"idolatry of the worst kind!"

This comment was posted by Abu Noor al-Irlandee in response to 'A Final Warning for the Curious':

"...If the purpose of the Qur'an was to be acceptable to Jews and Christians why did it make so many statements that the Jews found objectionable and why did it flatly and absolutely reject the central tenet of Christianity by that time, the Trinity, as idolatry of the worst kind?"

In response to the first question, the reason for the Prophet's endless rebukes, appeals, arguments and denunciations of the Jews is due to one simple fact - they had rejected him as the last 'Prophet of Israel'.

• They rejected him in spite of the fact that Islam's doctrines, traditions, laws and rites had been drawn from the chief Jewish sources - the Bible, the Talmud, and the Apocrypha.
• In spite of the fact that the Islamic confession of faith was a free adaptation of the Hebrew Shema: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord in One!'
• In spite of the fact that the Jew eulogized God in Hebrew as El Rachamim - 'God the Compassionate' - and God was likewise eulogized in Arabic as Al-Rachim - 'the Compassionate'!
• In spite of the Prophet being enjoined by Allah (Sura 2:130) to declare that "...‘We believe in God, and what has been revealed to us, and what has been revealed to Ibrahim, and Ismail, and Ishaq, and Yaqub, and the Tribes, and what was brought to Moses and Jesus, and what was brought unto the Prophets from their Lord; we will not distinguish between any one of them, and unto Him are we resigned.’

As to which Jews may have found some statements to be 'objectionable', I quote from a Washington Times article by Mustafa Aykol:

"There are also parts of the Koran that criticize Jews severely, and some current Muslims who embrace anti-Semitism quote them quite frequently. Yet there is a very crucial point that they fail to recognize: The Koran criticizes Jews not for being Jews, but rather for failing to be so.

To be more precise, the Koran condemns only those Jews who disobeyed God and abandoned His law -- such as those who worshipped the Golden Calf, refused to enter the Holy Land, disobeyed Jewish prophets, venerated the idol Baal and so on.

Moreover, while such deviators are condemned in the Koran, righteous Jews are praised. In one particular chapter, after first telling about the sins committed by those from "People of the Book" -- a term that refers to Jews and Christians as the bearers of previous revelations -- the Koran says, "They are not all alike; of the People of the Book there is an upright party; they recite God's communications in the night time and they adore (Him)... Those are among the good (3:113-4)."

And in response to the second question, it was only after the Jews had 'snubbed' the Prophet that he began to woo Christianity. Unlike the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, however, which Abu Noor al-Irlandee rightly describes as 'idolatry of the worst kind', the Christian notion of the 'Virgin Mary' could be adopted without much offense to Jews because it is stressed that this 'virgin' birth did not confer 'divinity' on Jesus.

Notwithstanding the above, The New Testament portrayal of Jesus as a messenger of God has far more in common with the monotheism of Judaism and Islam than it does with the 'Christianity' portrayed by the Christian churches.