THE
NEW TRINITY: DO WE ALL PRAY TO THE SAME GOD?
While agreeing upon little else, most Jews, Christians and Muslims seem to accept as a truism that they all pray to the same God. This is because the three monotheistic religions all believe that a single Supreme Being brought the Universe and all within it into existence and tend to view Him as incorporeal, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. Furthermore, due to their acceptance of the Hebrew Bible as Holy Writ (except to the extent it is contradicted by their own respective Scriptures), Christianity and Islam explicitly identify, respectively, the Heavenly Father of Jesus and Allah as none other than the God of Israel. In other words, Christianity and Islam each claim that the God of the Torah is the same One who made new and improved Covenants, respectively, with the followers of Jesus and with the followers of Mohammed ibn Abdullah. Notwithstanding the foregoing, to the extent that any sect of Christianity deifies Jesus -- a human being who walked the Earth -- Judaism traditionally considers such sect to be a practitioner of avodah zara (a designation which is generally translated as "idolatry" but which is actually much broader, encompassing any belief system which contravenes or deviates from the principles of belief and worship declared by the God of Israel to the Jewish people in the Torah). In the case of Islam, however, since Mohammed ibn Abdullah is acknowledged by all sects thereof to be a mere mortal (albeit one beyond mortal criticism), Judaic thought traditionally views all Muslims as fellow believers in the God of Israel and, in fact, views the name Allah as simply another appellation for Him. In this way, we traditionally accept that, with certain exceptions, Jews, Christians and Muslims all pray to the same God -- that is, the God of Israel.
But, does this view represent the Truth? Is the God of Israel the sum total of all that Judaism, Christianity and Islam attribute to Him? Or do the three monotheistic religions really pray to three different gods, only One of Whom is the Creator of Existence, thereby revealing the other two to be false gods, no different than the ancient pagan gods which preceded them?
Why, when Society's watchwords are Toleration and Fellowship, is this analysis important? -- only because God enjoined upon the Jewish people one Commandment which, in its simplicity, serves as the foundation stone for all of the others. After reminding our people that "I am HaShem, your God, Who has taken you out of the Land of Egypt, from the House of Slavery" (Ex. 20:2; Deut. 5:6), God immediately thunders: "You shall not recognize the gods of others in My Presence." (Ex. 20:3; Deut. 5:7). By agreeing that the God of Israel, and the Father who sired Jesus, and Allah are one and the same Creator, we Jews transgress this Commandment and thereby cause a great Chillul HaShem (desecration of God's Name).
God has deigned, through the Hebrew Bible, to reveal to us His Eternal Attributes, His Message and that which He expects of us as His Chosen People. God said of and to us:
"... So said HaShem: My first-born Son is
Consequently, it stands to reason that the Teaching that God gave to His Chosen People is both final and complete. As a result, our Sages' understanding of God is based exclusively on His Words and Actions, as related in its pages alone. If we were to accept that the God of Israel subsequently bestowed upon the gentile nations Revelation concerning His Nature, His Message and His Expectations, as expressed through the Christian New Testament and/or the Islamic Koran, each of which seek to annul, modify and add neologisms to the passages of the Hebrew Bible, then we would be transgressing yet another Commandment of the Torah. For, as the God of History, in anticipation of this Day, long ago warned His people: "The Entire Word that I command you, that shall you observe to do; you shall not add to it and you shall not subtract from it." (Deut. 13:1).
And just to reveal a bit of the Future to our people, God immediately added to the preceding Admonishment this specific Prophetic Warning:
"If there should stand up in your midst a prophet or a dreamer of a dream, and he will produce to you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes about, of which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us follow gods of others that you did not know and we shall worship them' -- do not hearken to the words of that prophet or to that dreamer of a dream, for HaShem, your God, is testing you to know whether you love HaShem, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul. HaShem, your God, shall you follow and Him shall you fear; His Commandments shall you observe and to His Voice shall you hearken; Him shall you serve and to Him shall you cleave." (Deut. 13:2-5).
And just so that doubt should not creep into our souls about God's Faithfulness to His own Word, the Prophet Samuel reminds us that: "'Moreover, the Eternal One of Israel does not lie and does not relent, for He is not a human that He should relent.' " (I Samuel 15:29), echoing the earlier words of the gentile prophet Balaam that: "'God is not a man that He should be deceitful, nor a son of man that He should relent. Would He say and not do, or speak and not confirm?' " (Num. 23:19).
Since Hebrew Scripture warns us that the nations' Scriptures, even if otherwise attractive and compelling, are nevertheless False, we are certainly required to treat the deities described in their Scriptures as False, and we are most certainly prohibited from intellectually merging or identifying their deities with the God of Israel.
Furthermore, Hebrew Scripture not only warns the Jewish people against merging or identifying the false gods of others with the God of Israel, but it also sends the very same warning to the gentile nations; for, the Prophet Isaiah says to them:
"For thus said HaShem, Creator of the Heavens; He is the God, the One Who fashioned the Earth and its Maker; He established it; He did not create it for emptiness; He fashioned it to be inhabited [and then declared]: 'I am HaShem and there is no other. I did not speak in secrecy, some place in a land of darkness; I did not tell the descendants of Jacob to seek Me for nothing; I am HaShem Who speaks Righteousness, Who declares Upright Things. Gather yourselves, come and approach together, O survivors of the nations, who do not know, who carry about the wood of their graven image, and pray to a god who cannot save. Proclaim and approach; even let [your leaders] take counsel together: Who let this be heard from aforetimes, or related it from[times] of Old? Is it not I, HaShem? There is no other god besides Me; there is no righteous god besides Me, and no savior other than Me. Turn to Me and be saved, all ends of the Earth; for, I am God and there is no other. I swear by Myself, Righteousness has gone forth from My Mouth, a Word that will not be rescinded: that to Me shall every knee bend and every tongue swear.' " (Isaiah 45:18-23).
But the refrain will be heard that all of the foregoing refer only to polytheistic and/or idol worshipping nations and religions, but neither to those sects of Christianity which limit Jesus to his messianic pretensions nor to the sects of Islam, all of which are monotheistic and do not engage in idol worship. The response to this is that God (in fulfillment of Deuteronomy 13:2-5) is testing our people by enticing us, not with an obvious form of polytheistic and/or idol worshipping avoda zarah but with one which is fully-cloaked in our own monotheistic garments and, consequently, much more difficult to identify and expose. For this reason, a brief analysis of the some of the basic tenets of Christianity and Islam are required.
Christianity, while revering the Hebrew Bible and even
incorporating its Greek-language translation -- as the Old Testament -- into
the Christian Bible, believes that Judaism's doctrinal errors caused God to
raise up Christianity in its place as its true spiritual heir and the bearer of
God's New Covenant, as manifested in the New Testament portion of the Christian
Bible. Accordingly, in order to deliver His New Covenant to humankind, God's
Holy Spirit impregnated Mary with Jesus -- the Son of God -- without altering
her prior status as a biological virgin. (Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-38). The
dogma of the virgin birth -- springing from the influence upon early
Christianity of pagan mythology in which a god had sexual intercourse with a
human female, thereby resulting in the birth of a demigod -- is scripturally
based upon Christianity's mistranslation of the Hebrew-language word "alma"
in the Prophet Isaiah's famous prediction (Isaiah 7:14) that the "young
woman" would give birth to a son named "Emmanuel" (a child
whom Christianity identifies as Jesus, despite the fact that nowhere
in the New Testament is Jesus ever referred to -- by his family or
by others -- as Emmanuel). The New Testament explicitly
relies upon Isaiah's Prophecy, as mistranslated and, more importantly,
as truncated, when it asserts: "All of this [the virgin birth of
Jesus] took place in order to fulfill what the Lord had said through the
Prophet: 'The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son;
and they will call him Emmanuel' -- which means 'God With Us.'" (Matthew
1:22-23). Furthermore, it is pointed out
that the meaning of the name "Emmanuel", after the application of
standard Hebrew-language syntax, is: "God is with us", and
not, as the New Testament (under the influence of pagan mythology) translates: "God
With Us". Moreover, the text of the New Testament itself negates
any implication that the future son of Joseph and Mary was intended to be
called by any name other than "Iesous",
which is rendered into the English language as "Jesus"
(see Matthew 1:21 where an unidentified Angel instructs Joseph to
call his future son by the name Jesus; and see Luke 1:31 where the
Angel Gabriel instructs Mary to call her future son by the name Jesus).
The
Christian Bible -- consisting of the New Testament, which was composed
in the Greek language, and the Old Testament, which is a Greek-language
translation of the Hebrew Bible -- mistranslates the
Hebrew-language word "alma" ("young woman")
in Isaiah 7:14 as "parthenos", being the Greek-language word
meaning "virgin", and then imports that very same
mistranslation into the flawed and incomplete repetition of
Isaiah's prophecy that is found in Matthew 1:23. The term "
However, even if the "alma" ("young woman") of Isaiah's
prophecy was, in fact, a "betulah" ("virgin") -- as is
likely to have been the case before she was married to her husband --
the historical context of the Prophecy demonstrates that it does not
even refer to the time period of Jesus, namely, the very end of the
First Century B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) through the beginning of the First
Century C.E. (the Common Era) when Judea (successor entity to the biblical
kingdoms of Judah and Israel) was a captive province of the Roman Empire, but
rather to events that occurred some 700 years prior to Jesus' birth,
namely, the invasion, then in progress, of the southern kingdom of Judah
(during the reign of King Achaz) by the armies of the northern kingdom of
Israel (during the reign of King Pekah) and the Empire of Aram (during the
reign of King Rezin). Moreover, a review
of the complete Prophecy in context also demonstrates that the
small portion thereof that heralds the birth of the child Emmanuel is not even
the true subject of the Prophecy.
For, that most famous snippet of the Prophecy is merely predicting an interim
event, the occurrence of which is intended by the Prophet Isaiah only
to provide compelling proof -- in
the Words of the Prophecy: "a sign" -- to the faithless King Achaz of
Judah that the final events predicted by the Prophecy will, in fact, also
come to pass. What are these final events
that are the true subject of the Prophecy? These final events are the impending
destructions of the Empire of Aram and then of the northern
Here, then, is Isaiah's complete Prophecy in context:
"It happened in the days of Achaz, son of Jotham son of Uzziah, king
of Judah, that Rezin, king of Aram, and Pekah, son of Remaliah, king of Israel,
went up to wage war against Jerusalem, but they could not triumph over it. It
was then told to the House of David [King Achaz of the southern kingdom of
Judah], saying, 'Aram has joined with Ephraim [the northern kingdom of
Israel]'; and his heart shuddered, and [also] the heart of his people, like the
shuddering of the trees of the forest in the wind. HaShem said to Isaiah, 'Go
out and meet [King] Achaz, you and your son Shearjashub, at the edge of the
channel of the Upper Pool, at the road of the Launderer's Field, and say to
him, "Be calm and still; do not fear. Let your heart not grow faint before
these two smoldering spent firebrands, before the burning anger of [King] Rezin
and
To discover the fulfillments of Isaiah’s Prophecy during the reign of Achaz, King of Judah, and during the reign of his son and successor Hezekiah, King of Judah (all well-before the time of Jesus), please see II Kings 16:1-9; 17:1-6; 18:1-37; and II Chronicles 28:1-8; 32:1-23. The misuse of Isaiah 7:14 in order to justify the fable of the virgin birth of Jesus and the latter’s messianic pretensions represents only one of the many mistranslations, misquotations, incorrect citations and erroneous summarizations of and from the Hebrew Bible which appear throughout the New Testament and form the theological basis of Christianity. (For a more blatant -- albeit less scripturally significant -- example of such dishonesty, the reader is referred to Jude 1:14-15 which quotes a prophecy of doom allegedly uttered by Enoch, an antediluvian descendant of Adam, despite the fact that nowhere in the Hebrew Bible does Enoch utter even a word, let alone a prophecy. And many other examples can also be cited.)
In Christian belief, Jesus descended to Earth in human form as the Messiah, was martyred for humankind's collective sins and was thereafter resurrected from death. Through the New Testament, God informs all human beings that, henceforth, they may only achieve forgiveness for their individual sins through the active intercession of Jesus, as Son of God, after acceptance of him as Savior (see Ephesians 2:8-9).
In the meantime, while on Earth, inter alia:
Jesus sought to abolish the Torah laws of Kashrut, by which God declared to the Jewish people those creatures which are spiritually clean and, consequently, permissible to eat, and those creatures which are spiritually unclean and, consequently, prohibited to eat ("He [Jesus] said to them [his disciples]: 'Are you also lacking in understanding? Are you not aware that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and [then] goes out into the latrine?' Thus, he [Jesus] declared all foods clean." -- Mark 7:18-19); and
Jesus ordered (by means of a parable concerning the advent of the Kingdom of God) the murder of those Jews who did not accept his kingship and who, consequently, deserved punishment, not only for their own sins, but also for the sins of the entire World -- retroactive to the dawn of humanity’s creation ("But these enemies of mine who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here, and slay them in my presence" -- Luke 19:27; and: "... so that there may come upon you [Jews] all the righteous blood poured upon the Earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the Temple and the altar" -- Matthew 23:35); and
Jesus condemned to a hellish existence those who refuse to worship and obey him as a demigod ("The Father loves the Son, and has committed everything into his hand. He who believes in the Son has Eternal Life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see Life, but the Wrath of God rests upon him." -- John 3:35-36); and
Jesus declared the objective criteria by which his true followers would be identified ("He that believes and is baptized will be saved, but he that does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those that believe: in my name they will cast out demons, they will speak with tongues, and with their hands they will pick up serpents, and if they drink anything deadly it will not hurt them at all. They will lay hands upon the sick and they will recover." -- Mark 16:16-18).
And, most infamously, the New Testament incites Christians to the most
virulent form of Jew-hatred by imposing upon the Jewish people full
responsibility for the capture, torture and execution of Jesus, the Son of God,
by declaring: "After this, Jesus went about in Galilee; he would not go
about in
Yet, despite all of the foregoing, in an enigmatic but prescient statement to a gentile follower which reaffirms the exclusive Truth of Scriptural Judaism, Jesus declares: "'... You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know; for, Salvation is from the Jews.'" (John 4:22).
Christianity knows God, not only through the Hebrew Bible, but also through the New Testament; and, in cases of conflict between the two Scriptures (either because of Christianity's misunderstanding of Hebrew Scripture or its outright abrogation of Torah law), the New Testament prevails simply because it is deemed by Christianity to be the complete and final Word of God. To the extent that the Christian Bible distorts the Nature, Message and Expectations of God it does not describe the God of Israel but another deity entirely -- and it is this deity that Christianity recognizes and to which Christians pray.
Obviously, we do not accept:
that the New Testament is the final Scripture of the God of Israel; or
that Christianity has superseded Judaism as the Revelation of the God of Israel; or
that the God of Israel impregnated a human female (whether or not a virgin), and did so for the purpose of causing His Offspring to be born as a human being, only to be tortured and murdered, in order to redeem humankind from its collective sins ( -- in that, the practice of human sacrifice, especially to appease a deity, is abhorrent to the God of Israel -- ); or
that, after the death of Jesus, the God of Israel has decreed that our individual sins can be forgiven only by accepting Jesus as our Savior ( -- in that, the God of Israel, before, during and after the time of Jesus, without employing any intermediary, Himself forgives an individual's forgivable sins, but only after that individual has repented, and thereafter modifies his thoughts and behaviors in order to avoid repeating those sins -- ); or
that the God of Israel gave Jesus the Power to abrogate the Divine and unalterable Commandments of the Torah; or
that the God of Israel decreed that we be murdered or otherwise persecuted as punishment for our refusal to accept Jesus as a demigod; or
that the God of Israel instructs us, as proof of our faith, to cast out demons, speak gibberish, handle deadly snakes, ingest poison, and heal the sick without seeking medical intervention; or
that we bear collective and perpetual guilt for the Crime of Deicide ( -- as if it were actually possible to kill the Creator of all Existence -- ),
Consequently, we cannot possibly accept the postulate that the deity depicted in the New Testament and the God of Israel are one and the same -- or that, after so thorough a baptism in the falsehoods of the New Testament, Christians (even those who do not worship Jesus as a god) nevertheless pray to the God of Israel.
It is no different with Islam. Islam posits that the God of Israel -- which it calls Allah -- sent Isa (Jesus) down to Earth as the Prophet of Christianity in order to correct the doctrinal errors of Judaism, and that He, seeing that Christianity had also fallen into false doctrine, thereafter sent His final Prophet, Mohammed ibn Abdullah, in order to transmit God's original and perfect Message to humankind, devoid of the prior errors of both Judaism and Christianity (see Koran, Sura 5 "The Dinner Table"). The repository of this Message, the Koran -- authored by Mohammed ibn Abdullah -- is, by design, the complete and final Scripture of God, thereby superseding, in Revelation, both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible. This is reflected in the Islamic dogma that: "The only true Religion in God's Eyes is Islam. ..." (Koran 3:19). It also explains why the Koran states: "No; Abraham in truth was not a Jew, neither a Christian, but he was a Muslim, and one pure in faith. ..." (Koran 3:67). Since Allah is the God of Creation, it is He Who spoke to our forefather Abraham. Since God's Religion is Islam, it is only Islam that He imparted to Abraham, as a result of which Abraham became the first Muslim. Since Abraham was a Muslim, and since Abraham's Jewish progeny of Seventh Century C.E. Arabia rejected a return to the true and only Religion of God, God's eternal Promises to, and Covenant with, the descendants of Abraham devolved exclusively upon Abraham's Arab progeny (through Abraham's elder son, Ishmael) who accepted Islam.
Like the Christian Bible, the Koran suffers from many misunderstandings and erroneous summarizations of and from the Hebrew Bible. For example, the Koran:
misidentifies Haman, who was chief minister of Persia's Emperor in the Purim story, as being a minister of Egypt's Pharaoh in the Exodus story (see Koran, Sura 28 "The Narratives" at 28:1-42, especially 28:6, 8, 38); and
falsely conflates the two righteous spies (i.e., Joshua and Caleb) who advocated conquering the Land of Israel despite the apparent strength of the Canaanite nations then occupying the Land with Moses and his brother (i.e., Aaron) (see Koran, Sura 5 “The Dinner Table” at 5:20-26, especially 5:23, 25); and
misidentifies Mary, the mother of Jesus, as being the sister of Aaron (i.e., Miriam) (see Koran, Sura 19 "Mary" at 19:16-34, especially 19:28); and
accepts, based upon false Christian dogma (stemming from the mistranslation and misunderstanding of Isaiah 7:14), the virgin birth of Jesus (see Koran, Sura 19 "Mary" at 19:16-34, especially 19:20-22), although it rejects both the divinity and the divine lineage of Jesus (see Koran, Sura 5 "The Dinner Table" at 5:17, 72-75, 116; and see Koran, Sura 9 "The Immunity" at 9:30-32).
Yet, in declaring Jesus to be a revered Prophet of Islam, Mohammed ibn Abdullah inexplicably ignored the fact that Jesus, per the New Testament, had permitted that which Islam -- the true and only Religion of God -- had explicitly prohibited (i.e., Jesus, having “abrogated” the Torah laws of Kashrut, thereby sanctioned the consumption of pig meat, which the Koran explicitly forbids -- see Koran 5:3).
In addition, the Koran, while accepting Abraham's son and heir, Isaac, as a Prophet, nevertheless declares his expelled brother Ishmael to be the greater Prophet and the one through whom God's Eternal Covenant with Abraham was transmitted to the generations; for, according to Islam, Ishmael -- rather than Isaac -- was the son whom God ordered Abraham to sacrifice on Mount Moriah as a test of the Patriarch’s faith. And, consequently, Ishmael was given the high honor of accompanying Abraham to Mecca (located in modern Saudi Arabia) where together they built and dedicated the Kaaba, the holiest shrine in Islam, and where they thereupon implored Allah to create of their descendants a holy nation to whom Allah's Truth would be revealed (see Koran, Sura 2 "The Cow" at 2:127-129). This fanciful tale serves as the basis for the annual Hajj (pilgrimage to the Kaaba) which culminates in the Muslim holiday known as Eid al-Adha (Festival of the Sacrifice).
Moreover, although certain verses of the Koran contain high praise for the Jewish people, such as:
"Children of
"Bear in mind the words of Moses to his
people. He said: 'Remember, my people, the favor which Allah has bestowed upon
you. He has raised up prophets among you, made you into kings, and given to you
that which He has given to no other nation. Enter, my people, the
"Thereafter We said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell securely in the Promised Land, and when the Promise of the Hereafter is near fulfillment, We shall gather you all together.'" -- Koran 17:104,
yet other verses viciously attack the Jewish people, such as:
"O Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians as your friends; they are friends of each other. Whoever of you makes them his friends is one of them! God guides not the people of the Evildoers!" -- Koran 5:51; and
"... [Jews are] those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He has been angry, [consequently] transforming them into apes and pigs, and [into] those who serve the Devil." -- Koran 5:60; and
"You will see many among them [the Jews] competing with each other in sin and wickedness and in practicing that which is unlawful. Evil is what they do. Why do their rabbis and leaders not forbid them to blaspheme and practice that which is unlawful? Evil indeed are their doings. The Jews say, 'Allah's Hand is chained.' May their own hands be chained! May they be cursed for what they say. ..." -- Koran 5:62-64; and
"You will find that the most implacable of men in their hostility to the faithful [followers of Allah] are the Jews and the pagans; and that the nearest in affection to the faithful [followers of Allah] are those who say: 'We are Christians.' ..." -- Koran 5:82; and
"The Jews say, 'Ezra is the Son of God'. The Christians say, 'The Messiah is the Son of God'. That is the utterance of their mouths, conforming with the unbelievers before them. God assail them! How they are perverted!" -- Koran 9:30.
Even worse, the Hadith (Islam's oral tradition which has preserved the extra-Koranic teachings of Mohammed ibn Abdullah), spews forth a cascade of calumnies and incitements against the Jewish people, the most infamous of which is: "The resurrection of the dead will not come until the Muslims will war with the Jews, and the Muslims will kill them; ... the trees and rocks will say, 'O Muslim, O Servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.'" (see Hadith translations of Sahih Bukhari: Volume 4, Book 52, Number 176 as narrated by Abdullah bin Umar, and Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177 as narrated by Abu Huraira).
There is also the well-entrenched Islamic belief that, during the time of God's Judgment upon humankind, Dajjal (the Anti-Christ) will begin to dominate the Earth together with his army of 70,000 Yahud (Jews) until Isa (Jesus) is resurrected and thereafter destroys Dajjal as well as his Jewish minions.
In order to understand this last enigma, namely, the intermingling in the
Koran of philo-Jewish and anti-Jewish declarations, a brief history of Mohammed
ibn Abdullah's rise to power is necessary. When Mohammed ibn Abdullah founded
Islam and first began to compose the Koran, he publicly preached his new
religion in
1. The original Muslim kibla (direction of prayer) was towards
2. Pig meat was prohibited (-- this follows Judaism).
3. The tenth day of the first Muslim lunar month was declared a complete fast day (-- this was in imitation of Yom Kippur, Judaism's fast day, which is the tenth day of the seventh lunar month, being however first lunar month after the turn of the Jewish calendar year).
4. Prayers were required three times a day (-- the same as in Judaism: Maariv, Shacharit and Mincha).
5. The Muslim Sabbath was decreed to be Saturday (-- this was, and is, the day of the Jewish Sabbath).
When the Jews of Arabia (being loyal to the God of Israel and to their
forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) still rejected Islam, Mohammed ibn
Abdullah felt humiliated and took personal affront; and, when he had built a
powerful army, he went to war against them. He first slaughtered the Jews of
However, annihilating the Jews of Arabia was not sufficient for Mohammed ibn Abdullah. In order to remove all former Jewish influences upon Islam he changed the kibla from Jerusalem to Mecca, he converted the complete fast day into a semi-fast month and he moved it from the first to the ninth Muslim lunar month (-- this is known as the Fast of Ramadan), he added two additional times for prayer to the original three times for prayer (making prayer five times a day), and he moved the Muslim Sabbath from Saturday to Friday.
The Koranic passages that are complimentary to Jews were written by Mohammed ibn Abdullah during the period that he was trying to entice the Jews of Arabia to convert, while those which spew hatred of Jews were written by Mohammed ibn Abdullah after he was rebuffed by them.
Obviously, we do not accept:
that the Koran is the final Scripture of the God of Israel; or
that the God of Israel has declared Islam to be His true and only Religion; or
that our forefather Abraham was a Muslim; or
that God's Eternal Covenant (see Gen. 17:19) devolved upon Ishmael rather than upon our forefather Isaac; or
that the God of Israel transformed Jews into apes and pigs and servants of the Devil (or even that there exists such a supernatural creature which vies with God for Supremacy over the Universe); or
that the God of Israel has condemned the Jewish people as Evildoers for their rejection of Islam.
Furthermore, Mohammed ibn Abdullah's hands are red with the blood of Jews. As such, not only do we consider him to be a great Evildoer, but we are required even to curse his name whenever it is uttered. As it says in Bereshit Rabbah 49:1: "Whoever mentions an Evildoer without cursing him misses out on a Torah Commandment: 'The name of the wicked shall rot' [citing Proverbs 10:7]"; and, consequently, it inexorably follows that Mohammed ibn Abdullah can never be considered by the Jewish people to be a Prophet of God. This is because God is pure Goodness. He does not favor or reward those who murder His beloved People. In fact, the Torah explicitly establishes the principle that the Jewish people’s enemies are, by Divine Definition, God's enemies. God initially declared to Abraham that: " 'I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you, I will curse ...' " (Gen. 12:3); and the gentile prophet Balaam, speaking in God’s Name, later confirmed that this Declaration had been made for the benefit of the Jewish people by stating of us: " '... Those who bless you are blessed, and those who curse you are cursed. ' " (Num. 24:9). Subsequently, Moses internalized this principle during the war against Midian when: "HaShem spoke to Moses, saying, 'Take Vengeance for the Children of Israel against the Midianites ...'", but "Moses spoke to the people, saying, '... inflict HaShem's Vengeance against Midian'" (Num. 31:2-3). As Mohammed ibn Abdullah is the enemy of the Jewish people, he is, by Divine Definition, also the enemy of God. Accordingly, the Koran authored by the enemy of God cannot be considered to embody the Word of God, even if that Islamic book did not otherwise contain within it all of the other infirmities discussed above.
Since Muslims pray to a deity revealed through a book which so distorts the Nature, Message and Expectations of God, written by a monster who so mercilessly massacred the People of God, it strains credulity that any Jew could believe that the deity depicted in the Koran and the God of Israel are one and the same -- or that Muslims, by imbibing the heresies of the Koran and praying to its god, are really praying to the God of Israel. Ironically, ever sure of its own false righteousness, Islam also recognizes this Truth: "Say: 'O Unbelievers, I do not worship that which you worship, nor do you worship Him whom I worship. I shall never worship that which you worship, nor will you ever worship Him whom I worship. You shall have your religion, and I shall have my religion.'" (Koran 109:1-6).
Clearly, the Jewish people do not believe either in the god of the New Testament or in the god of the Koran. That being the case, it is ludicrous for us to insist that while we do not believe in their gods, they believe in our God. Unless the Jewish people wish to embrace the gentile nations' distorted conceptions of God (-- the very sin which led to the destruction of the biblical northern kingdom of Israel at the hands of the Assyrian Empire: "The Children of Israel imputed things that were not so to HaShem their God ..." (II Kings 17:9) --), we cannot continue to entertain the erroneous notion that Jews, Christians and Muslims all pray to the same God. For although there is only one God, those who presently pray to ersatz versions of Him are merely engaged in avoda zarah -- like their polytheistic and idol worshipping ancestors before them -- rather than in the worship of the God of Israel. This Truth is reflected in the statement of the Prophet Zechariah, made concerning the aftermath of the future messianic War of Gog and Magog, that: "HaShem will be the King over all of the Earth; on that day HaShem will be One and His Name will be One." (Zechariah 14:9); and in the earlier declaration of the Prophet Isaiah, speaking in God’s Name, that: "I swear by Myself, Righteousness has gone forth from My Mouth, a Word that will not be rescinded: that to Me shall every knee bend and every tongue swear." (Isaiah 45:23).
However, until that Day of Judgment, when the gentile nations, due to their defeat at the hands of the Messiah, are forced to crown the God of Israel as their one and only King, it bears remembering and repeating that the God of Israel -- and only the God of Israel -- is God: "You shall know this Day and take to your heart that HaShem, He is the God -- in Heaven above and on the Earth below -- there is none other." (Deut. 4:39); and: "Thus said HaShem, King of Israel and Its Redeemer -- HaShem, Master of Legions: 'I am the First and I am the Last, and aside from Me there is no God.'" (Isaiah 44:6).
Accordingly, when, in defiance of our Scriptural sources, we continue to flatter the nations by proclaiming that we all pray to the same God, we not only cause them to fall deeper into the abyss of avoda zarah (-- thereby transgressing the Torah Commandment: "... You shall not place a stumbling block before the Blind. ..." (Lev. 19:14) --), but we also render ourselves guilty of a great Chillul HaShem.
© Mark Rosenblit