I am not interested in mixing Christianity with Islam. Either they are right that Jesus is a man, or the Watchtower (who falsely claim to be “Jehovah’s Witnesses”) are right that He is the archangel Michael, or we Christians are right that He is “very God, begotten not created”, as the Adeste Fidelis terms it.
We cannot all be right. We could all be wrong and the nihilist view that He is mere legend might conceivably be true, though absurdly unlikely, but each grouping believes different things more than one of which cannot be true of Jesus at once.
Mixing Islam and Christianity would be possible if this were a secondary point, up for negotiation, but that is not the case, not for them and not for us.
So what I expect from Muslims is that they allow an open debate. They cannot expect to be able to preach to us about shirk and Allah not having partners and then put their fingers in their ears when e clarify that Jesus is not Allah’s partner, He IS Allah, to the extent that Allah mean the Creator God, rather than a specific view of God which only embraces the Father and ascribes to him none of the fatherly aspects that Christianity does.
If a Muslim comes here and wants to set out a dawah stall, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I would grant them that liberty. The bad news is that I would only grant them that liberty on the basis of there existing similar liberties for Christians and others in his country of origin.
If a Muslim wants to build a Mosque, or attend a mosque which another Muslim built, fine. But only for nationals of places where I have the right to go unperturbed to an Evangelical church or a Catholic or Orthodox church with no barriers to building a thriving community in his place of origin.
I would not grant them any more rights than I would expect Christians to be granted in their countries. I would not expect them to arrange things so that Christians had reserved jobs in the food industry, for example, which is what the halal meat industry amounts to in the West for Muslims. If there has to be only Muslims involved in the value chains and production flows of halal food, then in the spirit of our Consumer law which already exists in other areas, it should only be placed on offer publicly if labelled up that Christians and other non-Muslims have not been allowed to participate in the making of this product. In plain text, not with some foreign word that we don’t all understand, why should we?
In Poland there one law about which foreign Companies are allowed to set up branches in Poland without incorporating. I was worried about UK Companies losing their Branch privileges on Brexit because at one time this privilege was only for EU Companies and those from one or two contracted countries. Now the rule extends to any country which allows the same privilege to Polish Companies in their economy. And that seems to work very well.
I think this “Gegenseitigkeitsprinzip”, to give it a posh German name the ichthyologist and explorer Harro Hieronimus once taught me, ought to be used a lot more often in society, in relations between people and businesses it’s self-evident, but needs to be made more evident in dealings between communities and countries.