Central to both Christianity and Islam is the belief that
God intervened in human history. Furthermore, that God revealed himself
to mankind at a specific time and place, directly and decisively, once and for all.
Does this suggest there will be harmony? Let's take a closer look.
On the one hand, Christians believe that God, in the form of
Jesus Christ, became a human being and redeemed human nature by taking it on
for himself. This was how the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was born.
On the other hand, to Muslims as well as to Jews, the notion
of the Trinity seems blasphemous because it detracts from the absolute oneness
of God and thus opens the door to idolatry. Muslims believe that the word
of God was communicated to a human being. And, they believe that
the chosen human being was the prophet Muhammad, who thus became the
"messenger" of God.
While Muhammad is believed to have possessed some special
talents, no Muslim believes that he was anything other than a man, or that he
actually was the author of the Word of God (which in time was transcribed as
The Koran, or Qur'an). They believe he merely passed along the Word of
God initially by reciting it to his fellow human beings.
Thus, Muslims do not regard themselves as followers of
Muhammad, but only as people who have accepted the Word of God as given to
Muhammad, and surrendered themselves to God's will. "Islam"
translates as "surrender," and a Muslim is one who "surrenders."
The importance of Muhammad is that he was the human vehicle through which the
Word was communicated.
On the other hand, Jesus of Nazareth was born into a
community whose religion was an expression of its national independence, at a
time when that national independence was in the process of being crushed by the
Roman Empire. Given the overwhelming power of the Roman Empire, a revival
of the Jewish religion in its nationalistic form was bound to lead to disaster
--- and it did so forty years after Jesus' death.
In his book, Faith & Power: The Politics of
Islam, Middle Eastern scholar Edward Mortimer suggests that Jesus
offered a way out of this blind alley by expounding a non-political
interpretation of Judaism: "My kingdom is not of this
world." Claiming not to be the national warrior leader (Messiah)
whom Jewish prophets had predicted, Jesus offered salvation only in the world
to come, to be achieved by individuals through faith, hope and charity,
rather than by the nation through organized revolt. By implication,
salvation in this sense was not reserved for Jews only. After Jesus'
death, Christianity became an invitation to all who suffered under the
Roman Empire to hope for a better world after death.
Yet the notion of a non-political religion was a novel one,
which the Roman Empire itself could not take at face value. The
expression of allegiance the Roman Empire expected from its subjects was to
acknowledge the divinity of the emperor. Christians who refused this were
persecuted, with varying degrees of intensity, until the day came (three
centuries after Jesus) when the emperor himself became a Christian. Once
that happened, Christianity was no longer non-political. A Christian
ruler was naturally expected to follow Christian precepts, to advance true Christian
doctrine, and to suppress heresy.
It was more than a thousand years before a school of
political thought arose suggesting that religious belief was a matter for individuals,
with which the state need not concern itself. All this time, says Edward
Mortimer, Christians kept alive the notion of "the church" as
something distinct from the state. Though church and state might be
composed of the same people, they had separate leadership whose roles were in
theory distinct and complementary, even if in practice overlapping and often
conflicted.
While for many centuries a number of European countries
declared their monarch to be the head of the Christian church in that country,
as countries evolved a parliamentary form of government, the power of the
monarch was diminished and "the church" became less and less an
agency of the state. Even our Founding Fathers included in the U.S.
Constitution wording that to this day requires the separation of church and
state.
Because church and state have been moving apart over the
past 200 years in many Christian societies, many people of Christian background
have expected something similar to happen in the world of Islam. But
Edward Mortimer says that involves a profound misunderstanding, since in most
Muslim societies there is not and never has been such a thing as a
church. Mortimer believes that the community of believers founded by
Muhammad was virtually from the beginning, what we should call a state.
Therefore, it is fair to say that the conflicts today
sponsored by many Muslim groups flying the flag of Islam, are simply attempts
to get or retain political power. They seem to be using dedication to
their particular interpretation of the Word as sort of a smoke screen to boost
their political power. While not all Muslim groups are motivated in this
way, the radical Muslim group ISIS is a fine example of how extreme the
political side of Islam can become ---- they even describe the territory they
now have taken and rule, as "The Caliphate Restored."
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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult
Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some
personal spiritual growth this winter at CPC.
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