BRIDGES TO ISLAM: A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE ON FOLK ISLAM by Phil Parshall, Baker, Grand Rapids, 1983, 163 pp. Review by Frederick W. Evans.

Building on his widely–discussed work, New Paths in Muslim Evangelism, Phil Parshall has offered Bridges to Islam. Its main contention is that “Folk Islam,” especially as represented by Sufism, presents evangelical Christianity with a signal opportunity for successful evangelism—if only missionaries and national workers in Islamic lands will change their methodology, adapting it to Muslim thought-patterns and worship-practices. Throughout there is the disavowing of any attempt to be syncretistic in matters of essential doctrine.

Much that Parshall has to say in Bridges, as earlier in New Paths, is well-taken. The “compound mentality,” which dominated missionary activity in certain lands of the Orient, often worked against effective cross-cultural communication. The paternalism of much missionary work and its linkage with colonialism did not always reflect accurately either the integrity of the Gospel or the universality of the Christian Church. (In candor, it should be pointed out that liberal missionaries were, as a group, more committed to Westernization than were their evangelical counterparts.) Nor can it be denied that some missionaries, consciously or unconsciously, did not have a proper appreciation of the people to whom they had gone. It is one thing, however, to develop a high regard for Muslims as human beings, bearing, albeit defaced, the image of God and quite another thing to give large approval to certain aspects of the religion of Islam, even in its more tolerant Sufi form. This, it would seem is the error that Parshall is courting. He is so eager to build bridges of understanding and witness that he obscures the witness, based on a true understanding of Gospel issues, that needs to be given. He is so taken with some of his Sufi friends that he appears reluctant to recognize the demonic elements which are to be found in the Sufi experience and, indeed, in orthodox Islam as well.

This is not to say that Parshall gives blanket approval to Sufi belief-with its pan-entheism and goal of absorption into Allah-or to Sufi practice-with its veneration of saints (pirs), its chanting of the names of Allah (dhikr), its mystical ecstacies, etc. However, in his zeal to find something ‘bridgeable’ in virtually everything Sufi, he tends to ignore the very real chasms which cannot be bridged. (Could this be why Christ never used the bridge-figure, although the Gospel records abound in other similes?) Thus he finds “parallels” of the Sufi “mystical experience and that of the Christian who is also seeking illumination and closeness to God” (p. 63). Thus he speaks of “dhikr” or Sufi chanting as something that “can be used as a vehicle to come to know God” (p. 82). Thus he suggests that Sufi “saints” may “intercede in much the same manner that Christ does for the believer” (p. 128).

In short, Parshall’s personal openness to Muslims, which is commendable, leads him to turn a blind eye to the Sufi brand ofIslam in particular and ‘Folk Islam’ in general. For example, he tells of joining a Muslim friend at prayer time, putting down mats and kneeling beside him as the friend prayed the prescribed prayers, which he followed up with his own prayer in Jesus’ Name, adding, “My friend is deeply impressed that I will pray with him . . . . There is an appreciation that I too sincerely want to know and follow God” (pp. 127, 8). Again, he writes of going up to a bearded Muslim sitting by the roadside and purchasing an amulet from him. Seemingly without qualification he goes on to say of the man, “He gave a beautiful prayer for my health and told me to always wear the amulet close to my body” (p. 137).

What shall we say of a missionary who protests his devotion to Christ and his loyalty to an inerrant Bible and yet who announces, “Recently I attended a three-hour meeting (of Sufis) that contained little that I could criticize” (p. 101)? What shall we think of an avowed Christian who responds positively to “beautiful chanting in a language most of the people attending could not understand,” to the first speaker of the evening who “gave a sermonette on the offering of Abraham’s son . . . with pungency” (pp. 101 , 2), Abraham’s son for the Muslim being Ishmael and not Isaac? What shall be our response to Parshall when he justifies “the frequent references (in the meeting) to the prophets and their teaching” and “other religious men” by likening it to an “average Christian meeting in the West” where “Paul and John . . . are mentioned as men who are authorities on religious issues” (p. 102)? For a committed Christian to mention the inerrant Scriptures in the same breath with all manner of Muslim writings is to have taken leave of his senses. Discernment is abandoned in the name of love.

True, Parshall continues, “I am forced to disagree with important areas of substance” (p. 103). He admits earlier that “folk Islam is an erroneous system” (p. 19). Yet he cannot “fault these men for their methodology or overall aims” because “they want to know God” (pp. 102, 3). Here, perhaps, is the ‘Achilles heel’ in Parshall’s whole approach. Throughout he assumes that Sufi Muslims are sincere seekers after God. Of the Sufi he writes, “The mystic, above all, wants to know his Beloved” (p. 118). While we would not dispute the incurable religiosity of fallen men, we must question, on Scriptural grounds, any innate seeking of the living God of the Bible whether by earnest Muslims or nominal Christians (Ps. 14:2, Rom. 3:11). Failure to see that the complete initiative in illumination and conversion is from God’s side has become a characteristic flaw of modern-day evangelicalism.

If it be true that salvation is altogether of the Lord, then both substance and method must be of Him. The Scriptural teaching regarding Jehovah must not be confused with the Quranic teaching regarding Allah, which Par shall seems prone to do in his bridge-building proposal that Allah’s ninety-nine names are worthy of meditation. Nor must the mediatorial work of Christ be likened to the role of Mohammed in “Folk Islam” (p. 128). Nor must those professing faith in the Lord Jesus of the New Testament be described as ” followers of lsa,” the merely human prophet of Muslim belief. Granting that peculiarly Western ways of evangelizing and worshipping are not incumbent on other parts of the world, still evangelism and worship in the East dare not do violence to Biblical principles nor give the impression that there really is no great difference between the Christian and non-Christian ways of viewing and doing things.

As Phil Parshall attributes worthy aims to his Sufi friends, so let us freely acknowledge his worthy goal of desiring to reach Muslims for Christ. Regrettably he skirts the precipice of syncretism and sometimes falls over the brink. His focus ing on “Folk Islam” as his target group is no doubt considered good missionary strategy. But what if his methodology did achieve a major breakthrough among the seventy percent of the Muslim population he estimates to be heavily influenced by Muslim animism and mysticism? There would still remain the thirty percent who are committed to Islamic orthodoxy. Our commission is to these highly resistant people as well. We should not suppose that they will be attracted by, much less cross over, syncretistic bridges. Strong in their misplaced trust, they can only be won by forthright –and loving–proclamation, not by equivocating—and sentimental—dialogue. In Peter Berger’s words, “Ages of faith are marked, not by dialogue, but by proclamation.”

Frederick W. Evans, Jr. is pastor of the Walnut Grove Chap el , 5825 E. 91st St., Indianapolis, Indiana 46250