The Qur’an repeatedly calls its hearers to follow the millat Ibrāhīm (ملة إبراهيم, the path, or way, of Abraham). The phrase is worth examining, because the Qur’an supplies its own definition wherever it appears.
The command and its wording
Three passages carry the command directly. The first instructs the Prophet to follow the path of Abraham, “the true in faith”, adding that he joined no partners with God.1 The second answers those who invite others to become Jews or Christians by pointing instead to that same path.2 The third repeats the instruction and describes Abraham as sound in faith and not among those who associate others with God.3
In each case the phrase is followed by the same qualification: Abraham was ḥanīf (حنيف, a pure monotheist), and he associated no partner with God. The Qur’an therefore defines the path it commands: worship directed to God alone, free of shirk (شرك, association).
What the phrase asks of the hearer
Read in this way, the command is not a call to adopt an ancestral custom. It is a call to the monotheism that the Qur’an presents as older than the communities that trace themselves to Abraham, and as the standard by which their later divisions are judged. The same passages describe Abraham as neither Jew nor Christian, since the Torah and the Gospel came after him.4
How the traditions read Abraham
Jewish tradition remembers Abraham as the first to recognise the one God and as the father of a people bound by covenant. Christian tradition, following Paul, reads him as the exemplar of justifying faith. The Qur’an’s emphasis falls elsewhere: on the content of his worship, and on the claim that this worship defines those who belong to him, whatever their descent.5 Readers who wish to compare the three treatments side by side will find them in Who was Abraham? and in Comparative studies.
