From Ongoing Time Judaism to Wide World Spread Islam
Why Hebrew-Jews (Genesis 14:13) were able to survive as the only ongoing monotheistic religion for about 15 centuries, when none of the other hundreds of pre-Abrahamic prophets’ monotheistic religions could not I do not know. But while the Jews accepted converts they did not send out missionaries to any great extent, so Jewish monotheism did not spread worldwide.
It is true that Rabbi Jesus reduced ritual details for Jews while the other rabbis were adding ritual rules. But while Christianity made it easier for believers to do the rituals, it made redemption harder by requiring pure belief in the Trinity, which created many dozens of Heretical sects. Also Islam and Judaism demanded a unitarian, imageless God, while the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches did not.
Prophet Muhammad was an imageless, monotheistic messenger for all nations and not just for image worshipping Arabs or Trinitarian Christians. I think of myself as a Reform Rabbi who is an Islamic Jew. Actually I am an Islamic Hebrew Jew i.e. a faithful Jew submitting to the will of God, because I am a Reform Rabbi.
As a Rabbi I am faithful to the covenant that God made with Prophet Abraham the Hebrew, the first Islamic Hebrew (Genesis 14:13), and I submit to the covenant and its commandments that God made at Mount Sinai with Banu Israel, the people of Israel.
As a Reform Rabbi I believe that Jewish spiritual leaders should modify Jewish tradition as social and historical circumstances change and develop. I also believe we should not make religion difficult for people to practice by adding an increasing number of restrictions to the commandments we Jews received at Mount Sinai.
These are lessons that Prophet Muhammad taught 12 centuries before the rise of Reform Judaism in the early 19th century Germany. Although most Jews today are no longer Orthodox, if the Jews of Muhammad’s time, had followed these teachings of Prophet Muhammad, Reform Judaism would have started 1,400 years ago.
I believe that Prophet Muhammad was a prophet of Reform Judaism to the Orthodox Jews of his day; although he was 1,200 years ahead of his time. During the six centuries between the birth of Jesus and the arrival of Muhammad........
