On October 13, 2007, 138 Muslim leaders and scholars from 43 countries published an open letter to Christian leaders known as A Common Word. (See www.acommonword.com and the Christian response from Yale University: #32 on that website under Christian responses, as well as at yale.edu/faith.) This was based on the following verse from the Qur’an.
قُلْ يَا أَهْلَ الْكِتَابِ تَعَالَوْا إِلَى كَلِمَةٍ سَوَاءٍ بَيْنَنَا وَبَيْنَكُمْ أَلاَّ نَعْبُدَ إِلاَّ اللَّهَ وَلاَ نُشْرِكَ بِهِ شَيْئًا وَلاَ يَتَّخِذَ بَعْضُنَا بَعْضًا أَرْبَابًا مِنْ دُونِ اللَّهِ فَإِنْ تَوَلَّوْا فَقُولُوا اشْهَدُوا بِأَنَّا مُسْلِمُونَ
People of the book, come to a common word between us and you that we will not worship any other gods besides Allah, and we will not make anything else a god, nor will we take each other as gods in addition to Allah. If they turn away, say, “Testify that we have submitted.” (Aal Imran 3: 64)
This Muslim initiative and Christian response focus on two major issues: first, belief in one God, and second, the love of God and love of our neighbor. These issues are essential and foundational, and were in fact the focus of a large conference at Yale University in July of 2008. However, real unity around these two basic concepts does not go very far. This book is an attempt to go into much greater depth by examining the books.
Methodology
There are many disagreements and conflicts between Muslims and Christians. The thesis of this book is that most of these differences can be traced to Muslim and Christian traditions, and not the books of the Christians and Muslims themselves. If we look at the Qur’an and the Bible in the original languages, the gap between them is fairly small, and bridgeable. The gap between translations in English (or other languages) of the Qur’an and the Bible is much larger and harder to bridge. The gap between commentaries on the Qur’an and the Bible is even larger. The gap between Christian and Muslim traditions is larger still, and the gap between typical beliefs of people who call themselves Christians and Muslims is so large as to be nearly unbridgeable.
- What the Bible teaches is much different than what the average person from a Western country believes, and even what the average pastor or priest teaches.
- In a similar way, what the Qur’an actually teaches is very different from what the average Muslim believes, or what the average Muslim teacher teaches.
This book will look at what the Qur’an and the Bible actually say, and not at Muslim and Christian teachings about what they say.
Back to the books
This book will deal not with
- what Christian beliefs and doctrines are, but what the Bible says.
- what church councils and creeds stated, but what the Bible says.
- what a particular confession or catechism says, but what the Bible says.
- what popular teaching says, but what the Bible says.
- what Christian history or traditions say it says, but what the Bible says.
- for the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible – the Tanakh), not what the Talmud, Mishnah or Midrash say, but what Old Testament itself says.
It will also not deal with
- what Muslim beliefs and doctrines are, but what the Qur’an says.
- what the Hadiths and Sharia say, but what the Qur’an says.
- what the imams, sheikhs, or mullahs teach, but what the Qur’an says.
- what Muslim commentators or historians say it says, but what the Qur’an actually says.
The purpose of this book is to go further and deeper toward unity between Muslims and Christians. Our hope is to accomplish this by directing Christians back to the Bible and Muslims going back to the Qur’an. We believe that by doing this, we can become as close to each other as possible as we are both as close to the truth as possible.
This diagram illustrates relative distances between Muslims and Christians. The closest we can get is to examine our books in the original languages. For this reason, the verses in this book are first quoted in the original languages and then translations are given in English.
This book is especially for Muslims who are willing to let the Qur’an interpret itself, instead of reading it through the lenses of commentators, hadiths or traditional interpretations. Similarly, this is especially for Christians who are willing to let the Bible interpret itself, instead of reading it through the lenses of their doctrinal statements, creeds, catechisms, or systematic theologies.
This book will deal with more than 20 topics that are “flash points” or “hot buttons,” either for Muslims, Christians, or both. It is our hope that these chapters will enable us to come closer together in our common faith in one God, and to shed the hatred, ill-will, and enmity that have built up over the last 14 centuries, and especially since the Crusades.
Three approaches
There have been two traditional approaches between Muslims and Christians. The first, which is polemic, amounts to building walls between us and throwing stones at each other. This is too often by attack and debate, and it has typically focused on denigrating the other in order to prove the rightness of “our” position (from both sides). This has fueled animosity, and has not brought peace.
The second has been “inter-faith dialogue.” There have been some fruitful dialogues of late, but as typically practiced, each side expresses their beliefs to the other, but without really listening to or trying to understand or benefit from what the other side says. As a result, most of these dialogues are really two simultaneous monologues, and they usually lead to superficial statements that are not very useful.
This book is an attempt toward a third approach: building bridges. We hope to show that by stripping off the external layers of tradition, history and religious additions, that we can arrive at truth which that both sides can actually hold. We do not want to compromise either book, nor to syncretize (combine religions) but find out what we actually have in common, based on our books.
A person’s attitude has a great effect on what they perceive.
- For example, if a person wants to build a wall of distrust, hatred and animosity, and is looking for contradictions within the Qur’an or within the Bible, he will find them because of his attitude. How much more if he is trying to find contradictions between the Qur’an and the Bible!
- However, if a person is trying to build a bridge to communicate love, truth, and respect, he will usually be able to build that bridge. This is the intended approach that we will take.
This book will use both the Bible and the Qur’an in order to reach a common truth. Both books can be a corrective, not only to the followers of their own book, but also to the followers of the other book in addition to any others who are willing to learn from them.
Goal
The goal of this book is not the creation of a new religion (something which is halfway between Islam and Christianity.) That would be syncretism, a mixture of two religions. Nor is it the goal of this book to prove that Christianity is right and Islam wrong, or to prove that Islam is right and Christianity wrong. Nor is it simply to find a minimal set of beliefs that anyone can agree with, whether Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, or whatever.
Rather, the goal is to find the essential truth, which we believe is a common truth found in both the Qur’an and the Bible, which will be the true teaching of the Bible, as well as the true teaching of the Qur’an. We want to be faithful to the Bible, and faithful to the Qur’an, and not drift into erroneous compromise, minimalism, or syncretism.
The hermeneutic used in this book is letting each book speak for itself and interpret itself, rather than interpreting each book through the lenses of its respective traditions. Both books have very harsh words about traditions, saying that (religious) people had by their traditions made the Word of God void.
ἀκυροῦντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ τῇ παραδόσει ὑμῶν ᾗ παρεδώκατε· καὶ παρόμοια τοιαῦτα πολλὰ ποιεῖτε.
Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like this. (Mark 7:13)
وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُمُ اتَّبِعُوا مَا أَنْزَلَ اللَّهُ قَالُوا بَلْ نَتَّبِعُ مَا أَلْفَيْنَا عَلَيْهِ آَبَاءَنَا أَوَلَوْ كَانَ آَبَاؤُهُمْ لاَ يَعْقِلُونَ شَيْئًا وَلاَ يَهْتَدُونَ
If they are told, follow what God has revealed, [they say:] “We follow what we found our fathers doing.” “And if their fathers did not understand and were not guided?” (Al-Baqara 2:170)
This was not only true of people in the days of the Bible and Qur’an, but is quite true today among both Christians and Muslims. In both cases, the books are nullified by the traditions that have been passed on and followed by people who did not read or study their books.
The Qur’an verses will be first presented in the original Arabic, followed by an English translation. The Arabic and the English translation used are generally from the Reference Qur’an, for sale at www.referencequran.com. The Old Testament verses will be presented in the original Hebrew, taken from www.mechon-mamre.org, and the New Testament verses will be presented in the original Greek are taken from http://www.obinfonet.ro/docs/gk/na27.pdf. The English translations of both Old and New Testaments are generally taken from the New English Translation, https://bible.org/article/net-bible-download.
If you are ready to examine the books themselves and put man-made traditions aside for a while, let us ask God together to help us focus on his words, and let us proceed.
Basic Assumptions
In order for us to have fruitful dialogue, we must stop criticizing and attacking each other’s books.
Some of the things Christians say about the Qur’an are:
- The Qur’an that we have today is not the same as the Qur’an of Muhammad (ص).
- The Qur’an was written by others long after Muhammad (ص) had died.
- Othman burned the original copies of the Qur’an and produced a defective copy. with missing verses and wrong verses, and the original Qur’an has been lost.
- According to Muslim traditions, a goat ate some verses.
- The verse about stoning is missing.
- There are grammatical errors or alternative readings in verses, etc.
Some of the things Muslims say about the Bible are:
- It has been changed, or corrupted.
- It is not the same as the original Bible that was revealed.
- The original Bible was either lost, or deliberately changed by Christians and Jews for various reasons.
These kinds of attacks, which are used primarily by those who follow the polemic approach, are not kind, nor are they useful for building bridges of truth, trust, friendship, and love of the neighbor.
If we are to make any progress in building bridges, we must at least accept each other’s book as it currently stands.
The approach used in this book is to use the currently accepted text of the Qur’an and the Bible. Neither the Qur’an’s original manuscripts nor the Bible’s original manuscripts exist, though there are early copies of both the Qur’an and the Bible in museums around the world.
It is possible that even older copies of both the Qur’an and the Bible may someday be found. Such a claim has been made recently for the Sanaa manuscript of the Qur’an found in the 1970s in the Great Mosque in Yemen, and some pages of the Birmingham Qur’an manuscript.
However, we very much doubt that either Muslims or Christians would accept new verses or chapters, or delete existing ones. Therefore, for the purposes of this book, we will assume the standard text of both books. Whenever appropriate, we use the currently-accepted dotting (which distinguishes consonants) and vocalization (which shows the vowels) of the Qur’an (the Arabic was originally undotted and unvoweled), the currently accepted pointing of the Old Testament (the Hebrew and Aramaic were originally unpointed), and the currently accepted word divisions and accents of the New Testament (the Greek originally had no accents and no spaces between words).
So, in hopes of having a fruitful dialogue, which is both polite and kind, we should avoid criticizing each other’s books. This book will not contain any criticism of any of the books. The next chapter will deal with the alleged changes in the Bible and the Qur’an.