I remember years ago stumbling upon an astonishing quote from the eighth-century Sufi mystic Rabiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya, also known as Rabiʿa of Basra:

I finally got around to reading Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam by Sean W. Anthony, and it was an enlightening experience.

In the traditional accounts of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, we find a number of important interactions between the founder of Islam and Christians, e.g., Khadija’s cousin Waraqa or the deputation of Najrani Christians in Medina.

There is a certain spiritual inspiration a religious believer can find by looking with an open heart and an open mind at a tradition other than that of their own.