Dr Sookhdeo's alerts-a challenge to secular indifference to religious difference

[david at virtueonline.org]

Dr Sookhdeo's alerts - a challenge to secular indifference to religious difference

February 20th, 2009

What is reality like for Christian believers in Pakistan, or Northern Nigeria or Indonesia? Only recently 400 Christians were killed in Jos, Northern Nigeria by hired mercenaries brought in from outside. In early December muslim militants from Pakistan killed over 100 people in Bombay. Christian Sunday school teachers were imprisoned and put on trial in Indonesia.

Patrick Sookhdeo has been alerting the worldwide Christian community to these and other realities. He has come to the conclusion that even though there are many wonderful well-meaning people who are Muslim, and of course we respect such people, when there is a Muslim majority in a country, some, and worryingly an increasing number in some parts of the world who are committed to be faithful Muslims find justification in the Koran and Islamic traditions for the use of force, threats of violence and violence as part of their "missionary" strategy to bring the rest of the world under Islam.

Moderate muslims and those who believe that Islam can promote societies which respect universal human rights and accept religious diversity also draw their arguments from the Koran and Islamic traditions.  

Dr Sookhdeo's considered judgment is that such modernizers are doing their best to come up with such resources, but these do not convince the hardliners or the majority of Muslims. This is a very serious matter for religious minorities in Islamic countries. The situation has changed dramatically for them. The hope of the emergence and acceptance of a tolerant Islam has largely disappeared.

Dr.Sookdheo's work suggests that the belief of some that Islam has authoritative theological resources for a renewal in the direction of openness is misplaced and can only be a luxury for those seeking to live in harmony with Islam in the west. Religious minorities in Islamic lands would agree with his assessment. They will pay a heavy price if they did so openly. In many ways Dr. Sookdheo is giving voice to their struggles and fears.

To find fault with him for speaking of this reality when he is seeking to be faithful to speak the truth of what is happening, and to question the realism of renewal within Islam is to shoot the messenger because the message is unpalatable. 

I trust that with some of us he will still hope and pray that Islam will experience reformation and transformation drawing on its own resources. But many facts on the ground cause grave concern. This is a matter for public discussion, not public polemics.

Lest we believe that these dangers are limited to elsewhere, we should remember the anonymous testimony in General Synod only last week by a muslim convert in fear for their life in England.

It is important to realize that the issue of religious commitment in other cultures is quite different from how it is viewed in the west. Religions are seen not just as belief systems but ways of life received from our ancestors and sacralized through faithful practice. 

Religious tradition is at the heart of a community's identity and unity.

For an individual or a small group to convert from an inherited faith to a new one is seen as an act that denigrates and insults something very precious and essential. What are seen are not freedom, agency and choice of individuals and groups but blasphemous judgments on sacred tradition. 

Therefore when someone like Dr Sookhdeo raises the question of the dangers faced by those who are dissentient religious minorities in these cultures, he should not be dismissed as someone who sins against religious freedom and religious tolerance as understood in the west. Rather he raises the challenge to the west of its secular indifference to religious difference.

----The author has lived as an Anglican priest in a religious minority context and for a significant time in the West