March 2007 issue Story by Carol Schersten LaHurd

Islam & Christianity

Understanding begins with acknowledging devotion and differences

For many Americans, the only encounter with Islam and Muslims is televised images of violent conflict in the Middle East. For others, it may be the glimpse of a fully covered female shopper in a supermarket. Our family’s first encounter was hearing the call to prayer from the mosques near our apartment in Damascus, Syria. Like this man reading from the Qur’an, many Muslims memorize large portions and meditate on them during prayer.

With our two young children, my husband and I had arrived in that 7,000-year-old city in 1981 for a year of teaching and research. We left Syria taking home many more images and friendships with Muslims from a country that is also home to vibrant Christian and Jewish communities.

In the 25 years since this first immersion in Arab-Muslim culture, I’ve studied Islam as a doctoral student, taught Islam in universities, participated in formal Christian-Muslim dialogue, traveled in a dozen Arab and African countries with Muslim majority populations, and lived six months in Yemen, an Arab-Muslim country even more distant from Western culture than Syria.

But most important, my family and I developed long-term friendships with Muslims of many nationalities and political and religious orientations. They share a desire to tell Christians that they take seriously their commitment to follow God’s will, and that they worship the same God, revere the same prophets, and obey the same spiritual commandments that we do.

Christianity and Islam are the world’s largest religions, with an estimated 2 billion and 1.3 billion followers, respectively. In North America, Muslims and Christians are increasingly living and working side by side. As Lutherans, it’s vital for us to understand Islam and its diversity—and also Islam’s similarities and differences from both Christianity and Judaism.

As an organized religion, Islam dates to the year 622, when Muhammad and his followers migrated from Mecca to Medina. Muhammad’s death in 632 led to dissension over leadership succession and the eventual division into the Sunni and Shia branches. Shiites, about 15 percent of the world’s Muslims, have further subbranches. Although Shiites differ from Sunnis on the matter of civil and religious leadership, they share most beliefs and daily practices.

For all Muslims the chief source of guidance is the Qur’an, believed to be a verbatim revelation to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. Also important are the hadith: the preserved sayings and stories of the prophet. Islamic law is derived from the Qur’an and the hadith, along with community reasoning and consensus.

It may surprise some Christians that the Qur’an is believed by Muslims to continue and complete God’s revelation to Jews and Christians through Moses and Jesus. Many verses from the Qur’an echo the psalms. Stories of biblical figures—from Noah to David to Jesus—are featured in briefer form.

Underlying devotion to the Bible and Qur’an as parallel scriptures suggests both a major similarity and a major difference between Christianity and Judaism on the one hand, and Islam on the other. All three of these traditions are religions of “the book,” stressing the importance of using scripture to discern God and God’s will for humankind.

But many Jews and Christians see the Bible as the word of God, written by human beings in their own historical and cultural settings. Consequently, Jewish and Christian biblical scholars apply a range of methods to interpret those words.

Qur’an as God’s actual words

Most Muslims, however, including scholars, believe the Qur’an to be the actual words of God in Arabic. They assert that Jewish and Christian written scriptures have been distorted by human tampering. Qur’an experts, however, are increasingly considering which verses apply to all Muslims in all times and which had meaning primarily in the time of Muhammad, such as those about proper public dress for women.

The Qur’an affirms Jesus’ virginal conception and exalted role as one of God’s greatest prophets. But it’s equally firm in denying Jesus’ divinity. Worshiping as divine anything or anyone other than God is the greatest sin in Islam.

Yet despite this major disagreement about the nature of Jesus, Muslim and Christian theologians for almost 15 centuries have been discussing Islam’s belief in God’s oneness and Christianity’s belief that the Trinity can also express that oneness.

In daily religious practice, Christianity and Islam, along with Judaism, emphasize the importance of living a God-centered life and the role of prayer in achieving that goal. Christians use ritual prayers in communal worship, and many rely on spontaneous daily conversation with God. Muslims pray together at the mosque on Fridays and feast days but also perform salat, ritual prayer at least five times each day.

Ethical living is a goal for both Muslims and Christians, but there is a difference. For Muslims salvation is equivalent to success in following God’s will and God’s guidance is considered grace-filled. For Christians, of course, salvation by God’s grace is realized most fully in Jesus’ incarnation, life and teachings, crucifixion and resurrection.

These differing understandings of salvation relate to a major divergence in the views of human nature. Both Judaism and Islam believe human beings are able to follow God’s teaching and law to achieve a right relationship with God and creation.

We Lutherans have inherited from Paul, Augustine and Luther the conviction that, with our wills bound by sin, we are unable to be reconciled to God. Thus we confess and give thanks for God’s willingness to become human and suffer and die on our behalf. It’s important to acknowledge that we have theological disagreements but that these need not prevent mutual respect and understanding.

Whether the different understandings of salvation mean Muslims and Christians worship different gods will continue to be debated by Muslim and Christian theologians. But two points are significant. First, Allah, the Arabic word for “God,” is used not only by Muslims but also by Christians in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

Second, most Muslims I know never question whether they are worshiping the same God as their Jewish and Christian cousins, since the Qur’an asserts that Moses and Jesus were both messengers of Allah.

Religion and politics

Equally relevant to the spiritual similarities and differences among Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the issue today of the relationship of religion and politics. Although for many centuries and in many places Christianity has been joined to the state, the U.S. Constitution provides for separation of church and state. The Islamic understanding of God’s unity and sovereignty over all extends to sovereignty over the state.

Some Muslims favor having a theocratic ruler, such as the Ayatollah Khomeni in post-revolutionary Iran. Others point out that early Islam encouraged rule by consensus of community leaders and maintain that God as sovereign means that no one human being can be an absolute ruler. They advocate a participatory government as appropriate for such Muslim and pluralistic societies as Jordan and the U.S. Many Muslim organizations in this country promote American-style democracy within their communities. Shortly after Sept. 11, the Muslim Public Affairs Council initiated the National Grassroots Campaign to Fight Terrorism, including guidance for local mosques.

Even those of us Lutheran Christians who live and work in places where we don’t have everyday association with Muslim people can learn about Islam (http://www.elca.org/ecumeni?cal/interreligious/Muslim). We also can work to overcome the negative stereotyping that happens when religious communities face one another in ignorance and fear. That will make us better prepared to work together toward a society just and welcoming for all.

 © 2007 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers. The Lutheran is the magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

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