Early Contacts between Christianity and Islam

Staff Writer

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Christianity and Islam have always been two noxious bedfellows and yet always proclaim and wish peace on earth. It would not be a crass assumption to state that the two religions have over the centuries crossed paths and re-crossed paths many times. Crossing paths might have been in their ideologies, conflicts, doctrinal interpretations and even sharing some physical spaces. Therefore, in this brief writing, we will explore the early contacts between Christianity and Islam and see how they have influenced each other.

Early Contacts between Christianity and Islam

The early contacts between Christianity and Islam were not short of frames. According to Kaufman et al., “frames are cognitive shortcuts that people use to help make sense of complex information.” They are means of interpreting our world and perhaps, the world of other people around us. Such interpretations helped them to see things the way they thought best and restructure the things that were not properly set as they thought. The polemics between the two religions hinging majorly on their understanding of the nature of God (one considers it a Tawhid and the other, a Trinity) “created mutually incompatible interpretations” of concepts of monotheism. The early contacts between the two religions were not only unique, but they were also replete with political and ideological affronts. According to Goddard:

Christian-Muslim relations over the centuries have developed on a kind of layer-by-layer basis: what happened in one community in one generation produced a reaction in the other community which in turn contributed to the development of formulations and attitudes in the first community in later generations. 

Briefly, I will describe two such early contacts that underline the Christian-Muslim relationships. They are the contacts with Monk Bahira and Monophysite Christians of the Axum kingdom. 

Monk Bahira

It is claimed that the first Christian contact with the prophet Muhammad was the oft-repeated monk Bahira. According to Daniel, monk Bahira saw in the Prophet while a boy, a messenger of God to be. Therefore, he warned the prophet’s uncle, Abu Talib:

That they should serve him and take care of him because he would become a prophet and the lord of a great people, and that they should immediately protect him from the Jews, for the time would come when these would want to kill him because he was going to say things contrary to the Law of the Jews.

The account rendered by Bahira was nothing different from Jesus’ nativity narration. It was like the message from the angel Gabriel to Joseph in a dream, who was warned to take the child Jesus and mother and depart to Egypt (Matthew 2:13). Goddard would describe such as a kind of biographical parallelism, that is, showing a striking similarity between prophet Muhammad’s boyhood account and Jesus’. Such an association could be considered a historical topos.

The Migration to Axum Kingdom

Early contact between the two religions can also be likened to the first Muslims’ reactions to the persecution in Makkah. They migrated in 615 A.D. to the kingdom of Axum (that is, an ancient town in northern Ethiopia in the 1st to 6th century A.D. Historically, the town was known as Abyssinia).

It was a Christian kingdom that adhered to the Monophysite's understanding of Christianity. That is, they believed that Jesus has one true nature which is primarily divine with attributes.

It could be argued that the choice of Christian Monophysites coincided with the Islamic concept of the nature of Jesus. Also, it supports the account reported by Ibn Ishaq that there was a Christian Monophysite delegation from the town of Najran, in South Arabia to Medina in 622 A.D to dialogue with prophet Muhammad.

One can imagine the early contacts and dialogues that had existed between the two religions were both regional and cultural as well as tactical, and open-minded.

The “new Muslims”, that is, converts from Arabian paganism in Makkah sought solace in Axum as the Christians of Najran, in South Arabia sent a delegation to prophet Muhammad in Madina for dialogue. Critics would argue that the association with the Monophysites could be interpreted as a ‘cognitive shortcut to understanding a Christian sect’s concept of Christology, and in fact, monotheism rather than the orthodox Christian’s concept of Christology and monotheism.  

Finally, it could be said that Islam sought dialogue not with the whole of Christianity but with a particular sect (Monophysite Christianity whose Christology was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon 451) and from a particular region. From this point, both religions framed and reframed their and each other’s ideologies.

Sources

S. Kaufman, M. Elliot, D. Shmueli, (2014) “Frames, Framing and Reframing”. https://www.beyondintractability.org/

H. Goddard (2000) A History of Christian-Muslim Relations. Edinburgh University Press.

N. Daniel (2003) Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. OneWorld, Oxford.

H. Goddard (1998) Christians and Muslims: from double standards to mutual understanding. Curzon Press, Surrey.

S.S. Nadwi (2004) Sirat-un-Nabi: The life of the Prophet, rendered into English by Mohd. Saeed Siddiqi, vol. 3, Kitabbhavan, New Delhi-India.

Ibn Kathir (2006) The life of the Prophet Muhammad, vol. 1, Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, translated by Trevor Le Gassick, Garnet Publishing, Uk. 

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