My First...

MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH ISLAM

In my early life during the 1950s, in an Australian state primary school and in Sunday School, both still essentially Eurocentric, Islam was something foreign, un-Christian, heathen and essentially Arabian. With an increasing awareness of the world around me, through learning and travel, that narrower view gave way to a more open-minded and liberal perspective: people can worship whatever they choose to, an inalienable right, but it means that all belief systems must be tolerant for that idea to be upheld. This is important, religious toleration is so fundamental to peace and harmony and any group seeking to enforce its belief system on unwilling others represents a threat to that stability. That is a lesson of history. Reading about the rise of Islam, especially during the period of the Moors in Spain, close to Christian Europe, was fascinating. I learnt that at this time Islam was by far the more tolerant, allowing the practice of other religions, even employing Jews at high levels within the state bureaucracy. Cordoba was the high point of European civilisation at that time, bringing not only higher and secular learning but what would be known as the Renaissance. However that intellectual vigour faded. Eventually what was the bulwark of the Arabian and Muslim world, the Ottoman Empire, would also fall apart. Islam became introspective, and with that came forms of fundamentalism. The price of that is isolation, and whether in Christianity, Hinduism or elsewhere, it breeds intolerant attitudes. Islam today has many negative images. What the world sees of it, courtesy, albeit of a predominantly Western media, is that it still has a Middle East context. The images tell us about women still being stoned to death, and about terrorism. My limited understanding of Islamic theology suggests that the genius of Islam lies in its very simplicity, each believer having a direct engagement with God, bringing great individual dignity. It is not a religion to create theocracies, institutions which throughout the history of civilisation on this planet have never endured because they become autocratic. Theocracies and self-worth are incompatible. Islam has succeeded most where it has sought to co-exist in a pluralistic rather than an exclusive setting. And that is a lesson not only for Muslims but for all those who are fervent about their religion.

John Steinbach