Ramesh, of course submission to God’s will is a concept not foreign to Christianty and Judaism. But your definition of submission (“having a duty to align one’s will with His, to the extent it can be determined”) turns on something you don’t address: namely, what is meant by “duty.” Is it something that we are called to but have free will to decline? Or something that that we are bent to accept because the alternatives are death or humiliating dhimmitude?

There has been shockingly little discussion of it, but last week two Fox News journalists were released by their captors only after being compelled, at gunpoint, to covert to Islam. What we instead were treated to — in the rare instances when this was addressed at all — was the media’s favorite verse of the Koran, Sura 2:256: “Let there be no compulsion in religion …” Translation: the actions of the captors were not the “true” Islam.

There was no discussion, of course, of such superseding Medinan scriptures as, for example, the so-called “verse of the sword,” Sura 9:5:

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every strategem of war; but if they repent, and establish regular prayers, and pay Zakat [the poll-tax imposed on non-Muslims for the privilege of being permitted to live under Muslim authority], then open the way for them: For Allah is oft-forgiving, most merciful.

I agree with your suggestion that the duty implied by submission to God’s will involves determining the extent to which God’s will has been made known. Muslims, of course, believe the Koran, including Sura 9:5 and similar verses, are the verbatim, unmediated instructions of God Himself. I respectfully suggest that what is conveyed here is a different notion of submission than one finds in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And while it is not the only interpretation of Islam, it is one accepted by tens of millions of Muslims, and one rationally based on their scriptures and traditions.