Ibn Warraq: The Judeo-Christian Origins of Islam (Part 3)

Certainly Islam is syncretistic and supercessionist. However, I think that the tribal traditions of the Arabs have had as large a role as the word-of-mouth borrowings from Jews and Christians in making Islam.

I've seen a bit of comment here at JW and elsewhere that speaks of Islam "breaking off" from Judaism. My own take on that is that Islam was more a case of Muhammad looking at Judaism [and Christianity] from outside, thinking they had something to offer, and borrowed a few elements. But the whole incident of the "Satanic Verses", in which Muhammad was ready to incorporate certain Meccan goddesses into the Islamic pantheon, suggests that the possibility of a politic compromise with potentially useful people was always a large part of Muhammad's make-up, as it is with any successful warlord. Indeed, I suspect that Muhammad may have grown interested in Christianity chiefly because it was associated with the prestige of the Eastern Roman Empire, while Judaism held political sway in Yemen for a brief period. Perhaps politics more than Satan informed Muhammad's flirtation with incorporating some of the Meccan goddesses.

As for what Ibn Warraq wrote, I've also noted similarities between some of the "Mary and Jesus" portions of the Qur'an and the Protevangelium of James. It's intriguing to note how much apocryphal material made it into the Qur'an where the true parallels to either Old or New Testaments is more in the nature of short summary.

Kepha

can you read French? If you can, there is a booklet entitled "Jacques Ellul: Islam et Judeo-Christianisme' which contains an extended essay by Jacques Ellul which was not published at the time of his death. He wrote it in 1991, around the time of the first Gulf War. It is entitled "Les trois piliers du conformisme' and it is a critique of the three main arguments by which Muslims in the modern West, and their apologists or dupes, attempt to pretend that Islam is just a sister religion to the Biblical faiths, Judaism and Christianity.

Ellul disposes of those three 'arguments' - the 'Abrahamic faith' argument, the 'monotheism' argument, and the 'religions of the book' argument - masterfully and in short order.

And he also discusses, briefly and trenchantly, the differences between what Islam says about Jesus and what the Gospels say, and the *meaning* of those differences. He puts his finger on exactly the same point that you do.

He notes that such 'miracles' as the Koran attributes to Jesus are represented as ostentatious shows of power; whereas the gospel miracles are acts of love; and that Jesus in the Gospels adamantly *refuses* to put on a show on demand, whereas the Koranic 'Isa' does exactly that (in 'The Laid Table' surah).

Islam is about Power, nothing more, nothing less. It is in that (as also in its misogyny) very Nietzschean - which is why Hitler, product of years of Nietzschean thought pervading German culture, was so admiring of Islam, and avidly read two books by an Indian Muslim author, and why after WWII so many escaping Nazis, fleeing to dar al Islam where they were welcomed and sheltered, eagerly converted to Islam; and it is also, I think, why many of the French intellectual class, heirs of Foucault and Deleuze, have been converting to Islam or shilling for it.

Once you get the centrality of the worship of Power in Islam - the master-slave dominance-submission murderer-victim rapist-raped paradigm that governs it at every level - you realize why the creator/s of Islam preferred the simple sensation-for-sensation's-sake apocryphal extracanonical stuff, to the more restrained and difficult canonical accounts; and why the writer or writers of Islam rewrote certain Biblical stories in the way that they do, and why they chose some stories and rejected others; and above all, why they claim Jesus was not crucified.

Here is my own - alas very rough - translation of the final three paragraphs of Ellul's discussion of what Islam does with Jesus and miracles:

"... let us note a detail that shows, well enough, misunderstanding: the Koran does not mention any of the miracles reported by the Gospels.

"By contrast, it attributes to Jesus three miracles.

"The first: while ‘the child was still in the mother’, he undertook a discourse partly mystical, partly theological;

"the second is a miracle not reported by the Gospels, concerning the infancy of Jesus, making little birds in clay, and breathing on them, which made them alive;

"the third, which by the way gives the title to the Surah which relates it, is that of the ‘laid Table’.

"Some people come to say to Jesus: we will belong to you if you make a table come down from heaven, full of delicious foods…and Jesus raises his hands and the table comes down from heaven.

"This shows much more than a difference of stories!

"** It is a fundamental difference of understanding.** {my emphasis - dda}

" Indeed, in the Gospels ALL the miracles of Jesus are the miracles of love.

"Even those where he shows a ‘power’. For example, in the ‘stilling of the storm’, he responds to the fear of his disciples; he does the miracle to give back to them peace and confidence.

" But the miracles reported in the Koran are exclusively miracles of power.

"[They are] miracles that signify nothing except power: and this signifies well the difference of perspective within which the person of Jesus is placed, in the one and the other of these texts (Bible and Koran).

"One must, moreover, take note of a contradiction that confirms this:

"at the time of the ‘set Table’, someone says to Jesus, ‘we will believe in you, if you do this miracle’. And Jesus does it.

"But in the gospel, precisely, every time someone proposes a miracle as a kind of proof, he refuses it, and even more so if someone says that they will believe in him, if…

"This is exactly what Jesus does not want. He is, and he acts, in a person to person relation, not in a magical operation.

"In the end, that which shows above all the radical opposition of comprehension on the subject of Jesus, in the Koran and in the Gospels, is the crucifixion.

"We know, in the gospels, that Jesus fills up the limit of his love…after a harsh spiritual battle, by accepting his death on the cross.

"But in the Koran it is not to be thought of that he who sought nothing but to demonstrate power would be crucified!

"So Jesus was never crucified (which avoids the question of the resurrection), but it is another who is crucified in his place!

"We have to pause at that point.

" How could one conceive that Jesus, who embodies the love of God, whose whole life was a sacrifice, who fulfils the prophecy of the man of sorrows, in a word this Jesus whose life signifies nothing if it does not constantly express the love of God, could have accepted that another man would be condemned in his place, crucified in his place, since it is precisely he who has come to bear our condemnation and who is burdened with our sufferings.

"Upon encountering such an anti-sense, one must say that what anyone [wants to say] concerning the presence of Jesus in the Koran, and the respect which people show him, is of no value at all.

"So, we must conclude this chapter by saying that, contrary to what people have often put forward, ** Islam is not a “Christian heresy” but a religion resolutely not-Christian** [ my emphasis- dda; one might even perhaps paraphrase Ellul's French 'une religion resolument non chretienne' as 'a religion resolutely anti-Christian' ], and which has no possible common point, with regard to this contradiction. "

Dear DDA:

I've been looking for an excuse to bone up on my French, so I will take your advice and look for Ellul's book ASAP.

As always, I appreciate your posts.

Bro. Kepha

What's uniquely new is its command to conquer by sword or subdue the non believers. I think it's also unique to Islam that the only guaranteed passage to "paradise" with through Islamic version martyrdom, i.e. being killed in the process of killing infidels (who can be children, women, old and invalid people. Do you know of any other religion that sanctions and institutionalize slavery? Come to think of it, Islam is really, really unique.

I, in fact, completely agree with Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus--as quoted by Pope Benedict--that

"Show me just what Muhammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."