Biblical and Qur’anic Names of God | Rabbi Allen S. Maller

But for those religions that trace their prophets back to Prophet Abraham, and his two sons Ishmael and Isaac, the many names of God simply describe different aspects or attributes of the one God’s multifaceted personality.

God’s names are appellations: titles and descriptions. Thus to say that God is a King or Judge describes one of many ways God acts. To say that God is the Compassionate One is to describe one of many character or personality traits of the one God.

While each of the many ‘names’ for the one God is only one of the many appellations of the one universal creator of space and time; both Islam and Judaism also have one special Divine name that is always in the believer’s heart and soul.

Because the Qur’an is filled with beautiful Arabic poetry, it is not surprising that the Qur’an is also filled with so many names of God.

Because the Jewish tradition reaches back more than thirty five centuries; it is not surprising that Jews have focused on many additional names for the one and only God over those many centuries.

Yet, because all the many names of God call upon the same One God, it is also not surprising that many of the 99 beautiful names of God in Muslim tradition also appear in Jewish tradition, which sometimes refers to the 70 names of God (found in Midrash Shir HaShirim and Midrash Otiot Rabbi Akiba).

Since Arabic and Hebrew are brother languages; in some cases the names even sound alike:

    Arabic                    Hebrew                                      English
Al-Raḥman            Ha Rakhaman                       the Compassionate One
Al-Raḥim               El Rakhum                             the Merciful One
Al-Quddus            Ha Kadosh                             the Holy One
Al-Bari                   Ha Boray                                 the Creator
Al-¢Aliyy               El Elyon                                   the Most High
Al-Salam                Oseh HaShalom                    the Peacemaker
Malik Al Mulk       Melek Malkay Melakim      the King/Ruler over all the kingdom/ kings
Al-Muhyi                Ha Michayah                        the Giver of Life
Al-Mumit               Ha Maymeet                         the Taker of Life

Most of the similarities between Jewish and Muslim appellations of God are not due to linguistics alone. They reflect similar philosophical views of God’s attributes.

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ISHMAEL, SON OF THE COVENANT

Why Would a Jew Become a Muslim?

Earlier today, I was catching up on my 84 unread YouTube messages, when I came across this short but to-the-point message:

“I don’t get it … aren’t you Jewish descent why would you convert to Islam … Muslims hate Jews?”

Interesting how that last “question” sounds more like a statement. Sadly, many people have this false impression that Muslims hate Jews, or that Islam is in some way against Jews. Yet I am living proof that this is not the case. I am a Muslim, and I am a Jew, and I happen to be quite proud of my Jewish heritage. I thought it was worth it to respond to the message, and I’d like to share that response with you, so that you might benefit from it as well insha’Allah.

“Hey, thanks for your question. Yeah, I’m a Jew. No, Muslims don’t hate Jews. According to the teachings of Islam, Muslims are required to protect non-Muslims, particularly Jews and Christians, who live in Muslim lands. This is why, when Spain was a Muslim land, then known as Al Andalus, my Jewish ancestors were able to live peacefully in Spain and not be persecuted for their religion, as was the norm in Christian Europe. Among the Christians during the Middle Ages, Jews were killed and tortured for their beliefs and identity. In Spain, this was not the case, and for the most part of the history, Jews, Christians, and Muslims coexisted in relative peace in Islamic Spain. When the Catholics from the North conquered Spain, the Muslims and Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism or be tortured or killed, so most of them left Spain for other lands, and the majority went to other lands controlled by Muslims, because the Jews knew that they would be much safer with the Muslims than with the Christians. Jews moved from Spain to places like North Africa, the Middle East, and other places in Southern Europe which were under Muslim control. My grandmother’s family comes from Greece, and my Grandfathers family comes from Turkey. At that time, Turkey was the center of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, and Greek had just recently come under Ottoman control, so these were both Muslim lands.
My conversion (or more accurately reversion, since we are all born Muslim) to Islam had a lot to do with my Jewish heritage. My mom is Jewish and my dad is Catholic, so growing up I wanted to find my own religious identity. As I got older and started to really examine things, I knew that I had a deep love and respect for Jesus (as), but especially considering my Jewish background, I was very conscious of the strict monotheism in Judaism (which happens to be shared by Islam, and I would argue is even more strict than in Judaism), and I knew that the Christian understanding of Jesus (as) as a part of God or the son of God was in total conflict with the first commandment given to Moses (as). The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I could not follow either religion. I couldn’t follow Judaism because it does not recognize Jesus (as) as the Messiah, something about which I was convinced, and I could not be Christian because it insisted on a concept of God that conflicted, not only with the prophets of the old testament, but also with the teachings of the Jewish Prophet and Messenger and Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary (as). I decided that I would consider myself upon the religion of Jesus (as) and his original Jewish believing followers who never worshipped him but worshipped God alone.

Not long after, I realized that Islam is that religion, and I became a Muslim.”

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Israeli rabbis clamp down on burka

At the insistence of the husbands of some burka-wearing women, a leading rabbinical authority is to issue an edict declaring burka wearing a sexual fetish that is as promiscuous as wearing too little.

A small group of ultra-orthodox Jews in the town of Beit Shemesh chose to don the burka, usually associated with women in repressive Islamist regimes, three years ago in a bid to protect their modesty.

Since then, the habit has spread to five other Israeli towns causing alarm among ultra-orthodox religious leaders who once saw it as a relatively harmless eccentricity – even though the number of Jewish burka wearers is not thought to be more than a few hundred.

“There is a real danger that by exaggerating, you are doing the opposite of what is intended [resulting in] severe transgressions in sexual matters,” Shlomo Pappenheim, a member of the rabbinical authority preparing to make the edict, was quoted as saying.

Ultra-Orthodox women are required to dress conservatively and keep their heads covered with a scarf, hat or wig when in public.

But even that was not enough for some, who insisted that only by covering their faces and wearing multiple layers of clothes to hide the shape of their bodies can they really be chaste.

"At first, I just wore a wig," one burka-wearing woman told the Haaretz newspaper. "Now when I see a woman with a wig, I pray to God to forgive her for wearing that thing on her head."

Since donning the burka, the woman said she had been taunted by neighbours who called her a "smelly Arab" and that Israeli soldiers had asked to see her identification papers to prove she was not a Muslim. They backed down, she said, when she showed them that her children were clearly Jewish.

The trend has also caused tensions in family life. One man went to a rabbinical court in an attempt to get a ruling to force his wife to stop wearing the burka.

The plan backfired, however. The court ruled that that woman's behaviour was so "extreme" that it ordered the couple to undergo an immediate religious divorce.

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Jews now have permission to murder non-Jews

A Jewish rabbi has issued a book giving Jews permission to murder non-Jews, including babies and children, who may pose an actual or potential threat to Jews or Israel.

"It is permissible to kill the Righteous among non-Jews even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation," Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement in the occupied West Bank, wrote in his book "The King's Torah."

He argues that goyem (a derogatory epithet for non-Jews) may be killed if they threaten Israel.

"If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments - because we care about the commandments - there is nothing wrong with the murder."

Shapiro, who heads a small Talmudic school at the settlement of Yitzhar near Nablus, claims his edict "is fully justified by the Torah and the Talmud."

The anti-goyem edict seems to come in response to the arrest by Israeli police of a Jewish terrorist who has confessed to having murdered two Palestinian shepherds in the West Bank.

The terrorist, an American-born immigrant named Yaakov Teitel, also confessed to have tried to assassinate leftist Jewish figures.

Police considered the arrest an important achievement in combating Jewish terrorism, which experts contend thrives on religious edicts issued by rabbis affiliated with the religious-Zionist camp.

Nearly 16 years ago, a Jewish terrorist named Yigal Amir assassinated then Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin.

Moreover, numerous innocent Palestinians have also been murdered in cold blood by Jewish terrorists.

In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a notorious Jewish terrorist, murdered 29 Muslim worshipers inside Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank town of al-Khalil.

The controversial edict is backed by numerous rabbis affiliated with the so-called national-religious camp as well as the Talmudic seminary in West Jerusalem, known as Merkaz Ha’rav.

Among the rabbis who have publicly supported the edict are Yitzhak Ginsburg and Ya’akov Yosef.

Ginsburg had written a leaflet glorifying murderer Goldstein and called him a "saintly figure."

Shapiro’s views on how Palestinians and non-Jews in general ought to be treated according to Jewish religious law (halacha) are widely looked at as representing the mainstream not the exception in Israel.

During the Israeli onslaught against Gaza earlier this year, Mordecahi Elyahu, one of the leading rabbinic figures in Israel, urged the army not to refrain from killing enemy children in order to save the lives of Israeli soldiers.

He had even petitioned the Israeli government to carry out a series of carpet bombing of Palestinian population centers in Gaza.

"If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after we kill a thousand, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop, we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to stop them."

According to Israel Shahak, author of "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: the Weight of Three Thousand years," the term "human beings" in Jewish law refers solely to Jews.

Many Jewish orthodox rabbis, especially within the national-religious sector, view international conventions incriminating the deliberate killing of civilians and destruction of civilian homes and property as representing "Christian morals" not binding on Jews.

In 2006, the Rabbinic Council of Jewish Settlements in the West Bank urged the army "to ignore Christian morals and exterminate the enemy in the north (Lebanon) and the south (Gaza Strip).

Such manifestly racist and hateful edicts don’t raise many eyebrows in Israel, neither among the intelligentsia nor in the society at large.

Head Covering in Different Religions

Very interesting image showing Modesty in different religions.

Source of image here.

Israel: Stones for 'sinful buses' and thumbs up to 'modesty buses'

This is the kind of news I would expect from Taliban in Afghanistan but its good to hear that the same fervour is present in Israel as well.

It is an all too familiar scene: the Israeli bus, travelling near predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem, is pelted with stones that smash windows and startle passengers. Except this time the stone-throwers are not Arabs but Jews. The violence is part of an unholy war in which strident elements of the ultra-Orthodox community in Mea Shearim are trying to force Israel's leading bus company – and, by extension, Israeli society – to defer to their strict religious teachings and sensibilities.

Although Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, what that means in practice is subject to dispute, with religious and secular Jews constantly tugging for greater clout in shaping the character of the country. The latest battle is over demands that buses segregate men and women in accordance with strict Jewish law on a line connecting the ultra-Orthodox stronghold of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem with the Western Wall. In the view of some ultra-Orthodox Jews, segregated seating, with women entering separately through the rear door and sitting at the back, is vital to uphold their stringent traditions stipulating modesty and prohibiting physical contact with members of the opposite sex.

Secularists say the push for sanctity on the buses is part of a larger effort to transform Jerusalem into a kind of Tehran. The violence is a major test for Jerusalem's new Mayor, Nir Barkat, who rode to power last year on the votes of secular residents worried over growing ultra-Orthodox influence.

In a BBC report, couple of years back, the buses with segregation were referred to as 'modesty buses'.

The other day I was waiting for a bus in downtown Jerusalem. I was in the bustling orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Sharim and the bus stop was extremely crowded.

When the Number 40 bus arrived, the most curious thing happened. Husbands left heavily pregnant wives or spouses struggling with prams and pushchairs to fend for themselves as they and all other male passengers got on at the front of the bus.

Women moved towards the rear door to get on at the back.

When on the bus, I tried to buck the system, moving my way towards the driver but was pushed back towards the other women.

These are what orthodox Jews call "modesty buses".

The separation system operates on 30 public bus routes across Israel.

The authorities here say the arrangement is voluntary, but in practice, as I found out, there is not much choice involved.

Naomi Ragen is one of a group of women now taking the separation bus system to court. She is an orthodox Jew herself.

"I wasn't trying to start a revolution, all I wanted to do was get home," she tells me.

"I was in downtown Jerusalem and I saw a bus going straight to my neighbourhood and I got on and sat down, in a single seat behind the driver.

"It was a completely empty bus, and all of a sudden, some men started getting on, ultra-orthodox men. They told me I was not allowed to sit there, I had to go to the back of the bus."

Not only is the segregation system discriminatory, says Ms Ragen, but it can also be dangerous, she says, for those like her who ignore it.

"I said to him look, if you bring me a code of Jewish law and show me where it's written that I have to sit at the back of the bus I'll move.

"And he tried to gain support from the rest of the passengers and I underwent a half-hour of pure hell - abuse, humiliation, threats, even physical intimidation."

Opponents of the separation buses face an uphill struggle. Orthodox Jewish leaders are a powerful minority in Israel.

Naomi Ragen says the buses are just part of a wider menacing pattern of behaviour towards women in parts of the orthodox Jewish community.

"They've already cancelled higher education in the ultra-orthodox world for women. They have packed the religious courts with ultra-orthodox judges.

"In some places there are separate sides of the street women have to walk on."

She says that there are signs all over some religious neighbourhoods demanding that women dress modestly.

"They throw paint and bleach at women who aren't dressed modestly and if we don't draw a line in the sand here with this seat on a bus, then I don't know what this country and this religion is going to look like in 20 years," Ms Ragen said.

Militant Rabbi urged Israeli troops to slaughter Gentiles

The Israeli army's chief rabbinate gave soldiers preparing to enter the Gaza Strip a booklet implying that all Palestinians are their mortal enemies and advising them that cruelty is sometimes a "good attribute".

The booklet, entitled Go Fight My Fight: A Daily Study Table for the Soldier and Commander in a Time of War, was published especially for Operation Cast Lead, the devastating three-week campaign launched with the stated aim of ending rocket fire against southern Israel. The publication draws on the teachings of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Jewish fundamentalist Ateret Cohanim seminary in Jerusalem.

In one section, Rabbi Aviner compares Palestinians to the Philistines, a people depicted in the Bible as a war-like menace and existential threat to Israel.

In another, the army rabbinate appears to be encouraging soldiers to disregard the international laws of war aimed at protecting civilians, according to Breaking the Silence, the group of Israeli ex-soldiers who disclosed its existence. The booklet cites the renowned medieval Jewish sage Maimonides as saying that "one must not be enticed by the folly of the Gentiles who have mercy for the cruel".

Breaking the Silence is calling for the firing of the chief military rabbi, Brigadier-General Avi Ronzki, over the booklet. The army had no comment on the matter yesterday.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the executive director of the Rabbis for Human Rights group, called the booklet "very worrisome", adding "[this is] a minority position in Judaism that doesn't understand the ... necessity of distinguishing between combatants and civilians."

From AFP, there are more quotes in the pamphlet:

"When you show mercy to a cruel enemy you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers. These are not games at the amusement park where sportsmanship teaches one to make concessions. This is a war on murderers," Yesh Din quoted the pamphlet as saying.

It said the pamphlet quotes at length statements by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a spiritual leader of the Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank who opposes any compromise with Palestinians.

"The Palestinians claim they deserve a state here, when in reality there was never a Palestinian or Arab state within the borders of our country," the pamphlet quoted Aviner as saying.

It said one urged soldiers to "spare your lives and the lives of your friends and not to show concern for a population that surrounds us and harms us..."

"Kill the one who comes to kill you. As for the population, it is not innocent," the daily quoted the pamphlet as saying.

Do I need to remind people about ethics of war in Islam? If I do then see Islam Online here.

Christianity: Is it a hoax?

Interesting article from The Guardian:

Jesus was a Jew. Everyone knows that, don't they? Well, it would seem that they do and they don't. It is certainly not the view of most Christians, nor is it common knowledge among atheists or even Jews, that Jesus was to the brim a Jew, not incidentally or as a matter of temporal accident a Jew, not, in Jonathan Miller's joke, Jewish, but a Jew by faith, by temperament and by spiritual ambition; a Jew in his relentless ethicising, in his love of quibbling and legalistics, in his fondness - frankly, to the point of tiresomeness sometimes - for extended metaphors and sermons wrapped in parables, and in the apocalyptic urgency of his teaching. A Jew, in other words, on unambiguously Jewish business.

Jesus's Jewishness is as essential to Christianity as it is embarrassing. To Christians, Jesus was the Messiah - itself a Jewish concept - whose coming had been foretold in Jewish scripture for centuries. It is Jewish history that Jesus fulfils. How many of us, when we join in Handel's Messiah, raising our voices in Messianic exultation, know the origins of the words we sing? "For unto us a child is born," sounds wholly Christian to us now. As a Jew myself, though I love the Messiah, I balk at the churchy rejoicing in that verse - "and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace" - but the words are taken from The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the Old Testament not the New. For Christians, Jesus was there (and needed to be there) well before his actual coming, in the fervid longings of a people who had suffered exile, dispossession and, at the time of Jesus, occupation. He was what the entire Old Testament had been leading to. He closed that story in order to tell another.

Messiah does not mean son of God. Nor did Jesus ever claim to be the son of God. The idea would have been a nonsense to him. The God of the Jews is indivisible, capable of refulgence - a shekhina, a shining presence - but not incarnation. The long-awaited Messiah (the word simply means "anointed one") would prepare the way for God, not assume the title of a God. He was to be an eschatological prophet, a preacher of the end of days, a soldier of liberation in the royal line of King David. It was in order to show that Jesus fulfilled this latter but most essential part of the prophecy that the apostles came up with such labyrinthine and competing reasons for him to be born in Bethlehem, the birthplace of King David, and that Matthew employs the opening 25 verses of the New Testament - through a plethora of begettings: Aram begetting Aminadab, Achaz begetting Ezekias, Eliud begetting Eliezer - to establish Jesus's line of descent, not only back to David but to Abraham. Thus begins the Christian Bible: bending over backwards to prove beyond dispute Jesus's impeccably Jewish bloodline. As though being the son of God is not genealogically enough.

It is later, with his deification, that the Jewish blood has to be squeezed out of him again. Judged Messianically, Jesus is a failure to the Jews. He neither liberates their land from the Romans nor brings in God's kingdom here on earth. To Jews - and this point hardly needs to be laboured - the world remains unredeemed. Christians turned Jesus's material failure into a spiritual success. God's kingdom is to be found elsewhere, they say. That is the meaning of the crucifixion. By this quibble on the idea of salvation, the early Christians achieved two notable successes: they turned what Jesus had not achieved into something Jews could not understand, and they doomed Judaism to a reputation for materiality. The invention of the silver-grabbing Judas - a figure today undergoing revaluation from all sides, even in the Vatican - helped in this. As did the exculpation of his moral counterpart, Pontius Pilate. In proportion as the name of Judas sank, so did that of Pilate rise. Though a governor of bloody reputation, Pilate was turned by stages into a man of sorrowing conscience. It was the "Jews" who called for Jesus's destruction - though there was scant reason for them to do so - while Pilate washed his hands. In this way, though the crucifixion will come to be susceptible to the most subtle and sublime theological interpretations, the events leading up to it take on the melodramatic qualities of pantomime - good versus evil, the material versus the spiritual, the innocent gentile world versus the perfidious Jewish one.

...

There is no point in crying theft. Every religion is an act of expropriation of some sort. And monotheistic faiths in particular exist as refutations of one another. There's the drawback of Only One God - ours knocks out yours. So it is vain to ask for Jesus back. But the purloining of him has had deadly consequences. Jew-hating didn't occur by mischance in the history of Christianity - it is inscribed in it. Because Jews attested negatively to the power of Christ they were worth keeping alive in their spiritual poverty; but because they killed Christ they were expendable too. Ours is not a peaceable world, but it would go a way to restoring harmony in some parts of it were Christianity to acknowledge responsibility for the anti-Jewish crimes committed in its name. Admitting the consequences of its falsification of the Jew Jesus would be a place to start.

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Funny that people dont know this fact and many other facts that may actually make them doubt Christianity. Jesus (pbuh - Muslims have to add pbuh with the name of their prophets. pbuh means peace be upon him. Jesus was a prophet according to Islam.) never said that he is God or son of God. He just asked people to stop distorting the religion and follow it properly. The first time the disciples of Jesus (pbuh) were called Christians was in Antioch. That was a derogatory term but it still meant that his followers were jews.

There are verses in the Bible that say that Jesus was sent for the Jews only. Pople have tried to make the simple thing complicated to provide explanations that dont really exist. See the following:

these twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them saying GO NOT into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans ENTER YE NOT. "But go ye rather unto the lost sheep of THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL (to the Jews only)." MATTHEW 10:5-6

"But he (Jesus) answered and said, I am NOT SENT but unto the lost sheep of the HOUSE OF ISRAEL (the Jews only). "Then came she (the Canaanite woman) and worshipped him, saying Lord, help me (to cure my daughter). "But he answered and said, it is not meet to take the children's bread and CAST IT TO DOGS (the non-Jews). " MATTHEW 15:24-26

. . all these things are done in parables. That seeing they may see, and NOT perceive; and hearing they may hear, and NOT understand, LEST at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven " MARK 4: 11-12

Lets hope people open their mind and start thinking.