Here’s a short summary of what I had posted in the Mohammad thread:
Here’s how I see things:
During Mohammads time, there were Christians & Jews living in Medina.
The Jews had their own scriptures, prophets, religion and practices
The Christians had their own scriptures, prophets, religion and practices
The pagans had their religion & practices, perhaps scriptures and prophets.
The native Arabs had nothing like this.
The Arabs had no prophets, no religion, no scripture to call their own
Great opportunity for Mohammad to create a prophet to represent the Arabs and create his own religious book.
Now, the Arabs were merchants, goat/animal herders, poets and perhaps other types of business existed.
But education was not on their list. Most of them could not read/write.
Mohammad disliked the Pagans very much. They worshiped way too many idols.
The Jews however worshiped one God
The Christians worshiped one God, but believed in The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit.
Although Mohammad was fond to learn about Jesus Christ, elevated him to a great prophet from stories he heard from the Christians, but could not stand the fact that He was the Son of God.
Why ~ because Mohammad believed that would be in believing in 2 Gods and that is what he was trying to avoid.
The book of Islam is not a book inspired or revealed by God.
Gabriel has never been sent by God to contradict God’s prior message(s)
Gabriel said to Mary in Luke 1:
31And, behold, you shall conceive in your womb, and bring forth a son, and shall call his name JESUS.
32He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give to him the throne of his father David:
33And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
And in Luke 8: Demons cast into the pigs:
28When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with you, Jesus, you Son of God most high? I beseech you, torment me not.
The Gabriel Islam speaks of is not God’s Archangel Gabriel.
Also, when you read the stories about the Biblical prophets, the majority of the stories are twisted and not found in the OT.
Mohammad got pieces of info from here & there and that is what he taught his Arab followers. Why question him. Mohammad was a clever man.
Everyone was amazed by him. Islam is born
What we don’t have today are the writings from the early scribes of Mohammad. The bones, parchment, stones, the skins in which parts of his sayings were written on.
His uncle abu Talib was a pagan and ,despite being Muhammad’s most loyal supporter, he rejected Islam because he was the head of a tribe and was worried about what other members of the tribe would say if he left the religion of his forefathers.