Monday, June 30, 2008

Muhammad in the Bible

In Duetronomy 18:18 God says to Moses
I will raise up for them a prophet like you among your brethren and will put words in
his mouth

Two prophets did come after Moses- Jesus (24) and Muhammad (25) The description in Duetronomy 18:18 fits Muhammad more than it fits Jesus

Descriptions Moses Jesus Muhammad
Like Moses
natural birth / X /
married with family / X /
natural death / X /
leaders of people / X /
Led people in exodus / X /
Brethren / / /
put words in their mouths / / /

Sunday, June 29, 2008

The Christians, the Jews and the Muslims

I wish that the Christians and the Jews realize that Muslims were their cousins because all of them were descendants of the patriarch Abraham. His two sons, Isaac started the Israelite line that produced Moses and Jesus. Abraham's eldest son, Ishmael, started the Ishmaelite line that produced Muhammad.Somewhere along the way,the followers of Moses and Jesus abandoned Islam to found Judaism and Christianity.Muhammad then took over the job of spreading Islam that Abraham started nearly 4000 years ago.The Christian,the Jews and the Muslim are adamant in their religious stand and refuse to budge.Prejudice sets in among the three religions and these prejudice snowballs with each passing day.This is the root cause of all the troubles in the world today.On one side we have the Christians and the Jews and on the other side,Muslim.These feuding religions should look into their common origin.Their holy books contain a lot of things in common that one imagines For instance.all express their dismay over the conduct of the Israelites

Saturday, June 28, 2008

What the Bible contains

I have always been curious about what the Bible says. So early this year I asked Mona to get a copy of it in Kuala Lumpur. I managed to skim through it and based on the results of my skimming, I think I could divide the contents into 5 categories:

1. Words of God
2. Words of prophets of Bani Israel recognized by Islam such as Abraham Isaac, Ishmael,
Moses, Jesus, David etc.
3. Words of Apostles not recognized by Islam such as Paul, Mark, Mathew etc.
4. Words of historians and biographers
5. Words of fiction writers who tried to make biblical stories more interesting such as Adam
hearing the foot steps of God in the garden. The bible also contains such ungodly stories
of sex and incest committed by prophets

Unlike Christians, Muslim put their books under separate covers. Words of God are recorded in the Quraan while words of the prophets, in Hadith

I will come back to this topic later

The Dead Sea Scroll

I first heard of the Dead Sea Scroll from an article in the Readers' Digest which I read more than 25 years ago. The scroll was believed to be a part of the old testament written in a language long dead but nevertheless still decipherable. One of the deciphered parts, goes something like this: "Perform your prayers and pay your dues". Incidentally this same line is also found in the Quraan. By no mean this is the only similarity; I discovered many other similarities as well. I am giving two examples below:

1. Christians are required to remove their foot ware when entering a place of worship just as Muslims do when entering a mosque.

2. Muslims have to do a ritual cleansing (wuduk) before performing a prayer and Christians are required to do the same.

I don't know what has happened to the rest of the Dead Sea Scroll. I learn that they are kept in Tel Aviv and New York. I wonder why their contents are not made public. Are they afraid of what the scroll might expose?