Two Thoughts on Rashid Rida

One.
I found it amusing that Rida’s responses to many of the arguments he lays out in response to Christian challenges are presented in the same form as many of the hadiths. He begins every response with a sort of isnad, establishing the source of the question, from whom it came, and who exhorted him to answer it, and then he proceeds with a sort of matn that attempts to provide a solid response to the question.

This format may not be entirely incidental or subconscious, given the recurrence of Rida’s charge against the Christian scriptures that they lacked “a science of biography for determining the soundness or unsoundness of a narration” (85). In other words, they are lacking a properly developed isnad to establish the validity of the authorship of their scriptures.

Two.
I was genuinely surprised that Rida’s evaluation of Jesus and his teachings disparaged him for his lack of an “influence worth of mention in science, social reform, or civilization” (81). The charge that “his teachings and exhortations lead to the spoliation of civilization, the destruction of culture, and the decline of humankind from its highest horizon to the lowest depth of animal existence” is nothing short of scandalous for someone who blesses the name of Jesus as a prophet and wishes peace upon him (81). Rida attributes this charge to the fact that Jesus preached the exaltation of the humble and lowly and the demise of the wealth, and he encouraged a sort of asceticism that undermined societal flourishing.

Likewise, Rida praises Moses for the honor of being “raised in the house of the greatest king in the world at that time” and lauded the “pride of monarchy… which shaped his tempter in the way of courage and initative” (79). While he later decries the Mosaic law as an emulation of the Egyptians’ law, he appears to hold the honor of being raised in the courts of the pharaoh with a monarchical temperament in high esteem.

Rida also states that European culture is not Christian in that it is “a civilization built upon love of money, power, overpowering others, glory, majesty, exaltedness and the savoring of passions, all of which is completely contradicted by Christian teaching” (82). Interestingly, he does not disparage those aspects of European culture for their decadence and immorality, but rather does so on account of their contradiction to Jesus’ teachings. On the contrary, Rida attributes their development to the encounter of Europe with Islamic culture, which presumable he would hold in high esteem.

He then proceeds to laud Muhammad for being a man of humble birth, yet at the same time able to found “a nation, religion, shari’ah, kingdom and civilization in a short period, the like of which knows no equivalent in history” (82). It appears, then, that Islam places a great value on the esteem and temporal strength of the social order in the establishment of what Rida understands as “greatness”. This makes me wonder whether the Christians’ responses to Islam’s expansion–those that anticipated a messianic Byzantine king who would come and liberate them–was brought about through interaction with the Muslims who conquered them. Perhaps these could be understood to desire such a messiah for the purpose of demonstrating the truth and “greatness” of the Christian religion on the Muslims’ own terms. This likely would have been seen as a devastating argument for the conquering Muslims’ claim to a divine right to rule.