Possibility of Muhammad being a Christian Saint?

It would be interesting if the Islamic faith was open to other prophets after Mohammed, how they might deal with Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi (the Bab) and Mirza Hussayn Ali Nuri (Bahaullah).
 
It would be interesting if the Islamic faith was open to other prophets after Mohammed, how they might deal with Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi (the Bab) and Mirza Hussayn Ali Nuri (Bahaullah).

Those specific figures would be way too far off from the POD to "happen" like they did OTL, but I doubt that's what you were saying.

After looking them up, I feel like that kind of idea (Baha'i) might come around much earlier TTL. I mean, the great prophet Muhammad has outright said that there will be more prophets coming later on to keep guiding humanity along. An obvious extension of that idea, regardless of whether Muhammad says so or not, is that there have been other prophets that came along before that we might not know about.

And since the already accepted prophets came from Arabia and Mesopotamia and Israel, what is there to say that they can't have come from India or China? I could very much see a Muhammadan Christianity that actively looks for other prophets "co-opting" figures from other religions like the Buddha or Confucius as different kinds of prophets. Maybe even more local figures like Zoroaster or Nestorius.

We could see a situation sort of like Protestantism, where every little sect bases itself not just off of the first reformer/prophet, but also off of the teachings of (an)other reformer/prophet(s). All of this would also seem to positively work against the kind of centralized church authority that exists in Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

Which is really interesting to think about, because you could go in absolutely any direction with it. What do y'all think? Would this version of Muhammadan Christianity that adopts foreign religious figures be more successful than other branches? And would this tradition of looking for prophets in other places eventually result a kind of Baha'i idea that all religions are inspired by the same God?
 
Perhaps maybe from religious philosophers, but as official church doctrine? I doubt it, perhaps the establishment will turn a blind eye to local syncretism, sort of how Indian christianity is on the far side of acceptability in terms of practice but gets off the hook simply because the local traditions serve to proselytize more effectively.
 
Perhaps maybe from religious philosophers, but as official church doctrine? I doubt it, perhaps the establishment will turn a blind eye to local syncretism, sort of how Indian christianity is on the far side of acceptability in terms of practice but gets off the hook simply because the local traditions serve to proselytize more effectively.

I was thinking that in a divergent Muhammadan Christianity, this drive to find more prophets would start damn near immediately. After all, it occurred to me about two days after seriously thinking about the idea. So within a decade we could see various people arguing about whether Nestorius or Zoroaster was or wasn't a prophet, and whether they should listen to anything they say or dismiss it all as just heathen beliefs.

In other words, the idea would probably come up before there's time for an official church to set itself up. Especially if Muhammad is more of a preacher than a political figure, in which case he's not really trying to set up his own church.

Even if nothing lasting results (almost certainly what happens) and within thirty years everyone laughs at the idea of Zoroaster being a prophet actually sent by God, the idea could still be there, and end up having a large effect on the faith as a whole. Though I can't think of what that effect would be other than being a bit more tolerant of other religions.

Indian Christianity is just about the only situation where I could see there being a big diversion from that basic model of considering and then dismissing locals as prophets. Because India is relatively far away and dominated by completely different religious traditions, the missionaries would probably have no choice but to create a mixed Christianity.



BTDubs, if what I'm saying is not very consistent, it's because I'm really really excited about any and all possibilities here. I'm posting ideas I have more or less as soon as I post them.
 
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