Christianity and Islam

by Carl Heinrich Becker

Eventually, however, the methods of interpretation and criticism, peculiar to the Arabs when dealing with Aristotle became of no less importance than the subject matter of their inquiries. This form of criticism was developed from the emphasis which Islam had long laid upon the value of wisdom, or recognition of the claims of reason. Muhammedan tradition is full of the praises of wisdom, which it also originally regarded as the basis of religion. Reason, however, gradually became an independent power: orthodoxy did not reject reason when it coincided with tradition, but under the influence of Aristotelianism, especially as developed by Averroës, reason became a power opposed to faith. The essential point of the doctrine was that truth was twofold, according to faith and according to reason. Any one who was subtle enough to recognise both kinds of truth could preserve his orthodoxy: but the theory contained one great danger, which was immediately obvious to the Christian church. The consequent struggle is marked by the constant connection of Arab ideas with the characteristic expressions of Christian feeling; these again are connected with the outset of a new period, when the pioneers of the Renaissance liberate the West from the chains of Greek ecclesiastical classicism, from Oriental metaphysical religion and slowly pave the way for the introduction of Germanic ideals directly derived from true classicism. Not until that period does the West burst the bonds in which Orientalism had confined it.

Christianity and Islam then stand upon an equal footing in respect both of intellectual progress and material wealth. But as the West emerges from the shadow-land of the middle ages the more definite becomes its superiority over the East. Western nations become convinced that the fetters which bind them were forged in the East, and when they have shaken off their chains, they discover their own physical and intellectual power. They go forth and create a new world, in which Orientalism finds but scanty room.

The East, however, cannot break away from the theories of life and mind which grew in it and around it. Even at the present day the Oriental is swathed in mediaevalism. A journalist, for instance, however European his mode of life, will write leaders supported by arguments drawn from tradition and will reason after the manner of the old scholasticism. But a change may well take place. Islam may gradually acquire the spirit as well as the form of modern Europe. Centuries were needed before mediaeval Christianity learned the need for submission to the new spirit. Within Christendom itself, it was non-Christian ideas which created the new movement, but these were completely amalgamated with pre-existing Christianity. Thus, too, a Renaissance is possible in the East, not merely by the importation and imitation of European progress, but primarily by intellectual advancement at home even within the sphere of religion.

Our task is drawing to its close. We have passed in review the interaction of Christianity and Islam, so far as the two religions are concerned. It has also been necessary to refer to the history of the two civilisations, for the reason that the two religions penetrate national life, a feature characteristic both of their nature and of the course of development which they respectively followed. This method of inquiry has enabled us to gain an idea of the rise and progress of Muhammedanism as such.

An attempt to explain the points of contact and resemblance between the two religions naturally tends to obscure the differences between them. Had we devoted our attention to Islam alone, without special reference to Christianity, these differences, especially in the region of dogmatic theology, would have been more obvious. They are, however, generally well known. The points of connection are much more usually disregarded: yet they alone can explain the interchange of thought between the two mediaeval civilisations. The surprising fact is the amount of general similarity in religious theory between religions so fundamentally divergent upon points of dogma. Nor is the similarity confined to religious theory: when we realise that material civilisation, especially when European medievalism was at its height, was practically identical in the Christian West and the Muhammedan East, we are justified in any reference to the unity of Eastern and Western civilisation.

My statements may tend to represent Islam as a religion of no special originality; at the same time, Christianity was but one of other influences operative upon it; early Arabic, Zoroastrian, and Jewish beliefs in particular have left traces on its development. May not as much be said of Christianity? Inquirers have seriously attempted to distinguish Greek and Jewish influences as the component elements of Christianity: in any case, the extent of the elements original to the final orthodox system remains a matter of dispute. As we learn to appreciate historical connection and to probe beneath the surface of religions in course of development, we discover points of relationship and interdependency of which the simple believer never even dreams. The object of all this investigation is, in my opinion, one only: to discover how the religious experience of the founder of a faith accommodates itself to pre-existing civilisation, in the effort to make its influence operative. The eventual triumph of the new religion is in every case and at every time nothing more than a compromise: nor can more be expected, inasmuch as the religious instinct, though one of the most important influences in man, is not the sole determining influence upon his nature.

Recognition of this fact can only be obtained at the price of a breach with ecclesiastical mode of thought. Premonitions of some such breach are apparent in modern Muhammedanism: for ourselves, they are accomplished facts. If I correctly interpret the signs of the times, a retrograde movement in religious development has now begun. The religion inspiring a single personality, has secured domination over the whole of life: family, society, and state have bowed beneath its power. Then the reaction begins: slowly religion loses its comprehensive force and as its history is learned, even at the price of sorrow, it slowly recedes within the true limits of its operation, the individual, the personality, in which it is naturally rooted.

CONCLUSION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

The purpose of the present work has been to show not so much the identity of Christian and Muhammedan theories of life during the middle ages, as the parallel course of development common to both, and to demonstrate the fact that ideas could be transferred from one system to the other. Detail has been sacrificed to this general purpose. The brief outline of Muhammedan dogmatics and mysticism was necessary to complete the general survey of the question. Any one of these subjects, and the same is true as regards a detailed life of Muhammed, would require at least another volume of equal size for satisfactory treatment.

The Oriental scholar will easily see where I base my statements upon my own researches and where I have followed Goldziher and Snouck. My chief source of information, apart from the six great books of tradition, has been the invaluable compilation of Soj[=u]t[=i], the great Kanz el-'Umm[=a]l (Hyderabad, 1314). To those who do not read Arabic may be recommended the French translation of the Boch[=a]r[=i], of which two volumes are now published: El-Bokâhri, les traditions islamiques traduites … par O. Houdas and W. Marçais. Paris, 1906.