Let’s say you have a grandfather whom you are particularly fond of, and out of the blue, a stranger says: “Hey, that’s my grandpa!” Then—lest you think this stranger is somehow trying to ingratiate himself with you—he adds: “Everything you thought you knew about grandpa is wrong!”
Would that endear this stranger to you? That is the question everyone who believes in the notion of “three Abrahamic Faiths” needs to answer.
Proponents of this view believe that, because Abraham is an important figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (especially the former and latter), all three religions share a commonality that should bridge gaps and foster growth between them.
This notion is entrenched in the mainstream of American opinion. At the Huffington Post you can read that “Muhammad clearly rejected elitism and racism and demanded that Muslims see their Abrahamic brothers and sisters as equals before God.”
While visiting Indonesia, former Secretary of State John Kerry beat on a mosque drum while calling Muslims to prayer: “It has been a special honor to visit this remarkable place of worship,” he said afterwards. “We are all bound to one God and the Abrahamic faiths tie us together in love for our fellow man and honor for the same God.”
After a Muslim from an Oklahoma City mosque decapitated a woman, “an official from Washington D.C. flew in to Oklahoma to present a special thank you to the Muslim congregation.” He read them a message from former President Barack Obama: “Your service is a powerful example of the powerful roots of the Abrahamic faiths and how our communities can come together with shared peace with dignity and a sense of justice.” Indeed, Obama has often spoken of “the shared Abrahamic roots of three of the world’s major religions.”
But the question remains: How is one people’s appropriation of another people’s heritage supposed to help the two peoples get along?
Also, those who ascribe to the “three Abrahamic Faiths” theory never mention—or bother to learn—the key problem: Islam does not treat biblical characters the way Christianity does.
Christians accept the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, as it is. They do not add, take away, or distort the accounts of the patriarchs that Jews also rely on. Conversely, while also relying on the figures of the Old and New Testaments— primarily for the weight of antiquity and authority attached to their names—Islam completely recasts them to fit its own agendas.
One need only look to the topic at hand for proof: Abraham.
Jews and Christians focus on different aspects of Abraham—the former see him as their patriarch in the flesh, the latter as their patriarch in faith or in spirit (e.g., Gal 3:6)—but they both rely on the same verbatim account of Abraham found in Genesis.
In the Muslim account, however, not only does Abraham leave his country on God’s promise that he will make him “a great nation” (Genesis 12), but he exemplifies the hate Muslims are obligated to have for non-Muslims: “You have a good example in Abraham and those who followed him,” Allah informs Muslims in Koran 60:4; “for they said to their people, ‘We disown you and the idols that you worship besides Allah. We renounce you: enmity and hate shall reign between us until you believe in Allah alone’” (emphasis added).
In fact, Koran 60:4 is the cornerstone verse that all “radical” Muslims—from al-Qaeda to the Islamic State—cite as proof that all Muslims “must be hostile to the infidel—even if he is liberal and kind to you” (to quote Sheikh Ibn Taymiyya, The Al-Qaeda Reader, p. 84).
Immediately after quoting 60:4, Osama bin Laden wrote:
So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility, and an internal hate from the heart. And this fierce hostility—that is, battle—ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed [a dhimmi], or if the Muslims are [at that point in time] weak and incapable [of spreading sharia law to the world]. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the hearts, this is great apostasy; the one who does this [extinguishes the hate from his heart] will stand excuseless before Allah [p. 43].
Such is the mutilation Abraham has undergone in Islam. Not only is Abraham not a source of commonality between Muslims on the one hand and Jews and Christians on the other; he is the chief figure to justify “enmity and hate … between us until you believe in Allah alone.”
Islam’s appropriation of Abraham has led to other, more concrete problems, of the sort one can expect when a stranger appears and says that the home you live in was actually bequeathed to him by your supposedly “shared” forefather. Although the Jews claimed the Holy Land as their birthright for at least a millennium before Islam came, Jerusalem is now special to Muslims partially because they also claim Abraham and other biblical figures.
As a result, statements like the following from mainline Christian groups such as the Presbyterian Church USA are common: “[PCUSA] strongly condemns the U.S. President’s [Trump’s] decision to single out Jerusalem as a Jewish capital. Jerusalem is the spiritual heart of three Abrahamic faiths …”
The Muslim appropriation and mutilation of biblical figures is a source of problems, not solutions. It is only the secular mindset, which cannot comprehend beyond the surface fact that three religions claim the same figures—and so they must all eventually “be friends”—that does not and never will get it.
Islam also made up stories about Abraham not contained in the Bible or consistent with the Biblical narrative about him, such as that he joined Ishmael in Mecca and helped build that shrine around their space rock that they practice Hajj around every year; that doesn’t fit with the Abraham who REJECTED idolatry, and cast Ishmael out of the household because God instructed him to follow Sarah’s wishes about keeping him around to share Isaac’s inheritance, since Isaac was the child of the promise not Ishmael. In their version it’s actually Ishmael that is treated as the child of the promise. That creates another whole set of problems, since obviously both can’t be right and they aren’t teaching the same lessons. But since the Bible from cover to cover teaches that it was FAITH that was accounted to Abraham as his righteousness, not “works”; and Islam relies on “works” alone, that would make things even more deeply divided. As a Christian, I believe, as we are told by Jesus, we are “grafted onto the olive tree” even though we were “wild olive branches”; or adopted into the family of Abraham according to the promise God gave him that his children would number as the stars of the heavens; we don’t have the blood connection, but the spiritual connection of faith is what unites us. I can find no commonality with Islam personally or spiritually, beyond that we are all human beings, and that wears thin when their expressed purpose is to kill me if I will not abandon the faith my Lord commands, to follow their ways.
Originally, it was intended in Islam that the Old Testament would be accepted as it was, following Christianity. The qur’an said ‘they have the Torah’ (5.43) and also called it the scripture ‘between your hands.’ Apparently, after reading and studying the muslims later learned that the qur’an could not be reconciled to the Old Testament and thus began the development of various islamic conspiracy theories about the Bible..
an interesting article written by someone I knew: Ishmael and His Father http://cosmades.org/articles/ishmael.htm
The whole lot of Biblical figures are NOT the same figures as mentioned in the koran. Only similarity is the name. All other facts in the koran are SO bizarre that a careful reader would be forced to be thoroughly confused as to whether they are referring to the same men. Not just Abraham- also Ishmael, no mention of Isaac, Joseph, David, Solomon…..the list goes on.. and on..and on…
Nice to see the use of the term “appropriation” very apt
And clearly Allah is not Jehovah.
Islam is full of crap, a religion of war made up by a crazy man, why does anyone take it seriously? Reading the Korahn it is quite obvious this maniac Muhammad nicked his story from the Babylonian Talmud {some nastier passages } the Torah, the Old Testament and dare I say even Revelations as well as the New Testament. read this last night out of curiosity:-
“The Beast was taken Prisoner, along with the False prophet who had worked miracles in its presence and deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.{ISIS flag} The two of them were thrown alive into the lake of fire with sulphurous flames. The rest were killed by the sword which came out of the riders mouth, and the birds all gorged themselves on the flesh”
Pick this para apart remember this is in pictorial language. volcano’s, vultures, ISIS, Muhammad, Muslims all have an indent on their foreheads from kneeling 5xday to Mecca. A meteor hidden by black covering. Does anyone else know there is a golden Buddha in a golden cage the Arabs dare not touch, been there for eons. Has a name but it escapes me annoying as I wanted to research its history!
Thank you Mr. Ibrahim for the solid insight. I don’t expect progressives to accept your argument. But it would be encouraging if more Christians and Jews got it.
Thank you Mr. Ibrahim for the solid insight. I don’t expect progressives to accept your argument. But it would be encouraging if more Christians and Jews got it.
You Go Raymond
You Go Raymond!
ri, Face it. Islam is a cult and the quran is nothing but an intended written mockery of the Bible. steamboat
So where is the Morality in Islam?