A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Reading the Qur’an quickly makes it apparent that Muhammad’s relationship with Judaism was more conflicted than his relationship with Christianity, perhaps because it was more intimate.7 It is possible to interpret his image of himself and his destiny as the last in the succession of Hebrew prophets, and his initial mission as a resolve to restore a monotheism concentrated on the Jerusalem Temple, which Christians had compromised. To begin with, Muhammad instructed his followers to pray facing Jerusalem, and he only altered the direction of prayer to Mecca after a murderous disagreement with the Jews of Medina. From that moment, the possibility of a united movement of Jews and followers of Muhammad ended and the Muslims formed their own single community (ummah).8 That concept of a united ummah has survived all subsequent divisions in Islam, including the great and so far permanent rupture between Sunni and Shī’a, but alongside it has been the concept of various People of the Book.