Those who believe that the true religion of Allah was revealed only to Abraham and preserved by the people of Israel alone, must be very ignorant students of the Old Testament literature, and must have a very erroneous notion of the nature of that religion. Abraham himself offered tithes to the King and Imam (l.) of Jerusalem and was blessed by him (Gen. xiv. 18). The father-in-law of Moses was also an Imam and a Prophet of Allah; Job, Balaam, Ad, Hud, Loqman, and many other prophets were not Jews. The various tribes and nations like the Ishmaelites, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, and others which descended from the sons of Abraham and Lot, knew God the Almighty though they too, like the Israelites, fell into idolatry and ignorance. But the light of Islam was never entirely extinguished or substituted by idolatry. Idols or images, which were considered as "sacred" and as household gods by the Jews, as well as their kindred nationalities, and usually called "Traphim" (Gen. xxxi.) in the Hebrew, were, in my humble opinion of the same nature and character as the images and idols which the Orthodox and Catholic Christians keep and worship in their houses and temples. In those olden times of ignorance the idols were of the kind of "identity card" or of the nature of a passport. Is it not remarkable to find that Rachel (Rahil), the wife of Jacob and the daughter of Laban, should steal the "traphim" of her father? (Gen. xxxi). Yet Laban as well as her husband were Muslims, and on the same day raised the stone "Mispha" and dedicated it to God!
------------- Footnote (1) In Hebrew these old Imams are called Cohen,' and rendered by Christians as "Priest." A Jewish priest can never be identified with a Christian Sacramentarian priest. ------------- end of footnote
The Jews in the wilderness, inebriate with the wonders and miracles worked day and night - their camp shadowed by a miraculous cloud at daytime and illuminated by a pillar of fire at night, themselves fed with the "manna" and "Salwai" - as soon as the Prophet Moses disappeared for a few days on the misty top of Mount Sinai, made a golden calf and worshipped it. The history of that stubborn people from the death of Joshua to the anointment of King Saul, covering a period of more than four centuries, is full of a series of scan- dalous relapses into idolatry. It was only after the close of the revelation and the Canon of their holy Scriptures in the third century before Christ that the Jews ceased to worship idols, and have since remained monotheists. But their belief in the Oneness of God, though it makes them Unitarians, does not entitle them to the qualification of being called "Muslims," because they have stubbornly rejected both the persons and the revelations of Prophets Jesus and Muhammad. It is only through submission to the Will of God that a man can attain peace and become Muslim, otherwise the faith without obedience and submission is similar to that of the devils who believe in the existence of Allah and tremble.
As we possess no records concerning the other peoples who were favored with Divine Revelations and with the Prophets and Imam sent to them by God, we shall only content ourselves with the declaration that the religion of Islam existed among Israel and other Arab peoples of old, sometimes more luminous, but mostly like a flickering wick or like a dim spark glimmering in a dark room. It was a religion professed by a people who soon forgot it, or neglected it, or transformed it into pagan practices. But all the same there were always individuals and families who loved and worshipped God.
It seems that the Jews, especially the masses, had no true conception of God and of religion as the Muslims have had of Allah and Islam. Whenever the people of Israel prospered and was successful in its wars, then Jahwah was acknowledged and worshipped; but in adverse circumstances He was abandoned and the deity of a stronger and more prosperous nation was adopted and its idol or image worshipped. A careful study of the Hebrew Scripture will show that the ordinary Jew considered his God sometimes stronger or higher, and sometimes weaker, than those professed by other nations. Their very easy and reiterated relapse into idolatry is a proof that the Israelites had almost the same notion about their El or Yahwah, as the Assyrians had of their own Ashur, the Babylonians of Mardukh, and the Phoenicians of their Ba'al. With the exception of the Prophets and the Sophis, the Muslims of Torah, the Israel of the Mosaic Law, never rose equal to the height of the sanctity of their religion nor of the true conception of their Deity. The faith in Allah and a firm conviction and belief in a future life was not ingrained and implanted in the spirit and in the heart of that people.
What a contrast, then, between the Muslims of the Qur'an, the believers of the Islamic Law, and the Muslims of Torah or the Mosaic Law! Has it ever been seen and proved that a Muslim people abandoned its Mosque, Imam, and the Qur'an, and embraced any other religion and acknowledged that Allah was not its God? Never! It is extremely unlikely that a Islamic Muslim community, so long as it is provided with the Book of Allah, the Mosque and the Mullah, could relapse into idolatry or even into Christianity.
I am aware of the certain so-called Tartar families who embraced the Orthodox Christian Faith in Russia. But I can assure my readers, on authentic authority, that these "Tartars" were those Mongols who, long after the subjugation of Russia and the establishment of the "Altin Ordu" by Batu Khan, were either still pagans or newly converted to Islam and seem to have been forced or induced to join the Russian Church. And in this connection it should not be ignored that this happened after the Muslim power of the "Golden Horde" ("Altin Ordu") tumbled down at the tremendous invasion of Timur Lang (Tamerlane). On the contrary, Muslim traders and merchants, in China as well as in the dark continent of Africa, have always propagated their Holy Religion; and the millions of Chinese and negro Muslims are the fruit of these unpaid and unofficial Mussulman missionaries. It is evident from the above that the true religion of God before Prophet Muhammad was only in its infancy, that it remained immature and undeveloped amongst the Hebrews, although it shone brilliantly in the life of the true worshipers of Yahwah. Under the direction of the God-fearing Judges and the pious Kings of Israel, the government was always theocratic, and as long as the oracles of the Prophets were favorably received and their injunctions duly executed, both the religion and the nation prospered.
But the True Religion of God never took the form of the Kingdom of God as it did under the Qur'anic regime. Allah in His Infinite Wisdom had decreed that four great Powers of Darkness should succeed each other before His own Kingdom was to be established. The great ancient civilizations and empires of the Assyro-Chaldeans, of the Medo-Persians, of the Greeks and of the Romans, had to appear and flourish, to persecute and oppress the people of God, and to perpetrate all the evil and wickedness that the Devil could devise. All the glory of these great powers consisted in their worshipping the Devil; and it was this "glory" that the "Prince of the Darkness" promised to grant to Jesus Christ from the top of a high mountain if he were only to follow him and worship him.
jazak Allah for sharing the knowledge of Islam. yeah it is true before Muhammad (pbuh) Islam was not as much famous and accepted in common public but when Muhammad(pbuh) arrived in this world , the great change occured with the revelati9on of Quran and most of the Arabs converted to Islam.
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