Jihad in the West
Paul Fregosi
‘Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries’
By Paul Fregosi
Prometheus Books, New York, 1998
Reviewed by Sharon Morad, Leeds
Preface
(pp. 15-18)
There is a link between terrorism known as Jihad today, with wars of Muslim expansion beginning with Muhammad.
All expressions of Islam’s basic distaste for the outside world.
Most Muslims claim crusades are the origin of the conflict between Islam and Christianity, but this is the wrong way around. The first crusade was in 1096 AD. Jihad had already been going on for 500 years by then.
Introduction
The Holy War that Isn’t (pp. 19-27)
Definition of Jihad: not attempt to convert people to Islam by force (except maybe in the 1st century of Islam).
Rather, attempt to “expand and extend Islam until the whole world is under Muslim rule. The jihad is essentially a permanent state of hostility that Islam maintains against the rest of the world, with or without fighting for more sovereignty over more territory” (20). It is a duty, an obligation for all Muslims.
[p.22] A contrast between Christ (He who lives by the sword will die by the sword), with Muhammad (the sword is the key to heaven and hell).
Christians who kill are ignoring the words of Christ. Muslims who kill are obeying Muhammad.[p.23] Crusades – 1096 AD until 1270 AD. An attempt to retake (formerly Christian) Palestine.
Jihad = 1,300 years. An attempt to occupy Europe, Asia and Africa, and then Islamicize them.[p. 25] Why do we not hear of the Muslim capture of Jerusalem from the Christians in 638 AD, or of the capture of Spain about 70 years later, or of the subsequent 800 year occupation?
It was the success of Jihad against Europe that triggered Pope Urban II to call for the first Crusade in 1095 AD.
Colonialism – not exclusively western. Muslim lands colonized much of Europe in the 7th – 19th centuries, and the two colonized each other in the 19th century.
In fact Europe colonized Muslim lands for only 130 years (1830s – 1960s)!![p. 26] Muslims have freedom of worship in Christian lands, not vice versa (penalty of apostasy = death).
Part One: The Days of the Prophet
Chapt. 1: The Beginning: Mecca 570-622 (pp. 31-33)
A summary of the traditional accounts of Muhammad’s life, describing Islam as being “essentially a patriotic movement aimed at asserting Arabian independence and prestige” (p.32)
Chapt. 2: Gabriel Cometh: Medina (pp. 34-39)
A traditional account of the early followers and opposition. Unfaltering description of the Qur’anic revelation.
A description of the clash between Muhammad and Abu Sufyan (Umayyad originator). Early days, Muslims at risk, and Hijra to Medina.
Perhaps a pious exaggeration of dangers in Mecca. Those that remained were undisturbed.
Chapt. 3: The First Battles (pp. 40-45)
A description of the early days in Medina.
Quarrels between Ansars and Muhajirun.
Problems with the Jewish tribes.
Poets writing verses mocking Muhammad.
Muhammad establishing his authority – intrigue, manoeuvering , assassinations, wars, monetary gains thru caravan raids.BattlesNakhla = successBadr = success (angels helped)Abu Jahl (enemy from Mecca) executed, head given to Muhammad.Poets
Female: Asthma bint Marwan, killed for making disrespectful verse.
Male: Abu Afak and Kab, both killed.
Terror is effective, as many people became loyal as a result.Jews: one tribe forced to leave (without possessions)
Chapt. 4: A man of Many Parts (pp. 46-51)
Many examples of Muhammad’s cruelty.
Torturing a Jew until he revealed a gold store.
Killing and robbing tribesmen to whom he had given hospitality (killing by cutting off hands and feet so they bled to death).
Had a number of pious followers willing to act as assassins. This is different from the Muhammad of the Muslim psyche. In the Muslim psyche he is kind, helps the poor, saves baby girls, is nice to 11 wives.
Combination of religion and politics. The Qur’an occasionally addresses Muhammad’s enemies with vengeance, and helps Muhammad out with exemptions from laws or answers , or knotty problems.
Chapt. 5: When the Killing Had to Stop (pp. 52-55)
Battle at Mt. Uhud was the first major defeat for Muhammad, but Abu Sufyan does not follow up his advantage. Two years later, the Meccans attack Medina, but due to a big trench which had been dug, their attack failed.
Kihouna – Jewish chief at Khaybar; had a fortune in gold, was tortured by Muhammad in order to reveal the whereabouts of his gold (46). When he was dead, Muhammad married his 17 year old widow, Safiya, that same day (54).
Killing by subordinates was routine.
An assassination attempt of Abu Sufyan was foiled, but not completely useless, as four others were taken instead.
Zaid (Muhammad’s adopted son) avenged a raid on a Medinan caravan, killed a middle-aged woman named Um Kirfa, along with her daughter, and two sons, by tying her legs to camels and having them pull her to pieces. Muhammad congratulated him on his return saying it was a job well done.
When Muhammad returned to Mecca there was not much bloodshed, only a poet, a minor singer and one or two others.
Chapt. 6: A Man of His Time (pp. 56-59)
Basically a summary of preceding chapters with a special comment that Muhammad’s actions weren’t so much worse than other men of his time, but he was a hypocrite for preaching love and mercy at the same time; and in any case his life in history is nothing like his mage in Islam today.
Now a comment on the slaughter of the Jewish Beni Quraiza tribe (660-800 men slain, wives and children sold as slave). Soldiers receive large amounts of booty (Muhammad gets 1/5). The Qur’an (S. 33:25) praises God for the killings because with them Muhammad becomes feared.
Chapt. 7: Of Banes and Stones (pp. 60-64)
A summary of the traditional account of the compilation of the Qur’an; some early controversy about it and the Mut’azilites. Throughout history other Muslims have challenged the idea of an eternal, uncreated Qur’an. A bit about the Hadith and questions on its reliability.
Chapt. 8: A Paradise for Warriors (pp. 65-68)
Why did outnumbered, under-equipped Arabs make such huge territorial victories so quickly?
1) dissensions between the Christians
2) warfare between the Byzantines and the Persians exhausted both.
3) plunder – either in this life or the next, the soldier of Islam was promised riches and women.
There is a detailed and graphic description of Muslim paradise, complete with houris, rivers of wine and the enjoyment of watching those in torment.
Part Two: Beyond Arabia
Chapt. 9: Onward Muslim Soldiers: Byzantium and Persia 632-640 AD (pp. 71-75)
After the death of Muhammad came the caliphate of Abu Bakr (2 yrs.), Umar (for ten years, then assassinated), followed by Uthman.
Uthman was the descendant of Abu Sufyan, the implacable enemy of Muhammad.
630 AD was the first battle outside of Arabia – against the Byzantines in Jordan. Muhammad ordered two campaigns just before his death:
Usama – led troops to the north
Khalid – captured Baghdad (he was a great general later on of the Umayyads)
Fall of Jerusalem, Damascus (635) and Antioch (636)
Muawiyya was active in the campaign against Syria. He was declared the governor of Syria by Umar in 640 AD.
By 641 AD much of Egypt and Persia had fallen
Islam (poor)
Sword (middle class)
Tribute (rich)
Chapt. 10: The Island Campaign: Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete 649-668 AD (pp. 76-82)
A summary of the civil war between Muawiyya and Ali, establishment of the Umayyad caliphate.
Ali – 4th caliph, had capital in Basra. Muawiyya accuses him of complicity in Uthman’s murder.
657 – battle at Siffin. Ali’s troops stop fighting when Muawiyya’s appeal to the Qur’an for a verdict. The Kharajites leave Ali and one of them murders him.
Muawiyya is the caliph between 661-680, with his capital in Damascus. The Umayyads rule until 749 – then the Abbasids take over and rule until 1258 AD.
Abbasid rule – was anti-Umayyad, with much destruction of any references to them. Thus we know very little about the Umayyads.
We do know that Muawiyya was a good leader, was an imperialist, had wanted to take ships to attack the Mediterranean islands, but Umar refused (Umar like many Arabs, was afraid of the sea). But Uthman gave him permission to attack Cyprus in 649, first from Saida (Lebanon) and then from Alexandria. The first major Arab naval enterprise brought great booty. Later the Arabs left when the island promised to pay tribute.
Crete was raided in 653 AD. Rhodes was raided in 653. The “Saracens” remanined there 5 years, stripped the island bare, melted down the giant bronze colossus (one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world). Sicily was raided in 668 AD (at which time Muawiyya was now the caliph and not simply a general)
Advancement to Constantinople and a 6 year siege.
Chapt. 11: Checkmate on the Bosphorus: Constantinople 668-673 (pp. 83-86)
The dream of conquering Constantinople, greatest city of the east. In 668 there was an amphibious assault. An expedition sails from Syria, the Arab headquarters established on the island of Cyticus (a few miles south in the straits). Siege for 7 years.
The Byzantines had a secret weapon, a flaming mixture of ‘naphtha’, sulphur and pitch poured down on the attackers.
Eventually, Muawiyya realized he couldn’t take the city. The problem was that many of his ships were burnt, so he loaded as many soldiers as possible on the remaining ships. 30,000 soldiers were left to march back through Anatolia. The infantry was destroyed by the Byzantines during this retreat until there was a peace settlement, which forced Muawiyya to pay a tribute to Constantinople.
Part Three: The Iberian Venture
Chapt. 12: The Toledo Whore: Spain 710
Legend: the King Rodrigo of Spain seduces the daughter of count Julian of Morocco. In retaliation, Julian sides with the Emir Musa, a Muslim ruler of North Africa, based in Tunisia. Musa’s dream was to invade through Spain and France and meet Muslims invading from the east, so that Islam would surround the Mediterranean.
Chapt. 13: The Mountain of Tarik: Spain 711 (pp. 93-96)
The Caliph al-Walid authorizes the invasion of Spain, so the Musa and his commander, Tarik, with the count Julian as advisor, cross from Tangier to Gibralter (then called Jabil Tarik).
Spain – peasants oppressed by aristocracy. Internal dissension especially against Jews. They were now ruled by the Visigoths, who were complacent and corrupt.
The first battle, on the banks of the Guadelete river was a decisive victory for the Muslims. King Rodrigo was killed and his head sent back to Damascus.
The Muslims called Iberia al-Andalus and immediately began the campaign to take it all and head on for France.
Chapt. 14: A Conqueror’s Fate: Spain 711-715 (pp. 97-100)
Musa had commanded Tarik to wait for reinforcements, but the general ignored him, dividing the army into 2 parties, one heading for Cordova and the other for Toledo. The inhabitants fled and the cities and booty were taken without a fight.
Musa arrived with reinforcements in 712 en route to Toledo. He captured several other cities; Carmona, Medina, Sidonia, and Seville. Often the Jews helped the Muslims as liberators.
By 715 nearly all of Spain was under Muslim occupation. Leaving his son in charge, Musa returned to Damascus to report, but the new Caliph, Suleiman, feared his victories and had him banished to live as a beggar in a town in Arabia.
Part Four: Islam Unfolds
Chapt. 15: The Forgotten Isaurian: Constantinople 717-718 (pp. 103-106)
Leo the Isaurian, Anatolian and Byzantine emperor repelled the second Muslim attack on Constantinople in 717AD, initiated by Suleiman, consisting of 120,000 Arabs and Persians by land and 100,000 by sea.
Leo filled the granaries and the citizens watched with full bellies as the besiegers starved throughout the winter. The Arab supply ships were destroyed by Greek fire. A final doom for the Muslims came about when the Bulgarians joined the Greeks against them. The retreat was ordered, again, 30,000 by land, the rest by sea.
Chapt. 16: The Dhimmis: Dar-al-Islam from the Seventh Century Onwards (pp. 107-109)
Dhimmis could not carry weapons, ride horses, wear shoes, ring church bells, wear anything green, or fight back against a Muslim assault.
Proclaiming Jesus’ divinity and conversion from Islam were capital offenses.
Muslim rulers were not anxious for converts because Dhimmis were more valuable economically, as they paid tribute and were the slave labour.
Chapt. 17: Forays into France: The Langvredoc 718-732 (pp. 110-115)
The Spaniards began the Reconquista in 718 (ended in 1492). They started out as resistance movements.
Pelayo ruled a tiny territory and ran guerrilla raids against the Muslims.
Muslims began moving north.
Al-Semak led the first invasion across the Pyrenees in 721, establishing a base at Norbonne.
He was succeeded by Abderaman, who moved up the Rhone as far as Lyon and Dijon; specially targeting churches and monasteries. Then he moved on to Bordeaux. Between Poitiers and Tours, there was a clash between Abduraman and Charles Martel.
Chapt. 18: The Hammer of the Franks: Tours 732-759 (pp. 116-121)
Summary of the battle of Poitiers (or Tours) where Charles Martel turned back Abderaman’s advance. There was lots of fighting in the south of France (to the west in Langredoc under ibd-al-Malik, up the Rhone river again, east to Piedmont in Italy). The Muslims helped by Christian allies, began quarrelling with each other.
737 – Charles Martel retakes Avignon and continues to recapture Muslim strongholds until in 739 he reaches Marscilles.
741 – Charles Martel dies and is succeeded by Pepin the Short. Te Muslims are effectively driven out of France by this time.
Chapt. 19: The Umayyad Takeover: Spain 756-852 (pp. 122-129)
749 – the end of the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus. The new Abbasid rulers try to kill off all the remaining Umayyads. Abu al-Abbas manages to murder them all, but one, Abd al-Rahman, who escaped to Spain. Al-Abbas sent an army after him, but al-Rahman defeated it and established hi control over al-Andalus.
Charlemagne invaded from the north, but had to return to France to fight the Germans. So Abd al-Rahman was able to consolidate his power over his Muslim subjects.
(788-796) – Hisham I – succeeded Abd al-Rahman. Muslims invaded France, but turned back by the Christians there.
(796-822) – al-Itakam succeeded Hisham I. There was violent and quarrelling dissension even among the Muslim subjects. Notorious for massacres. In 801 Louis I (son of Charlemagne) invaded. Turned back, and also had troubles with the Basques.
(822-852) – Abd al-Rahman II – relatively peaceful, focussed on his 97 children. Exception – execution of nearly 1 dozen Christians of Cordova, who deliberately sought martyrdom by insulting the prophet.
Chapt. 20: The Long Resistance: Sicily 827-902 (pp. 130-134)
Conquest of Sicily began in 827 AD, though it had been raided several times earlier. The conquest took place when Admiral Euphemius of the Byzantine navy rebelled against discipining action for marrying a nun. He joined up with the emir of Tunisia. The campaign was slow and bloody, complete with many massacres. From Sicily they took other islands (Corsica, Malta, Sardinia, Pantellerva), and then marched on to Italy, reaching Rome and pillaging the churches of St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s in 846 AD.
In Sicily the Arab occupation lasted 264 years. In 1091 AD the Normans defeated the Saracens.
Chapt. 21: The French Riviera Campaign: St. Tropez 898-973 (pp. 135-139)
Muslim sailors landed at St. Tropez and began a disjointed pattern of conquest. All throughout the Riviera, in the Alps, cutting off France from Italy. Many settled and intermarried. Slowly the tide began to turn and in places Muslims were being pushed out. But a weak and divided Christendom was singularly unfit for the task.
Part Five: For Spain, My Humble Duty
Chapt. 22: The Corpses of Simancas: Spain 912-961 (pp. 143-148)
Incoherent, disorganised battles between Muslims and Christians and between different groups on each side characterised the early 10th century. Abd Al-Rahman III (912-961) decides to establish order. (He was following on the heals of Abdalla (882-912), a notoriously cruel caliph. After the surrender of the Castle of Polei he ordered the decapitation of all Christians unless they converted – only one took that offer and survived.) Abd al-Rahman III re-established the authority of Cordova, putting down insurgent Muslim cities and waging war against Christian kingdoms of the north. But the Reconquista continued to grind on. The Christians won a major victory at Simancas while Abd al-Rahman was preoccupied with Muslim rebels in the south. But the Christians did not follow up on their victory, preferring instead to settle for peace with the Muslims and internal dissension at home.
Chapt. 23: Aurora’s Lover: Santiago De Compostela 967-1002 (pp. 149-152)
Ibn Abi Amir (a.k.a. “Almanzor”) seduced the wife of Caliph Hakim II and became vizier of al-Andalus. He became especially powerful when his lover’s 5-year-old son, al-Hisham II became caliph. In 981 Almanzor lead the Muslim conquest of Zamora and executed over 4000 Christians. As a sign of his religious zeal he copied the whole Qur’an by hand and carried it around with him on campaigns. He also helped to build a mosque with his own hands. In the face of internecine warfare on the Christian side, Almanzor took Rueda, Barcelona, a group of villages in Castile and Leon, the shrine of Santiago De Compostela (reputed burial site of St. James), and Caneles. Each campaign was followed by a massacre of prisoners and civilians, the burning of the town and desecration of churches and monasteries. The great bells of Santiago de Compostela were carried off to Cordova on the backs of Christian slaves to be hung in the new mosque built by Almanzor. In 1002 Almanzor died of illness on the return from capturing Caneles.
Chapt. 24: Exeunt the Umayyads: Spain 1085 (pp. 153-155)
Muslim empire : The Abbasid empire was divided with the Buhaywids in Iraq and Persia, Damanids in China, Fatimids in Syria, Egypt, eastern North Africa, Sicily and the Hijaz. The Spanish Caliphate was the de facto ruler of western North Africa until disunity among Muslims in Spain lead to the fall of the Umayyads in 1031 followed by “taifas,” a collection of ~30 little Muslim statelets each ruled by their own king. In contrast, the Christians were making attempts to unify. But not much was done in the way of jihad or reconquista, though the latter gained momentum in the closing decades of the 11th century, culminating with the reconquest of Toledo in 1085.
Chapt. 25: The Desert Warrior: Zalaca 1085-1086 (pp. 156-160)
1085- reconquest of Toledo stimulates the “taifa” of Seville to ask for help from the Almoravid leader, Yusuf ibn Tashufin. The Almoravids were a puritanical movement, following the Maliki school of jurisprudence. Yusuf, a military genius, came eager to fight against Christians and with the intention of remaining in Spain. The kings of the Muslim taifas chose Islam over Spain, they preferred the suzerainty of Africa rather than the Christian kingdom of Castile. Near Badajoz, at the Battle of Zalaca (a.k.a. Sagrajas), Yusuf defeated the Castilian army of Alfonso VI. >24,000 Christians were slaughtered and their heads shipped to all the main towns of al-Andalus and North Africa. Yusuf then returned to North Africa to tidy up affairs in his kingdom there.
Chapt. 26: Mio Cid: Valencia 1080-1108 (pp. 161-167)
El-Cid, born Rodrigo Diaz de Biuar, one of the heroes of the Reconquista, a tactical genius. He was estranged from Alfonso VI while the king appeared to be making progress against the Muslim taifas, but after Zalaca el-Cid and his knights joined the Christian knights of Leon and Castile in their assault on Valencia. After a 20 month siege Valencia was taken and its ruler burned alive. After that Yusuf and the Almoravids returned from Marrakech to retake Valencia. Their attempt to starve the city into submission failed when el-Cid led his troops in an attack that scattered the invaders. It was not until el-Cid’s death in 1099 that Valencia was retaken for Islam.
Part Six: Deflection in the South
Chapt. 27: Liberation in Lusitania: Portugal 1079-1147 (pp. 171-174)
The French knight, Henry of Burgundy, came to crusade against Islam on behalf of Alfonso VI of Castile and Leon. (Many French knights were at this time answering the appeal of the pontiff in Rome to save Spain from the Saracens). Henry married the daughter of Alfonso VI and was given the fiefdom of Portugal. His son, Alfonso Henrique, freed Portugal from the Muslims with the assistance of a fleet of 164 vessels carrying hundreds of crusaders bound for the Holy Land who stopped in Portugal and decided to stay. After the Christians reconquered Lisbon in 1147 they massacred the Muslim inhabitants and turned their attention against their Castilian overlords. By 1171 nearly all the Muslims had been expelled from Portugal and the Portuguese had established independence from Castile. In 1185 Alfonso Henrique died, king of an independent country.
Chapt. 28: Whence the Greeks and Normans: Sicily 1025-1091 (pp. 175-181)
961-Byzantines had retaken Crete from the Muslims
1035-Byzantine general, Giorgios Maniakes, assisted by the Viking Harold Hadrada, invaded Sicily.
1038-Byzantine victory at Rametta, however, no permanent landing was made because of fighting with the Normans in Italy and intrigues in the Byzantine court. The Normans had been brought to Italy as mercenaries in the wars between little Italian statelets. In 1061 a contingent of >2000 Normans landed on Sicily, ready to fight both with Muslims and Greeks. Initially a war between roving bands, in 1084 it took on more religious overtones for the Christians when the Muslims of southern Italy burned down the churches of Reggio and enslaved the monks of the Rocco d-Asino monastery.
1091-Noto, the last Muslim stronghold in Sicily, surrendered.
After the conquest of Sicily was complete mot of the Muslim population co-operated with their conquerors, some even joining the Norman army. A few rebellions were put down among those who would not co-operate, but a Muslim population remained until 1300 when the remnant was deported or forcibly converted to Christianity.
Chapt. 29: The African Take-over: Spain 1104-1212 (pp 182-191)
Yusef and the Almoravids introduced the North African rule of Spain. Spain became a secondary battlefield when war broke out between 2 rival Berber sects, the Almoravids and the Almorhads. This internecine “jihad” (so-called by the mullahs on each side) were often as fierce as those against the Christians. This infighting finally assured Spanish victory in Spain.
During the 12th century many of the Orders of Christian warriors were founded (e.g. Knights of Calatrava, Knights of Santiago, Knights of our Lady of Montjoie) They began to play a crucial role in the Liberation of Spain from the Moors in the 13th century.
By 1114 the North Africans had taken nearly all the Muslim taifas and were pushing north. This conflict roused Christendom as if it were a crusade, and many knights, veterans of the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1097, poured in to defend Spain. After some back and forth movement (complicated by power struggles between the Christian kingdoms) the tide began to move against the Moors.
The collapse of the Almoravids was not caused by the Christians, but by the Almorhads, who invaded Spain in 1146 and by 1150 were rulers of al-Andalus. (The Almoravids were desert nomads, ancestors of today’s Tuareg, and the Almorhads were peasant farmers and pastoralists from the Atlas mountains. The had little in common but love of Islam, hatred of each other, and the practices of slaver and violence.) Once firmly in power the Almorhads continued the Jihad in Spain.
1195 – Battle of Alarcos – fought between Alfonso VIII of Castile and the Almorhad el-Mansur. Expected Christian victory turned into a terrible defeat, which shook the rest of Western Europe. The pope (Celestine III) then intervened on behalf of Christian unity. He excommunicated the Leonese king who had formed an alliance with the Muslims, demanded the co-operation of rival kings against the Moors, and sent some crusaders to Spain instead of to the Holy Land.
Chapt. 30: The Year of Decision: Las Navos de Tolosa 1212 (pp. 192-196)
King Alfonso VIII of Castile called together the largest Christian army ever assembled in Spain, >100,000 men. This army met the Almohads at Las Navos de Tolosa. After fierce fighting the Moors were routed. After the Christian victory 1 million Moors migrated back to Africa. And the Christian campaign pressed forward.
Chapt. 31:The Muslim Debacle: Spain 1212-1250 (pp. 197-200)
La Reconquista took nearly 800 years to finally rid Spain of the colonial invaders.
Stage I: 710-1080 – retake 1st 1/3 of Iberia
Stage II: 1080-1210 – retake 2nd 1/3 of Iberia, including Portugal
Stage III: 1210-1250 – retake last 1/3 (except Grenada)
Most important battles: Simancas, Zalaca, Alarcos, Las Navos de Tolosa
Key Christian Leaders: Fernando III of Castile, Jaime I of Aragon. Most of the Christian soldiers were knights of military orders. The Muslims helped to destroy themselves. Some joined the Christians as mercenaries, the rest fought among themselves for power (in the 1220’s there were 3 rival caliphs in Spain.) The Spanish Muslims could expect no help from North Africa, which was embroiled in its own civil war. Muslim leaders rose and were swiftly decapitated by their fellows as the Christians moved inexorably south.
Chapt. 32: Five Cities to Go: Andalusia 1230-1248 (pp. 201-205)
The Almohads were expelled from Spain in 1230, after their departure five cities still remained in Muslim hands:
Cordova – reconquered by Fernando III of Castile. The bells of the mosque of Cordova, which had been made for Santiago de Compostela and were carried by Christian slaves to Cordova upon the order of Almanzor, 300 years earlier, were now carried back to Compostela by Muslim slaves upon the order of Fernando III. La Reconquista had come a full circle.
Seville – reconquered by Fernando III of Castile after the Muslim population assassinated their leader for suggesting they surrender. Instead the siege last 2 years and 2 months before the inhabitants finally surrendered and emigrated to Morocco in 1248.
Grenada – became a vassal state of Castile
Jaen – surrendered to Fernando III of Castile by its Muslim governor in exchange for permission to rule Grenada as a vassal of Castile.
Valencia – reconquered by Jaime I of Aragon. The Muslim king quickly capitulated because he wanted to convert to Christianity.
Part Seven: Onslaught from the East
Chapt. 33: The Ottoman Advent: Turkey Mid-1200’s (pp. 209-211)
1250- Turkey – Othman, son of Ertognil, is born. His tribe begins moving into Anatolia fighting the Byzantines on the west and the Mongols on the east. The Mongols had been sweeping across central Asia. In 1258, Hulagu (grandson of Ghengis Khan) took Baghdad. After the adoption of Islam the Turkish advance on Europe became a holy war. In a short time they became the most feared threat to Eastern Europe, twice nearly reaching Vienna.
Chapt. 34: The Mongolian Horde: Russia 1340-1480 (pp. 212-205)
Mongols – during their overrunning of central Asia they had no formal religion, practising a vague sort of shamanism. After conquering Muslim lands they adopted Islam (mid-13th cen,) and then moved north into Russia (at that time ruled by Lithuania in the east and Nougorad in the north.) 1223, Mongol victory by the river Kalka. 1237 – Mongols crossed the Volga and conquered Russian principalities one after another. The society ruled by the Mongols was a mixture of Mongols, Turks, Russians, Armenians and Greeks.
Late 14th century a Russian vassal state ruled from Moscow rebelled against the Mongols. After initial success they were trounced by and Moscow sacked. But the Mongols did not stay so far north for long. They remained in the south where they gradually disintegrated into different states. Those in the Crimea became known as the Tartars.
15th century – Russia was becoming a unified state. 1480 – Russia refused to pay tribute to the Mongols. The two armies faced off and disperse without a battle, effectively a victory for Russia.
1491 – Final battle of Mongols in Europe at Zasalvi in Poldavia, where a Polish army defeated a mixed Tartar-Turkish force.
Chapt.35: Janissaries Ahoy: Thrace 1301-1353 (pp 216-218)
Othman I – gave his name to the Ottoman Empire and little else. He didn’t fight much, just moved his people into sparsely populated areas of Asia Minor.
Orkhan I – son of Othman. Sultan in 1326 and made Bursa his capital.
Byzantine Empire – throne contested by John Cantacuzene and John V (a child, his widowed mother was protecting his claim to his father’s throne). John Cantracuzene invited the Ottomans into Europe to support his claim.
1345 – 1st Ottoman excursion across the Dardanelles
1349 – Byzantines ask for Ottoman help against Bulgaria
1353 – Turks establish their first permanent European settlement in Gallipoli
Orkhan I created the Janissary force – originally drawn from Christian slaves removed from their families as children. They were raised to be an elite fighting corp, loyal to the sultan alone. For the next 300 years, they were the best fighting force in Europe. (Janissaries were generally converted to Islam, sometimes by force, sometimes willingly.)
Chapt. 36: The Gay Revolt: Thrace 1376-1388 (pp. 291-223)
Under Orkhan I the Ottomans conquered Thrace. Europe was in its usual disarray. The French and English were beginning their 100 years war. Genoa and Venice were in a 30 years war. Spain endured internecine warfare between Christian kingdoms. In Germany the Black Death raged. Lithuania and Hungary were fighting over the Ukraine. Russia was fighting the Mongols and the Balkans were resisting Hungarian imperialism.
Murad I (Othman’s son) – began the first serious Ottoman invasion of Europe and tripled the size of the Empire. Pope Urban V, afraid of a renewed Muslim invasion from North Africa and the rising Ottoman threat in the Balkans, called upon Catholic Hungary and Orthodox Serbia to stop the Turks.
1371 –1st important Eastern European response to Jihad. Christians were stopped by Muslims at Cenomen. 1st conflict between Janissaries and their Christian relations, also 1st between Turks and the Serbs. Murad cleverly intervened in the Byzantine civil war between the rival “Johns”, supporting now one, now the other. The sons of John V and Murad began having an affair and also planned to overthrow their fathers. The coup was halted, and Murad was so enthusiastic that he launched a new invasion of Europe. Sofia fell in 1385 and Salonika in 1387.
Chapt. 37: The Field of Blackbirds: Kosovo 1389 (pp 224-230)
King of Serbia (Lazar I), threatened by advancing Ottomans, gathered together a force of Serbians, Wallachians, Bosnians and Albanians to oppose the invaders. The Christian force outnumbered the Muslims, but a well-timed addition of Janissaries to the fight turned the tide and the Ottomans won. Murad was wounded and ordered the execution of King Lazar before himself dying. The new sultan, Bajazet, immediately ordered his brother Yakub to be strangled. Yakub had led the counterattack that turned the battle against the Christians and might have proved a little too popular for the new sultan’s comfort. (The execution of surviving siblings proved to be a common political manoeuvre in the Ottoman court)
Chapt. 38: The Wild Knights of France: Nicopolis 1396 (pp. 231-239)
King Sigismund of Hungary sent envoys to France to plead for protection against the invaders. The 100 years war had just taken a breather and French knights were happy to head off to Hungary with the blessing of the pope. The purpose of the expedition of these ~10,000 knights was to retake Nicopolis on the Bulgarian side of the Danube. The brought no siege equipment, trusting on their courage to route the Turks. Instead, Nicopolis held, waiting for reinforcements, which Bajazet duly brought. Against the advice of Sigismund, the French knights rushed to meet the enemy – straight into a trap, rows and rows of sharpened stakes planed in the ground so the French were forced to dismount or disembowel their horses. Effectively helpless on the ground, the French were massacred, Bulgaria became an Ottoman vassal, and Hungary remained in danger.
One of the surviving French knights returned to France and brought a small force to assist in the siege of Constantinople. For a time the French forced the Turks to lift the siege by land and sea, but the eventual fall of Constantinople was really delayed by the invasion of the Mongol Timurlane who was leading his troops across Asia from Samarkand. He defeated Bajazet and established himself as sultan.
Chapt. 39: The Hungarian Hero: Varna 1444 (pp 240-247)
The Ottoman empire quickly degenerated into a 4-sided civil war. The Serbs foolishly sided with a prince that lost and were massacred in their thousands for their folly. Eventually only one claimant survived, Mahomet I, an exceptionally humane and just ruler. He signed peace treaties with Venice and Constantinople. His son, Murad II, resumed the invasion of Europe. In the Balkans he had been facing two resistance movement, one lead by Janas Hunyadi of Hungary and one led by John Castriot of Albania, and Murad was eager to make up his lack of prestige.
1443- The Hungarians, Poles, Serbs, Wallachians, and Germans untied under the Hungarian king Ladislaus and went out to face the advancing Turkish army. The vastly outnumbered Christians defeated the Turks, but, inexplicably, within sight of the Turkish capital King Ladislaus pulled back and signed a treaty with Murad. A year later the Hungarians changed their mind and started the war again, this time marching as far as Varna (where they were supposed to receive aid from Venetian ships which never arrived.) This time the Christians were soundly defeated by a renewed Muslim force.
Chapt. 40: The Last Agony: Constantinople 1453 (pp 245-259)
In 1453 Constantinople fell, unaided by any European ally except a few hundred troops from Genoa. Beset by internal quarrels, the European states did not notice until it was too late. The next thing they knew, Turkey was the most powerful state in Europe. Suleiman the Magnificent was far more powerful than his contemporaries Elizabeth of England, Charles V of Austria or Francois I of France.
(Pg. 249) “They feared the Turks. The Turks did not fear them. The Turkish threat was for centuries the main concern of all the European nations, and every European man and woman lived in terror of the Turks. They feared the Muslim Turks much more than they ever feared the Nazi Germans or the Communist Russians, and for much, much longer. The Nazi peril lasted 10 years. Soviet imperialism lasted 70 years. The Turkish threat lasted 500 years.”
Since its founding in 658 Constantinople had been besieged 29 times. Frequently by the Muslims (during the initial Arab conquests and then a frequent Ottoman activity), but occasionally by Catholic Christians who sacked the Orthodox city en route to the Holy Land on the crusades. Mahomet II determined to take Constantinople and the few hundred square mile remaining of the once glorious Roman empire. 1st he besieged the city, and waited. He made a treaty with the Catholic Hungarian Janas Hunyadi to ensure peace on his northern front. Mahomet was not a pious man.(rather he was fond of blaspheming the prophet, murder, and homosexual activity) and this war barely pretended to be a Jihad, rather it was straightforward imperialism. The Turks attacked the city relentlessly from 6 April to 29 October. Despite determined resistance and the addition of the Genoese troops, the city walls fell. The night of 28 October the remaining citizens crowded into St. Sophia’s Cathedral for a final service. The next day the city was overwhelmed, the soldiers slaughtered, the civilians enslaved, and the women raped – beginning with the convent. St. Sophia was declared as mosque, as it has remained to this day. But the Ottomans had to make long term arrangements for the surviving Christians throughout the empire, most of whom refused to convert, so they commanded the remaining Orthodox priests to appoint a new patriarch, who could shepherd his little flock at the will of the Sultan.
Chapt. 41: The Road to Rome: Belgrade 1456 (pp 260-264)After the fall of Constantinople, Mahomet II set his sights on Rome and turned his army north toward the Balkans. In the next few years he conquered 12 kingdoms and 200 cities. 1st, Peloponnese, the remaining part of Greece, then Bosnia. At its surrender the king and heir were promised their lives, but shortly they were executed as the Grand Mufti argued that agreements with unbelievers were invalid. The population generally converted to Islam so as to avoid the same fate, a crime for which the Serbs, who remained Orthodox, have never forgiven them. Serbia fell next, but for a time Albania held out under the leadership of John Castriot (a.k.a. Skanderbeg) until 1468. Hungary, still with Janos Hunyadi at the head of the army, stood firm and called for a crusade to protect Belgrade. Hunyadi’s victory there proved a major setback to the Ottomans.
After 15 years of fighting in the Balkans Mahomet II decided to try a sea assault against Italy. But plans went awry when he announced his plans to keep the plunder for himself and his Janissaries refused to attack. Mahomet died before leaving Asia Minor. The pope called for a crusade to protect southern Italy.
Part Eight: By Land and by Sea
Chapt. 42: The Sigh of the Moor: Granada 1492 (pp 267-274)
Mahomet II’s death triggered a power struggle between his two sons, Bayazid and Djem. Bayazid won, exiled his brother and established the Ottoman navy as a significant power in the Mediterranean. Muslim-Christian fighting had very much died down in Spain, as only Grenada and a few sea ports remained in Muslim hands. But Morocco sent a stead supply of soldiers, so the Spaniards decided to retake the last of these towns, but the effort was half heart (distracted by things such as the 100 years war between France and England) and took over a century.
1461 – Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile marry and together unify Spain
1480 – Beginning of the serious campaign against Grenada. The final conquest was completed in 1492.
Chapt. 43: The Ottoman Empire: Selim the Grim 1512-1520 (pp. 275-277)
After the fall of Grenada, Hungary plunged into civil war, the aristocracy brutally oppressed the peasantry which rebelled and then were crushed. But the Ottomans were busy elsewhere for the time being and missed their golden opportunity to take Hungary. Selim I (1512-1520) built up the navy and nearly doubled the size of the empire through conquests in Asia and Africa. He took for himself the title “caliph” which vastly increased his religious prestige. A devout Sunni, he hated the Shi’a nearly as much as Christians. A strong sadistic streak left a record of hundreds of thousands of executions and goulish torture.
Chapt. 44: The Red Danube: Manacs 1526 (pp. 278-284)
Suleiman the Magnificent succeeded his father Selim in 1520. He did fight 3 wars against Persia, his main Muslim enemy, but the general focus of his imperial policy was west, toward Europe. His navy moved to retake the island of Rhodes, which was defended by the Knightly order of St. John of Jerusalem. It fell in 1522 and Suleiman permitted the surviving knights to leave Rhodes unharmed, a gesture he bitterly repented when they moved to Malta and repulsed his attacks 43 years later.
Previous Jihad campaigns destroyed Serbia, Bulgaria, Wallachia and Bosnia, Albania and Greece. Only remaining was Hungary, which Suleiman was determined to destroy. Wracked by internal dissent and ruled by a foolish playboy, (Louis II), Belgrade fell in 1521. Louis II rushed to meet the enemy rather than waiting for reinforcements. The armies met at Mohacs, and the outnumbered Hungarians were destroyed by Turkish guns. During the next two centuries the Ottomans depopulated Hungary (from 4 to 2 /2 million), exporting ~3 million Hungarians as slaves and hunting others like partridges.
Chapt. 45: The Untaken Capital: Vienna 1529 (pp. 285-287)
In 1529 Suleiman moved on Vienna only to find that to his disgust both Charles V and his brother Ferdinand were elsewhere. After 3 weeks of vile weather which prevented the use of Turkish guns Suleiman decided the effort and time needed to take the city wasn’t worth the satisfaction of defeating the unimportant general in charge, so he returned to Istanbul.
Chapt. 46: Sailors, Slaver and Raiders: The Mediterranean 1504-1546 (pp. 288-294)
The Muslim fishermen of Grenada established a thriving piracy business from bases in North Africa. The chief commodity was Christian slaves from Spain and Italy. The pirates considered their actions to be Jihad, citing sura ix: 5-6 “kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every type of ambush.) Slavery was considered to have Qur’anic (and therefore divine) sanction (as compared to Christianity, where, though it has taken place, has nearly always been considered reprehensible.) The pirate Barbarossa, based in Algiers, brought the territory he controlled into the Ottoman Empire and then became head of Suleiman’s navy. 1535 – Charles V sacked Tunis committing atrocities worthy of the Turks. Generally the Europeans were too preoccupied with fighting each other to spend too much effort on the Ottomans.
Chapt. 47: In Arms Always and Prepared for Combat: Malta 1565 (pp. 295-308)
A shipload of luxury goods was captured and taken to Malta. Investors in the enterprise, including several of the sultan’s wives, stood to lose heavily, so they pleaded with Suleiman to attack Malta instead of launching a second attack on Vienna. 1565, the Ottoman fleet set out for Malta (galleys rowed by Christian slaves). To both sides this was a holy war, the struggle of Islam and Christianity. The battle started at St. Elmo, defended by Neapolitan knights who used “Greek fire” and boiling oil against guns and canons. After a month long bombardment, the fortress fell. The siege of Malta continued for 2 ½ months after the fall of St. Elmo. The island reached the breaking point, with even women and children joining the battle to defend their 1500 year old faith, first brought to the island by St. Paul. At last reinforcements arrived from Sicily and the Ottomans lifted the siege and returned to Istanbul. 30,000 Moors and Turks died. 8,000 of the 9,000 knights of Malta died, as did 5,000 civilians. The Ottomans never attempted to attack Malta again.
Chapt. 48: The Rhapsody of Death: Hungary 1566 (pp 309-311)
As Suleiman marched the largest ever Ottoman army north through the Balkans, he was annoyed by the Hungarians who stubbornly and repeatedly rebelled against their Turkish overlords. Suleiman looked on these rebellions as an affront not only to his personal majesty, but also to God, who had given him the right to rule Hungary. The rebels were brutally slaughtered, but the march to Vienna did not continue, as Suleiman died of a heart attack and was succeeded by his son Selim.
Chapt. 49: The Alpujarras Rising: Spain 1568-1570 (pp 312-316)
70 years after the fall of Grenada, 100,000 Muslims still lived in Spain, dreaming of the day Islam would return to rule al-Andalus. They were also persecuted in the Inquisition. A secret resistance movement formed, stockpiling arms to aid an eventual invasion from North Africa. Revolt broke out in the mountains of Grenada, and King Philip II petitioned the Pope for assistance. The Spanish force (for a time led by Don John) beat back the Moriscos, eventually completely uprooting them from Grenada and scattering them all over Spain.
Chapt. 50: The Flaying of Bragadino: Famagusta 1571 (pp. 317-321)
1570 – Selim launched an invasion of Cyprus to get a hold of the vineyards. After a year the defense collapsed and the Ottoman general Lala Mustafa had the governor of Cyprus, Bragadino, flayed to death.
Chapt. 51:A Good Day to Die: Lepanto 1572 (pp. 322-328)
1571 – Pope P ius V founded the Holy League in an attempt to unite Europe against the Muslim invaders. Commander-in-Chief was 25 year old Don John of Austria (who was actually a Spaniard). 1572 – The league sent out a navy of 316 ships which met the Ottoman navy at Lepanto where a mammoth battle took place. The result was a Christian victory that annihilated the Muslim fleet, but bad weather prevented a follow up attack on Istanbul.
Chapt. 52: Colonialism Muslim Style: Eastern Europe 1574-1681 (pp. 329-339)
Turkey was the first major colonial power (100 years before Spain). Following the victory at Lepanto the Holy League fell into disarray, its members preoccupied with quarreling with each other ( e.g. Elizabeth of England and Philippe of Spain). Selim II had fallen down in a drunken stupor and cracked his head. He was succeeded by Murad III who didn’t encourage much Jihad and allowed the Janissaries to degenerate. Revolts broke out in Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia. The Janissaries rebelled several times and engaged in widespread corruption. Mahomet III led a relatively uneventful reign. His son Ahmed I became sultan at age 14 and aside from a brief excursion into Hungary pretty much focused on Persia. Othman II (1618) was jailed and strangled by his own Janissaries (it was during his reign that a British envoy first described the Ottoman Empire as the “sick man of Europe). Murad IV (1623) Sultan at age 11, restored order at the price of 100,000 executions and quelled mutinies by the army and the Janissaries. An alcoholic and sadist (killing was a kind of sport to him), he did a few kind deeds, e.g. Ending the tribute in children which had been demanded of Christian villages, and thus he forced the Janissaries to find a new source of manpower. Ibrahim, (brother of Murad IV) resumed the Jihad in Europe against the Cossacks, assisted by the Tatars. He also broke a treaty with Venice and attacked Crete. The siege of Candia lasted 20 years, when the Venetians in turn besieged Istanbul. The irritated populace and the Janissaries overthrew the sultan. Mahomet IV (1648, age 10) briefly restored the Ottoman empire to its former greatness. He sent an army against the Holy Roman (i.e. Austrian) Empire and defeated the Christian force at the Battle of St. Gothard. In 1672, the Ottomans defeated the Poles and Russians, intervening at the request of the Cossacks. In 1681, the war turned around. The Poles and Russians had retaken all the land lost to them, and had made inroads into Ottoman territory.
Part Nine: The Waning of Holy War
Chapt. 53: Never was there a victory more complete: Vienna 1683 (pp. 343-348)
1682 – Hungarians revolted against Austria, providing a golden opportunity for the Ottomans, who sent a ½ million man army northward. 1683 – The Ottoman army, led by Kara Mustafa, besieged Vienna. Anxious not to damage the city he intended to rule, Kara Mustafa decided to starve out the inhabitants. Leopold I of Austria fled, issuing appeals for help from all over Europe. The pope sent prayers. The French promised not to attack Austria. But King John III of Poland (the same John Sobieski who defeated the Turks in four battles in four days a decade earlier) brought an army. 3,000 Polish cavalry and 18,000 Polish and German infantry set out to meet 500,000 Turks. The Ottoman encampment was lazy and ill-planned, and the Polish force routed them in a single charge. The flight headed by Kara Mustafa himself (who was duly strangled when he returned to Istanbul).
Chapt. 54: The Jihad Totters: Greece and Hungary 1685-1699 (pp. 349-353)
The Ottoman Empire is collapsing in the centre with corruption and mutinous Janissaries and crumbling at the edges as the Austrians moved steadily on. 1685 – Francisco Morosini leads a force to retake much of the Morea (Peloponnese) for the Greeks. Austrian victory at Gran taking Buda. 1687- Russians besiege Azov. Austrian victory at Mohacs taking Croatia and Transylvania. 1688 – Austrians take Budapest. 1690 – Turks regroup, take back Belgrade and renter Kosovo. France, threatened by growing Hapsburg strength attacks the Rhineland. 1691 – Austrians defeat Muslims in battle at Salankeman. 1697 – Battle of Zenta leads to Austrian capture of Sarajevo. 1699 – The treat of Karlowitz as the Turks sue for peace. This is the first time in the history of the Ottoman Empire that it had been forced to send envoys abroad to treat with its foes. This is the turning point. From now on the Turks are on the defensive.
Chapt. 55: The Gravediggers: Central and Southeastern Europe 1716-1770 (pp. 354-361)
Ottoman wars are no longer expansionist, and barely pretend to be religious. The empire is now a major player in European power politics. 1715 – Ottoman navy and army head out to attack the Hapsburgs. They are defeated at Peterwardein (1716) and the Austrians take Belgrade, but instead of taking Istanbul the victorious Hapsburgs sign a peace treaty. Sultan Achmed II (ruled 1703-1730) lost a war against Persia in the Caucasuses. Under Mahmoud I the Janissaries revolted. But the empire did not fall because it was alternately supported by different European nations who were trying to maintain a balance of power. Western European nations did not want a collapsing Ottoman empire to enhance the power of the Austrians or Russians. Turkey and Russia got into a war over Poland (who knows why?). Austria took more of the Balkans and under Catherine the Great Russia moved south toward the Black Sea.
Chapt. 56: The Orloff-Suvarov Duet: The Mediterranean and Crimea 1770-1792 (pp 362-36
1770 – Russian navy turns to assist Greek rebellion against Turkey. The Greeks took the opportunity to massacre the local Turks in particularly hideous ways. But the Ottomans managed to restore order with equal severity. The Ottoman navy was nearly destroyed, but most of the Russian sailors were killed in skirmishes around the Med. Catherine the Great ordered the Russian army to the Crimea which they took from the Tatars. The resulting peace treaty turned Turkey into a semi-vassal of Russia. 1783 – Russia incorporated the Crimea into her empire leading, causing a fresh outbreak of war. The threat of Ottoman collapse concerned the rest of Europe./ the resulting peace treaty (1792) pushed the Russian border further south but left the Ottoman empire alive.
Part Ten: Warriors of a Willing Doom
Chapt. 57: To the shores of Tripoli: North Africa 1798-1830 (pp 370-379)
French occupation of Egypt under Napoleon, who was unable to ally the Egyptians. Instead its Muslim inhabitants fiercely opposed him, calling for Jihad. The Janissaries joined the French, but eventually the Mameluks survived the temporary French presence. Napoleon’s attack on Egypt was an attempt to strike against the British in India, so when the British threatened Istanbul the French joined the Turks, bringing weapons and modern training.
The Americans clashed with the Muslims first over the Barbary pirates who annoyed US merchants and embarrassed the navy by capturing a frigate and holding the sailors hostage. A variety of skirmishes took place, ending with a treaty between the US and Algeria in 1815.
1816 – the British navy bombarded Algiers over its refusal to stop the practice of Christian slavery. 1830 – An exchange of insults between the French and Algerians deteriorated into warfare resulting in a French victory and the beginning of the French occupation of Algeria for the next 132 years. 1880s – The French took Tunisia. This was a disorienting change for the Muslims, for whom the natural order of things was Muslim rulers and Christian slaves. They weren’t quite sure what to do about the Europeans who were quite certain that the opposite situation was the natural order.
Chapt. 58: The Surrogates of Pericles: Greece 1821-1827 (pp. 380-388)
Rebellions in Wallachia and Moldovia triggered a revolt in Greece. Within a few weeks nearly the entire Turkish population of Morea had been slaughtered, and from the Peloponnese the revolt spread. Now Jihad was primarily a defensive concept to the Turks who fought to retain both their Ottoman nationality and Islamic religion. Furious at the deaths of their co-religionists in Greece, Turks turned on Christians throughout the rest of the empire. Simple death was too kind, instead they were brutally tortured, triggering further atrocities by the Greeks in a downward spiral. Philhellics from all over Europe joined the cause of Greek independence.
Sultan Mahmoud II finally managed to free himself from the tyranny of his imperial guard, secretly recruiting a gunner force that destroyed the Janissaries during one of their many revolts. Support from Muhammad Ali, pasha of Egypt (virtually independent for some time), turned the tide against Greece, until Britain, France, and Russia threatened to jointly attack Turkey if it did not sign a peace treaty with the Greeks. A short naval battle persuaded the Ottomans of their sincerity by destroying the Turkish fleet. Greece was finally free.
Chapt. 59: War Galore: The Balkans 1825-1878 (pp. 389-395)
Following the revolt of Greece the Ottoman empire plunged into a series of wars:
Russo-Turkish War (1828-29)
Crimean War (1853-56)
Russo-Turkish War (1877-78)
Balkan Wars (1912-13)
World War I (1914-18)
Russia was Turkey’s greatest enemy, and the Balkan states generally gained their independence because of their relationship with Russia. This growing power intimidated Britain and France enough to join the Ottomans against Russia in the Crimea. The wars were conceived almost exclusively as political struggles by the “Christian” nations, but the rhetoric of jihad still dominated Ottoman propaganda until the mid-19th century.
In the face of revolts in Egypt, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria, and the Russian advance to Edirne (~50 miles from Istanbul), belated military reforms and savage reprisals against rebels could not keep the empire together.
In India, 1877, a gathering of Muslim clerics decided that for their part, jihad against Britain was unnecessary, as long as she permitted the practice of Islam to her subjects.
Part Eleven: The Jihad Returns
Chapt. 60: The Great Unholy Wars: Dar al-Harb 1912-1945 (pp. 399-409)
The new Balkan states created in the first few decades of the 20th century had no experience at self-government. Their only model of government for the last few centuries had been Ottoman corruption and ruthlessness. The new borders were not drawn with intelligible divisions of ethnicity or language.
1912 – 1st Balkan war – Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Albania, Turkey – lots of switching sides. Austria got involved when Serbia claimed Bosnia, and the death of Archduke Francis Ferdinand triggered the 1st World War. Turkey entered on the side of Germany and the sultan/caliph declared universal jihad against the enemy nations. But in general the call failed and few Muslims in these countries rebelled. The British persuaded the Arabs in turn to declare a jihad against the Ottomans. Various rival factions declaring jihad on one another further weakened the empire.
1915-massacre of 1 million Armenians while being deported from Turkey to Syria. Most of the victims died along the way when deprived of food, water and all clothing. e.g. In one group of 18,000 Armenians, only 150 survived to reach Aleppo.
1922-100,000 Greeks massacred at Smyrna
All the victims in both cases were Christian.
With the destruction of the Ottoman empire, after the last orgy of violence in Smyrna, the caliphate and the rhetoric of jihad temporarily disappeared. In fact, the new leader of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal (Attaturk) detested Islam. But during W.W.II the first hints of the return of jihad appeared in Bosnia, unrecognised by almost everybody. In the midst of inter-ethnic violence where everybody appeared to be killing everyone else, Muslims began banding together, forming religiously defined defence groups. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem travelled to Yugoslavia to preach jihad against the Jews and other enemies of Islam on the side of Nazi Germany.
Chapt. 61: Terrorism: The West 1980s-1990s (pp. 410-412)
The vocabulary of jihad has returned, justifying terrorist actions of every type. But rather than uniting Islam, jihad today is dividing it as Muslims war against one another. Not all Muslims identify with this violence. Islam is still a political ideology, considering its destiny to rule the world and replace the outdated religions of Christianity and Judaism. Religious submission is demanded of its own people.
Epilogue: An Action in all its Luster (pp. 413-415)
Story about a good relationship between a Christian and a Muslim in the 18th century.
The Compilation of the Text of the Qur’an and the Sunni-Shia Dispute
Antoin MacRuaidh
Antoin MacRuaidh
1. Introduction
In recent years, in various countries, there have been public disputations between Christians and Muslims about the veracity of their respective holy books. At the time of writing there is an ongoing heated dispute taking place on the inter-net on this subject, and one issue being raised by some Christians is the question of the compilation of the Qur’an. A cursory examination on the literature on both sides demonstrates that the issue raises intense emotions, and sometimes both sides can express themselves in terms which do not promote good communal relations, or useful academic dialogue. It is not my purpose in this paper to raise questions about the veracity or otherwise of the contemporary edition of the Qur’an. Neither is it my intention to provoke or intensify hostilities between the Sunni and Shia about the integrity of the ‘Uthmanic edition of the Qur’an. Rather, I hope to show how the different Muslim hypotheses about the compilation of the Qur’an, and the Sunni-Shia dispute therein, help to explain the attitudes of Muslims to the Christian concept of inspiration, text and canon. After examining the history and nature of Qur’anic compilation and the sectarian controversy thereof, we can see that to some extent the accusations of Muslim polemicists about the Bible reflect an internal dispute within Islam about its own sacred Scripture. With this in mind, I have largely ignored the positions of Orientalist and other scholars who have engaged in ‘The Quest for the Historical Qur’an‘ and have questioned the veracity of the ‘Uthmanic edition of the text. Instead, I have been guided by what Muslims themselves say about its compilation.
This brings us back to the point I made in my previous paper, The Attitude of the Qur’an and Sunnah to the Christian Scriptures, that Muslims view the Bible through the lens of the Qur’an, and in their estimation the holy book of Islam sets the pattern for the form and content of an inspired Scripture. Insofar as the average Muslim is familiar with the concept of canonicity, he naturally assumes that what was true of the compilation of his own scripture is equally true of other sacred writings, at least those mentioned in the Qur’an. Nor is this a mere personal prejudice. If the ‘previous Books’ are true revelations from God, sent down from ‘the Mother of the Book’, a Muslim will believe that given the collegiality of the prophets and thus their Scriptures, the process which marked the compilation of the Qur’an must be a reflection of that procedure which characterised the collation of the Books of Moses, David and Jesus. If this is not the case, then, naturally, Muslim suspicions are aroused. Ironically, as we shall see, the actions Caliph ‘Uthman took to canonise the text assembled by Zaid ibn Thabit have influenced Muslim opinion on the corruption of the Biblical text and canon. It can be seen that on this issue, textual history and psychology meet. On the other hand, the position that oral tradition played in preserving the Qur’anic text presents us with an opportunity to explain to our Muslim friends the similar role it performed in the Biblical revelation.
2. Origins and Structure of the Qur’an
2.1 The Commencement of Revelation
The Qur’an celebrates the event of the commencement of revelation in its reference to Laylat al-Qadr, ‘the Night of Power’, during the month of Ramadan when the portion of the Tablet descended to the ‘House of Protection’ in the lowest of the seven heavens. The Qur’an claims to have been supernaturally revealed by angelic spirits on this night. Throughout history, as necessity arose, aspects of the eternal Tablet were revealed to the Prophets through Gabriel; the Qur’an is the culmination of these revelations. In the same fashion, it was revealed to Muhammad in Arabic by the angel Gabriel over a period of twenty-two to twenty-three years. The fact that the Qur’an as a whole was not revealed immediately demonstrates that in many cases it is responding to historical events in the career of Muhammad, and helps to explain the phenomenon of abrogated verses.
The hadith literature records the advent of revelation to Muhammad, and his reaction of terror, the result of fearing that he had become mad or possessed. Insanity was often associated with possession by the jinn, and so it is interesting to note Surahs 15:6 and 68:2 in this respect which answer the accusations of the pagans as to his condition. There is nothing comparable in Christian concepts of inspiration to the physical grip of the angel in imparting revelation to Muhammad, and this again points to the passive character of revelation in Islam. It is interesting to note that there was an early Christian association with Muhammad at this point, and that the role that the Christian believer played was crucial in confirming to Muhammad the truth of his revelation. After this, revelation ceased for a period, and when it resumed, it was once again through the agency of the Archangel Gabriel. At first, the reaction of Muhammad to the angelic visitation was once again to be afraid. Inspiration thereafter continued throughout the remainder of his life, and a large number of revelations came to Muhammad just before his death. The last revelation was 2:281 (although some say it was v282, v278, or all three). Others say it was 5:4. The Hadith literature offer support to either Surah Tawbah or Surah Nasr.
2.2 The Place of Oral Tradition
We can see from this that there was not a simple, single event which disclosed the entire Muslim holy book, and that given that most revelation came not long before his passing, it follows that there was not an entire, completed document of the Qur’an at the death of Muhammad. However, as Muslims often protest, this does not necessarily mean that the Qur’an as it stands is unreliable. Oral tradition and memorization have long been adequately practised by Oriental peoples of all faiths, and has been frequently demonstrated to be dependable. Muslims have long placed great emphasis on memorization of their sacred text, and many mullahs today are able to recite the Qur’an without mistake. The earliest claim for the public recitation of the Qur’an is found in respect to Abdullah bin Mas’ud, who proclaimed it at the pagan sanctuary in Mecca, in the early period of Muhammad’s ministry. Of course, there would have been only a restricted portion of the Qur’an to express at this time, and what bin Mas’ud recited according to the sira was clearly Surah 55 Rahman Ayah 1ff. This points to an early period of oral transmission, to which should be added the testimony of the hadith on the subject which encouraged memorization. Zayd ibn Thabit records that when he began his collection of the Qur’anic text it existed as writings on ‘… palmed stalks, thin white stones and also from the men who knew it by heart… ‘
2.3 The Structure of the Qur’an
The chapters of the Qur’an are called surahs, meaning ‘fences’. They are arranged in order of length rather than chronology. It is often difficult for a Christian reader coming to the Qur’an for the first time to understand the nature of what he is reading, since its form is so different from the Biblical structure of books and verses. The themes within each surah are not all sequential, but rather purportedly reflect the order established by Muhammad. Agreement with this proposition, however, depends upon whether one is a Sunni or a Shi’i. Further, it should be remembered that since revelation was effected over a period of twenty years, compilation was necessarily piecemeal. As stated earlier, for the most part, the Qur’an was preserved through oral tradition; necessarily so since most of the Prophet’s Companions were illiterate.
2.3.1 Abrogated Verses
A major issue in Qur’anic interpretation is that of abrogation – Naskh. Within the Qur’an itself are statements which offset others, but according to the doctrine of abrogation the later texts supersede the earlier whenever there are inconsistencies. The Muslim argument is that the abrogated verses were only meant for specific, temporary situations. We have seen that the revelation of the Qur’an is grounded in the historical circumstances of the life and career of Muhammad, and so there is a progressive element in doctrine of Islam’s holy book. Situations change and develop, and since the Qur’an reflects this, its teachings changed with the circumstance at hand. At the most obvious level we can see this in the fact that in the early years of Islam, Muhammad was a minority preacher in Mecca, concerning himself with almost solely theological and moral/social issues, but when he moved to Medina, he became the Governmental Executive, and so his revelations began to address legal, political and economic matters. The Qur’an explains the practice of abrogation by referring to the sovereignty of God. Yusuf Ali says:
For: 2.106
The word which I have translated by the word ‘revelations’ is Ayat… It is not only used for verses of the Quran, but in a general sense for God’s revelations, as in ii. 39 and for other Signs of God in history or nature, or miracles, as in ii. 61. It has even been used for human signs and tokens of wonder, as, for example, monuments or landmarks built by the ancient people of AD (xxvi. 128). What is the meaning here? If we take it in a general sense, it means tht God’s Message from age to age is always the same, but that its Form may differ according to the needs and exigencies of the time. That form was different as given to Moses and then to Jesus and then to Muhammad. Some commentators apply it also to the Ayat of the Quran. There is nothing derogatory in this if we believe in progressive revelation. In iii. 7 we are told distinctly about the Quran, that some of its verses are basic or fundamental, and others are allegorical, and it is mischievous to treat the allegorical verses and follow them (literally). On the other hand, it is absurd to treat such a verse as ii. 115 as if it were abrogated by ii. 144 about the Qibla. We turn to the Qibla, but we do not believe that God is only in one place. He is everywhere.
As can be seen, some Muslims believe that this verse refers to Jewish and Christian Scriptures. However, it is not the only verse that impinges on this subject, and these others indicate that what is involved is abrogation of the Qur’an.
For: 16.101
… The doctrine of progressive revelation from age to age and time to time does not mean that Allah’s fundamental Law changes. It is not fair to charge a Prophet of Allah with forgery because the Message as revealed to him is in a different form from that revealed before, when the core of the Truth is the same, for it comes from Allah.
In the Hadith, we find reference to abrogation which specifically relates this practice to the Qur’an. Another text concerns Surah 2:106; a Qur’anic reciter was supposed to have memorised every revelation from Muhammad, so what was under consideration in this text was whether he should have deleted those verses which had been cancelled. Finally, there are Hadith texts which settle the issue that abrogation relates to the Qur’an itself, rather than to the holy scriptures of the Jews and Christians (or anyone else for that matter). The Hadith illustrates our earlier point about the progressive character of Qur’anic revelation, and how an aspect of this related to the changed conditions of Muhammad after the Hegira. The classic example often used by Muslim exegetes to explain the mechanics of abrogation is found with respect to the widow’s bequest.
To understand what this involves, we can examine the fact that Islam makes a great point in portraying itself as a ‘mercy’ to Mankind, and part of this is that is does not burden believers with too much ritual obligation. For example, Surah 73 begins in vs. 2 – 4, by commanding Believers to spend a considerable portion of the night in prayer, but ayah 20 abrogates this. S. 43:89 orders that polytheists be let alone, however, S. 2:190-191 commands that they be slaughtered.
However, it is not only the case that the Qur’an abrogates itself; the Sunnah also abrogates parts of the Qur’an. This can be seen in the Mut’ah practice of temporary marriage. According to Sunnis, this was later abrogated, and the hadith refers to this. Ahmad von Denffer records three types of abrogation with respect to the Qur’an, which he evidences by quoting from ayat and ahadith:
Abrogation of the recited verse together with the legal ruling:
Aisha
SAHIH MUSLIM
It had been revealed in the Qur’an that ten clear sucklings make the marriage unlawful, then it was abrogated (and substituted) by five sucklings and Allah’s Apostle (peace be upon him) died and it was before that time (found) in the Qur’an (and recited by the Muslims).
Abrogation of the legal ruling without the recited verse:
Surah: 33. Ahzab Ayah: 50
50. O prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee; and daughters of thy paternal uncles and aunts and daughters of thy maternal uncles and aunts who migrated (from Mecca) with thee; and any believing woman who dedicates her soul to the Prophet if the Prophet wishes to wed her this only for thee and not for the Believers (at large); We know what We have appointed for them as to their wives and the captives whom their right hands possess in order that there should be no difficulty for Thee. And Allah is Oft-Forgiving Most Merciful.
52. It is not lawful for thee (to marry more) women after this nor to change them for (other) wives even thought their beauty attract thee except any thy right hand should possess (as handmaidens): and Allah doth watch over all things.
Abrogation of the recited verse without with the legal ruling:
Abdullah ibn Abbas
SAHIH AL-BUKHARI
… Umar sat on the pulpit and when the summoners for the prayer had finished their announcement, Umar stood up, and having glorified and praised Allah as He deserved, he said, ‘Now then, I am going to tell you something which (Allah) has written for me to say… Allah sent Muhammad (peace be upon him) with the Truth and revealed the Holy Book to him. Among that which Allah revealed, was the Verse of the Rajam (the stoning of a married person (male or female) who commits illegal sexual intercourse, and we recited this Verse and understood and memorized it. Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) did carry out the punishment of stoning and so did we after him.
I am afraid that after a long time has passed, somebody will say, ‘By Allah, we do not find the Verse of the Rajam in Allah’s Book.’ and thus they will go astray by abandoning an obligation which Allah has revealed. The punishment of the Rajam is to be inflicted on any married person (male or female) who commits illegal sexual intercourse provided the required evidence is available or there is conception or confession…
von Denffer notes that the punishment of stoning for adultery has been retained in the Sunnah, whilst it is not present in the Qur’an. According to Ibn Salama, an authority on the subject, there are:
43 surahs with neither nasikh (abrogating verses) or mansakh (abrogated verses)
6 surahs with nasikh but no mansakh.
40 surahs with mansakh but no nasikh.
25 surahs with both nasikh and mansakh.
According to Jalauddin us-Suyuti there are 21 abrogated verses, and according to Shah Waliullah there are five:
Mansakh 2:180 Nasikh 4:11, 12
Mansakh 2:240 Nasikh 2:234
Mansakh 8:65 Nasikh 8:62
Mansakh 30:50 Nasikh 33:52
Mansakh 58:12 Nasikh 58:13
The problem for Christians as they read the Qur’an, is that its structure is unlike that of the Bible in this regard. The New Testament, because of the Sacrifice of Christ, ‘abrogates’ the Old Testament rulings on animal sacrifices, since the latter had a prophetic character which is now fulfilled; to a large extent, this is the message of Hebrews, e.g. 10:1ff. On a similar basis, the kosher laws of the Old Testament are superseded by the declaration of Jesus in Mark 7:19 that all foods were now ‘clean’. In these cases, however, abrogation occurs because of prophetic fulfilment. This ending of food legislation and other aspects of the Law often seems so arbitrary to Muslims, and encourages them to believe that the Christians have tampered with their Scriptures. They do not understand the eschatological element involved. The structure of the Christian Scriptures, whereby the books that celebrated the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies of the Tenak, i.e. what we call the New Testament, in temporal terms obviously came later than the Old Testament texts, and the present Biblical structure, though arbitrary in terms of denoting the books as ‘Old Testament’ and ‘New Testament’, reflect the theological fact of the change that the Advent of Christ has wrought. Moreover, we are dealing with later books that abrogate aspects of the former books.
With the Qur’an, however, this is not the case. There is no element of realized eschatology involved. Nor is it simply a case that the Qur’an abrogates elements of the previous books. Rather, verses abrogate others in the same book, and the structure of the Qur’an does not reveal this, as the abrogated texts are not removed. Hence the need for instruction in the science of Qur’anic interpretation and the impact of the Sunnah. The fact that Christian ‘abrogation’ is of a different character to that of Islam is confusing to Muslims, and adds to the belief that the New Testament is fraudulent. This is especially true when we consider the role that the Sunni-Shia dispute has played in this. The Shia deny that the rule on temporary marriage has been abrogated, and naturally consider the Sunni hadith abolishing the practice as being untrue. The Sunnis, on the other hand, regard the Shia as sinning by continuing the practice. It is not surprising that when Muslims accuse each other of corruption in issues of text and canon on issues affecting doctrine and practice, that they naturally accuse ‘the nations before them’ of similar actions when they discover differences with Islam.
2.4 Variant Readings
One interesting feature about Islamic dogma concerning the Qur’an is that the holy book is held to have been revealed in seven different ways. There are various opinions about what this means. For example, one tradition linked it to seven different reciters of the text This however, is generally not accepted. Another possibility is that it refers to pages expressed in different Arab dialects. For example, a recent Muslim contributor to the Internet stated the following:
At the time of the Prophet… Arabs use [sic]to speak many different accents. Many of them did not know how to read or write. So Allah (SWT), allowed for them to read it in different ways. For example the tribe of Quraish do not pronounce the ‘hamza’ while the tribe of Tamim… pronounce it… When it comes to writing there have to be some differences in spelling, those who pronounce the ‘hamza’ wrote it down as the prophet taught them, others did not write it. Other differences in tone ‘harakat’, grammar or using a different word for the same meaning…
To this agrees the modern Muslim scholar von Denffer, as one of several possibilities. He points out that tribes like the ones mentioned above pronounced words differently, for example al-tabuh and al-tabut (2:248). Other differences include variant readings of words such as ‘trusts’ in 23:8, which can be read as either singular or plural in the unvowelled text, or in different wordings of a particular passage, such as 9:100, where adding min (‘from’) to the text gives a minor variant reading. Again, synonyms are used, such as in 101:5 which reads as ‘Ka-l-‘ihni-l-manfush’, but another reading is ‘Ka-s-sufi-l-manfush’, both meaning ‘like carded wool’. von Denffer also points out variant readings in the texts of the Companions, such as the omission of qul (‘Say’) in the texts of ibn Mas’ud, ‘Ubaid and ‘Umar with respect to S. 112:1, with ibn Mas’ud’s text replacing al-ahad (‘unique’) with al-wahid (‘one’), omitting 112:2, and replacing lam yalid wa lam yulad (‘he begets not’) for lam yulad wa lam yulid (‘he is not begotten’). The Muslim scholar Tabataba’i points out that ‘… the script used at the time was the kufic style and had no diacritical points; each word could be read in various ways.’ It should be noted that the Hadithimplies that there were different dialectic readings of the Qur’an.
This difference in recitation was later to lead to conflict between Syrians and Iraqis, and this led ‘Uthman to standardise the Qur’anic text.
3. Collation of the Qur’an
3.1 Fragmentary Existence
Whilst Muhammad was alive, certain of his companions began the compilation of the Qur’an, and this is recorded in the Hadith literature, an indication of how important it was to establish the claims of the Qur’an and especially to assert its purity of text. Amongst these, a major figure in the redaction of the Qur’an was Zayd ibn Thabit. There are clear evidences of different versions of the Qur’an in the early period, at least in regard to order. Four reciters had memorized it before the death of Muhammad. However, Muhammad said that he had left ‘the Book of Allah’ for his people, and there is evidence that parts were written down during Muhammad’s lifetime by some of his followers. Yusuf Ali says the following about Surah 80:13ff:
For: 80. 13
At the time this Sura was revealed, there were perhaps only about 42 or 45 Suras in the hands of the Muslims. But it was a sufficient body of Revelation of high spiritual value, to which the description give here could be applied. It was held in the highest honor; its place in the hearts of Muslims was more exalted than that of anything else; as Allah’s Word, it was pure and sacred; and those who transcribed it were men who were honorable, just and pious. The legend that the early Suras were not carefully written down and preserved in books is a pure invention. The recensions made later in the time of the first and the third Khalifas were merely to preserve the purity and safeguard the arrangement of the text at a time when the expansion of Islam among non Arabic-speaking people made such precautions necessary.
The written existence of some parts of the Qur’an at least is also implied by the fact that people were forbidden to touch it unless they were in a state of ritual purity. However, what was written down tended to be fragmentary. The Muslim scholar Mahmoud Ayoub, says that when Muhammad died, the Qur’an
… consisted of scattered fragments either privately collected or preserved in human memory. It was the Muslim community which in the end gave the Qur’an its final form and reduced it to a single standard version which remains unchanged to this day. The community has, moreover, guaranteed the authenticity and truthfulness of the Qur’an through its universal and unbroken process of transmission. Thus it is the community consensus on the shape and authenticity of the Divine Word which ultimately shaped the Qur’an.
3.2 The Role of Consensus
It is worth noting the role ijma played in the process of collation. There is a tradition in the Hadith that it is impossible for the united Ummah to err, so ijma on this issue is a divine seal on the ordering of the text. However, the Sunni-Shia divide on the text of the Qur’an raises questions about this authority, since the obvious point is the lack of consensus as to the true form of Islam’s holy book. We see evidence of this lack of consensus in the traditions, for some surahs were not named at first. It is also implied by the fact that Gabriel checked the recitation of the Qur’an once a year, presumably because the majority of the revelation was preserved orally, and thus was subject to the infirmity of the human memory. There would be little point in checking it if it were all set down in writing. The alternative explanation, that he would come to confirm that the text had not been corrupted by someone, would not commend itself to Muslims.
3.3 Collation Under the Caliphs
The complete compilation was the work of the Muslim leadership under Abu Bakr and ‘Uthman. The first compilation occurred after the Battle of Yamama in 633 during which some Qurra had been killed. Obviously, if the entire text, as recognized by every Muslim, had been already collated, there would not have been the sense of urgency that accompanied the death of these men. The event was recorded by Zayd ibn Thabit, and the narrative reveals that not even the Prophet of Islam himself had previously collected the Qur’an:
Narrated Zaid bin Thabit:
SAHIH AL-BUKHARIAbu Bakr As-Siddiq sent for me when the people of Yamama had been killed (i.e., a number of the Prophet’s Companions who fought against Musailama). (I went to him) and found ‘Umar bin Al-Khattab sitting with him. Abu Bakr then said (to me), ‘Umar has come to me and said: ‘Casualties were heavy among the Qurra’ of the! Qur’an (i.e. those who knew the Quran by heart) on the day of the Battle of Yalmama, and I am afraid that more heavy casualties may take place among the Qurra’ on other battlefields, whereby a large part of the Qur’an may be lost. Therefore I suggest, you (Abu Bakr) order that the Qur’an be collected.’ I said to ‘Umar, ‘How can you do something which Allah’s Apostle did not do?’ ‘Umar said, ‘By Allah, that is a good project.
‘Umar kept on urging me to accept his proposal till Allah opened my chest for it and I began to realize the good in the idea which ‘Umar had realized.’ Then Abu Bakr said (to me). ‘You are a wise young man and we do not have any suspicion about you, and you used to write the Divine Inspiration for Allah’s Apostle. So you should search for (the fragmentary scripts of) the Qur’an and collect it in one book).’ By Allah If they had ordered me to shift one of the mountains, it would not have been heavier for me than this ordering me to collect the Qur’an. Then I said to Abu Bakr, ‘How will you do something which Allah’s Apostle did not do?’ Abu Bakr replied, ‘By Allah, it is a good project.’ Abu Bakr kept on urging me to accept his idea until Allah opened my chest for what He had opened the chests of Abu Bakr and ‘Umar. So I started looking for the Qur’an and collecting it from (what was written on) palmed stalks, thin white stones and also from the men who knew it by heart, till I found the last Verse of Surat At-Tauba (Repentance) with Abi Khuzaima Al-Ansari, and I did not find it with anybody other than him. The Verse is:
‘Verily there has come unto you an Apostle (Muhammad) from amongst yourselves. It grieves him that you should receive any injury or difficulty..(till the end of Surat-Baraa’ (At-Tauba) (9.128-129)
Then the complete manuscripts (copy) of the Qur’an remained with Abu Bakr till he died, then with ‘Umar till the end of his life, and then with Hafsa, the daughter of ‘Umar.
The edition given to Hafsa was not copied nor presented as the ‘Authorised Version’ of the Islamic holy book, but rather appears to have been a private copy in the hands of the Caliph to safeguard against the loss of the text through incidents such as the battle in question. Other people kept their own codices, or relied on their own memorization of the text. This explains the trouble during the rule of ‘Uthman arise about variant copies. As we shall see, the Shia claimed that Ali already had both a written copy and appendices of the Qur’an.
These texts reveal the central role of Zayd ibn Thabit in the collation of the Qur’an, and that this occurred under Governmental mandate. However, it is clear that Zayd ibn Thabit’s collation did not fully resolve the matter, as we see later under the caliphate of ‘Uthman in 653, which indicates that variant readings remained a problem for the early Muslim community. In fact, so distinct were the variant readings of the Qur’an that there was trouble between the Muslims of Syria and Iraq at the time of ‘Uthman. The Christian apologist Campbell states that the differences arose from the Syrians using the collection of Ubayy bin Ka’b whereas the Iraqis used that of Ibn Mas’ud. von Denffer points out that the collection of Ibn Mas’ud differed from the ‘Uthmanic recension by excluding Surahs 1, 113, and 114, and also in terms of order, pronunciation, spelling and the use of synonyms. Likewise, the collection of bin Ka’b differs in order and variant readings from that of ‘Uthman and also that of Ibn Mas’ud. Not all 114 surahs are present in his collation, and he purportedly adds two extra ones, as well as an additional verse. Doi states that the Syrian-Iraqi conflict was over textual order, an issue that arises again when we examine the Sunni-Shia dispute. Maududi, in his Introduction to Yusuf Ali’s translation and commentary, holds that the dispute was over dialect readings. Tabataba’i states that the problem arose because
… differences and inconsistencies were appearing in the copying down of the Qur’an; some calligraphers lacked precision in their writing and some reciters were not accurate in their recitation.
Ahmad von Denffer claims that the differences were largely a matter of pronunciation and spelling, and this is the common Islamic view. It is amazing that such minor distinctions could have caused so much controversy, and that insignificant differences could have compelled ‘Uthman to take the drastic action he did:
Anas ibn Malik
SAHIH AL-BUKHARI
Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman came to Uthman at the time when the people of Sham and the people of Iraq were waging war to conquer Armenia and Azerbaijan. Hudhayfah was afraid of their (the people of Sham and Iraq) differences in the recitation of the Qur’an, so he said to Uthman, ‘O chief of the believers! Save this nation before they differ about the Book (Qur’an) as Jews and the Christians did before.’
So Uthman sent a message to Hafsah saying, ‘Send us the manuscripts of the Qur’an so that we may compile the Qur’anic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you.’ Hafsah sent it to Uthman.
Uthman then ordered Zayd ibn Thabit, Abdullah ibn az-Zubayr, Sa’id ibn al-‘As, and AbdurRahman ibn Harith to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies.
Uthman said to the three Qurayshi men, ‘In case you disagree with Zayd ibn Thabit on any point in the Qur’an, then write it in the dialect of Quraysh as the Qur’an was revealed in their tongue.’
They did so, and when they had written many copies, Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsah.
Uthman sent to every Muslim province one set of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur’anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt.
Zayd ibn Thabit added, ‘A verse from surat al-Ahzab was missed by me when we copied the Qur’an and I used to hear Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) reciting it. So we searched for it and found it with Khuzaymah ibn Thabit al-Ansari.
(That verse was): –
‘Among the believers are men who have been true in their covenant with Allah.'(33:23)
We learn from this that the collation of Zayd ibn Thabit ordered under Abu Bakr and held by Hafsa became the canonical Qur’an at the time of ‘Uthman by virtue of it being chosen by the political authority and by all other copies of the Qur’anbeing destroyed. It is noteworthy that the text did not become canonical under Abu Bakr. When one considers the reverence given to the Qur’an by Muslims, this destructive action on the part of the Caliph may imply how distinct many of the copies might have been from the chosen version, at least in regard to the kind of variants von Denffer proposes. Moreover, it is instructive that Zayd did not rely upon his memory of the text, but rather investigated various readings. However, the existence of variant copies, such as that of Ali, suggests that some Qurra under ‘Uthman had memorized different readings. It is also noteworthy that ‘Uthman’s action, restricting the recitation of the Qur’an to the Quraish dialect, overturned the permission of the Prophet to recite the text in different dialects. This in itself demonstrates the seriousness of the event; the Caliph would not have lightly acted in this way unless he faced a genuine emergency.
In the light of many Muslim jibes that Christians do not have the autographs of the Bible it is interesting to note that a Muslim scholar such as Ahmad von Denffer states that
Most of the early original Qur’an manuscripts, complete or in sizeable fragments, that are still available to us now, are not earlier than the second century after the Hijra. The earliest copy… dated from the late second century. However, there are also a number of odd fragments of Qur’anic papyri available, which date from the first century.
There is a copy of the Qur’an in the Egyptian National Library on parchment made from gazelle skin, which has been dated 68 Hijra (688 A.D.), i.e. 58 years after the Prophet’s death.
He goes on to say that ‘Uthman kept a copy for himself, and five were sent to major cities. What is extraordinary is the action ‘Uthman took in establishing an authorised text. Try as one might, it is impossible to get any true Muslim to write in, tear or burn any copy of the Qur’an. In fact, riots have often started in Muslim countries when it has been reported that someone has defiled the holy book in this way. The Hadith literature speaks about the miraculous qualities of the Qur’an, which include its being inflammable. It is therefore all the more astonishing that Islam records that ‘Uthman was successful in his auto da fe of existing copies. To understand the urgency of his action, we must recognise the emphasis Islam places on Ijmaand Muslim unity. Whenever a Muslim meeting is held, the issue of the unity of the Islamic world is at the top of the agenda. ‘Unity is strength’ is a genuine Muslim attitude. Muslims frequently blame their depressed political condition on their disunity. After all, the Gulf War would have been impossible if the Muslim Umma had been united, and America’s attitude to the Palestinian issue would doubtless be different if it had to take into consideration the opinion of a single, Islamic mega-state. Likewise, we can understand that ‘Uthman, given that Islam was still a young religion, and one that was in political-military conflict with its neighbours, would be concerned at anything which would weaken the unity of the nascent community, especially when internal conflict arose in the course of a military campaign. One should also remember that in Islam, there is no separation between religion and politics. Muhammad was a Ruler as well as a Prophet. The first Caliph, Abu Bakr, had to engage in jihad against rebels who refused to pay their Zakat religious tax. Taxation is a political activity, but here it referred to religion. Further, these uprisings are called the Riddah rebellions, a term used also to describe religious apostasy. The Sunni-Shia divide was originally a dispute about political succession. Malise Ruthven states:
The divisions of Islam, in contrast to those of Christianity, have their origins in politics rather than dogma. This is not to say that dogmatic and theological questions do not form part of these divisions. However, the questions over which they first crystallised were political to the extent that they were primarily concerned with leadership of the community. Having a religious ideology built on the social foundations of tribalism, the Muslims expressed their aspirations first in terms of group loyalty, and only afterwards in terms of the doctrinal and theological accretions surrounding these loyalties.
If the Muslim community split, not only would there have been a number of sects comparable to the divisions of Christianity, but by definition, Secular and Holy being synonymous, there would have been at least the danger of the emergence of separate Muslim states. The Sunni-Shia divide, for example, helped to preserve Shi’i Iran’s independence from the Sunni Ottoman caliphate. Had there been separate editions of Islam’s holy book, even if the differences were comparatively minor, the obligation to have a single Islamic state could not have been fulfilled, since the basis for state law in Islam is essentially the Qur’an and the Sunnah. If there is no unity as to the sacred text of Islam, there could not have been a united hermeneutic and thus ijtihad – legal/theological study seeking to establish a policy.
Moreover, it should be remembered that in Islam, the Qur’an is equivalent in position to Jesus in Christianity. Christianity centres on the Person and Work of Christ. We know from the history of the early Church the painful disputes that ensued over Christology, with various heresies such as Arianism, Monarchianism, Monothelitism, etc., all threatening the unity of the Church and the purity of its doctrine. The conflicts and councils that ensued from these challenges all testify to how crucial for the Church is the question ‘What think ye of Christ?’ Not for nothing was Hudhayfah so urgent in his cry to ‘Uthman to save the Muslims from the divisions suffered by Jews and Christians. If I may say advisedly, even if the Church did not have the Bible, it would still exist, because it has the Risen, reigning Christ. The role of the Bible is secondary to that of Christ. It witnesses to Him and His activity. Although oral tradition preserved the words and actions of Jesus intervening period, it is obvious that years passed before the complete New Testament was extant. The central act for Christianity is not the revelation of the Bible, but the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Christ, and the impartation of the Holy Spirit. The Christian emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus and His supernatural intervention in the life of a believer witnesses to the Christocentric nature of Christian faith and experience.
Islam, by contrast, centres on the Qur’an. The Qur’an is the revelation that establishes Islam, that instructs men how to live according to the will of God. Without it, Islam does not exist. One cannot have Christianity without Christ, and one cannot have Islam without the Qur’an. Christian initiation, based on Romans 10:9, involves a confession that implies a supernatural experience of the Spirit of Christ, as is indicated by 8:9-11. The Muslim credal affirmation, the Shahada, states ‘La ilaha illa llah Muhammadur rasulu llah’ – ‘there is no God but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God’. The Divine message Muhammad brought was the Qur’an, so if there is a dispute about its actual text, the effect is the same as conflict concerning the Person of Christ, since His Work is inextricably linked to, and flows from His Person. If I may borrow from 1 Corinthians 15:17, if the Qur’an is not revealed, Islamic faith is futile and Muslims are still in their sins. For the Qur’an to be revealed, its text must be pure. The Muslim scholar Bucaille makes this point in his polemical book; ‘It was absolutely necessary to ensure the spread of a text that retained its original purity: Uthman’s recension had this as its objective.’
In the light of this, we can understand what a desperate situation ‘Uthman faced, and why he took the extraordinary action of burning copies of Islam’s holy book. The doctrine of Ijma consecrated the action of the Caliph – the agreement of the Sahabah represented the voice of God, since the united Muslim community cannot err. What is so pertinent for our concern as Christians is the effect this has had in Islam’s view of Biblical canonicity. Given that the Qur’an is the paradigmatic Scripture for Muslims, it is natural for them to assume that the Muslim canonical process mirrors Christian historical experience. The Muslim polemicist ur-Rahim writes about the Council of Nicaea:
In 325 A.D., the famous Council of Nicea was held… out of the three hundred or so Gospels extant at the time, four were chosen as the official Gospels of the Church… It was also decided that all Gospels written in Hebrew should be destroyed. An edict was issued stating that anyone found in possession of an unauthorised Gospel would be put to death.
He goes on to allege:
According to one source, there were at least 270 versions of the Gospel at this time, while another states there were as many as 4,000 different Gospels… It was decided that all the Gospels remaining under the table should be burned… It became a capital offence to possess an unauthorised Gospel. As a result, over a million Christians were killed in the years following the Council’s decisions. This was how Athanasius tried to achieve unity among the Christians.
It need hardly be said that all this is pure fantasy, bearing no resemblance to actual events or decisions at the Council of Nicaea, which at any rate was not concerned with textual issues. It is noteworthy that the author gives no sources for his preposterous assertions. Yet this is the common Muslim idea of Christian canonical history, especially with regard to Nicaea. The trouble is that Muslim polemicists are not only convinced of a Christian conspiracy to pervert the Scriptures, and must find a convenient scapegoat such the Council of Nicaea, which purportedly destroyed the ‘Islamic’ Gospel. They are governed by the presuppositions of their own canonical history to imagine that like ‘Uthman’s commission, the Christians needed such an official event to decide upon their authoritative text. Given that consensus is so important to Muslims, it is natural for them to assume that the same must be true of Christians – note ur-Rahim’s comments about Athanasius. Following from this, it can be understood why Muslim polemicists would write what they do about the burning and destruction of variant New Testament texts: they are looking at Nicaea anachronistically in the light of ‘Uthman’s action to establish a single, authorised text. Like the Sunnah of the Prophet, the policy of the first four Caliphs of Islam – the Righteous Caliphs – is an obligated model for Sunni Muslims. It follows that their actions that should be the paradigm to be followed after them, and must have been the appropriate action to take in the years of the earlier Abrahamic faiths. Further, since the procedure for Islamic canonical orthodoxy was State-enforced, it is natural for Muslims to assume the same was true with regard to the Christian Scriptures, and likewise the penalty for disobedience. It does not seem to occur to Muslim polemicists that even if what they say about Nicaea were true, how could Constantine have enforced this decision outside his own borders, for example, among the Christians of Persia and Ethiopia? Moreover, since there are minor variants as to isolated verses, and Bible-translations – like Qur’anic translations, such as those of Yusuf Ali and Pickthall – are not identical in every way in their choice of words, although they have the same content, it is mystifying that the Christians in recent years have not resorted to such heavy-handed tactics as they purportedly did at Nicaea according to Islamic polemicists.
4. The Impact of the Sunnah
4.1 Classification of Hadith
The Sunnah, or the ‘path, way, manner of life’ records the sayings and doings of Muhammad, whose way of life became a norm for the entire Muslim community. Muhammad provided a pattern by the example of his life for others to follow as the Qur’an itself testifies. The life of Muhammad was the display of the teachings of the Qur’an, and thus was itself hermeneutical. On this basis, the words and acts of Muhammad were themselves revelatory as the practical outworking of the Prophetic Message. Moreover, many issues were not addressed in the Qur’an, and the Sunnah deals with these. This was especially pertinent before the collation of the Qur’an, when it was still fragmentary. Hence, Muhammad’s actions, his judgments, policies, words and silences are the norm of conduct and ethics for all Muslims. Muslims are prone to say of Muhammad that ‘his life was the Qur’an‘ or vice versa. As one Islamic scholar states
The Qur’an is both the foundation and fountain of Faith and, among the fundamentals of Divine Law, the Sharee’ah, its place is unique. Its purpose however is only to lay down the principles. Its elaboration and interpretation are left to the Sunnah and Hadeeth.
The Sunnah, the example of the Prophet in his words and deeds, is transmitted through the Hadith. A Hadith is divided into two parts:
Isnad: This word means ‘supporting’. It records the names of the persons handing down the tradition (the transmissional chain)
Matn: the actual information
We can see from the following text an example of this:
Abdullah ibn Umar
SAHIH AL-BUKHARI
Safwan ibn Muhriz al-Mazini narrated that while I was walking with ibn Umar holding his hand, a man came in front of us and asked, ‘What have you heard from Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) about an-Najwa?’
Ibn Umar said, ‘I heard Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) saying, ‘Allah will bring a believer near Him and shelter him with His Screen and ask him, ‘Did you commit such-and-such sins?’…
We see the chain of narration from ibn Muhriz to ibn Umar to Muhammad himself is the Isnad; the Matn refers to God’s discourse with a believer about sin. The Isnad became the testing point for the authenticity of a hadith. There were several criteria for a genuine tradition:
The narration must distinctly state something said or done by the Prophet.
The traditional chain must be able to be traced back to the original reporters and thus to Muhammad himself.
All the transmitters had to be men of excellent character and piety.
The tradition must not contradict the Qur’an or any other sound tradition.
The principal criteria for classification were:
Perfection or otherwise of the chain of transmission.
Freedom of the text from defect.
Acceptance of the text by the Sahabah (in the case of Sunnis), the Tabi’un (their followers) and the Tab’ Tabi’un (their successors). Obviously, with the Shia, the integrity of traditions depends upon their acceptance by the Imams.
There are three classes of hadith:
Sahih: This means a ‘sound’ or genuine tradition, with a reliable chain of transmission with no weaknesses.
Hasan: This is a ‘fair’ text, but not wholly reliable, since the narrators were not the best.
Da’if: A ‘weak’ tradition, because of internal defects and unreliable transmission.
Within this category are several sub-divisions:
Mu’allaq: Where a text omits one or two transmitters in the beginning of the Isnad.
Maqtu’: Reported by a Tab’i.
Munqati’: Broken traditions.
Mursal: Incomplete texts omitting Sahabah from the chain of Tab’i to Prophet.
Musahhaf: Texts with a mistake in words or letters of Isnad or Matn.
Shadh: Texts with reliable chains, but with meanings contrary to majority attested traditions.
Maudu’: Fabricated texts.
Other divisions, used especially by Tirmidhi, include the idea that Gharib can refer either to the isnad or the matn. It refers to a certain weakness in some respect.
It may refer to the only tradition known by a certain line of transmission, although the same tradition may be known by other line, this type being gharib regarding the isnad. It may refer to a tradition whose matn has only one transmitter, this type being gharib regarding both isnad and matn. It may refer to a tradition which comes only from a man who is considered reliable, or in which some addition to what is found in other lines of the same tradition is made by a man of this quality, such a tradition being called gharib sahih.
Gharib can also refer to the use of rare words in a text, although it is not so-employed in the Mishkat al-Masabih, an important hadith collection. The terms gharib hasan and hasan gharib are descriptions of texts which are recognised as hasan in terms of transmission and which does not contradict other transmissions, but has itself only one line of transmission, and is thus simultaneously considered gharib. Hasan gharib sahih and hasan sahih gharib are also found in the Mishkat, and seem to refer to a hasan sahih tradition which has some feature that is gharib. Hasan sahih describes a hadith whose isnad is hasan, but which is supported by another whose isnad is sahih.
4.2 Collection of Hadith
As time passed, more and more of these sayings were recorded, including undoubtedly a number of forgeries. In order to collect, sift and systematize this massive product, scholars started travelling all across the Muslim world.. For this reason, the dating for the collections is somewhat late. Strict rules were laid down to separate true ahadith from false. It should be noted that we have evidence from the Hadith literature itself that the transmission in some cases must have been oral at the beginning, rather than written. Although oral tradition was usually considered reliable, there was some reticence with regard to confidence on this issue among the narrators. Sunni Muslims have ever since regarded a particular six of these collections as authoritative:
Sahih Bukhari (d. 870)
Sahih Muslim (d. 875)
Abu Dawud (d. 888)
Al-Tirmidhi (d. 892)
An-Nasai (d. 915)
Ibn Madja (d. 886)
The most important collector of ahadith was undoubtedly Imam al-Bukhari of Bukhara in central Asia, 810-870 A.D. All of Bukhari’s collection is recognized as sound. His collection is called Jami’ al Sahih, divided into ninety-seven books with 3,450 chapters. He examined 600,000 purported examples of Hadith, memorised 200,000 but rendered all save 7295 as spurious. Many of the remaining are parallel traditions, e.g. the traditions by different narrators referring to the dread consequences of lying against the Prophet. It is significant that Muslims apologists often attack the veracity of the Gospels because of their different nuances, yet they can accept parallel hadiths which are often less similar than are the Gospels to each other.
Shia Muslims adhere to their own collections and regard many of the Sunni ahadith as forged. The most important Shia collections are the two collations of Mohammad Ibne Yaqoob Abu Jafar Kulaini (d. 939), Usool al Kafi and Forroh al Kafi.Others include Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih, by Muhammad ibn Babuya (d. 991); Tahdhib al-Akhkam, by Sheikh Muhammad at-Tusi, Shaykhu’t-Ta’ifa (d.1067); Al-Istibsar, by the same author. Many Shia texts specifically attack Sunni distinctives, particularly with regard to the purported vice-gerency of Ali. It follows from this that the Shia could not accept the authenticity of any traditions narrated by the Sahabah or showing them in a good light. Neither will the Shia accept any tradition which contradicts Shi’i theology, such as temporary marriage, even if the purported narrator had been Ali. For Shi’is, ahadith are usually transmitted through their Twelve Imams, the true successors of the Prophet, as opposed to the Sunni Caliphs. Even among Shi’ites themselves, there were fabricated traditions.
It can be seen that Islam had an early problem with the question of the authenticity of texts. Granted, we are dealing here with Hadith, rather than Qur’an, but as we have seen, the Sunnah interprets the Qur’an, and acts as a secondary source of authority. Invariably, Muslims refer to their authority as the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Hence, it is openly confessed that in their history they had problems with those who engaged in corruption of text, especially when we consider the mutual accusations of Sunnis and Shia on this issue. Given the correlation of the Books of God, it is not surprising that they assume the same is true of the Christian holy texts. Consider the problem of isnad. The Gospels are not written by Jesus Himself, but by others. This is not so insurmountable, since the authors were involved with Jesus and His ‘Companions’, but Muslims have encountered liberal Biblical scholarship which questions the authenticity of the traditional authorship of the gospels. Hence the chain of transmission is questioned. This is even more true with respect to the epistles of Paul, who was not at all associated with the earthly ministry of Jesus, and who did not write gospels, but epistles on his apostolic authority. Muslims do not take seriously his Damascus Road experience. Secondly, the issue of matn arises. We saw earlier with respect to criteria for soundness that the tradition must not contradict the Qur’an or any other sound tradition. This is true for both Sunnis, and Shia. As I stated in my earlier paper, The Attitude of the Qur’an and Sunnah to the Christian Scriptures, the Gospels appear to Muslims to be of the characteristics of Hadith literature. In this case, the Christian ‘hadiths‘ (as Muslims would see them) do not agree with the Qur’an. The New Testament is therefore judged unreliable.
5. Shi’ism and the Qur’an
5.1 Shi’ism – Origins and Politics
The essential distinction between Sunnis and Shia is their concept of the Imamate and its restriction to the Alids, the House of Ali. Shi’is claim their Imams, being the descendants of Muhammad through his daughter Fatima, to be the true successors of the Prophet. Ali is held to be the only genuine successor of Muhammad. After the death of Muhammad, Medinese Muslims assembled to appoint one of their number to the succession, but Abu Bakr arrived and successfully argued for a Meccan member of the Quraysh tribe as Caliph, and he himself duly received this honour. Shi’is argue that since so much of Abu Bakr’s claims relied upon the issue of kinship, the person with the strongest claim was Ali. It follows from this that later Sunni caliphs like Muwaiya and Yazid were guilty of sin in attacking the House of Ali. The implication is that Ali was to be both the chief aide of Muhammad and his successor. Another text echoes this, and it is important since it reflects the actions of Muhammad after the Farewell Pilgrimage of Muhammad in 632 which in Shi’i eyes designated Ali as the successor of Muhammad, and by implication, indicates that those who appointed or took the position of authority were guilty of rebellion against the Prophet and thus apostasy.
The word translated ‘patron’ in the hadith is Mawla, a strong term which is better rendered as ‘lord’ or ‘guardian’; it is used of God Himself. As with the previous text, this hadith is accepted by both Sunnis and Shia alike, and implies, in the eyes of Shia, that Ali was his designated successor and was recognized in this by Umar , the Caliph preceding Ali. Because the succession went someone other than Ali, it naturally follows that Abu Bakr, Umar and ‘Uthman were guilty of rebellion against Islam, since the faith is partly defined as obedience to the Apostle. Shi’is have an intense and emotional love for Ali and his two immediate successors Hasan and Hussain. All Muslims revere the memory of Muhammad’s grandsons. The implication is that those who oppose the House of Ali are guilty of opposing Muhammad, and thus God Himself. The text is so-employed by Shi’is. Moreover, what was said about the relationship of Ali to Muhammad is also stated about Hussain, the son of Ali, and the same is said of his brother Hasan. It follows that those who martyred Hussain were guilty of opposing Islam.
5.2 Sunni-Shia Conflict and Political Resolution
Since politics and religion are coterminous in Islam, it should not surprise us that throughout Islamic history, there have been frequent conflicts between Sunnis and Shia. In contemporary Pakistan, there have been terrible riots with much loss of life between the two confessions. The militant Sunni group Sipah-i-Sahabah have declared their hatred for the Shia, and the issue of Shia attitude to the Companions and the ‘Uthmanic edition of the Qur’an plays its part in this. One of the difficulties Iran has faced in exporting the Islamic revolution is the fact that it is a primarily Shi’i country. Saudi Arabia, being controlled by the militantly anti-Shia Wahhabi sect of Sunnis has used this in its propaganda against Iran, although the real reason for their mutual hostility is that Saudi Arabia is a conservative regime, widely seen as an American client state, whilst Iran is a radical, anti-imperialist Government. The largely Sunni but pro-Iranian Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, has prided itself on uniting Sunni and Shia. Its late leader, Dr. Kalim Siddiqui, had a reputation as an outspoken advocate of uncompromising Islamic radicalism, notably on the Rushdie issue. This impression tended to obscure that he was actually one of the finest Islamic political theorists of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most acute Muslim minds to have arisen in the West to date. A major advantage is that he writes in English, and being a Western-educated political scientist and journalist, his works are easy for Occidental minds to understand. As with Ali Shariati of Iran, and Malcolm X in the USA, his influence in death is likely to exceed that he exercised in life. One area in particular that he made a significant contribution is his understanding of Khomeini’s concept of the Guardianship of the Jurisconsult. The idea that in the absence of the Mahdi, for whose manifestation both Sunni and Shia wait, the ruler of the Islamic State inherits all the political power of the Prophet, as practised by the revolutionary Government in Iran, means that ‘… for all practical purposes, on issues of Leadership, State and politics, there is no longer any difference between the Sunni and Shi’i positions.’
5.3 Sunni Polemics
Since the Sunni-Shia divide was primarily political in origin, the contribution of Khomeini and Siddiqi might indicate that a major bone of contention has been healed, and we can only pray that the peaceful relations the two Islamic sects have enjoyed in Britain and the West will continue. However, the divide encompasses more than political considerations. A relatively minor problem is that Shi’is do not believe the Qur’an is uncreated. The Shia, because they hold that the activeattributes of God, such as speaking, are not eternal, believe that the Qur’an, as the ‘speech’ of God, is created. To Shia, the Sunni view borders on polytheism. A major difficulty is that Sunni and Shi’i polemicists accuse each other of corrupting the Qur’an. Saudi Arabia has printed a number of anti-Shia booklets in English in recent years which allege that the Shi’is make this claim about the Sunnis – that the latter have tampered with the text by excising verses. For example, the Jamaican-Canadian Muslim convert, Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, one of the most respected Islamic scholars in the West, has translated anti-Shia works which make this assertion, especially about the ‘missing’ Surah concerning Ali, Surah Wilaya, that the Shi’is are supposed to allege was excised from the Qur’an. A further claim is that Shi’is believe that yet another chapter Surah Nurain (forty-one verses), the ‘Chapter of the Two Lights’ (i.e. Muhammad and Ali) was removed. Sunnis allege that Shi’is believe that the authentic copy of the Qur’an, compiled by Ali, is in the hands of the Twelfth Imam and will be presented by him when he returns as Mahdi. In the meantime, Shi’is use the ‘Uthmanic Qur’an, but they interpret it in the light of their Hadith collections, which reinterpret texts in the Sunni edition of the Qur’an after a Shia fashion. According to Sunni polemicists, a Shi’i hadith purportedly states:
Jabir says, ‘I heard Imam Baqar… saying: One who says that he has collected the whole Quran is a big liar’.
It goes on to state:
‘Only Ali and the Imams collected it all and preserved it.’
It is noteworthy that even a respected Orientalist scholar such as Montgomery Watt echoes this belief.
The Shi’a, it is true, has always held that the Qur’an was mutilated by the suppression of much which referred to ‘Ali and the Prophet’s family. This charge… is not specially directed against ‘Uthman, but just as much against the first two caliphs, under whose auspices the first collection is assumed to have been made.
Shi’is deny these accusations, and state that they uphold the veracity of the present edition. The great Shi’i scholar Shaykh Saduq, (919-991 A. D.), stated (and with this agree the Shi’i scholars Allama Ridha Mudhaffar and Sayyid al-Murtadha)
Our belief is that the Qur’an, which God revealed to His Prophet Muhammad (is the same as) the one between the boards (daffatayn).
Jafri comments:
… the text of the Qur’an as it is to be found in the textus receptus,… is accepted wholly by the Shi’is, just as it is by the Sunnis. Thus the assertion that the Shi’is believe that a part of the Qur’an is not included in the textus receptus is erroneous.
5.4 Shi’i Qur’anic Beliefs
5.4.1 Emendations?
However, it appears that at times, whilst Shi’is agree that nothing has been added, some have indeed felt references to Ali have been excised. In Majlisi’s Hadith collection, S. 3:33′ adds ‘family of Muhammad‘ to the text. Surah 25:28 is apparently changed to read in Ali’s copy of the Qur’an, which will one day be revealed, ‘O would that I have not chosen the second as a friend‘, ‘the second’ referring to Abu Bakr, who was the second in the cave after Muhammad’s emigration from Mecca.. S. 3:110 is purportedly emended to read ‘You are the best of Imams‘, substituting ‘imma‘ (‘imams’) for ‘umma‘, (‘peoples’). Hence, even if Shi’is use the ‘Uthmanic recension of the Qur’an, their hadiths essentially emend it.
5.4.2 Allegorical verses
Linked to this is the issue of allegorical verses. S. 3:7 speaks of such verses, and the issue is specifically addressed in the Hadith. The division of these verses is called explicit or clear – in Arabic, mukham. The other kind are called mutashabih – implicit or allegorical. The first are held to be incapable of misinterpretation, whilst the second are not. The mukham verses have only one dimension, and are clear in meaning, the mutashabih are known only to God (in the eyes of Sunni scholars), have more than one dimension and require further explanation. The former include issues such as halal and haram,punishments, etc., whereas the latter deal with the divine nature, life after death, and similar concerns. Shi’is believe that the mutashabih verses actually have a deeper, mystical meaning, and that only the infallible Imams, recipients of divine guidance, had true knowledge of the latter kind. Since only Shi’i hadiths reveal this information, it could be argued that, in effect, Shi’is and Sunnis read something different from each other when they study the Qur’anic text, even if it is the ‘Uthmanic recension.
5.4.3 Textual Order
What does seem to be the case, is that Sunnis and Shia differ over the order of verses in the Qur’an. No-one denies that the present edition of the Qur’an is not in the same order as it was revealed. However, Sunnis believe that
Both the order of the ayat within each sura and the arrangement of the surat were finally determined by the Prophet under guidance from the Angel Gabriel in the year of his death, when Gabriel twice came to revise the text with him.
It is noteworthy, however, that von Denffer offers as the determining evidence for this assertion the statement of ‘Uthman that
… in later days, the Prophet used to, when something was revealed to him, call someone from among those who used to write for him and said: Place these ayats in the sura, in which this and this is mentioned…
Another Sunni scholar states of Muhammad with respect to textual order:
It is logical to suppose that there must have been a certain order in which he read all the verses. The Prophet also used to direct scribes as to the positioning of verses and Surahs in the Qur’an.
He goes on to refer to traditions mentioning the positioning of the last verse in the Qur’an, concerning usury. Hence, the question of textual order is crucial for Islam. According to Sunnis, the actual order is the result of divine inspiration – it is part and parcel of the Qur’an itself. Shi’is, however, deny that the ‘Uthmanic edition is true as regards its sequential order. We noted earlier the Sunni accusation about the Shi’i views of the compilation of the present text. However, Shi’is state that what their hadith actually says is the following:
I heard Abu Jafar (AS) saying: ‘No one (among ordinary people) claimed that he gathered the Quran completely in the order that was revealed by Allah except a liar; (since) no one has gathered it and memorized it completely in the order that was revealed by Allah, except ali ibn Abi Talib (AS) and the Imams after him (AS)’ (Usul al-Kafi, Tradition 607)
Hence, Shi’is utter the obvious truism
… the Quran that we use which was compiled by the companions is not in the sequence that has been revealed. In fact, the Sunni scholars confirm that the first Chapter… was Chapter al-Iqra’ (al-Alaq, Ch. 96)… Muslims agree that the verse (5:3) was among one of the last revealed… yet it is not toward the end of the present Quran. This proves that although the Quran that we have available is complete, it is not in the order that has been revealed.
The Qur’an which is in the correct order according to Shi’is is that of Ali, the first Imam and son-in-law of Muhammad. They hold that he was the first to compile the Qur’an. The Sunni polemicist Salamah agrees that Ali was one of the scribes, but only of the later, Medinan revelations. The Shi’is retort by claiming that the changed order of the Qur’an was the result of either deliberate purpose or ignorance on the part of the Companions. It is significant that von Denffer records the words of ‘Uthman as regards the question of order. Regarding ‘Uthman as they do, it is clear that they cannot accept the veracity of his statement, and they would be naturally suspicious of his edition. It is significant that a Sunni scholar such as von Denffer states that Ali wrote a copy of the Qur’an, which is held in Najaf, Iraq. Another Sunni writer, Suhaib Hasan, states
Ali had his own personal copy of the Qur’an in which he recorded Surahs in their chronological order. This was only one individual copy, and the accepted text of the Qur’an was that prepared by the first two Caliphs.
It is thus clear that Sunni and Shia agree that the Alid Qur’anic text is distinct from that of ‘Uthman at least as to order, and since textual order is an issue of revelation, we can recognize the seriousness of this division in Muslim minds. However, Ali’s text also included commentary and hermeneutical information from Muhammad
… some of which had been sent down as revelation but NOT as part of the text of Quran. A small amount of such texts can be found in some traditions in Usul al-Kafi… Thus the commentary verses and Quranic verses could sum up to 17000 verses.
This is crucial with respect to the issue of interpretation. Shia believe that Imams are the infallible interpreters of the Qur’an. According to this belief, they alone have the divinely-revealed hermeneutic and commentary on the text, as well as the proper order of the text. The transcript remains hidden in the possession of the Twelfth Imam until his manifestation. The concept is strange to Christian minds. The nearest parallel is in Apocalyptic literature, e.g. Rev. 17:7, where an angel explains the meaning of a vision. Obviously, if the Alid Qur’anic appendices are part of the inspiration accompanying the text, if the Sunnis do not possess this, they are lacking the fullness of revelation, and if the revelations are rejected, it could be argued that the Sunni Caliphs are somewhat less than faithful Muslims. Indeed, Shi’is claim Ali presented this transcript to the caliphs, but they rejected it. Tabataba’i echoes this, and appeals to the need for Muslim unity as the reason for his acquiescence. Ali then quoted S. 3:187 against them. On this basis, Shia accuse Sunnis of tahrif in the sense of displacing a verse or corrupting its meaning in the same way as the Jews did.
This, however, is not the end of the matter. The extra revelation Ali possessed disclosed the identity of the abrogated and abrogating verses, and also revealed the Mutashabih verses. Inevitably, this means that whilst the text of the ‘Uthmanic recension is complete, not only its order but the knowledge of the genre of each verse, as well as the scholarship of Sunni theologians as to these vital issues is somewhat off-beam. It is not hard to see why the issue raises the passions it does. Essentially, Sunnis see Shi’i claims as heretical fantasy, and both accuse each other of distortion.
A further point to consider in this regard is that the Shia claim that their assertions on the question of order are supported by some Sunni references on the issue. As we have previously seen, Aisha, one of Muhammad’s wives, narrated an incident in which reference was made to this. In particular, the collection of Abdullah ibn Mas’ud, one of the Prophet’s acknowledged reciters indicates variance of order, which is significant because he claimed to know the exact order of verses. His collection was distinct, as we have seen previously. However, the Shia use this to berate ibn Mas’ud since they claim that he asserted that the last two chapters of the Qur’an were not true Surahs, but merely prayers! Similarly, Shi’is point to Sunni ahadithwhich assert the incompleteness of the Qur’an. It should be noticed that the references to the ‘two valleys’ in Sahih Muslimare not in the Qur’an but there are further references in the Hadith. Likewise, Shi’is point to a sound Sunni tradition which relates Caliph Umar speaking of a verse of stoning in the Qur’an, despite the fact that there is no such verse in the present edition. Further, Shi’is assert that ‘Uthman, the Caliph who ordered the definitive collation of the Qur’an, was also guilty of mentioning the existence of Qur’anic verses which do not exist.
This is one reason Shi’is regard the Companions as perverters of the faith. Shi’is attack them anyway for engaging in innovation – departing from the path of the Prophet, which is essentially heresy. For example, ‘Uthman extended the journey prayer which Muhammad had shortened, and he changed the rules for pilgrimage. As a consequence of this, they necessarily are suspicious of the collections under Abu Bakr and ‘Uthman, especially since the Caliphs rejected the transcript of Ali, and in the case of ‘Uthman, burnt variant readings. This helps to explain the psychology of Muslim attacks on the Christian Scriptures. They emanate from a milieu in which accusations and counter-claims concerning textual corruption in some form or another have been advanced within the Muslim community against each other. It is not surprising that Christians are likewise targeted, because Shi’is see the actions of Sunni caliphs as both parallel to the historical practices of the People of the Book, and fulfilment of prophecy in this regard:
AbuSa’id al-Khudri
SAHIH AL-BUKHARI
The Prophet (peace b upon him) said, ‘You will follow the ways of those nations who were before you, span by span and cubit by cubit (i.e. inch by inch) so much so that even if they entered a hole of a mastigure, you would follow them.’
We said, ‘O Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him)! Do you mean the Jews and the Christians?‘ He said, ‘Whom else?’ (Emphasis mine)
Conclusion
What was said earlier about the relationship between theology, history and psychology needs to be reiterated. As can be seen from the often harsh words Sunnis and Shia sometimes use against each other in regard to their respective hadithcollections and the collation of the Qur’an, the attacks on the text and canon of the Bible to a large extent reflect an internal dispute between Muslims on similar issues. Family disputes are often the most bitter, and since Christians are part of the ‘Abrahamic’ prophetic family, along with Sunnis, Shia, and Jews in the eyes of Muslims, it is unsurprising that the terrible hostility that has characterized internal Islamic conflicts spills over to us as well.
Of course, this is not the only reason for Christian-Muslim difficulties with respect to the Bible. The political conflicts of the Middle Ages, especially the Crusades, the colonialism of the nineteenth century, and Western domination of the current Muslim world have all intensified passions, especially since the Gulf War and the Bosnian conflict. Muslims see no difference between religion and politics, so they are inclined to see the actions of the Belgrade or the Tel Aviv regimes as evidence of the corruption of Christian and Jewish holy texts. In this respect, they tend to see Christian evangelistic work in the same light as the massacres at Srebenica or Qana – as acts of aggression, intended to destroy the Muslims. People who are prepared to commit genocide are quite likely to be capable of anything, and certainly would not shirk to engage in deceit. It is in this light we should understand why they can imagine that the ridiculous stories Muslim polemicists publish about the Council of Nicaea and the canon of the New Testament are true.
The main reason, however, is that Muslims see themselves, or more especially Muhammad, as the eschatological fulfilment of the predictions of the previous scriptures. They affirm the unity of the Abrahamic prophets. Since, however, the Jewish-Christian holy texts differ from that of Islam, it follows that Jews and Christians must be the black sheep of the Abrahamic family. They must have distorted their scriptures, and done so in a parody of the action of ‘Uthman to establish confessional unity. In order to answer them, we must ‘speak the truth in love’, explaining what actually occurred in the realm of canonicity. To do so effectively, we must understand their own textual and canonical history, and how it affects their perceptions of Christian canonicity.
Bibliography
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A. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary, Leicester, The Islamic Foundation, 1975
Al-Afghaanee, Dr Ahmad, The Mirage in Iran, trans. A. A .B. Philips, Abul-Qasim Publishing House, Saudi Arabia, 1985
Ayoub, Mahmoud, Islam – Faith and Practice, Open Press, Toronto, 1989
Bucaille, Maurice, The Bible, the Qur’an and Science, North American Trust Publications, USA, 1978
Campbell, William, The Qur’an and the Bible in the light of history and science, Arab World Ministries, USA, 1986
Deedat, Ahmad, Is the Bible God’s Word?, 1987 UK reprint, Islamic Propagation Centre, Birmingham
von Denffer, Ahmad, ‘Ulum al-Qur’an, , Islamic Foundation, Leicester, 1983
Dimashkiah, Abdul Rahman, Let the Bible Speak, International Islamic Publishing House, Riyadh, 1995
Doi, A. Rahman, Introduction to the Qur’an, Hudahuda Publishing Company, Nigeria, 1981
Doi, A. Rahman I., Introduction to the Hadith, Arewa Books, 1981, Ibadan, Nigeria
Ghiyathuddin Adelphi, and Hahn, Ernest, The Integrity of the Bible according to the Qur’an and the Hadith, Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies, Hyderabad, India, 1977
Guillaume, A., Ibn Ishaq’s Life of Muhammad, 9th impression, OUP, Pakistan, 1990
Ismaeel, Saeed, The Difference between the Shi’ites and the majority of Muslim scholars, World Assembly of Muslim Youth, Riyadh, 1988 edition.
Jafri, S, Husain M., Origins and Early Development of Shi’a Islam, Longman, London and New York, 1979
Maududi, S. Abul A’la, The Meaning of the Qur’an, Islamic Publications Ltd., Lahore, 1993 edition.
Momen, Moojan, An Introduction to Shi’i Islam, Yale Univ. Press, !985, New Haven and London.
Philips, Abu Ameenah, Ibn Taymeeyah’s Essay on The Jinn, Tawheed Publications, Riyadh, 1989
Pickthall, Muhammad Marmaduke, The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an, Nusrat Ali Nasri for Kitab Bhavan, 1784, Kalan Mahal, Daryaganj, New Delhi, New Delhi-110 002, India, 5th Reprint 1993 (first published in Hyderabad, 1930).
Ruthven, Malise, Islam in the World, Penguin, London, 1984, 1991
Salamah, Dr Ahmad Abdullah, The Sunni and Shia Perspective of the Holy Qur’an, Abul-Qasim Publishing House, Saudi Arabia, 1992.
Siddiqi, Kalim, Stages of Islamic Revolution, Open Press (UK) Limited, London, 1996
Suhaib Hasan, An Introduction to the Qur’an, Al-Qur’an Society, London, 1989.
Tabataba’i, ‘Allamah Sayyid M. H., The Qur’an in Islam: Its Impact and Influence on the Life of Muslims, Zahra publications, London, 1987
The Holy Bible, New International Version, New York International Bible Society, Zondervan Corporation, Grand Rapids, USA, Eleventh Printing July 1980.
Tisdall, Rev. W. St. Clair, The Sources of Islam, T. & T Clark, Edinburgh
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Watt, Montgomery W., Introduction to the Qur’an, EUP, Edinburgh, 1970, 1977
The Secular Experience of God
Kenneth Cragg
By Kenneth Cragg
Published by Gracewing – Christian Mission and Modern Culture Series 1998 (74pp)
Reviewed by Jenny James
As a missionary-theologian and possibly Britain’s most creative Islamicist, Cragg is well-placed to describe how the three major Abrahamic religions do and might accommodate themselves to ‘secularity’ or ‘secularization’ – he uses both terms which are not entirely interchangeable. ‘Secularity interrogates them’, he writes. ‘ It is a vast commonizer, searching and shattering their privacies and presenting them all, alike and differently, with duties to their populations, their demographic factors, their political forms, and their economic obligations.’ Yet, while Christianity has had to come to terms with ‘the negligibility of God’ in those very societies for which it is particularly responsible, Islam on the other hand has the greatest problems. ‘What still remains mandatory to the Islamic mind is that this religious faith assumes, desires, and proceeds by state-and-power expression’ he writes 1.
That Islam now exists everywhere in a minority situation – contrary to its own instinct and establishment – is to say that it is already ‘de-Islamized’. That is because ‘Mohammed was his own Constantine’ 2. ‘The post-Hijra Islamic “establishment” at Yathrib (Medina) was an amalgam of faith and power so strong that apostasy from the one was treason tothe other. Submission to divine revelation meant submission to its power expression in the Ummah and Dawlah of Islam.’ And of the Islamic expansion: ‘The sanction was power in concert with preaching. Islam was thus the most political of all the great religions, and that without inhibition or any sense of compromise. Indeed, the logic of Muhammad’s Hijrah was precisely the legitimacy of religious power and the powered legitimacy of religion.’
How therefore can it adapt to modern realities and remain true to itself? Cragg is hopeful – but only by quoting those academics like Shabbir Akhtar and Fazlur Rahman who have been forced into a kind of exile from Islamic states – Malaysia and Pakistan respectively – where their work is anathema.
That being said, Cragg courageously and necessarily wrestles with the co-existence of different religio-political instincts within the modern context. He does this first by helpfully separating out two different definitions of ‘secularity’. He distinguishes between ‘secular’ as describing a state or society in which religious allegiance might freely vary within a common citizenship and share common civil and political rights ‘equally’, and secondly, ‘secular’ denoting a condition or attitude of mind that rejects or ignores divine transcendent reference altogether.’ i.e. ‘…there is only us’. He sees with the penetration of the long-practiced missionary the pathos and even the necessity of that denial, given the self-kenosis (a kind of denial, says Cragg) of God Himself. Yet, if the most deeply religious things – liberty, honesty and compassion – lead inevitably to privatization, since they cannot be coerced, what becomes of society’s cohesion, to those ‘norms, values and traditions by which alone bodies politic and social identify and know themselves?’ 3. The way the faiths answer this question will determine the future of the world.
While Cragg articulates the question with a rare sensibility for the yearning and integrity that is at the heart of the ‘secular mind’, his answers are surprisingly vague and unsatisfactory, given the enormity of what confronts him. And that is probably down to the unfamiliarity of the theologian and pastor with the disciplines of politics and sociology. It is not good enough to do as he does and consign those with more precise ideas to the lumpen category of ‘rigorists’, and ‘enforcers’. To see with Berger the religions’ role in ‘world-building’ is not to be a religious militarist. It is to examine the hard evidence that secular liberalism has already provided of its inability to safeguard both religious freedom and truth. 4. Cragg’s answer to the contest of faiths for political legitimacy lies in ‘state neutrality’ – a term he leaves totally unexamined as indeed he does the term ‘equal rights’:
‘this… political-national structure of religion can be secularized in the legal sense without that in any necessary way implying or requiring secular abandonment of religious belief, ritual, and practice. It has already been stressed that the secular state concept can, and should, be emphatically distinguished from any making irreligious of society. It is entirely valid to combine a system in which the state is neutral in respect to freedom and faith-allegiance, with some continuing tradition of faith, worship and religion.
There is a significant body of work by academic lawyers that demonstrates that the state is not, nor can be ‘neutral in respect to freedom and faith-allegiance.’ Different religions have already been granted lop-sided legal dispensation in respect to how they perceive their needs and their earthly trajectories. Cragg however side-steps the practical realities when he writes: ‘The case made here is that a single religion could properly continue to play the major role in the spirituality of secular statehood, on condition that it respected and recruited the contribution of faiths present in the body politic but not hitherto sharing its historic definition or its cultural assumptions…’ While he can see the disconcerting political logic of pluralism, and how asymmetrical are the different traditions in their treatment of minorities, it is not good enough to assume that this is simply a question of ‘spirituality’. What, without legal and constitutional underpinning, does that actually amount to? How does one contend for the ‘truth’ in the public domain except in practical, political terms? As Sanneh so penetratingly writes: ‘The secular programme for religious pluralism has focused primarily on rescinding the claims of Christian uniqueness, a strategy that lowers the threshold for the religious uniqueness represented by other religions, and opens the way for Muslim radicalism 5’.
Cragg’s approach is typically complacent: he assumes that ‘our’ type of body politic would go on because it has always gone on. As if those who seek to safeguard the religion that undergirds secularity are merely ‘those of a certain mentality’ and can therefore be banished to the margins of debate. The Cross is the clue, as much for Cragg as for Newbigin. However, unlike Newbigin who sees the Cross as the symbol of a struggle that cannot resort to violence, Cragg finds it in a kind of self-abnegation that cannot resort to politics. ‘Mission’, he says, ‘is done with the God of patience in a secularity thoroughly refusing… its sacred meanings’. It will be ‘guided by the clue we have studied concerning what that patience is as measured in the Cross…’ as ‘a mission that will kindle into life this perception in order to interrogate its neglect.’ One only has to look to the state of the church in its former heartlands – predictions abound that there will soon be no more Christians at all in the Holy Land – and the centuries-long spiritual deep-freeze over north Africa, where Tertullian and Augustine once strode, to ask: how much ‘interrogation of neglect’ is conducive of the common good? Shouldn’t we rather take up a Cross that is integral to the daily struggle of public, political witness and action than a Cross of our own inertia?
As Sanneh says: ‘The issue… has to be faced that the development of a democratic West was conceivable at all by virtue only of its Christian classical and Puritan developments, more specifically, by virtue of those marks… works and motives that belong with the… influence of the gospel. What is plain now is that society cannot be content with drawing on the reserves of Christian moral capital without attention to replenishing the source’ 6. That demands political will.
p. 17
p. 16
p. 6
See Newbigin, Sanneh and Taylor, 1998
1998:65
p.71
When Fear is a Crime
Jenny James
By Jenny James – March 1997
Stereotyping Islam should be made a criminal offence, says a new report.
The Runnymede Trust, a liberal think-tank on race relations says the British so hate Muslims and Islam as they perceive them that both need special protection in law.
The report – a consultation exercise leading to a major publication in November 1997 – uses a word so new to define the problem that it is not in the latest – 1995 – edition of the Oxford English dictionary.
Yet “Islamophobia”, thought to have been coined by a Muslim researcher at the Policy Studies Institute, has existed in western countries and cultures for several centuries,’ claims the report.
Defined as “dread or hatred of Islam and Muslims” it has become “particularly dangerous”, and “must be tackled with great urgency”, it says.
Chief among the phobics it identifies are other liberals, namely Fay Weldon, the UK’s leading female author and feminist who is furious at being nobbled by what she calls a term of political correctness’.
They single out her monograph Sacred Cows (1989) written after the fatwah on Rushdie, in which she described the Qur’an as food for no-thought. It is not a poem on which society can be safely or sensibly based. It gives weapons and strength to the thought-police.’
Other targets are the Roman Catholic chat show host, Robert Kilroy-Silk who described Muslims as “backward and evil” in a Daily Express article, the Jewish columnist Bernard Levin, and Patrick Sookhdeo who campaigns for persecuted Christians overseas.
Weldon railed to Third Way: “If to object when one’s friend and colleague is sentenced to death by a foreign power is islamophobic, then yes and certainly”.
“If to make a comment on the Qur’an is, and to say I don’t think it is a proper document to base a modern society on, then call me what you like!”
The report is the work of Runnymede’s “Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia’, which numbers Richard Chartres, Bishop of London and Ian Hargreaves, editor of the New Statesman among its members, as well as leading figures from other faiths and academia.
Philip Lewis, the Bishop of Bradford’s adviser on inter-faith relations who is both a Trustee and a member of the Commission, says Christians should welcome the fall out among liberals which the report represents.
Slamming Weldon’s comments as “religious illiteracy’, he told Third Way: “One of the most sophisticated societies in history was Muslim Spain. Fay Weldon is talking arrogant nonsense.”
He said the report was indicting such members of the liberal intelligentsia for their anti-religious sentiments.
“If that can contribute to a climate where religion is taken seriously in the public domain, that’s all to the good.”
The report draws a line between legitimate criticism of Muslims and Islam, and phobic’ generalisations.
Seven features of “Islamophobic discourse” would be the subject of new guidelines particularly for journalists, employers and foreign policy makers, unless there is sufficient uproar to block it:
1)Muslim cultures seen as monolithic and unchanging 2)Claims that Muslim cultures are wholly different from other cultures 3)Islam perceived as implacably threatening 4)Claims that Islam’s adherents use their faith mainly for political or military advantage 5)Muslim criticisms of Western cultures and societies rejected out of hand 6)Fear of Islam mixed with racist hositility to immigration 7)Islamophobia assumed to be natural and unproblematic “Confidence-building measures”, says the report, could enable Muslims to play a full part in political, intellectual, economic and cultural affairs.
“We are in the middle of a process so we have not come to a conclusion, but I think it may well press for incitement to religious hatred possibly to replace blasphemy, initially to protect Muslims”, says Lewis.
Research is beginning to show how particularly Pakistani Muslims have become demonised’ in the way the Irish were for 400 years up to Vatican II. Other research is showing how Britain’s ordinary Muslims have been marginalised and hidden in ghettos, under a a cloak of multiculturalism’. The Church has been quietly acting as brokers’ between them and wider society, on issues such as schooling, prison chaplains, civic celebrations and legal matters.
Lewis – whose book Islamic Britain has been widely acclaimed by sociologists – accuses liberal intellectuals of being locked into an individualist mode of being’ and asserts: “Identity is wrapped up with religious belonging.”
Christians should welcome a document that pointed out some of the crass ignorance of the intellectuals who talk about religion, he added.
“That won’t do any more. If we are going to have a fairly critical dialogue across religious communities, it’s not going to happen if it’s OK to be abusive about another person’s religious tradition. It’s not going to create a climate where we can take each other seriously and disagree with one another.”
Key Muslim lobby groups like the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs have been pressing for some years for an extension to the 1976 Race Relations Act to include discrimination on religious grounds.
They are also pushing for English law to recognise aspects of the shariah, now widely practised unofficially in variant forms throughout the country.
They gave a cautious welcome to the Islamophobia document, although the Muslim Parliament’s spokesman, Massoud Shadjareh, in the Muslim weekly Q News, accused the Commission of cherry picking’ its membership to exclude all but the most compromising figures in the community.’
Such comments do little to dispel what Weldon describes as a nervousness at saying the words Satanic Verses.
“I don’t think the way to peace is through understanding one another. I think we have tried that for 100 years and it hasn’t worked. If you come here because you like the schools or the jobs, or whatever reason you want to be here, then join in and try and make it a better sort of place.”
But joining in’ on Weldon’s terms means privatising your faith – which clearly won’t work for people whose legal and social profile is religious.
Theologian Lesslie Newbigin will say in a forthcoming book that the State needs to affirm more decisively its debt to Christianity if secularism is to remain tolerant of diversity.
He told Third Way: “This pamphlet is disappointing from a body with the reputation which the Runnymede Trust has. It fails to address the central issue: it does not recognise the real challenge which Islam is posing to our whole secular society and it simply keeps it on the level of “let’s avoid a punch up” which of course we would all agree with, but it does not really address the serious issues.”
“Certainly condemn hatred of Muslims, but we won’t effectively deal with that if we don’t face the genuine questions which Islam raises for our secular society, such as what, if anything, is the reason for our life together, many of which are also questions Christians must raise.”
When the Liberal Conscience Fails
Jenny James
By-line: JENNY JAMES
This article originally appeared in “The Third Way”, March 1996
Discrimination on grounds of religion is wrong, most Christians would agree. No-one should be victimised because of their beliefs. But is it as simple as that?
A new booklet was published in May 1996 by the British Government, advising minorities on how to cope with religious discrimination. It was produced as an emollient in response to pressure to change the law about racism, and recognise religious discrimination as a greater problem to those whose skins are brown but whose religion, they believe, is perceived as the greater ‘threat’.
Since the complaints about discrimination are coming from Islamic activists who have been unable to furnish evidence that it’s actually happening, some suspect a subtler, political agenda: an attempt to be recognised as a bigger group that cuts across race and is better able to command the debate.
Muslims have won concessions in Britain under the old racism agenda: now they’re seeking legal parity as both a race and a religion along with Jews and Sikhs whom they outnumber seven to one – although Islam, unlike Judaism and Sikhism, spans many races and cultures. To be regarded as Muslim confers more political clout than to be regarded as Bengali or Pakistani.
Called ‘Religious Discrimination: Ways to Challenge It’, the booklet has been put together by the Inner Cities Religious Council – an agency within the Department of the Environment (DOE), run by Anglican vicar David Horn.
The DOE refused to allow the writer to interview Horn, but it is known that the publication follows the government’s failure to endorse a European initiative in October 1995 to extend the 1976 Race Relations Act to include religion.
Britain alone out of the European Community’s 15 member states vetoed an Interior Ministers’ ‘joint action’ in Brussels making it a crime on the British mainland to incite religious hatred or discrimination.
The implications are complex – and ominous. Home Secretary Michael Howard is thought to have ducked out of a vote at the last moment, after representations that Salman Rushdie could have been prosecuted for The Satanic Verses under such a proviso.
The Commission for Racial Equality is uneasy too. Papers leaked to Q News – Europe’s first Muslim weekly – in October 1995 revealed that lawyers regard the measure as ‘neither feasible nor desirable’. They believe it would prove impossible to define religion for the purposes of an Act (do you include Druids? Moonies?) And there are some practices sanctioned or forbidden by religion that society as a whole might legitimately wish to discriminate against, such as polygamy for Muslims and the ban on blood transfusions for Jehovahs’ Witnesses. A 1992 review of the 1976 Race Relations Act spoke of ‘ramifications going well beyond the area of good race relations.’ They want a wider debate.
So what are people worried about? Is this a naive bid for power – the ‘Islamisation of Europe’ that the Islamic Foundation in Leicester speaks of – or more seriously, the beginning of the permanent polarisation of local communities along religious lines?
Massoud Shadjareh, Chairman of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain Human Rights Committee says Muslims are now the largest ethnic minority in Britain and they should be dealt with as such. ‘Our identity is first and foremost religious’, he says.
That challenges the assumptions of secular Britain – where the government lists religion with gambling under ‘leisure activities’ in its annual Abstract of Statistics. Islam functions as a political system, regulating every aspect of life. It is governed by Divine Law – which often contradicts other law in Britain. How would one arbitrate between the two laws if it became illegal to discriminate religiously? One easy way out would be to govern Muslims under Islamic law – but this could lay the groundwork for a kind of sectarianism we have not seen on the British mainland for several hundred years.
This is not far-fetched. Some high-profile Muslim groups have already demanded concessions ranging from recognition of blasphemy, through an Islamic curriculum in mainly Muslim schools, to the outlawing of free comment about Islam and more.
For example, the Manifesto of the Muslim Parliament, published under the name of ex-Guardian journalist Kalim Siddiqi in 1990, declares: ‘The option of integration and assimilation that is on offer as official policy in Britain must be firmly resisted and rejected.’
The Manifesto calls for ‘a no-go area where the exercise of freedom of speech against Islam will not be tolerated.’ Sussex University student union, among others, has already revoked its free speech rule – it must be assumed that religious extremism has had something to do with it – and British history dons examining the origins of Islam have received death threats
Q News – Europe’s first Muslim Weekly – is campaigning for parity with Jews in the public consciousness. ‘We are concerned that you can be accused of being anti-Semitic against Jews, but not against Muslims, although we’re the same race.’
The CRE is flummoxed. A survey of 2,500 minority groups in 1994 failed to find evidence of discrimination that is anything other than racist – and existing law can cope with border-line cases.
An employer who refuses to allow his workers to take leave to celebrate Eid for example – the festival marking the end of Ramadan – can be prosecuted as a racist.
Some Muslim lawyers, however, have a much broader agenda. To be Muslim, they say, is to observe the Shari’ah, Islamic divine law. Your identity as a Muslim cannot be divorced from your obligations to that law. And until English law recognises Muslim ‘religious rights’ in such matters, it remains discriminatory.
The CRE in October 1995 set up a working party under Kashmiri Muslim Kurshid Drabu to look afresh at the question of religious discrimination.
The question of incorporating Shari’ah law within the English legal system as a way of protecting Muslims from each other is also being examined by some lawyers. To refuse would be, in the words of the new politically correct lexicon – assimilationist. A case in point is ‘limping marriages’ to do with polygamy which is legal in Islam, and practised in Britain. It has reached ‘alarming proportions’ in the States. A woman may obtain a divorce from the state, but be denied one by her husband under Shari’ah law. The husband can and frequently does marry again under Muslim polygamy rules, but the wife cannot. She faces rejection and destitution within her own community. Unless the state recognises Islamic divorce or talaq in order to regulate it (a man merely has to pronounce a short verbal formula three times to divorce his wife) – such women have no real protection. And until the state recognises it, argue some, the state is guilty of discrimination.
In a new book published in 1996 Verna Menski, an academic lawyer and expert in ethnic minority law at London University, says that Muslims are operating a kind of legal apartheid anyway.
He says that the state is still closing its eyes to ‘the unpalatable reality’ that many different Asian laws are in full though unofficial, operation on British soil.
Muslims are increasingly asserting their religious values and are willing to challenge the system rather than neglect their religious duties, he says, ‘opening the door to possible conflict over differing norms’.
One alternative is what Muslim lawyers call ‘Angrezi shariah’ – a hybrid obligation system, whereby, for example, a Muslim woman in 1990 successfully sued her former husband who had accused her of not being a virgin on her wedding night. She was awarded £20,000 in recognition of the slur on her and her family ‘bearing in mind the values of her community’.
A more worrying option is what Sebastian Poulter, Reader in Law at Sussex University describes as ‘multi-cultural tolerance’ – a cloak for oppression and injustice within the immigrant communities themselves.
What angers Muslims is a feeling of being dragooned into ‘English public policy’ with its undefined ‘shared values’ which are not actually shared by Muslims.
‘This leads to a situation where the law is divorced from reality and unable to claim the loyalty of the Muslim community – bringing the law into contempt’, says Menski.
Some Muslim academics see the solution to the problem in ‘adjustments’ to the relation between church and state. By this they mean disestablishment, with the monarch becoming ‘defender of faith’ – not just one faith, the removal of bishops from the House of Lords and an end to the ‘predominantly Christian emphasis’ in religious education in state schools.
‘It is clear that norms and values of a Christian background are in a privileged position, whereas those derived from Islam have to fight their way in.’
Writers such as Tariq Modood at the Policy Studies Institute, echoing Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks’ 1990 Reith Lectures, are against disestablishment.
‘The minimal nature of the Anglican establishment, its relative openness to other denominations and faiths seeking a public space and the fact that its very existence is an ongoing acknowledgement of the public character of religion are all reasons why it may seem far less intimidating to the minority faiths than a triumphal secularism’, says Modood in his book, ‘Not Easy Being British.’
And indeed, as the new communities have bunkered down over the last ten years, it has been the largely anti-religious voluntary sector and local authority activists that have helped to dig the trenches.
The consequences are serious. Councillors on local authority race equality committees who yesterday funded mosques as ‘community centres’ today note with regret that many Muslims have ‘marginalised’ themselves by refusing to cooperate within broader community policies. Philip Lewis, the Bishop of Bradford’s Advisor on Race Relations says Bradford has ‘a permanent under-class’ The concept of citizenship is all but redundant. Muslims mistrust secular politics. The time has come for political forums to become religious again.
Nigel Todd, Labour Chair of Newcastle City Council Racial Equality Working Group – a self-confessed atheist – says councillors are getting ‘hurt’ by being called racist every time they resist the exclusivist Islamic agenda.
‘If they don’t get their way they say you are racist. These are politically inspired accusations that are about achieving another agenda. The aggro is ruining people’s lives. Why should we bother any more?’
If the liberal conscience is growing weary, who will fill the breach as communities threaten to splinter for good? Are the churches ready? ‘How blessed are the peacemakers’ is likely to be a text for our times.
Criminalise Religious Discrimination, Say Muslims (Christian Herald Article: Part II)
Jenny James
Byline: JENNY JAMES
Originally appeared in “The Christian Herald” 10th February 1996
Q-News, Europe’s influential first Muslim Weekly newspaper, is campaigning for new legislation to make ‘religious discrimination’ a crime.
The paper, with other Muslim groups, believes religious discrimination and ‘Islamophobia’ are preventing the establishment of Islamic state schools.
They have repeatedly dismissed the Commission for Racial Equality who see the issue as race-based as ‘incompetent’ and ‘secular’.
Said a spokesman for the paper: ‘Some estimates say Muslims are 65% of the total ethnic minority community in Britain now – and we are concerned that you can be accused of being anti-Semitic against Jews, but not against Muslims, although we’re the same race.’
Home Office Minister Michael Howard has so far resisted moves for a law against religious discrimination, despite sympathy in the rest of Europe where race legislation is less effective than in Britain.
The Swiss have recently voted, in a referendum, in favour of a law against religious discrimination.
Michael Howard has asked for more evidence while arguing there is already ‘indirect provision’ under the 1976 Race Relations Act:
Flexibility in workplace clothing was introduced in 1980 to allow for headscarves and trousers to be worn as uniform by women.
In 1992 the company Precision Engineering was found to have indirectly discriminated when saying it did not want to employ any Muslims
A tribunal in 1993 upheld the right of a Muslim worker to take unpaid leave to attend Eid.
Observers note that legislation would have to steer a careful path around practices considered barbaric in British culture – which are considered religious in others: female circumcision and public ritual slaughter for example.
The CRE also believes that the establishment of the Church of England could itself be seen as discriminatory in light of current demographic trends.
At the moment, 26 Anglican Bishops sit in the Upper House as a matter of right although some religious groups, including Muslims, already have more active members.
A new Religious Discrimination Working Party for the Church of England, which has so far met just four times, made representations to the General Synod Policy Committee in March 1996.
Its convenor Christopher Lamb, Anglican Inter-faith Secretary, believes it is ‘far-fetched’ to think legislation could backfire against free speech or wider constitutional issues.
‘I think it would depend on how it’s worded. What is in mind is a law that has to have a victim as is the case with race relations and gender legislation. I don’t think you could argue that the C of E actually makes victims in that way.’
The joint action document which was agreed to by 14 of the 15 European Interior Ministers in Brussels in January 1996 would seek to make a crime ‘public incitement to discriminate… in respect of the group of persons by reference to colour, race, religion or national or ethnic origin.’
Bishop Lessie Newbigin, who referred to ‘the Islamic mission’ in his Gospel and Culture lecture on 1 December 1995 at Kings College, London, said it was important to define discrimination.
‘If it means with respect to housing and healthcare, then of course we are all against it. If it means discrimination that you make claims and counter claims with regards to truth then it destroys all possibility of inter-faith dialogue.’
Some observers see the Qur’an and the Bible as disciminatory and even in some verses inciting to religious hatred, although Lamb discounts the possibility of legal complaints against holy scripture.
He says some religious publications might qualify – especially the anti-Christian videos of South African polemicist Ahmed Deedat, widely distributed from Islamic bookshops around Britain.
‘There is already in existence religious publications which are derogatory and some Christian material is liable to the same judgement,’ says Lamb. ‘We all have to be careful on that score.’
He and others are advising the Archbishop of Canterbury on framing legislation against intentional incitement to religious hatred which would be more workable than has proved the case in Northern Ireland.
Said a spokesman: ‘We are not opposed to such a law in principle, but we recognise that the government of the day would need to be persuaded that a) there is a significant mischief that is not covered by existing laws, and b) that technical problems of providing sufficiently tight definitions can be overcome.’
Meanwhile Michael Howard is busy meeting large numbers of Asian groups in the run-up to the next election.
The Asian business pound is significant to the British economy and Asian votes are going to be important in determining the outcome of the next election.
Says Myant: ‘Our single member constituency system gives ethnic minority power potentially greater weight than it might otherwise have.’
This article is re-printed by kind permission of the “New Christian Herald”.
Muslims Seek Power in Religious Identity (Christian Herald Article: Part I)
Jenny James
Byline: JENNY JAMES
This article originally appeared in “The Christian Herald” – 10th February 1996
Moves to meet the growing demands of Islamic pressure groups to outlaw alleged ‘religious discrimination’ in Britain are not being debated enough despite its far-reaching implications, it’s claimed.
Pressure, particularly from Muslim groups who now make up 65% of all Britain’s ethnic minorities, to be defined by religion rather than race, is mounting.
But the Commission for Racial Equality believes the implications of such legislation are only being discussed in obscure forums at European level – despite significant ramifications.
The issue was raised again at the Madrid Summit in December 1995 at which interior ministers agreed to press for a consensus on extending race law to religion – but the issue, which is of vital significance for British social policy, has gone largely unreported.
Britain has vetoed a ‘joint action’ agreed to by the 14 other members of the European Justice and Home Affairs Ministers Council – a parallel body to the European Commission set up under the Maastricht Treaty.
The matter of most concern to religious groups is the first clause which seeks to criminalise ‘public incitement to discrimination, violence or racial hatred in respect of the group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to colour, race, religion or national or ethnic origin.’
Michael Howard has objected to the words discrimination and religion – which extend existing law – until he is satisfied there is sufficient evidence to show that race relations legislation does not give adequate protection.
Member States would be required to adopt the Joint Action by June 1997 – and John Major said in Parliament on 18 December 1995 that all that stands between the measure and its becoming law are ‘technical issues still being worked out, but I do not envisage that they will cause any great difficulties.’
Says CRE spokesman, Chris Myant: ‘We would like to see a wider public debate – partly because the implications are so wide. We are not in a position to offer advice across this wide range of Muslim questions.
‘These are issues around which society would feel very strongly and it’s important that there be a wider debate. I don’t think there has been yet.’
Muslims believe they have more chance of securing their needs – particularly in education – as a religious group instead of under existing ethnic minority provision.
Says Massoud Shadjareh, Chairman of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain Human Rights Committee: ‘When it comes to our needs like health and housing we are excluded. The Asian umbrella is being addressed but the Muslim community which constitutes the largest ethnic minority is not, and our identity is first and foremost religious.’
There are various issues at stake being tackled in different ways:
incitement to religious hatred
discrimination in terms of the delivery of services and employment
discrimination that implies that one religion is inferior to another.
The CRE, recognising in its 1992 review of the 1976 Race Relations Act that the issue had ‘ramifications going well beyond the area of good race relations’ set up a Project Team to coordinate work around the whole issue in October 1995.
Run by Khurshid Drabu, a Kashmiri Muslim, the team has a three-fold remit including the backing of Max Madden MP’s Private Member’s bill against incitement to religious hatred – which exists in Northern Ireland but not the mainland.
The team will also:
continue to look for suitable test cases to deepen and further understanding of the application of the Race Relations Act in cases which involve elements or religious discrimination
seek to amend the Race Relations Act to clarify where discrimination on religious grounds may constitute indirect racial discrimination
As it stands the law itself gives people who believe they are victims of religious discrimination no automatic rights in law: They must make a complaint on a piece-meal basis by showing someone else has won a similar case, for example, where the CRE can define religious discrimination as racism by another name. And it is pledged to stamp it out – when it can find it.
But say the CRE, their efforts to secure hard evidence have largely failed.
A survey of major religious groups, previous test cases and law centres was carried out in response to pressure from Islamic groups in 1994.
It asked for first and second hand examples of problems being experienced in regards to faith, not covered by existing legislation in terms of jobs and services.
Says Myant: ‘We came back with very little material to show that an individual who was a follower of Islam and who experienced difficulty in getting a job for example, because he was a Muslim, or getting a service could not use existing legislation.
‘Clearly there was a problem for Jehovah’s Witnesses over invasive surgery on children which is prohibited.’
But he adds: ‘I am not quite sure what people mean by religious discrimination and we have to be a little bit careful.’
Observers believe the vexed question of Islamic schools – there are no grant-maintained Islamic schools as yet (1996) – has less to do with religious discrimination, and more to do with the availability of Muslim teachers – and broader integration issues.
Jorgen Nielsen, in the Journal for the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, writes: ‘It is clear that this way forward can never serve more than a minority, even if all the practical obstacles are overcome. This is not, of course, an argument against such schools in principle; so long as the facility exists in law and is used in practice by some religious communities it is invidious to prevent others from making use of the facility.
‘But the Muslim leadership cannot avoid the accusation that they will be racially divisive simply by pointing out that racism is unIslamic… A Muslim school in parts of Birmingham or Bradford would be racially segregated in effect even if not in intent.’
Part two of this article examining the Church’s response to the issue of religious discrimination follows.
This article is re-printed by kind permission of the “New Christian Herald”.