Page 223 - Prophet Jesus (Pbuh): A Prophet Not A Son, Of God

HARUN YAHYA 221

taught by Unitarianism and that taught in the Qur'an. 96
Unitarian clergyman Jack Donovan also draws attention to these
matters in a sermon:
Two Islamic teachings would have become common knowledge
and would have been much noted. One, the words of the daily call
to prayer sung from the minarets to the general public: "God is One.
There is no god but God. There is no god but God." And two, the ex-
plicit requirement of the Quran, emphasized by Muhammad, that
respect and tolerance be given to all religions because each is a re-
sponse to God. When those teachings are applied to the gospel of
Jesus, you get 16 th century Unitarianism. It is my hypothesis that
our tradition has a 450 year old debt to Islam for a center we share in
common… 97

Later in the same sermon, Ritchie stated that Unitarian leaders
throughout history have always held a positive view toward Islam:
The 17 th and 18 th century European Socinians were not so shy about
praising theological Islam as a pure monotheism that had corrected
many of the theological corruptions that had befallen the Christian
church since its early days of honest, non-doctrinaire practice.
Andrew Ramsey in 1727 spoke if Socinianism approvingly as the
sublime religion which stems from "Ideal Islam" (Bastianensen 21).
Henry Stubbe, John Toland, Arthur Bury, William Feke and Stephen
Nye were similarly all Socinian authors who strategically employed
a sympathetic stance towards theological Islam as means of high-
lighting the deviations from primitive Christian practice that they
found bothersome especially in the form of Anglican orthodoxy. 98
Mark D. Morrison-Reed of the Toronto Unitarian Church also de-

scribes Islam in a sermon entitled The Islamic Connection:
Houston Smith writes that Islam's "innovation was to remove idols
from the religious scene and focus the divine on a single invisible
God for everyone."[p. 236- Houston Smith, The World's Religions]