On peace being upon us all

Aya Sofya

I attended an Inter-Faith gathering on Friday night, which was interesting. We were an eclectic mix of the world’s religions: some Muslims, a Hindu-looking guy, a Buddhist – I presume, dressed as he was in flowing orange and looking very peaceful – a couple of Atheists, an Agnostic or two; it was difficult to know exactly where everyone stood on life, love and everything else as we weren’t sporting team colours or name-tags denoting our positions. We were however gathered loosely in religiously (or non)-affiliated clusters.

But as always, the conversation was stimulating. At one point Atilla, a Muslim friend of mine (some of my best friends are Muslim…), referred to the Prophet Mohammed as, ‘Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him’. I was responding to this and said Prophet Mohammed, and then I came unstuck: was it okay to say Mohammed alone without, you know, the added phrase? Would it be rude to just say Mohammed? Would it be like someone coming up to me and referring to my Saviour Jesus as ‘ol’ J.C.’? So, in the moment (forgive me, in robust inter-faith conversations, you’re working with fractions of a second to get your thought out) I said, ‘Mohammed, peace be upon him’. I was a little shocked that I said this. It sounded a bit too Islamic. 

I don’t know if I just had not noticed or if my confusing remark started a bit of an avalanche but then others started saying, ‘Peace be upon him,’ so much so that there seemed to be an awful lot of peace now flying around the room, and rather disconcertingly attaching itself to all sorts of different kinds of people. One man, until this moment a rather confident-seeming atheist, referred to Gandhi and then, like with me, hesitated wobbled and then said, ‘Peace be upon him.’ Actually he didn’t say that, he tried to say that but said instead, ‘May the peace of…’ and then rather trailed off, realising there was no good way for an atheist to end that particular sentence. And then I thought to myself: But Gandhi is a Hindu? He isn’t a prophet is he? A holy man for sure but… Is he a holy man or just ‘above average’ spiritually? He needs a miracle to be saint though, isn’t that right? Or is that just a Catholic thing? ... Who decides these things anyway?

And so it goes.

Then Atilla did a rather strange thing: he said ‘Jesus, peace be upon him’. Now one of the first, and rather surprising, things a newbie will learn in inter-faith dialogue is that Muslims hold Jesus in high esteem, as a prophet. So he too gets the phrase, ‘Peace be upon him.’ I found this rather offensive; I felt like saying to Atilla, ‘But Jesus is ours so stop making him sound so, I don’t know, Muslim-y. Just Jesus will be fine!’ Sporting an attitude the equivalent of a petulant child jumping up and down demanding a slow-to-arrive sweetie. I might have said this except the exceptionally smart Catholic had only minutes earlier reminded us Christians that Jesus was in fact not Christian but Jewish and that he had in fact not come to start a new religion; this is true, but unnerving. (As a colleague reminded me as I recounted this conversation, with Jesus not being Christian and John Wesley not being Methodist, it’s very hard for us Methodists to know exactly where we stand.) Inter-faith debates go like this. The ground begins to wobble beneath your feet and if you’re not careful you will lose your balance.

A few days later, while listening to Atilla present on Inter-Faith, he spoke of the prophets – and the prophets we have in common; his slide had the names of the prophets followed by an acronym, PBUTA. I wasn’t sure what that meant till I heard Atilla say, ‘Peace be upon them all’. I realised this was a catch-phrase for all prophets. I suppose religious reverence would soon give way to godless tedium if each prophet demanded a repeat of that phrase every time their name was used.

But I liked that: Peace be upon them all.

And maybe we just extend that a little bit: Peace be upon us all.

Or maybe we can just shorten it: Peace.

When Atilla was preparing to give his talk I said, ‘See you Monday.’ He said, ‘Hopefully’. I looked blankly at him, then blinked. ‘No, not hopefully, definitely. We’re on. It’s been advertised. People are coming. You’d better be there!’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought ‘hopefully’ was the correct English translation of ‘Inshallah’?’

‘No, I don’t think so. My Arabic is a little rusty but if ‘Inshallah’ means I could possibly make it but there’s a good chance something else might come up, then yes that is a good translation, otherwise not so much. Doesn’t ‘Inshallah’ mean ‘God-willing’?’

‘Okay then. See you Monday night, ‘Inshallah’.’

When Monday was finished I was saying goodbye to Atilla and his colleague Abdul, who lately has been everywhere Atilla is sporting always a smile, saying never a word. (He is a deeply helpful young man though silent as the grave.) I had neglected to give Atilla a gift for his presentation that evening and was arranging a coffee during the week to hand a gift over.

I said, ‘I’ll phone you mid-week and arrange to see you Thursday?’

Abdul looked at Atilla then looked at me and spoke only the second sentence I had ever heard him speak: ‘Hopefully,’ he said, sporting a smile so broad it made him float.