ISLAM
Judaism
| Christianity
What does the religion teach about people who follow other
faiths?
by John Kaltner
Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam are called the Abrahamic religions because
they all trace their origins back to the patriarch Abraham. Islam
calls attention to that common family ancestry and acknowledges
the connections that exist among the three faiths.
Qur’an
3:84 recounts what Muhammad is told to teach his followers about
the prophets who came before him. “We believe in God, what
has been revealed to us, what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael,
Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes, and what was given to Moses, Jesus
and the prophets from their Lord. We do not make a distinction among
any of them, and to God we submit.” Muslims
are required to respect all of the prophets equally and to consider
each one a legitimate recipient of God’s revelation.
Islam
acknowledges the validity of the other two monotheistic religions,
but it also maintains they suffer from some shortcomings. According
to the Muslim understanding of revelation, the followers of the
prior prophets distorted the message and did not record it in the
form in which it was given to them. In other words, the Bible does
not accurately relate the content of the revelation received by
Moses, Jesus, and the other prophets. This necessitated the sending
of a final prophet—Muhammad— whose people preserved
the message intact in the Qur’an. He is called the “seal
of the prophets” (33:40) because the prophetic line comes
to an end with him.
Islam’s
relationship with Judaism and Christianity is therefore a complicated
and ambiguous one. It considers them to be co-recipients of God’s
word through the prophets, and yet it maintains that only it has
perfectly communicated that word to the world. Like Jews and Christians,
Muslims believe they have a special covenant with God. They claim
their faith supersedes the earlier religions in a way similar to
how some Christians view Christianity’s relationship with
Judaism. In short, with the
coming of Islam, the other monotheistic faiths were rendered obsolete
and unnecessary. This partly explains the important
role that outreach, or da`wa, has in Islam. Because it
is the final, corrected version of monotheistic faith it invites
all people to join the ummah.
Despite
that missionary dimension, Islam does not force itself on non-Muslims.
There is a longstanding tradition of tolerance in Islam that is
best summed up in Qur’an 2:256: “There is no compulsion
in religion.” People can be encouraged to embrace the faith,
but conversion to Islam is ultimately something that is left up
to God alone. A person cannot be compelled
to convert. This spirit of tolerance and coexistence
goes back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad, whose “Constitution
of Medina” established guidelines for how Muslims, Jews, Christians,
and other non-Muslims would live together in that city. It is also
seen in the term “people of the book,” a designation
found in the Qur’an that is used for Jews and Christians.
This title underscores the high regard Muslims have for their fellow
monotheists, who have also been privileged recipients of divine
revelation.
The
theological disagreements Islam has with Christianity are more profound
than those it has with Judaism. The main reason for this is the
Christian belief that Jesus is God in human form. From the Muslim
perspective, this is an example of shirk—associating
something from creation with the uncreated nature of God—the
only sin God will not forgive. The Qur’an points out the error
in this thinking a number of times. “They have disbelieved
who say, ‘Truly, God is the Messiah, the son of Mary’”
(5:17). In one passage (5:116) Jesus denies he is divine and tells
God his followers are misguided. The Islamic text also dismisses
belief in the trinity as another example of shirk that
demonstrates Christianity has distorted God’s intended message
(5:73). Christians often find such texts disturbing or insulting
because they call into question central beliefs of their faith.
At
the same time, Jesus is a very prominent and important figure in
the Qur’an and for Muslims. He is a prophet who is virginally
conceived, performs miracles, and is given special titles like “messiah”
and “word from God.” His mother Mary is the only woman
mentioned by name in the Qur’an, and chapter 19 of the book
is named after her. Jesus is highly
respected by Muslims, but they and Christians will never be able
to agree on the question of his identity. The best
that can be hoped for is that they agree to differ in a spirit of
mutual respect and tolerance.
Copyright
©2006 John Kaltner
John
Kaltner is a member of the Department of Religious Studies
at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee where he teaches courses
in Bible, Islam, and Arabic. Among his books are Islam:
What Non-Muslims Should Know (2003); Inquiring
of Joseph: Getting to Know a Biblical Character through the Qu’ran
(2003); Ishmael
Instructs Isaac: An Introduction to the Qur’an for Bible Readers
(Collegeville: Liturgical Press/Michael Glazier, 1999).
Excerpts
from What Do Our Neighbors Believe?: Questions and Answers on
Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Howard Greenstein, Kendra
Hotz, and John Kaltner are used by permission from Westminster John
Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky. The book will be available for
purchase in December 2006.
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