Muhammad claimed he was visited by the Angel Gabriel while meditating in a cave during Ramadan (yes, the Arabic holiday predates Islam). Gabriel gave him a holy text and told him to read it, but Mo protested that he couldn't. Mo was but an illiterate camel driver and couldn't read or write a word. In any case, Gabriel informed him that he was now Allah's right-hand man. Mo thought he had been visited by a demon (first impressions are often accurate) and thought of killing himeself. Instead, he ran home to his first wife, a lady 15 years older than he, and hid himself in her blankets.
Mrs. Mo convinced her husband that the visitation was truly from an angel and she became his first convert. Craig Winn of "Prophet of Doom" believes she was just an opportunist, who saw this as a chance to make some money.
At first the "Prophet" was greeted with hilarious laughter from his fellow Arabs, who considered him a nutcase. Eventually, however, Mo had attracted a small group of followers, proving that no matter how nutty your movement is or how specious the premise on which it is based, fellow nutjobs will be impressed and go along. Joseph Smith started the Mormon religion with a similar ruse (his angel's name was Moroni, perhaps in honor of the folks who would believe this nonsense).
There have always been false prophets, like Joe Smith, Sun Myung Moon, Mary Baker Eddy and many more. Mo was onto something.
Mo didn't pretend to have supernatural powers. He couldn't work miracles, couldn't heal the sick or raise the dead, and did not possess the gift of prophecy. Well he did say that God would judge the world 500 years after his death, and that was 900 years ago. Whoops.
No one else saw the Angel Gabriel. At least Joseph Smith could get a few co-conspirators to say they saw Moroni, which just goes to show you that American false prophets are better counterfeits. And Mormons, despite the questionable authenticity of their revelation, are nice folks who generally live in peace with their fellow man.
Muhammed didn't reveal any great spiritual truths, did not advance man's concept of the Divine. He did not fulfill any biblical prophecies. He didn't give sermons on the mount, with poetic expressions of God's love for man, as did Jesus. His whole gig consisted of expressing hatred at those who were less than impressed by the revelation of his prophethood. Then he started having them killed, and robbing caravans to fund his new religion.
Allah, Mo's invented God (the name was taken from one of the pagan stone idols in the Kaaba), had a passionate mission. That mission was centered around giving Mo all the booty (both treasure-wise and babes-wise) that he wanted. It also included giving him the right to murder anyone who pissed him off, like poets who satirized him in verse, or Muslims who decided to cancel their membership in the cult.
Mo claimed that the Jewish and Christian scriptures foretold his coming, and that Moses and Jesus were in fact prophets of Islam as well. But the Jews and the Christians, being the rascals they are, amended the Torah and the Bible to delete all the references to Muhammad. It's a common theme among False Prophets (I think it's part of their Bylaws) that the holy scriptures have been tampered with to deny them their legitimacy as holy men.
Craig Winn points out that ancient copies of the Torah and the Bible have been found, in the thousands, that prove these texts existed centuries before Mo made the scene and were in fact, unchanged. They were the same hundreds of years before Muhammad and they are the same today. In order to pull off this big scam of deleting Mo from the scriptures, the wily Jews and their buddies the Christians would have had to replace thousands of texts throughout the world, including those not yet discovered (like the Dead Sea Scrolls).
So we see that Muhammad was a big fat LIAR. Never mind that his life was a testament to evil, or that he was a vain, selfish and cruel man completely devoid of compassion for his fellow man. Never mind that his whole life was a striking contradiction of the holy scriptures that he pretends foretold his coming.
If Muhammad was a prophet, then God effectively changed his mind about everything. "Do good to please God" became "Do Evil to please God." Murder, robbery and rape used to be bad, but now they were good. God must have made a few thousand typos in the original holy texts, and sent an illiterate bedouin to correct them. Yeah, right.
In subsequent articles we will discuss the unintelligible rant known as the Koran, or the Qur'an for the Politically Correct. When you see how bad it is as history or even literature, you will understand why Muslims are so sensitive about it. If they had any confidence in the authenticity of their religion, their prophet or their holy book, they wouldn't become lunatics when these things are honestly criticized.
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