The year was 610 and the man's name was Muhammad. And the belief system that arose from Muhammad's ideas became the basis of one of the world's most widely practiced religions: Islam. Muhammad was born around 570 in the city of Mecca, located on the Arabian Peninsula.
Muslims are monotheistic and worship one, all-knowing God, who in Arabic is known as Allah. Followers of Islam aim to live a life of complete submission to Allah. They believe that nothing can happen without Allah's permission, but humans have free will.
And yet, despite the manifest differences in how they practise their religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God. The founder of Islam, Muhammad, saw himself as the last in a line of prophets that reached back through Jesus to Moses, beyond him to Abraham and as far back as Noah.
The Catholic Church since Vatican II has taught in different ways that Muslims and Christians do worship the same God.
Muhammad is not mentioned explicitly or ;implicitly in the Bible, God's oldest written revelation (and the only written revelation as far as Christians are concerned). But Christ Jesus is found in the Quran. And what it says about Him places Ham far above the founder of Islam.
Christians believe that Jesus was the incarnated Son of God, divine, and sinless. Islam teaches that Jesus was one of the most important prophets of God, but not the Son of God, not divine, and not part of the Trinity. Rather, Muslims believe the creation of Jesus was similar to the creation of Adam (Adem).
The word Hindu is an exonym, and while Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, many practitioners refer to their religion as Sanātana Dharma (Sanskrit: सनातन धर्म, lit.
All Muslims and most Christians acknowledge that they believe in the same god even though their understandings differ. Arabic-speaking Christians call God Allah, and Gideon bibles, quoting John 3:16 in different languages, assert that Allah sent his son into the world.
According to religious historians, Islam was founded by Muhammad the Prophet around 622CE (Common Era), or about 1,382 years ago in Mecca. Christianity was founded by Jesus Christ approximately 1,971 (33CE) years ago.
Most religious scholars and historians agree with Pope Francis that the historical Jesus principally spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic. Through trade, invasions and conquest, the Aramaic language had spread far afield by the 7th century B.C., and would become the lingua franca in much of the Middle East.
In Christianity, the last prophet of the Old Covenant before the arrival of Jesus is John the Baptist (cf. Luke 16:16).
The Quran asserts that Muhammad was a man who possessed the highest moral excellence, and that God made him a good example or a "goodly model" for Muslims to follow (Quran 68:4, and 33:21). The Quran disclaims any superhuman characteristics for Muhammad, but describes him in terms of positive human qualities.
The association of the word specifically with Islam comes from the special status of Arabic as the language of Islam's holy scripture, the Qurʾān: since the Qurʾān in its original language is considered to be the literal word of God, it is believed that God described himself in the Arabic language as Allāh.
Gospel (Injil)
Accordingly, Muslim scholars reject the Christian canonical Gospels, which they say are not the original teachings of Jesus and which they say have been corrupted over time. Some scholars have suggested that the original Gospel may be the Gospel of Barnabas.
Of course, Jesus was a Jew. He was born of a Jewish mother, in Galilee, a Jewish part of the world. All of his friends, associates, colleagues, disciples, all of them were Jews. He regularly worshipped in Jewish communal worship, what we call synagogues.
Muhammad is distinguished from the rest of the prophetic messengers and prophets in that God commissioned him to be the prophetic messenger to all of mankind.
The last person to whom God is said to have been "revealed" is Samuel (1 Sam 3:21). The last person to whom God is said to have "appeared" is Solomon; this occurs early in the next biblical book, the book 1 Kings (3:5; 9:2; 11:9).
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
Adam's age at death is given as 930 years.
Jesus died at the age of 33. For us that seems rather early and at the prime of life for many.
It is simply the last of the divine messages to reach humankind through Prophet Muhammad, who was chosen by the Creator as the bearer of his last and all-encompassing revelation. This explains why there exists a strong link between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
Knowing that versions written in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament does predate the Quran, Christians reason the Quran as being derived directly or indirectly from the earlier materials. Muslims understand the Quran to be knowledge from an omnipotent God.