Islam

After watching The Story of Islam on VHS, I come to appreciate modern technology and modern documentaries. The first thirty minutes of the movie, the only thing talked about was the movement of Arabic people around Saudi Arabia. However, in the early parts of the movie, we did find out that there are over a billion Muslims in the world. This is over three times the population of the United States; however, the percentage of Muslims in the United States is slim to none compared to that of the other religions. Even today, the majority of Muslims are in the Middle East, mostly because they were never really run out of their area of worship like Judaism and other religions. I also found it interesting that today the Koran is the governing document of Saudi Arabia.

After thirty minutes of talking about Arabic movements which I will not go into explaining, the movie started to talk about Muhammad. Muhammad was born in 570 a.d. (can tell the move is old when we use C.E. now), and his parents died at a very young age. After their demises, he went to live with his grandfather and later his uncle. Upon living with his uncle, he was sent to be raised as a nomad in a Bedouin tribe. While he is still a boy, it is said that two angels came down from God and gave him the information of God. Muhammad did not immediately go into spreading the word of Allah, but he traveled to Syria and gained much information about the other religions.

During this time, Christianity was on the rise and Judaism continued to exist in the Mediterranean area. Muhammad learns about these other religions from the leaders of these religions, and this is the primary reason why some of the scriptures in the Koran are taken from the Torah and the Bible. Although these scriptures have slight changes to them, sometimes major in the case of Joseph, the originated in the other religions. When he was 25, he led a caravan from Syria back to Mecca, where he met his wife of 40 years, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. This was his first wife, although it is said that he had thirteen wives in his lifetime. This wife was wealthy making Muhammad wealthy, but he was not pleased with his life. He frequently would climb a small cave and meditate. In this area, he was once upon a mountain when the angel Gabriel came and visited Muhammad asking him to recite three times in the name of Allah. Muhammad simply responded back that he did not know what to recite.

He started questioning himself, and for three years he returned to Mt. Hera to listen to Allah, and during this time, the Ka’aba was dedicated to many idols. Thus, the Meccans believed in many gods and were threatened by Muhammad as he discredited their Gods. He then leaves Mecca with his followers and travels across the Red Sea, where he begins the first Islamic community outside of Mecca. Angel Gabriel then visits Muhammad another time, where he is taken from Earth and speaks with the past prophets. It is now time for Muhammad to go back to Mecca, and when he returns, Muhammad runs into even more trouble as people against him want him dead.

Muhammad again does not stay in Mecca, and he travels outside. He left Mecca because of the plots against his life and the death of his wife. While outside of Mecca, he creates the first mosque and the Koran. He is also commanded to start a war between non-believers. Eventually, Muhammad has an army of 10,000, and he goes back to Mecca and overtakes the city. This is when he rubs the black stone inside the Ka’aba and destroys the other idols other than Allah. This is when Mecca becomes the center of Islam for the world.

Eventually Muhammad dies of illness, but only after Islam is a largely established religion. Unlike other religions, Islam seems to be the most black and white religion of all. We know exactly the story of how Islam came about, and there seems to be no grey areas. It is interesting to me how much Muhammad was able to accomplish in his lifetime. It seems that he was constantly learning about or creating the religion of Islam his entire life. Also it is surprising to me that so many people worship a religion that is so modern. Judaism has been around for a much longer time than Islam, but the number of followers is significantly smaller than Islam. This could be in part due to the fact that Muslims used force upon non-believers while Jews never forced anything upon anyone else. Yet, a billion people who believe in Islam is quite an astounding number with or without the use of force.