The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

by Karen Armstrong

When Muhammad received his first revelations, in about 610 CE, many of the Arabs had become convinced that Allah, the High God of their pantheon,*8 was identical with the God of the Jews and Christians. Indeed, Christian Arabs often made the hajj pilgrimage to the Kabah, commonly regarded as Allah’s shrine in Mecca, alongside the pagans. One of the first things that Muhammad asked his converts to do was to pray facing Jerusalem, the city of the Jews and Christians whose God they were now going to worship. No Jews or Christians were required—or even invited—to join the new Arab religion unless they particularly wished to do so, because they had received valid revelations of their own. In the Qur’an, God told the Muslims that they must treat the ahl al-kitab, “people of an earlier revelation,” with respect and courtesy: Do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in the most kindly manner—unless it be such of them as are bent on evildoing—and say: “We believe in that which has been revealed to us from on high, as well as that which has been bestowed upon you: for our God and your God is one and the same, and it is unto him that we all surrender ourselves.”