His Wisdom In Handling His People
HIS WISDOM IN HANDLING HIS PEOPLE
Although empowered to impose his will on the believers by the injunctions to that effect in the Qur’an he never used this power except when absolutely necessary but preferred persuasion and did not hesitate to give ground when opposed or advised otherwise. He inclined more towards the parallel injunction of Allah in His book enjoining consultation and giving preference to voluntary services on the part of the believers in their work for Allah’s Cause. In other words he never entered into airs of either ‘holier than though’ or ‘I am the boss’ kind. Not did he always stress both by word and act that ‘I am just another man like you’ but he never lost his head in victory nor his nerve in mortal danger. Absolutely nothing could either spoil him and make him act arrogantly or unjustly; nor could spirit be broken by any pressures or persecution. He was absolutely sure of his destiny and mission and never lost his trust in Allah but survived his lowest ebbs by intense and ardent prayings to Him all of which prayers were granted. All of which add up to greatest possible wisdom given to anybody by the Creator. Let us see some instances of this.
He confirmed what Allah said about him in His Book: “Say: I am but human like you except that it is revealed to me that your god is one God. There is no god but that All-kind and Forgiving One”(*). When a man was over-awed by him he comforted him by saying “Don’t be afraid, I am the son of a woman who ate dried meat (cheapest poor’s meat)”. Once he was sitting on a low wall and eating something. A woman was passing by and said something to this effect” Look at the man who says he is a prophet; how casually he is eating like a man in the street”. The Prophet sws answered her “I am but a man like you”. In fact Allah quotes His prophet’s critics “This is but a man who eats from what you eat and drink from what you drink. Will you then believe in such an ordinary man and end up as losers?” (*). Humility is that greatest of spiritual qualities whereby its owner looks and lives like the least ambitious and least pretentious of men yet unintentionally broadcasts an aura of sanctity and power which nobody can miss. It is like some perfectly beautiful and virtuous woman living in extreme poverty and buried in menial duties.
All other women may look down on her and will not even contemplate being jealous of her. But all men will notice her overwhelming beauty and more often tremble with respect than with lust. Such can be one metaphor for the Messenger of Allah sws. About him was said “The Messenger of Allah (sws) had more blushing modesty (haya) than chaste virgins behind seven veils”. Please understand that he was not acting or faking such images. It was totally unconsciously natural to him simply because his big beautiful head was the locus of the greatest and wisest intellect while his broad silver bosom contained the purest and noblest of the hearts. He was so handsome, so beautiful to look at and so powerfully manly! All good men and women fell in love with him on sight and never came out of it while all bad men and bad women noticed his perfection with grudge and burned with jealousy and enmity like their master the Satan. He was Adam to them to whom they would not bow but seek to destroy.
Despite his incomparable superiority to all men he humbly and conscientiously seeked his
companions’ advice and pleasure in all things and even preferred to do the wrong thing when they insisted than the right he knew better. On the eve of the Battle of Uhud he consulted his companions, old and young as to the strategy. He put his own preference to the effect that they should dig in Medina and defend. Older and wiser companions concurred. But others, mostly youths who had missed the recent victorious experience at Badr when muslims had soundly defeated an enemy at least three times stronger then they clamoured for fighting in the open field. Can you imagine, the Prophet sws did not push his authority to impose his wise preference but yielded and it proved almost mortal. By that he taught them a lesson as Allah willed. So he was no dictator but a teacher; he did not aim at winning this world for his pupils but the next. He knew it would be better to have chastened pupils than gloating ones, because the first saves while the second spoils. And only the wise can let go this world for the next and find that Allah may well give both together to His good servants. Which He did. Let all muslims who aspire at dictating to others take lesson.
He was a realist and a naturalist in everything except when profound crisis and danger knocked. He did not expect Allah to do all work for him but did his best as if only his work could save him. As if he was an agnostic. For he was too wise to be unaware of the fact that ‘All is One in Allah’ and work of the creature is Allah’s work and neglecting the use of Allah’s advance gifts is tantamount to rejecting the gifts and expecting service from Allah while it is Allah Who is to be served. As an example of his realism we can quote the following. On an expedition the muslims had camped and a man came to the Prophet sws. The following conversation ensued “What did you do with your camel?” the Prophet sws asked. “I just entrusted it to Allah”. “Did you tie it somewhere?” “No”. “Go and tie it securely first and then entrust to Allah”. One day his second star pupil Umar RA, in his days of caliphate, saw several men staying at the mosque and never going anywhere. He asked them “What are you doing here all the time? How are you earning your living?”. “We are just worshipping Allah and entrusting our livelihood to Him”. Umar (RA) was angry and whipped them away saying “Neither gold and silver shall rain from heaven. You should work for your bread .You are expecting others who earn to provide for you”.
He was a naturalist. When he was burying his deceased infant son Ibrahim there was a solar eclipse and some companions commented that the heaven was joining in with the mourning. The Prophet sws denied the ‘supernatural’ interepretation. “No” he said “the sun and the moon are two signs among the signs of Allah and they will not be eclipsed with the death of anybody”.
After all, he was ushering in the Age of Reason as against superstition and the Age of Science as against magic. It was not for nothing that his nation revived all forgotten sciences of ancients and building upon them enormously caused both the Renaissance and the Reformation in the West which led to modern scientific and technological summits and a lot of the liberal and egalitarian social revolutions. Yet, the West’s largely unadmitting adoption Muhammad’s sws progressive attitudes has been mixed with a lot of impiety to produce today’s chimera of a civilization, half light, half darkness, half heaven, half hell. We pray and hope that the Prophet sws is embraced entirely and the Satan’s bit is completely discarded and a new Islamic civilization unites and blesses the whole world.
HIS WISDOM IN THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION
He was so much active and successful in the world yet this never deducted a bit from his activity in the spiritual dimension of life. As already said success did not go to his head and he lived the life of a reasonable ascetic to the end, deliberately sticking to a frugal life. What is more he enjoined ascetism on all his family- wives, children, sons in law and grandchildren. Basically he denied them both comforts and worldly power. His anxiety about their wasting their lives in the temporary satisfactions of this world must have been so strong that his offspring either did not survive him to reach the more prosperous days of Islam or the few who survived mostly perished in the hands of worldly rivals or at least heavily persecuted until the world became a prison or a place of ascetic seclusion for them. He persistenty denied his only surviving daughter Fatima RA many comforts which had become possible and affordable to other muslims and frustrated the known ambitions of Ali to succeed him. Here are some examples.
Later in his career as the Prophet-ruler of the emerging muslim nation wealth and captives had began to fill the treasury of Islam. Fatima RA dared to ask for either a slave to help her in her heavy house chores or at least to be given a hand mill to grind barley for bread for her hands were sore with calluses from beating barley on a stone slab. The Prophet gave her advice instead “O Fatima, it is better for you to bear with the sufferings of this world”. She could but yield to his Divinely inspired father. When the Prophet sws passed away Fatima asked his successor Abu Bakr RA about her share of the inheritance from his father which was mainly some palm orchard at Fadak, the Prophet’s (sws) share from what was acquired from the evicted Khaibar jews . Abu Bakr explained “O Fatima, I am afraid I can give you nothing for I heard the Prophet sws say ‘We prophets do not leave an inheritance. What we leave behind is sadaqa (alms to be distributed to muslims outside our families)”. Poor but glorious Fatima had to yield again.
He did not treat himself more too leniently either. He almost hated anything of this world’s comforts except the simplest and most natural, like enough basic food and sleep and decent dutiful and lawful sex without which there can be either physical or social survival. But those who wanted more pleasures could have them within bounds of lawfulness and decency with no blame. By that he blocked both unnatural monastic practices on the one end and wanton indulgence of the sense on the other. His call for moderation in everything and basic allowability of all almost all things other than what Islam made haram was wisdom at its best which made Islam the most natural and sensible of all religions. Those who aspired at asceticism beyond what the Prophet (sws) chose for himself he soundly condemned as doing wrong.
One such too zealous fellow was Abdullah b. Amr who read the Qur’an too much, prayed too much, ate and slept too little and neglected her wife’s needs. The Prophet sws criticized him in no uncertain terms and asked him to apply some brakes. Abdullah avoided committing himself to the Prophet’s (sws) advice saying that he could bear the ascetic level he chose for himself (as if he could be more pious than the Prophet sws). He made many mistakes in later in life and eventually came to regret his overzeal against the advice of the Prophet sws. “I wish I had listened to the Messenger of Allah” he had to say in the end. In fact his wisdom revolutionized and modernized the institution of religion in that (a) it abolished the priestly class and put an end to converting the faith or superstition of the common people into cash and influence on the part of pretenders to spiritual privileges ascetic practices (c) recognized women’s basic equality with men here and hereafter (d) taught natural and logical thinking and discouraged magical thinking and superstition (d) moderated and brought into balance the interests of this world and the next to name but a few.
His advocacy for the weak is more realistic, balanced even overall far better and sustainable than the modern alternatives. He recognized the under-privileged categories as follows: (a) slaves (b) the poor (c) the deceived and/or exploited like in a caste system (d) children and the elderly (e) females (f) the debtor (g) the conquered and the subjected. Towards all these the Messenger of Allah displayed his wisdom as we defined it: Doing them things which pleased both Allah and them. Nobody that ever visited this earth did so much good to, saved from so much evil from so many categories of under-privileged people.
Slaves’ condition he improved beyond comparison. From the position of no rights whatsoever the Messenger of Allah recognized them as almost equal human beings whose rights to life, well-being, rest and working and earning and keeping extra wealth for himself and then buying his freedom became available to him. He could not be beaten, tortured or killed arbitrarily and wantonly but any such injustice invited retaliation and compensation. A female slave burnt at the bottom by her owner was set free automatically by Umar the second caliph following the Prophet’s (sws) Sunna and also paid monetary compensation. Of course slaves had not been made full equals with their owners and they had still to serve them but unprecedented great improvements were made for them. What was equally important their complete emancipation was implied as the ideal and encouraged under only too many grounds and pretexts, the expiation of many sins being tied to freeing one or more slaves.
The poor got automatic rights to material help from wealthier citizens as well as the public treasury. In fact the Prophet’s (sws) government represented the first full-fledged welfare state in history. The assistance extended to non-muslim subjects. Umar came across an old Christian beggar and when he learned that he had no other means to look after himself ordered a monthly pension to be paid to him saying “Since we collected taxes from him when he was young now we have to look after him when he is poor and infirm”. Umar was a pupil of the Prophet sws.
The Prophet (sws), although appreciating noble lineage and good breeding among people he still regarded all people of whatever lineage and background as equals in principle and treated them as such as far as rights and obligations were concerned. He allowed no cast system to exist and punished the rich and powerful the same as the poor and weak. He appointed to high office on merit and not class pretention and disliked ambition without competence. He especially refused to appoint to office in ways smacking of nepotism and favoritism. Equal ability meant equal preference. Again Umar ordered retaliation against the recently converted Ghassanid king who had smitten another muslim who had accidentally stepped upon his long garment. He explained that king or subject, muslims were equals. The king departed in proud disgust and reverted to Christianity where he could enjoy his royal pride and arrogance.
Children and the elderly became taboo for victimization in any way. Them and women as well as monks and priests in non-muslim populations could not be harmed in any way in thre course of wars and conquests made by muslim fighters. Even animals could not be wantonly killed and trees and crops could not be destroyed and houses not demolished for revenge. Muslim elderly and children were simply sacred and automatically entited to full care and kindness.
Females in any capacity like wife or daughter were the absolute favorites of the Messenger of Allah sws. He is famous for treating all his wives with absolute kindness and civility and adore his daugherts as no arab or man of ancient times could either feel inclined or dareto display. He hugged and kissed her daughters heartily and they him and would not allow his sons in law to either hurt them in the slightest or take another wife on them. Once Ali had attempted to marry a second wife over Fatima (R. Anhuma). When Fatima complained in tears the Prophet (sws) made known to Ali that hurting Fatima for whatever reason was the same as hurting the Prophet sws. Ali had to drop the idea. Although he married many wives they were for great and Divine wisdom reasons which we shall shortly explain.
Other wise he made it understood that polygamy was offensive to women who had to share a husband and it could only be made palatable by the thought that men had their own grievance in the fact that they had to lay their lives down in defence of the society as a whole. As their numbers were so decimated all the time in wars both sexes were equally but differently victimized and women should therefore see the fact of this sorry equality and bear with their part. The alternative could only be too many women uncared by any man and exposed to many dangers and privations including dying without issue. Insulting women was out and beating almost so. Given the habits and ingrained prejudices of the times all such reforms and revolutions amounted to a great incredible lot and definitely paved the way to full equality in later times although nothing has been perfect to date and a lot of mistakes in the opposite direction has been made, like masculinizing women and exploiting them as honorless sex objects and exposing them to many terrible risks from lethal veneral diseases and bloody abortions to commercial commodity status and crass physical abuse. Against all such abominations the Prophet’s natural and qualified equality is most certainly the far better alternative.
THE PROPHET’S (sws) WISDOM IN HIS MARRIAGES
Certainly the single most outstanding act of the Prophet sws which came under most fire from his non-muslim critics has been his polygamous married life. Here as nowhere else we find dirty minds calling all the tunes forgetting that polygamy has been until recently in history almost the universal norm in legal terms and totally THE norm in practice. Of course always a minority among man could practice it because it costs so much in many respects. It has been mainly confined to relatively powerful and successful males and if for nothing else it helped to spread the genes of such superior males more among the population as is the case with many big mammalian species like elephants, deer and the lions. It is further necessitated by the lower survival rates among the males caused by their higher fragility in many diseases and their exposure to more risky occupations like building, hunting and war. Their daring adds to the dangers they face, like their playing, riding and nowadays driving more dangerously.
A lot are also disqualified by poverty and impotence. Therefore a surplus of marriageable women has plagued all societies and this proved an irresistible incentive for a minority among more able and amorous males to claim more than one woman to the overall benefit of all concerned- themselves, their additional wives and the society at large who becomes ridden of worse alternatives. Lastly, having multiple wives conferred status on powerful men and making them severally connected to in-law families and clans helped to create stability and integration. All these may have contributed to the Prophet’s (sws) marrying multiply over the last decade of his life and more. Below we shall offer some explanations which to us look reasonable enough on the basis of what we know from the Qur’an, the Hadith and history of the times. Before that however we must note that both in Arab culture and Islam which modified and improved it sexual matters in themselves were no taboos and did not carry any stigma since they were seen too natural and necessary to deserve such neurosis and phobia.
This contrasts with the neurotic and hypocritical Western attitude which previously demonised sex so much that the subject made almost all westerners mentally ill as far as sex was concerned in the past and transformed them into promiscuous and bisexual gluttons and gourmets in the present. Despite this supposed de-demonization and liberation the neurosis and phobia still lives side by side with the excessive indulgence and as if anybody would miss a similar opportunity celebrities are harassed by sensational media cover when caught or supposedly caught with a mistress or prostitute and many otherwise brilliant careers come to a sad end this way. Islam did away w th all such m. adness and hypocrisy and put sex on a natural as well as very responsible footing- do it when you can honourably own up to its responsibilities like the care of possible offspring and bear the consequences of any mishaps, like a handicapped child. It also substituted the irresponsible and multiply dangerous promiscuity with regulated and manageable polygamy- the lesser of the evils as well as the honest one.
The Prophet sws proved his moderation and considerateness by marrying happily to a single life for the best part of his adult years. From age 25 to 50 his only partner was Khatija RA who was both a widower and 15 years his senior. We may think that his preference for maturer women (for most of his his subsequent wives were also widowers of rather mature ages) came from at least two sources- one his own maturity of spirit could not enjoy much the company of immature girls, and two- he was starved of motherly love as an orphan and in older women who had been mothers and unlikely to become again he found the motherly atmosphere he so much missed. So, after Khatija’s death he married his muslim follower Sawda b. Zam’a who herself was recently bereaved and slightly later his best friend Abu Bakr RA offered his young daughter Aisha to him as well. The two were so close friends and mutual admirers that given the age’s unconcerned attitude towards the marriages with big age differentials the two couldn’t have an easier conscience about the match. Aisha, when she came to know about the match could only be happy.
There have come to us not a single shred of evidence to the effect that Aisha ever regretted her being given to the Prophet sws or that the marriage had been anything but happy. Obviously done by Divine Wisdom what Aisha lacked in maturity in years she more than compensated by her maturity of intellect. By all accounts she was extremely intelligent and eloquent and the Prophet enjoyed her company and conversation so much that she was able to get away with a significant amount of wifely objection and sarcasm no other wife could. Not that the Prophet was violent in any way. His reaction to disrespect was always a heartbroken resentment followed by moody withdrawal and only too ready to jump at the first murmurs of an apology. He was such a nice and soft man despite his heavenly status and unrepayable rights on everyone around him. He simply boyishly blushed, blanched and sulked, his big black beautiful eyes registering his innocent resentment which was swallowed and did not lead to any words of hit back. Totally innocent of all suspicions and accusations he never did owe an apology to any of his wives but they had to come round and offer them shamed and chastened and disarmed by his innocence.
As to why he married an additional seven more women in Medina was essentially motivated by forming a college of very intelligent and pious women who could serve as teachers of all muslim women in the new community in Medina and around. He could take young, gorgeous and wealth virgins had his aim been carnal. Instead he went for character, maturity, intelligence, piety and advantageous socio-political connections. ISLAM HAD ONE AND ONLY ONE CHANCE OF SUCCESS AND THAT WAS IN HIS OWN LIFETIME, ESPECIALLY THE LAST DECADE OF IT IN MEDINA.
His chances and powers of marrying had to be fully exploited to help his cause which was Allah’s in reality. So, among all younger widowers he married Hafsa the daughter of great Umar- father and daughter they both were geniuses. Of all elderly widowers he married Umm Salama who initially wanted to excuse herself on the grounds that she was too old to be a proper wife and that she had many children already to look after. The Prophet sws brushed all such reservations aside and they married. PLEASE LET US REMEMBER THAT UMM SALAMA HAD SAVED THE DAY FOR ALLAH AND HIS PROPHET (sws) AT ONE OF THE MOST CRITICAL MOMENTS OF THE HUDAIBIA DILEMMA.
He married Zainab b. Jahsh RA killing at east two birds with one stone- he compensated for the mutual suffe rings of both her and her first husband Zaid b. Haritha (until then known as the Prophet’s adopted son). Zainab was apparently attracted to her cousin Muhammad (sws) (what woman couldn’t be- although Muhammad (sws) was absolutely revered as Allah’s Messenger (sws) he was also equally taken as a fellow member of the community thanks to his unassuming, accessible, amicable and often additionally humorous image and every woman could admire him in her every way as every man could in his as a fellow man. There are on record a few instances of a woman offering herself to the Prophet (sws) in marriage- in one case he consented but divorced her when he found a bad skin disease in her (sign of constitutional ill health which could pass on to offspring), in another case the woman took on herself too much airs of sanctity as if she was a sworn nun and the Prophet (sws) had to back off; in the third the Prophet (sws) did not fancy his suitor and instead gave her to another man who asked for her hand.
In all three cases we can discern a great wisdom- for the Prophet was sent to teach wisdom. In the case of the woman with genetic condition we are taught that we must choose healthy partners to ensure that we shall have healthy offspring. In the case of the sexually frigid or difficult women we should avoid such hard nuts for the sake of both ourselves, hers and the potential offspring (Women also should not be given to cold men- they often try to compensate for their sexual unmanliness with macho cruelty). In the last case we learn that we must marry somebody to whom we feel attracted although in itself that shouldn’t be enough. WHAT A WONDER, WHAT A BLESSING, WHAT A WISDOM WAS THE LAST AND FINAL AND THE GREATEST OF THE MESSENGER OF ALLAH THE MOST PROFICIENT BUILDER OF SAINTS AND SAVANTS, LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS AND ONE UNIVERSAL AND EVERLASTING CIVILIZATION FOR ALL MANKIND FOR ALL TIME TO COME.
Sallallahu taala alayahi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sellam taslima w’alhamdu lillahi rabbil alameen hamdan katheeran daiman wa abada. Amen.
WHO WAS AND IS MUHAMMAD (sws) or APPRECIATING MUHAMMAD (sws)
INTRODUCTION
This study and essay is about Muhammad (sws), the Prophet of Islam and without any doubt the most famous of historical (as compared to more legendary and mythical) faith-founding persons with greatest and most enduring influence on the greater part of humanity.
We must first justify this first sentence above.
Of all founders of great religions only Muhammad (sws), repeat, only he enjoys the full light of history with minimal myth and legend attaching to him. A study of his various factual biographies, whose parent work is that of Ibn Ishaq, talk about him in such as-a-matter-of-factly way with so little in the way of myth and miracle that one feels almost he is seeing him the real flesh and blood man and could even touch him! He is born normally from parents pretending nothing except perhaps being impoverished nobles of the noble Arab tribe of Quraish tracing its ancestry to Abraham from whom also Jews as well boast of descending. Arab historians tell us that there were two kinds of Arabs. One, the true Arabs of the Arabian peninsular (recently this spelling seems to be replacing ‘peninsula’) whose timeless occupants they have been, and two, the “musta’aba” Arabs who are other Semites or to a lesser exthend non-Semites who have been Arabised by settling among and partly intermarrying with true Arabs. The tribe of Quraish were the second kind of Arabs but in practice this meant little. After all Arabia has always been an ancient homeland of Semites and modern historians in fact trace Jews also to an origin in the Arabian peninsula though their ostensible father appears at Ur in Chaldea circa 2000 BCE.
Peoples of the Middle East have the longest recorded history among mankind and their constant flux and mix are well-documented by archaeological evidence. Essentially all peoples of the area between the Mediterranean in the West, Euphrates in the East, Anatolia in the North and the Atlantic Ocean in the south have been recognised as Semitic races. They include Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Arabs and Hebrews and not Egyptians and Hittites or Persians for example. The last two are regarded Indo-Europeans for example. Among all these Semites the words like ‘shams’ or ‘shamash’ for the sun, ‘ban’ or ‘ibn’ for ‘son’, ‘al’, ‘eli’ or ‘alh’ for god and ‘pal’, ‘bal’ or ‘ba’al’ for lord or husband or god are common. One succeeded the other in imperial status and the successors learned from and often improved upon the culture of their predecessors. Both Babylon and Assyria for example, are deeply indebted to the Sumerian civilisation which preceded them at least by a thousand years. The racial make-up Sumerians is not clear however.
Historical evidence again shows that that most prized cultural product monotheism was not an invention of the Hebrews but its signs are clearly detectable in much earlier cultures of the area, like the Sumerian, Babylonian and even the basically non-semitic but neighbouring Egyptian. The Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaton was a strict monotheist and iconoclast (idols-breaker) like a most rigorous Biblical prophet. A reading of the first volume of the eleven volume celebrated masterpiece ‘The History of Civilisation’ by the late American scholar Will Durant alone will show this to be the case. Since then further research and scholarship have only largely confirmed his findings as well as adding to them.
As such we can say that Semitic civilisation is one continuous history of the cultural evolution of the Middle Eastern peoples and no single group can lay claim to any of its major features. The great Baylonian king Hamurabi boasts of receiving his law code direct from God centuries before Moses claimed the same. All the myths of the Genesis like the Flood have their counterparts and origins in Babylonian mythology which can again be traced back to the Sumerian. Many of the hymns sung to God or a god in Sumerian and Babylonian inscriptions have almost identical features and contents with the Old Testament ones. It therefore transpires that the Qur’an which traces monotheism and prophethood to the very beginnings of humanity is nearer the mark than the Bible. In the Quran Adam is not only the first man but also the first prophet of God to be succeeded by his favourite son Seth, then further down by Noah and a succeeding series of prophets until Abraham. And that is not all. Not all the prophets are Hebrews but quite a few true Arab prophets are told about in the Qur’an, like Hud, Salih and Shua’ib. What is even more spectacular, the Qur’an states that there have been many other prophets of God unmentioned in the Qur’an and in fact no single nation came and went to whom God had not sent a prophet to warn them!
This totally universal and non-racist spiritual-historical world-view of the Qur’an contrasts only too sharply with that of the Bible in which there is one and only one favourite, the Israeli Hebrew! ‘Israeli’ because there have been many other Hebrews like Ammonites, Moabites etc. From this one observation we can see what a light-years ahead improvement in spiritual outlook the Qur’an made on the Bible. Even the afterthought-like universalism of the New Testament is dwarfed by that of the Qur’an; while in the new Testament universalism is a reluctant, last resort concession or change of heart by the Creator as supposedly represented by the Christ, in the Qur’an it is there as a matter of primacy, a matter of timeless principle and human right.
As such, no religion before Muhammad (sws) and no holy scripture before the Qur’an bothered in a final and fundamental sense with the equality of men and the races of men. What is more, most pre-Muhammedan religions as far as their surviving documents are concerned are not free from class structure bias among people; in fact they are proudly full of them. If Judaism is discriminating in a fundamental sense between the Jew and other nations (for which it has a contemptuous term ‘goyim’ in Hebrew and ‘gentile’ in Western languages) Hinduism is discriminating among men by dividing them into four classes (castes) with no hope for any lower class man climbing to one higher let alone to the top. Against this we may listen to the Qur’an of Muhammad, on behalf of the only True God, Allah (the very same name Jesus called God by; for he spoke Aramaic and in Aramaic God is called Allah as in Arabic):
“O mankind! We have created you from a single male and single female and divided you into tribes and nations in order that you recognise each other and exchange civilities. The noblest among you are only those who are the most God-fearing among you” (49: 13)
Here we are: for the first time in history all racial and regional prejudices are transcended and human quality is put where it really belongs, which is personal moral superiority or ‘godliness’ to use the religious term. Are you a more understanding, more tolerant, more well-meaning, kinder and more charitable person than another? If so you are the better person in the Sight of God. Your or his race, country, age, learning, wealth, social position, material skills do not matter. So and for example when Islam replaced Hinduism in parts of India the caste system simply evaporated and fundamental legal equality of all men became the norm. When Christianity replaced European paganism it could not abolish the European caste system however. The four castes in Europe were the nobles or aristocrats at the top, of which was the royalty were the pinnacle. Twinned with this caste was the clergy, especially the higher (called princes spiritual), under this two-winged top caste were the free artisans and traders (bourghoisie), then the serfs who were the property (native slaves) of the nobles and last and the fourth were the foreign slaves, a caste inherited from Roman times.
Despite all these injustices were part and parcel of all religions before Muhammad (sw) and Muhammad (sws) had abolished them he ended up as the most hated founder of a religion in the view of the members of other major religions, especially Jews and Christians. Ages old prejudices fed by inconscionable or at least ignorant distortions and slanders have been so well entrenched among the members of these two rival monotheistic groups that unless more good will is dared on the part of them Islam and Muhammad (sws) will remain only to badly and too unjustly hated. Why?
Without going into details (and thereby avoiding the many devils which bedevil intra-faith argumentation) and without meaning any insult at all to any religious group I shall humbly submit two causes as I see them.
The Jewish hatred (which equally applies to Christianity) is based on racial bias pure and simple. The believing (especially ‘orthodox’) Jew believes that God is their inalienable slave, enslaved by His love for the second son of Abraham, namely Isaac and among Isaac’s sons He is enslaved by the love of Jacob nicknamed Israel. Further down the slavish love diverts to, of all the sons of Jacob, to Judah who was one of the less guilty but still guilty conspirators against good Joseph whose only crime was his being loved by his father more than his brothers. The brothers were therefore jealous and furious. They were determined to eliminate him and almost succeeded. Thankfully, God thought otherwise and turned the conspiratorial brothers plot into a great promotion of Joseph.
But the top bogeyman Jews hated though was Abraham’s true first-born son Ishmael and therefore the first great uncle of the Jews. They equally hated his mother Hagar. The interesting point is that we find a clear conflict between how both God and Abraham saw Hagar and Ishmael and how Sarah and her son Isaac and his offspring saw the two.
Abraham had no complaints regarding Hagar and he loved Ishmael only too much as all good fathers love their children and especially a first born son in those times. More importantly God also was pro-Ishmael and pro-Hagar and demonstrated this by addressing the two in commiserating and consoling terms. He blessed the two and promised them to make the ancestors of a great nation whose members would be as numerous as the stars in heaven. Against God’s and Abraham’s favourable attitude towards Hagar and Ishmael the other members of Abraham’s family were all resentment, jealousy, rejection and conspiracy. Here we find a preliminary to the fate of Esau and later on Joseph and lastly Muhammad. God had preferred all these sons of Abraham to his other and in each case these other sons conspired to frustrate the preferences of God. Allegedly Isaac cheated his elder brother Ishmael and Isaac’s son Jacob similarly cheated his first born twin brother Esau of his first-born status. Ishmael and Esau are depicted as thick, gullible, foolish and boorish and therefore deserving of being cheated by their respective junior brothers, namely Isaac and Jacob.
What is more, both Ishmael and Esau were to become ‘Arabs’ and automatically hated as Arabs! How can such an upfront psychological and theological diseases be cured? I am afraid never. Like all satanic perversions they there to stay to the end of the time, unless of course a Jew turns Muslim. Clearly there is something clearly and disturbingly wrong in the evolution of the relations between Jews and Arabs, the illness is obviously incurable and obviously the initiative for spoiling the relations have always come from the Jewish side. In Jewish parlance the contemptuous term for Arab is ‘Ishmaelite’ as the term ‘goyim/gentile’ stand for all no-Jews. All races have some discriminatory terms for other races; for example Arabs call other races as ‘Ajam’ but it never contains such venom as ‘goyim/gentile’ does. In fact Arabs, being mainly poor nomads, more admired other races than hated them. Greeks and Romans called races outside themselves ‘barbars’ and that was a term of contempt as well.
It therefore is no surprise that Christians, given their Greco-Roman and Jewish Biblical background inherited a lot of the venomous prejudices of their two cultural parents.
Which brings us to what we can call the Cinderella syndrome. As the third coming sister Islam has found herself resented and persecuted by her two elder sisters, namely Judaism and Christianity. No matter how Christians and Jews hated each other they united in their hatred of Muslims. Yet like Cinderella, Islam triumphed over both Christianity and had a whole millennium of success against both; until well into the 17th century the Muslim world was the more prosperous, advanced, civilised and humane area on the map. There was no Jewish power anywhere to be seen while the Christian powers were on the defensive against Muslims and among themselves fratricidal in the extreme. For the Arab ‘gentile’ and barbarian to succeed so spectacularly for so long albeit increasingly by proxy via the Turks and other Muslim races left such a bitter taste in Western mouths that the terms Muslim, Arab and especially Turk became synonymous with unforgivable offence and incurable hatred.
Ironically though the post-Muhammadan Jews found a far better refuge among Muslims than among Christians with whom they shared a hatred for Islam. Lastly, Muslims also had to reciprocate the feelings their Jewish and Christian haters had been born against them. The sad end result has been that we have three true sisters who have never been able to get along well enough. Each share some part of the blame but it has to be admitted that Muslims have been the Cinderella on account of being the youngest and the most open to reconciliation. The Qur’an proves this point quite sharply:
“Say (o Prophet): “O people of the Bible, let us come to a common word among us that we do not worship but God and we do not ascribe partners to Him and some of us do not take some others among us as divine lords besides God (like the Messiah, bishops, rabbis, saints etc.)”. If they turn away then say “Witness that we are Muslims (submitters to God”) (Chapter Ali Imran, v. 64)
The Christian hatred is less racial and more doctrinal. Christianity as we know it had began to lose its moorings in the teachings of the historical Israeli prophet Jesus called the Christ, thereby also losing a great part of its Semitic character and instead increasingly acquiring a spurious Greco-Roman character on the Gnostic side which in fact had been of ancient Semitic and Egyptian tradition, especially the latter. Sumerian, Babylonian and Egyptian mythology and mysticism were spreading fast throughout the Roman Empire and this form of mysticism was not so much based on a single and abstract and revealing God but on several gods from one family gods, gods related to each other by blood, i.e., father gods, mother gods and son gods for example. Modern scholarship has so well documented and proven the pagan Gnostic genealogy of Christianity and since we are writing for the better informed readers there is no point in elaborating on this subject. All in all the historical Jesus was one thing and the Jesus of traditional Christianity (pbuh) has been quite another.
It is then no wonder that so long a Christian remains assured of the god-nature of his Christ as his church is telling him this Christian cannot be expected to forgive Islam let alone understand it let alone embrace it. Perhaps more than the identity of the Christ (and Islam calls Jesus the true Christ but on its own realistic terms more favourable to Judaism) his role is the more separating issue between Islam and Christianity. While in Islam nobody other than God in His ultimate, imperceptible capacity can forgive sins on the basis of faith and good works among which sincere repentance is very much the favourite, in Christianity ‘faith’ is enough, the faith that Jesus died on the cross and thereby paid for all ‘our’ sins (incidentally ‘our’ only applies to Christians and not to Jews or Muslims or anybody else). Since a Muslim or Jew will never believe such a non-prophetic but pagan Gnostic dogma, the dogma of vicarious salvation, the gap between the last two and Christianity is unbridgeable.
All above does not mean that some fairer-minded Jewish and Christian believers do not exist who do not hate Islam or insult Muhammad sws but remain polite and non-judgmental. There do exist truly wise and saintly people among both groups who do appreciate Muhammad (sws) and Islam to varying extents and to them we owe equally respectful salutes.
Thankfully many Jews and Christians are constitutionally very decent people and no matter what they profess in spiritual terms or even when they do not look religious enough they are able to sympathise, empathise, tolerate and genuinely love and care for others not of their religion or culture. For me they are true saints for all humanity although outside the usual format of official definitions of piety. Yet, outside such real stars in the firmament of humanity, given the general or overall antipathy towards Muhammad (sws) and Islam I felt the need to explain and exonerate Muhammad (sws) and Islam once and for all, hoping that fair-minded people will come to see the light Muhammad (sws) and Islam represent, for fair-mindedness is always light-oriented and light leads to more light.
Then which of the three faiths is the more reasonable and constructive by modern, international and humanitarian standards is the most important issue we must settle.
I humbly hope that in the following pages I shall be able to contribute constructively and logically to an answer to this question. Amen.
I must add to above one more thing though. I am not a fanatic, a fundamentalist, an anti-Semite (that wrong term for anti-Jewishness, wrong because Arabs and some other peoples are also Semites) or Christian hater. I am a Sufi, Sufis fundamentally hate nobody and a Sufi’s attitude towards a problem can only mean not only an effort to be objective and profound in spiritual matters but being totally charitable and well-meaning towards every single man., woman, child, animal and plant all over the world. I hope this will show as the reader goes along. I hope that sympathy and even and more desirably love is created between me and my readers. I hope that we unite in one Word and One Value and wean ourselves from intractable prejudices and all the bad acts and bad relations issuing from them. Amen again. We need to look into a summary biography of Muhammad (sws) but before that let us clear up a few points.