Odpowiadając islamowi – protestanci w dialogu i polemice z muzułmanami

Abstract

The main issues on which a Christian-Muslim polemic focuses are: the status of the Bible and the figure of Jesus. The main sources to be used by Protestants in their polemic with Muslim clearly are the Bible and the Koran. Book and electronic publications require examination of several subjects: 1) The authenticity of the Bible (i.e. the Torah and Gospel), 2) The divinity of Jesus- the Savior, 3) Islam and Christianity, 4) The status of the Koran, 5) The so-called “false testimony”, e.g. Gospel of Barnabas, the issue of Paraclete. It should be remembered that in most cases a rather radical attitude of some Protestant studies is connected with the impossibility of having a real dialogue between the two religions based on the mutual exegesis of letters and dogmas and the text hermeneutics – the Bible is analyzed by Muslim theologians with regards to its contents to the Koran, and the Koran may not be subject to the classic text criticism applied by bibliologists with reference to the Hebrew Bible or to the New Testament books. Presenting someone with the Koran constitutes a call to accept Islam, whereas presenting someone with the Bible is regarded as an act of Christian missionary activity, naturally rejected by Muslims. Religious pluralism, which constitutes a base for a dialogue between religions, is unknown to numerous Muslim clergymen. As Bassam Tibi put it, “both parties of the dialogue have to acquire unprejudiced theological and historical knowledge”.