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Muhammad: Prophet or inspired poet

For nearly fourteen centuries, well over a millennia, the soil between
East and West has

sustained a seed, a seed of peace, love, respect and servitude. A seed

planted by a patient prophet.

A man, who, according to over a sixth of the modern population, received the
last holy words

from the God of Abraham. Nevertheless, this man was no more than a mortal

with no divine attribute. He was wise, intelligent, powerful and influential.

Was Muhammad a prophet, statesman, inspired poet or a combination of the

three. In this research paper, I will attempt to uncover the real Muhammad.

“ Continuing in my own voice, the word Islam means explicitly

“surrender,” but it is related to the Arabic word salam, meaning “peace,” as

in the standard Islamic salutation as-salamu ‘ alaykum, peace be upon you.

And when a virtuous Muslim enters heaven, it is said, the only word he will

be able to utter for three days, over and over, is “peace”, so overwhelmed

will he be by the total realization of the condition he has been longing for his

entire life. Between the bookends of Islam’s name and its complete

realization in paradise stands history, and it is instructive” (Smith ix). What

Huston Smith is trying to address here disproves the common perception

that Islam teaches war to its followers. The myth of violence is clearly

contracdicted by the religion’s doctrines. Smith further elaborates, “When

the Prophet Muhammad brought the Koranic revelation to 7th century Arabia,

a major part of his mission was to bring to an end the inter-tribal warfare

that was wreaking havoc in the region. Pre-Islamic Arabia was caught up in

vicious cycles of warfare wherein tribes fought one another in vendettas and

revenge. At the start the Prophet and his cohorts had themselves to fight in

order to survive, but once their foothold was secure, Muhammad turned his

attention to building peaceful coalitions between tribes, so successfully that

when he died he left as his political legacy a solidly united Arabia. And into

warfare the Prophet introduced chivalry. No holds were barred in pre-Koranic

warfare, but Muhammad introduced many traditions of forbearance.

Agreements are to be honored and treachery avoided. The wounded are not

to be mutilated nor the dead disfigured. Women, children and the old are to

be spared, as are orchards, crops, and sacred objects—no scorched land

policy or leveling of Hindu temples in Koranic Islam” (ix). Here he is in so

many words explaining the perplexity of its beautiful poetry of peace and

how it makes little difference to the usual games of politics. The legacy of

this man Muhammad, divinely inspired or not, has been tarnished by the

injustice of the grand chess board geopolitics. His magnum opus is dedicated

to the eradication, not of its opponents, but of the desire to conquer them.
The so-called “Koranic Islam” can be defined as that theory of peace

established in the actual body of the Qu’ran.

The injustice described above results in the product of the

aforementioned desire to conquer. A need apparently inherent to man, or at

the very least, the ancient West, is manifested as constant warfare in the

land of milk and honey, holy sites, later in markets, bazaars and later still

with the most quintessential resource of the 21 st century, as in the 20th

century: OIL. The cradle of civilization in the mists of the dawn half the

world’s religious traditions, being a Holy land to the theocrats and the

capitalists, is the site to war. It may be odd to say, but war brings out the

worst in humanity, thus : politics. The purpose of politics is to protect the

population and apportion goods and services. So, in turn when a book comes

along that strikes a chord with so many, and inspires the masses, who will

come along to handle the institutionalization of the book? Moreover, who

will take this revered and respected work and bring it to those who recognize

its beauty, but have bever read its words. And who will tell these words, but

as a slightly or entirely different set of words. And perhaps to the trained ear

this difference may be apparent, but in a part of the world crushed by

colonization, starved by capitalism and robbed by bomb raids, how many

receptive ears can one expect to find.

Regardless, the tarnishing of Islam may best be exemplified by the

current “War on Terrorism”, a notion as bizarre as it is ineffectual, but even

the modern incarnation of this long-running attempt to connect those that

hereditarily occupy the heritage and resources of the western world with a

violent, oppressive, extremely territorial, even anti-christal belief structure.

This conception is obviously false. The tarnishers would also place the

foundation of these beliefs in the writings of Muhammad revealed to him by

Allah, which is also false. Any semblance of these aspects in Arabia are

rooted in the various secular governments of the Arab world throughout

history. To note, the treatment of women in modern and historical Arabia, is

less than equal.

Smith discusses some aspects of this treatment in the following : “It

was in the institution of marriage, however, that Islam made its greatest

contribution to women. Muslims consider the family the foundation of a good

society and marriage its cornerstone. Women---as daughters, wives, and

especially mothers---are to be treated with utmost love and respect. Islam

sanctified marriage, first and primarily, by making it the sole lawful locus of

the sexual act” (Smith 63).

Here Smith deliberates on the Islamic treatment of women although

conforming to typical gender roles, the contributions provided by the

fulfilling of these roles garnering a respect of the true followers of the Holy

Qu’ran.

While Muhammad, according to Islamic tradition, was the last Prophet

chosen by Allah, and was revealed the Qu’ran, it is not, as has been
suggested by the opponents aforementioned, a work attributed to him.

Muhammad was a successful and prolific man in many endeavors, all secular

in nature but unified as a whole religiously. As his influence grew, it would be

only natural to look to him for guidance, which was graciously provided, in

his own words as documented in the Hadiths among other works. The tenet

of “no compulsion of faith” as expounded in the Qu’ran would leave little

room for him to combine his secular and prophetic duties.

Many of those who would benefit from the debasement of Muhammad

describe Islam as a religion spread by the sword. However, it is not the

doctrine of the Qu’ran to conquer, it is to submit peacefully. In an era of

tribal warfare, of the crusading west, of the colonizing empires and economic

enslavement ; the secular duty of those who follow Islam, and those that do

not, is to defend the citizenry. And it is precisely this duty that Muhammad,

the man, was charged with. A wise, intelligent and capable man; he may

have seen this charge as a holy honor, but it was an earthly requirement that

he excelled in fulfilling. “ Muhammad has been a familiar figure up to this

point. Having endured years of persecution and defeat, he has been a

prophet unrecognized in his own country. It is an image which those of us

who have been brought up in the Christian tradition can understand and

respect. But after the Hijra Muhammad became a spectacular success,

politically as well as spiritually, and the Christian West has always distrusted

this aspect of his career. Because he became a brilliant and charismatic

political leader who not only transformed Arabia but changed the history of
the world, his critics in Europe have dismissed him as an impostor who used

religion as a means to power. Because the Christian world is dominated by

the image of the crucified Jesus, who said that his kingdom was not of this

world, we tend to see failure and humiliation as the hallmark of a religious

leader. We do not expect our spiritual heroes to achieve a dazzling success

in mundane terms” (Armstrong 164). Here Armstrong discusses that

although the west defames Muhammad as a Caesar with a false religion to

unify his conquests, his prophecies were little known throughout his military

career.

We have now glimpsed at Muhammad’s situational relativity

concerning his standing within the historical and geographical context. It is

also important to discuss his influence on the rituals and laws of society.

“With more than 800 million believers in Allah and his prophet Muhammad,

there is a diversity as any comparable community would be. They exhibit

marks of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity” (Lawrence p.33). The

author demonstrates the lack of homogeneity in Arab culture despite a

mostly common religious background. This paradoxical phenomenon can

only exist if we glance further into the political models used in the Muslim

world. In addition, “The Islamic identity may take multiple political forms,

and by the same token, that there is no single political structure announced

by the prophet, perpetuated by the first three Caliphs, or sanctioned by

practice in subsequent Muslim Dynasties” (Lawrence 154).

 In the same sense that there is not one Muslim “ethnic, linguistic or

cultural” constant, there is also no constant on leadership. This variation in

hadith inspired Sharia leads to a sense of collective solidarity. “By the same

token, Muhammad announced the goal of a new Ummah, united in worship,

going beyond the bonds of tribal ties, and clearcut in its identity. Ummah,

we might say, is the collective dimension belonging to Muslims in the trust of

the Qu’ran, the obedience of Muhammad, and the fulfillment of law and

worship” (Cragg and Speight 72). The new Ummah implicit in the Hijrah

stressed a new sense of inclusiveness. The community, democratic in

nature, was not exclusive but open to all followers. The Medina exile is

testament of how “ successful leadership led to the defeat of the Quraish

tribesmen from Mecca” (Cragg and Speight 73).

The leadership of Muhammad was very effective in that this religio-

political figure prostrated in prayer in submission to the divine law as

pronounced in the Holy Qu’ran. Perhaps Muhammad in his revelatory visions

foresaw intuitively the esoteric speculation of later Sufism figures. Hasan al-

Basri wrote on this point: “ God has said : ‘when my servant becomes

altogether occupied with Me, then I make his happiness consist in the

remembrance of Myself, and when I habe made his happiness and his delight

consist in that remembrance, he desires Me and I desire him, I raise the veils

between Me and him and I become manifest before his eyes’” (p 68).

Depending on the geographical and national construct of the particular

Ummah one belonged to, borrowing from other faiths of the nearby regions
was “a tendency of Sufi mentality, while holding loosely to orthodox Islamic

demands” (Cragg and Speight 70). This is yet another example of the

flexibility of governance and the ever changing dynamic dance of religion,

politics and philosophy.

This overall sense of flexibility carries over from the ritualistic habits of

practitioners to the law (sharia) as divine legislation. Using Fiqh, which

means “understanding”, early Muslim jurists additionally exercised personal

opinion, known as ra’y. “For Muslims, God is the sole legislator, and

jurisprudence--- the science of the law-- is but a system designed to

facilitate obedience and service of God. The Sharia is an ideal as well as a

reality and writes and guides the Muslims in both time and space, down

through the generations and across the diverse and widespread regions of

Islam. It gave Muslims a profound sense of security and stability” (Denny

188). Muhammad is very much a widely interpreted source of the Sunna.

The Sunna in pair with the Qu’ran “prevented any irretrievable deviations

from developing even in a varied legal environment. The Sunna was paired

with the Qu’ran from the time of the rightly guided caliphs in Medina and

exploited for guidance and legislation” (Denny p.189). The prophet reaches

the stage where his actions were considered Sunna. Being the sole

authentic interpreters of the Qu’ran, he is the primary source of the Sunna

through his own example and precept. These sources were therefore the

most authoritative guides for the community or umma. “ To outsiders like

the Arabs there seemed little to choose between the two positions and it was
natural to imagine that both of the People of the Book must have added

somw new, inauthentic elements to the original pure revelation. His quarrel

with the Jews did not affect Muhammad’s relations with Christianity.

Sometimes indeed the Qu’ran sides with the Christians against the Jews, as

when it answers the Jews’ claim that they had crucified Jesus with the

Docetist answer that Jesus had not really died at all on the Cross: what had

seemed to die was only a simulacrum. But the Qu’ran does find it

scandalous that Christians should claim that God had sired a Son: it was not

likely that Muhammad, who had suffered so much because of his refusal to

accept that God had had daughters, would be sympathetic to this doctrine.

Again and again, the Qu’ran asserts that this belief is an example of zanna,

that idle, divisive speculation about things which nobody could possibly know

but which had split the People of the Book into two warring camps

(Armstrong 159).

Muhammad’s message of peace was a reconciliation, and even further

a reaffirmation of preceding prophets. It also makes clear that no prophet is

divine as Jesus is regarded in Christianity. The prophets represent the

vehicles through which the one and only God communicates the pristine

message. The Qu’ran was revealed through the last prophet. This unique

revelation linked the Arabs to Abraham like the Jews. This in turn led to a

change in qibla, being a sign of a proud new Muslim Identity. “The Jews of

Medina were very quick to interpret the change of qibla (prayers facing

Mecca, not Jerusalem) as an act of defiance” (Armstrong 163). The author

delves more into the devotional parallels of the opposing religious

viewpoints: “ Unlike the devotion to Jesus, however, the Muslim devotion to

Muhammad is not to the personal, historical character but to a symbol or

sacrament which, like the symnolism of great art, illuminates life and gives it

a new meaning by pointing to another dimension of reality beyond itself.

Just as Christians have developed the practice of imitation of Christ, Muslims

seek to imitate Muhammad in their daily lives in order to approximate as

closely as possible to this perfection and so to come as close as they can to

God himself. The sunnah taught Muslims to imitate the way Muhammad

spoke, ate, loved, washed and worshipped so that in the smallest details of

their lies they are reproducing his life on earth and in a real but symbolic

sense bringing him to life once more” (Armstrong 212).

The combination of Muhammad’s sayings (hadith) and customary

practice (sunnah) formed the moral model to follow. This Islamic model can

be harmonized with the west under a few conditions. “ If Muslims need to

understand our western traditions and institutions more thoroughly today,

we in the west need to divert ourselves of some of our old prejudice. Perhaps

one place to start is with the figure of Muhammad: a complex, passionate

man who sometimes did things that it is difficult for us to accept, but who

had a genius of a profound order and founded a religion and a cultural

tradition that was not based on the sword—despite the Western myth—and

whose name ‘Islam’ signifies peace and reconciliation” (Armstrong 266).

 In conclusion, synthesizing all the attributes given to Muhammad, one

can be satisfied with the acceptance of the last prophet as a human gateway

for God’s sacred poetry. The words are divine, the transmitter is human and

also the enactor and enforcer of God’s overall plan for muslim community.

Equality, tolerance and reaffirmation can all be considered as qualities of the

message of Abraham’s God. It is a message of acceptance. Muhammad can

therefore be considered the seal of prophets, a great statesman and an

inspired poet ‘sha’ir’ who revealed God’s poetics which give the follower the

grand design.