Slavery: A Retrospective

Slaves Vary

Slavery often brings to mind manacled black people toiling the plantations in the Southern US States for their white masters. However, the history of slavery is more pervasive and nuanced than many of us would feel comfortable to admit. For example, the etymology of the word slave is from ‘Slav’, who were Eastern European people commonly traded across Europe during the Middle ages; white Europeans enslaving white Europeans. Although slaves in a particular society of history might have had a shared ethnicity, it has not been so exclusively. When Portuguese merchants looking for gold arrived in West Africa in the fifteenth century, they were obliged to use the currency of the indigenous people: slaves (#2 Ch.1). An already well established intra continental trade; black Africans enslaving black Africans.

The very concept of slavery encompasses a range of historical and geographical contexts and lingers on even until this very day, from the galleys of Imperial Rome to the harīm of an Ottoman Sultan, from the Mamluk slave army of Egypt to bondage workers in modern Niger, and from Hideyoshi’s invasion and enslavement of Koreans to Maoris taking slave war captives to increase their food production and as food themselves (#2 Ch.1). Slavery is the most emotive form, but by no means the only form of subordination and coerced labour in history; whether enforced by governmental or private enterprise; or of a hereditary caste, individual fate or as a punishment.

The start of slavery is obscure, but it has been around ever since the invention of agricultural tools (#3).  A person from an unmechanised agrarian society could easily conceptualise his farm labourers as a type of livestock. A sentence of slavery was often given as a punishment to criminals or defeated foes and was also seen as a sign of conquest and triumph; Julius Caesar (d. 44 BCE) boasted of selling tens of thousands of Celts into slavery in a single day (#7). Enslavement was generally considered a natural response to the ‘other’, the foreigner. 

Whilst in our minds we might see slavery as the sign of a backwards society, Greek culture saw it as necessary to democratisation. Aristotle (d. 322 BCE) distinguished between the ‘civilised’ Greek citizens and the ‘barbarian’ – those who could not speak Greek nor were part of the ‘polis’ – which he referred to as the ‘community of slaves.’ Greek culture defined itself as the people of superior rational thought and by this rationale all people not of this culture were irrational and therefore were by nature slaves, merely a ‘living tool’. 

Greek concepts of rational and irrational were revived by Renaissance thinkers to justify their use of African slaves in the transatlantic slave trade. Black Africans were stereotyped and their cultural practices were misunderstood, denigrated as uncivilised, inferior and only associated with physical prowess. This conflation between race and slavery during the transatlantic slave trade is what made it so particularly vile.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

Developments in nautical engineering in the late Fifteenth Century meant that the Portuguese were in a position to deal directly with African gold merchants and bypass North Africa, where the Muslims monopolised the trade in exchange for salt. Having established trade routes by sailing down the West African coast, the Portuguese struggled to trade in an already saturated market. They were able to compete in, and eventually control the market by tapping into the slave trade there, facilitating a more expeditious route than the perilous Saharan journey.  This is similar to how the British gained legitimacy with China by trading opium from India in exchange for tea.

African slaves became more significant to the Mediterranean as supply was decreasing from elsewhere; the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 meant the loss of the Black Sea and Balkan slave routes. The Portuguese, as leaders of the African coastal trade, gained experience in long-distance, deep-sea commerce and with vast improvements to the capabilities of shipping formed the foundations for the European slave trade to new colonies across the Atlantic.

Greater European demand for ‘cash crops’ - sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee and cocoa - increased the demand for labour in the New World, which was more effectively supplied for by slaves as they provided longer lasting availability of labour than indentured servants. An indentured servant is one who is bound by contract to work unpaid for a period of time, usually seven years. Initially the intention was to cultivate the land with indentured labour and enslaved indigenous people, but decimation of the population by measles and smallpox encouraged plantation owners to buy the more expensive black, African slave due to their perceived hardier constitution. Over time prices fell and so the number of black slaves increased: In 1678 on Montserrat, forty percent of the population was non-white, but this grew to eighty percent by 1729.

The slave trade had been dominated by the Portuguese in order to supply Portuguese and Spanish colonies but the Dutch, French and British started to take a direct role as they expanded their colonial presence in North America (#2 Ch.3).

Christianity played an important role in the development of slavery. Although slavery had not been prominent in medieval Catholic Europe, the shifting of sourcing slaves from Europe to sourcing them from Africa was partly due to the prohibition of enslaving other Christians. Baptism was often seen as synonymous with emancipation in Europe, which is why African slaves were initially refused conversion in the US. Christianity was later used both to preserve the slave trade, mostly in the ‘The Bible Belt’ of the Southern United States (#2 Ch.1), and to abolish it.

We might incorrectly think of slavery as an exclusively European trade; however, the abolition of slavery was an exclusively European endeavour. This is not to belittle the role that slaves and former slaves played in abolition. More specifically The Abolitionist Movement was primarily a Quaker and Methodist Christian movement of the late eighteenth century (#44). Christian beliefs in the inherent unity of mankind and the growing missionary activities in the West Indies and Africa, greatly affected British opinion. The public conscious was swayed by visions of Christ liberating man from sin being retold as slaves breaking free from their chains. Britain, at this time, was the pre-eminent global power of the age and encouraged or intimidated other nations to follow suit, the eventual result of which, was the drawing up of a global pact of abolition in 1926 (#41).

Slavery in Christendom

Slaves in European Christendom, from the collapse of the Roman Empire until the late fifteenth century, were almost exclusively ‘white’. Slavery remained as a punishment for illegal activity or suffering defeat in battle, but generally dwindled by the mid-medieval period due to Christian opposition (#12) and the development of serfdom (#4 #5). Serfdom - a ‘milder kind’ of slavery (#4) – was when a labourer was ‘tied’ to the land rather than owned as property. Before the twelfth century, pirate raiding and trading was common, especially in Spain and Eastern Europe (#2).

One such victim was patron saint of Ireland St Patrick (d. 461 CE) who was kidnapped from Britain by Irish pirates and sold into slavery as a young man. He was possibly the first anti-slavery writer in history by accusing King Coroticus of having ‘stained his hands in the blood of the children of God’ (#11) when stealing his Irish converts and selling them into slavery in Northern Britain. 

Christendom also suffered slave raiding from non-Christian Vikings, pagan Bulgarian Magyars and from Muslim kingdoms. Slaves played a prominent role in Viking society as farm labourers and economically as a resource for the slave trade. By the Tenth Century, the trading routes of the Pagan Kievan Rus Vikings reached from the Baltic to the Caspian and Black Seas.

The dismantling of this slave trade in medieval Europe, especially in Western Europe, was achieved primarily through the Christianising process. The rules of legitimate wars between Christian states prohibited the enslavement of captives. Moreover, churchmen condemned slavery as dishonourable, sinful and associated with uncivilized societies (#13), thus shifting Pagan perceptions that honoured slave raiding, violence and sexual exploitation.

The New Testament uncritically accepted slavery as an institution (#30), but the concept of the Kingdom of God made social distinctions irrelevant; all were equal in the sight of God (#31). St Paul implores slaves to be dutiful (Col 3:22-25) and their masters to be ‘right and fair’ (Col 4:1). The Leading Latin Church Father, Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) saw slavery as the result of sin, not nature (#32). Although he did not view slavery as a wholly unmitigated evil, he would regularly emancipate abused slaves with funds from the Church chest (#33). Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) accepted the sin of slavery as a necessary evil due to its rational utility but held slaves in a much higher regard than Aristotle had (#34), such that the Cannon Law of The Church imposed punishments for unjust and cruel treatment (#3).

In the New World clerical pressure on the state encouraged the freedom and emancipation of aboriginal people; freedom was seen as an opportunity to proselytise rather than as a reward for becoming Christian. The Catholic Church officially stated ‘all the world’s races are men’ and the intrepid Southern European monarchs viewed native Americans as rational and therefore able to accept the teachings of Christ (#35 Ch.3). The Catholic Queen Isabella of Castile (d. 1504) set the precedent for how colonists should treat all indigenous peoples, ordering the freedom of slaves from the Canaries (1477), which was followed by Spain’s ‘New Laws’ (1542) and Portuguese legislation (1609) which banned future enslavement of indigenous Americans and the enforced emancipation for illegal ownership (#2 Ch.2). However, in frontier territories such as Chile and New Mexico, the Spanish who believed themselves to be fighting a ‘Just War’ were permitted to enslave captives.

The secularising process of the Enlightenment, freeing science from the morality of The Church, created a contempt for less technologically advanced cultures. This laid the foundations for the ‘science of race’ that eventually fuelled the Holocaust (#35).

Race in Western Thought

The term ‘race’ did not enter English, or other European languages, until the sixteenth century and initially was associated with family lineage and good breeding. Before then people distinguished between their group and those outside of it, but this was not especially linked to race. Greeks and Romans discriminated between citizens and non-citizens, but Rome with no conception of race became increasingly run by those of non-Roman origin, from all over the Empire. Even at the highest level; Emperor Septimius Severus (d. 211 CE) was black for example.

During the Middle Ages prejudice mostly existed between social classes; aristocracy was from a superior ‘blue’ bloodline and the peasantry were wild, base and bestial. Darkness became symbolic of wildness and the monstrous other. Noah’s grandson Ham, cursed to servitude, derives his name from Hebrew Ch’m meaning black or burnt, and it was he that was believed to be the father of all Africans. The Biblical story was subsequently used by to explain the origination of black races and later by slavers to justify enslaving black Africans. Although proto-racial themes began to develop during the later medieval period, it was not until the eighteenth century that the idea of race was systematically categorised into a hierarchical order (#35).

The most influential of the early classificatory systems was by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (d. 1778). He classified man into four distinct races (#37): white, yellow, red and black. Each of these races were also connected to a character trait, the highest white was ‘muscular’ and the lowest black was ‘indulgent’ (#36). Race, however, was still primarily thought of in the sense of the social order in every society, the noble ruled the ignoble.

The concept of race was part of developing ideas relating to the permanence and stability of the natural order of society in response to the brutaly swift establishment of the 'egalitarian' society by Madame Guillotine during the French Revolution (1789 - 1799). Humanist ideas of the Enlightenment, that all men are equal, gave way to ideas that nature was itself hierarchical. The social order, it was argued, was the result of a dominant race overpowering a lower race of commoners. From this frame of reference, race seen more in the sense of class, it was easy to move from the slavers as the dominant ruling class of slaves to the white as the dominant ruling race of the black.

The infamous Aryan Race Theory of Frenchman Count Arthur de Gobineau (d. 1882), linked physical markers such as skin colour, measurements of skull and hair texture with social, cultural and moral traits. Slavery generated huge amounts of wealth for the aristocracy and it served the interests of slavers, claiming a special knowledge of black Africans, to represent blacks as fit for no other fate than to inhabiting the lowest class of servitude (#35).

The art historian Johann Joachim Winklemann (d. 1768) devised a scale of beauty in which the African was seen as closer in form to an ape, rather than the ideal Hellenized European; the depressed nose was considered particularly ugly. It became common place in the emerging ‘science’ of racism for inferior races to be seen as less evolved and the result of sexual relations with apes, absorbing Charles Darwin’s (d. 1882) ideas from The Origins of Species (1859).

Organised hierarchies between races, such as white and black, were made intra-racially as well. Anxieties surrounding the identity of the ‘true’ American, in response to rising immigration from disparate provinces, fuelled racial snobbery.  The Irish were considered Africanoid by ethnologist John Beddoe (d. 1911) and received much prejudice in the US (#10) and in Britain, habitually being dehumanised and portrayed as ape like creatures. Irish labourers, fleeing starvation in the mid nineteenth century, came to the US as indentured servants. Far from being enslaved for generations indentured servants were eventually rewarded with citizenship. In order to gain credibility and acceptance as US citizens, Irish and other denigrated ‘whites’ such as Italians and Jews created formidable political machines, and in some cases vigilante groups, in the late nineteenth century to promote their whiteness at the expense of blacks; opposing black suffrage, emancipation and mixed marriages (#35).

The interwar period saw a growing rise in scepticism towards the sciences of race and after the horrors of WWII it was entirely debunked. Racial sciences conflated disparate unconnected concepts and lacked a proper understanding of genetic variation, phenotypical differences of appearance and cultural behaviour and experiences. In fact, the very concept of ‘race’ has now been shown to have no scientific credibility. For example, sickle cell anaemia which is commonly believed to only affect people who are ‘black’, also occurs among populations with Indian, Arabian, Greek, Italian and Turkish ancestry (#35).

Slavery in the Abode of Islam

It would be incorrect to think that the Europeans had a monopoly with trading slaves; they were irrelevant in the Chinese trade for example, and Muslim societies traded in comparably equal numbers to that of Europeans. The nature of the slave trade across the Sahara and from East Africa was quite different for a number of reasons, most notably due to the lack of a labour-intensive plantation economy and the influence of Islam. The interest in slaving Africans and those outside of ‘The Abode of Islam’ came from the prohibition of enslaving Muslims. The prime European demand was for male labour, whereas, the Muslim demand was primarily for women, particularly as domestic servants and concubines. In Egypt, Ethiopian females were greatly prized for their beauty and were considered more valuable than males (#2 Ch.2).

The Qur’an presents slavery as a fact of life (#14), but conceptualises slaves differently and in contrast to contemporary pagan Arab practices; prioritising a slave’s humanity over their status as property (#18). The Qur’an is not merely a rule book and so only refers to legal aspects of slavery in a few contexts, but by far the most prominent verses are of exhortations to release slaves as a good deed or as an expiation of sin (#17). The proportion of slaves were uncommonly low in the early Muslim community (#16) and it was the culture to manumit slaves; seven of Prophet Muhammad’s closest companions emancipated nearly forty thousand slaves alone (#23).

This culture continued throughout the Muslim world. The ruler of Mali, Mansa Musa (d.1337), showed his wealth by owning thousands of slaves and his righteousness by freeing one every day. The high rate of emancipation was something of a double-edged sword; as slaves were manumitted, new slaves had to be bought in to meet labour demands. Slaves would serve on average for seven years, which meant some fifteen percent had to be replaced annually (#25). Freed slaves (mawali) fate varied, from beggars to saints and from judges to military generals. The enormous culture capital absorbed into the abode of Islam through slavery produced the bulk of the scholarly and administrative elite, such as the famous geographer and literary scholar Yaqut Hamawi (d.1229), of Greek Byzantine origin (#20 Ch. 3). Like many traditional African societies, Muslims historically viewed slaves (riqq) not as simply cheap labour, but as a way of diversifying the population; slaves did not so much lose liberty but rather gained ties to the group becoming bound to it as part of its potential (#3).

Jurists conceived slaves as dependents, like that of a child (#20 Ch.2). Slaves had the right to be fed and clothed to an equivalent standard of their master (#21). In contrast to pre-Islamic practice, slaves could marry either other slaves or free people (#18). If the master fathered a child with a slave, the mother had the status ‘umm walad’ and could not be sold; the child was born free, was considered a legitimate heir and the mother would gain freedom in the event of the master’s death. It is said thirty-four of the thirty-seven Abbasid caliphs (rulers) were conceived this way (#18).

If slaves committed crimes, they would receive only half the punishment of that of a freeman. Inflicting injuries on a slave was also a crime which could be repaid in kind (#19 Ch.56,57) and the courts could enforce manumission (#19 Ch.52).  Jurists discussed all manner of interesting possibilities in great detail, such as whether a slave could be the caliph (#26), but were less prolific in areas we would think important today, such as the details of what constitutes consent to sex for a concubine (#27 Ch.3). This is not to say rape was any more tolerated in the courts for slaves than it was for wives; juristic concern was with the infliction of harm (ḍarar) rather than the more speculative lack of consent (#38). Court records show many examples of slaves approaching the courts with complaints of ill treatment and being freed, however in truth slaves were at the mercy of their masters and concubines were clearly sexually vulnerable (#20 Ch.2).

Despite the best efforts of Islamic jurists to protect slaves and endow them with rights, the reality for slaves in the abode of Islam did not always reflect these ideals. For example, people were regularly sold into slavery flouting stipulations that only captives of a just war could be enslaved (#19 Ch.10), and slave owners in the thirteenth century in Arden rented out slaves for prostitution in direct violation of Qur’anic commands (#20 Ch.3).

The worldwide agreement in the early twentieth century (#41) abolishing slavery is deemed obligatory to adhere to in Islamic Law (#40) and therefore renders slavery and the rules relating to slavery obsolete.  Despite this, slavery does still exist in some parts of ‘Muslim Majority’ countries today, most notably through ISIS. Although ISIS uses a counter system in contrast to Islamic Law and Islam itself (#42), Muslims would generally agree that absolute abolition of slavery is unnecessary and would deny that it is intrinsically immoral due to its acceptance in sacred scripture. The form of slavery that fuelled the cause of the Abolitionists would not realistically be condoned by Muslims, however. To consider riqq (slave), as conceived in the sacred texts of Islam and by the jurists of Islamic Law, to be the same as that of the reality of transatlantic, black African slaves is simply untenable.

Perceptions of Race in the Abode of Islam

The modern, and highly questionable, ‘one-drop rule’ identifying everyone as black even with the smallest amount of black ancestry would describe Arabs generally as black. Arabs have gone through a historical process of ‘whitening’ since the seventh century as Islam became ‘Persianized’ (#45) and spread west, such that more modern scholars described Arabs as a sub-category of ‘white’ (#46). However, classically Arabs have not viewed themselves as ‘white’ or more precisely red (aḥmar) as they would have described such a complexion. In his monumental work Tarikh al-Sudan (History of the Blacks), historian Na’um Shaqir (d. 1656) refers to the Arabs as a sub-category of ‘black’.

The Arabs are a people of whom are believed to have been the progeny of Ishmael; his mother, Hagar, was known to have been of sub-Saharan origin. Although the concept of race did not exist in pre-modern Arabia, they did see themselves as different from the ‘white’ people of Persia and Byzantium, and to the ‘black’ of East Africa. Ibn Manzur (d. 1311) reported the predominant colour among the Arabs was light brown (sumra) or dark brown (udma) (#15 Ch.1).

Arabs have favoured defining themselves along lingual and cultural lines rather than racial or geographical ones; an Arab is one whose mother tongue is Arabic. The language is full of subtle terms to describe the varieties of skin tone, for example, ‘black’ (sawad) would only refer to the very darkest skin tones, more common was to use green (akhḍar) and yellow (aṣfar) referring to the various hues of brown. White (abyad) had no racial connotations and meant blemish free, it could be applied to describe any shade of skin tone (#48). Misunderstandings, either deliberately or by mistake, have been attributed to both sacred texts and classical works to imply a ‘white’ racial preference, but this is an anachronism, such uses of abyad originally meant ‘bright’ and ‘beautiful’. This is not to say that devaluation of darker skin tones did not exist amongst Arabs, they have from the advent of Islam and continue to this day (#15).

Arabs have had much more familiarity than Europeans with sub-Saharan peoples. Ethiopians became scattered throughout Arabia following Persian occupation of East Africa during the sixth century, these immigrants formed the Aḥābish tribe in Mekkah at the time of The Prophet Muhammad (#46). Despite the prophetic narratives containing some positive black role models, such as Bilal’s appointment to the honourable position of Muʾadh·dhin (#29), prejudice to sub-Saharan Africans (#15 Ch.1) was clearly prevalent throughout the history of the Abode of Islam. The offspring of a black mother and white father, for example, was admitted to full equality, but ‘the full-blooded negro [zanj] generally remained an outsider in Muslim society’ (#28) although prejudice was an issue, is was not enough of a barrier to exclude black people from positions of high office.

Throughout the rise and fall of the slave trade in Europe and the US, black slaves in the Muslim world were proportionally higher in number than non-black slaves, however, black Africans, both enslaved and free, faired comparatively much better (#24). This is not to say that better meant an absence of struggle; the very fact that geographically and temporally disparate, non-white scholars, felt the need to write in defence of ‘black’ skinned people, speaks of a perennial problem of ‘black’ antipathy (#15 Ch.4).

Concluding Remarks

This was a very brief overview of slavery that engaged in but a fraction of the topic. There are many historical examples not explored, such as that of the Native American slave trade or the sacrificial slaves of Dahomey in West Africa, that existed before abolition. Nor has it looked at examples since abolition, such as the forced labour of German political prisoners to mine for uranium to support the Soviet atomic bomb programme.

Despite the emotive subject matter that is slavery, modern examples seem to exhibit less outrage from the public than those of the past. It is of course much easier to apologise for the past; the recent historicising of the slave trade and the rise of the Western ‘cult of apology’ elides the fact that it is still a modern problem. Increasing numbers of poor vulnerable Eastern European women, for example, are exploited and subjected to miserable conditions through Russian and Albanian sex trafficking routes. Poor children are still a major source of slaves across the world today, such as in the fishing industry in Ghana or cocoa harvesting in the Ivory Coast (#2 Ch.7).

What should be clear is that the transatlantic slave trade was not and is not the only one. It was not a preconceived idea, but the result of a specific set of circumstances, not all of which were European in origin. The transatlantic slave trade is none the less an important part of our history because its legacy still impacts us today.

The history of slavery is central to contemporary American culture wars and the North, South divide. Different and competing public narratives of slavery are used to assert identity and advance grievance. The Confederate flag might be considered as ‘anti-American’ and intimidating to black citizens, yet the ‘white South’ still resists removing it due to its own specific sense of historical grievance. In Britain the slave trade has been used as a longstanding critique of Imperialism and the establishment of Western dominance. It also forms the basis for modern debates on British identity and immigration. Immigrants are often from former colonies, unlike countries such as Denmark, and so the colonial past is inseparably linked to present day immigration concerns. France is likewise affected by its colonial past, and yet abolition is regularly used as a symbol of republican virtue in contrast to the ancien régime.

The pressure to apologise and the forms which it takes vary from country to country, often there is a lack of interest in former slave trading Islamic states. Despite its intended virtue the practice of apology in Western states is paradoxically Eurocentric; promoting European agency whilst downplaying African agency. Slavery is often seen as the very lowest point of abasement and weakness of black Africa, eliding the fact of its role in capturing and trading slaves, and the political maturity and military prowess of African societies. Misappropriated apology of the transatlantic slave trade as an example of genocide also obscures that such descriptions are more pertinent to the treatment of the Native American peoples (#2 Ch.8).

Race has become associated with slavery in popular consciousness, but as has been shown it is not necessarily an ingredient. Despite the concept of clearly unchanging definable races having absolutely no scientific credibility, the concepts of race and racism affects our understanding of the past and present. Conflations of biology, ethnicity and culture can endlessly be repackaged into dogmatised myths preaching the superiority of a particular group over another or safeguarding its purity.

Anti-discrimination legislation intended to help, has inadvertently compounded discrimination, by using classifications such as black, white, mixed, Asian etc. This has hard wired crude racial frames of reference into public discourse. The use of ‘mixed’ race implies there is a ‘pure’ race. These and other anti-racist attempts to de-racialize popular culture has done nothing but racialize it. The continued use of the ‘one-drop’ rule, which bewilderingly means a white woman can give birth to a black child but a black mother must only give birth to a black child, presupposes blackness taints whiteness.

More worrying perhaps, is the trend to pathologize racism as something inhuman. Racism is the result of specific historical events and comes from a very human way of interpreting a sense of belonging. To portray the racist as a cancerous alien is to use the same rhetoric as the Nazi propaganda machine. Moving beyond race may be difficult, but it is a cultural and political endeavour, not a medical one (#35 Ch.9).

The International Convention with the Objective of Securing the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade ratified by the League of Nations in 1926 defined slavery as ‘the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised’. In 2000 the International Association Against Slavery included debt bondage, forced work, forced prostitution and forced marriage. Slavery is not so easily defined and this difficulty can be exploited with linguistic gymnastics; it might be argued, for example, that something as seemingly benign as the football transfer market is like that of a slave trade (#48).

In Russia there was a legal and linguistic distinction between slavery and serfdom. An eighteenth-century Polish serf trying to fulfil the impossible quota of the robot (forced labour) under the shadow of their Land Lord’s torture chamber may have suffered more than a Russian slave, however. In contrast a free peasant in Saxon England may have gladly sold himself into serfdom to avoid starvation or even cannibalism bought by the harshness of winter (#1).

There are incidents of white, so called, ‘free’ labourers in the Northern USA, during the nineteenth century, being paid in tokens that could only be used in the company shops. Likewise, a modern ‘wage slave’ has no choice about their work or what form it takes, yet they are considered ‘free’ citizens. There are overlaps between slavery, convict labour, serfdom, debt servitude, indentured service and even possibly the entire nation of North Korea (#2, Ch.1). What perhaps is more useful is not so much the abolition of ‘slavery’, since many injustices can be done under another name, but rather the better and fairer treatment of human beings, whatever their social status.

A common criticism of Islam, is that neither the Qur’an nor the Prophet Muhammad outlawed slavery. The grotesque transatlantic slave trade cannot realistically be likened to the ‘reasonable’ and ‘moral’ calculations of Muslim jurists. There has never been an understanding amongst Muslims that only black Africans could be slaves, as opposed to those at the height of the slave trade. Muslim owned slaves, in contrast to transatlantic slaves, could own property, have an education, had freedom to marry, were not forced to change their names, could not be separated from their children, and had rights to be looked after as dependant family members. Slave owners were not masters (asyād), but rather patrons (mawālī).

Like Christianity the focus of Islam is the afterlife and exhorting believers to do good deeds with pure intention, for which the noblest, is the manumission of slaves. Both faiths did not create nor encourage slavery, despite both tacitly accepting its practice, but rather scripture and religious thinkers reacted ethically to the customary norms of society, drawing attention away from worldly gain to other-worldly gain. Despite the unquestionable benefits of abolition and Abraham Lincoln’s (d 1856) proclamation, former slaves were left without food, shelter, work or security. In contrast Muhammad's mission appears to have been to create a society to eventually manumit all slaves and support, former slaves. Whether this vision was ever truly realised, is however, debatable (#15 Ch.4).

Muslims traditionally, like their contemporary Catholic European counterparts, would have seen no need to abolish slavery generally due to slaves being an important part of society, but would attempt to abolish specific circumstances where slaves were abused. Abolition came as a reaction to the savage abuse of Africans. 

Repulsed, the Methodist preacher John Wesley (d 1791), strongly attacked the slave trade in his highly influential book Thoughts upon Slavery (1774), just as St Patrick had done previously. This afront to Christian sensibilities fuelled the, largely Quaker, lobbying group the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade to push for exactly what their name suggests. The leading abolitionist of the movement, William Wilberforce (d 1843), finally seeing The Slave Trade Act pass in 1807, having campaigned for over twenty years, which is the first legislation that started abolition worldwide. Although Biblical accounts were used as arguments to resist this Act, the driving force behind the trade was not Christian in nature, but rather a protest to it in the form of modernity; ideas such as: progress, entrepreneurial capitalism and the science of race. These concepts are the foundation of the modern world, so perhaps we should be more concerned with the prevailing ideas that justify unfree labour in our times rather than those that tacitly accepted it in the past.

In reading this it may be forgotten that slaves were and are actual people, people that are largely forgotten, let us pause and remember them.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

With many thanks to my editor

References, Notes and Bibliography

(#1) Lacey R, 2003, The Year 1000: An Englishman’s Year, Abacus

(#2) Black J, 2011, A Brief History of Slavery, Robinson

(#3) Fahlbusch, Erwin, Wirz, Albert, Szabó, Eszter and Cone, James H., 2011, “Slavery”, in: Encyclopedia of Christianity Online. Consulted online on 26/06/2020.

(#4) Adam Smith, 1776, The Wealth of Nations

(#6) Eddo-Lodge R, 2018, Why I’m no longer talking to people about race, Bloomsbury. Especially see chapter 1 for the history of black people in Britain, but also a definition and exploration of white privilege in chapter 3

(#7) McDevittie W A and Bohn W S (trans.). The Gallic Wars, accessed online 29/06/20 http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.html on 27/06/2020

(#8) For example see: Exodus 21:2-6

(#9) Brockopp, Jonathan E, “Concubines”, in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC. Consulted online on 26/06/2020

(#10) Bulik M, 2015, 1854: No Irish Need Apply, New York Times, accessed online https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/08/insider/1854-no-irish-need-apply.html on 29/06/2020

(#11) St Patrick’s Confessio, Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus, accessed online 30/06/20 https://www.confessio.ie/etexts/epistola_english#

(#12) Wyatt D, 2009, Slaves and warriors in Britain and Ireland 800-1200, Leiden

(#13) For example see: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28)

(#14) “God has given some of you more provision than others. Those who have been given more are unwilling to pass their provision on to the slaves they possess so that they become their equals. How can they refuse to acknowledge God’s blessings?” (Qur’an 16:71)

(#15) Abdullah Ali, 2019, The ‘Negro’ in Arab-Muslim Consciousness, Claritas

(#16) Brockopp, J E, “Slaves and Slavery”, in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: McAuliffe J D, Georgetown University, Washington DC. Consulted online on 26/6/2020

(#17) See for example: prohibition of prostitution and to acceptance of manumission (24:33), virtuous towards slaves (4:36), manumission as expiation of sins (4:92, 5:89, 58:3), free people marry slaves (2:221, 4:25), give charity ‘zakat’ in order to purchase freedom (2:177, 9:60) for further explanation see the commentary for each verse in: Nasr S H et al, 2015, The Study Quran: a new translation and commentary, Harper One

(#18) Allain J (Edit.), 2012, The Legal understanding of slavery: from the historical to the contemporary, Oxford University Press. See ‘E The Fiqh of Slavery’

(#19) Nyazee I A (tran.) Ibn Rushd, 1996, The Distinguished Jurists Primer: Bidayat al Mujtahid, Garnet Publishing

(#20) Brown J, 2020, Slavery and Islam, One World

(#21) For a full juristic exploration see #19 Vol 2. "(Slaves are) your brothers whom God has put under your control, so feed them with the same food that you eat, clothe them with the same clothes you wear, and do not burden them with so much that they are overwhelmed; if you do burden them, then help them" This hadith can be found in the collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud and Ibn Majah, see: https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah/33/34

(#22) “Worship God; join nothing with Him. Be good to your parents, to relatives, to orphans, to the needy, to neighbours near and far, to travellers in need, and to your slaves. God does not like arrogant, boastful people” Qur’an 4:36. Abdel Haleem (trans): https://www.islamawakened.com/quran/4/36/default.htm

(#23) Usmani S, 2006, Ma’ariful Qur’an, Maktaba e Darul Uloom Karach. Vol. 8 pg. 38

(#24) In the nineteen fifties King Faisal of Saudi Arabia caused alarm at The Waldorf Astoria, New York, when he insisted his well-dressed black slave eat with him in his room, where blacks were still prohibited. Usborn D, 1994, Desert heroes shed new light on secret state: World Cup success puts Saudis under spotlight, The Independent, accessed online https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/desert-heroes-shed-new-light-on-secret-state-world-cup-success-puts-saudis-under-spotlight-1417860.html

(#25) Wright J, 2007, The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, Routledge

(#26) Al-Mawardi, Clark A (edit.), Yate A (trans.), 1996, Laws of Islamic Governance: al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyyah, Ta-Ha Publication

(#27) Ali K, 2016, Sexual Ethics and Islam, One World

(#28) Von Grunebaum G E, 1953, Medieval Islam, Chicargo. pp. 209-11

(#29) One who calls the believers to prayer

(#30) The parables of Jesus mention it (Matt. 18:23–35; 25:14–30; Luke 12:42–48; 17:7–10)

(#31) See: ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3:28). And also: ‘masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favouritism with him’ (Eph. 6:9)

(#32) Augustine’s The City of God Book 19 Chapter 15 accessed online 05/07/20 https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120119.htm

(#33) Chadwick H, 2001, Augustine: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press

(#34) Aquinas T, Summa Theologiae, II of II q57 art 3 and q104 art 6, accessed online 05/07/20 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3.htm

(#35) Rattansi A, 2007, Racism: A very short introduction to, Oxford University Press

(#36) For example the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) proclaimed: ‘this fellow was quite black… a clear proof that what he said was stupid’, 1774, Academy Edition ‘Akademie Ausgabe’ 2:254-255

(#37) Systema Naturae, 1735

(#38) See #20 Ch.7 for a full account. Also see the contemporary eminent scholar Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad, consulted online 09/07/2020: https://eshaykh.com/doctrine/sex-slaves-in-islam-2/

(#39) Consulted online 22/06/2020: https://islamqa.org/hanafi/qibla-hanafi/42543

(#40) Taqi Usmani, Takmilah Fath al Mulhim: “Most of the nations of the world have today formed a pact between them, and have agreed that a prisoner from the captives of war will not be put into slavery; and most of the Islamic lands today are participants of this agreement, particularly members of the United Nations, so it is not permissible for an Islamic country today to put a captive into slavery as long as this pact remains.”

(#41) The League of Nations 1926, art. 4 of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights in 1948

(#42) For a full account relating to slavery and ISIS see #20 Ch.6. Also see contradictory use of Islamic texts and stories here: https://live-ijtihad.blogspot.com/2015/03/isis-burning-with-hypocricy.html

(#43) Füllberg-Stolberg, Katja, 2015, “Abolition”, in: Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, Editors of the English edition: Graeme Dunphy, Andrew Gow. Consulted online 03/07/2020

(#44) Lane E W, An Arabic-English Lexicon, accessed online on 10/07/2020:  http://lexicon.quranic-research.net/

(#45) Goddard H, 1995, Christian & Muslims: from double standards to mutual understanding, Routledge

(#46) Thomas D (edit.) et al, 2006, The Encounters of Eastern Christians with Early Islam, Brill. Particularly chapter 1 ‘Islam and Oriens Christianus’ by Irfan Shahīd.

(#47) Arnold Toynbee (d. 1975) and Bernard Lewis (d. 2018).

(#48) Football transfer like the slave trade? 2016. Accessed online on 11/07/2020 https://insajder.net/en/site/news/460/

Crucifixion or Crude Fiction?

Introduction

One of the main conflicts in Muslim-Christian dialogue is the crucifixion. This article primarily looks at the Qur’anic narrative and its most influential interpreters drawing a conclusion that challenges some commonly held beliefs and offering a more optimistic future for dialogue. It is written on the assumption that the reader has read the previous article Christians and the Bible in the Qur’an.

Qur’an 4:157

The crucifixion is not a central theme in the Qur’an, it only appers in one place:

{and said, ‘We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the Messenger of God.’ They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, though it was made to appear like that to them (shubbiha la-hum); those that disagreed about him are full of doubt (shakkin min’hu), with no knowledge to follow, only supposition: they certainly did not kill him (mā qatalūhu)} [4:157]

{God raised him up (rafa’ahu) to Himself. God is almighty and wise.} [4:158]

{There is not one of the People of the Book who will not believe in [Jesus] before his death, and on the Day of Resurrection he will be a witness against them} [4:159]

Context

These verses follow a collection criticising some historical incidents of Jewish unfaithfulness, rather than a direct criticism of Christian doctrine. In this context, it may reasonably be assumed that the primary purpose of the verse is mocking Jewish taunts as encapsulated by Ezar Pound’s poetic translation: ‘If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere, They are fools eternally.’ Similarly it could be understood as a rebuttal that they alone had killed Jesus and therefore he could not be the The Messiah (lit. anointed one), 4:159 confirming the ‘second coming’ where Jesus will return to fulfil the remaining messianic prophecies: {The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name} [Zechariah 14:9].

The main topic of the preceding verses to 4:157 is faithlessness (kufr), the universal problem of man, and reminds the reader of the triumph of God and His plan despite numerous examples of kufr and the killing of His prophets (4:155). Far from being in any way anti-Semitic this verse in fact absolves the Jews from blame, the accusation of which they have long suffered despite the Romans carrying out the crucifixion (Mark 15:15). It is possible the Gospels embellish the whitewashing of Pontius Pilate for the Roman readership (#2 pg 268) contradicting the cruel dictator of historical accounts who was disinterested in Jewish ‘superstition’ (#11, chapter 5).

The Qur’an then, as al-fur’qān (the discernment), may be seen as both confirming Jesus as Messiah, the Second Coming, Jesus on the cross and even the death of Jesus, but rejects the ‘killing’ of him directly by the Jewish conspirators and thus denies their desire to take responsibility for humiliating him with the death of a Jewish heretic.

Death of Jesus

The concept of death in the Qur’an is not as straight forward and final as the jāhilī (pre-Islamic) Arabs believed (see 45:24-26 and #4, Death, Dying and The Afterlife). The life eternal (kulūd) is the real life, this life span (ajal) is but a small part.

Jesus’ death is considered by the Qur’an: {Peace was on me the day I was born, and will be on me the day I die and the day I am raised (ub’athu) to life again} [19:33]. The raising to life again is normally interpretted as the Day of Judgement, for example the same construction is used for John (Yaḥyā) the Baptist {Peace was on him the day he was born, the day he died, and it will be on him the day he is raised to life again} [19:15], but the idea of resurrection in this life is not unacceptable from a Qur'anic perspective: {God made him die for a hundred years, and then raised him up (ba'athahu)} [2:259].

{God said, ‘Jesus, I will take you back (mutawaffi) and raise you (warāfiʿuka) up to Me} [3:55] Has been understood by some to mean raising Jesus to God miraculously without death (Jalalayn). Some said it means God caused Jesus to die and then God spiritually exalted him, since the Qur'anic usage of the root w-f-y numerously refers to death, even in reference to the death of Muhammad (40:77). Others said it was not death but the apparent death of sleep (ibn Kathir), making use of verses like 39:42. The actual death of Jesus is not what is substantially opposed to by the Qur'an, but rather his being killed; in keeping with the Gospel accounts: {Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father, ‘into Your hands I commit My spirit.’ ” Having said this, He breathed His last} [Luke 23:46]. 

Death is not an end but a change, from a Qur’anic perspective, especially for God’s good servants: {Do not say that those who are killed in God’s cause are dead; they are alive, though you do not realise it} [2:154] (also see 3:169) The Prophets and Martyrs are ‘living’ in a miraculous quasi-life in the barzakh (the ‘space’ between this life and the next see 23:100) where every soul resides in felicity or torment until the Day of Judgement. However 4:157-159 states they did not kill his ultimate reality, in the mundane sense of murder, he lives in a more miraculous way than the martyr - in body and soul -and will die at his appointed time at the end of days.: ‘The Son of Mary will definitely reappear as a just ruler … before [his] death’ [Bukhari].

Substitution or Supposition?

Whilst it is true that there are and were a variety of possible interpretations (see below) for 4:157-159 the only one that cannot be condoned as authentically Qur’anic is complete denial. Diverting responsibility for the crucifixion away from the Jews is not the same as denying the crucifixion entirely. The first written claims the Qur’an denies the crucifixion are not in fact Muslim in origin, but rather from the Church Father John of Damascus (d. 749) either through mistake or as propoganda to his non Arabic speaking audience (#8 pg 11-19). It really is only between the fourteenth and twentieth centuries that there was a trend where commentators felt the need to deny the crucifixion.

The first compiler of Qur’anic exergesis Tabarī (d. 923) gives eleven narrations (#5, pg 127-131),  mostly from the successor (tabi’īn) generation, that explain ‘shubbiha la-hum’ as Jesus being substituted with someone else who miraculously appeared to look like him. This interpretation is by far the most common and has largely been repeated by commentators ever since. What is interesting is that no attempt seems to have been made to explore their origins or even compare and assess their plausibility.

Two narrations from the Muslim Biblical scholar Wahb bin Munabbih (d. 738) are recorded, one of which explains the ‘volunteer substitution’ theory:

‘Jesus went into a house together with seventeen of his companions. The Jews surrounded them but when they burst in God made all the disciples look like Jesus. The pursuers, supposing that they had bewitched them, threatened to kill them all if they did not expose him. Then Jesus asked his companions which of them would purchase paradise for himself that day. One man volunteered and went out saying that he was Jesus and as God had made him look like Jesus they took him, killed him and crucified him. Thereupon {a semblance was made to them} and they thought that they had killed Jesus. The Christians likewise thought that it was Jesus who had been killed. And God raised Jesus right away.’

The other by a different route (isnād) is lengthier and explains more elements of the ‘Passion’ that conform to the Gospels and for this reason Tabari prefers this narration. It includes: the last supper, the thirty pieces of silver and the crown of thorns but includes ‘wa kāna shubbiha ‘alay-hum’ (and a semblance had been made for them), which may possibly be understood to be a miraculous body double.  Judas Iscariot (Yudas Rakn’yayuta) is mentioned as the betrayer and is said to have comitted suicide – by hanging - because of ‘regret’. Of the nine others: two from Muhājid ibn Jabr explain the Jews crucified someone by mistaken identity; a goup of brief reports from Qatāda, ibn al-Qasim bin Abi Bazza and Ibn Jurayj agree with the ‘volunteer substitution’ theory; one version from Al Suddī that includes a reference to 3:54 as the semblance being a Divine ‘deception’ and two from Ibn Ishāq that add Jesus’ ascension to heaven when the disciples were set upon by the Jews thus explaining their confusion (of 4:157) by the numerical difference between those who entered the house and those who still remained (#5, pg 129-131). Ibn Ishāq’s narrative is more familar to the Christian reader since it includes: the number twelve for the disiciples naming ten of them (Sergius being the volunteer), the thirty pieces of silver and identifying Jesus with a kiss by Judas, but also includes the first written example of the ‘punishment substitution’ theory: ‘Some of the Christians allege that it was Judas Iscariot who was made his semblance to them and that they crucified him despite his saying, “I am not one of his companions. I am the one who pointed him out to you!” God knows best.’ Elsewhere, in his comments of 61:14, Tabarī mentions a narration attributed to the companion ibn Abbas in which a similar story is mentioned where: ‘the semblance of Jesus was projected onto him [a disciple] and Jesus was raised to heaven from a skylight in the house’.

Tabarī’s narrations are generally repeated by other commentators verbatim, however some additions to these exist that more explicitly address the ‘punishment substitution’, albeit from an unknown origin, and the identify of the victim changes from Judas, an enemy of Jesus or even Pilate. Scholars more influenced by rationalism offered less fantastical explanations of the substitution as simply mistaken identity, Bayḍāwī (d. 1286) notes that ‘it may be that [in actual fact] nobody was killed although it was falsely claimed’ (for a coprehensive anaysis see: #5 esp. Chapter 13 #8 esp. Chapter 3).

Later commentators are more polemical and favour complete denial of the crucifixion. They moved away from the Isrā’īliyyāt (Sources from a Jewish or Christian Source), ibn Kathir (d.1373) even deamonising them, perhaps due to post Crusade tensions or maybe simply because of their unknown speculative source and contradictory nature. However, bizarrely, these same commentators seemed to rely on justification from the Apocrypha: Rashid Rida (d. 1935) despite criticising the authenticity of the Gospels, is the first exegete to use the Gospel of Barnabas to argue that Jesus was not crucified, but rasied to heaven and Judas was crucified instead!? (for a comprehensive analysis see #8 chapter 4).

We have sent it down as an Arabic Qu'ran so that you [people] may understand.

The primary commentator of The Qur’an is the Qur’an itself. The language used predates lexicons and so grammatical and linguistic analysis of the Qur’anic usage of the same word or phrase are an important form of interpretation which can be lost in translation.

The central phrase for the substitution theory ‘shubbiha la-hum’ is difficult to translate not because the root sh-b-h does not appear elsewhere (see 2:70, 3:7, 13:16, 2:118, 6:99, 2:25, 39:23) (#13), but because this particular form of the verb is only used once, in 4:157. The extra textual narrations of the substitution could be argued to have been placed onto ‘subbiha la-hum’ rather than derived from it (#8 chapter 1). Al Māturīdī (d. 933) suggests the ‘walākin shubbiha la-hum’ (rather it appeared so to them) is in reference to the conflicting reports; they were single (wāḥid) and not by mass transmission (mutawātir) and so they were unsure of Jesus’ death. Zamakhsharī (d. 1143) states the verb shabbaha of shubbiha la-hum could have Jesus as its subject or the crucifixion, such that it either can mean: Jesus’ likeness was projected onto someone or some thing; or, like Al Māturīdī, the affair of the crucifixion was made obscure to them.

The early Qur’anic grammarian Al Farrā’ (d. 822) pays little attention to ‘shubbiha la-hum’ 4:157 except that he argues that ‘hu’ (him) of ‘mā qatalūhu’ (they did not kill him) refers to knowledge, not Jesus, an argument that is frequently repeated, ‘as when one says: ‘qataltu ‘ilman’ (I knew it certainly) instead of [mere] opinion, verbal report or conjecture’. Similarly ibn Qutayba (d. 889) said that ‘mā qatalūhu yaqīnan’ means ‘they did not know about the killing of the Messiah with true knowledge, thoroughly comprehending the matter, rather it was conjecture’ deferring to Arabic poetry in which death is known by the euphemism al-yaqin (certainty) (#8 chapt. 3).

The doubt of ‘shakkin min’hu’ may be read ‘doubt concerning him’ or ‘doubt concerning it’, as such it may be in reference to Christian Christological controversies over Jesus’ human/divine aspect (Qurtubī d. 1273) or it may be in reference to doubt about the entire affair (Zamakhsharī). However the last part of the verse may be understood idiomatically as ‘they did not kill [their doubt] about the matter’ so that they remained doubtful (#4, v. 4:157).

Linguistically speaking 4:157 does not deny the substitution theory, but it does offer an alternative reading in which there is confusion of the details of the crucifixion. Ironically, the source of the substitution theory, if we take Qurtubī’s interpretation of ‘shakkin min’hu', is from the same confused reports! For this reason, among others, I do not think it can realistically be said that the Qur’an primarily expounds the substitution theory.

Gnostic Duel

The substitution theory has been argued by Christian apologists and from Muslim polemicists alike to derive from Gnosticism.

Gnosticism, from Greek Gnosis meaning to know, was a diverse and complex movement that initiated in the the second century. Rather than an organised Church or theology it was rather an approach to theology, which was characterised by a strong dualist belief. Creation was the result of a primordial pre-cosmic distaster, which imprisoned divine sparks in matter, the elect few were redeemed by awakening the soul to this knowledge (gnosis) of its higher destiny and escape the material world (#1 pg 29-31 and 40-41, #3 pg 35).

Some Muslim commentators found support for the substitution theory in the teachings of second century Gnostic Christian, Basilides. Only fragments of his writings remain and even then mostly by his critics. Irenaeus (d. 202) said he taught Jesus had not suffered death but Simon of Cyrene, who bore the cross, was transfigured to look like Jesus (#11 pg64).

The Nag Hammadi Library are early Gnostic texts that was discovered in Egypt in 1945. One text The Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter (AOP) includes an eye witness account of the crucifixion by Peter. It was possibly written between 150 and 250CE however very little is known of this period (#10). Peter is speaking to Jesus as a double of Christ is being crucified. He then sees a third Christ above the cross. Confused he asks: ‘What am I seeing O lord?’ Christ replies the one above the cross is ‘the living Jesus’ and the one being nailed to the cross ‘is the physical part’. The ‘living Jesus’ has been joyfully set free and ‘laughs at their [the crucifiers] lack of perception’ (#10) Neal Robinson is so ‘impressed’ by the similarity of the Tabarī narrations and the AOP that he is inclined to think of them as true: ‘As some pre-Islamic texts such as the gnostic Apocalypse of Peter discovered at Nag Hammadi mention the crucifixion of a substitute, it is possible that the traditional commentators have interpreted this verse correctly’ (#9)

It is not clear how far Docetic and Gnostic teachings survived or were known in seventh century Arabia, but no evidence exists that it did (#5). Gnosticism flourished in the second century and by the fifth had metamorphosed into Apthartodocetism - which emperor Justinian tried to enforce - that viewed Christ’s body as incorruptible so that his suffering on the cross only appeared to be so (#11 pg 68). The links between these Docetic - from Greek Dokeĩn meaning to appear - Christian trends and 4:157 are understandable since the verbs Shabbaha and Dokeĩn are almost synonymous, however that is as far the similarity goes. Docetism holds that Christ was totally divine and that his humaness was merely an appearance (#1 pg 45-46), which is diametrically opposed to the Qur’an’s Christology. For this reason and since the connection is speculative at best, I would think it a mistake, one mainly made by polemicists, to explain 4:157 as verifying the ‘True Christianity’ of Gnosticism.

Conclusion

The substitution theory is rather unsatisfactory because it is a supposition based on speculation. The varying single reports recorded in Tabarī are not traced back from the time of Muhammad; the accuracy of the narrators nor their beliefs or knowledge of the crucifixion can be validated, some are cleary fabricated. Whilst similar ideas can be found elsewhere amongst the Apocrypha, the beliefs espoused therein are not consistently in agreement with The Qur'an's Christology. Essentially there is no compelling evidence to choose their tales over what is commonly known. The language employed in the Qur'an does not necessitate we accept them, in fact if you remove the reports altogether then the verses most likely point to Jesus dying, not by the seeming humiliation of crucifixion, but as part of God's plan to exalt him. It might be argued therefore that the accounts of the crucifixion in the Gospels are largely accurate and confirmed by the Qur’an. However, the crucifixion seen as the price of man’s redemption ‘purchased with His [Jesus’] own blood’ [Acts 20:28] is not. K. Cragg (d. 2012) argues that the Qur’an denies the crucifixion only in the soteriological sense, not in the historical sense: the Christian understanding of the crucifixion has three elements: ‘the act of men in wrong, the act of Jesus in love and the acts of God in grace’ and it is only the third element is rejected since ‘God was not in Christ reconciling the world to himself’ (#6 pg 239 – 248). The Qur'anic narrative might be thought to correct Jewish unfaithfulness and confirm Jesus as the Messiah whilst simultaneously purging beliefs not of Christian origin.

The concept of the redemptive Crucifixion can be argued to have developed inorganically, departing away from the very Jewish Jesus as the charismatic ascetic preacher described in the Synoptic Gospels to the Hellenized teachings of Paul (and beyond). Jesus is metamorphosised into the triumphant heavenly Son of God as Paul creatively tried to win over the hearts of the gentiles appealing to their sensibilities: ‘Paul transformed the God-centred religion of Jesus into a Christ-centred Christianity’ (#2). There is reason to think that some interpretations of the crucifixion are pagan (#11 esp. Chapt. 4 and 5) in origin. Fourth century pagans even accused the Church of plagiarising Easter from the Cybele cult: ‘after fasting and ‘the Day of Blood (22 March) on which Attis was mourned, sorrow was turned to joy with the Hilaria celebrating his resurrection on 25 March (#3 pg 25).

H. A. R. Gibb (d. 1971) perhaps summarises everything here best when he said that Islam ‘is distinguished from Christianity, not so much (in spite of all outward appearance) by its repudiation of the trinitarian concept of the Unity of God, as by its rejection of the soteriology of Christian doctrine and the relics of the old nature cults which survived in the relics and practices of the Christian Church’ (#12 pg 67-68)

References and Bibliography

(#1) McGrath A. E. 1998, Historical Theology, Blackwell Publishing

(#2) Vermes G. 2013, Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicea AD30-325, Penguin

(#3) Chadwick H. 1993, The Early Church, Penguin

(#4)  Nasr S. H. (edit.). 2015, The Study Qur’an: A New Translation and Commentary, Harper One

(#5) Robinson N. 1991, Christ in Islam and Christianity, State University of New York Press

(#6) Cragg K. The Qur’an and the Holy Communion in Muslim World 1959.

(#7) Bowman J. 1967, The Debt of Islam to Monophysite Syrian Christianity, Sydney University Press*

(#8) Lawson T. 2014 The Crucifixion and the Qur’an, One World Publications

(#9) Robinson N. 2018, “Crucifixion” in: Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, Brill Online Resources

(#10) Robinson J. M. 2018, “Apocalypse of Peter” in The Coptic Gnostic Library – A Complete Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices, Brill Online Resources

(#11) Ehrman B. D. 2014, How Jesus Became God, Harper One.

(#12) Parrinder G. 2013, Jesus in the Qur’an, One World Publications. (especially chapter 11)

(#13) Arabic-English Dictionary Qur’anic Usage, 2008, E.M Badawi and M.A. Haleem, Brill

* It is also worth noting John Bowman’s (d. 2006) argument that the substitution theory ‘goes beyond Nestorianism, which said that only Jesus the Messiah died: God the Son returned to God. In Monophysitism Jesus being One nature Divine and human conjoined, the Divine suffered with the human on the Cross. With Muhammad’s view (substitution) neither suffers and thus he solves the argument between Nestorianism and Monophysitism’ (#7, pg 212). Whether we really can conclude ‘substitution’ is resolving the conflict by denying both, it does at least address the contemporary Christian concerns.