Talk about the teddy
(From Mark Greene from the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity.)
A pope gives a lecture in Europe and nuns are murdered in Ethiopia. A writer publishes a novel and is forced into hiding. A teacher allows her class to name a teddy bear after a popular pupil and a crowd call for her death.
To its credit, the Muslim Council of Britain was swift to distance itself from the actions of the Sudanese police. But, sadly, for most people in Britain, this new development only reinforces the growing perception of Islam as a repressive, violent faith. Perhaps even more damaging, it makes ordinary non-Muslims very wary of saying anything at all about Islam. Fear increasingly stifles comment, debate, and even everyday conversation at school gates and in classrooms and workplaces.
That can easily drive a wedge between Muslims and the rest of the community: how do you develop friendships when the conversational field is so full of mines? Nevertheless, as Christians we cannot allow fear to create barriers between our Muslim neighbours and ourselves.
Whatever the solutions on the global stage, there is at least one vital way forward in everyday life. We must normalize conversation about Islam, about Muhammad and about the Qur'an. And we must do it at school gates and in classrooms and workplaces. It's time to ask our Muslim neighbours and colleagues and fellow students: “What do you think about Muhammad the teddy?” “What does it feel like for Muslims when such stories fill the media?”
It's time to ask them what they love about their faith. “I am so thankful to Allah, so thankful to him,” a Manchester cabby told me two weeks ago.
It's also time to share with our Muslim neighbours what we believe—that we are so thankful that Jesus loved us so much that he died on the cross; that we are thankful for his wondrous word and the guiding, strengthening, moment by moment reality of his Spirit; and that we wish that the Sudanese had reacted to a (well-intentioned) teacher in the same way Jesus reacted to his mockers and murderers: “Father, forgive her, she didn't know what she was doing” (cf. Luke 23:24).
Still, in an atmosphere of fear and distrust, we will need more than courage. Courage doesn't drive out fear; it merely manages it. It is only love—the perfect love of God—that drives out fear (1 John 4:18). We are called to love our neighbours not because we have special courage, but because Christ’s love flows through us. How will we act to ensure that our Muslim neighbours experience this love, today and every other day?
©LICC http://www.licc.org.uk/. Reproduced with permission.