Is everybody a decendent of the Prophet Muhammad [pbuh]?

I just read an interesting site on the internet. Working on the logic that the number of ascendents each human being has is 2^x [where x = number of generations back, since we each have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 gt grandparents, 16 gt gt grandparents, 32 gt gt gt grandparents], that means that going back say 1000 years, each person has potentially billions of ancestors.

As an example, the furtherest ancestor I know about died in 1491 [in Gloustershire, England incidently]. That is 18 generations back from my daughter. Presumably, that means she has 262,144 eighteenth generation ancestors in total. Sure, some of them might be the same people, but let's hope not too many!

This of course is a little over 500 years ago. Now, what if we keep going back to around 900 CE? That means [for instance] 2³⁶ [36 generations back] she has a total of 68,719,476,736 36th generation ancestors. 68 billion!

Since there were only a fraction of that many people alive in 900 CE, we can assume that there were obviously some shared ancestors. However, given the laws of probability, it would be almost impossible that everybody in Europe [at least] is not related to each other in some way.

This is explained best at:
http://www.oz.net/~lee/Genealogy/charlemagne.html

Given that known descendents of the Prophet [PBUH] were living in Spain at that time, well... The point is that if you look throughout the Muslim world and even areas where Muslims / Christians interacted, it would be highly unlikely if the overwhelming majority of people do not have a genetic link to the sahabat [companions] and even to the Prophet Muhammad himself!

The question is then, what is the meaning of a title like 'Syed' in this day and age?

This all seems pretty convincing to me, with my limited maths. But if anyone has a different point of view, please explain!

Schapelle Corby: give it a rest!

This has certainly been done to death elsewhere [in fact just about everywhere] and I'm not going to go into details. Perhaps the most significant thing to come out of this is how issues that are basically irrelevant to most people become the centre of just about every conversation.

However, a plea: give it a rest! This woman is not Joan of Arc, Nelson Mandela or even Lindy Chamberlain.

From what I've seen, she's received a meticulously transparent trial, with every detail being available to the public. The thing is, she was found with 4kg of dope in her bag, 4 customs officers testified that she refused to open her bag when asked to do so, appeared agitated as though she was trying to hide something, and then admitted the drugs were hers. That's what the court heard. All the rest - the convicted rapist testifying about an overheard conversation, speculation about a domestic drug trafficking ring operating between Brisbane and Sydney - is circumstantial at best and an Australian jury would not have even got to hear about it. If the boot was on the other foot and Australian customs officers testified like that against an Indonesian girl, I don't doubt for a second who an Australian jury would believe. She'd be up the river just like Schapelle is!

What gets to me is this xenophobic notion of boycotting Bali or Indonesia. Yeah, that makes sense. Corby supporters argue she was set up by an AUSTRALIAN drug trafficking rings and the drugs were put in her bag IN AUSTRALIA by allegedly corrupt AUSTRALIAN baggage handlers. So boycott QANTAS!!!! If you think the Indonesian justice system has let Schapelle down by not fingerprinting the bag or forcing her to stay in such a hideous prison, by all means, put your money where your mouth is. I.E. don't boycott the country, DONATE money to Indonesia, an unbelieveably poor country so they can afford to provide some of the judicial luxuries you complain about. As it is, I'm far more supportive of them spending their limited budget on developing roads, schools and hospitals.

Finally, there are some losers who believe that Schapelle is some victim of an Islamist conspiracy to get revenge on Australia for East Timor. That can most simply be answered by saying that just about everyone involved in this case has been a CHRISTIAN [the head judge] or a HINDU [the other two judges]. Sorry for being so dismissive but this is one of the most xenophobic pieces of garbage to emerge about this whole sorry case, and those who express it are revealing their pig-ignorance in the worst possible way.

Anyway, I'm over this. Good luck Schapelle with your appeals, if you are innocent I hope your lawyers can provide some admissable evidence of it. It's not your fault that so many of your supporters are morons.