Written by Kevin Klein
Recent columns in The Bison have focused on the current clashes between Muslim and Christian worldviews, their political and military consequences and the proper response of Christians as ambassadors of Christ’s peace. While the debate will no doubt go on, I would like, as a student of Islamic history and a Christian, to add some background and commentary to the discussion.
Since the seventh century, conflict and bloodshed have most often characterized the relationship between the followers of Christ and the followers of Muhammad. This conflict has flared and abated from time to time but has never died completely down. Nor do I believe it will. The conflict cannot be extinguished so long as the followers of these two faiths genuinely subscribe to the central tenets of their religions expressed in their respective authoritative scriptures.
Historic orthodox Islam asserts that God is One, that all must submit to him, that Muhammad and his teachings are messages from God and that any other message to the contrary is a lie. Islam also asserts, quite unambiguously, that the defense of this truth is both required of all Muslims and, if necessary, maintained by force. Early efforts to establish these tenets, by both Muhammad and his immediate circle of followers, included the use of literally “the sword.”
Historic orthodox Christianity’s central tenets maintain that Jesus is divine, begotten by God and through his life, death and resurrection is mankind restored to relationship with God. Christian texts also clearly argue that any other claim of reconciliation with God is a lie. Christianity also asserts, quite unambiguously, that the defense of this truth is also required, but it need not be by force. Early efforts to establish Christianity, by both Jesus and his immediate circle of followers are often met with violence but do not include examples of their own use of “the sword.” Such action by Peter is actually condemned.
There have been many Christians and Muslims who have strayed from, reinterpreted, modified, ignored or failed to live by the tenets of their professed faiths since their founding periods in the first and seventh centuries. But the teachings and events of those founding periods are as well understood as anything in history. Both traditional historic Christianity and traditional historic Islam were and are exclusive faiths with irreconcilable claims and mutually exclusive theologies. Even their separate calendars, both beginning with their faith’s establishment, confront us with a daily reminder of the cultural/religious distinction. (The Christian calendar begins with A.D. 1 [Latin for “year of our Lord”]; the Islamic from the year of the “immigration/flight” of Muhammad in 1 A.H. [which corresponds to A.D. 622]) .
In fact the daily prayers of observant Muslims testify to the great gulf separating these two “Abrahamic” faiths. Observant Muslims generally pray five time daily (salat) in a highly structured, repeating and choreographed fashion. Of the daily waajib (obligatory) prayers thefirst Rak`ah (portion of a prayer) is as follows:
Bismillaahi’r-Rahmaani’r-Raheem
Qul-hu-wallaahu Aahad
Allaahus samad
Lam yalid walam yoolad
Wa lam Yakul-lahoo kufuwan Ahad.
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Say: ‘He is God, the One,
God the Eternal and Besought of all,
‘Neither begetting nor begotten (emphasis added), nor is there anything comparable to Him’
Compare the Islamic theology above concerning the nature of God to the Christian text of I John 5:1-5 in the New King James Version: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him.” By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”
The Muslim therefore prays daily his belief that God, by His very nature, could have no son, nor live in the flesh. The Christian must acknowledge that Jesus was the Son of God, God made flesh who lived among us.
Then there is the central claim as to the authority of the witnesses from whom you have received these two faiths. The daily prayer of Muslims contains the following in the second Rak`ah:
Ash hadu al laa ilaaha illallaahu wahdahu laa
shareeka lah, wa ash hadu anna Muhammadan
`abduhu wa Rasuluh
Al’laahum’ma salli `alaa Muham’madin wa Aali
Muham’mad
I bear witness that there is no god apart from
Allah, He is unique and without partners.
I also bear witness that Muhammad is His servant
and His Messenger.
O God, bless Muhammad and the progeny of Muhammad.
This contrasts sharply with Christian texts represented well by I John 5:9-11in the New King James Version: “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is the witness of God which He has testified of His Son. He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son. And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.”
The Muslim and the Christian must choose which witness is telling the truth and which is a liar. To parse, divide and edit these competing and mutually exclusive claims in an effort to harmonize them into a convergent whole is theologically, historically and intellectually naïve or dishonest. It is also insulting to both the traditional Christian and Muslim alike. Neither faith saw a complete agreement among those who professed to believe, but both have clear, historic and mutually conflicting orthodoxies. Nor did they transmit their respective beliefs from one generation to another without division, and both contended with heresy, sometimes violently. But the degree of violence, and the acceptance of its use by early leaders, was radically different between the two movements. Yet in one regard they were very much the same. Both displayed a militant zeal to maintain the unique, perfect, revealed, truth of their confessions undiluted by compromise with the world. This gives us both profound differences and similarities today.
When modern Christians are conflicted in defending their faith with the use of force, they find support for nonviolence in the actions and words of the founding generation of their faith. Muslims will find just the opposite example. When modern Christians, however, look to the founding generation of their faith for a gospel that will value all faiths equally and strive for reconciliation through mutual understanding — they will look in vain. The Muslim modernist will also fail to find such inclusive traits in the founding of Islam. When both groups look back to their founders, they see uncompromising figures professing to speak the literal words of life from God. But while one also sees in Muhammad a man with a sword establishing God’s Kingdom by seizing political control, the other beholds “the man” Jesus self-sacrificed on a cross, rejecting the establishment of an earthly kingdom by sword. These distinctions are fundamental and consequential. This conflict did not arise because we fail to understand each other. It arose because we understand each other all too well.
Yet both sides share a common humanity, with all its promise and peril. Followers are not always good at understanding or imitating their leaders. Neither the Islamic East nor the Christian West is solely responsible for each bloody encounter in the sad annals of our shared history. We cannot escape the baggage of more than 1,000 years of man’s iniquity. The physical war between these faiths, however, is not the one certainly freighted with eternal consequence. We share in our mutual humanity a shared sinfulness and a shared doom apart from Christ. That is the spiritual war that matters most. As Christians, we must always strive to bring the same peace to the followers of Muhammad, each made in the image of God, which we now have in Christ. We too were enemies of God but are now reconciled. We cannot offer any other terms of peace in that spiritual war than those which God offered, and still offers, to all.
In Romans 5:9-11, the New King James Version reads, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
As much as Christians may want to reconcile all conflict in this world, we have neither the power nor the authority to change the rebellious nature of man, to be inclusive of the claims of Islam that are contrary to Scripture, nor to exclude tenets central to our faith which are offensive to those who are still enemies of God and subject to his wrath. We are the ambassadors, not the King. We carry the message of the King (in jars of clay); we do not dictate the message. Now, as children and adopted sons of God, we are compelled to pray for and seek, even at the cost of our own lives, that the followers of the false hope of Islam are no longer deceived but are, through acknowledgement of His Son, embraced as God’s children and our brothers and sisters in Christ.
