Christian-Muslim relations blog

John Wansbrough’s account of the relationship between the Qur’an and the life of Muhammad effectively reverses both the traditional Islamic view, as well as the more positive assessments of 20th century Western scholars.  In the first place, Wansbrough argues that the Qur’an “suggests…the product of an organic development from originally independent traditions during a long period of transmission.” These independent traditions, he continues, originated from sectarian monotheistic communities — specifically, broadly Judeo-Christian ones.  

This account of the origins of the Qur’an, interesting in itself, also gives rise to an intriguing account of the life of Muhammad.  In Wansbrough’s view, these independent traditions gave shape to the traditional life of Mohammed; the life in fact historicizes the content of these traditions, such that the “traditional Judeo-Christian concept of prophethood” functions as the theological ground of the life of Muhammad (Berg 200).  The narrative ought to be seen as a dramatization of this theology of prophethood. Thus, for instance, allegations of sorcery and possession in the life of the Muhammad can be considered a faithful representation of the Judeo-Christian, and hence Quranic, understanding of the task of a prophet.

This nexus of connections raises several questions which are decisively important for the theological encounter between Christianity and Islam.  In the first place, how would Wansbrough’s understanding of the Qur’an as essentially a theological text derived from independent traditions of a Judeo-Christian stripe alter the Christian conception of Islam?  Conceiving the traditional life of Muhammad as a dramatization of such a theology makes this question more prominent. To what extent is Islam, both in its scripture and its traditional self-understanding, to be conceived of as a unique and fundamentally distinct religion? To what extent must it be viewed as foundationally related to, and even derived from, Jewish and Christian theology?  In sum, if Wansbrough is correct, how should Christians balance treating Islam as an independent theological and legal tradition with engaging and critiquing it on explicitly Judeo-Christian theological terms?

Ignaz Goldziher’s account of the development and authority of the sunna is often at pains to emphasize the extreme concern which “rigorists” often expressed with the concept.  The sunna governing a particular area of human behavior were derived from the words and, later, actions of the Prophet. On these grounds, pious Muslims strove to conduct even the most apparently minor matters of everyday life, from forms of greeting to the liceity of wearing certain kinds of jewelry. Correspondingly, Goldziher observes that, in the early Islamic period, this reverence for sunna gave rise to the doctrine that “the worst things of all are innovations” (Goldziher 64).  Particularly in the early period, this was interpreted to condemn “not only everything contrary to the spirit of the sunna, but also everything that cannot be proved to be in it” (68). All such innovations might be viewed, according to one strand of thought, as heretical and, consequently, damnable.  

On its face, this is extreme, and Goldziher observes that it led to a theological reaction fairly early in Islamic history.  To avoid the condemnation of any possible convenience or development unknown to the early decades of Islam, there emerge a distinction between heretical and unobjectionable innovations — those which contradict the Quran, and those which do not, respectively.  It seems a salutary development in Islamic thought. And yet, as Goldziher observed, this doctrine “supplied the motives for the approval of entirely new arrangements. Only a little broadmindedness is needed for men to approve…things which are absolutely contrary to Islam” (70).

The tension between these two poles is a familiar and, perhaps, predictable; as far as description goes, Goldziher sketches it admirably.  But the problem raises a fundamental, and unanswered, question: where does Islam strike a balance between these two poles? If rigorism ends in ossified hostility to any change whatsoever, and “broadmindedness” rapidly leads to the contradiction of foundational tenets of Islam, on what basis is it possible to steer a middle way between them?  

Abi Talib’s exegesis of Q 2:30 contains this remark on the creation of Adam: “The skin of the earth had both good and bad in it, which accounts for why some people are good and some are bad.”   It is a claim further adverted to by other interpreters exegeting other passages. Remarking on a series of passages about God’s covenant with Adam’s descendants, for instance, Abu al-Darda describes God striking Adam on the back with his right and left hands to produce to sets of descendants, identifying some with “To Paradise” and some as “To the Fire.”  

This pair of citations attempts to grapple with the problems of human evil and of the damnation of some and salvation of others. These texts on the creation of Adam ground both issues in protology: both human evil and the variant eternal destinations of human beings are known, and apparently determined, at the moment of creation.  To Christian eyes, it is a troubling theological maneuver, for it apparently leaves no space to human freedom either in the origin of human evil or the basis of eternal salvation or damnation.  

Abi Talib’s claim that the goodness or wickedness of human beings has its origin solely in the material with which they were created (“The skin of the earth had both good and bad in it”) seems particularly perilous. While it absolves God of the responsibility for creating bad human beings, it does so by effectively claiming that God could not have created humanity any differently; the moral deficiencies of human beings derive from deficient material. This apparently entails a level of dependence by God upon the matter out of which he creates, with a consequent challenge to the extent of divine power.  Are we to assume that God lacked the capacity to create human beings as good, but was limited only by bad material? Talib’s claim avoids attributing to God the responsibility for human evil only at the cost of raising more serious questions about divine omnipotence. In this respect, it seems only to complicate the issue without resolving it.