Prayer: Christian and Muslim Perspectives

A Muslim Response to Christian Prayer

A Muslim Response to Christian Prayer c an er da gl i I recall that on one occasion my mother, a pious Muslim who grew up in a town in central Anatolia in Turkey, asked her professor son the basic question, ‘‘Do Christians pray to Jesus?’’ with a tone of puzzlement and, it must be said, impending disapproval. Her difficulty stemmed from thinking about her own daily prayers and supplications to God—forehead on the ground or hands raised toward the heavens—and what it would be like to direct those prayers to Jesus. For any Muslim, the substance of prayer consists in gratitude for blessings bestowed, repentance for wrongs committed, petitions for good in this world and the Hereafter, and glorification and remembrance . These pillars of prayer and devotion, for the typical Muslim, approach something like self-evidently good ideas that are uncomplicated and direct. My mother knew enough about Christianity to know there is this idea of the Trinity, and that it involves something about Jesus being the Son of God or Jesus being God, and in her own mind she put these ideas together with her own understanding of what makes prayer prayer and came up with that sincere question, ‘‘Do Christians pray to Jesus?’’ What she said was hardly ever absent from my mind as I thought about how to approach writing a Muslim response to Christian prayer. The answer I gave her then, and that I would still give now, is no, Christians do not pray to Jesus in the way that Muslims pray to God when they stand and bow for the s .alāt or raise their hands in supplication, nor do they say or believe, for example, that Jesus as such created the heavens and the earth. I told her that when Christians pray to God, they really are praying to God, to one God. But when Christians talk about God, they do say that He is triune, and that Jesus is the son of God, and God incarnate, and to a Muslim this is already and necessarily a tension. 53 54 caner dagli For me the answer to the general question ‘‘To whom do Christians pray?’’ and, by extension, ‘‘How do Christians pray?’’ is from the Muslim point of view a complex one. The most important reason for this is that the Qurān, the basis for any Muslim’s theological position, provides a picture of Christianity that is often misunderstood, and that is more nuanced and complex than many commentators and theologians—both Christian and Muslim— seem to allow. It is clear that the Qurān does not render just one judgment about Christians, neither always condemning them nor always praising them. For example, if we were to ask what the Qurān says about monks, we would come across 5:82, which reads: ‘‘And you will find the nearest of them in affection toward those who believe to be those who say, ‘We are Christians .’ That is because among them are priests and monks, and because they are not arrogant.’’1 But in 9:34 we read: ‘‘O you who believe! Verily many of the rabbis and monks consume the wealth of people falsely, and turn from the way of God. [As for] those who hoard gold and silver and spend it not in the way of God, give them glad tidings of a painful punishment.’’ The complexity is perhaps evidenced most clearly in a single verse regarding Christian monasticism, 57:27: ‘‘Then We sent Our messengers to follow in their footsteps , and We sent Jesus Son of Mary and We gave him the Gospel and placed mercy and kindness in the hearts of those who follow him. And monasticism they invented—We did not ordain it for them—only to seek God’s contentment. Yet they did not observe it with proper observance. So We gave those of them who believed their reward, yet many of them are iniquitous.’’ This complexity comes out in the facts that (a) God characterizes followers of Christ as being kind and merciful; (b) Christians themselves, not God, ordained monasticism; (c) monastic practice was originally well intentioned, but Christians were not faithful to it (by which some commentators understand the introduction of the Trinity); (d) there was in fact a right way (h .aqq riāyatihi) to be a monk; and (e) some of these who practice monasticism have a reward while others are iniquitous. Finally, in light of...