How Muslims Are Likely to View Friday's Washington National Cathedral's Islamic Prayer Service

By Robin G. Jordan

The International Business Times and the Christian Post have published articles on this past Friday’s jumu’ah at the Episcopal cathedral in Washington D.C. According to these articles a lone woman protester briefly disrupted the gathering to be quickly escorted from the building. The service would also draw criticism from a number of Christian leaders and commentators.

For the Muslims who took part in the jumu’ah, the service was highly symbolic. In praying in the cathedral, they claimed the cathedral as a part of the Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam, as a part of the world under the sway of their religion, a notion completely lost on the religious pluralists in the Episcopal Church. It is obvious from the remarks of the Rev. Canon Gina Gilland Campbell that she did not have a clue as to how Muslims would view the service. To the Muslim way of thinking the opening of a church building to Muslims for prayers is in the natural order of things, a tacit acknowledgement of the superiority of their religion to Christianity

As a number of scholars have pointed out, Islam is not an Abrahamic religion in the sense that Judaism and Christianity are. The Abraham of the Quran is not the Abraham of the Old Testament. If one examines the development of Islam at its very earliest stages—during the life of Prophet Muhammad himself—it is not inaccurate to view Islam from a Christian perspective as a form of heresy or heterodoxy, particularly in its denial of the Triune nature of God and the divinity of Christ. They are certainly major points on which Christians and Muslims do not agree. Both Christians and Muslims view each other as mistaken on these points. 

The jumu’ah sends a quite different message to Muslims than the Episcopal Church may have intended. As well as viewing the opening of the cathedral for Muslim prayers as an acknowledgement of the superiority of Islam, they will also see it as a form of dhimmitude. It will do very little to mitigate the widespread Muslim discrimination against non-Muslims and their intolerance and persecution of non-Muslims, in particular Christians, around the world.

In the area of better relations with non-Muslims, Muslims themselves need to take the initiative. If one considers the divisions in Islam and the tensions between the different Islamic sects, this might prove to be a challenge. Muslims may need to learn to live peacefully with each other before they are able to live peacefully with the adherents of other religions. The struggle to be a religion of peace in both word and deed may be what true jihad is about.