Researching “The Scripture of the Other”

Niqula Ghabriyal’s Researches of the Mujtahids and Rashid Rida’s Rejoinder

Abstract

This paper discusses a Christian-Muslim debate taking place in Egypt early last century. It examines its protagonists’ deployment of scripture as they evaluated “the religion of the other” and upheld their own. The Christian protagonist is Niqula Ghabriyal, author of Abhath al-Mujtahidin fi al-Khilaf bayn al-Nasara wa al-Muslimin (Researches of the Mujtahids on Christian-Muslim Disputation), published in 1901. Ghabriyal deploys the Quran to uphold the veracity of the Bible and hence the soundness of Christian doctrine. In addition, he rebuts Muslim readings of biblical texts. Upon these bases, he calls for Muslim conversion to Christianity. His approach finds analogs in various missionary publications dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Muslim protagonist is Rashid Rida, who publicly challenged Christian critics of Islam. Beginning in 1901, Rida published a series of articles in his journal al-Manar in response to works critical of Islam, including Ghabriyal’s book. In 1905, Rida published sixteen articles as a separate book, Shubuhat al-Nasara wa Hujaj al-Islam (The Criticisms of the Christians and the Proofs of Islam). This paper examines the arguments developed by Ghabriyal and Rida as they sought to persuade Muslims of the merits of their views. The specification of the Muslim audience is pertinent. The debate was framed by a general notion of Western progress relative to Muslim backwardness. From the perspective of colonial administrators, Western evangelists, and like-minded Arab Christians, Islam was a barrier to progress. This was to be overcome, amongst other means, by conversion to Christianity, the call to which was often accompanied by discussions of Islam’s defects. These frequently draw on the Bible and Quran and, in Ghabriyal’s case, classical and modern Islamic scholarship. From this angle, the debate may appear to be a case of Christian proselytization met by Muslim resistance. Yet in Rida’s view there was something further at play. He felt that evangelism disingenuously if not hypocritically packaged a different agenda. Rather than Muslim conversion to Christianity, he felt that the ultimate Christian goal was to alienate Muslims from a general religious disposition. In resisting that, Rida would establish Islam’s rational character and contrast it with what he found to be the inherent irrationality of traditional Christian doctrine.