Or are they counter-productive in your opinion in view of the bad feelings they create on both sides?
Watch brother Idris Tawfiq’s answer:
Your question is very interesting. So I’ll get around today’s answer by going in a circuitous way.
What you’re asking me is: are debates the best way of speaking to Christians to convince them of the truth of Christianity?
Or are there other ways that are better?
Well, first of all, I ask you to take the example of the shirt that I’m wearing. Now imagine someone who’s never met me before and that person comes to me and says “Oh that shirt doesn’t suit you! You look silly in it!” Well, if I don’t know that person and he tells that I look silly in my shirt, I would take offense and I won’t listen to a word he says.
But if you, my very dear friend, says to me “brother Idris, that shirt you’re wearing it doesn’t really suit you, in fact you look little bit sill in it.” I’ll say “Really? I’ll change it”
You get the idea?
If someone who doesn’t know me says things to me that is close to home I could be very offended by what he’s saying. But someone who is my friend, you know we can tell also these things to our friends. Our friends tell the truth, our friends don’t just say nice things to us.
Sensitivity of Interfaith Dialogues
Now, one of the problems it seems to me in dialogues between religions, interfaith dialogue, inter-religious dialogue… first of all, the word I’m using is “dialogue”.
Dialogue means one person speaks and the other person listens, and then the other person listens and the other person speaks.
That’s a dialogue, two people talk and listen to one another; otherwise they call it “interfaith monologue” where I just talk to the other person and tell him about my religion and he listens.
Now it seems to me this work of interfaith dialogue is very precious and we have to be very careful in the way we pursue it or else we’re going to offend people; it would be like if someone speaks about my mother, they’d better be very careful what they say. You understand?
My friend can say something in a nice way to me and I’ll listen, but a stranger says something about my own mother and I’ll be “what’re you saying?” It’s the same thing with faith. You know, if someone I don’t know criticizes Islam to me, I’ll take offense about what he says immediately. But if maybe a Muslim friend says “well, you know as Muslims we do this” and I would be inclined to say “yes, we do; what can we do about it?”
Well, take then, we have two people from different religions, and two people from two different religions are talking to one another about their faith which is very precious to them. If they don’t know one another well, there are on very shaky ground.
So I’m answering your question with that premise, that’s the bottom line. Interfaith dialogue, discussion about faith between people of different faiths is so important, it’s so precious but we need to be very careful.
Debate or Dialogue?
Now it seems to be in my experience that debating is interesting and fun, you know, who’s going to win the argument and you put forward your reasons and the other person puts forward his or her reasons, and at the end of the debate the audience votes on who gave the best reasons, that’s what the debate is, it’s in the formal sense of the debate.
Sometimes in a debate you have a team, two speakers, or three speakers who speak for the motion, two/three speakers speak against and at the end the audience make up their mind which one was the most convincing.
Well, it seems to me that’s all very well if we talk about which country should enter the European Union, or what is the role of United Nations.
But if you’re discussing faith, if you’re discussing for example a Muslim and a Jew, or discussing the role and the person of Jesus (peace be upon him), well debate seems to me to be inappropriate because in a debate you’re trying to convince the other person that you’re right, and you’re trying to win over the audience by clever arguments to win them to your position, you’re not really interested in listening to what the other person has to say because you believe as a Muslim that Jesus was not God. So in a debate, you don’t really want to listen to the Christian’s view that he was.
Let’s take instead the example of Imam Al-Ghazali. He used to say - and this is very extraordinary - “I’d like to lose an argument.”
What does he mean by that?
Imam Al-Gazali was a man so interested in the truth that he honestly admitted “If my opponent has an argument that is better than mine, I’m happy to lose my argument and to learn something new.” That’s a different approach.
Well, if we’re talking about Jesus (peace be upon him) as the son of God, as Muslims we know because the Quran tells us of a certainty {they crucified him not} (4: 157). We know that he wasn’t the son of God. But whether we can put that to a Christian audience in the form of a debate, a debate is aggressive, a debate is antagonistic, you know, we’re opposing each other with clever arguments. The very nature of debate is that it is confrontational.
The Real Jesus in Edinburgh
I remember once I did an event with the bishop of Edinburgh and it was held in a mosque, in the Edinburgh Central mosque, and the audience was made up of Christians and Muslims (roughly half and half) and the event was called: “Muslims Christians and the Real Jesus”
The bishop of Edinburgh got up and spoke for twenty minutes about what he believed about Jesus, and he said that Jesus was the son of God, who died on the cross, and rose from the third day for the salvation of Mankind. That was his talk. And then I got up and I said “Bishop, it’s very nice what you have to say and I respect your belief, but as a Muslim I reject that belief. As a Muslim, I know that Jesus did not die on the cross because the Quran tells me so”.
Then I spoke about the role of Jesus as a Prophet, as a Messenger of Allah. And at the end we didn’t vote on who was right or wrong; at the end we admitted to one another that we disagreed, but then we embraced and said let’s go for lunch.
It seems to me that a better way for us to know one another’s religion, and maybe even to persuade some people to believe what we believe as Muslims, is not to argue with them, it’s not to debate with them. First of all, it’s to be honest, we’re not pretending. Islam is not threatened by anything, Islam is perfect, that’s what Muslims believe, and we are ashamed of nothing in Islam at all.
Muslims are not perfect by the way. Muslims have made a lot of mistakes but Islam is not threatened by any religion or any creed. Muslims can argue very happily with people who have no religion or any religion. We’re not threatened. You know, people of faith shouldn’t be threatened by one another because we hold so much more in common with one another, than with those secular people who do away with faith altogether.
Listen & Dialogue
So what I’m suggesting to you in answering your question, I’m saying maybe debates are fun, you know they can be exciting, you score a point, you get your position over this one and then at the end you’re the best speaker if you win and everyone feels good. The losing side don’t feel very good because they lost and it made their opinion the losing opinion.
It seems to me in our world, which is torn apart by religious strife; our world needs people to come together, not to come apart. Not to come together and say we all believe the same thing because we don’t; and in dialoging with Christians, we’re not giving up one word of what we believe as Muslims.
But in interfaith dialogue we are listening to good people; we’re talking about people of faith, we’re not talking about tribal religion, we’re not even talking about people fighting over their religion, we’re talking about people of deep faith, who really believe what they’re talking about.
So in interfaith dialogue we listen to what others have to say; so we learn something from them, and then they listen to us, and they are more inclined to listen to us if we’re not attacking them and telling them “Your religion is wrong…”
If, instead, we say “OK, I’ve listened to what you say, but this is what Islam teaches” and then as well, and this is something that we sometimes forget: it’s not just what we say, but it’s when we leave the conversation and by the way we behave that what people would learn about Islam.
So Inshallah, I encourage you to dialogue. Dialogue means to speak and to listen. You know in Islam, people are free in the world to believe whatever they want; {there is no compulsion in religion}; {…to you your religion and to me mine}
But we will convince people of the beauty of Islam by beautiful words, wise preaching, and also by the good way we live our lives.
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