MISSION for MOHAMMAD and ISLAM : Book Two Verses of Medina Words of the Impostor

Chapter 24: The Agreement of Aqabah

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Welch Updated by Ahmad S. Numerous biographies exist in all Islamic languages in prose, poetry, and recently on film. No formal editions were made of this material until much later, and there is no evidence that any of it was put in chronological order before the middle of the first Islamic century.

This requirement led to the collection of biographical data about the companions and subsequent transmitters of traditions as well as the writing of heresiographical treatises in which the reliability of individuals and groups was judged by their adherence to one religious norm or another.

In spite of increased scholarly attention, or perhaps because of it, traditions of dubious authenticity entered the major collections. These problems were also faced by the early collectors of traditions: The two terms had been used interchangeably but now came to designate separate functions for the sacred biography within the Islamic communities. As a result it became the basis for the Muslim views of history.

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In this form, it matched Jewish and Christian hagiographic and apocalyptic works with which it shared many features. The Islamic use of sacred biography as a model goes beyond that found in Christianity or Judaism. Even the legendary stories regarded with skepticism by pious Muslim scholars served a didactic function in the popular imagination and hence were preserved, embellished, and fixed in the biographical traditions.

In South Asian Islamic communities some of the celebrations incorporate characteristics of the local culture. This bias is so pervasive that the reader must be cautioned about finding it in much material available in Western languages written before the mid-twentieth century. They provide spiritual models for the individual Muslim and paradigms for community formation among emerging Islamic republics. Interest in the West has increased to include popular as well as scholarly biographies. For the scholars of Islamic law, the Prophet was the legislator-jurist who defined the limits and possibilities of ritual observance; for the mystic, he was the ideal seeker on a journey to spiritual perfection; and for the philosopher and the statesman, he was the role model of a resolute conqueror and a just ruler.

For most ordinary Muslims, the Prophet was a beautiful model, a source of God's grace and salvation. Most ordinary Muslims, however, have learned about the Prophet as a part of religious observances rather than through scholarly writings. Muslim conceptions of the Prophet have also been challenged by the rise of historicocritical scholarship in the West. At the same time, however, he is now viewed from an array of critical, often reductionist, perspectives; instead of being a Christian impostor, he became a psychopath or a mere product of the material forces of seventh-century Arabia.

These developments in modern scholarship have influenced the new images constructed within the Muslim community by Muslims at the crossroads between the West and traditional Islam. There are at least three identifiable images in modern Islamic thought: In their hands, he becomes the ideal personality manifesting the values of modern civilization.

Although not all Muslims have felt the need to rebut the European image of the Prophet, there has been a general caution in approaching traditional Muslim sources. This universalistic view was incorporated in the second image of the Prophet as a model for sociopolitical development which received greater attention by Muslims during the period of nation-building, ranging from the struggles for independence to the call for an Islamic state.

This image de-emphasizes the apologetic of the early modernists, but results in a dispute over which particular ideology the Prophet championed. Islamic modernism focused on the comprehensiveness of Islam and its validity as a complete life system that contains the components of progress and its compatibility with reason, science, and modernity.

The discourses of Islamic renaissance tried to distinguish between two methods, one divine and another human. The renaissance ideologues thought that the reading of Islamic heritage from a liberal perspective would lead to the rise of a democratic national revolution under the umbrella of Islam itself. The Arab renaissance, for instance, grounded its most important doctrines in natural reason. Thus the modernist Islamic thinkers adopt and adapt into Islam the principles of Western Enlightenment, including the distinction between state and society; the need for civil government; the necessity of a social contract that can be dissolved; the centrality of civil society; popular will; standing law or constitution; a limited government; and political representation.

At the same time, however, he speaks of the ummah Muslim community inheriting the function and responsibility of the Prophet. This sociopolitical image reached its climax in the work of Zakaria Bashier. The universal and sociopolitical images of the Prophet are accompanied by the suppression of his spiritual significance.

Under the modern reformulations the Prophet loses his central spiritual station. Earlier modernists did in fact emphasize a hazy moral and spiritual legacy of the Prophet in the service of their secularist project. Under these conditions, however, the Prophet is granted spirituality on condition that he depart from the center stage of history. In spite of the numerous biographies by Muslims in the twentieth century, then, there lurks a deep question about the religious presence of the Prophet.

Some Muslim thinkers have expressed this deep malaise in artistic form. The growing influence of religion in politics and culture around the world is one of the most remarkable developments of the twentieth century. This worldview stands in radical contrast to the liberal-modernist worldview. The return to the Prophetic biographies, traditions, and actions has been part of the ideologies of the revivalist movements in the Islamic world.

Some scholars distinguish between two trends of Islamic reform, one that depends on the centrality of the text, another that depends on the centrality of the inspiring personality as the representation of sacred authority. Islamism nonetheless relies heavily on the historically developed religious and political formations, especially those of the period of the governments of the Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs.

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This period is seen as formative and constitutive in the making of modern Islamic thought because of its distinctive religious and political impact on the minds of almost all Muslims. The vast majority of Muslim thinkers, philosophers, jurists, ideologists, and historians employ the prophetic experience to justify one interpretation or another. The significance of this constitution for the development and reinterpretation of modern Islamic political thought is immense. First of all, it sanctioned the coexistence of many groups and recognized collective identities, with no attempt to convert non-Muslims to Islam.

Thirdly, it accepted minorities and recognized their rights to administer their own affairs according to their religious and tribal laws. More importantly, the drawing of this constitution and its acceptance by non-Muslims signaled the Prophet's contractual legitimacy as the community's elder statesman and judge. Fundamental guidelines include protecting religion, administering justice, defending the state, applying Islamic law and the laws of other groups, collecting and dispensing state revenues, appointing state administration, and addressing all matters of concern to the state and the community.

The revival of the Prophet model in modern times serves as a way of deconstructing traditionalism and reconstructing Islamic thought, whether moderate or radical, modernist or Islamist. This model is central to any attempt to rethink Islam in terms of modernity, postmodernity, and globalization.

Period of the Meccan revelations. Text, Translation, and Commentary. The Man and His Faith. Translated by Theophil Menzel. London and New York, Translated from the German, Mohammed: Sein Leben und Sein Glaube.

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Originally published in Swedish. Reprinted in one volume but paginated as two. The most readable translation in English and, despite its title, the most literal. The Wives of the Prophet.

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Translated with an introduction by Matti Moosa and D. German translation of the original Danish, Muhammeds Liv. Remains the best historical-critical analysis of the sources, although dated in places. Buhl, Frants, and Alford T. The Life of Mohammad. San Diego, revised A Contribution to Muslim Military History. Translated with introduction and notes by Alfred Guillaume. London and Karachi, Moinul Haq, assisted by H. His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. The Biography of the Noble Prophet.

The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: Solid translation utilizing modern scholarship, while sometimes reading later, orthodox meanings into the text. It contains the Egyptian standard text of the Arabic, with a renumbering of the English verses to agree with the Arabic. Our bold, in complete amazement!! So, were the Medina Jews awaiting the Messiah — the last Prophet — and they identified him as Mohammed?

And so, in Medina, where Mohammed fled to, the Jews had theology schools where they taught the Torah, and through the Torah they had calculated that the Messiah was coming? And he would arrive in Medina! So the Jews had the power, the wealth, and the government in Yatreb and its surroundings, and practically dominated the Ansar tribe, and it was precisely to that place the Mohammed fled? And so, why is it that in Western history books there is nothing like what this most interesting Arab historian, Aminuddin Mohamad, tells us in such nonchalance?

If what Aminuddin Mohamad tells us, according to the Arab traditions, is true, why are Western historians silent about them? They told the Auss and Khazirij that the Prophet would come to conquer them. And since they had already lost prestige, they awaited the appearance of the last Prophet to join them and to fight against the idolatrous Auss and Khazirij, their rivals. However, when the last Prophet, long-awaited by them arrived, they rejected him for several reasons: What is said in this text is that the Jews were awaiting the last Prophet, that is, that they were waiting for the Messiah.

The Jews had been waiting for the Messiah, for centuries, as they still are. Several times, in their more then millenary history, the Jews have been wrong in identifying the Messiah as a certain historical character. The is how it was with Bar Kochba, in the 2 nd century, when their mistake led to the definitive destruction of Old Jerusalem by Emperor Hadrian.

The same happened in , when they thought that Sabbatai Sevi was the long-awaited Messiah Cfr. Fragments of Jewish texts of the time, of an apocalyptic or any other nature, indicate the passion and the expectation raised by the first Arab victories. A piyyut liturgical poem written probably after the first Arab victories in Palestine, but before the capture of both Jerusalem and Caesarea, the provincial capital of Rome, serves as an example: After his arrival, he soon recognized that that was the last Prophet that God had promised to send, and these promises were made to Moses in the Old Testament and to Jesus New Testament.

The Jews, who had a lot of consideration and respect for Abdallah Bin Salam, still did not know that he had converted to Islam. A meeting was set with the Prophet Mohammed to receive the Jews. Abdallah Bin Salam was hiding. The Prophet received them at the set time and asked them: Then Abdallah Bin Salam appeared from behind a curtain where he was hiding and told them what he had done and invited them to join Islam.

This did not in any way please the Jews that soon started making secret plans against Mohammed and were disturbed by his verbal disputes, just like their ancestors had done to Jesus, six centuries before after having recognized him as the authentic Prophet. History was repeating itself. And God, to warn the Jews and to inform the Muslims, revealed the second chapter of the Koran, verses 42 to 46, where God reminds the Jews of the favors granted them, telling them to keep the promise they had made to God through Moses, and that He would keep the promise He had made.

Then God ordered them to believe in the Koran that came to confirm the sacred books that they had, and to know the truth and not be the first ones to reject it. The Jews were determined to play a double role. Their purpose was to exile Mohammed from Medina just as it had happened in Mecca. They told the prophet to stay in Jerusalem and to leave Medina as a station between Mecca and Jerusalem. The said that Jerusalem was home to all Prophets, and therefore the ideal was for Mohammed to stay in Jerusalem and not in Mecca or Medina.

This long quotation was necessary, because it sheds light on the initial alliance and later separation of Jews and Muslims, because at least initially, the Jews supported Mohammed; later, at least some groups stopped supporting him as the last prophet of the Jews, that is, as their Messiah. The fact that Mohammed was Arab would have caused some Jews not to accept him as the Messiah.

They insisted that Mohammed became a Jew, making Jerusalem his capital, for Jerusalem was the capital of all the Prophets, and so it would be more dignified for Mohammed to live there than in Medina or Mecca. They also demanded that the Quibla were Jerusalem and no other. This point was turned into a sine qua non condition: But when Mohammed changed the Quibla from Jerusalem to Mecca, many of them rejected him as a false prophet. When Mohammed stated that Jesus Christ was a Prophet, the Jews started to stop considering him as the awaited Messiah.

It was not enough for them that Mohammed rejected Jesus as the Son of God made man. They even refused to accept Jesus as a mere Prophet. These reasons would have led the Arab Jews to finally reject Mohammed as the awaited Messiah of Israel. All this explains the numerous coincidences between Muslim and Jewish practices, just as we will see later, the extremely large number of texts of Jewish origin in the Koran, verses copied from the Old Testament and from the rabbinic Midrashes. Well, Jesus damned the scribes and Pharisees for their vices and doctrine but never the Jewish people for their nature, particularly because Jesus himself, the Holy Mary, and the apostles, were all Jews.

There is no criminal nature in the Jews of any other people, for that matter. In all peoples and races there are good and bad people. Why would it be a taboo to study the origins of Islam under a historic perspective, something that we are doing in this brief historic study? This is why Aminuddin Mohamad says that: When they heard him, they looked at each other and said: Undoubtedly, what he recited is the truth. The Jews said to them: They said this when there were disputes among them. But when the long-awaited for Prophet arrived, they rejected him for not being a Jew, according to the Koran: So, the Jews promised, initially, to follow Mohammed, for they believed, at least in the beginning, that he was the Messiah awaited by Israel.

This was in the tenth year of the Prophecy. And this is a sensational acknowledgement, because it makes it very clear that Mohammed as a Prophet is a myth. Prophet of God, between us and the Jews there are pacts that will be denounced. So, after this is done and God grants you success in your mission, you will go back to your people and abandon us?

Some historians believe that they were not of the Jewish race, but rather that they had converted to Judaism, because they notice a difference in the nature of true Jews and those who came from Arabia. They say that the Jews, although they are scattered almost the world over, never change their names; they use only Jewish names. However, a peculiarity of the Arab Jews is that they used pure Arab names. Haris, Nadhir, Cainucaa, etc. Secondly, Jews by nature are cowardly and shy. And that is why, when Moses told them to fight the enemy, they answered: Jews frequently adopt the names of other peoples.

This is what happens all over the Western countries, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula, where the Jews usually took on Christian names. As for the accusation of cowardice made against the Jewish people, it is absurd, for even recent history proves it wrong. The Jews started to nurture hatred and enmity for the Muslims since the day the prophet arrived in Medina, just as they concocted conspiracies against Mohammed and the Muslims, which they have gone on doing.

This text can then explain so many texts in the Koran that are favorable to Israel, such as the anti-Trinity and anti-Christian texts. It also becomes clear why there was a rupture later between Arabs and Jews regarding Mohammed. Islam is a religion of peace, that it tries to promote peace throughout the world, among all peoples, and that Mohammed was a worker of peace. At that time, the Muslims still turned to Jerusalem for their daily prayers, just as the Jews did. So, the Jews were also favorably inclined toward Mohammed, toward the well-being, prosperity and freedom for Medina and its inhabitants.

For such, a pact would have to be created and put into practice, as soon as possible, before any disagreement could arise. The highlights are ours. We are not making any accusations. It is those accountable for disseminating Islam that are confessing: Aminuddin Mohamad quotes some items of this pact between the Jews and the Muslims: Is it necessary to prove the absurdity of this presumption? Here we present just a summary of the pact: Has there ever been any other example of any Prophet or reformer entering a peace treaty with those professing a rival faith?

We must agree that: Not only were they not rivals but instead they had a mutual support pact in case of war. And why, in all Christian territories conquered by the Muslims, the result was almost always the extinction of Christianity? Evidently, this alliance pact between Muslims and Jews reinforces the hypothesis that in the beginning, Mohammed was considered the Messiah by a Jewish sect in Arabia. With this military alliance established between Muslims and Jews in Medina, Mohammed could start his wars to dominate the Arab peninsula, starting by conquering Mecca.

The Quibla is Turned to Jerusalem. When the prophet Mohammed S. This means that Mohammed, from the very start, accepted the Quibla of the Jews. He prayed like the Jews: But, not to scandalize the Arabs of Mecca, he pretended to pray turned to the Kaaba, positioning himself in such a way as to have the Kaaba and Jerusalem in front of him. Thus, the Arab idolaters thought that he continued to pray turned to the Kaaba, as was their custom, when in fact, he was turned to Jerusalem, like the Jews. Mohammed was a secret proselyte of the Jews, or at least adept to a Jewish Arabian sect that awaited the Messiah for soon.

But when he emigrated to Medina, then it was no longer possible to unite both, because Mecca is located to the south of Medina and Jerusalem to the north. But since the purpose of the Quibla was to give the believers a new, distinct symbol, this purpose was not being met because the idolaters of Mecca also had the Kaaba as their Quibla.

This confirms that Mohammed, while in Mecca, simulated praying toward the Kaaba, but that when he went to Medina, dominated by the Jews, he clearly adopted the Quibla of the Jews: Mohammed had become a Jewish proselyte. When after sixteen years in Medina, with the crisis between Muslims and Jews, Mohammed adopted the Quibla of Mecca once again, thus publicly braking up with the Jews, who up to them had had a very strong influence upon him.

Now, the results of the battle of Badr awakened the Jews to the fact that Mohammed was winning the hearts of the inhabitants of Medina and that they would soon all join Islam. And so what would become of the dream of establishing a Jewish kingdom in Arabia? They thought of the need to undermine his influence, but how?

The Arabs of Mecca fought against him and lost. So, the Jews thought of adopting a few tricks and weapons such as speaking ill of him and his religion to his people, intrigues and treason. These ill intentions were already in their minds long before Badr, but now it was high time to put them into practice. Cainuca, Nahdir, and Curaiza. They were capitalists, farmers, and traders. The Jews of Cainuca were considered the bravest and most valiant, and this is why they always carried concealed weapons. So, the Book is the Bible] — the Ansar looked up to them respectfully and treated them as more learned.

As Islam grew in Medina, the religious influence of the Jews diminished and as the Ansar got richer they freed themselves financially from the Jews. And when this financial influence was over, the secret of the Jews began to be revealed. When the Prophet arrived in Medina, he had signed an alliance and good relationship agreement with them granting them religious freedom. But the Prophet had to condemn their bad deeds. So, the Koran says the following about the Jews: The Jews ended up causing incidents that led the Jewish Cainuca tribe to rebel against Mohammed. The hypocritical Jews and the idolaters had already united against Mohammed and started conspiring against him.

This act of treason by the Jews against Mohammed was possibly a consequence of some Jews not recognizing him as the Messiah, but this is still a mere hypothesis in our study. Aminuddin Mohammed talks of an indemnity payment that the Jews of the Banu Nadhir had refused to pay. Pretending to go out to call other Jews, they started to take their distance, whispering that that would be a good opportunity to kill the four of them. Someone would go up the castle and drop a rock on the Prophet and his three companions, smashing them.

Noticing their attitude, the Prophet started to suspect a conspiracy. However, a Jew called Amar Bin Jahash Bin Kaab went up the castle furtively to drop the rock; but before they could carry out their plan, God informed the Prophet of the conspiracy of the Jews, thus confirming his suspicion. The Prophet left the site immediately with his companions and without uttering a word set out to Medina. The Jews wanted to call him back, but the Prophet said to them: Mohammed demanded that if the Banu Nadhir did not make the agreement, they should leave the surroundings of Medina.

The Banu Nadhir then prepared to wage war against the Prophet. The latter surrounded them and forced them to leave. A trustworthy scribe was needed. And this correspondence was so abundant that the new scribe had to learn Hebrew. At that time, only the rabbis and the scholars of the Torah and the Talmud read, wrote, and spoke Hebrew. And this scribe, Zaid Bin Sabit, whose name sounds like being of Jewish origin, wrote the first compilation of the Koran. It is not without reason that in the Koran — as we will see in a future study, God permitting — there are so many terms of Jewish origin, and so many verses copied from the rabbinic Midrashes.

The case is of interest for the change made in the Koran, which since then required four witnesses to prove adultery Cfr. The Siege of Medina or the Battle of the Ditch. The author we are summarizing here tells us that the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadhir, after emigrating from Medina, never stopped conspiring against Mohammed. This text shows that there were Jews resolved to combat Mohammed as the false Messiah as a Prophet , while other Jews continued to believe in Mohammed as the Prophet , that is, as the promised Messiah awaited by the Jews.

The situation became even worse for Mohammed, when the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza changed sides and joined the conspirators. All this resulted in the siege of Medina that was saved thanks to a stratagem devised by a Persian, who advised the Muslims to make a ditch around Medina. This afforded them a long resistance time, until an important ally of the Jews sided with Mohammed, and owing to his intrigues, gave Mohammed the victory.

Nuaim Bem Masssud, hiding his conversion to Islam and his having joined Mohammed, created such a web of intrigue among the several allied groups against Mohammed that they started to split up. They began to complain that the siege of Medina was taking too long and so, at last, the Jewish tribe of the Banu Qurayza declared: The Prophet wanted to renew the agreement with them, but the Banu Nadhir tribe refused to and was expelled from Medina.

After the battle of the Ditch, the Banu Qurayza were surrounded by the Muslims in their castle and had no means of winning. So, we had better believe him and end this enmity in order to save our lives and wealth. Because the Banu Qurayza resisted, they ended up by accepting what was decided by the chief of the Auss, the other Jewish tribe — who sentenced all the Bonu Coraiza men to death, between and of them. Mohammed, in this case, abided by the Torah. The same author said before that in Medina Mohammed had established that prayers should be said facing Jerusalem and not toward the Kaaba.

Mohammed sent someone to tell the Koraishite that he was coming as a pilgrim: And you do many things like that" Mark 7: The word Curban and this Pharisee custom came from the Mishnah Cfr. Mishnah , Nedarim treaty, I, So, originally, the Muslims were a Jewish Messianic sect that obeyed the Mishnah, as much as possible. Later, other rabbis refused to see Mohammed as the last Prophet awaited by Israel, that is, the Messiah, because Mohammed was an Arab and not a Jew, and because he dared to recognize Christ as a Prophet, something the more radical rabbis could not tolerate.

And finally, there was the issue of the Quibla of Jerusalem having been abandoned by Mohammed; hence, the split of the Jews with Islam. An Arab Koraishite witness that visited the Muslim camp when Mohammed tried to visit Mecca to pray next to the Kaaba says: Urwah Bin Massud As-Sacafi, leader of the Arabs from Taif, witnessed this cult of Mohammed, and said that he had never seen anyone do this for any king. But the same was done for the pseudo Messiah Tanchelm in the Middle Ages and for others in the 20 th century.

After some Jewish groups split up from Islam because they did not accept an Arab Messiah, or the fact that he recognized Christ as a prophet, these Jewish groups left for Khaibar, where they organized several fortifications. According to the narrative we are following, Mohammed had 1, men with him, of which one hundred were riders, while the Jews had more than 20, warriors Cfr. The Muslims kept all the plunder, but the copies of the Torah were given back to the Jews.

This behavior was completely different from that of the Romans toward the Jews when they conquered Jerusalem, when they burned and trampled on all the Sacred Writings they could lay their hands on inside the temple. With this for comparison we ask: Who is more tolerant? Well, this is completely false, for the Church always admitted the Old Testament as true. What they sometimes burned were copies of the Talmud and not the Old Testament, which the Catholic Church recognizes as an integral part of the divine revelation. After his victory, Mohammed did not exterminate these Jewish tribes; instead he pardoned them and let them work in the fields, and charged only an annual tax on their harvests.

However, regarding the Jews, this condemnation of racism is not so clear, for in the book we are summarizing, one can read: From the high number of alphabetized people, however, we have to exclude Mohammed, who remained an illiterate until his death. Mohammed decided on the order of the prayers and on prohibitions regarding food, which were very similar to the Jewish ones. So, a month has to elapse and, if she is pregnant, she has to give birth first. In the year , the eighth of the Hijra, Mohammed left with 10, men to conquer Mecca.

The victory took place almost without any fighting, meeting only with a minimal resistance. Aminuddin Mohamad tells us that Mohammed divided his troops to enter the city from several different directions, recommending that no blood be shed, and that weapons be used only in case of a deadly attack. Upon hearing these words, the Prophet said: Our underlining and bold. Such anomistic expectation — the abolition of all prohibitions — of the messianic kingdom, refused by Mohammed when he took Mecca, was eventually perpetuated in Shiite Islam.

The duodecimal Shiite Muslims believed that with the arrival of the hidden Imam, Imam Mahdi, the lawful prohibitions would be abolished Cfr. Now, the true Deuteronomy text is a little different from this one quoted above. In the true text there is no number ten. And the ending is also different, as it says: After the conquest of Mecca, Mohammed supposedly destroyed all the idols and paintings of the Kaaba, thus putting an end to idolatry among the Arabs.

The Ansar, who had received Mohammed in Medina, feared that after having conquered his city of birth [Mecca] he would never return to Medina. Mohammed soon convinced them of the contrary, promising them that he would always live there with them. In his whole life he never had two meals in a row or even full meals. But unlike him, his wives were not inspired. Their normal human instincts were not eliminated, because they came from distinctive and noble families and had been raised in luxury.

So, now that the Prophet had spent more money and time with his wife Maria after she gave birth to a baby boy, they did not want to be denied this privilege, especially now that the Islamic country had become rich from much loot. They thought that a small percentage of this should be enough to provide them comfort and a relatively high living standard. The Prophet could not waste time with those family disputes … The Prophet, with this separation period, wanted to give his wives some time to think over their demands and wait for their jealousy to decrease, but all over Medina there was talk that the Prophet had divorced his wives.

One day I reprimanded my wife about something and she answered me back, assertively: I, finding that strange, asked her: Is it true that you ague with the Prophet and criticize him so loudly that he becomes anxious and distressed all day? Hafsa confessed, by saying: O ye son of Khattab, you are truly amazing! After that, both went down together to the first floor and right there and then, the following verses of the Koran were revealed: Our bold to highlight the part that is in the Koran and that Aminuddin Mohamad did not quote.

However, they repented acknowledging their mistake, recovered their common sense, and chose the Prophet over the other world.

Mission for Mohammad and Islam : Book Two Verses of Medina Words of the Impostor

This revelation put an end to this matter, in a good manner, and the Prophet went on living with them normally, recovering the peace he needed to fulfill his mission. We understand that this is a purely private affair, and that there is no myth about it. Mohammed, in the ninth year of the Hijra appointed Abu Bakr to represent him at the Hajj the great pilgrimage to Mecca.

This implies that the Muslims sacrificed animals like the Jews did in the Temple, before its destruction. Mohammed himself went on the Hajj accompanied by , pilgrims and only shortly before his death, in the tenth year of the Hijra. He went to Mecca taking sacrificial camels Cfr. We remind you that this study was written in reply to an aggressive and blasphemous article written by a Muslim attacking the divinity of Jesus Christ Our Lord, stating that it is nothing more than a myth.

This unsuspected volume provides precious information about what actually happened in 7 th century Arabia, when Mohammed started preaching. In his book, Aminuddin Mohamad shows that there was a profound influence, and even an alliance, between the Jews and Mohammed, at least in the beginning of Islam. The Jews from Arabia surrounded and involved Mohammed, instructed him, deeply influenced his doctrine, which explicitly recognized the Old Testament as The Book of God, by excellence, gave him religious, political and military support, greatly contributing to his victory.

In another study, which will be written shortly, we will examine the Jewish influence on the Arab Koran. However, soon enough there was a crisis between the Jewish rabbis and Mohammed, even though some of them went on supporting Mohammed to the very end. Possibly, the fact that Mohammed was an Arab led to his rejection as the Messiah by the more orthodox rabbis, who could not accept a non-Jewish Messiah.

But the more radical rabbis could not even tolerate this: Christ could not be considered even as a mere prophet. Finally, a third reason that led to the split between Mohammed and the Jews of Arabia would have been the fact that Mohammed chose the Kaaba of Mecca as the direction Quibla for Islam praying, while before that he only prayed facing Jerusalem.

Mohammed would have refused the opinion of the rabbis that only Jerusalem could be the city of the Prophets. The adoption of Mecca as Quibla, instead of Jerusalem, was an unequivocal sign that Mohammed wanted to free himself from the rabbis that had instructed him and supported him in his preaching, in order to make the new religion an Arab religion, thus putting an end to the Jewish messianic dream, as it had been initially imagined.

Could anyone really be amazed at such a serious misjudgment on the part of the few rabbis that accepted an Arab Messiah for Israel? However, this is not the only case in the History of Judaism. Most of the rabbis accepted Sabbatai as the promised Messiah. Few condemned him from the very start.

Crowds of Jews from the world over left their countries and put everything down to go to Palestine to follow the triumphal march of Messiah Sabbatai to Constantinople, where he would convert the Turkish Sultan, and with his military support would invade Italy, destroy the Pope, and Christianity. The same happened to Mohammed: The Caliph Otman Bin Affan was later charged with the elimination, as thoroughly as possible, any traces of Jewish influence on Islam. Otman was responsible for the current version of the Koran, in which he established the order of the chapters according to size!!!

As we have said, we are contemplating examining the text of the Koran in another study.

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