Chrislam

Adapted from Voice, Mar/Apr 2015. Used with permission. Read Part 1.

God gave this warning to Israel as they were about to enter the Promised Land filled with Canaanites:

Take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’ You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. (ESV, Deut. 12:30-31)

The Quran certainly does believe in replacement, not only of the Jews and Israel but also of the Messiah and His Church, replacing them with Islam’s own prophet and book. But the Bible clearly teaches: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

From Voice, Mar/Apr 2015. Used with permission.

We need to make Bible believers aware of a new ecumenical trend called Chrislam, which attempts to reconcile Islam and Christianity based on shared common beliefs. It is a pattern developing in Christian-Muslim interaction with the goal to bring acceptance of Islam as a peaceful religion while rejecting the uniqueness of Biblical Christianity. In this article I will try to inform the readers as to how has this come about, what we should make of this trend and suggest how we might respond.

History of Chrislam

Due to religious tensions between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria in the 1970s, a group was formed that embraced both the Bible and the Quran as holy books of faith and this group held both combined and separate services to meet everyone’s background. The leaders believed they had special angelic revelation to create this syncretism of religions.¹ A similar grouping developed in 1993 following the Lebanon-Israel conflict. Several Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim leaders formed the “Islamic-Christian National Dialogue Committee” to promote understanding and dialogue between religious groups.²