- Title
- Bonhoeffer on Islam and Radical Islamism:Counter-narrative and a Speculative Exploration
- Creator
- Lovat, Terrence J.
- Relation
- The Bonhoeffer Legacy: An International Journal Vol. 5, Issue 1, p. 87-103
- Publisher
- ATF Press
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- The paper attempts to counter a strong and, as yet, too little contested allegation that Bonhoeffer can be used as an inspirational figure for anti-Muslim sentiments partly on the basis that Hitler's adulation over Islam's disposition to violence would have influenced Bonhoeffer to think poorly of the religion and presumably to have railed against it, given the opportunity. The allegation comes from Eric Metaxas whose works on Bonhoeffer, rightly or wrongly, have outsold all others; in that sense, it is an allegation that has to be taken seriously for its potential to influence opinions about Bonhoeffer's attitude to Islam and indeed to serve to strengthen anti-Muslim sentiment generally. The paper counters the allegation by opening up a line of argument that, contrary to Metaxas's inference, there may be a case to be made for Bonhoeffer's relevance to greater understanding of and tolerance towards Islam, even in elements of its radical Islamist and alleged terror-related form. While we can never know exactly what he would have thought about this issue, any more than about the myriad of issues to which his theology has been turned posthumously, the paper argues that, amidst Bonhoeffer's unfinished theological symphony', there lies a wealth of considerations that seem useful in opening up and exploring this topic in the all too rare theological way that modern scholarship largely disallows. It is this deficit in theological scholarship that, in part, exacerbates Western difficulties in dealing with Islam generally and radical Islamism especially. Can Bonhoeffer assist? What do we know? On what might we speculate reasonably?
- Subject
- islam; alleged terror-related; theological; radical islamism
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1447531
- Identifier
- uon:43179
- Identifier
- ISSN:2202-9168
- Language
- eng
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