Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking time to read this. I am writing this blog as a realm for my thoughts regarding my ambitions, preparations and aspirations for graduate work.
Around 2000 BCE a humble nomad known as Abrahm, had a radical religious experience that has profoundly influenced 55% of today’s global population. His transition to a monotheistic faith issued not only a change of name but of reputation still being felt to this day. Abraham, means “Father of a Multitude,” and these children are best described by their related religious faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is these later two faiths that I intend to concern myself with academically.
Prior to the rise of Islam, there existed more Christians in the Middle East than there was anywhere in Europe. Before Islam was associated with Arabia, there was a significant history of Christianity among Arabs dating as far back as the day of Pentecost. However, upon the rise of Islam in the 7th century BCE, many Arab Christians, to the horror of many western Christians, embraced Islam, not as a new faith, but a more relevant form of Christianity. The question I wish to ask is “Why?”
Theological statements and understanding are largely birthed out of questions our contemporary culture is asking. What were the questions that Arab Christians were wrestling with prior to Islam? What were the questions that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was asking? Why is it that answers within Arabic Christianity and Judaism not satisfy those questions? What answers did Islam provide that struck a relevant chord with those who embraced Islam? How then did Arabic Christianity seek to address questions created by the rise of Islam, and how did Islam itself seek to address similar questions?
Unfortunately, Western Christianity has been inundated with false narratives and rumors regarding Islam and its origins. What many of us know about Islam comes from biased sources written during the times of the Crusades. These attitudes were however not due to the rise of Islam as much as they were inherited from previous generations of racist sentiment toward Arabs stretching as far back as the First Century BCE, when Christianity was arising.
Therefore, it is not hard to imagine how this lack of historical understanding greatly hinders many of today’s contemporary Muslim-Christian dialogues. It is my ambition to ReOeient Abraham in order to assist in the academic reconstruction of a historically accurate accounting of Muslim-Christian relations as they existed within the first two centuries of Islam’s birth. I believe that knowing what questions they were asking each other then, and their responses could greatly affect the tone of our Western Christian impressions of Islam.
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