Is Muhammad Also a Prophet for Christians?

Sixteenth-century Persian Safavid miniature from the Khamsa of Nizami entitled, The Ascent of the Prophet Muhammad to Heaven (al-Miʿraj) by Sultan Muhammad (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Many of the most prominent figures of the Bible, such as Abraham, Noah, Moses, and Jesus, are revered by Muslims as prophets. While Muslims and Christians sometimes differ in their understanding of such shared figures, they can at least agree that they were sent by God. But when it comes to the person that Muslims hold most dear, i.e., the Prophet Muhammad, there has long seemed to have been no common ground to be had. In fact, instead of looking for areas of agreement, Christians have often sought out, and at times even invented, reasons to condemn him. Thankfully, there have been some Christian thinkers, particularly in more recent times, willing to take a fairer look at Muhammad.

One such individual is the late Swiss Catholic priest Hans Küng. In Islam: Past, Present, and Future, he argues in favour of Christians recognizing Muhammad’s prophethood, saying that it would also help improve relations between the two groups. In fact, he seems to find it rather ridiculous that Christians have not already done so, and even criticizes the Second Vatican Council for speaking positively of the faith of Muslims while at the same time failing to mention the Prophet. Moreover, Küng takes note of the striking parallels between Muhammad and the prophets of the Old Testament. For like the latter, Muhammad preached a strict monotheism, defied the powerful, fought for social justice, and frequently reminded believers of God’s judgement.

Since it is often the case that Christians looking to contrast Muhammad’s teachings with those of the Bible do so by focusing on the New Testament, Küng is wise to try to contextualize him by invoking the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. For while the New Testament is grounded in the Hebrew scripture, Jesus’s message is a revolutionary interpretation of it and faith in general. Whereas Muhammad’s message, while still revolutionary in many respects, feels rather akin to that of the Old Testament, as it places a far greater emphasis on God’s oneness and law than the Gospels do. To be honest, in many respects, even Muhammad’s biography sounds like something that one would find within the pages of the Old Testament. As a matter of fact, in Olivier Clément’s Dialogues with Patriarch Athenagoras, the hierarch tells him that it is perhaps possible to call Muhammad “a prophet of the Old Covenant,” since “Islam is like a rebirth of the faith of the forefathers and patriarchs,” and has led many from paganism to the faith of Abraham.

Küng also sees the Christian rejection of Muhammad as inconsistent. He says that if Christians can accept the prophethood of someone like Elijah, whom he deems “extremely violent,” and the other prophets of the Old Testament, then it is only “dogmatic prejudice” that prevents them from also recognizing Muhammad. While I feel that it is a mistake to brush aside dogma as seemingly inconsequential in determining someone’s prophethood, Küng’s point should still be taken seriously. For instance, Christians to this day often attack Muhammad as violent, claiming that his willingness to take up the sword somehow disqualifies him from being a messenger of God, while at the same time revering biblical figures who are remembered in no small part for their military prowess, e.g., Joshua, Gideon, and David.

However, some involved in Muslim-Christian dialogue believe a Christian acceptance of Muhammad’s prophethood to be counterproductive. For example, in Dialogue and Differences: Clarity in Christian-Muslim Relations, the Jesuit Christian W. Troll makes the striking statement, “From the Muslim perspective, Christians who say that Muhammad is a prophet but do not become Muslims either do not know their own (Christian) faith or are merely playing games.” He even gives an example of the sort of misunderstandings that can arise from such a position. He says that at the Cordoba Colloquium in 1977, the Christian scholar Gregorio Ruiz González argued that someone who possesses “extraordinary insight and intuition” and is “responsive to specific social contexts” can perhaps be called a prophet. Within this definition, González included Muhammad alongside Karl Marx. According to Troll, the Muslims in attendance were not happy with this.

While Troll’s example is anecdotal, and now somewhat dated, it is still worth considering. Strictly speaking, for both Muslims and Christians, a prophet must meet certain criteria. Moreover, Muslims believe Muhammad to be the seal of the prophets (Q 33:40) and the most important among them. They also see Islam as being for all of humanity, and, therefore, believe that Christians, like anyone else, are called by God to fully accept the revelation given to Muhammad and become Muslims. Thus, it makes sense that some Muslims may find it questionable for a Christian to call Muhammad a prophet while still choosing to remain in their own tradition. That being said, I have seen Muslims reacting positively to the popular Catholic scholar of Islam Craig Considine discussing his own unconventional belief in the Prophet Muhammad. So perhaps a Christian acknowledgement of Muhammad’s prophethood can benefit Muslim-Christian relations to some degree.

In my opinion, the most interesting examination of the Prophet’s relevancy for Christians can be found in Anna Bonta Moreland’s Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy. The author—who believes that Christians should remain open to the possibility of Muhammad’s prophethood on “Christian terms”—argues rather well for at least a partial recognition of the revelations given to Muhammad, particularly through her use of St. Thomas Aquinas’s views on prophecy. While Moreland readily admits that Aquinas himself took a dim view of the Islamic prophet, she identities this as being simply the result of the friar’s milieu, and instead focuses her attention on his arguably deeper and more timeless teachings regarding prophecy.

Saint Thomas Aquinas by Carlo Crivelli (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Moreland writes of how Aquinas teaches that true prophecy need not always come from a prophet, since someone may prophesy truly at times, while at other times may have difficulty transmitting the message without mixing their own opinions into it. While this may be somewhat hard to accept for those of us used to thinking in more black and white terms regarding the subject, there seems to be evidence for such a position in scripture. Among other examples, Aquinas notes that the high priest Caiaphas—one of the great villains of the Bible—prophesied concerning Jesus’s death (John 11:49-53). The example of Caiaphas speaking prophetically is important to Moreland’s overall argument because it vividly demonstrates how prophecy can come from those whom Christians may least expect. Further, she says that according to Aquinas, “anything touching upon knowledge or love of God is a candidate for prophecy.” Moreland argues that this would allow for the possibility for Christians to accept those portions of the Qurʾan that are in harmony with their faith as truly prophetic.

While there are certainly parts of the Qurʾan that no Christian can accept—just as there are parts of the Bible that no Muslim can accept—that does not mean that Christians should deny that it contains much that is true and holy from the perspective of their faith. For while the Qurʾan rejects fundamental aspects of Christian doctrine, such as belief in Jesus’s divinity and the Holy Trinity (e.g., 5:73-5), it still frequently reconfirms the sanctity of many of the teachings and figures of the Bible. For example, it calls Jesus the messiah (e.g., Q 3:45), and recounts his miraculous birth by the Virgin Mary (Q 19:16-26). Moreover, the Qurʾan honours Jews and Christians with the status of ahl al-kitab, or People of the Book (e.g., 29:46), since they also possess revealed scripture. In fact, the holy book even teaches that faithful Jews and Christians who believe in God and the Last Day will enter Paradise (2:62), and elsewhere tells Muslims that there is no people closer to them than the Christians (5:82).

The truth is that the old polemics that sought to demonize Muhammad as simply a heretic are outdated and will continue to appear lacking to anyone who has taken a serious look at the Prophet’s life and teachings. For who can deny the many parallels between Muhammad, himself a descendant of Abraham, and the Hebrew prophets? Or how can Christians disregard the spiritual importance of him having converted polytheist Arabia to the worship of the God of the Bible? Thus, during his eighth-century debate with the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi, Timothy I, patriarch of the East, could honestly say that Muhammad had walked in the path of the prophets. Further, in more recent times, Patriarch Parthenios III of Alexandria even called Muhammad an apostle, “who worked for the Kingdom of God.” The praise of these two Christian leaders for Muhammad is arguably the result of an authentic and open-minded encounter with the Islamic tradition and Muslims.

In the end, while elements of Islamic belief will always be incompatible with Christian doctrine, and vice versa, Christians cannot ignore the fact that the Qurʾan and the example of the Prophet Muhammad have led Muslims to worship the God of Abraham—something of immeasurable spiritual value. Therefore, even if Christians do not believe that they can recognize Muhammad as a prophet, they should still feel capable of acknowledging him as a great religious leader, whose profound faith in God brought about a sacred and lasting spiritual change in Arabia and beyond.