Islam vs. Christianity
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course
Instructor’s Name
Date of Submission
Islam vs. Christianity
Christianity and Islam are the two greatest religions in modern day society. Therefore there are a lot of controversies surrounding these two religions. One of the often argued questions is: do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? This question has engineered various debates on the subject both in the mainstream media and in the society. There are various similarities between the Christian faith and the Islamic faith, just as there are differences also. The presence of similarities and differences between these two religions has triggered a group of proposers and opposes of the thought that both Christians and Muslims worship one God. Each opposing groups have evidence based on the similarities and the difference in the two faiths to back up their respective opinions or arguments concerning this subject of faith.
For starters, both Islam and the Christian faiths are monotheistic. Both religions believe in one God who is all powerful, omnipresent, omniscient, and the sole creator of all the things on heaven and earth, including human beings (Carson et al., 2016). Both religions also believe in life after death, where a believer’s good deeds on earth are rewarded in the afterlife in heaven. Additionally, both Muslims and Christians recognize Jesus, although in deferring perceptions. However, they both acknowledge that Jesus was powerful and he was conceived and born by a virgin mother
The Passion Week, which coincidentally coincides with the current period, involves the Palm Sunday through the Good Friday to the Easter Sunday. This is the holy week for Christians, where they commemorate the process for the resurrection of Jesus (Woodhead, 2004). While Christians believe that Jesus is the son of God who was sent to die for the sake of the sins of humankind, Muslims don’t share the same perception. Although Islam recognizes Jesus (Isa) as a powerful prophet, they do not believe that he is the son of God. Neither do Muslims believe that Jesus died and resurrected, they believed that Jesus was taken up to heaven by God and someone else impliedly, Judas was crucified in his place.
Additionally, Christians believe in the holy trinity in that God is three in one. According to the Bible, the Christian holy book, there exists God the farther, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. However, Muslims do not believe in the trinity; the Quran, Muslim holy book, teaches them that there is only one God to be worshipped: Allah, who is all powerful and the sole creator of heaven and earth. The Muslims holy book Quran was written over a period of twenty three years by Prophet Muhammad in 7 CE while the Christian holy book, the bible was written over a duration of about one thousand six hundred years and it contains sixty six books which were written by forty varying writers in the year 1 CE (Hammond, 2020).
One other key difference between the Islamic faith and the Christian faith is on the subject of sin. While Christians believe that every human being is born a sinner, Muslims do not agree. The Islam faith dictates that human beings are born free of any sin. However, since humans are forgetful beings, their weakness of being forgetful drives them towards sin. Christians trace the sin to Adam and Eve, who were cursed by God after tricked by Satan into eating from a forbidden tree. The Islamic faith associates sin to Satan, but there is no mention of a curse on either Adam or Eve.
Both Christianity and Islam are Abrahamic monotheistic religions in that they claim descent to the God of Abraham. According to the gospels, Abraham had two sons Ishmael and Isaac. According to Roith (2018), Ishmael was the son of the flesh, while Isaac was the son of Promise, who was born out of Sarah, the wife of Abraham at old age. The conflict between Muslims and Christians is traceable to the Abrahamic era wherein the birth of Isaac shifted the attention from Ishmael to Isaac, thus bringing jealousy and rivalry between Isaac and Ishmael, the father of the Arab nation (Roith, 2018).
In conclusion, in as much as there are some similarities between the Islam faith and the Christian faith, there is no conclusive evidence to prove that both Muslims and Christians worship one God. Additionally, most of the evidence on the conflict between the Christians and the Muslims are theological and is not unanimously acceptable between the two faiths.
References
Carson, D., Sweeney, D., & Netland, H. (2016). The Message of Islam vs. the Gospel of Jesus. The Gospel Coalition. Retrieved 9 April 2020, from https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-message-of-islam-vs-the-gospel-of-jesus/.
Hammond, S. (2020). 4 Differences between Christianity & Islam. Christ Covenant Church: Knoxville, TN. Retrieved 9 April 2020, from https://www.christcov.org/seths-soundbites/post/4-differences-between-christianity-islam.
Roith, E. (2018). Ishmael and Isaac: an enduring conflict. In Sibling relationships (pp. 49-73). Rutledge.
Woodhead, L. (2004). Christianity. Oxford University Press.