Muhammad(P) & Lies
Islamic Awareness
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Last Modified: 1st September 1999
Assalamu-alaikum wa rahamatullahi wa barakatuhu:
On 9 Jun 1997, Jeremiah McAuliffe wrote:
> Jochen Katz was asked:
> There was also a question in my post Jochen, can't you answer it? Who
> do you say Muhammad was? Tell us. I've asked you this question a
> number of times. You've never answered it.
Actually this question has been answered by the pals of Jochen a few centuries ago. And Jochen will not answer this because his motive is "Inter-Faith Dialogue". But let me help Jochen and others out of this "Inter-Faith Dialogue". Most of us may not have heard the word Maometis derived from Mahomet. the word Maometis means The number of the beast, i.e., 666 stuff . When the Christian polemics started a few centuries ago strong vituperative language was poured out upon Muhammad(P) headed by Maracci, Prideaux and others. The word Mahoun and Mahound means Muhammad, imagined in the middle ages to be a pagan God. In Scottish this word means the devil.[1]
We have to agree with the Orientalist W Montgomery Watt when he says:
Of all the world's greatest men none has been so much maligned as Muhammad. It is easy to see how this has come about. For centuries Islam was the great enemy of Christendom, for Christendom was in direct contact with no other organized states comparable in power to the Muslims. The Byzantine empire, after losing its provinces in Syria and Egypt, was being attacked in Asia Minor, while Western Europe was threatened through Spain and Sicily. Even before the Crusades focused attention on the expulsion of the Sarcens from the Holy Land, medieval war-propaganda, free from the restraints of factuality was building up a conception of 'the great enemy'. At one point Muhammad was transformed into Mahound, the prince of darkness. By the eleventh century the idea about Islam and Muslims current in the crusading armies were such travesties that they had a bad effect on morale. The crusaders had been led to expect the worst of their enemies, and, when they found many chivalrous knights among them, they were filled with distrust for the authorities of their own religion.[2]
A few centuries ago the Prophet(P) was called the pagan God, the number of the beast i.e., the devil. This was the work of those Holy Ghost inspired Christians. These Christians also said that the Prophet(P) was a Child Molester, a Keeper of Harem and an anti-Christ. The great lies of the Crusades against the Prophet(P) and Muslims can even be seen in the so-called classics The Adventures Of Don Quixote.
Coming back to the modern age, we will still find Christians like Jochen calling the Prophet(P) Child Molester although in a politically correct language. Go to Hyde Park Speakers' Corner (London, UK) on Sunday and you will find Christian fundamentalists calling Allah, the Moon god and repeating the same age old polemics like the Prophet(P) was a Child Molester, a Keeper of Harem and an anti-Christ. Basically, nothing has changed from then till today. The "Crusades" are still there although wrapped up in a deceptive way. So do not get fooled by Jochen's "Inter-Faith Dialogue" or "Christian-Muslim Understanding". All these are lies and damn lies. Being on the soc.religion.islam for more than two and half years, I can testify that.
And regarding, the "Crusades" they are still here but people like Jochen shed crocodile tears. Now one can say that Katz is falsely being accused of what he has not done! A book is recommended by Katz called The Original Sources Of The Qur'an.
Apart from talking about the highly speculative sources of Islam, this book concludes in a fashion which is not too unexpected from a missionary:
But it (i.e., Islam) certainly does not contain a single new or lofty religious conception, and its general tone is all too faithful a reflexion of a carnal and sensual nature of its founder. To use an Oriental simile is not perhaps inappropriate in speaking of such a thoroughly local and Oriental religion as Muhammadanism. Islam therefore may aptly be compared with:
That bituminous lake where Sodom flamed.[3]
Before this paragraph Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall describes the matrimonial relations of the Prophet(P). This is about how Muhammad(P) had 'acquired' wives as well as the issue of Zayd and Zainab.
There are, however, people who have studied the life of the Prophet(P) as well as Islam. They do not have an axe to grind like Tisdall. Montgomery Watt after examining the various charges of voluptuousness, apart from others, heaped on the Prophet(P) conludes that:
In his day and generation Muhammad was a social reformer, indeed a reformer even in the sphere of morals. He created a new system of social security and a new family structure, both of which were a vast improvement on what went before. In this way he adapted for settled communities all that was best in the morality of the nomad, and established a religious and a social framework for the life of a sixth of the human race today. That is not the work of a traitor or a lecher.[4]
Thomas Carlyle, who was among the first people to speak against the Christian lies against Muhammad(P) says:
Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Imposter, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped around this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only. When Pococke inquires of Grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof! It is really time to dismiss all that.[5]
Missionaries just do not stop at the Prophet(P) himself. There is also something interesting about the Noble Companions of the Prophet(P) that Tisdall has to say
Whether Abu Hurairah, surnamed The Liar, has spoken the truth in asserting that he heard this passage quoted by Muhammad may well be doubted.[6]
Who calls Abû Hurrairah a lair? A Christain missionary or a Muslim? And this is all there in the book recommended by Jochen. If he thinks that Muslims will sincerely believe that spreading lies against Islam are over, he is sadly mistaken.
And Allah knows best!
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References
[1] William Geddie (Ed.), Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary, W & R Chambers, Ltd, p. 640.
[2] W Montgomery Watt, Muhammad At Medina, 1956, Oxford At The Clarendon Press, p. 324.
[3] Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall, The Original Sources Of The Qur'an, 1905, Society For The Promotion Of Christian Knowledge, London, p. 280.
[4] W Montgomery Watt, Op.Cit, p. 332.
[5] Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & The Heroic In History, 1993, University Of California Press, p. 38.
[6] Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall, Op.Cit, p. 210.