What did he (peace be upon him) come to teach and what reasons do we have to believe that he was telling the truth?Indeed - what reasons do we have to believe that Muhammad was telling the truth?
Before we consider this important question, may I say that it's a relief (in the present climate) that iERA are giving us permission to test the message (even though they are publicising this new dawah initiative under the rather bellicose banner of Defend the Prophet! and Hamaza Tzortzis looks very angry indeed in his video ...) I'm also delighted that iERA have posed this particular question since it is one I have struggled with ever since my friend announced he had "reverted" to Islam.
Regular readers of Rational Islam? will know that the so-called scientific and historical miracles in the Qur'an played a decisive role in my friend's conversion. Hence when I asked him this very question he replied that "all the arrows" pointed towards the Qur'an having been written by God... and when asked what "arrows" in particular, he directed me to Maurice Bucaille's book: The Bible, The Qur'an and Science and to the western scientists who had made pronouncements to the effect that they could not see how the knowledge in the Qur'an in their discipline could have come from anywhere other than divine revelation.
We have seen in countless posts on this blog and elsewhere how the claims of the miracle seekers are without foundation and, in the case of the Commission on Scientific Signs, of very dubious origin. So will iERA continue to base their new dawah campaign on these modernist and divisive claims or will they turn to more traditional theological reasons?
For if I felt the need to find answers to life's great questions in a religion, then the desperate need to prove the ridiculous scientific and historic "miracles" in the holy texts of Islam by Muslims such as Yusuf Estes, Deedat, Hamza Tzortzis et al would, I'm afraid, put me right off.
So let's return to iERA's question: What reasons do we have to believe Muhammad was telling the truth that the angel Gabriel spoke to him over a period of 22 years and that the Qur'an is God's final message to mankind - perfectly preserved, word for word?
If any Muslim would like to forestall the idiots at iERA and answer my question without reference to numerology, pharaohs, mountains, honey, the water cycle, the Big Bang or f*cking embryology I would be delighted to hear from you.
How about 2 billion Muslims and growing? Do you really think that many people can be wrong????
ReplyDelete80% of the entire human race (5 billion people) don't believe in your religion. Do you really think that many people can be wrong
Deleteyou forgot (intentionally left out) the fact that the ummah is GROWING, daily. Soon there will be a majority of Muslims in some European countries and then we will be able to vote for Sharia.
DeleteThose who say we need to fight for Allah are wrong. We simply need to wait.
Islam is growing mainly because of high birth rates. If you need to out breed non muslims to win then you suck. Of course you will implement sharia when you get a chance so that people cant leave your religion as you will kill them because the punishment for apostacy is death.
DeleteI am not a Muslim (clearly!) but allow me contemplate how a Muslim would approach this question. Two methods come to mind!
ReplyDelete(1) - Quran/ Hadith contains scientific/historic/numeric/cryptozoologic/literary miracles therefore Muhammad is the prophet from God and theretherefore Muhammad is truthful.
(2) - Muhammad performed such and such actions or stated such and such words which prove he was truthful.
As for (1), 'gimme a break already'!
As for (2), there is a certain question that Muslim who might be attempting such a method should consider. While it seems valid on the surface, what evidence would do they be providing to demonstrate the alleged good deeds of Muhammad.
Clearly, there is next to no record available in any non-Islamic sources. Any examples that may be brought forth in order to support (2)would have to originate in Islamic sources i.e. sources that inherently carry the believer's bias to portray Muhammad in the most glorified light possible.
Quoting examples from such sources are circular in nature. The argument would run as follows;
"Sources intended for portraying Muhammad as a truthful person, portray Muhammad as a truthful person. Therefore, Muhammad is a truthful person."
For that reason alone, proving Muhammad was a truthful may not even be a possible task.
PS - Of course, there is the irony that the Islamic sources portray Muhammad in many ways considered contemptible in the modern society.
A good scientist would base his theories on the results, not inputs.
ReplyDeleteAGAIN, they aim at the point, they shoot at the point...and then they go and miss the whole freaking point.
Argh! Its so annoying!!!
It doesn't matter if you add flour or water: it only matters how the cake comes out, or in more eloquent terms: "the health of the tree is judged by the quality of the fruit it produces".
If a book said: "eat shit and die" but for some reason, it has a very positive effect on the behavior of people: all good! If a book says "be good, and be moral" and has a negative effect on people....bad!
THAT's the bloody point. Why are muslim nations not progressing, flourishing, living in peace etc etc?
The only thing scientists should be analysising is how does this plus this result in this AND how do we change it?
The current state of Islamic affairs is not working - not for Muslims and not for non Muslims. Need to go back to the formula and rethink parts of the equation for more favorable results. For 200 years, the Arab muslims flourished: poetry, architecture, arts, scientific discovery and so on and so forth - all good. Then, 200 years after Mohammed something happened and they fell into a progressive- dark ages: bad. Fast forward a thousand or so years and new (bad) things are happening: why?
This is a faulty equation at work. Bad maths. Something has been added or subtracted to the recipe and the cake is flat and flavourless.
Its one thing to be a war with almost every armied nation with a budget on the globe, but when your own people start burning their own country down and executing their leaders en masse: you gotta change something.
What you don't gotta do is prove that everything thus far is correct. Its quite obvious something has gone seriously wrong somewhere. Time to address that - only they won't because it will shatter the current Islamic status quo to such an intensive degree that no practicing Muslim of today will be able to call themselves a Muslim anymore.
@Anonymous - if all you need is a certain number of people to agree for something to be correct, then you must agree with a lot of things including Chinese star signs, astrology, ghosts....I mean - come on dude: that's not even an argument.
ReplyDelete@CaptainDisguise - the majority of practicing muslims do not study their religion and therefore do not know how many things have been added and changed on a political level. They just accept things as they are because they've never been motivated to question. Some muslim countries dont even speak Arabic, so they barely understand the prayers they are reciting 5 times per day. This is a big issue in the community.
The facts are that everything we recognise as Islam today is based on Sharia which (asides from being 100% man made) only came 200 years after Mohammed and is largely based on human cultural narrations rather than any sound 'facts' - and it even diverts from the Quran here and there and everywhere to obviously suit the requirements of the times. AND the sharia has little to do with the Quran itself: being a legal system rather than a moral system. So basically, they teach crime and punishment rather than inner workings of morality: which is why many Muslims will not touch pork because the crime and punishment is very clear - however they will lie, because there is no punishment for that (only the phrase in the Quran "a believer does not lie"). This is a big issue: because practicing Muslims are practicing the jurisdictional sharia, rather than learning internal moral values. Its behavior control rather than character development. This is the problem.
try to understand what for & why god give you to come in this world & where to go after you die !did you think about that?????
ReplyDelete