Are Muslims Really Muslims or Are They Mohammedans?

ca.news.yahoo.com...

Pakistan blocked access to Facebook on Wednesday on a court order over a competition encouraging users to post caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed on the social networking site.

The "blasphemy" caused by a Facebook user who set up a page called "Draw Mohammed Day", inviting people to send in their caricatures of the Muslim prophet on May 20, could inflame parts of the conservative Muslim nation.

"If some say we are extremists, then yes we are on this issue because we cannot tolerate any blasphemous act by anyone against the Prophet Mohammed," said Mohammed Amir, 32-year-old student in the eastern city of Lahore.

Samuel "clash of civilizations" Huntingdon might have been onto something after all. Maybe there is no hope for coexistence between Islam and the Humanistic cultures of much of the rest of the world. I say Islam but I'm beginning to wonder if early writers from our culture really had it right when they referred to Islam as Mohammedanism.

I must confess that I don't know much about Islam, except that Northern India, including Pakistan, was conquered by brigands from Afghanistan who arrived in pick-up trucks with Islam written on the doors.

They were mainly interested in loot, but "Islam" provided a cloak of religious probity with which they could dress up venal rapacity. (Much the way the US has operated in Iraq and Afghanistan, using "democracy" as Tammy Faye Bakker used false eyelashes and layers of pancake makeup.)

Prior to that, Pakistan was Buddhist, I believe. The Swat Valley is famous in Buddhist legend as the birthplace of Padma Sambhava, early missionary to Tibet. Buddhist Pakistan was forced to convert to Islam, and the rest is history, bloody history.

I tried to read the Koran once, and have not definitely given up on it, although I have a distaste for fire and brimstone accompanied by threats of damnation. I didn't make it to page sixty. I'd read enough to wonder if it could even pass muster under Canada's anti-hate legislation. It speaks to the tolerance of Jewish people in Canada that they haven't pursued that question in the courts.

But then the Koran is not the only holy book of Islam. We also have the Hadiths. I haven't read the Hadiths, but my understanding is that they are observations and recommendations from the lips of Mohammed, the reputedly illiterate political leader who claims to have had the Koran spoken to him by Allah.

Having at least looked a little into the Koran, I wonder if the excessive reverence accorded to Mohammed is not really the sort of thing that the Koran forbids?

Are Muslims who reverence Mohammed deviating from the teaching of the Koran? Have such Muslims actually created another religion, more properly called Mohammedanism?

Are modern Mulims not Muslims at all really, but Mohammedans?

Just asking, as might a visitor from another planet.


[edit on 19-5-2010 by ipsedixit]

I am ignorant of so much about Mohamedan religion except the idea that they,the christians and hebrews all ostensibly worship the same deity. with mohamedans worshiping the prophet mohamed, christians worshiping the savior jesus, and jews worshiping the god of abraham(the head dude for all three) but also having religious regard for abraham and moses. The god of abraham being the uniting deity.
So in the sense christ has christians, mohamed has mohamedans
N.

reply to post by ipsedixit


Yes you are right in your assumptions.

Sadly most Muslims in foreign countries follow some Hadith refusing to reconcile that it is explicitly against the Quran which is a legitimate holy book. The Hadiths were never meant to be law just recommendations. Mohammadism is alive and well.

The Quran expressly forbids worshipping idols, and makes reference to Mohammed in this respect multiple times. As well as other hadiths.