Prophets of Islam

[Iblis_Efreetzai]

An Alternate Theory:


Another thing I'd like to add is that the "Semitic" Stories may not actually be exclusively Semitic.

a.) There have been links suggested that Abraham and Sara became Brahama and Sarasvati among the Hindus. Suggesting the posisbility that Mesoptamian stories were appropriated far outside of Mesopotamia.

b.) Since the Middle East was an International crossroads between Europe, Asia and Africa. It's possible these stories come from other regions of the world.


Just food for thought, not claiming this is the standard Islamic view. However with regards to the earlier argument about Dhul Qarnain (as) and Khidhr(as) were non-semetic stories is backed by geographic and trans-cultural evidence.

[Manzareh]

You are not answering the main questions in the video,

Why are all prophets from Middle East? Arabs, jews etc are all semites, why only semite prophets

So over one hundred thousand prophets were sent and one to every nation, God has all the knowledge, why didn't God mention some of these prophets sent to other Nations and relate their stories so we can learn something from them? All the stories are based in and around Middle East. The story of Lut AS, Yusuf AS, even dhul Qarnain who some speculate to be Cyrus the persian are all located in Middle east. Why not a Japanese story? Surely this would have helped the case of Islam as people would have bee astonished that the prophet PBUH could relate a story from Japan who were so far away from Arabs, thus showing he had divine knowledge?
No one is asking God to mention all the stories of all the prophets but at least one story putside the Middle East would have helped.

What do you mean 'surely it would have helped' helped in what? I just told you that clearly he didn't need that extra help to spread the word of Islam since Islam spread accross every nation just take a look at how diverse Muslims are. If Muslims were not as broad then perhaps even you could could then moan about God not taking about specific unmentioned prophets.

Maybe Allah chose to focus on Semitic prophets alone for his own reasons, who are you and me to question the actions of Allah. With that logic you could complain about so many things, 'why did God miss this out, why did he miss that out' you could go on all day, where do you draw a line on questioning Allah?

Yes there were 124,000 prophets, if Allah wrote about 100,000 prophets and 100,000 books, people like you will still complain and say why didn't Allah mention the other 24,000.. And even if he did mentioned all 124,000 still you would come up with 'why didn't Allah do this and that' there's no winning with you people, as Allah describes in the Quran (nearest meaning):

"And even if We had sent down to you, [O Muhammad], a written scripture on a page and they touched it with their hands, the disbelievers would say, "This is not but obvious magic. And they say, "Why was there not sent down to him an angel?" But if We had sent down an angel, the matter would have been decided; then they would not be reprieved." Surah al-anam

You would not be satisfied even if an angel came down. Subhanallah. There's another verse that I can't find where Allah talks talks to Mohammed pbuh about the munafiq's..tells him how they will not believe no matter what you show or tell them. Even if there was blatent signs shown to them they will dismiss.

I've been a member here since 2010, it's the same cycle with the kuffaar; they put a accusation against Islam, and demand an explanation, when you give an in depth response they either do two things. 1) run away, 2) make a joke and divert away and then a few weeks later ask the exact same question as if nobody has even responded to them.

[Iblis_Efreetzai]

Yes there were 124,000 prophets, if Allah wrote about 100,000 prophets and 100,000 books, people like you will still complain and say why didn't Allah mention the other 24,000.. And even if he did mentioned all 124,000 still you would come up with 'why didn't Allah do this and that' there's no winning with you people, as Allah describes in the Quran (nearest meaning):

.

What you highlighted in bold is exactly a classic example of what changing goal posts means. They make an objection, and when that objection is answered, they change the criteria of the objection to make it seem like the objection wasn't answered.

This is a tactic used by skeptical circles quite when dealing with Polemics. Christians use similar tactics as well.


The point is; Islam acknowledges that other Messengers and Prophets from other areas of the world exist; The is enough to show that Islam is not merely focused on Semites.

We can't say for sure why the Qur'an primarily elucidates on the Middle East ....BUT I think we can make some reasonable hypothesis in the very fact THE MIDDLE East ..was the MIDDLE East .... Middle meaning, It was CENTRAL to all the Highest Density Population regions of Asia ...Europe and Africa ...In fact If anyone knows Makkan history. It was A Center where people from all over the world visited. So If you ask me, that would be reason enough to send the final Prophet there...but again this is only speculation. But it provides a reasonable answer.

As you rightly pointed out If Islam put every detail on every Prophet, everywhere in the world; the text would be more voluminous.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

As the video shows, all the prophets named in the Quran are of semitic origin. It does sound strange that God or his prophet pbuh could not relate one story from China, India or Sub saharan Africa. All the stories are from middle east.

Why is this strange? Many ideologies that become universal or widespread across humanity start at an origin point. Additionally, the Quran claims that there are important commonalities across the human race and that tribes and clan are but mere markers of difference to put things in an appropriate order by "knowing one another." Therefore, its message is preserved across the tribes in a malleable form.

Additionally, the Quran and the Bible also lay the basis for the Bani Israel being chosen for a degree of relevance above all others (but not racial superiority). This would end up being both a momentous privilege but also a huge burden.

I would say that most human beings hold those endowed with knowledge to a higher standard and we certainly see in the Old Testament that when Israel turns her back on the message/religious knowledge she was entrusted with the subsequent tumult, evil, and deserved punishment are on a larger scale.

God repeatedly warns the Bani Israel for their repetitive aggression that pushes boundary lines farther and farther while asking for more and more miracles even though the inherent goodness of the law before them and the justice and balance it provided was miraculous enough. Finally they ask for miracles to the point of raising the dead (Christ did this when raising Lazarus) amongst other large scale miracles granted to Jesus. Despite this their response was horrendous and worse than any in prior generations when they sought his death and disparaged him in the Talmud beyond what any other Prophet endured.

This laid the basis for the transition from the Prophetic lineage to that of Ismail's lineage and the removal of this great privilege from the Israelite lineage.

That being said, the Prophet emerged from the Semitic tradition and the dueling major powers of the time, the Magians and the Christian Byzantines are in a sense both addressed by the Quran emerging from the Arabian wilderness. This permitted the interaction and familiarity of the faith to much of the known world of that era within a rapid period of time.

Eventually it would be the Christians that would aggressively open up Asia and exterminate or convert the natives of the Americas, even laying the foundations for these geographically disparate peoples to have encounter the semitic tradition and at least grasp the core message of Islam.

Also invert the question... why would a semitic people and the folks immediately in the Prophet's sphere (including foreigners like Bilal and Salman the Persian) care or what would they think to have to encounter the names of Indic, Aztec, Asiatic, etc Prophets and their stories? It might have actually had a negative effect. In fact we already see that they mocked the stories that they were familiar with using the Arabic accusation "Asaa Thayr ul Awaleen" ---> That is, hurling the accusations that he was telling meandering "tales of the ancients." To add to that with outlandish (literally in this case!) stories would hardly have been conducive to accomplish the mission at hand. This would potentially have extinguished the new movement before it even had the chance to take root and really have resulted in the message missing the proverbial forest (establishing a foundation in Arabia) and trading them for proverbial trees (reaching out to nations that would never even hear the message since it would have had little chance of succeeding if it perished).

No, instead, it made complete sense that the Prophet's message stayed on point and birthed a spiritual and earthly revolution amongst a a tribal people that resembled so many tribal nations across the Earth, but who were situated to take that energy and that reversion to the way of knowing God as he wants to be known and propel it across the world. It came as it did in just he right way and in just the right place. Its amazing that the region bordered on the Byzantine and Persian empires and both staked claims to it yet neither had attempted an aggressive colonization... and for that matter its even more amazing that the Greeks under Sikander had planned an Arabia Felix expedition but died right before he could accomplish it! This would render the region ripe for receiving the message and eventually starting the process that will fulfill the promise given to the Prophet that in the future that the Islamic religion would supersede the others.

Islam projected to be world's largest religion by 27



The video also mentions that muslims say except for Quran all other books hae been changed, why didn't God protect the other books like he has promised to protect the Quran?

He did protect them by revealing the message to re-newers of the faith that spoke against the attempts to alter the message (this is why in Jeremiah God says "What they say that they have the word of the Lord, yet the false pen of the scribe hath turned it into a lie!". The Quran itself refers to the text as Muhayminah (Guardian) over the prior texts.

And the Quran as we can discuss further has been protected from corruption even per the recent German theological studies.

These are all legitimate questions and some sensible answers from knowledgeable members would be appreciated.

x

[Shapur]

Let's not be disingenuous here

The Video is clearly referring to SEMITIC Prophets; you're changing goal posts making an equivalence between Semitic and Middle Eastern and then pigeonholing the ancient Achaemenid with the Semites.

1.) First of all it's debatable whether that region should be considered the Middle East in the first place. Cyrus the Great's Empire extended to the Frontiers of Turkestan and large swaths of India.

2.) The term "Middle East" is an ad-hoc term more recently defined. If we take that into consideration we fall back on the Video's original suggestion, that the Middle East is being used interchangeably with Semitic is a faulty one

Khidhr (as) and Dhul Qarnain (as) are two non-semitic stories contained within the Qur'an.

3.) Lastly we don't know if Dhul Qarnain is even Cyrus, what we have is a general geographic region which is essentially Asiatic. It serves affirm that Dhul Qarnain was most likely Asiatic.

It's an intellectually dishonest tactic to switch goal posts to make it seem as if there wasn't a valid response to the question, by trying to pigeon a Non-semitic story into the conditions. But based on the information we have available. This video has been sufficiently answered.

The video doesn't mention Semitic prophets but mentions the general geographic area centred around Middle East. There is no concrete evidence in the Quran that Dhul Qarnain is Cryrus, its all based on speculation and theories. There is also no evidence where Khidr AS is from but since he was guiding Mussah AS, most likely he was from The Middle East as well.
Now it makes perfect sense why all stories and named prophets in the Quran would be from the Middle East, since Arabs didn't have much contact with the Chinese, Japanese,.Indians, Sub saharan Africans, but the thing is Islam is not just for Arabs or Middle Easterners but for the whole world. All I am saying is, it would have been nice to include the names and stories of Prophets outside the Middle East to add some variety. I guess I will have to wait till yawm al qiyama for an answer.

[Iblis_Efreetzai]

The Video only references the semitic Prophets, hence only talks about the Semites. So they're equating Semitic with Middle East.

Khdhr(as) as I said in earlier posts has references connecting him to a wide variety of cultures. Thus the claim that he's most likely from the middle east is very tenuous.

Rather an alternate theory is that Middle Eastern Prophets encountered ones from outside the Middle East. Some extra canonical sources suggests Jesus (as) went to India for example, so it doesn't seem unlikely that others may have traveled and encountered significant figures outside the Middle East.

The Arabs most likely did have contact with Indians and Chinese; there were Hindu Idols within the Ka'aba which suggests likelihood that they interacted regularly with South Asian and Near Eastern People as well

The Dhul Qarnain (as) story takes place in an area area located in Central Asia; most scholars agree on this. Hence a non-Middle Eastern story.

[Shapur]

What do you mean 'surely it would have helped' helped in what? I just told you that clearly he didn't need that extra help to spread the word of Islam since Islam spread accross every nation just take a look at how diverse Muslims are. If Muslims were not as broad then perhaps even you could could then moan about God not taking about specific unmentioned prophets.

Maybe Allah chose to focus on Semitic prophets alone for his own reasons, who are you and me to question the actions of Allah. With that logic you could complain about so many things, 'why did God miss this out, why did he miss that out' you could go on all day, where do you draw a line on questioning Allah?

Yes there were 124,000 prophets, if Allah wrote about 100,000 prophets and 100,000 books, people like you will still complain and say why didn't Allah mention the other 24,000.. And even if he did mentioned all 124,000 still you would come up with 'why didn't Allah do this and that' there's no winning with you people, as Allah describes in the Quran (nearest meaning):

"And even if We had sent down to you, [O Muhammad], a written scripture on a page and they touched it with their hands, the disbelievers would say, "This is not but obvious magic. And they say, "Why was there not sent down to him an angel?" But if We had sent down an angel, the matter would have been decided; then they would not be reprieved." Surah al-anam

You would not be satisfied even if an angel came down. Subhanallah. There's another verse that I can't find where Allah talks talks to Mohammed pbuh about the munafiq's..tells him how they will not believe no matter what you show or tell them. Even if there was blatent signs shown to them they will dismiss.

I've been a member here since 2010, it's the same cycle with the kuffaar; they put a accusation against Islam, and demand an explanation, when you give an in depth response they either do two things. 1) run away, 2) make a joke and divert away and then a few weeks later ask the exact same question as if nobody has even responded to them.

The diversity of Muslim Ummah has nothing to do with the question as to why there are no non Middle Eastern prophets or stories mentioned in the Quran. Tomorrow the whole world might become muslim but it is still besides the point and doesn't answer the question asked.

You say that no matter what evidence or miracle is brought forward some people will not believe. That raises the question then, why perform any miracles at all and why relate any stories at all? The reason is that these stories, miracles helped convince some people who were skeptical.

I guess you are right, we will never know why non Middle Eastern prophets are not mentioned by name.

[Shapur]

[MENTION=1772]BarakzaiAbdali[/MENTION]

Appreciate your answer. I am done playing devil's advovcate for now :D

[Karachi]

barkazai saying that Israelis are the chosen people just shows his backwardness and stupidity. The world is a lot bigger and older then that you fool. In the next 50 years China/East Asia/India will rise and rule the world, where will your Israeli masters go then?

[BarakzaiAbdali]

barkazai saying that Israelis are the chosen people just shows his backwardness and stupidity. The world is a lot bigger and older then that you fool. In the next 50 years China/East Asia/India will rise and rule the world, where will your Israeli masters go then?

Are you really this dense Crotch-e? I realize now that your intelligence level functions far below the notion of abstract reasoning and you can only grasp concrete concepts and wording (if that), lol. Chosen does not mean a "get out jail free card" to do all kinds of idiocy. It means chosen for the lineage of Prophethood. That is why a large succession of Prophets emanated from Israel (Jacob's) line.

Here are the Quranic references:

The Qur’ān contains several passages regarding the chosen of Abraham’s progeny and of the Israelites (banī Isrā’īl),

“the descendants of Abraham and of Israel, and of those whom We have guided and chosen (ijtabaynā), for when the revelations of the Merciful were recited to them they fell down to their knees in tears and adoration” (19:58).

“God chose (Inna ’ṣṭāfā ’llāh) Adam and Noah, Abraham's descendants and the descendants of ‘Imrān, above the nations” (3:33).

“We saved the Israelites from the degrading scourge, from Pharaoh, who was a tyrant and a transgressor, and chose them knowingly (akhtarnāhum) above the nations. We showed them miracles which tested them beyond all doubt” (44:30-32).

“We gave the Book to the Israelites and exalted them (faḍalnāhum) above the nations.” (45:16)

“O Children of Israel: remember my favor (ni‘matī) which I have bestowed upon you and that I exalted you (faḍaltukum) above the nations” (2:122).

In each of these verses, the Qur’ān refers to Israel as chosen.

The same message may be learned by noting that the Israelites were given the Book as an inheritance wa-awrathnā Banī Isra’īla ’l-Kitāb (40:53); and that “the Book was bestowed as inheritance upon those whom God has chosen” (alladhīna ’stafaynā min ‘ibādinā) (33:32).

[Sarbani]

Dhul Qarnain, even if he was Cyrus, was still known by Arab peoples regardless of whether the Qur'an would have mentioned him or not. The Qur'an should have talked about Japan or the Congo to prove it was truly miraculous as it would have mentioned something completely alien to Arabs of the time.

[Iblis_Efreetzai]

The Arabs knew the Chinese as well, and there's no mention of any Chinese ruler or Wiseman as well, it also doesn't mention Zoroaster, Arabs definitely knew him since Salman was originally Zoroastrian.

So the argument that Quran needs mentioning something from Congo or Japan is a red herring and non sequitur fallacy.

However Quran mentions Khidhr(as) definitely unfamiliar to Arabs of that time, but was present in many other world cultures far and abroad.

[Karachi]

Dhul Qarnain, even if he was Cyrus, was still known by Arab peoples regardless of whether the Qur'an would have mentioned him or not. The Qur'an should have talked about Japan or the Congo to prove it was truly miraculous as it would have mentioned something completely alien to Arabs of the time.

Exactly, there are so many places and things that Quran didn't talk about , simply because Islam is a Middle Eastern religion. Culture, civilizations are so old then religions in general. No to mention how big the universe is, Earth is a speck of dust, God knows how many other worldly civilizations there are.

Morons like Barakzai are stuck in their cave mentality world

[Karachi]

Are you really this dense Crotch-e? I realize now that your intelligence level functions far below the notion of abstract reasoning and you can only grasp concrete concepts and wording (if that), lol. Chosen does not mean a "get out jail free card" to do all kinds of idiocy. It means chosen for the lineage of Prophethood. That is why a large succession of Prophets emanated from Israel (Jacob's) line.

Here are the Quranic references:

Who cares. I know Quran, Torah talk about these things. These are the things that make these religions so lame. Lol so called "Chosen" people.

[Iblis_Efreetzai]

Exactly, there are so many places and things that Quran didn't talk about , simply because Islam is a Middle Eastern religion. Culture, civilizations are so old then religions in general. No to mention how big the universe is, Earth is a speck of dust, God knows how many other worldly civilizations there are.

I already refuted this point.....how can it be "Exactly" when refutations to this claim have been presented by myself and others for years and years?

You can't pretend we didn't rebut this claim by reverting back to the original claim.