Christian History Home > 2006 > Christians and Muslims: Divided by History
Christians and Muslims: Divided by History
A timely book traces the story behind today's conflicts
Reviewed by Steven Gertz | posted 8/08/2008 12:33PM
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"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
This sentence from Pope Benedict XVI's speech ignited a firestorm of protest across Muslim lands last September. As the Western press noted, the pope was quoting Manuel II Palaiologos, a fifteenth-century Orthodox Byzantine emperor. Critics deemed the pope's speech insensitive and irresponsible given current tensions, and many denounced the quote itself.
Yet if you consider the situation at the time of Palaiologos, the reason for this emperor's vehement words against Muhammad becomes clear. Palaiologos was ruler of a proud but beleaguered empire facing near extinction at the hands of an army of Muslim Turks. He died in 1425, only 28 years before Constantinople (for centuries a bulwark of Christian power) fell to the Ottoman sultan. Is it any wonder, then, that at that moment in time a Christian would bemoan the militancy of Islam?
Quotes like these—and the damage they do to Christians' relationships with Muslims—make Hugh Goddard's A History of Christian-Muslim Relations timely and essential reading. Western Christians aren't necessarily aware of their predecessors' interactions with Muslims, but the past still powerfully affects many Muslims' perceptions of Christianity. Goddard hopes his survey will "help both Christians and Muslims to understand how the two communities have reached the situation in which they find themselves today."
Goddard, a professor of Christian-Muslim relations at the University of Nottingham, is well qualified to write this book. He writes for fellow scholars and students, but his fluid and accessible style shows he also has the general reader in mind. He avoids academic jargon and follows events chronologically, working his way from Muhammad's earliest encounters with Christians to Muslim-Christian relations today.
Arguably the most important chapter is the second, which examines the Qur'an's portrayal of Christians. While Qur'an 2:62, 3:55, 3:199, 5:66, 28:52–55, and 57:27 all make positive statements about Christians (or "People of the Book"), Qur'an 5:72–73 and chapter 9 place Christians in the same category as kufr, or unbelievers deserving damnation. This ambiguity has enormous implications for the history of Christian-Muslim relations because Muslims' treatment of Christians have depended upon which passages in the Qur'an they have emphasized.
Thus Goddard describes some of the horrors that Muslims have committed against Christians. For instance, in 850 the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil demanded that Christians wear clothing identifying their religion, destroyed newly-built churches, and ordered that wooden devils be nailed to Christians' doors. But then the author tempers this portrayal by noting that Christians hadn't always lived with these restrictions, and that Muslims often treated Christians kindly. He quotes the caliph al-Ma'mun, who protected a Christian debater from his angry Muslim opponent in 829: "This is a court of justice and equity: none shall be wronged therein. So advance your arguments and answer without fear, for there is none here who will not speak well of you … Let everyone speak who has the wisdom to demonstrate the truth of his religion."
This balanced portrayal of Muslim treatment of Christians sets Goddard's work apart from a book like Bat Yeor's The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam. In her book, Yeor meticulously documents Muslim wrongs against Eastern Christians, but critics have argued that she covers only the worst examples without considering more positive encounters.
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