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Present-day Christian intellectuals are accustomed to applying historical-critical methods to their own sacred texts, and would naturally expect their Islamic counterparts to do the same thing, but this is not so. So far, the only scholars to apply scientific-critical skepticism to the Qu’ran, and to propose for it an extensive period of oral change and development, have been Westerners.13 Muslim academics, whether modernist or traditional, simply have not accepted this approach in any appreciable numbers. This is because of the nature and content of the Qu’ran itself. The Qu’ran is emphatically concerned about Scripture. It believes that Scripture has been God’s primary means of self-disclosure throughout the ages. It asserts that the Hebrew and Christian scriptures represent badly preserved, but genuine, records of God’s previous self-revelation. And it contains a strong polemic against both Christians and Jews for having tampered with God’s texts.14 Probably as a result of this, there is a tradition within Islam, from the very beginning, of scrupulous care in the preservation and transmission of the Qu’ranic text.
In this paper we must not belabour textual issues. Suffice it to say that the sacredness and divinity of the Qu’ranic text has been at the very heart of Islam from the beginning. The Qu’ran is God speaking. The Qu’ran is everything God wishes us to know. There is no source of knowledge higher than the Qu’ran. Neither Science, nor our own experience, nor empirical observation, nor any other sacred scripture, is valid as a source of knowledge, if it contains information which contradicts the message of the Qu’ran.
When we turn to Christianity, we find sacred texts in plenty, but the fundamental orientation is to the person of Jesus Christ. Think, for instance, of a familiar Christian scene: a preacher holding a congregation spellbound. In some ways, the preacher is similar to the blind bhagi of Mauritania, for his words spatter like bullets, and whisper, and shake, and command. But while what he says is liberally salted with sacred texts, the mixture and the composition are his own creation. “Your Lord Jesus loves you so deeply!” he proclaims, “His hands, once nailed to the cross, reach out in love to embrace you and me and the whole world! Jesus is calling you by name, and has done so from before you were created in the womb....”
The people respond at a gut level, with smiles, and tears, and shouts of “Amen.” For here they are in contact with God. The preacher's portrait of Jesus is for them a true and reliable vision of the nature of all that is.
Christian intellectuals might shy away from the emotionalism of the gospel-house meeting, but some picture of Jesus, perhaps drawn in language more restrained, still orients their lives. Consider this image by Harvey Cox, who came to fame in the nineteen sixties with his popularization of the so-called “Death of God” theology:
Christ has come to previous generations in various guises, as teacher, as judge, as healer.... Now... Enter Christ the harlequin: the personification of festivity and fantasy in an age that had almost lost both. Coming now in greasepaint and halo, this Christ is able to touch our jaded modern consciousness as other images of Christ cannot.15
The word “Christ” has become, in the hands of Christians, a kind of free-moving image, rooted in Scripture but not tied to it. This image may or may not correspond in detail with the historical Jesus, but it never strays too far from the personality of Jesus as portrayed in the Christian Gospels. For the composite Gospel figure is held by every Christian to be a sufficient portrait both of the nature of God, and of the proper behaviour of humans. This portrait, freely toyed with and crafted by preachers and by writers, but always moving around the anchor of the New Testament, is the Christian's life-orienting doctrine. Any Christian, whether evangelical and literal, or intellectual and critical, desires their own life to be “Christ-like,” and to serve a God who is like Christ.
We are now in a position to grasp the difference in orientation between Scarpatti and Ibadiyah. Ibadiyah treated the Qu’ran as a primary and accurate source of information, not only about life in general, but about Christianity and about Jesus. If a Christian portrait of Jesus, whether in the Gospels or in the mind of a believer, contradicted the portrait of him found in the Qu’ran, Ibadiyah would simply dismiss it. In fact, the more a Christian such as Scarpatti were to acknowledge that parts of the New Testament might be open to question, the more Ibadiyah felt his own belief in the truth of the Qu’ran to be confirmed! For, has not the Qu’ran itself said that Christians have altered their texts?
To Scarpatti, meanwhile, the New Testament portrait of Jesus might not have given much information about science or diplomacy, but it was, in a profound way, the Truth about the nature of God and the nature of human life. He unconsciously dismissed huge portions of the Old Testament, and even parts of the New, if they did not conform to his understanding of the purpose and mission of Jesus; with how much more ease, therefore, would he dismiss the un-Christlike verses of the Qu’ran, or the un-Christlike deeds of Muhammad!
5. Uncovering the difference
It was the third day, and the two of them were having dinner together. Ibadiyah was speaking.
“Muslims,” he said, “Have always wanted to be in honest dialogue with Christians, you know.”
“Open-minded Muslims like you, perhaps. But my impression is that Islam as a whole wants us to convert!”
“Islam as a whole wants to submit to the will of God, and God very definitely wants the whole world to submit to him! If that is what you mean by ‘convert’, then I should hope you are already ‘converted’! But if you mean by ‘convert’ that we request you to stop believing in Jesus the Messiah, then you are quite mistaken.”
“How can you say that? Doesn’t the Qu’ran reject the idea that Jesus is the Son of God?”
“Oh yes, but it does not reject his title of ‘Messiah.’ The distinction may be subtle, but it is worth examining. That is why God also calls us to enter into dialogue. ‘O people of the Book,’ he says, ‘let us come together under a fair principle common to all of us...’16 You see, long before we agree about the Messiah, we are urged to talk together as equals, to discuss our differences, and to discover our common principles!”
“Fair enough, then,” said Scarpatti, “Let’s talk about the Messiah. What does the word mean to you?”
“It means he is one of the greatest of God’s messengers. And it means we are to believe in the message God sent to us through him.”
“All of his message?”
“Certainly.”
“Including the bit about love and forgiveness?”
“Oh, indeed yes! His great compassion is a very important example for us. His miracles, both of power and of healing, are clearly attested, as is his own submission to God, and his uncompromising stand against wrongdoing.”
“I don’t know whether I would use the words ‘uncompromising stand’ to describe Jesus.... I guess I think of him as a little more flexible than that, a little more generous...”
“Then how would you describe his refusal to bend before Pilate? His clearing away of those who defiled the sacred temple? His cursing of all who rebel and commit evil?”17
“‘Cursing all who rebel?’ I know about the time he cursed a fig tree, when did he curse those who rebel?”
“I don’t know whether the New Testament uses those exact words, but it is certain that he cursed various people.”
“It is?”
“How else would you call his condemnation of the Scribes and Pharisees? Were they not rebelling, changing the commandments of God, and oppressing the poor? And was Jesus not cursing them? How else would you call what he said about the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida, when they rebelled against his message? Was not his pronouncement that they faced something worse than the punishment of Sodom a very serious curse? What else would you call tying a millstone around someone and throwing them into the sea?”18
Scarpatti threw up his hands. “Okay! Okay!” he laughed, “I don’t know how you do it! You have strung together a whole bunch of New Testament passages which I cannot deny are there, and yet you have made of them a portrait which just... I don’t know... it just doesn’t ring true!”
“I regret that I have made you uncomfortable. Truly it is presuming too much to quote the New Testament to a Christian.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. In fact I find it rather fascinating. It is as if you, being a Muslim, with your emphasis on Judgement Day and conflict, have sifted out all the elements in the Jesus story that I find most moving and beautiful, and have left in the stuff that I find disturbing....”
“What have I, as you say, ‘Sifted out?’”
“Oh, the love, the forgiveness, the gentleness of Jesus...”
“I mentioned his great compassion!”
“Yes, but by the time you had finished, the compassion was almost drowned out by a kind of anger and violence which I think is totally foreign to the character of Jesus.”
“Perhaps the Muslim picture of Jesus is just more complete...?”
“In the interest of courtesy I might pretend to agree, but I can’t. Your picture of Jesus seems to be influenced by the worst side of Islam, the violent, the combative, the Jihad-proclaiming side....”
“Ahh, ‘Jihad,’ I was wondering when you would bring it up.... Using Jihad and similar Islamic concepts, which you have never actually studied, you Westerners have concocted for yourselves a completely false stereotype of the Muslim, as a bloodthirsty and fanatical bandit. It is such a distortion of the truth that I get very angry.
“Listen, once and for all. Jihad was instituted by God as a formal declaration of war by a sovereign nation. Its purpose is to further the cause of justice, dignity, and Qu’ranic law against forces bent on undermining these values. And it is responsive, not aggressive. God has said, ‘do not attack first. Allah does not love the aggressor.’19 It is unthinkable that a true Muslim would condone unlawful violence, or crimes against humanity, or terrorism against innocent people, committed under the pretext of Jihad!20
“Why do you think our Egyptian criminal, Islambouli, has been sentenced to death? Because we approve of his form of Jihad? Please. Islam has always condemned violence like that.
“But I can see that you do not believe me. You prefer to think of Muslims as crazy people covered in blood!”
“Not all Muslims. But I guess I see Islam, as a whole, as being a religion founded on violent principles. Muhammad himself, in the name of God, shed a large amount of blood, did he not?”
“Only in defence of Islam. As I said, aggression is forbidden, but defence is permitted.”
“I thought Muhammad led the big military assault on Mecca.”
“This was only in response to an attack which the people of Mecca themselves were planning. Legitimate defence can include a preemptive strike.”
“Then what about the massacre of the Jews of Medina? Six hundred unarmed men, killed in cold blood!”21
“You know more Islamic history than I thought! However, using the word massacre shows that you have viewed even this through the eyes of Western propaganda. It was not a massacre it was an execution done strictly according to law.22 The Banu Quraiza Jews had betrayed Medina and the Muslims in the midst of a major war. Muhammad, may Peace be upon him, was instructed by Divine Revelation to punish them for this treason. They were permitted to select their own judge, who judged them according to their Law.23 And, please, I a not minimizing it. The event took place in wartime, and terrible times often require terrible deeds. Think of the bombing of Dresden, or of Hiroshima, think of the massacres conducted by Christian soldiers in all kinds of wars.”
“I am all too painfully aware of the horrors of war. But I do think there is a difference between military necessity, and the founding act of a religion. Muhammad did what he did in the name of God. He was laying the groundwork for a divine society on earth. I believe he should have emphasized unconditional love, forgiveness, and gentleness, like Jesus did.
“That may be because you take too one-sided a view of the Messiah.”
“I don t think I do. Jesus was stern at times, as you have shown, but he really wasn’t violent. His response to aggression was to forgive it, not to retaliate, and when he taught his disciples to take up their ‘cross’ and follow him,24 he showed that he expected of them a gentle response even if they were under attack. In fact I beIieve that through Jesus, God caIls all of us to make a practice of ‘turning the other cheek.’25 Doing so is a sign of the highest moral virtue, for everyone.”
“I am very sorry but I do not believe you.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you truly believe, as you say, that God commands you to turn the other cheek, then why do you have armies? Why do you have police? Please. Practice what you preach!”
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