702 – 004 – Christianity And Islam

0 0

Christianity And Islam

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the perception of Islam by Christians and non-Christians alike has been profoundly influenced by a number of terrorist events that have marked the beginning of the new millennium.  There were, within a few years of each other, the attack on the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and the attacks on public transportation in Madrid and London.  It is necessary, however, to place modern Christian-Muslim relations in their historical and cultural context.

The history of Christian-Muslim relations begins with the biography of the prophet Muḥammad in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. Muḥammad met Christians and Jews on various occasions.  Ibn Isḥāq reports that a Christian uncle of Muḥammad’s first wife identified Muḥammad’s experience in the cave of Ḥirāʿ as divine revelation.  On the other hand, Muḥammad later disputed with a Christian delegation from Najrān about the doctrine of the Incarnation, though this same delegation had been invited to pray in the Prophet’s mosque.  This ambivalence is reflected in the Qurʿān and the ḥadīth (traditions).  The Qurʿān tells Muslims that they will find Christians “nearest to them in love” (5:85) but warns them (5:54) not to take Christians or Jews as “close friends” or “protectors” (awlīyāʿ).  Sometimes the positive and sometimes the negative aspect has received greater emphasis in the history of Muslim relations with Christians.

The earliest Christian reaction to Islam, dating from the struggle between Muslim and Byzantine armies for control of Egypt and Syria, shows ambivalence of a different kind.  Byzantine polemicists saw Islam as a “Satanic plot” to destroy Christian faith (Gaudeul, vol. 1, p. 65), and non-Chalcedonian Christians often saw Islam as “the rod of God’s anger” intended “to deliver us from the Byzantines” (Sahas, p. 23).

The early development of dhimmī status gave non-Muslims, including Christians, some legal rights as subjects of Islamic government. Relations between Christians and Muslims (especially the Muslim authorities) were generally very good during this period.  The Muslim empire originally used the existing bureaucracy to administer the empire, and this included Christians, especially in Egypt and Syria, and even included the use of Greek, rather than Arabic, as the first language of Muslim administration at Damascus.  There is evidence of problems between Christians and Muslims in the general populace, for example, the Coptic uprising in Egypt in 829–830.  During this period, Islam inherited the learning of the Hellenistic tradition.  The caliph al-Maʿmūn (r. 813–833) founded an academy to translate works of science, philosophy, and medicine from Greek into Arabic; the Bible was one of the few religious works translated.  Islam inherited the learning of the past and reached creative heights in architecture, science, technology, and philosophy.  The concept of legal rights for non-Muslims became an integral principle of Islamic law.  Islamic learning and Islamic legal tolerance survived the disintegration of political unity and became important elements of the medieval world.

The Medieval Experience

The ninth century contained the seeds of major changes in Christian-Muslim relations.  In the Muslim world, there were signs of the breakup of political unity.  During periods of instability the rights of non-Muslim minorities were often threatened by popular discontent.  This is often the lot of minorities at such times, and the phenomenon is not unique to Islamic history.  The various Muslim governments struggling for stability usually sought to protect the legal rights of their minorities.  The Byzantine empire was in a state of general decline and, in the eleventh century, shortly after the final schism of the Eastern and Western Churches, it had to petition Rome for help.  In the West, the same century saw the beginnings of a long struggle toward greater political and social integration, heralded by the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne (r.  768–814).  Western European history during this period paralleled Muslim history in that both were successions of competing dynasties.  Western Europe, however, was struggling toward greater integration and stability, and the Muslim world was evolving toward greater disunity and instability (except for the remarkable period of Ottoman hegemony over the eastern Mediterranean).

These two worlds approached military parity well before they attained any degree of intellectual equality.  The Middle Ages was the period of the Crusades and the Reconquista, the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula.  Also during this period, Muslim learning was passed on to the Christian West, which had been struggling self-consciously since Charlemagne’s reforms to reclaim its own intellectual tradition. The translations of Arabic texts into Latin from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries played a role in the development of western European civilization similar to that of the earlier translations of Greek texts into Arabic.  Christians and Jews studied with Muslims at the universities of Córdoba (968) and Cairo (972), perhaps influencing the later development of western European universities (Paris, 1150; Bologna, 1119).  The Middle Ages presented many apparent contradictions in Christian-Muslim relations: sometimes we find Christians and Muslims studying together, and sometimes we find them fighting each other on the battlefield.  Sometimes the language of inter-religious polemic verges on the obscene, yet in the fifteenth century, Nicholas of Cusa explored the idea of an ultimate unity of all religions, and John of Segovia and George of Trebizond actively campaigned for a Christian-Muslim peace conference.  From the Muslim side, Ibn Ḥazm launched a scathing attack on the unreliability of the biblical text, and yet Ibn ʿArabī speaks of the presence of God in all religious experience.

Such a complex situation needs to be studied in terms of individual biographies and of social history.  Some generalities are valid, however. The language of scholarship provided a common vocabulary in which the different traditions could speak to each other.  Religious tolerance remained a part of Islamic law, although its application varied with social, political, and economic circumstances.  Ibn Taymīyah, writing during a period of social unrest involving the combined threats of the Crusades and Mongol invasions, developed particularly harsh restrictions on the rights of dhimmīs.

Nonetheless, when the Jews were evicted from Spain in 1492, they went to Muslim lands.  The only Christian land to which many Jews emigrated was Italy.  Today, communities speaking Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) survive only in the eastern Mediterranean lands which were under Muslim control at the time of the expulsion.  The medieval period may be understood, in part, as the interaction of two great civilizations, the Christian and the Muslim, although this ignores important events such as Turkic and Mongol invasions of the Islamic heartlands.

As the Middle Ages began, Islamic civilization was in its prime, and western European civilization was still a child.  As the intellectual, technological, and scientific development of western Europe reached its prime, however, Islamic civilization showed clear signs of weakness.

Radical Transformation Of The West

Al-Jabartī (1756–1825), the last great Muslim historian in the classical tradition, perceived Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt in 1798 as “the beginning of a reversal of the natural order and the corruption or destruction of all things” (Hourani, p. 51).  Napoleon was, however, a child of the French Enlightenment, which believed in reason rather than dogma and exalted not God’s law but the human law of the state. In a telling gesture symbolizing the end of European Christendom, he refused to be crowned emperor by the pope but placed the crown upon his head with his own hands.  In many ways, contemporary secular civilization challenges both Christianity and Islam as cultural systems and religious faiths.  Some Christians and Muslims accept that certain values of the Enlightenment (such as tolerance and respect for human dignity) represent an authentic development of fundamental elements of the Qurʿānic and biblical vision of humanity.  Other Christians and Muslims, however, make common cause against the challenge of secularism and irreligion.

In the West, the origins of the shift from Christendom to nation-states are to be found in the late Middle Ages.  With this development, Christian identity (particularly in Western and Central Europe) no longer reflected a “Christendom,” but individuals belonging to a number of nation-states.  This was bound to affect Christian-Muslim relations. The post-Reformation “wars of religion” focused European attention on internal problems.  Islam tended to be viewed by Westerners as a threat.  During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thanks to rapidly developing science and technology, modern means of transport and communication increased the interdependence of different parts of the globe.  Internationally, industrial and commercial complexes began to eclipse the power of individual nation-states.  Greater local and international mobility resulted in the spread of multiracial, multicultural, and multi-religious societies both in terms of geographic area and intensity.  Different social and mental structures and perceptions coexist, often in unreconciled tension.  Muslims and Christians live increasingly in mixed societies, sharing a growing awareness of the multiplicity of religions, ideologies, and cultures on many different levels, local, national, and international.

Western Political Dominance And Colonialism

The Industrial Revolution in Europe ensured the military and technological supremacy of the Western powers whose colonial influence affected most of the Muslim world.  The Peace of Carlowitz (Serbia, 1699) subjected the Ottomans to increasing European pressure and interference.  France, Russia, and Britain benefited from the privileges (capitulations) granted by the Ottoman sultāns; these enabled their consuls to interfere in local affairs and to “protect” Christian minority groups see CAPITULATIONS.  The European powers supported national revolutions; Greece became independent in 1832, Serbia and Romania in 1878.  The Ottoman authorities were either powerless spectators or hidden organizers as some Christian minorities, whose discontent with dhimmī status was often encouraged by European powers, became victims of attempts at extermination.

Muslims in the Middle East regarded the Christians, with considerable justification, as pawns in the overall plans of the European powers to partition the Ottoman Empire.  Following Napoleon’s brief incursion into Egypt, European interference increased.   Algeria became a French colony in 1830, Tunisia a French protectorate in 1881, and Egypt a British protectorate in 1882.  European expansion halted the spread of Islamic states in West Africa.  Following a revolt against British interests in 1857, India was placed directly under the British Crown, and repressive measures were directed particularly against the Muslims.  In Southeast Asia, British and Dutch colonial rule expanded. World War I resulted in the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire into the Republic of Turkey (1919) and several smaller Middle Eastern countries under the colonial mandates of Britain and France.  Ethnic identity, traditionally strong in this region, played an increasingly important role in the nationalism of the emerging nation-states when the former colonies and mandates gained independence.  Muslim nations have played an important role in the movement of nonaligned countries that emerged from the Bandung Conference in Indonesia (1955). However, Western economic and military supremacy continued to grow, and disadvantaged populations envied the Western way of life, glimpsed through the mass media.

More importantly, perhaps, colonial policies also affected the religious institutions of Muslim societies.  In particular, educational policy effectively marginalized — and thus alienated — the traditional religious establishment (ʿulamāʿ); today the majority of young people in most Muslim countries receive Western-style educations.  Much the same happened in the sphere of law, to the extent that throughout the Muslim world constitutions of newly independent Muslim nations were modeled on European models.  The Muslim world felt politically humiliated and threatened by these developments. Non-Muslims had taken control of Muslim societies and interfered with Islam, the final religion, intended by God to be successful and dominant (Qurʿān 3:110, 39:74, 21:105).  The grievances of Muslims (and other Asians and Africans) against the colonialists reflect the dehumanizing aspect of much European colonialism.  Of course, the reality of European colonialism was heterogeneous and complex, and a full analysis of its impact on the Muslim world is beyond the scope of this article.

The Christian missionary movement brought the clash of religious institutions and ideas.  Although the influence of secular rationalism often cost European churches the support of civil governments, a vigorous missionary endeavor spread Christianity throughout the world. Missionary preaching, education, and health care could generally depend on the colonial governments’ protection, although evangelization was not always encouraged.  Fundamentally, however, the missionary movement grew out of a genuine spiritual revival — itself part of a complex Christian reaction to post-Enlightenment secularism — and a commitment to carry the gospel to all people.  Anglican and Protestant missionary societies were founded in Britain and the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as were Catholic missionary orders such as the Society of Missionaries of Africa (the White Fathers), founded in 1885.  Missionary activity among Muslims included the distribution of Bible translations, apologetic-polemical tracts, and public disputations.  Karl G. Pfander, a German who worked in India with the Anglican Church Missionary Society, translated his polemical work on Islam, Mīzān al-ḥaqq (Balance of Truth), into Urdu. Mawlānā Rahmat Allāh Kayrānawī published a refutation of Pfander’s work, the Iẓhār al-ḥaqq (Revelation of Truth) and led Muslim resistance to Christian activities.  Later, in a public debate, Rahmat Allāh used the methods of European biblical criticism to refute the fundamentalist approach of his opponents.  Still being reprinted, both books circulate as examples of Christian and Muslim apologetics.

By the end of the nineteenth century, many missionaries began to abandon this approach and to emphasize missionary service in education and health care.  However, a strong emphasis on conversion, in the sense of an institutional change of religious allegiance, remained strong among certain groups of Christians and Muslims.  On the Catholic side, Cardinal Lavigerie (1825–1892) believed the Church’s mission to be a transformation of individuals and whole cultures and societies by slow impregnation, with priority given to a witness of disinterested love and service.  He advocated a dialogue focused on common themes: God’s majesty, our creatureliness, our need to repent and to be forgiven.  He disapproved of the teaching of Christian dogmas to Muslims: only those already committed to Christ and actively seeking baptism should be taught Christian doctrines (Gaudeul, vol. 1, p. 313).

Recent Developments In Christian-Muslim Relations

Western colonial domination placed enormous stress on Muslims. Muslims had faced many challenges over the centuries, but the sweep of Western civilization proved to be the most serious challenge to Islamic life.  The traditional pattern of Islamic life based on sharīʿa was everywhere threatened by what Muslims perceived as Western aggression: political aggression leading to subjugation, economic aggression leading to poverty, social aggression disrupting family and society, intellectual aggression imposing Western thought and education, and religious aggression.  “For, say what we will, Christian missionary work is frequently understood by the peoples of Africa and the East not as the sharing of an inestimable treasure, but as an unwanted imposition from without, inseparably associated with the progress of the colonial powers” (Neill, p. 250).  Muslims often view Western scholars of Islam, usually termed “orientalists,” as serving, deliberately or not, the colonial and imperial designs of their home countries.  How far this generalization is true is a moot point.  The question is whether study of a culture and religion by an external observer should be entirely rejected because of a certain inevitable degree of misrepresentation.  Christian scholars, on the other hand, have regretted that few Muslims have attempted to create an Islamic “occidentalism” (Watt, p. 116).  Of course, these Christian scholars intend that such work follow methods of modern — that is, Western — critical scholarship to balance the work of orientalists and provide Christianity with a much-needed “critique” from without.  Interestingly, there is a growing tradition of Islamic “occidentalism” using a level and type of scholarship that can engage in meaningful dialogue with the Western “orientalist” tradition.  It includes such important thinkers as Jalāl Āl-e Ahmad (1923–1969),  ʿAlī Sharīʿatī (1933–1977), Hamid Enayat (1932–1982) and Daryush Shayegan (b. 1935), whose Cultural Schizophrenia: Islamic Societies Confronting the West appeared in English translation in 1992.

One reaction to Western domination has been a struggle over the formation of a bewildering variety of Muslim movements reflecting the wide variety of Muslim thought.  Some emphasize fundamental Islamic faith and practice, with minimal involvement in secular society; others adopt an approach more consonant with secular and European understandings of the role of religion in the modern world.  A reformist trend seeks to reconcile Islam with the contemporary world, particularly Western civilization, Christian or otherwise.  In spite of a widespread rejection of the West on the emotional level, Muslim societies usually depend on it economically.  These issues have produced a religious revival or resurgence, as the Muslim community seeks to clarify the relationship between Islam and modern national identity.  Often the process has been accompanied by revolution.

The Islamist trend, powerful in several Muslim nations since the second half of the twentieth century, advocates the integral implementation of sharīʿah, and some states have declared themselves Islamic republics.  Since the events of 9/11, Christians have shown a much greater interest in and concern with Islamist movements.  Some Christian writers have emphasized the inherent danger of Islamist (or otherwise politicized) Islam.  This is, of course, not new.  It has roots in the earliest polemics against Islam.  In a subtler form, it has been assured a place in Christian discourse by the writings of some of the most widely-read Christian scholars of Islam.  Islam’s need to redefine its relation to political power has been a constantly recurring theme of Kenneth Cragg’s prolific and influential output on Islam and Christian-Muslim relations.  A more nuanced, and even sympathetic, Christian approach to the complexity of contemporary Muslim developments in this area may be found, for example, in the work of the Evangelical writer Christopher Catherwood.

The question of Islam and political power, made even more intense by a growing awareness among Christians of Islamist discourse and tendencies within the Muslim world, is a question which affects Muslim-Christian relations profoundly.  This can be seen, for example, in the present situation in Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Malaysia.  It is not only Western Christians who express concern over this aspect of certain strains of contemporary Islamic thought. Christians in Africa and Asia have, for decades, been expressing deep concerns about the politicization of Islam, claiming that only secularist states would assure them complete freedom to practice their religion. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent displacement of the Palestinians have had a profound effect upon Muslim-Christian relations everywhere.  Although evangelical Christians often support Zionist policies, many other Christians in the West have been moved by the plight of the Palestinians.  Common bonds of language and culture often lead Arab Christians to support Palestinian rights, but because they share with Jews the experience of dhimmī status, they desire more equitable arrangements within a modern democracy.

The Muslim world is searching for effective, modern ways to achieve cohesion and growth for the ummah (the Islamic community) in order to play a decisive role in global affairs.  The aims of the Rābiṭat al-ʿĀlam al-Islāmī (Muslim World League), founded in Mecca in 1962, include the propagation (daʿwah) of Islam in Muslim and non-Muslim countries among Muslims and others.  It defends the rights of Muslim minorities in non-Muslim countries and, since 1976, has sponsored the research and publication of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (Jiddah and London).  Once the rights of the minorities have been secured in a given country, the second phase of the League’s strategy is aimed at transforming the minority into a ruling majority through proselytization.  The secretary-general of the League has publicly stated that the organization wishes all its activities to proceed in the spirit of dialogue and collaboration with Christians (Nasseef); the Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs has published research on the treatment of Christian minorities in Muslim countries. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), founded in 1962, set up the Islamic Solidarity Fund in 1974 to support religious, cultural, and charitable work in Muslim communities everywhere.  The Islamic Call Society, funded by Libya, was founded in 1970 to spread Islam and to provide educational and medical services as integral elements of daʿwah.  These and other organizations have sponsored meetings of Christians and Muslims (See MUSLIM WORLD LEAGUE and ORGANIZATION OF THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE).  This work also takes place on national and regional levels.  The Islamic Foundation in Leicester, United Kingdom, for instance, promotes daʿwah among Muslims and non-Muslims through printed and audiovisual media and by training workers “to successfully face the challenge of the West.”  (Also, see ISLAMIC FOUNDATION).  Of course, since 9/11 in particular, much more attention has been paid to Islamist discourse and particularly to the more violent and aggressive aspects of it.  There have been several important and insightful analyses of the Islamist phenomenon by both Christians and Muslims (e.g., Makris, and The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2003).

At least one-third of Muslims today live in minority situations and represent a wide range of understandings of Islam.  This situation impresses upon Muslims the urgent need for intra-Muslim ecumenism and for developing inter-religious ties with other faith communities. The problems of Muslim minorities among Christian majorities cannot be solved without the principle of reciprocity in the freedom of religious expression and movement.  Christians and Muslims collaborate in international and national organizations on global problems like international trade, economic underdevelopment, hunger, and migration. No longer can Christian-Muslim relations be perceived in terms of relations between Islam and the West, not least because today the centers of Christianity and Islam have shifted to Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  The Vatican II declaration Nostra Ætate of 1965 prescribes for members of the Roman Catholic Church “esteem” for Muslim faith and practice and “urges” Christians and Muslims “to strive sincerely for mutual understanding” and “to make common cause of safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace and freedom.”  These themes are important elements of contemporary Christian-Muslim dialogue both at the Office for Islam within the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue and in the work of the World Council of Churches (WCC).  In 1971 the WCC, representing Anglican, Protestant, and Orthodox churches, established an Office for Dialogue with People of Living Faiths.  Both the WCC and the Pontifical Council have sponsored many meetings between Christians and Muslims.  These central initiatives and offices also exist on regional and national levels.  Although some politicians seek to replace the Iron Curtain with a “Christian-Muslim Cold War” — an understanding often reflected in the mass media — only determined worldwide efforts to address the divisive issues that have separated Muslims and Christians can achieve significant reconciliation.  Muslim daʿwah and Christian mission are being redefined in terms of constructive coexistence, respecting each others’ differences and being for one another a source of righteous emulation and challenge.

There has been, however, an important change in Christian-Muslim relations in the last few decades.  Most noticeable, perhaps, has been an increase in the institutionalization of Christian-Muslim cooperation in working together for peace, justice, and the relief of human suffering.  In some cases, these are multi-religious organizations including Christians and Muslims together with members of other faith communities.  Such groups include the World Conference of Religion and Peace and the International Association for Religious freedom.  In other cases, these have been specifically Christian organizations such as the Roman Catholic Communità di Sant’ Egidio.  All of these organizations have been instrumental in helping to broker important peace agreements in different parts of the world (Valkenberg).

A final change that must be noted is the role of the Internet.  The Internet has served as a means for Christian and Muslim groups to spread their views more widely and more easily than has previously been possible.  The Internet has also made available a great deal of serious scholarship on both Christianity and Islam.  Many of the classic texts of both religions are readily available there.  The Internet has also been a major venue for Islamist groups to express their beliefs and for Christian (and non-Christian) individuals and groups to spread their views of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, and it will be increasingly important in the development of Christian-Muslim relations in the future.

Muslim-Christian Dialogue

Intentional, structured encounters between Muslims and Christians are generally termed “Muslim‐Christian dialogue.”  Interfaith dialogue is a conversation in which two or more parties seek to express their views accurately and to listen respectfully to their counterparts.  During the second half of the twentieth century, organized dialogue meetings have proliferated at the local, regional, and international levels.  The meetings vary significantly in their organization, focus, and venue, as well as in the composition of participants.

Several motives have propelled the dialogue movement.  These include desires to foster understanding, to stimulate communication, to correct stereotypes, to work on specific problems of mutual concern, to explore similarities and differences, and to facilitate means of witness and cooperation.  The pragmatic need for better understanding and cooperation among adherents in the world’s two largest communities of faith — Christianity and Islam — is particularly acute. Together Christians and Muslims comprise approximately half the world’s population, so the way in which they relate is bound to have profound consequences for both communities and for the world.

The dynamics of interfaith encounter between Muslims and Hindus, Muslims and Jews, or Muslims and Christians are distinctly different. Their historic relationships as well as their major theological, social, and political concerns vary markedly.  Contemporary initiatives in Muslim‐Christian dialogue can be understood best when seen in the larger context, which can be established by a brief overview of dominant themes in Muslim‐Christian encounter.

Historical Background

Muslim‐Christian dialogical encounter dates to the rise of Islam in the seventh century.  Rooted in the monotheistic tradition of the patriarch Abraham, Muslims and Christians share a common heritage.  For more than fourteen centuries these communities of faith have been linked both by their theological understandings and by living in close proximity.  The history of Muslim‐Christian interaction includes periods of great tension, hostility, and open war as well as times of uneasy toleration, peaceful coexistence, and cooperation to achieve shared goals.

Islamic self‐understanding incorporates an awareness of and direct link with the biblical tradition.  Muḥammad, his companions, and subsequent generations of Muslims have been guided by the Qur’ān, which they have understood as a continuation and completion of God’s revelations to humankind.  The Qur’ān speaks of many prophets (nabī; pl., anbiyā’) and messengers (rasūl; pl., rusul) who functioned as agents of God’s revelation.  Particular emphasis is laid on the revelations through Moses (the Torah) and Jesus (the Gospel) and their respective communities of faith or people of the book (ahl al‐kitāb).

The Qur’ān includes positive affirmations for the people of the book, including the promise that Jews and Christians who have faith, trust in God and the Last Day, and do what is righteous “shall have their reward” (2.62 and 5.69).  The different religious communities are explained as a part of God’s plan; if God had so willed, the Qur’ān asserts, humankind would be one community.  Diversity among the communities provides a test for people of faith: “Compete with one another in good works.  To God you shall all return and He will tell you (the truth) about that which you have been disputing” (5.48).

The Qur’ān makes clear that “there shall be no compulsion in religious matters” (2.256).  Peaceful coexistence is affirmed (106.1–6).  At the same time, the people of the book are urged to “come to a common word” on the understanding of the unity of God (tawhīd) and proper worship (e.g., 3.64, 4.171, 5.82, and 29:46) Christians, in particular, are chided for having distorted the revelation of God.  Traditional Christian doctrines of the divinity of Christ and the Trinity are depicted as compromising the unity and transcendence of God (e.g., 5.72–75, 5.117, and 112.3).  There are also verses urging Muslims to fight those who have been given a book but “practice not the religion of truth” (9.29).

While the Qur’ān provides a framework for Muslims’ understanding of Christians and Christianity, particular political, economic, and social considerations have shaped the encounter in each setting.  Christians living under Islamic rule normally were treated as “protected peoples” (dhimmī); the practical implications of dhimmī status fluctuated from time to time and from place to place. Even in the best of circumstances, however, it was difficult for Christians and Muslims to engage one another as equals in dialogue.

With few exceptions, most Islamic literature focused on Christianity has been framed in the language of polemics.  The writings of the celebrated fourteenth‐century Muslim scholar Ibn Taymīyah (d. 1328) illustrate the point.  In his book Al‐jawāb al‐ṣaḥīḥ li‐man baddala dīn al‐Masīḥ (The Correct Answer to Those Who Changed the Religion of Christ), Ibn Taymīyah catalogs the major theological and philosophical points of contention between Muslims and Christians: altering the divine revelation, propagating errant doctrine, and grievous mistakes in religious practices.

The advent of Islam presented major challenges to Christians.  In the short space of a century, Islam transformed the character and culture of many lands from northern India to Spain, disrupted the unity of the Mediterranean world, and displaced the axis of Christendom to the north.  Islam challenged Christian assumptions.  Not only were the Muslims successful in their military and political expansion, their religion presented a puzzling and threatening new intellectual position.

John of Damascus (d. c.750) provided the first coherent treatment of Islam.  His encounter with Muslims in the Umayyad administrative and military center of Damascus led him to regard Islam not as an alien tradition but as a Christian heresy.  Subsequent Christian writers, particularly those not living among Muslims, were even harsher.  Most tended to focus on malicious and absurd distortions of the basic tenets of Islam and the character of Muḥammad.  This trend is especially evident in Europe following the Crusades.

The Crusades, launched at the end of the eleventh century (1906), cast a long shadow for many centuries.  In the midst of their stories of chivalry and fighting for holy causes, medieval writers painted a picture of Islam as a vile religion inspired by the Devil or Antichrist. The prevailing sentiment in Europe is illustrated in Dante’s Inferno, where a mutilated Muḥammad is depicted languishing in the depths of Hell because he was “a fomenter of discord and schism.”

There were a few more positive voices among medieval Christians.  St. Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), who visited the sultan of Egypt in the midst of the Crusades, instructed his brothers to live among Muslims in peace, avoiding quarrels and disputes.  Deep animosity toward Islam was pervasive, however.  Martin Luther (d. 1546) wrote several treatises attacking Islam, the Qur’ān, and Muḥammad, motivated in part by the threat of Ottoman Turks advancing on Europe.  Luther reflected the long‐standing view that Islam as a post‐Christian religion was false by definition.

Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

Several developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries set the stage for contemporary Muslim‐Christian dialogue.  First, constantly improving means of transportation and communication facilitated international commerce and unprecedented levels of migration.  Second, the academic study of religion propelled scholars to gather a wealth of information on the world’s various religious practices and belief systems.  Although Western studies of Islam and other religious traditions in the East tended to be far from objective, significant changes have occurred.  With more accurate information in hand, many non‐Muslim scholars concluded that Muḥammad was sincere and devout, challenging the prevailing Western view of Muḥammad as a shrewd and sinister charlatan.   Similarly, the scope and reliability of information on Christianity has broadened the horizons of many Muslim scholars during the past century. 

A third major factor contributing to the new context arose from the modern missionary movement among Western Christians.  The experience of personal contact with Muslims (and other people of faith) led many missionaries to reassess their presuppositions. Participants in the three twentieth‐century world missionary conferences (Edinburgh in 1910, Jerusalem in 1928, and Tambaram in 1938) wrestled with questions of witness and service in the midst of religious diversity.  These conferences not only stimulated debate, they also paved the way for later ecumenical efforts at interfaith understanding under the auspices of the World Council of Churches or WCC, founded in 1948.

Dialogue Movement

The dialogue movement began during the 1950s when the WCC and the Vatican organized a number of meetings and consultations between Christian leaders and representatives of other religious traditions. These initial efforts resulted in the formation of new institutional structures.  In 1964 Pope Paul VI established a Secretariat for Non‐Christian Religions to study religious traditions, provide resources, and promote inter-religious dialogue through education and by facilitating efforts by Catholics at the local level.  In 1989 the Secretariat was reorganized and renamed the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.

The WCC established its program subunit for Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies (DFI) in 1971.  As with the Vatican, Muslim‐Christian relations were a primary focus from the outset.  The DFI concentrated on organizing large international and smaller regional meetings, providing educational materials, working with the more than three hundred WCC member churches, and facilitating Christian theological reflection on religious pluralism.  The WCC and the Vatican publish books, articles, reports, working papers, and reviews by both Christians and Muslims.

By the 1980s and 1990s, many other regional and international bodies had participated in or developed their own formal and informal programs for dialogue between Muslims and Christians.  The Muslim World League, the World Muslim Congress, and the Middle East Council of Churches are among the organizations active in this process.

At the local level, hundreds of interfaith organizations have organized or taken part in Muslim‐Christian dialogue programs.  These programs are difficult to characterize because they vary substantially, even within a given setting.  Detailed information and analyses of activities in specific countries and organizations is accessible through the periodical resources listed in the bibliography; the following examples illustrate the breadth of activity.

In India and the Philippines, Christian institutions study Islam, and Christians and Muslims have pursued dialogue programs for many years. Over the decades these academic programs have stimulated particular initiatives by churches and Muslim organizations.

The Muslim community in Great Britain numbers approximately two million.  The large influx of Muslims since 1950 has led to the creation of numerous local and national Islamic organizations, many of which are engaged with their Christian counterparts in local churches or through programs of the British Council of Churches.  Focal concerns range from local education and health care to Middle East peacemaking.

Diverse groups of Muslims and Christians have lived together in the area of Mt. Lebanon for more than a millennium.  The unique history and political structures of Lebanon were central factors in the multisided civil war that plagued the country from 1975 to 1992.  In the midst of the strife, religious and political leaders, scholars and neighbors continued to meet, exchange views, and even negotiate ceasefire agreements across confessional lines.

Muslim‐Christian dialogue programs can be found throughout North America, in Nigeria, Indonesia, Tunisia, France, Tanzania, and elsewhere.  While the nature of the encounter differs from place to place and over time, most organized efforts fall within the scope of one or more identifiable types of dialogue.  Meeting together on equal footing in order to improve understanding is a worthwhile goal.  As the interfaith dialogue movement developed, however, organizers and participants have developed several distinctive, yet interrelated modes.

“Parliamentary dialogue” is the term used for the large assemblies convened for interfaith discussion.  The earliest example was the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago.  Such gatherings became more frequent in the 1980s and 1990s under the auspices of multi-faith organizations such as the World Conference on Religion and Peace and the World Congress of Faiths.  These sessions of several hundred participants tend to focus on better cooperation among religious groups and the challenges of peace for people of faith.“Institutional dialogue” refers to the organized efforts to initiate and facilitate various kinds of dialogue meetings.  In addition to the immediate focus, this approach also seeks to establish and nurture communication between institutional representatives of religious organizations.  Institutional dialogue encompasses much of the work carried out through the Vatican and the WCC, with numerous variations at the local level.

“Theological dialogue” includes structured meetings in which theological and philosophical issues are the primary focus of discussion.  Muslims and Christians, for example, may concentrate on their respective understandings of God, Jesus, the nature of revelation, human responsibility in society, and so forth.  Theological dialogue can also refer to the wider discussion of the meaning of one’s own religious tradition in the context of religious pluralism.  Here, as with most other types of dialogue involving several participants, the dialogue occurs both within and between Muslims and Christians.

“Dialogue in community” and “the dialogue of life” are inclusive categories concentrating on practical issues of common concern — for example, the proper relationship between religion and the state, the rights of religious minorities, issues arising from inter-religious marriage, appropriate approaches to mission and witness, or religious values and public education.  Frequently this type of dialogue is designed to encourage common action.  Another important function of dialogue focused on life in community is difficult to measure: organizers often express the hope that it will stimulate more intentional and informal interaction between Muslim and Christian neighbors in daily life.

“Spiritual dialogue” is concerned with developing, nourishing, and deepening spiritual life through interfaith encounter.  Here too there is considerable latitude for exploration.  The least threatening approach might include observing the worship of others or sharing perspectives on the meaning of fasting or prayer for Muslims and Christians.  A more radical approach might include participation in joint worship experiences.

Obstacles

The organized dialogue movement represents a new chapter in the long history of relations between Muslims and Christians.  Intentional efforts to understand and cooperate with one another are a hopeful sign, particularly for religious communities whose interaction frequently has been characterized by mistrust, misunderstanding, @and mutual antipathy.  Muslims and Christians who advocate and engage in dialogue still face many obstacles.

Many Muslims are wary of the entire enterprise owing both to the long history of enmity and the more recent experiences of colonialism. Contemporary political machinations involving the United States or other major Western powers also create problems for many would‐be Muslim participants.  Still other Muslims suspect that dialogue is a new guise for Christian missionary activity.

Although the primary impetus for organized dialogue originated largely with Christians and church‐related bodies, many conceptual and theological obstacles remain.  Some Christians argue that dialogue weakens or undermines Christian mission and witness.  For many, the perception of Islam as inherently threatening is deeply ingrained; they are unwilling or unable to move beyond stereotypes or to distinguish between sympathetic and hostile counterparts in the other community.

The newness of dialogue and the absence of conceptual clarity has required a good deal of experimentation.  Questions about planning, organization, representation, and topics require thoughtful consideration and careful collaboration.  Through trial and error, advocates of interfaith dialogue in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America have continued to refine the process.  Many local, regional, and international dialogue groups have developed and published guidelines to address common concerns and avoid pitfalls.

Conquest And Collaboration

Before the rise of Islam in the early 600s, the Byzantine Empire (the eastern half of the Roman Empire) and the Persian Empire controlled most of the Middle East.  The Persians soon fell to Muslim invaders, but the Byzantine civilization, which was largely Christian, endured for almost 1,000 years.  Throughout history, relations between Christians and Muslims have been characterized by cooperation and conflict. Their followers have fought in wars for political dominance.  At the same time, Muslims and Christians have benefited from cultural and economic exchanges.  Today interaction between the world’s two largest communities of faith continues to be marked by ambivalence.

At the time of Muhammad, Jewish and Christian tribes lived in Arabia. Muhammad reached out to these groups, hoping that they would accept his message of social and religious reform and become his allies. Debate and dialogue between Christians and Muslims soon developed. Muhammad, for example, discussed theological issues with Christians from Najran and eventually allowed them to pray in his mosque.

In the years following the Prophet’s death, Muslim armies extended the boundaries of the Islamic world from the Arabian Peninsula to Spain, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.  During that time, Muslims captured Egypt and Syria, which had been controlled by the Byzantines.  Although many welcomed the Muslims as liberators from Roman rule, some Byzantine Christians viewed them as agents of Satan sent to destroy their religion.  In 829 the Coptic Christian community in Egypt even rose up against the Muslim government.

Despite occasional religious battles, relations between Christians and Muslims living in the Islamic empire were generally good.  In accordance with Islamic law, Muslim leaders extended legal protections to Christians living under their rule.  Muslims considered Christians and Jews to be People of the Book, meaning that these groups were guided by scripture — sacred writings that contained revelations from God. Furthermore, the caliphs permitted greater religious freedom and imposed lower taxes than had the Byzantine rulers.  Many Christians held government positions in the Islamic empire.  In Andalusia, for example, they served as translators, engineers, physicians, and architects.

Cultural exchanges between the Muslim and Christian worlds were also common during this time.  Scholarship provided a way for the different traditions to communicate.  The caliph al-Ma’mun founded an academy to translate works of science, philosophy, and medicine from Greek into Arabic.  The Bible was one of the few religious works translated into Arabic.  Christians studied at Islamic universities in Córdoba and Cairo. Such institutions became the models for universities in western Europe.  The exchange of knowledge between Muslims and Christians eventually helped Europe to emerge from its intellectual “dark age.”

Rise And Fall Of Empires

By the 1000s, the Holy Roman Empire, a European power composed of several states, controlled northern and central Europe.  The Christians within the empire considered Islam to be an enemy and a threat to their religion.  At that time, the Holy Land was under Muslim control, and European Christians believed they would be in danger if they attempted to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. In addition, Alexius I, the ruler of the Byzantine Empire, believed that his capital city of Constantinople was vulnerable to attack.  In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a Christian army to free the Holy Land from Muslim rule.  Four years later, the Christian forces captured Jerusalem and massacred Muslims and Jews living there, including women and children.  This event was the first in a lengthy series of bloody military expeditions that came to be known as the Crusades.  Muslims still regard the Crusades as a clear example of the aggression and imperialism of the Christian West.

Muslim forces recaptured Jerusalem in 1187.  Subsequent Crusades failed to dislodge the Islamic armies, except for brief periods.  Muslim victories eventually gave rise to a powerful Ottoman Empire in the 1300s.  The vast Muslim state ultimately encompassed southeastern Europe, most of the Middle East, and the Mediterranean coast of North Africa.  Christians living in the conquered territories served in the Ottoman government and military, and Islamic law protected their churches.

The hold of the Ottomans gradually weakened, however.  Inept leaders and corruption plagued the empire.  Beginning in the mid-1700s, Europe experienced the Industrial Revolution, which generated military and technological advances, further shifting the balance of power in its favor.  In the 1800s, European nations established colonies in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, and other Muslim lands and helped Greece, Serbia, and Romania gain independence from Muslim rule.  After World War I, the victorious European powers completed the destruction of the Ottoman Empire.  Colonization brought Western government and education and Christian missionaries to the Islamic world.

Most Muslims considered Western imperialism to be a serious challenge to their way of life.  They viewed colonization as an attack on their society, education, religion, and culture.  In response, some Muslims joined militant resistance groups.  Anti-colonial movements gained strength after World War II.  By the early 1960s, most Islamic regions had achieved independence from colonial rule and had established Muslim nation-states.

In 1948 the United Nations divided the Arab territory of Palestine into two parts, creating the state of Israel.  Muslims regarded Israel as a Western colony in Arab land.  Arab nationalists and Islamic activists have fought to regain possession of this land.

Renewed Interest In Islam

East-West geographic divisions are no longer a defining factor in Muslim-Christian relations.  Followers of both religions are now spread throughout the world.  Centers of Christianity and Islam exist in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.  Approximately six million Muslims live in the United States alone.  Nonetheless, the relationship between Christianity and Islam still retains a dual nature.  Though cooperation has reached new levels, suspicion and violence still separate the two faiths.

By the 1950s, Christian scholars renewed their interest in the study of Islam.  Dialogue between Christians and Muslims grew as the World Council of Churches and the Vatican organized meetings for representatives of various faiths.  In 1965 the Vatican officially recognized the legitimacy of Islam and called for greater understanding between Catholics and Muslims.  In the late 1990s, the Methodist Church, the second largest Protestant denomination in the United States, called for increased tolerance of Muslims.  In 2002 Christian and Muslim leaders met in London to improve relations and to promote mutual understanding.

Muslims and Christians have also worked together to solve many world problems including poverty, hunger, and trade barriers.  During the 1990s, the administration of President Bill Clinton helped Muslim groups take a more active role in public life in the United States.

Despite recent progress, conflict remains a major factor in Muslim-Christian relations.  The 1970s marked the beginning of an Islamic revival.  Some experts attribute this trend to increased revenue from oil in the Middle East and the corresponding rise in economic and political power of Muslim governments.  Others point to the defeat of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in the 1967 war against Israel and the continued statelessness of many Palestinians as a reason for renewed distrust of Christians among Muslims.  Radical Muslims became committed to victory over Christian culture and Western political systems.  In 1979 Islamic fundamentalists overthrew the Western-supported government in Iran.  Islamic militancy grew in nations around the world, aggravating tensions between Muslims and Christians.  Since the 1980s, Muslim and Christian mobs in northern Nigeria have battled in the streets.  Sudan has been embroiled in a 20-year civil war between Arab Muslims in the north and Christians in the south.  Since 1999 an estimated 10,000 people have died in Muslim-Christian violence on the Indonesian island of Ambon.

Most radical Muslims see the United States as their chief Christian enemy.  They oppose its military and economic support of Israel and what they consider to be oppressive anti-Islamic regimes.  Beginning in the 1990s, Islamic militant Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network launched a series of terrorist attacks against American targets around the world.  Bin Laden seeks to unite Muslims in a global jihad against Christians and Jews.  Al-Qaeda’s devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, demonstrated the intensity and potential for tragedy in this ongoing conflict.

Islamic Response

Western colonial domination placed enormous stress on Muslims.  For centuries, Muslims had faced many challenges, but the sweep of Western civilization proved to be the most serious challenge to Islamic life.  The traditional pattern of Islamic life based on the sharī῾a was everywhere threatened by what Muslims perceived as the “aggression” of the West: political aggression leading to subjugation, economic aggression leading to poverty, social aggression disrupting family and society, intellectual aggression imposing Western thought and education, and religious aggression.  “For, say what we will, Christian missionary work is frequently understood by the peoples of Africa and the East not as the sharing of an inestimable treasure, but as an unwanted imposition from without, inseparably associated with the progress of the colonial powers.” (Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions, Harmondsworth, 1964, p. 250).  Muslims often view Western scholars of Islam, usually termed “orientalists,” as serving, deliberately or not, the colonial/imperial designs of their home countries.  How far this generalization is tenable is a moot point.  The question is whether study of a culture and religion by an external observer should be entirely rejected because of a certain inevitable degree of misrepresentation.  Christian scholars, on the other hand, have regretted that few, if any, Muslims have attempted to create an Islamic “occidentalism” (Watt, 1991, p. 116).  Of course, these Christian scholars intend that such work follow methods of modern, (that is, Western), critical scholarship to balance the work of orientalists and provide Christianity with a much‐needed “critique” from without.

The reaction to Western domination has been a struggle to create independent nation‐states reflecting the wide variety of Muslim thought.  Some emphasize fundamental Islamic faith and practice, with minimal involvement in secular society; others adopt a secular approach and emulate European models.  A reformist trend seeks to reconcile Islam with the contemporary world, particularly Western civilization, Christian or otherwise.  The West is largely rejected emotionally by Muslims, although Muslim societies usually depend on it economically. These issues have produced a religious revival or resurgence, as the Muslim community seeks to clarify the relationship between Islam and modern national identity.  Often the process has been accompanied by revolution.  The Islamist trend, powerful in several Muslim nations, advocates the integral implementation of the sharī῾a, and some states have declared themselves Islamic republics; this affects Muslim‐Christian relations profoundly, as can be seen, for example, in the present situation in Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Malaysia.  The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent displacement of the Palestinians have had a profound effect upon Muslim‐Christian relations everywhere.  Although evangelical Christians often support Zionist policies, many other Christians in the West have been moved by the plight of the Palestinians. Common bonds of language and culture often lead Arab Christians to support Palestinian rights; however, since they share with Jews the experience of dhimmī status, they desire more equitable arrangements within a modern democracy.

The Muslim world is searching for effective, modern structures of cohesion and growth for the ummah in order to play a decisive role in global affairs.  The aims of the Rābiṭat al‐῾Ālam al‐Islāmī (Muslim World League), founded in Mecca in 1962, include the propagation (da῾wah of Islam in Muslim and non‐Muslim countries among Muslims and others.  It defends the rights of Muslim minorities in non‐Muslim countries and, since 1976, has sponsored the research and publication of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (Jeddah and London).  Once the rights of the minorities have been secured in a given country, the second phase of the League’s strategy is aimed at transforming the minority into a ruling majority through proselytization.  The secretary‐general of the League has publicly stated that all the organization’s activities wish to proceed in the spirit of dialogue and collaboration with Christians (Nasseef, 1986); the Journal Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs has published research on the treatment of Christian minorities in Muslim countries.  The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), founded in 1962, set up the Islamic Solidarity Fund in 1974 to support religious, cultural, and charitable work in Muslim communities everywhere.  The Islamic Call Society, funded by Libya, was founded in 1970 to spread Islam by propagation and to provide educational and medical services as integral elements of da῾wah.  These and other organizations have sponsored meetings of Christians and Muslims.  This work also takes place on national and regional levels.  The Islamic Foundation in Leicester, United Kingdom, for instance, promotes da῾wah among Muslims and non‐Muslims through printed and audiovisual media and by training workers “to successfully face the challenge of the West.”

At least one‐third of Muslims today live in minority situations and represent a wide range of understandings of Islam.  This situation impresses upon Muslims the need for an intra‐Muslim ecumenism and the urgency of developing inter-religious ties with other faith communities.  The problems of Muslim minorities among Christian majorities cannot be solved without the principle of reciprocity in the freedom of religious expression and movement.  Christians and Muslims collaborate on global problems like international trade, economic underdevelopment, hunger, and migration within international and national organizations.  No longer can Christian‐Muslim relations be perceived in terms of relations between Islam and the West, not least because today the centers of Christianity and Islam have shifted to Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  The Vatican II declaration Nostra Ætate of 1965 prescribes for members of the Roman Catholic Church “esteem” for Muslim faith and practice and “urges” Christians and Muslims “to strive sincerely for mutual understanding” and “to make common cause of safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace and freedom.”  These themes are important elements of contemporary Christian‐Muslim dialogue both at the Office for Islam within the Pontifical Council for Dialogue between Religions and in the work of the World Council of Churches (WCC).  In 1971 the WCC, representing Anglican, Protestant, and Orthodox Churches, established an Office for Dialogue with People of Living Faiths (DFI).  Both the WCC and the Pontifical Council have sponsored many meetings between Christians and Muslims.  These central initiatives and offices also occur on regional and national levels; although some politicians seek to replace the Iron Curtain with a “Christian‐Muslim Cold War” (an understanding often reflected in the mass media), only determined worldwide efforts to address the divisive issues that have separated Muslims and Christians can make significant headway in achieving reconciliation. Muslim da῾wah and Christian mission are being redefined in terms of constructive coexistence, respecting each others’ differences and being for one another a source of righteous emulation and challenge.

Muslim-Christian Relations

Intentional, structured encounters between Muslims and Christians are generally termed “Muslim-Christian dialogue.”  Interfaith dialogue is a conversation in which two or more parties seek to express their views accurately and to listen respectfully to their counterparts.  Since the second half of the twentieth century, organized dialogue meetings have proliferated at the local, regional, and international levels, although these meetings have varied significantly in their organization, focus, and venue, as well as in the composition of participants.

Several motives have propelled the contemporary dialogue movement. These include the desires to foster understanding, to stimulate communication, to correct stereotypes, to work on specific problems of mutual concern, to explore similarities and differences, and to facilitate means of witness and cooperation.  The pragmatic need for better understanding and cooperation among adherents to the world’s two largest communities of faith — Christianity and Islam — is particularly acute.  Together Christians and Muslims comprise almost half the world’s population, so the way in which they relate is bound to have profound consequences for both communities and for the world.

The dynamics of interfaith encounters between Muslims and Hindus, Muslims and Jews, and Muslims and Christians differ.  Their historic relationships as well as their major theological, social, and political concerns vary markedly.  Contemporary initiatives in Muslim-Christian dialogue can be understood best in the larger context that can be established by a brief overview of dominant themes in Muslim-Christian encounters.

Historical Background

Muslim-Christian dialogue dates back to the rise of Islam in the seventh century.  Rooted as both traditions are in the monotheism of the patriarch Abraham, 2jMuslims and Christians share a common heritage.  The history of Muslim-Christian interaction includes periods of great tension, hostility, and open war as well as times of uneasy toleration, peaceful coexistence, and cooperation.

Islamic self-understanding incorporates an awareness of and direct link with the biblical tradition.  Muḥammad, his companions, and subsequent generations of Muslims have been guided by the Qurʾān, which they have understood as a continuation and completion of God’s revelations to humankind.  The Qurʾān speaks of many prophets (anbiyāʾ, sg. nabī) and messengers (rusul, sg. rasūl) who functioned as agents of God’s revelation.  Particular emphasis is laid on the revelations through Moses (the Torah) and Jesus (the Gospel) and their respective communities of faith, or “People of the Book” (ahl al-kitāb).

The Qurʾān includes positive affirmations for the People of the Book, including the promise that Jews and Christians who have faith, trust in God and the Last Day, and do what is righteous, “shall have their reward” (2:62 and 5:69).  The different religious communities are explained as a part of God’s plan; if God had so willed, the Qurʾān asserts, humankind would be one community.  Diversity among the communities provides a test for people of faith: “Compete with one another in good works.  To God you shall all return and He will tell you (the truth) about that which you have been disputing” (5:48).

The Qurʾān states that “there shall be no compulsion in religious matters” (2:256).  Peaceful coexistence is affirmed (106:1–6).  At the same time, the People of the Book are urged to “come to a common word” on the understanding of the unity of God (tawḥīd) and proper worship (e.g., 3:64, 4:171, 5:82, and 29:46).  Christians, in particular, are chided for having distorted the revelation of God.  Traditional Christian doctrines of the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity are depicted as compromising the unity and transcendence of God (e.g., 5:72–75, 5:117, and 112:3).  There are also verses urging Muslims to fight, under certain circumstances, those who have been given a book but “practice not the religion of truth” (9:29).

While the Qurʾān provides a framework for Muslims’ understanding of Christians and Christianity, particular political, economic, and social considerations have shaped the encounter in each setting. Circumstances and relationships between Muslims and Christians in Egypt, for example, cannot be equated casually with those in Lebanon over the same centuries.  Relationships in Egypt, a religious and intellectual center of the Islamic world, were subject to distinctive dynamics not found elsewhere.  Cairo, known as the “city of a thousand minarets,” is home to al-Azhar, the mosque and university that have been a bastion of Sunnī orthodoxy through much of Islamic history. Still, the Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt comprise the largest Christian community in the Arabic-speaking world, representing nine percent of the total population of 82 million in 2011.  As members of an Oriental Orthodox church, the Copts have been completely independent of both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern (Greek, Russian, and Serbian) Orthodox churches since the middle of the fifth century.  By contrast, the mountains of Lebanon provided safe haven for a wide range of religious groups — including numerous Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christian communities after the nineteenth century, various Sunnī and Shīʿī Muslims, and the Druze — for more than a thousand years.  As minority communities threatened by Christian crusaders or Muslim conquerors or more recent colonial powers, inhabitants of Lebanon have coexisted, cooperated, and clashed in many ways.  An examination of Muslim-Christian relations in Spain or the former Yugoslavia or contemporary Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, further illustrates the need for careful, contextual analysis.

Historically, Christians living under Islamic rule were usually treated as “protected peoples” (dhimmī); the practical implications of dhimmī status fluctuated from time to time and from place to place.  Even in the best of circumstances, however, it was difficult for Christians and Muslims to engage one another as equals in dialogue.

With few exceptions, Islamic literature that is focused on Christianity has been polemical.  The writings of the celebrated fourteenth-century Muslim scholar Ibn Taymīyah (d. 1328 AD) illustrate the point.  In his book al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li-man baddala dīn al-masīḥ (The Correct Answer to Those Who Changed the Religion of Christ), Ibn Taymīyah catalogs the major Islamic theological and philosophical criticisms of Christianity: altering the divine revelation, propagating errant doctrine, and making grievous mistakes in religious practices.

On the Christian side, the advent of Islam in the seventh century presented major challenges, which altered the religious balance of power in several regions of the world.  In the short space of a century, Islam transformed the character and culture of many lands from northern India to Spain, disrupted the unity of the Mediterranean world, and displaced the axis of Christendom to the north. Furthermore, Islam challenged Christian assumptions, since Muslims were successful in both their military and political expansions, but also because their religion presented a puzzling and threatening new intellectual position.

Mutually negative depictions notwithstanding, there were a few more positive voices among medieval Christians.  Saint Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), who visited the sultan of Egypt in the midst of the Crusades, instructed his brothers to live among Muslims in peace, avoiding quarrels and disputes.  Deep animosity toward Islam was pervasive, however. Martin Luther (d. 1546) wrote several treatises attacking Islam, the Qurʾān, and Muḥammad, motivated in part by the threat of Ottoman Turks advancing on Europe.  Luther held the long-standing view that Islam as a post-Christian religion was false by definition.

Organized Dialogue Movement

The dialogue movement began during the 1950s when the WCC and the Vatican organized a number of meetings between Christian leaders and representatives of other religious traditions.  These initial efforts resulted in the formation of new institutions.  In 1964, Pope Paul VI established a Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions to study religious traditions, provide resources, and promote inter-religious dialogue through education and by facilitating local efforts by Catholics. Several major documents adoptedj at Vatican II (1962–1965) focused on interfaith relations.  On 25 October 1974, the late King Fayṣal ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl Saʿūd’s foremost religious advisors initiated contacts with Catholic officials, when Shaykh Muḥammad Āl Harakan (who became minister of justice), Shaykh Rashīd bin Khunayn (an undersecretary in the same ministry), Shaykh Muḥammad bin Jubayr (the late head of the Majlis al-Shūrā), and Shaykh ʿAbd Āl Musnad (who eventually chaired the Religious Studies Department at Imam Muḥammad University and later became a member of the Higher Council ofʿUlamāʾ), visited Pope Paul VI.  At the time, the four Saudi religious scholars participated in the Catholic Church’s dialogue between Christians and Muslims, part of a carefully laid out discourse between the two communities.  In June 1973, King Fayṣal visited Rome, where the Islamic Cultural Center received approval for construction. The dialogue continued when on 24 April 1974, Fayṣal received, in Riyadh, Cardinal Pignedoli, the president of the Vatican Office of Non-Christian Affairs, who conveyed “the regards of His Holiness, moved by a profound belief in the unification of Islamic and Christian worlds in the worship of a single God, to His Majesty King Faisal as supreme head of the Islamic World.”  The most visible Christian leader during the last quarter of the twentieth century, Pope John Paul II, was a strong advocate for the new approach to interfaith relations.  During his papacy (1978–2005), John Paul II traveled to 117 countries, including several Muslim countries.  Remarkably, John Paul II was the first pope to visit a mosque, in Damascus in 2001, illustrating his strong desire for dialogue.  Indeed, the spirit of his approach to Islam was evident in a 1985 speech delivered to over eighty thousand Muslims at a soccer stadium in Casablanca, when he declared:

“We believe in the same God, the one God, the Living God who created the world . . . In a world which desires unity and peace, but experiences a thousand tensions and conflicts, should not believers come together?  Dialogue between Christians and Muslims is today more urgent than ever.  It flows from fidelity to God. Too often in the past, we have opposed each other in polemics and wars.  I believe that today God invites us to change old practices.  We must respect each other and we must stimulate each other in good works on the path to righteousness. (Pope John Paul II, Casablanca, Morocco, 19 August 1985)”

In 1989, John Paul II reorganized the Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions and renamed it the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.

Modes Of Dialogue

While the nature of the encounter differs from place to place and over time, most organized efforts adhere to a particular type of dialogue. As the interfaith dialogue movement emerged, organizers and participants developed several distinctive yet interrelated modes.k

“Parliamentary dialogue” is carried on by the large assemblies convened for interfaith discussion.  The earliest example was the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago.  Such gatherings became more frequent in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries under the auspices of multi-faith organizations such as the World Conference on Religion and Peace and the World Congress of Faiths.

“Institutional dialogue” is the organized effort to initiate and facilitate various kinds of dialogue meetings.  In addition to its immediate focus, this approach also seeks to establish and nurture communication between institutional representatives of religious organizations.

“Theological dialogue” includes structured meetings in which theological and philosophical issues are the primary focus.  Muslims and Christians, for example, may concentrate on understandings of God, Jesus, revelation, human responsibility in society, and so forth.

“Dialogue in community” and “the dialogue of life” are inclusive categories concentrating on practical issues of common concern — for example, the proper relationship between religion and the state, the rights of religious minorities, issues arising from inter-religious marriage, appropriate approaches to mission and witness, and religious values and public education.

“Spiritual dialogue” is concerned with developing, nourishing, and deepening spiritual life through interfaith encounters.

Today, Muslim-Christian dialogue represents a new and major effort to understand and cooperate with others in increasingly interdependent and religiously diverse countries.  The newness of dialogue and the absence of conceptual clarity have required experimentation. Questions about planning, organization, representation, and topics of discussion need thoughtful consideration and careful collaboration. Through trial and error, advocates of interfaith dialogue in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America continue to refine the process. Many local, regional, and international dialogue groups have developed guidelines to address common concerns and avoid pitfalls to further enhance harmony among the world’s leading faiths.

Christian-Muslim Theological Exchanges

Encounters of Experts or, Meetings of Minds

Islam originated in a world where Christianity was very much in evidence.  According to Muslim accounts, the Prophet Muḥammad was acquainted with Christians in Mecca, and he and other messages traveling north would almost certainly have seen churches and monasteries in the towns on their way.  They quite probably encountered Christians who talked about . their beliefs.  The Qurʾān contains numerous passages that recall stories from Christian scripture, and it is often understood to be engaging in dialogue with Christians among others.  The Islamic states that flourished from the mid-seventh century contained huge populations of Christians who would have rubbed shoulders with Muslims daily, and conversed with them about beliefs as a matter of course.

As followers of the two faiths learned about one another in the first centuries of Islam, they soon came to recognize their differences. From early on they are known to have discussed these with one another, and they gradually developed arguments and techniques by which to explain and defend them.

The Qurʾān And The Earliest Encounters

The Qurʾān constantly stresses the radical oneness of God (tawḥīd) and declares he has no partner.  In consequence, it denies that Jesus was more than a human messenger (61:6) or son of God (4:171–172; 5:116–118).  It also denies that God could beget or be begotten (112:3), and rules out plurality in God (112:1–2), appearing to condemn the doctrine of the Trinity (5:73).  It also maintains that Jesus predicted the coming of Muḥammad and that the Gospel mentions him (61:6; 7:157), and in addition it hints that Christians as People of the Book did not preserve the Gospel as Jesus had originally received it (2:75; 5:41).

These detailed statements about Christian beliefs, particularly the denials of the Trinity and Incarnation, provided Muslims with abundant resources as they encountered Christians in the towns and cities of the empire.

For their part, the Christian denominations that came under Muslim rule affirmed that God was Trinitarian in nature and that Christ was both human and divine, no matter how Christians differed in their interpretation of this nature.  In addition, they declared that Christ was the climax of God’s revelation and had reconciled humankind with God.  In consequence, there was no need for God to send further revelations, and anyone claiming to bring a revelation could not be truthful.

These doctrinal insights gave Christians as clear a conviction of their correctness as the Muslims’ convictions gave them.

Islamic rule spread rapidly in the seventh century, and by the early eighth century a state structure was firmly established.  This included provisions, known as the Pact of ʿUmar, to control Christians and other non-Muslims, who became clients of the state subject to taxes and various restrictions.  This position obviously affected their freedom to speak about questions of religion, though the records show they often thought themselves superior to Muslims in intellectual and religious matters.  This attitude is exemplified in a public meeting that occurred in Baghdad in 782 between the ʿAbbasid caliph al-Mahdī (r. 775–785) and the Patriarch Timothy I (r. 780–823), leader of the Church of the East.

If the record is at all accurate (given that the account that has come down was written by Timothy for a Christian friend in Syriac, which almost no Muslims would have been able to read), in this meeting the caliph asserted his political superiority by assuming the role of interrogator, while the patriarch demonstrated his intellectual preeminence by coming up with convincing answers.  Al-Mahdī’s question on Christian views about Muḥammad (they covered many more topics) elicited from Timothy a statement that shows his subtlety in the practice of debate.  His answer was: “[Muḥammad] walked in the path of the prophets and trod in the tracks of the lovers of God,” which could mean he was the equal of the Hebrew prophets or simply imitated them without adding anything new or original.

At just about this time in the late eighth century, thanks largely to new Arabic translations of Greek scientific and philosophical works, reflections among Muslims on the relationship between revelation and reason led to one of the most active theological periods in Islamic history.  Discussions were headed by the group known as the Muʿtazila (“seceders”), who usually called themselves the “People of Divine Unity and Justice.”

Few details about the earliest members of this group have survived, though there are hints that a major concern was to distinguish their own teachings about a God, who was absolutely one, from the Trinitarian God of the Christians.  These are given in two kinds of works which are known by their titles alone (almost none of the Muʿtazilī writings from this time are extant), one often called Radd ʿalā l-Naṣārā (“Refutation of the Christians”), and the other Kitāb al-tawḥīd (“The book of divine unity”).  Many Muʿtazilīs wrote both kinds of such works, suggesting that in their refutations they could have employed proofs that the Trinity was illogical as support for arguments in their expositions of Islamic divinity that tawḥīd alone was rational.  If this was so, it points to the intense intimacy between the origins of doctrinal development in Islam and arguments against Christianity.

Although Christian theologians in the Islamic world at the time of the major Muʿtazilīs were often forced onto the defensive over their doctrines, their works show that like the Patriarch Timothy they constructed spirited proofs that exhibit confidence and assurance. The earliest known Arabic-speaking Christian theologians, from the turn of the ninth century, give little impression that they felt forced to surrender their traditional beliefs or even radically to reshape them.

One of the most innovative Arabic-speaking Christian theologians from this period was the little-known Nestorian ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī, who left two catechetical works that appear to have been intended for Christians faced with challenges to their faith from Muslims.  Apart from these, he can only be situated at all thanks to a lost refutation from a Muʿtazilī who was active in the early ninth century.  In one of these works, the Kitāb al-burhān ʿalā siyāqat al-tadbīr al-ilāhī (“The Book of the proof about the course of the divine economy”), he explains the Trinity in terms that those who knew Muslim theology would understand (if not accept), and that Christians would also recognize as fully embodying traditional beliefs.  His arguments represent one of the fullest engagements between Christian and Muslim theologians from the whole history of encounters.

In his explanation of the Trinity, ʿAmmār ingeniously employs current Muslim understandings of the relationship between God and his attributes.  At this time, it was generally acknowledged that God must possess characteristics that qualified his being — both reason and revelation demanded this.  Many Muslims derived these from actual attributes located in God’s essence, and so, for example, they said that he could be characterized as living because of an attribute of life within his being; to explain it they used the formula: “[The attributes] are neither him nor other than him.”  Muʿtazilī theologians thought this went too far because it implied that God’s attributes had reality in addition to his essence and were eternal alongside it, introducing the problem of a plural godhead.  ʿAmmār detected an opportunity here, and accepted the position of Muslim advocates of real attributes.  And he went a step further and said that not only did God possess real attributes within his essence, but that the two attributes of life and reason were foundational to his being (meaning he could not be considered God without them) and that they gave rise to the other attributes of power, sight, and so on.  Hence, said ʿAmmār, God in his very being comprised the divine essence, or Father, together with life, or Holy Spirit, and reason, or Word, a necessarily triple reality in one being.  Here was an imaginative explanation of the Trinity in terms of Muslim theological logic, involving three entities but not plurality.

This explanation of a key Christian doctrine shows how deeply ʿAmmār (and other contemporary Arabic-speaking Christians) had engaged in Muslim theological thinking and was able to make it his own currency.  In reality, however, neither he nor his Muslim interlocutors were convinced by this borrowing. He himself realized that Christian beliefs could not be made fully acceptable to Muslims, and Muslims knew there was an uncrossable divide between their doctrine of tawḥīd and a doctrine they thought involved plurality in God.  On his side, ʿAmmār made clear that the divine hypostases (the three entities that constitute the Godhead in Christian belief, known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) of Christian theology and the divine attributes of Muslim theology could never be fully equated because in Christian thinking hypostases were real and independent existences, while in Muslim thinking attributes were not properly distinguishable from the essence of God.   On their side, Muslim theologians objected to the distinction made by ʿAmmār between the attributes of life and reason and God’s other attributes, arguing that there was no reason why the Godhead should not comprise four, five, or more hypostases.

ʿAmmār appears to have borrowed these concepts not so much to recast the doctrine of the Trinity in Muslim terms but to give an initial impression to Muslims of what Christians meant when they talked of the Triune God.  Both he and they remained clear that Christian and Muslim doctrines could not be fully reconciled but only approximated.

Growing Disagreement

Full agreement over the nature of God between ʿAmmār and his Muslim opponents could have risked confusion between their respective doctrinal systems.  Nevertheless, in the live exchanges that lay behind his works a considerable amount of mutual understanding can be detected.  The two sides shared the same language and ways of thinking, and they also observed logical premises based on similar, though not identical, perceptions of the nature of God and his relationship with humankind.  This enabled them at least to gain some grasp of what the other believed, even while they refused to accept the underlying reasons.  There are lessons here for present-day theological engagement, not least that full agreement is remotely unlikely but that understanding, and maybe respect, can be achieved by judicious use of concepts from the other’s theological system. Of course, the prerequisite is deep and thorough knowledge of the terms and structures of the other’s theology.

If these first meetings took place in relatively homogenous intellectual settings, in later times, as Christians and Muslims encountered one another in circumstances which were very different, such as the Crusades, the Ottoman invasion of eastern Europe, and European imperial expansion over large parts of the Muslim world, the intellectual worlds inhabited by Christians and Muslims were so different that the possibility of measured understanding may have been lost, to be replaced by a tradition of mutual recrimination based on stereotypes.  On the Christian side, it became common in the Middle Ages to condemn the Prophet Muḥammad as a fraud and even demonically inspired, while accusations that the Qurʾān was a confused patchwork drawn from the Bible went unquestioned: the fifteenth-century cardinal Nicholas of Cusa observed, “If anything beautiful, true or undistorted is contained in the Qurʾān, then it must necessarily be a reflection of the most brilliant Gospel.”

On the Muslim side, it gradually became the norm to dismiss the Trinity and Incarnation as confused and irrational, largely because they were derived from a scripture that was corrupt with little or no relation to the original revelation given to Jesus.  This claim of distortion was known as taḥrīf.

Followers of both faiths tended to believe that they possessed the truth and that the other held only a defective or incomplete version.

The distance between the two sides can be seen in their respective attitudes toward Jesus’s miracles.  Christians claimed that these were Jesus’s own actions, and they took them as proof of his divinity, but Muslims regarded them as God’s actions through Jesus and proof only that God was using them to demonstrate that he had chosen Jesus as his messenger — after all, God had performed equal and greater miracles through other prophets, and Christians did not claim that they were divine.

The Medieval Inheritance In The Present

Down to the present, there has been little discussion about the hardest issues that were identified in medieval polemic, even in significant attempts to acknowledge the other made by official bodies in recent decades.  In 1965 the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church issued its Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (known as Nostra aetate), a ground-breaking document that put an end to centuries of condemnation.  It summarized approvingly the main teachings of Islam, and asked for the two traditions “to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding,” transmitting a message that there is enough agreement about elements of faith and moral behavior for Muslims and Christians to work constructively together.  However, Nostra aetate contains nothing about the Prophet Muḥammad or the Qurʾān, central elements of Islamic belief and self-understanding.

In an equally unexpected response to a remark by Pope Benedict XVI, in 2007, a group of Muslim scholars issued A Common Word between Us and You, a strikingly original summary of Muslim and Christian agreed teachings about love of God and love of neighbor that was intentionally modeled on Christ’s summary of the Jewish Law as quoted in the Gospels.  It called for both traditions to recognize what they held in common and to work together toward mutual good.  However, this summary, too, contains nothing about the Trinity or Christ as Son of God, or about the status of the Bible, key elements of Christian belief.

It is understandable that the drafting bodies of both documents should prefer silence on points of difference, though the result is a Christianized form of Islam in Nostra aetate and an attenuated Islamized Christianity in A Common Word.  Nowhere in either document is there a sign of concern about confronting fundamental points in order to achieve fuller theological awareness.

Discussions of relations between the two faiths have, of course, been ongoing.  But even the most well-meaning examinations often implicitly entail the same assumption that the other tradition is at base a version of one’s own, if its followers only looked closely enough.  Thus, on the Christian side is the contention of Kenneth Cragg (1913–2012), the best-known Christian apologist to Muslims in the later twentieth century, that the question God asks primordial humanity in the Qurʾān, “Am I not your Lord?” (7:172), points to the possibility that God’s creatures will freely reject him and shows God risking himself in relationship with them.  This is a depiction of the Islamic God that is strangely like the God of Christianity.  Corresponding on the Muslim side is the argument of Mohammed Arkoun (1928–2010), the Algerian scholar who made his home in European universities, that all revelation begins as single undifferentiated word in the presence of God, and only becomes separated into distinct proclamations when it takes the form of prophetic utterances and is then made scriptural text by groups of clerics.  This assumes that revelation can only ever take the form of verbal utterances (not a human life), as it does in Islam.

While these and other recent initiatives to bring Muslims and Christians closer together contrast entirely in tone with the polemics of the early centuries of encounter, they lack something of the sophisticated theological involvement achieved by theologians of those times. However, it may now be possible — against all the odds — to recapture something of the intensity of engagement in those times. This is because Muslims and Christians in a number of parts of the world again live in close proximity, and they speak the same languages, move in the same intellectual circles, and generally observe the same principles and methods of thinking by virtue of common education.  In these circumstances, it may be more than possible for followers of escamelia faith to set out their beliefs and doctrines in forms that are part of the joint currency with the expectation they will be generally comprehensible.  A first sign in this direction is Archbishop Rowan Williams’ (b. 1950) elegant explanation of the Trinity before the academic body of al-Azhar University, Cairo, in 2004.  The main difference is that this time the aim would be not to look for success through clever logic aimed at defeating the other, but to understand and be understood.

The time has surely passed when either Muslims or Christians could assume they can quash a faith by a simple argument. The aim today is for understanding and respect rather than polemical stifling of long-held beliefs.  What are needed are resolve, flexibility and patience, virtues that have long been missing between Christians and Muslims.

The Christian world into which Islam so unexpectedly burst in the seventh century A.D. had undergone a succession of divisions, controversies, and power struggles such that east and west were at serious odds, and each contained within its regions deep tensions and disagreements.  It is little wonder that the new religion of Islam, arising out of the heart of Arabia, appeared to those who knew of its existence as another Christian heresy, not unlike the many other heresies that had wrinkled the face of Christendom since its inception. The fact that within a century of the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 Islam had spread across much of the known world was for many Christians inexplicable, frightening, and theologically incomprehensible.

Muslims, for their part, on the basis of the Qur’anic revelations, found it impossible to understand why Christians insisted on impugning the oneness of God by their affirmation of the divinity of Jesus and use of Trinitarian formulas.  In the beginning of his career, Muhammad seems to have understood his role as the final prophet of a monotheistic faith of which Jews and Christians, before their perversion of the original revelations given to them by God, were the earlier members.  It was only when Muhammad encountered unexpected resistance from these communities and their refusal to recognize his status as the final prophet of true monotheism that his community came to understand itself as the bearers of a faith that was related to, but different from, the extant religions of the Jews and Christians.  This faith became known as Islam, submission to the one God.

The Effect Of Early Islam On Christians And Christianity

Arabia was the home of significant Jewish and Christian communities, particularly in the south.  During the Prophet’s lifetime, Christians were living in Medina, Mecca, Khyber, Yemen, and Najran, although their numbers were small in the areas in which Muhammad carried on his preaching mission.  Although Muslim doctrine attests to the fact that the Prophet could not read or write, thus ensuring that he did not “copy” from the scriptures or writings of Christians and Jews, there is also a record of his interaction with Christians throughout his life.  One popular tradition records a meeting in Syria between a young Muhammad and a Christian monk named Bahira.  The monk recognized the seal of prophethood between the boy’s shoulders as attested to by scripture.  The use of Christian scripture to confirm Muhammad’s prophethood was also evidenced when a Christian cousin of his first wife Khadijah, Waraqa ibn Nawfal, acknowledged Muhammad’s recitation of the revelation to be identical with that sent down to Moses.  During the early prophetic period in Mecca, Muhammad’s small community was often persecuted by the Quaraysh tribe, which was concerned for the maintenance of its hold over the city’s ancient and lucrative holy places.  At one point the Prophet sent a number of his followers to Abyssinia (what is how Ethiopia) to find shelter.  The Abyssinians are reported to have listened to the preaching Prophet with great respect and awe, especially the description of Mary, mother of Jesus, leading them to affirm that this indeed was God’s revelation.

These and other incidents confirm for Muslims their belief that Islam is not a derivative of Christianity but a divine revelation, a fact that at least some of the Christians of Muhammad’s lifetime recognized.  The Qur’an itself identifies Jews and Christians as the recipients of earlier revealed books or scriptures, namely the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel.  These scriptures are believed to have been corrupted by the communities to which they were sent and are thus abrogated and in some senses superseded by the Qur’an.  They are nonetheless held in esteem insofar as they were originally God’s revelation, and the peoples to whom they were given are thus considered in a special category, namely the People of the Book.  All prophets are said to have taught the identical message that came from God to Muhammad.

Perhaps because of their greater resistance to the presence of the Muslim community in Medina, Jews are treated more harshly in the Qur’an than are Christians.  The primary offense of the Christians is that they hold to a Trinitarian doctrine of God and the divinity of Jesus.  Jesus is referred to in ninety-three verses of the Qur’an, affirming that he was born of Mary the Virgin, that he was a righteous prophet, that he was given clear signs from God, that he had disciples (helpers), that he performed such miracles as healing the blind and the+ lepers and raising the dead by the power of God, and that he will be a sign of the coming of the hour of judgment.  The Qur’an also says very specifically that those who refer to Jesus as God are blasphemers, and that Christians saying that Christ is the son of God is an imitation of Jews, who earlier had said that Ezra is the son of God.  According to the Qur’an Jesus was only a servant; Jesus the son of Mary was no more than an apostle of God.  Qur’anic verses dealing with Jesus’ death have been interpreted differently by commentators, but generally they have been taken to mean that Jesus did not die by crucifixion.  For Christians the Qur’an has thus served as a denial of Jesus’ incarnation and death on the cross and of the reality of the Trinity.

About Christians themselves the Qur’an is quite charitable.  Apart from accusations of heresy for their stand on the Trinity and some chiding for their conviction that theirs is the true religion, the Qur’an declares that Christians are people of compassion and mercy, that they will be able to enter paradise, and even that they are nearest in love to the (Muslim) believers.  One Qur’anic verse is interpreted to mean that Jesus himself foretold the coming of a prophet called Ahmad (from the same root as Muhammad).  In 632, only months before he died, Muhammad apparently met for the first time with a Christian[ community as such.  An official delegation of Christians, probably led by a bishop, came to Mecca from Najran in Yemen.  After engaging the Christians in discussion, the Prophet is said to have realized that Christian teachings are indeed incompatible with Islam, after which the revelation followed that only Islam is acceptable to God as a religion.

The early community of Muslims in Medina established its presence and extended its domain primarily through carrying out a series of razzias or marauding expeditions against hostile tribes.  These led to more serious encounters, during which Muslims were not always the aggressors.  In any case, it was only the pagans to whom the choice of becoming Muslim or suffering serious consequences was given.  As the so-called People of the Book, Christians and Jews, along with Magians, Samaritans, Sabians, and later Zoroastrians and others, were treated as minorities under the protection of Islam (dhimmis), believers in God despite their refusal to accept the prophethood of Muhammad.  Adult male Christians were thus not required to convert (although that option was always open to them), but they were required to pay a poll tax as the price for this protection.  Because of the income accrued from this tax, Muslims in general preferred that Christians (and Jews) not convert to Islam but maintain their status as protected minorities. Dhimmis were granted the right to practice their religion in private, to defend themselves against external aggression, and to govern their own communities.  Later they were exempted from military service, although some Christians fought on the side of Muslims in the early expansion of Islam.  In fact, Christian subjects were often allowed a good deal of latitude in paying their poll and other taxes.

The specifics of the requirements for Christians who enjoyed dhimmi status were spelled out in what has come to be referred to as “the covenant of Umar,” which exists in several versions and most likely was attributed to rather than designed by the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634–44).  The covenant stipulated prohibition of the building of new churches or repair of those in towns inhabited by Muslims, although in some cases when financing was available Christians did construct new places of worship.  Beating the wooden clapper that Christians used to call people to prayer was forbidden, as was loud chanting or carrying the cross or the Bible in processions.  Dhimmis were allowed to keep their own communal laws, although they could apply to a Muslim judge if they wished.  They were not, however, allowed to give testimony concerning a Muslim in a court of law.  The recruiting of new Christians was forbidden, as was any insult about Islam or its Prophet.  As a means of identification, particular dress, such as a special girdle, was required for Christians.  Over the first several centuries of Islam, dress stipulations grew increasingly stringent for Christian men and women.  A Christian woman was not allowed to marry a Christian man, although the Qur’an does allow marriage of a Muslim man to a Christian woman.  Nevertheless, Islamic law from early on stipulated a great range of conditions under which such a marriage might take place.  The children of a mixed marriage were always considered Muslim.  A Muslim could own a dhimmi slave, but never the opposite.

Some of the judges and lawyers of Islam were strict in the interpretation of dhimmi status, especially in reaction against Christians and Jews occupying high administrative positions, while others showed more flexibility.  The different legal schools were not in complete agreement as to what privileges should be allowed to dhimmis, and customs differed from one place to another.  The strictest interpretations were applied in Baghdad and other major Islamic cities, while enforcement of regulations in small towns and rural areas was often more lenient.  Dhimmis were allowed to live anywhere except in Mecca and Medina.  In actual practice, Christians and Muslims often had very friendly relations.  Muslims, for example, are said to have especially enjoyed the hospitality of monks in Christian monasteries. Christians occupied high positions in the caliphal courts as physicians, engineers, architects, and translators, and sometimes they were treated as having virtually equal rights with Muslims.  Muslim writers and poets sometimes gave great tribute to Christians in their literature.

The dhimmi status seems to have been a changing one, in that laws were made and either broken or forgotten, and relations between Christians and Muslims obviously were dependent on individual whim and personal advantage as well as on what was stipulated by the law. Although Christians and Jews were often in positions of public service in Muslim communities, and sometimes were among the ranks of the very wealthy, they were never free from the whims of individual rulers who might choose to enforce strict regulations, or from the caprice of mobs expressing their passions in prejudicial and harmful ways.  In general, the first Arab Muslim dynasty, that of the Umayyads, was fairly flexible in terms of its Christian citizens, but in Islam’s second century the laws became more stringent.  Under the reign of the caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–61), laws against dhimmis were most severe, sometimes resulting in persecution of Christians as well as of Mutazilis, Shiites, and others considered opponents of the state.  Through the Middle Ages there was a hardening of attitudes against dhimmis, due more to political than to religious reasons, especially after the period of the Crusades.

After the Christians reconquered Spain from Muslim rule, many mosques were changed into churches.  In Seville, for example, the top of the fifty-meter-high minaret of the Almohed mosque, built from 1184 to 1198, was remodeled and transformed into a cathedral belltower.

The early Islamic empire included Christians in its bureaucracies; the first language of the Umayyad administration was Greek.  Early relations were good, though there is evidence of discontent (Coptic uprising, 829 – 30 ).  Islam inherited the Greek intellectual tradition, translating and elaborating on scientific, philosophical, medical, and religious texts, including the Bible.  Legal rights for non-Muslims were established.  The Crusades.   (1095 – 1291) and Reconquista (1085 – 1492) resulted in sustained military engagements and an exchange of knowledge that eventually led to the European Renaissance.  Christians and Jews studied with Muslims at the universities of Córdoba (established 968) and Cairo (972), perhaps influencing the development of western European universities (Paris, 1150 ; Bologna, 1119).  Religious tolerance varied with social, political, and economic circumstances.  After the Middle Ages, the religious dimension of Christian-Muslim relations became secondary to economic and political interests.  The Industrial Revolution ensured military supremacy of the Western powers, whose colonial influence affected most of the Muslim world.  Colonial policies and the emergence of nineteenth-century Christian missionary movements affected the social, economic, educational, cultural, and religious institutions of Muslim communities worldwide.  The reaction to Western hegemony has been a struggle to create independent nation-states reflecting varied interpretations of Islamic and Western political thought.  Some emphasize minimal involvement with secular society; others promote Islam’s reconciliation with the contemporary world.  The Islamist trend advocates the complete integration of shariah, causing inter-communal discord in places such as Nigeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.  Creation of the state of Israel (1948) and the subsequent displacement of Palestinians have had a profound effect on Muslim-Christian relations everywhere.

The Expansion Of Islam Into Christian Territories

The Christian world into which Islam moved with such rapidity was one that was far from united.  The church was divided into five apostolic sects, located in Rome, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Alexandria.  A series of controversies over the nature of Jesus’ relationship to God had failed to bring all Christians under one umbrella of belief.  The resulting sectarian divisions, pitting Christian against Christian, had significant consequences for the spread tof Islam.  To no small degree, these controversies served to exacerbate the already existing divisions between Greek-speaking and Syrian-, Armenian-, or Coptic-speaking Arab Christians.

The creed resulting from the Council of Nicaea in 325 affirmed that Christ was one substance with God, a perspective that dominated ensuing theological discussions.  This was reaffirmed in succeeding sessions at Constantinople, Ephesus, and finally at Chalcedon in 451, and was held by both Latin-speaking Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians.  This creed was opposed by dissenting groups such as the Arians, the Monophysites, and the followers of the Anti-Nicaean theologian Nestorius, each with their own subtle but distinctive theological interpretations.  The Council of Ephesus branded Nestorianism a heresy, but Nestorian missionary activity continued to move eastward through inner Asia.

The church of Alexandria split between the Copts, who held to the Monophysite doctrine condemned at Chalcedon, and the Melchites, who affirmed the orthodoxy of Chalcedon.  In Syria the Monophysites organized into an independent Jacobite church, following one of its leaders, Jacobus Baradaeus.  A fifth church council in 556, held in Constantinople, basically reaffirmed the Chalcedonian understanding, a position held by both the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox communions.  Arab Christians who affirmed this doctrine, mainly from Syria, were also referred to as Melchites.  In the second half of the sixth century, the Maronite church came into being, later to become the first eastern church to accept the supremacy of the Pope.

This was the complex background of the Christian church that the forces of Islam encountered.  The Roman church of the West was in an uneasy compromise with the Byzantines; Oriental communions fragmented over long-standing Christological -iiicontroversies and were generally considered heretical by both Romans and Greeks.  The Byzantine state ruled its eastern subjects with an authority that was often experienced as ruthless and oppressive.  Thus it was that many Oriental Christians welcomed Muslim political authority as a relief from Byzantine oversight and cooperated with their new Muslim rulers.  This was one of the most important factors in the remarkable ease with which Islam was able to spread across Christian lands.  Within twenty years of the Prophet’s death, the Byzantine Empire lost the provinces of Palestine, Egypt, and Syria.

For many Christians the arrival of Islam was actually seen as a liberation from the tyranny of fellow Christians rather than as a menace or even a challenge to their own faith.  Such acquiescence, of course, was encouraged by the fact that under Islam they were guaranteed the right to continue as independent communities.  The dhimmi status, despite the obligations and lower status attached to it, was for many a preferable option to Byzantine oppression.  The grandfather of John of Damascus, for example, was instrumental in the capitulation of Damascus to the forces of the Muslim commander Khalid ibn al-Walid in 635, signaling the end of Byzantine rule in Syria. Tensions between Syria and Constantinople had been high because of theological disagreements between the Monophysites and the Chalcedonians as well as for reasons of taxation and heavy-handed Byzantine rule.  The arrival of the Muslims in Damascus was welcomed by a significant portion of the population, many of whom were only vaguely aware that their new rulers represented another religious faith.  The Muslims, for their part, had little interest in Christian theological disputes, and although they forbade Christians from building new edifices, their rule was considerably more benign than that of the Byzantines.  Significant numbers of the members of these eastern communions eventually converted to Islam, significantly reducing the size of the Nestorian and Jacobite communities.

It was because of a combination of factors, then, that Islam spread so rapidly after the Prophet’s death; Christian accommodation for both political and religious reasons was only one of those reasons.  The two major empires in the Middle East — the Persian Sasanian and the Greek Byzantine — were exhausted after many years of struggle, and Islam was able to occupy what amounted to a power vacuum in many of the areas to which it spread.  The raiding tactics that had worked so well, as one after another Arabian tribe capitulated to the new faith, continued to function in expanded ways, with the plunder rendered in goods and taxes.  Military expeditions were political in nature and not undertaken for the purpose of forcing conversion to Islam as an alternative to the sword.  Dhimmi status was too profitable for this to have been the case.  Conversion was accepted, of course, but not encouraged, and for a number of centuries Christians remained the majority in much of what was nominally Muslim territory.

Of the many victories enjoyed by Muslims in Christian territories soon after the Prophet’s death none was to have more significance for the relationship of Islam and Christendom than the taking of Jerusalem shortly after the defeat of the Byzantine troops at the Battle of Yarmuk in 636.  Always considered the Holy City by Christians, Jerusalem from Islam’s beginning was also a place greatly venerated by Muslims.  Originally it was the place toward which the Prophet Muhammad asked his followers to turn in prayer.  Although he later changed the prayer direction to Mecca, the city continued to be a site of pilgrimage and prayer.  For Christians, Jerusalem is the place of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  For Muslims it is venerated as the location from which Muhammad is said to have ascended on his miraculous “night journey” through the heavens.  The conquest of the city was one of the most peaceful of its long and painful history. Shortly after its capture, the caliph Umar himself is said to have traveled to the Holy City to establish a treaty with the patriarch Sophronius, by which Christians living there were allowed freedom of life, property, and worship in return for paying the poll-tax and helping to fight off Byzantine raiders.  Umar ordered the Temple Mount to be cleansed of the piles of garbage that had accumulated on it, and he had a temporary mosque built on the site.  Christians remained the majority population in Jerusalem for many years; the city thus consisted mainly of dhimmis.  In 661 Muawiyah (r. 661–80) was proclaimed caliph in Jerusalem, first ruler of the near century-long Umayyad dynasty. Muawiyah00 is said to have done the initial planning for the construction of the Dome of the Rock on the site of Umar’s mosque; the edifice was completed by his successor Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in 691.  The oldest Islamic monument still existing, the Dome has held a place of enormous importance in the religious life of Islam and was the scene of great rejoicing when it was returned to Muslim hands after the defeat of the Franks at the time of the Crusades.  The adjacent mosque of al-Aqsa, in Islamic tradition the second and holiest sanctuary on the Temple Mount, was built either by Abd al-Malik or his son al-Walid I, and it has served through the centuries as a preeminent place of worship and prayer.

As Muslims pushed the boundaries further in virtually all directions, military advances were made by both land and sea.  From the middle of the seventh century Muslim naval strength grew in the Mediterranean, where the Byzantines had ruled supreme.  Occupying Cyprus and Rhodes, Muslims besieged Constantinople until finally retiring in 667. On the northern coast of Africa they moved again to consolidate power, gaining control of the major Mediterranean base of Tunis at the turn of the eighth century.  Resistance originally put up by the Berbers of North Africa was overcome with their (at least nominal) conversion to Islam, which was to prove key to the Muslim advance into Spain and France.  In 711 an army of Berber converts crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and soon took control of southern Iberia.  Two years later the governor of North Africa claimed Toledo to be under the sovereignty of the caliph of Damascus.  The final advance of the Muslim east into the Christian west came when Muslim armies crossed over the Pyrenees into the south of France in 718.  They took Bordeaux, destroyed the army of the defending Duke Eudes of Aquitaine, and pillaged Poitiers.  Eudes then fled north to seek assistance from the Frankish ruler Charles Martel, while the Muslim armies sacked and pillaged cities and abbeys.  In 732 the Muslim troops were met by Eudes and Charles Martel near Poitiers, where Islam’s advance into western Christendom was finally checked.  Muslims continued to foray into Frankish lands, maintaining their hold on the coast of Provence until 759, when Charles Martel’s son Pépin was able to secure the city of Narbonne in southern France, eliminating the last outpost of Muslim strength north of the Pyrenees.

The picture of Christian-Muslim interaction during this period is far from clear, as is the reality of who the adversaries actually were. Accounts of the events are sketchy from both western and Arab sources.  What is now France was divided among the northern Franks, the southern Franks, and the Visigoths, who ruled parts of Languedoc and Provence.  The drawing of lines of allegiance was often complicated by the fact that rulers were generally not strong, court intrigues were commonplace, and the population consisted of many conflicting elements.  Alliances were in constant flux.  Christian rulers, concerned with maintaining their own power, are known to have invited Muslim forces to garrison their cities for protection.  Duke Eudes himself, for example, gave his daughter in marriage to the Muslim ruler of Cerdaña (in the eastern Pyrenees), thereby forging an alliance to secure his southern borders.North of Spain the Muslims were never again serious opponents of the Carolingian Christians, who under the reign of the emperor Charlemagne, crowned in 800, consolidated power down to the Pyrenees.  Muslim incursions into the area in the early part of the ninth century were little more than annoying.  More troublesome were the raids of Muslim pirates along the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean. Attacks on monasteries were sometimes devastating, with the result that many monks abandoned them to move further inland.  Monastic revival that had been going on in Provence was stopped, and there are records of existing abbeys simply disappearing.  In the tenth century Muslim raids continued in the interior of Provence, causing considerable damage in areas around Aix and Marseille.  Ports and cities in the western Mediterranean were virtually deserted because of the raiding Muslim pirates.

At the same time that Muslims were advancing through Spain into France, Muslims were also moving into the Christian territories of Switzerland, northern and southern Italy, and Sicily.  In the early part of the ninth century, Muslims advanced well into Italy, moving to the walls of Rome before being pushed back by Christian forces.  By this time Christians had virtually lost control of the Mediterranean.  As the medieval Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) remarked, the Christians could no longer float a plank upon the sea.  Christians only navigated the ports of the east, where the Byzantines effectively prevented Muslims from complete domination.  What had formerly been the most active part of the empire had become the most threatened and attacked, and thus the most economically devastated. On land the Muslims were stopped at the northern border of Spain in the west and on the boundaries of Byzantium in the east.  In the meantime they had taken much of what had formerly been Byzantine territory, including Syria, Egypt, and the African provinces.

While Hispano-Romans in Spain capitulated with relatively little resistance, such relative ease of conquest was never the case in southern Europe.  Several centuries of repeated invasion of the island of Sicily, for example, were needed before it finally became a Muslim territory.  Beginning in 652 Muslim forces raided Sicily, first from Syria and then from the coast of North Africa.  In 831 the citizens of Palermo finally surrendered and accepted dhimmi status.  Muslims quickly occupied nearly half of the island, though it was not until 966 that the Byzantines finally signed a peace treaty acknowledging complete Muslim sovereignty.  Events turned around completely when a group of Norman Crusaders returning from Palestine began to reconquer the island.  In 1072 the last small rebel states in the interior had been subdued, Palermo yielded to the Normans, and a new Christian Sicilian kingdom was established.  Muslim culture flourished in Sicily in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and was allowed to continue even under Norman rule.  By the end of the Crusades, however, most of the oriental ethos of the island had been destroyed.

Despite the continuing raids and pirate attacks, in the early centuries of Islam the Frankish Carolingian rulers were much more focused on the possible expansion of territories to the north, namely into Saxon lands, than they were concerned about Arab advances.  There was even some diplomatic exchange as relations began to develop between Baghdad and the French court.  These began under the Carolingian House of Pépin, who in his zeal to be seen as a cosmopolitan ruler is said to have received embassies from many Mediterranean nations including the Saracens (Arabs).  The emperor Charlemagne, whose coronation was not recognized by the Byzantines, is said to have sought his allies further to the east.  In 797 an ambassador was sent from the court of Charlemagne to the caliph Harun al-Rashid, from whom it is reported that Charlemagne obtained precious gifts, including an elephant for the royal menagerie and a marvelous clock.  Popular belief, based on Frankish chroniclers, was that after a series of missions back and forth between the east and the west by Harun al-Rashid and Charlemagne, somewhere in the period from 797 to 802, the emperor traveled to the east to gain from the caliph protective rights for Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem.  This supposed journey of the Frankish king was recorded in one of the twelfth-century Chansons de Geste (literally “songs of heroic deeds,” a genre of literature filled with warfare and chivalry) entitled “The Pilgrimage of Charlemagne.” Although recent scholarship has disproved most of this, it does affirm the fact that Charlemagne and the caliph were on friendly terms and corresponded with each other, and that through this an important church in Jerusalem was secured for the Latin clergy.

Christianity flourished in Syria in the centuries before the rise of Islam.  A magnificent and extensive monastery, for example, grew up around the site near Antioch where St. Simeon Stylites (d. 459) spent twenty-seven years in a small cell atop a pillar.

Damascus was an important center of Christianity before the Muslims took the city in 635, but many Christians soon converted to Islam.  The Umayyad mosque, founded by the caliph al-Walid in 705, was built on the site of the Byzantine church dedicated to St. John.

Jerusalem is holy to the three great monotheistic religions.  This nineteenth-century lithograph by David Roberts, seen from the Mount of Olives, shows sites venerated by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Christians venerate Jerusalem as the place where Jesus died and was resurrected.  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, erected by the Byzantine emperor Constantine in the early fourth century and repeatedly restored and rebuilt, marks the site of Christ’s tomb.  Its prominent dome is visible on the skyline of Jerusalem’s Old City as seen from the platform on which the Dome of the Rock stands.

Jews venerate Jerusalem as the site of Solomon’s Temple, which was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt.  In 70 A.D. the Romans destroyed the temple built by Herod the Great, and the site remained largely vacant until Muslims conquered the city in 638.  They built the first mosque in the city, later known as the al-Aqsa, over the huge stone blocks remaining from the walls of the Herodian platform.

Muslims from North Africa conquered Sicily from the Byzantines in the ninth century.  After the Normans reconquered the island in the late eleventh century, a cosmopolitan culture developed that merged Byzantine, Islamic, and Latin Christian elements.  The twelfth-century palace chapel of the Norman rulers in Palermo, for example, is decorated with a typically Islamic muqarnas ceiling.

Christianity And Islam

702 – 004

http://discerning-islam.org

Last Updated:    11/2021

Copyright © 2017-2021 Institute for the Study of Islam (ISI) | Institute-for-the-study-of-Islam-org | Discerning Islam | Discerning-Islam.org | Commentaries on Islam | © 2020 Tips Of The Iceberg | © 1978 marketplace-values.org | Values In The Marketplace | are considered “Trade Marks and Trade Names” ®️ by the Colorado Secretary of State and the Oklahoma Secretary of State. All Rights Reserved.

About Post Author

Editorial Team

discerning.islam@outlook.com

https://discerning-islam.org

Happy

0 0 %

Sad

0 0 %

Excited

0 0 %

Sleepy

0 0 %

Angry

0 0 %

Surprise

0 0 %