LET THE BIBLE SPEAK (PB)

The writing and publication of this essay is not intended to be an exercise in polemics. Rather is it motivated by the desire to enlighten both Christians and Muslims who in many parts of the world have to live together as fellow countrymen and neighbours. Their enlightenment regarding the original fundamentals of each other’s faith would, it is hoped, make them appreciate the basic unity that binds them as adherents of the same original faith, the Universal Religion which teaches submission to the will of the one True God as the basis on which man’s moral behaviour is founded.
It is unfortunate that Jesus Christ has left for us nothing as Author Name(s)itative as the Prophet Muhammad has done. In the Qur’an are the teachings of Islam in their unsullied purity. We do not find the same in the Gospels (Injeel). The latter may be compared to the traditions of the Prophet (the Hadiths or Sunnah). Of the sayings and the actions of Jesus as reported in the Bible there are admittedly many which are spurious, false, just as there were established and the weak and false were weeded out. It is undeniable that attempts were made, for sectarian and other divisive reasons, to fake sayings and attribute them to the Prophet.
Impartial criticism would have to admit, however, that there was much more scientific methodology when the Prophet’s traditions came to be collected and shifted than there has been at the adoption of the canonical Gospels. The great scholars (Imams) who devoted their lives collecting the traditions of the Prophet made their best endeavors (Ijtihad) using strictly scientific standards to verify the genuine traditions. But even their best endeavors and their scientific methods were after all human and not infallible. Fortunately there is the Qur’an whose authenticity has never been questioned by friend or foe. That is the unshakable foundation of Islam on which the tenets of the faith are based. It is the final criterion of the genuineness of any tradition, and the rock on which the structure of Islam has been built.
In the following pages it will be seen that I have tended to reproduce many quotations. This is my way of dealing with the subject seriously, particularly a subject of such transcendent importance as religion. I do not want to be among Those who would argue about God without knowledge, and without guidance and without an enlightening book, as the Qur’an puts it.
Studying the Bible in the long solitude of my prison cell I attempted to search for the true teachings of Jesus and the Hebrew Prophets who had preceded him. Ten years and five months of imprisonment became ten years and five months of intensive Bible study. Painstakingly I kept removing bit by bit the hard encrustation which had piled up on what I knew must be a lustrous lying beneath.
I found it.
I would appeal to both my Muslim brothers and sisters who know very little of Christianity, and to my Christian friends who know next to nothing about true Islam (and the Christianity for that matter) to come along with me, and in the following pages search for the truth. We will find it, for the truth is the house that has been founded upon the Rock, and rain shall fall, and the winds shall blow, but the house shall not fall. There in Holy Jerusalem whence both Muhammad and Jesus rose in spiritual ecstasy to the Heavenly Presence is a symbol of glaring significance, denoting the truth that bids both Muslim and Christian bow to the same God who is worshipped with equal fervor and devotion in the Mosque upon the Rock and in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That Truth bids us rid ourselves of the traditions of men and follow the commandments of God. That Truth bids us relinquish the tendency to divide Religion into sects and uphold the Unity that binds us together.
Allah says in the Holy Qur’an:
And We verily gave Moses the Scripture, that haply they might go aright. And We made the son of Mary and his mother a portent, and We gave them a refuge on a height, a place of flocks and water-springs. O ye Messengers! Eat of the good things, and to right. Lo! I am aware of what ye do. And lo! this your religion is one religion and I am your Lord, so keep your duty unto Me. But they (mankind) have broken their religion among them into sects, each sect rejoicing in its tenets. So leave them in their error till a time.
Qur’an 23:49-54
Let us not keep on wandering in error when the Straight Path is clear before us. Let us understand one another and appreciate one another’s honesty in seeking for the truth.
Ali Muhsin