The Turkish term for ‘tolerance’ is ‘hosgoru’ which means seeing or looking for the good side of another person. Unlike toleration, which is a passive acceptance of the other, hosgoru means actively looking for something good in the other. Tragically, religious communities have not engaged in hosgoru when examining the sacred scriptures of other religions. For more than thirteen  centuries most Jews, Christians and Muslims have read each other’s holy scriptures from an adversarial perspective. 

Since all monotheistic scriptures come from the one and only God, we should view other scriptures as potentially enriching our understanding and appreciation of our own scripture. But in the middle ages almost all readers thought of revelation as a zero sum sport like tennis rather than a multiple win co-operative sport like mountain climbing. 

In a zero sum game any value or true spiritual insight I grant to another scripture somehow diminishes my own. This was the result of the influence of Greek philosophy’s emphasis on the logic of the excluded middle. Something is either true or it is false. There is no other option. If two propositions contradict one another, one or both of them must be false. 

This would mean that if my religion is true, yours must be false. In modern terms, light could not be both a particle and a wave at the same time. Yet we now know that light is indeed both a particle and a wave at the same time; and it is the individual observer’s viewpoint that makes light a particle or a wave.

This medieval situation did not improve much in modern times. In the last two centuries university academics have written many studies of comparative religion which they claim are objective and not distorted by their religious beliefs. 

Unfortunately, academics who treat other religions academically, usually do not believe that other scriptures are actually Divinely inspired. Indeed, many academics do not even believe that their own sacred scriptures are Divinely inspired. 

They use the same kinds of explanations to understand a revealed religion that they would use to explain secular history and literature. As a rabbi I follow a different model, one I learned from prophet Muhammad. For example, the Mishnah (an early third century compilation of the oral Torah, states,  “Adam was created as an individual to teach you that anyone who destroys a single soul, Scripture imputes it to him as if he destroyed the whole world.” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)  

And the Qur’an states,”one who kills a human being, unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land, would be as if he slew the whole people, and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people” (Qur’an 5:32)  

Academics explain the similarity of the two statements by assuming that since the Jewish statement is several centuries earlier than the Qur’an, Muhammad must have heard it from a Rabbi or other educated Jew in Medina. 

But I believe Muhammad is a prophet of God who confirms the Torah of prophet Moses. Muhammad has no need to learn this statement from another human being. Academics might reply that the statement is not found in the written Torah; it appears in the oral Torah  written by the Rabbis in the Mishnah more than 1000 years after Moses. 

But the Rabbis maintain that the Mishnah is part of the oral Torah that was passed down from Moses through many generations just as Ahadith have been passed down through the generations. Indeed, the Qur’an itself introduces this statement as follows, “It is because of this that We ordained for the Children of Israel “one who kills a human being …” (Qur’an 5:32) 

No prophet of God needs to be informed by another human what should be written in Holy Scripture. God is the source of all Divine inspiration. There are several verses in the Qur’an that mention things from the oral Torah. My perspective is that prophets and Holy Scriptures can not in reality oppose one another because they all come from one source. Prophets are all brothers; they have the same father (God) and different mothers (motherlands. mother tongues, nations, cultures and historical eras). 

All of these factors produce different rituals and legal systems, but their basic theology can differ only in small and unessential details. As the sage of Konya, Jalal al-Din al-Rumi says, “Ritual prayer might differ in every religion, but belief never........

© Eurasia Review