Free Koran Curious - A Guide for Infidels and Believers by C.J. Werleman

what we find morally repugnant today was, in fact, deemed morally acceptable 1,500 years ago i.e. slavery, honor killings, and human sacrifice to name a few such examples. In Muhammad’s era, marrying an underage girl was regarded as morally kosha, as was the selling of you daughter into sexual slavery as stipulated in the book of Deuteronomy. Now my point isn’t to justify or excuse Muhammad for breaking the hymen of a nine-year-old, it’s just to illustrate that one must judge him against the morals of that time.
    Later, Muhammad would take an additional two wives, who were both widowed during wars Muhammad later fought against the Meccans. In this sense, Muhammad never exploited the misogynistic laws for his own sexually polygamous benefit. The wives he took in were outcasts and the misfortunate, and he saw it as his duty to care and provide for them. Once more remembering that it was expected of Arabian leaders and the wealthy of that period to house a harem of women. In fact, a number of Muhammad’s friends would often criticize him for the leniency he showed his wives and for the way he sought their consul on religious and political matters. In regards to polygamy, Muhammad made it Islamic law that men and women are equal partners before God, but a man may marry up to a maximum of four wives at any one time. But this polygamy law was not without purpose, he made this decree at the time the Muslim men were being killed in skirmishes fighting the Meccan military, and their deaths meant the surviving wives would be without care. Moreover it was Muhammad who led the charge for the emancipation of women. In fact, the Koran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce hundreds of years before women in what is now Europe would receive similar entitlement. When critics of Islam point to the veiling of women as an example of blatant sexism and demonization of women, this was not something Muhammad decreed, and something that came centuries after his death by Islamic revisionists.
    With Muhammad’s house becoming the centre of Islam within Medina, his example of charity and anti-materialism won him practically all of the pagan population of the city to his religious faith. The numbers who called themselves Muslim was now in the few thousands, but the Jews and Christians remained aloof towards him. This disappointed him greatly, as he had looked forward to working closely with both Abrahamic faiths because he believed they were the Muslim’s equals as “people of the book.” In fact, Muhammad streamlined Islam to be in synch with Judaism by instituting communal prayer on Friday afternoons, and a fast on the Jewish Day of Atonement. Some of the Jews from the smaller clans welcomed Muhammad, and they would tutor him on the stories of the Old Testament, but the vast majority treated him with private scorn. Nevertheless, Muhammad remained confident he could convert the Jewish clans of Medina to Islam, and he had some initial success with a handful of former Jews accepting Islam. Muhammad’s pride in this achievement is demonstrated in the following Koranic verse:
    “ Think if this Koran is indeed from God and you reject it; for an Israelite has vouched for its divinity and accepted Islam.” (Sura 46:10)
     
    These converts would become far and few between, however, and the Jews, in particular, began to publicly deride and taunt Muhammad for his lack of biblical knowledge. They couldn’t accept the notion God would send a prophet who was not only illiterate but was also ignorant of the Jewish bible, the Torah. Seventeen months after arriving in Medina, Muhammad had enough of their teasing, and he made a profoundly massive theological changing decision to point the kiblah away from the Temple in Jerusalem and towards the Kaaba in Mecca. From this point onwards, Muslims would bow towards Mecca rather than the home of Judaism. Effectively, this change would be construed as a declaration of independence; Islam was turning its