Huston Smith Part 2

The Standing Miracle: What miracles were the prophet responsible for?

1. Muhammad himself could not read or write (ummi), yet he produced a book that is the ground plan for all knowledge and at the same time is grammatically perfect without editing. 
2. Muslims read the Koran literally; the Koran is a miracle because of the presence of the Uncreated Koran within the letters and sounds of its created.
3. The words of the Koran cam to Muhammad in segments over twenty three years through voices that at first sounded  like bells but over time became a clear single voice that was identified as Gabriel's.
4. Jewish and Christian bibles were partially corrupted in transmission,a fact that explains the occasional discrepancies that occur their accounts, and parallel to ones in the Koran. Exemptions from these limitations makes the Koran the infallible revelation of God's will. 
5. In the Koran God speaks in the first person. Allah describes himself and makes his own laws. Muslims consider each sentence in the Koran as a separate revelation.

Summary: Muhammad performed the greatest miracle in the Islam religion. He is responsible for reciting the word of God as it was revealed to him. Even though he could no tread or write, he was able to recite these revelations without grammatical error. People would write them down on anything they could and over time a collection of these revelations developed and Koran was in its early stages. Muslims learn and teach others about the Koran in the language in which it is was revealed. They believe that this limits human errors and thus declares the Koran as the infallible revelation of God's will.

Basic Theological Concepts: What theories were expressed in God's revelations to Muhammad?

1. The Koran's innovation was to remove idols from the religious scene and focus the divine in a single invisible God for everyone.
2. Muslims see monotheism as Islam's contribution not simply to the Arabs but to religion in its entirety.  
3. Muslims argue that fear is the only appropriate emotion because any other involves denial in the technical, psychological sense of the word..
4. Though the human and the divine are infinitely different, no barriers separate them. 
5. God, creation, the human self,and the Day of Judgement are the chief ideological pegs on which the Koran's teachings hang.

Summary: Through Muhammad, God revealed the theological concepts of Himself, the human self, and the Day of Judgement. Through revealing these ideals the Koran was able to remove idols from the religious scene and get society to focus on one divine God. God is so powerful that the only appropriate emotion to express in his presence is fear. This is only because any other emotion or type of fear involves denial in the technical, psychological, sense of the word fear. Through the Koran one can also get that although there are an infinite amount of differences between humans and the divine, there are no barriers which separate them.