What is Islam’s Relationship to Christianity?
by Mark Durie, Lausanne Movement:
The Quran is a book of the utmost importance and influence in the world today. It is the foundational text of Islam, and through the Islamic sharia it shapes legal systems, politics, ethics, cultures, and worship for a quarter of the world’s population.
The intriguing Quran.
There are many things about the Quran that are hard to understand and can seem puzzling. It is not an easy read. However, for Christians perhaps the most intriguing thing about the Quran is its many allusions to biblical stories and characters. Although Islam has offered a most effective challenge to Christianity during the past 1,400 years, conquering and then Islamizing four of the five patriarchates in the Pentarchy of late antiquity—Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constantinople—the text of the Quran draws heavily upon the Bible. The two most frequently named figures in the Quran are Moses (136 times) and Abraham (69 times). Jesus is mentioned by name six times as frequently as Muhammad.
One of the striking things about the Bible-in-the-Quran is the puzzling combination of knowledge and the lack of it.
One of the striking things about the Bible-in-the-Quran is the puzzling combination of knowledge and the lack of it. For example, although it contains hundreds of references to biblical figures and events, the Quran seems to consider Mary the mother of Jesus (Miriam in Hebrew) to be the same person as Miriam the sister of Moses and Aaron. In a surah (chapter) of the Quran called ‘The Family of Imran’ (Biblical Amram of Exod 6:20) there is an account of the birth of Mary to the ‘wife of Amram’, after which she is brought up by Zakariah, the father of John the Baptist (Surah 3:35–37). Then again, in Surah 19:28, Mary is called the ‘sister of Aaron’.[1] These observations give rise to the question: ‘How can the Quran know so much about the Bible, while at the same time, not know that a thousand years separated the family of Amram from the family of Jesus of Nazareth?’
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