According to the Qur’an, God created humanity from Adam and Eve, a single pair, one male and one female. The Qur’an goes on to note that God divided the descendants of Adam and Eve into nations and tribes, not so they would despise one another, but so they would know one another (49:13). The Qur’an explains that if God had willed, He could have made people as one community (11:118). The fact that God fashioned a world with different rituals and ways of worship further reveals God’s intention to create a diverse community of people. And the Qur’an clearly warns that process of inviting others toward God should not lead to dispute (22:76). Elsewhere, the Qur’an states that God created peoples with different customs and religious practices to inspire competition among them in performing good deeds (5:48). The diversity within humanity is a blessing from God for me and I believe that we must do our best to know each other and treat one another with respect as God intended.*

The stranger could be a person of a different faith or from a different ethnic or a racial group or from a different social class. It is amazing to notice in social gatherings people look for familiar faces to join them. Celebrating the anniversaries of the Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue, I try to mix people at the dining tables but there are many who prefer to sit at the table with their own people. Many would not go to a party where some faces are not familiar.

The Qur’an calls for respecting and extending a helping hand to all strangers: “And worship God [alone], and do not ascribe divinity, in any way, to aught beside Him. And do good unto your parents, and near of kin, and unto orphans, and the needy, and the neighbor from among your own people, and the neighbor who is a stranger, and the friend by your side, and the wayfarer, …” (4:36). Any person with whom we come in contact, whether a stranger or not, must be treated with respect and kindness. On one occasion, Prophet Muhammad asked some people: “Is there any stranger amongst you?” They said, “No except the son of our sister.” Allah’s Apostle said, “The son of the sister of some people belongs to them.”* The Prophet meant that the stranger should be no more treated as a stranger but as one belonging to them.

Many times strangers are not received with open hearts, but rather poorly treated. People in pre-Islamic Arabia discriminated between races and different social classes. When Islam asked its believers to stand shoulder to shoulder in straight lines during the daily worship in Islam, the rich, the masters and the tribal leaders of the pre-Islamic Arabia refused to enter the new religion, objecting to the concept of equality in Islam.

Islam stands for one people under one God. All people are children of Adam and Eve in Islam. The division of people in different colors, races, tongues, cultures and faiths is intended to help know each other better by building relationships and not treating others as strangers (49:13).

Strangers constitute a minority in the community. The stranger may be from one’s same ethnic group or race but different from the rest because of his or her religion. Strangers are also those who rectify what other people ruin. Talking about Islam, Prophet Muhammad said that Islam started as a stranger, with only a few people believing in it, and it will eventually go back to being a stranger as it started, with only a few people adhering to it, so it is important give glad tidings to the strangers. When his companions asked who these strangers were, the Prophet said they were those who maintain themselves upon righteousness when people become corrupt.*

The word for stranger in Arabic is Ghareeb. In one sense, we are all strangers living in this world. Abdullah bin ‘Umar said, “Allah’s Apostle took hold of my shoulder and said, ‘Be in this world as if you were a stranger or a traveler.’” The sub-narrator added: Ibn ‘Umar used to say, “If you survive till the evening, do not expect to be alive in the morning, and if you survive till the morning, do not expect to be alive in the evening, and take from your health for your sickness, and [take] from your life for your death.”* The abode of God alone is permanent; therefore, living as a stranger in this world leads to a righteous life and makes us capable of pleasing God and being blessed.

The Qur’an makes it part of a Muslim belief system to respect other faiths and followers of those faiths. Prophet Muhammad made many attempts to reconcile with other faiths. He grieved with the Christians of Rome when the Persians defeated the Romans (30:1-6).* When the Prophet and other Muslims migrated to Madina, he signed an agreement with Jewish tribes to live together in peace.* Isma`il R. Al Faruqi in his book Islam points out that the treaty of Prophet Muhammad with the Jews of Madina recognized the Jews as an Ummah (a religious community) as the Muslims were called an Ummah in the Qur’an. The same designation was extended to Christians, recognizing them as Ummah. When Muslims got their foothold in India in the 10^th century, the Hindu and the Buddhist communities were accepted as Ummah. In this, Islam guaranteed each religious community protection of rights and freedom to exercise their religious obligations.*

However, like some verses in the Hebrew Bible, there are some verses in the Qur’an that have created misunderstanding in the interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims. For example, verse 2:65 in the Qur’an says: “for you are well aware of those from among you who profaned the Sabbath, whereupon We said unto them, ‘Be as apes despicable!’” This verse is cited as a warning not only to Jews but even to Muslims to respect the law of God. It is very much like Exodus 31:14 where the words “put to death” are used for those who violate the Shabbat observance, or Nehemiah 13:16-18 that says violation of Shabbat day will bring down the wrath of God. Muslim commentators on the Qur’an have interpreted the Qur’anic verses 2:65, 7:166 and 5:60 the same way. Muhammad Assad, in his commentary on verse 7:166, says that Zamakhshari and Razi interpret the “apes” reference metaphorically (mathal), not literally. This is similar to another Qur’anic metaphor of “the ass carrying books” (62:5). It should be borne in mind that the expression “like an ape” is often used in classical Arabic to describe a person who is unable to restrain his gross appetites or passions. It is unfortunate that some Muslims may take this verse literally and use it in a derogatory way against their opponents, especially in areas of conflict.

However, many would agree that Muslims made great strides during their medieval period to bridge the gaps of misunderstanding among different religions. Muslims accepted and welcomed Jews and Christians and lived together in peace. When Jerusalem fell into Muslim hands in the 7^th century, Jews were welcomed back to Jerusalem and the same happened after the Crusades. Baghdad and Spain became the centers of interfaith activities, creating a great civilization of religious peace and harmony.

Since the 19^th century Muslims have faced many catastrophes. They lost their political power and were colonized. They became dependent economically and lost their manufacturing capability. Colonial powers supported Christian missionary activities and Muslims were challenged religiously. Muslim-Christian relations were severely damaged and Muslims mistrusted even those Christians who were living as their neighbors for centuries, suspecting them as collaborators with colonial powers. Muslim-Jewish relations took a negative turn after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. As the Palestinians were driven out of their homes and many took shelter in the Arab countries, intolerable policy toward Israel was formulated, and similarly, Jews living in the Arab countries lost the trust of their neighbors.

The political and economic downfall of Muslims had a reverse impact on Christian-Muslim and Jewish-Muslim relations. While there has been some progress in Christian-Muslim relations from the last two decades of the 20^th century, the Jewish-Muslim interfaith relations are strained over the Israeli- Palestinian situation.

As many Christians and Jews are not ready to enter into interfaith relations for one or other reasons, there are Muslims who also have deep suspicion about interfaith dialogue. To encourage Muslims to participate in interfaith dialogue and remove some of their fears, Mohammed Abunimer and I wrote: Interfaith Dialogue: A Guide for Muslims, published by IIIT in Herndon, VA, 2007.

Today all Major Muslim organizations in America such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim American Society (MAS), and the Council of American and Islamic Relations (CAIR) support interfaith dialogue. Saudi Arabian religious authorities had been a major obstacle in this effort. A major advance took place in 2008, however, when His Royal Majesty King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia supported interfaith dialogue publicly and set aside funds to create a center for interfaith dialogue in Switzerland.

David and Mary have described universalistic and particularistic voices within their traditions. Islam also includes both pluralistic, inclusivist and exclusivist tendencies. All prophets in Islam came from God. The Qur’an says: “Say: ‘We believe in God, and in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us, and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and, their descendants, and that which has been vouchsafed to Moses and Jesus; and that which has been vouchsafed to all the [other] prophets by their Sustainer: we make no distinction between any of them. And it is unto Him that we surrender ourselves’” (2:136). The Qur’an called Christians and Jews and People of the Book (Ahl al Kitab) in many places.* Muhammad called all the prophets as his brothers. As narrated in Abu Huraira, “Allah’s Apostle said, ‘Both in this world and in the Hereafter, I am the nearest of all the people to Jesus, the son of Mary. The prophets are paternal brothers; their mothers are different, but their religion is one.’”*

When it speaks inclusively, the Qur’an sometimes blames Jews and Christians for allowing their own desires to change the true revelation from God. The Qur’an says: “Woe, then, unto those who write down, with their own hands, [something which they claim to be] divine writ, and then say. ‘This is from God,’ in order to acquire a trifling gain thereby; woe, then, unto them for what their hands have written, and woe unto them for all that they may have gained!” (2:79). The Qur’an says in another verse: “Among those of the Jewish faith there are some who distort the meaning of the [revealed] words, taking them out of their context…” (4:46 ). The Muslim belief that the Qur’an is the most authentic scripture because it was preserved as it was revealed tends to strengthen an inclusivist view of Islam.

Just as many Jews and Christians believe that theirs is the only true religion, some Muslims believe the same about Islam. To make their point, they quote this verse from the Qur’an: “Behold, the only [true] religion in the sight of God is [man’s] self-surrender unto Him [Islam]; and those who were vouchsafed revelation aforetime took, out of mutual jealousy, to divergent views [on this point] only after knowledge [thereof] had come unto them. But as for him who denies the truth of God’s messages – behold, God is swift in reckoning!” (3:19). Thus some Muslims believe that all other religions are invalid after the revelation of the Qur’an. There is a difference of opinion among scholars on the application of this verse. Scholars like Muhammad Asad, Fazlur Rahman and Mahmoud Ayoub believe that the verse refers to all monotheistic religions as a true religion of God as Islam means submission to one God. Others say that the verse is about the religion of Islam revealed to Muhammad. Still others claim that this verse pertains only to the hereafter and life in heaven.

Whether one sees it as a pluralistic or inclusivist or exclusivist religion, all Muslims should agree that in this life Islam stands for justice and equal treatment for all people.