The Impact in the Islamic World

In Islamic, as in African, religion and society there was always an inherent divide between the ordered hierarchy centring on the Caliphate and sustained by the institutions and legal traditions of Sunni Islam at their greatest, a framework for a widely spread, rich and intricate culture, and the more apocalyptic, romantic impulses of Shi’a Islam, with its eschatological yearn­ing for a once and future Imam, and Sufist mysticism in all its varied forms.

With the coming of Western modernity, as the centres of government have become more secularised and liberalised, the traditional spiritual leaders have often tended to be pushed into the wings, in effect into the urban slums and the rural fringes. Christians have always stood to benefit from the more liberal, secularised mood at the centre. Ancient churches, whether Chalcedonian like the Orthodox, Nestorian like the Assyrians, or Monophysite like the Copts, Syrians and Armenians, gradually began to emerge from their second-class citizenship in the old Ottoman Empire into a new era wherein Western influences gave hope for a new deal. Aspiring modern Christians, often educated by Western missions, have always sought to participate in movements for greater openness, tolerance and modernisation. Many of them have been the pioneers of an Arab literary renaissance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While many of them have indeed been attracted by the West, their ideal has had to be the mutual tolerance sought by a leader like Charles Malik in Lebanon, who wanted to see his country not a confessional state but rather a ‘pilot country’ (pays pilote) for the development of a new kind of society. Something of the same vision was shared by members of an earlier generation of Jews in Palestine, such as Martin Buber.

The building of the modern state of Israel, and the interventions and pressures of the great powers, have served to intensify a developing radical, popular revivalism in Islam.

Where Christian energies flow into reconstruction, reconciliation and patient witness, as amongst some of those working with the Middle East Council of Churches in Beirut, the tradition of the ancient churches, in a witness of worship and service, offers the seeds of a new Christian movement within the Islamic world, penitent for the arrogance of the West. This movement can be strengthened by a sensitive Western Christian presence.