Maroc - EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 14/Nov 17:34

Prophet Abraham Started Three Unique Monotheistic Religions – OpEd

For thousands of years before Prophet Abraham, Allah sent thousands of prophets to thousands of tribes and nations on the earth, and not one of them were able to establish an ongoing imageless monotheistic community. So Allah decided to do things in a different way. Allah decided to make a covenant with a small tribe, and send hundreds of his prophets to this small tribe and worked continually for centuries with the people of this tribe until they were able to establish an ongoing community that would always have a core of righteous and loyal believers.  Allah selected Abraham the Hebrew (Genesis 14:13) and the descendants of Prophets Ishmael, Issac, and Jacob to be the first, but not the last monotheistic community. "There is for you an excellent example (to follow) in Abraham and those with him." [Qur'an 60:4] and "Indeed Ibrahim was a nation obedient to Allah, a Hanif, he was not one of the polytheists." [Qur'an 16:120]. God makes Prophet Abraham several promises that will be fulfilled if he heeds the comments he has been given: Genesis 12:2 states "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and it shall be a blessing. 12:3 I will bless those who bless you and curse him that curses you; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you." Most of these promises have already been fulfilled.  Prophet Abraham was the first person to be called a "Hebrew" in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 14:13). The term Hebrew probably comes from the verb to go over a boundary, like the Euphrates or Jordan river, or to be a migrant. Ten generations later the Philistines in Canaan used the term "Hebrews" to refer to the 12 tribes of Israel: "The Philistine commanders asked, "What about these Hebrews?" (1 Samuel 29:3); and Prophet Jonah identified himself to non-Jewish sailors as "a Hebrew" (Jonah 1:9).  According to a new Pew Research Center study released on August 19 2024: "Christians are about 30% of the world's population, the world's migrants are 47% Christian, according to the latest data collected in 2020. Muslims make up 29% of the migrant population and 25% of the world's population.  Jews, who are only 0.2% of the world's population and 1% of migrants, are by far the most likely religious group to have migrated, with 20% of Jews worldwide living outside their country of birth compared to just 6% of Christians and 4% of Muslims. Prophet Abraham was the first Muslim Hebrew as Qur'an 3:67 states: "He (Abraham) was not Yahuudiyyan, "a Jew", nor Nasraaniyyan, "a Christian", but rather a Haniifan", "a monotheistic Hebrew believer submitting (Islam) to the one imageless God who created all space and time; and who made Prophet Abraham's descendants through Prophets Isaac and Jacob (Israel), into a great multitude of monotheists called the People of Israel-Banu Israel. The Prophet Isaiah said: "Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he [Abraham] was only one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him. (Isaiah 51:1-2) and the Qur'an states: "You have an excellent example to follow in Abraham." (60:4) and "Follow the way of Abraham as people of pure faith." (3:95)  And the Quran 2:130 states: And (everyone) who shuns the creed of Abraham (is) but a foolish soul. We chose him (Abraham the Hebrew Genesis 14:13) in the world and in the Hereafter he shall be among the righteous. 2:131 And when his Lord said unto him "Submit!" (aslim) he said, "I submit (aslamtu) to the Lord of the worlds." Most people in the world have learned of Prophet Abraham, not by reading a book of Jewish history or religion, but by listening to and reading from the Christian Bible or the Muslim Qur'an. This unique and amazing situation is a reflection of a promise made to Prophet Abraham more than 36 centuries ago, and recorded in both the Torah and the Qur'an. "I swear (says God) because you did this - not withholding your son, your favorite one, I will bestow My blessing on you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore; and your descendants shall seize the gates of their foes. All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants, because you have obeyed My command." (Genesis 22:16-18) and "Indeed, We chose him (Abraham) as one pure and most distinguished in the world, and he is surely among the righteous in the Hereafter". (Qur'an 2:130) Prophet Isaiah also said: But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, are the offspring of Abraham, my friend;" (Isaiah 41:8) So the biological offspring of Prophet Abraham (the Banu Israel) became the first ongoing monotheistic community when God rescued them from Egyptian oppression; and made an ongoing covenant with them at Mount Sinai. Prophet Abraham was not born a Jew, but his descendants from his grandson Jacob/Israel became the Banu Israel—Jewish People. For 1200+ years after Prophet Moses, the Banu Israel was the only ongoing monotheistic community in the world. "Similarly, no Messenger came to the People before them, but they said (of him) "A sorcerer, or one possessed'"! (51:52) And as the Qur'an informed us: "The people of Noah denied before them, and the companions of the well and Thamūd; and ʿAad and Pharaoh and the brothers [neighbors] of Lot; and the companions of the forest, and the people of Tubbaʿ. All denied the messengers [Allah sent to them] so My threat was justly fulfilled." [50:12-14]  And those monotheistic communities that did last for a few generations, always fell away during subsequent centuries; while most, but not all, of Banu Israel remained loyal to the covenant God made with them at Mount Sinai: "Before (Messengers Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus) We sent messengers to many nations, and We afflicted the nations with suffering and adversity, that they call Allah in humility. When the suffering reached them from Us, why then did they not call Allah in humility? On the contrary, their hearts become hardened, and Satan made their sinful acts seem alluring to them. (Qur'an 6:42-43) But as the centuries passed the ongoing need to protect the Jewish way of life became increasingly the focus of their efforts; and after the deaths of Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, Banu Israel became more and more inclined to building a fence around the Torah, and making the rules more numerous and restrictive.  In 1065 Pope Alexander called for a Crusade against the Moors in Spain. Then in 1073, Pope Gregory issued official proclamations urging Christian princes to recover lands occupied by Muslims in Spain, over which he claimed papal sovereignty on the basis of previous Christian rule and right. These decrees were really the beginning of the Christian Crusades against Islam. For example, in 1209, Pope Innocent III urged a band of northern French nobles to rally an army that swept into southern France, where they unleashed a crusade so bloody it included the sacking of Beziers by an army under papal authority. Just before the attack, which would kill 15-20,000 men, women and children, the pope's man on the scene, Arnaud Amalric, is reported to have uttered one of history's most famous orders: "Kill them all. God will know his own." The next 4-5 centuries of religious military war in Europe and the MiddleEast was the result of the previous 2-3 centuries of all-out polemic verbal war between Christianity and Islam. Religious truth became a zero sum game: anything positive said about another religion was seen as a weakening of your own side.  The goal was not to modestly try to harmonize various religious perspectives of the one and only God; but to self-righteously exaggerate religious differences, well beyond any reasonable understanding of the two sides. In the Greek world, the Jerusalem Temple (Beit HaMikdosh) was well known, while the Ka'ba, the House of God (Baitullah) in Mecca was not known by name at all. The first Roman reference to the Baitullah is from Diodorus Siculus, a first century BCE Roman historian who wrote that in Arabia there was a temple greatly revered by the Arabs.  According to G. E. Von Grunebaum, who I studied with at the University of California Los Angeles in 1959, Mecca was also mentioned by Ptolemy, a second century Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer who wrote, "The name he gives it allows us to identify it as a South Arabian foundation created around a sanctuary." (G. E. Von Grunebaum, Classical Islam: A History 600–1258, p. 19) Yet just seven centuries later both of these cities and sanctuaries, one almost unknown by the Romans and the other totally destroyed by the Romans, were destined, throughout the Middle Ages in both Europe and west Asia, to be viewed as the heart, lungs or navel of the world.  Jerusalem and Mecca were frequently portrayed by Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the center of their maps. God willing, someday everyone may see both cities and their sanctuaries as central to our monotheistic connections to the One God of Prophets Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac.  If we can live up to the ideal that religious pluralism is the will of God, we will help fulfill the 2700 year old vision of Prophet Isaiah:  "In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. On that day Israel will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, "Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance."...(Isaiah 19:23-5) So God's promise to Prophet Abraham, that the other families of humankind will ultimately bless themselves, and one another, thus aspiring to be like Abraham's descendants (Genesis 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14), and will have fulfilled the three Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. As a Hadith states: "Abu Dharr narrated that one day he asked the Messenger of Allah (Prophet Muhammad): How many prophets are there in all? He replied: 124.000. Abu Dharr then asked: How many of them were messengers (bring a sacred scripture) prophets? He replied: 313 from the above group. He asked: Who was the first of them (the oral only prophets)? He replied: Adam...The first prophet among Bani Israel was Musa and the last of them (the Jewish prophets) was Isa (Jesus), and they (the Jewish prophets) were in all 600." (Biharul Anwar, Vol. 11, Pg. 32.)  This is why the 600 Jewish prophets who were the descendants of Prophet Abraham the Hebrew (Genesis 14:13) were and still are to this very day the smallest and oldest base of an unbroken, ongoing, monotheistic nation of survivors.  Prophet Abraham, like his early descendant prophets until Messenger Moses, the covenant with the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, and the Torah; was a muslim and not a member of the Jewish, Christian or Islamic religious community at that time; because there was no Jewish, Christian or Islamic religious community then. "Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was one inclining toward truth, a muslim [submitting to Allah]. And he was not of the polytheists." (Qur'an 3:67) Thus the Qur'an instructs members of the Islamic community when others say to them: "Be Jews or Christians [so] you will be guided..." Muslims should reply: "Rather, [we follow] the religion of Abraham, inclining toward truth [imageless monotheism], and he was not of the polytheists." (2:135)