HOW DO YOU SAY "WE’RE SORRY"?

Mollie

GetReligion.org
http://www.g etreligion.org/?p=11341
April 28 2009

Rather than update my previous Armenian genocide post with a link
to Julia Duin’s article on its anniversary in the Washington Times,
I wanted to highlight it separately. I noted that most stories about
the events of 1915 were solely or almost exclusively political. Very
few touched on religion in any meaningful way.

However, the Times used the anniversary as a hook to explore how
one theological concept — corporate repentance — differs across
various religions. What would contrition look like, Duin asks, from
a secular state based on a religious tradition that does not practice
corporate repentance?:

The concept of national repentance started with Jewish prophets
in the Hebrew Scriptures. Christians then ran with the idea, with
modern examples including President Lincoln’s 1863 call to a day of
national repentance and fasting. His idea lives on in the National
Day of Prayer on the first Thursday of each May.

Plus, Christians ranging from the late Pope John Paul II to bands of
evangelical Protestant missionaries have apologized for the excesses
of the Crusades. But what Islamic entity has apologized for the 300
years of conquest that provoked the Crusades?

These are the kinds of questions I wish newspapers gave more room
to explore. (Side note: I’m always somewhat amazed at the widespread
ignorance — both in the media and in the general population — about
the periods before, during and after the Crusades. There’s so much to
the larger story that is completely ignored. I’m ashamed to admit I
didn’t even know the Crusades were in response to anything until a
few years ago. It was just never mentioned in my history textbooks
or in any media reports. I knew almost nothing about the history of
Muslim expansion until I explored the issue on my own after 9/11.) And
bringing it forward, it would be so interesting to hear from people
about how different views of corporate sin, repentance and absolution
(or even individual sin, etc.) impact public policy.

Duin quotes Wadi Haddad, a retired professor of Islamic studies
and Christian-Muslim relations at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut,
saying that such corporate repentance is very Western. Other scholars
weigh in:

"Individual Muslims can express regret or repentance, but I don’t
know what the appropriate institution would be to express Islamic
regret," Georgetown University Islamic history professor John Voll
told me. Christianity has corporate bodies representing its various
divisions, he added, but "in Islam, there is no corporate structure
that represents the umma [world Muslim community]."

While many reporters are out there repeating the Armenian desire for
acknowledgment of and apology for the genocide, what a great idea to
explore how such requests are viewed from the Muslim perspective.