Interreligious Relation: Abrahamic Faiths(Judaism, Christianity and Islam)

Abrahamic FaithsJerald F. Dicks (2006) digunakan utk mengkelompokkan agm Yahudi, Kristian dan Islam kerana ketiga-tiga agm tsbt bersusur galur drpd keturunan yg sama.

Ia jg seiring dgn perkembangan Ilmu Perbandingan Agama khususnya dlm topik pengkategorian agama-agama dunia dalam kelompok yg sama.

Agama monoteisme, agama semitik, agama kenabian, agama Timur Tengah,

Berkongsi konsep monoteisme namun berbeza bersesuaian dgn falsafahdan tuntutan agama masing-masing.

Persamaan monoteisme yg umumnya menegaskan kepercayaan tuhan yg satu, tuhan yg mencipta alam dan tuhan yg mengutuskan nabi kpd umat manusia.

Semitik dinamakan oleh A.L Schoezler thn 1781 bermakna bahasa, tatacara hidup yg menjadi identiti kpd masy Shem.

Perkataan Sem berasal drpd Shem yg terdpt. Di dalam Bible da beliau merupakan anak keturunan Nabi Noh (Genesis 6:10).

Bahasa pertuturan bangsa Shem merangkumi bahasa Arab, Aramaic, Hebrew, Akkadian, Ethiopoc, Phoenician yg kini dikenali sbg Afro-Asiastic dan dirujuk sbg bhs Semitik.

Bhs pertuturan dan perantaraan komunikasi kpd Yahudi, Kristian dan Islam.

Perkataan faiths digunakan berikutan kerpecayaan dan keimanan Abraham terhadap Tuhan yg satu dalam agama masing-masing.

Hal ini terbukti apabila setiap agama meletakkan status Nabi Ibrahim berbeza-beza berdasarkan kepercayaan (faiths) kepada PenciptaNya.

Agama Yahudi meletakkan kedudukan Abraham sbg. Father of Many Nation berikutan keimanan dan kesabaran beliau menghadapi tekanan ketiadaan zuriat dan Tuhan telah menjanjikan beliau bapa yg mempunyai banyak keturunan (Genesis 17:5)

Agama Kristian meletakkan kedudukan Abraham sbg Father of Faiths yg dilihat memberi suatu contoh teladan ke atas penyaliban Jesus di tiang salib berikutan keimanan dan kesabaran beliau mengorbankn anaknya, Isaac.

Agama Islam meletakkan Nabi Ibrahim sbg Khalilullah berikutan perjalanan dakwah baginda yg mengharungi pelbagai rintangan bagi menuju agama Hanif dgn tugas dakwahnya kpd tiga golongan utama: Penyembah berhala, penyembah bintang, bulan dan matahari serta penyembah raja (Raja Namrud)

Istilah Abrahamic Faiths muncul seiring kemunculan ilmu perbandingna agama apabila berlakunya inter-faiths dialog di antara ketiga-tiga agama besar dunia ini.

Pertemuan pd thn 1974 yg dinamakan The Muslim-Jewish-Christian Conference (MJCC) telah melahirkn istilah Abrahamic Faiths yg berjuan menjadi suatu platfom kpd agama Yahudi, Kristian dan Islam dalam memahami komunikasi antara agama demi menjana keharmonian dan toleransi.

According to the history of the Abrahamic religions, it is known that Judaism is the oldest among Christianity and Islam.

The three religions base their foundations on Abraham (a.s.) and take him as their ancestor and progenitor.

They are all the scriptural religions, which affirm the existence of the divine revelation in written form. These revelations represent Gods intervention in history.

History tells that Christianity, in its origin, is deeply rooted in Judaism, and therefore, one cannot understand it without a sincere feeling for the Jewish world and a direct experience of it.

Christianity was born in the matrix of Judaism, but Judaism, from the beginning of Christian religions emergence until now, ignored this daughter religion by following its majestic course in lonely dignity.

In this sense, Judaism has always ignored Christianity, and has never been affected by its dogmatic teachings.

Hence, it is maintained that the origin of Judaism and Christianity are indisputably intertwined.

In addition, both Jewish and Christian scholars tended to assume that Judaism originated in about the 5th century, shortly after the Babylonian Exile, and that Christianity developed out of this religion but soon became dominated by Greek thoughts and norms.

Christianity claims both, continuity with Judaism as well as superiority over it.

In the early days of the Church, Christianity defined its relationship with the God of Israel as replacing and superseding the old covenant of God with the Israelites.

The church was the new Israel and the Bible was a New Testament.

The Jews lost their birthright when they rejected Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Thus, the existence of Jews and Judaism became a problem for Christianity.

According to traditional Christian theology, it is the Church rather than the Jewish community, which is the true heir to Gods promises given to Abraham.

Thus, by rejecting Jesus Christ as a Saviour, the Jews no longer constituted Gods chosen people and, as a punishment for their hardheartedness, Judaism, as a religion, was obliterated and became dead, the Ancient Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people were driven into exile.

After the rejection of Jesus as the Messiah (Saviour), Jews faced many problems among themselves as well as with the new Jewish sect (Christianised Jews), which was

formed by the followers of Jesus who claimed to be the true Israel or the true followers of Jesus Christ.

The new Jewish sect formed its Church, which was then called the Nascent Christian Church.

This Church claimed that God had sent the Saviour Jesus Christ to the Jews, and the majority of them had erred by rejecting or ignoring him.

Therefore, the dominant view in the early Church was that God had rejected the Jews as His people, except for that small number who had accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

Jews were charged with the rejection of Christ as their Saviour as well as killing him, and since Christ was God, they had killed their God.

From a historical standpoint, the reason for Jesus death was political rather than theological. By looking at the messianic movement of Jesus, the Romans and the Saducees (the followers of the high-priestly family the son of Zaddok. They controlled the Holy Temple and the cluster of central institutions associated with it from the rebuilding of the Second Temple), were convinced that this movement posed a danger to them, and therefore, they plotted against Jesus and arrested him.

Jesus was not brought before Pilate because of his teachings, but because anyone suspected of promoting the ancient Jewish idea of the Messiah had to be stopped.

The Sadducees collaborated with the Roman authorities in oderto stiop this messianic movement. It is observed in John (18: 12-27) that Jesus was arrested by the Roman soldiers accompanied by the officers of the temple, was brought to the residence of the high-priest for interrogation, and from there to the praetorium for a hearing before Pilate.

Paul Winter proposes that the following sequence of events can be affirmed with certainityL that Jesus was arrested by Roman military (John 18:12) for political reasons (Mark 14:48) and then conducted to a local Jewish administrative official (Mark 14:53a; Luke 22:54; john 18:13a) during the same night.

The following morning, after a brief deliberation by the Jewish authorities (Mark 15:1a; Luke 23:1; John 18: 28a). The governor sentenced Jesus to death by crucifixion (Mark 15:15b, 26), the sentence being carried out in accordance with Roman penal procedure (Mark 15: 15b).

The earlier hostility against Jews was indeed profoundly religious. This hostility was concerned with the rejection by the Jews of the Christian redeemer and his message, and was documented in the Gospels (the Jewish role in the life and death of Christ).

Religious anti-Semitism at the patristic and medieval times the hostilities were not generally not racial in nature but religious.

Some of the most intense Christian writers against the Jews are Aphrahat, Ephraem, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Agustine of Hippo in the 4th and 5th centuries.

During the patristic era, the Church stopped being a Jewish sect and it ceased practicing the Law or observing Sabbath.

The separation of Church from Judaism, was not peaceful, left many bitter feelings.

Christian anti-Jewish (anti-semitism) writings emphasise that: i) the Jews failed to recognize Jesus as their Messiah;

ii) they did that because they are stubborn and blind that is, unable to discern the truth from their Scriptures;

iii) therefore, they condemned and rejected by God, Who has rejected their ritualistic practices;

iv) therefore, they have been replaced by the Christian as the new people of God; and

v) as a result of the Jews blindness and inability to understand the Scriptures, the Scriptures belong the the Christians, who alone can properly interpret them.

Another factor that was added to the religious hostility between Christians and Jews was the racial hostility or the so-called anti-Semitism.

The notion of anti-Semitism (opposing Judaism as a religion; opposing he Jewish people) first appeared as a political program in Vienna.

In fact, the term was coined in the late 1870s by the German publicist Wilhelm Marr.

The term anti-Semitism according to Marr, regarded race rather than religion as the decisive factor separating Jews from Germans.

For this reason, racist anti-Semitism is usually distinguished from medieval Christian anti-Semitism

and its antecedents in the patristic and New Testament periods, in which the religious element was paramount.

Marr rejected religious polemics and said that he himself would defend the Jews against religious persecution.

For him, the problem laid not in religions, but embedded in the ultimate reality, which was race.

In addition, the term anti-Semitism also signifies not opposition to Semites in general, but a hostile or at least an unfriendly disposition on the part of Aryans towards Jews, both, socially and commercially.

In this sense, it seems very clear that the term anti-Semitism was not related to the thological polemics between Jews and Christians, i.e., in Europe and especially in Germany, but to racial differences.

The term anti-Semitism was rapidly adopted in all European languages in which it signified the hatred for Jews and systematic hostility towards them.

The term implies other concepts, common in 19th century modern Europe, that humanity is divided into well-defined races to which people belong by birth and that these races coincide to a large extent with linguistic family.

Consequently, the hatred towards Jews was considered to be aroused by their supposedly hereditary racial characteristics, which was regarded as either detestable in reality or of such a nature as to engender the hatred of others.

The racial anti-Semitism squeezed the Jewish people into a biological category.

In contrast to the medieval outlook that anticipated Jewish recognition of Christ of apocalyptic events, the modern anti-Semitism provided no exits from the Jewish condition.

The most important difference between medieval religious anti-Judaism and modern racists anti-Semitism was the possibility of conversion.

Actually, until the 19th century, the Church held out conversion to Jews as an option to save their souls and lives.

However, this was done according to the Christian belief that the Jews were the rejected people by God, and therefore, they have to acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Saviour in order to attain salvation.

Anti-Semitism seems to have emerged on a national scale in the wake of the Nazi victory in Germany.

In the middle 1930s, hundreds of anti-Jewish groups, openly racist and pro-Hitler, sprang out throughout the country and launched well-financed programs of incitement and rabble-rousing.

It is important to mention to mention that anti-Semitism is not something that can be eliminated through changes of culture, ideology or social system. Rather, it is inherent in the Jewish situation, that is, the projective reaction of the non-Jew (pagan, Christian or post-Christian) to the offence of Jewish existence.

Anti-Semitism manifests itself in various forms and levels; it expresses itself in terms of economic, social, cultural, political or religious conflict, or some combination of these.

Anti-Judaism is one of the roots of racist anti-Semitism and hence, responsible for the death of six million Jews as Zionists claimed (some scholars consider whole issue as a Zionist fabrication).

There is a great distinction between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. The former is concerned with the attitude of Christian theology regarding the Jews. This is a religious issue between Christianity and Judaism,

based on the Jewish rejection of Christ as a Saviour. The latter is concerned with the attitude of Nazi ideology of racism toward the Jews.

It was the racial anti-Semitism that led to the mass murders; the so-called Holocaust, and not theological anti-Judaism.

The Jews were murdered for being who they were, rather than for what they did.

The Jews were living in exile under the Christian

oppression until the twentieth century, or until Second Vatican Council took place.

The major conflicts between Judasim and Christianity (anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust), have led to a radical shirf in the relationship to Judaism of educated Catholic people as well as the Roman Catholic Church in its official public teachings and policies.

This policy shift started with Pope Pius XI in his classic sentence, We are all spiritual Semites.

Later on, Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council, which marked an important step in theological rapprochement between the Church and the Jewish people.

Thus, this council revised and restated its understanding of the Catholic Churchs relation to Judaism, and in its Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to non-Christian Religions renounced the once widely held view that all Jews, or all Jews contemporary with Jesus, should be held responsible for his death.

Nostra Aetate, par. 4 states: True, authorities of the Jews and those who followed their lead, pressed for the death of Christ still, what happened in his passion cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today

By the Jews, is not meant all the Jews, not even all those of Jesus days or even in Jerusalem, but principally the chief priests and Pharisees, that is, to says the religious authorities.

NA stressed the positive bond (the common spiritual heritage) between Jews and Christians and called for special love of Christians for Jews.

This declaration recommended mutual understanding and respect and a brotherly dialogue. NA promotes inter-religious dialogue between the followers of Christianity and Judaism.

We conclude that the attempts of Catholic Church for reconciliation with the Jews came into reality only after the formulation of the NA declaration.

It was this declaration, which broke the chains of a long conflicts (Anti-Judaism and Anti-Semitism elements) that existed throughout the history and introduced a new system of communication for discovering ways to further the inter-religious dialogue.

Hubungan Muslim-KristianGoddard (2008) - berasaskan sumber sejarah dan tradisi ajaran agama Islam dan Kristian. Berdasarkan model ini, hubungan Muslim-Kristian digambarkan bersifat konfrantasi dan antagonis dan sejarah menunjukkan contoh yg begitu jelas iaitu, Perang Salib penghujung abad ke-11(5H).

Hubungan Muslim-Kristian turut memaparkn hbgn toleransi dan kerjasama. Misalnya, Rasulullah s.a.w bersikap toleransi thdp masy Kristian.

I. 615M nabi mengarahkan 83 sahabat berhijrah ke Abyssinia (Axum).II. 628M berlaku di Madinah apabila Nabi memulakan hbgn diplomatik dgn kerajaan Parsi dan beberapa pemerintah Kristian spt Byzantine, Abyssinia dan Mesir.III. 630M Nabi membuat perjanjian dgn pelbau kumpulan Kristan dan meminta mrk membayar jizyah. Kaum Kristian Arab Nestorian (Selatan Arab) dan kaum Lakhmid (utara Sjung Arab); Nestorian Parsi dan Iraq, Jacobites Syria dan Copts (Koptik) Mesir.IV. Surat dihantar kpd Raja Heraclius dan pemerintah Empayar Sassanian.

dicontohi para sahabat antaranya Khalifah Umar bin al-Khattab ketika menawan Baitulmaqdis.

Mohd. Roslan Mohd. Nor (2010) menjelaskan:Jaminan Keamanan Umar (al-Uhda al-Umariyyah/Umar Assurance of Safety) telah menyediakan peraturan asas utk membantu pembangunan dan pembentukan semula komuniti baru di Aelia yg menekankan polisi Muslim yg praktikal thdp pengiktirafan kpd pihak lain dgn menentukn hak-hak penduduk Aelia dan tanggungjawab Muslim thdp mrk.

Ia memberi jaminan keamanan kpd setiap penduduk Aelia, tanpa pengecualian dan diskriminasi, termasuk menjamin penuh keselamatan rumah ibadat, tidak ada paksaan dalam beragama, dan tidak juga dianiaya.

Contoh lain - pada zaman perkembangan Islam di Andalus satu usaha penterjemahan dijalankan di Cordoba ketika zaman pemerintahan Sultan Abd al-Rahman III.

Fauzinaim (2005) menjelaskan fakta ini menunjukkan masyarakat Islam dahulu amat memahami keperluan utk duduk bersama dan bekerjasama dengan pihak lain dari kalangan non-Muslim.

Peranan penubuhan Secretariat for Non-Christians (SNC) pada tahun 1964 yg diilhamkan oleh Pope Paul VI signifikan dalam menjelaskan dialog Muslim-Kristian.

Pertubuhan ini bertujuan mempromosi jalinan dialog (dialogical relations) melalui penglibatan bersama Muslim dalam aktiviti keIslaman spt. sambutan Ramadan dan Id al-fitr serta aktiviti pertukaran lawatan, mesyuarat dan seminar.

Di bawah kepimpinan Pope Karol Wyotyla yg membawa gelaran John Paul II, beliau menekankan tema dialog yg berasaskan ikatan spiritual bagi memupuk kerjasama Muslim-Kristian.

Dalam manifesto kepaderian Redemptor hominis yg dilancarkn pd tahun 1979, John Paul II menyeru agar kedua-dua umat beragama ini bersikap sedia memberi dan menerima bagi memperkukuh jalinan dialog sedia ada.

Pada dasarnya, jalinan dialog ini bukan utk menyatukan kepercayaan atau membandingkan ajaran kedua-dua agama.

Sebaliknya, btjn. mencari nilai persamaan bagi membina keharmonian hidup bersama dan memenuhi perintah Tuhan agar dapat menjalin hubungan baik sesama manusia.

Dialog Muslim-Kristian signifikan dalam arena hubungan antarabangsa dan berlatar belakangkan senario semasa yg melanda dunia masakini, pd 13 Oktober 2007 seramai 138 wakil pemimpin Sunni dan Syiah dgn wakil Kristian menandatangan dokumen yang diikenali sbg A Common Word Between Us and You.

Inisiatif ini dimulakan oleh Royal aal al-Bait Institute for Islamic Thought yang berpusat di Amman, Jordan bagi menggalakkan kajian mendalam ttg dialog antara agama dan membiaya beberapa simposium dialog yg melibatkan penyertaan wakil Muslim dan Kristian.

Dokumen The Common Word (CW) direka khas bagi menegaskan sekalipun perbezaan wujud, asas persefahaman agama dan kerjasama antara Muslim-Kristian begitu diperlukan dalam kehidupan bersama.

Dialog Muslim-Kristian relevan dalam konteks Malaysia. Populasi penduduk Malaysia berdasarkan banci tahun 2000 menunjukkan penganut Kristian menduduki tempat ketiga tertinggi dengan catatan 9.1 peratus selepas Buddhis 19.2 peratus dan Muslim 60.4 peratus daripada keseluruhan penduduk Malaysia yg berjumlah 23.27 juta org.

Kedua-dua agama ini turut berkongsi tema dialog spt penyebaran Alkitab, pembinaan rumah ibadah dan isu penukaran agama.

Sebahagian besar drpd isu tsbt menimbulkn kontroversi dan krisis perlembagaan sehingga menuntut kedua-dua pihak berbincang dan berdialog bersama bagi mencari penyelesaian yg boleh disepakati bersama.

Dialog Muslim-Kristian dalam konteks Malaysia berbeza daripada situasi Muslim-Kristian di luar negara kerana di negara ini mereka berkongsi banyak persamaan, iaitu sama-sama hidup dalam konteks yang serupa.

Kedua-dua agama ini berkongsi persekitaran dan politik yang sama. Kedua-duanya adalah warga Malaysia yang bernaung di bawah satu konteks negara yang sama. Konteks inilah yang membentuk persamaan dan semangat solidariti antara Muslim-Kristian kerana sama-sama membina gerakan ketamadunan.

Muslim-Christian RelationsToday, Christians and Muslims are the two largest faith communities in the world. They constitute about half the population of the world.

Both religions are rooted in the monotheistic tradition of the Patriarch Abraham and therefore, Christians and Muslims share a common heritage.

They worship virtually the same God, the God of Abraham, though there are contrasts in their respective understanding of the nature of the Divine Being, God.

For more than fourteen centuries, the followers of these two religious communities have lived together in periods of tension, hostility and open conflict.

The history of their interaction has been characterized by mistrust and misunderstanding.

On the other hand, there have been periods where Christians and Muslims have had a considerable positive interaction.

The most significant changing point in the inter-religious interaction between Christians and Muslims has been issued in the Nostra Aetate resolution.

of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which created a new atmosphere for a closer fellowship between the adherents of both Christianity and Islam.

In order to give a clear picture of the attempts of the Catholic Church for a better understanding between Christians and Muslims, we have to go back to the pre-Vatican II period.

The history of Muslim-Christian interactions were based on superficial polemics, which were designed to denote the other, to vilify him, and to present a libellous, distorted account of Islams belief-system.

In Christian history, Islam appears to have been regarded as Christian heresy rather than a distinctive religious tradition.

However, Islam denied this, holding itself to be a fresh revelation from God and the final religion.

In the Islamic view, the gulf between God and man is too great to be bridged by Jesus or anyone else.

Islam recognizes Christianity as a revealed religion and calls Christians as Ahl al-Kitab People of the Book and not as a divine being.

There were two major conflicts which affected the Christians-Muslims relations, the Crusades amd the Colonisation.

The Effect of the Crusades on Christian-Muslim RelationsIslam and Christianity differ about the means that God has used to reveal Himself.

The field of disagreement involves the character of Prophethood and the concept of incarnation.

These major doctrinal themes make, both religions to stay apart.

With the spread of Islam, Christianity became a minority, and therefore, the polemic against Islam became more specialised.

When the Westerners saw the quick rise of Islam, which controlled almost all of the Eastern part of the world and was then directed to the European countries, they thought of a way to stop it.

Thus, in cooperation with the Catholic Christians, the Westerners found the Crusades as an option and started the war against Muslims and their religion.

The Crusades were seen by Christians as a Holy War, because they were intended to recover

land that allegedly belonged to the Christians.

The Crusades started at the end of the 11th century to recapture the Holy Land (Jerusalem) from the Muslims.

They started as a result of the call of Pope Urban II in his sermon held in the council of Clermont (1095 A.C.) to free the Holy Land which was occupied by the Saracens (the Christian name for the Muslims).

Some eminent historians maintain that the start of this holy war was not the liberation of Jerusalem as claimed by Urban II, but the fulfillment of Gregory VIIs plan for the unification of the Christian Church.

In addition, they view the Crusades as a colonial campaign, a prelude to imperialism.

The Crusades were not waged only against the Islamic Empire or the Turks, but were directed finally against Islam, a religion, which was considered by Christians as a Satanic religion or a demonic religion of apostasy, and Muhammad (p.b.u.h) was a false Prophet, a hypocrite and an agent of the devil, therefore, it had to be subdued.

In fact during the Crusades or the holy wars launched against Muslims, the Islamic faith and the Muslim societies were badly misunderstood by Christians and Westerners.

This led to religious hatred among the followers of both religions.

For Muslims, according to Islamic theological teachings, it is forbidden to vilify Jesus as he is a Prophet of God.

The Crusades have had an important impact on the mutual perceptions of Muslims and Christians, which has been disproportionate to their direct political effects.

The Crusades were undertaken from a complex combination of motives, both religious and temporal: i. The rivalries between competing commercial interests and between the emerging nation-states of Europe;

ii. The Popes desire to reunite Christendom under his authority following the East-West schism of 1054;

iii. A response to the initial Muslim conquests and to the coming of the Seljuqs;

iv. A desire to regain control of the holy places of Palestine, as well as to secure the passage of pilgrims to Jerusalem.

However, Christians saw the Crusades as a just war (Perang yang adil) against Muslims who had seized lands, once in the possession of Christians.

It is also stated that the Crusades were not wars of aggression because their aim was the recovery of what had been Christian territory.

The Effect of Colonisation on the Muslim-Christian RelationsAnother conflict, which involved religon, was the colonial period where the West European nations engaged in their colonial venture in Muslims regions.

The Christian missionaries welcomed the colonial venture to spread the Gospel, to assist local Christian communities, to establish medical care, schools and social help for the people irrespective of their faith.

With the emergence of colonisation, the right time had come to free the world from the danger of Islam.

The main aim of colonisation was to control the Muslim world and all its social, economical and religious dimensions.

The colonial period caused manu problems for the Muslims. It disunited and separated them into small nations, even though they were one nation or one Muslim Ummah.

At this time, Muslims faced the challenge of the newly evolving epistemology and the reinterpretation of Islamic theology.

Nostra Aetate Promoting a better Muslim-Christian RelationsBoth the Crusades and the Western colonisation were directed to the Eastern part of the world, which was under Muslim control.

Therefore, the Muslim-Christian conflicts have been religious in the sense of showing which one is the true faith one must go with.

In other words, which one is the true faith that grants man salvation in the world?

The historical accumulated antipathy of Christians toward Islam was changed in the Second Vatican Council, which aimed for a better relationship with Muslims.

The NA declaration had a deep impact on the relations between the Church and Muslim world.

The third paragraph of this Declaration is of special interest because it speaks about the Churchs concern toward the Muslims and their faith.

NA have opened a new and more positive relation with Muslims, as well as the adherents of other world religions.

From the text of NA, two main characteristics can be extracted:

i. It highlights the common or related points between the Christian and Muslim beliefs, noting at the same time the essential difference: the Christian profession of the divinity of Jesus.

ii. It opens up the possibility of a friendly cooperation and mutual respect between the followers of the two religions to create a peaceful relations and harmonious modern society.

At the beginning of the text regarding Muslims, it is stated that upon the Muslims, too, the Church looks with respect (NA, par.3)

When the Church shows a kind of respect toward Muslims, it means that Muslims are recognised by the Church fathers as followers of a Divine religion.

The Church advised the Christians to show a high regard for Muslims and take them as entities that should be admired.

This kind of mutual respect will lead to the development of friendships and good relations between Christians and Muslims.

The next sentence of NA which indicates respect towards Muslims, worship God, Who is One, Living, Subsistent, Merciful and Almighty, the Creator of the heaven and earthThis text mentions that the Muslims worship and serve the true God.

In this sense, both Christians and Muslims adore, worship or praise the One God, but the nature of understanding the being or the existence of the One God in Islam differes from that in Christianity.

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