Was Muhammad Inspired of God?

[SilverKnight]

How in the POOP did this thread get 5 stars? (And who was doiong the voting?)

Because the question posed in the OP is an intriguing one:

We LDS accept JS as a prophet, yet we flatly reject the only other major world religion also founded by a prophet (Islam).

The question merits discussion.

[Ahab]

Because the question posed in the OP is an intriguing one:

We LDS accept JS as a prophet, yet we flatly reject the only other major world religion also founded by a prophet (Islam).

The question merits discussion.

There is truth in every religion, including the one Muhammad started.

The key is in knowing that being a "prophet" isn't something that only a few people can become, and all that it takes is to receive knowledge of truth from God.

[Ahab]

Just one question:

How in the POOP did this thread get 5 stars? (And who was doiong the voting?)

Peace,

Ceeboo

I gave it 4 stars, myself.

Sorry to burst the bubble.

[CA Steve]

Just one question:

How in the POOP did this thread get 5 stars? (And who was doiong the voting?)

Peace,

Ceeboo

Okay I've had it. Next post you start gets one star!!!!

[BookofMormonLuvr]

My personal belief is that Muhammed is the false prophet of Revelation...

http://www.cocsermons.net/Studies/published%20studies/Babylon.html

By Apostle William Sheldon of the Church of Christ (Temple Lot)

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

My personal belief is that Muhammed is the false prophet of Revelation...

http://www.cocsermons.net/Studies/published%20studies/Babylon.html

By Apostle William Sheldon of the Church of Christ (Temple Lot)

The "Book of Revelation"?

[Ceeboo]

Okay I've had it. Next post you start gets one star!!!!

Dear Lurker (My 5-star friend ),

I was not wondering how your OP recieved 5 stars.

I was (and still am) wondering how this thread recieved 5 stars.

Peace,

Ceeboo

[CA Steve]

Dear Lurker (My 5-star friend ),

I was not wondering how your OP recieved 5 stars.

I was (and still am) wondering how this thread recieved 5 stars.

Peace,

Ceeboo

I guess I am still learning about this board. What is the difference between my OP (which starts the thread) and the thread itself?

Oh and if I am your five star firend I'd hate to meet your other friends.

[Mortal Man]

I would like to thank Dan Peterson for an enjoyable and interesting 2 hours last night at the fireside in CA. I found the comparisons between Muhammad & Joseph Smith very interesting, especially the part about Muhammad being inspired and perhaps even a prophet. A question occurred to me after the meeting was over. Why would God inspire a man to create a religion whose intent is to remove Christianity from the earth? It seems to me that given the spread of the Islam that perhaps the inspiration was not from God.

David French nails it.

[BookofMormonLuvr]

The "Book of Revelation"?

Sorry. Yes, the false prophet found in the Book of Revelation...

[SilverKnight]

David French nails it.

This is spot on.

If we are judging religion by their fruits, then Muhammad is perhaps the "falsest" prophet who ever lived.

[J Green]

I'm not a daily participant here, so I'm coming to this discussion fairly late. For those interested in the history of LDS attitudes towards Islam, A Green (may be related to J Green) offers a useful summary in his entry "World Religions (Non-Christian) and Mormonism: Islam" in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism:

The Church's doctrinal posture toward Islam has also gone through phases. Islam is not mentioned in either the Book of Mormon or the Doctrine and Covenants. Yet articles in Times and Seasons suggest that some LDS spokesmen initially echoed medieval Christian views of Islam as fanatical heresy (Editorial, 3 [15 Apr. 1842]; "Last Hour of the False Prophet," 5 [Apr. 1, 1844]; "Mahometanism," 6 [Jan. 15, 1845]). But speeches by apostles George A. Smith and Parley P. Pratt in 1855 evoked more positive traditional interpretations: that Islam, fulfilling biblical promises made to Ishmael (Gen. 21), was divinely instigated to "scourge" apostate Christianity and to curb idolatry. Perhaps unknowingly paraphrasing Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792), George A. Smith applied historical judgment to Islam's experience: "As they abode in the teachings which Mahomet gave them,

[J Green]

Some here seem to conflate the suggestion that Muhammad was somehow inspired with the concept of his being a dispensation head in the LDS sense, complete with priesthood keys, etc. I don't think we need to accept the latter if we agree with the former. (I personally doubt that he was a prophet in the LDS sense.) I simply concur with the statements of the General Authorities as they stand -- that he received some portion of God's light. I don't know exactly how he received that light and if we even have the original text(s) related to whatever inspiration he received. I don't know if he was meant to start some kind of organization and what it originally looked like. And I'm not sure we can know these things at this distance.

FWIW, there are portions of the Qur'an I feel are inspired. (Just as I believe there are portions of the Apocrypha that are inspired.) Is this because these Qur'anic passages are based on (or related to) principles expressed in biblical passages in the Psalms, Proverbs and other locations? Or are they manifestations of a portion of light given to Muhammad? I don't know. Acknowledging that there is some debate about the correct chronological order of the Qur'an, I seem to prefer the early Mecca surahs. Don't know why that is or what it means.

The ideas are intriguing but not worth a lot of heat and argument. Not enough data.

[J Green]

David French nails it.

I think he missed the brad and "nailed" his thumb. A few of the problems:

1. He simplifies the discussion along artificial fault lines: myopic liberal defenders v. worried, confused, conservative realists. The discussion is more complex and has more depth. Straw man.

2. He simplifies a complex landscape into a single human terrain factor. No discussion of economic or political factors. For example, when we template the origin of suicide bombers, where do they come from? Why, for example, are so many of them from a single neighborhood in Tetuan, Morocco? Why do many of them generally come from the most economically depressed regions of Morocco and Saudi Arabia? If so, is the economic factor irrelevant? Why or why not? Does the anger in these neighborhoods against their governments because of the economic situation take a religious flavor? Why or why not? What does the underground drug-trafficking economy in Tetuan and Cetua, Morocco have to do with it? And why is the generally secular Palestinian movement drawn into the discussion as an example of Extremist Islam? While the Palestinian movement started as secular, how has it trended religious?

The irony is that French superimposes a rather superficial patina of political trends in the US over a complex issue while ignoring the political trends and economic factors underneath the religious patina of Bin Laden and his acolytes. He notes that it is our very enemies that define the struggle in a religious and Muslim construct yet he also observes that there are many Muslims (US and otherwise) who are fighting these same enemies and giving their lives in the process who don't define it this way. Then he says he's confused about the real Islam. This observation gets at the heart of Dan's point to Pa Pa: Given the choice of believing how our enemies define Islam and how the Muslims we know and serve with (and who give their lives) define it, this should not be a difficult decision. And if you do decide to accept the version that comes from the extremists (however the ideas are filtered through society), don't be offended when someone points it out.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

Sorry. Yes, the false prophet found in the Book of Revelation...

Not sure about that...does that not speak of the "last days"?

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

The Church's doctrinal posture toward Islam has also gone through phases. Islam is not mentioned in either the Book of Mormon or the Doctrine and Covenants. Yet articles in Times and Seasons suggest that some LDS spokesmen initially echoed medieval Christian views of Islam as fanatical heresy (Editorial, 3 [15 Apr. 1842];

Did not know this...thanks.

[BookofMormonLuvr]

Not sure about that...does that not speak of the "last days"?

Read the article I linked to in my initial post. Has not his influence extended into the "last days"?

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

Read the article I linked to in my initial post. Has not his influence extended into the "last days"?

Valid point.

[Cold Steel]

Besides my name is quickly becoming crap around here. So pile on. Anyone else? Like I said...[Dan Peterson] is needed here, I am not.

You've got no one else to blame but yourself, mate! At the last six annual Antichrist Force Most Likely to Take Over the Universe Meetings, Dan's brought the Krispy Kreme donuts. You...all you brought were lizard magnetic logos. Ye have no one else to blame but yourselves, laddie!

I've spent several years of my life living in a predominantly Muslim nation, worshiping alongside literally thousands of Latter-day Saints who were raised as Muslims but who later embraced the Restored Gospel. Apparently neither these people nor their slacker neighbors seem to have got the same memo you did.

For every neighborhood like yours, I can show you a half dozen like the one I described!

[Hamba Tuhan]

For every neighborhood like yours, I can show you a half dozen like the one I described!

Really? My 'neighbourhood' includes 1/6 of the World's 1.57 billion Muslims. That means that, if every single other Muslim 'neighbourhood' in the world is like the one you described, the ratio would be five to one, maximum. But it's not actually like that. At all. My housemate, for example, was raised a Muslim in West Africa and joined the Church whilst attending an Islamic school on a scholarship; he completed school there as a Church member. Your claim is nonsense, so consider this an official CFR, or I want a retraction.

Trust me. Because of my situation, I'm fully aware of things I consider seriously flawed in Islam, but, as a Latter-day Saint, I can't stand idly by whilst people make up or even repeat bald-faced lies about another faith. We of all people should know how that feels and what it looks like...and then avoid it like the plague. Instead, it seems that many LDS on this forum have learnt everything they know about Islam from the exact same people who've made an entire industry out of telling everyone all kinds of unrecognisable 'facts' about us.

Again, CFR. And not from the Ed Decker of anti-Islam, either.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

You've got no one else to blame but yourself, mate! At the last six annual Antichrist Force Most Likely to Take Over the Universe Meetings, Dan's brought the Krispy Kreme donuts. You...all you brought were lizard magnetic logos. Ye have no one else to blame but yourselves, laddie!

That was cold of me...but some people like lizards. Next time I will bring keychains.

[ELF1024]

Sorry, but I just hate the men he said I agreed with

[Cold Steel]

That was cold of me...but some people like lizards. Next time I will bring keychains.

Some lizards have similar internal consistency as Krispy Kreme donuts with mushy centers. The donuts taste better, but then it all depends on who you ask. As a means of suicide, a Krispy Kreme sure beats a bullet in the head.

Hamba: As far as conversion and Islam goes, I'm not sure it gets down to just neighborhoods. All throughout Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Iraq and even communities within the U.S., Canada and the U.K., you can easily end up dead by converting to Christianity. Sometimes you can even get offed by your own family members.

The question of Islam is taking the religion that exists today and reconciling it with what Muhammad produced. As it is now, it's a dangerous religion that can be interpreted in a number of ways. People who compare it to the Old Testament simply don't know the Old Testament, nor the Law of Moses (read Nibley's book, Approaching Zion). Even benign Islam isn't exactly rushing to condemn radical Islam. Reading Ezekiel 38, Zechariah 12-14 and Revelation, one can see that Islam will be at the heart of problems in the Middle East. Without Islam, there would be no Gog, no destruction of Jerusalem on the scale it's now pegged for, etc. In short, it seems that everything the Lord is working to promote in the last days is being opposed on multiple levels by Islam. All over the world, Christianity is helping Muslims in disaster and hunger relief, but the reverse doesn't seem to be true.

[Ahab]

That was cold of me...but some people like lizards. Next time I will bring keychains.

... and a new app for our Urim and Thummim too, please.

I'd ask for more but I don't want to seem too greedy.

[Jason]

Hamba: As far as conversion and Islam goes, I'm not sure it gets down to just neighborhoods. All throughout Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Iraq and even communities within the U.S., Canada and the U.K., you can easily end up dead by converting to Christianity. Sometimes you can even get offed by your own family members.

Which seems to indicate that it is in fact about neighborhoods - the Middle East and those who are from there specifically.

Hamba's experience seems to be in different neighborhoods - Sub-Saharan Africa and Indonesia.

Reading Ezekiel 38, Zechariah 12-14 and Revelation, one can see that Islam will be at the heart of problems in the Middle East. Without Islam, there would be no Gog, no destruction of Jerusalem on the scale it's now pegged for, etc.

I don't see anything that specifically identifies Gog as being Muslim.

Saying the religion can't lead you to Christ seems reasonable. Saying that it's outright evil doesn't.