Tag : Abra­ham­ic religions

It has become a habit for some to pub­lish respons­es to any paper deal­ing with the issue of Islam, its truth­ful­ness and the false­hood of oth­er reli­gions. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true of the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies as such peo­ple do not care whether they pro­vide an effi­cient respons­es or not ; all they care about is to respond, regard­less of the out­come. Is this reac­tion an idi­ot­ic one ? Well, we can­not claim that it is a stu­pid strat­e­gy ; because it is always use­ful to show your fol­low­ers that you are able to respond and speak loud­ly, drown­ing oth­er voic­es. The psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tor is after all always impor­tant here. But what is glar­ing indeed are the con­tent of such ​“respons­es” because the writer tries to show that he is com­pe­tent in the field when in actu­al fact he is total­ly unqualified.

Answer­ing Islam has post­ed an ear­ly reac­tion in objec­tion to our pub­lish­ing of Han Kung on the Prophet Muham­mad (P). There are sev­er­al issues in this reac­tion by Jochen Katz, the de fac­to dic­ta­tor of Answer­ing Islam, that needs to be cor­rect­ed. We shall briefly respond to each of the allegations.

Dur­ing the Mi’raj, the Prophet(P) is report­ed to have received from God the com­mand of five dai­ly prayers (salah) that all Mus­lims must per­form. Upon his return to Mec­ca, the Prophet insti­tut­ed these prayers. It is sig­nif­i­cant to note that he made Jerusalem the direc­tion (al-Qiblah) which Mus­lims must face while doing their prayers (nar­rat­ed by al-Bukhari, 41 and by Mus­lim, 525). Jerusalem is thus called Ula al-Qiblatain (the first qiblah). The Prophet (P) and the ear­ly com­mu­ni­ty of Islam wor­shipped towards the direc­tion of Jerusalem dur­ing their stay in Mec­ca. After the Hijra’ (migra­tion), Mus­lims in Med­i­na also con­tin­ued to pray fac­ing Jerusalem for almost sev­en­teen months until God com­mand­ed the Mus­lims to change their direc­tion of prayer from Jerusalem to Mec­ca (Qur’an 2:142 – 150). These estab­lished facts clear­ly sig­ni­fies the impor­tance of Jerusalem in Islam.

The sto­ry of Prophet Ibrahim’s migra­tion from Baby­lo­nia to Syr­ia-Pales­tine (Kan’an), then to Egypt, then his return to Pales­tine and sub­se­quent­ly his com­ing with his wife Hajar and son Isma’il to Mak­ka is well-known. These epoch-mak­ing trav­els took place rough­ly at the begin­ning of the sec­ond mil­len­ni­um B.C. Ibrahim had at first called his own peo­ple to aban­don the wor­ship of idols and oth­er objects like the heav­en­ly bod­ies and to wor­ship the One Only God. They, how­ev­er, instead of respond­ing to his call, put him to var­i­ous vex­a­tions and ulti­mate­ly to the test of fire from which God pro­tect­ed and saved him. Only his wife Sarah and nephew Lot believed and accept­ed his call. Under God’s direc­tive Ibrahim, accom­pa­nied by Sarah and Lot first migrat­ed to Haran (in Syr­ia) and then on to Kan’an (Pales­tine). At both the places he preached God’s mes­sage and called the peo­ple to wor­ship Him alone. 

Asif Iqbal presents a com­men­tary of an extract from the Chris­t­ian his­to­ri­an Theo­phanes’ account of a group of Jews accept­ing the Prophet Muham­mad as their await­ed Messiah.