INTERNATIONAL FAITH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,
A UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF THE FREE INTERNATIONAL EPISCOPAL UNIVERSITY®,
LONDON, ENGLAND

DIFFERENCES IN DOCTRINE BETWEEN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY.
DOCTORAL THESIS FOR DEGREE OF A DOCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY, FOCUS AREA BIBLICAL STUDIES

SUPERVISED AND DIRECTED BY
PROF. DR . MUHAMMAD WOLFGANG G.A.SCHMIDT,

submitted by

Jean de la Paix Nkurunziza

IN 2005

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Any thing concerning doctrine is about Religion. Thus in order to understand doctrine one must be aware and know that there is no doctrine without Religion.

Indeed it is said that the main purpose of doctrine is to divide! But to divide what? Religions and their believers. So what is Religion? From the Amerriam Webster′s dictionary religion means the service and worship of God or the supernatural or just commitment or devotion to the religious faith or observance. In other words the Religion is the Human Belief about God.

From the beginning the man has sensed that there is a supernatural being who is the creator of every thing including man himself. The writer of Psalm (19:1)s said that the heavens declare the glory of God and the Skies proclaim the work of his hands. In 19th Century Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865) said that he could not conceive how a man could look up, in to heavens and say there is no God. All these show how a man is convinced that God is there and that she worth to be worshipped though the way people approach or worship her has been so different from the beginning. And this difference between the way people or group or community worship God from other is what the doctrine is about.
Around the world there are a good number of religions (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism, Sikhs, Jews, Shamanism, Confucianism, Bahaism, Shintoism e.t.c.)

Among these Islam and Christianity are the biggest religions under the sun which also claim to be monotheism and have the revelation from God. Quran for Islam and Bible for Christianity are viewed as sacred books of God in which God revealed himself to the human kind.¹

In the world view of monotheism, all supernatural phenomena are manifestations of or are under the control of a single external, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent super being.

To turn to the right track the doctrine means simply teaching or instruction. Since this thesis is about the different in doctrine between Islam and Christianity I will be talking about teachings of Islam and Christianity. According to Conrad Phillip Kottak, Islam is found in 172 countries around the world and it makes up 924, 611 500 adherents which is equal to 17,8% of the whale population of the world.²

Christianity is in 251 countries with 171,189 7000 adherents which is equal to 32.9% of the whale population of the world.
To date Islam is one of the Christianity strongest competitors and indeed also one of its strongest opponents.

After the death of Muhammad and Jesus the founders of the two religions, the disciples of each founder assumed responsibility and leadership. For Islam four disciples of Muhammad known as Caliphs (Abu Bakar, Umar, Uthman, and Ali) led the religion one after another. The four are known as collectively as the Rashidun or Right guided. The four knew Muhammad personally and worked with him in building Islam. Their leadership spanned from 632 the date of the death of Muhammad to 661 AD.

There is a story which said to hold in Heaven between Jesus and Angel Michael after Jesus′ ascension:³

Michael: Lord where have you been?
Jesus: I have been in the world for a mission of saving the humankind.
Michael: So how was your mission there?
Jesus: It was perfect and I am happy of what I achieved.
Michael: But people there killed you. So how can you say that it was perfect?
Jesus: My mission was to die for the world and that is what I did.
Michael: Did you reached everywhere so that everyone knows about you?
Jesus: No, instead I chosen my disciples whose their responsibility is to reach my good news to all corners of the world.
Michael: Suppose your disciples return to their former jobs and abandon the task what do you think will happen?
Jesus: As a matter of fact they can not. However to ensure that they do whatever I commanded them to do we have sent the Holy Spirit to be with them every time and everywhere, to remind them whatever I told them, to reveal, encourage and to comfort them.

This imaginary story illustrates how the disciples of Jesus were and played an indispensable role in building the Christianity or the Church of Christ thekingdom of God. Jesus had twelve disciples and all except one (Judas Iscariot) starting on the day of Pentecost and led by Simon Peter surrendered their life for the cause of Gospel of Jesus to the level of which most of them were martyred for proclaiming the Good news about Jesus. The eleven knew Jesus personally. Apart from those eleven apostles who worked and travelled with Jesus in his ministry which spanned the period of three years, there was another who was p[personally called by Jesus himself after ascension (Acts 9:4-5, 1cor 9:1,15:) This was apostle Paul who was a key player in proclaiming the Good News about Jesus in the apostolic time.

[...]

1 Lilian Eichler-Watson:“Light From Many Lamps“, Simon and Cobuster, 1951:35

2 In Cultural Anthropology, p.252.

3 Richard C. Martin: “Islam Studies“, Prentice Hall 996:48-53.