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Introduction: Paralyzing Ambiguity

Thus says the Lord of hosts, . . . "Go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." (1 Sam. 15;2-3)

It is not the will of my Father who is in

heaven that one of these little ones should perish. (Matt. 18:14 RSV)

The dream of a warless world is hoary with antiquity. It is at least as old as the words of a Hebrew prophet, written centuries before the time of Jesus:@@@

They shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more;

but they shall all sit under their own vines

and under their own fig trees,

and no one shall make them afraid.

(Micah 4:3-4)1

Phrases from this dream live on in this, perhaps the most warlike century in human history. We are asked to contribute to the Plowshares Defense Fund. The Vine and Fig Tree Community is located in Alabama. We sing around the campfire the African American spiritual "I Ain’t Gonna Study War No More."

But the dream is not confined to radical visionaries, who can be so labeled and dismissed. World War I was widely hailed as "the war to end wars." And at least twice in our century hardheaded politicians and diplomats, shaken by the horrors of modern warfare, have dared to dream the dream. In the prologue of the Covenant of the League of Nations they wrote:

The High Contracting Parties, in order to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war. . . agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations.

The League failed; the world went to war again, a yet more horrible war. In its aftermath there was another attempt to abolish war:

We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind . . .to ensure . . . that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.

Armed force has been used, not in the common interest, every year since those brave words were written. The inexpressible sadness of our era is that as soon as the dream is revived it dies, overwhelmed by the harsh realities of a world where finally only military might settles international disputes and where even the prospect of total annihilation cannot generate a sustained effort for the abolition of war.

The Church’s Timidity

One would suppose that the prophet’s dream would be cherished among the prophet’s heirs. The Christian church accepts the Bible, where the dream is found, as the authoritative word of God. Therefore one would expect the abolition of war to be high on the church’s agenda. Not so. By and large Christians have not talked seriously or acted resolutely for it. For most of its history the energies of the church have been focused, not on how to abolish war, but on how to go to war justly (jus ad bellum) and how to fight a war in a just manner (jus in bello).

The historic peace churches are an exception. They have believed that there is no way for a state to go to war justly or for a Christian to fight justly once war has been declared. However, it is fair to say that their energies have been focused on conscientious objection to war more than on the abolition of war.

At the height of the cold war, when the reality of the nuclear threat began to sink in, there were stirrings for peace in the churches in the United States. Unprecedented statements against war were released by the Roman Catholic bishops2 and the United Methodist bishops.3 Almost every mainline Protestant church issued statements and launched some kind of peacemaking program. but the rank and file of church members have seemed paralyzed, unable to act decisively, unwilling to insist in any clear and public way that the nations of the world, including their own, move toward the abolition of war and the realization of the prophetic dream. Indeed, there has been no clear statement of that goal in the pronouncements of their leaders.

Meanwhile, there was among the powerful TV evangelists and other evangelicals great support for the arms buildup and an ardent embrace of the warlike policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations and even of the military adventures of Colonel Oliver North and his colleagues in "the Enterprise."4

Why are Christians thus divided and paralyzed? Why are they so easily caught up in the carefully manipulated fervor of Desert Storm and the like? Why are even those most enthusiastic for peace timid to speak of the abolition of war?

The Ambiguity of the Bible

There are doubtless many reasons: economic and political, psychological and cultural,5 but a fundamental reason for paralysis and division among Christians is the ambiguity of the Bible.6 This is evident to the most casual reader. The dream of the abolition of war is given us in the Bible, but the reason most Christians hesitate to accept that dream and act upon it comes also from the Bible, from all the wars that are recorded and celebrated by God’s people, all the wars that are authorized and even commanded by God. God is the God of peace, who does not will the destruction of even one little child, but God is also the God of war, who orders war throughout the whole history of the Old Testament and even in the last book of the New.

The Bible is ambiguous with regard to many ethical problems,7 but Paul D. Hanson, who has made special studies of the diversities and polarities in scripture,8 says that the ambiguity regarding war and peace is regarded by many as the most troublesome and offensive of all. It can lead to silence on the subject, the justification of war, or the heresy of Marcionism.9

Attempted Solutions

Modern Christians have tried in various ways to resolve the scriptural ambiguity. One way is to abandon the Old Testament. Marcion tried this long ago, and was condemned as a heretic. But there has been a tendency, now and again, for "peace churches" to speak of themselves as "New Testament churches." Jean Lasserre, the staunch and erudite French pacifist, asks: "Why do I take up my position on the ground of the New Testament?" He answers that although Jesus bases his teaching on the Old Testament, he gives Old Testament texts an entirely new meaning. So, the Old Testament may illuminate the New, but it cannot contradict or challenge it. It cannot be normative directly. We must find our answers to moral questions in the New Testament alone.10 Even an Old Testament scholar like T. R. Hobbs, after summarizing the Old Testament view of war, says that it cannot be an example for Christians; they must depend on the New Testament for that.11 But the New Testament is utterly incomprehensible without the Old, which is its indispensable background. And, as I shall seek to demonstrate, to eliminate the Old Testament eliminates not only a huge number of wars but also the essential picture of what peace is all about, of God as giver of peace, of how peace is to be maintained and ordered -- its connection with justice -- and of the final peace that is promised and hoped for. The baby would be thrown out with the bath water.

Another attempted solution is the idea of the evolution of religious concepts. Human beings started out with a rather primitive, bloodthirsty conception of God. Slowly but surely their understanding improved until finally, with Jesus, they arrived at the idea of a loving heavenly Parent.12 There are several problems with this. For one thing, the Bible does not claim to be a study in evolving human concepts; it claims to be revelation, a series of words from God of which human beings could never have conceived on their own. For another, the God of peace occurs from the very beginning, in the most primitive strata of scripture, and the God of war is still there on the final pages.

A third solution is the celebrated two-kingdom solution of Martin Luther. As citizens of Christ’s kingdom, Christians do not fight or wage war. But they are also citizens of some earthly kingdom. In that capacity they do fight and wage war, just as the citizens of Israel and Judah did long ago. In a book that is excellent in many respects, Peter Craigie finally comes down, it seems to me, to a form of this solution. Christians are citizens of the kingdom of God, but they are also citizens of some state, and all states are founded on violence, nothing else. Christians cannot change either the kingdom of God or the violent state. Pacifists ignore the reality of the state. Advocates of just war ignore the reality of the kingdom of God. We must live in the tension, attempting the transformation of the state, even though that is impossible! We need both Isaiah’s vision of a warless world and Koheleth’s common sense that there is a time for war and a time for peace.13

One more solution is to say that the peacemaking injunctions of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount were directed at individuals in their conflicts with other individuals. They are therefore applicable to individuals and perhaps possible for individuals, but they are not applicable to conflicts between states and are not possible for states to obey. Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society14 was a very sophisticated development of this thesis, which had devastating effects on the post -- World War I peace movement in the United States and was widely used to justify U.S. participation in World War II. The Old Testament certainly contains abundant illustrations of national actions that fall below the ordinary level of individual morality. Interestingly enough, it is the Old Testament that insists clearly that peace is a national matter, a political matter, not to be confined to some inward peace in the individual heart or to good relationships between one individual and another.

If the ambiguity of the Bible does not yield to these or perhaps other solutions, what shall we do? How shall we start to assess it, to understand it, and ultimately to deal with it?

A Canonical Approach

First of all, it seems to me, we need to take the canon of scripture as it stands. Not only should we not delete the Old Testament, we should not use the tools of biblical criticism to delete any passage in either Testament that does not suit our argument. To say that it is "a later addition" to the authentic writing of the prophet, or "clearly reflects the mind of the early church rather than the mind of Jesus," does not mean it is not scripture.

What has functioned authoritatively in the church from early times, and still so functions today, is not the changing reconstructions of the critics, but the established contents of the canon. A discussion of war and peace in which all can join will need to be based there.15

This does not mean, on the other hand, that insights from literary-historical criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, sociological criticism, rhetorical criticism, or narrative criticism will be ignored. Such matters neither produce nor eliminate the biblical ambiguity regarding war and peace, but they have their importance, as we shall see.

The Starting Point

A second basic question of method is: where shall we begin to examine and perhaps to resolve this massive ambiguity? In Alice in Wonderland the King of Hearts solemnly advised Alice to begin at the beginning and go to the end.16 That would seem logical here, but there is a better way. Let us begin at the center, with Jesus. Are we to interpret the teachings of Jesus by the holy war doctrine of Joshua and Samuel, or are we to interpret the holy war doctrine by the teachings of Jesus? Surely Luther was right with his "was Christum treibi." For Christians, the true heart of God’s word is that which promotes, "pushes" Christ. The internal principle for interpreting scripture can be no other than the mind of Christ.17 Christ is Lord of scripture as surely as he is Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of the church, Lord of all.

Our first task, then, will be to see if we can understand the mind of Jesus with regard to peace and war. That will become our key to unraveling the ambiguity of the Law and the Prophets, and the ambiguity of the apostolic writings. It will not be as simple as it sounds, for the ambiguity that characterizes the Bible as a whole also characterizes its internal principle of interpretation, the biblical picture of Jesus himself. Ulrich Mauser says that the tension in Jesus’ teaching on peace must not be quickly and cheaply released, otherwise the subject itself becomes very seriously distorted."18 So we turn in the first two chapters to wrestle with it.

 

 

Notes:

1. A full discussion of Micah 4:3-4 and its parallel in Isa. 2 will be found in chapter 8.

2. The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response (Washington, DC.: United States Catholic Conference, 1983).

3. In Defense of Creation, The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace (Nashville: Graded Press, 1986).

4. Not all evangelicals axe m this camp. Among the most courageous voices for peace are those of evangelicals like Ronald J. Sider and Jim Wallis. See Sider’s "An Evangelical Witness for Peace" in Preaching on Peace, which he edited with Darrel J. Brubacher (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), pp. 25-28; and Wallis’s collection of articles from the magazine Sojouners, which he edits, entitled Waging Peace (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982).

5. For a penetrating analysis of the psychological and cultural reasons, see the writings of Sam Keen, particularly Faces of the Enemy (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986).

6. To say that scripture is ambiguous is not to slander it. Equivocation is saying two opposite things with intent to deceive; but ambiguity may arise out of the way words function and the way things are. The historical process is by nature ambiguous. The intention of the biblical writers is often ambiguous, like all human intentionality. The mystery of God’s will remains ambiguous to our understanding.

7. One of the fairest and most rigorous wrestles with biblical ambiguity known to me is Willard M. Swartley’s Slavery, Sabbath, War and Women (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1983).

8. Paul D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), esp. pp. 411-413; The Diversity of Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982).

9. Paul D. Hanson, ‘War and Peace in the Hebrew Bible," Interpretation 38 (1984): 347-362.

10. Jean Lasserre. War and the Gospel (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press. 1974), pp. 23-24.

11. T. R. Hobbs, A Time for War (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1989), pp. 222-233.

12. A good example of this is in Harry Emerson Fosdick, A Guide to Understanding the Bible: The Development of Ideas Within the Old and New Testaments (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938), pp. 1-54.

13. Peter C. Craigie, The Problem of War in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1978), pp. 107-112.

14. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932).

15. Here I am advocating a canonical approach on a practical basis: if we want a "level playing field" in debates about the Bible and war and peace, we need to start with a common definition of what constitutes the Bible, what can be quoted in the argument. There are, of course, more profound biblical and theological reasons for a canonical approach. See the work of Brevard S. Childs, notably An Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (1979); The New Testament as Canon (1984); Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (1986). See also the work of James A. Sanders, notably Torah and Canon (1972); Canon and Community (1984); From Sacred Story to Sacred Text (1987). All books cited here were published by Fortress Press in Philadelphia.

16. This is the method followed by Vernard Eller in War and Peace from Genesis to Revelation (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1981). J. Carter Swaim in War, Peace, and the Bible (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1982) moves back and forth between the Testaments, but starts with the Old.

17. Lamar Williamson, Jr., agrees that Jesus is "the hermeneutical key" to the discrepancy between the Old and New Testaments. See "Jesus of the Gospels and the Christian Vision of Shalom," Horizons in Biblical Theology 6(1984): 1-26.

18. Ulrich Mauser, The Gospel of Peace (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1991), p. 35.

Preface

This book is a tract for the times. It is written for Christians who love the Bible and acknowledge its authority for faith and life. It faces openly the fact that the Bible is ambiguous about many great moral issues, such as slavery, the place of women, and war and peace. That is to say that people on either side of the argument can quote considerable selections of scripture that seem clearly to support their side.

For Christians in the peace movement to work with a "mini-canon" of beloved peace passages, totally ignoring the war passages, and for the advocates of peace through strength to work with the war passages and ignore the peace passages gets us nowhere. Someone needs to present as plainly and honestly as possible both sides of the ambiguity and to work through them to a position that is faithful to the central thrust of scripture and to the Lord of scripture. Until we can do that, millions of Christians will be "nowhere" on one of the most critical issues of our time.

I first sensed the ambiguity of the Bible regarding war and peace as a child, listening to my father and mother quote scripture to each other in their ongoing debate about this issue. It figured heavily in my approval as a candidate for the ministry: the chairman of the committee, a veteran of World War I, was disturbed because I refused to embrace completely the warmaking side of the ambiguity. I agonized with it as I faced my own participation in World War II.

As the reality of the nuclear threat has come home to me and I have been caught up in the peace movement, the biblical ambiguity has continued to haunt me. I have been driven to grapple with this problem in lectures at Presbyterian School of Christian Education, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Davidson College, and elsewhere. Finally I have been driven to put my struggle into this book. My purpose here is to meet the biblical ambiguity head on and to see if in spite of it, and indeed because of it, there is a scriptural basis for working for the abolition of war, for joining in the chorus of "Ain’t Gonna Study War No More."

I am indebted to many books; I have tried to acknowledge them in the Notes. I owe a special debt to Walter Brueggemann, who patiently read the manuscript while on leave at Cambridge and promptly sent a multitude of helpful suggestions back across the Atlantic. Portions of an early draft were read to a small World Peacemakers group that met weekly at six-thirty AM. and included Walter and Clare Baldwin, Salome Betts, Beverly Blomgren, Dick Ellis, Barbara Gifford, Elaine Green, and others. Many of their suggestions helped to shape what is here. A special word of thanks goes to Gilbert Gragg, who persistently suggested the title. None of the above is responsible for the imperfections that remain.

An early draft resembled an anthology, because I wanted to assemble a large number of the relevant passages on both sides and let them speak for themselves. Readers and editors have persuaded me to reduce the number of passages quoted, but a considerable bulk of scripture quotation remains. I recognize the sin of sloth in us all that prevents us from looking up references, and I am still eager for readers to feel directly the impact of the biblical ambiguity.

Bible quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted. I salute its move toward more inclusive language and regret the abundance of remaining masculine pronouns that refer to God. I have not attempted to alter that, but have quoted texts as they stand with one exception. I have replaced "Son of Man" with "the Human One," believing that to be a quite accurate translation of bar enash and huios tou anthropou. The ambiguity regarding war and peace and the historical fact that our texts come from a patriarchal society are not unrelated.

Foreword by Walter Brueggemann

Anybody who knows Al Winn will know to expect a book on peace that is honest, trenchant, evocative, and energizing. And that is exactly what this book is. The thing about Al Winn is that he cares so much and knows so much -- rare combination! He cares so much because there resonates in his body the deepest passions of Christian faith for justice, peace, and human welfare. And those passions regularly drive him to public action that is risk-taking and future-creating. He knows so much because he is an informed, disciplined scholar who works the classic sources, and who thinks with judiciousness about the present crisis. This book, as a result, is a rich, well-documented resource.

The outcome of that caring and knowing is a book that will force rethinking and that will summon to reperception and to faithful action. Winn is honest about the ambiguity of the Bible on his topic, but equally unambiguous about the requirement of the gospel in our particular moment of discernment and obedience. His book is a courageous, poignant contribution to the missional crisis now facing the church. Winn understands about the match between means and ends, and understands that peaceful ends require peaceable means. The message, rooted deep in this man of peace, offers the best of evangelical faith in an accessible, inescapable way.

Walter Brueggemann

Columbia Theological Seminary

Bibliography

Books mentioned in the text:

Ahmed, A S, Postmodernism and Islam, Routledge, 1992.

Al Faruqi, Ismail R. Islam Argus Communications 1979.

Arberry, A J, Doctrines of the Sufis, Cambridge University Press.

Arberry, A, The Koran Interpreted, Oxford University Press, 1964.

Ayoub, M, Redemptive Suffering in Islam, Mouton Publishers, the Hague, 1978.

Aziz-us-Saud, U, A Comparative Study of Christianity and Islam, Noor Publishing House, Delhi, 1986.

Bell, Richard, The Qur’an Translated, T and T Clark, Edinburgh.

Bowker, J, Problems of Suffering in Religions of the World,

Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Braybrooke, Marcus Christian-Jewish Dialogue: The Next Steps, SCM Press 2000,

Braybrooke, Marcus Faith and Interfaith in A Global Age, CoNexus and Braybrooke Press, 1998,

Bryant, M Darrol and Ali, S A, Muslim-Christian Dialogue: Promise and Problems,

Christians and Muslims in the Commonwealth, Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2001

Cragg, Kenneth, Readings in the Qur’an, Collins, 1998.

Cragg, Kenneth, Muhammad and the Christian , Darton Longman and Todd. 1984, Denzinger, The Church Teaches, Documents of the Church in English Translation, B Herder Book Co., 1955, p. 165.

Esack, F, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism Oneworld, 1997.

Esack, F, On Being a Muslim, Oneworld, 1999

Hellwig, Monika ‘From Christ to God: The Christian Perspective’ in Jews and Christians Speak of Jesus, Ed Arthur E Zannoni, Fortress Press 1994

Hourani, A, Islam in European Thought, Cambridge University Press 1991.

Husain, S A, Islam, Punjabi University, Patiala, 1969.

Hussein, Kamel, City of Wrong, ET Kenneth Cragg, Amsterdam 1959, London 1960.

Ibn (al-)Arabi in Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, E.T. by R A Nicholson

Khalid, K M Together on the Road, Muhammad and Jesus, Cairo,.n.d.

Khan, I A, Insight Into the Qur’an: Reflections Upon Divine Signs, Genuine

Khan Muhammad Zafrulla, Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1980,

Lings, M, Muhammad, George Allen and Unwin, 1983.

Mitchell, R P, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, London, 1969

Mortimer, Edward Faith and Power in the Politics of Islam, Faber and Faber 1982, Muhaiyaddeen, Muhammad Raheem Bawa, Islam and World Peace, The Fellowship Press, Philadelphia, PA 19131, 1987.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Living Sufism, Unwin, 1972

Nielsen, N C, Fundamentalism, Mythos and World Religions, State University of New York Press, 1993.

Noibi, Daud O S, ‘O People of the Book: The Qur’an’s Approach to Interfaith Co-operation’. a paper given at the New Delhi Colloquium of the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace.

Otto R, The Idea of the Holy, (1917) Penguin, 1959.

Padwick, C, Muslim Devotions, SPCK, 1961

Parrinder, E. G, Jesus in the Qur’an, Sheldon 1976,

Parto, S., Seven Faces, Teheran, n.d..

Pilgrimage to Mecca, General Directorate of Press of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. N.d.

Quasem, M A, The Recitation and Interpretation of the Qur’an, Bagi, Selangor, Malaysia. 1979.

Repentance: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Etzioni, A and Carney, D E, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1997

Robinson, N, Discovering the Qur’an, SCM Press, 1996.

Sajid, Abduljalil ‘The Islamic View of Jesus’, Pamphlet published by Brighton Islamic Mission, n.d..

Schimmel, A, And Muhammed is his Messenger, University of South Carolina Press, 1995

Smith, W Cantwell, What is Scripture?, SCM Press, 1993.

Tutu, D, No Future Without Forgiveness, Rider 1999.

Vahiduddin, S, What Christ Means to Me. unpublished paper.

Wahiduddin Khan, Islam and Peace, al-Risala, New Delhi, 1999

Watt, W Montgomery, Islam and Christianity Today, Routledge and Kegan Paul1983.

Watt, W Montgomery, Islamic Fundamentalism and Modernity, Routledge, 1988

Zakaria, R, Muhammad and the Qur’an, Penguin 1991.

Most quotations from the Qur’an are from the English translation by Yusuf Ali as revised and edited by the Presidency of Islamic Researches of Saudi Arabia.

 

Chapter 11: Conclusion

The dangerous international situation makes urgent demands upon both Christians and Muslims.

First, members of each faith need to purge their religion of isolationism, violence and acquiescence in social injustice. This will mean making clear the authentic interpretation of the teaching of the faith, challenging false interpretations, and may mean re-examination of traditional teaching in the current socio-historical context. In this task, the friendly criticism of the other may help members of one faith see how some traditional statements are misunderstood or how past hostilities still clod our relationship today. The outside can help us recognize our blind spots.

Secondly, Christians and Muslims need, together with members of other faiths, to reflect on the values that they share and on the moral basis of a healthy society and a just and peaceful international order. They then should work together for the implementation of these values. Dr S. A. Ali, Chancellor of Hamdard University in New Delhi, has expressed this very movingly, when he wrote,

'Doctrinal differences should be relegated to the rear and more important issues should be the focus of discussion. What is the meaning of life? What is the position of Islam and Christianity on moral issues like abortion, machine-assisted insemination and euthanasia? What are the social issues of our times and how to solve them? How can terrorism be combated and how to put a stop to the diversion of funds from development to the production of weapons of mass destruction? How to check pollution and improve the quality of life? How to secure for all people on earth basic human rights, freedom from fear and equality and dignity? To do this, and much else, is then the mission and goal of both Christianity and Islam. Should they not, then join hands and change the world scenario, fulfilling Omar Khayyam’s dream:

‘Ah Love! Could thou and I with Fate conspire

To change this sorry state of things entire?

Would not we shatter it to bits, and then

Remold it nearer to the heart's desire?

It is a hopeful sign that leaders of public opinion in other spheres of life are now recognizing the importance of the moral and spiritual dimension of life in society. This year, (2002) for the first time religious leaders were invited to participate in the State of the World Forum.

Thirdly, to make real change possible, people of different faiths need to be far more proactive in challenging the abuses of government, international institutions and the economic system. They should be the voice of the moral conscience of humanity pleading for the poor, the dispossessed and the victims of violence. They should speak together of human rights and respect for the environment. This is beginning to happen, but, paradoxically, the interfaith movement which draws together people of all faiths in the search for justice and peace at the same time often makes its members very critical of the compromises that many faith communities have made with the abuse of power and social injustice.

Fourth, Muslims and Christians require a better understanding and appreciation of each other's religion. The work of scholars in this field needs to be far more widely known. Some of the issues discussed in this book may at first seem rather remote from the current crisis, but I hope they show the wide agreement of both religions on their approach to life. Members of both faiths seek to live in accordance with the will of God. There are some disagreements in their understanding of the divine will and more often, as I have suggested, differences of emphasis. In open conversation, the emphases and insights of both faiths can help us come to a clearer understanding of the truth. We can be a spur to each other in our wish to know and obey God's purposes.

As the Qur’an says:

To each among you

Have we prescribed a Law

And an Open Way.

If Allah had so willed, He would have made you

A single People, but (His

Plan is) to test you in what

He hath given you: so strive

As in a race in all virtues.

The goal of you all is to Allah.

It is He that will show you

The truth of the matters

In which you dispute.

Chapter 10: Islam in the Modern World

The last two hundred years have seen enormous challenges to all religions. Intellectually, Darwin, Freud, Marx, Nietzsche and the development of modern scientific ways of thinking have transformed the way we see the world and man and woman’s place in it. Critical study of religious texts has implied that these are human creations rather than divine revelations. Politically, two of the major ideologies which dominated the twentieth century, Fascism and Communism, were anti-religious. Technologically, patterns of life have changed dramatically in the more affluent parts of the world.

Religion, as we have suggested, has to some extent, especially in the West, been pushed to the margins of life, although the secular society of which many people spoke so confidently in the sixties and seventies is now more questionable. Secularism is a word used to cover several phenomena. It implies the autonomy of daily life. It excludes the interference of religious authorities in government and in political and economic life. Thus in the USA, there is a clear separation of church and state. Likewise, India, constitutionally -- if not in practice -- is a secular state in the sense that no religion is meant to be given favored treatment. A secular society may also mean one in which individual citizens do not have any moral pattern of behavior imposed upon them by the state. For example in many Western countries homosexual acts, which were until quite recently illegal and punishable by law, are now considered a private matter for consenting individuals. In the same way, in many countries, abortion, with certain restrictions, is no longer illegal. Secularism may also describe a change of mood by which people no longer seek to explain life by reference to religious beliefs. They will look for a natural rather than a divine cause of illness or disaster. Some sociologists of religion suggest that in the West religion should be regarded as a private or even a ‘leisure time’ activity. This, of course, is not a view that a committed Christian would accept and is even more alien to the devout Muslim, who, if he or she has been brought up to think of Britain or America as ‘Christian’ countries, is puzzled by what seems to him or her their moral decadence, especially in terms of permissive sexuality and drug-taking.

In addition to these challenges, which all religions have had to face, much of the Islamic world has had to cope with Western imperialism and the political, economic and military dominance of the super-powers, and now particularly of the USA. Many of the challenges to religion mentioned above were cradled in Western society, so they can seem to Muslims a Western threat.

It is hard to generalize about two centuries and large areas of the world. Individual Muslim countries are each different. The responses of religious people to change can, however, usually be classified in terms of those who seek to maintain the tradition, those who claim to be returning to the pure faith, reformers who allow for alterations to practice, but no substantive change and those, often labeled modernists by their critics, who draw on outside sources in their reinterpretation of a faith. Different writers use rather varying labels for these four categories.

The Cambridge scholar Akbar Ahmed includes amongst those who maintain the tradition, scholars such as Ali Shariati and Ali Ashraf, as well as Ismail Faruqi and Hossein Nasr, both of whom I had the privilege of getting to know through the World Congress of Faiths. These writers concentrate on the larger message of Islam and avoid narrower sectarian quarrels. Often, their scholarship has been inaccessible to and rather remote from ordinary Muslims.

The term modernist is used by Akbar Ahmed of creative thinkers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Sir Sayyed Ahmed Khan, who established the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, which was consciously modeled on Oxbridge, and which I once briefly visited. Another modernist, who I take him as an example, was Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1876-1938). One of the best known Muslim exponents of Renewal, he wished to create a synthesis of Muslim and Western thought.

Iqbal tried to reinterpret Islam in the light of the Sufi heritage and Western philosophy, especially the creative evolution of Bergson. The key feature of Iqbal’s thought was the notion of reality as pure duration, with God and human beings interrelating dynamically in the universe. He believed that the marriage of intellect and love could transform human beings into a higher level of being. Iqbal’s constant theme was ‘Arise, and create a new world’. His poetry in Urdu and Persian inspired Indian Muslims in the first half of the twentieth century to shape and improve their condition of life and was a factor behind the creation of Pakistan. In his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1928), Iqbal gave a more systematic elaboration of his Islamic vision, arguing for a return to independent judgement, ijtihad, and the establishment of a legislative institution for the reformation of Islamic law. One Indian Muslim professor of philosophy drawing attention to the word ‘reconstruction’ rather than ‘re-interpretation’ said that Iqbal ‘while he seems to be elaborating the meaning of a verse of the Qur’an, is really using it as a peg to hang his own ideas on.’

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who taught in Pakistan and later became Professor of the History of Comparative Religion at Harvard, wrote, in a book published in the middle of the last century, ‘Today if Islam would function in this radically new world in which we find ourselves, it must be refashioned to give dynamic initiative and vision to man facing a life of opportunity and to give him creative love towards the community of his fellow men. Such a refashioning was a service rendered to Islam chiefly by the outstanding Muslim poet and thinker of the century, Muhammad Iqbal.’ Cantwell Smith’s comment, which he might well have revised later in his life, is interesting for the assumption, common at the time that he wrote it, that liberal re-interpretation must be the way forward for religion in the modern world. As a long standing member of the Modern Church People’s Union, I sympathize with this, but it is not the dominant mood in Islam today, although Iqbal’s influence is not forgotten.

The term modernist is also used by Akbar Ahmed of some contemporary writers, but in a different sense to that in which we have been using it. The common feature, he says, ‘is the general belief that religion as a force or guide is no longer valid in our age.’ He mentions writers such as Tariq Ali, Salman Rushdie, who have been influenced by Marxism and, on the right, Shahid Burki and Rana Kabbani, although the latter has moved closer to the traditionalists. Writers on both flanks, he says, echo ideas and concepts from outside the Islamic tradition.

Far more common than modernists are those who are concerned to reform abuse or corruption, but who in no way wish to question the message of Islam. Reform, of course, can be quite superficial but it can be far reaching. I take too examples: Maulana Wahiduddin Kahn, who is a member of the Indian Muslim minority, and Farid Esack, who is a from South Africa, where again Muslims are in a minority.

Maulana Wahiduddin Kahn ‘stands out as a voice in the wilderness’, said Dr Yoginder Sikand, in a paper I heard recently at a conference at the Punjabi University in Patiala. Kahn called for an understanding of Islam that is both rooted in the original sources of Islam, while at the same time willing wholeheartedly, although critically, to engage with modernity, responding positively to serious concerns such as questions of peace, inter-religious dialogue and political activism.’

Maulana Wahiduddin Kahn was born in what is now Uttar Pradesh in 1925. At first he joined the Jama’at-i-Islami Hind, which was founded by Abul ‘Ala Maududi. Kahn was searching for a socially engaged spirituality, but he came to see that the agenda of the Jama’at, which was working for the establishment of an Islamic state in India was impractical. He moved for a time to the Tablighi Jama’at, but by 1975 he had cut his links with it because of its hostility to the creative application of Islamic law to the challenges of changing social conditions. In 1976 Khan set up his own research center in New Delhi. He believed that a new understanding of Islam was necessary to appeal to modern educated Indians.

Khan accepts that Muslims in India are and are likely to remain a minority. They need to seek a solution to their problems by internal reform rather than by conflict with the state or the dominant Hindu majority. He takes seriously the issue of pluralism and inter-community relations and stresses the need to build bridges with people of other faiths. He quotes from the Qur’an the saying ‘Unto you your religion and unto me mine.’ (109, 6). Islam enjoins Muslims to live with others as brothers in spirit. Khan argues that the Muslims of India today find themselves in a position similar to that of the Prophet and his followers in Mecca, when the nascent community was small and relatively powerless. Just as the Prophet at that time concentrated on peaceful preaching so Muslims in India today should do the same. They should also concern themselves with the problems and issues of the whole country instead of just thinking about their own communal interests.

Khan suggests that the traditional distinction between the ‘house of Islam’ or lands ruled by Muslims, dar-ul islam, and lands ruled by non-Muslims, traditionally known as dar-ul harb or ‘the house of war’ needs to be rethought. The term ‘house of war’ only applied to those lands where Muslims were persecuted for their faith and had to resort to violence in self-defense. There should be a third category, which he calls the ‘house of invitation’ or dar-ul da’wah, to refer to lands under non-Muslim control but where Muslims are welcome and have full civil rights. Here the Muslim responsibility is to address non-Muslims with the message of Islam but not to seek confrontation. A similar view was expressed when a delegation from the World Muslim League visited Oxford in March 2002. In answer to a question Dr Abdullah of the League said that the distinction between the ‘house of war’ and the ‘house of Islam’ was a historical concept which does not apply today. He stressed that Muslims in Britain should see themselves as good British citizens.

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan also insists that non-Muslims should not be spoken of a kafirs. To do so is ‘to violate God’s injunctions.’ The term kafir should only be applied to someone who knowingly rejects or conceals the truth.

Khan has not created a ‘movement’ and he has been attacked for collusion with the ‘enemies of Islam.’

Reference has already been made to Dr Farid Esack’s book On being A Muslim. This and another book, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism., are both written in the context of the struggle in South Africa against apartheid -- a struggle with which many Muslims, including Esack, identified. This struggle led Farid Esack to reflect on key Qur’anic passages used in the context of oppression to rethink the role of Islam in a plural society. He shows how traditional interpretations of the Qur’an were used to legitimize an unjust order, but that these same texts, if interpreted within a contemporary socio-historical context, support active solidarity with people of other religions in the struggle for change. In describing the objectives of his book, Esack puts first the wish ‘to show that it is possible to live in faithfulness to both the Qur’an and to one’s present context alongside people of other faiths, working with them to establish a more humane society.’ Towards the end of the book, he refers to a Call of Islam publication Women Arise! The Qur’an Liberates You, which says that ‘we must unleash a debate on the question of women so that equality and freedom become achievable.’ But the document hastens to add that ‘this debate need not depart from the pages of the Qur’an at all for within these pages there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Muslim women can and must play a full role in our society.’

The key difference, which is not always easy to make in practice, between those I label Reformers and those who seek Renewal is that those who are Reformers do not question Islam’s authoritative sources, but are willing to debate how these have been interpreted. Those who speak of Renewal seek to marry the teachings of Islam with philosophical ideas drawn from external sources. There are other examples of reformers who could be mentioned, such as Chandra Muzaffar, from Malaysia, who is President of the International Movement for a Just World and whose spiritual commitment has led him to participate actively in politics. Most reformers are also involved in inter-faith activity. Where, the application of faith to the search for peace and social justice is a high priority, it is natural to look for allies among people of other faiths who share this passion.

Others who share this social passion blame the West for many of the ills and are less interested in interfaith dialogue. Akbar Ahmed uses the term radical to group together thinkers, such as Shabbir Akhtar, Parvez Manzoor, Ziauddin Sardar and Kalim Siddiqui, known for his leadership of the British Muslim Parliament, who all reject the possibility of a modus vivendi with the West. In this they are similar to those who seek a return to the pure faith, who are sometimes called reactionaries and sometimes labeled radicals, although I am by no means suggesting that they would support violent opposition.

Reactionaries are those who recognize the challenges of the modern world to Islam and seek to resist them. They may welcome technological advance and scientific discovery, but reject many of the assumptions of secular society. I think it is necessary to repeat the distinction I made in the chapter on the Qur’an between reactionaries and traditionalists -- using the word in a very different sense than when I referred above to Seyyed Hossein Nasr and other scholars. Traditionalists live much as their parents did and continue to practice the religion in which they were brought up without much awareness of the challenges to it posed by modern society. Reactionaries consciously reject and resist those challenges. For a very small minority, that resistance may be expressed by violence.

As an example, I take the Wahhabiya movement, partly because of its influence. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-87) initiated an ultra-conservative puritanical movement, which adhered to Hanbalite law in the Arabian peninsula during the eighteenth century. The movement rejected centuries of legal interpretation as well as the mysticism of the Sufis. Al-Wahhab found a champion in the tribal leader Muhammad ibn Sa’ud and the Saudis became the main supporters of the movement. In 1801, the Wahhabis slaughtered two thousand ordinary citizens in the streets of Qarbala, so violence is nothing new to this movement.

Another influential figure was al-Afghani (1838-97), who was born in Iran but who spent his formative years in Afghanistan. He aimed to rally the Muslim world to realize its power as an international community and by raising its political and intellectual standards to combat Western colonialism. Freedom from foreign rule was he hoped to be followed by the establishment of a pan-Islamic state and the union of all Muslims under a caliph. He regarded the Arabic language as of primary importance in promoting Muslim unity. His programme, he believed, would lead to improvements in the living standards of all Muslims. He affirmed the transcendental truth of Islam in his The Refutation of the Materialists. Towards the end of his life, he was hunted down by the Iranian authorities, but although three of his colleagues were hanged, he himself died of cancer.

In the early part of the twentieth century, the Muslim struggle against the West turned into a mass movement. In 1928 an Egyptian called al-Banna (1906-49) founded the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, which rapidly gained support across the Middle East. Banna, who like many other radicals was a middle class intellectual, was in sympathy with the ideas of Afghani and deplored the disunity and moral laxity of Egyptian society, which he blamed on British occupation. One day, he wrote, six laborers from a British camp came to see him and said:

‘We are weary of this life of humiliation and restriction. Lo, we see that Arabs and the Muslims have no status and no dignity. They are not more than mere hirelings belonging to the foreigners. We possess nothing but this blood... and these souls ... and these few coins... We are unable to perceive the road to action as you perceive it, or to know the path to the service of the fatherland, the religion and the nation as you know it. All that we desire now is to present you with all we possess, to be acquitted by God of the responsibility, and for you to be responsible before Him for us and for what we must do.’

So the Muslim Brotherhood was born. By 1949, it had 2,000 branches and some half million members. Banna told his followers in 1943, ‘You are not a benevolent society, nor a political party, nor a local organization having limited purposes. Rather, you are a new soul in the heart of the nation to give it life by means of the Qur’an.’

Banna’s aim was to free Egypt from British control and to establish an Islamic state, eliminating such Western influences as night-clubs, casinos and pornography. After the Second World War, al-Banna took up the cause of the Palestinians, but his activities were restricted by the Egyptian government. At the end of 1948, many members of the Muslim Brotherhood were arrested. Soon afterwards a young member of the movement shot and killed the prime minister of Egypt, Nuqrashi Pasha and seven weeks later Hasan al-Banna was himself assassinated by secret servant agents.

The Brotherhood never fully recovered from the death of its founder, although the writings of Sayyid Qutb, who was executed in 1966, had considerable influence. His widely read Malim fi al-Tariq argued that social systems were of two types. Either there was a Nizam Islami -- a true Islamic order -- or a Nizam Jahli, that is the rule of pre-Islamic ignorance. As Egypt did not belong to the first category, it belonged to the second and therefore it was the duty of true Muslims to wage jihad against ignorant and despotic governments. In passing it is worth emphasizing that radical Muslims are often as critical of many Muslim governments, which they consider in the pay of the West, as they are of Western powers themselves. Members of the Muslim described Egypt’s defeat in the Six-Day War ‘as a sign of God’s punishment for leaving the path of Islam.’ They too were responsible for the assassination of President Sadat, whom they accused of treachery against Islam and the Palestinian people by his agreement to the Camp David Accord.

The most spectacular victories for militant Islam have been the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the capture of Kabul by the Taliban in 1979. The Shah of Iran and his father had tried to westernize their country. Traditional Muslim style of dress were banned and western education promoted. Opponents ran foul of the much feared secret police. When Muslim clergy protested, the Shah dismissed them as ‘black reactionaries’. He expelled the most vociferous protester, Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-89), a leader of the Twelve Shi’ite Muslims, who in exile became more dangerous and eventually succeeded in overthrowing the Shah in 1979. As leader of the revolution, he purged Iran of Western influences. His fatwa or ban against Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was widely accepted in the Muslim world.

The Taliban was originally a military group, formed in response to the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. As part of the Cold War against the Soviet Union both America and Britain trained Taliban fighters in guerrilla warfare and supplied arms and money. When they gained power, the Taliban showed themselves even more rigorous than Ayatollah Khomeini in imposing a version of Islamic law, which most Muslims regard as crude and distorted.

Recent years have also seen a revival of the original militant movement founded by al-Wahhab with a network of organizations, under various names. These groups have been involved in prolonged struggles in Algeria, where the Islamic party won a general election but were denied power and where there have been atrocities on both sides Militants are said to be responsible for the deaths of seventy tourists at Luxor in 1997 and to be linked with armed groups in Kashmir. The most notorious group is, of course, al-Qaida, led by Osama bin-Laden, which the USA accuses of responsibility for the twin tower tragedy on September 11th, 2001.

It must be emphasized that the great majority of Muslims want nothing to do with violence and most have condemned the terrorist attacks on America. Even so, it is important to hear what some of these militants are saying so as to see how the world is seen through the eyes of the most alienated Muslims. Terror draws its sustenance from disaffection which is caused by the hopelessness of those who feel victimized by poverty and injustice.

Ayatollah Khomaini was a long standing critic of the Shah of Persia’s regime, but during his exile, he broadened his opposition to attack the institution of monarchy itself and to call not just for adherence to Islamic law, but for the establishment of an Islamic state. In about 1969 he gave a series of lectures to his students, which were published as a book entitled Velayat-e Faqih. It is a blueprint for the reorganization of society. It is a handbook for revolution. There are four main themes. First the book condemns the institution of monarchy as alien to Islam, abhorrent to the Prophet and the source of all Iran’s misfortunes over 2,500 years. Secondly, it presents the Islamic state, which is based on the Qur’an and modeled after the Islamic community governed by the Prophet in the seventh century, as a practical form of government realizable in the lifetime of the present generation and not as some distant ideal. Thirdly, and this is particular to the Shi’ite tradition, the claim of the clerical class, as heirs of the Prophet, to the leadership of the community is forcefully asserted. Justice and an expertise in Islamic law are essential for those who rule. ‘The real governors’, he says, ‘are the Islamic jurists themselves.’ Although leadership is vested collectively in the religious leadership (ulama), it can be vested in a single leader. Fourthly, Velayat-e Faqih calls on all believers to work actively for the overthrow of the non-Islamic state. ‘We have no choice’, Khomaini wrote, ‘but to shun wickedness, and to overthrow governors who are traitorous, wicked, cruel and tyrannical.’ He urged revolution, but not violence.

The statements of Osama bin-Laden are more directly political in tone. In a ‘World Islamic Front Statement’ entitled ‘Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders’, he argues that the United States of America has created a state of war against the Muslim world and in particular the people of the Arabian Peninsula. He speaks of the occupation of the Arabian Peninsula, which contains Islam’s most holy places, arguing that it is being used by the Americans as a staging post for continuing aggression against the Iraqi people, of whom he claims more than one million have been killed. Further he complains of the ‘occupation of Jerusalem and the murder of Muslims there’ -- Israel, being seen as an American puppet state. These American actions, in his view, amount to a ‘clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims.’ Further because ‘the ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys Muslim countries’, Osama bin-Laden, therefore, declared that it is a duty for every Muslim who can to kill Americans and their allies and he quotes from the Qur’an (2, 193 and 4,75) to justify this call.

This is an extreme position, which I in no way seek to justify, but if there is to be an alternative to violent reaction to violence, then at least we need to hear the complaint of those who sympathize with Osama bin-Laden’s attack on America and the West. Two years ago, not for the first time, I visited a Palestinian Refugee camp. In the bitterness and despair of those we talked to I felt more than ever their deep sense of injustice and of a wasted life. The causes of the situation are complex and neighboring Arab nations have been almost as much responsible as Israeli governments. The human tragedy is overwhelming as also is the suffering of many families in Iraq, because of sanctions imposed by the USA and Britain (although nominally by the UN). One could add to the political complaints, the failure of Western powers to protect the Bosnian Muslims or to curb the ruthless Russian suppression of Chechnyan rebels. Terrorism is not to be condoned and I deplore all violence, but in every age victims of ruthless regimes have been driven to armed resistance. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom-fighter.

There is also a sense amongst some Muslims that Western concern for human rights is selective and that the world economic system operates largely to the benefit of the West and certain Arab rulers who are in league with them. To some eyes globalization is seen as bed-fellow of modernism.

I do not want to pursue the political analysis, but it is impossible to separate political and religious issues in the present situation. What is felt by many Muslims as injustice, contributes to oppositional attitudes and the rejection of all that the West stands for. Raficq Abdullah, a Muslim lawyer who lives in London, writes that for millions of Muslims who live in poverty and who feel profoundly marginalized, modernity has nothing to offer them. It embodies ‘the virulent return of jahilliyah or ungodliness which now infests the whole world including Muslim societies... It is justified by man-made laws which transgress God’s legislative authority as enshrined in the religious law or Shariah. This comprehensive failure to abide by the only sovereign law which is God’s exclusive attribute and prerogative is the cause of moral decay and spiritual bankruptcy. A true Muslim’s only shield against this seemingly intractable threat to his or her identity is a reversion to the authentic experience of Islam as it was practiced during the lives of the Prophet and the rightly-guided Caliphs.’ Raficq Abdullah is at pains to make clear that Islam is not a monolithic entity, but adds that the rejection of modernity and the ‘West’ is shared by both Sunni and Shi’a Islamists. As Raficq Abdullah makes clear, he does not share these views, and accuses those who take this position of committing ‘epistemological legerdemain by projecting their deeply nostalgic version of events of the founding moment of Islam as ahistorical categories, as givens which it would be sacrilegious, indeed blasphemous, to place under critical scrutiny’.

Raficq uses the term Islamists. I have tried to avoid the term ‘fundamentalist’, which as I have already explained is misleading and ‘extremist’, which may be an excuse for not listening to the call for justice of those who feel marginalized. As Raficq Abdullah points out the way in which some in the West speak of all Muslims as if they were terrorists is as bad as the way some Muslims see all Westerners as enemies of the true faith. As Edward Said has observed, ‘the real battle is not a clash of civilizations, but a clash of definitions.’

The struggle should not be the West against the world of Islam, rather a struggle is going on for the soul of Islam. Professor Khalid Duran, of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, writing well before the tragic events of September 11th, made a distinction between Muslims and Islamists.’ He compares the distinction to that in Germany between evangelisch and evangelikal (Protestant and Protestant fundamentalist). Similarly before the fall of the Berlin Wall both regimes in Germany claimed they were democratic. Two titles which sound almost the same may have sharply different meanings. One Muslim explained the difference by saying that ‘Muslims say "God is most great", whereas Islamists say "Islam is most great", although that is rather too simple.

Most of the Muslims I know and the ones whom we are likely to meet in dialogue are Muslims -- in the sense I am using it. They are also usually heirs to the Enlightenment so share many of the assumptions of the modern paradigm. Even so, we need to try to understand something of the appeal of the Islamists.

As we have seen, the origins of the Islamic Movement lie with the Wahhabi movement that emerged in Central Arabia in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Its aim was to revive the Muslim society of seventh century Medina in its ‘pristine purity’. A similar vision inspired Hasan al-Banna who founded the Muslim Brotherhood Party. He wanted to return to original Islam ‘cleansed of all later accretions such as theology, philosophy and mysticism. Compare this to the motto of Z. A. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party ‘Our religion is Islam, our political system is democracy, our economic orientation is socialism’ -- a slogan that was anathema to Islamists. There is a real ideological struggle in many Muslim countries reflecting radically different understandings of the Muslim religion.

In part, the Islamists, as we have seen, reject centuries of legal scholarship and the mystical tradition. They are fundamentalist in the sense that scriptural statements are not seen in their historical context and are treated as absolute - whereas any revealed statement ought to be open to interpretation. This points to the very different assumptions of those who are and are not heirs to the Enlightenment. In his book on Judaism, Hans Küng speaks of paradigm shifts and suggests that you can have periods when people of the same faith are living in different paradigm times, which means that they have few shared assumptions about life and the world. Islamists reject ‘modernism’, partly because their view of life starts from different basic assumptions.

The struggle within Islam is primarily a matter for Muslims, but sympathetic friends need to be aware of the struggle that is taking place, and to be supportive of those Muslims who are willing to take the risk of dialogue. They can help to make known the views of the latter group, thereby resisting the stereotyping of Muslims which will make prophecies of a clash of civilizations self-fulfilling. This is also a time when more than ever Christians need to seek dialogue with those Muslims who are willing to take part in it.

It is also vital to help Muslims in Europe and America feel that they are accepted as full citizens and that they have a stake and share in our society. One of the dangers in some urban areas of Britain is that young Muslims not only feel alienated from ‘white English society’ but are also increasingly alienated from the mosques and the leaders of the Muslim community. In 2001, I was invited to the Awards for Excellence ceremony organized by the Muslim News and also to the opening of a new Muslim center near Paddington Station by Prince Charles. It made me more aware how many Muslims are making a rich contribution to British life at all levels of our society. But many others, like a young Muslim woman at a check-out in Cowley or a Rhodes scholar at one of the colleges in Oxford have told me that they feel marginalized and have experienced discrimination and racial abuse. The search for a genuinely multi-cultural and multi-religious society is more important than ever and the work of the various interfaith organization needs to be strongly supported.

On the international scene, governments, all governments have to address the root causes of poverty and injustice -- and this includes tackling trade discrimination, the arms trade as well as seeking solutions for long-standing areas of tension in the Middle East and in Kashmir and Sudan. People of faith have constantly to call upon the leaders of the nations to live up to their responsibilities. The tragic events of September 11th could be a wake-up call to seek for the new world order that some of us talked about and hoped for with the start of a new millennium.

Chapter 9: The Whole of Life

On one of my visits to Chicago in preparation for the Cape Town Parliament of the World’s Religions, I stayed with a distinguished heart specialist, who was a Muslim. I was shown to my room which had the usual provision for a guest, but in addition there was a prayer mat. I was pleased to use this for my own prayers. It was a reminder also to me of the faithful Muslim’s wish to remember God in everything he or she does and or says.

This of course is the hope of the devout Christian, but even they may be reluctant to make their religious practices public. This is in part because of the secularization of Western society. ‘Secularism’ and ‘Secularization’, strictly speaking, are neutral terms, whereas ‘Secularism’ is a movement that opposes religion. Most Muslims, however, as Ataullah Siddiqui points out, use Secularism in a wider sense to include materialism, modernity and the secularization of society. They perceive this as a corrupting influence on their society and blame the West for the damage that secularism causes. They also often see Christian missionary efforts as an extended arm of secularization.

Public religious observance appears to be more evident today in Muslim countries than in most Christian societies. Certainly there seems to have been a decline of public religious observance in Britain over the last fifty years. For example, the school I went to had a holiday on Ascension Day and a half holiday on a Saints Day -- although the St Andrew’s day half holiday was usually deferred to coincide with the Varsity Rugby match! Now, in Britain, shops open not only on Good Friday but on every Sunday, except Easter Day. Rather than speak of Christmas, some cities in Britain have created a ‘Winter Festival’. Even practicing Christians tend to compartmentalize their lives.

Muslims publicly affirm their faith in the regular prayers which are offered five times a day. When I traveled once on Kuwait Airlines, as the flight began, a verse was read from the Qur’an. Royal Jordanian Airlines regularly indicated the direction of the Ka’bah at Mecca. Religion plays a more public role in Muslim societies today than Christianity now does in most Western societies.

There are many reasons for the secularization of Western society and the loss of the privileged position that Christianity once enjoyed. It allows for personal freedom, including freedom of speech, shown for example in the defense of Salman Rushdie’s right to say what he wanted in his novel, The Satanic Verses, even though many Muslims thought that ridiculing religious beliefs should not be granted such freedom. By contrast laws to defend Islam in Pakistan have led to attacks on Christians merely for possessing Gospels. What are the limits to freedom of speech and when do those limits become oppressive?

In Islam, God’s concern is for the whole of life. I have a little book called Radiant Prayers. It is a popular Muslim book of ‘easy prayers’. There are prayers for every occasion -- when the sun rises, on taking a bath, while looking into a mirror, on setting out on or returning from a journey. This may not seem strange to a devout Christian, it certainly is so to the modern secularist.

Yet soon after writing the above, I came across the following passage in Farid Esack’s book On Being a Muslim:

‘Our lives as Muslims are largely devoid of an ongoing and living connection with Allah. We confine this relationship to moments of personal difficulty, have it mediated through a professional class of religious figures -- the managers of the sacred -- or the formal rituals of the five daily prayers, the pilgrimage to Mecca and fasting in the month of Ramadan. Absent is the warmth evident from the following hadith qudsi (saying of Allah, in the words of the Prophet):

"When a servant of Mine seeks to approach Me through that which I like out of what I have made obligatory upon him (her) and continues to advance towards Me through voluntary effort beyond the prescribed, then I begin to love him (her). When I love him (her) I become the ears by which (s)he hears, the eyes by which (s)he sees, and the hands by which (s)he grasps, and the feet with which (s)he walks. When (s)he asks Me I bestow upon him(her) and when (s)he seeks my protection, I protect him(her)."’

This passage made me realize how difficult it is to understand the dynamic of a religion from outside. One can give an account of the teaching, but this may be an idealized version and not correspond to the actuality. Perhaps both Christians and Muslims and indeed members of other religions have the same struggle to be aware of the presence of God in every day life. We have our various rituals -- but none of us can judge the meaning another person attaches to them. Are they repeated by rote or are they a renewed encounter with God? As Farid Esack observes later in his book, ‘It is . . . possible to complete all one’s legal obligations in respect of the prayers and bypass Allah completely. . . This "in the presence of Allah" is a vital element in prayer that many of us seem to have sacrificed at the altar of legality. We are able to rush through the "whole thing" in a few minutes flat to get it over with.’

This question of attention in worship is nothing new, although it may be highlighted by the complexity of modern society, especially where the assumptions of shared belief no longer exist. Esack himself says that ‘We have never been as alienated from ourselves, from others and from Allah as in this age.’ Later, he comments that ‘Accumulation, the sister of consumerism, has impoverished us spiritually and humanly.’

Muslims and Christians face the same challenges in an increasingly alien society and differences are probably more to do with varied historical-social situations in different societies than differences of religious teaching.

There are, however, perhaps differences of emphasis on wealth-creation and sexual enjoyment between the two religions. There is little evidence of the ascetic or world-renouncing attitude to found in some forms of Christianity and I have found the positive attitudes of Islam helpful in my own thinking.

Al Faruqi wrote, ‘Every Muslim desires and plans to become a "millionaire" if he or she takes Islam seriously.’ He insists that the money should be earned and not accumulated by cheating or exploitation of natural resources. Further, Muslims should provide for the poor both by paying Zakat, which prescribes that two and one-half percent of one’s total wealth be distributed to the needy, and by other charitable giving. Nonetheless, he said, ‘Muslims believe that God commands them to produce wealth, so that all may live and prosper. They thank God if their efforts succeed, and they bear it patiently if they fail.’ In the teaching of Jesus, however, there is a suspicion of riches. Jesus told various parables warning against the dangers of wealth and he said that ‘You cannot serve God and Money’ (Matthew 6,24). When he was approached by a member of the ruling class who asked what he should do to win eternal life, Jesus said to him, ‘Sell everything you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven’ (Luke 18, 22). St. Francis’ renunciation of wealth has been copied by many monks and nuns who have taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Celibacy, which the Roman Catholic Church requires of all priests, is not regarded as a virtue in Islam. ‘For Muslims’ writes Al Faruqi, ‘sex is as natural as food and drink, growth and death. It is God created, God blessed, God instituted. It is not laden with guilt, but, like woman itself is innocent. Indeed, sex is highly desirable. The Qur’an prohibits celibacy for the sake of God, and the Prophet ennobled marriage by making it his sunnah, or example, and hence the norm for every Muslim male and female. Like everything else pertinent to life on earth, Islam made sexual gratification of men and women a thing of piety, virtue and felicity.’

As has been already mentioned, there is no doctrine of original sin in Islam. The Baptism service (now seldom used) in The Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, however, begins, ‘Forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin.’ According to St Augustine, Adam’s original sin has been transmitted from parent to child ever since through ‘concupiscence’ or the sinful sexual excitement which accompanies procreation. The Qur’an’s account of Adam and Eve’s disobedience is not linked to human sexuality. ‘Islam regards sex’, says Faruqi, ‘as an innocent good and the pursuit of knowledge as a paramount duty, not as evil.’

Christian attitudes to human sexuality have been far more ambiguous. Jesus, tradition holds, was unmarried, as was St. Paul. Influenced in part by Hellenistic thinking, which thought of physical pleasure as ensnaring the soul, many monks and nuns chose celibacy. Although many Christian thinkers would now repudiate Augustine’s teaching about original sin and take a far more positive and Biblical view of sexuality, certainly in the past guilt feelings have been quite common among Christians. Past inhibitions in the West have today been replaced by what most Muslims and many Christians would regard as undue permissiveness.

Western society seems to be obsessed by sex. One of the attractions of Islam for western converts -- many of whom are drawn to the faith by Sufism -- is its clear moral teaching. This is especially so for women converts as well as for ‘reverts’ -- nominal Muslims who become committed to the practice of the faith. Jemima Goldsmith, who insisted that she converted ‘of her own conviction’, said that ‘it would seem that a Western woman’s happiness hinges largely on her access to night-clubs, alcohol and revealing clothes, although such superficialities have very little to do with true happiness.’ The Times in an editorial in November 1993, drew attention to the growing number of women in Britain and the USA who were positively attracted by the sense of sisterhood and community which they discovered in Islam. Nouria, who converted after finding some verses of the Qur’an in a dustbin, emphasized the sisterhood. ‘There is no such thing as a Muslim woman on her own nor a single Muslim parent on her own. If anyone with a commitment to Islam sees you in hijab (the scarf) and you’re suffering, they step in and help. That’s abnormal in Britain.’ Female converts claim that in Islam they already have the equal status that the feminist movement is striving for. They keep their own name in marriage and they also retain anything they inherit and whatever they earn -- a right Muslim women have had for 1,400 years! They complain that Western emancipation means copying men, whereas Islam recognizes separate spheres.

A male revert, Asif, also tells how his attitude to women has changed. ‘I had a book full of contact numbers for women, and believe me they could do some freaky things, but I never talked to them. I talked at them and bought them stuff but it was all a ploy to get into their knickers and walk away with another tale for the boys. But when I meet a Muslim woman nowadays with full hajib, covered up, I can talk to her, really communicate, because it’s not about sex any more and I know she’s not out for my money.’ The constant bombardment of sexual imagery, which is used to sell everything, has led to a new puritanical outlook among some young Muslims who have grown up in the West and are returning to their faith. Asif explained what had made him change. ‘The Club was packed. The Charlie [cocaine] was racked out in long flowing lines in front of me and the blonde was in the doorway looking hot... I danced all night and in the morning when I was at home I flicked on the news and in a drugged-out haze I watched a report about Chechnyan Muslims being murdered.’

The rejection of the permissive sexual mores of Western society is linked to a wider rejection of Western values, especially capitalism and to the political dominance of the USA and its allies. The Disc Jockey Imran Khan ends his article on reverts by saying, ‘When Islam gives you spiritual and intellectual awakening it becomes hard for reasonable Muslims to turn a blind eye to the fact that Islam is seen as the enemy of Western life and that the slaughter of innocent Muslims is cheap compared with the lives of those taken on September 11.’

We shall return to these wider issues. On the question of morality, many Christians regret what seems to have become the norms for sexual behavior in the West -- at least as portrayed on television when people, after the most casual acquaintance, jump into bed together. I was brought up with the Christian teaching that pre-marital and extra-marital sexual relations were wrong and I have lived by this teaching. As a clergyman, especially in the sixties and seventies, I was aware that this teaching often sounded judgmental and negative and linked to Christian guilt feelings about sexuality. I have tried to emphasize that the negative flows from a desire to preserve the high ideal of Christian marriage in which physical union is seen, sacramental, as expressing and strengthening the union of two whole persons. I am aware that having been blessed with a happy marriage, it is easy to judge others who have been less fortunate. As a clergyman, I have been willing to marry those who have been divorced as I believe it is possible to affirm both the Christian ideal of life-long marriage and the Gospel of forgiveness and new life. I recognize the great suffering and damage that broken homes can cause, especially to the children, but I have seen second marriages which are creative and I am aware of the pain of unhappy homes and the adverse effects on children where there is parental violence or abuse. Equally, it has become common for couples to live together before marriage and it is now a surprise when couples who come to have their banns called give different addresses. Perhaps the church should have been more critical. Certainly some of the converts to Islam feel this. ‘Muslims don’t keep shifting their goal posts’ said Huda Khattub, who wrote The Muslim Woman’s Handbook. ‘Christianity changes, like the way some have said pre-marital sex is OK if it’s with the person you’re going to marry. It seems so wishy-washy. Islam was constant about sex and about praying five times a day.’

Yet this may be to ignore new understandings of human sexuality, for example in regard to homosexuality, as well as the very real changes in peoples’ expectations of marriage, which have increased, and in patterns of family life. I also believe that moral behavior should be self-chosen and inwardly motivated and not imposed by law and family pressure. I felt distinctly uneasy when in a recent TV documentary some Muslim women agreed that adultery should be a capital offence. Here again there is a need for balance -- one which may more easily be achieved by a sharing of Christian and Muslim insights into the best teaching and practice of the two faiths. If many Western Christians are too accepting of the permissive society, some Muslim regimes are too harsh in enforcing traditional morality.

Islam, in Faruqi’s words, ‘vehemently’ condemns sexual promiscuity because it is by definition a violation of responsibility of one or the other party. Marriage in Islam is not a sacrament but a civil contract. Although the Qur’an allows a man to have up to four wives, this is on condition that each is treated equally. Some Muslim scholars, such as Ameer Ali in The Spirit of Islam says that is emotionally impossible and that monogamy is ideal. It is often recognized that at the time of the Prophet many women were widows and the preponderance of women in the population made polygamy necessary.

Many in the West are critical of the status of women in Islam, partly because of their treatment by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Farid Esack himself quotes the words of his guide when he visited Uzbekistan in 1988, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. ‘You’d be delighted to know how alive Islam is; you won’t find a single woman on our streets!’

One of the difficulties of a discussion about the status of women in the two religions is to know whether one should discuss the teaching of the two religions -- and talk about an idealized situation which has little reality -- or compare actual situations which may have been historically and socially conditioned. Neither religion has much to boast about in its treatment of women and both religions have been male-dominated. Rather than argue over the past, theologians in both religions need radically to rethink traditional teaching and interpretation of the texts.

Farid Esack claims that ‘reading a text through the eyes of the marginalized who yearn for justice would yield a meaning in harmony with what Allah, the Just, desires for all humankind.’ Several Muslim women scholars, such as Fatima Mernissi or Riffat Hassan, are shaping a new reading of the Qur’an and the Hadith. Muhammad himself revolutionized the status of women. He stamped out female infanticide, accepted the evidence of women and allowed women to inherit. He washed and stitched his own clothes and shared the cooking chores with his wife. Islamic law, however, Esack says, has failed to keep up with human progress in the area of gender justice. ‘We have betrayed the prophetic intention of justice and equality for all Allah’s people.’

I would be equally critical of much in the Christian tradition and in an unpublished article on ‘Gender in Christianity’, I quoted Linda Woodhead who has said that ‘what is needed is fresh and creative reflection on the mystery of human sexual difference which is as responsibly related to the Christian tradition as it is to contemporary concerns.’

At the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1993, members of the Assembly, including leading Muslims and Christians, in the ‘Declaration Toward a Global Ethic’ committed themselves to work for an equal partnership between men and women. Men and women were urged to respect each other. At the same time sexual exploitation was denounced. There is some debate whether equal partnership means ‘equality’ or ‘equity’. Do the physical differences of men and women lead to some differences in role, although not in respect or worth?

There is also the question -- still too little discussed -- about the use of inclusive religious language and allowing women a full and equal role in the life of a faith community. Christian talk of God as ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ and the repeated references to God as Father is very masculine -- the Holy Spirit is normally spoken of as male. Allah, although no attributes can be given to Him, at least in translations of the Qur’an, is also assumed to be male. In some Christian churches -- but still a minority -- women may now be priests or ministers. In 1994 Professor Amina Wadud spoke at the Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town. The Cape Times -- inaccurately in fact -- described her as ‘the first woman ever to do so in South Africa.’ At the same time, women congregants at the mosque came down from upstairs to pray alongside the males, with a rope separating them.

These are isolated occurrences, but they suggest the possibility of change. Those in both faiths, men and women, who are committed to ‘equal partnership between men and women’ need to be partners in the struggle. Once again the question is what is true religion or how are we to obey God in an ever-changing world.

Chapter 8: Repentance and Forgiveness

"There will be no peace in the world without peace between religions." This maxim of Hans Küng is well known. Recently I heard a Muslim friend add to it, ‘There will be no peace in the world without justice’ and ‘there will be no justice without forgiveness’. His remark stands in sharp contrast to the impression of many in the West that Islam is a harsh and punitive religion -- an impression fuelled by reports of women being stoned for adultery or thieves having a hand chopped off or criminals being flogged in some Islamic states.

These practices are condemned by many Muslims, who also condemn acts of terrorism. The popular impression of Islam in the West is unfair, as I have been at pains to point out. Almost every chapter of the Qur’an begins with the words, ‘In the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful.’ Even so, I have to admit that I was surprised when I read Mahmoud Ayoub’s words that ‘Repentance is an essential element of the Qur’anic world view’ or again that ‘repentance is one of the fundamental principles of Qur’anic theology and worldview.’

As I am writing this chapter on Ash Wednesday, repentance is an appropriate subject. The word most often used in the Qur’an for repentance is tawbah. Its basic meaning is turning. ‘While legally it signifies turning to God for forgiveness of a sin or act of disobedience, its primary sense of turning to God as a personal act of love and devotion, and not necessarily from a state of sin, is a more exalted and deeper level of repentance.’ The Prophet Muhammad, for example, whom Muslims believe to have been protected from all sin by God, is said to have declared ‘I turn to God every day seventy times.’ Repentance is more than just asking for forgiveness, it is a turning to God with sincere love and devotion. It includes awe in the presence of the Holy, awareness of sin and genuine remorse for it, regret over lost opportunities and a desire to amend one’s life. Yet this change of heart, as the Qur’an makes clear, can itself only be achieved by divine grace. Two other Arabic words used for repentance emphasize this wider meaning. Awbah has the sense of repeated returning to God with humility, devotion and praise and inabah signifies turning to God for help in total submission to his will.

The Qur’an has more than ninety words for sin or offences against God or fellow human beings. Yet there is no doctrine of original sin, although the human propensity to do evil is clearly recognized. As a just and moral sovereign, God is severe in punishment, but more important his mercy is repeatedly affirmed. ‘God is oft-forgiving and Most Merciful’ (5, 98). To despair of God’s infinite mercy is itself a grave sin. God says in the Qur’an, ‘O my servants who have transgressed against their souls, despair not of the Mercy of Allah, for Allah forgives all sins.’ (39, 53). It is a verse which is reminiscent of the sentiments in the hymn ‘Wilt thou forgive that sin?’ by the seventeenth century metaphysical poet John Donne. The poet lists his various sins which need forgiveness and then in a final verse confesses,

I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

But sear by thyself, that at my death thy Son

Shall shine, as he shines now and heretofore:

And, having done that, thou hast done:

I fear no more.

God’s mercy is affirmed in the hadith or traditions. It is said that ‘When God created the creation, He prescribed with His own hand for Himself, "my mercy shall overcome my wrath"’. Interestingly, in the Jewish tradition, the Talmud says, ‘ "What does the Holy One, blessed be He, pray?" Rav Zutra bar Tovi said in the name of Rav, "May it be My will that My mercy suppresses My anger and that My mercy will prevail over My other attributes, so that I may deal with My children in the attribute of mercy and on their behalf, stop short of the limit of strict justice."’

Tradition in Islam speaks of God seeking the sinner and rejoicing at his repentance, as two examples vividly illustrate. In one it is said that ‘God is more joyful at the repentance of His servant when He returns to Him than one of you would be if he were upon his she-camel with his food and drink in an arid desert. She runs away from him, and he despairs of ever finding her. In desperation, he falls asleep in the shade of a tree. But when he awakes, he finds her standing beside him. With exceeding joy, he rushes to take her by the rope, exclaiming: "O God, you are my servant and I am your lord"; he erred from joy’. In another passage it is said, ‘God is more joyful at the repentance of His servant than a sterile man or woman who begets a child, an erring person who finds the right path, and a thirsty person who accidentally comes upon a source of refreshing water.’

On one occasion Muhammad, according to one of the Companions, Anas, said, Allah says: "When a servant of Mine advances to me by a foot, I advance to him by a yard and when he advances towards me a yard, I advance towards him the length of his arms’ spread. When he comes to me walking, I go to him running."’

Repentance or turning to God is prominent in the Sufi tradition. For the famous Persian Sufi master Hujwiri (d. c 1077), it is the first station of the traveler on the way to truth. For Sufis, the mystical life is a journey from God to the world of created things and back to God the creator of all things. This journey consists of acts of worship and obedience and a turning from carnal and worldly temptations. There is an ascetic strain in Sufism but also a deep sense of the love and mercy of God. Repentance is the means by which one is turned towards God. As Shaykh Ibrahim al-Daqqaq (d.1015 or 1021) said, ‘Repentance means that you should be to God a face without a back even as you have formerly been unto him a back without a face.’

The Shi’ite tradition with its more pessimistic view of human life sees sin as a primary cause of life’s troubles. Repentance, as Mahmoud Ayoub says, has therefore a redemptive significance and can help to lessen the evils in the world. Repentance should be expressed publicly through penitential liturgies.

Although, as I have suggested, there is much in Islam about God’s mercy, there is also clear teaching about a day of Judgement, when each person’s deeds will be weighed on an exact balance (7,8; 21, 47; 23, 103f; 101, 6-9) and the book of the record for each person will be opened (10, 61; 17, 13f; ). No one can help another person, each person is responsible for their own actions. Yet the possibility of intercession especially by Muhammad and later by angels and martyrs came to be accepted and modified this strict accounting.

The faithful are promised in the Qur’an the pleasures of affluence. ‘You and your spouses will enter Paradise and be glad. You will be served with golden plates and goblets. Everything the heart desires and that pleases the eye will be there, where you will abide for ever.’ (43, 70-71). Men will enjoy virgins with lovely eyes and swelling breasts (44, 54; 52, 20; 55, 72-76; 56, 34-37; 78,33). The great theologian Al-Ghazali claimed that the promise of sexual pleasure ‘was a powerful motivation to incite men... to adore God so as to reach heaven.’ I think myself that such imagery may easily be misunderstood and the self-immolation of suicide bombers makes one aware that the promise of heavenly rewards may be misused for political purposes. One of the early Sufis, Rabi’a of Basra (717-801) recognized that the vision of God was reward enough. ‘O my Lord’, she wrote, ‘if I worship Thee from fear of hell, burn me in hell; and if worship Thee from Hope of Paradise, exclude me thence; but if I worship thee for thine own sake, then withold not from me Thine Eternal Beauty.’

As for the wicked, the Qur’an says that they will burn ‘as long as heaven and earth endure’ (11, 106-7). There are two conditions attached to this. One is ‘except as Allah wills’ and the other, in the view of some theologians, is that the punishments are not eternal because the heavens and the earth as we see them are not eternal. Another verse says, ‘Those who deny Our revelations, we will roast in a fire. As often as their skins are consumed. We will give them fresh skins, so that they may taste the torment.’ (4, 56).

Imagery of heaven and hell is easily misleading, especially if taken too literally, as we are bound to use comparisons from this life which are not relevant to a life which we cannot imagine. The New Testament speaks of heavenly banquets and there are also grim warnings of hell where ‘the fire shall never be quenched, where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.’ (Mark 9, 43-4 AV).

Both Christianity and Islam try to balance belief in both the justice and mercy of God. God’s justice is important, although it is not perhaps given adequate attention in modern Christian circles. The justice of God emphasizes moral responsibility -- that our behavior matters. It also suggests that there is redress in another world to the injustices and suffering of this world. Yet too easily pictures of God’s punishment of sinners can give a picture of a God of vengeance, which is especially dangerous when humans take it upon themselves to be agents of that vengeance. Umar ibn Khattab told of the occasion when some prisoners of war were brought to the Prophet. Among them was a woman who ran all over the place looking for her child. When she found it, she lifted it close toward her and suckled it. The Prophet then asked, "Can you imagine this woman throwing her child into the fire?" When his companions said, "No", Muhmmad said, "God is much more compassionate towards his servants that she is towards the child."’

The Qur’an suggests that those who appear before God after death are involved in deciding their own guilt or innocence. God will say to every person,

‘Read thine (own) record:

Sufficient is thy soul

This day to make out

An account against thee’ (17,14).

As the Saudi Arabian commentary says, ‘Our true accusers are our own deeds.’ The distinguished scholar Huston Smith explains, ‘What death burns away is self-serving defences, forcing one to see with total objectivity how one has lived one’s life. In the uncompromising light of that vision, where no dark and hidden corners are allowed, it is one’s own actions that rise up to accuse or confirm.’ In St John’s Gospel, Jesus says that he did not come to condemn the world. People condemn themselves by not coming to the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed (John 3, 17-20 and 12, 47-8).

In both religions there is the suggestion that in the presence of God, we shall gradually see our lives for what they are in the light of divine truth. Whether there is place for further repentance is not clear. As warners, neither Jesus nor Muhammad would have wanted to lessen the urgency of their call to repentance, yet both were deeply aware of divine mercy.

Sadly, the application of justice in some Islamic states does not reflect the compassion of God. As Farid Esack says, ‘The idea of an Allah who is compassionate and merciful is one that we need to retrieve in order to recapture Islam from those who insist that our faith and Allah are only about anger and vengeance.’ This is not to say that some so-called Christian countries are without fault. I find, for example, the continued use of capital punishment in the USA deeply disturbing.

The context in which Islam and Christianity influenced legal development was different. Unlike the early Muslims, the early Christians did not constitute a political entity or state, so they had no responsibility for framing or administering laws. Especially those who lived outside Palestine lived under the law of the Roman empire, which was not based on revelation, but was roughly in accordance with the ethico-legal parts of the Mosaic law. When in the fourth century the Roman Empire accepted Christianity as the official religion, there was no need to create a new system of law based solely on the teaching of the Bible. Christians, therefore, generally accepted that it was possible to reach a satisfactory legal system based on sound reason apart from revelation. Thus in both mediaeval and modern Western Christendom, although the laws were expected to be in accordance with biblical teaching, it was not considered necessary to show how a particular law was derived from scriptural texts.

This over-lapping of civil law and personal and family law, which in some countries is reserved to religious courts, may be illustrated by the fact that when I officiate at a wedding as a clergyman of the Church of England, I not only bless the couple as a priest, but also act in a legal capacity in registering their marriage. In the twentieth century there has been increased questioning of Christian moral teaching, but religious communities in Britain have not demanded separate legal systems for personal and family law. The courts have tried to adapt to a more multi-religious society by, for example, allowing the oath to be sworn on the scriptures of the faith community to which a witness belongs.

Islam by contrast was a political unit from very early days -- from Muhammad’s Hijra to Medina. Even so, it did not have to construct a system of law out of nothing. In general the customs of the nomadic Arabs prevailed even in the towns of Mecca and Medina, although customary practices did not entirely fit urban life. Where something was unsatisfactory, the Qur’an gave new rules and tried to limit tribal vengeance and blood feuds, but otherwise the situation was unchanged.

As the Islamic state grew into an empire, influential Muslims came to think that the legal system should be based on the Qur’an, which, as we have mentioned in chapter two, was interpreted in the light of the hadith or stories about the Prophet, analogy, precedent and the mind of the community. The great jurist ash-Shafi’i (d. 820) produced a theory of ‘the roots of law’, which gained wide acceptance. He showed how to interpret the Sunna and how to apply the rules of the Qur’an and the Sunna to new situations. In theory, therefore, it was possible to show how the whole legal system was derived from the God-given law, or Shari’a, revealed in the Qur’an. The legal system was therefore what is called theocratic -- it was based on the revelation of God, whereas the law of Christendom was primarily based on sound reason and, especially in English Common Law, precedent. For Christians sound reason and the revealed law of God should be in agreement. For example, in Britain both the Church and the law of the land make clear that marriage should be a lifelong commitment.

Shari’a was intended for a Muslim society. Provision was made for non-Muslims who were known as Dhimmi. Originally intended for People of the Book -- Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians -- this status came to refer to all non-Muslims living in a Muslim state.

Many colonial powers imposed Western legal systems on their empires. Some Muslim countries have retained or revised these, whereas others have reintroduced Islamic or Shari’a law. As has been mentioned, there are various schools of Shari’a. In some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the Shari’a is based on the teaching of the Wahhabiya movement, which is ultra-conservative and puritanical. The Wahhabiya movement rejects centuries of development in Islamic legal thinking and is strict in its ban on luxury and on the introduction of non-Muslim or kafir practices, which in effect cover much of the behavior and life-style of modern Western societies. The movement also treats those Muslims who do not accept their teaching as heretics.

It is important, therefore, to recognize that cruel punishments such as stoning for adultery or amputation of a hand for theft, which are unacceptable to western opinion, are equally unacceptable to many Muslims. It is also helpful to remember that the Arab society in which Muhammad came to have political power was one of tribal rivalries. As Kenneth Cragg makes clear the bonds of blood and kin-relationship were transformed into a faith-based unity with a single worship and command. The Qur’an sought to limit private retaliation. Although it is still allowed this, it insisted that revenge, if exacted, must be strictly limited, and made clear that forgiveness or compounding for money were preferable (2, 178-9). Legal systems, based on the Qur’an tend to give greater weight to the injured party or his or her relatives than does British law. Nonetheless cruel punishments, wherever they occur, need to be challenged both in the name of God and in defense of human rights. True religion should emphasize the justice and mercy of God and seek to have this mirrored in human society.

This takes us back to the question of repentance and forgiveness. Most offences against another human being are also offences against God. This means that repentance addressed to God is necessary as well as compensation to the injured party.

If compensation is made and the repentance is genuine, is punishment still required? Maybe acceptance of punishment is a sign of contrition. It is interesting to compare stories of how Muhammad and Jesus dealt with a woman who had committed adultery. It is said that a woman who had committed this offence confessed to the Prophet and asked that she be duly punished, which meant being stoned. The woman was pregnant. The Prophet told her to go away and wait until the baby was born. In due course, she returned with the child in her arms and again asked for punishment. The Prophet sent her away again to nurse the child until it was weaned. The mother returned again leading her child who had a piece of bread in his mouth. Had the woman not returned and simply repented, she would have escaped punishment. But since she wished her sin to be expiated, the Prophet ordered that she be stoned to death. Afterwards he prayed over her and gave her an honorable burial. Umar B. al-Khattab, who was to become the second caliph, protested that Muhammad had prayed over a woman who had committed adultery. Muhammad replied, "But she had performed such a sincere act of repentance which, if it were divided among seventy inhabitants of Madina, it would suffice them. Is there anything nobler than her offering her life freely to God?"’

St John’s Gospel tells of a woman, caught in the act of adultery, who was brought to Jesus by some religious leaders who pointed out that the Law required her to be stoned. Jesus replied, "That one of you who is faultless shall throw the first stone." Gradually, one by one, the accusers went away. Jesus then turned to the woman and asked her, "Has no one condemned you?" "No", she replied. Jesus answered, "Nor do I condemn you. You may go; do not sin again."

Religious teaching focuses on the inner relation of the soul to God, which is known only to God. Legal systems have to focus on outward behavior. Neglect of prayers out of laziness and apostasy are offences, but the law has to be satisfied by an outward show of repentance. God’s verdict has to be left till the Day of Judgement. If punishment is carried out here on earth, the intention is to bring the recalcitrant person back to the community or to make him an example to others.

Where injury is caused to another person, the first requirement of the wrongdoer is that he should compensate the victim. The prophet, however, urged victims to offer forgiveness:

Let them forgive and overlook,

Do you not wish

That Allah should forgive you? (24, 22).

According to an early tradition, Muhammed advised, ‘If anyone would like God to save him from the anxieties of the Day of Resurrection, he should grant a respite to one who is in straitened circumstances or remit his debt.’ (Mishkat 12,9). Aisha reported that the Prophet said, ‘Avert the infliction of prescribed penalties on Muslims as much as you can, and let a man go if there is any way out, for it is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing’. (Mishkat 16,1).

Any religious tradition is complex and the outsider especially should avoid quoting one verse or example as definitive for a religion’s teaching on a particular matter. It may be that in terms of Biblical texts and their guidance for behavior today, Christians are more willing to set them in a historical context, but most Muslims also read the revealed teaching in the context of the agreed interpretation of the community. Both faith communities to my mind need constantly to review moral teaching and behavior according to the highest ethical standards of the faith and rightly there should be criticism of any behavior that devalues other human beings.

Religions should have an important role in bringing the teaching of forgiveness to bear on situations of conflict, many of which are inflamed by long memories of cruelty and injustice. It was suggested at the time of the Millennium that Christians should apologize for the Crusades. The Churches, sadly, declined to make an official apology, although a few brave Christians went to the Middle East to do so. Acknowledgment of past wrong-doing is a step towards healing its continuing poison.

Faith communities have a particular opportunity to play a healing role during the process of peace-building. The most striking recent example is South Africa. Desmond Tutu, who chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has said, ‘We here in South Africa are a living example of how forgiveness may unite people’. The example was set by Nelson Mandela. When he was released after twenty-seven years in jail, he declared that his mission was to the victim and the victimizer. ‘Our miracle’ Tutu continues, ‘almost certainly would not have happened without the willingness of people to forgive, exemplified spectacularly in the magnanimity of Nelson Mandela.’ It was recognized that the evils of the apartheid era had to be faced. A general amnesty, which would have amounted to amnesia was rejected, but also the Nuremberg option of the victors putting the vanquished on trial. The participation of white South Africans in the new nation was essential to its economic development. A third option -- a Truth and Reconciliation Commission -- was agreed. This was not like the one in Chile which was behind closed doors and on condition that General Pinochet and other members of the military junta were given amnesty. South Africa’s third way was ‘the granting of amnesty to individuals in exchange for a full disclosure relating to the crime for which amnesty was being sought.’ This dimension seems to have been lacking in the peace process in both Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine and there is little sign of it in former Yugoslavia.

There are many dimensions to forgiveness and these are increasingly being studied. Forgiveness is essentially a religious concept, although there are important differences of emphasis between religions. I agree with Desmond Tutu that ‘Without Forgiveness there really is no future’, which is the title of the final chapter of his book No Future Without Forgiveness. He recognizes that a papering over the cracks is a cheap peace that is no peace. ‘True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the pain, the degradation, the truth. . . People are not being asked to forget. . . Forgiveness means abandoning your right to pay back the perpetrator in his own coin, but it is a loss which liberates the victim.’ He ends the book by saying, ‘God wants to show that there is life after conflict and repression -- that because of forgiveness, there is a future’.

Where conflict is also a clash between members of different faiths, there is a responsibility on religious leaders to call for reconciliation. Indeed, wherever there is an abuse of human rights, injustice or violence, people of faith need to speak and act together, inspired by the teachings of their scriptures. Strikingly, one of first occasions in South Africa on which people of different faiths shared in reciting passages from their scriptures was in a prison cell. Members of different religions who had taken part in a protest against apartheid were arrested and locked up. They passed the time by reciting passages from the Bible, the Qur’an and the Hindu Vedas.

Chapter 7: Suffering

In Islam there is the confidence that in the end God will vindicate the righteous, whereas, it has been suggested above, Christianity, to which the Cross of Christ is so central, has a more tragic view of life. This contrast, as we shall see is not entirely true, especially when the Shi’ite tradition is considered. Even so, Christianity has probably given a larger place to redemptive suffering than Islam. The question of the suffering of the faithful, nevertheless, has been a concern for Muslims just as much as for Christians.

The Qur’an opens with the words, "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful." These words are found at the head of almost every chapter or sura. Equally, the Qur’an affirms that God is omnipotent, the Lord of the Universe and the Lord of history. God’s ultimate responsibility for all that happens is recognized. "Allah has power over all things" (35, 1; 2, 106).

Suffering, therefore, in a sense comes from God. ‘No kind of calamity can occur, except by the leave of Allah.’ (64, 11). The question then is why God allows suffering. There is a tendency in Islam to see success or ‘manifest victory’ as a sign of God’s favor. When at the battle of Badr, the Muslims, who were largely outnumbered, won an important victory over the Meccans, this was taken as a sign of God’s approval.

‘There has Already been

For you a Sign

In the two armies

That met (in combat).

One was fighting in the Cause

of Allah, the other

Resisting Allah; these saw

With their own eyes

Twice their own number

but Allah doth support

With his aid whom He pleaseth.

In this is a lesson

For such as have eyes to see.’ (3,13).

Yet the following year, at Uhud, the Muslims failed to repeat their success. Why was this?

Not for thee, (but for Allah),

Is the decision:

Whether He turn in mercy

To them, or punish them;

For they are indeed wrong-doers.

To Allah belongeth all

That is in the heavens

And on earth.

He forgiveth whom He pleaseth;

And punisheth whom He pleaseth;

But Allah is Oft-Forgiving,

Most Merciful. (3, 129)

In effect the answer in Islam is ‘submission’, acceptance of the will of God, with whom it is not for us to argue. But experience of life led to some wrestling with the problem of why the faithful are not always successful. Various answers were suggested, although the general expectation remained that the faithful would be victorious and the rapid and victorious spread of Islam seemed to confirm this.

Suffering may be a punishment, especially of proud and evil men. It is said of Pharaoh,

When at length they

Provoked us, We exacted

Retribution upon them and

We drowned them all.

And we made them

(A People) of the Past

And an Example

To later ages. (43, 55-6.)

Although suffering may be a punishment, we cannot assume this of the sufferings of others. For example, those who die in battle should not be derided as though survivors enjoyed the special favor of God. Equally

It is no fault in the blind. Nor in one born lame, nor in one afflicted with illness (24, 61). One cannot assume that the unfortunate are being punished by God and so ignore their needs. In the case of the faithful, suffering may be a correction or a trial or a test.

‘Every soul shall have

A taste of death;

And we test you

By evil and by good

By way of trial.

To us must ye return.(21, 35)

Again the Qur’an says,

‘Be sure we shall test you

With something of fear

And hunger, some loss

in goods, lives and the fruits

(Of your toil), but give

Glad tidings to those

Who patiently persevere,

Who say, when afflicted

With calamity: "To Allah

We belong, and to Him

Is our return."’ (2, 155-6).

The Qur’an recognizes that are those who are religious because they hope to be rewarded.

‘There are among men

Some who serve Allah,

As it were, on the verge.

If good befalls them, they are

Therewith, well content; but

If a trial comes to them,

They turn on their faces:

They lose both this world

And the Hereafter: that

is indeed the manifest loss.’ (22, 11).

Testing is, therefore, to be expected -- particularly of the faithful.

‘If a wound hath touched you,

Be sure a similar wound

Hath touched the others.

Such days (of varying fortunes)

We give to men and men

By turns; that Allah may know

those that believe,

And that He may take

To Himself from your ranks

Martyr-witnesses (to Truth) . . .

Did ye think that ye

Would enter Heaven

Without Allah testing

Those of you who fought hard

(In His Cause) and remained steadfast? (3, 140, 142).

Again the Qur’an says:

Do men think that

They will be left alone

On saying "We believe",

And that they will not

Be tested?’ (29, 2)

There is then an "instrumental" view of suffering. God uses it to punish and to test. This affirms the conviction that God is in control and that suffering can be part of God’s merciful providence to bring people to a right way of living. God does not test people beyond their capability (2, 286) and always offers them the possibility of repentance and forgiveness. The proper response is patience and endurance and trust in God. God in the end will reward the faithful and punish unbelievers. (2, 80-82).

Sometimes outsiders have thought of Islam as fatalistic, but this is a misreading of the Qur’an. The Qur’an makes clear that suffering as far as possible should be relieved and its causes removed. One way of doing so is to construct a society based on the teaching of the Qur’an and this is why some Muslims want an Islamic state. The fashioning of an Islamic society was intended to alleviate suffering. In early Muslim societies the position of women and slaves was improved compared to their contemporaries; almsgiving was required and limitations were placed on war and vengeance.

Equally the individual Muslim was expected to be compassionate. In a passage, which is sometimes thought to refer to Muhammad himself, the Qur’an says,

‘Did He not find thee

An orphan and give thee

Shelter? (and care)?

And he found thee

Wandering, and He gave

Thee guidance.

And He found thee

In need, and made

Thee independent

Therefore, treat not

The orphan with harshness,

Nor repulse him

Who asks;

But the Bounty

Of thy Lord.

Rehearse and proclaim.’ (93, 6-11).

Sometimes acts of mercy are valued above ritual. The Qur’an says:

It is not righteousness

That ye turn your faces

Towards East or West,

But it is righteousness

To believe in Allah

And the Last Day

And the Angels,

And the Book,

And the messengers;

To spend your substance,

Out of love for Him

For your kin,

For orphans,

For the needy,

For the wayfarer,

For those who ask,

And for the ransom of slaves;

To be steadfast in prayer,

And give Zakat,[charitable tax]

To fulfil contracts

Which ye have made;

And to be firm and patient,

In pain (or suffering)

And adversity,

And throughout

All periods of panic.

Such are the people

of truth, the God-fearing.(2, 177).

The teaching of the Qur’an then suggests that success should attend the faithful, but if not it may be a punishment for evil or a test of faith. Suffering does not lead to a questioning of God’s power or mercy and Muslims should seek to alleviate suffering both individually and by creating a just Islamic society.

Yet there are unanswered questions. Does the stress on divine omnipotence allow adequately for human free will? This became a subject of major philosophical debate. Further, I wonder whether Islam allows sufficiently for the depth of human suffering, although many early converts to Islam were persecuted and tortured for their faith. My thoughts are, of course, colored by my particular studies of the Holocaust and genocide and also relate to the different understandings of the crucifixion, which we have discussed. In Shi’a tradition, a theology of martyrdom does develop.

The classical theologians of Islam tried to hold together both divine authority and human responsibility. The Qur’an and Hadith stress the omnipotence of God and some Muslims came close to a determinism which seemed to eclipse human freedom. There was a reaction in a school of thought known as Qadariyya, who held that human beings initiate their own actions and thus determine their destiny. They argued that God remained in control, but that he delegated actions and responsibility to human beings.

The Qadariyya, however, were bitterly attacked for giving too much independence to humans and were called dualists. Orthodox thinkers tried to solve the problem by a concept of "acquisition" rather than "delegation". God did not delegate powers: rather humans acquired them and made them their own. The disciples of al-Ashari said that God creates in humans the resolve to do something. Humans have no effective, but only an acquisitive part in the deed -- that is to say human beings do not cause something to happen but rather connect human power with the deed. This really still allows for the complete control of God, but al-Ashari seems to have modified this extreme position by saying it is possible to allow evil without being its immediate or direct cause. For example, Abel by refusing to defend himself "willed" or did not prevent his own murder, but he did not cause it.

While God is the source of blessing, humans are responsible for their misfortunes:

Whatever good, (O man!)

Happens to thee, is from Allah

But whatever evil happens

To thee, is from thyself (4, 79)

Yet as Asad points out not everything that a person considers as ‘evil fortune’ is bad in its consequences. As the Qur’an says:

‘But it is possible

That ye dislike a thing

Which is good for you,

And that ye love a thing

Which is bad for you.’ (2, 216).

God is essentially inscrutable -- that is what submission means. God cannot be put under any necessity -- not even moral necessity. Al-Ashari, according to ash-Shahrastani, said, ‘God is Lord of creation. He does what He wishes and effects what He desires. If He sent all beings to paradise there would be no injustice, or if He sent them all to Gehenna there would be no wrong. Wrong doing means disposing of things not one’s own or putting them in the wrong place. But since God is the owner of all things without exception, it is impossible to think of wrong-doing in connection with Him and it is impossible to attribute injustice to Him. The argument is similar to Paul’s in the Letter to the Romans, where he compares God to a potter. "Nay but, O man," he wrote, "who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it. Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?" (9, 20-21). Personally I have some difficulties with this argument, because God is surely always more moral than human beings.

Christians may ask whether Islam allows sufficiently for the tragic dimension in life. There is no doctrine of original sin and so no need for an act of atonement. Shi’ite Muslims, however, out of their own tragic history had to contend with the fact that the faithful, even over time, were not vindicated in this world.

The division between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims centered on who should be Caliph. When Muhammed died he was succeeded by Abu Bakr, whose faithfulness to Muhammad was unfailing and whose daughter Muhammad had married. The Shi’ites hold that Ali, Muhammad’s closest relation, who eventually became Caliph, should have been Caliph immediately after Muhammad’s death and that the first three Caliphs were usurpers. Ali’s caliphate ended tragically. He was assassinated by a member of the break away group of Kharijites. Ali’s elder son, al-Hasan succeeded him, but publicly renounced the caliphate in favor of Mu’awiyya, but his brother al-Husain refused to renounce his claims in favor of Yazid, who had succeeded his father Mu’awiyya. On the way to join his supporters, Husain was intercepted by a patrol and surrounded at Karbala. He refused to surrender and on 10th Muharranm 61 AH (10 October 680 CE) his small band were attacked. They resisted, but Husain refused to do so. He and his followers were massacred. A report to Yazid said laconically, "It did not last long, just time to slay a camel and take a nap."

According to a tradition, Jesus with his disciples when roaming in the wilderness came upon Karbala, the place where Husain was to die. On the exact spot where he was to be killed, a lion blocked Jesus’ path. Jesus spoke to the animal, who replied that on this spot the descendant of Muhammad would be killed and that he would not let Jesus pass until he had cursed his murderers. Another tradition says that a group of gazelles were grazing in Karbala and were lamenting Husain’s death and that Jesus then had a vision of the future tragic event and described it vividly.

The deaths of Husain, Ali and even of Hasan were soon seen as martyrdoms and this introduced a new element into Muslim understanding of suffering. Indeed the death of Husain was seen as a cosmic event around which the history of the world revolves. Manifest success could no longer be taken as proof of divine approval. Each year the death of Husain is commemorated. He is innocence personified and sums up all sorrow -- Jacob mourning for Joseph, Rachel weeping for her children and all victims of cruel tyrants. All evil is there at his killing. Husain represents all innocent victims. His suffering, which was totally undeserved, has a virtue which can be pleaded by those burdened with sin and suffering. Thus in the Shi’ite tradition, the ideas of vicarious suffering and martyrdom developed. In Sunni Islam, only the Prophet Muhammad is believed to have the capacity to intercede on behalf of those who make supplication.

There are many forms of Shi’ite passion plays, but the purpose of them all is to encourage actors and spectators to enter into the events as they are re-created and so recognize the benefits of innocent suffering. In one such play, Husain, as he died prayed to be granted "bountifully, the key of the treasure of intercession." Then, at the end of the play, Gabriel delivers a message from Muhammad. "None has suffered the pain and afflictions which Husain has undergone. None has, like him, been obedient in my service. As he has taken no steps save in sincerity in all that he has done, thou must put the key of Paradise in his hand. The privilege of making intercession for sinners is exclusively his. Husain is, by my peculiar grace, the mediator for all." In Sunni Islam however, only the Prophet Muhammad is believed to have the capacity to intercede on behalf of those who make supplication.

In his fascinating book Redemptive Suffering in Islam, the scholar Dr. Mahmoud Ayoub, who was born in a Shi’ite village in South Lebanon, suggests that for the people of God this world is a place of suffering and sorrow, indeed "the House of Sorrows." Although, as he says, Islam has stressed the good things of life which a person should thankfully enjoy, he states that a sense of the sorrowfulness of life is equally recognized in Islam, although this may not be the dominant mood of the Qur’an. The Hadiths suggest that the person of faith may expect to be visited with suffering and calamity in accordance with the strength and durability of his faith. When Sa’d b. Abi Waqqas asked the Prophet who were most likely to be afflicted with calamity, he was told, "The prophets, then the pious, everyone according to the degree of his piety. A man is afflicted according to his faith (din); if his faith is durable, his affliction is accordingly increased . . . until they leave him walking on the face of the earth without any sin cleaving to him." On another occasion, the Prophet said, "If God loves a people, He visits them with afflictions. He who is content [with God’s will], with him will God be pleased." There is also a saying in the Book of Ali, that "truly affliction is nearer to the pious man of faith than is fallen rain to the earth."

Suffering is a purifying test and the person who endures it helps the redemption of others. "Suffering", writes Mahmoud Ayoub, "whatever its cause and nature may be, must be regarded as an evil power of negation and destruction. It is non-being, the opposite of the Good which is Being in all its fullness. Suffering or non-being, cannot itself be destroyed, but it can and must be transformed. The transformation of suffering from a power of total negation into something of value is effected through human faith and divine mercy. Thus transformed, suffering becomes the great teacher for the pious, their road to salvation. The redemptive power of suffering lies in the fact that suffering can be overcome only by its own power. This is movingly stated in the Christian liturgical hymn which triumphantly proclaims "Christ rose from the dead, trampling death and giving life to those in the tomb"’.

"Suffering" Mahmoud Ayoub says "can lead to the annihilation, both physical and spiritual, of the sufferer." But we have argued that ultimate victory over evil, suffering and death, can only be achieved through suffering and death. In fact, where redemption is the primary goal of the life of the religious community, it is accepted as a divine gift of eternal life granted through death. The Christian case is one of the most powerful examples of the phenomenon in human history. We would like to argue that this quest for salvation, in different forms to be sure, plays a major role in the religious life of the Ithna’ashari Shi’ia community.

One aspect of the tradition emphasizes Husain’s mercy, forgiveness and healing. Some modern writers see the main message of his death to be that of his courage, piety and self-sacrifice. Another side of the tradition stresses Husain’s terrible punishment of his enemies. One prominent leader told Mahmoud Ayoub that Husain died "in protest against the hunger of the hungry, the poverty of the poor and the oppression of the oppressed." He also refers to a play performed in Cairo in 1970, which depicted Husain as a revolutionary hero and great martyr. At the end of the play Husain appeared and told the audience, "Remember me as you struggle in order that justice may reign over you, remember me in your struggle . . . When the song of brotherhood disappears and when the poor complain and the pockets of the rich bulge, remember me. . . Remember my revenge so that you may exact it from tyrants. . . But if you hold your peace against deception and accept humiliation, then I would be slain anew. . . I would be killed whenever men are subjugated and humiliated. . . Then would the wound of the martyr forever curse you because you did not avenge the blood of the martyr. Avenge the blood of the martyr." Husain can be made a prophet of liberation theology!

The same event can be remembered by the faithful to teach very different lessons. The Martyrdom of Husain can be used to rally the faithful to seek revenge against those who tyrannize the afflicted, it can be used to teach patience under the purifying test of suffering.

Some of the Sufis, mystics who themselves often suffered fierce opposition and even martyrdom, also spoke of the purifying discipline of pain as a way to bring the soul closer to God. Jalalud Din Rumi wrote, "When you fall ill and suffer pain, your conscience is awakened, you are stricken with remorse and pray God to forgive your trespasses.

The foulness of your sin is shown to you, you resolve to come back to the right way. you promise and vow that henceforth your chosen course of action will be obedience.

Note, then, this principle, O seeker: pain and suffering make one aware of God.

No religion gives an entirely adequate answer to the mystery of suffering. The attempts to explain it are similar in Islam and Christianity, but for Christians God in Jesus Christ has entered into and shared human suffering. Further, Christians believe that by his own suffering even to death, Jesus Christ achieved the salvation of the world. Suffering for Christians, therefore, has redemptive possibilities. This note is also to be heard in Islam, but not so loudly. Some Muslims feel that an undue stress on the redemptive quality of suffering may lead to a pietistic indifference to the suffering in the world. Muslims may, therefore, help to remind Christians of their calling to work and pray for God’s kingdom of justice. The dialogue of Muslims and Christians may help both to maintain a balance between a recognition of the redemptive possibilities of suffering and the of the responsibility to do all that is possible to relieve it.

Chapter 6: The Responsible Use of Power

Islam is called by some of its followers ‘The Religion of Peace’. The words Islam and Salam, peace, come from the same root. Yet to many in the West, Islam seems to be identified with war and conflict. One of the sharpest contrasts between Jesus and Muhammad is in their attitude to power and the use of force. But there is less difference, as we shall see, between the teaching of Muslim jurists and Christian theologians. Here is an issue on which it is particularly important than members of both religions seek to distinguish true from false teaching. Nothing probably has done more to discredit religion that its being tainted by violence supposedly carried out in the name of God.

The Muslim world has probably seen no more conflict than Christendom. Certainly, however, Islam today is identified with some revolutionary movements, but before looking in a subsequent chapter at the contemporary scene, it is helpful to see what Islam teaches about the use of force.

It is important to recognize that in Islam the whole of life is under God’s control and that all human behavior should be in obedience to God’s will. A committed Christian might well say the same, but in the West secular society has made a distinction between the sacred and the profane. Sociologists have spoken of the ‘privatizing’ of religion in the West, by which they mean that religious adherence has become a leisure time activity -- some people go to church on a Sunday, other people go sailing or shopping. Until recently, certainly in Britain, politicians avoided talking about the moral dimension of public life, although in the last few years there has been more recognition of the fact that there are moral and spiritual dimensions to many of the most urgent issues facing society. In part, this separation of secular and sacred dates to the Enlightenment, which was an intellectual development in Western society and not fully shared elsewhere.

Muslims traditionally do not make a distinction between the sacred and the secular. It is the whole community which should submit to God. Society should be modeled on the Qur’an. In Madina, Muhammad, like Calvin later in Geneva, tried to shape a society that lived in obedience to God’s word. The logic of this position is clear. If God is God, then all life should be lived in obedience to God’s Laws.

The early caliphs, although nor successors to Muhammad as messengers of God, were his successors as ‘commander of the faithful.’ The early caliphs combined spiritual and temporal leadership -- as Christians would understand these terms. Gradually the political rulers of Islam lost their religious aura and the rulers came to be replaced, as the conscience-keepers of the community by the ulama or learned men, who had studied the holy law in depth. In time only the first four caliphs came to be regarded as truly orthodox. The Umayyad dynasty (661-750) were seen as a reversion to secular kingship. The Abbasid caliphs, who ruled in Baghdad from 750-1258, had rather more prestige and some called themselves Khalifat Allah, or God’s deputy or even ‘the shadow of God upon earth’ -- phrases that would have shocked Muhammad. With the loss of effective power by the Abbasids in the tenth century, ‘all genuine political authority in the mainstream Muslim tradition’ writes Edward Mortimer, ‘was secular’, although developments in the Shi’ite tradition were rather different. In the Sunni world ‘virtue and justice’, Mortimer adds, ‘were no longer regarded as indispensable qualifications of a ruler.’ By the eleventh century most of the ulama were teaching that obedience was an absolute duty, even to an unjust ruler, since an unjust ruler was better than none at all.

Today radical Muslims may question this divorce between state and religion. They are very critical of the life style and secular policies of some Muslim rulers and have campaigned, with success in some countries, for the introduction of Shari’a law instead of the law codes which they inherited from Western imperialist rulers. As in the early days, where possible, many Muslims expect to live in an Islamic state. Where Muslims are a minority they are taught to obey the laws of the country where they live, but some groups, like the Muslim Parliament in Britain, would hope that their country of residence would in due course become Muslim.

This concern for a society that is obedient to God goes back to the Prophet Muhammad himself. As we have seen, he met with hostility and ridicule in Mecca, but in 622 CE he was invited to become leader of the neighboring town of Madina. From there, he in due course attacked and captured Mecca. Whether or not he foresaw the quick expansion of Islam that followed his death we do not know, but Islam’s military conquests remain some of history’s most rapid and enduring victories.

There are various economic, social and political factors which contributed to the Prophet’s victory and to subsequent Muslim expansion. Our interest here, however, is in his acceptance of power and the use of force. The command of God was ‘Recite . . . ’ ‘Your only duty is to deliver (the message)’ , God told the Prophet (42, 48). Yet his preaching met with a meager response. Is it sufficient to proclaim God’s message and accept its rejection or should a person use the means available to them to ensure its success?

If you are convinced that you have been commissioned by God, it is understandable that you try to effect that divine commission. As Kenneth Cragg has put it, ‘After thirteen years of sustained and patient witness by word alone, and of relatively scant response within a community proudly resistant and incorrigible, Muhammad determined on emigration. The divine word could not be allowed to fail of "manifest victory". If this was manifestly not attained by preaching, then the very loyalty that preached must pass beyond its verbal task into an active accomplishment of "victory."’ The Muslim writer Fazlur Rahman, said, ‘Muhammad never lost the hope of success nor, indeed, the dire and stark realization that he was duty-bound to succeed. . . . It is part of the Qur’anic doctrine that simply to deliver the message, to suffer frustration, and not to succeed, is immature spirituality.’ It needs, however, to be stressed that force was only to be used in self-defense not in propagation of the faith.

Islam condemns strife, fasad, and many Muslim writers insist that violence should only be a last resort. It has also been pointed out that the battles of that time were quite small affairs in which probably less than two hundred people in all lost their lives. The Prophet is said not to have spent more than one and a half days in actual fighting in a missionary career of twenty three years.

One can compare Muhammad’s choice to that of Jesus who rejected the use of political power and taught the way of non-resistance, although it has to be noted that the political context of their ministries was very different. Cragg notes that the Qur’an makes mention of Moses, David and Abraham as exponents of prophetic action, but that there is no mention of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah or Jeremiah -- prophets who chose to suffer rather than compromise with political power. Jesus followed in the tradition of the Suffering Servant. In the Qur’an Isa (Jesus) is a faithful teacher and witness and warner to his people, but he is not externally ‘successful’, although he was rescued from death and vindicated by the action of God. Some Muslims see Jesus’ failure as evidence of Jesus’ lesser status as compared to Muhammad.

A comparison to the early history of Sikhism is also interesting. The first Sikh Gurus were pacifists. They suffered intense persecution. Two Gurus and many of their followers were martyred. The tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, however, created the Khalsa and organized the community to defend itself. Rather than see themselves and their faith community destroyed, the Sikhs chose to defend themselves and their faith by force.

Muhammad’s choice was similar. This highlights the complex question of when and whether it is right for those who are God-fearing to use force. Here is an area which Muslims and Christians need to explore more fully together. Does Truth need to be upheld by force with the inevitable compromises that this entails or is its purity and vulnerability more powerful? Jesus embodies a love that suffers. The only victory is the change of heart won by such self-giving love. The comparison of the choice made by Muhammad and Jesus has clarified my own thinking and deepened my commitment to the way of the Cross, the path of non-resistant suffering love. But I am aware of the painful choices this too entails. Does it make one appear to stand aside in the face of evil and terrible suffering? This would be the criticism of many Muslims. Ibn Khaldun (1332-1402), who was born in Tunis and moved to Granada and then to Cairo, a distinguished historian and philosopher, who has been called ‘the father of sociology’, said that verbal propagation of a faith is incomplete. He did not consider Christianity to be a ‘missionary’ religion precisely because it had no jihad.

The majority of Christians have rejected the way of Christ as unrealistic. The early Christians were pacifist and in every age some Christians, usually a minority, have held to this belief. The majority, however, have accepted the doctrine, in various forms, of the just war. The theory requires, first, that there is a just cause, which may be self-defense, the protection of the weak and vulnerable, the recovery of something wrongfully taken or the punishment of evil. Secondly, war should be initiated by a legitimate authority. Thirdly, those involved should have a right intention. Fourthly, the force should be proportional to the objectives. The teaching also tried to limit the cruelties of war. At the time of the Reformation, there was considerable debate about whether revolution could be justified. Some Christians held that it was right to rebel against a tyrant.

The teaching of the Qur’an and of Muslim jurists is similar. The use of force in certain clearly defined situations of self-defense or to protect innocent victims is allowed, but efforts are made to limit the cruelties of war.

The Qur’an says:

To those against whom

War is made, permission

Is given (to fight), because

They are wronged; -- and verily,

Allah is Most Powerful

For their aid;--

(They are) those who have

Been expelled from their homes

In defiance of right, --

(For no cause) except

That they say, "Our Lord

Is Allah". Did not Allah

Check one set of people

By means of another,

There would surely have been

Pulled down monasteries, churches,

Synagogues, and mosques, in which

The name of Allah is commemorated

In abundant measure. Allah will

Certainly aid those who

Aid His (cause); for verily

Allah is Full of Strength,

Exalted in Might,

(Able to enforce His Will).

(They are) those who,

If We establish them

In the land, establish

regular prayer and give

Zakat, enjoin

The right and forbid wrong.

With Allah rests the end

(And decision) of (all) affairs. (22, 39-41).

The Qur’an says also that:

And did not Allah

Check one set of people

By means of another,

The earth would indeed

be full of mischief:

But Allah is full of bounty

To all the worlds’ (2, 251).

The Qur’an describes war as a conflagration and God’s aim is to put it out. ‘Every time they kindle the fire of war, Allah doth extinguish it.’ (5, 64). The Qur’an tries to limit the evils of war. Should the enemy desist from fighting, Muslims should do the same, because ‘Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.’(2, 191). Incidentally, this verse follows the rather chilling verse that begins:

And slay them

Wherever ye catch them,

And turn them out from

From where they have

Turned you out;

For Persecution is worse than slaughter. ( 2, 191).

This is an example of the importance of reading a verse in context. The injunction in verse 191 is only valid in the context of hostilities in progress -- rather like the military command to ‘shoot to kill’. It should be understood, as the Saudi Arabian translation comments, in the awareness that in general "Islam is the religion of peace, goodwill, mutual understanding, and good faith. But it will not acquiesce in wrong-doing, and its men will hold their lives cheap in defense of honor, justice, and the religion which they hold sacred."

Cruelty such as disfiguring the enemy dead or torturing prisoners is forbidden. Plundering was forbidden and also unnecessary damage, such as cutting down fruit trees.

When an enemy combatant was about to be killed by Usama bin Zaid, he declared his faith in Islam. Usama killed him nevertheless. The Prophet was greatly displeased and questioned Usama, who said that the man was not sincere. The Prophet retorted "Had you cut open his heart to make sure whether he was sincere or not?" Yet, Muhammad was well aware of the ambiguities of power and the insincerity that it could cause. When a group of Bedouins came to him and said, ‘We believe’, the Qur’an gives as the reply,

‘Ye have no faith; but ye

(Only) say "We have submitted

Our wills to Allah."

For not yet has Faith

Entered your hearts.’ (49, 14).

The Qur’an uses the word Islam in two senses. One is a personal and religious ‘submission’ to God. The other is a visible political ‘submission’ to Islam.

The Qur’an accepts that it is legitimate to use power in establishing a community obedient to God. God’s approval was shown by the God’s gift of victory. Success or ‘manifest victory’ was seen as a sign of God’s favor. This was evident at the battle at Badr, where, despite being heavily outnumbered, the Muslims were victorious (3,13). When the following year, the Muslims were unsuccessful at Uhud, this was explained as a result of Muslim disobedience. It did not alter the conviction that God’s will is sovereign. If, therefore, the Muslim cause is just, God will in the end uphold it -- even if for a time the Muslims suffer testing and punishment. So some religiously motivated Muslim Palestinians reject compromise with Israel, believing that their cause is just and that therefore God will in the end vindicate them.

The use of force, therefore, in certain circumstances, is justified in Islam and it is in this context that the word jihad is to be understood. The word jihad means striving, especially striving in the cause of God. It is personal commitment to God’s service. al-Jilani, also known as Abd al-Qadir al-Jili (1077-1166), founder of the Qadiriya Sufi Order quotes the Prophet as saying , ‘We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad’ meaning that the purifying of the inner self is more important than the physical struggle against the enemies of Islam. Jihad involves a personal struggle against evil and the use of intellect and speech in support of right and truth and the correction of wrong and evil. Too often this wider meaning is forgotten and the word is confined to the use of force. War is primarily the responsibility of the community, not the individual. This is why, except by the Kharijites who were an early schismatic puritanical group, jihad is not regarded as one of the pillars of Islam.

Jihad is often taken to mean ‘religious’ war, but this is misleading. Certainly it does not imply the killing of non-believers just because of their lack of faith. The Qur’an makes clear that ‘there can be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error.’ (2, 256). Non-believers who were willing to submit should be accepted and as we shall see there was special provision for the Christians and Jews.

Islamic teaching normally only allows war under three conditions:

First, to oppose and expel those who attack Muslims without just cause.

‘Will you not fight people

Who violated their oaths

Plotted to expel the Messenger

And attacked you

First? (9, 13).

Secondly, to prevent oppression and persecution of the faithful. This may be extended to the protection of those who are not Muslim but who are victims of unjustified aggression.

And Why should you not

Fight in the cause of Allah

And of those who, being weak,

Are ill-treated (and oppressed)? -

Men, women, and children,

Whose cry is "Our Lord!

Rescue us from this town

Whose people are oppressors;

And raise for us from thee

One who will protect;

And raise for us from Thee

One who will help" (4, 75).

Thirdly, force could be used, as we have seen, to protect places intended for the worship of God -- not only mosques, but also churches and synagogues. ( 22, 40).

Perhaps the most influential analysis of war was made by Ibn Khaldun. He held that war was not an accidental calamity or disease but was rooted in the selfishness and anger of human beings. He distinguished four kinds of war: tribal wars, feuds and raids, jihad and wars against rebels and dissenters. The first two are wars of disobedience and not justified, whereas the other two are wars of obedience and justified. Victory, he held, depended on military preparedness and spiritual insight.

Muslim jurists submitted jihad to close analysis.

(a) Jihad against polytheists is in some verses of the Qur’an encouraged. For example, 9, 5, says, ‘fight pagans wherever you may find them’, but these are pagans who do not abide by treaties to which they have agreed. 9, 123 is similar, but as the notes in the Saudi Arabian translation say ‘When conflict becomes inevitable . . . mealy mouthed compromises are not right for soldiers of truth.’ 47, 4 says the same, but adds that when the Unbelievers have been subdued

Bind (the captives)

Firmly: therefore

(Is the time for) either

Generosity or ransom:

Until the war lays down

Its burdens.

(b) Jihad against believers was sub-divided by the jurist al-Mawardi (?dates) into:

(i) Jihad against believers. Apostates could become subject to jihad. After Muhammad’s death, some Arab tribes to secede. Abu Bakr gave them solemn warning after which they were attacked with fire and sword.

(ii) Jihad against dissension. When the Kharijites, rejecting Caliph ‘Ali’s offer of peaceful relations and permission to pray in the mosque, continued in their opposition to the Caliph, he overwhelmed them at the battle of Nahruwan in 658 CE.

(iii) Jihad against bandits, who were to be severely punished, unless they repented.

(c) Jihad against the People of the Book -- Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. They could either embrace Islam and become full citizens or if they retained their beliefs, provided they accepted the authority of the imam and paid taxes, they would be tolerated as Dhimmis, with somewhat restricted rights of citizenship.

(d) Some jurists accepted the strengthening of the frontiers -- ribat -- as allowable. This was based on the verse, 8, 60:

‘Against them [Unbelievers] make ready

Your strength to the utmost

Of your power, including

Steeds of war, to strike terror

Into (the hearts) of the enemies...

But immediately, the next verse continues,

But if the enemy

Incline towards peace,

Do thou (also) incline

Towards peace, and trust in Allah. (8, 61).

Normally ribat was interpreted defensively, in the hope that it would prevent conflict.

Although the Prophet is reported to have said that ‘He who supports a tyrant or oppressor knowing he is a tyrant casts himself outside the pale of Islam’, Al-Ash’ari (873-935) and Din ibn Jama’a (d. 1333) forbade uprisings against tyrants

There were also rules about who should participate and about the conduct of war. Fighters should be adult males who were believers. Non-combatants should be spared unless they actively helped the enemy. Before the first Syrian campaign, Abu Bakr read ten rules that limited violence. For example, soldiers were told not to slaughter a sheep or a camel except for eating, not to burn bees, and not to cut down tress with fruit on them.’ The Prophet had already forbidden killing a decrepit old man, or a small child or a woman. Some of the jurists, however, greatly limited the scope of these prohibitions and Abu Hanafi said that all is permitted against the enemy.

Arbitration was encouraged, based on verse 4, 59, especially to solve disputes within Islam. Muhammad had also submitted to arbitration in a dispute with the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe. This provided a precedent for the use of arbitration between Muslims and non-Muslims when questions of faith were not in dispute.

It can be seen that Muslim discussion of jihad is not dissimilar to the Christian teaching about a just war. Islam accepts the use of force in self-defense, to defend religion and to protect the weak. The need now is to see how these rules apply to the United Nations’ peace-keeping role. When is it right for the international community to intervene to protect the weak and, for example, to try to prevent genocide. What cost in civilian casualties is acceptable? How do you impose sanctions without hurting the most vulnerable parts of the population of a country? To what extent can peace-keeping forces intervene in civil war? There are important issues for members of different faiths to discuss together with politicians and generals. .

Of course, the teachings of both Islam and Christianity have not always been observed and rulers have been tempted to declare a war of self-interest to be a jihad or a just war It is important also to recognize that in much of both Christian and Muslim history religion has been part of a community’s self-identity. As a result a conflict acquires religious overtones, although its cause is not really religious differences. There is, therefore, a clear responsibility on religious leaders to distance themselves from this misuse of religion. They need courage to challenge their own community when they indulge needlessly in violence or the abuse of human rights.

A step in this direction was taken at the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders which met in UN General Assembly Hall in August 2000. The religious leaders agreed a ‘Commitment to Global Peace’ which included a rejection of killing in the name of God. There are, of course, those including suicide bombers who claim to fight in the name of God, but religious leaders need to make clear that they do not have the endorsement of the faithful.

There is a clear difference between Muhammad and Jesus’ attitude to the use of power, but much less difference between the teaching and practice of Christendom and the world of Islam. It may be true today that rulers in Muslim states make more specific reference to Islam than most European leaders do to Christianity, but the real causes of conflict seem to me about economic and political justice rather than primarily religion. Religion is called in to give respectability to policies decided on quite other grounds. The crimes of individuals, however, as the Muslim scholar K G Saiyadam said should not be blamed ‘on their respective religions. In judging a religion, we should do so as it is at its best and in the context of its genuine teachings.’

If both Christianity and Islam have, in some situations, accepted the use of force, their major contribution should be in creating a climate of trust and peace. The dialogue between the faiths is itself a contribution but they need also to emphasize the teachings of their respective religions which make for peace.

Here the Sufi tradition of Islam has a particular contribution to make with its emphasis on the spiritual jihad as well as the teachings of peace. Dr Hasan Askari, who worked for a time at the Center for Christian-Muslim Relations at Birmingham gave a talk some years ago on "Muslim Approaches to Religious Sources for Peace." He began by reference to Prayer which is central to a Muslim’s life. ‘To invoke the One is to become one, to rise above all division and discord... To invoke the name of God is to be in His Presence: to be in His Presence is to be in a perpetual state of prayer, and therefore ‘prayer is an actualization of peace.’ Askari then admitted that religious dogmatism is a fertile breeding ground of hatred and fear, but that acknowledgement of the transcendence of the One God brought people together beyond religious divisions. Members of different religions were called by God to strive ‘as in a race in all virtues.’ (5, 48). Striving for peace, Askari, continued is to struggle for justice, which is the prerequisite for peace, and to oppose corruption and disorder.

Muhammad Raceme Boa Muhaiyaddeen, a Sufi from Sri Lanka, in his Islam and World Peace, published after his death, also stressed the inner jihad. ‘For man to raise his sword against man, for man to kill man, is not holy war. True holy was is to praise God and to cut away the enemies of truth within our own hearts. We must cast out all that is evil within us, all that opposes God. This is the war that we must fight.’ The Oneness of God, he taught, means also that we never see another person as separate from ourselves. As Jesus said, we should love our neighbor just as much as we love ourselves.

I am not aware of ever having chosen to sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" and no doubt congregations where I have been in charge have felt deprived. The imagery of warfare applied to the spiritual life has its dangers. Too easily one identifies the enemy with opponents rather than one’s own inner temptations to sin and even more dangerously those opponents can be demonized and seen as God’s enemies as well as our own. The cruelty of the Crusades is not forgotten in the Muslim world.

If Christians are uneasy with the militant language used by some Muslims today, they need to acknowledge that some Christians in the past and still today find a similar message in Christianity. Those of us who disown that Christian tradition and emphasize the message of God’s forgiving love will be glad that in Islam too there is a similar strand. Here again the issue today is "what is true religion?" Those of every faith who believe that the divine will is love and forgiveness and that peace can only come through reconciliation have to stand together against those find in their religion a call to victory and triumph over the infidel. Evil needs to be resisted, but the true victory is the conversion of the wrong-doer.

[Editor’s note: The original manuscript contains no references for the following notes:]

Edward Mortimer, Faith and Power in the Politics of Islam, Faber and Faber 1982, p.37 Ibid.

K.Cragg, Muhammad and the Christian , DLT 1984, p. 32-3, p. 23

Fazlur Rahman, Islam, London 1961, p. 15. Quoted by Cragg, p. 43.

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1402), who was born in Tunis and moved to Granada and then to Cairo, a distinguished historian and philosopher, who has been called "the father of sociology", said that verbal propagation of a faith is incomplete. To be effective it needs the benefit of power. He wrote that "If the power of wrathfulness were no longer to exist in man, he would lose the ability to help the truth become victorious. Then there would no longer be Jihad or glorification (i.e. acknowledged establishment) of the word of God."

Wahiduddin Khan, Islam and Peace, al-Risala, New Delhi, 1999, p.201. Ibid, p. 182.

I explore this question more fully in What can We Learn from Hinduism?

Ibn Khaldun, op. cit. (n. 3), vol. i, p. 187f.

Saudi Arabian translation of The Holy Qur’an, note 205, p. 80.

Quoted by Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1980, p. 105.

The Holy Qur’an, note 1374, p. 541. Quoted by K G Saiyadain, ‘Islam" in World Religions and World Peace, Ed Homer A Jack, , Beacon Press, Boston 1968, pp. 53-4. Ibid p. 50.

Hasan Askari in Newsletter of the Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, report of a consultation in March 1982. Author’s italics.

Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, Islam and World Peace, The Fellowship Press, Philadelphia, PA 19131, 1987, p. 44. p. 54.