Ramadan thoughts...
Aug. 18th, 2010 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deborahjrossEileen Flanagan posted a previously unpublished part of her interview with an Imam who studied Comparative Religion at Harvard and now teaches history at a Quaker school.
First, I asked him about whether the images of God were more benevolent in Islam than in Christianity:
“I would think so. Every single chapter of the Qur’an, except one, starts out, ‘Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. In the name of God, the most gracious, merciful.’ Some say, ‘Beneficent, merciful.’ One of those words, Rahman, has its roots in the same Arabic word for the womb, and it suggests the mercy and the compassion of a mother. In fact, that was one of the words the Jews used even as far back as the time of the prophet in the Talmud. It says the most merciful over and over for God. So I don’t see it as a departure. I see it as continuity. Most of what I see in Islam is continuity from the prophetic traditions, from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, with some theological differences and distinctions, but that’s one thing that I think runs through all of them.”
First, I asked him about whether the images of God were more benevolent in Islam than in Christianity:
“I would think so. Every single chapter of the Qur’an, except one, starts out, ‘Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. In the name of God, the most gracious, merciful.’ Some say, ‘Beneficent, merciful.’ One of those words, Rahman, has its roots in the same Arabic word for the womb, and it suggests the mercy and the compassion of a mother. In fact, that was one of the words the Jews used even as far back as the time of the prophet in the Talmud. It says the most merciful over and over for God. So I don’t see it as a departure. I see it as continuity. Most of what I see in Islam is continuity from the prophetic traditions, from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, with some theological differences and distinctions, but that’s one thing that I think runs through all of them.”
