The Covenants Initiative is a collection of scholars that is spearheading a movement to promote the Covenants of Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World. This initiative calls Muslims to the Covenants of Muhammad, which command them not to attack, but rather defend peaceful Christians until the end of time.

On Saturday evening (November 3rd) at 6pm, the Covenants Initiative will present at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto, Canada. Full details of the event can be found here. The offering at the Parliament of the World’s Religions is a pledge of solidarity that also challenges Christians to oppose Islamophobia, as Muslims have opposed ISIS’s slaughter of both Christians and Muslims.

Since The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World, by Dr. John Andrew Morrow, appeared in 2013, the Covenants Initiative became an international movement within both Islam and Christianity.

Sometime between 622 and 632 AD, Prophet Muhammad decreed a series of Covenants specifically addressing Christians in the region. It is vital, as John Smelcer and I discussed on the Charter for Compassion website – that Christians and Muslims alike are reminded of the nature of the contracts.

“And even as they honor and respect me, so shall Muslims care for [the Christians] as being under our protection and whensoever any distress or discomfort shall overtake them, Muslims shall hold themselves in duty bound to aid and care for them, for they are a people subject to my Nation, obedient to their word, whose helpers also they are,” Prophet Muhammad wrote.

The Prophet of Islam also commanded Muslims to provide complete religious freedom to Christians and protect their churches, as noted in The Covenant with the Monks of Mount Sinai: “A bishop shall not be removed from his bishoporic, nor a monk from his monastery, nor a hermit from his tower, nor shall a pilgrim be hindered from his pilgrimage. Moreover, no building from among their churches shall be destroyed, nor shall the money from their churches be used for the building of mosques or houses for the Muslims.”

You can read more passages of the Covenants by reviewing an older post: “Pluralism in the Prophet’s Covenants: A Christian Perspective on Interreligious Solidarity Against Discrimination.”

The persecution of Christian populations around the world is inconsistent with Islamic teachings as outlined in the Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of his time. The Covenants, as Melik Kaylan noted in Forbes, show “incontrovertibly that the basic Wahhabis or Salafist notion of indiscriminate jihad amounts to heresy.”