My chastisement—I smite with it whom I will; and My mercy embraces all things, and I shall prescribe it for those who are godfearing and pay the alms, and those who indeed believe in Our signs, those who follow the Messenger, the Prophet of the common folk, whom they find written down with them in the Torah and the Gospel, bidding them to honor, and forbidding them dishonor, making lawful for them the good things and making unlawful for them the corrupt things, and relieving them of their loads, and the fetters that were upon them. Those who believe in him and succor him and help him, and follow the light that has been sent down with him—they are the prosperers. (7:156-157)
Since the messenger in question is apparently prophesied about in the Torah and the Gospels, in this passage Allah evidently refers to the prophet of Islam, Muhammad—even though he is supposed to be saying this to Moses many hundreds of years before Muhammad was born. The passage is not couched as a prophecy, but seems to presuppose that Muhammad has already appeared on the scene: a considerable lapse of attention for the Qur’anic narrator.
Ultimately, Allah curses the Sabbath-breaking Jews by transforming them into apes: “Be you apes, miserably slinking!”(7:166). This, too, is a theme to which the Qur’an returns, emblematic of an attitude toward Jews that would bring a blush to the cheeks of the most hardened anti-Semite.
In this retelling of the Exodus account, then, we discover numerous key differences between the biblical and Qur’anic accounts that are indicative of the differences between Christianity and Islam in general. Particularly significant are the lack of specification of the Ten Commandments and the failure of Moses actually to see God in the passage parallel to that in which he sees God’s “back” in Exodus. As we shall examine in depth later, these differences manifest a moral understanding and a vision of God sharply different from the Christian view.
The Almost-Fall of Man
Other similarities between Catholicism and Islam, along with some other striking and telling differences, can be found in the Bible’s foundational narrative, that of the fall of Adam and Eve. Here again, this Qur’anic account reads practically as if it were a summary interpretation of the biblical story, with some intriguing and telling variations—although, like the Qur’an’s account of the Exodus, it also never appears in any one place as a continuous narrative. At no point does the Qur’an tell the story of our first parents whole and entire, from beginning to end; instead, it is interspersed throughout the Muslim holy book. And so, in the account that follows, details are drawn from all over the book to present the details of the story as the Qur’an has them, but in linear fashion.
In the Qur’an, as well as in the Bible, God creates Adam and Eve and places them in a paradisal setting. In the Qur’an, Allah teaches Adam the names of the animals (2:31), rather than inviting him to name them himself. But the command to avoid the forbidden fruit is the same in substance as it is in the Bible: “And We said, ‘Adam, dwell thou, and thy wife, in the Garden, and eat thereof easefully where you desire; but draw not nigh this tree, lest you be evildoers’” (2:35). But “then Satan caused them to slip therefrom”—from the Garden, that is—“and brought them out of that they were in; and We said, ‘Get you all down, each of you an enemy of each; and in the earth a sojourn shall be yours, and enjoyment for a time’” (2:36).
Allah has created this first man “of a clay of mud molded” (15:26), or from dust, as we learn in a passage that affirms the thoroughly Christian doctrine of Jesus as the new Adam: “Truly, the likeness of Jesus, in God’s sight, is as Adam’s likeness; He created him of dust, then said He unto him, ‘Be,’ and he was” (3:59).
However, even though Jesus is likened to Adam, there is no indication in the Qur’an that Allah created mankind in the divine image (Genesis 1:26); although there are hints that the Qur’anic accounts were adapted from sources that took that image for granted. The Qur’an repeats no fewer than five times that Allah commands the angels to prostrate themselves before Adam (2:34; 7:11; 15:29; 18:50; 20:116). This command originated in Jewish tradition and depends upon the biblical notion of man’s bearing the divine image. For if man did not bear God’s image, the command that a greater being must prostrate before a lesser one would make no sense. Neither the Qur’an nor Islamic tradition, however, ever draws out these implications.
When Satan refuses to prostrate himself, the Qur’an tells us, he becomes “one of the unbelievers” (2:34)—an odd conflation of disobedience with disbelief. Allah asks him why he refused, and Satan answers pridefully, disparaging Adam: “I am better than he; Thou createdst me of fire, and him Thou createdst of clay” (7:12; cf. 38:76, 15:33, 17:61) Allah curses Satan for his disobedience (38:77-78) and banishes him from Paradise (7:13; 15:34)—but then Satan requests a reprieve until the Day of Judgment. Allah assents (15:37; 38:79-81), despite the fact that Satan boasts that he intends to use this reprieve to tempt Muslims away from Islam (7:16-17; 15:39). Recalling Satan’s colloquy with God in the Book of Job, Satan challenges Allah over Adam: “What thinkest Thou? This whom Thou hast honored above me—if Thou deferrest me to the Day of Resurrection I shall assuredly master his seed, save a few” (17:62).
Satan vows to lead astray all of mankind “excepting those Thy servants among them that are sincere” (38:83; cf. 15:40), although Allah warns him that “over My servants thou shalt have no authority, except those that follow thee, being perverse” (15:42) and vows to fill hell with Satan’s followers (38:85). “Depart!” he commands Satan. “Those of them that follow thee—surely Gehenna shall be your recompense, an ample recompense! And startle whomsoever of them thou canst with thy voice; and rally against them thy horsemen and thy foot, and share with them in their wealth and their children, and promise them!” (17:63-64). But this bounty is illusory; Satan “promises them naught, except delusion” (17:64).
Allah, meanwhile, warns Adam about him: “Adam, surely this is an enemy to thee and thy wife. So let him not expel you both from the Garden, so that thou art unprosperous. It is assuredly given to thee neither to hunger therein, nor to go naked, neither to thirst therein, nor to suffer the sun” (20:118-120). But Satan tempts him away from the delights of this place by inviting him to eat from what is known in the Bible as the Tree of Life—not, as the account in Genesis has it, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Adam, shall I point thee to the Tree of Eternity, and a Kingdom that decays not?” (20:120).
And Adam and Eve succumb, in no particular order: “So the two of them ate of it, and their shameful parts revealed to them, and they took to stitching upon themselves leaves of the Garden. And Adam disobeyed his Lord, and so he erred” (20:121).
The differences between this account and the biblical one are not mere matters of detail: In the Qur’anic account, Adam and Eve are never mentioned as having been created in the image of God; that there is something singular about them is assumed—Allah bids the angels to bow down before human beings—but never explained. And when Adam and Eve rebel from Allah, they do so by eating of the fruit of the “Tree of Eternity,” not the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is significant because, as the Navarre Bible explains, “the fact that man had access to the ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ means that God left the way open to the possibility of evil in order to ensure a greater good—the freedom that is man’s endowment. By using his reason and following his conscience, man is able to discern what is good and what is evil; but he himself cannot make something good or evil.”51
But reason, freedom, and discernment are all denied in Islam. In the Qur’an, human beings are not endowed with the dignity of bearing God’s image, but are merely another group of his creatures. A hadith does say that “Adam is the image of Allah,” but this does not carry over to mankind in general nor have the significance it does in Christianity.52 Indeed, its only significance in Islamic tradition is a tendency toward literalistic anthropomorphism, as some Muslim divines picture Allah with a human body. But it has no significance for the nature of th
e human soul and spirit.
And the first couple are not tempted with the prospect of moral awareness, becoming “like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). Instead, the tempter offers them everlasting life. As Allah banishes them to earth (the Qur’anic Paradise in which Adam and Eve lived before the fall doesn’t appear to have been an earthly one), he says: “Therein you shall live, and therein you shall die, and from there you shall be brought forth” (7:25). Yet, just as in the Christian conception of death and the afterlife, this earthly death is not the end of existence, for the blessed shall be resurrected to enjoy the delights of Paradise—although, as we shall see, the Qur’an envisions a Paradise that is markedly different from the Christian one.
In the meantime, the first parents’ progeny do not bear the burden of separation from Allah. As he banishes Adam and Eve from Paradise, Allah tells them: “Get you down, both of you together, out of it, each of you an enemy to each; but if there comes to you from Me guidance, then whosoever follows My guidance shall not go astray, neither shall he be unprosperous” (20:123). That’s all. Islam has no concept of original sin: Even though Islamic tradition echoes Catholic tradition by identifying only Jesus and Mary as sinless, in Islam man is no more alienated from God before the rebellion of Adam and Eve than he was before it, and all he need do is follow Allah’s guidance so as not to go astray. The rebellion of Adam did not change the fundamental character of either man or creation; it was simply the rebellion of one man, instructive for others only insofar as they can see that disobedience to Allah will bring punishment.
Thus, the contemporary Canadian Muslim writer Abdul Rashid, a veteran of Christian-Muslim dialogue in Ottawa, explains that “the Holy Koran tells us that God created the human being on ‘fitra’ (7:172; 20:30)”—that is, with knowledge of the Supreme Being and of the difference between right and wrong. “Thus,” Rashid continues, “Islam rejects the notion that people are inherently sinful. Each child is born innocent and free of sin.” Allah “revealed, through His chosen prophets, the right path but left it to human beings to follow it or to reject it.”53 And his ability to follow it is unhindered by any innate inclination toward sin, although Satan the tempter is always close at hand.
Slave of Allah
Because man is not made in Allah’s image, he is in essence merely Allah’s slave, and because he has, even as the result of his transgression, no knowledge of good and evil, he must obey Allah’s commands purely as a matter of fiat—without reasoning from them or about them. Consequently, Islam never developed any kind of natural theology, and indeed never could have. And because there is no idea of original sin, there is, furthermore, no understanding that any community of human beings will of necessity be imperfect and incomplete. In other words, alien to Islam is the idea that it is impossible to establish the kingdom of God on earth.
“Of those We created,” says Allah in the Qur’an, “are a nation who guide by the truth, and by it act with justice” (7:181). These are the Muslims, whom Allah addresses directly in a related passage: “You are the best nation ever brought forth to men, bidding to honor, and forbidding dishonor, and believing in God” (3:110). The Muslim community, because it is the “best nation” and guides by the truth, calling people to honor and forbidding dishonor, is able to establish a perfectly just society on this earth.
Yet even in this vision of a just society, we are already worlds away from the Christian understanding of the human person’s having an innate dignity stemming from being made in the image of God and endowed with free will, albeit marred by original sin: a being, in the lapidary phrase of the Byzantine funeral service, “full of grandeur and weakness.” For the Muslims are the best of people who “guide by the truth,” even if they fall short now and again.
These examples from Christian and Muslim holy texts reveal only a few of the significant differences between the Muslim and Catholic understandings of how God deals with his creatures. Ultimately, these differences indicate significantly different conceptions of God himself.
What about Abraham?
Yet we are all still children of Abraham, aren’t we? Jews, Christians, and Muslims all know and cherish the accounts of Abraham, who through his devotion to the true God became “the father of a multitude of nations” (Gen. 17:4-5)—don’t we?
Certainly some people at the highest levels of the U.S. government think so. In November 2011, President Barack Obama sent greetings to Muslims worldwide on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim feast day commemorating Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son (who in Islamic tradition was Ishmael, not Isaac) as a sign of his willingness to obey God. “As Muslims celebrate this Eid,” Obama wrote, “they will also commemorate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son by distributing food to those less fortunate around the world. . . . The Eid and Hajj rituals are a reminder of the shared roots of the world’s Abrahamic faiths and the powerful role that faith plays in motivating communities to serve and stand with those in need.”54
Obama wasn’t blazing any new trails. In December 2006, his predecessor, George W. Bush, said this in his greetings to Muslims on Eid al-Adha: “For Muslims in America and around the world, Eid al-Adha is an important occasion to give thanks for their blessings and to remember Abraham’s trust in a loving God. During the four days of this special observance, Muslims honor Abraham’s example of sacrifice and devotion to God by celebrating with friends and family, exchanging gifts and greetings, and engaging in worship through sacrifice and charity.”55
When President Bush spoke of “Abraham’s example of sacrifice and devotion to God,” he probably had the Genesis accounts of Abraham in mind. In Genesis, the story of Abraham is one of fidelity to God and how it is rewarded. The Lord tells Abraham that his faith in God will redound to the benefit of all mankind: “By your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice” (Gen. 22:18).
And when President Obama spoke of “the shared roots of the world’s Abrahamic faiths,” he was apparently assuming that Islamic accounts of Abraham shared the same expansive and generous vision: one of God blessing all the nations of the earth because of, or even by means of, Abraham’s immense faith.
However, Muslims do not accept Genesis as inspired Scripture. They believe that the Old and New Testaments contain the remains of what once were legitimate revelations from God, but which Jews and Christians have dared to tamper with to the extent that they cannot be trusted. What Muslims believe about Abraham comes primarily from the Qur’an, which does not present Abraham either as “the father of a multitude of nations” or as one through whom “all the nations of the earth” shall “bless themselves.”
Although it lacks those elements, the Qur’an does hold up Abraham as a “good example” for the Muslims—uswa hasana, the same appellation given to Muhammad elsewhere (33:21). In Islamic theology, Muhammad’s example is, with very few exceptions, the believer’s supreme guide. When the Qur’an says that Abraham also is a “good example,” however, it is in reference to a specific instance: when Abraham says to his pagan relatives, “We are quit of you and that you serve, apart from God. We disbelieve in you, and between us and you enmity has shown itself, and hatred for ever, until you believe in God alone” (60:4).
Abraham is held up to the Muslims as a model of emulation, then, only when he declares his everlasting enmity and hatred for those who do not follow what Muslims believe to be the true religion.
In that same verse, the Qur’an then adds a critical caveat: “Except that Abraham said unto his father, ‘Certainly I shall ask pardon for thee; but I have no power to do aught for thee against God.’” In other words, Abraham is a good example for believers except when he says that he will pray that Allah will pardon his pagan father. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn, a venerable and respected Qur’an commentary written by two mainstream and revered Muslim scholars, emphasizes that this is “an exception where the excellent example is concerned, meaning that you should not imitate him in that by a
sking forgiveness for unbelievers.”56
Abraham’s hatred is exemplary; his prayer for forgiveness is not.
“Shared roots of the world’s Abrahamic faiths,” indeed. Although it is clear that Islam emerges from the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, it so radically recasts that tradition as to render the value of any common-ground appeals dubious at best.
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The Same God?
In the Qur’an, Allah tells Muhammad not to argue with the “People of the Book”—that is, the Jews, Christians, and a few other groups who are considered to have received a genuine revelation from Allah, even though they later distorted that revelation: “Dispute not with the People of the Book save in the fairer manner, except for those of them that do wrong; and say, ‘We believe in what has been sent down to us, and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we have surrendered’” (29:46).
Many Christians, including many Catholics, accept this assertion at face value, and not without reason. As we have seen, there are so many similarities between the Bible and the Qur’an—their main characters, their preoccupations, their perspectives on numerous issues—that it is easy at first glance to regard Muslims as close allies in theism against a common foe of unbelievers.
Supporting this is the linguistic identity between the two religions’ names for God. Arabic-speaking Christians, including Eastern Catholics such as Maronites and Melkites, use the word “Allah” for the God of the Bible. Flowing from this is the common use among both Christians and Muslims of many Arabic interjections that feature the word “Allah”: Inshallah (“God willing”), Smallah (“in the name of God”), Wallah (“by God”), Allah ma’ak (“God be with you”), and others.
Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam Page 4