[hinckley buzzard]

Gibberish. IDK if the Copts are Arian or not, but fail to see the point. Arians were everywhere, including the Goths as they immigrated into the northern Roman empire such as it was. Had nothing to do with "protomoslems." What drivel.

[muawiyah]

There were even Mithrists all over the place, and plain old fashioned pagans ~ (who no doubt kept that secret by the time the 7th century came around).

I don't think it's quite rational for someone to claim for Islam all the non-Christians in the region BUT the business of claiming Jews as merely unreformed Moslems has been around since the 600s.

Moslems argue that Mohammad started out thinking he'd just reform Judaism (give it a Lutheran order of worship, a little group singing, standardize the prayers, and order up a nice walnut lecturn ~ I can only suppose).

This guy is just stretching that idea to everybody else.

He will have to watch it though. Plenty of Moslems out there don't like hearing that their ancestors were Christians of any kind.

[The_Reader_David]

It's absolute humbug. First, while Arius may have been a Copt (being from Alexandria, he could have been virtually any ethnicity found in the Empire), by the seventh century, the Copts were vehemently anti-Arian, and were separated from the rest of the Church over whether one could say Christ is in two Natures, Divine and Human (the common position of Orthodox and Latin alike) or only from two Natures, and the phrase "the One Incarnate Nature of the Divine Logos" which St. Cyril of Alexandria unknowingly took from the heretic Apollonius (whose errors are condemned alike by Orthodox, Latin and Copt) was the best way to speak of His Divinity and Humanity. By the time of Mohammed, Arianism was confined to various Germanic tribes, the Goths you mention and the Lombards (who finally accepted Orthodox christology when they fully reconciled with the Latin church in the 11th century).

Second, the bizarre claim advanced by Soliman fails to understand Arianism. Arius regarded the Divine Logos as the first creature, created even before time. While Orthodox Christians critique all "Christians" who deny the Divinity of Christ as "Arians", this is simply short-hand for that denial. In fact, even Arius had a more exalted view of Christ than Mohammed did.