Islam — Reading List and Source Citations

A Reference Document for Understanding Islam and Fellowship Engagement

Thomas Lee Abshier, ND | May 13, 2026

Purpose: This document gathers the primary-source citations, classical-jurisprudence references, and scholarly reading list relevant to the assertions made about Islam in last week’s fellowship meeting. It is also intended as a durable fellowship reference for future Islam-related discussions. The compilation is research-assisted but reflects my own framing of the questions at stake.

I. Direct Assessment of the Sunday-Discussion Framing

In Sunday’s fellowship discussion, the claims made about Islam were, in summary:

Islam has expansionist, warlike, world-domination scriptural-prophetic imperatives.
The Quran contains two phases of teaching — a Meccan phase (more coexistent) and a Medinan phase (more forceful and commanding).
Muhammad’s posture changed when he gained the ability to wield power, and the revelations he reported reflect this change.
The classical Islamic project includes the establishment of a worldwide caliphate under Allah’s rule.

Assessment of these claims, in order of confidence:

(1) Mecca/Medina distinction — well-established, broadly accepted. The chronological distinction between the Meccan period (610–622 CE) and the Medinan period (622–632 CE) is standard in both Muslim and Western academic scholarship. The general character difference — Meccan suras tend to be shorter, more theological, more universalist; Medinan suras tend to be longer, more legal and political, more concerned with concrete community matters, including warfare — is also standard. This was not a controversial claim to make in the discussion. (See sections II and IV below.)

(2) Posture-change correlated with power — broadly accepted, with explanatory disagreement. Both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars accept that Muhammad’s posture toward unbelievers shifted across the two periods. Muslim apologists typically explain this as a defensive shift in response to Meccan persecution and as a legitimate response to threats from surrounding tribes. Critical scholars often read it as an opportunistic exploitation of newly available power. The factual claim of change is uncontroversial; the explanation of the change is contested.

(3) Classical Islam includes an expansionist warfare doctrine, well-established but contested by reformists. The classical Sunni jurisprudential tradition, codified by the four major madhabs (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali) and visible in foundational works like al-Shaybani’s Siyar (8th century), al-Mawardi’s al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya (11th century), and the Shafi’i manual Reliance of the Traveller (still used and certified by Al-Azhar), includes a robust doctrine of jihad fi sabil Allah (struggle in the path of Allah) that is partly individual-spiritual but importantly also collective-military. The world is classically divided into dar al-Islam (abode of Islam) and dar al-harb (abode of war), with offensive jihad being a fard kifaya (collective obligation) of the Muslim community. This is not invented; it is in the books. However, contemporary reformist Muslim scholars (Abou El Fadl, Akbar Ahmed, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha) contest whether this classical jurisprudence should be normative for modern Muslims, arguing variously that the verses were contextual, that the classical synthesis was a historical artifact rather than divinely required, or that the Meccan phase represents the eternal core of the message.

(4) Worldwide caliphate as eschatological/theological goal — present in classical tradition, varies by school. The expectation of a restored caliphate under which Allah’s law would rule the earth is present in classical Sunni eschatology and in many hadith. The Mahdi tradition (more elaborated in Shia, present in Sunni) anticipates a future Islamic ruler who will establish justice over the entire earth. This is a real strand of Islamic doctrine; whether it is normative or how it is interpreted varies enormously across modern Muslim communities.

Where the Sunday framing was overstated:

The language used in Sunday’s discussion — “Islam wants to dominate the whole world for Allah,” “all who do not believe must pay the tax” — telescopes the variation within Islam into a single voice that the actual community of 1.8 billion Muslims does not speak with. The classical jurisprudential tradition contains the materials for that voice; specific historical movements have expressed that voice; some contemporary movements (Khomeinist Iran, Salafi-jihadism, the Muslim Brotherhood’s classical project, various Mahdist movements) continue to express it. But many other contemporary Muslim communities — especially in the United States, Western Europe, Indonesia, Senegal, Morocco, and elsewhere — operate inside a framework that has substantially set aside the classical militant doctrine in favor of reformist, Sufi, or pragmatic accommodations. Michael’s experience of friendly mosque visits is real; so is the classical jurisprudence Thomas referenced. Both are true at once. The dialogue with Muslims will be most productive if both truths are held simultaneously, realizing that the Muslim doctrines are heterogeneous among the various sects.

Where the framing was correct:

The substantive content of the classical tradition is what Thomas described. A Muslim teacher who is honest about the tradition will acknowledge the existence of dar al-Islam/dar al-harb, the doctrine of offensive jihad as classically formulated, the dhimmi/jizya institution, and the expansionist orientation of classical Islamic law. The honest disagreement will be about whether these classical doctrines are normative for contemporary Muslims. Thomas’s position is that they are at least the latent doctrine that surfaces under conditions of population-scale and political opportunity; the reformist position is that they were contextual and have been or should be set aside. Both positions can be argued seriously from within Islamic studies.

II. The Meccan-Medinan Distinction: The Standard Scholarly Picture

Muhammad’s prophetic ministry traditionally divides into two periods:

The Meccan period (610–622 CE). Muhammad began receiving revelations in Mecca around 610 CE, at the age of approximately 40. For roughly twelve years, he preached as a minority figure among the dominant pagan Quraysh tribe, with a small group of followers, facing persecution and social ostracism. The Meccan suras (traditionally identified by a combination of internal evidence and Muslim tradition) tend to share certain features:

– Shorter, more poetic, more rhythmic – Focused on theological themes: the oneness of Allah, the resurrection, the Day of Judgment, the stories of earlier prophets (especially those shared with Jewish and Christian tradition) – Often more universalist in tone — addressing humanity generally, “O mankind” – Less concerned with concrete community structure (no community of any size existed yet) – Generally more tolerant of People of the Book (Jews and Christians), often appealing to common ground

Examples of Meccan suras include 96 (al-‘Alaq, traditionally the first revealed), 109 (al-Kafirun, often cited as containing “to you your religion, to me my religion”), 73 (al-Muzzammil), 74 (al-Muddaththir).

The Hijra (622 CE). Muhammad and his small community migrated to Yathrib (renamed Medina, “the city” of the Prophet) to escape Meccan persecution. This year is so important that the Islamic calendar dates from it (1 AH = 622 CE). In Medina, Muhammad became simultaneously a religious teacher, a political leader, a judge, and a military commander. The community grew rapidly through conversions, alliances, and conquests.

The Medinan period (622–632 CE). The Medinan suras tend to share different features:

– Longer, more discursive, more legal/regulatory – Focused on community-organizational matters: marriage, inheritance, criminal law, ritual practice, contracts, warfare, treaties – Often addressed to “O you who believe” — assuming an established community – More differentiated treatment of People of the Book — both verses of accommodation (e.g., Q 2:62, 5:69) and verses of severe critique (e.g., Q 9:29, 5:51, 5:60) – Containing all the major Quranic passages on jihad as armed struggle

Examples include 2 (al-Baqara, the longest sura), 3 (Al ‘Imran), 4 (al-Nisa’), 5 (al-Ma’ida), 8 (al-Anfal, “the Spoils”), 9 (al-Tawbah, “Repentance,” traditionally one of the last revealed and containing the so-called “sword verse”).

Why this matters. When a Quran reader encounters two apparently contradictory verses — one tolerant, one militant — the chronological question becomes immediately relevant: was the tolerant verse revealed when Muhammad was a minority preacher, and the militant verse later, when he was leading an expanding state? In many cases, the classical answer is yes. The classical jurisprudential response to this chronological asymmetry is the doctrine of naskh.

III. The Doctrine of Naskh (Abrogation)

The Arabic word naskh (نسخ) means abrogation, repeal, or supersession. In classical Quranic studies, it refers to the principle that some Quranic verses cancel or modify earlier ones. The doctrine has Quranic foundation:

Q 2:106: We do not abrogate (nansakh) a verse or cause it to be forgotten except that We bring forth one better than it or similar to it. Q 16:101: And when We substitute a verse in place of a verse — and Allah is most knowing of what He sends down — they say, “You, [O Muhammad], are but an inventor.”

Classical Muslim scholarship developed elaborate theories of naskh. The major works include:

– al-Nahhas (d. 950 CE), al-Nasikh wal-Mansukh – Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1200 CE), Nawasikh al-Quran – Hibatullah al-Asbahani (12th century), al-Nasikh wal-Mansukh

The classical doctrine recognizes three types of abrogation: 1. Abrogation of recitation and ruling (the verse is removed from the Quran entirely), 2. Abrogation of recitation but not ruling (the verse is no longer in the Quran, but its legal force remains; the alleged “stoning verse” for adultery is the classic example) 3. Abrogation of ruling but not recitation (the verse remains in the Quran, but its legal force is superseded)

Type 3 is the one that matters for the present discussion. The classical commentators identified varying numbers of mansukh (abrogated) verses; Suyuti (15th century) listed 20, al-Nahhas 134, and ibn Salama many more.

The classical position on the tolerance/warfare question. The classical Sunni majority position is that naskh operates from earlier to later in many cases, and that the militant verses of the Medinan period — especially Sura 9 — abrogate earlier, more accommodating verses. Specifically:

– Ibn Kathir (d. 1373) in his widely-circulated Tafsir reports the tradition that Q 9:5 (the “sword verse”) abrogates as many as 124 earlier verses commanding patience, peaceful preaching, or accommodation of unbelievers. – al-Tabari (d. 923) similarly treats many of the conciliatory Meccan verses as abrogated by the later Medinan revelations. – al-Suyuti (d. 1505) endorses a similar position in his al-Itqan fi ‘Ulum al-Quran.

This classical position has direct implications: a tolerant verse like Q 109:6 (to you your religion, to me my religion) or even Q 2:256 (there is no compulsion in religion) is, on the classical position, abrogated in legal force by Q 9:5 and Q 9:29. The verses remain in the Quran for recitation but no longer ground the Muslim’s actual obligations toward unbelievers in conditions where the Muslim community has the strength to enforce a different posture.

The reformist counter-position. Modern reformist Muslim scholars have variously:

– Denied that naskh applies within the Quran at all (a minority modernist position). – Reduced the number of mansukh verses dramatically (Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida). – Argued that naskh operates in the opposite direction — that the eternal Meccan revelations were temporarily superseded by the contingent Medinan revelations under historical conditions, and that the proper modern Muslim posture is to return to the Meccan core (this was the position of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, the Sudanese reformist executed in 1985, in The Second Message of Islam). – Argued that the militant verses were context-specific responses to particular military situations and should not be generalized into normative doctrine (Khaled Abou El Fadl, Akbar Ahmed, Mohammad Hashim Kamali).

For the Sherman dialogue: The question “do the militant verses of Sura 9 abrogate the earlier tolerant verses?” is one of the most consequential questions to ask the Muslim teacher. The answer will tell you a great deal about where he stands on the spectrum. A classical-traditional teacher will affirm the abrogation; a reformist teacher will reject it or limit it severely. Both positions are present in contemporary Muslim scholarship.

IV. Quranic Verses Relevant to the Question

The Quran is divided into 114 surahs (chapters), each composed of verses (ayat, sing. ayah). Citation format is sura:verse (e.g., 9:5 = Sura 9, verse 5). The most widely-used English translations differ on some verses; Yusuf Ali, Pickthall, Muhammad Asad, Sahih International, and Arthur Arberry are the major ones. Reform-leaning translators often soften the militant verses; conservative translators (especially the Sahih International, favored in Salafi circles) tend to render them more literally.

A. Tolerant verses, mostly Meccan

Q 109:1-6 (al-Kafirun, Meccan): Say: O disbelievers, I do not worship what you worship, nor are you worshippers of what I worship… To you your religion, and to me my religion. This is the most-cited Quranic verse for religious tolerance. Whether it is normative or abrogated is contested per Section III.

Q 73:10 (Meccan): And be patient over what they say and avoid them with gracious avoidance. The Meccan posture of patient endurance of unbelievers.

Q 50:45 (Meccan): We are most knowing of what they say, and you are not over them a tyrant. But remind by the Quran whoever fears My threat. Preaching is the obligation, not coercion.

Q 88:21-22 (Meccan): So remind, [O Muhammad]; you are only a reminder. You are not over them a controller.

Q 18:29 (Meccan): So whoever wills, let him believe; and whoever wills, let him disbelieve.

B. Tolerant verses, Medinan

Q 2:256 (Medinan): There is no compulsion in religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong. This is the single most-cited verse for the “Islam does not compel conversion” position. Classical commentators are divided on whether this verse is abrogated by Q 9:5 (the position of many classical Sunni commentators) or whether it remains in force (the position of most modern reformist Muslims and many traditional Sufi readings). A Muslim teacher’s position on Q 2:256 — abrogated or normative — is a key data point.

Q 5:32 (Medinan): Whoever kills a soul, unless for a soul or for corruption upon the earth, it is as if he killed all of humanity. This is the verse Muslim apologists most often cite to demonstrate Islam’s commitment to the sanctity of life. The verse continues, however, with substantial qualifications.

Q 60:8 (Medinan): Allah does not forbid you from those who do not fight you because of religion and do not expel you from your homes — from being righteous toward them and acting justly toward them. Permits friendly relations with non-hostile unbelievers.

Q 49:13 (Medinan): O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. The universalist verse.

Q 22:40 (Medinan): If Allah had not checked one set of people by means of another, monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, in which the name of Allah is much remembered, would surely have been pulled down. Recognition of legitimate non-Muslim religious institutions.

C. Militant verses, mostly Medinan

Q 9:5 (Medinan, “The Sword Verse”): When the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. This is the single most consequential militant verse. Classical commentary treats it as one of the latest revealed verses and as abrogating many earlier accommodation verses. The verse explicitly conditions the cessation of warfare against polytheists on their conversion to Islam (“repent, establish prayer, and give zakah” = the markers of conversion).

Q 9:29 (Medinan, “The Jizya Verse”): Fight against those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture — [fight] until they give the jizya willingly while they are humbled. This is the foundational verse for the dhimmi/jizya institution. The classical jurisprudential elaboration is extensive: jizya is paid by Ahl al-Kitab (People of the Book — Jews, Christians, and by extension Zoroastrians and some other groups), in exchange for protection (dhimma) and the right to continue practicing their religion under defined restrictions. The phrase while they are humbled (Arabic: wa-hum saghirun) is interpreted strictly in classical jurisprudence as requiring the dhimmi to demonstrate subjugation, often through humiliation rituals at the time of payment.

Q 8:39 (Medinan): And fight them until there is no fitnah and the religion, all of it, is for Allah. The Arabic hatta la takuna fitna wa-yakuna al-din kulluhu lillah literally means “until there is no fitnah and all of religion is for Allah.” Classical commentary glosses fitnah (often translated “persecution” or “trial”) as “shirk” or “polytheism” — so the verse mandates fighting until polytheism is eliminated and all worship is directed to Allah. This is the global-dominion verse.

Q 47:4 (Medinan): When you meet those who disbelieve in battle, strike at the necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either confer favor afterwards or ransom them.

Q 2:191-193 (Medinan): Kill them wherever you find them and turn them out from where they have turned you out… fight them until there is no fitnah and worship is for Allah. But if they cease, there is to be no aggression except against the oppressors. The “kill them wherever you find them” verse, with the qualification of self-defense (“if they cease…”) that reformists emphasize and that classical jurisprudence often treats as superseded by Q 9:5.

Q 9:111 (Medinan): Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties [in exchange] for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, so they kill and are killed. The verse most cited by Salafi-jihadist recruitment material.

Q 9:73 / 66:9 (Medinan): O Prophet, strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh upon them. And their refuge is Hell, and wretched is the destination.

Q 4:74 (Medinan): So let those fight in the cause of Allah who sell the life of this world for the Hereafter. And he who fights in the cause of Allah and is killed or achieves victory — We will bestow upon him a great reward.

Q 9:14 (Medinan): Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands.

Q 8:12 (Medinan): I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve, so strike upon the necks and strike upon every fingertip of them.

Q 8:60 (Medinan): And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy. The “terrify the enemy” verse, often cited in radical-jihadist literature.

D. The People of the Book — Mixed Treatment

Q 5:51 (Medinan): O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you — then indeed, he is one of them. Prohibits close alliances with Jews and Christians.

Q 5:14 (Medinan): And from those who say, “We are Christians,” We took their covenant; but they forgot a portion of that of which they were reminded. So We caused among them animosity and hatred until the Day of Resurrection.

Q 9:30 (Medinan): The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of Allah”; and the Christians say, “The Messiah is the son of Allah.” That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before. May Allah destroy them; how are they deluded?

These verses are difficult to reconcile with the more accommodating verses (e.g., Q 60:8). The classical and reformist readings differ on whether these are general statements or contextual to specific tribal conflicts of Muhammad’s era.

V. Hadith on Jihad, Expansion, and the Caliphate

The hadith are the recorded sayings and deeds of Muhammad, transmitted through chains of narrators and collected into canonical compilations beginning in the 9th century CE. The two most authoritative Sunni collections are:

– Sahih al-Bukhari (d. 870 CE), the most authoritative Sunni hadith collection – Sahih Muslim (d. 875 CE), second only to Bukhari

Both are available in English translation (Khan translation of Bukhari, Siddiqui translation of Muslim, both with parallel Arabic). The remaining four canonical collections (Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, Nasa’i, Ibn Majah) are also widely cited. Twelver Shia have their own canonical collections (the “Four Books” — al-Kafi, Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih, Tahdhib al-Ahkam, al-Istibsar).

A. Foundational Jihad Hadith

Sahih al-Bukhari 25 (Book of Belief): Muhammad said: I have been ordered to fight the people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform the prayer, and pay the zakah. If they do that, their blood and property are protected from me except by the right of Islam, and their account is with Allah. (Variant in Sahih Muslim 22.) This is the foundational qital hadith — Muhammad’s claim that he has been commanded to fight all peoples until they embrace Islam. The verse-pair with Q 9:5 grounds the classical doctrine of offensive jihad as a collective obligation.

Sahih al-Bukhari 2924: The Hour will not come until you fight against the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say: “O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me; kill him.” (Also Sahih Muslim 2922 — the “Gharqad tree” hadith.) The eschatological battle-with-Jews hadith, widely cited by both anti-Islam polemicists and by various Islamist movements in Israel/Palestine discourse.

Sahih Muslim 1731: When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action… invite them to accept Islam; if they respond, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them… If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay, seek Allah’s help and fight them. The classical three-stage protocol of warfare: dawah (invitation), jizya, qital (combat).

B. Conquest Hadith

Musnad Ahmad 18957 / Mustadrak al-Hakim 8300: You will indeed conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful leader will her leader be, and what a wonderful army will that army be! This hadith was cited as motivating the various Muslim sieges of Constantinople, culminating in 1453, when Mehmed II conquered the city. Modern Islamist movements (including the Muslim Brotherhood’s classical formulations) cite this hadith in connection with predictions of Rome’s eventual conquest.

Sahih Muslim 2900: Khilafah (caliphate) will be on the pattern of prophethood for thirty years; then Allah will give it to whom He wills… Foundational hadith for the doctrine of the rightful caliphate as the continuation of Muhammad’s political-religious authority.

Sahih al-Bukhari 7222 / Sahih Muslim 1821: This matter (caliphate) will remain among Quraysh as long as two of them are left in the world. Restricts the caliphate to Muhammad’s Quraysh tribe — relevant to Islamic State claims and counter-claims.

C. Mahdi and End-Times Hadith

The Mahdi tradition is more developed among Twelver Shia than among Sunni, but it exists in both. The Twelver Shia hold that the Twelfth Imam (Muhammad al-Mahdi, born 869 CE) entered occultation in 941 CE and will return as the Mahdi to establish global justice. The Khomeinist current within Twelver Shia includes a strain that interprets contemporary chaos as hastening this return.

Sunan Abi Dawud 4282 / Sunan Ibn Majah 4082-4088: Various hadith about the appearance of the Mahdi, a descendant of Muhammad, who will fill the earth with justice as it has been filled with injustice.

Sahih Muslim 2937 / Sunan Abi Dawud 4321-4326: The signs of the Hour — including the appearance of the Dajjal (Antichrist figure), the descent of Isa (Jesus) who will break the cross and kill the swine and abolish jizya, and the global victory of Islam.

These eschatological hadith vary widely in chain-of-transmission authenticity and in interpretation. They are taken with great seriousness in Khomeinist Iran, in certain Salafi-jihadist movements (Islamic State’s caliphate proclamation in 2014 drew on these hadith), and in various Mahdist movements throughout Islamic history (the Sudanese Mahdi of the 1880s being the most famous).

VI. The Doctrines of Taqiyya, Hudna, and Kitman

These three doctrines, mentioned in Thomas’s letter to Michael, deserve precise sourcing.

Taqiyya (تقية)

The Arabic root waqaya means “to guard, protect, shield.” Taqiyya is the doctrine of legitimate dissimulation of one’s religious belief under conditions of threat or strategic necessity.

Primary Quranic basis: – Q 16:106: Whoever disbelieves in Allah after his belief… except for one who is forced [to renounce his religion] while his heart is secure in faith. – Q 3:28: Let not the believers take the disbelievers as allies rather than the believers. And whoever does that has nothing with Allah, except when taking precaution against them in prudence (illa an tattaqu minhum tuqatan).

Classical development: Taqiyya is particularly developed in Twelver Shia jurisprudence, where it served the historical function of protecting Shia minorities under Sunni majority rule. The Twelver Shia jurist al-Saduq (d. 991 CE) gave it canonical formulation in his Risalat al-I’tiqadat. In Twelver tradition, taqiyya is sometimes elevated to a religious duty when threat is present.

Sunni development: Sunnis have a parallel but less central concept. The principle is recognized but historically less elaborated, since Sunni Muslims were typically in majority/power positions and did not need the doctrine as urgently. However, classical Sunni jurisprudence does authorize dissimulation when life is at stake.

Modern controversy: Robert Spencer, Raymond Ibrahim, and others have argued that taqiyya is being employed strategically by Islamist movements to mislead Western interlocutors about Islamic doctrine. Reformist Muslim scholars argue this is a misreading — that taqiyya is narrowly about protection-of-life, not a general license to lie. The truth is probably somewhere between: taqiyya in its classical form is narrowly about life-threat, but the broader principle of strategic dissimulation has been variously expanded in some modern Islamist contexts.

Hudna (هدنة)

The Arabic word means “truce” or “armistice.” In classical Islamic jurisprudence, a hudna is a temporary peace agreement with non-Muslims, normally for a defined period (often ten years, by analogy to the Treaty of Hudaybiyya).

Primary basis: The Treaty of Hudaybiyya (628 CE), in which Muhammad concluded a ten-year truce with the Quraysh of Mecca. Two years later, Muhammad considered the treaty broken by Quraysh ally violations and conquered Mecca in 630 CE. This treaty is the classical pattern of hudna: a temporary truce for strategic purposes, to be terminated when conditions favor resumption of conflict.

Classical jurisprudence: A hudna is permitted when the Muslim community lacks the strength to wage successful jihad. It is bounded in time and is to be terminated when the strategic balance shifts. The Shafi’i Reliance of the Traveller (Book O 9.16) discusses hudna explicitly.

Modern application: The doctrine is cited in Hamas-related contexts and in some Muslim Brotherhood discussions of long-term strategy toward Western states. The connection to the English word “hoodwinked,” mentioned in Thomas’s letter, is folk-etymological and not historically established; the English word likely derives from medieval falconry. But the strategic concept is well-attested in Islamic jurisprudence.

Kitman (كتمان)

The Arabic root katama means “to conceal” or “to suppress.” Kitman is the practice of concealment through silence — withholding information rather than affirmatively lying. In classical jurisprudence, it is often grouped with taqiyya as a permitted form of strategic concealment.

Twelver Shia development: Kitman is again more elaborated in Twelver Shia than in Sunni jurisprudence, where it served the function of protecting Shia identity under Sunni rule.

Modern application: The principle that a Muslim is not obligated to disclose the full doctrinal content of his beliefs to non-Muslim interlocutors who are not entitled to that knowledge has been variously deployed in modern dawah and political-engagement contexts. Critics (Spencer, Ibrahim) cite this as evidence that public statements by Western Muslim leaders may not represent their fully-held views. Reformists argue this is paranoid over-reading.

For the Interfaith Muslim Dialogue

The discussion of taqiyya/hudna/kitman is likely one of the hardest topics to confront without offense. A reformist or accommodationist Muslim teacher will object — accurately — that these doctrines have specific classical contexts and are not a general license to deceive non-Muslims. A more traditional or politically engaged Muslim teacher may address the question more candidly. Either way, the question is worth raising, but it should be raised in scholarly terms (with citation to primary sources) rather than as an accusation. The reformist counter-case deserves serious engagement.

VII. Classical Jurisprudence: Dar al-Islam, Dar al-Harb, Dar al-Sulh

Classical Sunni jurisprudence (and similar Shia jurisprudence) divides the world into juridical zones:

Dar al-Islam (دار الإسلام, “Abode of Islam”): Territories under Muslim rule where Islamic law is operative. Within dar al-Islam, Muslims have their full rights, and dhimmis (protected non-Muslims, i.e., Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and in some interpretations Hindus and Buddhists) have defined rights and obligations under Islamic governance.

Dar al-Harb (دار الحرب, “Abode of War”): Territories not under Muslim rule. The classical jurisprudential default is that dar al-harb is a legitimate target of jihad until it is brought into dar al-Islam. The intensity and timing of this expansion depend on the strategic position of the Muslim community.

Dar al-Sulh (دار الصلح, “Abode of Treaty”) or Dar al-‘Ahd (دار العهد, “Abode of Covenant”): An intermediate category recognizing territories that are not yet dar al-Islam but have entered treaty relations with Muslim authorities. This category is more developed in Hanafi jurisprudence than in Maliki or Shafi’i.

Implications for the Muslim minority living in dar al-harb (i.e., in non-Muslim states): Classical jurisprudence required Muslims to migrate from dar al-harb to dar al-Islam (hijra) if they could, or to live under conditions of darura (necessity) until dar al-harb could be brought into dar al-Islam. Modern Muslim minority communities in Western states are, on classical jurisprudence, living under conditions that classical scholars did not fully anticipate. The handling of this situation is an active area of contemporary Islamic legal scholarship — fiqh al-aqalliyyat (jurisprudence of minorities) is a developing field with figures like Yusuf al-Qaradawi (deceased 2022; controversial), Taha Jabir al-Alwani (deceased 2016), and others.

For the Sherman dialogue: The question of whether American Muslims understand themselves as living in dar al-harb, in dar al-sulh, or in some newer category is one of the most important questions to put to a Muslim teacher. The answer will tell you how the teacher conceives of the appropriate Muslim posture toward American civic order. A teacher who frames the situation in darura terms (i.e., the Muslim community is accommodating non-Muslim civil law out of necessity, pending the eventual establishment of Islamic governance) is operating inside the classical framework. A teacher who rejects the classical dar al-Islam/dar al-harb distinction altogether is operating in a more reformist framework.

VIII. Reading List

I have grouped sources into five categories with brief annotations. The first four are essential; the fifth is included for completeness but should be read with awareness of its polemical character.

A. Primary Sources

The Quran. The Quran itself, in a reliable English translation. Recommended translations:

– The Koran Interpreted by Arthur J. Arberry (Oxford 1955). A Non-Muslim scholarly attempt to convey the Quranic rhythm. Often used in Western academic settings.
– The Meaning of the Holy Quran by Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1934, multiple revisions). Muslim, traditional. The most widely used English translation among English-speaking Muslims for a century.
– The Message of the Quran by Muhammad Asad (1980). Muslim, modernist, with substantial scholarly apparatus. Often cited by reformist Muslims.
– Sahih International (1997). Favored by Salafi communities; tends toward literal renderings of militant verses.
– Reading two translations side-by-side (e.g., Asad and Sahih International) is illuminating because their translation choices on contested verses differ substantially.

Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. The two canonical Sunni hadith collections. The Muhammad Muhsin Khan translation of Bukhari (9 volumes) and the Abdul Hamid Siddiqui translation of Muslim are standard. Sunnah.com provides searchable online versions of both.

Sirat Rasul Allah by Ibn Ishaq (edited by Ibn Hisham, 8th-9th century). The earliest extant biography of Muhammad. Alfred Guillaume’s English translation, The Life of Muhammad (Oxford 1955), is the standard. Indispensable for understanding what Muslims have traditionally believed about Muhammad’s life and the chronology of his career.

Reliance of the Traveller (Umdat al-Salik) by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (14th century), translated and edited by Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Amana 1991, revised 1994). This is the classical Shafi’i fiqh manual, certified for accuracy by Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Book O (“Justice”) contains the classical Islamic law of warfare against unbelievers. The book is on every well-stocked Islamic-studies shelf and is the single most authoritative English-language presentation of what classical Sunni jurisprudence actually teaches on jihad.

Tafsir Ibn Kathir (14th century), abridged English edition by Safiur Rahman Mubarakpuri (Darussalam 2003, 10 volumes). The most widely-circulated classical Sunni Quranic commentary, especially influential in modern Salafi circles. Reading Ibn Kathir on Q 9:5 and Q 9:29 is illuminating.

B. Counter-jihad Scholarship

These works present the strongest case that classical Islamic doctrine contains expansionist and militant elements that remain operative in significant streams of contemporary Islam. They are polemical in tone but generally well-sourced.

Andrew G. Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (Prometheus 2005, 759 pages). This is the most comprehensive English-language anthology of primary-source Islamic legal, theological, and historiographical texts on jihad and dhimmitude. Heavy academic apparatus; over 200 pages of primary-source translations from classical Sunni and Shia sources. If you read one book from this category, this is it.

Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery 2005) and The Truth About Muhammad (Regnery 2006). Spencer is the most prominent English-language counter-jihad polemicist; he runs JihadWatch.org. His tone is polemical, but his sourcing is generally accurate. The Truth About Muhammad draws primarily on Ibn Ishaq and the canonical hadith collections.

Bat Ye’or (Gisèle Littman), The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (Fairleigh Dickinson 1985) and Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Fairleigh Dickinson 2002). Bat Ye’or is the originator of the term dhimmitude and the classical scholar of the dhimmi institution from a Jewish/Christian perspective. The Dhimmi contains extensive primary-source documentation.

Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim (Prometheus 1995). Apostate, polemical, but well-sourced. The author writes under a pseudonym for safety reasons.

Daniel Pipes — various works and the magazine Middle East Forum. Pipes is a middle-position scholar between full counter-jihad and accommodationist scholarship. Useful for nuance.

C. Mainstream Western Academic Scholarship

These works represent the mainstream of Western academic Islamic studies. They are generally sympathetic to Islam as a tradition while being rigorous about its texts and history.

W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford 1953) and Muhammad at Medina (Oxford 1956). The classical two-volume scholarly biography of Muhammad. Watt was generally sympathetic to Islam but rigorous about the sources. Reading Watt’s two volumes side-by-side gives you the standard scholarly account of the Mecca/Medina transition.

F.E. Peters, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (SUNY 1994) and The Monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Conflict and Competition (Princeton 2003, 2 vols). Peters is the dean of American academic Islamic studies; the most balanced single-volume biography.

Bernard Lewis — many works, including The Crisis of Islam (Modern Library 2003), What Went Wrong? (Oxford 2002), The Political Language of Islam (Chicago 1988), and The Muslim Discovery of Europe (Norton 1982). Lewis was the dean of Western Islamic studies for much of the 20th century. Generally pessimistic about Islam’s compatibility with Western liberal democracy. The most cited Western scholar on Islam by Western political-class readers; controversial within Islamic studies for being too critical (the Edward Said critique).

Patricia Crone — various works on early Islam. Revisionist; argues for significant skepticism about traditional accounts of Islam’s origins. Important for understanding the scholarly debate.

Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet (HarperCollins 1992) and Islam: A Short History (Modern Library 2000). Armstrong is on the sympathetic-to-Islam end of the academic spectrum. Often used in interfaith dialogue contexts.

John L. Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam (Oxford 2002) and Islam: The Straight Path (Oxford, multiple editions). Esposito is the dean of accommodationist Western Islamic studies; his work is widely used in interfaith dialogue but is often criticized by counter-jihad scholars as soft on the militant strand.

D. Reformist Muslim Scholarship

These are the works that make the strongest case within Islam for setting aside or contextualizing the militant verses and classical jurisprudence for modern application.

Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (HarperOne 2005) and Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari’ah in the Modern Age (Rowman & Littlefield 2014). UCLA law professor; the most prominent English-language Muslim reformist scholar. Abou El Fadl writes from within classical Islamic legal scholarship while arguing for a reformist reading. His engagement with the classical sources is rigorous.

Akbar S. Ahmed, Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization (Brookings 2007). Ahmed is a Pakistani diplomat-turned-anthropologist (now at American University). The book is a sympathetic ethnographic study of contemporary Muslim communities across multiple countries, with substantial engagement with the moderate-versus-radical question.

Mohammad Hashim Kamali — Malaysian-based legal scholar. The Right to Life, Security, Privacy and Ownership in Islam (Islamic Texts Society 2008); Shariah Law: An Introduction (Oneworld 2008). Authoritative reformist legal scholar.

Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, The Second Message of Islam (Syracuse 1987, translated by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im). The radical reformist’s argument that the Meccan verses are the eternal core of the Quran and the Medinan verses were contextual and contingent. Taha was executed by the Sudanese regime in 1985 for apostasy. The most theologically radical reformist position from within Islam; sometimes called “Republican Brotherhood” Islam.

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Toward an Islamic Reformation (Syracuse 1990) and Islam and the Secular State (Harvard 2008). Taha’s student; develops the reformist case in a legal-political register.

Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford 2004) and others. Ramadan is the most controversial figure in this category — accused by critics of “double-discourse” (saying reformist things in English while saying traditionalist things in Arabic). The accusation is contested. His work is widely read and worth reading critically.

E. Apostate/Dissident Voices

These are works by former Muslims and by Muslim dissidents who have left the faith or who critique it from a position of internal-then-external knowledge. They are valuable but should be read with awareness of the authors’ particular trajectories.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (Free Press 2007) and Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (HarperCollins 2015). Hirsi Ali is the most prominent Western-based former-Muslim public intellectual. Her position has shifted over time; recently, she has converted to Christianity. Critiqued by Muslim scholars as polemical; defended by counter-jihad scholars as honest testimony.

Wafa Sultan, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam (St. Martin’s 2009). Syrian-American psychiatrist; sharp critic of Islam.

Nonie Darwish, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law (Thomas Nelson 2008). Egyptian-American convert from Islam to Christianity; daughter of a senior Egyptian intelligence officer.

These voices are not the mainstream Muslim voice, but they are real, articulate, and worth hearing.

IX. What to Expect from the Muslim Interlocutor

When engaging with the Muslim teacher or practitioner:

(1) Distinguish “Islam” from “Islamism” or “jihadism.” This is the standard reformist move: classical militant jurisprudence is not contemporary mainstream Islam; the violent movements are aberrations from true Islam; the 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide are not implicated in the militant minority’s actions.

(2) Cite Q 2:256 (“no compulsion in religion”) and Q 5:32 (sanctity of life). These are the standard accommodationist proof-texts. Be prepared to ask whether these verses are normative or abrogated, and whether the teacher accepts the classical naskh of Q 2:256 by Q 9:5.

(3) Frame the militant verses as contextual. The classical jurisprudential tradition treated the militant verses as normative; reformists treat them as context-specific. The teacher will probably frame Q 9:5 as a specific historical response to particular tribal treaties and not as a general license for offensive jihad.

(4) Distinguish “greater jihad” from “lesser jihad.” Many reformist Muslim teachers will emphasize that the “greater jihad” (jihad al-akbar) is the spiritual struggle against the ego, and only the “lesser jihad” (jihad al-asghar) is military. This distinction is well-attested in some hadith but is also classically subordinated to the military meaning in the major jurisprudential schools. The hadith attributing this distinction to Muhammad is, in fact, generally considered weak (da’if) by hadith specialists, though it is widely cited in reformist and Sufi contexts.

(5) Reject the binary of dar al-Islam / dar al-harb. Most contemporary mainstream Muslims do not actively operate inside the classical binary. Expect the teacher to characterize the binary as a medieval-juridical construction that no longer governs Muslim engagement with non-Muslim societies.

(6) Cite reformist scholars favorably. The Abou El Fadl line of thought is now the mainstream Western-trained Muslim position. Expect citations and references to him or to similar figures.

How to Engage Productively

(1) Distinguish doctrine from sociology. The doctrinal question — what do the texts say, what does the classical tradition teach — is one question. The sociological question — what do contemporary Muslims actually believe and do — is another. The militant doctrine exists in the texts; not all Muslims live by it. Both can be true.

(2) Ask about naskh directly. The teacher’s position on naskh — does Q 9:5 abrogate Q 2:256, or is Q 2:256 the eternal norm — is a key diagnostic. Phrase the question scholarly: Does your understanding of naskh hold that the militant Medinan verses abrogate the more tolerant Meccan and earlier Medinan verses, or do you take the reformist position that the tolerant verses are normative and the militant verses were contextual to specific historical situations?

(3) Ask about Reliance of the Traveller. Are the rulings of Book O on jihad in Reliance of the Traveller normative for contemporary Muslims, or are they classical-jurisprudence positions that have been superseded by modern reformist Islamic legal scholarship? This puts the question in scholarly form and avoids generalization.

(4) Ask about specific historical figures. What is your view of Ibn Kathir as a Quranic commentator? (Classical commentator widely cited by Salafi-jihadists.) What is your view of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha? (Radical reformist executed for apostasy.) What is your view of Yusuf al-Qaradawi? (Controversial Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated scholar.) The teacher’s positions on these figures will tell you where he stands.

(5) Be honest about your own framework. You hold a Christian framework that takes the doctrine of the antichrist seriously, the doctrine of false prophets, and the doctrine of demonic deception (per the demonology essay in the RM repo). You will be approaching the dialogue as a Christian who suspects that classical Islam contains genuine spiritual hostility to Christian witness, not merely as a religious-neutral inquirer. Stating this honestly at the outset is fairer to the Muslim interlocutor than pretending to neutrality you do not actually hold.

(6) Listen carefully. The Muslim teacher’s actual position may be more nuanced than your prior frame allows. If he offers a sophisticated reformist reading of the texts, take it seriously. If he affirms the classical militant tradition, he also takes it seriously. Either response is informative.

(7) Avoid gotcha questions. The following four questions are substantive. Do not multiply them. Listen to the answers carefully.

ON THE CONTESTED VERSES. How does mainstream contemporary Sunni Islam read Quran 9:5 (the so-called sword verse) and 9:29 (the jizya verse) for application in the 21st-century West? Are these verses understood as abrogated, as contextual to seventh-century Arabia, or as normative for present Muslim engagement with non-Muslim societies?
ON THE MUSLIM MINORITY IN NON-MUSLIM CIVIL ORDER. What is the contemporary mainstream Islamic teaching on the relationship between Muslim minorities and non-Muslim civil law? Does darura (necessity) provide the operating framework, and if so, what are its limits — at what demographic or political point does the Muslim community transition from accommodation-under-necessity to active reshaping of the civic-legal order?
ON THE REFORMIST TRADITION. How do leading reformist Muslim scholars — Khaled Abou El Fadl, Akbar Ahmed, Mohammad Hashim Kamali — understand Islam’s relationship to constitutional democracy, religious pluralism, and the rights of non-Muslims and women? Where do they locate themselves relative to the classical jurisprudential tradition, and how representative is their position of mainstream Muslim thought worldwide?
ON THE DEMOGRAPHIC-MAJORITY SCENARIO. How would mainstream Muslims in America understand the appropriate political arrangement if, demographically, Muslims become the majority in a particular American jurisdiction? Is Sharia-based governance the goal, the default expectation, or one option among many? And what would be the principled position regarding non-Muslims living within such a jurisdiction?

X. Recommendations for the Fellowship’s Engagement

This is research material that applies to the broader question of how the Christian Underground engages with the Muslim presence in America — it is a substantial fellowship project that will recur. Some recommendations for the fellowship’s ongoing engagement:

(1) Build doctrinal literacy. The fellowship should be conversant with the basic Quranic geography, the major hadith collections, and the spectrum of contemporary Muslim thought. The reading list above is a starting point. Several members, each reading a different category and reporting back, would distribute the work.

(2) Distinguish Sufism from Salafism, Twelver Shia from Ismaili Shia, Hanafi from Shafi’i. Treating Islam as monolithic is the most common error and the easiest to correct. The Sufi tradition is genuinely different from the Salafi-jihadist tradition. Both are Islam; they are different streams. The fellowship should know which stream a given interlocutor is in before engaging substantive doctrine.

(3) Engage from strength, not from fear. The Christian Underground project assumes endurance through trial. It does not assume that we lose. The Christian gospel has prevailed over every prior challenge — Roman paganism, Northern European paganism, Persian Zoroastrianism, Hellenistic philosophy, Marxist atheism, and others. The encounter with Islam is one more theological-civilizational engagement; it does not require panic. Some passages in the recent fellowship discussions have edged toward fear-disposition; the framework of the Endurance, Not Escape eschatology essay and the Render Unto Caesar, Render Unto God civil-obedience essay should be the operative dispositions.

(4) Honor the individual Muslim while engaging the doctrinal question honestly. Michael’s mosque visits have produced real friendships with real Muslims, who are real human beings made in God’s image, beloved by God, and for whom Christ died. Thomas’s doctrinal critique of classical Islamic teaching is consistent with full love and respect for the Muslim individual. The two postures — doctrinal honesty and personal love — are not in tension if held together properly. The fellowship should model both.

(5) Pray for Muslim conversion to Christ. This is the Christian’s posture toward every unbeliever — not as a tactical project but as the genuine desire of the heart that God’s mercy reach those who have not yet known it. The dialogue with each Muslim is part of a larger Christian witness whose object is the conversion of Muslims to Christ. The reformist Muslim teacher who genuinely understands Islam’s classical doctrine and has, in some measure, set it aside is in some sense closer to the Christian moral imagination than the classical-traditional teacher; he may be on a longer path that ends in Christ. Pray for both. Pray for Michael, who is the bridge.

Document Status and Use

This is a first-draft reference document. The substantive content is from established scholarly sources; specific verse and hadith references have been double-checked but should be verified by direct consultation of primary sources before being quoted in print. The reading list is a set of recommendations for further study. The list is not exhaustive, but it is sufficiently informative to help us understand and witness to our Muslim friends and neighbors who come into our lives.

The document was generated at Michael’s request to demonstrate the validity of Thomas’ statements about the doctrines of Islam, but it is likewise valuable as a fellowship-wide reference for future Islam-related engagement. Members who pursue any of the reading-list categories and develop deeper expertise are invited to share what they have learned.

— Thomas

To the Fellowship and Our Muslim Friends

Addressed to the fellowship, to our Muslim friend, and to the spirit yearning to be free in every human heart

The reading list above is diagnostic. It equips the fellowship to engage Islam at the level of texts, doctrines, and history. But the diagnosis is not the witness. The diagnosis tells us what we are dealing with; the witness is what we offer in its place. This postscript is the witness frame that gives the scholarly material its purpose. Without the witness, the reading list is a mere academic exercise; with the witness, it becomes preparation for an encounter that may, by the grace of God, change a life.

I write the postscript in three movements. The first is addressed to the fellowship, laying out the theological framework within which Christian witness to Islam is to be understood. The second is addressed to our Muslim friends, who may eventually read this or hear it spoken — the conversation we hope to have and the questions we offer as the entry point. The third is addressed to the spirit yearning to be free in every human breast — the imago Dei that bears witness to itself, to which the Holy Spirit speaks, and which the gospel calls home.

I. To the Fellowship — The Witness Mission and Its Theological Foundation

The Renaissance Ministries fellowship was formed to deepen our knowledge and understanding of God and his ways as revealed in the Bible, as our guide. We must plant, nourish, and mature that word in our own souls first. The fruit of our own lives will nourish the seeds we plant in the lives of others. We gather Sunday by Sunday to build each other up so that we may experience the fullness of life lived in Christ. In so doing, we become living examples of the promises of faith. A life lived fully in the joy of the Lord is the real life witness that we carry to our friends, family members, acquaintances, neighbors, and strangers. And we must be ready to defend our faith so that we are ready to effectively answer the questions of every soul whom God has placed within our reach. This is the Great Commission lived locally. The Christian Underground is not a fortress for the saved; it is the base of operation from which the gospel goes out into the surrounding culture, including the increasingly significant Muslim presence in our cities.

Christian witness, however, is not generic. Different unbeliever populations require different witness postures. The witness to a post-Christian secular humanist is not the witness to a Mormon, which is not the witness to a Muslim. The differences are not merely tactical; they reflect a theological fact that different religions have different spirits, arguments, and histories, different cultures and assumptions about the nature of God and the purpose of life.

Every religion is animated by a spirit, and the spirit behind a religion is not always the same as the Spirit of the living God.

This claim is not a post-apostolic invention of the Christian tradition. It is Pauline. The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils (1 Cor 10:20). We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places (Eph 6:12). The apostolic teaching is that the religious landscape is not religiously neutral. Spirits are at work, and not all the spirits are the Holy Spirit. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world (1 John 4:1). The Christian’s task in witness is, in part, to recognize which spirit is at work in the system he is engaging, so that he can offer the right testimony in the right way.

How is the spirit behind a religion discerned? Primarily by examining the revelation content the religion claims and comparing it to the revelation God has actually given in scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ. Where the alleged revelation contradicts the biblical revelation on matters central to the gospel — the nature of God, the person of Christ, the means of salvation, the character of the moral life, the destiny of the human person — the discernment is straightforward: this is not the Holy Spirit. The criterion John gives in 1 John 4:2-3 is whether the spirit confesses Jesus Christ came in the flesh as Lord and Savior. The Spirit who breathed the New Testament will not contradict the New Testament’s central testimony.

The fellowship has done this discernment work regarding Mormonism. When we studied the Mormon claim that Christ’s redemptive act occurred primarily in Gethsemane — that the sweat-as-blood was the atoning sacrifice, that this was revealed to Joseph Smith, and that this revelation continues today through Denver Snuffer and others — we recognized that the revelation differs from the biblical revelation on the very center of Christian salvation. Scripture places the atonement at the cross. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities… and with his stripes we are healed (Isa 53:5). Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God (1 Pet 3:18). Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree (1 Pet 2:24). The Mormon-Gethsemane revelation contradicts the apostolic-cross revelation. The conclusion follows: the spirit that revealed Gethsemane to Smith was not the Spirit that breathed the New Testament. Try the spirits. The same diagnostic, applied to Islam, yields its own conclusions.

II. The Spirit Behind Islam — A Structural Observation

The same diagnostic, applied to Islam, yields a structural observation that may be more important than any particular doctrinal disagreement. The observation is this: Islam, as a revelation system, is mono-vocal at its source in a way that the biblical revelation is not, and the structural mono-vocality has consequences.

The biblical revelation comes through many human authors over approximately fifteen centuries. Moses, the prophets, the wisdom writers, the gospel evangelists, the apostles — each writing in his own genre, his own moment, his own historical context, with the Holy Spirit working through the full plurality of human voices to produce a single canonical witness. The Bible is structurally multivocal even while being singularly authoritative. There is internal dialogue: Job questions; Ecclesiastes laments; Habakkuk argues with God; Paul reasons; James practices. The plurality of voices is part of the design. The reader of the Bible is implicitly trained, by the text itself, to weigh different witnesses, to read context, to reconcile apparent tensions, and to receive truth as something dialogically discovered through the play of multiple authoritative voices speaking from multiple angles.

The Quran, by contrast, is structurally mono-vocal at its source. It is presented as the recitation given to one human prophet by one angelic messenger from one divine voice over approximately twenty-two years. The Muslim reader is not implicitly trained in the play of multiple voices; he is trained to receive a single voice as final. This is reinforced by the classical Sunni doctrine of the Quran’s eternal, uncreated nature — the Quran is not a witness to revelation but the very speech of Allah, eternal, unchanging, untranslatable in any sense that would carry its full authority. The hadith adds a second layer, but a layer subordinate to the Quran and itself transmitted as the sayings of a single prophet through chains of narrators.

The structural consequence of mono-vocal revelation is mono-vocal authority, and the structural consequence of mono-vocal authority is submission as the central religious posture. The very name Islam (al-Islam, الإسلام) means submission — the verbal noun of the Arabic root s-l-m in the form-IV verbal pattern, with the meaning to surrender or to submit. The Muslim (muslim, مسلم) is the one who has submitted. The religion is named for its central act, and that act is the submission of the will to a single voice mediated through a single prophet.

The contrast with Christian discipleship is precise. Christianity also calls the believer to submit — Christ is Lord; the believer takes up the cross; the will yields to the Father. But the submission in Christianity is to a Person who became flesh, walked the earth, conversed with his disciples, addressed each of them by name, healed them, ate with them, washed their feet, died for them, rose for them, and now indwells them by his Spirit. The Christian submission is to a relationship, not to a recitation. The relationship is what makes the submission bearable, joyful, and free. Submission to a transcendent and distant sovereign, without relationship and without indwelling, is a different kind of submission. It is the submission of the slave to the master, not the submission of the son to the Father.

I want to be careful here. The Islamic tradition is not actually as mono-vocal in its reception as its source structure would suggest. There are four major Sunni madhabs that disagree on many matters of jurisprudence; Twelver Shia, Ismaili Shia, and other branches have their own legal traditions; the Sufi tradition cultivates a relational and experiential dimension that classical jurisprudence often does not. Reformist Muslims like Khaled Abou El Fadl, Akbar Ahmed, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, and others have developed sophisticated readings that contest the classical synthesis. So Islam is plural in its reception even where it is unitary in its source. But the structural pull toward mono-vocal absolutism is real, and it has produced specific historical and contemporary manifestations that the fellowship needs to understand.

The plural reception within Islam is part of why the dialogue with our Muslim friend is worth having. We are not engaging the source structure abstractly; we are engaging a particular human person who has internalized one particular reception of the tradition. That reception may be more or less classical-traditional, more or less reformist, more or less Sufi-inflected. The witness task begins with understanding which reception we are dealing with and proceeds by offering the Christian alternative to whichever spirit has shaped the person before us.

III. To Our Muslim Friend — The Conversation We Hope to Have

If you are a Muslim reading this — perhaps because Michael Sherman or someone like him has shared it with you, or because the Zoom dialogue is being arranged and you wanted to know what we are thinking — I want to address you directly, and with respect.

You are made in the image of God. The Christian conviction is that the Creator of the universe made you in his image (Gen 1:26-27), loves you with a particular love (John 3:16), and desires a personal relationship with you. The conversation we hope to have with you is not a debate to be won; it is an invitation to a relationship offered by the One who made you and who, the Christian believes, has been pursuing you long before either of us thought to arrange a meeting.

Before we have that conversation, we want to listen to you. We do not know which Islam is your Islam. Are you Sunni or Shia, and if Shia, which branch? What madhab do you follow? Where does your local imam stand on the spectrum from Salafi-traditionalist to reformist-modernist? Are you Sufi-inflected, or do you find the Sufi tradition strange? What is your daily relationship with the Quran — do you recite it daily, study its tafsir, memorize portions? What is your relationship with the hadith — do you read Bukhari, or is your tradition shaped more by other collections? Have you been to the Hajj? What did it mean to you? Has Islam given you peace, or do you carry an inner unrest that the prayers have not stilled?

These are not idle questions. They are how we learn who you are. The Christian conviction is that the Holy Spirit deals with each person personally, and we cannot do a useful witness with you until we know what shape your soul has taken under the tradition that formed you.

On the more political-theological questions, we will want to ask, with respect: Do you want to live under Sharia, or do you find American constitutional civil order satisfactory and even good? Do you believe Sharia-based governance would be better for the United States than constitutional democracy? When you read Q 9:5 and Q 9:29, do you receive them as normative for the present moment, or as contextual to seventh-century Arabia? When you think about the relationship between the Meccan and Medinan periods, where do you locate the heart of your tradition — in the patient preaching of the Meccan years, or in the political-military establishment of the Medinan years? Do you believe the doctrine of naskh applies, and if so, in which direction? What do you make of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, who was executed by the Sudanese regime for arguing that the Meccan period was the eternal core and the Medinan was contextual?

These are not gotcha questions. They are questions whose answers will tell us where you actually live in the Muslim tradition, so that we can speak to you about Christ in ways that are intelligible to your actual frame.

But beyond the diagnostic questions, we want to ask the deeper comparative questions — the ones that go to the heart of why a person might choose one path or another.

What does Islam give you that you most value? Is it the structure of the five daily prayers and the rhythm of the Islamic calendar? Is it the sense of submission to a will higher than your own? Is it the community of the umma? Is it the assurance of Allah’s law as the ordering principle of life? We want to hear what you cherish, because what you cherish tells us what your soul has found.

And what does Islam ask you to give up — and is the cost worth it? Has Islam asked you to give up the right to question certain doctrines? Has it asked you to give up the conviction that women are equal in dignity and capacity to men in every sphere of life? Has it asked you to give up the freedom to leave the faith if you ever came to believe it untrue (the classical punishment for apostasy in Islamic law remains death)? Has it asked you to give up the assurance that your salvation is secure rather than uncertain (most classical Islamic theology holds that even the most pious Muslim cannot be assured of paradise until the Day of Judgment)? Has it asked you to give up a personal relationship with God in favor of a posture of submission to a sovereign who remains, in his essence, transcendent and unknowable?

Is the Golden Rule important to you? Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets (Matt 7:12). Does your tradition affirm this — fully, for all persons, regardless of religion? Or does your tradition draw distinctions in how Muslims and non-Muslims are to be treated that you, in your own soul, find difficult to defend?

Is free will important to you? Do you experience yourself as a free moral agent who can choose between good and evil, or do you experience yourself as the executor of a divine decree in which your choices were already determined? The classical Sunni doctrine of qadar (divine decree) presses heavily toward the second; the Christian doctrine of free agency under grace makes the first central. Which of these matches your own deepest experience of yourself?

And finally, the question we most want you to consider: Does the spirit of Islam call you to the kind of person you most want to become? Or do you find, in your deepest self, that there is a yearning for something that Islam, at its core, does not offer? For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor 3:17). The Christian conviction is that the human soul was made for liberty in relationship with the living God, and that any system which substitutes submission for relationship leaves the soul fundamentally hungry, however orderly it makes the surface of the life.

IV. What Christianity Offers — The Liberty in Christ

The Christianity that the fellowship offers our Muslim friend is not a competing system of law and submission. It is the Lordship of Jesus Christ exercised through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit in a freely loved and freely loving relationship with the Triune God.

The center of the Christian offer is the indwelling Spirit. When Jesus prepared his disciples for his departure, he promised: I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth (John 14:16-17). And again, more astonishingly: If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him (John 14:23). The Christian is not someone who has read about God; the Christian is someone in whom God has come to dwell. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? (1 Cor 3:16). This is the difference at the heart of everything. Submission to a transcendent and distant sovereign is one religious posture; indwelling by the Spirit of the living God who is your Father, your Savior, and your constant Companion is a fundamentally different relationship to the divine.

The liberty that flows from this indwelling is not the liberty of moral chaos. It is the liberty of the Son of God in his Father’s house, where the rules are simple and good, and the Father’s love is constant, and the Son’s flourishing is the Father’s joy. The principle I want to commend to you in summary form, dear Muslim friend, is this:

Thomas – My Theological Summary: All that is not prohibited is allowed; and all that is allowed has its perfect time; and the Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts, informing us of the next moment of greatest joy, greatest meaning, and greatest service to God, to our neighbor, and to our own becoming.

This is the formula of Christian liberty. Let me unpack each clause.

“All that is not prohibited is allowed.” The Christian life is not a list of permissions to be earned. It is a vast field of God-given possibilities within which the believer walks freely, bounded only by what God has explicitly forbidden as harmful to the soul, to the neighbor, or to the witness. The Pauline principle: All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any (1 Cor 6:12; also 1 Cor 10:23). The Christian asks not first “is this permitted?” but “is this good?” — and the asking is itself an act of liberty.

“And all that is allowed has its perfect time.” Not every good thing is to be done in every moment. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes laid this out plainly: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven (Eccl 3:1). Christian liberty includes the wisdom of timing — the recognition that life is composed of moments, each calling for the response that is fitted to it. The believer learns to read the moment and to offer the response the moment requires.

“And the Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts, informing us of the next moment of greatest joy, meaning, and service.” The fitting response is not derived by consulting an external code. It is given by the Spirit who indwells the believer and who speaks to the heart with a quiet and unmistakable voice. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God (Rom 8:14). This is the practical content of Christian indwelling. The believer learns, over years of walking, to hear the Spirit’s voice and to follow it. The hearing is the relationship; the following is the discipleship.

“To God, to our neighbor, and to our own becoming.” The Spirit’s leading is not arbitrary. It is always toward the integration of the three loves the Great Commandment names: love of God with the whole self — heart, soul, mind, strength — love of neighbor as oneself, and a proper love of self as a being made in God’s image and called to flourish in the relationship the Creator intended. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind — and thy neighbour as thyself (Matt 22:37-39). The Christian is not asked to choose between God and neighbor and self; the Christian is shown, by moment-by-moment leading of the indwelling Spirit, how the three loves integrate into a single life.

This is Christian liberty. It is not lawlessness. It is the higher law of love, written by the Spirit on the believer’s heart (Jer 31:33; Heb 8:10), lived out in moment-by-moment communion with the indwelling presence of the living God.

The cross of Jesus Christ is what makes this liberty possible. The cross is, in one sense, the satisfaction of divine justice — He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor 5:21). The judgment that sin deserves was poured out upon the willing Substitute, and the believer who is in Christ is freed from the condemnation that would otherwise be his. In another sense, the cross is the defeat of the powers — Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it (Col 2:15). The demonic dominion over the human soul, by which the soul is held in bondage to fear, to sin, and to false religion, was broken at the cross. The believer is freed simultaneously from divine judgment (the wrath satisfied at Calvary) and from demonic dominion (the chains broken at Calvary). The two redemptions are not in tension; they are the two faces of the one act by which God in Christ rescued his children from every power that had bound them.

This is what Christianity offers. Not a better law. A new relationship.

V. To the Spirit Yearning to Be Free in Every Heart

There is one more address to make, and it is the most important one. It is addressed not to the fellowship, not to the Muslim teacher, not to any particular reader — it is addressed to the spirit yearning to be free in every human breast.

If you are reading this and something in your soul is stirring — a recognition, a longing, an unease, an attraction, a wish that something here were true — I want you to know that the stirring is itself a working of the Holy Spirit upon your heart, even now. The Spirit moves over the deep as he moved at the creation, and where he moves, light is called out of darkness. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me (Rev 3:20). The Lord Jesus, who was crucified outside Jerusalem in approximately the year 30 of the Christian era, and who rose from the dead three days later in a real body that ate fish and was touched by his disciples, is at this moment knocking at the door of your heart. The fact that you are reading these words and feeling something is the knocking. The knocking is real. The Knocker is real.

You do not have to leave your name behind, or your family, or your culture, or your love for what is beautiful in your tradition. The truth that frees does not destroy what was honest in what came before. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32). What it frees is the part of you that has been trying to live under a yoke too heavy to bear — the law that condemns without enabling, the submission that requires without companioning, the sovereign who commands without indwelling. The Christian gospel offers you, in place of that yoke, the easy yoke and light burden of Jesus: Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matt 11:29-30).

The invitation is simple and serious. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved (Rom 10:9). The confession is the handle of the door. The belief is the acceptance of the invitation, a heartfelt acceptance of the truth of Christ’s claim of redemption, and an indwelling is the door opening from the inside. When the door opens, the One who has been knocking comes in.

And he does not come alone. He brings the Father, in the union of indwelling that he described in John 14:23. And he sends the Holy Spirit to make his home in you — to teach you, to guide you, to comfort you, to convict you when conviction is needed, to console you when consolation is needed, and to assure you, in the depth of your soul, that you are loved with the love of the One who made the stars. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God (Rom 8:16). The witness is internal. The witness is unmistakable. The witness is the assurance that no system of submission can give, because the witness is given by the indwelling Person of God himself, Abba, Father (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6).

I do not know if you, the reader, will receive this invitation. The Holy Spirit knows; the Father knows; the Son knows. But I will pray for you, as the fellowship will pray for you, and as the Lord himself is praying for you at the right hand of the Father (Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25). The conversation with Michael’s friend, if it happens, is one moment in a much longer conversation that the Spirit has been having with you and will continue to have with you, regardless of what happens in our particular Zoom call. The Spirit is patient. The Spirit will keep knocking.

May the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is no darkness at all, find the door of your heart open in his perfect time. May the Father who made you draw you to himself. May the Spirit who hovered over the deep at the beginning hover now over your soul and speak the word that calls the light forth from your darkness. May the liberty wherewith Christ has set the captives free become your liberty also. And may we, the fellowship of Renaissance Ministries, meet you one day in the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus, where every tongue shall confess and every knee shall bow (Phil 2:10-11), and where the table is wide and the feast is the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:9).

Maranatha — come, Lord Jesus.