Muslims in Moscow - Christian (hopefully) thoughts from Belgium

The presence of a large Muslim population has hit the headlines with the open-air pray-in in Moscow last weekend.  

If I can throw in some ideas from our European, and particularly Belgian experience.  For information, right now Brussels has a 15-20% Muslim population, and more than 30% at primary school level. The big migration was in the 60s and 70s, mainly from French-speaking North Africa.

 I would want to make a clear distinction between a) the role of the government and b) the role of the church and the individual adult Christian.

 The government’s role is to provide the basics of order. Very much on the basis of the very sinful state where we find ourselves. In Moscow itt has two groups, one of Muslims who are (if I have got it right), largely male, largely young, relatively uneducated and uncultured. The second group is Russian, male and female, all ages, all educational levels. The two have to remain in sufficient harmony that both sides feel reasonably safe in each others' presence. That if you find yourself as a white Russian in a metro car with ten Muslims, you feel safe, and vice versa. And I think not much more.

 On the Christian side, yes, as some have said, there is the welcome to the stranger. I would, however, point to what seems to me to be a fundamental ambiguity in the approach of the Russian church hierarchy: on the one hand courting the Muslims en bloc as 'upholders of traditional order and morality', on the other hand there is the simple fact that we still believe that Islam is an inferior faith and that a Muslim will profit from becoming Christian. Look with the love of Christ in the faces, one by one, of the Muslim men on their carpets outdoors last weekend in Moscow, and what do you say? Do you leave them on their carpets? Was the late Fr Daniel Sisoes a martyr or a political embarrassment? Or do we quietly leave evangelization of Muslims to the Protestants (whose house church method may indeed be more suited).

Could someone answer me one question: are these young men in Moscow alone or with their families? This is the key question. Our practical experience in Belgium is that once Muslims bring their families into the host country, the situation changes rapidly, especially as their birth rate is about twice ours. The maths is simple. 10 Muslims, 90 Russians in this generation, Muslim 4 children per family, Russian 1.5. In two generations time, the ratio is 40 Muslims to 51 Russians.  At this stage the real hard question hits: what civilization do you teach them in school? As Nicolas Bardos, the former professor of gepolitics at the university of Louvain-la-Neuve told me recently: population is just about the most decisive political argument there is.

 As a Christian, I think we have to keep these two approaches in tension. The curse of Christianity in my adopted country (Belgium) is not having the guts to look the first one in the eyes and to accept the fact that politics is dealing with sinful man. If you don't accept that politics is dealing with sinful man, politics gets left to sinful men.