ABSTRACT
Islam is the only non-Christian religion to accord specific recognition to Jesus, the central figure in traditional Western European religion, whom Muslims revere as a healer, a perfect messenger of God and as a miracle-working Messiah, although, like Unitarians, Muslims do not accept the doctrine of his divinity. The spectacular diversity of Muslim cultures has as one point of unity the figure of Abraham, but the practical model and exemplar is always his Ishmaelite descendant, Muhammad. The connection with nature, which forms so fundamental a theme of the religion, has a theological basis rooted in the Muslim understanding of the human condition. The ‘knight of faith’ serves for Muslims, as he has for Christians such as Kierkegaard, as the model of a primordial believer, the upholder of a simple monotheism and a pristine moral code.
