Samir Khalid Samir, S.J. has devoted half a century to Islamic studies, and the English translation of his 2002 interview book on Islam is a welcome reminder that the subject of Islam can elicit more than shrillness. As an introduction to the subject and as an antidote to anodyne apologies, 111 Questions on Islam (Ignatius Press) is strongly recommended. The Italian version appeared in 2002, in the form of answers to queries submitted by journalists Giorgio Paolucci and Camille Eid. It is a model of serious and scholarly response to Islam without apologizing for the author’s Catholic faith. Fr. Samir continues to advise Benedict XVI, and readers will find supportive background for Benedict’s Regensburg comments on Islam.
It is misleading to speak of Islam as one of three Abrahamic religions, Samir observes, because Islam understands Abraham in an entirely different way.
“The notion of the promise or covenant with Abraham, like that of the ‘history of salvation’, which is common to Judaism and Christianity, is practically absent in Islam,” he writes, noting that an early draft of Nostra Aetate stating that Muslims pray to the God of Abraham was qualified to read that Muslims “profess belief” in that God. The Qur’an cannot be compared to the Jewish or Christian Bibles. “For Muslims, the Qur’an can be compared to Christ: Christ is the Word of God made flesh, while the Qur’an—please forgive my play on words—is the word “made paper.” Unlike Biblical revelation, in which the human witness is a participant, the Qu’ran was “sent down” to Mohammed. “If the Qur’an was indeed ‘sent down’ by Allah, there is no possibility of a critical or historical interpretation, not even for those aspects that are evidently related to the customs of a particular historical period and culture. In the history of Islam, at a certain point, it was decided that it was no longer possible to interpret the text. . . . The weight of the tradition and, above all, the fear of questioning the acquired security of the text have created a taboo: the Qur’an cannot be interpreted, nor can it be critically rethought.”
Fr. Samir, along with Fr. Christian Troll S.J., was a participant at Benedict XVI’s Islam seminar at Castelgondolfo. Another participant, the American Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, had remarked to a radio interviewer that Benedict XVI thought that Islam was incapable of reform. This prompted stern denials by Frs. Samir and Troll, as reported at the time in Sandro Magister’s web site. In a 2006 “Spengler” essay, I had contributed to the controversy by quoting Fessio’s remarks. Fr. Fessio later conceded that he had overstated the case, and that Islam was indeed capable of reform. Hair-splitting seems a fair characterization of the issue, however. Fr. Samir doesn’t say that reform is impossible, only that it is a very remote possibility.
Here is what Father Samir has to say:
Many Westerners fear Islam as a “religion of violence”. Muslims often call simultaneously for tolerance and understanding as well as for violence and aggression. In fact, both options are present in the Qur’an and the sunna. These are two legitimate manners—two distinct ways to inter pret, to understand, and to live Islam. It is up to the individual Muslim to decide what he wants Islam to be. . . . (p 18)
. . . Consequently, in the Qur’an there are two different choices, the aggressive and the peaceful, and both of them are acceptable. There is a need for an authority, unanimously acknowledged by Muslims, that could say: From now on, only this verse is valid. But this does not—and probably will never—happen. . . . (p. 71)
. . . If the Qur’an was indeed “sent down” by Allah, there is no possibility of a critical or historical interpretation, not even for those aspects that are evidently related to the customs of a particular historical period and culture. In the history of Islam, at a certain point, it was decided that it was no longer possible to interpret the text. Hence, today, even the mere attempt to understand its meaning and what message it aims to communicate in a certain context is regarded as a desire to challenge it. . . . (p. 42)
. . . In modern times as well, many efforts have been made in this direction but almost always in vain. The weight of the tradition and, above all, the fear of questioning the acquired security of the text have created a taboo: the Qur’an cannot be interpreted, nor can it be critically rethought. . . . (p. 43)
. . . I speak about the violence expressed in the Qur’an and practiced in Muhammad’s life in order to address the idea, widespread in the West, that the violence we see today is a deformation of Islam. We must honestly admit that there are two readings of the Qur’an and the sunna (Islamic traditions connected to Muhammad): one that opts for the verses that encourage tolerance toward other believers, and one that prefers the verses that encourage conflict. Both readings are legitimate. . . . (p. 65)
[Samir quoting the Qu'ran] “If we abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten, we will replace it by a better one or one similar. Did you not know that God has power over all things?”
. . . In the short run, we must admit that the pleas of the reformers have very limited influence over the Muslim mentality or social organization. But over time, their work is extremely precious because it proposes a model of reference for those scholars who seek instruments in order to reconcile Islam with the tensions and questions that characterize the social and cultural evolution of Islamic societies. . . . (p. 99)
Christianity and Islam view Abraham from two very different perspectives. In Islam, Abraham is the witness of the most radical monotheism, and like the other biblical figures, he is the model of perfect submission to God. The notion of the promise or covenant with Abraham, like that of the “history of salvation”, which is common to Judaism and Christianity, is practically absent in Islam. . . . (p. 206)
April 30th, 2009 |
Fr. Samir confirmsSamuel Huntington’s view in The Clash of Civilizations that Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. (I998 text}
Huntinton, also, wrote: In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations, from the bulge of Africa to central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders</I. (original 1993 “Foreign Affairs” article.)
While the moderate Muslims reformers who adhere to the more irenic passages of the Koran occasionally speak out, it’s unlikely that they in toto have sufficient will and strength to overcome the radicals. For sure we and the Israelis shall have to fight the Jihadis including those in Iran and Pakistan seeking access to nuclear weapons. Bernard Lewis is eloquent on the point that radical Muslims need to be dealt with through unrelenting force.
April 30th, 2009 |
Pardon, the last paragraph above ought not to have been in quotes.
April 30th, 2009 |
Spengler/David wrote above: “Unlike Biblical revelation, in which the human witness is a participant”
You have raised this point before in your columns and it has always struck me as not caputuring the normative Jewish view.
Judaisim might not have dogma but I would say that Rambam (Maimonides) is fairly close to an accepted “dogma”. Rambam described Moses as “like a scribe” in writing down the Torah from God.
Here is some commentary from a mainstream Modern Orthodox Yeshiva in Israel:
“Why is this point important to the Ramban? The Ramban views Torah not as a Divine-authored book of wisdom and instruction, but as an emanation of God Himself, containing all possible knowledge. The Torah was written originally as “black fire on white fire;” i.e., it is inherently immaterial and precedes creation. The Ramban views prophecy as the highest human achievement, as we shall see, but Torah is on a fundamentally different level.
The Ramban emphasizes that Torah precedes creation. He explicitly states that this is the reason that Moshe does not write about himself as the author of the Torah. The Torah is not the wisdom of Moshe, not even the divinely inspired wisdom of Moshe, but the word of God”. –
http://vbm-torah.org/archive/ramban/02ramban.htm
Spengler/David – I look forward to any response you may make. I am on my second tour with the U.S. Army (1st Cavalry Division) in Iraq and your columns have been an education for me. Thank you and yasher koach.
April 30th, 2009 |
MarcH,
Stay safe in Iraq, and please accept my thanks for your service.
Maimonides, it’s true, tends to view God as absolutely transcendent and remote. But I do not think his view should be understood as dogma. There is a very strong tradition in rabbinic as well as mystical thought of human-divine interdependency. I’m just editing a piece on Heschel’s theology for a forthcoming issue of First Things documenting exactly this point. Here’s an excerpt from Heschel:
In the phrase “we need each other” is embedded the concept of Israel’s power to diminish or enhance God’s might. This opinion, which served as a cornerstone of kabbalistic teaching, is already alluded to in a homily in Sifre (319): “You neglected the Rock that begot you” (Deut. 32:18). The word teshi (“neglected”) can be understood in relation to the word teshishut (“feebleness”), whence the interpretation “You weaken the power of the One above … This approach achieved its classic formulation in the mouth of R. Judah b. Simon, an amora of the third to fourth generation of Eretz Israel: “As long as the righteous comply with the Divine will they augment the Power above, as it says ‘And now, I pray Thee, let the strength of the Lord be enhanced’ (Num. 14:17). But if not, then, as it were,‘You enfeebled the Rock that begot you’ (Deut. 32:18).” Similarly: “As long as Israel complies with the Divine will they augment the Power above , as it says: ‘In God we shall make [=create] power’ (Ps. 60:14); and if not, as it were, say, “and they [i.e., Israel] are gone without strength before the pursuer” (Lam. 1:6). According to the Zohar (2:33a), this idea is intimated in the verse “Give power to God” (Ps. 68:35).
April 30th, 2009 |
“Unlike Biblical revelation, in which the human witness is a participant, the Qu’ran was “sent down” to Mohammed. If the Qur’an was indeed ‘sent down’ by Allah, there is no possibility of a critical or historical interpretation, not even for those aspects that are evidently related to the customs of a particular historical period and culture.”
I think that you are making an overly strong dichotomy here. I concur with MarcH above that seeing the Pentateuch as a purely divine text with Moses merely acting as God’s scribe is the normative traditional Jewish view (there are some traditional exegetes who -very slightly- qualify this idea, but it’s much too nitpicky to be relevant here). Your description of Biblical revelation more closely resembles the later prophetic writings, such as Jeremiah and Isaiah, where God communicate through images and not-immediately-clear ideas that needed the participant (i.e., the prophet) to “participate” in preparing the text that finally got written down. However, this human participation is precisely why the later prophetic writings do not have the same Halachic-legislative authority that the Pentateuch has.
“There is a very strong tradition in rabbinic as well as mystical thought of human-divine interdependency.”
This may be the case. However, there aren’t any Rabbinic authorities (at least traditional ones, anyways) that extend this idea to water down the divinity of the Pentateuch. The famous (and over-used) Talmudic phrase of “Lo bashamayim hi” (“It (the Torah) is not in Heaven”) isn’t understood to mean that Rabbis have complete freedom to interpret the Torah as they see fit, or to deny, through critical re-interpretation, that the Torah isn’t what the Torah says it is (i.e., divine communication written down by Moses).
As a sidenote – as brilliant as Heschel was, it would be a mistake to rely on him too much as a basis of getting a broad understanding of traditional Jewish thought. At the end of the day, he is just too idiosyncratic.
April 30th, 2009 |
Heschel admittedly is idiosyncratic on some points, but in this case he is quoting rabbinic sources in context. The great difference is not that the Pentateuch lacks divine authority, but that the Pentateuch is read through the Oral Torah. Perhaps the Karaites would be a close Jewish equivalent to Muslims.
May 1st, 2009 |
There is a joke told by Orthodox Jews:
God: Moses, listen carefully. Do not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.
Moses: God, what are you telling me? I can’t eat a cheeseburger?
God: Moses, you’re not listening. I said, “Do not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.”
Moses: God, I’m not trying to be obtuse, really — but does this mean I need two sets of dishes?
God: Moses, what part of “Do not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk” don’t you understand?
Moses: I think I understand, I just want to clear up whether I have to wait six hours after eating meat to eat dairy.
God: Moses, are you even listening? “Do not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.” Do you hear me?
Moses: I hear you, I hear you, who wouldn’t? Just tell me how long I have to wait to eat meat after I eat dairy.
God: Look, Moses, we’ve just got to move on. We’ve only got forty days, and we have to cover another 612 Mitzvot.
The Pentateuch is regarded as coming directly from Heaven with Moses as a scribe, but the Oral Torah involves human participation in revelation — and the Pentateuchal mitzvot cannot be understood except through the Oral Torah.
May 3rd, 2009 |
MarcH: I too wish you a safe tour of duty in which you accomplish your goals.
MarcH and Tzurah may have made serious errors in their description of the giving of the Torah.
In his introduction to the Commentary on the Mishnah, Maimonides states that the Torah of Moses has a special and unchanging status because Moses saw and heard with perfect clarity, unlike other prophets. This is repeated in the first book of his legal code, the Mishneh Torah.
Maimonides is not making this up or stating an individual judgment. The Torah itself quotes G-d as saying that Moses is not like other prophets, in this context his brother Aaron and his sister Miriam, in that G-d speaks to Moses “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend”.
The description of Moses as purely a scribe serves to emphasize the integrity and accuracy of transmission of the written text, not a robotic role in terms of proscribing human initiative and/or interpretation.
With regard to the written text itself, Deuteronomy is almost entirely composed of Moses’ final speeches to the Jewish people. There is no greater example of human initiative being included in the written text than this. (Note that Deuteronomy is written primarily in the first person, whereas the rest of the Written Torah is written primarily in the third person.)
Then there is the Oral Torah (most authoritatively compiled in the Talmud, whose name means the “Study”), given concomitantly with the Written Torah, and the only lens through which it can be understood and applied. The Oral Torah consists of both content and methodology for applying the imperatives and perspectives of the Written Torah. That methodology in turn is given to the Sages of each generation to apply to their circumstances, within the framework of understood and accepted content and perspectives.
“Lo b’shammayim hi” (“it is not in Heaven) was never intended to dilute the Divine origin and accurate transmission of the Written Torah, but to establish that once the Written Torah and the Oral Torah were given, sole authority to apply them was given to the Jewish Sages using the traditional methods of the Oral Torah. In fact, the follow up to that incident, in which the Jewish Sages reject G-d’s Divine Voice as irrelevant to the ongoing debate, is that G-d is reported later to have laughed and said “My children have defeated me, my children have defeated me”.
In turn, that means that the Jewish Sages have enormous, but not unlimited, flexibility in making their legal rulings. Historically, they have exercised this authority in terms of regulating conduct, and avoided doing so in terms of “doctrine” or “dogma”. (2 books for the general public that describe this in clear detail are “A Loving Covenant” by Rabbi David Hartman, and “One People?” by Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks.)
To sum up to this point, the giving of the Torah (Written and Oral) was the initial step in forming a bilateral Covenant (or partnership) between G-d and the people of Israel as a whole, with Moses first serving as a accurate recorder and transmitter of the Written Document (the Pentateuch) and then the Oral Law’s teacher par excellence to the “Elders” and through them to the people as a whole during their years in the desert.
In post-Mosaic times, the “Elders” were succeeded by the Sages. (The first set of Sages were also prophets, but Jewish law totally prohibits a prophet from making any legal decision on the basis of his or her prophecy because: 1) “it is not in Heaven”, so Divine-human communications are irrelevant, and 2) his or her prophecy is always inferior to Moses’.)
With regard to Maimonides’ concept that G-d is wholly transcendent, even if accurate, this does not preclude a relationship with G-d. See the last 2 chapters of his Laws of Repentance (Hilkhot Teshuvah) in which he describes ascending to first the Reverence of G-d and then to the Love of G-d. From those heights, our everyday concerns look insignificant, but they constitute the fulfillment, and not the negation, of the Divine-human partnership.
Concerning the article cited by Tzurah, I am at a bit of a loss as to how to understand why it was cited. The author is speaking about Nachmanides (Ramban with a final “n”) and not Maimonides (Rambam with a final “m”.)
Even so, I read the entire piece, and found it portrays Nachmanides as speaking about the unlimited scope and eternity of the Torah, and struggling with different approaches that we have to trying to comprehend its manifold dimensions and layers of meaning. Nothing, however, that I found in it even hints at contradicting the Covenant relationship and the sole responsibility of the Sages to implement the Torah’s imperatives within the broad scope of its perspectives.
In short, on Judaism Spengler is dead-on right. There is a Divine-human partnership (sought initially with Adam and Eve, retried with Noah, first successful with Abraham, and brought to culmination with the people of Israel at Sinai), one which not only includes, but demands, human initiative and deliberation as part and parcel of its essence.
As to Islam, I plead ignorance, but Father Samir’s book sounds interesting.
May 3rd, 2009 |
Correction: the article from the Yeshivat Har Etzion Virtual Beit Midrash (http://vbm-torah.org/archive/ramban/02ramban.htm) was cited by MarcH, not Tzurah.
Also the source for G-d describing the uniqueness of Moses’ prophecy is Numbers 12:1-8
Rabbi Chaim Frazer
May 4th, 2009 |
On the subject that Rabbi Frazer brings up, I strongly recommend Rav Joseph Soloveitchik’s little book “The Lonely Man of Faith.” No modern Jewish writer was closer in spirit to Maimonides, but the Rav has a marvelous exegesis of the divine-human partnership from Genesis. It is as clear an introduction to the subject as anyone could ask, and from the simplest premise, namely the creation of the first human being.
May 5th, 2009 |
Rabbi Frazer,
Far be it for me to deny a human-divine partnership in Jewish theology! Also, of course human actions and words are in the Pentateuch. Many characters – the patriarchs, matriarchs, and any number of more minor characters, say many things. Also, an interesting example of a human role in shaping the Written Torah is the role Jethro had in setting up the system of courts (Exodus 18).
The idea of the human-divine partnership, however, is often misused in justifying radically non-traditional readings of the Torah, and I wanted to call attention to that fact. From reading your comment, there’s very little that I disagree with (aside from part where you say that I may have made “serious errors”). I also totally agree with David Goldman’s comment re: the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah is, indeed, an important aspect of said partnership.
The description of Moses as a scribe is understood, not just to emphasize the fealty of the Pentateuchal text, but also to point to the singular clarity, as you said, of Moses’ prophecy, since only a prophet with unmatched clarity of vision could perceive exactly what God wanted to be put down “on paper”. The two descriptions of Moses are not a contradiction.
The status of Deuteronomy, and the nature of Moses’ prophecy in that book, is a much-discussed topic. However, the level of human input, *specifically* with regard to the writing down of the Chumash (the Pentateuch) is understood to be minimal, even by the Rambam.
For Example, the same Mishah Torah (in Hilchos Teshuva 3:8) states:
האומר שאין התורה מעם ה’…אם אמר משה אמרו מפי עצמו, הרי זה כופר בתורה
“A person who says that the Torah is not from God …if he says ‘Moshe spoke from his own mouth (i.e. Moshe inserted his own words or ideas into the Pentateuch), such a person is a heretic”
Now, the Rambam certainly knew about Deuteronomy! As I said, the prophetic nature of Deuteronomy is a much-discussed topic, and there are a number of approaches, the most simple one being that the decision to actually include Moses’ speech into the Chumash (and how much of it to include) was totally God’s decision, and not up to Moses.
May 6th, 2009 |
Dear Tzurah,
You and I are really in total agreement, as far as I can see. The point about Deuteronomy that I thought I made was that Moses, in addition to having total clarity as to what should be put down on paper in the first 4 volumes of the Pentateuch, also had so transformed his personality to intuit what G-d wanted said near the time for the People to enter the Land that G-d confirmed that Moses’ own words to the place of what otherwise would have been the fifth volume.
To the best of my knowledge, that type of personal development on the part of a human is not paralleled in either Christianity or Islam, and exemplifies the ultimate in Divine-human partnership.
Let me repeat in case others (not you) should misunderstand. Moses’ speeches, though uttered by him, were not entered into the Pentateuch on the basis of Moses’ own thought, or any other human’s thought. They were so entered because G-d examined them and confirmed them for entry-perhaps even to Moses’ great surprise-on the basis of Divine, not human, authority.
I have no doubt that Maimonides, in your quote, would agree with this, and trust that you do as well.
Thank you for your note.
Rabbi Chaim Frazer
May 7th, 2009 |
Rabbi Frazer,
In total agreement.
Kol hakavod.
August 11th, 2009 |
You mention that the Arabs of the former british mandate Of Palestine didn’t have blood on their hands from what happened to the european jews. Well think again! Haj Amin-Al-Husseyni the Grand mufti of jerusalem appointed to that position by Lord Samuels ie. the British high Commissioner of palestine, was in fact a nazi sympathiser who after fleeing from the british in 1937 to lebanon, then again fleeing to Baghdad in 1941 where he caused an unsuccessful pro-nazi coup. Fleeing the british once again, however this time to Berlin in nazi germany as personal Guest of Adolf Hitler. He eformed some bosnian Muslim battalions loyal to Hitler, where these barbarians hunted down to death thousands of Jews aswell as Serbs. He even visited the notorious death camps where the nazis were slaughtering thousands upon thousands of Jews and others on a daily industrialiazed scale. he was reponsible for nagating jewish transports of jewish children to freedom in palestine. He wanted to set up the same death camps in palestine and throught the arab world for the sole purpose of murdering Jews.
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