Article In both contexts, that of marriage and slavery, Muslim men and non-Muslim women often had children together. Though officially Muslims under the law, these children were raised between religions and cultures, with a foot in the worlds of both their fathers and their mothers to varying degrees. Thus, within the first few generations after…

The religious idea of Israel as a chosen people has consistently played an important role in Christian antisemitic polemics. For example, in his well-known book On the Jews and Their Lies (Von den Jüden und jren Lügen), Martin Luther drew the picture of the boasting Jews with respect to God’s election (M. Luther, Von den…

The legal position of the Jews in the medieval Muslim world was clearly defined in Islamic law: Jews are considered part of “the protected people” (Arabic: ahl-aldhimma, or: dhimmīs), together with other non-Muslim groups who live under Islamic rule, such as Christians, whose religion is acceptable to Islam. As dhimmīs, individual Jews have the right…

The Qur’an expresses significant antipathy toward Jews. Jews (or Israelites) are portrayed as disobeying God (2:93), rejecting their own covenant (2:100), failing to follow their own Torah (5:66), and distorting or twisting the meaning of the divine revelation they received (2:101, 174). Jews are even cursed by God in the Qur’an (2:88; 4:51–52), and on…

Article In Islam, taking care of the needy and giving alms to those whose situation is worse than yours are fundamental aspects of the faith. Most people are aware that zakat, compulsory charity, is one of the five pillars of Islam. The Qur’an says: “Zakat is for the poor and needy, those who work to…

On 28 February 380 CE, Emperor Theodosius issued his famous edict on reli gious observances in the empire (CTh 16.1.2, Code Théodosien. Livre XVI, ed. Theodor Mommsen, trans. Jean Rougé, SC 497, 114; Eng. trans. Clyde Pharr, Theodosian Code, 326). This edict sums up the dilemma faced by Byzantine Christians when confronted by the rise…

Article Introduction Patriarch Timothy I was born in the first half of the eighth century in Hazzā, a village near Arbelā, in Iraq. As a child, he studied at a monastery in Bashosh near Mosul. On 7 May 780, he was consecrated catholicos-patriarch of the East-Syrian Church. He died on Saturday, 9 January 823. During…

Article Pseudo-methodius reacts to this vilification by prophesying the immi nent appearance of a last Roman emperor who would defeat the Arabs, punish all Christian apostates, reinstate Christian worship throughout the re-conquered provinces and usher in the last earthly period of peace and prosperity. Pseudo-methodius’ use of the polemic assertion that the Christians have no…

Article Points of Controversy (Marriage and Divorce) Beyond the story of Zayd and Zaynab, in the earliest Eastern Christian texts about Islam one finds that the Islamic concept of divorce was generally frowned upon. Christians objected to polygamy and divorce. One of the particular aspects of Islamic regulations of divorce was the legal requirement for…

Two Christian theologians writing in Arabic in the early ninth century argued that God had created humanity to freely choose good or evil actions, a belief shared universally by previous Christian writers in Greek and Syriac no matter the denomination they came from. They were debating with Muslim intellectuals who held that God created all…