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Randolfo said:
Funny, how most people really miss the lack of evidence for pre-islamic islam, why is there no evidence for the worship of a non-pagan allah, before Mohammad cleaned up allah's act?
It's not particularly odd. The appearance of a gap takes place beyond "most people's" everyday range of consideration. I recommend
Muhammad and the Golden Bough, by Jaroslav Stetkevych; I confess I've never actually finished reading the slender but dense volume. There's an old topic (
Dec., 2003) waiting for the day I do finish reading the book.
listen, if allah had taught islam to Abraham, Moses, David, & Jesus, why is there no early manuscripts of the quran, say from 100AD?
Who says the message was the same each time? Immutability, while important to the theology, is distasteful to many of Christian faith. We might consider, as a general juxtaposition, Christ fulfilling The Law. This is a problematic issue for skeptics, for instance, because the answer from the faithful never quite addresses the problem. However, rather than hanging ourselves on the atheistic inquiry as to the appearance of contradiction, we might ask why this is a question at all. Mark Moore, of the Ozark Christian College, notes, "Ultimately, Jesus did not fulfill the law by what he did but by who he is," and while that ought to be enough to answer the point, what does it mean?
The question of what Jesus means in Matthew 5.17-19 only arises because there is an apparent difference between his teachings and those that came before him. How those teachings are the same, or how those teachings fulfill their precedent, is a metaphysical question.
The law from Moses to Jesus is not consistent; we have no reason to suppose consistency from Moses to Muhammad.
Furthermore, a point that is often lost in modern considerations of Islam is that the revelation was intended for Arabia: the Jews had their revelation; the Christians had theirs; why not Arabs? One whose needs are differently accounted for will see the world according to certain, unique priorities that are not necessarily reflected in the next person. On a sociological scale, this creates different cultural presuppositions.
Those cultural presuppositions can be viewed either rationally or religiously. Rationally, certain religious assertions make sense: sodomy, masturbation, incest, masturbation, recreational sexuality--all these things waste seed when wandering in the desert. The rules make sense for Jews seeking a home: keep the tribe alive. One need not be a medical doctor of modern knowledge and technique to realize that incest is problematic. As Stan explained to Eugene in Neil Simon's
Brighton Beach Memoirs, you can't marry your cousin because you get babies with nine heads. Tattoos? High infection rate in a hostile environment? Lacking the necessary scientific background to understand certain biological processes, and lacking the technology to accommodate certain demands, such things are left as observable mysteries: process A leads to result B, but why? It is left to the dominion of gods.
Why did God (re-)establish through Abraham? Or Jesus? Why were the messages not expressed identically? Why should the revelation of Islam be subject to any demand from which we exempt Judaism and Christianity?
There won't be any Quran from 100 CE. Just like there won't be a copy of the Pauline evangelization dating to 300 BCE.
From Eden forward, it is clear that nothing has gone quite as planned according to human expressions of God's intent. God failed to recognize His own creation (mankind), and thus punished it when it broke a covenant. A new covenant was established with Noah, with Abraham, and again through Jesus Christ. Islam asserts a new revelation. As with, say, Mormonism, the lateness of Islam's unique revelation is itself no discredit. As with Mormonism, Protestantism, and Catholicism at least, Islam is better questioned according to its own internal inconsistency.
if christianity & judaism had all these false off-shoots, like gnosticism, that survived long enough to write down their thoughts, why didn't pre-islamic islam?
In
The Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism, A. L. Basham describes a dichotomy between formal, institutionalized Hinduism and the traditional, familial Hinduism of home and hearth. It's in the early chapters; I'll see if I can dig up my copy sometime. (My bookshelf is lost behind a wall of crap requiring more of a weather event than a garage sale, but such is life.) The general point is that vulgar faith is generally less-organized, less-consistent even internally, than the institutional versions with all their flaws. "Pre-Islamic Islam" resembled more the disorganized, inconsistent theology of small groups--families, clans, tribes--than the institutional assertions of Islam proper and its offshoots.
Furthermore, we might even look to Muhammad himself. It is said that if Muhammad had been aware of other aspects of the world than merely the Judeo-Christian experience in Arabia, he would have included those revelations as well. God can only demand so much of His prophets: if those revelations are outside Muhammad's experience, discussion of them might be expected to confuse a human mind. It could be that God said nothing about the offshoots, as well, since Muhammad was unaware of them, and would only be confused by their detail.
Maybe.
Historically, though, if we look at the fracture of Islam in the wake of the Prophet, much of the disagreement centered on politics and economy, and was merely phrased in prophetic language for continuity's sake. Religion in Arabian pre-Islamic alliances seemed at least a little henotheistic; it is likely that endeavors containing other assertions of God were more likely political and economic in nature, and would be thus recorded in history.
We think of the American Revolution as political and economic, but there were religious issues motivating some Europeans to emigrate to the Colonies, and certainly even the Deists of the day seemed to think they had God on their side. Yet we don't speak of the militant Deist offshoot of Christianity. Instead, we just make Unitarian jokes.
It appears we'll revisit this point shortly.
muslims say that Abraham was a muslim, so why didn't he know allah? why are there no manuscripts with Abraham praising allah of mecca?
He did know Allah. One of the few abstractions about the Judeo-Christian experience is the name Yahweh, both in the metaphysical
and the alleged magickal. It is, in fact, a taller philosophical idea than the proprietary kowtowing of Christianity or the representative abstraction of Allah's oneness. Nonetheless, both Jehovah/Yahweh/IHVH and Allah, as well as the unity of Trinity, reach after a condition of wholeness that escapes human understanding. As far as Muhammad was concerned, he was addressing the same God as Abraham, the same God as Jesus. Had Muhammad been literate, perhaps he would have understood the Unmoved Mover, the first cause, the demiurge, or other monotheistic acknowledgments, and attempted to establish a continuity running through those ideas.
Why would Abraham praise a revelation that hasn't yet taken place, that, if we accept certain assertions regarding what happened at Eden (e.g. free will and God's knowledge) God cannot even know will be necessary? After all, he has God right there in front of him striking a deal in the here and now. Why praise a future that might not--and, we must bear in mind,
should not--come about?
Did God know he would strike that bargain with Muhammad? Did he know when he called Abraham that he would be giving further revelation? It's an acceptable thesis if we go with someone like Jack Blanco (
The Clear Word), but that wouldn't be fair, since even his own church peers stutter and gasp and pitch fits about his theology. In terms of free will, how could God, at the time He called Abraham, know that the human result of His endeavors would require further revelation?
How could Abraham praise Allah of Mecca before God chose to reveal Himself as such?
oh, muslims would say, "all those corrupt Christians, they destroyed them".
so, answer this, how were they so efficient against 'true islam', but let the Nag Hammadi library of 'true Christianity' survive?
Isn't that the wrong question? I mean, it has nothing to do with the assertion. Nag Hammadi was
hidden.
Sometimes the good guys win. Other times, there are no good guys.
Nonetheless, the Muslim assertion, with which many are familiar, bears some credibility. It only goes so far, though, as Islam's institutions suffer credibility issues of their own.
why are all the pre-cursors to islam all pagan or heretical christians? why are the early sources of islam not islamic?
While I can't promise a full answer to the question, I point again to Stetkevych.
Of course, there is also a question as to what constitutes "Islamic" for the purposes of the question, "Why are the early sources of Islam not
Islamic?"
I can only await your clarification.
archeology will be the new enemy of islam, it will tear it to shreds, islam can not survive a close examination of the source materials, for it will be found out as a fraud, a mish-mash of ideas, thrown together to make a new, previously unknown religion.
That seems to be the way of the Abramic cycle. Islam is not unique in this.
listen, if Judaism or Christianity had come against early islam in say 1000 BC or 100AD, there would be dialogs, discussions, arguments against it. John wrote against the Gnostics, Jews wrote against the worship of baal, yet silence against islam until 632AD or so, why would that be? could it be, that islam was not invented until 622AD?
Your logic is ... stunning.
One of these days I'll find a way to phrase the mistake you're making. I mean, right now I look at that last question in the paragraph: "Could it be that Islam was not invented until 622AD?"
Um ... ah ... er--now, just wait. Okay, the answer to your question is a question of its own: Why would that be significant?
Could it be that ... you're a sinner? (Insert sinister soundtrack here.) Why would it matter that you are?
Historically, yes, the revelation of Islam came in the seventh century of the common era.
Christians didn't start denouncing certain tribal religions until, say, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Could it be that they were invented in the 1490s? (Insert sinister soundtrack here.)
Or could it possibly be the
obvious?
In the case of the American tribes, Christians didn't encounter them until the fifteenth century. This is a matter of geography, economy, technology, &c. In the case of Muslims, Christians didn't encounter them until the seventh century. This is a matter of God's will.
Why, or
how could Judaism or Christianity argue against what God had not yet revealed?
if that were not true, show the evidence of it; where is the 'quran of Father Abraham'? or the 'quran of King David'? or the 'quran of Jesus Messiah'? or their prayers or poems to allah? they are MIA (missing in action)
Is that really a serious point?
Presuming that it is, the best I can do with a straight face is to simply say that we call it The Bible.
islam is a fraud
I rest my case
Fish. Barrel. Shotgun.
How could you possibly miss?
That's what I don't understand here. I mean, it's a poor case to rest on, for the reasons I've noted above. However, as to the general thesis as such, well, there's nothing like making a point of the obvious.
I would ask you to think of it this way: Even if you could rest that particular case confidently in support of that assertion, all you're really establishing is that Islam is a religion.
