Teaching Christianity and Islam

In my World Religions class, the hardest unit for me to teach is the Christianity unit, followed closely by the Islam unit.

The Christianity unit is hard because people either a) are some kind of Christian themselves and think they have nothing to learn (no matter how many times I warn them against it, this is always the unit with the highest number of students who skip); or b) they disdain Christianity and will not believe any information that might even hint at putting Christianity in a positive light.

For example, this week we were discussing Islam, which of course always has to include a discussion of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, and one student says, "But all that terrorism is no worse than all the stuff Christians did in the past. I mean, what about the Inquisition?"

Seriously? It wasn't the point in the discussion where I could stop and say, "What do you actually know about the Inquisition? Have you researched it for yourself, or are you just believing the vague condemnations you've gotten from television?"

So I just said, "Um, no." The Crusades get used the same way, as an example of aggressive acts of Christian terrorism against an otherwise tolerant and peace-loving people who never hurt anyone. Whatever. It's very frustrating to try to teach to people who already think they know everything.

The problem with teaching Islam is both religious and cultural. There are about a billion Muslims in the world, maybe 1.1 billion, and about 90% of those would not participate in, support, or approve of, any sort of violence. My son's little girlfriend is Muslim, her parents are a doctor and a dentist, and I can assure you, they're not a little domestic sleeper-cell.

The difficulty is in trying to teach the "most don't but some do" aspects of Islam. There is a strand of the Muslim tradition that supports the use of violence and/or military action to spread the teachings of the Prophet and bring the world under submission to Allah. Some Muslims, about 10%, choose to embrace that piece of their tradition. They aren't ashamed or apologetic about this--why should they be? They live in a culture where strength is respected, tolerance and dialogue are weaknesses, and if God's on your side, he'll enable you to force others to convert.

But Western minds can't grasp the cultural shift from "live and let live" multiculturalism to "God wants the world to submit, and we're going to make sure they do." But again, though 10% of a billion is a pretty significant number, it's still only 10%. 9/10 of Muslims are faithful people just trying to live in the world like the rest of us. We have to know what the other 10% are doing and what they believe--our safety and freedoms depends on it, and the threat is real, but we can't leap from there into saying that all Muslims should be classified with that 10%.

But in saying that, I'm afraid--or I was this week--that I allowed students to leave class with their anti-Muslim prejudices confirmed. That wasn't what I intended to do. Of course, they also do that in the Christianity unit, and I guess all I can do is to offer the real facts. I can't forcibly pry someone's mind open with a crowbar (though the thought has some appeal!). I hope that some of the real picture of both Christianity and Islam sinks into their brains over time.