40 Questions About Islam

Matthew Bennett

• Publisher: Kregel Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780825476112
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología islámica

A much anticipated new addition to the very popular and practical book series that answers real questions on key topics in contemporary Christianity Islam is one of the most significant forces shaping the world today, but most Christians are confused about its key beliefs and practices. Many wonder about the apparent similarities and obvious differences between Christianity and Islam, and want to reach out to Muslim friends or neighbors with the gospel but don't know where to begin. Having spent several years living in North Africa and the Middle East, missions professor Matthew Bennett guides readers through Islam's key tenants and provides answers to critical questions, such as:
•Who was Muhammad and what was his message?
•Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?
•What are the differences between the Qur'an and the Bible?
•What is shariah law?
•What is the Islamic view of salvation?
•What happens in the mosque?
•Is Islam inherently misogynistic?
•Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?
•How should a Christian share the gospel with Muslims?
•Helpful summaries at the end of each chapter encapsulate important information, followed by discussion questions useful for personal or small-group study. Whether you want to understand Islam better or reach Muslims for Christ, 40 Questions on Islam is an indispensable primer and reference book.

PART 1

The Traditional History of Islam

QUESTION 1

Where Did Islam Come From?

Today I have perfected your religion for you, and have completed my blessing on you, and I have approved Islam for you as a religion.

~Qur’an 5:3

Recently I found myself walking down a popular street in a well-known town in the southeast of the United States. Curio shops filled with trinkets and T-shirts lined the streets, and smells of various fried foods and candies wafted out to the sidewalks, enticing customers to enter and indulge. Some might call this a tourist trap.

While I was walking, an image in one of the shops caught my eye. It was one of several pictures of celebrities on display, but this one was unique in that it appeared to be moving. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that it was a poster including three images of the same celebrity at different points in his career. Depending upon what angle the viewer was approaching the poster, this celebrity showed up as either a young, up-and-coming heartthrob, a middle-aged success, or an aging, overweight has-been. Thus, as passersby glanced toward the window, their changing perspectives caused the images—and consequently, their impressions of the celebrity—to change.

Much like tourists passing by this poster, the angle of our approach to the study of Islam will determine the image produced by our inquiries. This is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in giving an answer to our first question, “Where did Islam come from?” On the surface this appears to be merely a historical inquiry with but one basic answer, providing a suitable introduction to the book. Yet, as we consider three different angles of approach common among scholars, a more robust impression forms, allowing us to better answer subsequent questions.

For a Christian motivated to understand and minister to their Muslim friends, then, this tri-perspectival approach will provide an orientation to a more holistic investigation of Islam and its adherents. This chapter will treat these three approaches under the following headings: (1) an Orientalist approach, (2) a critical approach, and (3) a confessional approach. Like the tourists viewing the poster of the celebrity from several perspectives, these three angles of approach to Islamic origins will provide distinct yet helpful windows into the whole picture.

An Orientalist Approach: Muhammad’s Ministry

The first image of Islam to confront us comes by approaching the question of Islamic origins from the perspective of Orientalist scholars. This nomenclature developed in the eighteenth century to describe scholars and artists involved in depicting eastern lands, including the Middle East.¹ Much of the popular material available in English takes this perspective, describing the religion of Islam as a cultural artifact of the East.

In contrast to confessional approaches to Islamic history that tout the virtues of Muhammad’s religious message and assume God’s blessing as the reason for Islamic expansion, Orientalists study the development of Islam as a mere sociological phenomenon. This secular approach excises the supernatural references within the reported accounts while yet depending upon the remaining information as reliable history. In so doing, Orientalists are left to sift through the traditional material in order to offer alternative explanations of how, apart from appeal to divine favor, seventh-century Arabia produced a global religion in less than two centuries.

According to the traditional material, the Arabian Peninsula of Muhammad’s day was rife with intertribal conflict. Desire for a unified Arab state existed, though disunity prevailed at nearly every level of society. Seventh-century Arabia was in want of leadership and reform.

Muhammad’s ministry began in Mecca, the regional center of polytheistic religious practice. The simple monotheism at the core of Muhammad’s message, while not initially well received, provided a unifying bond with which the diversity of polytheism could not contend. Having gathered a modest following in Mecca, Muhammad relocated to Medina, where he proved influential as a political and social reformer.

Shortly after Muhammad’s move, Medina and Mecca entered into a state of war with one another. While the war continued to exacerbate the divisions of the peninsula, Muhammad’s ability to strategically unify the Medinan population politically and militarily allowed him, and consequently his religious message, to rise in power and prominence.

For most Orientalists, then, Muhammad and the religion that followed him was successful on the basis of his ability to forge a common identity for his Arab kin. In the words of prolific author Bernard Lewis,

From what is known of the circumstances of the time, it is clear that the deeds performed by Muhammad or ascribed to him served to revive and redirect currents that already existed among the Arabs of his time. The fact that his death was followed by a new burst of activity instead of by collapse shows that his career was the answer to a great political, social, and moral need…. Muhammad had aroused and redirected the latent forces of an Arab national revival and expansion.²

In other words, as we approach the question of Islamic origins from the perspective of the Orientalist scholar, we see Muhammad as a unifying reformer whose religious message was carried on the wings of his political savvy. Islam was born as a result of Muhammad’s leadership and Arab nationalist desire.

A Critical Approach: Muhammad’s Successors

One of the true wonders of the Islamic faith is its rapid expansion. Reportedly having begun in an isolated region on the Arabian Peninsula, in less than two centuries Islam had spread to what is now southern France in the west, and to what is now western India in the east. Yet if one follows the traditional accounts, upon his death Muhammad had not clearly provided his followers with instructions for appointing a successor, let alone a codified means of practicing Islam in the far-flung corners of the empire as the centuries progressed.³

How did this fledgling faith, left by its iconic leader in such an early stage of development, come to dominate such a wide region? One major issue that critical scholars have identified is that the material available to inform us of Muhammad’s life does not pass the test of historical criticism.⁴ While it is perhaps the text that exerts the most influence on the practice of Islam, the traditional biography of Muhammad’s life—to say nothing of the body of traditions known as the hadith—is unattested, late, and prone to bias.⁵ Since Muhammad’s biography is the primary source of information regarding the life and ministry of the Arab prophet, skeptical scholars question how much one can truly know about this man named Muhammad.⁶

Furthermore, beyond the dearth of acceptable literary evidence for a traditional understanding of Islamic origins, archeological evidence does not lend its support to the Muslim account. For example, the first apparently Muslim reference to Muhammad to be connected to any recognizable form of Islamic theology is found on an inscription on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, dating to 691 CE, nearly sixty years after Muhammad’s death.⁷ After the date of this inscription, the archeological record reports frequent appearance of inscriptions, epitaphs, and documents bearing Islamic theological themes. However, that the first sixty years are silent leads some scholars to conclude that later Arab leaders were responsible for crafting a religious message and tying it to a character named Muhammad in order to unify the broad empire under a common identity.⁸

Unsatisfied with the supernatural explanation for Islam’s explosive growth given by Muslims, and unconvinced by the traditional account of Muhammad’s life, historical-critical scholars offer an alternative approach to Islamic origins. Instead of attempting to recreate a historical sketch of a man named Muhammad, critical scholars are keen to find Islamic origins in the political developments of later Arab rulers. Thus, as we approach the picture of Islamic origins from the vantage of critical scholarship, Islam did not precede Arab expansion, but was produced as an ideological bond, born and shaped in response to the Arab conquests.

A Confessional Approach: Muhammad’s Predecessors

It is likely obvious that faithful Muslims reject the conclusions of critical scholars discussed above. Like the Orientalists, those who personally confess Islam are typically inclined to accept the traditional material as historically accurate. Yet in contrast, confessional approaches retain the supernatural elements that Orientalists dismiss, understanding Muhammad to be the mouthpiece of God, whose blessing accounts for the success of Islamic expansion.

However, despite adhering to the traditional material, from the confessional Muslim perspective, Islam does not actually begin with Muhammad. Rather, according to Islamic theology, submission to God is the original form of worship prescribed by all of the prophets since Adam.⁹ Islamic scholar Mark Anderson highlights this idea, writing, “Every prophet before Muhammad is said to have pointed to the path of islam, since that is both the ideal for which we were created and our sole route of recovery from lostness.”¹⁰ In other words, Adam was a prototypical Muslim who foreshadowed the faith that Muhammad recovered and perfected.

While the claim that Islam precedes Muhammad is made variously throughout the Qur’an, perhaps no character is more centrally utilized to emphasize this idea than Abraham, of whom it is said in Qur’an 3:67, “Abraham was not a Jew, nor a Christian, but he was a hanif, a Muslim. He was not one of the idolaters.” Therefore, by exalting Abraham as an embryonic exemplar of Islamic faith who preceded both Judaism and Christianity, the Qur’an lays claim to roots much more ancient than Muhammad.

Thus, for confessional Muslims, the source of Islamic origins is not the product of Arab political strategy, nor is it wholly tied to the dynamic leadership of Muhammad. Rather, Islam originates at the dawn of creation and, through Muhammad’s call, humanity is given the opportunity to return to the one true expression of divine religion. A confessional perspective on the question of Islamic origins reveals a picture of Islam as the original religion, beginning when God first commanded submission from his creation.

Su...