Fitna and Faith: Pursuing A Christian Response – Part 5 – Where to Start

In this fifth and final post on a Christian response to Geert Wilder’s Fitna film (see parts 1, 2, 3, and 4), I argue that the most basic starting point in our response is to ask ourselves the underlying theological question: Do I treat Muslims like images of God?

Cutting Through the Political Noise

Due to the constant political propaganda and jaundiced media coverage surrounding Islam’s so-called “clash with the West,” American Christians (especially those who, ironically, have never made a Muslim acquaintance) are constantly tempted to classify “Islam” and “Muslims” in broad-brush, propagandized terms: “All Muslims are terrorists” and “All Mosques are halls of hatred” are, sadly, common sentiments found not only in the media but also on the lips and in the hearts of Christ’s bride. Brothers and sisters, this ought not be.

Asking the Underlying Question

For Christians, fearing an unknown “other” leaves us in ironic bondage to our own fears and removes our gaze from our only proper fear: God Himself. However, Christians’ attitudes toward Muslims in our “post 9-11″ and “post 7-7″ days are more heinous than simply fearing an unknown other; for, by fearing our own caricature of the “other” we deprive him or her of the most fundamental connection we have with all others, the imago Dei. When we fail to see “the other” as a fully dignified human being created in God’s image, our vision becomes darkened like Cain’s, and we allow the most heinous de-humanizing sins to crouch at our doors.

The underlying question for Christians, then, in thinking through our response to Fitna is primarily theological, not political (but not without political implications): Are Muslims images of God, just as Christians and all other people? If yes (and yes is how the Sacred Scriptures answer, i.e., Genesis 1 and 2), then our response must be lived out in the fear of God, the giver of all human dignity.

Listening to Muslims Themselves

One way to treat Muslims with God-given human dignity and to cut through the political noise is listen to Muslims who themselves are debating questions about their own fundamental identity, such as:

• What is Islam?
• Are Muslims doing enough to combat Muslim-based terrorism?
• What does it mean to be a Muslim in America today (and here)?
• What is the future of Shari’a in a secular state?

In other words, if your primary knowledge of Islam comes from the media’s nightly newscasts, then you are woefully ill-equipped to engage Muslims in meaningful relationships. For, how would we Christians like it if Muslims started saying all Christians are like the wacky televangelists who spew their money mongering and cheap spiritual trickery all over the airwaves? Should we not extend the same courtesy to Muslims that we would expect of them in their understanding of Christianity?

Learning from Thoughtful Christians

The Protestant world is slowly awakening to its ignorance of the Muslim world. So, not many Christians are writing and speaking thoughtfully on Islam or Muslim evangelism. And, sadly, some of the ones who are speaking on Islam treat the subject more from a political than theological standpoint. These speakers usually end up proffering propagandized fear mongering than proclaiming the Gospel’s power to change lives. So, as a Christian you’ve got to be discerning when you listen to self-proclaimed Christian “experts” on Islam.

Perhaps one of the best places to start learning from Protestant leaders is former Muslims who converted to Christianity. These authors have first-hand, intimate knowledge of their former religion, and this experience allows them to cut through the noise easier than second-hand “experts.” Former Muslims who are providing thoughtful and loving engagement with Muslims include:

• Anees Zaka (author and professor)
• Patrick Sookhdeo, directory of the Barnabas Fund (interviewed about his new book, Faith, Power and Territory)
• Ergun Canner, president of Liberty Seminary (watch Ergun’s testimony).
• Sam Solomon (White Horse Inn interview; Pilcrow Press)

Where to Start Cutting, Asking, Listening, and Learning

Christian friend, do you know any Muslims by name? If not, you have just found your beginning: Instead of buying a book or starting a “research project,” visit a local Mosque, and make a Muslim friend. (The former things will only make sense in the context of the latter, and your experience will propel your studies.) Or, if you pay attention to who is living in your own neighborhood, you might not even have to visit a Mosque.

Fitna and Faith: Pursuing A Christian Response – Part 4 – Protestant Laity’s Ambivalent Attitude

So far my attempt to think through a faith Christian response to Fitna has (1) introduced Geert Wilder’s film, (2) surveyed its political repercussions, and (3) examined how the Christian world is officially responding to Fitna. In the final two parts I will (4) fill out the Protestant picture by exploring the laity’s response and (5) suggest a theological trajectory for living out your own Christian response.

What do we see, then, in the Protestant picture when we add the laity?

Filling in the Protestant Picture: “Unofficial”/lay response

In the conclusion to Part 3 I suggested that more must be added to the picture in order to see the whole Protestant landscape; That “more” is the laity. Although Protestant groups such as the WCC (World Council of Churches) and PCN (Protestant Church in the Netherlands) have stood with Muslims in strongly condemning Fitna as heinous political propaganda, Protestantism’s laity does not fully agree with her leaders. Some Protestant parishioners even support Fitna.

Painting with broad brushes, two basic attitudes have emerged among Protestant laity in response to Fitna.

Seeing Two Basic Lay Responses: Arrogant “Amen!” or “Nuance Needed”

Arrogant “Amen!”

First, one group of Protestants is saying a hearty “Amen!” to Wilders’ Fitna film and is thanking him for simply “showing the scriptural [Koranic] authority for a lot of the acts we see on the news today.” Apparently, such Protestants interpret Wilders’ film as an unbiased, fair representation of the truth about Islam. This “Amen” approach is seen, for example, in Jay Smith’s response to Fitna:

(Excursus: Speaking from my own experience visiting Mosques and attempting to forge friendships across the Cross and Crescent divide, the arrogance, ignorance, and odiousness of such “Amen!” responses from Protestants is appalling, especially to those of us who are actively engaging in Muslim evangelism. When Muslims themselves, Christian leaders, political leaders, and news media all admit that Fitna is obvious political propaganda, Christians who give a hearty “Amen!” to Fitna allow themselves to be used as vessels of political fear mongering and preachers of bigoted social exclusion. Such actions are directly contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which calls upon all Christians to love their neighbors, including their enemies. How shall we ever share the Gospel with Muslims if we do not love them enough to even listen to what they have to say about violence in their own religion, but instead paint them all as terrorists?)

“Nuance Needed”

Second, a contrary Protestant voice can also be heard by those who see Fitna not as an unbiased presentation, but rather as an obvious display of political propagandizing. For example, Australia’s Center for Public Christianity produced a Fitna response calling for a nuanced and loving Christian response which sees through the political smoke and mirrors without ignoring real difficulties:

(See also the Center for Public Christianity article by Richard Shumack, Fitna: A Christian response to an anti-Islamic film.)

Comparing the Protestant Response to the Political

While surveying the international political responses to Fitna in part 2 I noticed two basic attitudes: derision or downplay. The common element is that both attitudes recognized Fitna‘s genre to be political propaganda: One group saw the film and shrugged off the propaganda; the other condemned the propaganda; but, both groups saw the propaganda.

Although the Protestant response also reveals a basic twofold division (“amen” or “nuance needed”), the demarcation is different. On the one hand the “nuance needed” Protestants see Fitna‘s genre clearly as political propaganda, and these Protestants condemn the film and/or call for a much more nuanced approach to Christian-Muslim relations. On the other hand the “Amen to Fitna!”portion of the Protestant church does not account for the film’s genre and thus praises Fitna for shining an unbiased light of truth. How could Protestants, then, be so divided especially when the film’s genre seems so obviously propaganda?

This important question leads us into our fifth and final post in which we will briefly sketch the underlying theological framework Christians need to live out their own faithful response to Fitna in their local churches and communities.

Fitna and Faith: Pursuing A Christian Response – Part 3 – Roman Catholic and Protestant Responses

Having introduced Geert Wilder’s Fitna film and surveyed its political repercussions over the past few days, in part 3 I will examine how the Christian world is officially responding to Fitna. First up, the Roman Catholic response; then, we’ll look at the Protestant response.

Roman Catholic Response

Silence So Far on Fitna

So far I have not found any official statements from the Vatican or other Roman Catholic sources regarding Fitna. If the Vatican’s past action of condemning the offensive Danish cartoons is any indicator, perhaps we should expect an official Vatican condemnation of Fitna soon. However, Vatican’s slow response may involve continued tensions in Vatican-Muslim relations due to Magdi Allam’s Easter baptism.

Ongoing Natural Law Tensions Perhaps Slowing Positive Momentum

The recent conversion and Easter baptism by Pope Benedict of Magdi Allam may have slowed the positive momentum in Christian-Muslim relations, evidenced most recently by the scheduled Vatican forum to discuss A Common Word in November and the Vatican’s negotiations toward opening a Catholic church in Saudi Arabia. In spite of the official Vatican preemptive press release about Allam’s baptism, Professor Aref Ali Nayed, a signer of the A Common Word letter, strongly condemned the Pope’s baptizing of Allam, claiming the Easter baptism to be a political spectacle.

Nayed’s condemnation received a rebuttal by Father Federico Lombardi, who reiterated the Vatican’s commitment to continuing the A Common Word dialog while at the same time re-stating the Pope’s arguments regarding Islam’s failure to navigate the church-state relationship in a post-Enlightenment world. (See Pope Benedict’s 2006 speech for his Enlightenment critique of Islam.) Speaking of the Vatican’s response to Nayed, Jeff Israely writes for Time.com:

Nonetheless, Allam’s public conversion is another reminder that the Vatican is not shying away from the more prickly questions in its complicated relations with Islam. Benedict has made what he calls a “frank” public conversation with the Muslim world a high priority of his papacy, arguing that Islam should address the violent minority within its ranks by incorporating the theories of “natural law” the way Christianity did with the Western ideas of the Enlightenment (A Muslim Critic Turns Catholic by Jeff Israely).

Thus, the differences between Roman Catholicism’s view of human rights as grounded in the Thomistic nature-grace dichotomy (and natural law theory) and Islam’s failure to distinguish church and state is thrust once again to the forefront of the Vatican’s relations with Islam.

Official Protestant Responses

Protestant Churches in the Netherlands

On 17 March 2008, ten days before the Internet premier of Fitna, the following groups issues a joint declaration against Fitna entitled, Declaration of Churches and Muslim Organizations in the Netherlands (PDF):

• Contact Committee Muslims and Government (CMO),
• Contact Group Islam (CGI),
• Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PCN), and
• Council of Churches in the Netherlands.

In addition to publishing the Declaration, the Protestant groups sent a delegation to various Muslim countries to ensure Muslim leaders that Wildres does not speak for the Protestant church in the Netherlands:

In view of the situation that has arisen because of the film of Mr. Wilders, the executive leaders of the CMO, CGI and PCN felt it necessary to again meet and come to further agreements. The general secretary of the Council of Churches in the Netherlands also attended this consultation. The outcome of this consultation was the decision to jointly visit a number of Islamic countries, to show that the relations between Muslims and Christians in the Netherlands are good, and to explain that the churches strongly reject contempt for another person’s religion. The statements of Mr. Wilders show that his intention is to drive a wedge between the Islamic community and the rest of Dutch society.

As Muslims and Christians, we are convinced that, in these complex times, we have the task of building bridges, overcoming distrust and combining our efforts for justice and peace. The chief purpose of the visit is to draw attention to the fact that the majority of the Dutch people reject the insulting of Islam. (Quoted from the Declaration.)

Protestant Responses Outside the Netherlands

Netherlands churches were not the only Protestant groups to issue official statements condemning Fitna as bigoted propaganda. In another preemptive Protestant effort, the Council of Churches in Indonesia sought a ban on Wilders’ film. Likewise, in February of this year the World Council of Churches (WCC) issued a brief statement echoing “concern expressed in the Netherlands and in other parts of the world following rumours of the release of a film against the Qur’an by a Dutch member of parliament.” These statements make clear that the worldwide Christian community is starting to distinguish, at least on paper (if not yet in practice in local communities), between political propaganda (i.e. blatant attempts to stir up “Islamophobia”) and the actual faith and practice of the Muslims who live next door.

WCC’s Press Release Regarding A Common Word

Although not directly related to the Fitna film, the March 26 press release explaining the WCC’s response to A Common Word–just one day before Fitna was released–could be seen as as well-timed “political” move by the WCC, as if to prove its robust commitment to interfaith dialog amidst the Fitna fiasco. (See the Reuters report on the WCC’s A Common Word response.)

More to the Protestant Picture

By reporting these official responses from the likes of the WCC I do not intend to give an unqualified affirmation that either (a) the WCC speaks for all Protestants (i.e. the WCC is not the “Protestant Pope”) or (b) that the WCC response represents a monolithic Protestant stance. The full spectrum of the Christian response needs to be filled out a little more.

As I mentioned in the introduction to part 2, I surveyed briefly international political responses to Fitna in order to draw a comparison between the ambivalent political response and the Christian world’s response. Accordingly, in my next post I will examine a bit of the “unofficial” Protestant response with the goal of filling out the Christian response picture more completely before drawing the concluding comparison.

Fitna and Faith: Pursuing A Christian Response – Part 2 – International Political Responses

In part 1 I simply set the context for discussing Geert Wilders’ Fitna film by briefly explaining its origins and purpose. Now in part 2 I will briefly survey Fitna’s international political fallout in order to set up a comparison between political and religious responses to Fitna in part 3.

Ambivalent International Political Reaction to Fitna

Media attention prior to Fitna‘s release expected a violent aftermath upon the film’s debut. For example, this pre-Fitna CNN interview with Wilders anticipates international outrage:

Since Fitna’s internet debut last Thursday, two general responses are apparent among both political laymen and leaders: (a) either downplaying the film as insignificant, or (b) strongly condemning the film as a bigoted straw man.

(a) Downplaying Fitna

Those who seek to downplay Fitna claim that the pressurized hype has deflated into a collective political shrug, as if to say, “Yeah, yeah, Wilders, we’ve seen this all before.” This general “shrug feeling” among both Muslims and non-Muslims can be seen in reports such as:

• LA Times: Dutch film ‘Fitna’ draws muted response from Muslims
• Time.com: Dutch Shrug for Anti-Muslim Film
• NRC Handelsblad: Fitna the Movie: not hyperbole or metaphor but repetition
• NIS News: Churches, Muslims in Joint Statement against MP Wilders

(b) Deriding Finta

These “shrug” reports make Fitna out to be just one more of the same old tired argument against radical Islam. And perhaps this is the general feeling among more progressive Muslims and Westerners living in countries which are not experiencing Islamization to as high a degree as Europeans. However, not everyone is shrugging, and the strong worldwide political condemnations against the Fitna film along with anti-Fitna protests should not go unnoticed. For example:

• Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende strongly repudiates Wilder’s film.
• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Fitna, issuing a terse official statement against Fitna.
• Spiegel: Interview with Dutch Populist Geert Wilders: ‘Moderate Islam Is a Contradiction’
• Fox News: Controversial Anti-Muslim Film Sparks Worldwide Condemnation
• AFP: Anger continues over Dutch film on Islam

For a further sampling of the disparate political responses to Fitna, listen to three international journalists debate the political fallout of Fitna in the Netherlands and Europe:

Download MP3

And Mid-East Strategy at Harvard blogger Josef Joffee writes a cautious “so far so good,” pointing out that historical precedent should inform us that we are not yet free from the threat of violent reactions against Fitna.

Ambivalence Reveals Continued Underlying Cultural and Political Tension in Europe over Islamization

The distance between the “shrug” responses and the strong condemnations is evidence of the continuing underlying tension in Europe’s political reaction to Islamization. Project Fikra director J. Scott Carpenter describes this tension as “a deep ambivalence about the cultural drift taking place within Dutch and broader European society, and the fact that too few people are reflecting on what it means.” Carpenter continues:

Whether it’s the Dutch foreign minister stating explicitly that Islamic culture will become part of Dutch culture, or the Archbishop of Canterbury stating that Sharia should be made part of British common law, there is the sense that European leaders are simply surrendering to political correctness without asking basic questions about what it is to be Dutch, British, European or—for that matter—Muslim. (Source: “Overcoming ‘Fitna‘” by Scott Carpenter.)

But the Tensions Run Deeper: Human Dignity and Metaphysics

Carpenter’s astute political observations lead into more profound, fundamental (dare I say “religious”) questions surrounding Fitna specifically and Christian-Muslim relations broadly, questions that go beyond the immanent realm of politics to the transcendent realm of human dignity and, ultimately, metaphysics.

This overlapping between the metaphysical (religious) realm and the political realm is unavoidable. Notice, for example, when Carpenter observes that underlying questions of identity are involved with Europe’s Islamization tensions (i.e. What does it mean to be Dutch, British, European), the religious question cannot be avoided (What does it mean to be Muslim?). Further, when one begins down the road of identity questioning, one cannot help but to arrive at the ultimate destination of human dignity: What does it mean to be human?

I want to unpack this overlapping realms idea further, but first, in part 3, we need to survey the religious responses to Fitna.

Fitna and Faith: Pursuing A Christian Response To Geert Wilders’ Controversial Film – Part 1

What Is Fitna?

Fitna, the Arabic word loosely translated “division,” “strife,” or “dissension” (with a religious connotation) is the title of Dutch politician Geert Wilder’s extremely controversial film which antagonizes against European islamization, especially in the Netherlands. See the International Herald Tribune’s Dutch lawmaker releases anti-Quran film for a brief news-media report about the film and the ensuing international response.

Fitna and Christian-Muslim Relations

I am not a political blogger, and I do not write this post for political purposes. Rather, my interest in Fitna arises from my current research into Christian-Muslim relations, especially the recent A Common Word initiative. Accordingly, I’m exploring this issue from the perspective that American Christians need to consider how political films such as Fitna (and media portrayals of Islam in general) impact both individual Christians’ and the institutional church’s views of Muslims in America.

Watch Geert Wilders’ Film

Fitna was published online on 27 March 2008. Due to death threats, the film was removed from its original sources. However, Fitna is now available on multiple servers such as the following two:

(Warning! This film is very graphic in nature.)

What Has Fitna to do with Christian Faith?

Stay tuned as I plan on following up with further posts, including:

• a brief overview of the international political reaction to Fitna,
• with an eye to how such political reactions influence the international religious response to Fitna,
• and suggestions on what ethical factors American Christians ought to be thinking about in pursuit of a thoroughly Christian response to Fitna in our American context.