Unpicking for Christians and Muslims

Dear good Muslim and Christian friends, there is great confusion on matters of faithfulness to God and what it means. Much of it has become jumbled, and the simple and unadulterated message of God is sullied by conflations and mischaracterisation.

Allow me to unpick it for you:

1. Small “i” islām is simply an Arabic transliteration of the word submission, and in the context of the final Proclamation, it denotes submission to God like Abraham through adherence to His Code. The agent participle for it with a small “m” is muslim, and one who leans to God like Abraham is a hanīf. The Ishmaelites referred to the tradition of Abraham as Hanīfiyyah.

2. Big “i” Islam is a proper noun which denotes the modern religious phenomenon popularly called Islam. There’s no fixed concept – it’s more of a sociological phenomenon in which can be found folk religion, reductive law, ritualism, Mohamedenism, a superstitious outlook, and is often used as an insipid mechanism for social control.

3. There’s also a cultural Islam which is an ethnicity and advocates ethno-cultural norms. Highly secular, in the western political/public space it either advocates multiculturalism or post-colonialism, and is habitually concerned with minority rights.

I advocate the tradition of Abraham, and the Covenant Code sent to his Israelite and Ishmaelite descendants as its custodians, with the completed iteration of the Code sent to the Ishmaelites via the last of God’s messengers, Muhammad, descending from the tribe of Kedar, the second son of Ishmael, the son of Abraham.

I do not care for foreign terms but substance, and whether we use Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew or Abraham’s Sumerian or Akkadian to refer to the primordial orientation is immaterial. However, since I write in the Anglophone realm, English is the natural go-to.

I do not call my big ‘m’ Muslim friends nor my Christians friends to modern and cultural Islam which has become another sect of Abraham’s religion (alongside Judaism and Christianity). The story neither started nor was defined by either Jesus nor Muhammad, but with their forefather, Abraham the friend of God.

I welcome a conversation about what we all claim:

That we serve the One True God Almighty in alignment with the tradition of Abraham and His descendants.

I don’t believe any sincere Muslim or Christian disagrees with this and once it’s explained as to where things went wrong along time, I’ve never witnessed a person not take the basic but pure path, whether scholar or layman. As has been the case for thousands of years, the Prophets taught that practical subservience to God is built on upholding the Code and abiding by the law. And as Brits, I believe we all ought to celebrate Britain’s rich and old connection with Abraham’s faith and seek to revitalise it (accurately) in this land of ours once again.