Islam, The Religion

 I know a bit about Christianity.  I also know a bit about Judaism.  Islam has me stumped.

The historical record is confusing.  Greek polytheism in bygone ages attracted some portion of Hebraic youth. The were attracted to Greek scientific ideas and they enjoyed Greek athletic games. The Romans borrowed heavily from Greek theology.  But they were more militaristic, and far more were brutal.  Under the Greeks you could take it or leave it.  Under the Romans, you had to acknowledge your subservient status.  That's where the Jews got into trouble.

The Christians were an offshoot of the Jews.  Jesus Christ was a Jew.  He was a particular type of a Jew.  He was a Pharisaic Jew, which distinguished him from the Sadducees. With the Sadducees, the worship of God was obeying his commandments and offering sacrifices.  The sacrifices were given at the Temple in Jerusalem,  It was run by the Kohanim, the priestly class.  You could offer bags of grain or or a pidgin or a lamb.  What you gave was a function of how rich you were.

However, when the Babylonians conquered the Jews, many of the leading Jews were exiled to Babylonia. There they had no temple.  However, the rabbis decided that Jews could offer up to God their prayers.  After about 40 years, Cyrus conquered the Babylonians and released the Jews from their exile.  They were free to return to Israel. 

Many of the returning Jews concluded that if prayer was a suitable form of worship in Babylonia, it was equally suitable in Israel.  Needless to say, there was considerable strife between the Sadducees and the Pharisees.  The destruction of the temple by the Romans ended the Pharisees.  From that time on, Judaism was carried forth by the Pharisees.  Indeed, Jesus was a Pharisee; a Jew in conflict with the Sadducees.  

After the death of Jesus, at the hands of Pontus Pilat, the teachings of Jesus were spread by his disciples.  Their message didn't have a great impact on Jews.  They were, however, received with some favor by the non-Jews in Greece and Turkey.  The disciples found it necessary to drop a number of Jewish practices, such as circumcision and the prohibition against eating pork. So as not to offend the Romans, the disciples presented the cruel Pontus Pilot as an unassuming Roman Governor.

Early Christians were persecuted as heretics by the Romans.  However, when the Roman empire came under relentless attack by various gothic tribes from the north, Emperor Constantine decided to make peace with the Christians who were found throughout Turkey and who had multiplied by converting the people around them.  Constantine worshiped the sun god until the time of his approaching death. He then  converted to Christianity.  However, some years earlier, Constantine assembled various religious leaders in the city of Nicea.  All Christians, he decided,  had to subscribe to one Christian faith.  The creed they authored was the Nicene Creed.  It remains to this day the statement subscribed to by all Chistian denominations.

Let's now turn to the Muslims.  Most know about the Quran, the book dictated to Mohammad by the angel Gabriel, and committed to writing by Mohammad's wife.  There are two other books arguably as important; namely, the Hadith and the Sunna.   Some observations:  Mohammad was not born until many generations after Jesus.  How then could he designate the first Jew, Abraham, as the first of the Islamic prophets?  How could he view Jesus as another Islamic prophet?  How could he claim the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem as an Islamic site, when it was built by Jews, for Jews?

To be honest there is little consistency in any of the western faiths and probably within any of the various religious faith.  The only thing that has been observed is the historic propensity of the various faiths to fight one another.  The struggles between the Protestants and the Catholic have been bloody.  An equal level of enmity can be found between the Shia Muslims and the Sunni Muslims.  And, both faiths have been atrocious towards the Jews, the people who started it all.  The treatment of Druze and Bahai hasn't been much better.

Many, if not most of this religious strife has ebbed.  But how do we distinguish between the secular Muslim and the Sharia committed Muslim?