The Judeo-Christian-Islamic heritage
"Media images of Islam have often obscured the fact that Muslims, Jews and Christians share much in common."
By John L. Esposito

For more than fourteen centuries, Islam has grown and spread from the seventh-century Arabia of the Prophet Muhammad to a world religion whose followers may be found across the globe. It spawned and informed Islamic empires and states as well as a great world civilization that stretched from North Africa to Southeast Asia. In the process, a great monotheistic tradition, sharing common roots with Judaism and Christianity, has guided and transformed the lives of millions of believers down through the ages. Characterized by an uncompromising belief in the one, true God – His revelation and Prophet – Islam developed a spiritual path whose law, ethics, theology, and mysticism have made it one of the fastest growing religions both in the past and today. Media images of Islam have often obscured the fact that Muslims, Jews and Christians share much in common. They are indeed all children of Abraham. Like Jews and Christians, Muslims worship the God of Abraham and Moses, believe in God’s revelation and prophets and place a strong emphasis on moral responsibility and accountability. The vast majority of Muslims, like most members of other religious traditions, are pious, hardworking women and men, family and community oriented, who wish to live in peace and harmony rather than in warfare.

For Muslims throughout the centuries, the message of the Qur'an (the Muslim holy book) and the example of the Prophet Muhammad have constituted the formative and enduring foundation of faith and belief. They have served as the basic sources of Islamic law and the reference points for daily life. Muslims today, as in the past, continue to affirm that the Qur'an is the literal word of God, the Creator’s immutable guidance for an otherwise transient world. This significance of this transhistorical belief is rooted in the conviction that the Qur'an and the Prophet provide eternal principles and norms upon which Muslims life, both individual and collective, is to be patterned. The challenge for each generation of believers has been the continued formulation, appropriation, and implementation of Islam in history. Islamic history and civilization provide the record of that struggle to interpret and to follow its path.

Islam in the last decade of the twentieth century had ceased to be solely of interest to those who are concerned with “foreign” religions or cultures. As we are slowly realizing, Islam is truly a world religion, increasingly visible in Europe and the United States as well as Asia Africa, and the Middle East. Muslims are very much part of the mosaic of Western societies, no longer foreign visitors but fellow citizens and colleagues. Thus, to understand the world in which we live, requires a knowledge of Islam as a prerequisite for an appreciation of our theologically interconnected and historically intertwined Judeo-Christian-Islamic heritage.

Source: Esposito, John L. Islam the Straight Path. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).