Is Islam Intolerant Of Other Religions?

Myth: Islam is intolerant of other religions because:

the Qur'an condemns the other religions as false
The Creator has taught us in the Qur'an and Sunnah that all other `religions' and ways of life are unacceptable to Him if a person is aware of Islam. The Qur'an states (translation),

[3:85] And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he shall be one of the losers.

However, even though the Creator has clearly specified that no other way of life is acceptable to Him except Islam (i.e. submission to Him as embodied in the Qur'an and Sunnah), He has also commanded the Muslims to be tolerant of people who espouse other creeds. From the Sunnah, specifically in the study of the Sunnah called Al-Awsat by Al-Tabarani, we find regarding those non-Muslims living in the Islamic state,

The Messenger of Allah (saas) said, "One who kills a non-Muslim person under protection (Arabic: dhimmi) will not even smell the fragrance of Paradise."

Also from the Sunnah, specifically in a report from Al-Khatib, we find that the Messenger of Allah (saas) also said:

Whoever hurts a non-Muslim person under protection, I am his adversary, and I shall be an adversary to him on the Day of Resurrection.

In short, Islam is intolerant of false ideas, however it is tolerant of the people who hold to those ideas. One historical example of Muslims living up to the standard of Islam can be found from the time of the Spanish Inquisition. During that disaster sprung by misguided Catholics, some Spanish Jews fled to Muslim Turkey and to this day, there is a community of Spanish-speaking Jews in Turkey. Another example may be found during one of the Crusader invasions from Western Europe. Some of the the Catholic Western European knights were so likely to rape, murder, and pillage the Jews and Orthodox Christians, that when the Muslims won, they were treated as a liberating force by those non-Muslims.

A. Judaism and Christianity:

Islam accords to these two religions special status. First, each of them is the religion of God. Their founders on earth, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, are the prophets of God. What they have conveyed -- the Torah, the Psalms, the Evangel (gospels) -- are revelations from God. To believe in these prophets, in the revelations they have brought, is integral to the very faith of Islam. To disbelieve in them, nay to discriminate among them, is apostasy. "Our Lord and your Lord is indeed God, the One and Only God." God described His Prophet Muhammad and his followers as "believing all that has been revealed from God"; as "believing in God, in His angels, in His revelations and Prophets"; as not-distinguishing among the Prophets of God."
Arguing with Jews and Christians who object to this self-identification and claim an exclusivist monopoly on the former prophets, the Qur'an says: "You claim that Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and their tribes were Jews or Christians [and God claims otherwise]. Would you claim knowledge in these matters superior to God's?" "Say, [Muhammad], We believe in God, in what has been revealed by Him to us, what has been revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, the tribes; in what has been conveyed to Moses, to Jesus, and all the prophets from their Lord." "We have revealed [Our revelation) to you [Muhammad] as We did to Noah and the Prophets after him, to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, the tribes, to Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron, Solomon, and David." "It is God indeed, the living and eternal One, that revealed to you [Muhammad] the Book [i.e., the Qur'an] confirming the previous revelations. For it is He Who revealed the Torah and the Gospels as His guidance to mankind. ... Who revealed the Psalms to David." "Those who have attained to faith [in this divine writ], those who follow the Jewish [scriptures], and the Sabians and the Christians -- all those who believe in God and in the Day of Judgment, and have done good work -- will receive their due reward from God. They have no cause to fear, nor shall they grieve."

The honor with which Islam regards Judaism and Christianity, their founders and scriptures, is not courtesy but acknowledgment of religious truth. Islam sees them in the world not as "other views" which it has to tolerate, but as standing de jure, as truly revealed religions from God. Moreover, their legitimate status is neither sociopolitical, nor cultural or civilizational, but religious. In this, Islam is unique. For no religion in the world has yet made belief in the truth of other religions a necessary condition of its own faith and witness.

Consistently, Islam pursues this acknowledgment of religious truth in Judaism and Christianity to its logical conclusion, namely, self-identification with them. Identity of God, the source of revelation in the three religions, necessarily leads to identity of the revelations and of the religions. Islam does not see itself as coming to the religious scene ex nihilo but as reaffirmation of the same truth presented by all the preceding prophets of Judaism and Christianity. It regards them all as Muslims, and their revelations as one and the same as its own. Together with Hanifism, the monotheistic and ethical religion of pre-Islamic Arabia, Judaism, Christianity and Islam constitute crystallizations of one and the same religious consciousness whose essence and core is one and the same. The unity of this religious consciousness can easily be seen by the historian of civilization concerned with the ancient Near East. It is traceable in the literatures of these ancient peoples and is supported by the unity of their physical theater or geography, in their languages (for which they are called "Semitic"), and in the unity of artistic expression.

This unity of the religious consciousness of the Near East consists of five dominant principles that characterize the known literatures of the peoples of this region. They are: 1) the ontic disparateness of God, the Creator, from His creatures, unlike the attitudes of ancient Egyptians, Indians, or Chinese, according to which God or the Absolute is immanently His own creatures; 2) the purpose of man's creation is neither God's self-contemplation nor man's enjoyment, but unconditional service to God on earth, His own "manor"; 3) the relevance of Creator to creature, or the will of God, is the content of revelation and is expressed in terms of law, of oughts and moral imperatives; 4) man, the servant, is master of the manor under God, capable of transforming it through his own efficacious action into what God desires it to be; and 5) man's obedience to and fulfillment of the divine command results in happiness and felicity, and its opposite in suffering and damnation, thus coalescing worldly and cosmic justice together.

The unity of "Semitic" religious and cultural consciousness was not affected by intrusion of the Egyptians in the days of their empire (1465-1165 B.C.), nor by the Philistines from Caphtor (Crete?), nor by the Hittites, Kassites, or "People of the Mountains" (the Aryan tribes?), who were all semiticized and assimilated, despite their military conquests. Islam has taken all this for granted. It has called the central religious tradition of til Semitic peoples "Hanifism" and identified itself with it. Unfortunately for the early Muslim scholars who benefited from this insight as they labored, the language, histories, and literature furnished by archeology and the disciplines of the ancient Near East were not yet available. Hence they scrambled after the smallest bits of oral tradition, which they systematized for us undt the tide of "History of the Prophets." In reading their materials, we must remember, however, that the accurate-knowledge (Abraham, of Julius Caesar, of Amr ibn al As, and of Napoleot about the Sphinx or the pyramids of Egypt, for instance, was equa i.e., nil.

The Islamic concept of "Hanif" should not be compared to Ka Rahner's "anonymous Christians." "Hanif" is a Qur'anic category not the invention of a modern theologian embarrassed by his church's exclusivist claim to divine grace. It has been operating within the Islamic ideational system for fourteen centuries. Those to whom it is attributed are the paradigms of faith and greatness the most honored representatives of religious life, not the despised though tolerated approximators of the religious ideal. Islam's honoring of the ancient prophets and their followers is to be maintained even if the Jews and Christians stop or diminish their loyalty to them. "Worthier of Abraham are those who really follow him, this Prophet and those who believe in him." In the Qur'an, the Christians are exalted for their self-discipline and humility, and they are declared the closest of all believers to the Muslims. "[0 Muhammad], you and the believers will find closest in love and friendship those who say 'We are Christians,' for many of them are ministers and priests who are truly humble?" If despite all this commendation of them, of their prophets, and of their scriptures, Jews and Christians would persist in opposing and rejecting the Prophet and his followers, God commanded all Muslims to call the Jews and Christians in these words: "0 People of the Book, come now with us to rally around a fair and noble principle common to both of us, that all of us shall worship and serve none but God, that we shall associate naught with Him, and that we shall not take one another as lords beside God. But if they still persist in their opposition, then warn them that We shall persist in our affirmation."

Evidently, Islam has given the maximum that can ever be given to another religion. It has acknowledged as true the other religion's prophets and founders, their scriptures and teaching. Islam has declared its God and the God of the religions of Jews and Christians as One and the same. It has declared the Muslims the assistants, friends, and supporters of the adherents of the other religions, under God. If, after all this, differences persist, Islam holds them to be of no consequence. Such differences must not be substantial. They can be surmounted and resolved through more knowledge, good will, and wisdom. Islam treats them as domestic disputes within one and the same religious family. And as long as we both recognize that God alone is Lord to each and every one of us, no difference and no disagreement is beyond solution. Our religious, cultural, social, economic, and political differences may all be composed under the principle that God alone -- not any one of us, not our passions, our egos, or our prejudices -- is God.