The Split between Islam and Judaism

 made

The conflict between Jews and Arabs
started in Biblical times

Arabs and the Israelis have been fighting since time immemorial over that tiny plot of land called Israel. Their battle is not one of flesh and blood, but of spiritual things. The Bible states that the last great battle will pit Israel against the rest of the Middle East and its allies. How did it all begin and why have they remained mortal enemies for thousands of years?

 original split between Islam and Judaism. One might figure (as Islam didn’t come into existence until the sixth century) that this split would have happened sometime after that. Amazingly enough, however, the official Muslim doctrine traces the split between Islam and Judaism to a couple thousand years before Islam existed.

The official story is that, up to a point, Islam and Judaism were the same religion. Theologically, they were the same people worshiping the same god up to the point where Abraham enters the picture.

For those of you who are anxiously looking to your bible to figure out where that is, you will find that the split happened in Genesis. [The book of the bible, not the “Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”‘70s band.]

The story goes like this:



It is well known to Muslims, Christians and Jews that Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his son and he was willing to do so but God gave him a sheep to sacrifice instead of his cherished progeny. So far, everybody agrees. However, Jews and Christians say that the sacrificed was Isaac -"Abraham's only son", whereas according to the Islamic tradition the sacrificed is Ishmael^(P). The opposition between the two versions has not bothered any side that much because in the common mind "what we think is certainly right and those who think differently are necessarily wrong". Recently, we came across an article  by the Christian missionaries claiming that according to the Islamic sources themselves the sacrificed was Isaac^(P) (i.e., the Judeo-Christian version of the story)

Abraham and his wife Sarah panicking about not having an heir when they were old, so they decided (at the urging of Sarah) to take matters into their own hands and have Abraham sleep with his wife's pagan/Egyptian servant Hagar. The result of that union was a son they named Ishmael.

In Genesis 16:13-16 the Angel of the YHWH told Hagar (who resented the fact she had conceived) that her son Ishmael would live and end up being "...a wild donkey of a man, His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand will be against him; and he will live to the east of all his brothers."

Ishmael - the son of the Egyptian slave woman - is the father of the Arab nations, most of whom today are Muslim....

When Abraham (then still known as Avram before God changed His Name) was 99 years old, YHWH appeared and made a covenant with him, promising to make Avraham the father of many nations - which meant at some point he would have another heir and that that other heir, and not Ishmael, would be the one with whom YHWH would make his next covenant:

Abraham supposedly had two sons, Ismail and Isaac that he loved very much. So, of course, God/Yahweh/Allah told Abraham that he should kill his most beloved son by traipsing him all the way up Mount Moriah, strapping him to an altar, and then gutting and burning him. (Note: There’s no real reason that you needed to know the name of the mountain, but it sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings, so I thought I would throw it in.)

Anyway…

The Christians and the Jews say it was Isaac who was to be sacrificed. The Muslims believe it was Ismail. In the bible, Genesis 22 says it was Isaac who was supposed to be filleted. The Quran never mentions which son it was. Long story short: The sacrifice was scrapped at the last second, and God told Abraham to sacrifice a goat instead. We will ignore for the moment how ridiculously unfair these bible stories are for the goat population. The important part is that this is where the faiths of Judaism and Islam supposedly diverged.

Jews believe that, after killing a rather confused and bewildered ram, Isaac and Abraham went off to found the nation of Israel.

Muslims believe that, after killing the rather confused and bewildered ram, Abraham and Ismail went off to modern day Saudi Arabia, where they remade the Kabah, the holiest artifact in Islam. They also believe that Ismail founded the Arab race, and that their prophet, Mohamed, was a descendant of Ismail. To the Muslims, this is the real start of their religion as a separate entity from the Jews.

The Jews kinda look at this as a fable. As far as they are concerned, Ismail was Isaac’s brother and they really have no idea what he did after Genesis 22. The one thing they believe he did not do, however, was take off to Saudi Arabia with Abraham. They know this because their stories tell tales of Abraham after the whole roast-a-goat episode on the mountain.

Me? I think the split happened far, far later. About the time when Mohammed was trying to take Mecca from the polytheists when he was just starting out. Back thenm the Jews and Muslims were fighting beside each other as monotheists against the evil polytheists who lived in Mecca.

Just before the final battle a group of Jews (who figured Mohamed was going to lose) secretly made plans to turn against Mohamed and side with his enemies. If it had worked, it would have divided Mohamed army at the height of battle, opening his ranks to Meccan offense.

It never happened.

Mohamed caught wind of the plan and, instead of letting on that he knew about it, he spread rumors through Medina that the Meccans were going to betray the Jews. He then had spies spread rumors through Mecca that the Jews were going to betray the Meccans.

By the time the battle happened, Mohamed had everybody so damn confused that they didn’t know what to do. Mohamed won the battle. As a special thank-you to the Jews for their disloyalty, he had the men beheaded and the women and children sold into slavery.

Seem to me that this is a far, far better guess at where the disparity between the faiths really started. I mean, let’s face it, beheading all the men and selling the women into slavery is slightly more antagonistic than trying to figure out which brother was supposed to be sacrificed on Mount Moriah.

Conflict between the two sons of Abraham began from the very start. Genesis 21:9 says the conflict began just after Isaac was weaned: "Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking."

Galatians 4 tells us that Ishmael had been "born according to the flesh" while Isaac had been "born according to the promise". Isaac replaced Ishmael as the favored son and heir. This, of course, made Ishmael jealous and bitter. As a result, he mocked and disdained his half-brother. Eventually the situation became so intolerable that Abraham's wife Sarah demanded that Ishmael and his Egyptian concubine mother, Hagar, be expelled permanently from Abraham's family.

But YHWH loved Hagar and her son, and had mercy upon them. He promised Hagar that her son would beget twelve princes who would become a great nation. Ishmael then went to live in the wilderness region of Hejaz in what became known as the Arabian Peninsula. He indeed had twelve patriarchal sons who became associated with the peoples known as Midianites, Edomites, Egyptians and Assyrians. The Bible and Islamic tradition both agree that Ishmael became the leader of all the great desert peoples of the Middle East.

This jealousy and resentment between Sarah and Hagar and their sons Isaac and Ishmael created an unparalleled hate which has set off wars and atrocities for four thousand years. It was the title deed to the land of Israel, which God promised to Abraham's lineage, that has been the source of the friction between the Jews and the Arabs right up to the present day.

Muslims believe the Jews changed and distorted the Bible in order to establish themselves as the heirs of Abraham's Covenant blessings. However, they fail to explain how the New Testament clearly teaches that the Covenant was made with Isaac and his descendants.

According to Islamic tradition, Abraham had eight sons rather than two who were reared in Mecca, not Hebron. They insist it was Ishmael, not Isaac, whom Abraham was about to sacrifice on Mount Moriah when an angel stopped him. According to the Koran, the Abrahamic covenant, with its promises - including the title deed to the land of Israel - was passed down to the Arabs through Ishmael, rather than to the Jews through Isaac.

If one believes that the Old and New Testaments were written under the inspiration of the Spirit of YHWH, then there is no question that Israel is the Promised Land of the Jews. God's words to Abraham in Genesis are some 2,500 years older than the creation of Islam (whose "prophet" Mohammed was a murdering, thieving pedophile who "married" a seven year old child - but that's another story).

The bottom line is, YHWH fulfilled His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael. And He is about to use the consequential warfare between the two brothers in order to bring about His "end time" scenario....