The Prophet Muḥammad between Lived Religion and Elite Discourse: Rethinking and Decolonizing Christian Assessments of the uswa ḥasana through Comparative Theological Aesthetics

ABSTRACTPrevious Christian assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad generally fall within two categories. The first asks whether or how he may be considered a post-canonical prophet. In the second, both Christians and Muslims sidestep the inquiry and advocate for the ‘two Words’ analogy (comparing Muḥammad to Mary and the Qur’an to Jesus the incarnate Word). However, attending to Muslim lived religion in postcolonial and diasporic contexts reveals an alternative, emic account of the meaning of prophecy and revelation in Islam: the embodied, emplaced and enacted experience of Muḥammad through poetry in praise of the Prophet and Prophetic beauty. Theological aesthetics prepares us for decolonizing Christian assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad through Muslim popular piety and vernacular traditions. A decolonial understanding of the experience of the Prophet suggests that his place in the experience of Muslims is unlike the way Christians relate to prophets, generally, and more akin to how Christians relate to Jesus—in both lived religion and elite discourse. While the ‘two Words’ analogy still has an important role to play, Christians would do well to rethink and decolonize their assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad through the lived religion—and elite discourses—of poetry in praise of the Prophet.KEYWORDS: Qaṣīdat al-BurdaMadīḥ nabawīpoetry in praise of the Prophet Muḥammaddecolonizingcomparative theologyrevelation Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Moreland, Muhammad Reconsidered. See a review of the book in Takacs, ‘Review’.2 The ‘two Words’ analogy is first noted in Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger, 24. Later scholars extend the analogy; see Nasr, Ideals and Realities, 31; Lumbard, ‘Discernment’; Madigan, ‘Mary and Muhammad’; idem, ‘Muslim–Christian Dialogue’; idem, ‘Jesus and Muhammad’;Takacs, ‘Mary and Muhammad’. It is likewise the premise of the comparative theological project set out in Lamptey, Divine Words, 36–42.3 Lamptey, Divine Words, 38.4 See, for example, Andani, ‘Metaphysics of Muhammad’ for an exploration and the development of this tradition. In the context of Islamic art and how Muḥammad was represented within this tradition of Logos prophetology, see Gruber, ‘Between Logos (kalima) and Light (nūr)’.5 All translations of qur'anic texts are my own.6 As it happens, however, revelation is intimately connected to the beautiful in Catholic accounts of the Revelation, Jesus Christ the Word incarnate, who reveals the beauty and glory of God. Already, one notices how previous Christian assessments in both categories have missed this crucial point, viz., the function of the beautiful in the experience of the Prophet Muḥammad—mainly because of an overcorrection that results in an absolute refusal to compare Muḥammad to the Christian Jesus, the beauty and glory of God incarnate.7 This Christian conception of prophecy is, in general, also how the tradition understood the role of prophets in the so-called Old Testament. That is, Christians often erased the theological aesthetic and theo-poetic aspects of the Jewish prophetic tradition they had inherited and replaced it with a unidirectional conferral of divine propositions and commands—the Law (a feature of anti-Judaism and later anti-Semitism).8 See Takacs, ‘Undoing and Unsaying Islamophobia’.9 Nostra Aetate, 3.10 Lumen Gentium, 16.11 Watt, Muhammad, 240.12 Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounters.13 Watt, Muhammad, 238.14 Moreland, Muhammad Reconsidered, 90.15 See Küng, ‘Towards an Ecumenical Theology’, 119, 125.16 See Cragg, Muhammad and the Christian; idem, Weight in the Word.17 Kerr’s considerations of Muḥammad can be found in three essays: Kerr, ‘He Walked in the Path’; idem, ‘Muhammad, Prophet of Liberation’; idem, ‘Prophet Muhammad in Christian Theological Perspective’.18 Jomier has argued that ‘if a Christian says that Muhammad is a prophet and does not become a Muslim, either he does not know his religion or he is a hypocrite’ (Jomier, How to Understand Islam, 143). Elsewhere his personal judgement is ‘to avoid the word prophet’ because employing it to describe Muhammad ‘would entail giving it a limited sense which Muslim faith would not accept’ (ibid., 147).19 Troll, Dialogue and Difference, 120.20 See Moreland, Muhammad Reconsidered, 48–62.21 Ibid., 115.22 Ibid., 121.23 Ibid., 131.24 Ibid., 132.25 Published under her former name. See Lamptey, Divine Words, 36–42.26 Ibid., 37.27 Ibid., 38; see Nasr, Ideals and Realities, 36.28 Madigan, ‘Particularity’, 19.29 Ibid.30 Madigan, ‘Muslim–Christian Dialogue’, 58.31 Ahmed, What Is Islam?, 346.32 For example, ‘Moreland’s careful and creative engagement with the Catholic tradition of “private revelation” corresponds to the distinction between prophetic waḥy, revelation unique to Muhammad and other prophets (anbiyāʾ), and other forms of revelation such as kashf and ilhām or divinely realized judgement of revelation such as taḥqīq granted especially to the saints/friends-of-God. These ideas were present early on, especially in the œuvre of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d. c. 869) and Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (d. c. 890), and continued into the corpus of many Shīʿī thinkers as well as Rūzbehān Baqlī (d. 1209), Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240) and Rūmī (d. 1273), and eventually coalesced into a the ṣūfī-philosophical amalgam from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century’ (Takacs, ‘Review of Muhammad Reconsidered’, 347). A comparative theological approach would reverse the direction of inquiry and learn from these concepts for constructive insight.33 Kassam, ‘Signifying Revelation’, 32.34 Ahmed, What Is Islam?, 346 (italics original).35 For Ahmed, the Text of Divine Revelation is the self-evident inscribed, historical textual artifact of the Qur’an and ḥadīth literature. But ‘the act of Revelation of Muḥammad plus the product of text of Revelation to Muḥammad does not encompass and is not co-extensive or consubstantial with the full idea or phenomenon or reality of Revelation to Muḥammad’ (Ahmed, What Is Islam?, 346 [italics original]). Hence the Pre-Text: ‘The Text of the Revelation requires as its premise an Unseen Reality or Truth that lies beyond and behind the Text of the Revelation-in-the-Seen and upon which the act, Text and truth of Revelation are contingent. This Unseen Reality is ontologically prior to and alethically (that is, as regards truth) larger than the textual product of the Revelation [ = the Qur’ān]: it is the source of Revelation … The act and text of the Muḥammadan Revelation together represent a single historical instance and enactment of this larger and prior dimension of the reality of Revelation—which I will here term the Pre-text of Revelation’ (ibid., 346–7 [italics original]). Finally, ‘Con-Text of Revelation is the body of meaning that is the product and outcome of previous hermeneutical engagement with Revelation. Con-Text is, in other words, that whole field or complex or vocabulary of meanings of Revelation that have been produced in the course of the human and historical hermeneutical engagement with Revelation, and which are thus already present as Islam’ (ibid., 356 [italics original]).36 Kassam, ‘Signifying Revelation’, 34.37 Ibid., 35.38 Ibid.,, 37.39 Madigan, Qur’an’s Self-Image, 178.40 Kassam, ‘Signifying Revelation’, 37.41 Ibid., 38.42 Ibid., 39.43 As already noted, I concur with the arguments set forth by Shahab Ahmed in What Is Islam? and will not rehearse them here. Even if they are contested, his point remains, viz., narrow focus on the classical Arabic theological and philosophical traditions and the Qur’an-qua-textual-artifact tradition erases the bulk of the 1400-years’ experience of being Muslim from West Africa to Indonesia.44 Nostra Aetate, 3.45 Moreland, Muhammad Reconsidered, 132.46 Abdel-Alim, ‘Hip Hop Islam’.47 Kassam, ‘Signifying Revelation’, 39. For an insightful study on Muslim hip hop, see Khabeer, Muslim Cool.48 See Khabeer, Muslim Cool, esp. 182ff.; see also Perry, Prophets of the Hood.49 Khabeer, Muslim Cool, 183 (italics original).50 Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. See https://sunnah.com/muslim, 746a.51 The full title is Dalāʾil al-khayrāt wa-shawāriq al-anwār fī dhikr al-ṣalāt ʿalā al-Nabī al-mukhtār (‘Indications of Benefits and the Shining of Lights in the Remembrance of Blessings upon the Chosen Prophet’). For a critical edition with commentary, see al-Sharnūbī, Sharḥ Dalāʾil al-khayrat. I also commend the website, https://www.dalailalkhayrat.com (accessed 27 October 2023) for an easy way to explore this text.52 Chittick, Me & Rumi, 71.53 Von Balthasar, Truth of the World, 223.54 Von Balthasar, Seeing the Form, 11.55 Carpenter, ‘Balthasar’, 616.56 Ibid., 617.57 Von Balthasar, Seeing the Form, 9.58 Ibid., 69.59 McInroy, Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses, 136.60 Von Balthasar, Clerical Styles, 334. The first is from Bonaventure’s Itinerarium (Itin. II, 10. Opera Omnia V, 302b) and the second is from his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences (II Sent. dist. 34, art. 2, q. 3, 6. Opera Omnia II, 814).61 Von Balthasar, Clerical Styles, 335.62 McInroy, Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses, 57.63 A few significant sources are: Murata, Beauty in Sufism; Kermani, God Is Beautiful; Zargar, Sufi Aesthetics. The popularity of Rūmī, Ḥāfiẓ, ʿAṭṭār and other poets supports the widespread centrality of the poetic tradition in lived religion. The conclusions of Shahab Ahmed’s What Is Islam? underscore the import of the poetic traditions among societies of Muslims.64 Ahmed, What Is Islam?, 392–3.65 Kermani, God Is Beautiful, 25.66 See Sells, Approaching the Qur’an, 5–11.67 There are other verses, but I briefly note the context of these two as they pertain to this essay. Q 69.40 is followed by verses rejecting Muḥammad as a pre-Islamic poet, seer or diviner, and affirming his speech as ‘revelation [tanzīl] from the Lord of the Worlds’ (Q 69.43). Muḥammad’s recitation was interpreted through the lens of pre-Islamic poetry precisely because his experience was similar to that of the shāʿir (poet) and kāhin (soothsayer; see footnote 81). Q 89.19 is found at the end of an eschatological section revealing the Day of Reckoning (yawm al-dīn) and situates Muḥammad, or at least his speech, as ‘powerful, established in the presence of the Owner of the Throne’ (Q 89.20). His position as ‘generous’ is central to the eschatological event and will ultimately be revealed to all on the Day of Reckoning.68 Kassam, ‘Signifying Revelation’, 37.69 Suhrawardy, Sayings of Muhammad, 104.70 Chelkowski, Mirror of the Invisible World, 9.71 While the imaginal faculty’s being that through which the Prophet receives revelation is an opinion held more explicitly by Muslim philosophers, such as al-Fārābī (d. circa 950) and Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037), Ibn ʿArabī does imply as much in some of his writings. I offer four quotations that are indicative of how he elevates the imagination as both divine plane and human faculty and subtly connects it to revelation, though generally it should be noted that the imagination in the Islamic theo-poetic and Sufi traditions, pace Christianity’s and Islamic philosophy’s reception of Aristotle’s poetics, is superior to the intellect and reason. ‘Existence (wujūd), all of it, is an imagination within an imagination (khayāl fī khayāl)’ (Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, ed. Niẓām al-Dīn Aḥmad, 138 [my translation]; for English, see Ibn ʿArabī, Bezels of Wisdom, 125; Ibn ʿArabi, Fuṣuṣ al-ḥikam, trans. Abrahamov, 72). ‘Among the power (quwwa) of the creation of the World of the Imagination is that the coincidence of opposites (al-jamʿ bayn al-aḍdād) manifests therein, because sense perception and the intellect are unable to make opposites coincide, whereas the imagination is able [to do so] … The imaginal faculty (al-quwwa al-mutakhayyila) and the World of Imagination … is the nearest to indicating the Real … Hence nothing has truly attained unto the [Divine] Form except the imagination’ (Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 4: 325, ll. 3–8 [my translation]; see Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 115–16). ‘When the [spiritual] wayfarer reaches the planet Venus, Venus takes him before Joseph, who casts to him the sciences which God had singled out for him, that is, those connected to the forms of imaginalization (tamaththul) and imagination (khayāl) … This is the celestial sphere of complete form-giving (al-taṣwīr al-tāmm) and harmonious arrangement (al-niẓām). From this sphere are derived assistance (imdād) for poets’ (Ibn ʿArabī, Futūḥāt, 2: 275, ll. 13–14, 17–18 [my translation]; also cited in Chittick, ‘World of Imagination’, 114). Finally, and most directly, is a poem found in the Futūḥāt: ‘Between the next world and this world adheres vision. / The degrees of liminal spaces possess enclosures [suwar = qur'anic chapters]. / […] / Were it not for the imagination, today we would be nonexistent [in nothing-ness]. / […] / Its authority is “As though/ka-inna [you saw Him]”, if you understand it. / Revelation has come through it, and understanding and consideration. / Among the particles is the “like” (kāf) of the attributes. / You are not separated from the [one set of] forms but that you reach [another set of] forms' (Futūḥāt, 1: 304, ll. 6, 12–14.)72 Khusrau, Dībāchah.73 Ibid., 18.74 Ibid.75 Ibid., 19.76 Ibid., 22.77 Ibid., 21.78 Ibid.79 Ibid., 23.80 Ibid., 2481 As Shahab Ahmed has noted, Muḥammad’s immediate audience recognized ‘two well-known categories of “inspired” individuals in society, the poet (shāʿir) and the soothsayer (kāhin)’ (Ahmed, Before Orthodoxy, 295). Not only was the literary form of the Qur’an recognized by the Islamic scholarly tradition as being poetic sajʿ (rhymed and rhythmic prose; see Stewart, ‘Sajʿ’), but ‘the early Muslims viewed some of the physical processes that accompanied the revelation of the Divine Word as similar to those that accompanied the poets’ search for inspiration in the composition of oral poetry’ (Ahmed, Before Orthodoxy, 202). This appears in Ahmed’s argument suggesting that the ‘Satanic verses incident [was] a momentary breakdown in this process’ (ibid.). For the precise argument concerning the early context of the qur’anic revelation vis-à-vis the poetic practices of seventh-century Arabia, see Zwettler, ‘Mantic Manifesto’. All this is to suggest that the poetic nature of the divine Word revealed to the Prophet Muhummad in the form of the oral recitation ( = the Qur’an) has as its nearest contemporaneous parallel the poetry of the pre-Islamic shāʿir and kāhin: ‘In other words, as far as the early Muslims were concerned, while Muḥammad was certainly neither a kāhin nor a shāʿir, but was undoubtedly a Prophet, his Prophethood—that is, his defining quality of receiving verbal inspiration—was understood as being something “between seer and poet”’ (Ahmed, Before Orthodoxy, 297). Here Ahmed references Neuwirth, ‘Der historische Muhammad’. Just as poets recited aloud their artistic production, so did the Prophet recite aloud upon receiving divine inspiration; hence the earliest and original meaning of qurʾān: ‘a reciting aloud’ (see Graham, ‘Earliest Meaning’, esp. 365–8). As Ahmed argues, if the shāʿir and kāhin were understood to rely on a shayṭān or jinnī as their companion (qarīn) conveying poetic inspiration, it is but a small step to take that the Prophet was understood to rely on the angel Gabriel (see Ahmed, Before Orthodoxy, 295–9).82 Ogunnaike, Poetry, 13.83 Ibid., 14.84 Ibn al-Fāriḍ, Dīwān, 180 (line 43). For an alternative translation, see Lings, Sufi Poems, 76.85 See Stetkevych, Mantle Odes, 30–69.86 Ibid., 32.87 Ibid. The pre-Islamic qaṣīda played this role, but in the context of tribal allegiances; see ibid., 1–28.88 Ibid., 32.89 Ibid., 37.90 Ibid.91 Ibid.92 Vs. 36, in ibid., 47.93 Ibid., 61.94 Ibid., 65.95 Ibid., 61.96 See the chapter dedicated to this poem in ibid., 70–150.97 The YouTube video ‘Qasidah Burdah around the World’ features, for example, the recitation of the first chapter from 15 different counties: https://youtu.be/1NB--Jlg37g (accessed 26 October 2023). The website, www.qasidaburda.com, is likewise a resource that exemplifies the popularity of the poem.98 Stetkevych, Mantle Odes, 70–1.99 See the narrative by Muḥammad ibn Shākir al-Kutubī (d. 1363) cited in ibid., 83.100 Ibid., 85.101 For an English translation, see ibid., 98–9. Variations based on the original Arabic are my own.102 For an Arabic edition of this commentary, see al-Ḥasanī, Al-ʿumda. For a translation, see idem, Mainstay).103 Idem, Mainstay, 69–70, modified slightly from the Arabic in idem, Al-ʿumda, 90. Later, al-Ḥasanī comments that ‘the miracles conferred upon the Prophets and [Messengers]—from Adam all the way to [Muḥammad himself]—were only connected to them and obtained through the Prophet Muhammad’s Light and because of him. For it is from [Muḥammad’s] light that all things were created, and it is because of him that all existent things have come to be’ (idem, Mainstay, 109; idem, Al-ʿumda, 132).104 Stetkevych, Mantle Odes, 103.105 Al-Ḥasanī, Mainstay, 93; modified from original Arabic: idem, Al-ʿumda, 114. Intriguingly, he goes on to suggest that Muḥammad came in human form with a ‘soul dissimilar to the souls of the rest of humanity’. The wisdom of God in doing this is that ‘had he been other than human, such as an angel, no human would be able to interact with the angels or receive revealed laws from them’ (idem, Mainstay, 93; idem, Al-ʿumda, 114).106 Asani, ‘In Praise of Muḥammad’, 159. See also Asani and Abdel-Malek, Celebrating Muḥammad, esp. Part I, pp. 19–45.107 Asani and Abdel-Malek, Celebrating Muḥammad, 51.108 Asani, ‘In Praise of Muḥammad’, 160–1.109 Ibid., 161.110 Ibid., 162.111 Ibid., 164.112 Ibid., 167.113 For an overview of this literature from the twelfth to the early twentieth century in multiple vernacular languages, see Chapter 10 in Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger.114 Ibid., 196.115 Çelebi, Mevlidi sherif.116 Asani, ‘In Praise of Muḥammad’, 176–7.117 Ibid., 180.118 Von Balthasar, Truth of the World, 223.119 At https://youtu.be/a18py61_F_w (accessed 25 October 2023).120 Ogunnaike, Poetry, 1.121 Al-Qandūsī, Drink of the People of Purity, 22–3.122 Ogunnaike, Poetry, 11; emphasis added.123 Ibid., 36.124 See the poem by Shaykh Ibrāhīm Niasse that praises Muḥammad to the level of ‘light of existentiated existents’ and ‘Adamic possessor of the Divine Truth’ (ibid., 48).125 Couplet by Niasse, in ibid., 68.126 Ibid., 20–1.127 Listen to a recitation of it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = Xw3TcJCIpVQ (accessed 26 October 2023).128 Ogunnaike, Poetry, 138–42.129 Sulaiman, ‘The Lover’, at 1:20–1:50. At the end, Sulaiman is referring to Hassan Cissé, the grandson and spiritual heir of Ibrāhīm Niasse.130 Ibid., at 2:27–2:39.131 Ibid., at 2:40–4:34 (emphasis added), concluding in Arabic with the ṣalawāt al-fātiḥ of the Tijāniyya Order: ‘God, bless Your master, Muḥammad, who opened what was closed and sealed what came before, rendering the Real victorious through the Real, the guide to Your Straight Path [ṣirāṭika al-mustaqīm], and [bless] his household according to their magnificent rank and degree.’132 See also Q 2.117; 3.47, 59; 6.73; 16.40; 19.35; 36.83; 40.68.133 Zargar, Sufi Aesthetics, 46.134 Ogunnaike, Poetry, 2.135 In particular, see von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology, 1: 211–26, esp. 212–13. See also McIntosh, Mystical Theology.136 Incidentally, those characterized as muḥsin or performing iḥsān in the Qur’an are not restricted to those who believe in the Prophet’s message; i.e., Christians and Jews are implicitly included in those who can participate in iḥsān. Iḥsān is thus an interreligious category potentially embracing all people—as the transcendentals do, and as von Balthasar indicates in his preface to the multivolume Glory of the Lord quoted in the introduction (even if his study ‘remains all too Mediterranean’ [von Balthasar, Seeing the Form, 11]).137 Zargar, Sufi Aesthetics, 46.138 Here I am referring to ongoing debates about the meaning of Dei Verbum, the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, including the most recent book by Anne Carpenter, who elucidates a theology of Tradition in the context of modern racism and colonialism (Carpenter, Nothing Gained Is Eternal).139 Dei Verbum, 8.140 Benedict XVI, ‘Verbum Domini’, section 14.141 Francis, ‘Address to Artists’.142 Ibid.143 Carpenter, Nothing Gained Is Eternal, xiii.144 Kassam, ‘Signifying Revelation’, 34.145 Ibid., 37.