Tradition of Polemic and Mawlana’s Understanding of Christianity
Muslims have used way of polemical literature to define or to express other religions from the beginning to modern times. It have been criticized other religions and beliefs with this method, especially by Islamic theologian. Polemical Literature tries to show that claims of truth of other religions are unfounded. In Mathnawi Mawlana narrate a long story about Jewish vizier how changed Christianity. According to the story, Jewish vizier consciously deforms preaching of Jesus. Beside this, there is an important passage that criticizes belief of one Christian who said that Jesus is God, in the Discourse of Mawlana (Fihi Ma Fih). Although Mawlana sometimes come close to Islamic theologians in his perception of Christianity, he mainly put into practice a different method from theologians. Essentially, Mawlana like theologians says Christianity isn’t real preaching of Jesus and Jesus isn’t God. Because of Mawlana used story language in criticizing of Christianity, Christians don’t react to him. This paper examines that Mawlana used methods of story/narrative as technique of caricature in understanding of Christianity. In this context, we will discuss differences of story language from polemical language in understanding of different people of faith. Keywords Mawlana, Christianity, Polemic, Language of story, Caricature.
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