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http://www.islamchristianforum.com/index.php?topic=1253.0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvJdRdB3ys4GREAT VIDEO of a Saudi Muslim on the subject!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL4upLajJSctext version with links
http://www.petewaldo.com/mohammeds_night_journey.htmMohammed's Night Journey
No Muslim can deny the importance of Mohammed's night journey in Islam, because this flight determined the Islamic rituals of praying five times a day, and performing ablution - or washing before prayer. In other words Mohammed's night journey impacts the lives of 1.5 billion Muslims all over the world - five times - each and every day.
sura 17.1 Glory to (Allah) Who did take His servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the farthest Mosque, whose precincts We did bless,- in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who heareth and seeth (all things).
Mohammed's alleged overnight trip covered the 766 miles from Mecca to Jerusalem, a trip to heaven, and a return to Mecca, and is described in part as follows:
Sahih Muslim, Book 001, Number 0309:
It is narrated on the authority of Anas b. Malik that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: I was brought al-Buraq Who is an animal white and long, larger than a donkey but smaller than a mule, who would place his hoof a distance equal to the range of vision. I mounted it and came to the Temple (Bait Maqdis in Jerusalem), then tethered it to the ring used by the prophets. I entered the mosque and prayed two rak'ahs in it, and then came out and Gabriel brought me a vessel of wine and a vessel of milk.
So Mohammed flew on al-Buraq to the temple in Jerusalem, tied it up to a ring "the prophets" had used in the past, and went on in to the Temple to pray. Because of the fantastic nature of Mohammed's claims, some 21st century Muslims try to suggest that this was a vision or dream, but according to perhaps the most highly regarded historian of Islam:
Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 58, Number 228:
Narrated Ibn 'Abbas:
The sights which Allah's Apostle was shown on the Night Journey when he was taken to Bait-ul-Maqdis (i.e. Jerusalem) were actual sights, (not dreams). And the Cursed Tree (mentioned) in the Quran is the tree of Zaqqum (itself).
Additionally, the rock enshrined in the Dome of the Rock on the temple mount, is supposed to be where Mohammed and Baraq launched from, for the leg of the trip to heaven. So it would be untenable to suggest that Mohammed's journey was a dream or vision, while at the same time claiming that he launched from a very much physical and tangible rock, on the temple mount.
Doubtless there were many skeptics when Mohammed recounted the details of his trip the morning after his night journey on the flying animal. As Dr. Rafat Amari points out in the introduction to "Islam: In Light of History", Abu Bakar (the first assistant of Mohammed who became his first Caliph) confirmed Mohammed's descriptions of the temple he had visited, because Abu Baker claimed he had once taken a journey to Jerusalem and had seen the temple himself, and remembered it to be just as Mohammed had described it.
There is, however, a little difficulty with their accounts. The temple had been torn down over 500 years before their claims of personal visits to it. Indeed if Mohammed had actually hitched his flying animal outside the Temple where, as he claimed "the prophets" had hitched theirs, at the time that his night flight occurred, he would have found that the temple mount was being used as a garbage dump. The Muslim's own Caliph Omar would have observed this when he marched into Jerusalem in 639 AD, not very many years after Mohammed offered his account detailed above.
While Mohammed and Bakr didn't need to be concerned about their largely illiterate followers traveling the 766 miles from Mecca to Jerusalem, to scrutinize their accounts, what excuse do today's Muslims have in this 21st century information age?
For many accounts of Mohammed's night flight by the chroniclers of Islam please visit the following link to our X-Muslim friends at answering-islam.org. As they also inquire,
"In light of all this, we ask the following questions:
* What Temple did Muhammad visit, enter and pray at before ascending to heaven?
* Seeing that the Quran mentions a journey to a Mosque that did not exist during the lifetime of Muhammad, how can you consider the Quran to be 100% the word of God?
* In light of the fact that both the Quran and the Islamic traditions contain this historical error, how can you trust either source to provide you with reliable information on the life of Muhammad and the first Muslims?
* Does not the fact that the Quran mentions a Mosque which was only erected in AD 691 prove that there were Muslims who unashamedly and deceitfully added stories to the Quranic text and passed them off as revelation from God?
* If you cannot find an answer to this historical problem within the Quran, why do you still remain a Muslim?"
For a look at historical accounts of other cults with similar ascension stories to Mohammed's please click here.
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Flying camels, or baraqs, were nothing new to Islamic tradition. It was how they explained away the transportation impossibilities that resulted from the fictional history the Islamic "historians" had created.
For example it was one of these mythical flying camels that enabled Abraham to pay visits to his son Ishmael in Mecca, a 1000 miles away. Islamic tradition also holds that it was a baraq that enabled Ishmael to attend his father Abraham's funeral in Hebron. Are we beginning to get the picture?
But then the flying camel wasn't invented by Muslim historians but had been in mythology from long before. It was utilized in Persian Zoroastrian mythology.
Quoting Dr. Amari
"The Pahlavi Texts of the book of Dinkard are Zoroastrian canonical comments on the Avesta, considered part of the Zoroastrian scriptures. It mentioned KaiKhusrois, a mythological prophet who transformed Vae, the god of the air, into the shape of a camel. He then mounted him and went where the immortal mythological Persians dwelt."
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Indeed, when combined with the "Mecca" page of this site, what we learn is that every Muslim on earth, bows toward and is supposed to travel to and circumambulate, the very same black stone moon god idol, that the pagans bowed toward and circumambulated before Mohammed. Now we learn that the reason that Muslims bow toward that black stone idol five times a day, and wash before doing so, is because Mohammed claimed to have taken a trip on a flying animal. Beyond the obvious questions that even an 8 year old might ask, his visit to and prayer in a temple, is also shown to be a physical impossibility.
The real reason Muslims pray five times a day and perform ablution, is likely because Mohammed became deeply involved in the second century occult cult of the Sabians, by way of four of his relatives. This cult apparently had so much influence over Mohammed's daily life, that some in his own tribe referred to him as "the Sabian". In the Quran Mohammed lists Sabians right alongside Christians and Jews.
surah 2:62 Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the sabians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day...
surah 5:69 Those who believe (in the Qur'an), those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the sabians and the Christians...
And guess what? The occult Sabian cult prayed five times a day and performed ablution.
Excerpt from "Occultism in the family of Mohammed"
"Waraqa was one of the founders of the group called Ahnaf. In the first narration of the life of Mohammed, written by Ibn Hisham in the 8th century A.D., we read:
The Honafa', or Ahnaf, was a small group started when four Sabians at Mecca agreed. Those four were Zayd bin Amru bin Nafil, Waraqa bin Naufal, Ubaydullah bin Jahsh, and Uthman Bin al-Huwayrith.[xxxi][31]
The four founders of Ahnaf were all related to Mohammed. They were descendants of Loayy, one of Mohammed's ancestors. Furthermore, Waraqa bin Naufal and Uthman Bin al-Huwayrith were cousins of Khadijah. We know this from Mohammed's genealogy presented by Ibn Hisham.[xxxii][32] Ubaydullah Bin Jahsh was a maternal cousin to Mohammed. Mohammed married his widow, Um Habibeh. All this reveals the close connection between Mohammed and the founders of the group."
Before fundamental, Quran and Hadith following - true Muslims - received Western financing through oil purchase to expand their murder of innocent non-Muslims all around the world - with 2 million killed in the Sudan alone by the Islamic beast during this Islamic Second Jihad - the only thing I would have likely recalled knowing about Arabia would have been what I learned as a child. This would include stories like Aladdin's lamp from which a genie emerged when it was rubbed, and Ali Baba and his magic flying carpet. Interesting now in adulthood to learn about Mohammed's night flight that 1.5 billion people are not only expected to believe, but also to follow, five times a day.
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More on the 5 daily prayers of the cult of the Sabians whose ritual Mohammed lifted for Islam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyqaXCRIotM
