JAN SLOMP

THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD IN ENLIGHTENMENT AND CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE

Introduction The second half of the twentieth century saw a revaluation among ecumenic- ally-minded Protestant and Roman Catholic thinkers of the Prophet Muham- mad. Writers like William Montgomery Watt (1961; Anglican), Anton Wessels (1978; Reformed), Kenneth Cragg (1984; Anglican), Hans Küng (1984; Ro- man Catholic), and Reinhard Leuze (1994; Lutheran),1 to mention only a few, do see him as a prophet. They are far from the influential Dominican monk Ri- coldo de Monte Cruce, who lived in Baghdad from about 1290-1300 and de- scribed Muhammad as a hominem diabolicum (cf. Bijlefeld 1959: 48). John Calvin’s view has been left behind as well: he saw Muhammad as the great se- ducer of the Turks, not taking the trouble to study himself but referring to this religion in numerous places in his works (cf. Slomp 1995: 126-57). Martin Luther and Erasmus, on the other hand, did study Islam. Luther trans- lated Ricoldo and wanted to study Islam and the Qur’an seriously, for he did not consider it responsible to state, without further investigation, that “Muham- mad was an enemy of the Christian faith” (In: Bobzin 2004: 269).

Each of the authors cited make clear immediately, each in his own way, that they do not use the word “prophet” precisely in the same way that Muslims do. To do so would imply that, as Christians, they see Muhammad as the last and final messenger of God. In short, for them he is a prophet and not the Prophet, using a biblical or phenomenological, frame of reference for their definition of prophet, rather than a Qur’anic one. But the Bible and the Qur’an have, as Küng demonstrated, so many similarities that this approach is justified. One semi-official church gathering, a conference on Islam organized by the Confer- ence of European Churches, stated in March 1984 in St. Pölten in Austria that Christians, with certain biblical reservations, could speak about Muhammad as

1 Prophet with a capital always refers to Muhammad. Cf. Leuze 1994: 26 The other writers mentioned here will be discussed below.

63 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 18 (2008) 1 a prophet—but, it was added, for Christians Jesus is more than a prophet. We will look at some of these writers and their views (Slomp 1995b).2

Hans Zirker, a Roman Catholic, discusses the dilemma for Christians by means of the following question: Was Muhammad a prophetic genius or a prophet? He concludes that it cannot be expected that there will soon be unanimity among Christians concerning this (Zirker 1993: 158). This is certainly absent in most evangelical circles, although positive changes are occurring there as well. What is the source of the revaluation of Islam as a religion in general and of the person of the Prophet in particular? In the Dutch-speaking world, the well-known expert on Islam in Leiden, C. Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936) wrote retrospectives in 1886 and 1894—which are still worth reading—on pre- vious literature on this subject (Snouck Hurgronje 1886: 185-294; 1894: 321- 62). To my knowledge, Clinton Bennet offers the most extensive overview in his In Search of Muhammad of how Muhammad has been viewed in the West in recent centuries (Bennet 1998). He limits himself largely to sources written in or translated into English. In particular, he misses the contributions by writ- ers from German Enlightenment circles, such as Lessing and Goethe, towards a revaluation of Muhammad. The former Baptist missionary could have been ex- pected also to provide an overview of recent views by Christian theologians who propose recognizing Muhammad as a prophet. David Kerr filled this gap in his “He Walked in the Path of the Prophets: Toward Christian Theological Recognition of the Prophethood of Muhammad” (Kerr 1995). In that same year, the writer of this article did the same for Dutch-speaking areas: “Het de- bat over de christelijke erkenning van Mohammed” (The Debate on the Chris- tian Recognition of Muhammad) (Slomp 1995b). No use could be made of Da- vid Kerr’s insights at this point.

In this article I will sketch four trails that have led to a more positive view of the Prophet of Islam. It is not possible to keep these four trails completely sep- arate, for they converge frequently in one and the same individual. These trails are the following: 1) the literary trail of the Enlightenment, 2) the orientalistic trail, 3) the trail of writers from the Muslim world leading to 4) the Christian theological trail. The first three trails—although the one more than the other— have influenced the thinking of Christian theologians on Islam in general and on the Prophet Muhammad in particular in both positive and negative ways.

The Literary Trail of the Enlightenment The first people in Western Europe to liberate themselves from a negative im- age of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad were not theologians but scholars,

2 The report of this conference is found on p. 132.

64 THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD historians, poets, novelists and playwrights. In Enlightenment circles, Islam was appreciated as a rational, natural religion with, according to thinkers in this period, a clearer and more delineated monotheism than the incomprehensi- ble and complex Christian reflections on three-in-oneness. In contrast to what is now the case among those who today claim to endorse Enlightenment ideals, the revaluation of Islam was accompanied to a certain extent by a critique of Christianity, particularly Christian doctrine. The following quote will serve to illustrate this: Leibniz and many other Enlightenment figures saw Muhammad as a herald of natural religion. Indeed, Henry de Boulainvilliers (1658-1722) made him into a hero of an “anticlerical novel” (first published in 1730) in which he was portrayed as the creator of a rational religion far superior to Christianity. (Fück 1955: 103) Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881): The Hero as Prophet Whoever follows this trail discovers that the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle is often cited as the first European writer to take a positive view of the Prophet Muhammad and as someone who broke the long chain of slanderous state- ments about him. He did this in the second of his six lectures on heroes and hero worship, which was on “The Hero As Prophet. Mahomet: Islam” on 8 May 1840.3 This lecture certainly made Carlyle the most well-known, most im- portant and influential writer on this subject, particularly in the English-speak- ing world, but he was not the first. Carlyle himself cited George Sale’s first English translation of the Qur’an directly from Arabic in 1734 as a positive source. Sale’s translation led people to suspect him of being a “closet Muslim” (Bennett 1998: 99). The body that commissioned the translation, the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, severed all ties with him because of his translation. Another source was the work of the British scholar Edward Po- cocke (1604-1691), the first professor of the Arabic language in Oxford. Car- lyle could profit also from Edward Gibbon’s famous The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-83), in which the latter, as a secular historian, wrote positively about Muhammad (Gibbon 1998: 861f.). Carlyle did not provide any footnotes and indicates sources only in passing. It is therefore possible that he was also acquainted with two works that were published in 1829: Godfrey Hig- gins’ Apology for the Life of Mahomed, which called Muhammad a “very great man,” and Charles Forster’s Mahomatism Unveiled, which stated that the Pro- phet “in some sense was raised up by God” (Bennett 1998: 102f.). Forster’s book was severely attacked by, among others, William Muir, who published a two-volume Life of Mahomet himself in 1858, with which Muslims were cer- tainly not happy. It would have great influence on missionaries in India and af- ter 1947 even in Pakistan (see below). Carlyle translated works by Goethe, Leibniz and other writers in the time of the Enlightenment. I will return to

3 On his life see “Thomas Carlyle,” in: Encyclopaedia Britannica 4: 923f.

65 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 18 (2008) 1

Goethe below. Another reason for beginning with Carlyle is that his work is discussed extensively in two well-known modern Egyptian biographies of Mu- hammad written in Arabic: Hayât Muhammad (The Life of Muhammed) by Mohammad Husayn Haykal and ‘Abqariyyat Muhammad (The Genius of Mo- hammed) by ‘Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad (cf. Sabanegh 1981: 117, 130, 357f.).4 Al-Aqqad wrote a book on Jesus, Hayât al Masih, as a counterpart, that was published in 1965 in Urdu. Because Carlyle made a greater contribution to a more positive image of Muhammad than his German predecessors, we will dis- cuss him first in this overview.

Carlyle was born into a Calvinist family in Scotland. His father hoped that he would become a minister, but Carlyle taught mathematics, studied law and German and wrote many historical works, in particular on great men like Cromwell and Napoleon, which caused a furore among the Victorian public. All his writings were characterized by Calvinist severity and a prophetic tone. His admiration for Muhammad is clear in the following quotes: We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret. But of a Great Man especially, of him I will venture to assert that it is incredible he should have been other than true. It seems to me the primary foundation of him, and of all that can lie in him, this. No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man ade- quate to do anything, but is first of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. The young man [in Syria] first came in contact with a quite foreign world,— with one foreign element of endless moment to him: the Christian Religion. But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man. His companions named him “Al Amin, The Faithful.” A man of truth and fidelity; true in what he did, in what he spake and thought. A serious, sincere character; yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose even;—a good laugh in him withal .... It goes greatly against the impostor theory, the fact that he lived in this entirely unexceptionable, entirely quiet and commonplace way, till the heat of his years was done (with his wife Kadijah).

4 I am grateful to Sabanegh for these references.

66 THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD

The great Mystery of Existence, as I said, glared in upon him, with its terrors, with its splendors; no hearsays could hide that unspeakable fact, “Here am I!” Such sincerity, as we named it, has in very truth something of divine. “If this be Islam,= says Goethe, “do we not all live in Islam?” Yes all of us that have any moral life; we all live so. This is the soul of Islam; it is properly the soul of Christianity .... Christianity also commands us, before all, to be resigned to God .... Mahomet’s Creed we called a kind of Christianity; and really, if we look at the wild rapt earnestness with which it was believed and laid to heart, I should say a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian Sects, with their vain janglings about Homoiousion and Homoousion. (Carlyle 1904: 40-66) Carlyle defends the fact that Muhammad used the sword to spread his faith by referring to the minority position of the Meccan believers in a hostile environ- ment. He does stop short of comparing Muhammad with Moses, the biblical prophet mentioned most in the Qur’an, who was given the task of using the sword to fight for the Lord and his people. Carlyle also discusses the de- scription of Paradise in the Qur’an in sensual terms. Some later Muslim apolo- gists could learn something from him on this point. The argument is persuasive and beautiful and, therefore, it is very understandable why some Muslim writ- ers responded to it with enthusiasm. But it would be a long time before Chris- tian theologians and missionaries in the Muslim world would read it. Revaluation in the German-speaking Areas: Goethe and Lessing Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) Goethe was occupied with Islam almost his whole life. He had affinity with both Islam in general and the prophet Muhammad in particular. Almost every- one with any education in Germany knows the quotation that Carlyle quotes in English above. Here is the German original: “Wenn Islam Gott ergeben heißt, im Islam leben und sterben wir alle.” During a lecture on 8 March 1982 in Erfurt, I quoted the first half of this quotation, and the whole hall answered in one voice with the second part of the sentence. It is taken from Goethe’s West- östlicher Diwan, a poem he had written in the style of the Persian poet Hafiz Sherazi (ca. 1320-1390). Goethe was inspired to do this by the translations of Sherazi’s poems by Josef von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856), the founder of Austrian Orientalistics (Slomp 1973). Because of the fact that it shared a bor- der with the Ottoman Empire for centuries, Austria played a “mediating role” between Europe and the Muslim world (Karamat 2007: 93). On 24 December 1819 Goethe sent a copy of his Divan to his friend, Karl Friedrich Graf Rein- hard. Reinhard confirmed that he had received it on 1 February 1820 (Goethe and Reinhard 1957: 241).5 He wrote that he had spoken with a woman friend

5 I am indebted to Julia Gauß for pointing this out.

67 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 18 (2008) 1 about this work: “Above all, I recommended she read the Divan, as proof that one can confide in a devout Muslim like you are, despite the Saki Nameh” (italics mine). On 19 September Goethe wrote to Adele Schopenhauer: “We all live in Islam, under whatever form we keep our spirits up.” More than a century later, in 1923, the great poet and philosopher Mohammed Iqbal in India would compose an answer to Goethe in a Persian poem, Pegham- e Mashriq (Message from the East).

Goethe also studied Muhammad’s life. He translated Voltaire’s play, Le fanat- isme ou Mahomet le Prophète. Voltaire had used Muhammad to attack reli- gious fanaticism in general. By the way, in his Essai sur les moeurs et l’ esprit des nations Voltaire did call Muhammad a very great man. Goethe intended to write a play himself on Muhammad but never finished it.6 He was not as good at writing plays as Schiller or Lessing, and his plays were not staged very often. Fragmente einer Mahomet-Tragödie (1772) is all that remains, including Mahomets Gesang. The fragments include the most important tribute ever brought by a poet in Germany to the founder of Islam, according to Katharina Mommsen. Goethe found Muhammad interesting primarily because the de- scription of his life made it possible for him to characterize the founder of a re- ligion who, in contrast to Jesus, had spread his religion not only through words but also through rigorous means like force of arms. But Goethe also projected something of his own creative power into the description of the Prophet and shared with him the idea that that power was something divine, and for both himself and Muhammad that entailed a divine task and mission (Mommsen 1988: 198). Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) A “calculated revaluation of Islam” occurred In the play Nathan der Weise by Goethe’s older contemporary Lessing (Kuschel 2004: 96). The Christians, the patriarch and the Templar knight, do not fare very well, while Saladin is the generous, tolerant Muslim prince and Nathan the sensible and wise Jew. This work, written in 1779, had a pro-Muslim tendency, according to Karl-Josef Kuschel. It takes place during the Crusades at the court of Saladin in Jerusa- lem. Saladin is the prototype of the enlightened prince, and in the play the des- tinies of Jews, Christians and Muslims are intertwined. By means of the fam- ous parable of the three rings, Lessing wanted to critique the claims of the three religions—especially Christianity—to uniqueness and exclusivity. All sons are loved by the father, but only one of the three inherited the real ring; two are given perfect copies. They do not know who has the real one and who has a copy: that will be evident from the good works that are done. This notion is completely in line with the Qur’anic call to Christians and Muslims: “So try

6 For this section see Mommsen 1988: 194-203.

68 THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD to excel in good deeds” (Sura 5:48). The play has lost nothing of its relevance in terms of promoting tolerance and is also popular in Muslim countries. A number of years ago a version in Urdu was performed in Karachi. Lessing had made good use of his sources. A scholar in Leiden, Albert Schultens, had pub- lished excerpts on the life of Saladin, with Latin translations, from the Abu’l Fedas’ history of the world (1740). The works of Louis Claude Marin and Bartholomé d’Herbelot (1625-1695) also belonged among his sources. It is al- so possible that he consulted the German translation of the Qur’an by Megerlin (1772). Lessing also mentions the Dutch writer Adrianus Relandus, whose honest treatment of Muslim sources he praises. Since that time there have been scholars in Germany on Islam who write either positively or negatively about Islam.

The Orientalistic Trail: Adrianus Relandus (1676-1718) Carlyle, Goethe, Lessing and other thinkers from the time of the Enlightenment did not themselves read Arabic, Persian or Turkish; for gathering knowledge on the Muslim world they were dependent on translations into Latin, English, German, French, etc. We have already come across a few names of Arabists and translators from Persian who put Carlyle, Goethe and Lessing on the Is- lamic trail. One of the first scholars to break with a negative presentation of Is- lam was a professor at , Adrianus Relandus. Johann Fück writes in the standard work, Die Arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den An- fang des 20.Jahrhunderts, “[Relandus’] work de Religione Mohammedica (1705) was pioneering, and was quickly translated into several European lang- uages” (Fück 1955: 102). Snouck Hurgronje has at least this to say about it: An entirely different impression is already given in the excellent work de Religione Mohammedica that the professor at Utrecht, A. Reland published at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In the short “dedication” it can be seen how this scholar was driven by love for the truth and sense of historical justice to give his readers a sound picture of Islam. Is it conceivable, he asks his brother, that a religion portrayed by Christians as so foolish would have gained millions of adherents? Let the Muslims describe their religion themselves, according to the preface; for as Jewish and Christian doctrine is presented by heathens and Protestantism is presented by Catholics as being all wrong, so every religion is known incorrectly from descriptions by those who op- pose it. (Snouck Hurgronje 1886: 186)

No religion, Relandus states, is more slandered than Islam. But Relandus him- self had to protect himself in advance against criticism. Snouck Hurgronje con- tinues: If he speaks in the course of his work about the ‘prophet’ Muhammad, he will first of all not want to be seen as glossing over the Muslim religion, “which he abhors” (quam

69 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 18 (2008) 1 execror), but he want to see the religion known properly and not misunderstood (Snouck Hurgronje 1886: 186-87) In 1717 a second, extended Latin edition appeared, which was published in Dutch translation in 1718. His work was pioneering because of the objective descriptions of Islam, according to his contemporary biographer, J. van Amers- foort (Van Amersfoort 2001).7

Next in Snouck Hurgronje’s overview is Count de Boulainvilliers who extols Muhammad in his Vie de Mahomet (1730) as a wise man. De Boulainvilliers was cited above as a representative of the Enlightenment. In England the works by Higgens (1829), Forster (1829) and Carlyle (1840), Washington Irving’s Life of Mohammed (1850) were overshadowed for a long time by the work mentioned above, William Muir’s very readable Life of Mahomet (1858). He wrote other works on Islam as well. Muir worked in the civil service in India and was seen as a great authority because he joined a thorough knowledge of the Arabic sources to the multifaceted support of missionaries like Karl Gott- lieb Pfander, whose Balance of Truth (1866) contained a frontal attack on Mu- hammad and the Qur’an. This work would have an adverse effect on relations between Christians and Muslims in India for years.8 The influence of Reginald Bosworth Smith (1839-1908), classicist, historian and author of Mohammed and Mohammedanism remained minimal. Smith was after the truth and what actually motivated Muhammad (Bennett 1998: 120).

Muhammad’s most important British biographer was William Montgomery Watt (1909-2006). Watts’ preference was for discussing great personalities and important problems. His Muhammad at Mecca (1953) and Muhammad at Me- dina (1956) broke with tradition, which wanted to show a break, a kind of “fall into sin” in the life of the prophet after the hijra, the migation from Mecca to Medina in 622 C.E. This tradition was still present in C. Snouk Hurgronje’s dissertation, Het Mekkaanse Feest (1880). In Mecca he was a sincere herald of God’s oneness, guidance and the threatening day of judgement; in Medina he became, in Snouck’s view, a calculating power politician. Watt’s Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (1961), the title of the summary of both earlier books, emphasizes the continuity in his character, as reflected in one person, a man loyal to himself and to his calling. At the very end of the third book on Muhammad, Watt asked the question: “Was Muhammad a Prophet?” (Watt 1961: 137). He stated that he had discussed Muhammad up to that point as a historian. But because Muhammad founded a world religion, a theological as-

7 I am grateful here to K. Steenbrink. See also Van Amersfoort and van Asselt 1997.

8 I have written on this in more detail in Slomp 2008.

70 THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD sessment should not be omitted. He then referred, with approval, to Emil Brunner who admits that, “had Mohammed been a pre-Christian prophet of Arabia, it would not be easy to exclude him from the ranks of the messengers who prepared the way for the revelation” .... I would begin by asserting that there is found, at least in some men, what may be called “creative imagination” .... Where do such ideas come from? Some would say “from the unconscious.” Religious people say “from God” at least with re- gard to the prophets of their own tradition, though a few would go so far as to claim with Baron Friedrich von Hügel, “that everywhere there is some truth; that this truth comes originally from God” (Watt 1961: 138). He rejects the idea that revelation, as a product of “creative imagination” would be more superior as a source of knowledge than ordinary human tradi- tions that can be checked as sources of historical facts. The Qur’an is not a his- tory book, and its denial that Jesus was crucified is a case in point. What is de- nied, according to Watt, is that the Jews claims to have been victorious over Jesus through the crucifixion. Years later he would write: “I consider that Mu- hammad was truly a prophet, and think that we Christians should admit this” (Bennett 1998: 130).

Watt was one of the European speakers at the (first) International Congress on Seerat from 3-15 March 1976 in Pakistan. The name of the congress was de- rived from the Sirat Rasul Allah of (85-151/704-767) as edited by (d. 213 or 218 A.H.), the idealized and almost canonical recount- ing of the life of the Prophet. It was the main source for all later biographies of the Prophet. Watt spoke on “Western Historical Criticism and the Prophet of Islam.” After his address, at which I was present, someone from the Pakistani radio broadcasting service asked why he, author of such fine books on Mu- hammad, never became a Muslim. Watt answered literally in almost the same wording as quoted above. William Montgomery Watt was a transition to a dis- cussion of the question of how Christian theologians thought and think about the question if Muhammad can be recognized as a prophet by Christians and churches. Watt was a professor in Edinburgh but also a priest in the Church of England. From 1943-1947 he was the Islam specialist for the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem.

Writers in the Muslim World and Elsewhere on the Prophet Muhammad One of the great merits of the Islam scholars among the orientalists was that they translated sources from Arabic, Persian, and other languages. Thus, Gus- tav Weil (1808-1889) published both a German translation of Ibn Hisham’s above-mentioned Sirat Rasul Allah and Mohammed der Prophet: Sein Leben und seine Lehre (1843) in which he stated: “Thus he may nevertheless ... be seen in the view of the non-Muslim as an “apostle of God” (Snouk Hurgronje

71 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 18 (2008) 1

1886: 190). A. Guillaume’s The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishâq’s Sirat Rasul Allah (1955) was especially pioneering (Raven 1997: 660-63). Hans Jansen made critical remarks, which were not always well-received by overly sensitive Muslims, in De historische Mohammed: De Mekkaanse ver- halen (“The Historical Muhammad: The Meccan Stories”) (2005) (and De ver- halen uit Medina (“The Stories from Medina”) (2007). Ibn Hisham is the main source for almost all modern biographies, leaving aside all other translated bio- graphical works. Because of these source publications and the works that are based on them we can acquire a better knowledge of Muhammad. The riots caused by the Danish caricatures have made countries outside the Muslim world truly aware of how much Muhammad is revered among his followers. That was of course already made known by the standard work of the Swedish Lutheran biographer of Muhammad, Bishop Tor Andrae, who described exten- sively how many Muslim writers modelled Muhammad after Jesus (Andrae 1918). Modern authors have restored Muhammad’s own autonomous place within Islam.

Andrae referred to the work of Ibn Taimijja (1263-1328) who is immensely popular among contemporary Islamists. According to Ibn Taimijja, people who insult the Prophet should receive the death penalty. Lack of respect for Mu- hammad was one of the reasons for the government of Zia ul Haq, president of Pakistan from 1977-1988, to sharpen the laws regarding blasphemy, so that in- sulting the Prophet there is now punishable by death. Such a law does not, of course, contribute to Pakistani Christians showing greater respect for the Pro- phet. Annemarie Schimmel (1922-2003) has also argued that account should be taken of Muslim sensitivities on this issue (Schimmel 1981). The works by Andrae and Schimmel are more necessary than ever. I myself have nowhere experienced the love and admiration of Muslims for their Prophet more strongly than the five times—twice in Pakistan in 1976 and three times in the —that I was invited as a Christian to speak during the major cele- brations of milad al-nabi, the feast in honour of Muhammad’s birth on the 12th day of the month Rabi al-awwal of the Islamic calendar.

Anton Wessels and the Egyptian Christian Islamicist Joseph Sabanegh have pointed out that modern Muslim biographies of Muhammad have taken West- ern criticism of the Prophet into account (Wessels 1972; Sabanegh 1981). Sa- banegh observes that there were overtures between Western and Christian writers on Muhammad and Muslim biographers, even if there is no consensus. From the Jewish side as well, a shift occurred, from rejection of the false prophet (Wallet 2006) to a sympathetic study such as that by Maxime Rodin- son Mahomet (1968; also translated into Turkish). Rodinson compares the spir- itual experience of Muhammad with that of the Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). Books like The Prophet, by the Christian Lebanese Kahlil Gibran (1923), Virgil Gheorghiu’s novel, La Vie de Mahomet, translated from Ruman-

72 THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD ian, and Karen Armstrong’s Muhammad (1991) have contributed to a greater appreciation of Muhammad. It is annoying that Armstrong writes almost as if she is a Muslim. This is not annoying, of course, in Tariq Ramadan, In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad (2007), who, unlike Watt, Rodinson, Jansen and the Egyptian authors discussed by Wessels and Sabanegh, skirts the problems quite smoothly because his primary inten- tion is to witness to his Prophet—and that is more than simply wanting to un- derstand and describe.

Christian Theologians on the Recognition of Muhammad as Prophet I was the only Christian invited to be part of the delegation from Rawalpindi and Islamabad during the above-mentioned “International Congress on Seerat” in 1976. The conference was opened by Zulfikar Bhutto. On the first day I spoke on “The Meeting of the Prophet Muhammad with Christians from Naj- ran and the Present Muslim-Christian Dialogue.” According to the description by Ibn Ishaq/Ibn Hisham, Muhammad proposed to his Christian guests that the truth concerning Jesus should be decided by a trial by ordeal consisting on a mutual cursing, in Arabic called mubahala. The Christians requested time to think and rejected this proposal. Their advisor, ’Aquib, said: O Christians, you know very well that Muhammad has been sent as a prophet [by God]. He made a decisive statement concerning the [human,created] nature of your master. You also know that no people has ever cursed the prophet and seen their parents live and their children grow up. One could conclude from these words that these Christians, at least according to their (in the meantime turned Muslim) advisor, recognized Muhammad as a prophet to a certain degree. There is no Christian report of this meeting (cf. “The Meeting of the Prophet Muhammad”).

According to the Greek Orthodox scholar Daniel Sahas, John of Damascus (680-750 C. E.), also had a positive view of Muhammad: “John of Damascus’ awareness of the idolatrous character of the pre-Islamic religion in Arabia leads him to a positive recognition of Muhammad as the person who brought his people back to monotheism” (Sahas 1972:72). John lived among Muslims; his father was the minister of finance for the caliph in Damascus. He saw Islam as a Christian heresy and could not know that Islam would grow into a world religion.

After that followed a period in which there was growing alienation and hostil- ity between Muslims and Christians both in the Western and Eastern churches. The political conflicts, Muslim conquests of areas where there were many churches, the Crusades and the reconquista led to a demonization (see Ricoldo above) of the Prophet and his religion. Norman Daniel summarizes this period

73 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 18 (2008) 1 as follows: “Revelation: The Christian Attack upon ‘Pseudoprophecy’” (Daniel 1958: 47-78). The same subjects come up as in the contemporary discussion but with a negative tint from beforehand. There were a few exceptions such as the Nestorian Catholicos Timotheos I in Baghdad and Nicolas Cusanus in the Western church. During his long ecclesiastical career in the church Timotheos I held philosophical and theological discussions with caliphs in Baghdad. Dur- ing one of these discussions, which probably occurred at the end of 781 or the beginning of 782, Caliph Al-Mahdi asked: “What do you say about Muham- mad?” Timotheos answered: “Muhammad deserves to be praised, for he has followed the path of the prophets (salaka bi-tarìq al-anbiyâ).” Did Timotheos answer diplomatically because, as the leader of a vulnerable minority church, he did not dare to say what he truly thought of Muhammad? The high theo- logical level of the whole dialogue belies this suggestion (Caspar 1977)—an attack on Muhammad would not fit in with the tenor of the dialogue itself. The contemporary Lebanese Orthodox bishop, George Khodr, agreed with the Nes- torian Timotheos I by pointing that God’s Spirit is also active outside the churches, which is evident, according to him, in the life of Muhammad (Kerr: 1995: 437-4-38). Nicholas of Cusa (Kues on the Moselle River), who is also called Cusanus (1401-1464), wrote shortly after the fall of Constantinople (1453). He had a great deal of criticism of the Qur’an and Muhammad but nev- ertheless sought common points of contact between between Christianity and Islam (Hagemann 1976: 182).

This period of hostility would last until after the Reformation. Luther, Eras- mus, and Calvin lived, after all, at the time the Ottoman Empire expanded right up to the gates of Vienna, which did not instill a positive attitude in them towards Islam. For them, Islam was an occasion to call Christians to self-ex- amination. The positive changes sketched above in the view of Islam among Islam scholars did influence some Christian theologians. Some of them even took the trouble to study Arabic and other languages stamped by Islam.

In the Netherlands the professors at the VU University, , Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck both displayed a positive attitude towards Islam. Bavinck, who had studied Arabic and was friends with Snouck Hurgronje, wrote in reference to Muhammad: “For the founders of religions were not de- ceivers or Satan’s instruments but people who, religiously inclined, had a task for their people and for their time and often exercised a favourable influence on the life of the peoples” (Bavinck 1928: I, 291).9 Almost three quarters of a century later, at the same theological faculty, Anton Wessels would write in a

9 When Bavinck wrote these words in 1895, he was still a professor at the theo- logical seminary of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands in Kampen.

74 THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD section on “Erkenning van Mohammed als profeet?” (Recognizing Muhammad as a Prophet): I believe that God spoke to Muhammad, that in a certain sense we are confronted in the Qur’an with the word of God. And that is something to take extremely seriously. At the same time I come into contact in the Qur'an with elements where fundamental points of the Christian faith are denied. Because of that I cannot accept that it is the word of God, unless you allow me to explain it differently. (Wessels 1978: 136)

Some Roman Catholic Thinkers Hans Zirker’s view was cited above. The declaration “On the Relation of the Church to non-Christian Religions,” known by its Latin title Nostra Aetate, issued by the Second Vatican Council on 28 October 1965, was pioneering and unique in the history of the church. This document speaks positively of the Muslim religion but does not mention the name of Muhammad (Abbott 1966: 660-68). These statements are also the result of the thinking of experts on Is- lam like Louis Massignon, Charles Ledit, Robert Caspar, Michel Hayek, Jacques Jomier, Georges Anawati and others. The most important of these, Massignon (1880-1962) saw an eschatological prophet in Muhammad because he proclaimed the return of Christ (Kerr 1995: 428-30). The new official guidelines for dialogue, written by M. Borrmans, which came from Rome in 1981, speak respectfully of the “imitation of a prophetic model” within Islam (Borrmans, 1981: ch. 3.3). The Swiss theologian Hans Küng (1928-) went still further in 1984. On the basis of a comparison of the biblical prophets with Mu- hammad, he argued for a recognition of Muhammad as a prophet in the biblical tradition. Küng cites seven similarities: just like the biblical prophets, Muham- mad had a personal relationship with God; his whole personality was marked by his calling; as a deeply religious human being, he stood opposed to a reli- gious establishment in crisis; he also did not want to proclaim his own views but to pass on God’s Word; further, he asked for unconditional surrender and obedience to God and gratefulness for God’s mercy and goodness; finally, he connected monotheism with social justice (Küng et al. 1984: 57f.). Bishop Kenneth Cragg (1913-) The most extensive and, in my view, most important treatment of possible rec- ognition by Christians of the prophethood of Muhammad was written by the now very aged Anglican bishop Kenneth Cragg. For many in almost all chur- ches, Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox, he is the guru for the dialogue with Muslims since his famous book The Call of the Minaret (1956). His book Mu- hammad and the Christian: A Question of Response (1984) was translated into a few languages. He refers in the latter book to Amos but, as a Christian, he wanted primarily to come up with a view that was grounded theologically in the New Testament. Unlike Hans Küng, who compared prophetic functions in the Bible and the Qur’an, Cragg looks to the content of the proclamation of the Qur’an. There he sees “wide areas of religious meaning which we share”

75 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 18 (2008) 1

(Cragg 1984: 121). Muslims and Christians feel themselves responsible to the Creator for the earth and people, animals and plants on the earth, for peace and well-being. Cragg cites the confession of God’s transcendence over against idolatry, human error and sin. He emphasizes the sovereignty and guidance of the one God whom Jews, Christians, and Muslims all acknowledge. Moreover, all people, believers and unbelievers, are one under God. This requires a rela- tivization of exclusive claims for the sake of society. Primarily the call to praise God in prayer and liturgy is a binding factor, as so nicely mirrored in the many beautiful names Muslims use for God. Cragg agrees that Muhammad is certainly a prophet but asks if more than a law is needed to rescue human be- ings from their problems? Cragg also has difficulty with Muhammad’s political role and his coercive imposition of rules. Confession and identity come to ex- pression in the questions that Christians pose on the basis of the New Testa- ment. In short, there is thus nothing against Christians talking about the prophet Muhammad in dialogue with Muslims.

Some Conclusions Finally, let me offer some tentative personal conclusions on the basis of the above overview (1) We should not expect in the near future that any church will come forward with a statement or declaration confirming the prophetic status of Muhammad. (2) We have noticed a growing consensus among Christian scholars of Islam, most of whom are ministers, from various ecclesiastical traditions who recog- nize Muhammad as a prophet comparable to Moses or Amos, for example, in the Old Testament. Moses was also allowed, even commanded, to use violence to prevail over the enemies of the people he was guiding through the desert. Amos’ call for social justice is found in the Qur’an. But Christian theology faces the unsolvable problem that in Islam Muhammad is a post-Christian and also a post-Judaic prophet, whose role and status supercedes the finality of Christ. (3) In the New Testament, after the Christ event, we find an ongoing prophetic ministry. The prophetic ministry of Jesus Christ is not final. The Spirit of God may raise other, fallible, prophets. Some great figures in church history, such as Martin Luther, were considered to be prophets. Although the Qur’an both confirms and contradicts the biblical message, the passages that confirm it are in the majority. That is one reason why, I believe, as individual Christians and theologians in the service of the church, we can write and speak without much hesitation of the prophet Muhammad. For me, this is more than a matter of intellectual courtesy for the sake of dialogue.

LITERATURE Abbott, Walter M. (ed.). (1966). The Documents of Vatican II. New York: Guild Press. Pp. 660-68.

76 THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD

Andrae, Tor. (1918). Die Person Muhammeds in Lehre und Glauben seiner Gemeinde. Stockholm: Norstedt. Armstrong, Karen (1991). Muhammad. London: Gollancz. Bavinck, Herman. (1928). Gereformeerde Dogmatiek. Vol. I. 4th ed. Kampen: Kok. Originally published 1895. Bennett, Clinton. (1998). In Search of Muhammad. London: Cassell. Bijlefeld, Willem A. (1959). De Islam als na-christelijke religie. The Hague: Van Keulen. Bobzin, Hartmut. (2004). “‘Aber itzt’ hab ich den Alcoran gesehen Latinisch”: Ge- danken Luthers zum Islam.” In: Hans Medick und Peer Schmidt (eds.). Luther zwischen den Kulturen. Göttingen: Vanderhoek & Ruprecht. Borrmans, Maurice. (1981). Guidelines for Dialogue between Christian and Muslims Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue New York: Paulist Press. Carlyle, Thomas. (n.d.). “The Hero as Prophet. Mahomet: Islam.” In: Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship. London: Cassell. Pp. 40-66. Caspar, Robert. (1977). “Les versions arabes du Dialogue entre le Catholicios Timo- thée I et le calife al-Mahdi (IIe/VIIIe siècle: ‘Mohammed a suivi la voic des pro- phètes (introduction, edition critique du texte arabe et traduction’.” Islamochris- tiana 3: 107-75. Cliteur, Paul (2004). “Is Mohammed een perverse tiran?” In: Paul Cliteur. Tegen de de- cadentie. Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers. (2007). Moreel Esperanto. Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers. Cockshut, Anthony Oliver. (1973). “Thomas Carlyle.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. 4. Chicago: William Benton. Pp. 923-24. Cragg, Kenneth. (1956). The Call of the Minaret. New York: Orbis Books.. (1984). Muhammad and the Christian: A Question of Response. New York: Or- bis Books. Coccejus, Johannes et al. (1997). Liever Turks dan Paaps? De visies van Johannes Coccejus, Gisbertus Voetius en Adrianus Relandus op de Islam. Transl. and in- troduced by J. van Amersfoort and W.J. van Asselt. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum. Daniel, N.A. (1958). Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. Edinburgh: Edin- burgh University Press. Fück, Johann. (1955). Die Arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig: Harrassowitz. Gibbon, Edward. (1998). The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ware: Words- worth. Gheorghiu, Virgil. (1974). La Vie de Mahomet. Transl. Livia Lamour. Paris: Laffont. Gibran, Kahlil. (1923). The Prophet. London: Heinemann. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. (1963). “Saki Nameh (Das Schenkenbuch).” In: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. West-Östlicher Divan. Vorwort und Erläuterungen von Max Rychner. Zürich: Manesse Verlag, and Karl Friedrich Graf Reinhard. (1957). Briefwechsel in den Jahren 1807- 1832. Wiesbaden: Insel.

77 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 18 (2008) 1

Guillaume, A. (1955). The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishâq’s Sirat Rasul Allah. London: Oxford University Press. Hagemann, Ludwig. (1976). Der Kur’an in Verständnis und Kritik bei Nikolaus von Kues: Ein Betrag zur Erhellung Islamisch-christlicher Geschichte. Frankfurt: Josef Knecht. Jansen, Hans (2005). De Mekkaanse verhalen. Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers (2007). De verhalen uit Medina. Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers. Karamat, Elisabeth. (2007). Christlich-Islamischer Dialog: Initiative Östereichischer Außenpolitik. Schenefeld: EB Verlag, Dr Brandt. Kerr, David. (1995). “He Walked in the Path of the Prophets: Toward Christian Theo- logical Recognition of the Prophethood of Muhammad.” In: Yvonne Haddad et al. (eds). Christian-Muslim Encounters. Gainsville: University Press of Florida,. Pp. 426-46. Küng, Hans et al. (1984). Christentum und Weltreligionen: Hinführung zum Dialog mit Islam, Hinduismus und Buddhismus. Munich: Piper. Kuschel, Karl-Josef. (2004). Jud, Christ und Muselmann vereinigt? Lessings’ “Nathan der Weise”. Ein pro-Muslimisches Stück. Düsseldorf: Patmos. Leuze, Reinhard. (1994). Christentum und Islam. Tübingen: Mohr. Mommsen, Katharina. (1988). Goethe und die Arabische Welt. Frankfurt: Insel. Sabanegh, E.S. (1981). Muhammad, Le Prophète: Portraits Contemporains Egypte 1930-1950. Paris/Rome: Vrin. Raven, W. (1997). “Sira.” In: Encyclopaedia of Islam. New ed. Vol IX. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 660-63. Rodinson, Maxime. (1968). Mahomet. Paris: Le Seuil. Schimmel, Annemarie. (1981). Und Muhammad ist sein Prophet: Die Verehrung des Propheten in der Islamischen Frömmigkeit. Düsseldorf: Diederichs. Sahas, Daniel J. (1972). John of Damascus on Islam: The “Heresy of the Ishmaelites.” Leiden: Brill. Snouck Hurgronje, C. (1880). Het Mekkaanse Feest. In: C. Snouck Hurgronje. (1923). Verspreide Geschriften/ Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. I. Bonn: Kurt Schroeder. Pp. 1-124. (1886). De Islam. In: C. Snouck Hurgronje. (1923). Verspreide Geschriften/ Ge- sammelte Schriften. Vol. I. Bonn: Kurt Schroeder. Pp. 185-294. (1894). Une nouvelle biographie de Mohammed. In: C. Snouck Hurgronje. (1923). Verspreide Geschriften/Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. I. Bonn: Kurt Schroeder. Pp. 321-62. Slomp, Jan. (1973). “The Triangle Goethe, Hafiz and Iqbal.” In: Hakim Mohammed Said (ed.). Main Currents of Contemporary Thought in Pakistan. Vol. II. Kar- achi: Hamdard. Pp. 388-414. (1976). “The Meeting of the Prophet Muhammad with Christians from Najran and the Present Muslim-Christian Dialogue, Rawalpindi, Christian Study Cen- tre.” Al-Mushir, nos. 8-12: 227-234.

78 THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD

(1995a). “Calvin and the Turks.” in: Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Wadi Z. Had- dad (eds.), Christian-Muslim Encounters. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. Pp. 126-57. (1995b). “Het debat over de christelijke erkenning van Mohammed.” In: Herre Halbertsma and Abdulwahid van Bommel (eds). Dialoog Joden, christenen, mos- lims en humanisten leveren gespreksstof . Zoetermeer: Oase. (2008). “Debates on Jesus and Muhammad in Europe, India and Pakistan.” In: Stephen Goodwin (ed.). World Christianity in Local Context and Muslim En- counter: Essays in Honour of David A. Kerr. New York: Continuum Interna- tional Publishers. Forthcoming. van Amersfoort, J. (2001). “Adrianus Relandus als filoloog en godsdienst-historicus.” In: Aart de Groot and Otto J.de Jong (eds). Vier eeuwen theologie in Utrecht. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum. Pp. 131-40. Wallet, B. (2006). “Vroeg moderne joodse historici over de Islam. Mohammed als valse profeet.” Zem Zem: Tijdschrift over het Midden-Oosten, Noord-Afrika en Islam 2: 115-23. Watt, William Montgomery. (1953). Muhammad at Mecca. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1956). Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1961). Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wessels, Anton. (1972). A Modern Arabic Biography of Muhammad: A Critical Study of Muhammad Husayn Haykal’s Hayat Muhammad . Leiden: Brill. (1978). De Moslimse Naaste: Op weg naar een theologie van de Islam. Kampen: Kok. Zirker, Hans. (1993). Islam: Theologische und gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen. Düsseldorf: Patmos.

79