Lambeth - Western culture worsens interfaith woes

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Lambeth Daily
Western culture worsens interfaith woes
Posted On : July 29, 2008 4:59 PM | Posted By : Admin ACO
Related Categories: News

Western culture often exacerbates the difficulties Christians face in 
societies where they are in a minority, the Moderator of the Church 
of Pakistan said yesterday.

While headlines (at least in the religious press) of persecution of 
Christians in Pakistan are commonplace, Bishop Malik said at the 
daily Lambeth press conference yesterday that his daily experience of 
Muslim people is overwhelmingly positive, and that dialogue "is for 
us a daily business, a dialogue of life".

"Always it is a small minority who disturbs the conversation," he 
said, alluding to extremist violence. "But Western culture 
exacerbates it." He said that the publication of anti-Islamic 
cartoons last year which prompted strenuous and sometimes violent 
protest from Muslims also attracted the ire of Christians in Pakistan 
who felt that they should not have been published.

Western foreign policy can also make life difficult for Christians 
who are living in minority communities such as Pakistan, and Iraq. 
When pressed for examples of clashes between the two faiths, Bishop 
Malik said that they had become more commonplace following the World 
Trade Centre attacks in 2001 and the subsequent foreign policies of 
Western governments on Afghanistan and Iraq. The depiction of all 
Muslims as terrorists and the West's reaction to conflict in 
Palestine also contributed to feelings of resentment by many in the 
Muslim world, he said.

"They feel that the Western countries are not fair."

Bishop Tom Butler, who accompanied Bishop Malik at the press 
conference, has oversight of the diocese of Southwark, where peoples 
of different faiths live "cheek by jowl". He also appeared keen to 
overturn stereotypes of Muslim violence closer to home, and he 
contradicted the controversial claims of Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of 
Rochester earlier this year that areas of England had become "no-go" 
for non-Muslims.

It may be the experience in Rochester, he said somewhat sceptically, 
but "certainly in England, it hasn't been my experience. I've been a 
bishop for over twenty years, always in multicultural areas."

So what of the call to the Anglican Communion by some for Bishop Gene 
Robinson to resign in part because, as one Sudanese bishop reportedly 
said, if the Christian world affirmed homosexuality it would give 
Muslims in Sudan "an upper hand to kill our people"[1]? Was there a 
risk of Christians allowing their agenda to be influenced unduly by 
an extremist position?

"Our policy has always been to support and build up the influence of 
mainline faith leaders," Bishop Butler said, "so that they are better 
able to tackle extremism in their own faiths, including their own."

While Bishop Butler acknowledged that there is a different dynamic of 
interfaith dialogue in societies where Islam is in the minority, 
rather than the majority, he said there's a "particular Anglican way: 
of practicing interfaith relations, of "being a presence in every 
community of whatever sort, for the long term, to witness to our 
faith but to serve others for the common good.. This is a time when 
we can sit down together and wrestle with it without any of us losing 
our integrity."

- staff writer

[1] http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=28688