Who Counts as the People of the Book

Ahl al-Kitāb, according to Islam, are the people given scripture before Islam — the Christians and the Jews, and no others. The Zabūr, the Tawrāt and the Injīl were given to the peoples before this Umma; the only book that remains is the Qurʾān al-Karīm, which is the book of the Muslims. Those who received a revelation from Allah (swt) before Islam are called Ahl al-Kitāb: they know Allah (swt), they know the Anbiyāʾ, and yet, because of their wrongdoing, Allah (swt) became angry with them and they deviated from the path —

— not of those who have earned anger, nor of those who have gone astray. They killed their prophets, they disobeyed Allah (swt), and they lost His favour. But regardless of this past, Allah (swt) gives them a special status, that of Ahl al-Kitāb: they remain mushrikīn, they remain kāfirīn, rejecters, and yet Allah (swt) still gives them this title.

Sūrat al-Baqarah is largely concerned with Ahl al-Kitāb, and so is Sūrat Āl ʿImrān; throughout both, Allah (swt) argues at length with the Yahūd and the Naṣārā, the Jews and the Christians. They are addressed there as Yā Ahl al-Kitāb, O People of the Book, and asked why they deny the signs of Allah (swt) when they themselves bear witness to them.

This point, though it has nothing to do with the question of ḥalāl meat, bears on a trend among Muslims today, particularly in Australia, toward interfaith dialogue. Muslims are not against interfaith dialogue as such — talking with a Christian or a Jewish friend is no problem, and in a country such as this anyone may speak of anything. The error comes when the argument turns into a claim that Christianity, Judaism and Islam share the same source and are therefore all the same, one monotheistic religion. That is absolutely wrong. Both Christians and Jews are kāfirūn — this is not in question; the Qurʾān itself says so. This does not mean that Ibrāhīm (as), whom they too claim as a father, was himself a kāfir — nāʿūdhu billāh — nor that they remain his children on the same religion as his; Muslims are of the Millat Ibrāhīm, the way of Ibrāhīm (as), but the People of the Book have deviated from it, became kāfir, and brought Allah's (swt) anger upon themselves. Only the Muslims are accepted by Allah (swt). There is no harm in speaking with the People of the Book, but placing them on the same footing as Islam — claiming there is no difference between a Christian, a Jew and a Muslim, that all alike are servants of God bound for Paradise together — this is sheer nonsense, not something held to. Ahl al-Kitāb nonetheless has a special status in Islam: they are not treated as ordinary kāfirīn but as a distinct people, and it is the Jews and the Christians specifically who are meant by the term.