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4/24/2002 (20:11) |
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Islam & Christianity: Approaches and Difficulties
by Darius Y. Panahpour
The objective of this paper is to explore one of the ongoing problems encountered by Christians who wish to see Muslims brought to an acceptance of Christ's salvation. Not surprisingly, the matter goes beyond acquiring and employing a rational presentation and defense of the Christian faith, for it is often contended that Muslims are the most difficult people to reach for the gospel. The primary points of contention between the two faiths are the Muslim's insistence that Christ is not God, the Christian's refusal to acknowledge Muhammed as one of God's prophets, the Muslim's denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Christian's refusal to recognize any divine involvement in the writing of the Quran, and the Muslim's refusal to accept any modern translations of the Bible as the authentic and uncorrupted Word of God. Because so much hinges upon the last point of contention, the following pages will focus on how one may effectively demonstrate the authenticity of the Bible to Muslims. I will also try to make clear some of the perceptions and attitudes that characterize current relations between Muslims and Christians, together with those approaches that would appear to be most helpful as one begins to interact with members of the Islamic faith.
In order for Muslims to come to the place of being ready to hear and consider the reasons for embracing Christianity, Christians need to understand Islam thoroughly and with compassion. This precludes merely familiarizing oneself with the deficiencies of Islam in order to refute them point by point. Rather, being fair to the followers of Islam means a readiness to acknowledge the valuable aspects of their faith, particularly when these are juxtaposed to Christianity as it has been practiced in the United States. Indeed, one of the mistakes of the 'orientalists,' those who studied Islam and Arabic culture in the past, was that they seldom, if ever, showed any recognition of the positive aspects of Muslim life and the religion of Islam alongside their criticism. The natural result was that they incurred a good deal of Muslim hostility.
'The Islamic Resurgence' of the last quarter century may be likened to Christian 'renewal movements,' though the emphasis in Islam has been on a return to traditionalism.[1] The resurgence came about partly as a result of the feeling among many Muslims in their homelands that the influx of western culture and goods was eroding their true identity. It began to catch the popular attention of the western world with the 1973 oil embargo, once the oil-producing Arab nations began to acquire economic and political clout. Also, since the time of colonialization by the major European powers in the nineteenth century, Muslims have felt looked down upon by Christians for following a religion that was false. Non-Christian Europeans influenced by the Enlightenment brought essentially the same snobbery to their dealings with Muslim.[2]
While one of the first steps of any apologetic is to praise what is commendable in another's belief system, the history of Christian-Muslim relations makes it all the more imperative that we do so in our work with Muslims. This is not to say that the present generation of Muslims themselves are so acutely sensitive to the lack of respect shown to Islam and its followers in the past. Nonetheless, they are aware of it, and the experience of those who have worked with Muslims indicates that a softer treading needs to accompany our bold presentation of the gospel. Specifically, one aspect of their religion we can praise is the sincerity and devotion it inspires in its practitioners, along with the peaceful spirit many Muslims demonstrate in their personal lives.
If Christians can include a readiness to admit and discuss the shortcomings of Christian practice along with their eagerness to share the truth and blessings of their faith, then the Muslim can begin to trust the Christian and relate naturally his or her own impressions of--and dissatisfactions--with Islam. Some of these dissatisfactions may not even be part of a Muslim individual's conscious awareness until he or she begins to reflect upon conversations with a Christian. In the Middle East such dissatisfactions have frequently manifested themselves as Muslims have begun to reconsider their faith as a result of listening the Christian radio broadcasts.[3]
From a point of mutual trust the Christian and the Muslim each can begin to understand the other's faith better. The importance of establishing a genuine relationship based on mutual respect for the dignity of the other person is obvious, but on college campuses particularly it is often overlooked. One hears complaints of unintentionally-condescending approaches in this environment. Without sensing genuine respect and interest on the part of the Christian, a Muslim in the United States has too much already working against him or her to give up what may well be the only aspect of life that gives unity, stability, and meaning to all of it. Consider the hardships that Muslim immigrants in the United States already face. They feel the brunt of ill will brought about by their extremist cousins' actions, including the hostage crisis in Iran, the deaths of American marines in Lebanon, the Salman Rushdie affair, the Gulf War, the bombing of the World Trade Center--and other bombings that seem to appear endlessly in the news, and most recently the fighting in Bosnia. Furthermore, they are minorities, many of their political and religious views are not popular, their values are ridiculed or ignored in the popular culture, their communities are--of necessity and desire both--tight-knit, their children learn to celebrate the sacred days of another faith whereas their own receive no attention at all, and so on. This is not to say that it is the job of Americans to redress each of these areas, but it is the job of Christians to demonstrate a common-sense-sensitivity to the difficulties they face, and through which the love of Christ may manifest itself. For without this, the breach of loyalty urged upon the Muslim is in and of itself too destructive of the old way of life even to be considered.
Estimates for the number of Muslims living in the U.S. today range between 1.4 to 4 million. It depends on whether one is including African-American Muslim groups, immigrant Muslims and their descendents, or only those who actively practice Islam. Estimates of immigrants who attend the mosque range from 1 to 5 percent according to one study. Another study found that only 10 to 20 percent of second- and third-generation Muslims attend the mosque.[4] From the preceding information it would appear a fair assumption that the majority of Muslim immigrants, particularly those who have never had religious instruction in a mosque, and their descendents have a limited understanding of Muslim theology and practice. Yet the majority of Muslims are not necessarily searching, or at least not actively. They are passively curious, potentially interested, but presently unmotivated.
Muslims who do take their faith seriously have several points of contention with Christian doctrine. While, they believe Christ is one of the top five prophets, along with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammed, they insist he is not God. Muslims affirm God's oneness but deny the doctrine of the Trinity, because to claim a three-person Godhead is to 'assign partners' to God, which constitutes the unforgivable sin of 'shirk.' To them, Christians take the importance of prophethood beyond its acceptable limits. Since God is not like anything else, they reason, he cannot have a son. Nor did Christ die on the cross; rather, many believe that when the Roman soldiers came for Jesus at Gethsemane, the likeness of Christ's face was transposed onto Judas who was crucified in his place. Until Muslims have studied Christianity adequately, they possess a distorted picture of the truth and function of the person of Christ. Based on their misconception, they cannot understand why Christians show no enthusiasm for Muhammed, especially since they accept Jesus as one of God's most honored prophets.
The Muslim's problem with accepting the idea of Christ's redemption is closely related to the Christian doctrine of original sin, which one Muslim described to me as 'hogwash.' This came from one of the leaders of the Muslim Student Organization on the University of Iowa campus. He expressed the unreasonableness of a doctrine in which, to his mind, God creates a person crippled and says, 'Start running.' Instead, he and other Muslims believe everyone is born into a state of nature that is uncorrupted. Later, Satan whispers into the ear of the individual and at that point the individual chooses to sin. But this does not lead to such a break of fellowship between God and the individual that the work of a savior becomes necessary. What is necessary is one's sincere resolution to follow the straight path of Islam more closely.
ALLEGATIONS OF CORRUPTED SCRIPTURES
Let us consider one issue, the Muslim claim that the Judeo-Christian Scriptures are corrupted, in some detail. This is important due to the Bible's obvious role as the source of Christian doctrines that are mistaken in Muslim eyes. In other words, the most significant disagreements Muslims have with the Christian faith hinge upon their refusal to accept the Judeo-Christian Scriptures in their present form as the authoritative Word of God. If this obstacle can be overcome, a greater openness to the Bible's teachings should logically follow. Specifically, as Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb have outlined, Muslims charge 'people of the Book,' meaning Jews and Christians, with hiding God's Word (based on sura 2:42 and 3:71), twisting the message found in the biblical books (3:78; 4:46), lacking faith in portions of Scripture (2:85), and remaining ignorant of our Scripture's true teaching (2:78).[5] (A sura refers to a chapter in the Quran.)
Kenneth Cragg, in his book, The Call of the Minaret, seeks to address the charge of corrupted Scripture by establishing and emphasizing the Bible's coherence and unity. The Muslim misconception is supported by their negative interpretations of the facts that the Bible was penned in several books by many different authors; it was written over a period of more than a thousand years, and its relation of the highest focus of the faith - the life and death of Jesus - is given in four separate gospels. The simple fact of four separate accounts is taken as evidence that they are all false. This view holds for many Muslims independent of the apparent contradictions of certain particulars between the accounts, which they also note. This is in contrast to the Quran, which they see as having come through one mediator over a period of twenty-three years, and which is therefore taken as being infinitely more credible. Furthermore, they have a problem believing that the Epistles, which fall under the category of 'personal correspondence,' can also constitute divine revelation.[6] In answering, it is helpful to explain that God's revelation in the Bible merges with human experience in order to manifest itself. That is, God's revelation carries rules for living which must by the nature of their subject matter involve tangible human conditions in the context of some group's history. Nonetheless, it is primarily for the purpose of offering us a relationship with himself that God gives his revelation. As Cragg writes,
In the Epistles, therefore, we find St. Paul explaining (to believers)...the nature of their faith, its impact upon their character and their behavior, its meaning as a break with the past and as a promise of the future.7
The problem may be further clarified by pointing out that the message of salvation offered in the gospels is shown in action in the lives of people in the Epistles. Thus, 'it is out of that experience, analyzed and elucidated in the Epistles, that the Gospel records were written.'[8] What seems to be a set of writings with little, if anything, to hold them together in fact forms a quite discernible unity, once the order and purposes of the activities described in the New Testament are understood.
As noted, Muslims also protest that the corrupted Christian Bible offers no good reason for the fact that its supposedly divine revelation spanning over a thousand years. This can be redressed by explaining the 'occasional' aspect of divine revelation, which is to say that it takes place in history and specific events.[9] Paul may deal with the issue of meat sacrificed to idols in addressing the Corinthians, but the principles underlying the account, and which are the point of his writing, are binding upon all Christians. Without the revelation from God coming in specific situations to which people outside its immediate context could relate in future generations, Cragg sees the danger that God's universally-applicable principle would be in danger of becoming an little more than an abstraction.[10]
The Bible must also be understood in terms of its selectivity of the events it includes. That is, there is no way to include all the events of human history, and since biblical revelation occurs through specific events, it must be selective. Thus 'the relation of God to all history is made clear in a particular history...which prepares and introduces that which illuminates and redeems all history.'[11]
One further benefit of the biblical revelation occuring over time and in specific events is found in its realistic portrayal of people and their weaknesses. They serve to give both faith and hope since the Bible shows God working with the faulted people he wants to redeem, and therefore we are able to see that God wants to redeem us for himself as well. The emphasis on God's love and mercy throughout the Bible is lacking in the Quran. While the Muslim Scriptures frequently reiterate the fact of God's compassion and mercy, it tends to focus more on God's law, inclining Muslims to approve the 'gainers' (believers) within their own group, and condeming the 'losers' (disbelievers) outside their group.[12]
Muslims are guided both by the Quran, which is of primary importance, and by Islamic tradition, which is secondary. The Muslim claim of corrupted Scripture is found only in accounts which form Islamic tradition and which were written and collected (and oftentimes rejected by Muslim theologians) only after Muhammed's death. More importantly, the Quran never speaks of the Bible as having become corrupted, but rather attests to the reliability of Jewish and Christian Scriptures. In fact, in sura 10:94 the Quran God directs Muhammed and others in the following manner: 'So, if thou art in doubt regarding what We have sent down to thee, ask those who recite the Book (which came) before thee.'[13] The fact that 'the Book' refers to the Bible is a fact acknowledged by both Christian and Muslim scholars, and attempts to establish another meaning have been many but unconvincing. Thus Muslims are directed to seek the counsel of Jews and Christians on matters that are problematic in the Quran. Furthermore, this one verse serves to authenticate the Bible.[14]
Other suras such as 21:7 and 4:163-4 demonstrate the Quran's requirement that Muslims revere and believe the Bible as God's revelation which preceded the Quran. Some suras do so specifically with regard to the New Testament (5:46, 67, 69, 71), and others confirm Jesus' status as a prophet to be believed (4:171; 5:78).[15] The result, as sura 2:130 demonstrates, is that Muslims are allowed to make no distinctions between the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and the Quran:
`We believe in God, and in that which has been sent down on us and sent down on Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, and the Tribes, and that which was given to Moses and Jesus and the Prophets, of their Lord; we make no division between any of them, and to Him we surrender.'16
Thus the following exhortation is found in sura 4:135: 'O believers, believe in God and His Messenger and the Book He has sent down on His Messenger and the Book which He sent down before.' Finally, sura 40:71-74 promises the fire of hell to those who fail to honor the Bible by refusing to believe any part of it.
One of the problems faced by Muhammed and other Arabs was the absence of a translation of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures which they could read for themselves. For such knowledge they were dependent upon Jews and Christians in the area, both of whom followed their Scriptures in conjunction with certain unorthodox elements. For Christians this included stories of saints and martyrs, the Apocrypha, and orally-rendered paraphrases of the Ethiopic and Syriac Gospels, the latter of which was a unification of the four Gospels by the Syrian Christian, Tatian, in approximately A.D. 170.[17] This unstructured and unregulated manner of religion provided the basis of Muhammed's understanding of Christianity, which became evident in the Quran's presentation of the Christian faith.[18]
Thus the Arabs lacked a revelation from God in their own language which caused many to feel inferior vis-a-vis the Jews and Christians among them. Muhammed sought to redress this need and to authenticate his own stature as a prophet in the Judeo-Christian tradition on the authority of the Bible. Muhammed tried to present himself as the awaited Messiah of the Jews, and asked them to see whether or not his name was found in their sacred writings. They informed him it was not, and their continued refusal to accept Muhammed as their Messiah led him to oppose them by claiming that they concealed the true teaching of their Scripture that he was in fact the Messiah.[19] The importance of this from an apologetic standpoint is that for Muhammed the corruption was to be found in the hearts of those Jews who hid the teaching of Scripture, not in the Scripture itself, which was therefore accepted by Muhammed as a genuine part of God's revelation.
The Quran accuses Christians only of forgetting a portion of their teaching which resulted in their following irrelevant practices. Nonetheless, over time Islamic tradition came to the view that both Christians and Jews had corrupted their sacred writings in order to hide their Scriptures' teaching on Muhammed, even though Muhammed himself had accused only the Jews of this.[20]
Material common to both the Quran and the Bible came from free interpretations of biblical texts. In the centuries after Muhammed the charge of corrupted Scriptures became increasingly useful as Muslims began to get more accurate information of what was stated in the biblical accounts and to see the discrepancies between the two. Naturally, since God would not send false Scripture, and since the Quran was perfect, the Judeo-Christian Scriptures must have become corrupted.[21]
Yet there are many other suras in the Quran in addition to the ones cited here which attest to the truth and binding nature of the Bible. Sura 2:27 establishes the Bible as the 'the Word of God.'[22] Such verses cause a problem for Muslim theologians who could not in good conscience maintain that God would allow the words of his perfect revelation to become corrupted. Sura 6:115 in particular makes such a position untenable: 'Perfect are the words of thy Lord in truthfulness and justice; no man can change His words; He is the All-hearing, the All-knowing.'[23] This led Muslim commentators to assert that a corruption of meaning, 'Tahrif-I-Manawi,' had occurred at the instigation of different Jews and Christians in order to deny the authenticity of Muhammed's prophethood. In this manner Muslims avoided direct contradiction of the Quran's teaching on the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The most likely sources for differences between material common to the Quran and the Bible may well be the extra-biblical accounts, apocryphal stories, and loose paraphrases that were present in Muhammed's time. In any case, the Quran itself stipulates at least the existence of reliable Judeo-Christian Scriptures since Muslims are commanded to know and revere them. Thus the burden of proving corruption in Scripture remains with the Muslims. Abdiyah Akbar Abdul-Haqq, a writer and speaker with the Billy Graham Association, writes that Muslims would need to provide satisfactory answers to the following considerations:
If the Jews of Arabia, aided by their Christian opponents, managed to corrupt the Biblical manuscripts within their reach, how about the many beyond their reach, humanly speaking?...Again, how could all available manuscripts of the Bible have been corrupted so completely and worldwide that not a single authentic copy surived? Such a proposterous vandalism could never have gone undetected in history recorded both by the friend and the foe.24
The fact is that the authenticity of the Bible in its present form is established by manuscripts which precede Muhammed and the beginning of Islam. All four gospels are dated in their current and complete manuscript form to approximately A.D. 250 in the Chester Beatty Papyri, and all of the New Testament books have been dated to A.D. 325-50 in the Vaticanus Manuscript (B). Besides these, hundreds of other New Testament manuscripts existed before the emergence of Islam in the seventh century.[25]
Unfortunately, the Quran's approach to the Judeo-Christian Scriptures is that of a sword that cuts both ways. For while the Quran instructs Muslims to honor and revere the Bible as part of God's revelation, many Muslims claim that both the Old and New Testaments refer to Muhammed. This is based upon passages in the Quran such as Sura 7:157: 'the Messenger, the Prophet of the common folk, whom they find written down with them in the Torah and the Gospel....'[26] Implicit in this verse also is belief in the authenticity of Scripture. Muslim theologians have therefore looked for prophecies about Muhammed in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and claim to have found several. One important instance is based on their understanding of John 16:7, in which Jesus promises to send the Comforter after he has returned to the Father. Some Muslim theologians have identified this with the Quranic sura 61:6:
And when Jesus son of Mary said, `Children of Israel, I am indeed the Messenger of God to you, confirming the Torah that is before me, and giving good tidings of a Messenger who shall come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad.'[27]
The name, Ahmad, is taken as a direct reference to Muhammed, who would therefore become the Comforter, the Paraclete to follow Jesus. However, the use of the name, Ahmad, may well have been an interpolation based upon the questionable renderings of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures available at the time.[28] Also, while 'Parakletos' is the Greek word for Comforter in the New Testament, a mistake of three letters can render it 'Periklutos,' meaning 'celebrated/ praised one.' The word for this in Arabic is Ahmad, but the desired reference is not established as Muslims claim since 'Parakletos' is not 'Periklutos' and each word has its own separate meaning.[29]
Even if this linguistic error could be ignored, other New Testament passages such as John 14:26 make it clear that the Comforter is the Holy Spirit, given by God in Jesus' own name. Further, in John 15:26 and 16:7 Jesus makes in clear that he would send the Holy Spirit in his name. Abdul-Haqq notes that Muslims might be willing to identify the angel Gabriel by the designation of 'Holy Spirit,' but they would not be willing to apply this name to Muhammed.[30] For a variety of reasons, Muslims would find the notion of their Prophet coming in the name of Jesus unacceptable. Nor did Muhammed make any pretense of coming in the name of Jesus. Muhammed is taken as the culmination of the prophets, and therefore as the greatest. For him to come in the name of another would make him subservient to the person bearing that name.
As we can see, the Muslim position on the Bible is self-contradictory since the Quran explicitly requires Muslim belief in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures as part of God's revelation. Their position also contradicts the factual evidence of preserved manuscripts which precede Islam itself. The problem for Muslims is that if they accept the arguments for the truth of the Bible as presented above, logic also compels them to accept its doctrines of Christ's deity and the Trinity, among others.[31] As noted earlier, however, there are many cultural factors one needs to handle properly. The resistance generated by these along with ubiquitous human pride must also be overcome. One widely-used apologetic tool is organized dialogues between Muslims and Christians, which reveal many of the difficulties posed by one's cultural and religious heritage and the natural loyalty a person feels toward them.
DIALOGUE
Despite their common goals of proselytization, Muslims and Christians began trying to find common ground and reconcile their differences as much as possible on a larger scale after World War II. One of the best-known efforts are the Christian-Muslim dialogues begun in 1969 and sponsored by the World Council of Churches. Among the most interesting results--of the early meetings, especially--were the reactions of the Muslims and Christians who attended. One Christian wrote:
Dialogue we find urgent as a repudiation of negativism and aggression. Yet are we truly in it, if we want it only for these `defensive' reasons? The `seriousness' of each faith forbids them to be closed entities, only capable of membership by accidents of birth and of geography. If they are impermeable to `conversion,' we have a situation quite intolerable to the dynamism of faith itself...What is my proper response if sincerity, speaking in other faiths, tells me: `Truly we have Christ, but on our own terms'? Shall I then fear lest their terms reduce him? Do I still contend for the Christian terms, whose fullness I need if I am to have him truly?32
Several of these points merit attention. First, from his own Christian standpoint, his best response would appear to be an explanation of how Christ requires himself to be understood and accepted, along with an emphasis on the consistency of the account Christ offers for himself in the Bible. (This, again, is a problem in light of the Muslim view that the Christian Scriptures are corrupted.) Rather than fearing a Muslim's reduction of Christ, the Christian needs to politely explain his conviction that Muslims have an inadequate understanding of the person and role of Christ. From the Muslim side one of the participants wrote:
(As we) shared our common religious concern, and also prayed together, we were made to feel something new, something which cannot be put into words except that we were all too small before God, too small to dispute him among ourselves...and many of us were led to feel that we were talking too much about God.
...To most of us the `other' faith was, before we actually met, an abstraction or just a different faith about which we knew less or more. But as we met, we became aware of a new situation, a kind of personal encounter, unfolding between us and within our common humanity which was, to translate it into religious terms, our common need of God.[33]
Part of the difficulty posed by organized dialogues is the increasing pressure brought by members of each faith upon the other to capitulate on certain unnegotiable tenets. Many believe they are doing the compassionate thing by urging both sides to compromise on points of contention that, to them, have little theological or practical consequence. For example, Professor Mahmoud M. Ayoub, a Lebanese Muslim, has tried to express how Muslims and Christians both can appreciate Jesus more fully by incorporating aspects of what the other faith has to say about him.[34]
While the Jesus of Islam is not the Christ of Christianity, the Christ of the Gospel often speaks through the austere, human Jesus of Muslim piety. Indeed, the free spirits of Islamic mysticism found in the man Jesus not only the example of piety, love and asceticism which they sought to emulate, but also the Christ who exemplifies fulfilled humanity, a humanity illumined by the light of God.35
This shows a mutual point of appreciation for Jesus that might lead to a greater receptivity among Muslims for more teaching about Christ that is entirely Christian. Professor Ayoub forces us to step back and call for clarity, however, when he writes in the same article:
The final stage in the long history of Muslim-Christian relations is still in its beginnings. When it is fully realized, it will, we hope, lead to true ecumenism, an ecumenism that will accommodate Islam not as a heresy of true Christianity, but as an authentic expression of the divine and immutable truth.36
There is a tendency to become cynical about the possibility of any good coming out of formal dialogues on Muslim-Christian relations. They are usually attended by those who are eager to see differences eliminated or at least discarded as far as possible. Indeed, for the World Council of Churches, the mission is not the conversion of non-believers, but dialogue itself. Eventually, however, (as we see in the observations by two participants), each side feels the tension when he or she is asked to give up one or more vital tenets. One Muslim student expressed dissatisfaction with the course dialogues tend to take and said he now invests his energies into 'more useful' activities. Part of his frustration came from the repeated experience of conversations ending with a Christian telling him, 'You can't understand unless you believe in Christ.' As my acquaintence eloquently put it, 'You can also make a leap of faith, but not at the cost of conviction.'
In closing, let us consider one highly perceptive comment about the future of Muslim-Christian relations from the well-known Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies, William M. Watt:
...although the emerging world culture will be dominated by the secular aspects of the western intellectual outlook, it still remains open for the adherents of the world religions to complement this by something of their own religious culture. The secular western outlook is, as it were, a framework within which they have to operate, but within that framework there is an opportunity for them to express their own experience of life.37
It is to be hoped that this view is not overly optimistic in its view of tolerance for Christianity and other exclusivistic faiths. For their part, Muslims have been given ample opportunity to reject Christianity on account of the unattractive elements of its modern practice. For Christians, the challenge that faces us now is whether we are going to express our own experience of life, and how it confirms our faith, so that Muslims are provided with good reasons to rethink their understanding of what abundant Christian living can offer them. To reiterate the words of the Lebanese Muslim, Mahmoud Ayoub, our goal should be to present 'the Christ who exemplies fulfilled humanity, a humanity illumined by the light of God.'
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Footnotes Darius Panahpour is a Ph. D. candidate at the University of Iowa in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. This was originally delivered to the 1995 Evangelical Theological Society.
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