Tom Facchine – They KNEW That Prophet Muhammad Was Coming

			There were people in Arabia, in the six hundreds that expected that a prophet was going to come.
This was an understanding. It wasn't necessarily the only understanding. But it was an understanding
within certain Christian and Jewish communities. And so we know because they ended up becoming
Muslims. And so they told us their stories about their histories, you know, there was one person who
was a Christian who studied with various monks, he was originally a from Persia, then Salman, and
fantasy is his name. And he converted to Christianity, and attached himself to various monks in the
kind of upper Mesopotamia, Turkey Syria area,
		

			and was essentially instructed, at one point that listen there, we expect there to be a prophet,
that's going to appear in Arabia. And so you should try to be there when it happens. And so he did.
And he met the Prophet Muhammad salallahu Salam, and he accepted Islam. And that was the end of it.
There were also different Christian figures in Iraq, and in Syria that are part of the biography of
the Prophet Muhammad. So like I said, I'm like when he was a 12 year old boy and his uncle, I will
tell you that brought him on a trading trip, right to these lands, and sort of interactions and
encounters that they had with different people.
		

			There were some people who were expecting, we're expecting Mohamed salah, and also within within the
Jewish community as well, you know, in, in Medina, there were three Jewish tribes that were living
there. And
		

			some of them became Muslims, when the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Sallam made his migration there
were fled there as a refugee. And they too, they had an expectation. And they said that this is the
person that we expected to come.
		

			Now, some people are these days, a lot of people are unaware of this. And it would be really useful
if we could have a more academic study of the beliefs at that time, then seventh century,
Christianity and Judaism as to
		

			these sort of expectations, like how common was it? Was this kind of forgotten knowledge? Was this
something that was fairly fringe? Or was it fairly mainstream? I don't know.
		

			But it would be very, very useful to know.
		

			And also, just the fact that there is this tradition, you know, it, it shows that it might make
people who are Christians and and Jews reconsider this kind of the story of their faith, because
here's, here's the thing, here's the thing I'll just cut to the chase, is that every religious
community has a spiritual test, in trying to convert what is initially something that's
meritocratic, that is rewarding you based off of your principles, and your accepting of the truth,
trying to turn it into a tribal identity, right? We can call it like the tribalism question of
faith. So every community struggles with this, when that revelation was given to the Jews, right?
		

			They were given to it as a covenant, right? It's the whole idea of covenant. If you do this, then
you're going to get favor from the Creator, you're going to get help, you're going to get divine
assistance, etc, etc. And the other side of it is if you violate the covenant, then you're not
going, you're going to lose that special favor. It's not guaranteed, right. And the same thing with
Christians and the Muslims, right. And so the human tendency, because we're kind of lazy, and we
kind of want to have shortcuts, and we want to get something for nothing, is that we want to turn it
into kind of like an identity, or a tribal identity, so that we don't have to work for it anymore.
		

			So that we don't have to uphold our end of the covenant. I don't have to do anything. It's just the
fact that I am a part of God's chosen people, which is why I'm saved or I'm going to happen, or this
or that the other thing.
		

			And that's, frankly, that's insulting to faith and that's insulting to even Allah because then, you
know, what's the purpose of Revelation? The first place the purpose is that the revelation is given?
It's a covenant you accept it, and you live by it. Right? You don't turn it into this sort of thing.
So So yeah, I mean, so that why I bring that up is because people who lean towards wanting to make
that move and reject the covenant aspect of faith. They're very unwilling to admit that there could
be another prophet that was expected, right, because that would imply the expectation of action of
acceptance of
		

			Is this sort of new covenant that has to happen? And so there's kind of a jealousy that arises and
Allah calls it jealousy in the Quran that people have a temptation to be like, no, no, we're good
with what we were given. There's nothing after what we were given. That's very convenient, right?
There's nothing, no guidance after what we were given. We have the monopoly on the guidance and
we're God's chosen people. Islam says that's not the way it works.