[Coach]

TM<

>>Muslims believe that every people on earth have been >sent a
>Prophet/Messenger. This is why we agree with some >aspects of
>the Veda, Upanishad and other religion's
>>scriptures for they have divine origin but in the case
>>of i.e. Hinduuism polytheism has taken root and the
>>original Messgae got lost in the midst.
>
>Would like to know more, please.

Since every people in the world had a Prophet sent to them, there would inevitably be found traces of beliefs/morals that make people have things in common. For example, if you are read through the Veda or Upanishads (two Hindu scrpitures considered to have divine origin) they both predate the Torah, Bible and Qur'an but you'll find that there some things that are in accordance to the books of the Jews, Christians and Muslims. But the Hindus consider the Veda to be the most important one and none of their other scriptures can overrule it.


>Since men and women were created by God (in His own image)
>they will always have the desire to worship (God or any other
>idol). Godd and bad are defined in their inner man.

True. But without guidance, man easily goes astray. That is why Prophets and Messengers were sent to humanity throughout time. Just as i.e. if you have a child and you don't give it guidance by teaching it morals, ethics etc then the child will grow up to be almost inhuman.





>>If you (Christians) can't decide which is RIGHT then what is
>>an 'outsider' to make of it?
>
>My point is that Muhammed and 400 years of Islam did not
>question the Bible in the way most morden muslims think. It
>only when people discovered that Muhammed was not mentioned un
>the Bible that all the noise started.


There are two main reasons why some Muslims became hostile towards Christians after the time of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In the 15th century, a man named John Andre Maure wrote a book against Islam which were full of lies. Most anti-Islamic writers that came a few centuries after him could not know Arabic so they took his words to be facts and wrote very many books using Maure's book as reference. The 'written Crusade" began in the start of 18th century where insults and false accusations about Islam nad the Prophet were spread all over Chrsitian territories. They called the Prophet an adulterer, a thief and many other foul names. Even you seem to have taken from them a lot when you refer to him as the "anti-Christ" despite Muhammad PBUH having great respect for Chrsitians and above all Jesus Christ (PBUH). If you read the history of islam, you'll realise that Muhammad PBUH sent some of his followers to Abyssinia where King Negus was the leader. He had heard about his kindness and his devotion to Christianity and he sent his people to escape prosecution from the Polytheists of Mecca. The Prophet always had good relations with the Christians but things changed dramatically a few centuries on.

Another reason was the atrocious Christians who led a Crusade against Islam. These people destroyed every form of life they met on their way, homes, trees and even animals were not spared. You probably know how the Crusade affected the views of Muslims and Jews towards the Christians. This together with the writngs against Islam caused Muslims not believe that the follwers of the Prophet of God could do such horrendous acts and this led to people questionning their (Crusaders' and the anti-Islamic authors') beliefs.


>>There are also about 17 (!) English versions of the
>>Bible and with every version you have
>>different words, with the differeing words comes different
>>intepretations and the essence is eventually lost!
>
>For someone who is well knowlegded, you surprise me.
>Translations are not from copy 1 to copy 2...then copy 2 to
>copy 3......until copy 17. Current translation are being done
>from greek mnuscripts written between 100 and 250AD


I think you totally misunderstood what I meant. There is one problem with translating works and that is the people doing the translation always write the word they believe is CLOSEST to the word in HEBREW/ARAMAC/GREEK. With this, you are left with many different words trying to describe teh same thing but ultimately the message gets lost in translation. This is the reason why Muslims have to learn Arabic in order to understand the Qur'an, but can still read a translated version which we don't regard even to come close to the original language and doesn't have the same respect. I'll give you one example of words getting 'lost in translation'. One English version of the Bible says...

"...Behold, a VIRGIN shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14 King James Version)

while another one reads...

"...Behold, a YOUNG WOMAN shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14 RSV)

The origianl word in Hebrew is ALMAH (and the Greek word PARTHENOS which means virgin but somehow people translating it to English choose to translate the word to mean "young woman" instead of virgin. There is a massive difference between the two and the "young woman" version even disregards the MAJOR fact that even Muslims acknowledge that Jesus (PBUH) was born to a virgin. All the different translations lead to different messages at times, I hope you get my point.