ADDRESS BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY AT THE
INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY, ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

THE HUMAN FAMILY AND THE DUTY OF RELIGION

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to address such a distinguished company in this celebrated university and I am grateful for the kind invitation from your Rector to do so. It is of particular significance too to me to be visiting your country for the first time in this, your 50th Anniversary Year.

May I also say to your Rector that I noticed we have both been travelling to similar places over the recent past and I was fascinated to read the lecture you gave in Cairo this July on the subject of 'Reinforcing the Dialogue between Islam and the West'.

In that lecture you said 'With the political liberation of the Muslim world, and the historic event of establishment of an ideological State of Pakistan in 1947, a new discourse started between Islam and the West'. Now, it is not for me as a visitor to say what the changes in the world have meant to this country since 1947. What I can talk about with confidence, however, are some of the changes that we have experienced in Britain and some of the parallels that can be drawn from them.

It was one of England's most celebrated poets, John Donne, a 17th Century Anglican priest who wrote 'No man is an island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee'.

Donne's conviction, stated 300 years ago, that we belong to one another as part of a common humanity is something which, over the past fifty years, we in Britain have become much more conscious of as members of a single global village.

Back in 1947 Jet travel was a thing of the future as far as most people were concerned. If you wanted to go from London to Australia there were only a very few flights a week - and those were in the back of a converted war-time bomber that took the best part of a week to make the journey. The English Cricket Team, on their way there opted that year to go by sea, and therefore had plenty of time to acclimatise to changes in temperature and time zones. All that is a far cry from the situation today when the West Indies, after playing England out here in next week's tournament, are also able to take us on in a few weeks time when they have returned home.

In Britain only a few people had telephones or cars in the immediate post-war years. Today all that has changed. As for the word 'computer', it was known only to a few scientists whilst fax machines and the Internet definitely belonged to the future.

Not only that but the population of our nation has changed significantly over the fifty years since 1947. Let me take one example. A few Muslims, but only a few, were living in Britain in the 19th Century. Even by the middle of this Century numbers were still very small. By 1951 these had increased there were still only some 23,000 Muslims living there. Twenty years later that figure had climbed to somewhere around 370,000, whilst today, a further twenty five years on, it stands somewhere between 1.2 million and 1.4 million.

Now, in terms of the total population of the country that is not huge percentage. Even if one adds together for all the members of non-Christian faith communities - Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs and so on - then the total only comes to something between 5 and 7% of the population. But despite these quite small numbers, they have brought a rich diversity to the cultural and faith map of Great Britain, which is a new experience for our country.

In my own role as Archbishop of Canterbury, it has raised the question of how we, as Christians, should be responding to the presence of these faith communities as a part of our nation. Indeed, only last Sunday I was addressing a gathering organised by the Inter-Faith Network to celebrate all it has done over the past ten years in fostering understanding and mutual support between the different Faith Communities.

Coming to this country I have been struck by what could be described as a sense of role reversal in Muslim-Christian relationships. Here, admittedly, the Christians have been present in greater numbers, and for longer, than have Muslims in Britain. However, I understand that today the numbers of Christians in Pakistan, and the number of Muslims in Britain are roughly the same proportion of the total populations of those countries. For both our traditions, then, the question is raised of how we may act, whether living as a majority or as a minority, according to the precepts of our respective faiths, in relation to one another as part of the human family. In Donne's imagery, not as islands, separated from each other, but rather as part of a single continent, closely intertwined.

One answer to that question, which I have heard repeated on many occasions, is that the key lies in being tolerant towards one another. Now that word is greatly overused by some at present. On occasions it is equated merely with indifference. It is, after all, easy to be tolerant about things you have no interest in and do not care about. Yet, by itself, it is necessary but not sufficient to produce the levels of mutual respect that can give true security to minority groups of whatever kind. If all that is offered to them is that kind of tolerance then such groups end up feeling that they are being allowed to exist on sufferance, but that their existence is by no means secured.

Let me give two examples. The Jewish people have, almost without exception, lived in minority communities down the Centuries. For most of that time they have been tolerated but every now and again persecution has broken out. They have suffered terribly in many places, notably in the holocaust prior to, and during, the Second World War. Or again I think of the destruction I saw in Bosnia where people who had lived together alongside each other for decades turned on their neighbours in acts of terrible bloodshed.

We must, therefore, seek for something more than the mere indifference that masquerades as true tolerance and to do that we shall have to dig deep into the resources offered by our different faith traditions. Now, although there is much that separates us as Christians and Muslims, it is not on those aspects that I want to concentrate tonight. Rather I shall be pointing to a number of important understandings our two faiths have in common, and will seek to develop from those some reflections on how we can live together whether as a minority or as a majority.

Shabbir Akhtar in his excellent, though provocative, book A Faith for All Seasons observes: 'A few significant details apart, the Muslim vision is identical with the vision of Judaism and Christianity, Islam's ethical monotheistic predecessors'. Dr Akhtar recognises the strength in each religious tradition, but points to the secular context in which faith lives and what he calls 'the unprecedented crisis in urbanised society'; a crisis for religious communities from the 'mass leakage from the vessel of faith' and the crisis for a secularised culture as there is nothing to hold it together. However, what in actual fact do we have in common?

Both of us I suggest are convinced that we have access to the immense resources of an infinitely resourceful God. As members of the two largest faith communities in the world we have plenty of evidence for the resources which are at God's disposal to shape the history of human kind. Indeed, although members of both our communities have played at times somewhat ambiguous roles, only the very biased would deny the positive side of what we have achieved. I think, for instance, of the marvellous cultural heritage that both our faiths have given to the world. I think too of the way in which both Muslims and Christians have been involved in caring for those who suffer whether in Bosnia or in Afghanistan. All these speak of the resources of a resourceful God.

But, more than that, our beliefs about God are similar in many respects.

For instance as Shabbir Akhtar notes both Christianity and Islam are monotheistic faiths. To be sure there are substantial differences in our understanding of God. For example, the Christian belief in the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - is distinctive and different, as is our understanding of the person of Jesus Christ. But let no one be in any doubt about the commitment of Christianity to worshipping the One true God who reveals himself to humanity and who calls us into a relationship of love in which we value justice and practise holy living. In both our faiths too God is seen as awesome, wonderful and greater than anything we can ever know in this life. And in relating to the One God, we both believe that he has made human kind incorrigibly spiritual, however many of our contemporaries may reject that belief, and in thinking of his greatness we both hold that his care and love extends beyond the communities of faith we represent. Indeed that his compassion extends to people of all races, classes and creeds.

As for the spiritual life, both our faiths are one in emphasising worship and prayer as essential elements in faithfulness to God. In both traditions we affirm the saints, prophets and holy men and women of the past as well as of the present day. We are one in affirming the importance of holy texts such as the Bible and Qu'ran each of which is fundamental to our respective faiths. Furthermore, as Dr Shabbir Akhtar observed, both Islam and Christianity are ethical faiths in which belief cannot be separated from behaviour. We are commanded in both religions to love and respect one another; to care for the weak and to defend the fatherless. Honesty, reliability and faithfulness are required from adherents of both faiths. In both the family is the building block of community life and faithfulness in marriage is demanded.

Working from this understanding of the breadth of God's concern that is present within our own traditions the good news is that in many parts of the world hopeful progress is being made. In my country through such prophetic organisations as the World Congress of Faiths, the Council for Christians and Jews, and the Inter-Faith Network, barriers of suspicion, prejudice and intolerance are being questioned and broken down. As countries like our own have received more and more members of a diversity of religions and cultures so we are realising that rather than representing a threat, other faith communities make a creative and valuable contribution to our common life. There is a wonderful line in one of R.S. Thomas's poems, another Anglican priest, where he says so powerfully: 'They listened to me preaching the unique gospel of love, but our eyes never met'. And what sort of good news is it if people never meet as friends and eyes never meet and smile in friendship?

My mind flashes back to some ten years ago when my wife and I were invited by one of the staff at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute, Palestine, to visit his family home in Hebron. We were delighted to accept because it denoted that trust had built up between us as Christians and himself as a practising Muslim. We had no idea what was in store for us, but we were feasted in such a regal fashion that we might easily have been members of the Royal Family. Although our friend's family could not speak a word of English, the most wonderful context of care and respect spoke its own language. It was an honour to be at the receiving end of such genuine hospitality and the time we had with that lovely family was precious beyond words. The conversations I later had with that man about Islam were as deep as I have ever had. We were able to speak of real issues which divided Christianity and Islam without them coming in the way of friendship which was, of course, the reason we could talk about them so frankly. Dialogue was able to flourish within friendship.

However, having drawn attention to some of the similarities between Islam and Christianity we should not be in any doubt that there are some very significant divergences too. It was Bishop John Taylor who said about Inter-Faith Dialogue in the first Lambeth Inter-Faith lecture almost twenty years ago: 'This is a more exacting exercise than any of us would wish for, because every human being finds it difficult to sustain contradictions and live with them. Instinctively we either try to destroy what is opposed to our understanding of truth, or we pretend that the antithesis is unreal. ... It takes a high degree of maturity to let the opposites co-exist without pretending that they can be made compatible'.

Or again, in his Cairo lecture, your Rector, writing of this Dialogue said: 'The western mind shall have to strip itself of the deep-rooted biases about Islam and the Muslims, the earlier the better. The Muslims shall have to reorient themselves and critically examine their assumptions about the West too'.

Moreover, we need to remember that these differences are more than cultural. In fact, they are fundamental to our understandings of God's activity in the world, and nowhere does that show itself more starkly than in the context of both being missionary faiths.

By claiming to be universal in both cases we are immediately confronted by the potential for conflict between them, especially in our shrinking world. We therefore have a duty to look carefully at the tension between making disciples on the one hand, and respect for other faiths on the other. I believe the task can be done on the basis that faith claims are essentially invitations - or as you might say, Dawah - invitations to consider that what our experience has meant to us may be something that may transform some one else. That implies that I, too, am obliged to listen to someone else's journey of faith and study the challenge that it brings to me.

All that sounds very hopeful - which indeed it is - but both our faiths are realistic about the fact that religions can turn sour and become desperately corrupt. For, although Religion shows no sign of dying out, neither does bad religion with its manifestations of fanaticism, intolerance and ignorance.

As I said in my lecture at the Al Azhar University: 'There is a darker side. The same religions which have such potential for creating community have, sadly, all too often divided and alienated people from one another. Both religions have had militant histories and there is much to regret in the tangled story of faith. But religious disputes continue today and, sadly, violence is often linked to passions which become associated with different faith communities. Issues of poverty and despair, to take just two examples, can become intertwined with issues of faith and can result either in aggression towards, or in the scape-goating of, others'.

Bearing this in mind, then, both faiths, when we are being true to them, commit us to respond to evil with good, and not with further evil. For the opposite to bad religion is not no religion, but good religion. Earlier this year the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, based in Birmingham, hosted a four day consultation on the whole subject of human rights. As a result of that meeting a number of the participants have drawn up a draft charter suggesting a common Christian-Muslim understanding of Human Rights. No doubt it will require considerable refining, but it begins with four quotations from the Qu'ran and the Bible, two of which read as follows. From the Qu'ran: 'Let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice' (Qu'ran IV, 135)'. From the Bible: 'But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream' (Amos 5: 24).

The Charter goes on to say:-

'As men and women of faith who believe in these holy verses we are bound to fulfil their meanings in our actual lives... We submit ourselves to the Will of God to whom we shall be accountable for our actions as servants or vice gerents on earth... In the end we stand before God accountable for the way we treat His creatures and creation because the doing of justice is a basic requirement of faith. It is this haqq/justice which grounds our faithfulness in all acts of life'.

This then is, I believe, a foundation for practical action which both our communities share and which can become, when we are true to what we believe, a guiding light for our behaviour towards one another, whether we are living as majorities or minorities. In this final section of the lecture, then, I want to outline five areas for practical action based on this foundation of a common calling to promote such justice in our societies.

The first lies in doing what we can to provide an environment for those of other faith communities in which they can grow in holiness. As I said earlier in this lecture all of us, if we are to be true to our faiths, need to learn to depend in our lives on the immense resources of God. Growing in personal holiness is one crucial way in which that can be achieved and it is therefore vital that we do what we can to provide the freedom that gives those of other faiths, as well as those of our own, the opportunity to do so. It means, for instance, that we should support each other as our communities seek to build new places of worship. Mosques and Churches perform a vital function in helping people to become better Muslims and better Christians and we should therefore resist those who seek, by whatever means, to deprive our communities of access to them. Clearly planning laws are a complex matter and I am not wanting to get into details here, but the principle is important to establish.

Or again, in both our traditions, education has an important part to play. Now I know there are complex issues here too, but to my mind it is important for the growth of personal holiness that we should be seeking to provide educational environments that are supportive of it. Recently in Britain discussions have been going on about the position of Church Schools within our broader educational system. In one exchange in the House of Lords a question was tabled on them. The questioner wanted to ensure that Church Schools under the new government would have unrestricted right to continue their work. What pleased me just as much as the positive answer that the Government spokesperson gave, was a question from the Bishop of Birmingham asking for assurances from our Government that Muslims will have their own schools in Britain. Schools which, like the Church Schools in our country, will have a distinct religious foundation, but which will be fully integrated into the educational system, teaching our national curriculum to a high standard.

This, it seems to me, is a good example of what it means to be acting justly towards one another. Elsewhere I have talked of this in terms of 'reciprocity' - not basing that in a framework of some kind of political bargaining - but rather rooting it in the demands of both of our faiths to act justly towards each other.

A second area to work for is I believe the freedom for individuals to decide to change their minds and to be converted in either direction whether from Christian to Muslim or vice versa. Clearly this will always be a tension between two missionary faiths such as our own, both of which see their beliefs more in absolute rather than relativistic terms. Furthermore the picture is made more complex by the fact that Christianity has tended to lay more stress on individual rights while Islam, historically, has put the greater emphasis on community ones.

But even though such tensions exist that is no reason why, in the name of justice, we should not support our fellow human beings if they wish to convert from one faith to another. Of course we may want to argue with them, and attempt to dissuade them by reason, though not by threat, from their chosen course of action, but we should also find ways of supporting their right to exercise this freedom of choice should they wish to do so.

Thirdly justice demands that people should work hard to understand each other.

A fresh humility is required by which the integrity of other faiths is recognised and their genuine contribution to the well being of human kind honoured. One can, I believe, be a Christian, as I am, wholly convinced of the uniqueness of Christ and his abiding relevance to human kind, and still affirm that other faiths possess value, significance and integrity. The Bossey Consultation of 1956 stated that 'all mission has the nature of dialogue'. Dialogue can only take place between those who value each other. Christians engaged in dialogue may thus approach their own faith in a new way. It opens up new and exciting opportunities - to engage with the living faith of another and to have one's own faith enlarged and deepened by it. And that happens properly at the same time as we share how our life is changed and sustained by our own faith and the way in which it has nurtured us.

By entering into such dialogue we shall also find ourselves challenging the crude pictures that are sometimes painted, in the media and elsewhere, of our different communities - and it is right that we should. When I visited the Central Mosque in Leicester two months ago one of the questions that came up for discussion was that of Islamophobia, and it was right that it should. Recently the Runnymede Trust published a report on the subject. Dr Philip Lewis, a leading authority on Islam in Britain, wrote of it: 'The Commission, which included Christian, Jewish and Muslim members, was shocked by the dread and dislike of Islam across all sections of English society. In the press, contemptuous stereotypes and cartoons were not confined to the tabloid (newspapers), but included the broadsheet (ones right) across the political spectrum. If some of the political cartoons had featured a Jewish rather than a Christian character, they would undoubtedly have been judged anti-Semitic'.

He then went on to say this 'the influential Policy Studies Institute survey, 'Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and Disadvantage', found that committed Christians were less likely than non-believers to express prejudice against Muslims'.

Once again there is a responsibility here, in the name of our faiths, to ensure that the truth is told about those who disagree with us and that challenges every kind of prejudice. After only a very short time here I am aware that such prejudices are felt to exist by the minority Christian Community, though I have yet to hear the word 'Christianophobia' used. I believe it is one of the tasks of an Institution like this to challenge them.

Fourthly, then, and linked to this, justice demands that there should be the freedom to participate in public life and to serve the wider community. In Britain, whilst there has, for some years now, been no official bar to anyone of whatever faith, sex, or ethnic origin serving in any public office, all too often people have encountered prejudice and resistance based on unspoken objections. I have been delighted, therefore, that so many Muslims are now being elected to positions in high public office, whether as Councillors, Mayors or, most recently, as a Member of Parliament to represent all those within their ward or constituency, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, agnostic, or atheist. I have also been encouraged by the way in which those of different ethnic origins are coming to hold senior positions in the Church and elsewhere in Society. It is something we have encouraged and will continue to encourage as part of this expression of our faith. Once again I will leave you to draw your own conclusions from the principle for the practice of things in this country.

Finally, then, I believe it is important to value minorities for the gifts of perception that they can bring to a majority. Of course it is always uncomfortable to have your presuppositions challenged - but it is often the case that, if they are, real growth occurs as understanding is deepened. Britain is a culturally richer place to live in because of the presence of substantial minorities in the different faith communities and those personal encounters I, and others, have with their members are enriching. That is not to say they are always easy, far from it, but I always feel I have gained far more than I have given.

But, if that is so, then the minorities themselves have a duty to share with the majority and not to retreat into enclaves as history shows us it is all too easy to do. Here in this country there is a fine tradition, so I am told, of Muslims being educated in Christian schools, or using health services provided by the Churches. Schools and hospitals with their own distinctive Christian ethos which have respected the integrity of their Muslim pupils and patients. Once again this is the kind of pattern for living which, I believe, is encouraged by both of our faiths.

My list could go on - and perhaps it will grow through discussion afterwards - but what I want to stress at this stage is that I believe both our faiths have within them the materials for building sound relationships between our communities, and that it is up to us to realise them, particularly in majority/minority situations of the kind we encounter in both of our countries.

Last month my colleague, the Bishop of Bradford, visited this country. He came, partly in response to the events at Shanti Nagar, but also because of the close contacts between the City of Bradford and this country. Uniquely, I suspect, he was accompanied on that visit by a leading British Muslim, his friend and colleague, Ishtiaq Ahmed, the Director of the Racial Equality Council, and the Secretary of the Council of Mosques in Bradford. They came together to learn and to express visibly the unity they enjoy as believers in their common humanity and concerns for society; a unity which I know the Sheikh of Al Azhar was very impressed by when he visited Bradford earlier this year. In summarising his experience at a meeting afterwards the Bishop said this:

'I conclude with a message delivered to us in Pakistan by Christian and Muslim leaders alike: We must acknowledge our differences but we must also acknowledge that:

We share a common humanity
We share life on one planet;
and we have a responsibility under God for it'.

These sentiments are ones I echo warmly and do, I believe, undergird what I have sought to say about 'The Human Family and the Duty of Religion'.

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