Month: August 2018

Book Review: Islam and the People of the Book

Islam and the People of the Book, Volumes 1-3

Critical Studies on the Covenants of the Prophet

John Andrew Morrow

Cambridge, England:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
December 2017.
1782 pages.
$299.99.
Hardcover.
ISBN 9781527503199.
For other formats: Link to Publisher’s Website.

Review

These three rather bulky volumes form a sequel to the book The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World (Angelico Press, 2013), also edited by John Andrew Morrow. These books are part of a larger project, the “Covenants Initiative,” which tries to awaken interest in a number of documents that have been preserved in Ottoman archives and Christian monasteries. The Covenants Initiative now has its own website (covenantsoftheprophet.org). The book published in 2013 is organized around three such covenants: the covenant of the Prophet with the monks of Mount Sinai, the covenant of the Prophet with the Assyrian Christians, and the covenant of the Prophet with the Christians of the world. The three volumes that are under review here contain thirty-three chapters (half of them written by the editor) about aspects of these three covenants and three more covenants (namely the covenants of the Prophet with the Christians of Najrān, the Christians of Persia, and the Armenian Christians) in volumes 1 and 2. The third volume contains translations of these six documents into fourteen languages.

Both the 2013 book and the 2017 extended documentation are praised by many Islamic and Christian religious leaders and scholars as an effective antidote to the negative image of Islam spread by ISIS and other self-declared radical Muslims, and I have personally witnessed Dr. Sayyid Syeed, Emeritus National Director for the Office for Interfaith and Community Alliances for the Islamic Society of North America, endorse it as one of the most important contemporary developments that will help to balance the image of Islam in the world. On the other hand, it must be said that many scholars are quite hesitant to acknowledge the historical value of these covenants for two reasons.

In the first place, it is clear that the copies that have been preserved in the archives and the monasteries are substantially younger than the originals from which they claim to be copied. It is therefore quite possible that the documents have a later origin and cannot be used as evidence of Muhammad’s personal attitude toward Christian groups. In the second place, the text of the documents strongly suggests a situation in which Christians need protection by Muslim authorities, presupposing a rather established and wide-reaching Muslim administration. On the one hand, quite a few historians have argued that such covenants were most likely forged by Christian groups who could not produce any more powerful means for their protection than a document supposedly signed by the Prophet himself. On the other hand, John Andrew Morrow and other defenders of the authenticity of these covenants are able to show that there is a multiple attestation (tawātur in hadith science) of such covenants, which in itself shows that the texts of the covenants were acceptable not only to Christians but also to Muslims as arguments on a traditional basis.

Since I am not an historian, but a theologian interested in Christian-Muslim relations, I am glad that the Covenants Initiative has been able to highlight a positive approach to Christians and other People of Scripture in the early history of Islam, even if this approach cannot be traced back to Prophet Muhammad. In my own studies of the term ahl al-kitāb—usually translated “People of the Book”—in the Qur’ān I have noticed that most texts addressing Jews and Christians as “People of Scripture” contain strong polemical elements. Yet they are based on actual or fictional dialogues in which the Qur’ān argues against Jews and Christians who trust their own religious traditions rather than being receptive to God’s revelation. Modern uses of terms like “People of the Book,” “A Common Word,” or “Abrahamic Religions” as labels of what we all have in common are therefore misleading, because they indicate differences rather than commonalities. Yet they do so on the basis of an insight that human beings are in this world together and that they are created to find a better understanding by using their differences as mirrors to “emulate one another in doing good,” as the Qur’ān famously states.

The three volumes of Islām and the People of the Book help us to come to a better understanding by bringing together the voices of many scholars who investigate the historical and contemporary possibilities of highlighting the Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the different People of the Book. They do not help as much when the argument is narrowed down to the particular issue of authenticity, especially when the confrontation with critics takes on a strong ad hominem flavor as happens in Morrow’s first chapter. Many chapters that follow are just strings of endless citations that give the impression of a very intense but also very myopic form of scholarship. Morrow tends to overstate his case, for instance when he writes at the end of the second volume that “the Covenants of the Prophet should sit side by side with the Qur’ān on the bookshelf of every believer” (II:544). Even if the covenants contain the actual words of the Prophet, still his sunna is not the very Word of God. At the same time, Morrow is right when he writes on the same page that the covenants “need to be studied, criticized, and scrutinized. And they need to launch scholars from a multitude of complementary fields in various directions.” Much work needs to be done, especially since I have not encountered many names of scholars that are well-known in the Western academic world of Qur’anic and Islamic studies among the contributors to these three volumes. In that sense, the Critical Studies of the Covenants of the Prophet are still in their infancy. But we should be grateful that Morrow and his collaborators in the Covenants Initiative have worked tirelessly to give us these dialogue-oriented testimonies from the world of early Islam.

About the Reviewer(s):
Wilhelmus (Pim) Valkenberg is Ordinary Professor of Religion and Culture at the Catholic University of America.

Date of Review:
August 29, 2018

About the Author(s)/Editor(s)/Translator(s):

John Andrew Morrow completed his Honors BA, MA, and PhD at the University of Toronto, as well as post-doctoral studies in Arabic in Morocco and at the University of Utah’s Middle East Center. Besides his academic training, he has also completed the full cycle of traditional Islamic seminary studies.

Book Review: The Importance of the Covenant of Medina

By Rabbi Allen S Maller

Khutba Bank (15 July 2018)

The Constitution, Charter or Covenant of Medina pre-dated the English Magna Carta by almost six centuries. It applied to the 10,000+ citizens living in Medina at that time. Remarkably, 45% of the total population in Medina consisted of pagan Arabs, 40% consisted of Jews, and only 15% were Muslims, at the start of this treaty. These numbers were recorded by Prophet Muhammad through a census he commissioned. So Prophet Muhammad’s Charter/Covenant of Medina was designed to govern a multi-religious pluralistic society in a manner that allowed religious freedom for all.

The Charter’s 47 clauses protect human rights for all citizens, including equality, cooperation, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. Clause 25 specifically states that Jews and pagan Arabs are entitled to practice their own faith without any restrictions: “The Jews of the Banu ‘Auf are one community with the Muslim believers, their freedmen and their persons, except those who behave unjustly and sinfully for they hurt but themselves, and their families.

(26-35) The same applies to the Jews of the Banu al-Najjar, Banu al-Harith, Banu Sai’ida, Banu Jusham, Banu al-Aus, Banu Tha’laba, and the Jafna, a clan of the Tha‘laba and the Banu al-Shutayba. Loyalty is a protection against treachery. The freedmen of Tha‘laba are as themselves. The close friends of the Jews are as themselves. So the Covenant of Medina was the first political document in history to establish religious freedom as a fundamental constitutional right.

The “Charter of Medina” created a new multi-tribal ummah/community soon after the Prophet’s arrival at Medina (Yathrib) in 622 CE. The term “constitution” is a misnomer. The treaty was more like the American Articles of Confederation that proceeded the U.S. Constitution because it mainly dealt with tribal matters such as the organization and leadership of the participating tribal groups, warfare, the ransoming of captives, and war expenditure. Two recensions of the document (henceforth, “the treaty”) are found in Ibn Ishaq’s Biography of Muḥammad (sira) and Abu ʿUbayd’s Book of State Finance (Kitāb al-amwāl). Some argue the final document actually comprises several treaties concluded at different times.

According to Arjomand, the treaty is a “proto-Islamic public law.” Some clauses in the second part of the treaty, or the treaty of the Jews section (namely clauses 53–64), form a pact with the Jewish Qurayza tribe that was incorporated in this treaty at a later stage. However, clause 44 (“Incumbent upon the Jews is their expenditure and upon the muslimun theirs”) and, clause 45 (“They will aid each other against whosoever is at war with the people of this treaty”) clearly were part of the original pact.

According to Denny, the ummah of the Constitution is made up of Muslims and Jews; although the Jews also constitute a separate ummah “alongside” the Muslims. The treaty was a political-military document of agreement designed to make Yathrib and its people more secure. The Jewish tribes were a party to it as a special group, a “sub-ummah” with its own din (religion and law). Yathrib was to be “sacred for the people of this document,” which adds a factor of locality and religion. Kinship was not to be the main binding tie of the new ummah; for monotheistic religion was of much greater importance. The ummah is the tribe, a supertribe, with God and Muhammad as arbiters and authorities.

According to Goto, the three main Jewish tribes—Nadir, Qurayza, and Qaynuqaʿ had agreements with Muhammad that were separate. Muhammad himself made a document or documents for the three major Jewish tribes. The six Jewish groups called “yahud bani so-and-so” mentioned in the treaty were not the three large Jewish tribes, but refer to significant groups of Jewish converts to Judaism within the pagan Arab tribes of Medina (since most Jews married other Jews these groups grew into large clans within the larger pagan Arab tribe of which they were a part).

Muhammad Hamidullah divides the document into two parts: (1) The rules affecting the Muhajirun and the Anṣar that go back to the beginning of the first year after the Hijrah, and (2) the code for the Jews concluded after the Battle of Badr. In his view it was a constitution promulgated for the city-state of Medina. It included the prerogatives and obligations of the ruler and the ruled, as well as other immediate requirements (including social insurance for the needy).

According to Rubin, the Jewish participants were not the three main Jewish tribes, but Jewish groups that unlike the three main tribes, had neither a territory of their own nor a separate Jewish tribal affinity, because they were families and clans of converts to Judaism within the various pagan Arab tribes. Muhammad’s ummah was a unity sharing the same religious orientation (monotheism) and included the Jews as “an umma of believers.” They were entitled to complete protection for themselves that also included their din (religion and law).

The original Covenant of Medina influenced later generations of Muslims to include Christians within its provisions. There are a total of six different versions of such covenants with different Christian groups, which have been largely ignored by both Muslim and European historians.

A recent book by John Morrow “The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World” published by Angelico Press is a good exposition of these historical documents that should be read by everyone concerned with improving political relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims. The Qur’an strongly supports religious pluralism and wasatia, a religious term in Islam for the middle path of temperance and reconciliation.

Extremists who deny the value of wasatia should read Prophet Muhammad’s original Covenant of Medina, as well as “The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World”.

Rabbi Maller’s web site is: http://www.rabbimaller.com. His book ‘Judaism and Islam as Synergistic Monotheisms: A Reform Rabbi’s Reflections on the Profound Connectedness of Islam and Judaism’ (a collection of 31 articles by Rabbi Maller previously published by Islamic web sites) is for sale ($15) on Amazon and Morebooks.