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Muslims don't believe Torah to be corrupt nor do they deny the Torah and it is considered in the six articles of faith to believe in all revealed scriptures like Torah, Psalms etc . Also Muslim share a common patriarch Prophet Moses and believe in all of the subsequent prophets like Israel etc , yet why are Muslims considered to be gentiles?

Monica Cellio
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knowit
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  • Are you claiming that Muslims share Moses as a biological or spiritual Patriarch? – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 07:06
  • muslim consider Moses as their patriach both biologically and spiritually – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 07:34
  • is there a source in the Quran for this? – ray Mar 03 '13 at 08:19
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    @R.Sebag Who cares? There's no Jewish source for it. – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 08:20
  • http://www.scribd.com/doc/70360662/Lost-Tribes-of-Israel-With-Prophet-Isa-Imam-Mahdi – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 10:17
  • @R.Sebag for detailed proof that there are muslims from lost tribe of Israel refere here http://www.scribd.com/doc/70360662/Lost-Tribes-of-Israel-With-Prophet-Isa-Imam-Mahdi – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 10:18
  • possible duplicate of Why are children from a gentile wife not considered Jewish with a Jewish father? – Seth J Mar 03 '13 at 14:01
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    @SethJ Overthunk. This really is simpler than that despite all the noise that gives the false impression that there's anything complicated about this. Approval of Judaism != Jewish nationality. – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 14:13
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    (... and kal vechomer, approval of a selected aspect of Judaism != Jewish nationality) – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 14:38
  • @SethJ this is not a duplicate of this question since it asks specifically about the motivation behind classification of Muslims as Gentiles . It is Rambam who throws a strawman saying Muslims are gentiles because they reject Torah which is simply false – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 14:39
  • @Ali, This question has already been answered. If you want to ask a question about understanding a particular statement of the Rambam (subject to the guidelines regarding constructive questions in our FAQ, you can do so in a separate question. (More explicitly, if the point of the question is to argue that the Rambam was wrong, it will be difficult for it to be a constructive question.) – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 14:53
  • @Isaac Moses (and Ali), Jewishness is passed matrilineally. End of discussion. This asks why muslims aren't Jewish when they claim descent from Abraham. Hence, this is a dupe. – Seth J Mar 03 '13 at 15:41
  • @SethJ The question needn't presuppose knowledge of that fact. The answer is indeed as simple as you say. – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 15:42
  • So why rule out the possibility of Muslim sharing even a jewish matrineal ancestry , this is not rare either , There are many cases in history where entire tribes including females converted to Islam, @SethJ – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 15:44
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    @Ali, your question was not about the specific case of some hypothetical tribe of Jews. It was about Muslims, in general, being considered Jewish based on their subscription to Muslim beliefs. – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 15:47
  • no it was about are muslims gentiles are muslims Jewish? – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 15:50
  • @Ali, you just said the same thing I did. – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 15:55
  • NO it was about are muslims gentiles? NOT are muslims Jewish IT can be possible to be muslim non gentile and jewish descent – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 16:45
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    @Ali "Rambam who throws a strawman saying Muslims are gentiles because they reject Torah which is simply false" The Rambam does not say that. You made that up. -1 for making things up. – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 16:46
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    If Muslims are gentiles, they aren't Jews. If Muslims are Jews, they aren't gentiles. – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 16:47
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    @msh210 I don't understand why you did that rollback. It didn't invalidate any answers. – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 16:48
  • repeated changing and editing of the question, while useful in some sense, also makes posted answers seem like they miss the point. Should I be changing my answer to address that Rambam thing? – rosends Mar 03 '13 at 17:18
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    @Dan I wouldn't bother. Your answer is still very valid. Plus there's nothing to address re the Rambam because the OP seems to have made it up. I highly encourage you to downvote the question, in case you haven't already. – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 17:47
  • "IT can be possible to be muslim non gentile and jewish descent". Yep, that's called a Jew (if the descent is matrilineal). If he is not following Halachah, he is sinning. This is covered in several questions on this site. – Seth J Mar 03 '13 at 17:52
  • @DoubleAA TY. btdt – rosends Mar 03 '13 at 17:53
  • @DoubleAA, re why the rollback: The vast majority of the screen real estate occupied by the current version of the question is occupied by an aside that has nothing to do with the question being asked. All editors are encouraged to make edits that improve others' posts. (But my edit summary was in error.) – msh210 Mar 03 '13 at 19:49
  • @msh210 Fair enough. My question was indeed based on the summary. – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 20:14

2 Answers2

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In Judaism, someone is considered a gentile (or Jew) not based on his beliefs or actions. Being a Jew is having a status that attaches to a person under very specific circumstances; without those circumstances, he's a gentile. Specifically, to be a Jew one must be born to a Jewish mother or undergo the process of conversion that is specified in Jewish law. That is why most Muslims are considered gentiles.

msh210
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    This doesn't really answer the question which claims Moses as a common patriarch. – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 06:56
  • @DoubleAA I don't see why not. No one said anything about matrilineal descent. – msh210 Mar 03 '13 at 06:57
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    @DoubleAA, I think you're reading more into "patriarch" than was intended. – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 06:57
  • @msh210 Are you supposing Moses had gentile spouses?? – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 06:58
  • @IsaacMoses I don't see how you could know without asking. I certainly am not an expert in Muslim oriented history, if that's where the OP is coming from. – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 06:59
  • @DoubleAA I agree with IsaacMoses's comment. But even if we are to take "patriarch" in the question literally, Moses's descendants could have had gentile wives, yes. – msh210 Mar 03 '13 at 06:59
  • @DoubleAA, Every single other claim in the question is about belief. In context, it seems clear to me that the patriarchy of Moses claimed here is a spiritual one rather than a lineal one. – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 07:01
  • There's really no reason we need to argue about what he meant. – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 07:11
  • @DoubleAA, I agree: my answer is correct either way. If he did mean genealogical patriarch, then adding "There's no evidence Moses is the female-line patriarch of Muslims today." before the last sentence of my answer will improve it, but it's good as is also. – msh210 Mar 03 '13 at 07:16
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    @msh210 What evidence is there of anyone's female line patriarch back 3000 years? – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 07:29
  • @DoubleAA let's continue this in chat. – msh210 Mar 03 '13 at 07:33
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    @DoubleAA Evidence shmevidence. We have no tradition of people who happen to believe in Islam all being as a result descendants of Moshe. I don't know how anyone could, as belief and descent are two different questions. The claim is dubious on its face and, in the context of our tradition, false. – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 08:12
  • "in the context of our tradition, false." That is the correct answer to the OP's question. Not this post. – Double AA Mar 03 '13 at 08:21
  • @DoubleAA, The question is mostly about beliefs. (And frankly, I suspect that the apparent implication of descent in part of it is mainly due to your prompting.) – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 08:23
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I am not going to discuss whether it Islam thinks that the Torah text was corrupted (though from proffered quotes and discussions about which son of Abe was bound make me wonder) but I am going to answer the question exactly as asked "why are Muslims considered to be gentiles?" This is similar but not identical to "Why aren't Muslims Jewish"?

The answer is simple, really. Because they aren't Jewish. The word Jew (and therefore, its opposite word, the label for 'not-being') developed significantly after Moses' time -- it had to do with the divided kingdoms and the lineage of most of the people in the kingdom of Judah. When the term became the generalized title for "people of the Kingdom of Judah" it excluded people who were not of that kingdom. And when it became used (as it was in the scroll of Esther) to mean "those who subscribe to the code of religious law of the people of the Kingdom of Judah" it created the class of "Gentile" if not in name then in theory (the word gains its current meaning as a noun in the 14th century. So semantically, the deciding factor is about being a Jew (which can come about by proper conversion or through descent as codified by Jewish law).

So if one asks "is a Muslim a Jew, because semantically, many Muslims say that every Jew could be considered a Muslim in the broadest sense of the word as submitting to the will of god" the answer is "no." Being a member of the Jewish religion (and therefore not a gentile) has to do either with descent as defined by Jewish law or conversion as defined by Jewish law. It is not about a personal sense that one can find a link for himself to some historical personage.

Also note (as I have been musing about some of the comments on the Q and A's) -- Jews don't claim Moses as a biological patriarch, nor do we list him as a spiritual patriarch (the forefathers were Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) so finding a shared belief in him as a prophet or a great grandfather doesn't have an effect on one's status as Jewish.

rosends
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  • so the muslim pashtun tribe(jewish ancestery) would be jewish going by your answer? – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 12:42
  • I know nothing of that claim, nor of any reason to think Pashtuns are Jewish based on a quick review of the theory at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Pashtun_descent_from_Israelites . Aside from a 16th century historically incorrect statement, what are you pointing to? – rosends Mar 03 '13 at 12:53
  • http://www.scribd.com/doc/70360662/Lost-Tribes-of-Israel-With-Prophet-Isa-Imam-Mahdi – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 13:05
  • some examples http://pastebin.com/hQCq7Rcj – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 13:09
  • the problem with your claim is that the text is trying to connect the Pashtun with the lost tribes. The lost tribes were lost from the nation of Israel, not Judah. Therefore, being of them would not make one Jewish (as that refers to the kingdom of Judah). Therefore, they would be gentiles. The linguistic links in the pastebin doc only show similarities in language in the mideast which, according to your logic, would "prove" that anyone who speaks Arabic is Jewish because of the commonalities. – rosends Mar 03 '13 at 13:16
  • So what about a group of Jew who converts to Islam, there are many such groups – knowit Mar 03 '13 at 13:48
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    That's a completely different question. – rosends Mar 03 '13 at 14:27
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    @Ali If a group of Jews were to begin ascribibg to the teachings of a false prophet and adopting a system of practice other than that of the Torah, they'd be sinning Jews, but still Jews. The more they intermarry with gentiles, the fewer of their descendants will be Jewish. – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 14:28
  • Dan, I suspect that if we were to theoretically find and verify one of the lost tribes and their lineage, we'd consider them "Jewish," in the contemporary sense of the word. Practically speaking, the difficulty of such verification would probably indicate that they'd be required to undergo giyur to be considered Jewish. – Isaac Moses Mar 03 '13 at 14:34
  • I think precedent has required some form of geirus and an acceptance of mitzvah in the contemporary sense. But this question needs to be addressed on a semantic level for it to be satisfied IMHO – rosends Mar 03 '13 at 14:41