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Vol XV No 1 January - June 2025
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Godefroy Ragunet de Saint-Albin OCSO (+2023) at the Monastic-Muslim dialogue held in Iran in 2012.
The Origins of
Monastic-Muslim Dialogue
Formal dialogue between Catholic monastics and Muslims is a fairly recent phenomenon. Still, its beginnings can be traced back to 1957, when an organization called Aide a l’mplantation monastique (Aid for the Establishment of Monasticism) was established within the Benedictine Confederation. Its purpose was to promote and assist recently founded Catholic monasteries outside Europe and North America. The organization is still very active and its acronym, AIM, remains the same, but now stands for “Alliance inter-monastères” in French, and “Alliance for International Monasticism” in English.
Shortly after it was founded, AIM engaged the French Benedictine monk Jean Leclercq to help monastic communities in Africa and elsewhere better understand and appreciate the religious beliefs and traditions of the people they were living with. Jean Leclercq made his first trip to Africa in 1962, visiting the monastery of Toumliline in in Morocco. Two years later, in 1964, AIM delegated him the task of taking part in the first meeting of monks in Africa, which was held at Bouaké in Côte d’Ivoire. This would be followed by many trips to West and East Africa, but not, it seems, to South Africa.
Also, in 1964, Pope Paul VI established a Secretariat for Non-Christians, which is known today as the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. Later that year, he promulgated the Second Vatican Council's declaration on the church's relation to non-Christian religions. That declaration, known by its opening words Nostra ætate (In our time), is the shortest of all the documents of Vatican II, but surely one of the most influential. It signals a sea change in the attitude of the Catholic Church toward other religious traditions, from condemnation and rejection to dialogue and respect. The opening words of Nostra ætate emphasize unity as the foundation and goal of the Catholic Church’s relation to other religious traditions.
In our time, when day by day humankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among all peoples, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what human beings have in common and what draws them to fellowship.
One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal, God.
Even before the establishment of AIM and the promulgation of Nostra ætate, some individual monks were deeply committed to interreligious dialogue in their search for the one God and for unity in God. Notable among them were the French monk Henri Le Saux (who adopted the name Abhishiktananda (Sanskrit for “the bliss of the anointed one”) and the English monk, Bede Griffiths, both of whom devoted their lives to integrating Christian and Hindu spirituality.
Qom, Iran, 2012.
Shortly before he died in 1968, Merton gave an informal talk in Kolkata at a conference on “The Relevance of Religion in the Modern World,” which was attended by representatives of ten world religions. In that talk he highlighted the realization of our fundamental unity as the goal of interreligious dialogue. “My dear brothers and sisters,” he said, “we are already one. But we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be, is what we are."[1]
The impetus for creating an organization to promote, support, and coordinate the interreligious dialogue of monks and nuns came in 1974 when Cardinal Sergio Pignedoli, president of what is now the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, sent a letter to the then Benedictine Abbot Primate Rembert Weakland asking the monastic orders in the Church to take a leading role in interreligious dialogue. The reason they should do so, he said, is because “The presence of monasticism in the Catholic Church is in itself a bridge spanning all religions. If we were to present ourselves to Buddhism and Hinduism, not to mention other religions, without the monastic religious experience, we would hardly be credible as religious persons.”[2]
The organization created in response to Cardinal Pignedoli’s request eventually became known as Dialogue Interreligieux Monastique•Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, DIM•MID for short. During the first years of its existence, its principal dialogue partners were Hindus and Buddhists, whose monastic way of life preceded Christian monasticism by about a thousand years—which just might suggest that Christian monks have something to learn from them. When Christian monks entered into respectful dialogue with Buddhist and Hindu monks, they gradually realized that monasticism was what Ramon Panikkar called a “universal archetype.” In other words, there is a universal, fundamental pattern or model of monastic life that exists across different cultures and religious traditions. Monasticism is not limited to specific religious denominations or institutions. Rather, it represents a deeper, more universal human impulse or way of life. That impulse is a search for what is ultimate and a search for unity, unity with God, unity with one’s brothers and sisters, unity with all of humanity, and unity with one’s self.
The year 1995 saw the beginning of DIM•MID’s shift toward dialogue with Islam. In that year, Christian de Chergé, prior of Notre Dame de l’Atlas, a Trappist monastery near the village of Tibhirine in Algeria, spoke at the annual meeting of the European Commission of DIM•MID. He had been invited to describe his and his community’s experience of dialogue with Muslims at the levels of daily life and spirituality. In his presentation, he explained why it was appropriate for Christian monks and nuns to be involved in dialogue with the followers of a religious tradition that does not include an institutionalized form of monasticism. He mentioned three significant links between Islam and the monastic tradition: the central place of obedience for monastics and surrender or submission for Muslims; their respective practices of ritual prayer several times a day; and the centrality of the Word of God in both spiritual
Prior Christian de Chergé (bottom) and monks of the Trappist monastery of Thibherine in Algeria who were abducted and executed in 1996.
One year later, on the night of March 26–27, 1996, Christian and six of his confreres were kidnapped by the Groupe Islamique Armé, the Armed Islamic Group, an Algerian extremist organization that emerged in the early 1990s. Two months later, all seven monks were killed in circumstances that still remain unclear.
Christian’s final testament, which he sent to his family to be opened if he became a victim of the violence sweeping through Algeria, and which put many Muslims to death, is a profoundly moving statement of his love for the people of Algeria, his admiration for the religion of Islam, and his commitment to Christ and his call to forgive those who trespass against us. The title Christian gave to his final testament, “Quand un a-dieu s’envisage,” is a play on words in French that can be interpreted in two ways: “When a farewell is envisioned” or “When God is given a face.”
Christian’s final testament is already regarded as one of the most important Christian spiritual documents of the twentieth century. It is relatively short and can be easily found online. These excerpts from the three final paragraphs of this statement are especially noteworthy:
My death, clearly, will appear to justify those who hastily judged me naïve, or idealistic: “Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!” But they must come to understand that my avid curiosity will then be satisfied. This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills—immerse my gaze in that of the Father, and contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of His Passion, and filled with the Gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness, while playfully delighting in the differences.
I thank God, who seems to have willed the loss of this life, which was totally mine and totally theirs, for the sake of that JOY in everything and despite everything. . . . . And also you, the friend of my final moment, who would not be aware of what you were doing. Yes, I also say this THANK YOU and this A-DIEU to you, in whom I see the face of God. And may we find each other, happy good thieves in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. AMEN! In sha’Allah!
In 2010, a French film on the monks of Tibhirine, “Des Hommes et des dieux,” won the Grand Prix at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. The film, which was released in English in 2011 with the title ”Of Gods and Men,” provided an added incentive to make Monastic-Muslim dialogue a centerpiece of the mission of DIM•MID.
After three meetings in England of Christians and Shi‘a Muslims, the first of eight international meetings in which DIM•MID was involved took place in Rome in 2011. Successive meetings were held in Italy, Iran (on two occasions), France, Kenya, England, and now South
Mashhad, Iran, 2016.
The meeting in Kenya, which took place in 2017, signaled a conscious decision of DIM•MID to begin focusing on Africa, given the large number of Muslims and the growing number of Catholic monks and nuns on this continent. The 2017 meeting was followed by a gathering of Muslim women and Catholic nuns that was held in Nairobi last year. In May of this year, these Muslim and Catholic women decided to come together again, this time to discuss the place of prayer and work in their spiritual lives.
Last year there was a meeting of West African monastic men and women that took place in Senegal. That meeting led to the formation of a West African Commission of DIM•MID with Abbot Olivier-Marie, here present, as its coordinator.
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At the end of one of the first modern-day Christian-Muslim dialogues, which was held in Lebanon in 1974, an Anglican bishop said, “We as Christians need the others, the Jews and the Muslims, to remember the strength and the richness of the vision of God as the One.”[4]
Our meetings with Shi‘a’ Muslims, especially the one held in Nairobi in 2017 that expressly dealt with the theme of unity of God and unity in God, have helped us to see that while we Christians express our faith in God differently in our doctrine of the Trinity, we share a common faith in the One God and in our commitment to work for the unity of all God’s children. As Christian de Chergé put it, “To speak of things differently does not mean that one is speaking of different things. Likewise, to speak of God in a different way does not mean that there is another [God], but that God is Utterly Other—in other words, different from everything that is.”[5]
The remarks of one of the Shi‘a participants in the 2017 meeting bears witness to the kind of transformation we hope to achieve by coming together in peace to speak of our search for the one God and for unity in God. She writes,
At one point, I wondered how anyone could believe the notion that religion is inherently divisive. Our faiths were the driving forces behind this God-centric atmosphere of brotherhood and sisterhood. It was religion that played a role in bringing us together in this very gathering. It was clear that our distinctive features were vastly overshadowed by a deep commitment to our Creator. . . .
I came to see with greater clarity just how much is at stake if we turn away from those who share in the core belief of One God, especially in light of our understanding of the End Times. A future in which our communities are working together under the umbrella of Jesus and Imam Mahdi (peace be with them both) may seem hopelessly idealistic, but if we are willing to make sacrifices, samplings such as this gathering are a testimony to the fact that it is well within our reach,
Sr. Markline Naturinda (Uganda), Fr Benoit Standaert (Belgium), Dr. Mohammad Ali Shomali, and Fr. William Skudlarek. Nairobi, Kenya, 2017.
As people who believe in the unity of God and recognize that God calls us toward unity and fraternity in Him, we cannot afford to settle comfortably inside the bubble of our own faith communities. We need each other to reflect God’s unity and to make God’s glory shine more brightly in the world. There is no limit to what can be achieved if we walk together and stand together; if we are motivated by our love for the all-Merciful, what is to stop us from flying together?[6]
Notes
[1] The quotation can be found in The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Directions Book, 1975).
[2] My translation of his letter, dated June 12, 1974, and held in the archives of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.
[3] William Skudlarek, “Monastic Muslim Dialogue” in Concilium: Signs of Hope in Muslim-Christian relations (2020/4), p. 50.
[4] See Jean-Claude Basset, Le dialogue interreligieux, p. XXX. Quoted by Benoît Standaert in his presentation at the 2017 meeting in Nairobi. See Dilatato Corde.
[5] Christian de Chergé, L’invincible espérance, Paris, Bayard, 1997, p. 127. My translation/paraphrase of “Mais voir les choses différemment ne signifie pas qu’on ne voit pas les mêmes choses. De même, quand Dieu se dit autrement, il ne se dit pas autre, mais Tout-Autre, c’est-à-dire autrement que tous les autres.”
[6] Miss Israa Safieddine, Hawzah limiyyah of England / United States (an Islamic seminary in London that offers traditional Islamic education). See Dilatato Corde. |
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