W. Montgomery Watt

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Muhammad at Medina
(1956)

William Montgomery Watt (14 March 1909 – 24 October 2006) was a

Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Edinburgh. He was also a contributor to the field of Quranic studies
.

Watt was one of the foremost non-Muslim interpreters of

Muhammad at Medina (1956), are considered to be classics in the field.[1]

Early life and education

Watt was born on 14 March 1909 in Ceres, Fife, Scotland.[2] His father, who died when he was only 14 months old, was a minister of the Church of Scotland.[2][1]

Career

Ordained ministry

Watt was

Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem.[2]

After Watt returned to academia in 1946, he never again held a full-time religious appointment. He did, however, continue his ministry with part-time and honorary positions. From 1946 to 1960, he was an

Anglo-Catholic church in Edinburgh.[3] He became a member of the ecumenical Iona Community in Scotland in 1960.[1] From 1960 to 1967, he was an honorary curate at St Columba's-by-the-Castle, near Edinburgh Castle.[3] Between 1980 and 1993, following his retirement from academia, he was an honorary curate at St Mary the Virgin, Dalkeith and at St Leonard's Church, Lasswade.[3]

Academic career

Watt was Professor of Arabian and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh from 1964 to 1979.

He has been called "The Orientalist".[4]

Watt held visiting professorships at the University of Toronto, the Collège de France and Georgetown University[citation needed].

Later life

Watt died in Edinburgh on 24 October 2006 at the age of 97.[5] He had four daughters and a son with his wife Jean. The family went on holidays in Crail, a Scottish village. On his death, the writer Richard Holloway wrote of Watt that "he spent his life battling against the tide of intolerance".[2]

Honours

Watt received the American Giorgio Levi Della Vida Medal and won, as its first recipient, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies award for outstanding scholarship.[1]

Watt received an

honorary doctorate from Aberdeen University.[6]

Views

Watt believed that the

divinely inspired but not infallibly true.[4]

non-Muslim Islamic scholar
, states:

His books have done much to emphasize the Prophet's commitment to social justice; Watt has described him as being like an

Arabs, for whom these were or had become irrelevant concepts. This would not be a sufficiently high estimate of his worth for most Muslims, but it's a start. Frankly, it's hard for Christians to say affirmative things about a religion like Islam that postdates their own, which they are brought up to believe contains all things necessary for salvation. And it's difficult for Muslims to face the fact that Christians aren't persuaded by the view that Christianity is only a stop on the way to Islam, the final religion."[7]

Carole Hillenbrand, a professor of Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh, states:[1]

He was not afraid to express rather radical

99 names of God, each expressing special attributes of God, Watt returned to the Latin word "persona
" – which meant a "face" or "mask", and not "individual", as it now means in English – and he formulated the view that a true interpretation of Trinity would not signify that God comprises three individuals. For him, Trinity represents three different "faces" of the one and the same God.

His account of the origin of Islam met with criticism from other scholars such as

School of Oriental and African Studies, and Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, in their book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977), and Crone's Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam.[8] However, Both Patricia Crone and Michael Cook have since said that the central thesis of the book "Hagarism" was mistaken because the evidence they had to support the thesis was not sufficient or internally consistent enough.[9]

Reception

Pakistani academic, Zafar Ali Qureshi, in his book, Prophet Muhammad and His Western Critics: A Critique of W. Montgomery Watt and Others has criticized Watt as having incorrectly portrayed the life of Muhammad in his works. Qureshi's book was praised by Turkish academic İbrahim Kalın.[10]

Georges-Henri Bousquet has mocked Watt's book, Muhammad at Mecca, describing it as "A Marxist interpretation of the origins of Islam by an Episcopal clergyman."[11][12]

Historian Patricia Crone took issue with Watt's approach of extracting "historical" information from mythical stories by simply excluding the miraculous elements.[13]

Selected works

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Hillenbrand, Carole (8 November 2006). "Professor W. Montgomery Watt". The Independent. Retrieved 1 June 2016.
  2. ^ a b c d Holloway, Richard (14 November 2006). "William Montgomery Watt". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 June 2016.
  3. ^ a b c d e f "William Montgomery Watt". Crockford's Clerical Directory (online ed.). Church House Publishing. Retrieved 1 June 2016.
  4. ^ a b "Interview with Profs. William Montgomery Watt". www.alastairmcintosh.com.
  5. ^ The Herald, The Scotsman, The Times, 27 October 2006
  6. ^ "Lecture by Professor Carole Hillenbrand in event: Islamic Studies in Scotland: Retrospect and Prospect" (PDF). University of Edinburgh, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. 13 December 2016. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  7. ^ "The Prophet Muhammad: A mercy to mankind". Archived from the original on 4 September 2006.
  8. ^ Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Princeton University Press. 1987 [1]
  9. ISSN 1556-5068
    .
  10. ^ Ibrahim Kalin, Prophet Muhammad and His Western Critics: A Critique of W. Montgomery Watt and Others
  11. ^ Fred M. Donner, The Study of Islam's Origins since W. Montgomery Watt's Publications (PDF), p. 4
  12. ISBN 978-3-11-019142-4
  13. ISBN 978-90-04-16730-8
    .

External links
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