Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sakurabi.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Hello everyone. Assalamu alaikum. Welcome to the Islamic Mary podcast. So one of the things we've discussed in this podcast is the idea of a book. And a book can open up doors. It can lead to new opportunities.
It can also make you ask new questions, and it provides new challenges and things for you to think about more deeply. One of the things in writing the book on the Islamic Mary is made me think more deeply regarding Christian Muslim relations. While writing the book, I came across the document Nostra Aetate. And this is a important document regarding Christian Muslim relations, written in Vatican 2. And in this document there is this fascinating statement regarding Muslims. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, his Virgin mother.
At times, they even call on her with devotion. The document goes on to praise Muslims as people who fast, give alms and pray. However, when reading this passage, where is the Quran? Where is the Prophet Muhammad?
Those questions eventually led me to the dissertation of Jordan Djederi Dufner. Jordan is someone I know for a long time, someone who went to the same school as me, Georgetown University, and someone I followed on social media and in her public scholarship and activism.
Today I'll interview Jordan on her recent dissertation and how she tries to answer some of these important questions.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: I want to welcome Jordan Denarii Dufner to the Islamic Mary podcast. Jordan, welcome.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Thanks for having me. It's great to be with you.
[00:02:06] Speaker C: So, Jordan, you're someone that I've been following for a long time, and as I've been writing the book on Islamic Mary, a lot of questions have emerged and I got the opportunity to look at your work, specifically your dissertation, and answering actually a lot of the questions I have regarding Christian Muslim relations and dialogue. But maybe we can start first, you talking about yourself, your spiritual autobiography, and how you became interested in Christian Muslim relations.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Sure.
So, like you, I went to Georgetown for a lot of my higher ed. I did my undergrad at Georgetown here in Washington, D.C. and then also my PhD. But I was in the Theology and Religious Studies department where you were at the, you know, our sort of Sister Irving, Islamic Studies.
And yeah, so I focus on Muslim Christian relations, interreligious dialogue, specifically between Catholics and Muslims and also Islamophobia. A lot of my work has been directed at Catholics and helping them to better understand Islam on its own terms and trying to upend some of the stereotypes that have proliferated, especially after 9, 11.
So last 20 some years. And yeah, this journey sort of.
There's sort of a positive motivation for it and also kind of a negative motivation for it, I would say. One, I've always been someone who's really interested in religion. I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, going to Catholic school, Catholic grade school, and was always really immersed in the Catholic tradition. I was an altar server. I was a mass coordinator, which meant that I got to help prep the Mass. So I got really familiar with all of the.
All of the different parts of the ritual and all the different things that we needed, you know, for the priest to say the Mass. And that was. That was a way that I just got to be very close to Catholicism in kind of a material way. But I was always sort of bothered, like, by this question, well, what about people who aren't Christian or aren't Catholic?
My mom will tell a story about when I was in fourth grade, we were driving to school one day and, you know, I asked her, well, what about all the people who don't believe in Jesus, who are good people? What happens to them? You know, are they not saved?
She was really smart. Cause she didn't actually answer my question. She let me sit with the question and let me explore that, you know, on my own. My parents have always been very open to spiritual exploration or like, allowing us, as my brother and I, to do that on our own. So I was always just sort of, like, needled by this question. And in many ways, as you. As you see in the dissertation, I'm answering that question in part in my dissertation. And know what?
What is the significance of non Christian religions in the plan of God? You know, what, how and how do we, as Catholics or as Christians, make sense of the religious diversity that we see?
And so I was always really interested in religion, really wanted to have, you know, a connection to God, but was starting to get kind of disillusioned with Catholicism. You know, I was really enamored with the Jesuit tradition. I went to a Jesuit high school. As you and some of your listeners probably know, the Jesuits are very well known, especially nowadays, for their focus on social justice and interreligious understanding and really putting our faith into practice to address issues in our world. And I was very committed to that, but still wasn't sure where I wanted to make a home religiously and started learning more and more about Islam in high school and then in college. And I did kind of wonder at times if I might convert to Islam down the line. I think I was actually involved in the Muslim Students association at Georgetown. And I think a lot of the people were like, why is she here, like, is she, does she want to be Muslim? But we know she's not. What's going on?
But ultimately the journey into Islam made me sort of come back to my Catholicism in a new way and appreciate it in a new way and to also discover, I think, some of the theological resources in Islam for, I mean, in Catholicism for making sense of religious diversity that like my, I could still be Catholic and still have a deep appreciation for other religious traditions and those things weren't in conflict. Like, that was big, that's baked into Catholicism. But like, it was never something I'd been exposed to growing up. And then on the, you know, on the, on the flip side, you know, as all of this is going on, as, as I'm kind of going through this spiritual journey, there's also this just like rise in Islamophobia in the wake of 9 11. I was in fifth grade when 911 happened, so I was pretty young. And so my whole, I mean, it was the first real news story that shaped my consciousness and people of my generation. And so Islam was always present, it was always in the media. And as you know, it was usually a negative portrayal. And Islam was being associated with terrorism and violence.
And you know, what I, what I was seeing is that the Islam that I was coming to know through friendships with Muslims and through my study was not the Islam that many of my Catholics knew from just absorbing negative stereotypes in the media. And so I remember in high school, one of our very close family friends sent around one of those chain emails. You know, this is back in like, you know, the early 2000s where chain emails were a really big thing before social media.
And she sent this anti Muslim chain email to us and it had already circulated through a lot of the people at our Catholic Church. And it was just super distressing to me because I'm like, I know all these people are well intentioned, kind, nice, open people, and yet they're sending around this stereotypical hateful message and they don't realize that there's a disconnect there between what our faith teaches us and then what they're actually doing.
And so especially my work on Islamophobia has been trying to address that disconnect and help fellow Christians and Catholics see that, no, our first of all, these stereotypes are wrong and untrue and the result of, you know, you know, geopolitical things or government actions that are, that are harmful to Muslims. But then to, to come back to our faith tradition and say, well, if we were going to actually carry out our Values. What would that mean in terms of our relationships with Muslims?
[00:08:17] Speaker C: All right. Wow, that's. That's beautiful. So could you speak a little bit more about your spiritual awakening of sorts, in college and in terms of your religious identity as well as your relationship with Muslim? I think a lot of our listeners are in academia. They're college professors and students. So I think hearing more about your college experience would help them in their spiritual and interreligious journeys.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Yeah, so when I went to Georgetown for undergrad and I started back in 2009, I thought I wanted to be a foreign correspondent, like a journalist. My. My sort of working assumption was, you know, if Americans have all these misperceptions about. About Muslims and Arabs, let me, let me go to the Middle east and, you know, be a reporter on the ground and report back, you know, what I. What I see and help to dismantle some of the stereotypes. I had done a lot of youth journalism in middle school and high school, and so, and I loved writing, and so I thought I wanted to be a journalist. And so I started taking Arabic at Georgetown and taking classes on Islam and Middle east history and things like that.
But I also became really involved in just inter religious dialogues with fellow students on campus, so made Muslim friends. And we would like. We would have little dialogues in our dorm rooms and stuff. We would get together. There was, There was one group of us, it was me, a Protestant and a Muslim, and we would get together every Wednesday night during our freshman year and just talk about different religious topics. You know, I would. My. My Protestant friend would bring her Bible. I was the. The good or maybe the bad Catholic and didn't bring a Bible because, you know, Catholics don't read the Bible.
And so I would, I brought like, some Jesuit prayer books and some other things. And then our Muslim friend brought the Quran and we would talk about Abraham and Isaac and Ishmael, which, you know, as I know, a topic that, you know, you spent a lot of time with and lots of different issues. And it was just, you know, it was the type of learning that really complemented what I was learning in the classroom and really brought it home, you know, and my Muslim friends would ask me questions that I couldn't answer about my own tradition. It's like, oh, I guess I need to go back and actually learn how to talk about the Trinity. You know, I had a similar experience when I, When I went abroad. I studied abroad in Jordan.
Then I lived there for a year after I graduated from Georgetown, also doing research, which we can talk about. But, yeah, talking about the Trinity in my native language of English is hard enough, but when someone asks you in Arabic to talk about the Trinity, it's a doozy.
But those are good questions because it makes you really think, well, why am I a part of this faith tradition?
And is it more than just an intellectual assent to ideas? You know, one of the things that I've really come to is that Catholicism feels like home to me, you know, and there's something really homey about Islam and other traditions, too, you know, but where do I want to make my home is Catholicism. Yes, I'm, you know, in large part, you know, convinced by the ideas, so to speak. But I think it's even more that, like, these are narratives and stories and rituals and experiences that are a part of who I am. And I think ultimately it was that feeling of home more than being convinced by any theological idea that made me end up where I am. And that also then allows me to appreciate all those things about Islam and other faith traditions, too.
[00:11:34] Speaker C: You know, maybe to build off that answer, could you tell us more about the people who made you who you are and influence your research and scholarship? So one of the things I love doing when I look at a book or dissertation is to read the acknowledgments, because you really get a sense of that person, who they are, their relationships, and, of course, that community that actually brings out these new ideas. So, yeah, a little bit. Maybe you can speak a little bit more about those people.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: As a Catholic who does this work, I feel like I stand in this long line of people who came before me who really paved the way. As you and some of your listeners probably know, the Catholic Church, particularly during the 1960s, had kind of this major shift in how it approached people of other faith traditions and going from a place of sort of hostility and distance to a place of curiosity and openness and welcome and hospitality and really trying to approach other religions in a positive way and to look at our similarities. And one time I actually drew out, like, my academic family tree because so many of my professors at Georgetown are also the students of other influential scholars, whether they be Catholic or Muslim.
And first of all, it's just very moving to know that I sort of, like, stand in that line of people who have. Have made really important shifts that, like, my scholarship would not be in my ideas, and all of that would not be possible without them. And so there's a lot of wonderful Catholic scholars of Islam, whether they be at Georgetown or elsewhere, who have been really influential to me.
But also kind of in a, in a more general way. As I mentioned before, I have gone to Jesuit schools for a long time. And so just the Jesuit charism, you might call it, of being open to other faith traditions has been so influential. And I definitely see myself as a product of a Jesuit spirituality and a sort of the Jesuit approach to religious diversity. I also just had a lot of friends and colleague friends who have shaped my work and my dissertation. I talk about how one of my classmates, whose name is Mohammed, he, I think was the genesis of the idea to use what's called the fruits of the Holy Spirit, this list from St. Paul in my dissertation. Neither he or I can actually remember who in our zoom conversation first brought up this, this list that I could potentially use in my research. But I think it's. It just speaks so much to the fact that dialogue between our two religious traditions can then propel developments in one or another of those traditions. And so I haven't just been a product of Catholics theologizing on Islam, but it's also been Muslims reflecting on their tradition and also knowing something about my tradition that then has propelled my work forward. So that's been really just beautiful to experience as well.
You know, you asked about, you know, the people in my acknowledgments and people who have shaped me and are important to me. You know, I mentioned my parents before. It's also quite funny because my husband, my brother, his wife, and my sister in law, all of us have theology degrees of some sort from college. And I, I just feel very supported by them. And we all sort of get it because we're all kind of coming out of the same. We're coming at it from the same place or just we all have that sort of theological concern.
And then also, you know, I think in this phase of my life, I'm also very shaped by my, by my kid. I mentioned my dissertation. I, I wrote my dissertation after having my. My first child, Adam, and we're expecting our second child now. And so at this phase of my life, it's not just my scholarly forebears who are influencing me and shaping things, but also my kids are a part of that, too.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: So you've written a lot already, and you're a public intellectual and scholar, and now you are a doctor, so congratulations. And you've written this really interesting dissertation regarding Christian Muslim relations and how Christians could potentially better relate to Muslims. So maybe you could speak a little bit about your argument, what issues you're dealing with and what challenges you're trying to address or solve.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: So my dissertation looks at the Prophet Muhammad and tries to offer a new way for Catholics to appraise the Prophet, so to speak.
So when I was shortly before the pandemic, I was at a Catholic conference in Los Angeles where I was giving a talk, basically an Intro to Islam talk to all of these Catholic educators from across the country.
And during the Q and A portion, this one man stands up and he said, well, Muhammad was this, that, and the other, you know, listing all of these, like, negative qualities that the Prophet supposedly had.
And he was like. And because of that, Muslims are xyz, you know, again, like, Muslims believe the Prophet to have been this. And, you know, by consequence, Muslims are bad, was the gist of it, you know.
And I mean, the premise of this question was the Prophet was this bad person, you know, and the thing I had to tell him was, I understand that that's what you've been exposed to, but the portrait of the Prophet that you've just described to me is not one that Muslims would find familiar at all. This is not who Muslims believe the Prophet to have been. You know, you might have gotten these anecdotes from polemical literature from, you know, Europe a thousand years ago, because these stereotypes and these negative tropes about the Prophet have been so prominent in Christian literature throughout history.
But if you were to ask Muslims to talk about the Prophet, their description of him would not match at all what you've just said.
So one of the things that I wanted to do in my dissertation is to really look at the Prophet on his own terms and in ways that Muslims would find familiar because there's been so much Christian writing on the Prophet, who over the centuries. But again, it doesn't often deal with sources or perspectives that would be salient for Muslims. And so when I was in grad school, one of the courses I took was called Visions of the Prophet. And so we read all this different literature on the Prophet. The one that was most new to me and was most interesting to me was our unit on what's called Shamael, or the Prophet's, like, good qualities or attributes and his character, his holluk. I had never read any of these texts before, but they're really prominent texts in the tradition by Abu Hamid Al Ghazali. And we read the first work of Shamael, I think, which is by Etirmidi.
And these are works that aren't prophetic biographies. It's not like the Prophet was born and then the Prophet did this, and then the Prophet did that. It's broken up into his different character traits.
And I thought that was.
I. I just was really floored by the portrayal of the Prophet in these texts. You know, they talk about how the Prophet would play with his grandkids and how the Prophet would laugh and how the Prophet would be really forbearing with people who would come up and berate him and assault him and how he would basically use. He would be really loving and gracious towards them. And that would. And that would be what converted them, not necessarily. Not even necessarily to Islam, but, like, that was what got them to, like, relent and to.
To. To change their ways. So I was just really struck again by, like, this discrepancy between what Muslims found, like these, These really central Muslim texts and then, like, what Christians think that Muslims believe about the Prophet. And I really wanted to deal with those shamal works in my dissertation. And, you know, the other sort of impetus for the. For the dissertation project is sort of back to this question of what. What significance do other religious traditions have in the eyes of God? And how can we as Catholics articulate that significance?
So, you know, to drill down to Islam Specifically, at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the church rolled out this document called Nostra Aetate, which meant. Which means in our time. And it was looking at basically saying that, you know, in. In the modern period, the Catholic Church wants to focus on what we share, what we have in common with people of other faith traditions, and to start having more positive relationships with the like, acknowledging that people are sincerely seeking God. And it might be in different ways than we are, but we want to acknowledge how that's happening.
In the section, there's a section dedicated to Islam or dedicated to Muslim beliefs and practices. And so they talk about the church fathers in the document talk about how Catholics and Muslims believe in the one God. They talk about and different attributes that we would ascribe to God, like how God is merciful or God is one, or God is the judge at the end of time, things like that. But then they also talk about prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. They talk about how we both refer back to Abraham when we talk about our sort of genealogy in terms of religion. They talk about Jesus and Mary. As you know, Mary comes up in this. In this document as a bond or a common point between Catholics and Muslims. But they don't actually talk about aspects of Islam that would be most central for Muslims like the Quran and the Prophet. And I read, I learned in my research that this was intentional, basically the church fathers were like, we know we're not mentioning the Prophet, but the dialogue needs to happen for more time. We need to get to know Islam better and we need to just give it time before we address this because we're not sure how we're going to. So 60 years later, I'm dealing with it in my dissertation.
Yeah, so they don't mention the Prophet. And so in my dissertation I'm trying to say, okay, well, if we were to have, you know, a Nostra Aetate 2.0, basically what might we say about the Prophet? And so I'm not necessarily interested in who the Prophet was as a historical person because it's, it's, you know, there's all these debates in the, or, you know, Islamic origins scholarship and about, you know, how much can we know definitively about who the Prophet was. And so I'm like, okay, I'm, I'm setting all that aside. But what's actually more interesting is how has the tradition, which, you know, has lasted a lot longer than the Prophet's life himself. You know, he was alive for 60 some years and the Islamic tradition is 1400 years long. What has the tradition said about who Muhammad was? Like, what have Muslims for 1400 years believed about him? So that's why I, in my dissertation look at these different sources on the Prophet's character. I look at a source called the Shifa of Qaed El. He was an Andalusian banish jurist. And then I also look at some contemporary videos, like digital material on the Prophet's character. So the, the Yaqeen Institute, which is a really well known American Muslim organization, they actually put out all of these different videos on the Prophet a couple years back where they're talking about his character. And so I'm like, okay, let me choose a historical source and a contemporary source and look at how the Prophet is portrayed in these sources. And then that can in some way help us as Catholics to come to it and answer on what? On, on this Muhammad question.
[00:22:47] Speaker C: One of the things I really found fascinating about your dissertation was that discussion on Nostra Aetate. So I, I talk about that in the book on Islamic Mary. And as you mentioned, there is a discussion on Abraham. There's this question on Mary, there's this reverence that Muslims pray, they engage in alms, but there is this gap there with the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad. So could you speak more about that? You kind of alluded to that the early church fathers or the mid 20th century that they didn't know Necessarily how to deal with it. But now you're kind of coming 60 years later and addressing it. So can you tell us more about that document, its origins, how it came about, and then why those gaps were there and why they persist?
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So Nostra Aetate came about initially because the church wanted to make a statement on anti Semitism and the Jewish people, because this was like, less than 20 years after the Holocaust and after World War II. And the church was really grappling with its role in, you know, especially European anti Semitism and just anti Judaism throughout the history of the church.
And Nostratate was initially meant to sort of articulate a new theological position that wasn't as supercessionist when it came to the Jewish people to basically say that the covenant with God's covenant with the Jewish people is still valid. Because for so long, Christians had been. Catholics had been saying, no, you know, we basically supersede you. And that kind of theological position led to a lot of then, like, political and other forms of discrimination.
So initially there was just going to be a declaration on. On the Jewish people and on anti Semitism.
And then, very rightly, you know, Catholics who worked on Islam, like Louis Massignon, who was a French scholar of Islam, he and others from the Middle east were like, no, if we're going to talk about Judaism, we also have to talk about Islam, because this is a religious tradition that's just as close to us as well. And.
And then others said, well, we should talk about Hinduism and we should talk about Buddhism also.
And so the document really expanded.
And, you know, there's some, you know, amazing, you know, scholarship and records of all of the debates and the different drafts. I mean, it's. It's a rabbit hole that. That you can go down and that I've gone down before about why certain phrases were used and why certain phrases were left out. Interestingly, the section on Islam is not framed as a section on Islam as a religious tradition. It's framed as well. It begins by saying the church regards with high esteem the Muslims or something like that. It depends on the translation.
So it's saying, we have a lot of respect and we hold this group in high esteem. And then it lists some of the similarities that, you know, that we have. But again, that means that things that are perceived as points of difference get left out. Now, the thing that I'm trying to show in my dissertation is that just because something is uniquely Islamic on the surface, so to speak, doesn't necessarily mean that it's not something it doesn't mean that it's something we can't praise or that we can't see God working through, if that makes sense.
So one of the theologians who had a big impact on Nostra Aetate and just the broader theology of other religions in Vatican II was a guy named Karl Rahner. He was a German Jesuit. And I draw on his pneumatology, his theology of the Holy Spirit, and the dissertation. And that's sort of what links up.
I'll explain how it sort of links back to the prophet or how I use it. Basically, Rahner's idea. He's known for this. This phrase, the anonymous Christian, which a lot of people take issue with, understandably, because basically he's saying that people can be Christians without knowing it and without converting to Christianity, without becoming baptized. But people of other faith traditions or of no faith tradition might actually be anonymous Christians. They have a kind of implicit faith. And the way that he understands that is he says, well, God's offer of God's self. God's offer of grace is offered to each and every person at the core of their being at all times. He has this really sort of, like, radical notion of grace he kind of is working with, but also upsetting some previous, like, theological categories. I mean, it's all still very, like, orthodox. Yeah, so to speak, but it's a reframing of Aquinas, you know, an important earlier Catholic theologian and things like that. But he says, okay, God is offering God's self to all people at all times at the center of their being.
But that offer of grace of God's self also has to be mediated through real life, through our cultures, through our. Through historical circumstances, and through our, even religious traditions, different social formations.
So the question then is, how is that happening? So Rahner says that, like, God is offering God's self to people through their religious traditions or through elements of them. But he doesn't name where that's going on.
And he. All because he's not a scholar of other religions. And he also doesn't really give good criteria for how we're supposed to locate that.
So he's saying that grace or the Holy Spirit is working in other religious traditions, or we can assume that, but now we have to go look for it. Where is that happening?
And so my. My dissertation is. Is saying, okay, well, yeah, how do we go look for that in the Islamic tradition? And suggesting a way that we can do that. Because Rahner doesn't offer criteria, other scholars that came after him said, well, what are tools that we can Use in our faith tradition to look for the Spirit in other religion. And one suggestion that someone has had and that also that my Muslim friend had too, or this list of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
This is a list of qualities related to living out one's love of neighbor. That is from one of the, probably the earliest letter from St. Paul. So, you know, one of the earliest, you know, known believers in, in Jesus as the Christ, one of the earliest Christian documents, so to speak.
And he basically says that if people are living out of the Holy Spirit or if the Holy Spirit has been offered to them and they're sort of, they've accepted that offer of grace, if they've accepted faith in an, you know, in an explicit or implicit way, so to speak, they will show forth nine qualities. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.
And so then I was like, oh, well, this is a really great tool. If we're looking for the Spirit somewhere, let's use this list.
And it works again really well with my interest in the character of the Prophet. So what I do in the dissertation is basically look for these different qualities, these fruits of the Spirit in these depictions of the Prophet, whether they're historical or contemporary.
[00:29:37] Speaker C: Oh, fascinating. So would you say that Rainer, he allows Christians to be Christian and value their own Christianity but see the grace or favor of God in non Christians or how would you describe it?
[00:29:51] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And also to see other religious traditions in a positive light. It's not, it's, it's not the typical pluralist position which sees all religions as equal means to salvation.
The Catholic Church doesn't really want to go there. But what Rahner does do is he allows Catholics to use our Catholic theology and worldview and perspective to say, you know, even though we believe that Jesus is the one who saves, this is how Jesus and the Spirit of God work through other religious traditions in order to save, in order to offer people faith. And so it's a way to still let other traditions be other, I think, and to, you know, or at least what I like about it is that I'm not saying that how do I want this. I'm still letting the unique aspects of the Muslim tradition speak to us, but I'm interpreting them still through a Catholic lens.
[00:30:50] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So maybe we could move to what you mentioned earlier regarding the Muslim tradition on the Shifa and then some of the videos you looked at on the Yaqeen Institute. So as you mentioned, you're not focused solely on the historical Muhammad, but the Muslim memory of Muhammad and how Muslims tried to emulate his example. So could you speak more about the historical, medieval, the Shifa in particular, that document, how it describes the Prophet Muhammad? Maybe some notable or interesting stories.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So one of the key emphases in the Shifa is the Prophet's mercy or rahmah.
And my colleague Matt Anderson, who you might have known at Georgetown too, he actually wrote this article a while back on how right around the time that Qadiyat and Al Ghazali were writing their works on the Prophet, there was this sort of shift, or these texts seem to mark a shift in this new interesting concern on the Prophet's rahmah or his mercy, his loving mercy. There's this emphasis on Muslims growing in love for the Prophet. And part of the way that they do that is also then by emulating his qualities.
So one of the key characteristics of the Prophet that comes through in these portrayals in the Shifa is the Prophet's mercy or his Rahman.
Well, rahmah or mercy is not one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, at least if we translate it, you know, one to one in English, usually rahmah is compassion or mercy, and that's not one of the fruits of the Spirit. But if you look at how Christians have understood the fruit of love or the fruit of kindness, there's a lot of resonances between how this shows up in the Prophet's character.
So to back up a little bit, one of the things that I do in the dissertation is create this rubric of the fruits of the Spirit. So Paul basically says, you know, here's these nine qualities that are evidence of the Spirit at work in people and in communities. But he doesn't, like, define them. He doesn't say what love is, he doesn't say what joy is, he doesn't say what gentleness is. And so obviously then, I mean, his community probably had a sense of what he meant by those things. But I'm also then interested in how have Christians defined and understood these qualities over time. So I look at biblical scholarship, I look at Aquinas, I Look at this 20th century British writer named Evelyn Underhill, who writes about the fruits of the Spirit. And so I came up with this rubric basically where I said, okay, well, this is what love means, this is what joy means, this is what peace means based on these, all these other things that Christians have said. And then I apply that to the character of the Prophet, or I use that when I'm then reading through all these stories about his character and so, you know, even though the Muslim tradition isn't often using the word love to talk about the Prophet, all of the examples of love are there, especially when they're talking about his rahmah. So the way that he really allowed himself to be emotionally impacted by the suffering of others or the way that he treated everyone the same, that's sort of a key hallmark of love, is not preferencing one group of people over another or not preferencing yourself over others. That came through really clearly. One of the other fruits of the spirit that was really dominant in the portrayal of the Prophet in the Shifa is Muhammad's gentleness. And this is a really interesting fruit because it's not just about being sweet. That's more the fruit of kindness. But the fruit of gentleness is this more complex one where a person is really forbearing and lenient, but then also will deploy anger when it's appropriate and necessary, not because they don't have control over their anger, but they. They will speak to what's right when. When it's called for. And so it's really interesting because both Muslim sources give the quality of gentleness to Moses, actually, and they give the example of Moses speaking forcefully to Pharaoh.
And it's not that, you know, Moses wasn't a. You know, he wasn't like this raging, angry person, but it's like he.
He knew when it was time to speak up against injustice. And so that quality is also really important in the fruits of the spirit and then also important in some of the portrayals of the Prophet. One of the qualities that comes up both in the contemporary and the historical sources is the Prophet's joy. And that was actually the most surprising of the fruits of the spirit for me to come across because. And maybe it's because, you know, I still hold on to some stereotypes about.
About Muslims, you know, like the. Remember the Newsweek cover, you know, years ago, Muslim rage. But no, the Prophet, I was just struck by how joyful he was.
The accounts talk about how he was able to maintain this sense of outward joy and to truly delight in other people and delight in other things, even while he himself was dealing with difficult, difficult things and himself was carrying a lot of sorrow.
There is interesting because they talk about how the Prophet would cry a lot and how he was really sorrowful, but at the same time, he tried not to show that to other people and tried to stay optimistic and upbeat and to not bring other people down. And so there's sort of this balancing of one's empathy and one's sorrow for the state of the world, but then also really trying to bring joy to people.
And then there's all these stories about him, you know, playing with kids, like, how much he loved kids and how he would try to, like, joke and have fun and, like, give Nick, like, give nicknames to his, you know, companions that sort of would needle them and stuff. And I just find those very humanizing and relatable. And again, I'm just excited for one Christians to be exposed to these descriptions of the Prophet, hopefully through the dissertation and through the eventual book that I'll do. And. And then to also see them as a place where God might be working in the Islamic tradition. Because, again, and I think this is sort of the crucial part, it's not just that these stories exist in the Muslim tradition. It's that, like, Muslims really take them seriously and try to embody them.
And so the fact that these stories and these examples of the fruits of the spirit have been so important in the Islamic tradition, that's indicative of the fact that God's working in the tradition and that, you know, to sort of use Rahner's terms, that there are Muslims who have accepted that sort of implicit faith that they have that the spirit is in their lives, and they've accepted it, and now it's sort of being carried forward and that God is sort of present in the way that they're living out their faith.
[00:37:08] Speaker C: All right, great. So, yeah, so maybe you could speak now about, like, Yaqeen.
So you could have just stopped there. Right. So my dissertation, when I wrote it, I just stopped in the medieval period. But you're brave and courageous and actually talking about contemporary sources.
So how does the yakin, you know, maybe could speak about the organization a little bit, and then how is it building off these classical sources and portraying the Prophet Muhammad?
[00:37:32] Speaker A: Yeah, so I also was planning on just sticking with the historical as well.
I was going to look at, like, Al Hazali also or like Tiramithi Shemael or something like that. First of all, I decided not to do that because all three of them are actually quite similar. And I said, okay, well, let me bring in something that's, at least in terms of the timeline, very different or something that might not overlap as directly with the Shifa, just to sort of get a broader swath of Muslim perspective. And actually, when I was writing my dissertation proposal, I think it was in 2021, Yaqeen came out with this video series called Meeting Muhammad. And every day during Ramadan, the head of Yaqeen Many people will know him. Omar Suleiman, he would do this video where he would talk about basically have the viewer imagine themselves in the presence of the prophet in different circumstances. So there's videos that are like, when he would play with your kids, when you needed his help, when you were with him in the trenches, like in a military battle, when I think there's one. I didn't analyze this one in my dissertation, but it's like when he lost his son, you know. And so what I also found really fascinating about these videos is that it's sort of like a Muslim version of what we would call Ignatian contemplation in the Catholic tradition, where Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, basically encourages a form of prayer where you read a Bible story about Jesus and you kind of put yourself in the story, you imagine yourself in the story, and you can, like, add in little details, or you just really sort of put yourself there with him and sort of see what happens and how you might react and, you know, what your experience of him, of Jesus would be like. And so I was super intrigued by these videos because they were kind of a version, a Muslim version of that. And then also, you know, I watched a few of them and I'm like, oh, there's so much about the Prophet's character here. And in a way, they were like a 21st century version of a Shemael work, because it starts off even sort of. It kind of starts off structurally like Al Ghazali's own Shma Elwirk, which is in his.
Is one of the books in his magnum opus, the Ihia. And he starts off by talking about the Prophet's appearance. Then he starts, in a general way, talking about the prophet's character, and then he'll get into some specific qualities or anecdotes. And so I was seeing that in the Yachin videos too, and I was like, oh, that's really interesting. This is sort of a modern iteration of that. I didn't analyze all 30 videos for my dissertation because there were 30 of them and they're all like 10 minutes. And it was going to be a huge amount of material.
But what I did is I picked out what I hope is a representative sample. I picked out some videos that I thought were very likely to show forth the fruits. And then I also picked the videos that I thought would maybe be the most challenging to find the fruits in, like, the one about, like, with him in the trenches. Because one of the sticking points that Christians have often had about the Prophet is that he was involved in like, military activities and politics. And that's often one of the ways that, that Christians try to distinguish themselves from Muslims. It's like, well, Jesus was apolitical. He allowed himself to be subject to political and military power. He didn't join in with it. And so I was like, okay, well, let me focus on like, let me choose that video and some other ones that, that I thought might like, contradict the fruits of the spirit in some way.
But surprisingly, I found both in the historical version, the historical sources, and in these contemporary ones that I looked at that very little that actively contradicted the fruits. Like, for example, there's been all these debates about, like, did the Prophet ever kill anyone?
Interestingly, in all of these sources, like the. It's. It's that the Prophet engaged in combat, but only in a way to disarm people or in like, defensive posture and things like that, which I thought was really interesting.
The other set of yachting videos that I looked at, I also wasn't planning to include initially, but they were framed, the series was framed as the fruits of the Prophet's character.
And so I thought, okay, well, I have to include these because it's framed as like fruits. And you know, of his character in those videos, there's this emphasis on so many qualities overlap with the fruits, his, the Prophet's faithfulness. For example, the Prophet's nickname was Al Amin, the faithful one, the trustworthy one. And so that overlaps perfectly really, with the fruit of faithfulness in the Christian tradition. Now when Paul is talking about someone being faithful, he's not talking about someone who believes in the Christian creed. He's talking about someone who's trustworthy, who is faithful to God and trusting of God. There are so many anecdotes about the Prophet and his trustworthiness. One example that I didn't know about before I started this work, the story goes that even when the Muslims, like the newly formed Muslim community, was at odds with the Meccans, you know, the non believers who were like, trying to destroy the Muslim community, the Meccans would still entrust some of their belongings to the Prophet because they knew that he would keep them safe, that he would safeguard them. So even though, like in a communal way, they were at odds, they still trusted him enough to say, like, can you keep. I mean, I don't know what these like, things would have been like jewelry or, you know, something, but they would, they still trusted him enough that they would do that even though he was their stated enemy. I guess, and there are so many other, you know, anecdotes like that. But there was a. There's a lot of continuity between the historical depictions of the Prophet's character and things that Muslims are consuming and believing about him today. And so even aside from my Catholic theological interests in all of this, I think there's just an Islamic studies insight here, which is just that there's been a fairly stable portrait of the Prophet that has lasted for a long time.
When we look at the Prophet's character and how it was described a millennium ago, there's a lot there that still. Still persists today. And people are still reading a text like the Shifa today, and it's informing sermons and it's informing, you know, teachers who do Sunday school and all that kind of stuff. So, again, aside from whatever theological interest I have, there's also just this insight, I think, for Islamic studies, that the character of the Prophet has remained fairly stable over time.
[00:44:01] Speaker C: Then as you talk about Yaqeen Institute and Shifa, then you have this really fascinating conclusion, and you speak about the implications of your work. So really, one of the things I admire about your work is you're able to go historical and then come back and then talk about the contemporary lessons. So what do you think the implications are for your dissertation and your work in general?
[00:44:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, as I said, there's this sort of Islamic studies thing that we could leave just to itself in some ways. I could have just done this as an Islamic studies dissertation, just looking at how the Prophet's character has been portrayed over time.
But for me, what is really of interest are the Catholic theological questions. And so what I find in this dissertation, through this research, is that the fruits of the Spirit are very thoroughly attested to in these depictions of the Prophet. If you see all nine of these fruits of the Spirit very clearly, I didn't have to look hard for them. They just were. They were there.
And so that indicates that, as I was sort of saying before, that God's offer of Spirit to Muslims is one occurring through their faith tradition, because these things exist in the faith tradition, and Muslims are exposed to this all the time.
But it also indicates that there are some Muslims who have clearly accepted this offer of grace, because people have written these accounts, people have absorbed these accounts, people have preserved and disseminated these accounts over time. So if these qualities are important to Muslims, this is an indication that the Spirit is. Is working among them already.
And I think this should give Catholics and other Christians a lot of confidence in the fact that you know, I mean, because there's a strand of Christianity and of Catholicism that says, oh, you know, these poor people of other faith traditions, like, we need to convert them, we need to event, you know, we need to proselytize and evangelize to them because they don't know God.
I think this dissertation shows that, you know, at least through this small aspect of the Muslim tradition, God is there, and Muslims are responding to God in their lives. And I obviously, as someone who knows the Islamic tradition in other ways, too, like, think that that's probably happening in a lot of other places, too, in the traditions, not just like through these Shemael works on the Prophet. So what the dissertation ultimately hopes to do for Catholic theology is to expand what's called our theology of religions to basically help us name where God's spirit is active in the Muslim tradition. And so, you know, as I said at the, you know, earlier, Rahner assumes that God is working in other traditions, but he doesn't say how or where that's happening. And so my dissertation points out what I think is just one small place where that might be happening. And so now the task, you know, for other theologians and other theologians are already doing this is to look for God in other aspects of both Islam and in other traditions.
And so I hope that the fruits of the spirit approach can be utilized by other scholars, too, whether they're looking at Islam or whether they're looking at other faith traditions. But then there's lots of other ways that other tools that scholars could use to look for the Spirit and other traditions, too. This is just the one that I've.
[00:47:14] Speaker C: Used here, so maybe we could then talk about the conclusion. But how does it connect to your future work? Because I know you're still writing, I follow you on social media, and, and you do have a vision of a relationship between Christian and Muslims and Christians and other religions. And you have activism, so you're actively involved, whether that be in politics or religious dialogue. So where are you going from here after your dissertation, your future writing, speaking and work?
[00:47:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So this project is not directly connected to the work that I'm doing now, but I am. I'm hoping to publish this as a book at some point. So, you know, still very. I mean, this project still means a lot to me, even though it's not directly connected to some of the stuff that I'm. That I'm working on now.
My current book project is on Pope Francis and Islam, basically how Pope Francis has prioritized dialogue with Muslims. And again, I'm you know, to actually make the connection back to the dissertation. I mean, Pope Francis takes for granted Catholic theological position. You know, of Rahner, which. And I was actually just reading Fratelli Tutti, part of Fratelli Tutti the other day. Fratelli Tutti was a papal encyclical that Francis released shortly after some major initiatives he did with. With the Muslim leader, the Grand Imam of. Of former Grand Imam of Al Azhar Ahmad Atayeb. In Fratelli Tutti, he sort of again, takes for granted the fact that God is at work in other religious traditions. And so I'm working on a new book that's all about why Francis has prioritized dialogue with Islam and what that has looked like.
And, you know, France, there's, I think, a lot of things that are really groundbreaking and what Francis has done and how that sets an example for both Catholics and Muslims in dialogue. And one of the things also, though that's been really fascinating and shouldn't be surprising that I've learned in the research so far, is a lot of the reason why Catholic Muslim dialogue has succeeded so well under Francis is because Muslims have actually been the ones taking the initiative.
So I was recently talking to a Muslim individual who was very instrumental in bringing the Pope and the Grand Imam together and facilitating their work and their relationship.
He's a huge, you know, this. This. This guy, Judge Mohammed Abdisalam, is a huge reason why this has succeeded. You know, this is not just Francis saying, I want to do this. This is Muslims saying, this relationship is important to us, and we're also going to do a lot to make it impactful and make it work.
But then Francis himself also, I think, finds this really important.
And he's also, I think, the master of the gesture. Some popes who came before Francis, like John Paul ii, said a lot of really great things about Islam and I think made some important theological statements. But Francis is. His whole thing is the gesture and being with people. And so he's really sort of living out some of the teaching that the Church has already articulated. And so I'm exploring that in. In my new book. Another thing that's been taking up a lot of my time lately is working with other Catholics in the US on the really horrific situation in Israel, Palestine that's been going on for, you know, almost a year now before the current war on Gaza started last year, back in 2022, I joined this body called the Catholic Advisory Council of a broader group called Churches for Middle East Peace and Churches for Middle East Peace is this coalition of Christian groups from really all across the theological spectrum that's pushing for a just peace in Israel Palestine, really sort of trying to uplift the rights and dignity of Palestinians. And so the Catholic Advisory Council, our role is to really engage US Catholics in that work and also, I mean, to educate Catholics, because I think many Catholics are just unfamiliar, and that leads to a lot of apathy. I think a lot of Catholics don't think that Israel, Palestine is our issue, so to speak.
I think sometimes Catholics perceive this as like a Muslim Jewish conflict, which can be really harmful.
I think that's a perception of a lot of Americans. So one of the things that we've been doing is really trying to apply the principles of what's called Catholic social teaching to the situation in Israel Palestine, and to help Catholics understand that our faith, tradition and our concerns about social justice really do and should apply in this case. And so we use these different principles to sort of diagnose the problem in a way that will be familiar to Christians, but then also to envision solutions, like ways that we can. That we can help.
[00:51:44] Speaker C: All right, thanks so much, Jordan, for your time and answering all those questions, and I look forward to being in touch.
[00:51:51] Speaker A: Sounds good. Thanks, Yunus.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: And that was my interview with Jordan Denary Dufner. There are so many things that stood out for me in that discussion. First, whenever I engage with Christians about the Quran and Bible, they're often very able to speak about Abraham, Jesus, and Mary. However, there's some tension when we reach the level or the discussion of the Prophet Muhammad. Jordan, in her dissertation, begins away an opportunity for Christians to speak more about the Prophet Muhammad and how he's important in Christian Muslim dialogue. I also noticed her emphasis on relationships. She's not only speaking about texts and theology and history, but she has relationships with Muslims and she cares about those relationships. And she wants to see a world where Christians and Muslims work together and build projects together.
And lastly, I see in her discussion not only discussions regarding theology and interfaith dialogue, but also a discussion regarding politics and building a new political reality. She mentions the situation in Palestine, and she wants to work with Muslims to build a global reality that is socially just and fair. And with that, thank you for listening to the Islamic Mary podcast. I would encourage you to subscribe to the podcast. Encourage your friends, students and colleagues to listen to it as well. We'll also invite you to review the podcast. I'm happy to see that there are a couple of reviews of people finding the information valuable, and you're always welcome to visit my website. You can see my research and blog as well. Join my newsletter where I'll update everyone on the publication of my forthcoming book, the Islamic Mary. Thanks once again and take care.
[00:53:51] Speaker A: Sam.
