King Charles III as Defender of all Faiths, including Islam

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Although King Charles III will, like his predecessors going back to Henry VIII, be styled “Defender of the Faith,” he intends the phrase to be understood in a pluralistic rather than exclusivist manner. Harriet Sherwood at The Guardian reports that before Charles takes the oath on Saturday, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, will say the words “the church established by law, whose settlement you will swear to maintain … will seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely.”

In the 1990s Charles had stirred a controversy by saying he would like to be a defender of all the faiths, sparking speculation that he would have the formula of the oath changed for his coronation. Instead, he is having Welby frame the oath in a universalist way.

Ironically, Pope Leo X bestowed the title of “Defender of the Faith” on Henry VIII in 1521. When Henry broke with the Roman Catholic church over its ban on divorces, he and his successors kept the title. So it has already changed its meaning once in history.

King Charles is a Christian, and favors High Church Anglicanism (Episcopalianism) for his services, though he has a mystical side and is drawn to Eastern Orthodox theology and devotion. He also seems to have a bit of the Perennialist about him, since he is deeply interested in other religions, including Judaism and Islam. It is not an abstract or purely academic interest, since he speaks of what he can learn spiritually from these other traditions.

The British crown has over the centuries ruled over hundreds of millions of Muslims, in Asia and Africa. Today, 6.5% of the population in England and Wales, about 4 million people, are Muslims. They grew by a million persons from the previous census in 2011. Because of a marked increase over the past 60 years in the number of Britons who say they have no religion, Christians now form a minority in the UK.

About 1.6% of Britons are Hindus, like the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who took his oath of office on a Bhagavad Gita. Some 0.4% of the UK is Buddhist, about a quarter of a million people, who disproportionately live in London. About the same number are Jewish.

So Islam is the second-largest religion in Britain after Christianity. Charles when he was a prince on several occasions spoke highly of the Muslim tradition. He was vice patron of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, and in 1993 delivered a lecture on Islam and the West, to which I will return.

Last year as the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan began, then-Prince Charles and Camilla shared a greeting on Instagram from their Clarence House account (a reference to their residence in London).

It began with the Muslim greeting, “Assalamu alaikum” (Arabic for ‘Peace be upon you.’)

Charles continued, “As Muslims across the United Kingdom and the wider Commonwealth begin a period of fasting and prayer at the start of Ramadan, my wife joins me in taking this opportunity to convey our warmest good wishes to all those observing this month.

“Ramadan provides time to reflect on one’s own blessings and to give gratitude for them. One of the greatest ways of showing gratitude in Islam, I understand, is by being of service to those less fortunate in our society.

“The generosity of spirit and kind-hearted hospitality of Muslims does not cease to astound me and I am sure that as we enter more uncertain times, with many now struggling to cope with increasing challenges, the Muslim community will again be a source of immense charitable giving this Ramadan.

“There is much we can all learn from the spirit of Ramadan – not only the generosity, but also abstention, gratefulness and togetherness in prayer which will give great comfort to many across the world during this blessed month.

“I pray that all Muslims have a blessed Ramadan. Ramadan Mubarak. – HRH The Prince of Wales,”

In his 1993 speech on the occasion of his visit to the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, “Islam and the West,” he said he wanted to address the relationship of the two “because the degree of misunderstanding between the Islamic and Western worlds remains dangerously high, and because the need for the two to live and work together in our increasingly interdependent world has never been greater.”

The then Prince of Wales lamented the victimization of some Muslim populations, speaking forcefully about the persecution of the Marsh Arabs and of the Shiites in their holy cities by the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. He revealed that he had personally pleaded with General Norman Schwarzkopf, the Centcom commander during the Gulf War of 1990-1991 to spare Najaf and Karbala, which are holy to Shiites, from bombing raids. Of the war in the Balkans, Charles said, “In Yugoslavia the terrible sufferings of the Bosnian Muslims, alongside that of other communities in that cruel war, help keep alive many of the fears and prejudices which our two worlds retain of each other.”

Charles pointed out the commonalities between Christianity and Islam (and Judaism): “that which binds our two worlds together is so much more powerful than that which divides us. Muslims, Christians – and Jews – are all ‘peoples of the Book’. Islam and Christianity share a common monotheistic vision: a belief in one divine God, in the transience of our earthly life, in our accountability for our actions, and in the assurance of life to come. We share many key values in common: respect for knowledge, for justice, compassion towards the poor and underprivileged, the importance of family life, respect for parents. ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’ is a Quranic precept too. Our history has been closely bound up together.”

He pointed to one reason for the rancor between the Christian and Muslim worlds being a common history of conflict and mutual suspicion, from the Crusades to the Spanish Reconquista.

Charles admires the scientific and civilizational achievements of medieval Islam, including in Muslim Spain, much of which was bequeathed to Europe. He also, however, views Islam as having retained a sense of the human as interconnected with the natural world, about which he says the Qur’an is eloquent. He said, “At the heart of Islam is its preservation of an integral view of the Universe. Islam – like Buddhism and Hinduism – refuses to separate man and nature, religion and science, mind and matter, and has preserved a metaphysical and unified view of ourselves and the world around us. ”

In our own day of rampant Islamophobia, at a time when Donald John Trump and other felons of the MAGA cult are planning to bring back the Muslim ban, it is a pleasure to end with these words of Charles from 1993: “Britain is a multi-racial and multi-cultural society. I have already mentioned the size of our own Muslim communities who live throughout Britain, both in large towns like Bradford and in tiny communities in places as remote as Stornaway in Western Scotland. These people, ladies and gentlemen, are an asset to Britain. They contribute to all parts of our economy – to industry, the public services, the professions and the private sector. We find them as teachers, doctors, engineers and scientists. They contribute to our economic well-being as a country, and add to the cultural richness of our nation.”

Charles perhaps could not have imagined that by the time he was crowned, London would have a Muslim mayor. But he already foresaw three decades ago the increasingly important role Muslim Britons would play. He gives every evidence of living up to his goal of being a defender of faith, rather than of ‘The (Anglican) faith,’ and it is arguably a role that a post-Christian, multicultural Britain desperately needs.