William Montgomery Watt

Watt (right), interviewed by Ali Akbar Abdolrashidi

William Montgomery Watt (14 March 1909 – 24 October 2006^[1]) was a Scottish historian, an Emeritus Professor in Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Edinburgh. Watt was one of the foremost non-Muslim interpreters of Islam in the West, and according to Carole Hillenbrand "an enormously influential scholar in the field of Islamic studies and a much-revered name for many Muslims all over the world". Watt's comprehensive biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, Muhammad at Mecca (1953) and Muhammad at Medina (1956), are considered to be classics in the field.^[2]

Biography

Watt, whose father died when he was only 14 months old, was born in Ceres, Fife, Scotland.^[1]

Watt was a priest of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and was Arabic specialist to the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem from 1943–46.^[1] He became a member of the ecumenical Iona Community in Scotland in 1960. He was Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh from 1964–79.

He has been called "the Last Orientalist".^[3] He died in Edinburgh on 24 October 2006 at the age of 97.^[4]

Awards

Watt held visiting professorships at the University of Toronto, the Collège de France, and Georgetown University, and 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.^[2]

Watt's views

Watt believed that the Qur'an was divinely inspired, though not infallibly true.^[3]

Martin Forward, a 21st-century 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 Old Testament prophet, who came to restore fair dealing and belief in one God to the 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."^[5]

Carole Hillenbrand, a professor of Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh, states:^[2]

He was not afraid to express rather radical theological opinions – controversial ones in some Christian ecclesiastical circles. He often pondered on the question of what influence his study of Islam had exerted on him in his own Christian faith. As a direct result, he came to argue that the Islamic emphasis on the uncompromising oneness of God had caused him to reconsider the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, which is vigorously attacked in the Koran as undermining true monotheism.
Influenced by Islam, with its 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 if Islam met with criticism from other scholars such as John Wansbrough of the University of London's 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.^[6]

Works

• The faith and practice of al-Ghazālī (1953) ISBN 978-0-686-18610-6
• Muhammad at Mecca (1953) ISBN 978-0-19-577278-4
• Muhammad at Medina (1956) ISBN 978-0-19-577307-1 (online)
• Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (1961) ISBN 978-0-19-881078-0, a summary of the above two major works (online)
• Islamic Philosophy and Theology (1962) ISBN 978-0-202-36272-4
• Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets (???)
• Islamic Political Thought (1968) ISBN 978-0-85224-403-6
• Islamic Surveys: The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe (1972) ISBN 978-0-85224-439-5
• The Majesty That Was Islam (1976) ISBN 978-0-275-51870-7
• What Is Islam? (1980) ISBN 978-0-582-78302-7
• Muhammad's Mecca (1988) ISBN 978-0-85224-565-1
• Muslim-Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misperceptions (1991) ISBN 978-0-415-05411-9
• Early Islam (1991) ISBN 978-0-7486-0170-7
• Islamic Philosophy And Theology (1987) ISBN 978-0-7486-0749-5
• Islamic Creeds (1994) ISBN 978-0-7486-0513-2
• History of Islamic Spain (1996) ISBN 978-0-85224-332-9
• Islamic Political Thought (1998) ISBN 978-0-7486-1098-3
• Islam and the Integration of Society (1998) ISBN 978-0-8101-0240-8
• Islam: A Short History (1999) ISBN 978-1-85168-205-8
• A Christian Faith For Today (2002) ISBN 0-415-27703-5

References

External links

• Professor W. Montgomery Watt by Carole Hillenbrand
• W. Montgomery Watt: Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman
• "Sirat An-Nabi and the Orientalists" Criticism of some of Watt's works by Muhammad Mohar Ali
• Obituary by Charlotte Alfred. Edinburgh Middle East Report Online, a journal founded in Watt's former department. Winter 2006
• Professor Watt's paper Women in the Earliest Islam
• Interview with Professor Watt on Islam/Christian relations
• William Montgomery Watt's picture