Muhammad the life and history of a man

Massorite

For a few years now I have considered learning about Islam to see what the differences are between the Quran and the Bible. I have wanted to study the life of Muhammad to learn about the man and his calling. But I never had the desire to begin until I was inspired by the God of Abraham to begin my studies and to write a book on what I found. Though I do not claim to be a prophet of God as Muhammad did, I do like Muhammad have a Message from God to Muslims.
Once I got started researching Islam, the life and times of Muhammad, the history of Arabia both before and after the birth of Muhammad and reading the Quran the Spirit of God that is within me started to get more and more excited until nearly all of my spare time was devoted to the tasks mentioned above.
The contents of this book are the result of my efforts and I hope and pray that all who read or rather digest what is written herein will be blessed by what they find. May God be with you with His wisdom.

Introduction

There are many misconceptions; falsehoods, assumptions, and questions both within and without of the nation of Islam and I for one have many questions about what the Quran says that I would like to have answers for. So I have read and researched the Quran and researched the life of Muhammad in an effort to better understand what more than a billion people believe in. I have focused on the claims and statements of fact made by Muhammad, the relationships he had with the people around him, his life before prophet hood and after his calling, the recorded history of Arabia in pre Islamic and post Islamic times, Muhammad?s conquests and most importantly the word of Allah that was handed down to Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel.
Here you will find explanations that are as detailed as it is possible for as many communications or divine statements as my research reveals to me. There is no way that I could research all that could be researched about the religion of Islam because it would take me a life time to do so. Since I am a half of a centurion+ already you can see that I don?t have a life time left to live. So to shorten things up I will be using only the Quran because it is the single most widely studied book in Islam.
I will also be using and quoting from the Old and New Testaments for their historical, archeological, and philosophical values. You can rest assured when I tell you that I have gone through an enormous amount of information to produce this book and I hope that all who would read this Message will learn from its contents.
My first contact with a Muslim was back in the late seventies or early eighties. It was during the first major Palestinian intifada and I wanted to understand what it was all about so I began to question a Palestinian named Fimme who owned a convenience store in Acworth Georgia and was the first Muslim I ever met. From time to time he would have members of his family working in the store with him who could barely speak English most of the time. One day when I was talking to Fimme about the uprising another Muslim who was working in the store misunderstood what I said and rushed over and told me ?YOU MAKE FUN OF MY GOD I KILL YOU? and he looked like he was ready to do just that. But Femmi elbowed him and told him to go away in a language I could not understand.
Little did I know then that I would ever even consider writing a book on the Quran which that hostile Palestinian Muslim man believed is the word of God.

Muhammad
The Life and History of a Man

According to Islamic tradition Muhammad was born in 570 A.D. in the city of Mecca which was a center for religion and commerce at the time. In ancient Arabian lore, when Adam and Eve were cast from Paradise they fell to different parts of the earth; Adam landed on a mountain in the island of Serendip which is known today as Sri Lanka. Eve was supposed to have landed in Arabia on the border of the Red Sea and for two hundred years they both wandered aimlessly in the earth until, because of their wretchedness God considered their penitence and allowed them to come together again on Mount Arafat near the present day city of Mecca. Because of the gratefulness that Adam felt he asked God if he could build a shrine in Macoraba/Mecca that was similar to the one he worshipped at in the garden. This is how the Kaaba came to be at the first.
Please keep in mind that this tradition or legend is not spoken of in the Quran and Muslims do not ascribe to this belief but the pagans did and this is important because ancient pagan beliefs of the peoples of Arabia play a role in future events as the pagan masses considered Mecca to be a holy city or place long before Muhammad was born.
Muhammad (the name Muhammad means ?praised one?) lost his father and mother at an early age and was raised by his uncle whose name was Abu-Talib. Early in his life Muhammad was a shepherd boy and an attendant of caravans. Sometime between the ages of nine and twelve Muhammad was attending a caravan and was accompanied by his uncle when the caravan was on its way to Damascus in Syria and passed by a monastery where a monk named Bahire who was a Nestorian Christian lived. The Nestorians were condemned by the Roman church for heresy but I could not find exactly what that heresy was. I know it had something to do with doctrinal beliefs but I was not able to pinpoint what they were or how many. It was on one of these caravan trips to centers of commerce in Syria that Muhammad first came into contact with Jews and Christians and became acquainted with both the old and new testaments of the Hebrew and Christian Testaments. It is believed that Muhammad was taught about the Hebrew and Christian Testaments by Bahire on his many childhood trips to Damascus with his uncle. There is even Islamic art that depicts Bahire the Christian monk paying respect to the young Muhammad and inviting all in the caravan to a feast and the offer was accepted. It is said that Bahira claimed that he saw in Muhammad a calling from God to become a prophet.

Bahira is the old man with the white beard and Muhammad has a checkered robe on.

Muhammad was a Hashemite and was born into the strongest, richest and most powerful tribe in all of Arabia. The Quraysh tribes were traders and very educated in the occupation from which they were able to acquire their great power and wealth. During Mohammed?s early life tribal connections were the most important part of the social structure of the people of Arabia and the Quraysh were the most powerful and influential of the tribes because of their involvement with water rights for pilgrimages and caravans. By the time of Muhammad the Quraysh had become active in commerce and had established alliances or treaties with tribes all over the Arabian Peninsula. These agreements allowed the Quraysh to send their caravans to Yemen and Syria with no fear of being robbed by bandits. The Quraysh had also jockeyed themselves into the position of Power Brokers and Mecca was their center of operations. By the age of twenty five Muhammad was well known for his trading prowess and profit making. His uncle got him a job with a very rich widow named Khadijah. Her father was a merchant and successful business man who had amassed a huge fortune. He died around 585 and Khadijah inherited both her father?s vast wealth and his talents in that she was able to successfully manage and expand her father?s business interests and the family fortune. She was a strong woman who gained notoriety in a man?s world and in those days that was a feat. She was known by two titles. They were ?The Queen of Quraysh ?and ?The pure one? which shows that she was both virtuous and respected among the whole of the Quraysh tribe. In those days men of talent were hired to travel and trade on behalf of or to be an agent of a merchant and after Khadijah hired Muhammad she was so impressed with Muhammad and his performance that she began to become affectionate toward him and asked him to marry her. Fourteen years after their marriage is when Muhammad claimed to feel the calling to be a Prophet of God.
By the age of forty Mohammed were a very successful business man and trader as well as a man of means whose commercial enterprises took him to Yemen, Damascus and several other markets of commerce. We also know that because he traveled to these centers of commerce, Muhammad was privy to or came in contact with the knowledge of all of the latest religions or beliefs including the beliefs of Christians and Jews. He also had contact with Jews and Christians who lived in and around Mecca and was also made aware of all of the newest scientific discoveries, philosophies, and technologies as primitive as they were.
It was also at the age of forty that Mohammed had his first ?marvelous illumination? from God?. Outside of Mecca was Mount Hira and on this mountain there was a cave. For whatever reason Muhammad was attracted to the mountain and so upon finding this cave he would retreat to the cave to pray and commune with God. It was on one of these nights that Muhammad claimed to have received a revelation that changed his life. He believed that he heard a divine voice he thought was the voice of Gabriel the Arch Angel. The record of this vision is recorded in the Quran.
Surah 961-19

Read In the name of your Lord who creates,
Created man from a clot.
Read And thy Lord is the Most Bounteous,
Who teaches by the pen,
Taught man that which he knew not.
Nay, but verily man is rebellious
That he thinks himself independent!
Lo! Unto thy Lord is the return.
Have you seen him who dissuades?
A slave when he prays?
Have you seen if he (relies) on the guidance (of Allah)
Or enjoin piety?
Have you seen if he denies (Allah's guidance) and is forward?
Is he then unaware that Allah sees?
Nay, but if he cease not. We will seize him by the forelock
The lying, sinful forelock
Then let him call upon his henchmen!
We will call the guards of hell.
Nay! Obey not thou him. But prostrate yourself, and draw near (unto Allah) (Translated by Pickthall)

The ministry of Muhammad started in 612 in the city of Mecca and the progress he made went very slowly and with very few results. There were several warring tribes and clans of tribes in Arabia and they were all pagans who worshiped one god or another. As Muhammad began to preach in the streets of Mecca he would proclaim that he received a calling from God and that he alone had the only divine massage that there was one God and one God only and his name is Allah. If they did not fallow after or receive that which the one God gave him to tell them they would receive punishment in hell. Needless to say that didn?t go over very well in a city full of pagans. At first he was simply ignored until he started attacking their gods saying that they were just pieces of wood or stone and condemning the vices born of paganism. Covetousness, Greed, and Deceitfulness or Injustice to ones neighbor represented moral depravity to Muhammad and were among the many spiritual conditions Muhammad preached against.
By 618 Muhammad had converted enough Meccans to become worrisome to the cities leaders because Mohammed had enough believers to affect the commerce in Mecca and especially on those days when large numbers of pagan believing pilgrims came to Mecca to worship the images of the gods they believed in which were stored in the Kaaba.
Though they wanted to get rid of him by any means they were afraid to harm him because of his uncle, but his followers were another matter. While Muhammad was protected by his family his followers received great persecution so sometime around 615 Muhammad advised some of his followers to flee to Ethiopia where they were taken in by an Ethiopian king who was a Christian. According to Islamic tradition the name of this king was Ashama ibn Abjar who was ruler over the Kingdom of Aksum. The same year as these Muslims left Mecca to escape the persecution and went to Ethiopia the Quraysh sent emissaries to Ethiopia to bring them back to Mecca. But the Christian King not only took them into his country but also protected them by refusing the to hand them over to the Quraysh.
The climate in Mecca continued to get progressively worse for Mohammed and after attempts on his life he thought it wise to gather his followers and immigrate to Medina in 622 A.D. where he was greeted with open arms and protected while he preached his message.
In Medina he began in earnest to create a Muslim community with him at the head and was very successful. When Mohammed immigrated to Medina there were eight large clans of Arabs and three large clans of Jews who lived in and around Medina who had been feuding for many years. Muhammad managed to maneuver himself into a political position very much like that of Moses in the Hebrew bible. Moses was appointed by God to lead his people in the desert and to be judge over all of the differences that the Hebrews had between each other as well as other problems. Like Moses Mohammed was able to convince those warring tribes to trust him enough to lay their grievances down before him. They became convinced that Mohammed was Allah?s representative on earth and he continued to preach his massage but the Jewish population would have nothing of it and openly disputed his claim to prophet-hood. Because of the large Jewish population in Medina an agreement or Constitution was drawn up that among other things afforded protection, rights and duties to the Jewish community and granted powers of war to Muhammad. Not long after he was given war powers Mohammed and his followers began to raid Meccan caravans which were the very life blood of the city. But the raids on many occasions were easily defeated so Muhammad had to change his tactics by attacking caravans and tribal settlements during the Meccan sacred month when large numbers of caravans and pilgrims would come to Mecca for trade and the worship of their gods. This was a taboo and shocked pagans and non-pagans alike. As Mohammed?s power and riches grew from these raids he started using his stolen riches to lore and recruit thieves, murderers, and other criminal types who were more than willing to convert to Islam for the wrong reasons. With his ever growing group of greedy criminals Muhammad started using blackmail, expulsion and assassinations to bring about his nation of Islam. Muhammad then came to believe that the very presents of any Jew in Medina was a threat to his vision so he started what is regarded today as ethnic cleansing and Muhammad went on to wipe out the Jewish tribe of Banu al-Nadir.
He broke the agreement he had with the Jewish population in Medina and killed or expelled them from the city declaring to his followers to ?Kill every Jew who comes into your power?. After that Muhammed and his followers attacked, enslaved the men and raped the women of the Jews of Khayber. All who were left alive including children were sold off to slavers and all properties were divided amongst the raiders. At this point in time Muhammad was also using trickery, treachery, bribery and any other methods he could us in the name of Allah and in the name of Islam to achieve his goal of Islamic dominance.
In the year 630 Muhammad?s enemies attempted to make peace with him and a treaty was signed which Muhammad quickly broke and conquered Mecca. After the conquest the very first thing he did was to destroy all of the images and statues of pagan gods in and around the Kaaba.
Finally Muhammad reached two of his goals conquering Mecca and uniting all of the Arab tribes of central Arabia and by the time of his death in 632 he had his eyes set on conquering the Empire of the Roman church.
The life of Muhammad was extraordinary and my own opinion of him is that Mohammed was a very, no extremely intelligent individual who was full of passion. He could see that the worship of so many gods was counterproductive and detrimental to the whole region. He could see that if all could be united in one religion with only one god that Arabia could become much more then it was. And so he set out to do something about it which would be an almost un-imaginable task for any average person to tackle. Unfortunately like so many leaders of the past Muhammed?s lust for power and riches got the best of him and corrupted his mind and moral values.
There seems to be a grand controversy over whether or not Muhammad was illiterate and I have a very hard time with the belief that he was indeed illiterate.
First of all Muhammed was born into the most powerful, most educated of all of the tribes in Arabia. Their travels in commerce took them to places where they would always be able to learn more about what is going on in the world, the latest technological advances, and new discoveries in medicine, new philosophies and new religions or beliefs.
In both Mecca and Medina there were Christian Romans and well established communities of Jews and Christians as well as other peoples who were educated and had skills in both writing and numbering systems. When Muhammad went to Damascus or Yemen on caravan trips he was exposed to educated people from around the civilized world including Christians and Jews. As it is mentioned earlier it was while on one of those trips to Damascus at the age of nine or twelve that Muhammad was befriended by Bahire the Christian monk. We should remember that as the Roman Empire was shrinking they left Christians behind. There were the Nestorians on the gulf coast, in both Damascus and Yemen there were Syrian Orthodox communities and the smaller groups of Christians were found among the Bedouins of the desert. There were also monasteries that dotted the landscape and it is believed Muhammad was sent to live among the desert Bedouins so he may learn the ways of desert survival. So we know that Muhammad was in fact being educated by his family and learned about Christianity.
We also know that in all of the trading centers there was an alphabetical and numerical system used to do business and the only way to be successful in the profession of commerce was to be able to master the alphabetical and numerical systems not to mention the number of languages one would have to learn at the least a rudimentary amount of one or more languages in order to do business with more than one group or nationality of people with a different language. It is possible that Muhammad had or hired someone to speak and buy or sell for him but that would put Muhammad in the position to be deceived, lied too, and robbed and I find it hard to believe that he would never have made himself as venerable as that.
Long before the life of Muhammad the peoples of Arabia could read and write. When the Hebrews and Christians migrated to Arabia they brought with them an alphabet and a numerical system from both the Greeks and the Romans as well as from the Hebrews and lets not forget about the Europeans. As a result the art of reading and writing was common among Meccans since both Jews and Christians had been living in and around Mecca and Medina for more than 200 years before Mohammed was born. However Mecca was by far more advanced in writing then Medina was.
So as we have seen from recorded historical facts, Muhammad was surrounded from his birth by educated family and peoples, until his death. We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Khadijeh which was the first wife of Muhammad could read and write because she was a merchant who was known and respected far and wide which means that in order to be a successful merchant one needed to learn how to read and write. We should also consider the odds of a woman like Khadijeh even thinking about asking an uneducated, illiterate man to marry her. She would have been lowering herself and her stature in the community to marry a man who had grown up in a rich, educated family that was part of a rich and educated tribe, who never had the interest or desire to become educated which would have shown a bad light on the person of Muhammad.

Jafar

Salam Massorite..

A request Maybe you can split your writing material into few postings based on topic or at least more reading-friendly format of paragraph and spaces. (I've headache reading your post.. please have mercy on my aging eye balls)...

If you want to learn about islam.. you can also start by seeing the similarity between Quran and Bible..
There's actually nothing new in the Quran.. as the Quran itself stated as such.
"Nothing is said to thee that was not said to the messengers before thee" (4143)

islam as teachings predate the Quran or Muhammad... Jesus teaches islam, Jesus apostles teaches islam, Abraham teaches islam, Moses teaches islam.. that is according to the Quran...

Nevertheless the historicity of Muhammad is both a controversial and interesting topic for discussion.. although it might not necessarily directly linked with islam given the description above.

Salam / Shalom / Peace

Massorite

Please I beg for your forgiveness Jafar as I am not educated in grammer. Apparently even with a program in place that is supposed to help me correct my grammatic mistakes it is still much less then perfect. What I have already posted and what I will post in the future will be chapters out of a book I have written. As you read them I think you will find that I have done my home work. Everything in the following chapters will be researchable for the purpose of verification of those facts within the chapters.

May the peace of God be with you.