Reviews
Envisioning Islam: Syriac Christians and the early Muslim world
Anthony McRoy
Michael Philip
Penn University of Pennsylvania Press, 294pp
Last month, we reviewed Penn's compendium of the earliest Syriac
Christian sources on Islam, When Christians First Met Muslims. This
second book is an analysis of those sources. It is well-written,
such that a non-specialist could follow it, and very engaging. It
is also very pertinent, as Europe grapples with the challenge of
Muslim refugees arriving en masse, and, obviously, as the West,
Syria, as well as Iraq confront the Islamic State (IS). In his
conclusion, Penn notes that Huntingdon's 1993 work The Clash of
Civilizations enjoyed only 625 citations up to 2000, but after 9/11
boasted over 5,000. The incompatibility of Islam with Western
Civilisation is now a staple assertion not only of the Right, but
even others; after the mass sexual molestation of women by Muslim
men in Cologne earlier this year there were references to
'Leftageddon' by disillusioned Guardianistas. Was it always so?
Penn attempts to show that the divide was not always so clear,
that there was substantial 'blurriness' in the relationship of
Conquerors and Conquered - at least up to the rule of 'Abd al-Malik
(684-705), and, to some extent, until the ninth century. For
example, the eighth century Caliph Hisham built a mosque in the
Syrian city of Rusafa immediately north of its Basilica, a
pilgrimage site for the relics of saint Sergius, such that the
qibla wall had a door opening out to the church courtyard. It gave
'Muslim worshippers quicker access to Sergius's shrine.' Was this
an example of how contemporary lines between Syriac and Arab
communities - even in worship - were not characterised by such
barriers (material and conceptual) being erected across Europe to
deny access to Muslim migrants? This may be indicated by the
writing of Jacob of Edessa (d. 708) referring to a Christian who
had become a 'Hagarene' (i.e. Muslim) but now wanted to re-convert.
Nowadays, anyone attempting such in IS or Saudi Arabia would be
executed, but Jacob's reaction suggests that in his time, apostasy
was not seen as a capital offence.
Was it a case of doctrinal development? The kind of punitive
discrimination now associated with Shari'ah in IS or Saudi Arabia
seems to have been established largely in the Abbasid era. That is,
the original Arab conquerors possibly thought of themselves as
somehow not that distinct from Christians in theological terms, and
only later constructed the religious edifice of Islamic
law/theology. Certainly, the Conquerors were first distinguished by
ethnic, not religious categories, demonstrated by terms such as
tayyaye, 'Ishmaelites', 'Sons of Hagar', etc. The essential
identification of their religion as a distinct entity - Islam -
began under 'Abd al-Malik, consolidating under the Abbasids. Works
such as John and the Emir (early eighth century) show that the
early Muslims seemed to accept the Torah, whilst rejecting the rest
of the Old Testament - a canonical position also held by the
Samaritans, (which was referenced by Patricia Crone and Michael
Cook in their 1977 controversial revisionist history of Islam
called Hagarism). Similarly, the Bet Hale Disputation (c. 720s)
indicates that 'Hagarenes' accepted the Torah and the Gospels,
whereas today Muslims denounce the entire Bible as corrupt.
This 'evolution' of law/doctrine is problematic for Muslims.
They base their understanding of Islamic Origins on the Hadith or
Sirah, but these were largely compiled two centuries after
Muhammad. Penn notes that there are 'almost no surviving Islamic
references to the conquests that can be securely dated to before
750'. In a reversal of the dictum that 'History is written by the
victors', the 'earliest and most extensive descriptions of the
Islamic conquests were composed not by the victorious Muslims but
by defeated Christians'. This is what makes these Syriac documents
so historically valuable - their early dates. By studying them, we
can see that the premise that 'Muslim'-Christian interaction was
always hostile needs to be qualified; there was, at different times
and places, considerable blurriness, a rebuke to right-wing
commentators to whom Penn refers in his conclusion.
However, after the ninth century the lines became more
demarcated, with consequent disadvantage to the Christians -
something the liberal-left must recognise. Penn demolishes that
oft-repeated claim that Syriac Christians welcomed the Arab
conquests, because of their persecution by the Byzantines, as this
depends on a single ninth century comment. The early Syriac
documents shows that this is unfounded - rather, as with the
Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, they saw the conquests as 'bad
news'. They tried to make theological sense of the Christian defeat
- usually seeing the conquests as a passing phase, and/or
punishment for sin.
The different Christian sects vied to impress Muslim rulers. The
Life of Rabban Hormizd is a Nestorian attack on the Jacobites,
where the latter try to frame a renowned Nestorian monk by taking a
prostitute and her son to his cave entrance, kill her and inform
the Muslim governor that Rabban did it. He resurrects the woman,
who explains the truth, and her baby speaks, informing the governor
that he was the product of two of the monks who impregnated her,
whilst the other three were impotent, causing the governor to beat
the Jacobite monks!
Unfortunately, today, Westerners often associate Islam with
terrorism and sex attacks in Paris, Cologne, Sweden and Rotherham.
Muslims may protest that this is stereotypical and unfair, but the
fact remains that when Westerners see people they have been told
were 'good, ordinary folk' joining IS as Jihadis or Jihadi brides,
it is unlikely that Mosque Open Days will shift their perception.
Perhaps the better response is what Penn suggests in this book -
that it was not always so.