From: Govind Rajesh < >
Judaism at least does not seek world domination. Also, the analogy breaks down when we consider that version increments generally indicate an improvement or advance of some sort. Christianity and Islam are called Abrahamic solely because these religions themselves claim to be Abrahamic, a claim that is, by the way, unsupported by any authority save their own assertions. The historical Abraham himself was instrumental in creating only one specific religious tradition, i.e. Judaism. Therefore the only religions that can rightfully call themselves Abrahamic are the ones that, at the same time, consider themselves Jewish. However, both Christianity and Islam reject Judaism and, by extension, reject Abraham since, in their view, being a practicing Jew is no longer sufficient to qualify for “god’s” grace. This has the logical effect of damning Abraham himself or putting him at odds with Judaism and Jews. Christian theologians, for example, have been at great pains to explain how the Jewish prophets, including Abraham, would be brought out of hell by Jesus Christ, not having had the benefit of accepting him as lord and savior during their own life-times.
Far from being Abrahamic, both Islam and Christianity have been busy demonizing and brutalizing Jews since their inception. Their Antisemitism, by itself, should give pause to anyone considering their claim of being Abrahamic. My point is one cannot rightly claim to be Abrahamic while at the same time rejecting Abraham’s religion and engaging in wholesale persecution of his followers/descendants.
From an Indian point of view also this joint classification distorts the picture quite a bit. The arrival of Jews to India parallels the arrival of the Parsis and is very different from the aggressive interventions of Islam and Christianity. This I don’t think is just a coincidence. Parsis too are monotheistic and, like followers of many other religions including Judaism, believe themselves to be the chosen recipients of divine revelation through their prophet, in their case Zarathustra. But beyond that there is no drive to eradicate or dominate other religions. Also each of these “monotheistic” religions has a different idea of monotheism and rejects outright that of all others e.g. Islam rejects the core Christian doctrine of the trinity. While the claim is made that the same god is doing the talking through all the different monotheistic scriptures it is more than evident that each of these “One True God’s” has a distinct personality of his own, basically mirroring the individual nature, prakriti, of the human being / medium claiming to speak on his behalf. Lastly the monopolist Christian and Muhammadan gods both seek to supplant the Abrahamic god as the one true god as much as they seek to eradicate each other and all other gods.
We might therefore want to move past or at least de-emphasize these conventional notions that club all three religions together under one “Abrahamic” rubric. Although Jews may themselves justifiably derive some satisfaction from the fact that these other religions seek to legitimize themselves by claiming Abraham’s legacy, many are also able to detect the proverbial devil in the details, that this claim too is, in the final analysis, exclusive and is made at the expense of Judaism and the Jews, ultimately appropriating both god and founding father as rightfully theirs since the followers of these other religions alone are the rightful heirs.
They say, ‘Accept the Jewish or the Christian faith and you shall be rightly guided.’ Say, ‘By no means! We believe in the faith of Abraham, the upright one. He was no idolater.'” (Surah 2:135)
What sets apart Islam and Christianity from the rest is not that they are Abrahamic or Monotheistic, but that they are monopolistic religions. Other Monotheistic faiths like Zoroastrianism and Abrahamic Judaism have borne the full fury of their aggressiveness along with other religions of the world.
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