Moses, Jesus, And Muhammad

Each of the major monotheistic religions has a central character that intercedes between Man and God. In Judaism, that person is Moses. Not necessarily because only Moses was able to do so, but because the other hebrews were too terrified of G-d to come near him:

All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance. “You speak to us,” they said to Moses, “and we will obey; but let not God speak to us, lest we die.”

Paraphrasing now, but G-d then says that they were well to have said this. Not, I believe, because only Moses was worthy (even though that’s probably true), but because it demonstrated the proper fear and respect.

Flash forward to Jesus. Jesus, as cited later, took a different approach and said that the ONLY way to come to G-d, was through him. The difference here is obvious. Now we’re being told that only by using an intermediary, can we approach G-d. This would be all well-and-good on its own, but it’s counter to what Torah teaches. Now, it’s of course stated that Jesus never really said these things, but the entire Christian religion was made up by Paul, who never even knew Jesus, whereas the apostles even wrote Paul letters telling him that what he was doing was contrary to Jesus’ teachings.

Flash forward again, and we come to Muhammad. And..what? I don’t know honestly. I don’t know much about Muhammad. I watched a video once that he was from a not well-to-do family of traders. That he wasn’t educated but eventually started speaking beautiful versus from G-d. Eventually someone else wrote down all the things that he couldn’t stop saying. It is said that he thought he was going mad. Eventually, this became the Quran. It isn’t my intent to belittle the Muslim faith, but one thing struck me as odd recently. It seems sometimes, that Muhammad is held in even higher regard than G-d himself. I hope this to not be the case, but recently there have been a number of riots and innocent people killed over the still unconfirmed to even exist movie, “The Innocence Of Muslims”. Not over G-d or blasphemy of G-d, but over the prophet (as Muslims believe) Muhammad. In fact, I’m not sure that a negative movie about G-d would inspire the same response from Muslims. So I hope I’m incorrect in saying that Muslims for some reason have elevated a human being above G-d.

Moses was a great prophet. Jesus the Christians believe to be a god. But that still leaves the question, what was Muhammad, and why have the Muslims elevated him to such a status? This has sparked my interest in the Muslim faith, and I will be researching more. To my 2 followers (you know who you are!) feel free to provide more insight and information.

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