WHY IS IT THAT THIS MOREDEN DAY MULLAHS ARE STOPPING AT NOTHING BY INDOCTERENATING THEIR FOLLOWERS THAT JESUS(PBUH) IS IN THE HEAVENS ALIVE AND WOULD FALL FROM HEAVEN ON DAY AND WOULD NOT HAVE THE STATUS OF A PROPHET HERE IS A VIDEO FOR YOU. 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 traditionalists 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.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 09:40:32 +0000
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