How did Islam get so popular?

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Indeed. Mary is the only woman to be mentioned by name in the Qu’ran. And when she’s not being mentioned by name she is being mentioned using such adjectives as sa’ima , tahira, and ’azra’ (Arabic for she who fasts, pure, and virgin respectively.)
 
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phil19034 said:
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Tis_Bearself:
Just to clarify, I’m mostly interested in how it got such a foothold in the early centuries, not why people today would convert to it.
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Mostly conquest.
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Again, it’s more complex than that. As I say above, Rome and Constantinople had already weakened the unity of the Early Church by going after non-orthodox groups in North Africa, so the conquest was greatly facilitated by local populations often either shrugging their shoulders or actually welcoming the Muslim invaders.

As to Christianity, it was already widespread throughout the Empire by the time Constantine enacted tolerance into law, and its spread after the Edict of Milan and the more active Pagan persecutions by his successors, was within the Roman Empire, or in areas adjacent to it. I suppose you could say in some cases, particularly during the Pagan persecutions under Emperors like Theodosius I was “by the sword”.

Christianity’s spread through Northern Europe, Central Europe and in the British Isles (after Rome vacated Britain and most of its native Christians fled or harassed nearly out of existence by the Anglo-Saxon invaders), was by a rather extraordinary group of Christian evangelists (like St. Patrick), who bravely went into areas dominated by Celtic, Germanic and Slavic pagans, putting themselves at enormous risk, to seek the conversion of those people. Even the mighty Norsemen finally converted. It wasn’t until the conquests of the Prussians and other Baltic peoples in the Carolingian and later periods that we see Christianity imposed by the sword.
 
I had a few Muslim friends very few of them drink alcohol claiming its beacuse of their religion.

Prior too the terror attacks in Christchurch the gunman released a video which the dunedin Islam society was apparently distributing
Encouraging families to have alot of children ( in some cases 9 or more) so that they would take over the world.
 
niceatheist said:
Judaism, generally has never been a proselytizing religion. There certainly have been converts over the centuries, but by and large Judaism has retained its fundamentally ethno-religious nature.
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I would agree with this. The Jewish religion makes it pretty hard to join and they do not seem to welcome converts with open arms, based on the people I’m aware of who wished to convert for some reason, almost always to marry a Jewish spouse. If you’re not born into it, the impression is that you have to do a lot of proving yourself to truly be accepted. Perhaps it’s understandable in view of the persecution Jewish people have experienced from both Christians and Muslims, that there would be a distrust or a gulf there.
 
And again, Muslim armies, depsite their many faults, were remarkably tolerant.

You’ve got to give it to Muhammad. He may not have been the best by our standards, but he did manage to, if not civilize his people, then lift them from desert-dwelling nomads to Empire builders.
 
Umm. I can’t seem to recall any names at the moment- I’ve had a long day. I’m sure a google search can help you.

EDIT: Not sure, but I think a few years back some girl named Gigi Hadid converted.
EDIT (2): Nevermind apparently she’s a Muslim-no mention of conversion.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Perhaps it’s understandable in view of the persecution Jewish people have experienced from both Christians and Muslims, that there would be a distrust or a gulf there.
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I don’t think it really has anything to do with Christians and Muslims. I think the Jews were always like that to a degree, and became more so after the fall of the Temple but BEFORE any persecutions ever started taking place by Christians and the non-existent Muslims.

Remember, the Pharisees basically got rid of any scriptures not originally written in Hebrew.
 
I noted on another thread that one of the sources of Anti-semitism was during the Seleucid period when Judaea was controlled by Greek rulers. There was out and out civil war between Hellenized Jews and conservative Jewish elements like the Pharisees in the 1st century BCE, and it seemed to generate a great deal of hostility of Greeks towards Jews. The first recorded riots against Jews were attacks by mobs of Alexandrian Greeks against Jews in that city in 38 and 40 CE, when I doubt there were any Christians in Egypt. It’s my theory that anti-semitism entered Christianity via early Greek converts who carried their anti-Jewish sentiments with them into their newfound faith.
 
jrgmercado said:
Cat Stevens!
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To be fair to Yusuf Islam, he seemed to have a pretty genuine spiritual experience that lead him to Islam, and he basically became inactive as a performing artist for many years. This doesn’t seem an example of “Hollywood conversion”.
 
We played morning has broken as I was walking down the aisle the day I married I love cat Stevens and of course sonny bill williams my favourite rugby player
 
Yes, I realize this. In fact, after posting, I thought maybe I was a little too harsh on you although what you said about the afterlife according to Islam struck me as, well, a bit uncharitable. That is why I focused on the promise of an afterlife in Christianity (provided you don’t “mess up” of course) rather than its many wonderful teachings concerning how we should live our lives in the here and now. Please forgive me for that. Anyhow, you have a right to your opinion.
 
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CCHcolonel said:
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niceatheist:
early Greek converts who carried their anti-Jewish sentiments with them into their newfound faith.
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More likely came from the whole deicide/Jews crucifying Christ thing, calling a blood curse on themselves and their children, and persecuting early Jewish converts to Christianity.
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That doesn’t really make much sense, seeing as for a considerable period of time the majority of Christians were Jews. The sentiment seems to have arrived as the number of Gentile Christians began to outnumber Jewish Christians sometime in the 2nd Century. Many of those early Gentile converts, if not almost all of them, would have been Greeks.
 
There’s no need to apologize! I wasn’t even offended-this is a discussion, after all.

What I said about Islam’s afterlife is what I know it teaches. However, I never claim to be a 100% right in discussions of religion, I of course await the (name removed by moderator)ut of our Muslim CAF’ers.

My knowledge of the Muslim religion has mostly been gleaned from my travels in Saudi Arabia, and I understand that many Muslims consider Saudi’s brand of Islam to be less than orthodox.
 
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The turning away three times of the prospective convert to Judaism is due to testing whether they are really serious about conversion and also making sure they understand the responsibility and challenges involved in becoming Jewish as reflected by their studying the religion. Now, if you’re talking about families’ semi-rejection or nonacceptance of converts to Judaism in the real world, unfortunately I have seen that, and it’s wrong, besides being completely contrary to the moral and ethical tenets of Judaism. A convert is every bit as Jewish as a Jew born to a Jewish mother and should be treated as such by family members.
 
repentant2 said:
Maybe, particularly if the original gospels when taken out of the context of a Jewish upbringing was introduced to a more “foreign” group. The Jews didn’t endear themselves to their former bretheren either though.
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It’s an interesting period of history that sadly is much shrouded by a lack of any first hand accounts. Josephus seemed to regard Christians as little more than an odd Jewish sect, and certainly up until the Destruction of the Temple, most Early Christians identified themselves as Jews. The first really solid evidence we have of what I’d consider anti-Jewish sentiment comes out of the circumcision controversy, and while some of Paul’s sentiments were less than charitable towards other Jewish Christians (after all, he had big plans to make Christianity a truly international religion), I agree that this sentiment has taken out of context by many over the centuries.

Paul and the writers of the Gospel certainly weren’t condemning all Jews (indeed, the earliest of the Gospels would have been written by Jewish Christians). I always read those passages as being more a condemnation of the conservative Jewish elements that demanded Jesus’ death, and to my mind, the treatment of Jesus was more a late symptom of the longstanding feuds that had run through Jewish society in Judaea for nearly two hundred years before the Crucifixion. I think the Gospel writers had a particular brand of Jewish conservative in mind when they wrote passages like Matthew 27:25.
 
Cat Stevens has always been one of the most famous Western converts to Islam. I get a chuckle every time somebody plays “Morning has Broken” as a reflection at church, which at one of the local parishes, happens from time to time.

Edited to add, then again I understand Stevens didn’t write that song though he had the big hit with it, and that it was actually a Christian hymn from the 1930s with the lyrics by an English poet and the piano hook part by Rick Wakeman from Yes. So maybe it’s okay after all.

We also have plenty of Nation of Islam converts in USA, but I don’t know as I’d consider them true Islam.
 
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niceatheist said:
The theory goes that many people in the Syriac churches found more theological affinity with the Muslim invaders
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Its easy to find “theological affinity” with people threatening to behead you by force.
 
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