Christianity and Islam in my eyes are similar enough to where they could have been turned into a united faith. From what Ive heard and read Prophet Muhammed seemed to be intrested in monothestic faiths like Christianity and Judisam. It appears to me that both faiths seem achknowledge that Jesus existed with the difference being Christians (Not all) believe in the Holy Trinity (A concept that is hard for many to grasp) while the other two major Monothestic Religions do not.
So Basically In this world Islam (It most likely wouldnt be called Islam, moreso something like Muhammedism but I havent came up with a good name ) Jesus is considered to be a Prophet who was called the "Son of God" because of what he did and then Muhammed would add Arabic traditions to his teachings in order to get the support of those in his region. Something like the Ghassainds but where the people follow Muhammeds teachings instead of the Orthodox ways. This new sect would begin in the same place where Islam started and would have some of the same rules and mabye holidays (there would be many different factors that could decide this). It is probable that a totally different religion would evolve form this faith aswell. And That new religion could be called "Islam".
In the Original OP its way more Likely that Islam would have been seen as an offshoot of judaism or Just couldnt happen at all so I fixed it to make more sense (Also no one liked how I worded it at first so sorry about that
(Correct me at any point if im wrong about what I say, also this is meant to be an Alt. History topic more than a religious debate topic, to explore the effects on world history if said thing could have occured. And plz no bully me
The Archregimancy wrote:The OP is poorly phrased, and the bit about 'Muhammed accepting the concept of the Holy Trinity' is particularly misguided, but the scenario is not quite as insane as most people replying to the thread seem to think it is. It's self-evident from the perspective of the early 21st century that we're talking about two distinct religions; but this wasn't necessarily the case during the first early medieval encounters between the faiths.
As far as Muhammed was concerned, he was indeed starting a new religion based on the final revelation of Allah, one that corrected the mistakes of the imperfect revelations embedded in Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Mandaeism (the 'Sabians' of the Quran), though acknowledging that all four contained elements of the truth, if not the fullness thereof.
However, to the first Christians, the distinction between Christianity and Islam wasn't at all clear. For example, John of Damascus (c.675 - 749), an important early medieval Christian theologian who was based in (surprise) Damascus, and was therefore intimately familiar with the early Caliphate, explicitly considered Islam to be a Christian heresy in his catalogue of heresies De haeresibus. It's important to remember in this context that several early Christian heresies took a very different view of the Trinity, and Arianism in particular viewed the Son and Spirit as created by and subordinate to God the Father. Since Islam recognises Jesus as a prophet - albeit a fully human one - and also accepts the virgin birth, ascension, and second coming (though not, traditionally, the crucifixion or resurrection), many of the eastern Mediterranean Christians who first encountered Islam conceptualised it as a slightly exotic 'heresy of the Ishmaelites' (to use John of Damascus's phrase) rather than a distinct faith.
This phenomenon is my no means unique to the relationship between Christianity and Islam. Christianity itself initially started as an exotic form of messianic Judaism, and its early decades were often spent resolving the tensions arising from differences between Jewish and Gentile Christians (as Christianity itself outlines in some detail in Acts). Buddhism was originally an offshoot of Hinduism, and there are still areas where - centuries after Gautama Buddha - shared and syncretic traditions between the two religions have a strong impact on everyday life. So we should be very, very, careful about assuming that just because a religious distinction is clear-cut to us, that they were necessarily clear-cut when those religious distinctions were developing.
So if we change the implicit question in the OP to asking 'is it possible to imagine a scenario where there's a 7th-century accommodation between Islam and Christianity?' rather than the implicit question 'is it possible to imagine a scenario where Muhammed embraces Nicene Christianity?', then the issue suddenly becomes more nuanced. Syncretism between early Islam and eastern Christianity via, for example, the Christian Arab Ghassanid kingdom, isn't completely impossible to imagine, even if it likely would have resulted in a very different form of Christianity.
History took a different path, of course; but the dismissiveness towards the OP's scenario is somewhat overplayed. That OP is poorly framed and both historically and theologically ill-informed as phrased, yes; but dismissing the associated concepts out of hand itself arguably shows a poor grasp of the eastern Mediterranean in the 7th- and 8th-centuries.
[/quote]The Archregimancy wrote:Thermodolia wrote:I’m pretty sure that Islam wouldn’t even exist and would be something like the Coptic Christianity. And if Islam had the trinity concept it probably in its early days wouldn’t have been very different so it’s unlikely it would branch off or gain enough followers to do so.
In this scenario where we're imagining some form of accommodation with Christianity, I think it more likely that our hypothetical Muhammed the Christian (who is only raised here as a hypothetical, without in any way disrespecting the historical Muhammed the Prophet) would have founded a form of Christianity in direct opposition to Coptic Christianity.
Muhammed was fairly clear that Christ was a human prophet, not divine. Coptic Christianity not only accepts the Nicene definition of the Trinity, but also arguably emphasises the unity of Christ's divinity and humanity more than other historical denominations directly descended from the Nicene Church.
Our hypothetical Muhammed the Christian would likely have found, for example, adoptionist theology - the early Christian non-trinitarian heresy that Jesus was fully human, and only adopted by God the Father (there's a spectrum of adoptionism; I've oversimplifying) - much more attractive. And there are clear strands of adoptionism and Arianism within Islam; something which Muslims have noticed, albeit putting their own theological spin on that relationship. In fact, there are some areas where Islam is closer to traditional Christianity than, for example, Ebionite adoptionism; in accepting the virgin birth, for one.
Noting the above helps to contextualise why, given some of the non-Trinitarian heresies floating around late Classical and early medieval Christianity, the distinction between Christianity and Islam wasn't clear-cut to the first Christians to encounter Islam - as well as my suggestion that the OP would be better framed as 'is it possible to imagine a scenario where there's a 7th-century accommodation between Islam and Christianity?' rather than 'is it possible to imagine a scenario where Muhammed embraces Nicene Christianity?'
