Skip to main content

Christians and Muslims... Know you not your own history?

In light of recent events of culminating hatred, I would like us all to reevaluate our values. I came across this article that I would like to share with everyone. The Malay version will follow in a subsequent post.

Prophet’s Promise to Christians

Dr Muqtedar Khan (Common Ground)

8 January 2010

Muslims and Christians together constitute over fifty per cent of the world and if they lived in peace, we will be half way to world peace. One small step that we can take towards fostering Muslim-Christian harmony is to tell and retell positive stories and abstain from mutual demonisation.

I must remind both Muslims and Christians about a promise that Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, made to Christians. The knowledge of this promise can have enormous impact on Muslim conduct towards Christians. Muslims generally respect the precedent set by their Prophet and try to practise it in their lives.

In 628 AD, a delegation from St. Catherine’s Monastery came to the Prophet and requested his protection. He responded by granting them a charter of rights, which I reproduce below in its entirety. St. Catherine’s Monastery is located at the foot of Mt. Sinai and is the world’s oldest monastery. It possesses a huge collection of Christian manuscripts, second only to the Vatican, and is a world heritage site. It also boasts the oldest collection of Christian icons. It is a treasure house of Christian history that has remained safe for 1400 years under Muslim protection. Here goes the Promise to St. Catherine:

“This is a message from Muhammad bin Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them.

Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.

No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries. No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses.

Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate. No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them.

If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray. Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants. No one of the (Muslim) nation is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).”

The first and the final sentence of the charter are critical. They make the promise eternal and universal. The Prophet asserts that Muslims are with Christians near and far straight away rejecting any future attempts to limit the promise to St. Catherine alone. By ordering Muslims to obey it until the Day of Judgment, the charter again undermines any future attempts to revoke the privileges. These rights are inalienable. The Prophet declared Christians, all of them, as his allies and he equated ill treatment of Christians with violating God’s covenant.

A remarkable aspect of the charter is that it imposes no conditions on Christians for enjoying these privileges. It is enough that they are Christians. They are not required to alter their beliefs, they do not have to make any payments and they do not have any obligations. This is a charter of rights without any duties! The document is not a modern human rights treaty but even though it was penned in 628 AD, it clearly protects the right to property, freedom of religion, freedom of work, and security of the person.

When I look at Islamic sources, I find in them unprecedented examples of religious tolerance and inclusiveness. They make me want to become a better person. I think the capacity to seek good and do good inheres in all of us. When we subdue this predisposition towards the good, we deny our fundamental humanity.

Dr. Muqtedar Khan is Director of Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware and a fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, US


References:

http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/Prophet-Muhammads-promise-to-Christians.html

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=/data/opinion/2010/January/opinion_January44.xml&section=opinion

http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/charter1.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0SsRmC6O5k



Comments

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
syhcool said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

Popular posts from this blog

Help is always far away

Help is never far away. That is the old adage that has been drummed into us ever since we were young. No matter where you are, and what difficulty you are going through, someone will be close at hand to help. Except they aren't. Many a time no one in your vicinity gives a rat's ass. Or could be in a mess of their own to even think that someone else may need the support. Just that little bit of assurance to show that they care. Sometimes it can be in the smallest things. A kind word. A check up of how one is doing. Yet help does come. Someone takes the time to respond, in short messages, all the way from across the Pacific Ocean. Someone does take the time to relate, and share their own experiences, and offers words of comfort from across the country. Yes, help is at hand, but it is always far away. *picture credit here

The Forbidden Kingdom No More

Yesterday is a day that would forever go down the sands of time as... "The Day I Fed Two Hundred Ravenous Mouths with Bottomless Pits" Oh the horror!... The Pain!... The Suffering!!! Like a swarm of locusts they came, wave upon wave upon wave... Like a farmer protecting his crop I could only look on and stare, as they darkened the sky, before zeroing in for the kill... Tears streamed down my eyes as I watched them strip every last grain of maize and corn that I had planted at the begininning of the year... My knees thudded to the ground, as I numbly watched the carnage around me, my tired brain barely registering what my eyes perceived. "So this is what it feels like"... I thought in my brain... "This thing called Open House" . .. ... Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut I'm just being dramatic here ;) Yesterday was actually a day that I'm going to remember for a long time, simply because it was graced with the presence of those eager young minds I he

My nightmare come true

This is it. It's finally happened. The stuff of bad dreams for many language teachers has today materialised for me, rearing its ugly head, scoffing at my abilities as a language professional. This is an actual letter from one of my students as part of their coursework. Final year student. Soon to graduate and meet the workforce of the nation. Read it and weep...