The Harvard Crimson reports on Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s DNA genealogy project that will be featured on a PBS series:
While working on the program, Gates learned that television personality and cardiothoracic surgeon Mehmet C. Oz ’82, who is Muslim, and Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony-award winning director Michael I. Nichols, who is Jewish, have a common ancestor.
“It’s sort of like the biblical story of Abraham,” said Gates, referencing the father of the monotheistic faiths and his two sons—Isaac, the founder of Judaism, and Ishmael, the founder of Islam.
Gates described this discovery as emblematic of the purpose of the project.
Writes my Muslim tipster: The vast differences posited between Muslims and Jews always annoyed me. My parents did almost keep a kosher kitchen. We loved books. In a strange rite derived I believe from Indian Muslim tradition, we were not allowed to step on a piece of paper or a book. It was considered blasphemous. It was described as stepping on the back of our mother. Today many Muslims and Jews argue for vast differences between the two on religio-political ideological grounds. Maybe one day Moshe and Mohammad can argue over who has the best hummus or how the semitic cousins have so much in common.
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The similarities between Jewish and Moslem practices have been noted by many. A few years back John Stewart showed videos of Jewish and Moslem services back to back — it was downright eery the similarities, at least at the level of the intonation of the chants. Also both the fundamentalist Moslems and orthodox Jews have more in common with each other than they do with their secular breathen on things like dietary issues, the role of woman and homosexuality.
It seems a secular Israeli should really worry about the peaceful one state solution — should it come to pass the religious Moslems and Jews would likely enter into a political coalition that would be a majority. Not a world I would like to live in but it sounds like a world definitely superior to the one that is there now. Especially for the US, no need for us to go to war against 1 billion Moslems to protect Israel.
“Isaac, the founder of Judaism, and Ishmael, the founder of Islam.”
This is not accurate; rather it is a case of people projecting the ethnocentric side of their Jewish faith on others to create a false dichotomy. You could argue that Isaac is the granddaddy of the Hebrews, and Ishmael of the Arabs, but in Islam ethnicity is irrelevant and the religion encompasses and embraces both Isaac and Ishmael. Abraham, Moses, Jesus are all considered fully “muslim” even though they are not descended from Ishmael.
I’ve never had a problem considering Islam as the culmination of the Jewish tradition; indeed all Muslims are taught that Islam “is not a new religion” but a summing up and completion of “what has come before”. My great-grandfather was named “Israel”, and I think it’s very sad that the usurpation of this name by very secular Zionists has led to a decline of such touching reminders of our commonality; I’ll bet few Muslims choose to name their children as such today.
Sorry if I’m busting up a kumbaya moment, but…
If one accepts both Islam and Judaism as God given religions the idea of Islam being the “culmination” of Judaism might sound to you like a compliment. But if one accepts both Islam and Judaism as man made religions this “culmination” idea becomes rather insulting. My religion is the completion of your incomplete religion. How does that sound?
What if I started a new religion called Herschelism and then told you that Mohammed was also a Herschelist and my religion is the culmination and completion of all that Mohammed left incomplete? How do you think that would go over with the Islamic billion? Not too well, I think.
Why would someone who considered the religions man-made – - i.e. essentially a non-believer – - be insulted by the culmination idea. I could understand a devout Jew or Christian who believes his faith is divine and complete and that no future prophets are expected to be insulted.
The fact is that Jews are free to ignore the subsequent Christianity as Christians do Islam. And Muslims, in general, do the Ahmadis or Bahaiis. And the Islamic message as others point out, is not much different from Judaism – monotheism, a long line of prophets, etc etc. The stories are so similar that Muhammad is accused of plagiarizing the prior faiths.
On a side note, I have always felt that adherence to a particular faith essentially is an act of proclaiming other faiths untrue. I mean if all paths lead to God, why choose any in particular over another?
Ahmed: Why would someone who considered the religions man-made – – i.e. essentially a non-believer – – be insulted by the culmination idea.
Good point, but there’s more to it than that. Unlike Catholicism, Islam never needed a “Vatican II”, because it always respected the Jewish and Christian paths to God, although naturally claiming it’s own superiority (if it didn’t, it would of course serve no purpose – might as well be Jewish or Christian). Islam never claimed to be the “New Israel”, or the only path to salvation. As such, there is no resentment in Jewish tradition toward Islam or its prophet, and the similarities are recognised and appreciated. Despite the 20th -century Jewish-Islamic rift, I was raised on stories of Bustenai (Jewish secretary to Mohammed), and taught in my religious studies that Islam is a holy faith, in fact the best possible faith for someone not born a Jew (not in the sense of “the best they can do”, but conversion to Judaism is considered unnecessary for doing “God’s will” or attaining salvation, in Rabbinic Judaism).
I once saw an interview on Israeli TV with an Orthodox Jewish professor (expert on mediaeval philosophy), who described himself as both a Jew and a Muslim, inasmuch as he submitted himself to God – the essence of Islam.
WJ – It’s not about “kumbaya”. There is an undeniable historical, philosophical, social, cultural and theological affinity between Judaism and Islam. Don’t forget that without the influence of Spanish and Provençal Jewish scholars, philosophers, linguists and halakhists of Arab culture, even Ashkenazi Judaism would have developed very differently. The influence of Judaism on Islam is obvious.
One more linguistic point. Modern Hebrew would be utterly inconceivable without the work of mediaeval Hebrew grammarians such as Ibn Janah, Kimhi, Ibn Labrat and others, whose work was heavily based on, even copied in many instances from Arabic grammar. Even Jewish exegesis, particularly the “peshat” school (very notably in the work of Ibn Ezra) was heavily influenced by Koranic studies.
” The influence of Judaism on Islam is obvious”
And vice-versa. Saadia’s Jewish philosophical theology, and that of many of his successors, was inspired by the Kalam movement in Islamic theology.
And vice-versa.
Of course. The influence of Islam on Judaism was the subject of both of my comments. I mentioned philosophy only briefly, but the Islamic influence on Jewish (and Christian) religious philosophy is immense.
Ahmed,
You should read about the treatment of Bahais by Muslims. Its not that pretty.
Witty,
You should read about the treatment of Palestinians by Zionists. Its not that pretty.
You should read about the treatment of Bahais by Muslims.
Which Muslim group are you talking about? You cannot lump all the different Muslim denominations into one group and make a soaring sweeping statement like that, because it’s inaccurate. Since Muslims represent almost 25% of the world’s population, your statement is even more ludicrous.
It’s like lumping Catholics, snake-waving Pentacostals, Methodists, Anglicans, Dispensationalists, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, etc, into one pot and saying Christians do X.
You should have read my comment more carefully, there is a reason I added “in general” in there. I know how Bahais have been treated in Iran. I wish you could open your eyes to how other minorities are faring.
Thanks for the info Shmuel about medieval rabbinic attitudes to Islam, I had no idea. I know that many Muslims cherished the close ties and talk about Maimonides and others glowingly. And according to the Quran, “true believers” of Judaism and Christianity are considered pious and heaven-bound.
Not exactly:
http://www.shadhiliteachings.com/tariq/?act=article&id=29
Muslims dont need to believe in the validity of other religious traditions in order to respect them.
wonderingjew:
“But if one accepts both Islam and Judaism as man made religions this “culmination” idea becomes rather insulting. My religion is the completion of your incomplete religion.”
If you accept both Islam and Judaism as man-made, you are in insulting both Islam and Judaism, denying them their ethical foundation and reducing Judaism to a matter of baseless identity politics — crude tribalism. That’s exactly what’s gone wrong; Zionism elevates Nationalism into an idol/false god.
From the Islamic viewpoint, Judaism was wholly sufficient from the time of its inception. Abraham, peace and blessings upon him, was a fully complete Monotheist, as was Moses. The scope of Moses’ prophethood was the Hebrew people, not humanity as a whole, which was appropriate for its time. It is not insulting to say that or to acknowledge that Judaism doesn’t really address the whole of humanity. The coming of Muhammad marks the universalization of the Abrahamic message to humanity as a whole. You could say Islam is Universalized Judaism; in fact, many medieval rabbis saw Islam in a similar manner, as “Judaism for the non-Hebrews”. Thanks to Islam, the Hebrew prophets (amongst many others, as ‘every nation has been sent a guide’) are honoured from Mali to Indonesia.
You can hear a bit more on this from Marc Abdallah Schleifer, a noted American Muslim journalist of Jewish stock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS8URMqFHKY
You misrepresent Judaism and you misrepresent Islam.
Enlighten us then.
Judaism contains dual themes of protection of the nation/people and obligation of the people to serve humanity and maintain high ethical standards and universal compassion.
The protection of the nation then is a means to an end, that has been often confused to be a primary end.
Islam similarly distinguishes between “us” and “them”, and periodically willingly harms, harrasses, misinterprets others, to maintain that division. Its a tribe based on different themes, but tribal nevertheless.
Israel (the people) shares a tribal approach with native Americans in that a Lakota does not stop being a Lakota if he joins the mainstream, assimilates, even if he/she rejects all of the Lakota lifeways. In worlds in which being native depends on continual residence within a particular land base, many American Indians wouldn’t pass the “Palestinian” test of permanent and continual residence. Some American Indians settled, some migrated.
As Jews maintained their/our peoplehood over extended period.
I had been an adherent of Ananda Marga for twenty five years, similarly described itself as “not religious, but universalistic” and similarly periodically thought in some terms of “us” and “them”. (Margiis and non-Margiis). I never heard of anyone in Ananda Marga undetaking random violence. There was some violence against Indian officials when the founder was in jail for six years during the Indira Gandhi martial law period.
“We are not a religion, we are spiritual”. “We are not blinded by our association. Our eyes are wide open. We’ve cut through prejudice.”
Lakotas are a race. Israelis are not.
How could Judaism have “protection of the nation/people” if Israel did not exist until 1948? What nation was Judaism protecting before then, and why do some ultra-Orthodox Jews object to this statement vehemently and on religious grounds?
Neturei Karta consider the Jewish people to be a people (am Yisroel). They are opposed to asserting protection of the people because they believe that God wills the Jewish people to be subservient until the Messiah comes.
RE: “Islam similarly distinguishes between “us” and “them”, and periodically willingly harms, harrasses, misinterprets others, to maintain that division. Its a tribe based on different themes, but tribal nevertheless.”
Substitute Judaism for Islam.
What do you get?
Is either American?
And the fact is that Islam is emphatically not tribal. There are 1.2 billion Muslims who share the same faith but never claim to be one racial or ethnic group. There is no “Muslim” state that transcends its regional identity, whether Indonesian or Pakistani or Iranian. None offer any Muslim anywhere automatic citizenship. You cannot inherent your Muslimness from your mother.
Hey, Witty likes this blood tie of his mother–it makes him feel comfortable.
He should get a Nazi silver cross, Die Deutsche Mutter. A gold one?
“Islam similarly distinguishes between “us” and “them”, and periodically willingly harms, harrasses, misinterprets others, to maintain that division. Its a tribe based on different themes, but tribal nevertheless.”
Evidence please? Scholarly/historical/textual evidence, I mean, not Fox News clips of neo-Marxist Muslim revolutionaries doing stupid things.
Can anyone say what “a people” and “a nation” mean in this context?
What are the defining features?
Well, you would need to prove your claims, wouldnt you.?
WJ, with all due respect, I could turn around and say that I find Judiasm a deeply offensive religion because it essentially asks us to believe that an anthropormphic god decided to withold salvation from all of humanity save this one little tribe in the Middle East that disrespected said diety again and again and had to be sent prophets again and again because they kept on screwing up, only to fast foreward to the modern era where one finds that many (if not most) Jews are secular if not downright atheistic.
i could also say that the Judiasm is a troubling ideology because, well, what other ideology believes in a “chosen race”, nationalism, the slave mentality of resentment, and a fervent desire for territorial aqcusition? Hers a hint: It was started by a little Austrian corpral.
But of course, I am more responsible than to say such things.
I would much rather have a discussion on how our traditions can contribute to humanity in an increasingly secularistic and materilistic world.
Olive, with all due respect, don’t say “with all due respect” and then go on a hateful tirade, which you then proceed to fake disown by saying you are more responsible than that.
The fact is that Judaism whether its origins are considered to be 6th century B.C. or 11th Century B.C. predates Islam by somewhere between a thousand and 1600 years. To expect an 11th century B.C. religion to embrace the universalism that a 7th Century C.E. religion is capable of is to engage in a form of anachronistic thinking, which demonstrates a shallow mind.
The antiquity of the Judaic religion is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Judaism can rightfully claim to be the mother of both Christianity and Islam and is inferior in its tribal emphasis and too much of the content of its Mosaic law (and the behavior of Joshua’s army), which can be attributed to its environment of antiquity.
I am not particularly pleased or enamored by the “chosen people” doctrine of Judaism. If I were building a religion from scratch I would not include that doctrine. Most people do not choose their religion any more than they choose their parents. Religion to a very large degree is a matter of habit and loyalty. I do not think that tossing away Judaism is a thoughtful thing to do, no matter what you think of the “chosen people” doctrine.
Olive, if you are in fact a follower of Islam, you are insulting the Prophet Mohammed by speaking poorly of the prophecy of Moses, for which Mohammed had nothing but good things to say.
I understand why you feel so free and easy to condemn the Jewish people given the history of the last sixty-two years in I/P.
I am not negating the possibility of making peace between the Jewish people and the Palestinian people or between the observers of the Jewish religion and observers of the Islamic religion. There is no question that the belief in one God is a particular point of commonality of the two religions and for a Jew to whom the Shma, “Hear o’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” is the primary “prayer” or “dogma” and the words to be uttered when threatened with death by those attempting to extinguish the people or attempting to convert the people, this monotheistic belief is a good building block for common interests and a common future.
Too much of the rhetoric heard these days is that the Jewish religion is corrupted and the Islamic religion is pure. It was certainly that type of rhetoric that I was reacting to.
Also: Muslims claim Moses and David amongst their prophets or admired, but Muslims do not know what is written in Moses’s book or in David’s Psalms, so their claim of respect for Moses and David seem to be very thin indeed. (as if I said I respected Shakespeare and had only seen “West Side Story”.)
I am willing to engage in discussion of how the Jewish tradition and the Islamic tradition can work towards a better future.
Wj, the reason that I went on my fake “hateful tirad” is to show you how unhelpful it is to decree that you find X religion “insulting”, as you have claimed about Islam. It seems this exercise was lost on you.
With that said, I think you have made some mistakes about orthodox Islamic beliefs. We believe that the only fully preserved divine scripture today is the Qur’an, that previously divine scripture have either been lost or grossly tampered with (many Jewish and Christian biblical scholars also believe this) , and we judge the accuracy of their remnants by measuring them againts the Quran and example of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of God be upon him.) Thus, Muslims today do not see the Tanakh or New Testament as authortative, even if those books are ascribed to Moses, David, Jesus, or any other of the 25 Prophets that Muslims are obliged to believe in.
We don’t respect David and Moses because we say that we read the books that they allegedly wrote. We respect them because Muhammad (peace and blessings of God be upon him) told us to respect them.
This is not “rhetoric .” This is mainstream Islamic theology and if Christians and Jews insist on asking Muslims “What does Islam say about Christians and Jews”, were not going to water down the answer.
Like I said, my previous “tirad” was only written to show you that to claim any religious tradition “insulting” is not helpful because people can easily turn the tables and do the same to your tradition. I think I was partly succesful because I seemed to have touched a nerve with you. But my intention was not to offend for the sake of offending , and if I have offended you, I apologize.
Physorg reports on a Middle Eastern marker found in Thomas Jefferson’s DNA, possibly Phoenician, however “The US media has taken up a different theory, leading to the New York Times headline, ‘Jefferson – the first Jewish president?”:
Now, new techniques have been brought to bear on Jefferson’s Y chromosome, in a study reported in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The presidential chromosome turns out to belong to a rare class called ‘K2’, which is found at its highest frequency in the Middle East and Eastern Africa, including Oman, Somalia and Iraq. Its closest match was in a man from Egypt. Could this mean that the President had recent ancestry in the Middle East? A careful survey revealed a few K2 chromosomes in France, Spain and England. Together, the K2s form a diverse group that may, in fact, have been in western Europe for many thousands of years.
Further evidence for Jefferson’s British origins come from the finding that two out of 85 randomly recruited men named Jefferson share exactly the same Y chromosome as the President. Prof Jobling said: ‘The two men have ancestry in Yorkshire and the West Midlands, and knew of no historical connection to the USA. They were amazed and fascinated by the link, which connects them into Thomas Jefferson’s family tree, probably about 11 generations ago.’
The ultimate origins of K2 chromosomes remain a mystery, however, and need further investigation: while they may have been present in Europe since the Stone Age, another possibility is that K2s came to Europe with the Phoenicians, an ancient maritime trading culture that spread out across the Mediterranean from their home in what is now Lebanon. The US media has taken up a different theory, leading to the New York Times headline, ‘Jefferson – the first Jewish president?’: European K2 chromosomes may originate in Sephardic (Spanish) Jewish populations, who have their ultimate origins in the Middle East.
Prof Jobling said: ‘When we look closely at large collections of British Y chromosomes we find surprises, like this rare K2 lineage, and the African chromosome that we recently found in a Yorkshireman. These exotic chromosomes remind us of the complexity of British history and prehistory.’
http://www.physorg.com/news94279329.html
For deeper ironies read Shlomo Sand on Spanish Sephardim…
Isn’t religion a blessing? More so than atheism? A tough call, eh? At least agnostics are humble.
I differ with the origin of Judaism and Islam given in the said report.
Prophet Isaac was not the fouder of Judaism – nor was Ishmael the founder of Islam. Both sons followed the religion of their father Abraham, which was based on “submission” to the ONE Creator – making him a Muslim based on the Arabic translation of the word “Islam”. After the death of Isaac the prophethood stayed in his family, while no prophet came from the family of Ishmael until the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Prophet Israel, too followed the Abrahamic religion, however, the descendants of his 12 sons were called “Israelite or Hebrew people” and not “Jews”. Israeli professor Shlomo Sand has explained in his book that current Jews are not the descendents of those 12 sons of Israel but are Khazars and Berbers converts. Prophet Moses, David, Solomon, John the Baptist or Jesus (as) never called them Allah’s messangers to Jew, but to the “House of Israel”.
Holy Qur’an don’t accepts the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as the “founder of Islam”. It says that Islam has existed since the day Adam and Eve were put on planet Earth. Holy Qur’an also says that all prophets were sent to tribes and nations with the limited revelation needed for their sphere of influence. Holy Qur’an is the compilation of all those original revelations and that’s what makes its message universal.
Unless we are using different definitions of ‘prophet’, I disagree that prophethood existed only within ‘the family’, as you put it. If you read the Quran there is nothing to suggest that prophets only came from that ‘lineage’ or line. You later, correctly pointed out, that many other (un named) prophets were sent to other peoples in the world, thus contradicting the first statement you made.
The main message I get out of all of this is that it doesn’t matter where your genetic origin lies, what matters is what you choose to make of yourself.
“what matters is what you choose to make of yourself”
Hold on!
When you say that, aren’t you denying people their precious “identity” or their “heritage” or something?
Nope I didn’t say that at all. People can have their identity and their heritage, but that is a cultural phenomonan which we know is entirely human constructed.
I was thinking more along the lines of “The origin of one’s genetic code does not make a person superior at all. What should matter is what a person does in this world through their actions.” To be more explicit, I don’t care if a person celebrates their heritage, but I care if they use that celebration of heritage as an excuse for racism.
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