Be Careful with Muhammad! With Dr Shabbir Akhtar (2021-08-10) ​

0:00:00 Well hello there, my name is Paul Williams from Blogging Theology and you are almost 0:00:06 welcome. And today I have a very special guest Dr Shabbir Akhtar from the University of Oxford. 0:00:12 You're most welcome sir! Thank you very much Paul thank you. And I just want to 0:00:18 introduce briefly who Dr Shabbir is for those of you who don't know. He's a philosopher 0:00:25 trained at Cambridge University, as a PhD in Kierkegaard, I think the famous Danish philosopher 0:00:32 who's really worth reading actually, he's widely published on pluralism, race relations in the UK, 0:00:38 and Islam's and Christianity's differing responses to modern secularism particularly in the UK. 0:00:46 He's written some some of my favourite books actually he's written The Quran and the Secular 0:00:51 Mind, published in 2007 an absolute feast for the intellect, it is one of Dr Tim Winter's recommended 0:00:59 reading books in his reading list, and I agree with that. And another great one is Islam as a 0:01:04 Political Religion, published in 2010, another really weighty and fascinating tome. I recommend both of these. 0:01:12 But also he's gone even beyond that - he's published the first of a three volume 0:01:17 commentary on the Greek New Testament called The New Testament in Muslim Eyes: Paul's Letter to the 0:01:23 Galatians, published by Routledge. And I think that may be a first: a Muslim philosopher, theologian, 0:01:30 actually engaged with contemporary cutting edge biblical scholarship and looking at the Greek of 0:01:36 Paul's letter to the Galatians, so i have read that and that is actually for all theological students 0:01:41 again another work that's highly recommended actually not just obviously by me but by 0:01:46 the scholars. And he's currently a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religions at Oxford 0:01:53 University, and i know you've been a professor in the USA, i think in Indonesia as well, you were 0:01:58 yeah Malaysia, in Malaysia as well, so incredibly diverse varied and fascinating career. 0:02:06 But the the reason he is here today i invited him to appear today is another book 0:02:13 that has he's just republished actually it's called Be Careful with Muhammad, Salman Rushdie and 0:02:20 the Battle for Free Speech. Now it's the second edition with a huge new preface which i've 0:02:27 read and that's worth it's actually a work in its own right a massive survey of issues to do with 0:02:32 freedom of speech and islam and secularism and oh many many issues so it's that book i think that 0:02:38 really triggered people triggered me to think wow you know maybe dr shabir can talk about that so um 0:02:45 can you just uh first of all um say a bit about um who Salman Rushdie is because not particularly 0:02:53 younger viewers i'm gonna have no idea who this gentleman is and uh and also this book that he 0:02:58 wrote the 'Satanic Verses' it sounds evil! What is it what is this book about and why why is it cause 0:03:05 such a furore, such an upset amongst Muslims in the UK. Well thank you very much Paul for inviting 0:03:13 me. Salam to everyone and also happy new muslim year in the month of muharram ii a good uh time to 0:03:23 speak on this topic uh paul is a mutual pleasure by the way i'm awesome admirer of your 0:03:29 blogging theology and you're a very erudite uh man yourself even though you don't have 0:03:35 the title of professor you don't need one um let me see what this book is about it's uh 0:03:41 as you say it goes back an event that took place about 30 years ago uh the salman rushdie affair 0:03:49 not just the publication of rushdie's book the satanic verses which i'll explain what's 0:03:53 in it but also our muslim response to it i was one of the campaigners and 0:03:58 this book actually the original book is a record of a campaign the preface 0:04:03 30 years on these were everything that's happened in the last 30 years the book was um published in 0:04:09 1988 autumn and then i wrote my response in 1989 soon after the fatwa was issued the sentence 0:04:19 sentencing summaries due to death by the late ayatollah khomeini my book is a survey of all 0:04:24 these events the book burning in bradford um 30 years on i think the issues are so relevant 0:04:31 uh paul what i do is i look at the charlie hebdo affair among other cartoon 0:04:36 controversies in the danish context as well that's part of the preface but the preface 0:04:40 really does try and cover it multi-dimensionally the event actually is a very interesting one in 0:04:46 islamic history it's greatly uh debated many words that there was such an incident the allegation 0:04:53 is that and it's recorded in islamic history by the way 0:04:58 and other historians that on one occasion surah 53 um the prophet's attempt to deliver the revelation 0:05:06 was interrupted by the devil who inserted a number of verses into the revelation now these verses are 0:05:12 not found in in any manuscript in the quran they were immediately removed during the time 0:05:17 the lifetime of the prophet so and there's a lot of dispute about whether the incident is genuine 0:05:23 or whether it was actually just invented perhaps possibly by muslims themselves 0:05:28 to provide an occasion of revelation for a verse in chapter 22 a different surah of the quran 0:05:34 which says that whenever satan tries to interject something into the mouth one of our messengers we 0:05:41 ourselves meaning god we cancel it we acknowledge so some people think it may actually just be an 0:05:46 artificial maneuver others think the incident is real but of course it doesn't occur in any extant 0:05:52 mastery of the holy quran what i think rushdie did is that he took an arguably real incident 0:05:58 in the history of the revelation of the quran and early islam and then he exaggerated it he 0:06:04 said well if a couple of verses in the quran could temporarily at least be from the devil 0:06:10 why isn't it possible that the entire quran is from the devil that's obviously the great 0:06:15 hyperbole and exaggeration so i take him to task for that suggestion because i think such a 0:06:20 revisionist account of history even in a fictional form is a very profound insult and abuse it's not 0:06:27 really a critique of islamic origins that's the background the rest was our reaction to it which 0:06:32 i've documented and i must say paul that i believe that the salman rushdie affair is not really just 0:06:39 to do salman rushdie it's true that he wrote the book to which we reacted but had we not reacted 0:06:45 there would not have been such an affair at all i think that the affair was an important one 0:06:50 a lot of people criticized me recently 30 years old saying our reaction to this was wrong perhaps 0:06:57 we ourselves are responsible for the islamophobia that has grown in the aftermath to which i respond 0:07:02 well islamophobia predates the affair and sadly it will long outlive it is that sufficient 0:07:10 paul for now well that that's that's very succinct uh summary i mean there's some spectacular global 0:07:17 phenomena that happen for example as you say the ayatollah hominy issued uh uh what in the west 0:07:23 is understood to be a fatwa is a death sentence isn't it in the west that's how it's understood 0:07:28 because it couldn't be further from the truth a fact were simply a a legal ruling issued by a 0:07:33 jurist it could be on any subject yeah the the ayatollah issued a death sentence and um the 0:07:40 the summon russia who's a novelist um given an obe by the queen for his services to britain um 0:07:46 extraordinary really um to be protected 24 hours a day by british police he may still be protected i 0:07:53 don't know um and so he's virtually in hiding for many years because of this novel satanic 0:07:59 verses that he wrote all those years ago it's an extraordinary reaction to a work of fiction but
0:08:07 well well paul firstly with regard to fatwa as you say the fatwa simply means legal judgment it need 0:08:15 not be binding however if it's issued by a head of state like community was obviously just by at 0:08:20 least to the people who follow him in that country uh the word fatwa it's a quranic term incidentally 0:08:26 the verb and the noun are used it basically means a judgment so obviously a fatwa from god 0:08:32 for example in several parts to quran there's a fatwa about a particular very intricate 0:08:38 matter of inheritance at the end of chapter four obviously the word fatwa the verbal form is used 0:08:44 there but actually in islamic history uh there have been a variety of fatawa or plural one of 0:08:50 the most famous ones was ironically given by ibn rushd avarice who wrote a book a whole treatise 0:08:58 in the form of fatwa because he was a maliki jurist and the book is called the compatibility 0:09:04 of the sharia the holy law with wisdom philosophy so it's strange that the word fatwa was associated 0:09:10 with something in purely intellectual and two recent years where now of course many 0:09:15 people misinterpret it to mean the fatwa means a death sentence specifically of course it doesn't 0:09:20 mean that but nonetheless it's a partnerable um era because a lot of westerners won't know that 0:09:25 background which is why i'm glad you asked me so i can clarify i should also clarify another point 0:09:30 in order to maintain a position of moral consistency for my work as a campaigner i 0:09:36 don't wish to comment on the validity of the fatwa and i don't do so in my book what i say there is 0:09:41 that this fatwa is for people who are subject to its jurisdiction let's just say whoever takes imam
0:09:51 obviously i live in england which is my country adopted citizenship i enjoy degree of religious 0:09:57 freedom here there are occasions when the secular state law conflicts religious law 0:10:02 and my conscience but that doesn't give me the right to implement fatwa here i 0:10:06 want to make that clear that i wanted to maintain a morally consistent position on the fatwa however 0:10:11 i do defend the book burning which you may come to later on which i think is fully within the law 0:10:16 and my book was written as a liberal response to rushdie meaning i wanted to as a philosopher 0:10:22 argue a case rather than simply respond to critics who are saying well you muslims don't know how to 0:10:28 answer salman rushdie therefore you wish to kill him i said no that's not the case we can answer 0:10:33 him if we're given a chance in the media and eventually were after a long struggle as far as 0:10:38 the killing of the apostate is concerned i do debate the israel apostasy in general but not 0:10:44 just simply with respect to rushdie finally a ps the idea of a legal judgment but there's no 0:10:50 monopoly of islam you know catholic canon law is a response uh a response i'm sure you know what uh 0:10:56 well better than i do so you know we're not unique in having legal judgments as you know catholicism 0:11:02 uh different from protestantism does have certain kind of canon law and you can ask for 0:11:07 authorities particularly the holy father to issue an important 0:11:11 fatwa if you like or response it's interesting it just struck me uh as you were talking about 0:11:17 catholic canon law during the time of elizabeth the first uh queen of england of course and uh 0:11:22 she was much hated by catholics for all sorts of reasons she seems a heretic and a persecutor 0:11:28 of catholics so the the rome the pope actually uh withdrew uh recognition of her as a head of state 0:11:34 and what this meant was that she was a legitimate target for assassination by catholics and this 0:11:40 didn't help catholics at all in england but uh but nevertheless it was kind of a fatwa in a way 0:11:47 and that's when catholics uh could have legitimately assassinated the queen of england
0:11:54 what would
0:11:58 historical point you're making it's absolutely true what you're saying the the reason why 0:12:02 people are not so familiar with this incident about the possible uh threat of assassination 0:12:08 because of the pope's action is because a great deal of um 0:12:12 you know people encyclicals as you know as they call people letters are not binding in the same 0:12:17 way uh as a response or you know juristic response would be but what you're referring to is a very 0:12:23 serious uh matter of canon law it wasn't just a papal encyclical paper encyclicals contain 0:12:29 what's called exhortation and admonition from the holy father of course they have normative 0:12:34 authority but anyway enough of that ought to get distracted into a debate on catholicism 0:12:40 thank you it's just one of the quick things i want to mention um about i saw this is a distraction 0:12:44 but i think it really is quite relevant to get a rounded picture of religious history in britain 0:12:48 uh every november the fifth we celebrate or most of the celebrate bonfire and we celebrate hey 0:12:55 uh if we you know why we're celebrating we're celebrating the deliverance of the king king 0:13:00 james of parliament from being blown up by these nasty evil catholics but what's interesting 0:13:06 the catholics did try and some catholics i should say did try and blow up parliament and kill the 0:13:11 king because of uh what he was doing to catholics but i i'm reminded of a recent um uh book 0:13:16 uh called the gun the gun gunpowder plot by uh frasier who she's a historian and a novelist and 0:13:24 it was um dedicated uh to her children and in the inside cover it says oh and some of my children 0:13:30 had really wished the gunpowder uh plotters had succeeded you know it was a sense of yeah yeah 0:13:35 there was a real cause for injustice and i thought reading that hang on if a muslim had said that 0:13:41 they would have been prosecuted for terrorism and uh well actually apologizing
0:13:54 the great novelist absolutely you know i'm aware of it uh by the way just to you know follow up 0:13:59 what you're saying paul as a matter of fact we burnt not myself personally but some people 0:14:03 burnt effigies of salmon rusty and bradford and um indeed in london and i was just saying that 0:14:09 analogously at the time yusuf islam actually said when somebody asked him on a live debate with me 0:14:15 we were among the muslims there present me and my brother yusuf islam about the effigy burning 0:14:21 i didn't comment on it but i remember yusuf saying perhaps he regretted it afterwards i don't know 0:14:26 he said well i don't have time to attend refugee burnings i'm a busy man but if it was the real 0:14:32 thing i might attend yeah you know i i yeah that caused a little bit of a fluttering in the media 0:14:37 absolutely absolutely um that's understandable hyperbole given the emotions at the time 0:14:42 but in your preface to your book um on on this um on the salman rushdie uh campaign against 0:14:50 his book you put the uh the argument perhaps of the adversary so in uh page 16 in the preface 0:14:56 you say freedom of religion is a right that conflicts with freedom of expression and speech 0:15:02 thus a citizen's right to believe in the faith of his or her own choice is intention with the 0:15:07 right of one's opponents to mock those freely chosen religious beliefs the liberal state 0:15:14 meaning the uk is committed to both principles simultaneously and must rely on the good will of 0:15:20 its citizens to forgo the right to offend others with opposed convictions religious believers too 0:15:27 need to show respect for the consciences of their secularist detractors now given that um matrix or 0:15:35 legal matrix as you call it uh and this is in reference also to the cartoons that appeared in 0:15:41 several european nations as well leading to the charlie hebdo murders in france how how do we 0:15:49 square this circle how do we have religious uh freedom of expression and the citizens right 0:15:56 also to uh criticize and even mock according to the charlie hebdo people they think it's 0:16:02 their what is their legal right in this country in france so how do you how do you as a muslim square 0:16:07 that's living in the west in in this difficult conundrum well it's a great question one of the 0:16:13 more difficult ones actually raised by my preface in the context of the preface i was posing this as 0:16:20 a problem for the liberal state they're just committed to two potentially contradictory 0:16:24 principles and therefore the state needs to do something about it but you have to be right to 0:16:29 put the burden on me as well as a muslim citizen of the united kingdom why should we deal with it 0:16:35 can we i mean i'm very keen actually to work with parliament you know behind the scenes uh on some 0:16:41 policy paper on this matter how did you well of course de facto what has happened so far is that 0:16:47 uh you know the the blasphemy law in england and worlds was abolished rather than extended you 0:16:52 know we had asked an extension to call islam under the the law of the time in 1989 uh only anglican 0:17:00 sensibilities were protected against what's called scarless attack extremely abusive yeah 0:17:06 so then presumably now under the public disorder act some amendments they're saying if something in 0:17:15 a multicultural society causes extreme provocation then the state may prosecute someone who has said 0:17:22 something let's say to do hate speech or trying to arouse sentiments which may get out of hand 0:17:30 apart from self-censorship by authors which i think is a separate issue you're asking me about 0:17:36 how do we deal with this legal tension well they say primarily it's a problem for the liberal state 0:17:41 but what i'm saying i'll say this now it's not in my book what i'm saying is that muslims also need 0:17:48 to show respect for the consciences not only of other fellow you know people of religions jews 0:17:55 christians but hindu sikhs but also the fact that the humanist tradition as a conscience too there 0:18:00 are some very uh fine human beings who are secular humanist and they may passionately believe as a 0:18:05 matter of principle and i actually agree with this uh principle-free speech my my concern is with its 0:18:11 precise content and parliamentary limits as to exactly when it is permitted and that's not a 0:18:19 muslim novelty the law already recognizes limitations so the way that this tension 0:18:24 is dealt with in law de facto rather than the journey is that people in fact already 0:18:30 a self-censorship by authors b the government does take people to task if it thinks that what 0:18:36 they've said is not simply a matter of a religious prejudice but what may be called 0:18:43 racial discrimination these are entirely different things religious prejudice 0:18:47 is held to be something private whereas all racism is public because racism is 0:18:52 is prejudiced private prejudice plus the power to implement your prejudice that amounts to racism 0:18:58 and that's illegal you know you just have to go to an industrial tribunal um so i would say that 0:19:05 you'd have to look at this on a case-by-case basis the people have citizens have the right to have 0:19:13 you know freedom of uh their worship and other citizens the right to mock the beliefs of these 0:19:20 people who are religious aren't we in practice balance them well people do in fact balance them 0:19:26 to a variety of things one the law is rather ad hoc and piecemeal it does have 0:19:31 provision for public disorder something that may lead to a provocation of a scurrilous type 0:19:39 and of course in practice because the cultural capital that's now going in britain 0:19:44 whereby there's some informal respect for the prophet muhammad and for the muslim faith 0:19:48 developing over the last 30 years is not uniform now people also of course you know in the cartoon 0:19:54 affair want to mock islam but i think there's a lot of self-restraint especially in britain 0:19:59 that's true in denmark uh in fact even finland had an incident by their cartoon so i mean i go in the 0:20:06 book is that fair enough more for now i'm sorry if i'm walking well it's a difficult sorry i'm 0:20:12 just reminded uh of two different things that speakers corner which i go to sometime that's 0:20:16 a place in high park in london where free speech is uh by statute actually by act of parliament is 0:20:22 is protected uh by legal right uh there's been an incident recently where a uh well in my viewer a 0:20:29 notorious missionary um who has desecrated the quran by uh drilling holes in it and by weighing 0:20:37 charlie charlie hepto cartoons every week and saying uh things which i won't repeat on 0:20:42 camera about the prophet himself uh she was very regrettably she was attacked she was stabbed now 0:20:48 she's okay physically and muslims uh have roundly condemned this physical attack on her of course 0:20:55 but nevertheless she um does seem to be protected in her in her right to be particularly noxious and 0:21:03 abusive and insulting towards uh the prophet of islam and i say physically desecrating the quran 0:21:09 and that is protected uh by by law and there hasn't been an uh and there's been a um 0:21:16 obviously a lot of support in the press for her uncritically not taking into account that she is 0:21:21 in my view a hate preacher she's not uh offering arguments and criticism she's offering uh uh abuse 0:21:29 and then i was reminded with the statues in i don't know in in whitehall and trages square 0:21:33 like the one of churchill in parliament square which was uh had uh graffiti uh daubed in it and 0:21:40 and that was not seen as acceptable uh free speech by society and uh the perpetrators were arrested 0:21:45 and you know the idiot was taken away says it's okay to desecrate the crime but it's not okay to 0:21:51 put graffiti on a statue of winston churchill uh about a mile away and um there seems to be some 0:21:58 interesting um standards or uh perhaps not making yes absolutely yeah let me comment on both points 0:22:04 uh well um yes so this is part of a larger concern about double possibly even triple standards of um 0:22:12 justice in this matter to which muslims are routinely subject i'm afraid you know we're not 0:22:18 asking for any special prerogative we're asking for fair treatment equality under the law like so 0:22:23 foreign holocaust denial is illegal in france it seems very remarkable that muslims are a fair game 0:22:30 you know that macro himself is taking somebody to task for macron being portrayed as hitler which is 0:22:37 basically the covered requirement of a vaccination so there's lots of these cases the lady whom you 0:22:43 mentioned whose name escapes me pattern is her name she's from turkey originally patton 0:22:50 the lady in the speaker's corner i mean yeah she's a presumably an evangelical 0:22:55 convert to christianity yeah well yeah i i think that her behavior is irresponsible 0:23:00 uh especially to describe physical copies of the quran however she does of course 0:23:04 have the right to uh say that she thinks that islam is not a true religion that's criticism 0:23:11 and especially with the zeal of the convert she'll want to say that i myself also condemn physical 0:23:17 attacks on someone who says that as you say paul it's a right protected by statute law then the 0:23:24 question simply is the individual who speaks there and i've heard some very very nasty and 0:23:29 fiery stuff from both sides whether i should add i've attended it on occasion um then it's simply a 0:23:36 matter of being irresponsible as she is i mean she should await the consequence of saying such things 0:23:41 i'm not quite sure what her point was in desecrating the quran because all the points 0:23:46 she wants to make valid points about why she on grounds of conscience left islam let's say and 0:23:52 thinks there's something wrong with the faith and that christianity is a superior often salvation 0:23:56 she has every right to say that we're very lucky actually that we live in a in the united kingdom 0:24:02 which i have always argued in my book 30 years ago too a very mature liberal democracy why do 0:24:07 i say it's mature well the proof is that thank god we don't go around the police doesn't go 0:24:12 around gunning down people at demonstrations i mean i myself took place in many demonstrations 0:24:17 and the police were there to protect both the demonstrators and those who demonstrate against us 0:24:21 like women against fundamentalism for example you know made a counter-demonstration in london 0:24:27 in may of 1989 i remember that occasion i tried myself to engage with them saying you know you've 0:24:33 got very good points we're not debating all injustice we're just talking about rushdie one 0:24:39 book and i always joke with people that you know people say you are like nazis with the inquisition 0:24:44 with the burning of books well we did burn only one book i mean and we were a powerless minority 0:24:50 the nazis burned many books and they were powerful and they were fascists which we certainly aren't 0:24:56 now indeed that's very good just to look at your the last paragraph in your preface to the second 0:25:02 edition of the book you you say something very interesting um relevant here i think 0:25:07 you say um in your role as an organic rather than a deracinated public muslim intellectual you wish 0:25:13 to see contemporary islam treated as an indigenous faith no longer a foreign transplant granted onto 0:25:21 an alien and barren western tree its practical fruit may not be a formal legal recognition of 0:25:27 islam's place in the western public sector however it meaning islam intends to achieve a minimum 0:25:34 level of respect for the prophet of islam this informal and internalized recognition of the 0:25:40 dignity of our prophet within culture art literature and the moral values of the west 0:25:45 would be no mean achievement it will enable cohesion and harmony in societies that aspire 0:25:50 to being mature democracies that can effectively manage uh internal descent i think that's a very 0:25:58 uh very well very well put and i i mean is it something that tim winter said in his uh recent uh 0:26:04 book on uh muslims in uh europe um that the uh someone uh believers who aspire to follow the 0:26:13 abrahamic faith the faith of abraham have more rights he says to um to europe as a heritage than 0:26:21 atheists do who disown the religious patrimony of uh of their society and i know what he means 0:26:29 muslims uh people who follow abraham see uh see god they they see the glory of his creation they 0:26:36 understand the moral universe we live in and so many of these uh aspects of islam are identical to 0:26:42 the traditional christian indigenous understanding of society man's role within it and morality and 0:26:49 traditional values but these are rejected by the new atheists like hawkings and and richard harris 0:26:55 and others so in a curious way muslims have a better right he argues to uh europe than the 0:27:02 atheists do who are often vicivirus in campaigning against i mean speakers corners some of the the 0:27:08 most hostile voices against islam or muslims are atheists and the irony is that that they are less 0:27:14 uh they can identify less with the heritage of the west i would he would argue that muslims can you 0:27:20 can say yes you were right to see god traditional values life after death the resurrection of the 0:27:25 day of the day of jude all those themes are there in christianity as they are in islam
0:27:33 yes a very intriguing question uh let me comment on that i mean uh firstly uh uh tariq ramadan 0:27:41 my colleague until recently at oxford university and someone with all my core debates against 0:27:47 douglas murray in cambridge union and we won i should have um as also of course for a long time 0:27:52 uh to argue about the idea of a european islam in which muslims are not aliens here 0:27:58 you know they are here to settle and they should be argued develop a fake or uh law legal system of 0:28:06 for suitable for a minority a muslim minority um professor abdullah murad another friend 0:28:13 of mine he has rightly argued in his book traveling home if i would go further than uh
0:28:20 on this point i think that there should be recognition of classical not modern classical 0:28:26 arabic as every bit an important language of europe as greek and latin and yeah i entirely 0:28:33 agree with abdullah on this and i would go a step further um yes i think that this is a very 0:28:40 uh profound point that makes that you know islam one of the abrahamic 0:28:45 feds uh has a greater right than the atheists lobby which is repudiated the whole of the 0:28:52 christian heritage and indeed attacked it um so yeah i'm very happy to see things in that 0:28:58 direction i think this will be the grounds for the development of a kind of cultural
0:29:04 capital for the respect to islam remember cultural meaning because culture and moral 0:29:11 normative attitudes inside culture towards the prophet will be a precursor to formal legal 0:29:17 ways of protecting islam which is my ultimate hope which is what i meant in the preface to 0:29:22 the last part of the presence you quoted at length paul that was my point about being organic 0:29:28 and not denacionated well it's a big temptation i think for muslims intellectuals to want to become 0:29:37 defenders of islam not to live among their people and to 0:29:41 look at their concerns this happens to many people marxism has suffered from this the language that 0:29:45 marxist scholars use is not something the ordinary workers used in the factory floor 0:29:50 and they followed the claim to be defending ordinary workers the proletariat feels that most 0:29:55 these university professors are talking to each other in the setting of oxbridge and other feudal 0:30:00 academia so i want to belong to people um and i did and i do well 0:30:06 because i live in a state of involuntary holy poverty unlike the prophet who lived in a state 0:30:11 of voluntary holy poverty i have no choice but to live among my people i don't have the money to go 0:30:16 and move out into the suburbs but i enjoy living among our own people and serving them placing my 0:30:21 scholarship at their feet i did that in bradford i mean my only complaint of course is that um 0:30:27 sadly as a culture the muslims don't make any room for the intellectual or for the man of 0:30:33 genius or you know for the scholar or whatever now they have a place for the um who is uh 0:30:39 into classical islamic learning but not for the place of simply a thinker wants to serve islam 0:30:45 um sadly we don't have that place i mean there are reasons for this i've mentioned other books 0:30:50 of mine one you mentioned on politics that you know we are a religion which 0:30:55 you know values martyrdom more than uh intellectuals and that's fine by me 0:31:00 but still it would be nice to get a bit of respect after serving the community activity for 30 years 0:31:05 and laying my own well my life at the time you know against racist groups and i didn't get police 0:31:10 protection and certainly my career which has suffered a great deal because of standing up and 0:31:15 i don't regret it that was the point of writing by the way this particular book i wanted to say 0:31:21 clearly that i'd like to reaffirm my commitment to the unnegotiable honor of the prophet muhammad 0:31:28 30 years on in case someone thought i'd mellowed and was now you know arguing for the fact that i 0:31:34 was just a young man at the time in my in my late 20s and now i'd no longer believe 0:31:38 in it i still affirm it no go good i appreciate your strong clear your strong clear voice and 0:31:46 about the absence of intellectuals in the world i mean so many muslims i know 0:31:50 are very bright they become doctors accountants uh i don't know they work in computing and so on 0:31:55 and i'll give you yeah when you're going to when someone gonna try and be a philosopher or a 0:32:00 or a new testament scholar biblical scholar for example i know one person i think you you know i 0:32:07 don't mention his name of course who is doing a phd at oxford uh who's sorry muslim uh from 0:32:12 a pakistani background as well he was doing uh a doctrine in the bible and he hopefully will become 0:32:18 a biblical scholar but i think he's pretty much a well a pioneer perhaps after you after you anyway 0:32:23 but we need more we need more uh muslim voices in academia in theology and biblical studies and 0:32:30 history and so on i think the young shoots are coming through but uh at the moment they're 0:32:34 not as visible as they might be shall we say well there are several things we said about 0:32:39 this uh you want me to mention the name of the default student or you can i i'm not going to 0:32:45 i believe it's a sake to whom you're referring and he's doing a doctorate 0:32:51 with the people with whom i work as well at the center for christian muslim studies 0:32:55 um yes he's trying to acquire the original languages well several issues are here um 0:33:00 you know paul to be fair to why people you know for law and engineering firstly i come from a 0:33:06 poor working-class background in bradford and i remember my father being distinctly disappointed 0:33:12 that i'd won a scholarship to cambridge to read philosophy i think he would have 0:33:18 you know if me and my two brothers that remain in pakistan he would have liked to have seen us 0:33:22 become commissioned army officers and go and fight indians and kashmir so it was a bit of 0:33:27 disappointing have a son who was going to be a bookworm all his life um but you know to be 0:33:32 fair to why parents make that choice i think it's because it's very difficult to earn a living in 0:33:38 academia this profile i mean since there's no one like quite like me in terms of being a committed 0:33:44 muslim as well as a professional philosopher and a new testament scholar and a poet etc and you know 0:33:49 it means you're a pioneer but it doesn't mean that you're going to face a lot of hardship because you 0:33:53 don't fit into any cat again how to earn a living unless you're lucky enough to have a private um 0:33:59 well to have patronage neither which i have so it's been difficult but you know god provides 0:34:04 and i think it's also true that as the muslim community becomes more affluent 0:34:10 some people will want to become novelists and writers and academics and philosophers but 0:34:16 the other and rather than merely always going into the safe professions accounting law well 0:34:21 nothing wrong with those noble professions good way to living but i think also that 0:34:29 to what extent this will happen depends upon if any role models of successful 0:34:34 muslim academics you know for example dr osama azmi uh has been at oxford my my colleague do 0:34:41 not directly my colleague based on middle eastern studies at centennial's very fine scholar has you 0:34:47 know fluency in arabic as well as other languages and the question is that young scholars you know 0:34:53 is he going to make in academia will there be opposition especially if he's a committed muslim 0:34:58 you know a lot of muslims in western academia tends to sell out you know if you want him in 0:35:02 yourself true to yourself like i have and then try to create a counter narrative to what you think is 0:35:08 wrong about western liberal academia but while earning a living then that academia as opposed 0:35:14 to being at a madrassa it's a great achievement but it does mean it's extremely difficult so we 0:35:19 had a conference in oxford recently where uh some people wanted to look at examples of successful 0:35:25 muslim academics in academia and sadly it was pretty hard to find people in the humanities 0:35:30 with the exception of uh certainly now you know no longer with us professor professor 0:35:36 ramadan professor doctor fifi alakit is with us a great scholar of al-qaida and this is still only 0:35:45 three people in the whole of feudal academia and but we've got auto engineers we've got you know 0:35:51 processes of biochemical engineering sadly also same caveat applies to nuclear physics by the way 0:35:57 that's another dangerous profession to be in apart from the risk of being assassinated by israelis 0:36:02 while you're living in iran you know and i'm sure it's stretched all the way down 0:36:08 no that's absolutely absolutely fascinating um i i the risk of boring the viewers i do want to 0:36:12 stress uh how um worthwhile reading these two books authored by dr shabir akhtar the crown 0:36:19 and the secular mind um which uh you know i've read a few books and this is one of the best i've 0:36:25 ever read it's a extraordinary uh um synthesis of different registers of learning western philosophy 0:36:32 which have a phd and obviously and islamic studies the quran obviously you can read the arabic um and 0:36:38 that and and this engagement with secularism which is absolutely fundamental i think here 0:36:42 in france and in britain and in america as well so i i strongly urge uh readers it is 0:36:47 an advanced text and and abdol abdul harim murad professor at cambridge has it on his recommended 0:36:54 reading list but it's an advanced text so um you know think about what you will um but also 0:37:00 islam as a political religion and it it takes on board fearlessly the the early expansion of the 0:37:07 the muslim uma and the armies into the uh levant and north africa and so on and the justification 0:37:14 for that and and islam is an imperial faith as well and i like the the bold fearless way that 0:37:20 you assert that rather than um kind of apologetic uh slightly defensive way you you assert uh the 0:37:28 truth of that in a very a good way i think so and also for aspiring new testament scholars or news 0:37:34 students of the bible who want to see a muslim perspective uh his uh commentary on paul's letter 0:37:40 to the galatians a really important letter uh in the new testament uh poly paul's earliest 0:37:46 um a minute engagement with the greek and also it is quite objective actually it's not um a 0:37:53 tendentious uh commentary it's you're trying to bring out the meaning but also you hold back 0:37:59 quite often for making pronouncements clearly you're muslim and you don't uh it comes out 0:38:03 the very end perhaps of the book you you you you view paul paul's uh religious life in a somewhat 0:38:10 negative way but nevertheless there's a work of scholarship and and is worthy to stand there with 0:38:15 other commentaries by jimmy dunn and other british uh scholars as well so i commend that uh the the 0:38:22 new testament he muslim eyes paul's letter to the galatians published by uh rootledge and there's 0:38:28 um is it is a three volume commentary what would be the next one in that series dr well the next 0:38:34 one will be a more general survey the entire new testament with particular emphasis on one of the 0:38:39 key gospels called gospel of luke which in my view is more or less fully compatible with the image of 0:38:45 jesus christ in the holy quran and i should add by the way that just very briefly that the galatians 0:38:53 book has received a lot of favorable reviews from christians and also a lot of negative reviews it's 0:38:59 endorsed by professor paul fidess a professor of systematic theology at the university of oxford my 0:39:04 colleague and one of my allies actually he says that the book comes yes he says that the book 0:39:09 i've written comes from the center of islam sunni orthodox defender of the faith 0:39:14 he said sometimes such works may be expected from progressive muslims or muslims who are often seen 0:39:20 by mainstream muslims as not real believers but he said no one doubts your credentials so that 0:39:25 that's that's important for me i should say on the islamist political religion kind of you to 0:39:29 mention that paul you're one of the few people who's actually discussed it it's been ignored by 0:39:33 critics and i think the reason is because i think people found his arguments on the the question of 0:39:39 terrorism and islam as a political religion i think they found him unanswerable i've done my 0:39:44 best to boldly answer the critics of the prophet's political ministry and i've also discussed 0:39:51 political violence in the modern world including 911 i've done it as fair as i could and i i 0:39:56 noticed that nobody reviewed my book and that can't be because i'm unknown to those people 0:40:00 because i noticed they have reviewed all my other works including my three poetry volumes but which 0:40:05 is very difficult to get reviewed but no one touched my book on politics that's a shame because 0:40:10 it it it is a substantial tone that deserves to be studied it should be on the bibliography 0:40:15 undergraduate level there's another advanced text i would say like uh the quran and the secular mind 0:40:20 but he looks at all these issues from a muslim point of view but fully conversant with western 0:40:25 political theory and and and so on so it's again an intellectual feast for those of us who enjoy 0:40:32 uh such things and that's you serve up these uh wonderful dishes from time to time and that's why 0:40:37 i like your work so much um so well i only wish for that my actual cooking was as good 0:40:43 as this intellectual dishes that i serve up thank you though we can't anyway so the next 0:40:48 one you say in that series will be on the gospel of luke okay so is it is it work on christology 0:40:53 perhaps is that the focus of that or would it so would it be a commentary on luke i should say 0:40:58 yeah it is actually on christology not just on look um it's rather involved on trade airport if 0:41:04 you don't mind me saying so it's complicated i think you would follow it but i'm not sure how 0:41:08 many other people would because you obviously know both islam and christianity yes it's a 0:41:13 major work on christology i'd like to think it'll be a landmark once it's finished along 0:41:18 with the third volume which looks at christian origins the question of revisionist history 0:41:25 uh like my colleagues are very excited although of course they are colleagues who are also very 0:41:30 concerned because they won't be happy i mean some people found my book on galatians 0:41:34 desolating others found it exhilarating these two words have been used by faculty colleagues 0:41:41 really well they're extraordinary adjectives to use of a work on new testament studies uh that 0:41:46 they're very very emotive uh expressions that's very true that's very true yeah um 0:41:52 just kind of better when will your book on christology be published do you think 0:41:57 well inshallah god willing it will be out sometime next year next year 0:42:03 good well i should certainly get that and review it on blogging theology thank you i think i should 0:42:08 certainly uh look forward to that enormously um maybe this is a good time to uh bring our 0:42:14 conversation to a close um but is there anything further you want to say i haven't focused too 0:42:19 much on the book uh be careful with mohammed that that's an interesting title be careful mohammed 0:42:25 where does that come from very interesting well it's it's a it's a persian proverb which was taken 0:42:31 seriously by western christian missionaries working in persia in iran uh the proverb was 0:42:39 say whatever you like about god literally be mad in taking liberties with god but 0:42:45 hoshar muhammad in farsi be careful with muhammad why well because the prophet of islam is our man 0:42:53 we alone love him christians and jews don't think much of it i even think he's a a prophet 0:42:59 let alone the final and greatest prophet uh you know while of course muslims are very generous to 0:43:06 jesus and to moses but no such curse is shown to our prophet however uh take liberties with god 0:43:12 means that there's a legitimate doctrinal dispute about the nature and actions of 0:43:18 of god whom we all share in the abrahamic faith but the prophet muhammad is simply our man and we 0:43:23 we love him and since we are the only ones to defend him you people who are who don't 0:43:28 understand our love for him just be careful i should say this book for the revised version 0:43:34 is very widely available there's more technology now to do 0:43:38 kindle and e-books and pdfs which we didn't have you know in the past it was just paperback so 0:43:44 it's very widely available the big emphasis on it is it's a satirical work as well i i want to 0:43:50 highlight the fact i think that if we are going to be satirized we should answer the idiom of satire 0:43:55 so you'll have noticed the preface quite a few jokes at the expense of my enemies and critics 0:44:00 okay well that's a very british tradition as well of course uh going back to entries 0:44:05 political card saturdays cartoons and so on um well that's excellent i will put links uh in the 0:44:12 box below description box below um to be careful with mohammed this second edition so you can 0:44:18 get uh kindle or hardback or paperback or whatever it comes in um but also to my favorite my two 0:44:24 favorite books uh the quran and the secular mind and islam as a political uh religion oh 0:44:30 and also his commentary on galatians of course so let's hang there's four books i'll put links to 0:44:34 um that's probably enough uh to be going on um but uh there is a website uh you have a 0:44:39 website dr shabir um i urge readers just to uh keep your eye on that sign subscribe to it uh 0:44:46 and look out for this new book on uh christology on luke's gospel next year because he promises to 0:44:51 be a bit of a a milestone an event in the history of british publishing in as much as uh you as a 0:44:58 muslim theologian and philosopher new testament scholar are writing on a christian text and uh 0:45:05 but in a way that uh you know puts you alongside the other uh new testament scholars in britain in 0:45:10 their work on the bible so uh thank you so much uh for coming on blogging theology dr shabir akhtar 0:45:17 and um hopefully we'll see you again maybe to talk about your uh new book when that comes out so um 0:45:23 thank you so much indeed well thank you paul um i'm very honored and pleased to have given 0:45:30 this interview to you paul as i say erudite man i can't see a picture of your library i 0:45:34 think that's enough to intimidate your viewers you don't have your library in the background
0:45:41 you've got every book on christian theology and on islam i was published 0:45:45 no i i i'm actually in france at the moment and i'm going to i'm going to london on friday we're 0:45:50 back back with my library i don't have it here with me in france unfortunately 0:45:54 um all right and until next time thank you bye-bye thank you thank you