BBC Two – The Life of Muhammad
Hello World!
I am currently studying the Life of Muhammad, well not studying, but watching a documentary called “The Life of Muhammad.” This interest peaked me this morning as I woke up. I wanted to learn more about Islam, so I decided to download the Quran, but then I decided to just learn about Muhammad.
When people ask me, “Who wrote the Bible?” There are many answers I can give. I can simply say God wrote it, and the authors are simply tools, or I can say, 40 different people wrote different parts of the Bible and then some other people put them together to make the Bible. Either way, I’m not entirely sure. But for the Quran, there was only one author (unless you say God is the author) and that is the Prophet Muhammad. So I figured, lemme learn more about this guy.
Here I will summarize what I learned so far. I highly recommend checking out the documentary, and I only finished the first hour, so I don’t know everything yet!
The Prophet Muhammad was born about 500 years after the death of Jesus in Mecca. His father died pretty early so he lived with his mother in poverty. (I may be wrong with what I’m about to say but I think I got the gist of it) Muhammad at a young age lived a very harsh and demanding life. He joined a nomadic tribe in Arabia and had to travel a lot because of it. His mother died when he was 6, and had to live with his grandpa, who then died 2 years later. Again a very harsh life. He ended up joining his uncle and learned the trade in the region. A couple years later down the line he wanted to get married, so he asked his uncle for permission to marry his daughter, but his uncle denied him because he was an orphan. Yet, God had other plans. Khadīja bint Khuwaylid, or Khadijah, was an older woman with great wealth and power. She asked Muhammad to find a prophet, and when Muhammad returned with the prophet she asked for, she asked him for his hand in marriage. So they got married, and slowly Muhammad gained wealth and power in the region. As time went on, Muhammad was not satisfied with the way of life in Arabia. He didn’t like the injustice and how money helped solve all problems. This can be seen when he was little to where he is now. (This is very important. I believe most human hit the point where we realize the reality we live in) I think this is what called him to meditate. He began meditating on the top of a mountain called Jabal an-Nour. He would continually go up there, sometimes with family, to meditate, but one day he had a divine revelation. I think the story goes like this: The angel Gabriel came down and told Muhammad to read, but Muhammad said he can’t. Gabriel repeated 3 times telling him to read. He was very shaken up by this and ran back to tell his wife. His wife help comfort him and is said to be the first one to believe what Muhammad had said, even before Muhammad believed it.
I will stop here!
That is my bad summary, I am missing a lot, but I also learned a lot. But why? As a Christian, why should I care about the Prophet Muhammad? Some Christians don’t care at all! Does it really matter? I don’t know, I was simply interested. For example, there were some things that I learned about Islam were very simple.
For one they do not worship the Prophet Muhammad, they believe he was the last prophet and they believe in the one true God. I believe it is sort of amazing. You see, the Prophet Muhammad was the first in his land to start saying there is only one God, but the people of Mecca at the time, believed in polytheism, multiple Gods. So when he was telling the tribes living in Mecca, that there is only one God, they didn’t like it. The Prophet even had to send people away from Mecca for their safety. There were bans in Mecca preventing people from having anything to do with Muhammad and his people. Yet, now Mecca is the hallmark of Islam. Amazing how history turns out.
This is part one of my learning experience, so please if you got something to say feel free to message or comment. I am eager to learn, but at the same time, I hold true to my own beliefs. I wanted to learn what is the nature of Islam, where did it come from, how did it explode. The origin of Islam, is very different from the origin of Christianity, yet at the same time they have a lot of similarities.
The question boils down to this. What is religion? Do we really know? Is religion real or not? If it is fake, then it shouldn’t matter, but it does. It is not fake. It is real-er than the society we live in. People die over religion. But is it real? It cannot be since there are so many different types of religions. Can you just choose which one you wanna live by like a video game?
My answer is no. It is Black and White. I believe one religion is right and another is wrong. The Bible says that Christians will suffer persecution for their beliefs. It says the World Hates Us. I believe Muslims at the time of Muhammad were exactly the same. They were getting persecuted, not because they were stealing, killing, raping, breaking laws, but because of their beliefs on a one true God.
The next part of the video talks about a massacre that happened. By God’s grace I will continue this series, till then CARRY ON!
(Air Force :D)
– Ayodeji Alaketu
