SINGING OFF THE SAME HYMN SHEET

05-03-2007

Being handed a religious leaflet in the street leads Edward Cameron to a surprising conversion.

Street preachers or missionaries or whatever you want to call them never really gave me any cause to look up from avoiding the chewing gum and the burger wrappers as I went through town.

But this weekend on a trip to Oxford was a little different. A Muslim man was calling out to people to take a leaflet and understand ‘what we're really about'.

So I reached out, I didn't say anything, but took the leaflet and a polite ‘God bless you'.

To my own disgust I realised as I read that I had been looking for something extreme, something to be fearful of.

But there was no such thing. It was exactly as the man had said, a brief low-down on the religion by those who worship their god through it.

True there was a little bit at the end about casting into the fire anyone who rejects the Qu'ran as proof of Allah, but that's no worse than some of the stuff I've heard from Christians wandering through Birmingham or Wolverhampton.

Indeed further up the street there was a Christian man on a soapbox (where do they get them from?) calling for the crowd to repent now because we were all damned otherwise.

But instead of being redeemed through God I'm instead choosing to feel enlightened by a new willingness to hear about other cultures.

I can't help the fact that media reports have made me wary of Muslims. I don't want to be and I'm very keen to get the balance. My fear is not of hell-fire but hell on Earth caused by ignorance, misunderstanding and allowing extremists to speak for us.

So I'm grateful that the Oxford Dawah Centre reached out to me this weekend. Because through them I've learned that ultimately most of the messages from two religions are pretty much the same. They promote tolerance and understanding, asking in return that you accept God.

I'm not too fussed about the last bit, hence my sitting here typing this on a Sunday morning rather being in church, but it's good to know the majority of us are able to sing off the same hymn sheet, or what-have-you.