– An INTERVIEW with Roy Watkins
Watkins - I must say first of all that it is most challenging and enlightening to read such a detailed Islamic critique of Christian orthodoxy. I choose my words carefully for you are not of course attacking Christianity; if I understand you correctly you have on the contrary a deep regard for it. What you attack are the serious distortions of it which as a Moslem you believe have corrupted the true message. As a Christian myself I am aware of a certain arrogance in the way the Church often talks about Jesus, as if it had sole proprietorial rights over him, occasionally paying lip service to him as a Jewish rabbi, but seldom if ever acknowledging that he is an important figure in Islam also.
Sr. Ruqaiyyah - Yes indeed. It is all too easy for Christians to forget that Jesus was not actually a Christian. He was a Jew, and as far as Muslims are concerned, we accept that he was one of the last in a long line of very special chosen Messengers, many of whom were Jewish prophets - although we also believe that God sent other prophets to other peoples too. Muslims all accept that Jesus was virgin born, without considering that unique event made him in any way a Son of God in the Trinitarian sense, but a very special child of miraculous birth, one of the greatest of all Messengers from God. God has only to say 'Be!', and His will comes to pass. We also accept that Jesus was the expected Jewish Messiah, bearing in mind the difference between the term Messiah or its Greek equivalent Christ, and the term Saviour, a difference that many Christians do not seem to realise.
Watkins - As I understand it you are suggesting that if we focus on the very earliest elements that make up the New Testament we encounter two irreconcilable teachings; on the one hand an ethical teaching centred on the love of God and the service of humanity, and on the other hand a mystery cult centred on a dying and rising saviour. The former was the teaching of Jesus and those trained by him, the latter was the teaching of a self appointed charismatic preacher named Paul. The idea of the atoning sacrifice has become central to Christian doctrine, yet you say that it is based on a complete misunderstanding of Judaism, that the true understanding of atonement by contrast is the much more direct and immediate one illustrated by Jesus in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Have I understood you correctly?
Sr. Ruqaiyyah - Again, yes. Furthermore, I would say that the ethical teaching centred on love of God and the service of humanity is what was taught by all the other prophets, including, of course, Muhammad - peace be upon all of them. The mystery-cult aspect was not only taught by St Paul, of course - the Trinities of Creator-Father, Virgin-Mother and Dying-and-Rising-Saviour-Son were commonplace all over the ancient world - the closest to Christianity possible being the Mithraic version. Atonement theology is based on the idea that Almighty God has got Himself into a predicament from which He cannot extract Himself without incarnating as a human being and sacrificing Himself, with the co-doctrine that human beings have inherited an original sin from which they cannot extricate themselves without this Divine Process. To a Jew or a Muslim, this is blasphemy, and frankly, nonsense. Monotheism always teaches that God's power is Absolute and both Judaism and Islam teach that His forgiveness and compassion is freely available for all who turn to Him, without any need of sacrifice of any description. Surely, that is what Jesus taught too?
Watkins - You also identify what appears to be a major inconsistency in Pauline theology; on the one hand the untimely death of Jesus is absolutely necessary to this viewpoint and yet on the other hand if Jesus' mission really was of an exclusively spiritual and non-political nature then far from being necessary his death appears entirely accidental.
Sr. Ruqaiyyah - In Pauline theology, I don't think one could call Jesus' death 'untimely' - his death seems to be rather the reason why he was born at all.
Watkins - It is clear then Paul was in quite a number of ways on very weak ground indeed. Perhaps in fairness to him and to the Jerusalem Church which never quite wrote him off we should ask if there was any sense at all in which he was on solid ground? Just as the Torah revealed through Moses was as much historical event as ethical teaching, so also with Jesus God was seen, by Paul at least, to be intervening in a decisive way in history. It does indeed seem strange that Paul focuses solely on the 'event', leaving aside the teaching, but is it possible that not having being trained by Jesus he saw this as outside his own particular calling (as also, apparently, he believed baptism to be) and best left to others?
Sr. Ruqaiyyah - Possibly. Of course, all Jews and Muslims believe very firmly that God continually intervenes in history in order to being about His will. Sometimes He seems to move in very mysterious ways, and many religious people feel aware of coincidences that seem too amazing to be coincidences, extraordinary turns of events, and so on, that give them confidence that God is indeed real, and in control. When God sends any Messenger, I guess the whole point is to intervene in history, if the tricky issue of human freewill and judgement-to-come is to have any meaning. Judgement is presumably quite lacking in justice unless we have the freedom to choose whether we will or not accept the will of God for us in our lives, and is also unfair unless we have been warned what that will is, or that we will face judgement according to our choices, tempered by God's compassion. Many people think Islam is fatalistic, but it seems to me that the whole point of sending Prophets is to give choice and the possibility of change and moral growth through selflessness and discipline and love of others.
Watkins - Having stepped around this very thorny question of Paul perhaps we might look at the mission of Jesus himself. Since you refer to yourself at one point in your book as a 'Quranic Christian' I take it that you see the true mission of Jesus as similar in nature to that of Muhammad. Presumably if the Mother Church in Jerusalem had not been waylaid by Paul and ultimately destroyed by Rome an ethical monotheism based on the Mosaic Law might eventually have established itself as the true universal world-faith. Perhaps the fact that Islam when it arose spread so rapidly suggests that beneath the surface the Jerusalem Church had been more successful than appearances would suggest?
Sr. Ruqaiyyah - Indeed, I firmly believe that ethical monotheism is the true universal world-faith, and do not find it at all surprising that it draws converts wherever it manifests. I can only believe that there is One God, one Almighty, and that 'He' is the same God that has inspired all the Messengers. The fact that different types of followers have understood things differently, and enact different rituals, and have different emphases in no way detracts from this. I believe the mission of Jesus to have been exactly the same as the mission to Muhammad, and all the prophets that came before him - to bring people to awareness of the Reality of God, and to find love and peace and fulfilment in that knowledge, and to work towards every possible care for and improvement of the environment in which they have been born, by God's will.
Watkins - Finally, do you see the mission of Muhammad as necessitated solely by the failure of the mission of Jesus, or does the Quranic revelation also offer something more that would have been required even if Jesus had succeeded?
Sr. Ruqaiyyah - We do not believe that Jesus' mission failed. He was one of the greatest of all the Messengers of God, and his example and teaching have drawn millions of people to love and believe in God, and brought them to eternal life. 'This is eternal life - that you believe in God, and in Jesus Christ whom He has sent.' For salvation, we believe people must study what he taught and how he lived, and not the results of the doctrinal wrangles of the next few centuries after him. The fact that his mission was presented as something different was not his fault, or his failure. I think he would have been as horrified to hear his followers called 'Christians' as Muhammad would have been at the misnomer Muhammedans (or Mahometans etc). The people who were stirred by Jesus were the 'Followers of the Way'.
The 'new' things in Islam consist mainly of the ritual practices which are so dear to Muslims - the routine of the five set prayers (over and above one's 'ordinary' prayers for help and blessings); the discipline of fasting; the setting aside of part of one's wealth in order to help the poor; the unifying practice of turning to a set direction for prayer; the concentration on ritual purity as regards bodily cleanliness, clean and unclean foods, and cleanliness of our environment; and many other practices. Obviously, none of these practices are of any merit if the heart of the Muslim is not clean, and the Muslim is not living a noble, generous, honest and compassionate life - but we have felt that the practices aid us in being conscious of God at all times, and keep us aware and diligent.