Allah the Compassionate and Merciful

When the biers of anyone whether Jew Christian or Muslim, passes you, rise to your feet.’

Feed the hungry and visit the sick and free the captive if he be unjustly confined. Assist any person oppressed, whether Muslim and Non-Muslim.’

The greatest enemies of God are those who without cause shed the blood of man.

What actions are most excellent? To gladden the heart of a human being, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrows of the sorrowful and to remove the wrongs of the injured.

Every man should set apart a certain percentage of his annual income for the poor.

In Heaven all grudges shall be taken away out of your hearts.

For all Muslims are the children of Allah and among them there is no distinction of race or color or tribe.

All this was Mohammed’s teaching at first.  In the later Qur’an there is much that doesn’t agree with this – warlike, hating, misogynist, and sectarian conflicts but this is the core of it, from the beginning of Mohammed’s teaching. Always there remains the description of Allah, as the Compassionate, the Merciful.

The later extensions to Islam came, as Mohammed took the sword and Islam was spread by it, after he and his new teaching was persecuted and he fled to Medina. This ‘Hegira’ was the beginning of the Muslim era, when to keep his religion alive, Mohammed took up the sword against his enemies who sought to destroy it. So the complete Qur’an is full of jihads which are Holy Wars both against one’s own failures and the enemies of Islam, as well as Mohammed’s original declarations. Still ‘the best of all Jihads is the Holy War for the conquest of oneself.’

 The wonderful Creation is based on a divine law, ‘that we must have compassion upon one another.’

 The sectarian divisions after his death included killing each other. Narrow definitions were made of his rulings. The development of shariah law, with amputations and other vindictive punishments, polygamy and injustice for women were taking the laws that were already strong in the desert. His misogynist passages forgot his early freedom for women - like his first wife, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid ,who was a great businesswoman. He had only her as his one wife for 25 years. Most of his later wives were taken for practical reasons – diplomacy or care for orphans.

In the development of cruelty, Islam has been similar to other religions and sects, demeaned by the successors, whether Jewish, Christian, Buddhist and so on.

It is better to remember the original beginnings.