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Introduction
The heritage of
Islam, both in its spirituality and geographical
location, lies very close to that of the West. As one of
the three Abrahamic religions,
its Semitic
roots are the same as those of Judeo-Christianity, and
it also shares with the West a common ground in Ancient
Greek philosophy.
Yet it appears
to the West rather alien, at times even menacing. This
perceived “otherness” is as much a product of the
West-East conflict in the
Middle Ages, the
Crusades; the secularising and moving on of Europe from
its Semitic heritage following the Enlightenment and
renewed interest
in its heritage
of the pre-Christian, Classical Age of Greece and Rome,
at the same time not forgetting European hegemonic
expansion of the
18th
and 19th centuries that saw the rise of a new
field of research called “Orientalism”.
The
term “Orientalism” has been used to describe the
subjects and works of scholars who specialized in the
languages, cultures, histories and
societies of the
“Orient”, an idea, a creation by Europe that
included the Middle East and the rest of Asia. It’s in this sense that the term is being
used. For North
Americans, the Orient has a different meaning as
it refers to
China, Japan and South East Asia.
The
Orientalists, as we understand them, first made
their debut in 18th
century Europe, with Germany leading the field. Other
Europeans
followed and
included
Britain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Russia, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Many
of these nations either were
already colonial
powers or engaged in colonial expansion, which added to
their interest in the peoples of the “mysterious” East,
conquered or
yet to be
conquered. But conquest was not necessarily the main
reason for such interest. Germany could barely lay claim to an empire
outside
of Europe; its
colony in Namibia, South West Africa, hardly counts
in this regard as it made no significant impact on the
rise of German
Orientalism,
yet Germany emerged as the leader in the
field. But undeniably, those countries that were engaged
in empire building found
Orientalism
a useful tool. Conversely, Oreintalism
benefited from an expanded European interest and
hegemony in the East, allowing the
Orientalist
to visit regions that would otherwise have been
inaccessible and harder to explore.
As the Middle East, as well as India with its large and politically dominant Muslim population, came under increasing European control,
the Orientalist turned his attention increasingly to Islam, its history and its sacred text, the Quran. These of course are sensitive areas and the
reputation of many Orientalists and Arabists has not helped in the negative image associated with the term Orientalism and its associated
activities. The general image conjured by the term Orientalist meant, and still means, a European who had by him the Bible and worked for the
domination of his religion and that of the West.
Post-Enlightenment Europe has had a rather long tradition in attempts at debunking the past - even its own. It was first seen in the textual,
historical and archaeological analysis of the Bible and biblical lands when some1 scholars started to question the historicity of the Bible.
A preference was seen by these people for the rational and materialistic philosophers of Ancient Greece and the practical enterprises of the
Roman world, which went hand-in-hand with the growth of the natural sciences in Europe and its industrialisation, rather than the mystical and
spiritual discourses of the Old and New Testaments. Religion remained very important at the popular level and efforts were made by colonial
powers to convert the conquered peoples, but its understanding had begun to change in the hands of the rationalists and the materialists.
The Quran and Islamic history also came in for systematic analysis but this story had a much slower and more complicated start than at first
appears.
The first Asian
language to be taught in
Europe was Hebrew. From the early Middle Ages
this Biblical language, followed by Syrio-Aramaic
and Chaldean,
was known to European theologians (1). Better knowledge
of these languages was a key to a better understanding
of the Old
Testament, but
for later generations this also proved to be vital for
textual analysis of the holy text. By the time the
Crusades were in full swing
in the 13th
century, Arabic, another Semitic language, appeared on
the list. By the 15th century there were many
chairs in European universities
dedicated to the
teaching and learning of Arabic language and translation
of Arabic texts. Spain and Portugal due to
their long history under
Muslim rule, the
so-called “Moors”, had an even longer presence of both
Arabic and Hebrew.
In fact, the
translation movement from Arabic to Latin and Castilian,
started by Raymond Bishop of Toledo, in the 12th
century (2), acted as a
spur for the
learning of Arabic in Europe. Many Greek and Roman authors had been translated
into Arabic; some works of the European
Classical Age
survived only in Arabic, for example, Aristotle’s De
Anima (a treatise on The Soul) in its complete form
was found only in its
Arabic
translation as the original Greek had been lost in
antiquity, and Apollonius’ later books on the geometry
of conic sections could only be
found in their
Arabic translations.
Although the
terms Orientalism and Orientalist were
abandoned after they acquired a depreciatory meaning in
the last third of the 20th century,
the legacy of
Orientalism is still with us. The most manifest
example of this is the continued labelling of the East,
especially the world of Islam,
as the “other” –
an alien, seemingly aggressive world that continues to
resist the power of the West and its increasing
globalisation. The political
theory of the
“clash of civilizations” propounded by Samuel
Huntington, is in the grand tradition of the
Orientalism of yesteryear. According
to Huntingdon
the ever-declining culture of the globally dominant West
needs to combat threats from the East, primarily in the
form of Islamic
and Confucian,
and even to some extent Indian, civilizations. Western
societies therefore need to defend themselves by an
increased reliance
on military
strength and political alliances to bring in Eastern
Europe and Latin America
as a balance to the demographically increased advantage
in favour of the
Asian nations.
The Ancient World and the “Clash of Early Civilizations”
Some scholars look back to the ancient world when they wish to analyse the present. A few even going as far back as the late Bronze Age to
look for an East-West conflict when Greater Mycenae clashed with the Hittite empire of Anatolia (Asia Minor) and its allies on its western coast;
a conflict that lasted for over a century and a half. The legendary city of Troy or Hisarlik, as it is now known (3), was once allied to the Assuwan
confederacy that first clashed with the Hittite empire and then Mycenae. This war represents to them the first recorded clash between the East
and the West in the ancient world. The Greek poet Homer, thought to be originally from Asia Minor himself, wrote about this momentous
conflict centuries afterwards in the 8th century BCE in a highly stylised and idealised poem called “The Iliad”(from “Iliyos”, the Homeric Greek
version of the earlier name “Wiliyos”, probably derived from the Hittite-Assuwan name “Wilusa” or “Wilusiya ”, that was once a Hittite
dependency (4)).
Recent excavations at Hisarlik (Troy) by a team led by the late Manfred Korfmann seem to indicate that Troy VI and VII, both show evidence
of violent destruction (5).
But the poem of Homer was never meant to be a faithful representation of an historical event other than the period to which it relates and a few
other details it reveals. Instead it was meant to be a primer of Greek mythological heroes and of “Homeric morality”, an integral part of the
religion of the Ancient Greeks. If the Trojan War could be mythologized then so could the later Greco-Persian wars of the 5th century BCE -
and they were. With the rise of Greco-Roman empires the threats, perceived or real, from the East receded but never disappeared. Asia Minor
and the Middle East remained at various times regions where the shifting military and spiritual frontiers between the West and the East existed
and struggled for dominance. Like earlier conflicts these too were mythologized, giving the impression that somehow they are representations
of a permanently polarized world. The Crusades of the Middle Ages were no exception to this.
The rise and collapse of the Macedonian Empire of Alexander eventually gave rise to the ascendancy in the East of the Parthians in Iran and
Rome in the West.
The new empires of Partha and Rome clashed in 53 BC at the Battle of Carrhae in Asia Minor. Once again an age-old East-West conflict
occurred. Rome suffered an ignominious defeat with the complete destruction of its legions and the death of their general, Marcus Crassus.
This West-East clash was repeated throughout the life of these empires and those that succeeding them, viz. the empires of Byzantinian and
Sassanian dynasties.
Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire) and Sassanian Iran fought for nearly four centuries (between 243-627 CE) and tried not only to wrest
control of colonies from each other but also managed to destroy large civic centres within each other’s frontiers. This ongoing duel weakened
both empires and it was in this historical context that a people appeared out of Arabia, in the first third of the 7th century, with a new and
vigorous monotheistic creed, drawing on many traditions of the ancient Abrahamic religions of Judaism and Christianity. Yet this new creed was
in many ways distinct and came under attack from the old and established Byzantine Church.
St. John Damascene and the first Christian Critique of Islam
Although attempts at debunking Islam, the religion that came from the depths of the East, and its scripture, the Quran, stretch back beyond the
Middle Ages when Latin translations of the book first started to appear in the 12th century, the first serious “critique” of Islam in the on-going
East-West rivalry came not from Europe but Asia. Muslim conquests of Syria and Egypt, both originally under Byzantine rule, gave impetus to
those loyal to their old masters and believers in an older religion to attack the new faith. Islam was labelled a Christian heresy and, quite
incredibly, even called a form of Arianism. A 4th century Christian called Arius believed that God the Son was inferior to God the Father, that
Jesus was born of a woman, suffered like all mortals and eventually died. Saint John of Damascus (d ~749 CE)*, whose full name was Yahya
ibn Mansoor, was also a “school friend” Yazid ibn Mu’awiyah, and later became an administrator during the rule of Abdul Malik ibn Marwan
(r. 685-705) and Yazid II (r. 720-724).
After Abdul Malik ordered that Arabic instead of Greek be made the language of administration, John or Yahya ibn Mansoor found himself
more restricted and when by the time of Yazid II active discrimination against the Christians became common place, John left his post as a
public servant in 724 CE for the monastery of Mar Saba, Palestine, near Jerusalem, to study theology and philosophy. He is considered one
of the great Apostolic Fathers of the Byzantine Church and his writings have a special significance for this church. He was fluent in Greek and
Aramaic, and knew Arabic well enough to read the Quran, noting parallels between certain Quranic stories and those of the Old and New
Testaments. He therefore dismissed the Quran and regarded Islam as a mixture of Christian Arianism, Judaism and some other beliefs.
Growing up under early Umayyad rule must have added to his confusion as to what this new religion was given that many Muslims
under the pay of Umayyads themselves were either ignorant on doctrinal matters or were busy distorting them.
Saint John wrote what has been described as a monumental work in Greek by the name of The Fount of Knowledge(6).
Its importance being the first great Summa of theology to appear in either the East or the West and it is still regarded by some as the single
most important work in Greek patristic literature. Most of what he wrote concerned schismatic movements within the church and other problems
of Christology like iconoclasm. However, it was also in this context of schisms that in the second part of his work entitled, Heresies in Epitome,
he gives his account of the origins of Islam and Muslims. As the work is of considerable importance, giving an invaluable insight into an 8th
century Christian’s view of Islam, it is worth looking at in greater detail. John’s critique of Islam, or “the heresy of the Ishmaelites,” as he
called it, is relevant even today as the language and tone he uses is very much that came to be used by many Orientalists in the 19th and
20th centuries. He says:
“There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites
which to this day prevails and keeps people in
error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist. They are
descended from Ishmael, who was born to Abraham and
Hagar, and for this reason they are called both
Hagarenes and Ishmaelites. They are also
called
Saracens -derived from Sarras kenoi,
meaning ‘the destitutes of Sara’, because of what Hagar
said to the angel: ‘Sara hath sent me away destitute.’
These used to be idolaters and worshiped the morning
star and Aphrodite, whom in their own language they
called Khabar (7), which means great.
And so down to the time of Heraclius (8) they were very
great idolaters. From that time to the present a false
prophet named Mohammed has appeared
in their midst.”
The use of terms such as “superstition”, “the
Antichrist”, “people in error” and “false Prophet”, all
are what you hear these days from the mouths of many
fanatical evangelists and Islamophobes or bellicose
politicians when they come to describe Islam, Muslims
and the Prophet.
Further on John notes the similarity between certain
stories of the Old and New Testaments and passages in
the Quran. He refers to the Prophet of Islam thus:
“This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New
Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with
an Arian monk, devised his own heresy.
Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of
the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that
a certain book had been sent down to him
from heaven.”
These again are the same “criticisms” you see by
Islamophobic scholars today and Oreintalists of
earlier times, levelled against the Prophet, i.e. that
he was
heretical and insincere.
John’s reference to the story of the Prophet Mohammad in
his youth accompanying his uncle Abu Talib to Syria,
when he is supposed to have met the Christian
(heretical) monk
Bahira (or in some accounts Sergius), is central to his
understanding of the new religion. He regarded this
event to be critical in the development of Islam,
stating
that the monk taught
his new acquaintance all he knew about Arianism.
However, he does accurately admit that Islam is a
monotheistic belief, that Islamic Jesus son of Mary was
a
prophet and that the Quran
denies the crucifixion and death of Jesus:
“He says that there is one God, creator of all things,
who has neither been begotten nor has begotten (9) ….
Jesus, who was a prophet and servant of God and he says
that the Jews wanted to crucify Him in violation of the
law, and that they seized His shadow
and crucified this. But the Christ Himself was not
crucified, he says, nor did He die, for God out of His
love for Him took Him to Himself into heaven (10).”
All of the above are what the Orientalists, many
of whom were believing Christians, would have found
totally unacceptable. Consequently they reacted by
issuing their own criticisms against Islam, Muslims and
the very person of the Prophet Mohammad. These days we
see uncannily similar objections being levelled
against the same.
John Damascene then goes on to lead a polemical
discussion against Islam in view of what was being
presented as a critique of Christianity of his times by
the
“heretical Ishmaelites” or “Hagarenes”
(Muslims). He found it very hard to accept that a
genuine prophet could appear in a land other than
Biblical land and
that he would come “unannounced” (11).
According to him, a commonly held Christian belief then
and even now amongst many evangelists, is that the
arrival of Prophet Mohammad was not foreseen
in the holy scriptures of the Jews and the Christians.
During the discussions he claims to have had with the
Muslims of his day, he found them not only wanting
in religious knowledge of earlier scriptures but also
the subtleties of their own religion. He was thus able
to run rings round them. For example he could not get
a satisfactory answer as to why “al-Hajar al-Aswad” (the
Black Stone) in the wall of the Ka’ba is venerated by
Muslims, yet they accuse the Christians of idolatry
for their belief in the Trinity and veneration of the
cross:
“They furthermore accuse us of being idolaters, because
we venerate the cross, which they abominate. And we
answer them: ‘How is it, then, that you
rub yourselves against a stone in your Ka’ba and kiss
and embrace it?’ Then some of them say that Abraham had
relations with Hagar upon it, but others
say that he tied the camel to it, when he was going to
sacrifice Isaac (12) …. Then we say: ‘Let it be
Abraham’s, as you so foolishly say. Then, just because
Abraham had relations with a woman on it or tied a camel
to it, you are not ashamed to kiss it, yet you blame us
for venerating the cross of Christ by which
the power of the demons and the deceit of the Devil was
destroyed.”
In his desperation to prove that the new religion is
false, John accuses Muslims (Hagarenes) of
idolatry:
“This stone that they talk about is a head of that
Aphrodite whom they used to worship and whom they called
Khabar (7). Even to the present day,
traces of the carving are visible on it to careful
observers.”
John Damascene quite mistakenly assumed that the stone
might still have some
deific or sacred value for the Muslims while in fact it
didn’t. Its veneration was
more a part of the Sunnah than any regard for the
object itself. But this may have never been
satisfactorily explained to him. He also observed, quite
correctly,
that this new “sect” has certain dietary laws and that
consumption of alcohol was forbidden:
“And, while he ordered them to eat some of the things forbidden by the Law, he ordered them to abstain from others.
He furthermore absolutely forbade the drinking of wine.”
Intellectual attacks on Islam continued after John Damascene, especially from other Middle East Christians. This in a way is understandable
as these people, unlike Christians in the Latin West, felt most vulnerable since they were under Muslim rule and also at the receiving end of
Muslim polemics. John’s book was not translated into Latin until the early 12th century and even then did not initiate an immediate interest
by the West in Islam. Thomas Aquinas and his contemporaries are said to have become adherents of this text and its effects initially seemed
to be confined to academia and theological schools.
Amongst the Near Eastern Christian critics of Islam that followed John Damascene was one called Abdul Masih al-Kindi (13). In his effort to
prove Muslims wrong, he wrote “al-Risalah” or “The Letter” which was part of a dialogue with a supposed Muslim who had put forward an
“unconvincing case for conversion to Islam”, as al-Kindi asserts. The detailed reply written by al-Kindi is worth reading as it goes over the same
criticisms of Islam we see levelled against it even in the 21st century. These include spreading the religion by the sword, the issue of abrogation
of verses (nasikh wa mansookh), and even the idea of Islam being a heretical faith with an Antichrist agenda. The contents of al-Kindi’s
“al-Risalah” became part of the West’s anti-Muslim literature despite its seriously defective arguments based on dubious “facts”, outright
fabrications and pure slander. But given that there was very little else known about Islam in Europe, these distorted ideas continued to be
circulated and became a became part of the West’s faulty understanding of the Prophet Mohammad, Islam and the Muslims.
In the following article we shall see
how the pre-and post-Renaissance Europeans developed an
interest in the study of Islam, how they reacted to this
new
knowledge and created their own image
of Islam. Norman Daniel in his classic study first
published in 1960 wrote on how Western attitudes about
Islam from
medieval times to the present are
born of a medieval conflict and how to this day the
relationship between Islam and The West remains one of
confrontation
and misunderstanding (14).
References
and Notes
* His name appears variously as follows in different sources:
Arabic ابن منصور يحيى )Yahyā ibn Mansūr; )
Greek:
Ιωάννης Δαμασκήνος or Iôannęs Damaskęnos;
Latin: Iohannes Damascenus or Johannes Damascenus
1) Beryl
Smalley,
The study of
the Bible in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1983.
2)
Arzobispo Raimundo de Toledo Escuela de Traductores
[1130-1187]
http://faculty.washington.edu/petersen/alfonso/esctra12.htm
3) Hisarlik / Troy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hisarlik
4) Iliyos (Troy)
http://www.archaeology.org/0405/etc/troy2.html
5) Trojan War
http://www.archaeology.org/0405/etc/troy.html
6) St. John
Damascene’s The Font of Knowledge
http://www.questia.com/library/book/writings-%5Bthe-fount-of-knowledge%5D-
by-saint-john-of-damascus-frederic-h-chase-jr.jsp
7) The word
should be transliterated as “kabir”. It is not
clear whether John Damascene himself got this wrong -
would be surprising as he is supposed to have
known
Arabic – or else the translator(s) from Greek to English
misunderstood.
8) Heraclius (Harqul
in Arabic) Byzantine Emperor, was one of the persons to
whom the Prophet sent a letter inviting him to Islam.
9) Quran,
Surah 112
10) Quran,
Surah 4:157-158
11) This has been disputed by many Muslims, some of
whom have maintained that in the four verses below, the
word "comforter", translated from the word
"Paraclete" ("Ho Parakletos" in Greek) and
variously interpreted as "an advocate", one who pleads
the cause of another, one who councils or advises
another
from deep concern for the other's welfare, is a
reference to the Prophet Mohammad (SAWA). In these
verses we are told that once Jesus (peace be upon him)
departs, a “Paraclete” shall come. He will
glorify Jesus, and he will guide mankind towards truth.
The Christians of course assert that this "Paraclete"
is identified
in John 14:26 as the Holy
Ghost.
John 14:16 "And
I will pray to the Father, and he shall give you another
Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever"
John 15:26 "But
when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you
from the Father, [even] the Spirit of truth, which
proceeds from the Father, he shall testify
of me"
John 14:26 "But the Comforter, [which is] the Holy
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall
teach you all things, and bring all things to your
remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." John
16:7-14 "Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is
expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away,
the
Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I
will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will
reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and
of judgment . . . . How be it when he, the Spirit of
truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he
shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall
hear,
[that] shall he speak: and he will show you things to
come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine,
and shall show [it] unto you."
The point about
the Bible foretelling the Prophet’s arrival remains
contentious and is unlikely to be resolved. It is
discussed further here:
http://www.islamicity.com/Mosque/Muhammad_Bible.HTM
12) Genesis
22:6
In the
Quran this story is related in Surah 37:100-107
13) Abdul Masih
ibn Ishaq al-Kindi wrote
an apology of Christianity to a Muslim friend called
Abd-Allah ibn Ismail al-Hashimi
while in the court of the Abbaside
Caliph Al-Mamun. An edition of the text was prepared by
the English Orientalist Sir William Muir and
first published in 1880:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology_of_al-Kindy_%28book%29
Some scholars
maintain this Apology represents a forgery.
[This al-Kindi
should not to be
confused with the 9th century Muslim
philosopher Abu Yusuf
Yaqub ibn Ishaq al- Kindi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Yusuf_Yaqub_al-Kindi
]
14) Islam and
the West: The Making of an Image by Norman Daniel
http://www.amazon.com/Islam-West-Making-Norman-
Daniel/dp/1851681299/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205695788&sr=1-1
[Of course
Bernard Lewis, an Orientalist of the old school,
has presented his own views on the same in his book:
Islam and the West |
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