ISLAM, HISTORY, AND MYTHOLOGY: Al Jazeerah recently published a long and very interesting article by Zeeshan Hasan on the history of the theology of the afterlife in the Bible and early Christianity, with special reference to its implications for the Qu'ran and Islam. I was busy when it came out and by the time I could come back to it I couldn't find it any more. But it's been reprinted by MuslimWakeUp!:

Myth Over History: Jesus and the Development of Afterlife Beliefs in the Abrahamic Traditions

The piece discusses the history of belief in the afterlife from the earliest texts in the Hebrew Bible, through the New Testament, and into the first few centuries of Christianity. The approach is historical critical and, although it sometimes oversimplifies problems (for example, by leaving the Enoch literature out of the discussion of the origins of apocalyptic thought), it's a good-faith effort to portray the situation accurately. The payoff is especially interesting. The author argues that the Qur'an made creative use of mythological themes from the earlier religions and therefore not every statement in it need be taken as literally historical:

The above discussion has important consequences for Muslim views of both culture and orthodoxy. Islam holds the Qur'an to be divine revelation; so we cannot accept the assertions of Western scholars that the Qur'anic positions on Jesus and the identity of all previous revelations are due to ignorance of history on Muhammad's part. In fact, we can find alternative explanations.

As we have seen, the Qur'anic picture of Jesus does not correspond to the historical reconstruction of Jesus as apocalyptic preacher, as the Qur'an retains traditional elements of the story such as the virgin birth and Jesus as logos/'Word' which are later Christian theological developments.

However, here we need to ask the question of why the Qur'an talks about Jesus at all. In fact, the reason the Qur'an talks about Jesus is to link Muhammad's message with the religion and culture of Christianity, which was already known and respected in Arabia. In establishing this link, the Jesus of the historians is irrelevant; what is necessary is the Jesus of Christian mythology. It is through mythology and not history that religion and culture is expressed.

It is the narrow-mindedness of our modern perspective which leads us to expect history, precisely because we have forgotten how to respect cultures and their mythologies. Fundamentalists typically deride culture for its implicit inclusion of many different traditions and consequent �impurity� in Islamic terms; but the Qur'an itself is showing its respect for earlier Christian culture and mythology by largely accepting it and rejecting only one of its many claims�the divinity of Jesus.

The historical lack of belief in afterlife on the part of previous prophets is likewise a problem of our current mindset. The unfortunate fact is that we are conditioned to think of religion in terms of orthodoxy, and thus we perceive a problem whenever we cannot find that orthodoxy. But the fact that the Qur'an asserts the identity of the messages of all prophets means that the Qur'an is not interested in asserting any kind of historical orthodoxy. Rather, the Qur'an is interested in asserting a continuity of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim traditions regardless of the lack of historical orthodoxy on afterlife. As in the case of the Qur'anic story of Jesus, the Qur'anic stories of the Jewish prophets serve to illustrate this continuity of tradition and mythology.

So the Qur'an does not share our current fascination with either orthodoxy or history, and focuses on inclusiveness and the mythological connections between cultures. This has important consequences for the open-mindedness of Muslim societies.

Recently in Bangladesh, Ahmadi Muslims have been attacked as non-believers due to their supposed belief in the prophethood of their spiritual leader, Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadian. And yet, even if this charge were true, would it be nearly the deviation from orthodoxy as Abraham's apparent lack of belief in an afterlife? Likewise, in Bangladesh there are radical fundamentalist groups who are so opposed to non-Islamic manifestations of local Bengali culture that they are willing to plant bombs at traditional Bengali New Year celebrations and Sufi shrines. And yet, the intrusions of local culture that they so violently oppose are little different from the intrusion of Christian mythology (as represented by the virgin birth) which the Qur'an easily accepts.

This sort of grappling with historical issues is very important for the Islam of the twenty-first century, and I commend Zeeshan Hasan for tackling them. This is a good step forward, and I hope this piece will be widely circulated in Arabic and English in the Muslim world. More please.