Islam, Judaism, and Christianity
As already mentioned, the Muslim religion shares many of its major tenets with Christianity and Judaism, including the expectation of an end of time followed by a final judgment. According to the Quran, “To Moses [God] gave the Scriptures, a perfect code for the righteous with precepts about all things, a guide and a mercy. . .” (6:154). The Quran also has praise for the Christians, especially their monks and priests (5:85). But it reveals that God is neither begotten nor begets (13:17), rejecting Christian teaching about the Divine Sonship of Jesus. Muhammad had great reverence for the figure of Jesus, and although the Quran acknowledges that a crucifixion had taken place, it adds that another body was substituted for Christ’s: “They did not slay Jesus, nor crucify him, only a likeness of it appeared to them” (4:156).
Many verses of the Quran speak of a broad religious tolerance not generally associated with our Western stereotypes of Islam, e.g., “Believers, Jews, Sabaeans and Christians — whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right — shall have nothing to fear or to regret” (5:69) (The Sabaeans were an ancient people who flourished in southwestern Arabia around the middle of the first millennium BC, in the kingdom of Saba, called Sheba in the Bible.) On the other hand, the Quran admonishes that the Jewish people “have tampered with words out of their context” and that both Christians and Jews “have forgotten much of what they were enjoined.”
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