Close Relationship With Christianity And Islam example essay topic

We study different religious faiths in order to understand other people. Many people have strong religious convictions, and it would be impossible to understand them without first understanding their faith. Which is why when studying the early Western World the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which are all closely related, are examined. All three of these religions are Western, they are monotheistic, and together they form the Abram ic religions.

Judaism is the oldest, dating from around 2000 BC and the most ancient religion still practiced in today's society; Christianity originates from shortly after the death of Jesus Christ; Islam is the youngest, emerging in the seventh century AD. It would appear, then, that Christianity and Islam are descended from Judaism, as different interpretations of the same beliefs. A possible hypothesis is that Christianity and Islam are adaptations of the old monotheistic religion in accordance with the political and social climates of the times in which they emerged. All three religions share the same ancient history.

The importance of Adam, Abraham, Moses and David and many others detailed in the Old Testament, is agreed on by all three religions; however, their view of Jesus' place in the scheme of things is the first major disagreement. The Christians believe him to be the Messiah, which the Jews had waited for for so long, while the Jews and Muslims believe him to be a great prophet and find the claim that he is the Son of God to be blasphemous. This difference of opinion was the chief reason for the bloody break up of the relationship between the Jews and the Christians. At their first emergence the Christians were considered a sect of the Jewish faith by both themselves and other Jews. However, the relationship between the different sects and the rest of the Jewish community became increasingly problematic as Jesus' teachings were considered blasphemous by the Romans.

Jesus' all embracing theories and disregard for Jewish law made his movement all the more loathsome to the Jews. This is the primary reason for the stormy relationship between the two religions that were once one; the second reason is due to the manner in which the sect broke away and become a religion in it's own right. This breakaway began with the increasing rejection of Jewish law, for example, of the dietary customs, and when an Emperor demanded that the Jews give up all their practices, the Christians did so immediately, but the rest of the Jewish population rose in rebellion. When the Jewish Temple was sacked and leveled in response to the rebellion, the Jewish "traitors", the Christians who had not fought for their religion caused further animosity to form. From this point forth, the relationship between Judaism and Christianity has been disjointed. Historically, then, it can be seen that Judaism and Christianity are very closely related.

They share the same roots and some of the same religious texts, and for several decades they were the same religion. However, when political pressures demanded that the religion changed or faced the consequences, the Christian sect broke away, distancing themselves from the Jewish faith. By the time Islam emerged as the third religion of Abraham, a large Jewish population as well as a large Christian population was deeply rooted in Islam, thanks to the Roman Empire there. Roman rule in this area had recently collapsed and the nation no longer observed their state religion, therefore the land was split between Judaism, Christianity and a form of paganism. There had been wars between the Jews and Christians for years but it was quickly shadowed by the birth of Mohammed, the founder of the Islamic faith. He traveled extensively when he was young and had a lot of contact with both Jews and Christians.

The fact that he did have this contact appears to have had a profound effect on Mohammed because the Islamic faith is very close in many ways to both Christianity and Judaism. There are two possible reasons why chose to begin his own religion rather than to convert to one of the others. The Islamic reason is that Allah spoke to Mohammed through an angel, appointing him the last prophet and relating to him the scriptures of the Koran and the laws by which Muslims should live. The other, however extremely controversial reason is that Mohammed had seen the way in which religious leaders were treated, for example the Pope, and wished for such power himself as the ambassador of God. He believed he was to become the divinely appointed dictator of his community. He may also have seen this as a way of uniting the people of his homeland because Islamic faith recognizes no separation between the church and the state, therefore the country would have had a national religion.

"The contention that Islam was, in its genesis, a 'national' religion of the Arabs, provided a sheet-anchor for their solidarity and expansion" (ETEP p. 59). With the emergence of all three religions it is easy to draw close relationship between Islam, Judaism and Christianity. "For Muhammad's monotheism was, from the very beginning, linked up with a humanism and a sense of social and economic justice whose intensity is no less than the intensity of the monotheistic idea, so that whoever carefully reads the early Revelations of the Prophet cannot escape the conclusion" (ETEP p. 58-59), that all three religions have a lot of the same experiences and roots. Several customs and practices are the same and the beliefs and laws are also very similar between all three religions. For example, all of Judaism's Prophets and Holy Scriptures are holy to Islam, and the Holy Land to Judaism is also a Holy Land to Islam. Although the Islamic religious book, the Koran, does not encompass any of the texts from the Bible, Islam recognizes the importance of the teachings of previous prophets.

It also recognizes Adam as the first man, expelled from Eden but forgiven afterwards by God. Within the Koran various stories are told to illustrate the punishment of the evil and the rewarding of the virtuous, similarly many of these stories are found in Jewish and Christian scriptures. It would appear, then, that Islam is a mixture of Jewish and Christian traditions. However, they all have slightly different beliefs which explains the small discrepancies between the Islamic, the Jewish and the Christian faiths.

Islam is therefore very closely related to both Christianity and Judaism. While it did not start out as a sect of either religion, as Christianity began as a sect of Judaism, historically Islam appears to be an interpretation of the two religions used for the purpose of bringing one man ultimate power and uniting a nation. Whether God did speak to Mohammed or whether he was a very successful imposter, Islam won a lot of Jewish and Christian converts, particularly in Mecca where the Jews were becoming increasingly unsatisfied with the extraneous taxes and the way they were being ruled. Monotheism was a very popular, even fashionable belief around the Roman Empire at this time, and paganism was fast becoming the religion of the ignorant.

However, the diversity of the cultures and pre-existing beliefs in this area meant that not everybody could accept Judaism and the laws and customs that came with it as their single religion. This made sects necessary, and there were a great number of these; Christianity and Islam were the most popular and enduring of them. In today's society, Christianity claims the largest percentage of the world's population, while Islam is the second largest faith. Therefore, although historically Judaism shares a very close relationship with Christianity and Islam, its two main sects have now overtaken it as the world's most popular religions. Today, if a non-Jew, a non-Muslim and a non-Christian came together and examined their faiths, they would find no real faults between them. However, ask any Jew, Muslim or Christian and they will tell you a lot of conflicting beliefs between the faiths.

When, in truth, the faiths are basically one faith all connected in roots, prophets, and beliefs and its not the faiths that are in conflict, but the people of those very faiths.