El Grupo Saker-Ti
Saker-Ti is Dawn in Quiché. In December 1944 political freedoms, never previously experienced, dawned in Guatemala, only to be all too soon eclipsed in 1954 by the American backed “liberation.” In this decade el grupo Saker-Ti came to birth and briefly flourished. One author has nostalgically termed it la década civilizada. Some background history is necessary prior to a discussion of el grupo Saker-Ti, its work and its influence.
Guatemala is an incredibly beautiful country that Humboltd has called the land of eternal spring. However, it had inherited the feudal system of the Spanish Conquista, that had not altered much with independence. In fact the civil wars that followed la libertad, in which Central America was initially united, pitched one caudillo against another until there were five independent states. The one distinguishing feature of Guatemala from the others is that the majority of the population is of Mayan origin. During the 19th. century there were a series of laws passed that deprived them of their communal land on which they grew their staple food, maize and a black bean, and they became virtual slaves to the new landowners, on whose fincas they were forced to work, growing principally coffee on the steep volcanic slopes, and in the coastal planes bananas, sugar, cardamon and rubber for export. The native people were driven from the best arable land to the plateaus and highlands, where they cut down the native pine trees for fuel to grow their own staple crops. The deforestation has led to soil erosion, and after a heavy rainfall the rivers are swollen and churned red with mud, and if they pour over a road half of it may be flushed into the valley below. In the middle of the 20th.century only two percent of the population owned 72 percent of the land. Dispossessed and not speaking Spanish, but rather a tribal language, of which there are said to be nineteen in all, they had no access to the government to redress their wrongs. Matters only deteriorated under the leadership of General Jorge Ubico from 1931 to 1944, who was not only supported by the oligarchical landowner class but, like other dictators of his era, maintained his power with the aid of a secret police.
These, however, did not prevent his being overthrown in 1944 in a revolt led by students and junior officers of the army. In great euphoria, for the first time in living memory, Guatemalans went to the polls to elect a new president, and they chose Dr. Juan José Arévalo. At that time he was relatively unknown in his own country as he had been teaching in Argentina. He was only in his forties and attracted many younger people to his government. He was an educator by profession and an author. He described himself as a “spiritual socialist”, but according to the “duck” theory of Richard C. Patterson, Jr., US ambassador to Guatemala, he was a communist. The ambassador had demanded the resignation of members of his government on suspicion that they were too radical; but Arévalo protested to the US State Department and the ambassador was recalled for “medical reasons.” But back in the States he continued to preach against the Guatemalan government with considerable effect, since he reached the ears of John Foster Dulles, later Secretary of State under President Eisenhower, and his brother, Allen, head of the C.I.A..
The need to redistribute the land to the indigenous people, so that they might grow their own food, was perceived by Patterson and his fellow Americans as “communism,” although Arévalo introduced only a moderate bill, compared with what was to follow. They passed the Law of Forced Rental, that obliged the landowners to lease their uncultivated land at low rates. It did not expropriate them. Arévalo not only had opposition in the United States, but also within Guatemala, since he had two potential political rivals; one his Minister of War, Jacobo Arbenz, and the other a Colonel Francisco Arana, who may have been more favourable to the Americans. However, in July 1949 Arana was shot and his killer has never been identified, although it was suspected that, whoever it was, he had received his orders from Arbenz. In 1950 Arévalo decisively lost an election to Arbenz and he went back to his teaching.
No one but Patterson could have seriously accused Arbenz of being a communist, but there were four members of the 56 seat Congress who were, and the Americans believed that they had an influence, out of all proportion to their number, as Arbenz continued the process of land reform, in spite of the opposition of the United Fruit Company, which was not only an American enclave, nuestro Guantánamo, as Cardoza called them, but the major land holder in Guatemala. Under the leadership of Arbenz the government passed the Agrarian Reform Law which did expropriate unoccupied land in order to redistribute it to the peasants. This really incensed the Americans, who began to place their faith in the military, rather than the government, and engineered Arbenz’ overthrow by means of the C.I.A. puppet, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who “liberated” his country from Honduras. Arbenz laid down the post of president as he said that it was not worth the loss of human life. Guatemala was once again plunged into the Dark Ages, el conflicto, as it is known today. People either had to passively support the new military government, or to go into exile or into the hills. There a guerilla army was formed, which for the next 42 years was constantly engaged in an undeclared civil war with the government. Atrocities were committed by both sides and the unfortunate indigenous population was caught in the middle. In this conflict over 150,000 lives were lost, and many thousands more just disappeared. It was so horrific that Castillo should write:
...es bello amar al mundo
con los ojos
de los que no han nacido
todavía.
The country finally emerged from a state of war in 1996, although some today are still settling old scores through kidnapping and lynching. The very idea of land reform has been set back by fifty years.
This lengthy historical introduction sets the scene into which El Grupo Saker-Ti was born. They were a group of bright, educated and literary young men. Their prose and poetic works were published in a series of journals, of which Saker-Ti, or Dawn, from which they drew their name, and Revista de Guatemala, edited by Cardoza,. were the two most prominent. Some of them were too young to have taken part in the overthrow of General Ubico, but their leader, Raul Leiva, was twenty eight in 1944. The father of Roberto Paz y Paz Gonzalez had been exiled in 1937, when he was only ten, but he returned in 1944 to take part in the student revolt. The youngest, Oscar Artero Palencia was only born in 1932. Membership of the group must have been somewhat fluid, as a list of members given by Cardoza, obtained from the internet, does not exactly correspond to that of Abelardo Rodas, their secretary, who is quoted by Mojón in her book Poesia Revolucionaría Guatemalteca.
Cardoza says that following a visit of Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet and an avowed communist, to Guatemala in 1949 the brightest of them were attracted to communism and “joined the Communist Party just as they would make their first communion.” The party to them appeared to be the only party that showed any compassion to the underprivileged. No doubt the church was working with the poor outside the capital, but the hierarchy was too closely tied to the oligarchy and the church itself was a landowner and had opposed the government. This was a genuine movement of the heart to the social needs of the country, and with their youthful energy they adventurously tried to build a more just society.
The group saw itself as a bombilla, or light bulb, to illuminate the problems which confronted them in their time, and to oppose the status quo. Their first concern was to identify the problems. They came together with this declared intent to form La Asamblea de Artistas y Escritores Jóvenes. They there set out to “forge a new type of cultural environment which would respond to the needs of the people that would be the function of the young Guatemalan democracy. This new environment would have to be national, knowledge based and democratic, because they recognized that the best of their cultural tradition held in high regard the dignity and independence of the country. They would oppose superstition and ignorance and provide service to the greatest number of people.” Noble ideals, indeed, not dissimilar to those of our Liberal Party!
This commitment marked a real new beginning in Guatemala for in the free environment of the new democratic society nobody was afraid to engage openly in the public affairs of the capital. They created a new literary style that united them in their prose and poetry, although revolutionary writing was not exactly new to them. Some of an older generation, such as the Nobel poet laureate, Miguel Angel Asturias, had been writing with others in a similar vein even during the Ubico years as el grupo acento. Asturias gave inspiration to his younger peers. But after six brief years they saw their work abruptly cut short by the “liberator” Armas. Cardoza said they then became earnest and even more dedicated with feeling for their enormous responsibility which they had undertaken, but, if they had failed, it was because they had underestimated the strength of their opposition, the United Fruit Company. He wrote with heartache, as they were all his close companions and friends. He suggested with bitter sarcasm that in place of the Quetzal, the Guatemalan national emblem and currency, the new government should have substituted a bunch of bananas!
The group officially disbanded after the fall of Arbenz, but unofficially it continued to grow. Each individually continued to write. Rather than being deterred by the repressive regime of Armas, several others rushed to the cause, also to become members of the Communist party and of the guerilla movement. If the American government had hoped to limit the influence of Communism their heavy handed treatment of Arbenz did more to promote it. In fact Cardoza says that the Communist party was only really organized after the fall of Arbenz. Members of Saker-Ti became its leaders, Huberto Alverado the secretary general. The most representative of those who joined the ranks after 1954 was Otto René Castillo, whose poem, Intelectuales Apoliticos, is quoted below.
Punishment for membership of the Communist party was severe. Alberto Alvarado paid the price by having his eyes gouged out before being further tortured and murdered in 1974 on orders of General Kjell Laugerud. Others chose to live in exile, such as Melvin René Barahona, who went to Argentina and died there in 1965, and Rafael Sosa, who lived in Moscow for more than a quarter of a century with what Cardoza says “that inconsistent stubbornness of being Guatemalan only comparable to my own.” He adds that none were committed to coprophagia, which is being forced to eat excrement, apparently a punishment meted to other more unfortunate dissidents. The body of Roberto Obregon Morales, in July 1970, was found floating in a river after he had been detained on returning to Guatemala from El Salvador. Castillo was captured by anti guerrilla forces in 1967 and was tortured to death at the age of only thirty one.. Roberto Paz y Paz Gonzalez was more fortunate, in that after his second exile in Argentina he was able to return to Guatemala in May 1963. Constantly threatened with death he was not killed, in spite of, as Mojón writes “his never wavering to stand for the high ideals for which he had always stood.”
But were they true Stalinists? Were they not unlike many young idealists, such as Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who were attracted to the Communist party? By Patterson’s “duck test” they were, but were they such a threat to the world at large, or to the United States in particular, that they had to be exterminated in such a brutal manner? It does display a capacity for cruelty, not unknown in Latin history. Were it a declared war, there probably would have been a War Crimes Tribunal. The most amazing fact, however, is that it passed unnoticed by the North American media, where such brutality was usually attributed only to communists. We saw every night, ad nauseam, the Viet Nam War fought on our television screens, such that we knew every detail of what was happening half way around the globe. Where was the media in Guatemala? Who in the 1960's and 70's knew anything of what was happening there, on our back doorstep? The Canadian government must have known. I learned of it first by going in 1996 and seeing in clinical practice those who had suffered in the conflict. Then I felt overwhelmed by anger with what we as a Canadian people had allowed to happen, and then to cover it up.
But what of their work? I shall quote only a few samples of their poetry, and then only brief excerpts, from Mojón’s collection of Guatemalan revolutionary poetry. She admits that it is far from being an exhaustive anthology, but it has a sufficient number of works of el grupo Saker-Ti, as well as the earlier group, el grupo acento, and the guerilla poets who followed the “liberation.” I find that I cannot read their work without feeling all over again the intense anger that I felt when I first visited Guatemala.
The first, from Roberto Paz y Paz Gonzales, from a poem first published in the journal Saker-Ti.
Reconstrucción de la Luz Reconstruction of the Light
Las manos, sí, las manos cantan
el poema de amor bien aprendido
y es ajeno su ritmo concertante;
para usinas y arados han nacido;
más tan sucio y oscuro es el instante
que a empuñar el fusil ahora llaman. These hands, yes, these hands sing
the poem of love that is well understood
and is alien to the concerted rhythm;
they have been born for factories and ploughs;
But so filthy and dark is the moment,
they now call to seize the gun,
Las manos saben roturar la tierra:
la patria se alimenta de esos manos;
las manos saben dirigir telares:
que vistan a los pueblos esas manos;
las manos elaboran calculemas:
que construyan los puentes esas manos;
las manos saben auscultar dolencias:
que curen a los pueblos esas manos;
las manos saben ordenar las letras:
que eduquen a los pueblos esas manos. The hands know how to break up the ground:
would that these hands feed the native land;
the hands know how to operate looms:
would that these hands really dress the people;
the hands can work out problems in calculus:
would that these hands build the bridges;
these hands know how to listen to pains:
would that these hands cure the people;
these hands know how to arrange words
would that these hands educate the people.
There was so much potential to solve the nation’s problems with so many well educated, eagre, young men, and possibly ladies too, though they were not in the forefront at that time. Paz y Paz was, as were all the other members of the group, anxious and impatient to get the work done; but it was not to be, since all the same problems, such as poor nutrition, insufficient clothing and suffering from the cold, especially in the higher altitudes, poor infrastructure of roads and bridges being washed away, disease, even those that were preventable, such as those caused by parasites, and illiteracy; they all still plague the countryside, where the majority of the indigenous live. He felt that taking the gun after democracy had failed was fully justified.
Barahona, writing in exile, hopes to return to redress these evils. He dreams of the day, perhaps beyond his own, when everything will have passed, and reconstruction might begin:
Las Guitarras del Exilo The Guitars of the Exile
Todo Pasará Everything will Pass
...Y todo pasará
Y yo estaré contigo en la mañana
de las reconstrucciones. ...And everything will pass
And I shall stand with you tomorrow
of the rebuilding.
Sí, Estaré en Zacapa
y estaré en Chiquimula,
estaré en todas partes
por donde la muerte anduvo
desalojando la esperanza.
Yo estaré allí para hacer
la sangré náufraga de los ladrillos muertos.
Para enjugar la ultima lágrima vertida.
Estaré allí
para borrar con mi frente los escombros
y los recuerdos tristes Yes, I shall stand in Zacapa
I shall stand in Chiquimula,
I shall stand in all the places
where death has gone
dislodging hope.
I shall stand there in order to make
useless the blood of the dead tiles
to wipe away the last shed tear.
I shall be there
to clean up the mess with my brow
and sad memories.
Pondré una rosa roja y un soneto
en cada tumba colectiva.
Pintaré allí un vástago de mi voz, una sonrisa
un estremecimiento de mis labios
en las palmeres resurrectas,
y besaré los nuevos ladrillos y los muros
definitivamente edificados. I shall place a red rose and a sonnet
on each collective grave
I shall paint there an offshoot of my voice, a smile
an agitation of my lips in the resurrected palms, and I shall kiss the renewed tiles and walls definitively built.
Sí, todo pasará;
y vendrán nuevas madres para los niños huérfanos,
y vendrán nuevos hijos para las madres tristes,
y un nuevo pan
más dulce y más sabroso
desbordará las muecas de mi pueblo, y una nueva esperanza
desberdará los pechos reconstruidos. Yes, everything will pass;
and new mothers will sell for their orphaned children
and new sons will sell for the saddened mothers,
and a new bread
more sweet and more tasty
shall flow over the grimaces of my people, and a new hope
shall flow over the reconstructed breasts.
I have seen the orphaned children and their saddened mothers. Barahona maintains the hope that there would be a brighter day, but he never lived to return to Guatemala to see it.
Castillo, whom I have quoted earlier, was not one of the original Saker-Ti, but he identified with their cause in 1954. In his Intelectuales Apolíticos he had nothing but contempt for those in his country who in the struggle were apolitical, who did not take a stand against the injustices of his society. This may equally apply to anybody who has stood on the sidelines in the face of injustice, not only in Guatemala.
I
Un día
los intelectuales apolíticos
de mi país
serán interrogados
por el hombre
sencillo
de nuestro pueblo. One day
the apolitical intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simple man
of our people
Se les preguntará
sobre lo que hicieron
cuando
la patria se apagaba
lentamente
como una hoguera dulce
pequeña y sola If he were to ask them
about what they were doing
when
the country was being snuffed out
slowly
as is a sweet bonfire
little and alone
No serán interrogados
sobre sus trajes,
ni sobre sus largas siestas
después de la merienda,
...
Nada se les preguntará
sobre sus justificaciones
absurdas
crecidas a la sombra
de una mentira rotunda. They will not be interrogated
about their suits,
nor about their long siestas
after the midday meal
...
Nothing like this will be asked
about their absurd justifications
swollen by the shadow
of a categorical lie.
III
Intelectuales apolíticos
de mi dulce país
no podréis responder nada. You apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country
you will not be able to make any reply.
Os devorará un buitre de silencio
las entrañas,
Os roerá el alma
vuestra propia miseria,
y callaréis,
avergonzados de vosotros. A vulture of silence will devour your entrails
Your own misery will gnaw
your soul,
and you will be silent,
ashamed of yourselves.
Un día is today.
El Grupo Saker-Ti grew from the birth of a democracy in Guatemala but died in its infancy from the bullying of a big brother, who could not stand to see anything but his own brand of democracy, as he continues to do to Cuba today. As most Latins with a social conscience, they were prolific writers, whose works have outlived them and are now inspiring a new generation of, not only Guatemalans, but also North Americans, from Canada and the United States, and other citizens of the world, to put right the wrongs that they in their time were unable to do. I believe that most thinking persons, aware of what has happened, would be ashamed of the part their governments have played, or have failed to play, in this conflict, and, as Castillo predicted, of their own silence and complicity. ¡Nunca más!
Bibliography
1. Cardoza y Aragón, Luis. El Grupo Saker-Ti (Amanacer en cakchiquel).El rio, novela de caballerias.. México: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1986 quoted from http.//www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~jce2/sakerti.html.
2. Frazier, Thomas R., gen. ed. The Underside of American History. 2 vols..New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1987. Vol. 2 The United States Reenters Central America by Walter LaFeber.
3. Mojón, Luisa Rodriguez. Poesia Revolucionaria Guatemalteca. Madrid: Graficas Guia. Julian Camarillo. 1971.
4. Beverley, John and Zimmerman, Marc. Literature and Politics in the Central American Revolutions. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1990
5. Gonzalez, Mike and Treece, David. The Gathering of Voices, The Twentieth Century Poetry of Latin America. London and New York: Verso. 1992.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
This is my story
This is my story
By Michael Burslem
Published: October 2008
I am eternally grateful for my solid Christian heritage. I was brought up in the West Indies, the Middle East and England as an Anglo-Catholic, a faith that I absorbed from my parents. It was not until I came to Canada and went up north to the Arctic that I encountered any other tradition than catholic. I lived in Frobisher Bay, now Iqaluit, for almost three years, and later in Cambridge Bay and Resolute Bay, working with the Meteorological Service of Canada. In retrospect, I was somewhat churchy, zealous for God, but not really knowing Him. I abhorred the excessive drinking that some in isolation got themselves into, and, like the Pharisee, thanked God I was not like other men. In Iqaluit I spent much of my spare time in the building of the church at Apex, the Inuit settlement close by. In Resolute there was an excellent library, and I read Hakluyt's Voyages, stories of Northern discovery, large sections of Grey's Anatomy, a text in physiology and H.P.V. Nunn's New Testament Greek I had taken north with me, and a Greek New Testament. I was very self-satisfied, until I saw the lives of the Inuit, when something unsettled me.
On returning south I offered to serve in the Diocese of the Arctic, and studied at King's College, Halifax, where I had settled. However, the working theology of the day was not that of the Bible, but rather of Bishop John Robinson's Honest to God. The summer of 1963 Bishop Donald Marsh sent me to Coral Harbour on Southampton Island to build a mission house with another student, Nigel Wilford. I well remember my teenage interpreter, as I was asked to do some preaching, bursting into tears as I tried to explain some aspect of this new theology. This left me so confused, that one Sunday when a boat appeared destined for Rankin Inlet, I asked to go with them, and they took me aboard.
That evening we moored on a sandy beech on the south coast of Southampton Island to eat and to wait for the weather forecast at 9:00 PM. This said fair weather for sailing, so we raised anchor and set out across Roes Welcome Sound. Around midnight the wind began to blow from nowhere, totally unexpected, as there were only few clouds. As a weatherman I was baffled. I was asked to take my turn at the wheel and was told to keep the moon over my left shoulder, but it circled around us, not once but many times over. The skipper finally grabbed the wheel and growled, "You idiot, don't you realize that we are in dangerously shallow water?" On examining the chart I could only see that we were wallowing in the Bay of God's Mercy.
That night the clouds became thicker, and the winds stronger. The sun rose only for a few minutes before it disappeared above the clouds, and it again became eerily dark in the spray and thrashing rain. It didn't let up till evening. The food was under the forward hatch. We didn't dare go on deck to fetch it lest we be washed overboard. By the time we arrived in Chesterfield Inlet we were exhausted. We hadn't eaten for 22 hours and were very tired. That night and day were a turning point in my life.
The next day we sailed down the coast from Chesterfield to Rankin Inlet. At Rankin I had to wait till the bishop sent me the fare to return south, which took a week. I flew to Churchill via Baker Lake. On the strip at Baker there was a gathering of about 100 seeing off an elderly kabloona, Canon William James, their pastor for the previous 30 years. On boarding the aircraft he came to sit beside me, and we became acquainted; he the faithful shepherd and I the run away. At Churchill there was a similar gathering, and we immediately went into a hanger where he greeted them in the name of the Lord and celebrated The Lord's Supper. There was nothing churchy about this.
In Churchill there was a letter awaiting me from the bishop. It was the most blistering letter that I had ever received, expressing considerable anger at my leaving Coral Harbour without his permission. On the train from Churchill to The Pas I showed it to Canon James, when we were alone in the Parlor Car, and we prayed together before going to our bunks, and the next day also, I remember, walking along the side of the train at one of its frequent stops. For three days we visited Inuit patients at the TB hospital at The Pas, and then we continued to Winnipeg, where we parted, he to Toronto, and I stayed there a week.
On my return east I stayed in Toronto only long enough to see Bishop Marsh. He explained that he would never ordain me, because, as he put it, I had no gospel to preach. Before leaving him, however, he came to my side of his desk and we knelt down together to pray for one another. That was real Christianity.
Not knowing exactly what to do next I continued my studies at King's, and achieved a Licentiate in Theology, but not with the intent to be ordained. I was much helped at this time by Rodney Stokoe, professor of Pastoralia at King's. Having read some anatomy and physiology in Resolute, I knew that medicine was an option. In one week in June 1964 I made two decisions that forever changed the course of my life; the first to apply to Dalhousie Medical School, and the second to give my life totally to Jesus Christ at a Leighton Ford Crusade that week in Halifax.
It was through the latter that I met Tony Tyndale with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. He invited me to a study of Romans 5 which he led every night for the first week after the Crusade. I was also encouraged by Ron Cunningham, also with I.V.. I also found a church, Trinity, where Dennis Andrews faithfully taught the scriptures Sunday morning and evening, week after. It was in this newly found New Testament fellowship that I met my wife, Ellen, who was from Egypt.
Afterwards I discovered that I no longer needed to achieve to be accepted by others, as I had already been accepted by God, warts and all. I had become a nobody, and even though I later graduated in medicine, I preferred the company of nobodies to those, who like me before my finding Christ, thought we were somebodies. I think I had lost my Phariseeism. In God's eyes only I am a somebody. Problems arise, however, between Him and me, and between me and my fellow nobodies, when I see myself in my own eyes as a somebody.
Over the years since I have thought that if the church really be a collection of nobodies we have nothing to boast about to non Christians, for whom Christ also died. We are like the street sweepers in Cairo, cleaning up the mess which the world discards. I feel a special kinship with Muslims. I'm also much influenced by the Anabaptists. Since I share a common humanity with all peoples, war is an anathema. So this is where I now stand; from Catholic, to Evangelical, to Anabaptist, or whatever; but yet still very Anglican, as Anglicanism runs through my veins. I have received the torch from my parents and forebears, and now pass it on; different, perhaps, in its outward form from that which I received it, but still the same Gospel once delivered to the saints.
By Michael Burslem
Published: October 2008
I am eternally grateful for my solid Christian heritage. I was brought up in the West Indies, the Middle East and England as an Anglo-Catholic, a faith that I absorbed from my parents. It was not until I came to Canada and went up north to the Arctic that I encountered any other tradition than catholic. I lived in Frobisher Bay, now Iqaluit, for almost three years, and later in Cambridge Bay and Resolute Bay, working with the Meteorological Service of Canada. In retrospect, I was somewhat churchy, zealous for God, but not really knowing Him. I abhorred the excessive drinking that some in isolation got themselves into, and, like the Pharisee, thanked God I was not like other men. In Iqaluit I spent much of my spare time in the building of the church at Apex, the Inuit settlement close by. In Resolute there was an excellent library, and I read Hakluyt's Voyages, stories of Northern discovery, large sections of Grey's Anatomy, a text in physiology and H.P.V. Nunn's New Testament Greek I had taken north with me, and a Greek New Testament. I was very self-satisfied, until I saw the lives of the Inuit, when something unsettled me.
On returning south I offered to serve in the Diocese of the Arctic, and studied at King's College, Halifax, where I had settled. However, the working theology of the day was not that of the Bible, but rather of Bishop John Robinson's Honest to God. The summer of 1963 Bishop Donald Marsh sent me to Coral Harbour on Southampton Island to build a mission house with another student, Nigel Wilford. I well remember my teenage interpreter, as I was asked to do some preaching, bursting into tears as I tried to explain some aspect of this new theology. This left me so confused, that one Sunday when a boat appeared destined for Rankin Inlet, I asked to go with them, and they took me aboard.
That evening we moored on a sandy beech on the south coast of Southampton Island to eat and to wait for the weather forecast at 9:00 PM. This said fair weather for sailing, so we raised anchor and set out across Roes Welcome Sound. Around midnight the wind began to blow from nowhere, totally unexpected, as there were only few clouds. As a weatherman I was baffled. I was asked to take my turn at the wheel and was told to keep the moon over my left shoulder, but it circled around us, not once but many times over. The skipper finally grabbed the wheel and growled, "You idiot, don't you realize that we are in dangerously shallow water?" On examining the chart I could only see that we were wallowing in the Bay of God's Mercy.
That night the clouds became thicker, and the winds stronger. The sun rose only for a few minutes before it disappeared above the clouds, and it again became eerily dark in the spray and thrashing rain. It didn't let up till evening. The food was under the forward hatch. We didn't dare go on deck to fetch it lest we be washed overboard. By the time we arrived in Chesterfield Inlet we were exhausted. We hadn't eaten for 22 hours and were very tired. That night and day were a turning point in my life.
The next day we sailed down the coast from Chesterfield to Rankin Inlet. At Rankin I had to wait till the bishop sent me the fare to return south, which took a week. I flew to Churchill via Baker Lake. On the strip at Baker there was a gathering of about 100 seeing off an elderly kabloona, Canon William James, their pastor for the previous 30 years. On boarding the aircraft he came to sit beside me, and we became acquainted; he the faithful shepherd and I the run away. At Churchill there was a similar gathering, and we immediately went into a hanger where he greeted them in the name of the Lord and celebrated The Lord's Supper. There was nothing churchy about this.
In Churchill there was a letter awaiting me from the bishop. It was the most blistering letter that I had ever received, expressing considerable anger at my leaving Coral Harbour without his permission. On the train from Churchill to The Pas I showed it to Canon James, when we were alone in the Parlor Car, and we prayed together before going to our bunks, and the next day also, I remember, walking along the side of the train at one of its frequent stops. For three days we visited Inuit patients at the TB hospital at The Pas, and then we continued to Winnipeg, where we parted, he to Toronto, and I stayed there a week.
On my return east I stayed in Toronto only long enough to see Bishop Marsh. He explained that he would never ordain me, because, as he put it, I had no gospel to preach. Before leaving him, however, he came to my side of his desk and we knelt down together to pray for one another. That was real Christianity.
Not knowing exactly what to do next I continued my studies at King's, and achieved a Licentiate in Theology, but not with the intent to be ordained. I was much helped at this time by Rodney Stokoe, professor of Pastoralia at King's. Having read some anatomy and physiology in Resolute, I knew that medicine was an option. In one week in June 1964 I made two decisions that forever changed the course of my life; the first to apply to Dalhousie Medical School, and the second to give my life totally to Jesus Christ at a Leighton Ford Crusade that week in Halifax.
It was through the latter that I met Tony Tyndale with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. He invited me to a study of Romans 5 which he led every night for the first week after the Crusade. I was also encouraged by Ron Cunningham, also with I.V.. I also found a church, Trinity, where Dennis Andrews faithfully taught the scriptures Sunday morning and evening, week after. It was in this newly found New Testament fellowship that I met my wife, Ellen, who was from Egypt.
Afterwards I discovered that I no longer needed to achieve to be accepted by others, as I had already been accepted by God, warts and all. I had become a nobody, and even though I later graduated in medicine, I preferred the company of nobodies to those, who like me before my finding Christ, thought we were somebodies. I think I had lost my Phariseeism. In God's eyes only I am a somebody. Problems arise, however, between Him and me, and between me and my fellow nobodies, when I see myself in my own eyes as a somebody.
Over the years since I have thought that if the church really be a collection of nobodies we have nothing to boast about to non Christians, for whom Christ also died. We are like the street sweepers in Cairo, cleaning up the mess which the world discards. I feel a special kinship with Muslims. I'm also much influenced by the Anabaptists. Since I share a common humanity with all peoples, war is an anathema. So this is where I now stand; from Catholic, to Evangelical, to Anabaptist, or whatever; but yet still very Anglican, as Anglicanism runs through my veins. I have received the torch from my parents and forebears, and now pass it on; different, perhaps, in its outward form from that which I received it, but still the same Gospel once delivered to the saints.
A review of Hugh Goddard’s Muslim Perceptions of Christianity
Special for Arab-West Report,
Title: A review of Hugh Goddard’s Muslim Perceptions of Christianity, published by Grey Seal Books, London, Year 1996
Authors: Drs. Cornelis Hulsman and Dr. Michael Burslem
Preface
To say that Muslims and Christians misunderstand each another is a gross understatement. The average person in the pew has very little knowledge of Islam, or of any other faith for that matter. Until recent times it did not matter, because very few actually came into contact with anyone very different from him or her self. However, that has now changed with global shrinking; people of differing faiths are rubbing shoulders more often. Not only do they look different – they may have a darker skin – but they dress differently. Indian ladies may wear saris, Muslim ladies the head scarf, known as the hijab, or they may have the whole face veiled with only slits for their eyes, the burkha. Sikh men wear turbans, and Arabs their long robe, called a galabeah, and the head scarf like that Yasser Arafat always wore, the qaffeah. These people have altered the appearance of towns and cities in the West. Our natural instinct is to shun them, having as little to do with them as possible, so that they have been forced to live in their own ghetto. Canadians have tried to adjust to this influx of racial minorities by increasing the number of the minorities into the police force, for instance. Churches have also tried to incorporate them, and there are congregations which are mostly black, or Chinese, but even in the best integrated churches, at coffee after the service some are hesitant to speak with strangers. Outside our church circles we are similarly hesitant to mix with people of another faith. We may like to get to know more about that faith, but it might also be more revealing to know what they think of us. That is why Hugh Goddard’s book, Muslim Perceptions of Christianity, is so useful. From the Qur'anic foundation to recent times he traces what Muslims have said or written about Jesus, Christians and the Bible, at each stage of their, and our, history. Some knowledge of history is necessary, since what Muslims have said about Christians reflects what we have said, and say, about them, and, more importantly, what we have done to them.
This can only be a brief summary of what Goddard says, and should perhaps be read in conjunction with the Qur'an, the very foundation stone of Islam. In the references to the Qur'an he uses the standard Egyptian system of verse numbering; from the English version of M.M. Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, published by Mentor Books –(Throughout Goddard uses the spelling Qur'an following the transliteration of the Encyclopedia of Islam, which uses q for qaf) and on occasion he uses his own translation.
Goddard's study shows us that Muslim responses to Christianity can be widely different, from irenic to polemical. Goddard, also shows that the reasons are often in how Christians addressed Muslims. Christian polemics can thus result in Muslim polemics. Christians should therefore try to get the best out of Islam, not the worst and that is done by an irenic approach to Islam. Christian polemics only result in more polemics and thus often a self-fulfilling prophecy of those who claim that Islam is evil. Of course that will bring the most negative out of Muslims.
Introduction
Goddard mentions that in recent years there have been a number of excellent books on the subject of the Christian faith and other faiths, but all from a Christian perspective. In this book he tries to trace Muslim views of Christianity from a Muslim perspective, and to explain why Muslims have so thought, so that both Christians and Muslims may appreciate the factors that have led to our present misunderstanding of one another. He does so only to fill a gap left by others.
In the modern period there is concentration on Egypt “because Egypt is in a sense the ‘head’ (in the intellectual sense) of the Muslim world, largely because of the respect traditionally accorded across the Islamic world to al-Azhar as a centre of Islamic learning, and material produced there about Christianity in therefore widely disseminated in other Islamic societies.”
1. The Qur'anic Foundation
The Qur'an is ambivalent about Jesus, Christians and the Bible. It contains positive and affirmative statements but to them adds cautions and statements rejecting certain things associated with Jesus and with Christians. So it is a sort of ‘yes…but’ situation.
Jesus: The first mention of Jesus is his birth in Sura 19:16-40 from the Meccan Qur'an. The birth took place under a palm tree, consistent with some of the Apocryphal Gospels, but not with Luke. Also Luke leaves no doubt whose son Jesus is, but the Qur'an leaves no doubt whose he is not. Sura 19:35 reads:
“It befitteth not Allah that He should take unto Himself a son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! And it is.”
His prophethood is affirmed, but his sonship is denied. The Medina section of the Qur'an is more explicit. Sura 4:171-172 states that Jesus was only a messenger of God.
“…believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not ‘Three’ – Cease! It is better for you! Allah is only one God. Far is it removed from His transcendent majesty that He should have a son…”
Tri-theism is outright rejected. But the Christian doctrine of the Trinity also rejects Tri-theism. There also appears to be some confusion about the members of the Trinity. The prophet seems to have believed that Jesus and his mother, Mary, shared the godhead with Allah. Sura 5:116 states:
“And when Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary, didst thou not say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah? He [i.e. Jesus] saith Be glorified! It was not mine to utter that to which I had no right. If I used to say it, thou knowest it. Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I know not what is in my mind. Lo! Only Thou art the Knower of Things Hidden.”
This may have been a reaction to the high esteem given to Mary in the Orthodox church, by their declaring her to be the theotokos, or bearer of God.
Also rejected is the idea that Jesus was crucified. Sura 4:157-158 says:
“And because of their saying ‘We killed the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, Allah’s messenger’ – they did not kill him nor crucify him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! Those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save in pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. But Allah took him up unto himself. Allah was the ever Mighty, Wise.”
It is affirmed here that Jesus was raised up to God, but that the Jews neither slew him, nor crucified him.
The Qur'an is ambivalent about Christ. He is affirmed, but there is also rejection of Christian views of Jesus. Goddard labels it a ‘Yes…but’ situation. From this ambivalence some Muslim thinkers have enlarged on the affirming statements in the Qur'an, with a positive view of Christ; while others, having based their views on fairly explicit criticisms of Christian doctrine contained in the Qur'an, focusing more on the rejecting statements, have a negative view.
Christians: The Qur'an is similarly ambivalent about Christians. Affirming them Sura 2:62, from the Medinan period, states:
“Lo! Those who believe, and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans – whoever believeth in Allah and the last Day and doeth right surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them nor shall they grieve.”
Yet both Jews and Christians are condemned in the same Sura, verses 111-113.
“And they say: None entereth paradise unless he be a Jew or a Christian. These are their own desires. Say: Bring your proof of what ye state if ye are truthful…And the Jews say the Christians follow nothing true, and the Christians say the Jews follow nothing true, but both are readers of the Scripture. Even thus speak those who know not. Allah will judge between them on the Day of resurrection concerning that wherein they differ.”
Sura 57:27 is ambivalent. Christians are affirmed for being in the line of revelation, and for being kind and compassionate, but they are reproved for having invented monasticism.
Sura 9:29-35 includes the thrust of two main Muslim objections to Christians; firstly, to their beliefs, and secondly, to their behavior.
“Fight against such of those who have been given the Scriptures as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low. Jews say Ezra is son of Allah. Christians say Messiah is the son of Allah. Allah fighteth against them. How perverse are they. Jews took rabbis as lords besides Allah. Christians took monks and the Messiah, son of Mary, besides Allah. Worship only one God. Many rabbis and monks take gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah.” AF
The response demanded by the Qur’an is largely a triumphalistic one. They are to be brought low and made to pay tribute (v.29), Allah Himself fights against them because of their raising Jesus to be the son of Allah (v30) Allah has sent the religion of truth to prevail over all religions (v.33) and a painful doom is promised to rabbis and monks who devour wealth (v.35) but Allah’s verdict on the Christians will come only on the Day of Judgment.
Sura 5 has variations on the same theme. In verse14 Christians had forgotten part of the covenant.
“Therefore we have stirred up enmity and hatred among them till the Day of Resurrection, when Allah will inform them about their handiwork…Their sufferings disprove the claims of Jews and Christians to be the sons of God. The Qur’an says to Jews and Christians “why then doth He chastise you for your sins?”(5:18).
Later in 5.51:
“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is one of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk”
And 5:69 is almost a repeat of Sura 2:62 assuring Christians, Jews and those who believe that no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they have cause to grieve. 5:82-86 says that most hostile to Allah are the Jews and pagans, but not the Christians. That is because there are among them priests, and even monks, who are not too proud to respond favorably to Mohammed’s message.
Christians have a covenant relationship with God, but they have fallen out with one another, because they have forgotten God. The general thrust of the Qur'an is that only those who believe in Allah will inherit Paradise, but the rest will be condemned to hell.
The Bible: Here again the Qur'an displays a similar attitude, of affirmation, qualified by rejection. It is affirmed in Sura 19:30 that Jesus was given a scripture and that he had been appointed a prophet,
“Jesus spoke in the cradle to his mother:”Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me the Scripture and has appointed me a prophet.”
as in 37:117 a clear scripture had been given to Moses and Aaron. A positive view of scripture is given in Suras 29:46.
“And argue not with the People of the Scripture unless it be in a way that is better, save with such of them as do wrong. And say: we believe in that which has been revealed unto us and revealed unto you; our God and your God is one, and unto Him we surrender.”
So also in 10:37, and 94.
In Sura 7:157 the prophet hints at an expectation that in both the Torah and the Injil the nabi-al-ummi (the illiterate prophet) will be found, who will be himself. He will show what is right, and forbid what is wrong; he will make lawful only good things, and prohibit the foul; he will relieve them of their burden and their fetters; then those who believe in him, and follow his light, will be successful.
In Medina period the note of corruption (tahrif) of the scriptures begins to emerge. In Sura 2:41-2 the recipients of earlier scriptures are accused of becoming confused about, or even of concealing, some of their contents. The first actual allegation of corruption comes in Sura 2:75:
“Have ye any hope that they will be true to you when a party of them used to listen to the word of Allah, then used to change it, after they had understood it, knowingly.”
Thos who falsify scripture are condemned in verse 79:
“woe unto them for what their hands have written and woe unto them for what they earn thereby.”
Verse 101 confirms previous scriptures; yet despite that fact, those who believe in those earlier scriptures reject and ignore the Qur’an. Moreover, those who read the earlier scriptures disagree among themselves.
Sura 62: 5 states:
“Wretched is the likeness of folk who deny the revelations of Allah.”
Sura 61:6 asserts that Jesus confirmed the Torah, and predicted the coming of a messenger after him, called ahmad (the praised one), but when that prophet came people accused him of sorcery.
So the Qur'an confirms the earlier scriptures, but states that those who believe them reject the Qur'an, and are divided among themselves (2:113). They will be cursed by Allah, (2:159) and come to an uncomfortable end (2:174). In Sura 62:5 they are likened to an ass carrying huge volumes of books, but not understanding any of them. Overall, the situation is left open. Again the Qur'an is ambivalent. Jews and Christians have their scriptures, but they have deviated from their teaching, so that they have become corrupted and distorted.
Evaluation:
In his evaluation Goddard asks three questions.
1. What does the Qur’an mean? Is it denying orthodox mainline Christian belief, or is it merely dismissing views which Christians would strenuously repudiate?
2. Were the Christians referred to in the Qur'an orthodox believers, or those whom the orthodox would consider heretics?
3. Is the Injil, the Gospel mentioned in the Qur'an, the New Testament, or is it not?
The Qur'an does not itself give any clear answers to these, and there has arisen much discussion and speculation over them.
The rejection of Jesus’ sonship must be seen against the background of the religious beliefs of the Meccans, for in that city, with its belief in a pantheon of gods and goddesses, who in turn produced sons and daughters, the Christian use of the word ‘son’ to describe Jesus may have been liable to misunderstanding. So Sura 112: 3 states:
“He [God] begetteth not nor was begotten.”
Initially this Qur’anic rejection of sonship was almost certainly a rejection of polytheistic Meccan ideas, rather than Christian ones. Prof. R.C. Zaehner in the appendix to his book ‘At Sundry Times’ suggested that the Qur’an does not deny incarnation because the word used in the Qur’an is ‘to take’. When Qur’an (19:35, 19:29 and 25:2) states that God has not taken unto Himself a son, it is not condemning the incarnation at all but rather the Christian heresy of Adoptionism.
Kenneth Cragg thought that there was little point in Christians and Muslims discussing the idea of the Incarnation in ‘mutual miscomprehension,’ and added that Jesus’ early disciples were all good monotheists, but had somehow to interpret the events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection into their belief in monotheism. He further suggests that Incarnation is consistent with Islam, since God is involved with the world.
The Qur’an does not address the Christian doctrine of Trinity, properly understood, but only tritheism, which Christians would deny equally strenuously.
Concerning Sura 4:157 both Watt and Cragg have argued that what the Qur’an is denying is not the fact that Jesus was crucified but rather that the claim on the part of the Jews that they had scored a victory over Jesus and that therefore he was not the Messiah.
All this raises questions about the identity of the Christians Mohammed came into contact with. That would help Muslims to look afresh at orthodox Christianity, secure in the knowledge that the Qur’an is rejecting, not mainline Christian beliefs, but rather beliefs which mainline Christians would themselves reject.
Is there a link to Ebionites? Jewish Christians who believed that the Jewish Law should be maintained. They threw doubt on Jesus’s status as Son of God. They also believed in the idea of the corruption of the scriptures. They, unlike the Qur’an, did deny the virgin birth. After the Ebionites were condemned by Irenaeus, who became bishop of Lyons in 177, they were pushed into Transjordan and possibly Arabia.
Belief in three gods, God, Jesus and Mary, is found in the views of the Collyridians, an Arabian sect of the fourth century who worshipped the virgin Mary. Epiphanius opposed this heresy. Confusion might have been arisen out of practice of calling Mary ‘Theotokos’ or God-bearer, which gave rise to the idea of calling Mary Mother of God; this could easily be seen as giving the impression that Christians worshipped a family of gods in a manner similar to the Meccan pagan worship, which was totally repudiated by the Qur’an, for example in Sura 112.
On the crucifixion the Qur’an might follow the Docetists who believed Jesus was pure spirit and his physical appearance was an optical illusion, hence he could only appear to be crucified.
The Bible was certainly not translated from its original languages until several centuries after the time of Muhammed. The account of pre-Islamic Christian martyrs of Najran and their examination by the Jewish ruler Masruq called ‘incarnate satan’ who told them to deny Jesus Christ, to spit on this cross and to be Jews with them. If not, he would let them suffer torment by fire. The cross in those days was not only a religious symbol but the symbol of the Byzantine empire with its image of a Christian Empire.
Conclusion:
Some Christians, including medieval Christians, have suggested that the Qur’an denies heretical Christian beliefs rather than mainline ones. Muslims have almost without exception taken the Qur’an to be denying mainstream Christian ideas too. We have to say that whatever we think the Qur'an says, or does not say, it is the foundation to further statements made by Muslims about Christianity.
2. The Classical Period of Islamic Thought
In the years after the death of the prophet Muslims acquired more information about Christianity, which was not previously available. This came to light by greater contact with Jews and Christians, readier access to Biblical texts from both the Old and the New Testaments, and through knowledge of converts to Islam from both Judaism and Christianity. Some have speculated that if Muhammad had had the information that his followers attained, would history have been any different? The use to which this fresh information was put varied according to the particular interest and the point of view of the authors who used it. Goddard warns us that the context of Muslim writing about Christianity is as important as the text, because the Classical Period included the Crusades, and ended with the Reconquista of Spain and the fall of Granada in 1492.
One author, al-Biruni (d. 1048) said that Christianity was ‘a noble philosophy which gives the shirt to him who takes the coat, and which blesses an enemy and prays for all, but since the time of Constantine, it is the sword and the lash which have been the instruments of the Christian governors.’ It is not surprising, therefore, that much of it is anti-Christian and polemical.
Jesus
Many of the writers of this period were familiar with the four canonical Gospels, and some apocryphal gospels, as well, but the view of Jesus’ death and resurrection did not change from that of the prophet.
Historian al-Tabari (d 923) wrote on Jesus’ birth and final days. He records his meeting with a Coptic peasant who explained that he was a Christian because Christianity was so incomprehensible, and yet the priests still believed in it, and if men of their intelligence believed it, so would he.
Al-Mas’udi’s approach is essentially an empirical and descriptive one, rather than a hostile or antagonistic one.
Al-Ya’qubi (d. after 891) in writing on John’s Gospel of the last events of Jesus’ life, comparing them with the other Gospels, concludes: “This is what the authors of the Injil say, and they differ in all its meanings. Allah said ‘They slew him not, and they crucified him not, but a similitude was made for them. And they who differed about him were in doubt concerning him, but only followed an opinion, and they did not really slay him, but God took him up unto himself.’” There is, therefore, nothing new. Al-Ya’qubi was merely following the opinion of the prophet.
The most favorable account of Jesus’ ministry, which is remarkable since it dates from such an early period, is that contained in the fourty-fourth of the fifty-two treatises of the Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethren of Purity). They faithfully recorded that Jesus was crucified, died, and it was witnessed by his disciples and friends. They continue: “Three days later the disciples gathered in a place where Christ had promised them to appear, and they saw the sign which was between them and him, and the news was spread that Christ had not been killed. His sepulcher was open but his human body was not there. The Jewish parties differed among themselves and many rumors spread about Christ.” Earlier in his ministry, the Ikhwan al-Safa said that Jesus said that he must return to his divinity, leaving his humanity, and spoke of a sign between himself and his disciples notifying them to meet him. These are puzzling features. Ikhwan al-Safa are, however, hardly representative of the main trends of Islamic thought, as they were Isma’ilis, or ultra-Shi’is. They do take the side of the monks. Christian asceticism had clearly caught their imagination.
The medieval Sufi Jalal ad-Din Rumi (d.1273) stressed Jesus’ role as healer and miracle worker. On the subject of the crucifixion Rumi believed that another person had been crucified.
The Spanish Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi (d.1240) described Jesus as the ‘seal of the saints’, a kind of parallel position to Mohammed as the ‘seal of the prophets’.
Al-Tabari said that all the disciples were changed into the image of Jesus. So they took one of the disciples, or a person appeared who had the likeness of Jesus, or a disciple who volunteered (a certain Sergius) or Judas Iscariot. He concluded “God knows which of these was the truth.”
Al-Zamakhshari, a Mu’tazilite, believed so strongly in the idea of justice, that the idea of God making someone else look like Jesus in order to suffer in Jesus’ place was morally repugnant. Thus he rejected this substitutionalist account.
Also al-Razi rejected the substitutionalist account. He said that if it were true then no social relationship could be relied upon and no historical testimony could be relied upon either.
Christianity
Generally the greater knowledge of Christianity was used to develop a more systematic critique of Christianity which never included negative statements on Jesus himself, but rather of what Christians said about him. The context of this more polemical and negative stream of thought was the growing elaboration of Islamic theology and the need to preserve the distinctiveness of the Islamic from the Christian community.
There were two arguments:
1. Historical: during the course of Christian history the original message of Jesus had become corrupted, and
2. Philosophical: that Christianity is fundamentally irrational.
•
Arguments first developed by Abd al-Jabbar (d.1025), the Mu’tazilite judge of the city of Rayy (Tehran). Jesus, he said, observed the law and ritual purity in prayer; he recited prayer texts from the Bible, turning towards Jerusalem to pray, he was circumcised, fasted on Jewish fast-days, he observed the Jewish Sabbath, and he abstained from pork so that in all these things he obeyed the precepts of the law. But Christians abolished the law.
He explained why this happened. First generation of Christians followed Jesus’s practice, but the next generation ‘sought worldly power and tried to gain the hearts of men by serving their desires.’ So the law was abolished in order to procure the adhesion of the gentiles. The chief villain, according to him, is Paul, whom the Christians honor more than Jesus or Moses for Christians read his epistles far more than they read the Torah or the Gospels. Constantine, he thought, took the corruption of Jesus’ message even further. He says of him, “Constantine reigned for fifty years, killing those who did not venerate the cross or accept the divinity of Christ, and thus in the end these beliefs were firmly established.”
The great Islamic theologian al-Ghazali (d.1111) argued that Christianity is fundamentally irrational. His main theme is the Christian idea of the incarnation. There are references to passages in the Bible where the divinity of Jesus is mentioned such as ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 17:11). Secondly, there are references to those passages in which the humanity of Jesus is clearly stated such as Jesus’s ignorance of the Day of Judgment (Matthew 24:36). The names given to Jesus are discussed; ilah (God), rabb (Lord) and ibn (son). The first is acceptable if it is meant to magnify Jesus, but not if it is meant literally. ‘Master’ is acceptable if it is just used in the sense of ‘master’ but not if it is used to mean ‘God’. 1 Cor.8:4-6 is quoted in support of this view since it refers to the existence of one God, yet many lords (arbab, plural of rabb) and Christ himself is then referred to as rabb, thus distinguishing him from God. Sonship is acceptable if it is a metaphorical statement rather than a physical and literal one such as Jacob and David who are also described as God’s sons.
Three particular arguments are then discussed:
1. John 1:1-18 The Word became flesh. That must be corrupted since this is impossible. One of these statements must be wrong.
2. Jesus’ claim to have preceded Abraham (John 8:58). Abraham knew of Christ’s mission by insight, a characteristic shared by other prophets, and
3. Jesus' response to Philip ‘who sees me sees the father’ (John 14:9) This is metaphorical since it is just not possible to see God, God ordains prophets to tell people of God, this is what is referred to here.
Incarnation is explicitly rejected since the very idea of it clashes with the author’s preconceived convictions. As Sweetman said of al-Ghazali, “Here there is revealed the primary difficulty which makes al-Ghazali quite unable to take any other view. Humanity and divinity are at opposite poles of opposition by the thoroughgoing doctrine of the absolute ‘otherness’ of God from man, the Muslim dogma of mukhalafa or difference.”
Christians
After the Islamic conquests, however, driven partly by practical and demographic necessity, Muslim attitudes towards Christians became less hostile and more accommodating. During this period, in spite of what Muslims were writing about Christianity, relations between Muslims and Christians were fairly amicable with few exceptions. Arabia was cleared of Christians with their expulsion from Najran by Umar ibn al Khatab (634-44) and caliph al-Walid (705-15) torturing and martyring the chief of the Banu Taghlib on the grounds that it was shameful that the chief of the Arabs should venerate the cross. On the other hand outside Arabia the first two centuries or so of that rule represented a golden age for some of the non-Arab Christian churches of the Middle East, which had suffered cruelly from persecution by the Byzantines in the centuries before the Arab conquest. Christians were left in peace if they paid poll tax (jizya) although there was an attempt by the caliph ‘umar (ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz) (717-20) to enforce a law that no Christian should serve in the administration of the Islamic state, an order which he had to revoke when chaos ensued. Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809) ordered that no Christian was to be like a Muslim in dress or riding. Abassid caliph al-Ma’mun (813-33) marked a period of particular interest for Muslim-Christian exchange, partly because of organized debates at the court between representatives of the two faiths, partly because of special role played by Christians to translate scientific works from Syriac and Greek into Arabic. At the same time there was also greater hardship for ordinary Christians, as illustrated by the revolt of Coptic peasants in lower Egypt in 832, a savagely-crushed revolt which marks the beginning of large scale conversion to Islam as a result of economic hardship in lower Egypt. On the official level the turning point came with al-Mutawakkil (847-61). The year 850 in particular because “he gave orders to destroy their churches which were newly built and to take the tenth part of their houses” He forbade employment in government offices and that children would attend Muslim schools. Jews suffered as much as Christians, perhaps a bit worse. More negative writings about Christians appeared, but at the worst some writers were more positive and tolerant. Even at its worst, however, life was considerably less harsh than that of Jews in medieval Europe.
The Bible
During the classical period there was greater knowledge of the Bible. However, this knowledge was used to critique Christianity by stating that either the text of the Bible, or its interpretation, had been corrupted. Some said that Christians did not understand the Bible, since the Bible pointed to the prophet, Muhammad. These views tended to co-exist, depending on the context in which they were written.
Ali Tabari used his knowledge of the Bible after his conversion to Islam to demonstrate the truth of Islam over and against Christianity, and in particular to establish the truth on the basis of biblical evidence of the prophethood of Mohammed. Ali Tabari explains in detail why he became Muslim; one of the most important reasons was simply Islam’s success.
Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) was from a family of converts. His view is that the Bible is unreliable. He ridicules certain parts. For example Matthew 13:31-2, Jesus’s parable of the mustard seed. Ibn Hazm comments that no one he had met knew of the possibility of birds dwelling in a mustard tree. His literalist frame of mind clearly makes no allowance for hyperbole. He also challenges the Bible for the sins of prophets such as David. Prophets are sinless and thus the accounts must have been made up.
Ibn Taimiyya (d.1328). Time and energy spent opposing a number of groups he perceived to be either signs of decay within Islamic society or threats from outside it. Among these were the Christians, internally because of their still significant presence inside the Islamic world and externally because of the Crusades and the continuing existence of the Crusading outpost of Cyprus. Despite his polemical attacks on the Christians, Ibn Taimiyya’s view of the Bible was that even if it had been misunderstood, its text was fundamentally reliable. The problem was therefore interpretation of the text.
Conclusion
It is particularly interesting to see why some writers were more positive or negative. To a large extent this can simply be explained by the circumstances in which different writers found themselves. Thus at the end of the medieval period there was a particular outburst of polemical anti-Christian writing in Spain, but this is not surprising if located in the context of the Christian campaign of Reconquista which reached its conclusion with the fall of Granada in 1492. Given the threat which Christian expansion posed to Muslim rule and survival in Spain, it is not surprising that Muslim literature about Christianity in this context tended to be of a negative and polemical nature. As ever, therefore, context is as important as text in looking at developing Muslim views of Christianity.
2. 3. The Early Modern Period.
This period is from about 1500 to the late 19th century. There was a political resurgence of Islam with the rise of the Ottomans, Safavids and Moghuls. However, there was a decline in their intellectual output. Commentary and revision replaced original thought. During this period European powers were expanding around the globe, including into large sections of the Muslim world. As a consequence of the increased contact between Islam and Christianity three new tendencies emerged;
1. ‘Politicized religion,’ in response to European imperialism;
2. ‘Modernist religion,’ in response to modern critical thinking – Muslims were visiting Europe to study to take home ‘modern’ ideas; and
3. ‘Polemicized religion,’ in response to Christian mission – some Protestant missionaries were virulently attacking the Qur'an, Muhammad and Islam.
Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, marked the beginning of European involvement in the affairs in the Middle East. He declared that he was in no way hostile to Islam and had rendered it a great service by abolishing the Holy Roman Empire, the traditional enemy of the Muslims. Not many believed him.
When European missionaries, especially Protestant ones, began to be active in the Muslim world, they did not hesitate to indulge in quite violent polemic against Islam; for example, Part III of K.G. Pfander’s Mizan al haqq (The Balance of Truth – see below) contained outright attacks on the Qur’an, Muhammed and Islam. Thus, if modern Muslim thinking about Christianity reflects these phenomena of politicized religion, modernist religion and polemicized religion, it is to some extent at least only reproducing and mirroring certain aspects of European attitudes towards the Islamic world.
Goddard has reviewed and assessed their work, and this can only be a précis of his précis, as we can only write a brief paragraph on each.
Jamal al-din al-Afghani (1839-97)
Al-Afghani is the principal representative of politicized religion. He was a controversial figure with a high reputation in the Muslim world. He was the leading exponent of pan-Islam in the last quarter of the 19th century. His creed was ‘political messianism’, and he appears to have believed in a mahdi as a secular political leader. Originally from Persia he traveled extensively throughout the Muslim world, but also visited London and Paris. He was an advisor to both the Shah of Persia and the Sultan of Turkey, but fell out of favor with both. He was anti-British and wrote a book entitled the Refutation of the Materialists, aimed at Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s ideas to reform Islam. He thought Sir Sayyid was a tool of the foreigners. Later in Paris he debated with Ernest Renan, who had written that Islam crushed free enquiry and was opposed to the spirit of modern science. He agreed with Renan, but added that all religion, not only Islam, obstructed scientific enquiry. Islam was, however, the religion of reason, totally in harmony with scientific thought, and was the religion demanded by reason. He has a reputation for orthodoxy, but this is open to doubt, as scholars since his time have noted discrepancies between what he said and wrote. Al-Afghani was successful in forging a bond between Islam and politics, making Islam conform to the dictates of reason, which led to political resurgence within the Muslim world. He strengthened the bonds between all Muslims, which later made possible the creation of a strong and stable state, able to resist European encroachment. He identified Christianity with the West, the imperialist enemy, and so rebuffed Christian doctrine. In the Refutation of the Materialists he wrote that it was necessary to reject any belief that God in the Highest has appeared in human garb, thus denying the Incarnation. He went on to show that Islam was superior to Christianity, in that it was the more rational religion. It is not surprising that most of his critics have been from the West.
Muhammad ‘Abdu (1849-1905)
Muhammad ‘Abdu was first a disciple of al-Afghani, but later disputed with him over the road to political independence. From 1882 Britain occupied Egypt, and ‘Abdu was less hostile towards them, and made fewer enemies. He stressed the need for education to liberate Islam from taqlid, the uncritical acceptance of tradition. He attempted to separate the religious from the political, which al-Afghani intertwined. He was more a liberal reformer than a political activist.
He authored a book, Al-Islam wa-l nasraniya (Islam and Christianity) in which he said that Islam was again the religion of reason, rather than blind faith. If Islam be obeyed, society flourished, as demonstrated by the golden age of Islam. He was not totally negative towards Christianity, but he said it depended on faith in the impossible rather than reason. If it were true that the Christian world was ‘advanced’ and the Muslim world ‘backward’ it was because the civilizing influence of Islam had been transferred to Europe at the time of the Crusades, and Europe had only been able to make use of this legacy by neglecting its Christianity.
He accepted that the text of the Bible was not corrupt; in other words the tahrif (corruption) was in the interpretation of the text rather than in the text itself. Abdu was not negative but, according to Mahmud Ayyub did not really understand Christianity. His work must be seen against the background of 19th century Christian views of Islam and that compared with the polemical insults and gross distortions committed by missionary scholars of Islam. He was perhaps the most courteous of all the critics of Christianity. He was writing during the period of the great debates between science and religion, in which some Christian leaders were showing a distinct lack of reason.
Rahmat Allah (al-Hindi) Kairanawi (1834-91)
Rahmat Allah represents the polemicized religion. ‘Polemic’ is derived from the Greek polemos, which means war. The word was first used in English in the 17th century to describe a war of words between rival religious groups. He wrote in response to K.G. Pfander (1803-65), a German by birth, who served with the C.M.S. (Church Missionary Society) an arm of the Anglican Church, which sent him to India in 1839. He had an inclination to work under educated Muslims and preached in the bazaar which he engaged at the risk of his life. Pfander had written a book entitled Mizan al-haqq, (The Balance of Truth), which was an attempt to balance the truth of both Islam and Christianity, but he came down on the site of Christianity. It tried to prove that the Old and New Testaments were the Word of God and that they were neither corrupted nor abrogated. He also showed that their aim was to set forth the principle doctrines of Christianity. It was translated into many languages.
Pfander relied too much on rational methods, which reflected a disposition of 19th century Europe and also of the ‘ulema but overlooked the emotional ties felt by Muslims towards their community. He did have considerable effect on the uneducated Muslims in India, especially in Agra. Rahmat Allah planned a counter offensive, and challenged Pfander to a debate in April 1854. Pfander was seconded by T.V. French, and Rahmat Allah by Dr. Wazir Khan, who in the 1830’s had studied in England, where he had researched Christianity, and learned of Biblical criticism from German authors, of which Pfander knew nothing. Four subjects treated in the debate:
1. The abrogation and corruption of the Christian scriptures,
2. The doctrine of the Trinity,
3. Muhammed’s claim to prophethood, and
4. The inspiration of the Qur’an.
Even Pfander, after the debate, admitted to the C.M.S. that the result seemed to favor the Muslims, but he was more optimistic over the long term result. Nevertheless the C.M.S. withdrew him to Peshawar. The Muslims, however, claimed it a great victory for Islam, and this became a turning point in their reaction to the Christian missionaries. They went immediately on the offensive and made use of western Biblical criticism. Pfander admitted there were a few mistakes in the Bible, such as discrepancies in Jesus’ genealogy but argued that mistakes were not the same as corruption. Muslims raised the status of 1 John 5:7, which states there are three witnesses, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, a verse which it was generally agreed was a later interpolation and Pfander admitted that this was an alteration of the text. Muslims seized on this as evidence of corruption. They said that if any error is detected in a document then the validity of the whole document is put at risk. Rahmat Allah’s decision to challenge the Christian missionaries on their own ground through the adoption of their techniques of publicity and propaganda, was a turning point in the Muslim reaction to the influence of Christian missionaries.
He was not totally un-involved in politics, and after the Indian Mutiny, 1857, he was forced to flee to Mecca.
Pfander later went to Turkey and began to baptize converts there. The Sultan was so incensed that he summoned Rahmat Allah to come to Turkey from Mecca, to write down the substance of his debate with Pfander. Izhar al-haqq (Demonstration of Truth) was the result. He knew that Christian beliefs were being challenged even in Europe, and used this to buttress the traditional Muslim argument. It was presented to Sultan ‘Abdulaziz, who printed it in 1864 in both Turkish and Arabic. It has recently been published in Pakistan, where the editor wrote that nothing written in the intervening 100 years on the theme of Islam and Christianity has replaced this work; and also in Egypt, whose editors we shall discuss later. An English translation was published in London in 1990.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98)
Also from the Indian sub-continent, and a near contemporary of Rahmat Allah, was Sayyid Ahmad Khan. He was far removed from the politicized and polemicized approach, and is best known as a leading figure of Islamic modernism and for his work in Muslim education. He was an Anglophile, believing all good things came from England. Where Rahmat Allah resorted to a polemical response, Sayyid Ahmad Khan adopted a more scholarly approach to the Bible. He too makes use of modern Western commentators on the Bible, such as T.H. Horne. This, and his ready acceptance of Western culture, made him suspect to his Muslim contemporaries, especially al-Afghani. However, like Rahmat Allah, he was concerned about the activities of Christian missionaries in India; but, unlike him, he adopted a non-confrontational approach.
Ahmad Khan was a serious student of Christianity, and especially of the Bible. He began a scholarly work, but was unable to complete it, though he did finish three volumes, entitled Tabyin al-kalam fi tafsir al-taurat wa ‘l-ingil ‘ala millat al-islam, (The Muhammadan Commentary on the Holy Bible). His ideas were not unlike that of other Muslims although he made use of Western commentators, but he did consider the text of the Old Testament as un-corrupted, and so those books should be accepted as authentic by Muslims. He was less confident about that of the New Testament, since it had been written by Jesus’ followers. He was concerned that the original Injil had been corrupted by them, and he tried to reconstruct that Injil from the texts as they stood.
Ahmad Khan went to great lengths to rationally explain the miracles of the Bible, or to demythologize them. He argued that the Qur'an did not assert that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus; she had been faithful to her husband, and had had intercourse only with him. Like others he claimed that Jesus did not die on the cross, but after hanging on it for some time, was still alive when he was taken down. He did, however, believe that in spite of their Trinitarian language, Christians were basically monotheistic. Goddard concludes that Ahmad Khan’s attitude towards Christianity was fair, and compared with his contemporaries, tolerant.
Rashid Rida (1865-1935)
Rida began as a disciple of ‘Abdu, and was his companion and biographer, but later in life he traced his own course. He tackled the same question as ‘Abdu, why the Muslim countries were backward, but he was less self-critical. He asserted that the principals of modern civilization – activity (jihad), unity of the whole of life (tawhid) and the possession of truth – were all possessed by Islam. He became more conservative and rigid as he grew older. In his book Al-wahy al-muhammadi (The Muhammadan Revelation) he made such claims as, ‘The Qur'an cannot but be the truth of God,’ and ‘There is in the world no general, perfect, sound and reliable religion except Islam,…it is the religion of truth and peace, of justice and right, giving its truth to every nation and individual.’
He supported the Wahhabis as the best hope of Muslim unification, (Wahhabis are strongly Hanbalite and thus he moved towards extremism and exclusivism and rigidity of the Hanbalite outlook. “The influence of the great conciliator al-Ghazali was rapidly replaced by that of the fundamentalist Ibn Taimiyya” - a quote from Gibb, 1947) So he moved towards extremism, a move back to al-Afghani’s more politically activist Islam.
Rida showed a strident anti-Christian attitude. If it were not for the church, for the politicians, and for the inner decay of Islam itself, Europe he thought might well become Muslim. He published a number of pamphlets which exposed his views. He accused Christians for their belief in the Trinity, arguing that God could not have had a son. The Incarnation was unnecessary, since God could have made himself known in other ways. The Christian idea of redemption was a crude rehashing of pagan ideas, and Jesus did not die, but rather swooned and later revived. The tomb of Jesus in India, as in Ahmadi belief, is cited as evidence of Jesus not having died. The idea of crucifixion contradicted the idea of the mercy of God, since he could have provided pardon without sacrifice. Christians he accused of ‘shirk’. Original sin is rejected. He compared Moses, Jesus and Muhammad and concluded that the completion of the evolution of religion was found in Islam.
Protestants were attacked for their unrealistic morals of gentleness and forgiveness, which leave the field open to the unjust. Catholics were attacked for their veneration of the saints. All missionaries were attacked because they accused Mohammed of being a liar and their link with the colonial authorities to ban Muslim books and force conversions to Christianity.
Rida believed the texts of the Christian scriptures to have been corrupted. He made use of the so-called Gospel of Barnabas, not available to Rahmat Allah. This ‘gospel’ was supposedly discovered in Amsterdam in 1709. In G. Sale’s commentary on the Holy Qur’an a monk, Fra Marino, claimed to have discovered an Italian manuscript in the Vatican library of Pope Sixtus V (1585-90); he smuggled it out, read it and became Muslim. In 1907 the Italian text was given a critical introduction and English translation by Laura and Londale Ragg. They established authoritatively that the work was not genuine, and this view has been accepted in Europe ever since. In 1908, however, the English translation was translated, without this critical introduction, into both Arabic and Urdu, the former in the circle of Rashid Rida. Since that date it has become a standard work in Muslim writings about Christianity, since it affirmed the traditional Islamic position from a supposedly ancient Christian author. The Gospel of Barnabas affirmed the unity of God, as opposed to the trinity, and Jesus’ claim to be only a prophet, and his observance of Jewish laws and denied his death on the cross.
Rida therefore combined the politicized religion with the polemicized, but never the modernist.
Conclusion.
Muslim perceptions of Christianity demonstrate a boomerang effect of Christian perceptions of Islam. In the period after 1800 there were three main features:
• politicized religion, in response to imperialism, with Afghani and Rida
• modernist/liberal approach, in response to liberalism, with ‘Abduh and Ahmed Khan, and
• polemicized religion, in response to Christian mission, with Rahmat Allah and also Rida.
4. Contemporary Egyptian Muslim Polemical Literature
From the late 19th century to mid 20th Britain occupied Egypt, and so writers were preoccupied in gaining political independence, rather than to re-examine Muslim views of Christianity. In 1922 Egypt became formally independent. After 1945, British influence began to decline further. There were many different views expressed, some new, but most a reproduction of the older views. In this chapter Goddard reviews the negative material, and in the next chapter he will review the more positive, and the chapter after that intermediate views.
Among the negative material, he notes that three lines of argument emerged.
1. The historical corruption of Christianity;
2. The truth of Islam being foretold by Christian sources themselves;
3. The close link between Christianity and Western imperialism.
Again, only a thumb nail sketch on each author can be given.
Muhammad Abu Zahra
Muhammad Abu Zahra lectured at Al-Azhar University. He had a particular interest in Ibn Taimiyya. His, that is Abu Zahra’s, main work, Mudhadirat fi ‘l-nasraniyya, (Lectures on Christianity) was published in 1942, and has since gone through five further editions. It was a very scholarly work, the sub-title being ‘A study of the stages through which the Christians’ beliefs have passed, of their books, their sacred councils and their sects;’ a survey of Christianity from the time of Christ to the then present day. In the introduction he showed high intension to be fair and he observed the difficulty in writing an opinion from which one differed, especially when the subject of the difference was a matter of belief and conviction. He went on to say that the task of scientific research was to study Christianity as its adherents believed it.
The lectures were given to students in the Department of Mission and Guidance of the College of Principals of Religion ('Usul el-Din). It was a seminal work, the basis for every other book on the subject that has been written since, but, in spite of that, it presented nothing really new. Having researched, he said, only Christian sources, but only those written in, or translated into Arabic, he concluded: “I ended as I began, believing in One Unique God, who has no father, and no son.” Thus the traditional picture of Christ and Christianity emerged. His key argument was that the ‘chain’ of transmission was broken between the time of Jesus and the council of Nicea; the claim that enabled him to state blandly that in the absence of any reliable sources from Christian quarters, investigators must have recourse to the Qur’an. The main influence that corrupted Christianity was paganism. Plotinus (d.270) was mentioned arguing the three-fold origin of existence, First Cause, Reason and Spirit. The Council of Nicea was not held until 325, and thus for Abu Zahra, Christianity borrowed the trinity from Plotinus. His next argument was that Jesus did not write the Gospels. There was an original gospel, the gospel of Barnabas, that preceded the others, but Christians did not want to accept this as a historical gospel. He said that prior to the Council of Nicea the opinion of Arius - that Christians were Unitarian - was so widespread that only the intervention of Constantine led to the deification of Jesus.
A section was devoted to a statement of Ibrahim Sa’id, an evangelical pastor of the Faith Church in Shubra, Cairo, in his commentary on Luke’s gospel that the position of Luke’s account was equivalent to the status of Hadith in Islam. Abu Zahra stated that the Hadith was much more reliable than the gospel. The pastor is accused of turning gold into dust. The idea of the Cross was rejected as was any idea of redemption.
He discussed the Reformers at length, but said that they did not take their logic to the furthest, by rejecting the councils and restoring the religion of tawhid (unity). Said Abu Zahra “we find many scholars explaining forcefully that Jesus was only an apostle, that he was no more than a man, and they quoted the gospels themselves to that effect.” Only Islam restored the original message of Christ, by seeing Jesus as a great man, but not God.
Abu Zahra’s main sources of reference were Ibn Hazm and Rahmat Allah al-Hindi’s Izhar al-haqq. Thus despite claims to scientific objectivity and the use of original sources, he was in reality limited to Arabic sources, and demonstrated a considerable reliance on traditional Muslim anti-Christian polemics. His conclusion was predictable. Christians have emerged who do call to tawhid, (presumably Unitarians) and thus reflect the light of the truth of Islam in what they write, but the councils have rejected that idea and Christianity has rejected it ever since. His book, rather than being an unbiased history of Christianity, showed how traditional Christian beliefs may be undermined in order to pave the way for the Christian world’s acceptance of Islam.
Muhammad Kamal Farag
One of the Egyptian editions of Izhat al-haqq was edited by Muhammad Kamal Farag in 1978. It was distributed by the Al Ahram organization. Its preface was written by ‘Abd al-Halim Mahmud, the late sheikh of al-Azhar. He was very affirmative towards Christ, but not to the point to affirm his deity. Abdel Halim Mahmud wrote in the preface, ‘Have you seen the honor with which Islam surrounds Mary and Jesus? However, he concluded that Jesus was a messenger to the people of Israel, who would affirm the Torah, and to tell people that the straight path was to worship God as Lord. Then followed Farag’s own preface. He cited the Qur'anic references to kufr, unbelief, of those who say that God is Jesus, the son of Mary, and that God is one of three, before going on to list various threats to Islam, from the Crusades to the tragedy of the English conquest of India with the advent of the missionaries. He said that the English began by killing thousands of the elite of the Muslim ‘ulema, and then in co-operation with the Hindus they defamed the sacredness of the Qur'an and the esteem of the messenger of God, until some ignorant people renounced their religion.
The editor recommended seven writers as being of use for the defense of the Islamic programme. They were: Ibn Iaimiyya, al-Su’udi, Samuel b. Yehuda, al-Qarafi, al-Qurtubi, al-Juweini and al-Khazraji. With Sheikh Rahmat Allah al-Hindi as their leader the ‘ulema began to refute the missionaries in books and in debate. There followed the account of al-Hindi’s encounter with Pfander and the debate of 1854 in Agra. He said that the English recalled Pfander and sent him to Constantinople, where al-Hindi followed him, and the sultan’s request for the publishing of Izhar al-haqq. Then followed al-Hindi’s major work with an account of the great debate, and some of his earlier works as appendices. At the end Farag again referred to attacks on Islam and the Qur'an.
Ahmad Hijazi al-Saqqa
Al-Saqqa was well educated in Islam at al-Azhar. In 1977 he wrote his doctorate on ‘The annunciation of the prophet of Islam in the Torah and the Injil,’ which was subsequently revised and published as a book. He also edited Izhar al-haqq. In the introduction to this he said that it was among the greatest books on the science of comparative religion and if people would continue to read and study it, the progress and flourishing of Christianity would cease throughout the whole world. He said that it made clear that the religion in God’s presence was Islam; that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, was sent from Almighty God; that the Qur'an is revelation from God; and that the people of the book had strayed from the straight path, firstly, by their corruption of the book entrusted to them, and secondly, by distancing themselves from Islam, although they knew that it was the truth. The reason for their changing the Torah and the Injil was because God had informed them in the Torah that a prophet from the children of Israel would one day come to convey to the world a message from God. That prophet was Muhammad. Because they could not accept him as God’s messenger they changed the message. He continued that when in 586 BC the Arabs, the descendents of Ishmael, deserted the Jews, the sons of Isaac, the latter decided to change the Torah in order to make it the law for them alone, and not for the whole world. The book of Nehemiah reinforced this, in the Jews saying to the Samaritans, Ammonites and Arabs, “You have no stake, or claim, or traditional rights in Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 2.20).
Al-Saqqa used the passages Deuteronomy 18.15-22, Psalm 2.2,6, Psalms 110 and 118 and Daniel 7.13-14, to show that the prophet who would come was Muhammad. He quoted the gospel of Barnabas to suggest Jesus’ saying that Ishmael was the son whom Abraham was prepared to sacrifice, so that it would be his descendents that would be blessed by God. He added that Jesus was called ‘messiah’ because he was one of the prophets of Israel, but he was not the awaited messiah for he had to come from the descendents of Ishmael. He also quoted the gospel of Barnabas to show that Jesus had obeyed the Torah and was spared from death. It was Paul who changed the predictions of the coming of Muhammad and applied them to Jesus. Paul also took the idea of the Incarnation and the multiplication of gods from the Romans. So there was no need to obey the Law because forgiveness was available through the cross. This was confirmed by the church councils. The Council of Nicea marked the official transfer of the prophecies of Mohammed to being prophecies of Jesus. Al-Saqqa thus summarized Izhar al-haqq and indicated his debt to Rahmat Allah al-Hindi.
The famous passage from Deuteronomy 18:15-22 he quoted to show the characteristics of a prophet:
• He will be from the Ishmaelites (Hebrew: from their brothers)
• He will be illiterate. Evidence: verse 18 ‘I will put my words into his mouth’.
• He will abrogate the law of Moses. Evidence: verse 15, ‘you shall listen to him’.
• He will be the guarantor of divine revelation. Evidence: verse 18 ‘he shall convey all my commands to them’.
• He will do away with the kingdoms of the Israelites in Palestine and throughout the world. Evidence: verse 19: if anyone does not listen to the words he will speak in my name I will require satisfaction from him. He explained that God would eradicate them from their land because they did not follow him. He quoted Acts 3.22.
• He will not be killed. Evidence verse 20. The prophet who said what God did, must not be killed. Goddard commented on this verse by saying it originally was an instruction, not a prophecy.
Al-Saqqa also quoted from the book of Genesis to show that both Isaac and Ishmael were to inherit Abraham’s blessings. Both were to get his kingdom and his prophesy. He added that Moses before his death confirmed that the blessing of the nations would come through Ishmael. He further claimed that every time the Bible used ‘son of God’, as for example in Psalm 2:7, it referred to the coming of Muhammed. Also the term ‘his anointed’ in Psalm 2:2,6 referred to Muhammed.
Daniel too, according to al-Saqqa, referred to Muhammed when he described the ‘one like a son of man who possesses everlasting sovereignty’ (Daniel 7:13-14). Daniel 7:13 spoke of the victory of the son of man. In al-Saqqa’s view this referred to the victory of the Muslims ‘for reasons beyond the level of reason’. So the kuffar (unbelievers) would be defeated. Maleachi also, when describing the coming of Elijah, in fact prophesized the coming of Muhammed, for the numerical values of the names ‘Iliya’ and ‘Ahmad’ were the same; but al-Saqqa had to change the spelling of Elijah’s name in Arabic in order to achieve that, for the name is usually spelled Iliyya. Jesus’ reference to ‘the Comforter’ is also taken to mean Ahmed. The gospel of Barnabas was again cited to the effect that Jesus had told his disciples that Ishmael was Abraham’s elder son, so it was he whom Abraham prepared to sacrifice.
In a short conclusion to Izhar al-haqq he repeated its main argument; the corruption of the Christian scripture, especially with reference to the existing of the prophecies of Muhammed. The existence of the gospels in plural proved that Jesus’ own Gospel had been lost. Similarly, the existence of two Torah’s, Samaritan and Hebrew, showed that it had been corrupted.
Al-Saqqa wrote several other books that reiterated much of what he said in his introduction to Izhar al-haqq. In Aqanim al-nasara (The ‘persons’ of the Christians) he investigated the Christian belief about the ‘Persons’ of the Trinity. In the preface he wrote that he was spurred to write the book by the appearance of the book ‘Imani’ (My faith) by Elias Maqar, a leading figure of the Coptic Evangelical Church. This book prompted Al-Saqqa to write about affirming the prophethood of Muhammed. Al-Saqqa argued that the Torah proclaimed the unity of God, that Jesus did not come to abrogate the Torah, and that he therefore originally proclaimed the unity of God. Then followed references to the promises to Ishmael; they were corrupted after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. The prophet to come was to conquer the world; therefore he could never have been Jesus.
On the Spirit al-Saqqa quoted Spinoza, who claimed Christians confused between ruh (spirit) and rih (wind). Razi was quoted to establish that the Paraclete was a name for Ahmed. Jesus wanted to proclaim the coming of Muhammed, but the Jews tried to kill him for it. Al-Saqqa claimed that the Christian interpretation of the Holy Spirit as being the Paraclete only appeared in the Fourth century, when the divinity of the Holy Spirit was first concocted and the promise clearly referred to a person and not to God. Jesus could not be God, al-Saqqa argued, because the letter of the Hebrews stated that he was lower than the angels and Jesus did not know the date of his second coming. Where did the idea of the Trinity come from? Jews took ideas of the Trinity when they were in exile in Babylon. Ancient Egyptians reflected the same idea. Paul capitalized on the idea of the Incarnation which the Romans had already accepted. Paul transferred the prophecies of Muhammed to Jesus.
His conclusion was that Christianity today had nothing to do with the teachings of the Messiah, and that comparison between the heavenly religions could only take place between Judaism and Islam, for while the Qur’an may have abrogated the practical prescriptions of the Torah, it did not so with the verses about God and His attributes. Jesus had no Shari’a since he was following the Shari’a of Moses, but Mohammed could change regulations and so he was obviously superior. Ibn Hazm’s arguments figure prominently here, said Goddard.
Al-Saqqa’s book ‘Nubuwat muhammed fi’il-kitab al-muqaddas,’ (1978) based upon his doctoral dissertation for the Azhar, repeated most of the previous arguments. Christians were perverse because they applied all the prophecies in the Torah to the Messiah, Jesus, whereas in fact not one of them referred to him because they all referred to Muhammed. In the year 2566 before the birth of Mohammed, Abraham was told the name of Muhammad. In the year 2407 before the birth of Mohammed, Jacob prophesized the termination of the kingdom, and the Shari’a of his sons and their termination to the prophet to come from the tribe of Ismail. This was fulfilled when ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab took Jerusalem in 636. Jesus also prophesized the qibla of Muhammed in John 4. Isaiah prophesized the emergence of Mecca as the focal point of the world and in Chapter 54 he predicted the spread of the Ishmaelites to the whole world. Isaiah and Jesus both referred to the ‘stone which was rejected’, in other words to Ishmail. Daniel predicted the year Muhammed would be born. The Magi also knew the year, which was why Abraha tried to destroy Mecca and kill Muhammed so that Christianity could last for ever. Habbakuk predicted the coming of a universal Shari’a from Mecca and Zacharia predicted the conquest of Jerusalem by ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab.
For all of this Al-Saqqa is described by many Muslims as being Egypt’s leading expert on Christianity.
Evaluation:
Al-Saqqa’s idea of comparative religion is seen as a way of evaluating another religious tradition and at the same time giving a vigorous assertion of the superiority of the religion of the writer, and indeed of the correctness of the claim of his religion to surpass and supplant the religious tradition about which he is writing. Goddard stated that the aim of comparative religion is that religions “should be studied for the purpose of comparison and not for the purpose of a blatant assertion of the superiority of one tradition over all the others. While it must be admitted that some Christian books adopt a similar approach to other religions, their authors have at least in most cases had a considerable amount of first-hand experience and in-depth study of the religions about which they write.”
Goddard claimed that works so far in this chapter lacked knowledge of Christian sources and Christian information, because authors did not know any other language but Arabic. The Christian publications in Egypt tended to be on a popular level, rather than on a scholarly level, and translations of European works on Christianity into Arabic tended to be works favorable to an Islamic point-of-view. So he concluded, “How much more difficult, therefore, for a Muslim writer to obtain reliable and scholarly material on Christianity, a subject on which, given his understanding of comparative religion, he has even less incentive to make the effort to do so than he does when seeking to investigate a Muslim polemicist against Christianity. Yet this is the reality of the situation.”
Ibrahim Khalil Ahmad
The final line of argument about Christianity is that it is the political arm of Western culture intent on subverting Islam, and therefore should be banned in Muslim countries. Many have written on this line; mention is made of two Lebanese writers who investigated the use of medical work and educational institutions for missionary purposes, and also the links between politicians and missionaries in pursuit of their common ambitions in the Middle East. Works of J.R. Mott, S.M. Zwemer and others are referred to, together with reports of the 1910 World Missionary Conference and periodicals as the Muslim World and International Review of Mission. None, however, has been quite as outspoken as Ibrahim Khalil Ahmad.
Khalil Ahmad was born and grew up a Christian in Alexandria, but in 1940 escaped to Upper Egypt to evade the war. From his youth he studied the three monotheistic religions, and at the American College in Assiut he spent most of his time in the library. He said that all his energy and time then were devoted to Christ and his church. He studied science there, but in 1945 entered the Presbyterian Seminary in Cairo, which was affiliated with the University of Princeton. He obtained a diploma in theology in 1948. He was then posted to the church of Baqur in the governorate of Assiut. He worked alongside American missionaries on evangelistic work among Muslims. In 1952 the Synod of the Nile appointed him to teach in the Theological College of the Holiness Revival. In 1954 he went to work in the German Hospital in Aswan where he became a traveling evangelist. He began a doctorial thesis from Princeton on the Sword of Goliath. He said that he intended to attack Islam by attacking the Qur'an, but instead the sword attacked him, and Allah conquered him by means of the glorious Qur'an. What convinced him was the simplicity of the Islamic doctrine on the unity of God, and the fairness of the Islamic view of judgment – that each person would be judged by his or her knowledge that forgiveness is from God alone, with repentance being all that is demanded. The simplicity of Islam won over the complexity of the Christian doctrine of the unity of the godhead, and redemption through Christ.
In1957 he announced to the mission that he was a Muslim. His wife left him, Ahmad says because of threats of missionaries who reminded her of biblical texts such as Matthew 10:32-33 ‘Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven;’ and Matthew 12:30-32 ‘He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever says a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. Subsequently he became imam of the mosque of the Rightly Guided caliphs in Heliopolis. In 1960 the official certification of the change of religion of his four sons came through. In 1961 he was invited to join the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs and since then has continued as a mujahid for Allah and His Apostle, and as a da’i to Islam, especially among the ahl al-kitab.
With this background he wrote a book with the English title, Orientalism And Mission And Their Relationship To World Imperialism. In the preface he explained that he had been a teacher of theology in Assiut, and there he came into contact with American, Swiss, German and English missionaries from whom he learned the history of the Middle East from their perspective. The Balfour declaration and MacMahon correspondence made him convinced of western machinations to divide the Arab world and to keep it in a state of weakness. But, quoting Qur'an 5:56, that God’s party would be the victors, he said, that if Arabs were to unite they would be victorious.
In Part 1 of the book he told the story of why he became a Muslim. He said that he presented the book without any animosity to show how mission and Orientalism combined to dominate the country, and how they were used by imperialism to divide national feeling and to suppress Arabism and the Arabic language. They should therefore be resisted with as much strength as possible. He then went into more detail to describe the activities of the ‘Protestant clerical machine,’ outlining the distinctions between the different churches, ‘which run so deep that they have caused civil wars.’ But despite this they are all part of the same worldwide plot. He listed various evangelistic and other centers belonging to the church in Egypt. Kenneth Cragg is called ‘an American strongly fanatical against Islam’. (If he had met him he would have known that he was not American, but English, and not a fanatic.) Pfander, Ibrahim Luqa and Cragg were termed subverters of Islam. The policy adopted to achieve that end had been to encourage ‘progressive thinkers’ within Islam, such as Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who founded a college within which Christianity was studied, and Taha Hussain, who wrote a book on pre-Islamic poetry that implied that the Qur’an was not true revelation. Orientalists argued that Islam took over ideas from the Sabaeans and others, thus undermining Islam’s claims to originality. Details are given of missionary methods in hospitals and schools - telling stories to those who are ill, teaching in schools that Islam and Christianity both proclaim the unity of God, and that the Torah and the Injil are reliable. The organization and funding of missionaries and Orientalists was discussed, with kings and princes supporting the work. The work of evangelism he described as having three parts, work in schools and hospitals, work among individuals, and Bible distribution, and he discussed their financing and management, and demonstrated a link between the religious and the political.
Part II dealt with the history of Orientalism from the Crusades to the British occupation of Egypt and Palestine, examples of crusading imperialism against the Arab world. But the fight against this through the lordship of Islam would lead to stability and peace. Ibrahim Khalil Ahmad maintained that Islam was the spirit of all religions and included belief in earlier religion; but the religion of Allah was one and that was Islam.
Part III continued this theme, entitled ‘Islam in the face of its enemies.’ It began with the assertion that ‘Islam is the power that will not be overcome.’ He said that Shari’a law was superior to Christian law, which he thought unrealistic, and he cited prominent people living together before marriage as examples.
In the section entitled ‘The remedy’ he made the following suggestions:
1. Education and the press needed to be purified from foreign influence.
2. An Islamic Educational Foundation needed to be established to reply to the Orientalists.
3. Publication of an Islamic Encyclopedia of Islam, a ‘translation’ of the Qur'an, and its understanding needed to be published.
4. Production of a magazine on Orientalism needed to be established.
He concluded that there needed to be a re-establishment of Islamic values in the soul of all Muslims and in the soul of Arab public opinion. For this to become reality there had to be solidarity between all Muslims, not just between all Arabs.
Goddard summarized Ibrahim Khalil Ahmad’s work by saying that he combined a conspirational view of past history with a highly idealistic view of the future. There was some truth in its view of the alliance between missionaries and Orientalists on the one hand, and imperial governments and administrations on the other, but the case was over stated and over simplified almost to the extent of a total rejection of the Arab East’s bearing any responsibility for its fate over the last two centuries. The Muslim world is presented as a victim, maliciously and willfully wronged by a plot against it; it is the innocent party which bears no responsibility for its fate. This theme has been repeated again and again, until it has almost become a myth; it certainly does nothing to further Muslim understanding of the West, or of Christianity, and it forms one of the major elements in modern Egyptian Muslim writings about Christianity. (Compare account of Western ‘myths’ about Islam in Said, 1978).
Goddard’s conclusion on this whole chapter was that none of the material examined in it came close to understanding Christianity. However, it was not surprising that it failed to understand, for it had neither the means nor the will to do so.
5. Contemporary Egyptian Muslim Eirenical Literature
At the same time as the more hostile writings on Christianity, noted in the last chapter, there were more friendly ones. The Cairo University, founded in 1925, is known for its liberal tradition. This produced a number of books in the 50ties with a much more positive attitude towards Christianity. Nasser's revolution included censorship and muzzling of Egyptian intellectuals. Yet in this period more positive works towards Christians, partly because of disillusionment with the religious establishment in Egypt. The new works were positive both in content and attitude, and fell into two main categories; biographical works about Jesus, and fictional works. Thumb-nail sketches, with a brief remarks on each, are listed below.
Muhammad Kamil Husain
Qarya Zalima or City of Wrong is the title of an important work on Christianity that received the Egyptian State Prize for literature in 1957, and which was translated into English, by Kenneth Cragg in 1994, and then into other Western languages. The author, Husain, was professor of surgery in Cairo University, but also a prolific author. The book is an examination of humanity’s hopes and fears by writing on what happened on Good Friday. Different characters are described, the prosecutor, the blacksmith, the merchant, the mufti, the ‘alim, Caiaphas. The crowd cried ‘crucify, crucify’. “So, like sheep, without knowing any wrong which Jesus has done, the people demanded his death: the community closed ranks and thereby shared the guilt around. Thus was Christ condemned to die on a cross? Can anyone afterwards feel the slightest trust in human wisdom?”
One of Hussein’s observations that is very relevant today bears special mention. “Faithful Christians are more eager to avoid wrongdoing than to promote good. Their fear of wrong is stronger than their concern for justice. Their dread of the fire of hell is greater than their effort to attain the garden of paradise.”
At the end of the book the impression is left that the main subject is humanity, humanity in community and humanity in religion and in particular the power of human beings in their religious community to do evil, to crush their conscience and do, communally, what individually they know quite well to be wrong.
The book neither states nor denies that Jesus was crucified.
City of Wrong thus centers on the events of Good Friday in Jerusalem. It deals with the motivation behind the intent to crucify Jesus. It is about humans, and their desire and ability to do evil as a community, rather than as individuals. The book’s main concern is sin, committed by consensus (ijma’), for Jesus was convicted by consensus, even though the members of that consensus probably knew that what they were each doing was wrong. Husain believed that the conscience was the guiding light for humanity, but it could be stifled by consensus.
Goddard commented on the work: “the author seems to miss either the depth of despair to which the disciples had sunk, or the magnitude of the news which brought them out which brought them to the proclamation of the message, regardless of the cost to themselves. He does not see that the Resurrection is a sign of hope and joy and Cross a symbol of the conquest of evil and the overcoming of death. Nevertheless, he did say that the introduction to the book, entitled Friday, could well serve as a meditation in a Good Friday service.
In other works by Husain, again translated by Cragg, he attempted to show the difference between the Muslim and the Christian conception of Sin. Zulm in Qur’an was not coterminous with shirk. It was much more than shirk, it included doing injustice. Christians, he said, see the sin of Adam, ‘original sin,’ ingrained in them; they are basically evil, incapable of salvation except by means of a savior, Jesus. Muslims, however, do not feel the weight of original sin, even though they were expelled from Paradise by the sin of Adam. Not only did Allah forgive Adam, but Islam holds that the human soul is basically good. If a person sins, he does wrong to his own soul, and does not need a savior. Cragg saw this also in Greek tragedy, Judaism and Christianity. He said that the idea of self wrong is not original to Islam, and asked if the knowledge of self wrong was sufficient to prevent it. He also challenged Husain’s conception of original sin. What original sin really meant was that there was no part of the human personality exempt of sinfulness. It was not the legacy of Adam, but rather the truth of Adamic humanity.
In another article on Adam in the Qur'an Husain argued that the Qur'an should not be used as a scientific textbook, containing predictions of scientific discovery. There were three main truths in the story of Adam; the first that God gave him a free will; the second that humans have an obligation to obey God; and the third that humans have rebelled against God. Christians would have no argument with these.
For the historian of the Christological debates in the early church Husain offered interesting insight as a Muslim, and he compared the debate on the uncreated Messiah with that of the uncreated Qur'an, and the tendency in both religions to call anyone with whom one disagreed an unbeliever. Those who are called to a specific belief began to use force against their enemies; al-Ma’mun is the obvious example among the Muslims. Cyril of Alexandria expelled the Jews. Nestorius is known for having burnt a monastery which differed from him. Secondly, religious belief is used as an excuse for other differences, so that al-Wathiq, for example, executed Ahmad b.Nasr for belief in the created Qur’an when it was really because of rebellion against the Sultan.
Husain wrote: “It will be worthy of the great religions …not to maximize their differences. They all derive from one source which is faith in the transcendent reality.” He also believed that there were characterized three main attitudes of God: fear, love and hope, whatever their nominal religion. Fear – more by the people of Moses; love – more by the disciples of Jesus, and hope in God - more by the disciples of Islam. Most religious people have the idea that sincerity in their own religion compels them to deny the belief of others completely. No one will deny the impact of Christianity on the history of Europe. But it would be wrong to attribute the crime and evil in this history to Christianity itself.
Husain then discussed the role of meditation and discipline in achieving purity of heart. In the final chapter the author mentioned the two types of religion - the enthusiastic or sincere and the fanatical. “The true believer loves other believers, while the fanatical believer hates those who differ from him. The greater part of the evils that have vitiated the secular history of religions have arisen from confusion here. The violence with which fanatical believers have persecuted those who differed from them shows how feeble their faith really was in their creeds and how inadequate they were to deal with any deviation.”
Husain rejected, in traditional Muslim fashion, the Christian ideas of atonement and redemption. What is interesting, however, is the fact that Christian beliefs on these subjects were not dismissed abruptly or mocked but were at least taken seriously.
Of all Muslim writers about Christianity in Egypt during this period, Muhammed Kamil Husain is the most positive and the most penetrating. He has a deep appreciation of earlier Muslim groups who were on the positive side of the medieval Muslim views of Christianity; in particular the Isma’ilis and the Ikhwan al-Safa. He also wrote fiction which delved into the subject of sin, and here Goddard said he came closer to the Christian view of sin as a pervasive bias, innate to all humans, rather than an occasional lapse.
Husain never saw Christianity as a Western import. He had Christian friends and knew Copts to be the Christians of Egypt. In summing up of all his work, Goddard concluded that Husain was the most positive and the most penetrating of all Egyptian writers on Christianity of his time.
‘Abd al-Hamid Gudah, al-Sahhar, ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad, Fathi ‘Uthman
These are three writers who have each written biographies of Jesus from the 1950’s and 60’s. They were all popular and well known authors. Al-Sahhar had founded a publishing house in 1943, which had become publishers of a lot of Egyptian fiction, including the works of Naguib Mahfuz. All three have some insight into Christianity, but are unable to appreciate the idea of redemption.
Al-Sahhar understood the importance of the kingdom in Jesus’ teaching, and used the term ‘Father’ to describe God, but said that it meant Lord. He said that Jesus did not claim divinity for himself, but that God had chosen him. He claimed that Judas Iscariot had been crucified in the place of Jesus. This is the traditional Islamic substitution theory.
Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad wrote a book ‘Abqariyat al-masih’ (The Genius of Christ). It was well received by both Egyptian Christians and Muslims. Later he wrote ‘Hayat al-masih’ (The Life of Christ). He understood that Jesus was a great and wise teacher, but when he described the crucifixion he said, “here we leave the realm of history and enter the realm of faith.” He had a deep sympathy for, and understanding of, Christ’s early ministry, but claimed agnosticism about the crucifixion.
Anawati described the book together with the City of Wrong as a new current of faint hope in Muslim writings about Christianity.
‘Uthman had read more Western books about Christ and quoted these in his biography. He appeared to understand Christ’s teaching that God was love and that all who were heavy laden should come to him; but he was incapable of understanding the Christian faith in the crucifixion, of which he presents the Islamic. He suggested that the Muslim idea of intercession of the prophets was close to the concept of salvation, since both contained the idea of the hope of forgiveness and mercy.
Naguib Mahfuz
Mahfuz is perhaps the best known Egyptian author. His 1959 novel Awlad haritna (The Children of our Quarter, or the English title Children of the Alley) is an allegory of human history. There are six main characters: al Jabalawi, the master of the quarter, who lives in ‘The Big House’: Adham, one of his sons, who is expelled from the big house; three characters, Jabal, Rifa’a and Qasim, who try to restore some sort of justice in the chaos following the expulsion, and finally ‘Arifa, the magician. Al Jabalawi appears to represent God, Adham Adam, Jabal Moses, Rifa’a Jesus, and Qasim Muhammed, and ‘Arafa Science (but equally he could represent Nietche or Marx.) Al’ Arafa thought he had the power through his magic to bring about the downfall of evil, but he ended up in causing the death of al-Jabalawi. It was this allusion to the ‘death of God’ that infuriated the Azharites, the religious sector, who tried to put Mahfuz on trial for heresy. The novel was first produced in serial form in the Al Ahram, but the government, in order not to offend the religious authorities, prevented its publication in book form until he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988.
It is the characterization of Rifa’a that is the most important for Christians. In his early life he develops an interest in exorcism to free the people of evil spirits. He rejects marriage to the daughter of a wealthy family and flees to the desert where al-Jabalawi encourages him to return, telling him to use his ‘inner strength.’ He does return and speaks up against violence: “Violence does us no good; every hour…we see people fighting, injuring and killing…Where is justice?” He also affirmed it was better to be killed than to kill. He saves the life of a prostitute who is to be stoned, by marrying her, but he never consummates the marriage. She later betrays him, and he is captured, led out into the desert and killed. He cries for help from al-Jabalawi, but is not heard. His followers are unable to find his body, and rumor spreads that al-Jabalawi has carried it off to the garden of ‘The Big House.’ One of his followers, Ali, is determined on vengeance, and Rifa’a’s wife is killed. After that they form a separate group, but their behavior becomes indistinguishable from the other children of the alley. Rifa’a’s message is submerged and forgotten. Mahfuz appeared to be very sympathetic towards Christ, but is that how he viewed Christians, futile in confronting evil? In fact, with the death of al-Jabalawi, evil appears to conquer.
The reaction to his book reinforced Mahfuz’ pessimism with respect to the religious establishment, and the prospect of any religious solution to his spiritual crisis. He appeared to be disillusioned with all organized religion, but continued to search throughout his life for a mystical supernatural power. He asked profound religious questions through the mouth of a simple child in a later novel, Jannat al-atfal (Child’s Paradise) which illustrate his continuing interest in religious questions. He affirmed: “For a while I wavered between the materialist and religious trends…but afterwards I finally settled upon faith as my own course.”
Ihsan ‘Abd al-Quddus
Al-Quddus is primarily a prolific writer of short stories, and of also a few novels, interested in religious diversity and divisiveness between followers of the monotheistic religions. God, to him, was one (salat), but basically unknown (majhul) which he had to be in order to be God. Both Jesus and Mohammed were called to God, and both died. Jesus was an ordinary man; his death was a historical event, but not a religious one. In life Al-Quddus was at odds with his traditional conservative Muslim background by marrying a lady from a Christian background, even though she had become Muslim. His works explored such divisions. They dealt with relations between Muslims and Christians, and between Muslims and Jews. He himself used to break all the rules by praying in mosque, church and synagogue prior to his exams, which his characters were unable to do, due to their religious tradition.
Salah ‘Abd al-Sabur
Al-Sabur’s grandfather was sheikh Ahmad Ridwan, a graduate of al-Azhar. His father was an artist who took as his wife Roz al-Yusuf, who had come from a Christian background but she had become a Muslim. Al-Sabur himself was literary editor of Al-Ahram, and in 1965 wrote Ma’sat al-Hallaj (The Tragedy of al-Hallaj, translated into English in 1972 as Murder in Baghdad.) It was a political play, critical of President Nasser’s government, so that it had to be first produced in Beirut rather than Cairo. The plot centered on the Baghdad crucifixion of al-Hallaj, the Persian mystic, in 922 and focused on the thoughts and motives involved. There were similarities with, and references to, the crucifixion of Jesus. Al-Hallaj was charged with heresy because he described himself as being influenced by the example of Christ. He said, “I saw my Beloved and I lost myself in Him,” and further, “I sinned against Him when I divulged the secret.” The Judge asked the crowd for their opinion. They screamed, “Death, death.” The judge asked, “His blood is upon you?” The crowd shouted in response, “His blood is upon us.”
The play was a criticism of unjust government, but the references to Jesus and to crucifixion may have been an indication of a positive understanding of the crucifixion in the face of an unjust government, and that the crucifixion could become a meaningful symbol in such circumstances. But crucifixion was just an important symbol and no more than that. The symbol would mean something different to a Christian than to a Muslim, which the Muslim would be incapable of understanding.
Goddard concluded, “Abd al-Sabur had an ‘instrumental’ view of Christianity. He used a Christian symbol or theme, viewed it positively, but the essential purpose of their doing was to make a fundamentally Islamic point. Abd al-Sabur uses the symbol of the cross to illustrate his feelings about the cost of opposition to an oppressive government. Goddard asked: “Is it possible for a Muslim to go beyond this and to take Christian symbolism seriously in Christian terms?”
To Al-Sabur God was basically unknown which he had to be in order to be God. But humans are star-crossed in not really knowing him. A prominent theme in his other works was the potential divisiveness of religion, both between Muslim and Christian and between Muslim and Jew.
In ‘Allah mahaba’ (God is love) which has been translated into English, a Coptic Christian girl falls in love with a Muslim. They toss a coin to see who will change their religion so that they can marry. She loses, but she cannot change because she is not of age, so he agrees to change, but her family refuses to accept him. They agree, therefore, to commit suicide together so that they can be together in heaven. She succeeds, but he does not.
‘Ana wa’l-sama’ (Heaven and I) told a story of a Copt who always said that he was a Copt whenever he met anybody because he once fell in love with a Muslim girl who just assumed that he was Muslim.
One story ‘Martyr in Dishna’ used an important Christian metaphor as a way to achieve reconciliation. A Cairo educated lawyer returned to his home village of Dishna after graduation. In an accident one of his cousins was killed and so the family decided on revenge. He argued against this but was defeated and revenge was taken. The feud continued until four more people had been killed. The lawyer then became the head of the family and thus the target for the next revenge killing: he tried to produce reconciliation, even going to the extent of humiliating himself by walking through the streets to the house of his opponents with a coffin shroud wrapped around his head. As he approached the house, he said to himself, ‘You are saving the blood of two families. You are bearing all this for the sake of humanity, so that love and harmony will prevail. Just like Christ you are willing to suffer for mankind’s sake.’ His enemies forgave him, but his own family rejected him and started to plan to kill him. In the end, however, they decided not to on condition that he return to Cairo, separated from his wife and children, on the understanding that if he set foot in Dishna again, he would be killed.
Muhammad al-Nuwaihi
Nuwaihi wrote no biography of Christ, nor fictional work alluding to him, but his writing was positive towards Christianity. Prior to his death in 1980 he was professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the American University in Cairo. He had an interest in the problem of ‘modernizing’ Islam. He suggested the need of intellectual, social, political and economic modernization. He argued that these changes needed to be applied to the Shari’a so that the flexibility of the early centuries of Islam could be restored. Recently it had become rigid and immutable. He noted parallel changes in modern Christianity in that some could no longer accept the doctrine of original sin and the sacrifice of the Innocent Lamb, for much the same reason as Muslims had argued for centuries. However, while never ceasing to be a Muslim, he nevertheless believed in a redeeming God, but all the prophets, not only Christ, played a redemptive role through their suffering and intercession, and Muhammad had suffered as had Jesus. He argued that the Qur'an saw the need for some kind of sacrifice and atonement. He pointed to the change in understanding of the Bible among Christians over the past century. A literal understanding had given way to a metaphorical or symbolic one. He wrote, “In our religious thought we have not yet reached the stage which those Christians have reached of taking religious beliefs as symbols.” Perhaps he envied Christians their liberal interpretation of scripture. “They do not believe that it is the literal word of God, but rather that it is a word written by men ‘in a state of inspiration’. This understanding gives them much greater freedom in understanding the text of the Bible and interpreting it.”
Al-Nuwaihi wrote about the fundamental differences with Christianity:
“Islam denies the crucifixion. Jesus, Muslims believe, was indeed placed on the cross, but he was saved and lifted up from it by divine intervention. Islam rejects the idea that God would allow Jesus to be killed, which fate would have been a violation of divine justice and would even have constituted an act of treachery. Thus the great and central idea of redemption through Jesus is denounced, and this stems from the basic concept that man is not born a sinner loaded with original sin so as to need a redeemer.”
He noted that quite a number of Christians found that their modern conscience could not accept the doctrines of original sin and the sacrifices of the Innocent Lamb, for much of the same reasons as had been argued by Muslims for many centuries.
In response to a paper that Redemption was a universal concept, he wrote,
“No religion would appear to be more condemnatory of the idea of Redemption than orthodox Islam. By its uncompromising insistence on the Oneness of God and horrified rejection of the Trinity; by its vehement assertion of God’s uniqueness, incomparability and transcendency, and the resulting denial of all anthropomorphism and of the possibility of His incarnation in any material form; by its refusal of the concept of original sin and of collective guilt and its declaration that every an is responsible only for his own actions and has himself to expiate his sins, and its resulting denial of the need for vicarious sacrifice - by these fundamental tenets…Islam would seem to be completely and irreconcilably opposed to any idea of Redemption whatsoever. And the fact is that the vast majority of Muslims view with the greatest loathing the idea of God sacrificing His own Son to atone for the sin of man. To them this would constitute an act of injustice and even base treachery which is impossible to emanate from the good and just Deity…”
“It may yet be argued that the Qur’an itself contains some other elements which, had they been developed, would have resulted in an attitude not so inimical to the concept of redemption.”
“For the Qur’an itself asserts and reiterates God’s concern for man. The God of the Qur’an is a very personal God, intimately involved in man’s innermost heart. The emphasis on the austere, aloof, forbidding image of Him was a later development, and was one that may be justly considered contrary to the ruling spirit of the Qur’an.”
He asked why there was the need for such sacrificial atonement? It arose, he wrote, from man’s basic weakness. Some Qur’anic verses stateed that man was by nature capable of both good and bad, hence he had a free choice. Still other verses, however, stated that man was evil by nature, aggressive, unjust, ungrateful, quick to anger, greedy, avaricious, boastful, tendentious, impatient, vain when feeling safe and chicken-hearted in adversity. So man could never save himself. But Nuwaihi concluded that the barrier between Muslims and Christians was not as deep as once thought. Through a more pessimistic understanding of the nature of man he has come to view positively a central Christian idea.
Goddard said of Muhammad al-Nuwaihi that he went beyond a use of the cross to an understanding of its significance from within a Christian context, and even went on to elaborate on how that important Christian theme existed within the Quran and within subsequent Islamic thought.
6. Contemporary Egyptian Muslim Intermediate Literature
Between the polemical and the irenic literature there is an intermediate group, neither explicitly positive nor negative towards Christianity. These writers are now discussed.
Hasan Hanafi
Hanafi was highly educated and literate in philosophy. He took Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in 1966 on existential hermeneutics with reference to the New Testament. He became Professor of Philosophy at Cairo University and was involved in Christian-Muslim dialogue. For four years he was visiting professor at Temple University in the U.S.A.. His attitude towards Christianity was remarkably similar to that of most traditional writings on the subject.
To Hanafi the Qur’an made a distinction between the Jesus of Faith and the Jesus of History. The Qur’an rejected the crucifixion of Christ on the same basis. It was mere conjecture. Nobody could ever be certain of his death. Much of Hanafi’s interest in Christianity was not in faith per se, but it served the way in which, in his opinion, Islam should develop. Since the ideas of much modern Western thought were highly suspect to traditional Islam and therefore unlikely to pass the censor in Egypt, Hanafi wrote commentaries on Western works in order to camouflage his opinions. In one summary of his views he said, “I am a Feuerbachian.” (Feuerback was a 19th century philosopher who took to extremes the process of humanizing God by arguing that the idea of God was no more than a projection of human ideals and desires.) He used the example of modern Christianity to explain his views of the path Islam should follow, which was the main purpose of his interest in Christianity. Hanafi did try to ‘modernize’ Islam, by emphasizing, not so much the transcendence of God, but his immanence. His desire was to transform religion from an other worldly preoccupation to a this worldly activity.
In his writings there was a liberal use of jargon, with repeated assertion of the superiority of Islam to Christianity. For instance, “Islam preconceived the Sola Scripture of Protestantism, the ethical Christianity of Harnack, the critical studies of Renan, the mythical interpretations of Strauss, Bauer [sic] and Feuerbach.” In his view Islam was superior because the Qur’an was the record of the very words of God. In the Bible there was no distinction between scripture and tradition. The Bible was a partial revelation, in which “God is characterized in obscene anthropomorphism. The prophets steal and kill, commit incest and adultery…The Word of God has been confused and intermingled with the word of man.”
Double standards in Hanafi are obvious. “The Qur’an describes the people of the book as ethnocentric. They mock other revelations and other prophets except theirs. They discredit every other cult except their own, although all revelations are from God, all prophets are sent from God or all prayers are for God [sic]. They also want to uproot all other believers out of their faith and make them Christians or Jews. Any other community than theirs can be cheated, humiliated, enslaved and even annihilated! That is why a dialogue with them is impossible. A fortiori, they will never believe in Islam or become Muslims. They live together, marry each other and live in absolute narcissism which is the prototype of a closed society.”
Goddard commented that such double standard became clear when Christians and Jews were accused of wanting other people to become Christians or Jews, only for it to be added that dialogue was impossible, since they would never believe in Islam or become Muslims. Hanafi believed that only Islam was in a legitimate position for any inter-religious dialogue, since it confirmed the Torah and the Gospel; whereas Christians and Jews both denied one or more of the Scriptures involved. Therefore Hanafi asserted, “Only Muslims can speak with Jews and Christians because Muslims believe in all revelation as one. They can deal with the other two communities of faith with open minds, without rancor or animosity.”
He further claimed that Islam came into existence to correct Christianity. In fact he ascribed that modern Western philosophical thought had its origins in Islam. Islam found faith and reason identical and passed it on to Medieval Europe. Kant praised Ibn Rushd for making the history of mankind a history of reason; Wellhausen was a Muslim in respect of preservation of Scripture. The revolt against ecclesia, censorship and tutorship all had an Islamic motivation. With respect to the future, “Islamic monotheism can guide the European conscience in its wilderness and aberration and guide it towards the focus of reality.”
Hanafi claimed that ‘Abraham was not a Jew or a Christian but a pure and true Muslim’ and there was only one religion, Islam, that had been founded by Abraham. The religion of Abraham was the religion of Reason. He was a seeker of truth. Judaism was the religion of children, relying on the senses; Christianity the religion of early adolescence, relying on feelings; Islam the religion of mature man, relying on reason.
Chapter 7 of his Religious Dialogue and Revolution consisted of a review of Paul Khoury’s 1973 book on Islam and Christianity. Hanafi argued that Khoury had confused Islam per se and Islamic culture. Goddard commented that in general Hanafi’s view of dialogue may be compared with that of Isma’il al-Faruqi, who stated quite clearly that the end, or aim, of dialogue, was conversion, and yet went on to assert that he was pessimistic about the prospects for Muslim-Christian dialogue because the Christians were too condescending.
Hanafi attacked Paul. “What passivity! Somebody sins for man and someone else saves him, and he is between them sinful and saved! Mediation, redemption, salvation - all these categories are forged by dogmatic theology inaugurated by Paul.” In a paper for the United Presbyterian Church of the USA he admitted that Jesus was ‘put to death as were other prophets.’ This appeared to contradict what he had said elsewhere. Goddard speculated whether this was a case of suiting the message to the hearer.
In his writing about Africa, “Islam is an ideological offer to the natives as well as Christianity. It is up to Africa to choose between the destruction of African cultural identity and independence as it is the case through African Christianism [sic] missionaries or the affirmation of Africa’s cultural identity and independence through Islam.”
G.C. Anawati referred in 1969 to Hanafi as a figure of hope but added that it was too early to judge his works. Goddard commented that Hanafi displayed a vast knowledge of Christianity, but without displaying much understanding of it, and so some hopes expressed about his writings had not been fulfilled. His knowledge of Christianity was used primarily as a means to explain his own views of how Islam should develop, towards a theology of revolution, and the understanding of Christianity was thus not one of his aims at all.
It was in some ways his development of ‘politicized’ religion of Afghani and ‘Abduh with a much greater knowledge of Western and Christian sources, which he nevertheless applied negatively, to expose rather than to understand Christianity. In that sense he was an heir of Rahmat Allah al-Hindi and Rashid Rida too, since they used their knowledge of Western sources to buttress an essentially traditional Muslim view of Christianity. Goddard’s final word on Hanafi was that though he had a greater sophistication and expertise than all the other figures, neither his tone, nor his ultimate intent, was very different from theirs.
Mustafa Mahmud
Mahmud trained in medicine, not in philosophy or theology, but developed an interest in religious matters. He wrote for the man in the street, rather than the academic, and was very popular, especially with the young reader, who had found no guidance in more traditional authors, but was hungry for spiritual leadership. He addressed problems that concerned modern Egyptians and occasionally delved into politics. He once wrote an article in Al Ahram, That is the Problem, O Khomeini (1979) strongly critical of the Islamic leader of Iran. A rather predictable reply came in Al-da’wa, the magazine of the Muslim Brethren, entitled That is the malady, O Doctor.
His writings on religion have been the most popular of all his writings. Mahmud saw God as the essence of all religions. Religion was one in respect of belief, but the paths (al-sharia’) differed. There were many prophets, even though they may not have been mentioned in the Qur’an. Buddha was a prophet, as were Akhnaten and Jesus, but there was no Incarnation. Jesus taught a message of love, but that none was good but God alone, and so he rejected divinity. He noted that Akhnaten also called himself the Son of God; and both Arius and Nestorius rejected Paul’s giving of the title ‘Lord and Savior’ to Jesus. Thus a fairly traditional Muslim view of Jesus is evident.
He also had a traditional view of the Bible. Although Islam was the only religion that recognized all the prophets and all the scriptures, yet all but the Qur'an had been corrupted. Mahmud quoted from Ecclesiastes, Job, the Psalms and Proverbs, all of which he described as ‘jewels’ in the midst of pages of rubbish. Charges of corruption were made. He quoted Christian witnesses to this fact; such as Augustine, who said that the Jews had corrupted scripture, and Luther who said that we should neither listen to, nor look at, Moses, for he was for the Jews only and had no relevance for Christians. Only the Qur’an was uncorrupted. He even believed that the Qur’an spoke of some 20th century scientific discoveries. Mahmud referred to a French surgeon, Maurice Bucaille, who became convinced that the Qur’an’s statements about scientific matters were so much more reliable than those of the Bible that he became a Muslim. Mahmud wrote of his close friend, Ahmad ‘Abd al-Wahhab, who authored ‘Jesus in the sources of Christian beliefs in the West’. He argued that Western Christian sources themselves were beginning to testify to the corruption of Christian belief.
He addressed the question of the end of time in a work, Are We at the End of Time? and answered in the affirmative. This was firstly because of the spread of technological progress, which had given rise to man’s feeling that he was master of everything; ‘man has imagined himself to be a god.’ Secondly, it was because of a number a signs, one of which was the coming together of the Jews into one country (watan). In this respect Qur’an 17:104 was cited, “And we said unto the Children of Israel after him [Moses], ‘Dwell in the land; but when the promise of the Hereafter comes to pass we will bring you together as a crowd.’” This was the prerequisite for the ‘final war’ between the Arabs and Israel, when the Arabs would enter Jerusalem. Mahmud saw proof of this in that Saudi Arabia had become the richest kingdom in the world in ten years, not because of the Saudis genius or hard work, but simply as a gift from God. God also raised up men of religion like Abu’l-‘ala al-Maududi. Another sign was the decline of ethics; men dressing as women. All this, he argued, pointed to an imminent apocalypse, and he noted that Christians believed the same.
Mahmud attempted to lead laymen to rethink Islam for a modern age. He was bitterly critical of the traditional men of religion, accusing them of hypocrisy and of worshipping self-interest, themselves rather than God.
Reaction to Mahmud has been varied. One conservative Azharite writer, ‘Abd al-Wudud Shalabi, accused him of being influenced by Christians by alleging that when Mahmud’s book ‘Allah wa’l-insan (God and man) was first published he was invited by a Coptic bishop to visit him and the bishop then encouraged him to pursue such studies. Mahmud commented in an interview with Goddard that he found that claim rather puzzling, but not so puzzling as when the Communists encouraged him to write on the Qur’an. He said that 90% of his friends were Christians and that he had received much encouragement from Egyptian Christians and also from the Dominicans in Cairo. His main purpose though was not to discuss Christianity. Like Hanafi he was concerned primarily to ‘modernize’ Islam. Neither of these authors displayed a deep understanding of Christianity. Mahmud enjoyed a wider readership and was less political than Hanafi.
Khalid Muhammad Khalid
Khalid was an Azharite, a strict Muslim, until 1950 when he wrote a book ‘Min huna nabda’ (We begin from here), which was banned by the Azhar, but was rehabilitated by a civil court. In the book he compared great teachers; not only Jesus and Mohammad, but also Socrates and Buddha. The teaching of all these agreed upon the protection of man and the protection of life.
In 1958 he wrote Ma’an ‘ala’l-tariq – Muhammad wa’l-masih (Together on the road – Muhammad and Jesus,) dedicated to Jamila Bouhred, the heroine of the Algerian revolution. On the cover it said: “The prophets are brothers; their mothers are different, but their religion is one.” The book was a powerful affirmation of the brotherhood of Jesus and Muhammad, particularly in their social teaching and world affairs. In the final chapter, entitled, Barabbas or Jesus? he said that Muhammad himself announced that Jesus would return and would fill the world with light, peace and justice; and whenever those things were fulfilled in the world, the return of Jesus would be fulfilled too. Therefore, “We, with ‘the faithful apostle’ affirm Jesus and not Barabbas.” It was a powerful affirmation of the brotherhood of Jesus and Muhammad.
As a Muslim liberal he quoted only the sayings of Muhammad in the Hadith, which bore some Christian influence. It was not primarily a book about Christianity, being concerned with social issues, but it was positive in what it did say. Goddard concluded, “Like al-Ghazali, the use made of Jesus’s sayings is neutral, and in that sense the book as a whole is also neutral.”
Mahmud Abu Rayya
Abu Rayya, a liberal Azharite (from al Azhar University) was an authority on the authenticity of the Hadith. In 1963 he wrote Din allah wahid – muhammad wa’l-masih akhawan (The religion of God is one – Muhammad and Jesus are brothers.) The title provoked such a reaction that it had to be withdrawn, and in 1970 a second edition appeared with the title Din allah wahid – ‘ala alsina jami’ al-rasul (The religion of God is one – from the lips of all the prophets.) In the introduction he commented on the reception of the first edition, namely that before it had even appeared rumors were spreading that it was against the Islamic religion and would undermine the thoughts of the faithful. Taha Hussein had read the draft of the second edition and wrote to the Minister of Culture, Dr. Abd al-Qadir Hatim, emphasizing that there was no contradiction with the glorious religion of Islam or any infringement upon any other heavenly religion. Therefore, Hussein urged, it was vital that the book be published in order to preserve freedom of thought in the country. The book was then published and was widely accepted. Taha came later to his assistance for the publication of other books.
The theme is, as the title says, that the monotheistic religions are one and that their followers are brothers, even though they be from different mothers. This precluded the non-monotheistic religions, as he was writing for Egyptians; but he pleaded for brotherhood and tolerance, rather than strife and rivalry. He did not attempt to promote an understanding of Christianity, but merely better relations between Muslims and Christians.
Abu Rayya told a story of an event in Mansoura, his home town. A Copt had died and a man said, “May God have mercy upon him”, but he was reproached for this by others of his co-religionists - how could he seek God’s mercy for a nasrani (Christian) who was a kafir (unbeliever)? The man said that the Christians were not kafirs according to the Qur’an. A Christian deserved the mercy of God quite simply because he was a human being. God had ordained that the Christians were ‘People of the Book’, so God’s mercy was open to all his servants.
Abu Rayya then recounted the incident of a Muslim Sheikh who in a debate with a Copt cited the Qur’anic verse, “Believe only in those who follow your religion” (4:73) and therefore dismissed the idea of a serious debate. Abu Rayya told the Sheikh to look at the context of the verse, the verses before and after, and to his embarrassment the Sheikh discovered that the verse he had quoted was a record of what the Jews had said and was therefore not a Qur’anic commendation but rather a condemnation. Rather, in the words of 5:82, the Christians are the nearest to the Muslims; and in the words of the hadith of Muslim, as described to Mohammed himself, “Deal well with the Copt, because he has a covenant (dhimma) and a mercy” (Muslim 44:226). Unity was in the interests of both Christians and Muslims. The religion of God was one, and therefore the men of religion should be one. Love was preferable to hate; and anyone who promoted division was not honest, either in his faith or in his patriotism.
Abu Rayya discussed the Qur’anic verse “The religion in God’s presence is Islam” (3:19), and argued that this therefore included every community to which prophets came, as all the prophets proclaimed Islam - Noah, Abraham and so on; the Christian warrior, al-Akhtal, was a Muslim while being a Christian. There were different expressions of Islam and the gist of it is monotheism.
He referred to Micah 6:8, “to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Muhammad’s message to the ahl al-kitab was to return to the worship of the one true God. Muslims should only debate with the Christians ‘what is better.’ Da’wa should be wise and peaceful, not based on fanatical hatred and overpowering people. Then followed a chapter arguing that the ahl al-kitab - Jews and Christians - are not mushrikun or kafirun. Judgment of belief was not the right of any created thing; only God could judge.
It was not true religion that said, “My religion is better than yours.” It was works that were the test, not words or strength of belief. If each returned to their original teachings there would be no difference in them. However, Jesus’ religion was twisted at the time of Constantine.
Goddard concluded that Abu Rayya sought a positive attitude towards Christianity but basic tenets of the Christian faith, such as the vicarious suffering of Christ, were simply dismissed as inconceivable or mistaken. His ideas were perhaps closest to the classical writer Ibn ‘Arabi (d.1240) who believed that all religions were equivalent, since the divine was working in each, and in each God was worshipped.
Anwar al-Sadat
In Anwar al-Sadat’s autobiography, Al-bahth ‘an al-dhat, (In search for the self) he spoke of the influence of Christians on him. He described how he was educated at a Coptic school in Toukh and how impressed he was by a visit to the Coptic monasteries of Deir al-Muharraq in Upper Egypt. He felt a special kinship with them. When in the Cairo Central Prison, 1947-48, he read from Lloyd C. Douglas and an article in Reader’s Digest by a psychologist on how to overcome one’s troubles, and came to a faith in God. He wrote, “Love ultimately triumphs…I am by nature committed to love”.
The three elements of his faith were first mysticism and second suffering, both of which led to a closer relationship with God; and, thirdly, what he called friendship with God. These are not exclusively Christian, or Muslim, but they reflect an interest in Christian tradition. But he remained true Muslim in his thinking that Christ was not killed, but rather a substitute died in his stead. His aim was, perhaps from political motives, to increase the harmony between Copts and Muslims in Egypt. Yet, during his regime Copts and Muslims did clash and Sadat made some very negative statements about Christians.
Fathi Ridwan
Ridwan was considered ‘of all modern Muslim writers the most sympathetic to Christian ways of thinking.’ In 1962 he wrote a one act play, Ilah raghm anfihi, (A god in spite of himself.) It considered the deification of a political leader in ancient Egypt. It was about a politician who was declared by three monks to be a god. In spite of his protestations that he was only a man, everyone accepted him as a god. Ridwan explained in the preface that the idea came when people in India wanted to make Nehru a god. But there were Christian overtones in that Ridwan’s god was Christ like; he suffered and was a friend of the weak and the poor. It showed sympathy for Jesus, but rejected any idea of Incarnation. Ridwan concluded, “Jesus was a man whom his disciples made into God and that is just unacceptable.”
For his incomplete understanding of Christianity Goddard placed him, with the others mentioned in this chapter, in the intermediate category.
Conclusion: Material from Other Parts of the Islamic World
In this final chapter Goddard summarized very briefly writers from other Islamic countries and concluded that they were not too different from Egyptians, whom he had described in greater detail. In the last century Egypt had been the centre of thought in the Islamic world. However, he quoted an Iranian, Sayyid Husain Nasr, whom he said had given the most succinct statement about the real difference between Christianity and Islam, by either a Christian or a Muslim.
Christianity is essentially a mystery which veils the Divine from man. The beauty of Christianity lies in the acceptance of God as mystery, and in bowing before this mystery…In Islam, however, it is man who is veiled from God. The Divine Being is not veiled from us, we are veiled from Him, and it is for us to try to rend this veil asunder, to try to know God…Islam is thus essentially a way of knowledge; it is the way of gnosis (ma’rifah.)
In the final summary of his work Goddard said that there was no one view, but a spectrum, of what Muslims thought of Christians, just as there was a spectrum of what Christians thought of Muslims. The implications of this were that some might see another person’s faith
as good as his own, pluralism;
or their own as better than another’s, inclusivism, which did not deny that the other person’s faith might still be good;
or their own as the best, exclusivism, which tended to state that the other’s faith is not good at all, but rather bad.
We were left, Goddard concluded, with the intriguing question for Christian-Muslim relations – why, in thinking about the other’s religion, did religion – either Christian or Muslim – make some people nice and some people nasty?
The answer to that question should make us all examine our own faith all the more closely, and to learn what others are saying about us, and we should be much more careful what we say about them, because whatever we say, like the boomerang, can have repercussions. It is in the interest of Christians, especially those living in Islamic lands, to elicit positive responses from their Muslim neighbors and thus to win them as friends. That is not done by avoiding discussions about real issues of concern, but by presenting these concerns in an honest way and in context, away from partisanship, always ready to distinguish socio-economic-cultural factors from religious factors, and ready to see issues in a larger context. Of course Christians should not be afraid to ask their Muslim friends questions about their interpretation of the Qur'an or of the Bible. Hard questions can and should be asked but we should also be willing to listen to the answers, even if we might not agree with them. We should love them, our neighbors, as much as we love ourselves.
Title: A review of Hugh Goddard’s Muslim Perceptions of Christianity, published by Grey Seal Books, London, Year 1996
Authors: Drs. Cornelis Hulsman and Dr. Michael Burslem
Preface
To say that Muslims and Christians misunderstand each another is a gross understatement. The average person in the pew has very little knowledge of Islam, or of any other faith for that matter. Until recent times it did not matter, because very few actually came into contact with anyone very different from him or her self. However, that has now changed with global shrinking; people of differing faiths are rubbing shoulders more often. Not only do they look different – they may have a darker skin – but they dress differently. Indian ladies may wear saris, Muslim ladies the head scarf, known as the hijab, or they may have the whole face veiled with only slits for their eyes, the burkha. Sikh men wear turbans, and Arabs their long robe, called a galabeah, and the head scarf like that Yasser Arafat always wore, the qaffeah. These people have altered the appearance of towns and cities in the West. Our natural instinct is to shun them, having as little to do with them as possible, so that they have been forced to live in their own ghetto. Canadians have tried to adjust to this influx of racial minorities by increasing the number of the minorities into the police force, for instance. Churches have also tried to incorporate them, and there are congregations which are mostly black, or Chinese, but even in the best integrated churches, at coffee after the service some are hesitant to speak with strangers. Outside our church circles we are similarly hesitant to mix with people of another faith. We may like to get to know more about that faith, but it might also be more revealing to know what they think of us. That is why Hugh Goddard’s book, Muslim Perceptions of Christianity, is so useful. From the Qur'anic foundation to recent times he traces what Muslims have said or written about Jesus, Christians and the Bible, at each stage of their, and our, history. Some knowledge of history is necessary, since what Muslims have said about Christians reflects what we have said, and say, about them, and, more importantly, what we have done to them.
This can only be a brief summary of what Goddard says, and should perhaps be read in conjunction with the Qur'an, the very foundation stone of Islam. In the references to the Qur'an he uses the standard Egyptian system of verse numbering; from the English version of M.M. Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, published by Mentor Books –(Throughout Goddard uses the spelling Qur'an following the transliteration of the Encyclopedia of Islam, which uses q for qaf) and on occasion he uses his own translation.
Goddard's study shows us that Muslim responses to Christianity can be widely different, from irenic to polemical. Goddard, also shows that the reasons are often in how Christians addressed Muslims. Christian polemics can thus result in Muslim polemics. Christians should therefore try to get the best out of Islam, not the worst and that is done by an irenic approach to Islam. Christian polemics only result in more polemics and thus often a self-fulfilling prophecy of those who claim that Islam is evil. Of course that will bring the most negative out of Muslims.
Introduction
Goddard mentions that in recent years there have been a number of excellent books on the subject of the Christian faith and other faiths, but all from a Christian perspective. In this book he tries to trace Muslim views of Christianity from a Muslim perspective, and to explain why Muslims have so thought, so that both Christians and Muslims may appreciate the factors that have led to our present misunderstanding of one another. He does so only to fill a gap left by others.
In the modern period there is concentration on Egypt “because Egypt is in a sense the ‘head’ (in the intellectual sense) of the Muslim world, largely because of the respect traditionally accorded across the Islamic world to al-Azhar as a centre of Islamic learning, and material produced there about Christianity in therefore widely disseminated in other Islamic societies.”
1. The Qur'anic Foundation
The Qur'an is ambivalent about Jesus, Christians and the Bible. It contains positive and affirmative statements but to them adds cautions and statements rejecting certain things associated with Jesus and with Christians. So it is a sort of ‘yes…but’ situation.
Jesus: The first mention of Jesus is his birth in Sura 19:16-40 from the Meccan Qur'an. The birth took place under a palm tree, consistent with some of the Apocryphal Gospels, but not with Luke. Also Luke leaves no doubt whose son Jesus is, but the Qur'an leaves no doubt whose he is not. Sura 19:35 reads:
“It befitteth not Allah that He should take unto Himself a son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! And it is.”
His prophethood is affirmed, but his sonship is denied. The Medina section of the Qur'an is more explicit. Sura 4:171-172 states that Jesus was only a messenger of God.
“…believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not ‘Three’ – Cease! It is better for you! Allah is only one God. Far is it removed from His transcendent majesty that He should have a son…”
Tri-theism is outright rejected. But the Christian doctrine of the Trinity also rejects Tri-theism. There also appears to be some confusion about the members of the Trinity. The prophet seems to have believed that Jesus and his mother, Mary, shared the godhead with Allah. Sura 5:116 states:
“And when Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary, didst thou not say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah? He [i.e. Jesus] saith Be glorified! It was not mine to utter that to which I had no right. If I used to say it, thou knowest it. Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I know not what is in my mind. Lo! Only Thou art the Knower of Things Hidden.”
This may have been a reaction to the high esteem given to Mary in the Orthodox church, by their declaring her to be the theotokos, or bearer of God.
Also rejected is the idea that Jesus was crucified. Sura 4:157-158 says:
“And because of their saying ‘We killed the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, Allah’s messenger’ – they did not kill him nor crucify him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! Those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save in pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. But Allah took him up unto himself. Allah was the ever Mighty, Wise.”
It is affirmed here that Jesus was raised up to God, but that the Jews neither slew him, nor crucified him.
The Qur'an is ambivalent about Christ. He is affirmed, but there is also rejection of Christian views of Jesus. Goddard labels it a ‘Yes…but’ situation. From this ambivalence some Muslim thinkers have enlarged on the affirming statements in the Qur'an, with a positive view of Christ; while others, having based their views on fairly explicit criticisms of Christian doctrine contained in the Qur'an, focusing more on the rejecting statements, have a negative view.
Christians: The Qur'an is similarly ambivalent about Christians. Affirming them Sura 2:62, from the Medinan period, states:
“Lo! Those who believe, and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans – whoever believeth in Allah and the last Day and doeth right surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them nor shall they grieve.”
Yet both Jews and Christians are condemned in the same Sura, verses 111-113.
“And they say: None entereth paradise unless he be a Jew or a Christian. These are their own desires. Say: Bring your proof of what ye state if ye are truthful…And the Jews say the Christians follow nothing true, and the Christians say the Jews follow nothing true, but both are readers of the Scripture. Even thus speak those who know not. Allah will judge between them on the Day of resurrection concerning that wherein they differ.”
Sura 57:27 is ambivalent. Christians are affirmed for being in the line of revelation, and for being kind and compassionate, but they are reproved for having invented monasticism.
Sura 9:29-35 includes the thrust of two main Muslim objections to Christians; firstly, to their beliefs, and secondly, to their behavior.
“Fight against such of those who have been given the Scriptures as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low. Jews say Ezra is son of Allah. Christians say Messiah is the son of Allah. Allah fighteth against them. How perverse are they. Jews took rabbis as lords besides Allah. Christians took monks and the Messiah, son of Mary, besides Allah. Worship only one God. Many rabbis and monks take gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah.” AF
The response demanded by the Qur’an is largely a triumphalistic one. They are to be brought low and made to pay tribute (v.29), Allah Himself fights against them because of their raising Jesus to be the son of Allah (v30) Allah has sent the religion of truth to prevail over all religions (v.33) and a painful doom is promised to rabbis and monks who devour wealth (v.35) but Allah’s verdict on the Christians will come only on the Day of Judgment.
Sura 5 has variations on the same theme. In verse14 Christians had forgotten part of the covenant.
“Therefore we have stirred up enmity and hatred among them till the Day of Resurrection, when Allah will inform them about their handiwork…Their sufferings disprove the claims of Jews and Christians to be the sons of God. The Qur’an says to Jews and Christians “why then doth He chastise you for your sins?”(5:18).
Later in 5.51:
“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is one of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk”
And 5:69 is almost a repeat of Sura 2:62 assuring Christians, Jews and those who believe that no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they have cause to grieve. 5:82-86 says that most hostile to Allah are the Jews and pagans, but not the Christians. That is because there are among them priests, and even monks, who are not too proud to respond favorably to Mohammed’s message.
Christians have a covenant relationship with God, but they have fallen out with one another, because they have forgotten God. The general thrust of the Qur'an is that only those who believe in Allah will inherit Paradise, but the rest will be condemned to hell.
The Bible: Here again the Qur'an displays a similar attitude, of affirmation, qualified by rejection. It is affirmed in Sura 19:30 that Jesus was given a scripture and that he had been appointed a prophet,
“Jesus spoke in the cradle to his mother:”Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me the Scripture and has appointed me a prophet.”
as in 37:117 a clear scripture had been given to Moses and Aaron. A positive view of scripture is given in Suras 29:46.
“And argue not with the People of the Scripture unless it be in a way that is better, save with such of them as do wrong. And say: we believe in that which has been revealed unto us and revealed unto you; our God and your God is one, and unto Him we surrender.”
So also in 10:37, and 94.
In Sura 7:157 the prophet hints at an expectation that in both the Torah and the Injil the nabi-al-ummi (the illiterate prophet) will be found, who will be himself. He will show what is right, and forbid what is wrong; he will make lawful only good things, and prohibit the foul; he will relieve them of their burden and their fetters; then those who believe in him, and follow his light, will be successful.
In Medina period the note of corruption (tahrif) of the scriptures begins to emerge. In Sura 2:41-2 the recipients of earlier scriptures are accused of becoming confused about, or even of concealing, some of their contents. The first actual allegation of corruption comes in Sura 2:75:
“Have ye any hope that they will be true to you when a party of them used to listen to the word of Allah, then used to change it, after they had understood it, knowingly.”
Thos who falsify scripture are condemned in verse 79:
“woe unto them for what their hands have written and woe unto them for what they earn thereby.”
Verse 101 confirms previous scriptures; yet despite that fact, those who believe in those earlier scriptures reject and ignore the Qur’an. Moreover, those who read the earlier scriptures disagree among themselves.
Sura 62: 5 states:
“Wretched is the likeness of folk who deny the revelations of Allah.”
Sura 61:6 asserts that Jesus confirmed the Torah, and predicted the coming of a messenger after him, called ahmad (the praised one), but when that prophet came people accused him of sorcery.
So the Qur'an confirms the earlier scriptures, but states that those who believe them reject the Qur'an, and are divided among themselves (2:113). They will be cursed by Allah, (2:159) and come to an uncomfortable end (2:174). In Sura 62:5 they are likened to an ass carrying huge volumes of books, but not understanding any of them. Overall, the situation is left open. Again the Qur'an is ambivalent. Jews and Christians have their scriptures, but they have deviated from their teaching, so that they have become corrupted and distorted.
Evaluation:
In his evaluation Goddard asks three questions.
1. What does the Qur’an mean? Is it denying orthodox mainline Christian belief, or is it merely dismissing views which Christians would strenuously repudiate?
2. Were the Christians referred to in the Qur'an orthodox believers, or those whom the orthodox would consider heretics?
3. Is the Injil, the Gospel mentioned in the Qur'an, the New Testament, or is it not?
The Qur'an does not itself give any clear answers to these, and there has arisen much discussion and speculation over them.
The rejection of Jesus’ sonship must be seen against the background of the religious beliefs of the Meccans, for in that city, with its belief in a pantheon of gods and goddesses, who in turn produced sons and daughters, the Christian use of the word ‘son’ to describe Jesus may have been liable to misunderstanding. So Sura 112: 3 states:
“He [God] begetteth not nor was begotten.”
Initially this Qur’anic rejection of sonship was almost certainly a rejection of polytheistic Meccan ideas, rather than Christian ones. Prof. R.C. Zaehner in the appendix to his book ‘At Sundry Times’ suggested that the Qur’an does not deny incarnation because the word used in the Qur’an is ‘to take’. When Qur’an (19:35, 19:29 and 25:2) states that God has not taken unto Himself a son, it is not condemning the incarnation at all but rather the Christian heresy of Adoptionism.
Kenneth Cragg thought that there was little point in Christians and Muslims discussing the idea of the Incarnation in ‘mutual miscomprehension,’ and added that Jesus’ early disciples were all good monotheists, but had somehow to interpret the events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection into their belief in monotheism. He further suggests that Incarnation is consistent with Islam, since God is involved with the world.
The Qur’an does not address the Christian doctrine of Trinity, properly understood, but only tritheism, which Christians would deny equally strenuously.
Concerning Sura 4:157 both Watt and Cragg have argued that what the Qur’an is denying is not the fact that Jesus was crucified but rather that the claim on the part of the Jews that they had scored a victory over Jesus and that therefore he was not the Messiah.
All this raises questions about the identity of the Christians Mohammed came into contact with. That would help Muslims to look afresh at orthodox Christianity, secure in the knowledge that the Qur’an is rejecting, not mainline Christian beliefs, but rather beliefs which mainline Christians would themselves reject.
Is there a link to Ebionites? Jewish Christians who believed that the Jewish Law should be maintained. They threw doubt on Jesus’s status as Son of God. They also believed in the idea of the corruption of the scriptures. They, unlike the Qur’an, did deny the virgin birth. After the Ebionites were condemned by Irenaeus, who became bishop of Lyons in 177, they were pushed into Transjordan and possibly Arabia.
Belief in three gods, God, Jesus and Mary, is found in the views of the Collyridians, an Arabian sect of the fourth century who worshipped the virgin Mary. Epiphanius opposed this heresy. Confusion might have been arisen out of practice of calling Mary ‘Theotokos’ or God-bearer, which gave rise to the idea of calling Mary Mother of God; this could easily be seen as giving the impression that Christians worshipped a family of gods in a manner similar to the Meccan pagan worship, which was totally repudiated by the Qur’an, for example in Sura 112.
On the crucifixion the Qur’an might follow the Docetists who believed Jesus was pure spirit and his physical appearance was an optical illusion, hence he could only appear to be crucified.
The Bible was certainly not translated from its original languages until several centuries after the time of Muhammed. The account of pre-Islamic Christian martyrs of Najran and their examination by the Jewish ruler Masruq called ‘incarnate satan’ who told them to deny Jesus Christ, to spit on this cross and to be Jews with them. If not, he would let them suffer torment by fire. The cross in those days was not only a religious symbol but the symbol of the Byzantine empire with its image of a Christian Empire.
Conclusion:
Some Christians, including medieval Christians, have suggested that the Qur’an denies heretical Christian beliefs rather than mainline ones. Muslims have almost without exception taken the Qur’an to be denying mainstream Christian ideas too. We have to say that whatever we think the Qur'an says, or does not say, it is the foundation to further statements made by Muslims about Christianity.
2. The Classical Period of Islamic Thought
In the years after the death of the prophet Muslims acquired more information about Christianity, which was not previously available. This came to light by greater contact with Jews and Christians, readier access to Biblical texts from both the Old and the New Testaments, and through knowledge of converts to Islam from both Judaism and Christianity. Some have speculated that if Muhammad had had the information that his followers attained, would history have been any different? The use to which this fresh information was put varied according to the particular interest and the point of view of the authors who used it. Goddard warns us that the context of Muslim writing about Christianity is as important as the text, because the Classical Period included the Crusades, and ended with the Reconquista of Spain and the fall of Granada in 1492.
One author, al-Biruni (d. 1048) said that Christianity was ‘a noble philosophy which gives the shirt to him who takes the coat, and which blesses an enemy and prays for all, but since the time of Constantine, it is the sword and the lash which have been the instruments of the Christian governors.’ It is not surprising, therefore, that much of it is anti-Christian and polemical.
Jesus
Many of the writers of this period were familiar with the four canonical Gospels, and some apocryphal gospels, as well, but the view of Jesus’ death and resurrection did not change from that of the prophet.
Historian al-Tabari (d 923) wrote on Jesus’ birth and final days. He records his meeting with a Coptic peasant who explained that he was a Christian because Christianity was so incomprehensible, and yet the priests still believed in it, and if men of their intelligence believed it, so would he.
Al-Mas’udi’s approach is essentially an empirical and descriptive one, rather than a hostile or antagonistic one.
Al-Ya’qubi (d. after 891) in writing on John’s Gospel of the last events of Jesus’ life, comparing them with the other Gospels, concludes: “This is what the authors of the Injil say, and they differ in all its meanings. Allah said ‘They slew him not, and they crucified him not, but a similitude was made for them. And they who differed about him were in doubt concerning him, but only followed an opinion, and they did not really slay him, but God took him up unto himself.’” There is, therefore, nothing new. Al-Ya’qubi was merely following the opinion of the prophet.
The most favorable account of Jesus’ ministry, which is remarkable since it dates from such an early period, is that contained in the fourty-fourth of the fifty-two treatises of the Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethren of Purity). They faithfully recorded that Jesus was crucified, died, and it was witnessed by his disciples and friends. They continue: “Three days later the disciples gathered in a place where Christ had promised them to appear, and they saw the sign which was between them and him, and the news was spread that Christ had not been killed. His sepulcher was open but his human body was not there. The Jewish parties differed among themselves and many rumors spread about Christ.” Earlier in his ministry, the Ikhwan al-Safa said that Jesus said that he must return to his divinity, leaving his humanity, and spoke of a sign between himself and his disciples notifying them to meet him. These are puzzling features. Ikhwan al-Safa are, however, hardly representative of the main trends of Islamic thought, as they were Isma’ilis, or ultra-Shi’is. They do take the side of the monks. Christian asceticism had clearly caught their imagination.
The medieval Sufi Jalal ad-Din Rumi (d.1273) stressed Jesus’ role as healer and miracle worker. On the subject of the crucifixion Rumi believed that another person had been crucified.
The Spanish Sufi Ibn ‘Arabi (d.1240) described Jesus as the ‘seal of the saints’, a kind of parallel position to Mohammed as the ‘seal of the prophets’.
Al-Tabari said that all the disciples were changed into the image of Jesus. So they took one of the disciples, or a person appeared who had the likeness of Jesus, or a disciple who volunteered (a certain Sergius) or Judas Iscariot. He concluded “God knows which of these was the truth.”
Al-Zamakhshari, a Mu’tazilite, believed so strongly in the idea of justice, that the idea of God making someone else look like Jesus in order to suffer in Jesus’ place was morally repugnant. Thus he rejected this substitutionalist account.
Also al-Razi rejected the substitutionalist account. He said that if it were true then no social relationship could be relied upon and no historical testimony could be relied upon either.
Christianity
Generally the greater knowledge of Christianity was used to develop a more systematic critique of Christianity which never included negative statements on Jesus himself, but rather of what Christians said about him. The context of this more polemical and negative stream of thought was the growing elaboration of Islamic theology and the need to preserve the distinctiveness of the Islamic from the Christian community.
There were two arguments:
1. Historical: during the course of Christian history the original message of Jesus had become corrupted, and
2. Philosophical: that Christianity is fundamentally irrational.
•
Arguments first developed by Abd al-Jabbar (d.1025), the Mu’tazilite judge of the city of Rayy (Tehran). Jesus, he said, observed the law and ritual purity in prayer; he recited prayer texts from the Bible, turning towards Jerusalem to pray, he was circumcised, fasted on Jewish fast-days, he observed the Jewish Sabbath, and he abstained from pork so that in all these things he obeyed the precepts of the law. But Christians abolished the law.
He explained why this happened. First generation of Christians followed Jesus’s practice, but the next generation ‘sought worldly power and tried to gain the hearts of men by serving their desires.’ So the law was abolished in order to procure the adhesion of the gentiles. The chief villain, according to him, is Paul, whom the Christians honor more than Jesus or Moses for Christians read his epistles far more than they read the Torah or the Gospels. Constantine, he thought, took the corruption of Jesus’ message even further. He says of him, “Constantine reigned for fifty years, killing those who did not venerate the cross or accept the divinity of Christ, and thus in the end these beliefs were firmly established.”
The great Islamic theologian al-Ghazali (d.1111) argued that Christianity is fundamentally irrational. His main theme is the Christian idea of the incarnation. There are references to passages in the Bible where the divinity of Jesus is mentioned such as ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 17:11). Secondly, there are references to those passages in which the humanity of Jesus is clearly stated such as Jesus’s ignorance of the Day of Judgment (Matthew 24:36). The names given to Jesus are discussed; ilah (God), rabb (Lord) and ibn (son). The first is acceptable if it is meant to magnify Jesus, but not if it is meant literally. ‘Master’ is acceptable if it is just used in the sense of ‘master’ but not if it is used to mean ‘God’. 1 Cor.8:4-6 is quoted in support of this view since it refers to the existence of one God, yet many lords (arbab, plural of rabb) and Christ himself is then referred to as rabb, thus distinguishing him from God. Sonship is acceptable if it is a metaphorical statement rather than a physical and literal one such as Jacob and David who are also described as God’s sons.
Three particular arguments are then discussed:
1. John 1:1-18 The Word became flesh. That must be corrupted since this is impossible. One of these statements must be wrong.
2. Jesus’ claim to have preceded Abraham (John 8:58). Abraham knew of Christ’s mission by insight, a characteristic shared by other prophets, and
3. Jesus' response to Philip ‘who sees me sees the father’ (John 14:9) This is metaphorical since it is just not possible to see God, God ordains prophets to tell people of God, this is what is referred to here.
Incarnation is explicitly rejected since the very idea of it clashes with the author’s preconceived convictions. As Sweetman said of al-Ghazali, “Here there is revealed the primary difficulty which makes al-Ghazali quite unable to take any other view. Humanity and divinity are at opposite poles of opposition by the thoroughgoing doctrine of the absolute ‘otherness’ of God from man, the Muslim dogma of mukhalafa or difference.”
Christians
After the Islamic conquests, however, driven partly by practical and demographic necessity, Muslim attitudes towards Christians became less hostile and more accommodating. During this period, in spite of what Muslims were writing about Christianity, relations between Muslims and Christians were fairly amicable with few exceptions. Arabia was cleared of Christians with their expulsion from Najran by Umar ibn al Khatab (634-44) and caliph al-Walid (705-15) torturing and martyring the chief of the Banu Taghlib on the grounds that it was shameful that the chief of the Arabs should venerate the cross. On the other hand outside Arabia the first two centuries or so of that rule represented a golden age for some of the non-Arab Christian churches of the Middle East, which had suffered cruelly from persecution by the Byzantines in the centuries before the Arab conquest. Christians were left in peace if they paid poll tax (jizya) although there was an attempt by the caliph ‘umar (ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz) (717-20) to enforce a law that no Christian should serve in the administration of the Islamic state, an order which he had to revoke when chaos ensued. Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809) ordered that no Christian was to be like a Muslim in dress or riding. Abassid caliph al-Ma’mun (813-33) marked a period of particular interest for Muslim-Christian exchange, partly because of organized debates at the court between representatives of the two faiths, partly because of special role played by Christians to translate scientific works from Syriac and Greek into Arabic. At the same time there was also greater hardship for ordinary Christians, as illustrated by the revolt of Coptic peasants in lower Egypt in 832, a savagely-crushed revolt which marks the beginning of large scale conversion to Islam as a result of economic hardship in lower Egypt. On the official level the turning point came with al-Mutawakkil (847-61). The year 850 in particular because “he gave orders to destroy their churches which were newly built and to take the tenth part of their houses” He forbade employment in government offices and that children would attend Muslim schools. Jews suffered as much as Christians, perhaps a bit worse. More negative writings about Christians appeared, but at the worst some writers were more positive and tolerant. Even at its worst, however, life was considerably less harsh than that of Jews in medieval Europe.
The Bible
During the classical period there was greater knowledge of the Bible. However, this knowledge was used to critique Christianity by stating that either the text of the Bible, or its interpretation, had been corrupted. Some said that Christians did not understand the Bible, since the Bible pointed to the prophet, Muhammad. These views tended to co-exist, depending on the context in which they were written.
Ali Tabari used his knowledge of the Bible after his conversion to Islam to demonstrate the truth of Islam over and against Christianity, and in particular to establish the truth on the basis of biblical evidence of the prophethood of Mohammed. Ali Tabari explains in detail why he became Muslim; one of the most important reasons was simply Islam’s success.
Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) was from a family of converts. His view is that the Bible is unreliable. He ridicules certain parts. For example Matthew 13:31-2, Jesus’s parable of the mustard seed. Ibn Hazm comments that no one he had met knew of the possibility of birds dwelling in a mustard tree. His literalist frame of mind clearly makes no allowance for hyperbole. He also challenges the Bible for the sins of prophets such as David. Prophets are sinless and thus the accounts must have been made up.
Ibn Taimiyya (d.1328). Time and energy spent opposing a number of groups he perceived to be either signs of decay within Islamic society or threats from outside it. Among these were the Christians, internally because of their still significant presence inside the Islamic world and externally because of the Crusades and the continuing existence of the Crusading outpost of Cyprus. Despite his polemical attacks on the Christians, Ibn Taimiyya’s view of the Bible was that even if it had been misunderstood, its text was fundamentally reliable. The problem was therefore interpretation of the text.
Conclusion
It is particularly interesting to see why some writers were more positive or negative. To a large extent this can simply be explained by the circumstances in which different writers found themselves. Thus at the end of the medieval period there was a particular outburst of polemical anti-Christian writing in Spain, but this is not surprising if located in the context of the Christian campaign of Reconquista which reached its conclusion with the fall of Granada in 1492. Given the threat which Christian expansion posed to Muslim rule and survival in Spain, it is not surprising that Muslim literature about Christianity in this context tended to be of a negative and polemical nature. As ever, therefore, context is as important as text in looking at developing Muslim views of Christianity.
2. 3. The Early Modern Period.
This period is from about 1500 to the late 19th century. There was a political resurgence of Islam with the rise of the Ottomans, Safavids and Moghuls. However, there was a decline in their intellectual output. Commentary and revision replaced original thought. During this period European powers were expanding around the globe, including into large sections of the Muslim world. As a consequence of the increased contact between Islam and Christianity three new tendencies emerged;
1. ‘Politicized religion,’ in response to European imperialism;
2. ‘Modernist religion,’ in response to modern critical thinking – Muslims were visiting Europe to study to take home ‘modern’ ideas; and
3. ‘Polemicized religion,’ in response to Christian mission – some Protestant missionaries were virulently attacking the Qur'an, Muhammad and Islam.
Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, marked the beginning of European involvement in the affairs in the Middle East. He declared that he was in no way hostile to Islam and had rendered it a great service by abolishing the Holy Roman Empire, the traditional enemy of the Muslims. Not many believed him.
When European missionaries, especially Protestant ones, began to be active in the Muslim world, they did not hesitate to indulge in quite violent polemic against Islam; for example, Part III of K.G. Pfander’s Mizan al haqq (The Balance of Truth – see below) contained outright attacks on the Qur’an, Muhammed and Islam. Thus, if modern Muslim thinking about Christianity reflects these phenomena of politicized religion, modernist religion and polemicized religion, it is to some extent at least only reproducing and mirroring certain aspects of European attitudes towards the Islamic world.
Goddard has reviewed and assessed their work, and this can only be a précis of his précis, as we can only write a brief paragraph on each.
Jamal al-din al-Afghani (1839-97)
Al-Afghani is the principal representative of politicized religion. He was a controversial figure with a high reputation in the Muslim world. He was the leading exponent of pan-Islam in the last quarter of the 19th century. His creed was ‘political messianism’, and he appears to have believed in a mahdi as a secular political leader. Originally from Persia he traveled extensively throughout the Muslim world, but also visited London and Paris. He was an advisor to both the Shah of Persia and the Sultan of Turkey, but fell out of favor with both. He was anti-British and wrote a book entitled the Refutation of the Materialists, aimed at Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s ideas to reform Islam. He thought Sir Sayyid was a tool of the foreigners. Later in Paris he debated with Ernest Renan, who had written that Islam crushed free enquiry and was opposed to the spirit of modern science. He agreed with Renan, but added that all religion, not only Islam, obstructed scientific enquiry. Islam was, however, the religion of reason, totally in harmony with scientific thought, and was the religion demanded by reason. He has a reputation for orthodoxy, but this is open to doubt, as scholars since his time have noted discrepancies between what he said and wrote. Al-Afghani was successful in forging a bond between Islam and politics, making Islam conform to the dictates of reason, which led to political resurgence within the Muslim world. He strengthened the bonds between all Muslims, which later made possible the creation of a strong and stable state, able to resist European encroachment. He identified Christianity with the West, the imperialist enemy, and so rebuffed Christian doctrine. In the Refutation of the Materialists he wrote that it was necessary to reject any belief that God in the Highest has appeared in human garb, thus denying the Incarnation. He went on to show that Islam was superior to Christianity, in that it was the more rational religion. It is not surprising that most of his critics have been from the West.
Muhammad ‘Abdu (1849-1905)
Muhammad ‘Abdu was first a disciple of al-Afghani, but later disputed with him over the road to political independence. From 1882 Britain occupied Egypt, and ‘Abdu was less hostile towards them, and made fewer enemies. He stressed the need for education to liberate Islam from taqlid, the uncritical acceptance of tradition. He attempted to separate the religious from the political, which al-Afghani intertwined. He was more a liberal reformer than a political activist.
He authored a book, Al-Islam wa-l nasraniya (Islam and Christianity) in which he said that Islam was again the religion of reason, rather than blind faith. If Islam be obeyed, society flourished, as demonstrated by the golden age of Islam. He was not totally negative towards Christianity, but he said it depended on faith in the impossible rather than reason. If it were true that the Christian world was ‘advanced’ and the Muslim world ‘backward’ it was because the civilizing influence of Islam had been transferred to Europe at the time of the Crusades, and Europe had only been able to make use of this legacy by neglecting its Christianity.
He accepted that the text of the Bible was not corrupt; in other words the tahrif (corruption) was in the interpretation of the text rather than in the text itself. Abdu was not negative but, according to Mahmud Ayyub did not really understand Christianity. His work must be seen against the background of 19th century Christian views of Islam and that compared with the polemical insults and gross distortions committed by missionary scholars of Islam. He was perhaps the most courteous of all the critics of Christianity. He was writing during the period of the great debates between science and religion, in which some Christian leaders were showing a distinct lack of reason.
Rahmat Allah (al-Hindi) Kairanawi (1834-91)
Rahmat Allah represents the polemicized religion. ‘Polemic’ is derived from the Greek polemos, which means war. The word was first used in English in the 17th century to describe a war of words between rival religious groups. He wrote in response to K.G. Pfander (1803-65), a German by birth, who served with the C.M.S. (Church Missionary Society) an arm of the Anglican Church, which sent him to India in 1839. He had an inclination to work under educated Muslims and preached in the bazaar which he engaged at the risk of his life. Pfander had written a book entitled Mizan al-haqq, (The Balance of Truth), which was an attempt to balance the truth of both Islam and Christianity, but he came down on the site of Christianity. It tried to prove that the Old and New Testaments were the Word of God and that they were neither corrupted nor abrogated. He also showed that their aim was to set forth the principle doctrines of Christianity. It was translated into many languages.
Pfander relied too much on rational methods, which reflected a disposition of 19th century Europe and also of the ‘ulema but overlooked the emotional ties felt by Muslims towards their community. He did have considerable effect on the uneducated Muslims in India, especially in Agra. Rahmat Allah planned a counter offensive, and challenged Pfander to a debate in April 1854. Pfander was seconded by T.V. French, and Rahmat Allah by Dr. Wazir Khan, who in the 1830’s had studied in England, where he had researched Christianity, and learned of Biblical criticism from German authors, of which Pfander knew nothing. Four subjects treated in the debate:
1. The abrogation and corruption of the Christian scriptures,
2. The doctrine of the Trinity,
3. Muhammed’s claim to prophethood, and
4. The inspiration of the Qur’an.
Even Pfander, after the debate, admitted to the C.M.S. that the result seemed to favor the Muslims, but he was more optimistic over the long term result. Nevertheless the C.M.S. withdrew him to Peshawar. The Muslims, however, claimed it a great victory for Islam, and this became a turning point in their reaction to the Christian missionaries. They went immediately on the offensive and made use of western Biblical criticism. Pfander admitted there were a few mistakes in the Bible, such as discrepancies in Jesus’ genealogy but argued that mistakes were not the same as corruption. Muslims raised the status of 1 John 5:7, which states there are three witnesses, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, a verse which it was generally agreed was a later interpolation and Pfander admitted that this was an alteration of the text. Muslims seized on this as evidence of corruption. They said that if any error is detected in a document then the validity of the whole document is put at risk. Rahmat Allah’s decision to challenge the Christian missionaries on their own ground through the adoption of their techniques of publicity and propaganda, was a turning point in the Muslim reaction to the influence of Christian missionaries.
He was not totally un-involved in politics, and after the Indian Mutiny, 1857, he was forced to flee to Mecca.
Pfander later went to Turkey and began to baptize converts there. The Sultan was so incensed that he summoned Rahmat Allah to come to Turkey from Mecca, to write down the substance of his debate with Pfander. Izhar al-haqq (Demonstration of Truth) was the result. He knew that Christian beliefs were being challenged even in Europe, and used this to buttress the traditional Muslim argument. It was presented to Sultan ‘Abdulaziz, who printed it in 1864 in both Turkish and Arabic. It has recently been published in Pakistan, where the editor wrote that nothing written in the intervening 100 years on the theme of Islam and Christianity has replaced this work; and also in Egypt, whose editors we shall discuss later. An English translation was published in London in 1990.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98)
Also from the Indian sub-continent, and a near contemporary of Rahmat Allah, was Sayyid Ahmad Khan. He was far removed from the politicized and polemicized approach, and is best known as a leading figure of Islamic modernism and for his work in Muslim education. He was an Anglophile, believing all good things came from England. Where Rahmat Allah resorted to a polemical response, Sayyid Ahmad Khan adopted a more scholarly approach to the Bible. He too makes use of modern Western commentators on the Bible, such as T.H. Horne. This, and his ready acceptance of Western culture, made him suspect to his Muslim contemporaries, especially al-Afghani. However, like Rahmat Allah, he was concerned about the activities of Christian missionaries in India; but, unlike him, he adopted a non-confrontational approach.
Ahmad Khan was a serious student of Christianity, and especially of the Bible. He began a scholarly work, but was unable to complete it, though he did finish three volumes, entitled Tabyin al-kalam fi tafsir al-taurat wa ‘l-ingil ‘ala millat al-islam, (The Muhammadan Commentary on the Holy Bible). His ideas were not unlike that of other Muslims although he made use of Western commentators, but he did consider the text of the Old Testament as un-corrupted, and so those books should be accepted as authentic by Muslims. He was less confident about that of the New Testament, since it had been written by Jesus’ followers. He was concerned that the original Injil had been corrupted by them, and he tried to reconstruct that Injil from the texts as they stood.
Ahmad Khan went to great lengths to rationally explain the miracles of the Bible, or to demythologize them. He argued that the Qur'an did not assert that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus; she had been faithful to her husband, and had had intercourse only with him. Like others he claimed that Jesus did not die on the cross, but after hanging on it for some time, was still alive when he was taken down. He did, however, believe that in spite of their Trinitarian language, Christians were basically monotheistic. Goddard concludes that Ahmad Khan’s attitude towards Christianity was fair, and compared with his contemporaries, tolerant.
Rashid Rida (1865-1935)
Rida began as a disciple of ‘Abdu, and was his companion and biographer, but later in life he traced his own course. He tackled the same question as ‘Abdu, why the Muslim countries were backward, but he was less self-critical. He asserted that the principals of modern civilization – activity (jihad), unity of the whole of life (tawhid) and the possession of truth – were all possessed by Islam. He became more conservative and rigid as he grew older. In his book Al-wahy al-muhammadi (The Muhammadan Revelation) he made such claims as, ‘The Qur'an cannot but be the truth of God,’ and ‘There is in the world no general, perfect, sound and reliable religion except Islam,…it is the religion of truth and peace, of justice and right, giving its truth to every nation and individual.’
He supported the Wahhabis as the best hope of Muslim unification, (Wahhabis are strongly Hanbalite and thus he moved towards extremism and exclusivism and rigidity of the Hanbalite outlook. “The influence of the great conciliator al-Ghazali was rapidly replaced by that of the fundamentalist Ibn Taimiyya” - a quote from Gibb, 1947) So he moved towards extremism, a move back to al-Afghani’s more politically activist Islam.
Rida showed a strident anti-Christian attitude. If it were not for the church, for the politicians, and for the inner decay of Islam itself, Europe he thought might well become Muslim. He published a number of pamphlets which exposed his views. He accused Christians for their belief in the Trinity, arguing that God could not have had a son. The Incarnation was unnecessary, since God could have made himself known in other ways. The Christian idea of redemption was a crude rehashing of pagan ideas, and Jesus did not die, but rather swooned and later revived. The tomb of Jesus in India, as in Ahmadi belief, is cited as evidence of Jesus not having died. The idea of crucifixion contradicted the idea of the mercy of God, since he could have provided pardon without sacrifice. Christians he accused of ‘shirk’. Original sin is rejected. He compared Moses, Jesus and Muhammad and concluded that the completion of the evolution of religion was found in Islam.
Protestants were attacked for their unrealistic morals of gentleness and forgiveness, which leave the field open to the unjust. Catholics were attacked for their veneration of the saints. All missionaries were attacked because they accused Mohammed of being a liar and their link with the colonial authorities to ban Muslim books and force conversions to Christianity.
Rida believed the texts of the Christian scriptures to have been corrupted. He made use of the so-called Gospel of Barnabas, not available to Rahmat Allah. This ‘gospel’ was supposedly discovered in Amsterdam in 1709. In G. Sale’s commentary on the Holy Qur’an a monk, Fra Marino, claimed to have discovered an Italian manuscript in the Vatican library of Pope Sixtus V (1585-90); he smuggled it out, read it and became Muslim. In 1907 the Italian text was given a critical introduction and English translation by Laura and Londale Ragg. They established authoritatively that the work was not genuine, and this view has been accepted in Europe ever since. In 1908, however, the English translation was translated, without this critical introduction, into both Arabic and Urdu, the former in the circle of Rashid Rida. Since that date it has become a standard work in Muslim writings about Christianity, since it affirmed the traditional Islamic position from a supposedly ancient Christian author. The Gospel of Barnabas affirmed the unity of God, as opposed to the trinity, and Jesus’ claim to be only a prophet, and his observance of Jewish laws and denied his death on the cross.
Rida therefore combined the politicized religion with the polemicized, but never the modernist.
Conclusion.
Muslim perceptions of Christianity demonstrate a boomerang effect of Christian perceptions of Islam. In the period after 1800 there were three main features:
• politicized religion, in response to imperialism, with Afghani and Rida
• modernist/liberal approach, in response to liberalism, with ‘Abduh and Ahmed Khan, and
• polemicized religion, in response to Christian mission, with Rahmat Allah and also Rida.
4. Contemporary Egyptian Muslim Polemical Literature
From the late 19th century to mid 20th Britain occupied Egypt, and so writers were preoccupied in gaining political independence, rather than to re-examine Muslim views of Christianity. In 1922 Egypt became formally independent. After 1945, British influence began to decline further. There were many different views expressed, some new, but most a reproduction of the older views. In this chapter Goddard reviews the negative material, and in the next chapter he will review the more positive, and the chapter after that intermediate views.
Among the negative material, he notes that three lines of argument emerged.
1. The historical corruption of Christianity;
2. The truth of Islam being foretold by Christian sources themselves;
3. The close link between Christianity and Western imperialism.
Again, only a thumb nail sketch on each author can be given.
Muhammad Abu Zahra
Muhammad Abu Zahra lectured at Al-Azhar University. He had a particular interest in Ibn Taimiyya. His, that is Abu Zahra’s, main work, Mudhadirat fi ‘l-nasraniyya, (Lectures on Christianity) was published in 1942, and has since gone through five further editions. It was a very scholarly work, the sub-title being ‘A study of the stages through which the Christians’ beliefs have passed, of their books, their sacred councils and their sects;’ a survey of Christianity from the time of Christ to the then present day. In the introduction he showed high intension to be fair and he observed the difficulty in writing an opinion from which one differed, especially when the subject of the difference was a matter of belief and conviction. He went on to say that the task of scientific research was to study Christianity as its adherents believed it.
The lectures were given to students in the Department of Mission and Guidance of the College of Principals of Religion ('Usul el-Din). It was a seminal work, the basis for every other book on the subject that has been written since, but, in spite of that, it presented nothing really new. Having researched, he said, only Christian sources, but only those written in, or translated into Arabic, he concluded: “I ended as I began, believing in One Unique God, who has no father, and no son.” Thus the traditional picture of Christ and Christianity emerged. His key argument was that the ‘chain’ of transmission was broken between the time of Jesus and the council of Nicea; the claim that enabled him to state blandly that in the absence of any reliable sources from Christian quarters, investigators must have recourse to the Qur’an. The main influence that corrupted Christianity was paganism. Plotinus (d.270) was mentioned arguing the three-fold origin of existence, First Cause, Reason and Spirit. The Council of Nicea was not held until 325, and thus for Abu Zahra, Christianity borrowed the trinity from Plotinus. His next argument was that Jesus did not write the Gospels. There was an original gospel, the gospel of Barnabas, that preceded the others, but Christians did not want to accept this as a historical gospel. He said that prior to the Council of Nicea the opinion of Arius - that Christians were Unitarian - was so widespread that only the intervention of Constantine led to the deification of Jesus.
A section was devoted to a statement of Ibrahim Sa’id, an evangelical pastor of the Faith Church in Shubra, Cairo, in his commentary on Luke’s gospel that the position of Luke’s account was equivalent to the status of Hadith in Islam. Abu Zahra stated that the Hadith was much more reliable than the gospel. The pastor is accused of turning gold into dust. The idea of the Cross was rejected as was any idea of redemption.
He discussed the Reformers at length, but said that they did not take their logic to the furthest, by rejecting the councils and restoring the religion of tawhid (unity). Said Abu Zahra “we find many scholars explaining forcefully that Jesus was only an apostle, that he was no more than a man, and they quoted the gospels themselves to that effect.” Only Islam restored the original message of Christ, by seeing Jesus as a great man, but not God.
Abu Zahra’s main sources of reference were Ibn Hazm and Rahmat Allah al-Hindi’s Izhar al-haqq. Thus despite claims to scientific objectivity and the use of original sources, he was in reality limited to Arabic sources, and demonstrated a considerable reliance on traditional Muslim anti-Christian polemics. His conclusion was predictable. Christians have emerged who do call to tawhid, (presumably Unitarians) and thus reflect the light of the truth of Islam in what they write, but the councils have rejected that idea and Christianity has rejected it ever since. His book, rather than being an unbiased history of Christianity, showed how traditional Christian beliefs may be undermined in order to pave the way for the Christian world’s acceptance of Islam.
Muhammad Kamal Farag
One of the Egyptian editions of Izhat al-haqq was edited by Muhammad Kamal Farag in 1978. It was distributed by the Al Ahram organization. Its preface was written by ‘Abd al-Halim Mahmud, the late sheikh of al-Azhar. He was very affirmative towards Christ, but not to the point to affirm his deity. Abdel Halim Mahmud wrote in the preface, ‘Have you seen the honor with which Islam surrounds Mary and Jesus? However, he concluded that Jesus was a messenger to the people of Israel, who would affirm the Torah, and to tell people that the straight path was to worship God as Lord. Then followed Farag’s own preface. He cited the Qur'anic references to kufr, unbelief, of those who say that God is Jesus, the son of Mary, and that God is one of three, before going on to list various threats to Islam, from the Crusades to the tragedy of the English conquest of India with the advent of the missionaries. He said that the English began by killing thousands of the elite of the Muslim ‘ulema, and then in co-operation with the Hindus they defamed the sacredness of the Qur'an and the esteem of the messenger of God, until some ignorant people renounced their religion.
The editor recommended seven writers as being of use for the defense of the Islamic programme. They were: Ibn Iaimiyya, al-Su’udi, Samuel b. Yehuda, al-Qarafi, al-Qurtubi, al-Juweini and al-Khazraji. With Sheikh Rahmat Allah al-Hindi as their leader the ‘ulema began to refute the missionaries in books and in debate. There followed the account of al-Hindi’s encounter with Pfander and the debate of 1854 in Agra. He said that the English recalled Pfander and sent him to Constantinople, where al-Hindi followed him, and the sultan’s request for the publishing of Izhar al-haqq. Then followed al-Hindi’s major work with an account of the great debate, and some of his earlier works as appendices. At the end Farag again referred to attacks on Islam and the Qur'an.
Ahmad Hijazi al-Saqqa
Al-Saqqa was well educated in Islam at al-Azhar. In 1977 he wrote his doctorate on ‘The annunciation of the prophet of Islam in the Torah and the Injil,’ which was subsequently revised and published as a book. He also edited Izhar al-haqq. In the introduction to this he said that it was among the greatest books on the science of comparative religion and if people would continue to read and study it, the progress and flourishing of Christianity would cease throughout the whole world. He said that it made clear that the religion in God’s presence was Islam; that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, was sent from Almighty God; that the Qur'an is revelation from God; and that the people of the book had strayed from the straight path, firstly, by their corruption of the book entrusted to them, and secondly, by distancing themselves from Islam, although they knew that it was the truth. The reason for their changing the Torah and the Injil was because God had informed them in the Torah that a prophet from the children of Israel would one day come to convey to the world a message from God. That prophet was Muhammad. Because they could not accept him as God’s messenger they changed the message. He continued that when in 586 BC the Arabs, the descendents of Ishmael, deserted the Jews, the sons of Isaac, the latter decided to change the Torah in order to make it the law for them alone, and not for the whole world. The book of Nehemiah reinforced this, in the Jews saying to the Samaritans, Ammonites and Arabs, “You have no stake, or claim, or traditional rights in Jerusalem” (Nehemiah 2.20).
Al-Saqqa used the passages Deuteronomy 18.15-22, Psalm 2.2,6, Psalms 110 and 118 and Daniel 7.13-14, to show that the prophet who would come was Muhammad. He quoted the gospel of Barnabas to suggest Jesus’ saying that Ishmael was the son whom Abraham was prepared to sacrifice, so that it would be his descendents that would be blessed by God. He added that Jesus was called ‘messiah’ because he was one of the prophets of Israel, but he was not the awaited messiah for he had to come from the descendents of Ishmael. He also quoted the gospel of Barnabas to show that Jesus had obeyed the Torah and was spared from death. It was Paul who changed the predictions of the coming of Muhammad and applied them to Jesus. Paul also took the idea of the Incarnation and the multiplication of gods from the Romans. So there was no need to obey the Law because forgiveness was available through the cross. This was confirmed by the church councils. The Council of Nicea marked the official transfer of the prophecies of Mohammed to being prophecies of Jesus. Al-Saqqa thus summarized Izhar al-haqq and indicated his debt to Rahmat Allah al-Hindi.
The famous passage from Deuteronomy 18:15-22 he quoted to show the characteristics of a prophet:
• He will be from the Ishmaelites (Hebrew: from their brothers)
• He will be illiterate. Evidence: verse 18 ‘I will put my words into his mouth’.
• He will abrogate the law of Moses. Evidence: verse 15, ‘you shall listen to him’.
• He will be the guarantor of divine revelation. Evidence: verse 18 ‘he shall convey all my commands to them’.
• He will do away with the kingdoms of the Israelites in Palestine and throughout the world. Evidence: verse 19: if anyone does not listen to the words he will speak in my name I will require satisfaction from him. He explained that God would eradicate them from their land because they did not follow him. He quoted Acts 3.22.
• He will not be killed. Evidence verse 20. The prophet who said what God did, must not be killed. Goddard commented on this verse by saying it originally was an instruction, not a prophecy.
Al-Saqqa also quoted from the book of Genesis to show that both Isaac and Ishmael were to inherit Abraham’s blessings. Both were to get his kingdom and his prophesy. He added that Moses before his death confirmed that the blessing of the nations would come through Ishmael. He further claimed that every time the Bible used ‘son of God’, as for example in Psalm 2:7, it referred to the coming of Muhammed. Also the term ‘his anointed’ in Psalm 2:2,6 referred to Muhammed.
Daniel too, according to al-Saqqa, referred to Muhammed when he described the ‘one like a son of man who possesses everlasting sovereignty’ (Daniel 7:13-14). Daniel 7:13 spoke of the victory of the son of man. In al-Saqqa’s view this referred to the victory of the Muslims ‘for reasons beyond the level of reason’. So the kuffar (unbelievers) would be defeated. Maleachi also, when describing the coming of Elijah, in fact prophesized the coming of Muhammed, for the numerical values of the names ‘Iliya’ and ‘Ahmad’ were the same; but al-Saqqa had to change the spelling of Elijah’s name in Arabic in order to achieve that, for the name is usually spelled Iliyya. Jesus’ reference to ‘the Comforter’ is also taken to mean Ahmed. The gospel of Barnabas was again cited to the effect that Jesus had told his disciples that Ishmael was Abraham’s elder son, so it was he whom Abraham prepared to sacrifice.
In a short conclusion to Izhar al-haqq he repeated its main argument; the corruption of the Christian scripture, especially with reference to the existing of the prophecies of Muhammed. The existence of the gospels in plural proved that Jesus’ own Gospel had been lost. Similarly, the existence of two Torah’s, Samaritan and Hebrew, showed that it had been corrupted.
Al-Saqqa wrote several other books that reiterated much of what he said in his introduction to Izhar al-haqq. In Aqanim al-nasara (The ‘persons’ of the Christians) he investigated the Christian belief about the ‘Persons’ of the Trinity. In the preface he wrote that he was spurred to write the book by the appearance of the book ‘Imani’ (My faith) by Elias Maqar, a leading figure of the Coptic Evangelical Church. This book prompted Al-Saqqa to write about affirming the prophethood of Muhammed. Al-Saqqa argued that the Torah proclaimed the unity of God, that Jesus did not come to abrogate the Torah, and that he therefore originally proclaimed the unity of God. Then followed references to the promises to Ishmael; they were corrupted after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. The prophet to come was to conquer the world; therefore he could never have been Jesus.
On the Spirit al-Saqqa quoted Spinoza, who claimed Christians confused between ruh (spirit) and rih (wind). Razi was quoted to establish that the Paraclete was a name for Ahmed. Jesus wanted to proclaim the coming of Muhammed, but the Jews tried to kill him for it. Al-Saqqa claimed that the Christian interpretation of the Holy Spirit as being the Paraclete only appeared in the Fourth century, when the divinity of the Holy Spirit was first concocted and the promise clearly referred to a person and not to God. Jesus could not be God, al-Saqqa argued, because the letter of the Hebrews stated that he was lower than the angels and Jesus did not know the date of his second coming. Where did the idea of the Trinity come from? Jews took ideas of the Trinity when they were in exile in Babylon. Ancient Egyptians reflected the same idea. Paul capitalized on the idea of the Incarnation which the Romans had already accepted. Paul transferred the prophecies of Muhammed to Jesus.
His conclusion was that Christianity today had nothing to do with the teachings of the Messiah, and that comparison between the heavenly religions could only take place between Judaism and Islam, for while the Qur’an may have abrogated the practical prescriptions of the Torah, it did not so with the verses about God and His attributes. Jesus had no Shari’a since he was following the Shari’a of Moses, but Mohammed could change regulations and so he was obviously superior. Ibn Hazm’s arguments figure prominently here, said Goddard.
Al-Saqqa’s book ‘Nubuwat muhammed fi’il-kitab al-muqaddas,’ (1978) based upon his doctoral dissertation for the Azhar, repeated most of the previous arguments. Christians were perverse because they applied all the prophecies in the Torah to the Messiah, Jesus, whereas in fact not one of them referred to him because they all referred to Muhammed. In the year 2566 before the birth of Mohammed, Abraham was told the name of Muhammad. In the year 2407 before the birth of Mohammed, Jacob prophesized the termination of the kingdom, and the Shari’a of his sons and their termination to the prophet to come from the tribe of Ismail. This was fulfilled when ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab took Jerusalem in 636. Jesus also prophesized the qibla of Muhammed in John 4. Isaiah prophesized the emergence of Mecca as the focal point of the world and in Chapter 54 he predicted the spread of the Ishmaelites to the whole world. Isaiah and Jesus both referred to the ‘stone which was rejected’, in other words to Ishmail. Daniel predicted the year Muhammed would be born. The Magi also knew the year, which was why Abraha tried to destroy Mecca and kill Muhammed so that Christianity could last for ever. Habbakuk predicted the coming of a universal Shari’a from Mecca and Zacharia predicted the conquest of Jerusalem by ‘Umar Ibn al-Khattab.
For all of this Al-Saqqa is described by many Muslims as being Egypt’s leading expert on Christianity.
Evaluation:
Al-Saqqa’s idea of comparative religion is seen as a way of evaluating another religious tradition and at the same time giving a vigorous assertion of the superiority of the religion of the writer, and indeed of the correctness of the claim of his religion to surpass and supplant the religious tradition about which he is writing. Goddard stated that the aim of comparative religion is that religions “should be studied for the purpose of comparison and not for the purpose of a blatant assertion of the superiority of one tradition over all the others. While it must be admitted that some Christian books adopt a similar approach to other religions, their authors have at least in most cases had a considerable amount of first-hand experience and in-depth study of the religions about which they write.”
Goddard claimed that works so far in this chapter lacked knowledge of Christian sources and Christian information, because authors did not know any other language but Arabic. The Christian publications in Egypt tended to be on a popular level, rather than on a scholarly level, and translations of European works on Christianity into Arabic tended to be works favorable to an Islamic point-of-view. So he concluded, “How much more difficult, therefore, for a Muslim writer to obtain reliable and scholarly material on Christianity, a subject on which, given his understanding of comparative religion, he has even less incentive to make the effort to do so than he does when seeking to investigate a Muslim polemicist against Christianity. Yet this is the reality of the situation.”
Ibrahim Khalil Ahmad
The final line of argument about Christianity is that it is the political arm of Western culture intent on subverting Islam, and therefore should be banned in Muslim countries. Many have written on this line; mention is made of two Lebanese writers who investigated the use of medical work and educational institutions for missionary purposes, and also the links between politicians and missionaries in pursuit of their common ambitions in the Middle East. Works of J.R. Mott, S.M. Zwemer and others are referred to, together with reports of the 1910 World Missionary Conference and periodicals as the Muslim World and International Review of Mission. None, however, has been quite as outspoken as Ibrahim Khalil Ahmad.
Khalil Ahmad was born and grew up a Christian in Alexandria, but in 1940 escaped to Upper Egypt to evade the war. From his youth he studied the three monotheistic religions, and at the American College in Assiut he spent most of his time in the library. He said that all his energy and time then were devoted to Christ and his church. He studied science there, but in 1945 entered the Presbyterian Seminary in Cairo, which was affiliated with the University of Princeton. He obtained a diploma in theology in 1948. He was then posted to the church of Baqur in the governorate of Assiut. He worked alongside American missionaries on evangelistic work among Muslims. In 1952 the Synod of the Nile appointed him to teach in the Theological College of the Holiness Revival. In 1954 he went to work in the German Hospital in Aswan where he became a traveling evangelist. He began a doctorial thesis from Princeton on the Sword of Goliath. He said that he intended to attack Islam by attacking the Qur'an, but instead the sword attacked him, and Allah conquered him by means of the glorious Qur'an. What convinced him was the simplicity of the Islamic doctrine on the unity of God, and the fairness of the Islamic view of judgment – that each person would be judged by his or her knowledge that forgiveness is from God alone, with repentance being all that is demanded. The simplicity of Islam won over the complexity of the Christian doctrine of the unity of the godhead, and redemption through Christ.
In1957 he announced to the mission that he was a Muslim. His wife left him, Ahmad says because of threats of missionaries who reminded her of biblical texts such as Matthew 10:32-33 ‘Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven;’ and Matthew 12:30-32 ‘He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever says a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. Subsequently he became imam of the mosque of the Rightly Guided caliphs in Heliopolis. In 1960 the official certification of the change of religion of his four sons came through. In 1961 he was invited to join the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs and since then has continued as a mujahid for Allah and His Apostle, and as a da’i to Islam, especially among the ahl al-kitab.
With this background he wrote a book with the English title, Orientalism And Mission And Their Relationship To World Imperialism. In the preface he explained that he had been a teacher of theology in Assiut, and there he came into contact with American, Swiss, German and English missionaries from whom he learned the history of the Middle East from their perspective. The Balfour declaration and MacMahon correspondence made him convinced of western machinations to divide the Arab world and to keep it in a state of weakness. But, quoting Qur'an 5:56, that God’s party would be the victors, he said, that if Arabs were to unite they would be victorious.
In Part 1 of the book he told the story of why he became a Muslim. He said that he presented the book without any animosity to show how mission and Orientalism combined to dominate the country, and how they were used by imperialism to divide national feeling and to suppress Arabism and the Arabic language. They should therefore be resisted with as much strength as possible. He then went into more detail to describe the activities of the ‘Protestant clerical machine,’ outlining the distinctions between the different churches, ‘which run so deep that they have caused civil wars.’ But despite this they are all part of the same worldwide plot. He listed various evangelistic and other centers belonging to the church in Egypt. Kenneth Cragg is called ‘an American strongly fanatical against Islam’. (If he had met him he would have known that he was not American, but English, and not a fanatic.) Pfander, Ibrahim Luqa and Cragg were termed subverters of Islam. The policy adopted to achieve that end had been to encourage ‘progressive thinkers’ within Islam, such as Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who founded a college within which Christianity was studied, and Taha Hussain, who wrote a book on pre-Islamic poetry that implied that the Qur’an was not true revelation. Orientalists argued that Islam took over ideas from the Sabaeans and others, thus undermining Islam’s claims to originality. Details are given of missionary methods in hospitals and schools - telling stories to those who are ill, teaching in schools that Islam and Christianity both proclaim the unity of God, and that the Torah and the Injil are reliable. The organization and funding of missionaries and Orientalists was discussed, with kings and princes supporting the work. The work of evangelism he described as having three parts, work in schools and hospitals, work among individuals, and Bible distribution, and he discussed their financing and management, and demonstrated a link between the religious and the political.
Part II dealt with the history of Orientalism from the Crusades to the British occupation of Egypt and Palestine, examples of crusading imperialism against the Arab world. But the fight against this through the lordship of Islam would lead to stability and peace. Ibrahim Khalil Ahmad maintained that Islam was the spirit of all religions and included belief in earlier religion; but the religion of Allah was one and that was Islam.
Part III continued this theme, entitled ‘Islam in the face of its enemies.’ It began with the assertion that ‘Islam is the power that will not be overcome.’ He said that Shari’a law was superior to Christian law, which he thought unrealistic, and he cited prominent people living together before marriage as examples.
In the section entitled ‘The remedy’ he made the following suggestions:
1. Education and the press needed to be purified from foreign influence.
2. An Islamic Educational Foundation needed to be established to reply to the Orientalists.
3. Publication of an Islamic Encyclopedia of Islam, a ‘translation’ of the Qur'an, and its understanding needed to be published.
4. Production of a magazine on Orientalism needed to be established.
He concluded that there needed to be a re-establishment of Islamic values in the soul of all Muslims and in the soul of Arab public opinion. For this to become reality there had to be solidarity between all Muslims, not just between all Arabs.
Goddard summarized Ibrahim Khalil Ahmad’s work by saying that he combined a conspirational view of past history with a highly idealistic view of the future. There was some truth in its view of the alliance between missionaries and Orientalists on the one hand, and imperial governments and administrations on the other, but the case was over stated and over simplified almost to the extent of a total rejection of the Arab East’s bearing any responsibility for its fate over the last two centuries. The Muslim world is presented as a victim, maliciously and willfully wronged by a plot against it; it is the innocent party which bears no responsibility for its fate. This theme has been repeated again and again, until it has almost become a myth; it certainly does nothing to further Muslim understanding of the West, or of Christianity, and it forms one of the major elements in modern Egyptian Muslim writings about Christianity. (Compare account of Western ‘myths’ about Islam in Said, 1978).
Goddard’s conclusion on this whole chapter was that none of the material examined in it came close to understanding Christianity. However, it was not surprising that it failed to understand, for it had neither the means nor the will to do so.
5. Contemporary Egyptian Muslim Eirenical Literature
At the same time as the more hostile writings on Christianity, noted in the last chapter, there were more friendly ones. The Cairo University, founded in 1925, is known for its liberal tradition. This produced a number of books in the 50ties with a much more positive attitude towards Christianity. Nasser's revolution included censorship and muzzling of Egyptian intellectuals. Yet in this period more positive works towards Christians, partly because of disillusionment with the religious establishment in Egypt. The new works were positive both in content and attitude, and fell into two main categories; biographical works about Jesus, and fictional works. Thumb-nail sketches, with a brief remarks on each, are listed below.
Muhammad Kamil Husain
Qarya Zalima or City of Wrong is the title of an important work on Christianity that received the Egyptian State Prize for literature in 1957, and which was translated into English, by Kenneth Cragg in 1994, and then into other Western languages. The author, Husain, was professor of surgery in Cairo University, but also a prolific author. The book is an examination of humanity’s hopes and fears by writing on what happened on Good Friday. Different characters are described, the prosecutor, the blacksmith, the merchant, the mufti, the ‘alim, Caiaphas. The crowd cried ‘crucify, crucify’. “So, like sheep, without knowing any wrong which Jesus has done, the people demanded his death: the community closed ranks and thereby shared the guilt around. Thus was Christ condemned to die on a cross? Can anyone afterwards feel the slightest trust in human wisdom?”
One of Hussein’s observations that is very relevant today bears special mention. “Faithful Christians are more eager to avoid wrongdoing than to promote good. Their fear of wrong is stronger than their concern for justice. Their dread of the fire of hell is greater than their effort to attain the garden of paradise.”
At the end of the book the impression is left that the main subject is humanity, humanity in community and humanity in religion and in particular the power of human beings in their religious community to do evil, to crush their conscience and do, communally, what individually they know quite well to be wrong.
The book neither states nor denies that Jesus was crucified.
City of Wrong thus centers on the events of Good Friday in Jerusalem. It deals with the motivation behind the intent to crucify Jesus. It is about humans, and their desire and ability to do evil as a community, rather than as individuals. The book’s main concern is sin, committed by consensus (ijma’), for Jesus was convicted by consensus, even though the members of that consensus probably knew that what they were each doing was wrong. Husain believed that the conscience was the guiding light for humanity, but it could be stifled by consensus.
Goddard commented on the work: “the author seems to miss either the depth of despair to which the disciples had sunk, or the magnitude of the news which brought them out which brought them to the proclamation of the message, regardless of the cost to themselves. He does not see that the Resurrection is a sign of hope and joy and Cross a symbol of the conquest of evil and the overcoming of death. Nevertheless, he did say that the introduction to the book, entitled Friday, could well serve as a meditation in a Good Friday service.
In other works by Husain, again translated by Cragg, he attempted to show the difference between the Muslim and the Christian conception of Sin. Zulm in Qur’an was not coterminous with shirk. It was much more than shirk, it included doing injustice. Christians, he said, see the sin of Adam, ‘original sin,’ ingrained in them; they are basically evil, incapable of salvation except by means of a savior, Jesus. Muslims, however, do not feel the weight of original sin, even though they were expelled from Paradise by the sin of Adam. Not only did Allah forgive Adam, but Islam holds that the human soul is basically good. If a person sins, he does wrong to his own soul, and does not need a savior. Cragg saw this also in Greek tragedy, Judaism and Christianity. He said that the idea of self wrong is not original to Islam, and asked if the knowledge of self wrong was sufficient to prevent it. He also challenged Husain’s conception of original sin. What original sin really meant was that there was no part of the human personality exempt of sinfulness. It was not the legacy of Adam, but rather the truth of Adamic humanity.
In another article on Adam in the Qur'an Husain argued that the Qur'an should not be used as a scientific textbook, containing predictions of scientific discovery. There were three main truths in the story of Adam; the first that God gave him a free will; the second that humans have an obligation to obey God; and the third that humans have rebelled against God. Christians would have no argument with these.
For the historian of the Christological debates in the early church Husain offered interesting insight as a Muslim, and he compared the debate on the uncreated Messiah with that of the uncreated Qur'an, and the tendency in both religions to call anyone with whom one disagreed an unbeliever. Those who are called to a specific belief began to use force against their enemies; al-Ma’mun is the obvious example among the Muslims. Cyril of Alexandria expelled the Jews. Nestorius is known for having burnt a monastery which differed from him. Secondly, religious belief is used as an excuse for other differences, so that al-Wathiq, for example, executed Ahmad b.Nasr for belief in the created Qur’an when it was really because of rebellion against the Sultan.
Husain wrote: “It will be worthy of the great religions …not to maximize their differences. They all derive from one source which is faith in the transcendent reality.” He also believed that there were characterized three main attitudes of God: fear, love and hope, whatever their nominal religion. Fear – more by the people of Moses; love – more by the disciples of Jesus, and hope in God - more by the disciples of Islam. Most religious people have the idea that sincerity in their own religion compels them to deny the belief of others completely. No one will deny the impact of Christianity on the history of Europe. But it would be wrong to attribute the crime and evil in this history to Christianity itself.
Husain then discussed the role of meditation and discipline in achieving purity of heart. In the final chapter the author mentioned the two types of religion - the enthusiastic or sincere and the fanatical. “The true believer loves other believers, while the fanatical believer hates those who differ from him. The greater part of the evils that have vitiated the secular history of religions have arisen from confusion here. The violence with which fanatical believers have persecuted those who differed from them shows how feeble their faith really was in their creeds and how inadequate they were to deal with any deviation.”
Husain rejected, in traditional Muslim fashion, the Christian ideas of atonement and redemption. What is interesting, however, is the fact that Christian beliefs on these subjects were not dismissed abruptly or mocked but were at least taken seriously.
Of all Muslim writers about Christianity in Egypt during this period, Muhammed Kamil Husain is the most positive and the most penetrating. He has a deep appreciation of earlier Muslim groups who were on the positive side of the medieval Muslim views of Christianity; in particular the Isma’ilis and the Ikhwan al-Safa. He also wrote fiction which delved into the subject of sin, and here Goddard said he came closer to the Christian view of sin as a pervasive bias, innate to all humans, rather than an occasional lapse.
Husain never saw Christianity as a Western import. He had Christian friends and knew Copts to be the Christians of Egypt. In summing up of all his work, Goddard concluded that Husain was the most positive and the most penetrating of all Egyptian writers on Christianity of his time.
‘Abd al-Hamid Gudah, al-Sahhar, ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad, Fathi ‘Uthman
These are three writers who have each written biographies of Jesus from the 1950’s and 60’s. They were all popular and well known authors. Al-Sahhar had founded a publishing house in 1943, which had become publishers of a lot of Egyptian fiction, including the works of Naguib Mahfuz. All three have some insight into Christianity, but are unable to appreciate the idea of redemption.
Al-Sahhar understood the importance of the kingdom in Jesus’ teaching, and used the term ‘Father’ to describe God, but said that it meant Lord. He said that Jesus did not claim divinity for himself, but that God had chosen him. He claimed that Judas Iscariot had been crucified in the place of Jesus. This is the traditional Islamic substitution theory.
Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad wrote a book ‘Abqariyat al-masih’ (The Genius of Christ). It was well received by both Egyptian Christians and Muslims. Later he wrote ‘Hayat al-masih’ (The Life of Christ). He understood that Jesus was a great and wise teacher, but when he described the crucifixion he said, “here we leave the realm of history and enter the realm of faith.” He had a deep sympathy for, and understanding of, Christ’s early ministry, but claimed agnosticism about the crucifixion.
Anawati described the book together with the City of Wrong as a new current of faint hope in Muslim writings about Christianity.
‘Uthman had read more Western books about Christ and quoted these in his biography. He appeared to understand Christ’s teaching that God was love and that all who were heavy laden should come to him; but he was incapable of understanding the Christian faith in the crucifixion, of which he presents the Islamic. He suggested that the Muslim idea of intercession of the prophets was close to the concept of salvation, since both contained the idea of the hope of forgiveness and mercy.
Naguib Mahfuz
Mahfuz is perhaps the best known Egyptian author. His 1959 novel Awlad haritna (The Children of our Quarter, or the English title Children of the Alley) is an allegory of human history. There are six main characters: al Jabalawi, the master of the quarter, who lives in ‘The Big House’: Adham, one of his sons, who is expelled from the big house; three characters, Jabal, Rifa’a and Qasim, who try to restore some sort of justice in the chaos following the expulsion, and finally ‘Arifa, the magician. Al Jabalawi appears to represent God, Adham Adam, Jabal Moses, Rifa’a Jesus, and Qasim Muhammed, and ‘Arafa Science (but equally he could represent Nietche or Marx.) Al’ Arafa thought he had the power through his magic to bring about the downfall of evil, but he ended up in causing the death of al-Jabalawi. It was this allusion to the ‘death of God’ that infuriated the Azharites, the religious sector, who tried to put Mahfuz on trial for heresy. The novel was first produced in serial form in the Al Ahram, but the government, in order not to offend the religious authorities, prevented its publication in book form until he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988.
It is the characterization of Rifa’a that is the most important for Christians. In his early life he develops an interest in exorcism to free the people of evil spirits. He rejects marriage to the daughter of a wealthy family and flees to the desert where al-Jabalawi encourages him to return, telling him to use his ‘inner strength.’ He does return and speaks up against violence: “Violence does us no good; every hour…we see people fighting, injuring and killing…Where is justice?” He also affirmed it was better to be killed than to kill. He saves the life of a prostitute who is to be stoned, by marrying her, but he never consummates the marriage. She later betrays him, and he is captured, led out into the desert and killed. He cries for help from al-Jabalawi, but is not heard. His followers are unable to find his body, and rumor spreads that al-Jabalawi has carried it off to the garden of ‘The Big House.’ One of his followers, Ali, is determined on vengeance, and Rifa’a’s wife is killed. After that they form a separate group, but their behavior becomes indistinguishable from the other children of the alley. Rifa’a’s message is submerged and forgotten. Mahfuz appeared to be very sympathetic towards Christ, but is that how he viewed Christians, futile in confronting evil? In fact, with the death of al-Jabalawi, evil appears to conquer.
The reaction to his book reinforced Mahfuz’ pessimism with respect to the religious establishment, and the prospect of any religious solution to his spiritual crisis. He appeared to be disillusioned with all organized religion, but continued to search throughout his life for a mystical supernatural power. He asked profound religious questions through the mouth of a simple child in a later novel, Jannat al-atfal (Child’s Paradise) which illustrate his continuing interest in religious questions. He affirmed: “For a while I wavered between the materialist and religious trends…but afterwards I finally settled upon faith as my own course.”
Ihsan ‘Abd al-Quddus
Al-Quddus is primarily a prolific writer of short stories, and of also a few novels, interested in religious diversity and divisiveness between followers of the monotheistic religions. God, to him, was one (salat), but basically unknown (majhul) which he had to be in order to be God. Both Jesus and Mohammed were called to God, and both died. Jesus was an ordinary man; his death was a historical event, but not a religious one. In life Al-Quddus was at odds with his traditional conservative Muslim background by marrying a lady from a Christian background, even though she had become Muslim. His works explored such divisions. They dealt with relations between Muslims and Christians, and between Muslims and Jews. He himself used to break all the rules by praying in mosque, church and synagogue prior to his exams, which his characters were unable to do, due to their religious tradition.
Salah ‘Abd al-Sabur
Al-Sabur’s grandfather was sheikh Ahmad Ridwan, a graduate of al-Azhar. His father was an artist who took as his wife Roz al-Yusuf, who had come from a Christian background but she had become a Muslim. Al-Sabur himself was literary editor of Al-Ahram, and in 1965 wrote Ma’sat al-Hallaj (The Tragedy of al-Hallaj, translated into English in 1972 as Murder in Baghdad.) It was a political play, critical of President Nasser’s government, so that it had to be first produced in Beirut rather than Cairo. The plot centered on the Baghdad crucifixion of al-Hallaj, the Persian mystic, in 922 and focused on the thoughts and motives involved. There were similarities with, and references to, the crucifixion of Jesus. Al-Hallaj was charged with heresy because he described himself as being influenced by the example of Christ. He said, “I saw my Beloved and I lost myself in Him,” and further, “I sinned against Him when I divulged the secret.” The Judge asked the crowd for their opinion. They screamed, “Death, death.” The judge asked, “His blood is upon you?” The crowd shouted in response, “His blood is upon us.”
The play was a criticism of unjust government, but the references to Jesus and to crucifixion may have been an indication of a positive understanding of the crucifixion in the face of an unjust government, and that the crucifixion could become a meaningful symbol in such circumstances. But crucifixion was just an important symbol and no more than that. The symbol would mean something different to a Christian than to a Muslim, which the Muslim would be incapable of understanding.
Goddard concluded, “Abd al-Sabur had an ‘instrumental’ view of Christianity. He used a Christian symbol or theme, viewed it positively, but the essential purpose of their doing was to make a fundamentally Islamic point. Abd al-Sabur uses the symbol of the cross to illustrate his feelings about the cost of opposition to an oppressive government. Goddard asked: “Is it possible for a Muslim to go beyond this and to take Christian symbolism seriously in Christian terms?”
To Al-Sabur God was basically unknown which he had to be in order to be God. But humans are star-crossed in not really knowing him. A prominent theme in his other works was the potential divisiveness of religion, both between Muslim and Christian and between Muslim and Jew.
In ‘Allah mahaba’ (God is love) which has been translated into English, a Coptic Christian girl falls in love with a Muslim. They toss a coin to see who will change their religion so that they can marry. She loses, but she cannot change because she is not of age, so he agrees to change, but her family refuses to accept him. They agree, therefore, to commit suicide together so that they can be together in heaven. She succeeds, but he does not.
‘Ana wa’l-sama’ (Heaven and I) told a story of a Copt who always said that he was a Copt whenever he met anybody because he once fell in love with a Muslim girl who just assumed that he was Muslim.
One story ‘Martyr in Dishna’ used an important Christian metaphor as a way to achieve reconciliation. A Cairo educated lawyer returned to his home village of Dishna after graduation. In an accident one of his cousins was killed and so the family decided on revenge. He argued against this but was defeated and revenge was taken. The feud continued until four more people had been killed. The lawyer then became the head of the family and thus the target for the next revenge killing: he tried to produce reconciliation, even going to the extent of humiliating himself by walking through the streets to the house of his opponents with a coffin shroud wrapped around his head. As he approached the house, he said to himself, ‘You are saving the blood of two families. You are bearing all this for the sake of humanity, so that love and harmony will prevail. Just like Christ you are willing to suffer for mankind’s sake.’ His enemies forgave him, but his own family rejected him and started to plan to kill him. In the end, however, they decided not to on condition that he return to Cairo, separated from his wife and children, on the understanding that if he set foot in Dishna again, he would be killed.
Muhammad al-Nuwaihi
Nuwaihi wrote no biography of Christ, nor fictional work alluding to him, but his writing was positive towards Christianity. Prior to his death in 1980 he was professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the American University in Cairo. He had an interest in the problem of ‘modernizing’ Islam. He suggested the need of intellectual, social, political and economic modernization. He argued that these changes needed to be applied to the Shari’a so that the flexibility of the early centuries of Islam could be restored. Recently it had become rigid and immutable. He noted parallel changes in modern Christianity in that some could no longer accept the doctrine of original sin and the sacrifice of the Innocent Lamb, for much the same reason as Muslims had argued for centuries. However, while never ceasing to be a Muslim, he nevertheless believed in a redeeming God, but all the prophets, not only Christ, played a redemptive role through their suffering and intercession, and Muhammad had suffered as had Jesus. He argued that the Qur'an saw the need for some kind of sacrifice and atonement. He pointed to the change in understanding of the Bible among Christians over the past century. A literal understanding had given way to a metaphorical or symbolic one. He wrote, “In our religious thought we have not yet reached the stage which those Christians have reached of taking religious beliefs as symbols.” Perhaps he envied Christians their liberal interpretation of scripture. “They do not believe that it is the literal word of God, but rather that it is a word written by men ‘in a state of inspiration’. This understanding gives them much greater freedom in understanding the text of the Bible and interpreting it.”
Al-Nuwaihi wrote about the fundamental differences with Christianity:
“Islam denies the crucifixion. Jesus, Muslims believe, was indeed placed on the cross, but he was saved and lifted up from it by divine intervention. Islam rejects the idea that God would allow Jesus to be killed, which fate would have been a violation of divine justice and would even have constituted an act of treachery. Thus the great and central idea of redemption through Jesus is denounced, and this stems from the basic concept that man is not born a sinner loaded with original sin so as to need a redeemer.”
He noted that quite a number of Christians found that their modern conscience could not accept the doctrines of original sin and the sacrifices of the Innocent Lamb, for much of the same reasons as had been argued by Muslims for many centuries.
In response to a paper that Redemption was a universal concept, he wrote,
“No religion would appear to be more condemnatory of the idea of Redemption than orthodox Islam. By its uncompromising insistence on the Oneness of God and horrified rejection of the Trinity; by its vehement assertion of God’s uniqueness, incomparability and transcendency, and the resulting denial of all anthropomorphism and of the possibility of His incarnation in any material form; by its refusal of the concept of original sin and of collective guilt and its declaration that every an is responsible only for his own actions and has himself to expiate his sins, and its resulting denial of the need for vicarious sacrifice - by these fundamental tenets…Islam would seem to be completely and irreconcilably opposed to any idea of Redemption whatsoever. And the fact is that the vast majority of Muslims view with the greatest loathing the idea of God sacrificing His own Son to atone for the sin of man. To them this would constitute an act of injustice and even base treachery which is impossible to emanate from the good and just Deity…”
“It may yet be argued that the Qur’an itself contains some other elements which, had they been developed, would have resulted in an attitude not so inimical to the concept of redemption.”
“For the Qur’an itself asserts and reiterates God’s concern for man. The God of the Qur’an is a very personal God, intimately involved in man’s innermost heart. The emphasis on the austere, aloof, forbidding image of Him was a later development, and was one that may be justly considered contrary to the ruling spirit of the Qur’an.”
He asked why there was the need for such sacrificial atonement? It arose, he wrote, from man’s basic weakness. Some Qur’anic verses stateed that man was by nature capable of both good and bad, hence he had a free choice. Still other verses, however, stated that man was evil by nature, aggressive, unjust, ungrateful, quick to anger, greedy, avaricious, boastful, tendentious, impatient, vain when feeling safe and chicken-hearted in adversity. So man could never save himself. But Nuwaihi concluded that the barrier between Muslims and Christians was not as deep as once thought. Through a more pessimistic understanding of the nature of man he has come to view positively a central Christian idea.
Goddard said of Muhammad al-Nuwaihi that he went beyond a use of the cross to an understanding of its significance from within a Christian context, and even went on to elaborate on how that important Christian theme existed within the Quran and within subsequent Islamic thought.
6. Contemporary Egyptian Muslim Intermediate Literature
Between the polemical and the irenic literature there is an intermediate group, neither explicitly positive nor negative towards Christianity. These writers are now discussed.
Hasan Hanafi
Hanafi was highly educated and literate in philosophy. He took Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in 1966 on existential hermeneutics with reference to the New Testament. He became Professor of Philosophy at Cairo University and was involved in Christian-Muslim dialogue. For four years he was visiting professor at Temple University in the U.S.A.. His attitude towards Christianity was remarkably similar to that of most traditional writings on the subject.
To Hanafi the Qur’an made a distinction between the Jesus of Faith and the Jesus of History. The Qur’an rejected the crucifixion of Christ on the same basis. It was mere conjecture. Nobody could ever be certain of his death. Much of Hanafi’s interest in Christianity was not in faith per se, but it served the way in which, in his opinion, Islam should develop. Since the ideas of much modern Western thought were highly suspect to traditional Islam and therefore unlikely to pass the censor in Egypt, Hanafi wrote commentaries on Western works in order to camouflage his opinions. In one summary of his views he said, “I am a Feuerbachian.” (Feuerback was a 19th century philosopher who took to extremes the process of humanizing God by arguing that the idea of God was no more than a projection of human ideals and desires.) He used the example of modern Christianity to explain his views of the path Islam should follow, which was the main purpose of his interest in Christianity. Hanafi did try to ‘modernize’ Islam, by emphasizing, not so much the transcendence of God, but his immanence. His desire was to transform religion from an other worldly preoccupation to a this worldly activity.
In his writings there was a liberal use of jargon, with repeated assertion of the superiority of Islam to Christianity. For instance, “Islam preconceived the Sola Scripture of Protestantism, the ethical Christianity of Harnack, the critical studies of Renan, the mythical interpretations of Strauss, Bauer [sic] and Feuerbach.” In his view Islam was superior because the Qur’an was the record of the very words of God. In the Bible there was no distinction between scripture and tradition. The Bible was a partial revelation, in which “God is characterized in obscene anthropomorphism. The prophets steal and kill, commit incest and adultery…The Word of God has been confused and intermingled with the word of man.”
Double standards in Hanafi are obvious. “The Qur’an describes the people of the book as ethnocentric. They mock other revelations and other prophets except theirs. They discredit every other cult except their own, although all revelations are from God, all prophets are sent from God or all prayers are for God [sic]. They also want to uproot all other believers out of their faith and make them Christians or Jews. Any other community than theirs can be cheated, humiliated, enslaved and even annihilated! That is why a dialogue with them is impossible. A fortiori, they will never believe in Islam or become Muslims. They live together, marry each other and live in absolute narcissism which is the prototype of a closed society.”
Goddard commented that such double standard became clear when Christians and Jews were accused of wanting other people to become Christians or Jews, only for it to be added that dialogue was impossible, since they would never believe in Islam or become Muslims. Hanafi believed that only Islam was in a legitimate position for any inter-religious dialogue, since it confirmed the Torah and the Gospel; whereas Christians and Jews both denied one or more of the Scriptures involved. Therefore Hanafi asserted, “Only Muslims can speak with Jews and Christians because Muslims believe in all revelation as one. They can deal with the other two communities of faith with open minds, without rancor or animosity.”
He further claimed that Islam came into existence to correct Christianity. In fact he ascribed that modern Western philosophical thought had its origins in Islam. Islam found faith and reason identical and passed it on to Medieval Europe. Kant praised Ibn Rushd for making the history of mankind a history of reason; Wellhausen was a Muslim in respect of preservation of Scripture. The revolt against ecclesia, censorship and tutorship all had an Islamic motivation. With respect to the future, “Islamic monotheism can guide the European conscience in its wilderness and aberration and guide it towards the focus of reality.”
Hanafi claimed that ‘Abraham was not a Jew or a Christian but a pure and true Muslim’ and there was only one religion, Islam, that had been founded by Abraham. The religion of Abraham was the religion of Reason. He was a seeker of truth. Judaism was the religion of children, relying on the senses; Christianity the religion of early adolescence, relying on feelings; Islam the religion of mature man, relying on reason.
Chapter 7 of his Religious Dialogue and Revolution consisted of a review of Paul Khoury’s 1973 book on Islam and Christianity. Hanafi argued that Khoury had confused Islam per se and Islamic culture. Goddard commented that in general Hanafi’s view of dialogue may be compared with that of Isma’il al-Faruqi, who stated quite clearly that the end, or aim, of dialogue, was conversion, and yet went on to assert that he was pessimistic about the prospects for Muslim-Christian dialogue because the Christians were too condescending.
Hanafi attacked Paul. “What passivity! Somebody sins for man and someone else saves him, and he is between them sinful and saved! Mediation, redemption, salvation - all these categories are forged by dogmatic theology inaugurated by Paul.” In a paper for the United Presbyterian Church of the USA he admitted that Jesus was ‘put to death as were other prophets.’ This appeared to contradict what he had said elsewhere. Goddard speculated whether this was a case of suiting the message to the hearer.
In his writing about Africa, “Islam is an ideological offer to the natives as well as Christianity. It is up to Africa to choose between the destruction of African cultural identity and independence as it is the case through African Christianism [sic] missionaries or the affirmation of Africa’s cultural identity and independence through Islam.”
G.C. Anawati referred in 1969 to Hanafi as a figure of hope but added that it was too early to judge his works. Goddard commented that Hanafi displayed a vast knowledge of Christianity, but without displaying much understanding of it, and so some hopes expressed about his writings had not been fulfilled. His knowledge of Christianity was used primarily as a means to explain his own views of how Islam should develop, towards a theology of revolution, and the understanding of Christianity was thus not one of his aims at all.
It was in some ways his development of ‘politicized’ religion of Afghani and ‘Abduh with a much greater knowledge of Western and Christian sources, which he nevertheless applied negatively, to expose rather than to understand Christianity. In that sense he was an heir of Rahmat Allah al-Hindi and Rashid Rida too, since they used their knowledge of Western sources to buttress an essentially traditional Muslim view of Christianity. Goddard’s final word on Hanafi was that though he had a greater sophistication and expertise than all the other figures, neither his tone, nor his ultimate intent, was very different from theirs.
Mustafa Mahmud
Mahmud trained in medicine, not in philosophy or theology, but developed an interest in religious matters. He wrote for the man in the street, rather than the academic, and was very popular, especially with the young reader, who had found no guidance in more traditional authors, but was hungry for spiritual leadership. He addressed problems that concerned modern Egyptians and occasionally delved into politics. He once wrote an article in Al Ahram, That is the Problem, O Khomeini (1979) strongly critical of the Islamic leader of Iran. A rather predictable reply came in Al-da’wa, the magazine of the Muslim Brethren, entitled That is the malady, O Doctor.
His writings on religion have been the most popular of all his writings. Mahmud saw God as the essence of all religions. Religion was one in respect of belief, but the paths (al-sharia’) differed. There were many prophets, even though they may not have been mentioned in the Qur’an. Buddha was a prophet, as were Akhnaten and Jesus, but there was no Incarnation. Jesus taught a message of love, but that none was good but God alone, and so he rejected divinity. He noted that Akhnaten also called himself the Son of God; and both Arius and Nestorius rejected Paul’s giving of the title ‘Lord and Savior’ to Jesus. Thus a fairly traditional Muslim view of Jesus is evident.
He also had a traditional view of the Bible. Although Islam was the only religion that recognized all the prophets and all the scriptures, yet all but the Qur'an had been corrupted. Mahmud quoted from Ecclesiastes, Job, the Psalms and Proverbs, all of which he described as ‘jewels’ in the midst of pages of rubbish. Charges of corruption were made. He quoted Christian witnesses to this fact; such as Augustine, who said that the Jews had corrupted scripture, and Luther who said that we should neither listen to, nor look at, Moses, for he was for the Jews only and had no relevance for Christians. Only the Qur’an was uncorrupted. He even believed that the Qur’an spoke of some 20th century scientific discoveries. Mahmud referred to a French surgeon, Maurice Bucaille, who became convinced that the Qur’an’s statements about scientific matters were so much more reliable than those of the Bible that he became a Muslim. Mahmud wrote of his close friend, Ahmad ‘Abd al-Wahhab, who authored ‘Jesus in the sources of Christian beliefs in the West’. He argued that Western Christian sources themselves were beginning to testify to the corruption of Christian belief.
He addressed the question of the end of time in a work, Are We at the End of Time? and answered in the affirmative. This was firstly because of the spread of technological progress, which had given rise to man’s feeling that he was master of everything; ‘man has imagined himself to be a god.’ Secondly, it was because of a number a signs, one of which was the coming together of the Jews into one country (watan). In this respect Qur’an 17:104 was cited, “And we said unto the Children of Israel after him [Moses], ‘Dwell in the land; but when the promise of the Hereafter comes to pass we will bring you together as a crowd.’” This was the prerequisite for the ‘final war’ between the Arabs and Israel, when the Arabs would enter Jerusalem. Mahmud saw proof of this in that Saudi Arabia had become the richest kingdom in the world in ten years, not because of the Saudis genius or hard work, but simply as a gift from God. God also raised up men of religion like Abu’l-‘ala al-Maududi. Another sign was the decline of ethics; men dressing as women. All this, he argued, pointed to an imminent apocalypse, and he noted that Christians believed the same.
Mahmud attempted to lead laymen to rethink Islam for a modern age. He was bitterly critical of the traditional men of religion, accusing them of hypocrisy and of worshipping self-interest, themselves rather than God.
Reaction to Mahmud has been varied. One conservative Azharite writer, ‘Abd al-Wudud Shalabi, accused him of being influenced by Christians by alleging that when Mahmud’s book ‘Allah wa’l-insan (God and man) was first published he was invited by a Coptic bishop to visit him and the bishop then encouraged him to pursue such studies. Mahmud commented in an interview with Goddard that he found that claim rather puzzling, but not so puzzling as when the Communists encouraged him to write on the Qur’an. He said that 90% of his friends were Christians and that he had received much encouragement from Egyptian Christians and also from the Dominicans in Cairo. His main purpose though was not to discuss Christianity. Like Hanafi he was concerned primarily to ‘modernize’ Islam. Neither of these authors displayed a deep understanding of Christianity. Mahmud enjoyed a wider readership and was less political than Hanafi.
Khalid Muhammad Khalid
Khalid was an Azharite, a strict Muslim, until 1950 when he wrote a book ‘Min huna nabda’ (We begin from here), which was banned by the Azhar, but was rehabilitated by a civil court. In the book he compared great teachers; not only Jesus and Mohammad, but also Socrates and Buddha. The teaching of all these agreed upon the protection of man and the protection of life.
In 1958 he wrote Ma’an ‘ala’l-tariq – Muhammad wa’l-masih (Together on the road – Muhammad and Jesus,) dedicated to Jamila Bouhred, the heroine of the Algerian revolution. On the cover it said: “The prophets are brothers; their mothers are different, but their religion is one.” The book was a powerful affirmation of the brotherhood of Jesus and Muhammad, particularly in their social teaching and world affairs. In the final chapter, entitled, Barabbas or Jesus? he said that Muhammad himself announced that Jesus would return and would fill the world with light, peace and justice; and whenever those things were fulfilled in the world, the return of Jesus would be fulfilled too. Therefore, “We, with ‘the faithful apostle’ affirm Jesus and not Barabbas.” It was a powerful affirmation of the brotherhood of Jesus and Muhammad.
As a Muslim liberal he quoted only the sayings of Muhammad in the Hadith, which bore some Christian influence. It was not primarily a book about Christianity, being concerned with social issues, but it was positive in what it did say. Goddard concluded, “Like al-Ghazali, the use made of Jesus’s sayings is neutral, and in that sense the book as a whole is also neutral.”
Mahmud Abu Rayya
Abu Rayya, a liberal Azharite (from al Azhar University) was an authority on the authenticity of the Hadith. In 1963 he wrote Din allah wahid – muhammad wa’l-masih akhawan (The religion of God is one – Muhammad and Jesus are brothers.) The title provoked such a reaction that it had to be withdrawn, and in 1970 a second edition appeared with the title Din allah wahid – ‘ala alsina jami’ al-rasul (The religion of God is one – from the lips of all the prophets.) In the introduction he commented on the reception of the first edition, namely that before it had even appeared rumors were spreading that it was against the Islamic religion and would undermine the thoughts of the faithful. Taha Hussein had read the draft of the second edition and wrote to the Minister of Culture, Dr. Abd al-Qadir Hatim, emphasizing that there was no contradiction with the glorious religion of Islam or any infringement upon any other heavenly religion. Therefore, Hussein urged, it was vital that the book be published in order to preserve freedom of thought in the country. The book was then published and was widely accepted. Taha came later to his assistance for the publication of other books.
The theme is, as the title says, that the monotheistic religions are one and that their followers are brothers, even though they be from different mothers. This precluded the non-monotheistic religions, as he was writing for Egyptians; but he pleaded for brotherhood and tolerance, rather than strife and rivalry. He did not attempt to promote an understanding of Christianity, but merely better relations between Muslims and Christians.
Abu Rayya told a story of an event in Mansoura, his home town. A Copt had died and a man said, “May God have mercy upon him”, but he was reproached for this by others of his co-religionists - how could he seek God’s mercy for a nasrani (Christian) who was a kafir (unbeliever)? The man said that the Christians were not kafirs according to the Qur’an. A Christian deserved the mercy of God quite simply because he was a human being. God had ordained that the Christians were ‘People of the Book’, so God’s mercy was open to all his servants.
Abu Rayya then recounted the incident of a Muslim Sheikh who in a debate with a Copt cited the Qur’anic verse, “Believe only in those who follow your religion” (4:73) and therefore dismissed the idea of a serious debate. Abu Rayya told the Sheikh to look at the context of the verse, the verses before and after, and to his embarrassment the Sheikh discovered that the verse he had quoted was a record of what the Jews had said and was therefore not a Qur’anic commendation but rather a condemnation. Rather, in the words of 5:82, the Christians are the nearest to the Muslims; and in the words of the hadith of Muslim, as described to Mohammed himself, “Deal well with the Copt, because he has a covenant (dhimma) and a mercy” (Muslim 44:226). Unity was in the interests of both Christians and Muslims. The religion of God was one, and therefore the men of religion should be one. Love was preferable to hate; and anyone who promoted division was not honest, either in his faith or in his patriotism.
Abu Rayya discussed the Qur’anic verse “The religion in God’s presence is Islam” (3:19), and argued that this therefore included every community to which prophets came, as all the prophets proclaimed Islam - Noah, Abraham and so on; the Christian warrior, al-Akhtal, was a Muslim while being a Christian. There were different expressions of Islam and the gist of it is monotheism.
He referred to Micah 6:8, “to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Muhammad’s message to the ahl al-kitab was to return to the worship of the one true God. Muslims should only debate with the Christians ‘what is better.’ Da’wa should be wise and peaceful, not based on fanatical hatred and overpowering people. Then followed a chapter arguing that the ahl al-kitab - Jews and Christians - are not mushrikun or kafirun. Judgment of belief was not the right of any created thing; only God could judge.
It was not true religion that said, “My religion is better than yours.” It was works that were the test, not words or strength of belief. If each returned to their original teachings there would be no difference in them. However, Jesus’ religion was twisted at the time of Constantine.
Goddard concluded that Abu Rayya sought a positive attitude towards Christianity but basic tenets of the Christian faith, such as the vicarious suffering of Christ, were simply dismissed as inconceivable or mistaken. His ideas were perhaps closest to the classical writer Ibn ‘Arabi (d.1240) who believed that all religions were equivalent, since the divine was working in each, and in each God was worshipped.
Anwar al-Sadat
In Anwar al-Sadat’s autobiography, Al-bahth ‘an al-dhat, (In search for the self) he spoke of the influence of Christians on him. He described how he was educated at a Coptic school in Toukh and how impressed he was by a visit to the Coptic monasteries of Deir al-Muharraq in Upper Egypt. He felt a special kinship with them. When in the Cairo Central Prison, 1947-48, he read from Lloyd C. Douglas and an article in Reader’s Digest by a psychologist on how to overcome one’s troubles, and came to a faith in God. He wrote, “Love ultimately triumphs…I am by nature committed to love”.
The three elements of his faith were first mysticism and second suffering, both of which led to a closer relationship with God; and, thirdly, what he called friendship with God. These are not exclusively Christian, or Muslim, but they reflect an interest in Christian tradition. But he remained true Muslim in his thinking that Christ was not killed, but rather a substitute died in his stead. His aim was, perhaps from political motives, to increase the harmony between Copts and Muslims in Egypt. Yet, during his regime Copts and Muslims did clash and Sadat made some very negative statements about Christians.
Fathi Ridwan
Ridwan was considered ‘of all modern Muslim writers the most sympathetic to Christian ways of thinking.’ In 1962 he wrote a one act play, Ilah raghm anfihi, (A god in spite of himself.) It considered the deification of a political leader in ancient Egypt. It was about a politician who was declared by three monks to be a god. In spite of his protestations that he was only a man, everyone accepted him as a god. Ridwan explained in the preface that the idea came when people in India wanted to make Nehru a god. But there were Christian overtones in that Ridwan’s god was Christ like; he suffered and was a friend of the weak and the poor. It showed sympathy for Jesus, but rejected any idea of Incarnation. Ridwan concluded, “Jesus was a man whom his disciples made into God and that is just unacceptable.”
For his incomplete understanding of Christianity Goddard placed him, with the others mentioned in this chapter, in the intermediate category.
Conclusion: Material from Other Parts of the Islamic World
In this final chapter Goddard summarized very briefly writers from other Islamic countries and concluded that they were not too different from Egyptians, whom he had described in greater detail. In the last century Egypt had been the centre of thought in the Islamic world. However, he quoted an Iranian, Sayyid Husain Nasr, whom he said had given the most succinct statement about the real difference between Christianity and Islam, by either a Christian or a Muslim.
Christianity is essentially a mystery which veils the Divine from man. The beauty of Christianity lies in the acceptance of God as mystery, and in bowing before this mystery…In Islam, however, it is man who is veiled from God. The Divine Being is not veiled from us, we are veiled from Him, and it is for us to try to rend this veil asunder, to try to know God…Islam is thus essentially a way of knowledge; it is the way of gnosis (ma’rifah.)
In the final summary of his work Goddard said that there was no one view, but a spectrum, of what Muslims thought of Christians, just as there was a spectrum of what Christians thought of Muslims. The implications of this were that some might see another person’s faith
as good as his own, pluralism;
or their own as better than another’s, inclusivism, which did not deny that the other person’s faith might still be good;
or their own as the best, exclusivism, which tended to state that the other’s faith is not good at all, but rather bad.
We were left, Goddard concluded, with the intriguing question for Christian-Muslim relations – why, in thinking about the other’s religion, did religion – either Christian or Muslim – make some people nice and some people nasty?
The answer to that question should make us all examine our own faith all the more closely, and to learn what others are saying about us, and we should be much more careful what we say about them, because whatever we say, like the boomerang, can have repercussions. It is in the interest of Christians, especially those living in Islamic lands, to elicit positive responses from their Muslim neighbors and thus to win them as friends. That is not done by avoiding discussions about real issues of concern, but by presenting these concerns in an honest way and in context, away from partisanship, always ready to distinguish socio-economic-cultural factors from religious factors, and ready to see issues in a larger context. Of course Christians should not be afraid to ask their Muslim friends questions about their interpretation of the Qur'an or of the Bible. Hard questions can and should be asked but we should also be willing to listen to the answers, even if we might not agree with them. We should love them, our neighbors, as much as we love ourselves.
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