Jack the Bodiless

When seeking to excuse the atrocities and errors of the Old Testament, Christians have a couple of strategies. One is to argue that those rules applied only to a brutal people in brutal times, and "Jesus swept all that away". Another is to argue that not all of the Bible is "inspired by God" and there's a lot of nastiness in there of purely human origin.

But what of "liberal" Muslims? The would-be moderate Muslim has two problems: the Koran is supposed to be the "current edition" of the Will of Allah, and every word is supposedly dictated by Allah and perfectly recorded by Mohammed. They can argue that certain passages are written in an "allegorical" or "poetic" style, but that's about all the wiggle room they have.

But does Islam teach that there will be no more prophets? Is there any Koranic equivalent of the passage in Revelation which declares that no more books can be added to the Bible?

Could a moderate Muslim (or an undercover ex-Muslim secular humanist with nerves of steel) declare himself to be next in line after Mohammed, with an updated set of revelations from Allah detailing the new rules of Islam for the modern age?

lugotorix

Yes, they teach that Mohammed was "the Seal of the Prophets", ie, the last one that God was going to have. As a result, any Muslim that claimed to be a prophet was de facto a heretic. The Baha'i faith started this way, with a Shi'ite man called "the Bab" claiming to be a prophet in the 1840s. From what little I've learned from some Iranian Baha'is who escaped to the US in the early 1980s, they face severe persecution anywhere that fundamentalist Muslims come to power.


lugotorix

kryzhn

from the few knowledge i got on the Baha'i faith, it is certainly a better religion than islam. baha'i spreads peace while islam spreads violence. enough said.

Daniel_AnglumTM

There has been various claims of individuals to be a Prophet some of these groups still exist. One was (whose name escapes me) arose in Sudan in the 1880's, i think this is more of Shitte than Sunni phenomana?

Heathen Dawn

In the 19th century, the Afghan cleric Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Al-Qadiyaani declared himself prophet. Needless to say, he and his followers, much like the Baha'is, were persecuted through all that generation. Later they revised the movement, saying that Al-Qadiyaani was Messiah rather than prophet, and that calmed the spirits down.

The Ahmadiyya sect of Islam are rather like Chabad in Judaism: they believe in a Messiah who is dead but will soon be resurrected, and will redeem all righteous people upon earth. I think a similar sect existed in Judaism in the days of the Roman Empire. I wonder whatever became of it?