Would any Mennonite church group ever invite a group of Muslims to use their meeting house on Fridays? I wondered this as I stood last month in the Kyk Ota Mosque in Serabulak, Uzbekistan, because it happened in reverse in 1881, when the imam offered refuge for nine months to a wandering and very needy bunch of Mennonites.

I was in Uzbekistan with 15 other Mennonites from the U.S. and Canada to visit scenes from an amazing 2,000-mile journey a group of German/Russian Mennonites took by horse and wagon in the late 1800s. After a punishing months-long trip from Ukraine through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, they had one nine-month stopover in Serabulak, Uzbekistan. There, the local imam gave them temporary shelter in the area around the mosque. They dealt with typhoid fever, their off-again, on-again hopes for settlement nearby, and the sad news of the deaths of two former advocates, General Kaufmann and Czar Alexander II. After leaving Serabulak and traveling for 40 more days, mostly through the desert, the surviving members finally established a colony near Khiva, which became their home for the next 50 years.

It is a tale of vision, of charismatic leadership gone astray, of courage, and of much suffering. We learned details from the diaries of leadership types -- all men; how I wished there were more remaining of the Mennonite Mama story!

Our trip followed that same Great Silk Road that had been traveled by this amazing bunch of pilgrims. We were welcomed at this mosque by local leaders who still have the local memory of the Mennonites' stay. Amazingly, the travelers at this location were even invited by the local imam to use the mosque for their worship services on Sundays -- in that same space used by Muslims on Friday! 

Standing together in this same mosque, we listened to three tour-group members read from diaries written by a grandfather and a great-grandfather, and a hymn from an account by Frank Bartsch -- all three had been part of the trek. After receiving permission from our hosts, we sang, "Come We That Love the Lord."  Tears surprised me as we sang, as those who "love the Lord" and as "children of the heavenly king." It was a holy moment shared with our new Muslim friends. The imam responded by thanking us for singing and added gracious words of peace and blessing for us and for the world. (This was interpreted for us by our expert and warm-hearted local Christian guide, Marina).

It was a time of discovery and pondering -- what made those Mennos behave as they did? Were they foolhardy? Courageous? Certainly interesting! What lessons should we take home?

But it is also a wondrous story of friendships between Christians and Muslims at that time -- with the Muslims offering hospitality and refuge. 

Helen Lapp lives in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, and is a retired administrator of the Mennonite Association of Retired Persons. Read about the end-times visions that fueled the 1880s trek, and the intercultural understanding that followed, in "Through the Desert Goes Our Journey," in the July issue of Sojourners.

Samuel Huntington, the Harvard political scientist and the author of The Clash of Civilizations, contends that unless things change, we are facing an era marked by religious wars.

Just about every military struggle between 1945 and 1995 was over political-economic ideologies. This was true of revolutions in Latin America and Southeast Asia led by Leninists and Maoists trying to establish Communist regimes, or by the CIA endeavoring to overthrow governments that were antithetical to U.S. interests. But from 1995 on, Huntington points out, revolutions and wars generally have been fought over religion.

In the Philippines, Kashmir, Sudan, and in several other “hot spots,” religious militants have been endeavoring to establish domination in the name of their gods through the muzzles of guns. It remains an obligation by religious moderates to stand up against such militants and to work for reconciliation between conflicting religio-political camps. The alternatives are all-out war on a mega-level, or endless acts of terrorism.

Those of us who are Red Letter Christians have still another concern with respect to these religious wars. We are a people committed to evangelism, and we realize that as religious wars escalate, our opportunities to preach the gospel in many places, and especially in Muslim countries, where it is seldom heard, are dramatically diminished.

At just about every conference on missions, there are regular calls for new missionaries to spread the gospel to the millions of people who live in the 10/40 window. The 10/40 window refers to the land mass that reaches from 10 degrees above the equator to 40 degrees below the equator, and stretches from the Atlantic eastward to the Pacific. The population in the 10/40 window is overwhelmingly Muslim.

It doesn’t take much for Red Letter Christians to recognize that the hostilities between Muslims and Christians have increased greatly as of late because of certain geopolitical events—particularly as we consider what has been happening in the Holy Land and the consequences of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It is not surprising that the Islamic world is growing more hostile toward the gospel than ever before. Around the world, Muslims are viewing the American army in Iraq as a Christian army reviving the likes of the medieval Crusades, which were marked by a massive slaughter of Muslims and the occupation of holy Islamic lands by so-called “Christian” conquerors.

The American toleration of the oppression of Arab peoples in Palestine, which our government could work to stop, has exacerbated a jihad that will settle for nothing less than having the Jewish people pushed off the land and into the sea, and an unbridled hatred of Christian Zionists.

The ramifications of our nation’s “big-stick” foreign policies in the Middle East have been severe for missionary work. For the first time in a thousand years, churches in Baghdad are being burned down. The Coptic bishop of Iraq was kidnapped and later found dead. Christians, facing persecution, have fled Iraq by the tens of thousands, so that a Christian community that once numbered more than 1.3 million is now down to 600,000.

In Pakistan, missionaries are finding it harder and harder to continue their work. Where once there were as many as 400 missionaries, it has been reported that the number is now down to 40.

Red Letter Christians should recognize that there is a certain unity among Muslim peoples that is ritually generated and sustained. Consider the social and psychological sense of solidarity of a billion people around the world who, five times a day, all turn and bow toward the same city, Mecca, and recite the same prayers. It should be easy to understand how this spiritual oneness creates a milieu in which injustice to any of their people can be deemed an attack on the entire Islamic people. It requires little imagination to recognize that America’s militaristic ventures in the Middle East, and the CIA’s toppling of legitimate Muslim governments (check the 20th-century histories of Iraq and Iran) are setting up barriers to the missionary enterprise in the 10/40 window.

It baffles me as to how the same evangelical Christians who are committed to spreading the gospel in the 10/40 window support with enthusiasm military actions and diplomatic policies that make evangelizing those who live in that part of the world nearly impossible. Perhaps in the long run they put nationalistic jingoism and our lust for oil above the call of Christ to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

We Red Letter Christians have a responsibility. We must act quickly to not only stop an immoral war and end the oppression of Arab peoples, but to help our missionary-minded evangelical brothers and sisters understand that America’s militarism is curtailing our capacity to spread the gospel.

Tony Campolo is founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University.

President Bush's remarks, made last week in Israel, suggesting that anyone who wishes to talk with a violent enemy is the contemporary equivalent of a Hitler appeaser, are so wide of the mark, patronizing, and simply untrue that they must be challenged.

The fact that he used the emotive context of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations as the background for these comments is an abuse of an already misused people. And implying that Sen. Obama wishes to appease terrorism is not only factually inaccurate, but morally troubling.

Why? Because this is to suggest that the only two options available to "good people" in responding to terror are to terrorise the terrorisers, or to cower in fear or denial. This has never been true. It does not become the president of the United States, a self-affirming follower of Jesus, to endorse the sport of violent revenge and the belief that there are certain people in the world who are so irredeemable that we should not talk to them. This aside, it is not politically efficient to suggest that terrorism can only be defeated by beating its proponents down.

I live in a place -- Northern Ireland -- where the government is now stewarded by two parties, both of whom could be caricatured as representing ancient warrior traditions. Their most recent manifestation, in the form of Irish Republican terrorism (the IRA) and militant Protestant fundamentalism, contributed to the horrors of my childhood, where political murder was a near-daily occurrence. After decades of terror, we did exactly what President Bush denounced last week -- we negotiated with each other and arrived at a settlement that sees former terrorist leaders share political power with those who consider themselves to be their victims. Successive U.S. administrations did not condemn this. In fact, the negotiations between terrorist leaders and constitutional democrats were chaired by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. President Bush has visited Northern Ireland to endorse the process. He has shaken the hands of former terrorist leaders. He made a video appearance at an investment conference in Belfast two weeks ago, encouraging U.S. businesses to set up shop here and to work with, among others, the current representatives of the organizations responsible for our violent conflict.

His suggestion, therefore, that anyone who wishes to sit down and talk with terrorists is automatically the moral and political equivalent of a Hitler appeaser is not only historically false (in that we know for a fact that such negotiation at least sometimes actually does produce peace), but so absurdly detached from the reality of his own administration's practices that it suggests either a malevolent and politically expedient attention-grabbing propaganda opportunity, or that President Bush simply does not know the truth about Irish politics.

I imagine I will be criticized on at least two fronts for writing this. One, that I am singling out President Bush for no reason other than my personal antipathy toward him. To that I respond with the following: I believe President Bush is a human being in need of redemption, like the rest of us. I do not share much of his politics, but I have been willing to offer praise when he has made good decisions, such as his progressive engagement with HIV/AIDs in Africa. I also believe that his predecessor made terrible errors of judgment regarding violent conflict, not least in Rwanda, and might have been likely to make similar remarks had he been in office and in Israel last week. I hope I would have had the integrity to write this article about President Clinton were he seeking to make the same dishonest political capital.

The second criticism is more nuanced -- the suggestion that the Northern Ireland conflict is not comparable to that in the Middle East. To which I can only reply that the sectarian political divisions on this island have lasted for at least 800 years, and that the violence has at times been at least as barbaric as anything done by Hamas or al Qaeda. I think the real reason that people don't consider my home conflict comparable to others is quite simply racist: They think that Northern Irish Christians are more capable of persuasion than Middle Eastern Muslims. Or, more practically, they don't want to acknowledge that the distasteful and difficult journey traveled in Ireland may have broken the path that the rest of us need to travel too.

What is even more likely, President Bush's remarks mask what might be called another inconvenient truth. When historians uncover the background story to this moment in international relations, they will discover one of two possible facts -- either that the Bush administration is already secretly negotiating with terrorists, or that they really do believe their own propaganda. British military intelligence had a secret back channel to the IRA from at least the early 1970s. Without this, alongside the contribution of politicians, business and church leaders, and other forces, there would be no peace in Ireland today. It would be unthinkable if the U.S. authorities are not already, in some sense, talking to representatives of Hamas, Iran, North Korea, Hugo Chavez, Raoul Castro, and all the other members of whatever "axis of evil" we are told is most threatening at present. For to be honest, if the Bush administration is not engaged in dialogue with such as these, President Bush is both failing to heed the lessons of the history of conflict resolution, and, more seriously, to protect the American people.

Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com.

As reported by the BBC, the Archbishop of Canterbury has attracted widespread criticism after appearing to back the adoption of some aspects of Sharia law in the U.K. This article goes on to explain that "under English law, people may devise their own way to settle a dispute in front of an agreed third party as long as both sides agree to the process. Muslim Sharia courts and Orthodox Jewish courts which already exist in the U.K. come into this category."

In response, the senior member of the Church of England's governing body, the General Synod, who insisted on remaining anonymous, told The Times: "A lot of people will now have lost confidence in him. I am just so shocked, and cannot believe a man of his intelligence could be so gullible. I can only assume that all the Muslims he meets are senior leaders of the community who tell him what a wonderful book the Koran is."

My friend Jonny Baker posted via his blog that "Richard Sudworth has an excellent response to this controversy." In this article, Sudworth observes that "For most people sharia = stonings for adultery, hands chopped off for stealing and institutionalised misogyny." However, he challenges this misperception. "The vast bulk of Islamic laws that are invoked within Muslim communities (yes, present tense because it is a current reality here in Britain) concern family relationships (divorce and separation), and inheritance matters. The trouble is, the media and our beloved political establishment are either not intelligent enough to know this or, and God forbid this be the case, prefer to play to the simplistic public perception of sharia = stonings for short-term electoral expediency."

Becky Garrison explores reaching those for whom church is not in their vocabulary in her book Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church.

[Continued from parts one and two. Click here to read the full response as one post.] On Jan. 3, Focus on the Family's CitizenLink criticized those of us who responded to an invitation to dialogue with 138 Muslim scholars. As an early signatory to the document, I thought I would reply to the criticism. (Focus on the Family's statements are in italics.)

8. Mohler said the agreement "sends the wrong signal" and contains basic theological problems, especially in "marginalizing" Jesus Christ. He also condemned the apology for the Crusades. "I just have to wonder how intellectually honest this is," he said. "Are these people suggesting that they wish the military conflict with Islam had ended differently — that Islam had conquered Europe?"

Would it send the right signal if we rebuffed their request for dialogue? Does it marginalize Jesus Christ to try to practice his teaching by loving our neighbor, loving the "other," reaching out to those whom we have offended and who have offended us in a desire to seek reconciliation and make peace? Are you aware of the atrocities associated with the Crusades – the rape, torture, mass slaughter – all by people who were supposed to be in a tradition of "just war theory?" Are you unaware that our behavior fell far below that of our own ideals, and don't you believe we should acknowledge that fact? Are you aware of how your line of thought could be used today to justify torture and other atrocities – that, to achieve a desired outcome in a "military conflict with Islam," we are justified in resorting to any and all means that were used in the Crusades? Do you realize how horrible this sounds – not just to a Muslim, but also to a fellow Christian?

9. Gary Bauer, president of the Campaign for Working Families, told CitizenLink the NAE leaders "have left the (card) table without their pants — that is, they've been taken and may not even realize they've been taken."

Was Jesus more concerned about "being taken" or giving himself to the dangerous work of reconciliation? Was it a mistake for him to allow himself to be stripped naked at the "table" of the cross? Whose politics should we professed followers of Christ follow in situations like this? And how do you know we have been taken? On what do you base your suspicion? Could your suspicion be a matter of religious prejudice, perhaps bordering on racism? How would you know if a group of Muslim scholars were completely sincere in their desire to reach out for peace? How do you defend your suspicion in light of the teaching of Jesus, which invites us to forgive seventy times 7 offenses in the pursuit of reconciliation?

10. Bauer said he already was dismayed by the NAE's recent controversial excursions into questionable areas such as global warming.

Can you see, even though you may disagree with it, the logic of our actions – those of us who are concerned about both the stewardship of the planet and the pursuit of peace with our Muslim neighbors? Can you see that Jesus' love for "outsiders" – the Syrophonecian woman, the Samaritan woman, the Roman centurion, not to mention notorious sinners – motivates us to love our Muslim neighbors; and it motivates us to join God in caring for the birds of the air and flowers of the field? Do you understand how for many of us these "excursions" flow from our understanding of Jesus' message – the good news of the kingdom of God?

11. Sookhdeo called for Christian leaders who signed the letter to withdraw their names, saying the confession of guilt puts Christian communities in Muslim areas of the world at risk.

By this reasoning, would you oppose the invasion of Iraq because it also put Christian communities in Muslim areas of the world at risk? And does it put Christians at risk more when Christians humbly admit their faults, or when they arrogantly remain in denial about them? When they reach out in friendship in response to Muslim scholars, or when they rebuff requests for dialogue?

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) was a pastor for 24 years. Now he serves as board chair for Sojourners. His most recent book is Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope, and he launches an 11-city tour at the end of January (deepshift.org). Just before the tour begins, he will be in Davos for the World Economic Forum, participating in Muslim-Christian dialogue.

[Continued from yesterday's part one] On January 3, 2008, Focus on the Family's CitizenLink criticized those of us who responded to an invitation to dialogue with 138 Muslim scholars. As an early signatory to the document, I thought I would reply to the criticism. (Focus on the Family's statements are in italics.)

4. Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Seminary (Southern Baptist), termed it "naiveté that borders on dishonesty."

Did it border on dishonesty for God, who has all power, to be expressed among us as a Word "veiled" in frail human flesh? Was it naive for Jesus to go to Jerusalem, knowing what waited for him there? Would it be naïve or dishonest for us to claim to love our neighbors and even our enemies, as Jesus taught us, and then to reject requests for dialogue? Wouldn't it be more naïve to think that the problems between Christians and Muslims around the world will be resolved by a refusal to dialogue? And when our neighbors come to us, reaching out their hands in friendship, and when our hearts tell us – after sincere prayer and reflection – that we cannot fold our arms in exclusion but must open them in friendship, how can we not respond?

5. Their response — initiated by Yale Divinity School and endorsed by other liberal Christian leaders — apologized for the sins of Christians during the Crusades and for "excesses" of the global war on terror, without mentioning Muslim atrocities.

When you have a conflict with your wife where both you and she have made mistakes, do you only agree to acknowledge your own faults if she will also acknowledge hers? If you say, "Yes, I may have made a small mistake, but you made even bigger ones," do you expect this to lead to a better relationship? If Muslims apologized for their faults, would you then be willing to dialogue with them in a respectful way?

6. It even seemed to acknowledge Allah as the God of the Bible.

Are you not aware that the word "Allah" is simply the Arabic word for God, just as in English we say God, and in Spanish people say Dios, and in Greek, theos? Did you know that when millions of Arabic Christians pray, they use this normal Arabic word for God? Don't you know that throughout history, the Christian faith has used the words for God already found in the language and culture into which they came with the good news of Jesus Christ?

7. The very name of the Muslim communiqué — A Common Word between Us and You — is from a verse in the Quran that condemns "people of the Scripture" (Christians) for alleged polytheism (the doctrine of the Trinity).

Are you aware that the trinity is not just a matter of disagreement, it is first a matter of misunderstanding between Christians and Muslims? Do you see that we can only deal with disagreements when we have achieved some basic understanding of what we mean by our key terms? Are you aware that many Muslims believe that our doctrine of the trinity affirms that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three different gods? Can you suggest a way of clearing up this misunderstanding without respectful dialogue? And are you aware that the apostle Paul respectfully quoted the writings of Greek philosophers and respectfully referred to Greek religion in his dialogue with the Athenian philosophers? With Paul's example in mind, should we never have any interaction with the Quran, one of the most important works of literature in the history of the world and unspeakably precious to about 21 percent of the world's population – except to argue with it? Have you ever actually read the Quran?

[TO BE CONTINUED…]

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) was a pastor for 24 years. Now he serves as board chair for Sojourners. His most recent book is Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope, and he launches an eleven city tour at the end of January (deepshift.org). Just before the tour begins, he will be in Davos for the World Economic Forum, participating in Muslim-Christian dialogue.

On January 3, Focus on the Family's CitizenLink sent an email by associate editor Stephen Adams called, "Evangelical Leaders Pledge Common Cause with Islam." Their target once again was the National Association of Evangelicals, echoing an attempt last year to oust Richard Cizik for having common cause with the birds of the air and flowers of the field against global warming.

This time NAE President Leith Anderson and Vice President Rich Cizik are in trouble for signing a cordial reply to a request by 138 Muslim scholars for civil dialogue and increased understanding between Christians and Muslims. I too signed the document, and thought I would reply to the criticism, just as I did to the Muslim's request for dialogue. (Focus on the Family's statements are in italics.)

1. They apologize for the 'sins of Christians'

How can we not apologize for our sins? Should we claim we have no sins? Or should we knowingly refuse to acknowledge them? Isn't the humility to confess sins a Christian virtue?

2. [They] leave the deity of Christ open for discussion.

If we only have discussion with people who acknowledge the deity of Christ as we do, won't that mean we will only be speaking to Christians with whom we already agree? How can we be peacemakers – not to mention bearers of the good news, following Jesus' commands, if we consider it unfaithful to discuss essential matters with people who differ from us? And besides, are you aware of how some Muslims have been misinformed so that they misunderstand our understanding of the Deity of Christ – that they think we believe that the living God, like some Greek deity of antiquity, had physical sex with Mary? Wouldn't it make sense to try to better explain what we mean when we call Jesus Lord and Son of God, so as to correct this misunderstanding? Wouldn't respectful dialogue be required for that kind of communication to take place? And in the meantime, shouldn't religious leaders be reaching out to one another so that we don't leave the field to religious extremists and hawkish politicians who have proved themselves highly willing to resort to terrorism and war?

3. An attempt by leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to win friends and influence Muslims is alienating another group — evangelical Christians.

I'm sorry when anyone feels alienated by those of us who try to follow Jesus' command to be peacemakers and to treat others as we would be treated, but didn't Jesus, when faced with a choice of reaching out to those considered untouchable outsiders by the Pharisees, side with the excluded? We intend no offense to Focus on the Family or anyone else in this attempt to respond in a God-honoring way to our Muslim neighbors, and hope that by better understanding our motives, you will be less alienated in the future.

Christianity and Islam comprise the world's largest communities of faith - 2.1 billion Christians and 1.5 billion Muslims. If these two religious traditions cannot find ways to keep peace between themselves, the world will be in very serious trouble. As Brian McLaren posted earlier on this blog, a group of 138 Muslim scholars and clerics recently sent an open letter to Christians around the world, A Common Word Between Us and You. In it, they proposed that

Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world's population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.

The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbour. These principles are found over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity. The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity.

A group of scholars at Yale Divinity School's Center for Faith and Culture wrote a response, Loving God and Neighbor Together. To date, the response has been endorsed by almost 300 Christian theologians and leaders, and it appeared on Sunday as a full page ad in The New York Times. The response begins by acknowledging that

… we were deeply encouraged and challenged by the recent historic open letter. … We receive the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians world-wide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors.

After affirming the Muslim letter's emphasis on love of God and love of neighbor as central to both faiths, the Christian response concludes

"Let this common ground" – the dual common ground of love of God and of neighbor – "be the basis of all future interfaith dialogue between us," your courageous letter urges. Indeed, in the generosity with which the letter is written you embody what you call for. We most heartily agree. Abandoning all "hatred and strife," we must engage in interfaith dialogue as those who seek each other's good, for the one God unceasingly seeks our good. Indeed, together with you we believe that we need to move beyond "a polite ecumenical dialogue between selected religious leaders" and work diligently together to reshape relations between our communities and our nations so that they genuinely reflect our common love for God and for one another. Given the deep fissures in the relations between Christians and Muslims today, the task before us is daunting. And the stakes are great. The future of the world depends on our ability as Christians and Muslims to live together in peace.

Religious communities should not resolve their differences by killing each other. We must prevent the "clash of civilizations" that some predict or even desire. Irresponsible calls to war against "Islamo-facism," even by some Christian leaders, must be countered with the spirit of the above declarations. That's why I signed this response to our Muslim counterparts and would encourage each of you to find ways to enter in to this dialogue. It's time to stop shouting and start talking. Out of that might come something even better than mere peace and dialogue - like actual interfaith collaboration in resolving some of the planet's most dangerous threats and challenges. Isn't that a better role for religion?

Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain aired this week on PBS in my viewing area. The film, which looks at the period of "Moorish" rule in European history when religious diversity was accommodated within a social and political system, and culture among Muslims, Christians, and Jews thrived, is part of a renaissance movement to reclaim the history of religious tolerance in Islam.

The Unity Production Foundation, producers of Cities of Light, is a nonprofit educational foundation that works through the media to produce films and documentaries that serve the cause of peace and understanding. Many of UPF's current projects focus on creating greater understanding about Muslims and Islam. (See American Muslim Teens Talk and Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet.)

Additionally, An Esoteric Quest for the Golden Age of Andulusia is a conference to be held this September in Granada, Spain. Theologians, authors, artists, poets, and others will come together to examine the extraordinary culture of religious tolerance in medieval Spain that produced works of enduring spiritual and artistic genius—such as the mystical traditions in Judaism and the writings of Spanish Christian mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. (Sojourners writer Mirabai Starr will be making a presentation on both these saints. See her article, A Garden of Righteousness, in the August 2005 issue.)

According to Irshad Manji, author of The New York Times' bestseller The Trouble with Islam Today, many Muslims are attempting to restore in Islam the spirit of ijtihad (pronounced ij-tee-had), Islam's own tradition of creative reasoning. "As globalization persists and pluralism spreads," writes Manji in her column On Faith, "both Muslims and non-Muslims need to know that Islam offers a positive alternative to the tribal mentality.

"Ijtihad has a history of achievement. In the early centuries of Islam, 135 schools of interpretation flourished. In Muslim Spain, scholars would teach their students to abandon 'expert' opinions about the Qur'an if their conversations with the living, breathing Qur'an produced better evidence for their peaceful ideas. And Cordoba, one of the most sophisticated cities in Muslim Spain, housed 70 libraries. That rivals the number of public libraries in most cosmopolitan cities today!

"From the 8th to the 12th centuries, the 'gates of ijtihad' - of discussion, debate and dissent - remained wide open. This is also when Islamic civilization led the world in ingenuity. If ever we Muslims needed to renew our commitment to ijtihad, it is now. From the emerging generation, I continually hear this question: 'Is there a way to reconcile our faith with freedom of thought?'"

Manji's own organization, Project Ijtihad, is an international network of reform-minded Muslims who want to work with Christian and Jewish allies in promoting religious diversity and a renewal of the creative, life-promoting Spirit that is the original impulse of our faiths.

In the midst of extreme religious intolerance and violence, celebrating the richness of the arts together is one way to move beyond simply "religious tolerance" or "interfaith understanding" to deep enjoyment and savoring of the flowering imaginations in our shared and diverse heritages and traditions.

Rose Marie Berger, associate editor of Sojourners, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.