ISLAM-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

277 birth of Mary and her childhood, the An- nunciation, Christmas: a great veneration for Jesus even though he is not conside- red the son of God. 2. In the early years Jesus was shown friendship, then as the years went by and becoming more powerful he ordered to fight him. 3. The scriptures remind us that man has a Creator, owes obedience to His com- mandments and returns to Him: - We believe what has been revealed to us, we believe what has been revealed to you. Our God and your God is one and we are subject to Him as Muslims (Koran 29:46). - Those who believe in God and in the last day and do good will all have their reward with their Lord, they will have nothing to fear and they will not be sad- dened by it (2:62). 4. Hostility: - Fight those who do not believe ... and who believe that what God and his Messenger have declared unlawful is lawful and, among those to whom the book was given, those who do not pro- fess the religion of truth. Fight them un- til they humbly pay the tribute (9:29). - Let there be no compulsion in religion! The righteous path is distinct from er- ror... the unbelievers will end up in the fire and remain there forever (2,256). - When therefore you meet in battle those who do not believe, hit them around the neck and after having slaughtered them with blows, tighten the logs well. Then, either grace or ransom...(47,4). Religious freedom: (2/256-257) Let there be no compulsion in religion! The right path is well distinguished from error. Whoever denies idols... God is the patron of those who believe... but the pa- trons of those who do not believe are the idols, who bring them out of the light into darkness. The disbelievers will be in the fire, and they will remain there forever. A hadith: - In friendship, mercy and affection for one another, believers are like human bodies: when one part suffers, the others also know fever and insomnia. - the great Muslim mystic RABAA EL ADAWIYYYA, who one day walked around with a bucket of water in one hand and a torch in the other, saying: "I would like to extinguish hell from this wa- ter and burn heaven with this flame so that it would be more for fear of a punish- ment, nor for a reward that one obeyed God, but for pure love of the interested." Koran Read and apply the text to the letter wi- thout correlating it to the text as a whole. The second way is to take the Koran in its entirety! not to look for the truth in the single sentence but in the general context. Despite the existence of verses that con- tradict Muslims, modernists assert that the Koran should be read as a single Chapter and not in the reading of a verse taken in isolation. The sacred texts are not closed-ended, but are a source of meditation and reflection. Wives You will not be able to be impartial with your wives even if you want to .... and do not neglect some and if you are afraid of not being fair ... marry only one. The problem of the veil fits into this fra- mework: For centuries entire Islamic so- cieties have not bothered to "dress" the woman, and they were no less religious than now. Today some Islamic currents continue to cover the woman's body as an essential message of Islam. (who was addressed to Muhammad's wives so that they would not be offended, and added that God continues to forgive!)