Evangelicals Now
Christian news worldwide
magnifying glass Search archives
home Home check the archives Archives Subscribe Subscriptions Advertising Information & booking of classifieds Adverts Find a local evangelical Church Find a church for the search engines and extremely curious! About us Contact us Site Map
Printable
Version

Islam - what every Christian should know

Confused

ISLAM - WHAT EVERY CHRISTIAN SHOULD KNOW
By Bassam M. Chedid
Evangelical Press. 288 pages. £13.95
ISBN 0 85234 573 9

A book enabling Christians to understand Islam is to be welcomed, especially if by an Arab Christian, but unfortunately I cannot give this publication wholehearted endorsement, because of a number of errors. Chedid writes in a style making his subject eminently accessible for the layman, and he covers most aspects of Islam very thoroughly.

Of special mention is the way he helpfully compares and contrasts Islamic and Christian doctrines in various sections. This is important because often Muslims and Christians use the same phrases but mean something different.

However, even here there is cause for criticism. In his section on ‘Christ in Islam’ (p.214), Chedid lists some depictions of Jesus, but these can be misleading. For example, he lists ‘Word of God’ as a title of Christ in the Qur’an, but this should not be confused with the biblical title; the Qur’an presents Jesus as ‘a word from God’. Similarly, when he refers to the Qur’an presenting Jesus as ‘United with the Holy Spirit’, he does not mention that in Islam, the Holy Spirit is the Angel Gabriel.

The situation becomes more confused when he lists a number of Christological heresies that he suggests influenced Muhammad (p.28ff), including Arianism, Apollinarianism, etc., but I know of no historical evidence for this. In fact, given that the Qur’an explicitly denies what Christians affirm on Christ’s deity, this seems unlikely. It is not helped when the author repeats discredited descriptions of Nestorianism and Monophysitism.

Further confusion is caused by including the heretical Ahmadi sect among the Sunnis (p.63), and the Druze and Nusairis among the Shia. It would have been better to include these in a section devoted to Muslim sects. Perhaps linked to this is his treatment of the view of the Qur’an as eternal (p.102) — a view certainly held by Sunnis, as he notes, but rejected by Shia, which he does not. His treatment of the Sevener Ismaili sect is also misleading. He states that a ‘seventh imam will emerge some time in the future to establish a new order’ (p.109). In fact, the problem arose because the Sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, who died in 765, had designated his son Isma’il as the seventh Imam but he died before his father. Some believed he had not died but would return as the Mahdi. Some claimed that Isma’il’s son, Muhammad, was the rightful Imam.

There are a number of other questionable points in his book, but hopefully a future edition will be more carefully crafted; certainly, there is a need for a book like this written by a native of the Muslim world.

Dr. Anthony McRoy