Christianity Today has been taken in by sharpies who aren’t telling it the truth. Mark Durie is right: the document that this story is primarily about is “pious propaganda.” The ancient covenant Muhammad supposedly made with Christians, known as the Achtiname, is indeed supposed to have been written by Muhammad around 628 to the monks of St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. Unfortunately, it is of even more doubtful authenticity than everything else about Muhammad’s life. Muhammad is supposed to have died in 632; the Muslims conquered Egypt between 639 and 641. The document says of the Christians, “No one shall bear arms against them.” So were the conquerors transgressing against Muhammad’s command issued just a few years before their invasion of Egypt?

There is no mention of this document in any remotely contemporary Islamic sources. Among other anomalies, it bears a drawing of a mosque with a minaret, although minarets weren’t put on mosques until long after the time Muhammad is supposed to have lived, which is why Muslim hardliners consider them unacceptable innovation (bid’a).

The document exempts the monks of St. Catherine’s monastery from paying the jizya. While it is conceivable that Muhammad, believing he bore the authority of Allah, would exempt them from an obligation specified by Allah himself in the Qur’an (9:29), the Achtiname specifies that Christians of Egypt are to pay a jizya only of twelve drachmas. Yet according to the seventh-century Coptic bishop John of Nikiou, who had firsthand knowledge of what happened when the Arabs invaded Egypt, Christians in Egypt “came to the point of offering their children in exchange for the enormous sums that they had to pay each month.”

The Achtiname, in short, bears all the earmarks of being an early medieval Christian forgery, perhaps developed by the monks themselves in order to protect the monastery and Egyptian Christians from the depredations of zealous Muslims. Modern scholars doubt its authenticity, and the prevailing opinion among Muslims is likewise dubious.

“Covenantal Theology: Can Muhammad’s Ancient Promise Inspire Muslim-Christian Peace Today?,” by Jayson Casper, Christianity Today, December 21, 2018:

Christians esteem the biblical progression of covenants—Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic—finalized by Jesus as he ushered in the New. But for the sake of religious freedom in the Muslim world, should they embrace a further covenant: Muhammadian? Modern scholarship suggests the Muslim Prophet’s Christian covenants could offer contemporary guidance; they already influenced a favorable verdict in the case of Christian Asia Bibi in Pakistan. After eight long years on death row, Bibi was acquitted of blasphemy by the Muslim nation’s Supreme Court in late October. The Christian mother of five had been sentenced for uttering contempt for Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, while attempting to drink water from a well. The three-judge panel ruled that contradictions in accuser testimony and Bibi’s forced confession by a local cleric rendered the charges invalid.But in the official court document, one justice went as far as to partially base his judgement on how Bibi’s accusers violated an ancient covenant of Muhammad to the Christian monks of Mount Sinai—“eternal and universal … not limited to [them] alone.” “Blasphemy is a serious offense,” wrote judge Asif Khosa, “but the insult of the appellant’s religion … was also not short of being blasphemous.” He referenced a 2013 book by John Morrow, a Canadian convert to Islam. The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World is an academic study of six treaties commanding the kind treatment of Christians, reportedly dated to the seventh century. Each similar in scope, they command Muslims not to attack peaceful Christian communities, to aid in the construction and repair of churches, and even to allow self-regulation of tax payments. It is “nothing short of providential,” Morrow wrote, that they have been “rediscovered” at a time of widespread Islamist violence against the Christians of the Middle East. “For Muslims, it means a wake-up call, an awareness that they have deviated from the Islamic tradition,” Morrow told Patheos, the religion and spirituality website. “[It] requires that Muslims not only tolerate Christians, but love them as their brothers and sisters.” This resonates with Mustafa Akyol, Turkish author of Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty. “The Supreme Court of Pakistan must be congratulated,” he said. “Both for saving Asia Bibi from execution, as well as taking great pains to explain why this was the right Islamic thing to do.” But the senior fellow at the Cato Institute also gave two serious challenges for the treaties in Covenants. Some experts dispute their authenticity; and most Muslims are unaware of them. “Yet to me, these covenants look convincing, at least in their general spirit,” said Akyol, “because they resonate with ecumenical themes already in the Qur’an.”

Islam’s holy book calls Christians the closest of all people to Muslims, with a direct call for the protection of synagogues, churches, and monasteries.

What a smooth and devious deceiver Mustafa Akyol is. Here are some of the “ecumenical themes already in the Qur’an”:

Jesus is not the Son of God and belief in the Trinity is “excess”: “O People of the Book! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter anything concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and his word which he conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from him. So believe in Allah and His messengers, and do not say ‘Three.’ Cease! It is better for you! Allah is only One Allah. It is far removed from his transcendent majesty that he should have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth. And Allah is sufficient as Defender.” — Qur’an 4:171

And: “It is not befitting to Allah that he should beget a son. Glory be to him! When He determines a matter, he only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.” — Qur’an 19:35

Jesus was not crucified: “And because of their saying: We killed the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah’s messenger – they did not kill him or crucify him, but it appeared so to them; and those who disagree concerning it are in doubt about it; they have no knowledge of it except pursuit of a conjecture; they did not kill him for certain.” — Qur’an 4:157

Those who believe in the divinity of Christ are unbelievers: “They have certainly disbelieved who say that Allah is Christ, the son of Mary.” — Qur’an 5:17 (cf. 5:72)

Christians have forgotten part of the divine revelations they received: “From those, too, who call themselves Christians, We did take a covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message that was sent them: so we estranged them, with enmity and hatred between the one and the other, to the day of judgment. And soon will Allah show them what it is they have done.” — Qur’an 5:14

Those who believe that Jesus is God’s Son are accursed: “The Jews call Ezra a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah’s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth! ” — Qur’an 9:30

Christians who do not accepted Muhammad and the Qur’an are the most vile of created beings: “Nor did those who were given the Scripture become divided until after there had come to them clear evidence. And they were not commanded except to worship Allah, sincere to Him in religion, inclining to truth, and to establish prayer and to give zakah. And that is the correct religion. Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Book and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the most vile of created beings.” — Qur’an 98:6

Muslims must fight against and subjugate Christians: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden what has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” — Qur’an 9:29

Also, a hadith has Muhammad predicting that Jesus will return at the end of the world and break the cross, as it is an insult to Allah’s power to say that he would have allowed one of his prophets to be crucified: “Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, ‘By Him in Whose Hands my soul is, son of Mary [Jesus] will shortly descend amongst you people [Muslims] as a just ruler and will break the Cross and kill the pig and abolish the Jizya [a tax taken from the non-Muslims, who are in the protection, of the Muslim government]. Then there will be abundance of money and nobody will accept charitable gifts.'” — Bukhari 3.34.425

Professor Mustafa Abu Sway of Al-Aqsa Mosque and Al-Quds University in Jerusalem said Muhammad made agreements with many Christian communities. He celebrates especially how the prophet received delegates from Najran (near the border with Yemen), hosting them in his mosque…. Bibi’s argument with her accusers started when they refused to drink water from a Christian hand. This is against the practice of Muhammad who freely ate with Jews, said Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi in Amman, who according to a report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center is the leading Salafi-Jihadi theoretician in the world….

“O you who have believed, indeed the polytheists are unclean…” — Qur’an 9:28

Some may say that Islam doesn’t consider Christians to be polytheists, but the Qur’an says otherwise. Its call to the “People of the Book” not to “worship except Allah and not associate anything with Him and not take one another as lords instead of Allah” (3:64) is a rejection of the Christian idea of the divinity of Christ.