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 / / /

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

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?

Extremist

I read about a bunch of teachers from Turkey who are planing to go to Afghanistan: The mission: To make Afghans more liberal in their religious out look. We know the Turks are liberal, as far as their practice of Islam goes. And the Afghans are the opposite. It was this man Kamal al Turturk
who changed Turkey what it is today. But why are the Afghan so different. I have a theory to explain this. I want to describe how a religious dogma changes after many generation

Generation One: You are encouraged to keep a beard
Generation Two: You should keep a beard
Generation Three: You must keep a beard
Generation Four: If you don't have a beard, you are a bad Muslim
Generation Five: We are putting you in jail because you don't keep a beard.

Men of religions make fatwas based on previous fatwas Those Turks could consider themselves lucky if they didn't get a kick in the butt by the Afghans

For Aida

Awareness of Allah comes at different level to different people. This awareness level can be as low as 2%. I know this mathematical expression is difficult to quantify. Its validity therefore is questionable. May be it would be easier to grasp if we use a different method of assessment. Lets say,on a scale of 1 to 10, a person's awareness level is at 1.5 and this is low. How do you assess you awareness level then?

A person may be aware of Allah all the time but that does not mean his awareness level is at the top. Higher awareness is determined by two factors:

First the duration of awareness whether it is all the time or once in a while.
The intensity of awareness in your conciousness.

High awareness is a beautiful experience because you can feel the presence of Allah. I would like to relate an incident that happened many years ago while I was driving from Dungun to Kuala Terengganu on one moonlit night. It was at about 1.30. I started saying Subhanallah the way Raihan did. Then I became aware of God's presence. Everything turned beautiful. It was as if I was driving in a place I had never been before in spite of the fact that I have been traveling along that road for years and years.

It is not difficult to achieve high awareness because Allah says He would help anybody achieve this awareness of Him, if he or she wants it. All that one has to do is to make a statement before
God that he/she wants this awareness installed into his conciousness.

Allah is real and it is as real as Petronas Twin Towers
Allah is all seeing because He says so. Would you doubt His words? It is like an orbiting sattelite
taking photographs of everything in its path. Allah hears. He hears your prayer and your supplications. He hears the words you utter and the words that you do not utter.He says so. Doubt not His words

Allah is benevolent (caring) He wants everybody to get to heaven. This is the impression I get after reading the Quraan. But one of course has to stick to the rules He prescribed

Many of the blunders I did in my younger days were caused by this absence of this conciousness
of Allah.

About Me

I was born in the midst of the Second World War, in a small village, 12 km from Kuala Terengganu. The first ten years of my care free life was spent in the rustic environments of padi fields, water buffaloes , fighting fish and durian plantation. However with the untimely demise of my parents, I was taken to Pahang to be brought up by an uncle there in an alien environment - a town- so unlike the village I was used to. It was a novelty staying in a house with piped water, electricity and even a telephone!

I completed primary education in Pahang, that was in 1956 and in the following year - the merdeka year- I found myself back in Terengganu, not back to my village though, but to the Sultan Sulaiman School Hostel in Batu Buruk. I was there for five years and after completing Form Five, I joined Teacher Training Program in Kelantan and worked there until 1966. In January of the following year, I got a posting to Terengganu, and while serving as a teacher, I tried my best to get a university degree because so many of my former class mates, who were smarter than me, have graduated then. My efforts finally paid off because a few years later the government offered me scholarships to study overseas, first in New Zealand later in United States. With formal qualifications, I was able to get jobs in MRSM and later in KUSZA which became a university after I left the place. All those sojourns in foreign lands have given me a new perspective of life and a wider field of vision one needs to look at the world

I got married in 1969- almost forty years today, and have six grown up children, most of them have traveled abroad either to study or to work.

Now I have retired and pass the time by writing about the old days. I also have a passion for religions