The Ancient Islamic Theology Behind Modern Anti-Zionism

The rejection of Jewish sovereignty did not begin with the modern State of Israel. It is rooted in a centuries-old struggle over revelation, legitimacy, and who inherits the biblical story.

A Quran (photo: Malik Shibly/Unsplash)

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This is a guest essay by Rick Arons, a traditional Jewish activist.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Irrational Jew-hatred is nothing new. Political and economic circumstances fan the flames.

Yet religious particularism and resentment underly the overt demonstrations of exclusion, demonization, and violence directed at Jews and their institutions.

This knowledge is embedded in the gentile mind. Christians introduced it, the Soviets perfected it, and now the Islamic world has co-opted “progressive” thought and expanded its reach through media, influencers, and journalists.

While there has been demonization of the Jews by Christians, there has also been some 20th century Church-generated remorse. But the same cannot be said for Islam. Islam arose in the wake of Christian domination and Jewish diminution and has harnessed the power of social media to dictate a contemporary journalistic narrative.

Among both the naïve and misinformed, a competition exists today between Christianity and Islam to wrest the designation of “chosen” from the Jews. Of course, Jewish claims predate those of Christianity by a millennium and those of Islam by another several centuries.

So, what then does Islam teach regarding its relationship with its competing religions, and how does it justify its claims? The answer is best drawn from its religious texts and icons.

According to Islam, Moses and Jesus were prophets; the former eclipsed by the latter and both by Muhammad.

Tabari’s Quran commentary (per American medievalist David Nirenberg) says:

“The faith of the Jews prescribed cleaving to the Torah and to the sunna of Moses until Jesus came. Once Jesus came … whoever did not reject these and follow Jesus was condemned to perdition. The faith of the Christians consists of adhering to the Evangel and to the laws of Jesus until Muhammad should come. Once Muhammad came, whoever of them did not follow Muhammad … was lost.”

The exceptionalist claims of Islam are based on its fundamental belief that the prophecy received and transmitted by Muhammad in the 7th century is the final and perfect divine revelation to mankind. This divine book is believed to have been dictated by the angel Gabriel to Muhammad and passed orally to his followers. A few years after the prophet’s death, manuscripts were recorded under the rule of Uthman.

The text consists of 114 chapters called suras, divided into those revealed in Mecca and those revealed later in Medinah. Their order is not chronological. The book is a hodgepodge of knowledge, legalisms, cosmology, psychology, eschatology, and metaphysics. Its study takes two forms: tafsir (the outward meaning of the text) and ta’wil (its inner meaning), some of which is taken up by Sufi and, to a lesser extent, Shiite tradition.

The Quran teaches the doctrine of Docetism (Sura 3), which understands the suffering and death of Jesus not to have been a reality at all. His illusory death is a mere interruption in his career; he remains concealed and will return from this absence (gaiba in Arabic) to complete his mission.

Islam also takes pains to excoriate Judaism for obfuscating the dictates of God to Abraham and Moses, corrupting them beyond recognition. Muhammad’s role was to eliminate those misunderstandings and restore perfect adherence to faith. It is Islam’s task to assert the single religion of the single God in its final form.

Muhammad is proudly identified as nabi ummi, an illiterate prophet, and this is a dogma of Islam. Absent an ability to read, he could only have received the knowledge from a divine source. His ignorance helped establish his claims of prophecy and the miraculous origin of the revelation and its Arabic diction.

The Hadith (statements attributed to Muhammad but not appearing in the Quran, something like the Oral Law in Judaism) were compiled well after the introduction of the Quran. Taken together, these extra-scriptural texts are the source of the Islamic legal system (shariah), early Islamic history, and the earliest commentaries on the Quran. Different streams of Islam hold different texts to be reliable. Much of the historic detail contained there has little or no corroboration.

The Quran references dozens of characters and events recorded in the Bible. Muslims argue that the Bible became corrupted (tahrif) over the centuries before its accurate revelation to Muhammad. While Islam claims the Quran as an original revelation, its narratives and themes are often taken directly from Biblical accounts, frequently with purposeful changes and omissions.

The origin story of Jesus and Christianity is claimed as an original revelation from Allah. The altered histories of Christianity and Judaism allow the Quran to be very clear about its exceptionalism:

“If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah), never will it be accepted of him; and in the hereafter he will be in the ranks of those who have lost all.”

The content of the book is an overt appeal to the Jews, castigating them for their misbehavior. Beginning with verse 40, Sura 2 warns the Jews to avoid the steps of their ancestors, who continually sought to subvert the word of Allah and throw away their covenant with God. Jew and Christian are often lumped together because “Allah will judge between them in their quarrel on the Day of Judgement.”

But the true believer is warned, “Never will the Jew or Christian be satisfied with you unless you follow their form of religion.” The Quran assumes that Jews and Christians study the same scripture yet disagree. It borrows and applies as scripture the Talmudic Aggadah describing how Mount Sinai was turned upside down and held over the Jews to compel them to accept the Torah.

The prophet has the Jews admitting to killing Jesus even though, according to the Quran, he did not really die. Instead, Allah elevated him to heaven so that he could testify against the Jews in the future.

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Much of Sura 3 is a diatribe against the Jews who would not accede to Muhammad’s entreaties after his revelation. The reader is told that the Jews will pay a stiff penalty for their resistance. They are the People of the Book, but they rejected the substance of faith and will suffer accordingly.

A prelude to that suffering is that of the Jews of Medina and An-Nadir. In the time of Muhammad, they were driven from their lands and had their orchards confiscated. When the Jewish community of Banu Quraizah was overrun, 600 men were beheaded and their women and children taken as slaves.

The Quran accuses the Jews of killing their own prophets and, as a result, living on in shame:

• “Soon we shall cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers … their abode will be the fire and evil is the home of the wrong-doers!”

• “And remember, Allah took a covenant from the People of the Book … but they threw it away behind their backs and purchased with it some miserable gain! And vile was the bargain they made!”

In the Quran, Jews and pagans are especially fierce in their opposition to Islam, while Christians are seen as neither proud nor arrogant. Christian priests and monks know that the Quran is true. It is the responsibility of every Muslim to fight those who reject Islam, including Jews and Christians, until these unbelievers pay regular financial tribute willingly while understanding that they are completely subject to their Muslim overlords:

• “… curses were pronounced on those among the Children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary.”

• And, lest one forget, Jews are “… the spreaders of war and corruption.”

In the Hadith, the Jews are described as followers of the Dajjal, the Muslim anti-Christ. When he appears, Dajjal will be accompanied by 70,000 armed Jews. They will be defeated and slaughtered. A variant has Jesus routing Dajjal and his followers in Jerusalem.

On the day of resurrection, the defeated Jews will be consigned to Hellfire, thereby allowing forgiveness to Muslims who have sinned. All Muslim sects quote the Hadith attributed to Muhammad that at the dawn of the messianic era all Jews will suffer violent deaths. The Quran condemns the Jews to perpetual wandering even though they were once given the Land. Consequently, the re-establishment of the Jewish homeland is an affront to Allah and must be reversed.

As if to summarize, al-Tabari, a 10th-century commentator on the Quran, explains why Christians are somewhat more acceptable to Islam than are Jews:

“In my opinion, (the Christians) are not like the Jews who always scheme in order to murder the emissaries and the prophets, and who oppose God in his positive and negative commandments, and who corrupt His scripture which He revealed in His books.”

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The creation accounts of the Bible and Quran are similar, but there are purposeful variations. Taking a harder line than Judaism on the partnership between God and mankind, the Quran has Allah dictate the names of all living things to Adam, who is then able to repeat them.

In the Bible, God partners with Adam, asking him to name the animals using the genius of the Hebrew language. The Quran’s creation story also identifies Satan as one expelled from paradise for refusing to accept Allah’s approval of Adam. It is Satan (Shaitaan) who tempts both Adam and his wife to sin, causing their fall to earth. Contrary to Christian scriptural interpretations, Adam and woman — created from one soul — are forgiven in the Quran. There is no assignment of original sin.

The story of Cain and Abel is similar in both texts, with the exception of the lesson drawn directly from the Babylonian Talmud:

“If one slew a person … it would be as if he slew the whole mankind; and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he save the life of the whole mankind.”

The delegitimization of Jewish scripture continues with Noah. In Sura 11, one of Noah’s sons refuses to board the ark and perishes, while unrelated individuals board and survive. There is no mention of seven pairs of kosher things, of course, because the idea of kashrut has been rejected.

Since the Quran is married to the primacy of Ishmael, Abraham’s compliance with the command of God to sacrifice his son is a story of Ishmael, not Isaac, who according to Muslim belief was not yet born. Unlike the Bible, the Quran has Abraham tell his son of God’s plan for him.

The story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is much the same in both books, but Lot is described as a righteous man and prophet. The events that result in the nations of Moab and Amon are missing, as neither nation is relevant to the geography or genealogy of Muhammad’s spiritual realm.

The narrative of Joseph and his brothers is also common to both traditions and differs chiefly in the events that result in Joseph’s imprisonment. The Pharaoh’s dream, Joseph’s rise to second in command and his reunion with his brothers are similar.

Moses is common to both traditions, but in the Quran he first attempts to convert Pharaoh to belief in the one God. Pharaoh’s advisors submit while Pharaoh feigns belief. Later, Aaron resists rather than facilitates the golden calf. Korach is a rich, arrogant man, not the leader of a rebellion against Moses.

The roles of Saul, David and Goliath are similar. Yonah’s God-given mission to warn Ninevah is omitted; instead, it is his own people who are saved by his message. Haman is associated with the Pharaoh of Moses and the building of a tower in Egypt. The Quran also includes a tale of Moses being guided by an unnamed prophet-like servant, known in Muslim tradition as Khidir, who reprimands him for a lack of understanding due to his spiritual distance from Allah.

In its references to the New Testament, the Quran borrows stories of Zachariah and Mary from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus appears repeatedly and is credited with bringing the dead to life, being the messiah, having disciples, being filled with the holy spirit, and being alive in heaven. Other stories about Jesus are taken from the non-canonical Infancy Gospels.

In addition to the obvious borrowings from the Bible and New Testament, and the changes implemented to make a case for Islam over Judaism and Christianity, there is reason to doubt the historicity of the Quran and its origin.

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The earliest recorded account of Muhammad appeared about 40 years after his purported death. The Armenian bishop Sebeos describes him as a merchant for whom Abraham was a prominent part of his preaching.

A century later, John of Damascus refers to parts of what is now the Quran, calling it a book for Hagarians, Ishmaelites, and Saracens. An inscription attributed to Muawiya, the first Umayyad caliph, makes reference to God but not to Muhammad as a prophet or to the Quran as scripture.

Coins from this period have the name Muhammad beneath the figure of a king bearing the cross of Christianity. The inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock, completed in 691 CE, may actually refer to Jesus and to Muhammad as his messenger.

The Hadith were written a century after the death of the prophet, when it became necessary to expand knowledge of Muhammad’s life and behavior as a model for communal observance. There is some evidence that the emirs of the time “forced people to write the hadiths.”

While the Quran is known as a work of pure Arabic, some believe it may have originated, at least in part, as a Syriac Christian liturgical text. Many words do not seem to be Arabic. Some of that uncertainty is the source of the belief that 70 willing virgins will be encountered in Paradise after the death of a devout Muslim. The language may actually refer to 70 white raisins.

Muhammad never visited Jerusalem, and the word does not appear in the Quran. The holiness of the city is a later addition to Muslim tradition. In 638, caliph Omar captured Jerusalem from the Byzantines but prayed facing Mecca, as Muslims in Jerusalem do today. An early Islamic name for the site of the Jewish Temples was Bauyt al-Maqewdis (Holy Temple). The mosque there is most likely that of caliph Abd al-Malik, who in 688 built the Dome of the Rock to compete with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Its dimensions are identical to those of the rotunda of that Church.

In Sura 17, Muhammad is described as having a dream in which he takes a midnight ride on his flying horse. He is carried from the holy mosque in Mecca to the distant mosque (al-masjid al-Aqsa). The location of al-Aqsa is never mentioned and is thought by many to be a place in heaven. Muhammad then ascends to heaven accompanied by the angel Gibril and speaks to Allah and the prophets.

And so, Islam was created for a spiritually homeless and scattered people. Its aim was to capture the imagination of its target audience and give voice to resentment of their low social status. These alienated Arab tribes became a fertile landscape for conquest, the elevation of their religious beliefs, and the negation of those of their monotheistic cousins.

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