Muhammad
In a book called The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, the top spot went to Muhammad (570–632 C.E.).14 This was a controversial choice. Christianity has almost twice as many adherents as Islam, yet Muhammad was ranked ahead of Jesus (who came in second). How could this be?
First, Muhammad did more for Islam than Jesus did for Christianity. Jesus was a great religious teacher, but he left it to Paul (who is ranked sixth) to establish Christianity and spread Jesus’s teachings. If Jesus wrote anything, nothing of His writing survives, while Paul is credited as the author of nearly half of the New Testament’s books. In purely religious terms, Muhammad did the work of Jesus and Paul combined. He was both a charismatic and a bureaucratic leader. He founded Islam and, though Muslims insist he did not write the Quran, he was the prophet through whom this revelation came into the world. Today Muslims look to Muhammad as a model for their own lives. The Hadith, a scriptural collection of his sayings and actions second in authority only to the Quran, has long provided a basis for Islamic law. Whereas Christians ask, “What would Jesus do?” Muslims ask, “What would Muhammad do?”
Second, Muhammad was also a great political and military man—a legislator, diplomat, and general. Unlike Jesus, who never married, and the Buddha, who abandoned his wife, Muhammad accomplished all this while maintaining an extended family network that, upon his death, included nine wives. Muhammad was the only person ever to achieve this combination of spiritual and secular success. “He was,” a Muslim admirer writes, “a religious teacher, a social reformer, a moral guide, a political thinker, a military genius, an administrative colossus, a faithful friend, a wonderful companion, a devoted husband, a loving father—all in one.”15 Obviously this is faith talking, but even outsiders can see that Muhammad was the vehicle for both a new religion and a new political and economic order. While Jesus refused the sword, Muhammad led armies. While Jesus eschewed politics, Muhammad ruled over a vast empire that extended at his death over most of the Arabian Peninsula. Moreover, the scripture Muhammad brought into the world attends to more topics than the Christ-inspired New Testament. As much about society as it is about spirituality, the Quran speaks of prayer and providence, marriage and divorce, breastfeeding and menstruation, lending and law.
Given Muhammad’s unprecedented accomplishments, it should not be surprising that some Muslims used to call their religion Mohammedanism. But this is going too far. While Christians worship Jesus as God, Muslims have always insisted that Muhammad was only a human being. There is one and only one Allah in Islam, and He does not take human form.
As scholar of religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith has observed, the closest parallel to Jesus in the Islamic world is not Muhammad but the Quran. For Christians, the gift God sent to the world is Jesus, who came in the form of a human body. For Muslims that gift is the Quran, which came in the form of the Arabic language. So Muhammad, who is traditionally said to be illiterate, is more like the Virgin Mary than like her son. Whereas the Word of God that is Jesus came into the world through the pure vessel of a woman who had never had sex, the Word of God that is the Quran came into the world through the pure vessel of a man who could neither read nor write. Reciting the Quran, therefore, is like partaking of the Christian Eucharist. It is how you incorporate the divine into your body.16
Born in Mecca and orphaned as a child, Muhammad was a forty-year-old merchant married to an older woman named Khadijah when God first came to him in a cave on Mount Hira outside of Mecca. In this place, where Muhammad was known to withdraw for prayer and contemplation, the angel Gabriel interrupted his idylls with a command to “Recite.” Muhammad was terrified. But recite he did, from 610 until these revelations came to an end shortly before his death in 632.
Islam dates its origins, however, not from these recitations but from the formation of the Muslim community in 622. In this year, Muhammad and his earliest followers fled from Mecca, where his criticisms of local polytheistic traditions were met with scorn, to Yathrib, now known as Medina. There they established the Muslim community, or ummah. Today this event, known as the hijra (emigration), marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar, which is itself marked by the letters A.H., meaning “in the year of the hijra.”
After Muhammad’s death—in 632 C.E. (or A.H. 10)—the tradition split into its two main branches, Sunni and Shia, over the matter of Muhammad’s successor. But before the end of the seventh century this new religious movement had spread spectacularly—east across the remainder of the Arabian Peninsula, west into Egypt and as far as Tripoli, and north into Jerusalem and modern-day Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. By 750, when the Mayans were still building Chichen Itza, Muslims had advanced across North Africa into modern-day Spain and Portugal and extended their reach to the Aral Sea and the Silk Road city of Samarkind. At the dawn of the modern age, in the sixteenth century, three great dynasties pushed Islam to the pinnacle of its powers: the Ottoman dynasty, centered in Istanbul, extended from the holy lands of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem into Egypt, North Africa, Iraq, and southeastern Europe; the Safavid dynasty controlled modern-day Iran; and the Mughal dynasty lorded over modern-day India. This era of global dominance ended with the rise of the British empire in the nineteenth century and the dissolution of the Ottoman empire in 1918. The world lives today under the heavy impress of this historic upheaval.
Quran
As Islam spread and became a global religion, it remained rooted in Arabian culture—in its sacred cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, and in the Arabic language of the Quran. Although Christians vary widely in their views of biblical authority, it is a nearly universal article of Islamic faith that the Quran is the perfect, unaltered, and untranslatable word of God. It was written not by Muhammad but by Allah, who gave its words to an angel, who gave them to Muhammad, who recited them to companions (but never wrote them down himself). If you want to know how God sounds, here it is, verbatim. So the Quran is scripture only in Arabic (unlike in Christendom, translations do not count).
The word Quran means “recitation,” and the first words revealed to Muhammad were, “Recite: in the Name of thy Lord who created, created the human being of a blood-clot” (96:1–2).17 So unlike the Book of Mormon (said to be translated from gold tablets), this scripture was oral from the start and not written down until long after Muhammad’s death. Today the Quran is, of course, a book. But only about 20 percent of the world’s Muslims are able to read its Arabic, and even for them the Quran is, like the Vedas to Hindus, more about sound than about meaning. So, as in Muhammad’s time, the Quran is recited today more than it is read. It goes forth to the world in waves of sound, and it is not unusual for children as young as the age of ten to memorize these sounds in their entirety. Those who do so acquire both special honor and a special name—hafiz (for males) or hafiza (for females). More than a people of the book, Muslims are a people “of the recitation”—al-Quran.
Muslims believe that the Torah of Moses and the gospel of Jesus were revealed by Allah through His prophets. They also believe that these scriptures have been corrupted and are no longer trustworthy. So while Christians adopted a version of the Hebrew Bible as their Old Testament, Muslims adopted neither the Jewish nor the Christian scriptures. According to Muslims, only the Quran is the perfectly preserved word of God, committed to memory during Muhammad’s lifetime and later written down just as originally recited.
The Quran is a relatively short book. About as long as the Christian New Testament, it can be read in a single day. Unlike the New Testament, the Quran contains almost no storytelling. Its preoccupations are doctrinal and legal rather than narrative. It comprises 114 suras, or chapters, each of which is named. The first sura is called “The Opening,” and the second is called “The Cow.” As a rule, suras are presented by length, from longest to shortest. The Quran contains no formal divisions other than the suras themselves, but scholars divide these chapters into earlier “Meccan” and later “Medinan” suras, dependi
ng on where they were revealed. Where a given sura was revealed matters because of the Islamic doctrine of abrogation, which states that later suras can overturn, or abrogate, earlier ones.
Tibetan Buddhists claim that their tradition synthesizes the wisdom of South Asia’s Theravada Buddhism with the compassion of East Asia’s Mahayana Buddhism. Muslims make a similar claim. While Judaism is about law, and Christianity is about spirituality, they say, the Quran combines the two. The Quran’s earlier (and often shorter) Meccan suras focus on spiritual matters, while the later (and often longer) Medinan suras focus on social, political, and economic matters such as marriage, war, and gambling. So Islam is a way of life as well as a religion. The Quran tells Muslims not just how to worship Allah but also how to lend money, divide estates, enter into contracts, and punish criminals.
One of the Quran’s most persistent social themes concerns justice and poverty. Reminiscent of Latin American liberation theology’s “preferential option for the poor,” the Quran articulates a preferential option for the weak, speaking out forcefully and frequently on behalf of the blind, the lame, and the sick. The pious, the Quran says, “give food, for the love of Him, to the needy, the orphan, the captive” (76:8).
The Quran glories, however, not in this world but the next. More than any other great religion Islam emphasizes life after death. In fact, it is difficult to find a sura that does not address the afterlife. Hundreds of verses detail the horrors of hell, the splendors of Paradise, the rewards awaiting martyrs, the mechanics of the resurrection, and the prophesies and procedures of the Day of Judgment. Exactly what this all means, and how literally or metaphorically it is to be taken, is up for grabs, but hell and Paradise are described in the Quran in far greater detail than hell and heaven in the Christian Bible. Hell is a place of fire and thirst, roasting skin and cactus thorns; Paradise is a garden of cool shade, comfortable couches, full-breasted virgins, abundant fruit, and, above all, rivers: rivers of water, of milk, of wine, and of honey.
Repeatedly the Quran warns of horrors to come for those who persist in their pride and refuse to submit to Allah. The words “warn” and “warning” occur dozens of times, Muhammad is described as “a warner” (38:4), and the Quran as a book sent down “to warn the evildoers” (46:12). Prophets repeatedly warn that there is no protector but Allah, yet these warnings go unheeded, and the prophets are accused of forgery and sorcery instead.
One of the core questions posed in the Quran is this: “There is no god but He; so how are you so turned about?” (39:6). What turns us about is not so much sin as forgetfulness. Socrates understood learning as recollection: the truths we think we are learning we are actually recalling from past lives. Muslims don’t typically believe in reincarnation, but they too see learning as recollection. All of us are born Muslims, they argue. No baby imagines that she is self-created or self-sufficient. As we grow older, however, we “wax proud” (16:23) and forget our true nature. The Quran seeks to shake us out of this forgetfulness, to remind us of our radical dependence on God, and to offer us ways to practice humility. “What, will you not remember?” the Quran asks incredulously (45:23). “Be not as those who forget God” (59:19). So while the Quran is revelation and recitation, it is also remembrance—“a Reminder unto all beings” (68:52). Remember Allah, it says. Remember the prophets and the holy books. Remember to take care of the weak and the needy.
Jewish and Christian readers new to the Quran are often surprised to find that its cast of characters extends to Abraham, Adam, Cain and Abel, David, Goliath, Isaac, Ishmael, Israel, Jacob, Jesus, John the Baptist, Jonah, Joseph, Mary, Moses, Noah, Pharaoh, Satan, Saul, and Zachariah. Mary appears more often in the Quran than she does in the New Testament. Nonetheless, the Quran differs radically from the Christian Bible. Here Adam sins, but this first sin is not imputed to the rest of us. So, as in Judaism, there is no doctrine of original sin and no Savior sent to earth to redeem us by dying.
On the question of relations between Muslims, Jews, and Christians, the Quran seems as conflicted as interactions among these groups were during Muhammad’s lifetime. The Quran says its God is the same as the Christian and Jewish God—“Our Allah and your Allah is One” (29:46, Pickthal)—and Muslims are told to “dispute not with the People of the Book” (29:46). At least one Quranic passage seems to indicate that Jews and Christians will make it to Paradise: “Surely they that believe, and those of Jewry, and the Christians … whoso believes in God and the Last Day, and works righteousness—their wage awaits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow” (2:62). Many passages say that the Jewish and Christian prophets were sent by God, and at least two passages insist that “we make no division between any of them” (3:84 and 2:136).
Abraham, for example, is described as “a man of pure faith and no idolater,” and it is written that “in the world to come he shall be among the righteous” (16:120, 122). But he will stand there as a submitter rather than a Jew, since “whoso desires another religion than Islam, it shall not be accepted of him; in the next world he shall be among the losers” (3:85).
Consigning Jews and Christians to hell is one thing, but speeding their arrival is another. Some of the Quran’s so-called sword verses—“O believers, fight the unbelievers who are near to you” (9:123) and “Fight you therefore against the friends of Satan” (4:76)—seem not only to justify but also to command making war on non-Muslims. Another controversial verse commands Muslims to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush,” unless, of course, they convert: “If they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms,” then you can “let them go their way” (9:5).
Ethics is the dimension where the great religions converge most closely. But on the ethics of war the Quran and the New Testament are worlds apart. Whereas Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, the Quran tells us, “Whoso commits aggression against you, do you commit aggression against him” (2:194). The New Testament says nothing about how to wage war. The Quran, by contrast, is filled with just-war precepts. Here war is allowed in self-defense (2:190; 22:39), but hell is the punishment for killing other Muslims (4:93), and the execution of prisoners of war is explicitly condemned (47:4). Whether in the abstract it is better to rely on a scripture that regulates war or a scripture that hopes war away is an open question, but no Muslim-majority country has yet dropped an atomic bomb in war.
After 9/11, many non-Muslims read the Quran for the first time. Some came away horribly conflicted. When I read the Quran (in translation) for the first time, I found it repetitive. I kept wishing for some sort of narrative arc. I strained for historical context. Still there were elements I loved. I loved the recurring short litanies of the names of Allah, which seemed to punctuate almost every sura, providing the reader with moments of rest and breath:
“and know that God is All-forgiving, All-clement”
“and know that God is All-hearing, All-knowing”
“and know that God is All-sufficient, All-laudable”
(2:235, 2:244, 2:267)
I found the notion of a religion designed to humble the proud thrilling. I also loved the Quran’s habit of the question—“Do you not understand?” (2:44); “Have you not seen?” (31:20)—despite the fact, because of the fact, that these questions were rarely answered.
There were also specific passages I found beautiful in expression and sentiment: “Every man has his direction to which he turns; so be you forward in good works” (2:148); and “let thy Lord be thy Quest” (94:8). My favorite sura was this short, poetic one, called “The Forenoon”:
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
By the white forenoon
and the brooding night!
The Lord has neither forsaken thee nor hates thee
and the Last shall be better for thee than the First.
Thy Lord shall give thee, and thou shalt be satisfied.
Did
He not find thee an orphan, and shelter thee?
Did He not find thee erring, and guide thee?
Did He not find thee needy, and suffice thee?
As for the orphan, do not oppress him,
and as for the beggar, scold him not;
and as for thy Lord’s blessing, declare it. (93:1–11)
Although I do not believe that this life is a mere dress rehearsal for the next—that “the present life is naught but a sport and a diversion” (6:32)—I was moved by passages about the “homecoming” Muslims believe they have waiting in God (24:42). Finally, I loved the challenge of this simple question, the question of Islam itself: “So have you surrendered?” (11:14). I must say, however, and with no small measure of regret, that I did not love the tactics the text employed to get me to answer this question in the affirmative.
One source of my disquiet is the way the Quran twists wrath around compassion so tightly that the former seems to strangle the latter. The Quran begins almost every sura with the reminder that Allah is merciful and compassionate, and repeatedly we are told that He is “All-forgiving to him who repents and believes, and does righteousness, and at last is guided” (20:82). But at least as often we are told of the horrors to come for “the inhabitants of the Blaze” (35:6). Repeatedly I read that Allah is watching me, that I should fear him, since he is both “terrible” (40:3) and “swift” in retribution (6:165), and that He will bring down fire on the unrepentant, the unbeliever, the unrighteous, and the boastful.
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