Küng: Who Was the First Muslim?

7:14 AM Monday.

It looks like the Creator is calling me to undertake another lesson in Islamic studies with Professor Küng today. I was a little bit put off by Küng's somewhat intemperate critique of Samuel Huntington in yesterday's lesson, but I didn't let that stop me from continuing forward early this morning with appreciative study of Islam: Past, Present and Future. Küng is a brilliant thinker and there will be tremendous value, I am in sure, in sticking with him all the way to the end of his book. Today I read through most of section AII, "Problems of the Beginning," and now I'd like to focus on the important question Küng poses at the start of this chapter: Who was the first Muslim?

Küng gives us three initial ways to answer this question. First, there is a common Christian understanding that Muhammad was the first Muslim. Second, there is the common Muslim understanding that Adam was the first Muslim. And third, there is an intriguing academic hypothesis that the Jewish Christians of Arabia were the direct precursors of Islam.

This gives rise to five questions for exploration and discussion.

Q1. In what way if at all is it intellectually accurate to say that Islam began with Muhammad and that he was the first self-styled Muslim?

See: https://share.google/aimode/VEcVYvrVrqpe12ihd    

Q2. Do Islamic scholars teach that all of humanity descends from Adam and that all people have fitrah, a yearning for submission to Allah, as their inherent nature?

See: https://share.google/aimode/CCxGNVO9pl0vsJ8y4

Q3. Is it widely accepted among scholars that the specific type of Judeo-Christian tradition that influenced early Islamic thought had a Semitic low Christology, in contrast to a Greco-Roman high Christology?

See: https://share.google/aimode/0YF0ZCVuarXNh2iVp

Q4. Are these Judeo-Christians with a low Christology referred to as Nasara in the Quran?

See: https://share.google/aimode/tiHWaDOT8p81EwObZ

Q5. Even if scholars believe these Nasara influenced early Islamic thought, does this necessarily invalidate the originality and authenticity of the revelation to Muhammad? How does Küng address this point?

See: https://share.google/aimode/poatRg9tZFFPyPZHh

In my next Islamic studies lesson I will take up Küng's discussion of "Abraham - the Common Ancestor of the 'People of the Book.'"

End 10:06 AM.