Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

6 t CHAPTER ONE
tion, then vindication—of Muhammad’s own mission. Muhammad
also understands that his Book is a confirmation of what has
been sent beforehand to the Jews through Moses (2:41). Indeed,
early in his career, the Prophet had been instructed by God to turn
to the Jews if he had any doubts about the revelation sent down to
him, and the Meccans are offered as a proof of the truth of
Muhammad’s message the fact that “the scholars of the Banu Israil
know it” (26:196–197).
The presence of so much biblical matter in the Quran has
prompted suspicion among non-Muslims that from the outset
Muhammad was in contact with Jews who served, wittingly or
unwittingly, as his informants. We have no evidence that there was
a permanent Jewish colony at Mecca, as there certainly was at
Medina, but it seems likely to think, given the considerable presence
of Jews in the Yemen to the south and in the oases to the
north of Mecca, that Jews passed through the town and that their
beliefs and practices were familiar, to some degree, to Muhammad
and his contemporaries—more familiar indeed than they are to us
since we have little idea of the shape and heft of seventh-century
Arabian Judaism. The issue of whether Muhammad “borrowed”
anything from that quarter for his own message may come down
to the degree of originality one is willing to grant to prophets, or,
more pertinently, to other people’s prophets. Islam was, and is, not
simply a warmed-over version of Judaism, or of Christianity, for
that matter, although some earlier Christians thought so. It was a
unique vision—whether from God or inside Muhammad’s own
head is precisely what separates the Muslim from the non-Muslim—preached
with great conviction, and in the end with great
success, over the course of twenty-two years.
History Begins
Islam is quite obviously a biblical religion. But it is not such merely
because echoes of biblical stories sound throughout the Muslims’
own sacred book, and certainly not because Muslims follow the
Christian practice of reading the Jewish Bible, which they assur-