Suffering and Its Endurance in Christianity and Islam:  The World Is Not a Vale of Tears

by Claudia Mende

Is resignation to one’s fate a typical Islamic characteristic? Does only Christian theology deal with the question of the righteousness of God? These issues were recently discussed in detail by Islamic and Christian theologians. Claudia Mende presents the results

Natural catastrophes, illness, accidents – life has a whole host of unpleasant experiences in store for many people. Suffering in the world questions the credibility of all monotheistic religions to the core. How can anyone believe in God in this unjust and horrible world? How can we reconcile the existence of evil and the suffering of the innocent with a belief in a benevolent God?

In modern times, this so-called theodicy question is one of the main arguments against the belief in a creator deity. This makes it all the more important for Christianity and Islam to find common ground in order to convincingly answer these basic concerns.

The need for Christians and Muslims to catch up

Christian and Muslim theologians have struggled with just these issues at the Catholic Academy in Stuttgart as part of a conference held by the Christianity-Islam Theological Forum. This annual interreligious get-together of experts has already met four times and has since become the most important forum for Christian and Islamic theologians in the German-speaking world.

This latest conference in Stuttgart has shown that Muslim theologians in Europe are able to critically examine their own tradition, while Christian theologians still have a fair deal to catch up on.

The Islamic God has no need for explanations

The contributions to the forum can finally be read in a collection of articles entitled “A Test or the Price of Freedom? Suffering and its Endurance in Christianity and Islam” published by Pustet Verlag in Regensburg.

It is astonishing how differently Christianity and Islam deal with this issue. The theodicy question has far less significance in Islam than in the Christian tradition and is discussed very little. The Muslim tradition assumes man’s freedom to act and sees human suffering as, above all, a test of his faith in God’s greater righteousness. Man should not expect any explanations from Allah.

It is not in keeping with the Koran and the orthodox Islamic tradition to make accusations against God, also because the pious could thereby find themselves in harm’s way. This theme is, however, taken up by Islamic mysticism. The figure of Job from the Judaic-Christian tradition, who holds God accountable for his suffering, is also established in the Koran.

The Ayoub of the Koran, however, is a pious man who submits to his fate, as the religious scholar Stefan Schreiner from the University of Tübingen elaborates. An explicit thematization of human suffering and its religious interpretation, however, is not to be found in the Koran.

As a result, Islam has a much more optimistic view of the world than Christianity. For Muslims, the world is not a vale of tears. In contrast, Christianity stands under the long shadow of the transfiguration of suffering, which has accompanied the religion in an often baleful way throughout its history. Arnulf von Scheliha, Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Osnabrück, sees this as reason enough to take his own religious tradition to task.

Fatalism as a typical Islamic characteristic?

Christian history is also familiar with a yearning for martyrdom, which can be politically abused. “What we are currently experiencing is that people are led to martyrdom for political purposes and are misused for terrorist aims,” says Scheliha. Such overzealousness results in “the religious interpretation of suffering and consolation falling into horrible disrepute.”

In Sunni Islam, the theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) achieved consensus with other theologians on the position that human reason leads to unconditional obedience to God. Today, this submission to one’s fate is often seen as a typical Muslim characteristic. Yet, does this willingness to endure the trials of fate stem from theology or the political and social circumstances in the Arab world?

Unfortunately, this question is not comprehensively dealt with in the articles. Nonetheless, the Islamic scholar Hüseyin Inam from the European Muslim Theologian Association stresses that the concept of divine destiny (qadar) has been “persistently misused to condone social and political injustice, although classical theologians have been almost unanimous in their condemnation of this manner of justification.”

“God is also active outside of the Islamic state”

The contribution by the Bosnian theologian Dzevad Hodzic from the University of Sarajevo is particularly noteworthy. Hodzic urges Muslims to reconsider the relationship to their own history. “Even during the centuries of Islam’s historical triumph, its history was not as ideal as it appears,” stresses Hodzic. Muslims should hold themselves and not others responsible for “many of their difficulties.”

Above all, they should “critically question the predominant understanding of the Islamic concept of God. This means that God is not absent when Islam is not the historically dominant religion. God is also active outside of the Islamic state.”

Hodzic’s article especially shows how rewarding discussion between Christian and Islamic theologians can be. One can only look forward to the results from the next round of discussions.

Claudia Mende

© Qantara.de 2009

Source: Qantara.de

Andreas Renz, Hansjörg Schmid, Jutta Sperber, Abdullah Takim (editors): A Test or the Price of Freedom? Suffering and its Endurance in Christianity and Islam (Prüfung oder Preis der Freiheit? Leid und Leidbewältigung in Christentum und Islam), published by Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg, 2008.