Western Europe’s Changing Image of Islam

The Western view of and response to Islam has undergone considerable change during this century and during the past twenty-five years in particu­lar. And this is most notable in the case of the Christian churches who once perceived Islam as the principal threat to the survival and expansion of Christian civilisation and summarily dismissed it as a post-Christian heresy.

Today, and for some time now, these same churches, leaving aside some of the fundamentalist movements, for example the German Evangelicals as mentioned above, are increasingly inclined to adopt a more open, tolerant attitude towards Islam. This change in attitude is clearly marked in the case of the Roman Catholic Church among others.

This church, which had once resorted to scripture to justify the crusades and in a variety of different ways, for example through the introduction of a number of solemn feasts such as the Transfiguration and through other liturgical means, had made Christians aware of the ‘peril of Islam’, only officially altered its attitude toward and response to this religion as recently as the 1960s. In its document, Nostra Aetate, on non-Christian religions the Second Vatican Council (1963-5) presented what has been interpreted as a ‘positive if cautious and minimalistic’ view of Islam stating, among other things, that the Catholic Church, ‘looked with esteem on Muslims who adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all power­ful, Maker of heaven and earth and Speaker to men’. The document also acknowledged that over the centuries quarrels and hostilities had arisen between Muslims and Christians and encouraged both to forget the past and to ‘strive sincerely for mutual understanding’. This pronouncement, though it did not go as far as Muslims would have wished—for example it said nothing very precise on the essence of the Muslim faith or on belief in the prophetic mission of Muhammad—did mark a breakthrough and vindicated in part the work of such Catholic scholars as Massignon who described Islam as the ‘religion of faith’, encouraged Christians to embark upon a ‘spiritual Copernican revolution’, and to return to the origin of Islamic teaching, ‘to that point of virgin truth that is found at its centre and makes it live’.

Another Catholic document, Guidelines for a Dialogue between Muslims and Christians, followed Nostra Aetate in 1968. Moreover, the European Conference of Churches (ECC) meeting in the Austrian town of St Polten in February 1984 while recognising the important theological differences that existed between the two faiths nevertheless emphasised the need for Christians and Muslims in Europe to co-operate more closely on practical issues such as peace and justice. It insisted, further, that the political rivalry and competition that once characterised relations between the two faiths should be laid to rest and encouraged Christians and Muslims to shoulder responsibility together and ‘before God for the world and its future’.

Despite this constructive approach on the part of the churches, negative images of Islam, reinforced from time to time by events in Iran, Libya and elsewhere, persist and are likely to do so for some time to come. Perhaps the most widespread of these images is that of Islam as a backward, primitive, and given the understanding of some of its teachings, for example those on slavery, and of its laws regarding theft and adultery, an inhumane religion.

The Muslim image of Christianity is also very often a distorted one based, as it sometimes evidently is, on mere hearsay, myth and even unauthentic documents such as the Gospel of Barnabas. According to recent research in West Germany on Muslims’ images of Christians, typical responses included the following: ‘Christians have several gods, one of whom is Jesus’, and ‘Christianity is belief in three persons: Mary, Jesus and God the Father.’ Changing these false images is an extremely difficult and contentious task, and one that demands a great deal of trust and confidence in each other on the part of both Muslims and Christians. Both are world religions and seek to convert others to their faith and this can affect the extent to which either one is prepared to adopt the necessary means to disabuse its followers of any wrong notions they may have of the other.

However, there is evidence in the Western European context that an increasing number of Muslims are concerned both to know more about Christian beliefs and practices and to forge closer ties with Christians. In a poll of nine hundred practising Muslims between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five, conducted in 1984 in West Germany by a Muslim organisation (Islam Archiv Deutschland), attached to the Muslim World Congress, between 70 and 80 per cent favoured ‘more friendship’ and ‘closer personal relations with Christians both for themselves and their children’, and an even higher percentage ‘welcomed suggestions of social and educa­tional co-operation’. And rather surprisingly over 50 per cent of the parents stated that they would not object to their sons marrying Christians while, not so surprisingly, only 30 per cent would allow their daughters to do so and only then on condition that their future sons-in-law became Muslims.

It would appear that, theological differences apart, the potential for Christian-Muslim co-operation and understanding in the Western European setting is considerable, and that although the ‘spiritual Copernican revolution’ in the Christian approach to and understanding of Islam called for by Massignon has not yet fully materialised there has been, none the less, something of a profound change in both these areas.