Muhammad (SAW) as Spirit of Truth: A Christian testimony against islamophobia (I)

Islamophobia has been on the rise in the United States ever since 9/11. The Republican Presidential primary has both revealed this troubling trend and exacerbatedww it. Trump and other politicians have been trading on fear and hatred of Muslims for political expediency. They build on a foundation that has been laid, in large degree, by […]

Islamophobia has been on the rise in the United States ever since 9/11. The Republican Presidential primary has both revealed this troubling trend and exacerbatedww it. Trump and other politicians have been trading on fear and hatred of Muslims for political expediency. They build on a foundation that has been laid, in large degree, by a consistent stream of islamophobic rhetoric from the Christian Right. Now we have a xenophobic mood in the US that reminds people of the rise of Nazism in Germany.
When Hitler came to power in Germany, a vocal minority of Christian leaders – the Confessing Church movement – opposed Nazism. Among the leaders of this movement, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is the most notable. He died in prison after participating in a failed conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.
In his prison writings, he disavowed Christian anti-Semitism and embraced the fact that Jesus Christ was a Jew. In doing so he broke with the historic anti-Semitism of Lutheranism and of Christianity in general which can be traced back to the early centuries of Christianity. For example, leaders like Archbishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom (mid-late 4th century), who is regarded as a saint, preached with hatred and vitriol against his Jewish neighbours, blaming them for killing Christ.
His sermons incited mob violence against Jews. This kind of scapegoating of Jews is so entrenched in Christianity it can even be clearly seen in the gospels themselves. In the Gospel of John Jews are called “children of the devil” and in the Gospel of Matthew Jewish bystanders at Jesus’ execution say, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matt 27:25, NRSV).
Since the Shoah (Holocaust), mainstream Christians, including Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians have fundamentally revised our views on Jews and Judaism; we’ve acknowledged Christianity’s historic anti-Semitism and no longer blame Jews for killing Christ or attempt to convert Jews to Christianity. Today, Christian leaders of conscience are called to take a vocal stand against islamophobia. We are called to root Islamophobia out of our religion before it leads to another genocidal catastrophe.
As is the case with Christian anti-Semitism, Christian Islamophobia has deep roots. In the oldest Christian writings on Islam, St. John of Damascus’ Against Heresies (8th century CE), Muhammad is presented as a heretic; Islam itself is categorized as a Christian heresy. Tragically, this has been the dominant Christian assessment of Muhammad and Islam up until the present day, with influential figures such as Dante, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther all making similarly inflammatory claims.
In the 15th century, Nicholas of Cusa was distressed by the wars between Christians and Muslims and sought to unify the religions theologically. However, he did not succeed and instead ended up writing a diatribe refuting the Qur’an and again framing Muhammad as a devil-inspired heretic. The most notable counter-example to this rather dismal tradition of Christian polemic against Islam is St. Francis of Assisi. During the crusades of the 13th century, Francis was successful in dialoging with Sultan Malek al-Kamil of Egypt and negotiating a truce between Christian and Muslim fighters.
The Sultan was not interested in negotiating with the Pope or any other leader, but only with Francis, whom he admired and trusted as a person of integrity, peace, and devotion to God. The Christian Right in the United States has not invented islamophobia, they are merely continuing this hateful vein of the Christian tradition.
From the beginning, Christians have reacted to Islam in a spirit of competition and mistrust. Instead of embracing and appreciating Islam as a sibling faith, Christians have tried to discredit Islam. Now, in the 21st century, it is high time for Christians to acknowledge how wrong we have been. Islam is the second-largest religion on the planet and is an integral part of human civilization as we know it.