Summary and Abridgement:

Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.

The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbor. These principles are found over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity. The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbor is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity. The following are only a few examples:

Of God’s Unity, God says in the Holy Qur’an: Say: He is God, the One! / God, the Self-Sufficient Besought of all! (Al-Ikhlas, 112:1-2). Of the necessity of love for God, God says in the Holy Qur’an: So invoke the Name of thy Lord and devote thyself to Him with a complete devotion (Al-Muzzammil, 73:8). Of the necessity of love for the neighbor, the Prophet Muhammad said: “None of you has faith until you love for your neighbour what you love for yourself.”

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ said: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. /  And you shall love the Lord  your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. ’This is the first commandment. / And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ’There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)

About Author:

Lejla Demiri is a 2010/2011 postdoctoral fellow with the "Europe in the Middle East - the Middle East in Europe" project sponsored by Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Her research focuses on respective Muslim and Christian understandings of the religious ‘other’, as expressed in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish theological writings; her current project is "A Muslim Approach to Religious Diversity and Salvation in the late 17th and Early 18th Centuries: ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (1641-1731) on Christianity and Christian Theology." From 2007-10 Demiri was a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall College, Cambridge University, and she also taught courses on religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue at the Cambridge Muslim College. Demiri holds a BA and MA from Marmara University, licentiate degree and postgraduate diploma from the Pontifical Gregorian University, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge.