Posted by An interesting quote from Philip Yancey’s Vanishing Grace:
A young Muslim man recently told Yancey, “I have read the entire Koran and can find in it no guidance on how Muslims should live as a minority in society. I have read the entire New Testament many times and can find in it no guidance on how Christians should live as a majority.”
I haven’t read Vanishing Grace but the statement itself might very well be true.
While both religions started out as insurgent movements, Christianity stayed on the margins of mass/state acceptance much longer. The Bible was produced in a climate of minority status. Jesus Christ (or Prophet Isa as he is called by Muslims) himself was crucified for his beliefs and three centuries passed in the shadows before the Emperor Constantine converted and gave state sanction to Christianity.
Prophet Muhammad, on the other hand, while persecuted at the beginning of his ministry and forced to flee Mecca, eventually returned and conquered the city, converting its population to Islam in the process. Early parts of the Qur’an were revealed during the early stages of Islam’s rise but there is an air of defiance about the entire book; a confidence that the Righteous will overthrow the old order and spread the faith.
Perhaps the two Prophets had to adopt rhetorical and proselytizing strategies which best suited the variant characters of their respective peoples. I do not think that the Arabs of Prophet Muhammad’s time would have taken kindly to a religion which advocated turning the cheek. Whereas the sometimes polemical nature and assured quality of Prophet Muhammad’s ministry might not have swayed the Roman citizens of his day.
