The Argument of Imam Māturīdī With the Jews: His Theological Critiques of Prophetic Beliefs

Imam Māturīdī (d. 333/944), was born in in Transoxania where hosted to various religions, beliefs and cultures, and lived in a period in which many religious, philosophical and political views emerged and Islam was attacked by destructive thoughts coming from inside and outside. Acting with a sense of responsibility towards the beliefs and values of the community he lived, Māturīdī fought a great struggle by defending the principles of Islamic belief against this devastating intellectual assault. In this struggle, he highlighted the monotheist perception in religion and criticized the religions which had contradicted with this perception. Judaism was one of these religions that Māturīdī criticized. According to him, the first religion of humanity is the religion of monotheism. In this sense, all the prophets, including Prophet Muhammad, spread the same religion; they called on people to merely believe Allah and make worship unique to Him. However, some communities distorted the belief of monotheism for various reasons. Among these communities are Jews. In this respect, Judaism, while inherently a divine religion, was distorted over time and moved away from this essence. In this respect, by criticizing Jewish theology in various contexts, Māturīdī focused specifically on the prophetic beliefs of the Jews. Acting on the principle that all the prophets have the same religion, he regarded that the prophetic belief of the Jews ended up with a deviation from the belief of monotheism. In this article, it is aimed to determine the criticisms of Māturīdī towards Jewish theology in the context of prophetic beliefs by taking theoretical background above into consideration