When Muhammad was a young man he married his boss. He was a camel driver and she had a "trucking" company and he married her in order to get ahead in life.
Because she was fairly wealthy it left him with a lot of time on his hands, and being a somewhat introspective ascetic, he liked to go up and meditate on "spiritual" things up in the mountains.
When he was 40 years of age he started having these strange convulsions. He started foaming at the mouth and going into trances, and he was convinced that he was demon possessed, that he had a djin, the Arabic from which we get our English word genie—an evil spirit. But his wife said no, it was just the angel Gabriel who was wanting to communicate with him.
So he goes up into a cave in the mountains and the angel Gabriel allegedly appeared to this illiterate camel herder, outside of Mecca, and they had a little fight. Gabriel strangled him and choked him into submission, demanding that he "proclaim in the name of the Lord, the creator, who created man from a clot of blood."
So he was to proclaim this new revelation that came allegedly from God, and the fact that Gabriel allegedly choked him into submission is key for understanding Islam because the word Islam does not mean peace, it means submission.
The role of Islam and their mission is to cause everybody on the planet to come into submission to Allah, and it doesn't matter if it is done by free will or whether by force through violence. That becomes clear from reading the Koran. Just as Muhammad was forced into submission through violence, that is the way that Islam has often spread in history.
Because she was fairly wealthy it left him with a lot of time on his hands, and being a somewhat introspective ascetic, he liked to go up and meditate on "spiritual" things up in the mountains.
When he was 40 years of age he started having these strange convulsions. He started foaming at the mouth and going into trances, and he was convinced that he was demon possessed, that he had a djin, the Arabic from which we get our English word genie—an evil spirit. But his wife said no, it was just the angel Gabriel who was wanting to communicate with him.
So he goes up into a cave in the mountains and the angel Gabriel allegedly appeared to this illiterate camel herder, outside of Mecca, and they had a little fight. Gabriel strangled him and choked him into submission, demanding that he "proclaim in the name of the Lord, the creator, who created man from a clot of blood."
So he was to proclaim this new revelation that came allegedly from God, and the fact that Gabriel allegedly choked him into submission is key for understanding Islam because the word Islam does not mean peace, it means submission.
The role of Islam and their mission is to cause everybody on the planet to come into submission to Allah, and it doesn't matter if it is done by free will or whether by force through violence. That becomes clear from reading the Koran. Just as Muhammad was forced into submission through violence, that is the way that Islam has often spread in history.
-
2
- Show all
