Christianity and the Qur’an: The Rise of Islam in Christian Arabia

A leading Qur’anic scholar’s revisionary account of how Islam emerged in dialogue with Christian traditions

Challenging the dominant narrative about the history of the Qur’an and the emergence of Islam in a predominantly pagan context, Gabriel Said Reynolds presents the Qur’an as a text born within a largely Christian culture. As he examines the ways the Qur’an engages with Christian traditions--not only those of the New Testament but also those of late antique Christian literature--and with Christians themselves, Reynolds also draws on recent scholarship on pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions suggesting that monotheism, Christianity in particular, was a significant presence in the pre-Islamic Hijaz, the region in which Muhammad preached.

This study re-situates the Qur’an as a text thoroughly concerned with Christianity, not just the longer narratives of individuals such as Mary and Jesus but also passages that do not mention Christians explicitly. The Qur’an’s stance toward Christianity is on occasion controversial, aiming to advance Islamic theology and undermine Christian apologetical arguments, yet the Qur’an is not always polemical. At times, the text makes use of the audience’s knowledge of the Bible to advance its own vision of God and God’s relationship with humanity.

Gabriel Said Reynolds is the Crowley Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of The Qur’an and the Bible and Allah: God in the Qur’an. He lives in Granger, IN.