Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

198 t CHAPTER EIGHT
Note: The dhimmi issue is generally moot in modernizing Middle
Eastern states with Western-style constitutions, which guarantee freedom
of religion and equal political rights for all citizens. Yet the
dhimma remains an active—and provocative—component in many
Muslims’ vision of the Islamic state, whether in being, as in Iran or
Saudi Arabia, or as a prospect, as in the program of the Muslims
called fundamentalists or Islamists.
Defining the Truth
Unlike the Jews, who regarded themselves as an ethnic as well as a
religious community united by ritual and behavior, Christians and
Muslims were both solely religious communities who ended up
defining themselves as much by their beliefs (orthodoxy) as by
their behavior (orthopraxy). The normative teaching or doctrine
of the faith community can take several forms. First, it is the body
of teaching explicitly set forth in Scripture and upon which there is
an agreed interpretation. But this handing down of doctrine occurs
in other less formal terms, as we have seen, whether through the
Jews’ Sinai-based oral tradition, the Christians’ conviction that
their bishops were enunciating a true Apostolic Tradition, or the
Muslims’ acceptance of the Prophetic traditions as a veritable second
revelation. Finally, doctrine may rest on a consensus, when the
community was unanimously agreed, or so it seems, on some point
without scriptural warrant, for example, the canon of Hebrew
Scripture, the divinity of Jesus, or that there should be a leader
(caliph, Imam) after Muhammad.
Christianity defined and redefined itself in a series of credal
statements, and in the positive dogma and negative anathemas issued
by the councils of the Church. Among the Jews and Muslims
were officials who might respond to queries, particularly on matters
of correct behavior, but none could pronounce with the same
authority as the Christian bishop, singly or in council, and none
ever enjoyed the authority of the bishop of Rome. Yet both com-