It is mid-morning, and the calm of the corner of the Cairo hotel in which Hans Kèng explains his views on Islam and inter-religious dialogue is disturbed by the infuriating ring-tones of mobile phones. Misreading the Muslim world has had grave ramifications, he says, and he infuses his understanding of the history of Islam with a wealth of detail and a kind of unanticipated solemnity. "There will be no peace among nations without peace among religions," he states, matter-of- factly, and his deepest desire is precisely to help bring about an atmosphere of greater understanding between Muslims and Christians.
Kèng is unhappy with the current state of affairs and particularly about growing tensions between Muslims and Christians in the West. What he advocates above all is a common ethical framework for humanity as a whole, which must "demolish the walls of prejudice stone by stone and build bridges of dialogue, rather than erect new barriers of hatred, hostility and vengeance." In particular, for this Swiss-born Christian theologian, Westerners must build bridges of dialogue with Muslims.
That is the aim, but if there is to be genuine dialogue between Christians and Muslims, certain prickly questions will inevitably crop up. He explains that "a question that is not just for Christian theologians, but which constantly comes up especially in dialogue with conservative Muslims is: how are monotheism and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity related? Aren't they contradictory?" For many Muslims, the concept of the Trinity is tantamount to shirk ("association"), the worst form of unbelief in Islam.
As Kèng notes, "in seventh-century Islam the doctrine of the Trinity was brought into the centre of criticism." And while "the paradigm of early Christianity developed only after the death of Jesus, the foundations for the paradigm of original Islam were laid quite decisively during the Prophet Mohamed's lifetime." He is dismissive of religious conservatism, both Christian and Muslim. His rejection of papal infallibility cost him dearly, after all. However, he is convinced of the "moral imperative" of religion.
"Neither Christian fundamentalism nor secularism can satisfy the deep desires of humans," Kèng says. "We have to concentrate on religion." This is his third visit to Cairo, and he says that the city has a special place in his heart. He expresses an interest in having his recent book, Islam: Past, Present and Future, translated into Arabic, and he is ecstatic that it is already available in English in an Arab and Muslim city like Cairo.
I caught up with Kèng at the Nile Hilton in Cairo and sounded him out on the key points in his book. As a professional theologian, Kèng is clearly preoccupied by religion, and while he is aware that the divine status of Jesus in Christianity constitutes a stumbling block for inter- religious understanding, there are also other questions that Christians, or Westerners more generally, sometimes have regarding Islam, notably the affirmation of polygamy and the position of women. Kèng devotes sections of his book to discussions of these topics.
In Kèng's view, the core of the current of unease in Muslim-Christian relations comes from a sense that there is a perceived need for Muslims to "catch up" with the West, a perception that is common both in the West and in the Muslim heartlands. He contends that Muslims, and by implication Islam, have remained positioned in an older religious view, in which two different strands of religion took hold of Muslim practice. "Islam," he says, "has remained spiritually in the mediaeval paradigm of the ulama and Sufis," pausing to assess the impact of his words, marking a division between the Sufi orders that spread across the Muslim world and the clerics and theologians ( ulama ) who upheld the system of law (Sharia) taught in Quranic schools or madrassas.
From here, he thinks, comes much of the dilemma of contemporary Muslim reformers. "[Islam's] elites and representatives noticed too late that in Europe an epoch-making paradigm change was making itself felt, which in the long- run forced the cultural sphere shaped by Islam increasingly on the defensive," Kèng writes in his book Islam. "Faced with Sharia, Islam and Sufi Islam, Arab Islamic philosophy hardly had a chance. It did not achieve any accepted normative validity and could not develop any permanent dominant structures and institutions, for example in universities. Arab Islamic philosophy had a great history but was not historically influential in Islam," Kèng observes.
Kèng smiles a sanguine smile and acknowledges the debt Westerners owe to Islam, stressing the impact the Muslim religion had on Christianity, especially in the Middle Ages with the flowering of Islamic culture in Al-Andalus (Spain) and elsewhere. "Christianity inherited the Arab philosophy of Islam," Kèng says, while at the same time noting that while the European Christians were able to make ample use of this Islamic heritage, the Muslims themselves failed to utilise it. "Arab-Islamic philosophy had ended by the 12th century, as would become evident only very much later. That was an ominous development for the intellectual future of Islam," Kèng says.
He notes that, "the tolerance and cultural exchange that took place in the southern Spanish city of Cordoba and throughout Al-Andalus were unprecedented," but there is nevertheless little doubt that even after such impressive beginnings, the Muslim world later began lagging behind the West.
For Kèng, "it is not very helpful to play the blame game" for this. Islam is not to blame for stagnation, he insists. So, how did such an initially wealthy, intellectually rigorous and progressive civilisation wither into a politically weak and economically poor culture, characterised in later centuries by a degree of intellectual stagnation? "Is Islam itself to blame for the striking lack of spiritual productivity in the Islamic world?" is the way Kèng phrases the question. "Even [the British orientalist] Bernard Lewis does not think that," he notes, explaining that he is critical of Lewis's own attempt at an explanation, in the book What Went Wrong?, which is nevertheless highly thought of in some Western circles.
"In the 10th and 11th centuries, the caliphate had its capital in Cordoba. This was the 'Jewel of the Earth' in both economic and cultural respects -- thousands of shops, thousands of mosques, baths, running water, paved streets with lighting and the caliph's library of 400,000 volumes, which was just one of 70 libraries."
For Kèng, the reasons for the later stagnation of Muslim societies are complex, and they cannot be reduced to any one set of factors. In his attempt to answer the question, he explains that "by way of anticipation, my reply would be: Islam is not in itself to blame, nor is any particular paradigm, as long as it is appropriate to the time. What is to blame is the perpetuation of a paradigm beyond the period which is appropriate for it."
Kèng is also conscious that Islam at a popular level was influenced to varying degrees by the pre-Islamic societies it encountered and absorbed. This was especially evident in areas like India, for example, and Southeast Asia. "[Islam] mixed with the practices and convictions of the popular cultures in which it found itself taking root," he observes.
He goes on to discuss Christian views, historically often negative, of the Prophet Mohamed. He makes it clear that he does not ascribe to such views, while conceding that even today they are widely held among some Westerners. These views "relate to the truthfulness of the prophet, his use of force and his relationship to women," Kèng explains.
We turn to Kèng's recent book on Islam, and he frames the discussion by referring to other works often read in the West such as the Cambridge History of Islam published by Cambridge University Press, and its rival the Oxford History of Islam, edited by the American academic John Esposito. He states his views on these works with characteristic dry wit.
Today, Islam for some Westerners is associated with intolerance and militancy, or, as Kèng puts it, "when the Western media portrays Muslims, it loves to do so by portraying them as fanatical bearded lawyers, extremist violent terrorists, super-rich sheikhs, or veiled women." All too often, there is a desire to see Islam "as a totalitarian religion that leads to irrationality, fanaticism and hysteria".
But, on the contrary, for Kèng, "though the history of Islam is about a third shorter than Christianity, it is no less complex." Indeed, in Kèng's view, "the more Islam spread, the less monolithic it became."
One difference between the Muslim world and the modern West is the devaluation of religion in the latter. Is God dead in the secularist West?
"I think that this is partly right," Kèng says. "However, while in Europe 'God is dead', I think a lot of people know that life must have a meaning and that ethical standards are important. I think many people in Europe, as elsewhere, are seeking for spiritual truths. Secularism is a godless ideology, and I do not believe that it helps people. Communism, Maoism, Nazism -- these are all ideologies that function in the name of atheism," Kèng observes.
A country that particularly interests him is Turkey, largely because of its secular character. In particular, Kèng is interested in the character of Kemal Atatèrk, founder of the modern Turkish state, and in Turkish historical experience more generally. "In Turkey today, people clearly are not comfortable with 'secular extremism'," he observes, noting the rise in political Islam. "Atatèrk, a positivist and an atheist, was not interested in religion, and he thought nothing of religion, at first even using it strategically. He died in the conviction that the new Western worldview and secularist culture offered a substitute of equal value for the 'obsolete' Islamic religion and religious culture."
Kèng also touches on the Arab socialism practised in Egypt under president Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Pan-Arabism as a secular ideology. His conclusion is telling: "Given the political difficulties of Pan-Arabism, many Muslims are asking themselves whether it would be better to give up visions of Arab unity and concentrate instead on a religious and social renewal of Islam."
Indeed, it is this question of the religious and social renewal of Islam that perhaps most interests Kèng. He himself has been among the most vociferous advocates of change in his own Roman Catholic Church, and he ventures to explore such possibilities in Islam, even though he realises that there are fundamental differences between Christianity and Islam. For him, one opportunity for Muslims to indulge in reform came during the era of the French Revolution, when Muslims were obliged to face modern realities and to examine the fundamentals of their religion.
"The French Revolution in 1789 seemed to Muslims to be the first European movement that was not Christian, even anti-Christian," notes Kèng. The vital question for this erudite Christian scholar is one of "how should Islam react to the demand for democracy, human rights and civil rights, toleration and the separation of state and church propagated by the [French] Revolution."
Earlier in his visit to Cairo, Kèng gave a lecture at the American University in Cairo, where he touched upon another episode in the historical relationship between the Arab world and the West: the Crusades.
Asked about these mediaeval events, Kèng says, "I am against all crusades. That is the whole point of my book. The paradigm of revenge and hate should be substituted by a new paradigm of mutual understanding and honest cooperation."
We venture into a prickly subject: the sometimes unpleasant things that men can discover about their own religion. "Indisputably, hundreds of millions of people are fascinated by Islam," he says. "Those, like me, who can well remember the time of uncritical Roman Catholic apologetics before the Second Vatican Council, can imagine why some pious Muslims today attempt to depict their own religion in the brightest colours."
"However, for both Islam and Christianity, the final goal of the victory of the religion has proved unattainable and illusory. Moreover, this is theologically in conflict with statements of faith in both religions to the effect that it is for God himself to bring in the goal of history. There are more realistic political alternatives and alternative religious foundations."
Kèng is not only interested in religious matters, and he shows a willingness to discuss politics. He wonders "if the new president of the US will see that the politics of outgoing President George W Bush are bad and inappropriate."
"The religion of Bush stipulates that one must not lie. Yet, Bush lied a great deal about Iraq."
Kèng suggests that issues of morality and ethics necessarily impact the socio-economic sphere, and he is a firm believer in the need for a genuinely new world order. "I strongly believe that in the long-term the global market economy will only be accepted if it is socially acceptable," Kèng insists. He speaks of his belief that a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will improve relations between the adherents of the three Abrahamic religions. "If the Palestinian problem can be resolved," Kèng asserts, "then the West, and especially the US, will attack the Muslim world less," he says.
"I am Swiss, and therefore a little more independent. We are not so loaded by the history of Nazism, as, say, the Germans are. I try to be sincere," he explains.
Finally, we return to points of controversy or disagreement between Christianity and Islam. There is an assumption in the West that women are oppressed in Islam, whereas, in fact, for Kèng "women are a problem for all the Abrahamic religions." While all three religions aspire to accord equal dignity to men and women, in practice this has not always been the case.
The three religions, according to Kèng, share many ethical standards. They all urge their adherents not to murder, torture or torment -- including physical or verbal abuse. And, they call on their followers not to steal, exploit or accept bribes. They also regulate marital relations in a positive fashion by not allowing partners in a conjugal relationship to abuse, cheat on, humiliate or dishonour their spouses.
Kèng thinks that the importance of Sharia and legal rules in Islam is exaggerated. "It is striking that only around 600 of the thousands of verses of the Quran are concerned with legal questions, and most of these have to do with religious obligations and practices, such as ritual prayer, fasting and pilgrimage. Only around 80 verses contain directly legal material," he points outs.
Kèng's book Islam: Past, Present and Future is a persuasive study of faith written in an accessible style. It is also a history of the Abrahamic religions more generally. It is the latest in a stream of works that have won him many accolades, for example when former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan told Kèng in his address for the 75th birthday of the distinguished theologian that, "I cannot really think of this lecture as a gift from me to you. It is you who do me a great honour by asking me to speak on your home turf on a subject -- global ethics -- which you have thought of profoundly as anyone in our time."
Kèng's book recognises the differences between the three monotheistic religions. "How can one God in two, even three, 'persons' still be one God? How can Father and Son, Spirit and man be one?" the Christian theologian asks of the doctrine of the Trinity. "The Quran protests energetically not against Jesus as the Messiah, but against his being made equal with God," he explains.
For him, on the other hand, Prophet Mohamed was an "utterly earthly leader". And the elative Allahu Akbar, "God is greatest," is the essence of Islam.
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