In the search for truth one must pay close attention to the superficial similarities and closer attention to the fundamental differences...
There is a pronounced emphasis in Islam on individual power and responsibility. We do not find any great emphasis on the extent to which individuals are, in fact, internally compromised by evil or carry significant baggage from the past or face truly problematic structural evils in the present.
In Islam, the scale of the problem of evil is not very large.
Perhaps this is why Islam is unconvinced, too, about the need for radical divine action in the world (in redemption and atonement) to deal with evil.
There is no need for a redeemer, nor for a vicarious atonement, to deal with evil in general and with each person’s evil in particular. There is also no need to be inducted into a saving community.
Allah has responded to evil simply by sending the Qur’an, and the problem of evil is solved to the extent that individuals turn to God and obey him (on the basis of the Qur’an), rather than going in a different direction.
The human problem arose in the first place because individuals headed off in the wrong direction:
“in one way or another, all the evils and troubles of the world have their origin in human unbelief.”
There is, then in Islam, a very high idea of the freedom of the will: “since sin is not of the essence of humans, it is possible to live in total submission to God’s law - that is, it is possible for human beings to be perfect Muslims. Islam is, in the end, about “self transformation in harmony with God’s design of felicity...
There are similarities, then, between these two Abrahamic religions, when it comes to our primary question: What am I to do about evil and suffering?
However, the similarities should not blind us to the fact that Islam and biblical faith provide fundamentally different answers to some important questions. How far are human beings compromised by evil in their attempts to do good? How significant is their struggle with “dark forces” of evil in the world? How far does the removal of evil depend on particular actions of God, as well as on our own - on God himself taking steps to atone for evil and to redeem his creation. Is self-transformation really possible, and is it enough?
Confucius would have agreed with Muhammad on such matters, despite their many other difference. Biblical faith, however, agrees in the end with neither.
Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters, p. 161
