Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

28 t CHAPTER ONE
just like humility, even though it is a Christian who is involved
here.”
Sura 5 continues in verse 83:
And when they [that is, the Christians] listen to what has been revealed
to the Messenger, you see their eyes overflow with tears because
of their recognition of the Truth. They say, “O Lord, we believe.
Inscribe us among the witnesses.”
There are other such benign passages, but there is criticism of the
Christians too, fairly extensive and some of it quite pointed. The
Christians’ assertion of the reality of the Incarnation or the Trinity
is tantamount to disbelief (kufr) (5:75–76), and their unique claim
to salvation is vanity (2:111). Finally, the Muslim is advised: “Do
not take the Jews and the Christians as your friends and protectors.
They are but friends and protectors to each other. And whoever
among you turns to them is one of them. In truth, God does
not give guidance to an unjust people” (5:54).
The Quran, then, is apparently of two minds about Christians,
and even about Jews. How are we to understand these differing
views? Non-Muslim scholarship favors an evolutionary solution.
The verses favorable to or in praise of the People of the Book are
generally early ones: they date from a period when Muhammad
was still feeling his way, still expecting, perhaps, an acceptance on
their part of his mission and his message. With his more intimate
exposure first to the Jews, and then, later, to the Christians, his
favor changed to the harsher and more critical attitude exemplified
in the Medina revelations. The Quran’s final word on the subject,
for example, is very likely this pragmatic and hardheaded pronouncement
in sura 9:29, when Muslim arms had spread across
the peninsula and encountered Jewish and Christian oasis communities
and tribes, some of whom resisted Islamic sovereignty: “Fight
against those who do not believe in God or in the Last Day, . . .
(even) among those who have been given the Book, until they pay
the poll-tax from their hand and are humiliated.
Like Jews and Christians, Muslims are committed to the total
and simultaneous truth of Scripture; thus their exegetes tend to be
harmonizers no less than their traditional Jewish and Christian