Hans Küng On ​“Is Muham­mad A Prophet”?

Edi­tor’s Note

The fol­low­ing is an excerpt tak­en from ​“Chris­tian­i­ty and World Reli­gions : Dia­logue with Islam”, in Leonard Swi­dler (ed.), Mus­lims in Dia­logue : The Evo­lu­tion of A Dia­logue, vol. 3 (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992) by the Chris­t­ian philoso­pher Hans Küng who con­veyed a Chris­t­ian opin­ion on the Prophet Muham­mad^(P). We do not nec­es­sar­i­ly agree with every­thing that has been said here.

Hans Küng On Muhammad

Of course, many reli­gions do not have prophets in the strictest sense. Hin­dus have their gurus and sad­hus, the Chi­nese their sages, Bud­dhists their mas­ters — but they do not have prophets, as do Jews, Chris­tians, and Mus­lims. There is no doubt that if any­one in the whole of reli­gious his­to­ry is termed the prophet because he claimed to be just that, but in no way more than that, it was Muham­mad. But may a Chris­t­ian assert that Muham­mad was a prophet ? Chris­tians, if they pause to sur­vey the sit­u­a­tion, must admit the fol­low­ing (espe­cial­ly in light of the Hebrew Bible):

• Like the prophets of Israel, Muham­mad did not func­tion by rea­son of an office assigned to him by the com­mu­ni­ty (or its author­i­ties), but by rea­son of a spe­cial per­son­al rela­tion­ship with God.
• Like the prophets of Israel, Muham­mad was a per­son of strong will who felt him­self ful­ly imbued with a god­ly call­ing, ful­ly con­sumed, exclu­sive­ly appoint­ed to his task.
• Like the prophets of Israel, Muham­mad spoke to the heart of a reli­gious and social cri­sis, and with his pas­sion­ate piety and rev­o­lu­tion­ary procla­ma­tion he opposed the wealthy rul­ing class and the tra­di­tion it was try­ing to preserve.
• Like the prophets of Israel, Muham­mad, who most­ly called him­self the ​“Warn­er”, sought to be noth­ing but the ver­bal instru­ment of God and to pro­claim not his own, but God’s word.
• Like the prophets of Israel, Muham­mad untir­ing­ly pro­claimed the one God who tol­er­ates no oth­er gods and who is at the same time the good Cre­ator and mer­ci­ful Judge.
• Like the prophets of Israel, Muham­mad required, as a response to this one God, uncon­di­tion­al obe­di­ence, devo­tion, sub­mis­sion, which is the lit­er­al mean­ing of word Islam : every­thing that includes grat­i­tude to God and gen­eros­i­ty toward fel­low human beings.
• Like the prophets of Israel, Muham­mad com­bined monothe­ism with human­ism or human val­ues, belief in the one God and God’s judg­ment with a call to social jus­tice, and a threat to the unjust, who go to hell, with promis­es to the just, who are gath­ered into God’s paradise.

Who­ev­er reads the Bible — at least the Hebrew Bible — togeth­er with the Qur’an will be led to pon­der whether the three Semit­ic reli­gions of rev­e­la­tion-Judaism, Chris­tian­i­ty, and Islam-and espe­cial­ly the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’an, could have the same foun­da­tion. Is it not one and the same God who speaks so clear­ly in both ? Does not the ​“Thus says the Lord” of the Hebrew Bible cor­re­spond to the ​“Speak” of the Qur’an, and the ​“Go and pro­claim” of the Hebrew Bible to the ​“Stand up and warn” of the Qur’an ? In truth, even the mil­lions of Arab-speak­ing Chris­tians have no oth­er word for God than ​“Allah”.

Might it not there­fore be pure­ly dog­mat­ic prej­u­dice that rec­og­nizes Amos and Hosea, Isa­iah and Jere­mi­ah, as prophets, but not Muham­mad ? What­ev­er one may have against Muham­mad from the stand­point of West­ern Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty (armed vio­lence, polygamy, a sen­su­al lifestyle for males), the fol­low­ing facts are indisputable :

• Today there are almost eight hun­dred mil­lion per­sons in the huge area between Moroc­co to the west and Bangladesh to the east, between the steppes of cen­tral Asia to the North and the Island world of Indone­sia to the south, who are stamped with the com­pelling pow­er of a faith that, like vir­tu­al­ly no oth­er faith, has mold­ed into a uni­ver­sal type those who con­fess it.
• All those per­sons are linked by a sim­ple con­fes­sion of faith (There is no God but God, and Muham­mad is his prophet), linked by five basic oblig­a­tions, and linked by thor­ough sub­mis­sion to the will of God, whose unchange­able deci­sion, even when it brings suf­fer­ing, is to be accepted.
• Among all the Islam­ic peo­ples there has remained a sense of fun­da­men­tal equal­i­ty before God of an inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty that is basi­cal­ly capa­ble of over­com­ing race (Arabs and non-Arabs) and even the castes of India.

I am con­vinced that, despite all the renewed fears of Islam, there is a grow­ing con­vic­tion among Chris­tians that, in the light of Muham­mad’s place in world his­to­ry, we must cor­rect our atti­tude toward Islam. The ​“scourge of exclu­sive­ness”, aris­ing from Chris­t­ian dog­mat­ic impa­tience and intol­er­ance, con­demned by the British his­to­ri­an Arnold Toyn­bee, must be aban­doned. Regard­ing the fig­ure of the prophet, I believe the fol­low­ing must be admitted :

• Ara­bi­ans in the sev­enth cen­tu­ry right­ly lis­tened to and fol­lowed the voice of Muhammad.
• In com­par­i­son to the very world­ly poly­the­ism of the old Ara­bi­an trib­al reli­gions before Muham­mad, the reli­gion of the peo­ple was raised to a com­plete­ly new lev­el, that of a puri­fied monotheism.
• The first Mus­lims received from Muham­mad — or, bet­ter still, from the Qur’an — end­less inspi­ra­tion, courage, and strength for a new reli­gious start : a start toward greater truth and deep­er under­stand­ing, toward a break­through in the revi­tal­iz­ing and renew­al of tra­di­tion­al religion.

In truth, Muham­mad was and is for per­sons in the Ara­bi­an world, and for many oth­ers, the reli­gious reformer, law­giv­er, and leader ; the prophet per se. Basi­cal­ly Muham­mad, who nev­er claimed to be any­thing more than a human being, is more to those who fol­low him than a prophet is to us : he is a mod­el for the mode of life that Islam strives to be. If the Catholic Church, accord­ing to the Vat­i­can II ​“Dec­la­ra­tion on Non-Chris­t­ian Reli­gions”, ​“regards with esteem the Mus­lims”, then the same church must also respect the one whose name is embar­rass­ing­ly absent from the same dec­la­ra­tion, although he and he alone led the Mus­lims to pray to this one God, for through him this God ​“has spo­ken to human­i­ty”: Muham­mad the prophet. But does not such an acknowl­edge­ment have very grave con­se­quences, espe­cial­ly for the mes­sage he pro­claimed, the teach­ings set down in the Qur’an ?

I think for the peo­ples of Ara­bia Muham­mad’s prophe­cy led to tremen­dous progress. What­ev­er we Chris­tians do with this fact, we must affirm that he act­ed as a prophet and that he was a prophet. I do not see how we can avoid the con­clu­sion that on their way of sal­va­tion, Mus­lims fol­low a prophet who is deci­sive for them. 

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