Two of a Kind
The rationale behind going through all these details of Jewish history is to be able to see our faces in their mirror. Both the Muslims and the Jews claim to be the followers of a holy messenger of Almighty Allah (SWT), and both were endowed with Divine Scriptures. This in itself constitutes a significant common factor, meaning that the two are essentially similar communities. According to a tradition that appears in Jame‘ Tirmidhi, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is reported to have said: “My Ummah will undergo and experience all those conditions which were experienced by the Children of Israel, just as a shoe resembles its pair.” The parallelism between the history of Muslims and that of Jews is indeed amazing. A comparative study of their past reveals that, like the Israelites, we Muslims have also undergone two phases of rise and two phases of decline, as alluded to by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in the above prediction.
What follows, therefore, is an outline of the history of Muslims vis-à-vis their rise and decline over the last fourteen centuries, and this will clearly demonstrate the points of resemblance between the Jews and Muslims.
The principal reason, however, for presenting this comprehensive yet brief chronological sketch of our past is two fold: First, as far as “rise” is concerned, we need to fully appreciate our past grandeur and glories, so that our younger generations can be motivated to recapture that lost greatness and to try and revive this half-dead tiger that was once the Muslim Ummah. Second, with reference to “decline,” we need to clearly understand that Allah’s Justice is the same for everyone, and His laws are permanent and immutable. The manner in which He treated the previous Muslim Ummah — the Jews — was repeated in His dealings with us. When we indulged in the same sins and crimes as were committed by the Jews, we received the same punishment as was given to them.
To begin with, we need to have in our minds a rough idea of the geography of Muslim world. For the purpose of description, the Muslim world can be seen as consisting of three sections. That is, the center or the heart of Muslim world, which is made up of the Arabian peninsula in the south and Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor in the north; the right wing, which extends from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asian republics to Malaysia and Indonesia in the Far East; and finally the left wing, which includes the whole North Africa and, in the good old days, extended even upto Spain.
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