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The Qur'an in the light of ChristCan we compromise with the Qur’an?THE QUR’AN IN THE LIGHT OF CHRIST Ron George — a man for whom I have the highest respect — and I will have to agree to disagree on the value of this book. Perhaps my ex-Roman Catholic background has something to do with it, although I strained to be objective when reading this book by a Franciscan scholar. Clearly, the book is written from an RC context. Originally published, it seems, in 1977, it is also somewhat outdated in terms of the contemporary situation of Islam. However, apart from educating non-Muslims about Islam, it has one main objective — to encourage a positive attitude towards Islam and to read the Qur’an with a Christian ‘key’. Exclusivism and sectarianismIts first section details how the author moved from a stridently antagonistic, indeed, what we might now term Islamophobic attitude to a more accommodating position. This is always the danger when dealing with other faiths: we can confuse exclusivism with sectarianism. My worst experience of the latter was as a young man in Belfast in the 1970s when, with a group of friends, I met an infamous ‘Protestant’ (though hardly evangelical) demagogue, who complained that if the troops had not come in 1969, they would have sorted out the problem then — meaning a general pogrom of Catholics. You can guess my feelings as a Catholic. Some evangelicals fall into this Satanic spirit when dealing with Muslims, forgetting that we must love our neighbour, even if we are wronged. The other extreme is to hold that all roads ultimately lead to God — an idea the Bible clearly rejects. The answer to sectarianism is not ecumenism, but rather a theological exclusivism that recognises other people (not religious systems) as being the image of God, and endowed with God-given dignity. This is where Basetti-Sani’s position fails — he collapsed into ecumenism. Of course, his ecumenism is subtle, to see Islam as a stepping stone to Christ. He does this by first of all, appealing to Islam’s belief in Christ’s Second Coming (p.38ff). The problem is that the differences between the Christian and Islamic doctrines of the Parousia preclude such a vision. The Islamic Jesus resembles Muhammad more than the biblical Christ. Jesus descends to Damascus, goes to Palestine to kill the Antichrist with a lance, marries, has children, reigns for 40 years, dies and is then buried in Medina. Whilst in Paradise, he does nothing for believers before his return, and nothing after his demise. This is not the Jesus for whom Christians are waiting. Intellectually dishonestSecondly, Basetti-Sani advocates reading the Qur’an with a Christian ‘key’, a hermeneutic based on the New Testament (pp.42,102). In my view, this is intellectually dishonest. There is no eschatological relationship between the NT and the Qur’an as exists with the Old Testament — except if you’re a Muslim, who anyway will see the Bible as textually corrupt. The Qur’an does depend on the Jewish-Christian Scriptures; Surah Al-i-Imran 3.3, ‘He hath revealed unto thee … the Scripture with truth, confirming that which was (revealed) before it, even as he revealed the Torah and the gospel.’ However, the reverse is not true; Christianity is not waiting for Muhammad. Basetti-Sani’s position would only work if the latter were valid, which it is not. Moreover, if one reads the Qur’an with a Christian key, one does violence to the integrity of the Islamic text, which is intellectually invalid. It may be true that the Christology that the Qur’an rejects does not correspond to orthodox Christianity (p.39), or that the picture of the Trinity it dismisses is actually tritheism (p.136), but it is equally clear that the Muslim understanding of God is definitely unitarian, so by default biblical Christology/Trinitarianism would also be rejected. Further, since Islam believes in salvation through works and belief in Muhammad’s prophethood and his message, it is incompatible with biblical soteriology. It should be noted that the Hadith states that any Jew or Christian hearing of Muhammad, and rejecting his prophethood, will be damned in hell. Either Basetti-Sani was unaware of this fact, or he chose to ignore it. At any rate, it invalidates his position, not least because the Hadith is an essential tool in Qur’anic hermeneutics. Throughout I got the impression that Basetti-Sani was trying to ‘squeeze’ the Qur’an into his theological presuppositions, as opposed to letting the text speak for itself. Surely this is just the same approach as Muslim polemicists who wrench biblical texts out of context to support their positions — and, as the saying goes, a text out of context is a pretext. Further, few Muslims in my experience would be impressed by such a proposition. Of course, our approach to Muslims and people of other faiths must always be charitable, avoiding a harsh sectarian spirit and upholding their human dignity and civil rights, but we cannot — and need not — sacrifice the exclusive claims of Jesus to do so. Dr. Anthony McRoy© Evangelicals Now - January 2008 |