Crash Course in Jewish History Part 42 - The Rise of Islam
http://www.aish.com/jl/h/48949566.htmlMohammed reacted with anger when Jews refused to recognize him as the last of the prophets.In the previous chapter, we discussed at length the Jewish impact on intellectual Rome prior to the advent of Christianity. Similarly, Jews living on the Arabian Peninsula impacted positively on their Arab neighbors.
During the days of Jewish clashes with the Roman Empire, Jews fled to areas outside the control of Rome and founded many towns and villages in Arabia. One very famous town, almost certainly founded by Jews, was Yathrib. Today Yathrib is better known as Medina and is considered Islam's second holiest city (after Mecca).
As in Rome, the local Jews attracted significant numbers of converts to their way of life and many more admirers.
M. Hirsch Goldberg, in the Jewish Connection (p. 33), sums up the story before the early 600's:
"In Arabia, whole tribes converted to Judaism, including two kinds of the Himyarites. French Bible critic Ernest Renan remarked that 'only a hair's breadth prevented all Arabia from becoming Jewish.'"
One of those impressed by the Jews' uncompromising devotion to monotheism was a young trader named Mohammed ibn Abdallah.
In the early stages of his spiritual awakening, Mohammed came to be greatly impressed by the Jews.
Although his travels had exposed him to Christianity and he was clearly influenced by it, he found aspects of it troublesome -- in particular, the doctrine of the Trinity did not seem strictly monotheistic in his eyes. He is recorded as having said:
"Unbelievers are those that say, 'Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary' ... Unbelievers are those that say, 'Allah is one of three.' There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished." (Koran, Sura 5:71-73)
However, there is no doubt that in the early stages of his spiritual awakening, Mohammed came to be greatly impressed by the Jews. Writes S.D. Goiten in Jews and Arabs (pp. 58-59):
"The intrinsic values of the belief in one God, the creator of the world, the God of justice and mercy, before whom everyone high and low bears personal responsibility, came to Muhammad -- as he never ceased to emphasize -- from Israel."
He clearly had some knowledge of the Torah as later he would quote Moses (though usually not accurately) more than one hundred times in the Koran, the record of his teachings which became the holy book of his newfound religion. Of the 25 prophets listed in the Koran, 19 are from Jewish scripture, and many ritual laws, as well as civil laws, of Islam parallel Judaism -- circumcision and prohibition against eating pork, for example.
CHILDREN OF ISHMAELMohammed believed the ancient tradition that the Arabs were the other children of Abraham - through the line of his son Ishmael by the Egyptian maidservant Hagar - and that they had forgotten the teachings of monotheism they had inherited ages ago. He saw his mission as bringing them back. Paul Johnson, in his History of the Jews (p. 167), explains:
"What he [Mohammed] seems to have wished to do was to destroy the polytheistic paganism of the oasis culture by giving the Arabs Jewish ethical monotheism in a language they could understand and in terms adapted to their ways. He accepted the Jewish God and their prophets, the idea of fixed law embodied in scripture - the Koran being an Arabic substitute for the Bible - and the addition of an Oral Law applied in religious courts."
There is no argument that the Arab world into which Mohammed was born was badly in need of moral values and social reform. The Mecca of his day was a central place of pagan worship. The Arab tribesmen of the region worshipped a pantheon of gods there, including Al-Lat, the sun goddess, and Al-Uzza, a goddess associated with the planet Venus, both of whom were daughters of the chief deity, known as Al-Ilah, (Allah) or "the God."
In Mecca stands Kaaba, the shrine enclosing the famous black meteorite, a former site of pagan worship.
The Kaaba, the shrine enclosing the famous black meteorite which was worshipped in Mecca before Mohammed's time, was also a site for an altar where blood sacrifices were offered to these and other gods.
The morality of the neighboring tribesmen could, charitably, be described as chaotic. Huston Smith, in his classic The Religions of Man, (p. 219) goes so far as to call the Arab society before the advent of Mohammed "barbaric." Tribal loyalties were paramount; other than that, nothing served to mitigate the blood feuds, drunken brawls and orgies that the harsh life of the desert gave sway to.
Topic: Crash Course in Jewish History - The Rise of Islam