Lost Tribes or The Left Tribes? Who Decides Who the “Lost Tribes” of Bani Israel Are?

History is often written by those who control the narrative. Those who control it are usually the victors, the powerful, and those with a specific agenda.

Whoever holds the narrative determines who is considered “original”, who is considered “legitimate”, who is said to be “lost”, and who is not mentioned at all.

This is what has happened in the story of Bani Israel. To this day, many people still cannot distinguish between Jews, Bani Israel, Zionists, and the illegitimate State of Israel. These terms are conflated as though they meant the same thing, even though each has a different meaning.

In the Jewish narrative centered on Jerusalem, they position themselves at the center of the entire story of Bani Israel. It is as though they alone represent the surviving continuity of Bani Israel, while all the other groups have disappeared.

Other Bani Israel groups that do not appear in their records or fit within their Jerusalem-centered historical framework are then labelled the “Lost Tribes”, meaning the lost tribes.

Although the term “Lost Tribes” is not mentioned in the Qur’an, Bani Israel is mentioned so many times in it.

So, in reality, there is no question of any tribe having been lost.

Lost from whom?

Have they disappeared from Allah’s knowledge?

That is impossible.

What has happened is that they have disappeared from Jewish records, are unrecognized within the Jerusalem-centered historical framework, or may have been deliberately removed from the narrative so that Jerusalem continues to appear as the sole center of Bani Israel’s history.

That is why control of the narrative matters so much. When Jews control the story through the Jerusalem framework, almost no one raises the possibility that they themselves may actually be the group left behind, the “Left Tribes”, while other Bani Israel groups have moved far into the mashriq, to the eastern parts of the earth and other regions.

People whose minds have been “cooked” by the Jerusalem-centered Jewish narrative will find it difficult to open themselves to the story of the mashriq, the eastern and western parts of the earth, Bani Israel in Nusantara, and the Anbiya’-Centric framework.

Why?

Because, from the beginning, they have heard history only from those who hold the Jerusalem narrative. When that narrative is repeated for centuries, it eventually comes to be regarded as the only legitimate history, beyond question.

Then, when evidence or another perspective is presented, they immediately seek refuge again in the views of earlier scholars.

But we must also ask: how many of the earlier scholars who shaped that historical framework ever came to Nusantara, studied its geography, understood its local history, and compared it directly with the guidance of the Qur’an?

They belong to a generation that has passed. They will not be held accountable for what happens in our generation, as Allah says:

تِلْكَ أُمَّةٌ قَدْ خَلَتْ لَهَا مَا كَسَبَتْ وَلَكُمْ مَا كَسَبْتُمْ وَلَا تُسْأَلُونَ عَمَّا كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ

“That was a community that has passed away. They will have what they earned, and you will have what you earned. You will not be questioned about what they used to do.”

Surah al-Baqarah 2:134

It is our generation that must review, scrutinize, and correct the narrative we have inherited. We cannot simply repeat the Jewish historical framework as though they alone have the right to determine where the history of Bani Israel begins, develops, and ends.

I have discussed this in greater detail in:

Part 3 of the Pertukaran Kiblat Series

(21 June 2026)