Dante’s portrayal of Muhammed in hell is one of western literature’s most egregiously racist, not to mention blasphemous, offerings—one that still leaves Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in the shade. But until 9/11 and the block on Turkey’s accession to the European Union, there might have been good reason to think that the west was slowly but surely getting over its deep-rooted prejudices against Islam.
Under presidents George Bush Senior and his successor, Bill Clinton, America began earnest attempts, after years of neglect, to woo the Arab peoples. George Bush Junior undid all that.
Now, in his masterful speech at the University of Cairo, President Barack Obama has not just turned the clock back to better days, on the contrary, he has pushed it forward as fast as anyone could have imagined a year ago. It was a personal triumph for the president, and also a triumph for the millions of Muslims around the world who listened the speech. At last, they were being treated by the west’s most important leader on an equal footing with Christian and Jewish peoples. Muslims themselves may never have doubted the profound qualities and virtues of their faith, but westerners long had. Obama’s speech was as much aimed at a home audience as it was to the Islamic world, but he proved without a doubt that he is the son and grandson of the Islamic faith.
It should perhaps reminds us of how Christian scholars in the 12th and 13th centuries began to realise that they had much to learn from Islam. The Arab corpus that incorporated Greek, Persian and Roman learning was translated into Latin. Adelard of Bath’s translation of the Arabic version of Euclid’s Elements made western scholars aware of the most influential handbook on geometry ever written.
Thanks to Muslim scholarship, western philosophers were able to acquaint themselves with Aristotle and the argument that the world was intelligible without revelation. We have to go back to the 15th century to find influential Christian thinking on the theological virtues of Islam. The Spaniard, John of Segovia, who died in 1458 and the German, Nicholas of Cusa, who died in 1464, were particularly important. John translated the Koran and sought to foster academic conferences at which scholars from the two religions could meet and debate. Unfortunately, the primate of Spain ignored him and continued with his policy of forced baptisms.
Nicolas was a cardinal yet wrote a work that argued that the Koran is compatible with the New Testament. (Compare this with Pope Benedict’s ill chosen words in his speech at his old university in which he slighted Islam for its supposed violent tendencies.) Nicolas argued that there was more that bound the two religions together than separated them. Since human intellect would never plumb ultimate truth, we should rely on mystical intuition and seekers from both religions to understand God.
These two philosophers left only a small, long forgotten, mark on Christian theology and practice. Nevertheless, in the 600 years since, as Islam spread very fast, one of its most intriguing aspects was a tolerance for Judaism, an attitude that not always reciprocated. The Koran requires that Muslims should respect the Ahl al-Kitab, “The People of the Book”. Muslims in India were also expected to be tolerant of Hindus. (The Taj Mahal with its fusion of Islamic and Hindu styles is a testament to its benign attitude.)
Muhammed himself treated Christian beliefs with something approaching affection. Mary, Christ’s mother, is mentioned more in the Koran than in the Gospels. Muhammed accepted that Jesus was born of a virgin and references to Jesus and his teaching are found repeatedly in its pages. But he did not accept that Jesus was the Son of God. Nor that he died on the cross. (“They killed him not, nor crucified him. But it was made to appear so.”)
When his early troupe of followers was persecuted by traditional Arab rulers he chose Christian Abyssinia as a place of refuge for them. The prophet’s daughter, Rugayyah, and fourteen others travelled by boat down the Red Sea to Abyssinia.
It is within the bounds of possibility that Obama is beginning a new chapter in the long running relationship between Islam and the Christian and Jewish worlds. The job for him now is to harness history and theology to modern day politics.
