In a minute
Many Muslims sum up their faith in six articles, taken from a famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him): belief in God, in angels, in the revealed books, in the messengers, in the Last Day, and in the divine decree.
Jews and Christians do not count their beliefs this way. Jews have the Thirteen Principles of Maimonides, sung every week in the hymn Yigdal, and the great declaration "Hear, O Israel" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Christians have the creeds that are said in church.
Even so, all three faiths speak about the same six subjects. This set of pages puts them side by side. Shared ground comes first, then the real differences, and each faith speaks for itself.
How to read these pages
- Where the three agree, we say so plainly.
- Where they differ, we do not smooth it over. A difference is not an attack. It is the reason each faith has its own door.
- Every faith is described the way its own followers describe it. We do not say whose reading is right.
- The order of the six follows the saying of the Prophet ﷺ. It is not a ranking.
The six subjects at a glance
- God. Jews and Muslims hold that God is absolutely one. Christians confess one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Read more.
- Angels and jinn. Angels serve God in all three faiths. Islam makes belief in them an article of faith. Jinn, shedim, demons and Satan are told differently by each. Read more.
- The books. The Torah is honoured in all three. Each faith holds its own scripture as the fullest word it has received. Read more.
- The prophets. Abraham, Moses and David appear in all three books. The faiths part over Moses' place, the end of prophecy, and who Jesus and Muhammad ﷺ are. Read more.
- The Last Day. Resurrection and a just judgement are held in all three, with very different amounts of detail. Read more.
- Decree and free will. All three hold God's knowledge and human responsibility together, and each has argued long about how they fit. Read more.
A note on the word "articles"
About the six articles
- "Six articles of faith" is the Sunni way of counting.
- Shia Muslims hold belief in God, His angels, books, messengers and the Last Day too, and arrange the core of their faith as five "roots": the oneness of God, His justice, prophecy, the Imamate and the Return. Ibadi and other Muslim communities frame it differently again.
- Judaism has never had one creed that every Jew signs. The Thirteen Principles of Maimonides are widely used, especially in Orthodox prayer books, and other medieval teachers proposed shorter or different lists.
- Christianity's creeds are shared across many churches but are shorter than this list.
- So the six subjects are a map we draw across the three faiths. They are not a statement that all three use the same list.
Where to go on the site
Each page in this set links to the full pages on each faith. For the Islamic detail, start with The essentials of Islam. For the other two, see Judaism and Christianity.
What this page does not do
It does not claim the three faiths say the same thing, and it does not claim they are enemies. It lets you see what each says in its own words and decide what to read next.
We are not here to win an argument. We are here to show that the same questions have kept Jews, Christians and Muslims searching for thousands of years.