‘How would the Muslim community respond if ITV made a programme challenging Muhammad as the last prophet?’
So, according to a report in Saturday’s Guardian, does Anglican canon Dr Patrick Sookhdeo protest against the decision by ITV to broadcast, on some as yet unnamed future Sunday, a one-hour documentary setting out the Muslim view of Jesus.
Doubtless, Dr Sookhdeo is perfectly correct to surmise, in the wake of the worldwide Muslim protests at the publication of Danish cartoons of Mohammad, that it is almost unthinkable in today’s climate that any British TV company would have courage enough to screen a documentary setting out Christian conceptions of Islam and of its founding figure.
However, neither that lamentable fact - nor the fact that, to Christians such as Dr Sookhdeo, the Koranic denial of Jesus’ divinity is ‘unacceptable’ - should be considered good enough reasons for right-minded people, whether they be Christians or not, to oppose the documentary to which Dr Sookhdeo takes such strong exception.
This is so for several reasons.
First, and this consideration is intended just for Christians like Dr Sookhdeo, surely it displays a most decidedly un-Christian attitude for them to be unwilling to act towards Muslims as they would have Muslims act towards them, merely because some Muslims are unwilling to act towards them as they would have Muslims do?
According to Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, what Jesus bid his followers was: ‘As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.’ (St Luke, Vl, 31.) He most decidedly did not bid them: ‘As men do to you, do ye also to them likewise.’
Dr Sookhdeo might reply that he does not particularly want that Muslims should allow Christians to be able to explain to them their Christian take on Muhammad. But, again, were he to say this, that would surely be for him to display a most un-Christian attitude, since, like Islam, Christianity is a proselytising religion.
Surely, free and respectful communication by adherents of each major religion of their view of each other is a perfectly worthy and commendable ideal to which no right-minded adherent of any religion should have any trouble in signing up. As such, those in particular who are enjoined by their religion to follow the Golden Rule should above all be willing to allow Muslims to explain to them and others their view of Jesus, despite many Muslims not being prepared to reciprocate in terms of being willing to hear from others what their view of Mohammad is.
But it is precisely because of the current unwillingness of so many Muslims to listen to other people’s views of their religion that all those concerned with social cohesion should welcome Muslims reflecting on their own religion’s view of Jesus. For rightly exploited, their so doing could provide non-Muslims with a golden opportunity to invite them to reflect about the nature and content of the Muslim revelation.
One of the great causes of such violent extremism as exists in the world today in the name of Islam is that those who engage in such violence think it is sanctioned or commanded by the Qur’an, a text they say was originally communicated verbatim and in toto to Mohammad by God through the intermediation of the angel Gabriel.
Those who think this way simply won’t entertain the idea of treating the Qur'an as an historical text that, though perhaps divinely inspired, is not a verbatim transcription of a revelation or rather series of revelations.
Surely noticing the huge overlap in doctrinal content between Islam and Christianity, notwithstanding their crucial differences, might be a good way to encourage Muslims to adopt towards their sacred text a less fundamentalist and literalist posture, and one that gave them more scope to be more discriminating in terms of what they take from it.
In his hugely instructive account of what led him to join and then leave radical Islam, Ed Husain writes that what started the process of his disillusion with radical Islam was his beginning to realise how derivative from non-Muslim sources were the ideas of some Islamists, despite their professed repudiation of all things non-Islamic.
Husain writes that he began to question the teachings of Nahbhani, founder of Hizb ut-Tahrir, after he realised how much Nabhani had adopted into his own thought without proper acknowledgement from western thinkers. Husain writes:
‘Nabhani had argued that his … scholarly reasoning was based purely on Islam and not influenced by any other source, particularly Western philosophical thought, which he abhorred. This hatred of Western intellectual development was widespread in the Hizb, and we [its members] prided ourselves on our ‘intellectual purity’ as carriers of deep enlightened thought’ derived from Islam.
‘Now I discovered that Nabhani was not as ‘pure’ as he and his followers claimed. His ideas were derivative, fully formed by Western political discourse but presented in the language of Muslim religious idioms, offering European political ideals wrapped in the language of the Qur’an in order to gain mass appeal in the Arab world….
‘In my mind, Nabhani had fallen from his pedestal. And with him all of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s claim to political purity, intellectual superiority, deep thoughts, and the dressing up in religious terms of a political agenda born in the 1950s Middle East. Islamism became an empty, bankrupt ideology.’
[Ed Husain, The Islamist (Penguin 2007), pp. 160-64, passim]
Now, my suggestion is that a consideration by Muslims of how much the doctrines of their religion resemble Christian teachings as they had developed by the seventh century could serve a similarly moderating influence.
Heaven forbid anyone think I am wanting to suggest that, should any rational Muslims dwell on that overlap, they would at once or eventually come to see that Muhammad simply lifted Christianity and turned it to his own ends.
Rather, what I am suggesting is that reflection on the overlap might cause Muslims to begin to undertake the same shift in attitude towards the putative Muslim revelation as occurred in the case of Judaism and Christianity in the nineteenth century with the advent of higher Biblical criticism.
After all, what lies at the basis of Muslims’ belief in the revealed character of the Qur’an? It is not that it says it was, for to accept its word on that matter would beg the question at issue.
It is rather that the espousal of such a supposedly beautiful and profound text by an uneducated man as Muhammad is something that Muslims claim could not possibly have happened through natural causes, and hence only happened because Muhammad was subject to the divine revelation of those verses.
That this is what lies at the basis of the Muslim acceptance of the Qur’an as a divinely revealed text is not a construction placed on their faith by non-Muslims. It is the view that Muslims themselves hold.
In the case of religions that ground their teachings on putative acts of special revelation, a sign of such has always been the accompaniment of miraculous occurrences. In the case of Moses, we have the burning bush, and the parting of the Red Sea. In the case of Jesus, we have the miracles of the loaves and the fishes and above all the Resurrection. In the case of Muhammad, we have … the Qur’an.
Thus, for example, consider the ‘proof’ of the revealed status of that text offered by Nabhani in his principal work, Nidham ul Islam or The System of Islam. Here he writes:
‘As for the proof that the Qur’an is revealed by Allah, it is well known that the Qur’an is an Arabic book conveyed by Muhammad. Thus, it is either from Arabs, from Muhammad, or from Allah, and it is not possible that it be from any other except these since it is Arabic in language and style.
‘It is false to say that the Qur’an comes from the Arabs because it challenged them to bring forth anything similar to it… They tried to bring the like of it but they failed to do so. Hence this book is not of their speech because they were unable to bring the like of it, though it challenged them, and they tried to bring the like of it.
‘It is also false to say that it is from Muhammad, since Muhammad is one of the Arabs, and whatever the height of his genius, he is a human being and a member of the community of nations. Since the Arabs themselves had failed to bring the like of it, this also applies to Muhammad, the Arab, that he could not bring the like of it. Thus, it is not from him…
‘Since it is proved that the Qur’an is neither the speech of the Arabs nor the speech of Muhammad, it is definitely the speech of Allah, and consequently it is a miracle for the one who brought it.
‘Because Muhammad brought the Qur’an, and the Qur’an is the speech of Allah and His divine law, and because no one brings Allah’s Shariah (law) except the Prophets and the Messengers, then accordingly Muhammad must definitely be a prophet and messenger, by rational proof.
‘This is an intellectual proof for the iman (belief) in Allah and in the message of Muhammad, and that the Qur’an is the speech of Allah.’ (passim p.13-16.)
I will refrain from commenting on this ‘proof’, save to say that, even to a devout Muslim, the fact that both the Old and New Testaments had received canonical form in Muhammad's day, and that their contents were in wide currency in his society, suggests the possibility of other routes for his inspired ‘revelation’ than that via Gabriel God disclosed to Muhammad every single last word of what he claimed God had.
The more Muslims and non-Muslims dwell on the close similarity between the teachings of Islam and Christianity, notwithstanding their differences the easier will I think it become for Muslims to rid themselves of a belief in a baneful and fundamentalist form of exceptionalism that makes them look down on all other religions as inferior to theirs and to regard ever injunction and permission in the Qur’an as binding on them today because divinely revealed.
Those wanting to appreciate just how closely Islam follows Christianity doctrinally in many respects need not wait until the documentary is screened. For guidance, they can turn to Hilaire Belloc’s wonderful essay of 1936 ‘The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammad’. There they will learn from this staunch Roman Catholic that:
‘Mohammadanism … is not a new religion. That which he [Muhammad] taught was in the main Catholic doctrine… The very foundation of his teaching was that prime Catholic doctrine, the unity and omnipotence of God. The world of good spirits and angels and of evil spirits in rebellion against God was a part of the teaching [of Muhammad], with a chief evil spirit, such as Christendom had recognised. Mohammad [also] preached with insistence that prime Catholic doctrine, on the human side – the immortality of the soul and its responsibility for actions in this life, coupled with the consequent doctrine of punishment and reward after death.
‘Muhammad gave to our Lord the highest reverence and to our Lady also. On the Day of Judgement (another Catholic idea that he taught) it was our Lord [i.e. Jesus], according to Mohammed, who would be the judge of mankind, not he, Mohammed. The Mother of Christ. “the Lady Miriam”, was ever for him the first of womankind. His followers even got from the early Fathers some vague hint of her Immaculate Conception.’
Now, of course, because Muslims reject the Incarnation, they also reject the Eucharist, as they do the need of a specially authorised priesthood to administer it.
But then so do the Jews which brings me to a third reason why all right-minded people, including Christians, should be willing to allow Muslims in Britain to explain to their non-Muslim compatriots their view of Jesus, despite many Muslims being unwilling to allow their non-Muslim compatriots to explain their view of Muhammad.
In the Guardian report, Dr Sookhdeo is reported as having accused ITV of double-standards in allowing Muslims to explain their view of Christianity to Christians without allowing non-Muslims to return the compliment as it were and explain their view of Muhammad to Muslims. He is quoted as saying: ‘How would the Muslim community respond if ITV made a programme challenging Muhammad as the last prophet?’
But surely Dr Sookhdeo cannot be unaware of the fact that his own religion contests the view that Moses was the last prophet to reveal any divine law, a view of Moses to which Jews subscribe.
If, as I am sure, Dr Sookhdeo would wish to allow, Christians may challenge the Jewish view of Moses as being the last prophet to disclose any divinely revealed law, why should he object to Muslims being able to treat Christians in the same way as he is willing to allow Christians to treat Jews?
Furthermore, in December 2000, Channel Four broadcast, without any Christian complaint at the time, a documentary by the Jewish theologian Hyam Maccoby entitled ‘The Real Jesus’ which also contested the divine status of Jesus. Since Dr Sookhdeo never objected to that, so far as I am aware, then surely it would be double standards on his part for him to object to a documentary that presents a similar non-Christian view of Jesus -- one furthermore which regards Jesus as a prophet, rather than merely as an inspired pharisaic rabbi which is what Maccoby argued is all Jesus actually was.
Given how dire and strained relations between Muslims and non-Muslims are at the present time, respectful debate between them about their mutual doctrinal differences could well be the best way forward to create greater social cohesion than presently exists.
In light of the deep suspicion by many Muslims of a fundamentalist outlook that there is vast Jewish conspiracy against them, I give the last word on this subject to what Moses Maimonides, the great twelfth century father of Jewish orthodoxy, had to say about how orthodox Jews such as he envisage the future messianic period. For I think it offers a very comforting vision for all men and women of good-will of all three theistic faiths and even of none:
‘The wise men and the prophets longed for the days of the messiah not in order to rule over the whole world, nor to subjugate the nations, nor so that these peoples would be elevated, nor to eat, drink, and be merry, but in order to have the leisure for [study of] the Torah and its wisdom – with no one to oppress or obstruct them – so that they would merit the life of the world-to-come.
‘At that time, there will not be hunger, or war, or envy and rivalry. For the good things will overflow in great abundance, all the delicacies will be as accessible as the dust of the earth. And the occupation of the whole world will be solely to know the Lord. … As it is said: ‘For the earth shall be full of knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’ (Isaiah, 1, 9)
[Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah,'Laws of Kings and their Wars, ch.11.]
The irony is, of course, that, were that section of humankind which notionally signs up to some form of theistic religion within the Abrahamic tradition able to figure out how to stop their religious differences from creating violent confrontation between them, then it is within the reach of present-day human technology to be able to realise that vision. Since I believe the best way of overcoming the tensions created by those religious differences is by better mutual understanding between these religions, and, for the reasons I have given above, I believe that the ITV documentary about Muslim views of Jesus promotes such better understanding, I am in favour of it.
My one cavil with ITV it is that I think they could have chosen a more respectful day of the week on which to broadcast it than a Sunday.