Wood Chopped Down : The Infor­ma­tion Super­high­way and the Non­sense of Chris­t­ian Mis­sion­ary Belligerence

From the begin­ning of Ori­en­tal­ism, the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies have been assum­ing that Islam is ​“head­less” enough to be attacked and scru­ti­nized with a feroc­i­ty that one can only con­clude bor­ders on fanati­cism. These mis­sion­ar­ies proved then that they do not have the brains to acknowl­edge their own headless­ness. One such exam­ple is David Wood, a recent zeal­ous recruit by the ever-intol­erent Answer­ing Islam, whose only amaz­ing abil­i­ty is his extreme bel­liger­ence, and what can only be described as fanat­i­cal intol­er­ence, towards a faith dif­fer­ent from his. This is a review of one such arti­cle.

Mr. Wood begins by saying :

Muham­mad’s empire of faith has man­aged to thrive in the mod­ern world for one sim­ple rea­son : Mus­lims have kept Muhammad?s dark past a secret. Indeed, they have gone beyond keep­ing it a secret ; they have some­how con­vinced them­selves (and many oth­ers) that Muham­mad was an out­stand­ing moral exam­ple, per­haps even the great­est moral exam­ple of all time. Per­pet­u­at­ing this fraud has been, in my opin­ion, the most stu­pen­dous decep­tion in world history.

We are sure that it has been such ​“a very large secret” that the inci­dents ​“exposed” in Mr. Wood’s bel­liger­ent piece were actu­al­ly record­ed in some recent con­tem­po­rary biogra­phies of the Prophet Muham­mad^(P). Mr. Wood should con­sid­er read­ing the late Mar­tin Ling’s ​“Muham­mad : His Life Based on the Ear­li­est Sources”, M. H. Haykal’s ​“The Life of Muham­mad” and anoth­er book, ​“The Sealed Nec­tar” and see whether these emi­nent writ­ers have con­cealed even a frac­tion of the Prophet’s^(P) life.

Yet Mr. Wood con­tin­ue to per­sist in this mind­less big­otry, and says :

The dif­fi­cul­ty here is that, no mat­ter how loud­ly a Mus­lim shouts these objec­tions, they have no pow­er to over­come the his­tor­i­cal fact that Muham­mad was a rob­ber and a murderer.

One should not throw stones at glass hous­es, and sim­i­lar­ly one could say the fol­low­ing for the Judeo-Chris­t­ian faith :

The dif­fi­cul­ty here is that, no mat­ter how loud­ly a Jew/​Christian shouts these objec­tions, they have no pow­er to over­come the his­tor­i­cal fact that Moses was a rob­ber and a murderer.

Mr. Wood has not proven any­thing apart from an asser­tion that, in his view, what the Prophet^(P) did was ​“rob­bing and murdering”.

The fol­low­ing are some of the claims that he has charged against the Prophet^(P). Do note the nature of the polem­i­cal trend employed by Mr Wood. They are nei­ther ​“new” nor have they not been dis­cussed or answered aeons ago. What we will do here is to repro­duce some of the charges, and pro­vide a link to a fur­ther dis­cus­sion on the issue. This is to demon­strate to Mr. Wood and his mis­sion­ary pals that their tired, old rep­e­ti­tions are not unfa­mil­iar to us, and to send a mes­sage that we are not inter­est­ed in rein­vent­ing the wheel and waste our time in respond­ing.

The fol­low­ing are some of the claims that were made.

Claim #1 : When Muham­mad began receiv­ing his rev­e­la­tions, his first impres­sion was that he was pos­sessed by demons

Ver­dict : Manip­u­la­tion of Facts

This was dis­cussed by Al-Nowai­hi, who notes that :

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.

(For more on the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary abuse of the Fatrah inci­dent, see The Fatrah : Inter­mis­sion of the Prophet Muham­mad)

Claim #2 : Muham­mad sup­port­ed his fledg­ling reli­gion by rob­bing people

Ver­dict : Manip­u­la­tion of Facts

(For more on the leg­is­la­tion and begin­ning of jihad, see The Leg­is­la­tion and the Begin­ning of Jihad)

Claim #3 : Muham­mad was often ruth­less towards his adversaries

Ver­dict : Falsehood

On the con­trary, the Prophet^(P) was always gen­tle and treat­ed his ene­mies kind­ly, and this is a fact recog­nised by the most vir­u­lent of his con­tem­po­rary enemies.

(For more refu­ta­tions to accu­sa­tions of the so-called ​“bru­tal­i­ty” of the Prophet^(P), see What About The Killing of Ka’ab bin Al-Ashraf ? and The Killing of Abu ​‘Afak and Asma’ bint Mar­wan ?)

Claim #4 : Muham­mad had far more wives than even his own rev­e­la­tions allowed

Ver­dict : Manip­u­la­tion of Facts

The injunc­tion on the lim­i­ta­tion of wives does not apply to the Prophet’s^(P) wives. As they had attained a high stature in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty of believ­ers (Ummul Muk­minin or ​“Moth­ers of the Believ­ers), it would be noth­ing short of an injus­tice to deprive them of their sta­tus by divorc­ing them and hence con­demn them to humil­i­a­tion. For the Prophet’s^(P) mar­riages, a sep­a­rate law was giv­en to him, name­ly that he may not mar­ry any more women after this rev­e­la­tion was revealed.

(For more on the Prophet Muham­mad’s wives, see Why Was The Prophet Polyg­a­mous ?)

Claim #5 : Muham­mad con­sum­mat­ed a mar­riage to a nine-year-old girl

Ver­dict : Manip­u­la­tion of Facts

(For more on Muham­mad’s rela­tion­ship with Aisha, see The Young Mar­riage of Aishah)

Claim #6 : Muham­mad had a con­temptible opin­ion of women

Ver­dict : Out­right Falsehood

(For more on the Islam­ic view of women, see The Posi­tion of Women in Islam)

Claim #7 : Muham­mad is unique among prophets in that he is the only one to receive a rev­e­la­tion, pro­claim it as part of God’s mes­sage to man, and lat­er take it back, claim­ing that it was actu­al­ly from Satan.

Ver­dict : Out­right Falsehood

(For more on the Ori­en­tal­ist fan­ta­sy regard­ing this unau­then­tic tra­di­tion, see Those Are Their High-Fly­ing Lies Indeed)

Hence from these mere selec­tive ​“claims”, Mr Wood tries to con­clude that :

These are just some of the facts that Mus­lims have been keep­ing secret, but they are enough to make any rea­son­able per­son doubt the valid­i­ty of Islam.

On the con­trary, the alle­ga­tions that were hurled and repeat­ed ad nau­se­am by the mis­sion­ary is noth­ing new. They have been dis­cussed, debat­ed, and refut­ed by Mus­lim and non-Mus­lim schol­ars time and time again. Mr. Wood is per­haps igno­rant of the copi­ous amount of mate­r­i­al on these issues and who can blame him ? Per­haps he has been liv­ing in a mono-cul­ture all his life and has nev­er come across a sin­gle Mus­lim on the street.

The truth about Muham­mad has been one of the world’s best-kept secrets. For cen­turies, it has been vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to raise objec­tions about the char­ac­ter of Muham­mad in Mus­lim coun­tries, for any­one who raised such objec­tions would (fol­low­ing the exam­ple set by Muham­mad him­self) imme­di­ate­ly be killed.

And it was pos­si­ble to raise issues of doubt about the char­ac­ter of Jesus^(P) in the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion and Cru­sades era, for exam­ple ? Mr. Wood is try­ing to ​“pull wool” over his read­er’s eyes, with­out a doubt.

Con­clu­sions

We will not make secret of the fact that review­ing Mr. Wood’s arti­cle (not to men­tion his series of Chris­t­ian bel­liger­ent non­sense) has been noth­ing but a most tire­some exer­cise. Mr. Wood tries to cast the illu­sion as though ​“crit­i­cism” of the Prophet^(P) is some­thing for­eign or alien to the Mus­lim world. On the con­trary, attack­ing Islam has been as old as the found­ing of Islam itself and ​“crit­i­cism” of the Prophet^(P) as old as Ori­en­tal­ism itself.

We also demand evi­dence from Mr. Wood about his claim that ​“any­one who raised such objec­tions would…immediately be killed”. What is the proof of his sweep­ing state­ment ? In which coun­tries are these peo­ple killed for their ​“crit­i­cism” and what is the nature of their so-called ​“crit­i­cism”?

Yet Mr. Wood con­tin­ues with :

In the end, Islam will fall, for the entire struc­ture is built upon the belief that Muham­mad was the great­est moral exam­ple in his­to­ry, and this belief is demon­stra­bly false.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Mr. Wood, Islam does not rise or fall on a sin­gle indi­vid­ual. It is true that the Prophet Muham­mad is held in the high­est esteem. It is actu­al­ly more true to say the fol­low­ing about Christianity :

In the end, Chris­tian­i­ty will fall, for the entire struc­ture is built upon the belief that Jesus was the God-incar­nate, and this belief is demon­stra­bly false.

Indeed, count­less indi­vid­u­als and groups have secret­ly wished for Islam’s down­fall from past to present. How­ev­er, we are not dis­turbed by the secret desires of Mr. Wood and his bel­liger­ent Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary pals to see Islam’s destruc­tion. There is no rea­son to believe that Mr. Wood and his pals will suc­ceed where their more ​“knowl­edge­able” pre­de­ces­sors in the likes of Mar­goli­uth, Muir, Zwem­mer and Pfan­der had failed before.

And with that, we say that only God knows best !