What Every Christian Should Know About Islam

Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood

• Publisher: The Islamic Foundation
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780860374190
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie islamique

Of the many books explaining Islam, few specifically address the concerns and questions of those from a Christian background. Moreover, the commonalities between the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are too often ignored. Set out in an easy and informative question-and-answer format, the book addresses the specific theological points of agreement and difference between Christianity and Islam, explains the core religious beliefs and practices of Islam, and answers today's most common questions of Islam and Muslims in an age when there is much conflict and misunderstanding. Islam is best judged not by the limitations and transgressions of its most extreme, ignorant, and outlandish followers, but by the example of its moderate majority, and Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood presents this introduction to the theology and practice of Islam in an attempt to explore some of the false impressions that surround it.

Table of Contents:
Section 1: The Religious Beliefs of Islam Explained
Section 2: the Religious Duties of Islam Explained
Section 3: Miscellaneous Questions
Section 4: Christianity and Islam

Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood gained an honors degree in Christian Theology from the University of Hull in 1963 and then taught religious studies at various state schools until her retirement in 1996. She converted to Islam in 1986 and now lectures and writes on Islam.

SECTION FOUR

Christianity and Islam

What changes of belief would Christians have to make if they accepted Islam?

a. The starting point for any person wishing to become a Muslim is a declaration known as the shahadah. It is a very simple creed in two parts:

‘I bear witness that there is no God but the Almighty (Allah); and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Servant and Prophet of Allah.'

What this means is that the person genuinely believes that there is only One God, Who is ‘the Almighty'. Secondly, the person has genuinely accepted that the messages revealed to Muhammad are not his own inventions or ‘fakes', but the genuine messages of the Genuine One God.

Sometimes converts came into Islam in two separate stages; for example, the Prophet's uncle Abu Sufyan was able to accept the first part of the shahadah eventually (he had been a staunch pagan all his life, worshipping his ancestral gods that were kept in the Ka‘bah), but it took him longer to accept the second part.¹

It does not mean that Jews or Christians have to immediately cast aside all their own scriptures, but they do have to measure their content and teaching against the Qur'an. They will discover, of course, that virtually all the recorded sayings of the prophets are not only completely in keeping with each other, and with the teachings of Jesus, but also with the teachings of the Qur'an, since they come from the same Source, God the Almighty. However, they will also discover some things that are not in keeping,² and here they will have to use their reason, intellect and sense of morality if they are to consider that it is the Qur'an which has the truth. Muslims maintain what Biblical scholars have known for centuries, but which has yet to reach the mass of believers who are not exegetes, that in the other scriptures certain verses, or emphases in them, have found their origins in the motivations of the various human editors.

b. Many quotations from the Qur'an could sum up the Muslim faith, but the one quoted here is perhaps the most pertinent:

It is not righteousness to turn your faces towards east or west; but this is righteousness – to believe in God, and the Day of Judgement, and the angels, and the Book (meaning all God's genuine revelations to all of His prophets), and the Messengers; to give from your wealth out of love for God to your family, to those without family, to those in need, to the wayfarer (including the refugee), and to those who ask, and for the setting free of slaves; to be steadfast in prayer and to practise regular giving; to fulfil all the promises which you have made; to be firm and patient in pain and suffering or any other adversity, and through all periods of panic. Such are the people of truth, the God-fearing.

(Surah 2:177)³

This quotation speaks for itself.

c. All Muslims would happily accept Jesus's reply to a Jewish religious teacher who asked him which of all the teachings of God was the most important? Jesus answered:

This is the first commandment. “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength”. And the second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’ Then the scribe said to him: ‘You are right, Rabbi. You have truly said that He is One, and there is no other but He; and to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.’ And when Jesus heard that he answered wisely, he said to him: ‘Truly, you are not far from the Kingdom of God.'

(Mk 12:28–34)

Incidentally, Jesus was not the first to use these words as teaching. He was quoting what was called the Shema, the verses of Deuteronomy 6:4. These were the very words Jews were commanded to write on parchment and place in little boxes called phylacteries, which were strapped to their arms and foreheads as they prayed, and also placed in little containers called mezuzim, which they fixed on the thresholds to their houses so that they could touch them every time they came in or went out.

Rabbi Hillel, the most famous Rabbi of the generation before Jesus, also gave this teaching. The story is that once an irritating student went the rounds of great teachers asking if they could summarise the whole of the Law for him in the time he could balance on one leg. Rabbi Shammai impatiently hit him with his builder's cubit, and sent him on his way; Rabbi Hillel told him to take up his stance, whereupon he declared that this verse was the whole of the Law; the rest was merely commentary on it.

d. Finally, I would like to refer to one of the hadith – a teaching of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) – in a story reported about him.

Once a delegation calling themselves believers came to him in Madinah. The Prophet said: ‘Everything has a substance, so what do you define as the substance of your belief ?’ They said to him: ‘We have fifteen characteristics. Five we have been told to believe in, and five you have ordered us to do, and five are our traditions. We will maintain these unless you instruct us to the contrary.'

They told him that they believed in God, His angels, His revealed Books, His Messengers, and in resurrection after death. Those were the five beliefs taught by the Prophet's representatives. Those to whom the Prophet had given instructions were to bear witness that there is no deity save Allah; that there should be prayers five times per day; payment of the zakah (a proportion of one's wealth set aside to help others); fasting in the month of Ramadan, and, if possible, a pilgrimage to Makkah once in a lifetime. The five among their own traditions were thankfulness, fortitude, patience, steadfastness and compassion; to be grateful in times of plenty, to remain faithful in times of adversity, to accept God's will whatever it may be, not to desert the cause on the field of battle, and no to show pleasure when calamity befell an enemy.

The Prophet commended them on these and added five more to make their total twenty. He said to them:‘If you are truly as you say, then do not amass what you cannot eat, or build what you do not reside in, nor complete what you will soon abandon. Fear God, to Whom you shall return, and work for what you will soon be facing.'

If a person could strive to keep these twenty, he or she would be truly Muslim.

There is only One True God. Jehovah (Yahweh), Our Father in Heaven, and Allah are one and the same god

The three religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam do indeed all worship the same God, even though some followers of each faith might not have realised it, or might have been confused by the fact that they use different names for God. Every Christian who grew up at school with lessons in RE (formerly known as ‘scripture') is familiar with some Old Testament narratives and the fact that God is known as Jehovah in the Old Testament. The name Allah is, however, an unfamiliar one. Jehovah, of course, is just as ‘foreign’ to English-speakers, but Allah seems much more ‘foreign’ because this name is unfamiliar in Christian teaching. This unfamiliarity gives the false impression that Allah is a different god, a rival god – a notion strengthened of course, by past events, such as the Crusades, or the conflicts in Spain between Christian knights and the Moorish conquerors.

Christians usually accept that the Old Testament is part of their own holy literature, despite the fact that it originated long before the arrival of Jesus, and is solidly against all the manifestations of ancient worship which was generally based on a trinitarian theology with a divine Father, Mother, and dying-and-rising saviour-Son (the system usually called Baalism in the Old Testament). Christians accept that the heritage of the prophets is their heritage; they assume that the God who spoke to Moses is their God, the God, who was caring for His created people long before the incarnation of God the Son.

However, only certain groups of Christians refer to God as Jehovah. Most call Him simply ‘the Lord', and it is all too easy when moving into New Testament times, to confuse ‘the Lord’ who was and is God the Almighty, with ‘the Lord’ who was Jesus, His Son (as Christians believe). Few Christians use the Hebrew name familiar to Biblical scholars – Yahweh, the name God revealed to Moses when he asked Him directly to tell him His name. Yahweh is derived from God's statement: ‘Ehyeh asher ehyeh', a phrase with several choices of meaning ranging from ‘I am that I am’ to ‘I will be as I will be’ or ‘I cause to be what I cause to be', or any combination of these.⁴ It is not really a name, but a statement of Existence, Causality and Permanence.

As a name for God, Yahweh is as unfamiliar as Allah to these Christians. The point that needs to be understood by all is that God the Father, Jehovah, Yahweh and Allah are one and the same God. There is only one True God no matter what people call Him. The Supreme One, the Almighty, can by definition only be One Alone. There cannot be two supremes. Allah is simply the Arabic word for ‘the Almighty'. It is the word for God normally used by Arabic-speaking Christians as well as Muslims in the Middle East.

People who can see the connection between Judaism and Christianity may perhaps think that Islam is a ‘different’ religion because it has various different practices and emphases. That, of course, is true. Christians do not think of themselves as Jews, or vice versa, and both Christians and Jews do not think of themselves as Muslims. Needless to say, Muslims do not regard themselves as Christians or Jews. Their allegiances to the practices, dogmas and rituals they believe to be correct set them apart as three different sets of believers. Yet they are all ‘Ahl al-Kitab’ – ‘People of the Book’, that is, receivers and followers of Revelation from the One True God. It is the same God that inspired all the prophets at different periods throughout history.

The word ‘Islam’ simply means self-surrender to the One True God, or submission to the will of God.

Insofar as devout Jews and Christians believe that they are truly submitted to the One True God, then they are Muslim. The Qur'an and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (May Allah's peace and blessings be upon him and all the Prophets) make it very clear that the great Messengers, such as Abraham, Moses, Noah, David, Solomon, John the Baptist and Jesus were all considered by Muslims to be Muslim.

All three faiths originated in the same ‘patch of sand', the same small section of the world, and all are entirely based on the notion that this One True God really does exist, but that it is impossible for human beings to know anything about Him unless He chooses to reveal it to them.

The history of all three faiths originates in the revelation to Abraham, the Nomad of Mesopotamia, and his descendants, including Joseph, David, Jesus and Muhammad. Therefore, they certainly ought to think of themselves as belonging to one ‘family'.

The respect Islam grants to Judaism and Christianity, their founders and scriptures, is not just courtesy but an acknowledgement of their religious truth. Islam does not see them as ‘other religions’ it should tolerate, but as part of itself – as truly revealed religion from God. In this Islam is unique – for no other religion in the world has made belief in the truth of ‘other religions’ a necessary condition of its own faith and witness.⁵

Moreover, non-Muslims living in an Islamic State are not required to accept Islam; in fact, their own beliefs and the right to believe them are actually protected by Islam. For example, after the advent of Islam a Jew could model his life on the Torah and do so supported by the public laws of the State; a non-Jewish State put its executive power at the service of rabbinic law. The State assumed responsibility for the maintenance of Jewishness and declared itself ready to use its power to defend the Jewishness of Jews against their enemies. After centuries of oppression the Islamic State was regarded as a liberator and protector. Jewish law, religion and institutions became a sacrosanct trust whose protection and perpetuation became a Muslim responsibility imposed by Islam itself. Only questions of war and peace lay outside the jurisdiction of non-Muslims. All this was possible because of the Islamic principle that recognised the Torah as true revelation.⁶

The same principle applied to Christianity. The Christians of Najran, for example, came to the Prophet and were invited to accept Islam. Some converted, but the majority did not. The Prophet nevertheless granted them the same autonomous status, loaded them with gifts, and sent them home protected by a Muslim bodyguard. For the greater part of the first century of the Islamic State a large number of its citizens were Christians, who enjoyed respect, liberty and a new dignity – because of the Islamic principle that recognised Jesus as a true prophet of God.

If Jews, Christians and Muslims really do all worship the same God, why cannot they just get together and become one faith?

If only it were that simple! You do not need to have interfaith committees and meetings to come to grips with the problems that arise when this quite reasonable question is raised. The task of bringing together all the various branches of Christianity is hard enough, and has never been achieved, not even in the primal history of the Church, when fierce differences broke out between the converted Jewish Christians led by Jesus’ brother St. James, and St. Paul's mission to the Gentiles. When religious faith is involved, especially when that faith is based on different interpretations of revelation from God, feelings run very high, and people cling to their cherished beliefs and principles.

In their aims, Muslims, Je...