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.

Hold on!

When you say that, aren’t you denying people their precious “identity” or their “heritage” or something?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Evidence please? Scholarly/historical/textual evidence, I mean, not Fox News clips of neo-Marxist Muslim revolutionaries doing stupid things.