[wvns] Karen Armstrong: Balancing the Prophet
Balancing the Prophet
By Karen Armstrong
Financial Times (London)
April 27, 2007
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4a05a4a4-f134-11db-838b-000b5df10621.html
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."
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