what religion was the prophet Muhammed before he founded Islam?

[Bombtrack]

I'm going over some considerations for a research project for one of my classes and I'm leaning towards one dealing largely with Islam. I'm just curious if anyone could answer me that question. You're help is appreciated.

[yella_dawg]

1. I thought that

like Jesus, Muhammed was a Jew.

[kiahzero]

2. Probably Zoroastrian

It was the religion of choice in Persia before Islam. My girlfriend (religious studies / philosophy major) is checking now.

[Bombtrack]

5. tell her thanks in advance

I'm reading one page where it says :
"Al" means "the" in Arabic, so the name of that god is Lah. He was the god of the moon in the pre-Islamic, polytheistic, pagan Arabic religion. Lah was just one among many gods, like Zeus in the Greek religion

Would that pagan religion be the same as the one you mentioned?

[kiahzero]

20. She did find confirmation

That doesn't sound like Zoroastrianism, though.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/zoroastr.htm

[Must_B_Free]

26. There is some speculation that there was a giant land calandar

with a circle of hindu temples. Each one focused on a different temple. This moon one comes from those temples.

[Must_B_Free]

27. here is from an article

He was also drawn to spiritual questions. Arabia in Muhammad's day was home to a great variety of religious practices. Much of the polytheistic tradition of the early Arabs survived in and around Mecca; people there worshipped a number of divinities, and called upon each for inspiration or assistance as the occasion demanded. Challenging these beliefs, perhaps, were Jewish communities that had established themselves in the northern half of the peninsula and the Sheban dynasty, in the far south, which had converted to Judaism. Christianity, also, was not unknown to the Arabic population- from time to time, missionaries who spoke of the teachings of Jesus appeared in Mecca, and won some converts. Muhammad's encounters with these dominant belief systems, and with other more minor religions he had come across in his travels, led him to ponder their meanings, and to undertake to discern the "true faith."

[DrWeird]

35. Arabia and Persia are two different places.

Mohammed was an Arabian.

[Trajan]

3. I believe ...

That Arabia was polytheist at that time: with knowledge and cultural interaction of Judaism and Christianity ... The Roman/Byzantine reach did not extent to the arabian peninsula to any great degree ...

It should be noted: the Caaba was first a long time pagan site: it is said that Abraham worshipped many mesopotamian deities there ...

Among them ? .... YHWH, a minor deity of the desert folk ....

Consider that a 'rags to riches' story ....

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

11. Trajan, I believe you are correct

the Beloved Prophet had definately heard of Christianity and Judaism. He was called "Ahmed" and was considered wise. When the Stone in the Kaaba fell to the ground, a disput arose among the various tribes as to who would have the honor of putting it back. Ahmed solved the problem by placing the Stone on a cloth and having the leaders of all the tribes raise it back in place. So he had an honored place among Arab society.

He took to going on retreat in caves, for he felt a need to get closer to God. It was while on retreat that the Angel Jibril (Gabriel) came to him and said, "Recite!" and gave him the first Sura of the Qur'an.

Mohammed told his wife, Kadija, of what happened, and she stood by him, telling him he should follow the will of God and tell the Arabs there is but one God and that He was Mercy and Compassion. The polytheists drove him out of Mecca to Medina; much of the passages in the Qur'an dealing with warfare and the lesser jihad deal with this point in history, when the Muslims were a decided minority and truly in danger of being wiped out.

Hope this helps!

[papau]

13. Objects as Deity - or residence of a Deity

When a Mecca "spirit rock" was tossed out under the orders of Muhammad, the area hit several years of bad luck and he was forced to order the rock brought back. Indeed that what is inside the Ka'ba that they circle and throw stones at to this day.

He could find no great number of followers in Mecca - so he went north with with his one god theory and got a bunch of Jews to ride with him (along with many non-Jews that signed on). You can get a fun debate going if you are in mood by suggesting that without those Jewish riders, He would have been unable to conquer town 1 - and Islam would have ended!

:-)

[Trajan]

18. I had read of this mutual support ...

In the Abram Leon Sachar tome ; "A History of the Jews" ....

Mohammed, in his plight with the status quo leaders of Mecca, found a diasporic judaic sect (perhaps abyssinian ??? ) that was willing (at first) to join him to take Medina ...

I cannot recall the outcome of that union, except it did break within a short time .... such is the fate of such pacts ....

History ... fascinating stuff ....

[papau]

39. I agree - The Jews helped Mohammad take Medina - but the history does

not show that they were critical to his success after Medina was taken..

But then again, if they had not rode with him, he may not have won at Medina - and wthen here would we be now!

:-)

:toast:

:-)

[unblock]

4. he believed jesus was more than what jews believe

so he was fairly close to being a christian, no?

[Bombtrack]

6. Well the Quaran says that the old and new testaments where basically

prequels to the quaran. That Moses and Jesus where the first 2 prophets and Muhammed was the third

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

12. Mohammed is the Seal of the Prophets

as Jesus is the Seal of the Saints. The Torah, Bible, and Qur'an are all parts of the same Book; people of The Book are to be respected.

[Aidoneus]

14. leaving off a few

Adam, Noah, and Abraham from the "Old"/"New" Testaments make up the stated line.

[kiahzero]

24. Well, not so much prequels.

The idea is that all three got the same holy book - the Jews made the mistake of losing it, finding it again, translating it over and over, etc.

The Christians focused on the messanger rather than the message, and so didn't pay attention.

This is why the Qur'an is written in Arabic - it is the language the Book was given to Muhammad in, and translating it would change the meaning.

[Trajan]

25. Was it actually Mohammed who possessed the Quran ? ..

Or did His uncle 'possess' it well after Mohammed's death ?

[revcarol]

31. I have a Qu'uran that has the English translation on one page

and Arabic on the other. It was given to me by the King of Saudi Arabia. It is supposedly official because the Saudi royal family regard themselves as the guardians of Islam.

[kiahzero]

32. Right, but the English translation is not 'official'

If one were trying to determine what the Qur'an said, the English version would not be applicable.

On an unrelated topic - How did you get the King of Saudi Arabia to give you a copy of the Qur'an?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. Here's a biography with a description of the existing religions...

...at that time...

<http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/prophet/profbio.html>

Excerpts:

"Religion

8. From the point of view of religion, Arabia was idolatrous; only a few individuals had embraced religions like Christianity, Mazdaism, etc. The Meccans did possess the notion of the One God, but they believed also that idols had the power to intercede with Him. Curiously enough, they did not believe in the Resurrection and Afterlife. They had preserved the rite of the pilgrimage to the House of the One God, the Ka'bah, an institution set up under divine inspiration by their ancestor Abraham, yet the two thousand years that separated them from Abraham had caused to degenerate this pilgrimage into the spectacle of a commercial fair and an occasion of senseless idolatry which far from producing any good, only served to ruin their individual behaviour, both social and spiritual."

....snip....

"Beginning of Religious Consciousness

14. Not much is known about the religious practices of Muhammad until he was thirty-five years old, except that he had never worshipped idols. This is substantiated by all his biographers. It may be stated that there were a few others in Mecca, who had likewise revolted against the senseless practice of paganism, although conserving their fidelity to the Ka'bah as the house dedicated to the One God by its builder Abraham.

15. About the year 605 of the Christian era, the draperies on the outer wall of the Ka'bah took fire. The building was affected and could not bear the brunt of the torrential rains that followed. The reconstruction of the Ka'bah was thereupon undertaken. Each citizen contributed according to his means; and only the gifts of honest gains were accepted. Everybody participated in the work of construction, and Muhammad's shoulders were injured in the course of transporting stones. To identify the place whence the ritual of circumambulation began, there had been set a black stone in the wall of the Ka'bah. dating probably from the time of Abraham himself. There was rivalry among the citizens for obtaining the honour of transposing this stone in its place. When there was danger of blood being shed, somebody suggested leaving the matter to Providence, and accepting the arbitration of him who should happen to arrive there first. It chanced that Muhammad just then turned up there for work as usual. He was popularly known by the appellation of al-Amin (the honest), and everyone accepted his arbitration without hesitation. Muhammad placed a sheet of cloth on the ground, put the stone on it and asked the chiefs of all the tribes in the city to lift together the cloth. Then he himself placed the stone in its proper place, in one of the angles of the building, and everybody was satisfied.

16. It is from this moment that we find Muhammad becoming more and more absorbed in spiritual meditations. Like his grandfather, he used to retire during the whole month of Ramadan to a cave in Jabal-an-Nur (mountain of light). The cave is called `Ghar-i-Hira' or the cave of research. There he prayed, meditated, and shared his meagre provisions with the travellers who happened to pass by."

[keithyboy]

8. From what I found, he sounds a lot like Jesus.

http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp?query=the+prophet+Mohammed&page=1&offset=0&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3Dcce81fdc845ddfad%26clickedItemRank%3D3%26userQuery%3Dthe%2Bprophet%2BMohammed%26clickedItemURN%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dlshq.org%252Fsaints%252Fmohammed.htm%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DNSCPSuggestion%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dlshq.org%2Fsaints%2Fmohammed.htm

[genius]

9. He believed Jesus was a prophet of God

This brings him closer to Christianity. I might mention that there are so many differences within the Christian churches as to make them almost as far apart as Chistians and non-Christians.

[doni_georgia]

10. he was a polytheist

tribal gods of his tribe. He was born in Mecca and his uncle raised him. His uncle was the keeper of the ka'ba (temple) where idol worship was the norm, but according to Islamic teachings, the ka'ba had once been a temple to workship "the one true God." Muhhamed did not believe he was starting a new religion, simply reinstituting the old religion, and he was a new prophet. if you are familiar with the old Testament prophets - it's a similar story. The people had drifted into idolotry and immorality and God sends a new prophet to warn the people and turn them back to Him. Muslims believe that Muhhamed is a prophet in the Old Testament tradition. They recongnize the Old Testament prophets and Jesus as a prophet as well. Hope this helps.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

15. The Kaaba

was built by Ibrahim and his son Ishmael after they returned from the Egyptian mystery schools. They raised the stone as testiment (shahada) to the fact there is but One. When Ibrahim was about to sacrifice a son, in the Islamic tradition, it was Ishmael, not Isaac.

Jesus (Isa) is called "Ruh Allah", or breath of God. There is a whole sura (chapter) in the Qur'an named "Miriam" or "Mary" to honor Jesus's mother.

[papau]

16. Where is the worship of the stone, the removal - and the reversal and

return of the stone to the Ka'ba?

Afraid I got the Cliff Notes version of the history and have not actually studied it.

Thanks

:-)

[Trajan]

22. Mary worship ...

was a late development in Xtianity .... and was rejected by many factions until they saw the light (of the swords and torches) .....

I am intriguied by the notion that a Sura of the 7th century would be focused on the adulation of a figure that was not uniformly revered by the theology which spawned that worship ..

In other words: christians did not themselves UNIVERSALLY revere Mary, at least until the church was able to enforce such reverence by the point of the sword and the fire of the torch: ... WHY would a non christian theology include Mary worship ? ... Im not sure one could find a contemporaneous refernce to Mary in the xtian documentary tradition of that era ....

Fascinating ....

BTW: I am atheist ..... I really dont accept ANY of the abrahamic theologies as 'real' ... I just love history ....

[scarletwoman]

37. You have it backwards.

"Mary worship" was a movement of the common people, who were harking back to their pre-Christian traditions of Goddess worship. The early Church discovered that it could win more converts by allowing the local Mother Goddess to morph into the "Virgin Mary", as well as allowing various other minor Goddesses to morph into "saints".

All through the pre-Islamic Middle East there were remnants of Goddess worship, it was not unusual to give honor to a female form of Divinity. Even in Judaism there is the concept of the "Shekinah" -- the female "wisdom" of God.

The big three monotheistic religions all share deep and ancient mythological and archetypal roots that predate them by thousands of years. Much of the Old Testament is a retelling of far older Near Eastern myths. The entire Jesus story is deeply interwoven with far older mythological themes such as the virgin mother and the dying god.

It is no great surprise to see Mary given honor in Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, its spiritual antecedents are ancient. The Divine Mother has never been very far from our collective consciousness.

sw

[Lydia Leftcoast]

40. Reverencing Mary was quite an early development

I believe that she is depicted in the mosaics at Ravenna, Italy, which are about contemporary with Mohammed. (Just Googled. They're from the sixth century), and she certainly figures prominently in the art of the Eastern Church, which is the one Mohammed would have been familiar with.

[scarletwoman]

43. Thanks!

Always love to get new historical information! :D

sw

[Trajan]

41. While I agree ...

The impulse to worship "Goddess" is extremely old, and provides the among the first examples of human artistic expression ... this impulse is universal across cultural boundaries ...

But my reference was to UNIVERSAL acceptance, which is still TO THIS DAY not recognized across the board by all xtians ....

Yes; Mary is an iconic reflection of the 'mother' deity present in early history, yet her 'holiness' is still problematic, as is the scriptural dissonances between the "Virgin" motif, and the production of siblings of Jesus .... These issues still rend the church to this day ....

Nevertheless: .. the mohammedian tradition, inclusive or not of christian AND pre-christian elements and figures , isnt much my cup of tea, as it were ....

I suppose no theology is ...

[scarletwoman]

42. "Universal acceptance" and theological nitpicking.

Just to clarify, my intitial reply to your post was intended merely to point out that the concept of a "divine feminine" was both a bottom up (as opposed to top down, as your initial post appeared to assert), and broadly familiar cultural and spiritual phenomenon.

As to Mary's "official" theological status in the early Church and the later Roman Church, the various theological issues and arguments involved is whole study unto itself. And that doesn't even begin to address the Reformation, when Protestantism arose and split away from the Roman Church. And, how much of that debate centered on the matter of Mary -- which is also a quite intricate subject for further study, if one were so inclined.

I was raised Roman Catholic, and throughout my childhood addressed countless prayers to "Holy Mary, Mother of God!" As a woman "of a certain age", I have come to appreciate several things about my early Catholic upbringing (I broke away when I was 14).

First and foremost, was the Latin. I am old enough to remember that it was well into my young adulthood when Latin was banished from the Mass. I still feel great sorrow for that. As a lover of words, my life has been immeasurably enriched from having become familiar with Latin at a young age.

Secondly, as a lover of world mythology, it has been fascinating to trace back to the pre-Christian roots of much that got absorbed into the pre-Reformation Church. I think that on this point, a very important distinction is present between the Roman Catholic church, and all the various Protestant churches that arose afterward; after several centuries of complete domination of the so-called "Christian" world by the One Church.

One of the many striking things that happened is that the older "pagan" layers that had over time infiltrated the early Church, were often roundly condemned and rejected by the new Protestant sects. In fact, mythological thinking itself was supressed.

The absence of mythological and metaporical thinking, imho, is a major ingredient in the rise of religious fundamentalism -- which are basically authoritarian systems requiring adherence to dogma, rather than our far older heritage of creative, poetic means of making sense of the world.

For me, myth is the poetry of the human psyche -- many haikus and koans among the epics, odes and sonnets. It is an artwork of the collective human soul, that I quite cherish. And I can see that some of the groundwork for this interest came out my Catholic childhood.

sw

[IndianaGreen]

17. Islam was founded by Allah (God) and first given to Adam and Eve

The Prophet Muhammad is the last of the prophets.

[CabalBuster]

19. Mohammad PBUH was born to the Banu Hashim - Quraish tribe

Which was one of the noble arab tribes. Most of the arab tribes practiced idol worshiping. Since he was a small child he professed his belief in only ONE good. He was NOT a jew.

"One major trace of the divine care for the Prophet (s.a.w.) was that he was, from early age, a monotheist. He used to unequivocally proclaim his hostility to the idols(6). He used to perform hajj without eating the meat which was slaughtered at the feet of the idols. He would to mention the name of Allah before having his food'(7) and praise Allah when he finished. Muhammad, He was widely known among Arabs to be upright and virtuous. He would keep his word, and for that he was known as "the truthful and the faithful".

See: http://www11.brinkster.com/nedians1/life_prophet.html

[Trajan]

23. "Idol Worship" ...

equals 'Old Way' polytheism ... Its a convenient way to indict those who cling to the 'old way' by condemning their 'idol worship' ...

Funny thing about monotheism (well, not funny, but understandable) ... It becamse the 'new way' for a reason ....

Polytheism is a poor political tool for someone trying to unite a state against its enemies ... the great 'innovation' of the Hebrews, the 'one god', was a worthwhile development that simplified BOTH communal worship (through a uniform creed that all can be easily taught) and a smaller state outlay for infrastructure ...

NO one need build numerous temples and shrines to numerous deities in numerous places: .. the state only need build ONE temple in each place: .. a boon to state coffers ....

Furthermore: this consistency in worship provided a uniform concord within the community, allowing it to focus better on other issues ... like defending the walls against invaders ....

It should be noted: ... The probable 'inventor' of the 'one god' was most likely Ikhnaton, who provided the Egyptians with the 'one god' - Aten ....

[mr_hat]

21. Southern Baptist, I believe.

[TahitiNut]

28. Not Mormon?

:silly:

[CityZen-X]

29. Rethuglaism!

The belief that all that is material is the nature of all power! 666=18 with a bullet!

[JanMichael]

30. Were his parents dead before he created Islam?

If so they certainly hadn't read the Koran and most likly didn't hold the same religious beliefs as Muhammed:-)

IIRC that was the argument that got an author in Pakistan the death penalty.

[KittyWampus]

33. What An INteresting Thread

Glad Bombtrack asked a question!

:)

[DrWeird]

34. I'm guessing christian.

Obviously he was abrahamic. And since there weren't any muslims yet, he would have either been a jew or a christian.

There were polytheistic religions in Arabia at the time, of course, but given islam is abrahamic I doubt Mohammed was one.

So was he a christian or a jew? In Islam, christ was born of a virgin, he was resurrected, and they'll be a second coming.

So obviously Mohammed had read the Gospels and believed them. So in my definition that would have made him a christian.

[Mari333]

36. Heres a little tidbit of history that might enlighten you also

http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/blston2.htm

[powergirl]

38. ASSEMBLY OF GOD - JUST LIKE ASHCROFT

{(

I think it would be funny to spread that around - even if it's not true just to make Ashcroft paranoid.

[Yupster]

44. A pagan

He grew up in Arabia which was a tribal, nomadic area which had not yet embraced Christianity or Judaism. It was not part of the Roman Empire.