CAIRO, January 14 (IslamOnline) - “His top-notch manners, remarkable devoutness and honest transactions with all people made us feel that he was the Messiah. He was indeed a Messiah singled out for his rare qualities. But we did not know that he was a Muslim,” neighbors of the Israeli citizen Abraham, or to be precise Ibrahim, told an Israeli magazine.

The Israeli weekly Hamishbaha magazine said the story began two months ago when there had been talk about a remarkably pious man belonging to the extremist Haradim religious sect in the illegal Israeli settlement of Gush Emonem.

His fellow religious Jews started modeling themselves after Ibrahim and took him as a paradigm for his messianic manners, to the extent that they thought he was the Messiah who would save the world, the magazine added.

Jews from everywhere came in droves to Ibrahim’s home day in and day out, calling him “Abraham the Truthful.”

They asked him to invoke God’s blessings and forgiveness and to preach sermons to disseminate his noble message, the weekly said.

Dropping a bombshell, one of Ibrahim’s relatives shocked the local people by telling them that Ibrahim secluded himself in his home to practice his Islamic rituals, asserting that he converted to Islam three months ago.

The magazine blamed the rabbis for falling short of filling the spiritual vacuum of those who sought blessings, pointing out that they [the rabbis] themselves abandoned their synagogues, neglected their daily prayers and stayed in front of Ibrahim’s home for long intervals, begging for blessings.

Mocking them, the magazine said: “It is really disgraceful that those Jews stuck close to the home of Ibrahim, who was, at the meantime, performing his Islamic prayers.”