By Steve Doughty
(http://www.dailymai l.co.uk/home/ search.html? s=y&authornamef= Steve+Doughty)
Last updated at 10:09 PM on 15th July 2008
Christian doctrine is offensive to Muslims, the Archbishop of
Canterbury said yesterday.
Dr Rowan Williams also criticised Christianity' s history for its
violence, its use of harsh punishments and its betrayal of its
peaceful principles.
His comments came in a highly conciliatory letter to Islamic leaders
calling for an alliance between the two faiths for 'the common good'.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has admitted that
Christian doctrine is offensive to muslims. But it risked fresh
controversy for the Archbishop in the wake of his pronouncement
earlier this year that a place should be found for Islamic sharia
law in the British legal system.
Dr Williams is also facing immense pressures from inside his own
Church of England and Anglican Communion. A gathering of Anglican
bishops from around the world, which begins today,
is on the brink of a devastating split over whether homosexuality and
homosexual clergy should win their approval.
The Archbishop's letter is a reply to feelers to Christians put out by
Islamic leaders from 43 countries last autumn. In it, Dr Williams said
violence is incompatible with the beliefs of either
faith and that, once that principle is accepted, both can work
together against poverty and prejudice and to help the environment.
He also said the Christian belief in the Trinity - that God is Father,
Son and Holy Ghost at the same time - 'is difficult, sometimes
offensive, to Muslims'. Trinitarian doctrine conflicts with the
Islamic view that there is just one all-powerful God.
Dr Williams added: 'It is all the more important for the sake of open
and careful dialogue that we try to clarify what we do and do not mean
by it, and so I trust that what follows will be read in this spirit.'
He told Muslim leaders that faith has no connection with political
power or force, and that Christians have in the past betrayed this idea.
'Christianity has been promoted at the point of the sword and legally
supported by extreme sanctions,' Dr Williams said.
Islam, he continued, has been supported in the same way and 'there is
no religious tradition whose history is exempt from such temptation
and such failure.'
The Archbishop appeared to rebuke his colleague, Bishop of Rochester
Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who criticised his sharia lecture and who
maintains that Christianity is central to British law, politics and
society.
'Religious identity has often been confused with cultural or national
integrity, with structures of social control, with class and regional
identities, with empire: and it has been imposed in the interest of
all these and other forms of power,' he said.
The Archbishop said that faiths which reject the use of violence
should learn to defend each other in their mutual interest.
'If we are in the habit of defending each other, we ought to be able
to learn to defend other groups and communities as well,' he said.
'We can together speak for those who have no voice or leverage in
society - for the poorest, the most despised, the least powerful, for
women and children, for migrants and minorities; and even to speak
together for the great encompassing reality that has no voice of its
own, our injured and abused material environment. '
The Archbishop did not mention sharia at all in his closely-argued
18-page letter. Dr Williams was heavily criticised by MPs and Downing
Street after he suggested sharia law could have an established place
in British life. But his letter in reply to last year's Islamic
approach, A Common Word for the Common Good, chimes with his view
expressed in February that people of faith should be able to work
together against secularism despite their differences.
Lambeth Palace hinted that Christians as well as Muslims should listen
to Dr Williams' message. Officials pointed to the Archbishop's call
for 'religious plurality' to turn to serving the common good and
added: 'This is true even where truth claims
may seem irreconcilable' .
A number of conservative and evangelical Anglican bishops are poised
to break away from the 400-year-old network of Anglican churches
around the world because they believe homosexual behaviour is
incompatible with Christian principles.
Among those expected to boycott the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury
is Dr Nazir-Ali, whose seat in Rochester is just 20 miles away.