DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY

Differences Between Islam and Christianity ~ 13 ~ The theory of Aristotle became very popular with the Christians. According to his geocentric theory, the earth was of prime importance, and it seemed more appropriate to the Christians, who believed in the divinity of Christ, that the centre of the solar system should be the planet where the Lord Jesus was born. At the time when Copernicus (1473-1543) put forward his heliocentric theory, churchmen reigned supreme in Europe. To preserve their belief, they suppressed Copernicus’s views. The portrayal of the place of the Lord Jesus’s birth as a mere satellite was a crime, which Christianity could never tolerate. It was Christianity in its corrupt form, which was an impediment to scientific progress, not divine religion in its pure sense. The Muslims, not having deified their Prophet as the Christians had done, had no scruples about accepting the very reasonable theory that the sun was the centre of our solar system. The question of rejecting it on the basis of religion did not arise. In this connection Professor Burns, in his book entitled Western Civilization, writes: “In no subject were the Sarracens further advanced than in Science. In fact, their