It is through the Holy Spirit that I know what Scripture is.
Jesus or Muhammad
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sk0rpi0n
Active member
Muhammad does not have that title. Muslims do not consider Muhammad as a "son of God".
Islamic law is not "radically different" from the laws of the Torah. In fact there are many similarities between Islamic law and that of the Torah.
If the Torah Law is so important to you then why don't Christians follow it?
Do you have a scriptural source for the claim that Jesus' soul was not created?
According to Psalm 22 (which many Christians say is about Jesus), Jesus "begins" in his mothers womb. It says "from my mother’s womb you have been my God". If Jesus' soul was uncreated then God would have been Jesus' God from eternity, not just his mother's womb.
Many saw God the Son. I am referring to the ones who said they were there.
As I said John saw God the Son. You referred to what John saw and now you are chnaging what he wrote he saw. I cant waste time with people making stuff up as we go along.
Except that he saw God the Son, not the Father. No one has seen God the Father and God the Son except the God the Son. He writes that. You have to address what he is writing about, not something you think he is writing about. He is writing about God the Son Matthew 11, Luke 10, John 3. You are no doubt thinking that when John writes no one has seen God he is referring to your Allah who isnt Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but your Allah wasnt though of until several centuries later.
Same problem for you, God the Son is a distinct manifestation of God from God the Father.
look.. Paul also writes Galatians 4:6 ..God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts..."
Well the God of the Biblical testimony as opposed to Allah of the Quran's testimony
sk0rpi0n
Active member
Is "God the son" (Jesus) God?
If your answer is YES then John saw God.
Yet. John writes "no one has seen God".
That means to John... Jesus was not God.
And you're here making stuff up as you go along about "God the son" and what not. The funny thing is John (and the other writers of the NT) don't even use the term "God the son".
Again, if "God the son" is God, then people saw God. But Paul writes about God. "No one has ever seen Him, nor can anyone see Him".
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But you regard him as the son of God, and even on a par with God, even God the Son.
His image cannot be drawn, he cannot be criticized, he himself made himself subject to special laws (number of wives etc), and he is subject to undue reverence (considering he was just a man).
They are "radically" different. E.g. The Torah never allowed any woman to initiate divorce: no exceptions if a man only had one wife. Jesus reinforced the Torah, Mahomet departs from it.
Christians are required to follow its moral precepts but not the rules pertaining to ritual cleaness and to the sanctuary (temple) and sacrifice which have been fulfilled for all time by Christ, who now commands a spiritual sacrifice.
Allowing that Jesus's soul is references by the word "I"
Jhn 3:13 "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven."
Jhn 6:38 "For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me."
Jhn 6:51 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
Jhn 6:58 "This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever."
Jesus soul was a human soul, but also a soul that originated "from above". So there was no "I" until Jesus' body was formed, as a human soul commences at conception or birth (depends on your own personal view). Jesus the man was a real man in every sense as there was no "God the Father" in Jesus' body.
Rather there was a strictly human soul that was uncreated. It was fashioned from what "came from above."
sk0rpi0n
Active member
No. We don't do that. Those are Christian concepts and have no place in Islam.
We address our prophet as "prophet of God", "messenger of God", "servant of God".
In Islam, drawings of ALL prophets are prohibited. Muslims do not criticize our prophet for the same reason Christians don't criticize Jesus.
Yes. As the fnal prophet of God and the leader of Muslims, he had a few "special privileges".
Just like how David had the special privielege of not being subject to the law of "kill the adulter".
Just like how Jesus had the special privielege of not being subject to the law of the sabbath.
It's not undue reverence. It's the reverence that befits a prophet chosen by God.
Even in the Bible, God chastised those who criticized Moses (who was also "just a man") saying "How dare you speak against my servant Moses?” (Numbers 12:8)
Just as Christians regard Jesus as being more important than Moses, and just as Jews regard Moses as being more important than Noah, we regard Muhammad as being more important than the other prophets. What's so scandalous?
But Muhammad himself did not regard himself as superior to any prophet. He is known to have said "Whoever says that I am better than Jonah has told a lie” meaning he did not regard himself as being better than even Jonah, a prophet who shirked his duty and ran away.
There are differences but they are not radically different. I could make a long list of similarities between Islamic law and Torah law.
What would you say to Jews who say Jesus departed from the Torah by breaking the sabbath and such? And changing some of the law?
What about Paul who taught against the law?
What about the legal rulings? And the parts about with charity, dealing with criminals etc?
I don't see how that proves Jesus' soul was uncreated.
If you agree that we are not bodies with souls, but rather souls with bodies, then the sense of "I" begins with the soul.
In fact, when the body dies, the soul survives with all it's thoughts and memories of this world. If Jesus' soul was eternal, then his sense of "I" gos back to eternity. And God would have been Jesus' God from eternity. He would have said "from eternity you have been my God".
I know, but for publishing his picture you can die, which is tantamount to making graven images of the Hebrew God. Thus he is treated as if God.
Where does the OT Torah prohibit making pictures of prophets?
Christians would call him a hypocrite.
There wasn't anyone to willing to kill David as he was king. But he along with the nation of Israel was severely punished for his adultery. You can assume that if David himself had allowed himself to suffer justice, the nation of Israel wouldn't have been punished in his place. That's the problem with kingship. Kings tend to be above the law. Mahomet also committed adultery with the wife of his follower, as I understand it, even if there was a token divorce.
Yet this is a good point. Mahomet was a king first, and a prophet second, just like king David. Jesus was ALL prophet .
No, Jesus had no special privileges. He showed that the Sabbath didn't apply to feeding oneself, or healing the sick. This applied to all.
Mahomet was a king on earth. You give him the reverence due to a God-king, not a prophet, who is but a man like any other human being. You are deceived by his kingship. As a prophet he didn't amount to much. What did he accomplish as "prophet" as opposed to "king" besides destroying a few idols, which the kings of Israel were also did, and many others too?
Moses had taken a cushite wife long before he became Israel's leader. It was an evil accusation that was done to foment rebellion and for no other reason.
But Moses talked regularly with angels. He was rather more highly regarded by God than Mahomet whose only direct contact with God was in some reputed dream.
What is scandalous is that Mahomet repudiated the Torah and murdered the Jews (Banu Qurayza) just as if they were prophets of ba'al.
I contend that the man himself has been wrongly over-exalted after his death by his followers for political ends. The Mahomet that is presented today likely never proclaimed himself as the savior of the whole human race, which is what muslims allege today. He may have demolished idol-worship in Arabia, but that is the most he accomplished spiritually speaking. The equivalent would be like advancing king David of the Jews as a universal savior. David was a Jewish savior, as Mahomet was an Arabian savior. That really is the limit of their respective activities for God.
The universal savior was Jesus, who was no human king, but all prophet and man of God.
Human morality is generally similar everywhere.
The Jews of today are enslaved to their rabbais who fill their heads with anti-Jesus propaganda. As Jesus said "the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath."
He didn't teach against the law. He taught "no justification by law" because "to be justified by law you have to keep every last law, which is impossible." So he taught justfication by faith in Christ and that the ritual of the law is no longer necessary to fulfil, especially for Gentiles, just because justification is by faith in Jesus alone (Hab 2:4 "The just shall live by faith").
The spiritual side of the law, including the laws governing human relations remain intact and are to be upheld by Christians.
Whenever anyone says "I" they refer in the first instance to their soul and only in the second to their body. So Jesus said his soul came from heaven, even if fashioned in human form.
Thus Christ said "destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days." The "I" refers to his soul, the "temple" to his body.
But there can be no "I" without a body to begin with.
You are on the right lines. Before becoming a human soul, the Word (the eternal form of Jesus' soul said to be in the form of God) as identified in John 1:1 was with or at God's side. It then underwent a "kenosis" (Greek word for an emptying) to become a human soul. On resurrection and ascension, the process was reversed and the Word of God resumed its place at God's side (right hand) metaphorically speaking (all this refers to spiritual events).
In response to your original point, either as opposed to the koran. The Jewish Bible is the OT in the Christian Bible. Same old testament and both at odds with the Koran
The text is the same, the narrative the same, albeit the Christians see the revelation of Christ in the OT.
The accounts differ somewhat in the Koran
sk0rpi0n
Active member
Then by your logic, the Torah commands to treat priests and judges as if they're God. Because...
1. The Bible commands to kill anyone who blasphemes God (Leviticus 24:16)
2. The Bible also commands to kill anyone who shows contempt for a priest or a judge (Deuteronomy 17:12).
3. The punishment for offending judges and priests is the same as the punishment for offending God.
In fact, in TWO places in the Torah, the judges are called "Elohim", the same word used for God. See the hebrew for Exodus 22:8 and Exodus 21:6.
So by your logic, the Torah treats judges and priests as God and commands people to do the same as well.
If you disagree, then you'll know why I disagree with your statement above that Muhammad is treated as if God.
I believe the command to not make images of living things (Exodus 20:3) extends to images of prophets. That's why Jews, like Muslims, don't depict any of the prophets. It's only Christians who have the traditions of making images of prophets -- iconography, illustrations, film and tv, cartoons.
Why? As the prophet of God and leader of Muslims, he was allowed to take a few extra wives. Just like David (who had wives and concubines).
But if you're going to make excuses for David, then the same excuses can apply to Muhammad.
God -- who gave the Law to execute adulterers -- coud have killed Davd Himself (like He killed David's son). Instead, God sent David a prophet to explain the error of his ways. So clearly God made a special allowance for David.
And God gave david the wives of his master and was even willing to give him more if David wanted more. (2 Samuel 12:8).
Royal privilege or special allowances from God?
Muhammad was a prophet and the leader of the Muslims. He had the power of a king, but never called himself a king. He did not live in a palace, or sit on a throne or wear a crown. IIRC Islam recognizes only 2 prophet-kings and they are David and Solomon.
Nope. The concept of God-king is non-existent in Islam.
Muhammad was a slave of God and His apostle. If you think I am making that up, google the wordings of the "attahiyat", a special prayer Muslims recite after EACH of the 5 daily prayers:
“All the best compliments and the prayers and the good things are for Allah. Peace and Allah’s Mercy and Blessings be on you, O Prophet! Peace be on us and on the pious slaves of Allah, I testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah, and I also testify that Muhammad is Allah’s SLAVE and His Apostle.”
There you go. Muslims witness 5 times a day that Muhammad is God's SLAVE and apostle. Not a "god-king" or "son of God" or whatever.
He accomplished much more than ALL the Israelite prophets combined. I'll need a seperate thread to expand on this.
I know. It still remains that the Muhammad, like Moses, received the reverence befitting a prophet chosen by God.
Muhammad did not "repudiate" the Torah. God gave a new Law to Muhammad. As for the Torah, Muhammad respected it as the revealed Word of God. We know that from this hadith where Muhammad was called to judge a case of fornication.
A group of Jews came and invited the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) to Quff. So he visited them in their school. They said:
AbulQasim, one of our men has committed fornication with a woman; so pronounce judgment upon them. They placed a cushion for the Apostle
of Allah (peace be upon him) who sat on it and said: Bring the Torah. It was then brought. He then withdrew the cushion from
beneath him and placed the Torah on it saying: I believed in thee and in Him Who revealed thee. He then said: Bring me one who is
learned among you.... (Abu-Dawood 4434)
As for the Banu Qurayza, the story was that there was a conflict and they were guilty of violating a treaty and allying with those who wanted to wipe out Islam. Muhammad had nothing to do with it. When they were beseiged the Jews requested a man named Sa'ad (who was from a tribe they were allied with) to negotiate the terms of surrender. Muhammad sent for Sa'ad to ovelook things and Sa'ad did whatever he did. Ironically, Sa'ad used the Law of the Torah to deal with the Banu Qurayza. See Deuteronomy 20 which describes how to deal with a beseiged enemy.
The only saviour in Islam is God. God instructed Muhammad to describe himself as a "warner". That's in the Quran 67:26 and 22:49.
Muhammad did more than demolish idol-worship in Arabia. God used him as an intrument to establish a religion that:
- teaches the worship of the God of Abraham.
- honors the Israelite prophets.
- recognize Jesus as the messiah.
- implements the Law of God.
If you still think that's not a big deal, then I can't convince you otherwise.
As for Jesus being the universal saviour, according to the Bible it is God who is the universal saviour.
"Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else."Isaiah 45:22.
Jews, as custodians of the Torah, have a valid case that Jesus departed from the Torah. It's their book, after all.
At least in the case of Muhammad, while he respected the Torah, he did not claim to teach or uphold it (although many Islamic laws are similar to those of the Torah).
Jesus on the other hand, is supposed to have kept the Torah perfectly, yet he violated the Sabbath.
There's plenty of evidence from Paul's own writings that he taught against the Law. He taught that the Law was in effect only until Jesus came and that people are no longer under the Law. But Jesus said that the Law was to remain until heaven and earth passed away.
So how do Christians punish those who break the "spiritual side of the Law"?
Since souls are not made of matter, all souls come from heaven. I still don't see any evidence that Jesus' soul was eternal.
Except God, all other things have a beginning, and that would include the soul of Jesus as well.
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Note these rules only apply when the priests and judges are officiating in their priestly / judicial duties. So if they play the hypocrite they can be called hypocrites, as Jesus enjoined (Matthew 23:13->).
So office alone cannot preclude critique of their conduct outside the direct performance of office, nor can it preclude innocent representations of the same for didactic purposes. Another point is that Mahomet isn't known to have performed any priestly or judicial duties, but to have acted as a king with asserted powers of prophecy. What he or more likely his followers did was to usurp the perogatives and protections of the Old Testament priests in their priestsly offices and apply them to Mahomet in his role as secular ruler + prophet.
A prophet and king or even a prophet king ought not to be confounded with a priest or judge. Indeed there were no kings in the days when the Torah was written. All the rules about kingship were constructed later on.
By these things Mahomet's dignity is promoted by his followers into being a priest-king equivalent to God himself.
Jesus ordained no such promotion of his human flesh. Rather he said "every blasphemy against the son of man may be [i.e. is able to be] forgiven" Matt 12:32. Not so with Mahomet. Not even one blasphemy can be forgiven. Therefore Mahomet is God.
I see no reason why pictures (as opposed to moulds or gaven images can't be drawn of anything that exists on earth). After all, if you preclude pictures, you preclude hieroglyphic writing, and also early cuneiform writing which developed from hieroglyphics. Thus no writing system would have been invented had men been forbidden to draw pictures.
Neither David nor Solomon presumed to make rules on the number of wives, so they weren't hypocrites like Mahomet was, making one rule for others and another for themselves. However it seems both David and Solomon were severely punished for their predilection for the female sex: David by his being given over to the sins of adultery and murder and the subsequent rebellion of his sons against him, and Solomon by outright apostasy from the faith.
I agree. In fact the kingdom would have descended into anarchy had David been killed, and also likely have been subject to foreign invaders, so it wasn't for his sake, but for the sake of God's purposes that he was allowed to escape the death penalty.
In this is a teaching: God shows mercy to benefit promote his own interests.
He was a warlord and a de facto king, much like David. It's just that he didn't succeed any prior king. He was the first king and he had many successor kings or caliphs. Caliph: the supreme religious and political leader of an Islamic state known as the Caliphat. i.e. a (priest-)king.
First Caliphs - see above, then Sultans (e.g. Al-Nasir Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub).
Also you have the Madhi concept.
(cont.)
But it is precisely by articulating that belief or opinion, which is undoubtedly propaganda because until his first wife died he was just an ordinary travelling merchant, the same as everyone else, that you make him out to be equivalent to God. You effectively assert he was without sin, which means he is or became equivalent to God.
Not more than Moses accomplished, to be sure (who redeemed his people from slavery to a foreign heathen nation). Mahomet did not conquer more other heaven-inspired or mission-inspired nationalistic warlords, such as Genghis Khan, Kubai Khan, Ying Zheng (unified China), Alexander the Great, Cyrus I, etc.
Thus Mahomet never extended his rule outside of Arabia. The main reasons for the later arabian military conquests lay in the weakness of the empires neighboring Arabia, which had exhausted themselves by war between each other, and had been corrupted from within by false religion.
How do we know his law was given by God? Hadith are unreliable and many are believed to have been invented later for propaganda reasons, and were later suppressed. In fact many stories about Mahomet were originally deemed in large measure fictitious as not contemporaneous with events as they were written, and as contradicting each other. So they went through a purgation. What we have today is a retrospective and idealized representation of his life and sayings in the hadith, but which still discloses disturbing things.
So the Torah is being used to justify killing of Jews by muslims? The Torah belongs to the Jews and specifically to the land of Canaan, and no-one and no-where else. It can't be invoked by Jews' enemies to kill Jews somewhere else in the world!
Mahomet reformed the heathen Arabs, but not in a good way. He only inspired their lust for conquest, for wealth and for women. He is regarded as if an avenging angel on apostate Christianity. Jesus isn't honored by Mahomet: he is repudiated as the son of God by Mahomet and all muslims. Jesus said "I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father except by me." John 14:6.
God is the heavenly savior, Jesus the justifier of sinners through faith. Moreover Jesus upheld the Torah and no other system of law.
No valid case against Jesus whatsoever. It is Paul and Jesus' disciples who are deemed the real apostates from Judaism.
Doing good on the sabbath isn't a sin. Jesus explained why this should be so. Mahomet repudiates the Torah to allow divorce to be initiated by women, which is anathema to both Jews and Jesus. It is this kind of thing that makes Islam a non-abrahamic religion for it even violates the faith of Abraham.
Paul taught that the rudiments, the ritual and ceremonial laws, "do not touch" etc, were abolished especially for Gentiles, and that other laws were optional (e.g. holy days), but that the spiritual Torah remained intact - ten commandments etc. Mahomet teaches a mixture of new rudiments and new spiritual and some old spiritual: it's all very confused and very confusing and then some of the Koran is likely reverse translated from christian syriac documents into arabic in an amateurish way, such that a not inconsiderable portion of the Koran is unintelligible (seventy virgins in heaven etc). In fact we don't know how much of the Koran came from Mahomet and how much of it was creatively put together by his followers.
For much of history they have suffered in line with the punishments in the Torah. However there is little uniformity due to the perversion of Christianity and due to Christians often having no political power: Christianity not being "law and rule" based, but heaven-centric where many rulers and rich people are seen as non-Christian, even in nominally Christian countries. Christianity was never primarily a political religion, but a spiritual religion; and it remains so.
Jesus was raised from the dead. On his ascension, his body and soul was transformed back into the Logos (heavenly word of God).
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sk0rpi0n
Active member
But if the Torah's prescribed punishment for offending priets/judges is the same as the punishment for offending God Himself, then the Torah is treating and commands people to treat priests/judges as if they were God.
If you can explain the were not being treated as if God, then the same explanation applies to Muhammad.
The answer is that the priests/judges and Muhammad were given authority by God and one who offends them are in open rebellion against God and had to be dealt with severely.
Matt 12:32 says "Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man...". It's not the same as blasphemy.
The fact is, Muhammad's enemies not only spoke against Muhammad, they also verbally, mentally and physically abused him and sought to kill him. But they were all forgiven by Muhammad -- on the very day when he emerged victorious over them, when he could have taken revenge and had them all executed.
Muhammad is not God. He never claimed to be God or asked for worship. I have already shown you that he was a SLAVE of God, a prophet, an apostle, warner etc. But if you still insist he was God then you must also accept that the priests/judges were God. After all, not even one offense against them was forgiveable.
Exodus 20:3 prohibits drawings of living things. So I don't think it includes writing systems,. As for heiroglyphics, they were invented before the Torah was revealed. Basically it's saying "even if you did it in the past, don't do it from now".
They weren't making rules on the number of wives because the Law had already been revealed and was in practice for hundreds of years. That makes it even worse, especially for David. Because as leader of the Israelites, he would have overseen the executions of adulterous Israelites!
In David's case, the problem of hypocrisy is pushed back to God because He did not apply His own law to David.
God could have easily raised up another man to take David's place as king. He could have found the next best man after David, filled him with the Holy spirit, given him wisdom and made him king. The real lesson is that God makes special allowances for people He likes. Perhaps David's extraordinary righteosness and piety in the past EARNED him an exemption.
The difference is that with kings, the throne is passed down from son to son. This system was absent in Muhammad's case.
There were Muslim kings, but there's no such thing as a "God king" in Islam.
It isn't propaganda. I've already shown you clear proof that Muslims witness Muhammad is God's slave 5 times a day.
If you still insist that we "make him out to be equivalent to God" then it's beyond my ability to change your mind. As a Muslim, I've done my due diligence in showing you clear proof that Muslims understand Muhammad as God's slave, not God. So I am now free of you and you are free of me.
Muhammad accomplished whatever Moses did but on a much, much larger scale, and against tougher odds.
I'm not just talking about his military victories, but how the religion Muhammad established was far, far more influential than the one established by Moses.
Genghis Khan, Kubai Khan, Ying Zhengm Alexander the Great, Cyrus I, etc. were great military generals but what religious / cultural / literary/ political / legal system have they left behind? What instructions did they leave behind to worship the One God of Abraham?
How do we know the Law of the Torah was given by God? I believe the Torah and the Laws of Islam, as stated in the Quran was given by God on the basis of faith.
Nope. You brought up the issue of the Banu Qurayza. And I just showed you that they were dealt with according to their own laws, at the hands of a man that THEY chose as a negotiator.
Or are you saying that only the Jews were allowed to deal with a beseiged enemy by killing their enemies and enslaving their women and children, and the same could not be done to them if the roles were reversed? I don't think that's how it works.
The same can be said of the Israelite armies that went from town to town conquering, killing raiding and taking women.
The kingdom of God is said to spread on earth via conquest. That's how it was with Moses. And that's how it was to be with the future "kingdom of God" spoken of in the Bible, which I am 1000% convinced was fulfilled with the kingdom of Islam.
“Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities..." (Isaiah 54:2-3)
"If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing; whoever attacks you will surrender to you." (Isaiah 54:15)
“In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever" (Daniel 2:44)
As you can see, the kingdom established by God was meant to be one that spreads through war and conquest.
sk0rpi0n
Active member
I don't know what your definition of honoring Jesus is. But I will point that Jesus has the following titles in Islam:
al-Masih – “The Messiah”
Kalimatullaah – “God’s Word”*
Qawl al-haqq – “sure word”
Ruhun minhu – “a Spirit from Him”*
Nabi – “prophet”
Rasul – meaning “messenger”
Abd Allah – meaning “Servant of God”
Min al-muqareeabin – “among those who are close to God”
Wadjih – “worthy of esteem in this world and the next”
Mubarak – “blessed” as “a source of benefit for others”
(* Note that Jesus being "God's Word" and "Spirit from Him" doesn't indicate divinity).
Looks to me like Jesus is honored greatly in Islam. Islam also teaches that Jesus is the messiah, who was born of a virgin and that he would return during the end times to defeat the antichrist and establish his rule on earth. So Jesus plays a HUGE role in Islamic eschatology. Name one other religion (besides Christianity) that honors and gives so much importance to Jesus. You can't because there are none.
I don't think Jesus taught a faith only system of belief. He expected his followers to obey the Torah. No doubt Jesus upheld the Torah, but he didn't say "I'm keeping the Law so you don't have to".
But Christians don't keep the Sabbath. And Paul taught the Law no longer applies after Jesus appeared.
But doesn't Christianity have a set of dos and don'ts? Doesn't Christianity prescribe a way of living that's aligned to what God wills? I believe the answer is YES. The only issue is that Christianity lacks the will or means to implement it and punish those who do wrong. If everything is "spiritual" then there's no need to deal with real-world issues. If God wanted people to live by a "spiritual" religion why then did He give the Torah -- a document that covers the political, legal, social, moral aspects of society?
The issue is that Bible says nothing of Jesus' soul being eternal. In fact, the bible says nothing about the nature of souls and how they were created. But on the basis of verses like "Before me there was no God formed, and after me there shall be none" (Isaiah 43:10) we can conclude that God is the only eternal being and everyone else were created later.
Mahomet is dead. He exercises no authority or office, legal or by kingship. The continuing application of blasphemy laws respecting Mahomet, the dead human being, discover that you regard him as if God / deity.
Also, Mahomet never had any priestly office whilst on earth as Torah law didn't apply to him. The Arabs weren't God's chosen people, and God didn't lead them out of Egypt because they never went to Egypt.
It is identical.
At this point, we're not really interested in what Mahomet did or didn't do. Mahomet doubtless then acted from reasons of political expediency, same as everyone else. It's expedient to forgive: that way you make more friends. Today we're interested in what his self-proclaimed followers are doing in his name, which is erecting blasphemy laws against anyone violating his name. Their aim is to coerce all into submission by force and by law, but which has no sanction of scripture as Mahomet's religion isn't recognized by Torah, and neither is he himself recognized or even prophesied.
Your reading of the Torah is wrong. The prohibition is confined to the Hebrew words "pesel" and "tᵊmûnâ" which have always been understood as a sculptured or fashioned images, and don't extend to two dimensional drawings. If it were so, every biology book, or zoology book, or book on medicine etc, would have to be consigned to the flames. Of course one could also add a caveat that if a two-dimensional representation was specifically made for the purpose of idolatry, it should be prohibited.
What about photographs? They are neither sculptured nor fashioned. In the Christian era, two-dimensional representations would be allowed if the purposes were spiritually good. Have you ever seen anyone bowing down to a picture? I have, but such is limited to pictures of politicians or kings displayed in prominent places; and would include pictures of the "virgin Mary" designed to promote idoltary.
These could be seen as forbidden by the Torah, as spiritually impure, and distinguishable from pictures created for educational use or even aesthetic use including pictures designed to preserve history - i.e. Bayeux Tapestry.
David was no small sinner and reaped no small punishment. His years after his adultery were spent in strife and armed struggle against his own sons, and other horrors also.
So God did punish David severely, although didn't visit death on him, as he repented. God wasn't a hypocrite as he isn't bound by human law.
Yes and Yes. As I have said, God acts according to his purposes, and he isn't bound by human law.
But you haven't accounted for the blasphemy laws that are used to put Christians to death in places like Pakistan.
Islam is just a synthesis of Christianity, Judaism and Arabian customs. It borrowed everything from others. It could have been wiped off the face of the earth in the 13th century had the Franks and Catholic church elected to co-operate with the Mongols which had exterminated Islam throughout Asia, which was then being massively defeated by the Mongols. The Catholics deemed the Mongols Nestorian heretics and didn't want to co-operate.
The reason why Islam exists today is because the leaders of Roman Catholicism allowed it to survive back in the 13th century. They ignored the opportunity to finally extirpate it from the face of the earth. This was because of extensive heresy within Roman Christianity.
The same thing happened again with the British in the 19th century. Instead of aligning with Russia to extirpate the Ottoman empire, a corrupt British government gave the Ottoman empire sustenance by warring against Russia instead.
Islam only exists because heretical Christianity allowed it to and continues to allow it to exist.
Islam has contributed nothing to the world's morality. For centuries after the slave trade was abolished by nominally Christian countries, muslims continued slave trading.
They were agents of God's wrath and fulfilled God's purposes in that sense. In the same way, Islam functions as an agent of God's wrath on corrupt versions of Christianity.
Jesus attested the Torah. He didn't attest Mahometan law but warned against false prophets.
What I am saying is that (a) there was no obligation on Mahomet to follow this arbitrator's ruling, (b) there was no commandment from the Torah to do any such thing as this arbitrator suggested, as the captives were Jews (and allegedly worshippers of the true God), and not Canaanite ba'al worshippers, (c) Arabia wasn't Canaan.
In enacting this slaughter Mahomet disclosed he was willing to treat Jews and Christians as Canaanites.
The kingdom of God is in heaven, not primarily on earth. Daniel spoke of a heavenly kingdom, the existence of which on earth (i.e. the existence of the people of God on earth) would lead to God's wrath being poured out on all human pagan empires. And this is what has happened down the ages. See the book of Revelation.
John 18:36 “My kingdom is not of this world; if it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest by the Jews. But now My kingdom is not of this realm."
Islam has been itself subjected to so many massacres throughout history at the hands of God that it can hardly claim to be God's kingdom on earth. If it were, why would he punish it so often and so severely?
