Do you think that Mohamed..

[jay_a2j]

Are the 72 virgins promises to all men in Islam or is it reserved only for those who strap explosives to their torso's and litter 100 sq. feet with their DNA?


I mean you have to admit, 72 is a good selling point.

[Titanic]

Are the 72 virgins promises to all men in Islam or is it reserved only for those who strap explosives to their torso's and litter 100 sq. feet with their DNA?


I mean you have to admit, 72 is a good selling point.

You ever heard Bill Mayer's take on why its 72?

[GabonX]

Rather than simply looking at this as a theological issue, I am posing this as historical question. You guys make an interesting comparative point about Jesus and Mohamed but I would argue that it isn't entirely valid. Both Jesus and Mohamed were real people regardless of whether or not their faith was divinely inspired...

While Jesus did preach, and he did gain followers he used them very differently than Mohamed. You could make the argument that he didn't use them at all, but rather tried to give people an outline for clean and harmonious living. Mohamed on the other hand was a conquerer. He united the Arabian peninsula through a series of offensive wars and Islam served the purpose of uniting his followers and establishing divine justification for their actions.

While Jesus was a pacifist, Mohamed was anything but. In my mind, this makes the question of why Mohamed established Islam much more pervasive than a similar question being asked of Christ.

Did Mohamed really believe what he said (he couldn't write, instead the Archangel Gabriel is said to have commanded him to "recite". I believe one of his wives 'wrote' the Koran) or did he simply use Islam to gain a heightened social and political status?

He did certainly gain heightened social and political status in a way that Jesus never achieved in life.

You are very right there. However, I doubt whether Mohammed believed what he said or not is important. It is interesting to think about how Mohammed's role as a conqueror shaped the way he made a religion though. Would his religion have looked differently if he weren't a soldier? Could he have used a different, already existing religion as effectively as his own? (Like Christianity for example)

Regardless of whether or not he believed in his faith or whether it was divinely inspired I think of Mohamed as one of the great men of the ages. The movement he started grew to become the greatest empire on earth for a time. I consider Mohamed's accomplishments to be on par with the founding of Rome. He has as much in common with Alexander of or Caesar as he does with Moses or Christ.

Your questions are interesting. I personally see Mohamed's military role as playing an integral part in the formation of the religion. As for whether or not he could he have used a different, already existing religion as effectively as his own..
..He did. Sort of.

Mohamed claimed that his tribal God was the God of the Jewish Old Testament and of Christianity. This gave people of pagan, Jewish, and Christian faiths a cry to rally around together. In essence he was able to capitalize on people's already existing faiths by claiming that they were all parts of a larger whole....that only he could piece together and which could never again be amended (see Seal of the Prophets).

Certainly he must have been a very charismatic individual to achieve what he did.

As an aside, religions always get shaped more by people's thoughts and beliefs they already have than some supernatural power. People don't join up when they don't think what you're saying is already right anyway, and you don't write up stuff you disagree with even if some angel dictates it to you.

That comes down to a question of whether or not you believe that a given religion was divinely inspired. For the purposes of this thread, we are considering Islam in something of a more secular historical view though this should not exclude religious commentary if it would be relevant to the discussion.

[jay_a2j]

Are the 72 virgins promises to all men in Islam or is it reserved only for those who strap explosives to their torso's and litter 100 sq. feet with their DNA?


I mean you have to admit, 72 is a good selling point.

You ever heard Bill Mayer's take on why its 72?

No I haven't.

[Titanic]

Are the 72 virgins promises to all men in Islam or is it reserved only for those who strap explosives to their torso's and litter 100 sq. feet with their DNA?


I mean you have to admit, 72 is a good selling point.

You ever heard Bill Mayer's take on why its 72?

No I haven't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhefWmeAydE

[jay_a2j]

Are the 72 virgins promises to all men in Islam or is it reserved only for those who strap explosives to their torso's and litter 100 sq. feet with their DNA?


I mean you have to admit, 72 is a good selling point.

You ever heard Bill Mayer's take on why its 72?

No I haven't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhefWmeAydE

[Snorri1234]

Your questions are interesting. I personally see Mohamed's military role as playing an integral part in the formation of the religion. As for whether or not he could he have used a different, already existing religion as effectively as his own..
..He did. Sort of.

Mohamed claimed that his tribal God was the God of the Jewish Old Testament and of Christianity. This gave people of pagan, Jewish, and Christian faiths a cry to rally around together. In essence he was able to capitalize on people's already existing faiths by claiming that they were all parts of a larger whole....that only he could piece together and which could never again be amended (see Seal of the Prophets).

True, I was talking about actually really using another religion though. If he had merely become a Christian and tried to spread Christianity trough the conquered nations it's doubtfull whether he would have succeeded. It's certainly far easier to use Islam as a justification for religious war. (It's certainly possible with christianity, as has been seen in history, but Islam is actually direct about it.)

Actually, when I think about it, there is good reason to assume Mohammed didn't really believe what he said. Because instead of joining a religion worshipping the god he said he believed in, he made his own religion which was very usefull for what he did. Perhaps he did believe in God, but not really in his religion.

As an aside, religions always get shaped more by people's thoughts and beliefs they already have than some supernatural power. People don't join up when they don't think what you're saying is already right anyway, and you don't write up stuff you disagree with even if some angel dictates it to you.

That comes down to a question of whether or not you believe that a given religion was divinely inspired. For the purposes of this thread, we are considering Islam in something of a more secular historical view though this should not exclude religious commentary if it would be relevant to the discussion.

Yeah I agree. I made that comment more to exclude divine inspiration in both the case of Mohammed and Jesus. It shouldn't come to "Oh yeah mohammed made things up but Jesus was actually the son of god so ofcourse he believed in himself". It seemed to me that the topic might steer towards religious discussion rather than historical discussion. (Hope we avoided that now.)

[Juan_Bottom]

There are truly some amazing coincidences in the Quran that are not easily explained.
The word "land" is used 32 times and the word "sea" is used 17 times. On a percenatge basis, that is 72.11% and 28.89% respectively.
In the advent of modern science, scientists have documented that the actual ratio of sea to land on earth is 72.11% and 28.89%

Nah, that's 34.7% sea and 65.3% land.
Earth it's 72.1% sea and 28.9% land

they're quite different, I'm afraid.

Wait, are we using fractals here?


Also, I thought that this was a thread about this story:
http://www.examiner.com/x-22465-Louisvi ... f-cartoons

Am I back?

[jonesthecurl]

Mohamed was real.
Perhaps Jesus was, but nobody mentions him outside of the bible (and some bits that were left out of the bible, written by Christians).

Wow, let's that 27 words and see how many mistakes you made...

but nobody mentions him outside of the bible

The histories of Josephus (a jewish scholar) confirms the historical existence of a crucified religious leader under the title, "Jesus of Nazareth from the region of Galilee"

Josephus was not born until after the crucifiction, if it occurred.
The earliest copy of his writing s dates from several hundred years after his (Josephus) death, and there are doubts as to how much he said about jesus, and whether the text was changed to support a Christian standpoint in various copyings.

[jonesthecurl]

and some bits that were left out of the bible

Some bits were left out of canonical bible, but these bits remain in the Apocryphal bible, and have always remained available to, well, anyone. clicky

Not everything that was left out of the bible found its way into the apocrypha.