Islam

Overview

• Islam is the monotheistic religion founded on the preaching of Muhammad (c. 570–632) and the Qur'an, which its followers hold to be God's final revelation. The Orthodox Church, following St. John of Damascus, has from early on regarded it not as a separate revelation but as a Christian heresy.

Summary

Islam (Arabic for "submission") teaches submission to the one God, Allah, whose word Muslims believe was revealed to Muhammad in the Qur'an and to earlier prophets — many of them, like Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, shared with the Bible.[^1] The decisive parting from Christianity is over Christ Himself: Islam denies His divinity, His Cross, and His Resurrection, holding that He was not truly crucified but only appeared to be.[^1] For this reason St. John of Damascus, who lived under early Muslim rule, treated Islam in his catalogue of heresies as "the heresy of the Ishmaelites," and later writers have described its account of Christ as a compound of older errors — Arian, Nestorian, and Docetic.[^1]

Sources

[^1]: OrthodoxWiki, Islam — Islam as submission to the one God; the Qur'an as its final revelation; denial of Christ's divinity and crucifixion (Qur'an 4:157); classed as a heresy by St. John of Damascus ("Critique of Islam"), likened to a compound of Arianism, Nestorianism, and Docetism.