Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Islam critiqued searches for the Ishmaelite connection; the Jews removed it?

In answer to the video "Abraham's Only Son- Genesis 22"

The event, as reported in the Bible is one of the the most glaring displays of tribal prejudice by the Bani Israel, who are known for their tribalism, towards their own Israelite brethren and more blatantly against their brethren of Bani Ishmael. The Quran addresses this unjust behavior of theirs after giving a detailed account of the achievements of Ibrahim and Ismail, including their construction of the first Temple of monotheism, the Kaaba
2:140"And who is more unjust than he who conceals a testimony that he has from Allah? And lah is not at all heedless of what you do".
Similarly after mentioning the Safa and the Marwa as a sign and a place of pilgrimage in remembrance of the exact location where Hagar and Ismail were settled and guided to the Zamzam source, the Quran turns again to those of the Jews who conceal the truth 2:159.

The settlement of a place dedicated to propagate the Abrahamic legacy away from the sacred Jewish land, and established by their non-Israelite brethren, undermines the racist ideology prevalent throughout their scripture. This racism, besides having fueled all kinds of intertribal hatred among their own Israelite brethren, did not even spare the pure monotheism which they claimed to uphold, by turning the God of all mankind into an ethnical monolatrous deity.

Before detailing how the Abrahamic connection to Mecca and the Kaaba was distorted, the first thing to address is a recurrent question by Judeo-Christian apologists; how and when did the corrupt version of the patriarchs make it to the written Biblical text?

The simple logical answer is that these corruptions were first transmitted orally, as would any lie be repeated and exaggerated, until the matter was obscured beyond recognition as the generations passed through successive periods of destruction, enslavement, tumult and exile. The introduction of just one of many blatant falsehoods in their scriptures, is revealed by scrutinizing all related signs they could not blot out. These signs most often attest to carelessness in the transmission of religious knowledge, but also many times deliberate distortions fueled by their racial hatred. That disfigured version was eventually put in writing when Genesis was first composed, around the same time different parts of the Torah were written by priests and scribes in the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah during the First Temple period and the Babylonian Exile.

This occured very far removed in time and space, let alone the Persian and Hellenistic cultural environment, and social conditions than the time of Moses, let alone Abraham. Scholars place that first redaction anywhere from the 9th to 6th centuries BCE, most probably the 7th which happens to coincide with the discovery of a scroll which nobody knew what it was until it was ascertained that it was the forgotten Torah 2kings22,23. How uncanny that this unknown document suddenly reappears around the same time the Torah is believed to have been written and compiled. Most of these parts were stitched together by Ezra the Scribe to create a single historic narrative and legal code for the returning exiles. These authors were not writing from historical sources but were reflecting their own ideas, ideologies, cultural background, and rampant prejudices, as well as obviously their historical context.

The Quran however sheds light on the approximate period where the prejudice against Ismail began to grow among the Israelites
2:133-4"were you witnesses when death visited Yaqoub, when he said to his sons: What will you serve after me? They said: We will serve your god and the god of your fathers, Ibrahim and Ismail and Ishaq, one Allah only, and to Him do we submit. This is a people that have passed away; they shall have what they earned and you shall have what you earn, and you shall not be called upon to answer for what they did".
In the HB, this particular section of Jacob's story, his last moments among his family, is known among biblical scholars as one of the most convoluted and problematic accounts of the Torah, betraying the conflation of multiple traditions which the scribes tried harmonizing.  

As the Quranic version makes it clear, up to the time of Jacob and the first few generations that followed, Ismail's rightful place in prophetic history was recognized. What is also interesting here is how the Quran absolves a prophet of God, Jacob, from any type of prejudice, let alone tribal, and shows that his utmost priority in regards to his sons is that they worship the one true, universal God as opposed to the tribal monolatrous Jewish religion later grafted into the religion of Ibrahim, Isaac and Jacob. What is remarkable is the manner in which the Quran, in its usual pattern of employing words with surgical precision, subtly maintains the idea of a universal religion proclaimed by the Israelites' ancestors. When it quotes the prophet Yusuf/Joseph citing his physical relatives Ibrahim, Isaac and Jacob he leaves no ambiguity as regards the universality of the religion of these noble figures. He states that the same uprightness God favored him and his ancestors with, was equally bestowed on all of mankind
12:38"And I follow the religion of my fathers, Ibrahim and Ishaq and Yaqoub; it beseems us not that we should associate aught with Allah; this is by Allah's grace upon us AND ON MANKIND, but most people do not give thanks"

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