He was a pious family man, a trader from Mecca who regularly
retreated into the hills above the city to fast and pray. In his
40th year, while he was praying in a cave on Mount Hira, the
angel Gabriel spoke to him, saying, Muhammad, you are the
Messenger of God, and commanded him to Recite!
MUHAMMAD PROTESTED that he could not after all, he was not
gifted like the traditional tribal bards of Arabia. Then,
according to this tradition, the angel squeezed him so violently
that Muhammad thought he d die. Again Gabriel ordered him to
recite, and from his lips came the first verses of what
eventually became the Qur an, regarded as the eternal words of
God himself by some 1.3 billion Muslims around the world. Until
that moment, 13 centuries ago, the Arabs were mostly
polytheists, worshiping tribal deities. They had no sacred
history linking them to one universal god, like other Middle
Eastern peoples. They had no sacred text to live by, like the
Bible; no sacred language, as Hebrew is to Jews and Sanskrit is
to Hindus. Above all, they had no prophet sent to them by God,
as Jews and Christians could boast.
Muhammad and the words that he recited until his death
in 632 provided all this and more. Like the Bible, the Qur an is
a book of divine revelation. Between them, these two books
define the will of God for more than half the world s
population. Over centuries, the Bible fashioned the Hebrew
tribes into a nation: Israel. But in just a hundred years, the
Qur an created an entire civilization that at its height
stretched from northern Africa and southern Europe in the West
to the borders of modern India and China in the East. Even
today, in streets as distant from each other as those of
Tashkent, Khartoum, Qom and Kuala Lumpur, one can hear from dawn
to dusk the constant murmur and chant of the Qur an in melodious
Arabic. Indeed, if there were a gospel according to Muhammad, it
would begin with these words: in the beginning
INHERENTLY INTOLERANT? But since the events of September
11, the Qur an and the religion it inspired have been on trial.
Is Islam an inherently intolerant faith? Does the Qur an oblige
Muslims to wage jihad holy war on those who do not share their
beliefs? And who are these infidels that the Muslim Scriptures
find so odious? After all, Jews and Christians are monotheists,
too, and most of their own prophets Abraham, Moses and Jesus
especially are revered by Muslims through their holy book.
Listening to the rants of Osama bin Laden and other radical
Islamists, Jews and Christians wonder who really speaks for
Islam in these perilous times. What common ground if any joins
these three Peoples of the Book, as Muslims call their fellow
monotheists? What seeds of reconciliation lie within the Qur an
and the Bible and the traditions that they represent? Does the
battle of the books, which has endured for centuries between
Muslims and believers in the West, ensure a perpetual clash of
civilizations?
was the Book. The Qur an does contain sporadic calls to
violence, sprinkled throughout the text. Islam implies peace,
as Muslims repeatedly insist. Yet the peace promised by Allah to
individuals and societies is possible only to those who follow
the straight path as outlined in the Qur an. When Muslims run
into opposition, especially of the armed variety, the Qur an
counsels bellicose response. Fight them [nonbelievers] so that
Allah may punish them at your hands, and put them to shame, one
Qur anic verse admonishes. Though few in number, these
aggressive verses have fired Muslim zealots in every age.
The Bible, too, has its stories of violence in the name
of the Lord. The God of the early Biblical books is fierce
indeed in his support of the Israelite warriors, drowning
enemies in the sea. But these stories do not have the force of
divine commands. Nor are they considered God s own eternal
words, as Muslims believe Qur anic verses to be. Moreover,
Israeli commandos do not cite the Hebrew prophet Joshua as they
go into battle, but Muslim insurgents can readily invoke the
example of their Prophet, Muhammad, who was a military commander
himself. And while the Crusaders may have fought with the cross
on their shields, they did not could not cite words from Jesus
to justify their slaughters. Even so, compared with the few and
much quoted verses that call for jihad against the infidels, the
Qur an places far more emphasis on acts of justice, mercy and
compassion.
Indeed, the Qur an is better appreciated as
comprehensive guide for those who would know and do the will of
God. Like the Bible, the Qur an defines rules for prayer and
religious rituals. It establishes norms governing marriage and
divorce, relations between men and women and the way to raise
righteous children. More important, both books trace a common
lineage back to Abraham, who was neither Jew nor Christian, and
beyond that to Adam himself. Theologically, both books profess
faith in a single God (Allah means The God ) who creates and
sustains the world. Both call humankind to repentance, obedience
and purity of life. Both warn of God s punishment and final
judgment of the world. Both imagine a hell and a paradise in the
hereafter.
DIVINE AUTHORITY
As sacred texts, however, the Bible and the Qur an could
not be more different. To read the Qur an is like entering a
stream. At almost any point one may come upon a command of God,
a burst of prayer, a theological pronouncement, the story of an
earlier prophet or a description of the final judgment. Because
Muhammad s revelations were heard, recited and memorized by his
converts, the Qur an is full of repetitions. None of its 114
suras, or chapters, focuses on a single theme. Each sura takes
its title from a single word The Cow, for example, names the
longest which appears only in that chapter. When Muhammad s
recitations were finally written down (on palm leaves, shoulders
of animals, shards of anything that would substitute for paper)
and collected after his death, they were organized roughly from
the longest to the shortest. Thus there is no chronological
organization this is God speaking, after all, and his words are
timeless. Nonetheless, scholars recognize that the shortest
suras were received first, in Muhammad s Meccan period, and the
longest in Medina, where he later became a political and
military leader of the emerging community of Muslims. As a
result, the longer texts take up matters of behavior and
organization which are absent in the shorter, more prophetic
suras that announce the need to submit. ( Muslim
means submission to God.) The Qur an s fluid structure can be
confusing, even to Muslims. That s why one finds in Muslim
bookstores such books as What the Qur an says about women
or What the Qur an says about a just society , observes Jane
McAuliffe of Georgetown University, editor of the new
Encyclopaedia of the Qur an.
Bin Laden's Twisted Mission
Like the Bible, the Qur an asserts its own divine
authority. But whereas Jews and Christians regard the Biblical
text as the words of divinely inspired human authors, Muslims
regard the Qur an, which means The Recitation, as the eternal
words of Allah himself. Thus, Muhammad is the conduit for God s
words, not their composer. Moreover, since Muhammad heard God in
Arabic, translations of the Qur an are considered
mere interpretations of the language of God s original
revelation. In this very important sense, says Roy Mottahedeh,
professor of Middle Eastern history at Harvard, the Qur an is
not the Bible of the Muslims. Rather, he says, it is like the
oral Torah first revealed to Moses that was later written down.
In gospel terminology, the Qur an corresponds to Christ himself,
as the logos, or eternal word of the Father. In short, if Christ
is the word made flesh, the Qur an is the word made book. The
implications of this doctrine are vast and help to explain the
deepest divisions between Muslims and other monotheisms. For
Muslims, God is one, indivisible and absolutely transcendent.
Because of this, no edition of the Qur an carries illustrations
even of the Prophet lest they encourage idolatry (shirk), the
worst sin a Muslim can commit. Muslims in the former Persian
Empire, however, developed a rich tradition of extra-Qur anic
art depicting episodes in the life of Muhammad, from which the
illustrations for this story are taken. But for every Muslim,
the presence of Allah can be experienced here and now through
the very sounds and syllables of the Arabic Qur an. Thus, only
the original Arabic is used in prayer even though the vast
majority of Muslims do not understand the language. It doesn t
matter: the Qur an was revealed through the Prophet s ears, not
his eyes. To hear those same words recited, to take them into
yourself through prayer, says Father Patrick Gaffney, an
anthropologist specializing in Islam at the University of Notre
Dame, is to experience the presence of God with the same kind
of intimacy as Catholics feel when they receive Christ as
consecrated bread and wine at mass.
PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
Why then, does the Qur an acknowledge Jews and
Christians as fellow People of the Book, and as such,
distinguish them from nonbelievers? Contrary to popular
belief, the Book in question is not the Bible; it refers to a
heavenly text, written by God, of which the Qur an is the only
perfect copy. According to the Qur an, God mercifully revealed
the contents of that book from time to time through the words of
previous Biblical prophets and messengers and also to other
obscure figures not mentioned in the Bible. But in every case
those who received his revelations particularly the Jews and
Christians either consciously or inadvertently corrupted the
original text, or seriously misinterpreted it. On this view, the
Qur an is not a new version of what is contained in the Bible,
but what Jane McAuliffe calls a re-revelation that corrects
the errors of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Readers of
the Bible will find in the Qur an familiar figures such as
Abraham, Moses, David, John the Baptist, Jesus and even the
Virgin Mary, who appears much more often than she does in the
New Testament, and is the only woman mentioned in the Qur an by
name. But their stories differ radically from those found in the
Bible. In the Qur an all the previous prophets are Muslims.
Abraham (Ibrahim), for example, is recognized as the
first Muslim because he chose to surrender to Allah rather than
accept the religion of his father, who is not mentioned in the
Bible. Neither is the Qur anic story of how Abraham built the
Kaaba in Mecca, Islam s holiest shrine. Abraham s importance in
the Qur an is central: just as the Hebrews trace their lineage
to Abraham through Isaac, his son by Sarah, the Qur an traces
Arab genealogy and Muhammad s prophethood back through Ishmael,
a son Abraham had by Hagar. The Qur anic Moses (Musa) looks much
like his Biblical counterpart. He confronts the pharaoh, works
miracles and in the desert ascends the mountain to receive God s
commandments. But in the Qur an there is no mention of the
Passover rituals, and among the commandments one of the most
important for Jews keeping the Sabbath is absent. Obedience to
parents is stressed repeatedly, but as in the Qur anic story of
Abraham, disobedience is required when parents are polytheists.
As a prophet rejected by his own people, the Qur anic
Jesus (Isa) looks a lot like Muhammad, who was at first rejected
by the people of Mecca. He preaches the word of God, works
miracles, is persecuted and what is new, foretells his
successor: Muhammad. But the Qur an rejects the Christian claim
that he is the son of God as blasphemous and dismisses the
doctrine of the Trinity as polytheistic. The Crucifixion is
mentioned in passing, but according to the Qur an Jesus
mysteriously does not die. Instead, Allah rescues him to heaven
from where he will descend in the last days and, like other
prophets, be a witness for his community of believers at the
Final Judgment.
What Muhammad may have known about the Bible and its
prophets and where he got his information is a purely scholarly
debate. The Qur an itself says that Muhammad met a Jewish clan
in Medina. He even had his followers bow to Jerusalem when
praying until the Jews rejected him as prophet. Some scholars
claim that Muhammad had in-laws who were Christian, and they
believe he learned his fasting and other ascetic practices from
observing desert monks. But Muslims reject any scholarly efforts
to link the contents of the Qur an to the Prophet s human
interactions. They cherish the tradition that Muhammad could not
read or write as proof that the Qur an is pure revelation. It is
enough for them that Islam is the perfect religion and the
Qur an the perfect text.
That belief has not prevented Muslim tradition from
transforming the Qur an s many obscure passages into powerful
myths. By far the most significant is the story developed from
one short verse: Glory be to Him who carried His servant at
night from the Holy Mosque to the Further Mosque, the precincts
of which we have blessed, that we might show him some of our
signs (sura 17:1). From this Muslims have elaborated the story
of Muhammad s mystical nighttime journey from Mecca to
Jerusalem, where he addresses an assembly of all previous
prophets from Adam to Jesus. Yet another version of this story
tells of his subsequent Ascension (mi raj) from Jerusalem to the
throne of Allah, receiving honors along the way from the
prophets whom he has superseded. For Sufi mystics, Muhammad s
ascension is the paradigmatic story of the soul s flight to God.
For many Muslim traditionalists, however, the journey was a
physical one. Either way, its geopolitical significance cannot
be ignored because the spot where the ascension began is Islam s
third holiest shrine: the Dome of the Rock on Jerusalem s Temple
Mount.
In Islam s current political conflicts with the West,
the major problem is not the Muslims sacred book but how it is
interpreted. Muslims everywhere are plagued by a crippling
crisis of authority. The Qur an envisioned a single Muslim
community (the umma), but as subsequent history shows, Muslims
have never resolved the tension between religious authority and
Islamic governments. When Islam was a great medieval
civilization, jurists learned in the Qur an decided how to apply
God s words to changed historical circumstances. Their fatwas
(opinions) settled disputes. But in today s Islamic states,
authoritative religious voices do not command widespread
respect. Like freewheeling fundamentalists of every religious
stripe, any Muslim with an agenda now feels free to cite the
Qur an in his support. Osama bin Laden is only the most
dangerous and obvious example.
DECIPHERING MEANINGS
But the Qur an has its moderate interpreters as well.
Since September 11, brave voices scattered across the Middle
East have condemned the terrorist acts of killing civilians and
judged suicide bombing contrary to the teaching of the Qur an.
Returning to the text itself, other scholars have found verses
showing that Allah created diverse peoples and cultures for a
purpose and therefore intended that the world remain pluralistic
in religion as well. The Qur an, argues Muslim philosopher
Jawat Said of the Al-Azhar Institute in Cairo, gives support
and encouragement to sustain the messengers of reform who face
difficult obstacles. America, too, has a core of immigrant and
second-generation Muslim scholars who have experienced firsthand
the benefits of democracy, free speech and the Bill of Rights.
They think the Qur an is open to interpretations that can
embrace these ideals for Islamic states as well. Islam even has
feminists like Azizah Y. al-Hibri of the University of Richmond
Law School, who are laying the legal groundwork for women s
rights through a careful reconsideration of the Qur an and its
classic commentators.
It is precisely here that the Bible and the Qur an find
their real kinship. As divine revelation, each book says much
more than what a literal reading can possibly capture. To say
that God is one, as both the Qur an and the Bible insist, is
also to say that God s wisdom is unfathomable. As the Prophet
himself insisted, God reveals himself through signs whose
meanings need to be deciphered. Here, it would seem, lie the
promising seeds of religious reconciliation. Humility, not
bravado, is the universal posture of anyone who dares to plumb
the mind of God and seek to do his will.
To those against whom war is made, permission is given to
fight, says the 22d chapter of the Qur an especially those who
have been expelled from their homes... for no cause except that
they say, Our Lord is Allah . Thus in Muslim theology
defensive holy war was justified against European Crusaders and
conquerors who attacked Muslims in the name of Christ and
imposed the Inquisition, with all its horrors. Thus, in more
recent times, Afghans could wage their war against the atheistic
Soviets with plenty of religious backing. Few if any Muslim
scholars will speak out against jihad by Palestinians fighting
Israeli occupying troops. But bin Laden, a Saudi, was never
persecuted for his faith. The goals he fought for initially were
political and personal: to overthrow the Muslim rulers of his
own country. And the jihad he declared against the United
States, in the eyes of most religious scholars, was never a holy
