to believe or not to: there's no question

There have been few, if any, personages in history more revered than the holy prophet: it is true that Buddha, Moses and Jesus are revered by their followers in greater or lesser degree, with some of them equating these great men with God Himself. But unlike Muhammad , these personages were only semi-historical. In other words, a large accumulation of myths, legends and fables augment these personages in the form they have been handed to us. But in the case of Muhammad, we have his life as it was lived by a man of flesh and blood. Even Philip K. Hitti had to admit this when he willy-nilly remarked: Muhammad was born in the full light of history (Hitti 9).
Muhammad’s birth was most unceremonious. He did not have any royal lineage like Buddha; he was not heir to any priestly tradition the way Jesus was; nor did enjoy the comforts of a courtly life as Moses did. His was the most unlikely circumstance for a man to make his mark on history. Born an orphan, he lived a poor man for most part of his life (barring a brief spell) and died a poor man. Most of the time, his stomach was empty and he survived consuming nothing but water and dates; he slept on coarse mattresses made of palm fronds that left their mark on his skin; with his wives, most of them widows and over-aged, he lived in thatched huts equipped with flimsy cloth curtains. But more than a thousand and five hundred years after his death, his name echoes from across the globe: it has become a mantra that can arouse and sway millions of people.
In fact, Muhammad’s life is itself a testimony to the truth of the message that he preached. The ready alternative for someone who does not accept the prophecy of Muhammad, is the opposite one of considering him a dissembler, and not a minor one: for they will have to admit that he single-handedly deceived a huge chunk of humanity. As everybody knows, when Muhammad started his mission, he was alone; it was with great trepidation that he revealed his message even to the closest of his associates. So the choices are: we have to either accept Muhammad as a messenger or a dissembler.
Of course, there are people who willingly or not admit to the greatness of the prophet without necessarily subscribing to his prophecy, but this stance is nebulous and smacks of escapism. They are unwilling to confront the real issue of prophecy with the seriousness that it deserves.
A dissembler will certainly have his motives: money, fame, empire etc. In the case of Muhammad* none of these could be attributed as motives. He was a successful businessman at the age of forty when he first announced his mission. His claim of prophecy only weakened him financially as he must have anticipated himself: for he was demanding a complete overhaul of the system which earned him more enemies than friends. Fame could not have been his motive either. At the beginning of his mission he lived under constant threat to his own person. It was only God’s miraculous interventions (and this is something that the dissembler theorists cannot buy) that saved his life. Will any sane person posit himself in a totally antagonistic position vis-à-vis his family, tribe and community to seek fame that was nowhere within sight?
The initial reaction that the prophet’s announcement of his mission was something he expected. His closest family and tribe turned against him. Abu Lahab, who was not only his uncle but the father in law of his two daughters publicly abused him and forced his sons to divorce Muhammad’s daughters. Will a dissembler seeking fame embark upon a course that appears so destructive and bring nothing but collateral damage to him and his family?

It was not only threats and vicious propaganda that Muhammad had to put up with. Having realized that threats and persecutions were not going to deter Muhammad, the Quraysh tried to woo him by offering everything that a dissembler might be tempted to accept.
If he wanted to be the king, they were ready to accept him as their unquestioned monarch; if it was money that he was hankering after, they were ready to give him as much as he wanted; if he wanted to marry the most beautiful girl among them, they would even make provision for that.

What was Muhammad’s reply to these offers? He was emphatic: even if they place the sun in my right palm and the moon on my left, I won’t relinquish this mission. Are these words a dissembler will ever speak? It should be remembered that Muhammad* declined these offers at a time when the prospect of his movement were fraught with all conceivable obstacles. For all these offers, the Quraysh only wanted one concession from Muhammad*: he should not question the authority of their gods; even his favorite uncle and guardian Abu Talib pleaded with him but to no avail. Those who consider Muhammad* to be a great social reformer, but not as a prophet with a definite mandate from God, have something to ponder here: if social reformation was his only intention, he could have made at least some compromise over the issue of monotheism; but it was precisely on this score, he refused to budge the least. When the Quraysh realized neither persecution nor temptation could work, they resorted to the most agonizing kind of social boycott imaginable. They banned all commerce and transaction with the Prophet and his kinsmen belonging to the Banu Hashim; not only could anybody buy from or sell to them but nobody could marry their girls. This boycott lasted for three years during which Muhammad* and his companions suffered the most harrowing experiences in their lives.

They survived on leaves and brambles and went without food for months on end; but nothing could shatter their resolve. The impact of this was so hard that it precipitated the deaths of Abu Talib and Khadeejah, the beloved wife of the holy prophet. Can we imagine a man who didn’t have an express command from God to remain so steadfast in his mission against such odds and obstacles? The dissembler theorists will have to explain.
The world has never had any shortage of bogus divinities: ‘holy men’ who claimed miraculous abilities and an enviable proximity with the upper realms. All such men and women were keen on placing themselves at a certain remove from the people. They always sought to emphasize their difference from the mob to augment their holy status. How different was Muhammad* from such holy men? He always lived in the thick of the crowd: he ate, slept, fought, and died in the company of the people who believed in him. He always made it a point to stress his likeness with his fellow humans and dismiss off any suggestions of divine attributes. Is this something that any bogus holy men do? Doesn’t he or she seclude himself/herself from the mob and seek the company of a select clique composed of his or her cronies and parasites?

One thing that the prophet expressly forbade was giving him undue reverence. Once his companions stood up as he entered a majlis (a place where people sit and talk). It was a simple token of respect. But the prophet reprimanded them severely even warning them of hellfire. He admonished them not to admire him the way Christians admire Jesus. Such reverence was due only to God and not to his human messenger who had no claim to divinity. Once a group of girls singing his praises chanted that they had a prophet among them who knew the future.
Muhammad* immediately corrected them by saying he was nothing but a mortal and knew nothing about the future other than what Almighty let him know. There was a lunar eclipse on the day his son Ibrahim died. People of Madīnah were quick to attribute it to the death of the messenger’s son.
But Muhammad* was quick to scotch the rumors stating that such cosmic occurrences had nothing to do with anybody’s birth or death. Isn’t this the kind of occasion any fake messenger would have seized upon to buttress his claims?

Anyone studying the life of the prophet will be impressed by the nature of Muhammad’s mission and the way he fulfilled it. Until being commissioned a prophet at the age of forty he hadn’t written even a single verse, in a city where the gift of poety was accorded the highest honor. And then on a fine day, he started ‘creating’ the finest verses known to Arab tongue.
Its charm was so overwhelming that the Qurayshi leaders, including the bitterest enemies of Muhammad, stole off their beds at night to listen to it. Can we imagine any man endowed with such exceptional gifts to hide his poetic genius so fully concealed until he decided to make his bogus claim to prophecy? Those who deny the prophet will have to delude themselves that this was the case.

The literary beauty of the Quran is so surprising that the great literary giants of Arabic language from the old Waleed bin Mughirah to the modern Taha Hussein have been simply astounded by it even though neither of them were believers in its divinity. Omar Khayyam, the great Persian poet was so mesmerized by the Quran that he said we could burn all other books in the world for everything that mankind needed was there in this single book. The mnemonic devices of Quran are themselves an ample testimony of its superhuman nature. There has been no other book in the history of human race that has been so widely memorized. At any given moment, you can see thousands of people who have memorized its verses numbering more than six thousand. This includes many a people who do not even know Arabic. Leo Tolstoy had commented highly of the literary beauty and significance of the story of Joseph described in the Bible. If he had read the Quranic account of the story, he would have been more astounded: The Quranic narrative is an ebullient display of style and craft where stuff and substance are so skillfully welded together to create a perfect harmony. If it were Muhammad, the man, who had written this chapter, one simply wonders why he was so frugal with his narrative skills and didn’t take pains to enchant us with more stories? Why didn’t he write a single story until the promulgation of his prophecy when he was forty?
This introduction does not purport itself to be a detailed disquisition on the miracle that the Quran is. It will be sufficient to note that its revelations before nearly one and a half millennium ago had pointed to certain things that modern science discovered only a few decades back or is still in the process of discovering. These discoveries that attest to the Quranic revelations range across fields as varied as astronomy and embryology. The famous Canadian embryologist Keith L. Moore was so overcome by the Quranic descriptions of the various stages of the embryonic growth that he converted into Islam. His remarks on Quranic embryology are worth quoting:
It is clear to me that these statements must have come to Muhammad from God, because almost all of this knowledge was not discovered until many centuries later. This proves to me that Muhammad must have been a messenger of God.

In his epochal work The Quran, the Bible and Science, the famous French scientist and writer Maurice Bucaille makes a scholarly analysis of the discoveries made by modern science on a variety of topics viz. the origin of the universe, the evolution of the embryo, the water cycle, astronomical bodies and so forth. What strikes Bucaille about the Quranic descriptions is the fact that a text written so long ago could be so fully in accordance with the modern scientific discoveries on these topics and so wholly free of the prejudices and superstitions that were prevalent then. He wonders whether it was at all possible for a learned man who lived in sixth century Arabia, let alone an unlettered man like Muhammad*, to have known such things. Comparing the description of the water cycle in the Quran with the hypotheses made on this topic by many ancient writers including Aristotle, Bucaille writes:

When the verses of the Qur’an concerning the role of water in man’s existence are read in succession today, they all appear to us to express ideas that are quite obvious. The reason for this is simple: in our day and age, we all, to a lesser or greater extent, know about the water cycle in nature.

If however, we consider, the various concepts that the ancients had on this subject it becomes clear that the data in the Qur’an do not embody the mythical concepts current at the time of the revelation which had been developed more according to philosophical speculation than observed phenomena...

Two specialists on this subject, G. Gastany and B. Blavoux, in their entry in the Encyclopedia Universalis under the heading Hydrology give an edifying history of the problem:

“In the Seventh century B.C., Thales of Miletus held the theory whereby the waters of the oceans, under the effect of winds, were thrust towards the interior of the continents: so the water fell upon the earth and penetrated into the soil.
Plato shared these views and thought that the return of the waters of the ocean was via a great abyss the ‘Tartarus.’
This theory had many supporters until the 18th century; one of whom was Descartes. Aristotle imagined that the water vapor from the soil condensed in cool mountain caverns and formed underground lakes that fed springs. He was followed by Seneca (1st Century AD) and many others, until 1877, among them O. Volger...
The first clear formulation of the water cycle must be attributed to Beranrd Palissy in 1580: he claimed that the underground water came from rainwater infiltrating into the soil.
This theory was confirmed by E. Mariottte and P. Perrault in the Seventeenth century.

In the following passage from Qur’an there is no trace of the mistaken ideas that were current at the time of Muhammad:
“We sent down from the sky blessed water whereby we cause to grow gardens, grains for harvest, tall palm trees with their spathes, piled one above the other – sustenance for (Our) servants. Therewith we gave (new) life to a dead land. So will be their emergence (from the tombs). (50: 9-11)

We sent down water from the sky in measure and lodged in the ground and we certainly are able to withdraw it. Therewith for you we gave rise to gardens of palm trees and vineyards wherefore you are [able to grow] abundant fruits and of them you eat. (23: 18-19)
(Bucaille, 173-74)

This introduction to the life of the holy prophet is not meant to be a detailed discussion on the correspondences between the Quran and modern science. Anybody who wishes to study it in detail may refer to Maurice Bucaille’s The Bible, The Quran and Science.
The conclusion that Bucaille makes to his epochal study wherein he consulted a whole body of scientific, historical and religious texts is however relevant to our context:

The comparison of several Biblical and Quranic narrations of the same subject shows the existence of fundamental differences between statements in the former, which are scientifically unacceptable, and declarations in the latter which are in perfect agreement with modern data; this was the case of the Creation and Flood for example.
An extremely important complement to the Bible was found in the text of the Qur’an on the subject of the history of the Exodus, where the two texts were much in agreement with archeological findings in the dating of the time of Moses.
Besides, there are major differences between the Qur’an and the Bible on the other subjects they serve to disprove all that has been maintained – without a scrap of evidence – concerning the allegation that Muhammad is supposed to have copied the Bible to produce the text of the Qur’an...
In view of the level of knowledge in Muhammad’s day, it is inconceivable that many of the statements in the Qur’an which are connected with science could have been the work of a man. It is, moreover, perfectly legitimate, not only to regard the Qur’an as the expression of a Revelation but also to award it a very special place, on account of the guarantee of authenticity it provides and the presence in it of scientific statements which, when studied today, appear as a challenge to explanation in human terms. (Bucaille, 252)

This correspondence between the Quran and the science was responsible for the peaceful co-existence of religion and science in the Islamic world. Unlike Christendom, Islam has no history of burning scientists at stakes or condemning them for heresy. Moreover, some of the great Muslim scientists like Al Battani, Al Baruni and Ibn Tufail were also great men of religious scholarship. These scientists whom the West discovered only recently are said to have anticipated many of the western discoveries credited to scientists like Copernicus, Galileo and even Newton as Ziauddin Sardar notes in his book Introducing Islam. Quran was the torch that helped these scientists in their explorations and experimentations.

In the light of the above analysis, it becomes crystal clear that the Quran cannot be the word of a shepherd who lived in the sixth century Arabia. The impact that the Quran made on the personal life of Muhammad* and those around him also needs to be studied. The scene of Abu Talib’s death is remarkable. Despite offering his nephew all the protection he needed, the Qurayshi patriarch died a pagan. At his death-bed Muhammad* was pleading with him to believe in God and forswear idols, so that he could plead his uncle’s case with the Almighty. But Abu Talib declined, succumbing to the wishes of Islam’s arch enemy Abu Jahl. Can we imagine a bogus prophet doing thus at a time when his guardian was battling for life?
Though Abu Talib died a pagan, Muhammad continued pleading his case with Allah until he was forbidden from doing so through a revelation:

It is not for the prophet and the believers to beg forgiveness for polytheists, even if they might be their close kinsmen after it was made clear that they are dwellers of hell. Abraham prayed for his father only to fulfill a promise he had made. But when he realized he was a foe of God, he disowned him. Surely Abraham was a compassionate and kind-hearted man. (Qur'ān 9:113-115)

This was a big shock to the prophet. Can we imagine a dissembler being subject to this kind of emotional trauma on account of what critics accuse to be verses that he himself fabricated?
Another revelation that came as a shock to the prophet was the opening verses of chapter eighty titled “The Frowned.” The incident that led to this revelation has been well-documented.
The holy prophet was trying to convince a group of Qurayshi chieftains the true nature of his mission. Though these chiefs had no misgivings about the honesty and truthfulness of the Messenger, they were reluctant to forswear their ancestral creed and join the new religion. One of the main reasons for this was the egalitarianism preached by Muhammad. Once they joined Muhammad’s ranks, they feared, they would have to share the same platform with all those downtrodden people whom they looked upon with unmitigated scorn and derision. On this occasion they were but all ears to the messenger’s words. The prophet thought if he could sway them, his task could be much easier, since they were people who wielded considerable influence among the local people. He sensed an opportunity to turn the levers of Makkahn history the way his mission demanded.
While he was persuasively preaching the Makkahn chieftains, the blind Abdullah Bin Umm Maqtum dropped by. Oblivious of what the messenger was doing, Abdullah interrupted him; he wanted the messenger to devote some time to give him religious instruction. Abdullah Bin Umm Maqtum was exactly the kind of man that the Qurayshi leaders did not want to associate themselves with. Muhammad was a bit annoyed at this untimely intrusion. His contour turned grim. But Almighty Allah was not impressed by the conduct of his messenger.
The Quran was harsh:

He frowned and turned away when the blind man approached him; How can you know? He might probably cleanse himself. He might be mindful and the reminding might him benefit. But to those that are well-off thou are at-tentive; although it will not be upon you if they fail to cleanse themselves. Yet to him that came to you in eager expectation; you did turn away from him. (Qur'ān 80: 1-10)

This revelation used to haunt the prophet throughout his life. Even after a decade, he could not face Ibn Maqtum with a calm head; a chill used to run down his spine at the very sight of the blind companion. Isn’t this proof of the seriousness that Muhammad attached to the divine revelation?



In a sense, Arabs are/were the very anti-thesis of the English:
they are seldom reserved. Until modern times, they lived in close-knit societies where social interactions were maximized to a level that almost everyone in an urban society knew each other. While living in such communities, it was their practice to associate certain qualities with certain individuals. The equation of the pre-Islamic figure of Hatim Al-Tai with generosity is an example. The very mention of the word generosity brings to Arab minds the figure of Hatim al-Tai. We need not digress here by narrating the story of a few Syrian youth who decided to put Tai’s famed generosity to test: They visited the man at his home and after being treated to a sumptuous dinner asked him whether he could part with his prized horse.
Hatim al-Tai was visibly at a loss because he had slaughtered the horse to entertain his guests. If Hatim was thus known for his generosity Muhammad was well-known for his trustworthiness. People gave him the appellate Al-Ameen or ‘the Trustworthy.’ Being a businessman, he was in constant touch with people and it was him that the Makkans used to trust with their money and valuables. There was never a single incident of any breach of trust on his part and that was what earned him this enviable epithet. Can we imagine such a man to turn into nothing but an out and out dissembler one fine morning and utter nothing but falsehood? Those who deny the prophet will have to believe this was the case.
The course that Muhammad’s life and mission followed suggests a carefully laid-out divine plan. Even Biblical scholars now agree that he belonged to the lineage of Cedar, son of Ishmael, son of Abraham. Abraham had prayed to Allah to bless his progeny by appointing messengers from among them. Allah answered his chosen servant’s prayer by appointing a host of prophets from among his seed. Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, Jesus and Muhammad belong to this table. Muhammad’s case was however different. Unlike the earlier prophets he belonged to the lineage of Ishmael. His advent as a messenger was something foretold in the Bible.

Though later Biblical scribes were keen to omit all such references, some of them are still available in the Bible used in the Christian world. One of the oft-quoted references in the context is the verses 15-16 in the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel. In this verse we have Jesus addressing his followers thus:

If you love me keep my commandments. And I will pray the father and He shall give you another comforter that he may abide with you forever. (John 14: 15-16)

This verse forms part of a speech that Jesus Christ delivered at his last supper. He went on to say:

But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: for if I go not away, the comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and approve righteousness and judgment. (John 16: 6-8)

The word used in the original Greek version of the gospel for ‘comforter’ was ‘Parakletos,’ which many scholars argue to have actually been ‘Perilqlytos’ which means one who is exceedingly praised (Bucaille 102-06). This exactly is the meaning of the word ‘Muhammad’ in Arabic. The usual Arab custom is to name the first born child after his grandfather. In Muhammad’s case his grandfather himself violated this family tradition by giving him a name which according to historians was never given to any other Arab before him. Abdul-Mutalib’s decision to name his grandson Muhammad had actually raised a few eyebrows among his kinsmen who could not appreciate such a break with the tradition. Addressing their concern, Abdul-Mutalib responded: I am calling him ‘the praised one,’ so that he might be praised by men on earth and angels in heaven. Can it be merely accidental that a man with the same name as predicted in the Bible happened to be born in Arabia and claimed himself to be a prophet?

During the time of Muhammad’s proclamation of his mission, the Jews and Christians in Arabia and the world were in a state of eager anticipation. The Jews of Arabia used to talk of him as a deliverer of mankind in the mold of Moses.
In fact, there are several references in the Old Testament to a future prophet in the cast of Moses. Verses 18: 17-19 of Deuteronomy state it most clearly:

The Lord said to me [Moses] “What they say is good. I will raise up for them a Prophet like you among their brothers [underline added]; I will put my words into his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone doesn’t listen to the My words that the Prophet speaks in My name, I will Myself call him to account (Deuteronomy 18: 17-19)

Though Christian scholars are at pains to argue that these references allude to Jesus, the remarkable similarities that Muhammad’s life has with that of Moses’ makes him a more suitable candidate. For one, unlike Jesus, Muhammad’s birth and death - like Moses’- were natural; like Moses he too had migrated; led his people in both spiritual and secular spheres and like Moses married and sired children. All these shows how the prophesied messenger could more appropriately be Muhammad* than Jesus, who lived a bachelor, whose birth and death were unnatural and who did not migrate like Moses. Actually, the Christian and the Jewish wait for the new messenger hadn’t stopped with the advent of Jesus and the fulfillment of his mission. Who could the much expected messenger be if it were/ isn’t Muhammad? The reference ‘from among their brothers’ is significant because Biblical scholars themselves admit Muhammad to belong to the lineage of Ishmael, son of Abraham and brother of Isaac.

The man who first recognized Muhammad to be the future messenger was Bahîrah, a Christian monk. Muhammad was at that time only a boy of eight years. He was part of a caravan, being led by his uncle Abu Talib on its way to Syria. Upon observing the child, Bahîrah could recognize all the signs and features of the promised messenger. Bahîrah quizzed Abu Talib about the child’s father. When Abu Talib said it was his own child, Bahîrah shook his head saying the child must necessarily be an orphan. It was then Abu Talib revealed him to be the son of his deceased brother. This incident shows how the advent of the future prophet was something more extensively described in Christian scriptures. But those sections were scissored out by the established church that was busy promoting the polytheistic concept of Trinity. The maintenance of this irrationality demanded the whole-sale denial of the future prophet and his mission. It is notable that Christ’s lengthy speech delivered at his last supper, in which he referred to the advent of a future prophet, is missing in the three other canonical gospels. It was in this speech that he repeatedly referred to the advent of the future prophet. This omission could not be accidental but the result of deliberate interpolations according to scholars (Bucaille 102). The church was similarly eager to dismiss of those gospels that contained clear allusions to the Arabian prophet.

The most notable example in this context is the Gospel of Barnabas, which was written by one of Jesus’ own disciples called Barnabas. This gospel contains many clear references to the future prophet. The following are only a few samples:

[Jesus is speaking with his disciples] There are written in the prophets many parables, wherefore thou oughtest not to attend to the letter, but to the sense. For all the prophets, that are one hundred and forty four thousand, whom God has sent into the world, have spoken darkly. But after me shall come the splendor of all the prophets and holy ones, and shall shed light upon the darkness of all that the prophets have said, because he is the messenger of God. (Barnabas. 17).

Jesus went into the wilderness beyond Jordan with his disciples, and when the midday prayer was done he sat down near to a palm tree, and under the shadow of the palm tree his disciples sat down.
Then said Jesus: ‘So secret is predestination, O brethren, that I say unto you verily, only to one man shall it be clearly known. He it is who the nations look for, to whom the secrets of God are so clear that, when he cometh into world, blessed shall they be that shall listen to his words, because God shall overshadow them with his mercy even as this palm tree overshadoweth us.
“Yea even as this tree protecteth us from the burning heat of the sun, even so the mercy of God will protect from Satan them that believe in that man."
The disciples answered, O Master who shall that man be of whom thou speakest, who shall come into the world? Jesus answered with joy of heart: ‘He is the Praised one [underlines added: as stated earlier, the word Muhammad means ‘Praised one’], Messenger of God, and when he comes into the world, even as the rain makes the earth to bear fruit when for a long time it hath not rained, even so shall he be occasion of good works among men, through the abundant mercy which he shall bring. For he is a white cloud full of the mercy of God, which mercy God shall sprinkle upon the faithful like rain. (Barnabas 163)

It was from Gospels and texts like that of Barnabas, later suppressed by the church, that Bahîrah and other learned Christians recognized the signs of the prophesied messenger in Muhammad*even before Muhammad* himself became fully aware of the nature of his mission.
Upon receiving his first revelation in the mountain cave of Hira, Muhammad*was beyond himself with shock and awe: He couldn’t fully appreciate the import of the message that archangel Gabriel brought him (Refer chapter 5). When he reached home, he was tremoring and beside himself in awe. Scared about what must have happened to her husband, Khadeejah went to her cousin Waraqat Bin Noufal, a Christian scholar who was well-versed in scriptures. Listening to Khadeejah’s narration, Waraqat remarked: By him who has control over Waraqat’s soul, if your report is true, Khadeejah, this must be the great spirit that spoke to Moses. Muhammad must be the prophet of this nation. Tell him that he must be firm. Later Waraqat told Muhammad* when he met him at Ka’aba: The great spirit that has come to Moses has now come to you. You will be denied and you will be hurt. You will be abused and you will be pursued. If I should ever live to see that day I shall surely help the cause of God. God knows that I will.
These incidents show how Christian scholars could identify the future prophet in Muhammad even before the messenger himself. But when Al Mustafa announced his mission, the response was exactly as Waraqat Bin Noufal predicted. It was not only the polytheists of Makkah who formed his immediate relatives that denounced him but also the Jews and Christians of Arabia who could have more readily empathized with him.
The Jewish hostility was mainly fuelled by their sense of racial superiority. As the children of Abraham, the Jews still believe themselves to be the sole claimants to heaven. All the rest, barring the microscopic minority they form are according to them permanent dwellers of hell. Though Ishmael too was considered or rather conceded to be a son of Abraham, to them, he was the son of the slave woman Hager and hence they say, not entitled to the privileges of heaven. The negative portrayal of Ishmael in the Biblical scene where the angel foretells his birth to Hager, his mother, attests to this.
The angel says: ‘He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.’ (Genesis 16. 12-13). Portrayal of Ishmael as a ‘wild donkey of man’ attests to the racial prejudices of Jews concerning Arabs.
Christians found Muhammad’s* mission unacceptable for reasons that were wholly dissimilar. After the Nicaea conference held in 325 AD, under the behest of Emperor Constantine, Christianity hopelessly slid into a morass of polytheism -as exemplified in its concept of Trinity- and moral corruption. Though Christ’s singular mission was the proclamation of the unity of God Almighty, his immediate disciples turned Christ himself into a God. This was something that Christ himself had warned against as can be seen in the following quotations from the Bible.

And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, ‘which is the first commandment of all?’
And Jesus answered him: ‘The first of all the commandments is: hear O Israel, the Lord thy God is One Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord, thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment. (Mark: 12: 28-30)

And a certain ruler asked him saying, ‘Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said unto him, ‘Why callest thou me good? None is good, save one, that is God.’
(Luke 18: 18-19)

As it happens in every polytheistic creed, a powerful clergy emerged in Christianity. Priests of all ilk have found pure monotheism an anathema. Any faith that offers unlimited access to the laity to the upper realms will adversely affect their monopolistic claims to the spiritual sphere. So opposing Islam that visualized a direct communion between God and his slaves was a question of survival for the priests and they did with professional vigor. Since the denial of Muhammad’s mission per se demanded an act of extreme self delusion, the church sought to obfuscate his message through an organized calumny campaign that has few parallels in history.
This campaign, riddled with self-contradictions and spurred by unmitigated venom shaped the western discourse on Islam for more than one and a half millennium. The absurdity of this campaign is amply demonstrated in its contradictory stances: on the one hand, they consider Muhammad to be a very smart and learned man- clever enough to lift and tailor whole passages of Bible from a foreign language, since there was no Arabic Bible in his time- and on the other, a hopeless psychopath with few redeeming features. Though the theory of a neurotic prophet is something only a neurotic can buy, it was given such currency in the West that most of western intelligentsia to this day refuse to treat Islam with the seriousness that a belief system shared by more than one fourth of humanity demands.

Nothing can be more ridiculous than the charge of insanity against the holy prophet. We have all seen many neurotics. Does the holy prophet in any way resemble them?
Muhammad* led a life that needed nerves of steel. He had to put up with the kind of challenges that few men in history had to put up with. Can we imagine a man with jangled nerves to be capable of leading battles, governing a province riven with internal strife with such exemplary foresight and fortitude, and luring a people away from their faith to one entirely inimical to their ancestral beliefs? Again this would call for an unusual degree of self delusion. In other words, we will have to put aside our own sanity to believe in the ‘insanity’ of the holy prophet.





WE shall conclude this introduction by briefly examining two main themes of the propaganda against Muhammad* vigorously pursued by Western missionaries and critics of Islam belonging to all folds, including rationalists, atheists and communists:

a. The holy prophet was a womanizer who married several wives and was a sexual deviant.

b. Muhammad’s mission was a bloody one; he led several battles that caused the deaths of several people.

A full-scale examination of these charges is not something that the scope of this introduction allows. However, the flimsiness and amateurishness of these claims can be well brought out by considering a few simple facts: We shall examine the first charge:

a) A Deviant?

i) Muhammad, the man had married only a single woman: her name was Khadeejah; it was Muhammad, the prophet who married the other women, when he was in his fifties.
Muhammad married Khadeejah when he was twenty five and she forty. She was a widow who outlived two husbands. It was Muhammad’s trustworthiness and personal qualities that prompted her to propose to him. They lived together for more than twenty years and Muhammad* never married another woman during her life-time.
The Makkahn society in which the prophet lived was very permissive and promiscuous. But during Muhammad’s long and youthful life there, he was never, even once, accused of any sexual misdemeanor. He was never guilty of any indecent act in his interactions with women. In a society where men and women marched around the Ka’aba naked nobody ever saw him even in a state of partial undress. Was there any ‘libertine’ who lived such a pure and pristine life?

ii) It is true that after migrating to Madīnah at the age of around 53, the prophet consummated many marriages. But if we examine the history of each of these, it will be evident that his intentions were entirely noble:

a. All his wives, except Ayesha were widows. Some of them were aged upward of fifty and the prophet’s intention of marrying them was offering them spiritual and emotional succor. Many of these widows were wives of those who had suffered utmost hardships in the cause of Islam and were themselves extraordinary specimens of piety and moral dedication. His wife Zynab for instance was Ummul Masakin or the mother of the poor. The prophet married her when her second husband died a martyr at Uhud. At the time of marriage itself she was in miserable health and died soon after. The only intention of the prophet’s marriage to Zaynab at this stage was offering her the best care and protection that a virtuous husband could alone provide. Was there any ‘libertine’ in history whose carnal desires were wholly directed to-wards pious over-aged widows? Was there any libertine who was so infatuated with widows that he took upon himself the task of protecting not only those helpless women but also their children as the holy prophet so exemplarily did in the case of Zaynab and Ummu Salma?

b. An important reason for the holy prophet’s multiple marriages has to do with the complex geopolitics of Arabia. Arabs were, and are still, a largely tribal societywhose cultural and political matrix was determined by the ever-warring tribes. Marriages provided the tribal chieftains with an opportunity to patch up and forge relationships with other tribes for political ends. As the messenger of God and the political chief of Madīnah, the holy prophet worked this situation to the advantage of Islam. It was in this sense that Karen Armstrong remarked that the Prophet’s marriages were mostly political. Some of these marriages brought fresh waves of converts to Islam and helped the religion gain a foothold in the nooks and crannies of Arabia. The marriage to Juwairiya that brought several of her tribesmen to Islam is an example. For those who disagree with the essential truth of Islam, this might not be a convincing argument. But even they will have to admit that these marriages were a matter of great personal sacrifices for the holy prophet than a means to satisfy his carnal longings as his detractors would want us to believe.

Armstrong writes:
Muhammad’s numerous marriages have a occasioned a good deal of prurient interest in the West, but it would be a mistake to imagine the prophet basking decadently in sexual delight, like some of the later Islamic rulers. In Makkah, Muhammad had remained monogamous, married only to Khadeejah, even though polygamy was common in Arabia. Khadeejah was a good deal older than he...In Madīnah, Muhammad became a great Sayyid (chief), and was expected to have a large harem, but most of these marriages were politically motivated. As he formed his new super-tribe, he was eager to forge marriage ties with some of his closest companions, to bind them closer together...Many of his other wives were older women, who were without protectors or were related to the chiefs of those tribes who became the allies of the Ummah. None of them bore the prophet any children: His wives sometimes more of a hindrance than a pleasure. (Armstrong 15)

What the author means by ‘politically motivated’ is nothing but the spread of Islam and the message of monotheism, for the prophet was not a worldly man who enjoyed riches and luxury. As Armstrong hinted the marriages were a burden to the holy prophet at a personal level. He found it difficult to divide his boundless affection and scarce means among his wives. Until those few days before his death, when he was severely ill, he used to take turns with his wives, spending each night with each of them. Can anyone imagine a lust-driven man sharing his bed with aged women on successive days when his young pretty women awaited him in rooms nearby?
The prophet observed this regimen rigorously until his final illness when all his wives consented to his request for staying with Ayesha since he was no longer in a position to move around. The prophet was always anxious whether he was being partial to any of his wives and prayed to Allah to forgive if his unconscious mind inclined more toward one or other.
If the holy prophet were a mere man with no mandate from God, he could still after the Arabian custom marry as many women as he chose because there was nothing in ancient Arabian custom that proscribed a man from doing so:

In other words, there was no need for him to make a claim to prophethood as his detractors say. In fact marriage is not an option that libertines and morally loose persons prefer because it implies a lot of responsibilities and burdens. Why did Muhammad* take up the burden of supporting so many widows and their children if his intentions weren’t noble? The orientalists’ clamor on this issue has been so vociferous that it is made to sound that the sole aim of the prophet’s mission was the gratification of his carnal desires.

a. Those orientalists who pedal the image of a lust-driven prophet will also have to answer another important question. The prophet’s life in Madīnah was one of Spartan simplicity. The houses of his wives in the compound of the mosques were mere excuses for a house.
They didn’t have even a decent bed in them.

b. The ten years that he spent in Madīnah was a period of extreme turbulence marked by intermittent wars. It was the holy prophet who led the Muslims in a most of these wars. When he was at home the prophet was in the habit of performing long prayers that stretched well into the night. This was besides the five compulsory prayers in which he led the people at the mosque.
The prophet was never absent for these prayers except during the last few days of his fatal illness. Once during his night prayer, Ayesha observed that his legs were badly swollen. She pleaded with him to cut short the optional prayer since God had already forgiven him all his sins including those he might still commit: Muhammad’s reply was simple: Should not I be a grateful servant?

 Ayesha had once said that she had never seen her husband naked. Can we imagine any libertine in this cast? As Ziauddeen Sardar remarked the West is often guilty of foisting its own suppressed desires and sense of guilt on the orient (Sardar 6-12). The charge of the prophet having been a sexual deviant can only stem from this perverse instinct. In fact many of those intellectuals that the West elevated to the status of spiritual saints were miserable specimens of sexual deviation. Tolstoy, for one was a womanizer of such epical proportions that he had to be treated for venereal diseases.
Bertrand Russell had marital and extramarital relations with a handful of women. Even Karl Marx, a saint in comparison with the likes of Tolstoy is said to have fathered an illicit child.
It was Friedrich Engels who revealed this in his deathbed. Michel Foucault, the idol of postmodernist iconoclasts, led such a licentious life that he died of AIDS. And still the West reveres these people and lays the charge of profligacy on a man who lived a Spartan life of poverty and simplicity. The portrayal of the prophet as a lust-driven man has as much to do with Christian antagonism towards Islam as Christianity’s own skewed perception of sex. Christians con sider sex to be evil; a residue of the original sin that led to the expulsion of man from heaven. Islam on the other hand, considers libidinal energy to be a positive life force that can play a salutary role in society if channeled and harnessed properly. In medieval times the Church was even against employing midwives during delivery because labor pain was considered to be something inflicted by God for Eve’s evil role in the original sin; many midwives were burned on the stake for practicing their profession since they were trying to prevent God’s willful punishment. Islam, on the other hand, considers man to be born pure; it does not stigmatize a child for a sin his forefathers are said to have committed.
Islam believes in giving body its due and spirit its; it is not the denial and suppression of bodily desires that it seeks from its followers but the channeling of it in a way that would help strengthen the social fabric and encourage salutary relationships between the sexes. It is Christianity’s utterly defective view of sex that is at the root of many western maladies. One of the biggest issues that rocked the Catholic Church recently was the abuse of young children by priests sworn to the vow of celibacy. By trying to mortify the bodily instincts in a way contrary to nature, Christianity was, in spite of itself, becoming responsible for some of the most heinous crimes committed under the banner of religion. It is again a reaction to this skewed morality that took the totally disruptive and antihuman turn in gay and lesbian movements. Its philosophic manifestation can be seen in the works of thinkers like Michel Foucault and his followers who question the legitimacy of everything including labels like ‘normal’/deviant, sane/insane, nature/ culture and so forth.
The portrayal of the holy prophet as one driven by sensual desires is another instance of the perverse western mind whose concept of sex is as guilt-ridden as that of a 19th century English public schoolboy’s. The real prophet was a highly protective father and husband whose company his wives, children and everybody around him cherished because of his exemplary qualities and the deep concern that he showed toward them. However, the prophet was not only a successful husband and father but also a successful leader, an inspirational teacher, a sagacious ruler and a successful military commander who led his untrained army to unbelievably great successes. History has hardly witnessed anybody who had such a rounded personality, one who excelled in every activity: personal and social, religious and political, tactical and diplomatic and what not. In the section, Thus Spake the Messenger given as an appendix to this volume, I have provid ed some quotes of the holy prophet. Some of these prophetic sayings have to do with such mundane things as blowing out the fire before going to bed and the mode of mutual greetings whereas others deal with affairs of state and governance.

They show how the prophet was a greatly practical man who guided his followers in all matters of private and public life.

b) Blood Thirsty?
Now let us briefly discuss the second charge that is often leveled against the messenger. It is again Christian missionaries and orientalists that have been most vociferous about this. In western literature the prophet is portrayed to be a bloodthirsty dictator who caused innumerable death and destruction. This negative representation reached its apogee in the portrayal of the prophet as anti-Christ whose advent signified the imminence of Doomsday.
Ziaudden Sardar writes: From its inception, Islam presented the Christian world with a ‘problem.’ What was the purpose of the new revelation to an Arabian prophet over 600 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of God’s own son? Islam contained within itself a recognition of Christianity and its legitimacy: it described itself as the summation of the messages brought by true Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all the other prophets; it accepted the virgin birth of Jesus and gave him a prestigious position among the prophets;...But Christianity could not return this ecumenical courtesy. Europe was still proselytizing the Christian faith within its boundaries, struggling to establish an orthodoxy that came to be based on the exclusive claims of the Christian message and of the church, as the body of Christ, to be the vehicle of God’s providence on earth.
When, within 100 years of Islam’s inception, Europe found it at its borders, Islam became a political problem. In addition, the achievements of the Muslim civilization made it an intellectual, social and cultural problem...

With the arrival of the crusades new imaginative flights of fancy were added to expand the propagandists’ image of Islam as a tool to maintain the crusading spirit...The crusaders brought with them knowledge but fairy tales designed to focus hostility towards those who held sway on the ground where Christ had walked. Now Mahomet [a corruption of the name of the holy prophet] was a magician who destroyed the church in Africa and East. He attracted converts to his depraved religion by promising them promiscuity. He finally met his end, during one of his fits, with a herd of pigs. At his death a white bull appeared to put the fear of Christ in his followers and carry away Mahomet’s laws in his horns. (Sardar, 20)

The portrayal of the prophet as a blood thirsty dictator has to do with this kind of fictions than to historical realities. Any examination of the life of the prophet will prove that he was essentially a pacifist by nature who resorted to war only when it was thrust upon him. For one, he never permitted fighting against anyone who with or without conviction was willing to accept the doctrine of Islam. Two, he did not permit fighting anyone who had concluded a treaty with him. Three, he never refused or turned down anybody who wanted to have a treaty with him whether they wanted or didn’t want to accept his creed. An examination into the reasons of the different campaigns that he led- Badr, Uhud, Khandaq, Khayber - show how each of them was imposed upon him by his enemies and not matters of his own personal choice. It has been recorded by historians that the total number of deaths in all the wars that he fought was only 1018. As a result of these wars many lives were saved because it ensured peace and stability in the strife-torn Arabia for several decades. His treatment of the prisoners of war was also exemplary. Some of the prisoners of Badr were not in a position to pay the ransom: the only task that the prophet gave them was to teach reading and writing to a few children of Madīnah. Is this how a blood-thirsty dictator behaves? When the prophet entered Makkah as a conqueror, the magnanimity that he showed was something that has no parallels in history. Makkah was the city of his birth that expelled him for proclaiming the oneness of God and the equality of men before him; before expelling him Makkans had subjected him to utmost brutalities; boycotted him and his kinsmen, denied them food and water. After his migration to Madīnah they tried to eliminate him and his nascent movement by waging repeated wars against him. After the battle of Uhud, in which the Muslims suffered an unexpected reversal of fortune, the Makkans were satisfied only by mutilating the dead bodies of their soldiers and insulting them in the most offensive way imaginable: the body of Hamza, uncle of the prophet was torn open and his liver pulled out to be chewed and spat out by Hind, wife of Abu Sufyan, the leader of Makkans. But during his conquest of Makkah, the holy prophet was a perfect example of magnanimity. He granted amnesty to all including Hind, to her own dismay. History has seldom witnessed such a peaceful conquest.

The battles that took place subsequently during the reign of the virtuous Caliphs have also been well documented. Caliph Omer’s conquest of Jerusalem was such a peaceful affair that not a single person was killed after the surrender of the city, no property destroyed nor any attempt made to convert any of the inhabitants.
M J Akbar writes:

...While Umar [alternative spelling of Omer] was touring the church of the holy Sepulcher with Sophronius as his guide, they heard the azaan, the call to the prayer. The patriarch asked the Caliph to say his prayers right there in the Anastasis. Umar refused. He told the priest that if he had prayed at that spot, Muslims would have converted the church into a mosque. Umar passed an order that no Muslim should ever pray at this church or at the martyrium of Constantine or ever build a church there...Umar also lifted the Christian ban and brought the Jews back to a city which was holier to them than it was to Christians and Muslims. (Akbar, 95)

This was how the prophet and his companions behaved in war; they were the most peaceful warriors the world witnessed. But many Muslim rulers who succeeded them were not equally magnanimous. At least some of them were as blood thirsty as the Christian crusaders, though none of them was probably a match for the likes of Reynauld of Chatillon whose army massacred thousands of Muslims and Jews in the precincts of the holy temple of Jerusalem; his men later gloated proudly on how they rode their horses through puddles of blood along the streets of Jerusalem. Nor did the savagery of these Muslim rulers match that of the holy saints of Christianity like Ignatius Loyola whose counter reform moves saw the systematic genocide of hundreds of thousands of people who professed allegiance to Protestantism. In short, burning scientists, heretics and women accused of witchcraft
has had no parallels in Islamic history.
Neither Islam nor the Prophet was in any way responsible for the cruelty and debauchery that the rulers who followed the holy prophet and the virtuous Caliphs displayed because their actions didn’t have any religious sanction. If true Islamic principles were applied these rulers would have been openly punished.

To sum up, the two main charges against the Prophet are notable only for their falsity and the vehemence with which they have been articulated by the opponents of Islam. There are other charges that are as groundless as the ones we examined: for instance, the charge that the prophet was being responsible for the institutionalization of slavery in the Muslim world. Scarcely do those who make this accusation realize:

that Islam was the religion that was responsible for the emancipation of countless slaves; that the prophet himself was the one who set the example by setting free his own slave; that his followers like Othman and Abubaker were people who saw buying and setting free of slaves as their religious duty.

It is true that at a time when there were no prisons- which are sometimes crueler than the slavery itself- Islam was not in a position to put a sudden halt to the practice of slavery that stood against the very ideals that Islam epitomized. Wars were then as it is now something unavoidable and the only way of keeping war prisoners in those days was the institution of slavery.
But Islam saw to it that such prisoners were always treated most humanely and the masters were asked to clothe and feed the slaves in exactly the same manner they fed and clothed themselves. It also put an end to the practice of calling somebody after their master as it was common in pre-Islamic Arabia, where slaves were called after the names of their masters by prefixing the word, abd, which meant slave in Arabic. The holy prophet put an end to this practice by declaring that nobody was nobody’s but God’s slave.

Henceforth, the term Abd could only be prefixed with the multiple names of Allah the creator, he stipulated. His policies led to the emancipation of countless slaves and the eventual eradication of the institution of slavery. Even during his life-time some of the former slaves rose to such eminence that they became key figures in the social and political life of the Islamic empire; some of their descendents became rulers in their own right and founded powerful dynasties. What a contrast this forms to the picture presented by the western experience where even centuries after the promulgation of the abolition, blacks continue to be marginalized and brutalized by Whites.

The best way of countering the charges against the prophet is by presenting his life in its proper light. An acquaintance with the life of the prophet is itself enough for anyone with a right head to grasp the deeply flawed nature of the critics’ charges.

References
Akbar, M.J The Shade of Swords. Lotus Collection, Roli Books. New Delhi, 2003.
Armstrong, Karen. Islam: A Short History. New York, The Modern Library, 2002.
Bucaille, Maurice. The Bible, The Qur’an and Science. Crescent Publishing Company, Delhi, 1994.
Haykal, Muhammad Hasayn. (Translated into English from Arabic by Ismail Ragi al Faruqi).
New Crescent Publishing Company. Delhi, 2004.
Hitti,Philip K. Islam and the West. D Van Nostrand Company INC, 1962.
Sardar, Ziauddin & Zafar Abbas Malik Introducing Islam. Icon Books. Royston, UK,2004.
Sardar, Ziauddin. Orientalism. Viva Books Private Limited. New Delhi,2005.
Siddiqui, Abdul Hameed. The Life of Muhammad. Islamic Book Trust. Kuala Lumpur, 1999.