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Religion Title: The enigma of Islam: The two faces of Muhammad American Muslims tell us that Islam is a religion of peace. Jihadist leaders abroad describe Islam as a religion of war against infidels. Who is correct? Both are correct. If both are correct, does this mean that there are two Muhammads and two Qurans? Yes, in the sense that Muhammad was like two different persons at two different times and the Quran is like two contradictory books pasted together. Now that you are thoroughly confused, let us turn to history and to the book Islam and the Bible: Why two faiths collide (2004), by David Goldmann, veteran missionary to Muslims in Morocco, for the solution to this riddle. Muhammad (circa 570–632 A.D.) was born in Mecca and was a traveling merchant until age 40. From 610–622 he had a ministry in Mecca as a prophet of Allah. In 622, he fled from his enemies in Mecca and led his followers to Medina. Through tribal political alliances, Muhammad soon became the ruler of Medina. He ruled Medina until his death (622–632). According to Mr. Goldmann, Muhammad as ruler of Medina had a strikingly different character than when he was the prophet of Mecca. The Quranic verses he penned in Mecca often contradict the verses he wrote in Medina. Let us compare the two Muhammads and the two Qurans. The following numbered examples are paraphrases of points in Goldmann's book. My commentaries on the numbered statements are in parentheses. Mecca versus Medina (1) In Mecca, Muhammad preached and exhorted people to submit to Islam. In Medina, he used the threat of the sword to compel people to convert to Islam. (According to the Medina verses, Allah accepts converts who do not believe in him inwardly, but will kneel to him outwardly under threat of death. Muhammad did not have this view of Allah until he became a war lord and used force to compel people to accept his rule.) (2) In Mecca, Muhammad led the life of a teacher and prophet and followed disciplines of prayer, fasting, and worship. In Medina, he was the political ruler and the military commander. During his ten years in Medina, he personally led 27 military attacks. Prior to his death, he conquered most of the Arabian peninsula. (The Allah of Medina allowed his prophet to be a warlord seeking military conquest. In like manner, he encourages Muslim leaders to spread the religion of Islam by the sword--which they did on an epic scale after the death of Muhammad. The conquests continued until the Muslims met those with stronger armies, or they outran their supply lines. The Muslims eventually conquered about 50% of the Christian world--the eastern Mediterranean lands, the Middle East, and North Africa--and gradually extinguished most of the Christian testimony in those lands.) (The Westward rush of conquest was halted exactly a century after Muhammad's death. The Muslim army in Spain attacked Gaul [France] and was defeated by Charles the Hammer at the battle of Tours [732 A.D.]. Muslims subsequently switched to expansion through proselytizing and mercantile colonies. However, when new Muslim nations arose with great armies [e.g., Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks, and Moguls], they reverted to the expansion of Islam through conquest. The Ottoman Turks conquered the remains of the Christian Byzantine Empire and took Constantinople in 1453. They attacked Europe from the east in 1529 and 1683, and both times were stopped at the gates of Vienna by European armies. Three times [732, 1529 & 1683], Christian civilization in Europe came close to extinction from invading Muslim armies.) (3) In Mecca, Muhammad had one wife. During his last ten years of his life at Medina, he married twelve more women. (The poor family man of Mecca became the wealthy, voluptuous sheik with a harem of "wives" in Medina. Polygamy and harem culture debases women and makes men hedonistic and narcissistic. Societies that sanction polygamy, harems, and concubines have always assigned a low status to women.) (The Medina Quran's heaven for men is a garden paradise where every male sensual pleasure is catered to by nubile nymphs--just as every sensual pleasure of Muhammad, as the voluptuous sheik of a harem, was indulged. The Medina Allah is a God for men. Goldmann says Muslim women have a hard time getting into paradise.) (4) In Mecca, Muhammad fought against idol worship. In doing so, he exempted Christians and Jews from his proscriptions and persecutions and respected them as "people of the book." In Medina, he persecuted Christians and Jews as infidels. (Christians and Jews in Islamic countries never know when they will be protected and respected or persecuted and reviled. The situation is often fluid so that protection can suddenly gives way to persecution. Historically, the best Christians and Jews can hope for under Muslim rule is second class citizenship and heavy taxes from which Muslims are exempt. When jihad and war lord sensibilities were in the air, Christians and Jews often faced forced conversion, banishment, slavery, sexual bondage, or death.) Was Muhammad corrupted by power? Was Muhammad corrupted by power in Medina? We do not know for sure, but it appears to be so. His exploitation of women by creating a harem of wives and his violent abuse of power in Medina was the very antithesis of his methods and behavior in Mecca. If the change in the Quranic verses resulted from Mohammed's changed character, then we can rule out Muhammad's claim that the contents of the Quran were dictated by the Angel Gabriel. If Muhammad lied about getting the verses from Gabriel, the changed verses were probably self-serving. Does that imply that Muhammad was a charlatan? Not necessarily. It's possible he was just self-deceived. The hypnotic power by which Islam holds hundreds of millions of people in an enchanted thralldom is the profile of a cult, not a mere con-game. The spiritual powers of heretical cults emanate from diabolical sources. Muhammad may well have been deluded by the same dark powers as have bewitched his followers. Unfortunately, Muhammad's changed behavior and teachings in Medina are a little too convenient and self-serving for anyone with a grain of skepticism about human nature to swallow. We are thereby compelled to face the possibility that Muhammad was corrupted in Medina by the lust for power, control, vengeance, fame, wealth, and women--and wrote the new verses of the Quran to rationalize his vices. We can find the same venal motivations and self-serving manipulation of religion in many of the Muslim caliphs that followed Muhammad, and in the Muslim dictators of today. The corruption of Muslim officialdom in many lands seems to follow the pattern set by Mohammed when he was a corrupt war lord. The Muslim quandary How do Muslims decide whether to lean toward the peaceful or the jihadist verses? American Muslims tend to think for themselves on this issue, and generally lean towards the mild Meccan verses, even if their leaders disagree. Arabs in the Middle East have a tendency to follow the teachings of a mufti or mullah, or to follow what their family, clan, tribe, or community decides. If their clan or their mullah goes jihadist, they will probably follow them and become jihadist, at least in theory. Although Muslims in Arabic countries are less prone to independent thought than American Muslims, many appear to be secretly peaceful for pragmatic reasons, while publicly joining the jihadist chants to keep up appearances. Some conservative Muslims refuse to go militant until they perceive a threat to the "ummah," or the Muslim community. However, Muslim teachers are not in agreement about what constitutes a "threat" and how the "ummah" is to be defined. Therefore, there is no formula by which one can predict who will go jihadist or who will moderate their views. As a result, Muslim leaders are capable of volatility in their policy and influence. Volatility in policy Some Muslim leaders in Europe recently pulled back from jihadist rhetoric to the surprise of Muslim scholars. When Muslims rioted over Danish cartoons that ridiculed Muhammad, many Europeans were disgusted and contemptuous of Islam. The loss of face connected with appearing ridiculous was unbearable to the European Muslims, and that is why some of their leaders backed off from jihadist propaganda. Muslims rioted because of ridicule and moderated their behavior because of the fear of more ridicule. No Westerner could have predicted either event. The contradictory nature of Islam allows for such volatility of policy. The volatility of policy can be exploited by clever manipulators and deceivers. The slippery con man Yasser Arafat preached peace and moderation one day, jihad to the bitter end the next day, and terror bombings as a war of nerves on the third day. Sometimes, he would speak about peace in English and preach jihad in Arabic from the same podium. How could a pathological liar like Arafat hang onto power so long? According to Goldmann, a lie is not a sin in Islam in the way it is in Christianity. Christians care deeply about whether a person believes what he is saying is true. Muslims mainly care about whether what one says is true. Whether or not one believes the statement he is making is a secondary question. This is especially true of the Medinian version of Islam in which there is a rift between the human heart and prescribed public actions. The prevalence of lies in many Muslim communities sometimes makes Muslims easily deceived and prone to treachery. Muslim duplicity multiplies the difficulties of negotiating with them, trusting them, and understanding what they really think. Lies breed corruption, and the corruption of Muslim officialdom is a major barrier to democracy and to reform. Does Allah change his mind? Do the verses written in Medina represent a new policy that overrides the verses written in Mecca? If this be the case, does Allah change his mind? Goldmann answers yes to both questions. Christians believe in a God of steadfast principles and purposes. In contrast, a Muslim has no problem saying that Allah changes his mind. Goldmann has often heard Muslims say, "Allah can change his mind, because he is Allah and can do anything He wants." Christians believe that God's laws, commands, revelations, and actions are expressions of his character and that God never acts in ways that are inconsistent with his character. Therefore, we can learn about God's character by studying and obeying his law and learning his truth. Furthermore, the universal moral law is written on men's hearts, so that the laws of God ring true in the human conscience. Muslims generally believe that Allah is unknowable. He does not reveal his character to man, but only reveals his commands. According to the warlord version of Islam from Medina, Allah's commands express his arbitrary will and do not express a universal moral law that lines up with his character or with his nature. It is Allah's will that makes a thing right or wrong. One must learn by rote the things Allah declared by fiat to find out what is right or wrong. Reason and conscience are of no help in understanding arbitrary law that demands perfunctory obedience. In contrast, Western man traditionally believed that the intrinsic quality of a thing in itself gives clues to its rightness or wrongness. Therefore, good and evil are not arbitrary, but have an objective quality. Muhammad's conception that Allah makes arbitrary decrees implies that Allah as lawgiver is inconsistent with Allah as creator--or it implies that the creation does not follow an orderly design. Mohammad at Medina brought an element of irrationality and chaos into the cosmos by introducing the idea that his arbitrary moral law does not necessarily line up with the laws of nature. Arbitrary ruling by fiat must of necessity introduce irrationality into law. American liberal judges who practice arbitrary law share this legal aberration with Muhammad. Muhammad's theology is illogical and self-contradictory--and that is why his law does not fit the natural law of the creation. Not only can we not learn about the design of nature by studying Allah's law, but we can learn nothing about Allah from his law. After all, we should not expect to learn anything about a warlord (like Muhammad in Medina) by his decrees. The decrees are an exercise in raw power with no thought to justice. The warlord means to have his decrees obeyed and his power publicly honored. The very fact that his decrees are arbitrary yet obeyed demonstrates his sheer power more blatantly than if his decrees made sense. Allah, as the god of a warlord, inevitably has the same attitudes. A warlord does not tolerate those who question his decrees. In like manner, Muslims are warned by their teachers that asking too many questions about why Allah commands something is a sign of impiety. If Allah changes his mind, it is not for man to understand or to question why, but simply to obey. A parallel tradition in Islamic law is based upon Quranic verses written in Mecca. This alternative Islam views the laws of Allah as objects of divine harmony and splendor that delights the human heart and enlightens the mind. This second tradition is close to the Jewish view of God's law. American universities often teach the Meccan face of Islamic law and are mute about the Medinian warlord version. Islam is a Janus mask of two faces. To teach about only one of the faces is to deceive the students. Poster Comment: American universities often teach the Meccan face of Islamic law and are mute about the Medinian warlord version. Islam is a Janus mask of two faces. To teach about only one of the faces is to deceive the students.
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#1. To: liberator, Ibjensen, Orthodoxa, A K A Stone, out damned spot (#0)
Ping. The two faces of Islam from the very same source----Muhammad
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name (John 1:12)
Mohammad murdered those who criticized him and when he came to power and became de facto despot of Arabia, Muhammad was bereft of human compassion. He was an obsessed man with dreams of grandiosity and could not forgive those who stood in his way. Muhammad was a narcissist, like Obama, and He was astute and knew how to manipulate people, but his emotional intelligence was less evolved than that of a 6-year-old child. He simply could not feel the pain of others. He brutally massacred thousands of innocent people and pillaged their wealth. His ambitions were as big as a narcissist and he honestly believed he was entitled to do as he pleased and commit all sorts of crimes and his evil deeds were justified. Today, he exists in the torment of hell, but the insane jihadists act as though he is still living among them and that his phony words are like a beacon unto them. The heart of Islam can be found in the mass slaughter of the Banu Qurayza who followed Judaism. The hatred that Mohammed installed within his followers can be seen in the 21st century in Somalia and a host of other Islamic nations. Political and religious leaders in the free world need to wake up because history and the modern world clearly shows us that the same Islamic barbarity is alive and it is stretching its tentacles.
Good commentary and observations.
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name (John 1:12)
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