My contribution to a University of Edinburgh Book Panel Review in 2020 is sometimes cited, but the university website where the reviews were posted is no longer functioning. So I've placed it here so it has a weblink to point to when citing it.
University of Edinburgh, Christian-Muslim Studies Network Book Panel
Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy, Anna Bonta Moreland
Reviewed by Charles Tieszen, FRHistS, PhD
Anna Bonta Moreland’s recent book, Muhammad Reconsidered, joins an ever-growing body of literature devoted to Christian assessments of Muhammad’s function and identity. In it, she proposes that, given the Church’s understanding of prophecy, Christians can view Muhammad as ‘a religious prophet’ (p. 34), a recognition that opens a way for the Qur’an to be taken seriously by Christians as a source of knowledge about God.
Prof. Bonta Moreland develops her argument through a carefully plotted structure, moving from the general state of Christian views of Islam in the context of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) to sources for reconsidering his prophethood. That she succeeds in offering a proposal derived primarily from Thomas Aquinas, a source especially revered in the Western Christian tradition, makes her book both a unique and very helpful contribution. Further, the book will be of particular interest to Roman Catholic laity, clergy, and scholars as it places the figure of Muhammad in the natural trajectory of texts produced in relation to Vatican II. Given Prof. Bonta Moreland’s concise and well-presented arguments, the book will also be useful to Christians from other traditions who may not have thought to consider Muhammad and the Qur’an as sources for spiritual wisdom or who might be predisposed to discard Islam and its Prophet out of hand as completely false.
These achievements are noteworthy, but they do not come without certain risks. Helpfully, Prof. Bonta Moreland is aware of these, admitting that accusations of syncretizing religions, colonizing the Qur’an, and Christianizing Muhammad loom (p. 9). In response, she asks that readers ‘give this book a fair hearing’ since Christianity, under the lens of her reconsideration, shows a ‘theological openness to [Islam]’ that renders ‘a Christian reading of the Qur’an’ possible (ibid.). I began Muhammad Reconsidered with suspicions about colonizing the Qur’an and Christianizing Muhammad nearby but anxious to see how Prof. Bonta Moreland would overcome them. As a result, I finished the book with a better knowledge of Thomas Aquinas and a better grasp of how analogical reasoning can strengthen discussions Muslims and Christians have when they encounter one another in theological dialogue. I can affirm Prof. Bonta Moreland’s critiques and admonitions of other scholars like Montgomery Watt, Hans Küng, Kenneth Cragg, David Kerr, Christian Troll, and Jacque Jomier and I can support her thesis as a way beyond their assessments. Nevertheless, I am left wondering if her proposal, despite its strengths, does not go far enough. As a historian of religious thought among Christians and Muslims and as a Christian practitioner of Muslim-Christian dialogue, I find that my suspicions about colonialist readings of the Qur’an and assessments that effectively Christianize Muhammad are not sufficiently assuaged.
My reservations as a historian lead into my concerns for how Prof. Bonta Moreland’s proposal will play out in actual Muslim-Christian encounter. To take the historical bit first, then, the questions of how, exactly, Christian’s ought to respond to and consider Muhammad are not new ones. Probably the first surviving written comment comes as early as 636 when Thomas the Presbyter mentioned in a Syriac chronicle that the Romans had done battle with the ‘Arabs of Muhammad’. Thomas was aware, so it would seem, that Muhammad was at least a military leader.[i] Evidence of theological assessments also surface early. In perhaps 660, Sebeos, an Armenian chronicler, acknowledged that Muhammad was a merchant but that he also presented himself as a religious figure who, Sebeos admitted, turned his followers away from idolatry and toward monotheism.[ii] Sometime in the 720s an account of an East Syrian monk reduced Muhammad to a quasi-Christian and a wise monotheist of marginal significance. In every century thereafter we find texts written in a variety of languages by Christians from a variety of traditions who reflect upon on the role of Muhammad and his relevance, or lack thereof, for Christian thought.[iii] Within the last 100 years, the status of Muhammad was even the subject of numerous Muslim-Christian dialogues.[iv]
Bearing this history in mind, I was perplexed when I first read Daniel Madigan, in an otherwise very perceptive and important essay, begin his remarks by asserting that the question of Muhammad for Christians is ‘without doubt the most avoided question in Muslim-Christian relations’.[v] In fact, the question has been all but avoided, except, as perhaps Prof. Madigan meant to intimate, in the context pertaining specifically to Vatican II. The relevant texts from the Council, particularly Nostra aetate and Lumen gentium, remain important landmarks for how Christians, especially Roman Catholics, ought to regard Muslims and Muslim beliefs. Even so, they do not, perhaps intentionally (p. 31), address Muhammad. Prof. Bonta Moreland makes clear that it is this void in Vatican II discussions that she hopes to fill in Muhammad Reconsidered. She also points to Prof. Madigan’s assertion as a challenge to which she hopes the book will respond (p. 10). While Prof. Bonta Moreland succeeds in offering something of substance with which to fill the noted void left by Vatican II regarding Muhammad, one must wonder about the much wider history of Muslim-Christian encounter and whether or not it affects her thesis.
Aside from texts produced in the twentieth century, Prof. Bonta Moreland makes only a few brief references to the long history of Christian treatments of Muhammad. Most of these appear in endnotes and are relatively generic pointers to other resources. One exception is a note regarding Paul of Antioch, to which I shall return below, and another is a comment she makes regarding Aquinas’ knowledge about Islam. In this latter case, she suggests that since Aquinas worked in a context of crusade, it is understandable that he did not have an affirming estimation of Muhammad. To have offered one would have been ‘countercultural’ and that what Christians have learned about Islam since the medieval period can be likened to advancements in what we now know about biology, astronomy, and history (p. 45). But this is simply untrue. In fact, the sophisticated knowledge that many, though certainly not all, Christians demonstrated about Islam, the Qur’an, and Muslim traditions, knowledge that numerous intellectuals applied to their estimations of Muhammad, is well attested throughout the history of Muslim-Christian encounter (even, in some cases like Paul of Antioch—again, more below—in the context of crusade). Again, one wonders if this historical amnesia about how Christians consistently wrestled with Muhammad in every single century of Muslim-Christian relations imposes upon Prof. Bonta Moreland’s thesis.
One could, for example, consider the remarks of Patriarch Timothy I (d. 823), now well known to scholars. When asked in the late-eighth century by a Muslim caliph what he had to say about Muhammad, Timothy responded eloquently: ‘Muhammad is worthy of all praise . . . he walked in the path of the prophets, and trod in the track of the lovers of God’.[vi] This view of Muhammad is full of great esteem. As such, it is noteworthy and opens a door for Christian consideration of both Muhammad and the Qur’an. Careful inquiry, however, notes that the Patriarch stopped short of actually calling Muhammad a prophet and took great care to acknowledge only that he acted prophet-like in his preaching of monotheism and proscription of evil. As Timothy commented elsewhere in the account of his conversation, Muhammad only really mimicked in his Arabian context what the Hebrew prophets did in theirs. In Timothy’s estimation, Muhammad’s prophet-like qualities prepared the way for Christ.[vii]
This sounds very much like the ‘prophetic instincts’ Prof. Bonta Moreland ascribes to Muhammad (e.g., p. 75, 82). These instincts allow the ‘theoretical possibility that Muhammad spoke prophetically’ (p. 115) but stop short of granting him the ‘full office of prophet’ (ibid.). The distinctions, however, between carrying the title of ‘prophet’ and merely existing at the far edge of prophetic experience (p. 66) constitute different matters, but Prof. Bonta Moreland does not probe the nuances of each category and they are at times seemingly conflated in her book. Would reflection on the wider history of Christian assessments of Muhammad, like that from Patriarch Timothy I, have helped to add needed specificity to the distinctions between being a prophet and merely acting like one?
To take a second example, Paul of Antioch, a thirteenth-century Melkite Bishop of Sidon, argued in his Letter to a Muslim Friend that Muḥammad was a prophet, not one sent to all people, and certainly not to Christians, but to pagan Arabs. In this way, Muhammad was not a universal prophet and his message had limited applicability. Nevertheless, he asserted that Muhammad was sent by God. Prof. Bonta Moreland offers a quick nod to Paul’s interpretation of Muhammad (p. 134, note 21), but does not mention the implications Paul saw for reading the Qur’an. In Paul’s understanding, if Muhammad could be acknowledged as a prophet, even in a limited way, his message, the Qur’an, could be read by Christians. When they read the Qur’an, it could finally be interpreted correctly, which in turn yielded a message that confirmed Christian truth. In the same century, Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Idris al-Qarafi (d. 1285), an Egyptian Maliki jurist, responded to Paul’s letter. The response, ‘Splendid Replies to Insolent Questions’, is a devastating critique of the Bishop’s reasoning and his assessment of Muhammad. A century later, Paul’s letter was edited by an anonymous Christian and redistributed as The Letter from the People of Cyprus. Though amended and rearranged, the author’s assessment of Muhammad and the Qur’an were much the same as Paul’s and the letter fared similarly when read by Muslims. Two Damascene Muslims, the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) and the intellectual Muhammad ibn Abi Talib al-Dimashqi (d. 1327) both wrote treatises in response to The Letter from the People of Cyprus in which they shattered the anonymous author’s argumentation, thoroughly rejected his estimation of Muhammad, and attempted to place the Prophet within a Christian frame of view as a universal prophet with a final revelation that superseded what God previously sent down.[viii]
The two Christians’ letters offer a suggestion not unlike Prof. Bonta Moreland’s: Muhammad is in some ways a prophet and therefore his message can be read by Christians who might find in it, according to their own reading and interpretation, authentic truth. That Muslims would not assent to this is unquestioned but need not detract from the realization that Christians can hear something from Muhammad and his message. That Muslims might deem, as indeed they have done, the inherent logic of such a proposal as inadequate, failing to recognize even a little bit of their Prophet and his message in it, however, might draw the proposal into question and call for greater finesse, something that might have taken place with a longer look at assessments from those like Paul of Antioch and the anonymous editor who followed him. Of course, Prof. Bonta Moreland’s concern is not the long history of Muslim-Christian encounter, but the gaps left by one particular period within it (i.e., post-Vatican II). Nevertheless, looking further back may help to reshape her thesis in ways that would give it greater strength.
Besides history, my other concern is a dialogical one. Prof. Bonta Moreland’s proposal is a convincing argument that changes the way Christians ought to consider Muhammad, which in turn leads to an openness toward the Qur’an. But my struggle has less to do with the affect the proposal can have among Christian readers and more to do with the implications it may have for Muslims. A Christian assessment of Muhammad is an inevitable reduction of his identity and function for Muslims. Prof. Bonta Moreland acknowledges this, especially in her critique of Christian Troll and Jacque Jomier, and she offers analogical reasoning as a method for perceiving the overlapping spaces where Muhammad can exist between Christians and Muslims. While this can help protect against an imperialist pressing of Christian views upon Muslims (p. 117), it nevertheless seeks to make Christian use of Muhammad. The more use is made of him, the less Muslim he becomes and when he is Christianized in this way, he not only ceases to be recognizable to Muslims but he is ever more removed from a dialogical exchange where he might otherwise exist as a guide alongside whom Christians might learn. More acutely, a Christian reading of the Qur’an, especially in the context of so-called ‘private revelation’ (p. 122–132), will, in my mind, inevitably lead to a polite invasion of Muslim space that mines it for its usable resources, discards what cannot or should not be used, and politely returns to Christian space; in other words, it colonizes the Qur’an. The result is that Christians are effectively isolated from Muslims instead of standing by their side. To say little of the horribly negative repercussions that have come from Christians untrained in how to read and interpret the Qur’an—from such efforts we have assessments of Islam as entirely and irretrievably violent, for example—Christians turning to the Qur’an solely to find in it positive, spiritual truths effectively erase Muslims by ignoring how the Qur’an has been read and interpreted by those who claim it as their own. The true safeguard against this cannot be limited to analogical reasoning (p. 117), but should be an argument that affirms Muhammad’s prophetic instinct as one that can be listened to, as Prof. Bonta Moreland has done, but also extended to include Muslims who act as hosts and guide their Christian guests in reading their text. To do so will not leave Christians isolated, but include Muslims as partners and fellow pilgrims who can, to use the language of
Nostra aetate, ‘promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom’.[ix]
[i] Robert G. Hoyland, ‘The Earliest Christian Writings on Muhammad: An Appraisal’, Harald Motzki (ed.), Muhammad: The Issue of the Sources (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 279–280.
[ii] Ibid., 283.
[iii] Relatively recent historical overviews of the topic include Minou Reeves, Muhammad in Europe: A Thousand Years of Western Myth-Making (New York, New York University Press, 2020); Julian Yolles and Jessica Weiss, eds., Medieval Latin Lives of Muhammad (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2018); John Tolan, Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2019), the French translation of which is noted by Bonta Moreland (p. 134, note 18; p. 144, note 9); Clinton Bennett, ‘Christian Perceptions of Muhammad’, Douglas Pratt and Charles Tieszen (eds.), Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, Volume 15: Thematic Essays (600–1600) (Leiden, Brill, 2020); and my forthcoming book, The Christian Encounter with Muhammad: How Theologians Interpreted the Prophet (London, Bloomsbury, 2020).
[iv] See, for example, accounts of dialogues in Richard W. Rousseau, ed., Christianity and Islam: The Struggling Dialogue (Scranton: Ridge Row Press, 1985).
[v] Daniel Madigan, ‘Jesus and Muhammad: The Sufficiency of Prophecy’, Michael Ipgrave (ed.), Bearing the Word: Prophecy in Biblical and Qur’anic Perspective (New York, Church Publishing, 2005), 90.
[vi] See an English translation in Alphonse Mingana, ‘Timothy’s Apology for Christianity’, in Woodbrooke Studies: Christian Documents in Syriac, Arabic and Garshuni, vol. 2 (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons Limited, 1928), 61–62. See also Samir Khalil Samir, The Patriarch and the Caliph: An Eighth-Century Dialogue between Timothy I and al-Mahdi (Provo: Brigham Young University, 2017).
[vii] See analysis in Samir Khalil Samir, ‘The Prophet Muhammad as Seen by Timothy I and Other Arab Christian Authors’, in D. Thomas (ed.), Syrian Christians under Islam (Leiden, Brill: 2001), 93–96; David Thomas, ‘Cultural and Religious Supremacy in the Fourteenth Century’, Parole de l’Orient 30 (2005), 302–304; Charles Tieszen, ‘“Can You Find Anything Praiseworthy in My Religion?”’, in Douglas Pratt, Jon Hoover, John Davies, and John Chesworth (eds.), The Character of Christian-Muslim Encounter (Leiden, Brill: 2015), 132–136; and my remarks in chapter 3, ‘Muhammad as a Retrograde Moses of Minimal Significance: East-Syrian Christians and Public Discussion with Muslims’, in The Christian Encounter with Muhammad.
[viii] For analysis, see the introductory remarks and referenced literature in Rifaat Ebied and David Thomas, eds., Muslim-Christian Polemic during the Crusades: The Letter from the People of Cyprus and Ibn Abi Talib al-Dimashqi’s Response (Leiden: Brill, 2005). My comments on the exchange appear in chapter 8, ‘Muhammad as a Powerless Prophet to the Arabs: Paul of Antioch and Letters Written to Muslims’, in The Christian Encounter with Muhammad.
[ix] Nostra aetate, 3.