Islam and Christianity share more common ground than you might expect, but their answers to the deepest question about human value diverge in ways that matter.
My doctor is a Muslim woman
When we speak, faith is an easily acknowledged part of the conversation. She introduces it in her Islamic dress; I introduce it with my occupation. It is clear as we speak that we have something in common beyond our sex and our experience as ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom. Beyond the immediacy of our London-living – the din of traffic, the proximity of global foods – is our sense of the transcendent. We each understand the other to be living for something beyond themselves, and not just something, but someone. Someone above, to whom we are accountable. Someone above, by whom we were created and to whom we depend on for our survival, and in whose wisdom, we find our framework for living.
In days as polarised as the ones we are living in, that kind of common ground is worth something.
"In days as polarised as the ones we are living in, that kind of common ground is worth something."
The gulf beneath the handshake
We shake hands, we make small talk and on the surface, we are not so different. But beneath the pleasantries, we hold fundamentally different beliefs about what makes a human being matter and those differences run deeper than most interfaith conversations are willing to go.
Christian teaching on human worth rests on three pillars: creation, incarnation, and redemption. The first is shared, in some form, with Islam. The other two are where the conversation gets interesting.
The first pillar, creation, holds that all people are valuable because we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). God forms humanity from the dust and breathes his breath into the first man, Adam, bringing him to life. He tasks Adam with naming all the animals, an expression of the responsibility and authority that come with bearing God’s image. When humans sin (Genesis 3), it has devastating consequences, and future generations inherit a sinful nature that mars that image. But it does not replace it.
The second pillar, incarnation, pushes this further: all people are valuable because, in Jesus, God took on human flesh and became one of us (John 1:14). Humanity is now honoured to form part of God’s essential Triune nature.
The third pillar, redemption, goes further still: through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God took on our sin to buy us back to himself. All who accept Jesus receive, as a gift, the indwelling presence of God the Holy Spirit.
Of these three, the only counterpart in Islam is creation, and even there, the picture looks markedly different.
Creation in Islam
Where the Bible opens with a sweeping narrative of origins, creation in the Qur’an is more like a mosaic, assembled across many pages rather than laid out all at once. The resulting picture is striking: Allah, the almighty creator, speaks the world into being. He sends angels to gather dust from the four corners of the earth, which he forms into the first man, also named Adam.
"Where the Bible opens with a sweeping narrative of origins, creation in the Qur’an is more like a mosaic, assembled across many pages rather than laid out all at once."
He breathes into this figure his spirit, though in Islamic teaching that spirit is itself a created thing, not a personal aspect of Allah’s own nature.
Allah then teaches Adam the names of all things, illustrating the human capacity for knowledge, but also the very different level of trust invested in humanity between the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an.
Different too are the consequences of human rebellion. Adam and Eve sin by eating from a prohibited tree in Paradise (Surah Taha 20:120 – 121), but the effects are contained, there is no original sin bleeding into future generations, no wound requiring a healer, no estrangement requiring a costly reconciliation. In Islamic teaching, there is no need for a saviour, much less for Allah to sacrifice something as dear as his own self to win humanity back.
That distinction is not incidental. It is the hinge on which everything turns.
A God who serves
As such, my doctor and I believe very different things about who we are, and with that, who God is.
As significant as the distinctions are however, I don’t believe this difference is expressed in how she serves me. If anything, I see something in her which reminds me of Jesus, as she amasses her expertise and years of study not to enforce a hierarchy between us, but instead to help and heal me.
"As significant as the distinctions are however, I don’t believe this difference is expressed in how she serves me. If anything, I see something in her which reminds me of Jesus."
I know what it is to be dignified by her service to me, but I long for her to experience what it is to be dignified by a God who serves her, for her to receive the sacrificial care of the God who is uniquely revealed in Jesus.
We’ve found our common ground easily enough. The harder, and more important, conversation is still ahead.
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