Dbq Muslims V. Christian Merchants

In the beginning of Christianity, trade was considered sinful, while the Muslims thought trade was a lesson of appreciation and hard work. Christians had a strongly negative attitude towards the interaction between trade and merchants. Islamic people, however, had various different opinions on trade in comparison to the Christian religion. However, over time, the thoughts on trade and merchants shifted to a more negative point of view from both religions. The opinions from these religions were opposite at the beginning of time, but they eventually fused into one overall thought and opinion by the 16th century. From the beginning of time of the early development of each religion, there were various differences between the Christian and Islamic point of view towards trade and merchants, which can be displayed in documents 1 and 2. Document 1 had an in-depth focus on the negative point of view that Christianity obtained towards trade. It focused on the idea that becoming a merchant was sinful and a merchant himself was unable to enter into heaven, which agreed accordingly to the Christian opinion on producing money in their society. Furthermore, document 1 served as a direct statement of how Christians felt towards the subject of building an economy in the religion and in the community; the bible was provided as a direct objection against trade and merchants, mostly focusing on statements that displayed the rich as being corrupted and vain. This statement ultimately proved how negative the opinion of the Christian society was on merchants between 70-80 CE. Overall, document 1 states that wealthy merchants were frowned upon and prevented from entering heaven in the community, which supported the negative bias that Christians held. Jesus, the holy leader of the Christian community, was poor, thus his negative views against wealthy merchants could correlate with his inability to receive wealth. On the other hand, in document 2, the views of the Muslim society were