On 21/02/2008, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 21/02/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I think "belong" is the wrong word. Muhammad has meaning outside the context of Islam.
Perhaps it isn't the wrong word though; perhaps, primarily Muhammad does belong to Islam? That would be largely consistent with the wikipedia article, and if you google him.
The guy was moderately competent military leader. There is more than one way to categories the man.
OK, consider L.Ron Hubbard- does he belong to Scientology?
I would argue a highly qualified yes, or it's arguable. How do you decide?
Since scientology talk about him quite a bit, he's theirs to a fair degree. But highly qualified, because there's a lot of quite high quality sources on him that say completely the opposite to what Scientology says; so he doesn't completely belong to them.
You've forgotten his status as a Si-Fi author.
But for Jesus and Muhammad, very much the biggest sources by far that we have on them are from their respective religions, and thus the term 'belonging', probably is very appropriate.
You can't really compare the two. Aside from Christianity Jesus is a very minor figure in the historical record. Just one of a a number of Jewish preachers who picked up a following so ranks about level with Theudas and below John of Gischala.
Muhammad was on the other hand a military leader of some import who founded and lead a small empire.