Both Christianity and Islam have scriptural documents that they consider to be the Word of God. In some ways, in fact, Christians and Muslims believe the same things about their scriptures: they were revealed by God to prophets or others who recorded the revelation and passed it down to future generations. Each religion says that by looking into the text of the revealed document (the Bible, the Qur'an), a person can learn something of the mind of God, and how humans ought to live their lives - indeed, what it means to be human.
But the similarity can't be extended too far. The Qur'an was revealed to one person - the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and to nobody else. It is the final and supreme self-expression of God to humanity. God, in a sense, is incarnate in the pages of the Qur'an - every word, every letter of the text, especially in the original Arabic, is sacred as a result. It is a terrible blasphemy to disturb or damage the text of the Qur'an (or even, in some interpretations, a text containing text from the Qur'an ... or even the word Qur'an itself!). This is the Book of books. Other religions (Christianity, Judaism) also have revelations from God. Prophets from God have spoken to us before Muhammad (PBUH), and have contributed to scriptural documents (hence the Muslim designation of Christians and Jews as people of the book). But the Holy Qur'an is special.
The Bible is not as important to Christians as the Qur'an is to Muslims. This is for a very good reason: to Christians, Jesus is the final and ultimate expression of God to humanity, and the Bible merely points the way to him. Damaging a Bible might be deeply offensive to Christians. However, it wouldn't affect them the way damaging a Qur'an would affect Muslims. In a Muslim country like Pakistan, you could cause a riot (literally!) by deliberately damaging a Qur'an. Such an act would not just be an attack on the faith, and not merely offensive to believers: it would be an attack God himself. My old Bible is all marked up with pen, marginal notes, words circled etc. I doubt there are many Qur'ans like that.
Christians who take the Bible too seriously, in fact, are sometimes accused of "Biblolatry" - Bible worship - which is a form of idol worship. Don't get me wrong here: the Bible is from God according to Christians. It's just not from God in the same way, for Christians, as the Holy Qur'an is from God according to Muslims.
This is not surprising. The Bible is not the work of one person. It was written by many different people over thousands of years, and gathered together by editors into a single, more or less coherent text. To understand it fully clearly requires a basic knowledge of the various cultural backgrounds of the different peoples whose cultures produced it, and the kinds of literature they employed in their self-expressions. One of these self-expressions is the idea that a Messiah would come to save the people and lead them. The Bible is not from that Messiah, however. It is, in part at least, about him.
So the different religions approach their basic texts differently.
Nevertheless, the use of the text can be similar! Look at the texts in the image here (or look at this bigger image). They both talk, in surprisingly (is it surprising?) similar terms, of the role of the scriptural document in the life of the believer. These religions, in the end, might have more in common than people nowadays tend to believe.
At least, that's what I think.
But the similarity can't be extended too far. The Qur'an was revealed to one person - the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and to nobody else. It is the final and supreme self-expression of God to humanity. God, in a sense, is incarnate in the pages of the Qur'an - every word, every letter of the text, especially in the original Arabic, is sacred as a result. It is a terrible blasphemy to disturb or damage the text of the Qur'an (or even, in some interpretations, a text containing text from the Qur'an ... or even the word Qur'an itself!). This is the Book of books. Other religions (Christianity, Judaism) also have revelations from God. Prophets from God have spoken to us before Muhammad (PBUH), and have contributed to scriptural documents (hence the Muslim designation of Christians and Jews as people of the book). But the Holy Qur'an is special.
The Bible is not as important to Christians as the Qur'an is to Muslims. This is for a very good reason: to Christians, Jesus is the final and ultimate expression of God to humanity, and the Bible merely points the way to him. Damaging a Bible might be deeply offensive to Christians. However, it wouldn't affect them the way damaging a Qur'an would affect Muslims. In a Muslim country like Pakistan, you could cause a riot (literally!) by deliberately damaging a Qur'an. Such an act would not just be an attack on the faith, and not merely offensive to believers: it would be an attack God himself. My old Bible is all marked up with pen, marginal notes, words circled etc. I doubt there are many Qur'ans like that.
Christians who take the Bible too seriously, in fact, are sometimes accused of "Biblolatry" - Bible worship - which is a form of idol worship. Don't get me wrong here: the Bible is from God according to Christians. It's just not from God in the same way, for Christians, as the Holy Qur'an is from God according to Muslims.
This is not surprising. The Bible is not the work of one person. It was written by many different people over thousands of years, and gathered together by editors into a single, more or less coherent text. To understand it fully clearly requires a basic knowledge of the various cultural backgrounds of the different peoples whose cultures produced it, and the kinds of literature they employed in their self-expressions. One of these self-expressions is the idea that a Messiah would come to save the people and lead them. The Bible is not from that Messiah, however. It is, in part at least, about him.
So the different religions approach their basic texts differently.
Nevertheless, the use of the text can be similar! Look at the texts in the image here (or look at this bigger image). They both talk, in surprisingly (is it surprising?) similar terms, of the role of the scriptural document in the life of the believer. These religions, in the end, might have more in common than people nowadays tend to believe.
At least, that's what I think.
7 comments:
Incidentally , if you read the post right through, you'll see that my point is that Islam and Christianity have important differences. They may have similar roots, but they have very different approaches to their own scriptural documents. They also have very different approaches to the way to approach God and what it means to live a life of faith. If you're right that they are analogous or "akin", then this has to be shown. The similarities are visible at the surface level, but are hidden when one probes more deeply... and then begin to become visible again when one probes even more deeply. But simply to dismiss them as 'analogous' is actually a way of being unfair to both. They constitute distinct worldviews and should be respected as such.
Sorry, I didn't intend for my comment to be objectionable.
I did read the entire post. Degree of religiosity also has a great effect on an individual's state of mind. I agree that the worldviews of Christians and Muslims are distinct. However, religion is only one aspect of the numerous cultural differences that are responsible for this. By akin, I simply meant blood-related, which is historically factual for many religions.
Well, sure. I didn't take offence - it just appeared to be the kind of comment that people sometimes make when they are dismissive of religion. I obviously just misunderstood your point. I would argue (and shortly will, in class, by the way) that worldviews generally are dominated by aspects of themselves - that is, there are worldviews that are correctly characterised as 'religious' or 'scientific' or 'cultural/ethnic' and so on. My thinking here was about primarily religious worldviews.
Now, that might be taken to mean that I think your comment about culture contributing is incorrect. But in fact, I think it's deeper than that - and that you're right. Worldviews are best thought of as integrated wholes, in which many different elements are at play all the time. However, some of these elements will always dominate, and which element (elements) are dominant is important in any worldview analysis. So I'd argue that in a "Christian" or "Muslim" worldview, things tend to be filtered through the lenses of religion, and this colours everything else. This means that, yes, 'culture' (in the broad sense of the traditions and practices of a community) influences the religion. However, it is more true to say that the religion influences the culture. So (for example) a Muslim or Christian worldview will interpret the role of women in a culture through a Muslim or Christian lens - and modify or adopt cultural practices in ways that fit with the values and beliefs of the worldview in question... and these can be very different.
But that is in a worldview dominated by religion. In a worldview dominated by something else, say technology, the religion will be more deeply influenced by technology than the reverse. To take other examples, a capitalist worldview will produce religion that is 'entrepreneurial' (as we see in the USA); a marxist worldview will marginalise religion as an inherently negative influence on society; a nationalist worldview will often incorporate religion as a uniting factor or an element of the people's identity, and so on. All of this is a bit simplistic, of course, as these ideas are extremely complex. But the main point is made: the give and take changes depending on the emphasis. In the cases I was trying to discuss (less than successfully, it now seems), the worldviews in question were the Christian and the Muslim, which would themselves modify, interpret, invent, import and destroy various cultural practices or beliefs as they fit or did not fit with the practices, values, beliefs, etc. of each worldview.
Very interesting. I never thought about it that way.
(This was my last post as 'anonymous'.)
That's ok, Anonymous! You've offered some interesting and useful feedback.
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