Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam (5 page)

Thereafter follow “the flood and the locusts, the lice and the frogs, the blood, distinct signs; but they waxed proud and were a sinful people.” When the sea is parted and the Children of Israel arrive on the other side, they find an unnamed idolatrous nation and immediately demand that Moses fashion gods for them to worship. Moses responds: “You are surely a people who are ignorant. Surely this they are engaged upon shall be shattered, and void is what they have been doing,” and “What, shall I seek a god for you other than God, who has preferred you above all beings?”

The charge that the people are ignorant, rather than simply sinful and rebellious, is noteworthy, for to this day Islamic spokesmen and apologists charge non-Muslims with ignorance, including those who demonstrate that they understand the religion well. The mainstream media present us with surveys alleging that people who dislike Islam or distrust Muslims are simply suffering from a lack of knowledge.
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This is in line with the Islamic scheme of things: Allah did not send prophets and revelations so much to save people from sin—although there is a moral framework in Islam—but to save them from ignorance.

Thus, the Fatihah, the first
sura
of the Qur’an and the most frequently repeated prayer in Islamic tradition and day-to-day piety, has the believer saying to Allah, “Guide us in the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those against whom Thou art wrathful, nor of those who are astray” (1:6-7). Although this may appear to be a statement enjoining good behavior and rejecting sinful behavior, in fact, it is more of a confessional statement. At least that is how Islamic scholars have generally understood it. The most mainstream and widely accepted understanding of this passage among Muslims is that “the straight path” is Islam, while “those against whom Thou art wrathful” are the Jews and “those who are astray” are the Christians.
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The problem with the two groups is their erroneous beliefs, which they hold in ignorance—although this ignorance is culpable.

In the Qu’ran, Allah recounts that he gave Moses the Ten Commandments, with a stern warning to the unbelievers but without specifying here (or anywhere else in the Qur’an) what those commandments actually are:

And We wrote for him on the Tablets of everything an admonition, and a distinguishing of everything: “So take it forcefully, and command thy people to take the fairest of it. I shall show you the habitation of the ungodly. I shall turn from My signs those who wax proud in the earth unjustly; though they see every sign, they will not believe in it, and though they see the way of rectitude they will not take it for a way, and though they see the way of error, they will take it for a way. That, because they have cried lies to Our signs and heeded them not.” Those who cry lies to Our signs, and the encounter in the world to come—their works have failed; shall they be recompensed, except according to the things they have done? (7:145-147)

Shortly thereafter, as we hear about the Children of Israel’s dalliance with the golden calf, Allah says of the tablets he gave to Moses that “in the inscription of them was guidance, and mercy unto all those who hold their Lord in awe” (7:154) but again, doesn’t say exactly what that guidance was.

Those who worshipped the calf, meanwhile, will not only be subject to the Lord’s anger, but to “abasement in this present life” (7:152)—a concept that recurs in many contexts in Islamic teaching.

Moses, for his part, prays for forgiveness for the Children of Israel, noting: “My Lord, hadst Thou willed Thou wouldst have destroyed them before, and me. Wilt Thou destroy us for what the foolish ones of us have done? It is only Thy trial, whereby Thou leadest astray whom Thou wilt, and guidest whom Thou wilt”(7:155).” Allah responds somewhat anachronistically:

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.”
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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.
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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 the 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.