Muhammad as a partner with Allah

Gibbs wrote: I know I'm kinda jumping in late in this thread but I'm curious to ask whether being divine necessarily makes you co-equal to God.

I know I'm kinda jumping in late in this thread but I'm curious to ask whether being divine necessarily makes you co-equal to God.

Ron Webb wrote: If Muhammad's words and his actions are both from Allah, then what else is there?  In other words, what is there about Muhammad that is just Muhammad?

What is there about Muhammad SAW that is just him you ask? If he's passing on God's message in the first place, what should be even there 'about him' in between? Nothing. He's the messenger, and that's what's about him which is him.
 

Ron Webb wrote: And if everything about Muhammad is divine, then I find it hard to distinguish the Muslim regard for Muhammad from the Christian regard for Jesus, i.e. "the Word made flesh".

Again, I see you're mixing up with words here. Big time. "If everything about Muhammad is divine", might as well scratch the if cuz its not. Nothing about Muhammad [SAW] is divine, its the message he passed on that is. Makes a mighty massive difference. I'll tell ya how. Christians claim Jesus [SA] as God, muslims don't claim Muhammad [SAW] as one, and I'm not sure if I have a need to tell you that. There ya go. Now don't go on telling me "its hard to distinguish."

Ron Webb wrote: In past discussion it really seemed to come down to little more than the name of the person to whom you address your prayers: Christians will often pray "in Jesus' name", while Muslims always pray directly to Allah.  But it seems a small difference to me, a mere matter of semantics.

I didn't read through the thread since its pretty long, but yeah, its about whom we address in prayers. Christians supposedly address Jesus, who is a God according to them. We only address God as well. It doesn't make a difference in this issue because regardless of the true God, the idea in both cases is to address the prayer to God. You're bringing this similarity up, but it has nothing at all to do with Muhammad [SAW] in anyway being considered a partner of some sort to Allah. The very basic idea of Islam is one God, and only he is who we worship. If we regard Muhammad SAW highly and respectfully as a messenger of the Almighty, it no way means we regard him anything above a human being and hence there's no worshipping of Muhammad [SAW] anywhere in Islam.

Edited by xx__Ace__xx - 12 June 2010 at 4:04pm

Shouldn't the Qur'an and further Islamic holy texts be interpreted in the historical and cultural context of their time?

I read that the vision of the Qur'an as a text was the vision of the elites of Muslim societies, whereas, at the same time, the Qur'an as an oral discourse played the most important part in the understanding of the masses. The scholar Nasr Abu Zayd for example calls for another reading of the Holy book through a humanistic hermeneutics, an interpretation which sees the Qur'an as a living phenomenon, a discourse. Hence, the Qur'an can be "the outcome of dialogue, debate, despite argument, acceptance and rejection". This liberal interpretation of Islam should open space for new perspectives on the religion and should account for social change in Muslim societies.

The aim of scholar Nasr Abu Zayd's research is to substantiate a theory of humanistic hermeneutics that might enable Muslims to build a bridge between their own tradition and the modern world of freedom of speech, equality (minority rights, women's rights, social justice), human rights, democracy and globalization.

Biblical hermeneutics is the study of the principles of interpretation concerning the books of the Bible. It is part of the broader field of hermeneutics which involves not just the study of principles for the text, but includes all forms of communication: verbal, nonverbal and written.

Higher criticism, or the historical-critical method, is a branch of literary analysis that investigates the origins of a text. As applied in biblical studies it investigates the books of the Bible and compares them to other texts written at the same time, before, or recently after the text in question. The foundation for Protestant historical-criticism included the movement of rationalism which held that reason is the determiner of truth.

As an example of the influence of higher criticism on contemporary thought, consider the treatment of Noah's Ark in various editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In the first edition, in 1771, the story of Noah and the Ark is treated as essentially factual. By the ninth edition, in 1875, there is no attempt to reconcile the Noah story with scientific fact, and it is presented without comment. In the 1960 edition, in the article Ark, we find the following, "Before the days of "higher criticism" and the rise of the modern scientific views as to the origin of the species, there was much discussion among the learned, and many ingenious and curious theories were advanced, as to the number of animals on the ark. Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_criticism

Does something like the higher criticism method exist when scholars are analyzing the Qu'ran? And again, the question, shouldn't the Qur'an and further Islamic holy texts be interpreted in the historical and cultural context of their time? What are your thoughts of this?