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Christianity and Islam

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Christianity and Islam

Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world, with approximately 2.3 billion and 2 billion adherents, respectively. Both are Abrahamic religions and monotheistic, originating in the Middle East.

Christianity developed out of Second Temple Judaism in the 1st century CE. It is founded on the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and those who follow it are called Christians. Islam developed in the 7th century CE. It is founded on the teachings of Muhammad, as an expression of surrendering to the will of God. Those who follow it are called Muslims (meaning "submitters to God").

Muslims view Christians to be People of the Book, but may also regard them as committing shirk (idolatry) because of the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Christians are traditionally classified as dhimmis (non-muslims) paying jizya (tax on non-muslims) under Sharia law. Christians similarly possess a wide range of views about Islam. The majority of Christians view Islam as a false religion because its adherents reject the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.

Like Christianity, Islam considers Jesus to be al-Masih (Arabic for the Messiah) who was sent to guide the Banī Isrā'īl (Arabic for Children of Israel) with a new revelation: al-Injīl (Arabic for "the Gospel"). But while belief in Jesus is a fundamental tenet of both, a critical distinction far more central to most Christian faiths is that Jesus is the incarnated God, specifically, one of the hypostases of the Triune God, God the Son.

While Christianity and Islam hold their recollections of Jesus's teachings as gospel and share narratives from the first five books of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible), the sacred text of Christianity also includes the later additions to the Bible while the primary sacred text of Islam instead is the Quran. Muslims believe that al-Injīl was distorted or altered to form the Christian New Testament. Christians, on the contrary, do not have a univocal understanding of the Quran, though most believe that it is fabricated or apocryphal work. There are similarities in both texts, such as accounts of the life and works of Jesus and the virgin birth of Jesus through Mary; yet still, some Biblical and Quranic accounts of these events differ.

In the Islamic tradition, Christians and Jews are believed to worship the same God that Muslims worship. However there are many different opinions in the discussion of whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God.

The Christian Bible is made up of the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament was written over a period of two millennia prior to the birth of Christ. The New Testament was written in the decades following the death of Christ. Historically, Christians universally believed that the entire Bible was the divinely inspired Word of God. However, the rise of harsher criticism during the Enlightenment has led to a diversity of views concerning the authority and inerrancy of the Bible in different denominations. Christians consider the Quran to be a non-divine set of texts.

The Quran dates from the early 7th century or decades thereafter. Muslims believe it was revealed to Muhammad, gradually over a period of approximately 23 years, beginning on 22 December 609, when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632, the year of his death. The Quran is written mostly in parable and not in form of a linear process of history. However, the stories often involve Biblical figures. By that, the Quran assumes that the audience is familiar with their associated narratives. Sometimes, stories featuring in the Bible are summarized, dwelled at length, and sometimes entirely different. Another difference in style is that the Bible offers a linear set of time, from the beginning of the narrative to its end, while the Quran implies a cyclical pattern, in which the main narrative of the Quran unfolds repeatedly at the time of each prophet.

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