Dear Friends, Subscribers, Readers: The Good News On December 1, 2020, I posted my first blog on this Website. Today, I am celebrating my blog’s third year of operation. Twenty-five blogs have been posted since this time last year, and some of the blogs were outstanding. “Is Petra the Original Mecca,” although published last March, is still getting a lot of hits. I was excited about my first book, Muslim Mechanics, which came out in April. If you’re unfamiliar with Islam, this is an excellent book to learn from. It’s not too late to get your copy on Amazon. If you perform an internet search fo ..read more

Now and then, I see statistics that make me wonder how Muslims and Christians stack up against each other. One religion is not better than another, but do conditions warrant one religion being different? For example, earlier this year, I compared birth rates and acceptance of Democracy between the two religions. Regarding birth rates, Muslim nations have higher birth rates than Christian nations mainly because Christian nations have a higher rate of technology, which makes them wealthier and, consequently, they live longer. Muslim nations are more likely to be agricultural and less developed ..read more

Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu has been trying to use Jewish and Christian eschatology to stir up support for his nation's war with Hamas. Hamas is the governing political party for the Gaza Palestinians. It seems Netanyahu is equating Hamas with the ancient nation of Amalek. On Saturday, November 28, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Israelis were united in their fight against Hamas, whom he described as an enemy of incomparable cruelty. "They (the Israelis) are committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world," Netanyahu said in Hebrew. He added, "You must ..read more

As discussed in Part 1, the Temple Mount had been used as a waste dump for the citizens of Jerusalem from 610 to 638 AD. Twenty-eight years of rubbish was what Caliph Umar saw when Muslim forces captured the city in 638. Muhammad had died in 632, and his replacement, Caliph Umar, had made it his calling to capture Jerusalem. Muhammad's night journey to the seven heavens enthused Umar's control of the Temple Mount. Soon after his occupation of the city, Umar cleansed the Temple Mount, built a small mosque on the southern end over Herod's extension of the Temple Mount, and dedicated the site to ..read more

Most people can identify the golden dome over the Muslim shrine, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. There are two components of this shrine that we need to explore and understand. First, the shrine itself has much history regarding Muslims, making it the third most venerated religious structure in the Muslim world, only surpassed by Mecca and Medina. The Muslims recognize Jerusalem as the location for Muhammad's ascension to heaven, as mentioned in the Qur'an (17:1). Second, the platform that the Dome is built upon, called the Temple Mount, has much history for Jews and Christians. To the Jewi ..read more

Muslim-Jewish Enmity The title of this blog is the same as Chapter 11 in my book, Muslim Mechanics. The roots of the terrible chaos initiated by Hamas and responded to by Israel run deep. Muslims and Jews have been going against each other since 627 A.D. When writing my book, I could only identify five reasons that cause Muslims to react against Jews. For the current conflict, the media has postulated many reasons why the Palestinians rose up against the Israelis. Reasons offered include Israel is running an apartheid state with the Palestinians getting the short end. Next, the Israelis won't ..read more

One city in the Midwest United States is providing one of the greatest civic lessons that all Americans should be watching. The city government of Hamtramck, Michigan, has become a civics experiment in governing. This city of 28,000 was once so Polish it was dubbed "Little Warsaw." This was a working-class city where people moved to work in one of Henry Ford's auto factories. A legend in the local Yemeni community in Detroit is that Henry Ford told a Yemeni sailor on one of his cruises about how much he paid his automobile factory workers. It was more than the sailor made, so he went to work t ..read more

Two religious groups that have garnered much attention in the United States over the last couple of decades are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka LDS or Mormons) and the world religion of Islam. The LDS gained national attention in 2012 when Mitt Romney, now a Senator from Utah, ran as the Republican candidate for President of the United States. Islam has been indelibly embedded in the American consciousness since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The reason I am addressing the relationship between the two religions was about two years ag ..read more

From the 9th century to the 12th century, Islam had a “Golden Age” that was the envy of the rest of the world. While Islam, as a whole, benefited, Cordoba, Spain, and Baghdad, Iraq could be considered the centers of learning that brought about this change. The achievements of Islam can be seen in medicine, science, the arts, and architecture. These areas had noticeable improvements. For example, in the 10th century, Cordoba had streetlights. Nowhere else in the world were streetlights existent. The quality of life was higher than it had ever been. These achievements happened with Christians, J ..read more

Numismatics, the study of coinage, is a rapidly expanding part of archaeology that reveals what ancient countries did and how they did it. In our case, numismatic evidence shows the visual history of the first seven decades of Islamic rule. Muhammad transitioned in 632, and the caliphs who followed him made the Islamic Empire a giant trading market. By nature, Muslims are traders. Muhammad had a trading background, as did several of the "rightly guided "caliphs that followed him. Coinage is an integral part of the infrastructure that promotes trade. The Muslims did not mint coins at first. By ..read more