Christian Lives Given to the Study of Islam

Christian Lives Given to the Study of Islam

Islam and the West

Christian Lives Given to the Study of Islam

Author(s): Christian W. Troll & C.T.R. Hewer

Reviewed by: Ian G. Williams, Markfield Institute of Higher Education, Birmingham, UK

 

Review

This book is a collection of the personal testimonies of a group of Christians from around the world who have devoted themselves to the study of Islam and to the task of building good relations between Christians and Muslims. The stories have been painstakingly gathered by two of their number, the German Jesuit scholar, Christian Troll, and one of his former students, the English Islamicist and exponent of adult education and dialogue, Chris Hewer. It is hard to think of a more fitting symbol than this book to capture the achievements of the first fifty years of the Church of the Second Vatican Council. The first thing that is so impressive is the sheer number of stories there are to tell: 28 in all, Catholics (overwhelmingly religious, predominantly White Fathers and Sisters, Jesuits and Dominicans) and Protestants, ministers and lay people, Europeans, Americans and Australians, spanning between them several generations from the early fifties all the way to the ripe old age of ninety-nine (the Anglican, Bishop Kenneth Cragg, died recently, just shy of his century). But the 28 are hardly the full story. One knows of plenty of others, too, who could have been included alongside them as well as more either side of the generations covered here. It is, in short, an astonishing truth that the Churches have asked some of their most extraordinary sons and daughters to give themselves to an apostolate which is at best obscure and little-understood, at worst takes them to an austere border country which not a few have found too arid to bear. (One might mention too, that small but important sub-class of Christian students of Islam who opted to cross that boundary and whose stories, for obvious reasons, are not told here either.)


To continue reading...
Login or Subscribe