| I have asked myself this question regarding Islam and
Judaism, as well as Islam and Christianity, for an uncountable number of years. But it is
only now, very recently, that I believe that I finally understand the answer to your
question. After all is said and done, the answer is a very clear and simple one, so simple
that I should have seen it years ago. But then, the East and the West are two different
consciousnesses; and it takes a while to develop a double consciousness. And, of course,
others might have other responses for you. The
Qur’an was given by Heaven to mankind through a prophet, who was called to be a
messenger of Allah’s Divine Discourse. Hence, Islam begins with a very special human
being, made special by Allah’s anointing attention. We are called upon, therefore,
not only to understand the capabilities of human nature through the example of a prophet,
but also the nature and character of the human being of prophecy.
Through Islam, Allah has given us the Seal of Rasuls
(prophets). So we need to pay special attention to that last experience offered us. Is it
no wonder that those who denigrate Islam and Muslims often do so by denigrating the
Prophet first? (May Peace and Blessings Be Upon Him Forever.)
Judaism also has had prophets, so we are told. But we are
faced with two different telling: the biblical one as found in the Jewish texts (The
Hebrew Bible and the Talmud) and the Islamic one as found in the Qur’an.
And when we examine the Jewish prophets as portrayed in
the Hebrew bible in light of how the Qur’an presents prophets to us, we must
unabashedly conclude that the two religions teach us two mutually exclusive versions of
who prophets are as human beings and what a prophet’s behavior has been like in the
world. We are then pulled immediately back to the Qur’anic surahs that inform us that
the Jewish texts have been altered, which, once you read the Jewish narratives, must mean
fictionalized for ethnocentric purposes.
Would a prophet--* a real prophet *--do what Lot does in
the Jewish narratives? Would a real prophet arrange for a certain general to be killed so
that he might have the man’s wife for himself, as David does in the Jewish texts?
Would a real prophet use the basest of sexual language to describe a sinful and idolatrous
nation as Eziekiel does in the Jewish texts?
You must remember that a prophet is someone through whom
Allah’s word passes. To say that a real prophet would act the way many of the
so-called Jewish prophets have acted amounts to saying that Allah acts in that manner.
Hence, the Muslim must conclude that the Jewish texts, ultimately, are not "the word
of God". |
