The Origins Of "Islam"
-
Greetings and Peace all,
This has been the most interesting subject, personally speaking ofcourse figuring out what actually happened and where and why.
There are many theories on where the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) came from and where he was active; where the Quran was actually revealed - present day Mecca being the most unlikely of places. It seems that both passages from the Quran and the surviving sources of evidence, such as old mosques which do not point to the hejazi Mecca, suggest a place further north, where you had a mix of religions, not just pagans and the community was well aware of judeo-christian concepts and traditions. Also the landscapes alluded to in the Quran suggest an audience who are at least living in an oasis instead of the arid, inhospitable place that is Mecca.
I found a very well composed video presentation last year. Unfortunately his videos were taken off or deleted mysteriously. Luckily I have managed to track it down and the person who re-uploaded did so to his channel for the wrong reasons thinking it discredits the Quran and its narrative. On the contrary, this video nicely summarises a few historical evidences that discredit the traditional narrative of " Islam" and instead, supports the Quranic gist, where the message of God and through God's message, God is the main concern for any believer and not the messengers or prophets or angels or scholars or the so called khalifas/"khalifa-e-rashidun" and the whole arab imperialist system of "Khilafat". Any follower of the Quran called him/herself as a believer "mou'min". The association of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh)'s name with a believer's motto (which was just "No god except God" came much later. This would have happened when finally corruptors had infiltrated and started fighting for power. It was in these circumstances where the aberration of sunnah was perverted to mean the "Sunnah of Muhammad" through the introduction of the hadith and conjecture collections.
We can suddenly see what gave birth to "Islam" with "Muslims" being the follwers, exactly like "Judaism" with "Jews" and "Christianity" with "Christians" the two corruption religions that were born aforetime to support and fuel a complex web of corruption with the sole purpose of granting power to the power hungry.
I have included the video link here
https//youtu.be/DzMEgGwBGIk
-
Ah yes, I had a listen to Fred Donner's lecture a couple of years ago, the same one you've referenced. Very insightful indeed. Haven't read the book though.
I've been trying to contact that guy whose video presentation I posted in my opening post, no luck so far. I've been trying to find out why all of his video presentations have been taken off/deleted, his youtube channel is empty even though he has 1,251 subscribers.
EDIT Managed to communicate on facebook, he's just updating his material so its good to know. Will be quite interesting to go through them once he updates.
-
Glad to know there are some people interested Comrox! )