Muhammad's Estrangement from Buddha

[RascalPuff]

Like Mani, Muhammad claimed that the prophets before him, and especially Jesus and Abraham, had been divine teachers, but that he crowned and completed their teaching. Buddhism, however, he did not name, probably because he had never heard of Buddha. Desert Arabia was in a theological backwater.
- H. G. Wells, The Outline of History

[Profpat]

It still is a theological backwater.

[RascalPuff]

It was in Mecca about the year A.D. 570 that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born. He was born in considerable poverty, and even by the standards of the desert he was uneducated; it is doubtful if he ever learnt to write. He was for some years a shepherd's boy; then he became the servant of a certain Kadija, the widow of a rich merchant. Probably he had to look after her camels or help in her trading operations; and he is said to have travelled with caravans to the Yemen and to Syria. He does not seem to have been a very useful trader, but he had the good fortune to find favour in the lady's eyes, and she married him, to the great annoyance of her family. He was then only twenty-five years old. It is uncertain if his wife was much older, though tradition declares she was forty. After the marriage he probably made no more long journeys. There were several children, one of whom was named Abd Manif that is to say, the servant of the Meccan god Manif, which demonstrates that at that time Muhammad had made no religious discoveries.

Until he was forty he did indeed live a particularly undistinguished life in Mecca, as the husband of a prosperous wife. There may be some ground for the supposition that he became partner in a business in agricultural produce. To anyone visiting Mecca about A.D. 600 he would probably have seemed something of a loafer, a rather shy, good-looking individual, sitting about and listening to talk, a poor poet, and an altogether second-rate man.
About his internal life we can only speculate. Imaginative writers have supposed that he had great spiritual struggles that he went out into the desert in agonies of doubt and divine desire. «In the silence of the desert night, in the bright heat of noontide desert day, he, as do all men, had known and felt himself alone yet not in solitude, for the desert is of God, and in the desert no man may deny Him». [1] may be that was so, but there is no evidence of any such desert trips. Yet he was certainly thinking deeply of the things about him. Possibly he had seen Christian churches in Syria; almost certainly he knew much of the Jews and their religion, and he heard their scorn for this black, stone of the Kaaba that ruled over the three hundred odd tribal gods of Arabia. He saw the pilgrimage crowds, and noted the threads of insincerity and superstition in the paganism of the town. It oppressed his mind.

The Jews had perhaps converted him to a belief in the One True God, without his knowing what had happened to him.
At last he could keep these feelings to himself no longer. When he was forty he began to talk about the reality of God, at first apparently only to his wife and a few intimates. He produced certain verses, which he declared had been revealed to him by an angel. They involved an assertion of the unity of God and some acceptable generalizations about righteousness. He also insisted upon a future life, the fear of hell for the negligent and evil, and the reservation of paradise for the believer in the One God. Except for his claim to be a new prophet, there does not seem to have been anything very new about these doctrines at the time, but this was seditious teaching for Mecca, which partly subsisted upon its polytheistic cult, and which was therefore holding on to idols when all the rest of the world was giving them up. - H. G. Wells, The Outline of History

[Mikal]

Hi RP...I think the word "desert" is an analogy for as you say inner agonies of doubt and although we don't tend to see that as desiring the divine....I can honestly say I have been in the desert alone...yet have never went into an actual desert alone.

Interesting outline!!


Regards Mikal

[Graybeard]

Last words of the Prophet: Be kind to people, Maud.

cool bananas ... greg

[labelwench]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXt46jZ6t_U

[Graybeard]

Budda's worldview was before Muhammad .... and there were worldviews before Budda.

CLICK


cool bananas ... greg

[Bogie]

Budda's worldview was before Muhammad .... and there were worldviews before Budda.

CLICK


cool bananas ... greg

Wow, great video and sound. Do they allow visitors to Mutawintji? Have you ever been there?

[Graybeard]

yes ... you can go there ... you must obtain Aboriginal permission first, they now own the land ...( or should I say have re-claimed it .. lol) ...those are my photos. But I am only allowed in the 'male' section of the gorge .... there are 'female' initiation areas where males are not allowed and vice versa.

cool bananas ... greg

[Mikal]

Budda's worldview was before Muhammad .... and there were worldviews before Budda.

CLICK


cool bananas ... greg

Thanks sugarbear...that video so beautiful its almost haunting...actually gave me goosebumps...


Regards Mikal