An Unbroken Chain

The next verse to go to is 5:111. A quick word on the notation in which such references are given, since a reference may be written 5 A 111, and the letter A stands for āyah: āyah is a better word than "verse". "Verse" relates to the translation of the Bible, the King James Version, whereas āyah literally means a sign, in Arabic — a sign, which is a very interesting word; the idea is that one is dealing with a symbol. Sūrah means, in the Arabic language, something related to a gate, or to something around a city; and the idea is that a sūrah is a series of signs, or meanings, that are contained within a limited number. Then there is the letter J, which is juzʾ. There are thirty parts to the Qurʾān, and juzʾ is Arabic for one-thirtieth of the Qurʾān; juzʾ means a part. So the sixth part means the sixth, beginning with the first — one, two, three, four — and the last part would be the thirtieth. There are thirty parts to the Qurʾān, and this verse is in the sixth part. It says: and behold, I inspired the disciples to have faith in Me and My messenger; and they said: we have faith, and do You bear witness that we bow to Allah as Muslims.

The disciples there are the ḥawāriyyūn, the disciples of Jesus. So again, here is the idea: there was the idea that Isaac, who is the father of the Jewish tradition, and there is the idea that Jesus — the prophet, or, according to the Christians, the saviour of the Christian tradition — that they are saying: we are Muslims. This is really important to see, simply in order to understand how the Muslims view the matter. They really do view the matter that Islam is an unbroken chain. It is not something new; and the Prophet Muhammad did not see himself as bringing a new religion. He really saw himself as a renewer of an ancient tradition.

Now, once those verses have been seen: what these chapters are obviously attempting to do is to understand Islam from the perspective of the religion of those who believe in the Prophet Muhammad and his tradition — not so much to study comparative religion; they are not here to teach readers about their own traditions, or anything like that. But just as a starting point, it is important to recognise that this is definitely part of the Muslim worldview: that Christianity was an Islam, Judaism was an Islam, and there were many Islams that we do not know about and do not name, because the Qurʾān does not mention them. It talks about other traditions simply, and it does not mention them by name. But there is a tradition from the Prophet Muhammad that there have been 124,000 prophets; there have been 313 or 314 messengers; there have been over a hundred books that have come down; and all we are told about is four books, and then the tablets of Abraham and Moses. So there are many things that we do not know about traditions, and this is why the Muslims traditionally have tended not to say: we do not believe in such a tradition. One might say of Hinduism, even though from a Muslim point of view there are many things in it that are very problematic — still, one would hesitate to say that it was not a prophetic tradition, because it is a very ancient tradition; and from a Muslim point of view, the previous traditions have been distorted. That is the Muslim worldview.