Fr. Christopher Metropulos: Today we're going to be discussing an Orthodox Christian perspective on Islam. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners' ears are perked up now because the issue of Islam, Muslims, Mohammed the Prophet, is so prevalent today in the media. We wanted to talk to someone that knows a little bit more about this than me. I really don't know very much about Islam. Although I've read a lot, I really wanted to speak to a historian today. That's what we're going to try to do with Fr. Nektarios. So welcome, Father.

Before we deal with the Orthodox Christian perspective on Islam, we have to realize that Orthodox Christians and Muslims have lived together for centuries. Sometimes good times, sometimes bad. Could you give us something of a background on that?


Fr. Nektarios Morrow: We can go back really to the early beginnings of Islam in the seventh century, when of course Mohammed begins to offer his message. As Islam spread over the decades of course in to the eighth and ninth centuries, being where it was located in the Middle East and in its vicinity to the Mediterranean and the Byzantine Empire, it would be inevitable that there would be interaction. Certainly there was early interaction with monastic communities, with priests, with various other aspects of Orthodoxy, and even with some of the heretical aspects of Christianity at that time. So this interaction goes way back to the beginning, and of course the history of Islam being as it spread that interaction became greater and greater.

As that happened, there were a few theologians within the Orthodox Church that began to look at Islam. What were its teachings? To look at the Koran - how does this compare with Christianity? - enter in to theological dialogue on issues of Jesus Christ, the Holy Trinity, and so forth. And that continued in various ways for really over 1000 years, with some of it being very congenial and productive and at other times it was very angry or out of fear, just not exactly knowing what was happening. But as Orthodox Christians we're very unique in that we have this long history of dialogue and relationship with Islam that we can draw from when we look at our contemporary situation today. . . .

I think we need to realize too when we look back on those periods in history and those events, we can look back on the whole history of religion and we can see how so much at times that violence and hatred has been associated with it. Many times it's the incitement of one group against another. "They're different than we are and so we need to do something against them." It's not often religiously based. It may have other causes. And we see that in our modern world today where you have countries that may differ ethnically or religiously and they've lived peacefully for a period of time, and then all of a sudden they're killing each other. That's one of the challenges of our modern world, where we do have a growing global interdependency where countries and religions and races are being brought together in ways that have never happened before on such a large scale throughout human history. And the challenge for us as Christians is, how do we address that in the proper way? How do we, yes, be aware of the past and history and maybe of the good things and the very difficult things, yet on the other hand look at the world that we need to live in today and apply the principles of our Christian faith to our relationships with other human beings? . . .


CM: I remember after 9/11, after the tragedy of the World Trade Center coming down, that the President of the United States met with some of the leading Muslims in this country, brought them to the White House. There was an attempt there - and I believe it was a noble attempt - to try to put forward the best that Muslims had to offer here in America. . . . Then you had commentators coming on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and they began to recite some of the verses that I want to bring up that are from the Koran, from certain chapters. I'm doing that purposely, so that we can go to the question I'm going to ask you: How has Christ shown and directed us to respond to those who do not believe as we do, or are even our own enemies?

So, let me read just a few of them.

From chapter two: "Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God's religion remains supreme."

From chapter four: "The true believers fight for the cause of God, but the infidels fight for the devil. Fight them, against the friends of Satan."

One more, this deals with religious rewards given to those who fight for Mohammed. From chapter nine: "God has purchased from the faithful their lives and worldly goods. And in return has promised them the garden. They will fight for the cause of God. They will slay be slain."

Father, in the light of just some of these - obviously there's thousands of these - tell us, how do we respond as Orthodox Christians to these kinds of things? People who don't believe as we believe, or at some point are even our own enemies.


NM: Well, I think there are a couple of levels of understanding that we need to have when we address these things. First of all, the historical context, in which the prophet Mohammed was initially not concerned with the Jews and Christians. In fact, many times in the Koran they are referred to as the people of the Book and are not seen, are not viewed, as infidels or, say, outside of the faith to the degree that say idolators were. Because when Mohammed went to Mecca and began to preach that was what he was addressing - the idolatry of the society that was there, and their lack of understanding of a one God. And so some of those passages are referring to that historical situation which Mohammed was addressing.

We do have in Islam a tradition that has interpreted those passages and has applied them to people outside of Islam itself, people who are not practicing Islam. And that has always been a debate, even within Islam itself, as to where we have this in the Koran - people of the Book, Christians and Jews - we should understand and treat them differently than others. Others have said, no, anyone who will not submit to the teachings of Islam, than we cannot consider them in any way to be associated with us. And so that has been a challenge and it still is today in Islam, where you have many who will certainly recognize the elements of Christianity and Judaism that to a Muslim have some validity, whereas you have others that will not.

Some of that is associated with the past several hundred years, where Christianity was associated with Western powers that were coming in to Muslim lands, taking over, taking natural resources, all of these things that have really colored the view of Christianity in more political, economic, and geographic ways rather than in religious ways.

So those are things that people have to understand related to the history of Islam, and then have to see too within Islam today that there is such a variety of interpretations. There is no hierarchy. There is no final authority within Islam that determines, "this is a correct interpretation," or not. There are some authorities like that, but there is no one or nothing over all of Muslims that would influence them in a way that would maybe correct aberrations that we would have in interpretation, that really turns people against Christians or against others. . . .

I think one of the challenges that we have today is to ourselves. How much do we know? Because we really can't have a dialogue or discussion if first we don't know our own faith, the teachings of our faith - our Scripture, our theology - and especially if we don't know what Muslims believe and practice. I think that's before us - to educate ourselves. Because if we look back at our own tradition within Orthodox Christianity we have the example of saints and theologians who did not discount a religion that was affecting so many people. And we still have that today. We have so many countries, people, races that are Muslim. They didn't discount that. They engaged with it. They looked at it, they examined it, they said what's different here, what relates to Christianity, how do we enter in to a level of dialogue where we can affirm what we believe as Christians but do it in a Christ-like way? . . .

It's not always about winning converts to Christianity. Although we want to share our faith, it's also about - are we showing love towards another human being by the way in which we engage with them? We learn about who they are. We talk to them about what we believe. We allow the Holy Spirit to work. We don't try to force truth on others. We just ask for the space. I think this is a challenge in Muslim countries, that Christians need the space, the freedom, to be able to express their faith, to share their faith. Our labors today are really to ask Muslim countries to allow more of that to take place. . . .

We've been led on an international level by our Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as he has tried to do that. He's in a unique position, being in the part of the world that he is, to work for that, and work in a very open and loving way to encourage others to allow Christians to worship, to practice, to share their faith as they need to do.


Fr. Christopher Metropulos is founder, host, and executive director of the Orthodox Christian Network (OCN) and the Come Receive The Light national Orthodox Christian radio program (www.myocn.net). He is pastor of St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he and his wife Georgia are raising their six children.

Fr. Nektarios Morrow is the former Director of Communications of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. He is currently an adjunct faculty professor at Howard Paine University, and lives in Brownward, Texas.