What is Islam?

Question 60012.

Islam and Christianity share a great deal of vocabulary and disagree about almost everything that vocabulary refers to. Both speak of one God, of prophets, of revelation, of Jesus, of judgement, and the overlap makes the differences harder to see rather than easier.

I want to describe what Muslims actually believe, accurately enough that a Muslim reading this would recognise his own faith, and then say plainly where the two part company. Misrepresenting a neighbour’s faith is a form of bearing false witness.

Origins

Muhammad was born in Mecca around 570 and, according to Islamic tradition, began receiving revelations through the angel Gabriel from about 610. Opposition drove him to Medina in 622, an event called the hijra which marks year one of the Islamic calendar.

By his death in 632 much of Arabia had come under his authority, and within a century the movement had spread from Spain to the Indus. The Qur’an was collected into its standard form under the caliph Uthman shortly after Muhammad’s death.

A dispute over succession produced the division between Sunni and Shia that persists today, and the Hadith, collections of reports about Muhammad’s sayings and practice, supply much of the detail of Islamic law alongside the Qur’an.

Islam and Christianity on the nature of God

The central confession is that there is no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger. The doctrine of tawhid, the absolute oneness of God, governs everything, and the gravest sin in Islam is shirk, associating any partner with God.

God in Islamic thought is one in an indivisible sense, transcendent, merciful and just, but not a Father and not incarnate. Islam and Christianity divide here more sharply than anywhere else, because the Christian doctrine of God as Father, Son and Spirit is heard as the very sin Islam most fears.

I take up the related question of whether the two faiths worship the same God in whether Christians and Muslims believe in one God, which is more complicated than either a flat yes or a flat no.

Practice and the shape of the life

Islamic practice rests on five obligations, the confession of faith, prayer five times daily facing Mecca, almsgiving, fasting during Ramadan, and pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime for those able. These are lived rather than simply believed.

Alongside them stands sharia, a body of law derived from the Qur’an and the Hadith covering diet, finance, marriage, dress and dispute. Islam does not divide life into sacred and secular in the way Western Christianity often has.

I have found that Muslim friends are frequently more disciplined in devotion than I am, and honesty requires me to say so. The disagreement between Islam and Christianity is not about sincerity or seriousness.

What Islam says about Jesus

Jesus, called Isa, is honoured as a great prophet, born of a virgin, a worker of miracles, sinless, and destined to return before the day of judgement. Mary is spoken of with high respect and has a chapter of the Qur’an named after her.

Then come the denials. Jesus is not the Son of God, and the Qur’an rejects the idea in strong terms. He was not crucified, according to Surah 4:157, but it was made to appear so to those who saw it. And He is not divine.

That single denial removes the foundation. Paul says that if Jesus has not been raised our faith is futile and we are still in our sins, 1 Corinthians 15:17, and a crucifixion that never happened leaves nothing to be raised from.

Scripture and the charge of corruption

Islam teaches that God gave the Torah to Moses, the Psalms to David and the Gospel to Jesus, and that these were genuine revelations which have since been corrupted, a doctrine called tahrif. The Qur’an is presented as the final and uncorrupted word.

This is where a conversation about Islam and Christianity often stalls, because a Muslim may decline to discuss a Bible he has been taught is unreliable. The manuscript evidence is worth knowing here, and I set it out in whether we can trust the manuscript transmission.

The internal problem is worth raising gently. The Qur’an itself instructs the people of the Book to judge by what God has revealed in the Gospel, which is difficult to obey if that Gospel has been lost. Asking when the alleged corruption occurred, given that manuscripts predate Muhammad by centuries, is a fair question.

Salvation, and the absence of assurance

Islamic teaching presents judgement in terms of a weighing of deeds, with God’s mercy sovereignly given or withheld, and no guarantee available in advance. Even Muhammad is reported in the Hadith as saying he did not know what would be done with him.

Christianity offers something structurally different. Justification is a verdict announced now on the basis of another’s work, received by faith, so that Paul can write that we have peace with God, Romans 5:1, and John can write so that you may know that you have eternal life.

In my experience this is the point at which Islam and Christianity feel most different from the inside. Not the arguments about the Trinity, but the question a Muslim friend once put to me at a bus stop, which was how I could possibly know.

Sin, and what the cross assumes

Islam holds no doctrine of original sin. Human beings are born pure and weak rather than fallen, and sin is a matter of forgetfulness and disobedience which God may simply forgive by decree, since He is merciful and needs no mechanism.

That is why the cross seems to a Muslim not only unnecessary but unworthy. If God can forgive by fiat, an execution looks like a defeat inflicted on a prophet rather than a substitution accepted by a Saviour.

The Christian answer runs through the holiness of God and the demand of justice, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Islam and Christianity are working with different accounts of what forgiveness costs.

Speaking well of a neighbour

There is a great deal of nonsense circulated about Muslims in Britain, and Christians repeat some of it. If you are going to disagree with Islam, disagree with what it teaches rather than with a caricature you found on the internet.

Most Muslims you will meet are not theologians, any more than most churchgoers are. They are people with families and jobs and worries, often more socially conservative than their neighbours, and frequently lonely in a culture that regards them with suspicion.

Hospitality does more here than argument. Sharing food, remembering names, asking about Ramadan, being a decent neighbour over years. I have written on the wider civic questions in how Baptists defend religious liberty.

Where to begin in conversation

Start with the character of God rather than the doctrine of the Trinity. Ask what it means that God is merciful, and whether mercy that ignores justice is really mercy. That question opens ground that a debate about mathematics never will.

Then talk about assurance, and about Jesus. Read a Gospel together. Many Muslims have never read one, and Luke is a good place to start since it deals so directly with the prophets and with Mary.

And expect it to take time. Conversion carries a cost in many Muslim families that most British Christians cannot imagine, and the differences between Islam and Christianity are lived as much as believed. See also whether Islam is compatible with Christianity.

Reading the Qur’an honestly

If you are going to discuss Islam and Christianity seriously, it is worth reading some of the Qur’an rather than relying on quotations selected by people with an argument to make. It is not a long book and translations are widely available.

You will find a great deal that surprises you in both directions. There is genuine reverence, there are passages of real beauty, and there are passages that are hard to reconcile with the tolerant summaries offered by Western commentators. Reading it yourself means you can speak about it without exaggeration and without naivety, which is what Proverbs means when it says the one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him, Proverbs 18:17.

You will also notice how much of the material assumes familiarity with biblical figures. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus all appear, usually in versions that differ from the biblical accounts in significant detail. That overlap is the reason conversations between Islam and Christianity begin so easily and stall so quickly.

The question of assurance, pressed further

I keep returning to assurance because it is where the difference becomes personal rather than theoretical. A system of weighed deeds cannot tell you the verdict in advance, and a merciful judge who has committed to nothing leaves you hoping rather than knowing.

The New Testament writes so that you may know. John says these things are written that you may know that you have eternal life, and Paul says nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, Romans 8:39. The Greek behind the pledge of the Spirit, arrabon, is a deposit guaranteeing the rest.

When Islam and Christianity are compared on paper the discussion tends to circle the Trinity. When they are compared at a deathbed the question is simpler, and it is whether anybody knows how this ends.

So, now what?

If you know a Muslim, invite them into your home. Hospitality is understood and valued in a way that leaflets are not, and it will teach you more about their faith than a book will.

Then learn one thing accurately rather than a little about everything. Understand what tawhid means and why the cross seems unnecessary, and you will be able to talk rather than argue.

And examine your own assurance, since you cannot offer what you do not have. Do you know that you have eternal life, or are you also waiting to see how the scales come out?

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:1, ESV