Christian Muslim Dialogue, Part 1

Christian-Muslim Dialogue and the Purpose of Mutual Understanding

I have been looking forward to this evening for a very, very long time. It has been my desire to engage in a dialogue like this, and when the opportunity came that I'd be coming into this area, I contacted Dr. Cotty, and I put out the call, and the church here was so kind to respond and to join with us in providing a place for us to have our conversation this evening.

I want you to understand what our motivations are this evening in coming together. This is not a debate. Some of you have seen debates that I have done around the world. This is not intended to be a debate.

We are going to, of necessity, discuss differences that we have. The thing that makes this wonderful, and the reason that I sought out Dr. Cotty, aside from the fact that I have learned so much from him over the years, that he's been a primary influence in my study of Islam, I am a student of Islam, and I have learned much from him, but the reason I specifically sought him out is because I sense in him such a kindred spirit on the other side of the chasm that divides us in regards to our theology and our beliefs.

He is a consistent Muslim. He believes what he says. He wants to seek for consistency amongst his people and his own practice, and so when you have two believing people, one Christian, one Muslim, come together and say, we need to discuss not only what divides us, but also, where do we have similarities?

How can we live in the same community? And the most important thing is this. If we do what I hope happens this evening, we're gonna do something absolutely unique. It hardly ever happens, and that is two communities where unfortunately, there is a lot of fear on both sides.

There is a lot of misunderstanding on both sides, and as a Christian, I want to see doors opened. As a Christian, I want you, as if you are a Christian here this evening, to not have fear of the Muslim people, but to have love for the Muslim people.

I want the Muslim people to understand that we care and that we want to have dialogue and that we're not seeking this evening to sweep our differences under the rug and say they don't matter. Dr. Khadi cannot present an Islam that is just simply one view amongst many.

I believe in divine revelation. He believes in divine revelation. So how do we get along? How do our communities talk to one another? The sad fact of the matter is that conversation isn't happening, and I want it to start tonight, and I want it to start here.

So if you're a praying person, pray that we will have understanding, that if you're a Christian, I want you to hear what this man has to say. I want you to understand why he believes the things he does, what his life is like here in the United States as a Muslim, and I want you to hear, especially when he talks about what Islam is and what it is not and who speaks for Islam and all these types of things.

I want you to hear so that we can have better communication with one another. That's why we're here this evening. I hope that's why you've come here this evening. Please, no audience reactions or participation.

Let us do the conversation. We're gonna have the audience questions later on, but I very much appreciate you coming here. Dr. Khadi is a Muslim scholar. He has written books. I, for example, was very, very happy to receive from him a 16-CD series called Light and Guidance, and it tremendously helped me to get a basic understanding of, you know, sort of get the lay of the land.

He has, he is an expert in Hadith. I think I've sort of scared him a little bit by telling him that sometimes in August in Phoenix, where I live, I have to ride at literally 2 .30, three o 'clock in the morning if you can even survive, and I have distinct memories at that time in the morning of riding my bike in the desert, listening to him lecture on Hadith sciences.

I think even the Muslims will go, that is really weird, because I don't even think they do that. Can you get people? No, they don't. No, they don't do that. I didn't think so. That's really weird, but he is an expert in those areas.

We're gonna be talking about a lot of these things. We're gonna be explaining what we're talking about. We want to bring everyone along, and hopefully at the end of this evening, when we go over there to have refreshments, the Christians and the Muslims together will be able to have conversation, and many of the misunderstandings that separate us right now will be laid aside.

There won't be any compromise, because we both believe very firmly in what we believe and what we profess, so how in light of that do we get along? That's why we're here this evening. Dr. Khadi, sir, you honor us with your presence.

Thank you very, very much for being with us. Thank you for inviting me.

It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. I hope this is the first of many future dialogues. One of the main motivations for us to come here really was that, and I was expressing this to James, should I call you Mr. James, Reverend James?

James is just fine. Okay, James, and you can call me Yasir. Let's just be formal, the Dr. Khadi here. So I was expressing to James that in the interfaith dialogues that Muslims typically end up having, it's with people that I would consider to be a different type of Christians than the predominant strand here in Tennessee, if you get what I'm saying.

In other words, most of the people that are engaged in interfaith are really not minding the fact that we have differences in theology. They don't really express any type of discomfort with us. They're very nice to us.

The fact of the matter is that there is a segment of this population that has a lot of misconceptions and a lot of fears, and when we try to dialogue with them, we find that they're not really that interested to come to the dialogue table, to the interfaith events.

They have these notions that translate into misunderstandings, translate into misconceptions, and it takes two hands to shake. You can't just shake a hand that's not extended to you. So it's very important that people understand we are committed, the both of us, to our faith traditions.

Our commitments are not going to be watered down, but that doesn't mean that we can't get along and have genuine, genuine love and care and concern for one another right here and now. That doesn't mean that we can't live together as peaceful neighbors.

That doesn't mean that our children, or I guess in my case, my children and his grandchildren, because you're telling me about his grandchildren, that they can't get along and play together because you see, theology is one element.

But there are other elements as well to being a human. And for me and for James, theology is the most important. That's what I like. We're not gonna water that down. We are very committed to our faith traditions.

I passionately believe in my religion, and so does James. And I do not doubt his sincerity. I do not doubt his intentions. I do not doubt his commitment to his faith. And I know that he feels the same about me.

So if we can get along and have a fruitful dialogue and conversation and show that it's okay to disagree, even if we disagree passionately, I don't have to hate him. I don't have to feel fear against him.

I can wish for guidance for him and he can wish for guidance for me. One side of me can feel a sadness or remorse that he's not fully there yet, but I can still break bread with him. Like we did today for lunch.

We had a great lunch together. He likes really spicy Mexican, by the way, just so you know.

Ethnically, I'm Indian. I can't help liking spices. So it's like, we can break bread together. We can crack jokes together. We can watch Monty Python together. So it's... Okay, sorry. Always look on the bright side of life.

But there is also quite a lot that conservative Muslims and conservative Christians have in common. So even as we understand and appreciate the differences, we don't water them down. Let us also look at the similarity so that at least, at least, we can remove the fear and distrust and hatred and suspicion of the other.

Because it does no one any good if my heart is full of anger and fear and hatred of anyone else. It doesn't help me. It doesn't help him. It doesn't help our kids. It doesn't help our society. So really, that's the purpose of this dialogue is just to begin the building of bridges.

And I hope that this is the first of many future dialogues to take place.

What Islam Is and Why Mainstream Muslims Reject Extremism

So let's tackle one of the first things that causes the problem. When I speak in many places, I say, you know, one of the biggest problems I see amongst my fellow Christians when it comes to Islam is that most of their knowledge of Islam comes from Fox News.

Or even worse, MSNBC. But you put the two of them together, it's really bad. Yeah. And so they see pictures. They're bombarded with images every single day. There's been the truck in the Christmas thing in Germany, I think it was, and all the rest of this type of stuff.

Gotta understand, what is Islam? And why is it that this evening, you right here in this area are one of the primary leaders of Islam. But there would be people would say, well, you don't really speak for Islam.

ISIS is more consistent, et cetera, et cetera. Help us to start understanding, because remember, you called me once. I think you emailed me once, and you were gonna be at an event. And you said, could you help me out?

What's the difference between a Lutheran and a Presbyterian, or something along those lines? From your side of things, things look sort of confusing over here. Well, from our side of things, things look confusing as well.

Help us to understand, what is Islam for you? So, the way that I feel,.

A lot of times when I'm addressing audiences, the example that I give is, imagine somebody who's never been to America, never stepped foot in America, never met an American. And their only source of information about America is years and years of watching The Jerry Springer Show.

Let that sink in. Now, this person has never met or visited or seen, but they're consistently bombarded with a certain type of America. And The Jerry Springer Show is American in the end of the day, if you understand what I'm saying.

And that's the only image they have. Now, if they meet an actual American, this uneducated foreigner will think that he knows everything about America, because he's seen over and over and over and over again, years and years about America.

And that's the way I feel when I approach congregations or audiences or I lecture in college, I'm a professor, that we have to begin with this notion that, obviously, the primary source of information about a religion should be the broad mainstream people who follow that religion.

So, if you haven't visited a mosque, if you haven't socialized with a Muslim, then you really need to understand what you see on television is but The Jerry Springer equivalent. It is but one minuscule strand.

And I don't even know how else to say this other than the Islam of ISIS or the Islam of terrorism is not an Islam that any one of us in this audience has grown up with. Honestly, we are just as shocked as you.

That's not the Islam of my parents. That's not the Islam of my mosque. This is as alien to us as it is to you. Unfortunately, the problem comes that the perception is that this is the normative or this is the mainstream.

And we're gonna come eventually in the questions, I guess, to some of the causes of why this is happening. But what exactly is Islam? Well, in a nutshell, very simply, very simply, Islam is the admittance and recognition that there is one supreme God in being who is almighty, all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowledgeable.

There is only one God. That is the God of Abraham, of Moses, of Jesus, of Muhammad, that that God is almighty, all-powerful, and worthy of being worshipped and venerated. No other being is worthy of being worshipped.

Islam tells us that God continued to send prophets to mankind with the same message. So for the Muslim, the Muslim is one who is following the religion of Islam. For the Muslim, Islam is not new. It's not an Arabian religion.

It didn't begin with the Prophet Muhammad. Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Adam, they're all teaching the same essential message with some fine tunings, but the message is the same. There's one God, love Him with all your heart, worship Him to the best of your ability, and praise God and follow the law.

And if you do so, you shall live peacefully, at least your heart will be at peace in this world, and you shall attain God's kingdom and God's grace in the next world. This, in a nutshell, is Islam, that there is but one God, this God is worthy of veneration and worship, and to be a good person, you have to believe in Him, worship Him, follow the law, obey the commandments, and if you do so, there will be a life after death, and there is heaven or hell where there is accountability.

In a nutshell, Islam is the same religion that Abraham and Moses, and from our perspective, I guess we'll come to this as well, Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad taught. It's not something that began 1 ,500 years ago in Arabia.

I guess I wanna talk a little bit about, as being a Muslim, there are certain things you have to do. There's rituals that are mandatory. I'll just mention three of them, and there's actually five, or I can actually mention very quickly the five.

The first is the testimony of faith, and the testimony of faith is two sentences. I testify that there is no God worthy of worship other than the one true God. We call Him, in Arabic, Allah. Allah is not a foreign God.

Allah is the Semitic term for God. Christian Arabs use the term Allah. Jewish Arabs, and yes, there are Jewish Arabs, use the term Allah. Allah is a Semitic term, and in Aramaic and Hebrew, there are similar cognates that mention the name of God.

Elohim is essentially Allah. So there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger. That's the first of the five pillars. The second pillar, a Muslim is required to pray five times a day, every single day.

There are no exceptions. In fact, holy days, you do more prayers. Five times a day, at particular time intervals, you have to pray. The third pillar is charity. A Muslim is required to give charity to the poor annually.

So once a year, Muslims have to calculate. There's a calculation depending on what you own and whatnot, and you have to give to the poor. The fourth pillar is to fast the month of Ramadan, so the one of the months of the Islamic calendar, from sunrise to sunset.

You abstain from food and drink, and from intimacy with one's spouse if you're married, and that is done to appreciate God's blessings, and also with the food and drink aspect, to sympathize with the poor, to force yourself to recognize that food and drink is of the greatest blessings that God has given you.

So that's done once a month. And then the fifth and final, for those who are financially and physically capable, they have to undertake a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca once in their lifetimes, and from the Muslim perspective, Mecca is the city of Abraham and Ishmael.

Mecca is the city where Abraham left Ishmael. The Bible mentions leaving Ishmael in the Valley of Paran. Well, for Muslims, the Valley of Paran is the Valley of Mecca, and the Islamic faith basically takes its heritage from the Ishmaelic side of the progeny of Abraham.

The five pillars that you just mentioned, the first one is the shahada. And so for people to understand, I normally show a video of people saying the shahada so they can see, this is how a person becomes a Muslim.

So anyone who has, and there are seven, I think seven requirements for a true shahada, would you still hold,.

Because I heard you lecture on that. So the point is that the shahada, or the testimony of faith, it must be uttered with sincerity,.

With belief, with understanding, so these are the requirements. So the fact that I've said it in Arabic doesn't mean anything because it's not joined with those.

A professor of Arabic or Islamic studies utters the shahada to teach his students what it is. Obviously, that's not an embrace. It's not a magical thing. There has to be other things to go with it. But that is what makes you, there's nothing else beyond that.

There is no baptism, even though Islamic law strongly encourages, but it's not mandatory, to take a bath and cleanse yourself before embracing Islam, but there is no baptism, there's no other ritual for a non-Muslim to become a Muslim.

All they have to do is to verbalize the shahada. I testify there's no God but Allah, and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Okay.

Now, where does this derive from? So the primary sources of Islam. Now, the five pillars, by the way, would the Shiites recognize the same five pillars? Oh yes, oh yes, yes.

The five pillars are universal in all strands of Islam. Shiites have the shahada, the prayer, everything. It's exactly the same. So it is universal in all strands of Islam. That's non-negotiable.

If someone denies any of the five, would you say that fundamentally would place them at least in a position of bidah, it's a heresy?

There are no classical mainstream groups that deny the five pillars. I mean, now obviously there are people that are not committed to the five pillars, right? I mean, Muslims aren't allowed to drink. Well, unfortunately some Muslims do drink.

But if you were to see them and say, oh, aren't you not supposed to drink? Hopefully they'd say, this is a sin, may God forgive me. So they'd recognize that it's a sin, they're falling short. Obviously not all Muslims pray five times a day, right?

By the way, FYI, interesting point. Pew, you know the polling thing, Pew. Pew did a survey two years ago about rituals as practiced by all the mainstream faith traditions of the world. And according to their statistics, the number one observed ritual across all religions and civilizations, by far, was the fast of Ramadan.

Over 70 of the Muslim world was faithful in observing the fast of Ramadan. The next statistic was like in the 30s or something. So the fast of Ramadan, for some reason, I honestly don't know why myself, the fast of Ramadan seems to have a very powerful effect on the Muslim world.

And anybody who's visited any Muslim land in Ramadan, you will see the social customs and the moors change, office hours change, street traffic changes. I mean, you cannot but notice that it is the month of Ramadan in any Muslim society across the world.

And it's hard for us to keep up with it because it keeps moving 10 to 11 days up in our calendar because you use the lunar calendar instead of the solar. Yes, the Islamic calendar is lunar.

And so what that means is that it's based on the sighting of the moon. And so the Islamic calendar consists of around 355 days. So every single year, the month of Ramadan is pushed back by 10 or 11 days.

So this means, 15 years ago, so right now Ramadan is in July. Try fasting from sunrise to sunset in July, not a drop of water, not a drop of water. From in Memphis, that's around 4 .30 a .m. to 8 .20 p .m.

Okay, so we wake up at around 3 .30 or so or there's something and have a somewhat too heavy of a breakfast, but cut us some slack. And we observe complete fast up until 8 .20 or 8 .30, where we have somewhat of a lavish dinner, cut us another slack over there.

But yeah, during the daytime, absolutely nothing.

I've heard studies that say that on average, you take in more calories during Ramadan.

You don't need studies. You can ask me or any Muslim. On average, I gain like three to five pounds for Ramadan. I'll be honest here. Why? Because I mean, it's human nature. It's not good and I'm ashamed to say this, but you kind of overcompensate when you're hungry all day.

So, and another thing is in the month of Ramadan, the best dishes for some reason are always prepared, right? So every day is a festival. So in our mosque, it's free food every single day for anybody who walks in.

We have on average two, three, on weekends, five, 600 people coming and it's free. I mean, anybody can go. We all sponsor. Everybody sponsors on a different day. It's a very festive occasion, right? You barely, you rarely break the fast alone.

Inevitably, you're invited to people's houses. You go to the mosque. So there is an environment of, and the point is nobody is supposed to go hungry. Now, once upon a time, the spirit of that was that the poor should partake along with the rich.

Our wealth in this land is so much that everybody has a surplus of food. So unfortunately, that spirit is kind of lost. But when I was in Saudi Arabia, that was the point, that you go to the mosque and everybody, I mean, I remember clearly, even the street cleaner would come and break fast with us.

We're all sitting together and eating the same food. That's the spirit. I would say there's a commercialized, you guys complained of the commercialization of Christmas, right? Well, we complained of the commercialization of Ramadan, especially in America.

So you see, there's quite a lot of uncommon between Christians and Muslims here that we can actually agree upon.

Unfortunately, I'd love to talk about Laylat al-Qadr and all sorts of other stuff. We just don't have time. The sources. Oh, yes, the sources. That's where we were. My bad, yes. The sources. Obviously, first and primary is the Quran.

Very briefly, what is the Quran to a Muslim?

The Quran is the primary source of Islam for all Muslims. It is considered to be the divinely inspired word of God. It is in the Arabic language. It is always in the Arabic language. Any translation of the Quran is not considered to be the Quran.

It's simply a translation of the Quran. And the Quran, there's only one Quran. There are no various versions or whatnot. It's one standard copy of the Quran across the Muslim world. And the Quran is a document, a book, that is literally considered to be the word of God.

Now, Western academics, and of course, there's always pros and cons with this. Western academics say that the way Christians view Jesus is somewhat analogous to the way Muslims view the Quran. Now, that's a very simplistic, and you and I both know this, but it's very common to find this comparison.

Now, the Quran is eternal? The Quran is considered to be the speech of God. And so the speech of God is eternal. So it's uncreated. So the Quran, as the speech of God is created, but the book that I have in my hands, right, is simply a recording of that eternal speech.

So it's recorded in heaven, and I believe it was sent down on the night of power to the angel Jibril.

Muslims believe that, yes, the Quran was revealed in the month of Ramadan, the beginning of the Quran was revealed, and it was then revealed piecemeal, bit by bit, for the next 23 years. So passages were revealed here and there, and then put together in the lifetime of the Prophet.

And really, there's not been any variant versions of the Quran. The Quran is the Quran for all sects and schisms and groups of Islam. And it is, as you also know, a memorized document. Muslims memorize the entire book cover to cover in the Arabic language.

Which you've done. Thank God, alhamdulillah, I have also memorized the Quran. But it is not just me. Here in Memphis, I would estimate at least, at least, what, 20, 30 people have also done it. And so wherever you are in the world, you always find people that have memorized the entire book cover to cover.

Now if I could just throw in some information here for people's, I'd be really interested, other than our Muslim guests, how many of you have read the Quran? That's what I always get. I just wait for someone to go, parts, because that's very normal.

For everyone's information, the Quran is, I believe, 54 the length of the New Testament, and 14 the length of the entire Bible. I wouldn't know the percentages, but I guess that sounds about right.

Well, I broke down the number of words. That sounds about right. And so it's smaller in length than what we have in the Bible. And I hope you don't mind if I tell the story, because you found it to be interesting, and I think educational.

But I was listening to Dr. Khadi lecturing once, and I could tell it was in the morning. He had made some comment about being in the morning. And he was quoting the text, as he normally does very quickly, both in Arabic and in English.

And he came to one, and just, it happens. It just wouldn't come out. He couldn't remember where, he couldn't get it started. And so, and sort of in frustration, he said, well, it's in surah, it was one of the shorter surahs toward the end, because in the Quran, the surahs are arranged basically by size.

I mean, the first surah is only seven verses, but then the second surah is hundreds of verses, and they get a little bit shorter, basically, as you go through, until you get, there are 114 of them, and you get toward the end, they're only like four verses long, or something along those lines.

But he said, well, it's in such and such a surah, right-hand page at the top. Right-hand page at the top. Now think about that for a moment. That was a valid reference for Muslims, because they all have the same Arabic Quran.

And so, if you find the right surah, if it's the right-hand page at the top, there it is. We could never do that, because of the nature, and it really goes back to our view of what inspiration is, because what I wanted to ask was, from the Islamic perspective, there is nothing of the human touch to the words of the Quran.

This is not Muhammad's reflections.

Exactly, the Quran. There's nothing of him in it. Exactly, the word Quran linguistically means recitation, and it's viewed as being the recitation of God to Muhammad, or via the archangel Gabriel, because Gabriel plays a very prominent role in our religion as well, because it is the Abrahamic religion.

So, Gabriel came with the recitation of God to the prophet. The prophet recited it to the people. So, essentially, we believe there's an unbroken chain of transmission to God himself, directly, and the Quran is viewed as being the recitation of God.

So, when we look at our scriptures, Peter said that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So, we have Paul saying, bring me the cloaks and the parchments. We have that kind of personal statement that is coming from him, and yet, from our perspective, that's exactly what God intended to do.

But that element of the human nature is nowhere in the canonic.

There's no invisible hand of God in the Quran. That's guided, no, Quran is the actual word of God, in Arabic only, and that's why we Muslims firmly believe that you have to recite the Quran in Arabic, and we also, all Muslims, take pride in the fact there is but one Quran.

There's no variance of the Quran. So, it does quote other people a lot,.

And things like that, but it is. Yes, but it is God reciting, yes.

So, you have the Quran, but that's not the only source. That's not the only source.

For the majority of Muslims, and here we have to begin a little bit of sectarianism, as with other groups and religions, Muslims are divided into various schisms and sects, and perhaps most of you have heard of the two most common sects of Islam, Shiites and Sunnis.

Sunnis represent around 85 of the Muslim world, and therefore, they are the majority. I, myself, am also from the Sunni background, and for Sunnis, there is a second source after the Quran, and that's where they get the name Sunni from, and that is the Sunnah, or, so Sunnah is the concept, Sunni is the one who follows it.

In Arabic, the E sound is the equivalent of the English apostrophe S, so you ascribe to. So, Sunni is somebody who follows the Sunnah. What is the Sunnah? The Sunnah are the sayings and teachings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad.

So, the second source of Islam are the sayings and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as recorded by his disciples, we call them in Arabic or in English, companions, as recorded by his companions and later scholars after that.

Now, the Sunnah, let's not mention Hadith, I guess it's the same thing. Well, the Hadith and Sunnah are synonymous for our purposes. So, the Sunnah, we believe, has been preserved by humans, not directly by God.

So, the sayings of the Prophet are found in different collections, and there are multiple attempts and multiple collections. The equivalent of the gospel according to, right? So, the Prophet's life and teachings according to, and we have a number of classical books that have attempted to record the sayings of the Prophet, and we sift through them.

We have Sunnah criticism, like some people have biblical criticism. We have Sunnah criticism. We don't have Quran criticism, because we believe the word of God is separate. The word of the Prophet has been recorded by humans and is separate, and it's a human attempt, and human history and early Islamic history is yet a third genre.

So, the word of God, the words of the Prophet, and what happened to the early Muslims are three separate genres. From the perspective of Muslims, and again, I know this is from our perspective, the Bible is a mixture of all three.

You have bits of the word of God, bits of the words of the Prophets, and bits of human history. From the Islamic perspective, and again, this is obviously a biased perspective, we have these genres in separate books.

There's one book of God, there are many, many books of Sunnah, because these are human attempts, and there's even more books of history, because these are what people recorded of the early times. So, we respect the Quran like no other book, because that is the one preserved book of God.

And the hadith, if our scholars have viewed it as authentic, the Sunnah, the Sunnah is viewed as authentic, we respect it as well, but we don't sanctify the Arabic text, we don't recite the Arabic text as we recite the Quran.

So, the words of the Prophet are theology and law, but they're not recited, they're not said in prayer, they're not liturgy. Whereas the Quran is liturgy, the Quran is recited, the Quran is a lived document.

Every Muslim opens up the Quran almost daily, the committed Muslims, and recites from it. You don't do that with the sayings of the Prophet. The sayings of the Prophet are sources of theology and law, of etiquettes and morals, of manners.

They're not read for blessings, they're not read for just daily stuff. These are read by scholars.

And of course, history is history. But, wouldn't it be true though, that the interpretation of the Quran is deeply influenced by the schools of jurisprudence, and that those depend on the interpretation of the Sunnah?

Different groups will emphasize different elements, and that actually does end up.

Impacting the interpretation of the Quran. Well, true, when it comes to interpretation, humans are humans, and there's a spectrum of interpretation. And historically speaking, there's been a spectrum of acceptable interpretation, and these are the main schools of Islamic law.

And there's never been any type of sectarian warfare between these schools of Islamic law. These are the minutiae of the law, the finer details of the law. I would dare say that the main gist of Islamic law is pretty much agreed upon by the majority of schools within Sunni Islam.

Of course, Shiites have a different theology, and a different source, and a different law, and that's a different topic altogether. But within Sunnism, by and large, most of Islamic law is within a spectrum of interpretation.

You've mentioned the Muslim view of the prophets, that they were Muslims, and in fact, my understanding is that from the Muslim perspective, God has always sent a prophet to each people group, and that they're all united by monotheism.

By Allah, there is one God, right?

Exactly, the way I phrase it, a bit of a theological joke. For God so loved the world, he continued to send prophets. This is the way I phrase it. So we believe that God continues to send prophets to mankind with the exact same message.

Because from our perspective, theology does not change. God does not change. What might change are the finer details of the law. Perhaps one prophet prohibited one food item, and the other prophet allowed it.

These types of things are negotiable, but theology does not change from prophet to prophet. Moses, and Adam, and Noah, and Solomon, and David, the same God is the same God, and the same attributes are the same attributes.

Theology does not change. And so from our perspective, and again, this is important to note, and I say this with utmost respect, but we have to know our differences as well. The fundamental difference between Muslims and Christians is obviously over the persona of Jesus Christ.

That is where, obviously, we have very different understandings. We kind of sort of agree on Abraham, and Moses, and Solomon, and David. Both of us view them as mighty messengers, and prophets, and people who came to spread monotheism to teach the law.

And these are names mentioned in the Quran. People are surprised to discover that the most common prophet mentioned in the Quran is the prophet Abraham and the prophet Moses. These two are mentioned more than any other prophet.

Jesus is mentioned almost 25 times by name. Jesus, the son of Mary. The only woman ever mentioned in the Quran, an entire chapter named after her, is Mary, the mother of Jesus. And the Quran is very explicit that God says to Mary, through the angel Gabriel, that, oh, Mary, God has chosen you, and sanctified you, and blessed you over all the women of the entire world, meaning of the entire creation.

This is a verse in the Quran. I just quoted you the English translation. So we sanctify, well, not sanctify is an ambiguous term. We respect is the better term. We respect all the prophets, and we consider them to be role models.

And for our perspective, Jesus is a prophet of God whom God sent with the same message that he sent all the previous prophets with, and he was sent to the children of Israel, and he was born of a virgin called Mary, and he was to be the final prophet to the children of Israel, because this is something I think the New Testament and the Quran agree upon.