B i s m i l l a a h i r R a h m a a n i r R a h e e m
Balancing the Prophet
Sall Allaahu`alayhi wa sallam
By Karen Armstrong
Published: April 27, 2007
Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the prophet Muhammad
as a sinister figure. During the 12th century, Christians were fighting brutal
holy wars against Muslims, even though Jesus had told his followers to love
their enemies, not to exterminate them. The scholar monks of Europe stigmatised
Muhammad as a cruel warlord who established the false religion of Islam by the
sword. They also, with ill-concealed envy, berated him as a lecher and sexual
pervert at a time when the popes were attempting to impose celibacy on the
reluctant clergy. Our Islamophobia became entwined with our chronic
anti-Semitism; Jews and Muslims, the victims of the crusaders, became the
shadow self of Europe, the enemies of decent civilisation and the opposite of
"us".
Our suspicion of Islam is alive and well. Indeed, understandably perhaps,
it has hardened as a result of terrorist atrocities apparently committed in its
name. Yet despite the religious rhetoric, these terrorists are motivated by
politics rather than religion. Like "fundamentalists" in other traditions,
their ideology is deliberately and defiantly unorthodox. Until the 1950s, no
major Muslim thinker had made holy war a central pillar of Islam. The Muslim
ideologues Abu ala Mawdudi (1903-79) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), among the first
to do so, knew they were proposing a controversial innovation. They believed it
was justified by the current political emergency.
The criminal activities of terrorists have given the old western prejudice
a new lease of life. People often seem eager to believe the worst about
Muhammad, are reluctant to put his life in its historical perspective and
assume the Jewish and Christian traditions lack the flaws they attribute to
Islam. This entrenched hostility informs Robert Spencer's misnamed biography
The Truth about Muhammad, subtitled Founder of the World's Most Intolerant
Religion.
Spencer has studied Islam for 20 years, largely, it seems, to prove that it
is an evil, inherently violent religion. He is a hero of the American right and
author of the US bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam. Like any
book written in hatred, his new work is a depressing read. Spencer makes no
attempt to explain the historical, political, economic and spiritual
circumstances of 7th-century Arabia, without which it is impossible to
understand the complexities of Muhammad's life. Consequently he makes basic and
bad mistakes of fact. Even more damaging, he deliberately manipulates the
evidence.
The traditions of any religion are multifarious. It is easy, therefore, to
quote so selectively that the main thrust of the faith is distorted. But
Spencer is not interested in balance. He picks out only those aspects of
Islamic tradition that support his thesis. For example, he cites only passages
from the Koran that are hostile to Jews and Christians and does not mention the
numerous verses that insist on the continuity of Islam with the People of the
Book: "Say to them: We believe what you believe; your God and our God is one."
Islam has a far better record than either Christianity or Judaism of
appreciating other faiths. In Muslim Spain, relations between the three
religions of Abraham were uniquely harmonious in medieval Europe. The Christian
Byzantines had forbidden Jews from residing in Jerusalem, but when Caliph Umar
conquered the city in AD638, he invited them to return and was hailed as the
precursor of the Messiah. Spencer doesn't refer to this. Jewish-Muslim
relations certainly have declined as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but
this departs from centuries of peaceful and often positive co-existence. When
discussing Muhammad's war with Mecca, Spencer never cites the Koran's
condemnation of all warfare as an "awesome evil", its prohibition of aggression
or its insistence that only self-defence justifies armed conflict. He ignores
the Koranic emphasis on the primacy of forgiveness and peaceful negotiation:
the second the enemy asks for peace, Muslims must lay down their arms and
accept any terms offered, however disadvantageous. There is no mention of
Muhammad's non-violent campaign that ended the conflict.
People would be offended by an account of Judaism that dwelled exclusively
on Joshua's massacres and never mentioned Rabbi Hillel's Golden Rule, or a
description of Christianity based on the bellicose Book of Revelation that
failed to cite the Sermon on the Mount. But the widespread ignorance about
Islam in the west makes many vulnerable to Spencer's polemic; he is telling
them what they are predisposed to hear. His book is a gift to extremists who
can use it to "prove" to those Muslims who have been alienated by events in
Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq that the west is incurably hostile to their faith.
Eliot Weinberger is a poet whose interest in Islam began at the time of the
first Gulf war. His slim volume, Muhammad, is also a selective anthology about
the Prophet. His avowed aim is to "give a small sense of the awe surrounding
this historical and sacred figure, at a time of the demonisation of the Muslim
world in much of the media". Many of the passages he quotes are indeed mystical
and beautiful, but others are likely to confirm some readers in their
prejudice. Without knowing their provenance, how can we respond to such
statements as "He said that he who plays chess is like one who has dyed his
hand in the blood of a pig" or "Filling the stomach with pus is better than
stuffing the brain with poetry"?
It is difficult to see how selecting only these dubious traditions as
examples could advance mutual understanding. The second section of this
anthology is devoted to anecdotes about Muhammad's wives that smack of prurient
gossip. Western readers need historical perspective to understand the
significance of the Prophet's domestic arrangements, his respect for his wives,
and the free and forthright way in which they approached him. Equally eccentric
are the stories cited by Weinberger to describe miracles attributed to the
Prophet: the Koran makes it clear that Muhammad did not perform miracles and
insists that he was an ordinary human being, with no divine powers.
It is, therefore, a relief to turn to Barnaby Rogerson's more balanced and
nuanced account of early Muslim history in The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad.
Rogerson is a travel writer by trade; his explanation of the Sunni/Shia divide
is theologically simplistic, but his account of the rashidun, the first four
"rightly guided" caliphs who succeeded the Prophet, is historically sound,
accessible and clears up many western misconceptions about this crucial period.
Rogerson makes it clear, for example, that the wars of conquest and the
establishment of the Islamic empire after Muhammad's death were not inspired by
religious ideology but by pragmatic politics. The idea that Islam should
conquer the world was alien to the Koran and there was no attempt to convert
Jews or Christians. Islam was for the Arabs, the sons of Ishmael, as Judaism
was for the descendants of Isaac and Christianity for the followers of Jesus.
Rogerson also shows that Muslim tradition is multi-layered and
many-faceted. The early historians regularly gave two or three variant accounts
of an incident in the life of the Prophet; readers were expected to make up
their own minds.
Similarly, there are at least four contrasting and sometimes conflicting
versions of the Exodus story in the Hebrew Bible, and in the New Testament the
four evangelists interpret the life of Jesus quite differently. To choose one
tradition and ignore the rest - as Weinberger and Spencer do - is distorting.
Professor Tariq Ramadan has studied Islam at the University of Geneva and
al-Azhar University in Cairo and is currently senior research fellow at St
Antony's College, Oxford. The Messenger is easily the most scholarly and
knowledgeable of these four biographies of Muhammad, but it is also practical
and relevant, drawing lessons from the Prophet's life that are crucial for
Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Ramadan makes it clear, for example, that
Muhammad did not shun non-Muslims as "unbelievers" but from the beginning
co-operated with them in the pursuit of the common good. Islam was not a closed
system at variance with other traditions. Muhammad insisted that relations
between the different groups must be egalitarian. Even warfare must not obviate
the primary duty of justice and respect.
When the Muslims were forced to leave Mecca because they were persecuted by
the Meccan establishment, Ramadan shows, they had to adapt to the alien customs
of their new home in Medina, where, for example, women enjoyed more freedom
than in Mecca. The hijrah ("migration") was a test of intelligence; the
emigrants had to recognise that some of their customs were cultural rather than
Islamic, and had to learn foreign practices.
Ramadan also makes it clear that, in the Koran, jihad was not synonymous
with "holy war". The verb jihada should rather be translated: "making an
effort". The first time the word is used in the Koran, it signified a
"resistance to oppression" (25:26) that was intellectual and spiritual rather
than militant. Muslims were required to oppose the lies and terror of those who
were motivated solely by self-interest; they had to be patient and enduring.
Only after the hijrah, when they encountered the enmity of Mecca, did the word
jihad take connotations of self-defence and armed resistance in the face of
military aggression. Even so, in mainstream Muslim tradition, the greatest
jihad was not warfare but reform of one's own society and heart; as Muhammad
explained to one of his companions, the true jihad was an inner struggle
against egotism.
The Koran teaches that, while warfare must be avoided whenever possible, it
is sometimes necessary to resist humanity's natural propensity to expansionism
and oppression, which all too often seeks to obliterate the diversity and
religious pluralism that is God's will. If they do wage war, Muslims must
behave ethically. "Do not kill women, children and old people," Abu Bakr, the
first caliph, commanded his troops. "Do not commit treacherous actions. Do not
burn houses and cornfields." Muslims must be especially careful not to destroy
monasteries where Christian monks served God in prayer.
Ramadan could have devoted more time to such contentious issues as the
veiling of women, polygamy and Muhammad's treatment of some (though by no means
all) of the Jewish tribes of Medina. But his account restores the balance that
is so often lacking in western narratives. Muhammad was not a belligerent
warrior. Ramadan shows that he constantly emphasised the importance of
"gentleness" (ar-rafiq), "tolerance" (al-ana) and clemency (al-hilm).
It will be interesting to see how The Messenger is received. Ramadan is
clearly addressing issues that inspire some Muslims to distort their religion.
Western people often complain that they never hear from "moderate" Muslims, but
when such Muslims do speak out they are frequently dismissed as apologists and
hagiographers. Until we all learn to approach one another with generosity and
respect, we cannot hope for peace.
Karen Armstrong is the author of "Muhammad: Prophet For Our Time"
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
http://www.ft.com:80/cms/s/4a05a4a4-f134-11db-838b-000b5df10621.html
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