Slaughter on the Beach: in whose name?

I'm reticent about adding to the torrent of comment and opinion following the massacre on the Tunisian beach at Sousse. When we're faced with terrible events that affect others rather than ourselves, our instinctive response is to start talking. So the first thing to do before we open our mouths is to be silent in solidarity with its victims. This atrocity is beyond words. When Job was afflicted with terrible pains, the best thing his comforters could do was to sit silently with him for a week. It was when they began to speak that his suffering got a lot worse.

So this is a time for tears and for prayer. We weep with and for the victims. We pray for those who have been murdered and injured and bereaved. It's a time for us all to try to enter into the grief so many across the world will be feeling. It's a time when people of good will who follow the three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, must stand together in supplication, protest and witness. This outrage, with every other act of terror in our young but bloody century is another step in the mindless assault of brutal savagery upon human civilisation. No one of integrity condones it, whether they have faith or not. If you don't read any further, at least please endorse that sentiment if you can.

However, we have to speak about terror in relation to faith. After Sousse, many said things like: the jihadists weren't acting in the name of Islam, but in pursuit of some crazy ideology. I've heard a number of commentators say that this was not about religion but politics. Yet that doesn't sound quite right. Those beach murderers, and those who perpetrated similar outrages including the 7/7 bombings in London can't be insulated from the religion they espoused.

We all do it. I've defended Islam by saying that the great majority are a noble witness to their faith; only a tiny minority embrace its perversions that utterly discredit it. We know we speak for virtually the whole of the Muslim community that condemns violence and seeks peaceable co-existence in a world of many faiths. I've been privileged to know a fair few Muslims in two cities I've lived in. They have all been fine people. I've learned a lot about Islam from them and admired the disciplined way it shapes its adherents. You only have to watch Muslims keeping Ramadan this summer to see this. It puts my Lent to shame.

You'll remember the sense of panic and fear not far below the surface following the attacks of 9/11. I wanted the church to hear the voice of Islam amid the cries for retribution and a war on terror. I persuaded a local Sunni leader to address the Diocesan Synod. In a powerful speech he begged for understanding and partnership with us as a church. and with all the faiths represented in the city. He began by turning to the Bishop and saying, rather to his surprise, 'You, Sir, are a Bishop to us Muslims too'.

How should we speak about the perversions of faith when actions like terror discredit it? Perhaps something like: whatever they say, these jihadists are not acting in the true spirit of Islam. Take our Christian history. Islam still hurts in the aftermath of the crusades. Jihadists look back to them as a reason for wreaking vengeance on 'infidels', among whom Christians (or perceived Christians) are prominent for their reckless adventurism, slaughter and cruelty centuries ago. When I travelled the pilgrim road to Compostela in Spain and saw medieval images and paintings of St James the Great, called Matamoros, 'Slayer of the Moors', I realised how the spirit of the crusades had permeated medieval Christendom. It took centuries to learn co-existence and toleration, one of the gifts of the Enlightenment to religious faith (pace those who see only bad in that movement to which the modern world owes so much).

It's no use Christians saying: those who inspired, preached and led the crusades, princes, popes, bishops and even saints like the great St Bernard, were somehow 'not acting in the name of Christianity.' They clearly thought they were doing precisely what their faith required. Very few questioned it. Only with hindsight have the churches recognised the monumental error they committed in the name of Christ. We should be deeply ashamed that our Christian history is stained with massacre and bloodshed on this colossal scale. Of so many collective sins the church has committed down the centuries, the crusades are among the very worst. Of course Muslims too were implicated in these centuries of violence. It was largely the unquestioned way in the pre-modern world. But that shouldn't make us feel any better about it. as we look back to those terrible times.

I'm saying that a faith has to grow in self-understanding and maturity in each generation. If it doesn't, all religion is brought into disrepute, not only your own particular faith. But the faithful move at different speeds. Christians don't now defend the crusades (do they? - the evangelical Bible class I attended as a teenager, the 'Crusaders', changed its name for this reason, a wise move). But we still see believers today who bring discredit on the good name of Christianity just as jihadists do on the good name of Islam. Woodenly literal readings of the Bible leads some Christians to commit acts of violence at abortion clinics, stir up racial hatred and endorse institutional homophobia in their churches. They are acting 'in the name of' Christianity, whatever we more liberal types say about the complexities of Christian history and hermeneutics. That's also true of Islam. Radical fundamentalists in all religious traditions claim to represent faith in its pristine ur-purity, free of corruption and compromise. They read their sacred texts, come to simplistic black-and-white conclusions and consign the rest of us to burn as heretics (which is how Isis-inspired Sunni extremists justify their attacks on Shia mosques).

Clearly there are many different 'Islams' and many different 'Christianitys'. We want to think that our version of our faith tries to be close to its central vision and values. Who is to say that it isn't, however imperfectly we live it out? We eschew religious craziness in all its forms, whether expressed violently or not because we have seen the huge damage it causes. People are killed and injured through clashes of religious civilisations and ideologies. Millions more are cowed with fear. Bad religion is poisoning the world.

It takes religious literacy to gain intelligent purchase on all this and allow good religion to see off the bad. We, the millions who are lit up by our faith, for whom it is the very centre of our path to wisdom and goodness cannot allow religion to be hi-jacked by the madness of the few. In an era when secularised leaders often have little clue about the rudiments of world faiths, we have to ask if they are up to (or even up for) this tricky conversation. All the more need for them to take the best theological advice on offer so as to speak with clear heads into this babble of religious claim and counterclaim. We have to understand the complexities of what we are handling when we speak about faith at all, let alone at a time of crisis. 'Islam' and 'Christianity' won't be pinned down. So we need some sense of the long and difficult histories that lie behind those words.  

So it's safer to say something like these religious perversions are not in the spirit of how a great world faith understands itself today rather than just not in the name of. It's part of the need to foster a vital debate about what good religion brings to the modern world and how the world faiths talk to one another. I don't sense that our leaders always grasp how urgent this is in relation to religious-inspired terror. How we frame the discourse is all-important. To speak wisely and well is only the beginning. But it will lay a firm foundation.

Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair!

Last week's destruction of Nimrud by Daesh-IS is nothing less than a calamity.

Nimrud is a very ancient Assyrian site. The city was founded in the 2^nd millennium BC, and became the capital of the mighty Assyrian empire in the 9^th century under its legendary king Ashurnasirpal II. His palace was one of the most magnificent buildings of its age. You can see for yourself by going to the marvellous Assyrian Galleries in the British Museum (or by visiting the website www.britishmuseum.org). Two whole rooms are dedicated to Nimrud including the famous palace reliefs. They show in amazing detail the kind of activities that kings liked to engage in such as battles, lion-hunts, chariot rides and sacrifices. From Nimrud king Tiglath-Pileser III launched his campaign to overrun the kingdom of Israel in 721 BC. The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold; his cohorts were gleaming with silver and gold wrote Byron. It was the end for Israel. Twenty years later, when the capital had been moved to Nineveh, the Assyrians attacked again, this time the southern kingdom of Judah. The palace reliefs showing the siege of Lachish are among the Museum’s most precious treasures.

One of the Nimrud sculptures in the galleries is a statue of a winged lion. It was one of a pair that stood at the entrance to Ashurnasirpal’s throne-room. Because the king was seen as a divine figure, this room was the most sacred space in the palace complex. The carved lamassu, as they were called, had a ritual, protective function. The lion’s strength and the eagle’s wings together symbolised keeping chaos at bay. By defending the space against the demonic, they kept it as a ritually safe place where the gods could do business with the king and through him with the people whose sacred representative he was.

Some sculptures from that era survived in situ at Nimrud until last week. They must have been a magnificent sight. Not now. Even its famous winged lions and bulls have not been able to protect it against the power of the bulldozer. IS has said that it has levelled it. We needn’t doubt that they have razed its walls and buildings, ground its peerless sculptures and decorations into dust. They claim that these relics of an ancient civilisation are idolatrous. They are an affront to Islam with its prohibition of images; whatever is pre-Islamic must be destroyed. They glory in the iconoclastic project of erasing every survival, every trace, every memory of what is seen as subverting the purity of monotheism. It is an act of cultural cleansing. It's a crime against humanity. And it's heart breaking.  

How do you measure the value of heritage as against the value of human life? 

I've learned a little about the human and spiritual significance of heritage, having lived and worked in the Durham World Heritage Site these past 12 years. It has raised for me the sharp question about whether we shouldn't have an uneasy conscience about investing too much in ancient stones. We no doubt regret the loss of Nimrud, but shouldn’t we care more about the human beings and communities of Iraq and Syria who have been treated so cruelly? Isn’t the life of even one man or woman or child worth more than all the treasures of antiquity?

As soon as I pose the question that way, I see that it’s based on a false premise. It's not either-or: each is part of the other. The callous treatment of Iraq and Syria’s heritage is just another aspect of a regime that is callous in every other respect. Nothing is sacred to it except its own corrupted version of faith, its concept of a hideous deity whose pleasure is to exact vengeance. The destruction of heritage with all that it symbolises of human life, culture and achievement is just another expression of this murderous world-view. It is hardly the first time. Iconoclasts have flourished in many periods of history. In the 20th century, precisely this was true of Nazi Germany with its hatred of all that was not Aryan. The book-burnings, the re-writing of history, the suppression of ‘decadent’ art and culture were part and parcel of the terror, the deportations and the extermination camps. Where life is cheap, so are civilisation and heritage. These too become the objects of wrath and revenge. There is nothing new under the sun.

We have wept for many months for the victims of this tragedy that is being played out in the lands of the ancient near east. We would not have believed the cruelty inflicted on so many innocent victims if we had not seen it on our screens with our own eyes. The world seems powerless to stop it. ‘Look on my works ye mighty, and despair!’ And desperate is what it seems, when the lone and level sands stretch far away over the bodies of murdered victims and the vanishing human traces of millennia. But Ozymandias himself had become a mere memory in Shelley’s sonnet, his impotent toppled colossus a symbol of how all principalities and powers fall in time. There is a reign we look for that will be the judgment of all the cruelties and corruptions of human systems. Only this kingdom lasts for ever.

Meanwhile, we can still visit the Assyrian Galleries in London and wonder at the treasures from Nimrud. But for me, it will be with a deeper sense of the tears in things. The Assyrian empire was itself a theatre of cruelty: the atrocities of Ashurnasirpal were legendary. These ancient artefacts already speak of terror from the past. Now they speak of a terror of today that is the daily experience of ordinary people in Iraq and Syria. The palace reliefs, sculptures and winged lions mustn’t leave us untouched. They should evoke our lament and compassion, return us to the work of prayer and action on behalf of people we must go on holding in our hearts.

Valuing heritage must always mean reverencing human life, showing our solidarity with all of humanity past and present, especially the suffering peoples of all ages. If we don't cherish the memory of the past and try to understand it, perhaps there's something missing from our care for the victims of the present. Good remembering is a symbol of our capacity to be humane. It should excite our social conscience because at heart it is always about people. Those who despise it show us what their values really are.

At least no one can destroy the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Je Suis Charlie: thinking and praying in the shadow of a massacre

As I write this, a vast crowd is gathering in Paris in a defiant cry for freedom and unity following last week's terrible massacres. Many world leaders are joining them, among them David Cameron. I wish I could be there too. Yet I am there, wholeheartedly, in spirit, in imagination, in sympathy, in everything except body.

Much has been written about these events and their aftermath. The Twitter hashtag #jesuischarlie has trended beyond all expectation. I have added to the volume of tweets expressing sorrow, prayers, outrage, and condemnation. Above all I have wanted to join the worldwide chorus of Non!, the refusal to cave in before the fear violence is meant to evoke. Bombs and guns will never, ever, intimidate the pen. Not in any society that treasures democracy and is pledged to live by it. 

What have been my thoughts in the past few days? They have swung this way and that, I admit it: when events are so wicked, it can take time for our initial responses to stabilise. At first I entertained the notion that when religion is mocked or insulted, as in the long tradition of satire in which Charlie Hebdo stands, we should not be surprised if its committed practitioners react violently. But that's the first step on the dangerous path where understanding an evil can veer into subtly shifting responsibility for it. We can start to think that when people say certain things or draw certain pictures, they should expect a retaliation. So while we are appalled, we toy with the thought that they partly brought it on themselves: whether through malice, unwisdom or just carelessness, they were responsible. But this is absolutely how not to see it. Responsibility for this atrocity lies with those who pulled the trigger - with them alone. 

What they did was an act of hatred of the freedoms our democracy stands for. We need to calibrate those freedoms. In any society, rights are not absolute. They have to be negotiated and consented to. Freedom of speech, precisely because of the power it gives, has to be handled responsibly. Paddy Ashdown tweeted last week: 'Some say that because you can say something, it doesn't mean you should. But free speech means that because you shouldn't say something, it doesn't mean you can't.' To put it that way round is clarifying. There are things I shouldn't say or write; if possible, I shouldn't even entertain the thought behind them. Not because I am not free to, or am afraid to, but because it erodes the value of another human being, damages people, or is exploitative or hurtful or just plain rude. That is a judgment everyone must make. And within the boundaries of what is lawful, we should expect a huge range of opinion as to what is or is not responsible in an environment where so many freedoms are given us. Charlie Hebdo is not everyone's cup of tea. But however people use these freedoms, and even if they abuse them, violence is never the answer. 

Voltaire has predictably been much quoted: 'I disagree with what you say, but shall defend to the death your right to say it'. It's hard to improve on that. I guess that saying that makes me what I have realised in a new way I am: a citizen of modernity, a child of the Enlightenment. The assault on Charlie Hebdo was a clear attack on the values of the Enlightenment at the very heart of its French homeland. Freedom to speak, equality before the law, toleration of dissent, all this was in the sights of the Islamists as they named their victims and gunned them down. They did what they did not out of reverence for truth and justice on behalf of the Prophet. It was an act of naked fear. 

To be a post-Enlightenment society means standing for the belief that the tyranny of ideas, any ideas, even the best, can never belong in a civilised society, let alone the distorted and debased doctrines of radical Islam or other extreme fundamentalisms. The principle of laïcité lies at the heart of the secular French Republic. That clear separation of the state from religious belief and practice is the direct heir of Enlightenment thinking. It's not that religion is to be repressed, but that everyone should be allowed to practise it according to their conviction in an environment of toleration. Or not, as the case may be. It's important for people of faith to understand that liberal secularism, so hated by some strands of Christianity, is not the tyrannous proscription of faith but the guarantor of a space in which it can find its free expression. At its best, it is the ally of good religion, not its enemy.

This much has become clearer to me in the past few days: that we must speak and act not out of fear or hatred but out of the love of truth. Yes, the Enlightenment itself did not always live up to its own best vision of a civilised society: witness the Terror that followed the French Revolution. But just as in Christianity and Islam, we need to rise to the highest aspiration of a noble movement, not the corrupted versions certain periods of history bear witness to. And the Enlightenment has given us gifts we should celebrate and be profoundly thankful for. It's arguable that it could only have happened in a Christian environment with its respect for the individual, for personal freedom and for the pursuit of truth. 

The preacher in the Cathedral today got it right. He said that he certainly did not like it when his Lord was maligned or mocked or his name used as a swear word. It is hurtful and grievous. Yet nothing anyone can say or do to Jesus Christ today can go beyond what he has already suffered in his passion and crucifixion. He stands before us as the Lord of truth and love. And, as the New Testament tells us, he did not resort to retaliation when he was ridiculed and insulted. 'When he was abused, he did not abuse in return.' 

Islam honours the same God of Abraham as Christians and Jews. He is not a coercive tyrant; on the contrary, as the Qur'an insists, he is 'Allah the compassionate and merciful'. We do not confuse those who follow the noble path of Islam with the crazed extremists who have so violently twisted its meaning and practice, and by wreaking havoc on the streets of France brought the name of a great world faith into disrepute. Jesus prayed from the cross for those who did not know what they were doing. These atrocities are beyond comprehension to us, beyond our capacity as mortals to forgive. We burn with anger on behalf of victims who can no longer cry out for themselves. Yet is it not precisely in the heat of our rage that we must pray that hardest of all prayers that Jesus uttered at the darkest moment of his passion: 'Father, forgive'? Or try to?

Black Flags over Mosul

The black flags of Isis are flying over Christian churches in Mosul. It is heartbreaking to think of what they symbolise: the ruthless persecution of innocent Christian men, women and children who are fleeing for safety from the city that has been their home for generations. The doorposts of Christian homes are now marked by a blood-red symbol: the Arabic letter N for Nazarene. It means they are to be slaughtered.

Mosul was already ancient when Christians first settled there in the 2nd century. It stands on the Tigris, one of the rivers that watered the Fertile Crescent and on whose banks some of the oldest civilisations in the world were established. Across the river stood the proud city of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, where Sennacherib built a great palace in about 700BCE - you can see his magnificent palace reliefs in the British Museum. 

Mosul played a central part in the growth of Christianity in early times. By the 6th century, it was a bishopric of the Assyrian (Chaldean) Church. Some of the world's oldest Christian communities were founded in what is now Iraq, and the valley of the Tigris was home to many of them. Christians were indigenised there before Islam arrived. And when it did, a modus vivendi enabled Christians and Muslims for most of the subsequent centuries to live peaceably together. 

These ancient Christian communities harmed no one, did not subvert Islam, did not antagonise their Muslim neighbours. On the contrary, their members were exemplary citizens, aware of their minority status in an Islamic environment but respected as adherents of a fellow Abrahamic faith, a people of the book. They did not look for conflict, simply for a safe space in which to practise their faith peacefully as their forebears had done since time immemorial. 

The swift arrival of the radical Sunni movement called Isis has changed all that with a viciousness that has surprised the west. Crosses and statues over Christian churches have been toppled. An 1800 year old church has been destroyed. Christians have been warned: 'if you want to stay alive, convert to Islam at once, or pay the Christian tax (protection money) or get out of the city'. Most are fleeing, perhaps never to return. This exodus was already beginning ten years ago as in other places in Iraq; now it is in full spate. Few are left, for this is no place to stay when lives are at such risk. As are those of Shiite Muslims too - something we mustn't forget.

We weep with these exiles who weep beside the waters of Babylon. We pray for them, and as churches in safe, peaceful western Europe, we shall support them through refugee and aid agencies that are working to bring assistance as quickly as they can. They need to know that they can count on us not to forget them in their great need. They need to know that we shall keep their story alive in the media so that the nation is aware of their plight.

But there is something else we must do. It is to resist demonising Islam because of the cruelty of this rogue movement. Isis, like its parent body Al Qaeda, like Boko Haram in Nigeria, is utterly untypical of mainstream Islam. We mustn't allow these terrible events to cloud our response to a noble world faith with its values of dignity, honour and reverence for life. Instead we should make common cause with our Muslim friends and neighbours to denounce violence and terror, and support them as they speak out against the atrocities perpetrated in their name. The more they can do this, the more chance there is that radicalisation will be stanched before its poison gets expressed in bullets and bombs.

I once sat down with a senior imam I'd got to know. He too was a Sunni, from Saudi Arabia, not a westernised Muslim like most I had met. He gave me a copy of the Qur'an in which he had underlined the passages that spoke well of Christians. 'You are among these' he said, pointing to the Cathedral. So I asked him about the passages where Christians are derided or criticised. 'Those are about renegades who deny the Abrahamic faith' he said, 'not loyal, faithful, god fearing people like you.' 

I guess that Islam's reading of Christianity is a more complex matter, where so much is coloured by history; but I remember that encounter with warmth. It helped me to understand the respect with which Islam has in its best époques regarded Christianity. This, I think, is more characteristic of it than the bitterness and hatred that each day's headlines seem to underline and which do so much to fuel the Islamophobia that is becoming a worrying aspect of modern western attitudes. 

No to Islamophobia

After last week’s killing of Drummer Rigby, what is there for me to say that hasn’t already been said far better by our political and religious leaders? We continue to pray for him and his family.  We pray for those who dream up and perpetrate these terrible acts, whatever their belief or ideology.  With our prayers we try to re-imagine a world in which historic hatreds are being healed and people of all faiths and cultures live together as friends.  And we stand alongside those of the Islamic faith who are feeling beleaguered, misunderstood and afraid in the aftermath of last week’s events.

 

I have been fortunate to live and work in two cities with great ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. Fortunate, because I have learned a great deal from people - Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu in particular - who have taken the trouble to befriend Christians by offering hospitality in their places of worship, helping us to understand their life, giving time to discuss issues of faith and social justice, being willing to make common cause in the pursuit of the common good.

 

But it is the personal, intimate encounters that leave the most vivid memories.  In Coventry, I remember how one afternoon, I was called across to the Cathedral by someone who wanted to see a priest. You never know what this request may be about. On this occasion it was an Asian woman, a Muslim I think, who had just come out of the maternity ward with her baby born 72 hours ago. She wanted to ‘present’ him to God in a holy place before she took him home and asked if I would say prayers with them both.  When we had done this, she pressed a banknote in the infant’s tiny hand and helped him give it to me for the Cathedral. It was an unforgettable moment.

 

In Sheffield, I found myself on the rota to preach at a special service due to be held on the very evening of 9/11. When external events suddenly create urgent theological and spiritual imperatives, you tear up the sermon you had planned and start again. Having to preach that night helped me to see how we must try to bring Christians and Muslims together as soon as possible to make sure what had happened in the US would not put good community relations in the UK at risk.

 

So I asked one of the senior imams to come to the diocesan synod to give an address. He opened by saying that as people of the Book, it was imperative that all of us as children of Abraham should work together for understanding and reconciliation in our world. Then he turned to the bishop and said: ‘You are a bishop for us Muslims as well as for Christians. We look to you to help us all find the ways of peace, and we thank you for the part you play as a spiritual leader in the life of our city’. Since then, I have heard other leaders of faith communities speak to us Christians in similar ways, but in the aftermath of the terrible events of September 2001, it was especially potent and memorable.

 

Here in Durham, I recall how we used to be visited by an elderly blind imam from Saudi Arabia who came to England each year to escape the searing heat of the Saudi summer. He was a highly respected theologian and ethicist who had taught clergy serving in the Great Mosque at Mecca. He used to stay with a Muslim community in Newcastle, and once asked them to take him to their favourite place in the North East. So they brought him to the Cathedral.

 

I took him round on a tour. It took a long time because he wanted to know everything, and relished the opportunity for some friendly dialogue across faith, all of which had to be done through an interpreter. He especially loved Cuthbert’s shrine where he said he strongly sensed the presence of a holy man, just like we have in Islam. He gave me an Arabic-English Qur’an in which he had marked up all the passages that speak positively about Christians. When I asked about those that were negative he replied: ‘I can tell, coming here, that you are all faithful people of the Book. Those other passages don’t refer to faithful practising Christians’.

 

We all have good stories to tell about encounters like these that affirm our God-given common humanity – if, that is, we are willing to reach beyond the narrow confines of our upbringing, histories and often lazy assumptions to take the risk of meeting people who are different. The ability to live with difference and embrace it is one of the most trustworthy indicators of being adult. This has always been the case. But in contemporary Britain the need to do this has become urgent. It doesn’t need this blog to point out the risks posed to a stable democratic society by extremists who have their own reasons for undermining it. They may be radicalised Muslims bent on indiscriminate killing and maiming. Or they may be people seduced into hating their Muslm neighbours by far-right Islamophobic tendencies on the other.

 

So I warmly welcome the statement put out today by the Christian-Muslim Forum’s co-chair who is also a senior officer of the Muslim Council of Britain. It represents the best of the noble faith that is Islam. Notice the reference to 'our Archbishop'.

 

The Muslim communities of Britain, like the rest of the country are shocked and appalled by the horrific murder in Woolwich. The murderers chanted slogans during their heinous crime claiming to do it in God’s name. Far from it. As our Prime Minister rightly concluded, this is a betrayal of Islam. Indeed, this is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn it utterly and unreservedly. 

 

Our thoughts and prayers are with Lee Rigby’s family and friends and especially his two year old son. Drummer Rigby was a serving member of the Armed Forces.  Muslims have long served in this country’s Armed Forces, proudly and with honour. This attack on a member of the Armed Forces is dishonourable, and no cause can justify this murder.

 

This crime has heightened tensions throughout the country.   The Muslim Council of Britain calls on all our communities, Muslim and non-Muslim, to come together in solidarity to ensure the forces of hatred do not prevail. 

 

I am immensely grateful for the leadership of our Archbishop during this most difficult time and thank leaders of all our faith communities for their support. Your local Muslim communities will welcome your support and I encourage you to knock at the doors of every mosque and offer them your neighbourly love. The Christian Muslim Forum is here to support you in that endeavour. 

 

As we pray for our nation to heal, we also pray for peace and justice throughout the world. Amin.

 

Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra

Co-Chair, Christian Muslim Forum

Assistant Secretary General, Muslim Council of Britain