Islam Pt. 2

History Pt. 2:
The words given to Muhammad in his trances are now known as al-Qur’an (English: the reading). For the next three years, Muhammad preached to his family and his close friends. The other Meccans began to think that he was a little mad.

The first Muslim, other than Muhammad was his wife, Khadijah. The second was his cousin and adopted son Ali. The third was his servant Zeyd. Another important early convert was his friend Abu Bakr.

At the end of the three years, Muhammad received the command, "Arise and warn," which began his career in public proselytization. Many poor and oppressed people became Muslims.

Muhammad’s tribe, Qureysh, became angry that people were turning to Muhammad’s preaching and away from the idols in the temple Ka’bah. Qureysh began persecuting many of Muhammad’s followers, especially the poorest ones. They would have killed Muhammad, but they feared retaliation from his family’s clan. They contented themselves with ridiculing his teachings and persecuting his followers. The persecution grew so bad that Muhammad encouraged his followers to leave Mecca and go to Abyssinia, a Christian nation.

The Ka’bah was the destination for a yearly pilgrimage. All the people in Arabia would come, so the Qureysh had a major financial interest in its success. They became worried that the preaching of Muhammad and his growing group of followers would interfere. To avoid this, they offered this compromise to Muhammad: We will accept your religion and make you king if you will declare that our gods are intercessors to Allah. Muhammad rejected the compromise.

Qureysh then went to see Muhammad’s uncle, Abu Talib. They offered him this deal: If we are allowed to kill Muhammad without ramifications, we will give you the best of our young men to replace him, as well as whatever else you want. Abu Talib refused, and the anger of Qureysh grew to a further extreme when one of their own, Omar, became a follower of Muhammad.

Eventually they grew so angry that they drew up a document that completely ostracized Muhammad, his clan, and all his followers from the rest of the Meccan community. The document was kept in the Ka’bah. For the next three years, Muhammad and his group lived secluded in his stronghold right outside Mecca. He only ventured out to preach at the time of the pilgrimage.

Islam Pt. 1

This is the first in a series of articles I'll be writing about Islam. My purpose is mostly to formulate my opinions on the religion, and to verify or destroy my previous hypotheses on the topic (such as that killing a Muslim could be considered self defense). I'll begin by going over the history of Islam according to its own tradition. Then I'll move on to specific topics of belief, for example: salvation, moral law, prayer, prophets, Jesus Christ, marriage/divorce, sexuality/homosexuality, etc. I'll also analyze and compare the average American Muslim with the "extremists." I want to test the popular theory that the terrorists are actually orthodox, and that American Muslims are the real extremists (as far as belief goes, that is).

History Part I:
Muhammad was born about AD 520 in Mecca. As a Meccan, Muhammad could claim to be a descendant of Abraham through Ishmael. His father died before he was born so his grandfather raised him. When his grandfather died, his Uncle became his protector.

As a young man he would travel in caravans, working in the service of travelers. During one such journey he was in the service of a widow named Khadijah. She was impressed by his wise handling her business transactions, and they later married. She was 15 years his senior. Their marriage lasted until her death twenty-six years later.

In Mecca, there was a temple, believed to have been built by Abraham. It contained several idols: the daughters of Allah. Muhammad and many Meccans became skeptical of this idol worship and broke away from these temples. Instead Muhammad would go out into the desert to a hill named Hira and would spend the month Ramadan in meditation there.

During one of these meditations Muhammad fell into a trance. He heard a voice, saying to him, "Read!" He answered, "I cannot." This happened three times. When he woke up he went outside. Outside the cave, the angel Gabriel appeared to him, saying, "You are Allah's messenger." Muhammad got scared, too scared to move. He tried to look away, but no matter where he turned his head Gabriel was there. Eventually the angel vanished.

Muhammad was still scared out of his mind when he went to his wife. She tried to reassure him. They went back to Mecca to see Khadijah's uncle, a sage. He believed that the spirit that had contacted Muhammad was the same one that had contacted Moses. According to some traditions, Muhammad's wife is said to have "tested the spirit" and declared it "good." These two convinced Muhammad that it was indeed Allah who had contacted him.

THIS BLOG IS NEW

I'm not the type of guy to fall behind the times, so since all my friends have been blogging lately, I decided to start one of my own. Actually that's not the reason. The real reason is that Kapper is gay. His blog doesn't allow anonymous comments, so I started my own so I could comment on his.

Enjoy.

Not another Doonesbury

I've always believed that there are three places where politics should not be discussed: the comic page(not the editorial page mind you), a first date, and someplace else that has slipped my mind. Unfortunately, as the other two readers of Alley Oop and I recently discovered, even the seemingly most innocent comics are being infiltrated by the agents of the lefty mainstream media. That's right. Alley Oop has officially become just another liberal stinkpiece. In the story, the evil republican red states split from the Union and created Crimsonia. Now the Republican thought police are interrogating the doctor dude and the future guy while Oop and the know-nothing blonde look on. The interrogators might as well start using newspeak, calling the "terrorists" "thinkcrimers" and claiming to work in minipax and telling them that they need to learn doublethink. It's a cheesy Orwell ripoff and Alley Oop readers should join the other 99.99% of the population in boycotting it.

There is one good thing about it. Obviously the red states kicked some serious blue state booty in order to become independent. I can see it now...

Bush, of course, would lead the red states. The red state slogan would be "Crimsonia: we don't castrate our straight men." Michael Moore would lead the blue states. Their slogans would be "Teal Land: at least we have diversity," and "Stop name calling you brain dead, evil Republicans."
Since 73% of the military backs the Republicans, the only thing the Dems could do in the Civil War would be to ask the UN for help. The UN would send some peacekeeping troops wearing blue helmets, which would make it easy for Republican five-year olds to identify and pistol whip them with their own guns. The war would last about five days. The blue states would win on one front: fashion. That's right, their gay uniform designers would make sure that their uniforms would be the snappiest teal outfit ever. Unfortunately for the blue states, all their resources would be spent on replacing the uniforms daily, otherwise they might get out of style.


Update:
With my awesome webhacking skills I found the pre-edit copy of an Alley Oop comic. Thankfully an editor got to it before the author could publish it.