Prophet Muhammad’s Life and Deeds Still Resonate after 1400 Years

Faced with worldwide protests and condemnation, Reverend Jerry Falwell has tendered a half-hearted and lukewarm apology for insulting Prophet Muhammad. In an interview on CBS 60 Minutes program he had called the Prophet of Islam a terrorist. He said he reached that conclusion after reading Muslim and non-Muslim sources.

There is a large body of work, both by Muslim and non-Muslims writers and historians, about the life and times of the Prophet. Had the Reverend bothered to look beyond his religious xenophobia he would have not labeled him a terrorist.

Unlike many other figures in history, the life and deeds of Prophet Muhammad are well documented. Most of what the Prophet said and did was recorded by earlier Muslim historians like Muhammad Ibn Ishaq (died 767), Muhammad Ibn Saad (d. 845), Muhammad al-Waqidi (d. 820) and Abu Jafar at-Tabari (d.923). Their objective narratives are devoid of any selective bias and have been used by contemporary historians to understand and reconstruct history of that era. For example, the incident of Satanic Verses where the prophet had made a mistake and also some of less than complimentary remarks by one of his wives were duly recorded even though such writings were considered blasphemous at the time.

So who really was this man?

Muhammad was born an orphan in the southern Arabian town of Mecca in 570 AD. He grew up in a mostly pagan environment that prevailed in Arabia Peninsula. He had no formal education and was said to have shunned most of the adolescent and youth pasttimes that were a norm in Meccan society at that time. As a young man he made business trips to Syria on behalf of a rich widow whom he later married. He would often retreat to a mountain cave in the valley of Mecca for reflection and contemplation.

It was during one of his retreats that he received the divine call through arch angle Gabriel. Like many others before him, his message of change and worship of one God was rejected by the polytheistic pagan community of Mecca that included members of his own extended family and his tribe. Relentless persecution at the hands of his own people forced him and a small group of his followers to flee north to the city of Medina where he found a receptive audience for his message.

For the next 23-years he preached and led the people of Arabian Peninsula as their spiritual leader as well as head of the nascent Islamic state. At the time of his death in 632 at age sixty-three, the entire Peninsula had accepted his message. Qur’an, the sacred text of Islam, is the compilation of divine revelations he had received during his prophethood.

Here are some of his quotes:

*The first thing created by God was intellect.

* The most excellent Jihad is the one waged for the conquest of self.

* The ink of a scholar’s pen is more sacred than the blood of a martyr.

* One learned man is harder on devil than a thousand ignorant worshipers.

*Riches are not from an abundance of worldly goods but from a contented mind.

*Heaven lies under the feet of one’s mother.

*When a bier passes by you whether the deceased is a Jew, Christian or Muslim, rise to your feet in respect.

*Women are the twin halves of men.

*The person nearest to God is the one who forgives those who have injured him.

* Assist the oppressed whether Muslims or non-Muslims.

*The creation is God’s family and God loves those who do good to His family.

These certainly are not what a terrorist would have preached. So why is the Prophet of Islam denigrated by the likes of Jerry Falwell?

Karen Armstrong the well-known British author (Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World, The Gospel According to Woman, The Battle for God: A history of Fundamentalism) in her 1991biography of Muhammad traces this to times when the fear of Muslim expansion into the heart of Europe led many a writer to cast Islam and its prophet in the most degrading terms. They called him the Great

Pretender, a false prophet and Antichrist. They turned him into a bogey to scare unruly children and labeled him Mahound. Salman Rushdi’e Satanic Verses perpetuated the same myth but with a fictional character called Mahound. Some people just cannot get out of the medieval dark ages of their own making.

However for Muslims, Arabs and non-Arabs alike, Muhammad remains an ideal and in their own lives they strive to live up to that ideal. So when someone, out of ignorance or hatred, heaps abuses on a man revered by one billion people, it touches them to their deepest core.

Jerry Falwell should have known that.

(S. Amjad Hussain is an op-ed columnist for the daily Toledo Blade)