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04-04-2008, 04:48 AM
Khushwant Singh is an award-winning Sikh writer from India.
SEE ALSO:
Muhammad: the Best Product of the Creation
Dr. Javed Jamil
http://www.dailymuslims.com/Opinion/Muhammad_the_Best_Product_of_the_C
reation.html
=====
MUHAMMAD: A Messiah for Our Time
by Khushwant Singh
(Telegraph, Calcutta)
PREJUDICE is like poison. Unless purged out of one's mind in early
stages, it can spread like cancer and make one incapable of
differentiating between right and wrong. Of the many kinds of
prejudice, the worst is to believe that one's own religion is
superior to all others, which may be tolerated but never taken
seriously or accepted as equally valid as one's own.
The most misunderstood of the major religions today is Islam, which,
after Christianity, is the second most widely practised religion in
the world. It also gains more converts than any of the other
religions. Prejudice against Islam was spread in Christendom from the
time Muslims gained dominance in the Middle East, North Africa and
Spain. Christian crusaders failed in their missions to crush Islam in
its homeland but continued to vilify its Messenger Muhammed. The
emergence of militant Islamic groups like al-Qaida and taliban gave
them reasons to do so. The attack on the World Trade Centre in New
York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001 provided
fresh ammunition to vilifiers of Islam. Since then Islamophobia has
been deliberately spread throughout the non-Muslim world. The two
principle contentions of the anti-Islamists are that Islam was spread
by the sword and that its founder-prophet was not the paragon of
virtue that Muslims make him out to be.
It can be proved by historical evidence that Islam was not forced upon the people; it was readily accepted by millions because it offered them new values, principally equality of mankind and rights to women that were unheard of in those times.
In countries like Indonesia and Malayasia, Islam
was not forced on the population by Muslim invaders but by Muslim
missionaries.
Muslims are extremely sensitive to criticism of their Prophet. A
popular adage in Persian is: ba khuda diwaana basho, ba Mohammed
hoshiar! — "say what you like about God, but beware of what you say
about Mohammed." They regard him as the most perfect man who ever
trod upon the earth, a successor of Adam, Moses, Noah, Abraham and
Christ. He was the last of the prophets. If you honestly want to know
how Muslims see him, you ought to take a good look at his life and
teachings, which he claimed had been revealed to him by God. It would
be as wrong to judge him by the doings of al-Qaida and taliban or by
the fatwas periodically pronounced by Ayatollahs and half-baked
mullahs. You do not judge Hinduism of the Vedas and Upanishads by the
doings of Hindus who, in the name of Hindutva, destroy mosques,
murder missionaries and nuns, vandalize libraries and works of art.
You do not judge the teachings of the Sikh gurus by the utterances of
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and by the murder of innocents by his
hooligans. Likewise, judge Mohammed by what he taught and stood for
and not by what his so-called followers do in his name.
Mohammed was born in Mecca in 570 AD. He lost both his parents while
still a child and was brought up by his grandfather and uncle. He
managed the business of a widow, whom he later married. She bore him
six children. He took no other wife until she died. He was 40 years
old when he started having revelations while in trance. They
proclaimed Mohammed as the new messiah. Such revelation kept coming
at random, sometimes dealing with problems at hand, at other times
with matters spiritual. They were memorized or written down by his
admirers and became the Quran, which means recitation. It should be
kept in mind that Mohammed was not preaching ideas of his own but
only reiterating most of what was already in the Judaic creed.[This is not correct !!!] Allah
was the Arabic name for God before him.
Similarly, Islam was 'surrender' and salman was 'peace'. Mecca was
the main market city of the Bedouin tribes. They gathered at the
Kaaba, the huge courtyard with the black meteorite embedded in it
during two pilgrimages — the bigger Haj and the lesser Umrah.
Mohammed accepted Judaic traditions regarding food which is halaal
(lawful) or haraam (forbidden, such as pig meat), names of the five
daily prayers and circumcision of male children. Mohammed only
asserted the oneness of God that did not accept of any equal such as
the stone goddesses worshiped by different tribes. Mohammed never
forced people to accept his faith and indeed quoted Allah's message
of freedom of faith. "There must be no coercion in matters of faith —
la ikrah f'id deen." Further: "And if God had so willed, He would
have made you all one single command; but He willed otherwise in
order to test you by means of what He has vouchsafed unto you. Vie,
then with one another in doing good works!"As might have been
expected, Mohammed's mission roused fierce hostility. Many attempts
were made to assassinate him but he had miraculously escaped.
Ultimately, in 622 AD he was advised to flee from Mecca to Medina.
This is know as the Hijra (emigration) and recognized as the
beginning of the Muslim calendar. Meccans made a few attempts to
capture Medina but were ousted. Muslim armies led by Mohammed
triumphed and returned to Mecca as conquerors. By the time Mohammed
died in Medina in 632 AD, the Arabian peninsula was united as a
confederacy of different tribes under the banner of Islam.
Most of the ill-founded criticism against Mohammed is directed
towards the number of women he married after the death of his first
wife, Khadijah. This has to be seen in the perspective of Arabian
society of the time. Tribes lived by warring against each other and
looting caravans. There were heavy casualties of men, creating
serious gender imbalance. Widows and orphans of men killed had to be
provided with homes and sustenance. Otherwise they took to
prostitution or begging. So they were given protection by being taken
in marriages. Also, matrimonial alliances were a good way of creating
bonds between different tribes. Mohammed did nothing not acceptable
to his people. He went further: he was the first teacher to proclaim
that the best union was a monogamous marriage and fixed the maximum
limit to four, provided a man could keep all of his wives equally
happy — which was most unlikely. The pertinent verse in the Quran
reads: "And if you have reason to fear you might not act equitably
towards orphans, then marry from among other women who are lawful to
you, even two or three or four; but if you have reason to fear you
might not be able to treat them with equal fairness, then only one."
Bear in mind that at that time polygamy was the norm in patriarchal
societies all over the world.
To make a beginning in clearing your mind of anti-Muslim prejudices,
I suggest you read Karen Armstrong's Muhammad: A Prophet for Our
Time. Armstrong is the leading writer on comparative religions today.
She is not Muslim.
SEE ALSO:
Muhammad: the Best Product of the Creation
Dr. Javed Jamil
http://www.dailymuslims.com/Opinion/Muhammad_the_Best_Product_of_the_C
reation.html
=====
MUHAMMAD: A Messiah for Our Time
by Khushwant Singh
(Telegraph, Calcutta)
PREJUDICE is like poison. Unless purged out of one's mind in early
stages, it can spread like cancer and make one incapable of
differentiating between right and wrong. Of the many kinds of
prejudice, the worst is to believe that one's own religion is
superior to all others, which may be tolerated but never taken
seriously or accepted as equally valid as one's own.
The most misunderstood of the major religions today is Islam, which,
after Christianity, is the second most widely practised religion in
the world. It also gains more converts than any of the other
religions. Prejudice against Islam was spread in Christendom from the
time Muslims gained dominance in the Middle East, North Africa and
Spain. Christian crusaders failed in their missions to crush Islam in
its homeland but continued to vilify its Messenger Muhammed. The
emergence of militant Islamic groups like al-Qaida and taliban gave
them reasons to do so. The attack on the World Trade Centre in New
York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001 provided
fresh ammunition to vilifiers of Islam. Since then Islamophobia has
been deliberately spread throughout the non-Muslim world. The two
principle contentions of the anti-Islamists are that Islam was spread
by the sword and that its founder-prophet was not the paragon of
virtue that Muslims make him out to be.
It can be proved by historical evidence that Islam was not forced upon the people; it was readily accepted by millions because it offered them new values, principally equality of mankind and rights to women that were unheard of in those times.
In countries like Indonesia and Malayasia, Islam
was not forced on the population by Muslim invaders but by Muslim
missionaries.
Muslims are extremely sensitive to criticism of their Prophet. A
popular adage in Persian is: ba khuda diwaana basho, ba Mohammed
hoshiar! — "say what you like about God, but beware of what you say
about Mohammed." They regard him as the most perfect man who ever
trod upon the earth, a successor of Adam, Moses, Noah, Abraham and
Christ. He was the last of the prophets. If you honestly want to know
how Muslims see him, you ought to take a good look at his life and
teachings, which he claimed had been revealed to him by God. It would
be as wrong to judge him by the doings of al-Qaida and taliban or by
the fatwas periodically pronounced by Ayatollahs and half-baked
mullahs. You do not judge Hinduism of the Vedas and Upanishads by the
doings of Hindus who, in the name of Hindutva, destroy mosques,
murder missionaries and nuns, vandalize libraries and works of art.
You do not judge the teachings of the Sikh gurus by the utterances of
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and by the murder of innocents by his
hooligans. Likewise, judge Mohammed by what he taught and stood for
and not by what his so-called followers do in his name.
Mohammed was born in Mecca in 570 AD. He lost both his parents while
still a child and was brought up by his grandfather and uncle. He
managed the business of a widow, whom he later married. She bore him
six children. He took no other wife until she died. He was 40 years
old when he started having revelations while in trance. They
proclaimed Mohammed as the new messiah. Such revelation kept coming
at random, sometimes dealing with problems at hand, at other times
with matters spiritual. They were memorized or written down by his
admirers and became the Quran, which means recitation. It should be
kept in mind that Mohammed was not preaching ideas of his own but
only reiterating most of what was already in the Judaic creed.[This is not correct !!!] Allah
was the Arabic name for God before him.
Similarly, Islam was 'surrender' and salman was 'peace'. Mecca was
the main market city of the Bedouin tribes. They gathered at the
Kaaba, the huge courtyard with the black meteorite embedded in it
during two pilgrimages — the bigger Haj and the lesser Umrah.
Mohammed accepted Judaic traditions regarding food which is halaal
(lawful) or haraam (forbidden, such as pig meat), names of the five
daily prayers and circumcision of male children. Mohammed only
asserted the oneness of God that did not accept of any equal such as
the stone goddesses worshiped by different tribes. Mohammed never
forced people to accept his faith and indeed quoted Allah's message
of freedom of faith. "There must be no coercion in matters of faith —
la ikrah f'id deen." Further: "And if God had so willed, He would
have made you all one single command; but He willed otherwise in
order to test you by means of what He has vouchsafed unto you. Vie,
then with one another in doing good works!"As might have been
expected, Mohammed's mission roused fierce hostility. Many attempts
were made to assassinate him but he had miraculously escaped.
Ultimately, in 622 AD he was advised to flee from Mecca to Medina.
This is know as the Hijra (emigration) and recognized as the
beginning of the Muslim calendar. Meccans made a few attempts to
capture Medina but were ousted. Muslim armies led by Mohammed
triumphed and returned to Mecca as conquerors. By the time Mohammed
died in Medina in 632 AD, the Arabian peninsula was united as a
confederacy of different tribes under the banner of Islam.
Most of the ill-founded criticism against Mohammed is directed
towards the number of women he married after the death of his first
wife, Khadijah. This has to be seen in the perspective of Arabian
society of the time. Tribes lived by warring against each other and
looting caravans. There were heavy casualties of men, creating
serious gender imbalance. Widows and orphans of men killed had to be
provided with homes and sustenance. Otherwise they took to
prostitution or begging. So they were given protection by being taken
in marriages. Also, matrimonial alliances were a good way of creating
bonds between different tribes. Mohammed did nothing not acceptable
to his people. He went further: he was the first teacher to proclaim
that the best union was a monogamous marriage and fixed the maximum
limit to four, provided a man could keep all of his wives equally
happy — which was most unlikely. The pertinent verse in the Quran
reads: "And if you have reason to fear you might not act equitably
towards orphans, then marry from among other women who are lawful to
you, even two or three or four; but if you have reason to fear you
might not be able to treat them with equal fairness, then only one."
Bear in mind that at that time polygamy was the norm in patriarchal
societies all over the world.
To make a beginning in clearing your mind of anti-Muslim prejudices,
I suggest you read Karen Armstrong's Muhammad: A Prophet for Our
Time. Armstrong is the leading writer on comparative religions today.
She is not Muslim.