A Different Trinity: God, Mary & Jesus

At The Face of the Goddess I quoted Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) about a "heresy" of Mary-worshippers:

The Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of paganism: their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the temples of the East: the throne of the Almighty was darkened by the clouds of martyrs, and saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridian heretics, who flourished in the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and honours of a goddess.

At Islamic Awareness there are several more quotes from and about the Qur'an and Mary, including a telling quote from Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall in his book, The Original Sources Of The Qur'an, published in 1905 by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. Tisdall wrote,

...Muhammad heard certain Christians make that there are three Gods, that is to say God the Father, Mary, and Jesus. It is perfectly plain from these verses that Muhammad really did believe that the Christian doctrine inculcated belief in three separate Divine persons, Jesus and Mary being two of them. But our third quotation implies that Muhammad - probably from what he had seen of "Christian" worship - thought that the order was Jesus, Mary, God, or Mary, Jesus, God. No reasonable man will wonder at the indignation with which Muhammad in God's name abjures such blasphemy. We must all feel regret that the idolatrous worship offered to Mary led Muhammad to believe that people who called her "Queen of Heaven" and "Mother of God" really attributed to her Divine attributes.

Christians have evidently long thought that Muhammad just misunderstood about the trinity, but Islamic scholars - and Christians as well - point to seventh century Christians in Arabia who did worship Mary along with Jesus and god.

Also at Islamic Awareness, is a quote from George Sale in the preliminary discourse to his translation of the Qur'an, writes:

"Among the Arabs it was that the heresies of Ebion, Beryllus, and the Nazareans, and also that of the Collyridians, were broached, or at least propagated; the latter introduced the Virgin Mary for God, or worshipped her as such offering her a sort of twisted cake called collyris, whence the sect had its name.

"This notion of the divinity of the Virgin Mary was also believed by some at the Council of Nice, who said there were two gods besides the Father viz. Christ and the virgin Mary, and were thence named Mariamites."

There's a group called the Oregon Collyridians in Portland - they have an extensive website with links galore.

Seventh Century Islam Today

Two new histories look at what happened to Islam - which means why do some of the cultures informed by this religion still believe in stoning? Or, as the reviewer says, "The Muslim world seems to be caught up in a crisis that shows no end in sight. If there is a single image that reflects this ongoing catastrophe, it is captured in the haunting eyes of a dying Neda Soltani, the 24-year-old woman shot dead on the streets of Tehran."

The two books are:
THE CRISIS IN ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
by Ali A. Allawi
Yale University Press, 320 pages, $33.50
*
LOST IN THE SACRED
Why the Muslim World Stood Still
by Dan Diner
Princeton University press, 214 pages, $35.95

The Globe and Mail reviews these two books here.

Until the 15th century, bloodshed and oppression were not an exclusive domain of the Muslim world. The rest of humanity, from India to China, from Africa to Europe, lived through similar travails. However, after the Reformation, Renaissance and Enlightenment, Europe slowly started on the long road to democracy, freedom, liberty and secularism, with religion and race separated from state and politics, at least in spirit if not in practice.

However, in the Muslim world, time seems to have stood still for the past five centuries. The once glorious civilizations that flourished in Baghdad, Cordoba and Delhi now seem to me mere myths that sustain the ossified existence of a billion people, trapped in the past and seemingly unable to break loose from chains of conformity intertwined with superstition and a contempt for joy itself.

Interestingly, the readers' comments are hostile - complaining that the West didn't stop being bloodthirsty in the 15th century, but has eclipsed Islam before and since.

There's some truth to that, but doesn't explain what happened to Islam.