The Everlasting Hatred (16 page)

“Wonderful Originator of the heavens and the earth!
How could he have a son
when he has no consort… . Follow what is revealed to you from your Lord;
there is no God but He
; and withdraw from the polytheists [i.e., Christians].”

— K
ORAN
, S
URAH
6.102, 106
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The word
enigma
is defined as a “mystery: somebody or something that is not easily explained or understood.”
¹¹²
This word perfectly applies to Mohammad. He is a figure of history that defies natural explanations. Indeed, apart from the acceptance of the fact that a supernatural being worked in and through him, there is no way to comprehend him.

How did an orphan become the greatest Arab leader of all time?

How could an illiterate man become the author of a book that is the pinnacle of classic Arabic—the most beautiful and majestic of all Arabic literature?

How is it possible that one who as a child was thought to be either insane or demon-possessed by his own family became the founder of the second-largest religion on earth?

How did a man who was admittedly both violent and sensual become one of the most revered religious leaders in history?

This is what I mean when I say, Mohammad is an “enigma” who, apart from the working of supernatural forces, is impossible to explain.

You can worship him as God's last and greatest prophet, or you can reject him as a false prophet—but you cannot ignore him. This one man is solely responsible for the Arabs exploding out of the Arabian Peninsula and in less than one hundred years conquering lands from the Atlantic to the borders of China and the islands of the Pacific, from North Africa to Spain and into Europe to the gates of Vienna. If the Muslim hoards had not been stopped by the Frankish king Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in A.D. 732, all of Europe would have fallen under Islam's control.

Mohammad was born around A.D. 570 and died in July of the year A.D. 632. As mentioned previously, his father was from the Quraysh tribe. This tribe gained much power and influence, both because of their commercial activity in their hub at the city of Mecca, and because they were the guardians of the sacred well and the Ka'abah, with its black meteorite cornerstone. They enjoyed much prestige, influence, and profit because of the continuous religious pilgrimages Arabians made to the Meccan “holy sites.”

Mohammad's father was Abdallah, the son of Abd al-Muttalib by Fatima bint ‘Amr of the Quraysh clan of the Banu Makhzum. Abdallah was reputed to be quite a handsome man. Marriages
were strategically calculated for political and economic goals, and Abd al-Muttalib was seeking an alliance with the Banu Zuhra (Shura) clan. Thus he secured Aminah bint Wahb as an arranged bride for his son Abdallah.

The wedded couple soon became the parents of a son whom they named Mohammad. According to consistent historical witnesses, Mohammad had a strange, mystical childhood, one marked by the presence of many different guardians and “visitations of spirits and angels.”

We may gain an important insight into Mohammad from a description by his mother. Muslim scholar Robert Morey writes, “Mohammad's mother, Amina, was of an excitable nature and often claimed that she was visited by spirits, or jinns. She also at times claimed to have visions and religious experiences. Mohammad's mother was involved in what we call today the ‘occult arts,' and this basic orientation is thought by some scholars to have been inherited by her son.”
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From his birth, Amina feared for the infant's health in the crowded conditions of Mecca. So she did what Quraysh mothers with means customarily did—she hired a nurse from one of the Bedouin tribes to take him out into “the healthy air of the desert.”

Mohammad was entrusted to a Bedouin woman named Halima, who nursed the infant until he was two years old before bringing him back to Amina. Delighted with his healthy look, Mohammad's mother said, “Take the child with thee back again, for much do I fear for him in the unwholesome air of Mecca.”
¹¹⁴
So Halima took him back. After two more years she returned again, but this time she was troubled. The child had experienced numerous fits, which caused Halima to think he was demon-possessed. Amina, however, pleaded with her to
carry him back once more. But after Mohammad experienced subsequent epileptic fits and “spirit visitations,” Halima returned him to his mother when he was five years old and refused to take him back. Mohammad always remembered Halima with great affection.

Author Robert Payne investigates in more detail the incident that caused Halima to return Mohammad. According to Halima, “Mohammad experienced the first of his ‘visitations' while he was walking in a field with one of Halima's sons. He suddenly fell down shouting that ‘two men in white garments' were splitting open his belly. When later asked by Halima what happened, he said ‘two angels had cut open his belly searching for something.'”
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According to Mohammad's own testimony, he experienced these sorts of ‘visitations' at various times for the rest of his life.

Abdullah, Mohammad's father, died before the boy was five years old, while he was still under Halima's care. About one year after he was returned to his mother, she also died. So Mohammad became an orphan at the vulnerable age of six years old. He was then entrusted to the care of his seventy-year-old grandfather and his mother's slave girl, Umm Ayan.

When Mohammad was twelve-years old, his grandfather also died. His uncle Abu Talib took him under his care and began taking him on long caravan journeys to Damascus and other great cities of the Middle East. During this time Mohammad apprenticed in the merchant trade. He continued working in the caravan trade from the ages of twelve to twenty-five years. In this formative period of his life, the travel experiences were very important. He was exposed to Christianity through encounters with various Catholic monks, who formed his erroneous ideas about the true Christian faith.

When Mohammad was twenty-five years old, his uncle suggested that he go to work for a woman named Khadija, a rich widow merchant in Mecca. Mohammad was hired to accompany her merchant caravan to Syria, which he did several times. Although she was forty years old, widowed twice, and had three daughters, they got married. Together they had two sons, Abdullah and Qusim, and a daughter named Fatima. Tragically, the two boys died in infancy.

As mentioned before, Mohammad exhibited mystic tendencies and was very religious from an early age. Khadija's wealth gave him the opportunity to take long retreats into the hills around Mecca for uninterrupted periods of religious meditation. However, these religious quests did not bring him the inner peace he sought. His frequent long excursions into the desert produced a “spiritual anxiety” that was reflected not just in his personality, but also in the religion he founded.

Historians have sought to analyze Mohammad's complex temperament. Sir Norman Anderson observes about this period:

He would retire to caves for seclusion and meditation. He frequently practiced fasting; and he was prone to dreams. His character seems to have been a strange mixture. He was a poet rather than a theologian; a master improviser rather than a systematic thinker… . He was generous, resolute, genial and astute: a shrewd judge and a born leader of men. He could however, be cruel and vindictive to his enemies; he could stop to assassinate; and he was undeniably sensual.
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Robert Payne notes the contradictory traits within his nature:

It is worthwhile to pause for a moment before the quite astonishing polarity of Mohammad's mind.
Violence and gentleness
were at war within him
. Sometimes he gives the appearance of living simultaneously in two worlds, at one and the same moment seeing the world about to be destroyed by the flames of God and in the state of divine peace.
¹¹⁷

These two antithetical traits of violence and gentleness equally existing together in his soul are what made Mohammad such a complex person. He seems to have been able to exert either trait at any moment without any personal awareness of contradiction. He also held severe grudges toward those who rejected his personal religious claims, as both the Jews and the Christians learned.

Dr. Anis Shorrosh gives this interesting description of Mohammad's appearance based on eyewitness accounts:

As an adult, Mohammad was somewhat above middle height, with a lean but commanding figure. His head was massive, with a broad and noble forehead. He had thick black hair, slightly curling which hung over his ears; his eyes were large, black and piercing; his eyebrows arched and joined; his nose high and aquiline; and he had a long bushy beard. When he was excited, the veins would swell across his forehead. His eyes were often bloodshot and always restless. Decision marked his every movement. He used to walk so rapidly that his followers half ran behind him and could hardly keep up with him.

In A.D. 610, when Mohammad was forty years old, he had a visitation that would come to be known as “The Night of Power.” It was this extraordinary experience that finally convinced Mohammad that he was called as God's prophet and apostle. Muslims believe that Allah began revealing the true religion of Islam that night.

According to Islam, this beginning of revelation came to Mohammad in the form of “a gracious and mighty messenger, held in honor by the Lord of the Throne.” The messenger appeared to him in a cave on Mount Ararat, which overlooks the Hijaz Valley in eastern Arabia in the vicinity of Mecca.

“Proclaim!” the angel commanded three times. Dazzled, Mohammad asked, “What shall I proclaim?” The angel replied: “Proclaim in the name of your Lord who created, created man from clots of blood! Proclaim! Your Lord who created the most bountiful one, who by the pen taught man what he did not know.”

At this point, it is important to note that Muslim scholars believe Mohammad saw himself as more of a reformer and restorer than a founder of a new religion. Mohammad believed that he was sent to re-establish monotheism as it had originally been revealed. He believed that the original recipients—Jews and Christians—had corrupted God's true revelation. It is crucial to note that in the Koran, Mohammad calls the Jews “the people of the Book.”

This fundamental belief that God's revelation had been corrupted guaranteed a collision with Judaism and Christianity. In one fell swoop, it dismisses the Bible as a book laced with lies and fraud introduced by Jews and Christians. Muslims teach that Jews—and to a lesser degree Christians—deliberately perverted the original revelation from God in order to make themselves the recipients of God's covenants and blessings.

Here are just a couple of examples of this teaching in the Koran:

O followers of the Book [Jews]! Indeed Our Apostle has come to you making clear to you much of what you concealed of the Book and passing over much; indeed, there has come to you light and a clear Book from Allah [i.e., the Koran]; With it Allah guides him who will follow His pleasure into the ways of safety and brings them out of utter darkness into light by His will and guides them to the right path. (Surah 5.15, 16)

O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide these unjust people. (Surah 5.51)

The mode in which Mohammad received subsequent revelations from Allah is uniformly recorded in Muslim tradition. When Mohammad was about to receive a revelation, he would usually fall down on the ground, his body would begin to jerk, his eyes would roll backward, and he would perspire profusely. His followers would cover him with a blanket during these “visitations.”

The “divine visitations” occurred when Mohammad would go into a trancelike state. When he would come out of the trance, he would immediately begin to proclaim what had been transmitted to him.

As we view this description today, it would seem to be an epileptic seizure. Dr. Morey makes an astute observation about this:

What must be remembered is that in the Arab culture of Mohammad's day, epileptic seizures were interpreted as a religious sign of either demonic possession or divine visitation.

Muhammad initially considered both options as possible interpretations of his experience. At first he worried about the possibility that he was demon possessed. This led him to attempt to commit suicide.

But his devoted wife (Khadija) was able to stop him from committing suicide by persuading him that he was such a good man that he could not possibly be demon possessed.
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Whatever caused these trancelike states; it is clear that the revelations received during them were from a supernatural source. The important question here is not so much about the
method of revelation, but its source. From a Christian viewpoint, there are only two sources of supernatural: The God of the Bible and “the god of this world,” who is also described as “an angel of light.”
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The Bible offers tests to prove the authenticity of a message from God. Moses, the first writing prophet from God, was given a test to prove whether a message or a prophet was truly from God:

But the prophet who shall speak a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he shall speak in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. And you may say in your heart, “How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?” When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.
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