Almost two days later, the wife is still apt to burst out unexpectedly at any given moment into a rendition of ”Swing Low, Sweet Chariot“.  Also having enjoyed the England victory, following the sports reporting I ended up clicking around in the Guardian at one point.  There, I happened upon Inayat Bunglawala’s writing the other day in “Comment is Free” of the “…letter from 138 Muslim scholars and academics around the world, addressed to Pope Benedict XVI, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other Christian leaders…”, in which he concludes:

…the propaganda machinery of the warmongers can be heard gearing up yet again, this time to prepare the western public for an attack on Iran.

From that opening above, how did Mr Bunglawala manage to get there, finding himself worried to bits alongside Boris Johnson?  Let’s just say he chose to start way back:

…To Martin Luther, Muhammad was second in wickedness only to the Pope (who was, of course, the real anti-Christ)…

Presumably, Mr Bunglawala is being sarcastic there. But here, let’s be serious. Given Martin Luther’s zeal to unshackle Roman Catholicism from what he saw as papal corruption, one can only but imagine also how he might also have felt about Muhammad and Islam had he, Luther, been in somewhat closer proximity to Mecca than he was in early modern Germany. 

…Muhammad has presented a major challenge to Christian thinking ever since he began preaching the faith of Islam in the early seventh century. Muhammad saw himself as the last in a long line of prophets sent by God and reaffirming the essential teachings of Judaism and Christianity and indeed, Islam’s insistence on the oneness of God, the accountability on the day of judgement, abstinence from alcohol and gambling, the duty of care towards one’s parents, family and neighbours, were not easy to portray as the mutterings of the anti-Christ…

…Since the middle of the 19th century, there has been a gradual reappraisal of the role of Muhammad and Islam by many western scholars. The Scottish essayist, Thomas Carlyle, led the way…

…the appreciation of Muhammad’s role has improved - except in the most bigoted quarters…

Let’s take those somewhat out of order, paragraph-wise, but more orderly in terms of discussion. 

Apparently, to disagree with Mr Bunglawala’s appraisal of matters is, default, to be a bigot.  Such can be overlooked, since one can only but heartily welcome the Muslim Mr Bunglawala’s ecumenical eagerness to offer us his dozen-ish paragraph summary of the development of 15 centuries of Christian thinking regarding Muhammad and Islam.  However, despite his obvious in-depth knowledge of Christianity, it is decidedly unfortunate that having gone back so far — even in quoting Oxford’s Richard Southern on the existence of Islam being “the most far-reaching problem in medieval Christendom…” — Mr Bunglawala doesn’t choose to trod too deeply when he gets there. 

It is probably worth recalling here that pre-medieval times, Christ had warned “…Take heed that no man deceive you … For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many…”.  Muhammad had subsequently not only served, Muslims said, as a messenger of God (albeit initially a reluctant one), but by leading armies in the field (unlike Christ) he had come also to function simultaneously as Islam’s earthly Constantine.  Therefore, it might well be considered a tad understandable that simple “bigotry” was not necessarily the core rationale underlying medieval Christians’ having found Muhammad rather something of a “major challenge”. 

Perhaps, for the benefit and enlightenment of Christians, Islamic theologians have since tried to offer some clarification?  Alas, himself having duly informed contemporary Christians about what they don’t know about their own Christianity, Mr Bunglawala sadly fails to seize the chance here similarly to address that with which one might think he would be even that much more familiar: the richness of Islamic theological thought vis-à-vis Christianity since Muhammad?  Mr Bunglawala’s simply dropping the “138 Muslim scholars” statement of last week into readers’ laps and leaving it there unhistorically explored is a terrible shame, when we crave so much more. 

Of course, writing as he was in the Guardian, exploring comparative religious dogma seems unlikely to have been Mr Bunglawala’s prime motivation in composing his discourse.  So why go so ’round the houses?  If he admires the policy “wish list” and methods of diplomatic outreach espoused by the Islamic Republic of Iran, why doesn’t he just say so?  After all, given that “the appreciation of Muhammad’s role has improved“, it would seem Mr Bunglawala hardly needs to try to hide behind the likes of Luther and Thomas Carlyle.