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I have this question, on Christianity, it's not welcome there and some user stated that i could move it here. Well if i simply copy paste, it will be closed, cross posting.

Was Mohamad's father a Christian?

As this post stated

Some topics are known to cause flamewars on the Internet.

I'm not going to post my question, on islam.SE, if what i stated in my question is true, then i won't be receiving honest answers there.

I'm not gonna be posting it on Biblical Hermeneutics, it has nothing to do with the Bible.

Skeptics? I don't know if it's a good fit.

So is it a good fit here or not. I don't want to hurt the feeling of any Muslim user.

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The problem I see with your question over on the Christianity stack, and IMHO it would be a problem on any SE site, is that merely by being phrased the way it is, it implies that there's a good reason to believe it might be true, even though as near as I can tell you actually have no real reason to believe it might be true.

Questions that seem to start with a preferred answer tend to annoy people. Couple that with the fact that you are talking about the central figure in one of the world's great religions, and yes that is most certainly flamebait.

If I might make a suggestion, it might be best to take a step back, and instead ask "What do we know about the religious beliefs of Mohammed's parents?" You can then throw in the anecdotal story you heard, but I'd still make an explicit point of the fact that you are skeptical (which clearly you are, or you wouldn't be asking).

Now, if phrased in this way, one could make an argument that the proper stack for it is the Islam stack. I'd still vote for accepting it here (just on the basis that the religious stacks tend to be populated by folks who are, erm, a bit less "science encumbered" than most of the other stacks).

We can accept, and have accepted, history-based questions about religious figures. However, if they aren't very carefully and neutrally worded, someone is going to feel personally affronted, and flamage will ensue. So please be unusually considerate when wording such questions.

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  • Note that this is mostly a rephrasing of @DVK 's answer. I upvoted it, but saw from the comments that the OQ was having a little trouble wrapping his head around the point of that answer. I thought I'd try the same point from another angle.
    – T.E.D. Mod
    Oct 23, 2013 at 1:46
  • Ok sir, I'll try to rephrase my question, hopefully I get some answers
    – Lynob
    Oct 23, 2013 at 9:59
  • @T.E.D. - nice rephrase. Much clearer. +1
    – DVK
    Oct 23, 2013 at 14:31
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If you have a plausible set of information that can be interpreted as "Mohamad's father was a Christian?" (e.g. where he lived there were many Christians, or some plausible historical source mentioned it), it sounds like an ontopic question.

Otherwise, no (as the negatives would outweigh the positives).

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  • as it currently stands, is it good or no? wikipedia mentions the name of mohamad's father as abd allah, that's as good as it gets, i don't have any other proof, i have proofs that christians existed in the arabic golf, but not more than that, i didn't state the argument, it's my instructor. should i give it a shot or no?
    – Lynob
    Oct 22, 2013 at 23:44
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    @Fischer - what's a plausible reason to consider that theory?
    – DVK
    Oct 22, 2013 at 23:49
  • you mean why do i tend to consider that the father of Mohammad was christian? Simple, because he was called abd alla, (Slave of God) and he died at 25, never met his son, before islam, only 2 religions, believed in God, Christians, and jews, and Abd Alla wasn't a jew, so why was he called abd alla? (Slave of God)
    – Lynob
    Oct 23, 2013 at 9:58
  • @Fischer - I'm HIGHLY skeptical of "2 religions" only thing. Is there any reference for the fact that he believed in a monotheistic god? (the name doesn't say anything, could be any god of any religion). If you can provide specific details on that line of reasoning, IMHO it becomes a good question.
    – DVK
    Oct 23, 2013 at 14:30
  • Could be, and that's my question, but highly improbable since, if you can read arabic i'll give you this link ejabh.com/arabic_article_106124.html that's some muslim trying to say that the name was common before Mohammad, i did research on all of them, none of them was born BC, the word as it is commonly used originated in israel with ibraham, and there were many arab monks in the arabic golf, but what you said could be right, that's what im asking, is the name slave of god was common before jews and Christians...
    – Lynob
    Oct 23, 2013 at 15:31
  • @Fischer - then a better question is just that to ask (was this name common outside Jews and Christians in correct timeframe). You don't even need to include the whole backstory with the claim, aside from that this (include sources) was Mohammed's father's name
    – DVK
    Oct 23, 2013 at 15:53

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