The question of the status and prophethood of Muhammad has been one of the most crucial and controversial issues of Christian-Muslim relations since the advent of Islam. So, in almost every Christian-Muslim encounter, Christian acknowledgement of the prophethood of Muhammad has been and still is raised. Muslims ask, "Since we [Muslims] accept Jesus as a genuine prophet and messenger of God, can you [Christians] not reciprocate by accepting the genuinness of Mohammad’s prophethood?".640  For example, in the eigth and ninth century, the Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdi asked this question of the Assyrian patriarch, Timothy, in his meeting with him, and Timothy answered by saying "He [Muhammad] walked in the path of the prophets".641  Some Muslims strongly affirm that on almost every occasion the Christian response to this Muslim demand has been one of the most unsatisfactory encounters for Muslims because of "the reluctance of Christians to recognize the prophethood of Muhammad".642 

Starting from the earliest periods, Christian scholars who were in contact with Islam and Muslims almost totally directed their efforts to rejecting the prophethood of Muhammad. They sought to prove that Muhammad was not a prophet but a heretic who was instructed by Christian monks and was the author of the Qur’an. They aimed to discredit his revelation by showing it to have arisen out of the social and political circumstances of a particular place and age, thinking that the whole of Islam would then fail and collapse. To achieve this objective, in the medieval period, many Western scholars claimed that Muhammad was a cardinal who failed to get elected pope and, in revenge, seceded from the Church.643  They depicted and described him by using the worst terms such as heretic, impostor or sensualist to disgrace him in the eyes of Christians and, in a sense, Muslims.644  This kind of distorted image of the Prophet Muhammad spread to such an extent that it was preserved and perpetuated in literature, such as the Divine Comedy , where Dante consigned him to one of the lowest levels of Hell.645  A. Schimmel comments that this consignation of Muhammad to Hell reflected the view of the majority of Christians who "could not understand how after the rise of Christianity another religion could appear in the world".646 

In short, during the medieval period in which Islam was regarded as the work of the devil and Muhammad was inspired by him, almost every polemical work repeatedly expressed that Muhammad was a wicked man who founded Islam with force and spread it with the sword. He was also regarded as an erotic man who was very fond of women. On every level this image was expounded, and it helped to prove to Europeans that this man [Muhammad] could not be a real prophet, but a false one. The following observation of W. Montgomery Watt clearly shows how the image of Muhammad was distorted by Western writers. He notes, "None of the great figures of history is so poorly appreciated in the West as Muhammad. Western writers have mostly been prone to believe the worst of Muhammad, and wherever an objectionable interpretation of an act seemed plausible, have tended to accept it as fact".647  N. Daniel stresses that the hidden agenda behind these polemical works on Muhammad was to prove that Muhammad was a mere human with no divine intervention in his life and, hence, could not be a prophet. Since the recipient of a divine message was to be totally different, aspects of his life which showed him as ordinary were further proofs of his falsity.648 

After the second half of the nineteenth century, these kinds of distorted images began to change to more objective and positive ones, since during this period more and more Western Christian scholars started to think about Muhammad more positively than before by appreciating his prophethood and teaching.649  For example, towards the middle of the nineteenth century for the first time in the history of Western Christian accounts about Muhammad, Thomas Carlyle, in his famous lecture "The Hero as Prophet" [1840], expressed openly the sincerity of Muhammad and the truthfulness of Islam.650  Despite this welcome development, N. Daniel criticised Carlyle for not establishing his appreciation of the sincerity of Muhammad "on any sound theoretical basis".651  Montgomery Watt, in his assessment of Carlyle’s essay on Muhammad, highlighted the significance of his appreciation of the sincerity of Muhammad by indicating that Carlyle’s statement on Muhammad was:

The first strong affirmation in the whole of European literature, medieval and modern, of a belief in the sincerity of Muhammad. It is an important step forward in the process of reversing the medieval world-picture of Islam as the great enemy, and rehabilitating its founder, Muhammad.652 

 

There is no criterion by which the gift of prophecy can be withheld from him unless it is withheld from the Hebrew prophets also. The Qur’an is in fact the quintessence of prophecy. In it you have, as in no other book, the sense of an absolutely overwhelming Being proclaiming Himself to a people that had not known him653 

 

However, Carlyle’s acceptance of Muhammad’s sincerity and Zaehner’s acknowledgement of his prophethood should not be understood to mean that Western Christian scholarship was ready to acknowledge the prophethood of Muhammad. The influence of those orientalist scholars654  who tried to prove that Muhammad could not be a prophet was still very effective in the first half of the twentieth century and even in time.655 

In the process of Christian-Muslim dialogue that was officially started by the Second Vatican Council, it has been observed in the previous chapters that both the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC preferred to be silent about the status of the Prophet Muhammad in their official statements.656  Some theologians urge these official bodies to break down this silence for the sake of better and more fruitful relationships with Muslims. In this respect, the prolific Catholic theologian, Küng, in his comment on the Catholic document Nostra Aetate, stresses that if the Catholic Church and all other Churches wish to establish a real and fruitful dialogue with Muslims, they need to acknowledge the prophethood of Muhammad officially.657  Daniel, too, maintains that the way by which Christians can understand Islam correctly passes through the acknowledgement of the prophethood of Muhammad. He says "it is essential for Christians to see Muhammad as a holy figure; to see him, that is, as Muslims see him. If they do not do so, they must cut themselves off from Muslims".658 

How it is possible to appreciate Islam and Muslims without showing appreciation for the Prophet of Islam and the values he has promoted? Not to do this would not only be a lack of respect, to which the Council exhorts Christians, but also neglect of a religious factor of which account must be taken in theological reflection and religious awareness.659 

 

In another Christian-Muslim consultation, convened by the Conference of European Churches in Salzburg in 1984, it was emphasised that "Christians respect the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. It calls people to repentance in the service of the One God. It is unjust to dismiss Muhammad out of hand as a false prophet. Christians may recognize Muhammad as part of the same prophetic tradition, and in the past some have done so".660 

Apart from these positive statements in Christian-Muslim dialogue meetings, there is also an increasing number of Christian thinkers who argue for a positive Christian evaluation of the status of Muhammad. Karen Armstrong, Lamin Sanneh and Martin Forward urge non-Muslims to see Muhammad positively by taking into account how God used him "as a mercy for humankind" to bring peace and civilisation to his people, rather than to see him as the antithesis of the religious spirit and as the enemy of decent civilisation.661  The renowned theologian John Macquarrie in his Mediators [1995] includes him among the nine great mediators of "a new or renewed sense of holy being".662  William E. Phipps too in his recent work Muhammad and Jesus [1996] attempts to compare the teaching of Jesus and Muhammad by regarding them as the prophets of the same family.663 

It is an undeniable fact for Christians that the Prophet Muhammad "for his own part thought himself sincere, and was regarded as sincere" by his followers, both in his own day and still now.664  And we have seen that this kind of positive assessment of the Prophet Muhammad put the following theological questions on the agenda of Christian-Muslim dialogue, namely, Can Christians acknowledge the prophethood of Muhammad ? Are they ready to regard Muhammad as the prophet of God? Or in other words, could it be possible for Christians to consider Muhammad as a prophet in the light of their own religious traditions?

As we have noted earlier, Watt, a distinguished Islamicist, is regarded by both Christians and Muslims as the most prolific scholar of this century in the field of Sirah scholarship because of his acceptance of the Qur’an and the early Islamic works as reliable sources for determining the status of the prophet Muhammad.665  Concerning Watt’s significance for Sirah scholarship, Daniel indicates that Watt’s views on Muhammad, although they "do not revolutionise the Christian assessment of the Prophet, do change the emphasis, so that the reader, through the historico-anthropological approach, is drawn into and allowed to some extent to share the Muslim awareness of the Prophet".666  F.E. Peters in his recent biography of the Prophet notes:

Undoubtedly Montgomery Watt’s two-volume life of Muhammad written at the mid-century has become the standard for students and scholars alike. Works of such magnitude and conviction usually signal a pause, the reshaping of a new communis opinio, and such seems to have occurred here: no one has since attempted a like enterprise in English.667 

 

In doing so, we would like first to give his criticism of Christians’ distorted images of the Prophet Muhammad in order to highlight the starting point of his own arguments concerning our investigation. In his Muhammad at Medina, he invites Christians to develop an objective view about Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, because of the close contacts between Christians and Muslims. He totally rejects the past allegations made against Muhammad and says that the advocate of those allegations regarded Muhammad as an impostor without thinking about "how God could have allowed a great religion like Islam to develop from a basis of lies and deceit".668  In another place, he criticises early Christian scholars’ views on the issue of Muhammad’s prophetic vocation by remarking that

In Medieval Europe there was elaborated the conception of Muhammad as a false prophet who merely pretended to receive messages from God; and this and other falsifications of the medieval war propaganda are only slowly being expunged from the mind of Europe and Christendom.669 

Thus, not merely must we credit Muhammad with essential honesty and integrity of purpose, if we are to understand him at all; if we are to correct the errors we have inherited from past, we must in every particular case hold firmly to the belief in his sincerity until the opposite is conclusively proved.670 

Watt urges Christians to try to understand some events of the Prophet Muhammad within the context of his own circumstances without judging them according to their own circumstances. In this connection, he states that Christians accused Muhammad of being treacherous and lustful because of events such as the violation of the sacred month and his marriage to the divorced wife of his adopted son, without thinking about the circumstances of his time. He argues that if those Christians carefully scrutinise early Islamic sources, they can easily find out that they judge Muhammad’s actions without taking into consideration the moral criticism of his contemporaries.671 

He also criticises the theory that Muhammad was a "pathological case"672  by stressing that none of the medical symptoms associated with this condition were present in Muhammad. Further, he argues that even if it were the case "the argument would be completely unsound and based on mere ignorance and prejudice; such physical concomitants neither validate or invalidate religious experience".673

It is incredible that a person subject to epilepsy, or hysteria, or even ungovernable fits of emotion, could have been the active leader of military expeditions, or the cool far-seeing guide of city-state and a growing religious community; but all this we know Muhammad to have been. In such questions the principle of the historian should be to depend mainly on the Qur’an and accept Tradition only in so far as it is in harmony with the results of Qur’anic study. 674 

 

After this criticism, Watt begins his own assessment of the status and the prophethood of Muhammad by pointing out the necessity of making a theological evaluation of his prophetic vocation. He insists that "So far Muhammad has been described from the point of view of the historian. Yet as the founder of a world religion he also demands a theological judgement".675  Then he starts his theological appreciation by defining prophethood as follows:

Prophets share in (what may be called) ‘creative imagination’. They proclaim ideas connected with what is deepest and most central in human experience, with special reference to the particular needs of their day and generation. The mark of the great prophet is the profound attraction of his ideas for those to whom they are addressed.676 

 

In another work, Truth in Religions [1963], Watt depicts a prophet "as a religious leader who brings truth in a form suited to the needs of his society and age".677  As we will see, his evaluation of the prophethood of Muhammad appears to conform to this definition.

Furthermore, in his essay "Thoughts on Muslim-Christian Dialogue" [1978], he notes the differences between Christian and Muslim understanding of the term "prophet". Here, Watt indicates that the main specialities of the Old Testament prophets were to be involved in their contemporary public events and to foretell the future. According to the modern historically-minded Christians he argues, the main duty of the prophet is not to foretell the future, but to transmit and proclaim God’s message to his people.678 

he was a man in whom creative imagination worked at deep levels and produced ideas relevant to the central questions of human existence, so that his religion has had a widespread appeal, not only in his own age but in succeeding centuries. Not all the ideas he proclaimed are true and sound but God’s grace has been enabled to provide millions of men with a better religion than they had before they testified that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is his messenger.679 

In his essay "Thoughts On Muslim-Christian Dialogue"[1978], Watt argues that it would be very difficult for Christians to regard Muhammad as a prophet. For, according to him, if Christians did, perhaps Muslims would draw the conclusion that Christians considered Muhammad as a prophet in the Islamic sense in which Muhammad is understood as "a mere instrument for transmitting to his fellow-men the actual speech of god without his personality entering into the transaction in any way".680  In his Islam and Christianity Today [1983], he develops his views about the status of the Prophet Muhammad in the light of observable fruits of Muhammad’s teaching on his followers. In this connection, he argues that Christians should accept the facts that on the basis of the revelation which came to Muhammad

A religious community developed, claiming to serve God, numbering some thousands in Muhammad’s lifetime, and now having several hundred million members. The quality of life in this community has been on the whole satisfactory for the saintliness of life, and countless ordinary people have been enabled to live decent and moderately happy lives in difficult circumstances. These points lead to the conclusion that the view of reality presented in the Qur’an is true and from God, and that therefore Muhammad is a genuine prophet.681 

 

Muhammad was a genuine prophet in the sense that God used him to communicate truth about himself to human beings; but this assertion has to be qualified by holding also that prophets can make mistakes of a sort, as the Old Testament prophets Haggai and Zechariah did when they thought that prince Zerubbabel was the Messiah682 

 

He, also describes the prophet Muhammad as one used by God to found a religion, and part of his duty "is to challenge Christians to more profound reflection on some of their basic beliefs.683 

Personally I am convinced that Muhammad was sincere in believing that what came to him as revelation (wahy) was not the product of conscious thought on his part. I consider that Muhammad was truly a Prophet, and think that we Christians should admit this on the basis of the Christian principle that ‘by their fruits you will know them’, since through the centuries Islam has produced many upright and saintly people. If he is a prophet, too, then in accordance with the Christian doctrine that the Holy Spirit spoke by the prophets, the Qur’an may be accepted as of divine origin.684 

 

In his essay "Islamic Attitude to Other Religions" [1993], he attempts to make this personal statement as a general Christian account not to offend Muslims in the process of interreligious dialogue. He says Christians "must accept Muhammad as a prophet who was similar to the Old Testament prophets".685 

In one Christian-Muslim Encounters [1991], Watt emphasises that in the process of Christian-Muslim dialogue it is very important that "Christians should reject the distortions of the medieval image of Islam and should develop a positive appreciation of its values. This involves accepting Muhammad as a religious leader through whom God has worked, and that is tantamount to holding that he is in some sense a prophet". And he adds, "Such a view does not contradict any central Christian belief", since "Christians do not believe that all Muhammad’s revelations from God were infallible, even though they allow that much of divine truth was revealed to him".686 

In one of his recent essays "Ultimate Vision and Ultimate Reality" [1995], Watt concedes that although in his academic life he always defends the view that the Qur’an was not the prophet Muhammad’s own product, but something that came to him beyond himself, he hesitated to speak of Muhammad as a prophet because of his fear that "Muslims would have taken this to mean that everything in the Qur’an was finally and absolutely true" which he did not acknowledge to be so. But only recently as we have observed above, he says he admitted Muhammad as a prophet like the Old Testament prophets who came to "bring the knowledge of God to people without such knowledge".687  Further he clarifies as follows what he means when he recognises Muhammad as a prophet like the Old Testament prophets in his Religious Truth for Our Time [1995]:

Muhammad was a prophet comparable to the Old Testament prophets, though his function was somewhat different. The latter were primarily critics of deviations from an existing religion, whereas he had to bring knowledge of God and of his commands to a people without any such knowledge. In this respect Muhammad’s role and station more closely resembled that of Moses in that through each of them a form of the divine law was communicated to their people.688 

Firstly, while he is making one of his bold statements about the prophethood of Muhammad, Watt underlines that he is "convinced that Muhammad was sincere in believing that what came to him was revelation". In our opinion, this statement should be understood in the light of Watt’s understanding of the status of the Qur’an. For, as we have observed in our previous chapter, although Watt conceded that the Prophet Muhammad did not produce the Qur’an consciously, he argued that something of him entered into the process of revelation. 689  So, from this understanding, we could argue that what Watt is convinced of is not that Muhammad actually received revelation from God, but that he sincerely believed that he received revelation. This naturally leads us to draw the conclusion that although Muhammad believed that he received revelation from God, in reality he might not have. In our opinion, this point needs more clarification from Watt himself for the sake of better Christian-Muslim understanding.

However, even after considering these ambiguous and significant points, as Muslims we must concede that, in Western Christian scholarship Watt’s position represents a great shift from the distorted medieval images of the Prophet Muhammad to the positive evaluation of his status. In doing so, Watt has already paved the way through which Christians can obtain a complimentary different view about the Prophet Muhammad than previously and be able to evaluate the status of the prophet "in a more positive light than hitherto".690 

Significance for our study is that as a committed Christian and an Islamicist he takes the Muslim demand seriously and tries to answer it sincerely within the context of his own religious tradition. In this connection, his Muhammad and the Christian can be regarded by Muslims as "judicious, gentle, and positive in its use of information. Its criticism of Islam is honest, and ostensibly caring in tone".691 

Before analysing the accounts of his Muhammad and the Christian, we would like to observe briefly how he treated the phenomenon of Muhammad in The Call of the Minaret [1956]. Here, Cragg portrayed the personality of Muhammad as being a man of "a sure monotheism and a prophetic mission in which a divine relationship of revelation, through a scripture, created a community of faith".692  Then, after asking according to which criteria the prophethood of Muhammad is to be evaluated by Christians, Cragg enumerated the following criteria:

Is it by those of Arabian paganism which would show Mohammad to be a great reformer? Or by those of early Islamic development which would show Mohammad to be one of the rarest potentialities in human history? Or by those of the classical Hebrew prophets which would show in Mohammad a strange and yet unmistakable shift in the whole concept and expression of prophethood? Or by those of the hills of the Galilee and Judea where there are criteria of almost insupportable contrast.693 

 

He himself subscribed to the last criterion in answering the question "How should prophethood proceed?", and made the following contrast: "The Muhammadan decision here is formative of all else in Islam. It was a decision for community, for resistance, for external victory, for pacification and rule. The decision of the Cross—no less conscious, no less formative, no less inclusive—was the contrary decision".694  Here, Cragg’s main criterion for the assessment of the phenomenon of Muhammad is the Christian one, and is the direct comparison with Christ as is portrayed in the Gospels.

One of the most interesting points of Cragg’s treatment of the phenomenon of Muhammad in The Call of Minaret [1956] is that he used the title "prophet" almost synonymously with the name of Muhammad. Our examination of related passages show us that he did not use this title to give an official status to Muhammad as a prophet. But, he might have used it because he was accustomed to call him prophet while he was living among Muslims in the Middle-east.695 

Religions, they will say, are specifics best left to their differing histories and their segregated faith systems, hopefully practising tolerance but never venturing to translate their own ethos into the idiom of another. On this view, it will be either naive or hopeless to think that Muhammad is assessable in terms proper to the Buddha or that the Prophet of the Qur’an can rightly be aligned with Jesus of the Gospels. Therefore it is wisdom to leave the several faiths to their own world-views, their historical matrix and their charasterictic mood and mind. One should not look to their contemporary societies for any common reaction to the present world. Their futures must be conceded to be as separate as their pasts.696 

 

The ultimate area of Christian response, given an honest reckoning with all the foregoing, will be the content of the Qur’an itself. Indeed, the question of a Christian acknowledgement of Muhammad resolves itself into that of a Christian response to the Islamic Scripture. It is safe to say that Muhammad himself would not have it otherwise. Nor could any faithful Muslim.697 

 

Then he maintains that within this context a Christian can consider Muhammad as "the Prophet of the Qur’an".698  As Abrahim H. Khan remarks, Cragg’s strategy of assessment of the prophethood of Muhammad within the context of the Qur’an can imply that his study of the significance of Muhammad for Christians is "intellectually respectable", because by doing so he may mean that "Muhammad’s role in the Qur’an is authentic and genuine".699  In this connection, he points out:

The Christian conscience must develop a faithful appreciation of the Qur’an and thereby participate with Muslims in Muhammad within that community of truth as to God and man, creation and nature, law and mercy, which they afford. 700 

 

The Holy Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the meaning of the Cross, the mystery of the Eucharist, the integrity of the four Gospels, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and many contingent matters, are not vital. But it means that they are better left latent here, within the positive and often common themes of Islamic faith and devotion.701 

 

In the broadest terms it means the rule of God, the reality of divine power, wisdom, mercy and justice. It means the strong permeation of the human scene with a consciousness of God, his claim, his creating, his sustaining, his ordaining. That awareness by which Islam lives is surely enough to contain all those issues which the Christian must be minded to join when he studies the predicates of his New Testament theology.702 

 

From this passage, we may conclude that Cragg is extremely careful and cautious in his assessment of the prophethood of Muhammad, within the context of the Qur’anic teaching, not to underestimate theologically his own dogmatic position. For example, while he acknowledges Muhammad as "the Prophet of the Qur’an", he interprets the finality of Muhammad not in time, but with respect to place and locale so as not to compromise the Christian belief of the finality of Christ.703 

For the Christian the pattern of Muhammad’s Sirah will always be in conflict with the power and perspective of the Cross.704 

 

One cannot assess the latter only in terms of the preferability of monotheist faith to pagan idolatry, without regard to questions about Jesus and the Cross.705 

 

The Gospel presents what we must call a divine ‘indicative’, an initiative of self-disclosure on God’s part by which His relation to our human situation is not only in law and education, but in grace and suffering. Christians therefore believe that they have to ‘let God be God’ in just those initiatives which Islam excludes.706 

 

By these statements, Cragg explicitly argues that God’s sovereignty is fully vindicated not in terms of Islamic understanding of prophecy, but in the sonship of Christ which is designated by "those measures of grace and love, of sin and redemption, which are distinctive to the Gospel".707  He also makes the connection between the Qur’anic statement about the blessing of the prophet708  with the New Testament statements about the Divine sonship of Jesus Christ.709  It seems that he uses this connection to demonstrate that the Prophet Muhammad in one sense "incarnated" the reality of God’s message to humankind by asking, "Are we not then warranted in saying that the Prophet of Islam’s very stature argues the sort of divine commitment to the human situation and its righting which the Christian sees implemented in Jesus as the Christ".710  In our opinion, this attempt of Cragg is repugnant to Islam, since "it runs against the grain of basic Qur’anic teaching, which is that only a being who is completely human can provide effective guidance to humankind".711  Further, Khan maintains that the understanding of the position of the Prophet Muhammad "from the perspective of a theology that implies that incarnation, atonement and redemption, and that endorses Jesus Christ as the standard of faith" distorts his image in the eyes of Muslims. Also, to see Muhammad as a witness "to the human situation implemented in Jesus Christ" is to underestimate Muhammad’s being as Rasul Allah or messenger of God.712  Jane I. Smith, stresses that by trying "to balance Christology with the Muslim sense of prophecy," Cragg "moves onto potentially dangerous ground".713 

In his investigation of the status and the prophethood of Muhammad, Cragg used Jesus Christ as a decisive criterion by indicating that the human condition needs more than prophethood to meet its deepest needs. He concludes his investigation by arguing that "if, restoring Jesus’s principle, we question or regret the Caesar in Muhammad, it will only be for the sake, in their Qur’anic form, of those same ‘things of God’, which move us to acknowledge him.714  This conclusion leads him to argue that "The whole logic of Muhammad’s career is that the verbal deliverance of prophetic truth fails of satisfaction and must therefore pass to the post-Hijrah invocation of power".715  By doing so, Cragg acknowledges that Muhammad might have been a prophet, but Jesus Christ was more than a prophet. For, according to Cragg, Muhammad is a prophet testifying to "the sort of divine commitment to the human situation and its righting which the Christian sees implemented in Jesus as the Christ".716 

It is the aim of this study to offer at least one Christian’s view of a resolution of the problem, a resolution which, no more than tentative, remains loyal to Christian criteria while outlining a positive response to Muhammad.717 

 

First of all, Cragg regards Muhammad as a prophet of God and the human channel through whom the Qur’an was transmitted for those who had no scripture. However, while doing this, Cragg places the significance of Muhammad into the pattern of an Old Testament prophet whose ultimate significance points beyond himself to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Chronologically speaking, we may ask how this is possible when Muhammad came six centuries later than Jesus. This question is answered by Cragg with an appeal to geography. Thus the Arabian peninsula at the time of Muhammad is considered by Cragg to have been in an Old Testament state of affairs. He says "For places can be ‘contemporary’ in time and in no way ‘contemporary’ in character."718 

Thirdly, although Cragg examined the question of the prophethood of Muhammad in a scholarly way in the light of the Qur’anic accounts, it seems that his final verdict was "no longer from a scholarly position but a theological-apologetic one, intended to safeguard the kerygmatic core of the Christian faith, and simultaneously to appease Muslims".719 

The same church must, in my opinion, also respect the one whose name is absent from the same declaration out of embarrassment, although he and he alone led Muslims to pray to this one God, so that once again through him, Muhammad, the Prophet, this God ‘ has spoken to mankind’.720

The Christian who wishes to engage in dialogue with the Muslims acknowledges from the outset his or her own conviction of faith that for him or her Jesus is the Christ and so is normative and definitive, but he or she also takes very seriously the function of Muhammad as an authentic prophet.721 

 

Muhammad is discontinuity in person, an ultimately irreducible figure, who cannot be simply derived from what preceded him, but stands radically apart from it as he, with the Qur’an, established permanent new stands.722 

 

From this passage, David Kerr rightly concludes that Küng takes the discontinuity as an essential element for his evaluation of originality of the prophethood of Muhammad.723  By using this exposition, Küng advocates that "Muhammad and the Qur’an represent a decisive break, a departure from the past, a shift toward a new future".724  Also, Küng argues that there is no one who is more worthy of being called a prophet than Muhammad in the whole of religious history because of his claim that he was no more than a prophet, come to warn people. He says, "When the history of religions speaks of ‘the Prophet’ tout court, of a man who claimed to be that but absolutely nothing more, then there can be no doubt that this is Muhammad".725 

Muhammad based his work not on any office given to him by the community (or its authorities) but on a special, personal relationship with God. Muhammad was a strong-willed character, who saw himself as wholly penetrated by his divine vocation, totally taken up by God’s claim on him, exclusively absorbed by his mission. Muhammad spoke out amid a religious and social crisis. With his passionate piety and his revolutionary preaching, he stood up against the wealthy ruling class and the tradition of which it was the guardian. Muhammad, who usually calls himself a ‘Warner’, wished to be nothing but God’s mouthpiece and to proclaim God’s word, not his own. Muhammad tirelessly glorified the one God, who tolerates no other gods before him and who is, at the same time, the kindly Creator and merciful Judge. Muhammad insisted upon unconditional obedience, devotion, and ‘ submission’ to this one God. He called for every kind of gratitude toward God and of generosity toward human beings. Muhammad linked his monotheism to a humanism, connecting faith in the one God and his judgement to the demand for social justice; judgement and redemption, threats against the unjust, who go to hell, and promises to the just, who are gathered into God’s Paradise.726

 

Do not these three Semitic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—have the same origin? Does not One and the same God speak loudly and clearly in these religions? Does not the Old Testament’s ‘ Thus says the Lord’ correspond to the Qur’an’s ‘say’, as the Old Testament’s ‘go and tell’ matches the Qur’an’s ‘take your stand and warn’.727

 

He says that if Christians do this, it is impossible for them to answer these questions negatively. Thus, he concludes that "it is only dogmatic prejudice when we [Christians] recognize Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah, as prophets, but not Muhammad".728 

were lifted to the heights of monotheism from the very this worldly polytheism of the old Arabian tribal religion. Taken as a whole, they received from Muhammad, or rather from the Qur’an, a boundless supply of inspiration, courage, and strength to make a new departure in religion, toward greater truth and deeper knowledge, a breakthrough that vitalised and renewed their traditional religion. Islam, in short, was a great help in their life.729 

Küng also reminds Christians of the following facts when dealing with the question of the Prophet Muhammad. He says it is well known today that one fifth of the world population "are all marked by the exacting power of a faith that, more than practically any other, has shaped its followers into a uniform type"; and those people [Muslims] share a "feeling for the fundamental equality of all human beings before God, an international brotherhood that has managed to overcome barriers between the races".730 

These quotations from Küng imply that the right way for Christian appreciation of the prophet Muhammad is to take into account the observable benefits of his message on his followers. In other words, according to Küng, it is necessary to move away from theology to the practical effects of one’s message on the life of its followers in order to reach a right conclusion about that faith. By implying this, it seems that Küng adopted a similar approach to both Smith and Montgomery Watt whose views have been studied above.731 

Finally, Küng moves to outline the theological meaning of this recognition of the Prophet Muhammad for Christians. He begins by showing that in the New Testament there are statements which indicate that after Jesus there is the possibility of authentic future prophets. But, Küng restricts their mission to witness to Jesus and his message by making it comprehensible for every age and every situation.732  Within this context, in the last stage of his examination of the status and the prophethood of Muhammad, Küng regards Muhammad "as a witness for Jesus—a Jesus who could have been understood not by Hellenistic Gentile Christians, but by Jesus’s first disciples, who were Jews, because, with this Jesus tradition, Muhammad reminds the Jews that Jesus fits into the continuity of Jewish salvation history".733  And he emphasises that this Muhammad can be a "prophetic corrective" and "prophetic Warner" for Christians in order to inform them that

the one incomparable God has to stand in the absolute centre of faith; That associating with him any other gods or goddesses is out of the question; That faith and life, orthodoxy and orthopraxy, belong together everywhere, including politics.734 

 

In one of his papers which was delivered at Edinburgh Theological Club, Küng maintains that "I can as a Christian be convinced that if I have chosen Jesus as the Christ for my life and death, then along with him I have chosen his follower Muhammad, insofar as he appeals to one and the same God and to Jesus".735 

Evaluation: As we have observed above, as an ecumenical Catholic theologian and leading defender of interreligious dialogue, Küng tries to reassess the status and the prophethood of Muhammad in the light of the developments of Christian-Muslim relations in our modern day. By doing this, he examines the issue from both practical and theological perspectives. In the light of our examination of his views within the context of these two perspectives, we may draw the following conclusions.

Secondly, while doing this, it is necessary to take into account the similarities between the prophet Muhammad and the Old Testament Prophets, and the observable fruits of his teaching on Muslims. In this issue, Küng argues that like the Old Testament prophets, Muhammad, too, deserves to be called "prophet" by Christians. From the Muslim understanding of prophethood, there would not be a problem in this argument of Küng, since, according to Islamic teaching there is no difference between prophets.736  However, from the Christian point of view his argument needs further clarification to avoid ambiguity. For, what Muslim understand by this term differs from what Christians understand.

Thirdly, from the theological perspective, according to Küng, the New Testament allows the continuation of prophecy after Jesus Christ, as long as they witness to him in every age and in every situation. Therefore, Küng acknowledges the prophethood of Muhammad by seeing him "as a witness for Jesus," not as understood by Hellenistic Gentile Christians, but by his first disciples and also a "prophetic corrective" for Christians. In our opinion, there are two significant implications of these arguments. The first is that Christians may have an opportunity to revise their own understanding of Jesus by taking into account Jewish Christians, since according to Küng there is a great similarity between the Qur’anic and Jewish Christian understanding of Jesus.737  The second is that being a "prophetic corrective" for Christians seems to be compatible with the prophet’s teaching, as long as this is understood as just one of his duties, among others. For example, in the Qur’an, Christians are invited to give up their extreme views about Jesus, not his teaching.738  Although these are positive implications, when Muhammad and Jesus are compared, Küng always seem to make Muhammad inferior to Jesus. We will highlight this point in chapter six while we are dealing with the issue of the status of Jesus.

David Kerr, as a former director of two highly significant Christian-Muslim study centres, the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian Muslim Relation in Birmingham, England and the D.B. Macdonald Center in Hartford, USA, and a pioneer of Christian-Muslim dialogue, has produced three significant essays on the assessment of the status of the Prophet Muhammad from the Christian perspective. In his first essay "The Prophet Muhammad: Toward A Christian Assessment" [1987], Kerr examines the prophethood of Muhammad in the light of the Qur’anic accounts by putting aside the question whether Christians can acknowledge the Qur’an as the word of God or not. For, according to him the answer to this question does not change the following facts. Firstly, he says the Prophet Muhammad sincerely believed that the Qur’an came to him from God. Secondly, The Qur’an provides "us an accurate guide to his understanding of his ministry".739  In the light of this clarification about his source, Kerr explains his approach as follows: "Ethically the paper starts from the premise that Muhammad was a man of utter spiritual and moral seriousness and sincerity, as Muslims themselves believe."740 

After this methodological explanation, Kerr tries to outline the ministry of the Prophet Muhammad in the light of the Qur’anic accounts and the sirah literature. After drawing the similarities between the Biblical and the Qur’anic teaching on ethical issues and peace, he argues that they offer Christians "a firm basis for Christian interest in Muhammad’s ministry as part of" their dialogue with Moslems.741  In the end of the essay, he strongly maintains that in this essay he did not want to be involved in making a theological evaluation of the prophethood of Muhammad in the light of the Christian, criterion, namely Jesus Christ. In doing so, it seems that he wanted to stay outside "the long tradition of Christian polemical writings which have portrayed Muhammad as a ‘false prophet’".742  Instead, as he has pointed out earlier, he wanted to understand Muhammad as he had understood himself in the Qur’an.

Mohammad is manifestly such a sign ‘in the way of the prophets’, the Qur’an witnessing the universality of divine revelation, reiterating many of the fundamental perceptions of the Bible, and providing as it were a critical commentary on the more dogmatic aspects of particularly New Testament belief, and Mohammad exemplifying the application of the Qur’anic vision in society.743 

 

What Kerr indicates by this evaluation is that Christians can regard Muhammad as a witness to God’s universal revelation which was revealed in Jesus Christ for all humankind and not more than that. Within this context, it can be argued that, according to Kerr, Muhammad could be a prophet who was inspired by the Trinitarian God, and he is a "prophetic corrective" for Christians as Küng stressed.744 

In his last essay "‘He walked in the Path of the Prophets’: toward Christian Theological Recognition of the Prophethood of Muhammad" [1995], Kerr observes some renowned twentieth century Christian scholars whose views "create theological space for Muhammad as a "post-Christian" prophet within their theological understanding of the Christian tradition". By following in the footsteps of his first essay, he says that while doing this his intention was not to develop a proper Christian answer to the question of the prophethood of Muhammad, as did Cragg who "confused Christian confessional and ecumenical statements about the theological importance" of this prophethood.745 

After highlighting some important points of their views, Kerr rightly points out that those who use theological Christian criteria in their evaluations of the prophethood of Muhammad "largely fail to address Islamic understanding of prophecy and prophethood". But as has been stated above, he assessed the Prophet Muhammad in the light of the Christian revelation which was revealed in Christ. Lastly, he argues that the solution of the question of the prophethood of Muhammad very much depends on understanding the Islamic revelation anew in the light of modern scientific developments.746  By this argument, Kerr indicates that if Muslims re-read the Qur’an in the light of the modern scientific methods as some Muslim scholars did [such as Fazlur Rahman], then Christians and Muslims will be able to reach a mutual understanding about the status of the Prophet Muhammad.

But it also raises an interesting and important question about the understanding of the term "prophet". For, as is well known Christians and Muslims understand different things from it. The French Catholic scholar, J. Jomier, states that according to Christians, a prophet is someone who speaks on behalf of God by divine authority. For that reason, he says, when a Christian considers someone a prophet, he/she should obey what he said. In this sense, he argues that Christians cannot use the title "prophet" for Muhammad, because "they cannot obey him without reserve". Further, Jomier clarifies that when Christians use the title "prophet" for someone, they do not mean that they accept all that he says, but admit some of it while rejecting some.747  The Dutch Protestant theologian, Hendrik Vroom, too, says that when the title "prophet" is used, it means someone who devotes himself to God as a "man of God" or is understood to be "someone who bears witness to others of the one God, Creator and Ruler", Christians can use that title for Muhammad. But, when it is used and understood within the context of the Biblical tradition, then they cannot use it for Muhammad.748 

On this point, we remind our reader that today although there are those who are in favour of a new and positive Christian assessment of the Prophet Muhammad, they do not want to use the title "prophet" for Muhammad because of these differences. For example, the Catholic scholar J. Jomier, R. Arnaldez, and the British Methodist M. Forward maintain the necessity of a more positive Christian assessment of the Prophet Muhammad. In doing so, Jomier argues that unless Christians re-examine the question of the status of the Prophet Muhammad positively it is very difficult "to take a new step" in Christian-Muslim dialogue.749  Forward stresses that "those who seek to cast lustre upon their own religion by darkening another do themselves and their faith little honour and less justice".750  But, on the other hand, both of them state that because of the differences between Christians and Muslims on the understanding of the term "prophet," it is better not to use this title for him.751  For, as Forward says, "Muslims and Christians deceive themselves when they think that by calling Muhammad a prophet they mean the same, even a comparable thing".752  Because of these reasons, both of them, unlike Watt, Küng, Cragg, and Kerr regard the Prophet Muhammad as a political and religious genius without using the term "prophet" for him. Although this attempt of Jomier and Forward seems an honest Christian response to the question of the status of Muhammad, it does not contribute to understanding Muhammad’s religious and spiritual vision.753 

In his work Prophecy in Ancient Israel, J. Lindblom elaborates the features of the prophet as follows: A prophet is a person who experiences the divine in an original way to himself. He entirely belongs to God and receives revelation from Him. His primary duty, first of all, is to listen to God and obey Him and then proclaim His message to others. He develops his personal communion with God by prayer, devotion, and moral submission to His will. In this sense, he differs from a politician, a social reformer, a thinker or even a poet, although he often puts his words in a poetical form.754 

Apart from these specialities of a prophet, the Bible itself makes a distinction between true and false prophecy in Deuteronomy 13:1-2; 18:22. In these passages after expressing that those false prophets urge people to follow gods other than Yahweh, and that those whose prophecy is not fulfilled are false prophets,755  it follows that a true prophet is someone who proclaims all God reveals to him. In other words, a true prophet is someone through whose mouth God transmits His message to humanity.756 

In the case of those whose views were expressed above, it is obvious that contemporary Christian scholarship has generally attempted to go beyond the polemical tradition by accepting Muhammad as a man of religious genius and the messenger of God who affected the course of human history under the sovereign role of God. Also, when these accounts of contemporary Christian thinkers are compared with the accounts of those who maintained that any theological Christian recognition of the prophethood of Muhammad would be impossible, it becomes obvious that more and more leading Christian scholars regard this issue as a challenging question which deserves to be discussed seriously.757  But as Antonie Wessels rightly remarks, all Christians are not totally ready to shake of the remnants of the ill-informed Medieval distorted images of Muhammad. In this connection, he maintains that "the task of understanding anew what it means in modern times to say that God spoke to or through Muhammad, as we find reflected in the Qur’an, lies in my opinion, still ahead".758