Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

A History of Islam and the United States (Excerpt Three) by William J. Federer
Family Security Matters ^ | February 21, 2008 | William J. Federer

Posted on 02/21/2008 6:45:36 AM PST by K-oneTexas

What Every American Needs to Know about the Qur’an

Published: February 21, 2008

A History of Islam and the United States – Excerpt Three

William J. Federer

 

MOHAMMED’S CHILDHOOD

 

Mohammed was born around 570 AD into the Quraysh tribe, being a descendant of Adnan, who is said to have descended from Ishmael. Mohammed’s father, Abd Allah, died six months before he was born. Mohammed’s mother, Amina, died when he was 6 years old. At the age of 8, his grandfather and guardian, Abd al-Muttalib, died. Mohammed was then given to his uncle, Abu Talib.

 

Mohammed’s first biography, Sirat Rasoul Allah, written by Ibn Ishaq and edited by Ibn Hisham, recorded how for a time, Mohammed’s mother, Amina, gave him to a Bedouin nursing mother named Halimai and her husband to raise, but he was returned him with the account:

 

It was not longer than a month after our return that his milk-brother came running to me and his father, saying, “Two men dressed in white garments have taken hold of my brother, and have thrown him on the ground. They ripped open his belly, and are squeezing him.”

 

I and his fosterfather hastened out and found him standing apparently unharmed but with his countenance quite altered.

 

We questioned him, and he said, “Two men dressed in white garments came to me, who threw me down, opened my abdomen and searched in it for I know not what.”

 

We returned with him to our tent, and his fosterfather said to me, “O Halima! I fear something has happened to the boy. Carry him to his family ere the injury becomes apparent!”

 

Accordingly, we took him back to his mother, who asked, “What has brought you here, when you were so anxious that he should remain with you?”

 

I replied, “Allah has caused my son to grow and I have done my duty, but I feared that something might befall him and therefore I have brought him back to you as you desired.”

 

She said, “Such is not the case! Tell me the truth about it.” And she would not let me alone until I had told her everything.

 

Then she asked, “Are you afraid that he is possessed by Satan?” and I replied, “Yes.” She said “No, by Allah!” (“Siratu’l Rasul of Ibn Hisham” vss. 105-106, Mizanu’l Haqq, page 347, and Anas Ibn Malik, Mishkat IV, page 367)

 

MOHAMMED TRAVELS WITH UNCLE

 

At age 13, with his mother and grandfather dead, Mohammed was raised by his uncle, Abu Talib,

a textile merchant who went on camel caravans to foreign lands.

 

Mohammed could not read, so what he learned about Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Arabian pagan religions, such as Sabeans, came mostly from stories and oral traditions he heard on these travels.

 

QUR’AN: MANICHAEISM INFLUENCE

 

About the year 210 AD, a religious leader named Mani was born in Persia. Like the Baha’i faith, Mani combined features of different religions to create a new religion called Manichaeism. Mani claimed to be the Paraclete promised in the New Testament, the Last Prophet, the Seal of the

Prophets, completing a long line of prophets, which included Seth, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Zoroaster, Hermes, Palto, Buddha and Jesus, accusing their followers of corrupting their teachings.

 

Exceptionally gifted as a child with a mystic temperament, Mani claimed to have been visited by a spirit. His theology contained a dualistic, continual battle against evil. Mani went on evangelistic

missionary journeys to India, Iran and Turkistan.

 

In the centuries prior to Mohammed birth, Manichaeism became popular in Persia, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia and the Middle East. A famous follower of Manichaeism was Augustine of Hippo (354- 430 AD) before he rejected it and converted to Christianity. (The Confessions of Saint Augustine, 397 AD)

 

QUR’AN: ZOROASTRIAN INFLUENCE

 

Like Mani, Mohammed was aware of many faiths:

 

As for the true believers, the Jews, the Sabeans, the Christians, the Magians, and the pagans, Allah will judge them on the day of Resurrection. Allah bears witness to all things. (Sura 22:17)

 

The Magians or Zoroastrians of Persia believed in one uncreated Creator, with seven heavens and seven hells. The old Pahlavi Book of Arta Viraf had a story of the priest Arta Viraf flying on a journey through seven heavens, similar to Mohammed’s “Mi’raj” a purported miraculous night journey to the 7th heaven. (Sura 17:1, Hadith Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 1, No. 345)

 

Zoroastrians had the concept of jihad, a continual struggle of dualism-good fighting evil, and focused on ritual cleanliness. Mohammed adopted the Zoroastrian term for demon called “Jinn” or “Genie.” (Sura 72 Al-Jinn)

 

Zoroastrians believed there was a tree in Paradise called “humaya,’ similar to Islam’s lote-tree “sidrah.”

 

Zoroastrian Paradise was sensual with wine and women called “Faries” or “Houris.”

 

The Pahlavi name “Houris” is used several times in the Qur’an’s sensual description of Paradise,

referring to “bashful virgins,” “fair as coral and ruby,” “dark eyed youths,” “high bosomed maidens”:

 

We shall join them to fair women with beautiful, big, and lustrous eyes. (Sura 44:54)

 

Reclining on ranged couches. And we wed them unto fair ones with wide, lovely eyes. (Sura 52:20)

 

In them will be (Maidens), chaste, restraining their glances, whom no man or Jinn before them has touched. (Sura 55:56)

 

There will be Companions with beautiful, big, and lustrous eyes,-Like unto Pearls wellguarded. (Sura 56:22-23)

 

Verily for the Righteous there will be a fulfillment of (the heart’s) desires; Gardens enclosed, and grapevines; And voluptuous women of equal age; And a cup full (to the brim). (Sura 78:32-34)

 

Some Muslims considered Zoroaster (Zarathustra), founder of Zoroastrianism, as one of Allah’s prophets.

 

QUR’AN: ARAB PAGAN INFLUENCE

 

Each pagan Arabian tribe called its main local deity “allah,” which simply meant “the god.” In Mecca, the pagans worshiped as many as 360 deities, represented by stones believed to have fallen from the sun, moon and the stars.

 

The most senior deity was the moon god Hubal, whose idol was brought to Mecca from Moab. Hafiz Ghulam Sarwar, author of Muhammed The Holy Prophet (Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, Pakistan, 1969) wrote:

 

About four hundred years before the birth of Muhammed...Amr ibn Luhayy had put an idol called Hubal on the roof of the Ka’aba. This was one of the chief deities of the Quraysh (tribe) before Islam.

 

Perhaps influenced by Canaanites, who worshiped Baal and his three daughters, pre-Islamic Mecca revered three female daughter goddesses:

 

1) “al-Lat,” worshiped as a square stone;

2) “al-Uzzah,” worshiped as a granite slab on the road to al-Talf;

3) “Manat,” worshiped as a black stone on the road to Medina.

 

Mohammed referred to these goddesses:

 

Have ye thought upon al-Lat and al-Uzza. And another, the third goddess, Manat? Are yours the males and His the females? That indeed were an unfair division. They are but the names which ye have named, ye and your fathers, for which Allah hath revealed no warrant. (Sura 53:19-23)

 

Hisham ibn Al-Kalbi (ca. 819) was an Arab historian raised in Baghdad. He wrote in Kitab al-Asnam (Book of Idols, translated by Nabih Amin Faris in 1952):

 

They then adopted al-Lat as their goddess. Al-Lat stood in al-Ta’if and was more recent that Manah. She was a cubic rock beside which a certain Jew used to prepare his barley porrige. Her custody was in the hands of the banu- ’Attab ibn-Malik of the Thagif (tribe), who had built an edifice over her.

 

The Quraysh, as well as all the Arabs, were wont to venerate al-Lat. They also used to name their children after her, calling them Zayd-al-Lat and Taym-al-Lat. She stood in the place of the left-hand side minaret of the present day mosque of al-Ta’if.

 

She is the idol which God mentioned when He said, “Have you seen al-Lat and al-Uzza?”

 

...Al-Lat continued to be venerated until the Thaqif (tribe) embraced Islam.

 

Arab pagans walked in circles around the square edifice called the Ka’aba and went inside it to kiss the Black Stone, a 12-inch in diameter meteor rock or impact glass from a meteor crater.

 

Arab pagans prayed five times a day towards the Ka’aba in Mecca and fasted part of a day for an entire month, as Muslims do at Ramadan. The symbol of the crescent moon, which pre-Islamic Turks also venerated, is atop every mosque and on many Islamic countries’ flags. Islam adopted the Lunar calendar, starting their months with the sighting of the first crescent of a New Moon.

 

 

In the next excerpt, we’ll learn more about the influences other religions had on the Qur’an, including Christianity and Judaism.


# #

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor William J. Federer is a nationally known speaker, best-selling author, and president of Amerisearch, Inc., a publishing company dedicated to research America’s noble heritage. This has been excerpted with permission from his book What Every American Needs to Know About the Qur’an – A History of Islam & the United States.
read full author bio here


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 02/21/2008 6:45:38 AM PST by K-oneTexas
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: K-oneTexas
What Every American Needs to Know about the Qur’an...

The only thing I need to know about the koran, is the fact that it makes a pitiful toilet paper, so, therefore, I use it for a fire starter.

That reminds me, I've got to get hold of CAIR to get another free copy.

All sarcasm aside...don't you think we, as Americans, have learned all we need to know about these murdering scum?

I mean if 911, Khobar Towers, USS Cole, the basement of the Twin Towers, televised beheadings, the Iranian US Embassy, Lockerbie, suicide belts, etc, etc, haven't taught us anything, then can we ever learn?

The Religion of Peace is not.

'Nuff said.

2 posted on 02/21/2008 7:06:08 AM PST by OldSmaj (Death to islam. I am now and will always be, a sworn enemy of all things muslim.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: K-oneTexas

ALLAH = SATAN


3 posted on 02/21/2008 7:12:04 AM PST by JimRed ("Hey, hey, Teddy K., how many girls did you drown today?" TERM LIMITS, NOW!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: JimRed
Links to the four parts (in this series thus far) here on FR:

What Every American Needs To Know About The Qur’an: A History Of Islam And The United States, Part 1

What Every American Needs To Know About The Qur’an: A History Of Islam And The United States, Part 2

What Every American Needs To Know About The Qur’an: A History Of Islam And The United States, Part 3

What Every American Needs To Know About The Qur’an: A History Of Islam And The United States, Part 4
4 posted on 02/22/2008 6:27:08 PM PST by ConservativeStLouisGuy (11th FReeper Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Unnecessarily Excerpt)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson