Sunday, February 12, 2006

Something I wrote to someone I know, a response to something she said about Islam being a Noachide religion. I will post her response here after she's responded. Peace...

I've thought about that too; if Islam is a Noachide religion. Can we say that it is halachically? I think yes. The only problem with it is that it needs to (meaning that Muslims need to) believe and understand that their religion needs to live side-by-side with ours; Laws for the Gentiles and Laws for the Jews. One of the built-in problems of Islam is that, necessarily, Islam is a Noachide religion that believes itself to have replaced the Law of the Jews, and if you consider that, then this is quite an interesting little phenomenon here. Is it halachically sound? I would venture to say "yes," can these Noachides "wrinkle out the problems" in their religion, which date back to its establishment (and therefore makes it very difficult), that set it up as the finality of our religion, the conclusion? Harmonious living in Islam is struck only by Jewish submission to it (Jewish submission to a Noachide religion??), while in Judaism, it's struck by Jews being Jews and Muslims being Muslims. But we can't be blind; Islam doesn't believe in the same type of harmony that Judaism believes, and that's a problem. There's a part of Islam that would need to disappear before there could be peace between Jews and Muslims.

Question, how do we Jews help to make Noachide harmony known to Muslims when generally, and probably especially now, Muslim sentiment is growingly hostile and immature and therefore resistant to any teachings that come from Judaism which are not already described in Muslims texts? For example, the written source of the Noachide Laws is the Talmud; will Muslims accept the validity of that text? Thoughts? Yaniv...