Saturday, December 18, 2010

For the Love of Rebecca

For the Love of Rebecca

The Murder of Charlie Poole by the Black Legion

 

By Mary Teresa Coulter

 

As do many sagas, mine began with a knock on the door.  On a hot summer night in 1968, a faint knock on our front door woke me up.  Soon I began to hear the low rumble of voices in the night.  Two black men with wide rimmed hats sat at our table talking to my dad.  They were very serious.  My mother closed the drapes and told me to go to bed.  My dad yelled from his chair, “Fuck the neighbors.  Open that window!”  My mom slowly did and walked in the kitchen solemnly.  The men were Black Panthers, the time was the Detroit riots.  The mood was ominous.  I never saw those men again.

A few years later, I attended a summer camp program with all black kids, with the exception of two white girls from another town.  At bedtime the two white girls got to sleep in a separate room by themselves.  And I stayed with the black girls.  A black girl asked me why I wasn’t in their room.  I said I didn’t know.  I just didn’t like the white girls, I liked the black girls better.  But, I didn’t know why.  During my stay, I kissed a boy.  My brothers said, “Wait until Grandma Becky finds out that you kissed a black boy, she will have a heart attack!  Upon my arrival home from camp my mother sat me down on the couch to have a talk with me.  I was never to tell anyone I kissed that boy, especially Grandma Becky.

Similar scenes played out during my childhood and haunted my mind.  “Why were so many situations shrouded in secrecy and why did something eat at my developing young mind to clue me into some deep mystery that was unbeknownst to me?” I needed answers to this tugging in my gut.  “Something was not right.  What was it?”

Over the years, bit by bit, I would hear things that began to spell out a picture for me and an explanation to so many things I could not find reason to. I am now 42 years old and I have all the missing pieces to the puzzle.  I know why I can’t tell anyone that I kissed that black boy.  It was all for the love of my grandmother Rebecca.

I would always ask her about my grandfather.  I wanted to know who he was.  What happened to him and why we never talked about him?”  “Was he a bad man?  Did he leave her?”  She would rarely mention him or talk about it.  But from time to time I would listen from another room and hear her talking about Charlie, to my mother.  My mother would always have that same foreboding stare in her eyes.  She did not want to hear it.

I took care of my grandmother during the last ten years before she died.  Her declining mental health allowed her to speak freely about the past.  Secrets she tried to carry to her grave, melted into my ears like butter.  I was hearing the truth and I knew it.

This is what Rebecca told me when she was 81 years old.

My grandmother spent a summer at her sisters house at the same time a young man was staying with her sister as a boarder.  His name was Lowell Rushing.  He was enamored with Rebecca and fell in love, secretly.  Rebecca was married to Charlie and Charlie was the only thing that stood between Lowell and the object of his affection.  A few years later, Lowell started running with the Black Legion.  Charlie told Rebecca to tell Lowell that if he kept running with those boys something terrible might happen to him.  He better get out while he had a chance.  A few weeks later, my grandfather was dead at the hands of Lowell.

My Aunt Marcy Rushing was a gossip.  She would sit at her kitchen table with her coffee and cigarettes and loudly express her opinions for hours.  Lowell was unemployed, and sat for long hours at that same coffee table hanging on for any news of Rebecca.  My grandmother called one spring afternoon in 1936.  She and Marcy discussed the details of a recent argument that Rebecca and Charlie had.  At one point in their marriage Charlie was not working and Rebecca was.  Even though Charlie was at home, Rebecca hired a woman to baby sit for her little girl. 

Grandma said she thought that the woman liked Charlie.  She argued with Charlie about this a lot.  She was indignant with him over the fact that while the woman was at home with the child, Charlie was not out looking for work but hanging around the babysitter.  Rebecca was jealous.  She would fuss at Charlie for that past indiscretion. She would fuss at Charlie over his drinking and bar life.  She was not satisfied with him and they would argue.  When he would leave, she would pick up the phone and call her sister Marcy to pour out the details of all his failings.

When Marcy hung up the phone, she would rave on for hours about my grandfather.  On the occasion that Charles and Rebecca had a more serious fight, Lowell began to form a plan.  Her downgrading sunk deep into Lowell’s mind and soon he found his avenue.  He knew what he was to do.  Soon he would have Rebecca and no one would be the wiser.

Lowell walked to the wolverine club and spread his news of my grandparents fight.  He changed the details of a terrible argument to a terrible fight.  Soon the Clan began shadowing Charlie.  Men would show up at Rebecca’s house all hours of the day and night.  Strangers would approach her on the street.  Some would ask where Charlie was.  Some would just seem interested in her, but she knew this was bad, very bad.  “But what was it?”

The Clan knew that Charlie and Rebecca only argued.  The Clan knew that Rebecca went into the hospital to deliver her baby.  The Clan also knew that they needed to twist the truth to justify their dark actions.  They knew.  They all knew.

Rebecca’s fear for her husband’s safety grew.  She started lying about his whereabouts to everyone.  Marcy told her that certain people had heard about their fight.  Everyone was on edge.  “What did Marcy Do?”  The inevitable doom crippled them.  “Something was about to go down, but what, and when?”

This had gone on for some weeks now and when Marcy got the call that Rebecca went to the hospital, Lowell was there.  It was time.  He ran to the club and they plotted the hanging of Charlie. 

I think my grandfather knew too.  As a younger man he refused to join the Klan in Kentucky, and as my grandma said, “They ran him out.”  That is where his vagrancy charge came in.  He climbed aboard a cargo train due for Detroit, and never returned to Kentucky.

Charlie was Catholic and Rebecca was Southern Baptist.  That was a good starting point for the hatred of the Klan, but Rebecca’s beauty and contagious flirtations probably enraged them also.  “Why was such a beautiful white woman married to a Catholic.”  Not only that, but a Frenchman!”  Charlie poured out all his time and effort, trying to get into one of the motor companies around Detroit.  I don’t know what he was doing for money at the time of his death.  According to my Grandma, he was unemployed. 

According to the media, the last thing he did the day he died was drop off a high chair and shoes for his daughter Mary Lou.  The media portrayed him as working for the WPA.  He only was enrolled with their program, a program that was a welfare type program.  He was not a fancy WPA official, he was an unemployed worker on the dole.  We never will know much about who he was, because the Klan wiped out his life, past and future like thieves in the night.  All is lost.


Grandma said that Charlie visited her only once in the hospital to see his new baby girl, Nancy.  My grandfather had blondish hair and was fair skinned like my grandmother.  He sat on the edge of Rebecca’s bed and pulled a piece of his hair and said, “Look, I don’t have black hair.”  Grandma said she thinks he was referring to Lowell.  She never explained or returned comment.  She was hiding an even bigger secret.

Grandma knew what the Klan could do.  The fear was crippling to her.  She was the keeper of secrets and she never blinked at Charlie’s comment.  She never saw him again.  She knew why Nancy’s hair was black and her complexion was dark.  She was a Melungeon

The story has been written in many books and periodicals over the years.  Speculating is the best anyone could do.  Not because the Klan was shrouded in secrecy and the media reported.  But, because the Melungeons were. 

The secret my grandmother was hiding was not the fact that the baby’s father was Catholic, French, and skeptical of the paternity.  The secret my grandmother was hiding was the fact that she herself was black.  She was the product of a tri-race nationality with origins from before the 16th century in the United States.  The dark Melungeons have been passing themselves off as “Scotch-Irish” for centuries, when their real race was black, Portuguese, and sometimes Indian, sometimes, white.  My grandmother is the direct descendant of Mahala Mullins, the most infamous moonshiner at the turn of the century.

Mahala’s father Solomon Collins, was black.  Mahala was ½ black, her son James who served for the north in the Civil War and ran moonshine and was involved in one of the biggest raids on the mountains where Mahala lived was ¼ black.  His daughter Mary Jane Mullins was 1/8th black, and her daughter Rebecca Booker was 1/16th black.  Rebecca, the beautiful white woman whom the Klan defended and caused the demise of their own organization over was a black woman.  And Rebecca knew it.

They could never know why my mom was dark.  No one could know.  Not Charlie, not his family, not the reporters that forced her life on the pages of newspapers as far away as New York and Paris. 

If the Klan ever found out surely they would kill her children.  This story must die. 

Nancy and Mary Lou were sent back to Erin, Tennessee for 6 years to live with their grandmother.  Rebecca stayed in Detroit.  Worked and sent money home for the girls.  After 6 years her mother Mary Jane who was raising them decided that the girls needed their mother and she packed up her husband and grandkids and headed them to Detroit.  My grandmother never bonded with her girls as a mother.  She had been forever stunted by the Klan.  She was a shell.  An empty shell where nothing lived.  Nothing but secrets she could not tell, fear she could not shake. 

On May 12, 1936, the Klan took my mother’s parents away from her for no reason except stupidity.  I was raised by a wounded woman, who never knew the joy of living, only the fear of dying.  Dying at the hands of the Klan if ever the secret of her dark skin was revealed.

My mother Nancy, the baby Rebecca was having that fateful May was dark and she always wondered why.  When I was a little girl, she would say, she thinks she must have taken after her dad’s father since he was French, or her grandmother as she was also dark.

It wasn’t until the 1990’s when my mom spent time in Georgia that some self revelations came to the surface.  She was reading a Georgia newspaper with an article about a strange race of people around Sneedville, Tennessee.  She recognized an old photo in the article that she knew as her great grandmother.  She was curious.  My mom, Nancy, went to the Library and began research into the “Melungeons.”  She was very fascinated.  She mailed my brothers and myself copies of the articles and secrets were about to be brought to light.  The odd behavior of my grandmother was all beginning to make sense. 

One afternoon, years later, my sister-in-law called excitedly and said that my nephew was watching history’s mysteries and that our grandfather’s story was featured on it.  He taped it.  When I viewed the tape I was stopped in my tracks.  There were images of my grandfather dead in a ditch, and my tiny little grandmother grief stricken and afraid talking on the news about the murder.

Later on my kids came home from school and said that our grandfather was in their 6th grade history book.  I was stunned.  How could my tiny unassuming grandmother hide such a world wide, secret from us.  Until I pieced the grandpa story with the Melungeon story did I began to realize the deep reasons for my grandmother’s behavior.  She was protecting us from the Klan because she knew we were dark.  And she knew what they could do.

Even now, 70 years later, my family doesn’t want this story told.  They want it to die.  I heard my Aunt Mary Lou say to my mother once.  “If we don’t tell our kids, it will die with this generation.  And the cord will be cut. But, if we keep telling it over and over, the pain will just go on.”  Now I fully understand what she meant.  But, I disagree with her.  I think this is a story that should be told, over and over again.  And I think the Klan should read this story.  To know that I am black and I am not afraid!  But I do remember.

The murder of my French Catholic grandfather Charles Poole brought down the Black Legion, the guardsmen of the Ku Klux Klan, for the love of a white woman named Rebecca.  Little did they know they were in reality defending the honor of a woman with a bigger secret than her husband’s faith.  She was black, and she took that secret to her grave.  Rebecca died on the 4th of July in 1997 quietly in her bed at 83 years of age.  She was the bravest woman I never knew.

Now I understand why my mother closed the window shades that evening in 1969, and why members of the Black Panthers sat at our table, and why I couldn’t tell anyone I kissed a black boy.  I just wished I could tell my grandmother that I knew why and that I understood.  And the reason I waited until she died to tell this story is for the love of Rebecca.

*   *   *   *   *

Other Sites: The Murder that brought Down the Legion  / Time's "Black Legion"

*   *   *   *   *

In Black Legion (the film directed 1936 by Archie Mayo), Humphrey Bogart gives an outstanding performance as factory laborer Frank Taylor, who loses a promotion to a foreign-born coworker. Filled with hatred, Taylor joins the Black Legion, a secret white supremacist organization. The group burns down the barn of Taylor's coworker, scaring him out of town. Thus, Taylor receives the promotion. But when Taylor is forced to spend his time recruiting new members for the Legion, he is demoted from plant foreman back to factory laborer. The Legion attacks Taylor’s new boss, making friends suspect Taylor's involvement, while Taylor himself begins drinking heavily in a fit of self-loathing. When Taylor finally loses his job and the Legion gears up for an attack on a former friend, it appears that Taylor has hit rock bottom--with only himself to blame. This fast-paced, black and white tale of moral decay and redemption is based on the true story of the Black Legion's condemnable actions in Michigan in the 1930s.

Warner Home Video, Running Time: 83 minutes, Not Rated, B&W, item #VVWA65273

Author: Mary Coulter, born in Dearborn, MI May 9, 1964  (the last year of the baby boom)Catholic, 9 brothers, no sisters; divorced, mother of 3 girls, 22 and twins 17was a Community Columnist Port Huron Times Herald Newspaper 2000-2001 (18 published articles that year, 26 plus articles total in all, including years she was not a columnist). This was an unpaid position.  A few articles were on issues of race relations between the black and white population of Port Huron. She received two threatening hate letters from KKK members resulting from her views in those articles. She now lives and works in the Manistee-Benzie county area.

She's in the process of writing two books.  One of which she'd like to make into a screen play: the "true" story of her grandfather’s death.  And the other she wantso title "Punchdrunk," about the life and death of her mentally ill brother.

 

Monday, December 13, 2010

E-Waste Market Size Continues to Grow

The volume of electronic waste is continuously growing all around the world. The main accused are the developed countries. But now the fast developing countries are also adding woes to it. The size of e-waste market is estimated to be worth $11 billion till 2009.
The modernization and digitization have proved to be worthy for the entire world and humanity but it has also given us a menace in the form of e-waste. With the increasing use of electronic devices and electrical equipment, the collection of e-waste is also mounting. 

E-waste or electronic waste is a term used for those electronic equipment that has reached its end of life in the hand of its current user. These devices when disassembled or destroyed are either taken for reuse or slated for hazardous disposal. Some of the electronic waste can be recycled and they are called as a "commodity" while those which cannot be reused is categorized as "waste".

E-Waste Market Size
The global market of electronic waste is estimated to be $7.2 billion in 2004 and it is predicted to increase at average annual growth rate of 8.8% till 2009 to $11 billion.
  • Due to the rising demand of high value engineered plastics, the recycled plastics sector will register the maximum revenue growth. It will grow at 10.2% AAGR.
  • The recycled metals market will continue to be dominated by the growth in metals mined from end of life electronic waste, growing at an AAGR of 8.1%.
  • Recycled glass is low valued hence the recycled glass market continues to be stagnant. Glass cullets sold into the marketplace will continue to command modest prices.
  • The cathode ray tube recovered from the old CRTs are vastly used in the new CRTs. The market demand for recovered cathode ray tube feedstock is growing and getting stronger. Due to this higher value glass-to-glass recycling the market will grow at an AAGR of 7.5%.
Reasons for Increasing E-Waste

Due to the increasing areas of information society and the dependency of businesses on computer and Internet, the e-waste has been mounting. Perhaps e-waste is the fastest growing segment of the municipal solid waste stream. E-waste has been mounting rapidly with the rise of the information society. In developed countries, e-waste constitutes 1% of solid waste but it is expected to grow to 2% by 2010. In developing countries, the percentage of e-waste out of solid waste ranges from 0.01% to 1%. But in recent future, the developing countries including, China will be the fastest growing segment of the e-waste market. Over the next five years, the electronic waste in developing countries has the potential to triple the amount at current. 

The rising mount of electronic waste isn't going to be cut recently. Computer sales are growing at a rate of 10% worldwide and sale of DVD players are doubling every year. Along with that the rate of obsolescence of electronic equipment is increasing. The life-cycle of the electrical and electronic equipment are shortening. The life period of a television set is reduced to 10 years while that of a computer remains only 2-3 years. All the above mentioned facts are equally responsible for the rising e-waste. In spite of such horrendous situation manufacturers and governments have not kept pace with electronic waste policy and practice. Eventually a high percentage of electronics are ending up in the waste stream releasing harmful toxins into the environment.
   By Pattrick Savarna

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Examples of Propaganda Techniques

Propaganda has been used since the beginning of time. It is basically a type of message aimed at influencing the behavior, opinions and decisions of people. Propaganda doesn't necessary has to have morals and is often misleading or exaggerated. Propaganda is mainly used in politics and takes it cue from public relations and advertising.

Advertising and public relations can also be termed as types of propaganda because they exaggerate the truth behind products and individuals.

Other than advertising and public relations, another type of propaganda is for influencing opinions and decisions on religious issues. One another of the types of propaganda is used by the ruling government. The various public information campaigns by the government can be termed as a type of propaganda.

Propaganda can be sent across in many and all types of media. Propaganda can be radio and television broadcasts, leaflets, posters, hoardings, so on and so forth. The techniques of propaganda include books, leaflets, movies, radio, television, government reports, news reports, paid news reports and historical revision. Here are some examples of the techniques of propaganda.

Propaganda is mainly used during wars and similar situations of grave danger and strive. One early example is the 'Destroy Old World And Build New' poster in China. The poster depicted a worker destroying various religious symbols, like the Buddha, the crucifix and ancient Chinese texts with a hammer.

Propaganda has been used extensively since time incarnate. Here are some examples of the various types of Propaganda used.

Maybe the one institution that used propaganda intensely was the Nazis. Adolf Hitler was of the belief that the Allied won the World War 1 due to the power of propaganda and therefore had a Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Journalists and Broadcasters required prior approval before the dissemination of their work took place. As a result, the Nazis had produced a number of books and films to spread their belief and change public opinion. There were also countless posters during the Nazi regime which glorified the Nazi rule and went ahead to describe the American liberators as monsters.

Comics have been the main attraction of propaganda artists over the years. While almost every storyline has some or the other propaganda ingredient in it, it is quickly and subtly instilled into the public mind due to the entertainment factor. American patriots donning the super-hero costume to save the world are not very uncommon themes in superhero comics. Almost every patriotic hero, be it Captain America or Superman has had to combat villains of different ethnicity.

There have been a number of posters which can be termed as propaganda regarding the army.Maybe the most famous example of Propaganda is the 'Lord Kitchener Wants You' poster of 1914. The poster was aimed at the Britons with Lord Kitchener ordering them to join the country's army.This kind of poster is a type of the Direct Order technique of propaganda.During the Vietnam War, the the Viet-Cong soldiers were termed as 'gooks'. This is an example of the propaganda technique known as 'demonizing the enemy', in which the enemy is generally described as a worthless or immoral enemy.

Glittering generalities is another type of propaganda technique. This technique is mainly used in advertising, with a particular company creating a illusion that their product is better than their competitors on no particular grounds. One famous example of this kind of propaganda
technique is Ford's 'Ford Has A Better Idea' ad campaign.

The Chewbacca defence propaganda technique has varied examples in the modern world. This technique has been defined as speaking something so completely nonsensical and irrelevant to the topic on hand that nobody listens further. It was recently used by Dinesh D'Souza in his criticism for the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

6 Tips on How to Make $500 Dollars a Day with Adsense

Google’s Adsense program provides the perfect way to generate an ongoing passive stream of income for the savvy internet entrepreneur.
It is free to join and easy to set up.

I hear you ask, if it’s so easy why isn’t everyone making piles of money by slapping Adsense code into the pages of their websites.

Well there are a number of factors that contribute to a webmaster’s success with Adsense not least of all having a contextual website.

If you base your quest to make $500 dollars a day with Adsense on the following, you stand a good chance of sustained success.

1. Don’t build a site for Adsense

Apart from being against adsense’s TOS, site’s created purely to carry adsense ads don’t work in the long term.

They will in all likelihood get banned by Google, won’t make money as well as making it difficult for you to open another Adsense account.

2. Build a Site with Content 

Sounds obvious doesn’t it, but sites that are interesting and packed with compelling content are more likely to be revisited and related ads are more likely to be clicked upon.

Be sure to use your own original content - sites that duplicate content get penalized by Google.

Remember that rubbish sites generate rubbish income.

3. Choose Your Site’s Topic Carefully

Whilst your site should be based on your business interests or your hobby to keep your motivation levels high, just keep in mind that certain topics will attract higher value Adsense clicks than others.

For example a website on the mating habits of the north sea clam probably won’t attract any advertisers and therefore no Google Ads to display, let alone traffic.

Making money online and web hosting are topics that will never be short of advertisers, however the competition is higher and therefore more difficult to attract website traffic.

4. Niche Market

Your best bet is to target a niche market that does not have the competition in terms of fellow webmasters but still has a certain amount of interest.

Therefore if your website is cameras, targeting "digital cameras" would be a very competitive term, whilst targeting "underwater digital cameras for scuba divers" would be less competitive and will attract targeted traffic as well as related Adsense ads.

It is important that you understand that the text and keywords you use and the placement thereof will influence the type of ads that are served up by Google.

5. Type of Ads and Placement

The placement of your ads on your web page has a direct influence on your CTR (Click Thru Rate) - the higher the CTR the more clicks your ads are generating and the more money you are making.

To this end, take special note of the heat map provided by Google that shows the best positions for your ads on your web pages. 

Also decide carefully on the type of ads and the colors that you choose – the type that blend in well with the look, feel and flow of your site will probably be best in silently persuading your visitors to click on them.

6. Traffic Statistics

Finally analyze your adsense traffic stats as they’re packed with useful information – Google provides such a tool for this purpose with your Adsense account.

To make money with adsense you need to know what your stats are telling you and what you need to know.

The amount of traffic your site generates will obviously influence your adsense income but that is a whole separate subject just on its own.

The point is that for 2 sites generating the same amount of traffic, the site that is optimized for adsense, as above, will earn for more in adsense income than the site that isn’t.

To find out more about how you can make $500 a day with adsense visit:
http://www.internetbusiness.co.za/adsense-decoded.htm

Mark Bellinger, a university graduate, is a successful businessman and entrepreneur exploring ways to profit with Adsense, profiting with internet income streams and how to make money from an internet business

Friday, December 10, 2010

"SAY NOT THREE": SOME EARLY CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO MUSLIM QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TRINITY

The Thomist74 (2010): 85-104


"SAY NOT THREE":
SOME EARLY CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO MUSLIM
 QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TRINITY

Sandra Toenies Keating

Providence College
Providence, Rhode Island

IN OCTOBER 2007, a group of Muslim intellectuals, scholars, and clerics issued a statement that has come to be known as A Common Word between Us and You. The title comes from a phrase from the Qur’ān exhorting Christians and Muslims to find agreement in their worship of the one God. According to the official website of the group who formulated and endorsed the statement, it was written in direct response to Pope Benedict XVI's address to the faculty at the University of Regensburg in September of the previous year, and is the result of Muslims who have "unanimously come together for the first time since the days of the Prophet r[sic] to declare the common ground between Christianity and Islam."(1) This is a very bold statement, and may signal the beginning of a new era in relations between Muslims and Christians.
But what exactly is new about this endeavor, and how ought Christian theologians to respond to it? It is true that such a joint effort of this kind among Muslims is revolutionary and may ultimately serve the same purpose in articulating traditional views in contemporary language for like-minded Muslims that Nostra Aetate has for Roman Catholics. For this its drafters are to be highly commended. It has taken great courage to make this public statement at a time when the Islamic ummah is roiled by internal

page 86
divisions and large parts of it are deeply suspicious of what it perceives as the Christian West. From the longer perspective of history, the initiative itself is unique, and the drafters of the text have taken full advantage of modern technology to spread their message, making it possible that it will influence Muslims worldwide. What is not new is the content of the statement. A careful reading of the text reveals that it very closely follows the approach past Muslim apologists have taken, namely, it emphasizes the call to a common understanding between Muslims and Christians based on what is similar between the Qur’ān and the Holy Bible, while clearly rejecting the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. It seeks to formulate concord upon a common monotheism while calling upon Christians to reject their own "heretical" distortion of that monotheism.
In particular, the Common Word statement stresses that Christians and Muslims agree that central to their religions is love of God and love of neighbor, and that this is expressed in worship of the one God. Indeed, this crucial doctrine can provide a firm foundation upon which to build a more stable and peaceful society. In support, the Common Word quotes a key passage from the Qur’ān, found in Sūra 3 (Āl-cImrān):64:
Say: "O People of the Scripture! Come to a common word between us and you: worshipping only God, and not associating any partners with Him, and not taking one another as lords apart from God." And if they turn away, then say: "Bear witness that we are the ones who have surrendered (to God)."(2)
The Muslim confession of belief in one God, in Arabic tawhīd, is identified here as a common point of agreement between Muslims and Christians. In this verse, tawh īd is defined as a monotheism that does not allow any other being to be associated with God,(3) nor to be addressed as "lord"; that is, it prohibits giving to anyone

page 87
or anything else the sovereignty that properly belongs to God. Traditionally, this has been interpreted by Muslim thinkers as a clear condemnation of polytheism. Read together with other verses of the Qur’ān, it is also understood to preclude the Christian profession of the Trinity and the Incarnation as formally defined by the early Church councils.(4) More will be said about this below. It has long been recognized that what unites Muslims and Christians is monotheism, what divides us is Trinitarian monotheism. A Common Word, in keeping with many earlier Muslim apologetical texts, reiterates this point, exhorting Christians to recognize the truth of the Qur’ān and to abandon any false beliefs that compromise tawhīd.(5)
The idea that monotheism is the common ground on which Muslims and Christians can build better global relationships has been at the center of many modern efforts to find social unity. For this reason, the Islamic concepts of the ahl al-kit āb ("People of the Book/Scripture") and "Abrahamic Religions" have been employed by a multitude of theologians (as well as politicians) and become popular ways of conceptually integrating Muslims into communities of Christians and Jews. In the same vein, A Common Word has elicited the call from many well-intentioned Christians and others (some perhaps not so well-intentioned), to act in the spirit of cooperation and desire for world peace, leaving aside complex theological discussion. Whether out of fear it will lead to compromise, discouragement over the dialogue process so far, or lack of confidence that doctrinal formulations are meaningful, the point is made on all sides that such conversation is bound to be unproductive, and is therefore useless.
I would argue, though, that many Christians, whether they have ignored or endorsed and promoted the statement, have not fully grasped its radical call to abandon "heretical" Trinitarian monotheism, and the implications of such a move. Yet this is exactly where the rubber hits the road, so to speak, and has done

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so from the beginning. For centuries Christians living in close proximity to Muslims have recognized that we share a great deal in common principles and values, and at times this has even been enough to build a common society, as was found in Cordoba, Baghdad, and elsewhere. This is not a new insight. What remains at the heart of the disagreement between the two religious communities is how we speak about God's oneness and what does and does not violate the grammar of monotheism. The Common Word statement offers us a renewed opportunity to take up the Christian doctrine of Trinitarian monotheism in light of the Muslim challenge that it is a kind of "monotheistic heresy." As a contribution to this question, I will offer some observations about a few of the earliest written testimonies reflecting on the crux of the issues, in order to provide a foundation for the present-day discussion. I am convinced that attention to these early thinkers, men who first encountered Islam and sought to make sense of it, will prevent contemporary theologians from "reinventing the wheel" and even help us to avoid falling into some of the traps set by modern sensibilities and sensitivities.

I. "Believe in AllĀh and His Messengers and
Say Not 'Three'"
(Sūra 4 [al-Nisā']:171)

Although the information we have of the first encounters between Muslims and Christians is scant, it is apparent that Christians recognized the central challenge of the Qur’ān to their faith as being focused on the nature of God and the relationship between Creator and creation. This, of course, had been at the heart of the struggle in the early centuries of Christianity that had come to a head especially in the Christological councils of Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451). Islamic thought seemed to many to be a continuation of this debate but from a new angle. More specifically, Christian thinkers recognized that the question raised by Islam was: is the God of Israel's prophets, the Creator of all who has revealed himself to humanity, the same triune God of Christian confession who became incarnated? Or is this God

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rather the Absolute One who is unlike any creature and has spoken his divine word in the last days through Muhammad?
For Muslims, the problem is summarized in Sūra 4 (al-Nisā'):171:
O People of the Scripture, do not exaggerate in your religion, nor say [anything] about Allāh except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is [only] Allāh's Messenger and His Word [kalimatuhu], which He cast into her, and a Spirit from Him [rūhun minhu]. So believe in Allāh and His Messengers and say not "Three." Refrain, it is better for you. Allāh is truly One God, glory be to Him! How is it He could have a son? To Him belongs what is in the heavens and on the earth.
Traditional Muslim commentators on this verse, such as Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373),(6) connect it closely to Sūra 5 (al-Mā'ida):72-73:
For they are unbelievers (kafara) who say that Allāh is the Messiah, the Son of Mary. And the Messiah said: O, Children of Israel, worship Allāh, my Lord and your Lord. Surely the one who associates (yushrika) other gods with Allāh, Allāh will forbid him [entrance into] Paradise and his dwelling is the Fire. . . . For they are unbelievers who say that Allāh is the third of three, And there is no god except the One God; and if they do not refrain from what they say then those who are unbelievers among them will be severely punished.
Elsewhere the Qur’ān states that on the Day of Judgment Jesus will be asked by God: "O cIsa, son of Maryam, did you say to the people: 'Take me and my Mother as gods apart from Allāh?'", to which he will reply that it has not been given to him to say what is false" (5:116). This and other verses have led some to conclude that the Qur’ān is concerned with a group of Christians who acknowledged a trinity of a Father, Mother (Mary), and Son (Jesus), and is therefore not a critique of orthodox Christians.(7)
While the current debate as to whether the Christians of the Qur’ān are an identifiable group who held views quite different from accepted orthodoxy, and what the significance of this is for qur’ānic exegesis, may be of interest to scholars, it can cause us to

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overlook the deeper intention of the text. At its heart, the Qur’ān is a critique of any notion that God is, much less chooses to become, like anything in creation. This is the truest meaning of lā ilāh illa Allāh--"there is no god but God." Conversely, nothing in creation bears any resemblance to God, including human beings. To say otherwise is the worst of all sins--shirk.
Lest we miss the point, the verses cited above and a multitude of others draw an explicit connection between Christian belief in the Trinity and conviction that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, and shirk, identifying those who hold such beliefs as mushrikūn (associators/polytheists) and kâfirūn (unbelievers).(8) Over the centuries, Muslim and Christian scholars have debated the truth and implications of this correlation. Parallel to the Christological disputes, one can see struggles among Islamic scholars to understand the divine attributes, the sifāt Allāh and especially to articulate the relationship between God's Word, the Qur’ān, and God's being.(9) In this paper, I will look more carefully at how some Christians who first encountered the qur’ānic critique of the Trinity understood it and more specifically how they responded to it. It should be of interest to the modern theologian that records of the earliest conversations between Muslims and Christians do not focus on the qur’ānic characterization of specific aspects of Christian beliefs (for example, whether or not Christians worship Mary as a god); rather, they take on the general concern that belief in the Trinity and Incarnation are shirk--associating others with God and not giving God the absolute worship and honor that is his due.

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This consideration gives us a further insight as to why many Christian theologians in the first centuries of Islam regarded Muslims as adhering to another heretical Christian sect, probably related to Arianism, and, as far as we have documentation, engaged them on the level of theology, rather than on legal and practical issues such as polygamy, inheritance, governance, war, etc. It was well understood by these writers of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries that the real point of contention was how to speak of the one God who is Creator and who has been revealed to humanity, in ways that uphold the singularity of his deity; from this concern all other practical applications flowed.(10) I would argue that they "got it right," and we would do well to take another look at the insights that they gained from these encounters as we continue the project of articulating Christian faith in the context of a diversity of religions and, in particular, a diversity of monotheisms. This issue is all the more urgent since one of these monotheisms is vocally and emphatically anti-Trinitarian.

II. St. John of Damascus and the Heresy of the Ishmaelites

The first Christian writer of interest here is St. John of Damascus (d. 749), who needs little introduction. His inclusion of Islam in his De Haeresibus was perhaps the Christian commentary on Islam that was most widely read in the West until modern times. John has been accused, unjustly I believe, of many things because of this. His critique of Islam, and especially of Muhammad, is quite harsh. But the few short pages in which he summarizes the beliefs of the followers of Muhammad are surprisingly accurate. John's synopsis of the Muslim version of Jesus' conception, birth, his being taken up to heaven instead of suffering crucifixion, and Jesus' own teaching that he was not God, reveal a good knowledge of the Qur’ān on these topics.

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John follows his summary with a response to the "Ishmaelites" who say that Christians are "associators" ( JEtairiastal) when they claim that "Christ is the Son of God and God."(11) They maintain, he says, that this false teaching is the result of Christians having added to the Scriptures through the use of allegory, as well as through deception by the Jews.(12) The Damascene's famous response is that the Word and the Spirit must be inseparable from the one in whom they have their origin, so
if, therefore, the Word is in God it is obvious that he is God as well. If, on the other hand, th[e Word] is outside of God, then God, according to you, is without word and without spirit. Thus, trying to avoid making associates to God you have mutilated Him. For it would be better if you were saying that he has an associate than to mutilate him and introduce him as if he were a stone, or wood, or any of the inanimate objects. Therefore, by accusing us falsely, you call us Associators; we, however, call you Mutilators [Coptas](13) of God.(14)
In a few strokes John goes to the heart the problem: what does it mean to deny the possibility of the Trinitarian relationship in God? He answers that to strip God of life and word is to make the divine being more akin to a stone, and this is much worse than to say God is like human beings in trying to explain the relationship between God's life, word, and being. John's obvious point here is that if God is who Christians believe he is, one, living, and communicating to creation, then the Spirit and the Word must be God. The problem is not whether God is one, but the inner nature

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of the one God as it has been communicated to human beings. This, of course, the Damascene lays out in great detail in his De Fide Orthodoxa.
John's approach had wide-reaching influence among Christians living under Muslim rule through a number of his later disciples, notably Theodore Aūb Qurrah in the Melkite Church and the Syrian Orthodox Archdeacon Nonnus of Nisibis in Armenia.(15) Those who read their writings in Arabic, Greek, and Armenian recognized the usefulness of John's insights for apologetical and catechetical purposes as they carried on their engagement with Muslims. As we shall see below, in different ways, most Christian apologists from the first centuries of Islam made a defense of the Trinity central to their theology, only turning to other topics after they had established this doctrine.

III. A Tract on the Triune Nature of God: "Against the Muslims"

This brings us to our second unknown writer, who was probably active around the same time as John of Damascus but takes a rather different approach. Over a century ago, Margaret Dunlop Gibson edited and translated part of a seventh- or eighth-century codex from the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai desert containing an Arabic version of the Acts of the Apostles, the seven Catholic Epistles, and an anonymous treatise that one might call "Against the Muslims."(16) The treatise, which still awaits careful scholarly analysis, likely represents one of the very earliest

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attempts in Arabic to counter the claims of the Qur’ān discussed above that Christians are mushrikūn--those who associate others with God.
At first glance "Against the Muslims" appears to be a long chain of biblical quotes reminiscent of testamonia lists, which demonstrated the truth of the Christian claim that Jesus Christ has fulfilled the prophecies of the Jewish Scriptures, evidence that might be useful for convincing a Jewish reader that Jesus is the Messiah. J. Rendel Harris has pointed out that the treatise draws heavily on previous apologetical writings directed against the Jews (for example, Justin's Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, Pseudo-Gregory of Nyssa's Adversus Judaeos, and the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila). He even suggests that its main value consists in its preservation of excerpts of some previously unknown anti-Judaic and apocryphal texts.(17) In conclusion, Harris claims it simply reveals "that the eastern church stood toward the Moslem in much the same position that they had occupied from the beginning toward the men of the synagogue."(18) In his opinion, the text is of little use for scholars of Islam.
I would argue that he has been too quick to dismiss efforts of the author as simply throwing Jews and Muslims into the same basket, for "Against the Muslims" points us in the right direction for understanding the earliest perceptions of Islam by Christians. In several places the author informs us that his intention is to counter charges of polytheism, particularly the belief that there are multiple "lords." He admonishes his reader: "Say not that we believe in two Gods (allāhayn), or that we say there are two Lords (rabbayn). God forbid! Verily God is one God and one Lord in His Word and His Spirit."(19) This is certainly intended to call to mind the charge of Sūra 3 (Āl-cImrān):64 quoted above. Read through the lens of this Christian apologetical goal, it becomes clear that "Against the Muslims" identifies the most significant point of contention with the Muslim rejection of the triune nature of God revealed through the Incarnation. For this reason, the

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author was apparently confident that he could respond to the new challenge Islam presented by reformulating in Arabic many arguments defending the Trinity that had been used previously against another community who questioned its coherence, the Jews.
"Against the Muslims" moves beyond mere reformulation, though, pointing out the continuity between what Muslims and Christians believe, and directing the reader's attention to the logical implications of accepting past prophecy and revelation. In one passage, the author confronts his reader directly, stating: "The prophets and saints of God have shewn that God and His Word (kalimatuhu) and His Spirit (rūhuhu) established all things and gave life to all things, and it is not fitting for anyone who knows what God hath sent down to His prophets, that he should disdain to worship God and His Word and His Spirit, one God."(20) Those familiar with the Qur’an would recognize this as an allusion to any number of verses, such as Sūra 4 (al-Nisā'):171 quoted above, denying the possibility of multiplicity in God. Here, the qurānic verses are not disputed, but rather used in support of Trinitarian monotheism: if one believes that by his Word and his Spirit God has created and sustains all things, then it is not shirk to worship that Word and Spirit. On the contrary, anyone who believes what God has sent down to the prophets is required to acknowledge that the Word and Spirit are God, else they attribute God's creative power or life-giving spirit to something other than God.
This type of argumentation is repeated throughout the treatise. In one particularly interesting passage, the Christian author writes:
The Christ said to the children of Israel : If ye believe not in me, believe in my work which I do [John10:38]. The Christ created, and no one can create but God. You will find in the Koran: "And he spake and created (khalaqa) from clay like the form of a bird, and breathed (nafakha) into it, and lo! It became a bird by the permission of God."(21)


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This is a reference to Sūra 3 (Āl-cImrān):49 in which Mary is told that her child will be a messenger (rasūl) performing signs (ayāt) to confirm the revelation to previous prophets. Although the Qur’ān emphasizes that Jesus only creates "with God's per-mission," our writer uses the text to draw a direct line from Jesus, the Messiah, to God who creates the birds of the air through his Word and Breath. If only God creates and give life, then the Qur’ān itself is a witness to Jesus' divinity.
Near the end of "Against the Muslims" the author offers a brief profession of faith addressed to God, summarizing his point: "I believe in You and Your Word and Your Holy Spirit, one God and one Lord, as You have sent down and demonstrated to human beings in Your Books. . . ."(22) The statement is thoroughly Christian--three Persons, one God, one Lord--yet appealing to Muslim sensibilities--a revelation sent down and found in the Books, one God, his Word and his Spirit. At this point, the text turns immediately to the necessity of baptism for the forgiveness of sins, taught by Christ.(23) If one accepts part of what has been given in revelation through the prophets, the writer argues, then one is obligated to follow it in its totality.
It is noteworthy that the author of this text takes for granted a common belief with Muslims in the one God of the Prophets--what remains to be demonstrated is the truth of the Trinity revealed through the Incarnation. He does not attempt to discredit the Qur’ān, but instead uses what he sees as further evidence of the Trinity overlooked by Muslims in their own sacred text. In other words, he identifies an opening to Trinitarian monotheism in the Qur’ān's description of Allāh as a creating and revealing God, an opening for authentic theological exchange.

IV. Mar Timothy and the Caliph al-MahdĪ
Perhaps the first account of an extensive discussion between a Muslim and a Christian is the well-known conversation between the Nestorian Catholicos, Mar Timothy, and the Caliph al-Mahdī

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(775-85) dated in the year 781.(24) The original text is in Syriac (although later Arabic translations exist) and has long been recognized as containing the major themes and the earliest answers given by Christians to Muslims who were asking them to clarify their faith. This is well-trodden ground, and it is not necessary for us to examine Timothy's responses in detail here.(25) It is enough to note that the Caliph's questions begin with the Incarnation and how God can beget a son without genitals or sexual intercourse (which implies that God has a body like creatures), moving to the question of the relationships between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The typical challenge presented to the Christian respondent in this context is how to express the relationships among the persons of the Trinity without succumbing to tritheism. Like others, Mar Timothy draws on the work of previous writers to develop formulae useful for Christians living with Muslims and needing to defend themselves against efforts to convert them to Islam. But although he sees that the "new Jews," that is, the Muslims, present a challenge for discerning truth from falsehood just as in previous times, and many useful parallels can be drawn with the past, Timothy recognizes it is not enough simply to translate old arguments. Rather, the situation requires Christians to return to the very foundations of their faith in order to meet the questions and articulate the fullness of Christian faith.(26)

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Central to the argument Timothy develops in the discussion with al-Mahdī is that it is not contradictory to describe God as one and three, but is rather necessary for truthful belief about God. He begins by arguing that just as the Caliph is physically one, always existing along with his word (or knowledge) and his spirit, so God also is one, existing eternally with his Word and his Spirit. A further comparison can be made with the sun, its light, and its heat. This analogy has its limitations, Timothy notes, as do all comparisons between God and the created world. Yet what the analogy illustrates is that blasphemy lies not in claiming three persons in God, but rather in saying that there was a time when God was without his Word and his Spirit, that is, without knowledge and life. In fact, he argues, Scripture makes clear that God cannot be Creator without his Word and his Spirit.(27)
Later in the dialogue, after Timothy praises Muhammad for leading his people away from polytheism to tawhīd (the belief that God is one), the Caliph states that it is obvious that Timothy should "accept the words of the Prophet" that "God is one and that there is no other one besides Him."(28) Mar Timothy answers, "This belief in one God, O my sovereign, I have learned from the Torah, from the Prophets and from the Gospel."(29) But the God revealed is one triune God. In the ensuing discussion, Timothy marshals a wide variety of arguments from Scripture and Pythagorean number theory to build on his previous point about the unity of God and the nature of the relationships between the divine persons so that they remain coequal, coeternal, unmixed, unconfused, and uncircumscribed.(30)
The account concludes with Mar Timothy's amicable departure from the Caliph's presence, leaving his reader to ponder several points. First, it is clear that he identifies a common belief with his Muslim interlocutor in the unity of God, and that this has been revealed through the Old and New Testaments. To the extent that Muhammad preached this, Timothy acknowledges that it is true. One does not find in Mar Timothy's discussion any disparaging

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remarks about Muslim practices or Muhammad.(31) He further leaves aside the question of the authorship of the Qur’ān and its relationship to Muhammad, focusing instead on what he sees as the central issue: the necessity of professing the triune God revealed in the Incarnation.
Timothy's conversation with the Caliph continues in the vein of John of Damascus--he recognizes theological agreement with his Muslim questioner in tawhīd, but does not shy away from arguing for the authority of Jewish and Christian Scripture as proof of for the Incarnation and Trinity. He continues to maintain that it is Trinitarian monotheism that has been revealed in the Scriptures. What is different about Mar Timothy is the respect he shows the Caliph, and his apparent decision to steer clear of criticizing the practices of Muslims (likely in order to avoid direct confrontation with someone who holds his life in his hands!). This approach would come to be incorporated in later writings and accounts of such discussions in Arabic, which were readily accessible to Muslims, unlike Greek and Syriac texts.

V. AbŪ RĀ'ita al-TakrĪtĪ and tahrĪf

Habīb ibn Khidma Abū Rā'ita al-Takrītī, the Jacobite (Syrian Orthodox) Christian who died sometime around 835 in Takrīt near Baghdad, carries on this apologetical tradition, but adds a new dimension by emphasizing philosophical, rather than scriptural, proofs. Abū Rā'ita belongs to those who came to be known as mutakallim ūn, "the ones who make arguments about religion," and was apparently well known in his day as a controversialist as far away as Armenia.(32) I have argued elsewhere that Abū Rā'ita's signal contribution to Arabic Christian theology

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is his introduction of certain philosophical terminology in Arabic into discussions on the Trinity precisely in response to some apparently intractable problems in theological debates with Muslims. One particularly difficult issue involved the use of Scripture in defense of Christian doctrine. At the root of the problem is the qur’ānic charge of tahrīf, the claim that Christians and Jews have changed (ghayyara) and altered (harrafa) their Scriptures, making them unreliable.(33) Judging by the literature that begins to appear in the time between John of Damascus and Abū Rā'ita, Muslim thinkers were continuing to develop the idea of tahrīf and using it in their apologetics as an answer to the claim that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures in fact support Trinitarian doctrine.
The charge of tahrīf is found in several places in the Qur’ān and is usually associated with an affirmation that Muhammad is a true prophet and his message is from God. The initial function of the charge was probably that of a defense against Jews and Christians who did not accept Muhammad as a prophet like those of the Old Testament. In response, the Qur’ān states that first the Jews and then the followers of Jesus have hidden the true revelation predicting the coming of another final prophet. By the end of Muhammad's life the concept is used to account for any discrepancy between the Torah and the Gospels, and the messages he received. As a consequence, all verses interpreted by Christians as pointing to a triune God who became incarnate in Jesus Christ are deemed by Muslims as rooted in error.(34)
The distortion of true revelation is identified in the Qur’ān in a number of ways: as kitmān or labs ("hiding and concealing" or "disguising" the true revelation), layy ("to twist" the pronunciation of the text so its true meaning is obscured), nisyān ("forgetting, overlooking" part of the text), or most seriously, tabdīl, the substitution of a word for another word. Understandably, the gravity of the offense of altering the Scripture or its meaning lies in intentionality--verses may be accidentally

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forgotten, but God will punish the deliberate concealment of revelation. In the effort to account for discrepancies among the "Books," many Muslim scholars reached the same conclusion: any scriptural text that compromises tawhīd is the result of some form of tahrīf and should be rejected as unsound. (35) Thus it became impossible for Christians to refer to scriptural evidence in support of their doctrines, even though the Qur’ān acknowledged them as "People of the Book/Scripture."
For our purposes, it is enough to note that Muslim thinkers begin to employ the charge of tahrīf against Christians more systematically as Islamic theological thought developed in the eighth and ninth centuries. As a result, whereas earlier Christians such as the writer of the tract "Against the Muslims" and Mar Timothy relied heavily on scriptural arguments and spent a great deal of their apologetical energy demonstrating that scriptural evidence was on their side, by the beginning of the ninth century argumentation shifts away from Scripture to metaphysics. This change strongly suggests that Muslims were using a more developed notion of tahrīf in oral debates.
Extant Christian texts reveal a move from emphasis on Scripture to argumentation drawn from philosophical sources, and in this Abū Rā'ita leads the way. In his most influential work, On the Holy Trinity, Abū Rā'ita again takes up the Muslim demand that Christians recognize their common belief in the one all-powerful Creator God of the prophets, and abandon a belief in the Trinity that leads to shirk. In response, Abū Rā'ita takes advantage of the Hellenistic ideas that were beginning to be translated into Arabic in his day, beginning a systematic response to Muslim objections by demonstrating that it is not contradictory to say God is one and three, drawing on Aristotelian and Pythagorean arguments that would have been familiar to his readers. Abū Rā'ita then makes a novel move, adopting one of the Arabic terms being employed by translators for ijdiwvthς (individual property) to explain how to understand the three hypostases.(36)

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The term he uses is sifa, also commonly translated as 'attribute'. In a nutshell, Abū Rā'ita argues that just as Muslims speak of the divine attributes (the sifāt Allāh) of living, knowing, and wise, Christians recognize that these attributes are persons (aqānīm)--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Further, it is only because of these attributes that God lives, creates, communicates, sends prophets, etc., as even the Muslim sacred book states. Without the sift God is lacking. Thus, rather than being contradictory in saying that God is both one and three, Christians recognize the true necessity of the Trinity.
Throughout the entire treatise Abū Rā'ita demonstrates that if Muslims accept the basic principles of logic put forth by the philosophers, they should accept the Trinity as well. The Old and New Testaments have not been distorted; rather, Muslims have not followed out the full implications of belief in one God who creates and communicates with his creation. Christians know this truth because they have received and accepted God's perfect revelation in the Incarnation.
Abū Rā'ita's remaining works in response to Islam on the Incarnation and proof of the truth of Christianity place the Trinity at the center. For him, since God's power to create and communicate flow directly from the triune nature, a foundation exists with Muslims on which to build a conversation. Like many other writers answering the challenge of Islam, he assumes a commonality with Muslims in their belief in one God and in the prophets, and treats it as "seeds of the word."

Conclusion

One could go on to multiply evidence, but I think it is possible to make some general observations based on the texts we have looked at here.
First, the consensus that arises out of the earliest encounters between Muslims and Christians--be they Chalcedonian,

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Nestorian, Miaphysite/Jacobite, speakers of Arabic, Greek or Syriac--is that the dividing line between the two communities is Trinitarian monotheism. For Muslims, belief in the Trinity compromises tawhīd and leads one to gravest of all sins, shirk, in associating what is not God with God. This is the result of a distortion of previous Scriptures that has now been corrected by the Qur’ān. The only solution for Christians is to recognize this and abandon the doctrine of the Trinity.
The Christian response in the texts presented here is that when Muslims follow out the full implications of monotheistic belief in a God who creates and communicates with his creation they will see that Trinitarian monotheism is necessary. Without it, God is neither creator nor revealer; he has no personal relationship to creation and remains remote. As John of Damascus said, Muslims may call Christians "Associators," but according to Christian doctrine, the Muslims are "Mutilators." For this reason, Christian writers responding to Islam emphasize the necessity and logical consistency of Trinitarian doctrine.
Second, although accounts of the discussions between a Muslim and a Christian end with one or the other "winning" the debate, the impasse remains. One rarely hears that the arguments result in the conversion of an individual to the opposing religion. Even Abū Rā'ita's move away from scriptural evidence to philosophical proofs was apparently more successful for strengthening Christians than altering Muslim allegiance. Not much has changed since those earliest debates. In the end, we may not be able to overcome the impasse, but it is critical to know where it lies. Knowing where our difference lies has enormous implications for how one regards the way in which to proceed in contemporary relations, dialogue, and the goals of evangelization and mission, preaching and teaching, even the theological enterprise.
In keeping with the Islamic traditions of Sharīca, A Common Word emphasizes the human obligations to God and one another. God's commands, according to the Qur’ān, make clear how we are to live as creatures and servants of God (cf. Sūra 51 [Dhāriyāt]:56). For the most part, Christians and Jews can agree

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with these requirements. But the Christian response must be that in the Incarnation, God has revealed the perfection of human beings and human community--that God's very self is made known as a loving triune community who has healed the broken relationship with humanity through divine self-sacrifice. God is not simply the omnipotent, omniscient Lord of all creation, the merciful and just judge; God is the triune Lord who loves and calls those who bear within themselves the divine image.
We do well to remember the insights of the first Christians who encountered Muslims as Islam was being formulated and codified. They saw that the most important belief that united them was also what divided them most deeply--not doing good works, not a common claim to a spiritual father in Abraham or that God communicates to human beings, not even a common belief in love of God and love of neighbor. All of these may be of great value in finding common ground on which to promote peaceful communities, and in this sense the Common Word initiative is an important step in the right direction. But A Common Word also reminds us of what the early Christian apologists recognized in their engagement with Muslims: the significance of the radical teaching of the Trinity. The confession that there is one God is what we have in common, but what makes Christian faith unique (and true) is the recognition that Christ reveals to us the triune nature of God--that God is in his very nature relational, and so God's self-sacrificial love for us is possible. That makes all the difference.(37)

1. "Introduction to 'A Common Word between Us and You,'" the official website of A Common Word (http://www.acommonword.com), accessed 14 May 2010.
2. Translations of the Qur’ān, unless otherwise noted, are mine. This verse is quoted in A Common Word, 13-14.
3. This also forms the basis for the Islamic rejection of any notion that human beings are made in the image of God, a teaching that has important theological and practical implications. See, for example, the work of David Burrell, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), especially 128-39 on the relationship between God and creation.
4. See, for example, Tafsīr al-Jalālayn on Sūras 3:64, 80; 9:31; 18:102; Tanwīr al-Miqbās min Tafsīr Ibn cAbbās on Sūras 3:64; 9:31; Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr on Sūra 3:64; etc.
5.  For example, Sūras 4:171-72; 5:116-17; 43:59, 63-64, among others have been important for Muslims apologists from the earliest centuries. A Common Word quotes or refers to these verses throughout.
6. Ismā'īl Ibn cUmar Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-cazīm (Cairo: Matbacah Mustaf Muhammad, 1356/1937).
7. An excellent study of some of these issues and attendant scholarly view is found in Jane Damen McAuliffe, Qur’ānic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), esp. 13-36.
8. For an overview of this problem see Gerald Hawting, "Širk and 'Idolatry' in Monotheist Polemic," in Dhimmis and Others: Jews and Christians and the World of Classical Islam, Israel Oriental Studies 17, ed. Uri Rubin and David J. Wasserstein (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, Inc., 1997), 107-26.
9.  This is well-traveled ground. Some of the most informative studies of the various aspects of the questions can be found in Richard M. Frank, "The Neoplatonism of Gahm ibn Safwān," Le Muséon 78 (1965): 395-424; Morris S. Seale, Muslim Theology: A Study of Origins with Reference to the Church Fathers (London: Luzac and Co., Ltd, 1964); and Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), as well as my forthcoming article: "Some Reflections on the Early Discussion concerning the Sifāt Allāh."
10.  An overview of these themes and authors is found in Rachid Haddad, La Trinité divine chez les théologiens arabes 750-1050, Coll. Beauchesne Religions 15 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1985).
11. Daniel Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam: The "Heresy of the Ishmaelites" (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), 137.
12.  John puts forward the qur’ānic accusation that the Jews have deceived Christians by adding prophets to the Scriptures to mislead them. This charge is made in several verses, such as Sūra 5:13, 41; 2:75; and 4:46, where the Jews are said to have altered (yuharrifūna) or forgotten (nasū) words of the original revelation. In the later eighth and ninth centuries the Muslim principle of tahrīf (alteration) became more developed as theologians sought to give an account of the variations between the Qur’ān and the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, which the Qur’ān teaches have the same origin in the heavenly Preserved Tablet (al-lawh al-mahfūz [Sūra 85:22]). For a fuller account of this principle, see Sandra Toenies Keating, "Refuting the Charge of Tahrīf: Abū Rā'ita (d. ca. 835) and His 'First Risāla on the Holy Trinity,'" in Ideas, Images and Methods of Portrayal: Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam, ed. Sebastian Günther (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 41-57.
13.  Kovpta" (Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam, 36).
14.  Ibid., 137.
15. See Sidney H. Griffith, Theodore Abū Qurrah, the Intellectual Profile of an Arab Christian Writer of the First Abbasid Century, The Dr. Irene Halmos Chair of Arabic Literature Annual Lecture (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1992); and A. Van Roey, Nonnus de Nisibi, Traité Apologétique, etude, texte et traduction, Bibliothèque du Muséon, vol. 21 (Louvain: Bureaux du Muséon, 1948).
16. Gibson gave the title "On the Triune Nature of God" to the text, although this is somewhat misleading. See An Arabic Version of the Acts of the Apostles and the Seven Catholic Epistles from an Eighth or Ninth Century Ms. in the Convent of St Catherine on Mount Sinai with a Treatise on the Triune Nature of God, ed. and trans. Margaret Dunlop Gibson, Studia Sinaitica 7 (London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1899), 74-101 (Arabic), 2-61 (English); and J. Rendel Harris, "A Tract on the Triune Nature of God," The American Journal of Theology 5 (1901): 75-86.
17. Harris, "A Tract on the Triune Nature of God," 76-77.
18.  Ibid., 86.
19.  Gibson, A Treatise on the Triune Nature of God, 16 (English) and 88 (Arabic).
20.  Ibid., 24 (English) and 95 (Arabic).
21. Ibid., 12 (English) and 84 (Arabic); Harris, "A Tract on the Triune Nature of God," 85.
22. My translation. Gibson, A Treatise on the Triune Nature of God, 32 (English) and 103 (Arabic).
23. Gibson, A Treatise on the Triune Nature of God, 32-36 (English) and 103-7 (Arabic).
24. Alphonse Mingana, "The Apology of Timothy the Patriarch before the Caliph Mahdi," in Woodbrooke Studies: Christian Documents in Syriac, Arabic, and Garshuni, Edited and Translated with a Critical Apparatus, vol. 2 (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., 1928), 1-162. See also Hans Putman, L'église et l'islam sous Timothée I (780-823) (Beyrouth: Dar al-Machreq éditeurs, 1975).
25.  See for example Sidney H. Griffith, Syriac Writers on Muslims and the Religious Challenge of Islam (Kottaym: St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute, 1995); "Disputes with Muslims in Syriac Christian Texts: from Patriarch John III (d. 648) to Bar Hebraeus (d. 1286)," in 25th Wolfenbüttler Symposion "Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter," 11-15 June 1989, ed. Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992), 251-73; and "The Prophet Muhammad: His Scripture and His Message according to the Christian Apologies in Arabic and Syriac from the First Abbasid Century," in La vie du Prophète Mahomet, Colloque de Strasbourg (octobre 1980) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), 99-146.
26.  Griffith, "Disputes," 264. Reference to the "new Jews" is found in Timothy's Letter 40. See Thomas R. Hurst, "Letter 40 of the Nestorian Patriarch Timothy I (727-823): An Edition and Translation" (M.A. Thesis, The Catholic University of America, 1981), 48.
27.  Mingana, "The Apology of Timothy," 22-23.
28.  Ibid., 62.
29.  Ibid.
30.  Ibid., 24-27, 63-90.
31. This, in spite of the fact that it was written in Syriac. This may be evidence for the historicity of this conversation, since if this text reflects an actual conversation, Timothy would have been careful in the presence of the Caliph to avoid inflammatory remarks. Other texts in Syraic, Greek, and Coptic commonly show less restraint, especially if the author believes they will not be accessible to arabophone Muslims. See the excellent overview by Griffith, "The Prophet Muhammad."
32.  Sandra Toenies Keating, Defending the "People of Truth" in the Early Islamic Period: The Christian Apologies of Abū Rā'ita, HCMR 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), esp. 1-65.
33.  For a complete survey of this problem in Abū Rā'ita's writings, see Keating, "Refuting the Charge of Tahrīf."
34. Ibid., 41-44.
35.  One should also note that this is the period in which extensive criteria were being developed to determine the authenticity of the isnād (chain of transmission) of a hadīth (oral tradition concerning Muhammad). Neither Christians nor Jews could produce a reliable chain of transmission for their own Scriptures, casting doubt on their reliability in Muslim eyes.
36.  Keating, Defending the "People of Truth," 147-215.
37.  An earlier version of this article was given at the annual meeting of the Academy of Catholic Theology, May 2009.