Muhammad

THE FAITH THAT MOVES MOUNTAINS:

The way of the peaceful warrior it’s a great book that would allow people to see how they can cause change. It is written by Dan Millman who brings us the following from another of his books that is worth contemplating.

“On an ordinary day, an angel appeared to a young merchant and former camel herder, known to everyone in the city where he was born. The angel’s words filled him with amazement and awe: he told him that he must defy his ancestral religion of the people, denouncing 360 deities carved in stone and worshiped for centuries, declaring himself a prophet of one God, abolishing a way of life on which countless lives and beliefs were founded, and establishing a new religion out of nothing Surely, he would meet with disbelief, rejection, violent persecution, and exile.

Or would this mortal, obedient to an angel’s divine command, achieve a victory beyond anything reason could have predicted?

He was born in Mecca in AD 570. His father died before he was born. Devastated by his mother, unable to care for him, she named him Muhammad and gave him to a nanny, a herdsman from a Bedouin band. Muhammad spent his first five years with these nomads, living a harsh existence in the great outdoors following grazing herds through desert grass and scrub, sleeping in tents under vast desert skies. Once weaned, he drank camel’s milk and ate mainly rice, dates, wild birds, and lobsters fried in oil. From the beginning, the desert claimed Muhammad as its own. He would always be a Bedouin at heart.

At the age of six, he returned to his mother, but she died that same year. She ended up living with an uncle, a caravan dealer. In the years that followed, Muhammad traveled throughout Arabia with his uncle’s caravans, learning the wisdom of the desert, the ways of doing business, and the art of war as they battled marauding bands. His travels brought him into close contact with various tribes and religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Arab sects that worshiped hundreds of gods and goddesses in the form of stone idols. These experiences left a deep impression on this thoughtful and introspective young man. From these first threads, he woven the tapestry of his own destiny.

He grew into a handsome young man admired for his strong character, moral integrity, and sharp mind. But he had come to life as a merchant more by chance than choice. Disinterested in money and drawn to solitude, he left the caravan to work as a shepherd in the desert for months.

When he was 25 years old, Muhammad took a position in a trading company owned by a beautiful woman 15 years his senior. Her name was Khadija. For two years, he led Khadija’s caravans throughout Arabia, rising to the position of company manager. Not surprisingly, Khadija fell in love with him. Finally, she proposed to him through an intermediary. Their marriage, which she blessed them with six daughters, would last until Khadija’s death 21 years later.

But almost as soon as the wedding ceremony was over, Muhammad’s mind turned inward again. His encounters with so many cultures and religions had planted hidden seeds within him that began to grow. He found himself pondering how the 360 ​​stone gods in the Meccan temple could save souls. Such questions led him to search once more for his own soul in the solitude of the desert.

Muhammad began spending his days in a cave in the hills outside of Mecca, fasting, praying, and meditating. Sleeping little, he began to enter altered states {It seems that a man estranged from a woman who has visions that he is a shepherd and a poor person, might have begun to be attractive in the literary lore.} and having waking visions – to experience the inner life of a mystery Sometimes a violent tremor seized him and he lost consciousness. A practical man of robust health who had endured many grueling journeys across the desert, he encountered these strange and disturbing phenomena. But these internal tremors {Buddha’s story includes many of these kinds of things. What would happen to them today?} What he feared might be harbingers of ill health were actually the premonitory tremors of a great awakening.

One night in the holy month of Ramadan in his 40th year, while fasting and praying in his desert cave, Muhammad heard a voice calling out to him with great urgency. Looking up into the darkness of his cave, he saw an angel standing before him, emanating a dazzling light. Muhammad fainted from fear, when he woke up, he found the angel still standing there.

“Read, you,” the angel commanded in a voice of severe authority.

“I can’t,” Muhammad stammered, because he could barely read.

‘Read,’ the angel commanded him again in verse, ‘in the name of the Lord who created all things, who created man from a clot. Read in the name of the Most High who taught man the use of the pen and taught him what he did not know before.’

In amazement, Muhammad repeated these words, memorizing each one. Then the angel said: ‘Muhammad, you are the messenger of Allah and I am his angel, Gabriel.’

With that, the angel vanished.

In a stunned elation, Muhammad went and told Khadija what had happened. She embraced him and unequivocally expressed her faith in his vision and her mission, saying, ‘Rejoice, dear husband. He who holds Khadija’s life in his hands is my witness that you will be the messenger of his people.’

But Muhammad could not accept his own vision. How could he, an ordinary man so far from perfect, be such a messenger? He feared that he might be delusional or perhaps crazy. The days passed. He waited for another sign, more confirmation so he could believe in himself and know how to proceed. But there is no camera signal.

Finally, he returned to the cave on Mount Hira, in search of the angel Gabriel. He waited and prayed, but to no avail. Desperate, plagued by terrible doubts and assailed by fears of madness, Muhammad climbed a precipice and prepared to leap to his death. At that very moment, the angel appeared before him again and, raising his hands, repeated: ‘I am Gabriel and you are Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah.’ Muhammad froze on the edge of the abyss in a spellbound trance. Hours passed. That night, one of Khadija’s servants came and found Muhammad still perched on a rock, lost in ecstasy, and brought him home.

After that event, Muhammad began quietly spreading the revelation of his new faith to a few close friends and family. But in this tight-knit culture, the news spread quickly. Before long, he began his persecution: gossip, brutal beatings, plots against him, and attempts on his life. Over time, his honesty and virtue, the words of the Scriptures were revealed through him, and the mysterious mechanisms of fate caused the conversion of several of Mecca’s greatest warriors. All of this greatly strengthened the fledgling faith of Islam and struck fear into the hearts of its enemies.

People demanded that he perform miracles as proof of his divine mission. Muhammad replied that he had not come to perform miracles; he had come to preach the word of Allah. Challenged to move a mountain, he looked up at it but it did not move, so he uttered the now famous words that demonstrate his wisdom, humor and humility: “If the mountain does not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad will go to the mountain.” .’

From beginning to end, Muhammad recognized himself as an ordinary man, full of flaws and limitations, a man chosen by God, for reasons he did not understand, to deliver a new revelation of Islam, which means ‘submission to God’. Islam required faith in God, charity, purity, and a life free from idols, lived with the courage of a warrior in battle, with prayer as a purifying immersion in his spirit.

The citizens of Mecca were enraged by Muhammad’s attack on their beloved idols and by his declaration that there was only one God, called Allah, and that he, Muhammad, was His prophet. Forced to flee across the desert to the city of Medina, he began his mission anew, once more as a lone prophet with a handful of followers in a city of unbelievers.

In time, the angel Gabriel revealed the scriptures to Muhammad, which he recited aloud and which Khadija and others wrote down. This scripture became known as the Holy Qur’an (Quran). The Qur’an was Muhammad’s defining miracle: the writing of this masterpiece of religious poetic scripture by a simple, semi-literate man could have earned him the fame of a prophet. But this feat was only one chapter in Muhammad’s life.

Persecuted as a heretic for almost two decades by the people of Mecca {How was Khadija alive if she spent almost two decades there? The math doesn’t work, but perhaps the semi-literate won’t worry.}, Including many of his own relatives and former friends, the once young Bedouin became a fearless military general in old age. More than once, the Meccan army laid siege, seeking to destroy Medina, where Muhammad and his followers lived; their war would not end until Muhammad or Mecca fell. In the final battle, outnumbered three to one, but filled with the power of Allah, Muhammad and his followers descended like a storm on the Meccan army and destroyed it. This battle turned the tide.” (1)

People who ridicule the legends of Indians and natives are not funny and it’s not right for me to do it either. It still seems like a bad role model for gaining a following for the sword of Allah or Yahweh (Yahu) or Shiva. We are all paying the price that these storytellers have wrought since the days of Caliph Omar and Constantine, who took the fledgling new beliefs and built empires under their spell of ignorance. Omar said that there was no need to read anything but the Qur’an when he commanded one of the raids to destroy the great library of Alexandria that housed all knowledge; we need to really know about our roots. Islam has a lot of good and is less bigoted than other Ur Story based religions. The Caliphate still has its stranglehold on the souls of the people. He doesn’t want people to have knowledge, so he encourages reading old books with limited meaning, as I see it.

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