Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

DISCOVERING SCRIPTURE IN SCRIPTURE t 17
fications, once attention began to be directed more to their origins
than to their content, the fact that they had been supplied by Jews,
albeit converts, bothered some Muslims and the Israiliyyat began
to be excluded from serious consideration as history—“It is reported
by the Jews; it is prohibited (to be used) . . .”—even though
they were never really intended as such. But well before this reaction,
the Israelite tales had worked themselves deep into the Muslim
view of the prophets who had received and spread God’s message
in earlier times. Indeed, much of Louis Ginzberg’s collection
of rabbinic stories on Scripture, Legends of the Jews, can be
echoed, if not duplicated, directly out of the Muslims’ “Tales of
the Prophets.”
Abraham the Builder
The verse where God recalls his command to Abraham and Ishmael
to build the Kaaba in Mecca appears rather abruptly in the
Quran. There is no mention of an earlier shrine there, much less
that Adam built it. Nor does the Quran offer any explanation of
how the patriarch got from Palestine to the distant Mecca. It was
not difficult for a later generation of Muslims to figure out what
had happened to Adam’s original construction. When the Flood
came upon the earth, God raised the Kaaba to heaven and hid the
holy Black Stone embedded in its side on nearby Mount Abu
Qubays. The Quran knows nothing of these stories. Of the Kaaba
it says, quite simply (2:125–127):
Remember We made the House a place of assembly and a place of
security. Take you the station of Abraham as a prayer place. And
We covenanted with Abraham and Ishmael that they should sanctify
My House for those who circumambulate it, or those who are
in retreat or those who bow or those who prostrate themselves
(there).
And remember Abraham said: Lord, make this land secure, and
sustain its people with fruits, those, at least, among them who believe
in God and the Last Day.