Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, was an unlettered prophet.
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Chitchat Why does London look more and more like a Muslim country just like Singapore?
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Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, was an unlettered prophet.
Not just Muslimah put on hijab.
Orthodox xtian
Orthodox jewish
Catholic nun
Hindu woman
u seldom find catholic nuns and orthodox christians wandering around modern cities working in offices and drinking coffee at starbucks,those are extremely pious and devoted to the cause........and orthodox christian people are known to be extremely wacky.......the average christian is already cuckoo enough when u look into their jesus loving eyes.
its hilarious that the avg muslim compare themselves to nuns in a monastery,unless they have decided to devote the rest of their lives to a nunnery,and taken a vow of chastity.....otherwise its strange to impose such extreme dress codes on the general populace.
someone might be a christian believer but do they go around dressed in a priest's or monk's robes
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You really believed that? Arriving in medina, he had to come up with a peace agreement between various warlords and tribes, and a trader.
WAS PROPHET MUHAMMAD REALLY ILLITERATE? AN INTERVIEW WITH JUAN COLE 28 AUG 2018 POSTED BY JOSEPH PREVILLE, AMERICAN WRITER AND BOOK CRITIC JOSEPH RICHARD PREVILLE INTERVIEWS JUAN COLE ABOUT HIS NEW BOOK, MUHAMMAD: PROPHET OF PEACE AMID THE CLASH OF EMPIRES. Prophet Muhammad was one of the most fascinating and influential figures in human history. Noted historian Juan Cole takes a look at his extraordinary life and mission and the community he founded in Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires (Nation Books, October 2018). Cole grounds his excellent book in a historical and textual study of the Qur’an and an analysis of how geopolitical forces and events from Rome to Persia shaped Muhammad’s worldview and peaceful theology in seventh-century Arabia.
Was Prophet Muhammad Really Illiterate? An Interview with Juan Cole TWEET THIS Author Juan Cole Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Sacred Space and Holy War (I.B. Taurus, 2002) Napoleon’s Egypt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and The New Arabs (Simon and Schuster, 2014). Cole has appeared as a guest on PBS NewsHour, ABC World News, the Today show, Anderson Cooper 360, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Colbert Report, Democracy Now!, Aljazeera America and many other programs. Cole’s popular blog, Informed Comment, averages 4.5 million page views per year. Juan Cole discusses his new book in this interview. Joseph Richard Preville:
What problems do historians face when writing about the life and times of Muhammad? What are the principal sources you consulted to write your book? Juan Cole: The problem is that the Arabic biographical sources for the life of Muhammad ibn Abdullah (d. 632) are largely undated or dated 130 to 300 years and more after the death of the Prophet. The one primary source we have, which is contemporary with the Prophet, is the Qur'an, which Muslims believe God revealed through him. Carbon dating and paleography are proving that the Qur'an is early 7th century. If we want to do intellectual history, the Qur'an is a relatively large book and can tell us a lot about what the Prophet recited to his contemporaries. I think the Qur'an can also be set in context by Greek and Persian works of that time. JRP: You write that “Islam is, no less than Christianity, a Western religion that initially grew up in the Roman Empire” and that “Muhammad saw himself as an ally of the West.”
How does your theory challenge or support other major scholarly interpretations of early Islam? Muhammad – Juan Cole JC: The Arab Muslim sources emphasize the origins of Islam in Arabia and downplay how integrated the Arabs of late antiquity were into the Eastern Roman Empire, but Roman sources, inscriptions, and Qur'an passages give strong evidence for the Arabs as Roman citizens or allies. As for Muhammad being allied with Constantinople, there is some evidence for it in early Arabic sources and the eminent Princeton classicist G. W. Bowersock has hinted at it in his recent work, but I have taken the bull by the horns and said it explicitly. JRP:
Many biographies portray Muhammad as illiterate and provincial. Would you agree? JC: The Muslim tradition calls Muhammad "illiterate," I think in part to protect him from charges by polemicists that he learned things by reading the Bible or other works. But the tradition also says he was a successful long-distance merchant who regularly traded up to Damascus and Gaza in the Eastern Roman Empire. Long distance merchants are always literate, and I think Muhammad could read and write Arabic, Aramaic and possibly Greek. The Qur'an shows knowledge of the Bible, of Jewish tradition, and of classical Greek thought. It isn't provincial. JRP:
What was Muhammad’s role in the creation of the Constitution of Madinah? How revolutionary was this document for its time? JC: The Constitution of Madinah was a treaty among groups in Madinah, to which the Meccan pagans expelled Muhammad in 622. Madinah had Muslims, Jews and pagans and possibly some Christians. The treaty pledged all these groups to defend the city militarily if it was attacked. It says that the Muslims have their religion and the Jews have theirs, so it recognizes freedom of conscience and is a political alliance. In the Roman Empire at that time, Jews were placed under disabilities and would not have been treated as equals this way. JRP:
How did medieval Muslim clerics slight or minimize the Qur’an’s peace verses by a theory of abrogation? JC: Peace-making and turning the other cheek are very important themes in the Qur'an. It allows going to war to defend yourself and innocents, but forbids aggressive, expansionist warfare. The text was very inconvenient for later aggressive Muslim empires. So ideologues developed a theory of "abrogation" where later verses invalidated earlier ones. They interpreted late verses on warfare as permitting aggression (they don't), and then alleged that all the peace verses were thus abrogated. It was an intellectual and spiritual travesty. Some Muslim thinkers, though, said only 5 verses were abrogated (not the peace verses), and rejected the procedure. JRP:
You have placed strong emphasis on Muhammad as a “Prophet of Peace.” How do you think your book will encourage and strengthen Islamic peace studies? JC: The peace verses of the Qur'an have been there all along, and have been central, but scholarship has not focused on them. I'd like to see the kind of intersection of Peace Studies with Islam that exists with regard to Christianity. Christians have fought a lot of wars and even been involved in genocide, but we all also know about the Quakers and Mennonites. Only a few authors have written on the history of peace movements in Islam, which include the Murid Sufis of Senegal and the Gandhist Muslims in twentieth-century India. JRP:
Could you recommend a few biographies of Muhammad and books on early Islamic history by contemporary authors? JC: A crucially important work is Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers (Harvard University Press, 2010). G. W. Bowersock's Crucible of Islam (Harvard University Press, 2017) is excellent on the context of early Islam in late antiquity. The same author's Throne of Adulis (Oxford, 2013) takes on the Ethiopian, Yemeni and Red Sea geopolitics of the Roman Empire as a background to the rise of Islam. It is a wonderful book. Carl Ernst's How to Read the Qur'an (University of North Carolina Press, 2011), is also essential.
Read more at World Religion News: "Was Prophet Muhammad Really Illiterate? An Interview with Juan Cole" https://www.worldreligionnews.com/?p=55654
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Didnt i tell u its in their bible scriptures too. Headscaffs applied to all believers. Not just to nuns! I cant help it if they refuse to abide by God's commandment. Now, why should Muslims compare themselves to nun? Muslims abide by the rules commanded by Allah, azzawajal.
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A problem facing many Scriptures is multiple authorship over many generations. The Old Testament consists of 39 books authored by numerous individuals over a period of many centuries. The New Testament contains 27 books written by multiple authors spanning a period of nearly half a century. The questions and uncertainties that surround the chronology and authorship of the Bible, for example many of the books were written anonymously, only serve to hinder one from accepting, at least wholesale, that it is the pure word of God.
This is not a problem that affects the Qur’an. There is no doubt that Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was the person responsible for transmitting the Qur’an. There are mass historical reports that support this claim, and the Qur’an itself confirms that it was revealed to him. Although Muhammad ﷺ was responsible for transmitting the Qur’an, was he its author? The following are just 10 of many reasons which prove that it is impossible for Muhammad ﷺ to have authored the Qur’an:
1. HE WAS NOT A POET
Many non-Muslims are unaware that the Qur’an was not originally delivered to its first audience in the form of writing, but rather speech. Remarkably the Qur’an often did not have the opportunity for an editorial process, as many verses were revealed on the spot as a response to questions and challenges that were brought forward to Prophet Muhammad ﷺ from both believers and non-believers. Moreover, although the Qur’an was revealed gradually over a period of 23 years, it did not go through multiple revisions as it was revealed. This is in contrast to the New Testament which has undergone numerous corrections as the manuscripts were passed from one scribe to another and they decided to correct each other’s mistakes. So had any mistakes or errors crept into the Qur’an, it would have been extremely difficult to correct or retract them given the rapid and mass spread of the Qur’an to multiple tribes and countries.
In the face of all these obstacles, one would naturally expect the Qur’an to exhibit traits of incoherence, contradictions, redundancy, errors and other such issues. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as the Qur’an is incontestably the standard of the Arabic tongue, a literary masterpiece. Every page of the Qur’an is literally filled with such rhetorical devices and literary nuances.
Prophet Muhammad ﷺ could not read or write. The Qur’an itself confirms this:
Moreover throughout his life, prior to Prophethood, Muhammad ﷺ did not have a reputation for poetry. In fact we know from history that at a personal level he disliked it and wasn’t a skilled poet. There are instances where he attempted to relate some poetry and would jumble the words up [1]:
How could a man, unable to read or write and without any reputation for being a poet, have authored the Qur’an, the most important work (in terms of literary merits) in the whole of Arabic literature?
You can learn more about the literary magnificence of the Qur’an here.
2. THE QUR’AN IS INIMITABLE
Perhaps the greatest miracle of the Qur’an is its inimitability. The author of the Qur’an tells us that it is impossible for any human being or jinn to produce just one chapter like the Qur’an, even if we were to all aid one another in the effort:
What’s remarkable is that the tools needed to meet this challenge are the finite grammatical rules and the twenty eight letters that comprise the Arabic language; these are independent and objective measures available to all. For argument’s sake, were the origin of the Qur’an merely the invention of the mind of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, then surely another human being, with equal or greater literary ability would be able to produce a chapter like it. Many have tried and failed to meet this challenge, and this is in spite of having the very blueprint, i.e. the Qur’an itself, as an example.
The Arabs at the time considered themselves (and are still considered by historians and linguists to this day) to be masters of the Arabic language. If the Qur’an was written by Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, why were not Arab scholars and linguists able to rival it? The failure of those at the peak of their trade – mastery of the Arabic language – to rival the Qur’an which challenged them should make one think. Furthermore many Arabs accepted him to be a prophet just by listening to the Qur’an as they immediately knew he could not have authored it and that it must be divine.
You can learn more about the challenge of the Qur’an here.
3. FREE OF CONTRADICTIONS
In spite of being revealed piecemeal over a period of 23 years, and in spite of many verses being revealed on the spot as a response to questions and challenges that arose unexpectedly, the Qur’an is remarkably free of contradiction. The Qur’an informs us that had its author been a human being then it would exhibit the following trait:
The Bible by comparison is filled with contradictions, both big and small which serves as clear evidence of human tampering.
You can learn more about contradictions in the Bible here.
4. HE IS NOT PORTRAYED AS INFALLIBLE
The position of sceptics is that Muhammad ﷺ was nothing more than a power hungry megalomaniac, with his claims of divine inspiration being nothing more than an attempt to conquer Arabia and Islam being just another desert cult to emerge from a sea of desert cults.
Anyone who has studied cults and megalomaniacs from history will know that there are certain traits or a specific image that the leader of the cult will try to portray. In fact studies have shown that one of the defining features of a cult leader is that they portray an image of infallibility to their followers, whom are expected to revere the leader, with criticism and doubt not being tolerated. This is crucial in order for the cult leader to maintain control of their group.
For the sake of argument, if Muhammad ﷺ was the author of the Qur’an, with Islam representing nothing more than a false desert cult, then one would expect the aforementioned trait of infallibility to be present throughout the Qur’an. Yet what we find in the Qur’an is the complete opposite, here is just one example:
The above verses highlighted an incident where Muhammad ﷺ was once sitting with some tribal leaders, inviting them to Islam. A blind man, who was already a Muslim, came to ask him some questions regarding Islam. Muhammad ignored him, as he was busy delivering the message of Islam to the tribal leaders, hoping their tribes would embrace Islam. Thereupon the revelation came reproaching him for ignoring the blind man. Why would an upstart cult leader undermine his own position of power and authority by dwelling on his mistakes?
5. JESUS AND OTHER PROPHETS ARE MENTIONED MORE TIMES BY NAME
Returning once again to the theme of cults and megalomaniacs, a common pattern among them is that they are authoritarian in their power structure and totalitarian in their control of the behaviour of their members. Again for the sake of argument, were Muhammad ﷺ the author of the Qur’an, with Islam representing nothing more than a false desert cult, then one would expect the Qur’an to focus primarily on him. Yet again what we find in the Qur’an is the complete opposite, as it mentions other leaders (such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus) by name more times than Muhammad ﷺ. The Qur’an commands Muslims to hold all of them in high regard:
Moreover unlike the case with Muhammad ﷺ, the shortcomings of these other leaders are never highlighted. To take things a step further, the Qur’an actually raises the status of these other leaders to a higher position than they have in their own Scriptures, because it denies the bad characteristics and evil sins attributed to them in the Bible! Why would an upstart cult leader not only mention other leaders more times than himself, but also praise them unequivocally and confirm their lofty statuses as Prophets?
You can learn more about comparative Prophethood in the Qur’an and Bible here.
6. WENT AGAINST CUSTOMS AND NORMS OF SOCIETY
The tribal society at the time of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ gave little care or regard to those who were in positions of weakness in society, particularly women. The doctrine laid out in the Qur’an considerably improved the status of women in 7th century Arabia. For example it was the custom to bury alive unwanted female infants, a practice prohibited in the Qur’an:
In those days before Islam, women were treated like slaves or property. Their personal consent concerning anything related to their well-being was considered unimportant, to such a degree that they were never even treated as a party to a marriage contract. Women had been treated as possessions of their husbands. Again the Qur’an served to put an end to this:
Women were often used for one purpose, sexual gratification, and then discarded. The Pagan Arabs had no limit to the number of wives that they could marry. In fact Islam is the only Abrahamic religion whose Scripture explicitly limits the maximum number of wives (to four), on the condition that they are treated fairly and justly:
Before Islam, women had no independence, could own no property and were not allowed to inherit. Again the Qur’an guaranteed women a fair share of property:
It must be noted that by comparison the Biblical rules of inheritance afford women no such rights. The laws of inheritance are outlined in Numbers 27:8-11 in the Bible. Accordingly to these laws a daughter can inherit only if no male heirs exist. Even in comparison to the Secular West, Islam was way ahead of its time. From the point of view of economic rights, we have to remember that in Europe until the 19th century, women did not have the right to own their own property. When they were married, either it would transfer to the husband or she would not be able to dispense of it without permission of her husband. In Britain, perhaps the first country to give women some property rights, laws were passed in the year 1860 known as “Married Women Property Act.” More than 1,300 years earlier, that right was clearly established in Islamic law.
Prophet Muhammad ﷺ had absolutely nothing to gain by uplifting the status and rights of women in tribal Arabia. Quite the opposite in fact, as the stance of the Qur’an only served to alienate those who were in positions of power and had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
7. ABUNDANCE OF FALSIFICATION TESTS
For the sake of argument, were Muhammad ﷺ the author of the Qur’an, with his sole mission and purpose in life being to accumulate as much power as possible throughout Arabia, then why does the Qur’an contain an abundance of falsification tests, such that were any one of them to be achieved or proven true by his many enemies and sceptics then it would have completely destroyed Islam as a religion. Here are just a few examples::
8. REVEALS KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNSEEN
Advances in our understanding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs have shown that the Qur’anic use of the Egyptian term ‘Pharaoh’ is historically accurate. This is in spite of the fact that all knowledge of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs was unknown at the time of the Qur’anic Revelation.
Knowledge of the old Egyptian hieroglyphs had been totally forgotten until they were finally deciphered in the 19th century CE with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. The only source of knowledge of the religious past were the Bible-based stories in circulation, but Prophet Muhammad ﷺ couldn’t have copied from the Bible because the Bible gets it wrong with regards to its use of the Egyptian term ‘Pharaoh’.
Muhammad ﷺ couldn’t have been the author of the Qur’an because its author consistently demonstrates knowledge of the unseen, which is not a trait of human beings.
You can learn more about hieroglyphs and the historicity of the Qur’an here.
9. PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE
History has not always dealt kindly with Scriptures. The original Gospel of Jesus was lost in its infancy and replaced by the later works of anonymous writers. In fact prior to the Qur’an, every other revealed Scripture has either been lost or tampered with. It is in this backdrop that the author of the Qur’an makes a bold prediction about its preservation:
One of the means by which the Qur’an has been perfectly preserved to this very day is through the language of the Qur’an itself:
It is estimated that there are at least 10 million Muslims alive today who have memorised the entire Qur’an in its original Arabic language. In fact if every written copy of religious Scriptures in existence today were to be somehow destroyed then it is only the Qur’an that could be recreated perfectly, thanks to its mass memorisation.
If Prophet Muhammad ﷺ were the author of the Qur’an then he could not have guaranteed that the Qur’an would be perfectly preserved to this very day. This is because the track record of all other revealed Scriptures throughout history only serves to prove that the exact opposite is the case, that their loss and tampering is the norm.
You can learn more about the preservation of the Qur’an here.
10. REJECTION OF THE SUPERSTITIONS AND MYTHS OF THE ARABS
Arab society had many groundless superstitious beliefs at the time of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. This is only natural given that they lacked the technology to examine the world around them and had high rates of illiteracy. It is estimated that the number of literate persons in the centre of the region of the Hijaz did not exceed seventeen [2]. History has recorded a large number of myths and superstitions pertaining to the Arabs and the Iraqi Islamic scholar Sayyid Mahmud Alusi has collected many of them. For example, the Arabs took their cows and the oxen to the bank of a stream for grazing. At times it so happened that the oxen drank water but the cows did not. Thereupon they thought that this was due to the evil spirits which had accommodated themselves between the horns of the oxen and were preventing the cows from drinking. In order therefore to drive away the bad spirits affecting the cows they hit the faces of the oxen [3].
It was against this backdrop of ignorance that the Qur’an was revealed, utterly rejecting such superstition. The example that I will cover is the sun and moon, which were worshipped as gods by the Arabs. Rather than upholding these pagan beliefs, the Qur’an rejects them:
Moreover the Qur’an talks about the universe, particularly astronomy, using descriptions and terminology that is not out of place in modern times:
There is also a notable incident recorded by the companions of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ that on the same day his son Ibrahim died there was a solar eclipse and so the people linked the two events together. Prophet Muhammad ﷺ personally denounced such beliefs, saying:
There is absolutely no reason why Prophet Muhammad ﷺ would go against the superstitions of his people, especially when he came from a tribal culture that blindly followed the traditions of their forefathers.
CONCLUSION
Sceptics/critics may attempt to argue away some of these points individually. However taken collectively, these arguments provide powerful and compelling evidence that the Qur’an could not have been an invention of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
Who then, is the author? The answer to the question of authorship lies in the Qur’an itself:
References
1 – Tafsir at-Tabari, also see Tafsir Abdul Razzaq 3/86 Narration No. 2496 under Qur’an 36:69.
2 – Futuh al-Buldan, al-Baladhuri, page 458.
3 – Biharul Anwar vol. II pp 286 – 369.
4 – Sahih Bukhari, Volume 2, Book 18, Number 152.
But now is 21st century alrdy! Why dont edit and improve the verse? I believe christian use new testament and overwrite the head scarf rule and dont need to wear it anymore!Woman are advise to guard their modesty.
And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which [necessarily] appears thereof and to wrap [a portion of] their headcovers over their chests and not expose their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands' fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers, their brothers' sons, their sisters' sons, their women, that which their right hands possess, or those male attendants having no physical desire, or children who are not yet aware of the private aspects of women. And let them not stamp their feet to make known what they conceal of their adornment. And turn to Allah in repentance, all of you, O believers, that you might succeed. [Q24:31]
Not just the Muslimah. Those xtians woman are supposed to put on hijab too. But the NT altered everything. Wats stated in the OT is obsolute now.
But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head. [Corinthians 11:5-6]
The hui and some uyghurs and some turks are not wearing hjiab right? Why they can be more fashionable? As for sinkie malays, many will wear hijab esp after marriage, they usually wear hijab! Some malay ah lians dont wear but aft marriage she will wear!
Luckily chinese and ang mo are not adhere to it!
Edit and improve till they have thousand of diff version of the bibles. So which version is the truth?
Tats where the line being drawn. God fearing and those who totally rejected God's commandment.
Cheena have their own beliefs. I respect their belief and shall not comment on it. To each its own.
i tot the truth is whatever the imam says is?
Tere are 1.9 billion Muslims in the world. U cant expect every individual to be perfect. Some are backward lack of proper islamic education. For me, very simple. Imam can say anything. If in doubt, just refer to the scriptures.
U most probably support zakir naik as he is one of the high islamic scholar! So you agreed about him saying that kill infidels is one of the gateway to 72 virgins? Camels urine can be use as medicine? Then, chinese and indian are guest in msia and they are not peaceful peo?
Ur above post is no long a discussion. U started to prejudge. I do not wish to engage in unhealthy discussion.
Islam was a fabrication from Mohammed..................a lot was taken from Judaism like being pork-averse and circumcision ..................he wanted to convert the Jews but failed.........
Whenever a country is bastardised through open immigration and foreigners are allowed to swarm in like flies, its sovereignty is lost and culturally the country is more like a refugee camp. Singapore? Long gone down the drain.
Wearing the hijab does not guarantee a free pass to Heaven; it is a personal choice just to show others wearer is religious and will pray 10 times daily but in truth, the wearer can be just as evil as a beast.
yes I also have mentioned many times already! They just copied cat the Judaism and forbid pork consumption heavily and other principles are also just bull shit and illogical!
The issues are that they can't change even how logical things tat the infidels have explained to them! They are dead brain!
The jews probably wrote The quran.and handed it over to the Othmanin caliphate on how to subjugate its citizens.
It is said in the quran, you will be judged by your deeds alone.
But Muslims believe that doing rituals will get them merit points which is a fallacy. Its a waste of time.rituals were created way after the death of mohamad if based on historical facts.
Mosques were not as many as you can see today. Inital mosquese could be a place for discussion and debate and not for ritual prayers,
Putting on a hijab or to pray 5 x a day does not mean one is religious. Its not a personal choice by the way. Practising Muslims have HUKUMS to abide to as decreed in the Quran. No Muslims would be arrogant to say they will be guaranteed entry to paradise. Waala hu'alam.
