A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

The Islamic Perspective on Judaism and Christianity
As the last of the three Abrahamic faiths, Islam is able to look back on the
evolution of the earlier two. According to the Qur’an, Jews made several critical
errors in receiving the message: Jews saw themselves as God’s uniquely Chosen
People, they perceived the One God to be the God of the Jews, they perceived
the message of Judaism to be for the Jews. No, said the Qur’an, God has no
chosen people: “On those who believe and work deeds of righteousness, will
[God] Most Gracious bestow love” (Qur’an 19:96). This, of course, was the
message of St. Paul as well in definitively breaking with Judaism—that Jesus’s
message about God is not for Jews but for all mankind. Thus Islam propounds a
revisionist view of its Jewish predecessor and probably was influenced by Paul’s
vision of Jesus’s message that he proclaimed to be universal.
Yet Islam and Judaism share a common critique of Christianity; both see the
idea of any “son” of God as blasphemous to the concept of the One God, who
does not beget and cannot be subdivided. The concept of a Trinity smacks of
polytheism, which is equally anathema to both Jews and Muslims. According to
Islam, Jesus did not die on the cross but was taken up to heaven by God. And it
will be Jesus, not Muhammad, who will return at the day of judgment to quell
the anti-Christ, punish the enemies of Islam, and bring justice.
Yet, historical evolution has a way of changing the way humans perceive
religion over time; this reality helps explain differences among the faiths.
Muslims often acknowledge this reality, even if in a slightly self-serving way.
More than once, Muslims have told me, “All three religions are from God, but
they were received at different times in the evolution of human history. Human
understanding of God has advanced each time. In modern technical terms, we
can look at Judaism as something like Word 2.0, a software that worked
perfectly well in its time, works even now if you wish. But Christianity came
along as, say, a Word 5.0, considerably upgrading the sophistication of the
‘software’—the understanding of God’s message. And then six hundred years
later, Islam brought out the equivalent of a Word 8.0, the most sophisticated
understanding of God and his message of all. Each ‘version’ works, is
acceptable, but advances are made over time.”
We are hardly bound to accept this definition of religious evolution offered in
some popular Muslim thinking, but the same concept of evolution of religious
understanding occupies a major place among theologians, even if the Microsoft
analogies are grating. Karen Armstrong, in her book History of God, identifies
clear landmarks in the ongoing evolution of human understanding of the divine

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over time.
Nonetheless, with their own popular hi-tech analogy, Muslims open the door
to a logical follow-up question that is truly heretical in Islam: is there no
possibility, then, of a still later revelation, a Word 9.0? For Muslims, the Prophet
Muhammad brought the final and perfect revelation that cannot be improved
upon; there will be no more legitimate prophets. Muhammad is thus the “seal of
the Prophets.” This belief has put Islam in the curious position of being quite
tolerant in looking back into religious history, but intolerant in looking forward
to any possible post-Muhammad religious teachings that involve new revelation;
this is the source of the intense strain Islam has with the later Ahmadi, Sikh, or
Baha’i religions, which have some foundation in Islam but which in effect
“update” Islam in the preaching of still later prophets. These three movements
are thus vigorously condemned by Muslim clerics, and their followers have been
subject to persecution in several Muslim states.

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