Tag : Jerusalem

A spe­cial ​“gift” for the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies on occa­sion of Good Fri­day. I wish to show by an analy­sis of Wis­dom Chris­tol­ogy in Matthew’s gospel chap­ter 23, that the evan­ge­list took the dra­mat­ic step of chang­ing Jesus’ meta­phys­i­cal sta­tus from crea­ture to Cre­ator by alter­ing the Q tra­di­tion, and to reflect on the the­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this meta­mor­pho­sis for Chris­tian­i­ty, and where we go from here.

There are those who say that lying and deceiv­ing is at the soul of all crime and that Chris­tian­i­ty epit­o­mizes these traits more than any oth­er faith. As proof of their asser­tion they often quote Paul of Tar­sus, arguably the true founder of Chris­tian­i­ty, who is record­ed to have said, ​“But if through my false­hood God’s truth­ful­ness abounds to his glo­ry, why am I still being con­demned as a sin­ner ? Any why not do evil that good may come ? – as some peo­ple slan­der­ous­ly charge us with say­ing. Their con­dem­na­tion is just.” (Romans 3:7 – 8)

The mis­sion­ar­ies have pub­lished an arti­cle claim­ing that there is no sig­nif­i­cance between the holy city of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) with Islam, while at the same time dis­play­ing their Zion­ist ten­den­cies. We repub­lish an arti­cle from Israeli Watch which rebuts their fatu­ous claims and cements the rela­tion­ship between Islam and Al-Quds.

The most uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized sym­bol of Jerusalem is not a Jew­ish or Chris­t­ian holy place but a Mus­lim one : the Dome of the Rock, or Qub­bat as-Sakhra as it is known in Ara­bic. When peo­ple see its gold­en dome ris­ing above the open expanse of Haram as-Sha­reef, they think of only one place in the world. The Dome of the Rock is undoubt­ed­ly one of the most cel­e­brat­ed and most remark­able mon­u­ments of ear­ly Islam, vis­it­ed every year by thou­sands of pil­grims and tourists. It is Jerusalem’s answer to Paris’ Eif­fel Tow­er, Rome’s St. Peter’s Square, Lon­don’s Big Ben and Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas twin tow­ers ; daz­zling the minds of Mus­lims and non-Mus­lims alike. The Dome of the Rock is Jerusalem.

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.

It is well known that the Gospel of Mark con­tains numer­ous geo­graph­i­cal errors. This is summed up in Küm­mel’s clas­sic, Intro­duc­tion to the New…

In the arti­cle His­tor­i­cal Errors in the Qur’an ? I briefly touched upon the events men­tioned in the Gospel of Matthew sur­round­ing the cru­ci­fix­ion of…

When the Evan­ge­list becomes a Shaikh, the angels become poly­the­ists, wor­ship­ping Adam instead of Allah. When the Evan­ge­list becomes a Shaikh, the Nasikh becomes Man­sukh, the Mut­laq becomes Muqayyad and the ​‘Aamm becomes Makhsus, and vice-ver­sa. Not that it is not hilar­i­ous to read for Evan­ge­lists-turned-Shaikhs. It is at the dis­cov­ery of the lev­el of hor­rif­ic con­fu­sion and plain errors con­tained in the ​“fatawa” of the many Evangelists/​Shaikhs who sprung up in recent years that inten­si­fies one’s amaze­ment and baf­fle­ment, espe­cial­ly not­ing the lev­el of pub­lic­i­ty the writ­ings of the new Shaikhs receive in the west­ern media.

From Muham­mad Asad’s com­men­tary, The Mes­sage of The Qur’an Surah 17 (Al-Isra’), verse 1 reads as : ​“Lim­it­less in His glo­ry is He who trans­port­ed His servant…