ABSTRACT

The Prophet Muhammad’s ‘companions’ were his ‘disciples’ since they followed the ‘discipline’ he imposed. Jesus’ disciples were more like companions since no legal discipline was required. (In Spanish universities, to the delight of professors, students are called discipulos!) Christians regard the law as worldly, secular and therefore inferior to the religious gifts of grace and truth (John 1:17). Secularism, understood as an autonomous world view with atheistic foundations rather than a political ideology compatible with religious faith, could only have grown out of a dispensation divested of sacred law: a faith concerned solely with the things of God, a religion that vacated the secular realm. Once armed with a holy law, a religious faith can compete successfully both with political secularism and with secularism understood more broadly as a comprehensive ideology underpinning atheistic humanism. Hence we have Islam.