The influence of Islam on the course of the Protestant Reformation

Abstract

From their beginnings, Christian–Muslim relationships have been characterised by conquests and crusades, two words that cast a long shadow. However, several positive aspects deserve our attention. I intend to unfold those elements that possibly channelled the Protestant Reformation and offer a fresh look at them. The basis for my construction is the politico-religious ground the Roman emperor Constantine already prepared. He is the one who launched the era of politicallycontrolled Christianity. Two and a half centuries later, Justinian went the reverse way by setting up the religiously-controlled governance of his empire. At least from the point of view of a Scripture-oriented Protestant, the fusion ended in centuries of theological and social deviations. Incidentally, right after the reign of Justinian, Islam emerged and overshadowed European chronicles for the next one thousand years. No wonder the new religion was assimilated with an apocalyptic calamity. Its presence brought massive financial and human disasters to medieval Europe. Territorial and geopolitical losses were also substantial: the whole of Asia Minor, North Africa, and a large section of the Balkan Peninsula. Its looming presence at the gates of Vienna became almost overwhelming, marking the apex of its expansion. But could the bitter aftertaste of the Islamic presence have been over-accentuated and some constructive elements ignored? Two considerations could provide an answer. First, the existence of two distinct Christian views on the Scripture from Constantine’s time. Presenting them will possibly help us trace the origins and the raison d’être of the Protestant Reformation as an intra-Christian crisis amid the intra- European race for hegemony. At the same time, the Ottomans emerged and made a distinction between Christians identified in the Qur’ān as “concealers” and those named “different believers”. A significant part of my work consists of a review of such mentions and a study of how Muslims generally behaved toward those two groups. The question is whether their interference was motivated by religious conviction and political calculus, or if it was simply the result of random factors. Another aspect to be addressed is the critical examination of written sources designed to demonise Islam or, on the contrary, to idealise it. It addresses challenging areas such as the outcome of the Muslim conquests for Christianity through forced conversions and the expression of religious intolerance on one hand and the protection of certain Christian minorities on the other. I need to add Islam’s vital role in the preservation of Bible manuscripts and the participation of its commonly called “Golden Age” to the enlightenment, which flowered into the development of the Reformation. This beneficial repercussion has been widely underestimated, leaving people with a distorted image. It is why History deserves to be reassessed in a way that places the current rise of Islam in the West in a new light. In turn, that would be beneficial to the ongoing efforts in the area of interfaith dialogue.