Allen's "Future Church" -- Trend Three: Islam

Two weeks ago Amy kicked off our discussion of John Allen's important new book, The Future Church, with Allen's first trend ("A World Church"), and last week Rob continued the conversation by focusing on his second trend: "Evangelical Catholicism." This week I’ll lay out some of the most important insights from Allen’s reflections on Islam (or more appropriately perhaps, Catholic engagement with Islam). I will focus on his strongest contentions, identify the more problematic points, and then comment on the implications for Catholic legal education.

Allen provides a fair bit of background on important demographic trends in the growth of Islam. Although the community is growing, the statistics cited tend to debunk alarmist fears that Islam will somehow displace Christianity anytime soon. That said, Catholics can no longer afford to ignore or marginalize Islam as a world faith, with its nearly two billion adherents.

The next section provides theological background and context for the great diversity within Islam, appropriately rejecting a monolithic or essentialized view of the various communities. This then leads to an important discussion of the sometimes problematic relationship the institutional Catholic Church has had with Muslims, particularly in the last 30 years. After this generally helpful introduction, Allen goes on to list a number of possible consequences for Catholicism.

The most important (and in my opinion likely) consequences he identifies are the expansion of Islamic studies, the role of “Great Commission” Catholics, the increasing importance of religious freedom, and the possibility of greater cooperation between Muslims and Catholics on issues of agreement. Islamic studies has clearly become a high priority for the Vatican as well as Catholic universities, and this is only likely to grow. The impulse of Catholics to convert (which I would argue is a different goal than evangelization) Muslims will likely rise with the influence of Evangelicalism and is likely to increase interreligious tension in predominantly Muslim countries. The Catholic Church is likely to maintain its advocacy for religious freedom in countries like Saudi Arabia and constraints on religious expression in places like France and Turkey. To be fair, only recently has the Catholic Church supported religious freedom, whereas institutional tolerance of Christianity was an ideal embedded in early Islamic texts and practice. The most hopeful insight in the chapter is that Christians and Muslims have similar visions of justice and agree on a number of important policy issues, providing ample opportunities for us to cooperate.

The main challenge I have with the chapter is its depiction of radicalism and the threat of terrorism. With regard to the first, the main movements typically associated with violence (e.g., The Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabism, the Taliban, and Hizbullah) are briefly described, but there is inadequate analysis of any real connection between theology and violence. Lumping the Iranian Revolution with 9/11 makes little sense, and attributing violence in both cases to Islam ignores social, political, and economic context. With regard to terrorism, I was deeply troubled by the subject lines “A Wild Card: Blowing Up St. Peter’s” and “A North-South Clash of Civilizations.” While these are both in his least likely to occur category, including them in some ways make them foreseeable events—new reasons for us to live in fear.

Perhaps the main implication of this chapter for legal education is the increasing importance of teaching Islamic and Middle Eastern law in American (especially Catholic) law schools. John Makdisi at St. Thomas has done important research on the proliferation of Islamic law courses in American law schools, and Catholic schools have played an important role in this development. Two other implications might be that Catholic law schools, in particular, ought to offer strong international and dispute resolution programs to prepare lawyers who can constructively engage in the work of dialogue and reconciliation.