As is well known, the Qur’an stands at the centre of Muslim faith and religious experience. It embraces their life, thought, and culture and has shaped Muslim civilisation from its advent to our modern day. For a committed Muslim it represents the Word of God as revealed or "sent down" to the Prophet Muhammad. It is a revelation, a divine disclosure to which special, even unique, treatment must be accorded. With regard to its function for the Muslims, the Qur’an is regarded as equal to the function of the Christ event for Christians. It is argued that whereas Christianity would not be Christianity without Jesus Christ, Islam would not be Islam without the Qur’an.501 

This, the most important element of Muslim faith, had been perceived by Christians until recently as the product of the events of the life of the Prophet Muhammad in response to particular needs of his own community and not as God’s revelation to him.502  After the second half of this century, this negative and prejudiced attitude towards the Qur’an started to change to a more positive and scholarly understanding. There were a number of reasons for this, such as the increasing number of scholarly and comprehensive studies on Islam, and specifically on the Qur’an in the light of new scientific developments and the increasing Muslim presence among Christians. It seems that this more positive attitude is the result of developments which have occurred in Christian-Muslim relations on the official level since the 1960’s. For, as observed in the first part, both the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC officially declared the necessity of establishing fraternal dialogue with Muslims inviting both Christians and Muslims to abandon the past hostilities and prejudices.

As a result of these official invitations, both Christian authorities and individual thinkers started to meet Muslims to know them better and to understand their religious beliefs in order to create a more positive and fraternal dialogue environment. However, while creating an atmosphere based on mutual understanding and respect, these activities caused a number of theological problems in the minds of the dialogue partners. As an example of this fraternal dialogue, while some Christians come to realise the richness of the Qur’an and its meaning in the life of Muslims by discovering the presence of God within the context of the notion of oneness, transcendence, and mercy, the significance of its ethical requirements for human life, and its highly respected place for Jesus and his mother Mary, others find challenging and threatening the Qur’anic rejection of such Christian doctrines as the Trinity, Incarnation, Crucifixion and Redemption. Due to these developments a number of questions have been discussed among Christian scholars concerning the nature and status of the Qur’an, namely: Is there revelation after the New Testament? If there is, does this mean a kind of requestioning the fullness of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ? Or Can Christians accept the Qur’an as "the word of God" which was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad?503 

Montgomery Watt, as an historian of Islamic history and prolific modern biographer of the Prophet Muhammad, has been regarded as one of the most accredited Islamicists of the twentieth century by both Christians and Muslims. By his works on Islam, as Khurshid Ahmad remarks, he has changed the prejudiced attitude of Christians to Islam to a more objective and sympathetic one.504  In doing so, Watt has contributed to the understanding of the Islamic revelation not only among Christians but also among Muslims, although his views differ from the traditional Muslim understanding of revelation, as we will see shortly. Watt produced two significant works directly related to the Qur’an. The first was Islamic Revelation in the Modern World [1969];505  the second was the revised edition of his teacher, Richard Bell’s, Introduction to the Qur’an506  [1970]). He has also dealt with the issue of Islamic revelation in a number of places in his other publications.507  In our analysis of his views on the Islamic revelation, we will focus our attention mainly on his Islamic Revelation in the Modern World, since our examination of the related passages of his other works has shown that there are no major changes in his views on this issue in the course of time. We will also consult his other works when it is necessary.

Watt begins to state his views on the status of the Qur’an by maintaining that as a result of new positive developments in the process of Christian-Muslim dialogue, in our day Christians should avoid thinking and speaking about the Qur’anic revelation as the product of the Prophet Muhammad’s experience,508  as "a mere hotch-potch of biblical material brought together by Muhammad himself,"509  or discarding its originality. He stresses that most Western scholars have agreed that "in the Qur’an there is no conscious borrowing from other scriptures".510  Watt supported his argument that there is an originality in the Qur’an by arguing that when one looks at the first Meccan suras, one can draw from them the following five points:

(1) God is all-powerful and good; (2) Man will appear before God on the Last Day to be judged and assigned to heaven or hell according to their deeds; (3) Man ought to be grateful to God and worship Him; (4) Man should be generous with his wealth and upright; (5) Muhammad has been sent as a Warner to bring this message from God to his fellows.511 

 

After proving that there is an originality in the Islamic revelation, Watt turns to describe revelation as "divine activity by which God, the Creator, communicates himself to man, and in so doing, evokes man’s response and co-operation". Then, in the light of this definition, he regards the Qur’an, "as a product of divine initiative and therefore revelation".512  Further, in his Islam and Christianity Today [1983], he develops this point by taking into account the positive contribution of the Qur’anic message to its followers’ life. Finally, he reaches the conclusion that the Qur’an is true and from God, since on the basis of the Qur’anic message:

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 members. Many men and women in this community have attained to 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.513 

In Islamic Fundamentalism and Modernity [1988], he underlines that he has no objection to the Muslim belief that the Qur’an came to the Prophet Muhammad from God. In his recent essay, "Ultimate Vision and Ultimate Reality" [1995], he clarifies his position by indicating that "I always took the view, contrary to most previous scholars of Islam that the Qur’an was not something Muhammad had consciously produced."514  What he objects to is the belief that there is no human element in the Qur’an.515  By arguing this, it seems that Watt implies that while the Qur’an was not produced consciously by the Prophet but came to him from God, it contains both divine and human elements together.

Watt strongly claims that there are human elements in the Qur’an since it contains errors and mistakes.516  For that reason he argues that it cannot be the verbatim speech of God which was revealed to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. To support this view, he develops the following arguments. The first is that being in the Arabic language naturally proves that the Qur’an has a human element, since "a language does not just happen to exist, but has been made by a human community in a forgotten past". Secondly, by comparing the Qur’anic presentation of events with the Bible, Watt concludes that there are errors and mistakes in the Qur’an. According to Watt, these errors are: the confusion of the mother of Jesus Mary with the sister of Aaron, the rejection of the historical event of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the assertion that Christians worship three gods.517  Thirdly, he argues that the Prophet Muhammad deliberately revised the Qur’an. For example, in Medina when Muhammad encountered the Jewish opposition, he took some verses which condemn only the Jews, but later when the Christian opposition arose he might have revised those verses again by addition of words "and Christians". On this point, Watt claims that Muhammad himself or those who collected the Qur’an after him put the later verses in the Qur’an and omitted the former ones.518  Watt argues that in the light of the modern Western historical critical method it becomes clear that the traditional Muslim belief that the Qur’an as the verbatim speech of God revealed to the Prophet through an angel can no longer be defended. Instead of this understanding, he suggests that Muslims advocate that "God had adapted the wording of the Qur’an to the outlook of the people of Mecca, among whom these erroneous opinions were current, and that it was not part of the purpose of the revealed message to correct such errors".519 

(1) Muhammad is aware that certain words are present in his ‘heart’ or conscious mind; (2) They are not the result of any conscious thinking process on his part; (3) He believes them to be placed in his mind by an external agency which he speaks of an angel; (4) He believes that the message is ultimately from God. 520 

In the discussion of this question, Watt argues that the words of the Qur’an came from Muhammad’s unconscious and thus they were, in one sense, related to him before he became consciously aware of them. As he says, this explanation can be reconciled with the traditional Muslim belief by indicating that the angel put those words into Muhammad’s unconscious, from there they came into his consciousness,521  and then he transmitted them to his society using his own language, Arabic.

He explains what he means by this argument by using the data of the modern natural or empirical sciences i.e. the Jungian theory of "collective and personal unconscious".522  In doing so, Watt advocates that the messages of the Qur’an came to the Prophet Muhammad from both his personal and cumulative unconscious. This means that Muhammad found the contents of the Qur’an in the cumulative unconscious, and then he experienced them by responding positively.523  For, according to Watt, "most religious ideas emerge from the collective unconscious into consciousness, and most religious practice is the conscious response to these ideas".524  By generalising this understanding of the nature of revelation, he concludes that "the revelations on which Judaism, Christianity and Islam are based are ‘contents’ which have emerged from the collective unconscious". Then he clarifies what he means by this conclusion as follows: While in Judaism and Christianity the development of these collective unconscious ideas and images emerged in continuity with each other because of their familiarity to people, in Islam, too, since the region where they emerged was "only slightly influenced by Judeo-Christian ideas, there was a sudden and largely unprepared for emergence of contents from the collective unconscious".525 

To support this modern psychological explanation of the nature of revelation against a possible Muslim objection, Watt upholds that to claim that the content of the Qur’an came to the Prophet Muhammad from his cumulative and personal unconscious has nothing to do with its ultimate source. On the contrary, it helps to illustrate how the Qur’an was adapted by the Prophet and his community.526  He further clarifies this by stating that "In suggesting that the Qur’an came to Muhammad from his unconscious, I am not denying its divine origin, but placing it on the level of the Old Testament prophecies. All that is being denied is one simplistic way of understanding what it means by saying that the Qur’an is the word of God".527  By following this, he points out that this explanation does not reject the view that God is the ultimate source of the Qur’an, "since God can work through created beings and can so presumably work through the personal or collective unconscious of a created human beings". Moreover, he argues that it also does not contradict the Muslim belief that the Qur’an was transmitted to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, "since that is the picture language for a reality known mainly through its effects". 528 

In short, as has been seen, Watt establishes his own understanding of the Qur’anic revelation on two matters: that the verbal content of the Qur’an came into the Prophet Muhammad’s consciousness from the unconsciousness and that the Prophet was able to distinguish these materials from his own conscious thinking. This understanding leads Watt to admit that the Qur’an is not the product of the prophet Muhammad’s own thinking but came from beyond him. In a recent interview with him, he clarifies what he means by this as follows: "I believe that Muhammad had genuine religious experiences, that he did really receive something directly from God. I believe that the Qur’an came from God, that it is Divinely inspired".529  For that reason, he says, it is wrong to speak of a Qur’anic verse as "Muhammad said such and such a thing".530 

However, it seems that by using this theory Watt not only wanted to explain the nature of revelation, but also wanted to illustrate the relationship of the Qur’an to the socio-economic and religious circumstances of seventh century Arabia. This naturally implies that the Qur’an came out through the creative imagination of the Prophet Muhammad which "worked at deep levels and produced ideas relevant to the needs of a society torn by economic, social and religious changes". This implication seems to contradict his definition of revelation as a "mode of divine activity by which the Creator communicates himself to man and, by so doing, evokes man’s response and co-operation". For that reason, as D’Souza rightly remarks, we may conclude that Watt’s above explanation of the nature of Islamic revelation "is more in agreement with what he calls the Western secularist view".531 

As an ordained Presbyterian minister Cantwell Smith began his academic life as an Islamicist and Oriental linguist, then became one of the most influential historians of religion of our century. In his academic life and still now, he has contributed greatly to understanding world faiths in general and Islam in particular. In doing this he has always stuck to his famous principle that no statement about other faiths can be true unless their followers acknowledge it as true.532  Although he has not published any specific book on the status of the Qur’an, he has dealt with it in various places in his various publications. On this issue, his major essays are "Is the Qur’an the Word of God"[1967]533  and "The True Meaning of the Scripture: An Empirical Historian’s Nonreductionist Interpretation of the Qur’an" [1980].534  In our examination of his views on the status of the Qur’an, we will mainly follow these essays, but, while doing this, we will also refer to his other works.

Within this phenomenological approach, in his first essay, "Is the Qur’an the Word of God?" [1967] Smith, first of all, tries to explain the status of the Qur’an by asking the following delicate question "Is the Qur’an the word of God?" and points out both Muslims and non-Muslims answered this question as ‘ Yes’ or ‘No’ in the past and also in our modern day without asking and studying it.535  He stresses that these two different answers can be regarded as prejudgements, since Muslims have insisted that the Qur’an is the verbatim speech of God without reading and studying it but by believing it is so. In the same way Christians have declared that it is not the Word of God without studying it, but assessing it according to their own understanding of revelation.536  Smith maintains that these two different answers would be regarded normal for past circumstances in which both sides, Muslims and Christians, were living in isolation and ignorance of each other. But, in our global world, Muslim and Christian intellectuals should look for new types of answers to come to a common understanding on the Qur’an. That would not mean that Muslims and Christians would cease to be different by taking into consideration contemporary historical circumstances.537 

Smith strongly emphasises that resolution of this kind of question can only be found by ceasing to ask questions about the Qur’an itself and looking at the attitudes of those on either side who answer positively or negatively to the above question. For, according to Smith, the Qur’an is the word of God for those whose faith is expressed through it, and it is not the word of God for those whose faith is expressed through another medium.538 

As can be seen here, Smith avoids answering the above question ‘yes’ or ‘no’ directly. Instead, in his Towards a World Theology [1981] he replaces it with the question "Has God spoken to Muslims through the Qur’an across the centuries?"539  More recently, too, in his essay "Can Believers Share the Qur’an and the Bible as the Word of God?" [1992],540  he has clarified this question by putting it, "Has the Qur’an been the Word of God for Muslims?" or more concretely, "Has it served God as a channel for His Word among them?" Then he answers this modified question, after all his study of Islam and his observations of Muslims among whom he lived for many years, as follows: "In some cases yes, to varying degrees, in some cases no".541  Then he adds only the following types of people can disagree with him in this answer:

(a) those who are not familiar with Islamic history, and who do not have Muslim friends; (b) those whose prejudices dogmatically rule out any willingness or ability to consider transcendent dimensions of human life and history; (c) those who, although recognizing transcendence and our involvement in it, are not themselves theist but operate with some other conceptual framework to think and speak of it and yet are unwilling or unable into that framework .542 

 

Although there are ambiguities in Smith’s answer to the question of "Is the Qur’an the word of God?" or "Has the Qur’an served God as His Word among Muslims?", one cannot conclude that he does not acknowledge the Qur’an as the word of God. For, in another essay, "The True Meaning of the Scripture", he makes two suggestions for a better understanding of the Qur’an by non-Muslims. Firstly, he maintains that the Qur’an should be regarded as a separate scripture not any other book before studying it.543  According to him, one cannot appreciate its status and its role in human affairs without taking into consideration scripture as a major matter in those affairs; and it is very difficult to develop a scholarly notion of scripture unless the Qur’an can be so acknowledged.544  For this reason Smith urges non-Muslim students of Islam to accept the Qur’an as a religious document by asking what would its verses convey to them if they acknowledged them as God’s words. Smith puts his argument on this issue as follows:

If an outsider picks up the book and goes through it even asking himself, What is there that has led Muslims to suppose this from God? He will miss the reverberating impact. If, on the other hand, he picks up the book and asks himself, what would these sentences convey to me if I believed them to be God’s word? Then he can much more effectively understand what has been many centuries in the Muslim world.545 

 

The Qur’an has meant whatever it has meant, to those who have used or heard it or appropriated it to themselves; that the Qur’an as scripture has meant whatever is has meant to those Muslims for whom it has been scripture. Every passage has meant this or that to so-and-so in such-and-such a place at such-and-such a time. We leave out nothing that Muslims have seen in it.546 

 

If one is drawing parallels in terms of the structure of the two religions, what corresponds in the Christian scheme of the Qur’an is not the Bible but the person of Christ—it is Christ who is for Christians the revelation of (from) God. And what corresponds in the Islamic scheme to the Bible (the record of the revelation) is the Tradition (hadith), the counterpart of the Biblical criticism, which has begun. To look for historical criticism of the Qur’an is rather like looking for a psychoanalysis of Jesus. 547 

The significance of the Qur’an lies in part, no doubt, in the background and its mundane sources; but so far as actual history is concerned, that significance lies in much greater part in its prodigious and continuing force in the lives of men and women since, as over a large sector of the globe and over the long course of centuries, they have in its light dealt with their changing problems and have confronted creatively a fluctuating a series of varied contexts.548 

Thirdly, Smith outlines that those scholars who regarded the Qur’an as a seventh century Arabian document have failed to discern that the Qur’an is not only a seventh century Arabian document but "it is equally a ninth, and a tenth, and a fourteenth, and an eighteenth, and a twentieth century document", since it has been very effective in the lives of its followers, not only in Arabia but almost all over the world, such as Central Asia, Middle East, Africa, Northern India and Western China. In this sense, Smith maintains that the real meaning of the Qur’an lies in its history that is dynamic, rich, creative, deeply intertwined with the lives of its adherents over many centuries, and many lands. For him, "the meaning of the Qur’an as scripture lies not in the text, but in the minds and hearts of Muslims".549 

The Qur’an is significant not primarily because of what historically went into it but because of what historically has come out of it; what it has done to human lives, and what people have done to it and with it and through it. The Qur’an is significant because it has shown itself capable of serving a community as a form through which its members have been able (have been enabled) to deal with the problems of theirs lives, to confront creatively a series of varied context. To understand the Qur’an is to understand both that, and how, this has been happening.550 

 

From our observation of Smith’s understanding of the Qur’an, we can conclude that Smith is not interested in searching for the authenticity of the Qur’an by applying modern scientific methods. Instead, in the light of the phenomenological approach, he gives priority to what Muslims say about the Qur’an and how the Qur’an serves them as the Word of God. In his recent essay "Can Believers Share the Qur’an and the Bible as Word of God?" [1992], he articulates his methodology more clearly as follows: "The significant question about the Qur’an and all scriptures is not whether they are inspired, but whether they are inspiring."551  By doing this, unlike many other Christian scholars of Islam, he regards the the Qur’an as the Word of God for Muslims. But with this acknowledgement he does not intend simply a descriptive statement in the sense of "Muslims hold the Qur’an to be the Word of God." Rather he makes a theological judgement in which he acknowledges that the Qur’an is actually the Word of God for Muslims, since God speaks to Muslims through it. By doing this, he considers the message of the Qur’an as a call to faith " in a God who commands it", and thus he prefers the way that leads to doing "justice to the faith in men’s hearts."552 

The benefit of this sort of approach for Christian-Muslim understanding can be seen in his positive answer to the question "Is the Qur’an the word of God"? or "Has the Qur’an served God as His Word among Muslims?". By doing this, as Neal Robinson rightly argues, Smith both saves himself from Christian polemics and urges the non-Muslim student of the Qur’an to study the Qur’an more sympathetically. Also, this positive answer of Smith can lead both Muslims and non-Muslims to approach the Qur’an by studying it, not something in their baggage. 553 

Because of these positive implications of Smith’s views on the understanding of the Qur’an or, more correctly, of all sacred scripture, he is appreciated by both Muslims and Christians. For example, while the renowned Muslim scholar, S.H. Nasr, regards him as one of the few Christian scholars who have tried to understand the meaning of the Qur’an as it is understood by Muslims,554  the Christian scholar, W. Bijlefeld, too, praises him because of his phenomenological approach to the Qur’an.555 

In his major work, The Event of the Qur’an [1971],556  Cragg develops his own understanding of the status of the Qur’an by investigating its content and the historical circumstances in which the Qur’an came to the Prophet Muhammad. One year later, Cragg wrote The Mind of the Qur’an [1972]557  in order to test his theories concerning the status of the Qur’an, which he had laid out in The Event of the Qur’an by giving examples from Qur’anic themes. Later on, he wrote Muhammad and The Christian [1986]558  as a response to the Muslim question why Christians do not acknowledge the prophethood of Muhammad, while Muslims show great respect to Jesus by recognising him as a prophet. We will analyze this book more deeply in the next chapter; here, we will deal only with its sixth chapter, "The Prophetic Experience". In his Readings in the Qur’an [1988],559  Cragg translated about two-thirds of the total Qur’an. Cragg made his selection in accordance with his own understanding of the Qur’an by omitting passages which are not compatible with the content of the Bible, such as social laws, man’s duty in society, nature and eschatology. Recently, Cragg published Returning to Mount Hira [1994]560  where he tries to explain the Islamic revelation by returning to its beginning, the event of Mount Hira. The main argument of this book is that to solve their contemporary problems, contemporary Muslims need to return to the beginning of revelation instead of taking Hijrah as a starting point.

After this brief introduction of Cragg’s works on the Qur’an, we will focus on his main arguments concerning the status of the Qur’an, concentrating mainly on his The Event of the Qur’an [1971]. Our reading of his works has shown that he spelled out his main arguments first of all in this work and more or less repeated them in his other works. Cragg regards this work as an "attempt to see the Qur’an, as it were, in its own mirror".561  Its primary objective is to "to reflect on the book within itself and assemble its own implications about the nature of what happened in its genesis as a religious experience"562  by taking it in its own terms. Cragg starts his arguments on the status of the Qur’an by defining it as a collection of recorded religious experiences of the Prophet Muhammad:

The event of the Qur’an lives in an intense personal prophetic vocation. As such it moves with eloquence and poetry in the mystery of speech. It speaks a corporate solidarity, awakening a stirring sense of ethnic identity. These, in their progress, and their climax, are none other than the claim and the vehicle of a total religious demand and surrender.563 

 

As can be seen, Cragg, unlike Smith, regards the Qur’an as a religious experience, not as a scripture which came at a particular time and in particular circumstances during the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Hence, he insists that the Qur’an is a document which came from God and His messenger, and its living context was the circumstances in which the prophet lived.564 

Further, he sees the main purpose of the Qur’an as a struggle with idolatry in order to lead pagan Arabs from polytheism to monotheism by claiming that "the main theme of the Qur’an is to struggle with idolatry; the others are only contributory"565 . In this sense, he regards the Qur’an "as a mission to retrieve idolaters to a true worship".566 

After expressing the main purpose of the Qur’an in this way, Cragg moves to explain the relationship between it and the Prophet Muhammad. He rejects the traditional Muslim view which considers Muhammad as a mere instrument through which the Qur’an as the verbatim speech of God was transmitted. Instead, he argues that to do justice to him as a prophet it is necessary to accept "a parallel quality of active mind and spirit in both directions of his medial position between the eternal and the temporal, between the word given and the word declared".567  In other words, according to Cragg, the phenomenon of the Qur’an cannot be separated from the phenomenon of the Prophet Muhammad, since both are "a supreme expression of humanness instrumental to God".568 

Cragg sees a close connection between the words of the Qur’an and the words of the Arabic poetry and soothsayers, despite the strong Qur’anic rejection of this kind of argument. 569  He claims that the mystery of the origin of the Qur’an cannot be understood without "sounding the depths of language". He states:

The Qur’an, in its power and quality, is a thing of surpassing poetical worth, and that its genesis must be understood in terms of literary inspiration. The mystery of its origins cannot be fathomed without sounding the depths of language.570 

 

As can be drawn from this quotation, Cragg considers Arabic poetry as a very effective tool for the expression of the Qur’anic words by the prophet Muhammad. It seems that Cragg, with this argument, implies that the Prophet Muhammad was a poet, and the Qur’an was a kind of poetic expression which, mixed with divine inspiration, came to the Prophet Muhammad as "a sort of dictation from beyond without straining, or study, or conscious effort"571 . In another place, too, he exposes this last point by highlighting that "the Qur’an constitutes a massive document of religious meaning whose deepest source lies beyond personal human factors". He clarifies this by stating that this should not be understood that "Muhammad was the recipient of a heavenly dictation which bypassed all his yearnings of heart or process of mind and virtually ignored both the stress of his environment and the travail of his personality".572  In this point, we may say that there is a similarity between Cragg and Watt concerning the issue that the Qur’an was not the product of the conscious thinking of Prophet Muhammad, but came to him from beyond himself, though they produce different explanations for it.

To support the above argument about the origin of the Qur’an, Cragg compares its ‘matchlessness’ with the inimitable magic of Shakespeare. He says, "It may be doubted whether, in the last analysis, prophecy has ever been other than poetic and poetry, at its truest, ever other than prophetic".573  Moreover, he cites William Blake’s definition of his poetry as "dictation from beyond, without straining, or study, or conscious effort" and then gives this experience as an example of the "same inwrought mystery of content and form, of meaning and word" which underlines the Muslim concept of "verbal inspiration". The above arguments lead Cragg to advocate that "the Qur’an is understood to say what it says in a inseparable identity with how it says it".574  Furthermore, he argues that in the course of time, after the hijrah, the poetic character of the Qur’an has changed towards political prophecy. In other words, the poetic prophecy of the Mekkan years is transformed in Madina to an argumentative and political prophecy of a more "prosaic" form. In this connection, he states:

The poetic prophecy passed into phases of argumentative and political ‘prophecy’, where prose was the more accordant form. Deliverances turned into directives, ordinances and documents of law and community. The biography of the prophet continues to comprise them all within one phenomenon of tanzil. Muslim faith sees an undifferentiated status of authority throughout. But the feel and fervour of the Qur’an, by the literary criteria, are evidence enough that there is a transition, a change of key. It is clearly in the poetry, where it lives in its strength, that we must locate the essential meaning of ‘ an Arabic Qur’an’.575 

In the light of the above arguments, we may say that Cragg is trying to prove that the ‘matchlessness’ and the literary excellence of the Qur’an is very much dependent on the power of poetic language and an active human factor, not on its divinity. For, according to him, the Prophet Muhammad expressed the words of the Qur’an in his own mother tongue by using the daily words of the Arabs. Indeed, in chapters "The Landscape of the Hijaz" and " Markets of the City" of his The Event of the Qur’an, he tries to illustrate that the language of the Qur’an is metaphor which reflects the living situation of the Arabs at the time of the Prophet Muhammad. For example, in the chapter, "Markets of the City," this metaphoric language, he argues, was expressed in commercial terms.576 

By citing the metaphorical language and allusive style of the Qur’anic verses, Cragg seems to imply that the Prophet Muhammad picked the words of the Qur’an from Arabic poetry by using his poetic ability. But, as Watt rightly remarks most of the Western scholars, including Cragg, have misunderstood the allusive style of the some Qur’anic expressions by assuming those expressions as words of Muhammad. Concerning this point, Watt maintains that by using this kind of language the Qur’an gave its message to Arabs not only in their language, but also in terms of the ideas familiar to them.577 

Further, in order to support his arguments against the Muslim view of the status of the Qur’an, Cragg argues that the traditional Muslim understanding mostly depends on the dogma of the Prophet’s total illiteracy which is taken from the verse "the Apostle, the unlettered Prophet".578  He proposes, like all other Western scholars, that the term ummi in this verse should be understood as "not yet scriptured" not " unlettered", since it is unfair to ascribe that a prosperous merchant did not read and write anything.579  To justify this reading of the term ummi, Cragg argues that "if this reading is accepted it in no way detracts from the Qur’an’s quality as given, not composed, but it does return us squarely to study Muhammad’s role." 580  It seems that although this sort of understanding of the term ummi challenges the Muslim understanding, it would not contribute to understanding the Qur’anic message, since being illiterate at the time of the Prophet Muhammad was not an obstacle to being a good merchant. Even today, it may not be absolutely necessary to be an educated person in order to be a good trader.581  In his Readings in the Qur’an [1988], Cragg remarks that if the Qur’an is read carefully, one can find in it the ecumene of religions, Islamic spirituality and the image of a strong religious community.582  But, on the other hand, he expresses that the Qur’anic message in four points causes trouble to those who belong to other religions especially in the process of inter-faith dialogue. He argues that these four points are very important in determining the Qur’anic attitude towards those who do not follow its message. The first point is the finality and absoluteness of the Qur’anic revelation. Cragg reveals that Muslims draw this conclusion from the verse, "So set thou thy face steadily and truly to the Faith. God’s handiwork according to the pattern on which he has made mankind."583  He argues that in this verse the word fitra comes from the verb fatara which can be translated into English as both ‘nature’ and ‘religion’. And, according to these two meanings Islam can be defined as "the religion of God in accord with which He made man religious". From this definition, Cragg concludes, "Where revelations diverge from this norm and religions diversify in essential particulars, then they are misled or compromised".584  He points out that contrary to this finality and absoluteness of the Qur’an, some other Qur’anic verses anticipate and celebrate the diversity of races, revelations, and religions.585 

Within these two different contexts, Cragg asks how the finality of the Qur’anic message and Muhammad’s seal of the Prophets are to be understood. He suggests looking at them from the perspective of timing which means the Qur’an postdates the other scriptures and the Prophet Muhammad postdates the other Prophets.586  It seems that Cragg is saying that the Qur’anic verses about the finality of the Qur’anic message and Prophet Muhammad’s seal of the Prophets are metaphorical, since those Qur’anic verses do not express that the Qur’an is the last and final message or that the Prophet Muhammad is the seal of the Prophets.587 

The second point is whether it is enough to educate humanity by word and exhortation or is it necessary to do more than that? Cragg states that the Qur’an, on the one hand, advocates that all mankind is born "naturally Muslim", which means with the inclination of submitting themselves to the hand of God. On the other hand, it mentions human perversity, the incorrigible character of mankind’s capacity for unbelief. Cragg argues that, within these two contradictory positions, the Qur’anic exhortation cannot be enough to liberate humankind from sinfulness, and he employs the Christian understanding of the Cross to explain it.588 

The third point is the meaning of God’s supreme judiciary role. And the last point is the role of the force factor in the life of the Prophet Muhammad and in later periods for the spreading of Islam.589  Cragg argues that Muhammad opted for the path of power in order to spread his message by using force rather than suffering, as Jesus did for the sake of God’s will. Actually, these four points never seem to create any trouble for non-Muslims, if they are taken into consideration within the context of the general teaching of the Qur’an. But, here, Cragg tries to explain them in the light of Christian teaching, such as the meaning of crucifixion of Jesus on the cross and his redemptive role of human sin.

Before finishing our examination of Cragg’s views on the status of the Qur’an, we would like to point out that he tries to justify his interpretation of the nature of the Qur’an by arguing that the orthodox Muslim view of revelation, "the celestial dictation," has led to "a less than lively approach to the sense of the text and to an excessive preoccupation with grammar, parsing, syntax". By doing this, he implies that Muslims have underestimated the actual meaning and the content of the Qur’anic message. We would respond that his view that there is a human element and a positive relation between the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad’s own thinking and feelings, too, does not reduce the value of the Qur’an, but can contribute to its exegesis.590  Finally, Cragg maintains that Christians can acknowledge the status of the Qur’an as "the Word of God," in the sense that it is "the Word from God" not in the New Testament sense that "God was the Word".591 

Evaluation: As has been observed, Cragg’s understanding of the status of the Qur’an is based on the following arguments. Firstly, the primary objective of the Qur’an is to call the Pagan Arabs to transform them from paganism to monotheism. That argument implies that the Qur’anic message has nothing to do with those who already believe in God, namely Christians and Jews. It seems that by arguing thus Cragg underestimates the Qur’anic verses which invite Christians and Jews to re-examine their own original message by leaving aside their extreme views about their own beliefs.592  Secondly, in the transmission of the Qur’an the Prophet Muhammad was not only a mechanical, but also an organic instrument. In other words, there is an inseparable relationship between the Qur’anic revelation and the Prophet Muhammad’s own thinking, feelings and environment. Thirdly, the Prophet Muhammad had a great poetic power through which he combined together those thoughts and inspirations which came to him beyond himself and his own thinking. Lastly, Cragg takes all these points together and concludes that "prophetic inspiration does not differ greatly from literary inspiration, nor the prophet from a genuine poet".593 

While arguing these points, Cragg, as a loyal churchman, tries to develop a sympathetic Christian understanding of the Qur’an. And in so doing, he has found the orthodox Muslim understanding of revelation incomplete. Then he has tried to establish a truer and more complete interpretation of revelation by using Christian terms, categories and connotations. Further, in his evaluation of the value of the Qur’anic teaching, by using "a Christian key" he has maintained that the primary objective of the Qur’anic message was "to retrieve idolaters for a true worship". In this sense, he has claimed its teaching is not enough to liberate human beings from their sinfulness without support by the Christian teaching. In his PhD thesis on Cragg, namely The Call to Retrieval; Kenneth Cragg’s Christian Vocation to Islam [1987], Christopher Lamb regards Cragg as guilty because of using "a Christian key".594  Then Lamb tries to lessen his guilt by comparing him with Basetti-Sani who reads Christian meanings into the Qur’an in his work The Koran in the Light of Christ. 595  In our opinion, Cragg may not be thought of as guilty, but he can be considered by Muslims as a subjective scholar who tries to fit Islam within Judeo-Christian tradition. Or, as Charles Adams and some others have said, he can be accused of Christianising the Qur’an. For example, Charles Adams, in his essay "Islamic Religious Traditions," accuses Cragg of indicating that in understanding the nature of the Qur’an Christians are in a better position than Muslims. According to Adams, Cragg implies that "the Islamic religious traditions means not what Muslims have always thought it to mean, but something else that Christians are in a better position to understand". 596 

Despite the above Muslim and Christian criticism of Cragg’s Christianising approach to the Qur’an, he should be appreciated because of his sincere intention to study the Qur’an to see if it can be acknowledged by Christians in the light of their own faith. Further, his stress on the living environment of the Qur’an in seventh century Arabia in his Event of the Qur’an is worth being taken into account by Muslims for modern Qur’anic hermeneutics. As Farid Esack rightly observes, the accounts of that work demonstrate "the most profound and moving account of the Qur’an’s engagement with a living and dynamic context".597 

Hans Küng, as an ecumenical Catholic theologian, began his scholarly life by dealing with problematic issues within Christianity. But in the course of time he became interested in contemporary common issues not only for Christians, but also for people of other faiths. According to W. G. Jeanrond’s classification of Küng’s theological development, his reflection on theological method and the dialogue between Christianity and world religions began in the early 1980’s in order to promote interreligious dialogue.598  In this context, he published his major work Christianity and World Religions: Paths of Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism [1984]599 . In each part of this book, first of all, he paid attention to scholarly accounts of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and then provided a detailed critical response to each one as a Christian theologian. Apart from this, Küng has also published a number of essays in various places.600  But, here in our examination of his views on the status of the Qur’an we shall focus mainly on his critical response to Josef van Ess’s presentation of Islam601 . For, in all other essays he roughly summarises what he has already said in this critical response.

Küng prepares the background of his understanding of the status of the Qur’an by pointing out new developments in the process of Christian-Muslim dialogue. In all his essays concerning dialogue with Islam, he stresses that after the establishment of Christian-Muslim dialogue, it is no longer possible to return to early Christian polemics about Islam and Muslims. Moreover, it is impossible to ignore the Qur’an, thanks to the increasing number of publications of the Qur’anic translation into Western languages and to the millions of Muslims who live in Western Europe. For those reasons, Küng maintains that in these circumstances study should take the place of ignorance; and inter-religious dialogue should take the place of missionary activities.602 

has provided Islam with its notion of moral obligation, its external dynamic, its religious depth, . . . it has also supplied quite specific, lasting doctrines and moral principles: human responsibility before God, social justice, and Muslim solidarity. Thus the Qur’an is the holy book of Islam, and it is such precisely because Muslims understand it as the word that has been written down, the word not of man but of God.603 

Then he asks "Is this book really God’s word?" as W.C. Smith did in the 1960’s as we observed in section 4.3. In his answer to this question, Küng agrees with Smith by indicating that the conflicting past answers, which have been given by Muslims and Christians as ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, were ultimately based on an unexamined, dogmatic "pre-convictions".604 

To expose this answer, Küng first of all, discusses the possibility of revelation outside the Bible. In doing so, he maintains that "the better Christians and Muslims get to know each other and give up trying simply to ‘convert’ each other the more Christians will come to doubt whether their negative attitude toward the Qur’an was right". Then, he suggests that Christians understand the negative statements of the Bible concerning "the errors, darkness, and guilt of the non-Jewish or non-Christian world" in their own context without generalising them. Also, he urges them to look at the positive statements of the Bible which indicate that God wants to save all humankind and "originally manifest himself to all humanity; Non-Christians can come to know the true God; outside the Church [Christianity] there is grace". After these points, Küng says, "If we [Christians] acknowledge Muhammad as a post-Christian prophet, then to be consistent we shall also have to admit that Muhammad didn’t simply get his message from himself, that his message is not simply Muhammad’s word, but God’s word".605 

is not simply a piece of evidence from seventh century, to be analysed by scholars of religion, but for countless men and women, a twentieth century document; it is no dead letter, but the most vital text, a source both literary and religious—a book not for study and analysis, but for life and action, and that not only in matters of faith, but of law and morals as well.606 

 

Further, Küng expresses the common Muslim understanding on the question of how the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad which is that the prophet received the Qur’an word by word directly from God. In this sense the Qur’an is definitely God’s verbatim speech, and there is no influence on it from Jewish and Christian environments, since Muhammad could not read the Bible, because he was illiterate and also there was no Arabic translation of the Bible at his time. Küng points out that this Muslim argument, whether the Qur’an is the ipsissima verba of God or whether there is any influence on it from Jewish and Christian side, has been studied by Western intellectuals for a long time. But their theories diverge so widely that, it is very difficult to get a conclusion from them.607  For that reason, he argues that instead of discussing the origin of the Qur’an and the Judeo-Christian influences on it, it would be better, in the light of modern exegesis and the challenge of historico-critical method, to examine whether the Prophet Muhammad received the Qur’an word-by-word directly from God or received it as an inspiration and expressed it with his own language.608  For, according to Küng, whatever result one gets from one’s search of the origin of the Qur’an, "the important thing is that nowadays the divine word of the Qur’an must be understood at the same time as the human word of the Prophet".609  Also, he argues that Christians cannot deny that Muhammad had received revelation, nor can Muslims deny the influence of the oral Judeo-Christian tradition on the Qur’an.610 

Hence, he maintains that for this objective and the benefit of Christian-Muslim dialogue, it is necessary for both Christians and Muslims to try to understand the revelation in the light of historico-critical debates about the provenance of the Bible and the Qur’an, since, according to him, it is very difficult to make any progress in the process of dialogue between Christians and Muslims unless they come to terms with "the notion of truth required for the use of historico-critical instruments".611 

After expressing his views on the Qur’an, Küng invites Muslim intellectuals to study the Qur’an by using the historico-critical method through which the Qur’an is seen neither as a "collection of cut and dried formulae", nor as a "flux of constantly varying interpretations", but "as a living message, continually heard anew in liturgical recitation, as the great prophetic testimony to the One and only Mighty and Merciful God, the Creator and Completer of His Judgement and His promises".612  In a similar vein, Hugh Goddard encourages Muslims to study the Qur’an in the light of the historical-critical method to facilitate Christian-Muslim understanding.613  Küng adds that it is a very positive development for Qur’anic studies to see an increasing number of Muslim intellectuals who have started to study the provenance of the Qur’an in the light of modern historico-critical methods, and he points to the distinguished Muslim scholar, Fazlur Rahman, as an example of these intellectuals. And he adds that in our modern world, as so many bright Muslim students all over the world have started to discuss the necessity of a more historical approach to the Qur’an, it will be impossible in the long run for Muslims to avoid discussing certain questions concerning their own beliefs.614  Further, in a response to the Muslim objection615  to the application of historico-critical methods to the Qur’an, Küng argues that "to take a more historical approach to the Qur’an would not damage Muslim faith in the one God and in Muhammad his Prophet, but could strengthen this faith".616

Lastly, as a strong defender of the application of historico-critical method to both Bible and the Qur’an, Küng answers the following question, "To what degree can the Qur’an or the Bible still be revelation and the word of God after a ‘critical reading’? by indicating that, in the case of the Qur’an or the Bible, "God’s word can be heard only in human words; divine revelation is imparted only through human experience and interpretation".617  He further clarifies this point in the Qur’anic case by arguing that the Qur’an was revealed as an ideal to the Prophet’s mind, and the Prophet, too, expressed it with his own language, Arabic, to the Arabs. In other words, the Qur’an is both the word of God and the word of Prophet Muhammad. He says, "It is important that the Koran as the word of God be regarded at the same time as the word of a human prophet".618 

The most interesting point of his views is his comparison of the Qur’an and the Bible, because it is well known that what Muslims attribute to the Qur’an is very similar to what Christians attribute to Jesus Christ and not to the Bible.619  Further, by depending on this comparison, Küng urges both Muslims and Christians to come together to develop a common view of revelation in the light of modern exegesis and scientific methods. This would be very difficult for Muslims who believe that comparison can only be made between the Qur’an and Jesus. As F.P. Ford rightly observes, this common view of revelation which Küng implies "is unmistakably more Christian than Muslim".620  Also, Küng, interestingly, invites Muslims to apply the historico-critical method to the Qur’an as Christians have done for the benefit of their faith. But, while doing this, he forgets that among Western scholars discussions are still going on as to whether this method is really useful for Christian faith, and whether, in the light of its results, Christians can re-interpret their own doctrines. Concerning this point, Muslims can rightly ask that if the historical-critical method is so good, why are Christians so uncertain in accepting its results for their own faith. In this respect S.H. Nasr rightly makes the following remarks:

Non-Islamic Western analysis based on the separation between the Qur’an and its traditional commentaries over the centuries is not going to help dialogue with Muslims, for in the Islamic perspective the growth of all different aspects of the traditions throughout the centuries is based upon the Qur’an.621 

 

Ward is neither an Islamicist, like Watt, Smith and Cragg, nor a pioneer of interreligious dialogue, like Küng. He began his academic life as a dogmatic Christian theologian and became a senior professor in Oxford University. Recently, like some other Christian theologians such as Hick, Knitter and others, he has subscribed to a pluralistic Christian theology of religions. Within this context, he published Religion and Revelation [1994]622  to explain comparatively the meaning of revelation in the major world religions according to modern scientific developments. Ward takes the following principle that "God reveals truth to whomsoever He wills, since there need be no expectation that there will be universal agreement on it"623  as a base for his assessment of different revelations, including the Qur’an. We will consider now what Ward thinks about the status of the Qur’an.

First of all, he points out the crucial theological differences between Islamic and Christian revelation, namely the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, atonement for human sin by the death of Jesus on the cross, and the concept of God as Trinity. Then he argues that if God had really wanted a single revelation, this kind of conflict between different religious traditions would not exist.624  He states that from the advent of Islam up to our modern day both Christian and Muslim scholars were on the side of mutual condemnation instead of tolerance and mutual understanding of each other because of those major theological differences.625  In order to help create an atmosphere of mutual understanding and tolerance, he offers to consider the theological differences between Islamic and Christian revelation as follows. He says that if one thinks these differences

in a common concern to honour God without reserve, to insist on human obedience to moral law, and to assert the possibility of Divine forgiveness for all, then it is plausible to see these two religious traditions as different ways of response to authentic Divine revelation. 626 

witnessing to Divine unity, power, and transcendence; and affirming that these truly are attributes of God which have been communicated through an active influence of God upon a particular human mind, raising it to heights of insight and aesthetic perfection.627

 

In this sense, he stresses that Christians can regard the Qur’an as the word of God, as they regard the Old Testament, by indicating that this should not be taken to mean the Qur’an is totally the word of God which directly came from God without any human contribution, but should be taken to mean that the Qur’an is more than a human construction, since it represents "a profound spiritual response to Divine revelation and a genuine medium of Divine presence and power".628 

In the last stage, Ward urges us as Christians and Muslims, without eliminating our theological differences, to acknowledge Divine revelation "as a Divine luring of the mind," which can lead us to assume that such luring should be universal in order to cover all great religious traditions, since, as he states, there is not any final perfect expression of the Divine revelation. Within this context, he argues that if one adopts this kind of attitude as a basis for oneself, one can look at and assess other religious traditions very positively, and thus can "see each religious tradition, including one’s own, as one among many continually changing, fallible, culturally influenced forms of life".629 

Secondly, all the scholars whose views we have outlined, with the exception of W.C. Smith, argued for the application of modern-scientific methods developed as a result of the new approaches in scholarly research and applied to the sources of the Judeo-Christian tradition. They urge that these methods initiated in European academies in the nineteenth century630  be applied to the Qur’an in order to facilitate Christian-Muslim understanding. Although this can be considered a reasonable demand, it may not facilitate Christian-Muslim understanding. For example, the views of the exponents of the "Literary approach" to the Qur’an definitely do lead not to mutual understanding but to controversy. Contrary to the Muslim understanding, they claim that the Qur’an was not finally fixed until the early ninth century and was produced in an atmosphere of intense Judeo-Christian sectarian debate.631 

It seems that if this and similar views are brought to the dialogue table by Christians, the dialogue process will be affected negatively. As Rahman maintains, they can be defended only to make nonsense of the Qur’an632  not to make a positive contribution to Christian-Muslim understanding. They all mean that from the advent of Islam to our day Muslims do not understand the real status of the Qur’an, and in order to do this they need to apply the methods Christians use to understand their scriptures. As Nasr indicates, these Christian scholars have proceeded to apply their own findings, experiences, and methods to Islam, all defined by a particular cultural context, and to teach Muslims what their own sacred scripture really means and what the status and reality of the Qur’an are.633  It would seem better to leave it to Muslim scholars to apply modern scientific methods to the Qur’an within the context of their tradition, as the Christian scholars applied the modern scientific methods to their own scriptures within the context of their tradition.634  On this issue, John Hick rightly points out:

The official belief-system of each tradition is capable of desirable developments and modifications at many points; but this can only properly be done from within those traditions and by their own thinkers change has come from within a religious tradition.635 

 

Nevertheless, contemporary Muslim scholars are very eager to apply modern scientific methods to the Qur’an. For example, Arkoun is strongly in favour of the philosophical critique of Qur’anic text by saying that the application of this method "would serve to strengthen the scientific foundations of the history mushaf and of the theology of revelation".636 

the Qur’an is the Word of God (Kalam allah). Muhammad, too, was unshakeably convinced that he was recipient of the Message from God, the totally other. This ‘Other’ through some channel ‘dictated’ the Qur’an with an absolute authority. Not only does the word Qur’an, meaning ‘recitation’, clearly indicate this, but the text of the Qur’an itself states in several places that the Qur’an is verbally revealed and not merely in its ‘meaning’ and ideas.637 

 

In the light of these points the following question arises, ‘If the views of the scholars mentioned have failed to do justice to the Qur’an and thus affect Christian-Muslim relations negatively, what sort of approach is necessary to do justice to Islamic scripture and affect these relations positively?’ In our opinion, Bijlefeld answers this questioning in his essay "Islamic Studies Within the Perspective of the History of Religions" as follows: "In my opinion we ought to reject the proposition that we have either to accept the Qur’an ‘as the work of God or as that of man’. There is a third way: to see the Qur’an not just as ‘scripture’ but as Sacred Scripture, as the Scripture of Muslims and the Muslim community". Further, he points out that seeing the Qur’an in this way "is not a ‘compromise’ between accepting the principles of critical historical scholarship and attempting to avoid giving offence to Muslim sensibilities. It means recognising and taking seriously the fact that the Qur’an was not ‘discovered’ by Western scholarship, but that it reached us [Western world] through the Muslim community which did not simply ‘preserve’ it, but for which it remained reality".638 

As can be seen here, Bijlefeld, like Cantwell Smith, tries to understand the nature of the Qur’an, subscribing to the phenomenological approach. In doing so, as Smith maintains, he calls those who want to study the Qur’an to acknowledge it as the Word of God for Muslims. Then he argues that to do justice to the nature of the Qur’an it would be better to avoid using modern scientific methods which have been applied to the Bible. Our research shows us that although all of the above approaches of the Christian thinkers can contribute to the development of Christian-Muslim understanding, the phenomenological approach presented by Smith and Bijlefeld can contribute most. This leads Christians and Muslims into dialogue on facts that can be empirically and critically stated, analysed and reconstructed. To defend the necessity of this approach, leading Muslim scholar, Hasan Askari, stresses that unlike the other approaches "the phenomenological approach starts with the conviction that there are phenomena, strictly religious, which cannot be reduced or turned into merely social, economic and psychological paradigms".639