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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 8000331, member: 128351&quot;]Early Islamic belief, really? </p><p>Most of our sources on Muhammad and the beginning of Islam are of Abbassid date, and may reflect the beliefs of this time more than what Islam or &quot;Ismaelism&quot; (as John of Damascus called it) actually was under the first caliphs and the first Umayyads. </p><p>You can notice that in the 6th and 7th c. the art of statues and figurative reliefs had disappeared in the Christian Byzantine Empire. Byzantine art abandoned sculpture or any kind of 3D art and concentrated only on 2D art : frescoes, icons, mosaics. In Syria the art of making statues or high reliefs of human beings disappeared in the 5th c. But it was reintroduced... by the Muslims ! There are stone statues of naked women from Qasr al-Mushatta in Jordan, stucco high reliefs of the caliph and women in Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi in Syria, the same stucco high reliefs in Khirbat al-Mafjar in the Palestinian territories, and even a monumental statue probably of the caliph. Umayyad art did not forget painting and low relief, as can be seen at Qusayr Amra in Jordan or the bronze brasero (with bronze statuettes of nude women) found in al-Fudayn, Jordan. </p><p>Not very &quot;Islamic&quot; indeed, at least not in conformity with the later Islam of the Abbassids... Even the Quran was probably not what it is now and has been since the Abbassids. We have a review of the Quran by John of Damascus (<i>On Heresies</i>) written under the Umayyads (he died c. 749): he sums up some surahs of the Quran (he calls them &quot;books&quot;), including a so-called &quot;book of the Camel of God&quot; that is not found in the present recension of the Quran. </p><p>John of Damascus enumerates all the differences between Christian and Muslim dogmas, but he says nothing about images, though this topic was of great importance for him (he is the author of an <i>Apologia against those who decry holy images</i>).</p><p>I am convinced that the Islam of the Umayyads was not the same as the Islam of the Abbassids, which is the source of today&#039;s Islams.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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