Muslims and Christians face challenge of structural greed

Muslims and Christians share common values in the quranic and biblical traditions that lay the ground for a collective interreligious response to the unprecedented threats posed by the neoliberal economic system to human and ecological well-being and survival.

This was the finding of 43 Muslim and Christian scholars and religious leaders who attended the “Interfaith Dialogue Engaging Structural Greed Today” in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia on 25-30 September. The consultation was organised by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for Theology and Studies (DTS).

“In the course of this Muslim-Christian interfaith dialogue, there arises a convergence on the need to provide constructive, systemic alternatives to the current dominant reductionist, ‘death-bound’ neoliberal system,” said a dozen Muslim delegates from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia and the United Kingdom who met as a group and put together a report, “Muslim Understanding of the Issue.”

Many of the plans the Muslim group proposed were similar to “common-good initiatives” undertaken by Christian churches and secular initiatives, said Adi Setia, assistant professor at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur.

“I believe Muslims can and should work in tandem with them, since we are all engulfed in this hailstorm of structural greed, and we need to work together to escape and chart a new course,” he noted.

But while both Islam and Christianity acknowledge the human being as “custodian of God’s creation” and greed as “betrayal of God’s trust in humankind”, there is strong resistance in both faiths to challenging greed as it manifests itself in the forces of globalization, said Prof. Chandra Muzaffar.

Challenge to faith communities

Even Islamic nations have not been able to resist the power of the market despite injunctions against profiteering in the Koran, added Muzaffar, head of Global Studies at the University of Malaysia and founder director of the International Movement for a Just World.

Peace for Life Working Group members Prof Chandra Muzaffar
(right) and Dr Ulrich Duchrow (left) providing the theological
framework for the 2011 LWF-sponsored interfaith dialogue on
structural greed. (Photo © LWF/I. Benesch)

Dr. Ulrich Duchrow of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Baden, Germany said that while suggesting that even the banking system has become an instrument of institutionalised greed, many churches are indirectly blessing the neoliberal market economy by pretending that it is still being regulated.

“Many of the European churches are not ready to accept the clear decision of the ecumenical assemblies rejecting the capitalist imperial market system,” Duchrow added, referring to church bodies that have taken a clear stand on economic injustice and related issues.

“Religion condemns greed and philosophy sees it as a vice, but still it rules the world,” Muzaffar said.

“Faith communities too must understand that strategies for transforming structural greed need to be initiated at the micro [personal] and macro [community] level through mutual acceptance and cultivation of compassion for others,” said Y.B. Yee Moh Chai, deputy chief minister of Sabah state in Malaysia and a member of the Lutheran Basel Christian Church of Malaysia (BCCM).

In his address, Rev. Thu En Yu, principal of the hosting Sabah Theological Seminary, pointed out that intercultural dialogue offers a way to articulate a new ethic for people in a pluralistic society. “Ethics has always had an inseparable link with religion,” noted Thu, a retired bishop of the BCCM.

Rev. Dr. Martin L. Sinaga, LWF study secretary for Theology and the Church, explained the consultation was a follow up to a similar dialogue with Buddhists in 2010 held at Chiang Mai in Thailand.

Unity of thought

Participants in the consultation noted that there was a great deal of unity of thought among Christians and Muslims at the event.

“I thought we [Muslims] might have to quarrel on an ideological level with the Christians,” remarked Intan Syah Ichsan, an Indonesian Muslim economist. “But to my surprise, I find that there is great unity (of thought) among us (Muslims and the Christians) on the problem.”

“The common elements between Christianity and Islam on economic issues are very high,” said M. Hum Hulwati, professor of Islamic Economics at the Institute of Islamic Studies at Padang in Indonesia.

“Economy is the lifeline of the people and religions should speak out more for the people on such issues,” she noted.

Rev. Pedro Bullón Moreano of the Peruvian Lutheran Evangelical Church pointed out that until he came to the interfaith conference, he knew little of Islam.

“The presentations of Muslim scholars here have shown that their thinking on social issues is very close to us. They are also equally concerned about the impact of the greedy market economy on the lives of ordinary people,” said Moreano, professor of theology at the Latin American Biblical University in Lima.

For Esha Faki Mwinyihaji, a Muslim economic lecturer at the Maseno University in Kenya, the interfaith dialogue affirmed the conviction that “Humanity is one and we should work together.”

Compiled from these articles:

“Faith Groups Must Work Together to Tackle Structural Greed”. Lutheran World Information. 5 October 2011
“Faith communities urged to challenge greed in global market economy”. Lutheran World Information. 28 September 2011

“Muslims and Christians Engaging Structural Greed Today” - Conference Findings of the LWF Interfaith Dialogue Engaging Structural Greed Today, 25-30 September 2011, Malaysia
Chandra Muzaffar, “God or greed? A Muslim view”, 27 September 2011.
“A Buddhist-Christian Common Word on Structural Greed”, 17 September 2010.