When it comes to Jesus, NPR loves lining up atheist and Muslim authors to run the whole gospel down – from Bart Ehrman to John Dominic Crossan to Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and don’t forget Reza Aslan. (For trashing the story of Mary, there’s Colm Toibin.)
So what about Muhammad? Would a Christian or atheist author critical of Islam get the call? You may keep laughing. On Sunday’s All Things Considered, they served the stew you might expect: a book by a Muslim feminist named Kecia Ali, a Boston University professor and Huffington Post blogger.
NPR anchor Arun Rath began: “Muhammad is without a doubt one of the most important men in human history. But when it comes to Muhammad's own life, there's not too much we can say with historical certainty. The details of his life have been debated and manipulated since the birth of Islam in the seventh century.”
Reza Aslan became the toast of the Left when Fox interviewer Lauren Green wondered out loud why a Muslim author would write a biography of Jesus. But Ali is not questioned for discussing how non-Muslim authors have “manipulated” the biography of Muhammad. She’s merely set up to explain it:
KECIA ALI: Non-Muslims have been writing about Muhammad almost as long as Muslims have. And the things that they had to say about him were very much shaped by what knowledge they did have - much of it inaccurate - but also by current theological, political, social worries.
So that when paganism was the concern, Muhammad was a pagan idol or a God. When heresy was a concern, Muhammad was akin to a Christian heretic. When fraud and imposters were the concern, Muhammad was a fraud. He was the arch-imposter. Over the centuries, European Christian accounts of Muhammad in particular, went through a variety stages and depictions.
Then came the truly jaw-dropping part, when the NPR interviewer suggests “ecumenical” Westerners have theorized that Muhammad is a genius:
RATH: In the Islamic world, one of the most intense debates seems to be about whether Muhammad was divine or divinely inspired or a man just like any other man. Can you talk about what's at stake in that debate and if one particular view has prevailed?
ALI: Well, I certainly think the view that has prevailed among Muslims has always been that Muhammad is a man. But the Muslim response to the traditional saying that Muhammad is a man is, yes, but like a ruby among stones, which is to say Muhammad is a man. But he's a very unusual sort of man.
He's not divine, but he has the divine in him, in the sense that he is divinely inspired. His character is luminous. His ability to intercede on behalf of Muslims has historically been a very important part of his persona. He is the beloved of God. The way in which he surpasses humanity has historically been very, very important. I would say it's been down-played somewhat in some modern Muslim biographies. But that tension has always been present.
RATH: And it's interesting how that fits in with, as you note, some of the more ecumenical-minded Western thinkers who would put Muhammad in with that idea of genius -- natural genius.
ALI: Absolutely. And it's so striking to see the ways in which we move from Muhammad the imposter to Muhammad the genius, where you're unveiling what's real underneath. And of course this is in keeping with trends in the West to thinking in a different way about the presence of the divine, where it's not revelation from on high, but something innate in the core of the human being or at least certain human beings.
Rath did turn to that obvious, thorny question of violent Islamic extremism, or “reactionary” Islam, as Rath put it. Ali claimed they’re just making an “interpretive choice” like the Westerners: "But it's actually been very striking to me how little direct appeal there is to the kind of interpretive tradition that looks at translating Muhammad's life and Muhammad's example and Muhammad's precedent into rules for Muslims of later generations to follow. Because, of course, that has been a major concern of Muslim jurists for well over a thousand years."
Ali is one of those slick ideologues that claims that none of the “Muslim countries” are really imposing a real “sharia law,” sort of the way leftists used to claim that the Soviet Union and its satellites didn’t really represent Marxism.
Claims like that of the Sultan or Boko Haram that "Islam" demands implementation of "sharia" ignore the complex reality in which there is not now nor has there ever been a uniform set of identifiable rules that Muslim scholars have agreed on much less that governments in Muslim majority countries have implemented over the centuries.
As I wrote elsewhere, so-called sharia laws on the books in Brunei, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Morocco are not directly revealed by God. They are human products with human histories negotiated in human contexts. The pretense that these laws are straightforward implementations of God's will not only serves to justify these otherwise unjustifiable rules but also feeds the demonization and dehumanization of Muslims. Though happening on two continents and perpetrated by two quite distinct sorts of actors - a multibillionaire monarch enmeshed in global capitalism and a militant anti-Western, anti-government insurgency - the Nigerian kidnapping and the Brunei law became exhibits A and B for the vilification of sharia.
Ali insisted all this real-world Sharia law is a patriarchal invention: "Whose sharia is this? It is certainly not mine. I cannot believe that it is God's."
PS: Back in May, Ali was brought into an NPR story on feminists and gay activists protesting the Sultan of Brunei's new stricter Sharia law at his Beverly Hills Hotel. She insisted the protests could backfire and burnish the Sultan's image.
