![71a3421bd7138a1b96ce3d3537b66e22[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/r5ENSXv.jpg "71a3421bd7138a1b96ce3d3537b66e22[1].jpg")
how could Muhammad be illiterate if he was a merchant?
Isn't reading kind of required to be a merchant?
Nah nigga you only need to count, not read. Also he wrote the Koran so probably wasn't illiterate.
He wasn't illiterate. It's a made up idea to further promote that he must have been special.
The justification comes from a part of the Quran which says he isn't a person of the book. This is taken to mean illiterate, but it actually means a gentile, a non jew, and it is used in that way other times. It's to say that though Muhammad wasn't a Jew he was still a prophet.
The man must have been able to read and probably write because he was a merchant, and more crucially, specific numerals didn't exist at that point, letters were used to represent numbers, so he must have at least known 9 letters.
>>752406
>The justification comes from a part of the Quran which says he isn't a person of the book
wow, is that really where the interpretation for that particular meme comes from? That is about as vague as anything written in the Bible.
considering the Quran is meant to be taken literally, I would interpret it as he isnt a mathmatician/philosopher/educated elite. That would make more sense than HE DONT LIKE BOOKS MUST MEAN HE CANT READ.
then again, the entire meme is meant to justify his "sudden message" from Gabriel or some shit, i can see the justification to push the meme given that, but it still seems a bit extreme
>>752405
> Doesn't know about dictation.
>>752422
It's pretty obvious that it means gentile, it only started to become "illiterate" when Imams wanted to promote Muhammad as something more special. Theres a reason they force Muslims to read the Quran in Arabic when most can't read Arabic.
I used to be Muslim, its a very corrupt religion, the only true and proper form of it would be Quran alone and without any organisation, just personal. But religion in general is something bad for humans.
>>752452
wait... im connecting dots here....
>feels the need to explicitly mention he is a gentile
I suppose this is meant to distance him from jews
>merchant
would a merchant in Mecca around to 6th century AD have much contact with Jews? I know after the diaspora they scattered like dust, with most ending in Europe, but iirc some did end up in areas around the middle east
>received his revelations as an "divine inspiration"
so either he came up with the entirety of Islam on his own, or he had some help. Since the actual written account is out of the question.
which leads to my final series of thoughts, which are dulled by my lack of knowledge of early Middle Eastern history. What sort of Currency was used in Mecca around the period of Muhammad's lifespan? And what effect did the creation of Islam have on the local economies in Arabia?
>>752486
>would a merchant in Mecca around to 6th century AD have much contact with Jews?
Yeah. Arabia had a lot of totally Jewish tribes, plus he traded up in Syria and the Levant.
>so either he came up with the entirety of Islam on his own, or he had some help. Since the actual written account is out of the question.
With his knowledge of biblical stories i imagine he spent a lot of time in his room reading the bible and torah and chatting with scholars. Then he came back and started his own.
I don't know about the currency, just generic coins i guess. Archaeology is limited by the Saudi government, Arabia actually has a rich history of civilisation before Islam but we're not allowed to know much about it.
>>752403
>tfw we'll never get a legitimate Muhammad visual novel
He's quite literally the perfect VN hero.
>starts out a orphan nobody
>works for MILF widow who eventually marries him
>gets kicked out of Mecca
>becomes a important figure in Medina
>marries his best bro Abu Bakr loli daughter
>bunch of other wives for people with other tastes
>Even gets a NTR (IE getting cucked) scare when rumors spread that the his loli wife Aisha had sex with the guard who rescues her when a caravan left without her
>plenty of action with Muslims fighting pagan Arabs
It would be perfect
>>752493
IIRC he had a friend who was well-acquainted with Greek scholarship. Am I correct or full of shit?
>>752493
maybe I am attempting to narrow of a stroke when bringing it down to currency specifically.
I guess ill just out and say what I am hypothesizing in my head
at the risk of sounding like a /pol/ tin foil hatter, could Islam have resulted as a botched handling of a Jewish attempt to create a unified economic powerhouse in the middle east?
Given the information that the middle east is what separates the "western" nations from the wealth in India, and the amount of trade that was already present in Arabia, it would seem upon initial observation that a unified state that could capitalize on all that trade would become a powerful economic force. Just look at how wealthy Constantinople was when compared to most cities of the time period. That wealth was produced by the trade between East and West.
Take into account the lack of a unified religion in the area, and the experience of watching Christianity expand, it would only make sense to take the lessons learned from the mistakes made in the growth of Christianity and apply it into a doctrine that is designed specifically to assimilate as many people and as much territory as possible.
I guess my whole tin foil conspiracy theory here is that the ultimate goal was for the Jews to make use of this unified state and capitalize on its wealth in the same way that they eventually succeeded with doing in the United States.
>>752526
Lol
>>752513
>wanting to play a game about a kiddy fiddler
lmao fag
>>752526
Islam was very much involved with trade but I don't think it was an organised attempt at religion in that manner. It's fairly clear from the texts that it was Muhammad preaching to the poor and downtrodden, who once they finally joined him, probably influenced him to have more revelations about trade and rights, as well as warfare of course.
Arabia until about the 5th century was full of powerful kingdoms, but something happened, we're not entirely sure which, and most of the kingdoms collapsed. The Quran is full of references to ghost cities. It could be due to the fall of Rome. Regardless, this Arab "Dark age" is probably what caused a religion to emerge.
I don't view Muhammad like most do, he was a typical guy preaching religion to create a new more just social order. Whether he molested children isn't the issue because it was the 7th century, though no, he isn't a good example to follow your life by today.
>>752403
>reading is kind of required to be merchant
AFAIK not much if you just forwarding goods in a backwater place.
>>752486
>Jews
There are jews in Madinah. Muhammad start antagonizing them when they laughed his version of biblical stories. One tribe slaughtered, the other banished.
>currency
Gold denari and silver drachm was used, it was made by empire outside of arabia
>effect on economy
As arab united, I assume there's less inter-tribe raids which means safer to conduct trade inside muslim land.
>>752403
Muhammad never actually claimed to be illiterate. The illiteracy meme was pushed by Muslim scholars centuries after his death based on a questionable interpretation of the word "ummy", which as >>752406 has said was used to mean gentile in the rest of the Quran.
Indeed, it's unclear if "ummy" even meant illiterate at the time that the Quran was written. There's a bunch of stuff in the Hadith that suggests that he may well have been able to write.
>>752422
"People of the book" (Ahl al-Kitaab) refers to Abrahamic religions. It definitely means he was a gentile.
There's no way he was illiterate, it's just stupid shit to appeal to commoners like "Jesus was a carpenter"
>>752486
>so either he came up with the entirety of Islam on his own, or he had some help. Since the actual written account is out of the question.
The 'entirety' of Islam didn't come about until a few generations after his death to explain the rapid social and political changes that had taken place in the chaos of the Arab conquests. If we just take the Quran to be our earliest contemporary source on Muhammad, then it's clear that Muhammad's divine inspiration is in effect his message of doctrinal purity and anti-pagan influence in Judaism and Christianity alike. The way he talks about Jewish and Christian stories and texts in the Quran doesn't come off as someone who had secretly learned this information from a book he once read or divine wisdom, but that these things were actually common knowledge that everyone around him already knew.
Reminder that there is absolutely no reason to take the traditional 'biography' of Muhammad as historical fact.
>>753585
This t b h
Modern scholarship now concludes that he was most likely a Jewish messianic figure with a large Jewish and Christian following that grew out of the early Ebionite Christian tradition and started a reform movement to bring Christianity "back to its Judaic roots" and liberate Jerusalem from the Romans, which he did. Not Umar.
>>752405
He didn't write anything. He had his apostles or whatever to write for him.
>>753884
>fringe
More like a third of all Islamic studies nowadays, with other two-thirds divided into staunch traditionalists and a middle group reconciling both.
>>752526
Mohammad did not take the year he started becoming the warlord that he was and go forward from there.
He tied himself backwards in history to all of the prophets of the OT, and to Jesus, all the way back to Adam.
His claim is that God revealed Himself to the Jews through the prophets, and then to the world through Jesus, but that people lost the message and were not acting properly. Hence Mohammad comes with a "new" revelation, that purports to be a continuation of the same story from Adam to Abraham to Moses to Jesus to Mohammad. He attempted to co-opt both Jews and Christians into this way of thinking, mostly without success.
As he grew older, he grew more violent, and spoke more about killing infidels, instead of trying to "revert" them "back" to a stage of being a muslim. That is why the quran is not written chronologically; if you read it chronologically, it is clearly a man's descent into madness.
Pre-literate cultures tend to produce people with amazing mental skills. Four men actually had the quran, or at least the sayings, memorized. Following Mohammad's death at the hands of a Jewess, the resulting battle to be his successor cost the life of one of those men. The other three were conscripted to write down their accounts, lest they be lost to death as well.
From all of the writings, the winner of the struggle for succession chose one, forbid all others on pain of death, and held onto the "true" quran very tightly. It was not well disseminated.
From a meeting in a cave with an angel, whom Mohammad knew at first to be Shaitan, to twenty years of having that angel whisper into his ear, Mohammad has probably led more people to hell than anyone else alive.
>>753520
Most of what Mohammad "knew" about Christianity is false.
Jesus never spoke from His manger to the wise men.
Jesus never brought a clay pigeon to life.
Jesus never raised His childhood friend to life.
Jesus never told anyone to worship Mary.
Jesus really did get crucified.
Jesus really did die.
Jesus really did rise from the dead.
Islam is the "different gospel, told to a man by an angel" that is accursed, according to the Apostle Paul.
>>754068
>I have no idea what I'm talking about
>>754077
These are not things Muhammad was preaching about Christianity, these are things that from the language of the text imply were common beliefs (or troubling minor heresies) of Christianity in his part of Arabia. Considering the many heresies and conflicts in the Roman Empire at the time, it's not difficult to imagine some of these groups being pushed into the desert the same way Nestorianism and Arianism were.
The crucifixion, death, and resurrection in the Quran are never explained as a definitive counterpoint to Christian belief, but as an argument against whatever Medinan Jews were saying about Jesus.
>>754077
>Islam is the "different gospel, told to a man by an angel" that is accursed, according to the Apostle Paul.
I'm pretty sure that's whatever the Galatian churches were teaching five or six hundred years before Islam.
>>754042
The staunch traditionalists being big-bearded idiots at donkey colleges across the Middle East. Modern scholarship has only just begun to dissect the narrative that Islamists have held under lock and fucking key. There are plenty of exciting scholars coming out of the woodwork and the moment the Islamic world trades violence and dogmatism in for rational thought and scholarship there will be hundreds if not thousands more following in their footsteps.
>>754129
But Islam is just a hyper-evangelical, absurd form of Arianism
>>754170
If it was it'd just be called Arianism. There are other influences at work both in the Quran and later Iraqi scholarship that makes it a distinct movement.
>>753884
Lol
Please do explain why you consider the hadith to be a reliable historical source.
>>754170
Funny you should say that, there's a theory by some Spanish writer whose name I forget that there was no initial Islamic conquest of Spain. Instead Spain was conquered by Arian Berbers and Arabs who Islamized after a second migration of Syrians after the rise of the Abbasids and then fully Islamic with the Almoravid invasion that retroactively reworked Maghreb Muslim history.
It's a little off the wall for my taste, but there's some insight there about how we take certain religious and polemic narratives on events centuries old by the time of their writing for granted.
>>752513
>>753820
>painting mohammed in any positive light
>not hidden taqiyya
Are you fucking retarded? (That's a rhetorical question. You are absolutely fucking retarded and in a moment I'll explain why).
These absolutely ARE taqiyya-threads.
>muslims believe something different from every subtle compliment they spout
>dhimmis believe something distorted and blab before they can even SIT BACK AND THINK: Anything less and your intelligence is ignored
That is fucking taqiyya, you little shits. All I'm doing is inverting the perspective, returning it to its proper position.
You're telling me that if I don't consent to your "tolerance" and post some circlejerk, I can't be worth consideration.
There's no reason for me to have to admire someone or something before I've said what I want, and I won't fucking do it.
I'm not like these spineless anons, mindlessly acquiescing to your bullshit and excessive "open-mindedness."
I do what I want, when I want.
Get in my lane, and I run you the fuck over.
Deus vult.
>>754184
There were certainly other elements that were specific to the context.The word on most serious scholars' lips seems points away from the notion that a striving small businessman actually heard the angel Gabriel in a cave.
>>754251
>taqiyya
>>754251
Oh my god. I hope somehow you can read this post again when you grow up and realize how silly you sound.
>>754251
No offense anon, but you sound like a retard
>>754129
The quran expressly states that "al-lah" played some sort of trick and replaced Jesus on the cross, so Jesus went to heaven without dying.
I'd quote the sura, but you're in full taqiyya mode.
>>754152
Paul's church at Galatia was being told the true gospel of Jesus Christ by Paul, and was warned by Paul to accept nothing different, even if it came from Peter, James and John.
>>753896
This. It wasn't even his first apostles that wrote it down; the thing didn't get transcribed until a few hundred years after Mohammad's death.
>>754275
Don't take the Lord's name in vain. What a hypocrite zozz
>>754309
Nice opinions. You still write like an idiot.
>I do what I want, when I want
just like my 4 year old nephew
>>754309
To his credit, he briefly unified and (more or less) pacified a plethora of Arab tribes that had been continuously killing each other for centuries.
It wasn't until he died that his social justice project became just another ruthless empire.
>>754322
Tribal rivalries still existing is what doomed the Rashiduns ;-;
>>754329
>>754329
>>754293
I repeat, the text takes about what some Jews were claiming. What it meant regarding Christian views was not brought up at all until much later.
>but you're in full taqiyya mode
That'd be Surah 4:157 if you're having trouble searching for it in whatever place you keep your copypasta to avoid having to ever debate seriously with other people.
>>754339
Know this is bait, but gonna take it anyway for shits and gigs.
I don't deny that Islam has degenerated immensely in the last two centuries; if it weren't for radical Islam, it would be totally irrelevant today. But you have to admit that it started out strongly as a primarily positive revolution. Mohammad definitely wasn't a perfect person by any standard, but he had good intention and surprising success that carried on for a good 40 years.
He just didn't take into account the fact that he was the glue that held the whole movement together, so it took a dive immediately after he died.
>>754301
>
you re talking about the paul who never met Jesus?
>>752405
> Giving the exact word of God to an illiterate
As if the burning bush and zombie son wasn't enough proof that God is taking the piss.
>>754068
>if you read it chronologically
is there a quran like this? Would like to read it like that.
>>752403
More importantly if he was a good merchant he would have paid someone to teach him arabic literacy. Either he's a nigger who just spent his profits on hashish n shit or he was a terrible merchant who couldn't get enough for a tutor.
>>757032
Ali compile quran like this, but rejected by other shahaba.
You could recompile it like this as there are study about occasion/circumstance of revelation (أسباب النزول) but no scholar doing it.
>>752403
Well, since exchange and trade predate writing, evidently not.
Even then, literacy is a spectrum. It's pretty easy to be a merchant and only get by with a few personal and place names and some numbers. Names and numbers was pretty much all the very earliest writing was anyway.
>>752513
>legitimate Muhammad visual novel
Anon, I...
>>754314
"god" is not the Lord's name. It's not even capitalized.
Hey this is an odd question but the Qu'ran and the hadith seem to use the same system as the bible (i.e. verse 4:18) which I find interesting, who developed the system first?
>>757150
Probably the bible.
It's probably just a natural consequence of connecting separate books into one, and adding numbers to each verse such that citation is easy.
>>754331
They didn't really listen to Mamet, huh
>>752493
I can't wait for this wahabi bullshit to die down so we can start excavating all the lost cities in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula.
>>752493
>Palmyra
>tfw Palmyra is gone forever
