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Our Past in Present Tense
Muhammad and the Jews
Dr.
Yehuda Shabatay
Recently,
as three million Muslims completed the annual Hajj — or pilgrimage to Mecca — with the Feast of Sacrifice (Eid
al-Adha), a major catastrophe took place that made news headlines all over
the world. When heavy luggage fell in the way of the pilgrims, the throngs could
not be stopped and continued to march over 350 dead bodies and a thousand
injured ones. However, as the newscasters enumerated the poor victims who were
trampled to death or had to be hospitalized, very few mentioned the reason for
the Feast: Abraham ransoming his son, whom he was ready to sacrifice to God,
with a ram (Gen. 22:12-13). While the story is biblical, Islamic tradition
conveys it with two major differences. The first is that, according to the Quran, Ishmael, Abraham’s firstborn son, and not Isaac, whose name
appears in the Bible, was the intended victim. The second difference is even
more interesting: that the event took place near Mecca, and not in the land of
Canaan. In addition, Muslims maintain that after Ishmael was rescued, he and
Abraham raised the Ka’aba, the
holiest shrine of Islam (Sura 2:124-130).
This
is only one of the many parallels between Judaism and Islam, which was founded
by Muhammad at the beginning of the 7th century. He met Jews and
Christians for the first time working in trade caravans that carried merchandise
from Arabia to the Eastern Mediterranean. In those days, Muhammad was a poor
orphan. But, at some stage, he drew the attention of the owner of the caravans,
a rich widow named Khadija. She fell in love with the young man who was 15 years
her junior, and after their marriage Muhammad was free to spend much time in
meditation, sitting in a cave on one of the hills overlooking Mecca. There, the
archangel Gabriel appeared to him one day and ordered him to “Read!” Since
Muhammad was illiterate, the angelic instruction was changed to “Recite!”
Due to the fact that both words have the same root in Arabic, the Quran, Islam’s foremost scripture, may be considered either a
“Reader” or “Recitation.” When Muhammad began to reiterate the words he
had heard from Gabriel in front of Khadija’s cousin, Waraqa, who was a
Christian, Waraqa exclaimed that the ideas were similar to the ones God revealed
to Moses at Mount Sinai. As a result, Moses became the first Muslim’s favorite
prophet.
While
in Mecca, Muhammad gathered numerous followers eager to hear his teachings on
the existence of one God and on the rights of the poor and the defenseless in
their midst. But those ideas were instantly rejected by the polytheistic upper
classes. Their opposition grew to the extent that in 622 CE Muhammad had to
“emigrate” to the oasis of Yathrib, about 250 miles north of Mecca. (This
event, known as the Hijra, or
emigration, is considered the beginning of Islam.) Yathrib happened to be the
home of about 20 Jewish clans who continually struggled with the neighboring
Arab clans. Muhammad, in his new position of a religious leader and an arbiter
of disputes, did his best to persuade both Jews and Arabs to acknowledge him a
prophet and thereby bring peace to all the inhabitants of that region.
He
emphasized the identity and the continuity of his message with that of earlier
prophets, turning his followers’ attention to Abraham, who preceded Moses and
Jesus and thereby became the first who “surrendered himself” (muslim)
to God. But, in order to entice the Jewish tribes to support him, Muhammad went
several steps beyond that basic idea. First, he held special meetings for
Muslims on Friday afternoons, at the time when the Jews were preparing for the
Sabbath. Then he prescribed a fast on the Day of Atonement, he called Ashura,
or tenth, because Yom Kippur occurs on
the 10th of Tishre.
Finally, he set three times a day for prayer, following Jewish tradition.
Even
more importantly, Muslims were instructed to turn to Jerusalem in prayer, as the
Jews, as well as the Christians did in those days. Actually, Jerusalem had
assumed great importance for Muhammad already before the Hijra,
because one night Gabriel flew him from Mecca to the Temple Mount, where he was
greeted by Abraham, Moses, Jesus and several other prophets. Then a ladder
appeared on which Gabriel and Muhammad climbed all the way to the Divine Throne
(Sura 17:1). The opening sentence of the sura,
called “The Night Journey,” says: “Glory be to Him who made his servants
go by night from the Sacred Temple (of Mecca) to the farther Temple” — al-masjid
al-aksa, in Arabic. Hence the name Al-Aksa,
which was given to the mosque that stands by the southern wall of the Temple
Mount. A more impressive monument nearby, with the famous golden dome, is called
the Dome of the Rock. According to Islamic tradition in its center is
Muhammad’s toe print that he made as he leapt into heaven on “The Night
Journey.”
Muhammad
issued other rules, too, concerning the Jews: he allowed Muslims to marry Jewish
women and to eat Jewish (i.e., kosher) food. To this day, Muslims frequently
purchase food items approved by the rabbinate, and particularly kosher meat,
although their dietary laws are less restrictive than that of the Jews (Sura
2:173; 5:4; 7:157). Another interesting point is that Muhammad’s followers
changed the name of Yathrib to Medina, an Aramaic word meaning “the city,”
that was used by the Jews in those days. As we know, it soon became the second
holiest city of Islam, followed by Jerusalem, as the third.
Yet,
the “shidduch” (or “match”) between Muhammad and the Jews did
not work out. When the Jews refused to acknowledge him as a prophet, warfare
began between Muhammad’s followers and several Jewish tribes, which ended with
the Jews’ surrender. The consequences came instantly: almost all the
previously adopted Jewish religious customs were erased from Islam. Still,
Muhammad instructed his followers not to destroy the “People of the Book,”
namely the Jews and the Christians who held the Bible sacred, as long as they
surrendered to Islamic rule and paid heavy head taxes. Later historical events
indicate that such taxes were not always collected. On the contrary, some of the
finest periods in medieval Jewish history took place under Muslim rule.
Dr. Yehuda Shabatay received rabbinical training in Budapest, a master of jurisprudence degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his doctorate in Hebrew literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. He was engaged in Jewish educational administration over most of his career and now teaches Jewish studies and history at Palomar College and San Diego State University.