Author: dbrown@isrme.org

In the beginning was the Word. The phrase is biblical, but the idea is also qurʾanic. Before anything else was, God spoke. Christians and (most) Muslims also agree that God’s speech is uncreated and eternal. But what is the nature of this eternal Word, and how do we encounter it? Here we quickly part ways. For Christians the eternal Word is ultimately a person, for Muslims, a book. We can’t avoid this crucial divergence for long, but let’s first begin with something we hold in common: We do both call a particular set of writings the “Word” of God. That is, we both read books that we believe are in some sense spoken by God, and we come to these books as reliable and authoritative guides to what ultimately matters most. In our doctrines, whether Christian or Muslim, scriptures hold a primary place; they are a foundation for everything else that we believe. There are good theological reasons to start our conversations with the Bible and with the Qur’an.

Why not start with God?

God obviously comes before the Book, and so why wouldn’t we start with a chapter on God? Good question, and both traditions give us reason to take the question seriously. Paul tells us that the basic attributes of the Creator are known to humans from the creation, and that we are therefore without excuse when we substitute idols for God; the Qur’an similarly spends a great deal of  space calling attention to “signs” in the creation that point to the Creator. But a quick glance at actual human beliefs and real human lives suggests that when left to their own devices people develop crazy and conflicting ideas about the spiritual world. The religions of India provide an excellent laboratory, as do the modern gods and goddesses of the post-Christian west. We may have no excuse to be consistently wrong about God, but when we are left on our own, we inevitably are. For both Muslims and Christians, the only antidote is an intervention by the Creator. The only way to have an accurate understanding of God and his will is via revelation. We have no choice but to start with the Word.  

There are also practical reasons to begin with our books. In practice, Muslims who want to know about Christianity will assume they should start with the Bible. Similarly, Christians who want to learn about Islam will assume that they should read the Qur’an.

But when we actually start to read the Qur’an, or the Bible, we often come away confused, or worse, condescending and dismissive, with our biases confirmed. Our confusion is understandable. When Christians read the Bible, we read it against the background of a well-developed worldview, informed by years of training about how to read scripture, and often with minds and memories full of Sunday School stories that help us make sense of it. We send pastors to seminary to learn how to read the Bible correctly, and each Sunday we listen to those same pastors pass those lessons on to us in simplified form.

Muslims do something similar when they come to the Qur’an. In other words we each bring a great deal of prior knowledge to our reading of Scripture, and much of that prior knowledge will not be known to first-time readers. Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians are sometimes more honest about this than either Protestant Christians or Muslims. In Catholic and Orthodox understanding, the Scripture does not stand alone, but must be interpreted via the life and experience and authority of the Church. In practice, as we will see, Muslims also do not rely on the Qur’an alone, but read it through the lens of centuries of Muslim tradition, law and doctrine. And although, in theory, Protestants affirm Sola Scriptura, scripture alone, real-life Protestant reading of the Bible is shaped by shared assumptions, doctrines, and history. Few of these shared assumptions will be obvious to the Muslim reader, nor will Muslim assumptions about how to approach the Qur’an be obvious to the Christian reader.

So a Christian should not be surprised to find the Qur’an a frustrating book. On first reading you may find it hard to enjoy. The language is difficult. Translations often don’t help.  Some of the most common translations read like bad imitations of the King James Bible, and even the best translations are a constant reminder that literature like this is really hard to translate. You will come to the Qur’an accustomed to familiar biblical literary structures like stories, letters, history, poetry or proverbs. The Qur’an has few of these. The text jumps from topic to topic. The context is often completely opaque; the text gives us no history, except in the most indirect way. When we do come across a narrative, the Qur’an often seems to omit critical details, leaving us puzzled.

You have probably never encountered literature anything like it. This is not surprising. There is no other literature like it.

If you are a Christian, what was your first reaction upon reading the Qur’an, and does the above ring true? If you have never yet read any of the Qur’an, give it a try. First impressions are often very telling, and I’m interested to know them.

The first thing the reader will encounter in most modern printed translations of the Qur’an, or the Bible, after wisely skipping over the translator’s introduction, will be a table of contents. The Qur’an’s table of contents will list the names of the 114 suras of the Qur’an. For convenience, western writers often refer to the suras by number. Muslims, however, usually memorize and refer to the suras by their Arabic names, just as Christians memorize the names of the books of the Bible. Unlike chapter divisions of the Bible, which were added later for convenience, the suras of the Qur’an are original to the text and each sura is a self-contained literary unit. A better biblical comparison is the the book of Psalms. Each Psalm, like each sura, is a self-contained literary composition, and the 150 Psalms together form a larger work with discernible themes and patterns of composition.

Like the names of books of the Bible, the titles of the suras do not belong to the text itself, but were added later. Sometimes these vary slightly. As you browse through these titles, you will recognize familiar names: Jonah/Yunus (10), Joseph/Yusuf (12), Abraham/Ibrahim (14), Mary/Maryam (19), Noah/Nuh (71). You will also come across titles that hint at familiar biblical themes:  Repentance/al-Tawba (9),  Believers/al-Mu’minun (23), The Forgiver/Ghafir (40), The Resurrection/al-Qiyama (75), The Most High/al-A’la (87). The significant overlaps with biblical characters and themes are important. They also turn out to be rather misleading for Christian readers of the Qur’an. The majority of sura titles are short and cryptic – The Cow, The Thunder, The Bee, The Cave, The Poet, The Ants, The Spider, The Smoke, the Moon, The Jinn, He Frowned, The Dawn, The Daybreak. These are usually drawn from some distinctive or memorable word that occurs in the sura. One sura is named for Muhammad himself (47) indicating that this sura is the only place in the Qur’an where Muhammad is mentioned by name. 

As you browse the contents of the Qur’an may also notice that the suras are ordered roughly from longest to shortest. The first sura is an exception. This has the curious effect of placing the shortest suras, which are generally thought to be oldest, at the end of the book so that we are reading it in reverse chronological order. Introductions to the Qur’an sometimes recommend starting with the later suras, not just because they may be earliest, but also because they are, well, short, and presumably easier to digest. Michael Sells does this in his Approaching the Qur’an, and his translations of these suras are excellent. But the choice is dubious, and I don’t recommend it. When Muslims read the book, they often proceed from beginning to end. In fact many versions of the Qur’an are divided into 30 parts of roughly equal length so that the book can be read through devotionally in a month. It makes sense for Christians who want to familiarize themselves with Muslim ways of experiencing the Qur’an to do the same.

Each Sura is further divided into verses, called Ayat (singular Aya). These verse divisions are not original to the text, and numbering schemes vary slightly. Most recent translations follow a consistent scheme, but the Arberry translation, for example, uses an alternate verse numbering scheme. As you browse beyond the table of contents, you may notice other curious and distinctive literary features. For example, every sura but one (sura 57, al-Tawba) begins with the invocation “In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate” and twenty-nine suras follow this invocation with between one and five mysterious letters. I have no idea why they are there, or what function they perform, but they are an integral part of the text and I am in good company since the best Qur’an commentators also have no idea.

Readers may have difficulty making sense of how suras are organized. This is not an issue for the very short suras. But longer and even medium length suras often seem, on the surface, to be stitched together rather randomly, moving unexpectedly between themes or topics. Trying to figure out why the suras are put together the way they are is a very modern pre-occupation (though not a post-modern one, since post-modern scholars are often quite at peace with apparent randomness). On the side of western critical scholarship, Richard Bell, for instance, spent many undoubtedly happy hours cutting the text of the Qur’an into small pieces and trying to paste it back together again in ways that made better sense to him. Some Muslim scholars have also spent a lot of time on this problem, but with the opposite aim of showing that the internal organization of suras is not at all random but that they have a strong coherence that is discernible – for those with eyes to see.  For most interpreters of the Qur’an before the modern period, and for most ordinary Muslims now, questions about the internal structure of suras was and is a non-issue. For them the Qur’an was simply God’s word, and therefore just as God wanted it to be. The job of humans is not to figure out how it might be better organized, but to figure out what God has to say to them through it.  

Christians who struggle to understand the structure of the Qur’an will better understand the challenges a Muslim friend will face if he opens a Bible. The contents of the Bible – 66 “books” in two separate “testaments” composed over many centuries by roughly 40 different human authors – will be daunting to any first time reader, but Muslim readers face special challenges. A Muslim familiar with the Qur’an has every reason to expect the Bible to be composed of three books, the Torat (Torah), the Zabur (the Psalms) and the Injil (the Gospel), each revealed directly from God to a particular Prophet. The fact that this scheme appears to correspond to actual components of the Bible, only heightens the confusion. Why does the Bible contain four Gospels, not one, and why do these read as historical accounts rather than as words from God delivered by the Prophet Jesus?  And how does poetry, history, or letters to churches fit into this scheme? A Muslim reader of the Bible will need, even more than a Christian reader of the Qur’an, to set aside prior expectations, and to read the book for what it is rather than what he expects or wants it to be.  And both Muslim and Christian readers will do well to return to the advice I gave in the introduction – don’t read alone.  If at all possible, Muslim readers should read the Bible with a Christian friend, and Christian readers should read the Qur’an with a Muslim friend.

As I finish writing this section, I am fearful that I am becoming (Oh no!) pedantic. Have I piled on too much detail and lost the thread?  How does it read to you?

I concluded this section was originally in the wrong place, so I’ve move it up.

I advise newcomers to the Qur’an, before reading, to pause instead to listen. The title “Qur’an” means “recitations”, and the book is intended to be recited and heard.

It is easy to find recordings of the best Qur’an reciters by going, for example, to Qurʾan.com, where you can select any passage of the Qur’an, click on settings, choose a reciter, and press play. I suggest choosing “AbdulBaset AbdulSamad (Mujawwad)”. Abd al-Baset Abd al-Samad was among the best known and most popular Qur’an reciters, and his voice is exquisite. The mujawwad style is one of two major traditions of recitation. It is more stylized and musical than the murratal style. If you are a Protestant, what you hear may seem alien. Christians from traditions in which the Bible is chanted, sometimes in an unfamiliar language, will be on more familiar ground. But alien sounding or not, it seems to me many listeners will come away with increased appreciation for the skill, training, emotion and centuries of tradition that combine in this exquisite art form. Qur’anic recitation is more than an aesthetic exercise; it also makes a clear theological message: These words are no ordinary words, but are unrivalled in beauty, in truth or in perfection; therefore they demand to be recited not just with precision, but also with artistic skill. Like a Bach Mass, the best Qur’an recitation is doctrine performed as high art.

Equally helpful is to observe Muslim hearers of the recited Qur’an. Listening to the Qur’an is sometimes an aesthetically and emotionally charged experience in which the very words of God are experienced. In Muslim-majority societies the sound of the recited Qur’an marks holidays, births and deaths, and measures out the rhythms of the day. Consequently, the sounds of the Qur’an may have a deep emotional resonance, even for Muslims who are not particularly pious, in the same way that an Oxford agnostic may find that church bells, Christmas Carols, or the melody of an old hymn still evoke powerful emotion. A surprising number of Muslims memorize the entire Qur’an, often as children, contests and ceremonies to celebrate the completion this feat of memory are common in many Muslim communities, and those who accomplish it are thereafter honored as Hafiz al-Qur’an.  The words of the Qur’an are everywhere read, recited, remembered, a constant reminder that God speaks.

If we come to read the Qur’an after listening to it, and with with a sense of what it evokes for our Muslim friends, we will be much better able to recognize the limitations of a translation, where the rhythm, the rhyme, the musicality and the economy of the Arabic are lost and unrecoverable. But in the end most of us, whether Muslim or Christian, will have no choice but to pick up a translation. The Qur’an is intended to be read and understood, not merely appreciated for its aesthetic qualities. And as we read even the most flawed translation will not obscure the most obvious literary feature of the Qur’an: the voice we are hearing (with the notable exception of suras 1, 113 and 114 which function like opening and closing prayers) is the unmediated voice of God. 

This brief statement will raises two charged questions: Is the author really God? And can Christians address God as “Allah”? These questions are important, and endlessly discussed, often unhelpfully. But because these questions risk distracting from our main goal of listening to the text itself they need to be dealt with. I will address them separately in the next two sections.

Authorship is complicated. When we ask “who is the author?” of any particular text we often squeeze many questions into one:

In the case of scriptures we likely have in mind the metaphysical origins of the text. Before any human spoke or wrote these words, did God speak them? And if so, how? The question is more complex if we come to it with strong views about the power and transcendence of God. Can any words be spoken unless God enables them to be spoken, or written unless God enables them to be written? So how are the words of one particular text uniquely God’s speech in a way that other words are not?  We might use the word “inspired” for both The Book of Job, and for Hamlet. Both are works of genius. So how is one divinely inspired in a way that the other is not? The nonbeliever might reply that there is no difference. For the believer, whether Christian and Muslim, there is a clear difference that involves claims to unique perfection, unique authority and unique universality. We believe that God has chosen to perfectly and authoritatively speak to all of humanity in these words and only in these words. Putting the question this way our claims are irreconcilable: A Christian who believes the Bible is the unique and authoritative word of God will be unable to call God the author of the Qur’an, nor can a Muslim consider God the author of the Bible in the same way that he believes him to be author of the Qur’an.  A Christian might nevertheless read the Qur’an as a valuable classic, possibly thinking of it as “inspired” in the sense that we call other great classics inspired. And many Muslims will be willing to read the Bible with respect, even though most contemporary Muslims believe that it has been corrupted so that human words have become mixed in with divine words. More on that below.

Or we may be asking a literary question: As a matter of literary form, whose voice is speaking in the text? In the case of the Qur’an the answer is easy: God is speaking.  This is, in fact, one of the ways in which the Qur’an stands apart from other world scriptures – it is much more self-conscious and direct in its claims to authority and revelation. For the Bible, the questions of literary authorship is far more complex, and becomes especially confusing for Muslim readers.  Sometimes Paul or Peter or Isaiah or Luke is speaking; sometimes God speaks directly; sometimes the voice is that of an unknown historian, poet or theologian. In this book, when I talk about God speaking in the Qur’an, I will most often be referring to authorship in this literary sense. When I talk about God speaking in the Bible, I will more often intend it in a metaphysical sense: God is the ultimate source of the words, regardless of the human voice. 

Finally, we may be asking about the history of the text. What human voices first spoke or human hands first wrote down the words of the text, and when? This question will be important regardless of how we answer the metaphysical one. Through what human agents did the book come to us?  Was the Qur’an recorded by one person, or by many, over a short time or long? Who were those who passed it on, wrote it down, edited or copied it, possibly added their own stamp to it, or inadvertently changed it? Are these not, in some sense, authors too? Thorny questions will inevitably arise with regard to the relationship of this human “authorship” with claims to divine authorship.

With regard to the question of human authorship, Christians and Muslims face a huge divide about how they think about scripture and revelation. Most Muslims hold that Muhammad had no part to play other than faithfully transmitting the words he was given. He was only the channel for words that are entirely God’s. This contrasts sharply with Christian views of the inspiration of scripture, whereby God speaks through the human voices, pens and circumstances of human authors to communicate his word. Muslims tend to come to the Bible expecting an idealized book that matches the Qur’an and consequently are quick to believe that the Bible Christians read is at best a corrupted version of the real thing. Christians will naturally approach the Qur’an as the work of Muhammad or of other human authors. Critical scholarship of the qur’anic and biblical texts further complicates the divide. Modern scholars of the Qur’an have suggested that the text may have taken much longer to reach its final, canonical form than the Muslim tradition suggests, and even the Muslim tradition records evidence of a complex process of compilation and editing–a process that literary scholars think they can trace from the text itself. Muslim polemicists like Ahmed Deedat have eagerly used modern biblical criticism to attack the integrity of the biblical text. Because my aim is for Christians to understand how most Muslims view the Qur’an and the Bible, and for Muslims to understand how most Christians view the two books, this book will not explore these important questions or debates in any depth.

Here’s the difficulty I’m feeling right now. This section seems like it is not finished – that questions raised by critical scholarship about the origins of the Qur’an are hanging out there. But I didn’t really intend to take those on here. How to deal with this? [I’ve updated since asking this question – does it work?]

The question is often phrased, “Do we worship the same God?” These two questions are not exactly the same, but they do overlap, and they both squeeze many questions into one:

Linguistic: What do the words “God” or “Allah” themselves mean?  Where did we get them from? Does it matter that English speakers inherited the work “God” from the name of a deity worshipped by teutonic tribes, or that Allah was part of a pre-Islamic Arab pantheon? Should it impact our answer that Arabic speaking Christians referred to God as “Allah” before the rise of Islam, and have continued to do so up to the present? In light of history, etymology and widespread misuse of the name “God” in Western cultures, should English speakers be comfortable addressing Yahweh as “God” or would we be wiser to limit ourselves to biblical titles.

Theological: Do the attributes of Allah in the Qur’an and of YHWH / Elohim / Theos in the Bible overlap sufficiently that a normal person would recognize these as varying portraits of the same Creator God? Where is the line between disagreeing with someone, maybe sharply, about the nature of God and concluding that we worship completely different Gods? By analogy, if my brother and I argue about what our father is really like, at what point will I conclude that we are not talking about the same person, but about different people altogether, and that perhaps this is not my brother at all but an imposter who has invaded his body?

Christological: When I worship Jesus as the incarnate third person of the Trinity, must my Muslim friend condemn me as an idolater? When my Muslim friend rejects the divine Sonship of Jesus, is his idea of God merely incomplete and inadequate, or is it so entirely false as to be unrecognizable to me?

Soteriological: Is my Muslim friend’s sincere service to and devotion to Allah true and acceptable worship, such that it is in some sense “saving”, or does it ultimately lead away from God? Similarly, can my Muslim friend see my worship of God in Christ as worship that God finds acceptable or will I be condemned as an idolater? Can we distinguish between worship as seeking God, and worship as finding him?

Ontological: Are God and Allah references to real, and independent, ontological beings, like Aslan and Tash in the Narnia stories, such that one is the Creator God, and the other is an evil deity?

Common sense: When I talk about God with a Muslim friend, will it seem obvious and natural to us to assume that we are talking and disagreeing about the same being, or does it seem more natural to assume that we share nothing and must explain everything? Will it seem most normal to talk about “my God” and “your Allah”, or to talk about one Creator God?

Each of these questions involves multiple questions, and each set of questions is worth a long conversation in itself. We need not assume that the answers to all of them are the same. When we combine all of these questions into a single question, and insist on a single yes or no answer, we cheat ourselves of rich discussion and of clear thinking.

Astute readers (no doubt all of you) will complain that I have not answered any of these. That’s your job, not mine.

For both the Bible and the Qur’an, it makes sense to read from the beginning. In both, the start of the book anticipates what is to come. Just as the early chapters of Genesis lay a foundation for the entire biblical worldview, so the opening sura of the Qur’an lays out the broad outlines of the worldview it reflects. And because the two introductory sections function in surprisingly different ways, reading the two together can help us understand the unique trajectory of each book.

The aim of Genesis is simple and ambitious:  It sets out to tell the story of how the world – not just humans, but the entire cosmos – came to be what it is, a tragic mixture of beauty marred by ugliness, good struggling with evil, life cut short by death. The first three chapters of Genesis also anticipate a solution in evocative ways that will then be echoed in other parts of the Bible. The first three chapters of Genesis sets up the problem to which every subsequent book of the Bible must in some way respond.  Everything that follows struggles with this problem, or points to its resolution. But Genesis presents this problem in the form of a story. The basic realities of the cosmos are laid out, not didactically, but as a narrative – the story of God’s good and perfect creation and the tragic de-creation (curse, sin, death) triggered by the first human couple’s tragic rebellion against God.

By contrast, the first chapter of the Qur’an, “The Opening”, is an invocation – an opening prayer. Like the Lord’s Prayer, this prayer serves both a liturgical and a teaching purpose, and it is just as well known to Muslims as the Lord’s Prayer is to Christians. It is short, its phrases are rhythmic, and the words are easy to memorize. A pious Muslim will recite the Opening multiple times during each of the five daily prayers, and by repeating these words he learns, affirms and repeatedly reaffirms foundational beliefs about God, the cosmos and the human condition. Muslim commentators, for good reason, treat this chapter as an encapsulation of the entire qur’anic message. The remainder of the Qur’an will repeat, elaborate, and illustrate this message, but the message will not vary in any significant way.

Christians might be able to better understand the structure and function of the first sura of the Qur’an in this way: Imagine that we took the Psalms to be the one clear and final scriptural revelation. And imagine that everything else in the Bible served to tell the story of why the Psalms are of ultimate importance and why we should constantly recite them, live by them, let their words pervade our lives. The first Psalm would then serve as an excellent introduction to the book as a whole – it would be read liturgically, as it in fact is read, and by doing so we would repeatedly reinforce many of the main lessons of the book.

This liturgical and didactic start to the Qur’an contrasts sharply with the narrative form of Genesis, and this difference is critical to understanding what follows. While the Qur’an does incorporate narratives, those narratives always serve a didactic purpose – they illustrate and teach, and they almost always teach the same lessons.  Almost all Qur’anic narratives will repeat the same basic plot line: human communities stray from worship of God and embrace idols; God in his mercy sends prophetic messengers and books to warn them; those communities and individuals who reject God’s guidance suffer judgment in this world and the next; those who submit are rewarded by God in this world and the next.  The names of the prophets and their communities vary, but the basic lesson to be learned never changes, and it is not difficult to see where this is going: Muhammad and the Qur’an, like all previous prophets and books, are God’s mercy to humankind;  those who reject them will be judged; those who submit will be rewarded.

Although the Qur’an contains stories and alludes to stories, it is difficult to think of the book as forming one unfolding story. By contrast it is easy and natural to read the Bible as one extended and complex story with one dominant protagonist, one major plot line within which hundreds of minor characters play roles and many subplots coalesce, and an ultimate resolution.  This is not a forced reading; most of the human biblical authors are themselves deeply conscious that they telling parts of a larger story of God and the people of God. Muslims do believe that the Qur’an is part of a story, but that story is external to the book itself.  For Christians, the Bible recounts the drama within which the revelation of God in Christ is the decisive act; for Muslims, the Qur’an itself is itself the culminating act, and the story, the “gospel” of Islam, is the story of Muhammad which is the subject of the next chapter.

Clearly we will need to ask different questions as we begin to read each book. In the case of the Bible it will make sense to ask “What is the story to which this serves as introduction, and where do we fit into that story?” In the case of the Qur’an, it will make better sense to ask, “What lessons are we being taught, and what does heeding those lessons demand of us?” One useful warning here for readers of the Bible, whether Christian or Muslim, is that when we read the Bible primarily looking for rules to live by, we are likely to miss its main point. For further development of that theme, look ahead to the chapter on Law. A practical suggestion for Christian readers of the Qur’an may be to approach it as we might approach reading the Psalms.

Can the essence of the Qur’an really be condensed into 7 short verses? Most Muslim and non-Muslim scholars of the Qur’an tell us that the Fatiha functions this way, and it will certainly be handy for us if it does. But there are some problems. First, as we have already seen, the Opening is a prayer and thus differs in form from every other sura, except the final two (113 and 114), which are also brief prayers. In these three short suras the reciter or worshipper seems to be speaking rather than God. When this happens the command “Say” (Qul) routinely precedes what is to be recited so that we are left with no doubt that the voice is God’s. Suras 113 and 114, for example, begin with “Say.” But not the first sura. Muslim commentators were bothered by this, and insisted that the command “Say!” must be implied so that the voice really is God’s, instructing believers how to pray. But it takes work not to see that this sura stands apart and the real body of the Qur’an begins with the second sura.  Another more substantial problem is that the the oneness of God, Tawḥīd, gets no clear mention here. Again, Muslim commentators argue that it is implied. But for a succint and emphatic affirmation of the oneness of God we have to jump to the end of the book to sura 112, Surat al-Ikhlas:

Say, ‘He is God the One, 
God the eternal.
He begot no one nor was He begotten
No one is comparable to Him

The Christian reader is likely to see in this powerful little sura (take the time to listen to it) an unambiguous and emphatic rejection of the Incarnation and Trinity. Many Muslims will agree. But Christians, along with Jews, affirm just as confidently, that God is One, and the Shema (Dt 6:4-5; Mk 12:29) makes this point just as powerfully as Surat al-Ikhlas:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart 
and with all your soul and with all your might. 

Both the Qur’an and the Bible tell us “God is One.” Both Christians and Muslims affirm that God is One.  Do we mean the same thing?

He is God the One

Here in Sura 112 and throughout the Qur’an, the oneness of God means two things.  First, “No one is comparable to Him”, he is unique, “there is no god but God,” and thus there is only one (wāḥid) God who alone is to be worshipped. For the Qur’an the single unforgiveable sin is shirk, “associating” anything with God (in plain language, idolatry). Isaiah would have had no trouble with this, nor do any of the New Testament writers, nor does any Christian I know. On this point the main challenge that we all face, whether Christians or Muslim, is a shared one: Saying “there is no god but God” is easy, living a life free of associating lesser things with God is harder. 

Second, “He is God the One” also tells us that God is One (aḥad) in himself. This is also standard issue monotheism:

God has never had a child. Nor is there any god beside Him – if there were, each god would have taken his creation aside and tried to overcome the others. May God be exalted above what they describe! (Q 23:91)

At its most basic, this verse is a simple rejection of a family of gods, a pantheon – for even in a mostly harmonious family, as John of Damascus argues,  “difference introduces strife. And if any one should say that each rules over a part, what of that which established this order and gave to each his particular realm? For this rather would be God.” But we can go a step further. A pantheon is just the crudest way of talking about a divided God, but for monotheists there can be no division of any kind in God. God is not composed of parts, or puzzle pieces, so that once correctly assembled we have a complete god, or that, should a puzzle piece be missing, we would somehow be be left with a lesser god.  This is why John of Damascus repeatedly insists that God is “uncompound” because “all that is composed of imperfect elements must necessarily be compound. But from perfect subsistences no compound can arise.”  Another way that Christian theologians have sometimes expressed the oneness of God: “There is no number in God.” Or as Denys Turner says, with regard to God, there is no counting to be done, of any kind. God is simply God: perfect, transcendant, needing nothing.

To be fair, as soon as we start talking like this we have entered territory that will sound more familiar to Christian theologians than to Muslims. The Qur’an does not invite theologizing of this kind. God is ultimately ineffable, unknowable, beyond human understanding, and the Oneness of God is not something that needs explanation. It simply is. As creatures we simply accept what he says about himself.  Christians also agree that God is incomprehensible, but Christians find the Bible, and their experience of prayer and worship, forces theology on them.  To treasure and understand our experience of the grace of God the Father, the love of God in Christ and the fellowship of God the Holy Spirit, while also affirming the Oneness of God, we have no choice but to do some hard thinking, and to struggle with language that is inadequate to express what we affirm.    

The first sura makes two great affirmations of the sovereignty of God, God is “Lord of the Worlds” and he is “Master of the Day of Judgment.” We can begin with a survey of the worlds of which God is Lord. Muslim commentators often take these to be the worlds of humans, jinn, and angels. The obvious point is that nothing exists, visible or invisible, known or unknown to us, that is outside the scope of God’s Lordship. As a Christian, I agree. Yet what the Qur’an says about these “worlds” and their inhabitants seems a strange mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar.  

The strangest world is that of the Jinn, who are neither human nor angelic, but a distinct created order. 

Belief in Jinn (singular Jinni) is an enormously important in shaping religious life in just about every Muslim society. Via spinoffs of A Thousand and One Nights like the Aladdin stories, Genies have also been successfully exported to Western popular culture.  While often wildly exaggerated, these popular beliefs about Jinn are firmly rooted in the Qur’an, where the Jinn are described as a distinct order of being, neither human nor angelic, and created from fire (7:12, 15:27, 38:76, 55:15). They are intelligent and moral creatures that can be either good or evil (72:14), can be preached to and seem to have their own prophets (6:130), and will be judged (55). Though invisible to humans, the Jinn interact with and interpenetrate the world of humans and animals. Solomon, famously, was able to harness their labor for his building projects, and they can do extraordinary feats (27:39). But evil Jinn opposed every prophet (6:112), and the pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped them (6:128) and sought their help (72:6).  Some Christians will be inclined to identify Jinn with the demons encountered in the New Testament, especially in the Gospels; a better comparison might be to the invisible world of faeries, goblins or gnomes of European folklore.

The story of one particular Jinni, Iblis, which is repeated several times in the Qur’an, is an especially helpful illustration of the scope of God’s sovereignty.

When God decided to create man He announced his plans to the angels. They were dismayed. Why would God place a creature on earth who would create mischief and shed blood? Despite these objections God created Adam from clay and taught him the names of all things. Then he showed his creations to the angels, and said, “Now tell me the names of these if you speak truly.” They replied “We only know what you have taught us.” (2:31-32) But Adam was able to tell them all the names. Then God commanded his angels, “Bow down to Adam.” And they bowed, except Iblis, (2:34) who said to God, “I will never bow to a mortal who you created from dried clay, formed from dark mud.” (15:33) and he defied God’s command.

In the face of God’s wrath, Iblis begged for respite from destruction, and his request was granted. He then stated his intention:  “O my Lord! Because Thou has put me in the wrong, I will make wrong fair-seeming to them on the earth and I will put them all in the wrong—except thy servants among them, sincere and purified.” In return, God granted specific authorization, but with limitations:  “Lead to destruction whichever of them you can with your voice; muster your cavalry and infantry against them, share their wealth and their children with them, and make promises to them–Satan promises nothing but delusion–but you will have no authority over My [true] servants: Your Lord can take care of them well enough.” (17:64-65) In this role as tempter of humans, Iblis is given a more generic name, Shayṭān, Satan, and he immediately begins to carry out this new commission, tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden: “Then Satan whispered to them, to reveal to them that which was hidden from them of their shameful parts.  He said, ‘Your Lord has only prohibited you from this tree lest you become angels. Or lest you become immortals.’  And he swore to them, ‘Truly, I am for you a sincere adviser.’  So he led them by a delusion . . .” (7:20-22). 

Christians will see the obvious points of connection with Genesis—the naming of the animals, God’s creation of Adam from earth, the role of the Devil as Satan the tempter, the famous forbidden tree, the promise of immortality, and the shame that follows rebellion. But the sometimes subtle differences are also important. Rather than Adam naming the animals, God teaches the names to him; God seems to exempt his sincere servants from Satan’s temptation; and God quickly forgives Adam, though he is not restored to the garden. The most intriguing departure from the Genesis account is story of the angels and the rebellion of Iblis. Earlier generations of Christians and Jews would not have found this story so strange. Jews passed on the tradition about God’s command to the angels to bow before Adam. So did Syriac speaking Christians.  In the Syriac Christian version of the story, the bowing of the Angels has a clear theological point—it anticipates the future when every knee will bow before Christ, the new Adam.

The Qur’an’s version has its own, strikingly different point. When God says bow, the angels must bow, whether they like the idea or not. Iblis may rebel, but he can never escape God’s will, and even in his rebellion, he will continue to address God as Lord. God’s absolute authority overshadows all the action, and all other actors. Satan’s authority in relation to humans is explicitly given by God, and God exercises complete freedom to show mercy or condemn. The assertion of God’s complete sovereignty over evil and the devil will not seem completely strange to readers of the bible. The heavenly court scene in the first chapter of Job, for example, when Satan requires explicit divine authority to test the godly Job, seems to make a similar point, and God tells us in Isaiah “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things” (45:7). But the Qur’an seems more direct and unambiguous than the Bible in asserting God’s active determination of everything, good and evil, without exception. We see this especially in pairs of divine names that affirm opposites: He honors and humiliates; he grants and withholds; he offers help and causes distress; he guides and he leads astray. God, in the end, is responsible for all that is. It is not surprising that the creed of the dominant brand of Islamic theology affirmed, unambiguously, “that good and evil both come from God.”