Some Reflections on Islam's Convergence on and Divergence from the People of the Book in Qur ̄an and the Prophet's S ̄ira (Biography)

From the beginning, Hij z region was the land of the theistic religions. With the advent of Islam, this religion was to spread its message pervasively. But this new religion got into difficulties. One of these difficulties was with the believers of other religions in Arabic Peninsula. Some verses of the Qur n clarified how the Prophet was to behave the people of the book. By a descriptive-analytic method, this research is going to answer how Islam- according to Qur n and Prophet's tradition- behaved the people of the book, whether this behavior and encounter with all of the people of the book is convergent or not, and in which condition it became divergent. The assumption of this essay is that the people of the book had- according to Qur n and Prophet's tradition- the given rights and so long as they behaved in a convergent way, they could live freely as Muslim citizens. But there was an obvious difference between Jew's behavior and Christians', and Jew's behavior was mainly divergent.