Fight in the Way of God 101Jerusalem as a holy city; indeed, after Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem is
the most sacred city in the whole of the Muslim world. Moreover, the
Prophet maintained most of the dietary, purity, and marriage restric-
tions he had adopted from the Jews. And until the day he died,
Muhammad continued to engage in peaceful discourse—not theolog-
ical debate—with the Jewish communities of Arabia, just as the Quran
had commanded him to do: “Do not argue with the People of the
Book—apart from those individuals who act unjustly toward you—
unless it is in a fair way” (29:46). Muhammad’s example must have had
a lasting effect on his early followers: as Nabia Abbott has shown,
throughout the first two centuries of Islam, Muslims regularly read
the Torah alongside the Quran.
Certainly, Muhammad understood that there were distinct theo-
logical differences between Islam and the other Peoples of the Book.
But he saw these differences as part of the divine plan of God, who
could have created a single Ummah if he had wanted to but instead
preferred that “every Ummah have its own Messenger” (10:47). Thus,
to the Jews, God sent the Torah, “which contains guidance and light”;
to the Christians, God sent Jesus, who “confirms the Torah”; and
finally, to the Arabs, God sent the Quran, which “confirms the earlier
revelations.” In this way, the ideological differences among the Peo-
ples of the Book is explained by the Quran as indicating God’s desire
to give each people its own “law and path and way of life” (5:42–48).
That being said, there were some theological differences that
Muhammad considered intolerably heretical innovations created by
ignorance and error. Chief among these was the concept of the Trin-
ity. “God is one,” the Quran states definitively. “God is eternal. He
has neither begotten anyone, nor is he begotten of anyone” (112:1–3).
Yet this verse, and the many others like it in the Quran, is in no
way a condemnation of Christianity per se but of Imperial Byzantine
(Trinitarian) Orthodoxy, which, as noted, was neither the sole nor the
dominant Christian position in the Hijaz. From the beginning of his
ministry, Muhammad revered Jesus as the greatest of God’s messen-
gers. Much of the Gospel narrative is recounted in the Quran, though
in a somewhat abridged version, including Jesus’ virgin birth (3:47),
his miracles (3:49), his identity as Messiah (3:45), and the expectation
of his judgment over humanity at the end of time (4:159).