At the Feet of Abraham

A Day-to-Day Dialogic Praxis for Muslims and Christians

Levi UC Nkwocha

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781725276925, 9781725276918
• eBook ISBN: 9781725276932
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

This book advances an Abrahamic "asymmetric-mutual-substitutive" model of hospitality as a practical approach to establish peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians. The merits include its helpful survey of the four models of interfaith dialogue and its clear exposition of the dialogue of life; its constructive use of the philosophy of Levinas, particularly in supporting its vision of asymmetrical moral responsibility among Muslim and Christians; and its familiarity with an extensive philosophical literature on alterity, gift-exchange, and responsibility. The research also demonstrates strong command of the relevant Christian and Muslim scriptures and Catholic teaching on interfaith relations, in addition to a wide range of background material on African Ubuntu spirit, visible in Nigerian sociocultural and religious interdependent relations. Through a consistent engagement of these philosophical, ethical, and cultural dimensions, the Abrahamic theology of hospitality is ingeniously crafted to fill the age-old gap--mutual inability to deal with religious otherness. At once, the book provokes further scholarship inquiries on and around the identified concerns. Its commonness and concreteness, with the proposed respect for each other's faith commitment, further underscores its quality.

1

The Problem

Religious Otherness?

This first chapter argues that the mutual subjective perceptions adopted at the initial encounter between Christians and Muslims have indeed impacted their unsettled relations. The chapter purposefully accentuates subjective perception, rather than condemn either the religions or their representative actors, because it agrees with Raimon Panikkar, a mystic-pluralistic religious scholar,47 that the cleaner our windows into reality are, the better we perceive reality.48 This means that the more unbiased our minds are, the clearer we appreciate the significance of diversities in life, because biases, like dirt, smear our windows, forcing the other to look dirty. Moreover, this approach fits into the overall argument of this book, which claims that the existing Christian-Muslim antagonisms can be drastically diminished when the other is allowed to define its identity on her own terms.

Distorted portraiture of the other, as is argued, reflects in broad strokes what defines Christian-Muslim relations from its inception to the present time. The Muslim-Christian relational problems engaging this research fit into four broad questions that form the road maps: 1) What were the possible root causes of subjective perceptions among Muslims and Christians? 2) To what extent were their sacred texts instrumental? 3) What were the resultant effects of their antagonized perceptions at both global and local settings? 4) When, and what factors, might have engendered some improved relations, leading to dialogic option? Closely engaged attempts on these questions will not only be expository, but will also confirm the inherent danger of living with distorted imagination of the religious other.

In the meantime, however, a brief historical review of the age-old mistrust between Muslims and Christians at the universal level will first expose the possible root causes and then provide a roadmap for a better comprehension of what is particular to the Nigerian context.

The Arabian soil was host to Christianity for about two centuries before the sudden emergence of Islam. Two suppositions have been posited to account for the advent and spread of Christianity in Arabia. The first assumption is linked to the biblical Paul of Tarsus, after his retirement (Gal 1:17), while the second is traced to the “south-to-north mission” by the Syrian desert monks.49 Despite historical uncertainty of both accounts, Christianity, no doubt, inadvertently influenced grounds for the implantation of Islam.

In the Arabian Peninsula, Christianity was not the sole religion. It rather coexisted with Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and traditional polytheism up to the early seventh century, when what became today’s Islam began to emerge. Prior to the Medina experience, Muhammad had launched his prophetic mission in Mecca and also attracted some followers, about AD 618. At this earliest stage, historians suggest a tiny community of Christians, mostly artisans.50 Before the hijra (flight), the few Christian presences in Mecca were the Nestorians and the Monophysites. More recently, the research of Hans Küng showed that the most popular form of Christianity to Meccans was a distinct Jewish Christian community that rejected the theological formulations of the Byzantine Church. These Jewish Christians in their doctrinal simplicity would accept the messianic mission of Jesus, but not his divinity.51 The Medina context was no different. It was more or less a Jewish settlement, rather than Christian.

Christian missionary efforts at this period had more than the idolatrous locals as targets. They were known for promoting conversion, through polemics on other religions, while at the same time extolling their own doctrinal practices as solely authoritative. Judaism, even though treated with greater tolerance by Christians, was not entirely exempt from the latter’s triumphalism.52

Besides these disparaged religious others, however, exist...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Problem
• Chapter 2: Mismanaged Problem
• Chapter 3: Contextual Rivalry
• Chapter 4: Inadequate Reactions to Religious Otherness
• Chapter 5: The Development of Positive Views
• Chapter 6: Dialogue of Life as Faith Witnessing
• Chapter 7: The Hospitality Key
• Chapter 8: Hospitality and the African Communality
• Chapter 9: Hospitable Coexistence
• Chapter 10: Hospitality
• Chapter 11: The Abrahamic Model
• Conclusion
• Bibliography