A Reflection on the Crises in Afghanistan following the Fall of Kabul

The Winter 2021 edition of ‘Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review’(Vol 110, No 440) , Winter 2021) included my paper, ‘A Reflection on the Crises in Afghanistan following the Fall of Kabul’ (pp 458-469)

Patrick Comerford

Introduction

The fall of Kabul in recent months and the completion of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August have created a multiplicity of crises and have had repercussions in many areas of life in Ireland. The responses in Ireland have included knee-jerk and prejudiced reactions from people who object to accepting Afghan refugees. Paradoxically they are also among the people who point vocally to the forms of Islam expounded by the Taliban, yet have exercised little or no effort to understand Afghanistan, its history, its people, and the complexity and diversity of its religious cultures.

For many too, the Taliban confirm all their fears and prejudices of an expanding, militant Islam, and they are unwilling to concede that Islam is as diverse as Christianity and other religions, if not more so. The Taliban represents an extreme expression of Islam that has arisen only comparatively recently. Indeed, the Taliban expression of Islam cannot easily be labelled ‘conservative’ – for it is not conserving anything that is traditional in many streams of Islamic culture and thinking, nor is it rooted in traditions in Afghanistan.

Fears about the rights of women, for the education of children, and for freedom of expression in Afghanistan are well-founded. But there are genuine fears too for the loss of religious and cultural diversity and pluralism in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

It is difficult too, for many of us, to understand and accept that Afghanistan is not a distant and remote part of Asia, but that for many centuries it came within the ambit of the ‘Euro-Mediterranean’ world, that it has long had close links with the classical and Hellenistic worlds, and that its history has been intimately interconnected with the history of Europe, including the history of Ireland.

Childhood reminders

As a child in Cappoquin, Co. Waterford, I was regaled with stories of General Sir John Keane (1781–1844), who eventually become Baron Keane of Ghuznee and Cappoquin. Those derring-do stories of Keane’s escapades and adventures in Afghanistan were as gripping as the stories of ‘the Wolf of Kabul’, which featured in my childhood days in The Hotspur, a popular British boy’s comic in the 1960s.

Keane played the key role in the capture of Ghuznee (Ghazni) during the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1839, following the fall of Kabul. I was reminded of this link between Ireland and past conflicts in Afghanistan during a recent visit to Cappoquin House, when Sir Charles Keane showed me many family mementoes of Lord Keane, including a portrait, a painting of Ghunzee Fort, and a ceremonial sword.

John Keane was born in Belmont, Cappoquin, on 6 February 1781, the second son of Sir John Keane, 1st baronet. He joined the army as an ensign at the age of 11 in 1792, rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and commanded a brigade in the Peninsular War, and he was promoted to major-general when he commanded a brigade at the Battle of New Orleans. Later, he was the British commander-in-chief in the West Indies and administered the colonial government of Jamaica.

Keane was commander-in-chief of the Bombay Army in 1834–1840, and he commanded the combined British and Indian army (‘The Army of the Indus’) during the opening campaign of the First Anglo-Afghan War. He and his forces seized Karachi in February 1839. He then commanded an expeditionary force that entered Afghanistan from India to forestall an expected, imminent Russian invasion, and commanded the victorious British and Indian army at the Battle of Ghazni on 23 July 1839.

Because of severe shortages of supplies and the lack of draft horses, Keane’s forces had to leave heavy siege equipment behind them in Kandahar. The defence of the city was led by Hyder Khan, the son of Dost Muhammad, then the ruler of Afghanistan. All the gates into Ghazni were sealed with rocks and debris, with the sole exception of the Kabul Gate, which was lightly guarded and poorly defended. Keane’s forces went around the city, camped on the north side facing the Kabul gate, and attacked early on the morning of 23 July. By dawn, Keane’s force had captured the city.

The British forces suffered 200 men killed and wounded while the Afghans lost almost 500 men and 1,600 were taken prisoner. Keane left a small garrison in Ghazni and began to march his forces towards Kabul on 30 July. When Dost Muhammad heard of the fall of Ghazni, he fled Kabul towards Western Afghanistan and the Afghan army surrendered. The British then installed Shuja Shah Durrani of Kandahar as the new ruler of Afghanistan.

Keane retired without being engaged in further fighting. He was honoured with the peerage title of Baron Keane, of Ghuznee and of Cappoquin, Co. Waterford, on 23 December 1839, and received a pension of £2,000 a year for his and two successive lives.

Lord Keane died on 24 August 1844, and his title died out in 1901. But his remaining mementoes in Cappoquin House are a reminder that events in Afghanistan were never remote from the lives of people in Ireland.1

The reaches of ‘Euro-Med’ civilisation

From Keane’s adventures to recent events in Afghanistan, we are reminded throughout wars and history why Afghanistan has been known to military and diplomatic figures as the ‘graveyard of empires.’ But modern Afghanistan, as we know it, dates from 1747, when Ahmad Shah Durrani captured territory from Nader Shah’s descendants in Persia, from the Mughals, and the Uzbeks to his north. Although the name Afghanistan, meaning the land of the Afghans or Pashtuns, only came into general use during the wars of the 19th century, it can be traced to some time between the eighth and the 14th centuries.

Afghanistan is not a new country, nor is it culturally Asian. Traditionally, it has been seen as part of the ‘Euro-Med’ world. In classical times, the area was regarded as within the ambit of the Persian Empire, one of the great classical civilisations, and was known to both Greek and Roman writers as Ariana (Ἀριανή), from an Old Persian word (Ariyanem) meaning ‘the Land of the Aryans.’

In Rudyard Kipling’s short story ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ (1888), two British venturers, Peachy Carnehan and Danny Dravot, played by Michael Caine and Sean Connery in John Huston’s film of the same name (1975), set out to become kings of Kafiristan, a mountainous, isolated country beyond the Hindu Kush in north-east Afghanistan. They confide in their plans to Rudyard Kipling (Christopher Plummer), who tells them they are mad. No man, he says, has made it to Kafiristan since Alexander the Great, to which Peachy replies, ‘If a Greek can do it, we can do it’. In north-east Afghanistan, they find the last remnants of the empire of Alexander the Great, and a local culture and religion that are part-Greek, part-Kafiri.2

The story is fiction, but aspects of its historical content are true. Alexander the Great spent most of the years 330–325 BCE campaigning in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, and left behind Greek kingdoms and culture that flourished throughout the Hellenistic period and even later.3

Alexander the Great and his Macedonian forces crossed the Euphrates, marched through Mesopotamia, defeated Darius III of Persia in 331 BCE, and dismantled the Achaemenid empire. Alexander arrived in Afghanistan in 330 BCE, and the Seleucid Empire held on to the area for 15 years.

Later, there was a second Hellenistic conquest of the area by the Greco-Bactrians. Until the Taliban first took over Afghanistan, traces of these Greek kingdoms came to light continually, and the archaeological, artistic and epigraphic evidence from Afghanistan revealed a prosperous and culturally diverse kingdom.

Kandahar, the second city of Afghanistan and the de facto capital of the Taliban until the fall of Kabul, dates from the conquests of Alexander the Great, who laid out the foundation of what is now Old Kandahar in 330 BCE and gave it the Greek name Ἀλεξάνδρεια Ἀραχωσίας (Alexandria of Arachosia).

Alexander the Great is also said to have founded the city of Alexandria on the Oxus, at present-day Ai-Khanoum in Takhar Province, northern Afghanistan, in 327 BCE. It had a magnificent royal palace, a large amphitheatre, several Hellenic temples, a gymnasium, stoas and mosaics. For almost two centuries, this was a focal point of Hellenism in the East, and the centre of Hellenistic culture at the doorstep of India.4

This area was the most easterly reach of Greek civilisation and the Hellenistic world, and the Greek influence survived until at least the year 10 CE. This was the access point for the Classical World to the east, and when the Silk Road opened in the first century BCE, Afghanistan flourished thanks to trade along the routes from the Greek and Roman world through Persia to China and India. Ideas as well as goods were bartered, traded and exchanged at this centre point, so that Afghanistan was at the ultimate reach of our European-Mediterranean or ‘Euro-Med’ world.

The Kalash people in the Hindu Kush mountains are unique, with a distinctive cultural and religious identity; they are light-skinned, have blonde hair and blue eyes. To this day, traditions and myths persist that they are the descendants of Alexander the Great’s army.5

But how diverse is Afghanistan and its people in terms of religious heritage and identity?

Diversity in Afghanistan

The Taliban, or ‘students’ in the Pashto language, emerged as recently as the early 1990s in northern Pakistan, following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. The predominantly Pashtun movement first appeared in religious seminaries, mostly financed from Saudi Arabia, and preached an extreme form of Salafism within Sunni Islam, with their own austere version of sharia, or Islamic law.6

One of the principal objectives of the Taliban is to impose a uniform practice of Islam throughout Afghanistan that forces all Muslims to conform to their own interpretation of Salafism.

Within weeks of the fall of Kabul, Muslim minorities became the first religious groupings to feel the impact of this religious intolerance. Yet, in the past, Afghanistan was known for its diversity among Muslims, once embracing a variety of expressions of Islam, among Shia minorities and Sufi orders.

Shia Islam

Shia Muslims form Afghanistan’s largest religious minority, and they are the religious group facing immediate threats and fears today. Estimates vary, but Shia Muslims make up from 7 to 20 per cent of the population of Afghanistan. They are mainly divided into two groupings, the Twelvers, who look to Iran for spiritual leadership, and the Ismailis, most of whom recognise the leadership of the Aga Khan. Both groups are regarded as heretical by the Sunni majority, and there is no doubt that the Taliban and Isis seek to eliminate their presence in Afghanistan and throughout the Islamic world.

The association of Twelver Shia Muslims with Iran also makes them politically vulnerable under the Taliban, and Shia Muslims are additionally vulnerable because they are mainly members of ethnic and linguistic minorities, including the Hazaras, Farsiwan (who are Persian speakers), Qizilbash and Pamir people.7

Two recent attacks on mosques in Afghanistan serve to illustrate not only the diversity of Islam in Afghanistan, but that the first target of Islamists in any religious purge is the country’s Muslim minorities.

At least 65 people were killed when the Imambargah in Kandahar, the equivalent of a Shia mosque, was attacked by a suicide bomber during Friday prayers on 15 October. The attack came a week after a similar bomb attack on a Shia mosque in northern Kunduz province, in which at least 50 people were killed.

Following the fall of Kabul, the Taliban has disarmed all security guards at Shia buildings, leaving them vulnerable to attacks by the even more extreme Isis. Kandahar is in the Taliban heartland, and the attack sent the clear message that Afghanistan’s Shia minority is no longer safe in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. ‘Life is becoming difficult and risky in Afghanistan for every Afghan, especially for Shias as Isis are only targeting Shia Muslims in Afghanistan. The world communities must help Afghanistan and Afghans in this terrible time’, one social activist who asked not to be named told The Guardian.8

Rumi, poet and Sufi mystic

Perhaps the most influential Muslim figure to emerge from what is today’s Afghanistan was Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Balkhī or Mevlânâ and known more popularly and more simply as Rumi. Although this Sufi mystic was born to Persian-speaking parents in 1207 and was buried in Konya in present-day Turkey when he died in 1273, he was born, as his name indicates, in Balkh, then part of the Khwareziman Empire and now in present-day Afghanistan.

At the time, Greater Balkh was a major centre of Persian culture, and Sufism had developed there for several centuries, and Rumi’s father, Bahā ud-Dīn Walad, was a theologian, jurist and mystic from Balkh. For several generations, the family were preachers of the relatively liberal Hanafi Maturidi school. Rumi’s influence transcends national borders and ethnic and religious divisions, and he has been described as the ‘most popular poet’ and the ‘best-selling poet’ in the United States.9

Later, in the sixteenth century, Ahmad al Faruqi Kabuli, who was born near Kabul, was renowned for his teachings in India.

Three Sufi orders are prominent in Afghanistan: the Naqshbandiya, founded in Bukhara; the Qadiriya, founded in Baghdad; and the Cheshtiya, found mainly at Chesht-i-Sharif, east of Herat.

Afghan religious minorities

Buddhism first arrived in what we now know as Afghanistan with the expansion and conquests of the Maurya Empire throughout the Hindu Kush region during the reign of King Ashoka (268-232 BCE). In the following century, the Buddhist monk Lokakṣema travelled to China, and his translations of Mahayana Buddhist scriptures contributed significantly to the development of Buddhism in China.

His near contemporary, Mahadhammarakkhita, was a Greek Buddhist master in the reign of the Indo-Greek king Menander in the 2nd century BCE. His birth name Yona means ‘Ionian,’ and he travelled from ‘Alasandra’ – Alexandria of the Caucasus, about 150 km north of Kabul, or Alexandria of the Arachosians – with 30,000 monks for the dedication of the Great Stupa in Sri Lanka.10

Buddhism began to fall into decline in Afghanistan with the Muslim conquest in the seventh century, but finally came to an end under the Ghaznavid dynasty in the eleventh century.

The last great, surviving monuments to the presence of Buddhism in Afghanistan were the massive Buddha of Bamiyan, carved in the sixth and seventh centuries, and destroyed by rocket and guns in March 2001 after the Taliban decreed they were idolatrous.

The region of Arachosia, around Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, was once primarily Zoroastrian and is sometimes described as the ‘second homeland of Zoroastrianism.’ Until half a century ago, 2,000 Zoroastrians or Parsees were living in Afghanistan. There may still be small pockets of Bahais, Sikhs, Jains and Hindus in the country.

Christianity in Afghanistan

A legend in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas and other traditions suggests that Saint Thomas the Apostle once preached in Bactria. By the fifth century, the Nestorian Church had a number of dioceses in Afghanistan, and there was a Christian presence in Herat until at least the early fourteenth century.

But Christianity has always had a small presence in Afghanistan. Until recently, the total number of Christians in Afghanistan was put at 10,000–12,000, almost all of them converts from Islam, although the law has not allowed Afghans to convert to Christianity, and only expatriates may be recognised as Christians.

Perhaps the best-known expatriate Christian living in Afghanistan until this year was Rula Ghani, a Maronite Christian from Lebanon, whose husband, Ashraf Ghani, was President of Afghanistan from 2014 until they fled Kabul as it fell to the Taliban earlier this year.

The only legally recognised Christian church building in Afghanistan is the Catholic chapel in the Italian embassy, which existed from the 1930s. The only Protestant church in Kabul was destroyed on 17 June 1973.

The last Jew of Kabul

Legends claim that Balkh, the home of Rumi, was also the burial place of the prophet Ezekiel and was once home to the prophet Jeremiah. There is a tradition among the Pashtuns of Afghanistan that they are descended from the exiled lost tribes of Israel. Interest in the topic was revived recently by a Jerusalem anthropologist, Professor Shalva Weil, who was quoted in the popular press as claiming the ‘Taliban may be descended from Jews’.11

Legends aside, a Jewish presence flourished in eastern Afghanistan from about the seventh century CE. An estimated 40,000 Jews once lived in the area of Herat. That number dwindled to fewer than 5,000 by the mid-twentieth century, as the community faced persecution from successive regimes that, influenced partly by Nazi propaganda and beliefs that Jews were ‘Bolshevik agents,’ restricted where they could live and work.

The Jewish presence in Afghanistan virtually disappeared from the 1950s, with emigration to Israel, India, Britain, and the US. When the Taliban first came to power in 1996, the Jewish population had dwindled to single-digit numbers.

Afghanistan’s last known surviving Jew, Zabulon Simantov (62), was finally evacuated from Kabul after spurning a number of rescue attempts in the days immediately after the city fell to the Taliban. Earlier this year, he told Arab News he would leave Afghanistan after the High Holy Days, which began on Rosh Hashanah (6 September 2021). Simantov had stayed on in Afghanistan to look after the last remaining synagogue in Kabul, through decades of violence and turmoil.

Simantov is a carpet and jewellery merchant who was born in Herat, once home to hundreds of Jews. He moved to Kabul but fled to Tajikistan in 1992, before returning to Kabul. Since then, he had lived the synagogue – which he has renovated– in the heart of Kabul’s flower district.

He became the country’s last Jew when Yitzhak Levi died in 2005. The pair famously did not get along, and in 1998 Levi wrote to the Taliban interior minister to accuse Simantov of the theft of Jewish relics. Simantov retorted by telling the Taliban that Levi ran a secret brothel where he sold alcohol. The Taliban jailed both men, but eventually released them when they continued to fight in prison.

Their story inspired Michael J Flexer’s play My Brother’s Keeper, staged by the Apikoros Theatre Company at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006. The play tells the tale of the last two remaining Jews in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. They harbour a bitter hatred for one another, born out of their enforced co-habitation in a small, dilapidated synagogue, and spend the duration of the play feuding in fiery fashion.

Flexer told interviewers at the time that he had ‘tried to infuse the play with that feisty yet phlegmatic Jewish gallows humour’, and that he wanted the play to get across the idiocy of religious intolerance: ‘The comedy comes from the fact that, in this case, there was only one religion involved!’

However, in the past few months, comedy has given way to disturbing reality, and fears grow for everyone with the return of Taliban rule. Simantov’s departure means the future of the synagogue in Kabul is perilous and brings to an end Jewish life in Afghanistan after 1,500 to 2,000 years, or more.12

Conclusions

The ‘Wolf of Kabul’ in the Hotspur was supposed to be the moniker of Second Lieutenant Bill Sampson, a British intelligence agent in the North-West Frontier, and he first appeared in the Wizard in 1922. But, apart from Keane of Cappoquin, there have been other real-life ‘wolves of Kabul’ in Irish history.

Michael Mallin (1874–1916), chief of staff of the Irish Citizen Army garrison at the Royal College of Surgeons during the 1916 Rising in Dublin, spent 14 years in the British army, mainly in Afghanistan and India. He was decorated with the India Medal of 1895, and with the Punjab Frontier and Tirah clasps in 1897-1898. But it is also said that he was radicalised during his years in Afghanistan.

Before him, Lieutenant Walter Hamilton (1856-1879) from Inistioge, Co. Kilkenny, was posthumously decorated with the Victoria Cross for his part in the second Afghan War (1878–1880). He was part of the guard on duty when British headquarters in Kabul were overwhelmed and their guns seized in 1879. Other Irish recipients of awards and decorations during that war in Afghanistan include Sir Reginald Clare Hart (1848–1931) from Scarriff, Co. Clare, but Hamilton is remembered too for his appearance in M.M. Kaye’s epic novel The Far Pavilions (1978), which later became a British television mini-series.

Rudyard Kipling made popular the label ‘The Great Game’ as a description of the wars between Britain and Russia for control of Afghanistan – although the phrase was probably first used by the explorer Arthur Conolly (1807–1842), born in London of Irish parents. Kipling was so intrigued by the story of the disappearance and possible survival after the Battle of Balaclava of an Irish heir that it provided the basis for another of his short stories, ‘The Man Who Was’.

John Charles Henry Fitzgibbon (1829–1854), Viscount Fitzgibbon of Mountshannon House in Castleconnell, Co. Limerick, disappeared during the Crimean War and his body was never found. However, there were persistent rumours in his native Co. Limerick and in army lore that he had survived and escaped through Russia and Siberia to Afghanistan.

During the second Afghan War, Fitzgibbon’s regiment, the 8th Hussars, was stationed near the North-West frontier. One night, a dishevelled-looking man who spoke English was brought into the officers’ mess and was invited to stay for dinner. There he surprised all with his uncannily good knowledge of the regimental customs, indicating he was an ex-officer of the regiment. He was not asked to identify himself, but rumours developed and persisted that he was, in reality, the missing Fitzgibbon heir from Co. Limerick.

Kipling adapted the story in 1890 to tell of a man arrested for gun-stealing and who is believed to be an Afghan. He turns out to be an ex-officer, Austin Limmason – perhaps a verbal play on ‘Limerick’s son’ – who had been a Russian prisoner for many decades before making good his escape and finding his way back to his regiment in Afghanistan.

Kipling heads his 1891 version of this short story in his collection Life’s Handicap with a short ballad:

The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
Into our camp he came,
And said his say, and went his way,
And left our hearts aflame.
Keep tally – on the gun-butt score
The vengeance we must take,
When God shall bring full reckoning,
For our dead comrade’s sake.13

But the fall of Kabul and the conquest of Afghanistan cannot be regarded as part of God’s reckoning, nor can we continue to seek the ‘vengeance we must take’. In a geopolitical understanding of the present crises in Afghanistan, we are seeing yet another working out of the internal power struggles in the Islamic world between Saudi Arabia, seeking to assert its place as the major power among Sunni Muslims, and Iran, equally assertive of its place as the major power among Shia Muslims. It is a power struggle that has already had disastrous consequences for the people of Yemen and Syria, and Afghanistan serves to let the Iranians know that the Saudis have now opened another front on the eastern borders of Iran.

Western concerns for the future of Afghanistan cease being a continuing playout of ‘The Great Game’ in the ‘Graveyard of Empires’ when we begin to grasp that Afghanistan is – and has always been – an integral part of our ‘Euro-Med’ world; and condemnations of the Taliban and their expressions of Salafism can only gain legitimacy when we start to appreciate the pluralism and diversity within Islam and the religious, cultural and ethnic diversity that is part of the heritage of Afghanistan.

(Canon) Patrick Comerford is a priest in the Church of Ireland Diocese of Limerick and canon precentor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick. He is a former adjunct assistant professor in Trinity College Dublin, a former lecturer in Church History and Liturgy in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a former foreign desk editor at The Irish Times. He has written and lectured widely on Christian-Muslim affairs, and blogs daily at www.patrickcomerford.com.

Notes

1 Glacott Symes, Sir John Keane and Cappoquin House in Time of War and Revolution (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016), passim; the author’s visits to Cappoquin House, last visited 28 August 2020.
2 Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ in The Man Who Would Be King: Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1999); Rachel Meirs, The Archaeology of the Hellenistic Far East, BAR International Series 2196 (2011), 13.
3 Shane Wallace, ‘Greek Culture in Afghanistan and India: Old Evidence and New Discoveries,’ 205–226 in Greece & Rome, 63.2 (The Classical Association, 2016), p 209. Meirs (2011), 8.
4 Meirs (2011), 16. 5 Barbara A West, Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), 357–358.
6 Malise Ruthven, Islam in the World (London: Penguin, 2000), 393–394; Sayed Hassan Akhlaq, ‘Taliban and Salafism: a historical and theological exploration,’ Open Democracy, 1 December 2013, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/taliban-and-salafism-historical-and-theological-exploration/, accessed 22 October 2021.
7 Ruthven, Islam in the World, 211–21.
8 ‘Dozens dead in mosque bombing as doubt cast on Taliban security’, Guardian, 16 October 2021; ‘Islamic State Bombing Kills at Least 65 people in Southern Afghanistan’, Washington Post, 16 October 2021.
9 John Baldock, The Essence of Sufism (Royston, Herts: Eagle Editions, 2004); William C Chittick, Sufism (London: Oneworld, 2013), 76. 10 Meirs (2011), 12.
11 Rory McCarthy, ‘Pashtun clue to lost tribes of Israel’, The Observer, 17 January 2010; Michael Freund, ‘Are the Taliban descendants of Israel?’ Jerusalem Post, 9 September 2021.
12 Josef Federman, ‘Rescuers: Last Jew of Kabul making his way to Israel, AP News, 17 October 2021, https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-middle-east-religion-israel-turkey-c701c38308bbd81c8f69b32315ee3393, accessed 22 October 2021.
13 Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Man Who Was’ in Life’s Handicap (London: Macmillan, 1891), 84.

● Patrick Comerford, ‘A Reflection on the Crises in Afghanistan following the Fall of Kabul,’ Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review (Vol 110, No 440, Winter 2021, pp 458-469)

The Greeks have a word for it (33) Genocide

The monument on Mikrasiaton Square in Rethymnon commemorating the Greek Genocide in Asia Minor 100 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

In every corner of Rethymnon, it seems, I stumble across reminders of the Greek Genocide in Asia Minor a century ago.

These reminders come are found in street names and placenames, from Smyrni Street beneath the slopes of the Fortezza, and Mikrasiaton Square in the heart of the old town, to Tsesmes, the suburban village on the eastern fringes of Rethymnon, beside La Stella Hotel, where I was staying for the past two weeks.

Mikrasiaton Square (Πλατεία Μικρασιατών) has been transformed into the biggest square in the heart of the Old Town. Its name recalls the refugees from Asia Minor, who were known as Μικρασιάτες or Mikrasiates, people from Minor Asia.

The Greek genocide (Γενοκτονία των Ελλήνων, Genoktonia ton Ellinon) was the systematic killing of the Greek Christian population of Anatolia or Asia Minor, during World War I and its aftermath (1914-1922).

The wholescale massacre of people and communities was carried out systematically on the basis of religion and ethnicity. It was instigated by the Ottoman government led by the Three Pashas and intensified and systematised by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

The genocide included massacres, forced deportations, death marches, expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Greek cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Up to a million Greek people living in the Ottoman Empire and its successor the Turkish Republic were murdered and died in this period.

By late 1922, most Greeks in Asia Minor had either fled or were murdered. The majority of survivors fled as refugees to Greece, adding over a quarter to the population of Greece at the time.

The refugees who arrived in Rethymnon first found shelter in the area now known as Mikrasiaton Square. Many found shelter in the Church of Saint Francis (Agios Franciskos), which had been used as an imaret or poorhouse during the Turkish era; others found homes in outlying villages such as Tsesmes, which takes its name from Cesme, north-west of Smirni (Izmir).

The refugees from Asia Minor integrated quickly into to the local population, bringing with them their arts, crafts and creativity, and actively contributing to the revitalisation of the local economy.

Today, Mikrasiaton Square is an attractive plaza, filled with strolling families, playing children and tourists taking selfies in front of the minaret and domes of the Neratnzes Mosque. There are bikers and skaters too, park benches and attractive restaurants. In pre-pandemic times, this was a popular venue for open air concerts and live music.

Some abandoned buildings might have blighted this square in the past and become typical recipients of graffiti and painted scrawls. But instead, an imaginative initiative has attracted the talents of street artists, adding to the attractions of the square.

The buildings around Mikrasiaton Square include some of the town’s most important buildings from the Venetian and Ottoman periods, such as the House of Culture, the Nerantzes Mosque, the former Venetian Church of Agios Franciskos (Saint Francis), now housing temporary exhibitions of the Archaeological Museum, and the Historical and Folklore Museum of Rethymnon.

The new monument on the east side of Mikrasiaton Square recalls the Asia Minor catastrophe and is an initiative of the descendants of those refugees who arrived in Rethymnon a century ago. It is five meters long and four meters in high, and depicts the horrors of burning homes, death marches, murders and grieving mothers.

The names of the towns in Asia Minor that had sizeable Greek majorities until a century ago are inscribed on the monument, beginning with Symrni, and including Tsesmes, Ephesus, Pergamon, Miletus, Iconium (Konya), and Sardis … many of them Greek-speaking cities long before Saint John wrote from Patmos to the Seven Churches in the Book of Revelation.

Smyrni Street beneath the slopes of the Fortezza in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Before the word genocide came into legal use, the destruction of the Greeks of Asia Minor was known by Greeks as ‘the Massacre’ (η Σφαγή), ‘the Great Catastrophe’ (η Μεγάλη Καταστροφή), or ‘the Great Tragedy’ (η Μεγάλη Τραγωδία).

Ataturk provided a ‘model’ for genocide for the Nazis. Hitler once declared that he regarded himself as a student of Ataturk, and described him as his ‘star in the darkness.’ Ataturk and his new Turkey of 1923 constituted the archetype of the ‘perfect Führer’ and of ‘good national practices’ for Nazism. Nazi propaganda emphasised the ‘Turkish model’ and continuously praised the ‘benefits’ of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

At the height of the Holocaust in World War II, the word ‘genocide’ was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. He formed hybrid word by combining the Greek word γένος (genos, ‘race, people’) and the Latin suffix -caedo (‘act of killing’).

Lemkin was a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, and in his writings on genocide he detailed the fate of Greeks in Turkey. In August 1946, the New York Times wrote: ‘Genocide is no new phenomenon, nor has it been utterly ignored in the past … The massacres of Greeks and Armenians by the Turks prompted diplomatic action without punishment. If Professor Lemkin has his way, genocide will be established as an international crime.’

Genocide was declared an international crime in international law in 1948. Last week (13 September), Greece marked the 99th anniversary of the ‘Catastrophe of Smyrna’ (Izmir), when Greeks were forced to flee the city when Turkish forces set fire to it. The great fire of Smyrna began on 13 September 1922, and lasted nine full days and nights until 22 September 1922, 99 years ago today.

The monument on Mikrasiaton Square recalls the genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Yesterday: Hypocrite

Tomorrow: Cinema.

Two Mevlevi dervishes join an interfaith chorus on a rectory bookshelf

Two Mevlevi dervishes have joined priests, bishops and rabbis in an interfaith chorus on a bookshelf in the Rectory in Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

I am back in the Rectory in Askeaton, and two Mevlevi dervishes have arrived from Istanbul on a bookshelf in the Rectory in Askeaton.

These ‘whirling dervishes’ have joined an array of multifaith religious figures of varying sizes on the bookshelf that now include a Russian Orthodox bishop, two Greek Orthodox priests – one with a Bible, the other with an icon, a pious Jew from Kraków, a rabbi carrying Torah scrolls, and a mohel from Murano, whose scalpel, in some unseemly manner, slipped off while he was being brought back from Venice.

In among them too is a Golem figure from Prague, who has not yet managed to find his way up into the rectory attic.

An accompanying present from Istanbul is a cushion cover based on a painting by Osman Hamdi, The Turtle Trainer (Kaplumbağa Terbiyecisi), painted in 1906. There has a copy of this painting in the house in Knocklyon, Dublin, for many years.

This painting was originally called The tortoises and the man (‘Kaplumbağalar ve Adam’), but became known popularly as The Tortoise Trainer.

The painting recalls how, during the Tulip era in the 18th century, Ottoman gardens were lit at night with turtles carrying candles on their back. The tortoises were used like this less for illuminative and more for decorative purposes, but they were so fashionable that they were even counted in the payroll as palace-employees. The Turtle Trainer in the painting is an image of Osman Hamdi himself. He carries a reed flute, tongs hanging from his neck and a Dervish’s pot on his back, which is a symbol of impending death, which all Mevlevi dervishes were supposed to wait for in expectation.

The trainer is supervising three turtles eating leaves with their heads bowed, while two other turtles behind him are trying to approach to the leaves. This picture can be interpreted as a merciless, hopeless satire on his colleagues at work. The light coming from the only, low window, which is at floor level in the room, co-ordinates all the other elements in the picture, from which all unnecessary details have been eliminated.

Osman Hamdi’s original painting sold for $3.5 million in 2004. It was acquired by the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation and is on display at the Pera Museum in İstanbul.

A Mevlevi dervish on a cushion cover inspired by Osman Hamdi’s ‘The Turtle Trainer’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The two Mevlevi dervishes and the cushion cover were brought as presents from Istanbul in mid-March, and are reminders of earlier visits to Mevlevi tekkes in Konya in Turkey and Nicosia in Cyprus, and reminders too of an evening at a ‘Whirling Dervish’ performance in Uçhisar in Cappadocia five years ago and a similar performance during a working visit to Istanbul in 1992.

The Mevlevi Order or ‘Whirling Dervishes’ traces its origins to Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207-1273), also known as Mevlânâ, Mevlevî (‘my master’), and more popularly as Rūmī. He was a Persian poet, jurist, theologian and Sufi mystic.

Rumi’s influence transcends national, ethnic and even religious divisions. He wrote mainly in Persian, but also wrote verse in Greek, Arabic, and Turkish. His Mathnawī, written in Konya, is the greatest classical work of Persian literature.

His poetry has been translated into many languages and he is said to be the most popular, best-selling poet in the US. Dr Leonard Lewisohn, editor of the Cambridge-published journal, Mawlana Rumi Review, compares his place in Persian and Middle Eastern literature with Dante in Italian and Shakespeare and Milton in English.

Rumi wrote his best-known work, his Masnavi, in Konya, with the opening lines:

Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,
How it sings of separation …

Rumi spent the next 12 years dictating the six volumes of his masterpiece. By the end, he also wrote about belief in a ‘religion of love’ that crosses over traditional denominational boundaries. In the Masnavi, he wrote, ‘The religion of love is beyond all faiths, The only religion for lovers is God.’

When he died in Konya on 17 December 1273, he was buried beside his father. At his funeral, there were singers, musicians, dancers, Quran reciters, and imams. But there were also Jewish rabbis reciting psalms, and Christian priests reading from the Gospels at his funeral – which left some of his Muslim followers bewildered, but probably makes the ‘dervishes’ more at home with the other figures on the rectory bookshelf.

The Yeşil Türbe or ‘Green Tomb’ was erected over his grave. The mausoleum was designed by the architect Behrettin Tebrizli and was finished in 1274. Rumi’s epitaph reads: ‘When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.’

Following Rumi’s death, his son Sultan Walad and his followers founded the Mevlevi Order, also known as the Whirling Dervishes, famous for their Sufi dance known as the sema ceremony. The mausoleum of Rumi is now the Mevlâna Museum and is one of the great centres of pilgrimage in the Islamic world.

The tomb of Rumi is covered with brocade embroidered in gold with verses from the Quran (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the Mevlevi ritual, the sema represents a mystical journey of spiritual ascent through mind and love to the Perfect One. In this journey, the seeker symbolically turns towards the truth, grows through love, abandons the ego, finds the truth and arrives at the Perfect. The seeker then returns from this spiritual journey, with greater maturity, to love and to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination based on belief, ethnicity, class or and nationality.

Rumi’s teachings emphasise tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love. He believed all religions are seeking truth. His essential teaching focusses on the reunion of the soul with the Beloved or the Creator, from whom the soul has been cut off. It is said the sound of the reed and the ney represent the plaintive longing of the soul for reunion with the Friend, the Creator.

Some sayings of Rumi include:

In generosity and helping others, be like a river.
In compassion and grace, be like the sun.
In concealing others’ faults, be like the night.
In anger and fury, be like the dead.
In modesty and humility, be like the earth.
In tolerance, be like the sea.
In generosity and helping others, be like a river.

One of his poems that I love best is ‘The Mouse and the Frog’:

A mouse and a frog met every morning
on the riverbank.
They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.
Each morning, the second they see each other,
they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,
empty of any fear or suspicious holding-back.
To watch and listen to those two
is to understand how, as it’s written,
sometimes when two beings come together,
Christ becomes visible.

In another poem, he writes:

A soul not clothed with Love
brings shame on its existence.
Be drunk on Love,
for Love is all that exists.
They ask, ‘What is Love?’
Say, ‘Renouncing your will.’
He who has not renounced will
has no will at all.
The lover is a mighty king,
standing above the two worlds.
A king does not look
at what is beneath him.
Only Love and lovers
have eternal life.
Set your hearts on this alone;
the rest is merely borrowed.

A ‘Whirling Dervish’ performance in Uçhisar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A guide for the spiritually perplexed that leaves me even more perplexed

Patrick Comerford

People talk easily about “bucket lists.” They talk about 10 places they have got to see, or ten adventures or escapades they hope to experience. They count the places they have been to, and they count the places they plan to go to.

I have to admit though, although there are many places I would like to visit, I have no regrets about not getting to some of them yet – only because I have been busy visiting somewhere else.

I am sceptical when I see people listing spiritual places to visit, as if spirituality is some kind of commodity that can bought, that is a matter of choice, and that we can pick and mix our experiences.

Indeed in the book I was reading over the weekend, the author, Meera Lester, asserts that “all roads lead to enlightenment – but the choice of which to travel is yours.”

I cannot remember where I picked up this book. I must have bought it at a bookstall at a fete, or in a second-hand bookshop. But I was rummaging through some other books in search of a book I bought in Crete last year when I came across Sacred Travels: 275 Places to Find Joy, Seek Solace, and Learn to Live More Fully by Meera Lester (Avon MA: Adams Media, 2011).

The very first place she visits is the Shrine of Rumi in Konya in south central Turkey, which I visited last year. It was an intriguing opening invitation, and so I decided to read on.

I imagine I am well-travelled, but I was surprised, as I made my own mental list as I read through this book, that I had visited at least one-fifth of the places she recommends.

There is a heavy emphasis on places in Jerusalem, Rome, India and Japan, and as the average reader might expect she includes Lourdes and Fatima, although I have never been to either. I was surprised by own omission. I have yet to visit many places on these islands that she describes, including the cathedrals in Durham, Lincoln, Norwich and Winchester, nor have I been to Stonehenge and Glastonbury.

On the other hand, there are some inexplicable omissions, including the Lavra Monastery outside Moscow, and other important centres of Russian spirituality in Moscow and St Petersburg. As a woman she could not visit Mount Athos, it is still worth listing, even if a writer has to rely on someone else’s descriptions. There are no great Orthodox centres in Romania or Bulgaria either.

I was surprised at other missing spiritual centres too: there is no entry for Westminster Abbey or Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, or King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, there is no Quaker meeting house, there is no mention of Wesley’s chapels, and there is no Note Dame in Paris.

The Taj Mahal is a surprising entry, as it is a mausoleum and not a temple. To include it but not Yad Vashem.in Jerusalem is an idiosyncrasy to say the least.

Although Mecca is mentioned on the cover, it is not included inside. There is a Baha’i temple in the US, but not the main Baha’i centre in Haifa. The Blue Mosque in Istanbul is here, but not Aghia Sophia. Qom, which is the centre of Shia devotions, is nor mentioned. The Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City has a page of its own, yet it is not open to non-Mormon visitors. And the garden in Galway she recommends and the Hill of Ward in Co Meath are curious choices when Christ Church Cathedral and Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin are overlooked.

I was delighted that Lichfield Cathedral has its own page, but I wondered about the accuracy of each entry when I found Lichfield spelled Litchfield, and I read the travelling recommendations: “Travel from Birmingham (17 miles north) or London (124 miles south) to Lichfield by bus, taxi, rental car, or coach tours.” Of course, Birmingham is south, no north of Lichfield, and a taxi from London to Lichfield might ensure that this is the only 1 of the 275 places you would visit.

She spells Navan in Co Meath as Naven, insists that Croagh Patrick in Co Mayo is Mount Croagh Patrick, and places Temple of Hera in Olympia in Athens instead of the western Peloponnese.

She offers special prayers, meditations, and devotions for each sacred site, but often these are not connected with the denomination or tradition associated with a chosen location.

This may be a book for the new-age spiritual tourist whose tastes change with the weather, and it’s also a little fun, even if it can send you in the wrog direction or expensive taxi journeys. But I’m glad I bought it at a bookstall and did not buy the original when it was published.

The Mevlâna Museum, tekke and surrounding buildings are the heart of Konya (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

I try to visit a monastery at least once a year, and I am looking forward to visiting some monasteries and monastic sites in Greece over the next few weeks, as well as a one-day retreat in a monastery in England before summer ends. But which of her 275 places did I visit?

Here were my 56:

1, The Shrine of Rumi in Konya

3, Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome

7, The Western (Wailing) Wall, Jerusalem

24, The Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome

30, Pamukkale, Hierapolis, Turkey

34, The Asclepeion of Kos

62, Basiliek van het Heilig-Bloed, Bruges

65, The Great Pyramid of Khufu

72, Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque), Istanbul

73, Church of All Nations, Jerusalem

77, Saint Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Edinburgh

79, Tel Megiddo

91, Temple of Artemis, Ephesus

101, Mar Elias Monastery, near Jerusalem

105, Hill of Ward, Athboy, Co Meath

113, Russian Church of Mary Magdalene, Jerusalem

114, Al Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem

118, Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre, Paris

120, Lichfield Cathedral

124, Temple of Apollo, Delphi

127, Agii Apostoli, Athens

132, Mitrópoli Cathedral, Athens

133, Panagia Gorgoepikoos, Athens

139, Basilica di Santo Marco, Venice

148, La Sagrada Família, Barcelona

152, Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore or Duomo in Florence

154, Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church, Dublin

155, Baths of Aphrodite, Paphos, Cyprus

156, Temple of Hera, Olympia

159, Church of Saint Nikolaos, Demre

160, Shepherds’ Fields, near Bethlehem

175, Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai

178, Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny

180, Il Gesu, Rome

188, The Temple Church, London

191, Croagh Patrick

193, Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem

195, Coventry Cathedral

203, Elijah’s Cave, near Haifa

204, Church of Agios Dionysios, Zakynthos

207, Agios Gerásimos Monastery, Kefalonia

211, Canterbury Cathedral

213, Lateran Baptistery, Rome

219, Mount Olympus, Thessaloniki

221, Church f the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

227, Basilica of the Dormition, Jerusalem

232, Pere Lachaise, Paris

233, The Catacombs, Rome

236,The Hill of Tara

238, The Great Mound at Knowth

242, Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

247, The Peace Memorial, Hiroshima

253, Church of Our Lady, Bruges

255, The Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos

265, Duomo di San Martino, Lucca

269, Newgrange Passage Tomb, Co Meath

Meera Lester, Sacred Travels: 275 Places to Find Joy, Seek Solace, and Learn to Live More (Avon MA: Adams Media, 2011).
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Liturgy 10.1 and 10.2 (2015-2016): Public prayer, ritual and spirituality in Islamic life

The crescent and the minaret at the Irish Islamic Centre and mosque in Clonskeagh, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

EM8824: Liturgy, Worship and Spirituality

Year II, 10:30 to 1 p.m., Thursdays, Hartin Room:

Liturgy 10: 14 December 2015:

10:1 Public prayer, ritual and spirituality in Islamic life;

Liturgy 10.2: Visit to Mosque.

Introduction

Coming to an understanding of the public prayer life, rituals and spirituality of people of other faiths is important for our ministry and mission in the Church. In surprising ways, such an understanding may also provide ways of deepening our own spirituality. It is important too if we are going to understand people on their own terms, and allow them to define themselves.

Seeking to understand Islamic public prayer life, rituals and spirituality is not just a matter of comparative studies. It is also important if we are going to understand Muslims on their own terms, and understand them within the contexts we are working in.

In recent weeks this has been made difficult for many people in Europe because of the attacks in Paris and the incidents in Brussels. It seems that one reason for widening the chasm follows another: the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the Sydney hostage crisis (2014), the murder of Lee Rigby (2013), the London Underground bombings (7 July 2005), the Bali bombing (2002), 9/11 (2001), and so on.

On the other hand, imagine how Muslims perceive the intentions of Western military actions in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and so on, or how they reacted to George W Bush's use of the word ‘crusade’ in 2001.

But encounters between Christians and Muslims not only need not be difficult but can be positive and mutually enriching.

Earlier this year, I spent Easter week in Cappadocia, as part of my continuing research in Patristics. It also provided an opportunity to visit Konya, one of the most holy sites for Muslims. This is the burial place of the great Sufi saint known as Rumi, and is a place of mass pilgrimage. It is the centre of the school Islam we know in the west as the Whirling Dervishes, but in the wider Islamic world it is revered as the location of the many important relics, including the beard of Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

For many years, I have had an interest in this area, and have visited mosques and Muslim communities in Ireland and England, throughout Europe, but also in Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, Palestine, Syria and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, and further afield in Pakistan, Hong Kong, and so on.

Liturgical and pastoral questions

One of the noticeable changes in the Irish population today is the sizeable presence of Muslims. There are, perhaps, up to 40,000 Muslims in Ireland today. The context of your future ministry is within a changing Ireland in which Muslims are increasingly visible and playing a role, and a changing world which, in the wake of the rise of ISIS, Arab Spring and since 9/11, needs to know how to deal with our fears about terrorism, our vulnerability, our prejudices (in the sense of pre-judging) about Islam and Muslims, and a legacy that has left many unresolved questions.

The theological considerations that you will have to weigh up include the problems and opportunities created by Christian/Muslim exchanges in your parish or community, including the attendance of Muslim children at Church-run schools; the possibility of intermarriage, the dilemmas surrounding interfaith public occasions; the increasing role of the Anglican Communion as one of the primary actors on behalf of Christians in creating the opportunities for Christian-Muslim dialogue; and the questions around whether we can learn from others, including Muslims, in ways that will deepen our own faith and our practice of it.

Liturgically and pastorally, you will have to face up to questions such as:

Can a Muslim be a sponsor at baptism?

How do you deal with a request for a Muslim-Christian marriage in Church?

Can a Muslim read one of the readings at a baptism, wedding or funeral?

If a local Muslim leader wants to visit your church or school, where do you seat him during prayers?

How do you respond or behave when a Muslim leads prayers at a public or civic occasion?

How do you behave, as a local Christian leader, when you visit a mosque or Muslim-run school?

Islam in Ireland: some background

Despite popular perceptions, the majority of Muslims in Ireland probably are not foreigners, when we consider the number of Irish women who have become Muslims through marriage, and the number of Muslim children born in Ireland.

Historically, the first Irish contacts with the Islamic world predate the Anglo-Norman invasion, and the first regular contacts are found from the 17th century on. In the mid-17th century, baptisms in Roman Catholic parish records in Waterford City point to a Muslim presence there at that time. In the 18th and 19th centuries, baptisms in Church of Ireland parish records in Diocese of Raphoe and Roman Catholic parish records in Diocese of Ferns point to a Muslim presence from Co Donegal to Co Wexford in that time.

Indeed, in the late 18th century, one Muslim was an active member of the Volunteers – giving an added dimension to the ideal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter.

In the 19th century, there was still an air of exotic excitement surrounding Muslims in Ireland. But their presence has grown here especially since the mid-1950s, with the arrival of a new wave of Muslims as medical students.

The history of the arrival and the makeup of Muslims in each European country is different: in France, Muslims are mainly of North African descent; in Germany, they are mainly Turkish in origin; while in Britain, their origins, by-and-large, are mainly in the Indian subcontinent.

But these images hinder our acceptance of Muslims as being truly European. There are many Muslims who are truly European in every sense, including those in Bosnia. We forget easily that Spain was a Muslim-ruled country for longer than it has been a Christian-ruled country, while Istanbul or Constantinople was seen as the greatest city in Christendom for much longer than it has been seen as a Muslim city.

In Ireland, Muslims come from a very mixed and diverse background, a large number are Irish-born, and increasingly they see themselves as being Irish, and part of the scenery, as part of the furniture.

How many of you know a Muslim?

How many of you visited a Muslim country?

How many of you have visited a mosque?

Students from CITI during a recent visit to the mosque in Clonskeagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In your ministry, you will encounter Muslims as neighbours, in civic and social public occasions, and you will encounter fear and suspicion among your own parishioners.

Some of this fear and suspicion in founded in reality. Yes, there is a threat from ISIS, al-Qaida and other jihadist groups. But it is a threat to security in the Muslim world too, when we consider recent violence, killings and bombings in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan or Nigeria.

In terms of violence instigated by Muslims, statistically more Muslims are killed by Muslims in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan or Nigeria each week than Christians are killed by Muslims in Europe or the US each week. Muslims can often fear each other more than we fear them. Many mainstream Muslims fear the rigorous approach to Islam among the Wahhabis, who are supported and nurtured in Saudi Arabia, and Sunni and Shia Muslims fear each other in Iraq, the Emirates, Pakistan and Nigeria.

Much of the fear – on their part and on our part – is irrational, and it is not based on knowledge, experience or reality.

We need to understand them, what they believe, who they are and where they come from.

Today, 1-in-5 people in the world are Muslims, and the breakdown of statistics produces interesting details. The majority of Muslims are not Arabs, and only 20 per cent of Muslims live in Arab countries. There are large communities of Muslims in the Balkans and Russia. The world’s largest Muslim country is Indonesia, and there are more Muslims in India than there are in Pakistan. The countries with the largest Muslim populations are Indonesia, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, with more than 100 million Muslims each. There are 20 million Muslims in China. The Middle East countries with the largest Muslim populations are two non-Arab countries – Turkey and Iran. On the other hand, a large minority of Arabs are Christians, and there are even Arab Jews.

Yet, much of the fear of Muslims in the world today is based not on their religious beliefs, but is expressed in ways that are close to racism. We objectify them, make them “others” who are not part of “us,” and outsiders who bring nothing as gifts to us, but instead bring threats.

We need to see other-ness as a gift rather than a threat. And criticism and reaction, we offer it, needs not always to be negative, but certainly needs to be based on knowledge and experience.

What is Islam?

A decorated box in Konya, Turkey, said to contain the beard of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Islam (Arabic: الإسلام; al-'islām) is a monotheistic Abrahamic faith dating to the teachings of Muhammad (ca 570-632), a 7th century Arab religious and political leader. The word Islam means “submission” or the total surrender of oneself to God (Arabic: الله, Allāh). And so an adherent of Islam is a Muslim, or “one who submits (to God).” With 1.1 billion to 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, Islam is the second-largest religion in the world, after Christianity.

Muslims believe that God revealed the Qur'an to Muhammad. They see him as God’s final prophet, and the regard the Qur'an and the Sunnah (words and deeds of Muhammad) as the fundamental sources of Islam. They do not regard Muhammad as the founder of a new religion, but believe he restored the original monotheistic faith of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets.

Muslims are generally expected to observe the Five Pillars of Islam or the five duties that unite Muslims. In addition, Islamic law (sharia) has developed a tradition of rulings that relate to virtually all aspects of life and society, from dietary laws and banking to warfare.

The word Islām means acceptance of and submission or surrender to God. Muslims demonstrate this submission by worshipping God, following his commands, and avoiding polytheism. Islam is often described as an action of returning to God – more than just a verbal affirmation of faith.

What do Muslims believe?

An old, richly decorated copy of the Qur'an on display in Konya (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

According to the Qur'an all Muslims must believe in God, his revelations, his angels, his messengers, and in the Day of Judgment. There are other beliefs that are particular to different schools of Islam. For example, the Sunni concept of predestination is called divine decree, while the Shi'a version is called divine justice. Shi'a Muslims hold a unique understanding of Imamah or the political and spiritual leadership of the Imams.

Muslims believe that God revealed his final message to humanity through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad over a period of two decades or more in the years 610 to 632. The Qur'an mentions numerous figures considered as prophets in Islam, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. The Qur'an names Jews and Christians as “People of the Book” (ahl al-kitāb), and distinguishes them from polytheists, although Muslims believe that parts of the previously revealed scriptures, the Tawrat (Torah) and the Injil (Gospels), had become distorted – either in misinterpretation of the text, or in altering text, or both.

The fundamental theological concept of Islam is tawhīd – the belief that there is only one God. The Arabic term for God is Allāh; most scholars believe it was derived from a contraction of the words al- (the) and 'ilāh (deity, masculine form), meaning “the God” (al-ilāh), but others trace its origin to the Aramaic Alāhā. Tawhīd, the first of the Five Pillars of Islam, is expressed in the shahadah (testifying), which in which every believing Muslim declares that there is no god but the God, and that Muhammad is God’s messenger or prophet.

For Muslims, God is beyond all comprehension. They are not expected to visualise God, but to worship and adore him as the protector. Muslims will say that God is as close to us, to you, as the vein in your neck.

Muslims consider the Qur'an to be the literal word of God. The Qur'an is divided into 114 suras, or chapters. The chronologically earlier suras, dating to Mecca, are primarily concerned with ethical and spiritual topics. The later suras from Medina are concerned mostly with social and moral issues in the Muslim community. The Qur'an is more concerned with moral guidance than legal instruction, and is considered the “sourcebook of Islamic principles and values.”

In Islam, the “normative” example of Muhammad’s life is called the Sunnah (“trodden path”). This example is preserved in traditions known as hadith (“reports”), which recount his words, his actions, and his personal characteristics. The Sunnah is seen as crucial to guiding interpretation of the Qur'an and Muslim jurists see the hadith, or the written record of Muhammad’s life, as supplementing the Qur'an and assisting in its interpretation. Muslims are encouraged to emulate Muhammad’s actions in their daily lives.

Muslims regard their belief in angels as crucial to their faith. Their duties include communicating revelations from God, glorifying God, recording every person's actions, and taking a person’s soul at the time of death.

Muslims believe in the “Day of Resurrection,” yawm al-Qiyāmah (also known as yawm ad-dīn, “Day of Judgment” and as-sā`a, “the Last Hour”) that its time is preordained by God although unknown to humanity. The Qur'an emphasises bodily resurrection, and says the resurrection of dead will be followed by the gathering of humanity, culminating in judgment by God.

The Qur'an lists several sins that can condemn a person to hell, including disbelief, usury and dishonesty. Paradise (jannah) is seen as a place of joy and bliss, with mystical traditions in Islam placing the heavenly delights in the context of an ecstatic awareness of God.

Muslims believe in predestination, or divine preordaining (al-qadā wa'l-qadar), so that God has full knowledge and control over all that happens. For Muslims, everything in the world that happens, good or evil, has been preordained and nothing can happen unless permitted by God. However, while events are pre-ordained, we have freewill in that we have the faculty to choose between right and wrong, and so are responsible for our actions.

The Five Pillars of Islam

The Mevlâna Museum, mosque, tekke and surrounding buildings in Konya in Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The Five Pillars of Islam (Arabic: اركان الدين) are five practices essential to Sunni Islam. Shi'a Muslims talk about eight ritual practices which substantially overlap with the Five Pillars. These are:

1, The shahadah, which is the basic creed or tenet of Islam: 'ašhadu 'al-lā ilāha illā-llāhu wa 'ašhadu 'anna muħammadan rasūlu-llāh, or “I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God and I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” This declaration of faith is the foundation for all other beliefs and practices in Islam. (Shi'a Muslims consider the shahadah to be belief and do not regard it as a separate pillar, just a belief.) Muslims repeat the shahadah in prayer, and non-Muslims wishing to convert to Islam are required to recite the creed.

2, Salah, or ritual prayer, must be performed five times a day. However, Shi'a Muslims often run together the noon prayers with the afternoon prayers, and the evening prayers with the night prayers. Each salah is performed facing towards Mecca. Salah is intended to focus the mind on God, and is seen as a personal communication with him that expresses gratitude and worship. In many Muslim countries, reminders called Adhan (call to prayer) are broadcast publicly from local mosques at the appropriate times. The prayers are recited in Arabic, and consist of verses from the Qur'an.

3, Zakat, or almsgiving, is based on accumulated wealth, and is obligatory for all Muslims who can afford it. A fixed portion is spent to help the poor or needy, and also to assist the spread of Islam. The zakat is considered a religious obligation (as opposed to voluntary charity) that the well-off owe to the needy because their wealth is seen as a “trust from God’s bounty.” The Qur'an and the hadith also suggest a Muslim give even more as an act of voluntary almsgiving (sadaqah). Many Shi'a Muslims are expected to pay an additional amount in the form of a khums tax, which they regard as a separate ritual practice.

4, Sawm, or fasting during the month of Ramadan, requires Muslims not to eat or drink from dawn to dusk during Ramadan, when they should contemplate their sins. The fast is to encourage a feeling of nearness to God. During Ramadan, Muslims should express their gratitude to God and their dependence on him, atone for their past sins, and think of the needy.

5, The Hajj is the pilgrimage during the month of Dhu al-Hijjah to Mecca. All able-bodied Muslim who can afford it must undertake the Hajj at least once in their lifetime. Islamic teachers say that the hajj should be an expression of devotion to God instead of a means to gain social standing, although the pilgrim or hajji is honoured in his or her community on returning home.

In addition to the khums tax, Shi'a Muslims consider three additional practices essential to the religion of Islam. These are:

1, Jihad, which the Sunni do not consider a pillar.

2, Amr-Bil-Ma'rūf, the “enjoining to do good,” calls on every Muslim to live a virtuous life and to encourage others to do the same.

3, Nahi-Anil-Munkar, the “exhortation to desist from evil,” enjoins Muslims to refrain from vice and from evil actions and to encourage others to do the same.

Some questions:

A mosque on the Greek island of Rhodes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The concise expressions of faith in these five pillars offer an interesting challenge to Christians.

1, Can we express our faith in coherent yet concise phrases? Are we confident about making public declarations of faith?

2, Is our daily routine punctuated by rhythm of prayer? Are we embarrassed by postures of prayer that express public submission to God?

3, As a Church and as Christians, is our giving to charity, mission, or development work limited to mere duty, or do we go beyond that? Is it an essential part of Christian life and discipleship?

4, Have we lost the spiritual values of fasting and preparation associated with Lent and Advent?

5, Do we see our lives as pilgrimages, that “this land is not my home, I am only travelling through?” How do you respond to ideas such as pilgrimage and retreat?

Islamic Law or Sharia

Islamic law covers all aspects of life, from matters of state, like governance and foreign relations, to issues of daily living. There are the punishments for five specific crimes: unlawful intercourse, false accusation of unlawful intercourse, consumption of alcohol, theft, and highway robbery. There are laws of inheritance, marriage, and restitution for injuries and murder, and rules for fasting, charity, and prayer.

Islamic law has four fundamental roots, which are given precedence in this order: the Qur'an, the Sunnah (actions and sayings of Muhammad), the consensus of the Muslim jurists (ijma), and analogical reasoning (qiyas).

Islamic law does not distinguish between matters of “church” and “state.” The ulema function as both jurists and theologians. But as the Muslim world came into contact with Western secular ideals, Muslim societies responded in different ways. Turkey has been a secular state since the reforms of Atatürk, while the Iranian Revolution in 1979 replaced a mainly secular regime with an Islamic state under Ayatollah Khomeini.

Many practices fall into the category of adab or Islamic etiquette, including greeting each other with as-salamu `alaykum (“peace be unto you”), saying bismillah (“in the name of God”) before meals, and using only the right hand for eating and drinking. Islamic hygienic practices mainly fall into the category of personal cleanliness and health, such as the circumcision of male children.

Muslims, like Jews, are restricted in their diet, and prohibited foods include pig products, blood, carrion, and alcohol. All meat must come from herbivorous animals slaughtered in the name of God by a Muslim, Jew, or Christian. Muslims may also eat game they have hunted or fished for themselves. Food that Muslims may eat is known as halal food.

Islamic scholars disagree whether the texts justify traditional Islamic practices such as veiling and seclusion (purdah).

What is Jihad?

Jihad means “to strive or struggle” in the way of God and a small number of Muslim scholars regard it as the “sixth pillar of Islam.” Jihad, in its broadest sense, is “exerting one’s utmost power, efforts, endeavours, or ability in contending with an object of disapprobation.” This may be a visible enemy, the devil, or some aspects of one’s own self. But jihad also describes striving to attain religious and moral perfection.

Jihad usually means military exertion against non-Muslim combatants in the defence or expansion of the Islamic state, the ultimate purpose of which is to universalise Islam. Jihad, the only form of warfare permissible in Islamic law, may be declared against apostates, rebels, highway robbers, violent groups, non-Islamic leaders or states that refuse to submit to the authority of Islam. Most Muslims understand jihad as only a defensive form of warfare.

For most Muslims, jihad is a collective duty: its performance by some individuals exempts the others. For most Shia Muslims, offensive jihad can only be declared by a divinely appointed leader of the Islamic community.

One of the leaders of “neo-Sufism” in modern Turkey, Said Nursi, argued that “the time of the ‘jihad of the sword’” is over, and that now is the era of the “jihad of the word,” meaning a reasoned attempt to propose Islam as a basis for a reconciliation of science and modern institutions with religious faith and morality. As early as 1911, Nursi argued that Muslims and “pious Christians” should make common cause in defending a moral and spiritual vision of human life against the momentary illusions of consumer culture.

The divisions of Islam

The richly-decorated interior of a mosque in Turkey, inscribed with words from the Qur'an (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Islam consists of a number of religious denominations that are essentially similar in belief but with significant theological and legal differences. The primary division is between the Sunni and the Shi'a, with Sufism generally considered a mystical inflection of Islam rather than a distinct school. About 85 per cent of Muslims are Sunni and about 15% are Shi'a.

Sunnis recognise four major legal traditions, or madhhabs: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali. All four accept the validity of the others and a Muslim might choose any one that he/she finds agreeable. There are also several orthodox theological or philosophical traditions within Sunnism. For example, the recent Salafi movement sees itself as restorationist and claims to derive its teachings from the original sources of Islam.

Within 18th century Sunni Islam, the Wahhabi movement took hold in what is now Saudi Arabia today. Wahhabism was founded by Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and is a fundamentalist ideology that condemns practices like Sufism and the veneration of saints as un-Islamic.

The 20th century saw the formation of many new Islamic “revivalist” movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan. They see Western cultural values as a threat to Islam, and promote Islam as a comprehensive solution to every public and private question of importance. They inspired later movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida.

Shi'a Muslims believe in the political and religious leadership of infallible Imams from the descendants of Ali ibn Abi Talib. They say that Ali, as the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was his rightful successor. The Shi'a follow a legal tradition called Ja'fari jurisprudence. Shi'a Islam has several branches, the largest of which is the Twelvers (itnā'ašariyya), while the others are the Ismaili, the Seveners, and the Zaidiyyah.

Muslim mystics and Sufism

A “Whirling Dervish” performance in Uçhisar in Cappadocia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Many Westerners have been introduced to Islamic spirituality through contact with or reading about Sufism. Sufism has been described as “the pursuit of spiritual experience by bodily discipline and mystical intuition” (HAR Gibb). Professor Victor Danner, in The Islamic Tradition (1988), says: “Sufism has influenced the spiritual life of the [Islamic] religion to an extraordinary degree; there is no important domain in the civilisation of Islam that has remained unaffected by it.”

While the Muslim-Arab elite engaged in conquest, some devout Muslims began to question the piety of indulgence in a worldly life, emphasising rather poverty, humility and avoidance of sin based on renunciation of bodily desires. Devout Muslim ascetic exemplars such as Hasan al-Basri inspired a movement that evolved into Sufism.

Both Sufism and Shi'ism underwent major changes in the 9th century, so that Sufism became a full-fledged movement that had moved towards mysticism and away from its ascetic roots, while Shi'ism splintered into different groups, due to disagreements over the succession of Imams, many of them developing their own emphasis on mysticism.

The tomb of Rumi in Konya is covered with brocade embroidered in gold with verses from the Koran (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Beginning in the 13th century, Sufism underwent a transformation, largely due to the efforts of al-Ghazzali to legitimise and reorganise Sufism. He developed the model of the Sufi order – a community of spiritual teachers and students. Another important development for Sufism was the creation of the Masnavi, a collection of mystical poetry by the 13th century Persian poet Rumi. The Masnavi had a profound influence on the development of Sufi religious thought, and for many Sufis it is second in importance only to the Qur'an.

Sufism (Arabic: تصوف‎ - taṣawwuf, Turkish: tasavvuf, Persian: صوفیگری, sufigari) is not a denomination within Islam. Instead, it is understood as the mystical-ascetic dimension of Islam. By focusing on the more spiritual aspects of religion, Sufis strive to obtain direct experience of God by making use of “intuitive and emotional faculties” that one must be trained to use. Most Sufi orders or brotherhoods are known as tariqas. They may be associated with Sunni Islam or Shia Islam, although the major ones, such as the Qadiri and Naqshbandi orders, are associated with traditional Sunni Islam.

The word Sufi is said to originate from Arabic صوف‎ (sūf), the Arabic word for wool, referring to the simple cloaks the early Muslim ascetics wore. Others say the root word of Sufi is the Arabic صفا (safā), meaning purity, referring to the Sufi emphasis on purity of heart and soul.

Others suggest the origin is from Ašhab as-Sufā (“Companions of the Porch”) or Ahl as-Sufā (“People of the Porch”) – a group of devout Muslims who spent much of their time on the veranda of Mohammad’s mosque, devoted to prayer. However, the 10th century Persian historian Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī linked the word sūfīya with the Greek word Sophia (wisdom, especially divine wisdom).

A practitioner of Sufism is generally known as a Sufi (Arabic: صُوفِيّ‎), although some senior members of the tradition reserve this term for those who have attained the goals of the Sufi tradition. Another common name is the word Dervish (derived from Persian: درویش - darwīš).

Almost all traditional Sufi schools (or orders) trace their chains of transmission back to Muhammad through his cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib. The Naqshbandi order is a notable exception, and traces its origins to the first Caliph, Abdullah (Abu Bakr).

Sheikh Ahmad Zarruq, a 15th century Sufi master, wrote in his major work The Principles of Sufism that Sufism is “a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God.” Sheikh Ahmad ibn Ajiba, a famous Moroccan Sufi, defined Sufism as “a science through which one can know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one’s inner self from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits.”

Sufis believe that it is possible to become close to God and to experience this closeness while one is alive. The chief aim of all Sufis is to let go of all notions of duality, including any concept of an individual self, and to realise the Divine unity.

Sufis teachers make extensive use of parable, allegory, and metaphor, and it is held by Sufis that meaning can only be reached through a process of seeking the truth, and knowledge of oneself. Sufism as a whole is primarily concerned with direct personal experience.

Junayd al-Baghdadi was among the first theorists of Sufism. He concerned himself with fanā and baqā, the state of annihilating the self in the presence of the divine, accompanied by clarity concerning worldly phenomena derived from the altitude of that perspective. Uwais al-Qarni, Harrm bin Hian, Hasan al-Basri and Sayid ibn al-Mussib are regarded as the first mystics among the Taabi'een in Islam. Rabia al-Basri was a female Sufi and known for her love and passion for God.

Rumi, a universal mystic and a devout Muslim ... his way of sufism teaches unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love

A significant part of oriental literature comes from the Sufis, who created books of poetry containing the teachings of the Sufis. Some of the more notable examples of this poetry are Attar’s Conference of the Birds and Rumi’s Masnavi. Rumi, or Mevlana Celaleddin-i-Rumi (Jalal-e-Din Rūmī, 1207-1273) was a universal mystic and a devout Muslim. His way of sufism teaches unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love. The Mevlevi order was formalised and propagated by his son Sultan Walad and the scribe of the Mathnawi, Husamaddin Chalabi.

From 1200 to 1500, the “Classical Period” or the “Golden Age” of Sufism, there was an increase in Sufi activity throughout the Islamic world. This period is considered as. Lodges and hospices soon became not only places to house Sufi students, but also places for practicing Sufis and other mystics to stay and retreat.

Mujaddid Alf Sani, a 17th century reformer of the Naqshbandi order, is also a seminal personality in the propagation of Sufism, as he began a movement that aimed to purify Islam by returning to the Quran and the Sunna as the basic sources for Islam, while maintaining the integrity of the spiritual dimension of Islam.

Sufi practices

Dhikr is recollecting or remembering the name of God, which is commanded in the Qur'an for all Muslims. This has been one of the most fundamental features of Sufism from the beginning. To engage in dhikr is to have awareness of God. The practice of dhikr within Sufism is a devotional act including the repetition of the divine names, supplications and aphorisms from the hadith literature, and sections of the Qur'an. Some Sufi orders have developed ritualised dhikr ceremonies that may include recitation, singing, instrumental music, dance, costumes, incense, meditation, ecstasy, and trance.

Muraqaba is a form of meditation used to attain higher states of consciousness.

Sufi whirling or spinning, a twirling meditation that originated among the Turkish Sufis, it is still practiced by the Dervishes of the Mevlevi order

Sufism has produced a large body of poetry alongside numerous traditions of devotional dance, such as Sufi whirling, and music, such as Qawwali, a form of devotional Sufi music found throughout Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey and known for its secular strains.

Sama or Sema' (Arabic “listening”) refers to Sufi practices that can involve the sort of music and dance associated with the “whirling dervishes.” The practice of Sufi whirling or spinning (Arabic: رقص سماع) is a twirling meditation that originated among the Turkish Sufis, and it is still practiced by the Dervishes of the Mevlevi order. It is a symbolic ritual through which dervishes (semazens) aim to reach the “perfect” (kemal). They try to desert their nafs, egos or personal bad desires by listening to their master and to Sufi music, thinking about God and whirling.

In the symbolism of the Sema ritual, the semazen’s camel-hair hat (sikke) represents the tombstone of the ego. His wide, white skirt represents the ego’s shroud. By removing his black cloak, he is spiritually reborn to the truth. At the beginning of the Sema, the semazen holds his arms crosswise, to represent the number one, thus testifying to God’s unity. While whirling, his arms are open: his right arm is pointed towards the sky, ready to receive God’s blessings; his left hand, upon which his eyes are fastened, is turned towards the earth. The semazen conveys God’s spiritual gift to those who are witnessing the Sema. Revolving from right to left around the heart, the semazen embraces all humanity with love. The human being has been created with love in order to love. Rumi says: “All loves are a bridge to Divine love. Yet, those who have not had a taste of it do not know!”

Recently, there was a performance by Whirling Dervishes in the Vatican, providing an occasion to discuss the diverse nature of Islam.

Sufism emphasises non-quantifiable matters, such as states of the heart. The authors of many Sufi treatises used allegorical language to describe these states, in some cases comparing them with intoxication, which is forbidden in Islam. Some groups even considered themselves above the Sharia and spoke of Sufism as a method of by-passing the rules of Islam in order to attain salvation directly.

Sufi mystical poetry:

Rumi (1207-1273) was a Sufi mystic who founded the Mevlevi order, known as the Whirling Dervishes. His masterpiece, the six-volume Mathnawi, dates from 1248 on, and was first written in Persian, and includes parables, ecstatic love odes, jokes and practical advice on meditation. In recent years, he has received new popularity in the west.

One of his poems that I love best is “The Mouse and the Frog,” from which I quote:

A mouse and a frog met every morning
on the riverbank.
They sit in a nook of the ground and talk.

Each morning, the second they see each other,
they open easily, telling stories and dreams and secrets,
empty of any fear or suspicious holding-back.
To watch and listen to those two
is to understand how, as it’s written,
sometimes when two beings come together,
Christ becomes visible.

Or another poem from Rumi:

A soul not clothed with Love
brings shame on its existence.
Be drunk on Love,
for Love is all that exists.
They ask, ‘What is Love?’
Say, ‘Renouncing your will.’
He who has not renounced will
has no will at all.
The lover is a mighty king,
standing above the two worlds.
A king does not look
at what is beneath him.
Only Love and lovers
have eternal life.
Set your hearts on this alone;
the rest is merely borrowed.

(Divani-I Shamsi-I Tabrizi 455: A1:54, translation John Daldock).

Two other examples are provided by Rabi’ah al-‘Adawiyyah (ca 717-801), who is one of the best-known saints in Islam and is a prominent figure in Sufi mysticism. Her poetry and writings have been compared with those of the later great Spanish mystics, including Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross:

“Love of God hath so absorbed me that neither love nor hate nor any other thing remains in my heart.”

A lifelong celibate, her devotion and love for God was so great that she is credited with being one of the first great Sufis to give ecstatic voice to the theme of Divine Love. Her poems about the love of God are among the first love poems in Sufi literature.

I love thee with two loves, love of my happiness,
And perfect love, to love thee as is my due.
My selfish love is that I do naught
But think on thee, excluding all beside;
But that purest love, which is thy due,
Is that the veils which hide thee fall, and I gaze on thee,
No praise to me in either this or that,
Nay, thine the praise for both that love and this.

The 99 names of God:

In Indonesia, it is reports said, a growing number of young students and affluent housewives are attracted to Sufi prayer services, especially Thursday night gatherings when followers sing the 99 names of God.

The Sufi practice of meditating on the 99 names of God found in the Quran has become popular throughout the Islamic world. These 99 names, which do not include the name Allah, are usually listed as:

1, Ar-Rahman, the All-Compassionate
2, Ar-Rahim, the All-Merciful
3, Al-Malik, the Absolute Ruler
4, Al-Quddus, the Pure One
5, As-Salam, the Source of Peace
6, Al-Mu'min, the Inspirer of Faith
7, Al-Muhaymin, the Guardian
8, Al-'Aziz, the Victorious
9, Al-Jabbar, the Compeller
10, Al-Mutakabbir, the Greatest
11, Al-Khaliq, the Creator
12, Al-Bari', the Maker of Order
13, Al-Musawwir, the Shaper of Beauty
14, Al-Ghaffar, the Forgiving
15, Al-Qahhar, the Subduer
16, Al-Wahhab, the Giver of All
17, Ar-Razzaq, the Sustainer
18, Al-Fattah, the Opener
19, Al-'Alim, the Knower of All
20, Al-Qabid, the Constrictor
21, Al-Basit, the Reliever
22, Al-Khafid, the Abaser
23, Ar-Rafi', the Exalter
24, Al-Mu'izz, the Bestower of Honours
25, Al-Mudhill, the Humiliator
26, As-Sami, the Hearer of All
27, Al-Basir, the Seer of All
28, Al-Hakam, the Judge
29, Al-'Adl, the Just
30, Al-Latif, the Subtle One
31, Al-Khabir, the All-Aware
32, Al-Halim, the Forebearing
33, Al-'Azim, the Magnificent
34, Al-Ghafur, the Forgiver and Hider of Faults
35, Ash-Shakur, the Rewarder of Thankfulness
36, Al-'Ali, the Highest
37, Al-Kabir, the Greatest
38, Al-Hafiz, the Preserver
39, Al-Muqit, the Nourisher
40, Al-Hasib, the Accounter
41, Al-Jalil, the Mighty
42, Al-Karim, the Generous
43, Ar-Raqib, the Watchful One
44, Al-Mujib, the Responder to Prayer
45, Al-Wasi', the All-Comprehending
46, Al-Hakim, the Perfectly Wise
47, Al-Wadud, the Loving One
48, Al-Majíd, the Majestic One
49, Al-Ba'ith, the Resurrector
50, Ash-Shahid, the Witness
51, Al-Haqq, the Truth
52, Al-Wakil, the Trustee
53, Al-Qawi, the Possessor of All Strength
54, Al-Matin, the Forceful One
55, Al-Wáli, the Governor
56, Al-Hamid, the Praised One
57, Al-Muhsi, the Appraiser
58, Al-Mubdi, the Originator
59, Al-Mu'id, the Restorer
60, Al-Muhyi, the Giver of Life
61, Al-Mumit, the Taker of Life
62, Al-Hayy, the Ever-Living One
63, Al-Qayyum, the Self-Existing One
64, Al-Wajid, the Finder
65, Al-Májid, the Glorious
66, Al-Wahid, the Only One
67, Al-Ahad, the One
68, As-Samad, the Satisfier of All Needs
69, Al-Qadir, the All-Powerful
70, Al-Muqtadir, the Creator of All Power
71, Al-Muqaddim, the Expediter
72, Al-Mu'akhkhir, the Delayer
73, Al-Awwal, the First
74, Al-Akhir, the Last
75, Az-Zahir, the Manifest One
76, Al-Batin, the Hidden One
77, Al-Walí, the Protecting Friend
78, Al-Muta'ali, the Supreme One
79, Al-Barr, the Doer of Good
80, At-Tawwib, the Guide to Repentance
81, Al-Muntaqim, the Avenger
82, Al-Afu, the Forgiver
83, Ar-Ra'uf, the Clement
84, Malik al-Mulk, the Owner of All
85, Dhul-Jalali Wal-Ikram, the Lord of Majesty and Bounty
86, Al-Muqsit, the Equitable One
87, Al-Jami, the Gatherer
88, Al-Ghani, the Rich One
89, Al-Mughni, the Enricher
90, Al-Mani', the Preventer of Harm
91, Ad-Darr, the Creator of the Harmful
92, An-Nafi, the Creator of Good
93, An-Nur, the Light
94, Al-Hadi, the Guide
95, Al-Badi, the Originator
96, Al-Baqi, the Everlasting One
97, Al-Warith, the Inheritor of All
98, Ar-Rashid, the Righteous Teacher
99, As-Sabur, the Patient One

The word Allah simply means “The God”.

Do you think any of the 99 Names would be out of place in a Christian litany?

Which names do you think have Biblical resonances?

Compare 73 and 74, the First and the Last, with the Alpha and the Omega.

How about the way, the truth and the light?

The Christian composer John Tavener was commissioned by Prince Charles to write The Beautiful Names, a musical setting for the 99 Names of God drawn from the Qur'an and performed in Westminster Abbey. This eclectic work draws inspiration from several religions other than Islam and Christianity, but has provoked unease among Christians who regard it as inappropriate for performance in a Christian church.

Christopher Howse, a Roman Catholic columnist in the Daily Telegraph, wrote some years ago: “The word Allah refers to the same God that Jews and Christians worship. There is no doubt of that. He is the God of Abraham and Isaac; the one living God. He is the God that Jesus worshipped and whom he invoked, in Aramaic, as he died on the cross, calling on him by the name Eloi.” However, these views also drew a storm of protest.

Christian-Muslim dialogue

Church and Mosque side-by-side in an urban setting in Egypt (Photograph, Patrick Comerford)

In 2006, an Open Letter was signed by 100 leading Islamic authorities and scholars in response to Pope Benedict XVIII’s Regensburg address. This was followed with a message from 138 Muslim leaders addressed to the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others, calling for co-operation on the basis of the fundamental principles of love of God and neighbour, the “two great commandments” recalled by Christ in Mark 12: 29-31.

They said the commandments to love of God and neighbour – found in both the Qur'an and the Bible – are the “common word” that offers to the encounter between Islam and Christianity “the most solid theological foundation possible.”

The official website of the second letter can be found here.

Some reading:

Called to Dialogue, Interreligious and Intra-Christian Dialogue in Ecumenical Conversation, a Practical Guide (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2016).

Coleman Barks has three volumes of translation of Rumi’s poetry: Like This, Open Secret and We are three.

Clare Amos, Peace-ing Together Jerusalem (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2014).
John Baldock, The Essence of Rumi (London: Arcturus, 2006).
John Baldock, The Essence of Sufism (Royston: Eagle/Arcturus, 2004).
John Bowker, Voices of Islam (Oxford: One World, 1995).
Colin Chapman, Cross & Crescent: responding to the challenge of Islam (Leicester: IVP, 1995).
Patrick Comerford, Embracing Difference, the Church of Ireland in a Plural Society (Dublin: Church of Ireland Publishing, 2007).
Patrick Comerford, Reflections of the Bible in the Qur'an (Dublin: National Bible Society of Ireland, 2009).
JS Cutsinger, Paths to the Heart: Sufism and the Christian East (Bloomington IN: World Wisdom, 2002).
William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: a journey in the shadow of Byzantium (London: Flamingo/Harper Collins, 1998).
Hugh Goddard, Christians & Muslims: From double standards to mutual understanding (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1995).
BE Hinze and IA Omar (eds), Heirs of Abraham: the future of Muslim, Jewish and Christian Relations (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 2005).
Michael Ipgrave (ed), The Road Ahead: a Christian-Muslim Dialogue (London: Church House Publishing, 2002).
Michael Ipgrave (ed), Scriptures in Dialogue: Christians and Muslims studying the Bible and the Qur'an together (London: Church House Publishing, 2004).
Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Michael Nazir-Ali, Islam: A Christian Perspective (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1983).
Michael Nazir-Ali, Mission and Dialogue (London: SPCK, 1995).
Leslie Newbigin, Lamin Sanneh and Jenny Taylor, Faith and Power: Christianity and Islam in ‘Secular’ Britain (London: SPCK, 1998).
Malise Ruthven, Islam in the West (London: Penguin, 2000).

The modern village mosque in Çavuşin, north of Göreme, seen from the abandoned Greek Orthodox basilica of Saint John in Cappadocia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor, the University of Dublin (Trinity College Dublin). These notes were prepared for an introduction to Islam prior to a mosque visit on 14 December 2015 as part of the Module EM8824: Liturgy, Worship and Spirituality on the MTh course.