Abstract
Religions
Dynamics of Muslim Worlds, edited by Evelyne Reisacher and published as a part of IVP’s Missiological Engagements series, provides nuanced and insightful analyses of today’s changing Muslim societies. Most of the ten chapters are papers initially presented at the Missiology Lectures of Fuller Theological Seminary in November 2016. In part I, the contributors challenge existing stereotypes of Muslim societies with their regionally focused presentations of the Middle East, West Africa, South Asia, and Western Europe. Part II deals with important and yet seldom addressed themes of diverse voices of Muslim women, Islamic punishment for blasphemy, and the Islamic law under globalization. Part III offers missiological assessments on changes and diversity of Muslim societies, biblical principles, and efforts of peacemaking among Muslims, and a helpful evaluation of how Muslim and Islam are defined in missiology.
It is notable that the authors question established missiological thinking. For example, Nimi Wariboko points out that missiological discourses tend to frame Christian–Muslim relations only in terms of pluralism or interfaith dialogue and often overlook the political aspect of religion (57–59). Cathy Hine contends that missiology marginalizes women by accepting male-centric discourses of Islam and ignoring women and their agency in mission theories and practices (115). Reisacher critiques the binary view of orthodox Islam vs. folk Islam and maintains a need to investigate interrelationships between them (228). Overall, the contributors challenge missiologists not to dwell on the theology of Islam but incorporate the full scope of the phenomenology of Islam.
While several contributors underscore the Great Commandment as a key to engaging Muslims, none makes the Golden Rule as explicit or prominent. Perhaps philosopher of religion Harold Netland’s suggestion in his Christianity and Religious Diversity (2015) to apply the triad of the Great Commission, the Great Commandment, and the Golden Rule in interreligious engagements, especially in majority Christian nations where Muslims are a minority, could have made a helpful contribution to missiological implications.
Accessible in style if not in all the content, this book may be suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of religion. Scholars and practitioners may find in its scholarly breadth and balanced reflections an excellent resource for further study while all readers would appreciate each contributor’s evident effort to provide applications of more theoretical and sometimes technical content. This work is a welcome addition to the growing Christian literature on interfaith engagements in the contemporary world, and particularly on Christian–Muslim relations in a globalizing world.