By Jim Coggins

"THE Christian Church has always existed in a context filled with a wide diversity of religious expressions."

So declares the Vision Statement explaining why Emmanuel College has begun training leaders for the Muslim faith.

At the end of March, the Toronto college began offering its first two Islamic courses: 'Islamic Spirituality in a Health Care Setting' and 'The Qur'an in the Canadian Context.' These are continuing education courses, which confer no academic credit. However, students who complete all nine planned continuing education courses will be given a Canadian Certificate in Muslim Studies.

The courses are geared to four groups of people: imams (Muslim clergy) and other leaders in the Muslim community; community workers and Islamic school teachers; people engaged in interfaith dialogue; and people who just want to learn more about Islam.

The courses will help students understand "what it means to be a committed Muslim in the Canadian context," Emmanuel principal Mark Toulouse told CC.com. The majority of Muslims in Canada are immigrants -- and they struggle with how to relate to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for instance.

Toronto is the most logical place for such a program because it is "the most Muslim city in North America," Toulouse said. Muslims make up over two percent of the Canadian population, but five percent of the population of Toronto. There are 60 mosques in the city.

The certificate is just the first step in Islamic studies at Emmanuel. The college is also developing an accredited two-year Master's degree in Islamic studies. It would be a second track in the current Master of Pastoral Studies program. In the first year, while Christian students are studying the Bible, Christian theology, Christian ethics and the history of Christianity, Muslim students would be studying the Qur'an, Islamic theology, Islamic law and the history of Islam. In the second year, students from both tracks would take vocational training together, studying areas such as chaplaincy, and death and dying. The program would prepare Muslims to be chaplains, counsellors and imams.

The third step is for Emmanuel to hire a full-time Muslim professor, as early as fall 2010, and to raise enough money to endow a chair in Muslim studies.

The program arose out of "scriptural reasoning seminars" organized by Emmanuel and the University of Toronto in recent years, involving Christians, Muslims and Jews. As interfaith friendships developed, conversations developed over the needs of the Muslim community in Toronto. Emmanuel then spent two years consulting with the Muslim community, including the Canadian Council of Imams, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, and representatives of the Sunni, Shia and Ismaili branches of Islam. Nevin Reda, the Muslim point person for the scriptural reasoning seminars, has been appointed coordinator for Emmanuel's Islamic programs.

Emmanuel, whose main role has been to train clergy for the United Church of Canada, is one of the schools which make up the Toronto School of Theology at the University of Toronto. Like Emmanuel's other programs, the Islamic studies programs will stress understanding and professional training. The courses will "embrace university values," Toulouse said, and "no class will set out what you must believe."

He stressed: "We are not out to make Muslims into Christians." He added that this approach is in keeping with the United Church position that "God is at work in Islam just as God is at work in Christianity" and that "Muslims don't need to become Christians to be faithful to God."

The Vision Statement for Emmanuel's Islamic studies initiative states that this does not mean that there is no absolute truth -- only that no religion has a monopoly on truth. It cites a United Church report as saying that "no single religious tradition can speak with finality" (That We May Know Each Other: United Church-Muslim Relations Today, 2004).

The goal, Toulouse said, is for Muslims and Christians to seek truth together and see what each can contribute to "a common understanding of who God is and how to relate to human beings."

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The new approach is "an odd sort of thing for a Christian college to be doing," Geoff Wilkins told CC.com. Wilkins is chair of the National Alliance of Covenanting Congregations, a theologically conservative movement representing about 75 congregations in the United Church of Canada.

Dialogue between religions and studying comparative religions are important things, Wilkins suggested, but training Muslim clergy is "completely inappropriate" for a Christian college. "The complete revelation of God is given in Jesus Christ. Why would a Christian institution be teaching a partial revelation when the complete revelation is available?"

Wilkins wondered whether the new program at Emmanuel is a response to the "enrollment crisis" that most United Church theological colleges are facing.

Toulouse is aware that other Christian colleges and universities have a different approach to the issues than Emmanuel does.

While not familiar enough with the Emmanuel program to comment directly, Pierre Gilbert, an associate professor of Bible and theology at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) in Winnipeg, did suggest that Emmanuel's approach is highly unusual.

Gilbert coordinates an annual lecture series at CMU called 'Proclaiming the Unique Claims of Christ.'

This year's series, March 15-16, featured Emmanuel Ali El-Shariff speaking on 'Is Jesus Only For Christians?'; 'Do the Unique Claims of Jesus Make a Difference? Helping People Come to Faith'; and 'How can we Reach Muslims with Understanding and Compassion?' El-Shariff is a former imam-in-training who converted to Christianity, and converting Muslims was the main thrust of his presentation.

El-Shariff has been involved in television and Internet evangelism to Muslims for a number of years. He owns a business in Winnipeg and is working on a DMin degree from Providence College.

Gilbert agreed that it was important for Christians to dialogue with Muslims, saying: "How Islam will respond to the West and vice versa will be a defining issue in the 21st century." However, that does not mean Christians need to abandon their claims about the uniqueness of Christ. "You can't be a Christian and say something opposite to what Jesus said about himself in passages such as John 14:6," Gilbert said.

"If Jesus is the Son of God," and Jesus is the only one who has "dealt with sin and broken the bonds of death," El-Shariff told CC.com, then "he is the only one we should worship."

Citing Jesus' words that "he who does not gather with me scatters," El-Shariff suggested that Emmanuel College's plan to train Muslims to teach others to believe in Islam amounts to scattering.

When approaching Muslims, it is important to have an attitude of respect, love and compassion, Gilbert said, summarizing some of what El-Shariff had said in his presentations; but it is also important for Christians to respect their own faith and "remain true to what the Bible says of Jesus." When talking to Muslims, Christians should "give priority to sharing the good news of forgiveness and eternal life in Jesus Christ -- just as they should with anyone else."

Muslims are used to open discussion, Gilbert said, and "they will respect us more if we tell them clearly what we believe."

It is particularly important to offer Muslims personal testimonies, Gilbert suggested. "If we tell them how Jesus Christ transformed our lives, they will listen with great interest, because Islam is a more formal religion."

It is also important to speak about the forgiveness of sin through Christ's death on the cross, Gilbert said, because Islam is a legalistic religion and many Muslims have "a profound sense of guilt." This is why becoming a suicide bomber can be "very attractive to Muslim young people who have lived immorally -- it offers them an opportunity to redeem their lives." This makes it doubly important for Christians to offer them another alternative.

March 25/2010