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Muslim Identity
Islam sees itself very much as parts of the long Judeo Christian Biblical Prophetic tradition with which most Americans can certainly are familiar. Muslim’s accept the torah and the Hebrew bible and its entirety as well as the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, as part of this self-revelation of God. That comes from Adam, the first man and according to Islam the first Prophet to Muhammad, the seal of the Prophets. They see this as one long narrative. A mastered narrative in which the revelation of God, the self-communication of God is passed down through the Prophetic consciousness of one Prophet after another, after another and in fact, Islam takes this one-step further and talks about a concept called the Um Al Khattab, the mother of books. This notion that exist in the Koran that all revealed scriptures whether they would be, the hidden bible or the New Testament, or whether they would be the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishad or the Kathad. All revealed scriptures are essentially derived from a single source in heaven called the Mother of Books and that God’s self-communication has been passed down to humanity. Not in its entirety but in pieces and as the Koran says, “Deliberately so for God could have.” As the Koran says, “Created one nation, one book, and one Prophet,” but he choose instead to create many nations and many books, and many laws, and many Prophets so that the Koran says, “The nation’s may know one another.”
So there is this concept within Islam that all religions are in extricable linked to each other through this passing on a Prophetic consciousness. I think to me, that is a really beautiful way of thinking about religion. Now of course Muslims believe to that comes to an end at the Prophet Muhammad, but I think an argument could be made that the revelation of God did not stop with the Prophets last breath. That God is ever present and eternal and that the human society is the human nations that he made are in a constant state of evolution. They did not come to a stop 14 centuries ago.
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