Author: Rabbi Allen S Maller

The oppression of Judaism by Antiochus IV, the Syrian Greek king, was the first known attempt at suppressing a minority religion, but unfortunately not the last. Other well-known early attempts were the three-century long Roman persecution of Christianity, and the persecution of…

The Qur’an teaches: Say, [O believers], “We believed in Allah and what has been revealed to us [the Qur’an] and what has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Descendants [of Jacob] and what was given to…

In the Zabur of Prophet David it is written: “One thing God has spoken; two things have I heard.”  (Psalms 62:11/12). The rabbis in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 34a) asserted that this means there are multiple interpretations of each verse of Sacred Scripture…

According to the Muslim scholars Ibn Abbas and Suddi, after the death of Hagar [Hajar], her son Prophet Ishmael [Ismâ’îl] married, divorced and remarried again. Ibn Kathir says that Ishmael’s first wife was an inhospitable Amalekite woman who was rejected by her…

Muslims understand David as one of the major prophets sent by God —while Jews have emphasized David as the great foundational King of historical Israel. Why the difference in Islamic and Jewish orientations? Who Was David? Before David was a Prophet or…

Ignác/Ignaz [Yitzhaq Yehuda] Goldziher (June 22, 1850 – November 13, 1921), was a Hungarian scholar of Islam and is considered one of the three founders of modern Islamic studies in Europe. Goldziher was educated at the universities of Budapest, Berlin, Leipzig and…

Still being used in the 21st century are anti-Islamic polemical arguments from 18th and 19th century Christian Missionaries who claimed that Muhammad made lots of mistakes in the Qur’an when he refers to events that occur in the Bible. In reality, these…

At the annual commemoration of Isra and Mi’raj (March 22 this year) many Muslims will remind themselves of the well-known Hadith about why Muslims pray five times daily. The Qur’an itself does not explicitly state that there should be five distinct daily…

Rabbi Allen S. Maller offers Aljumuah readers his insight on early Jewish relationships with Prophet Muhammad on a day when Muslim World League leaders have just joined with Jewish leaders to visit Auschwitz, It is hard for me as a Reform Rabbi to…

Christian missionaries declare the Qur’an wrongly states that Prophet Jesus was not killed by the Jews, or the Romans, or by anyone else. A popular translation of the relevant Qur’anic passage reads thus: “And for their saying, ‘Indeed, we (Romans, Jews, or…