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From: gt8145a@prism.gatech.edu (FADEL,AYMAN HOSSAM)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Al-Jawzi's position on Jews
Message-ID: <1990Dec13.143336.22909@wpi.WPI.EDU>
Date: 13 Dec 90 14:33:36 GMT
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Ayman  = gt8145a@prism.gatech.edu (FADEL,AYMAN>>>>> HOSSAM)
Talbis = Talbis Iblis, by al-hafiz al-imam jamal al-din Abul-faraj
	 abd el-rahman ibn al-jawzi al-baghdadi (13th cent.) 

Talbis> a few as evidence of this.  They include their finding similarities 
Talbis> between the Creator and His creation.  If this was true, then He would
Talbis> be exposed to the same things [creation] is exposed to.

Moshe ben Maimun, in Hilchot Yesodei Hatorah, chapter 1, makes exactly
the same point.  This is why Jews do not, in fact, make this claim.

Talbis> Abu abd allah
Talbis> ibn hamid reported from one of our professors that the Jews claim
Talbis> that the worshipped God is a man made of light who sits on a chair
Talbis> made of light and that He has a crown of light on His head.  Also,
Talbis> He has body parts like humans.

Again, the professor was wrong.  Jews explicitly deny such a belief.

Talbis>  Also, the Jews maintain that Uzair
Talbis> (Ezra?) is the son of God.  However, if they understood the true
Talbis> nature of sonship, which goes under the category of parts [i.e. someness,
Talbis> the son is part of the father], and that the Creator cannot be
Talbis> divided into parts because there is nothing comparable to Him, they
Talbis> would not have attributed sonship to Uzair.
Talbis> Furthermore, a son has the attributes of his father, and Uzair was
Talbis> in need of food and a god is that upon which things depend for
Talbis> existence, not that which depends on things for its existence.

Once again, a valid point which becomes irrelevant once one realises
that it is based on a false premise.  I have never heard of anyone
considering Ezra to be the son of God.  Ezra was not even a prophet.
He was merely an extremely righteous and learned man, who was one of
the greatest figures in Jewish history.  His importance in Jewish
history is on a level with that of Moses, Rabbi Akiva, Rambam, and a
very few others, but he was no more than a man.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Zev has raised a number of good points.  In fact, according
to an article al-Jahiz wrote in the 3rd (?) century, some Christians
were using these same arguments to say that there are errors in
the Quran.  I don't have a copy of al-Jahiz's book, but I think
there's a transalation of some of his works.  It's called "The Letters
of al-Jahiz,".  The appropriate article is al-Jahiz's "Polemic
Against the Christians."  (Al-Raddu ala al-nasara)

Al-Jahiz is more famous as a man of letters than as a religious
scholar.

I read it a couple years ago, but I recall that he argued that
Muslims were in fact as close to Jews as they were to Christians (or
as far from  Christians as they were from Jews.)  he says that
the common closeness between christians and muslims in Baghdad during
his lifetime was due to the Christian ruler of Abyssinia having
provided refuge to Muslims fleeing the persecution of Qureysh and was
due to the infrequency of contact between Muslims in Medina and
Christians in the Peninsula.  He compared the struggles of Muslims
and Jews in the Peninsula to wars between cousins in the period
before islam:  they were always longer and more intense than
wars between strangers.

The purpose of this excercise was to demonstrate that muslims'
relationships to adherents of other religions is at least partly
a function of the historical circumstances.  It is folly to assume
that Islam is inherently hostile to a specific religion.

At the same time, I think most Muslims would agree that Islam is
the best religion revealed to humankind.  I mean, they (and I)
would not accept a statement such as "All (present) religions
are equally valid expressions of belief in God."

Wassalam, Ayman