a letter from the Prophet which “summons him to worship God and avoid worshipping servants of God [Jesus]. . . if he refused, he would have to pay the tax (jizya), and if he refused to pay it, he would be warned of warfare”.
The most bizarre examples are two “dialogues” with Jews. In the first, the Jewish interlocutor is “open” to the prophetic message and embraces it; in the latter, a Jewish tribe betrays a treaty with the prophet and joins his enemies. They face draconian punishment: hundreds are executed and their wives are enslaved. Finally, when it comes to the Prophet’s letters to the Byzantine and Sasanian emperors — again considered “dialogues” — both, again, are little more than an invitation to these emperors to embrace the true faith. It matters little that many of these letters are deemed apocryphal.
Such negative comments do not mean that the book is without merit. The author does remind Muslim and non-Muslim alike of positive encounters: for example, a Christian ruler of Abyssinia extending safety and refuge to Muslims fleeing persecution in Mecca, or the Prophet allowing Najran Christians to worship in his mosque. Although the material on Australia and Malaysia is very brief, it makes clear that the work of UMCCD, operating within a political context of “competitive authoritarianism”, has an uphill task to win over an indifferent or hostile population. Moreover, its programmes do not as yet reach out to lay people, youth, or imams.
For readers interested in Christian-Muslim relations, past and present, the splendid work by Youshaa Patel The Muslim Difference: Defining the line between believers and unbelievers from early Islam to the present (Yale, 2022) is a much better investment at a fraction of the price.
Dr Philip Lewis is a consultant on Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, advised Bishops of Bradford for some three decades, and taught in Peace Studies at Bradford University.
Interreligious Dialogue Models: From the life of the Prophet Muhammad
Alwani Ghazali and Muhammad Kamal
Routledge £135
(978-1-032-47417-5)
Church Times Bookshop £130.50