Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

274 t REFLECTIONS AFTER A BREAKFAST
the Quran proclaims confidently and often. Christians took note
of that latter fact, and many could only imagine that Muhammad
had once been a Christian, perhaps even a cleric, who fabricated
the Quran out of the Old and New Testaments as an imposture.
Neither supposition has been entertained here, either in its extreme
forms—that Muhammad had a Jewish teacher or was himself
a failed Christian—or in its mitigated versions—that he was
somehow influenced by local Christians or, more plausibly, by contemporary
Arabian Jews. Nor has it been suggested that Muhammad
concocted a synthesis of the two older monotheist faiths.
Such an approach, with its powerful reductionist appeal, does
nothing to enhance our understanding of the profound originality
of Islam or of its prophet. Whether its source was God or, equally
wondrously, the startlingly prophetic insight of a religious poetgenius,
the foundation of Islam, its Scripture, was laid down by a
single individual. The Bible and the New Testament are clearly
community projects elaborated over decades or centuries by individuals
with only an uncertain connection with their subject or
subjects. The Quran, in contrast, proceeded from the mouth of
Muhammad, and his alone, over a rather precisely measured interval
of twenty-two years. Even on the Muslim supposition that the
Book was sent to him from on high, the community of Muslims,
the umma, that issued from it was clearly Muhammad’s creation,
shaped and guided by his powerful will, tended to by his infinite
care, and sustained by his extraordinary courage and determination.
Theologically Christianity rests uniquely on Jesus’ redemptive
work, whereas Muhammad’s theological role in Islam—he was
merely a messenger or a warner, he insisted—was quite secondary.
But Christendom owes considerably less to Jesus of Nazareth than
Islamdom—the social and political body that came forth from the
preaching of the Quran—did to Muhammad, without whom it
would be unthinkable. Judaism may be unfathomable without
Abraham and Moses, but they are powerful characters in a story,
role-players in the foundation haggadah of the Jews, whereas
Muhammad is a full-bodied individual who rises persuasively
above his “story.”
We are newly aware of Islam, but only because of our aversion