Urbana Interaction Paper: Intro to Islam

The “Intro to Islam” seminar at Urbana was taught by Fouad Masri, the founder of an organization called The Crescent Project, which seeks to help North American Christians reach out to Muslims in love. The main point of his seminar was to provide a basic overview of Islamic history, beliefs, and practices, as well as to point out some similarities and differences with the Christian faith. He structured his talk accordingly, beginning with the life of Muhammad and continuing through into basic Quranic interpretation and Islamic practices, such as the five pillars of Islam.

Coming from Fuller’s Islamic Studies emphasis, very little of what Masri presented was new to me and most of his presentation consisted of relating facts rather than methods of evangelism. There were a few points at which he did discuss methods of interaction. In my experience within evangelical circles, I have found that a good deal of Christian interaction with the Islamic faith consists of denigrating its beliefs and especially Muhammad. I have found these tactics to be largely alienating and counterproductive. Masri, however, made a point that Christians need to emphasize the good things that Muhammad accomplished, which I really appreciated. At other times, Masri seemed to set up false dichotomies in his polemics which I believe to originate in slightly different understandings rather than inherent differences (for example, three of the 99 Names of God – the source of death, the schemer, and the God of vengeance - that Muslims acknowledge would be rejected out-of-hand by most Christians, when I think that the fundamental beliefs those names come out of are probably shared, simply extended in different ways).

Despite the lack of new information, it was interesting to hear the way in which the information was presented, since both Fouad Masri and my professor Martin Accad grew up in Arab Christian families in Beirut, Lebanon, yet have different approaches to interacting with Muslims. Masri’s approach is much more polemical, almost abrasively so, than Accad’s. This is probably due more to personality differences, however, it was interesting. Personally, I prefer the dialogue emphasized by Accad over polemics and apologetics, but both can be effective and both have their place. In my own experience, most Christians do not know enough about either Islam or their own faith to effectively do polemics, and so should be encouraged to engage in relational ministry over polemics until they are capable of doing so. This is, indeed, a large part of what Masri was doing in his talk, both empowering ordinary Christians to engage in relational ministry while whetting their appetite to learn more about Islam. I found it to be a helpful model for what I will probably be doing as a missionary to Muslims during furlough years.