Islamic Studies Specialist Lectures on “Jesus in Islam”

by Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

The pioneering Center for Middle East Studies at Chicago’s century-old conservative Protestant North Park College and Seminary is dedicated to what its director, Rev. Dr. Donald Wagner, calls an “ecumenical evangelical vision.” Its goals include promoting understanding of a reconciliation with the Jewish and Muslim communities through academic study, publishing, conferences, guest lectures, reciprocally available services and cultural exchanges.

April’s guest lecturer was Dr. Mahmoud Ayoub, a Lebanese-born Muslim. He holds degrees from Harvard and the American University of Beirut, both of which owe their origins to often-overlooked evangelical intellectual initiatives. His six published volumes include Redemptive Suffering in Islam, and The Qur’an and Its Interpreters. As professor of Islamic studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, he succeeds the late Dr. Ismail al Faruqi, the Palestinian scholar who, with his wife, produced the monumental Cultural Atlas of Islam. Ismail al Faruqi is especially remembered for his promotion of candid, constructive Muslim-Christian, Muslim-Jewish and tri-faith interpersonal discourse and inclusively representative conferences.

The March guest lecturer at the North Park Center was Professor Rosemary Radford Ruether, Roman Catholic theologian at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. Her article, “A Joint Capital: Jerusalem’s Future,” reprinted from the Christian Century, appeared on p. 121 of the April 1996 Washington Report.

“Woman of the Year” Sees Threats to Fragile Bosnian Peace Hopes

Violence is set to return to Bosnia despite the Balkan peace process, according to a British volunteer who has spent the past four years ferrying supplies to starving Muslim children. Sally Trench, named in 1995 as Britain’s Catholic Woman of the Year, told ecumenical correspondent Gavin Simpson in March that too much personal hatred of neighbor against neighbor had been recently generated on both sides for peace to last.

Trench, who has spent much of her life working with disadvantaged children, said that “horrors” she had seen in Bosnia could only be compared to those of the Nazis. A diminutive mother of 10, she has pulled Bosnian children’s bodies from cement mixers into which they had been thrown. She was once forced—at gunpoint—to watch Muslim women being herded into deep-freeze containers to die. She also was forced to watch drunken Serb soldiers rape 14-year-old Muslim girls. She herself has survived imprisonment in Bosnia and the shelling of a food truck in which she was traveling. Badly injured, she once had to wait for eight hours before being rescued by Muslim forces. Taken to a hospital for her injuries, she heard the screams of patients whose limbs were being amputated without anesthetic. “They didn’t even have an aspirin in the hospital,” she reported.

It was a TV program on the sufferings of Bosnian children that initially stirred her to find ways to help them. Her first flight to Zagreb took 50 tons of food in a plane lent by a wealthy British businessman. Once there, as she tells it, “a former British ambassador to Yugoslavia got me into a refugee camp with thousands of small children with no food or water and temperatures of over 40 degrees celsius (100 F). I went back to Britain after that and organized trucks to return with more food.”

She has returned to Bosnia every four months since, with big food shipments accompanied by her seven sons, their friends, and others who help drive the trucks.

Christians in Jerusalem Stress Palestinian Peacemaking Role

The Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence is an affiliate in Jerusalem of the Holland-based Christian International Fellowship of Reconciliation. It has done a study of reactions to recent terror attacks, which “shows beyond all doubt that, in spite of their present hardships, Palestinians are against all violence and all acts of terrorism…overwhelmingly support the peace process, and…feel personal sympathy with the families and friends of all those killed and injured in the attacks.”

The study reports that “the widespread protests and condemnations against the recent terror attacks are a new phenomenon in the Palestinian populations. They are the strongest possible affirmation of support for the continuation of the peace process and for the creation of an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. Yet they have not been sufficiently reported in the Israeli or foreign press.”

The center is “concerned that Israelis are reverting to the cruel misperception and misrepresentation of all Palestinians as terrorists and supporters of terrorism. The waves of spontaneous Palestinian protests at the terrorist attacks, on both the public and the private levels, should convince the Israeli public that the Palestinian people as a whole is against any kind of violence and that they continue to put all their hopes in a future based on peace and coexistence.”

To help make up for deficiencies in media coverage, the center is distributing accounts from the Arabic press of the Palestinian demonstrations and marches saying “Yes to Peace and No to Violence.” These include “daily condemnations by leading Palestinian political parties and unions urging an end to all acts of terrorism.” These averaged seven a day from the time of the first bomb attack and reported thousands participated in marches and demonstrations in Bethlehem, Gaza, Nablus, Tulkarem, Jenin, Jericho, Qalqilya and Ramallah.

Bethlehem University Head Tells of Hardships Under Israeli Closure

On April 8, Brother Ronald Gallagher, Ph.D., Rector of the Vatican’s Bethlehem University, took time out from his overwhelming responsibilities to write its board of directors and supporters concerning the circumstances that have prevailed in recent months. He did so, he told them, out of concern that the continuing closure imposed on the Palestinian people by the Israeli authorities is steadily attacking the fabric of Palestinian institutions.

The balance of his letter, below, spells out the grounds for their frustration and despair:

I am sad to report that whatever slim hopes people here had that the peace process might improve their lives are being eroded in frustration and despair.

The strict closure of the West Bank and Gaza, imposed by Israel from Feb. 25, 1996, continues to have serious effects on the Palestinian population of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Due to the severe travel restrictions, the economy and virtually all of the institutions of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, are suffering a slow but steady strangulation.

Health care institutions in East Jerusalem and the West Bank have suffered particularly, as neither their workers (teachers, doctors, nurses, etc.) have been able to enter Jerusalem, nor their clients have been allowed access to essential or emergency health services.

All of the Christian schools in Jerusalem have suffered drastically, as up to 40 percent of the teachers live in the West Bank and are being prevented from going to their jobs. Teachers and students of Bethlehem University have been continuously frustrated by travel restrictions and frequent harassment by soldiers at checkpoints.

All West Bank Palestinian Christians were prevented from attending holy week services at Christian churches and sites in Israel and Jerusalem. In pointed irony, travel within Bethlehem was severely restricted by Israeli police on Easter Sunday in order to allow Jews to enter the town and pray at Rachel’s tomb.

All of the Christian schools in Jerusalem have suffered drastically.

Strong complaints about the collective punishment of closure have been registered to Israeli authorities from virtually every sector of Palestinian society, from international organizations and NGOs, from church leaders, and from a growing number of groups and organizations within Israel. Despite the complaints and protests, the Israeli government has said that the closure will continue until at least the completion of Israeli elections in late May.

Classes resumed at Bethlehem University on March 18, but the closure has had serious effects on the whole of its academic life. In addition to the three weeks of class time lost during February and March, the following should be noted:

•35 BU students have been cut off in Gaza and most are liable to lose credit for the entire semester.

•Hundreds of BU students from the Hebron area have been subject to frequent curfews and consequent loss of the right to attend the university.

•2 BU professors from Gaza have not been allowed to report for work

•The immediate poverty caused by high levels of unemployment has resulted in an increase in student requests for financial aid and assistance.

•The BU staff, at the request of President Arafat, contributed 5 percent of their March salary to a fund for the unemployed.

•The university has either canceled or been forced to reschedule several major international conferences, due to the travel restrictions of the closure.

•Research by professors has been curtailed and participation in numerous conferences has been canceled, again due to travel restrictions.

•The announcement of Israeli confiscation of land in Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour for the building of settlements and bypass roads has further frustrated and angered university personnel. Many BU staff and students, some of whom trace their residency back 700 years in the Bethlehem area, own lands recently designated for confiscation.

•Provided there are no further disruptions, the university will finish its spring semester on June 21, a full three weeks late. Summer school classes will begin June 29, and graduation ceremonies will take place on July 13.

I have listed these issues and incidents for you out of concern that the continuance of the closure threatens the very mission of Bethlehem University and similar institutions, whether Christian or Muslim. The university cannot serve the people of the Holy Land in a climate of violence or in circumstances of closure. I again urge the supporters of the university to contact appropriate authorities in an appeal to promote the process of peaceful resolution of conflicts here and to demand the end of the punitive closure.

Sincerely yours, Brother Ronald Gallagher, FSC, Ph.D., Rector

Copies of Brother Ronald’s letter have gone to Protestant, Orthodox and ecumenical as well as Roman Catholic officials in the U.S., Canada and abroad.

Ecumenical Leader Urges Broader View of Islam

Conrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, has called on the West to have a broader, clearer, inclusive view of Islamic culture and of events in the Middle East. He made this plea upon his return to Geneva on March 16 after visiting Christian and Muslim leaders in Syria and Egypt. While the threat of terrorism in the region should not be underestimated, he said, it is grossly in error to take this single element out of context and attribute it to Islam and only Islam.

Traditional Christian communities have lived with Muslims for centuries, and the two cultures have much in common. The current Muslim renewal should be seen in the context of the threat to Muslim culture from the West. The emphasis of Western culture on material values, he said, has left deep traces in the Muslim world. This emphasis “is destructive to many of the very basic religious commitments of the Muslim community, including the communal solidarity which has been characteristic of Muslim culture.”

Raiser reported that many members of the ancient churches he met in the Middle East made it clear that they were quite comfortable living alongside Muslim culture, saying, “We have lived with Muslims for hundreds of years and have had our ups and downs, but there is no way of disentangling us.”

During his visit, Raiser met the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Antioch, leaders of the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Greek Catholic Church in Syria, and the National Evangelical Synod in Syria and Lebanon. He also had an official meeting in Damascus with the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ahmad Mohammed Kuftaro, the highest ranking Muslim religious leader in Syria.

In Egypt, he and his delegation met Patriarch Parthenios of Alexandria, Pope Shenouda of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Samuel Habib, president of the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services, and other Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant leaders. He also met Muslim officials and academics, and President Mubarak of Egypt.