Christianity and Islam

The term ‘Religion’ can be defined in a number of ways, thus there is no one definitive way to describe the term. Religion is thus “any specific system of belief about a deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics, and a philosophy of life.” The world’s population, about 6.5 billion people are related in one way or another to specific geo- political and socio-cultural aspects that bind them together. There are a number of religions in the world today with the five largest in terms of population representation being: - Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. Each having evolved in its own unique way, some remaining whole while others split into different factions due to a number of reasons with examples being witnessed in both the Christian and Islamic faiths.

These major religions have had strong representations abate on regional basis, where some are the main or sole religious representations for these regions. Confucianism and Buddhism have major representation in the Asian-Pacific region, the Hindu religion having major representation in the region of India, Christianity being in Europe, North and South America and Sub-Saharan Africa and Islam being heavily represented in the Middle and Far East and in North Africa. The different religions of the world have had significant impacts on the geo-politics of the various regions with the impacts and results being felt in their social fabric.

The religion of Islam

The name Islam is derived from “salam”, an Arabic word that is often interpreted to mean “peace” or “submission.” Therefore a Muslim is a person who submits to the will of Allah (God). Islam, a monotheistic religi...

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...ed for differently among the two religions with Christianity rooting for a ‘one man - one wife marriage’ while Islam has provisions for which a man can marry up to a maximum of four wives. Both religions share on the issue of circumcision, while differing on the issue of Baptism that is present only in Christianity.

In conclusion, both religions share many aspects such as origin, belief in God, His Angels, His revelations, the Judgment and Resurrection Day among others. Muhammad referred to both Jews and Christians as the ‘People of the Book’ thus accepting the rightful existence of these two. Differences have arisen that continue to have major impacts in today’s global setting and are causes of much tension, conflict and bloodshed where extremism prevails on both sides. Religious intolerance is one of the main issues that add to this discordance between the two.