Barth as Dialogue Partner? Really?

I just finished Glenn Chestnutt's book Challenging the Stereotype. He opens up the book with an important comment: the main religious issue of our day is the relationship between Christianity and Islam. The way he approaches this problem is seeing how Karl Barth's theology can be a vehicle for religious dialogue especially with Muslim thinkers. He examines how to do this by filtering Barth's work on Judaism, on the Just State, and his work on "parables" and the other "lights" found in CD IV:3.

Now this is a constructive work because Barth did not write much on the plurality of religions (even though he expressed an intention to) and the stereotype of him being a "Christocentric" thinker is true to an extent (he also highlights problematic passages from Barth corpus on Islam and Judaism). However, the fact that he is not a pluralist in the John Hick sense is also good because in our postsecular age I believe the way for religious thinkers to dialogue is for them to actually acknowledge the concrete differences of their religions instead of a soft, liberal, mountain top theory (the idea that all religions lead up to different paths but ultimately we all meet up at the top of the mountain and say-"hey, what are you doing here?-oh, guess it was all the same god we worship").

Now Chestnutt does two things to craft his thesis. First, he uses the "open space" that Jeffrey Stout claims Western secular democracy brings to the table as a good starting point for religions to have the freedom of expression in concrete talks; in addition, he quotes Stout's use of Barth's theology in backing up his theory. Second, Chestnutt turns to another Swiss born citizen in Tariq Ramadan as a model Muslim thinker who can dialogue with someone from the Barthian side of theology. Ramadan like Barth have strong convictions from their own traditions but also acknowledge the space given by Western secular democracy for their religions to flourish. Ramadan contends that Muslims number of Western citizens are growing and need to become recognized citizens in the West because most have assimilated as good citizens anyway.

What drew me to this work is my own research on the way secularism is being used or viewed by different thinkers like Barth, Ramadan and others. What I especially appreciate is the way the goal is to articulate a way for religions to dialogue but in a way that keeps in mind the actual practitioners of the different religions (and not just to focus on "liberal" thinkers who are hardly identifiable with the actual traditions of the religion).

The Bianry of West vs Rest

In Dabashi's book, he targets a number of intellectuals and public figures for continuing the binary thought process of the West (Western Europe and the US) vs the Rest (basically the so-called Third World). One of the figures he targets is Oxford scholar Tariq Ramadan. He thinks that Ramadan (and Soroush) are fighting a lost battle by basically appealing for an audience from the modern West that is not listening now and for all intents and purposes does not exist. Ramadan's appeal to reform "Islam" in order to dialogue with the West is doomed for failure.


Instead Dabashi claims globalization has illustrated that the binary thinking of the West vs Rest is over. There is no real monolithic West as there is no monolithic Islam (in essence there never existed such things in the social-historical reality). Modern thought (as seen in Kant and others) brought forth Orientalism and thus colonialism. The response to colonialism is the Islamic nationalism of figures like Khomeini and Qutb. According to Dabashi, these narratives are ultimately oppressive.









Furthermore, a good point Dabashi makes is that for him Shiite thought is a powerful movement of critique against the powers as seen in the thought of Ali Shariati but when in power has the capacity to be as oppressive as other powers as seen especially with the Iranian Revolution (I think Christian theology has the same capacity as seen in history).

Where does Dabashi think we can move from this binary way of thinking? He believes that what is needed are more people movements (kind of like the multitudes of Negri/Hardt) to mobilize resistance against abusive powers. I think one of the key chapters which he closes the book with is when he compares the late global thought of a Malcolm X with other nationalist movements like Qutb. For Dabashi, Malcolm X went through many changes in thought until finally he became a more global thinker due to his pilgrimage surrounded by various peoples of color. Moreover, religion is a force that can provoke a way to a call for justice (see his references to Gustavo Gutierrez, for example), but can never be the transcendent power that tries to collapse the real, social-historical differences of the multitudes.

So, for a book I bought on a whim, it was really helpful to read a current thinker, arguing against various voices inside (like Ramadan) and outside (like Agamben) the Muslim world. I will still be working out his arguments about modernity and the secular for a while but it will probably start a trend in my reading to see the viewpoints of voices outside of the canon of the so-called West.

A short message by Tariq Ramadan on Tunisia and Egypt

I have to admit being glued to my T.V. for a bit Saturday night watching events unfold in Egypt; stuff like this does not happen everyday. I'm totally out of my element in understanding the social-political situation of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, but I have to say I see forms of Orientalism (see earlier posts on Edward Said) in some of the news broadcasts. This impression I get is that there seems to be this underlying fear that since we are predominantly talking about Muslim/Arab people here they don't have a shot in hell to do this thing democratically. Let us just wait to see how this all turns out.

Muslim theologian Tariq Ramadan gives some words about the hope for a democratic process in Tunisia and Egypt; I have read some of his works to get an idea of a Muslim thinker on modernity and concepts like human rights, democracy, etc that came out of it. His whole take on it is that Muslims can live peaceably in Western society just like Christians have been able to. In fact, his overall point is that most everyday Muslims who live in England, the U.S., etc. already do live in such a way:

Milbank takes a shot at Ramadan

Wow! Well blogs that I often take a look at have been doing there best at taking shots at "Radical" Orthodoxy's head honcho John Milbank for his piece on Islam, the Enlightenment and Christianity.

What I find most interesting is how again Tariq Ramadan is framed as a poor academic; everybody seems to be attacking this guy. I haven't seen this kind of academic and frankly pseudo-academic attack since writers attacked the French Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida. Milbank thinks "the scholarly inaccurate "Religious Studies" view of Islamic history put forward by figures like Tariq Ramadan" is what clouds the judgment of Christian leaders like Rowan Williams. Again, Ramadan is critiqued for 1)sugarcoating the dark elements of Islam and 2) being a closet supporter of the freedom denying aspects of Islam. I still wonder if anyone (like Milbank) has read his books?

Of course Milbank thinks the best Islam is a mystical form; if he thinks this of Christianity as well then he has bigger problems than Islam.

Ramadan & Barth: Orthodox & Modern?

I am finishing up Gregory Baum's book on The Theology of Tariq Ramadan and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I really like the conversational style of the book and the openness the author has toward Ramadan while having his theology relate to specifically the Catholic theology of Vatican II.

It seems one of the problems that people have with Ramadan is that he seems to be (like Bruce McCormack labeled Karl Barth) both Orthodox and Modern. In other words, both Barth and and now Ramadan work within the breakthrough of modernity (they use context, history, critical thought) while at the same time being faithful to their tradition and its founding scriptures. In other words, they are part of the Reformist tradition. The point is not to destroy the faith of the fathers but continue to be faithful to it by always reforming.

Liberals, Fundamentalists and Radicals really despise this position because it is not "faithful" enough to their own perspective. For a fundamentalist, they are too "liberal" in buying into the modern framework. For Liberals, they are too conservative for being to faithful to the past traditions and interpretations and their religious communities (better to have a vague spirituality). For Radicals, they are too conservative because they haven't deconstructed the whole religious paradigm and embraced pure secularism or atheism.

Instead a reformist is always looking to reform the current faith to be both faithful to their sources and the community of believers while at the same time open to the voice of God for changes that should be made today especially when the tradition is either silent or not clear on a matter. For example, Barth wrote particularly to the Church because they are the witnesses of God while Ramadan targets Western Muslims; there is a clear particularity in their target audience yet not denying their general readership as well. The point is that they want to be faithful to the real communities of faith that ascribe to their faith. Thus, when it comes to modernity, it is a mixed bag of blessings and problems; it is up to the reformist to see where the faith can value modern ideas while at the same time be critical as well. It is to say, yes, some of modernity is good because of its liberating dimensions, yet modernity and secularism is not our God; there is only one God and God is one. This is what I see both theologians doing...