This is not the place to review the history of Christian-Muslim relations. This history may now be read in the erudite works of Norman Daniel.Islam and the West. The Making of an Image (Edinburgh: The University Press, 1960); Islam, Europe and Empire (Edinburgh: The University Press, 1966). The reading is sad and agonizing. The conclusion which may be safely drawn from this history is that Christianity’s involvement with the Muslim World was so full of misunderstanding, prejudice, and hostility that it has warped the Western Christian’s will and consciousness. “Would to God Christianity had never met Islam!” will reverberate in the mind of any student patient enough to peruse that history.In considering that history one must take account of the following facts: The first missionaries which Islam sent to Christendom were met with swords drawn and were massacred at Dhat al Talh in 629 A.C. From that moment, however, a section of Christendom which might be called “Semitic Christianity” welcomed the Muslims, gave them protection, listened to and were converted by, or simply tolerated them. These Christians were for the most part Arab or Semitic, though not necessarily Arabic speaking, and a fair number were Copts, whether Abyssinian or Egyptian. The Abyssinian state, Christian and theocratic, previously welcomed and protected the Muslim refugees from Mecca and was regarded as a friend by the Muslims ever since. With the rise of the Islamic state and the entry of Islam onto the stage of history, a much older division began to resume its shape: the division of Christianity itself into Eastern and Western, Semitic and Hellenic.
Though they had abandoned most of the so-called “heretical” doctrines of the ancestors, submitted themselves to the main pronouncements of the synods and councils and acquiesced to the theological, christological and ecclesiological tenets of catholic Christianity, the Semitic Christians cooperated with the Muslims. Despite the fact that the innate appeal of Islam, its examplars in life and action, and the continuous exposure to its civilizing and cultural power had taken their toll of converts from their ranks, these Christians have survived in considerable numbers fourteen centuries of living under the political rule of Islam. Islamically acculturated they certainly are; but not converted. They constitute a living monument of Christian-Muslim co-existence, of mutual tolerance and affection, of cooperation in civilization and culture building. Their inter religious modus vivendi is an achievement in which the whole human race may take rightful pride.
On the other hand, Western Christians, embittered by a military defeat initially brought about by their own intolerance to allow the Islamic can to be heard, nursed their resentment and laid in wait. For three centuries, sporadic fighting erupted between the two camps without decisive advantage to either party. In the eleventh century, the Western Christians thought the time had come to turn the tables of history. The Crusades were launched with disastrous consequences to Christian-Muslim and Muslim-Christian relations. Christian executions, forced conversions or expulsion of the Muslims from Spain followed the political defeat of the Muslim state. For eight centuries, Islam had been the faith not only of immigrant Arabs and Berbers but of native Spaniards who were always the majority. The “Inquisition!’ made no differentiation; and it brought to an end one of the most glorious chapters in the history of inter religious living and cooperation.
Modern times brought a story of continuous aggression and tragic suffering beginning with the pursuit and obliteration of Islam from Eastern Europe where the Ottomans had planted it, to the conquest, fragmentation, occupation and colonization of the whole Muslim World except the impenetrable interior of the Arabian Peninsula. Muslims remember with bitterness that this is the period when Christendom changed the script of Muslim languages in order to cut off their peoples from the Islamic tradition and sever their contact with the heartland of Islam; when it cultivated and nursed Hindu and Buddhist reaction against the progress of Islam in the Indian sub-continent; when it invited the Chinese to dwell and to oppose Islam in Malaysia and Indonesia; when it encouraged the Greeks in Cyprus and the Nile Valley, the Zionists in Palestine and the French in Algeria; when, as the political and economic power within the Muslim World, Christendom discouraged, retarded or impeded by every means possible the awakenings, renaissance and self-enlightenment processes of Muslim societies; when, controlling the education of Muslims, it prescribed for it little beyond the purpose of producing clerks for the colonialist administration.
Equally, modern times witnessed the strongest movement of Christian proselytizing among Muslims. Public education, public health and welfare services were laid wide open to the missionary who was accorded the prestige of a colonial governor, and who entered the field with pockets full of “rice” for the greedy, of intercession with the colonialist governor for the enterprising, and of the necessities of survival for the sick and the needy.
Throughout this long history of some fourteen centuries of Christian-Muslim relations, the researcher ran hardly find one good word written or spoken about Islam by Christians. One must admit that a number of Semitic Christians, of Western Christian Crusade-annalists or of merchants and travellers may and did say a few good words about Islam and its adherents. Samplings of this were given by Thomas Arnold in his The Preaching of Islam (reprinted by Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1961), especially the conclusion. Modern times have seen a number of scholars who conceded that Muhammad’s claims were candid, that Islamic religious experience was genuine, and that underlying the phenomenon of Islam, the true and living God had been and still is active. But these are isolated statements even in the life of those who made them, not to speak of the deluge of vituperation and attack upon Islam, Muhammad and the Muslims which rill practically all Christian writing about the world of Islam. Moreover, whatever little may be found belongs to Christians as individual persons. Christianity as such, i.e., the bodies which speak in its name, be they Catholic, Protestant or Greek Orthodox, has never recognized Islam as a genuine religious experience. The history of academic Western Christian writing on the subject of Islam is a history of service to the world of scholarship, though one of misunderstanding and falsification. As a librarian seeking to collate manuscripts, establish texts and analyze historical claims, the Christian scholar has done marvellous work which earned him the permanent gratitude of scholars everywhere. But as an interpreter of the religion, thought, culture and civilization of Islam, he has been — except in the rarest of cases-nothing less than a misinterpreter and his work, a misrepresentation of its object. (See the scathing analysis of A. L. Tibawi, “English-Speaking Orientalists: A Critique of Their Approach to Islam and Arab Nationalism”, The Muslim World, Vol. LIII, Nos. 3, 4 [July, October], 1963, pp. 185-204, 298-313.) Vatican II conceded that “the Moslems adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all-powerful, Maker of heaven and earth and Speaker to men … they prize the moral life and give worship to God…” though it carefully equated these characteristics not with actual salvation but with the mere inclusion within “the plan of salvation.” (The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, S.J., New York, Guild Press [An Angelus Book], 1966, p. 663.) Little rewarding as this concession becomes when conjoined with the earlier statement that “whosoever…. knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by God through Jesus Christ, would refuse to enter her or to remain in her could not be saved” (ibid., pp. 32-33), anything similar to it has yet to come from the World Council of Churches-indeed from any Protestant church, synod or council of churches. On the other side, Muslim-Christian relations have been determined by the Qur’an.Before the Hijrah to Madinah and the establishment of the first Islamic polity, the revelation of Muhammad, i.e., the Qur’an, defined the religious relation of Islam and Christianity. To the Jews, it asserted, God sent Jesus, a prophet and apostle born of Mary by divine command. He was given the Evangel, taught to relieve the hardships of Jewish legalism and to exemplify the ethic of love, humility and mercy. Those of his followers who remained true to his teaching are blessed. Those who associated him with God, invented trinitarianism. and monkery and falsified the Evangel, are not. The former the Qur’an described in terms reserved for the friends of God: “The Christians are upright; they recite the revelations of God during the night hours and prostrate themselves in worship. They believe in God and in the Day of Judgment. They enjoin the good, forbid evil and compete in the performance of good works. Those are certainly righteous” (Qur’an, 3:113). “And you will find among the People of the Book the closer to you those who said that they were Christians; for many of them are priests and ascetics and are humble” (Qur’an, 5:82). “In their hearts, We planned compassion and mercy’ (Qur’an, 57:27). Parallel to this lavish praise of some Christians, stands the Qur’an’s castigation of the others. “Some Christians said: The Messiah is the Son of God, thereby surpassing in unbelief the unbelievers of old….They have taken their priests and monks for gods, as well as the Messiah, son of Mary, whereas they were commanded never to worship but one God beside Whom there is none else” (Qur’an, 9:30). “0 People of the Book! Do not go to extremes in your religion and never say anything on behalf of God except the truth. Jesus, the Messiah, the son of Mary, is only a prophet of God, a fulfillment of His command addressed to Mary …. So believe in God and in His prophets and do not hold the trinitarian view …. God is the one God. May He be exalted above having a son. To Him belongs everything in heaven and earth” (Qur’an, 4:171). As for what Muslim attitude towards Christians should be, the Qur’an prescribed: “Say: O People of the Book! Let us now come to agreement upon a noble principle common to both of us, namely, that we shall not worship anyone but God, that we shall never associate aught with Him, and that we shall not take one another for lords beside God. And if they turn away, then say: Remember, as for us, we do submit to God …. We believe in that which has been revealed to us and that which has been revealed to you and our God and your God is One. It is to Him that we submit” (Qur’an, 3:64; 29:47). From this we may conclude that Islam does not condemn Christianity but reproaches some devotees of it whom it accused of deviating from the true path of Jesus. Every sect in Christianity has accused the other sects of the same. Yet, Christianity has never recognized Islam as a legitimate and salutary movement. It has never regarded Islam as part of its own tradition except to call Muhammad a cardinal in rebellion against the Pope because of his jealousy for not being elected to the office, and Islam a “de relicta fide catholia” (Islam and the West, pp. 83-84). Doctrinally, therefore, these relations have seen no change. Throughout their history, and despite the political hostilities, the Muslims revered Jesus as a great prophet and his faith as divine religion.
As for the Christians, the Muslims argued with them in the manner of the Qur’an. But when it came to political action, they gave them the benefit of the doubt as to whether they followed the Christianity of Jesus or of the Church. Muhammad and ‘Umar’s wager for a Christian victory over the Zoroastrians, the Meccan Muslim’s choice of, welcome and protection by Christian Abyssinia and Muhammad’s personal waiting upon the Christian Abyssinian delegates to Madinah, the Prophet’s covenant with the Christians of Najran, ‘Umar’s convenant with the Archbishop of Jerusalem and his refusal to hold prayer on the premises of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre lest later Muslims might claim the place, the total cooperation of the Umawis and ‘Abbasis with their Christian subjects, and of the Umawis of Cordova with Christians who were not their subjects-all these are landmarks in a record of cooperation and mutual esteem hardly paralleled in any other history. Some persecution, some conversion under influences of all sorts, some aggression, some doctrinal attacks going beyond the limits defined by the Qur’an, there were, without a doubt. The Muslims in all places and times were not all angels! But such were scattered cases whose value falls to the ground when compared with the overwhelming spread of history which has remained true to this Qur’anic position.
