On the Side Effects of Polemics

In attending conferences recently, I’ve noticed a trend gaining traction among some ministries to Muslims. I sometimes meet individuals who are part of Muslim Background Believer (MBB) networks claiming to have access to ancient Qur'anic manuscripts that, they argue, differ significantly from the standardized Qur'an.

When I inquire further, it becomes clear that the hope behind these efforts is that new scholarship will expose the Qur'an’s flaws, ultimately undermining the foundation of Islam itself.

This approach raises some critical missiological concerns for me.

Firstly, I do not need Islam to be a priori disproven for Jesus to be Lord. My faith rests in the perfect revelation of Christ — there is no one like Him, and no one has done more for me. Whether or not Islam is polemically dismantled has no bearing on Christ’s Lordship, and it shouldn't for any of us, including Muslims.

I am deeply interested in Islamic studies, and understanding Islam’s emergence is essential for missiology. However, recognizing that many elements of Islam’s traditional narrative are mythological should not make us triumphalistic, but empathetic. We can sympathize with Muslims who are navigating their faith in a complex, real-world context. For example, I sometimes reflect on my own identity as an “Evangelical” — a term that carries its own set of contested meanings! Just as Muslims wrestle with internal questions of faith and identity, so do we as Christians.

Secondly, there has been extensive scholarly work in this area already. I am shocked when leaders in these groups are unfamiliar with key scholars like Gabriel Said Reynolds, Martin Accad, or Daniel Brown, whose work extensively explores the complexities of Qur'anic manuscripts (see also various sections in The Religious Other).

This kind of oversight suggests that such MBB-driven research, while earnest, may not be engaging with the broader academic landscape. Any attempt to dismantle “Islam” through textual criticism needs to reckon with this body of existing scholarship.

Finally, a strong focus on polemics reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what sustains Islam. Biblical faith is grounded ontologically in the person of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. Yet Islam, like all other religious traditions, is a socially constructed reality – without Muslims there would be no Islam. Islam does not rest simply on a textual foundation or a reality outside the realm of experience. Instead, it is Muslims themselves who decide what Islam is, and they continue to shape, evolve, and contest its meaning.

Even if one were to discredit the Qur'an academically, Islam as a lived religion would persist. In fact, polemics often have the unintended consequence of solidifying group identities. Though it’s true that some Muslims convert to Christianity through these debates, such conversions are exceptions rather than the norm. The broader impact of polemics on the Muslim ummah (community) often serves to reinforce, not weaken, religious boundaries.

If a medical treatment has severe side effects that make the patient worse than the illness being treated, one might say the treatment is worse than the disease. Let’s be discerning with our use of polemics in ministry to Muslims.

Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes | Richards and James

Richard James is an associate editor for our upcoming Motus Dei volume and will be contributing a chapter tentatively titled, Hearing the Story of “People of Peace” in Luke-Acts.

Together with E Randolph Richards, he has coauthored a new book for InterVarsity titled Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World.

From the back cover:

The Bible was written within collectivist cultures. When Westerners, immersed in individualism, read the Bible, it's easy to misinterpret important elements―or miss them altogether. In any culture, the most important things usually go without being said. So to read Scripture well we benefit when we uncover the unspoken social structures and values of its world. We need to recalibrate our vision. Combining the expertise of a biblical scholar and a missionary practitioner, Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes is an essential guidebook to the cultural background of the Bible and how it should inform our reading. E. Randolph Richards and Richard James explore deep social structures of the ancient Mediterranean―kinship, patronage, and brokerage―along with their key social tools―honor, shame, and boundaries―that the biblical authors lived in and lie below the surface of each text. From Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar to Peter's instructions to elders, the authors strip away individualist assumptions and bring the world of the biblical writers to life. Expanding on the popular Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, this book makes clear how understanding collectivism will help us better understand the Bible, which in turn will help us live more faithfully in an increasingly globalized world.

Nijay Gupta, professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, has a good review of the book at Christianity Today. Here are some highlights from his review:

Richards is a well-respected biblical scholar, bringing reliable insight and interpretation to the study of individual texts. And James (“Richard James” is a pseudonym) has been involved in church-planting ministry in the Middle East. As a team, they deftly weave in modern cross-cultural stories to demonstrate worldview factors and social values of collectivist people. And they cycle back and forth between stories and passages from the Old and New Testaments…

I wish I had been given a handbook like this 15 years ago when I was first learning how to read the Bible well…

A central assumption of this book is the idea that we all read Scripture through our own cultural lenses or “eyes.” That is not necessarily bad. We have two eyes but only one perspective. Many modern Western readers of the Bible see the world differently than the biblical writers and the many characters in our Holy Book. I am thankful that Richards and James wrote this crash course in collectivism versus individualism to help us avoid many faux pas and pitfalls.

Read the whole review. Buy the book.

Lausanne Global Analysis: Chapman and Azumah Respond to Taylor

When I first read Jenny Taylor’s brief article Why Grace is Not Enough to Reach Muslims: Balancing Grace and Truth in Outreach, I admit I was surprised that Lausanne would allow an article like this associated with it’s name. It was a bit confusing, and it seemed to imply that anyone who does not truly understand that violence is core to Islam has somehow minimized “truth” in their ministry approach to Muslims.

Thankfully, Colin Chapman and John Azumah have responded with  Islam through the Lens of the Golden Rule: Grace and Truth in Our Approach to Muslims and Islam. Here are their four main points, which I believe quickly get to the heart of many missiological fallacies made when discussing Islam and terrorism:

1. We must allow Muslims to define what is ‘true Islam’ and remember Muslims are not all the same
2. Texts are important, but they cannot be considered in isolation
3. Understanding jihadi violence does not mean justifying it
4. We too have our failings, and we need to find ways of addressing these problems within our own communities

I encourage you to read these two brief articles. This is an important conversation.

What is sharia law?

From The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility (p. 79-80):

Based on a Qur’anic keyword meaning the “straight path,” the sharia was first elaborated by Muslim scholars as a philosophical and theological rather than a strictly legal concept (W.C. Smith 1962).

Yet over time and by virtue of the force represented by the rising importance of Sufism as a discipline stressing the inner truth, the sharia, as much as it was seen as the manifestation of divine Will (shar`), also came to represent the outer dimensions of the ethico-religious code of Islam. The sharia happened to be identified with the more systematic dimension of the Islamic normativity, the one that could be formulated in terms of legal norms which, in turn, would be liable – to a not yet exclusive extent – to be enforced. Apart from this technically legal dimension, the sharia covered a comprehensive concept of norm, which included ritual and dietary rules, as well as rules about family, commerce, and social relations more in general. However, this normative idiom, reflecting basic values of humanity, justice, and equality, never became a code in the sense of a closed (and univocally ‘searchable’) text. It rather preserved an inherent, inner pluralism and contestability in the form of a cumulative tradition articulated in translocal schools and local, contextualized sets of practices variably drawing from most pre-Islamic customs.

This is why the understandings of sharia and related practices have been historically dependent on the types of knowledge and the varieties of culture prevalent on a local scale, as well as on the degree of social contention and reconstruction that they authorized. The convergence between concretely practiced Islamic jurisprudence and the idea of sharia was therefore a diversified, gradual, and (at least till the colonial era) never fully accomplished process… Modern attempts to systematize and implement sharia, whether associated with ‘liberal’ and ‘reformist’ or with ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘puritan’ interpretations (all labels that, originating in Western history, should be taken with a grain of salt), have been hardly able to extinguish its historic dynamism. Yet they certainly contributed to obfuscate the consciousness of this dynamism among a mass public, which in the colonial and postcolonial eras has been more prone to appreciate its new rigidified contours.

It is a myth to assume that sharia is a universal, coherent legal code that is ready to be applied. Any missiological approach to Muslims that claims sharia is some sort of spiritual force that means the same thing to all Muslims everywhere has not done enough contextual analysis.

The Haram Halal Fallacy

There are certain paradigms of witness to Muslims that treat Islam as an evil, monolithic entity that corrupts everything it touches. Therefore, in this view, when talking about evangelism/discipleship, we should have nothing to do with “Islam.”

The tendency to binary thinking is related to a modern worldview and a naïve realism epistemology. This black and white paradigm also understands theology of religions to mean that Christianity is against Islam and will eventually triumph. There can be no mixing between the Christianity and anything else.

This is fallacious and lazy thinking. See this post by Daniels: Black and White - - or not?. We could easily expose this fallacy by discussing the incarnation and the nature of biblical revelation, but I want to make one quick point… Ironically, this model of missiology also mirrors conservative Islamic law, where everything is either haram or halal. It has a lot to do with with how mainstream Muslims view the world today!

(HT:C&P)

See also The Essentialist Fallacy.

The Essentialist Fallacy

The essentialist fallacy is committed when an evaluation is made of an “insider” or MBB on the basis of some supposed “real Islam” and not on the basis of how the specific believer relates to the particular context, including his or her local Muslim community. Neither insider proponents nor traditionalists are immune to the essentialist fallacy.

Examples of this fallacy abound in evangelical missiology. I would be interested to see readers of Circumpolar point to some in the comments below.

Black and White - - or not?

Thinking in terms of "black and white" is common in Christian mission. After all, people are either saved or lost, Christian or not, right? While this kind of binary thinking obscures reality, particularly when it comes to something as complex as cross-cultural mission.

One of my former Muslim friends likes to say that the first few years after he came to Jesus he did not know what he was. He did not know if he was "Christian" or "Muslim," everything was confusing. He told me, "the only thing I <strong>did know</strong> was that I was clinging to Jesus!"

Many people feel like having everything boiled down to good or bad, right or wrong. It makes them feel safe. Not only that, but it is actually easier to think this way.

Despite the incredible complexity God gave our minds, the physical organ of our brain is basically lazy. Without getting too deep into neurological science, due to the nature of biology, our brain seeks the easiest way to process information because that conserves energy. Thus it is easiest to think in terms of black or white because it is simplest.

But a quick look around your home will remind you that most of us enjoy more than the three primary colors. Because of the beauty it brings into our lives, we have learned to think in terms of nuance and shades.

In the same way, our missiology is greatly enriched when we push beyond our natural tendency of binary thinking. While it takes real work to carefully consider nuance and shades of meaning, the effort is more than made up for by the beauty of seeing God's incredibly rich handiwork woven into a great redemptive tapestry.