Muslim Immigration & Christian Hospitality | Matt Kaemingk

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Muslim Immigration & Christian Hospitality | Matt Kaemingk

November 17, 2018

Theology professor Matthew Kaemingk's book Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear is a powerful synthesis of his life’s work. Combining his theological expertise with his lived experience in Europe, Kaemingk challenges Christians to respond differently to the political crisis surrounding Muslim immigration. Earlier this year, we sat down with Kaemingk to discuss his book and his hope for a more genuine pluralism.

Transcript

The politics of high walls and the politics of open doors doesn't really offer us a way to live together across difference. Theology professor Matthew Kaemingk's book Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear is a powerful synthesis of his life's work. Combining his theological expertise with his lived experience in Europe, Kaemingk challenges Christians to respond differently to the political crisis surrounding Muslim immigration.

Earlier this year, we sat down with Kaemingk to discuss his book and his hope for a more genuine pluralism.

[Music] Maybe the best place to start would be to have you tell us a little bit how you got interested in Islam and maybe its relationship to Christianity. So I got interested in this topic when I read a book called Murder in Amsterdam and it was about a murder that happened in poinsanelling.

A Dutch film director had created a very controversial film that was extremely critical of Islam and Muslim immigrants who had been moving into Europe and specifically into his country of the Netherlands. It was very inflammatory and in response to this young Muslim man in Amsterdam shot him off of his bicycle and murder and right there in the street. The backlash that occurred after that in the Netherlands was what was very fascinating to me because I had always thought of Dutch society as a very progressive and open-minded, very tolerant society.

What had really happened was the country itself shifted hard to the right and a new right-wing party, very nationalistic, very populist, rose up against Muslim immigrants. In large part is response to this and other ills. Essentially that the Netherlands and Europe as a whole is beginning to lose patience with Muslim immigrants.

Now as I was reading this I was reading it as a Christian and one referring to myself what is a Christian response to this? When I see my Muslim neighbors being the victims of a right-wing shift in politics, when I see my Muslim neighbors being demonized, all these sorts of things, what is my Christian response to that? And really asking myself do I have what it takes to defend them? Even if I deeply disagree with them on different theological questions, legal or political questions, do I have what it takes to defend their rights and their freedom and their dignity at a time when they're being demonized? So that was what initially got me interested in these questions of Muslim immigration and religious freedom. Well what's interesting too, your starting place is how do I how do I stand up? How do I actually love this community of people? And it seems like oftentimes what you encountered were people who didn't have that starting position. They had a starting position of more of based in fear, based in almost a much more reactionary starting point.

What do you think is contributed to that I guess that sense of fear that seems to be targeted very specifically on Muslim immigrants? Well I think what's important to note is that everyone is uncomfortable with deep difference. So Muslims, Christians, secular people, Jews, Buddhists, we all struggle when we come when we interact with people who are very different from ourselves, who have a very different understanding of human flourishing or justice or God or whatever that is, difference makes us uncomfortable. And all of those worldviews, Islam, liberalism, Christianity, communism, all of these worldviews have a history of trying to make others like themselves.

So trying to squash difference. I'm gonna make you Muslim like me. I'm gonna make you Christian like me.

I am gonna make you liberal like me and I will use the government to do so. I will use governmental power to do that. So fear is fear and a desire to control is sort of a universal human problem.

So that's that's something that we're all tempted by. And so Muslims have to wrestle with that temptation. Christians have to wrestle with that temptation.

And liberals do as well. Are atheists do as well? Yeah. You spent several years in Amsterdam doing some doctoral work and it seems like that allowed you to kind of see up close maybe a country that was even more progressive than the US and their relationship to Muslim immigration.

What did you experience there that changed your thinking on how we how maybe even the US or what could the US maybe even learn from what's happening in the Netherlands? I think oftentimes when we discuss the politics of difference. The initial encouragement is that we should take ourselves and our beliefs less seriously as sort of a way to have everyone get along sort of move everything loosely. Right.

And things will be okay. So if we let go of our identities or if we let go of our labels be they Islam or Christianity or secularism let's just all kind of let go of those things. And then we'll get along as sort of the assumption.

I think the lesson we can learn from the Netherlands is that a lack of conviction a lack of identity doesn't actually help. It doesn't actually give you the content to interact with deep difference. That actually what you do need is deep convictions about why you need to love and make space for deep difference.

That's sort of a waffling worldview. Can't stand up in a time of deep fear. Yeah.

Intensity. It can't last. You cite in your book Christian hospitality and Muslim immigration in the age of fear.

So I want to get the whole name. Right. You talk about Kuiper Abraham Kuiper as maybe a helpful voice for rethinking about how Christianity can relate to pluralism.

What in particular do you think Kuiper tapped into that may help our current moment in America? Well it's really that question of God being in control over the country. That's really his bed rocker, his starting point. That we as Christians need to make space for other worldviews, other religions, other political ideologies.

We have to make space for them because Christ alone gets to judge them. We don't get to judge them. That's not our calling in life.

And so the act of making space for individuals who are different than you and the act of making space for their distinct institutions and their distinct communities, their distinct houses of worship. When I make space for those individuals and their associations, I am honoring God's rule for them. Rather than try to rule them or judge them myself, I'm honoring that Christ is in charge.

So what Kuiper would say is that if I try to stop a mosque from being built in my city or I protest a Muslim school being built in my neighborhood or a halal butcher shop, he would say that what I'm doing if I'm trying to abstract those things is I'm actually taking Christ's crown for myself. I'm taking God's place in a way that I that I ought not. And so that's that's the primary part of what Abraham Kuiper has to add to all of this is a book of theology that makes space for others.

And it doesn't say that all religions are equal or all religions are true. There's you know, it's many ways up the same mountain. And it's like there are deep disagreements.

Right. Have those disagreements publicly. But we're gonna do that with fairness and with justice.

We're gonna treat one another justly. Yeah, how does that maybe work alongside I guess for the Christian that's coming with this imported belief that Christ is at the throne. He is king.

He is sovereign. If I'm a progressive secularist, that's probably the worst way to characterize someone who didn't know and call themselves that. If I'm a non-religious person who's committed to pluralism and democracy, that could be seen as a similar sense of your projecting your beliefs about the world onto me.

And I don't I want you to kind of keep that private. How is there is there a way that we can maybe keep those beliefs public in a way that doesn't threaten someone who's not a Christian? Well, I would say that all people have beliefs or faith. And so we take those things into the public square.

But I would say that my secular friends have their own reasons. So essentially I would ask my secular friend, do you think Muslims should be allowed to build a mosque here in this city? And I think most of them would say yes. I think they should be.

And I think many of them would say yes. I'd be okay with a Muslim school being built here as well. Now they would have different reasons for why they would say that.

And I would encourage them to develop those reasons and to think about those reasons. Now my reason for protecting a local mosque is that Jesus commands me to do that. I'm honoring Jesus when I protect my Muslim neighbor.

But a liberal is going to cite a different, you know, a secular person or a non-religious person is going to cite a different reason. And I'm grateful and hopeful that they can come up with those reasons. I'm not saying that my reason has to be theirs.

Yes. I would love for it. But that's I need to be honest about why I care about this issue.

And I don't think it's threatening to them. I think it can be stated in a way that they find understandable. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

You write about how learning to welcome Islam can maybe help us relearn how we do democracy. And I'm thinking specifically if you talk about the France or the French issue with the hijab in particular and wanting to potentially ban those. What do you mean by that when you say that Islam can help us redo democracy? Yeah.

So the wonderful thing about our Muslim neighbors is that they don't keep their faith private often. Right. So and the most obvious example of that is the headscarf.

That when a Muslim woman is walking down the street and she's wearing a headscarf, that is a visible public sign that she's different. Notice that she has some convictions that she is submitting herself to a higher authority that is not the United States government. That she believes that she is serving something larger.

And that's an opportunity for everyone walking on the street to see her and to reflect on what their authority is and to reflect on how that connects with their understanding of authority and justice and who they are. And that and what that has to do with democracy is that I believe that democracy is healthy when citizens are paying attention to what they believe and why and when they engage in conversations about that. And I think that the simple presence of a headscarf in a restaurant or an grocery store can spur a conversation about what we believe matters and about who we submit ourselves to.

And I think you know a lot of democracy in the West is struggling because we don't talk about those things. We don't examine them. And our new Muslim neighbors are forcing us to do so in a public way.

And so for that I'm very grateful. And they're also challenging the assumption that religion is supposed to be something you keep private. And that the only thing that can be public are liberal values.

Yeah. Christian values, Jewish values, Muslim values, those all have to stay in the house. And the only thing that's allowed to be public is liberalism.

And that's not good for democracy. It's much better for democracy if Muslims choose liberals are being honest about what the Christians are and actually having a dialogue. And you know a fully full volume debate too.

Yeah. Well Islam it seems in particular has been has been often conflated with the radicalism that has you know generated terrorism or violence. And so it's is they're part of this I guess phenomena that's related to if Islam is practiced publicly there is kind of this then this religion or ideology will then take over how we start to see things.

Well I think I think we do have to be honest you know about Islam. That Islam does have some very dangerous movements within it. Some some violent and difficult movements within it.

But then I think we also have to be honest about Christianity and history. And we also have to be honest about secularism and the ways in which secularism has oppressed religious difference. Yeah.

Political difference in some really violent ways. So I think we do have to be honest about that. And we also have to be honest about how democracy is a risk.

That when you allow people to speak you allow people to vote. Democracy can carry within it the seeds of its own destruction right it can allow you to vote and in a very undemocratic way or very undemocratic things. So it requires a group of citizens who are willing to risk.

Who are willing to lose. And so you really do have to believe in in the power of your convictions and the power of justice that these things will endure. So yeah, the fear that Sharia law is coming under that.

How you know Muslims comprise somewhere around 1 to 2% of the American population. So what I have yet to hear is how 1 to 2% of the population is going to accomplish imposing Sharia law on the United States. Right.

That's I haven't heard a good explanation of it. Yeah, me either. When we think about I guess the failings of democracy to welcome our our Islam neighbors.

What are some I guess avenues or strategies that could help us rehabilitate our democracy's ability to welcome religious difference. In the book that I mean when it comes to Muslim immigration there are two big loud voices out there right. You have the voice advocating high walls and restrictions.

Yeah. You have the voice advocating sort of open doors and in Europe and the United States you have both of those voices yelling really loudly. That one saying our house needs high walls and the other saying no our house needs big open doors.

And there's validity to both of those voices in specific ways. But in in my book I want to argue that both of those ways don't actually pay attention to what happens inside the house. They're so focused on walls and open doors that they're not actually thinking about how do we interact with Muslims once they come in.

Right. You can build all the walls you want. There's still millions of Muslims already inside.

Right. That's you're asking the question almost too late at that point. Yeah.

So what I what I find in Jesus is politics of the table. And that's what I kind of develop is a politics of way a way of sitting down together of eating together of demonstrating hospitality across deep deep differences. And the politics of high walls and the politics of open doors doesn't really offer us a way to live together across the difference.

I think hospitality is a skill and like every skill it needs to be practiced. And so we need to start badly and then continue to practice and getting better and better. So it's actually really what I have found the most successful attempts of these tend to be practiced.

So soccer games together, eating together, cooking together, being engaged in neighborhood associations and student groups together, but actually doing something together. There's a large movement for interfaith dialogue that has discussions about faith. And I'm supportive of that.

But I find that what's what's more successful is rather than sort of putting a Muslim and a Christian across a table looking at one another and talking about their different theologies. What's actually much more successful is if you stand next to one another and you look at a problem and you work on it together or you look at a hobby or a sport and you practice it together and in that you discover sort of a common humanity and a sense of affection for one another. A lot of the people that I met in the Netherlands who were doing these sorts of peacemaking activities, it was around cooking together, playing together, studying together, building neighborhoods together.

There was a sewing group, a women's sewing group of conservative Muslims and conservative Christians that they really did come to love each other. Wow. Yeah, it reminds me of the, I'm gonna butcher his name, but the Anton Saint-Expirate line about kind of like love consists not in staring at each other but staring side-by-side in the same direction.

Kind of that long view of like we can walk towards this together. Yeah and in the book that I wrote, my argument is that political and democratic life actually depends upon those little actions. That democracy depends upon soccer games and it depends upon kitchens and living rooms and neighborhood associations that in those small interactions democracies can be mended.

Things that have been broken can be put back together. So that yeah even those little things have political impacts. Right.

I mean it's how we're actually living out our democracy. It's why we believe it's for those moments and for that actually lived experience. Yeah.

Not just an ideological ascent to political belief. And it releases the tension of you know I have to be right or I have to beat you on this or that theological issue or political issue but it's sort of an ascent to that we're we're both citizens and we both care about this place. We care about this city and let's work together on that and we don't actually that we can have sort of these contingent relationships that they don't depend upon you joining my self-group.

Yeah. My ideology. Let's talk a little bit about the Syrian refugee crisis in particular.

I think we can't ignore that if we're talking about Muslim immigration. I think current estimates have it as more than six million Syrian refugees since 2011. Around 18,000 have resettled in the US according to some data.

Which seems like a very small number compared to the amount of refugees. We could obviously talk about the political reasons that the US has been reluctant to welcome refugees. There's been obviously the travel ban and a lot of political action that has prevented that.

Do you have hope that this will be something the US could address better in the future? Do I have hope? No I don't have a lot of hope for the next year or two. I think that as long as Donald Trump is president I don't see a whole lot of change on that. So no unfortunately not.

It's sort of a it's an opportunity for us to reflect on who we are as a nation. Like that we allow that to happen. What does that say about who we are? Yeah.

Let's say about who we value and just to sort of reflect on that and like look in the mirror. Yeah. Yeah.

Rather than sort of like demonize Donald Trump you know that he's reflecting who we are and what we want in really crummy way about that. So why is that? How do we change that? Right. Well and let's assume if we are troubled by that gap that inability to welcome our the refugee in the foreigner.

What are their steps that someone could take you know within the US right now? Are there organizations or other places they could? Oh absolutely. Yeah. World Relief is a tremendous organization that is really tackling this refugee crisis on a number of different levels.

So they help with refugee resettlement. They help with refugee training and empowerment. They work with churches and organizations who want to host refugees but they also do political advocacy on the issue in Washington DC.

So they're they're quite tremendous. There are a lot of other great refugee organizations but one of my favorites is World Relief. So you can give to them you can volunteer for them.

You can follow them on social media and get engaged in political action and advocacy through signing petitions and calling your congressmen and they're very helpful. That's great. I think we actually had Jenny Yang who was the vice president of advocacy in DC.

She spoke at a recent very tough forum and she's great and yeah they're doing some great stuff. You talk also about the habit forming I guess liturgies of Christianity that may allow us to dig into this as well. Could you talk a little bit about how that works or how that could work in terms of like forming these kind of postures towards our neighbor? Yes.

So I'll give you a few examples from a Christian worship service and how that might have an impact. One is in many churches there is a time of confession a few minutes long and it looks different in different Christian denominations but there is a moment where you're asked to confess your sins, the ways in which you've fallen short. And here's a tremendous moment for Christian citizens to confess and to remind themselves that they are not perfect.

That they do not love their neighbors as they should. That they do not recognize that Christ walks among them in the faces of their elders. And so it's an opportunity for humility.

So that's one example. A second example is there's often a moment in Christian worship services in which the whole congregation prays for the world. So not themselves.

My grandma is sick. Will you please help my grandma or I need a job. Will you help me get a job or something sort of self-focused.

But there's normally a moment in different denominations in which the church is called to pray for the world. And there again is a moment for Christian citizens to be reminded to pray for the welfare of their city and pray for the welfare of their neighbors who are not in the congregation with them. Pray for their flourishing to ask God to serve them, to ask God to help their Muslim neighbors.

So to intercede. And once again that keeps that's a way in which worship can remind us not to be so self-centered. Right.

And it's not an immediate act either. It takes place over time and slow kind of almost painstaking involvement in that. So you know I mean if you think of it like when you're learning piano right and you do your scales and you're practicing your scales and it feels like you're not making any it feels like you're not making any progress.

But over time right it becomes natural. And so in a worship service and a good worship service your heart is slowly being very slowly over years and years being opened up to the other. So it's over time your heart is learning to confess, is learning to be humble, is learning to to seek the welfare of others rather than just yourself.

But this takes a long long time and it's not not something that happens all at once. The ancient Christians called this the gymnasium of the soul and it's like going to the gym right. Yeah.

Once the results immediately. But that's sort of how it functions. That's really good.

That's been really good for us. I mean is there anything else you want to talk about a little bit? I feel like we kind of didn't cover well enough? No no it's been you know it's been great chatting with you and it's been very encouraging to see that you know that the book is getting a good reception over the last couple months and I'm excited for people to engage it and you can connect with me on Twitter if you want to talk about it more. But I'm so thankful for Veritas, all the things that you guys are doing.

Thank you so much. Yeah it's been great to chat and we're very thankful for the work you're doing. Find more content like this on veritas.org and be sure to follow the Veritas forum on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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