As for praying for People of the Book: one cannot pray over (salatu-l janazah) a non-Muslim, but praying for someone - as is du'a - may well be a different matter: Rasulu-Llah, peace be upon him, seemed to pray for Waraqah, the uncle of his first wife, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (may Allah be pleased with her).

Who is doing the forbidding? What are their texts (nusous)? What is their authority, and, particularly, what is their tarbiyyah - that is, who are their shaykhs that they can claim this authority? We must know these things, otherwise the whole of our world will degenerate into anarchy.

We may only forbid those things that Allah Almighty and His Messenger have said are forbidden - that is, declared haram. And we are forbidden by Allah Almighty from declaring haram what He did not. Such haram-declarers had better be extremely careful that that which they are anathematising has actually been forbidden by the Almighty and is not some hang-up of their own. This word haram is grossly overworked by our demagogues and self-opinionated gurus: what happened to al haraamu bayyin wa-l halaalu bayyin ("the forbidden is clear and the permitted is clear"), or did they forget that one?

I agree that there does seem to be a very recent viciousness that has developed in the rhetoric of many Muslim demagogues. It is also quite a surprising one.

The People of the Book are often praised in the Quran and the same can be inferred from many ahadith. The theological debate about whether the People of the Book are to be regarded as a category of believers (mu'minoun) or a category of infidel (kafiroun) has swung back and forth over the centuries, sometimes with the one interpretation being favoured and sometimes with the other; but no definitive show-stopping conclusion has been reached even by the great imams of the past, so it's unlikely that the pygmy gurus of today will resolve the matter. We can only try to follow what Rasulu-Llah, peace be upon him, did.

The Quran is very clear about the respect we must give to the People of the Book. I paraphrase: "You can see among them good and saintly people". There are many ahadith relating favourably to the People of the Book, the most obvious of which being those describing the hijrah of the Prophet's community headed by Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq (may Allah be pleased with him) to the Christian King (Negus) of Abyssinia. The Prophet, may peace be upon him, said that he was sending them there because the king was a believer and he knew that he would protect them.

The Prophet himself, peace be upon him, married women of the People of the Book - a Jewish lady and then a Coptic lady, Mariah, who was the mother of his son, Ibrahim (whether they converted afterwards is not necessarily relevant because the principal is still the same). And if men are allowed by the Shari'ah to marry women of the People of the Book, or "believing women", are they then necessarily going to condemn their own wives to Hell? Anyway, isn't it Allah Almighty who actually says who's going to Heaven or Hell; or are these Muslims now telling Him how to run His Creation according to how they interpret His Book. And what if He doesn't shape up?

This new-style condemnation of the People of the Book raises the interesting question whether these intellectual Lilliputians of ours are now, in effect, declaring a time-limit on the Quran, and if so where will they stop?

They say, for example, that today's Christianity is not the same as that of the 7th century, and so our contemporary Christians are not the ones referred to in the Quran and Sunnah. Basically, therefore, they are saying that Allah Almighty's knowledge is limited.

If they and their gurus really believe this, then they are committing an act of kufr, surely? I assume that this attitude comes from ignorance, or resentment, but either way it is not scholarly (compare this with Imam al-Ghazzali's essay Ar Raddu-l Jameelu li Ilahiyyati 'Isa-l Maseeh bi Sareehi-l Injeel, "The Excellent Refutation of the Divinity of Jesus Christ by the Text of the Gospels", in which he demonstrates by the use of "case study" theologies that whatever the Christians believed in back in the days of the Early Church were still being believed in in the 12th-13th Centuries. It is probable that little has changed). In fact, there is a staggering degree of ignorance among the gurus of the modern Muslim World, ...and not only about Christianity.

Actually, some of the Christian communities of then were getting up to exactly the same mischief as they are now, and in some cases indulging in even worse antics: the burning of the Library of Alexandria; the sending of the legions under the empire's best general, Bellisarius, to impose a Roman bishop on Carthage; the murdering of a million people in north Africa for refusing to accept the authority of the Church of Rome; the extermination of the gnostics in Egypt; the later extermination of the Arian "heresy" in southern France, Spain, and western north Africa. It's all terribly familiar. And yet the Seerah relates favourably about Bahirah and Waraqah, the Negus of Abyssinia, Heraclius the Emperor, and Honorius the Pope (the only Pope to be anathematised by his successors).

It would be true to suggest that the 7th century contained more different Christian beliefs than today's world does - the Church of Rome has seen to that. Nevertheless, among them were those that became the Orthodox and Catholic churches (the protestant churches are all break-aways from the beliefs and authority of the Church of Rome) of today. Missing through extermination are various "heresies" (from the beliefs of the Church of Rome) such as Arianism, Pelagianism, Donatism, or Priscillianism. And in the world of the 7th century, Celtic Christianity - unitarian, believing in Christ as a prophet, acknowledging the authority of the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria (but not the bishop of Rome), and following the Mosaic Law - was still vibrant, though in retreat before the aggressive expanionism of the Church of Rome.

One can put the question to the gurus and their followers that if the Christians of today are not the same as those of the 7th century, then should they not also logically be rejecting those ayaat Quraniyyah that condemn the actions and beliefs of a section of the People of the Book along with those ayaat that praise them. So wouldn't it be logical, therefore, to take them at their face value and be nice to them?

A considerable amount of anger and frustration as regards the People of the Book is indeed justified. A recent trip I made to the Mezquita - the Masjid Jami' - in Cordoba, for example, really made my blood boil when I realised the destruction that the Church of Rome in Spain had inflicted upon what must have been a phenomenally beautiful complex. Cultures rise and, when their time comes, they fall. But here, as everywhere else in Spain, Italy, and Sicily, sheer wanton vandalism and viciousness were used as a part of a coherent policy of cultural genocide.

Compare the survival of Christian communities and their artifacts in the Balkans with the total absence of Muslim ones in Cordoba (the Fall of Cordoba in 1326 was very roughly contemporary with the first Battle of Kosovo Polje), or those in Istanbul with Granada (again roughly comparable dates: Istanbul fell to the Ottomans in 1473, Granada to the Church of Rome in 1492).

Extermination, public torture, rape, dispossession, sequestration, enforced conversion, cultural genocide, mass deportations are all part of the familiar behaviour of the Christians (when they have the upper hand) towards the Muslims. In spite of this, there is no reason at all for Muslims to behave in the same way when the situation is reversed, and there are no nusous for doing so. The Muslims of yesteryear didn't do this: are the gurus of today better, more pious, and more knowledgeable than the 'ulama of the past, that they should advocate what our forebears didn't?

Yes, there are criticisms of communities of Christians and Jews in the Quran; but then there are also criticisms of the Muslims-to-be, so we cannot afford to be smug! Moreover, when accusing all Christians of believing that the Prophet Isa, peace be upon him, is God, we must be very careful, as very few of them actually believe this as such, unless, of course, you challenge them and "put them on the spot" - then, of course, they'll come out with the "party line". There are also many who do not really believe in the Divinity of Christ at all, or the Trinity. Even if they do, we have no right to go around advocating arbitrary killing of them as this is against the Shari'ah. The only person against whom one has a haqq is the one who is actually bearing arms against one: if he puts his weapon down, he becomes immediately sacrosanct (there are various ahadith and athar that bear this out: we can dig them out if you need us to). We "should not let hatred of a community lead us to injustice".

If we look, for a brief paragraph, at some of quotes from the Bible, or those frequently used by Christians, it is very difficult to see anything necessarily "unIslamic" about them:
"Wherefore callest thou me 'good'? There is none good save God and He alone" (The Prophet Isa (peace be upon him) in response to a lady who addressed him as "Good Master").
"I am the Lord thy God... Thou shalt have no other gods before Me... thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images... thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them..." (Exodus 20: 1-17).
"...for God is Love" (I John IV: 8).
"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar..." (I John IV: 20).
"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" (Galatians 6: 7).
"Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding" (Proverbs 3:13).

In Jewish practise the Hebrew word for "God" is considered so sacred that it is not allowed to be uttered in the synagogue or during religious occasions, and some Jews do not utter it at all. Some British and American Jews even write the English word "God" as "G*d", using an asterisk instead of the "o". This is a testament to their respect and love of God.

As religions, therefore, there is ample to defend Christianity and Judaism as ways of belief, when followed correctly. When the actions of Muslims are very different from Islam, we make excuses. Surely when the actions of Christians or Jews are very different from their doctrines, we should also at least put it down to the fact that they are "bad Jews" or "bad Christians", rather than claim that "all Jews are kafirs" or "all Christians are kafirs".

Moreover, one thing that every Muslim could learn from reading the Bible and the Torah, if he refuses to learn it from the Quran, is "example". It is likely that the criticisms we read in the Quran about certain communities of Christians or Jews are actually to be taken as examples for us, so that we can learn. These communities could just as easily have been anyone else, or even communities of Muslims, but they happen to be Christians or Jews because God appointed those particular communities to make the point He wanted. This is not to assume that all People of the Book are like this - we are expected to use some intelligence here! And this should be quite clear because these communities are usually specified by names (i.e. they are not referred to as "Christians", or even "all Christians"), and also because we have these instructions to treat People of the Book with respect, which by implication means that they are not all Hell-bound.

No matter what we think of the People of the Book, and no matter what they do to us, we are commanded by Allah Almighty to deal with them respectfully, and so this is what we must do. We are required to accord them a special status. Moreover, if "there are amongst them good and saintly people", then there should be no conflict (as far as we are concerned at least). We are falling into this trap of judging a whole group of people, a whole nation, or a whole religion, by the actions of a few. Islam has never advocated this. Islam has always dealt with the merits of the individual. In fact, we are doing to others what they have been doing to us. Oh, the irony....

Moreover, in the world of today (akhiru-z zamaan) when all beliefs are under attack from the agents of Satan, we need to work with all those who believe in the Supreme Being, as our own communities are distinctly lacking in many things. For example, a couple of years ago there was a panel discussion programme on a British TV channel about "Islamic Fundamentalism" occasioned by the views of a certain Syrian refugee and his followers. The refugee was on the programme and failed dismally to speak up for what Islam really teaches; such was his perversion of the teachings of Islam that in the end it was an Israeli Rabbi who defended Islam against its detractors!

If we will not defend ourselves, let alone do all the other things that we are supposed to be doing - such as standing up for justice, and defending the weak and the oppressed - then it is just as well that we have the People of the Book around to do it for us. Considering some of the ridiculous acts, often horrific, that are done in the name of Islam I don't think we should be worrying about others; we need to worry about what our own communities are getting up to.