Dave Andrews

Many people want to improve relationships between Christians and Muslims. The most common way we try to do that I call the ‘problematic approach’. The ‘problematic approach’ focuses on the problems and tries to fix them. Which at first glance, makes sense; because if you want to improve a relationship you want to see if there are any problems that need to be resolved and solve them.

But when you give the ‘problematic approach’ a second thought you realize the ‘problematic approach’ is actually endlessly ‘problematic’; because if you look for problems you find lots of problems, and the more you look for problems the more problems you’ll find, and the more you look at the problems you find the bigger, the scarier, the harder they become to deal with until you find yourself overwhelmed by the problems to such an extent you are unable to solve them.

In Christian-Muslim engagement we see this happen time and time again. Christians try to fix Muslims, Muslims try to fix Christians, and both sides end up not only overwhelmed the problems, but also battered and bruised by our cack-handed attempts to solve them. My Muslim colleague, Nora, says she didn’t want to meet me to start with because she heard I was a Christian and she was sick of Christians seeing her as a problem and trying to fix her.

An alternative way to improve relationships is the ‘appreciative approach’. The Apostle Paul writes ‘And now, brothers and sisters, let me say this one more thing: Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely, and dwell on the fine, good things in others.’ (Philippians 4.8)

The ‘appreciative approach’ does not focus on problems and fixing them but on ‘the good things in others’ and acknowledging ‘what is true and good and right’. Which at first glance, doesn’t seem to makes sense; because you think that if you celebrate the ‘good things’ people won’t make any real effort to get any better. But when you give the ‘appreciative approach’ a second thought you realize the ‘appreciative approach’ is the only approach that will make us want to do better; because if you notice ‘the good things in others’ you enhance ‘the good things in others’, encouraging them to do ‘what is true and good and right’ more often.

This is the approach Nora and I take in trying to improve relationships: 1.We appreciate the ‘good things’ we notice in one another’s communities; 2. We analyse why those ‘good things’ in each other’s communities are so good; and 3. We affirm the ‘good things’ in each other’s communities we could do better in future.

Hence, though I am a Christian, not a Muslim, I have still tried to appreciate the ‘good things’ in Nora’s religion. Like the Bismillah. The Bismillah stands for the Arabic phrase Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, a beautiful poetic phrase Nora says contains the true essence of the Qur’an, indeed the true essence of all religions. I have analysed why the Bismillah is so good, and the more I have thought about it the more I have come to the conclusion that it does represent the best perspective of God that any religion has got.

Both rahman and rahim are derived from the Semitic root rhm, which signifies the womb and nourishing-tenderness and loving-kindness. Rahman describes the quality of limitless grace with which God embraces the whole of the world and all of those who dwell in it, while rahim describes the general embracing grace of God as it interacts with us in the particular circumstances of our lives, always proactive, prevenient, responsive.

In talking with Nora, I have gladly regularly affirmed how much better both our religions would be if we interpreted our sacred texts in a way that reflects a spirituality of the Bismillah. We have both come to believe we should use that invocation as a hermeneutic to interpret our sacred texts in the light of God’s nourishing-tenderness and loving-kindness.