An excerpt from What' s Right with Islam: a New Vision for Muslims and the West, by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf:
The monotheism that Abraham taught was not only theologically radical, in that it decried the plurality of gods as false, it was also socially radical. The idea that God is one implied two significant things about humankind.
First, it implied that all humans are equal, simply because we are born of one man and one woman. "O humankind," God asserts in the Quran, "surely we have created you from one male [Adam] and one female [Eve] and made you into tribes and clans [just] so that you may get to know each other. The noblest of you with God are the most devout of you" (Quran 49:13).
This meant that all of humankind is a family-brothers and sisters, equal before God, differentiated only by the nobility of our actions, not by our birth. Showing preference for one human over another on the basis of accidents of birth, like skin color, class structure, tribal or family belonging, or gender, is unjust and therefore has no place in a proper human worldview.
Although it grossly violates reason and ethics, showing preference on the basis of these categories is the very way people traditionally judged others and structured their societies.
Second, because we are equal and have been given free will by our Creator, we have certain inalienable liberties. The most significant liberty we have been given is to accept or reject God, our Creator. Every other choice is a distant second to this, from the liberty to choose between a host of right and wrong actions to the liberty to choose our spouse or profession instead of being born into them.
Because we are free to think for ourselves, thought control is anathema to this ethic of free will. Even today, in many parts of the world people are still socially coerced into a certain religious belief, job, spouse, or way of thinking. Our delight in movies that depict the love story of a prince who wants to marry a poor farmer's daughter demonstrates how much this commitment to free will is embedded in us-how we sympathize with those prohibited from marrying "outside their class" by such social rules of propriety.
"There shall be no coercion in religion; the right way is clearly distinct from error," asserts the Quran (2:256). In verses such as "The Truth is from your Lord; so let whomever wills, believe, and let whomever wills, disbelieve" (Quran 18:29, italics mine), the Quran asserts that God created us free to choose to believe in or reject God: "Had God willed He would have made you into one community (ummah); but [it was His will] to test you in what He gave you. So compete with each other in doing good works. To God you are all returning, and He will inform you about how you differed" (Quran 5:48).
Human free will, the liberty to make our own individual choices-and our own mistakes-is essential to human dignity. Only if we have free will can we be held individually accountable for our choices and actions. Only then can we grow and mature, learning to be responsible agents. Without the freedom to choose, how could we be held responsible?
But because individual humans can and do freely exercise their will in ways that sow inequality and limit the liberties of others, an ethic of free will judges such violations as wrong, unjust, and tyrannical. Jews, Christians, and Muslims therefore have a particularly strong sense of social justice; they are keen to seek retributive justice.
We shall call this cluster of monotheism's core ideas and its concomitants of human liberty, equality, fraternity, and social justice the Abrahamic ethic. These ideas constitute the essential core of Abrahamic religion and the later iterations and reformations of the Abrahamic religion known today as the faith traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
It was therefore no accident that the cry of the French Revolution was for human "liberty, equality and fraternity," essential components of the Abrahamic ethic. Neither was it an accident that the authors of the American Declaration of Independence expressed the Abrahamic ethic as "self-evident Truths: that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," a Creator whose laws of creation are by definition the laws of nature.
And since nature is a manifestation of God's creation, nature's laws are therefore God's laws: natural law is divine law. So, the argument goes, what you feel in your heart as good and right is the very foundation of divine law.
The monotheistic principle is enshrined in the Hebrew Shema, which the Prophet Moses taught his followers: Shma yisrael adonai elohenu adonai echad: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One."
Although Moses addressed the Children of Israel, it is a call that is in fact addressed to all humanity-that the Lord our God, the Lord is One. The human response to this call is cogently expressed in the Arabic declaration of faith (shahadah) that the Prophet Muhammad taught his followers: Ash hadu an la ilaha illallah: "I declare that there is no god but God."
The challenge of maintaining the pure monotheism and ethical principles of the Abrahamic faith required a succession of prophets to remind and restate the primordial message of Abraham. Why the reminder? Because, as the Quran says, humans are forgetful. If there is anything in the Islamic view that approximates the Christian idea of original sin, in the sense of something that can be described as the universal human flaw, it is that humans forget. It does not mean a lapse in memory as much as a lapse in applying what we know. We know better, but we do what we know to be wrong anyway-and perhaps even delight in doing it.
Generally, although we recognize the commandments we are given as ethically correct, we have a strong tendency not to follow them. And loving someone "like a brother" is not very helpful if you love your brother the way Cain loved Abel, by killing him. That's why I advise my congregation to probe the one who tells you, "I love you like a brother." The prophets understood this very well, which is why the golden rule is to love others as we love ourselves.
Anything less just won't do. Knowing that loving your fellow human being as a brother or sister wasn't quite enough, and perhaps because we sometimes treat our neighbors more generously than our own siblings, the Prophet Muhammad phrased the second commandment by saying to his companions, "None of you is a believer (mu'min) until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself."
Ironically, the closer we are to someone, the stronger the tension and the conflict. This certainly raises the bar. How many of us feel happiness and not envy when others succeed or when others receive something not given to us?
One factor contributing to the challenge of fulfilling the Abrahamic ethic is the difficulty humans have in understanding something unless they can relate it to themselves, individually and/or collectively.
For example, the word Jesus evokes different images for different people. European Christians often depict him as blue eyed and blond haired; Mexican Christians depict him as black eyed and black haired. Obviously, Jesus could not have been both, but the point is that humans tend to create in their minds their own image of what something is; often this image is inaccurate, imposed upon the object of their understanding. If European and Mexican Christians, however, decided that this was important to the truth about Jesus and something worth fighting for, then this example would not be so harmless.
More significant issues arise in how Christians regard Jesus spiritually. Catholics regard Jesus as the "unbegotten son of God." Those who denied the divine sonship of Jesus disputed this, and until the 1600s they were burned as heretics for this difference in opinion.
When it comes to religion, each of us holds in our mind an image of what our religion and our God is. We're not that different from little Johnny, who was drawing something on the school chalkboard. His teacher asked, "What are you drawing, Johnny?" "God," he answered." "But," his teacher retorted, "nobody knows what God looks like." And Johnny proudly puffed up his chest and exclaimed, "They will after I'm done!"
Because God created us in His image, we can't seem to help returning the favor, creating God in ours, and in spite of knowing that our idea does no justice to divine reality, we can't resist the urge. If someone debates us on our understanding of God, we get quite upset about it, but when prophets come to correct our understanding, we tend to treat them worse-like Abraham or Jesus, seeking to burn or crucify them as heretics.
The Quran points out this human tendency, asking, "Do you propose to teach God what your religion is? While God-Knower of all things-fathoms what is in the heavens and the earth?" (Quran 49:16).
Whereas the Prophet Muhammad was sent to revive the Abrahamic ethic in the cultural mind-set and language of the Ishmaelite branch of the children of Abraham, most people have come to regard the Prophet Muhammad's mission as conveying a different message from that of Jesus and Moses, seeing it as a distinct and separate religion.
The Quran never tires of repeating that its task is to reestablish the Abrahamic ethic and that Muhammad and all the prior prophets came to do just that: "The nearest of people to Abraham are those who follow him, and this Prophet [that is, Muhammad] and those who believe" (Quran 3:68).
Islam, as we shall see later, defines itself as the latest version, or reformation, of the Abrahamic religion. It is not so much the religion of Muhammad (which is why Muslims reject the name Muhammadanism, a name given to it by outsiders), but the religion of God, originally established by Abraham, cleansed by Muhammad of pagan and polytheistic encrustations that had accrued over the intervening centuries.
To recapitulate, the Abrahamic ethic embodies the fullest and most balanced individual and social institutional expression of these two commandments whose core ideas are:- A radical monotheism, expressed in loving the one God with all of one's being
- Human liberty, equality, and fraternity, expressed in loving for others what we love for ourselves (that is, social justice) and in ensuring and protecting these principles
