Dealing with Extreme Evangelicals

Dealing with Extreme Evangelicals

Lecture by Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad

Opening

I know this has been quite an exhausting program, and this is the final item in the program. But since the imam this morning at Fajr was reciting those extraordinary verses about the Ahl al-Kitab, I thought that I'd accede to the request that I've had from one or two of you, and offer some general thoughts about the da'wah program in the current 21st century environment, and particularly da'wah in the context of Ahl al- Kitab.

The Changing Context

We all know that this is a curious, in a sense, post-secular age, and increasingly in the Muslim world, one finds Muslims thinking that in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, we experienced the West, modernity, American civilization as essentially a secular thing, and now we're experiencing it as an increasingly religious thing.

And so a recalibration is taking place, a paradigm shift seems to have taken place. The idea of the Pentagon as absolutely packed with Bible-believing, fundamentalist Christians who are fighting a crusade, the daily Pentagon briefing to the White House still has a Bible verse on the cover, the idea, the language of crusade, the end-time, millennial expectations of tens of millions of quite politically active Americans, and particularly Republican voters, has really changed the Muslim world's perception of what used to be called Christendom.

And increasingly, Muslim societies are perceiving the West as having not just economic and political designs on their territories, but also a kind of military adventurism that seems to be linked to a type of right-wing evangelical empire building.

The Quranic Foundation: The Diversity of Ahl al-Kitab

We need to figure out what is the correct response. Historically as Muslims, our perception of the Ahl al- Kitab is shaped by the Quranic verses, which are respectful. Ahl al-Kitab is essentially a respectful category.

And we know that:

"They're not all the same. Among the Ahl al-Kitab, there is an upright community who recite God's verses throughout the day."

And there are categories of the Ahl al-Kitab, particularly of the Christian Ahl al-Kitab, who we've always respected. And the old Christians who live in the Muslim world, and they're very much part of the society and the culture in the Muslim world, in the Middle East and elsewhere, are people with whom we have a kind of positive metabolic relationship.

The Central Principle: Rahmah (Divine Mercy)

One way of looking at it, in fact the central Quranic way, is to remember that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has said:

"He has prescribed mercy upon Himself."

This is the watchword of Islam. Allah is Arham al-Rahimin - the most merciful of those who show mercy. And within this category of Rahmah that hardly translates into a word in a European language, we find all of those warm senses of love, of affection, of self-giving, of hospitality, of compassion.

All of that is part of Allah's Rahmah. So the basic principle has to be, when confronted by this incredible religiously motivated adventurism, is to remember the principle of Rahmah. And to remember, as a result, that the Quran says:

"Repel evil with something that is better."

Don't just replicate the hatred. If somebody is hurling curses at you from some town in the Bible Belt, on the discussion group, don't reciprocate by using the same kind of obscene language. Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has forbidden that.

"Repel evil with what is better. And then the one, between whom you and him was enmity, becomes like a warm friend."

And that is part of the secret of prophecy and part of the secret of wilaya, that we respond with something better.

Understanding the Psychology of Extreme Evangelicals

Another thing that we need to remember, it seems to me, is that when one is dealing with people who are in the grip of this kind of far-right evangelical militancy, that they are human beings like oneself and that like all human beings, they tend to spend their lives justifying to themselves and their others their own persuasions. And their persuasions are shaped more often than not by their own sense of what they want to think about themselves.

And very often people who are in that position want to identify, quite unthinkingly, without expressing it in these terms, with power, with privilege, with success, with wealth. And so the identification of the Washington political elite with a certain type of crusading Christianity is psychologically attractive for very many people. There is this prosperity gospel. America is rich because it believes in Jesus.

God's Preferential Option for the Weak

And one needs to counteract that by referring to a principle that is not just an Islamic principle, but is there at the founding moment of all of the great world religions, even the non-monotheistic world religions, which is that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is with the weak and the despised and the poor and the outcast.

He can be with the privileged as well. They have a shot at salvation as well, but generally he has a preferential option for those who are despised by the power elite in any given time and place.

Earlier in Sheikh Yahya's class, we heard this beautiful hadith : أَنَا عِنْدَ الْمُنْكَسِرَةِ قُلُوبُهُمْ - "I am with the broken-hearted."

And the earliest verses, some of the most salient teachings of the Holy Quran are that this is the message to uplift and to console those who are weak and those who are despised. And the story of Moses and Pharaoh in the Quran is just one instance of how this takes place.

The Story of Abraham's Two Sons

The next step in my experience is to remember that this story that's in the book of Genesis and has its moral parallel version in the Muslim memory, which is Abraham, and his two sons, is a kind of archetype of that.

And very many of these right-wing militarized evangelicals will talk about Ishmael as the outcast, the rejected, and the ancestor of the Arabs and of the Muslims. And they like to see America's role in the world as being upholding the true covenant and smacking down the Ishmaelites.

Go into any Christian bookshop in the U.S. now, and you're likely to see many titles about Ishmael specifically. Ishmael as the rejected, the refugee, the outcast, the asylum seeker, the one who is rejected by privilege.

And again, if you work with them a little bit, you can help them to see that perhaps in a true religious perspective based on rahmah, based on mercy, maybe Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, maybe God is with the rejected, but is not rejecting the privileged son either.

The great beauty of the Quranic story of the two brothers is that both of them are affirmed as true prophets of God. We believe in Sayyidina Ishmael, Ishmael alayhi salam. We also believe in Isaac, in Ishaq, and we affirm the prophets that come from both of those lines. That's part of the universality and the inclusiveness of Islam and one of its beauties.

So it's not either/or. For the radical Christians, it's either/or, but for the Muslim, it's both/and.

The Question of Salvation History

Another thing that is helpful to stress is the fact that if rahma, mercy, love, compassion is the nature of the divine, because he said he has prescribed, inscribed mercy, rahma, love, compassion on his very self, on his nature, that has implications for our view of history.

The radical evangelical view of history as being divided absolutely into the unsaved and the saved, and that outside having a personal relationship with Jesus, there is no salvation, is an intolerable challenge to the principle of the love of God.

A God who coherently and recognizably shows mercy and compassion and care for his creatures doesn't stuff all of salvation into a single moment in human history, because that's being avaricious with the truth.

We now know that the human story is so old, recognizable homo sapiens goes back so many tens of thousands, so many hundreds of thousands of years, that to say that it's only in the last 2,000 years that a proper relationship between human beings and God has been possible makes a nonsense of the idea of the divine love, because that's not loving. That's a kind of arbitrary diktat.

The Quranic vision is very different. For every people there has been a guide, and the guidance that was given, the salvation that was offered through all of the prophets, tens of thousands of prophets, 124,000 prophets has been the same salvation.

Salvation by Grace, Not Works

Another thing that one can deploy is to explain what our theology actually teaches. We don't have a theology of salvation by works. The Ash'ari position, the Sunni position generally is that Allah subhanahu

wa ta'ala gives us in his mercy a form of life and commandments and there has to be boundaries in societies.

But there are famous hadiths. For instance, the Holy Prophet says:

"None of you will enter Paradise by his deeds. They said: Not even you, O Messenger of Allah? He said: Not even me, unless Allah shall encompass me in his mercy."

His rahmah again, that's the principle. It is Allah's rahmah alone that saves. It is not our actions that save us.

Our actions are the consequence of our love for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and our desire lovingly to submit to his commandments. But it's not the actions that save. It's Allah alone that has the gift of salvation.

Another hadith, in Bukhari on Abu Musa al-Ash'ari:

A Bedouin man comes to the Holy Prophet and says: "O Messenger of Allah, when will the hour be?" And he says: "What have you prepared for it?" And the man who is simple but also humble says: "I haven't prepared for it much prayer and fasting, but I love Allah and his Messenger." And the Holy Prophet says: "The human being is with those whom he loves."

In other words, you have that qurb, that proximity, that ma'iyyah, that withness to Allah and his Messenger if you have love for them.

The Problem of Atonement Theology

And then they can come at you and say, "ah, but only the blood of God himself is enough to save you from your absolute sinfulness." And this really is at the heart of their message.

And our response to that is: what about the divine love, first of all? And also the divine justice.

The divine love says, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala saves and he doesn't really have to save you through this violent method. Because even the teachings of Sayyidina Isa, alayhi salam, the prophet Jesus, are very clear in his parables. The parable of the prodigal son, for instance.

The son goes astray and messes up and becomes a swineherd, the ugliest thing in Jesus' Jewish religion. But then he repents and comes back to the father and the father forgives him and welcomes him. What is Sayyidina Isa talking about? He's talking about salvation.

We mess up, we sin, and then there's teshuvah or tawbah. In Hebrew and Arabic, it's the same thing. You turn back and you're forgiven.

Sayyidina Isa does not say, "no, there has to be an innocent victim that suffers horribly before the father is loving enough to forgive you." A loving father won't require the payment of any price. A loving father will just welcome you again.

And that's the meaning of love. They will say, "we are indebted to God and somebody has to pay off that debt and we can't do it. So there has to be an infinite sacrificial victim."

And we would, again, look at that from the perspective of rahmah and say, if my neighbor owes me, say, a thousand pounds or a thousand euros, basically there's three things I can do about that. Either, which is what we usually do, I can say, "pay me back my thousand pounds or my thousand euros" and then justice is done and the issue is settled. Or I can say, "you can't pay but somebody else can pay on your behalf and I'll be satisfied with that."

Or you can say, "I give it away as charity, I'll let you off." And Allah, in his omnipotence, can and does do that. He doesn't have needs. He doesn't require that a debt be repaid. That's a kind of crude, cruel, legalistic language that negates the whole meaning of love.

In those three situations, which would we regard as being the most moral? Of course, the person who just lets you off. And Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, is the fountainhead of morality.

The Intercession of the Prophet

And part of that is the shafa'ah of the Chosen One ﷺ:

"My intercession is for the sinners of my community."

He will go before his Lord and he will plead for them. But there is also a hadith which says:

"My intercession shall be for the majority of the people on earth."

And many of the ulema say that can mean non-Muslims as well. Part of his role as, if you want to use that word, saviour at the end times, is to plead even for people who are good people but outside the ummah of Islam.

That's the love of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. That's the beautiful, inclusive, love-based tawheed of Islam.

The Problem of the Trinity

Another thing that we need to stress is that monotheism is about tawheed. And although there are many versions of the doctrine of the trinity, we would say that that version which is adopted particularly by right-wing evangelicals doesn't add up to monotheism. It really doesn't.

If they're saying there are three persons in the trinity bound to each other by a love relationship, the son really loves the father, the father really loves the son, the holy spirit, ditto. To have love, you have to have a personality, you have to have some type of distinctiveness. There is a center of consciousness there. There are one, but there are three. They interact with each other.

We would say that's imputing plurality to the divine nature. In Sunni Islam, we have the divine names, but they're not centers of consciousness that love each other. They're just names. But the essence of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is wahid.

That's specifically against that doctrine.

And to help them with this, as they struggle with it, and many of them are unhappy with it, you can ask them whether they really believe it, and if they can really explain it. And in most cases, they argue amongst themselves.

And you can also point out that if you want a personal relationship with God, it's very hard to have a personal relationship with this kind of triangular, algebraic problem. The three that are also one, what kind of person is that? What are you worshipping? What are you praying to?

Biblical Criticism and Tahrif

And if they talk about biblical inerrancy, then you can ask them to look at Christian books that teach that the Bible is not inerrant. Bart Ehrman's book, "Misquoting Jesus: the story behind who changed the Bible and why," which was a New York Times bestseller quite recently.

And Ehrman is interesting because he began as a Bible-believing fundamentalist Christian. He went to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and to Wheaton College, which is another evangelical place. And he was so good that he went to Princeton Theological Seminary where he started to encounter more sophisticated forms of historical criticism of the New Testament.

And eventually he realized that the idea of plenary inspiration, that the New Testament is God's literal word, simply doesn't add up because there are too many contradictions, as he puts it, and so many

things that are not there in the earliest versions of the New Testament from the manuscripts that we have that are there in subsequent translations.

This is what Muslims call tahrif, which is differently interpreted by the ulama, but among serious Christian students of the Bible, as opposed to people who are desperately finding ways of convincing themselves of something whose sell-by date has passed, really, you will find that we don't have a controversy with them regarding the principle of tahrif.

Conclusion: The Common Word Initiative

Important thing is to remember (لَيْسُوا سَوَاءً - laysu sawa'an) - they are not the same. There are some who are really furious and hate us, but there are others who are soft-hearted people and the Quran has beautiful things to say about the true ahl al-kitab and they're the ones who we should be working with.

And this most recent Kalimatun Sawa (Common Word) initiative that was launched by a group of 138 Muslim ulama a couple of years ago and which has since been endorsed by many other ulama and also by many Christian leaders, really gives us a lot of hope that suggests and implies that the furious fundamentalists don't monopolize Christianity and that there are very many mainstream believers who we can and should talk to.

Because now we're living in societies where we are co-citizens living cheek by jowl and furious exchanges of hatred and polemic and stereotyping the other side have nothing to do with the teachings of Sayyidina Isa or Sayyidina Muhammad ﷺ and simply bring religion into disrepute.

So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to strengthen us all in iman inshallah and to make the light of tawheed triumph throughout the earth inshallah.