Mustafa Akyol
At a time of bitter conflict in the Middle East, The Islamic Moses dives into the older, deeper, and often unexpectedly brighter story of Jews and Muslims.
Today, I am glad to announce the release of my latest book,
The Islamic Moses: How the Prophet Inspired Jews and Muslims to Flourish Together and Change the World (St. Martin’s Press, 2024)
It is, in a sense, a sequel to my earlier book, The Islamic Jesus (2017), which examined the Qur’anic depiction of Jesus Christ, revealing the intricate connections between Christianity and Islam. This time, I examine the Quranic depiction of Moses, who, curiously, is the most dominant human figure in the Islamic scripture, eclipsing even the latter’s own prophet, Muhammad.
The Quranic Moses is just the key to a much larger story, though. The Jewish prophet was so central to Islam’s founding text because he was the role model for Islam’s own prophet. Muhammad embraced the core ideals of Judaism — a staunch monotheism with a comprehensive religious law — only to proclaim them to his people, the Arabs. The theological continuation between two faiths was so strong that modern Jewish historian Shelomo Dov Goitein (d. 1985) defined Islam as “from the very flesh and bone of Judaism.” This new religion, Goitein added, was “a recast, an enlargement” of its Jewish precursor.
For many people in the West today, all this may be surprising to hear, because they are used to hearing about the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” while Islam is often considered, at best, a distant cousin. But the Judeo-Christian tradition is a modern concept popularized only in the twentieth century, when Western civilization finally began to question its dark history of antisemitism, while parts of the Muslim world sadly began to absorb it.
However, there is an equally valid “Judeo-Islamic tradition” — as historian Bernard Lewis once called it — that encompasses both the striking religious parallels between Judaism and Islam, and also the deeply intertwined history of Jews and Muslims.
The Islamic Moses offers a theological and historical journey into this much-forgotten story.
The journey begins in Mecca with the book’s first chapter, “The Moses of Mecca.” Here we look into the very birth of Islam in early seventh-century Arabia, with Judaism being its “midwife,” as some modern Jewish historians saw it. We see why the Qur’an, especially in its Meccan chapters, narrates so much about Moses and his nemesis, the Pharaoh, with many parallels to the Hebrew Bible, but also with some fascinating nuances.
Then, in chapters 2 and 3, “What Really Happened in Medina (Parts I and II), we reexamine the first actual encounter between Jews and Muslims, which begins with a remarkably cordial and pluralist “constitution,” but ends up with grim stories of violence. We see, though, that beneath this seemingly religious conflict there could be more than meets the eye: the clash of the two great empires of the time, the Byzantines and the Sassanids, which strained the relations in peripheral Arabia.
In chapter 4, “Under the Kingdoms of Ishmael,” we see how the Judeo-Islamic tradition really began to take hold in history. As surprising as it may sound today, the early Islamic conquests, which built a huge empire from Spain to the borders of India in just a century, were often welcomed by Jews, if not assisted by them. The reason was not a “Jewish-Arabic cabal,” as some Christians believed then, but rather the simple fact that Jews found more freedom under Islam than elsewhere.
In chapter 5, “Halal Judaism, Kosher Islam,” we explore the “creative symbiosis” that took place between medieval Islam and Judaism, as some Jewish historians called it. The two religions, with remarkably similar beliefs and practices, learned a lot from each other, in intricate ways that may surprise many of their believers today.
In chapter 6, “How Islamic Rationalism Enriched Judaism,” we explore how some theological and philosophical trends that appeared in the golden age of Islam influenced the Jewish tradition in fascinating ways while, ironically, dwindling within Islam itself.
Chapter 7, “The Jewish Haskalah and the Islamic Enlightenment,” takes the readers to the modern world and examines how Jews, at the dawn of Western liberalism, reinterpreted their tradition with a new sense of individual liberty and religious freedom. We focus on Moses Mendelssohn, the greatest Jewish thinker of the eighteenth century, whose liberal ideas about the origins and values of Judaism are remarkably similar to the arguments of Islamic reformers of the more recent time.
Chapter 8, “The Good Orientalists,” challenges a cliché that has become all too popular in Muslim societies: “Orientalism,” or the study of Islam in the modern West, is built only on cynical motives that serve colonial interests. The truth is more complex, as evidenced especially by the much-forgotten Jewish Orientalists of nineteenth-century Germany. Their motivations toward Islam had nothing to do with colonialism or racial supremacism. Quite to the contrary, they had genuine sympathy for Islam, and even identified with it, while trying to find remedies in it against European antisemitism.
Chapter 9, “The Ottoman Haven,” reminds of the safety the Ottoman Turks, my ancestors, offered to Jews in their darkest hours, such as their expulsion from Spain in 1492, and the blood libels of the nineteenth century. In return, Jews were remarkably loyal to the Ottoman Empire until its very end in World War I — in stark contrast to latter-day myths about Jewish conspiracies that supposedly ended this last seat of the Islamic caliphate.
Finally, in the epilogue, “In the Darkest Hour,” we ponder whether the better history between Jews and Muslims is gone for good, as many would think today, especially in the darkness of the brutal conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, or whether there is a chance for peace and reconciliation.
The Islamic Moses, in other words, is not much about the modern conflict in the Middle East, which has built much tension and distrust between Muslims and Jews over the past three quarters of a century. Instead, it is about the much older, deeper, and often brighter story of Islam and Judaism, the remembrance of which, hopefully, can also help find a peaceful solution to that modern political tragedy. It can also help Muslims and Jews everywhere to look at each other with better understanding and deeper respect.
You can buy it on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or everywhere else in the United States where books are sold.
Praise for The Islamic Moses
“A timely, accessible, and eye-opening new approach to a centuries-old story.” — Kirkus, starred review
“Mustafa Akyol has written a genuinely valiant and profoundly knowledgeable book. His immersion in a tradition other than his own is moving to behold: an unforgettable example of humaneness across difference. I feel blessed to inhabit this ugly world with the author of this beautiful book.” — Leon Wieseltier
“Moses is the name that recurs most often in the Qur’an, and the Qur’an was just the beginning. Mustafa Akyol surprises again and yet again with one documented instance after another of affinity or alliance between Jews and Muslims over the centuries. Cogent, admirably concise, and thoroughly engaging.” — Jack Miles, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Pulitzer-winning author of God: A Biography
“It is a rare thinker who can offer a critical comparative study of two religions and their interactions that is both honest and fair. Here you have it, and in a balanced presentation that is a delight to read.… A must-read for those open to sincere reflection.” — Rabbi Reuven Firestone, professor in medieval Judaism and Islam at Hebrew Union College
“This is a brilliant book that must be widely read by mainstream commentators and public figures as well as studied on campus[es]. It not only tells an important story but offers a key to peace in our troubled times.” — Akbar Ahmed, distinguished professor and the chair of Islamic studies at American University, former Pakistani High Commissioner
“A bold and original book.… Akyol’s path-breaking analysis gives us hope about better relations between Jews and Muslims in the future.” — Ahmet T. Kuru, professor at San Diego State University, author of Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment
“A piece of outstanding scholarship and an act of courage … Akyol tells us that Jews and Muslims are not condemned to a never-ending struggle. They can make appeal to a shared past and a common rationality.” — Martino Diez, associate professor of Arabic, Catholic University of Milan
“A magnificent act of writing [and] an urgently needed act of peace. I could not recommend The Islamic Moses with more enthusiasm. Or hope.” — Rev. Stephanie Dowrick, award-winning author and interfaith minister