Word: islam
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Ismaili Community, of which the Aga Khan is the leader, is a sect of Islam which broke off from the main religion shortly after its founding...
Christians have always been puzzled by the Moslem conquest, which took Islam to the Pyrenees and beyond them into France. The Cross had emerged triumphant from the blood bath of Roman persecution. Why had it fallen before the Prophet's sword? In The Call of the Minaret (Oxford University Press; $6.25), published last fortnight, Anglican priest and Moslem scholar Kenneth Cragg blames not Moslem power but Christian failure for the rise of Islam. "It was a failure in love, in purity, and in fervor, a failure of the spirit," he argues. "Islam developed in an environment of imperfect Christianity...
...Faith? "Islam was generated as a new faith," says Cragg, "because of the conviction that a new one there must be. But why?" A bitter, running dispute between Christian factions in Arabia scandalized the non-Christian population, and Christian ideas had made no lasting impression on the Arabs among whom Mohammed was,born. "Perhaps in the formative years of Mohammed's quest," says Cragg, "a more virile, a less dubious Christianity could have satisfied his sense of need and obviated the great 'other' that Islam became." Later, Christian assaults in the form of the Crusades taught Islam...
Today Christian faces Moslem in a new sort of encounter. From Marrakech to Djakarta, the nations of Islam's teeming household (close to 322 million members) are bursting with newly won freedom and touched with the spirit of change. For the first time, Christian and Moslem face each other on equal ground and with mutual need. It is high time, says Author Cragg, for Christians to re-examine their relationship with the children of the Prophet...
Baptism Postponed. Another difficulty is the fact that Islam is not only a religious faith but a communal allegiance and a social order. The Moslem's relation to God is inextricably linked with his relation to society. As a consequence, Moslems frequently upbraid Christianity for not disciplining and controlling Western civilization. Christians must impress on Islam, says Cragg, that "the Christian understanding of how man is put to rights is that it happens personally and through faith. . . . Thus the unit of Christianity [is] not society but persons in society . . . The Gospel of grace does not suppose that...