Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

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INTRODUCTION
doubted the revelations in the Quran to the Jews and the Christians,
who would confirm that what was in the “clear Arabic
Quran” was likewise the Word of God. In the Muslims’ own view,
the Quran is, quite simply, the same God saying the same things to
his often heedless creation.
That is the theological basis of the approach here. There are
equally convincing historical grounds for going down this way.
Christianity is clearly an “offshoot” of Judaism. The image is
Paul’s, an olive tree branch that Christians claim has replaced the
trunk, but a branch nonetheless. Branch and trunk, stem and offshoot,
parent and offspring, the two have grown up and out together,
each dissembling, as suited its purposes, the family resemblance.
No such easy image occurs with Islam. It is neither a
branch nor a child of either Judaism or Christianity, though some
Jews and many Christians used to think so. Rather, it is their successor,
according to the Muslims. A child not of Moses or Jesus but
of Abraham, and of God.
We will leave the quarrel over rank orders to the respective communities.
What is incontestable is that Islam, almost from its inception,
was a party in the great religious competition that took
place for many centuries among the monotheists around the Mediterranean,
eastward into Asia and southward into Africa. It was
indeed a confrontation as much as a competition, often hostile in
intent and act, but it was also the great growth period for the three
communities, an extraordinarily rich era of interaction when the
practices, institutions, and religious ideals of Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam grew into what would long be their standard form, in
many cases into our own lifetime. Jews, Christians, and Muslims
not only worshiped the same God; they also shared many, though
by no means identical, ideals and aspirations, operated often in the
same social and economic environment, and at certain times and in
certain places lived side by side within the same culture, indistinguishable
in language, costume, and manners.
Little of that reality is apparent today. Judaism and Christianity
have evolved in the public consciousness into “Western” religions,
while Islam remains at best a “Middle Eastern” or at worst an
“oriental” religion, and in any event an exotic one. But it did not