The Tripod - Editor
Issue: 4/20/04

Time for Moslems to Find Peace
By Michael Schub

The sainted Pope Paul II said that, for all Christians, "the Jews are our older brothers." This statement made dialogue between the two groups much more productive and fraternal.

We are still waiting for a prominent Muslim leader to declare that "the Christians and the Jews are our older brothers," a statement which would do much to heal deep rifts among the three Abrahamic faiths.

There are historical reasons for this. Marcion, the cleric who wanted to abandon the Hebrew Scriptures ("the Old Testament") in order to have the New Testament alone comprise the Christian Bible, was declared a heretic (and excommunicated in 144 A.D.) by the Church Fathers. They saw the New Testament (or "New Covenant") firmly based upon its Hebrew foundations: the Gospels of Matthew and Luke begin with Jesus' genealogy going back to Abraham or Adam, all four Gospels are replete with O.T. quotations, especially from the Prophets, as "proof texts," and Jesus came to remove not "one jot or one tittle" from the Law or "Torah" (Matthew 5:18).

The Islamic doctrine, however, is that the Jews and the Christians once did have perfect Scriptures given by God, but they had "corrupted" (Arabic: taHriif) them. Thus the Qur'an was revealed to correct, abrogate, and supercede the previous scriptures with the truth: that Mohammad's coming was predicted in the Bible, foods prohibited in the Hebrew Scriptures other than pork were permissible to eat, and Jesus was never crucified, much less resurrected (Qur'an 4.156-8); etc.

Thus any continuity or historicity shared with the other two Abrahamic faiths (which is obvious if one glances at the Qur'an's narratives about Adam, Noah, Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh, King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, Isaiah, Mary, Jesus, Zacharia, etc.), is denied as if somewhere along the line a historic Islamic "Marcion" severed all connections between Islam and historical reality.

We should all be alarmed that the eight captured British terrorists who planned major havoc there last week were not involved in Al Qaeda - they were all native-born Muslims.

Only when moderate and/or secular Muslims succeed in dispelling this Marcionic stance from its established position as an acceptable Islamic and Islamist (fundamental and militant Islamic) heresy will it be possible for Muslims to lift the curtain of insufferable backwardness and bottomless despair from the 55 benighted countries comprising the Abode of Islam.