Interview: Christian Muslim Forum on Recent Attacks

|PIC1|The Rev Dr Nicholas Wood is one of the presidents of the Christian Muslim Forum, established by the Archbishop of Canterbury last year to promote stronger relations and better understanding between the Christian and Muslim communities in the UK. He is also a Baptist minister and has a long-standing interest in inter-faith relations.

Christian Today spoke with Dr Wood to find out how the recent foiled attacks in London and Glasgow might have impacted Christian-Muslim relations.

CT: What was your initial reaction to the attacks in central London and Glasgow?

NW: Like most people, I was shocked by recent events, although given the last few years I wasn't necessarily surprised. We were warned that other incidents like this might occur. I think something that particularly shocks is that the people allegedly involved are related to the medical profession and that is particularly shocking because of the sense which we all have of the medical profession being dedicated to preserve and enhance life, rather than take it away.

In terms of how this affects the work of organisations like the Christian Muslim Forum, on the one hand it's unhelpful because it reinforces stereotypes about Muslims in particular and makes people fearful, but I would say it also underlines the need for exactly the sort of work we are aiming to do. We are trying to bring people together, to break down barriers of suspicion and get people talking to each other and discover what the real issues are and how they deal with them, because they are not issues for one community but issues for all of us and it is about how we as people of faith in a globalised world tackle these issues.

We are very committed to working at the grassroots level and particularly with people who are involved at the grassroots with some of these issues. Last year we held our first ever 24-hour consultation for imams and pastors and that was a very successful initial meeting. It was so successful that we are planning two in the coming year which will allow Christian and Muslim leaders to work together and get to know each other, to understand how the other thinks and operates. We also recently brought Muslim and Christian young people together to talk about their faith, about being people of faith in a secular society, learning from each other, and what it means to be a young Christian or young Muslim.

CT: Do you think Islam and Muslims are misunderstood by Christians?

NW: I think Christianity is misunderstood by Muslims and Islam is misunderstood by Christians in different degrees. I would be careful about generalising. There is always that danger, and therefore it's important to think beyond the stereotypes.

That is one of the issues we are dealing with and trying to help people break down some of those barriers, to engage across the 'parallel lives' issue and discover where there are things in common.

I think one of the issues we are concerned about is what we call the 'parallel lives' phenomenon in which people from different faith, ethnic or social groups live next to each other but don't really engage with each other. Then there is a danger in which we grow up with stereotypes and what the 'other' looks like, often reinforced by careless media representations.

We can think back to what it was like when our denominational ties were much stronger than they are today and people had very strong ideas about what it meant to be a non-Conformist or an Anglican or a Roman Catholic, and I think happily these days we can see across those boundaries and discover those things that we have more in common and which make us distinctive.

And I think similar things can happen between faith communities - but not to water down those things that are distinctive. The way in which we honour all faith communities is to recognise their distinctiveness, not to pretend necessarily that we all think the same and believe the same, when that's clearly not the case.

The question then is, given our distinctiveness, how do we learn together in an ideal way, in a diverse and plural society?

CT: It is of course not long after the attempted attacks, but from what you can gather, have they had any effect on inter-faith relations so far?

NW: I think it's important to make the distinction that as far as we can see from the reports so far, the people investigated in relation to this are not long-standing members of British society, but have arrived from elsewhere in the last year or two. So I don't think that the actions of this particular group of people should necessarily be seen as representative of either Islam or British Muslims in general. It doesn't seem to have that background.

The second thing is that I think it is too early to say what impact these attacks may have. I do think that there have been some positive outcomes from other attacks, post-9/11, post-7/7. I think people have recognised the importance of developing good inter-faith relationships and I think in a sense that provides an impetus for our work and people are beginning to see the relevance of what we have been saying for a while.

One of the things that the forum is doing is to emphasise the importance of appropriate training for both clergy and imams, in terms of relating to contemporary British society, learning to live with the other, understanding the other and relating to the other appropriately. That is important both for imams and for clergy and that is something that the forum wants to address in the coming months.

CT: So there is a lot to be positive about?

NW: Clearly there are anxieties that we need to be alert to but I think there are real opportunities for both Christians and Muslims to take the initiative and to find a way forward.





For more information about the Christian Muslim Forum, please go to www.christianmuslimforum.org