Frank wrote Today at 3:33pm:

He didn't invent Islam; he advocated for the Arabs to dedicate themselves to monotheistic belief, one of the reasons being to unite them as one against the threat of invasion and cultural dominance by another monotheistic people - Christianised Europeans.

Exactly as Constantine had done in Europe 300 years earlier.


Arabs, by Muhammad's time, were well aware of what happens to a people who resisted Christianisation by the western (Roman) and eastern (Byzantine) branches of the religion.

google

The Dome of the Rock was built between 685 and 691/2 C.E. by Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik in Jerusalem to establish a major religious center and mark the triumph of Islam. It was designed to protect the sacred rock (Foundation Stone) on the Temple Mount, believed to be the site of Prophet Muhammad's night journey to heaven.

Key motivations for the construction of the Dome of the Rock included:

Religious Significance:

The site is associated with the Prophet’s Night Journey (al-mi'raj) to heaven, and the rock itself is considered the point from which creation began.

Political Consolidation:

Caliph Abd al-Malik sought to secure his authority during a civil war with rival rulers in Mecca, making Jerusalem a crucial religious center for his supporters.
Rivalry with Other Faiths: The structure was designed to match and even rival the grandeur of nearby Christian, Byzantine-era churches, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and to assert Islam's status against the older Abrahamic faiths.

Rebuilding Solomon's Temple: It was also seen as a continuation or reconstruction of the Temple of Solomon (Mihrab Dawud) on the Temple Mount.
While often mistaken for a mosque, the Dome of the Rock was originally intended to function as a mashhad, a shrine for pilgrims.

Same motvations  apply to the al-Aqsa mosque.

What is YOUR point?

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And abra cadabra, the mosque he just built is suddenly the one Muhammad referred to in the Quran and the 3rd holiest site in Islam.

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Those prophets created Judaism and Christianity. So Muhammad did the same thing, but did not create Islam?

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Wow. Three pages in and you have already caught up with what I posted in the OP. I should have known you were in speedy mode when you opened by telling everyone what the real point was.

freediver wrote Today at 3:59pm:

Have you thought of what you want to be when you grow up?

No single prophet created Judaism; each is considered to be a continuation of Yahweh's revelations to his chosen people.

No prophet created the religion of Christianity, nor claimed to. Paul considered his Judaism to be the Judaism of the Gentiles.

Muhammad did not create the 'new' religion of Islam. If he'd done so, he would have had to concede that Allah was not Yahweh.

freediver wrote Today at 4:35pm:

Muhammad did not 'invent' Islam.

His teachings were a rededication to the Abrahamic faith in the one god that Arabs could claim religious descent from through Abraham's son, Ismael.

He claimed that the archangel Gabriel told him the revelations he'd received were a continuation of those given to the prophet descendants of the prophet Isaac, Ismael's brother.

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You keep answering your own question.

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No. It was built because it happened to be useful to one of the competing Caliphs in a civil war to 'own' the third holiest site in Islam. Your own evidence. There was absolutely no issue of legitimacy before then. Scholars were happy to argue until they were blue in the face whether it was a reference to a Mosque near Mecca or to a place in heaven. Declaring it to be Jerusalem when it happened to be convenient to the Caliph during a civil war hardly lends legitimacy to the claim.

Meister appears to be arguing that because Muhammad claimed to be revealing the true nature of previous religions, he did not invent Islam. It is yet another of his curious exercises in circular logic. Because we define Islam as a separate religion to Judaism and Christianity, it can't have been invented by Muhammad, because Muhammad (and Muslims to this day, including on this forum) insist it is actually the same religion.

He also appears to be projecting this same belief onto Christianity, though I have never heard a Christian argue that it is actually the same religion as Judaism.

It is actually almost impossible to talk to a Muslim about Judaism or Christianity, because they define those religions out of existence. They will only talk about Muhammad's various "corrections" to those religious beliefs. It comes across as extremely arrogant. It's like trying to talk to Meister about reality, and he asks you to define reality and point to it in the paperwork. But you have no difficulty talking to a Christian about Judaism or Islam.