The Quranic View of Sacred History and Other Religions

In presenting itself as the final revelation of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, the Quran recounts the stories of prophets from Adam to Muhammad, encapsulating much of the sacred history that precedes it. According to the Quran, prophets have been sent at different times to all human collectivities with revelations in different tongues, but their message was one: lā ilāha illa’Llāh—there is no god but God. From this perspective, the history of humanity is a history of forgetting and being reminded again and again of this eternal truth. Hence, the trials, triumphs, defeats, and rebellions confronted by the prophets of old are not told with a view to historicity in the modern sense. Rather, the history related in the Quran tells the story of the epic struggle between truth and falsehood or good and evil that takes place among peoples and within each individual’s soul. From a Quranic perspective, the principles that govern the cosmos also determine the reality of the human microcosm, and just as the Will of God has shaped the destiny of humanity, so too does it shape the life of every individual human being.