Duvduv

I have found it rather interesting in corresponding with Sunni Muslims that they all state that all the stories about the origins of Shia Islam going back to the time of Ali and Hussein after Mohammed are fiction and fantasy. It is argued that in fact there is not a shred of documentary evidence even from the Shia that their religion existed anywhere before the 15th or 16th century when Shah Ismail the First instituted Shia Islam as the religion of Persia to provide an alternative to Sunni Islam that originated among the Arabs.

Ismail imported clerics from Lebanon (the area is called Jabal Amil). All that is ever stated about the Shia is concerning undocumented "rebellions" against the Caliphate.

Thus, there is reason to believe that Lebanon/Syria, which was the meeting place of so many religious trends, was the source of philosophy that gave rise to Shia Islam in Persia.

The similarity between the emergence of Christianity under the Constantinian regime in the 4th and 5th centuries and the emergence of Shia Islam in the 16th century is rather intriguing. Were it not for this development, Shiism would have ended up like the Druze or Alawite religion as a tiny sect in the mountains of Lebanon. This also answers the question as to why there are so many Shia Muslims in Lebanon and Syria, so far from Iran - the influence started from Lebanon and moved to Iran and not the other way around.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_I

aa5874

Again, you present propaganda. You have NO actual evidence that Christianity emerged in the 4th and 5th century.

There is ACTUAL RECOVERED DATED evidence that suggest the Jesus cult of Christians had emerged by the 2nd-3rd century.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...stament_papyri

Duvduv

Ismail's maternal grandmother was a Pontian Greek, who had converted to Islam from Orthodox Christianity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontic_Greeks

It is not at all hard to see that Ismail would have found the religious mixture in Lebanon/Syria of interest in establishing his regime against his enemies, the Sunni Muslim Arabs.

sotto voce

Hardly a conversion. The Christus Victor teaching of the Orthodox is in practice no different from the Islamic teaching that Jesus did not even die. It is evidently more credible among developed people to admit that he died, but there is no reason why one cannot decide in the other direction instead.

As we well know here, the establishment of Islam in the 7th century bore many similarities of origin with those that prompted the reluctant decision of the Roman Empire to set up its caricature of Christianity, that was to murder so many who claimed to follow the Christ of the New and Old Testaments, which sources were buried away from common view. At the average rate of one bloody conflict every other year, for 160 years, Islam, that ignored the restraint of 'Turn the other cheek', exceeded the mortality rate of the Romans and their successors. All Muslims, of whatever sect, recognise Muhammad as their prophet, and therefore carry the responsibility of his mass murders and those of his immediate successors. At least the Orthodox do not carry this indictment, though of course at leadership level they recognise the papists as separated brothers, and therefore share in their evils. Ordinary Orthodox tend to regard any 'pope' as being 'as great a heretic as can be imagined', for reason of historic brutality.

Duvduv

This is a different matter entirely. I was merely referring to the well-known claims that Shia Islam originated upon the deaths of Ali and Hussein and the establishment of the 12 caliphate of the infallible imams which distinguishes Shiism from Sunni Islam, and the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever of any Shia religion before the advent of the Safavid regime in Persia. This is why the Sunnis claim that the origins of Shiism in the 8th century are all false and mythological.
Furthermore, the claims of a Shiite regime in Egypt in the Middle Ages is also without any evidentiary foundation and is also a myth.

sotto voce

Not so.

Duvduv

"Not so" what?????

Duvduv

Interestingly enough the claim of the so-called Ismaili Shiite regime in Egypt is mythical because there are no Sunni sources, Christian or Jewish sources that say anything about it, much less anything else about Shiism in the early centuries.

Of course an argument could be made that Muhammad himself never existed and that the religion did not emerge as we know it until the establishment of the caliphate in Baghdad, at least 150 years after Muhammad is said to have died.

The fact that the Quran only mentions the name Muhammad four times (as compared to Moses 136 and Jesus 25) is significant. Even one prophetic verse (61:6) spoken by Jesus doesn't use the name Mohammed:

And [mention] when Jesus, the son of Mary, said, "O children of Israel, indeed I am the messenger of Allah to you confirming what came before me of the Torah and bringing good tidings of a messenger to come after me, whose name is Ahmad." But when he came to them with clear evidences, they said, "This is obvious magic."

And of course the invocation in the Quran of a historical Jesus with verses stated by Allah concerning him clearly indicates writings or oral traditions of a syncretic Arabian Christ sect who worshipped Allah known to the author who created the composite that originated totally apart from the Muhammad tradition. For example:

[61:14] O ye who believe! Be ye helpers of Allah: As said Jesus the son of Mary to the Disciples, "Who will be my helpers to (the work of) Allah?" Said the disciples, "We are Allah's helpers!" then a portion of the Children of Israel believed, and a portion disbelieved: But We gave power to those who believed, against their enemies, and they became the ones that prevailed.

Duvduv

Perhaps as a composite therefore it is possible to identify different strata in the Quran, i.e. a strata emanating from a sect that believed in a historical Jesus; a strata from a sect of Noahide Judaic monotheists; a strata belonging to an Arabian monotheistic warrior sect led by someone named Ahmad, etc.
There were clearly a variety of sects apparently sharing ideas found in various ideas circulating in the areas. The Qarmatians were clearly not "Muslims," not to mention mystics who became sufis, gnostics who later latched on to Shiism and became Druze and Alawites, etc.

If the argument against a first century Jesus is presented to any Muslim they have to address the issue as it is presented in the Quran which holds of a historical Jesus - although it does not specifically place him in any historical context. And since Islam accepts a "gospel/injil" (not necessarily specifically the NT), whereby Jesus visits the Temple in Jerusalem, I wonder how Islamic scholars reject the idea of a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

Duvduv

A sensible explanation for the absence of a "Paul" in the Quran (Bulus) is simply that even by the 7th century the epistles and Acts were not universally known, or at least the source for the segments of the Quran mentioning Jesus and condemnation of deification of Jesus existed PRIOR to the arrival the epistles and Acts into the Arabian area, were considered "authentic" stories, and therefore could not be altered by the redactors of the Quran.