The Case of the Overlooked Fatwa
Khaleel
Mohammed
PRECIS
While Muslims and Christians profess a shared reverence for Jesus, they differ on two main issues. The Qur’an denies the divinity of Jesus, and most Muslims interpret the single verse about the crucifixion in the Qur’an (Q 4:157) as denying that such an event occurred. Over the last thirty years, scholars have found that the Qur’an does not clearly reject the idea that Jesus was placed on the cross and died there. However, the majority opinion remains one of rejection. This essay presents the fatwa of one of modern Islam’s most famous and dynamic reformist thinkers, Mahmoud Shaltut, former shaykh of al-Azhar University. He shows that what the Qur’an actually denies is not the placement of Jesus upon the cross but, rather, that such placement was the cause of his death. Such a fatwa could, in a time of high polemic between Muslims and Christians, foster an outlook that, if it falls short of complete common agreement, at least acknowledges part of the Gospel narratives.
Centuries
of interfaith discussion have not brought Christians and Muslims to any
agreement on two rather contentious aspects of Christology. For Christians, the
divinity of Jesus and his crucifixion as vicarious sacrifice are elemental to
faith. The Qur’an most certainly objects to any idea of Jesus’ divinity,1
and its single verse (Q 4:157) on the crucifixion has led most Muslims from the
classical period up to the present to deny the relevant Gospel narratives.
Indeed, the dominant opinion among Muslims is that another person was
substituted in Jesus’ place.2
Recent
scholarship has shown that the Qur’anic verses
on the crucifixion are open to more than one interpretation. Prominent among
such scholars is Mahmoud Ayoub, who
concluded that the Qur’an does not actually deny the crucifixion.3
He sees the problem as lying with the Muslim commentators who, while not
convincingly disproving the event, have in fact compounded the problem by
adding substitutionist
theories.4 The most in-depth study to date was done by Todd Lawson
in his The Crucifixion and the Qur’an.5
After a comprehensive survey of primary sources, he concluded that there is no
single consistent Muslim view on the subject and that the Ismailis and the Ikhwan al-Safa, for
example, affirmed the crucifixion.6
Curiously,
however, despite his exhaustive coverage, Lawson did not mention the fatwa of Mahmoud Shaltut
on the subject. Shaltut was the shaykh of Azhar,
Islam’s flagship university of traditional learning, from 1958 to 1963, and one
of the most authoritative scholars of doctrine. His fatwa runs contrary to the traditional Sunni viewpoint and, as
such, ought to be an elemental reference in comparative Muslim-Christian
Christology. This is perhaps why The
Moslem World, in 1944, chose to carry a translation, since the journal at
that time was aimed toward spreading the gospel among Muslims.7 The
present essay presents and analyses Shaltut’s fatwa for its possible effect on
interfaith discussions.
To
contextualize the importance of Shaltut’s fatwa, however, it ought to be
understood that, for those who deny the crucifixion, the dominant idea is that
Jesus will return at the end of time to wage war against an antichrist.8
The Hadith Collections contain
several traditions that graphically detail the return of Jesus who, with a
Muslim army, completely routs a Jewish antichrist and his ungodly forces.9
The
Second Advent of Jesus is so important to majoritarian Islamic creed that the Permanent Committee for Research and Fatwa,
of Saudi Arabia, a government institution headed by that nation’s most
influential religious authorities, proclaimed:
It has been established by proofs from the Scripture and
the authentic traditions that Jesus, son of Mary, was not killed and did not
die, but that God raised him alive unto Himself and that he will return at the
end of time as a just judge in the Muslim community. Whoever says that Jesus
son of Mary died, and that he will not return towards the end of time, has
opined contrary to the book of God and the authoritative tradition of His
prophet, thereby committing a grievous error. After such a person comes of age,
and proof has been sustained against him
for lying against God and his Messenger, he is to be ruled as a disbeliever.10
A
ruling of disbelief would, in the strictly traditional jurisprudential system
of Saudi Arabia, be essentially a death sentence. In almost any Muslim
community in the world, the charge of disbelief leveled against a Muslim would
lead to certain ostracism. Although the Saudi Arabian edict postdates Shaltut’s
statement, it must be noted that the idea of the denial of Jesus’ ascent and
return as tantamount to disbelief is not new.11 The Saudi Arabian fatwa therefore rightly pointed out that
the general body of Islam views the Second Advent as a creedal element.
It
is in light of the foregoing that the importance of Shaltut’s
1942 fatwa shines forth. Charles
Adams translated most of the text and published it under the heading “A Fatwa on the ‘Ascension of Jesus” in The Moslem World in 1944.12
The translation that follows is largely mine, as taken from Al-Fatāwa,13 with due
acknowledgement to Adams for extensive use of parts of his rendering. The
explanatory sub-headings are not mine but are taken directly from the book.
Like Adams, I have left out parts that I deem overly repetitive or unimportant
for the purposes of this essay, and have rendered some expressions outside of
the literal Arabic into what I view as equivalent English idiom.
Translated Text of the Preamble and Fatwa
An
inquiry was addressed to the scholars of al-Azhar
from Mr. Abdul Kareem Khan, Middle Eastern Forces High Command, asking: Is
Jesus living or dead according to the view of the Qur’an and Islamic Oral
tradition? What is the status of a Muslim who denies that he is living? What is
the status of one who does not believe in him if it were supposed that he would
return to this world again? We issued the following fatwa that was published by Al-Risālah
in 1942, issue 462:
The
Qur’an and the End of Jesus
The
Qur’an refers to Jesus’ final interaction with his people in three chapters:
1. Q 3:48–55: . . . God said, “O Jesus! Verily I will
cause you to die (mutawaffīka)
and will raise you to me (rāfi’uka ilayya), and
I will purify you of those who disbelieve . . .
2. Q 4:157–158: . . . As for their saying, “We killed the
Christ Jesus, son of Mary, messenger of God” – they did not kill him nor did
they crucify him, but it appeared as such to them. Indeed those who differ in
this are in doubt concerning it. They have no clear knowledge of the matter
except conjecture. They did not clearly kill him. Rather God raised him unto
himself (rafa’hu Allahu ilayhi),
and God is Powerful, Wise.
3. Q 5:116–117: . . . (Jesus said): I did not say to them
except what You
ordered me, “Worship God, my Lord and your Lord. I was a witness over them so
long as I was amongst them. And when you caused me to die (tawaffaytanī), You
were the Watcher over them and You are Witness to everything.”
The
last reference is to an eschatological matter that pertains to his people’s
worshiping him and his mother in this world, about which matter God questioned
him. The verse represents, in Jesus’ own words, his avowal that he did not
order them except to do what God had commanded; that he, Jesus, was a witness
against them for the time that he was among them; and that he did not know what
happened to them after God caused him to die.
Meaning
of Tawaffā
The
term “tawaffā”
occurs several times in the Qur’an to mean death, until this has become the
dominant usage, the one most immediately understood. It has not been used in
any other sense unless accompanied by a conditioner that changes its dominant
meaning (examples are provided showing a contextual meaning other than death,
as in Q 4:9, 4:15, 6:61, 8:50, 12:101, 22:5, and 32:11). The correct
understanding of tawaffaytanī
(in Q 5:117) and the obvious meaning is that of ordinary death as comprehended
by everyone. Native Arabic speakers, from the term itself and the context, can
discern this. Since this verse, in its affirmation of the end of Jesus among
his people, comes without any conditioner, there is no justification for saying
that Jesus is alive and did not die. There is no way to interpret “death” here
to mean the (future) death of Jesus after the Parousia,
based on the supposition of those who believe that he is still living in the
heavens and that he shall return toward the end of time. The verse is clear in limiting
the context to his people of Jesus’ own time . . .
Does
“God Raised Him unto Himself” Mean That Jesus Was Taken Up to Heaven?
The
greater body of exegetes explain Q 4:158, “rather God raised him unto Himself,”
to mean a physical ascent to heaven. They state that God cast Jesus’ likeness
upon another and raised Jesus to heaven, where he remains alive to return in
the Last Days to kill the swine and break the cross. Their interpretation
relies on:
a. Traditions that
indicate the descent of Jesus after the Antichrist makes his appearance. These
are uncertain and contradictory narratives whose inconsistency does not allow
any room for harmonization, as noted by hadith
scholars. Apart from that fact, these traditions stem from the narrations of Wahb
b. Munabbih
and K’ab
al-Ahbār,
two converts to Islam whose status is well known to specialists in hadith criticism.
b. A tradition from Abu Hurayrah
that summarizes the information about Jesus’ descent that, if it is genuine, is
nonetheless an
āhād hadith.14 There is consensus
among the scholars of Islam that such a hadith
cannot be used as a foundation for doctrine or matters about the unseen.
c. The material that has come via the hadith about Muhammad’s night ascent (Mi’rāj),
when he ascended to the heavens, traversing each one, until he saw Jesus along
with his cousin John (the Baptist) in the second heaven.15 In
critique of this argument, we find it sufficient to refer to what has been
posited by several of the interpreters of hadith
on the issue of the Night Ascent and Muhammad’s meeting with the earlier
prophets, that such meeting was spiritual, not physical (here, the author
provides some classical references). It is rather odd that they should use the Mi’rāj hadith to prove that the Qur’anic
reference to the ascent of Jesus is a physical one, while we find another group
among them seeking to show that Muhammad’s meeting with Jesus was a physical
one by relying on the Qur’anic clause,
“rather God raised him unto himself.” In so doing, they are taking the Qur’anic
verse as a proof for what they understand from the hadith when trying to explain a hadith,
and they are taking the
hadith as a proof for what they
understand from the Qur’an when they are seeking to explain the scriptural
verse.16
The
Raf’
(Raising)
in Q 3:48–55
If
we compare Q 3:48–55 and Q 4:158, we will see that the latter verse serves to
elucidate fulfillment of the promise given to Jesus in the former. This promise
was about death, exaltation, and purification from those who disbelieved. Since
the second verse comes without mention of death and purification and limits
itself to the aspect of being raised to God, account must therefore be taken of
what is said in the first as a means of reconciling the two verses. Al-Alūsī
(1803–53) explained the expression “cause you to die” in many ways, among them
– and this is the clearest – “I will complete your appointed life span and
cause you to die a natural death, not giving any power to those who seek to
kill you.” This is a trope to denote Jesus’ immunity from his enemies when they
were so close to murdering him, and it necessarily means that God’s completion
of Jesus’ appointed term refers to natural death. It is evident that the
“raising up” that would follow a natural death is one of status, not a bodily
ascension, especially when one notes that alongside it is the verse that states
“And I will purify you of those who disbelieve.” This denotes that the meaning
is one of honoring and ennobling. The word “raising” in this context occurs
several times in the Qur’an, as in Q 6:83, 19:57, 24:36, 58:11, and 94:4.
The
expressions “raise you to myself (Q 3:52)” and “rather God raised him unto
Himself (Q 4:158)” are similar to such everyday metaphors as “person x met the
Most Exalted Companion” and “God is with us” and “with the All Powerful King.”
All of these expressions are understood to mean nothing else except being under
divine guardianship and preservation and being graced with God’s protection.
How then can the word “heaven” be derived from the expression “unto himself” in
Q 4:158? God preserve us . . . this is certainly an injustice to the clear Qur’anic
expression and reduces the Scripture to supporting legends and traditions that
are not buttressed by any definite proof or anything remotely resembling proof.
The
Obvious Meaning of the Qur’anic Verse
Jesus
was nothing more than a messenger, like those messengers who passed on before
him. Since his people treated him with enmity, and their mischief against him
was evident, he sought refuge in God – as is the wont of prophets and
messengers. God, by His grace and wisdom, rescued him, thereby ruining the
scheming of his enemies. This is what the verses encapsulate . . . as well as
that Jesus would complete his term without being killed or crucified, but
instead expire through natural death. This is what any reader whose mind is
free from those misleading traditions understands from the relevant verses when
he contemplates how God protects His prophets when their enemies hatch plots
against them. I do not perceive how the rescue of Jesus by his physical removal
from among them, and a physical ascent to the heavens, can be deemed the
triumph of God’s plotting (Q 3:54). How can this be described as being better
than their evil plotting when it is a thing that is outside of their
capability, indeed beyond the ability of any mortal? Is it not that, for
something to be deemed a plotting, it has to be on the same level as the term
indicates and within the customary connotation? A similar event occurred in the
case of Muhammad when God delivered him from his enemies’ machinations: “And
when the disbelievers plotted against you to capture or kill you or banish you.
They plotted and God plotted, and God is the best of plotters” (Q 8:30).
Someone
Who Rejects Jesus’ Ascent Is Not a Disbeliever
The
summary of this fatwa is as follows:
1. There is nothing in the Qur’an or the Sunna to
reliably establish as a tenet of creed that Jesus was bodily raised to Heaven,
is currently alive there, and that toward the End Times will return to earth.
2. All that the verses afford in this matter is that God
promised Jesus that He would complete for him his life-span, that he would
cause him to die a natural death, and honor him by exalting him and providing
him immunity from those who disbelieved. This promise was fulfilled in that
Jesus’ enemies did not kill nor crucify him; rather, God caused him to die at
the end of his term and exalted him.
Whoever
denies that Jesus was bodily raised to Heaven and is currently alive there and
will descend in the End Times is not rejecting anything that has been
established by definitive proof, and such a person therefore has not renounced
Islam, or faith, and it is therefore not proper to rule that he is an apostate.
Rather, he is a believing Muslim, to be buried in the graveyard of the Muslims,
and there is no blemish in his faith in the sight of God, for God is fully
cognizant of his worshipers.
Analysis of the Fatwa
In
his foreword to The Crucifixion and the Qur’an, Professor Sidney Griffith noted
that:
The problem with most of the suggestions about how to
read and understand puzzling phrases in the Qur’an . . . is that the
interpretive focus has often been too narrow, confining attention to the
immediate context of the troubling words and phrases and imagining a solution,
either grammatical, lexical or historical, without taking a wider Qur’anic
context into account, or a wider historical frame of reference, for that
matter, or failing to find comparable phraseology in some alleged, non-Islamic
source.17
This
focus on grammar is precisely one of the problems for most Muslim exegetes in
dealing with the crucifixion verses, because the emphatic negative “wa maa salabūhu”
literally seems to deny that Jesus was ever placed on the cross. In taking this
position, Muslim exegetes seem to rely on the lexical meaning of the word,
“being placed upon a cross” – for the Qur’an uses this word in other areas to
indicate punishment that does not in and of itself result in death.18
The term, in Christian usage, however, is rather clear that it necessarily
leads to death – as explained, for example, in the Dictionary of Christianity,
where it is given as “execution by being nailed to a cross.”19 If
the Qur’anic
verses are read in terms of Christian terminological usage – given that many
words are so used in Islam’s main text – then what may be argued is the
placement upon the cross as being the cause of Jesus’ death, rather than
denying his being put upon it.20
Shaltut never pays attention
to the lexical fetters that the exegetes placed upon themselves. Instead, by
using sub-headings in his fatwa, he
effectively focused on the most dominant issues that underline the Muslim
tradition of the physical ascent. The linchpin of the argument for the Second
Advent lies in the interpretation of the word “tawaffā.” As one fatwa put it,
Any Muslim who says that God caused Jesus to die a
natural death . . . has gone against the accepted position of the Muslim
community, and has deviated from the right path. That which stands against him
is Q 3:55, wherein he interprets tawaffā
as death, and in so doing has contradicted what has been authenticated from the
earliest Muslims who explained the verse as God taking Jesus up physically
alive, thereby removing him from those who disbelieved, harmonizing therefore
between the scriptural narrative and the authentic hadith that supports the ascent while he was alive, and his return
to Earth . . .21
It
is to be noted that in the foregoing excerpt the Qur’an is not being allowed to
speak for itself, but it is being interpreted based on the hadith. This is one of the most momentous developments in Islam
since, although the evidence indicates that there was argument in early Islam
regarding the status of hadith, this
position was changed within the first two centuries to one where the duality of
revelation was accepted.22 Once this occurred, the Hadith was used to refract the Qur’an,
despite the fact that Islam’s book says that the Qur’an itself is an
explanation for everything (Q 16:89). Given this urge to do away with the
literal meaning of tawaffā,
the state-sponsored translation of the Qur’an from Saudi Arabia makes no
mention of death for Q 3:55, rendering it: “O Jesus, I will take you and raise
you to myself.”23 The interpretation of “raising”
as a physical ascent is, of course, dependent on accepting the “death” as being
used outside of its literal sense. As Shaltut has
shown, without recourse to the hadith,
the Qur’an itself uses “raising” to mean extol and exalt as in Q 2:253, 6:165,
7:176, 24:36, and 29:57.
While
Shaltut
might have been a reformist, he was not a rejectionist of the Oral Tradition.
It would seem that he still subscribed in theory to the idea of the hadith being a reliable explanation of
the Qur’an as long as certain criteria were fulfilled. It is for this reason
that he made his claim that the hadith
used to support the ascent were all in the category of āhād and, therefore,
not a reliable basis for the formulation of creed. It is rather strange that Shaltut
should have claimed that there is scholarly consensus that such a hadith cannot be used as the basis for
creed; in fact, the issue is one of great controversy among scholars. It would
appear that he was using a favorite ploy of debate – wherein claims of
consensus or the tawātur
status of hadith are often made.24
One
of the issues that Shaltut rather
surprisingly did not touch upon was the Qur’anic verse
that makes Jesus’ prophesy about Muhammad’s coming “and after me will come a
prophet called Ahmad” (Q 61:6). Logically, since Muslim normative belief views
Muhammad as the last of prophets, if Jesus is coming back, it leads to a return
of Muhammad as well, and consequently to an ad infinitum set of returns for both
personalities. The conundrum is solved by the Muslims divesting Jesus of his
prophetic office and having him come back simply as a just judge and praying
behind a Muslim imam – clearly,
therefore, making himself a part of the Muslim religion. The phraseology of one
fatwa clearly indicates an awareness
of the problem:
The hadith
indicate that he (Jesus) will return towards the End Times, and that he will
judge according to the Shari’ah
of Muhammad, and that the leader of prayer for the Muslim community and others
during this time will be from the Muslim community. From this then, there will
be no contradiction between Jesus’ advent and the finality of prophethood
being sealed by Muhammad, since Jesus will not come with any new message . . .25
This
supposition, of course, runs counter to the Qur’anic
promise to Jesus wherein God blesses him with peace on the day that he was born
and even on the day that he would die (Q 19:31–33). It also brings into being a
creed that has no sanction in the Qur’an – that God would not only divest a
messenger of his office but also send him to another people, despite his having
been expressly from the tribe of Israel. How could the Muslim traditionists
have introduced this type of reading to the Qur’an, a scripture that, as
earlier noted, never mentions a single word about the Christian idea of the
Second Advent? The answer seems to lie in the fact that, once the hadith became accepted as a reliable
source of Muslim belief, the Qur’an was read through the presuppositions of hadith imagery. If it is argued that the
hadith seems so much in conflict with
the Qur’anic
imagery and that common piety ought to have been a protection against such
superimposition, it has to be taken into account that the hadith is so structured that, since it is imputed to the Prophet,
it comes with the stamp of authority.
As
long as a chain of tradents can be
established that leads back to Muhammad, and nothing that supposedly detracts
from their probity is known, then their hadith
is deemed to be authentic. Glaring contradictions can be explained away quite
easily, since a community will interpret scripture based on its present
realities. In the same manner that earlier Muslims invented the concept of
abrogation of scripture to introduce and explain changes, so, too, the
authority of scripture could be deemed malleable, subject to situational
change, or even contextually irrelevant.26 This is not to suggest
that the interpreters of the Qur’an or the formulators of creed were being
duplicitous. Once the hadith
narratives were deemed authoritative enough to interpret the Qur’an, the
interpreters, like their counterparts in the other Abrahamic faiths, may not
have believed that they were reading into the text something that is not there.27
Since
the hadith about Jesus’ return serve
as the lemmata
for the battle narratives of the End Times, and since Shaltut’s
clear statement that a Muslim who rejects these beliefs is still within the
faith, it would seem that his fatwa
allows Muslims to think of an eschatology that has none of the sanguinary
imagery of the traditional expectations nor of the demonization of Jews and
Christians. Despite the cogency of the fatwa,
it still remains largely unaccepted among Muslims, perhaps due to the fact that
the majority of traditional scholars in all sects of Islam are not willing to
question medievalist constructs. As Fazlur Rahman
pointed out, Muslim scholars have yet to come up with an interpretation of the
Qur’an that is adequate for contemporary needs or one that deviates from
traditionally received opinions.28 However, Muslims are becoming
increasingly aware of the incompatibility of the Qur’an and hadith on several issues. Especially
after the events of September 11, 2001, the vast outpouring of Islamophobic
sentiment has forced many Muslims to step aside from apologetic to really
researching and querying many of the creedal formulations they previously
accepted unquestioningly.
The
Council on American Islamic Relations, North America’s largest representative
body for Muslims, recently distributed Qur’ans free of charge to both Muslims
and non-Muslims. Interestingly, it chose the translation of Muhammad Asad,
who rejects the idea of the Second Advent.29 In distributing a
translation that is banned by the Saudis, the Council tacitly disregarded the
Saudi fatwa regarding the disbelief
of someone who denies the Parousia, and it
vouchsafed the position of Shaykh Shaltut
and his supporters.30 This
effectively opens the door for Muslims to reexamine aspects of Islamic creed,
in much the same way that their Christian and Jewish counterparts have been
doing in academic studies of religion, especially concerning the violent
apocalyptic of the End Times.31
It
is probably unlikely that Muslims and Christians will ever come to any uniform
position regarding the crucifixion, especially in terms of the salvific aspects
as viewed in Christianity. The willingness of Muslim scholars – especially
those based in the West – to reexamine creedal positions and to engage in
interfaith dialogue rather than disputation with Christians leaves the door to
change open. Many conferences arranged under the aegis of the Muslim-majority
countries now allow for the presentation of different interpretations of the
Qur’an. In Azerbaijan, in November, 2009, at the Organization of the Islamic
Conference-hosted “Inter-Civilizational Dialogue,” this author was allowed to
present an oral version of this essay. The participants were high-ranking
religious dignitaries and academics from the approximately fifty countries that
make up the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Of the questions raised,
none sought to refute or debunk Shaltut’s
position.
It
would seem, therefore, that many Muslims are willing to accept that the Qur’an
does not actually deny that Jesus was placed on the cross and that the
majoritarian Muslim understanding has been conditioned by creed and medieval
exegesis rather than being focused on the text. While it may seem, then, that
there exists the possibility of harmony on at least one contentious issue of
Christological difference between Muslims and Christians, the focus ought not
to be on interpretational agreement. Rather, it is more important that Muslims
and others continue to engage in dialogue, for through this method they can
learn about each other. Revisiting Shaltut’s fatwa and similar responsa may perhaps add some
renewed energy to the wonderful proposition of Nostra aetate.
*
* *
Khaleel Mohammed (Muslim) is
Associate Professor in the Dept. of Religious Studies at San Diego (CA) State
University, where he has taught since 2003. He holds B.A.s from Interamerican
University (Religion and Psychology) in Saltillo, Mexico, and from Imam
Muhammad Bin Saud University (Islamic law), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; an M.A. in
history and philosophy of religion from Concordia University, Montreal; and a
Ph.D. (2001) in Islamic law from McGill University, Montreal. He was a
Kraft-Hiatt Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer in Islamic studies in the Dept. of
Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (2001–03),
and has been a visiting professor/lecturer in universities in Yemen, Syria,
Canada, and the U.S. He has lectured and written extensively on Muslim-Jewish
relations, including articles appearing in such journals as the Middle East
Quarterly, Islamic Studies, Social Science and Modern Society, J.E.S., Judaism,
and the Journal of Religion and Culture; articles in books, encyclopedias, and
conference proceedings; and several book reviews.
Works Cited
1
Concomitant
with the denial of divinity is the idea of the trinity. See Q 4:171, 5:76,
5:116.
2
For
a good discussion on this issue, see Kate Zebiri,
Muslims and Christians Face to Face
(Oxford, U.K.: Oneworld Publications, 1997), pp.
21–43.
3
Mahmoud
Ayoub,
“Towards an Islamic Christology, II,” The
Muslim World vol. 70 (April,1980): pp.
91–121; reprinted in Irfan Omar, ed., A Muslim View of Christianity – Essays on
Dialogue by Mahmoud Ayoub (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis
Books, 2007), pp. 156–186.
4 Ibid.
5
Todd
Lawson, The Crucifixion and the Qur’an: A Study in the
History of Muslim Thought (Oxford, U.K.: Oneworld
Publications, 2009).
6
Ibid., p. 41.
7
Charles
Adams, “A Fatwa on ‘The Ascension of Jesus’” The Moslem World, vol. 34 (1944), pp. 214–217.
8
For
good coverage in Western languages of these expectations, see Khaleel
Mohammed, “The Jewish and Christian Influence on the Eschatological Imagery of Sahih
Muslim” (M.A. thesis, Concordia University, 1997), pp. 24–48; also E. J. Jenkinson,
“The Moslem Anti-Christ Legend,” The
Moslem World, vol. 20 (1930), pp. 50–55; also Isma’il
Ibn
Kathir,
The Signs before the Day of Judgment,
Tr. Huda Khattab
(London: Dar al-Taqwa Ltd, 1991).
9
For
a good collection of traditions, see Kadir Baksh
and Khaleel
Mohammed, “Demonizing the Jews: Examining the Antichrist Tradition in the Sahihayn,”
Journal of Religion and Culture 12 (Fall,
1998): 151–164.
10
Ahmad
b. ‘Abd
al-Razzāq
al-Dawīsh,
Fatāwā al-Lajnat al-Dā’ima
l’il
Buhuth
al-‘Ilmiyya
wa’l
Iftā
(Riyadh: General Presidium for Research, Responsa,
Propagation, and Guidance, 1411), 3:213–215; emphasis added.
11
See
Muhammad Ibn
Jarīr
al-Tabari
(d. 922), Jāmi’ al-Bayān ‘An Ta’wīl
Āy
al-Qur’an (Beirut: Dār Ihyā
al-Turāth
al-‘Arabī,
2001), 3:338–343.
12
Adams,
“A Fatwa.”
13
Mahmoud
Shaltut,
Al-Fatawá: Dirasah
li-Mushkilat
al-Muslim al-Mu’asir fi Hayatihi
al-Yawmiyah
w’al-‘Āmmah
(Beirut: Dār
al-Shuruq,
1986), pp. 59–65.
14
In
his “A Fatwa,” Adams mistranslated the term “āhād,” rendering it as
that which refers to a tradition related by only one narrator, and then
explaining that it had no parallel lines of transmission. See Adams, “A Fatwa,”
p. 215. The terminological meaning is quite different from the lexical
connotation. Āhād
means that the transmission does not have the requisite number of tradents,
among other criteria, that allows for definitive, decisive information. See Mahmūd
al-Tahhān,
Taysir Mustalah
al-Hadith (Riyadh: Matba’at al-Ma’ārif,
1987), p. 22; and Muhammad ‘Abd al-Hayy
al-Lucknawī,
Zafr
al-Amānī
fī
Mukhtasar
al-Jurjānī
(Alamgarh,
India: Jamia
Islamiyyah
Press, 1995), p. 44.
15
The
reference here is the opening verses of chap. 17 of the Qur’an where Muhammad
makes a nocturnal ascent to heaven. There is a difference of opinion among the
scholars as to whether this was a physical or a spiritual journey.
16
Here,
Shaltut
is pointing out some inconsistencies in exegetical methodology. Since the hadiths on the controversy are
inconclusive, they cannot be used to force any singular, authoritative
understanding of the verse. It is erroneous, cyclical reasoning to attempt to
use the Qur’an and pretend there is a consensus on its meaning in order to
support a controversial hadith.
17 Sidney Griffith, “Foreword,” in Lawson, The Crucifixion and the Qur’an, p. xi.
18
See,
e.g., Q 5:33, 7:124, 12:41, 20:71, 26:49.
19
George
Thomas Kurian,
ed., Dictionary of Christianity
(Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2005), p. 198. See also Adrian Hastings,
Alistair Mason, and Hugh Pyper, eds., The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought
(Clarendon, U.K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 146.
20
For
the terminological importations in Qur’anic
vocabulary, see Arthur Jeffery, The
Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’an (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2007).
21
Khalid
b. ‘Abd
al Rahman
al-Juraysī,
Al-Fatāwā fī
Masā’il al-‘Asriyya
min Fatāwā
‘Ulamā
al-Balad
al-Harām
(Riyadh: King Fahd Complex, 2007), p. 466.
22
Abu
Muhammad AIi
Ibn
Hazm,
Al-Ihkām
fī
Usūl
al-Ahkām
(Beirut: Dār
al-Kutub
al-‘Ilmiyyah,
n.d.),
1:102. For a full-length discussion on this, see Aisha Y. Musa, Hadith as Scripture: Discussions on the
Authority of Prophetic Traditions in Islam (New York: Palgrave, 2008), pp.
6–20, 26, 91, 98.
23
See
Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din
al-Hilali
and Muhammad Muhsin Khan, trs,
Interpretation of the Meanings of the
Noble Qur’an in the English Language (Riyadh: Dar al-Salaam Books, 1996),
p. 91.
24
Ibn Hazm,
Al-Ihkām,
1:110–111. It ought also to be noted that there is no agreed-upon figure for
determining when a hadith is āhād
and when it is to be deemed mutawātir;
the sufficiency of numbers to fulfill the criterion of tawātur may differ from one
scholar to another. See Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah,
Majmu’ Fatāwa Shaykh
al-Islam Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah,
comp. Abd
al-Rahman
Ibn
Muhammad Bin Qāsim al-'Āsimī
(Riyadh: General Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Places, n.d.),
18:40–41.
25
Al-Juraysī,
Al-Fatāwā fī’l
Masā’il
al-‘Asriyya
min ‘Ulamā’
al Balad
al-Haram (Riyadh: Mu’assasat al Juraysī,
1999) p. 465.
26
Charles
M. Wood “Hermeneutics and the Authority of Scripture,” in Garrett Green, ed., Scriptural Authority and Narrative
Interpretation: Essays on the Occasion of the Sixty-Fifth Birthday of Hans W. Frei
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), p. 4.
27
Bart
Ehrman,
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture
(Oxford, U.K., and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 30.
28 Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an (Minneapolis,
MN: Bibliotheca Islamica,
1980), p. xii. Muhammad Sa’īd
Ramadan al-Būtī
challenged the fatwa in his Kubrā al Yaqīniyāt
al-Kawniyyah
(Beirut: Dār
al-Fikr,
n.d.),
pp. 348–352.
29
Muhammad
Asad,
tr., The Message of the Qur’an (Bristol, U.K.:
The Book Foundation, 2003). He translated Q 3:55 as “Lo! God said, ‘O Jesus!
Verily I shall cause thee to die and exalt thee unto Me,
and cleanse thee of [the presence of] those who are bent on denying the truth.’”
30
The
decision of the Muslim World League ruled that the printing and distribution of
Asad’s
translation was forbidden because it has “abominable errors and shameful
blasphemies.” See al-Dawīsh, Fatāwā al-Lajnat al-Dā’ima
(Riyadh: al-Ri’āsat al-‘Āma
li Idārat
al-Buhūth
al-‘Ilmiyyah
w’al-Iftā’
wa’l
Da’wah
wa’l
Irshād,
A.H. 1411), 3:215.
31
Among
such scholars are Bart Ehrman, David
Freedman, John Spong, Regina Schwartz, Tim Harpur,
and Jacob Neusner.
Posted November 19, 2011. The above article was printed in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 46:3, Summer 2011. This material is copyrighted, all rights reserved. It is posted here with the author’s consent.