Islamic Fundamentals
Christians have a responsibility to understand our Muslim neighbors and their beliefs
By Wendy Murray Zoba | posted 3/01/2000 12:00AM
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The Qur'an.
The Qur'an to the Muslim is not what the Bible is to the Christian. Rather, the Qur'an is to the Muslim what Jesus is to the Christian. Jesus is the Word made flesh and the Qur'an, for the Muslim, is the Word made text. The Book preexisted in heaven before Muhammad received the command to recite and he simply brought into physical being what already existed in completeness.To borrow Christian vocabulary, one might say he incarnated the Book. Muhammad was illiterate, according to Islamic tradition, ensuring the purity of the revelation (though some, including Cragg, dispute that view).When the recitations ended with Muhammad's death in 632, points in the Qur'an required further clarification for long-term communal guidance. This clarification gave rise to Tradition (hadith sharif): the collected sayings, thoughts, and deeds of Muhammad. Muslims looked to how Muhammad lived for guidance in practical living. For example, Al-Ghazali—an eleventh-century Muslim legal scholar and equivalent of Thomas Aquinas—wrote:
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