Sequel 3: Allah, Prophets, & Revelations in the Qur'an vs. in Judaism/Christianity
In an earlier email you wrote as follows:
"I think the commonalities between these 3 Abrahamic faiths are overwhelming:
belief in God, His messengers, revelations, angels, after life, accountability,
day of judgment, and so on. They all share the same concepts of ethics, morality,
and social justice. I think we should look for what is common between us as
opposed to what is different. That is why knowledge of each other's faith is
important so that we may understand each other."
It seems to me that the questions we must grapple with in order to attain your
goal of commonality are as follows:
1) Is Allah and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the same entity? If so,
the Bible and the Kor'an should present identical attributes of Him. If not,
how could we find common ground? It seems that Mohammed himself may have
proclaimed that they were not the same God when he announced to Jewish and
Christian teachers living his area that he had found a "greater" god than
theirs. If he had said he had discovered the "greatest" god, that might be
understandable because, as you know, there was a virtual pantheon of gods in
the Arabic world at that time (some 360 gods), and so Mohammed could claim to
have found the greatest of these. But to say that Allah was "greater" is
quite a claim, given the thousands of years of history, even in his time, of
the Judeo-Christian God. The Jewish and Christian churches would not
listen to him, and turned him away. How could you blame them, given the
deep Jewish and Christian religious traditions?
2) Are the messengers (apostles) of Islam and the messengers (apostles)
recorded in the Judeo-Christian scriptures speaking with one unified voice,
fed from the same source? This seems to rely on the answer to question 1,
doesn't it? If Allah and the Christian God are not the same entity (still
to be determined), then how could followers of the Islamic faith possibly
recognize and heed the message of the apostles (such as Isaiah or Paul)
of Judeo-Christian scripture, and vice versa? A true "messenger" of God
is bound on pain of death to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth. The authenticity of a prophet is directly related to the
veracity of his or her words. They speak truth 100% of the time, whether
prophesying future events or interpreting current events. I assume the
Islamic litmus test for a prophet would be the same.
3) As for revelations, there are over 600 substantiated prophesies in the Old
and New Testaments, most pointing to the coming Messiah, revealed to be Jesus
Christ in the New Testament. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all
clearly proclaim the deity of Christ, as well as the Pauline Epistles, the Book
of Hebrews, etc. Of course the problem here is that most Jews don't believe
that He was the Messiah. They crucified Him! But there are many historical
prophesies unrelated to Jesus that a Jew would trust. What prophetic
revelations are you referring to in Islam that are in common with the
Judeo-Christian revelations? Again, answers to the previous questions are
of utmost importance here to seeking some commonality between the two religions.
- Wiley, 18 October 2001
Answer
These are very good questions. Answers to #1 and #2 are evident in the Qur'an
(as a matter of fact so is the case for your yesterday's questions). To deal
with #3, what would be needed is a good understanding of the Christian
scriptures and their historical development, not from "faith" perspective but
from neutral and objective historical perspective.
I can address these but I am saving these for our meeting. Or perhaps I will try
to address a few over the weekend. At any rate, I welcome all these questions
and I look forward to more.
- Mushfiqur Rahman, 19 October 2001
(The issues mentioned in the question above have been addressed in Sequel 5)
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