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Did Mohammed actually exist?

[media=https://youtu.be/LA16jWQc_Qs]
ArishMell · 70-79, M
[b]Yes. [/b]

The Prophet Mohammed as Muslims honour him (often adding in speech something like "May peace be upon in him") was a merchant by profession, making him quite wealthy by their contemporary standards.

I don't know what he dealt in; but cotton, silk (the latter from the Far East) and fabrics, bronze and pottery, and spices were major commodities of his place and time.

He was also married; and the histories I have read say they were all as educated as he was. (Don't tell the Taliban!)

The faith he founded, Islam, is unlike the other two Abrahamic faiths in being developed and codified by a single man from its multi-faith / multi-prophet Hebrew roots plus his own ideas he ascribed to divine revelations. In that respect it is parallel to the much older Indian and Chinese faiths.

Unlike Christianity, which was developed by followers of Jesus' and OT prophets' teachings some three centuries AD - in effect, codified selectively by committee from a minor Jewish sect diverging from mainstream Judaism.

The Islamic, Shia / Sunni schism that continues to cause so much strife even 1300 years later, is rooted in later interpretations of the Koran by Mohammed's own relations; mainly a nephew.

The Prophet Mohammed also wrote a companion book - I have seen an English translation but forget its title - which is essentially a guide to living as a good Muslim.

(Probably best not tell the Taliban or ISIS that, either; nor that Islam's early history is noted for a remarkable flowering of scientific and medical learning, and standards of living, that bemused the NW European, Christian[?] "Holy" Crusades invasions trying to crush Islam in the Eastern Mediterranean lands.
hippyjoe1955 · 61-69, M
@ArishMell Virtually nothing you wrote is true. What is true is Mohammed is like King Arthur. Great tales exist about him but there is no actual evidence of his existence. The legend you wrote was written to keep an empire together with a religion of its own. Thus the bias of the muslim faith. The western Christians launched the crusades in response to the muslim aggression and expansion. Muslims were forcing Jews and Christians under their control to convert or die.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@hippyjoe1955 Really?

I suspect you wish Mohammed had not existed so want him to have been as unreal as King Arthur (invented by a Mediaeval French novelist) , but his existence is rather more credible than that of the Old Testament prophets or the divinity of Jesus; and if he did not write the Q'ran and found a huge faith on it, then who did? Some Mediaeval Q'anon?

Lets' face it, the history of all three Abrahamic religions and their own sects, despite common roots, is one of power struggles, strife and bloodshed centred on the arrogant but childish excuse of their own theology being more "true" than the others.

While Christians are no position to moan about other cultures' historical expansionism and enforced conversions.

Notably, Islam is the last major faith to have been devised. Sects of existing ones, and assorted cults, have appeared over the 1300 years since, but no new complete religion.
TrashCat · M
All he had to do was climb on a cross and ...Voila! Reality
no one has any proof he did but from the muslim books he was a racist,pedo,rapist, wife beater,liar, cross dressing, pansexual, warlord....
@ArishMell this verse give muslims the right to kill each other QURAN 49.9And if two parties of the believers quarrel, make peace between them; but >>>if one of them acts wrongfully towards the other, fight that which acts wrongfully until it returns to Allah's command; <<<<then if it returns, make peace between them with justice and act equitably; surely Allah loves those who act equitably.

he Holy Inquisition.... Where is that stuff according to the bible?

Catholic Hitler? you never heard what adolf said about islam and christianity?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt_o1k26mF4

anyone trying to defend or soften says islam is bad but...HINDUISM OR CHRISTIANITY....... I never do so i let each stand on its own
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@SexyLesGirl13 The encouragement do do evil acts does not need explicitly be in an ancient book - all it needs is later readers to find interpretations to help them justify their own actions.

Of course the Inquisition was not foretold in the Bible, but the sort of people who ran that organisation are the same sort of people are cruel and selfish in other ways - domestically or nationally - in the name of their deity in any faith. Always so, whether in Old Testament, Mediaeval or the present times.

They excuse themselves in combining over-enthusiastic belief with a lust for power by selective reading of their scriptures and the debate-closing attitude that it's what their god wants.

If the instructions to engage in what the law would call "coercive and controlling behaviour" even if not actually calling for violence is enshrined in the books - whether the Torah, Bible or Q'ran or any other - it makes the matter worse; but all religious texts were written by men not gods, and they all reflect their writers' own attitudes and societies.

Neither you nor I wish to support a faith that encourages violence and oppression, but let's not use that as a meretricious attack on just one religion. For all that is bad among Muslims, is not unique to Islam except perhaps in degree.


Hitler was certainly no Christian in his acts, but he was from a Catholic background in a largely Lutheran country; and he came to a sort of arrangement of acquiescence with the Church.


Incidentally much of what I know of modern religions does not come from propaganda videos made by American para-Christian groups and cults, but from reading and listening to what clergy and theologians of many faiths say about matters of the day. One of the wisest I can name is Edinburgh University's Professor* of comparative theology, Dr. Mona Siddiqi - a woman and a Muslim.

I live in a country that hosts all faiths and none in largely peaceful, even sometimes ecumenical ways - and though from a mildly Anglican background I am personally agnostic. I simply oppose gratuitous control and oppression of others on feeble grounds like differing religious ideas; at home or at state level.

[i]Agnostic[/i] - one who doubts - a word that rarely appears on this all-too-binary chat-site that encourages ignorantly dividing the world's population into "Christians [good] and atheists [bad]"!


It is wrong to single out any one faith for its bad side: all deist faiths and non-faith beliefs have good and bad associations - because all such philosophies were devised and are run or followed by humans not gods, and some humans are good, some are bad.

'''

*A Professor being one acknowledged for her or his published, original research in the subject, and oversees PhD students' projects as well as any tutoring of undergraduates. May also chair a university's school in that field. Someone who simply teaches undergraduates the established facts needed for a Degree, is a Lecturer, not a Professor.
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SW-User
Will you debunk your faith next?…oh, wait, thats already happened.

 
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