Tawhid Monotheism And Iran’s King Cyrus The Messiah – OpEd
All three Abrahamic religions share similar views about many things; ranging from basic concepts to minor details. For example, they all agree that the one God of all creation, has used spiritual agents or messengers who act as agents of the Divine will. All three religions even use some of the same names for their angels; like Gabriel, Michael and Raphael, although each religion perceives their roles and activities in different ways.
In the same way, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all proclaim that sometime in the future our world will undergo world wide, cataclysmic upheavals, that will occur prior to Judgement Day, and the resurrection of the dead; as well as the belief that God’s anointed (Moshe’akh in Hebrew, Messiah in English, Christos in Greek and Madhi in Arabic) will come to battle the forces of evil and promote peace.
The Hebrew Bible records that a remnant of the Jewish population returned to their homeland from Babylon, following an edict from Cyrus to rebuild the temple. This edict is fully reproduced in the Book of Ezra. As a result of Cyrus’ policies, the Jews honored him as a dignified and righteous king, and he is the only non-Jewish Gentile to be designated as a messiah, a divinely-appointed king, in the Hebrew Bible.
One of the major differences between the Muslim and the Jewish-Christian views of the signs of the coming Messianic Age is the many Biblical prophecies of the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. Had these differences been widely discussed in the decades prior to the 1917 Balfour Declaration perhaps a religious agreement might have been arranged that would have avoided the tragic conflict of the last 108 years.
But the leaders on both sides in those generations, were primarily political nationalists who failed to see the larger religious events soon to take place. In 1897, when the Zionist movement held its first internationalist congress, only 1% of the world’s Jews lived in the Land of Israel. Now, 128 years later, 45% of the world’s Jews live in the revived State of Israel.
And since the 1960’s an even larger number of Muslims have settled in Europe, and North and South America. While these movements have resulted in the rise of inter-religious tensions worldwide, they also provide religious opportunities for spiritual developments of ‘End-time’ significance. Here is a small example from the Jewish view.
Most people have heard of the ‘ten lost tribes of Israel’. In reality they were never lost; they were just submerged among the much larger non Jewish population in the place where they lived, or they moved to distant lands, and over the course of centuries became detached from the main body of the Jewish People, and were forgotten.
The well known Marano Jews, who are the descendants of Jews forced to convert into the Catholic Church in 15th century Spain and Portugal, are a good example of a submerged Jewish population similar to the forced underground Muslims of Spain.
The Jewish communities in India and China are a good example of remote Jewish communities, who in the 12th and 13th century became detached from the body of Israel and were forgotten. Today the Jews of India and China are remembered primarily because, unlike Jews in Europe and the Middle East, the Jews in India and China never were subject to Anti-Semitism or any form of religious oppression.
Now, a group of ‘lost’ Indian Jews, who are descendants of the tribe of Menashe, one of the ten tribes exiled from the Land of Israel in 721 BCE by the conquering Assyrian Empire, are returning home. In 2005, Israeli Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar officially backed the Bnei Menashe’s claim to be Jewish.
That announcement led to the beginning of immigration from India to Israel; and about 1,700 of the 8000+ Bnei Menashe community arrived in Israel over 15 years ago. But the flow stopped in 2007, when Israel stopped giving visas to the Bnei Menashe due to the strong objections from some Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis.
Israel’s decision to reverse the policy paved the way for the remaining Bnei Menashe members to migrate. Some 6,000+ Bnei Menashe have immigrated to Israel in recent years, with the rest remaining in India.
The Bnei Menashe Indian Jewish community says it is one of the ten lost tribes of Israel who were exiled when Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8th century BCE. According to its oral tradition, the tribe travelled through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet, China and on to India, where it eventually settled in the north-eastern states of Manipur and Mizoram.
Ethiopian Jews are another remote community that returned to Israel a generation ago after a separation of over 2,000 years. The amazing 1991 rescue of 15,000 Ethiopian Jews in an airlift lasting less than 48 hours stirred and inspired people for several weeks. Subsequently, the difficult problems the newcomers faced (similar to those of the 900,000 Russian Jews who immigrated in the 1970’s and 1980’s) occupied the Jewish media. Now both are taken for granted. The miracle has become routine.
But if you had told the Jews of Ethiopia two generations ago that they would someday all fly to Israel in a giant silver bird, they could only conceive of this as a Messianic miracle.
If you had told Russian Jews a generation ago that the Soviet regime would collapse, and the Soviet Empire disintegrate; while hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews would emigrate to Israel, they would have conceived it only as a Messianic dream.
In our own generation therefore we have seen the dramatic fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy: “I will bring your offspring from the East (India) and gather you from the (European) West. To the North (Russia) I will say ‘give them up’ and to the South (Ethiopia) ‘do not hold them’. Bring my sons from far away, my daughters from the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 43:5-6)
And Qur’an 17:4-8 states: Â 4. “We conveyed to the Children of Israel in the (Hebrew) Scripture that, “You will surely cause corruption on the earth twice, and you will surely reach [degrees of]Â haughtiness. 5. So when the (exile) promise came for the first of them, We sent against you servants of Ours – those of great military might (pagan Babylon), and they probed [even] into the homes, and it was a (exile) promise fulfilled. 6. Then We gave back to you a return victory over them (Persia defeated Babylon and King Cyrus a Messianic figure) helped Jews return to Israel). And We reinforced you with wealth and sons and made you more numerous in manpower (in your diaspora).
7. (So), “If you do good, you do good for yourselves; and if you do evil, (it is) to yourselves.” Then when the second (exile) promise came, (pagan Rome) to sadden your faces, and to enter the Temple in Jerusalem (in 70 CE) as they (pagan Babylonia) entered it the first time (in 587 BCE) and to destroy what they had taken over with cruel destruction. 8. (Allah said), “It is expected, (if you repent), your Lord will have mercy upon you. But if you return (to idolatry), We will return [to punishment]. And We have made Hell, for the disbelievers, a prison-bed.””
Truly amazing things are happening in our generation if we would only open our eyes to the wonders around us. If we, and our religious leaders do, then we may also see the fulfillment of another prediction of Prophet Isaiah:
“In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. On that day Israel will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”…(Isaiah 19:23-5)
And as the Qur’an states: “We (God) told the Israelites after this (exit from Egypt) to settle in the (holy) land until Our second (Rome caused exile) promise will come true. We would then (long after the two exiles) gather them all together (in the Holy Land).” (Muhammad Sarwar translation 17:104).
