A brief quote from today’s Wikipedia article on the Baha’i faith:
So what exactly does Islam have to say that is new or different from any previous religion? I freely admit my ignorance of Islam, but all I’ve ever heard about it can be boiled down to: (1). Mohammed is the prophet of Allah. If he says it’s from God, it’s from God. (2).Here is a long list of rules. To obey Allah, you must do all the things you’re commanded to do, and avoid all the things you’re forbidden to do. If you don’t you’re damned to Hell.
That doesn’t strike me as particularly spiritual, or even particularly different from anything Moses had to say, other than the specifics of the commands. It sounds like the next step up in spiritual understanding from polytheism. I don’t see what it claims to impart that a Christian, or a Buddhist for that matter, would regard as the next “stage in the spiritual development of civilization”. Is there more to it than that?
yes it does reveal an alternative view of good.
of the three main semitic religions i.e. judaism, christianity, and islam, islam is the one where it is inappropriate to view [supreme being name here] as a “Father”
Judaism = Punishing Father
Christianity = Loving Father
Islam = Loving Leader (more appropriate to view a paritioner as a “Follower”)
1 more accuratel Mohammad is the Seal of the Prophets; the final one. Allah didn’t say anything to Mohammad. Allah wrote the Quran through the illiterate Mohammad’s hand.
2 long list. what about the 613 “laws” found in the Torah and/or Old Testament.
In islam you have 5 pillars of faith and the ten commandments.
Main difference in my view is that Islam claims to be Allah/God’s revelation for all humanity and has been kept by Him pure from idolatry, as distinct from Judaism which is just for Israel and C’nity which idolatrously worships Jesus (and Mary according to the Quran).
I might also add that the radical view of Jihad between the House of Islam (the Islamic world) & the House of the Sword (the non-Islamic world) seems to be an interesting combination of Moses/Joshua’s Holy War to conquer the land of Canaan & Christ’s Great Commission to evangelize all nations.
Ah, but that’s not a Qur’anic concept. Rather it was first articulated a couple of generations later by great Islamic theologian Abu Hanifa ( c.699/700 - 765/767/768 ), founder of the oldest ( and currently the largest ) schools of Sunni jurisprudence ( Hanafi ). As such it is ijtihid, a religious interpretation that is not a fixed religious law/canon.
Oh and to address the OP, I’m not sure the Baha’i are looking at it in quite that manner ( and we have a resident Baha’i or two I believe, who can correct me if I’m wrong ). Baha’i split off of Shi’a Islam and regard Bab, a lineal decendent of Imam Husayn, as the next prophet in a straight bloodline from Muhammed. As such I believe they regard the “reformation” of Muhammed as valid and the Qur’an as the legitimate dictated word of God. And Muhammed wasn’t intending to introduce a new philosophical paradigm necessarily, so much as in his view to correct the accumulated errors of the past - the Islamic view is that Abraham and the other major prophets, including Jesus, were Muslims - Judaism and Christianity were just unfortunate corruptions of the original Word.
So Islam was the next temporal step towards the Baha’i faith. And Bab and then Bahá’u’lláh built on that “corrected” tradition.
:dubious: Doesn’t Islam have a lot more rules than that? For instance, neither the ten commandments nor the five pillars say anything about alcoholic beverages, yet Muslims are supposed to abstain from them. Same is true of the Islamic rules about veiling women, avoiding pork, and a lot of other things.
/hijack/
To include Krishna in the list of Messengers of God, or calling him a prophet would be incorrect. Hindus believe Krishna to be an incarnation of God(Vishnu) himself and not a messenger.
/hijack off/
Not too many religions promise you 72 virgins if you martyr yourself on behalf of their deity. Never mind that it implies their god is too lazy to smite his enemies or that it makes him a pimp. I’ll assume these concepts are not derived from the prophet Muhammad and will eventually fade into the violent past that haunts most religions.
You’ll note that Jesus was on that list as well, and most Christians would raise the same objection. The point is that the Baha’i regard them both as messengers of God, not incarnations.
If part of Islam’s objection to Christianity historically stemmed from considering Christianity idolotrous (the veneration of saints) and polytheistic (the adoration of Mary), does this mean that Muslims consider the Protestant version of Christianity at least marginally less offensive?
No, Protestant C’nity still holds to the Trinity of God, the Deity of Jesus & His worthiness to be worshipped. All these are still considered idolatrous in Islam.
Even an Arian C’tian faith still exalts Jesus too highly to be considered pure in Islam, the very title "Son of God’ is regarded as blasphemous in the Quran.
Well, historically I’m not sure you could say that those were the main issues of dispute.
Protestants are still trinitarian ( most of them, anyway ) which is a much more significant issue than venerating saints. Indeed many branches of Islam have figures of veneration as well - Shi’a Imams, Sufi saints, etc. - only the most hardcore neo-Salafi types have much issue with that.
