Full Text

232 Insight Turkey Vol. 12 / No. 4 / 2010
Edited by Miroslav Volf, Ghazi bin Muhammad John and Melissa Yarrington
Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010, 242 pp.,
ISBN 9780802863805.
This volume is the first monograph-
sized publication on the most important
initiative towards interfaith dialogue be-
tween the Abrahamic religions in recent
years, edited by two figures intimately in-
volved in the A Common Word project and
Book Reviews
233Insight Turkey Vol. 12 / No. 4 / 2010
the Christian reaction to this Muslim ges-
ture. In fact, Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad
of Jordan - a scholar of religion with doc-
torates from both Cambridge and al-Azhar
and a close advisor to both former King
Abdullah II and King Hussein - was the
driving force behind the initiative, while
the Croatian-born theologian Miroslav
Volf played a leading role in formulating
the "Loving God and Neighbor Together:
A Christian Response to ‘A Common Word
between Us and You'".
To recapitulate briefly the sequence
of events behind this book: In September
2006, Pope Benedict XVI's "Regensburg
Address," containing an ill-chosen reference
to Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleolo-
gus's less than favorable comments about
Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, caused
major unease among Muslims around the
world. The speech cast a shadow over the
Pope's subsequent visit to Istanbul, which
took place amidst widespread protests in
Turkey, putting the ruling AKP party in an
awkward position.
An open letter dated October 13, 2006,
addressed to the Pope by 38 prominent
Muslims expressing their concern was fol-
lowed up exactly a year later with A Com-
mon Word. Initially signed by 138 Muslim
dignitaries, scholars and intellectuals, the
number of signatories has since increased
into the hundreds. This led in turn to a
Christian reply on November 18, 2007,
which was published in the New York Times
with an Arabic translation released a little
later in the United Arab Emirates. This
document has since then become known as
the "Yale Response".
The editors have organized the book
in five parts consisting of an introduc-
tion and the reproduction of the two texts
mentioned above; two sections with com-
mentaries and meditations by a number of
Muslim and Christian scholars; an ‘FAQ'
section providing a further explanation of
the two key documents; and a closing sec-
tion discussing the political significance of
A Common Word and listing the signatories
of both documents.
In his frank introduction, Prince Mu-
hammad bin Ghazi notes the discrepancy
separating the positive and optimistic ex-
changes between religious traditions on
an intellectual level from popular culture,
the rivalry between the centrifugal forces
of religious extremism and the centripetal
pull of "interfaith and intercultural centers
all over the world," as well as the wide-
spread Muslim concern over "the massive
missionary movements launched from the
West into the Islamic World" (p. 6). Follow-
ing a kind of via negativa, he also points out
that A Common Word is not intended to
convert Christians to Islam, nor to deny the
irreconcilable differences between Muslim
and Christian doctrine which cannot be
reduced by some "artificial union" (p. 10)
on the basis of the Commandments to love
both God and neighbor. These points are
echoed by Volf as he refuses to sweep the
history of mutual violence and oppression
and the many practical problems separating
the two faith communities under the carpet
(although there is some asymmetry in his
juxtaposition of Christians ill-speaking of
Islam with the lethal hostility of Muslims
towards former co-religionists converted to
Christianity).
Examining the two core texts, it becomes
clear how similar they are in their mutual
references to both Islamic and Christian
scriptures in order to undergird the shared
injunctions of divine and neighborly love.
Where A Common Word contains copious
citations and footnotes, the authors of the
Book Reviews
"Yale Response" have appended a virtual
line-by-line commentary to their more con-
cise document. Acknowledging past and
present excesses of Christians against Mus-
lims without pretending to ask forgiveness
on behalf of Christianity may indeed avoid
further religiously-defined communalism,
but reeks a bit of claiming the moral upper
hand nevertheless.
The Muslim and Christian perspectives
in parts two and three present a very varied
picture both in terms of outlook and qual-
ity. The rather stale sermon-like texts of the
Yemeni scholar Habib al-Jifri and the Ni-
gerian legal scholar Judge Bola Ajibola pre-
serve a traditionalist Islamic rhetoric which
contrasts starkly with the more academic
contributions of Reza Shah-Kazemi and
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, which affirm the sus-
tained philosophical tradition of Shi‛ite re-
ligious scholarship. Shah-Kazemi's medita-
tion shares the Sufi spirit informing al-Jifri's
keynote address to the Yale conference and
invokes mystical poets such as Rumi and
Ibn Arabi, who have also influenced the
Perennialist position taken by Nasr, whose
article highlights the centrality of the term
‘word' - kalimah in Arabic, logos in Greek -
in the Muslim-Christian exchange around
A Common Word.
The metaphysical focus of Volf's sec-
ond contribution to the volume betrays his
background as a leading systematic theolo-
gian, although he attempts to insert an ethi-
cal dimension into the six Luther-like theses
closing the essay. Joseph Cumming draws
on the Arabic Bustani-van Dyck transla-
tion of the Gospels and uses both Shi‛i and
Ash‛ari theologians as interlocutors. This
chapter is followed by a brief meditation by
David Burrell CSC and a suggested man-
date for academic and religious institutions
put forward by the Swiss-Lebanese theolo-
gian Martin Accad. Part three ends with a
rather idiosyncratic piece, digressing into
seduction and sorcery, by the famous Har-
vard theologian Harvey Cox, author of the
seminal 1960s text The Secular City.
On a final critical note, I question the
wisdom of seeking political endorsement
for the project by including a preface by
former British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
whose legacy is tainted by the controver-
sial decision to extend the ‘war on terror'
to Iraq and which is now the subject of an
official inquest. To some degree that also
applies to the epilogue by US senator and
former presidential candidate John Kerry.
Flaunting his deep New England roots
do not help dispel his image as an elitist
member of the American political estab-
lishment. However, that does not diminish
the significance of this first book-length
discussion of what will probably enter into
history as a crucial phase in the encoun-
ter and shared journey of two faith com-
munities encompassing more than half
the world's population. This publication is
therefore not only of interest to scholars or
religion, but also to political scientists and
historians working on international rela-
tions and world history.
Carool Kersten, King's College London