Judaism's views on Muhammad

Very few texts in Judaism refer to or take note of Muhammad. Those that do, reject Muhammad's proclamation of receiving divine revelations from God and label him instead as a false prophet.

Background

In Judaism, prophets were seen as having attained the highest degree of holiness, scholarship, and closeness to God and set the standards for human perfection. The Talmud reports that there were more than a million prophets, but most of the prophets conveyed messages that were intended solely for their own generation and were not reported in Scripture. The Talmud reports that there were prophets among the gentiles (most notably Balaam, whose story is told in Numbers 22, and Job, who is considered a non-Jew by most rabbinical opinions). The prophet Jonah was sent on a mission to speak to the gentiles of the city of Nineveh.

References to Muhammad

In the Middle Ages, it was common for Jewish writers to describe Muhammad as ha-meshuggah ("the madman"), a term of contempt frequently used in the Bible for those who believe themselves to be prophets.

Contemporaries

In the VII century and during the life of the prophet Muhammad himself, many Jewish leaders and individual Jews made public their views on him or those who followed, especially but not limited if it concerned their communities. Among others, the old sage and man of letters Abu 'Afak from the Ubaeda tribe who wrote a poem which would be indicted by Muhammad himself, as warranting the capital sentence by assassination. The extant of it was preserved in Islamic biography and it may have been less severe,

Long have I lived but never have I seen

An assembly or collection of people

More faithful to their undertaking

And their allies when called upon

Than the sons of Qayla when they assembled,

Men who overthrew mountains and never submitted.

A rider who came to them split them in two

(saying)"Permitted", "Forbidden", of all sorts of things.

Had you believed in glory or kingship

You would have followed Tubba.

The apostle [Muhammad] said, "Who will deal with this rascal for me?"

Maimonides

Maimonides referred to Muhammad as a false prophet and an insane man. In his Epistle to Yemen he wrote "After [Jesus] arose the Madman who emulated his precursor [Jesus], since he paved the way for him. But he added the further objective of procuring rule and submission [talb al-mulk; pursuit of sovereignty] and he invented what was well known [Islam]."

In his authoritative work of law the Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot Melakhim 11:10â€"12), Maimonides indicated that nevertheless Muhammad was part of God's plan of preparing the world for the coming of the Jewish Messiah: "All those words of Jesus of Nazareth and of this Ishmaelite [i.e., Muhammad] who arose after him are only to make straight the path for the messianic king and to prepare the whole world to serve the Lord together. As it is said: 'For then I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech so that all of them shall call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord' (Zephaniah 3:9)."

Natan'el al-Fayyumi

Natan'el al-Fayyumi, a prominent 12th-century Yemenite rabbi and theologian, and the founder of what is sometimes called "Jewish Ismailism", wrote in his philosophical treatise Bustan al-Uqul ("Garden of Wisdom") that God sends prophets to establish religions for other nations, which do not have to conform to the precepts of the Jewish Torah. Nethanel explicitly considered Muhammad a true prophet, who was sent from Heaven with a particular message that applies to the Arabs, but not to the Jews. However, Al-Fayymi's explicit acceptance of Muhammad's prophecy was rare and virtually unknown until recent times beyond his native Yemen.

Midrash

The apocalyptic Midrash Secrets (Nistarot) of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, written in the Crusader period, compares Muhammad, "a prophet sent to Ishmael according to God's will", to the Jewish Messiah. According to this text, ascribed to the famous 1st-century sage and mystic Simeon bar Yochai, Muhammad's role as a prophet includes redeeming the Jews from the Christian ("Roman" or "Edomite") oppression and playing a positive role in the messianic process.

Secrets of Rabbi Shim'on bar Yohai has been published as a part of a number of Midrash collections. A recent Hasidic edition was included in the book called Yalkut ha-Royim, endorsed as authoritative by Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum, the former leader of the Satmar Hasidim.

Obscure and indirect references

One Yemenite Jewish document, found in the Cairo Genizah, suggests that many Jews had not only accepted Muhammad as a prophet, but even desecrated Sabbath in order to join Muhammad in his struggle; However, this document, called Dhimmat an-nabi Muhammad (Muhammad’s Writ of Protection), was have been fabricated by Yemenite Jews for the purpose of self-defence.

A number of stories from the Islamic tradition about Muhammad entered mainstream Jewish thought incidentally, due to the great cultural convergence in Islamic Spain of the 9th-12th centuries, known as the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry. For example, Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polonne, one of the early Hasidic mystics, wrote that one pious man (hasid) taught that the internal struggle against the evil inclination is greater than external battle, quoting Bahya ibn Paquda's popular treatise Chovot HaLevavot. In the Judeo-Arabic original version of that book, Bahya Ibn Paquda refers to both external and internal battle as jihad and the "pious man" about whom the story is originally told is Muhammad, though the author does not mention his source by name.

References

See also

• Islam and Judaism
• Judaism's view of Jesus