Ramadan Begins

I am grateful to my friend Chris for reminding me that Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, has begun. (http://religioninthebalance.wordpress.com/)

Chris and I attended a conference together a few years ago at our alma mater, Georgetown University, on Christian-Muslim dialogue. He has made a much more sustained effort since then to continue that dialogue, a witness for which I am grateful. For my own part, such dialogue begins with finding connections. That doesn't mean we are all "the same." There are differences between Christians, Jews, and Muslims to be sure - differences that far too often contribute to misunderstanding, but could be celebrated. But there are also similar ideas, or at least practices, that are too easily forgotten in polarized times.

Ramadan is a month of fasting that is intended to focus the believer on God, and to teach patience and discipline. It is about God's forgiveness and the invitation to make changes in one's life that put God/Allah first. It's about learning self-restraint and doing good deeds. To my ear, that sounds a lot like what Lent is about for Christians; the Book of Common Prayer says that it is a time of "self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word." (BCP 265) Yom Kippur, as I understand it, is about similar practices and disciplines.

When I try to take the long-view I am reminded that as a person born in 1963 (the year that Vatican II opened) I was born in a context where there was little understanding and much mistrust between Roman Catholics and Protestants. My aunt was not "allowed" to be my godmother because she went to mass in a Roman Catholic Church and I was baptized in a Lutheran Church.Times have changed. While the gains made in Christian-Jewish dialogue lag, in my context at least there have been gains here as well. In the fall I'll be co-officiating at a Jewish-Christian wedding that will attempt to respect both traditions (rather than watering things down to something unrecognizable by anyone as "faithful.")

The public opinions about mosques being built not only at Ground Zero but around the nation reveal that we have a much longer way to go in Christian-Muslim dialogue. One of the most poignant moments for me in the 2008 Presidential campaign was when, amid rumors that Barack Obama was "secretly a Muslim," General Colin Powell was one of the few voices of reason who said the right response was not "no, he's not" but "why should it matter if he was?"

There is a danger in comparing the worst of another tradition with the best practices of our own. Jesus said something, I believe, about seeing the splinter in another's eye and not the beam in our own. It seems to me that Christians can and should cultivate a "holy envy" that emulates the best practices we see in others. The forty-day season of Lent, after all, is not about confessing the sins of others, but our own. Perhaps the beginning of Ramadan gives us a moment to pause and reflect on that - even as we remember our Muslim friends and neighbors in prayer.