Word: koranic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Alevi whose parents come from Turkey. "The traditions that became Turkish Alevism exist all over the Arab world and are very diverse." Alevis follow the Shi'ite path laid down by Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali, but with a twist. "Orthodox Shi'ites say the entire Koran is the word of God," says Metin K??k, director of the Berlin center. "But we differentiate between Muhammad's inspired verse and the rules he came up with later on, when he was an administrator and warrior." That means no mosques, no five daily prayers, no separate worship...
...best as a dynastic grandfather whose grandson Jacob actually founds the nation of Israel, Muslims regard him as one of the four most important prophets. So pure is his submission to the One God that Muhammad later says his own message is but a restoration of Abrahamic faith. The Koran includes scenes from Abraham's childhood in which he chides his father for believing in idols and survives, Daniel-like, in a fiery furnace to which he is condemned for his fealty to Allah. And in the Koranic version of Abraham's ultimate test, Abraham tells...
...meaning that Abraham's only true followers are true believers--i.e., Muslims. Moreover, if Allah ever had a pact with the Jews as a race, they backslid out of it in episodes such as the worship of the golden calf in the Torah's book of Exodus. Indeed, the Koran advises Muslims proselytized by either Jews or Christians to answer, "Nay... (we follow) the religion of Abraham...
Then there is the matter of Isaac and Ishmael. Unlike the Torah, the Koran does not specify which son God tells Abraham to sacrifice. Muslim interpreters a generation after Muhammad concluded that the prophet was descended from the slave woman Hagar's boy, Ishmael. Later scholarly opinion determined that Ishmael was also the son who went under the knife. The decision effectively completed the Jewish disenfranchisement. Not only was their genealogical claim void, but their forefather lost his role in the great drama of surrender...
...remind the poet's legions of new fans that when Rumi invited his listener or reader to leave the yesses and nos of conventional belief behind, he did so as a card-carrying member of a culture that unquestioningly accepted Muhammad as the Seal of the Prophets, and the Koran as God's last word, dictated verbatim by the angel Gabriel...