ABSTRACT
The relationship between Judaism and Islam has not usually been easy. For one thing, Islam as a later religion was always subject to the criticism or anxiety that it is only a derivation of earlier religions, something that certainly is not seen as a viable option for Muslims. An effective way to downplay the significance of Islam is to stress its putative origins in other religions and the non-Islamic factors that influenced it. Orientalist commentators have spent much energy stressing this sort of dependence, and Muslims have often countered this approach by stressing the originality of the event of the message presented to Muhammad. This spat between the two religions has often been replicated in far worse and violent behavior and as with that other new religion-Christianity-it is always awkward to know how the new should relate to the old. Too much respect of the new for the old raises the issue of why a change needed to be made at all. Too little respect suggests that there is something wrong with the source of the new, challenging its credentials as the genuine path to God.
