Author: Rabbi Allen S Maller

At the annual commemoration of Isra and Mi’raj (March 22 this year) many Muslims will remind themselves of the well-known Hadith about why Muslims pray five times daily. The Qur’an itself does not explicitly state that there should be five distinct daily…

Rabbi Allen S. Maller offers Aljumuah readers his insight on early Jewish relationships with Prophet Muhammad on a day when Muslim World League leaders have just joined with Jewish leaders to visit Auschwitz, It is hard for me as a Reform Rabbi to…

Christian missionaries declare the Qur’an wrongly states that Prophet Jesus was not killed by the Jews, or the Romans, or by anyone else. A popular translation of the relevant Qur’anic passage reads thus: “And for their saying, ‘Indeed, we (Romans, Jews, or…

What does Hajj have to do with Humanity’s successful survival when the Neanderthals died out? Read on! Human survival is about more than genetics.  The current rapid advancement in genetic knowledge of the human and other species is truly breath-taking. But that…

Both Islam and Judaism agree that the Christian belief in ‘Original Sin’ is an unwarranted and overly negative and pessimistic evaluation of the nature of human beings.

Both the Holy Qur’an and the Holy Bible stress the religious importance of annual pilgrimage to a sacred location (Hajj in Arabic, Hag in Hebrew). In Biblical times the Hebrew word Hag was pronounced Haj.

The 'Constitution,' 'Charter' or 'Covenant' of Medina pre-dated the English Magna Carta by almost six centuries. It applied to the 10,000+ citizens living in Medina at that time.

A well known Hadith says: “Prophets are paternal brothers [sons of one father by different co-wives]. Their mothers [mother tongue, motherland. and religious community—Umma comes from Um, ‘mother’] are different; but their religion [from the one God] is one.” (Bukhari Vol. 4,…

Islam shares with Judaism the unwavering assertion that only the One God is to be worshipped; no would-be deity is to be tolerated.  Any spiritual being supposedly independent from God is an imaginary god, leading mankind away from true understanding. This one…