During Ramadan, which began last week, sunset finds observant Muslims taking their iftar, a ceremonial breaking of the rigorous fast, involving specific prayers. Often this is done as a community. Pictures of mosques hosting iftar bring to mind the parish festivities which were a common feature of pre-Reformation England, before the Protestants decided that attendees at such beanfests were having far too much fun.
For reasons that remain unclear, it seems to have become fashionable for Christian churches in Britain to make themselves available as venues for the iftar. This year Manchester Cathedral, no less, opened its doors one evening for the local Muslim community, causing a brief stir on social media. I must confess to being among those who raised a sceptical eyebrow.
The objector inevitably runs the risk of sounding like a grouch. What’s the problem with a bit of hospitality? The dean and chapter are just being good neighbours, reaching out across the sectarian divide to foster love, understanding and world peace. Can’t we all just get along?
The problem is that the iftar is not simply a jolly get-together. If it were simply a question of inviting other religious groups to share a meal, or to socialise, there would be no issue, but iftar is inescapably a specific religious observance. The accompanying prayer, the adhan, incorporates the shahada, undoubtedly one of the most important credal statements in Islam, because its sincere recital is widely regarded as sufficient to become a Muslim. The shahada not only states that Muhammad is God’s Messenger, but also describes God as ‘one’. Both of these statements should be regarded as rebuttals of Christianity, which does not regard Muhammad as a significant figure at all, and teaches that God is a Trinity. Islam’s strong emphasis on the Oneness of God must be understood in the seventh century context of its founding, when its two chief rivals were polytheism and Christianity.
It follows, then, that for clergy to allow the shahada to be prayed in a Christian cathedral is an extraordinary act of negligence and careless, a turning away from the task of defending, spreading and explaining the Christian faith.
None of this should be regarded as an attack on Muslims. The rigour of the Ramadan fast is deeply impressive. No food or drink at all during the daylight hours puts most modern Christian fasting in the shade.
But there is no getting around the fact that Christianity and Islam are two distinct and mutually contradictory religions. They might both be wrong, but they cannot both be right. If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, he cannot also be merely an important prophet. If Muhammad received God’s definitive revelation, then I am quite mistaken to regard him only as a merchant-turned-warlord. And I think serious Muslims would agree that there is a binary choice to be made here. I doubt they would want the elegant and austere purity of their faith dissolved into a syncretic mush, to make it more congenial to the modern Western mindset. I would not imagine there are many mosques who would consider inviting Christians to hold a prayer meeting or a Bible study – and quite right!
The question remains why a minority of Christians are so enthusiastic about these gestures. We’re not talking about a few oddballs acting on their own initiative under the radar. Presumably the decision to hold an iftar in Manchester Cathedral would have to be cleared with the bishop, David Walker, one of the more senior Church of England prelates. Without hearing from the organisers themselves, it is hard to be certain, but I suspect there are probably several different factors in play.
I honestly have no idea how we can overcome the instinctive cultural cringe that leads to these kind of incidents
One of these is hinted at by Douglas Murray in his 2015 book The Strange Death Of Europe. He talks about our civilisational loss of confidence following the terrible convulsions of 1914-1945. His argument is that the European intelligentsia, as a whole, can no longer regard their cultural and religious inheritance with healthy respect and gratitude, and instead maintain an instinctive suspicion and hostility towards anything that is theirs, while bending over backwards to accommodate what social scientists call the ‘Other’. It is this mindset that is being satirised by the old joke about a liberal being a man so open-minded he won’t take his own side in a fight. Christian clergy are not exempt. Quite the opposite, in fact, because Christianity’s traditional focus on self-abnegation and humility can lead to a kind of pathological altruism, unless it is balanced by a willingness to hold and police certain barriers of doctrine, discipline and practice.
The low status of patriotism and cultural conservatism in contemporary Britain mean that Church of England clergy, who are mostly drawn from the intellectual middle class, and who mostly conform to the shibboleths and prejudices of that class, are by and large very uncomfortable with anything that smacks of ‘old-fashioned’ ways, such as firmly declining to invite Muslims to hold iftar in a Christian church. It is noticeable that even many of the clergy who criticised the Manchester event did not appear to consider it a very serious offence, or deserving of proper discipline. Yes, it’s technically against canon law to invite members of another religion to pray heretical prayers in front of a cathedral altar, but one mustn’t make a fuss, you know. So we get a few disapproving Tweets, but nothing really changes. No-one is held accountable. Next Ramadan some other churches will do the same; perhaps another cathedral will have a go, and there will be a renewed round of polite tutting, but except for a few reliable firebrands, there is no real urgency to the criticism.
I honestly have no idea how we can overcome the instinctive cultural cringe that leads to these kind of incidents. It seems like an impossible task to disentangle the political from the spiritual in the minds of Christian elites, such that we can draw necessary lines of demarcation in our religious practice, without that demarcation taking on a political aspect. But it must be done, if we are to have any hope of reviving meaningful Christian faith among the British people, whom it has sustained for 1500 years.
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