Okay, I'm not really studying to become a Muslim, but I am studying to be able to communicate with students what Muslim's believe and how their beliefs differ from Christians in a series that we are currently in. I did a similar teaching several years ago with a good friend of mine who now is a missionary to Muslims in the Middle East.
It is amazing to me how ignorant we are to what Muslims believe. Most of what we believe we get from what the news and Media feeds us. It is interesting to read the history about how this once grassroots religion got of the ground. My challenge now is to make it relevant, practical and interesting for high school students! Here are a few interesting things I have learned:
1) Early on there was no emphasis in Islam to convert Christians or Jews to Islam. The only people that needed to be converted were the pagan, idol-worshiping Arabs, because clearly the Christians and the Jews were worshiping this same God that hew as trying to introduce to Arab culture.
2) When Muhammad first started implementing the habit of praying five times a day he had everyone face Jerusalem because he viewed it as the most holy city. It wasn't until the Jews and Christians shunned him as a false teacher that he changed the direction of the prayer towards Mecca.
3 ) The Qu'ran is full of things that contradict each other. Islamic scholars agree, the explanation is “progressive revelation” What was revealed at the beginning may be different from what is revealed in the end. The end is how you interpret the beginning.
Qu’ran isn’t in chronological order it is in order of the length of the verses. So Muslim scholars spend their lives determining which are the earlier and which are the later revelations.




