Islam's Claim to Predate Judaism and Christianity
Islam is often assumed to be a relatively new religion that emerged in the 7th century. Islamic teaching holds a different view: that Islam, understood as submission to the One God, has existed since the first human being walked the Earth, and that Prophet Muhammad ﷺ renewed rather than founded it.
What the Words 'Judaism' and 'Christianity' Actually Mean
The term Judaism derives from Judah, a descendant of Prophet Abraham, while Christianity refers to the followers of Jesus Christ. By definition, then, Abraham could not have been a Jew — he lived generations before Judah, from whom the term originates — and he could not have been a Christian, since he predated Jesus by many centuries. Neither term even appears in the Torah or the Gospel.
So What Was Abraham's Religion?
The Qur’an’s answer is that Abraham, like the prophets before and after him, practiced Islam — submission to God — in the broadest sense of the word, prior to it becoming formalized under that name through the final revelation to Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian; he was a Muslim, wholly devoted to God. And he certainly was not amongst those who associate others with Allah in His divinity.
In Arabic, ‘Muslim’ simply means one who submits to God, and by that definition, the Qur’an describes every prophet — including Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus — as having taught and lived by that same submission.
He has ordained for you of religion what He enjoined upon Noah and that which We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], and what We enjoined upon Abraham and Moses and Jesus - to establish the religion and not be divided therein.
A Continuation, Not a Competitor
From this perspective, Islam does not present itself as arriving after Judaism and Christianity to compete with them, but as a renewal of the same core monotheistic message God sent through every prophet, including those honored within Judaism and Christianity themselves. The Qur’an frames itself as the final, protected iteration of that message.
Indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur'an, and indeed, We will be its Guardian.
A Global and Growing Faith
Within its first hundred years, Islam spread across the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Asia and Europe. Today it counts roughly 1.8 billion adherents, about 24% of the world’s population, drawn from a wide range of ethnicities, cultures, and nations, and various demographic projections point to continued growth in the coming decades.
Conclusion
Understood this way, the question of whether Islam ‘started after’ Judaism and Christianity rests on a particular framing of religious history. Islamic teaching offers a different one: that submission to the One God is the constant thread running through every prophetic mission, with Judaism and Christianity representing earlier chapters of the same message, and Islam its final, complete form.
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