The Prophet

The Prophet

Islam Then and Now

By: Rev. Brian Gee

ATE ONE AFTERNOON a while ago, I went to one of my favourite Tim Horton’s for a coffee—down Brock Street in Whitby, just off Highway 401. As I was enjoying my “medium black,” I saw a young man whom I would judge to be in his late 20s, along his wife and small child. They were sitting near the south east door that leads out to the parking lot.

The young man looked like any other young man, until he got up from the table, rolled out a mat, spread it out on a small space handy around a corner from the door, knelt down on it and bowed five times facing East—all in full view of everyone. It wasn’t meant to be a public display. I recognized right away that it was a religious observance on his part. The whole process took less than five minutes.

Here was a young Muslim man following the first of the five pillars of Islam, his Muslim faith—praying to Allah five times daily, facing towards Mecca. At that time of day, this would have been the third or fourth of those five prayer times. He was faithfully practicing his religion in his own humble way. Is there a lesson here for us in devotion to be learned from another major world religion?

Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, wouldn’t think so. He has the ear of the President of the United States, and he is on record for calling Islam “an evil and wicked religion.” We should weep! What a stupid way to dismiss one person in every five who lives on this planet, just because he or she happens to be a Muslim! And having the ear of the President, it is also a highly dangerous outlook—unsafe for those one out of five in the world.

But, enough of that. My mission today is to look at the origins of Islam—the Muslim faith—and see how it got started around its founder, Muhammad the Prophet. His ministry took place in the Arabian Peninsula almost fourteen hundred years ago, from 610 to his death in 632 AD.

My information comes from a book in my possession called “No god but GOD” written by Reza Aslan, who was born in Iran, educated in America, and at the time of writing was visiting professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Iowa. It has been for me a gold mine of credible information about Islam. What I prize about the book is that it is information about their religion not written by an outsider to their faith, like several books on Islam are, but by one from the inside. It makes for more accuracy.

When I read the book, I felt that here was information too important to keep to myself. So I want to share with you some of what I learned. I found that it puts a different perspective on things—different from the popular press, which is usually the main source for what we know, and whose accuracy sometimes needs to be called into question. For good reason, I have certain reservations about the popular press, coming from my own experience.

You know as well as I do that Muslim people today live on our streets, shop in our stores, drive on our highways, and work in our offices. Unfortunately, all too often we hear about the extremist forms of their religion—the suicide bombers, the roadside ambushes, and the terrorist cells. They are very much another side to Muslims in our midst. We need to have a better understanding of these good people, who are not living examples of evil and wickedness (Franklin Graham’s terms).

We go back to the beginning to Muhammad the Prophet, to Seventh Century Arabia—those many centuries ago.

Muhammad was a thoroughly good person. His life was dedicated to the betterment of his Arab people according to the revelations he received from God, or Allah—the Muslim name for God. Muhammad never set out to found a new religion. His purpose was to reform the existing religious beliefs and practices in Arabia as he found them. He wanted to bring to the Arab people the God of the Jews and of the Christians. (42:13) Now that is a piece of information I never knew before, that Judaism and Christianity figured so largely in his thinking. You can understand that right away this caught my interest.

Muslims believe that God continually reveals himself, starting from Adam, down through Moses who gave us the Torah, down through David, down through the Hebrew prophets, and on down through Jesus who inspired the gospels. From the beginning of his ministry, Muhammad revered Jesus and considered him the greatest of God’s messengers. He had great respect for the Hebrew patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Moses is mentioned about 140 times in the Koran—the Muslim holy book. There is more mention of Jesus in the Koran than there is of Muhammad himself.

Muhammad believed that Abraham was the great father of Judaism and Christianity. We agree with that. But Muhammad also believed that the same Abraham was the great father of what became Islam. He said, “Our God and your God are the same, and it is to him we submit. (29:46)

The Koran reminds Muslims that they are not hearing a new message, but a confirmation of previous scriptures (12:111) All revealed scripture comes from a single source in heaven—“The Mother of Books.” (13:90) According to Muhammad, the Jewish Torah, the Christian Gospels, and the Koran of the Muslims must be read as a single story about the relationship of people to God.

It was never Muhammad’s intention that the Koran cancel out these scriptures, or even supercede them. It was never a case of one being better than the others. He did make the claim that the Koran completed them. That meant that he considered himself as the last of God’s messengers.

Muhammad even said, “He who wrongs a Jew or a Christian will have me as his accuser on the Day of Judgment.” (This is quoted by Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto STAR, Sunday, August 20, 2006, in a review of his forthcoming book “Being Muslim.”)

IN MUHAMMAD’S EARLY DAYS, the city of Mecca was run by an elite class of people known as the Quraysh tribe. They were a wealthy, greedy and powerful lot. If anything was going to happen in Arabia, it would only be with their authority. Mecca in those days attracted many pilgrims, much as it does today. But these pilgrims came there to honour many different gods, and they brought plenty of money with them. Pilgrims were good for business, and the Quraysh wanted to keep it that way, because they were more interested in economy than in theology.

Muhammad appeared in the neighbouring city of Medina to the north. He said, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.” Now this was a serious challenge to the Quraysh which they could not afford to ignore. This would upset the economy of Mecca. A lot of money was at stake if you were to eliminate all those many different gods. Where would all the pilgrims go? One God? Never! Bad for business!

And who does Muhammad think he is anyway, claiming to be Allah’s only messenger? That would strike right at the heart of the power and authority of the Quraysh tribe. This Muhammad fellow has got to go! But Muhammad was too smart by half, and they didn’t get rid of him after all.

Muhammad listened to God, to Allah, and not to the Quraysh tribe. He started building an Arab civilization based on moral principles rather then on privilege and power. (42:40) He called for sweeping reforms. He demanded justice. He warned that the Day of Judgment was coming. (84: 1–3) It sounds to me like the old Hebrew prophets, Amos and Jeremiah and the others. Muhammad preached care for the poor, and—of all things—equality of rights for women. Are you hearing echoes of Jesus here? Put together, this amounted to a religion of equals, and a very fine religion at that. It was very revolutionary in seventh century Arabia.

“But,” you ask, “this is so different from Islam that we are seeing and hearing about today. What happened?”

Men got a hold of it. That is what happened. And they imposed their cultural standards—social practices they had always followed, upon this new movement, and made it into the very thing that Muhammad worked against. Muhammad’s successors reversed a lot of what he advocated. They cancelled the equality of women and built a male-dominated religious institution. They downgraded the Jews and the Christians, and promoted Islam as above all others—the one true religion.

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THIS IS NO TIME FOR FINGERPOINTING. We do not have that privilege. Have we not seen the same thing happen to our own Christian faith, where many of Jesus’ teachings and practices have also been betrayed by a male-dominated institution? There has been enough evil and wickedness percolating in our own Christian house throughout the centuries. We need to keep our mouths shut.

People say Islam is “a religion of the sword.” It has become that in part, even though Muhammad said that there should never be any compulsion to religion—no forced conversions on pain of death. Tell that to the Jews and Muslims who were forced out of “Christian” Spain the same year that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. Yes, and as well, the successors of Muhammad have assassinated each other with great abandonment and zeal in their leadership struggles over the years. And they are still doing it. It has more to do with Bedouin culture than with the Koran as Muhammad passed it down to his followers. There are many arguments, even to today, between Shias and Sunnis as to who is a true Muslim. Osama bin Laden is part of that argument, with disastrous results.

When Muhammad died in 632 AD, the feud over his successor began. Some Muslims supported the Prophet’s cousin, Ali, These Muslims became the “Shiites”, whose vision for the religion was one of purity of faith and morality. They lost. The other Muslims supported the Prophet’s elder companion, Abu Bakr. These Muslims became the more worldly “Sunnis”, and they won. But the Shiite losers didn’t go away quietly. They assassinated the first four Sunni successors to the Prophet. And, as we know, these two factions have been fighting each other ever since—to the present day. This could very well cause Iraq to descend into civil war right now, regardless of the American presence.

Many religions are religions of the sword. Again, it is not our privilege to point fingers. Remember the Christian Crusades of a thousand years ago, whose purpose was to rid the Holy Land of those wretched Muslims, and restore that part of the world to sacredness once more. Remember the Spanish Inquisition. What about the American Indian wars of a few generations ago that wiped out whole tribes of native Americans? And closer to home, what about the arrogant theology behind the Residential Schools run in our own land by the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and United Churches—to “Christianize the savages?” They are all variations on the theme of religion by compulsion, often being religion by the sword, right in our own Christian house over too many generations

Islam has come a long way—and not always a good way—from Muhammad to the point today where it is hard to recognize its beginnings. By the same token, Christianity has come a long was from Jesus in the same manner. I would hazard a guess that if Jesus were ever to stumble across the Nicene Creed, which was designed to sort out who Jesus really is, and which was developed out of Christian conflict, he would never recognize himself. We have imposed our Western culture upon the way of Jesus just as much as the Muslims have imposed the tribal laws of the desert upon the way of Muhammad. The results are equally mixed, confusing, and, unfortunately, often fatal.

You have often heard the word “jihad.” It raises uncomfortable feelings within us. It was the terrible working out of “jihad” that brought down the twin towers in New York City on 9/11. That was a very long way from the mind of Muhammad. He originally intended “jihad” to be a spiritual struggle, a striving, a great effort on the part of the individual Muslim to overcome the sins that keeps one from Allah. ”Jihad” was meant to be the purification of the soul, something like St Paul advocating praying without ceasing, or Jesus saying, “Go in through the narrow gate, because the gate to hell is wide and the road that leads to it is easy…. But the gate to life is narrow, and the way that leads to it is hard….” (Matthew 7:13-14) That is “jihad,” in its original pure intention. Unfortunately, over the centuries “jihad” has been militarized and radicalized.

A quarter century ago, Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran used it as a weapon of “holy war.” This belligerent version of “jihad” has given rise to militant groups like Hezzbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza. These two groups take their lead, not from the Koran, but from the Iranian Revolution under Khomeni, their money from Iran and Syria, and their aim to completely wipe Israel off the map—the position voiced stridently by the current Iranian president. Such things were never in the heart and soul of Muhammad the Prophet.

Yet these things do not happen in a vacuum. They need to be understood, but not excused. Terrorism and the wanton taking of innocent life as we see it today are never excusable. It is wrong, no matter what religion a person espouses.

There is plenty of reason for what is going on in the world today, and it is not a clash of civilizations—the West against Islam.

For close to two hundred years, Europeans first and Americans later have been carving up the Middle East economically and militarily. Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798. That is a Muslim country. In 1830, France occupied Algeria. That is a Muslim country. In 1839, Britain occupied Aden. That is a Muslim country. In 1861, Lebanon came under French control, at that time a Muslim country. In 1872, there was a British-Russian struggle for the control of Iran. That is a Muslim country. In 1901, oil was discovered in Iran, and its development given to Britain. In 1917, the Balfour Declaration gave British support to the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine—a Muslim country. In 1948, the State of Israel was created—as right as that was—but it was in the midst of a wider Muslim territory.

In 1951, the popular President Mosaddeq of Iran nationalized Iranian oil. The corrupt Iranian Shah fled the country. But with the combined authority of the American CIA and British Intelligence, President Mosaddeq himself was deposed in 1953 and the Shah—friendly to the West—was returned to his throne. Then, of course, many of us remember that in 1979, the Shah was in turn thrown out by Ayatollah Kohmeni, and Iran was declared an Islamic Republic.

These events are only part of the story of Muslim lands being occupied, used and abused by Western powers—the disastrous Iraq war of the present day being the latest edition.

Now I ask you, do you think that if the opposite was true, and that Muslims occupied American, British and Russian territory so systematically and ruthlessly, we would sit idly by? What would our reaction be?

Islamic fundamentalism today did not arise out of nothing. If some asks, “Why do they hate us?” there are reasons. The American President says that they hate us because of our culture and our values—those sort of abstract things. He is missing the point. There is nothing abstract about their feelings. If they hate us, it is because of what the West has done to them in their own lands in very specific ways for over 200 years! But that doesn’t make Islam an evil and wicked religion. Rather, it calls out for international justice.

Yes, Muslims are living among us and they are good people. They are just as horrified by the things their extremists are doing in the world. They are just as quick to condemn suicide bombings and terrorism as we are. We cannot paint all Muslims with the same brush as Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda or the Taliban.

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I AM NO EXPERT HERE. Rather, I am a commentator on what I have come to know and wish to pass on to you. And I have only been able to touch the edges of a vast international, religious, military, political and social drama—a people in the agonies of arising out of a tribal past into becoming citizens of the wider world. It will take generations for that to be worked out. We are only yet at the leading edges of it.

What, then, can we do? There are several things.

Be informed. Get the truth about what we see and hear. Do your homework! And that may not be all that easy to do.

Be suspicious of what you hear and see in the media, because news is always managed. News comes to us with a slant. Have you tuned in to Fox News in the U S ?

Be generous. There are bad people out there, but there are far more good people. Don’t paint all Muslims with the brush of violence and terror. They don’t deserve it any more than we do

Be grounded in our Christian Faith. Don’t be narrow about it, thinking we have the edge on all others. Know Jesus Christ and the way he appealed to people. Follow his lead of openness and inclusiveness—to those of our own faith and to those of other faiths. Take the log out of our own eye, before we even attempt to take the speck of sawdust out of someone else’s eye!

Work hard and ceaselessly so that the one God of the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims may be praised !

Amen and Amen !

† Y Z

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Books for Reference—they are all very good

due out in September

ISBN 0-679-64040-1

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“THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM TODAY” , Irshad Manji Foundation Books

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Look in on her Web Site www.muslim-refusenik.com It will be worth it!