How Does Islam Relate to Christianity and Judaism_ - NYTimes

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The Stone

How Does Islam Relate to Christianity andJudaism?

By Gary Gutting

September 25, 2014 7:00 pm

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues bothtimely and timeless.

This is the 11th in a series of interviews about religion that I am

conducting for The Stone. The interviewee for this installment is Sajjad

Rizvi, a professor of Arab and Islamic studies at the University of Exeter

and the author of Mulla Sadra and the Later Islamic Philosophical

Tradition.

Gary Gutting: How do you see Islam in relation to the other major

Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Judaism? Should we think of them as

(for example) rivals, or as complementary developments of monotheism, or

as different cultural expressions of an essentially similar religious

experience?

Sajjad Rizvi: The very notion of Abrahamic religions is arguably

Islamic. The Quran presents Abraham as an adherent of Islam, but here

Islam means the primordial faith that connects humanity to one God and

leads in turn to Judaism, Christianity and then historical Islam as
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proclaimed by Muhammad. There are some who view Islam as a faith that

supersedes the two earlier monotheistic religions. But I think its more

useful to understand Islam as a religion that is self-conscious about its

relationship to Judaism and Christianity and explicitly takes account of their

scriptures and traditions. Almost all the prophets of the Quran will be

familiar to those who know the Bible, and the Quran explicitly refers to

parables, ideas and stories from the Bible.

The common roots and inheritances of the three faiths make it

useful for us to think seriously in terms of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic

civilization and heritage that we all share. The development of philosophy in

Islam also shows a common tradition of rationality. Anyone with a basic

understanding of the categories of Aristotles thought employed by Christian

and Jewish thinkers would find many of the arguments of Islamic

philosophers and theologians familiar. The great Islamic philosopher

Avicenna (10th-11th century) developed a metaphysical notion of God that

had a tremendous impact on the Latin west: the idea that God is the

necessary being required to explain the existence of every contingent being.

G.G.: But even given these deep similarities, doesnt Islam claim that

the other two faiths are, if not entirely false, still not the full truth that Islam

is?

S.R.: Ultimately, the Islamic reflection on the other two faiths

considers them to be earlier versions and revelations of the same truth even

if the long history from their sacral origins might have diluted their

understanding. The Quran itself engages in a polemic with some of those

communities often precisely because of the exclusive claims that they madeabout salvation. The Quran tends to insist upon Gods final decision (to

which we, of course, are not privy) against the presumptions of theologians.

The fundamental distinctions in the scripture are between monotheistic

believers, imperfect monotheists and others: Jewish and Christian

communities were considered often to be in the second category. Some


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theologians would consider them to be paler reflections of their original

revelation and some say that their scriptures have been corrupted. But we

should not lose sight of how the Islamic tradition itself often refers back to

the earlier Jewish and Christian scriptures and prophets to make sense of

the mission of Muhammad.

G.G.: What about the fundamental question of salvation do you go to

heaven or go to hell? Does Islam say as Christianity often has that you

cant be saved if you dont accept it? Or can, for example, Christians be

saved?

S.R.: It depends on whom one reads. Theres a whole range of opinions.

The early scriptural traditions (especially in the Quran itself) are quite clearthat success in the afterlife everlasting life in paradise in the presence of

God is not exclusive to those who define themselves as Muslims in the

historical sense. Belief in God and the afterlife and performing good deeds

are the only conditions of success. Later theological traditions have

complicated matters, but even then a tradition developed of considering

punishment in hellfire to be not eternal, so that ultimately everyone will be

embraced by Gods mercy.

G.G:Christianity and Islam are both religions that originated in

specific cultural contexts but have developed into world religions, practiced

by people in a wide variety of cultures. How would you compare or contrast

their development in this regard?

S.R.: Christianity and Islam share the paradox of being religions that

claim to be universal, while retaining particular dogmas and practices that

are exclusive to them. There were times when pursuit of world empire led

both religions to more universal claims. Their trajectories seem similar a

small, persecuted faith that acquired an imperial form and expression that

led to its dominance across the world. Here both used orthodoxy to bolster

the authority of the empire, and defined heterodoxy to deal with political


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dissent. One of the main differences that has always struck me concerns how

orthodoxy was shaped and implemented. On the whole the Muslim world

did not have the same mechanisms of central control councils, creeds and

inquisitions to enforce matters. They sometimes tried to set up such

mechanisms, but always failed. When people raise the problem of a crisis of

authority in the Muslim world, they forget that this is not just a situation

that arose in modernity. What is interesting, however, is that each of the two

faiths has significant internal divisions on matters of political theology.

G.G.: What about the division we hear so much about in the news,

between Shias and Sunnis. Could you say a bit about that?

S.R.: Shia Islam is a religious tradition in which it is precisely thepresence of the divine through the Imam the successor to Muhammad in

his bloodline that provides not only the foundations for authority and

sovereignty in human communities of belief, but also the path to salvation.

The everlasting and indeed ever-revealing countenance of the divine

mentioned in the Quran (28:88, for example) is glossed in the tradition as

the person of the Imam. The Imam is not the defender of the Law; he is the

Law he is not the exegete of scripture, he is revelation itself. Through the

person of the Imam, the transcendent divine, the origin and the true King, is

manifest; and believers follow the path to salvation through their devotion

and obedience to the Imam. In fact, from early on, Islam seems to have held

that believers afterlife depends on their allegiance to their community. In

this sense, Shia is a normative political theology, concerned with the relation

of political authority and salvation. The comparison with Christ Pantocrator

and the person of the emperor in Eastern Orthodox Christianity is rather

striking.

G.G.: How does this compare with the Sunni traditions?

S.R.: In contrast to the Sunni, the Shia traditions in Islam have a more

absolute notion of the political-theological significance of both sacred


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are strongly held and this is clear even in Europe and North America. But

if one has the rule of law and political stability, that negativity to the other

may manifest itself in hate speech but rarely in violence.

G.G.: Youve presented what many of our readers may see as a quitemoderate and enlightened version of Islam. But arent you ignoring

fundamentalist versions of the religion that today are very powerful and

directly opposed to liberal values? Im thinking, for example, of their

treatment of women, their demand for Islamic states, and their use of

violence to achieve religious goals. Do you think there is a need for a

reformed Islam that will decisively reject such fundamentalist views?

S.R.: In many ways we live in an age of fundamentalisms and this istrue not just of religious communities. That, coupled with the weakness of

traditional scholarly institutions in many Muslim communities, has led to

uncertainty about who speaks for the faith and whether anyone can speak

definitively for the faith. I have a problem with applying to Islam the

standard European account of progress as a process in which conflict with

secular thought leads to reform, intellectual enlightenment, and finally the

redefinition of faith in terms of beliefs divorced from any communal

expression.

What I would argue for is not necessarily reform I have serious

reservations about most reformist agendas as well as forms of neo-

traditionalism but rather for a more open debate about the simple acts of

reading texts in multiple ways. We need to understand how we might read

traditional texts in ways that make sense of our faith for the contexts in

which we now live. This is not radical reform, but it is an attempt to keep thedialogue within traditions alive and dynamic across space and time. It is a

particular strength of Islam that its intellectual traditions of philosophical

theology and spirituality emphasize such dialogue.

G.G.: How do you, as a Muslim, respond to the atheistic claim that, in


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our age of science, theres no rational basis for accepting theism?

S.R.: I reject the atheistic claim, since I dont believe in a God of gaps

and I dont think Islamic intellectual traditions pit science against religion.

In those traditions, arguments for the existence of God were not based onscientific observations, but rather on the simple intuition that we cannot

reduce everything that we can say about ourselves and about our world to

the physical. Atheists may not find arguments for the existence of God

compelling, but the arguments at least allow believers to fit their faith in

God into a rationally coherent framework. This is why reflection on

existence to provide a rational case for believing in God has been a critical

element of most Muslim theological traditions.

Alongside those strong traditions of rationality, there have also been

fideistic tendencies as well as more experiential responses. What are we to

make of the cultural artifacts of our religious civilizations, of the art, poetry,

music and expressions of the self, rooted in an enchantment with some

ultimate reality that remains intangible and unscientific? The argument

from contingency mentioned above is still one that I think gives a rational

account that is coherent. But I also recognize that we are not all rational

agents who approach our reality in a purely logical way at all times.

This interview was conducted by email and edited. All interviews from

this series can be read here.

Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre

Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the

author of, most recently, Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy

since 1960, and writes regularly for The Stone.

2014 The New York Times Company
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How Does Islam Relate to Christianity and Judaism_ - NYTimes

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