AMAZING! Revd Professor Keith Ward on Muhammad as a Prophet of God (2021-05-02) #

0:00:00 What do you as a Christian theologian make of the prophethood of Muhammad? 0:00:05 Do you have any thoughts about that?
0:00:10 I do think Muhammad was a genuine Prophet of God and that he was raised up by God 0:00:18 and that the Quran is in some way an expression of God's Revelation. So I do think that
0:00:33 I am a Christian, I'm a follower of Jesus, so clearly I'm not a Muslim but 0:00:39 I would I think I'm totally opposed to people who misunderstand Islam as a rejection of Christianity. 0:00:49 I think that is not true. I think Islam would as I see it and Muhammad I don't think he knew much 0:00:56 about Christianity. I would have thought he was opposed to some of the views of Christians that he 0:01:02 knew about and I think that's true, but I don't hold any of those views. In fact and none of my 0:01:08 colleagues do. So there are differences, I mean there are clear differences but I 0:01:16 think he was a genuine, Muhammed was a genuine Prophet of one God who stand against a sort of 0:01:27 popularized Christian version of there being three 0:01:31 gods or let's see three different things in god, was correct he was justified in this so I 0:01:39 see the difference between a school of Islam and a school of Christianity has 0:01:47 about the same sort of difference as a difference between me and conservative Evangelical Christians. 0:01:57 That there are differences I can live with those I can respect those who differ from me and I 0:02:04 think we have so I am not infallible so I'm not saying that I know that I'm right, to use 0:02:11 an expression from the Quran 'God will decide who is right' but you have to go along with your 0:02:17 own feelings so I follow Jesus because I think he was a human expression of the wisdom 0:02:26 and love of God and the main message of that is that God loves without exception everyone. 0:02:34 There are Christians who don't believe that, there are Muslims who do believe that, right but wouldn't 0:02:41 use words like Incarnation or the Trinity etc some certain forbidden terms but if you accept that 0:02:50 religious language is fluid and that all of us are unable to comprehend the nature of God precisely 0:02:59 I think islam and Christianity shouldn't really be regarded as two different religions. I 0:03:05 think they're two different ways of approaching God and I'm nearer to many Muslims than I am 0:03:13 to many Christians. So that's a very interesting answer can I ask this question it's really 0:03:20 really on behalf of i know some of the muslim viewers audience will want me to ask this. 0:03:26 Muslims also have a very high regard for Jesus clearly yes and see him as a an incredibly 0:03:34 wonderful human being who expressed the love of God to the outcasts and the sinners and so on and 0:03:39 and that's all wonderful, so your admiration for Jesus is shared by Muslims too, or they may be 0:03:47 expressed slightly differently of course. He's not seen as an Icon into God that we pray through 0:03:52 of course but they would wonder the question would be 'Why aren't you a Muslim?' If you accept it 0:04:00 in that mindset if you accept that Muhammad is a prophet of God and you believe in one god 0:04:05 god sent jesus that is virtually a definition of what a muslim believes anyway um so they would 0:04:12 ask why aren't you a muslim and and saying you're a christian is not an answer because 0:04:17 for the reasons you mentioned muslims can already encompass that understanding as well that he 0:04:21 is someone who expresses the love of God to you and the wisdom of God in a 0:04:25 very special way, you know many sufi muslims could say yeah absolutely we agree with you but we're 0:04:30 muslims so the question is 'Why are you not a Muslim?' That's the question. Well it's like 0:04:36 asking me why i'm an Anglican or an Episcopalian rather than a Methodist um because that's the way 0:04:47 of thinking of God which has i feel demanded my loyalty. So it's a bit like saying why 0:04:59 do you uh prefer one view of philosophy to another view of philosophy and you say well because 0:05:08 that that's the way that seems right to me that attracts me to demands my loyalty and once your 0:05:15 loyalty is demanded well i said this for a muslim too of course you stay true to what has revealed 0:05:22 god to you so i say all right the end why i'm a christian is because i have personally experienced 0:05:29 i believe that i have personally experienced the presence of jesus christ actually um 0:05:37 affecting what i feel and think. And so i have no alternative you know this is 0:05:45 this is the this is the person who has revealed god to me personally but i so i'm not denying 0:05:50 that muslims can have god revealed to them in a different way and i honor that way 0:05:56 but it's not my way that's not i would like to try to understand it more that's true 0:06:01 and be much in affinity with the Muslim world of thought but it's just not the way 0:06:11 that it's happened for me it's not my it's not my not part of my autobiography. A 0:06:19 supplementary question to that it just occurred to me you acknowledged that Muhammad is 0:06:24 a prophet, in your in your knowledge of your colleagues in in Christian theology globally 0:06:29 how widespread is that view do you think that Mohammed was a prophet of God amongst your 0:06:37 academic colleagues who are christian theologians? I think it's almost universally accepted, I mean as 0:06:43 you know even I suppose Roman Catholics are on the whole more conservative than i would be 0:06:49 as an episcopalian but they now officially believe that uh islam is a revelation of god and 0:06:57 that that's Vatican II, official electoration so i think it was my colleagues would undoubtedly 0:07:06 say that. I mean I know lots of Christians wouldn't. But no well that's 0:07:11 why i meant theologians, particularly those who know theologians would all accept
0:07:22 but you know the truth yeah well if you're asking the question how influential are 0:07:28 theologians on most christians the answer is not in this matter
0:07:34 yeah, no I there's some of you input yeah anyway but that's interesting that 0:07:39 that will come as quite a a revelation and a quite a shocking thing to say that 0:07:44 uh in your experience most of your academic christian theological colleagues who are 0:07:49 not catholics would actually see muhammad as a Prophet of God. Yes, yes, I think that's true. That's 0:07:56 remarkable! That I didn't know actually it was a genuine question of mine um that's interesting 0:08:01 so that that suggests a certain openness to other faiths and and overcoming these cultural barriers 0:08:06 and looking beyond our own comfort zones and and recognizing patterns of commonality and similar 0:08:12 spiritual dynamics and spiritual realities across the boundaries between religions and theologians 0:08:18 today are well equipped to do that in our world in our global village perhaps.
0:08:27 I know you will know the work of Wilfred Cantwell Smith who was the founder of Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions, 0:08:33 and he was an expert on islam that was his scholarly 0:08:39 field uh and he he actually recommended that we should stop using the word religion 0:08:45 as though there were different blocks of huge beliefs which everybody who's a christian has this 0:08:52 block and everybody who's a muslim has that block and we just should talk about ways of faith and 0:08:58 ways of approaching god and um i mean sympathy with that i think talking about a religion 0:09:06 you know some of my some of the christians i know don't believe anything that i believe 0:09:12 except they use the word jesus but they're talking about somebody else. 0:09:17 I think that this speaks of a yawning chasm shall we say between your world in that sense uh of the 0:09:24 academic theologians and certainly many in the pew say in the united states and and um africa 0:09:29 and other parts of the world where that they are exclusivists to the absolute you know only 0:09:35 i hear this all the time, only jesus will lead you to god and i say well okay so moses didn't 0:09:41 know jesus is he damned because you've got to believe in jesus to be saved well what about all 0:09:44 the prophets they didn't know and i'm not quite sure what the answer they give to that but it's 0:09:48 a very uh binary absolutist exclusive world view which is a million miles from your own of course 0:09:56 and it's a million miles away from uh saying that jesus is the savior of the world not of one little 0:10:06 group within the world and of course people like ME and again most most of my academic colleagues 0:10:14 would in general agree with this we would say that the savior of the world is of course god 0:10:21 and it's only insofar as jesus mediates god that jesus is the savior of the world and we believe 0:10:26 he does mediate god so we can say that but we're not excluding everybody else because god wants to 0:10:32 save the whole world and i'm very clear about that and i think some of my muslim friends and i have 0:10:42 been have a close association with the Oxford Islamic Centre and i think
0:10:51 most of them i think believe that too. 0:10:55 I just want to say thank you very much indeed for your time and um
0:11:03 it was really really fascinating and i know uh many muslims um will be very interested 0:11:09 in what you've said but in clarifying because we're often used to uh fundamentalist christians 0:11:14 having a go and to hear an alternative voice of which your voice is certainly 0:11:21 more more representative of christianity i think than the harsh extremism 0:11:28 that we hear of it's good that muslims hear this and you're more openness to 0:11:35 islam as well to be frank so um yeah thank you so much. I actually think Paul that until 0:11:43 all the the major developed spiritual faiths of the world i include india and buddhism 0:11:51 and forms of hinduism in this too until they come to a greater understanding of their own historical 0:11:59 perspective and development and and shared goals and their differences as well and but 0:12:06 have a sympathetic appreciation of that until that happens uh we're not going to adequately perceive 0:12:14 the truth of our own tradition that we belong to. Yes, excellent. Well thank you very much and 0:12:21 i'm going to end the discussion now and and thank you everyone for listening in and 0:12:27 please leave your comments and your thoughts as well. Until next time. Thank you. I do think 0:12:34 that Muhammad was a genuine Prophet of God. I do think that Muhammad was a genuine Prophet of God.