The Quran’s Depiction of Abraham in Light of the Hebrew Bible and Midrash r 47is, Abraham accepted God’s decree submissively. Another midrash depicts
Abraham as one who heeded God’s orders, even with regard to a minor
commandment given orally.^8 Yet another midrash states: “Since you have
made known to all that you love Me, and you did not withhold your son
... I will treat you as if I asked you to sacrifice yourself, and you did not
hesitate.”^9 Therefore, it seems to me that the description of Abraham as
“submissive and obedient” may very well have been influenced by the
earlier Jewish sources that Muhammad or his disciples heard from their
Jewish neighbors, but in the Quran it undergoes accentuation, expansion,
and Islamization. The principle of submissiveness turns from an appropri-
ate characteristic of a believer to a term that characterizes the community
of believers who are faithful followers of Muhammad. At a later period,
this principle is extended to become a concept defining the new, exclusive
religion of Islam.^10
David Zvi Baneth disagrees with the interpretation of the term Islam
as “submissiveness to God.” He argues that submissiveness to God ex-
presses a very high spiritual level, and it cannot be that when Muhammad
established the new religion he used a high-level language to speak to
his simple audience. Moreover, his earliest followers included slaves and
poor people who would not be persuaded to join a new religion by the
idea of “submissiveness.” On the contrary, that would distance them from
it. Therefore, Baneth suggests that the term Islam denotes unity, whole-
ness, totality, something indivisible. The emphasis is on wholeness, not
on submissiveness. To reinforce his idea, Baneth points out that Muham-
mad blamed his people for believing in polytheism. So it is logical that
the term Islam is the opposite of “association” (idolatry). Thus it signifies
faithfulness, indicating that a person must give himself wholly to one God
only. The term Islam became the name of the new religion in contrast to
polytheistic religions that worship a multiplicity of gods.^11
Muhammad’s mission was thus to restore the faith of the Hanifyya,
namely, the belief in one God, which was the belief of Abraham, the first
Muslim. In the Quran, when God commanded Muhammad to obey him
submissively, he replied: “I have surrendered myself to the Lord of all be-
ings. My Lord has guided me to a straight path, a right religion, the creed
of Abraham, a man of pure faith, he was no idolater” (6:161).
Muhammad is depicted in the Quran as a follower in the footsteps of
Abraham. The analogy between the two, as reflected in the Quran, is the
basis for the Muslim view that the first Muslim community epitomized