THE MATCHLESS MOSES

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From THE URANTIA BOOK

Part III, 96, 3

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The beginning of the evolution of the Hebraic concepts and ideals of a Supreme Creator dates from the departure of the Semites from Egypt under that great leader, teacher, and organizer, Moses. His mother was of the royal family of Egypt; his father was a Semitic liaison officer between the government and the Bedouin captives. Moses thus possessed qualities derived from superior racial sources; his ancestry was so highly blended that it is impossible to classify him in any one racial group. Had he not been of this mixed type, he would never have displayed that unusual versatility and adaptability which enabled him to manage the diversified horde which eventually became associated with those Bedouin Semites who fled from Egypt to the Arabian Desert under his leadership.

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 Despite the enticements of the culture of the Nile kingdom, Moses elected to cast his lot with the people of his father. At the time this great organizer was formulating his plans for the eventual freeing of his father’s people, the Bedouin captives hardly had a religion worthy of the name; they were virtually without a true concept of God and without hope in the world.

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 No leader ever undertook to reform and uplift a more forlorn, downcast, dejected, and ignorant group of human beings. But these slaves carried latent possibilities of development in their hereditary strains, and there were a sufficient number of educated leaders who had been coached by Moses in preparation for the day of revolt and the strike for liberty to constitute a corps of efficient organizers. These superior men had been employed as native overseers of their people; they had received some education because of Moses’ influence with the Egyptian rulers.

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 Moses endeavored to negotiate diplomatically for the freedom of his fellow Semites. He and his brother entered into a compact with the king of Egypt whereby they were granted permission peaceably to leave the valley of the Nile for the Arabian Desert. They were to receive a modest payment of money and goods in token of their long service in Egypt. The Hebrews for their part entered into an agreement to maintain friendly relations with the Pharaohs and not to join in any alliance against Egypt. But the king later saw fit to repudiate this treaty, giving as his reason the excuse that his spies had discovered disloyalty among the Bedouin slaves. He claimed they sought freedom for the purpose of going into the desert to organize

the nomads against Egypt.
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 But Moses was not discouraged; he bided his time, and in less than a year, when the Egyptian military forces were fully occupied in resisting the simultaneous onslaughts of a strong Libyan thrust from the south and a Greek naval invasion from the north, this intrepid organizer led his compatriots out of Egypt in a spectacular night flight. This dash for liberty was carefully planned and skillfully executed. And they were successful, notwithstanding that they were hotly pursued by Pharaoh and a small body of Egyptians, who all fell before the fugitives’ defense, yielding much booty, all of which was augmented by the loot of the advancing host of escaping slaves as they marched on toward their ancestral desert home.

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THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN MUHAMMAD'S TIME

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From A HISTORY OF GOD -
The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
by Karen Armstrong
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Muhammad died unexpectedly after

a short illness in June 632.  After his death, some of the Bedouin tried to break away from the ummah, but the political unity of Arabia held firm.

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[From Wikipedia -  Ummah (Arabic: أمة‎) is an Arabic word meaning "community" or "nation". It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of states, or (in the context of pan-Arabism) the whole Arab world. In the context of Islam, the word ummah is used to mean the diaspora or Commonwealth of the Believers (ummat al-mu'minin), and thus the whole Muslim world.]
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Eventually the recalcitrant tribes also

 accepted the religion of the one God:

 Muhammad's astonishing success had shown

 the Arabs that the paganism which had served them

well for centuries no longer worked in the modern world.

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The religion of al-Lah introduced the compassionate ethos

which was the hallmark of the more advanced religions:

brotherhood and social justice were its crucial virtues.

A strong egalitarianism would continue to characterize

the Islamic ideal.

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During Muhammad's lifetime, this had included

the equality of the sexes.  Today it is common in the West

to depict Islam as an inherently misogynistic religion, but,

like Christianity, the religion of al-Lah was originally positive

for women.  During the jahiliyyah, the pre-Islamic period,

Arabia had preserved the attitudes toward women which

had prevailed before the Axial Age.  Polygamy, for example,

was common, and wives remained in their father's households.

Elite women enjoyed considerable power and prestige -

Muhammad's first wife, Khadija, for example, was a

successful merchant - but the majority were on a par with

slaves; they had no political or human rights, and female

infanticide was common.

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Women had been among Muhammad's earliest converts,

and their emancipation was a project that was dear to his heart.

The Koran strictly forbade the killing of female children and

rebuked the Arabs for their dismay when a girl was born.

It also gave women legal rights of inheritance and divorce:

most Western women had nothing comparable until the

nineteenth century.  Muhammad encouraged women to

play an active roll in the affairs of the ummah, and they

expressed their views forthrightly, confident that they

would be heard.  On one occasion, for example, the women

of Medina had complained to the Prophet that the men

were outstripping them in the study of the Koran and

asked him to help them catch up.  This Muhammad did.

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One of their most important questions was why the Koran

addressed men only when women had also made their surrender to God. 

 The result was a revelation that

addressed women as well as men and emphasized the

absolute moral and spiritual equality of the sexes.

Thereafter the Koran quite frequently addressed

women explicity, something that rarely happens in

either the Jewish or Christian scriptures.

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Unfortunately, as in Christianity, the religion was later

hijacked by the men, who interpreted texts in a way that was

negative for Muslim women.  The Koran does not prescribe

the veil for all women but only for Muhammad's wives,

as a mark of their status.  Once Islam had taken its place

in the civilized world, however, Muslims adopted those

customs of the Oikumene which relegated women to

second-class status. 
 They adopated the customs of veiling women
 and secluding them in harems from
 Persia and Christian Byzantium,
 where women had long been marginalized in this way. 
 By the time of the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258),
 the position of Muslim women was as bad as that
 of their sisters in Jewish and Christian society.
  Today, Muslim feminists urge their menfolk to return

to the original spirit of the Koran.

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