GCSE Religious Studies: Christianity and Islam

Most schools in England teach Christianity alongside one other religion, and for the large majority that second religion is Islam. This set covers both: three questions on Christian beliefs, two on Christian practice, three on Muslim beliefs and two on Muslim practice.

Two of them are there because they are where students most often lose marks. One asks which belief Shi'a Muslims name among the Five Roots of Usul ad-Din that Sunni Muslims do not state separately — the answer is Imamah, and the other three options are common ground held just as firmly by both branches, which is exactly the trap. Another asks who is excused from the fast during Ramadan, where the tempting wrong answer is "someone who finds it hard", when the difficulty is the point of the discipline and the real exemptions are for illness, travel, pregnancy, age and childhood.

The questions are descriptive, not evaluative. Each asks what believers hold, teach or do; none asks whether a belief is true or which tradition is right. Where believers within one religion disagree, the question says so rather than presenting a single official line — the item on Holy Communion turns on the difference between churches that hold the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ and those that treat the meal as a memorial, and the item on suffering sets out the free-will defence alongside the belief that God enters suffering rather than standing outside it.

No scripture is quoted word for word here, and nothing is taken from any exam board specification, past paper or mark scheme — those are copyright material. The questions target the subject content the boards share, using the transliterations standard in English classrooms.

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• State what the Trinity and the incarnation mean, and why Christians insist the Trinity is monotheistic
• Set out the responses Christians have traditionally given to the problem of suffering
• Explain the difference between liturgical and non-liturgical worship, and how denominations differ over Holy Communion
• Define Tawhid, risalah and the place of prophethood in Muslim belief
• Identify Imamah as the belief distinctive to the Shi'a Five Roots of Usul ad-Din
• State the purpose of zakah and say who is excused from sawm during Ramadan

Sunni and Shi'a Muslims set out their core beliefs in slightly different lists. Which of these beliefs do Shi'a Muslims name among the Five Roots of Usul ad-Din, but Sunni Muslims do not state as a separate article of faith? — one of ten questions written for this set, alongside the Trinity, the incarnation, suffering, worship, Holy Communion, Tawhid, risalah, zakah and sawm.