On 21/02/2008, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 21/02/2008, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)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.
--
geni