ভূমিকা

Muslims believe in all the prophets (ie: Adam, Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad, etc.) in the sense that they all originally came with the same central message of Tawheed (worshipping only One God), but different branches/details (how to pray, etc.) contextual to their time/location; each prophet had their own “branches” for their particular ummah (the ummah of the Jews, of the Christians, etc.). is believed to be the seal of the prophets from his time till judgment day for the entire world.

Differences between the three monotheistic religions over even the central meaning of Tawheed today (the status of Jesus being more than a prophet, etc.) are believed to be due to tampering/alterations of the older scriptures by various theologians and others throughout history. For a fuller discussion, see Dr. Umar Ashqar’s Belief in Allah.

2- See Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2003) 3- For the often underplayed details of U.S foreign policy see Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the World or William Blum’s Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. 4- Some academics label the 18th and 19th centuries the traditional period of the Muslim world, thereby, dismissing much of pre-Western Enlightenment history as of negligible significance (Bray, 2007). (Noddings, 1984, p.74).

5- I am purposely using “academics” to refer to Western scholars affiliated with universities and academia to differentiate them from Islamic Studies scholars/theologians (university related or otherwise) in the Muslim world who will be referred to as ulamaa (sg: alim). 6- These ulamaa who tried to incorporate Greek philosophy into Islam as early as the 9th century, are known for placing their own reasoning over textual proofs.

They include scholars such as Al-Ghazaali, Al-Razi, and Ibn Rushd; some of them took on W. philosophy as their own substitute belief system, such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Arabi. Ahl Al-Kalaam, philosophers, and Sufis are usually the few ulamaa deemed worthy of mention in Western academia) for obvious reasons (Halstead, 2004).