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Islam and Christianity Today
A Contribution to Dialogue
W M Watt
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Islam and Christianity Today
A Contribution to Dialogue
W M Watt
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In this volume, originally published in 1983, W Montgomery Watt looks at the meeting of Christianity and Islam, how they see and have seen each other, and considers how they can aid each other in dealing with the problems of the world today. He emphasizes those beliefs which Christianity and Islam have in common, and shows how they may be justified intellectually.
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Chapter 1
Attitudes and approaches
Although this study is chiefly concerned with the meeting of Islam and Christianity in the present, it is important to look briefly at the way in which contemporary attitudes
have been shaped by the past.
I Traditional Islamic attitudes to Christianity
Through the preaching of Muhammad in the early seventh century AD Islam came into being in a region in which certain Jewish and Christian ideas were
circulating. Meccan merchants went regularly to places like Gaza and Damascus in the Byzantine empire, which was Orthodox Christian, and they also had contacts with the Abyssinian or Ethopian
empire, which was Monophysite Christian. In Mecca itself there were a few Christian individuals, mostly outsiders, while in Medina, where Muhammad lived from 622 to 632, some Jewish clan-groups
were permanently settled. Soon after Muhammad began to receive revelations (about 610), his wifeâs uncle Waraqa, who was well versed in the Christian scriptures (though not necessarily a
Christian), confidently expressed the view that the revelation which had come to Muhammad was identical with that received by Moses; and this doubtless strengthened Muhammadâs conviction that
he followed a long line of prophets. In consequence of this and other experiences there was a time when the Muslims regarded the Christians as friends. The QurâÄn (5.82) states:
Â
You [Muhammad] will indeed find that the most hostile of men towards the believers are the Jews and the idolaters, and you will indeed find that the most friendly of them to
the believers are those who say, âWe are Christiansâ; that is because among them are priests and monks, and they are not proud.
Â
When he went to Medina, Muhammad was surprised and dismayed to find that the Jews there, with one or two exceptions, far from regarding him as a prophet, used their
knowledge of the Old Testament to criticize his claim to prophethood. In the closing years of his life he appears to have met Christians whose attitude was similar. This led to a change of attitude
among the Muslims. Originally the QurâÄn had presented Islam as a religion parallel to Judaism and Christianity and confirming their scriptures.1 Before long, however, it became necessary to erect âdefencesâ against Jews and Christians to prevent them disturbing the faith of simple Muslims. The
chief point made in the QurâÄn was that Islam is the religion of Abraham in its purity, and that Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, since he had lived
before the revelation of the Torah to Moses or the Gospel to Jesus.2 The Jews and Christians, on the other hand, had deviated from the revelation they
had received and had introduced false doctrines, which the QurâÄn explicitly refuted. The QurâÄn uses the word
hanīf for an adherent of this presumed religion of Abraham.
Within a dozen years of Muhammadâs death the Arabs had conquered the provinces of Iraq, Syria and Egypt, and were continuing to expand eastwards and westwards. The conquests brought them
into contact with many well-educated Christians, and some further âdefenceâ became necessary. This took the form of elaborating a doctrine of the âcorruptionâ
(tahrīf) of the Jewish and Christian scriptures.3 This doctrine was never precisely formulated, and was
understood by Muslim writers in various ways. Some thought that the actual text of the Bible had been altered, while others said that it was only the interpretation which had been changed. The
doctrine is allegedly based on some verses of the QurâÄn; but on examination these prove to deal with minor matters, or else to be altogether vague, like 2.75
which speaks of âa party of them [the Jews] hearing the word of God, then âcorruptingâ it deliberately after they understood itâ. The imprecision of the doctrine did not
lessen its usefulness as a âdefenceâ, since if one form was unsuccessful, another could be tried. The net effect of the doctrine was that Christians and Jews were unable to use
arguments based on the Bible against Muslims, and instead had to meet them on ground of the Muslimsâ choosing.
Loosely connected with this doctrine of âcorruptionâ is another belief, which is not merely a âdefenceâ but also part of the self-image of Islam. This may be called the
belief in the self-sufficiency of Islam, though it has also other aspects. An illustration of it is the story of the caliph âUmar and the general who had just captured Alexandria. When
asked by the general what was to be done with the books in the great library, âUmar is said to have replied: âIf they are in agreement with the
QurâÄn, they are unnecessary and may be destroyed; if they are not in agreement with the QurâÄn, they are dangerous and
should certainly be destroyed.â This story is probably not factually true, but it expresses exactly a belief still common among Muslims, namely, that all the religious and moral guidance
required by the human race from now to the end of time is to be found in the QurâÄn (coupled with the example of Muhammad). This belief may go back to the
feeling of the nomadic Arab that he was superior to all peasants and city-dwellers and had nothing to learn from them. It was a kind of corollary to the doctrine of the âcorruptionâ of
the scriptures, since, if these contained false assertions, it was better not to read them. It led many medieval Muslim scholars to deny even obvious borrowings from non-Islamic sources, such as
the genealogy from Abraham back to Adam found at the beginning of the life of Muhammad by Ibn-HishÄm. In more recent times it has made many Muslims unwilling to
learn from the West even when failure to do so was to their own disadvantage. Only in the last decade or so, for example, have any Muslim scholars begun the serious study of other religions.
II Traditional Christian attitudes to Islam
When Greek-speaking Christian theologians learned about Islam, they first of all classified it as a Christian heresy. As their knowledge of it increased, they gave ever fuller
accounts of its false assertions, as well as charging Muhammad with various moral weaknesses.4 These were their âdefencesâ against Islam and
were particularly necessary for the many groups of eastern Christians who became âprotected minoritiesâ under Muslim rulers. Western Christendom, however, and the West generally,
appears to have been little influenced by the work of these Orthodox, Monophysite and Nestorian theologians.
Western Christians had little contact with Muslims until the occupation of Spain in the early eighth century and the conquest of Sicily in the ninth. After this they gradually became aware that
in these regions and on the southern coasts of the Mediterranean they had a formidable enemy, who was culturally far superior to them, and whose military might was redoubtable. For some
considerable time they had little accurate knowledge of Islam. Mahound, a deformation of the name of the Prophet, was popularly identified with the devil. The Crusades
brought a demand for fuller knowledge, and from about 1100 for a century or two this was provided by various scholars. Yet, although they had access to the QurâÄn and other Muslim books, the image of Islam which they produced for Western Europe was a distorted one. This was probably because even the scholars had a feeling of cultural
inferiority, and so by way of âdefenceâ had to show that as a religion Islam was much inferior to Christianity. Among the points which went to compose this âdistorted imageâ
of Islam were the following: Islamic doctrine contained many false assertions and deliberate perversions of the truth; Islam was a religion of violence, spreading by the sword; it was a religion of
self-indulgence, especially sexual; and since Muhammad, besides exhibiting moral weaknesses, was the author of a false religion, he must be a tool or agent of the devil.5 None of these points could be accepted by an objective historian today. The âdistorted imageâ, however, has continued to influence the Western understanding of
Islam into the present century, despite the efforts of scholars for two hundred years or more to correct the more flagrant distortions. Just as their efforts appeared to be successful certain
events linked with the present revival of Islam are causing not a few Westerners to turn back to the âdistorted imageâ.
III The nature of dialogue
One of the distinctive features of the present age is its religious pluralism. Before the nineteenth century there were very few contacts between the members of the great world
religions. Even the beginnings of European colonialism did not lead to many close contacts between persons who felt themselves social equals. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as
communications improved and trade expanded contacts gradually became much more frequent; and since 1950 there has been a considerable acceleration of the process, coupled with world-wide movements
of population. It is reckoned that there are now (1983) nearly seven million Muslims in Western Europe, and there are also several millions in North America. Western statesmen have to sit around a
table with Muslim statesmen, Western factory-workers find Muslims on the same assembly line, and Western school-children find Muslims among their classmates. This is the contemporary meeting of
Islam and Christianity.
Where the relation between members of different religions is a friendly one, it is convenient to speak of âdialogueâ. This can occur in various forms. There
may be officially organized meetings such as the âSeminar of Islamo-Christian Dialogueâ, held in Tripoli, Libya in February 1976; or neighbours who have become friends may find their
conversation turning to religious matters. The Christian scholar engaged in the study of Islam is also in a sense involved in dialogue. Such experiences normally lead those who share in them to
reflect deeply on their religious beliefs in the privacy of their own thoughts, since to meet someone with opposing views is disturbing. Reflection may merely confirm some people in an attitude of
xenophobia, in which the âdefencesâ are strengthened. Others, however, may begin to open themselves to the otherâs truth and so enter into dialogue, for dialogue might be
described as the mutual exchange of views between people who have a genuine concern for one another and are open to learn from one another.
An attitude of openness requires a lowering or demolition of âdefencesâ of the type described above. The great world religions have all erected âdefencesâ to protect the
faith of their adherents from attacks and challenges made by other religious communities with whom they had contacts, or by sectarians or heretics from within their own ranks. A common form of
âdefenceâ is to present the other religion as inferior to oneâs own in certain ways, and this nearly always involves mis-representing it. Examples of this are the Islamic
doctrine of the âcorruptionâ of the Bible and the Christian âdistorted imageâ of Islam. The cruder misrepresentations cannot survive a few elementary conversations with
members of the other religion; but there are other cases where the âdefenceâ is subtly interwoven with positive assertions about oneâs own religion which cannot easily be
abandoned. It then becomes necessary, if one wants to enter into real dialogue, deliberately to cultivate an attitude of openness. This was well expressed by the Muslim thinker al-Ghazali (d. 1111)
in a passage in which he described his personal attitude in the face of religious pluralism. He wrote:
Â
I have made an assault on every problem, I have plunged into every abyss, I have scrutinized the creed of every sect, I have tried to lay bare the inmost doctrines of every
community; all this I have done with the aim of distinguishing between true and false, between sound tradition and heretical innovation.6
Â
The meeting of Islam and Christianity at the present time takes place in a situation in which bothâand indeed all other religionsâare subject to attack from
many quarters; and the Christian who defends his own beliefs against such attacks finds that he is at the same time defending some of the beliefs of his Muslim friend. In the pages that follow most
attention is paid to criticisms based on scientism, that is, the system of assumptions and presuppositions, thought to be derived from science and accepted by some scientists, but in fact of
dubious validity and no part of science proper. While some of the assumptions of scientism are here refuted, however, the results generally recognized by scientists will be fully accepted. The same
will hold of the results and methods of historical and literary criticism. For the discussion of such questions some philosophical basis is necessary, and, since no adequate basis exists in
contemporary philosophy, an attempt has been made to create such a basis by bringing together ideas from different quarters and trying to give them some measure of coherence. Among the writers laid
under contribution are Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, John Macmurray, Michael Polanyi and Peter Berger.
In the final writing of this book an attempt has been made to go beyond an attitude of mere openness to alien truth in order to find something more positive. Nearly a century and a half ago
Thomas Carlyle, speaking about Muhammad in his lecture on âThe Hero as Prophetâ, said that in order to get at his secret he intended âto say all the good of him I justly
canâ. More recently, Thomas Merton has in effect said that the good Christian is not the one who can refute other religions, but one who can affirm the truth in them and then go
further.7 This thought is adopted here as a guiding principle. It expresses an attitude which is more than ever necessary at the present time when many
in the West are trying to reconstruct medieval Christendomâs âdefencesâ by reasserting aspects of the âdistorted imageâ. Moreover, Mertonâs principle is not
restricted to Christians, but can be adopted and adapted by Muslims and members of other religions. With such an attitude dialogue becomes a process of mutual witnessing. Neither party is
abandoning anything of its essential truth (though it may be gaining a clearer idea of what is truly essential), but both are caught up into a friendly rivalry to discover which can show to the
other the fullest and deepest truth.
Chapter 2
The affirmation of religious truth against scientism
The purpose of this chapter is to defend the truth of religious assertions in the face of criticisms and doubts current among our contemporaries, especially those which arise from scientism. Part of the process consists in formulating an intellectual or philosophical basis for argument, and this basis will also be used in the more detailed discussions in later chapters.
I The verification of religious truth
(a) The social construction of reality
It is convenient to begin the presentation of the conceptions to be adopted by looking at the sociological theory of âthe social construction of realityâ which has been advanced by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann.1 The interest here is in the more elementary parts of the theory, not in such matters as the legitimation of social institutions. While something similar could be found in the works of other thinkers, the Berger-Luckmann formulations contain one or two useful and memorable phrases. Some sentences may be quoted from their account of âthe world of everyday lifeâ:
Everyday life presents itself as a reality interpreted by men and subjectively meaningful to them as a coherent world. . . . The world of everyday life is not only taken for granted as reality by the ordinary members of society in the subjectively meaningful conduct of their lives. It is a world that originates in their thoughts and actions, and is maintained as real by these.2
These words may be supplemented by two quotations from a later book by Peter Berger, The Social Reality of Religion.3
Manâs world-building activity is always a collective enterprise. Manâs internal appropriation of a world must also take place in a collectivity. It has by now become a social-scientific platitude to say that it is impossible to become or to be human . . . except in society.
The fact of language, even if taken by itself, can readily be seen as the imposition of order upon experience. Language nomizes (sc. gives a nomos or meaningful order) by imposing differentiation and st...