W. Robert Godfrey

And I find people are interested in Islam today, and so we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about Islam.

Islam developed as a religion primarily in the 7th century, so in the 600s, and it was born of the visions claimed by a man named Muhammad, born in Mecca around 570.

He was born to a good family but not a wealthy family.

And he came to be convinced that the religions that surrounded him there in Arabia, today what we call Saudi Arabia, was pagan religion and was idolatrous.

He was not well educated.

Some claimed that he couldn't read or write.

And he claimed that the Koran was dictated to him by divine inspiration.

And he began to have visions as a result of a time of prayer and fasting, growing concern about the state of religion.

And what motivated him above all else was a fanatical, determined monotheism.

He wanted an absolute insistence that God is one, that there are not many gods, there is only one God, and that one God is God.

Allah is the Arabic for God.

There is no God but God.

That's the central confession of Islam.

Initially, very few people believed him, that he had revelations, were attracted to his monotheism.

And in 622, he was forced to flee from Mecca.

and was forced to flee north some 250 miles to the city of Medina.

And that flight becomes crucial in the history of Islam, and that's why Mecca and Medina remain holy sites, centrally holy sites for Muslims.

That's why ultimately it became a foundation of Muslim faith that any pious believer

Muslim who possibly can must make a pilgrimage to Mecca once in his life.

That's an essential part of the faith.