Christian-Muslim-Jewish friendship thread

[niminypiminy]

I've had a talk with Crescentmoon about starting a thread where Christians and Muslims can hold out our hands in friendship to one another. I feel like we have so much to offer one another, and I certainly would love to learn more about Islam, and to understand the ways in which my Muslim sisters live out their faith. Would anybody else like to join?

I'm niminypiminy, and I'm a member of the Church of England, and work, and have two children. I realise that I'd don't even know if there is an equivalent in Islam for the different denominations (aside from Sunni and Shia, which I'm not at all confident I correctly understand the difference between). I'm going to be offline for a couple of days, so can't get back to reply, but if anybody would like to use this thread to come together as Christians trying to live out our faith, and to prayerfully and open-heartedly welcome and understand each other...

[stressedHEmum]

Ramadan Mubarak. My prayers are with all those who are fasting during these long, hot summer days. It must be so difficult.

Crescent, if you want to do a lent type fast, make sure that it's not too much for you - just keep on giving up chocolate or something. I think Muslims have the same sort of idea during Ramadan as Christians have for Lent - giving something out/back as well as giving something up, is that right? That's the bit I like best about Lent, more prayer/bible reading and more service to God and people.

Moomins, I have often wondered about that, as well, but don't have anyone to ask.

[Tuo]

Ramadan Mubarak!

I have been reading this thread, but have had a bit of an excess of RL just recently and haven't got around to posting. However, I was lucky enough to visit Jerusalem on a work trip just recently, and that provoked a huge range of conflicting thoughts and emotions for me, but most of all it made me see how incumbent it is upon those of us who are able to do so to extend hands of love and friendship to those of other faiths, and for us to try to understand one another. This thread is one way in which we can do that, and I am so glad that it exists.

Moomins - I am only guessing, but I am guessing that the phrases in Arabic have become ritualised and accepted into everyday speech to the point where they no longer seem foreign to the person saying them. An analogy would be 'amen' or 'hallelujah'. This may be less frequent (although it may depend on the branch of Christianity that you embrace - I was a bit surprised, having been brought up as a buttoned-up Anglican, to attend a funeral where people shouted 'hallelujah' quite frequently and quite loudly...!) but it is part of the tradition nonetheless.

Praying with and for my muslim sisters this Ramadan... for peace between individuals and between and within nations, for understanding between faiths, and for us all to know God's love in our lives.

[niminypiminy]

crescentmoon I was thinking of doing something that I did in Lent during this Ramadan, which is get up earlier to spend some quiet time in prayer. I would really love it if there was a Muslim prayer that I could say, or something close to your heart that I could pray for or about during that time.

[Tuo]

That's really interesting, crescentmoon. I'm not Catholic, but my children attended a Catholic school for a while when we lived abroad, and one of the things they did on a particular holy day they recited the 'Hail Mary' 100 times (or something... I'm a bit hazy on the details, which just goes to show how little I know even about other Christian denominations, let alone other faiths...). Praying the Rosary is similar, isn't it?

[Moominsarehippos]

There are prayers that you say for a specified number of days or throughout lent. Prayers for everything! I inherited a beautiful catholic prayer book and there seems to be a specific one for many life events.

Do muslims have a translated version of the koran they use in prayers? I'd have trouble with a latin bible (there was so much hooha when it was translated, wasn't there??). You can't really 'feel' a foreign text if you don't speak it completely bilingually.

[niminypiminy]

I have the feeling that the words in Arabic are devotional in themselves, and that it is essential to say the Arabic words (even if you might also have a translation). I think this is also the case for Jews with the Hebrew words in the Torah. (Hope I'm not making this up I seem to recall learning this at some point!) Whereas the translation of the Bible has great significance in Christian history how it was translated, into what language and by whom and for whom -- and Christians don't treat the Greek text of the New Testament devotionally.

In the Orthodox Christian tradition an important way of praying is to say a simple prayer, such as the 'Jesus prayer' (Lord Jesus, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner) over and over again, slowly and meditatively -- that sounds as if it might have a similar purpose/effect to saying the name of God, or saying the rosary.

[Moominsarehippos]

(Apologies). I'm going to l o w e r the tone now...

I do love Father Ted. Anyone saw the episode when Mrs Doyle falls down the stairs and is praying 'Holy Mary, Mother of God...' Over and over until she hits the ground?

[niminypiminy]

... and there's an episode of Rev where Adam is frantically looking for a child he's left with a parishioner in an old people's home (finally located chatting with Colin, the resident scally), muttering 'Lord Jesus, son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner' under his breath.

[twistyfeet]

Many jews pray in hebrew, such as recisting blessings and several prayers a day fully in hebrew.

[ButThereAgain]

If you don't mind me dipping my toe in, I have a question for the Muslims on the thread about how Islam conceptualises what I've usually imagined must be the goal of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faith equally -- the goal of being wholly in the loving presence of God/Allah.

For Christianity (and I have always blindly guessed for other faiths too, but now I am questioning this) finding oneself in that loving presence is about overcoming. Overcoming a loss, overcoming a separation from God. We fell, we were exiled from God's presence. We yearn to be reunited, we seek redemption. The awful state of separation from God seems, for a Christian, to be part of the essence of what it is to be in the world.

That has always seemed to me to make Christianity a deeply (and beautifully) sad religion -- it is about exile, abandonment, a loss of God (albeit with the promise of overcoming the loss if we observe the correct pathways to redemption). I'm not a believer but I feel that that sense of sadness and loss has shaped so much of our culture, not just religion itself.

My question for any Muslim who might wish to answer is, does Islam too share this essential sadness, this plight of a loss that has to be struggled with and overcome? Or is it (in this particular respect) a bit happier, lighter, a bit more about being with God/Allah than about questing for him? Are you (as it were) with Allah to begin with, or are you seeking (by your religious observance and so forth) to overcome a momentous separation from him?

Where Islamic art, music, literature is at its most beautiful, is it (like Christianity) often expressing loss, exile, yearning? Or does it express the certain presence of Allah?

[Tuo]

twisty - I was thinking today about an episode in Primo Levi's account of his return from Auschwitz to Italy, in which his group of Italian survivors meets some Eastern European Jewish women, who refuse to believe that the Italians can really be Jewish because they don't speak Yiddish. The Italians insist that there really are Jews in the world who don't speak Yiddish, and the women ask them to prove it by reciting a prayer. Levi begins to recite the Shema and the women fall about laughing, claiming that he speaks Hebrew 'like a Christian'.

ButThereAgain - I can't answer your actual question, I'm afraid, but I have to respond to your view of Christianity as being all about loss. Of course, the story of the Fall is a story of exile, but - at least in my understanding of it - the separation between human beings and God brought about by the Fall is reversed once and for all in Jesus Christ - not by human beings somehow being returned to Eden as if nothing had happened, but by God coming to us, in all our brokenness and weakness and sinfulness. I can't imagine anything more beautiful and more joyful than God seeing humanity flailing about, getting it all wrong, and coming in person to gather us to Himself. (There's a post-Eucharistic prayer which I love which starts: 'Father of all, we give you thanks and praise, that when we were still far off you met us in your Son and brought us home'. That really sums it up for me.) So for me, at least, Christianity is not about loss but about the Love that breaks down all distance and all separation, and accepts us as we are in our frailty and insufficiency, rather than expecting us to pass some kind of 'Holiness Test' before allowing us back into some lost paradise. Sorry for sidetracking from your actual question, though. I hope someone can answer it, because I'm also interested to know...

[twistyfeet]

I think most of our congregation can recite the Shema and shabbat blessings and other well known stuff in hebrew but as its a reform synagogue the level of hebrew varies. You certainly see miming and once when there was only 4 at a friday evening service the Rabbi stopped singing suddenly to find absolute silence behind her. All 4 of us had been miming
I can do most of them but some I reach the mumblemumblemumble stage even though the hebrew is printed on the siddur in front of me. I cant read hebrew fast enough.
I certainly cant speak Yiddish. But I'm an English Jew. My family has been here for 200 years.

[twistyfeet]

One day I will learn biblical hebrew (and some aramaic) so I can read the Torah as the translations differ a fair bit (and for Christians, the OT translations are very different from even our Torah translations) but not yet. First I'm concentrating on learning the service hebrew and learning to actually read hebrew at normal reading speed. Like Arabic its a root language built on 3 letter roots (they are closely related).
I've been teaching dd. Her memory is better than mine too. She can remember the whole shema and Amidah while I have to keep checking the paper. I am ancient and decrepid

[ButThereAgain]

Crescentmoon thank you very much indeed for those thoughtful answers. I will think hard about them.

Tuo, yes, I probably exaggerate the loss/exile part of Christianity. It is so rich in content that we can sometimes each 'read' it in accordance with our particular preoccupations, and I guess I mistake my reaction to it for what it is in itself.

[stressedHEmum]

Butthereagain, I find Christianity very joyful, rather than sad. There is the profound loss and heartbreak brought about by the Fall, but Jesus got rid of that. I think that Christianity is a religion of triumph and love. Even before Eve at the forbidden fruit (or whatever), God had a rescue plan. he looked at us and saw us in all our misery and mistakes and He still loved us. He loved us enough to send His Son to bridge the gap and to take all that on himself so that, while we were still sinners, we could walk with Him and grow in His grace.

We don't have to overcome because Christ has already done that once and for all, so we rejoice in that and wonder at God's love.

I don't think I've put that very well.

Crescent, thank you as always. You are so very knowledgeable about your faith and put everything so clearly.

I think that part of my problem understanding these kinds of things is that I come from a stripe of Christianity that just doesn't do ritual prayer, except the Lord's prayer, and if any of us said Amen except at the end of prayer, folk would look at us as if we were certifiable. We probably would be certified if we started coming out with Alleluia - that is confined to the words of some old fashioned hymns. Presbyterianism kind of frowns on spontaneous outpourings of faith - you don't find and raised hands or faces lifted to heaven in our services.

I used to be able to read and translate Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek, sadly my brain is far too old and tired nowadays. it is well worth it, though, you get all sorts of nuances in the text when you read the original that you just don't get in a translation - so much of the richness gets lost.

[ButThereAgain]

Thanks stressedHEmum. I tell you what started me thinking of this joy and sadness business yesterday. It was the lovely smile on the face of the young man doing the . That joyfulness/tranquility in Islam isn't something that the media picture of the faith often lets us see, so it was particularly touching and thought provoking.

[Messandmayhem]

Can I join here? My family are non religious, we had Christmas and Easter but in their popular commercial forms. I have been becoming drawn to Judaism and I'm trying to gather the courage to go to the synagogue on Shabbat. The synagogue I would like to go to is a reform synagogue.

[minniemagoo]

Can I just say what an amazing thread, I can't wait to read it more indepth and hopefully add to the discussion when I have more time. Just introducing myself, born and raised Irish Catholic, now go to a Presbyterian church.