Assalaamu alaikum [Peace be to you],

Someone may ask:
What is the oldest monotheistic religion in the world?
or even
What was the oldest religion in the world?

You may disagree with what I am going to write. everyone is entitled to their opinion. I do not aim to debate, I only aim to share what I know.


The evolutionary secularists claim that, just like humans passed through different evolutionary phases, religion also passed through different evolutionary phases. they propagate an evolutionary progression from Animism via Polytheism to Monotheism. These people imply that man was a non-believer in God at start. and then, according to their claim, he became a nature-worshipper. they also claim that man created G*d -I seek refuge with the God from this blasphemous claim-. they go and claim that man practiced shamanism and paganism and with time, man came to invent the idea of monotheism.

Some other people claim that Hinduism was the earliest known religion going back to the 33rd century BCE.
and Some people claim that Zoroastrianism was the first monotheistic religion going back to 1700BCE. Some claim that the Egyptian King Akhenaten was the inventor of monotheism in 1367 BCE. and of course, some say that Judaism was the first monotheistic religion.
to summarize, there are a lot of claims. a lot of hypotheses, a lot of assumptions.


What is Islamic perspective on Chronology of Religion

Many people have a misconception that islam is a 1400 years old religion and that the prophet mohammed -peace be upon him- was the founder of this religion. so they put Islam in the seventh century as a new religion.

Is this true? let's consider a few points:

First, Mohammed -peace be upon him- stated clearly that he is not the founder of Islam. can you imagine people giving credit for the foundation of something to someone who clearly states he is not the founder?
if he was a founder, why would he deny that? we know that everyone wants to take credit for his achievements and be rewarded for them. it's unthinkable that someone brings a big religion and claims it is not his genuine work. besides, if he is not the founder, who is?

Well, Mohammed -peace be upon him- stated that he was a restorer of Islam. that Islam was on earth long before Mohammed's birth.
this raises questions:
a- if Mohammed was not the founder of Islam, then who founded it and when?
b- why was Mohammed a restorer of Islam?

Mohammed brought a very unique scripture called Qur'an. this scripture claims to be the word of the God and it claims to answer several very important questions of mankind. (I am not going to prove the Qur'an here. I am going to see how it answers these questions)


The Tale of the WTG

when reading the Qur'an trying to find answers to the above questions, we learn several important things:
First, we learn that there is a great God who created the whole universe and all that exists.
The God decided to create one special creation called mankind and put man on earth as a caretaker and agent for some time. the God taught the first man the right way of success (let's call it WTG -Way To God-) but the God gave man freedom of choice. so the man can choose his faith and his decisions. he can choose to follow the WTG or not to follow it.
The first man who ever lived on earth, Adam -peace be upon him-, was appointed as the first prophet of the God. he had the duty to teach his family about the first version of WTG: WTG 1.0
In this time, Adam and his family were the only humans on earth. they practiced the religion called WTG. it was a monotheistic religion.
The God is All-Wise. he did not give Adam complicated and detailed teachings related to things man did not know in that time, such as trade and business and society. because Adam and his family would not understand them yet and get confused. the God only taught Adam according to the needs of that time.

Centuries later, the little family of the first man became a big tribe. some people moved far away discovering new lands and looking for grasslands for their animals. with time, people started forgetting a little about WTG. so the God choose a good and wise man among mankind and appointed him as a new prophet in order to remind people and bring the teachings of WTG to life. Now that society became bigger, people invented several new things. so the God included teachings related to these new discoveries in the new version of WTG. so it became WTG 1.1 a new and updated cool version that fits the needs of the people of the time.

The new prophet remained teaching people about WTG until his death... centuries later, people developed even more. now they built a civilization. life became more complicated. better in many sides, but worse in others: people forgot much of WTG and many people included things in the original teachings of WTG. they made it into WWTG (Wrong Way To God) of course, these people, out of ignorance or evil intentions, claim that the WWTG is the true WTG.
Now there was a need for a new prophet. so the God chose the most qualified among the people of that time and gave him the responsibility to restore the WTG and bring WTG 2.0.
Of course each time a new prophet comes to restore the old WTG, many people oppose him and his followers. and the task of delivering the message of WTG was never easy...

It continued like this for long centuries. each time civilization progresses and people discover new things, the God sends an updated version of the WTG with new options related to the new needs of people. Also each time people try to corrupt the WTG, the God sends prophets to restore it.

There were hundreds and thousands of these prophets. they were sent to people of all nations and tribes. and each one had a special version to fit the people he was sent to. but they have all the same core. for example, the tribes of central Africa's WTG was not identical to the WTG of the tribes in Northern Europe because they had different customs and different needs. but they agree in the core.
what was the core?
the belief of one and only one true God creator of everything that exists. this monotheistic message was the essence of all versions of WTG.

Later in time, we had many corrupted versions of WTG, some were close to the original and some were very far and different depending on the additions and changes people made to the original WTG. Some of these false versions were corrupted very much and people included worship of some man-made gods and human gods and animals... these false versions of the original WTG grew to become established and organized religions with their scriptures and priests and all. People gave names to these false versions of WTG based on the tribes of their followers or their presumed founders or the place where their followers lived.

But the God kept sending prophets after prophets to restore the old WTG. But the God did not plan to keep doing that all the time. so the God sent his final prophet and restorer of WTG. and this time, he gave him teachings that apply not only to his people, but to all people of the whole world from that time to the end of time. this prophet charged with this great responsibility was not only sent to his own people, he was sent to the whole of mankind bringing the most perfect WTG ever known to mankind. the SUPER DELUXE VERSION SWTG (Super Way to God). Just like previous versions, this version includes teachings related to all aspects of life. It covers all human needs and problems. With the same core as the first WTG, the SWTG is special in the fact that it is immune to any kind of corruption or alteration.


So the first religion known to mankind is the WTG. of course people did not call it WTG. they used different words from their own languages to refer to it. but the name of the true religion was not chosen by the people, but by the one who sent it, the God Almighty.
The core of WTG is the submission to the will of the God. so people who practiced WTG were submitting their will to the will of the God.
The SWTG happened to be delivered to the Arabs, so it certainly had an Arabic name. the God chose the name for it and he called it ISLAM. In the Arabic language, Islam means the total submission to the will of the God. Those who followed Islam are called Muslims.

Islam was the first religion on Earth. the first religion practiced by man. and the first monotheistic religion. in other words, all religions of the world, monotheistic or polytheistic, all came from one origin, ISLAM. and this explains the similarities in many of these religions. animism, shamanism and paganism came as a result of the alteration and corruption of the original Islam. Atheism came later as a denial of the corrupted and altered religions...


What about Christianity? What about Judaism?

Someone may ask: What about Judaism? What about Christianity?
From an Islamic point of view, there is no divine religion called Judaism and there is no divine religion called Christianity. According to Islam, the prophet Moses -peace be upon him- preached total submission to the will of the God. he did not preach Judaism. he never heard the word Judaism in his life. it's his people after him that adopted the name Judaism. Jesus -peace be upon him- also preached total submission to the will of the God. he never heard the word Christianity in his life. it's his people later adopted that name Christianity. so the original religions preached by Moses and Jesus were not Judaism and Christianity.
According to Islam, All biblical prophets preached the same message: WTG, or Total submission to the will of the God (in the Arabic language, we have one single word for it and it is called Islam). which makes them total submitters to the will of the God (in the Arabic language, one word for it is Muslims) and those who followed the original message were also submitters to the will of the God (in the Arabic language, one word for it is Muslims).


Now someone may say:
"Alright, all this makes sense. but how can we know it is really the truth? How can we know if what the Qur'an tells is really true. can you provide a proof?"
This is a very genuine question. and to answer it, we need to study and check the credibility of the Qur'an as a scripture. and that will take long articles. stay around, and in sha'Allah [God willing], I will provide some good and interesting evidences of the credibility of the Qur'an in my future articles.


I hope this was beneficial.


You have right to disagree with what I wrote above. but I do not like to see long walls of rebuttal text in my page. I do not aim to debate. I only aim to share what I know. if you still want to refute what I said, please write a reply in your own page and invite me to read it.

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If I am right, it is from the God. if I am wrong, it is from myself. I only did my best. so God, forgive me.