How does that happen, and why is it important? After the Hijrah, Mohamed began preaching to the Jews with whom he lived in Yathrib (later renamed to Medina after he purged in of Jews). Verses 2:47-74 reiterate Old Testament stories, mostly of Moses. Allah reminded the Jews of their history, their covenant with Him, the favors He granted them, the times He intervened on their behalf, and of their transgressions, such as worshipping the golden calf. Most of this Biblical recap must have sounded familiar to the Jews, but oddly, much of it was anachronistically framed in the present tense. These verse's 35 uses of second-person conjugations seemingly transported the Jews of Yathrib into events of the past as though they were the transgressors rather than their ancestors. The third person is occasionally employed, which only serves to create confusing and apparently random trips back and forth in time. The Sahih International Qur'an tried to hide this temporal discontinuity in its translation of verse 2:49. It says "We saved your forefathers from the people of Pharaoh'' in open denial of the 2nd person pronoun "you" used in the original Arabic. This pronoun peculiarity also appears in later verses.
An unfortunate effect of this grammatical to and fro is that verses written in the present tense remain so for all time, thereby making all 'current' Jews appear responsible for the alleged sins of their forefathers. Eventually, in what looks like an attempt to clear up any resulting confusion, and perhaps in response to Jews who did not appreciate being blamed for events of the past, Mohamed revealed verses 2:134 and 2:141, which say, "This is a people that have passed away; they shall have what they earned and you shall have what you earn, and you shall not be called upon to answer for what they did." The back-pedal is so obvious as to be laughable.
But, the damage was done. Every Jew from that time forward has to wear those accusations like a yellow star. Verses such as 2:92-93 perpetuate this unfair time-tripping by using the present tense to again accuse the Jews of Yathrib of worshipping the golden calf, and concludes with an assertion that forever tarnishes Judaism - "How wretched is that which your faith enjoins upon you." This, along with several other verses that denigrate Jews, makes it virtually impossible for modern day Muslims to view Jews as anything other than perpetual blasphemers.
