Koran XXI1.30: dhalika wa man yu`azzim hurumati-l-lahi fahuwa khayru-l-lahu `inda rabbihi wa 'uhillat lakumu-l-'an'amu 'ilia ma yutla `alaykum fajtanibu -r- rijsa mina-l-'awthani wa jtanibu qawla-z-zuri
31: hunafa'a lil-l- lahi ghayra mushrikina bihi wa man-yshrik bi-1- lahi faka'annama kharra mina-s- sama'i fatakhafuhu- t-tayru 'aw tahwi bihi-r-rihu ft makanin sahigin
30: That (is the command) And whoso magnifies the sacred things of Allah, it will be well for him in the sight of his Lord. The cattle are lawful unto you save that which hath been told you. So shun the filth of idols, and shun lying speech [false words, qawla-z-zur].
31: Turning unto Allah [only], not ascribing partners unto Him [mushrikina bihi]; for whoso ascribes partners [yshrik] unto Allah, it is as if he has fallen from the sky and the birds had snatched him or the wind had blown him to a far-off place.
A number of scholars have argued that the mushrikun mentioned in the Koran are to be taken as referring to "Christians." Gunter Luling, for instance, has put forward the thesis that the Koran that we know today contains within it a pre-Islamic Christian text. The transmitted Islamic Koran text is the end result of several successive editorial revisions, which must be seen against the background of polemics against the Trinitarian Christians of Mecca, who associated Jesus to God (mushrikun = "associators"), thus deifying him. According to Luling, there is "a massive number of references in the writings of early Muslim scholars which plainly show that they took mushrikun and the synonyms of this word as `Christians' of the trinitarian creed."1 For Luling, these references to Christians reflect a real historical situation in Mecca just before the rise of Islam.
Hawting, on the other hand, wants to argue that "material in Muslim tradition that has been understood as informing us about religious conditions in and around Mecca in the time of the Prophet should not be understood primarily as a reflexion of real historical conditions. Rather it reflects two fundamental Muslim beliefs: that Islam is identical with the religion of Abraham (din Ibrahim), and that the Koran is revelation made in Mecca and Medina. The former belief is mirrored in reports documenting the persistence of elements of Abrahamic religion in inner Arabia in spite of its degradation by the idolatrous Arabs; the latter leads to the view that the opponents called mushrikun in the Koran must be the Arab contemporaries and neighbours of Muhammad."2
Though Muslim tradition does talk about pre-Islamic Mecca and Medina as societies dominated by polytheism and idolatry, it also suggests that the Arabs had some sort of an idea of a supreme god, over and above their local idols, called Allah, who was especially associated with the sanctuary called Kacba. The latter was the locus of an annual pilgrimage (bajj).
Hawting continues:
It is against this background that the traditional charge of shirk is usually understood. That Arabic noun (to which are related the verbal form ashraka and the active participle mushrik), is.... frequently understood as "idolatry" or "polytheism" but in a basic, non-religious sense it refers to the idea of "making someone or something a partner, or associate, of someone else or something else." . . . According to the traditional material, the mushrikun were not simple polytheists who were ignorant of the existence of God: they knew of Allah and on occasion prayed to and worshipped Him, but generally they associated other beings with Him and thus dishonoured Him.3
Muslim tradition also tells us of the talbiya, "the invocation made in a loud voice and repeatedly by the pilgrim when he enters the state of ritual taboo (ihram) for the Pilgrimage at Mecca."4 This verbal formula is called the talbiya because it begins with the words labbayka Allahumma labbayka ("at your service, 0 god, at your service"). As Hawting adds, "In a completely monotheist version it is an important part of the Muslim hajj rituals, but tradition tells us that before Islam many tribes had their own versions which exhibited the distinctive mixture of polytheism and monotheism that characterised shirk. "
The talbiya of the Quraysh goes: labbayka Allahumma labbayka la sharika laka illy sharikun huwa laka tamlikuhu wa-ma malaka ("at your service, 0 God, at your service; you who have no associate apart from an associate which you have; you who have power over him and that over which he has power").5 Mugatil b. Sulayman (died 767 C.E.) in his Tafsir gives a list of fifty-six talbiyas. "Kister6 makes it clear that for ... Mugatil the various talbiyas of pre-Islamic Arabia were evidence of the way in which the pure monotheism brought to Arabia by Abraham had been corrupted in the generations that followed him. Commenting on Koran XXII.30, Mugatil identifies the `false speech' (qawl az-zu r) that we are there commanded to shun as that contained in the talbiyas of the pre-Islamic Arabs. What we must avoid, he says, is attributing a partner to God in the wording of the talbiya (al-shirk fi'l-talbiya)." 7
For Hawting,
the identification of the mushrikun as pre-Islamic idolatrous Arabs is dependent upon Muslim tradition and is not made by the Koran itself; the nature of the Koranic polemic against the mushrikun does not fit well with the image of pre-Islamic Arab idolatry and polytheism provided by Muslim tradition; the imputation of one's opponents of "idolatry"-of which shirk functions as an equivalent in Islam-is a recurrent motif in monotheist polemic [e.g., in Reformation Europe] and is frequently directed against opponents who consider themselves to be monotheists; the traditional Muslim literature which gives us details about idolatry and polytheism of the pre-Islamic Arabs of the jahiliyya is largely stereotypical and formulaic and its value as evidence about religious ideas and practices of the Arabs before Islam is questionable .... 8
For Hawting, the rise of Islam can only be understood against a monotheist background; Islam was born as a result of disputes among monotheists, not from a confrontation with real idolaters. Nor was it born in a remote area of western Arabia but probably in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq, where the monotheist tradition was already firmly established.
Luling and Kobert, on the other hand, accept the traditional Muslim framework, both the geography and chronology. They point to various accounts that seem to attest to the presence of monotheism of various sorts in the Hijaz and even in Mecca, where the Ka`ba is said to have contained a picture of Jesus and Mary. Indeed for Luling, the Kalba had been a Christian church.9 However, Luling, like Hawting, also believes Islam was born out of the discord between the different factions and confessions of Christendom. But unlike Hawting, Luling believes all this took place in Mecca and its environs. Luling and Kobert see their task as uncovering the Christian layers that have lain hidden, indeed deliberately disguised by Muslim editors, in the Koran and Muslim tradition.
Thus Kobert tries to show that the words in sura XXII.30: ijtanibu gawlaz-zu ri ("shun lying words" or "shun lying speech") are not just about lying but more to do with avoiding shirk, that is associating or attributing a partner to God.
More specifically, Kobert believes that there was a talbiya, the verbal formula frequently repeated during the rituals connected with the hajj, which was influenced by Christianity but one which the Prophet rejected as false words.
Early Muslim tradition recognized that mushrikun referred to Christians, but this was gradually forgotten as the final form of the Muslim dogma took shape.
Kobert then tries to show the presence of Christianity in the Hijaz, giving linguistic and biographical evidence.
NOTES
1. Gunter Luling, On the Pre-Islamic Christian Strophe Poetical Texts in the Koran (forthcoming), p. 21, n. 15
2. G. R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam. From Polemic to History (Cambridge, 1999), p. 20.
3. Ibid., p. 21
4. E12 s.v. Talbiya.
5. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam, p.22.
6. M. J. Kister, "Labbayka, Allahumma, Labbayka ...... JSAI 2 (1980): 33-57.
7. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam, p.32
8. Ibid., p.5
9. G. Luling, Der christliche Kult an der vorislamischen Kaaba als Problem der Islamwissenschaft and christlichen Theologie (Erlangen, 1977, 1992); Die Wiederentdeckung des Propheten Muhammad (Erlangen 1981), esp. chap. II.2.a.