The Romans would be very confused as the Muslims and the Christians insist they aren't Jews while the Jews say those two groups aren't part of their group.
What if Islam was as old as Christianity?
- Thread starter King Thomas
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It seems pretty obvious to me that all religions are products of the circumstances in which they originate. Christianity would for instance never have occurred if it hadn´t been for the spread of Greek influences into Judea. Judaism would have developed totally different if it had not been for the Babylonian captivity. The same applies for Islam and other religions. The circumstances in Arabia 600 years earlier would have been different and Muhammad could not have been born at that time as he could only have been born by his biological parents. If a monoteistic religion had developed at that time, it would have been different, both because the circumstances were different and because another person would have been the founder. It would also have been far less likely to expand into the areas belonging to the Roman and Parthian Empires.
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Fair enough. The distinction between "Muslim" and "Mu'min" is clearly blurry in earlier texts I know of. I also note that the sophisticated approach to Tawheed you outline above was developed relatively late and is not, to my understanding, a generally accepted feature of the Medieval consensus (although the basis was there, the distinctions you make are not, AFAIK).
My thought is that the best way to even have anything like Islam develop before Christianity is to have a kind of mixed religion between Zoroastrian and polytheistic Arabian (Sabean?), along with a hearty dose of Judaism. The resulting religion could look like Islam, but in the end, without Muhammad, it will never be exactly the same.
@The Muslims in this thread, I mean no disrespect by this, but now that the question is out there, how come children tend to "forget" this innate Muslim knowledge as they grow older?
@The Muslims in this thread, I mean no disrespect by this, but now that the question is out there, how come children tend to "forget" this innate Muslim knowledge as they grow older?
Well the Tawheed types were developed over time. Yet, they are typically the agreed upon consensus in terms of what Tawheed is. In times past, Muslim would say Tawheed which had multiple meanings to it, because of this, se have the creation of categories of Tawheed to better explain to people.
The fourth category, or Tawheed al-Haakimiyyah is the only one that there is not a consensus on. The reason being, that many scholars say that it is the same as Raboobiyyah. This position of Haakimiyyah is perhaps the most contentious issue in Islam.
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Are you sure about that? My understanding is that "allah/Allah" is like "god/God" in English - the name for a class of supernatural deities turned into the specific, personal name of a deity. What you're saying here is more analogous to if Christianity had adopted "Zeus" as the name of God.
Certainly not in itself as a theological notion. But I agree that the political effects of this ultimately lead to one of the largest conceptual divergences in modern Sunni Muslim discussion.
You are both correct. "Allah" is just "God" in both Modern and Medieval Arabic use, but that was also a name for an individual, posibily very imprortant, deity of the Preiclsmic era.
Well theologically it is a major issue as well and as we know, within Islam, politics and theology is blurred.
It is also, as far as I understand it, related to El/Elohim, in pre-Judaic times an important god in the Canaanite pantheon - or possibly just god/gods?
After all, the creation story in the old testament does refer to the lord of these Elohim.
Going back to the original intention of the thread: if A-Islam did start up in 100 AD, then it would eventually come into contact with Rome, which would turn a few legions against it. At best it would become a regional religion, but more likely it would die out after a while.
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So if I get that right, all the prophets before, including Jesus were preaching the same thing, it's just that Mahomet is the latest agreed version? Kinda like Jesus is to Judaism?
That's quite interesting, are all prophets on the same level or is Mahomet particularly important by another virtue than being the latest?
Genuinely curious about this stuff
On another monotheistic religion... It would probably join Sol Invictus and the cult of that emperor's loved in the dustbins of history. Islam succeeded because it filled a void after the exhaustion of the major players of the area.
We often forget how much religion is tied to the secular powers
The prophets before preached the oneness of Allah. However, Muhammad (SAW) came with the complete religion. As it is said, "I have on this day perfected your religion" (Allah). So no, they are not all equal. Muhammad is above the rest as he is the one through which Allah perfected His religion.
There are in fact different levels of messengers/prophets/law bringers, etc....
Yeah, this thread would be more worth debating, imo, if the OP had posited some sort of indigenous Arabian monotheist religion - trying to to tie it to Islam means tying it to a very specific societal circumstance in a very specific region. If the era of the early Principate saw indigenous Arabian monotheism develop, first we have to justify why it caught on. Sure, we can say that a man went into the desert or a cave or a mountain and came back preaching a religious message, but if it doesn't fit the social situation it will be forgotten.
Now, there were plenty of regions of the Arab world that had contact with Greco-Roman civilization and Judaism. Indeed, some Arabian groups were among the earliest converts to Christianity, even at the elite level. This speaks, I think, to the interconnectedness of the era, culturally speaking. A Jewish religion animated by Greek philosophy has substantial appeal among Arab Kings.
Your best bet, I think, would be to have a major religious movement take off in one of the mercantile cities on the border between Arabia and the Roman world, borrowing liberally from all the cultural threads of the time - from eastern mystery cults, from Judaism, from Hellenic philosophy, from the iconoclastic tendencies which have always been prevalent to various degrees in the Arab world, from a diverse series of sources - and work them all together to form a chimera of sorts, not unlike what Christianity did.
The assumption that this "alt-Islam" would spread by war is probably unlikely. There's no way this alt-Islam would be able to spread like that - but if it preached a sufficiently radical and compelling message it might well spread across the Near East in a manner not unlike Christianity.
If we're ISOTing the Prophet Muhammad and his recitations into Roman times, nothing happens. The references contained in the Quran, for one, are simply not relevant to pre-Christian times. The Quran at times assumes knowledge of Biblical myths and stories, not to mention the politics of a specific era. These portions in particular would be meaningless to people five hundred years prior.
Now, there were plenty of regions of the Arab world that had contact with Greco-Roman civilization and Judaism. Indeed, some Arabian groups were among the earliest converts to Christianity, even at the elite level. This speaks, I think, to the interconnectedness of the era, culturally speaking. A Jewish religion animated by Greek philosophy has substantial appeal among Arab Kings.
Your best bet, I think, would be to have a major religious movement take off in one of the mercantile cities on the border between Arabia and the Roman world, borrowing liberally from all the cultural threads of the time - from eastern mystery cults, from Judaism, from Hellenic philosophy, from the iconoclastic tendencies which have always been prevalent to various degrees in the Arab world, from a diverse series of sources - and work them all together to form a chimera of sorts, not unlike what Christianity did.
The assumption that this "alt-Islam" would spread by war is probably unlikely. There's no way this alt-Islam would be able to spread like that - but if it preached a sufficiently radical and compelling message it might well spread across the Near East in a manner not unlike Christianity.
If we're ISOTing the Prophet Muhammad and his recitations into Roman times, nothing happens. The references contained in the Quran, for one, are simply not relevant to pre-Christian times. The Quran at times assumes knowledge of Biblical myths and stories, not to mention the politics of a specific era. These portions in particular would be meaningless to people five hundred years prior.
Correct. The most likely etymology sees the Arabic root as a close cognate of "Elohim". It should refer originally to a sky deity (not unlike the etymology of "Zeus"), or a general term for "god". The details are less clear but this is the general outline.
Edit: I am of course referring to the word "Ilah", of which "Allah" is the determinate form with prefixed article (originally "al-ilah"). So it's "Ilah"= "a god", "Allah" = "The (One) God" (with capital G). The two can be considered two different related words or two different forms of the same word (which is what they are grammatically in origin). However, all Arab-speakers use "Allah" to indicate God, even if they are not Muslims (Arab-speaking Christians, Jews, etc. ).
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@Falecius the way it is typically enunciated in KSA is that the Allah is the deity from which creation is derived or the supreme deity. Hence the addition of al to illah which in its strict sense is deity. This stems from a time in which Arabs where pagans and practiced a faith with many gods and idols. Some scholars say that the idols or illah were worshipped as aspects of Allah whom the Arabs of Jahiliyyah referred to as Allah and the creator deity.
This opinion was expanded by Shaykh Muhammad Abdul Wahhab who said that the sin of the Arabs was not polytheism but intercession. Which he claimed was one and the same.
Now, this use of the word illah to refer to a deity fell out of use as the society of the Arab became increasingly monotheist and the notion of a smaller god (illah) or non creator god fell into vogue. The only antecedents to this is the practice of Ghulat for their Imamiyyah.
The use of illah in a realm of proscription is a break of Tawheed al-Asma wa Sifat, as it gives a deification title to something other than Allah (The God or The Creator).
I am unfamiliar, but does Syriac have a similar distinction? I know they use Allahu or something like that.
This opinion was expanded by Shaykh Muhammad Abdul Wahhab who said that the sin of the Arabs was not polytheism but intercession. Which he claimed was one and the same.
Now, this use of the word illah to refer to a deity fell out of use as the society of the Arab became increasingly monotheist and the notion of a smaller god (illah) or non creator god fell into vogue. The only antecedents to this is the practice of Ghulat for their Imamiyyah.
The use of illah in a realm of proscription is a break of Tawheed al-Asma wa Sifat, as it gives a deification title to something other than Allah (The God or The Creator).
I am unfamiliar, but does Syriac have a similar distinction? I know they use Allahu or something like that.
I should check about Syriac, but I am almost sure that a cognate root exists in Aramaic, Syriac included.
Well, to begin with, the language the Qur'an is written in likely did not exist as such in 100 CE. Nor did the Arabic writing system (the area used Ancient North Arabian, a very different script with a slightly different language - something like Arabic proper is sparsely attested but was probably not like seventh century Arabic at that point). It is far from clear that the style and structures of Qur'anic pericopes were in any use. The christian concept of the Trinity, the Romance of Alexander, Syriac homilies, and Talmudic narratives referenced in the Qur'an directly or indirectly had not been established. Contemporary Orientalist scholarship has a prevailing approach of "Qur'an as a Late Antique text" wholesale. Muslim religious scholars of course usually don't share this view (the Qur'an is an eternal attribute of God in the mainsteam Sunni view) but they also would agree that Muhammad revealed it when and where he did because he could not have done so at a different time or place. We know little of Mecca in 100 CE actually, but I bet that if someone recited the historical Qur'an of OTL there, it would look as nonsensical babbling in that context. No frame of reference, probably no extant knowledge of monotheism in the area (Jews lived in northern Hijaz though) not even a fully understandable language.