Prophets for Our Tme: Are We
Listening?
by Dorothy C.Buck
When I think of Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Muhammad, the ancient
Hebrew prophets, Abraham, Elijah, Moses then John the Baptist and Jesus, in
fact the religious reformers and visionaries of all cultures and traditions in
every age, one word overshadows all else. They knew how to
listen, first
to God, then to the voices of others in the world around them. As Christians we
talk of God “calling”us into relationship, of the prophets being “called” to
speak publically for God, to challenge and confront the ways that God's voice
was not being heard. In the Gospel according to Matthew John the Baptist is
heard quoting the major Hebrew prophet Isaiah,
“ Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! ...A voice cries out: In the
desert prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the wasteland a highway
for our God!”(Matthew 3:2, Isaiah 40:3)
Unless we listen to the prophets among us we are likely to wander farther
and farther away from the kingdom of God's love into a maze of tempting
cultural values and materialistic idols. We hear competing voices inundating
our TV programs enticing us with more and more “things”we must have and that we
are told will make us “happy”. Even cigarettes and an SUV are claimed to
fulfill our longings for love and companionship, and more and more credit debt
is the capitalistic means of achieving the successful consumer lifestyle that
feeds our economy, but not our souls.
We have ample voices throughout our short history as a country who have
warned us of the dangers of not heeding the call of the poor, of not feeding
the hungry, offering a drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, and welcoming
the strangers in our midst. Now we are challenged, almost beyond our capacity
to respond, by the fear of terrorist attacks and the distrust and hatred felt
towards this country in many parts of the world. Are we listening?
When Louis Massignon, the French scholar of Islam and a Catholic mystic
started the Badaliya prayer movement in Cairo in 1934 with the Egyptian Melkite
Christian, Mary Kahil, he was answering a call to a vocation grounded in love
of God and love of others. As the Muslim Arabs became the majority in Egypt,
Arab Christians were increasingly marginalized. While Mary Kahil devoted much
of her life to both Muslim and Christian Arab women's rights she was also
intent on maintaining the visibility and rich cultural heritage of Egyptian
Christians in the midst of Islam.
The word
Badaliya in Arabic means to
take the place of, instead of, or substitution, and the prayer is an offering
of oneself to God for the well being of others. Louis Massignon invited Mary
Kahil to join him in devoting their lives and their prayer to the Muslim people
around them. He understood the Badaliya as a call to feeling the pain and
suffering of others and joining their experience of it to the sufferings of
Christ for the salvation of all humanity. They took these words of Jesus
seriously, “Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors”.(Matt.5:44) It is
not easy to feel persecuted or marginalized and be willing to pray for those
who persecute us let alone feel compassion and love for them.
The Badaliya movement became a means of “crossing over” to the other, of
entering into the Muslim life and community in order to grow in understanding
and mutual respect. Louis Massignon was a prophetic voice in his time whose
embrace of arabic culture and Islam pointed to a means of interreligious
understanding that went beyond dialogue to the essence of Christian love. It
led to a Muslim-Christian shared prayer group that survived until 1979 and to
an annual Muslim and Christian pilgrimage that continues to this day in
Brittany, France. In 1948 when the modern state of Israel was in its infancy
Louis Massignon was outspoken in his prophecy of disaster for the whole Middle
East if the three religions of Abraham were not reconciled to living side by
side in peaceful co-existence. The path towards a Palestinian crisis was
already clear to him. Was anyone listening? On June 1, 1962, five months before
his death, Massignon wrote:
“... We do not tire in repeating that it is necessary to pray together,
Christians, Jews, and Muslims, for the advent of this so desired and waited for
peace. Every tentative economic and even cultural agreement, if it is not
founded on a sincere movement of hearts, united in faith in the God of Abraham,
Father of believers, can only frighten the third world and be rejected...”
This letter was written 45 years ago. Christians are still being marginalized
in Arab countries all over the world and there are communities of
Egyptian,Palestinian, Iraqis, and other Arab Christians throughout the Middle
East struggling to live together peacefully with their Muslim and Jewish
neighbors.The prophets among them are the many grassroots groups working in
mental health centers, parents circles, the Holy Land Trust in Israel,
Christian Peacemakers Teams, the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions,
Families Forum and Rabbis for Human Rights, along with many other human rights
organizations from all over the world. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord
saying, 'Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?' Here I am, I said, send me!'
(Isaiah 6:8-9)
An Iraqi friend of mine speaks of growing up in Baghdad very much the way a
young married Muslim woman wrote in her weblog this past Christmas 2004:
“Iraqis have strong bonds between them in spite of religion or ethnic
differences, we all work together, have neighbors from other religions, visit
each other and respect our differences. My neighbors are Shias, my best friends
are Christians and Kurds, and I am Sunni, but we all have good relations
between us. Christians celebrate Christmas with traditions very similar to our
Eid (feast). Muslims and Christians visit each other in Eid (by the way the
Christians call their Christmas Eid too).... They serve our traditional
Kulaicha besides some pastries just like us. My daughter has her share of gifts
for Christmas too, and she always asks me why Santa doesn't come to our house
too? I don't know what to tell her so I usually say that Santa brings your
gifts and puts them in our friends house so you can take them from there.”
(Dec.22, 2004. www. rosebaghdad.blogspot.com) Are we listening to the prophets
among us?
Here in the United States, in the spirit of Louis Massignon, we recreated
the Badaliya prayer for our time two years ago. We are responding to a quite
different challenge than he and Mary Kahil were in 1934 since we live in a
predominantly Christian society and it is our Muslim neighbors who are a
distinct minority. Ancient medieval prejudices and misconceptions still inform
our unconscious responses to Muhammad and Islam and we can no longer afford to
allow ourselves to remain ignorant of them. Giulio Basetti-Sani was an Italian Franciscan
priest who met Louis Massignon in 1936 and continued to refer to him as a
mentor until Massignon died in 1962. Basetti-Sani describes his own
misconceptions of Islam at the time and realized how influenced he had been by
the rhetoric of the medieval crusades of the popes and fears of later 17th
century Christian writers. When he presented these views to Massignon the
professor answered, ”The medieval Christian world taught that Muhammad was a
messenger of Satan and that the Allah of the Qur'an was not the God of Abraham.
We should not do to others what we would not have them do to us”.
Basetti-Sani writes,” Massignon had alerted me against an unjust
condemnation of (Islam) that precluded any sincere and productive dialogue
between Christians and Muslims. Islam is a mystery linked with the blessing
obtained by Abraham from God for his son Ishmael and Ishmael's progeny. This
line of thought, taken from the Bible, is the one to take in order to grasp the
significance of Islam. Before we parted Massignon gave me two thoughts meant as
guidelines in my reorientation. One was from Augustine, ' Love sees with new
eyes', and the other was from John of the Cross, 'Where there is no love put
love, and you will find Love Himself'. It was true: my eyes had seen badly...Later,
when my eyes were to see clearly, I would discover in Islam and the Muslims the
reflections of the infinite goodness of God”. (Basetti-Sani. 1977. “The Koran
in the Light of Christ” Franciscan Herald Press IL pp..17-18)
The media coverage of Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist groups hardly
helps us to overcome our misconceptions of Islam and the teachings found in the
Qur'an. Yet, Muslims are very clear about the distortions of their religion and
use of it for violent behavior and political purposes by fundamentalist groups.
The meaning of the Arabic word,
Islam tells us a great deal about those
of this faith tradition. Islam means “submission” and comes from the root for
the Arabic word for “peace”,
salaam.
Muslim believers are called to submit themselves entirely to the will of God,
Allah, and to find within that experience an abiding peace. For most Muslims
Islam is both a religion and a way of life that leads to peace, mercy and
forgiveness.
“It may be that Allah will grant love (and friendship) between you and those
who you (now) hold as enemies. For Allah has power (over all things); And Allah
is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful”. (Qur'an Sura 60:7)
”But if the enemy inclines towards peace, you (also) incline towards peace,
and trust in Allah for He is One who hears and knows (all things)”.(Qur'an Sura
8:61)
Are we listening to our Muslim neighbors, co-workers, brothers and sisters
in Abraham? At a gathering of Muslims and Christians co-sponsored by the
Islamic Council of New England, the Massachusetts Council of Churches, and the
Archdiocese of Boston recently there was a newspaper article distributed at the
gathering. It is a description with interviews of the detention at the US and
Canadian border of 40 Muslims returning to Buffalo from an Islamic conference
in Toronto entitled, ”Reviving the Islamic Spirit”. Most of those stopped were
American citizens and included everyone from the U.S.A. who attended the
conference. They were stopped, fingerprinted and held for as long as six hours
with no explanation. One 18-year-old student was singled out, searched, finger printed
and questioned. He was forced to go along and when he refused he was told that
he legally had no choice. He was initially told that his vehicle was being
stopped as part of a random check but he noticed that everyone from the
conference was being held. “We weren't treated as American citizens. We were
treated as suspects”.
Others described the incident as “an ordeal,
embarrassing, dangerous and un-American, If objections are not raised, what’s
going to happen in the future”? were some of the quotes. The article states,
“the Toronto conference was open to the public and featured well-known and
well-respected Muslim leaders, many of whom have had discussions with White
House officials”.(paraphrased and quote from Buffalo News, Jan. 31,2005 by Jay
Tokasz, staff reporter).
At the Boston gathering the discussion led to one prophetic voice from a
Muslim living in the Boston area, “I came to this country seeking the safety of
a country with laws that protect my right to live my faith as a Muslim and to
escape living in fear every day. Now I feel fearful again”. Someone else asked
that we ‘”Christians” stand with them as they fight against the religious and
racial profiling that each of them has experienced after September 11th in the
name of “homeland security”. Are we losing the very democratic ideals that are
the foundation of this country in our fear of the strangers in our midst? Have
we not yet heard this Gospel passage?
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me......Then
the just will ask him: ....Lord, when did we welcome you away from home or
clothe you in your nakedness?....The king will answer them: “I assure you, as
often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me”. (Matthew
25:31-40)
Louis Massignon's experience of compassion was the ground for his spiritual
life and a prophetic call for our time. In one of his letters to members of the
Badaliya prayer movement he writes:
“As long as God leaves us absorbed in our own suffering we remain sterile,
nailed to ourselves. As soon as compassion brings us beyond ourselves to
another's suffering than our own, we enter into the science of compassion
experientially, we discover wisdom in it. In the immortal company of all
creatures purified by angelic and human trial we glimpse the joy of tomorrow
through the pain of today.
Our desire, Christ's desire, for substitution,“badaliya”, for the most
unfortunate, for the abandoned, for our “enemies”, make us little by little
guess the secret of history, which belongs, Léon Bloy said, to the souls of
compassion and pain; and it is through “substitution” that they decipher it, by
achieving it”. (Letter #1 1947 )
The Badaliya prayer led Massignon to more and more social action as he
responded to the injustices in his country and in the world in his time. He
remains a prophetic voice as we continue to face many of the same injustices
that he describes so passionately in his letters. Isn't our Lenten fasting, prayer
and almsgiving ultimately meant to draw us ever closer to the mind and heart of
God, to the fulness of life in God? And doesn't that lead us to greater and
greater compassion, hospitality and to the heart of non-violence and love? In
1957 Massignon wrote:
“In its edition last August 9th, ‘the Commonweal', the New York Catholic
weekly,
completed an article in which the Badaliya was urged to hold firm to its
program of non-violent action, in saying," (the Badaliya) remembers that
it is better to suffer injustice than to commit injustice, and that is the test
which, to a Muslim ("one who has surrendered to God")proves that he
is a Muslim. And for us, as St. Augustine pointed out, it is the test of a
Christian". (LM Convocation #11)
Thich Nhat Hanh poignantly captures the essence of the Badaliya prayer
movement for our time. There are many prophetic voices to guide us. May we
always listen to them:
“If any accident happens to one member of our family, the whole family
suffers. When an accident happens to a part of our nation, it happens to the
whole nation. When an accident happens to a part of the planet Earth it happens
to the whole planet, and together we bear it. When we see that their suffering
is our own suffering, and their death is our death, we have begun to see the
no-self nature.....Whenever we love, we see that the person we love is
ourselves; and if our loved one dies, we also die. Although we are sitting
here, and we have the impression that we are alive, in fact we have also died.
What happens to one part of the body happens to the whole body.....The pain of
one part of humankind is the pain of the whole of humankind. We have to see
that and wake up”.
(part of a response to the recent devastating earthquake in Asia on Dec.
26,2004, the Tsunami, by the Vietnamese Buddhist --Thich Nhat Hanh)
