Al-Huda
Foundation, NJ U. S. A
the Message Continues ... 4/105
Newsletter for May 2010
Article 1 - Article 2 - Article 3 - Article 4 - Article 5 - Article 6 - Article 7 - Article 8 - Article 9 - Article 10 - Article 11 - Article 12
Common Word and Common Ground: Transforming Interfaith Dialogue
into Interfaith Solidarity
Dr. Robert D. Crane
I. The Three-Phase Process
The last five years of the third millennium’s first decade, from
2005 through 2010, witnessed an unprecedented movement toward
mutual understanding and practical cooperation among the world
religions designed to combat extremism and address some of the
underlying issues of conscience. This movement has
involved the leaders of all the world religions in a common
effort to transform interfaith dialogue to interfaith solidarity
in the pursuit of transcendent justice. This effort has
proceeded in three phases or chapters, the first one within
Islam, the second among the Abrahamic religions, and the third
between them and the Eastern Religions.
The first phase culminated in the Amman Message of July, 2005,
at which the leading Islamic scholars of the world convened in
Amman, Jordan, to condemn the growing practice, known as
takfir,
among Muslim extremists to condemn as apostates those who
disagree with them. This was the first such universal
fatwa by all six of the Islamic schools of law in many decades.
This was designed to launch a global process of intra-faith
dialogue and cooperation among Muslims. It was obvious
that the first step in inter-faith understanding and cooperation
must be intra-faith cooperation within each of the major world
religions, based on understanding that the real clash of
civilizations is not among civilizations but within each of
them.
The second phase of the universal search for interfaith
solidarity in rehabilitating the role of religion on behalf of
transcendent justice started in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s
Regensberg speech of September 12, 2006, which was widely
perceived as an attack on Islam as a religion and as a radical
change from the interfaith outreach of his predecessor, John
Paul II. This helped to spark intra-faith conferences that
year, following the Open Letter to the Pope on October 12, 2006,
in which thirty-eight authoritative scholars from every branch
of Islam for the first time spoke comprehensively with one voice
about the true teachings of Islam. This was followed by a
letter of September 13, 2007, from 138 authoritative Islamic
scholars, entitled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” which was
even more inclusive than the first one and for the first time
since the days of the Prophet Muhammad,
salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa salam,
declared the substantial unity of Christianity and Islam in
addressing key issues of conscience.
In November, 2007, a group of scholars at Yale Divinity
School drafted a reply to A Common Word, entitled “Loving God
and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to ‘A Common Word
Between Us and You’,” which was endorsed by more than 300
leading Christian scholars in an effort to reorient
Muslim-Christian relations away from “a clash of civilizations.”
This, in turn, led to the first of a series of conferences
beginning at Yale University on July 24th-31st, 2008, to be
followed by four more at Cambridge University, The Vatican,
Georgetown, and the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute in Jordan.
This pioneering process was enriched by parallel efforts,
beginning with the conference held by King Abdullah of Saudi
Arabia in Madrid at the end of July, 2008, to bring Jewish
scholars into the process for the first time.
The third phase of a growing global movement toward
interfaith solidarity in countering extremism by reviving the
best of the past in the present to shape a better global future
was sparked by the same Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad and his Royal
Aal Bayt Foundation for Islamic Thought, based in Jordan, who
launched Phase Two in 2007. This phase led in 2010 to the
publication of an orientation book from Fons Vitae entitled
Common Ground Between Islam and Buddhism,
by Reza Shah Kazemi with an Introduction by the Dalai Lama and a
Conclusion by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf of America. This differs
from Phase Two because it focuses not on the Common Word but on
the Common Ground.
The Common Word initiative has focused on what one might
call the intellectualization of God, thus the focus on the Word,
which is central to the Abrahamic religions and has led to
irresolvable differences at this level. The initiative led
by Prince Ghazi and the Dalai Lama focuses on the spiritual and
moral affinities of understanding at the deeper level understood
intuitively by all humans without ontological or epistemological
explanation.
For example, in the Pali Canon the Lord Buddha’s silence on
the One as Creator is not a denial as such, but in the view of
the leaders of the Third Phase is simply assumed. In his
environment 2,500 years ago, the Buddha avoided a focus on the
material world and its creation in order better to bring
awareness of what transcends it. The Buddhist emphasis on
the Absolute is comparable with, but not necessarily identical
with, the Essence (Dhat)
of God in Islam. The core Islamic word,
Al Haqq,
which means simultaneously Allah, truth, and normative law, is
comparable, but perhaps not identical, with the Buddhist
dharma.
Karuna
or loving compassion in the sense of participating in the
suffering of others is similar to
rahmah
in Islam. The Buddhist concept of
nirvana
or the transcendent as the highest good, which transcends the
ego, is similar to the Islamic
fana
or extinction of the self, which is basic to all of what is
called Abrahamic mysticism. The Buddhist
shunya
or The Void is similar to the otherwise unique Islamic concept
of
la ilaha ille Allah
(no god but God). The combination of Dharma, Nirvana, and
Shunya is similar to what Sufis would call the unnamable essence
of God, beyond the Trinity of Persons and beyond all conceivable
qualities.
This Common Ground, beyond the Common Word, has been
fundamental in Islamic-Buddhist relations for well over a
thousand years in most of the so-called Muslim World.
Phase three of the growing global movement, like the first two
phases, is designed to rehabilitate the role of religion in the
world by laying a traditionalist foundation on the natural law
of transcendent justice.
II. Three Basic Principles
of Respect
The success of this global movement depends first of all on the
role of respect among the followers of the global religions for
each other. The Islamic guidelines focus on three basic
principles emphasized throughout the Qur’an. They are:
1) Freedom of religion, which includes equality in human
dignity, unity in diversity, equality of prophets, universal
conditions for salvation, and equal validity of prophets.
2) Love, which includes one’s personal relationship with God,
forgiveness, and peaceful reconciliation; and
3) Compassionate justice, which includes personal righteousness
and normative law.
Together these three lead to respect for each other among Jews,
Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists and to acceptance of each
other as fellow peoples of the book.
A. Freedom of Religion
1. Equality in Human Dignity
Immediately following the beautiful “throne
verse,” which describes the attributes of God, in the second
surah, Surah al Baqara, is verse 257. It states simply,
“Let there be no compulsion in religion (la
ikraha fi al din)”.
This is axiomatic because absolute truth does
exist and it is human instinct to seek it, but no person or
community can know more than a portion of this truth.
Certainly no one should claim to possess it to the exclusion of
others, because this would be the same as claiming to be God.
This is clear from scholarly interpretation of the throne verse,
“He knows all that lies open before men and all that is hidden
from them, whereas they cannot attain to any of his knowledge
except what He wills [them to attain].” Some scholars
consider that this refers to earth and heaven, but the meaning
is essentially the same.
The word din used here for religion is the broadest of several
related terms and refers to the unchanging spiritual truths that
have been preached by every one of God’s prophets. Twice
the Qur’an refers to the
shar’,
which refers to the normative jurisprudential principles common
to Judaism, Christianity, and all human communities. The
term
din
in reference to freedom of religion includes also the more
restrictive terms
minhaj,
which refers to an entire way of life based on one’s own
conscience and the wisdom of one’s community, and
shar’ah,
which refers to the governing laws of the particular community.
The still more restrictive term,
shari’ah,
is reserved for the normative principles and specific
regulations that are binding only on those who profess to be
Muslims.
The Prophet Muhammad,
salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa salam,
was specifically ordered to treat all people equally regardless
of their religion. Shortly after the throne verse we find
Verse 2:272, which reads, “It is not for you, O Prophet, to
bring people to the path of right guidance, since it is God
[alone] who guides whom He will.” The circumstance of this
revelation was the Prophet’s advice to his companions to give
charity only to his own followers in Madinah who were poor.
The above revelation came immediately, whereupon the Prophet
enjoined his followers to disburse charity based on personal
need without regard to religion. Freedom of religion means
freedom for all persons to be treated equally in dignity as
human beings.
The reason for this requirement of equal treatment is the
requirement of respect for every person’s free will. Surah
Yunus 10:99-100 reads: “If God had willed, everyone would have
believed. Will you then compel humankind to believe
against their will? No soul will ever attain to faith
except by the Will of God.” As a moral being, every person
is free to discriminate and choose between right and wrong and
to use one’s reason in conforming to one’s God-willed nature,
but this is possible only through the grace of God.
2. Unity in Diversity
Throughout the Qur’an, we are asked to see the
coherence of the universe in the diversity that points to its
Creator. If uniformity were the norm, there would be only
one standard tree, one standard cloud, and one uniform sunset
all over the world. Furthermore, we are directed to see
that all beings are created to form pairs and with a nature that
seeks community. This communal nature applies also to
religion.
Sur’ah al Ma’ida 5:48 reads thus: “To you have we
given the scriptures, just as we have given scriptures to people
before you. We have protected your scripture [the Qur’an]
in its entirety. So, judge among people from what
knowledge has come to you, and do not be carried over by your
vain desires. Unto every one of you We have appointed a
[different] governing system of law (shir’ah)
and a [different] way of life (minhaj).
If God had so willed, all humanity would have been a single
community. God’s plan is to test you in what each one of
you has received [in both scriptures and inspiration]. So
strive as in a race in all virtues. The goal of all people
is to God. God [alone] will tell you the truth about
matters over which you dispute.”
This is why the immediately preceding verse,
5:47, states: “Let, then, the followers of the Gospel judge in
accordance with what God has revealed in it, for those who do
not judge in the light of what God has bestowed from on high are
truly the iniquitous.” In other words unity in diversity
can come only when the diverse paths are respected as legitimate
in the plan of God, even though the most comprehensive
expression of truth may be found in the Qur’an, after which no
further revelation is necessary.
3. Universal Conditions for Salvation
One of the clearest and most insistent messages throughout
the Qur’an and in the teachings and practice of the Prophet
Muhammad was the universality of salvation within the various
religions that have developed in various times and places.
Only three conditions are given as the requirements for
salvation. These are: 1) belief in One God; 2) belief in
the justice of God both in this world and the next; and 3) the
practice of good works.
Near the beginning of the Qur’an in the second
surah, Baqarah 2:62, we have the standard formulation: “Those
who believe (in the Qur’an), those who follow the Jewish
Scriptures, the Christians (those who follow the teachings of
the Gospel), and the Sabians – all who believe in God and the
Last Day and do righteous deeds – shall have their reward from
their Lord, and they need have no fear, nor shall they grieve.”
The Sabians may refer to a specific people,
perhaps the Buddhists, as suggested by Reza Shah Kazemi, but,
like much of the Qur’an, probably is also generic in referring
to all monotheistic peoples, as well as to every individual who
follows his own human nature and recognizes the essence of what
all the prophets have taught. Muslims in the East, from
Persia to the Pacific, have always included the Lord Buddha in
this category. One of the early revelations in the Qur’an,
Surah al Tin, refers symbolically to four religions.
According to many commentators, this surah takes its title from
the first symbol, namely, the Bo Tree (Tin) under which The
Buddha received enlightenment.
In Surah al Baqarah 2:112 an even more generic formulation is
given: “Everyone who surrenders his whole being unto God, and is
a doer of good, shall have his reward with his Sustainer; and
all such need have no fear, and neither shall they grieve.”
The literal translation is “everyone who surrenders his face
unto God,” which is classical Arabic for one’s whole being.
Whoever does so is a
muslim
and it is in this sense that the terms
islam
(the religion) and
muslim
(the person who surrenders to God) are used throughout the
Qur’an.
4. Equal Validity of Prophets
A central teaching in Islam is that God has
provided a prophet for every people, beginning with the cavemen
millions of years ago, and probably has done so for all the
sentient beings on the perhaps millions of other inhabitable
planets in the universe. The Qur’an states that no
community has been left without a prophet. The hadith
suggest that the number of prophets is 124,000, which means
numerous beyond count.
Since all prophets taught essentially the same
thing, the Qur’an specifically says that humans should not make
distinctions among them, even though they may have had different
emphases depending on differences in time and place and on the
receptivity of their own communities.
“Those apostles We endowed with gifts, some above others: to one
of them [Moses] God spoke; others [David] He raised to degrees
(of honor); and to Jesus the Son of Mary We gave Clear (Signs)
and strengthened him with the Holy Spirit". (Surah al
Baqarah, 2:253)
This “equality” of prophets in the sense of their legitimacy as
witnesses before God and of the validity of their message
mirrors the Qur’anic emphasis on the equality of believers in
the different religious traditions. The standard
formulation is first found in Surah al Baqarah 2:136: “Say: ‘We
believe in God, and in what has been bestowed upon us from on
high, and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael
and Isaac and Jacob and their descendents, and that which has
been vouchsafed to Moses and Jesus, and that which has been
vouchsafed to all the [other] prophets by their Sustainer: we
make no distinction among any of them [in faith]. And it
is unto Him that we [all of us] surrender ourselves (literally
“unto Him we are Muslims)’.”
This is repeated verbatim in the next surah,
Surah Al-i Imran 3:84, and is preceded by the rhetorical
question in 3:83, “Do they seek perchance a faith other than in
God, although it is unto Him that whatever is in the heavens and
on earth surrenders itself, willingly or unwillingly, since unto
Him all must return.” The standard formulation is followed
in 3:85 by the warning, “For, if one goes in search of a
religion other than self-surrender unto God (literally “other
than the din of Islam”), it will never be accepted from Him, and
in the life to come he shall be among the lost.”
This emphasis on the universal equality of all
Prophets, while recognizing the special gifts of some adapted to
time and place and the missions of some as Messengers bringing
books of guidance, is why a Muslim is not a Muslim unless one
believes in the holy scriptures given to earlier dispensations.
B. Love
1. The Personal Relationship with God
The most pervasive teaching in the Islamic
religion is the centrality of love. Oddly, this is
precisely the concept that its detractors insist does not and
cannot exist. Unfortunately, Islam has more than its share
of professed adherents who share the conclusions of its
detractors and accordingly exhibit arrogance toward God and
exude hatred rather than love for Jews and Christians.
Such hatred is the origin both of terrorism and of terroristic
counter-terrorism.
The word islam means submission to God but
implies both love as the means to submission and peace as the
result. The Qur’an often uses the term
taqwa,
which means loving awareness of God. The common word for
love,
hubb,
as the basis for the reciprocal relationship of love intended
between God and the human person first appears near the
beginning of the Qur’an in the second chapter, Surah al Baqarah
2: 165: “Those who have attained to faith love Allah more than
all else.”
The combination of God’s love and mercy first appears in the
next chapter, Surah Al-i Imran, which introduces the Virgin Mary
and the “Word from God,” Jesus, whose message is renewed by
Muhammad. The Prophet Muhammad is instructed as follows:
"Say: If you love God (in
tuhibbuna Allaha),
follow me, and God will love you (yuhbibkum
Allahu)
and forgive you your sins, for God is much forgiving, a
dispenser of grace".
The term
hubb
is first used in conjunction with taqwa in 3:76,
fa ina Allaha yuhibu al mutaqin
“for God loves those who live in awe of God’s love.”
The first complete listing in English of all terms in the Qur’an
referring to love may be found in the Concordance of the Qur’an
in English by H. E. Kassis, University of California Press.
In addition to hubb it also lists the related terms
radiya, shaghata,
and
wadud
(waada
and wadda).
The favorite prayer of the Prophet Muhammad, and of millions of
Muslims after him, is
Allahumma, asaluka hubbaka wa hubba man yuhibuka wa hubba kuli ‘amali
yuqaribuni ila hubbika,
“Oh Allah, I ask you for Your love, and for the love of those
who love You, and for the love of everything that will bring me
closer to your love.”
2. Forgiveness
Compassion and mercy are the essence of Allah in His name Al
Rahman and are manifested in His attribute of action Al Rahim.
Every surah in the Qur’an, except one, begins with the
invocation
Bi ismi Allah, al Rahman al Rahim,
as does every prayer by practicing Muslims.
Surah Fatir 35:45 concludes with the statement that if it were
not for the mercy and grace of Allah not a single living
creature would enter heaven.
This is why kindness and forgiveness are
encouraged throughout the Qur’an, which states about those who
forgive transgressors, “Their reward is with God, for God loves
those who exercise restraint and forgive.”
Forgiveness is also an essential part of Islamic
law. The well-known punishments of retribution are covered
in Surah al Ma’ida 5:45, “We ordained in the Torah a life for a
life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, and an ear for a
ear, and a tooth for a tooth, and a similar retribution for
wounds, but he who shall forego it out of charity will atone
thereby for some of his past sins.”
The same applies to the prescribed punishment for theft,
which is cutting off the thief’s hand. This is waived in
times and in societies where poverty reduces the freedom of the
individual to maintain a moral life based on truth. This
reflects the Prophet Muhammad’s warning, “Poverty may well turn
into a denial of the truth.” This means that those who
must exert all their energy merely to survive have no dignity,
no freedom, and no spiritual progress. This can drive
whole communities into materialism and away from love of God.
This is why the second caliph, ‘Umar ibn al Khattab, gave a
blanket waiver and eliminated the particular
hadd
of cutting off hands during a time of hunger.
This aspect of Islamic law reflects the basic
Islamic teaching that the economic well-being of the individual
is essential. If the functioning of societal institutions
does not provide adequate material well-being through the
community’s duty to protect its members, it has no right to
apply the full punishment for theft. In a fully
functioning Islamic society, however, theft by one person from
another is considered to be an attack on all of society and
deserves full
hudud.
In this case, the thief may be pardoned only if he repents and
returns the stolen goods before apprehension, because at least
from the standpoint of society he does not otherwise merit mercy
and forgiveness.
3. Reconciliation and Peace
The opposite of love and forgiveness is the ascription of
collective guilt to another community because of the sins of
some of its members. This leads to war. The Qur’an
specifically condemns collective guilt as the origin of
politically inspired
hiraba,
which is the closest Arabic equivalent to “terrorism.”
Collective guilt is used as the justification for blowing up
Jewish babies and “driving the Jews into the sea”, just as it
was in blaming the Palestinians for the crimes of the Nazis.
Of course, extremists among Jews would like to do the same to
all Palestinians in response to the perceived collective guilt
of the entire world for the shoah or holocaust. And
extremist Christians would like to nuke Makkah now rather than
later as retaliation against the incineration of 3,000 innocent
people in the towers of the World Trade Center. But one
crime inspired by ascribing collective guilt to others does not
justify another in an unending chain of destruction.
In the universal principles of Islamic
jurisprudence the right to life is next in importance to freedom
of religion, so much so that both the Jewish and Islamic
scriptures compare slaying another human being to killing all of
humanity. As in the holocaust, quantity becomes somewhat
irrelevant compared to the evil of the crime, which in the shoah
was unprecedented in human history. Near the beginning of
Surah al Ma’ida, 5:32, we read, “If anyone slays a human being –
unless it be [in punishment] for murder or for spreading
corruption on earth (fasad
fi al ‘ardi)
– it shall be as though he had slain all mankind; whereas, if
anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the
lives of all mankind.”
Long before the beginning of international law in
Europe, Islamic scholars developed a sophisticated set of
criteria for the just war similar to that now universally
accepted at least in theory throughout the world. Islam
does not preach pacifism because the Prophet Muhammad warned his
sometimes reluctant followers that under certain conditions one
must oppose aggressors with force, because otherwise not a
single synagogue, church, or mosque would remain standing.
A permanent state of war, as advocated by many Muslim extremists
today, however, is both unnecessary and forbidden.
The limits of just war are the same as the limits
for the jihad al asghar or Lesser Jihad. The aims must be
approved by legitimate authority and must be limited to the
defense of human rights for oneself and others. The amount
of force must be held to the minimum required for victory in
order to avoid harm to non-combatants and property. “Fight
in the cause of God [to defend justice] against those who fight
you, but do not transgress limits, for God does not love
transgressors” (Surah al Baqarah, 2:190).
Furthermore the expected benefit from war must be greater than
its inevitable harm. And all measures short of war must
have been exhausted in the search for justice.
Among the measures short of war are the other two
forms of jihad. These are the
jihad al akbar
or Greatest Jihad and the
jihad al kabir
or Great Jihad. The greatest jihad is the purification of
the self spiritually so that one will always seek peace.
The greatest and lesser jihads are found in the hadith or
sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.
The great jihad, which is the only one mentioned in the Qur’an (Surah
al Furqan 25:52) reads,
wa jahidhim bihi jihadan kabiran,
“strive with it (divine revelation) in a great jihad.”
This is the intellectual jihad needed especially during times
when one’s soul and body are relatively secure. This is
the struggle of
tajdid
or societal renewal in order to promote greater justice at all
levels of human community, since injustice is the major cause of
war.
According to the Grand Mufti of Syria, Shaykh
Ahmad Kuftaro, who headed one of the Naqshbandi Sufi orders
until his death at an advanced age, “The Great Jihad is to
acquaint ourselves and others with our Lord, with His greatness,
wisdom, justice, mercy, and love. It is to reflect all of
His attributes, as we can conceive of them, in our own lives so
that we become instruments of His purpose. And the Great
Jihad is to acquaint ourselves and others with the models of
Allah’s attributes to be found in the Prophets and Messengers of
Allah and in their common message in all its purity and fullness
in the life of the Prophet Muhammad.”
Good translations and annotations of the Qur’an
are now becoming available free, such as that by Muhammad Asad
from The Book Foundation. A profound
tafsir
or commentary on the Qur’an is now nearing completion by The
Traditionalist Foundation under the direction of Syed Hossein
Nasr, who has long been University Professor in Islamic Studies
at George Washington University and over the past half century
has published a score of excellent books on Islam for both
scholars and inquisitive teenagers. Recently he has
augmented the wealth of good books on Islam by his introductory
volume, The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity.
C. Compassionate Justice
1. Righteousness
The third of the principles that lead to respect
among all people of faith, other than freedom of religion and
love, is compassionate justice. This includes both
individual righteousness, known as
qist,
and social justice, known as
’adl
or
'adala.
Islamic teaching and practice distinguish between
righteousness and justice. This is shown by the use of
both terms in Surah al Nisaa 4:135: “Be ever steadfast in
upholding equity (qist).
… Do not follow your own desires lest you swerve from justice
(‘adl).”
What is translated as equity refers to a set of responsibilities
in the practice of individual virtue, because virtue at the
individual level is the essential foundation of justice at the
level of the community. This is why the portion of Surah
al Nisa’a leading up to verse 135 deals with one’s personal
spiritual life (verses 105 to 126) followed by responsibilities
and rights in social behavior (verses 127 to 130), including a
strong moral but not legal restriction on plural marriage in
verse 129 as part of the rights of women.
Equity or qist, though usually not differentiated from justice,
includes the five pillars of Islam, which are submission to God
and divine revelation, prayer, charity, fasting, and the
pilgrimage to Mecca in the hajj. These are essential means
to go beyond the level of
islam
to the level of
iman
or faith, which may be defined not merely as belief in the
Islamic creed or
‘aqida
(belief in divine revelation, angels, prophets and revealed
books, ultimate justice, and the infinite power of God) but to
the higher level of faith so that one can become fully human.
God’s supreme gift to every person is one’s endowment with a
conscious soul, referred to in the Qur’an as the
ruh
or spirit, which God breathes into every person as a “breath of
His own spirit.” Every person’s identity is the person God
intends one to be, so the pursuit of
iman
is to become that person. At the highest level, known as
ihsan,
which is the goal of Sufis, one’s subjective impression, though
not the absolute reality, is that only God exists, because
everything else is relatively irrelevant. This is a
foretaste of heaven.
2. Justice
Justice is the most universal value in all civilizations.
Justice assumes the existence of a truth higher than man-made or
positivist law. In fact, justice is merely an expression
of this truth. Thus God reveals in Surah al An’am 6:115 of
the Qur’an,
wa tamaat kalimatu rabika sidqan wa ‘adlan,
“The word of your Lord is fulfilled and perfected in truth and
in justice.”
The purpose of all religion is to empower the
truth. Justice is important for Muslims because they
consider that it is the translation of truth into practice and
that therefore justice is nothing more than the Will of God.
Its nature and substance, however, must be sought out through
deduction from divine revelation, natural law (known by Muslims
as the
sunnat Allahi),
and human intellectual processing of the first two sources.
In other words, justice is heuristic in the sense that it
constantly seeks knowledge about the sources, nature, and
practice of justice, with the challenges lying more in the
present as a means to build on the best of the past in search of
a better future.
Justice requires us to recognize that there is such a thing as
the furqan or difference between right and wrong at an absolute
level of truth and that we are not the ultimate arbiters of it.
The major purpose of prophets as intermediaries between God and
humankind is to raise our natural awareness of the
multi-dimensional nature of reality. Jesus, whom most
Muslims call the Prophet of Love and many Muslims call a Word
from God through the Holy Spirit (Ruh
al Quddus),
taught that as a manifestation of the divine he was an essential
link. He taught, “The truth shall set you free” (John
8:32) and “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
This statement of ultimate reality and of the means to access it
is just as true today as it was when Jesus spoke it two thousand
years ago. Today it is perhaps even more needed, now that
we have entered the most militantly polytheistic period of human
history.
The above three principles of respect, namely, freedom of
religion, love, and compassionate justice, constitute the
essence of Islam and the paradigmatic framework for human rights
in all higher religion.
III. Can Christians, Jews, Muslims, and
Buddhists
Acknowledge Each Other’s
Scriptures?
The Peoples of the Book can accept the Common Word in all divine
revelation, because they accept the same Common Ground.
They can accept Hans Kung’s Global Ethics, first proposed and
approved in Chicago at the Second Parliament of the World
Religions in 1993, just as they can accept the normative
principles in Islamic jurisprudence, known as the maqasid al
shari’ah. But, can they accept each others’scriptures as
divinely inspired?
The movement of The Common Word and The Common Ground has led to
several good books on this difficult question. One of the
most profound is Muslims, Christians, and the Challenge of
Interfaith Dialogue, by Jane Edelman Smith, who wrote this book
at Hartford Seminary as Professor of Islamic Studies and
Co-Director of the MacDonald Center for the Study of Islam and
Christian-Muslim Relations.
Whether Muslims can accept Jesus as a Muslim is explored in
Robert F. Shedinger’s treatise, Was Jesus a Muslim? Questioning
Categories in the Study of Religion.
The more difficult question is whether Christians can do the
same by accepting Muhammad as a Genuine Prophet and the Qur’an
as God’s Word. Can Christians respect the Muslim belief
that the Qur’an is a verbatim revelation from God and therefore
is central to their faith. Can Muslims accept Jesus, a
person of a Trinitarian God, as Christians’ response to God’s
presence in their lives.
From my reading, the New Testament does not clearly support the
basic Christian teachings on the trinity, original sin, and the
death of Jesus as vicarious atonement for the sins of humankind.
The New Testament therefore is quite compatible with the Qur’an
as a divine revelation. Based on my dissertation on the
subject at Northwestern University in 1955-56, however, I would
emphasize that the majority position in Catholic tradition
should be accepted as definitional for Christians as it was
developed in a series of Ecumenical Councils in the early
Christian centuries. For the same reason, the majority
position of the greatest Islamic scholars in Islamic tradition
should be taken as definitional for Islam, regardless of whether
or not this has been accepted universally by Muslims throughout
the centuries.
The great Roman philosopher, Cicero, advised two thousand years
ago that before one discusses anything whatsoever one should
first define one’s terms. Another wise wag has added that
“One should treat symbols and terms with the same caution one
would with tame rattlesnakes”. One has a universal
responsibility to respect the role of faith in understanding and
relating to any sacred scripture. An important question in
interfaith understanding, which is essential for productive
interfaith cooperation in addressing issues of conscience, is
the definition of prophecy. Prophecy has at least four
basic definitions.
The first is prophecy in the sense of predicting the future,
which secular think-tanks sometimes do based exclusively on
their selection of variables from the world of manifestation in
order to reach a preordained policy conclusion and
recommendation. In Islam, any such attempt to predict the
future is forbidden as denying the power of God, Who alone knows
and has the ultimate power over all things.
The second definition of prophecy, the Islamic one, is contained
in the Qur’anic word for it,
nubuwah,
which means “bringing the news”. A prophet or
nabii
(pl.
anbiyah)
brings the news from God either to a specific people or to all
humankind. A few prophets also bring a book of guidance
and therefore are called
rusul
(sing.
rasul)
or messengers. They may address the future, as well as the
past, but the primary message is for the present.
Perhaps the best Islamic definition of prophecy is contained in
an interview with Professor Hossein Nasr, entitled “The First
Prophet”. He explains, “First of all, prophecy is the
revelation of some aspect of divine reality in the world of
creation. Or, speaking metaphorically, the projection of
an aspect of divine reality into manifestation. The world
as we see it, of course, is not reality; it is only the
appearance of reality, a level of reality. The Divine is
reality as such, the absolute and ultimate reality”.
He concludes, “It’s the ‘Good News’. That is, news which
has to do, not only with our own nature in the world – what we
are, who we are – but also what we ought to become, where we
should be going”. This is similar to Thomas Merton’s
wisdom that each person’s real identity is the person that God
created one to be, so one’s mission in life is “to become the
person that one is” in the “eyes of God”, as contrasted with the
false self or selves that occupy the creative energies of so
many persons in the contemporary world. And the same
applies to every human community.
Still a third possible definition of prophecy is represented by
the Qur’anic reference to the mysterious character known as Al
Khidr or “The Green Man”. He famously dumbfounded the
Prophet Moses,
alayhi as-salam,
on a journey by doing things that seemed to have no legitimate
purpose, while commanding Moses not to ask questions. At
the end he explained the purpose of every inexplicable act,
thereby teaching even a Prophet of God what he did not and could
not know.
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf in the book,
Common Ground between Islam and Buddhism,
discusses the classical Islamic scholars’ identification of
Khidr (also called Al-Khadir) as the Lord Buddha. He
writes, “Based on their description of the Buddha, if they are
accurate, it would seem that he is none other than al-Khader,
whom Muslims acknowledge, upon him be peace. … Although al
Khadir,
‘alayhi as-salam,
is associated with the period of Moses in the Qur’an, a
widespread belief among Muslims is that al-Khadir does not die
until the end of time. … Al Khadir was a trans-historical
character. It is also possible to interpret the figure of
al-Khadir as a supra-historical archetype, or a particular mode
of spiritual guidance – antinomian and enigmatic, radically
transcending human modes of comprehension, and even ‘normal’
modes of prophetic guidance”.
“Al-Khadir”, writes Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, “is indeed an enigmatic
character. According to the Qur’an, he is given two gifts
directly from God: mercy and experiential knowledge of reality.
He is generally not considered a prophet. He is a teacher
who wants no students, and, in the Qur’anic narrative, he
attempts to dissuade Moses from attempting to learn what cannot
be taught but has to be experienced. This is a very
Buddhist view. The Buddha is reported to have said, ‘If
one would make oneself as one teaches others to be, one should
master self-control, for the self is truly hard to tame’.
Al-Khadir uses a Zen-like approach, in which the student cannot
discern the meaning of his actions but has to endure the
teacher’s outward antinomian behavior patiently. He is
described by most of the theologians of Islam as someone who was
given direct knowledge (‘ilm ladunniyy). Which is not
revelation, but knowledge ‘from the divine presence’. It
is defined as ‘A direct knowledge someone obtains from God
without means of an angel or a prophet through witnessing, as
occurred with al-Khadir… It is said that it is a knowledge
of the divine essence and its qualities with a certainty that
arises from direct witnessing and experience that occurs in the
inner eye of consciousness’.”
Sufi exegetes of the Qur’an have argued: “Al-Khidr represents
the inner dimension, esoterism, which transcends form. He
appears to men in those moments when their own soul bears
witness to an awareness of that dimension. In that rare
case when there is a spontaneous realization of spiritual truth
on the part of a fard, a solitary or someone who is by destiny
cut off from revelation or from normal channels of spiritual
instruction, it is al-Khidr who is the teacher, as in the saying
‘when the disciple is ready, the master appears’.”
Ordinary Muslims understand this esoteric teaching merely as the
distinction between
wahy
or divine revelation to prophets, which is binding on everyone,
and
ilham
or inspiration, which is binding only on the person who receives
it. Those who confuse the two are by definition outside
the faith. Roman Catholics accept inspiration but reject
prophecy after the death of Jesus. Muslims reject prophecy
after the death of Muhammad, simply because there is no further
need for prophecy. The same is not true, however, for
Jews, who may reject both Jesus and Muhammad as prophets but are
still awaiting future prophets until the Messiah comes at the
end of the world.
The fourth form of prophecy is the Jewish. Under this
definition, Jews and Christians can accept Muhammad as a
prophet, even though few do. The classical definition of
the prophet as a recipient of divine revelation was penned by
Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel. In his magnum opus,
The Prophets: An Introduction,
HarperCollins, 1962, he writes, as reproduced in Parabola,
Spring 1996, pp. 6-9, entitled “What Manner of Man is a
Prophet”:
“The Prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a
burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s
fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human
voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice
that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered
poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form of
living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in
the prophet’s words. …
“To a person endowed with prophetic sight, everyone else appears
blind; to a person whose ear perceives God’s voice, everyone
appears deaf. No one is just; no knowing is strong enough,
no trust complete enough. The prophet hates the
approximate, he shuns the middle of the road. Man must
live on the summit to avoid the abyss. There is nothing to
hold to except God. Carried away by the challenge, the
demand to straighten out man’s ways, the prophet is strange,
one-sided, an unbearable extremist….
“The prophet’s word is a scream in the night. While the
world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from
heaven. … The prophet is a watchman, a servant, a messenger of
god, ‘an assayer and tester’ of the people’s ways (Jeremiah
6:27). … The prophet’s eye is directed to the contemporary
scene; the society and its conduct are the main theme of his
speeches. Yet his ear is inclined to God. He is a
person struck by the glory and presence of God, overpowered by
the hand of God. Yet his true greatness is his ability to
hold God and man in a single thought.”
IV. Conclusion
This story of Khidr in the Islamic scripture reveals the central
challenge of interfaith dialogue and cooperation. In order
to bring out the best of all faiths one must understand and
respect where each person of faith is coming from. Equally
important is solidarity in practical follow-up through a
commitment to explore for everyone’s mutual enrichment what all
people of faith have in common in addressing universal issues of
conscience. In Christianity, as developed throughout the
centuries, the commitment is based on mutual love inspired by
God. In classical Islam and classical Judaism, as
developed in their extensive interpretative tradition, the
commitment is based on the search for truth and justice inspired
by one’s love of God and of one’s fellow human beings.
Both the search and the result originate in God’s love for
everyone of us.
One of the most instructive moments in my life
was the five minutes I spent almost 30 years ago in 1982 with
two Buddhist monks, who had just arrived from Nepal to join a
gathering of representatives from the world religions designed
to establish a village of monasteries in Baca, Colorado.
They had only five minutes time before they had to go shopping
in Baca, and I was delegated to entertain them. Not
knowing how one entertains Buddhist monks, I asked them to
explain Buddhism in five minutes.
They laughed and replied, “We do not need five
minutes to explain all there is to know about Buddhism.
First, one must master Hinayana Buddhism, which is to separate
oneself from addiction to the material world. Then one
must master Mahayana Buddhism, which is to unite with nirvana,
nothing, no thing, the transcendent. Finally, once has
accomplished this, one will be at the level of Tantrayana
Buddhism, where one’s great desire will be to bring peace
through justice to every living being”.
My response was still more simple: “You have just
explained in twenty seconds everything that is essential to know
about Islam”. This simple lesson from two Buddhist monks
is the secret to success for the movement of the Common Word and
the Common Ground in transforming interfaith dialogue into
interfaith solidarity for Transcendent Justice.
ENDNOTES
1 See Crane, Shaping the Future: Challenge and Response,
Tapestry Press, 1997, 159 pages.
2 Crane, Robert D., “From Clashing Civilizations to a Common
Vision,” in Islam and Global Dialogue: Religious Pluralism and
the Pursuit of Peace, Roger Boase, editor, with a Foreword by
HRH Prince Hassan bin Talal, Ashcroft, 2005, 310 pp., pages
159-177. See also Joseph E. B. Lombard, Editor, Islam,
Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition: Essays by Western
Muslim Scholars, World Wisdom, Bloomington, IN, 2004, 324 pages.
3 See, Crane, Robert D.,
http://www.theamericanmslim.org,
“The Mission of Imams in America: Marginalizing Extremists by
Revealing the Real Truth about Muhammad, June 25, 2007, and
“Mission of Muslims in America: A Grand Strategy to Marginalize
Extremists,” July 18, 2007. See also, Crane, “New
Frontiers in Conflict Management: A Grand Strategy to Wage Jihad
Against Terrorist Muslims,”
http://www.theamericanmuslim.org,
September 24, 2004, and “Counter-Terrorism 201: The Role of
Islam,”
http://www.theamericanmuslim.org,
March 4, 2005.
4 Robert D. Crane, “Common Word and Principles of Respect:
Transforming Interfaith Dialogue into Interreligious Solidarity
for Justice,” condensed for delivery at the 37th Annual
Conference of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists
(AMSS), entitled “Crossing Boundaries: Mobilizing Faith,
Diversity, and Dialogue,” at Harvard Divinity School on October
24th-25th, 2008,
http://www.amss.org.
5 The best discussion of this question is by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
in his concluding essay, entitled “Buddha in the Qur’an,” pp.
113-136, published in 2010 by Fons Vitae in the book Common
Ground between Islam and Buddhism, by Reza Shah Kazemi, with
introductions by the Dalai Lama, by Mohammad Hashim Kamali, who
is perhaps the leading Muslim expert on the shari’ah, and H.R.H.
Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, who was the author of the
historic A Common Word Open Letter and Peace Initiative of 2007.
6 Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation, and Commentary,
1934, 1854 pages, footnote 6198 to Surah al Tin, 95:1.
This footnote in the original Yusuf Ali translation was removed
in later editions, together with some lengthy appendices,
footnotes, and translations that were not acceptable to those
who funded its publication.
7 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for
Humanity, HarperCollins, 2002, 338 pages.
8 Robert D. Crane, The Natural Law of Compassionate Justice: An
Islamic Perspective, Fort Washington, MD, Scholars Chair, 224
pages, officially launched in a signing ceremony at the Rumi
Forum in Washington, D.C. on January 28, 2010.
9 Jane Edelman Smith, Muslims, Christians, and the Challenge of
Interfaith Dialogue, Oxford University Press, 1997, 186 pages.
This was followed by the second edition of her book, Islam in
America, New York, Columbia University Press, 2010, 231 pages, a
publication of the Columbia Contemporary American Religion
Series.
10 Robert F. Shedinger, Was Jesus a Muslim? Questioning
Categories in the Study of Religion, Minneapolis, Fortress
Press, 2009, 194 pp.
11 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “The First Prophet”, Parabola: Myth,
Tradition, and the Search for Meaning, Spring 1996, pp. 13-19,
in an issue devoted to “Prophets and Prophecy”.
12 The story of Khidr in Surah al Kahf, 18:65-82, relates to the
travels of Moses reportedly near the tip of the Sinai Peninsula,
where the “two waters” meet, in the search for wisdom,
specifically in discerning the difference between his own great
knowledge of this world and the still greater and higher
knowledge that transcends it. According to the account
revealed by God through the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet
Muhammad, Moses “encountered one of Our servants, on whom We had
bestowed grace from Ourselves and unto whom We had imparted
knowledge issuing from Ourselves. Moses said to him, ‘May
I follow you on the understanding that you will impart to me
something of that consciousness of what is right which has been
imparted to you’. He answered, ‘Behold, you will never be
able to have patience with me – for how could you be patient
with something that you cannot comprehend with the compass of
your experience?’ Moses replied, ‘You will find me
patient, if God so wills, and I shall not disobey you in
anything.’ Said the sage, ‘Well, then, if you are to
follow me, do not question me about anything (that I may do)
until I myself give you an explanation for it’.
“And so the two went on their way [until they reached the
seashore], and when they disembarked from the boat [that had
ferried them across the water] the sage made a hole in it,
whereupon Moses exclaimed, ‘Have you made a hole in it in order
to drown the people who may be traveling in it? Indeed,
you have done a grievous thing!’ The sage replied, ‘ Did I
not tell you that you will never be able to have patience with
me?’ Moses said, ‘Do not take me to task for having
forgotten, and do not be hard on me on account of what I have
done’.
“And so the two went on until they met a young man, whom the
sage promptly killed, whereupon Moses exclaimed, ‘Have you slain
an innocent human being without his having taken another man’s
life? Indeed, you have done a terrible thing!’ He
replied, ‘Did I not tell you that you will never be able to have
patience with me?’ Moses said, ‘If, after this, I should
ever question you, do not keep me in your company, for by now
you have heard enough excuses from me’.
“And so the two went on, until, when they came upon some village
people, they asked them for food, but those people refused them
all hospitality. And they saw in that village a wall which
was on the point of tumbling down, and the sage rebuilt it,
whereupon Moses said, ‘If you had wished, surely you at least
could have obtained some payment for it’. The sage
replied, ‘This is the parting of ways between you and me.
And now I shall let you know the real meaning of all those
events that you were unable to bear with patience’.
“‘As for that boat, it belonged to some needy people who toiled
upon the sea, and I desired to damage it because [I knew that]
behind them was a king who was accustomed to seizing every boat
by brute force. And as for that young man, his parents
were true believers – whereas we had every reason to fear that
he would bring bitter grief upon them by his overweaning
wickedness and denial of all truth, and so we desired that their
Sustainer grant them in his stead [a child] of greater purity
than him and closer to them in loving tenderness. And as
for that wall, it belonged to two orphan boys living in the
town, and beneath it was buried a treasure belonging to them by
right. Now their father had been a righteous man, and so
your Sustainer willed it that when they come of age they should
bring forth their treasure by your Sustainer’s grace. And
I did not do any of this of my own accord. This is the
real meaning of all those events that you were unable to bear
with patience’.”
13 Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, footnote 5 supra.
HOME - NEWSLETTERS - BOOKS - ARTICLES - CONTACT - FEEDBACK
DISCLAIMER:
All material published by Al-Huda.com / And the Message Continues is the sole responsibility of its author's).
The opinions and/or assertions contained therein do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of this site,
nor of Al-Huda and its officers.