THE HISTORY OF ISLAM - 2

 PART 2

So now you kinda get the picture of where they got the thing like the Kaaba and their crescent moon "sigil" The pagans had a rock they thought had fallen from the moon. Now, even the Book of Judges 8, it talks about Zeba and Zalmuni and they took away the crescent moon, half moon ornaments that were on their necks. Most of the pagan cultures had a female deity and a male deity associated with the sun or the moon. Muhammad kissed this rock and it got incorporated into his belief system.

Mohammed - The Electic

Muhammad and his early followers could not read. Hence the word " Qur'an " which means ' recitation ' Jews and Christians were called people of the book.  So Mohammed never read the Old Testament,  but he heard their oral stories called Talmud and Mishnah. And some of those stories got incorporated into his belief system. The gospel was known to Mohammed chiefly through apocryphal and heretical sources.  So what's  apocryphal? Well, that's the infancy gospel of Thomas written several centuries after Jesus by someone who knew nothing of Jewish life. Mohammed heard the stories in the apocrypha and they got incorporated into Islam. They take them now as fact. Mohammed thought the Trinity was the father, Mary and Jesus. Nobody ever explained to him the Holy Spirit. And then you have  a movement started by St. Anthony of the desert of monasticism,  where holy men would live in caves as hermits. One hermit was St. Benedict. He established the rule of Benedict around 530AD, which was praying at set times of the day. So Mohammed heard about this, praying at set times of the day.

Mohammed - The Revelation

It's 595AD, Mohammed is 25 years old.  He marries a wealthy widow Khadijah, she's 40 years old.  And so  now he doesn't have to work and he goes out to a cave and prays. [ what a life man ] At 610AD, he goes to the caves to pray, and a spirit appears to him and commands him to read. He said, I cannot read. Three times. Then it squeezed him and he began to recite. And that's how the Quran came to Muhammad. He'd get these verses.  He would repeat them till he had it memorized. And you think, well, how can somebody that's illiterate memorize all these verses? Mohammed goes back to his wife Khadijah, and he tells her that he thinks he's demon possessed. Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah " I thought, 'woe is me poet or possessed - never shall Quraysh say this of me'"so Khadijah, his wife decides to test the spirit.  The test were whether he could see the spirit, Jibril when he appeared. Multiple times he did see him and when he didn't finally, she said, "be of good heart, oh, by Allah, he is an angel and not a Satan." So that's how the wife determined that Mohammed was indeed the called or chosen one and that the spirit was of God and not satan. Now, the Bible has a test, 1 John 4, "every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God, this is the spirit of Antichrist."  And Mohammed couldn't read the New Testament. He couldn't read 2 Corinthians 11:14, "even Satan can disguise himself to look like an angel of light." Or Galatians 1:8, "though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed."

Mohammed - The Multiplication

In 610 AD,  he goes into the city of Mecca  and he feels like there's something in his religion for everybody. So  he only makes 70 converts, and starts to get confrontational. When his uncle and wife dies in 619AD, the people of Mecca decide to chase Mohammed out of town.  And he flees to Al-Tayyif. They don't want him. They pelt him with rocks and stones.  So in 622 AD,  he goes north to a Jewish city called Medina. And there, there are three Jewish tribes or clans "Banu" These Jewish clans do not like each other. They have inter-tribal warfare.  Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Nadir, Banu Qurayza,  but they let Muhammad in  as the first  ever  Muslim immigrant. The jews rejected his faith but were tolerant enough to let him stay. This is where he organised minorities and became a political leader.