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In the same chapter, while discussing the Attributes and Names of God, Watt remarks:
So far as names and words go there would seem to be little difference between Islam and Christianity. Nevertheless, many Christians would claim that God as conceived by Christians is more loving than God as conceived by Muslims. For Christians, He is not merely benevolent towards those who obey and love Him, but He is like a shepherd who goes out to look for and rescue sheep that have gone astray ....Many items of news in recent years have given Westerners the impression that Muslims are sterner and more rigorous in their punishment of offenders. Undoubtedly, however, there are many other Muslims whose attitudes are much more liberal.(p. 53)
Watt's attitude is fairer than that of some Orientalists and scholars of Semitic religions who regard the Old Testament and the Quranic conceptions of God as being sterner or less loving than the Christian conception'. Watt is willing to admit that there is "little difference" between the Islamic and Christian conceptions "so far as names and words go'." However, there is something true in the statement that the Christian conception projects God as being more loving and lenient in comparison with the Jewish and Islamic notions. There are two reasons for this: firstly, the emphasis on love, more than in the Gospels, is found in Paul's letters; secondly, the absence of any system of legislation in Christianity comparable to the Mosaic Law or the Islamic Shari'ah3. God in the popular Christian conception is no more the authoritative lawgiver that He is in the Quran and the Torah. In the Christian conception, `one is put right with God' solely through faith in God and Jesus Christ. Voluntary morality substitutes the compulsory Divine Law. God, to Paul and his followers, no longer seems to make any of the following demands:
Whoever hits his father or his mother is to be put to death. Whoever kidnaps a man, either to sell him or to keep him as a slave, is to be put to death. Whoever curses his father or his mother, is to be put to death. Whenever a man gets angry and deliberately kills another man, he is to be put to death, even if he has run to My altar of safety (Exodus 21:14‑17). If a thief is caught breaking into a house at night and is killed, the one who killed him is not guilty of murder (Exodus 22:4). Put to death any woman who practises magic. Put to death any man who has sexual relations with an animal. Condemn to death anyone who offers sacrifices to any god except Me, the Lord (Exodus 22:18‑20). If a man is caught having intercourse with another man's wife, both of them are to be put to death (Deut. 22:22). Whoever does not keep it (the Sabbath), but works on that day, is to be put to death (Exodus 31:14).
Similarly, Christianity is not `encumbered' with the laws regarding qisas, and hudud as in Islam. This banishment of Law from the predominant Christian religion which has survived until today, reduces God, na'udhu billdh, to an easygoing, indulgent and negligent sovereign who is no longer bothered about how men may regulate their lives and social affairs, as long as they have faith in Him and His Son, whose death on the cross exempts the believers from the jurisdiction of the earlier Law given to Moses. To the Muslim it appears that the Christian or rather the Pauline emphasis on love is a plea to compensate the guilt caused by the rejection of Mosaic Law in the interest of Paul's ambition for proselyting among the Gentiles. The Mosaic Law, with its all embracing nature covering all the individual and social affairs, would have reduced the acceptability of the Christian doctrine for the Gentiles used to liberal life styles.
Watt is referring to the much publicized cases of‑implementation of the Islamic penal laws in the latter part of his above‑quoted statement. When he refers to the "many other Muslims whose attitudes are much more liberal", he is indeed referring to the "moderate" Muslims who, like Paul, consider religion as voluntary ethics and a matter of individual's inner faith that would not tolerate the Law of the Shari'ah to invade all spheres of individual and social life. While they are delighted with the abstract idea of loving Gad and all mankind and the rest of creation, they are put off by any suggestion that God should be obeyed (at least as much as their office's regulations or the traffic rules) and not merely loved. They are liberal indeed in the sense that they liberally appropriate all control over their individual lives or the affairs of the society to themselves. Faith and love, they are convinced, are sufficient to satisfy and placate God, and compensate for their rejection of the Law, without which, they are certain, it is possible to regulate individual life and socio‑political affairs of their society `satisfactorily.'
Actually in a sense Watt's present work is aimed to reassure and perhaps guide these Muslim liberals in the light of the Christian experience, as the note on the book's flap candidly suggests:
In the Islamic world today there are many liberal‑minded Muslims who feel threatened by their own fundamentalists, and who are likely to see in the positions adopted and defended in this book a possible way forward for themselves.
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