"CHRISTIANITY TODAY" TOUTS
ANCIENT FORGED DOCUMENT AS BASIS FOR
"MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN PEACE TODAY"
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
Christianity Today has been taken in by sharpies who aren’t telling
it the truth. Mark Durie is right: the document that this story is
primarily about is “pious propaganda.” The ancient covenant Muhammad
supposedly made with Christians, known as the Achtiname,
is indeed supposed to have been written by Muhammad around 628 to the
monks of St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. Unfortunately, it is of
even more doubtful authenticity than everything else about Muhammad’s
life. Muhammad is supposed to have died in 632; the Muslims conquered
Egypt between 639 and 641. The document says of the Christians, “No one
shall bear arms against them.” So were the conquerors transgressing
against Muhammad’s command issued just a few years before their invasion
of Egypt?
There is no mention of this document in any remotely contemporary
Islamic sources. Among other anomalies, it bears a drawing of a mosque
with a minaret, although minarets weren’t put on mosques until long
after the time Muhammad is supposed to have lived, which is why Muslim
hardliners consider them unacceptable innovation (bid’a).
The document exempts the monks of St. Catherine’s monastery from
paying the jizya. While it is conceivable that Muhammad, believing he
bore the authority of Allah, would exempt them from an obligation
specified by Allah himself in the Qur’an (9:29), the Achtiname specifies
that Christians of Egypt are to pay a jizya only of twelve drachmas.
Yet according to the seventh-century Coptic bishop John of Nikiou, who
had firsthand knowledge of what happened when the Arabs invaded Egypt,
Christians in Egypt “came to the point of offering their children in
exchange for the enormous sums that they had to pay each month.”
The Achtiname, in short, bears all the earmarks of being an early
medieval Christian forgery, perhaps developed by the monks themselves in
order to protect the monastery and Egyptian Christians from the
depredations of zealous Muslims. Modern scholars doubt its authenticity, and the prevailing opinion among Muslims is likewise dubious.
“Covenantal Theology: Can Muhammad’s Ancient Promise Inspire Muslim-Christian Peace Today?,” by Jayson Casper,
Christianity Today, December 21, 2018:
Christians esteem the biblical progression of covenants—Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic—finalized by Jesus as he ushered in the New.
But for the sake of religious freedom in the Muslim world, should they embrace a further covenant: Muhammadian?
Modern scholarship suggests the Muslim Prophet’s Christian covenants
could offer contemporary guidance; they already influenced a favorable
verdict in the case of Christian Asia Bibi in Pakistan.
After eight long years on death row, Bibi was
acquitted of blasphemy
by the Muslim nation’s Supreme Court in late October. The Christian
mother of five had been sentenced for uttering contempt for Muhammad,
the prophet of Islam, while attempting to drink water from a well.
The three-judge panel ruled that contradictions in
accuser testimony and Bibi’s forced confession by a local cleric
rendered the charges invalid.But in the
official court document,
one justice went as far as to partially base his judgement on how
Bibi’s accusers violated an ancient covenant of Muhammad to the
Christian monks of Mount Sinai—“eternal and universal … not limited to
[them] alone.”
“Blasphemy is a serious offense,” wrote judge Asif
Khosa, “but the insult of the appellant’s religion … was also not short
of being blasphemous.”
He referenced a 2013 book by John Morrow, a Canadian convert to Islam. The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World is an academic study of six treaties commanding the kind treatment of Christians, reportedly dated to the seventh century.
Each similar in scope, they command Muslims not to
attack peaceful Christian communities, to aid in the construction and
repair of churches, and even to allow self-regulation of tax payments.
It is “nothing short of providential,” Morrow wrote,
that they have been “rediscovered” at a time of widespread Islamist
violence against the Christians of the Middle East.
“For Muslims, it means a wake-up call, an awareness that they have deviated from the Islamic tradition,” Morrow
told Patheos, the religion and spirituality website.
“[It] requires that Muslims not only tolerate Christians, but love them as their brothers and sisters.”
This resonates with Mustafa Akyol, Turkish author of Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty.
“The Supreme Court of Pakistan must be congratulated,”
he said. “Both for saving Asia Bibi from execution, as well as taking
great pains to explain why this was the right Islamic thing to do.”
But the senior fellow at the
Cato Institute also gave two serious challenges for the treaties in
Covenants. Some experts dispute their authenticity; and most Muslims are unaware of them.
“Yet to me, these covenants look convincing, at least in
their general spirit,” said Akyol, “because they resonate with
ecumenical themes already in the Qur’an.”
Islam’s holy book calls Christians the closest of all
people to Muslims, with a direct call for the protection of synagogues,
churches, and monasteries.
What a smooth and devious deceiver Mustafa Akyol is. Here are some of the “ecumenical themes already in the Qur’an”:
Jesus is not the Son of God and belief in the Trinity is “excess”: “O
People of the Book! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter
anything concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of
Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and his word which he conveyed to
Mary, and a spirit from him. So believe in Allah and His messengers, and
do not say ‘Three.’ Cease! It is better for you! Allah is only One
Allah. It is far removed from his transcendent majesty that he should
have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the
earth. And Allah is sufficient as Defender.” — Qur’an 4:171
And: “It is not befitting to Allah that he should beget a son. Glory
be to him! When He determines a matter, he only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it
is.” — Qur’an 19:35
Jesus was not crucified: “And because of their saying: We killed the
Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah’s messenger – they did not kill him or
crucify him, but it appeared so to them; and those who disagree
concerning it are in doubt about it; they have no knowledge of it except
pursuit of a conjecture; they did not kill him for certain.” — Qur’an
4:157
Those who believe in the divinity of Christ are unbelievers: “They
have certainly disbelieved who say that Allah is Christ, the son of
Mary.” — Qur’an 5:17 (cf. 5:72)
Christians have forgotten part of the divine revelations they
received: “From those, too, who call themselves Christians, We did take a
covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message that was sent
them: so we estranged them, with enmity and hatred between the one and
the other, to the day of judgment. And soon will Allah show them what it
is they have done.” — Qur’an 5:14
Those who believe that Jesus is God’s Son are accursed: “The Jews
call Ezra a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of
Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; they but imitate what the
unbelievers of old used to say. Allah’s curse be on them: how they are
deluded away from the Truth! ” — Qur’an 9:30
Christians who do not accepted Muhammad and the Qur’an are the most
vile of created beings: “Nor did those who were given the Scripture
become divided until after there had come to them clear evidence. And
they were not commanded except to worship Allah, sincere to Him in
religion, inclining to truth, and to establish prayer and to give zakah.
And that is the correct religion. Indeed, they who disbelieved among
the People of the Book and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell,
abiding eternally therein. Those are the most vile of created beings.” —
Qur’an 98:6
Muslims must fight against and subjugate Christians: “Fight those who
believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden what has
been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion
of Truth, of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with
willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” — Qur’an 9:29
Also, a hadith has Muhammad predicting that Jesus will return at the
end of the world and break the cross, as it is an insult to Allah’s
power to say that he would have allowed one of his prophets to be
crucified: “Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, ‘By Him in Whose
Hands my soul is, son of Mary [Jesus] will shortly descend amongst you
people [Muslims] as a just ruler and will break the Cross and kill the
pig and abolish the Jizya [a tax taken from the non-Muslims, who are in
the protection, of the Muslim government]. Then there will be abundance
of money and nobody will accept charitable gifts.'” — Bukhari 3.34.425
Professor Mustafa Abu Sway of Al-Aqsa Mosque and Al-Quds
University in Jerusalem said Muhammad made agreements with many
Christian communities. He celebrates especially how the prophet received
delegates from Najran (near the border with Yemen), hosting them in his
mosque….
Bibi’s argument with her accusers started when they
refused to drink water from a Christian hand. This is against the
practice of Muhammad who freely ate with Jews, said Abu Muhammad
al-Maqdisi in Amman, who
according to a report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center is the leading Salafi-Jihadi theoretician in the world….
“O you who have believed, indeed the polytheists are unclean…” — Qur’an 9:28
Some may say that Islam doesn’t consider Christians to be
polytheists, but the Qur’an says otherwise. Its call to the “People of
the Book” not to “worship except Allah and not associate anything with
Him and not take one another as lords instead of Allah” (3:64) is a
rejection of the Christian idea of the divinity of Christ.
And despite acquitting Bibi, the Supreme Court verdict
also upheld the duty of the state to prevent blasphemy and confirmed
that capital punishment is consistent with Islam….
And for some Western experts, Covenants is shoddy scholarship of traditions invented to begin with.
The book is “pious propaganda,” said Mark Durie, an
Anglican pastor from Australia with a doctorate in Qur’anic theology. “I
don’t know of any serious scholar who believes [these texts] are
genuine.”
He believes they were produced by Christian communities angling for better treatment by Muslims.
For example, Muhammad had no contact with the tribes of
Sinai when the covenant with St. Catherine’s monastery was supposedly
composed. The stipulations better reflect concerns from later Egyptian
history when Christians were persecuted and prevented from repairing
churches.
Another curious note from the alleged recovered
covenants: Why would a community of monks receive a promise of religious
freedom for Christian women who marry Muslims?
“It is the survival strategy of a victim to praise the
abuser and become an apologist for his better side,” said Durie. “There
is no true freedom in making up stories about Muhammad; only proof of
bondage.”
Authentic or not, Mitri Raheb, former president of the
Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land,
said the covenants reflect how certain Muslims in certain contexts did
treat Christians positively….
Akyol said the solution is internal.
“The antidote to such bigotry, among whose victims Asia Bibi is only one, must come from Islam itself,” he said.
“The Supreme Court of Pakistan just showed us an example.”
