Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

DISCOVERING SCRIPTURE IN SCRIPTURE t 9
lowers, save that Muhammad is the last of those messengers
(33:40), and hence Islam will be the last covenant of all. But the
Muslim covenant is more than that. It is not a “new testament” in
the Christian sense but rather a return to an older one—not to the
primordial covenant with Adam, which was for all humankind,
but to the more confessional covenant that God took from Abraham.
Islam is nothing other than the “religion of Abraham,” the
Quran announces (2:135), but it is in fact not very different from
what was given to, and sworn to by, the other prophets (2:136).
Why the religion “of Abraham”? The biblical precedent is clear:
when Jews and Christians refer to the Covenant, they mean the
one that God concluded with Abraham. But the Quran’s firm insistence
on the point has something more behind it. The context is
almost certainly polemical. When Muhammad promulgated his divinely
revealed message of an absolute and purified monotheism in
seventh-century Mecca and Medina, many simply turned their
backs on him, as had Jesus’ audience when he began to speak of
his body as the “bread of life” (John 6:58–61). But for some of the
more acute listeners, the message raised a question. “Why then,”
they asked Muhammad, “should we not just become Jews or
Christians?” God himself instructed his prophet on what to respond.
“Say: No, we follow the religion of Abraham, the monotheist,
who was not one of the polytheists” (Quran 2:135). Islam
is, then, older than either Mosaic Judaism or Jesus Christianity; it
is a return to the father of believers professing his faith at the dawn
of monotheism.
Abraham
Abraham is clearly a transcendentally important figure in the Muslim
revelation. He is mentioned, sometimes at length, in thirty-five
chapters of the Quran, more often than any other biblical personality
except Moses. Moses, like Jesus, is a key figure in the Muslim
view of Sacred History as it is laid out in the Quran. They were the
divinely designated founders of the communities of Jews and
Christians, and each was the bearer of a Book sent down from on