Believers and Brothers: A History of Uneasy Relationship

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© 2009 Israr Hasan. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 5/18/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4389-4445-6 (s)

ISBN: 978-1-4389-9414-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009903337

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

CHAPTER 1

THE SEARCH FOR ETHICS AND RULES

CHAPTER 2

DEFINING JUDAISM

CHAPTER 3

DEFINING CHRISTIANITY

CHAPTER 4

DEFINING ISLAM

CHAPTER 5

SANCTIFIED VIOLENCE

CHAPTER 6

THEOLOGICAL ISSUES

CHAPTER 7

THE EARLY ENCOUNTERS

CHAPTER 8

LATER CONQUESTS AND EXPANSION

CHAPTER 9

ISLAM IN EUROPE

CHAPTER 10

ISLAM IN THE UNITED STATES

CHAPTER 11

CAUSES OF HOSTILITY

Global Village

We are all One.

We don’t all have to be the same.

We don’t all have to think the same.

We don’t all have to act the same.

We don’t all have to talk the same.

We don’t all have to dress the same.

We don’t all have to believe the same.

We have the right to be ourselves.

We have the right to be different from one another.

We know that our differences make us interesting and unique.

We know different ways of being, acting, and believing—and when we don’t agree with them.

We do our best to solve our problems peacefully.

We speak up if we see others being treated unfairly.

We treat each other the way we would like to be treated.

We treat each other with respect.

We are a Global Village.

INTRODUCTION

Never before in the history of Europe and America as well as in the history of Muslim world, we felt such a pressing need of understanding, tolerance and coexistence amongst the followers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as we feel it now. Never before the adherents of Christianity and Islam lived in such a close-knit society of multi-faith and multi-culture based on ideologies of secularism, democracy, social justice and human rights in contrast with the religious ideologies of Christian Europe and Islamic empires in the past fifteen centuries. Inter-faith understanding for peaceful coexistence is a basic need of our time.

Allow me to quote Dr. Malcolm Stewart, a retired professor in logic and religion in 1941-42, reviewing an article by Paul Findley in a Presbyterian Church newsletter, wrote the following comments:

There will not be peace in our world until there is peace among the religions. And there will not be peace among the religions until the adherents come to understanding one another. The beginning point is to emphasize the similarities, the likeness, and the agreements—not the differences. The expressed purpose of each religion is peace, unity, and harmony. It is interesting to speculate what might be accomplished if the religions could cooperate to achieve these expressed goals.¹

Why we need peace, unity and harmony at this time of our history is not a question that needs any elaboration. Today our world is torn apart amongst believers and non-believers, East and West, white and black, rich and poor, terrorists and innocents. There can be reasons, one or more than one, for nations and states to fight with one another and attack on each other. War among nations is one of the constants of history and has not diminished with the passage of civilization, be it monarchy, kingship, autocracy, theocracy, communism, socialism or democracy. In the last some 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 years have seen no war.²

Peace among religions and understanding among adherents can, no doubt, help diffuse, to some extent, the causes of war and destruction, although religion is not the only solution of the problem. The causes of war among nations and states are the same as the causes of competition among individuals: acquisitiveness, pugnacity and pride, greed and egoism; desire for food, land, material resources and riches, mastery and supremacy.³ Most of the religious wars were fought for one or more than one motives, to uphold the power of churches or supremacy of Islamic caliphates and kingdoms, and not for supremacy of faith and God. There is no doubt that the dogmas and doctrines followed by the adherents of different faiths make them hostile to each other, which are used by a nation or state for its own motives. God and politics play their role in one form or another even after the separation of church and state. Understanding among the adherents of different faiths, especially in a multi-religious and multi-racial society of Europe and the United States, will greatly help in achieving the goal of peace, unity and harmony.

The world we’re living in today is different from the past. One way in which we can benefit from the new scholarship is in getting to see Islamic matters from the Islamic point of view; and Christian matters from Christian point of view. This is possible both by means of modern scholarship and also by simply conversing frankly with each other, since the privilege to be discreet and to exchange information reciprocally is one that we seem only to have acquired recently; previously, converse was intended to lead to controversy and not to mutual information. It is essential for Christians to see the Qur’an as a holy book and Muhammad as holy figure, to see him as Muslims see him. Muslims see the Bible and Jesus Christ as the Qur’an teaches them to see. But it is pertinent that Muslims see the Bible as it asks the readers to see it. This is not a matter to proselytize each other but to know each other—to know all the believers and followers of different traditions living around us. We should know the world we are living in.

Coexistence is the minimal, least demanding way for people to relate to one another positively. It is not the same thing as love. It may not even be the same thing as friendship. To the contrary, it is an expression of distance, and an acknowledgment that boundaries will remain, that the possibilities of misunderstanding will never completely disappear. It is informed by an attitude of live and let live and that is precisely its message. Coexistence is an ideal without illusions. Its objective is not the seamless union of opposites, but a practical relationship of mutual respect among opposites. In a pluralistic society, ethnic and cultural differences are not abolished. They are legitimized, and society strives to guarantee that the law will be blind to them.⁴

We are living basically in the Christian Europe and Christian America, spread with different denominations of churches and synagogues, mosques, temples and Gurdwaras, monasteries and meditation halls. Communities in minority are obligated to know their surroundings and integrate in the mainstream of social settings of Europe and America for the sake of their survival and the survival of their posterity. This applies also to Muslims living in Europe and America by actively participating in what is good for them and abstaining what is evil for them without sacrificing their piety and legacy. After all this is the world of freedom of belief and age of human dignity and civil rights. This is a case of suspension of inherited disbelief and discord, which we immigrants have brought with us from our native lands. If we do not do so, we must cut ourselves off from comprehension of each other, by putting ourselves at perpetual war and discord with each other. If there is this sympathetic approach, it immediately becomes possible to pass into and share the state of mind of our fellows living our next door. But if some such spiritual and mental borrowing does not take place, no further progress is possible in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious society of Europe, America and Canada.

The story of distrust and apprehension among Christians and Muslims are spread over the pages of history from the very beginning of Islam in the seventh century. The swift, vast conquests achieved by the early Muslims brought great numbers of non-Muslims into the Islamic empire, of which for some time they constituted the majority of the population. Even after their majority status was ended by conversion and assimilation, they remained in significant numbers as minorities living among the Muslim majority. Such a revolution had never been. No earlier attacks on Christian Civilization had been so sudden, so violent or so permanent. Within a score of years from the first assault in 634 the Christian Levant had gone; Syria and Palestine, the cradle of the Faith, Egypt with Alexandria, the mighty Christian See, and North Africa, a crucial part of the Church of Rome. Within a lifetime half the wealth and nearly half the territory of the Christian Roman Empire was in the hands of Muslim masters and rulers, and the mass of the population was becoming affected more and more by this new thing. Later, when the first great wave of conquest was spent and a more or less stable frontier was established between the House of Islam (Dar as-Salam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb), other non-Muslims from the House of war came to the Islamic lands as visitors or temporary residents, sometimes as students or diplomats, but most commonly for purposes of trade. Islamic government and influence had taken the place of Christian government and influence, and were on the way to making the bulk of the Mediterranean on the east and the south Islamic.

Now, why did this new, simple, energetic heresy have its sudden overwhelming success? One answer is that it won battles. It won them at once, as we shall see when we come to the history of the thing. But winning battles could not have made Islam permanent or even strong had there not been a state of affairs awaiting some such message and ready to accept it.

Both in the world of Hither Asia and in the Greco-Roman world of the Mediterranean, society had fallen, much as our society has today, into a tangle wherein the bulk of men were disappointed and angry and seeking for a solution to the whole group of social strains. There was indebtedness everywhere; the power of money and consequent usury. There was slavery everywhere. Society reposed upon it, as ours reposes upon wage slavery today. There was weariness and discontent with theological debate, which, for all its intensity, had grown out of touch with the masses. There lay upon the freemen, already tortured with debt, a heavy burden of imperial taxation; and there was the irritant of existing central government interfering with men’s lives; there was the tyranny of the lawyers and their charges.

To all this Islam came as a vast relief and a solution of strain. The moment a slave admitted that There is no God, but God and Mohammed is His prophet ceased to be a slave. The slave who adopted Islam was henceforth free. The debtor who accepted Islam was rid of his debts. Usury was forbidden. The small farmer was relieved not only of his debts but of his crushing taxation. Above all, justice could be had without buying it from lawyers. In practice all this was not nearly so complete. Many a convert remained a debtor, many were still slaves. But wherever Islam conquered there was a new spirit of freedom and relaxation.

It was the combination of all these things, the attractive simplicity of the doctrine, the sweeping away of clerical and imperial discipline, the huge immediate practical advantage of freedom for the slave and riddance of anxiety for the debtor, the crowning advantage of free justice under few and simple new laws easily understood that formed the driving force behind the astonishing Islamic social victory. The courts were everywhere accessible to all without payment and giving verdicts which all could understand. The Islamic movement was essentially a Reformation and we can discover numerous affinities between Islam and the Protestant Reformers on Images, on the Mass, on Celibacy, etc.

We have just seen what was the main cause of Islam’s extraordinarily rapid spread; a complicated and fatigued society, and one burdened with the institution of slavery; one, moreover, in which millions of peasants in Egypt, Syria and all the East, crushed with usury and heavy taxation, were offered immediate relief by the new creed. Its note was simplicity and therefore it was suited to the popular mind in a society where hitherto a restricted class had pursued its quarrels on theology and government.

The decline of Islamic power happened to be as sudden as its rise was. The tenth century saw the beginning of a Christian recovery and counterattack, which in time forced the retreat—sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent—of the Muslims from many of the former Christian territories that they had conquered and dominated. Already, in the tenth century, a Byzantine advance brought much of northern Syria back under Christian rule for a while. In the eleventh century, the Norman conquest recovered Sicily and shortly after, the Crusaders established four Christian principalities in the Levant, between Taurus and Sinai, in lands that had been held by Islam since the seventh century. The long struggle for the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula gained significant victories in the eleventh and succeeding centuries and was finally completed with the fall of Granada, the last Muslim principality in Western Europe, in 1492.

Even greater disasters struck the Muslims in the East, when the great Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century brought Central Asia, Iran, and Iraq under pagan rule and, for a while, seemed to threaten Syria and even Egypt. With the decline of Muslim power and the rise of modern Europe, the problem was compounded a thousand fold, as province after province, country after country was reconquered and annexed to the great European empires—first Austria and Russia, then the maritime powers of western Europe. All these Christian advances brought large Muslim populations under Christian rule and confronted them with a new and agonizing problem.

When the Muslim empire was established in the seventh century, Europe was a backward region. Islam had quickly overrun much of the Christian world of the Middle East as well as the great Church of North Africa, which had been of crucial importance to the Church of Rome. Even when Europe recovered from the Dark Ages and established its own great civilization, the old fear of the ever-expanding Muslim empire remained in their psyche. Europe could make no impression on this powerful and dynamic culture: the Crusading project of the 12th and 13th centuries eventually failed and, later, the Ottoman Turks brought Islam to the very doorstep of Europe. This fear made it impossible for Western Christians to be rational or objective about the Muslim faith. Western scholars denounced Islam as a blasphemous faith and its Prophet Muhammad as the Great Pretender, who had founded a violent religion of the sword in order to conquer the world.⁵

Writing about the state of distrust and hatred of Church against Islam during Muslim rules of Europe, Spain, Africa and the Middle East, Norman Daniel illustrates in the following language:

The suspicion was natural enough, in fact, inevitable, in the circumstances in which Christians lived. Since the authorities put so much pressure upon Muslims within Christendom to convert them, and upon Christians within Islamic empire to isolate them, and upon merchants and others to prevent any communication of intelligence at all, the two societies lived side by side as ignorantly of each other as possible. The way was nowhere open to an ordinary Christian to get to know Islam better, because he was prevented by Church from knowing Muslims, from communicating freely and usefully with them. He was brought up to expect to be in a relationship of force and violence with them. It is difficult to erect learning upon a foundation of ignorance, to establish understanding in minds formed amid inherited prejudice and suspicion. No single one had a knowledge sound in all respects, or free from controversial bias in any. Ignorance was justified and fortified by the highest ideals.⁶

Now at the doorstep of 21st century, an entirely new scenario has developed after the end of World War II and consequent dismemberment of Soviet Russia and colonial powers in the second half of twentieth century throughout the Muslim World. Muslims as minority community began to emerge by voluntary migration from Muslim lands to predominantly Christian countries in Europe, America, Canada and Australia in search of subsistence and better opportunity in the open societies. There is no precedent in Muslim history for such immigration by Muslims.

The voluntary migration of Muslims from Muslim lands to lands of non-believers and Christian countries puts some tough questions to be answered. Almost all the Christian territories of Europe and America have social and political setup on the basis of secular constitution and freedom of religions. For migrant Muslims there is no such concept of separation of religion and state. Muslims are inherently religious and every aspects of their personal life, at least, are traditionally governed by the laws of Shari’a. In addition to the social, cultural, political and religious incompatibility, the role of migrant Muslims as silent and guilty spectators at national tragedies, such as 9/11 attack on twin towers in New York, explosion of passenger train in Spain and attack on subways in London make their allegiance doubtful. In spite of Muslim migrants living in Europe and America for more than half a century they could not assimilate in the mainstreams of these countries. The reason, in my opinion, is more than their social seclusion. Apart from the clash of civilizations and their irreconcilable doctrinal differences, the active involvement and interference of the colonial powers and the United States after the past two World Wars, to keep their influences continue in the Muslim countries, rich in oil and resources and the age-long conflict of Palestine and Israel are contributing towards the tension at home more than anything else.

Once a fire breaks out — whether by accident or intention — the impact on life and property can be devastating. The best firefighting techniques and the most courageous firefighters can limit the damage, but the best defense against the destructiveness of a conflagration is prevention. The same is true for human conflict. It is possible to resolve disputes, sometimes before they escalate into violence, sometimes only after hostilities, but the ideal is to create a tolerant society where conflict does not exist, or at least does not intensify to the point of violence. This should remain our goal and our dream, but, realistically, the next best solution is a community where everyone coexists.

Since God and politics go side by side in the annuls of the two worlds today, this paper is an attempt, inter-alia, to diffuse the tension by making the message contained in the Holy Bible and the Noble Qur’an intelligible to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

Let us never forget that there exists no other religious reality than the faith of the believer. If we really want to understand religion, we must refer exclusively to the believer’s testimony. What we believe, from our point of view, about the nature or value of other religions, is a reliable testimony to our own faith; but if our opinion about another religion differs from the opinion and evaluation of the believers of other faith tradition, then we are no longer talking about their religion. We have turned aside from historical reality, and are concerned only with ourselves.⁷

The purpose of this paper is to promote understanding amongst the East and the West—amongst Christian West and the Muslim and the Jews of East through better understanding of their faith traditions and the crux of their political problems. The nature of differences amongst the three faith traditions is as much secular as religious. The Biblical and the Qur’anic texts are, no doubt, irreconcilable and irrefutable on conflicting matters. At the same time all the three communities are living together side by side for many centuries in spite of basic differences in doctrines and faith. In addition to the ‘People of the Book’, there are followers of dozens of other religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikh and others who are spread throughout our neighborhood.

How many of us—we Christians or Jews have ever read the Qur’an or we Muslims have ever gone through the chapters of the Bible? Let us read the verses from the Bible and the Qur’an and judge ourselves without any prejudice and presumptions, without going through the theological interpretations of Rabbi, Pastor, Imam or Mujtahid. Interpretations—not all, but most of the interpretations are the main ingredients of differences. We should not forget that the higher intents and objectives used in these verses are identical, which are peace, unity and harmony.

This book follows a single thread—the hostility and antagonism between the Western Christendom and the Eastern Islamic world. Apart from their adventure of conquests and reconquests in the battle fields, their hostility goes through their differences in faith and theology. It covers a huge sweep of both time and place, begins in the seventh century and extends into the twenty-first. Its boundaries are Algeria to the south, and Vienna to the north, the Atlantic to the west, and the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean to the east. Occasionally, it spills outside those limits, but its center is the world connected with the Mediterranean. It traces the history of the origins of the three faith traditions and goes through their encounters and interactions culminating in their conquests and reconquests. We can read them and see how they made an impact on the human imagination. This human imagination is the result of the relations developed in the two worlds from the beginning of the seventh century onward till today.

The book is designed in two parts, Part One deals with the origin and development of the three communities along with matters relating to their faith and theological issues. Part two studies their encounters in the battlefields and their uneasy relationship in their occupied settlements in different places at different time spreading to our present age.

There was something quite specific in the meeting between Islam and Christendom that seemed to engender violence. The deep cause seemed hidden beneath the normal explanations, underlying political and economic rivalries, hatred and animosities, personal ambitions and vanities, chance and accident.

The faith of Abraham is rightly considered by our three religions as the father of our faith. In spite of differences of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, they are united in their acceptance of Abrahamic faith and in their considering it to be a source of inspiration and a guide for human life, capable of giving a satisfactory response to the essential problems of man. The faith we have inherited from Abraham has, as its central subject, monotheism free from uncertainties or equivocations. We profess one God, the Creator of the world, the judge of men’s actions, and who has spoken to men through the prophets. The sacred books and the traditions of our three religions admit no shadow of doubt on this fundamental point. This basic unity of faith is of such importance that it allows us to consider our differences with serenity and with a sense of perspective. It does not mean that we minimize these differences or renounce the points that separate us. But it does mean that we can speak together in an atmosphere of understanding and friendship, because we are all believers in the same God. Throughout the centuries our three religions of prophetic monotheism have remained unswerving in adherence to their faith, in spite of their dissensions and differences. Certainly we must study the past and learn from it, but life must above all look to the present and to the future.

It is sufficient here to recall explicit expressions as given in key texts of Deuteronomy, in which Moses called all Israel, and said to them: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk, when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorsteps of your house and on your gates.(Deut. 6:4-9)

The identical phenomenon was found in Christianity: its fidelity to the One God, with the exclusion of any other divinity was the true nature of Christianity and its irreconcilability with paganism of Roman empire:

But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing Him, and saying: Teacher which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord our God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (Matt.22:34-40).

The gospels of Mark, Luke and John in Mk.12:29-31;Lk.10:27; Jn.1:1-3 are almost identical of the gospels of Matthew. Also the following gospels testify the identical view of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

…yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him… (1 Corinthians 8:6).

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. (1 Timothy 2:5-6).

One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. (Ephesians 4:5-6).

You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble! (James 2:19).

Christianity utterly rejects any kind of polytheistic worldview; and its Trinitarian understanding of Deity must not be confused with polytheism if dialogue is to be meaningful. However difficult this may be for a Muslim or others to comprehend or appreciate, it must be accepted in good faith as the Christian understanding of God who is One, not many.

As regards Islam, one needs only to read the list of the ninety-nine names of God (Asma’ al-Husna) to be aware of the unshakeable and jealously guarded Muslim faith in the One God of Abraham.

Say: He is Allah, the One and only; Allah the Eternal, Absolute;

He begets not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like Him."(112:1-4).

This religious affinity, the common faith in the Oneness of God, has always met with difficulties and it would be dishonest not to acknowledge this. However, there have always been through the centuries, examples of mutual understanding and collaboration. We can think, for example, in the high Middle Ages of the Toledo conversations and those at Cordova where, in the very palace of the Archbishop, Christians, Muslims and Jews met together in discussion. We could think too of the writings of Maimonides, Ibn Rushd (Averose) and al-Farabi and of St. Thomas. Writings that influenced one another and contributed to the forming of medieval civilization.

It is true that these happy instances were not typical but rather singular and isolated events, while over many years, even centuries, there were reciprocal misunderstandings and suspicions, conflicts and persecutions, in which it is difficult, rather impossible to determine the responsibilities of the different sides. The best road to follow for us today is that of sharing sorrow for what has happened in the past and what is happening now and of choosing resolutely, all of us to open ourselves not only to dialogue and encounter, but to mutual love and understanding. We cannot hate a person we know. We must look ahead, and at what better point to begin than by affirming our faith together in the One True God, and to walk together with Him. It is befitting to include a quotation from Robert Burns, who wrote, Like it or not, we are all on this planet and there’s no place else to go.

We see that in principle Christian doctrine, as seen especially in the Gospels, is unequivocally open to those having faith in the God of Abraham. In fact, however, there have been on the part of Christians and the Churches, deplorable instances of intolerance and persecution that were in direct contrast with the doctrine of Christ. Judaism and Islam, likewise, have a long series of hostilities and animosities spread in centuries. The best way to make amends for the past is to renew our minds and hearts in that spirit of love, which is at the very foundation of our faith, and to strive in this spirit with all our strength. Men like Pope John XXIII, like Paul VI and John Paul II; scholars like Jules Isaac, Massignon, Cardinal Bea and many others from each of our monotheistic religions, have shown us the road we should walk.

The Second Vatican Council expressed clearly and authoritatively the attitude that the Catholics should have in regard to Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters. The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration ‘Nostra Aetate’ is a landmark document on interfaith understanding. On the relation of the Church to the Jewish faith, the document declares: "As this Council searches into the mystery of the Church, it recalls the spiritual bond linking the people of the New Covenant with Abraham’s stock (Note 4).⁸ The Church of Christ acknowledges that the beginnings of her faith and her election are already found among the patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets.

Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred Council wishes to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit above all of biblical and theological studies, and of brotherly dialogues.(Not 2).⁹

As regards the relationship of the Catholic Church to the Muslims, the document says: Upon the Muslims, too, the Church looks with esteem. They adore one God, living and enduring, merciful and all-powerful, maker of heaven and earth and speaker to men. They strive to submit wholeheartedly even to His inscrutable decrees, just as did Abraham, with whom the Islamic faith is pleased to associate itself. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet……

Although in course of the centuries many quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Muslims, this most sacred Council urges all to forget the past and to strive sincerely for mutual understanding. On behalf of all mankind, let them make common cause of safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace and freedom. (Note 3).¹⁰

The Declaration of Religious Freedom, published in 1965, remains one of the major texts of the Second Vatican Council. It expresses clearly in what way the Church is able to respect the freedom of the other Churches and religions without diminishing in any way her commitment to the faith of Abraham and the Gospels of Christ. This principle of religious