During Ramadan, Muslims and Christians look for ‘a shared language’

The eggs and orange juice are next to the dates, aniseed shortbread and chebekia – a honey cake. A singer introduces the meal with a prayer, after which some of the dozens of attendees close their eyes. Here, in the Andalusian cultural center MAQAM in Amsterdam, Christians and Muslims come together.

Two members of the Amsterdam Andalusia Orchestra perform an interplay of Christian-Palestinian and Islamic-Moroccan music. Then table mates describe each other, they are not allowed to “correct anything themselves”. The prejudices that arise from this form the basis for a conversation.

As night falls, the group — Muslims, Christians and others — has gathered to learn more about each other. They break the fast together during Iftar, the meal that Muslims eat after sunset during Ramadan. Ramadan and Christian Lent coincide this year for the first time since 1995. Basically the same idea, but in reality they seem like separate worlds.

That is what the initiative of the ‘interphilosophical student platform for meaning’ New Connective, of the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Free University in Amsterdam, VU Association and the Protestant Church in Amsterdam, wants to break this evening. They have been organizing, since the terrorist attacks of 2015 in, among others, the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo and the music venue Bataclan, several times a year this kind of ‘Great Prejudice Dinners’.

“Don’t you drink water either?”

“When there is Ramadan, it seems as if there are two worlds: the inner and the outer world,” says Esra Terzi (36) while eating. She is a teacher at the teacher training college in Rotterdam. “I think that the ‘native Dutch’, apologies for that wording, are reluctant to ask questions about Ramadan.” Some clichés, such as ‘don’t you drink water too?’, always come up, says Terzi. “Then keep asking, I think. There is much more behind it. It is a period of reflection. You donate part of your income, there is abstinence in all kinds of areas, you weigh your words. That energy is very beautiful.”

Protestant fasting is not much, acknowledges Herman Koetsveld. He is pastor of the Westerkerk. “The concept of ‘forty days’ has only recently come into existence. It was always regarded as ‘a Catholic thing’.” Lent is for him about thinking about big issues: “The slavery past, climate, institutional injustice. That inequality continues, we have something to put right.”

Earlier in the evening, in the Westerkerk in Amsterdam, the same group of Christians and Muslims gathered around the pulpit. They are relatively young, mostly female. “I am of the 9/11 generation,” publicist and Islam expert Enis Odaci tells those present. “After those attacks, I came back from Turkey on vacation and suddenly I became ‘the Muslim colleague’. A meeting was shut down so a colleague could ask me, “What do you think of New York?” I got upset because I was reduced to being a Muslim.”

Odaci and Koetsveld became friends in 2009 after Koetsveld, together with other Twente ministers, spoke out in a manifesto against the “language roughening of Geert Wilders and exclusion of people purely on the basis of their faith” – as Odaci paraphrased in a written reply to Koetsveld at the time.

Because Odaci found that he “had to relate to Islam”, he began to delve more and more into his faith as a “culture Muslim” – someone who does not “strictly adhere to religious rituals”. “When I saw that manifesto, I thought: Thank God! Or may Allah be praised,” says Odaci, whereupon those present begin to laugh. “I had wanted a reply from the Christians for so long about Wilders, who hijacked Christianity to put Muslims away.”

Together, Odaci and Koetsveld are looking for a ‘common language of trust’. Odaci: „Starting from the humanity of the other. Then you ask what inspires someone in life instead of why they wear a headscarf.”

The nieces Yousra Talmssou (23) and Lamia Azrour (23) from Belgium traveled to Amsterdam especially for this evening to “make the unknown known”. They are a practicing Muslim. According to Talmssou and Azrour, there is too little “dialogue between Christians and Muslims”. “I think people are too preoccupied with their own ways of thinking,” says Talmssou. The two see in the friendship between Koetsveld and Odaci evidence that a “close bond” between religions is possible.

“I used to have more friends from other religions,” Azrour says. “I am curious about others, but I feel less understood by them.” She is positively surprised by the evening: “I have learned that there is respect in humanity after all. That you can walk through one street with different religions.”

brave agnostic

Back to the dinner together. A bearded man, who calls himself a “cowardly agnostic,” helps clear the tables at the end of the evening. “I don’t normally approach someone that quickly.” The meeting has brought him “a little bit of confidence.” Passing by, a woman taps the man on the shoulder with a smile: “I think you are a very brave agnostic.”

Also read this article: Portrait of a Moroccan-Dutch family: how Islam is becoming increasingly important