The Invitation to Affirm Common Principles

The only divine religion is Islam: “Indeed, the religion in the sight of God is Islam” (555) and Islam is what God has commanded everyone to accept and declare: “Say, ‘We have believed in God and… we are Muslims [in submission] to Him’” (556). Any religion other than this is not Islam, for the Glorious God, after a verse with the same content (557), says: “And whoever desires other than Islam as religion_—_never will it be accepted from him”(558). Therefore, He said to the Muslims: If the People of the Book believe as you have believed, they will be guided: “So if they believe in the same as you believe in, then they have been [rightly] guided” The expression “they have been [rightly] guided” (ihtadaw) is in contrast to the false claim of the Jews and Christians who said: “Be Jews or Christians [so] you will be guided.”

To avoid imposing in speech and to prevent the People of the Book from stubbornly saying “we do not believe in what you believe,” He did not say “if they believe in what you believe” but expressed it as “if they believe in the like of what you believe.”

The subtle point and challenge that al-Zamakhsharī proposed and some like Abū Ḥayyān considered good(559), although possible and technically sound in its own right, requires careful consideration to derive from the verse.

The Glorious God said: Muslims believe in the aforementioned truths, and if the faith of others is like their faith, their faith is true and they are guided. Therefore, the Noble Prophet invited the People of the Book to the common principles among all laws: “O People of the Scripture, come to a word that is equitable between us and you_—_that we will not worship except God and not associate anything with Him and not take one another as lords instead of God”(560). He did not say these principles are ours and you should accept and rely on our principles. In fact, the content of this noble verse is close to the verse under discussion.

The apparent meaning of the verse is as explained; however, as some exegetes like al-Zamakhsharī have noted, its content may be a form of “rebuke” (tabkīt)(561). That is, if the People of the Book have found a true religion similar and equal to Islam in correctness and soundness, and have believed in it, they will be guided. But since Islam is the only true religion and there is no true religion other than it, there is no similar religion for them to believe in and be guided.

It should be noted that the reason for inviting them to a similar faith is that those afflicted with dualism: “The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the son of God’”(562) and trinitarianism: “They have certainly disbelieved who say, ‘God is the third of three’”(563), like those tainted by polytheism with unfair division and considering angels as God’s daughters, are all caught up in anthropomorphism, corporealism, incarnation, union, and the like. Such anthropomorphic contamination will never be like pure transcendence. Their faith becomes similar to the true faith of real believers only when they migrate from false anthropomorphism to true transcendence.

The point is that the divine invitation is accompanied by honor; that is, it does not say “believe in what we have believed” so that they would say: “We believe in what was revealed to us and disbelieve in what came after it…”(564).

In summary:

The only true religion is Islam, and the only way of guidance is to adhere to and believe in it.

The true religion has no similar; that is, there is no religion that shares an essential common ground with the reality of Islam and both fall under that common ground.

The reason for the impossibility of similarity and why Islam has “nothing like unto it” is that in Islam, the origin and return is God, and general and specific prophethood and messengership are limited and defined, and these objective realities never have similars. Therefore, Islam, which is the true religion and the law of truth, will not have a similar.

The religiosity of individuals to a single religion is similar to one another; that is, each person’s faith in Islam (with all its core elements) is like another person’s faith in it, because these individuals are of one type and the definition of similarity applies to them.

Since similarity exists in instances of religiosity and examples of faith, it also exists in instances of guidance and its examples; meaning if their faith was like your faith, their guidance would also be like your guidance.

Note: Regarding “with the like of what you have believed” (bi-mithli mā āmantum), several views have been presented; such as:

a) The letter “bā” is redundant.

b) Both the letter “bā” and the word “mithl” are redundant; like the redundancy of “kāf” in “like eaten straw” (ka-ʿaṣfin maʾkūl)(565).

c.) Neither is redundant and it means “with the like of this” (bi-mithli hādhā).

The third view is better than the first, and the second view is the weakest of all. To explain, the essence of the expression “with the like of what you have believed in” (bi-mithli mā āmantum bihi) refers to “with the like of your faith” (bi-mithli īmānikum). Therefore, it does not mean believing in something similar to what the believers believe in, so that it could be said “the object of the believers’ faith is God, and God has no likeness or similarity: ‘There is nothing like unto Him’”(566), thus “like” (mithl) in the verse under discussion is redundant(567).

Al-Ṭabarī and Shaykh al-Ṭūsī have narrated a tradition from Ibn ʿAbbās with this content: “… Do not say ‘with the like of what you have believed’ (bi-mithli mā āmantum), because God has no likeness, but say ‘Believe in that which you have believed’ (āminū bi-lladhī āmantum bihi).” Then they considered this narration as anomalous and contrary to consensus, and said: Assuming that it is indeed authentic authenticity, the meaning of this tradition is that you should not interpret the verse in question in a way that suggests the existence of a likeness for God, but rather interpret it in the correct manner(568).

Multiple readings are also found in the verse under discussion; Fakhr al-Rāzī, after quoting the aforementioned statement from Ibn ʿAbbās, has reported from the judge that abandoning the widely transmitted (mutawātir) reading in cases where the meaning becomes difficult is unjustified, because one who makes something their doctrine_—in order to interpret the Qur’an according to it—_would need to alter the recitation of all ambiguous verses, and this is prohibited and forbidden(569).

It appears from Jāmiʿ al-Qurṭubī that what is meant by the difference in reading in cases such as what has been reported about the verse under discussion is actually the difference in exegesis and commentary(570). Therefore, one cannot justifiably assume textual distortion from the perspective of differences in readings.