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@cee-dee wrote:

You said earlier that "There is a general misunderstanding that Islam as a religion started with the prophet Muhammad whislt in fact the Islamic religion was aready in existence when he was born with Noah, Abraham, Jesus etc all prophets of Islam. "

 

The Islamic religion wasn't in existence before Mohammad. Mecca was mostly pagan and had a variety of idols.... It was he who picked out bits of Judaeism and Christinity that suited then mixed and matched with his own sayings and distortions claiming he'd been "told" what he said was "the word of god".

 

It seems that when he was in his cave getting these revelations, he also suffered some sort of seizures......

 

He was "a bit upset" with the pagan people who drove him out of Mecca because they didn't care for his opinions so he went to Medina where he raised an army of followers.....

 

He vowed to annihilate the Jews and Christians who rejected what he was saying.....

 

Some of the goings-on after that are pretty controversial..... and so it went on and still goes on to this day? Peaceful huh?

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The point I was making was that Islam as a religion didn't just spring up as a brand new religion - in exactly the same way that Christianity was an evolution of Judaeism, Christ being the prophesised Messiah of that religion.

Mohammad spent time in 'retreat' in much the same way that Jesus spent forty days in the desert.  Most of the converts to Islam came from followers of Judaeism and some Christians.  I'm not sure where you get the idea that he vowed to annihilate Jews and Christians??

The conflicts with the Jews was an Arab Jewish conflict rather than an Islam Jewish one and existed prior to the formalisation of Islam as a religion.  The Jews are 'descended' from Isaac son of Abraham whereas the Arabs are 'descendents' of Ishmael, Abrahams first son.   The Arabs believed that Ishmael was the 'blessed' son of Abraham and inheritors of the 'promised land' whereas the Jews believed the same of Isaac.

In the early days of Islam as a formal religion Christianity and Judaeism were considered as 'protected' religions.  It was paganism and idolatory that were the main opponents of Islam and this conflict explains a lot about the attitude Islam has to depictions of 'holy' figures.