Verses 19:17-35:

And once remote from them, she hid behind a screen. Then we sent to her our spirit, who took the shape of a well-formed man.
She said, “I take refuge in the All-Merciful from you, if you are pious.”
He said, “I am but an angel of your lord, come to bestow on you a son without blemish.”
She said, “Will I have a son, when no mortal has touched me, and I was not rebellious?”
He said, “So it is.” He said, “Your Lord says, it is easy for me. We will make him a sign for the people and a mercy from us. The matter has already been decreed.”
So she bore him, and withdrew with him to a remote place.
And the pangs of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, “I wish I had died before now, and had been forgotten in oblivion.”
But he called to her from beneath her, saying, “Do not be sad. For your Lord has made a stream run beneath you.”
So shake the trunk of the palm tree toward you, and ripe, fresh dates will fall to you. So eat and drink and be comforted. If you see any human being, say, “I have taken a vow to the All-Merciful to fast, and will speak to no one today.”

Many of these details are from material circulating in the late antique Christian community that also reached the Prophet Muhammad. In the Qur’an Jesus is depicted as in a line of God’s prophets, including Moses, Solomon, David, and others, a line that went on to include the Prophet Muhammad as of the early 600s CE.

The tradition of Persian and Mughal miniature painting — of painting leaves intended to go into manuscript books for the libraries of kings or very wealthy notables — flowered in the 1200s and after, in Iran, Central Asia, India and what is now Turkey. It was influenced by Chinese techniques that came in through the Mongol conquests and the Silk Road and sometimes the people depicted look a little Chinese.

In 1519-1687, the Qutb-Shahi dynasty ruled the Kingdom of Golconda, named after their initial capital, a city near Hyderabad in South India. From 1591 Hyderabad itself became the capital. That city today is the capital of Telengana State and is the fourth-most-populous city in the Indian Republic. The dynasty was founded by an adventurer from Hamadan in Iran, who was a Shiite, and so the kingdom had Shiism for its state religion, even though most of its subjects were Hindus and most of its Muslim subjects were Sunnis. In its later decades it became a vassal of the Mughals based up north, and ultimately was absorbed into the Mughal Empire.

During the 1600s in particular there was a lot of contact with European maritime empires and merchants, who brought books and paintings from Europe, and so the Renaissance tradition of depicting the Nativity had an impact on court artists. But these paintings were commissioned by Muslim rulers for Muslim court purposes, as their own celebration of Jesus, whom they considered, as did all Muslims, one of their prophets.

The National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian has a spectacular miniature painting from Golconda, dated to about 1630, of the adoration of the baby Jesus.



Jesus and Mary are both shown with golden halos. Joseph is also there but without a halo.

One of the adorers is, (extremely) anachronistically, a 17th-century European merchant in boots, almost certainly Dutch. He also seems to have brought gold vessels, and he has in his hand what looks to me like fine cloth, dyed purple. Indigo dye was one of India’s trading major commodities. More on all that later.

There are three winged angels, two hovering above and one on the ground in front of the manger. One of the angels above is holding what looks to me like a crown. Since the Muslim tradition doesn’t know about the Gospel language regarding the messiah being the king of the Jews, my guess is that this motif was borrowed from a European artist. Also, gold was one of the gifts traditionally thought by Christians to be brought to the Christ child by one of the 3 magi.

The other angel has a bow. In South India, the crown and the bow were royal symbols. So I think the angels are depicted as exalting Jesus in the way royalty was exalted. These symbols raise the possibility that the royal treatment given here to baby Jesus is not Christian in origin but Hindu Indian. After all, the beloved god Ram was a king. For these Indian artists, who did not know the Bible, the symbols may not be an assertion that he was royalty, only that he deserved the sort of glorification that kings received.

Although in the West of the Muslim world Arab artists were reluctant to depict holy figures, this Indian artist has no problem with it. Most did not, and they painted Muhammad, as well. Mary is shown wearing hijab but with her face visible, and Joseph and Jesus also have their faces depicted.

Shiite Islam puts special emphasis on piety centering on the family of the Prophet, including Muhammad’s son-in-law and first cousin, Ali, Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah, and the two sons of Ali and Fatimah, Hasan and Husayn. Although Sunni courts also produced nativity paintings, it could be that this form of Christian piety especially appealed to the Shiite rulers of Golconda.



As for the Dutch merchant or factor, Sanu Kainikara explains,

“In 1627, the Dutch had a disagreement with the Governor of Golconda, under whose jurisdiction the region fell, regarding the grant of a ‘farming’ permit for Masulipatam (Macchilipatanam). They withdrew to Pulicat and blockaded Masulipatam from the sea. The Qutb Shah dismissed his governor and invited the Dutch to return to Masulipatam. The reason for the Qutb Shahi sultan’s action was that the Dutch possessed a preponderance of naval strength that was able to threaten an adversary from the sea without exposing themselves to any significant danger—a capability that no other European power in India could lay claim to at that time.”

“The Dutch trade from Masulipatam amounted to Rupees 600,000 per year throughout most of the 17th century. In 1660, the Dutch opened a factory in Golconda, whose chief merchant also doubled as the ambassador to the Qutb Shahi king.”

One of the key commodities traded from Golconda to the Netherlands and later to Britain was diamonds.


Map of Hyderabad state, c. 1730, H/t Wikipedia, UM Clement Library .

So that Dutch merchant was almost certainly in Hyderabad seeking diamonds. But maybe also indigo dye and textiles, which he is shown in turn offering to baby Jesus.

And the court painter, having been commissioned by the king to do a nativity scene, obligingly incorporated the trader into the painting, a common practice. It is unlikely that the painting was commissioned by the foreigner– it stayed in India until a British officer purchased it. It just shows that the Prophet Jesus (`Isa in Arabic) had acquired another connotation in the Renaissance period, being associated with the expanding maritime trade empires of the Christian Europeans. The Dutch had just displaced the Portuguese, who can be seen in earlier miniatures.

The painting is a reminder that Christmas is not parochial — not northern European, as it is often conceived in the US, but a global commemoration of a global event. Not only do Muslims celebrate Jesus as a holy figure, but many Hindus also respect him (and more used to before the rise of Hindutva, Hindu nationalism). And Jews who live alongside Christians often have Christmas trees, even if they can’t go along with Christian beliefs about Jesus, who after all was born and bred a Jew. Christmas should be for celebrating rebirth and renewal and hope, in a world that desperately needs all three, for Christians and for everyone.

Exploring the Qur’an and the Bible with Gabriel Said Reynolds: “Juan Cole: Infidel or Pagan? Understanding Kufr (كفر) in the Qur’an | Muhammad the Prophet of Peace ”

Juan Cole, here. This is what I wrote on the subject at IC when my article first appeared:

My new article is out in The Journal of the American Oriental Society about the meaning of the root k-f-r in the Qur’an, the Muslim scripture. We’ve all grown up hearing about the Qur’an’s condemnation of “infidels” or “unbelievers,” but I think that this is for the most part a mistranslation. I argue that the root does not mean “infidel” but “pagan” or “polytheist” (and I think with the connotation of hostile, impious and morally corrupt pagan). In fact, I think the Arabic may be a translation of the Latin paganus. The latter had connotations of “hick” or “rustic” but also of “polytheist” and the same is true in Qur’anic Arabic.

Juan Cole, “Infidel or Paganus? The Polysemy of kafara in the Quran,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 140, 3:(2020): 615-635:

I also find that the noun kāfir is never applied in the Qur’an to Jews and Christians in an unmodified way. The noun implies “pagan” or “scoundrel” or “ingrate.”

The Qur’an considers Jews and Christians to be monotheists or submitters to the one God (muslimun). This is the antonym of “pagan.” In The Cow 2:62, the Qur’an promises paradise to righteous Jews, Christians and other monotheists alongside the followers of Muhammad.

I write in the article, “A key attribute of the [pagan] kāfir, as we have seen, is that such a person is damned to hell. Dominion 67:6 reads: “And for those who denied (kafarū bi-) their Lord, there awaits the torment of hell, and a wretched destination!” In contrast, in speaking of Jews and Christians we find in The Spider 29: “Debate the scriptural communities only in the best of ways, except for those who do wrong. Say ‘We believe in the revelation sent down to us, and the revelation sent down to you; our God and your God is one, and to him we have submitted’.””

It is common in the contemporary Muslim world to refer to all non-Muslims as kuffār or unbelievers, but I believe this is contrary to the usage of the Qur’an itself.

I think virtually all Qur’an translations err in consistently translating kafir as “infidel” or “unbeliever” or “disbeliever,” since this rendering implies a larger group than just pagans.

I made some of these arguments very briefly in my book on the Prophet Muhammad, but since it is a rip-roaring historical narrative I could not stop and do word philosophy at length:

In the article, I also explore how the verb kafara can be used of anybody. It means to commit impiety, blasphemy, immorality, etc. It is like the verb “to sin.” Monotheists can commit impiety as a one-off or occasional act, but that does not cause them to be characterized as among the group of pagans or kafirun. Even Muhammad’s own followers can commit this sin, as I explain:

“The verb kafara, however, is more fluid and is sometime applied to monotheists. The Family of Imran 3:167 complains about those of Muḥammad’s believers who declined to go out to defend the city (later commentators say the verse concerned the battle of Uḥud in 625): “They were told, ‘Come, fight in the path of God, or at least take a defensive position’. They replied, ‘If we knew how to fight, we would have followed you’. That day, they were closer to kufr than to faith, inasmuch as they said with their lips what was not in their hearts. God knows best what they are concealing.” The deverbal noun kufr here clearly means hypocrisy or dishonesty rather than disbelief.

Here are a few excerpts from the article, which I have modified slightly in an attempt to make them a bit more readable. The original is technical and written for specialists, but I think the findings are accessible and very important. Obviously, scholars should consult the full text for footnotes and for the larger argument about how the noun and verb could diverge from one another (and there really are two distinct verbs, only one of which means “to disbelieve” in a straightforward and consistent way).

—–
From Juan Cole, “Infidel or Paganus? The Polysemy of kafara in the Quran,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 140, 3:(2020): 615-635:

The active participle kāfir . . . cannot be assumed necessarily to mean “rejecter of something” or “infidel.” Rather, it has a wide range of meanings that can be discerned contextually. In Iron 57:20 the broken plural refers to rustic farmers: “Know that the life of this nether world is a game, a sport, a trinket, a mutual boast among yourselves and a multiplication of your wealth and children. It resembles rain whose resultant vegetation pleases the peasants (kuffār), but then it withers and you see it yellowing into chaff.” As al-Khalīl mentioned [in his early dictionary], kafr means village, reinforcing the rural connotation of the root. It may be that a secondary meaning of polytheist or adherent of traditional religion emerged because the population in the countryside was more likely than its urban counterpart to have clung to the old gods and resisted accepting monotheism.

The root is also clearly associated in the Quran with polytheism. Al-Kāfirūn 109:1–6 opens with: “Say: kāfirūna! I do not worship what you worship. Nor are you worshipping what I worship. Nor am I worshipping what you have worshipped. Nor are you worshipping what I worship. To you your religion and to me my religion.” There is an admission that the pagans have a religion, but it is simply castigated as a false one, which makes translating kāfir as “infidel” seem odd. That the dispute was over Muḥammad’s monotheism versus Arabian polytheism is demonstrated by Ṣād 38:4–5, which says . . . “They marvel that a warner came to them from among them, and the [pagans] kāfirūna said, ‘This is a lying sorcerer. Has he made the gods into only one God? That is an astonishing thing’.” This and many other verses demonstrate that the Quran came out at least in part of a milieu where there were adherents of traditional religion . . .

The sense of “to worship the gods” for k-f-r is underlined in The Cow 2:257: “God is the patron of those who believe, bringing them out of darkness into the light. And those who kafarū, their patrons are Ṭāghūt, who bring them out of the light into darkness.” Ṭāghūt is a loan from [Ethiopian] Geʿez that means “new or alien god” or “idol,” and, interestingly, is treated as a plural in this quranic verse, corresponding to numerous patrons. Belief in polytheistic religion is not, properly speaking, disbelief but the wrong sort of belief, from the point of view of the Quran. It is not a charge of atheism. Not only are such believers committed polytheists but they are also militant: “Those who believed fight in the path of God, and the pagans (al-ladhīna kafarū) fight in the path of Ṭāghūt, so fight the associates of Satan, for the guile of Satan is feeble” (al-Nisāʾ 4:76) . . .

Elsewhere, it is admitted that they [the pagans] are believers in their own tradition; when they question the eschatological opening or grand success, the verse reads: “Say: On the Day of the Opening, the faith (īmānuhum) of those who kafarū will not benefit them, nor will they be granted a respite” (al-Sajda 32:29). Since it is allowed that they have faith, they are not unbelievers strictly speaking and translating this phrase as “the faith of the infidels will not benefit them” would be self-contradictory. While they are not accused of disbelieving, they are, however, liars and wrongdoers, dishonest and workers of evil (cf. The Women 4:167–68). As well as labeling them “wrongdoers” (sing. ẓālim), they are “morally dissolute” (fāsiqūna) for responding incorrectly to God’s proverbs (The Cow 2:26). Along the same lines, it is said of Muḥammad’s monotheistic followers: “God has caused you to love faith, rendering it beautiful in your hearts, and he has caused you to abhor impiety (kufr) and ungodly behavior (fusūq) and rebellion” (al-Ḥujurāt 49:7).

“Rebel” is one meaning of the root k-f-r. In the story of how Lucifer fell (The Cow 2:34) it is reported: “And when we said to the angels, ‘Bow down to Adam’, they prostrated them- selves, save the Devil; he refused, and grew haughty, and so he became one of the rebellious (kāfirīna).” The active participle here does not involve disbelief but disobedience. The Devil (Iblīs, Gk diabolos) is not accused of rejecting the existence or oneness of God but of refusing the divine order to bow down to the first human being. Indeed, in 2:30 the angels are depicted as arguing with God that creating Adam would lead to turmoil, and the implication is that Satan parted ways with God not because he disbelieved but because he had a positive if misguided motive -— he differed with him on the wisdom of opening Pandora’s box . . .

kufr is equated with impiety, which Grecophone Christians in their polemics against the pagans called asebeia. Likewise, in Prohibition 66:10 God had made the wives of Noah and Lot an object lesson for those who kafarū because of these women’s preference for pagan society over their husbands. The reason given in 2 Pet 2:6 for the calamity that befell the people of Sodom and Gomorrah is that they lived impious lives (asebesin), which seems roughly the meaning of kufr in Q 66:10.

BLASPHEMY

A controversial passage in The Cow 2:102 provides a further sense of the verb. The Quran condemns those in the era of Solomon who followed demons… that taught magic. It goes out of its way to underline that Solomon himself did not commit kufr, even though in late antique folk tradition he was held to be able to control sprites and demons. The demons were guilty of putting otherwise inoffensive teachings to evil purposes, turning them into black magic, so that they kafarū (A. J. Arberry translates this as “disbelieved”). Of what, however, did this act consist? It does not appear to have been a denial of anything, but rather was a blasphemous activity. The humans were eager to have the teaching of the two angels of Babylon, Hārūt and Mārūt, which they then desecrated by turning it into dark arts so as to separate spouses from one another. The demons’ instruction harmed people rather than benefited them, and turning to the occult deprived these individuals of any portion of heaven.

Hārūt and Mārūt are two of the Zoroastrian celestial spirits, Haurvatāt and Ameretāt. These emanations of the supreme deity, Ahura Mazda, symbolize wholeness and immortality. For instance, in the Younger Avesta, Yasht 19.95–96, the last days during which the world will be renovated are described thus: “Evil thought will be overcome, good thought will overcome it . . . The celestial spirits Integrity (Haurvatāt) and Immortality (Ameretāt) will defeat the demons of Hunger (Shud) and Thirst (Tarshna).” The two celestial spirits associated with nemeses among the demons symbolizing bodily human cravings like hunger and thirst may have inspired the Quran’s motif that devils misused their teachings to satisfy lust. Moreover, Ameretāt is associated with plants, fertility, and the tree of life. The Quran could be projecting into the time of Solomon a contemporary set of Zoroastrian ideas. The retrofitting of this motif to the time of the Hebrew monarch may in turn have come about because of the association in late antiquity of Solomon with mastery of the sprites or demons, which is reflected in quranic passages.

In late antique Greek Christian authors, black magic was associated with blasphemy (which originally meant slandering [God]). In his “Homily 10 on 2 Timothy,” John Chrysostom (ca. 349–407 CE) wrote, “Let us then so live that the name of God be not blasphemed (blasphēmíesthai).” Among the many examples he gave of Christians blaspheming in failing to live up to their ideals were “your auguries, your omens, your superstitious observances . . . your incantations, your magic (mageías) arts.”

What if we translated The Cow 2:101 this way?

“They followed what the demons recited over the realm of Solomon. Solomon himself was not a blasphemer, but the demons were blasphemers, teaching the people magic and what was revealed to the two archangels of Babylon, Haurvatāt and Ameretāt. But these two had been careful not to teach anyone without warning them, ‘We are a potential disturbance of faith (fitna), so do not fall into blasphemy.’ From them they learned how they might divide a man and his wife [. . .].”

Here is a condemnation of warlocks and witches who engage in what is seen as necromancy, which apparently enables those who covet married persons to cast spells to separate them from their spouses. They are instructed by demons who pervert and misuse the teachings of divinely inspired Zoroastrian angels.
Later Muslim commentators on this text are divided over its meaning. Some saw the anecdote as concerning fallen angels. Others defended the angels as having been sinless, and held that while they performed licit miracles, the demons turned their teachings to the purposes of thaumaturgy. As I read the text, the teaching of the angels itself is not being condemned here. Solomon, the verse says, bore no blame for his mastery of the spirits. The Zoroastrian celestial spirits are spoken of with reverence, called angels rather than demons, and are depicted as having been given inspiration (unzila) by God. The angels act responsibly inasmuch as they give disciples an explicit warning that learning their esoteric teachings could tempt humans, if they are not careful, to the dark side. (Zoroastrianism is listed in Pilgrimage 22:17 with the monotheistic religions and distinguished from paganism.)

The Quran shows positive attitudes throughout to Christians and The Cow 2:62 admits Christians to heaven (“Those who believed, and the Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, and whoever has believed in God and the Last Day and performed good works, they shall have their reward with their Lord”). To underline the difference, the Quran shows God pledging to Jesus regarding future Christians in The Family of Imran 3:55: “God said, ‘Jesus, I will take you to me and will raise you to me and I will purify you of those who kafarū and will render those who follow you superior to those who kafarū until the judgment day’.” Likely it is distinguishing between the old pagan Romans, who had persecuted Jesus and his faithful, and the Christians themselves. There will always be, the Quran vows, a difference between followers of Jesus and the kāfirūn. This and other passages suggest to me that the deverbal noun kāfir is never used tout court for Jews and Christians.

[Takeaway: kafir as a noun is never used in the Qur’an to refer to Christians and Jews, only to pagans or rebels or blasphemers or the morally dissolute.]

In the Medinan period, the Quran uses the verb kafara when it begins speaking of an antagonistic group from among the other monotheists: “Neither those who kafarū from among the people of the Book, nor the polytheists (mushrikūna) themselves, desire that good from your lord descend upon you” (The Cow 2:105). Some groups from among the biblical communities had allied politically with the militant pagans. A hypernym — for instance, “tree”—is lexically superordinate to hyponyms, another set of nouns or phrases under its rubric (e.g., “juniper” and “acacia”). Here the phrase “people of the Book” functions as a phrasal hypernym, which is lexically superordinate to the hyponym “Those who kafarū from among the people of the Book.” Logically speaking, the need to identify this subset of believers in the Bible as those who kafarū proves that kāfir does not ordinarily refer to Jews and Christians. That is, if all Jews and Christians were always kāfirūn, it would be redundant to identify this group “from among the people of the Book” as “those who kafarū.” Moreover, if all Jews and Christians were always kāfirūn, it would make nonsense of God’s pledge to Jesus (Āl ʿImrām 3:55) that he “will render those who follow you superior to those who kafarū until the judgment day.” Christians are not kāfirūn under ordinary circumstances, just as they are not doomed to hell under ordinary circumstances. Still, just as they can commit mortal sins and so depart from righteousness into perdition, so they can throw in with bellicose polytheists against Muḥammad and his cause, and likewise join the damned . . .

PAGANUS

It is suggestive that kāfir maps so closely onto the Latin paganus as it was used in late antiquity. Remus points to an imperial decree of 416 CE (16.10.21) that excludes from government service “those who are polluted by the profane error or crime of pagan rites, that is, gentiles (qui profano pagani ritus errore seu crimine polluntur, hoc est gentiles).” This principle was reaffirmed by Justinian (r. 527–565) in his Code (1.5.19), which body of law applied to Arabic speakers in the empire in Muḥammad’s own era. The Table 5:103 likewise denounces the pagan rites of sacrifice to idols practiced by those who kafarū and al-Jumʿa 62:2 speaks of “purifying” gentiles (ummiyūna) implying that paganism had polluted them.

The two words share a number of other meanings and connotations -— rural, polytheist, opponent, persecutor, enemy, blasphemer, potential convert, and interlocutor. K-f-r may at least in some instances be a loanshift from the Latin paganus. Whatever the etymology of the term paganus, by the late fourth century it had come to mean both “rustic” and “adherent of the old Roman religion.” It was often used satirically, to class the remaining pagan aristocracy with unlettered peasants.

Centuries of Roman rule had made Arabic speakers familiar with Latin vocabulary. The word for “path” in the phrase “straight path” of piety in the Quran, ṣirāṭ, is a loan from the Latin via strata or paved avenue.72 One route for Latin influence was the Arab mounted foederati who served as an auxiliary to the Roman army in Bostra and elsewhere, since Latin remained the language of the military. Another way Latin may have proved influential was through law, inasmuch as fourth- and fifth-century imperial decrees and even some of the sixth-century Code of Justinian were still issued in Latin as well as Greek in the sixth century.

I have argued that kāfir in the Quran for the most part does not mean “unbeliever” or “infidel.” In most of our examples, a lack of belief is not at stake. Rather, kāfir is a polysemous term that has a wide range of meanings, including “peasant,” “pagan,” “libertine,” “rebel,” and “blasphemer.” These are discernible if we look at the parallelisms, synonyms, and antonyms with which quranic verses surround this noun. I understand the impulse of translators to use “unbeliever” for kāfir, and, of course, the term sometimes does mean just that. Moreover, the condemnations of pagan belief and practice, while often made with other terms, could be seen to imply unbelief at some meta level. I argue, however, that limiting the meaning of the root so severely causes us to miss a rich set of other connotations that give us a rounder idea of the Quran’s intent…

I have suggested that the bilingual lives of many Arabic speakers in and on the fringes of the Roman empire over hundreds of years (Arabic-Aramaic and Arabic-Greek) contributed to this polysemy, through the phenomenon of the loanshift. The Latin paganus, which came to have the connotation both of “rustic” and “polytheist” in the fifth and sixth centuries, may well lie behind Iran 57:20, which refers to kuffār as peasants happy to see rain and greenery. At the same time, the quranic term is clearly also used to refer to polytheists. Ṣād 38:5 reports of the kāfirūn that they rejected the notion that the many gods could merge into only one, while The Cow 2:257 says that those who kafarū had taken the deity or idol Ṭāghūt for their patron instead of God. The Family of Imran 3:151 menaces these pagans with hellfire for having made God part of a pantheon (ashrakū). While it is not impossible that Arabic independently invented a connection between farmers and polytheists, Occam’s razor would suggest that we instead posit that Arabic was influenced by late antique Roman Christian usage, which was embedded in imperial laws applying to Arabophone citizens of the empire. In any case, far from being deniers or nihilists, the pagans are admitted to believe in their own religion (dīn) and to have faith (īmānuhum) in it. It is simply a false religion. Kafara thus has a positive valence that “to disbelieve” does not capture, even if the latter is not ultimately an incorrect characterization of the quranic view of the pagans.

1. The killing of innocent non-combatants is forbidden. The Qur’an (2:190) says “Fight in the cause of God ˹only˺ against those who wage war against you, but do not exceed the limits. God does not like transgressors.” It is only the wagers of war, i.e., soldiers, who are legitimate targets — not innocents. The Amman Message, crafted by a vast council of Muslim clerics from various denominations, says that according to a hadith or saying of the Prophet Muhammad, he said to one of his generals, “‘Run after Khalid ibn al-Walid [and tell him] that he must not slay children, serfs, or women.’ In another hadith the Prophet says clearly, ‘Do not kill weak old men, small children, or women.'”

Muhammad Sayyid al-Tantawi, the rector of al-Azhar University in Cairo, said, “Attacking innocent people is not courageous; it is stupid and will be punished on the Day of Judgment […]. It’s not courageous to attack innocent children, women and civilians. It is courageous to protect freedom; it is courageous to defend one and not to attack.”

Hamas killed hundreds of innocent non-combatants on October 7, including some 260 concert-goers at a peace festival. It fired unguided rockets at civilian towns and cities, inevitably endangering them since Hamas could not control where these dangerous munitions landed. Some landed on families. Although a few Hamas fighters attacked Israeli military bases and engaged Israeli soldiers, these encounters were a tiny part of the operation, most of which was aimed at innocent non-combatants. This behavior is un-Islamic according to the religion’s central texts and its authorities. Hamas cultists over-rule their own tradition, being full of themselves.

Embed from Getty Images
“BE’ERI, ISRAEL – OCTOBER 14: Houses that were destroyed in a battle between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians militants on Saterday’s Hamas attack on the kibutz on October 14, 2023 in Be’eri, Israel. Israel has sealed off Gaza and launched sustained retaliatory air strikes, which have killed at least 1,400 people with more than 400,000 displaced, after a large-scale attack by Hamas. On October 7, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel from Gaza by land, sea, and air, killing over 1,300 people and wounding around 2,800. Israeli soldiers and civilians have also been taken hostage by Hamas and moved into Gaza. The attack prompted a declaration of war by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the announcement of an emergency wartime government. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images).

2. Wanton destruction of a town is prohibited. According to Sunni tradition, “Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the first Caliph, gave these instructions to his armies: “I instruct you in ten matters: Do not kill women, children, the old, or the infirm; do not cut down fruit-bearing trees; do not destroy any town . . . ” (Malik’s Muwatta’, “Kitab al-Jihad.”). Islamic jurisprudents forbade the destruction of houses, as well.

What Hamas terrorists did to Kibbutz Beeri would fall under the category of “destroying a town.” And lots of houses were destroyed.

3. Muslim commanders must give the enemy fair warning that war is imminent. The Prophet Muhammad at one point gave 4 months notice. Sneak attacks are forbidden. October 7 was obviously a sneak attack.

4. Muslim authorities such as the Shaykh al-Azhar, the preeminent Sunni seminary, insist that taking civilian hostages is prohibited by Islamic law.

I do a lot of public speaking and teaching about Islam and I know how hard it is for many Americans and Europeans to get past their stereotypes about Islam and Muslims. The rise of vigilante cults with nihilist values and a complete disregard for the Qur’an and Muslim tradition has reshaped views of Islam itself, as though our view of Christianity were altered by the Capitol Insurrectionists (it wasn’t).

For anyone who wants an extended argument about the values of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad, I wrote a book:

The other bombing hit a mosque in Hangu in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Province. The mosque was known to be frequented by members of the local police. The suicide bombers had tried to hit the police station first and been repulsed, so they turned to a soft target. There have been 300 attacks in this province this year.

The insurgent movement in the tribal areas of northern Pakistan, the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP), denied involvement. The TTP is closely allied with the Taliban who now again rule Afghanistan, and there are frictions between the Taliban and the current Pakistani government.

That the attack in Mastung targeted worshipers commemorating the birthday of the Prophet suggests that the perpetrators were members of ISIL, the so-called “Islamic State” group. When ISIL was ruling northern Iraq and eastern Syria, they banned celebrating Muhammad’s birthday as a sinful “innovation.” Their views on the matter are in accord with the fundamentalist Wahhabi branch of Islam in Saudi Arabia, where jurists such as Abdel Aziz Bin Baz (d. 1999) also forbade honoring the Prophet’s birthday. Small ISIL cells have carried out terrorist attacks on the Taliban in Afghanistan, and have occasionally hit targets in Pakistan itself. In Baluchistan, the so-called Islamic State- Pakistan Province is active, whereas in Khyber Pushtunkhwa the rival Islamic State – Khurasan carries out attacks. The latter was likely the perpetrator at Hangu.

Pakistan’s own security has declined because of infighting among the country’s political elite since Prime Minister Imran Khan was unseated in a vote of no confidence on April 10, 2022, in which 20 former supporters in the parliament defected. Khan has castigated the parliamentary maneuver as an illegitimate plot, and is now in jail on corruption charges that his followers say are trumped up.

I’d say 98% of the Muslims in the world approve of commemorating the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, which is usually given as the twelfth day of the third month of the Islamic calendar, Rabi’ al-Awwal in 570 CE, nearly six centuries after the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

I wrote a book about the Prophet Muhammad, in which I discuss the likely circumstances of his birth, but more importantly his teachings on peace and reconciliation.

Purchase

It is a great shame that some do things in his name at which he clearly would horrified.

Admittedly, historians do not think large public celebrations of this day began until about the 1100s CE, some 500 years after the Prophet. Since that time, poetry and hymns have been composed for the occasion, and people have developed customs like giving children toy horses or staging parades in the streets and putting up illuminated chandeliers and lanterns over city streets. That is why some scholars consider it an innovation. But most of those see it as a good innovation. The fundamentalist Wahhabi and Salafi tendencies, in contrast, tend to see all later innovations not present at the beginnings of Islam as illegitimate.

In Pakistan, most people celebrate the entire Muslim month of Rabi` al-Awwal as the birth month of the Prophet. Marching bands, rides on caparisoned camels, and other activities of public “fun” are popular.

It is widely celebrated among American Muslims.

The major Sunni religious authority, the al-Azhar seminary in Cairo, Egypt, has repeatedly upheld the legitimacy of such celebrations. The considered legal ruling or fatwa says, “It is not permissible according to Islamic law to challenge the legitimacy of celebrating the anniversary of the Prophet’s birthday due to the forbidden things that may occur during it. Rather, we denounce the evils that may surround it, and we warn those who commit it – with wisdom and leniency – that these evils contradict the basic purpose for which these honorable occasions were held.”

Sufis, Muslim mystics, have sometimes engaged in ecstatic rituals on this anniversary of which the more sober clerics disapprove. You could compare this difference to one between, say, mainstream Presbyterian clerics and Pentecostalists.

Still, there is a broad consensus in both Sunni and Shiite Islam that commemorating the birth of the Prophet is a good thing, a moment of joy and celebration.

The ISIL terrorist group, which has wrought a vast swathe of destruction through Muslim societies and has also committed terrorism in Europe and the US, has a policy of acting harshly, “like wild beasts” (tawahhush). By attempting to outlaw perfectly innocent and uplifting religious practices like the birth of the Prophet, they set themselves up as superior to other Muslims and can use such prohibitions as a means of asserting power over others. Hence the bombing of the procession outside a mosque in Mastung. The good news is that the Muslims themselves have waged a concerted and brave campaign to root out this wicked heresy that has created so many orphans.

When news broke July 26, 2023, that the gifted Irish singer Sinead O’Connor had died, stories of her most famous performance circulated amid the grief and shock.

Thirty-one years ago, after a haunting rendition of Bob Marley’s song “War,” O’Connor ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on live television. “Fight the real enemy,” she said – a reference to clerical sex abuse. For months afterward, she was banned, booed and mocked, dismissed as a crazy rebel beyond the pale.

Commemorations following her death, however, cast the protest in a very different light. Her “Saturday Night Live” performance is now seen as “invigorating,” the New York Times’ pop critic wrote, and “a call to arms for the dispossessed.”

Attitudes toward Catholicism, sex and power are far different today than in 1992, whether in New York or O’Connor’s native Dublin. In many people’s eyes, the moral credibility of the Catholic Church around the world has crumbled, and trust in faith institutions of any sort is at an all-time low. Sexual abuse, once discussed only in whispers, is now beginning to be talked about openly.

I join the chorus of voices today who say O’Connor was decades ahead of her time. But leaving it just at that, we miss something profound about the complexity and depth of her religious imagination. Sinead O’Connor was arguably one of the most spiritually sensitive artists of our time.

I am a scholar of Catholicism in the modern era and have long been interested in those figures – the poets, artists, seekers – who wander the margins of their religious tradition. These men and women are dissatisfied with the mainstream centers of religious power but nonetheless compelled by something indelibly religious that feeds the wellsprings of their artistic imagination.

Throughout her life, O’Connor defied religious labels, exploring multiple faiths. The exquisite freedom in her music cannot be disentangled from that something transcendent that she was always after.

‘Rescuing God from religion’

Religion is often thought about as discreet traditions: institutions that someone is either inside or outside. But on the ground, it is rarely that simple.

The Catholic Church had a strong hold on Irish society as O’Connor was growing up – a “theocracy,” she called it in interviews and her memoir, “Rememberings” – and for many years she called for more accountability for the clerical abuse crisis. But she was also open in her love of other aspects of the faith, albeit often in unorthodox ways. She had a tattoo of Jesus on her chest and continued to critique the church while appearing on television with a priest’s collar.

Ten years after her SNL performance, O’Connor took courses at a seminary in Dublin with a Catholic Dominican priest, Rev. Wilfred Harrington. Together, they read the prophets of the Hebrew Bible and the Psalms: sacred scriptures in which God’s voice comes through in darker, moodier, more human forms.

Inspired by her teacher, she made the gorgeous album “Theology,” dedicated to him. The album is a mix of some of her own songs inspired by the Hebrew Bible – like “If You Had a Vineyard,” inspired by the Book of Isaiah; and “Watcher of Men,” which draws from the biblical story of Job – and other tracks that essentially are sung versions of her favorite Psalms.

In a 2007 interview with Fordham University’s WFUV radio station, O’Connor said that she was hoping the album could show God to people when religion itself had blocked their access to God. It was a kind of “rescuing God from religion,” to “lift God out of religion.” Rather than preaching or writing, “music is the little way that I do that,” she said, adding, “I say that as someone who has a lot of love for religion.”

Reading the prophets

In doing so, she stood in the long line of the prophetic tradition itself.

The great Jewish thinker Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book “The Prophets” begins with this sentence: “This book is about some of the most disturbing people who have ever lived.” Over and over, the Bible shows the prophets – the prophets who inspired “Theology” – mounting bracing assaults on hypocrisies and insincerities in their own religious communities, and not politely or calmly.

To many horrified Catholics, O’Connor’s SNL appearance and her many other criticisms of the church were blasphemous – or, at best, just throwing stones from outside the church for attention. Other fans, however, saw it as prophetic condemnation. It was not just a critique of child abuse but of church officials’ professed compassion for children – sanctimonious pieties as they covered up the abuse.

In calling this out and so much more, O’Connor was often seen as disturbing: not just the photo-of-the-pope incident, but her androgyny, her shaved head, her openness around her own struggles with mental illness. But for many admirers, as the documentary “Nothing Compares” makes clear, all this showed that she was free, and like the prophets of old, unashamed and unafraid to provoke.

Rasta to Islam

At the same time, O’Connor’s religious imagination was so much more than a complex relationship with Catholicism. Religion around O’Connor was eclectic and intense.

She was deeply influenced by Rastafarian traditions of Jamaica, which she described as “an anti-religious but massively pro-God spiritual movement.” She considered Sam Cooke’s early album with the Soul Stirrers the best gospel album ever made. She counted among her spiritual heroes Muhammad Ali – and converted to Islam in 2018, changing her name to Shuhada’ Sadaqat.

Yet O’Connor’s vision was not fragmented, as if she were constantly chasing after bits and pieces. The miracle of Sinead O’Connor is that it all coheres, somehow, in the words of an artist who refuses to lie, to hide or not say what she thinks.

When asked about spirituality, O’Connor once said that she preferred to sing about it, not talk about it – as she does in so many songs, from her luminous singing of the antiphon, a Marian hymn sung at Easter services, to her Rasta-inspired album, “Throw Down Your Arms.”

In “Something Beautiful,” a track from the “Theology” album, O’Connor speaks both to God and the listener: “I wanna make/ Something beautiful/ For you and from you/ To show you/ I adore you.”

Indeed she did. To be moved by her art is to sense a transcendence, a peek into radiance.

Brenna Moore, Professor of Theology, Fordham University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Hate acts targeting minorities are not actually free speech, of course.*

The great exponent of mystical Islam, Sayyed Hossein Nasr, argued that if we want to understand the position of the Qur’an in Muslim societies, we should think of it as the way Christians venerate Christ. It is the very “Word of God,” which of course is what Christians call Jesus (John 1:1).

Nasr wrote, “What corresponds to Christ as the word of God in Christianity is not the Prophet Muhammad but the Koran in Islam.”

So burning the Qur’an is sort of like throwing a big wooden crucifix with the corpus of Christ on a bonfire.

Iraqis in several cities, led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, held demonstrations for the past two days against the desecration of scripture. On Thursday they had tried to storm the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.

Ironically, the man who burned the Qur’an in Sweden is himself Iraqi, and he had served alongside the Shiite militias in a Chaldean Christian Popular Mobilization Force, fighting ISIL, which targeted Iraqi Christians. A lot of Iraqi Christians are angry about how Muslim fundamentalists in Iraq treated them after the American invasion. Since they are Christian they seem to have been unfairly tagged as somehow related to the American occupiers, but this allegation was untrue. Many Kurds and Shiite Muslims were close to the Americans, though.

It is interesting to me that there are indications in the Qur’an itself of how believers should respond to ridicule and harassment. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad himself, the Qur’an says, pagans in the city of Mecca subjected the early believers to a great deal of humiliation.

I wrote about these peace verses in my edited book,

Peace Movements in Islam, edited by Juan Cole. London: IB Tauris, 2021. Click here. .

Enwrapped 73:10-12 speak of how the believers were to respond to hostile comments: “Be patient with what they say and take your leave of them graciously. Leave to me the affluent who impugn your integrity, giving them a short reprieve, for we possess shackles and a searing abyss . . .”

The notion of leaving vengeance to God can be compared to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 12:19, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”

The Prophet was so far away from harboring any ill-will toward his opponents that in Ornaments 43:33-35, Muhammad appears to speak in his own voice with these sentiments: “If it would not have caused all people to observe a single communal path (an yakun ummatan wahida) we would have bestowed roofs of silver and staircases for their houses on those who reject the All-Merciful, and would have furnished their homes with fine doors and couches on which to recline, and gilded ornaments. But all that is merely for the enjoyment of the life of this world, whereas the hereafter is for the God-fearing.”

The Criterion 25:63 says, “The servants of the All-Merciful are those who walk humbly upon the earth — and when the unruly address them, they reply, “Peace!”

The word for “unruly” here literally means “ignorant,” but it was used in that era to refer to people who lacked self-control. They clearly were low-lifes, taunting the believers, who kept their dignity and replied by praying for peace and security for their tormentors.

The Table 5:45 in the Medina period paraphrases Deuteronomy 19:21. Arberry translates it this way: “And therein We prescribed for them: ‘A life for a life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth, and for wounds retaliation’; but whosoever forgoes it as a freewill offering (tasaddaqa bi), that shall be for him an expiation (kaffara). Whoso judges not according to what God has sent down – they are the evildoers.”

So, as in the Gospels it is urged that the faithful go beyond the principle of an eye for an eye to exercise forgivenes, so in the Qur’an believers are urged to forgo demanding this satisfaction for a wrong against them, and it is implied that exercising restraint in this regard will bring the blessings of divine forgiveness on the believer.

Distinguished 41:33-35 observes, “Whose discourse is more beautiful than one who calls others to God and performs good works and proclaims, ‘I am a monotheist? The good deed and the evil deed are not equal. Repel the latter with what is best and behold, it will be as though the one, with whom you have a mutual enmity, is a devoted patron. Yet to none is this granted save the patient (alladhina sabaru), and to none is it granted save the supremely fortunate.” This remarkable verse goes beyond counseling gracious withdrawal from and forgiveness of foes to urging doing good toward them and returning their evil deeds with good ones, which over time has the prospect of winning them over and making them patrons rather than enemies.

So that’s it. That’s how the Qur’an advises dealing with unruly and hostile harassers. Return good for evil. Win them over. Wish peace on them. If the harassment becomes too much, withdraw graciously.

It might be objected that there are verses in the Qur’an authorizing violence. There are, but they are clearly about permission for self-defense when being violently attacked by marauding enemy warriors. They aren’t talking about how you would behave in peacetime and in civil society. Christian thinkers also made a distinction between war-time ethics and peace-time ones.

The Christian monk Athanasios of Alexandria (d. 373) wrote, “For even in the case of the other actions in life we will find that there are differences based upon the circumstances in which they are done. For example, it is not permitted to commit murder, but in wars it is both lawful and praiseworthy to destroy one’s enemies, so much so that those who displayed valor in war are deemed worthy of the highest honors, and monuments to them are erected to proclaim their achievements. And so, the same action is not permitted in certain circumstance and at certain times, but is allowed and excused in different circumstances and at the right time.”

I also discussed the historical context for these verses in my biography of the Prophet Muhammad:

Juan Cole, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires (NY: Bold Type Books, 2018). Click here.

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*An earlier version of this posting linked to an article alleging that Sweden had banned the burning of the Hebrew Bible. Apparently the person threatening to do so actually withdrew the threat before the police could decide on the issue.

( The Irish Times ) – Four global aid agencies have suspended services in Afghanistan in response to a Taliban ban on women working at non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

In a joint statement, Care, Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the International Rescue Committee said: “We cannot effectively reach children, women and men in desperate need in Afghanistan without our female staff.”

The agencies said women employees enabled them to reach “millions of Afghans in need since August 2021″ when the Taliban seized power.

Some 3,000 women are employed by the International Rescue Committee alone and make up 40 per cent of its staff.

Many of the 180 foreign and local NGOs operating in Afghanistan funnel UN and other external aid to Afghans in need of shelter, food, and medical treatment.

Over the weekend, the Taliban’s minister of economy Din Mohammad Hanif signed an order barring women from working in national and international NGOs as they were not wearing headscarves and failing to observe other Islamic laws. He warned any organisation that didn’t comply with the order would have its licence revoked.

The edict came after condemnation by Sunni Islamic scholars and governments of last week’s ban by the Taliban on women attending university. Cairo-based Sunni authority on the faith, Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayeb of the Al-Azhar Islamic heritage institution, ruled that the ban contradicts Muslim canon law (sharia) and conflicts with Islam’s call for both men and women “to seek knowledge from cradle to grave”.  He argued the ban ignored 2,000 sayings of the Prophet Muhammad as well as “historic roles women have assumed in education, science, and politics”.  He called the prohibition “shocking” and said it should not have been issued by any Muslim.

The Abu Dhabi-located Muslim Council of Elders also opposed the ban, saying: “Islam liberated women from pre-Islamic traditions that deprived them of their rights and rendered them unable to function.”

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar have expressed concern over the ban while Pakistan, a Taliban ally, said it was disappointed.

In a bid to pre-empt the university ban, six Gulf Co-operation Council members met Taliban acting foreign minister Amir Khan Mutaqi in Doha last month and urged full inclusion of women and girls in Afghan affairs. The UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia – which base their laws on sharia – told the Taliban to make a reconciliation plan that “respects basic freedoms and rights, including women’s right to work and education”.

In March, the Taliban closed girls’ secondary schools but allowed girls’ elementary schools to operate. However, girls and teachers have, reportedly, been told not to go to elementary schools.

This would deny literacy to half 40 million Afghans.

Reprinted from The Irish Times with the permission of the author.

This year I want to point to some verses of Farid al-Din Attar of Nishapur (1145-1221). Attar was what we would now call a pharmacist, but also a perfume maker. So he was the one you would go to for the equivalent of Pepto Bismol to settle your tummy, but also for this season’s Chanel N°5. He was a highly successful pharmacist, said to have been besieged by customers. In his spare time he wrote spiritual poetry. He does not appear to have traveled much, but the city of Nishapur in eastern Iran under the Saljuq Empire saw a lot of dramatic events, including nomadic conquests– as Richard Bulliet explains. In 1221 when Attar Was 76, the Mongols invaded Nishapur from Central Asia, and he was killed.

In the collection of Attar’s work, “50 Poems” can be found a depiction of the infant Jesus as a symbol of innocence, the sort of innocence that is the secret infancy of which adults have lost sight. In the Qur’an it is alleged, as in the pseudepigraphic infancy gospels of late antiquity, that Jesus spoke from the cradle. Attar uses this image to make Jesus the essence of innocent infancy:

The secret infancy has all the traits of Jesus;
like Jesus it speaks with sweetness from the cradle.
As the rose sweated from my Beloved’s face
a pure moistener like rosewater entered my mouth.

In the same volume, we find:

Firstly they became dust beneath the feet of dogs,
lastly like the wind they bowed their head to their Lord.
Attar whose words gave life to the soul,
found that Jesus became their companion.

Here Jesus is a symbol of humility and the putting aside of ego so as to become as dust before God. When they reach that estate of self-effacement, they discover that Jesus has become their companion.

Attar’s great classic was The Conference of the Birds, of which the best translation is that of Dick Davis and Afkham Darbandi. He also wrote the “Divine Book,” translated by J. A. Boyle, and lyric poetry as well.

In the Ilahi-Nama (Boyle translation), Attar says:

“Like the Prophet David play this melody; like Jesus breathe the love of thy friend.”
“And had not Jesus been the Word of God, how should he in his glory have been the Pure Spirit?”

David was famed for his melodic Psalms, and Jesus for exemplifying God’s love (God is called “the Friend” or the “Beloved” by Sufis).

Jesus is also a symbol of self-denial. Attar depicts him in “The Conference of the Birds” as riding on a donkey and deploys this image as a symbol of the higher self mastering the carnal self, and purifying the soul with love:

The Self, that whirlpool where our lives are wrecked;
As Jesus rode his donkey, ride on it;
Your stubborn Self must bear you and submit –
Then burn this Self and purify your soul;
Let Jesus’ spotless spirit be your goal.
Destroy this burden, and before your eyes
The Holy Ghost in glory will arise.
Welcome, dear nightingale – from your sweet throat
Pour out the pain of lovers note by note.

An anecdote about Jesus is also attributed to Attar, saying that once Jesus was passing through a small town and some of his coreligionists taunted and reviled him. He replied by praying for them. An observer was astonished and asked him why he had not lashed out against them. Jesus replied, “I can only spend what I have in my purse.”

That is, he had no rancor in him, only love and forgiveness.