|
..it must be said that even today theological publications about Islam are far from being unbiased about this religion and its founder or truly appreciative of them. In fact this is not surprising, because research into Islam has emerged mainly from Christian missionary research. Missionary scholars, who had mainly had an Evangelical or Catholic education, looked at islam from a teleological point of view, and were not able to consider it outside the Judeo-Christian framework or to grasp its essence. A method which mainly depends on finding points of contact for the Christian mission and on unmasking the subject-matter as an amalgam of Arabic heathen, Jewish and Christian elements is, form the start, incapable of achieving any kind of insight into the subject. Even modern authors not affected by denominational considerations nevertheless frequently-- and usually quite unconsciously-- subsume the result they have obtained from historical and phenomenological research under the religious concepts acquired from Christianity and Judaism, and thus obstruct their own way to a proper understanding of the religion under study. Very often they lack sympathy, sensitivity and understanding for the numinous or irrational and which does not reveal itself to purely intellectual research. Religion is a subject which can only partly be explored by science in the same way as the natural world with its cause and effect. Basically, the science of the study of religions is only possible as religious history, religious phenomenology and religious sociology. However, religious life is far from being exhausted in these branches of the study of religion. This is why the presentation of a religion is also always dependent on the intellectual attitude of the one presenting it. For in the sphere of the religious, in the domain of cultural values, a completely objective intellectual attitude does not exist. From the start, different conclusions are to be expected when Islam is presented by a convinced Christian, a staunch atheist, or a Muslim. The attitude adopted towards the subject-- the conviction that after Christ a divine manifestation is impossible, or that a divine manifestation is not possible at all, or that the Arabian Prophet revealed the Word of God-- will be clearly visible in the presentation. For it is of crucial importance whether a religion is described from within or without. He who is not satisfied with a pure recording of religious phenomena and of their interpretation according to subjective standards which from the start are taken as absolute criteria, but who wants to learn something about the essential mystery of a religion, should acquaint himself with a believer's own interpretation of his faith.
(138:1)
|