Salaam/peace
Was Muhammad (p) a Prophet?
Question: I am a Catholic desiring to learn more about the Islamic religion. …1) That Muhammad truly did not receive revelations. He believed that he did but it was some kind of mental disorder …
- Muhammad did receive revelations, but not from God. There are other spiritual powers, namely Satan …
Ans is given by US revert Noor ad-Deen Ingalls :
…Allah says in Surah 16, verse 98:
So when you recite the Qur’an, seek refuge with Allah from the accursed Satan.
If we agree on the existence of God, don’t we think that no matter what religion we follow, He will respond to our seeking refuge in Him from Satan? In other words, why would Satan tell us to seek refuge in God from him?
Even if we had the wrong religion, wouldn’t this weaken his power over us? The verse can only harm him; it serves no benefit to him – why would he include it?
Next, let’s look at the state of the world in which Muhammad (peace be upon) lived. The Arab pagans to whom he originally preached were as far from God as is imaginable. They worshipped stone idols, buried their daughters alive, murdered over a camel’s drinking out of the wrong well, were ruled by the most absurd superstitions, etc.
Satan had fully deceived them already. Why would he start a new religion that clearly brought them closer to God and closer to virtuosity?
A Christian cannot deny that the pre-Islamic pagans were infinitely farther from the Christian teachings and ideals than their later-day Muslim counterparts.
One may say: But Satan brought the Arabs slightly closer to God in order to later mislead the rest of the world – it was a sacrifice on the part of Satan for the sake of the greater evil. Then let’s look at the state of the people who accepted Islam after the Arabs.
The Persians, though custodians of a hitherto great civilization, by and large practiced fire-worship; their religious beliefs, rituals, and views on the sanctity of life were no more than a shade better than the desert idol-worshippers.
The Indians were seeped in countless forms of idol worship, animism, ancestor worship, and religiously-legitimized socioeconomic bigotry.
The advent of Islam would later lead to a unification, simplification, and reform of the native beliefs of India that now comes under the over-simplified title of Hinduism. North Africa, though containing many Christian enclaves and strongholds many of which would incidentally retain their Christian beliefs after the Islamic conquests, was de-facto ruled by polytheist tribes of Berber and African ethnicity. The later-day Turks and Mongols also worshipped idols and dead ancestors prior to their adoption of Islam.
From a Christian perspective, there is no doubt that Islam brought the native populations of the aforementioned areas closer to the Christian ideal than their previous religions.
Why wouldn’t Satan leave “sleeping dogs lie” and let the people continue on in their religions that epitomized the nadir of misguidance? From strictly a numbers perspective, Satan would have clearly mislead more people and would have caused more people to die in the farthest state from the Christian ideal had he not “inspired” the Qur’an, as the Christians hold.
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