Muhammad in the Bible — Page 10
10 The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever. The promise of eternal possession is not for Israel as such but for the righteous. This utterance of David, in fact, was a clear warning that the days of Israel’s dominance were numbered. The Prophet seemed to point out that the divine promise, after a time, was to be understood not in a racial but in a spiritual sense; that the sons of Ishmael were going to inherit the promises made to Abraham by inheriting the truth and a new covenant was going to be initiated through them. If our interpretation of the prophecy is not correct, then the question is, Why did God make the sons of Ishmael—and believers in the Message of the Quran—dominant in Palestine? The prophecy was quite clear. The sons of Isaac were to hold Palestine until the Last Day. The question is, Why did they not? Why did God allow a transfer of political power from the sons of Isaac to the sons of Ishmael? If the transfer had lasted for a short time, it would have made no difference to the prophecy. The rise and fall in the fortunes of nations are a common phenomenon. But the transfer of which we speak proved a permanent one. More than one thousand three hundred years have passed, and Palestine is still in the possession of Muslims, the sons of Ishmael. European powers and the U. S. A. are trying hard to alter this, but so far, at any rate, they have not succeeded. If at all they succeed in their designs, the success is bound to be short-lived. Either the new Israelite settlers will become converted to Islam and regain possession of Palestine through a new covenant; or they will have to quit Palestine once again. Palestine is for those who keep the covenant which Abraham made with God. Christians, no doubt, claim to fulfil the covenant. But they forget that the covenant lays down an important external sign. That sign is circumcision of the male population. Only Ishmaelites have kept the sign both before and since the revelation of the Quran. In short, the prophecy of Abraham promised blessings to both Isaac and Ishmael. According to this promise, the sons of Isaac were established over Canaan and the sons of Ishmael over Arabia. But when the Last Day arrived for the sons of Isaac, then, in terms of the prophecy of David, the promise was transferred from Israel to Ishmael. The claim of Israel was now only a racial claim. The claim of Ishmael was spiritual. On the basis of their racial claim the sons of Ishmael held Mecca and the territory around (2 : 125-29). On the basis of their spiritual claim they added Canaan to their possessions after the religious deterioration of Israel.