Read Dialogue, chapters 8, 21

4.1: The Muslim community (Ummah), part 1

4.2: The Muslim community (Ummah), part 2

The Muslim community (Ummah)

1. Muhammad was born in 570 A.D. in Mecca into a family that traced its lineage back to Abraham and Ishmael. In 610 Muhammad claimed that he began to receive revelations through the angel Gabriel. The people of Mecca as a whole rejected his message. In 622, he migrated to Medina (the Hijra) and established the Muslim community. Eight years later he returned to Mecca in triumph as a general, statesman, and prophet. By the time of his death in 632, all of Arabia had come under the rule of the Muslims.

2. Jews, Christians, and Muslims claim Abraham as a father of their faith.

2.1 Over half the people on earth are participants in these three families of faith.

2.2 The Abrahamic faiths are missionary faiths. So is Buddhism.

2.3 The other faiths of humankind are either tribal or national, but Abrahamic faiths seek to be a blessing to all nations.

3. The legacy of Adam (first prophet of Islam)

4. The legacy of Abraham (middle prophet of Islam)

4.1 Ishmael

4.2 The Ka’bah

5. The legacy of Muhammad (the final prophet of Islam)

5.1 An Arabic Quran

5.2 An Arabian prophet

6. The Ummah

6.1 The perfect community

6.2 The balanced community

6.3 A witness over the nations

6.4 The Ummah is the one world-wide international Muslim nation that transcends the nation-state.

7. Jews, Muslims, and Christians are committed to worshiping the God of Abraham.

7.1 The nature of God

• God as Elohim or Eloha
• God as Allah
• Allah is the Arabic way of saying the Hebrew Eloha, which means the God Almighty

7.2 God as Eloha or Allah is God the Creator or God Almighty who is the one and only true God.

(Note to the translator: I have moved God as I AM to point 8. Be sure to note that change.)

8. God revealed Himself as I AM to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 6:2-3).

8.1 God as I AM is referred to as Yahweh or The Lord.

8.2 God as I AM (Yahweh) is quite different than God as understood in the Quran.

What are the differences?

• God as I AM is the God who is beyond naming.
• God as I AM (Yahweh) comes down and meets us in order to save us.
• God as Yahweh meets us in "I-Thou" encounters.
• God as Yahweh reveals Himself to us, not just His attributes.

9. In Jesus God reveals Himself both as Yahweh and Elohim or Eloha (Allah).

9.1 His name is Jesus which means Yahweh saves.

9.2 He is also Emmanuel which means Eloha (Allah) with us.

10. Bible translators all over the world seek the local, pre-Christian name for God.

10.1 For example the Kikuyu of Kenya referred to God the creator as Ngai.

10.2 They said that Ngai the creator had gone away to live on Mount Kenya and that he would never return.

10.3 The missionaries translated the gospel of Matthew into Kikuyu.

10.4 They used Ngai for God in their Bible translation.

10.5 The Kikuyu were astonished to read in Matthew’s gospel that in Jesus, Ngai had come to live among us and that one of the names of Jesus was Ngai is with us (Emmanuel).

10.6 Arab Christians have always used Allah to refer to God. As mentioned earlier, Allah is not only the Muslim name for God, but was also the name Christians in Arabia used prior to the time of Muhammad.

11. God is known through revelation.

11.1 Jews, Muslims, and Christians believe that creation is a dimension of revelation.

11.2 Muslims, Christians, and Jews also believe that God reveals truth through Scripture.

• Jews believe that the Torah is the soul of Scripture.
• Christians believe that Jesus is the living Word whom the Bible reveals.
• Muslims believe the Quran is the final revelation.

11.3 Each of these Abrahamic faiths are, therefore, formed by different revelation centers:

• Judaism — the Torah with the Tanach, which Christians call the Old Testament
• Christianity — Jesus the living Word and the total biblical witness culminating in Jesus and the formation of the Church
• Islam — the Quran, the final Book which Muslims believe Muhammad modeled perfectly

Conclusion:

Any dialogical encounter between these faith communities proceeds from commitments to these different truth centers. This means that there are similarities (for example, the belief in one transcendent Creator who is almighty) and there are differences (for example, God who comes down to meet us and save us within biblical revelation is different than the Muslim conviction that God sends His will down but does not come down to save us).