The Origins of Islam and Christianity Compare

The origins of Islam are similar to those of Christianity. These means are obviously varied in many ways as they involve different people, times, places, etc. Although, they both revolve around a similar principle that happens to be the heading of the chapter: there was a messenger and the messenger sent a message that revolutionized the world of religion, initiating something new, appealing, and to become enormous. Islam began with the birth of Muhammad in 570 CE in Mecca. Accordingly, Mecca was going to become a holy, acclaimed, and historically significant site in Islamic history--all because of Muhammad. He undertook periods of disconnection from society, and when he was amidst the rest of life, he went through a deeply religious and eye opening experience which would set him with his drive for the meaning of the rest of his life: to enlighten and spread the words of God which connected with him during his periods of withdrawal and religious connection. These experiences had him convinced that he was the messenger of God, Allah, and that he was to do his work without question and with faith, devotion, and willingness. This is very comparable to Jesus, the initiator of the Christian movement and religion in history, who was born and raised in an outlandish home, far away from much civilization. There, after being born via immaculate conception (an already spiritual, god-like feature to his life) he was raised without much interaction with others in rural areas. He had experiences in which he personally established a connection with a higher power and that power (assuming God) provided Jesus with his insight and messages. Because of this, Jesus was considered the son of God, in the sense that he represented and embodied everything that the higher power consisted of. Both Jesus and Muhammad were individuals who, as a result of religious experiences, allegedly gained something from their Gods and went on to spread their message and attract others with the insight they possessed. They were both messengers of God, embodying everything that God was, and therefore, both became crucial figures in their respective religion’s history. Another similarity between the origins of Islam and Christianity was the reason which both of them succeeded in spreading their religious ideas and beliefs. Both Jesus and Muhammad were born without a holy scripture of their religion, and lived their lives in the absence of either religion’s religious texts. This was because they themselves would be one of the first things that would appear in their religion’s holy scriptures since they were the main root causes for the religion’s existence. Anyways, Muhammad was still actively spreading and teaching the principles of the Quran because what was in the Quran were God’s attributes and therefore the beliefs about Islam since they revolved around Allah. So, Muhammad had been teaching the lessons from God that were recorded in the Quran; being written down allowed Muhammad and Islam to spread much faster around since just verbally, Muhammad could not introduce Islamic tradition and belief around the entire region at the time. Oppositely, Christianity’s holy scriptures were written way after Jesus’ actual time spreading Christianity. He had to personally, verbally popularize and explain Christianity to everyone he interacted with, making the process of its spreading and appealing much slower than that of Islam. The Old Testament heavily revolved around Jesus and the beliefs of God, only because Jesus’ messages were implemented and transferred so strongly, historically, throughout society. So, both Islam and Christianity compare in the sense that their holy scriptures revolve around them, their interaction with God, and the religious beliefs according to them (and God), but Islam was able to use that to their advantage and widespread at a faster rate than Christianity did, considering their holy texts were not established yet. Considering both religion’s holy scriptures and messengers/messages, the origins of both Islam and Christianity (especially the lives of Muhammad and Jesus) compare to one another.