Faith, Sacrifice, Commitment and
Patience.
These are just some of the qualities
that characterize Prophet Ibrahim or Abraham as he is called in English (peace
be upon him).
So it should come as no surprise
that he is revered not just in Islam, but in Christianity and Judaism as well.
Prophet Ibrahim is also a great personality to discuss in dialogues between
Muslims, Jews and Christians. Here is some basic information about him from the
three perspectives:
“Salam (peace) be upon Abraham!” God
says in the Quran.
In
Islam, Prophet Ibrahim is the friend of God and the father of Prophets (Ismail
or Ishmael in English and Ishaq or Isaac and the grandfather of Prophet Yaqub
or Jacob). He is also one of the ancestors of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and
blessings be upon him). Anyone who rejects Prophet Ibrahim is not a true
believer in Islam. Prophet Ibrahim plays a key role in this regard. In
terms of beliefs, a Muslim must believe in all of the Prophets. This includes
not just Prophet Ibrahim, but his sons Ismail, Ishaq, his grandson Yaqub and of
course his descendant Prophet Muhammad.
When it comes to the five pillars of
Islam, the importance of Prophet Ibrahim becomes even more evident.
The second pillar of Islam is Salah,
the obligatory five daily prayers. Every Muslim who has reached the age of
puberty is accountable for their prayers, be he male or be she female, whether
they live in the desert of northern Arabia, a village of northern Pakistan or
an urban center of North America.
During one part of each of these
five prayers, Muslims must ask God to send His blessings upon Prophet Ibrahim.
Now calculate this: you’ve got more than a few million Muslims, every day, five
times a day, in virtually every time zone on this planet asking God to send His
blessings on Prophet Ibrahim in the course of his/her prayer.
More importantly, the direction in
which every Muslim must face when praying is towards a structure Prophet
Ibrahim built with his son Ismail: the Kaba, in Makkah, Saudi Arabia.
With regards to the Kaba, God says
this about it: “The first House (of worship) appointed for men was that at
Bakka (another name for Makkah); full of blessings and guidance for all kinds
of beings: in it are signs manifest, the station of Abraham-whoever enters it
attains security; pilgrimage thereto is a duty men owe to God-those who can
afford the journey; but if any deny faith, God stands not in need of any of His
creatures”.
This leads to the second way in
which this Prophet, described as the intimate friend of God ,is revered: Hajj.
Hajj is the pilgrimage every Muslim
must make to Makkah at least once in his/her lifetime. Hajj is also an
obligation no Muslim is allowed to reject or ignore. It is in this rite that
Prophet Ibrahim’s importance becomes even more prominent.
In general, Prophet Ibrahim’s
centrality to this fifth pillar of Islam is indicated by the Prophet Mohammed’s
statement, You must adhere to the traditions and rituals (of Hajj), for these
have come down to you from (your forefather) Ibrahim in heritage (Tirmidhi).
First,
the Kaba is the central structure around which the Hajj takes place. No Hajj is
valid without going around this structure built by Prophets Ibrahim and Ismail
in counterclockwise fashion seven times. Second, Muslims who perform the
Hajj or Umra must run in the middle portion of the distance between Safa and
Marwa (two hills close to the Kaba) seven times. This is a commemoration of the
sacrifice of the wife of Abraham, Hajira (may God be pleased with her) for her
son Prophet Ismail.
Prophet Ibrahim had settled his wife
and son in the valley of Makkah by God’s order to pioneers a civilization. It
was from this civilization that the Prophet Mohammed was born.
Finally, Prophet’s Ibrahim’s
willingness to sacrifice his beloved son Ismail for the sake of God exemplifies
not only his sincere devotion to God. The commemoration of this sacrifice is
practiced with the sacrifice of an animal during Hajj and one of the two
Islamic holy days: Eid-ul-Adha.
Both father and son willingly
submitted to God’s command. God substituted a ram in Ismail’s place at the last
moment. God talks about this incident in Quran .
The sacrifice that is offered by
Muslims all over the world every year (at Eid-ul-Adha) is in commemoration of
the supreme act and spirit of sacrifice offered by Prophet Abraham in lieu of
his son Ismail.
2. Judaism
According
to A Concise Encyclopedia of Judaism by Dan Cohn-Sherbok (Oneworld Publications
1998), Prophet Abraham is the father of Jewish people. According to
Scripture, he was the son of Terah and the father of Isaac, who was born to
Sarah, and he is also the father of Ishmael, who was born to Hagar.
After leaving Ur of the Chaldees,
Abraham traveled to Canaan, visited Egypt and returned to Hebron. God appeared
to him in a vision. He promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit the
land. God tested Abraham’s faith by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac
When the mother of Isaac, Sarah,
died, Abraham bought the cave of Macpelah as a burial place. Abraham died at
the age of 175.
According to the Oxford Concise
Companion to the Jewish Religion by Louis Jacobs (Oxford University press
1999), the story of Abraham is narrated in the book of Genesis .Here is an
excerpt from that section which focuses
on the Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac, according to Jewish tradition:
And He said, “Take now your son,
your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him
there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you”.
So Abraham rose early in the morning
and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his
son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the
place which God had told him.
Then on the third day Abraham lifted
his eyes and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay
here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will
come back to you.’
So Abraham took the wood of the
burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand,
and a knife, and the two of them went together.
But Isaac spoke to Abraham his
father and said, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” And he said,
“Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’
And Abraham said, “My son, God will
provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” And the two of them went
together.
Then they came to the place of which
God had told him. And Abraham built an alter there and placed the wood in
order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the alter, upon the wood.
And Abraham stretched out his hand
and took the knife to slay his son. But the Angel of the LORD called to him
from heaven and said “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
And He said, “Do not lay your hand
on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you
have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
Then Abraham lifted his eyes and
looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horn. So
Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead
of his son.
A majority of contemporary scholars
think that he lived in approximately the eighteenth-century before the
Christian Era.
In the Jewish tradition, he is the
father of the Jews and Judaism.
God’s covenant with Abraham is
expressed in the rite of circumcision and male Jewish children, to this day
are, for the most part circumcised.
This act is called ‘entry into the
covenant of Abraham our father’, and the name of the rite itself is the
‘berit’; the ‘covenant’.
Abraham is also considered the
spiritual father of anyone who converts to Judaism. At a Jewish conversion
ceremony, a convert is given a Hebrew name and is called a ‘child of Abraham
our father’.
3. Christianity
It is through the central figure of
Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) that Prophet Abraham is given prominence in
the Christian tradition.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia
Volume 1 (1999, Kevin Knight, online version), in the New Testament, the
generation of Jesus Christ is traced back to Abraham by St. Matthew.
Similarly, as the New Testament
traces Prophet Jesus’ descent of Jesus to Prophet Abraham, it does the same of
all Jews in terms of “carnal” descent.
However, in the New Testament, it is
not this carnal descent from Abraham to which importance is attached but
importance is placed on practicing the virtues attributed to Abraham in
Genesis. Thus in John, 8, the Jews say : “We are the seed of Abraham”, and
Jesus replies : “If ye be the children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham”.
The
Catholic Encyclopedia also notes that Prophet Abraham may be considered the
source of Old Testament religion. From the days of Prophet Abraham, men were
accustomed to speaking of God as the God of Abraham, while Prophet Abraham is
not found referring in a similar way to anyone preceding him.
According
to the A Concise Encyclopedia of Christianity by Geoffrey Parrinder (Oneworld
Publications 1998), Abraham is a great Hebrew patriarch and is considered the
common spiritual father of the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and
Islam.
Paul wrote of all those who have
faith being children of Abraham . Prophet Abraham’s faith and example is cited
by many Christian authors.
According to Luke , Jesus spoke of
Abraham’s bosom as a symbol of Paradise .
Christians believe God first gave
Abraham a son through a bond woman named Hagar. This son was named Ishmael. God
gave him a second son from his barren wife Sarah. He was named Isaac.
According to Christian tradition,
God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac “to prove that he was ‘worthy of
becoming the father of a mighty nation, which would be as numerous as the stars
in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore’”
From “A History of God, the
4,000-year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam” by Karen Armstrong
published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Foot prints of Prophet Abrahim
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