There were about half-a-dozen local men sat in a group on mats in one corner, their backs propped up against the mud-brick walls and pillars of the mosque, the inevitable pot of Arab tea simmering away in the background. I greeted them all individually, shaking them each by the hand, and the imam and I sat down among them.

"Bismillah!" the imam repeated, "Haalu!" (Speak!) The other men turned their eyes expectantly to me, waiting to see what this strange white man the imam had invited had to say.

In fact, Muslims and Christians share a lot of common ground, much more, say, than with followers of the consumerism of modern western society, so dominated by the pursuit and abuse of wealth, power, and pleasure that Christ so strongly criticised. This is not to deny the fundamental differences between the Christian and Muslim faiths. But our stories and moral values have a huge amount of overlap that comes from sharing some common roots.

So I began with what we held in common:

"We know that there is One God."
"Wallaahi! Goonga!" (In the name of God, it's true!)
"He is the Creator of all things, and the Judge of all people." I went on to sketch out the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, and Abraham, stories that, with slight differences, but essentially the same, are familiar to Muslims from the Quran. Out of these, we drew lessons about God's holiness, about the destructive consequences of sin, and about God's desire and action in providing deliverance from these consequences.

Then I began to speak of Jesus, of his birth by the power of God, of his sinlessness, of his miracles - again, all touched on by the Quran. I filled out the picture more by adding some of his teaching from the gospels, where Jesus speaks of coming to bring God's deliverance from sin for all people. I spoke of his death on the cross for our sin, and his resurrection in power. The crucifixion of Christ and his resurrection are two of the central pillars of the Christian faith that Islam rejects. But my friends carried on listening.

I finished by speaking of Christ's ascension into heaven, and his promised return - again both hinted at in the Quran. I spoke of the assurance this gives us that we can know God's gift of deliverance and forgiveness and love in Christ.

I wound up, and sat back, waiting for the response. The imam asked that we should pray together that God would help us all to leave our sin. And so we did, raising our hands, first he praying, then I, praying in the name of Jesus. He certainly was not asking to become a Christian. But he did recognise that we were on a common journey - even if at the moment, our paths were different. We both loved God, shared a desire to please him, and to live rightly before him, and were trying to work that out in our daily lives. We both knew too, that on key points, we believed very different things about how that works out.

But as I said goodbye to my friends, and moved once more from the relative coolness and shade of the mosque into the glaring intensity of the African sun, slipping my feet once more into my plastic flip-flops, I began to ponder again the common ground we share.

Muslims do suffer from being vilified in much western, and even in much Christian perspective. Of course there is a whole spectrum of different kinds of Muslim, including the fanatical extremists, just as there are in Christianity or in any other sector of society. Yet from my experience, it seems that most Muslims are genuine, generous people who just want to live in peace, provide for their families, and know that they are right with God.

I can recognise the presence of God in the Muslim's desire for Him and desire to live rightly before Him, in his search for righteousness and forgiveness, and in the generosity, hospitality, and respect that come from that. I believe unashamedly that Jesus Christ is the way forward for the Muslim on his journey to find those things. But God has set eternity into the human heart, and we need to recognise the validity of the starting place of each person's journey.

Sitting chatting together over a glass of tea must surely be a better way forward to mutual understanding and effective communication than lambasting each other's faith, or xenophobic demonisation. After all, we have so much common ground.

(This entry comes originally from my website, under the title Common Ground. This and other stories from my life among the Fulani can be found here.)

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