If Muhammad (PBUH) could be collected to the present, what do you think he would advise modern Muslims to do. If we had a time machine and could go back to 628 CE and offer Muhammad (PBUH) the opportunity to travel to the year 2006, and he agreed to do so, what would he do.

How would he deal with Muslims like Osama Bin Ladin, Ahmadinejad, Muhammad Karzi, the many Islamic doctors in our hospitals, our friend Farad1, the Saudi Royal Family, and to the average men and women who comprise almost 2 billion of the Earth's population?

Christians often ask me, "What would Jesus do?" So I would also like to know what Muhammad (PBUH) would SAY? To Muslims and those of us who are not.

Amergin

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Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

In the 7th to 12 Centuries, the Islamic world from Samarqand to Cordoba was a remarkably advanced and prosperous civilisation while we (Europeans) were still barely above savages. The Islamic world had advanced geology, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. The Christian European world believed the world was flat, centre of the universe, disease was caused by sin, demons caused epilepsy and insanity, and that God physically resided in little Solar Disk Bread Wafers. European cities were filthy, with excrement all over the streets, and people emptying chamber pots from windows onto the streets below.

The contrast with the Islamic Caliphate was dramatic and word carried back to Europe by travellers and traders. Christian Crusaders in "L'Outre Mer" acquired Islamic customs which were puzzling to Europeans living in filth in Paris, Toulouse, Vienna, and London.

But what happened??????

Why did Islamic Civilisation collapse into the squalor as Europe underwent the Renaissance and Industrial Revolution, and European Science triumphed over Christian Superstition?

I assume Europe profited by the northward flow of knowledge from Cordoba to France, Germany, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Knowledge flowed westward from Samarqand through Constantinople to Vienna.

I just do not understand what happened to the once magnificent Islamic Caliphates.


Amergin

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Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

If Muhammad (PBUH) could be collected to the present, what do you think he would advise modern Muslims to do.

My reply:

Well for Baha'is the Light that was reflected from Prophet Muhammad has in a sense returned for us in Baha'u'llah and there are specific things He revealed for today..however not for just Muslims but everyone..

Baha'u'llah abrogated Holy Way or Jihad.. advised setting up a world parliament, universal education, reducing armaments and taxes for war machines, urged the acceptance of the oneness of mankind, the equality of men and women, a reduction in the extremes of wealth and poverty, communal storehouses for disasters, eliminating prejudices..among other things.

- Art

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"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

Allow me to correct you, my name is Fahad not farad. As far as your question is concerned, it is not easy to answer this question since I including all the muslims are not aware of what Prophet(pbuh) would be doing at present if he was here with us but according to my limited knowledge and understanding I am pretty sure that after seeing the level of luxuries and comfort in Saudia and other Middle Eastern Countries, he would surely be in great pain and would be really disappointed with what is happening with muslims.

Unfortunately in Saudia Arab and other Khalijeeh Countries ,you see wealth flowing like water and their government system is based on Kingdom where as in Islam their is no concept of kingdom and the only form of government or administration accepted in the eyes of Islam is Caliphate(Khilafat) which consist of many aspects of democracy as well.

The democratic system that you see in Europe today is a mixture of Western style and Islamic Style but the Caliphate that Islam talks about is much different from the Western Democracy and that is basically because Western Civilization is based on the economic system unlike Islamic Civilization which is based on ,rational,religious, moral and spiritual teachings and which guides us how to run the economy.

What I think is that If Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) would be alive today then he would not be happy with the present situation of Muslims and if you read some predictions of Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) about the present modern muslims then you will come to know that he already knew what will be the future of muslims.

So it would not be something new for Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) but what I know is that he will encourage the muslims to refer to the basic sources of Islam which is Qur'an and his Sunnah because these are the only 2 sources of guidance in Islam.

Unfortunately present muslims have moved away from the main teachings of Islam and argue over silly and baseless matters that donot have any relevance with Islam or with rationality.

I agree with you that what has happened to the Islamic Civilization of medival times and how did it end? well the renassance of West started after the end of Muslim Civilization and it became only possible when State was seperated from Church because teachings of Christianity are not in complete harmony with Modern Scientific Researches and Investigations so the secular groups in Europe decided to seperate the teachings of Christianity from State so that State could independently make progress in Science and Technology.
According to Christian Scholars ,making progress in Science and Technology is against the teachings of their religion and they dissuaded their new generation from learning science and other knowledge ,so their was a conflict between secular party and religious party.

Unlike in Islamic Civilization where their is no such conflict between religion and science and muslims progress during medival times was because of their closeness with Islamic Teachings contrary to the Christians progress which is due to their isolation from Christian teachings.

How interesting isnt it?

The prophet of Allah if he were to come to see the condition of specifically the muslims............
The vast majority of us would most likely be labeled as munafiqeen (hypocrites) not to mention being labeled as kafireen (disbelievers). I don't think all of us will fall into that category, but I fear that a majority of us muslims would. He would be extremely hurt and angry with us. I don't think he would be astonished or surprised by our condition because it is in the hadith about our present state. One main thing that he would be angry with us about is the cause of our plight as muslims. The cause is our undying love for the life of this world that has effectively blinded us from the concern of the life hereafter. When I say life of this world I mean that it has become more important to the muslims to satisfy our desires, than it is to obey Allah's commands. I think he would be greatly pained to find that all the struggle that he and his sahabah went throguh to ensure that Islam would survive past his death, has been thrown to the wayside by us.

For the non-muslims, such as yourself who are genuinely interested in the acquisition of knowledge, and seeking of the truth through the use of logic and rationale, he would be a great source of knowledge. He would not talk you to death, like we muslims do today, he would live how he is suggesting you to live. You would find help with him. You would find that he is only interested in the welfare of all mankind. One thing about the prophet is that he not only was interested in the muslims and their well-being, he was interested in the well-being of the entire mankind. He always begged Allah to guide each and every human being to the truth and a way that is straight, despite knowledge that not all people would follow that way.

He would not present a new set of laws but merely enforce the ones that are already established. A real muslim state would most likely be formed and there the non-muslims would see with their own eyes the treatment they would receive. Even his enemies would respect him even if they hated him. And indeed, if he were to come back here at this time, he would surely be targeted for assassination.

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Have you seen him who has taken as his god his own desires? Would you then be a watcher over him?(25:43)

I will answer your other post too Amergin but it is early here and I am very tired. I am very happy you are back posting. I hope everything is well with you. I enjoyed our posting back and forth last time, and I look forward to posting with you again. I am intrigued and impressed somewhat by some of your thoughts on religious matters, and hope you will continue your straightforwardness.....I know you will anyway.....

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Have you seen him who has taken as his god his own desires? Would you then be a watcher over him?(25:43)

Short Answer:
When muslims fail to practice Islam and adhere to its tenets, we fail as a society. A steady drift away from true Islam always marks the end of whatever greatness the muslims achieve.


Long Answer:
When we look at a great civilizations rise and fall, it can almost always be attributed to a drifting away from the foundations on which it was built. What, you may ask, was the thing or foundation that made muslim civilization and way of life flourish? I can tell you what it wasn't. It wasn't a vast powerful army, not a desire for worldy wealth, not a desire to subjugate others. The thing that started the muslims on such a path of success was Islam itself, love for Allah and His rasul, and a strict adherence to the practices of Islam. The muslims in the beginning had vast amounts of self-control and discipline. They practiced Islam by caring for other people and animals. The well-fare of those around them regardless of religious creed was a thing that the muslims took personal responsibility for, and people lived together in peace.

I am going to tell a little known story about the first attempts at spreading Islam. During the life of the Prophet (saw) he used to have letters dictated. These letters contained an introduction of himself, and his mission and a peaceful invitation to accept Islam. He would have these letters delivered by a delegation of muslims to the head of a sovereign state. The reason for sending it to the head of a state was because this is a method that had worked with the tribes in Arabia. If the leader of a people accepts Islam, then it is likely that his subjects will follow suit. Usually, he received one of three reactions to such invitation.

a) The head of a state would decline to accept Islam, but would wish no ill upon the muslims. It was a polite "no". This reaction usually resulted in an alliance and treaty being forged between the muslims and the non-muslim state.

b) The head of state would decline harshly. This pretty much meant that not only did the head of state refuse to accept Islam, the delegation would be killed. This violates the rules of conduct between nations even today. It automatically meant war. That reaction was most often linked to simple disbelief in the messege itself, and/or fear that if accepted would lead to the leader of the state to be removed from his post or killed by his own people, should they opposse his decision.

c) The head of state, after conferring with his viziers and cabinet members, would willingly accept Islam. This lead to an entire population of people becoming muslim, without nary a sword drawn, or blood spilled. After the leader would accept Islam, the delegation sent to deliver the messege would stay on, to assist in matters of religion, and explain to the king and his men how to deliver that messege to the common people without causing a mass uprising and as little civil unrest as possible.

This is how the spread of Islam started. Of course there were detractors who decided that swift and violent action should be taken against what was viewed as a new and heretical religion. Not to mention all the politics that played a part in the start of such wars.

If you study history, you will propbably find that as time went on, and the muslims were farther and farther removed from the time of the Prophet, more and more corruption could be found. It is a wrong assumption that it was Islam that caused this corruption, or that it had been interprated wrongly. The start of corruption in the Islamic empires of the past started for the same reason any other corruption started. Amergin, few it is who can drink the wine of power and not become intoxicated. The greed for territory, lust for power, and the attraction to all that that entails was the start of corruption. The root cause of the reason for corruption is what I mentioned above. When muslims fall away from Islam as a whole, it is easier for us to succumb to our less desireable traits. We can begin to cause harm rather than good. Tyranny and oppression replace justice and equal-footing.

Allah takes notice of this. Allah always removes tyranny and oppression after a time, regardless of the perpetrator. For the tyrants Allah has prepared a painful punishment. Makes no difference if the tyrant is muslim or not. Allah hates such practices as it is always damaging to the forward progress of humankind.


I hope that I have answered that question to your satisfaction. If you have any more inquiries on the subject, I know you'll feel free as a bird to post them.

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Have you seen him who has taken as his god his own desires? Would you then be a watcher over him?(25:43)

Understanding is the first step to real peace.

I very much appreciate the feedback from you and from Fahad (sorry about the misspelling.) It is welcome because I think that I (in Ireland) and the US, UK, are given a slanted view on Muslims by the media, and by outright government propaganda. I understand but do not condone average people being angry and descending to hatred of any people who ethnically resemble the 9-11 terrorists. The media and governments here promote that negative feeling. US movies have stopped using Germans, Russians, and Chinese as bad guys and more often the evil terrorist is portrayed as a Muslim or Arab. It is sad that we humans act that way.

I remember during the 1980s, when travelling in London or other parts of England, my Scottish accent was mistaken for Irish and I got searched and stripped twice because they assumed I could be Irish Republican Army (IRA.) The people who did 9-11 and 7-7 were called "Islamic Terrorists" but do you recall ever hearing Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (Oklahoma City Bombing) called "Christian Terrorists". McVeigh did carry a Bible with him. Eric Rudolph blew up clinics, bars, and a mixed race crowd in Atlanta. He is a member of the Radical Christian Fundamentalist group, Christian Identity. Yet he was never called a "Christian Terrorist."

I know from past medical practice in East Africa and an emergency Medical Team in Banda Aceh, Indonesia after the Tsunami December 2004. I worked with thousands of Muslims as aid workers, and treated several thousand Muslim patients. I have also known many Christians, obviously, as doctors, nurses, researchers, and just average people at my home city of Inverness, my current residence in Donegal, and a year in Seattle, USA. People were people in all of those places Muslim or Christian. They were overwhelmingly good people. I hate to see what is happening because most Muslims are reacting with hatred of Christians and many Brits and Americans hate Muslims.

I only wish the US President and UK PM would abandon the stupid "never negotiate with the enemy" if you call them terrorists. What can they lose if Bush, Blair, Chirac, and Merkel would meet in a neutral place with Osama Bin Ladin, Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Sadr, and the Sunni leader in Iraq? The talks may fail. But maybe they could arrive at a compromise. The West could agree to pull troops out of Muslim Countries if Osama and Ahmadinejad agree to end terror attacks.

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it? I saw a telly programme featuring veterans of the Vietnam War (Americans and North Vietnamese/Viet Cong) meeting in Vietnam and tearfully embracing. US-Vietnamese relations were once fully based on hatred. Now today veteran old soldiers hug each other and shed tears. I predict that some day British and American veterans will have a reunion in Baghdad with veterans of the Mahdi Army, Al Qaeda, and Sunni insurgency. People of the Middle East need to exercise their self-determination not have a government designed by Westerners.

Amergin

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Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

I have studied history in the Middle East. Many assert that the Islamic Arab state started on a war of conquest without explaining it. What I read was that Heraklios, Emperor of Byzantium had just fought a war with Sassanid Persia. People in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt were monophysite Christians who were persecuted by the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. Heraklios sent a large army maing consisting of Hun mercenaries and many from provinces that were stirring against the Empire. Heraklios sent his army because he feared a Syrian insurrection that could strip Syria and Palestine from the Empire. He worried that Arabia might help the insurrectionists.

So when this vast army was moving south from Asia Minor toward the southeastern border (Nabataea and Arabia), the Arabs feared an invasion and Heraklios might have actually planned an invasion. He had exchanged angry letters with Muhammad (PBUH). So the Arab Army went forth to halt the Byzantine advance. What happened is that Syrian Monophysite Christians joined the Muslim Army defeating the Byzantines. Having taken Syria and Lebanon, Palestine was relatively undefended. The Muslims occupied it without any seriour resistance. Many of the Christians welcomed Muslim rule because they were persecuted by the Orthodox Byzantine. The same happened in Egypt. Military patrols by the Muslim Army from Sinai toward Alexandria met with enthusiasm by the Egyptians who also prefered Islamic rule to Byzantine rule. The same happened in Libya.

Byzantium continued to fight a stalemate war in Eastern Asia Minor, and put up stiff resistence in Tunisia (Carthage). The Moors, enemies of Byzantium allied with the Arab armies and Islam easily "conquered" or "converted" everything from Armenia to Morocco. In Spain a usurped Visigoth King invited Tarik to land his army in Spain. Resistence in Spain rapidly fizzled out. So there were wars, but in the eyes of Syrians and North Africans it was more wars of liberation. Christians were not molested. The Arian Christians of Visigothic Spain felt more commonality with Monotheistic Islam than Trinitarian Christianity. So many Visigothic and Hispanic Spaniards converted. The well-fare of those around them regardless of religious creed was a thing that the muslims took personal responsibility for, and people lived together in peace.


Quite true. It was the letters that Heraklios regarded as threatening and especially in view of the native unrest in Byzantine Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. There was no armed resistence by Egyptians to the Arab occupation. Today, most Egyptians are ethnically Coptic Egyptians (Hamitic) and only Arabic in language and religion. Likewise in Libya and Morocco, althought Islamic and Arabic speaking are Hamitic Moors. And on the Eastern side of this all, was Persia, which fell easily after attempting to invade Arabia. Now Persia/Iran is ethnically Irani-European with some Mongol-Turkish mixture with only a small contribution of Arab genes. Almost all Turks in central Asia became Muslim but I cannot find out if it was purely conversion or Arab conquest. I think that Mongol (Ikhan) and Turkish (Timur e-lenk) conquest of southwest Asia led to their conversion by the conquered subjects and they took Islam back to the central Asian plains with them. I am not aware the Malasia and Indonesia were conquered by any foreign Islamic Army.


I think this applied to Iranians of the North of the Plateau, along the south shore of the Caspian Sea. These Persians struck a deal with the Muslim Army occupying the rest of Persia. And they continued on as a Zoroastrian Shahdom known as Tabaristan. A century or so later they converted to Islam. Was this also the case in Cyprus, existing as a neutral island between the Umayyad Caliphate and the residual Byzantine Empire.


I think that Heraklios in sending a large Army south toward Arabia through Syria given his harsh letters would force you to assume this army was sent south for a reason, and most likely and attack on Arabia.


Do you know if this applied to Egypt? I assume it applied to Sudan, Somalia, and Arabic outposts along the coast of Africa. The African multinational language, Swahili, is (I am told) largely derived from Arabic. Malaya and the Indonesian Islands were not conquered as far as I know. And I think the vast Turkic-Mongol Khanates accepted Islam after conquering Muslims (Ilkhans of Persia, Kwarizim, and Selkuk Turks.) And Islam spread out in those Khanates except for the East Chinese Khanate of Kublai Khan.

This is how the spread of Islam started. Of course there were detractors who decided that swift and violent action should be taken against what was viewed as a new and heretical religion. Not to mention all the politics that played a part in the start of such wars.

If you study history, you will propbably find that as time went on, and the muslims were farther and farther removed from the time of the Prophet, more and more corruption could be found. It is a wrong assumption that it was Islam that caused this corruption, or that it had been interprated wrongly. The start of corruption in the Islamic empires of the past started for the same reason any other corruption started. Amergin, few it is who can drink the wine of power and not become intoxicated. The greed for territory, lust for power, and the attraction to all that that entails was the start of corruption. The root cause of the reason for corruption is what I mentioned above. When muslims fall away from Islam as a whole, it is easier for us to succumb to our less desireable traits. We can begin to cause harm rather than good. Tyranny and oppression replace justice and equal-footing.

Allah takes notice of this. Allah always removes tyranny and oppression after a time, regardless of the perpetrator. For the tyrants Allah has prepared a painful punishment. Makes no difference if the tyrant is muslim or not. Allah hates such practices as it is always damaging to the forward progress of humankind.


I hope that I have answered that question to your satisfaction. If you have any more inquiries on the subject, I know you'll feel free as a bird to post them.[/quote]

Aye, it has helped me understand the history that I have studied and rounded out by your input. And some facts were right before my eyes and I didn't notice. That is, the huge number or impressive percentage of Islamic scientists in the British Isles and France. In my younger years I assumed, wrongly that Islam opposed science much like traditional Christianity. You have shown me that is not so, and the Article in the Science Journal, Nature, on Iran showed that Islam and Science are not at odds.

Amergin

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Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

[quote=Amergin]If Muhammad (PBUH) could be collected to the present, what do you think he would advise modern Muslims to do. If we had a time machine and could go back to 628 CE and offer Muhammad (PBUH) the opportunity to travel to the year 2006, and he agreed to do so, what would he do.

How would he deal with Muslims like Osama Bin Ladin, Ahmadinejad, Muhammad Karzi, the many Islamic doctors in our hospitals, our friend Farad1, the Saudi Royal Family, and to the average men and women who comprise almost 2 billion of the Earth's population?

Christians often ask me, "What would Jesus do?" So I would also like to know what Muhammad (PBUH) would SAY? To Muslims and those of us who are not.

Amergin[/QUOTE

Mohammed was inspired by Luciel ( not Gabriel ).

If Mohamed could get out of the situation he is in then certtainly he would not advise his mates to carry on in his errors but maybe he wouldn't care and be in heart an agent of Luciel wishing, hopeing, contriving and giving all his efforts to the ****ationation ot human beings.