C.H. Becker - History of Muslim Worship
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peace,
I particularly liked how the author laid it out, step by step, how formalisation took place.
One thing that I am struck by is that early Muslims must have had a huge inferiority complex concerning Christianity. This must be the reason for the second coming myth and attributing miracles to Muhammad (as well as the above) that one can read about in the hadith.
This is a reasonable observation, and this is also said by some authors I have read. Like today, most individual and communal religious practice are rituals and not really recitation, study and implementation of a book. Also consider back in those days very few would have had access to AQ, so rituals made up the main part of their daily lives. This book makes a strong case for early islam being very inclusive and flexible, and when islam spread I have no doubt a fusion of practice/beliefs/rituals took place, with inevitable competition amongst various faiths for which one had most legitimacy/authority, which was most impressive, whose prophet was best, who won the greatest battles, polemics, theological debates etc. Throw in the favourite pastime of Arabic culture at the time for oral storytelling for entertainment, then you have the perfect backdrop for corruption to ensue. The book also mentions that whilst things were inclusive early on, later there is a movement to distinguish the muslim community from other faiths, hence formalisation. This is also said by other authors.
In summary, it seems the earliest sources significantly damage the credibility of the homogeneous version of Islam as we know it today. I have only recently had access to such works and even I was surprised by the variance/contradiction.
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peace,
I particularly liked how the author laid it out, step by step, how formalisation took place.
This is a reasonable observation, and this is also said by some authors I have read. Like today, most individual and communal religious practice are rituals and not really recitation, study and implementation of a book. Also consider back in those days very few would have had access to AQ, so rituals made up the main part of their daily lives. This book makes a strong case for early islam being very inclusive and flexible, and when islam spread I have no doubt a fusion of practice/beliefs/rituals took place, with inevitable competition amongst various faiths for which one had most legitimacy/authority, which was most impressive, whose prophet was best, who won the greatest battles, polemics, theological debates etc. Throw in the favourite pastime of Arabic culture at the time for oral storytelling for entertainment, then you have the perfect backdrop for corruption to ensue. The book also mentions that whilst things were inclusive early on, later there is a movement to distinguish the muslim community from other faiths, hence formalisation. This is also said by other authors.
In summary, it seems the earliest sources significantly damage the credibility of the homogeneous version of Islam as we know it today. I have only recently had access to such works and even I was surprised by the variance/contradiction.
Any chance of scanning This book at a later date?
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Highly unlikely. See the review on amazon.com by "groggy in seattle", covers pretty much the main points.
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filedropper likely deletes the file after a while. Try www.scribd.com or google
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One thing that I am struck by is that early Muslims must have had a huge inferiority complex concerning Christianity. This must be the reason for the second coming myth and attributing miracles to Muhammad (as well as the above) that one can read about in the hadith.
I think so as well.
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Sound to me that the prophete did abolish rituels, maybe , just maybe there was the salat satnding and bowing prostrating without regulations , in the simplest way and the primitive ways, because Mohamed didn't want, or better allah didn't want Islam to be a religion with rites, maybe the latter muslims were impressed about regulations in christianity and they fall in the trap, thinking make it look more serious and more religious, because we're talking about the period right after the fall of islamic civilisation, andalousia to baghdad , they changed from a life with no religion , to a liife full of rituels, they left the quran, instead of staying free of rituals and continue living a normale life, they became like jews and christians , or maybe there was too many new converts with differents ideas that they influenced the other people, or finnaly, a great conspiracy that changed the way of Islam by introducing whatever they wanted in the hadiths and making anyone who doesn't follow the hadiths is an apostate, well, they had the power after all
All these are just my understanding
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This excellent article is now available as a text pdf
www.islam-and-muslims.com/Becker-history-of-muslim-worship.pdf (right click, save as)
