Agreeing and Disagreeing in Love: Dialogue Between and Within Faiths

by Dora-Marie Goulet

Having been to other events in this vein over the last year, I went in with certain expectations. My adrenaline was pumping, and my poor body desperately wanted to fight or to flee, but I made myself sit quietly and listen intently to the one hour presentation by Baroness Cox on “Bridges not Walls: Reconciliation thru Realism.”

Perhaps because I had already had exposure to this view of interfaith dialogue, this time I was able to move past astonishment to analysis of the approach. I was fascinated to realize that it has much in common with the radicalized Islam it warns us of.

In Ed Husain’s book, The Islamist, he describes how young Islamists are taught to tie local events to global conflicts to raise the fervour of people who might otherwise be apathetic. Cox’ presentation, as I understood it, was to be about Christian/Muslim dialogue, instead over three quarters of the presentation looked at situations of conflict in Nigeria, the Sudan and Indonesia.

More specifically, it degenerated to the level sometimes referred to as “disaster pornography,” and insisted on seeing the sufferings in these areas as a direct result of “Jihad” and inter-religious conflict, rather than being open to the possibility that a complex web of factors play a role; including tribalism, economic injustice, political corruption, and the legacy of colonialism.

It was not at all clear to me that the topic was “Bridges not Walls,” rather it appeared to be a call for funds and a scapegoating of a minority expression of Islam, which then casts aspersions, even if unintentionally, on Islam in general. I worry that such an approach does little to improve interfaith conversations within our own country.

I’m struggling to know how to disagree in love with Christians who take a stance like that of Cox, even while I respect the relief work she does. Perhaps space for real dialogue between speaker and listeners, rather than the inevitable power dynamics of a Question and Answer period would have made a difference.

I’d like to contrast her talk with one I attended the next night, this one organized through North London Interfaith. It was a presentation by a young English woman who converted to Islam six years ago. Six years hasn’t been enough time to dampen her enthusiasm for her new faith.

From what I understood, growing up in a nominally Christian family she was searching for a system of belief that would shape her whole way of life. Growing up in a practicing Christian family myself, I have faith she could have found what she was looking for within Christianity. Still, I applaud her sincere desire to be a better person, and to find a faith tradition that would help her in that.

I don’t “agree” with her (that Muhammad conveyed a more complete revelation of God’s will than Jesus did), but as two ordinary women, both wanting to live as more loving people in an often broken world, I find my disagreement with her cushioned by mutual respect.

God willing, I will also learn to have a more loving disagreement with those with whom I differ, like Baroness Cox, within my own tradition.