A Brief History of Islam

A Sermon Delivered In Response to the 9/11 Attacks, March 2002

Islam
Guest Sermon Delivered March 10, 2002
Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo
by Frank Housh
copyright © Frank Housh 2002

Introduction

Islam was born six centuries after Christ, about 600 miles southeast of Golgotha. It began in the year 610 in our calendar, during the month of Ramadan. Ramadan had long been holy period of fasting, prayer, and repentance for the Arab People, and in the caves of Mount Hira, near his hometown of Mecca, an illiterate merchant named Muhammed went to pray.

It was in that place at that time that Muhammed was overcome by a divine presence. It was the Archangel Gabriel, sent by the One True God to Muhammed. God had chosen that place and that man to reveal himself to the Arab peoples, just as he had revealed himself to the Jews through Abraham and Moses, and the Gentiles through Jesus.

What he said to Muhammed -- the actual words of God spoken to his prophet in Arabic over a period of 22 years -- became scripture. It became the Koran. The development of the fai…