The Story of Islam:
The problem with Islam study is that there is a story of Islam
There are certain etiqites and truths that need to be know
Islam established in the 7th century in Arabia
Truth: That Mohammed received revelation from God.
A highly venerated person, regarded as the greatest human being in the world. Came with a book, with this Quran, he came upon with these communities that established peace in the world.
Looking at historical records of the time, there is not that many empirical data.
Started in the Middle East
Major Empires:
Byzantines: Chrisitian
Sassanians
Abyssinians: Christians and Anamosts
The Yemen: Nomadic civilization that had a powerful navy
Area we are interested in is the Hijazz – Mecca and Madina.
At the time they were not important. The only importance is that they were in the middle of all these empires
Somehow a religion came out of this place that swept off the entire area. Empirically there is no evidence of how this happened. Was there any mention in trading records of Mohammed? Islam? Lead some people to conclude that religion was conceived somewhere between the 8th century.
There are a few documents that we have which are unbiased. One being the Quran (7th century). It had only minor variations. Suggesting that there was some force that came out of Arabia that came out with a universal text.
The Quran however, is remarkably vague. Attempting to reconstruct the past is very difficult due to its convoluted chronology.
The Backdrop of The Quran:
Islam came to Arabia, it did not start with Mohammed
Started a long time ago
Started with Adam and Satan, who were in Paradise.
God decides one day that he is going to create a creature (Khalifa).
A Khalifa is someone who succeeds, or someone who comes afterwards.
Along with Adam, this creature was a Jinn (made from fire). Jin’s name was Iblis.
The assumption is that there was a whole world made of these fire creatures, and then the king of the jins prayed to god to take the jin and places the jin in heaven. And this jin named iblis all the time constantly prayed to God.
At some point God said that he was going to create a successor. Iblis gets jealous. Iblis was ordered to bow down to this Khalifa in which he rejects the order of God.
God’s anger leads God to cast Iblis out, now named Satan. He dares God in proving that adam is not a nice person.
Adam gets sent back to earth, and if you follow the words of God then he hwill be able to return to the garden.
The laws passed down by God through a messenger that slowly built a repitorie of dos and donts.

Abraham:
Starts life with Laws rather than introduce laws in the middle of lifestyles
After Noah they started fresh, after that people followed or broke the laws
This also lead to the worshipping of idols. Messengers were sent down to disprove this ideology.
There was an allure to polytheism. Why would people want to worship multiple Gods?
Abraham comes in and starts telling people is to worship one god.

Moses:
God gave him this creed of worshiping one god and a law. And this law is going to teach us how to grow and live. The tribes of moses started adding laws and god sent messengers through god to establish a fully functioning society.
However that does not work out and God sends another messenger and the “people of Israel” refused to follow the rules of God.
Jesus: The Spirit of God
Jesus, in the Quran is a very nice guy
Portrayed in the Quran as innocent
Mohammed: The Prophet of God.

Abraham and Da’wah
The laws get passed fown with Noah and Mosses
Abraham called people to God…known as the Dawah
Abraham was raised in a itinerant location.
He advocated a new way to think of tribal affiliation – you are nothing without your tribe, your tribe has its own God.
Abraham offered the idea of Faith. If you have faith, then you don’t need anything in front of you. If you have ultimate faith, then the better off you will