UCC - Sammak: God's promises revealed in Torah, Bible, Qu'ran

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

Sammak: God's promises revealed in Torah, Bible, Qu'ran

> Written by Eric Anderson
> July 2, 2011
Mohammed Sammak, Secretary General of Lebanon's Christian-Muslim 
Committee for Dialogue, sought to correct misunderstandings about 
Islam during his Suncoast Saturday presentation at General Synod 28. 
Some of those misunderstandings, he observed, are held by Christians 
about Muslims, and some are held by Muslims about Islam itself.
The Qu'ran mentions the Bible twelve times. The verses call upon the 
people of the Bible - Christians - to follow what God revealed to 
them in the Bible: to be better Christians.
Sammak told the story of the first encounter between Christians and 
Muslims, when a delegation of Christian leaders from Yemen came to 
Medina to speak with the Prophet Mohammed. He received them at his mosque.
They carried on discussions throughout the day, and then the group 
decided to pray. When Mohammed invited them to pray in the mosque, 
the Christians demurred. They were still not persuaded he was an 
authentic prophet, so they stepped outside to speak with their God.
They returned to the mosque and continued their conversations. When 
the discussion ended, they returned home. As Sammak put it, "They 
remained Christians, and they went home."
Shortly afterward, the Prophet Mohammed dictated a covenant to define 
the relationship between the Muslim rulers and Christian citizens of 
the emerging state, intended to endure "until the end of time."  Its 
opening summarizes the import of the document: "I protect and defend 
Christians and their churches." As Sammak summarized the remainder of 
the lengthy text, it made Christians full citizens entitled to full 
protection of their neighbors and rulers of the state, including a 
formal tax exemption for churches and support for Christians charged 
with crimes as they resolved the accusations.
What would it be like if Christians and Muslims agreed to such a 
covenant as the principles for Christian-Muslim relations into the 
future? "We are different, and we are going to remain different until 
the end of time," said Sammak. "This is one of the symbols of the 
greatness of God, to create these colors that we live with."
Sammak then defined dialogue as "the art of searching for the truth 
in the point of view of the other."
Among the initiatives to engage in truth-seeking dialogue was the 
2007 document "<http://www.acommonword.com/>A Common Word," signed by 
138 Muslim scholars including Sammak. It was directed toward 
Christians, but Sammak confessed the authors were thinking more of 
the Muslim readers than Christians, encouraging them to better 
understand the foundations of relationship between the two faiths.