Often when I’m reading I come across a passage that makes me want to fling the book across the room. I almost never do this—I handle books with an almost superstitious reverence—but at least I can groan or shake my head.
I did a lot of head-shaking and some groaning while reading Matthew Kaemingk’s Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear. Sometimes that was prompted by an excruciatingly pedantic sentence, like this one on page 224: “Music is a powerful sonic medium for liturgical formation.” Sometimes it was in response to the author’s failure to live up to the very principles he eloquently puts forward, as in his caricature of Ayaan Hirsi Ali (no measured critical engagement here; we’ll return to this point later). More often, though, I was scribbling appreciative comments on Post-It Notes and wishing that a friend or two would drop by so we could talk about this book immediately and at length.
Kaemingk’s book should move to the top of the reading list for participants in four distinct but often overlapping conversations: (1) on Christian-Muslim interaction generally, post-9/11, and the “framing” of this subject in the West; (2) on Muslim immigrants to the United States; (3) on the “hegemony” of liberalism in modernity; and (4) on Abraham Kuyper’s theological case for genuine pluralism, with particular reference to the stance that evangelical Christians in the United States should take (admirers of John Inazu’s Confident Pluralism will be particularly interested in this thread). Throughout, Kaemingk’s narrative focuses on the Netherlands, asking what can be learned from the experience of Muslim immigrants there and from the failure of Kuyper’s pluralist project; in addition to Kuyper, he draws on the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck and the pastor-theologian Klaas Schilder.
“So,” you’re thinking, “basically a book about the Netherlands. Thanks, but I have so much already lined up to read . . .” No, not exactly. It’s a book that uses the case of the Netherlands—especially with regard to Muslim immigration—to illuminate the range of subjects listed above. Kaemingk speaks of a “clash between Mecca and Amsterdam,” in which Amsterdam—aggressively, licentiously “liberal”—stands in for “liberal modernity” more generally, priding itself on its “tolerance” even as it becomes ever less willing to brook dissent.
Depending on their investment in this or that conversation, most readers (I suspect) will focus on certain parts of the book and merely skim others. All readers, so I think, should start not at the beginning but with Chapter 8, “Pluralism and Action.” This is the most original, most inspiring, and most grittily particular section of the entire book. It starts with a beguiling epigraph from Kuyper: “The smallness of the seed should not disturb us.” The seeds in question are specific examples of Christian pluralism in action. Oddly, Kaemingk introduces these wonderful examples rather defensively: “This book does not have a single solution.” Well, of course not! (We’re not idiots, you know.) “Instead, the goal of this final chapter [“final,” that is, in Part 3] is to illuminate a mosaic of Christian answers (notice the plural).” We did notice. (For crying out loud, trust your readers!) “These pluriform answers are being articulated in and through a variety of different careers and social spheres.” That awful sentence will no doubt prompt some readers to go on to the next chapter or close the book for good, missing what was for me pure gold.
The examples that follow, drawing extensively on interviews Kaemingk conducted, are delightfully “pluriform.” The first little section describes a group of Christian women in Rotterdam who began meeting regularly with Muslim women to sew. The second tells how the religion department of the Free University of Amsterdam “is actively recruiting Muslims to teach Islam, Christians to teach Christianity, Jews to teach Judaism, and so on.” There are six examples of “Pluralism and Action” altogether, each distinct and each harmonious with all the others.
If you start with this chapter and then go to the beginning, you will (I think) feel that Kaemingk has earned your trust. Then, when you encounter his overview of the “dangerous imbalance in the stories the West tells itself about the conflict between Mecca and Amsterdam,” you’ll be willing to cut him some slack. Maybe he does exaggerate the extent of “Islamophobia.” (Though for some readers, especially those in academic settings, that won’t be a problem.) Maybe he doesn’t say enough about legitimate concerns with Islam (a subject he mentions but does not really address). Let’s not focus on those differences in emphasis; let’s concentrate on the big picture.
I’m not merely willing but eager to do so. Still, as I suggested above, there are points at which Kaemingk fails to live up to his own principles, most egregiously in the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I love the first entry for her in the index: “anti-Islamic narrative constructed by.” That’s a phrase Kaemingk is excessively fond of, as many academics are these days. But of course his own “narrative” is “constructed” as well. His scornful dismissal of Ali’s account of Muslim women abused by their husbands reads a bit differently today than it may have when he wrote those sentences. Is it possible that there is some value in this testimony, even if—clearly—it cannot legitimately be used to impugn Islam across the board? And why is there nothing about what Ali herself has endured? “Ayaan Hirsi Ali lives in the United States and has worked for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.” A conservative think tank, huh? Obviously she has deserved whatever persecution she has suffered. She’s well set-up now. She clearly doesn’t merit the “Christian hospitality, justice, and grace” so movingly (and unpretentiously) extended to faithful Muslims in Kaemingk’s book.
While reading Kaemingk, I recalled a conversation with a young man (mid-30s) I greatly admire, a convert to Catholicism. He had been telling me about several encounters he’s had with Muslims, what good conversations they’d had, how he was struck by their unembarrassed piety, and so on. “In fact,” he said, “I feel much closer to them than I do to a lot of other Americans, including”—and here he smiled—“most evangelicals.” Too many evangelicals, he thinks, tend to lust after approval from “the culture” and are too ready to compromise. How unthinkable such a conversation would have been when I was that young man’s age.
In the early 1990s, when reports of an “Islamist revival” began to appear more frequently, I tried to remember in what contexts Islam had even been mentioned in passing in my four years as an undergraduate. Memory is fallible, needless to say, but I was unable to recall as many as a half-dozen instances. We are still early in an entirely new phase of interaction between Islam and “the West,” one in which Muslims are increasingly established in Western Europe and North America. Far too many words in the last 20 years have been devoted to explaining what “will happen next,” as the writer confidently asserts, or what will happen if we don’t do X, Y, or Z. I don’t think anyone knows.
We can be certain, though, that the modest but not undemanding practices commended to us by Matthew Kaemingk will not become irrelevant.
