Towards A Re-Eval­u­a­tion of Muham­mad : Prophet and Man

Mohamed Al-Nowaihi
Pro­fes­sor of Ara­bic Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture, Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty at Cairo. The Mus­lim World, LX (4), Octo­ber 1970, pp. 300 – 313An address deliv­ered to the Har­vard Islam­ic Soci­ety on the occa­sion of Mawlid al-Nabi (Prophet’s birth­day) Rabi‘ al-Aww­al 12, 1388 (June 81968).

In addi­tion to the fes­tiv­i­ty, we should try to learn more about the life of the Prophet and the Divine Mes­sage which he brought”, declares the notice of this cel­e­bra­tion which has been sent out by the Har­vard Islam­ic Soci­ety. True enough ; but let us, then, not be con­tent to repeat the uncrit­i­cal reports and asser­tions which are usu­al­ly reit­er­at­ed by Mus­lim preach­ers on this occa­sion. First of all, let us try to sift fact from fic­tion. For instance, in Mus­lim lands speak­ers and cel­e­brants in mosques and homes would now be read­ing sto­ries of Mawlid al-Nabi which pur­ports that the birth of the Prophet was pre­saged and accom­pa­nied by cer­tain cat­a­clysmic events in the heav­ens and on earth. Stars came near the earth until they almost fell down. The palace of the King of Per­sia was shak­en and four­teen of its bat­tle­ments col­lapsed. Per­sian fires, which had been con­tin­u­ous­ly burn­ing in Zoroas­tri­an tem­ples for a thou­sand years, were extin­guished. Lakes dried up and val­leys were flood­ed. A light came out of the Prophet’s moth­er and illu­mi­nat­ed all the palaces of Syr­ia. The sto­ries go on to claim that the Prophet was born ful­ly cir­cum­cised and with his pla­cen­ta already sep­a­rat­ed from his navel. When he fell down to the ground, he pros­trat­ed him­self in wor­ship of God and his ful­ly-opened eyes were fixed on Heav­en. He brought the most extra­or­di­nary good luck to his wet-nurse and her peo­ple, and dur­ing his infan­cy he grew at a rate nev­er before achieved by a human child, so that when only two years old he was a strong, stur­dy lad. When he was a few years old the Archangel Gabriel descend­ed from Heav­en and split his chest open, took out his heart, removed a black clot from it, washed the heart in a gold ves­sel with pure ice, returned it to his chest and sewed the chest up. Dur­ing his child­hood, a light cloud accom­pa­nied him wher­ev­er he went, pro­tect­ing him from the heat of the sun.For Mus­lim lit­er­a­ture on Mawlid an-Nabi, see, e.g., the arti­cle Mawlid” in (Short­er) Ency­clopae­dia of Islam and A. Jef­fery, ed., Islam-Muham­mad and his Reli­gion (New York : The Lib­er­al Arts Press, 1958), p. 226. Eas­i­ly acces­si­ble are the rel­e­vant pas­sages in Ibn Ishaq’s The Life of Muham­mad (transl. by A. Guil­laume ; Lon­don : O.U.P., 1955), pp. 68 – 73. For a West­ern sum­ma­ry of many of the birth-sto­ries, cf., Tor Andrae, Die Per­son Muhammeds in Lehre und Glauben sein­er Gemeinde (Stock­holm : P. A. Norstedt & S, 1918), pp. 28 – 3952ff. 

Sev­er­al oth­er reports of a sim­i­lar nature are giv­en. But some of these sto­ries go back even to the begin­ning of time and claim that God cre­at­ed Muham­mad as a pure light before He cre­at­ed any oth­er human ; that that light was placed in the loins of Adam and from him descend­ed via pure, chaste wombs into one noble ances­tor after anoth­er until it reached Muham­mad’s father, in whom it showed as a white, lumi­nous mark in his fore­head until he placed it in Ami­na, the Prophet’s moth­er. Muham­mad’s birth fifty-three years before the Hijra was there­fore only the incar­na­tion in human form of that first cre­ation.Andrae dis­cuss­es at length the pre-exis­tence and logos notions found in Sufi writ­ings ; Die Per­son Muhammeds, Chap­ter VI pas­sim, esp., pp. 313 – 357. This part of the sto­ries — which are all fab­ri­ca­tions of a lat­er date — is clear­ly jeal­ous emu­la­tion of what the Chris­tians say about Jesus the Christ. The mis­chief of such fairy tales, which, admit­ted­ly, give great joy to the cred­u­lous mass­es, is not mere­ly that they arouse the deri­sion of non-Mus­lims ; their greater mis­chief is that they dis­tract the Mus­lims them­selves from the true char­ac­ter and mer­it of Muham­mad and the faith which he brought to mankind. Unlike cer­tain oth­ers before him (and after him), he was not a mir­a­cle-mon­ger. Nei­ther in the pro­mul­ga­tion nor in the prop­a­ga­tion of his reli­gion did he resort to any phys­i­cal mir­a­cle what­ev­er, deem­ing it suf­fi­cient to recite the revealed vers­es of the Qur’an and to appeal to the hearts and minds of sen­si­tive, think­ing men. As the Qur’an explic­it­ly and repeat­ed­ly por­traysSee, for instance, S. 17:90 – 93, he stead­fast­ly refused to suc­cumb to the entice­ment of his peo­ple in Mec­ca and their repeat­ed chal­lenge that he per­form a mir­a­cle to prove his divine mis­sion — a sure sign of his integri­ty, espe­cial­ly if one real­izes the cru­el mock­ery and con­tempt which he suf­fered on account of that refusal.

Hav­ing cleared Muham­mad’s biog­ra­phy of the crop of myth and leg­end that has over­grown it, let us then — espe­cial­ly with a view to non-Mus­lim read­ers — not be sat­is­fied with repeat­ing the claims which only Mus­lims can accept and which they see as the pre­con­di­tion for belief in the Islam­ic reli­gion. We Mus­lims believe that Muham­mad was the great­est and last of the prophets and apos­tles of God. We also believe that his char­ac­ter reached per­fec­tion. On nei­ther of these claims does the major­i­ty of mankind agree with us. Nor does the major­i­ty fol­low us when we go on to affirm that the birth of Muham­mad was the great­est event in his­to­ry ; the most munif­i­cent bless­ing which God gave to man ; the deci­sive act which flood­ed the earth with light and guid­ance after total dark­ness and error, estab­lished right in the place of wrong, spread knowl­edge and mer­cy among mankind instead of igno­rance and sav­agery — and oth­er such expres­sions which, in stereo­typed terms lit­tle bet­ter than cliché we are wont to repeat espe­cial­ly on the occa­sion of the Prophet’s birthday.

It should be obvi­ous that we shall not help the cause of our faith nor per­suade the rest of human­i­ty to learn more about the char­ac­ter of its founder so long as we are con­tend to make such claims. Let us, there­fore, con­cen­trate on find­ing the com­mon ground on which all men of rea­son and good will should meet. Owing to the lim­it­ed space avail­able here, I can only touch upon two major ques­tions : the ques­tion of Muham­mad’s truth­ful­ness, and that of his char­ac­ter. In tack­ling each, let us pay atten­tion to the views that have been expressed by non-Mus­lim writ­ers, in order to note the rad­i­cal change which has occurred in recent decades.

As to the answer to the ques­tion of Muham­mad’s truth­ful­ness, it is time to real­ize that whether he was or was not a true prophet of God is entire­ly a mat­ter of belief, which depends, first­ly, on peo­ple’s accep­tance or rejec­tion of the mere exis­tence of God ; sec­ond­ly, on their accep­tance or rejec­tion of the idea of a God who calls on cer­tain men to com­mu­ni­cate His mes­sage to mankind ; and third­ly, on their con­vic­tion regard­ing both the form and con­tent which that com­mu­ni­ca­tion must have in order to be accept­able. We would there­fore only be wast­ing time and effort if we attempt­ed to prove our par­tic­u­lar stand on any of these three points to peo­ple who do not share our con­vic­tion ; for all these ques­tions are beyond proof in the cor­rect sense of the word proof’: fac­tu­al demon­stra­tion and ratio­nal argu­ment. There is, how­ev­er, a ques­tion which is, I think, open to objec­tive assess­ment, and which is of para­mount impor­tance, since it decides men’s basic atti­tude to Muham­mad, irre­spec­tive of their accep­tance or rejec­tion of his mis­sion. This is the ques­tion of his own sincerity.

At anoth­er occa­sionIn an address to the Har­vard Islam­ic Soci­ety on the occa­sion of Id al-Fitr. I described how the ear­li­er non-Mus­lim schol­ars firm­ly believed that Muham­mad was a delib­er­ate impos­tor, a con­scious char­la­tan who fab­ri­cat­ed the Qur’an while ful­ly real­iz­ing it was his own com­po­si­tion.“Car­lyle referred in 1840 to the then preva­lent view of Muham­mad as a schem­ing Impos­tor, a False­hood incar­nate, … his reli­gion … a mere mass of quack­ery and fatu­ity.” Thomas Car­lyle, On Heroes, Hero-Wor­ship and the Hero­ic in His­to­ry (New York : John Wiley, 1849), p. 39 If he was such a per­son, he would, of course, only mer­it the strongest con­dem­na­tion and the out­most repug­nance of mankind. How­ev­er, with the pas­sage of time, sev­er­al fac­tors com­bined to change this extreme denun­ci­a­tion. Mod­ern meth­ods of his­tor­i­cal research devel­oped, enabling schol­ars to make more objec­tive assess­ments. There was a grad­ual less­en­ing of the motives of pri­ma facie ani­mos­i­ty which acti­vat­ed the ear­ly Ori­en­tal­ists, who were most­ly Chris­t­ian or Jew­ish schol­ars intent upon prov­ing the a pri­ori fal­la­cy of Islam and the exclu­sive valid­i­ty of their own creed. Oth­er schol­ars entered the are­na of his­tor­i­cal research, and treat­ed all reli­gions with an equal­ly open mind. Orig­i­nal sources on the life, say­ings and actions of Muham­mad were increas­ing­ly avail­able, both in the orig­i­nal Ara­bic and in good West­ern trans­la­tions. Now, although many unin­formed peo­ple still repeat the old accu­sa­tion, the great major­i­ty of writ­ers and speak­ers on the sub­ject no longer have any doubt of Muham­mad’s com­plete sin­cer­i­ty. Whether he was a true prophet or was only delud­ed, he him­self was ful­ly gen­uine in his spir­i­tu­al search and became utter­ly con­vinced that what he had heard was the true rev­e­la­tion of the true, invis­i­ble God.Car­lyle plead­ed in his famous lec­ture of May 8, 1840, for the recog­ni­tion of the hero’s sin­cer­i­ty, a deep, great, gen­uine sin­cer­i­ty,” the kind he can­not speak of, is not con­scious of : may, I sup­pose, he is con­scious rather of insin­cer­i­ty” (op. cit., p. 41). This char­ac­ter­is­tic” of all men in any way hero­ic Car­lyle saw as def­i­nite­ly apply­ing also to Muham­mad. Per­haps the best exam­ples of a dis­cus­sion of Muham­mad’s sin­cer­i­ty in this cen­tu­ry are Leone Cae­tani, Annali dell’ Islam, II, Tomo I (Milano : Ulrich Hoepli, 1907), pp. 464 – 476 (132- 138) and H. Lam­mens, Mahomet, fut-il sinc” Recherch­es de Sci­ence religieuse, II (1911), 25 – 53, 140 – 166.

An impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to this dis­cus­sion in the fol­low­ing decade was Tor Andrae’s biog­ra­phy of the Prophet, first pub­lished in 1932 (Engl. trans­la­tion 1936); cf., his remark, Mohammed regard­ed his call with the utmost sin­cer­i­ty”; Mohammed, the Man and his Faith (New York : Harp­er and Broth­ers, 1960 and reprint), p. 178

Prob­a­bly the most sig­nif­i­cant more recent dis­cus­sion of The Man and His Great­ness” is found in W. Mont­gomery Watt, Muham­mad in Med­i­na (Oxford : The Claren­don Press, 1956), pp. 321 – 335 (on his sin­cer­i­ty esp., pp. 325 f.)

Let me begin with an argu­ment rec­og­nized by sev­er­al West­ern schol­ars them­selves, as I for­mu­lat­ed it earlier :

First of all, there is his white-hot faith in the exis­tence of the omnipresent and invis­i­ble God : a faith which burned in all his pro­nounce­ments and which nev­er abat­ed in the whole his­to­ry of his career. This is too pas­sion­ate and over­pow­er­ing to emanate from a mere moun­te­bank. Then there is the stu­pen­dous anguish which he under­went in his search for the true God, that long and ago­niz­ing search…In an address to the Har­vard Islam­ic Soci­ety on the occa­sion of Id al-Fitr.

It is impor­tant to real­ize that when that search cul­mi­nat­ed in his hear­ing the voice of Gabriel in Mount Hira, at the age of forty, he did not has­ten to believe in his rev­e­la­tion or become con­vinced of it overnight. He passed through a peri­od of con­sid­er­able doubt and fear, ter­ri­fied lest it be only the wicked trick and cru­el jest­ing of Satan, and he need­ed the whole­heart­ed sup­port of his faith­ful wife Khadi­ja to over­come his fears. I ven­ture to sug­gest that this was an attes­ta­tion of his integri­ty ; a delib­er­ate impos­tor bent upon decep­tion would not have gone through those ago­niz­ing ter­rors. Fur­ther­more, a care­ful read­ing of the ear­ly suras of the Qur’an shows that, even after he was con­vinced of the authen­tic­i­ty of his rev­e­la­tion, it was only with great reluc­tance that he accept­ed the awe­some bur­den of his mis­sion, and only after he was dri­ven by an over­pow­er­ing sense of the duty which he could not shirk.

Fur­ther­more, the Qur’an con­tains a num­ber of ter­ri­fy­ing vers­es denounc­ing those who fab­ri­cate words and claim they are God’s and threat­en­ing them with damna­tion and dire chas­tise­ment. Here is one such instance :

If he [Muham­mad] had fab­ri­cat­ed any say­ings and false­ly ascribed them to Us, We should cer­tain­ly have seized him by the right hand, and had cut through the vein of his neck, and none of you would have saved him. (S. 69:44)

Read­ing those burn­ing vers­es, it is almost impos­si­ble to believe that Muham­mad him­self was con­scious­ly one of those whom the vers­es so fer­vent­ly con­demn. In this con­nec­tion, we may remem­ber how ter­ri­fied Muham­mad was lest through faulty mem­o­ry he for­get or alter some of the words revealed to him, so much so that he need­ed God’s reas­sur­ance and com­fort sev­er­al times on this ques­tion (see, for instance, S. 87:6 – 8 ; also 75:16 – 19).

The Qur’an also records accu­sa­tions made by the Quraysh against the gen­uine­ness of his rev­e­la­tions. Some of these accu­sa­tions claimed cer­tain peo­ple as Muham­mad’s accom­plices who helped him to man­u­fac­ture the Qur’an (see, for exam­ple, S. 16:103). It is dif­fi­cult to believe that Muham­mad would have had the courage to record those accu­sa­tions, and in such detail, had he not been con­vinced of their wrong­ness. More­over, the Qur’an records some mis­takes com­mit­ted by Muham­mad, and rebukes him for them, some­times in quite a sharp tone which caused him great cha­grin. One of them was that some­times he weak­ened and thought of giv­ing in to or com­pro­mis­ing with the idol­aters, even of alter­ing the revealed vers­es a lit­tle to please them and gain their friend­ship (see, for instance, S. 17:73 – 75Anoth­er impor­tant illus­tra­tion is the occa­sion’ of S. 53:1 – 20 ; see, e.g., Guil­laume, Life, pp. 165 ff.
, the last of which vers­es stern­ly declare that, had Muham­mad suc­cumbed, God would have made him taste of woe in life and woe in death, and Muham­mad would then have found no helper against God). This, again, is strong evi­dence of his com­plete belief that what he heard were the very words of God which he was not at lib­er­ty to sup­press or mod­i­fy no mat­ter how much they hurt him.

It is equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant to remem­ber the his­to­ry of the severe hard­ship, per­se­cu­tion and mor­tal dan­ger which he faced and accept­ed for some twen­ty years in the ful­fill­ment of his mis­sion. Impos­tors do not usu­al­ly last so long or sur­vive such tri­al. Any of these facts may not in itself be con­clu­sive, but I sub­mit that no hon­est thinker can deny that their cumu­la­tive evi­dence is overwhelming.

Even so, attempts have been made to explain them away. When West­ern schol­ars who had no belief in the exis­tence of God or in divine­ly sent mes­sen­gers could no longer doubt Muham­mad’s utter sin­cer­i­ty, they sought to account for the remark­able phe­nom­e­non of his mis­sion by var­i­ous med­ical or psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ries.Oth­er schol­ars joined them, e.g., A. Sprenger, The Life of Moham­mad, from Orig­i­nal Sources, (Alla­habad [India]: Pres­by­ter­ian Mis­sion Press, 1851), pp. 77 f., 105 – 114 ; Dun­can Black Mac­don­ald, The Reli­gious Atti­tude and Life in Islam (Chica­go : Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press, 1909 ; reprint, Bey­routh : Khay­ats, 1965), p. 33 Since they did not believe in divine inspi­ra­tion per se, their attempts were under­stand­able. What sur­pris­es and grieves one is to see some Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish schol­ars fol­low­ing in the same track. When one care­ful­ly con­sid­ers the impu­ta­tions that are still made against Muham­mad’s prophet­ic rev­e­la­tion, one may come to the con­clu­sion that they do not so much injure Islam as shake the foun­da­tions of the­is­tic belief itself. Such facile expla­na­tions are : an unbal­anced and apoplec­tic, or epilep­tic ner­vous sys­tem ; a schiz­o­phrenic per­son­al­i­ty ; hal­lu­ci­na­tions out of a wild and dis­tort­ed imag­i­na­tions ; a suprasen­si­tive and dis­eased psy­che ; a down-rush from the super­con­scious, etc., etc.

There is not one of these ratio­nal­is­tic expla­na­tions that can­not be lev­eled with equal plau­si­bil­i­ty at the oth­er prophets and reli­gious lead­ers accept­ed by believ­ers in oth­er reli­gions. Let us admit the fact that all those vision­ar­ies were unusu­al or super­sen­si­tive in some ways — we may here remem­ber what Car­lyle in his Heroes and Hero-Wor­ship said on this ques­tionHeroes and Hero-Wor­ship, pp. 41 f. and else­where (“At all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him ; unde­ni­able, then, there!?I wish you to take this as my pri­ma­ry def­i­n­i­tion of a Great Man…” [on Muham­mad] “… an earnest con­fused voice from the unknown Deep.”) — and yet this does not nec­es­sar­i­ly inval­i­date their visions. In fact, it may be argued that unless they were excep­tion­al­ly attuned they would not have been able to see and hear what they quite fac­tu­al­ly saw and heard. We can­not sim­ply equate them with those who are def­i­nite­ly sick, phys­i­cal­ly or phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly. In any case, as regards Muham­mad, all such pre­sump­tions of his phys­i­cal or men­tal dis­ease are fair­ly eas­i­ly dis­cred­it­ed by his great suc­cess as a prac­ti­cal leader and founder of a new state, in which dif­fi­cult role he is admit­ted to have dis­played con­sum­mate skill, tact and wis­dom. The atti­tude now preva­lent among non-Mus­lim schol­ars is that there can be no doubt about Muham­mad’s sin­cer­i­ty. Indeed, we find that cer­tain Chris­t­ian schol­ars, such as Wil­fred Cantwell Smith and Ken­neth Cragg,Cf., Wil­fred C. Smith, Ques­tions of Reli­gious Truth (New York : Charles Scrib­n­er’s Sons, 1967), pp. 37 – 62 : (“Is the Qur’an the Word of God?”). The author dis­cuss­es Crag­g’s posi­tion on p. 57, with a ref­er­ence to Crag­g’s most wide­ly known works. con­cede that Muham­mad was not mere­ly hon­est in his con­vic­tion of his prophe­cy, but must have been a true prophet of God receiv­ing God’s rev­e­la­tion in some sense or anoth­er, though not nec­es­sar­i­ly in the ortho­dox, lit­er­al sense under­stood by Muslims.

If we now move from the ques­tion of Muham­mad’s prophe­cy to that of his char­ac­ter, we notice again a con­sid­er­able change in the pic­ture made of him by non-Mus­lim schol­ars. For­mer­ly, con­comi­tant with their accu­sa­tion of delib­er­ate char­la­tanism, the por­trait they drew of his total per­son­al­i­ty was black indeed, with hard­ly one reliev­ing virtue. He was depict­ed as an ambi­tious moun­te­bank, bent on sheer self-aggran­dize­ment, blown up by insuf­fer­able van­i­ty and con­sumed with devour­ing greed. Noth­ing but the most igno­ble motives impelled him to do what­ev­er he did, and lust and lech­ery were accord­ed the lofti­est place among his heinous sins. A cru­el tyrant he was, unfor­giv­ing and venge­ful, tricky and treach­er­ous — in short, a very mon­ster who calls forth only the revul­sion and abhor­rence of mankind. Lit­tle won­der that his name was changed from Muham­mad, the Praised One, to Mahound, the Prince of Dark­ness.Cf., W. Mont­gomery Watt, Muham­mad at Med­i­na, p. 324. For this whole sub­ject of the West­ern images of Islam, see espe­cial­ly Nor­man Daniel’s Islam and the West : The Mak­ing of an Image (Edin­burgh : Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1958); and Islam, Europe and Empire (Edin­burgh : Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1966). 

How­ev­er, the same process­es in the world of schol­ar­ship as those not­ed above slow­ly act­ed to bring about a grad­ual tem­per­ing of that extreme pic­ture, and now it is changed in many respects, some of them basic. In place of the for­bid­ding por­trait of a sav­age, grasp­ing, vin­dic­tive despot, there is now a pro­file of an essen­tial­ly kind man, affec­tion­ate and ten­der-heart­ed, mod­est and unas­sum­ing, with sev­er­al lov­able and indeed noble traits in his char­ac­ter. Per­haps the great­est thing which demon­strates his true essence was the fact that he was espe­cial­ly kind to all low­ly and despised peo­ple : slaves and ser­vants, women, chil­dren and orphans.

Even when he was at the sum­mit of his suc­cess and pow­er, he helped his house-folk in the per­for­mance of their menial duties He darned his clothes and cob­bled his san­dals. He nev­er found fault with his ser­vants or rebuked them with any mis­take. His per­son­al ser­vant Anas b. Malik relates that in ten years of ser­vice to Muham­mad, the Prophet nev­er struck him, nev­er said one harsh word to him, and nev­er even frowned in his face. He greet­ed chil­dren with a grave as-sala­mu alaykum when he passed them, and often stopped and talked with them, asked them about their games and ques­tioned them about their toys. He com­mis­er­at­ed with a small boy on the death of his pet nightin­gale.A ref­er­ence to the pet nightin­gale sto­ry and a short dis­cus­sion of Muham­mad’s ten­der­ness towards and fond­ness of chil­dren can be found, e.g., in Wat­t’s Muham­mad at Med­i­na, pp. 322 f. An inter­est­ing and detailed com­par­i­son of var­i­ous tra­di­tions on the nightin­gale inci­dent is giv­en by R. Marston Speight in his unpub­lished Ph.D. dis­ser­ta­tion (The Hart­ford Sem­i­nary Foun­da­tion, 1970), The Mus­nad of al-Tay­al­isi”, pp. 107 – 110 A lit­tle girl would come and pull him by the hand, and he would not pull his hand away, but would go with her to see what she want­ed to show him. A woman slave would ask him to keep her com­pa­ny on her var­i­ous errands in Med­i­na, and he would con­sent. Once a woman with a defec­tive mind came and said she want­ed him ; he got up, took her to one side, lis­tened to her and con­versed with her until she had poured out all she wanted.

Muham­mad nev­er declined an invi­ta­tion to a par­ty, even from the mean­est of his men. Nor was he ever a kill-joy : he often laughed with peo­ple and did not con­sid­er it beneath his dig­ni­ty to exchange jokes with them. How­ev­er, he was nor­mal­ly silent, not the silence of haugh­ti­ness, but of shy­ness. As one of his com­pan­ions said, he was more shy than a vir­gin inside her apart­ment.” When he entered an assem­bly of his fol­low­ers, he did not select a promi­nent place, but sat in what­ev­er place was imme­di­ate­ly avail­able. He hat­ed his com­pan­ions to stand up when he entered, so they even­tu­al­ly learnt to keep their seats. He refused to recline while eat­ing, though they assured him he would find it more com­fort­able ; that, he said, was the man­ner of kings when they ate. He was always quite and soft-spo­ken, nev­er loud ; even his laugh­ter was gen­tle and nev­er bois­ter­ous. He smiled more than he laughed, and he had a con­stant, gen­tle smile ; one of his con­tem­po­raries said, I nev­er saw any­body smile so con­stant­ly.” He nev­er cursed or used foul lan­guage, although obscen­i­ty was the nor­mal man­ner of speak­ing in that time among the Arabs. Even some of his clos­est friends and fol­low­ers, not exclud­ing the gen­tle Abu Bakr, in a num­ber of record­ed anec­dotes, used what we would now con­sid­er coarse or inde­cent lan­guage ; but Muham­mad, not once.

The Prophet nev­er pun­ished out of mere retal­i­a­tion for a per­son­al slight or injury. All his pun­ish­ments, of believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers alike, were for crimes com­mit­ted against the pub­lic weal or infringe­ments of the pro­mul­gat­ed law ; and even here his life con­tains acts of clemen­cy in which he put mer­cy above jus­tice. Espe­cial­ly remark­able in this respect was his great reluc­tance to inflict upon adul­ter­ers the pre­scribed pun­ish­ment of death by ston­ing. A man or woman would come and con­fess hav­ing com­mit­ted that major sin and ask to be puri­fied” ? i.e., by the due pun­ish­ment. Muham­mad would first pre­tend not to have heard the con­fes­sion. After repeat­ed insis­tence from the con­fes­sor, he would say, Per­haps the man is drunk and does not real­ize what he is say­ing.” In the case of one woman, who insist­ed on her right­ful pun­ish­ment, he said she might be preg­nant and it would not be jus­tice to kill the inno­cent embryo. The woman went away and even­tu­al­ly came back with the new­born baby in her arms, but Muham­mad said he must allow her a few years to suck­le her young one and bring it up. In con­sid­er­ing the pun­ish­ments he dealt to the ene­mies of his cause, we must not for­get, first, that they were polit­i­cal actions made nec­es­sary by the con­di­tions of the time ; sec­ond, that none of them were exces­sive unac­cept­able by the usages or mores of that time. And his life was crowned with his supreme act of for­give­ness, when, in his hour of final vic­to­ry upon the con­quest of Mec­ca, he for­gave his most bit­ter and dogged adver­saries, those who had denied him the right to wor­ship his God in his own way, who had long per­se­cut­ed him and had caused him to flee his native place and seek refuge with strangers. Accord­ing to the rules of war preva­lent then, and for cen­turies after­wards both in Asia and Europe, he could have put them all to the sword.

To appre­ci­ate the full extent of his clemen­cy, patience and for­bear­ance, how­ev­er, it is good to real­ize that he did not suf­fer only from the per­se­cu­tion of the unbe­liev­ers, but suf­fered a great deal from the rude­ness, uncouth­ness and quick tem­per of many of his own fol­low­ers. It is nec­es­sary to remem­ber the state of the Arabs at that time, still near the wild and vehe­ment char­ac­ter very just­ly dubbed by the Qur’an al-Jahiliyya.T. H. Weir stat­ed in his dis­cus­sion of Djahiliya” in The Ency­clopae­dia of Islam (1st ed. and Short­er Ency­clopae­dia) that the mean­ing of Jahiliyya is rude­ness, rough­ness, boor­ish­ness rather than igno­rance.’ The arti­cle Djahiliyya” in the new edi­tion of the Ency­clopae­dia (by the Edi­tors) points to the fact that the Qur’an­ic occur­rence of jahil (nine times) and jahiliyya (four times) scarce­ly per­mit of their sense being pre­cise­ly deter­mined.” In the vio­lence and quick­ness to anger, they often talked insult­ing­ly to the Prophet, but he nev­er answered back ; in fact, his capac­i­ty to suf­fer fools was amaz­ing. Once a nomad came and, evi­dent­ly to draw Muham­mad’s atten­tion, pulled him by his man­tle until he almost fell down, and the man­tle left a mark round his neck. Muham­mad looked at the nomad, laughed appar­ent­ly at his vio­lent way of call­ing his atten­tion, and said, What is it you want?” The nomad said, Muham­mad ! Give me some of the mon­ey you have got.” Muham­mad said to his fol­low­ers present, Give him” (Notice how this per­son rude­ly addressed the Prophet by his bare name, not by his kun­ya”, patronymic, as the polite cus­tom of the Arabs dic­tat­ed, not by the usu­al O, Apos­tle of God’ adopt­ed by the believ­ers). More than once a nomad would come and, in the usu­al offen­sive way of the bedouin, make an accu­sa­tion against Muham­mad which would prove to be unjust. But Muham­mad would nei­ther retal­i­ate nor even mete out the just pun­ish­ment ; and he would stop his com­pan­ions, who often want­ed to kill the cul­prit, from molest­ing him in any way. Only in the most gen­tle way did he cor­rect peo­ples’ mis­takes. A bedouin entered the mosque in Med­i­na and uri­nat­ed in it. When Muham­mad’s com­pan­ions start­ed to shout at the man, he asked them not to be rough on him, called him over, and gen­tly explained to him that mosques were not suit­able places for such actions, but were meant for the read­ing of the Qur’an the remem­brance of God, and prayers. Then he called for a buck­et of water and poured it over the urine. When proven wrong in an argu­ment, even when his dis­putant was inso­lent, Muham­mad would admit his mis­take and rec­ti­fy it with­out any false pride, and would apol­o­gize pro­fuse­ly as well. Once he had for­got­ten to pay back some­thing he owed to a nomad. The man came to Muham­mad, vio­lent­ly pulled Muham­mad’s man­tle until it fell away from his shoul­ders, and accused him in quite an offen­sive way of delib­er­ate dila­tori­ness. Umar, enraged by the rough han­dling and insult done to the Prophet, called the man an ene­my of God, and said he wished he could cut off his head.

Mean­while, the Prophet was look­ing at Umar "quietly and calmly". Then he smiled and said toUmar : He and I need some­thing else. I need that you order me to pay back my debt prop­er­ly, and he needs that you order him to demand his dues in a prop­er man­ner.” Then he ordered Umar to take the man, pay him the debt, and add to it twenty measures of dates to compensate him for the fright he (Umar) had caused him.

When he did get angry, the only reac­tion he showed was that his face red­dened. All he would then do was to turn his face away from the per­son who angered him. When he was pleased, how­ev­er, his whole face beamed as if irra­di­at­ed with light, like a mir­ror reflect­ing the sun,” in the words of a com­pan­ion. When he con­versed with some­body, he turned with his whole body to him. He nev­er was the first to leave a com­pan­ion, or take his hand away from a hand­shake, or pull his hand away from a t?-??. These, how­ev­er, were not points of mere super­fi­cial good man­ners which might have no deep­er sig­nif­i­cance ; they obvi­ous­ly sprang from a ten­der and tru­ly hum­ble nature. There is no sur­er indi­ca­tion of the depth of his human­i­ty than his extreme kind­ness to ani­mals. Pass­ing by a bitch with puppies?and this was on the crit­i­cal march to the con­quest of Mecca?he stopped to warn his men not to dis­turb her and her lit­ter ; and, in order to make sure this was car­ried out, he post­ed a man by her. He sought to teach kind­ness to his peo­ple, a peo­ple who then were cru­el in their treat­ment of the dumb creatures.

No won­der those rough peo­ple end­ed by giv­ing Muham­mad a love and devo­tion greater than any leader of men can hope to receive from his fol­low­ers. Even this was attrib­uted by the Qur’an to the mer­cy of God :

It is by the mer­cy of God that thou hast been gen­tle with them. Hadst thou been harsh and severe-heart­ed, they would have scat­tered away from thee. There­fore, for­give them and ask God’s par­don for them, and con­sult them in all affairs. (S. 3:159)

So much for the vain, cru­el and vin­dic­tive tyrant. As to his greed and ego­tism, no read­er of his biog­ra­phy can fail to be struck by his great abstemious­ness and fru­gal habits of liv­ing. To the end of his days, even after the great rich­es result­ing from the con­quests began to accrue to the Mus­lims, he kept those same habits. He refused to eat bread made of refined flour, and nev­er allowed him­self to eat wheat bread on two suc­ces­sive days. Of bar­ley bread?the cheap­est then?he did not once have his fill ; and he nev­er ate gravy with bread more than once a day, nor com­bined any two of bread, dates and meat in one meal ; in fact, he nev­er had two full meals on the same day. He abstained from even mak­ing per­son­al use, either for him­self or for any mem­ber of his fam­i­ly, of the zakat, the tithe of alms paid by Mus­lims into the trea­sury. The pro­ceeds of the land received as his share of the booty he always dis­trib­uted among the needy. It is suf­fi­cient in this respect to note that, despite that great wealth, he him­self died not only poor, but vir­tu­al­ly pen­ni­less. One of his com­pan­ions said : He left nei­ther a gold coin, nor a sil­ver coin, nor a man-slave, nor a woman-slave, nor a sheep, nor a camel.“This is not lit­er­al­ly true, for he left some milch camels, as well as cer­tain pos­ses­sions of land which — as stat­ed before — accrued from his share of the booty. The com­men­ta­tors explain this dis­crep­an­cy by say­ing that what is meant is that he pos­sessed no cap­i­tal which he uti­lized in trad­ing. So we may still agree that the gen­er­al pic­ture accord­ed with the fol­low­ing mnemon­ic verse, list­ing the pri­vate pos­ses­sions left by Muhammad :

The lega­cy of Taha (a pop­u­lar name giv­en to Muham­mad) was : two rosaries, a copy of the Qur’an, a kohl-pot, two pray­ing car­pets, a hand-mill and a walk­ing stick.” In fact, at the time of his death, his coat-of-mail was mort­gaged with a cer­tain mer­chant for thir­ty mea­sures of bar­ley which he had pur­chased to feed his large family.

Thus died the man who had con­quered all Ara­bia, and to whom one-fifth of the great spoils was paid. I have con­cen­trat­ed on those aspects of his char­ac­ter which would now be read­i­ly admit­ted by non-Mus­lim schol­ars. This is not to say that they agree with us Mus­lims in every point of our eval­u­a­tion of Muham­mad. And, in my opin­ion, when those schol­ars dif­fer with us, it is not always they who are in the wrong and who have to change their view. For just as we fab­ri­cat­ed those fables about the birth of our Prophet, we have indulged in cer­tain exag­ger­a­tions and out­right inven­tions regard­ing his qual­i­ties. We have claimed for him a per­fec­tion which is not giv­en to any human, not even the prophets. If we ever aspire to have a san­er and truer esti­ma­tion of him, one that is capa­ble of dis­cov­er­ing his real and demon­stra­ble virtues, our point of depar­ture must be the real­iza­tion that nei­ther he him­self claimed per­fec­tion, nor did the Qur’an claim it for him. In fact, such a claim, vaunt­ed by such mod­ern books as the one enti­tled Muham­mad : the Per­fect Ide­al“By Muham­mad Ahmad Jad al-Mawla, 5th print­ing, Cairo, 1961 is utter­ly blas­phe­mous by the strict tenets of monothe­is­tic Islam which ascribe per­fec­tion to God alone. For, states the Qur’an God is the lofti­est exam­ple” (S. 16:60). And again : His is the lofti­est exam­ple in the Heav­ens and on the Earth” (S. 30:27); notice this : and on the Earth.” When the Qur’an (S. 68:4) describes Muham­mad as hav­ing a great char­ac­ter,” it did not say that he had the great­est. Both the Qur’an in many vers­es, and Muham­mad him­self in many say­ings, stress again and again his fal­li­bil­i­ty, and the inevitable short­com­ings of his human nature. The Qur’an orders him : Say : I am only a man like you” (S. 18:110 ; cf. also 41:6). And again : Say : Glo­ry be to my Lord ! Am I more than a man, a mes­sen­ger?” (S. 17:93). Muham­mad also said : I am only the son of a woman from the Quraysh who used to eat strings of sun-dried meat.” (The qadid was one of the sta­ple foods of poor nomads in the deserts.) The cor­rect Islam­ic creed about ismat al-anbiya’, immu­ni­ty of the prophets, is that this immu­ni­ty applies only to mat­ters con­nect­ed with their integri­ty as receivers and pro­nounces of the mes­sage of God.

It has been said by schol­ars of com­par­a­tive reli­gions that, owing to the great pains Muham­mad took to stress his mere human­i­ty, he was the only founder of a great reli­gion who suc­ceed­ed in pre­vent­ing his peo­ple from deify­ing him after his death. But if the Mus­lims have abstained as count­ing Muham­mad as god, they have not abstained from mak­ing ridicu­lous claims on his behalf. In these claims they were, of course, lim­it­ed by their own envi­ron­men­tal­ly-con­di­tioned con­cepts. When those con­cepts changed with the change of human ethics and the devel­op­ment of human con­science, some of their inven­tions did griev­ous harms to the good nature of the Prophet. Wit­ness the extrav­a­gant claim that he was giv­en the sex­u­al pow­er of thir­ty men, or six­ty men ; and that he would go round his wives, eleven in num­ber, in a sin­gle night, or a sin­gle day, or a sin­gle hour of the day or night. Much of the accu­sa­tion of lust that has been lev­elled against him by many West­ern writ­ers was based on such Arab or Ori­en­tal fan­ta­sy. Here is one illus­tra­tion. Sir William Muir him­self, who does his best in his biog­ra­phy of the ProphetWilliam Muir, The Life of Mahomet, iv (Lon­don : Smith, Elder and Co. 1861), 310 f.; William Muir, The Life of Moham­mad (new and revised edi­tion by T. H. Weir ; Edin­burgh : John Grant, 1912), p. 515. to be fair in his final eval­u­a­tion of the Prophet, quotes uncrit­i­cal­ly this say­ing ascribed to Ibn Abbas : Ver­i­ly the chiefest among the Mus­lims was the fore­most of them in his pas­sion for women.” Then he com­ments:”… a fatal exam­ple imi­tat­ed too read­i­ly by his fol­low­ers…” My hum­ble com­ment on Muir is : a sad exam­ple of how even the best Ori­en­tal­ists some­times too read­i­ly accept the fig­ments of the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion of the Arabs. For it is quite pal­pa­ble that this say­ing is pure­ly an a pri­ori deduc­tion : since Muham­mad was the chief Mus­lim who had to epit­o­mize their ideals, he must have been the most sex­u­al­ly potent. So it was not a case of the Mus­lims imi­tat­ing” their Prophet’s exam­ple”, but rather the con­verse : a case of their recre­at­ing the char­ac­ter of Muham­mad accord­ing to their then accept­ed morals.

Those writ­ers, in all too read­i­ly accept­ing the pop­u­lar notions, found it easy to for­get the silent facts about Muham­mad’s mar­riages : that for 28 years?and those the years of his utmost vigor?from the age of 25 to the age of 53, he had only one wife (for 25 of those years, she was the con­sid­er­ably old­er Khadi­ja); that his mar­riage to Ayesha in the first year of the Hijra was quite obvi­ous­ly a way of express­ing his grat­i­tude to her father, his first, clos­est and most faith­ful fol­low­er among men, who made with him the per­ilous fight from Mec­ca to Med­i­na, the First Com­pan­ion Abu Bakr ; and that all his oth­er mar­riages were either a sim­i­lar homage to a close friend, a way of giv­ing shel­ter to a friend’s wid­ow, or one of the most effec­tive ways then prac­ticed to pla­cate a pow­er­ful ene­my and induce a defeat­ed tribe to for­get its humiliation?much as the cus­tom of mat­ri­mo­ni­al alliances among the reign­ing dynas­ties was in medieval Europe. So clear is this fact that Mont­gomery Watt has concluded :

It is not too much to say that all Muham­mad’s mar­riages had a polit­i­cal aspect.Muham­mad at Med­i­na, p. 330

Fur­ther­more, with the excep­tion of Ayesha, none of his wives was an unmar­ried maid­en ; and not one of them did he mar­ry against her will. Indeed, in one case the woman he had just mar­ried showed reluc­tance to come to him ; or, in anoth­er ver­sion of the anec­dote, asked for God’s pro­tec­tion from him. Muham­mad answered her : Invi­o­lable is the one who asks for God’s pro­tec­tion,” and imme­di­ate­ly returned her to her tribe untouched.

These are the bare his­tor­i­cal facts about the mar­riages of a man who has been con­demned as a prof­li­gate volup­tuary, and whose own fol­low­ers helped unwit­ting­ly to smear him. When we on our side have less­ened our exag­ger­a­tions and abjured our fab­ri­ca­tions, and when the oth­ers have gone fur­ther in their expla­na­tion of the true Muham­mad as prophet and man, unham­pered by the residue of their own prej­u­dice and mis­con­cep­tion, what, then, will be the com­mon ground on which all men of san­i­ty and good faith can meet, on which, indeed, a by no means neg­li­gi­ble minor­i­ty of think­ing men of var­i­ous races and creeds already agree ?

Whether one accepts or rejects his mis­sion, there can be no doubt that he was an earnest and ded­i­cat­ed searcher after the divine truth, who became pro­found­ly and hon­est­ly con­vinced that God had cho­sen him to con­vey His mes­sage to mankind. This alone dis­cred­its both the con­temp­tu­ous expres­sions and the angry, con­dem­na­to­ry tone that used to be adopt­ed towards him by either believ­ers in oth­er creeds or nega­tors of all creeds. All those who val­ue human dig­ni­ty, and who have the capac­i­ty to hon­or and respect man’s inces­sant search after the spir­i­tu­al truth, even though they may not agree with the forms or the results of that search, can­not help but have the deep­est respect for Muham­mad. And, when they read of his anguish and tor­ment both in his search and in the ful­fill­ment of his call, that respect will sure­ly mount to sym­pa­thy and com­pas­sion. Then, when they con­sid­er his many ster­ling qual­i­ties, and real­ize that essen­tial­ly he was a large-heart­ed man, a man of gen­uine humil­i­ty, with one of the sweet­est and meek­est of natures, they may agree that, despite his imper­fec­tions, or per­haps more cor­rect­ly because of his human imper­fec­tions, here was one of the noblest and most lov­able of men. In short, they may sim­ply agree with the Qur’an­ic state­ment quot­ed above, a ver­dict addressed to Muham­mad while he was meet­ing with stead­fast patience and for­bear­ance the rabid vil­i­fi­ca­tion and per­se­cu­tion of the idol­aters : Tru­ly thou hast a great char­ac­ter.” (S. 68:4) Towards A Re-Evaluation of Muhammad: Prophet and Man 1

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