Islam is Arabic for “surrender,” or “submission,” to the will of God. A Muslim is “one who surrenders.”
Yes, Jews can be excommunicated. The Hebrew word for excommunication is herem. it involves the cutting of all religious, social, and business ties with someone considered dangerous to the community. One of the most famous cases of herem involved the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Spinoza.
The secret fraternal order of Free and Acceptable Masons has its origins in communities of actual stoneworkers, the masons who built cathedrals in the Middle Ages. Eventually, lodges in need of new members started admitting non-masons, and from these lodges modern Freemasonry developed.
Christ was probably born in 6 B.C. We know because the Bible suggests that Christ was at least two years old when King Herod died. Herod, we know from other sources, died in 4 B.C.
Tradition gives the names of the two thieves crucified at the same time as Jesus Christ as Dismas’ and Gestas. The New Testament does not say.
Muslims start their calendar from Friday, July 16, A.D. 622. This was the day that Muhammad and his early followers made their hijrah, or emigration, from Mecca to Medina. They were forced to leave Mecca because of opposition to Muhammad’s teachings.