The Importance of Interfaith Respect
In a world beset by religious strife, or at least, is made to seem so by those who would divide people of faith, it is desperately important that people understand one another better and come to see how much they have in common.
There are those who would try to create enmity and antagonism between religions, but we must resist responding to their attempts and see that religious people are friends, never enemies.
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam share so much that Christians, Jews, and Muslims must work together for the sake of humanity and for the God they all worship.
Many Prophets, One Message, One God
Islam, as I am sure you know, was revealed in its final form to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him-PBUH) fourteen hundred years ago in the Arabian Peninsula.
It was meant to be a message for all people, for all time.
Muslims believe that this was not the beginning of the revelation but, rather, God had established Islam as the natural religion of mankind right from the beginning of Time.
We believe that He sent prophets down through the centuries calling people to worship One God and to live in accordance with His will.
These prophets of Islam have such familiar names as Adam, Moses, Solomon, David, Abraham and Jesus (peace be upon them all), and they all came with the same message.
The only difference is that each brought with them laws for a particular people at a particular stage in history.
It stands to reason, then, that these prophets were calling people to worship the same God, not a different God.
How The True Message of Monotheism Was Diluted
It is the belief of Muslims that even though these prophets were called to announce the worship of One God to their people, those who received the message from them often misunderstood it.
And over time, the actual message itself became distorted through translation or even through the deliberate action of some people.
Many stories found in the Bible, for instance, can be found in the Quran.
Islam teaches, though, that those who had gone before, misunderstood or rejected what had been revealed to them. This is why Christians and Jews have a different understanding of God from Muslims, but it is still the same God believed in by all three.
The message given to Muhammad (PBUH), though, was never distorted because the Book revealed to him is still in its original Arabic. This is why the Arabic language is important in Islam.
It was the language in which the Quran was revealed and in which it has been preserved.
Allah= Arabic Word for “God”
Although Arabic is important to Muslims because it is the language of their Book and of their final prophet, Islam is not an Arabic religion, nor is it restricted to Arabs.
In fact, it may surprise you to know that less than 20% of the world’s Muslims are Arab.
The name “Allah”, which Muslims use to speak about God, is an Arabic word just as “God” is an English word, “Gott” is a German word, and “Dieu” is a French word.
No one would suggest that French, German, or English people have a different God because they refer to Him in their own language.
If, for example, you open any page in an Arabic Bible used by Christians in the Middle East, you will see the name “Allah” many, many times because it is the Arabic name for God.
Muslims believe, then, that God’s final revelation to mankind was given in the Quran, and that it corrected or confirmed what had been revealed previously to other prophets.
The Wisdom of Interfaith Dialogue
The purpose of inter-faith dialogue is for people of different traditions to better understand one another, not preaching what they believe, but respecting the beliefs of others.
In the case of Christians, Jews, and Muslims; they find very quickly that although there are many differences, there are also many things held in common.
I hope you can see from all this, that the God worshiped by Christians, Muslims and Jews is one and the same.
Muslims believe that they have the fullest understanding of what that God is like because they have the final revelation about Him.
In respecting other religious traditions, Islam is not abandoning anything.
Muslims, by the way, have the greatest respect for the prophets held dear by Christians and Jews, precisely because they believe them to be prophets of Islam itself.
We should never feel threatened by goodness, wherever it is to be found.
The world’s religious leaders need not only to come together often to speak about what they hold in common, but they also need to be seen doing so.
They need the whole world to see that they respect one another and that violence done in the name of religion is wrong.
Those people who have no place for religion do not like to hear this message, but it is nonetheless true.
By talking to one another and getting to understand one another better, people of faith can speak to the world about the One God the world is thirsting for.
- aboutislam.net
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