In this century the papacy was officially instituted. The etymology of the word pope (daddy) is a reference within the Church. The pope, then, becomes the highest authority in Christianity, whatever he says will be law, will be a determination to be fulfilled in all councils, by all cardinals, bishops and priests.

However, some distinct figures appeared in past centuries and were considered popes, such as Leo I and Gregory I. The city of Constantinople then became the center of attention within Christianity, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

In 610, the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire Phocas decided to appoint a pope, Boniface III, who came to be considered the first pope after the officialization of the papacy. When historians speak of the institution of the papacy, they list several positive aspects. Before the 7th century, there were many fights, conflicts, there were those who considered that the Doctrine should be one way, while others had different opinions. Anyway, it was very good to maintain unity within Christianity. But there was also a negative aspect, because if the pope made a mistake in his decisions, if he committed some error, the Church would err as a whole. And many mistakes happened in the following centuries.

The tree of religions has two great branches: the Vedic branch and the Abrahamic branch. The Vedas, a polytheistic doctrine, became the wisdom of the East. Several doctrines of the East were inspired by Vedic truths, coming from India. On the other hand, in the West, we have the Abrahamic religions, monotheistic, which are only three: Judaism, Christianity and the third, the most recent of them, Islam.

Exactly in the year 610 the first expressions of Islam appeared, precisely when Christianity officially instituted the papacy. Its initiator was called Muhammad (Mohammed, in Portuguese), son of Abdullah.

When Muhammad was born, his father had already died and, at two years of age, his mother also died. He then began to be raised by his paternal grandfather, Abu al-Muttalib, because in the concept, in the tradition of his people, the child belonged to the father. So, he stayed under the care of his grandfather, who had married a second time and had children, some of the same age as Muhammad. However, when still young, at around six years of age, his grandfather died.

From then on, one of his uncles, who was older than him, took his guardianship. And this uncle traveled a lot and took him along. On one of these trips, when he was a teenager, he had contact with Christianity. He met a pilgrim who traveled the roads preaching Christianity. Muhammad had never heard of Jesus. He then absorbed the concepts of Christianity.

He lived in a society very different from the one he would later build Islam. The Arab peoples, at the time when Muhammad was a child and teenager, were also polytheistic. There were many cultures of various gods, many different religions.

There, in Mecca, where Muhammad was born, there was a construction in cubes, made of bricks (it still exists today), which is called Kaaba, which means cube. For those who today see it in photos, they may think it is black, but it is only covered with a black cloth. It was and is a place of great reverence.

There is a tradition within Islam, very interesting. They say that who built the Kaaba was Abraham, together with his son Ishmael. Abraham had two sons, the first with his servant, Hagar, Ishmael, who generated the Arab people. Then, he had a second son, with his wife Sarah, called Isaac, who generated the peoples of Palestine and the Jews themselves.

When Ishmael was a teenager, Sarah forced Abraham to expel him, together with his mother, Hagar, from the home. Abraham, very upset, sent away his slave and his son, about 13 years old. When Sarah died, tradition says that Ishmael returned to approach Abraham. Then, in one of these pilgrimages that the two made, they would have built the Kaaba.

In this Kaaba, there is a very interesting curiosity. On one of its sides, in one of the foundation pieces, there is a rock that is called “the stone that fell from the sky”, which is actually a meteorite, much larger than the bricks. As all the bricks are the same and have the same shape, this stone is totally different from the rest of the construction. It is there to this day.

At the beginning, the Kaaba was worshiped by polytheists and was full of idols, statues of different gods. So, Muhammad grew up in this polytheistic environment, until he became an adult.

When we talk about Jews, Christians and Muslims, we mean that we are all brothers, we are part of the same family. We come from the same trunk of Abraham. But why do we fight so much?

Let’s go back to the story and understand why: Abraham had a wife, Sarah, who could not give him children. So, she allowed him to lie with her Egyptian slave, Hagar, so that he could have a child with her and generate his descendants. From this relationship, Ishmael was born, who in theory was the firstborn. Ishmael, for Islam and the Quran, is the son of the promise.

But then, Sarah, Abraham’s legitimate wife, even at an advanced age had a son, Isaac. We know the story: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who generated the twelve tribes of Israel, one of these twelve tribes being Judah. From Judah comes the generation that reaches Jesus, that is, Christians come from Jesus, who comes from Judah, who comes from Abraham. Jews come from Isaac, who comes from Abraham. Our Muslim brothers come from the first son, who was Ishmael. We are brothers!

What we see today in the Middle East, these fights, these disagreements, are all family disagreements (just as happens today in the best families). The conflicts exist in our interpretations. We could very well learn to live in harmony.

Interesting is that Ishmael, traditions say, also married an Egyptian and from this union they also had twelve children, who formed the twelve tribes that originated the Arab Nations. One of these tribes is the Quraysh. From this tribe, in the year 570, Muhammad was born.

So, Muhammad, after meeting the Christian preacher, became a simple merchant without great possessions. When he was 25 years old, he met a widow of 40 years, very rich, called Khadijah. They married and he rose, in terms of social position, and became a rich merchant. Their union lasted many years and Muhammad did not adopt any other woman during that time.

When Muhammad turned 40 years old, in the year 610, he was already a shepherd, had sheep and properties. One of the times he was herding his sheep on Mount Hira, he entered a cave and there, a phenomenon happened that would change his life forever.

Muhammad, in that cave, felt a spiritual approach. The angel Gabriel appeared to him, the same who made the announcement to Mary, saying that she would be the mother of the Savior. According to traditions, the angel Gabriel told him: “It is up to you to reveal the one God, Allah, and you will be His prophet.”

Then, right there, he had trances, in which the angel Gabriel spoke with him, but he did not write anything down. The angel inspired him and Muhammad began to recite verses, “not writing anywhere”, only reciting. People began to go to the cave to hear him and many noticed his altered state of consciousness.

From that year 610 on, the angel began to inspire messages, which gave rise to the Suras (the Suratas), that which later composed the sacred book of the Muslims, the Quran. He compiled the messages and began his preachings to the people. But they were not preachings free of conflict, because the people were polytheistic and began to oppose him, to persecute him.

Due to the persecutions being very violent, in the year 622, he had to move to another city, Medina, a change recognized as the Hegira, a very important phenomenon within Islam, because from Mecca, he took Islam to the city of Medina. The Muslim calendar begins exactly in 622.

There, in Medina, Islam gained strength, grew, became liked by people. In this period of persecutions and change, his wife Khadijah died, in 619. So, Muhammad lost his father, his mother, his grandfather, his uncle and, lastly, his wife. His story of orphanhood was very strong.

The persecutions were very violent. There were tortures and deaths against those who presented themselves as defenders of his thought. There was martyrdom against his followers. This is the cause of his move to Medina. He had already become a reasonably influential person, and this, according to historians, spared him from being sacrificed.

Muhammad stayed 10 years in Medina, organizing himself, making disciples, guiding people in the Doctrine. After these years, already feeling strong enough for a confrontation with the people of his hometown, he decided to return to Mecca.

Islam has five principles: 1) SHAHADA (profession of faith): there is only one God, Allah, and one greatest prophet, Muhammad, among all others; 2) SAWM (fasting): month of Ramadan, sacred, in which Muslims fast from dawn to sunset, dedicating themselves to prayer, reflection, charity and reading of the Quran; 3) HAJJ (pilgrimage to Mecca): mandatory for every adult Muslim with financial and health conditions; 4) SALAT (prayer): five daily prayers mandatory for Muslims, who must turn towards the city of Mecca, where the Kaaba is located. Wherever they are on the planet, it is the duty of every Muslim and the objective is to maintain constant connection with Allah; 5) ZAKAT (charity): every Muslim must do charity, help the needy and promote solidarity.

The problem is not in religions, it is in men. Christ spoke of love, Moses spoke of love, the Quran speaks of love, and it is the book that most cites the Virgin Mary and speaks of charity. If there are ill-intentioned people, the fault is not of religion, but of men. The Quran is a rhymed, musical book, a very beautiful way of writing.

When Muhammad was still alive, there was a group of people who said that he had said that the one who would replace him after his death would be his nephew-son-in-law, married to his daughter Fatima, called Ali. However, when he died, it was not Ali who replaced him, it was Abu Bakr. Those who were supporters of Ali became very upset and, then, a rupture occurred. Those who wanted Ali as their leader became Shiites, and those who did not want Ali became Sunnis. These groups began to fight soon after the death of Muhammad.

Abu Bakr was chosen because he was the first to convert, thus he was given this reverence. But he was already very old and did not last long. After his death, they said that Ali would take his place and would be the caliph, but this did not happen. Omar was chosen. The hatred and revolt were even greater and when Omar died, they were again in expectation, but Osman took his place, worsening the situation even more. Only when Osman died did Ali finally become the fourth caliph.

Caliphs are the substitutes of Muhammad. The caliph is to Islam what the pope is to Catholicism. However, Ali was very persecuted and ended up being killed. His sons, Hassan, Hussain and Muhammad, assumed in sequence, but were also killed. The lineage of Ali is, in total, composed of twelve caliphs.

The last of this lineage was Mardi, who was 13 years old when he assumed. However, he disappeared. In the view of Islam, he, in fact, did not die, he simply transubstantiated, and is alive. So, when his name is pronounced one has to place the hand on the head. And, according to Islamic traditions, when Jesus comes a second time, Mardi will come with Him and they will come together to judge humanity, separate the good from the bad.

It is these first caliphs who wrote the Quran. They called the people who knew the verses of the prophet Muhammad and put them on paper. Thus, they organized the Suratas that Muhammad had received. After that, all other texts were burned. No one could have any other text except that which was adopted by this group of specialists who composed the Quran.

The Quran is made up of 114 Suratas, but it is not a chronological sequence. These are organized by size, starting with the longest, until the last, which is very small. This was done because they did not know for sure the order in which they had been received. When questioned why they are organized by size, the answer follows the principle of how chromosomes are organized, by size. Thus, the same logic was used in the organization of the texts of the Suratas.

Between the years 621 and 622, Muhammad had an insight, a kind of unfolding. And historians say that he was taken on a winged horse named Buraq, from the city of Mecca (he had not yet moved to Medina), to Jerusalem, more precisely to Mount Moriah, and there he would have ascended to the seventh heaven and there would have met Allah and received from the mouth of Allah the Quran. He would have received the revelation that Allah was the true God and that he was the greatest of the prophets. He would have also met Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus Christ.

This tradition justifies the interest of the three monotheistic religions in Jerusalem. Mount Moriah was the one on which Abraham received a request from God for him to take his son, Isaac, to the mountain and sacrifice him. And according to Jewish traditions, it is the same mountain where Cain and Abel made their sacrifices to God and the same place where Jacob had to fight all night with the angel. In the understanding of Judaism, Mount Moriah was the place where the various generations had spiritual experiences. So, it is a place of sacrifice and offerings for many centuries.

Mount Moriah is sacred to Muslims. There is what remained of the last temple of the Jews, known as the Western Wall. But it is a mistake to name it like that, because, for the Jews, it is the Western Wall, that is its correct name. Jews do not go there to lament, on the contrary, they go there to revere God, through prayer. And for Christians this Mount Moriah is important because there is the Church that was built on the place where Jesus was crucified.

The same Mount Moriah is worshiped by Jews, Muslims and Christians. The reverence for the city of Jerusalem is very great, for being a key city for the three monotheistic religions. However, for the same reason, it is a city that causes so much dispute.

After the death of Muhammad, which occurred in the year 632, there began to be an expansion of Islam and disputes between Christians and Muslims began. Places that were until then Christian, such as Asia Minor, North Africa, Turkey, began to become Muslim. In 632, Syria, which was a Christian cradle, became Muslim. In 638, the caliph Omar, the second of the caliphs, took Jerusalem. And an interesting phenomenon occurred. Christianity, which had left the West with the fall of the Roman Empire and gone to the East with the invasion of the Muslims, began to retreat back to Europe.

And, moving toward the next century, the Muslims prepared to invade Europe and the fights between Christians and Muslims would take on great proportions.