Christianity seen by Muslims and Islam seen by Christians in the Period of Early Islamic Rule in the Middle East
14.00 (UK Time)
This lecture highlights a context where Christians lived under Muslim rule. Muslim critique of Christianity was widespread, and Christians had to react to Muslim dominance by finding ways of responding to criticisms without incurring punishment for rebellious attitudes to their rulers.
In the first two centuries after the Arab conquest of the largely Christian Middle East, Muslims viewed Christians as needing correction for their mistaken beliefs about the oneness of God in their deviant Trinity, about the humanity of Jesus in their insistence on his divine status, about the death of Jesus by crucifixion when this had not happened, and for their failure to recognise the finality of the Prophet Muḥammad in their suppression of testimony to his coming in the Bible. Christians viewed Muslims as heretics who had diverted from the true Christian faith in the Trinity and the divinity and crucifixion of Jesus and who looked for prophecies of Muḥammad in the Bible that did not exist. Muslims and Christians searched each other’s scriptures to persuade the other that their interpretations might need correcting.
As the centuries passed in the Middle East, Christians steadily embraced Islam. By the time of the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century, the vast majority of the population were Muslims.
Speaker
Dr Mark Beaumont
Research associate at London School of Theology
Dr Beaumont is currently a research associate at London School of Theology, where he taught Islam and Mission from 2011 until retiring in 2016. He spent ten years in Morocco and taught at Birmingham Christian College. He completed his PhD through OCMS in 2003 which was published as Christology in Dialogue with Muslims by Regnum. His subsequent publications have all been in the area of Christian-Muslim relations:
Al-Radd al-jamil – A Fitting Refutation of the Divinity of Jesus, attributed to Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. Beaumont & Kaisy-Friemuth. Brill, 2016.
Jesus in Muslim-Christian Conversation. Cascade, 2018
The Theology of `Ammar al-Basri: Commending Christianity within Islamic Culture. Gorgias Press, 2021.
`Ammar al-Basri’s Arabic Apologetics: The Book of the Proof concerning the Course of the Divine Economy and The Book of Questions and Answers translated by Mark. Gorgias Press, 2022. Trinity in Dialogue with Muslims. Regnum, 2024.
The last book is a companion volume to the PhD published by Regnum in 2005 and denotes the importance that OCMS holds for Mark in his academic life.
