Moses is the great law-giver in Judaism who came face-to-face with God on Mount Sinai. Jesus is the Messiah of Christianity, whom Christians believe is also the Son of God. For Muslims, the penultimate prophet is Muhammad, to whom God revealed the many sayings which are enshrined in the Qur'an.

All three are what we call 'Abrahamic faiths', because each of these monotheistic religions trace their origin back to Abraham. Does that mean that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God? And is it possible to think of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad as prophets on a par with one another?

Team USA poses this difficult question to three men: Father Bill Messenger of the USC Catholic Center; Rabbi Reuven Firestone, professor of Medieval Judaism and Islam at the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion; and Dr. Mohamed Fathi Osman of the Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation.

Father Bill: From a Catholic point of view I would have to say, 'No'. Theologically speaking, Mohammed, who was a great leader of his people and has a great place within the Islamic tradition is a step backward. Within a Christian tradition, Jesus is not just a prophet, Jesus is in fact God. To my knowledge it is the only major religion that makes that kind of a claim. Jews certainly do not claim that Moses is God and it would be an offense for Islam to claim that Mohammed is God. But that is what we believe about Jesus. So to suggest that Mohammed would be on a par with Moses and Jesus when in fact what Islam does is take a step backward theologically and the best that they can do is to grant that Jesus is a prophet, then I would have to say, no they are not on a par.

All three of our religions traditions trace our faith back to Abraham. Out of that first expression of trust in god comes the Jewish Christian and Islamic traditions and there is a lot more that we all hold in common, all three of our traditions would at least embrace the bulk of what we call the old testament to some extent Islam embraced some elements of the new testament but it all goes back to that same god, we use a phrase in all of our traditions I believe, certainly in Christianity and Judaism, we talk about Abraham being the father of our faith. That is a good place to begin. It does require, we have to allow for the fact that god communicates with different people in different ways, that within different traditions or cultures or different periods of time, that same god, while not negating what we believe to be true about him is nonetheless going to speak to a another group of people in a way that they can better understand. And I think that at least is a partial grounding for how we might seek some commonality in the three traditions.

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Rabbi Reuven: As Jew, my response would probably be, no I can't accept the prophet-hood of Mohammed. I can't accept that the Qu'ran is absolute true revelation because I have my revelation and my revelation is complete. But as a Jew who has studied other religions deeply and who was taught really, as a young child to have deep and great respect for other people, I believe certainly the possibility of the prophet-hood of Mohammed, minimally, I would believe it as a possibility. I can't believe that God has ceased speaking or relating to humanity and so I as an individual, I as an individual who is also a Jew accepts the likelihood of the prophecy and prophet-hood of Mohammed. That doesn't mean that I believe that everything in the Qu'ran is absolutely true and accurate as Islam would state, but I also don't believe that everything in the Torah is absolutely true and accurate.

Because revelation is different from scripture and scripture is the human attempt to record the divine experience and therefore scripture is a combination of the divinity and the divine message with the human individual and therefore it is fallible and I believe that with regard to all scriptures and that is something that is not generally expected among religionists of any the three great traditions.

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Dr. Fathi: Definitely yes. Because this is, it is not just something that we deduct or use analogy for it or logical or something. It is clear and openly stated in the Qu'ran...[Arabic]... that is our Lord and Your Lord, so he's the one. In the dialogue between Mohammad and Alex he is always saying especially Christians and Jews and the Jews more because this was most of the dialogues in Medina, the residents there were Jews. So, he is always emphasizing [Arabic] that it is one, we are all worshiping the same God, so we should not have any conflict and, if we have differences, let him decide on these differences, but we are not we have we are not the people who can judge who is right or who is wrong about the details because definitely there are certain difference in the details so let this be judged, and this is and this is repeated about thirty times in the Qu'ran that any Muslim cannot judge. Judgment is for God, who will be accepted who will not be accepted, because it is a matter of the inside not the outside and the inside is known only by God. I may speak to you very eloquently, very convincingly about something, but God only knows my inside.

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