Islamic Interpretations of Christianity

Lloyd Ridgeon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136840203
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Many books about Islam and Christianity are comparative however this book examines Christianity from an Islamic perspective. Each chapter focuses upon theological, philosophical and mystical issues, which are as relevant today as they always have been in the Muslim-Christian dialogue. The book is divided into two sections: the classical and modern periods, thus the reader will benefit from a broad overview of the myriad Islamic interpretations of Christianity.

Part I

The Classical Period

1

Christianity in the Qur’ān

David Marshall

“Christianity in the Qur’ān” is so broad a subject that for the purposes of this study the relevant Qur’ānic material needs to be broken down into more manageable categories. The approach adopted here is therefore to subdivide “Christianity” into three themes suggested by the Qur’ān itself: “Jesus and Mary”; “scripture”; and “Christians.” Other categories than these could have been used to subdivide the Qur’ānic material further, such as “Christian practices” (e.g. monasticism), or “Christian doctrines” (e.g. the Trinity). Lines must be drawn somewhere, however, and I hope that the three thematic categories which I have chosen provide a reasonable framework for making sense of the Qur’ānic material. As well as grouping the material thematically in this way, this study also adopts a chronological approach. The basic structure of the study is thus as follows. I begin with an examination of relevant Qur’ānic passages from the Meccan period of Muḥammad's preaching (roughly 609–22 CE), dealing with passages firstly on Jesus and Mary, secondly on scripture, and thirdly on Christians. Then I turn to the Medinan period (622–32 CE) and work through the same three categories again. The intention is to give some sense of how the Qur’ānic treatment of these themes evolves alongside developments in the experience of Muḥammad and his followers.¹

I. THE MECCAN PERIOD

What the Qur’ān says about Christianity in this period needs to be understood against the backdrop of Muḥammad's experience in Mecca. During the Meccan period, the main challenge facing Muḥammad was to preach to the polytheists of Mecca. The essence of his message was that they should turn from idolatry to the worship of the one true God, and should submit to the moral reformation which God demanded of them. If they rejected the message they faced the prospect of divine punishment, both in this life and in the hereafter. During this period Muḥammad gained some followers, but by and large he encountered rejection and ridicule.

Muḥammad's preaching to the Meccans involved two crucial claims which related his activity to Christianity. These two interdependent claims are that Muḥammad is a messenger sent by God and that he is the bearer of a divine revelation. These claims are set within the wider Qur’ānic vision of the history of God's activity in the world. At the heart of this vision is the belief that God has repeatedly sent messengers entrusted with divine revelations to provide guidance for human beings. The Qur’ān mentions many such messengers, one of whom is Jesus. So Jesus and the revelation brought by him constitute one episode in the great history of divine activity, of which now, in Mecca, Muḥammad and the message revealed through him are the latest manifestation.

Jesus and Mary²

As we turn now to Meccan passages dealing with Jesus and Mary, it should first be acknowledged that there are a number of other religious figures about whom the Qur’ān has considerably more to say. At least part of the explanation for this can be grasped if we keep in mind the question of the immediate relevance to Muḥammad's situation in Mecca of the different Qur’ānic stories about the messengers sent before him. These stories are not recited by Muḥammad in a spirit of detached interest in religious history; rather, they bear on what is happening around him in the present. For example, there seems to have been a particular relevance to Muḥammad at Mecca in a group of stories which are essentially variants on one basic story-line. These stories depict a messenger sent by God who preaches to his people, is rejected by them, but is finally vindicated when God intervenes to punish the unbelievers (e.g. with the flood in the case of Noah, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the case of Lot, and so on). These stories are so often repeated in the Meccan period (e.g. notably in sūras 7, 11 and 26) that it is natural to assume that they are particularly relevant to Muḥammad at Mecca: they reflect his situation as an embattled preacher of monotheism and his hopes of vindication through God's intervention.³ The messengers depicted in these stories thus serve as models of Muḥammad in Mecca; their stories are an encouragement to him and his followers in their difficult situation (see 11: 120). For our present purposes the important point is that although a number of other messengers feature in these stories, Jesus does not.

Indeed, the fact that Jesus features in only one extended narrative from the whole Meccan period (19: 16–33) is a strong indication that (unlike Noah, Abraham, Lot, Moses and others) he did not, at this stage, represent an especially relevant model to Muḥammad. This point gathers strength as we look more closely at that narrative and notice that it in fact focuses rather more attention on Mary than on Jesus. An angel sent by God (literally “our spirit” (19:17)) tells Mary that she is to give birth to a “pure boy” (19: 19). She asks how this can be when she is a virgin; she is assured that it is easy for God and that the child will be “a sign to humankind and a mercy from [God]” (19: 21).⁴ Mary then withdraws to a distant place where she gives birth to Jesus and is miraculously provided with food and drink. On her return to her people, however, she is accused of sexual immorality. This evokes a further miracle: the infant Jesus speaks from the cradle, thereby implicitly vindicating his righteous mother and shaming her detractors.⁵

Despite the great significance of this speech by the infant Jesus, it is at least arguable that the main interest of the narrative, and certainly its main relevance to Muḥammad in Mecca, is in Mary's drama. Like Muḥammad, Mary receives a divine message brought to her personally by an angelic being; Muḥammad might therefore naturally have seen in Mary somebody whose experience was similar to his own. Furthermore, like Muḥammad, Mary experiences rejection and vilification by her own people because of this divine initiative singling her out for a special task. Then she is miraculously vindicated by God in the face of those who scoff at her – the denouement for which the rejected Muḥammad waited and hoped. Thus at least part of the significance of this narrative is that it contains the pervasive Meccan motif of the rejection and vindication of God's chosen servant, a theme which was highly relevant to Muḥammad's experience and his expectations. It may seem strange to think of Mary functioning as a type of Muḥammad in this way, and indeed it may well be that the obvious dissimilarities between Mary and Muḥammad account for the fact that, unlike a number of Meccan narratives, this Mary-narrative is not repeated.⁶

This analysis of the story of Mary indicates that despite the fact that there is comparatively little Meccan material on Jesus and Mary, such material as there is should be interpreted in the light of the basic observation that the Qur’ānic Mary and Jesus have their significance and their coherence in their relatedness to the experience of Muḥammad.⁷ They are part of the religious pre-history which culminates in the coming of Muḥammad and the revelation of the Qur’ān. The miraculous speech of the infant Jesus (19: 30–33) further illustrates this point. The self-description of Jesus in vv. 30–31 (as with so much of the speech of the Qur’ānic prophets) could be put into the mouth of Muḥammad without any alteration:

I am God's servant; God has given me the Book, and made me a Prophet … and he has commanded me to pray and to give alms as long as I live.⁸

Of other Meccan references to Jesus and Mary, two brief passages (21: 93–5 and 23: 50) speak of their revelatory significance; together they constitute a “sign” (āya). Two other ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I The Classical Period
• Part II The Modern Period
• Index