Issues for Christians

Preface by Sebastian

Shabbir Akhtar is a well known writer born in Pakistan, who worked in England for about 10 years as a writer, journalist, and consultant in Islamic affairs and Muslim-Christian relations before moving to a US university in 2002.

In this blog, I present a chapter of a book by Shabbir Akhtar. The chapter is a response to writing by Kenneth Cragg. The Cragg writing rejects the claim of Muslims that Muhammad is a prophet of God.

Is it valid to debate it? The Qu’ran recommends debating from the Qu’ran (if you must debate). This article does apply quranic techniques to the arguments given by Cragg, so that's why I have included it in the blog.

However, in quranic argumentation, consulting other scriptures and referring to the opponent’s arguments is not required, it's optional. Quoting the Qur'an itself is actually sufficient. So, I think that the considerable time that this article gives to examining the Christian position is generous.

At the end of the article, I include chapter 48 of the Qu’ran, which mentions some points I think are relevant to the content of the chapter.

Philosophy within religion

Shabbir Akhtar is a professor of philosophy. The danger of reading his material is becoming too philosophical about religion. I’ve heard a saying: “shorten the sermon and lengthen the prayer”. I think that’s a good tip.

So, I’ve warned you – don’t think that reading and understanding is an excuse for not worshipping. Some people never understand everything, but they are always busy in worship. Others understand, and they still engage in much worship. I recommend worship.

Division and unity within religion

A further note. As chapter 42 of the Qur’an shows very clearly, divisions within religion are not liked by God. The Quran says that Christians are actually Muslims but they began focusing on Christ and that’s how they became Christians. So, according to the Qu’ran, muslims are muslims, and Christians are muslims who are a little off-track, but anyone who longs for complete submission to God, and places complete faith in God (God alone) is a muslim.

The point I want to make is that Akhtar accepts Christianity more than I do. I think that the sholars give too much credit to Christian paradigms which the Qu’ran says are essentially wrong. Anyway, here is the chapter...

Sebastian





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THE FINAL IMPERATIVE

An Islamic Theology of Liberation



Shabbir Akhtar

Bellew Publishing
London


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Preface


Then the Devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in all their greatness. ‘All this I will give you,’ the Devil said, ‘if you kneel down and worship me.’

So reads St Matthew’s Gospel (4:8-9) on Christ’s third temptation in the wilderness. Jesus’ alleged repudiation of the political wing has had permanent consequences for any distinctively Christian reflection on power and polity. ‘The Scripture says,’ retorts Christ, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him!’ (How Islamic an answer, incidentally.)
The purpose of this book is to explore the relationship between theological truth and secular power, and attain the right equilibrium between preaching and activism, the pen and the sword. What is, for the man of God, the correct attitude towards worldly powers and principalities? Christians and Muslims have responded differently here because Jesus of Nazareth and Muhammad of Mecca are thought to have given opposed verdicts. Their answers, in turn, have reflected and sustained differing portraits of the moral nature of deity.
The Arabian prophet, of course, preached to the hostile pagan establishment of Mecca; after thirteen years he was expelled from the metropolis. After his emigration/exodus (Hijra) to Medina, he embraced the political arm, empowered his religion, and eventually conquered the entire power structure that had resisted his revolutionary proposals. He re-entered Mecca, in bloodless triumph, purified iits precincts of all pagan association, and declared it the hub of the Muslim universe. And so it has remained up to this day.
Modern Christian apology has rigidly maintained that the adoption of the political course is a short-cut to the messianic goal – one which effectively compromises with evil. Jesus declined the choice of moving, so to speak, to his Medina, as a way out of the deadlock with the antagonistic establishment. In this way, Jesus resisted, while Muhammad succumbed, to the temptation to ‘effect a detour’, an alternative route requiring the sanction of force. In drinking from the cup of suffering, Christ opted for, in Kenneth Cragg’s words, ‘the quiet strength of truth and the fidelities of love’ (Jesus and the Muslim, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985, p. 154).
In this book I examine and defend – against Christian and associated liberal accusation – the Muslim stance on the status of worldly power. It is an apt time to do so. Under the impact of increasing tensions in the Muslim world in the last two decades there has been an attempt, quite deliberate and perhaps even co-ordinated, to construct an influential stereotype of contemporary ‘fundamentalist’ Islam as a violent creed. The stereotype of contemporary feeds on indelible images of apparently motiveless malice and terror; Islam and all things Islamic are these days synonymous with a fanatical bloodthirstiness sustained by and in turn sustaining an overwhelming lust for power. In such a context, the Muslim frankness about the morality of constraint often leads Christians to accuse Muslims of being unscrupulous warmongers.
I explore and defend the traditional Muslim confidence that ‘political religion’, for want of a better phrase, is the only alternative to daydreaming. Also contained here is the conceptual framework for a complete ‘Muslim liberation theology’. My aim is primarily to sketch the terrain; but I do not pretend to any neutrality on the large and practical questions of the legitimacy of political violence in the contemporary scene. My account implies distinctively Muslim verdicts about establishments and militancies in places and consciences as diverse as Latin America, Israel’s occupied territories, South Africa, Brazil, Northern Ireland and other troubled lands. Islam, unlike a religion such as Buddhism – if indeed one can call it a religion and not merely, in Nietzsche’s phrase, ‘spiritual hygiene’ – takes its political obligations very seriously. Accordingly as a Muslim scholar, I continually imply political judgements. It is every Muslim believer’s duty to identify injustice and to call it by its name. Wherever religious obligation and the demands of professional detachment have clashed, I have not hesitated about which loyalty comes first.

SHABBIR AKHTAR
Bradford, 1991


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Chapter 3 - The Third Temptation


1
There is no passage parallel to Matthew 4:1-11 in the Koran. But let us suppose, for the sake of a theological experiment, that the Devil, no stranger to the Koranic world, comes to Muhammad and offers him all the kingdoms of the world on condition that he worship him. Would Muhammad’s retort have been any different from that of Jesus or indeed any other messenger of God? No; in fact, Jesus’ own response is thoroughly Islamic. So what’s our quarrel?
The quarrel, as Cragg sees it, is that Muhammad, unlike Jesus, accepted power as a means of achieving religious ends. But power, Cragg counsels, is no part of the arsenal. Though God is of course all-powerful in the Christian vision, it is his love that seeks to achieve triumphs over the recalcitrant human heart.
The third temptation experienced by Jesus in the desert (Matthew 4:8-9; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:2-17) is in effect a temptation to interpret the messianic chore as essentially political, as power-centred. Offered the cup of power, Jesus refuses it on religious grounds. Divine ends require divine means; and power is not one of them. Human perversity requires a suffering Messiah – not, as contemporary Judaic wisdom required, an armed and ‘victorious’ one. In the event, Christ is said to have chosen the cup of suffering love in one of the supreme tragedies of religious history.
I will need at this stage to request both Muslim and Christian readers to exercise care and caution. The Muslim will, no doubt, be offended by the implied suggestion that Muhammad ‘chickened out’ in the hour of crisis; Christians are likely to entertain triumphalist sentiments about Christ standing his ground where others of a similar vocation retreated. There are at stake here complex worries about the essence of Islam, the essence of the Christian outlook, and, in turn, a tangle of issues about the ministry of Jesus in an Islamic-koranic (as opposed to New Testament Christian) perspective. I will proceed step by step and pause for reflection at a number of points.

2
Cragg writes, with evident approval, of those servants of God’s word – men like Jeremiah, pre-eminently – who prefer a worthy failure of their ministry to an unworthy success (Muhammad and the Christian, pp. 43ff). Within the potentially polemical context of the debate, the implication about the moral unworthiness of Muhammad’s success is unmistakable. Cragg himself goes on to make this explicit. Was then Muhammad’s political career compromised by his involvement with power? Does worldly success always tell against the moral (or religious) worth of a truly prophetic ministry? Is political failure the only guarantee of authenticity of mission?
Before we begin to answer these questions directly, it is wise to strengthen Cragg’s case. The Koran, suggests Cragg, is completely silent on the ‘failed’ servants (except for Jesus, whose ministry is radically reinterpreted). This silence is taken by Cragg to be a very eloquent comment on the ultimate character of a koranic religiosity that is, arguably, internally coherent yet blind to alternative patterns of divine grace.
To include prophets such as Jeremiah in the scriptural corpus would, conjectures Cragg, ‘have been to entertain an intolerable interrogation of Muslim assumption and assurance’ (Muhammad and the Christian, p. 43). It is true of course that Jesus’ career is discussed in relative detail in the Muslim Scriptures, though his ministry ‘ended’ in apparent failure. But, as Cragg notices, this ministry is radically reinterpreted – and, for Christians, radically attenuated if not distorted – in the Koran in order to align it with Muslim norms of genuine religion. Jesus was denied political success while receiving purely ‘religious’ honours; Muhammad had the best of both worlds. In an unusual manoeuvre, the Koran adopts a spectacular rescue mission for the obedient Jesus, thus frustrating the Jewish will to impiety and vindicating the ‘politically failed’ servant. Failure is not allowed the last word; tragedy finds no foothold in the Islamic mind.
Let us examine Cragg’s contention that no mention of the failed messengers is to be found in the Muslim scriptures. Is this true? The Koran’s choice of messengers whose careers are rehearsed is representative rather than comprehensive. It is possible therefore that some prophets not mentioned by name in the scriptures were failures by worldly criteria but are none the less recognized as having been true to their office. Certainly, there are messengers without pronounced political ambitions – Job, Zachariah, John, Joseph, Jacob, and others – who receive extensive mention in the sacred volume. And the Koran, like all sacred literature, rejects the identification of success by profane standards.
Even so, Cragg’s point remains. What of Jeremiah? And why does Job’s passionately accusatory address to his Lord receive no mention at all? The koranic outlook is, I would argue, fully compatible with the view that some faithful spokesmen were political failures. They delivered their trust from God, stood their ground, died or were in some cases martyred by the sinful establishment, and consequently did not live to see the fruits, political or otherwise, of their endeavours. Such men’s spirituality is as perfect in its way as is the spirituality of those – like Muhammad, Moses, and Solomon – whose careers resulted in political success. If political achievement is not a proof of religious authenticity, political failure is not a necessary condition of it either.
If God had willed, Jesus could have been martyred rather than translated; he could have failed in a straightforward way and done so within Islamic presuppositions. Equally, as Chapter 13, Verse 40 of the Koran hints, Muhammad could have died in Mecca without living to see Islam established with the sanction of power in Medina. These possibilities are not theologically vetoed by any doctrine of the Koran.
There is a view, held by some modern Muslims, that Jesus’ spirituality remained immature on account of its failure to blossom into worldly political success. This view is both un-Islamic and demonstrably unworthy of genuine religion. The koranic view is that God ordains a particular messenger, tailored to time and place. The essence of his vocation is always islam, i.e., complete and unqualified submission to the will and dictates of the Almighty. The details differ. Some prophets have been more successful – in a worldly sense – than others. For some, their mission remained incomplete: they failed to get their community to repent in time. For others, the ending was drastic: the impious society rose up in arms and exterminated the warner and his group. But each messenger has his religious authenticity in his mission. It is true that God has, according to the Koran, exalted some prophets above others. But the ranking is, wisely, not given; and it is not implied that political success is one of the criteria for assessing religious worth. That some Muslims have, in a triumphalist spirit, thought otherwise should not seriously interest us here.
It is true of course that God has granted a spectacular victory to the Arabian messenger. And God does whatever He pleases on account of His power and wisdom, being bound neither by the whims of rejectors nor the prejudices of believers.
When Cragg claims that the Koran’s reluctance to discuss the ministry of men such as Jeremiah is due to a diffidence about its own preferred religious norms, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion of some partisan Christian sensibility at work. (Cragg is a missionary to Islam if not to Muslims: he wants to Christianise that faith if not convert its adherents. ‘Subvert if not convert’ is an apt slogan here.) In any case, only a reading thoroughly imbued with Christian preconceptions could succeed in detecting any such lack of confidence. When I read the same text – and here I can speak on behalf of many Muslims – I see that the Koran expresses, decrees rather, its own normative views with sustained clarity and irresistible force of conviction as well as language. That many passages about the truth of the vision on whose behalf it is felt. It is evidence rather of a desire to see the appropriate ideals fulfilled in a recalcitrant world.
It is fair to conclude that there is no theological reason for the view that a messenger’s commitment to islam is incomplete unless it bears fruit in political success. To be sure, many Muslims have seen politically unsuccessful prophetic careers as amounting merely to conventional speech-making.
The real issue at stake here between Muslims and Christians is whether or not worldly success can legitimately crown religious achievement. And the Koran does presuppose that religion is not allergic to worldly triumph.

3
In Jesus and the Muslim, in a series of heart-searching meditations (especially on pp. 126-7), Cragg raises what he aptly calls the problem of the kind of victory pertinent and proper to religious truth. I have just argued that Islam does not, in principle, preclude from the ambit of God’s varied grace the kind of victory exemplified in the ministry of Jesus as understood by Christians. Many Muslims have indeed dismissed such a possibility as unworthy of true religion. The Koran’s own reservations are purely historical, not doctrinal. Christ did not suffer in the manner claimed by Christians; he didn’t have to, though he was certainly ready to do so.
If Jesus had been as successfully crucified, the Koran would still have refused to draw any potentially tragic conclusion. Crucifixion or no crucifixion, Jesus was victorious. For he had, in both cases, submitted himself to the will and ordinance of God. He was muslim – resigned to the will of his Lord. And that is sufficient.
Christians need to listen to the Islamic story here carefully. The beginnings of Islam do indeed constitute a success story. But that success is only genuine because it is the kind of success pertinent to faith. If it were improper – if it were patronized by some diabolic sovereignty – it would no longer be a success in the eyes of the highest arbiter of value. This is the Muslim conviction.
What, then, is the kind of victory appropriate to faith? In one sense, the answer, surprisingly, is ‘None’. For God’s views do not stand in need of the patronage of victory in the human world. The divine truth contains its own guarantee of success and worth. The word of God cannot fail in its truth, in its claim to metaphysically secure status; at most it can fail in its acceptance by us – fallible, sinful men and women. And so much the worse for us. This is the sense in which the word of God necessarily has the last word. Whatever we may think, scripture is the ultimate truth. In that sense, God is certainly independent of our response to His holy summons – whether in penitent submission or impenitent rejection.
Cragg’s concern is, of course, a different one, though he himself never makes the necessary distinctions here. What is success in matters of the spirit? How should the word of God ‘succeed’ in our human, all too human and wayward world? How should the messenger endure the success and victory of God’s cause? Granted that God’s causes are always victorious in the last analysis, how should a prophet crown them with success in the mundane context of impiety and opposition? Granted that God always wins eventually the way if not all the battles, what are the weapons His spokesmen should use?
One might say that Jesus responded very differently to the crisis of Israel’s kufr (disbelief) than Muhammad did to the crisis of Qurashi rejection and scorn. Christ interpreted kufr to be a malady deep within the human soul – a malady only love could cure, a love that assumed a ‘passively’ suffering vocation. Muhammad, one might argue, interpreted the experience of rejection as necessitating social and political struggle in alliance with the perennial concern with the mischief of the sinful heart. The alternatives as posed by Christians are false both in fact and in implication. For Muhammad was concerned to eradicate hypocrisy precisely because of his concern with the inner self; and Christ’s supposed repudiation of the political sector has none the less retained significances that are manifestly political. Of course, neither reformer could have doubted the power of God’s love and mercy. The question remains whether or not a victory attained through patience, prayer, and political strife and struggle is worthy of the name in matters of the spirit. Cragg insists that the only truly godly resources are preaching in alliance with patience and prayer. God, despite his former militancy as recorded in the Old Testament, has recently washed His hands of the whole dirty political side of the affair. The debate must continue.

4
The quarrel between Muslims and Christians is over what Cragg describes as ‘the politicization of religion’ (Muhammad and the Christian, pp. 48, 66) whereby the divine arsenal is supplemented by political power. Now this problematic phrase already arguably implies a perspective alien to Islam. It leads Cragg to make a number of uncharacteristically hasty and, in my view, radically untrue judgements concerning the essence of the Muslim faith. Cragg is convinced, for reasons connected with his Christian outlook, that it was the deep-rooted pagan opposition to Muhammad’s Meccan ministry that necessarily ‘politicized’ the initial and purely religious faith of Islam. Islam was, in its very essence, and conception, a faith incorporating the political dimension as integral to its own self-image. Is it possible to ‘politicize’ such a religion? It is not as though Islam acquires political temper for the first time in the antagonistic circumstance of Medina.
Any view of the political which characterizes it as a feature extraneous to the religious ideal is totally foreign to the Koran. Islam was incomplete in the Meccan context; it found completion in the Medinan state. When Cragg argues that Islam was politicized he means that involvement with the political sector – the attempt to conquer the entire pagan power structure – was an accretion, if a legitimate one, to an originally ‘pure’ religious faith. But this assumption is false. For one can only politicize a faith that is originally apoliticial in the sense required by Cragg. And in that sense one can quite meaningfully speak of the politicization of Buddhism or Christianity. When the religion in question is Islam, there is a temptation – to which Christian critics readily succumb – to transport, indeed smuggle in, alien conceptions of the ‘religious’ and the ‘political’ wing. At no stage in its development does the Islamic outlook record any recognition of any territory of human concern that is outside the range of the religious imperative. It is the critic who first separates the political sector – understood in the narrow sense popular with Western writers – and then makes its alignment with the Western wing – understood in an equally restricted sense – into a matter for moral reproach. To be sure, all faiths, including Christianity, necessarily have dealings with the political establishments of their day. That is uncontroversial. But Islam, by its very nature, seeks to absorb political community in the larger desire to sanctify it. Muslims do not, in other words, see the political life and political institutions as outside of, or extrinsic to, the demands and regulations of faith.
Cragg’s understanding of Islam as essentially – that is, originally – a purely religious world view that got caught up later, for good reasons, in political conflict, is radically mistaken. And the fortunate thing – for us – is that Cragg fully reveals his misunderstanding. He does this in a long and crucial passage in Muhammad and the Christian. Cragg is here asserting that while many faiths may well need to compromise with force as they become traditions, they should not do so in their very origins. Consequently, he finds it odd that Islam unashamedly incorporates the power dimension into its original setting. Since the point is complex and controversial, it is best to quote directly:

Faiths may well discern this compromising necessity in their entail. Is it well that it should be hallowed in their origin? […] To the Christian mind, nurtured by Jesus and the Gospels, it will always be a burden and a tragedy that force has been so uncomplicatedly enshrined in the very canons of Islam via the patterns of the Sirah. For that sufficient reason, any appreciation of Muhammad in situ must resolutely retain the contrasted meaning of the love that suffers as the Christ. Christianity in history has so far and so readily besmirched its own originating nature as to make that resolve paramount in all its external relationships, lest its own temptation should be mistaken by others for its – or their – proper norms. (p. 51).

This is an extremely important message in Muhammad and the Christian. Now, when Cragg writes that he can well sympathize with the tendency of men to debase their own ideals, no one will quarrel with him. That is a well-documented fact – an observation of the failings of our common humanity. Christians, and, to a lesser extent, Muslims, have much to be ashamed of in their respective histories. But failure to live up to one’s own ideal is one thing; failure to live up to someone else’s ideal is quite another. The model behind Cragg’s critique is, unsurprisingly, Christian in impulse. And, at least from a modern Protestant standpoint, he is absolutely right in saying that Christians have compromised themselves in having recourse to secular power. Such a move may well be a categorical departure from the norms implicit in any authentic imitation Christi. But Cragg is begging the question against Muhammad and his followers when he claims that their use of force was equally compromising. For, surely, the Islamic ideal recognizes the legitimacy of force. Thus, a Christian compromises his moral integrity in having any recourse to coercive methods to effect reform. But a Muslim only compromises himself – if we use standards intrinsic to Islam – by mis-using force. For Islam does not see power in itself as necessarily destructive. Indeed, power is no more inherently corrupting than sexuality or knowledge, or the appetite for food. Men err when they lapse from the appropriate ideal governing the proper recruitment and enjoyment of a particular facility. And this error is discerned by reference to a religious ideal that is ordained for the tuition and guidance of a fallible humanity.
Cragg is perturbed by the fact that Islam incorporates power into its basic canons. But, disturbing or not, surely what this decision to incorporate the political wing really shows is that the involvement with power is integral – a part of the definition of Islam – and not, as Cragg would have us believe, an act of compromise necessitated by later recalcitrant circumstance. One can now readily see why the phrase ‘politicization of Islam’ is, strictly speaking, senseless. For it implies an originally apolitical faith. And Islam was never apolitical; it was a faith that was always insisting on its involvement with worldly power. Like the ministries of David and Solomon, Muhammad’s own ministry was a thoroughly political affair wherever it could be, both in Mecca and in Medina. To see his vocation as acquiring political colouring after the Hijra – to see the Hijra as a ‘temptation’ – is to misunderstand Islam.
We can well understand why Christians wish to see power as a temptation. For that is precisely what it is – for the contemporary Christian conscience. A radical and inclusive reservation about power is now a part of the Christian ideal. To be sure, the quoted passage from Matthew is not a repudiation of power but rather of idolatry. But even so, early Pauline Christianity was indeed distinguished by its refusal to seek the protection of political sanction. Christians saw power as a temptation. Notwithstanding severe persecution under Roman rule and less severe persecution by the Jewish establishment, Christians remained loyal to the image of a suffering Christ. Widespread martyrdom among early Christian communities is an undeniable fact of ancient history. However, in subsequent centuries, Christians did indeed compromise – sometimes eagerly – with the powerful forces of the world, wielding the sword in practice while periodically decrying its use in their abstract theology. The Muslim must, for religious reasons, look with compassion and forgiveness upon those who fail to live up to what are often seen as impossibly high ideals. (To a Muslim, they are not high ideals at all, but simply an irresponsible refusal to address the pressing injustices of the real world.) But there can be no doubt that the Christian faithful have been, from a modern theological viewpoint, guilty of a betrayal of principle.
Cragg, then, is misled by the problematic phrase ‘the politicization of religion’. Such a phrase significantly skews the debate. The expression may be properly used only if some reservations about its use in discussions of Islam are formulated and published from the start. Otherwise one begs the question against a faith that recognizes no distinction between the religious and the political. To say that Islam was politicized on account of its early hostile encounter with the Qurashī establishment is to introduce an acceptably Christian squint.
To see clearly why the phrase ‘the politicizing of religion’ is unacceptable, it is well to compare it with the less sinister-sounding expression ‘the religionizing of the political’. Both phrases are, of course, from the standpoint of Islam, strictly speaking incorrect as a description of the Muslim involvement with the political life. But the latter expression is to be preferred, for it describes a process much closer to what the Islamic ideal actually entails. The political life is brought within the purview of divine demand and dictate. One might say that the political has been sanctified and purified once it has been brought under the aegis of revealed faith.

5
In Muhammad and the Christian, Cragg often writes as though Muhammad’s troubles were over after the Hijra. In Mecca, then, this powerless but conscientious man had voiced a better jeremiad against the rich and powerful who occupied positions of undeserved privilege. The wealthy and proud Quraysh ignored the just plea of the powerless man. And then, after due consideration, the prophet realized that power was the cure for all the ills around him – including the scorn and haughtiness of the pagan Arabs. After thirteen years of earnest quest, pacific labour and religious anxiety, Muhammad had found the much-sought ‘short-cuts to ease the calling’ (Muhammad and the Christian, p. 44).
It is utterly naïve, when one considers the historical details, to discern any easing of the prophetic vocation in the post-Hijra years. Many Medinan passages in the Koran warn of greater ‘trials’ (fitan) – in the extremely rich sense of the original Arabic – yet to come. Thus for example, Sūra 8, vv. 65-6, cautions the infant community that though it has one victory to its account – the decisive Battle of Badr – there are yet greater tests forthcoming which will thoroughly ‘try’ the mettle of the believers.
The concern with ceaseless jihād (struggle) is central to the Koran. And a commitment to jihād is precisely a way of making sure there are no ‘short-cuts to ease the calling’. The Koran and its prophetic recipient are both concerned to condemn sinful complacency, any notion that the end is in sight. Muhammad remained in the field, - fighting, praying, repenting, witnessing to the glory of God – until his dying day. There is a marked stress on the importance of self-purification and ‘struggle in the way of God’ (al-jihād fi sabīli’Llāh) in the Medinan Sūras.
It was in fact at Medina that the Prophet began training the ahl al-suffa (the ‘People of the Veranda’) – those ascetic and saintly men who became the ideal for later Islamic spirituality. It was Medina, too, that the annual fast of Ramadan, one of the most world-denying Islamic rites, was institutionalized and observed. Any reading, no matter how concerned to attenuate the rich import of the Medinan passages, must still discern a rigour of moral demand that is hard to supersede. All the believers, particularly the Prophet himself, knew they had miles to go before they slept. To find here any easing, any attenuation of demand, any drop in the moral temperature, requires bias on the part of the reader.
We must pursue this point a little. The Prophet himself saw militant struggle as a necessary evil; he did not enjoy it. But, as he knew, if the commitment to Islam requires violent struggle against injustice, then so be it. To concede that God is great (Allāhu akbar) and yet to prefer one’s own opinions is not to make for sincerity of conviction. For Muhammah, the abdication of political struggle would have been the real compromise, the real short-cut to ease the vocation. As with most arguments of polemical import, Cragg’s contention can easily be turned on its head: to refuse to accept violent struggle when circumstances are thought to demand it is as compromising a gesture as accepting it when it is thought morally preferable to eschew it. The question of compromise is not resolved a priori but rather in relation to an agent’s perception of moral worth and lapse. And seen in this light – the only correct perspective here, incidentally – we can see why Jesus and Muhammad could have entertained opposed notions whose authenticity is relative to social context. If Christ really rejected the political option, that is no ground for every prophet to reject the political option. He was presumably right to do so, given the circumstances of his mission; nothing follows about the normative deportment of the messengers fatefully placed in different circumstances. This is one of the many instances in which some idiosyncratic yet proper feature of Jesus’ ministry (in Christian-New Testament perspective) is mistakenly seen as supplying a central criterion for assessing the authenticity of the prophetic mission in general.
Muhammad was a conscientious man. Indeed, it is impossible to study his life objectively without being impressed by the sheer severity of his iconoclastic conscience. The Koran itself – Muhammad’s guide in all circumstances – lays the axe at the root of every facility, whim, or desire, that could conceivably serve to attenuate, sell short, or compromise the service of God. It is important to note in this context that Muhammad and his group were, at the outset, reluctant to use force even in defense. The Koran itself, in the chapter entitled The Pilgrimage, sanctions violent struggle in the case of those against whom war is made, who are unjustly expelled from their habitations solely on account of their saying ‘Our Lord is God’. Fighting was hateful to the believers; yet it was necessary. God, counsels the sacred volume, may put much good in a thing we perceive to be unpleasant (Koran 2:216). Our ultimate allegiance is to God; and if the use of force is required for the preservation of justice and witness, we must be willing to use it.
Now, if the Koran had seen the use of force as a form of compromise – as Cragg implies – it would certainly have condemned it. For it is precisely the repudiation of any and every form of compromise that constitutes the iconoclastic conscience. The Prophet is instructed to reject the pagans’ formula for reconciliation through religious compromise: ‘to you your religion, to me my religion’. That extremely uncooperative sentiment eventually led to much bloodshed and unhappiness and total débâcle. Again, the Koran’s many uncompromising verses that place the bond of faith above that of blood, marriage, and tribe, led to much domestic friction, pitching brother against brother, severing families and tribes, while the slackening of alliances with the pagans caused considerable commercial losses for the Muslims and, in its wake, extreme poverty. But that is Islam. It is not a religion of comfort – of comfortable accommodations with rejection and sin. To say Allāhu akbar and yet to prefer one’s own whims is to invite the charge of hypocrisy to vindicate the resulting lapse from the ideal.
Nor is this to deny the possibility of abusing the facility of power. The success that power brings must itself be worthy of religious acceptance. God does not patronize victories that betray His sacred purposes to profane ends. In the hour of triumph, the hundred and tenth chapter of the Koran instructs the Prophet to ‘sanctify’ his success lest it should become one patronized by some profane, inwardly idolatrous though outwardly Islamic, sovereignty. Muhammad knew he had miles to go before he slept.

6
In Jesus and the Muslim, Cragg attempts to indicate a central discrepancy in koranic thought about the issue of collective evil confronting individualistic patterns of piety. Unwittingly, he here provides a justification for the post-Hijra ministry of Muhammad. The context of the debate is a much-quoted koranic remark: ‘No soul, already laden, bears the burden of another’ (Koran 6:164; 17:15). Cragg is trying to express, in a manner congenial to Muslim instincts, the Pauline concern with the status of original (or Adamic) sin (Jesus and the Muslim, pp. 216-25).
Cragg – straying rather far from orthodoxy – explains that original sin is not properly to be interpreted as an individual act, committed by Adam, and transmitted in some kind of travesty of justice to all subsequent men and women. The issue is not the historical one of inheritance but rather the perennial one of perversity. We are all human; and Adam is the typical mortal.
So far, so good. Adam is the symbol of mankind, a symbol of collective pride and sinfulness. Cragg claims that ‘this human solidarity makes for dimensions of human evil which a purely individual view of relationships is likely to overlook’ (op. cit. p. 219). He argues that the koranic view of evil is, in general, ‘very personalistic’ – laying emphasis on the private individual, his individual choices, his individual vindication or condemnation. Yet, continues Cragg, this is to overlook ‘the evil of structures, of states and society, of collectives and institutions…’ (ibid.). And where ‘motives of personal selfishness become corporate, of find excuse in the expediency to which things political and economic readily appeal, then the collective selfishness intensifies the wrong’ (ibid.). In this context, Cragg writes with approval of the obscure Egyptian writer Muhammad Kāmil Husayn’s ‘scepticism about the amenability of public “causes” to the moral restraints and standards that might weigh with private people’ (ibid.; Kāmil Husayn, The City of Evil).
Yet one surely should, if one is fair, immediately note the implications of this train of thought for our earlier assessment of Muhammad’s ministry. If it is true that collectives and groups develop their own momentum of evil, as Cragg implies, that the consequences of even undeniably private actions are far from private, it may well be the case that the right way of ‘dealing’ with collective evil must itself be alert to the structural-public dimension of human wrongdoing. Yet precisely this recognition is denied, for reasons adduced a priori, by Christian critics of Islam. For any such recognition serves conclusively to justify Muhammad’s decision to alter not merely recalcitrant individual consciences but rather also to come to terms with the entire power-structure that had resisted his preachings. To be sure, such a reckoning must itself respect the constraints of religious principle and right conduct. The political programme must engage men and women who are long-suffering, working with and within individual consciences, never upon, let alone against, the promptings of the individual conscientious office.
The point is elemental. The Christian thinker cannot have it both ways. If there are social dimensions to individual evil, then a right form of piety, in its confrontation with the evil of structures, must have the resources to deal with the social, not merely the personal, consequences of such evil. And this is particularly true given the fact that collective evil is very likely in practice to assume militant forms. To concede, as Christians do, that evil takes on a structural aspect, yet to deny the need for a corresponding form of reckoning that is alert precisely to this structural dimension is, in effect, to make for an unrealistic and immature model of piety. Cragg’s other points about the koranic dictum concerning the soul’s individual responsibility are well taken. The burden of the soul is that of the guilty – or better, shamestricken – conscience introspectively aware of its own wrongdoings. That is the intended meaning here. Of course, there are others around us who impose various burdens of pain and suffering – burdens that are strictly not our own in their origin but certainly ours in the bearing. As friends, enemies, lovers, mothers, brothers, fathers, citizens, we contribute to one another’s pains. In that sense, virtually every burdened soul bears the burden of another. But the divine reckoning that awaits the individual cannot be transferred.

7
One might say that the Koran, like the Bhagavad Gita, was revealed on a battlefield. The forces of good and evil are entrenched in their positions. The Koran’s Arabian context is one of militant impiety versus militant righteousness; the profane establishment was thoroughly opposed to the sacred cause. Unsurprisingly, as Cragg reminds us, the actual context of the Scripture’s incidence is significantly reflected in its tone, its method and mood.
Fair enough; but then come the somewhat wistful musings of a Cragg ‘wishing he might saviour the message of divine transcendence in a constituency more congenial to its wonder, less stubborn in its waywardness, than the one Muhammad had to face in Mecca, so that his quality might be known in a joyful availing of his word’ (Muhammad and the Christian, pp. 22-3). An idle wish, of course, even at best; and a thoroughly misguided one at worst. For there is only one constituency proper to the word of God – the human constituency. And that constituency is typically not ‘congenial’ in the required way. Unfortunate, to be sure; but there we have it. It was not congenial in the days of Moses; it was not congenial in the days of Muhammad. And it has not become so in the contemporary world. Impiety has, does, and will always assume militant forms in its opposition to righteousness. That is the way of the world – and one very conclusively demonstrated, ironically, in the ministry of Jesus. The world of first-century Palestine did not, to put it no more strongly, provide a congenial constituency; it was not lacking in perversity of the over-confidence of evil, both perennial features of the human condition.
God works out His purposes in the real world, not through our daydreams. His constituency is our human, all too human, world. To attenuate the obstinacy of man, to reduce the actual dimensions of human perversity, whether for purposes practical or abstract, is effectively to wish for a constituency that has little in common with our own world. It is, in effect, to ask for illusions. Reality, both natural and political, has no great desire to reflect the wishes and slogans of the pious will.
These observations relate importantly to issues of political violence, as will be seen more clearly in the following chapters. This harsh and indifferent world may not be the only one worth describing – fantasy has its rewards – but it is necessarily the only one worth changing. That is why any realistic scripture must deal with human beings as they actually are, not as we would ideally like them to be. There is no constituency more worthy of wonder than the real world.






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So, the thesis from the Qu'ran is.... God will order whatever God wants, whenever God wants. If you’re in the business of saying ‘God wouldn’t do that’, then you’re the one claiming to know about God: you might as well declare yourself to be a prophet and explain the meaning of the universe to the rest of us.






Surah 47, The Qu’rān

Those who reject God and hinder men from the path of God, God will render their deeds void. But those who believe and work deeds of righteousness, and believe in that which is sent down to Muhammad - for it is the truth from their Lord,- He will remove from them their ills and improve their condition. This because those who reject God follow vanities, while those who believe follow the truth from their Lord: thus does God set forth for men their lessons by similitudes.

Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them: thereafter is the time for either generosity or ransom: until the war lays down its burdens. Thus it is: but if it had been God’s will, He could certainly have exacted retribution from them; but He lets you fight in order to test you, some with others. But those who are slain in the way of God, He will never let their deeds be lost.

Soon will He guide them and improve their condition, and admit them to the garden which He has announced for them. O ye who believe! If ye will aid the cause of God, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly. But those who reject, for them is destruction, and God will render their deeds void. That is because they hate the revelation of God, so He has made their deeds fruitless.

Do they not travel through the earth, and see what was the end of those before them? God brought utter destruction on them, and similar awaits those who reject God. That is because God is the protector of those who believe, but those who reject God have no protector.

Verily God will admit those who believe and do righteous deeds to gardens beneath which rivers flow; while those who reject God will enjoy this world and eat as cattle eat; and the hellfire will be their abode. And how many cities, with more power than thy city which has driven thee out, have we destroyed? And there was none to aid them.

Is then one who is on a clear path from his Lord, no better than one to whom the evil of his conduct seems pleasing, and such as follow their own lusts? Here is a parable of the garden which the righteous are promised: in it are rivers of water incorruptible; rivers of milk of which the taste never changes; rivers of wine, a joy to those who drink; and rivers of honey pure and clear. In it there are for them all kinds of fruits; and grace from their Lord. Can they compare with such as shall dwell for ever in the hellfire, and be given, to drink, boiling water, so that it cuts up their bowels?

And among them are men who listen to thee, but in the end, when they go out from thee, they say to those who have received knowledge, "What is it he said just then?". Such are men whose hearts God has sealed, and who follow their own lusts. But to those who receive guidance, He increases the guidance, and bestows on them their piety and restraint.

Do they then only wait for the deadline, that it should come on them of a sudden? But already have come some tokens thereof, and when it actually is on them, how can they benefit then by their admonition? Know, therefore, that there is no god but God, and ask forgiveness for thy fault, and for the men and women who believe: for God knows how ye move about and how ye dwell in your homes.

Those who believe say, "Why is not a chapter sent down for us?" But when a chapter of basic or categorical meaning is revealed, and fighting is mentioned therein, thou wilt see those in whose hearts is a disease looking at thee with a look of one in swoon at the approach of death. But more fitting for them would be to obey and say what is just, and when a matter is resolved on, it would be best for them if they were true to God.

Then, is it to be expected of you, that if ye were put in authority, that ye would do mischief in the land, and break your ties of kith and kin? Such are the men whom God has cursed for He has made them deaf and blinded their sight. Do they not then earnestly seek to understand the Qur'an, or are their hearts locked up by them?

Those who turn back as apostates after guidance was clearly shown to them,- the evil one has instigated them and busied them up with false hopes. This, because they said to those who hate what God has revealed, "We will obey you in part of the matter"; but God knows their inner secrets.

But how will it be when the angels take their souls at death, and smite their faces and their backs? This, because they followed that which called forth the wrath of God, and they hated God’s good pleasure; so He made their deeds void.

Or do those in whose hearts is a disease, think that God will not bring to light all their rancour? Had we so wiled, we could have shown them up to thee, and thou shouldst have known them by their marks: but surely thou wilt know them by the tone of their speech! And God knows all that ye do.

And we shall try you until we test those among you who strive their utmost and persevere in patience; and we shall test your facts. Those who reject God, hinder men from the path of God, and resist the messenger, after guidance has been clearly shown to them, will not injure God in the least, but He will make their deeds of no effect.

O ye who believe! Obey God, and obey the apostle, and make not vain your deeds! Those who reject God, and hinder men from the path of God, then die rejecting God - God will not forgive them.

Be not weary and faint-hearted, crying for peace, when ye are on the higher ground: for God is with you, and will never put you in loss for your good deeds. The life of this world is but play and amusement: and if ye believe and guard against evil, He will grant you your recompense, and will not ask you to give up your possessions.

If He were to ask you for all of them, and press you, ye would covetously withhold, and He would bring out all your ill-feeling. Behold, ye are those invited to spend in the way of God. But among you are some that are niggardly. But any who are niggardly are so at the expense of their own souls. But God is free of all wants, and it is ye that are needy. If ye turn back from the path, He will substitute in your stead another people; they would not be like you!












All glory belongs to God. God knows best in all matters.

Religious Duties

Glory belongs to God.

I was born in 1973. I was brought up without any religion. I lived in Sydney. For some time, you could say I was a skeptic. However, by the age of about 25, I had begun to 'explore' belief systems. At first, though, I didn't want to make much effort other than reading.

Eventually, after learning meditation, I began to use meditation for health benefits, whereas beforehand I had preferred swimming in the ocean, bushwalking, or sports. Even so, at first I didn't realise that the primary function of worship is spiritual, not physical.

Eventually I realised that meditation should be used for spiritual gain, not only physical, and then I began to feel a desire for meditation. These days, I believe that worship is actually incumbent on the good souls within humanity, it's like brushing your teeth, you can't get far without it. The Quranic position is my position.

Some people argue that there are certain individuals who are lucky enough that they have a mission in life that is so crucially necessary to humanity, that their very occupation within that mission is a form of worship. My point of view is that the following comments by the Qur'an more or less rule out this possibility.

1. Prophets have to worship. Early prophets called on god with supplication. Later prophets instigated regular worship. In chapter 17 of the Qu'ran, the prophet Mohammad himself is personally commanded to engage in nighttime worship for the sake of helping him with his prophetic mission.

2. In chapter 11 the Qur'an discusses worship at the community level; the establishment of regular worship among the people is clearly encouraged. In fact, the Qur'an speaks much of worship throughout its length; sincerity and purity in worship are recommend highly.

The points raised above, and in the article below, show that for anyone who believes in the Qur'an as god's word, it would be very hard, if not impossible, to argue against the duty of worship.

Glory be to God.

Religious Duties – A Gift from God

Glory belongs to God. This article is taken from Appendix 15 of the Translation of the Qu’rān by Dr Rashad Khalifa, as it is found on the website www.submission.org. I don’t agree with everything Dr. Rashad Khalifa has said, however I do agree with some of it. We all have the right to our opinions, and glory belongs to God.

A supplication of the prophet Abraham was so significant in mankind's history that it is reported in the Qur'an. He implored God, not for wealth or health, but that he might be made to be a person who observes worship.

This is found, for example, in chapter 14 of the Qu’rān, verse 40, ‘My lord! Make me to establish proper worship, and some of my posterity also; Our lord! And accept my supplication’, but it’s worth reading the whole chapter to get the full picture about him. Chapter 11 also discusses worship, and is key to the concept of regular prayer – again, it's worth reading the whole chapter.

The religious duties instituted by God are a great gift. They constitute the nourishment required for the growth and development of our souls. With such nourishment we can prepare for the return to God and the day of judgement. Belief in God does not, by itself, guarantee our redemption; we must also nourish our souls.

This is mentioned in many places in the Qu’rān, for example chapter 6. In line 158 it explains: “Are they waiting to see if the angels come to them, or thy lord himself, or certain of the signs of thy lord! The day that certain of the signs of thy lord do come, no good will it do to a soul to believe in them then if it believed not before, nor earned righteousness through its faith. Say ‘Wait ye: we too are waiting’”.

The reader may see that the context of this line is actually to make clear to man that passivity will not be accepted as an excuse on the day of judgement, nor will similar avoidance techniques; yet, the point is made clear to us that ‘earning righteousness through faith’ is recommended. It is saying, learn how to be good, and be good.

The fate that is in store for those who reject this advice is exemplified by the story of the Pharaoh, as evidenced in chapter 10 of the Qu’rān. Lines 90-92 of the chapter give the story of his plea to God for mercy as he was dashed, but shows that at that point it was too late.

God chose to save Pharoah’s body, to make it a lesson for later peoples, yet his soul couldn’t be saved, due to his misdeeds. Additionally, 15:99 states that observing the religious duties instituted by God is our duty while we wait for the events of the future: “But celebrate the praises of thy lord, and be of those who prostrate themselves in adoration. And serve thy lord until there come unto thee that which is certain”.

That's the article by Rashad Khalifa. Thanks be to God. It explained things to me quite clearly. Also, though, let me not forget that pilgrimage, for those who can manage it, is a duty. Read the Qur'an, chapter 22, for more details about that.

Glory belongs to God.