A PHENOMENON OF DEGENERATION
Prophetic Model or Communal Model
Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian. He was an upright man, one who had surrendered himself to God. He was not one of those who associate partners with God. (QURAN 3: 67)
THIS verse does not seek to clarify which religion the Prophet Abraham followed. Rather the purpose of this verse was to dispel the claim of the groups of people who considered the Prophet Abraham as their elder and believed that they were following his religion.
These groups, in their period of degeneration, had developed a selfstyled version of the original religion brought by Prophet Abraham. These people were in reality following a self-styled model of the Abrahamic religion and were wrongly attributing it to the Prophet Abraham. This way they were trying to portray that the religion which they were claiming to follow was the same religion that the Prophet Abraham had originally brought. When a community undergoes degeneration, it develops the above kind of psychology. There is no exception to any community as regards this principle. In the present times, the Muslim community is going through a similar phase of degeneration. They have created a self-styled edition of God’s true religion which had been originally revealed to Prophet Muhammad.
The tendency of associating with the Prophet only in name develops in a community in the later periods of its degeneration in order to provide religious justification for its communal behaviour.
Their self-styled version of religion is based on the communal model and not the prophetic model. Only in name have the Muslims attributed their religion to the Prophet, although in reality the present formulation of their religion has got nothing to do with him. This tendency of associating with the Prophet only in name develops in a community in the later periods of its degeneration in order to provide religious justification for its communal behaviour. The purpose of such tendency in a community is to portray its communal conduct as prophetic conduct.