Islam, the most modern religious manifestation from Judeo-Christian root, has emerged as an Arabic version of Judaism, retelling the story of the revelation of divine truth to man through Abraham, from the point of view of his Arab descent, i.e. from his bastard son Ishmael. According to the Islamic religion, Muhammad is God’s last messenger and the greatest of the prophets.. In the Koran, the Muslims sacred scriptures, Abraham's spiritual connection to the Jews is denied, and Muhammad asserts that Abraham is the patriarch of Islam, but not of Judaism, because he "surrendered himself to Allah." (1) The Bible however, clearly states the opposite, i.e.; through the genealogy presented by Matthew; Jesus, the Messiah, is presented as a descendant of Isaac, the legitimate son of Abraham.
Although sharing the same basic principles of faith of Judaism, and having as one of its core foundations the claim of being the last revelation from God to man; and despite Muhammad’s claiming to be the "seal of the prophets and his teachings being touted as the only to bear a universal character; the ethos of Islam is not the same as of Judaism. The ultimate end of the Islamic religion is to teach Islam, or the worship and allegiance of man to a single God, in the form of compliance with his statutes, as described in the Qur’an and in the Sunnah, which for Muslims comment and clarify the teachings of the Prophet, in a similar way to the Hebrew Talmud, which is a rabbinic commentary of the Torah . The teachings of Allah (the Arabic word for God) are contained in the Qur'an or Koran (Qur'an means "recitation"). Muslims believe Muhammad received these teachings from Allah through the Angel Gabriel (Jibreel) through revelations that occurred between 610 and 632 CE. The Qur'an is considered to be sacred only in its original version, in Arabic, although it has already been translated into multiple languages.
Islam acknowledges the legitimacy of the Hebrew Torah, although claiming that the loss of its original manuscripts has generated many distortions in the interpretation of its contents. The Christian New Testament, however is not recognized as legitimate spiritual Scriptural source because, according to Islamic scholars, the manuscripts in which their texts were based and the source of its testimonies are not reliable. According to Islam, the Qur'an alone would be the true foundation of the new Covenant between God and man; for having been revealed to a single Prophet, by being based on the original texts and for being written in a living language.
Only a few people however know the real history of Islam. Many few know, for example, that Allah was originally the name for the God of the Moon, one of the several deities worshiped by Arabs before the birth of Muhammad, who later became the generic name of God in the cultures of the Middle East. The symbol of the Crescent Moon found in mosques’ minarets and on the flags of some Arab emirates at the beginning of the 20th century, is a remnant of the polytheistic beliefs that characterized the religious life of these peoples. (2)
When Muhammad was living with his uncle, head of the Hashemite clan, Mecca was a city-State in the desert, a large commercial and religious center. Muhammad was sensitive to the frequent conflicts that occurred between the tribes, an usual aspect of the nomadic culture of his people, and also bemoaned the intense polytheism and animism to which they were spiritually bound.
He also loathed the materialistic culture that dominated the community, and the way the poor, the orphans and the widows were excluded from society. Reputed for his wisdom and for his ability in arbitrating disputes among tribal leaders, he was then called Al-Ameen ("trusted") due to his sense of Justice, often revealed in these disputes.
Muhammad was part of a religious faction existing in Mecca which, inspired by the Judeo-Christian principles, had withdrawn from the pagan cults practiced there, calling themselves hunafa, a term derived from the Syriac hanephe, meaning Gentile or Pagan (3). The hunafa claimed to believe in the one God of Abraham.
Muhammad knew the history of the Jewish people, he also knew the God of Abraham and noticed how the revelation of God to the Jews had brought up a deep cohesion and a sense of ethnic unity among them. As well as among the Jews, religion was the most significant cultural trace of the life of the Arab tribes of that time. Muhammad thus saw that this would be the path to unification and social development of his people. However, he did not devise the possibility of adopting neither Judaism nor Christianity as an Arab nation’s religion, due to disagreements he had with the Jews and also due to doctrinal conflicts existing between these religions.
Muhammad then built, through the Koran, a cultural transposition of Judaism - and, to some extent, of Christianity as well - to his people, having as a primary goal to establish the worship of the one and only God, and to establish the cultural foundations for the emergence of an Arab nation. (3) Muhammad was therefore a great social leader, and although being illiterate, he was also a gifted poet. The Koran is indeed a magnificent religious poetic work of oral tradition, comparable to the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Muhammad certainly was inspired to create this work, but this inspiration could hardly be considered a divine revelation, primarily because the God to whom it refers, is not the same Biblical God.
In the beginning of his ministry, Muhammad himself was not sure about being a true prophet, neither about the source of his revelations. According to Daniel Shayesteh, Arab poets believed that only could be considered authentic poets those who were possessed by a jinn or djnn, a spiritual being, that compelled them to recite the verses they inspired. The moral nature of these spirits was not important, as long as they helped the tribe to grow and prosper. The spiritual inspiration of Muhammad is highly controversial, as testify the so-called "Satanic Verses" (53: 19-20) of the Qur'an, which exalted the pagan gods al-Lott, al-Uzza and Manat. Muhammad told later that these verses had been inspired by Satan, with the permission of Allah, in order to confuse the men of hardened heart. But later on Muhammad himself removed this revelation, according to him, following the command of Allah. (2)
Muhammad was persuaded as to the legitimacy and nobility of his ministry by Khadijah, his first wife, and by her uncle, Nofel. Khadijah, a prosperous merchant and poet, has always been the strongest support of Muhammad in his ministry, and he probably would not have made it without her.
It is impossible to tell however to what extent the Koran was spiritually inspired or a mere fruit of Muhammad’s personal convictions and of his Judeo-Christian influences. Proof of the influence of Judeo-Christian Scriptures in the production of the Koran, according to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, is the fact that his verses (Ayat), "Unlike the highly refined poetry of the pre-Islamic Arabs, presents in its structure rhymes and distinct rhythms, more similar to prophetic statements, marked by inspired discontinuities found typically in the Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity". (5)
Some Islamic rituals and Koran passages show also a strong influence of Zoroastrianism, a religion that Muhammad learned through a slave scholar called Salman Farsi. Muhammad was certainly inspired by the life of Zoroaster (Zarathustra) and in his struggle to eradicate polytheism from the culture of the people of ancient Central Asia. (2)
The religion founded by Muhammad, who preached Islam or humility and submission, was well accepted by much of the population of Mecca. Muhammad's leadership however was rejected by the majority of the Arab tribes and he was forced to leave the city, in 622 C.E. and flee to Yathrib, later called Medina. There he lived among Jews and Christians, which he called “The People of the Book”, a term used to designate non-Muslim adherents to faiths which have a revealed scripture called, in Arabic, Al-Kitab or "the Book" and "the Scripture". These adherents mentioned in the Koran are the Jews, Sabians (Arabians) and Christians.
In Medina he amassed a significant number of followers, who fought by his side. Around 627 C.E., Muhammad had united all Medina under Islam, with the defeat of his closer enemies. The Bedouins, after a period of battles and negotiations, became allies of Muhammad and accepted his religion. In 630 C.E., after several battles, Muhammad succeeds, in taking over Mecca and in destroying all the pagan idols still remaining there.
Due to the increasing disagreements with Jews, Muhammad changed the Muslims prayer direction from Jerusalem to Mecca and legitimized the war against non-Muslims, which led to the expulsion and extermination of all Jews in Medina. Soon after, Muhammad rejected also the Christian principles he had at first accepted. He denied Jesus being the son of God, his divinity and also the Christian concept of the Trinity. (6) Some verses of the Koran, that praised Christians and Jews above all other people (Q.2:62; Q.3:55) were later changed to reflect his new political stand, as in Q.9:5; Q.4:171 and Q.9:31.
By the time of his death in 632 C.E, Muhammad had already become the most powerful political and religious leader of the Arabian Peninsula, having managed to establish, after several battles, alliances with most nomadic tribes there. When converting to his doctrine, the faithful became known as Muslims, i.e. those who submit to God.
Islam has several requirements for salvation, but basically it is accepted that man is saved by his faith in Allah and by abiding to his teachings, as established in the Koran.
Sometimes seen as a separate branch of Islam, Sufism is considered a form of mysticism which seeks to achieve a direct communion with God through a series of practices that generally include outer asceticism, i.e.; the ascetic life in mosques and mystical practices such as meditation and dance. Sufism gained adherents among a number of Muslims as a reaction against the worldliness of the early Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 CE).
The God of Islam is a God of justice, but not a God of love. He is, "as close as the jugular" to man (Q.50: 16), but at the same time he is so distant that no man can personally relate to him. It writes down the fate of men and may or may not change their destiny, according to the works of each, so that no Muslim has assured of their salvation, including Muhammad.
When a Muslim meets Christ, however, and Jesus reveals to him the true nature of the Father, then his spiritual eyes and ears open up, because he comes to know the one and true God. The greatest difference between God and Allah is the Son, Jesus Christ, the perfect manifestation of God’s love, justice and grace. The Muslims, like all men, find in Christ their redemption and the certainty of their salvation.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
1. Bard, Mitchell G. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict. 3rd Edition. NY: Alpha Books, 2005.
2. Shayesteh, Daniel. The Difference is The Son. Daniel Shayesteh, 2004.
3. Grypeou, Emmanouela. The Encounter of Eastern Christianity With Early Islam. Edited by Mark n. Swanson, David Thomas Emmanouela Grypeou. Brill Academic Publishers, 2006.
4. According to the website Answering Islam: "He [Muhammad] set himself therefore to transplant into their minds some of the "knowledge" of things religious which those who dwelt in more enlightened lands possessed. His own acquaintance with that "knowledge" was limited enough; and the opposition of the Meccans to his fundamental doctrine of Monotheism gave a denunciatory cast to the bulk of his deliverances there. But a certain amount of positive teaching he had acquired and promulgated in the Koran before he migrated to Medina. For this he had looked to those who had been Monotheists before him, i. e., to Jews and Christians. It is almost impossible to decide in particulars whether he drew upon Jewish or Christian sources. Nor does it greatly matter. For he does not in the early stages appear to have distinguished between them. All religion was for him revealed religion, and the content of the revelation given by the one God must be one. In any case, he had been in the habit of looking to previous Monotheists as the source of his knowledge, and he naturally assumed that they would agree with him (Who Were the Hanifs? – http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Bell/hanifs.htm)
5. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. "Qur'an." Encyclopædia Britannica Online. March 15, 2011. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/487666/Quran.
6. As Daniel Shayesteh shows in The Difference is the Son (pp. 132-136) the Koran is contradictory concerning the teachings about the divinity of Christ. This is due to the fact that Muhammad initially borrowed from some Christian principles and merged those principles, out of their original context, with other sources, arranging them in the Koran in order to differentiate his message from the traditional biblical text. However, the very logic of the Koran does not deny the divinity of Christ, as evidenced in verses Q.3 :45-47, Q.4: 171b; Q.19: 17, Q.21: 91. Nonetheless, some verses accuse Christians of affirming that God had a carnal relationship with Mary to generate Jesus (Q.4: 171c; Q.6: 101 and Q.112 :1-4), which is a distorted concept of the virginal conception. Muhammad admits the possibility of God having a son in verse Q.39:4 of the Koran, which contradicts his basic teaching that God is unknowable and also contradicts his condemning of this statement by Jews and Christians, in verse Q.9:30.
